Strong, Strained or Stuck: How Executive Pastors Can Build Trust in 2026 with Jeremy Peterson
Jan 21, 2026
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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re sitting down with an executive pastor from a prevailing church to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey, so you can lead forward with clarity.
We’re joined by Jeremy Peterson, Executive Pastor at One Church, a fast-growing multisite church with five physical locations across New Hampshire and a strong online presence. Jeremy is also a key leader behind the Executive Pastor Summit (XPS), investing in the health and effectiveness of second-chair leaders across the country. In this conversation, Jeremy reflects on insights from the National Executive Pastor Survey and shares practical wisdom for strengthening one of the most critical—and often fragile—relationships in the church: the partnership between the lead pastor and executive pastor.
Is your relationship with your lead pastor thriving, strained, or somewhere in between? Are you feeling neutral when you know the relationship needs to be strong? Jeremy offers clear, experience-tested guidance on building trust, maintaining alignment, and leading with integrity in the second chair.
Why trust matters more than ever. // The survey revealed that just over one in five executive pastors feel uncertainty or strain in their relationship with their lead pastor. While not a majority, Jeremy believes the number may actually be higher in practice. He notes that many executive pastors quietly wrestle with trust—either feeling that they are not fully trusted by their lead pastor or struggling to trust their lead pastor themselves. Because the lead pastor and executive pastor sit at the intersection of vision and execution, even small fractures in trust can ripple throughout the entire organization.
Consistency builds confidence. // One of the clearest ways trust erodes is through inconsistency. Jeremy emphasizes the importance of being dependable—doing what you say you’re going to do, following through on commitments, and showing up with a calm, steady presence. When executive pastors overcommit and underdeliver, even unintentionally, trust begins to erode. Over time, staff and lead pastors alike start to hesitate, slowing decision-making and momentum. Reliability, Jeremy notes, is one of the most underrated leadership strengths.
Truthfulness over comfort. // Another major trust-builder is honesty—especially when the truth is uncomfortable. Executive pastors often act as filters, but withholding information eventually backfires. Metrics like attendance, giving, or volunteer engagement will surface eventually, and surprises damage credibility. Jeremy argues that leaders would rather hear hard truth early than manage damage later. Speaking truth with humility strengthens trust far more than protecting feelings in the short term.
Clarity before problem-solving. // Jeremy observes that executive pastors are wired to fix problems, sometimes before fully understanding the lead pastor’s intent. When clarity is missing, misalignment follows. At One Church, Jeremy maintains a standing weekly lunch with the lead pastor to ensure they are synced on priorities, vision, and concerns. These rhythms allow for shared understanding and prevent assumptions from growing into frustration. Trust, he explains, grows when leaders take time to listen before acting.
No surprises. // A core operating principle between Jeremy and his lead pastor is the “no surprises rule.” Whether it’s service times, staffing changes, or ministry initiatives, quick five-minute conversations prevent hours of repair later. Jeremy encourages executive pastors to drop into offices, make short calls, or send clarifying texts rather than letting uncertainty linger. Small misunderstandings left unaddressed often become major relational landmines.
Prayer as a leadership discipline. // One of Jeremy’s most personal insights is the impact of daily prayer for his lead pastor and staff. Rather than praying only during crises, he now prays intentionally for his lead pastor, lead pastor’s spouse, and children by name. He’s seen this practice soften frustrations, realign perspective, and strengthen unity across the team.
Trust sets the speed of the church. // Referencing Stephen M. R. Covey’s Speed of Trust, Jeremy explains that trust is not just relational—it’s operational. High-trust teams move faster, communicate clearer, and recover quicker from failure. Low-trust teams slow down, double-check motives, and avoid risk. For executive pastors, cultivating trust is not optional; it’s foundational to healthy church culture.
To learn more about One Church and reach out to Jeremy, visit church.one. For executive pastors looking to grow in their leadership, learn more about the Executive Pastor Summit at xpsummit.org.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We are in the middle of these special episodes we’ve been doing where we’re reflecting back on what you said in the National Executive Pastor Survey. And what we’re doing is bringing executive pastors from prevailing churches on to really help us wrestle through some of the things that we saw and ultimately to provide some help for you as you launch here into 2026. Today, it’s our privilege to have the executive pastor of all executive pastors, Jeremy Peterson with us from One Curch. It’s a fantastic church, a multi-site church in Northeastern United States. They have five, if I’m counting correctly, outpost locations in New Hampshire, plus church online, plus Jeremy’s involved in a leading XPS, a great conference for executive pastors and and and and campus pastors. And he does all kinds of amazing stuff. So Jeremy, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Jeremy Peterson — It’s quite the introduction. Thanks, Rich, for having me. Rich Birch — This is the problem you become you become a more than one-time guest. And I’m like, what do I say? He’s amazing. That’s what you should say. Tell us a little bit about One Church, to set the context for people, understand a little bit about your background, where you’re at. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so I spent the first 17 years in ministry in Texas, and I’ve been here for 12 and a half years now, and it’s it’s pretty wild. I said I would never be on the mission field. I grew up as a missionary kid, and so being here, I really feel like I am on the mission field. I’ve been here 12 and a half years, and we just celebrated like our 4,000th person that’s been baptized…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Jeremy Peterson — …since I’ve been here. And so it’s just it’s just been quite the ride being a part of what God’s doing and just trying not to mess it up. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, this thing we’re looking at today to kind of kick the conversation off, there was a a stat that jumped out to me from our study. 22.32% of executive pastors, that’s just over one in five, are either uncertain or experiencing strain with their lead pastor. Now, I know that that’s a minority number. It’s not like two-thirds are like struggling with this. It’s it’s It’s just over one in five. Rich Birch — But to me, that’s still a hauntingly large number that one in five executive pastors we would bump into and say, I’m not sure that that relationship is working well. So I’d love to start the conversation there. Why do you think the lead pastor and executive pastor relationship, why is there kind of tension there? Why would people be experiencing that? And and personally, I think, man, that relationship’s got to be strong for the the health of the church. But help us understand, maybe set the problem up for us. What what do you think is going on there when that relationship is strained? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, it’s interesting to stat, Rich, because talking to a lot of executive pastors around the country like you do, I feel like that number may even be a little bit higher.
Rich Birch — Right.
I think so surveys are incredibly helpful, but I feel like one of the biggest challenges or conversations that I’m having on a regular basis with other executive pastors is I’m not sure the lead pastor trusts me. Sometimes it’s like, I’m not sure that I trust my lead pastor. Jeremy Peterson — And so I think there’s definitely a tension, which I think it’s, there there are two roles that are so incredibly crucial for the church, right. You have either the cedar senior or lead pastor, who’s really the one casting the vision. And you’ve got the executive pastor in that second role or that second chair, that’s really called to like help execute on the vision. And when there’s like, trust or mistrust, lack of trust, whatever it may be, that can cause a lot of, i think, tension and frustration if it’s not if it’s not addressed in some capacity. Rich Birch — Yeah. And I do get these calls as well. I sometimes what happens is i’ll I’ll be talking to an executive pastor, maybe I’m on site and they’ll pull me aside and they’ll say, you know, I just love my lead pastor. So fantastic. They’re an amazing vision-caster. They do such a great job. And then they they rattle off all this real positive stuff. And then they’ll say, but can you help me get better at this relationship how do I… Or it’ll be a lead pastor will pull me aside and say oh i just i love the executive pastor here and they’ll same thing rattle off that person’s so good at getting stuff done and they manage the team so well and never worry about money stuff, and and then there’s a but. But could you help me get better at that relationship like ah it’s like we’re struggling around this.
Rich Birch — What would be some early signs in conversations that you’re having that maybe there’s the trust is starting to erode a bit that that’s drifting towards this kind of, Ooh, this is things are not in a good place. What are some of the telltale signs in those conversations that you see? Ooh, we maybe have a trust problem here. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. Trust is really interesting because I feel like, um, really time builds trust. I mean, I feel like I’m, I usually kind of err on the side of like, hey I’ll trust you until you, until you cause reasons to bring like, untrust or whatever that may be…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Peterson — …or or break the trust. Because it takes, I feel like time, time is what really builds on trust, but it’s something that can be also lost overnight. Rich Birch — Very quickly. Jeremy Peterson — And so, um, I think a few things that I’ve noticed over the years, As trust begins to erode, I think there’s ah a few things that I would that I would hit on. I think um a few of them is just as being consistent. So like as an executive pastor, are you like are you reliable? Are you are you dependable? Are you doing what you say you’re going to do? Are you coming in with like a calm calm spirit? Sometimes senior pastors or lead pastors can be all over the place. They can be upset or frustrated, and if you kind of come in as like the is the constant like in the midst of a storm and you can kind of calm that down a little bit, I think that that’s that’s really helpful. Jeremy Peterson — I think a big part of it is just is being truthful. So like in the consistency, are you being truthful? Because a senior pastor needs somebody who can speak the truth into them. Most of most staff even other um I think a lot of senior pastors they’re just not very trusting people by nature, and so I think when you have somebody who can speak truth into you, I think it actually starts developing and growing the trust. I feel like if you’re the same time i feel like if you’re holding back all the truth, I feel like like trust starts eroding over time if you’re holding back some of the truth. Jeremy Peterson — So take something like weekly attendance, right? Senior pastors, lead pastors really, really care about seeing like about attendance. But if you are not being like fully truthful or transparent, little if you start holding some of the information, the information is going to come out in some capacity.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Peterson — And so I think if you start holding on to that, that can start breaking or even eroding the trust over time. So I think that consistency is a is a huge thing. I think another part of it is…
Rich Birch — Yeah. I think…
Jeremy Peterson — …oh go ahead. Rich Birch — No, no, I was just going say, it’s amazing how, and what was that poem? Like everything I learned about life I learned in kindergarten. It’s amazing though, how much the just the core idea of like, do what you say, do what you said you were going to do.
Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like it’s, but it’s amazing how for some leaders we, they seem to struggle with that, that it’s like, well, you said you were going to do this. Like, why did you not do it? It’s incredible. What else else were going to say there? Jeremy Peterson — Oh yeah, the other thing was just going to add is I think clarity is so crucial. You’ve been an executive pastor. I think sometimes we go into this like problem solving mode and we’re constantly trying to think of like, how do we solve this problem? How do we how do we get in front of it? Jeremy Peterson — And so a lot of times we don’t even have clarity, even necessarily around what the senior pastor or lead pastor are trying to accomplish. And we’ve already gone into like fix it mode before even we even have a full picture of like what’s trying to be accomplished. And if you’re not constantly like syncing up in some capacity with the senior pastor, I think that that’s where some of the trust can break over time. Jeremy Peterson — So like I have a standing lunch every single Monday, regardless of what’s going on, unless we’re on vacation, we get together and we sync up every single Monday to have a conversation. And I remember initially it was like, well I don’t know that I can commit to a, you know, weekly lunch time and doing this. And so unless there’s some random exception for us, Mondays is really that chance to be able to sync up, make sure that we’re on the same page. And and I think really in that time, kind of not only hear like what’s God placed on your heart, but but I’m building camaraderie. Jeremy Peterson — So like, and by camaraderie, I don’t I don’t feel like in any sense, like you as an executive pastor and lead pastor need to be best friends. But I feel like having some kind of common interests where you can you can spend some time together, you can have conversations that are not just work related, but a lot of it’s also about like hey what’s going on in your life. Like what’s happening not just here at the church but what’s happening in your own life? What’s going on? Like like being aware of those things, I think the more you can have those conversations it’s not just all about work all the time, I think that that helps build trust builds that relationship with your senior lead pastor as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to come back to that the kind of friendship, co-worker relationship thing there. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah Rich Birch — But you said something earlier that caught my attention, this idea of a standing lunch on Mondays. Are there any other, in your relationship with Bo, a part of why I was excited to talk to you about this is as an outsider, I perceive you guys are like, those guys seem to like working with each other. Rich Birch — They’re like, the fact that you’ve been there for 12 years and you continue to be there is a sign of that and vice versa. He continues to love working with you and it’s a prevailing church. You guys are taking new ground. Mondays, lunchtime, that’s a core behavior practice, intentional practice. Are there other things that you’re doing as you think about engaging with him in a way that build trust or build that relationship? Jeremy Peterson — That’s a great question. So I think two things is, I will constantly drop into his office and have a five minute conversation, or make a five minute phone call. I’ve realized that over the years, how much time and probably pain I could have spared both of us…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Peterson — …had we just dropped in and had those conversations. And so kind of a a best practice that we would have now is like, hey, pick up the the phone and let’s have a five minute conversation…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Peterson — …instead of like potentially hours on the back end of things that we may have to undo or repair just because you know you may have had a question, doubt, frustration, whatever it may have been like. Just go ahead and voice those things and let’s have those conversations and then let’s move on versus like dwelling on it. Because I think that’s where the enemy does a really good job getting a foothold. And it’s like, hey, if I can just create a little little doubt or a little dissension here, then I can help break away and erode that trust. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Could you give me an example, that’s maybe not too close to home, of what one of those five minute things would be? Because I think that’s a good insight that like, hey, I should just like pick up the phone or drop by and like, hey, here’s something either I heard I can I can see that or I’ve thought of a similar thing around, like I see something that’s getting going and I’m like, I could wait to meet with the executive team and everybody or like, I but I really should just get my lead pastor’s thoughts on where his head’s at on this issue. Because if this thing gets too far down the road…
Jeremy Peterson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, we could be causing pain. What would be some examples of the kind of things that you think those kind of five minute drop-ins are helpful with? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I mean, something is simple as we had one of our locations was going from two services to three services. And so I had a conversation with the outpost pastor and we started talking through what those things are. Jeremy Peterson — And we’re like, yeah, these three times make sense. And we just kind of ran with it. And so in retrospect, we start going to print. So we get to the point where it’s like going on the website, it’s going to print. And he asked me, he’s like, what are these times? Like, why why did we land on these times? Jeremy Peterson — And so it was realizing that sometimes it’s those simple things, but if you can constantly be dropping in shoot a text, have a quick conversation, like the amount of things that we had to undo to fix something like that, was big. Another thing that he’s he’s shifted a lot now, but early on, it would not be uncommon for, say, one of our student pastors to go up to him and say like, hey, I know you did student ministry back in the day. I’m thinking about doing this. And he would be like, that sounds like a great idea. Just go for it. Not thinking through like all the details and ramifications of what that looked like. Jeremy Peterson — And so next thing I know, I’m in a meeting with one of our student pastors and they’re like, hey, Bo said that we should do this. And I’m like, hold the phone, like no we’re not we’re not doing that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeremy Peterson — And so having those short conversations really trying to operate under the like the no surprise premise which is what him and I operate under. Our elders operate under that as well. So we’ve we’ve kind of shared the same thing with our elders is like, hey, if you have questions or concerns, pick up the phone, make a call, always choose to believe the best instead of assuming the worst. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. You know, speaking with weight, you know, that’s always a shrewd move by staff to like, if I can just get the lead person to say, yeah, yeah go do that that. That’s like a blank check. Well, Bo said, you know, I can imagine that, that Jeremy Peterson — He signed off on it. It’s fine. Rich Birch — It’s fine. It’s totally fine. We’re buying the corporate jet. It’s fine. Let’s go back to the best friends versus coworkers thing. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. Rich Birch — I see that this is an interesting relationship. And I’ve had I’ve had the privilege of working for three incredible lead pastors who I have really good positive relationships with. And, you know, we got a lot of stuff done, moved a lot stuff for the kingdom. And we’re friendly, like we’re we were close, but we weren’t like dudes. We were not like, you know, going to whatever dudes do like, you know. Rich Birch — And, so I sometimes had tension around in my own brain around like, should I be more friendly with these people? I don’t know. Help us understand, pull that apart. How, what do you think is healthy? What, what, what’s the kind of a minimum viable relationship? You know, how do we think through our you know, that, that side of this, this relationship? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, that’s that’s a really, that’s I think it’s probably different for every senior executive pastor relationship, but I feel like there’s some who think that they need to be best friends.
Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — So like every vacation we do, like our families need to do this together. Every hobby, like we need to be a part of that together. What I’m also realizing is that there there’s probably some common interests that you share. Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — And they may not be the same. So like your lead pastor may like to golf. You may not like to golf. I may really like to fish. He does not really care to fish. Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — But but there are common interests that we’ve realized over time. So a lot of that could be sports. So like we follow one of the same college football teams. We both enjoy working out. And so being able to share some of the best practices in those areas, I think it is finding like, where’s their common ground?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeremy Peterson — And how can we have a conversation? At the same time, I don’t know how healthy it is for you to be best friends. And because there are times where that could actually keep you from being fully truthful with them in in worries that you may like you may impact your relationship in some capacity. I think that’s a dangerous place to be. Rich Birch — That’s good. How do you think, so we’re really talking here about trust and how we’re building trust. How are we trustworthy people with our lead pastor and are seen by being trustworthy with our lead pastor and then vice versa? How do we, you know, continue to try to, you know, choose trust with them and engage in a way? Rich Birch — How do you think this idea of building trust ends up rippling into other relationships as, as, ah as we lead as an executive pastor? I often think, you know, we, we, we end up in, we’re in this really interesting kind of intersection of vision and execution. And so, you know, oftentimes I think lead pastors, when they’re doing their job, right, they are like a large portion of what they’re doing is thinking about vision and about the future. And then our job is to figure out, okay, how does that actually, how do we make that work? Rich Birch — And so we got to work with all these other relationships. What’s the connection here around trust and relationships with our staff, with our staff teams, maybe younger staff, what’s that look like? Jeremy Peterson — And I think it goes back to being truthful. If I overcommit and under deliver, then I can only do that a couple of times before like trust will start to erode. And I’ve seen it times over the years where like somebody way overcommits on this and they’re like, no problem, we can do this. And you know we’re going to have 10,000 people show up to it, but it’s going to be amazing. And then you you hype it up in such a way that then then the event or the function, whatever it is, happens. And then all of a sudden you like, you feel like you way under delivered. You can only that I think ah a few times before it starts to become like, man, I’m not sure. Like I know, I know Jeremy said he was going to do this, but like he keeps dropping the ball. He keeps committing at super high level and he’s not executing at that level. I think that that starts impacting things. um Jeremy Peterson — There’s a, there’s a great book out there um that Stephen Covey wrote. He’s probably most, probably most well known for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I think is the name of the book. Rich Birch — Yep. Jeremy Peterson — He wrote another book that’s not as well known, but the book is called Speed of Trust.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeremy Peterson — And it’s a great reminder that like the more you work on being synced up together, the more trust begins to grow, the faster you can actually move and operate as an organization and as an entity, the more that that is built. And so so if you haven’t had a chance to read it, fascinating read. It was really helpful for me to understand that like, the more truthful I am, the more consistent I am, the more clarity I’m providing and actually executing at that level, then the more trust begins to build. And therefore allows us to actually move at a pretty rapid pace, the more that that foundation is built.
Jeremy Peterson — And I think it impacts the staff as a whole. it’s It’s a little bit like the mom-dad relationship. Like if there’s tension or if they’ve like if there’s been a fight or an argument, like as as kids, like you can tell something’s off. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Jeremy Peterson — What did dad say? Or you know why is mom upset with dad? um I think ah the staff can sense that. Like If something is off between the two of you, they can start to begin to wonder, doubt. They can even begin to you know, put in like suspicious thoughts of like, man, something must be off here. Something’s out of sync. And so I think that that’s a big part of it is just, is taking time, working on the relationship, and then just watching it kind of like grow and blossom over time. But also I would encourage, like if you’re a new executive pastor to the role, just realize that like you can’t buy time. Rich Birch — It just takes time. Jeremy Peterson — I’m an investment over years, the things that you’ve learned. You know, we talk often here about like failing fast and cheap because we feel like failure is actually needed to be able to accomplish what God’s calling us to do. But I think if you’re not truthful and transparent as that’s happening, then then it’s not long before it it starts catching up to you. Rich Birch — That’s good. That reminds me one of the the, you know, axioms I’ve talked about with our teams is, you know, there’s, there’s no bad information. There’s just because I think sometimes like something might go wrong, you might have an event, you might be a team member, you, you know, you busted something, it could be as simple as, you know, youth event, we had literally had this happen, we opened a brand new building. And the very first youth event, there was a car, we had a kid go through the wall, and it busted a like it, you know, but busted a wall, like his brand new building, $15 million dollar build. Wow. This is amazing. You know, put a hole in the wall.
Rich Birch — And you know, there’s no bad information. What makes that hole in the wall worse is if we never hear about it, and it gets covered up and someone puts a, you know, well, we’ll just move this, you know, whatever, some furniture. Jeremy Peterson — Just put a big poster up there, it’ll be fine. Rich Birch — Yeah. Put a poster in front of it or whatever. That just gets worse over time. Like, sure. There may be information we don’t like, but there’s no bad information. Like we’ve got to be organizations that spread even bad news and you know how we react. That was one of the times where I felt like in that case that instance I said was, I feel like, oh like the Lord was with me because actually I responded super well. I said to the guy, I’m like, this is why we bought this building. I’m so glad you had all these students here. You know, let’s get it fixed and and move forward. I did not like paying that bill, but you know, it is, it is what it is, so. But we can’t, if we create organizations that are trying to hide the truth, that are trying to hide information that will erode trust long-term and you move way slower to the speed of trust, you know, information there. Rich Birch — So pivoting in a in a slightly different direction, but related kind of an adjacent neighborhood of conversation. What are you learning about developing, particularly trust with, or building up team members, younger team members, newer team members at, at One Church? How, what does that look like for you guys? How, how are you, how how does that fit into this whole idea of, you know, building trust with people? Jeremy Peterson — That’s a great question, Rich, because actually the and we can talk about it if we have time. But the Executive Pastor Summit this year specifically is really about leading up and empowering younger leaders. Rich Birch — I love it.
Jeremy Peterson —But can I just do a quick jump backwards before? Rich Birch — Yes. Jeremy Peterson — Just just maybe this is a bonus thing. Regardless of whether you’ve worked with your lead senior pastor um for the last couple of months or the last 10 years, something that has really changed my heart and my perspective, and I think has really helped grow the relationship, is um it’s just daily be in prayer for him or her. I know that sounds very simple. Until about three years ago I would pray for Bo on a regular basis but it was just kind of like when I thought of it, or on the way to work, or Sunday morning… Rich Birch — Right. It’s a big thing coming up. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, here’s a big thing coming up. But but man the the more we really challenge all of our staff to do this, but I know for myself praying for him, praying for each of his kids by name, know where they’re at in their life, relationships that they’re in, praying for his spouse, and I know he’s doing the same thing. Like I think that that God really takes that, honors that, and he helps kind of build trust through that. And so just an encouragement to some of you if you’re like wrestling with this, if you’re doubting, if you feel like the enemy is getting a foothold is, my encouragement is like, man, just take time every single day to pray for your senior lead pastor. And then I think that’ll make a huge difference. So just want to put that in. So I didn’t forget about, about that on the, on the back end. Rich Birch — No, that’s so good. That’s a great practical tactic for us around, particularly, you know, you think about the the lead pastor, there was a high percentage of these in this kind of one out of five that were really saying, so it’s 17.89 is the number of people, of executive pastors that said that they feel neutral about their relationship with their lead pastor. And man, we don’t want to feel neutral about this relationship. Like this can’t be like, it’s fine. Like that’s not good. That would be a great takeaway is say, Hey, what if I was going to spend time every day praying for my lead pastor, for what’s going on in their world, for their, you know, for their spouse, for their kids, all of that. I think that’s a great, great takeaway. Rich Birch — That’s a callback to a previous episode as well. I love, and I know I’ve joked with you about this before when we had you and Bo on talking about multi-site stuff last year, and you know, I asked this question around how do you know the campus versus teams and like the classic multi-site tension. And, um and I’ve retold this story way too many times. And, you know, I’m like, what do you guys do to fix this problem? And then Bo in his wise sort of way rolls out the like, well, you know, I pray every day for every staff member and their, and their family. And I found that that has really helped. And I was like, literally, I was like, Okay. So I’ve been doing this for 20 years, asking that question. Never, never once considered that. So I felt humbled. Rich Birch — But that’s a great, a great, you know, it’s not just like, and know that’s what I love about you guys. It’s not like you’re not saying that from like, oh, just pray about it. It’s like, no, this, let’s actually add this as a part of our lives and discipline and see what the Lord will do. You know, I think it’s amazing. It’s fantastic. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, not to recap the whole thing, but man, like our staff as a whole has been doing that the last four and a half months, Rich. And even the interaction, some of the past frustrations, it’s crazy how much that’s minimized. Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — And just simply praying for, I mean, we spend all this money to go to conferences and all this stuff. And it’s like, hey, how about here’s a printed off name of everybody on staff, their spouse and their kids. Rich Birch — Yes. Jeremy Peterson — Hey, just take 20 minutes a day and pray for them.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeremy Peterson —It’s like, oh yeah, I can I guess Ii can do that as it doesn’t cost much other than some time so. But anyway… Rich Birch — Well, and you start to see each other as humans, right? At the end of the day.
Jeremy Peterson — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch —And, you know, you start to be like, hey, this person’s like, they’re not just a task that needs to be done or, you know, they’re not just whatever the next problem is that’s going to come up. So, um yeah, that’s a great practical takeaway.
Rich Birch —Well, let’s pivot on that. I want to make sure because I know that you can help leaders on this as well. As we think about younger leaders, what, you know, just ah ask a super wide open, what should we be thinking about? What are you thinking about? What are you wrestling with? Help us wrestle through that. you know, let’s talk about that. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, something that’s really been on my heart the last probably year and a half is how do we empower younger leaders? And so I’m not sure who sits around like your, know, your decision making team. But God really put in our hearts several years back to start a residency program and really pour into some of these younger leaders. I know people took a risk on people like you and I, at some point when we were in our twenties and didn’t really know what we’re doing. And we made some dumb things. Like, I think I made multiple holes and multiple walls, which the senior pastor was like very forgiving at the time about it. Jeremy Peterson — But, but I just love that we get an opportunity to like really pour into invest and actually empower and, um, and and put some trust even behind some of these residents that they’re they’re going from like, okay, I’ve learned these things in school. I have this head knowledge of things, but from a practical standpoint, what does that really look like?
Jeremy Peterson — And so so knowing that we were going to this conversation, I just sat down with one of our first year residents just to kind of hear what their experience has been so far, because I want to hear like the positives, the negatives and kind of what their insight was. But um but a few things that he shared shared with me was like, I love that you guys allow us to fail. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Jeremy Peterson — He’s like, I’ve been at other jobs before where it’s like, if something happens to me, if I miss it, then it could be like, hey, you’re going get written up for this. And for us for us, it’s really trying to create that culture of like, you are allowed to fail. You’re allowed to try things. We talk about failing fast and cheap. We hope it doesn’t cost us a lot. But but ultimately, like that’s a safe place in the residency to but to be able to be. Jeremy Peterson — Another thing he said was, um like I’ve been challenged to say yes to opportunities. And I was like, well, yeah, tell me a little bit more about that. And he’s like, no, usually kind of like you pick and choose. Well, yeah, I want to say yes to this one, but I don’t want to say yes to this. And he’s like, I’m in my early 20s. Why would I not say yes to all these different opportunities? And he’s like, I really want to be scrappy. Jeremy Peterson — And I’m like, well, tell me more tell me more about that. He’s like, no, I really want to be like more of a utility, like multi-tool staffer. And in my mind, I’m like, OK, I appreciate the the hustle and this younger resident because he’s already talking about like, OK, how do we create a staffing position for him?
Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — But I also think realizing that, you know, he said, if I get an opportunity to preach, I’m going to take the opportunity to preach. If I get the opportunity to host, I to take the opportunity to host. If I don’t have anything that weekend, that I’m going to see if I can serve with our production team and kind of learn the behind the scenes side of things so that I can help with that. Anywhere that’s needed.
Jeremy Peterson — And so I love this idea that they’re willing to say yes, they’re willing to take some risks, knowing that the team believes in them. And so for us, and I think for me specifically, it’s been okay, who do I see being a part of our leadership decision making team in the years ahead? Jeremy Peterson — And know for, you know, if the average age in the room is like, say, in their mid 40s, like to bring in a early mid 20 year old is it like, wait a second, like, what is this, you know, what is this kid going to say to us? um I think they provide some incredibly fresh perspective… Rich Birch — 100 percent. Jeremy Peterson — …on what we’re actually doing well, things that we should do differently, and just ways that we can continue to like really empower them, challenge them, put them in positions that may make them feel uncomfortable. Like we have some that have are like almost deathly afraid of having you know being on stage and talk talking to somebody. But give them an opportunity to to get in there, host, I mean, hosting’s two, three minutes, but get an opportunity to get on stage, just kind of like, you know, put a little fire under them, and and see how they do. And and just watch them grow. And I’m always shocked, and I shouldn’t be shocked because because we’ve been doing the residency for a while, but how many of them not only step up into the challenge, but then actually go beyond our expectations. Rich Birch — Right. That’s so good. I think this is a critical important critically important for us to lean in on. You know In the last year I’ve been struck, I was with a lot of different churches, and but there were two in particular that stood out to me. These are like prevailing churches, folks that are listening in. If you were listening, they’re like name brand churches. You know these people. Rich Birch — And the thing that stood out to me was I was having in both of them, I just happened to be having a kind of a meeting with leadership meeting with the folks that were actually operational leaders of a whole bunch of different departments. It was like a kind of a cross section of team leaders. And I was pleasantly surprised with how young that crowd was. Like I looked around the room and I was like, man, these people are all in their late twenties, early thirties. And they’re running departments that are larger than, you know the majority of churches in the country. Rich Birch — You know they’ve got 15 staff reporting to them. They’re managing multi-million dollars of budgets. And these are prevailing churches. Now, I don’t think that that is a coincidence. I think both of those churches have unlocked something and have realized, wait a second, we have to pass this thing on to the next generation. Rich Birch — So when you think about the residency, kind of talk to us so about but about the residency program. What does that look like? And how did you get into that? How did that kind of get that ball get rolling? Help us understand. Maybe there’s someone who’s listening in today is thinking, hmm, maybe that’s something, a step we should take in this coming year. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so it was actually a retired baseball player who’s actually going to be at XPS this year. I’m going to do an interview with him. Because now that he’s retired, he’s still coaching, but the like now he’s kind of coaching up the AA and AAA players as they’re coming in and they’re moving up to the major leagues. But he really challenged us because we told him the staffing was one of the biggest challenges, especially in in the New England area. There’s not a lot of people that feel called to be up here this close to Canada, which I know you’re in Canada. But they’re they’re like, maybe if we can be further south, like a little more comfortable. Jeremy Peterson — But for us, we realized that staffing was a challenge. And for us, he really challenged us to to start a residency. And the residency, it’s either a one or two year residency. And you come on you come in you have two areas of focus. And so it could be, say, worship and production. And you’ll spend six months with each of those areas, really kind of hands-on. And so if you’re showing up here, you’re actually like, you will be on stage leading worship. You will be helping run production, whether it’s for our online service or at one of our outposts. But we really try to give as many hands-on opportunities as possible. Jeremy Peterson — As somebody who went to seminary, I think I had one class called practical ministry. And it was like, here’s one semester on, you know, how to do weddings, how to do funerals, but not a whole lot of hands-on experience unless I was volunteering at a church. And so for us, it’s really trying to take, hey, here’s some things that I’ve learned, like from a practical standpoint, but like actually let’s just actually see them like, live happening in real time and get an opportunity to be able to see like, Hey, is it something that God’s even really calling me to? And how can I use the gifts that he’s given me to further the kingdom? Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Love that. Well, we’ve kind of referenced XPS. So XPSummit.org. This is a conference that you are the grand content poobah for. Talk to us about XPS this year. This is to me is a must-attend event. Talk to us about it. and And where is it? All those kind of details this year. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, sure. It’s it’s May 4th through 6th in Dallas-Fort Worth. And typically we’ll have 150, 175 executive pastors from different size of churches around the country. And and I appreciate the comment, Rich, but really my goal is to get the people that are there with the content, people like you, and other leaders who really want to come and pour into other executive pastors. And so, yeah, so if you, whether you live in the area or you just want to a day to hang out with some incredible leaders, Rich is going to be there, I’ll be there. And like you said, you can go to xpsummit.org and you can see some of the keynote speakers as well as some of the breakout leaders. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, Jeremy, just as we wrap up today’s episode, bit of a curveball question here. As you think about 2026 at One Church, what’s a question or two that’s on your mind that you’re like, hmm, here’s some stuff that we’re thinking about. it doesn’t have to do with anything we’re talking about today. It could be just anything that you’re thinking about this year. You’re wrestling through thinking, hmm, I wonder what that’s going to look like in this this coming year. Jeremy Peterson — Man, I was not expecting that question. One thing I’ve been praying about is I think we’re going to start seeing a shift in different parts of the country um where we may have people that are more of like a like a tentmaker role in ministry where um I think there’s an incredible opportunity to do things in like the business sector, but at the same time still work in the church using some of the gifts that God’s empowered you with. And so I can see a shift happening where we have more of the tent making. It’s crazy to me that it’s been like less than a hundred years since the church has actually had like paid full-time staff…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Peterson — …and not only paid full-time staff, but multiple staff. And so I think I think we could see a shift there. I think a lot of its just to be trying to be, in the words of one of our residents, how to be a little more scrappy, and really looking for staff that is not just focused on one specific area, but somebody who is a utility player that’s like, hey, I can help out in these four or five different areas instead of just being like, I have this one skill set that I can bring. I think those are two things that are going to make a huge impact in the church in 2026. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Jeremy. I appreciate you being on today. If people want to track with One Church, where do we want to send them online to track with you guys? Jeremy Peterson — Just go to church.one. Little bit different of a website, but yeah, they can go there and you can find my email address if you want to email me or if we can serve you any way, I know um for for our elders, for Bo, our senior pastor, we love serving the local church as a whole. And so if you’re in the area or if you want to come and hang out with us for a few days, shoot me an email and we’d love to host you guys. Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today, sir.
When Growth Creates Pressure: Facilities, Space and What to Do in 2026 with Eric Garza
Jan 15, 2026
Leading Into 2026: Executive Pastor Insights
Momentum is real. So is the pressure.
This free report draws from the largest dedicated survey of Executive Pastors ever,
revealing what leaders are actually facing as they prepare for 2026.
Free PDF • Built for Executive Pastors • Instant access
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re continuing our special series responding to insights from the National Executive Pastor Survey with an executive pastor from a prevailing church.
Today we’re joined by Eric Garza, Executive Pastor at Cross Church. Cross Church is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with 12 campuses across South Texas, serving both English- and Spanish-speaking congregations. In this conversation, Eric helps unpack the number-one fear expressed by executive pastors in the survey: running out of space and not knowing what to do next.
Is your church growing but feeling physically constrained? Are facilities, kids’ space, or parking holding you back from what God may want to do next? Eric offers practical, hard-earned wisdom from leading through rapid multisite expansion.
Facilities don’t just limit space—they shape momentum. // At Cross Church, growth has come through both campus planting and mergers or acquisitions of existing churches. In both cases, facilities either enable momentum or quietly choke it. Sustainable space must support all aspects of ministry—not just a worship room. Parking, kids’ environments, lobbies, restrooms, storage, and office space all play a role. A building that works on paper can quickly fail if it can’t support the full weekend experience.
Don’t rush into permanence. // One of Eric’s strongest recommendations is to resist the pressure to own a building too early. Several Cross campuses began in leased spaces, which reduced operational burden and allowed the church to test viability without long-term risk. Leasing removes concerns like insurance, major maintenance, and long-term liability, freeing leaders to focus on ministry. If a campus stalls or misses the mark, leaders can pivot without being locked into a costly asset.
Location matters more than you think. // Some facility lessons are learned the hard way. Eric humorously—but seriously—warns against launching next to railroad tracks or industrial zones. Visiting a facility during a Sunday morning timeframe is essential. Noise, safety, curb appeal, and accessibility all influence guest experience. Cross has launched campuses in libraries and event centers, learning to adapt acoustics and layouts while prioritizing safety and hospitality.
Capital campaigns need margin. // Eric is candid about capital campaigns. Churches often believe in faith for a number that rarely materializes at full scale, especially since capital giving sits above normal tithes. Meanwhile, construction costs almost always rise. Cross learned the hard way that campaign timelines and construction timelines rarely align. Building 10–15% margin into every campaign accounts for inflation, surprises, and delays. If surplus remains, it becomes a testimony of generosity rather than a crisis averted.
Remodeling vs. rebuilding requires sober math. // Acquiring an existing building can be a gift—or a trap. Before knocking down walls, Eric urges leaders to get third-party inspections and cost estimates. Some remodels quietly approach the cost of new construction while delivering less functionality. Evaluate whether a building should serve as a long-term campus, a ministry center, or even collateral for future development. Sometimes the wisest move is not to hold services there at all.
Define a clear facility standard. // Over time, Cross Church developed a consistent “Cross standard” across campuses—shared color palettes, stage layouts, kids’ safety ratios, and ministry flow. While floor plans differ, the experience feels familiar. This standard helps teams evaluate remodels quickly and ensures families know what to expect. It also clarifies where compromise is acceptable and where it’s not.
When space is tight, simplify strategically. // Not every constraint requires construction. Cross has increased capacity by adding services, adjusting service times, and consolidating kids’ age groups when space is limited. Combining grades temporarily doesn’t dilute quality—it preserves momentum. Eric defines excellence not as “having the best,” but “doing the best with what you have.” Obstacles are reframed as opportunities to steward growth faithfully.
Communicate the season clearly. // Your people can endure inconvenience when they understand the why. Leaders don’t need to share every detail, but they should frame facility strain as evidence of impact, not failure. Clear vision keeps people focused on mission rather than discomfort.
To learn more about Cross Church, visit crosschurchonline.com or follow @crosschurchrgv on social media. You can also connect with Eric directly on social media at @ericpgarza.
Watch the full episode below:
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Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We are in the middle of, in the in the midst of, is maybe a better way to say, these special set of podcasts where we’re responding to what you said in the National Executive Pastor Survey, which turned out to be the largest dedicated or direct executive pastor survey that we’re aware of ever, which is kind of cool. And hundreds of people were you know, logged in and told, gave us a sense of where ministry is at. And what we’ve been doing is spending time with an executive pastor from a prevailing church, and frankly, people I like, to get their ah thoughts on kind of what was surfaced.
Rich Birch — And today we’ve got a big one. This is a significant issue. In fact, it was the single biggest fear that was expressed. We asked a question around, what’s your kind of biggest fear for this year? And nearly one in five executive pastors expressed fear about this. And what is that fear? It’s the whole issue of our facilities, space, capital projects, that sort of thing. Many churches are running out of kids space, parking, seating, lobby capacity.
Rich Birch — You know, we’re all worried about in inflation of construction costs. If you got a building quoted on five years ago, you’re going to want to get it quoted on again, you know, renovation, building, all of this stuff. And, you know, we’re excited to have ah today a return guest, Eric Garza with us. He is from a fantastic church, Cross Church, which is located in Texas. It’s one of the fastest growing churches of ah in the country, and they have 12 campuses, if I’m counting correctly. So Eric has thought about facilities and so excited to have you back on the show, Eric. Thanks for being here. Eric Garza — Rich, thanks for having me back. Good to have an opportunity to have a great conversation about a big topic for a lot of pastors and executives across the country. Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, you’re going to solve all our problems for us today, Eric. So. Eric Garza — It’s just some nuggets of what I’ve learned and experienced. But if I can make your life and your world a little bit better, awesome. Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s good. Kind of tell us a little bit about Cross again, kind of set the context, you know, give us a bit of sense of the the church. Eric Garza — Yeah, so we’re in deep south Texas. Most of our campuses are within a half hour north of the US-Mexico border. So right at the bottom of the tip of Texas. 30 years going on 31 years as a ministry. In the last eight years, we went from one site ah to now seven locations, physical locations and 12 campuses. Eric Garza — We’re a bilingual ministry, which means we do we have English campuses and we have Spanish campuses. And we recently, last year in 2025, launched our first campus outside of our region in San Antonio, Texas.
Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Garza — And you can imagine a lot of ah victories and a lot of challenges, ah you know leaving your space, your comfort area, the region where you’ve been, for 30 years and then heading out and venturing off into what we believe God called us to do in in Central Texas. Eric Garza — So ah just phenomenal growth. We’ve seen God’s hand up on our ministry and it’s come with, ah like I said, a lot of wins and a lot of challenges we’ve had to navigate. And being a a predominantly Hispanic ministry that reaches both English congregants and Spanish congregants, dealing with cultural, political issues in our region of the country ah has just been a whirlwind. But as anybody could imagine, it’s been a big learning season for us for expansion. You know, I know we’re talking about facilities going from one side to multisite and all of that that entails operationally, logistically, financially. So I wouldn’t say we know it all. We certainly don’t if we’re always learning. But man, if if we can just impart any wisdom, we’re we’re all for that. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, I would say I actually re-looked at a lot of these fears. And the overall tone, if you were to kind of summarize the the conversation that people seem to be expressing is like, there’s this sense from a lot of executive pastors, listen, our ministry could grow, but our space, frankly, is holding us back. And we’re not entirely sure what the path forward is. It’s like, we we see the physical space issues, but I’m not sure where to go from here. So I’d love to jump right in. Eric Garza — Sure. Rich Birch — How have you, as you’ve looked at your seven physical locations, 12 campuses, how do you evaluate facility limitations? And are they the things that are actually restricting growth or does the issue lie somewhere else? How do you, how are you discerning that when you look at, you know, this, this whole issue? Eric Garza — Yeah, a lot of our of our growth has come from us planting campuses, but some of our growth has come from, I guess, what the corporate world calls mergers and acquisitions, where we’ve merged or really acquired other ministries who either had an existing facility that we took over. Or where we partnered with them through the acquisition and launched a campus in a new building or a new facility. Eric Garza — So some of the things that we’ve done is, there’s a whole process, right, that that it’s entailed with going multisite. And one of those big key indicators of whether the campus or the church plant is going to succeed is whether they have a sustainable facility that can house all aspects of the ministry. And sometimes that can be difficult to find. Eric Garza — For example, you don’t just want meeting space to have services, right? You need maybe an office space, you need childcare space, you need a meeting space, you need lobby, restrooms, you need adequate parking. And all of those factors come into play when you’re looking to find the right spaces. So for us, We’ve just been blessed that ah either we’ve have you know gone through the capital campaigns, we’ve gone through the funding, the you know internal funding to build new facilities, or the acquisition that we’ve ah done over the last couple of years already had an existing facility, which is a plus. Because instead of building, we just went into a remodel phase to bring that building up to what we would call our Cross-standard to house our campus and facility. And so I mean it’s It’s a holistic approach.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Eric Garza — You look at parking, kids space. What you don’t want to do and what what we’ve run into in the past, is it’s okay to to launch with limited space, but if you’re launching and you already have a couple of hundred people that are gathered, you’re going to want to find a space that’s going to give you ample room to have one or two services without having to crunch yourself in the short term. And it’s going to, in in in a larger sense, going to really facilitate some challenge and some angst and frustrations early on. And you want to minimize as much of that, especially when you’re when you’re launching and you’re setting out to start a new campus or a new church. Rich Birch — Yeah, so that’s one of those kind of pinch points would be too small, right? Like I’m assuming you’ve ended up in facilities where it’s like, okay, this is this just frankly is too small.
Eric Garza — It’s not going to work.
Rich Birch — And so we’ve got to, it’s not going to work. We’re going have to start with three services and that, you know, or something like that. Or we’ll start with two and we’ll be pinched too quickly. Are there any other kind of tripwires that you’ve run into that are like, oh, like it might be great on these five things, but this, these, if it’s not these two or three, if these aren’t right, we were not going in there. Are there any other things to get to, as you said, a sustainable facility? Are there any kind of big no-nos that you’ve bumped into, or maybe you wish you knew before? Yeah. Tell me about that. Eric Garza — Yeah, a couple of things. Number one is don’t ah start a church next to the railroad tracks. That may sound a little funny. Rich Birch — No, tell me more. Eric Garza — You never know that during your Sunday morning message at your 10 o’clock service, roughly about 10:40 a.m., this train…
Rich Birch — Oh, gosh.
Eric Garza — …who’s two or three blocks away is going to come blaring out ah and just completely disrupt your sound and and your service and your message for a few minutes. So it may sound comical, but ah yeah, definitely don’t do that. Right. Rich Birch — No, that’s very good. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s well, and even going and seeing, that’s a great takeaway because even going and seeing the facility during a Sunday morning, like, cause you wouldn’t know that if you’re there to just Tuesday afternoon or something, you would have no sense of that.
Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — But, but cause it might be a train, but there’s, I could see lots of things where. Eric Garza — Trains are not confined to Monday through Friday. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eric Garza — They’re there every day as they need. And so you just you just never know. That has to happen a couple of times, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s interesting. That’s good. Eric Garza — And so you play it off the middle of the service, but man, it can it can mess it could mess with some stuff. The second thing I would say is is this when looking for a facility. There’s obviously some innate some internal perhaps pressure or self-imposed pressure as a pastor or an executive to want to get into a permanent facility right away. Eric Garza — One of the things that helped us early on with with a couple of our campuses is we actually rented. And here’s the benefit of renting or leasing, even for a year or two, as you grow that site is number one, you’re not worried about insurance, right? You’re not worried about lawsuits. You’re not worried about maintenance or you’re paying for that, right? But there’s a lot that you minimize when it comes to overloading your mind and your brain about what you have to handle. Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Garza — Alright. And so you pay a fee, but the building’s clean when you come in. And right after you set, you know, you tear down your equipment for the service in your kids area, you don’t have to worry about that because you’re leasing a space.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Eric Garza — And so if you can minimize, like I said, as much of the overload of operations and facilities on the front end, that’s that’s a great a great thing. And most spaces, right, what we did early on is if we had an event center where we would rent the main auditorium uh we would use conference rooms or or multi-purpose room for child care. We would safe proof them, right – all of our protocols in place. But that’s what we would do early on, and it would give us a chance to test and gather some data.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Eric Garza — Is this going to work long term? Right. Number one, we don’t believe we missed God. But if after a couple of years, this isn’t going anywhere. Well, thank God we didn’t buy a building…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — …because now we’re you know up a creek without a paddle, as they say. And so leasing is not is not an entirely bad idea on the early outset. Rich Birch — No, that’s great. Eric Garza — But definitely the neighborhood that you’re in, right beside the town that you’re in, you want to be in a centrally as centrally as you can, centrally located as you can, and and not next to a railroad track or any industry or warehouses where there’s going to be trucks, just for safety concerns, for the curbside appeal. And so that’s why public libraries or where we had actually launched started campuses was at a public library – acoustic set because we couldn’t be so loud. So all of those facility concerns are are really things you want to keep in mind. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of the rental on the front end. What a great way to, it’s good use of capital. It’s a good, you know, it it gives you a chance to test…
Eric Garza — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …even if you stay for a couple of years, that’s, you know, that’s fantastic. So you’ve been through multiple, you know, capital campaigns, this whole process of like, we’ve got to raise money and then get a facility renovated or, you know, you know, expanded or whatever.
Rich Birch — What, what do you wish you would have known before all that? Well, are there a couple like things that either, you know, you stumbled upon, you stubbed your toe or you wish, man, I wish somebody would have told me this. Are there any things that stand out to you? Eric Garza — Number, I think the first one is this. You have an you have a number in your mind, and you of course you believe God for it. It… Rich Birch — And it’s lower. It’s going to come in lower every time. Eric Garza — …it is. Every single, unless God does a miracle, which he is more than able to do… Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Garza — …it’s going to come in lower. And so I think have have high anticipation but realistic expectations…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — …because most capital campaigns are campaigns that are above normal giving. Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Yep. Eric Garza — Right. And so at least for us, it’s above normal giving.
Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Garza — We encourage and we get people to give towards a specific capital campaign, which is for a specific campus or a specific project or or what have you. But you have this number in mind and then if you can tend to early on. It’s not coming in yet. Or maybe you’ve done it for a year or give a specific timeline. Rich Birch — I see. Okay. Yep. Eric Garza — And you can get quickly discouraged, especially with capital campaigns where you’re like, we’re halfway through this thing and not even half has come in yet, or of what we thought would come in. And so it’s easier to get discouraged. But that was a big thing is that number in your mind, it’s going to be lower. And that’s not a bad thing. Right. That’s not a bad thing. Eric Garza — People are giving to a capital campaign above giving of their normal giving, sacrificially, they’re giving by faith. They’re giving with expectation. But at the same time, for those of us on the inside, right, those of us who are managing the resources and what have you, it’s it’s about having a realistic expectation that we have the faith that God can do it. But we’re all going to budget ourselves knowing that if there’s a high probability, not impossible, there’s a high probability that the number we had in mind, is not going to be what comes in for the capital campaign. Rich Birch — Let’s talk about that there. So there’s an interesting, um so I’ve seen that for sure in churches. There’s an interesting kind of tension that pulls in two different directions. One, you can have exactly what you’re talking about, which is, you know, we thought we would go in, we we were hoping we would raise X and we raised something less than that.
Eric Garza — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But then the other part of it is we were hoping the project was going to cost X and it costs X plus, you know, it’s costing us more than, than we anticipated. How do you manage that tension? How have you been able to kind of navigate that? That’s a, that’s a tough tension. Eric Garza — Yeah, the longevity of the capital campaign is gonna is not always going to be exactly match, it’s not going, rather, to exactly match what the building construction cost was at the beginning. Prices fluctuate and prices change. Eric Garza — And so let’s say you have let’s use so a rough even number, a million dollar capital campaign for your church organization. And the construction is going to cost, I don’t know, $900,000, $950,000. Well, a million dollars should cover it. But by the time a million dollars or shortly or short of that comes in, well, your budget is now at 1.2 or 1.3.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — It’s fluctuated. And so the what’s congruent at the beginning can be really a little bit financially off by the time that can…In other words, the timelines of the capital campaign and your building projects sometimes don’t align perfectly. And we’ve run into that too, where we’ve had to take from our operating budget a little bit, or we’ve had to really emphasize a certain amount during the campaign, because that’s what needs to come in. We’ve you know met with with key givers and donors of the church. And those are challenges that you navigate ah during the capital campaign process.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Eric Garza — And and like I said earlier, it’s it’s challenging because, well, let me backtrack and say this. Eric Garza — This is why on the front end, you should add margin into your capital campaign…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Eric Garza — …which we didn’t do that, perhaps the first go around. But certainly the later ah seasons, we added margin in our capital campaigns to account for any fluctuation in construction costs. And if there was ever in a surplus, well, we would tell the church it’s because of your giving and because of your support and generosity that we had more than enough come in.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — And so now we’re going to use those funds for X or they’re going to go back to the general fund or or whatever whatever the case. But I think that the key that would be to incorporate some 10 to 15% margin in your capital campaign on the outset to account for anything that might happen 12, 15, 18 months down the road. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. That’s good. You maybe just saved somebody a lot of headache two years from now…
Eric Garza — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because of that part of the conversation. I want to go back to something you talked about earlier. You’ve had multiple buildings that you’ve acquired or you’ve merged with, and you were talking about remodeling and there’s like, that can be a blessing and a curse. Like it can be amazing. Like, wow, this is great. And… Eric Garza — You never know what you’re going to find. Rich Birch — …you know, you open up, you open up a wall and who knows what’s behind that wall. And, you know, there’s all that. And you talked about bringing it up to the Cross standard. Talk me through what how have you decided what that is? What is the Cross standard? And how do you what are the common things that you find, Oh, we’ve got to make this change. And how have you kind of defined that as you think about projects like that? Eric Garza — Yeah, so over the last few years, we’ve pretty much honed in on, I guess, the vibe and the look of what we want our campuses to to feel and look like. Rich Birch — Okay. Eric Garza — They may be different ah floor plans because some of them we built, some of them we acquired, properties we took over. But as far as color schemes, we do our very best to match wall colors, sanctuary colors. We use the same stage equipment, both branding and layout as best as possible across all of our sanctuary auditoriums, our stages. Eric Garza — Our kids spaces, ah we have an internal ratio of how many teachers or volunteers per infants, per toddlers, for school-age children we want. And so that determines our spacing. And so sometimes we’ve got to knock some walls down or build some walls in to accommodate for for what, like I said, our standard of ministry, both in appeal, but also in care for for our congregants and for our families. Eric Garza — And so when we remodel, you’re right, there’s some things that once you knock down a wall, you’re not going to know until you knock it down. And that’s where that, you know, that margin comes in. But for the most part, right, we’ve had we do inspections, we get we get third party opinions on the building, on the cost estimates, and like we would encourage anybody to do, right. Eric Garza — But that’s our Cross standard is the look, the feel, the equipment, the wall colors, you know is there enough space for our our guests, connect area, our next steps area for first impressions. Does every ministry have adequate space to store their items – all of those factors come into play in deciding how we’re going to remodel a facility. Eric Garza — And I’ll say the second thing is this is why before you break or before you knock down a wall, get an inspector or or get some people either in your church or in the construction industry or somebody that you know in in your community. Because sometimes when you have a building, your initial thought is to remodel. That may not always be the most financial financially wise decision. And here’s why. Because you may not know all that you’re going to encounter, you may in the long run end up spending just as much as if you had built a brand new facility with the exact floor plan you want. Eric Garza — And so that’s where you’re evaluating and deciding, is it more feasible to remodel this building for X amount of dollars? Or are we within 5% to 10% budget margin, where we might just say it’s it’s in the best interest of the church perhaps to use either this facility as collateral for our next building or a brand new building, or is it better to use it a multisite building, excuse me, multi-purpose building, and we end up building a new facility… Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — …for the church or for the campus. And so those cost estimates are going to help you make the best, most informed decision of where you’re going to steward the resources financially in either remodeling or in building a site. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. One of my favorite churches, Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina, they they had a building that was given to them and they did, they weren’t entirely sure what to kind of, it was in a part of town, they weren’t necessarily sure they wanted to launch a campus and just they had a campus closer and all that. And they ended up using it turned it into a really a student center and it’s a fantastic ministry building and it’s active, you know, five, six days a week. Rich Birch — Now they don’t do Sunday morning services there, but they do all kinds of other stuff, which is fantastic. Like is a great, you know… Eric Garza — And we’ve seen that too. Yeah. They use for leadership meetings, for small chapel receptions…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Eric Garza — …or gatherings or next gen events, youth, young adults, even renting it out to the community as a means to supply income to the church… Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. On a daycare or something. Eric Garza — …to like, you know aligned organizations, of course, whatever your church policy is. But yeah, sometimes the best use of that building is not for church services. Rich Birch — Have you, have you run into facilities that you’ve evaluated and then decided, no like this is going to cost way too much to renovate and we’re, so we won’t go forward with it. Have you run into that after evaluation? Eric Garza — Well, not entirely, but I’ll say this…recent… Rich Birch — I know that risk is there for sure. Eric Garza — Yeah, there is risk. There is risk. And the risk assessment is different when you’re leasing a space or remodel…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — …and when you’re when you’re obviously building your own facility, as far as and including the costs associated with that. One of our campuses recently, and I mean in the last 24 months, before we moved into our new building was leasing a space and we were given the option to remodel the space we were leasing. Because though it was suitable for what we needed for the ministry, for Sunday services and and all the other ministries, parts of it were not really conducive to growth for the congregation and for the ministry. Eric Garza — So we did contemplate remodeling. I think I think what kept us from doing that number one is whatever you remodel for the landlord the landlord is going up keeping. And so the return on that investment would be short term and not long term, We were already in the midst of building our building but we were growing at a rapid rate, and so we were eight, twelve months out from from being in our building and the campus was growing, and so we needed a short-term solution. Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — So we did think, Well, we’ll spend X amount of dollars to remodel our site where we’re leasing before we get into the new building. But we found out that shifting our service times and and doing different different strategies ended up alleviating in the short term the constraints we had to give us a time to get into our new building, which is now more than enough space for us to grow for for years and years to come. Rich Birch — Right. That’s cool. Yeah. Cause I’ve said as a, I feel like I’ve been in a ton of conversations with XPs where, you know, they’re talking about this issue and you know, there’s like a building that they’re, maybe it’s another church that’s come to them and they’re having a conversation and they’re, I would say their mindset is like, I’m not sure we should do this. Like this is, they’re like, this other church came to us and statistically, actually the most likely for these mergers to succeed are when the joining church comes to the lead church.
Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — So they would come to your church and be like, Hey, we’re interested. So it actually happens a fair amount. And I’ve, I feel like I’ve talked, tried to talk so many executive pastors into like, man, it’s gotta be a really bad building. If particularly if it’s like has debt or has no debt or very little debt on it, it’s gotta be a very bad building to not want to take it. Cause it’s like, you know, you can, you can take, invest, you know, a moderate amount of money. You don’t need to dump a ton into it and get something great. And like you said, as long as you’re above board with everybody, you know, five years from now, if it doesn’t work, you could take that asset, sell it and move on and use those resources somewhere else. Eric Garza — And that’s very good because when you talk about acquiring a ministry, especially if it has a low balance on their mortgage or or they don’t have much to pay off the building, and if you’re in a position to pay that off within the first year of acquiring the ministry…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — …think of a collateral and the equity that your organization now has because of that new facility that’s in your portfolio. Rich Birch — 100%. Eric Garza — And I know it sounds very business-minded, but when you’re looking to expand into the future, even at another site in your church ministry organization, you now have more collateral, more resources to leverage for a better financial position in the future when you do want to actually build a building. Eric Garza — And the second thing is this, if you’re acquiring a ministry that already has an existing building, in most cases, it’s already built out for church purposes. So that’s very helpful. So at that point, you may be putting in a smaller amount and just…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — …you know, refurbishing it, painting the walls, putting some new equipment, some new screens, maybe be changing out the flooring a little bit, or some of the fixtures in different spaces…
Rich Birch — There’s technology or whatever, yep.
Eric Garza — …because it’s already built out for a church. And so that’s the benefit of going or acquiring in a ministry if you’re going that route that already has an existing facility. Rich Birch — Yeah, we had, ah we were running, our budget was about $8 million dollars and we were, we had a church come to us and they were, they had really, they had had a tough season and the summer before we ended up merging with them or they joined us really, they had multiple Sundays where they had two people show up on Sunday. They had the person that was preaching and the guy that was opening the door, like it was, it had really atrophied down. Rich Birch — And I remember in one of those conversations, they had had a bit of a roof problem. The facility was worth just probably south of 2 million. It was like ah a great facility, but they had a roof problem. And I remember one of the the elders leader person, he said, you know, we we got a quote on the roof and it’s it’s going to cost maybe about $15,000 to fix. Do you think you guys will be able to fix that? And they had no debt and were going to give us their building. Rich Birch — Well, like I humbly had to say like, like, yeah, we’ll we’ll be okay. Like, it’s gonna it’s gonna be fine. Like, you know, I what I didn’t want to say is like, I feel like our youth guys have like wasted $15,000 this year. Like, you know, like it’s like we can, you know, the exchange just on paper. And again, that’s not why you go into those conversations.
Eric Garza — Of course. Rich Birch — But a part of that is, particularly in our seats as executive pastors, that’s a part of what we have to wrestle through and think about those things. So let’s get back to the renovation thing. A lot of what churches were talking about is like, pressure of like, man, I just, our physical facilities are, are holding us back.
Rich Birch — Any other thoughts around, you know, changes you’ve made to increase capacity or, um you know, things that maybe are like some low hanging fruit or creative solutions that have that, that maybe we’re not thinking about, but as a leader who’s been through this, you know, you’ve been, you’ve wrestled through that, that we, we could, you know, benefit from. Eric Garza — Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things. You can please everybody, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Eric Garza — And so I think one of the ministry pressures well, we want to please the next gen. We also want to please the child care. We also want to please the elders of the church. And we also want to please the younger families of the church and young professionals. And when you’re when you’re in a facility that wasn’t originally built according to your specs, it’s going to be difficult to do that. Eric Garza — And so you have to focus, as we have, on the most critical areas, sanctuary and child care. If you don’t have child care, it’s going to be a barrier to growth because families or parents are not going to have the comfort level they need to come to your church on a regular basis and to be a part of the community. And so for us, when we’ve remodeled, the first things we look at are sanctuary and then the kid space. Do we have enough adequate kids space? Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — Some of the solutions when we’ve been limited in space is is launching multiple services to we have a smaller sanctuary or a smaller space, we’ll offer more service opportunities. Or when it comes to our kids ministry, we’ve evaluated with our kids directors and our our kids department of how can we best merge age groups to maximize the space that we have. So if you have right an ideal facility where you have you know your child your child care divided by grade level or age level, sometimes you have the amenity to do that and many times you don’t. And so what we’ve done is instead of having first grade on their own, maybe we’ll put you know kindergarten and first grade level kids together. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Eric Garza — We’ll put second and third together, fourth and fifth together as a way to consolidate because we don’t have the space that we prefer to have, at least in this season. And so for us, sometimes you’re not watering down in essence, the content, the quality, but you are consolidating in the short term or even medium term…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — …if you will, if that’s even a term, to make adequate space for the constraints that you may have. Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — And so you have 600 members and you only have 200-seat sanctuary, 250. Well, that’s an opportunity for three services. Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — Is that is that is that Is that a strain? Well, it can be if you see it from core perspective versus a perspective of, Man, we’re so large and we have the space. You know, one of our core values at our church is excellence. And we’ve defined excellence as not having the best, but doing the best with what you have. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Eric Garza — So we may not have a thousand seat auditorium for this growing congregation, but what we do have, we’re going utilize it and steward it to our best ability. So if that means two or three services, well, God give us the strength and the people to manage and to lead and to execute three strong services every weekend, or every Sunday, in order to meet the need of the congregation that we have. Eric Garza — And and I think one of the biggest things, Rich, is also communicating this. It’s keeping them current, right. You’re not going to go into all the details per se, unless that’s your preference and that’s your senior pastor’s prerogative. But to share with them the overarching theme of, hey, here’s where we’re at as a ministry. Here’s our facility. And here’s what we’re going to do to continue to offer as best a ministry as we can, while at the same time being cognizant of the challenges that we’re facing. Eric Garza — We said this to our staff and to our church many times, is we don’t look at obstacles as negatives. We look at obstacles as opportunities. Okay. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Eric Garza — If this is what we have, how can we be as excellent as possible with what we have? If that means going to a third service, well, then we’re going to give it a shot because what we don’t want to do is allow facility constraints to translate into diminished capacity or into a diminishing congregation and I’m talking about numerically. Because the diminishing congregation numerically also means a diminishing budget and revenue financially because you have less givers in the seats. And that’s those are some of the challenges that you got navigate so we don’t see it as obstacles. We don’t see obstacles necessarily as a challenge we see that’s an opportunity of okay how can we navigate around this mountain if you will to continue to provide as excellent a ministry as we can. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love your example of the kids age size rooms. Because I think you’ve you’re articulating a tension that whenever we’re, particularly for launching we talked a lot about this, like renovating other spaces and new campuses and all that, where I think really is germane to our job as executive pastor to to manage this tension of we want it feel, you know, the language you used was Cross standard. It’s absolutely has got to be Cross standard, but there will be areas where we’re going to have to compromise. Like that is just true. And a part of what we have to do, we have to use our leadership and our discernment and, you know, get the right players in the room and have the conversation. And, you know, somebody using your example, somebody kids’ ministry to be like, no, we can’t combine them together. That’ll be terrible. And it’s like, we’re going to be fine. Like, we’ll figure it out, you know. Eric Garza — Yeah [inaudible]. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s going to be okay. We’ll we’ll help that navigate. And that’s one example, but there’s a ton of those that can come up in these, you know, in these renovations for sure. Eric Garza — Yeah, absolutely. Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — and And people are always going to have opinions. Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — But I’ll say this from experience. And I mean, no ill intent towards anybody in your congregation or your ministry. Rich Birch — No. Eric Garza — Most of the people that are criticizing are the people that aren’t giving anyway. And so I’m not saying ignore them by any means. They’re part of your part of your ecosystem. They’re part of your church, they’re part of your flock. Rich Birch — Yep. That’s very true. Eric Garza — But it’s always with a grain of salt because the people that are really bought into your ministry are going to walk through those opportunities alongside you, ah hopefully with the best attitude that they possibly can muster up because this too shall pass. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Garza — Right. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Garza — If you’ve gone out in faith to plant or to grow or to expand your congregation, this is a temporary season. It’s not a permanent season. You won’t always be at three or four services, right? Or multiple services. Eric Garza — At some point, if God is in this and you really believe He is, and I believe He is for many organizations and ministries, the timing will be right when you have a facility that can house what you need, or that can provide the amenities and space that you need. And so for parents, for givers, for guests, it is just letting them know as best you can, even subtly through announcements or even messages and say, hey, we’re in a season of growth and expansion. \ Growth doesn’t always look you know perfect. And so we have seasons where we’re going to navigate some some challenges and opportunities as best we can to get us to an end goal. Eric Garza — This is a means to an end. What we’re going through is a means to get us to where we want to go as a ministry. And as long as you keep it at the forefront, tying it into the vision of the house, you’re going to see that in a large sense, you’re going to have people rally behind that idea and unfocused, if you will, from the constraints of their of the facility to the broader appeal of what God is doing in the ministry. Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good. Friends, you should go back and re-listen to what Eric just said there. That is some wise advice. And obviously from somebody that’s been in the trenches a lot, that’s been my experience as well. The people, the complainers, I’m reading through the book of Job right now. And I’m like, man, his friends are just like, this guy needs better friends. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — And that that reminded me of the people you’re talking about. Like… Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know, there’s these people who are just, you know, sniping from the cheap seats and they’re not really engaged in the mission where, man, those people that are right on in the middle of it, they’re like, let’s go, let’s lean in. Rich Birch — And man, that’s the kind of person, I’m hoping as I transition into older age that I’m that person, you know, because we have a number of those people at our church that I look at that are like, these are incredible saints who have seen so much change. And who I’m sure lots of things annoy them, but they’re fired up for the mission. They’re excited in our case to reach unchurched people, to see people who far from Jesus connected. Eric Garza — If you’re not changing, you’re not making progress, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
And the fact you the fact that your ministry is facing opportunities or obstacles rather disguised as opportunities is proof positive you’re going somewhere.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Eric Garza — You’re not a stagnant ministry. You’re not a you’re not a lazy ministry, right? You’re not apathetic. You’re really out in the field of vision that God has given you or to your senior leadership. And so it’s proof positive, right? And so take that as an badge of honor in some way to say, we must be doing something right. Rich Birch — So good. Well, Eric, just as we’re coming to kind of land, this has been a great conversation, hopefully been helpful for you, friends, as you’ve have been listening in. But as we kind of come to land today’s conversation, what’s a question or two that that you’re kicking around for this year at at Cross as you’re thinking about 2026? Where’s your head at? What are the things you’re wondering? It doesn’t have to be about this, could be anything. Eric Garza — Yeah, well, ah thanks for letting me speak into that, Rich. I think for me as an executive and looking at our ministry, you know, looking at the previous 30 years and looking at the next decade, if you will, of where God is going to take our ministry, being one of America’s fastest growing churches, being the largest bilingual Hispanic-led ministry in the country. We’ve, you know, like I’ve said in a previous episode with you, we haven’t had any precedent for us in our context. And so we’ve navigated a lot of uncharted waters and learned from both wins and losses and different opportunities and struggles to get us to where we’re at now. Eric Garza — I think one of the biggest questions facing the church at large in 2026 is how the church is going to respond to the ever increasingly fast-paced changes that we’re seeing on the political front, on the cultural front. I’m not saying that the church has to be a political response. The church has to be, has to provide a biblical response to what we’re seeing. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Garza — And with the fast paced nature of culture and society and trends, I don’t believe it’s the church’s responsibility to respond to every trend or to everything, but certainly the overarching elements of our current culture and political dynamic where there is a biblical either mandate or precedent for it, that the church would speak it into that and provide biblical perspective…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Eric Garza — …and and and wisdom for how people should think about certain topics that have a biblical or moral prerogative. And so navigating that as an organization, because as a growing church and being such a large ministry, if you can imagine the opinions. We have people in our church who are conservative and who some who are not. We have people who belong to one political party over another. We’re in multiple communities. And so different communities have different demographics, different cultural contexts, different policy initiatives. There’s a lot going on. Eric Garza — And as a church ministry, especially as that we’re multisite, one of the biggest questions I’m asking myself and our team is how do we, number one, stay biblically founded, right? And unwavering in what the biblical standard is. Eric Garza — Number two is how do we address the different things and different occurrences in different communities that we’re in? If we were just one site and one community, well, then we would just be I guess you could say in our own little space and our own little focus. But we have multisites, so we have multi-focus, if you will, at how we continue to provide as excellent a ministry as possible…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Eric Garza — …keeping Jesus at the forefront, above the fray, and at the same time, giving a biblical perspective so that people have the right biblical worldview for how to walk out their journey of faith their relationship with Christ, but at the same time, how to respond to what’s happening in our world. I think for many times, for for many years, really for decades, the church has abdicated its biblical responsibility, if you will, to speak into things, not from a political perspective, but from a biblical perspective. Eric Garza — And because that abdication of responsibility we’ve seen a lot of things that have happened. Thankfully, in recent seasons, in recent years, we’ve seen a a shift where faith is now at the forefront. And so though I have that question, my biggest, I guess you could say prerogative is to leverage that people are focused more on faith, that people are open to faith now more so in our country, that people are focused more on this person of Jesus and is to leverage that as an opportunity to really hone in and speak into people’s hearts and minds and into the different communities that we’re in so that they have the right biblical perspective, the biblical worldview to carry out what God has enabled them or called them to do. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love I love what you’re saying there. And you know I know had a friend say, you know if you’re, you know, we we all are serving in a context. We serve in a particular time, in a particular cultural context, and God’s called us to lead in that context. And if you’re not feeling the pull from, you know, multiple sides, multiple polarities, you’re like, well, everybody here agrees with me then it means you’re not actually reaching your community, you know. And the fact that you’re feeling that tension means, okay, like there’s there’s people from a wide variety of, and it can be all different political is one, but there’s lots of different ways to think of that. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — And yeah, that’s that’s so true. I really appreciate this. Well, Eric, you’re you’re a blessing to us. I thank you so much for for giving us time today and helping us think about these things as we kick off into 2026. If where do we want to send people if they want to track with you or with the church? Rich Birch — How do we how do we want to get people connected to Cross? Eric Garza — Yeah, well, Rich, thanks for the opportunity. And it’s what a blessing for us and for me personally to be able to just share some thoughts. And if it helps anybody, well, praise God for that. I think if you want to follow the church, we’re crosschurchonline.com or crosschurchrgv on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all of, you know, most of the social media platforms. Eric Garza — If you want to connect with me, I’d be happy to connect with you at Eric, E-R-I-C-P Garza on any of social media platforms. It’d be a h privilege for me to help you guys and to share some thoughts and even answer questions. I’d be more than happy to do that. If I can serve your ministries in any way, by all means, feel free to reach out to me on any of the social media platforms. Rich Birch — Nice. Thanks so much, Eric. Really appreciate being here today, sir. Thank you.
Eric Garza — Thank you, man. God bless. Appreciate it.
From Attenders to Engaged Disciples: Building Ownership in Your Church in 2026 with Kayra Montañez
Jan 14, 2026
Leading Into 2026: Executive Pastor Insights
Momentum is real. So is the pressure.
This free report draws from the largest dedicated survey of Executive Pastors ever,
revealing what leaders are actually facing as they prepare for 2026.
Free PDF • Built for Executive Pastors • Instant access
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re sitting down with an executive pastor from a prevailing church to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey so you can lead forward with clarity.
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Kayra Montañez, Executive Pastor at Liquid Church in New Jersey. Liquid is a fast-growing multisite church with six campuses stretching from Princeton to communities just outside New York City. In this conversation, Kayra helps unpack one of the biggest concerns surfaced in the National Executive Pastor Survey: the growing gap between attendance and engagement. While many churches are seeing people return, far fewer leaders feel confident that those people are truly connected, discipled, and serving.
Is your church seeing full rooms but thin volunteer pipelines? Are you unsure how engaged people really are beyond weekend services? Kayra offers practical insight into why that gap exists—and what churches can do to close it.
Attendance is up, engagement is unclear. // Kayra begins with encouragement. Across the country, churches are seeing renewed spiritual openness. People are coming with expectancy, ready to encounter God. At the same time, many leaders sense a disconnect between attendance and belonging. Kayra identifies several common gaps: people attending without joining “people systems” like groups or teams; online attenders remaining anonymous without a clear bridge to community; seasonal attenders who show up for Christmas and Easter but never return; and potential volunteers who are open to helping but hesitant to commit long-term. These patterns aren’t unique to Liquid—they’re widespread across the church landscape.
From prescribed paths to personalized journeys. // One of Liquid’s biggest shifts has been moving away from a rigid, one-size-fits-all connection pathway. Kayra compares the old model to the video game Mario Brothers, where everyone must follow the same prescribed path or “die.” Instead, Liquid now operates more like Zelda: a choose-your-own-adventure approach that honors people’s seasons, needs, and interests. Rather than telling people where they must plug in, the church focuses on learning what people actually want and helping them find a meaningful next step.
Connect and Conversation. // This shift comes to life through a monthly experience called Connect and Conversation, hosted at every campus after the final service. New and not-yet-connected attendees are invited to a meal where they sit at tables with others like them and facilitators. The event begins with relational icebreakers to help people connect naturally, then moves into guided conversation around what attendees are looking for—community, care, serving, support groups, or spiritual growth. Facilitators take detailed notes, which drive personalized follow-up in the weeks ahead. Kayra describes it as “high-touch, concierge-style ministry,” and the results have been significant movement from attendance into engagement.
Measuring what matters. // Liquid tracks what happens after people attend Connect and Conversation—not to claim direct causation, but to see correlation. They monitor whether participants join groups, teams, or discipleship environments in the following months. That data has helped the church refine pathways and remove unnecessary friction. Kayra encourages leaders to examine two key metrics: how many first-time guests take any next step within 30 days, and what percentage move into a people system within 60–90 days. These numbers often reveal where engagement breaks down.
Reimagining discipleship. // One surprising insight at Liquid came from surveying the congregation about small groups. While relational connection mattered, the top desire was biblical literacy. In response, Liquid “blew up” its traditional small-group model and launched a new midweek Bible study format called Deep Dive. Rather than prioritizing relationships first, these environments put Scripture front and center, with connection as a natural byproduct. The pilot—an in-depth study of Revelation—drew hundreds of participants and revealed a deep hunger for understanding God’s Word.
Rebuilding volunteer momentum. // Like many churches, Liquid faced a volunteer crisis as growth outpaced serving capacity—especially in kids’ environments. In response, the church launched a short-term campaign called For the One, built around a “try before you buy” serving model. New volunteers could serve a few times with a shortened onboarding process (without compromising safety) and then decide whether to commit long-term, scoring exclusive team swag. More than 400 people stepped in to serve, helping stabilize teams and reignite volunteer culture.
Short-term fixes and long-term culture. // Kayra emphasizes that engagement is both a systems problem and a culture challenge. Churches need short-term solutions to address immediate gaps, but long-term health comes from storytelling, celebration, appreciation, and consistently casting vision for why serving and community matter. Engagement doesn’t happen accidentally—it’s cultivated intentionally over time.
To learn more about Liquid Church, visit liquidchurch.com, or connect with Kayra directly via email.
Watch the full episode below:
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’ve got a special episode on today where we’re diving into some of the results from the National Executive Pastor Survey. And today we’re super excited to have Kayra Montañez with us from Liquid Church in New Jersey.
Rich Birch — And today we’re talking all about engagement. One of the things that jumped out, well, one of the top tier results, kind of concerns that came out, 10% of executive pastors in the open questions, expressed fear around discipleship death depth and volunteer sustainability. At the same time, nearly 12% said they lacked really visibility into participation and involvement data. Another 6% pointed specifically to volunteer and team metrics really being an unmet need, not knowing where they are.
Rich Birch — So what does that all that mean? Roughly one in five executive pastors are entering 2026 this year, wondering really how engaged their churches are. And Kayra is going to solve all that for us. So Kayra, welcome to the show. Tell us about Liquid. Tell us a little bit about the church.
Kayra Montañez — Well I appreciate the vote of confidence but I’m not sure about that. But, Rich, it’s always so great to be with you and to be a guest on your podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So yes, we are in New Jersey. So our church is called Liquid. I get the incredible privilege of serving there as one of two executive pastors. And we are a multisite church. We have six campuses. If you and know anything about New Jersey, one of them is the furthest one is in Princeton, New Jersey – a lot of people know Princeton.
Kayra Montañez — And then probably the closest one that we have up north is closest to New York City, about 30 minutes from the city. So that kind of gives you the breadth and width of how we’re trying to saturate the state of New Jersey with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is our mission.
Rich Birch — So good. And Kayra, I really appreciate you jumping in on on today’s conversation, particularly in this area, because I think, man, have so much to offer. You know, so many of our churches, we feel like the volunteer pipelines are thin. How are we getting? It’s like people are underutilized. Maybe are our follow-up process are like overly complex. And you’ve done a great job on on this area. So let’s just jump right in.
Rich Birch — Where do you see some of the biggest gaps today in churches, whether it’s Liquid or other churches you interact, between, you know, getting people to attend church attendance and actual engagement. There’s a gap there. what What’s driving that? What do what do you think drives that gap in our churches?
Kayra Montañez — Yeah. So I see a couple of things. But before I get to that, you know, I just really wanted to start with something really encouraging because it’s not in my nature to be discouraging. So one of the things that I have noticed, in fact, I was actually spending some time with other pastors from other states in the U.S. And we were talking about like, hey, what is the Lord doing in the in the Big C Church? What are you experiencing in your context?
Rich Birch — So good.
Kayra Montañez — And one of the things I think that was a theme for all of us is it feels like we don’t have to work as hard to get people to come and be ready for what the Lord has for them. And that feels very exciting.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — And that’s like a theme that I’m seeing repeated across the entire nation with all of my pastor friends from different locations. Having said that, there are still things that we have to do to get people from going to just attending to engaging, like you were saying. I think there’s a couple of things that I saw.
Kayra Montañez — One of them is a big one, I would say, is like this idea of, attending versus belonging, right. So like first people actually want to come, but they don’t actually join people systems. So they come in person, they come online, but they don’t actually join any kind of people system. So when I say people system I’m thinking about groups, or dream teams, a support group, a class. That’s actually something that we started seeing a lot post-pandemic, and I would say it’s still here. So that’s one gap that I see.
Kayra Montañez — The second gap that I see is digital versus relational. So obviously, we at Liquid have spent a lot of, we’ve invested a lot in our digital ministry, and we really believe online and in-person can both thrive at the same time, and we’re seeing that.
Kayra Montañez — However, online services, while they can remove barriers, which is good, it also helps people stay anonymous unless there’s a clear bridge for those people to actually join in-person community. And so churches that haven’t figured out well how to do that will continue to see a gap between people who are attending, whether it’s in person or online, but not actually engaging.
Kayra Montañez — There’s also the people who just come for big events, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — We’re approaching one of them, even as we film this podcast, next week is Christmas Eve. So we joke at Liquid, we have the CEOs, they come for Christmas, Easter, and other big events, but they don’t actually have a weekly rhythm of attending and engaging.
Kayra Montañez — And then there’s people who I would say are curious about serving and for the most part are open to helping, but are not really ready to make a serving commitment and actually take on a very consistent role. So I would say across the breadth and width of churches, that’s probably something that would hit most people, no matter where you are.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Kayra Montañez — Definitely we experience all of them at Liquid.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I there was a lot there, in which I appreciate. and i appreciate the way you’ve kind of diagnosed. I think there’s multiple ways to kind of um diagnose or kind of pick apart – Hey, here are different aspects here, or different ways that we’re seeing this kind of attendance versus engagement question. So maybe, you know, pick apart those attending versus belonging. What has Liquid done? What are you doing to try to help move people from just attending, actually getting into those people systems? What does that? What are you learning on that front?
Kayra Montañez — Yeah. You know, we’ve had a major shift at Liquid, I would say, in the past two years. The best way that I can explain this is with a gaming analogy, because I have teenagers and they love gaming.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Kayra Montañez — So if you um go back to when we used to play Mario Brothers, you remember Mario Brothers?
Rich Birch — Sure, yeah.
Kayra Montañez — Mario Brothers has prescribed path where if you did not follow the path, at some point Mario would die. Like if you stayed behind and the camera kept moving, the character would die. You remember that?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kayra Montañez — And that’s the way that a lot of churches, even today, approach helping people connect. There is a prescribed path for you, and we’re going to tell you what you need to do and what you have to do. Then Zelda came into the scene and Zelda is like, hey, choose your own adventure. You can start your adventure anywhere you want.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kayra Montañez — And so I feel like Liquid, we’ve shifted in that. We used to be Mario Brothers, like, hey, here’s a prescribed path for you. Here’s all the things that you have to do to connect. Whereas now we’ve shifted over the past two years into like, hey, we have a lot of things that we can offer you. And there are many different things depending on your season of life, on your felt needs, on what you’re looking for, on what you’re interested in, on what makes your heart beat. Tell us what you want to do and we’re going to help you.
Kayra Montañez — And so in order for us to understand what is it that people want, we created an event that we do every month called Connect and Conversation. And the whole idea and the way that we market it is if you’re new to Liquid, or if you are not new, but you haven’t connected yet, you haven’t found your people, you haven’t found something that you want to be a part of, come to this event.
Kayra Montañez — We feed you. We get to know you. And then we follow up personally with you. It’s very high level concierge, kind of a follow up system, where after we connect with you, we ask you, hey, what are you actually interested in? What are you looking for? Because your needs as an empty nester who’s been married for over 25 years, you’re parenting adult children who are already married are very different than mine who have two team have two teenagers.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — One of them is about to go to college, right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Kayra Montañez — And so that has actually produced incredible fruit from getting people who are attending.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — Now I’ve actually offered them something they’re interested in, which is making connections with people. And then from there, we follow up to offer, what do you need?
Rich Birch — That’s so cool.
Kayra Montañez — And everybody has different needs. Some people just wanna join teams because they’re just like, I just wanna serve. Some people, they really just need a lot of care. And so maybe they need a support group and we’re gonna offer that to you.
Kayra Montañez — Some people may need marriage mentoring. We’re gonna offer that to you. So it really depends. And what we’ve seen is people taking significant next steps once they go out of that event. And that has really changed the past. In the past, we would only be marketing teams and groups, role and relationship, join, ah you know, get into a role and connect with a relationship. And while that’s still good, I’m not saying that’s not good or not needed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kayra Montañez — It’s not the only thing that people are looking for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. Can we, I’d love to dive just a little deeper on on that because I think there’s ah a really key learning there for lots of us. This idea, and you didn’t say it this way, but where my brain went to, you know, I think we have, we have for sure in the past done the thing where it’s like we have these giant funnels that we’re pushing everyone through.
Rich Birch — And and the only question we’re really asking is where do you fit in our funnel?
Kayra Montañez — Correct.
Rich Birch — Like where, You know, and we and we push and literally, and this is no, you know, kind of slam on other systems, but it’s like, this is the, you know, step one, step two, step three, everyone do step one first, then you do step two, then you do step three.
Rich Birch — So the the connecting conversation, that feels like highly, like it’s volunteer intensive. You got to get a lot of volunteers in there because it sounds like you’re having one-on-one conversations or something close to one-on-one. Unpack what that looks like. Maybe as a guest, if I arrive at that, what do I actually experience when I show up there?
Kayra Montañez — So you you can register up until the time that we have the event.
Rich Birch — Yep, that’s great.
Kayra Montañez — So we do math you know magical math with the food and and the preparation so that we can just accept people who are going to come on the day of. Because we promote it, obviously, every week. And then the day of, we actually promote it. We get most people to show up the day of the event.
Rich Birch — Right, okay.
Kayra Montañez — So people will come. There’s going to be a lunch. And then they’re going to sit at a table with about five other people who have a facilitator at that table.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kayra Montañez — And that facilitator is actually going to lead them through a series of relational icebreakers because the event is designed for you to first connect. You want to meet other people who are just like you. Maybe they’re new or they’re not new, but they haven’t connected yet with somebody.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kayra Montañez — And so there’s going to be a lot of relational icebreakers you know during the first part of the event. And then after that, we get into like, hey, what are you looking for? What are you hoping to get out of? What do you need? What are you interested in? We make notes.
Rich Birch — How can we help? All that kind of stuff.
Kayra Montañez — That facilitator takes really good notes based on what people are saying. And then the follow-up begins.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool. I love that. That’s what a great learning. You know, I think so many times we’ve seen that step and for sure that echoes what I’ve seen in in a number of churches. There’s really a trend away from the class being the first step.
Rich Birch — It’s like the stand that we used to do that thing where it was like, okay, someone stands up at the front and they’re going to talk for 50 minutes about why we’re such a great church. And, ah you know, that really has gone away. I would I would echo that, that we’ve seen that as ah as a best practice for sure. So let’s talk…
Kayra Montañez — When we do measure…
Rich Birch — Sorry, go ahead. No.
Kayra Montañez — …oh sorry, as I was to say, we measure the activity of everyone who goes to Connect in Conversation and what they do.
Rich Birch — Oh, that, tell me about that.
Kayra Montañez — And so there’s, or ah how we say it at Liquid is it’s correlation, not causation. Like I can’t prove that if you go to this event, your next steps were a direct result of this event…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Kayra Montañez — …but we can correlate that because you came to the event you actually took these next steps, if that makes sense.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — So we’ve seen tremendous, tremendous engagement grow because of that.
Rich Birch — And that’s on Sundays. You do it on on campus after the last service, that sort of thing.
Kayra Montañez — Every month. Yes, every month at every campus after the last service, we promote it up to the day of the event…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kayra Montañez — …and we do it rain or shine. Whether it’s five people or 10 or 50, obviously at our largest location, sometimes we have about 100 people show up every month to these events.
Rich Birch — That’s great. I love that. That’s a great. You’re coming in hot, Kayra. Great learnings, even you know, with friends, we’ve got through the first question.
Rich Birch — So yeah, and we’re, you know, it’s fantastic. So one of the one of the things I’d love to hear a little bit about, um you know, that when we look in the data, people’s anxiety, there’s there seems to be some anxiety around or concern around discipling people. We offer these discipleship pathways or engagement pathways. And it’s like, we do this stuff, but then people don’t actually take advantage of it. It’s like, we do, we offer small groups, but people don’t do them. Or people we offer classes and people don’t actually engage on them.
Rich Birch —What are you doing to try to move to, to ensure people are actually engaging with the various pathways that you’re developing at Liquid to actually get them to use them?
Kayra Montañez — So this is a very interesting question in this particular time because at Liquid we’re just about getting ready to or just ready to ah blow up small groups basically.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Okay. I’d love to hear more.
Kayra Montañez — Yeah, so I would say that small groups was the one metric that did not recover for our church post-pandemic. So even though our volunteer pipelines at times felt thin, we were able to have incredible momentum around that. We can talk more about that later. How did we do that? We recovered in attendance and giving, baptism, but we were not able to crack the code on small groups. We were at an all-time low, about 20% our church…
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — …was engaged in small groups, pretty low. And so we started surveying people.
Rich Birch — Yep.
We’re like, what is it that people actually want from the small groups? Like, what is it that we’re not offering that they’re looking for? And the one, it was shocking to us that the number one thing, I mean, it shouldn’t be shocking because we are a church.
Kayra Montañez — The number one thing that people wanted was to understand the Bible. So for the first time ever, we have uncoupled relational connection from biblical literacy. In the past, our small groups, the thing that was in the driver’s seat, I would say, was the relational connection. We wanted people to connect, to join a group so that they could make friends, do life together. We used to um promote it that way, if you remember. Do life together. Where are the people that you’re doing life together?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Kayra Montañez — For the first time ever, we’re actually putting biblical literacy in the front seat and relational connection on the passenger seat. So you will actually make connections, but that’s not the goal of this process right now. The process is for you to actually understand and read and study the word of God. In fact, our new tagline is to know the word of God so that you can love the God of the word.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And is that so if you change the the container that that fits in or are you changing the like, like…
Kayra Montañez — We did. We changed the container.
Rich Birch — So what’s that look like?
Kayra Montañez — So right now we’re offering people different levels of biblical literacy.
Kayra Montañez — The biggest vehicle that we’re that we just piloted this fall through the book of Revelations, if you can believe it. So we’re like, why not start with the hardest book of the Bible?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kayra Montañez — And what we did was we created a Bible study midweek on a Wednesday night where people would go in person and study the word of God in tables with other people. Now, obviously there’s facilitators who have been trained and vetted. And once you join a table, that was kind of like the table that you were going to go on this journey with, but it’s not a small group. It’s a, it’s a short term. It was 10 weeks. We went through the entire book of Revelations, 22 chapters. We would do homework in order to get ready for this midweek study, we would come, we would have a conversation around what did you put in question 10?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — What did I write? This was hard, I don’t understand. And then there was teaching.
Kayra Montañez — And we also piloted doing that same thing with our high school students so that parents could actually come with their kids on the same day, drop their high school kiddos in their own cohort, and then they would go to their own biblical midweek you know Bible study.
Kayra Montañez — And that was, too, a great success. So we are trying to figure out like what are the appropriate levels of biblical literacy that we can offer a congregation…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Kayra Montañez — …that is increasingly illiterate in biblic in in the Bible.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — And deep dive, make no mistake, is the highest level. So that’s not for everyone. And we understand that. And so the parts that we’re trying to figure out is what’s like the appropriate next level to that for somebody who’s not willing to come in person 10 weeks to do homework and study, you know, the actual Bible.
Kayra Montañez — But, it was fascinating to just uncouple those two things for the first time. And I would say it’s in the right frame of, in the right approach. You’re still making friends.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kayra Montañez — You’re just not, that’s just not being the driver.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, I do wonder. So we for sure have seen that. I’ve seen this conversation. I don’t claim to be a small groups expert. I never have.
Kayra Montañez — Me neither.
Rich Birch — Like for 20, 30 years, it’s always been a mystery to me. I’m like, it’s like hard. It’s a hard system to run and to to build. And, but for sure, post COVID it it is, I would say that’s a universal concern that it’s like, whatever we used to do, I see this all over the place, whatever we used to do to try to get people into groups, we don’t do that anymore. We’re doing something completely different. I happen to be at Liquid this fall. I think you were speaking at a conference when I was there. Bummer…
Kayra Montañez — I was, I missed you. Yeah.
Rich Birch — And I saw the deep dive. I think that’s what it was called.
Kayra Montañez — Yes.
Rich Birch — Deep dive that night. And I remember, i remember thinking, I was like, Whoa, this is like, ah this is incredible. Like, you know, I don’t know how many people were there that night. There was a ton of people all lined up and ready to go. I’m like, that’s, That’s cool. I love that.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s pivot. You kind of flagged it there, the volunteer piece.
Kayra Montañez — Yes.
Rich Birch — I’d love to know what you’re learning on this front, you know, to rebuild volunteer culture. We had this kind of, I don’t know when we’ll stop saying post-COVID. I don’t know whether we’ll be like that generation that was like after the like war or like after the depression where like for 40 years we’re going to be talking about it.
Rich Birch — But it does still feel like we’re post-COVID. I don’t know when that is. But what have you done to kind of restart? How what’s going well on that front externally? Liquid feels like a incredibly volunteer you know robust culture – help us understand what’s that looking like what are you learning these days?
Kayra Montañez — Sure. Yeah. I mean everything you said is still very much a factor. I mean, we are constantly having to work at this. This is never going to be a problem that I feel we’re ever going to solve. It’s really a tension that we’re managing. And sometimes tension feels better and sometimes it doesn’t feel good.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kayra Montañez — In fact, this year, I would say in March, we probably had like our biggest crisis in the broadcast campus where our church growth so far outpaced the amount of people that were serving that we were finding ourselves having to close rooms for Liquid family…
Rich Birch — Ooh.
Kayra Montañez — …not because we we hit ratios, but because we didn’t have enough volunteers. And that doesn’t feel great…
Rich Birch — No.
Kayra Montañez — …especially if you’re a new here family, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kayra Montañez — And so we were like, all right, we need to do something really aggressive. And the best way that I can explain it is we did like a try before you buy.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kayra Montañez — Very low approach…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — …low hanging fruit. We said, hey, we we casted a vision, right? It’s never about we need volunteers, but we actually told a really significant story of where’s all the fruit that the Lord is bringing to this church, all the spiritual fruit that we’re seeing, like people are getting saved, people are getting baptized, they’re coming to get to know Jesus, they’re studying the Bible.
Kayra Montañez — It was incredible.
Kayra Montañez — But we need people to use their spiritual gifts. And so we came up with a campaign called For the One. And everything was geared for that one person. Like, who’s who are you going to go serve? Who’s the one that you’re going to go serve?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kayra Montañez — And the try before you buy was, we’re going to give you a hoodie. We designed a hoodie. It was called, it was, you know, at the tagline For the One. And the key is you only get it after you serve a couple of times.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.
Kayra Montañez — So this is the try before you buy. You know, you’re going to try it out.
Rich Birch — Yes.
You’re not going to go through the whole background, pipeline, covenant process because we need people now and we need them quick.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — So you’re trying before you’re buying. But if you like it and we’re going to make sure that first serve experience is incredible for you, then we want you to buy it.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Kayra Montañez — And we’re going to reward you by giving you swag that’s limited, exclusive. Not everybody’s going to get it. Rich, you would be surprised. Like I’m still to this day, i have been at Liquid, it’ll be 13 years in April. And I am still shocked by how much people, the gamification of playing to people’s particular interests…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Kayra Montañez — …whether it’s FOMO, they don’t want to miss out, whether it’s the idea of collecting exclusive apparel.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — There’s something here for everyone that just draws people out.
Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true.
Kayra Montañez — We had over 400 people sign up for the one.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. That’s great.
Kayra Montañez — It was incredible. And we were able to tell amazing stories of people who were coming and showing up and serving, whether it was our special needs kiddos or high school whatever you want to call it. We had it. And and I would say the appeal of a try before you buy, how can you shortchange without? So this is key. You don’t want to reduce the quality. But you do want to shorten your pipeline so that you can get people quicker to try it. And then once they actually feel like, hey, I really enjoy this, now we’re going to get you through the whole, you know, rest of the process, right? But you can still serve while we do that.
Kayra Montañez — So that was a huge thing. And then obviously, you know, like the free apparel swag, that always is a nice incentive to give to people. So that was huge.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Kayra Montañez — It was very successful. And that’s what I would recommend is like, hey, can you run, try before you buy little events with like swag, and like you you get you have people serve for a limited amount of time. Like you don’t give them the swag immediately. You make them work for it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Kayra Montañez — They got to serve three, four times before you give it to them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we did a similar thing last summer. Our kids ministry team did a similar thing last summer where we did the summer serve, which we hadn’t done in in actually a number of years. And they they pulled that out and did summer serve. And it was the same thing. If you signed up, you got a t-shirt, a specific t-shirt for that.
Rich Birch — And then you, there was, they basically were asking you to serve once in June, once in July, once in August, like once a month, just for the summertime. And if you served, um I forget exactly what the ratio was, but it was, you got entered in a draw for however many times. And basically, so if you served all three, you got like 10 times the number of draw things to win. And it was all this stuff that you, you could win. And it was like really great gifts.
Kayra Montañez — Yes.
Rich Birch — And you would think that that should not motivate people.
Kayra Montañez — But it does.
Rich Birch — But it does.
Kayra Montañez — It does.
Rich Birch — And and you know and it was and, you know, they did it in really fun, you know, hey this is going to be a fun thing to be a part of. Talk to me about the, because there’s a friction thing there to learn around trying to reduce the friction the kind of onboarding friction, I think over time that stuff can become, you know, it’s, it’s the, we actually are like our, we can become just too hard for our people.
Kayra Montañez — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What did you learn through that process in, in trying to find that balance of like, we want to make it easier to onboard people, but we still want to, is there any kind of lessons from that when you look back on that?
Kayra Montañez — To me, the the lesson really is, again, there is a tension between you can’t shortchange, especially when it comes to kids. I can’t emphasize this enough.
Rich Birch — No, yeah, absolutely. Yep.
Kayra Montañez — Like I oversee all of these ministries and it would be not on my watch will will this happen, right?
Rich Birch — No, yeah, yeah.
Kayra Montañez — So we have to make be very sure that we’re not shortchanging the safety procedures.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep.
Kayra Montañez — At the same time recognizing these things can take some time, right? Like we ask people to get a background check, they have to be interviewed, they have to sign a covenant, they have to have a reference. I mean, these things this is a lengthy process.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kayra Montañez — And I stand by it. We have to do that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — At the same time, can we actually live in a world where we are marrying our need to have someone in the room while also still doing all of these things simultaneously, not actually waiting for all of this to happen so that then they can come.
Kayra Montañez — And that’s kind of how we figured it out. Our Liquid family pastor came up with a process where she’s like, okay, we can shorten it this time. They’re only going to do these three things, not four, not six. But while they’re in the room trying it, we’re going to continue to do the other remaining four.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Kayra Montañez — It’s messy. It’s not always the best thing to do in an ideal world. You are not doing that. But when you’re faced with crisis, then you need to come up with, you know, resourceful ideas.
Kayra Montañez — And so what I would say about the volunteer pipeline is this. There are short-term problems that you have to solve while you’re still working on this very long-term. Like this is a culture that you have to create.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — And in order for you to create a culture, you have to tell stories. You have to celebrate what you want to be repeated. have to make people feel thanked, encouraged, appreciated, seen. You those are all long-term things that you have to be doing all the time. This is like nonstop.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Can’t take the, you can’t take the gas off that pedal for sure. Pedal off that gas.
Kayra Montañez — Correct. You cannot take your foot off the the pedal. But at the same time, there are things that are short term that you really do have to also do. And sometimes that will require teaching from the stage where you’re actually envisioning people about why this matters so much.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kayra Montañez — And this is what we did in March with the For the One. So I would say it’s it’s both/and; it’s not either/or. And so if that’s helpful, that’s how I would approach it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s super good. That’s good. If there was a church that was, if you were sitting across the table from an executive pastor, maybe you’re at a conference or someone drops in your office and they’re, they’re feeling really stuck on this engagement issue. They feel low. Like it’s people were, maybe it’s groups, it’s teams, it’s all of it. Like it’s, we’re not moving people through any kind of pipeline.
Rich Birch — What would be some of those first steps or first recommendations, first things you’d have them look at, maybe like a diagnostic or a first couple of things that you’d have them think about in this area?
Kayra Montañez — Well, I would say if there’s a way for them to know of the people who are attending and maybe they figure this out with new here, how many of those people take one next step within the first month?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kayra Montañez — That would be one diagnostic that I would first see if I can do with the data that I have and the data that they collect and they actually figured that out.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Kayra Montañez — If they’re able to do that, then the next diagnostic would be what percent actually move into a people system…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — …whether it’s a group, a deep dive experience, a dream team within 60 to 90 days, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kayra Montañez — Because if you do that, you’re going to find the blockage. You’re actually going to discover Maybe our attendance is fine. We don’t have an invest and invite problem, but maybe what we have a problem with is our conversion rate. And so then you can start to identify what is it about our conversion that we need to fix?
Kayra Montañez — Is it that we have ah unclear on-ramps? Or is it that our processes are too high friction? It’s too hard people to get involved. If you actually find like, no, actually people are taking next steps. Great. But they’re not sticking to it. Then you have a different problem. Then you can actually diagnose…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kayra Montañez — …oh, maybe the first serve experience actually wasn’t sticky enough. It wasn’t welcoming. Maybe there were issues with scheduling. Maybe we didn’t give clear information. So you can kind of figure out what the problem is based on how you’re measuring it and what you’re discovering. That’s how I would start if I didn’t know what the problem was. Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That makes total sense. And, you know, it it definitely aligns with one of my bugaboos that I constantly driving with executive pastors. When you look at the actual numbers—I and I have not run into a church yet that this is not the case—most churches actually have a front door problem. They don’t have a back door problem. They their actual problem that we think we feel like, oh, like people aren’t sticking and staying in groups, they’re not staying and volunteering. But statistically, that’s actually not true. When most of the time, if you look at, okay, all the people that end up in a group, what is the kind of churn rate on that? Whatever that number is, I’ve never seen a church where it’s higher than the people we’re missing on the front end with exactly with what you said is how many people are removing from new here to taking the first step in the first month?
Rich Birch — Because that you lose a ton of people in that door right there. That is a, you know, by a multiple of 10 or 20, like it’s a lot more that we’re missing out. And, you know, generally in most churches…
Kayra Montañez — And can I just [inaudible] to that?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — Because I just want encourage people, like, figure out a way to target your new here audience.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Kayra Montañez — So at Liquid, for example, if you come for the first time, not only do we encourage, highly encourage you to tell us that you’re here for the first time because we give you an awesome gift.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kayra Montañez — Lots of churches do this, but then we survey people who came for the first time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — And based on what they answer, they receive a custom follow-up process for the first 30 days.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — We don’t, so in that regard, like it is worth to look at that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kayra Montañez — Because you’re going to find out a lot of information and a lot of data about what people are choosing to do, where are they going, why they’re not sticking to it or why they’re not even going in the first place.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kayra Montañez — Like I’m shocked that I’ve been to churches sometimes to speak and they don’t actually really do like a new here call out. Like they don’t.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I was going to say that. You said, oh, churches do this.
Kayra Montañez — Maybe not.
Rich Birch — And I’d be like, Kayra, I’ve been to way too many churches where they don’t do any of that. And they’re like, well, we’re not really sure. And I’m like, this is a solvable problem. We can fix this.
Kayra Montañez — Yes. Yes.
Rich Birch — There’s like real things you can do here. Actually, I worked with a church last year, a fairly large church in 2024, where they were experiencing some of these issues and so and I was like I basically said the same thing I just said, I’m like you’re losing people on the front end. And they’re like they’re like well we do a gift. And I’m like no you don’t. And I said there’s a and there’s a few things to fix around that. In 2025 the year we just ended, they received we made a few changes it’s not about me there’s about them they made a bunch of changes, they ended up receiving 5,000 more first-time guest contacts than they did 2024.
Kayra Montañez — Wow. Just like we’ve always told it to do.
Rich Birch — Now they did not grow by people but it’s just by focusing on that, right?
Kayra Montañez — Amazing.
Rich Birch — It’s just by like saying, hey, how are we what are we going to do to ensure that that step goes well with folks? So anyways, there’s huge opportunity there and in lots of churches. Kayra, you’ve been incredibly generous to give us your time at this time of year. As you’re thinking, kind of last question, as we’re thinking about 2026, what are some of those questions that are floating around in your head as you think about Liquid, as you think about the future? What are some things that you’re wrestling with that you’re wondering about that you’re contemplating as we go into this year?
Kayra Montañez — Oh my gosh, Rich, so many. After this conversation, you know, I really am interested to see what’s going to happen with our discipleship model since we just blew it up.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Kayra Montañez — I’m helping all of that and changing the way that we even onboard leaders. Like I’m really invested in seeing this through.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Kayra Montañez — I also totally unrelated to this, but we just launched, I think in the survey, one of the questions that was asked was what’s the best idea that you had in 2025?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right.
Kayra Montañez — And I was like, well, I feel like one of our best ideas was to use AI to launch a Spanish service. And I am really invested in that in seeing like, how do we continue to grow that service? How do we continue to grow that ministry? We’re launching new ministries in 2025, or 2026. So that always feels exciting and daunting.
Kayra Montañez — So there’s just the work never ends. And there’s always it is an exciting and fascinating time to be in the church. I’ll say that.
Rich Birch — I would agree. I totally would agree. Yeah, it’s the best. I would think, literally, I think this is the best season that I’ve been involved in ministry for sure.
Rich Birch — For folks that don’t know what you’re doing with Spanish ministry, give us the 60 second, explain that again. Because I think I keep pointing churches to you saying, have you heard what Liquid’s doing? You go talk to them. So tell us about that.
Kayra Montañez — So basically we have a Spanish service. We do have live hosting in Español. We have live worship in Español. But then we take our English message and we pass it through an AI service called Heygen, which actually uses the communicator’s voice and matches the words to their lips and they’re just preaching, they preach it in Spanish. Even if they’re not bilingual, they will preach it in Spanish. And it’s like you, Rich, are speaking in Spanish. Your words match to your voice.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, it’s it’s amazing.
Kayra Montañez — People get to hear the the gospel and the message in their language. So it’s been fascinating to learn who we’re reaching, who’s coming, who likes that kind of a thing. You know, as a Spanish speaker myself, I’m like, would I go to a service where the message wasn’t actually authentic Spanish and it’s an AI generated?
Kayra Montañez — I believe in the quality of our communication so much that I actually have to say, yes, I would. Because like last year, this year, we took our entire church through the book of Revelation. Tim spent 25 weeks teaching us the hardest book of the Bible.
Kayra Montañez — The fruit that that endeavor produced is incredible. And so when I think about what we’re doing, I’m like, I believe in that so much that I do think this is a this is a thing that’s actually good to do. Even if people would who would think like, why would they go to that and not like an authentic Spanish speaker?
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting. And that, and you’re, you’ve been a year, that’s been basically almost a year you’ve been doing that now.
Kayra Montañez — A year. A year.
Rich Birch — And, and you’re be continuing to do it. So obviously something’s working. There’s some sort of version of like, Hey, we’re, we feel.
Kayra Montañez — We’re continuing to do it. we’re seeing We’re seeing the fruit. We’re seeing baptisms, people giving their life to Christ, getting baptized, showing up and joining teams, um reaching families. We’re reaching multigenerational families where the parents go to the Spanish service, the kids go to the English service because it’s simultaneous, right? Well, the English is going on, the Spanish is going on. So families get to decide. It’s just really interesting to watch. Obviously, it’s been challenging in the U.S. to grow a Spanish service because of everything that’s been happening.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah…
Kayra Montañez — But it’s just been really fascinating to see like the dynamics of who we’re reaching, who’s is sharing like who’s excited about it, and then using technology to further the gospel. It’s always exciting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. I know I was goofing around with Heygen a little bit. And the part that actually, this was you know almost a year ago when you guys started doing that that, one of the tests I ran that actually convinced me was, so I was like taking videos of me and I would send them to like a friend who speaks Spanish. And I sent to a friend who speaks, you know, a couple of languages that it was doing, but then I did the reverse. There’s a great church, Nouvelle Vie. It’s a French speaking church, large church, be very similar to Liquid, but they’re French speaking. And so I took one of the, the lead pastors from that. I took a clip of his message and translated into English. And I was blown away. I was like, Oh my word. Like,
Kayra Montañez — It is getting better and better every day.
Rich Birch — I was I was shocked. I was like, oh, that that is, yeah, could I tell? Yeah, but this guy’s an incredible communicator. And you know similar to you and Tim and the team at at Liquid, I’m like, I could see that work anyway.
Rich Birch — So that’s exciting. Kayra, it’s so great to see you.
Kayra Montañez — Thank you, Rich.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much for having time with us today. If people want to connect with you or with Liquid, where do we want to send them online?
Kayra Montañez — Sure. So my name Kayra, K-A-Y-R-A at liquidchurch.com. Happy to connect with anybody have questions.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today.
Chosen: How Adoption & Foster Care Fuel a Fast-Growing Church’s Mission with Andrew Hopper
Jan 08, 2026
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Andrew Hopper, Lead Pastor of Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina. Planted in 2012 with just 30 people, Mercy Hill has grown into a multi-campus, fast-growing church known for its gospel clarity and sending culture. In this conversation, Andrew shares why adoption and foster care have become central expressions of Mercy Hill’s mission—and how those practices flow directly out of the gospel. He also unpacks the heart behind his book, Chosen: Building Your Family the Way God Builds His.
Is your church unsure how to engage big social needs without drifting from the gospel? Are you looking for a way to mobilize people beyond church walls while keeping discipleship front and center? Andrew offers a clear framework for doing both.
Doing good as a sign of the kingdom. // Andrew addresses a common tension churches feel between community engagement and disciple-making. Mercy Hill refuses to treat these as competing priorities. Acts of service—whether foster care, adoption, or family restoration—are not the kingdom itself but signposts pointing to it. Meeting tangible needs creates openings for gospel conversations. These ministries don’t replace evangelism; they amplify it by demonstrating the heart of God in visible ways.
A church’s collective heartbeat. // Mercy Hill’s deep involvement in adoption, foster care, and family restoration didn’t start as a top-down strategy but emerged organically from the gifts and passions within the church. Many leaders and members have adopted children themselves, shaping the church’s collective heartbeat. Rather than attempting to address every social issue, Mercy Hill chose to focus deeply on a few—believing churches are most effective when they lean into the specific good works God has prepared for them. This focus has mobilized hundreds of families and created a powerful witness in their community.
Rope-holding and shared responsibility. // Not everyone is called to adopt or foster, but everyone can hold the rope. Drawing from the William Carey analogy, Mercy Hill equips members to support families on the front lines through prayer, childcare, meals, financial help, and presence. Over time, they’ve learned that rope-holding works best when built on existing relationships rather than formal assignments. The goal is to ensure no family fights alone in what Andrew describes as intense spiritual warfare.
Big vision with baby steps. // Mercy Hill isn’t afraid to cast a bold vision—whether for global missions, adoption, or church planting—but they pair that vision with accessible next steps. Prayer nights, giving opportunities, short-term service, and relational support allow people to grow into greater obedience over time. High challenge without guilt creates healthy discipleship.
Why Andrew wrote Chosen. // Andrew wrote Chosen: Building Your Family the Way God Builds His not to promote a program, but to give churches a theological foundation for engaging adoption and foster care. The book weaves together Andrew’s family story, Mercy Hill’s journey, and a deeply gospel-centered motivation rooted in Scripture. Designed to be used individually or in groups, Chosen includes discussion questions and practical guidance for churches or small groups wanting to explore this calling in community. Andrew’s prayer is that the book would catalyze thousands of Christian families to participate meaningfully in caring for vulnerable children and families.
Gospel-driven motivation. // Underneath everything is Andrew’s conviction that gospel motivation outlasts guilt. Behavior rooted in grace goes further than behavior driven by pressure. Adopted people adopt people. Chosen people choose people. That theological clarity fuels Mercy Hill’s sending culture, their community impact, and their ongoing growth.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We have got a multi-time guest on, and you know what that means. That means that I really respect, deeply admire, and want you to listen up, and today is no exception. Excited to have Andrew Hopper with us. He is the lead pastor of a church that they should be following, that you should be following. He’s a lead pastor of Mercy Hill Church with five locations, if I’m counting correctly, in North Carolina, and is repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. I love this church on many levels. They’re centered on the gospel and have a radical commitment to sending people to the nations. They have a desire to make disciples and multiply churches. Andrew, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Andrew Hopper — Man, I’m so pumped to be here. Love the podcast. Really appreciate it, man. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m honored that you would come back. For folks that that don’t know Mercy Hill, give me a bit of a kind of an update. Tell us a little bit about the church. Andrew Hopper — Yeah. Rich Birch — Maybe update us from last time you were on. Andrew Hopper — Yeah, man. So just real quick, planted in 2012. We had 30 people, all you know kind of young professional age, and man, just really believe that God could do something incredible ah through, you know just through our our open hands, and he did. Andrew Hopper — And so it’s been 13 years. It’s crazy. We’ve been sort of pushing the same boulder up the same mountain for 13 years, just flywheel kind of concept and keep pushing. And ah the Lord has done an incredible thing, like you said, five campuses. And man, just moved into a new home and hub. That was from last time we had a chance. That’s been really great. Andrew Hopper — We were in a rented location for a long time as our main like broadcast campus. We’re a video-based multi-site. And so um it’s ah it was a three or four-year journey to raise the money and build this new facility. But we’re in, and the Lord has really blessed that with tons of new people, highest baptisms, sent ones, first time guest numbers, all everything that we’ve done. This has been a, you know, we’ve gone been on a ride – praise God for that. It’s it’s, um, it’s for his sake and his renown, but this year has been unlike the others. So it’s been… Rich Birch — Yeah, you were saying beforehand, it’s like 30 or something like 30 some percent year over year growth. That’s insane to keep up with. Andrew Hopper — It is man. And the, and the giving does not, uh, you know, the giving doesn’t happen. Rich Birch — Reflect that yet. Andrew Hopper — So it’s, it’s like, we’re trying to do ministry on a budget of a church that’s 3000, but a church that’s running 4,500. And it’s like, how do you do that effectively without killing everybody? Rich Birch — Nice. Andrew Hopper — All your staff, I mean, so, but we’re, we’re learning, man, we’re figuring it out. It’s fun. We got, we just planted our sixth church. So that’s apart from the campuses. This is first time, Rich, we’ve planted a church in our own city. Rich Birch — Oh, nice. That’s cool. Andrew Hopper — It’s been really, a really cool dynamic and it’s been fun. He’s doing great. Man, it was a college student that we met when he was 19 years old at North Carolina AT&T 10 years later. He’s an elder here. He’s done a lot of different things. And man, he goes and plants a new church in Greensboro about five minutes from one of our campuses and they’re doing great. Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, the thing, there’s lots I love about Mercy Hill, but one of the things that I’ve loved about your church from the you know the chance we’ve had to journey a little bit over the years about it is you just have real clarity around the mission, this idea of making disciples, multiplying churches. It’s like that has been rock solid from the beginning. When you think about we want churches to have discipleship at its core, this idea of a church that actually grows people up in their relationship with Christ. What matters most at the foundation? How are you keeping that so foundational to you know what’s happening at Mercy Hill? Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I think um I think that we always sort of bought into kind of what we see in Acts 2 as a little bit of a flywheel. We call it gather, group, give, go. A lot of churches have something like that. Andrew Hopper — The the difference, I think, at Mercy Hill a little bit than what I see ah in in in a lot of churches that we help mentor and coach is that 2020 hit and everybody was like, man, what is a church? What is discipleship? What are we going to do now? And and people were kind of… And I do think it was and it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t just me. I mean, our, you know, our executive pastor Bobby, he was really integral in this. We sort of really doubled down on no, I kind of think the church is going to come back. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — And I kind of think what we were doing is sort of what our church is set up to do. It kind of a brand thing. We are sort of a big box sending brand. And that, you know, for us, when we look at Acts 2, we’re like, dude, the gathering, there’s no more there’s no more important hour for discipleship and evangelism. And I know there’s a lot of things written against that. And people are kind of almost like downplaying it. Andrew Hopper — We’re just like, man, we just don’t believe it. We believe people need to be in a group. You know, we they need generosity is lead step in discipleship, give. And we got to teach people that there’s a mission bigger than themselves. And if we do that, it’s going to funnel more people into the gathering. Andrew Hopper — So I think fundamentally what I would say, we need to get, you know, we could talk about our value, you know we can talk about values to gospel and [inaudible] identity, but I think landing on you know, it’s very hard now to, to not get a word salad book form or thing. When you ask somebody, how are you making disciples? It can just be like… Rich Birch — Right. Very vacuous. Who knows what that means? Yeah. Andrew Hopper — For us, it’s just been a very clear, simple process. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — Like, man, we believe if someone is in the gathering, if they’re in relationship, if they’re being pushed on generosity, and if they’re living for a mission bigger than themselves, that’s a current of maturity that will move them. They just get in the stream, they’ll move. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good. Andrew Hopper — that’s kind of So you know for us, I think that’s as, you know we’ve we’ve tried to simplify things there. Rich Birch — Yeah. And, and your last episode, I’ve pointed a ton of people to it, uh, to really, and we really unpack a lot of what you talked about there in more detail. Andrew Hopper — Right. Yeah. Rich Birch — You’re going to want to go back and, uh, and listen to that. You’ve reached as a church, you’ve reached a lot of people who don’t grow up in church that it’s like, there’s a lot of people who are there. You know, we used to say we ain’t your mama’s church, but mama didn’t go to church, you know? So, you know, and it’s been a long time that people were there. What challenges have you seen, you know, helping move people from curiosity into real ongoing discipleship? So like, I think there are, we’re seeing a swell of attendance across the country. People are like, oh, I’m kind of interested in this, but we got to move them from just, oh, this is something interesting to like, oh, I’m actually want to grow my relationship with Jesus. Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I mean, and it’s it’s funny too, Rich, you probably have a better bird’s eye view of this than I do. But I feel like churches that have been faithfully growing for like the last 10 years, they’re not really doing a lot different now. Or even though there’s this big swell happening, what I do think is that some churches have sort of decided like, oh, clarity does matter. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s true. Andrew Hopper — And don’t try to be friends with the culture. We’re going to speak in and be prophetic. And, you know, even even to the you know Proverbs 25:26 says, you know, there’s there there’s no there’s no benefit in a muddied spring. You know, it’s like you got to be sort of you got to figure out if we’re going to be clear. Andrew Hopper — So, I you know, for me, I think like and you’re right, we do reach most of the people that we reach that are in the camp that you’re talking about our college age. We reach a lot of people, though, ah that are, you know, they’re they’re coming back to the faith because they’re a southerner. Rich Birch — Sure. Andrew Hopper — You know, they they kind of they kind of were, you know, they they did have some church in their background. They’re coming back. Their kids are not only born, but they’re realizing they’re sinners and they don’t have answers. They’re trying to figure that out. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Andrew Hopper — They’re coming back to church. Andrew Hopper — And, you know, I think the biggest thing that moves people from like interest into a decision point is just being very clear on this is what the gospel is. This is the life it compels you to. Are you going to be in or out? Andrew Hopper — One of the things we say at Mercy Hill a lot is like, man, if you’re if you’re just intrigued, you know, if you’re interested, you’re not going to stay at Mercy Hill because we’re never going to let you, you’re going to get pushed every week. And it’s like, man, people are not really in or like that. I’m not going to do that. You know, they’re just like, no I’m not going to sit here and get like pushed every single week on something I don’t really… And the flip side is when people say, all right, you know what? Stake in the ground. I’m in. Rich Birch — Yeah, we’re doing this, yep. Andrew Hopper — I wanna look like this, I want to build my life on this. It’s like, well, now, you know, it’s it’s man, I’m hopefully, you know, putting tools in the belt every single week to live that life. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. I do think there was a time where people wandered into our churches where I don’t think that happens as much anymore. I think people, when they arrive, they come with questions, with live active questions that they’re trying to wrestle with, kind of regardless of where they’re they’re at in their journey. Andrew Hopper — Yeah. Rich Birch — And they’re what you to your point around, you know, there’s no benefit in a muddy stream. People aren’t looking for anything that sounds like, well, what do you think? Because the reason why they’re there is because they’re asking questions. And so, you know, they’re they’re looking for clarity, like I think you’re saying. Rich Birch — Well one of the things I love about your church is there’s a high commitment to, you’re you’re you’re tearing down what I think is a false dichotomy. Sometimes I think when churches come to this idea of outreach or making a difference in their community, there’s this there can be this gap or false dichotomy between doing good in our communities and making disciples. Like we gave that up at some point. We were like, you can’t, you know, we can’t do both of those things for some reason. Why, why did we do that? Why did we, as churches say, we can’t both make a difference in our communities and also make disciples? Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I think it’s, I actually have a lot of sympathy for the fundamentalist leaning. I know it sounds a little bit weird. Rich Birch — No, that’s fine. Andrew Hopper — Churches that led from the, you know, from the good do good in your city kind of thing. I don’t think they’re right, but I do have sympathy for that because I understand how quickly that sort of, you know, is so hijacked by liberal, by theological liberalism to where it’s finally man we’re digging wells and wherever but we’re not talking about who the true source of living water is. Like we don’t want to be offensive we just want to do good without speaking the whole you know you know live your life as a Christian only use words if necessary, whatever, you know. And and I so I understand why people kind of fled and have fled that. Andrew Hopper — Like, you know, I’ve even had our church before when I when I talk about adoption or we we have a ministry, and a ministry called No More Spectators. We’re like moving people towards community ministry. And we had people kind of going on like, oh, my gosh, this seems like a sign of like churches start going this way and then they lose the gospel. Andrew Hopper — And I’m like, well, the reason you’re kind of feeling like that is because a lot of churches have done that. You know, you’re not [inaudible] like that just out of nowhere. Now, of course, I think it’s a little bit immature and we’ve got to push through. The way we talk about it, Rich, is, man, we want to do good in our community as signs of the kingdom coming. Andrew Hopper — They are not building the kingdom. You know, if we go repaint a house or house a homeless person, one day that person would parted with that house, whether they, you know, get messed up and leave or whether they do great and then would die one day, you know. Andrew Hopper — Or, if we have, ah you know, if we go and, and you know, we’re going to, for example, we have ah ah a family in our church that they need a ramp built because, man, the the brother is struggling with MS and he’s, they’re they’re fighting it like Christians do. We’re going to go do that. You know, we’re going to go build that ramp. That ramp’s going to rot and die one, you know, rot and rot away one day. And, you know, whether it’s 100 years from now or whatever. Andrew Hopper — Like it’s not literally the kingdom. But when the outside world sees us engage and, you know, our church will talk about this primarily when we think about community ministry, we think about it in terms of adoption, foster care and families count, which I can talk to you about. I think it’s bringing a sign of the kingdom that is to the community around us to say, hey, this is not the gospel. But it sure points to the gospel.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Andrew Hopper — You know, it’s a pretty good signpost of like, yeah, there’s a kingdom coming where kids aren’t separated from their parents, you know. And and so that’s kind of the way that we think about, it’s not, you know, it’s not the kingdom. It’s a sign of the kingdom that is coming. Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s let’s dive in. So adoptions, foster care, families count. These are not small issues. Like you started with like putting a ramp on, painting somebody – those are like, okay, I can organize my head around that. And then we jump to what I think are obviously significant. How, it can be easy, I think, for church leaders it can be easy where, you know, we got a lot of fish to fry in our own backyard. When you see big problems like that, help us unpack that. Why do you as a lead pastor, why are you passionate about these issues? Why are these the things that you’ve chosen? Andrew Hopper — I think it’s, man, I think it’s great. I mean if you can’t if you don’t mind I’ll go back and give you a little bit of context. I’m a context [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …number one so I always want to frame it in where we’ve been. But the short answer to the question is I think that every church because it is made up of individual believers that have individual gift matrix, you know they’re they’re gifted the church is gifted in a unique way because the people which are the church are gifted in a unique way, right?
Andrew Hopper — And so to me, you know, slapping, you know, a top down every single church has to to manifest signs of the kingdom in X way, which, for for example, I’m not to pick on it, but like, you know, the whole diversity church kind of movement. I love you know, if that’s your brand, that’s awesome. That’s great. Go, go bring signs of the kingdom in that area. But you know what people do is they take their thing and then slap it on every single church. You know, this is the sign of the kingdom that you have to manifest. Andrew Hopper — I don’t think that. It takes every kind of church to reach a city because there’s all you know, there’s every kind of people in the city. Right? For us, though, and I think for a lot of churches that that maybe are are made up a little bit like we are, I think there is a lot of meat on the bone for adoption, foster care, families count ministry. And I think churches could be greatly helped by latching on to maybe, you know, something in particular, maybe this, maybe this specifically. How we got there, Rich, was we had we had, you know, huge movement in our church in 2019. I was very convicted. Andrew Hopper — Some of the exponential stuff was coming out, you know, mobilizing people outside the walls of the church. And I really was, man, I was just really affected by that. And I don’t want the dichotomy, you know, I don’t want, well, you your people serve in the church and not outside the church. It’s like, no, most people serve outside the church. If you watch them, they are serving inside the church as well. It’s it’s like a it’s like, man, you know, just just because serving inside the church is not the finish line, don’t demonize it because it is a starting place. Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — So it’s like, I don’t like that kind of whole thing. But but it did affect me to say, OK, what are we doing to push to the outside? So we we we did a thing. You would have loved this, man. But it except for the fact that it didn’t really work that good. OK, it was awesome. Andrew Hopper — It was, we still have the domain name – nomorespectators.com – I had the tagline: Jesus didn’t die to create spectators. He died to create servants, not spectators, workers, not watchers. We, man, you could go to nomorespectators.com and, you know, it was like, it was like a funnel for all of these community ministry opportunities in our city. So it was, you know, people from the housing, you know, authority type stuff would post things. And it was, it was all this kind of, it had a bunch of stuff in it. Andrew Hopper — In the end of the day, great idea. It was a little too complex. Our people latched on to the foster care, pregnancy network, you know, ended up being families count, Guardian ad Litem and adoption. So our guy that was over all that at the time our sending director, which is hard for me to have a good idea that ends up dying hard, okay that’s just tough for me. Rich Birch — You had a great sticky statement and everything. Come on. Andrew Hopper — I’m the king of sunken cost bias. Okay. Like, I’m like, dude. And so finally around 2020, he came to me and he said, bro, I know this is hard for you. Cause it was like a two year initiative. He’s like, this is hard. He said, No More Spectators needs to just turn into Chosen. And it needs to be like, you had this idea for 30 different things. It just, this needs to be our niche, man. You know, we we don’t do a lot of these other things, but we do this really well. Andrew Hopper — And it was hard for me. Ultimately, it was great wisdom by them, not me. And we started going down that road. And partly, I think it’s because, Rich, is heart is near to my heart. I have an adopted daughter. A lot of our staff have adopted kids. We just have a guy right now. Our associate director of first impressions at the Rich campus is in Texas right now, you know, bringing their daughter home. Andrew Hopper — I mean, so it’s just, and so it’s sort of started to morph into, and the the the big thing I’ll say, and I, you know, I’ve been talking a lot here, but the big thing I’ll say is, if you think about the way I just ah described all that, it doesn’t start with the need in the community. It starts with the gift matrix of the church. The poor we will always have with us. Like there there is no there’s no scenario until Jesus comes back that there’s no kids that need to be adopted, you know. Rich Birch — Right, right. Andrew Hopper — And it’s just the reality of it. And so there’s always going to be need in the community. It’s more about, okay, what are the Ephesians 2:10 works that your church, because the church is made up of people who are individually called, what are the you know what are those works that God has set out for your church?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — And, you know, so for us, we just felt like, dude, this is a a heartbeat thing. Our people got more, they get more fired up. The greatest thing I’ve ever been able to mobilize our people for prayer for is go to the abortion clinic and pray. I mean, a thousand people on their face in the pavement. It’s like, it just strikes a chord with our church and who we are. So we wanna run after that. Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, I love that. And we’re going to dig out a bunch of this, but let’s think about it first from a perspective of somebody who’s maybe attended your church. They just started. They’re they’re relatively new, you know. The idea of something as weighty as adoption or foster care, that’s a big ask. And you know when you yeah how do I experience that as someone who’s just new? What are some ways that I could get plugged in? What does that look like? That, that, cause I, I’m hard, it’s hard to imagine that I go from zero to, to, you know, adoption, you know, how do I end up or flying to Texas to, you know, pick up a kid. That’s a lot. Help me understand. How are you, cause I know you guys are so good at moving people along from kind of where they are to where you’re hoping to – what’s that look like? What’s the kind of, how do you bring people along in this? Andrew Hopper — Man, totally. I think you’re right. I think it’s a combination of big vision on one end and then baby steps on the other. But the big vision matters. Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — Like we don’t want to be scared of the big vision. So, you know, for example, our weekender process, which I know you talked about some, you know, that weekender process, you know, people literally for years, we would give them a passport application in the weekender process. Because we’re like you’re at this church you’re probably going to be overseas at some point on a mission trip. And so to me it’s like people are like dude that probably scares the crap out of people. And it’s like well, I mean we want to make sure they know what they’re getting into, you know. We’re not telling them they got to do that tomorrow…
Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — …but that is the, and then and then there’s all these baby steps, right? Like hey come to you know, every February we do Sent weekend. Come to the prayer night. Like that’s a baby step. That’s not you getting on a plane to go to Nepal. But you know hey we’re doing this missions offering at the end of the year, like maybe get you know. So there’s all these I would say that our the way we think about Chosen ministry, which again: adoption, foster care, families count, and rope holding, which is a big part of this discussion…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Andrew Hopper —…is that way. It’s big vision on the front end so we’re never going to tell somebody, hey you know, I know you could never do this. Like I’ll never…I think people can do it and they should. Or or you know more Christians than are should. At the same time we’re also not guilting anybody. Like so I’m I you know the the first thing I’ll tell people is like, hey, you know we start talking about adoption. I always say always say, hey, we have not lined up a bunch of little kids in the lobby for you to take one home today, okay. And then I’ll tell them, that’s next week. Rich Birch — That’s great. Andrew Hopper — Okay, so yeah but and we we try hard to like put some levity in it. Man, we’re not everybody’s not going to do that. In fact, a minority, of a small minority is going to do it. But everyone can be involved and there are baby steps. Andrew Hopper — So we try to highlight giving, man. Like if you someone adopts from Mercy Hill, we pay 25% of their adoption. Okay. Rich Birch — Wow. Yep. Andrew Hopper — If they’re a member and they’re in a community group, they get 25%. All right, well, you know, we’re going to connect that. Like, man, you you are never going to adopt. You feel like that’s, but it’s like, well, I give $100 a month to the church.
Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — Well, hey, what? You know, you’re you are you are supporting. Rich Birch — We’re making a difference. Andrew Hopper — We do parents night out, you know, for all of our foster and adoptive parents. We do it quarterly. It’s like, hey, those are opportunities to come and serve, man. You can serve the meal you can do. We do rope holding, which I know we’ll probably talk about. But but the the idea of rope holding is just like, man, I’m not going to do this, but I can be in the corner for somebody. They’re in my community group. I want to be their first call if they need a babysitter or they need, you know, a gift card, or whatever they need. Andrew Hopper — So I think, man, we try to do big vision. You know, we’re going we’re going to set a huge vision, you know, for 2030 for 2030. Actually, we just hit our vision for 2025, which is 200 adoptive or foster families. There’s a lot of ways people can be involved with it. Rich Birch — So good. There’s, I think thing I would encourage friends who are listening in, you really should be following Mercy Hill, Andrew, because I do think you’re a very unique communicator where you, and you just described it. And I think to you, it’s just like, that’s just what you do. But this idea of like, you’re calling people to a high bar, but you’re not leveraging shame, guilt. you know, it’s, and I think so many times our language can kind of lean in that direction. Or we can, if we really are trying to push people towards something, or we can just undersell the vision. You know We can be like, oh, it’s not that it’s not that big of a deal. You know It’s not for everybody. So I would encourage people to listen in. Rich Birch — Talk to me about rope holding. How is that, what’s that look like? Unpack what that looks like a little bit. Andrew Hopper — Yeah, so rope so the the the rope-holding analogy, which a lot of your listeners probably gonna already know this, but you know William Carey, Andrew Fuller, William Carey, father of modern missions, he’s he he he makes the statement, “I’ll dangle at the end of the rope in the pit, if you’ll hold the rope,” talking to Fuller. And Fuller held the rope for him. Like, you know, Carey the mission field, Fuller’s raising money, preaching sermons, organizing mission boards. So that’s kind of the picture. Right. Andrew Hopper — So we say, all right, not everybody is going to go down into the pit of foster care adoption, even even families count. I mean, these are these are massive spiritual warfare battlegrounds you know um which is one of the reasons why our church wants to be involved so much. I mean you if you want to talk about getting to the you can do all the rhetoric in the world, brother, you want to get to the very bottom of societal issues, you you be involved in somebody’s story that’s trying that’s trying to get their kids back from the foster care system. You’re trying to help them with that. I mean, every you could fatherlessness, poverty, drug abuse. I mean, everything you can think, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — So this this is just spiritual war. So what we tell people is like, hey, man. If we got people that are mobilizing for for adoption and foster care, we better have people in their corne,r because the enemy is going to bring his war machine. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — And we see it all the time. I mean, you’re going to see, you know, a family steps in to adopt and you’re going to start seeing them, you know, there can be sickness. They can have marital problems. They can have financial things that come up. They can begin to believe lies, frustrations. I mean, There’s just so they can become, you know, their their heart can start getting hard toward the system. I mean, there’s so many things that come at them. And so what we say is we need people in their corner, right.
Andrew Hopper — Now, it’s funny because like the way our church has operated was at first we said, all right, we’re going to we’re going to do, you know, the the community group is going hold the rope for the people. And and that that was fine. The problem is when we really kicked off this ministry, so many people got involved that it became overwhelming to the group. So we said we got to start this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …rope holding ministry. The rope holder ministry is good. It’s like, what does a rope holder do? They kind of do whatever the person needs them to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — So there are examples of the rope holding ministry going really well, where it’s like, hey, man, they’re they’re helping with ah child care with the other kids when they’re going to foster care appointments in court. And or, hey, we’re we’re helping you do some things around the house whenever you’re overseas doing your adoption, which is going to put you three weeks in country. You know, there are some good examples like that.
Andrew Hopper — But the other thing that we’ve learned is, you know, foster care and adoption families that are that are walking through this, they’re going through a very trying time. And to just pair them with somebody they don’t know and say, hey, look, here’s your supporter, it can be a little bit like, oh, that’s awesome, and then they never reach out to them. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — They never reach out – the rope holder’s ready. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — But it’s just like, dude, I don’t I don’t know you. And this is a hard time. Rich Birch — Who are you? Yeah, yeah. Andrew Hopper — And so what we’re trying to figure out now as we reboot that rope holder idea is, you know, how how do you kind of integrate relationships they’ve already had? Almost like, hey, do you have this massive pool of people called rope holders? Or when an adoptive family comes up, you say to them, hey, who can we shoulder tap, rope holder for you. Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — And then we’ll train them. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. Andrew Hopper — But not have this pool, but say for you, we’ll put them in. So that’s kind of what we’re, so as part of our reboot for 2030, you know, that’s sort of what’s in our mind right now. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Andrew Hopper — We have a whole playbook for the way we’ve done it, which anybody, you know, if anybody wants any of those things, they can go to AndrewPHopper.com/chosen. And I can send you any of that stuff we have, but on the rope holder side, you know, just full transparency, we’re still, you know, kind of, of you know, and I’m sure it’ll always be that way that we make an improvement. Rich Birch — Yeah, always trying to make it better. Yeah. And I want to, yeah, at some point in this journey, you decided, hey, we’ve got to put this vision and framework into writing, like we and you actually ended up writing a book, and friends who are listening in, I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of this book. Listen, we’re almost half an hour in. I know you’re interested in this. This is the kind of thing you, Andrew’s a trusted leader. He’s, I’ve had a chance to take a peek at the book. This will be super helpful for you. But, but that’s a lot of effort to put this together into a book. What pushed you from just leading this ministry to ultimately saying, hey, I want to capture this into a resource that could help other people? Andrew Hopper — Well, you know, Rich, I never really saw myself as like a writer, just like a practitioner, man. Let’s just keep keep working on the thing and going. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — And truthfully, I got approached. Hey, would you have any interest in writing? You know, New Growth Press is the one that’s editing this book and putting it out. And it was funny, though, because the second I was asked, I was like, man, I know what we should do [inaudible] that should be what we should do. It’s it’s our it’s it’s my story’s family story with our special needs child that we’ve adopted. It’s our church’s journey. But more important than either of those two things, it’s a grounding in the gospel-centered motivation. Because I think that is what is so important. We don’t do guilt motivation. And you know, cute kids and sad, cute kids and and sad stories are good reasons, but they you need a great reason, because it’s hard.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep. Andrew Hopper — You know, and the great reason is of course, adopted people adopt people. And so we delve way into the helplessness of our spiritual condition, how God adopted us and then how, you know, that provides a deep motivation for us to go and do the same for others. Rich Birch — Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because I think this is, ah to me, a core part of the book that I think is really helpful. Even if you’re maybe listening in, you’re thinking, okay, I’m not sure adoption or foster care is necessarily the thing, but you unpack this idea of gospel rather than guilt. And can you talk us through, you know, how, yeah, just talk us through that part, that concept a bit more. Just double click on that a little bit. Andrew Hopper — Yeah. So, you know, when we think about behaviors that flow from the Christian life, there’s really only two ways to think about it, right? Like one of them is we try to do things in order that God would approve of us, you know, that he would, you know, he would, ah he would, he would let us in his family, you know, those those types of things. And we, you know, this is for a lot of Baptistic world, which I am, this was kind of like, wow, this is really revolutionary, but that was 20 years ago – Keller and all that. You know, we just started understanding what more of a gospel center motivation. Andrew Hopper — Of course, the other way to think about Christian behaviors is you are part of the family because of what Christ has done for you. And the family has a culture. The family works a certain way. There’s fruit that will pop out in your life, not so that you can gain entrance into the vine. That’s not how it works. Like, ah you know, you don’t you don’t produce fruit to get in the vine. You produce fruit because you’re in the vine. Andrew Hopper — And so, you know, when we think about like like Titus 2, for example, we think about how the grace of God appears to all men, teaching us not just salvation, but teaching us to obey his commands. So there’s something about salvation that and is inherent to the gospel-centered motivation of of of going out, living the Christian life. You know, it’s it’s kind of the John Bunyan idea when they said, man, if you, you know, if you keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever they want to do. And he said, no, if I keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever God wants them to do.
Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — You know, and so I think what we’ve done in this book is just say, hey, that that is true universally in our Christian life. Like if I’m not tithing and I’m stingy, I can do motivation in two ways. Number one, how dare you, you piece of trash that you never, you know why would you never give? Look what God, you know, blah blah blah, blah, blah, guilt, guilt, shame, shame. Right. Andrew Hopper — Of course, the other way to say is like, man, what kind of riches has God given you in the gospel? And what kind of inheritance do you now have as a son of the king? It’s like, all right, that’s powerful, you know, and it will it will take us places that guilt never can. Guilt will work for a while. You can put fire under somebody and it’ll move them. But if you put it in them, they’ll run through a wall, you know. Rich Birch — So true. Andrew Hopper — And so it’s like it’s like, hey, OK, so you could do it with all these different things. We’ve tried to take this book and do that with adoption to say, all right. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — We know James 1:27, we need to care for the fatherless and the orphan. We understand. I mean, dude, there ain’t, when you talk about metaphors, there’s two big ones, marriage and adoption, you know? And so if you want to do adoption well, we can do it from two motivations. One motivation is look how many kids need. That’s all and that’s all true. That moves my heart. You know, look, can you believe this story of this kid? And that’s fine. Andrew Hopper — Of course, you could do guilt, too. Like, how dare you, you know, have this nice, happy family and not go adopt a little poor orphan kid. You know, you could do guilt. All those things will be fine. They’ll put fire under you a little bit. But if you want to put the fire in someone that is going to carry them through the long haul of all this stuff, I think it’s better to start with: All right. There’s kids that need to be chosen. Were you chosen? Andrew Hopper — You know, so like one of the you know, one I’ll give you an example. We know of a family here in the tribe. They’ve got an awesome son that is 20-something years old, kids got Down syndrome, and they adopted him from Ecuador. And his story was one day a carpenter was working on this building and he heard cries coming out of a dump, like a trash heap. This child had just been born and been left you know with his deformities had just been left for the dumpster. Andrew Hopper — And they brought him to the orphanage. And next thing you know, you know about three or four years later, he got adopted by this family that we know. And that family’s father, he said, Eddie’s story is my story. I was pulled from a trash heap by a carpenter. And if you it’s like that is powerful. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Andrew Hopper — You know, when you start thinking about, man, in my sin, I was one who had no part and parcel in the kingdom of God. I was headlong in rebellion. I had rejected. I was not a son. And God lavished his love upon me, that I would be called his child. And if if that has happened to me spiritually, how could I not want to do that? Or at least help those. you know I’m not saying that’s a call for everybody, but be involved in others that are doing that as well. Andrew Hopper — And so that’s what we say. Adopted people, adopt people, chosen people, choose people. And hey, I didn’t answer your last question. Rich Birch — That’s fine. Andrew Hopper — Okay. Your last question was, why did we write the book? Very simply, I think more people just need to think about what I just said. You know, and I think churches do. And I think that if, you know, a lot of churches have adoption-minded people and a little bit of of fuel in that fire might create some really cool ministry in that church. And this book lays really well for being like, man, make it a small group resource for eight weeks. You know, it’s got questions at the end of each chapter. Andrew Hopper — Like my my prayer is that this book would catalyze tens of thousands of Christian adoptions.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Andrew Hopper — And that’s why we wrote the book. Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s and I thought the same thing as I was looking through it, that this would be a great resource for a small group, a great resource as a staff training thing. Because again, I think there’s two things happening on two levels. From my perspective, there’s what you’re actually talking about – adoption, but then there’s how you talk about it. And I think even both of those, I think could be interesting as a as a staff team to kind of unpack and think about. How do we ensure that what we’re doing is so gospel-infused. That’s part of why i love you as a communicator. I think you do such a good job on that. It’s just fantastic. So I would strongly encourage people to pick it up. Rich Birch — Help me understand the connection. So Mercy Hill is known for, or at least from my perspective, known as a sending church. You know, the thing, one of the and I’ve told again, I told you this before, you’re the first church leader I’ve ever bumped into that has connected new here guests to number of missionaries sent. This like idea of like this funnel of how do we move people all the way along to that? I think that’s incredible. How does that kind of sending culture and adoption, how does that fit together? How does that help kind of fuel the flywheel of what’s happening at Mercy Hill? Andrew Hopper — Well, you you helped me think about this when you came and did our one day for our for our Breaking Barriers group, you know, for the pastoral trainings that we do. Because in your church growth book, you talk about how, ah you know, community ministry is used as an evangelism tool. I’m not, I’m probably butchering the way you talk about it. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Oh, that’s good. Yep. That’s great. Andrew Hopper — That was like a big light bulb for me because because we we definitely do that, but we have not leveraged the communications of that. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — And so, um you know, for us now, what we’re trying to really think about is how does our adoption of foster care ministry and rope holding and families count ministry, how does that create open? We call them open doors, right? Rich Birch — Yep. Andrew Hopper — Like, how does it create open doors, questions in the community, where people come in? And we’ve seen it. You know, so like when we’re talking about the sending culture, that pipeline starts when new people get interested in faith, they get interested in church. Andrew Hopper — And, you know, like, for example, we we had a guy, we just did a historic video. Man, he’s saved, baptized, serving now, ah or, you know, family, young family, prototypical Mercy Hill guy, like, man, just you know blue collar heart, white collar job, just that. I mean, just everything we talk about. Right. He’s our he’s kind of our guy. And the way he got connected was his boss had signed up to be a rope holder. And it just blew his mind. Like, why would a guy take limited time and go help these families? I mean, he of course, he thought it was a good thing. But it really intrigued them.
Andrew Hopper — And so we’ve tried to we’re trying to leverage more of the communication side. It’s tricky. You don’t want to be like, hey, look at us you know in the community. At the same time, I’m like, man, this year, you know when we’re going to do a pretty significant upgrade to some of the there our foster care system has, there’s a house that has a backyard and the backyard is where families come to play with kids, play with their kids they’re trying to get back from the foster care. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Andrew Hopper — And we’ve said like, you know what, man, if these parents are putting in, that needs to be like the best, the best backyard, and you know? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Andrew Hopper — And so, you know, we’re, we’re going to do a significant investment in some, you know, whatever… Rich Birch — Play structures and yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …like a, you know, whatever, like a pergola type thing. They’re going put a shed out there. All going to connect it, pavers, all that stuff is what we want to do. And, you know, we’re, we’re looking at that and I’m going like, yeah, I mean, I get it. Like you don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, but at the same time, that’s not for us. That’s for people that are interested to say like, why would a church do that? You know, like why do they care so much? Andrew Hopper — And it’s because, Hey, sign of the kingdom. We want to build families through adoption. We want to restore families through foster care and families count. This is part of that. So we’ve tried to we’ve tried to use it as a way. And I would really encourage church leaders to think about that. Like, hey, is your community ministry actually an evangelism strategy? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Love that. And yeah, I would encourage you continue to encourage you to think through those things because I do think that there’s, we’ve seen that there’s huge opportunity for folks who don’t normally attend church. They’re interested the way I’ve said in other contexts is they see it as a good thing. We see it as a God thing. We’re not going to fight them over the semantics of it at the front end. Because like you say it’s it’s the kingdom puncturing through that grabs their attention and you’re like oh what what you know what’s going on there? It’s a first step – how do we encourage those people? Rich Birch — Like on that backyard project, I no doubt if you’re rallying a bunch of guys to go work there, I know that there are guys in your church who have friends who they could invite who don’t attend church who maybe would never walk in your church who’d say, hey, will you come and work for a Saturday for a couple hours and swing a hammer and help us do this thing? Let me explain what this is about.They absolutely would show up, right? 100% they’d show up and and they’ll get intrigued by that. And they’ll be like, oh, what’s going on there? That’s that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Well, friends, unabashedly, I want you to pick up copies of, not just a copy, copies of this book. So where do we want to send people to pick up copies, that sort of thing? Andrew Hopper — Yeah, man, they can just go to andrewphopper.com/chosen. Rich Birch — Perfect. Yep. Andrew Hopper — The book’s out so they can pick up a copy. I mean, it’s also just like on Amazon or whatever, but that link will take you straight to New Growth Press. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — So, yeah, man, would love it. Would love to hear from anybody who’s using it well in a church context um to catalyze Christian adoption. Rich Birch — Love it. Anything else you want to share just as we close and how can people track, go to the website, other places we want to send them as we close up today. Andrew Hopper — Also on Instagram, we have a lot of stuff on Instagram, andrewphopper on Instagram. Yeah, the last thing I would say as a closing thought, Rich, is you know, the Christian adoption boom has sort of happened 20 years ago. People started talking about this a lot more. And now you can feel in some of the podcast world and all that, there’s a bit of a backlash, not not to don’t do it, but also like, hey, no one told us how hard this was going to be.
Andrew Hopper — You’re dealing with traumatic situations, kids that have been brought, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s crazy. One thing I try to do in this book is I try to say, Hey, that’s not a good reason to take our ball and go home, you know. Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — Instead we just need to try to shoot as straight as we can. And I do that in this book, man. It is hard. It’s you’re on the front lines of spiritual war. I mean, it’s almost like, dude, the, the, the greatest transfer of faith from one generation to another happens in the home. We love it when adults get saved. I get that. But let’s be honest. Statistically, where does it normally happen? Right.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Kids.
Andrew Hopper — And so if you got a home that’s broken apart, that Christians are trying to put back together, what did we think Satan was going to do? You know, and so instead of taking our ball and going home, let’s just call it what it is, and then ask the Lord to steel our spine…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — …and to move forward with the mission. So, yeah, man, I’d love for people to pick it up. And I appreciate the time to talk about it today. Rich Birch — Andrew, thanks so much. Appreciate you. Just want to honor you for the work you do. You’re a great leader. And I love how God’s using you and your church to make a difference. Thanks for being on the show today. Andrew Hopper — Thanks, brother.
Closing the Ministry Income Gap: Need an Extra $1,000 a Month? Try This Proven Side Hustle with Tim MacLeod
Jan 01, 2026
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Tim MacLeod, a former nurse who escaped the financial treadmill by flipping couches—and now teaches others how to do the same.
Are you a church leader feeling the financial squeeze? Looking for a side hustle that doesn’t require debt, special skills, or hours you don’t have? Tim’s story offers a practical roadmap—and encouragement—for anyone needing to close that income gap.
Burnout and financial pressure. // Tim became a nurse at 21, newly married, supporting his wife through teacher’s college, and quickly thrown into adult responsibilities. The only way to stay financially afloat was by working overtime once or twice a week. When their second child was on the way, he realized the path he was on was unsustainable.
Finding financial freedom. // Options like upgrading his nursing degree, relocating, or working in dangerous psychiatric facilities were unappealing. Tim needed something flexible, part-time, and profitable enough to replace overtime. He discovered flipping phones and iPads first, but competition was fierce. Then, after borrowing a trailer and responding to a free couch listing, everything changed. He cleaned it up, sold it the next day for $280, and instantly covered more than an entire nursing shift.
Why flipping couches works. // The opportunity exists because of a gap in the marketplace. Most people don’t own trucks, can’t move heavy furniture, and face tight deadlines when moving. Sellers value reliable pickup over price; buyers value affordable furniture delivered to their door. Tim steps into this gap. With polite communication and kindness, he creates a “win-win-win”: sellers get rid of furniture quickly, buyers get affordable delivered couches, and Tim earns a consistent profit. He estimates most beginners can make $1,000/month by flipping just five couches—buying each for around $50 and selling for $250 with delivery included.
A side hustle with time freedom. // One of the most surprising parts of Tim’s business is the flexibility. He built the early stages of his flipping business in the evenings with his wife and baby riding along—road dinners, cheap pizza, and trips to pick up inventory. Now he schedules pickups during school hours, stacks deliveries based on availability, and can pause or accelerate the business as needed. It’s ideal for ministry families with unpredictable schedules.
Why you can succeed at this. // Many of Tim’s students are pastors or church employees, and he says ministry workers have unique advantages: access to storage at the church, a heart for helping people, strong communication skills, and the ability to bring calm to awkward interactions. Many pastors live outside their ministry communities—creating the perfect “import/export” opportunity where they can buy in one market and sell in another. And unlike many side hustles, flipping couches doesn’t conflict with ministry—it simply provides supplemental income with minimal stress.
A free resource to get started. // Tim created a free Google Doc of scripts—his exact messages for starting conversations, vetting couches, and negotiating with integrity. To get it, simply comment scripts on any of his Instagram videos and he’ll email it your way. He also offers an affordable course walking through his full system, including storage setup, videos, delivery strategies, and scaling beyond $1,000/month.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’re definitely having a very un-unSeminary episode today. You know recently I heard some statistics that I was like, man, we gotta do something about this. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics—you’re like, it’s a little early in the year for the Bureau of Labor and Statistics—but there’s a 13% gap between what religious workers—people who are clergy actually, is the title—and the average income in the country makes – a 13% gap. In fact, it even gets worse when you look at people, there’s a category called “religious workers, other”, which these would be like not the senior pastor types. This is like everybody else that works in a church. There’s a 40% gap between those people and the the average salary in the country. Rich Birch — And so why am I bringing this up? Because I know that there are people that are listening in today that are feeling that gap. Here we are in January and they’re feeling the pressure of that. And I want to help you with that. And so I’ve got a friend, like a friend from real life, friends. This is like we’re in the same small group. We know each other, incredible leader, and I want to expose you to him. But more importantly, I think he can help you with that gap. Rich Birch — It’s my friend, Tim MacLeod. Tim was a nurse with the dreams of fatherhood and home ownership, but after a few years was faced with reality and no time, no amount of overtime was really going to fill the gap that he needed to make things work. And after being stuck on that kind of financial treadmill, he found a way out. He found the niche of, wait for it, friends, flipping couches. What? Flipping couches and was able to quit his nursing job and now does this full time. And I’ve asked him to come on. Uh, because I think what he did at the beginning, even part-time, I think could help some of us today that are, that are listening in. Tim, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Tim MacLeod — Thanks so much for having me, man. I’m excited. Rich Birch — This is going to be a good conversation. Kind of fill in the story. Tell us a little bit, uh, tell us about your background, and how did you get in? How did you go from nursing to flipping couches? Tim MacLeod — So I wanted to be obedient and I got married maybe a little bit too young at 21. My wife was still in teacher’s college. And so very, very quickly I was thrown into adulthood of two cars, rents and all the things that come with that. Tim MacLeod — And nursing was good. I was a registered practical nurse, so not a university educated RN making bank, but doing okay with a college diploma. And I got the comfy gig at a long-term care home because I preferred eight-hour shifts and not the, I didn’t want nights. Rich Birch — Midnight and all that. Tim MacLeod — I just wanted, yeah, exactly. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim MacLeod — I wanted the free parking and the the reliable six to two shifts. That was just the lifestyle that I liked. And the only way that I could stay afloat financially was with doubles. I had to do my six to two and then at least once a week, usually twice, if I wanted to have any money to play with, um I would work the two to ten. Rich Birch — Wow. Tim MacLeod — And that was cool while my wife was in college or while she was finishing up teacher’s college, that was fine. And then, we had a newborn baby and that was fine. Because anytime that I would have to do those doubles, she’d go to sleep, go for a sleepover at her parents’ place. And, uh, and I would just drudge up the shifts. Tim MacLeod — And, but then when we were pregnant with number two, I knew that there was difficulties coming. And the road ahead did not look very good. And so I needed something different and all my options for replacing the income suck. Like I could go back to school and upgrade to RN, but I scraped through the first time. So that was nuts. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — I didn’t have much hope in myself in that avenue. And I could go, I could relocate, I could move or I could commute about an hour and 20 away to the mental health hospital and make like danger pay in like an asylum, basically with my current qualifications. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — And everything just looked terrible. I hated all of that. And all I needed was something better than overtime. I just needed to replace that portion of the income. And I needed something better in my evenings that hopefully I could do with my wife or from home. And so I was looking at side hustles. Tim MacLeod — And I had a little bit of success flipping phones and iPads because that’s all that I really understood… Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah. Tim MacLeod — …all I understood at the time. And I live about an hour north of where my in-laws live, which is a pretty dense population. I’m in the sticks and the supply was really light there. So I could reliably go for a free meal at my in-laws place, pick up an iPhone or three and for like 300 bucks and then bring them home and sell them for 450 bucks. And so that took that took the pressure off and that was like grocery money. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — And it was really consistent, really reliable. And and it was fun too. I really liked it. I liked the negotiations. I liked, I liked not trading time.
Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — Like I liked making making a profit instead of a wage. And that I was hooked on that, but there was competition. Like I wasn’t that clever doing that. Tim MacLeod — There was there was kids that were closer to the inventory ripping around in little Hyundai Elantras and uh i remember meeting this this Indian kid named Lucky, at least his Canadian name was Lucky, and he was beating me to all the goods. And and I met him one time to buy a phone for myself and I actually got to meet him and ask him some questions and he was making four grand a month flipping phones. Rich Birch — Wow. Tim MacLeod — And I thought that is so sick, and it’s just a pure cash hustle. And he was making more doing that than whatever his office or IT job was at the time. And I was super inspired by that, but I didn’t want to compete with him. So that kind of that kind of festered with me a little bit. Tim MacLeod — And um I just got an awesome idea. Well, was gifted to me by the Holy Spirit, I think, based on how fast and how fierce it came, that I need to get skills and tools to sell in a different category, something with a higher barrier to entry. And I wanted something where I didn’t have to compete with the Honda Civics and the Hyundai Elantra’s that were closer to the action. Rich Birch — With Lucky. Yes. Tim MacLeod — Yeah, exactly. He was smoking me. And and it also, it was a little bit of that and then also a little bit of me coveting. I wanted to get like, um I wanted an excuse to buy a Ford Ranger. I wanted a truck at the time. Rich Birch — Love it. Tim MacLeod — And so this combination, this combination of like wants and needs at the time, had me pitching an idea to my brother, Ross. I’m just like, Hey, what do you think about instead of phones and iPads? What if I got a truck and I started doing like washers and dryers or appliances or something like that? And he said, that’s a cool idea. Tim MacLeod — You’re good at the phones and iPads thing. And I definitely like, you’re good at the negotiations, all that. But don’t start eight grand in debt. That’s so stupid. Why don’t you just borrow my trailer and just try it? And I said, well, I don’t have a, I don’t have a hitch on my car. He said, get a hitch on your car, buddy. Okay. So, put that on the Visa, did not have the money for it.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tim MacLeod — Put that on the Visa, put a two inch two inch hitch and four prong wiring on Mazda 5 like the little four cylinder, little mini minivan. Rich Birch — Oh, I wish I would have saw this at that. I wish I would have s seen this at this phase. Cause that, that, that would have been amazing to see him getting pulled around. Tim MacLeod — It was it was pretty cute and it was a big trailer too 12 by 6 aluminum being pulled by this little aaaaahhh. And it was stick shift and and… Rich Birch — Nice. Tim MacLeod — …and the first day I got the trailer, the only thing I could find, because I was just itching to use it, was a free couch. And it was one of those beige microfiber, like gets dirty if you look at it wrong. Rich Birch — All right. Yes. Tim MacLeod — Like they hold on to every water stain. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Tim MacLeod — And it was that and it was free and it needed a little bit of TLC. And I went and I got it for free. Brought it home and with a damp cloth, scrubbed out all the little marks and had it looking good. Took a picture of it, listed it with an offer of delivery and it sold the next day for 280 bucks. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Tim MacLeod — It was awesome. Because a nursing shift net was like 180. Rich Birch — Wow, OK. Tim MacLeod — I think I was, I think I was 28 bucks an hour for an eight hour shift after taxes. Yeah. Probably like 180 hit the account. Rich Birch — Wow. Tim MacLeod — And so 280 for that. And it was one of those trips of free meal at, at the in-laws and then a free couch and then bring it home and then solve somebody’s problem of, I just got an apartment. I don’t have a car or my car’s too small and I need a couch. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Tim MacLeod — And their option was, rent a U-Haul or go to Leon’s and finance something that comes delivered. Both are not very good options for most people. And then lo and behold was this guy who said, I got a couch, I can bring it by. And it was just the easiest yes for them. It was a win for everybody.
Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — The person who needed the couch picked up, didn’t care about the money. They needed reliable pickup more than they needed cost recovery of the item because they had a deadline. I needed a way to make some cash and the person on the receiving end needed a couch that was affordable that came delivered. So it was just a win-win-win for everybody. I was like, okay, forget about appliances. Couches – I love this. And it was easy, it was it was easy enough to lift by myself.
Rich Birch — Did you ever do appliances? Did you ever do appliances in there?
Tim MacLeod — Yeah. I did a washer and dryer and ate a loss on that because it needed repair and I didn’t…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim MacLeod — …I paid for someone to assess and they were like, yeah, this thing’s broken. Was like, sweet. Okay. So a hundred bucks to you for, for, to tell me that it’s hopeless, and then pay for junk removal too. Rich Birch — Yes. Tim MacLeod — Like it was just such a loss. But couches, I could reliably sit on it and be like, well, that’s not broken. And I can handle that little stain or I can, my wife could stitch that up. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tim MacLeod — And, uh, it was just so safe. And I loved it. If, if I were handier, I’m sure I could, flip snowblowers or lawnmowers or cars or something like that, but I’m not handy. I’m just, I have the ability to relocate stuff. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — And so couches were just so perfect where I could just accurately be like, that’s 300 bucks to me. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — And they only want 60 for it. Perfect. Let’s do that. Rich Birch — So and let’s double click on that. A part of what, so friends, like with the reason why, I think you’ve seen why I’ve got Tim on the the line today. I want to inspire you to think like, hey, you you could in part-time make a little extra a month. And I’m going to get to that with Tim. I’m going We’re going hammer down on, okay, what exactly would be some of the first steps that you take? But let’s unpack a little bit more. You’ve talked about once this insight, which I think is just a stellar insight that’s obviously at the core of your business. It’s this whole timing thing. Like people, you know they think a couch is worth certain certain amount, but they’re moving on X date, and the value of that couch goes down. But then it’s literally the reverse. Someone on the other side, they have an empty living room and they’re like, I need something here. Rich Birch — Unpack that a little more, kind of double click on… that value exchange and how you’re in the middle of that. What’s it talk us through what that looks like. Tim MacLeod — Yeah, there’s there’s a gap. There’s a gap in the marketplace. On the one end, we’ve got people who need it picked up and their options are hope that someone will pay the price that they want. And then if they hit a deadline, then their option is junk removal or put it to the curb. And so there’s a gap to fill there. Tim MacLeod — And then on the other side, there’s a gap of people who need a couch dropped off but can’t do it themselves. Like how many, what’s the population of people that own a truck that can actually do it is probably less than 10%. Most people have cars and hatchbacks and SUVs and stuff like that. Rich Birch — Right.
Tim MacLeod — And then there’s also the how many people can lift a couch. I would say easily less than half the population. And so there’s just this huge gap that can be filled. And so by just committing to being the dude, you can help a lot of people solve a lot of problems. And there’s a little slice in it for you too. Rich Birch — So one of the things I’ve heard you say is that you have found this process of buying couches and then, you know, sitting on them for a while, maybe cleaning them a little bit and then turning around selling them is really flexible. Talk us through that. You know, it feels like you’re, you know, you’re, you have some time control. Talk us through what that looks like for you in your current world. Tim MacLeod — Yeah, the time freedom is crazy. And that was the appeal in the beginning was [inaudible] I didn’t want to be strapped to a location, a building to to make money. I had to be away from my wife and kids. But when it, couches just took off so fast that the first time I flipped a couch, I immediately called the scheduling office and reneged on all of my overtime. I said cancel all my two shifts. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Tim MacLeod — I’m done. I’m I’m I’m just doing my 10 shifts. And, and then it didn’t take too long before i wanted to quit so fast, man. I wanted to be out of there. My, my my passion for the, like, I was so replaceable. Like as soon as if if I’m gone, someone’s going to fill the shift. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tim MacLeod — Like, ah but there was a, there was a huge, there was a need that, and it was fun for me too. It was a game. I forget the question. Rich Birch — Yeah, I was just talking about the time flexibility, like how you feel like it’s, you know, you have a fair amount of time freedom. Part of what I’m trying to get to is pastors are busy people. Church workers are busy people. Is this even the kind of thing that they could fit into, you know, an existing as like a side hustle kind of thing? Tim MacLeod — Yes. Yeah. The time freedom is crazy. And so on the buying side, I’m just letting people know when I’m available. And sometimes I’ll tie it up with ah with a $50 deposit so that they can market it sold with confidence and they know that I’m not going to ghost on them. And that I have the peace of mind of nice, that’s mine for when I need it. And I’ll squeeze them for a deadline so that I make sure that I’m providing the service of reliable pickup in a manner that works for them. Tim MacLeod — But yeah, I’m just stacking pickups when it’s convenient for me. And in this current season, it’s during school hours. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — So I’ll drop the kids off at school and then rip south and grab some stuff. But in that season, it was I’m available in the evening. And so I would come home from school, I’m sorry, work from my nursing job. And my wife would pack up, we pack up a little cooler bag of like a road picnic of dinner. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — We had a one-year-old baby at the time and, uh, oh, that summer there was a lot of 50% off pizzas. Pizza Hut had a, the, the apps, we had all, all the apps, lots of road dinners.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Tim MacLeod — And Costco was clutch too. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tim MacLeod — But, um, yeah, just when I had an availability, I would acquire inventory and then they’d sell when they sell. And and again, full flexibility of, okay, I’m available at this time. I can squeeze in a delivery or someone could come pick it up. But yeah, the the time freedom is crazy and it’s sweet to to to just dabble in profits instead of relying on a wage. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — Yeah, time freedom is awesome. Rich Birch — Well, you talked about the fact that your you know your brother was telling you you’re good at negotiations. I know there are people that are listening in today that are feeling like, oh, there’s no way that I would be good at negotiations. Obviously, you’ve got to buy the thing for considerably lower than what you’re selling it for. Talk us through even just a couple, help us get over that hurdle in our brains. Man, I just don’t know that I could do that. Tim MacLeod — Yeah. So the first thing is I’m scrolling a lot. And not not frequently. I’m not glued to my phone. But when I do it, I lock in. Like today was the shopping session and it was headphones in with some instrumental music, just kind of vibing. And I’m probably scrolling, looking at probably 400, 500 couches.
Rich Birch — Okay. Tim MacLeod — And I’ll message probably 20 to 30 of them. Because a lot of them are crap. A lot of them are actually new. There’s no opportunity with new coaches. like There’s lots of warehouse stuff that’s still on first Facebook Marketplace and stuff like that. But what I’m looking for is very specific. I’m looking for private sales from real people. You got to be able to spot the scammers and weed them out. Tim MacLeod — And I’m looking for couches that I would want in my lockers. I’m not worried about the price whatsoever. Because the price is super subjective and it’s just kind of like what they’re hoping for. It’s not actually what they’re necessarily going to get. So the price is irrelevant. I’m just looking at pictures and I’m compiling lists of couches that I would want. And I’m starting conversations so that it’s kind of like I’m, I’m, it’s it’s like I’m offering my service. I’m starting the conversation to see why they’re selling it, if there’s a deadline, and if they would be someone who would be receptive to my service. And it’s kind of like they’re paying me for my reliable pickup service with a smoking and deal on a couch. Tim MacLeod — And so I have to get them there. And it’s not just, I can’t just go around lowballing everybody because you burn the bridge and you hurt feelings.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim MacLeod — So I’m starting conversations and I’m filling in the gaps on the item. So I’ll read the description and see what’s missing. Like, did they specify that there’s pets in the house? I want to know, is there pets? Are there smokers in the house? Does it need any repairs? Does it need any stain removal or restoration if it’s leather? And I’m filling in all the gaps. So I have a complete picture of what it is that I’m actually buying. And that’s all kind of like a trauma response from my many, many drives of shame of I didn’t ask the right questions. Tim MacLeod — And so it’s it’s definitely preventing the drive of shame. And I’m just running through these scripts that I have. And it would sound like it’s a lot of typing, but I’ve actually made keyboard shortcuts for all of it. So my opening question is, I’ll never say, hi, is this still available? Because everybody hates being asked, hi, is this still available? On Facebook Marketplace, right? Because they’ve made it ah they’ve made it a button…
Rich Birch — Yes. That’s why it’s up.
Tim MacLeod — …where it’s just like, hi, is this still available? But that upsets people, which is fair, because it’s annoying. But at the same time, most people don’t have empathy for the fact that, how else are they going to start the conversation? Why would you ask questions if you’ve got someone lined up for it? So I’ll ask the exact same question, but in a way that annoys nobody. And I’ll say, is anyone scheduled to pick this up? It’s the same question, but upsets nobody. Rich Birch — Same question, just in a different way. Tim MacLeod — So that’s, that’s my first shortcut is, good morning, good good afternoon, good evening, whatever. And then any, and so on my keyboard, any with two wise expands into anyone’s schedule to pick this up. And then the next one is, does it need any repairs or stain removal? That’s if it’s fabric. And that’s does D or D O E S S and then D O E s S S S or with three S’s is, does it need any repairs or restoration? That’s if it’s leather. And so it’s just these quick little, my thumbs are just, and just…
Rich Birch — So cool.
Tim MacLeod — …I’m, I’m drafting up this quick little paragraph that fills in all the gaps, firing that over. And then, And then they’ll reply and fill in the gaps. And then I park it. I pause the conversation by saying, okay, awesome. Thanks so much. Just starting to have a peek at options, might get back to you. Tim MacLeod — And that one line separates me from everybody on Facebook. Because most people ask a question and then they just leave it on read. They got that little picture, that little tiny profile picture of yourself that says that, hey, he read it, but he’s gone and it’s crickets. Rich Birch — Yes. Tim MacLeod — And it’s a very, very infuriating experience. And that’s kind of like part of my service is that I am very, very different on Facebook Marketplace. Like an experience selling to me is better than anybody… Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — …because of how I talk. Like I’ll receive offers every day from people that don’t use words. They just send a number.
Rich Birch — Just money.
Tim MacLeod — Like I’ve got a couch listed for 1150 and someone just sends 700 – no dollar sign, no question mark, no good morning, nothing like that. And, and that’s a fair offer. Like he’s…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tim MacLeod — …I paid, I paid a fifth of that, like 700 is a fair offer, but I automatically hate this guy. I don’t, I don’t hate, I don’t hate him.
Rich Birch — Yes. No, I get what you mean. Tim MacLeod — But, but it’s immediately just like, dude!
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tim MacLeod — You like say, say hi, say please.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Tim MacLeod — Even a, even a question mark would be, you know, so that’s the kind of people that I’m dealing with. And I’ve got thick skin and I always operate on the mindset of, I do want to sell this guy and I, and I do want to see him later today. So I’m not going to match his energy.
Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — I’m never, I’m never a thermometer. I’m always a thermostat. I always set, set the temperature in the room, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Yep. Tim MacLeod — And so that’s ah that’s a big factor. But yeah, running through those scripts and and just getting people to their best price. And so after pausing it of, thanks so much, just starting to have a peek at options, I’ll reconnect with them. Tim MacLeod — Now, this is this is if their price is optimistic and it’s not a price that I’m willing to pay. I’ll slow play it a little bit by pausing the conversation. And then I’ll come back and then I’ll hit them with my my secret weapon is my polite lowball offer. And the number they might hate the number, but it comes gift wrapped in this like apologetic, like, Hey, I’m… Rich Birch — Oh, you got to tell me more that you’re, you’re setting that up. Well, you’re like, what is the polite low ball offer? Tim MacLeod — For me, I’m shopping in Toronto, which is like 90 minutes, two hours away. Tim MacLeod — And so my apologetic offer is: It’s so far, is there any chance you’d consider this much, any chance you’d consider for an out of towner? And then I just plug in the number. And, and it’s always received well. And even if it’s even if it’s even if they’re firm, that’s fine. Now I know.
Rich Birch — Right. It’s data.
Tim MacLeod — But and ah honestly, if somebody accepts my offer, then I didn’t offer low enough. Like I’m i’m really pushing the limit. Rich Birch — Oh, interesting. Tim MacLeod — I’m flirting with the line between an optimistic offer and a rude offer, but because I’m so nice about it. And it’s, it’s kind of like, it’s my secret weapon to get them to their best price. Because the the worst way to get someone to their best price is what’s your best price? Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — Like whenever someone asks me that, it’s again, it’s just like, that’s annoying. I don’t like you. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Right, right, right, right, right. Tim MacLeod — But to politely lowball and then their counter is their best price. So I just want to squeeze them for their counter offer. And now I know what their best price is. Rich Birch — Right. Okay. That’s cool. There’s a lot there. And I know you’re want to stay tuned because Tim’s got an offer of some free help that he wants to give you that we’re going to, we’re going to get to here in a minute. So I know some of you were like, go back and ask questions on that. But I know that the free offer to help is going to help with some, some of those things.
Rich Birch — What about negotiation on the other side? So I get a sense of what you’re talking about to try to get them, you know, there’s a time thing there and we’re going to wait and all that. But now on the other end, you’re trying to obviously maximize or get the biggest money for that couch you just bought, bought. What are some things we should be thinking about on that? How are you offering the couches in a way that, you know, captures people’s imagination and says like, oh, okay, that’s this, I want to do business with this guy. Tim MacLeod — So a big thing is where I’m selling it. It’s almost like I have an import business. It’s that I’m I’m ripping down the city and I’m shopping in the Tesla BMW neighborhoods where nobody has trucks and they sell really slowly.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Tim MacLeod — And I’m loading a trailer and then bringing it home to the sticks where there’s not as much supply. And I’m selling to people who do have pickup trucks. Like where I live, there’s lots of people with trucks and trailers, but they weren’t doing that drive to the city like I did. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tim MacLeod — So I’m destroying a Toyota Highlander in kilometers, which is really hard to do. It’s at 400,040 and she ain’t quitting anytime soon. It’s been a great car. Rich Birch — Love it. Tim MacLeod — So that is definitely like the fact that it feels like an import business feels like cheating. Rich Birch — Well, and can I just, I just want to interrupt you for a second here. This, because that dynamic, this is a part of why I wanted to have you on the show. Because one of the things that I’ve seen is like, it’s super common, like super common for church leaders to not live in the community that they serve. Because frankly, they can’t afford to live there because of that gap that I just told you about. Rich Birch — There is a wage gap between what people make and the communities they serve in. And so they typically live you know, 45 minutes, an hour away. I actually think that that, the fact that they’re just driving into the office could be, and then going back to wherever they live, could actually set them up for running this kind of business just because they’re in and out of where they’re at. Tim MacLeod — Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’d be cheating. If you could, if you could grab a couch on your way home from on your way home from work to bring it back to the sticks, that’d be awesome. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. I see that all the time. Tim MacLeod — For sure. And at a lot of… Rich Birch — So the distance is one way. So there’s like an import out, out, port anything else that you get, it’s kind of an interesting part of how you negotiate on to try to increase the, the, the price. Tim MacLeod — Knowing what it’s worth and how quickly it would sell is definitely a factor. And just patience wins on both sides. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — Being the dude who um can pick it up and someone is now, they had their optimistic kick at the can and now it needs to go and their patience has run out. Patience wins there. And then on the selling side to where I don’t, it’s not in my foyer. It’s not in my living room. The new couch hasn’t arrived. It’s in a storage locker ready to be picked up anytime. And my lockers are fairly affordable being in a rural spot. Tim MacLeod — And so it’s kind of like if if we were playing poker, I’m holding aces. I can deliver it. I can sell to anybody. I’m not relying on people on the small demographic who can pick it up. I can sell to the Honda Civic crowd. I can sell to seniors who can’t lift a couch themselves. I can finesse it into a patio door by myself. And so there’s the there’s the skill gap there as well. And all of the all of the hindrances that make selling a couch difficult are not a factor for me. I can lift them by myself. I can I have the best trailer. I have storage lockers. They can take as long as they need to sell. And I live in a market where there’s not as much supply. So it’s just, it feels like cheating. Like I’m just really, really set up for it. And it’s super easy to be patient. Rich Birch — Now, I don’t know if I’m going to force you to give away one of your secret weapons here, but talk about the videos that you shoot ah of the, you know, of the products. Because i to me, I think this is one of the things you do that I think is super unique. What is what’s unique about the videos that you might shoot? Say got this nice leather couch. It’s like, you know, it sells for $5,000 somewhere else. You’re selling it for whatever, $1,500, $2,000. What’s actually in that video that might set your your listings apart? Tim MacLeod — Yeah, so that was something that I feel like I pioneered. And since then, Facebook has now added a feature where you can add a video to a listing. But it’s so nice to have. So I’m I’m posting flattering photos. So it’s it’s a scroll stopper when they’re on Marketplace. Tim MacLeod — And they’ll inquire. And then my video is super, super honest. And the goal is for it to be so detailed that they could confidently say, okay, he just showed me all the reasons not to buy the couch because all my stuff is used. I’m not selling anything new. It’s all pre-owned. They all have some blemishes or some quirks or worn spots or something like that. But to include ah a video that shows all of the reason not to buy it really, really greases the wheels because no one’s coming to see a couch and then being disappointed when they get there. Everything was already shown. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tim MacLeod — So they’re coming to just give, basically just come sit and sniff and make sure that it’s something that they would want in their house, or something they’d want to sit on for two hours a day. And, um, and so those videos really, really saved me so much time and gasoline. And since then they’ve added that where you can add a feature. So, or where you can add a video into the listing. And so as long as the video is less than a minute, so I’m aiming for 59 seconds, I’ll fill the whole thing and I’m showing every inch of it and I’m packing it with dialogue on the neighborhood that it came from, the people, the house. And a lot of times that’s a selling feature of this this couch came from North York. The house was ridiculous. Rich Birch — Right. Tim MacLeod — It’s one of those houses with three living rooms. And this is the one that had the Christmas tree for a month a year. Like this was barely used. And I’m just packing it with dialogue and really, really selling it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tim MacLeod — And my goal is that I could deliver it with them like sight unseen that they could firm up. And that when that couch arrives, there are absolutely no surprises. It’s everything they ask for [inaudible]… Rich Birch — Which from from your point of view, like this isn’t the only couch you’re hoping to sell this week. And and a part of the way that you have to protect your time and protect your business, frankly, is not having a bunch of people come and check out couches and then decide against it. Whether they’re coming to your locker or you’re driving it to their place. That’s like the worst case scenario is they show up and they’re like, oh, I don’t want this. So you might as well be fully upfront and be like, hey, here’s some stuff that’s not great about it. Rich Birch — And you do it in a really clever way. I love those videos. You helped me sell a car, which was fantastic. And I love the video you did for, you know, for that, because it was the same thing. It was this kind of like fun, um you know, here’s five reasons why you shouldn’t buy this, which which is just endearing. People, you know, lean in and want to hear more about that. Rich Birch — Well, what about the lifting piece? So, you know, if you’re not seeing one of these clips, Tim is a man of a certain size. He’s got some girth to him. He can pick stuff up. But what if I can’t? What if I’m not that guy? What if it more like me? You know, you’re like, hey, I’m not sure that guy can pick up 20 pounds. Like, is that like, I know that’s a part of what your you offer. Obviously, it’s a part of your advantage. But, you know, not everybody can do that. Talk us through that hesitation. Tim MacLeod — Yeah, I don’t think that it’s a deal breaker for having success. I think that if you can carry in a stubborn load of groceries in from the house that you could make a lot of money flipping couches. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tim MacLeod — And it it feels like a very unique form of laziness. Like I’m the kind of guy that if I need to go start start the barbecue or go run and grab my wallet from the car, I’m going to walk across the whole house and look for my flip flops instead of bending over and lacing up my boots that are right there. Like it’s a very unique form of laziness where I could jackknife park the trailer up to the storage locker. I have the dolly, but I’d way rather just, hey-yep-hey-yep-pep-pep just, just he-man lift it myself. And I’ve got a lot of really good mechanics lifting it. Tim MacLeod — Lifting a couch solo actually is not very heroic. And, and I’ve taught a lot of people how to do it. And there is, there are some heroic angles where, where the couch is on the ground and all four feet are on the ground to like clean and jerk it up overhead is that would definitely take some mass and some explosive power, but you can always also lift the couch up from the side until it’s vertical and then kind of like let it teeter and, fall on you in ah in a safe manner. And the lift itself, like once it’s up, it’s it’s as easy as like portaging a canoe. It’s not it’s not as heroic as it seems. Tim MacLeod — And I’m still reliant on other people. I am a one man show and it’s not, the money’s not good enough to pay an employee to sit in the car with me for four hours for 30 seconds of actual work. And so that’s one of my, one of my questions that I’m asking people, lift with two T’s on my phone expands into is anyone available to help me lift it? I’ll be alone. So I do need muscle. Tim MacLeod — And, um, if it’s in the garage, I can do it solo, like dragging a couch onto my trailer is easy enough. They slide very well. And I do have the dolly if there’s anything overly technical, like the pullouts, it’s nice to have a dolly. But yeah, a lot of the times there’s people, there’s someone there to help me lift it. And very, very rarely is it, sorry, I had back surgery or sorry, I’m a single senior lady or something like that. There’s usually, and even even when they say that, sometimes I’ll press a little further. Like, do you have a helpful neighbor?
Rich Birch — Right. Meet us. Tim MacLeod — Do you have a son-in-law who can who could that I could coordinate with? Yep. And a lot of times I’m just handing it, or I’m squeezing them for a cell phone number of whoever the the muscle is. And now I’m on their schedule. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Tim MacLeod — So solo lifts are not required, but they are, they are helpful sometimes, especially at the locker when I’m by myself. Rich Birch — So this is how many years you’ve been doing this full time? Like you, so you left nursing, you know, I know this goes way back to the beginning the story. You left nursing and then how many times, how many years you’ve been doing this? Tim MacLeod — July, 2019, I borrowed the trailer from my brother. And I did full-time nursing plus evening couches for about a year, pulled back from full-time to part-time, part-time to casual. And I think it was May, 2021. Like I did a year of COVID nursing and hated every second of it. Like as soon as COVID was announced, I wanted to be out of there, but I had mortgage approval on the brain and T4 income, or W2 income for the Americans, is much more preferred for lenders than self-employed income. So I held on for that reason. And eventually left just because I hated nursing. I was getting like ulcers on my ears from wearing masks all day. Just the the charades of COVID were really, really ruining it for me. Rich Birch — So we’re going I want to get to that, that help that you’re, you know, you’re offering, which is fantastic. But I want to think about like a person that, you know, they, we want people to stay in their jobs. We don’t want them necessarily to leave. And so ah somebody that wants to make maybe like an extra thousand bucks a month, maybe that’s like, which is, you know, to lots of people, that is like a, that’s a game changer. Like that’s like, that makes all the difference in the world. Rich Birch — Give me a sense of what you think that would take to actually get to that point where, okay, yes, I could, you know, how much time do you think they would need to invest? You know, what would, what is that going to look like? How many couches do you think I’d have to move? You know, I know that’s hard to say. It’s like all North America wide, but give us a sense of kind of the framework of for an extra thousand bucks a month, what would that look like for somebody? Maybe it’s like a youth pastor that’s that’s listening in or an executive pastor. Or and they’re like, Hey, if I just had an extra 1000 bucks that’d make a huge difference in my life. What what would that look like? Tim MacLeod — Sounds like five couches to me. Rich Birch — Five couches. Okay. Tim MacLeod — Buy them for 50, sell them for 250. Delivered. Yep. And that’s that’s a great way to start is just three-seaters. Just rinse and repeat. Three-seater, three-seater, three-seater. But the money is sets and sectionals. That’s where my focus is now. Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Tim MacLeod — Now that does require trailer privilege. But with a with a minivan, you can pick up a three seater. Most three seaters will fit inside a Dodge Caravan or an Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna. And that’s a really good way to start lean and mean with a U-Haul, enclosed trailer, you just need a V6 all wheel drive. So obviously preferred, especially if you have the kind of weather we do, but, um, yeah, for 45 bucks for a U-Haul enclosed, that’s, that’s insured so that you could get in an accident and you’re not paying for it. Always take the insurance. Always. It’s only like five bucks. Tim MacLeod — But um yeah, 45 bucks for 12 by 6. And then you can pick up couch, love seat twice. But yeah, just fill in those trailers. But yeah, starting lean with what you have available and scaling up when it’s smart. And once you’ve proven that it’s possible in your market as well. But everyone’s using couches, so I think it’s good alright. Rich Birch — Yeah, so five, so five couches. How many conversations do you think I’d have to get into take to buy five couches, maybe on that side first? Tim MacLeod — I think, yeah, with the numbers, I think that if you were to start 30 conversations a month, that there would be, there would be five people that hit deadlines and they’d be like, sure. 50 bucks. If you can actually show up, it’s yours. Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s that feels very doable. That doesn’t feel like crazy out of reach. Like there’s no way that feels like a good, you know, a great starting point for sure. Tim MacLeod — And nobody wants to do it. The barrier for entry is, is ah high enough that it’s it’s basically a private little fishing pond. A lot of people to help. Rich Birch — Right. So let’s talk about, I want to, you’re going to help people, which is amazing. And so you’ve put together some resources to help them kind of get the the ball rolling on this front. And how do, first of all, tell us what it is and then talk to us about how we can get that contact information. We’ll put links and all that in the show notes, but talk us through this. Tim MacLeod — Yeah. So those scripts that I was talking about, um, I’ve made a Google doc that is available. All you got to do is comment scripts on any of my videos and, uh, my little robot Tim will fire over, um, just squeeze you for an email and then I’ll fire that over. And, uh, it’s a good little list and you can plug those in just copy and paste and plug them into keyboard shortcuts in your phone. And then you can use those.
Tim MacLeod — And it doesn’t have to be for couches. Like a lot of them are pretty couch specific, but just using those as inspiration for starting conversations and getting people to their best price and making sure that you have all the information so you’re making an informed purchase and there’s not any surprises. And and you’ll see with the with the flow of the conversation, I really am just gifting the blueprint on getting people to their best price.
Tim MacLeod — And yeah, and then in my in my bio on instagram I’ve also got the couch course and I’ve run that before as a high ticket offer um and I had help from an agency to, to get leads and all that stuff. And I didn’t like it cause I didn’t like how much people were having to pay in order for me to afford that team. And I just want it to be an impulse buy price range. Tim MacLeod — So for a one hundred bucks, you can come along on a three month ride along with me while I’m pulling like $15,000 months. And, uh, the summer that I recorded that, was 2023 and I did 180k in sales with a gross profit so just sales minus cost of goods was north of a 100k, I think, after tax. I think it was like an 80k a year income.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Tim MacLeod — And I had a three-year-old with me the entire time. My wife had gone back to work and was using her teaching license and I had a little three-year-old tow. And I also got 75 rounds golf in that year. So it’s, it’s… Rich Birch — That just got some people’s attention. Yeah, that’s amazing. Tim MacLeod — Yeah. The time freedom is stupid. The money is incredible. And, uh, it was, yeah, that was a really, really fun year. Rich Birch — Love it. So what we want to do is send people to your Instagram. Would that be the best? So @thefulltimeflipper, @thefulltimeflipper. And again, you can just comment on any one of his videos. Rich Birch — Well, first of all, Tim’s a great follow on social media. I’ve said this to lots of folks. It’s just such a fun follow. You know, it makes something like flipping just like I was like, man, I think I could do that. And, but just comment scripts on any of those and we’ll get access to those scripts. Rich Birch — And then if you’ll find the link to tim-macleod.com on there as well, which takes you to the course, it’s only a hundred dollars friends. That’s worth your investment. It’ll, it’ll really literally outline. There’s a bunch we could have talked about today and there’s a bunch of details to get into. It will drive into all of those. Literally just take his approach and just do it. Like just, take his scripts, take the what he’s done and apply it. And you’ll for sure be able to find that extra thousand dollars a month or more, you know, down the road. So, yeah, I would love that. and Anywhere else we want to send them. So Instagram, @thefulltimeflipper, anything else about that? Tim MacLeod — Oh, that’s lots. That’s good. And I was feeling pretty pretty silly that I never asked to come on your podcast earlier because a lot of my students are in church ministry in the States. And I think it’s such a sweet side hustle. Tim MacLeod — For me, it was an escape from a job that I didn’t like. But the fact of that most people need supplementary income is pretty across the board and especially in ministry. And a lot of my students have um have had that background and are still in it. And a lot of the time, the people that are in church ministry have an advantage of storage where the church, like they’re like, oh, I got free storage at my church. Pastor said the back room is available. And he said, as long as I just keep a rotation of couches for the student ministry… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a good call. Tim MacLeod — Yeah, there was a lot of advantage there for church leaders. But yeah, it’s awesome, reliable, supplementary income. And it’s nice to not rely on your ministry for income. Like people aren’t in ministry for the big bucks. They’re there because they that is their purpose. That’s their calling. But the pressure of having to rely on that for income isn’t always the best. Rich Birch — Well, and I do think, um you know, I think folks who are in church ministry, a part of what I why why I think this is great that we’re talking about this is you might underestimate that even like a part of your core, it’s like literally core to your business is like, be kind to people and like be helpful.
Tim MacLeod — Yeah. Rich Birch — And, you know, you don’t need to be sleazy. You don’t need to be, ah you know, some sort of like, oh, you’re like a used car salesman of couches. No, that’s not what it is at all. You’re just being kind and helpful and you want to try to close this gap in the market. And and I think there’s a lot of people in ministry who are like, my I could totally do that. I can make that happen for sure. So, Tim, I really appreciate this. Tim MacLeod — It really does feel like stewarding my gifts, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So again, that is, if you just go to Instagram, @thefulltimeflipper, you should follow them there and then comment scripts for any of those. Appreciate you being on the show today, sir. Thanks so much. Tim MacLeod — Thanks, man.
Leading After You Lose Everything: Redemption, Honesty & The Fight with Scott Landry
Dec 18, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Scott Landry, Senior Pastor of The Bridge in Ontario. Scott first joined the church in 2013 as a worship and student pastor before later stepping into the senior pastor role.
Is your leadership marked by hidden wounds? Do you struggle with vulnerability in your ministry? Are you fighting the wrong battles—externally and internally? Scott recently released his first book, The Fight, a raw, deeply reflective look at the internal battles that shape our lives. Tune in as Scott’s story of redemption after hitting rock bottom offers an honest, hopeful picture of what it looks like to stop hiding, confront the truth, and let God rebuild what was lost.
Honesty after years of hiding. // After ten years as a “professional Christian”, hiding behind his seminary degree, thriving ministry, external success, Scott’s internal life was crumbling. His marriage ended, his relationship with his daughter was severed, his ministry collapsed, and he hit emotional and spiritual rock bottom. That collapse became the catalyst for transformation—choosing vulnerability and refusing to fake spiritual health.
Sharing scars, not open wounds. // Leadership requires discernment about transparency. Scott embraces the principle: share your scars, not your wounds. There is a kind of vulnerability that belongs with counselors, trusted friends, and Jesus alone—and another kind that can help others heal. For Scott, his book, The Fight, became a way to share healed places that might help protect others from making the same mistakes he had. Vulnerability isn’t weakness; rather, it’s a gift. The act of going first as a leader gives others the courage to do the same.
Fighting the right battles. // One of the dangers we face is fighting the wrong battles. Scott uses the story of David and Eliab to illustrate how church leaders often get pulled into conflict—criticism, social media arguments, internal comparison—and miss the “Goliath” right in front of them. We often fight against the people we are supposed to fight for, especially in ministry. Learning to focus on the right fights is essential for healing.
The breaking point—and the voice of God. // One of the most powerful moments in his journey is when Scott found himself alone, isolated, and furious at God. In an explosive moment of honesty, he shouted, “I don’t even believe in You anymore!” And then he sensed God say: “Then who are you yelling at?” That moment shattered his illusions. His anger, he realized, was evidence of God’s presence. God had been waiting for Scott at the place of his deepest anger—the place he had avoided his entire life.
Pain as preparation. // Drawing from Joshua’s story and the painful preparation before Israel entered the Promised Land, Scott argues that discomfort often precedes destiny. The battles we face now equip us for battles ahead. Instead of asking God to end the fight, ask God to form you through it. Scott’s leadership has since been shaped around embracing discomfort—having hard conversations early, sitting with difficult emotions, and obeying God before understanding.
Obedience in writing the book. // Writing The Fight began as an act of pure obedience. Scott resisted God’s nudge for a year, until finally acknowledging that he couldn’t ask God to bless one area of his life while disobeying Him in another. Once he opened a blank document, the first draft poured out in just three days. The writing became a healing process—one he initially believed was meant only for his children. The surprise has been how deeply his congregation has embraced his honesty and resonated with his story.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You are going to be rewarded today. We’ve got a great conversation lined up. I have my friend Scott Landry with us. He is the lead pastor at a fantastic church called The Bridge in or just outside of Ottawa, Ontario.
Rich Birch — He joined the team in 2013 as the pastor of worship and student ministry and now serves as the senior pastor. Just being totally honest, friends, Scott and I are friends in real life. So it’s, these are actually, I find some of the funnier conversations because it’s like this weird conceit of like, we’ve got microphones between us and all of that. So, but Scott, welcome. So glad you’re here today. Scott Landry — Honored to be here with you, and better yet to be your friend. Rich Birch — This is going to be good. This is I’m really look looking forward to today’s conversation. So, um ah dear listener, I’m just going to pull back the the curtain. I really want you to listen in. Scott is an incredible leader and is doing, there’s lots of different things we could talk about, the way you’re using his his leadership and the church is growing and making an impact. And he’s got a bunch of platinum problems that he’s trying to figure out. And you know, where to get space and all that. But, but actually is none of that I want to talk about today. Actually, earlier this year, Scott released and a book. He wrote a book called “The Fight”. And what we’re going to talk about today is a little bit of the content, what it’s about and what led him to that process. And and then about ah the impact on ah his church. And I really want you to listen to in friends, think there’s a lot we can we can take out of this. Rich Birch — Why don’t you, how do you describe the book? When you, someone says like, oh, you wrote a book? What’s that on? I’d love to hear that. I’ve read the book, friends, so you just so you know. Scott Landry — Yeah, um it’s honestly somewhat of an autobiography, but it’s also a personal therapy session that’s on paper. It’s a little bit of biblical perspective in light of those things. And then I think hopefully pointing people who might read it to some level of personal insight or maybe personal application to both, both my story and also more importantly, the scriptural kind of you know, underlying and all of it. Scott Landry — So yeah, it’s not a self-help book, but I think it’s a self-reflective book.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Scott Landry — And kind of hoping that people, yeah, hoping that people might see their story in the midst of mine. And and what what are the things that connect or are kind of similar threads through everybody’s story. And, uh, and, and it was, it it was, it was the cheapest version of therapy I could come up with, really. It was a lot of just kind of looking at my life and trying to make sense of it and and trying to find, find words for feelings I didn’t even know I felt. And, uh, yeah. And so just kind of putting it all out there for myself and also, for my kids and then, you know, the, the, you and the three other people that might read it. So it’s great. Rich Birch — Ah, and that’s not true. A lot more people than that have read it. At the core of this book, and we’ll get into this, friends, but at the core of this book, I would say it’s a high level of transparency. Like you are, you know, you let people in on, hey, here’s some stuff that I’ve been wrestling with, you know, over these years. Rich Birch — And I think most pastors think they should be transparent. That always hasn’t been the case. I’ve been in ministry long enough that there was a time where I think people actually wanted religious leaders who seemed perfect and were like…
Scott Landry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …they’re these like, they’ve got their whole life together. That’s not the case anymore. People are looking for, and I think leaders want to be transparent. We want we want to kind of be honest with people. But the stakes sometimes feel higher for some reason. So what kind of led you to the place where you’re like, hey, I want to be vulnerable in a way, ah in written form, with your people, with the community around you? Scott Landry — Yeah, that’s a great question. Honestly, I think it was the fact that I hadn’t been authentic and vulnerable for too long and then lost everything because of it. You know, obviously I write in the book about my journey. I was a pastor for 10 years. I had a a seminary degree and didn’t have an unSeminary one, but I had the degree on the wall and I had, you know, the… Rich Birch — The real one, the real one. Scott Landry — They’re the real one. Yeah. And, uh, but I had all of that. I had 10 years of, of experience standing on stages and preaching the gospel and sharing who Jesus was. And, but the truth is I never really bought what I’d been selling, like in a personal, intimate way. And I wouldn’t say I was good at selling it, but I, but certainly, you know, had been doing it long enough, and and and and in some ways had been successful doing that. like Like good things were happening, ministry was growing, you know people were excited. And so then there becomes this like, oh, well, the lie, it’s amazing the lies that we can tell ourselves and the things that we can convince ourselves of. Scott Landry — So as a professional Christian for 10 years, you know, talking about but all these things and then my own life being a complete mess. And so as a leader, I’m sure other leaders that are listening to this can relate like I’m a dreamer. I always have been, always will be. But I was living a nightmare. And and for I was I had actually become a villain in my own story. Scott Landry — And and and I lost everything. A marriage fell apart. A relationship with my daughter, it was was severed at a very young age. She was four. Ministry was over. Like it was it was all done in an instant. And so 10 years of of hiding and not being, not authentic just for the people, but to my own self. And so when God resurrected my life and resurrected ministry, which I never thought was gonna happen, I was like, that that can’t ever happen again. Scott Landry — And so I wanted to kind of be someone who would lead by going first and saying, you know, and, and so I’ve been vulnerable and transparent from the pulpit. But this was something else. And, and I still am not sure why God prompted me to do this, but, but I would say, I never, I never want to go back to hiding. Scott Landry — And I think, I think we hide for a lot of reasons. I think there’s pastors or leaders listening to this. We hide, ultimately, I think we can give all the excuses we want, but it’s like, who you going to tell? Who you and what are you going to tell them? And and the minute you do, it’s like, well, then I’m going to be disqualified. I’m going to lose my job. Like, so it’s like, we kind of do this thing where I think I shared with you before. It’s like, I’m going to, we we almost force ourselves into a corner and convince ourselves we’re going to fake it till we make it. And ultimately what ends up happening is we fake it till we’re found out. Scott Landry — And and that’s, I mean, we’ve we’ve heard so many stories of that. And I was just like, that happened to me and I would hate for it to happen to anyone else. And I certainly am not going to let it happen to me again. Rich Birch — Yeah, I, friends, you can see why I’ve had Scott on today. There’s a lot here to, I think that all of us need to wrestle with. In fact, one of the, when I didn’t, didn’t even told you this, this is one of the the things I was, when I was reading it, um I had a mentor, a guy I worked for earlier in my career who his life has spectacularly failed. He had to has one of these situations that’s just blown up, and ministry’s blown up and all that. Rich Birch — And ironically, I find there’s ah multiple things about his leadership that I carry with me. And one of the things that I remember him saying very early on was he was like, there’s this interesting dance we do as leaders where we let people in. We know we have to let people into our, into our story, but we only let them in far enough.
Scott Landry — Yeah. Rich Birch — We only let them in some, to something. And you’re always going to draw that line somewhere. The question is, where do you draw that line? And, um you know, you’ve chosen to to be very open and say, hey, this is my experience. This is who I’ve been here. And you kind of cast it in the book, not kind of, it’s literally called “The Fight”. You cast it in the book as an internal fight, the stuff beneath the service that shapes ultimately who we become. How do you discern, where are you drawing that line? How much are we able to, how transparent can we really be? Scott Landry — Yeah. That’s a great question. I think for me, it’s a few things. I’m not sure who said it. Um, but I, I, I’ve heard it said multiple different ways, but like, you know, you share your scars, not your wounds. So I’ve kind of, I think there’s a lot of truth to that. So for me, it’s like, if I’m still bleeding, that’s for therapy. That’s for trusted friends. That’s for my wife. That’s for Jesus. Scott Landry — But if it’s a wound that has, that is healed, and somebody can see their story in it and it’s helpful for them as either they’re still bleeding or or it could prevent them from getting hurt, then to me it’s worth sharing. Scott Landry — I’ve kind of come to the conclusion in my life, vulnerability isn’t weakness. it it’ it’s It’s actually it’s actually a gift. It’s there there is something to vulnerability in sitting with someone. You and I have done this without microphones in front of us. And we’ve we’ve told things to each other with tears in our eyes. And there’s something powerful that happens. That is a gift that you give someone. And it’s a gift for for what you give them and what you share to them. Scott Landry — But it’s also the gift to them that’s like this could, I could actually do this myself. It’s freeing for me to be given this gift to know it might not be with you, but with someone I could do that too. And, and that gift, I don’t think we truly understand how freeing and the weight that could be lifted by going first in that way. So for me, I’ve just decided that’s that’s who I’m going to be moving forward. So that the book is “The Fight” and because life is a fight. And to me, vulnerability and authenticity are worth fighting for. Rich Birch — I’d love to dig into some of the some of the stuff that you actually talk about in the book, kind of dig a couple layers deeper. You write about the danger of fighting the wrong battles that we can find ourselves in conversations that we we shouldn’t be in. You know, pulling out this… talk us through that. How does that relate? How have you seen that in your life? Scott Landry — Yeah. Rich Birch — And then what is that? How do you lead differently out of that? Because, you know, how do we pick the right battles? Talk me through that. Scott Landry — Yeah, I think it’s a personal thing. It certainly applies to leadership as well on a personal level. I think many times we fight, we fight with the people we’re supposed to fight for. Scott Landry — I think we fight amongst family members and, and then, you know, times goes by and you’re like, was that even worth it? I think, so I think those things happen. It’s like, how many fights have you had with your spouse? And it’s like I’m supposed to be fighting with you, not against you. Like we’re supposed to be in this together. And I’ve seen that happen in leadership too. It’s amazing to me how church people can, can hurt each other and and fight with each other and over things like carpet and and song selections and song volume and and preaching styles. Scott Landry — And so for me in leadership, it’s fighting the wrong battles. I talk about it, the David and Eliab thing, and you know, on the, on the battlefield where Goliath is kind of waiting in the wings and it’s really the main event. And, so much could have been so different if David had wasted his time in that argument. And, and he would have been justified in doing it. I mean, his, his character was being questioned. I mean, that’s worth fighting against. And it’s like, David’s like, I don’t get time for this, right? And I think how many of us as leaders spend so much time in the comment section, we’re fighting critics and we’re missing out on the giants. Rich Birch — Yeah. Scott Landry — You know, you, you, like that that in our culture, I think, is a huge one for leaders. And it’s like… Rich Birch — Yeah, big deal. Scott Landry — …oh, we’re so…And and I’m I’m guilty of that. You know we’re the other one I struggle with, I’m sure no one listening to this could can relate to this, but I spend so I spend so much time spending energy on who’s left, and not who’s here or who could be coming. And it’s like, and and you know what? Many times the people who’ve left, they were never really here anyway. Now that’s not to say we haven’t done something wrong at times and hurt people, but it’s like, man, I’ve I’ve spent so much time trying to convince that one person. Cause I’m like, oh, Jesus would leave the 99 to go after the one. And I’m like, maybe not that one. No, I’m just kidding. Rich Birch — That’s good. I like that. Scott Landry — But you know what I mean? Like but… Rich Birch — Yes. Scott Landry — …but we do. And and it’s it’s tragic how how distracted we can become. And and we we miss out in the fights that matter most because of ones that weren’t worth fighting to begin with. Rich Birch — Well, and this this is why we’ve seen a lot of pastors make the decision, church leaders make the decision, like, I just need to step back from social media. Because it’s like, you know, it’s like it’s like it’s set up for us to pick fights with other church leaders.
Scott Landry — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, it’s like, you know, that people are out there and there’s and there seems like there are for whatever reason, there are ah brothers and sisters in the faith who, who think that it’s their job to agitate, like that they’re like the professional agitators out there. And it’s like, so then we’re fighting with some other pastor or whatever, but that’s not, that’s like a total distraction from our mission. Like this, who, that person’s going to Jesus is going to be fine. Like, what about, like you say, the people that aren’t here yet.
Rich Birch — There’s a moment in the book where you describe kind of being hitting a rock bottom or hitting an emotional bottom and crying out to God. Would you mind opening up a little bit about that? What did that teach you? Scott Landry — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know, what God meets us when, when all our strength runs out. Scott Landry — Well, yeah, that the, I mean, that I hope that’s a powerful moment in the book because it was it genuinely the most powerful moment in my life. And this was this was kind of at the crescendo of my my breaking point. So after after, you know, my my marriage and my my my life specifically falling apart. And I kind of lived in a place of isolation. I was living in, in, in, in the North, Canadian North. And, I was, yeah, I was lost. I was, I was angry. Like I had so much anger. And it was, so yeah, I talk about in the book. And, and, uh, I was angry and ultimately I was angry at myself, but I was also angry at God. Scott Landry — And, um, because even after, again, making a mess of my own life. Like He didn’t make a mess of my life. Nobody made the mess of my life. I made the mess of my life. And, but then after that, I was trying to do everything right. And I was trying to, you know, do the right thing, do the right thing. And I was like, God, when are you going to start intervening on my behalf. And so, you know, being the the preacher that I am, I was like, I got all the Bible verses that tell me that you’re going to like now is you’re going to do the redemptive thing. You’re going to show up, you’re going to move, you’re going to fix, you’re going to redeem, you’re going to restore, you’re going to repair, you’re going to do all the R words. And, and nothing was happening. Like it was like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Scott Landry — …and, and it was almost as if I, heard and I literally heard nothing. And I’d like to say I didn’t feel anything, but I did. It was just this, this anger that was welling up inside of me, like a, like a pot boiling. And eventually it just, I just became unhinged. Like I was alone. And I was completely isolated. I was in this, you know, empty house and I just started crying out like, and yelling out. And I threw, I threw things. I used words I’ve, I’m ashamed to admit I used. Like, I mean, I was as unhinged as could possibly, I was like, I gotta, if I saw you face to face, I would give you the thing. Like I told him all this stuff. Scott Landry — And, and what I found in that moment was like, and again, I talk about it in the book, but like I yelled, God, I don’t even believe in you anymore. I’m done. Like, like I don’t I don’t believe. You’ve promised me that you would never leave me. You would never forsake me. And that’s exactly what you’ve done. I’ve told people that you would never leave them and forsake them. And yet you’ve done that to me. You are you are dead to me. I don’t believe in you anymore. And I even now, I still feel this when I’m just talking about it. But like, this is, and this is, I know some people are going to roll their eyes at this. But like, genuinely, when I heard myself say that, I felt this like, over me, over my house. It was like this eerie like pause. And I heard, as if I’ve ever heard the voice of God, I heard a voice say, well, then who are you yelling at? And it was like this, like…
Rich Birch — Beautiful.
Scott Landry — …and in that moment, it was like, my anger was, it wasn’t my degree. It wasn’t my Bible. It was, it was my anger was my evidence that God was present right then and right there. And because my anger was directed at him. And he knew that I was angry with him. Scott Landry — And he met me at the place of my anger. And he was waiting. And this is the part that I still, I can’t do this, what’s what’s in my head, into my heart justice. But it was God was saying, I’ve been waiting for you at this place your whole life. Rich Birch — Wow. Right. Scott Landry — You have been hiding from this anger from your childhood, from your young adulthood, and I’ve been waiting for you to meet me here at your anger. And I’ve I’ve wanted you to know that I would be here waiting for you. And if you met me on the top of the tallest mountain, and if you look me face to face, and if you were to give me the finger, you would find me there waiting because I am waiting at who you really are, not who you’re pretending to be. Scott Landry — And everyone around you, you’ve got them fooled and you’re used car salesman and you can spin the Bible verses and you can do all that other stuff. But I know who you really are. And I’m waiting for you to finally be honest with yourself about who you really are. And now that you finally are, now we can do something about that together. Scott Landry — And that was the moment that God truly revealed himself to me. And that’s when I, for the first time in my life, truly discovered who I was. And yeah, that that’s the moment that I hope anybody who ever meets me or talks to me or listens to me or reads in it, like that’s the part that I long for people to have before it costs them like it costs me. Rich Birch — I just want to say thank you for for going there and talking about that. Because to me, that…and friends, you should pick up a copy of the book. I’m not trying to sell the book, but you should pick up a copy and actually…it’s worth it for this interaction. Because I think as pastors, people who are in what we do, I think we can give, we can put a varnish on all of this. And it and and I love that picture of you yelling at God. And then and then he’s like, well who are you yelling at? Like, what’s, what’s you you know… Scott Landry — Yeah. You don’t believe it. You don’t believe in me, but you’re yelling at me. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yes. Like, I think, I think that is such a, I don’t know, there’s so much there. And I think it’s beautiful that you would open up about that and tell, talk to us here. I feel a little bit bad because I feel like I’m getting you to mine out like one of the best parts of the book, but that, um, at its core, I think would be hard for a lot of leaders to even admit to say, because by this point, friends, again, remember the pre-story, you had been a professional Christian for a long time. Like that that you had built your life around taking money from people…
Scott Landry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and doing this and came to that moment of crisis. So talk to me about the road back from there. So there’s obviously, you know, between there and today, you know, something happened. So talk us through…
Scott Landry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …kind of what were some of those key steps? We’re not going to be able to cover all of it, but some of those key things that, that God used on that journey. Scott Landry — Yeah. Well, the immediate one was that I needed to get away. I was living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories at the time, and I needed to get to Ontario because that’s where my four-year-old daughter was. And that necessity was kind of the you know the spark of of God beginning a redemptive work in my life. Scott Landry — And and then again, had never thought that I would be back in you know ministry in terms of you know a job or a career. I I I and iI wasn’t I had no idea what I was gonna do. And so I just did what I had to do to survive. Scott Landry — And, and, and again, God just, it’s the, it’s, it’s all this cliches. It’s all the songs we sing. It’s, you know, he made beauty for ashes. He, he resurrected things I was certain was dead. And so, and, and there were, he was orchestrating things to, to, you know, provide another way for me to get back into what he called me to do, which, you know, again, I, I, it would take me a long time to, to get into it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scott Landry — But I, again, I think it was just, it was, I just took the steps I had to take because I, and, but they were the steps that he was preparing for me to take, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Scott Landry — It’s and I, and I see that now, but it didn’t, it just felt like, like necessity then. But it was more than necessity. It was, it was intention. So, yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, I don’t I don’t know if I’ve said this to you, but I think, in fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t said this to you. One of the, you know, I mentioned, and and you know the person I’m talking about whose life fell apart. You know, one of my own reflections on that experience as a leader that was in that person’s orbit, pretty close to that orbit, in hindsight, um was we have to do a better, the collective we have to do a better job on helping people to talk about what’s going on on the inside in a way that doesn’t just immediately jump to, hey, like, you you know, you should not think that thought. Like, you know, we we need to be better at that. And I you think you’ve done a gift in this, you know, this with this book. Rich Birch — One of the things you also talked about is this whole idea that comfort can be the enemy of our calling. And I wish you didn’t write about this, but because, ah you know, it’s like convenience is and comfort are organizing principles of culture, right? That is like our entire culture is based around how do I make myself more comfortable? And and it’s true. I agree. Like I’m, you know, I’ve been on the Peloton and I’ve felt discomfortable. And then at the end of that, I’m like, I’m glad I did that in the middle of it. I was hating it. I get that. Talk us through that. What’s that journey been like in this kind of return home? How has that played a, you know, a part of that as a part of the journey? Scott Landry — Yeah, I think I think what I’ve learned is pain is always preparation. And and to me, I use the word always because I don’t see it never being that. I think there’s always something in in in a situation of discomfort or pain that is always preparing you for something that’s next for you or something that’s next for someone else that’s going to require you to be a part of it. Scott Landry — So the pain that I go through a lot of times is is you know preparing my my son or my daughter. Um, and so it’s always preparation for something. And that’s what I write about in the book, the story of Joshua, you know, it’s, it’s the most uncomfortable thought in the world that, you know, the, the, before their greatest battle, they, they’re circumcised, as, as men. And it’s like, oh, you know, that’s, that’s one conversation when the kid’s like a couple days old or eight days old as it was supposed to be. But when you’re, you know, 18, 20, that’s a whole different conversation. Scott Landry — And, Any guy that’s listening right now feels uncomfortable, but that’s, but that’s the point. God brought them to a place specifically to bring pain into their lives because of the destiny that he had for them. Scott Landry — And I think that’s just true in life, you know, it’s, and, and, and going through those things is crucial. It’s always, there’s always something next. And I think that’s the thing that I’ve, and again, I use the analogy of the fight and I tried to do that in the book because I, you know, I’m not a fighter in terms of like, I don’t do, you know, mixed martial arts or anything. I love that stuff and I love watching it. And I love boxing, which the the movie Rocky was part of the inspiration for the book or at least the theme of it. Scott Landry — And I think when you look like look at that stuff, what you always see is fighters fight a fight, so they can fight another fight. It’s like, I want to win this fight because I want to win this fight, but winning this fight sets me up for another fight that has greater reward for me. Scott Landry — And so I’m I’m inspired to win this fight because it’s going to put me or it’s going to allow me to fight on another level and another dimension. And I think, you know, in leadership, I think the challenges or the platinum problems, as you call them, you know, I think those are preparation. They’re not just to solve and the problem itself to be solved. It’s also preparation for a problem that’s coming because of getting through this one. Scott Landry — And I think when we start to see it that way and we can view the fight as like, I always pray that God will cause the fight to end. Like, God, just, just stop. Like, get me through this fight. Instead of praying, God, will you help me become the person in the midst of this fight that I need to be for the fight that’s coming down the road? It, that perspective, I think changes everything. Scott Landry — And if as leaders, we looked at our current challenges and struggles as like, hey, this is just preparation for something bigger. I think we’d i think we’d go into it a whole lot differently. And I think we would be willing to endure it just and with a different mindset. And so, yeah, that’s that’s what I’ve I’ve come to discover my own life through this thing. Rich Birch — Like our friend T.D. Jakes said, every level, a new devil. Like it’s like, right? Scott Landry — Yeah, yeah, totally. Rich Birch — This idea of like, hey, we’re going to get through this, but then that’s just going to open up something else that we got to get through. And I think that’s, I think it’s a great metaphor and is, I see too many people who are, and it could be, you know, people of my age or whatever. Rich Birch — I must, you know, you reach a certain age with enough zeros on the end. You hit a couple of those zero birthdays. And then you look around at your friends and you’re like, the people that, that don’t inspire me are the ones that are hitting the coast mode.
Scott Landry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That are like, Hey, I’m going to try to, i’m going to try to make life more comfortable. It’s the people that are saying, no, let’s lean in. Let’s look, what can we do next? What is the thing that God’s got for us? I love that. Well… Scott Landry — Well, I tell people, oh, sorry, I was just going to say just… Rich Birch — Go ahead. No, go ahead. Scott Landry — …well, just to to kind of follow up on that. I think practically, what does that mean? Or what does that look like for us? Like, I you know, we talk to our staff all the time, right? I, you know, constantly tell them it’s like, to embrace that means in leadership, you’ve got to have uncomfortable conversations now because you’re going to have them anyway.
Rich Birch — Right. Scott Landry — So comfort tells us, oh, like if I just let it go or if I just like, no, you’re you’re just prolonging the inevitable conversation. So have it now.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Scott Landry — You know, or or you sit with emotions that you’re feeling. You got to sit with them a little longer before you act on them. That’s not comfortable. We want to just, you know, so it’s that balance. Like it’s, It’s, ah you know, even obeying before understanding, right? Scott Landry — Like, like you’ve got like all those lessons and those places of discomfort, I think are all preparation pieces for the greater thing. So… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Scott Landry — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. And even in the physical world, like I was thinking about this when I was on my Peloton prepping for this. And I know you have Peloton, that like there was a time when there would be numbers on the screen in front of me that those numbers felt like death. Like I’m like, this is not like, I can’t keep doing this. But then what happens over time is you, your body acclimatizes to that, right? You become healthier. You get your cardiovascular system, your VO2 max grows, and then you’re able to, ah you know, to carry more. And I think that is true in leadership. I think that’s true in our spiritual life. I think there is like a, you know, kind of bearing on the weight of it. And um yeah, I think that’s very true. Rich Birch — Okay. I’d love to pivot in a totally different direction. So, you know, again, friends, you should pick up a copy of the book because I think it’ll be great. It’s spiritually enriching experience for you. I think this book could be helpful in like, there’s lots of conversations where I’m like, I think, I think this could be one of those books you have on your shelf. And you said, Hey, you know what, why don’t you read this book? This might help you think through, you know, might be a real encouragement. So I will, we’ll get to where you can get that in a minute.
Rich Birch —But I want to kind of talk more about kind of the meta experience of you as a pastor, writing a book, choosing to do that. When you first introduced me to this idea, I still remembered it. You were like, I do not want to write a book. I am writing a book. Like, and it was like this, I am compelled. It is by obedience that I am, who knows? I think literally the thing you said to me the first time, and it was through tears, was like, I’m not really even sure why like I’m doing this thing, who knows? So talk to me about that obedience. What did that first step look like? Kind of help me ah or understand the process. Talk about that a little bit. Scott Landry — Yeah, it’s funny. You did a great version of me there. That’s exactly how I said it. And that’s exactly how I felt. And I honestly, I still feel that way, even now that it’s out there in in the world. Yeah, it was totally an act of of obedience. Scott Landry — And so for context, two years ago, my family vacations in Florida. I, I have no shame. I mooch off my in-laws who have a condo there. My wife and I both lived there at one, at one point. So it’s kind of like going home. Scott Landry — But anyway, long story, I was running on the beach. And, and I just, I felt like the Lord just stopped me and he gave me two very clear directives for the next chapter of my life. One was about the church and the other was to write a book. Scott Landry — And the first one made complete sense to me. And the other one still makes absolutely no sense to me. I am not an, writer. I’m not an author. I’m not ah like, and who am I? Like all this kind of, you know, who am I syndrome started kicking in and and I was just like, whatever. So I came back two years ago and I got to work on the first one and ignored the second one. Scott Landry — And I ignored the second one, writing a book for an entire year. And then on my birthday in September, I just, I felt like I was, I was genuinely like, how can I ask God to bless this first thing that he’s asked me to do if I’m being disobedient in this other thing that he’s asked me to do? And I, I don’t understand it. So to me, I’m, that justifies why I’m not doing it. And I was like, I’ve got to be obedient to this, whether I understand it or not. So that’s what I did. And so for me, obedience was opening a blank document. And just starting. And that’s what I did. Scott Landry — And it was, and I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, Rich, but it was amazing to me. I’ve had writer’s block for sermons. This poured out of me…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scott Landry — …in a way I was not expecting. Like it it was the draft that you read of the book or the first draft of the book was done in a little over three days. Rich Birch — Yeah. Scott Landry — It just… Rich Birch — Well, that surprised me even, you know, cause I remember you were, and that hasn’t been my experience with writing. It’s been like, I have found it like arduous. But I remember you’re like, Oh, I’m going away. I’m going to this thing. And then it was like, Oh yeah, I got it done. And I was like, wow. Like that’s, that’s incredible. That’s amazing. And then obviously then there’s all the editing and you got to actually get it. Scott Landry — Well, yeah, I, yeah, everything after that was way longer than I or wanted it to be um um for sure. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Scott Landry — And way more than I expected it to be. But I think, I think I needed to me, to me, it was a piece of, it was a document that was basically like a therapy session that didn’t cost me anything other than time… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Scott Landry — …that I needed to get a lot of stuff off my chest and and off my heart. And it just, I needed to open that document to do it. And I think maybe that is, and it didn’t occur to me until just now, that that may be the very reason that God wanted me to do it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Scott Landry — …was to free me of that so I could be released to do whatever has nothing about to do about the book. It just was his way of getting me to get through it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, and I remember at one point, um hopefully I’m not outing something. We can cut this if you don’t want me to say this, but I remember at one point you were saying like, even if I just have it for my daughter, that would be a gift, right? Rich Birch — Like it’s like for her at some point to read this would be, um you know, a gift. Actually, I know a friend of mine who has literally done that has written full books and literally got like got them printed and given it just to them for their kids. Scott Landry — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know, tens of thousands of words. So yeah, that’s, that’s, ah that’s incredible. So, you know, the writing of books in general, is I find the line between writing and thinking is very blurry. Like it’s like, it’s like almost in my mind, like it’s kind of the same thing. Like it’s the same activity. There’s obviously writing involved, but it’s like, it’s, it costs, it’s a, or it, it drives a lot of reflection, honesty, you know, thinking about all that stuff. Was there anything as you went through this therapy process of writing that actually just surprised you about like, Oh wow. Like that was either my reflection on that was different or, um, you know, we’re, you know, like anything surprised you through the process process? Scott Landry — Yeah, there was a…good question. There was a couple things for sure. One of them was I had to go check. It’s amazing how your memory can be your greatest enemy. I remembered certain things a certain way and then going back and talking to my mother. Again, spoiler alert – I grew up in a single parent household. My mom is my hero, strongest woman ever. Scott Landry — Anyways, and I write about her and, and my life growing up and what she had to do to get us through. So, so going back and, and, and really at as an adult, getting the details of what actually happened and what my perception of what happened happened. It was it was It was much worse than I understood… Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Scott Landry — …and what she endured and went through. And I gained a level of admiration from my, I thought I admired her, but I gained a level of admiration that is a gift. And, and, and every child should have the gift to see their parents the way that I see my mom. She is, she is amazing.
Scott Landry — So that, that’s one. The other one was, was I there was some things that I, I learned along the way. I think the first one was that I found was about the, the resentment that I had towards my father. And I, and, and I, as I was writing it, God just kind of revealed this to me that, that adapting, adapting to loss is different than than winning a fight. And I had adapted to the pain of what I had lost. And I thought that was the same thing as winning that fight against resentment. And they’re not the same thing.
Scott Landry — And that was that that was a real breakthrough moment for me. I was in a cabin near a ski hill as I was writing that. And it was like i was almost like I was watching a movie, watching myself have a moment.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scott Landry — And it was just this this really beautiful moment between God and I. And I was just like, wow, God, thank you for for showing that to me. And then, give me the words to articulate this to my kids. Cause you’re right. I, I did first and foremost, write this for my kids, Emma and Parker. And I wanted them to know, you know, who they come from, what they come from. And, and, and hopefully if I never get the chance to tell them, they’ve got this to fall back on. And then my wife being my wife was like, well, if you’re going to do it for them, you might as well go all the way. So, so that’s, that’s, that’s what we did. Rich Birch — Wow. Okay. So what did this process teach you as you’ve now, cause you’ve launched this book, it’s out in the world. You’ve, you can get it on Amazon. You, you know, it’s, you’ve done a series at the church. You’ve talked about it. You know, if you’ve been public about it.
Rich Birch — What did the launching of that teach you about your congregation, about your church? What resonated? What, how, how was it helpful? Any conversations that sparked kind of what was the impact that you’ve, now that you’ve landed this in, in your church? Scott Landry — Yeah. Oh, I just got emotional there thinking about your question as you’re asking it. I think… what I talk about in the book, Rich, is that I’m a very insecure person. And and as a leader, I’m an insecure leader. And always, you know, that that dance between, you know, being authentic about who you are at the same time, the insecurity about that. And it’s, Lisa, my wife tells me all the time, if people knew how insecure you are, they they wouldn’t believe it, because you don’t present that way. Scott Landry — But I was very insecure about doing this thing and the people that I serve, and and and journey together with seeing me in a way that they might change their mind about me. But the people at The Bridge, they love me, and they are so gracious to me. And I what I’ve discovered is that me being honest about who I am is is who they’ve wanted me to be the whole time. Scott Landry — And so everybody that’s read the book, I shouldn’t say everybody, but I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from the people at The Bridge just thanking me for telling my story and then them saying so much of that I relate to, so much of that I needed right now telling me things about themselves that I had no idea was happening in their lives. And this has only been out for like a month.
Scott Landry — And so I’ve just gotten overwhelmed with, with people’s responses. And, and I think for our church, you know, one of our values is authentic storytelling And so, um, it just so happens that as a leader, you get to go first
Rich Birch — Right.
Scott Landry — And, and, and and in order for that value to be more than something that’s just plastered on a wall or a website, like I had, I didn’t know it was going to be in in the form of a book. But I do see that, that people are opening up in ways that, you know, just in the, in the in the last month to me and in others. So, yeah, but that that’s the thing that that i’ve I’ve seen in our church is just um that that I’ve been insecure about how I’m seen as a leader and and they’ve shown me that that they love me. And that’s the greatest gift, I’m telling you. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so cool, man. I love that. That’s, and thanks for being vulnerable in your sharing there. Like I think I, you know, I think there is anyone that’s written has had a book definitely has those feelings on the inside of like, oh man, this was a bad idea like why am I doing this. And like I’m you know, the stuff I’ve written about is nowhere near as, you know, personal and tender as what you’ve written. And I can identify exactly with what you’re saying there around the like, what will people think of me? You know, and it’s amazing.
Rich Birch — So trying to extract a bit of, you know, there might be people that are listening and I hope there’s people that are listening in who would think like, maybe I should write a book. Or maybe, maybe they had a similar experience where God told them to write a book and they’ve been dragging their feet.
Scott Landry — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — What would be a couple kind of just practical takeaways, like maybe things you would say, I wish I would have known this before timelines, collaboration, editing, any of that kind of stuff. Scott Landry — Yeah. Well, the first thing I would do is thankfully what I did, was talk to people who have done it. So you were one of those people and I was hoping that you were going to convince me not to do it. Thanks thanks for letting me down. But yeah, just like, and, and, you know, it’s like, Hey, talk to a few different people and, and, and, you know, what’s their process is and and kind of what they did.
Scott Landry — But the other thing that I learned quickly was everybody that I talked to does it differently. And so it wasn’t about figuring out the process. It was about finding my own.
Rich Birch — Yep. Scott Landry — And so I kind of leaned on what I know of myself and how I kind of operate. And so that was one. Scott Landry — I think the other one was You know, however much time you think it’s going to take, double it and then add some to that. Like it’s way more time than you think it’s going to going to take. Scott Landry — I would, you know, what do they say? Like find people in your life who tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. Like it’s like whoever you’re going to invite into the process with you, like you want to collaborate with people who are going to tell you the truth, not that you’re profound. It’s like, yeah, like I, I wanted this to be the best that it could be for my kids. Rich Birch — Right. Scott Landry — And that’s why I asked, you know, you and a few others. And so, um, and then I think, you know, the other one is, is really have a clear, at least for me, and I don’t know if this is true for you, but it’s like, I’m sure it is, like, you know who you’re writing to and who you’re writing for.
Rich Birch — Right. Scott Landry — And I think that has to be like, every time I sat down, like after a coffee and was like, okay, here, we’re opening up the laptop again, it was like, I pictured Emma. I pictured Parker. This is who I’m writing this for. It’s like who, so whether if it’s a, if it’s a book for your church, if it’s a book for leaders, you know, whoever that’s for is like have a very clear picture in your mind, who your audience is and and imagine faces that represent those people. Scott Landry — Because I think it, to me at least, is it makes it less about the content and it brings the heart into it. And I think that I hope that and is what engages people more than, because I’m not a writer. But I hope my heart comes through the words that are on the pages. And I think that’s just because I had those two beautiful kids in mind. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. That’s a great, that’s a great tip. I, the, that idea of focusing who is the person. And I worked at a church that had a very robust practice kind of sermon practice process. And that’s one of the things, one of the questions we would often ask is like, who are you preaching this to? And I loved, cause our lead guy, he would get like really specific. It wouldn’t be like, it’s not like, well, I’m generally thinking 33 year old, you know, guys that are married. He’d be like, Scott Landry…
Scott Landry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, like he would like, it’s like he would pick out a specific person. He said, I’m hoping that that that’s who I’m thinking about. And that always struck me as like, I think that’s a part of what gave him great kind of power in his communication because it wasn’t this vague idea of like this, some general target. It’s like, no, I’m talking to this person and I want to, I want to communicate in a way that will move them. I think that’s great when you think about from a book point of view. Rich Birch — Well, I want to encourage people to pick up a copy of the book. But before we get there, any kind of last words about any of this that you want to share? You’ve been so generous with your time today. Scott Landry — No, I appreciate your time. I appreciate you having me on. And if anybody’s gotten to the end of this podcast and is even considering, you know, getting a copy of the book, I guess my heart for you would be to discover what I discovered the hard way, but I hope that it doesn’t require you to to find out the hard way is that that God truly knows who you truly are. And all he desperately wants is for you to be honest about who he already knows you are. And and then he wants to release that person for the purpose that he has for them. And so I pray that it doesn’t take whoever you are, you losing what I lost to find that. I hope that you will be wiser than I was. Learn, you know, don’t learn from your own mistakes, learn from mine. And, and, and, and find yourself because you’re going to find God there waiting. And I hope that for you and pray that for you. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s great. So we want to send people to Amazon. Is that the best place that they can pick up copies of this book? Is there anywhere else we want to send them just as we wrap up today’s episode? Scott Landry — No, yeah, Amazon, the book “The Fight” is there. Can also follow me on Instagram. Keep updates there – @scottmlandry. Yeah, you can see pictures my sneakers. That’s about it. Rich Birch — It’s great. Thanks so much, Scott. Appreciate you being here. Scott Landry — Thank you, Rich.
From 800 to 2,500: Growing a Multi-Ethnic Church with Limited Staff with Sarah Hooley
Dec 11, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Sarah Hooley, Executive Pastor at City Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Founded in 2016 by Lead Pastor Chris Freeman, City Church is a young, rapidly growing, intentionally multi-ethnic, multi-economic, and multi-generational church. Since moving from a setup/teardown environment into their renovated 60,000-square-foot facility, the church has experienced explosive growth—reaching 2,500–2,600 weekly attendees, baptizing nearly 500 people this year, and engaging a high percentage of unchurched and new-to-faith individuals.
Is your church reaching people far from Jesus but struggling to disciple them well? Are you navigating the complexities that come with rapid growth? Tune in as Sarah shares how City Church reaches, welcomes, disciples, and mobilizes people who often arrive with little to no church background.
Reaching the unchurched at scale. // From the beginning, City Church planted itself intentionally in one of Fort Wayne’s most racially diverse neighborhoods. Many guests arrive with no church vocabulary. Many don’t know the difference between the Old and New Testament or famous biblical characters. Teaching, therefore, is designed with zero assumptions, helping newcomers feel included while still deeply challenging long-time believers. Worship reflects the church’s diversity, blending musical styles in a way that unites cultures rather than centering one preference. Many first-time attendees hear about the church through friends who aren’t yet believers themselves—evidence that transformation is visibly taking root.
Welcoming culture built by transformed people. // One of the most powerful forces shaping City Church is its culture of warmth and belonging. Their Connections Director, Victoria, came to Christ through City Church herself—giving her deep empathy for the unchurched experience and a passion for noticing people. Her team is trained not just to greet but to see people, engage them meaningfully, and make church feel safe and familiar. Serve teams are intentionally open to nonbelievers as a front door for community and spiritual curiosity—allowing people to “belong before they believe.” This relational warmth is often the defining difference-maker for guests who have never experienced church before.
Discipleship for people with no foundation. // Rapid growth and a high percentage of new believers revealed a critical discipleship gap. In response, Pastor Chris launched Act Like Men, a 15-week, high-accountability discipleship course for young men covering identity, integrity, purity, humility, servanthood, and spiritual discipline. Women quickly asked for something similar, prompting the launch of Be Bold Women, a complementary course that includes teaching, mentoring, small groups, a women’s conference, and topics like emotional health, community, and living as a godly woman.
A volunteer-driven church with a tiny staff. // One of the most stunning aspects of City Church is how much ministry happens through volunteers rather than staff. With only seven full-time staff and roughly 2,600 attendees, their ratio is radically outside national norms. Staff serve as equippers, not doers. High-level volunteer leaders oversee major portions of ministry: shadowing, training, leading teams, scheduling people, and pastoring others. Leadership development is an essential form of discipleship, not an operational necessity.
Leading from abundance, not scarcity. // Sarah encourages leaders to adopt a “loaves and fishes” mindset – the question is not what the church lacks but what God can do with what it has. Simplicity, clarity, and focus keep the team aligned. Staff calibrate constantly, coaching one another to resist the pull toward doing everything themselves. Sarah also stresses the importance of relational support systems for leaders—cohorts, mentors, and peers who remind pastors that faithfulness, not outcomes, is the goal.
To learn more about City Church, visit forthecity.com, or follow them on social media at @citychurchfw.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. This is going to be a jam-packed episode. You’re going to want to buckle up. We’re talking about a lot of stuff today that applies to your church that I know will be super helpful. I’m excited to be talking to Sarah Hooley. She is the executive pastor at a church called City Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is a church you should be tracking with. If you’re not, they were founded in 2016 by lead pastor Chris Freeman. It’s a diverse church in a city that is for the city with multi-ethnic, multi-economic, multi-generational community. It’s really, God’s doing some incredible things here, and you’re going to want to track along with that. And we’ve got Sarah on the show to help us. Sarah, welcome to the show.
Sarah Hooley — Thank you so much for having me. It is a privilege to be joining you today.
Rich Birch — Oh, this is going to be wonderful. I’m really looking forward to learning from you. Why don’t you tell us a little bit of the City Church story, kind of set up. Tell us a little bit about it. What’s going on Give us a sense of what’s happening at City Church.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, so we are a nine-year-old church plant. We were a set-up, teardown church for the last eight or so years ah seven and a half. We’ve move we bought a grocery store in 2020.
Rich Birch — Good year.
Sarah Hooley — Great time to buy a building, and and it was being used as a warehouse. And so we bought it and then the pandemic happened and we’re like, well, we still have a warehouse occupying the space. Maybe at some point it’ll become a church. We don’t know. And then it was just about a couple years ago that we then started a capital campaign and went to develop the the space. It’s 60,000 square feet. We developed about 40,000 square feet of it for our church.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sarah Hooley — I’m thinking, man, that’s going to, we’ll be set for a good long time. And we are out of space already.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sarah Hooley — And so and we moved from two services to three. And now we’re just, excuse me, trying to figure out what do we do? um God has just been moving in incredible ways. Like we have from the from the start been very intentional about wanting to be a multi-ethnic, multi-economic, multi-generational church. And where we planted has been very intentional.
Sarah Hooley — So even where we were for set up and tear down, and we were right in the heart of the city where it was the most ethnically diverse within Fort Wayne. So Fort Wayne is roughly about 66% white in the city as a whole, but in our neighborhood specifically, it’s more 40% African-American, 20% white, 20-ish percent Hispanic. And so it is a much more racially diverse area.
Rich Birch — So good.
Sarah Hooley — And that is has been very intentional from the beginning. And so our location now, is it’s just been beautiful to see how God has really drawn people from every background. And, you know anyone who’s been a part of a multi-ethnic church knows that that that’s a messy process. It’s It is incredible to see, though, the the beauty and of what God can do when we are are not just attending a church together, but really in community with one another, and with people who come from radically different backgrounds um and and how that can really bring about a lot of healing in our stories and in our in our relationships.
Rich Birch — So good.
Sarah Hooley — And so um we have grown since moving into the building, we were about 800 people um when we were set-up/teardown. And then once we moved into the building, it has just been um exponential growth. So we we have grown very quickly and just tried to keep up with all of it.
Sarah Hooley — One of the things that I’ve i’ve just loved about City Church is it’s very intentional about um reaching those who don’t know Jesus. And so the that really comes from our our lead pastor, from Pastor Chris Freeman, his heart for the lost. So a lot of our growth has not been transfer growth. It’s not just people moving from church to church, but really those who’ve never set foot in a church, those who are, or who ah are really far from Jesus. It’s been a long time.
Sarah Hooley — And the greatest evidence of that, that we’ve seen is we are on track to have 500 baptisms this year.
Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness.
Sarah Hooley — That has just blown our minds.
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Sarah Hooley — Like we, We had to move up ah the frequency of our baptisms to every six weeks because we just could not keep up with all of the people who wanted to get baptized.
Sarah Hooley — But we we’re about 430 right now, and I have over 70 people registered for this next upcoming one in December.
Sarah Hooley — So it has just it has been a wild ride…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Sarah Hooley — …of um seeing God move in such phenomenal ways, and and just try to be faithful along the way. How do we steward these people well?
Rich Birch — So good.
Sarah Hooley — How do we continue to point them to Jesus? How do we encourage them to grow in their faith and to take those next steps of what it looks like to follow him? So it’s…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. There’s a ton we could we could unpack there, and maybe we’ll have you on in the future to talk. I um, you know, we’ve said it in the past on the podcast, every zip code in the country is more diverse today than it was 10 years ago, and 10 years from now, it will be more diverse, and our churches need to continue to progress towards reflecting the kingdom of God and being, as you’re saying, multi-ethnic.
Rich Birch — And so there’s a ton we could we could learn from you on that. Maybe we’ll have you back in the future to talk about that. Cause I, that is definitely a thing I think we all can, can learn from, but I’d love to kind of key in on what you were talking there about. Hey, your church has a heart for, which I think lots of churches do have a heart for reaching people, who don’t know Jesus, but it’s like actually happening at your church, ah which is incredible.
Rich Birch — So what were some early signs, you know, that you realize, or what are some of the signs that you realize, oh, this is actually happening. Like we’re actually reaching people. Baptism is one of them. Can you think of any other signs that were like, oh, we we’re reaching people who, who this is a brand new thing for them?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. So I mean, baptism was definitely a big sign of like, wow, these are, these are people who are, are new to following Jesus and taking that, that first step. And in our conversations with people who are preparing to be baptized, um, that, that was a part. It’s so funny, just, just this last week, uh, somebody posted on their Facebook page, uh, City Church choir is better than the club for real.
Rich Birch — I love it. Love it. That’s great.
Sarah Hooley — And they didn’t, like we don’t have, we didn’t have a choir. It’s our worship team, but like they don’t even know the words for what that worship team is.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. They don’t know the words yet.
Sarah Hooley — And, and the comments after that, like it, it truly was showing that we, we are drawing and attracting people who, who like, they’ve they’ve never really considered going to church. And then in our conversations with people, as they’ve realized, like, man, I do want this. I want to follow this Jesus. Like, this makes sense. This is incredible. But you just can’t assume anything.
Rich Birch — No.
Sarah Hooley — Like, they there’s no foundational understanding of what that looks like. There’s no, and and I think even just, there’s no understanding of even like what some sins are. Like, there’s just not like, oh, I didn’t even, not even realizing that like, that’s not a good idea to continue. So we’ve had, we have people who are like, yes, I want to follow Jesus. And then they’re still sleeping with their girlfriend. They’re still, you know, like it’s and it’s like…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. 100%.
Sarah Hooley — …oh, I didn’t, I didn’t even know…
Rich Birch — The thing.
Sarah Hooley — …that that was something that you shouldn’t do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sarah Hooley — And so really being able to, to come alongside and say, okay, man, we have to go back to the basics. We can’t assume anything. It’s gonna…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sarah Hooley — And it really has set the tone, even in just the way that Chris preaches and and all of our our pastors preach that we don’t make assumptions when we’re talking about scripture.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Sarah Hooley — So allowing um there not to be any barriers or or anything that would create a place where people would feel like, man, like everybody else knows what he’s talking about, but I don’t. And so like just the way that you set things up and explain things and introduce people. So you don’t don’t just assume that everybody knows who Joseph is from the Old Testament.
Rich Birch — 100%. Right.
Sarah Hooley — Like you have to be like, Hey, this is this guy. And so I think that that has led us to like, Chris does such a great job on Sunday mornings, but man, there’s, there’s so much more that we need to do as far as for people to truly learn what it means to follow Jesus when they don’t have much of a background. Like it’s going to take some more intentional discipleship that, um that we do. So that that has been really a process of of recognition that we even people who are coming on a Sunday…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sarah Hooley — …they’re excited about Jesus, there’s still some gaps there.
Rich Birch — Sure. I’d love to talk. We’re going to get into the discipleship question, but I just want to pause just before we get there. And so um what do you think God’s using to help your church engaged? You know, in different circles of the Christian world, it’s called different things. Unchurched people, seekers, people who follow Jesus, people new to the faith, you know. So the teaching, I agree. That’s like a best practice around, um ah you know, taking time to explain. It takes three sentences to explain instead of just saying, well, you all know Joseph.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — He’s an example, which is just lazy preaching. You should take a few sentences, explain it. But what else is God using you think to, ah you know, to help your church reach so many unchurched people?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, you know, so we we really have, the the teaching is significant.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sarah Hooley — And that’s one of the things that I have just been blown away. So I grew up as a pastor’s kid, went to Bible college, went to seminary, like…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sarah Hooley — …biblical, like good, solid biblical teaching is such a huge priority for me.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sarah Hooley — And the thing that I think has been unique is that Chris has a way of communicating with those who have never been in church and and helping them to to see a clear picture of who Jesus is and challenging the deep disciples. Those who’ve been following Jesus their whole life. And yet, man…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Sarah Hooley — …the way that he brings light to scripture and, and even just like points out some, like, this is what it means to live this out.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sarah Hooley — That has made such a big difference. And then, so we really have had this, this drawing of, of those who have been followers…
Rich Birch — So good.
Sarah Hooley — …who then can invest in those who are new believers. But also we have, and it and it is beautiful, like a really dynamic worship time that is incredible. And one of the things that’s unique about it is it’s because we’re multi-ethnic, you can’t just go in one kind of genre of music, like it really is a blend.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Sarah Hooley — And so there’s something about it that um it it’s not all of anyone’s preferences, but you’re like, oh man, like I love this part of it. And then, well, this part’s new and different, but okay, I can I can get on board with it. And so I think those that combination, um but there’s there’s another factor and that’s, that really is in the culture that’s been set in how we are a welcoming church.
Sarah Hooley — And so our connections director is somebody who came to faith in our church. So she she started following Jesus, like she had no church background whatsoever, started following Jesus, um started really growing in her discipleship. Her name is Victoria. And it it has been such a beautiful thing to see how she has has such a heart for Jesus and heart for others. And so she’s continued to invest in her team…
Rich Birch — It’s great.
Sarah Hooley — …in like, how do we make people feel welcome from the beginning? How do we not just say hello and let them walk by, but like really see people?
Sarah Hooley — And she has really invested in her connection team on like, how is that an opportunity for discipleship? And so one of the things is you can you can join our greet team. You can join our parking lot team. You can join our coffee team and not be a believer. But the heart behind it is like, is you’re still investigating who Jesus is. Like we hope that you’re rubbing shoulders with someone who is following after him.
Rich Birch — Yeah, make some friends, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Hooley — And you have those conversations and that relationship has grown um through that. And you’re you get a picture of of who Jesus is.
Rich Birch — So good.
Sarah Hooley — And so um like there there it’s just this multifaceted thing that has happened um that really is like when you come, you’re like man, I want to be a part of this. And so we have like, that’s the crazy thing. We have people who are not followers of Jesus inviting their friends,
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. That’s great.
Sarah Hooley — …like new church is better than the club for real.
Sarah Hooley — Like they’re inviting their friends to come and…
Rich Birch — So good.
Sarah Hooley — …and be a part of this because there’s just something happening here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Okay, let’s talk about the discipleship issue. So ah you didn’t say this, I said it, but one of the problems with the church in general is a lot of our discipleship systems assume a fairly high level of actually understanding of scripture. And our church shares a similar heartbeat. We’ll normally see, one of the things a new year guest come through in our church. We don’t ask them a lot, but one of the questions we do ask is for them to describe their kind of faith background before they came. And we’re consistently above 50%. It’s usually 60, 75% of people would describe themselves as something that we would label as unchurched.
Rich Birch — And so I understand the discipleship problem. In lots of churches it just you just assume people know stuff and they grow closer to Jesus, but that’s not the case. So how are you helping move people towards being fully discipled followers of Jesus? What does that look like for City Church?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, so we we do, we have loved using Alpha for for those who really still are in that questioning phase and like they’re not even sure. And like they may not, they might may not feel comfortable coming to City Church, but they would come to somebody’s house and walk through Alpha. So that’s been really great for those who are kind of trying to still discover who Jesus is.
Sarah Hooley — But for specific discipleship, because we were realizing, man, there’s just some some gaps here, Chris decided to launch a 15-week discipleship course for young men specifically.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Sarah Hooley — And we really saw, like we are we are a pretty young church. I mean, always have been, but that there was some some pretty serious gaps in and not only like, what does it mean to follow Jesus, but even what does it mean like what does it mean to be a godly man? And so wanting to have, to bring alongside some intentional mentors and people who can invest in these young men.
Sarah Hooley — So um he invited people, but it was a very high accountability, high expectation sort of class. They meet at 6 a.m. on Thursday mornings.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow.
Sarah Hooley — That is not something everybody wants to sign up for. It was…
Rich Birch — Yeah, no, not every guy wants to do that. I can say that.
Sarah Hooley — No, it is it is a huge sacrifice.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sarah Hooley — And he said, this is going to require a lot of you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sarah Hooley — And they actually have a crazy. Like if you are, if anyone is late, any single person is late, even five seconds, the whole group does pushups together…
Rich Birch — Oh, no. Yeah. Okay, that’s cool.
Sarah Hooley — …and not in a shaming way, but in a like, Hey, we’re inviting you to something great.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sarah Hooley — And part of, part of following Jesus is is it’s going to need incorporate discipline in your life. And so we have, we are called to have discipline. And so we’re going to really keep you accountable to this.
Sarah Hooley — And so he does um he he talks through, like what does it mean to be a godly man? Talks about identity, talks about discipline, talks about integrity, purity, humility, servanthood. So he’ll do a ah teaching, and then they break off into groups with two leaders. So each group usually has about six six guys who are participants and two leaders who are older men in the church who have um that Chris has identified and recruited. And then they have a small group time.
Sarah Hooley — So It has been so incredible to see how God is working, not only through his teaching, but really through that accountability…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sarah Hooley — …and like digging into what does this look like in our lives? And, and then those leaders are, are following up with them and encouraging them throughout the week. They, they do, they, they challenge, they come up with their own challenges. And as like, okay, we’re going to memorize this passage of scripture. And then they, then they like, all right, how did you, did you memorize this? Most of these guys have never memorized scripture in their lives.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Sarah Hooley — And so, even though some of those practices have been really incredible. And he he calls the class Act Like Men. And it really is so, and he makes it very clear, this is not about talking about what what is the difference between a man and a woman. This is talking about what’s the man and a boy.
Sarah Hooley — Like we are calling you to be godly men and intentionally calling you up to to live out as godly men, not selfish boys. And so that, that has been beautiful. There was about, um, I think he had about 60 participants the first time he he ran it…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sarah Hooley — …with 25 leaders. And then this next, um, this heat currently they’re they’re walking through it right now and there’s 100 guys and 30 leaders.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sarah Hooley — It also requires, and they have to pay $100 and that goes right back into them. Like it’s for some resources that they are given. But again, it gives that like, hey, this is a high threshold. This isn’t just a casual thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sarah Hooley — They also cannot miss more than three sessions. If they do, they are asked to step away and if they can join again in a future time.
Rich Birch — Take it again or whatever. Yeah.
Sarah Hooley — So super high high high…
Rich Birch — And is it the idea that it’s going to rotate like kind of a couple seasons a year or something like that? How what what’s the thinking on that?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like how often are you going to run it or what’s that? What’s that look like?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. So, so what we’ve done so far is, um, the men’s course is in the fall. And then, um, after last, last fall, the first time that, that Chris did it, there was such an out, like lot of the wives and the girlfriends and the people who were just connected with these guys, they were like, man, this has been so incredible. Like, what do you have for women? Like, when are we going to have our, our course?
Sarah Hooley — And so that really sparked. And I was like, I’m too busy to do this right now, but like, I can’t not do it. So, um my kids, pastor, and I developed Be Bold Women’s, which was a complimentary course for women. And so the men is in the fall and the women starts in January. And we go through the spring and do kind of a similar, we follow a lot of the same topics, although we did choose some different ones, a couple of specific one…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sarah Hooley — …that we felt really convicted that, like we do one of our lessons is on emotions and like, what is a healthy, godly way to approach and process, and how are emotions a part of our life? We also talk about community. So there’s just a couple of different topics that we walk through with the women.
Sarah Hooley — We also incorporated women’s conference as a part of it that we then opened up to the rest of the church. So everyone in the church could come to the conference. We had our own people speaking at it, our own worship team leading worship. And we had about 300 women at this conference.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s great.
Sarah Hooley — And it was just, it was a great start, like jumpstart to our time together in the course, but then also with our larger community.
Rich Birch — There’s a lot there I’d love to ask questions about. So my impression of City Church just looking in, don’t know your church well, but follow online. And, you know, I don’t get the vibe from you guys that there’s like, I don’t know, like an overly machismo kind of like, you know, ah like in a negative way. Like, you know, you know you know what I mean? There’s some churches out there. You’re like, okay, they’re like a little too much into the man/woman thing.
Sarah Hooley — Uh-huh.
Rich Birch — And, and I don’t know how to say that nicely and not like step on people’s toes. I don’t get that vibe from you guys, but this, but you’ve, you’ve obviously taken, taken a gendered approach. Can you unpack that a little bit? Help me understand how is that it’s obviously been super helpful. So, but just kind of talk through that issue. Help me understand that. What’s that look like for you guys?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, we really saw their there just was a need to have those intentional conversations um really of older men investing in younger men, and older women investing in younger women.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good.
Sarah Hooley — And so um there are things that, there are conversations that you can have when it’s just men, that you add one woman into that mix and it’s gonna change some of those conversations.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sarah Hooley — And some of the things that, especially when it comes to kind of the harder accountability parts of of those conversations, it’s going it’s just gonna look differently. If if somebody’s trying to impress somebody else, like that’s going to be an issue.
Sarah Hooley — But I think, I think really, even though we’re not a overly like machismo, there’s, that’s still a part of our culture.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sarah Hooley — And so I think Chris really wanted to be sure that he, he tackled that kind of toxic masculinity approach.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sarah Hooley — And, and like, that is not biblical masculinity.
Rich Birch — No.
Sarah Hooley — Like this, this idea of, you know, I’m the man. And we’re, but like, that’s not what, and and so really continuing to call them back to that, that being a true man is not the world’s version of, of power and money and having the beautiful wife or girlfriend. It really is about following Jesus’ example. He is the greatest example of what a godly man looks like.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Sarah Hooley — So what does that look like?
Rich Birch — Yeah. What’s that look like?
Sarah Hooley — So that means humility and servanthood and sacrifice and laying down your life for others. And so how do we live that out?
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.
Sarah Hooley — And then for our women, it it it has been so powerful to be able to have those those deep conversations and um and challenging them to live this out.
Sarah Hooley — And you know when you have people who are coming from, like they they don’t have um maybe those older women or men in their lives who have been investing in them and showing them what it looks like to follow Jesus or to live this out. It’s still brand new. And so there’s still, there’s some some space to have those questions be brought.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.
Sarah Hooley — And um like, why shouldn’t I return to this abusive boyfriend?
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Sarah Hooley — Why shouldn’t I like, so like being able to deal with some of those really hard conversations in a really healthy way that that comes back to scripture and comes back to like, this is what God wants for you.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Sarah Hooley — And um and it’s and it’s hard, like following Jesus is hard. Like there is nothing easy about that…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah.
Sarah Hooley — But it’s so worth it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Sarah Hooley — And I think that being able to put that in front of people. But you know, those are two courses that we have. We have lots of small groups and mid-sized groups and groups that are that are mixed gender. And like there’s some beautiful things from that, too. These two courses specifically are just a little bit unique in in their approach.
Rich Birch — That’s good. So as you’ve kind of watched this roll through as an XP, you know, go people go through these experiences, what what kind of changes have you seen in the broader church culture? Like, has there, you know, what have you seen that like, oh, hey, there’s something happening here that that seems to be having a positive impact or negative, I’m assuming there’s positive, that’s been kind of impacting the church culture. Talk to me about that.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, I I you really start to see um just that that growth, the idea that this is, you know, that that view of discipleship that’s a long obedience in the same direction. That is what we are are experiencing. You know, with so many people who are new believers, there are some great breakthrough moments and that is worth celebrating, but it is a long process. And so um I think really being able to come alongside and and watch watch those who are like, they were, they’re excited about Jesus. They’re pumped. They’re going lift their hands and worship. They’re going to be like, join the team. But to go beyond that to, okay, what does this actually look like in my life? And to see them begin to make changes in how they actually live that out. um That they’re not just, okay, this is my Sunday thing. And then I go and I do my weekly thing, um but truly changing. And that like that’s profound. It’s profound to see God work in such powerful ways.
Sarah Hooley — And again, it’s not it’s never overnight, like there’s overnight breakthroughs, but it’s always a process. And I think that that like watching the the development of these courses is like there’s gonna be things you’re confronting in week one. And then you might still be confronting in week 10. You might still be confronting in week 15. But there’s there’s growth. And there’s um it doesn’t mean that they’ve been able to overcome everything, but you you can see that that change in them. And that draws people.
Sarah Hooley — And so I think that we we’ve been able so to so clearly see even just the growth in the number of guys who who joined the course the first time and then the growth in the second second time through that people are hearing about it and being like, I want to be a part of this.
Sarah Hooley — Like I saw what it did in my friend’s life. And like, that’s like, I know it’s 6am, but it’s worth it. I’m going to make the sacrifice. I’m going to be a part of it. And so I think that that that kind of invitation to discipleship where you see what the effect it’s having. And then that brings others in. And they’re like, I want what he has.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Sarah Hooley — Like, I, I’ve, I know who Jesus is, but I, Idon’t want it just to be a yeah, I know who Jesus is. I want to actually know Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. Friends that are listening in. I one of the one of the changes I for sure have seen in people who are arriving at our churches is, this is a problem when you’ve been at this long enough, like decades ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, people did kind of just stumble into church. Like that actually did happen, but that’s not happening today.
Rich Birch — People, when they arrive, they’re they’re arriving with real questions and are looking for, they’re not looking for us, they’re not looking for our ideas, they want Jesus and they wanna know what that looks like. So I love this this idea of calling people to something That is a little more, you know, that’s, it’s not just the like, well, we’re going to to make it super easy. That’s not what it’s about.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Rich Birch — I think makes a lot of sense. Well, I want to pivot to it just a totally different conversation. As we were getting ready for this, one of the things that caught my attention, and you’re a humble leader, Jesus has formed your life. So like you didn’t lead off with like your attendance numbers and all that. You talked about growth, but you didn’t really go there. What what are you averaging right now? Attendance wise, where are you at?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, we’re about 2,500 to 2,600 right now.
Rich Birch — Okay. And how many full-time staff do you have as as a team?
Sarah Hooley — Oh, we have seven full-time staff. Now, we do have some part-time roles that are high level…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sarah Hooley — …but we are a skeleton staff.
Rich Birch — Yes. Okay. So to put that in context, like, I, this is why want to hear more about this. How, how are you doing that? So to put make some context that people are listening in, um there’s a kind of a well kind of oiled benchmark out there that says churches should really shoot for 1 to 75 attendees and staff. And, you know, ah really great churches are maybe one to a hundred. Like that would be amazing if you could get that. I think the math on you guys is one to like 350 or something like that.
Sarah Hooley — Yep.
Rich Birch — Even if it’s like, okay, those those other equivalents, even if they end up being say you have another three full-time people in all those part-time. So you’re 10 full-time equivalents. That’s still like one to 250. So like, this is a significant lesson, friends. We need to learn from.
Rich Birch — So it’s like, I really just want to say, talk. Like what systems and philosophies make that happen?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How do you, you know, how are you able to make that happen? Talk us through that.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. Well, we are trying to hire. So there are some roles that we definitely know that we need.
Rich Birch — Yes. You got a long ways to go though. Even if you doubled your staff, you still would be like one to 125, which is still very high. You know, that’s great.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. And this has been one of the unique things about being a multi-ethnic church and a multi-ethnic church that’s reaching new believers. The the the financial support, it takes longer. Like financial discipleship, it’s a process. And and in a um you know within our community, there’s a significant like where we our church specifically is, there’s a significant number of people who are below the poverty line. And so that just means that where our budget is not going to be as large.
Sarah Hooley — But so like we have always, and I think part of it is going from that church plant model to even having an established church. Like we’ve always had to be scrappy. Like you always have had to, like I started as a volunteer and I wanted to do a women’s conference. And then someone came and said, I heard that you’re leading the women’s ministry. And I was like, what? Like I didn’t, I just wanted to lead this women’s conference.
Sarah Hooley — But just the the way that, um you know, we have continued to to philosophically want to equip the body to be the ministers. That it’s not just, oh, we can just hire somebody to do that. But for every staff person being so intentional about choosing staff members who can be equippers, who are not looking to just do ministry, but who are looking to equip others to do the ministry. And so those who can develop and be leaders of leaders. And that that really has been a part of our heart um in the beginning out of necessity. But also as we’ve continued to grow, um we’ve found there’s just been incredible fruit, because it calls the whole church body into being a part of what’s going on.
Sarah Hooley — And so there is nothing more powerful and significant than saying like, yeah, I am I am a significant like participant, I am leading within this church in in a significant way that creates such buy-in. And so like that has really made a difference in in, I think, our church culture and and in just people so staying with us and saying like, man, there’s there’s there’s something happening here. I wanna be a part of it. And um being identified in like, given the opportunity to lead in those ways. And so um we are very, we are slow to hire because we’re kind of a unique, um we have a unique church culture and unique church body…
Rich Birch — For sure.
Sarah Hooley — …and we want our staff to reflect our church body and to to have buy-in. So I would, so the majority of our staff really are people who have come from the church body itself. So we we only have had very few outside hires um because we know that they understand who we are, they they understand kind of what we’ve been called to do.
Sarah Hooley — And so that has been the most, like we have one full-time kids pastor…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sarah Hooley — …for 400 children. And she has an associate who’s also very high level and she’s incredible too. Um, but they have done such an incredible job of identifying, okay, within our kids ministry, within our volunteers, who are those people who, who can lead others and who have a heart for developing others.
Sarah Hooley — And so, um, so they’ve broken down the different areas and they have leads over each of those individual areas where they’re doing some of the scheduling. So like identifying those administrative skills, like people who have people skills as well as administrative skills.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Sarah Hooley — But so the role of our of our kids pastor is to you know set the vision and invest in our leaders. And then they are then the ones who are are working through some of those logistics of what it looks like when it comes to staffing or when it comes to volunteers um and being fully like, oh, it’s a whole lot of children. We have a lot of kids.
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s amazing. I’d I’d love to double click on some of that there. So this idea of leaders of leaders does not surprise me that, um you know, I it’s like one of these when I heard this, I’m like, I don’t even know anything about this. But I know that you the only way you get to that kind of ratio is you’ve empowered volunteers to actually lead things.
Rich Birch — There’s a humbling thing you could do. Church leaders that are listening in do it. Do a giant org chart. Spend two hours and do a giant org chart on a whiteboard. Like literally draw out who is who leads who all the way down to every role in the church and then circle the people that are staff. And oftentimes what you find is there are no leaders of leaders that are volunteers. And they’re just that that’s a that’s a key distinction. How do we get and and how do we keep our staff being Ephesians 4 leaders, people who equip the saints to do the work?
Sarah Hooley — Yes.
Rich Birch — So give me some of the telltale signs that you that you see in volunteers that, hey, this person is could lead at a high level. And what does the equipping look like? How are you helping them step into that?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, we really do view leadership as discipleship. And so, um, so even for our volunteers, we want to identify people, for them to step into a leadership role like that, that relationship with Jesus, that that’s strong connection to to him is is key.
Sarah Hooley — So like that is first and for foremost across across all of our leadership teams. So even though I mentioned earlier that we have some of our serve teams that you can join the team and not be a believer, but for the people who are leading those people, we want them to be following Jesus.
Sarah Hooley — And then just looking for those who also love people and have that heart for like, I want to have the conversations that, you know, something is is going on in someone’s life and they’re having a hard time, I’m going to follow up with them during the week. And so um so that love for Jesus, that love for people in some of these roles, it it is some administrative ability. Like, can you handle scheduling people? Like there’s there’s just like, are you able to complete some of those things, some of the doing aspects of ministry?
Sarah Hooley — But even within our within our high level leader volunteer leaders, like they’re actually then finding other volunteers who are are doing some of those roles as well. So I think that that has been a process. So it’s looking at who who do we have in front of us? Like who are the people who are like bought in? They see the mission. They’re they’re passionate about what we’re doing. They care about what we’re doing. um And then inviting them into that next step of leadership.
Sarah Hooley — A lot of times it’s we kind of give them a chance to kind of test it out first before just throwing them to the wolves so that they can kind of see like like shadowing somebody who already is currently doing something like that to get their feet wet, to kind of understand the the scope of the role. We don’t ever want to ask somebody to to step into a role that they aren’t, that they’re like, I don’t have the capacity for this. And so, but there’s there’s lots of development still along the way of like conversations of like, of of our actual staff members, checking in with them and helping them to like navigate problems and helping them to to think through like how to process, um you know, that they even are invited to bring feedback of like, hey, here are some things that we’re seeing, like what’s a way that we can then approach that together? So like really they they have a great voice into into how things are being run.
Rich Birch — That’s good. One of the tensions that happens in a lot of churches is staff, our staff start to think like the kind of important people are people who have full-time staff that report to them. There’s like this insidious pull towards, I’m going to build my little kingdom. And like this is really common, like lots of churches struggle with that. It can be difficult.
Rich Birch — How are you developing your, particularly the the culture with your staff team to ensure that they stay focused on leading volunteers rather than, you know, just hiring people? Like, let’s just hire somebody. How do we, how do how are you what are you doing there? Beyond the like, well, we can’t afford it. There’s got to be something else you’re doing to try to help them, you know, develop that.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah, feeling missed out on the budget is really helpful.
Rich Birch — Well, because, well, and yeah, but the but my pushback would be friendly pushback as as one leader to another is like that resource things are going to get sorted out. And it’s going to come to a time where you have resources to be able to do that. And it could be very tempting to say, let’s just go quadruple the size of our staff. So how are you ensuring that the culture isn’t going to do that?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. And so much of that is through through our coaching, through the way that we talk about this. This is something like we have these calibrating conversations all the time of of this is who we are and this is what we’re about. And this is what it looks like to lead here. That we um and and that And to be totally candid, like that has been a challenge where we had a staff person and as we grew, um could not make that transition of from doing to leading others and and delegating.
Sarah Hooley — And so like that that is a challenge of, and and just thinking like, oh man, all we need to do is just add more staff and then I would be okay. And instead of really recognizing like, no, our our heart behind this is inviting the church to be the church. That that, Letting them know that that priesthood of all believers, like we are all called um to do ministry.
Sarah Hooley — Ministry is not just for those who have a degree or those who have a title. Like we are called into ministry. And so keeping that before our our leaders and our staff so that they are keeping it before the the people that they’re calling into these volunteer leader roles.
Sarah Hooley — And I will say like those who are the volunteers, like they, they’re excited. They’re excited about like, man, like you just invited me into this position. Like you’ve asked, you’ve seen, you saw something in me and asked me to, um to lead in this way and to serve in this way. And it’s, it’s a privilege to do that. But it is also like continuing to put that before us. Like we we are investing in our people.
Sarah Hooley — Now, some of our future staff members might come from those who are volunteer leaders. And like and like that’s a beautiful thing because we’re like, man, I already know, I can see how you would operate in this role and how you would fit on our team and how you would keep how you you do get the culture and what what we’re trying to do. And I think that that’s that’s really a beautiful thing.
Sarah Hooley — But it is it is a lot of conversation, a lot of coaching, and just a reminder of like, and I think part of it too is is realizing like, we can’t do everything. And so being very intentional to not be overly programmed. To be very clear about, we’re going do these things, like these very simple.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sarah Hooley — And so that’s where it’s like, it seems so simple. It seems so basic, but we’re going do these simple, basic things and do them faithfully. And um and then, yeah, see what God does.
Rich Birch — Trust God for the results. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah. And listen, you know it makes sense that you’ll end up hiring some people because it’s like that’s a little bit of a crazy ah you know ratio. And you know I think that’ll be that’ll be a challenge ahead to keep that focused as you add those people. And it’s not unreasonable to say to your team like, oh, yeah, like we probably should add a few people.
Rich Birch — But to still champion at the end of the day, I think that’s like there’s a key piece there that you mentioned. It’s like this idea of championing the people who have been able to make that transition. And I’ve like, I got us like hey, ah it’s about developing leaders and I want to make that happen. And I know that might be messy and there’s other problems with that, but that’s you know that’s good.
Rich Birch — It’s been a fantastic conversation. For people who are listening in today who might feel that kind of like, oh my goodness, we’re under-resourced, we’re you know are outnumbered, we don’t have enough people. Help us think through, kind of talk to us a little bit from an even mindset or how we lead point of view to kind of lead from abundance rather than from scarcity. Because a part of what I don’t hear you saying is like, oh, woe is me.
Rich Birch — Like you’re like, no, this is just what God’s called us to in this season. We’re going to make it happen. And God’s doing a great thing. So try to encourage us, yeah help us think that through.
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. Well, I would, I mean, I would first of all say you’re not alone. So if you feel, if you do feel overwhelmed and outnumbered and under-resourced, like you’re not alone. And so I think that that is is helpful to be like, man, I’m not. And I think that’s where like even having podcasts like this, where you’re able to hear from others, we’re like, oh, man, OK, we’re in this together. We are all doing the mission that God has called us to. And there are challenges that come with that. And and that can be really discouraging and hard. And yet, like, I think when we can have that kind of. loaves and fishes mindset of like the disciples, they could not feed those people. Like they could not fit fill all the needs that were before them. But Jesus could.
Sarah Hooley — And so if we can be faithful to say, okay, God, what do we have? What do we have? Like, what do we have in front of us? And how do we use that for your glory? And what what does that look like? What what are the things that we need to like have that laser focus on um so that we can then continue to see what you are going to do with with what we bring.
Sarah Hooley — And and I think that there is that reliance on God to um to say like, you’re the one who does the work. Like this is not, and I think that helps us to like, it takes away that that pride and also that just overwhelming feeling feeling of sometimes failure when it’s, it’s not, when we realize that it’s not all on me…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.
Sarah Hooley — …like this is not like my responsibility is to be faithful and continuing to be faithful, to follow what God has called me to do. And that means, I mean, that means working hard. That means best practices. That means learning from others, but I am not responsible for the the end result. So how do I just be intentional and faithful with what God has given me?
Sarah Hooley — And, and, and I think too, I think it’s really important to, to find others who are also in the journey with you.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sarah Hooley — That you can, that not that you just get together and complain, but that you can really come alongside each other and encourage one another. And that, That has been one of the most significant things that I have found in in stepping into this role. I got connected with a women executive pastor cohort of women all over the country who are leading in this in similar roles.
Sarah Hooley — And being able to just ask questions of other church leaders, being able to say, will you pray for me? Like, I’m going through something really difficult right now. Will pray for me? That has encouraged me personally to be able to keep pressing on when it does feel overwhelming or it does feel like, man, the the task is too great for me. To be reminded and to have other pastors in like my corner and in my ear saying, remember who God is and remember what he’s called you to.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sarah Hooley — And so I think that that is just, it’s, if we can keep that in view and that in, in that mindset in view, that that God is so much greater than the most difficult person at your church who is louder than all of the others. And, um and God is greater than the the greatest problems that you are facing and the, the difficulties that you’re walking through. And, and so like, I think just looking for those, those things.
Rich Birch — So good. Sarah, this has been such a helpful conversation. I really appreciate you being here today and investing in us. And it’s fantastic, super encouraging and lots of good nuggets in there. I got pages of notes here. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Sarah Hooley — Yeah. We I mean we’re on um Instagram and Facebook. We’re forthecity.com is our church website. We are not on TikTok yet. We’re not that cool. I don’t know. Someday we’ll we’ll get there.
Rich Birch — Nice. That’s fun.
Sarah Hooley — But yeah, that’s that’s the primary way.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today.
Sarah Hooley — Thank you so much.
Before You Build: What Every Church Should Know About Facility Expansion with Aaron Stanski
Dec 04, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, a firm that partners with churches across the country to design and build facilities that amplify ministry impact. With more than 15 years of experience in church architecture, project management, and ministry leadership, Aaron and his team help churches navigate complex building challenges while staying focused on mission.
Is your church facing growing pains—crowded lobbies, full parking lots, or overwhelmed kids’ spaces—but unsure how to move forward? Aaron shares practical insights on how to approach facility planning strategically, align vision with budget, and avoid the costly mistakes that can slow down momentum.
Overcoming the overwhelm. // When churches consider expansion or renovation, leaders often feel paralyzed by the process. Questions about cost, zoning, design, and disruption quickly pile up. Too often, churches jump straight to hiring an architect before defining their real needs. Instead, churches should first clarify what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s next before anyone draws plans.
Start with scope and budget. // The two guardrails of every successful project are scope (what you’re building) and budget (what you can spend). Aaron warns that skipping this step often leads to beautiful drawings that churches can’t afford. Risepointe begins with a Needs Analysis, an on-site deep dive into the church’s DNA, culture, and challenges. The team listens to staff, studies how people use the building, and identifies bottlenecks—whether it’s the children’s hallway, lobby congestion, or limited parking. Only then do they define the right-size project and realistic cost range.
The power of early engagement. // Most churches wait too long to start planning. Zoning approvals, fundraising, and construction all take longer than expected, especially in urban areas. Waiting too long forces rushed design work, unclear budgets, and lost ministry opportunities. You don’t have to build everything at once. Start with a plan that captures the next few wins—like improving your lobby or kids’ check-in—while preparing for long-term growth.
Knowing when it’s time. // Aaron says early warning signs include maxing out your primary service, overflowing kids’ spaces, and parking lots at capacity. Many pastors misjudge space needs because they see the auditorium every Sunday but rarely experience the parking or early childhood chaos firsthand. Evaluating your entire Sunday experience—entry to exit—reveals where capacity problems really begin.
Aligning buildings with ministry models. // Every church facility reflects a ministry philosophy—but those philosophies evolve. Where there used to be 40-year ministry cycles, now they are closer to 10 to 20. Churches shaped by the seeker-sensitive movement, for example, are now adapting to relational, community-driven models. Spaces that once emphasized rows and stages now need more environments for conversations, mentoring, and connection.
A free resource for leaders. // To help churches begin the conversation, Aaron’s team created a free guide called “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build.” The resource walks through key questions every church should answer before launching a building project—from clarifying vision and budget to preparing for change. You can download it and schedule a free consultation at risepointe.com/unseminary.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, across the country, we keep hearing about churches that are growing and we’re seeing swelling attendance and that’s good. Some of that is like a platinum problem though. It generates other issues that we have to think about. And so what what I did was pull on a friend of mine, Aaron Stanski, he’s the founder and CEO of Risepointe. He’s got 15 plus years of church design, leadership and project management and experience.
Rich Birch — If you don’t know Risepointe, where have you been? You’re living under a rock. They’re church architects and designers. They have years of experience working with churches like yours, schools and nonprofits, and they offer a wide range wide variety of services, including architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, and so much more. Aaron is, I like Aaron not just because he actually has got incredible skills. His team’s got incredible skills, but he really actually wants to help churches like you. And so Aaron, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I’m glad to be here, Rich.
Rich Birch — It’s going to be good. Give give people, you’ve been on a couple of times…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and but give us again, for folks that haven’t heard, the Aaron Stanski, you know, a couple bullet points.
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — What did I miss? What do you want to fill in the picture?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, ah you know the quick story is grew up in ministry. My dad was a pastor growing up, planted a we planted a church in Boston when I was a kid. Went to school for engineering, worked for Harley Davidson Motorcycles, did big projects, project management and stuff for them for a while. And then felt called to ministry.
Aaron Stanski — So left Harley Davidson, was on staff with Cru for a couple years doing college ministry before I jumped on staff at a fast growing multi-site church here in Chicago. So loved that, loved being part of that ministry team. And then, of course, we went through a big building project. So got to roll up my sleeves on the on the church staff side of things and hire architects and engineers and AV consultants and really kind of combine my my engineering mind and my ministry heart. And so absolutely love that process. And so, yeah, I’ve been helping churches now for the last 15, 16 years. It’s been an absolute blast.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, the the kind of person I want to have in mind today, and so friends, if if you’re listening in, if this sounds a little bit like you, you’re going to want to pay close attention. So I’m thinking about that church, you know, the leader that looks around, they maybe have got, maybe they got two services.
Rich Birch — They’re looking around and they’re seeing, ooh, they feel like maybe their growth ah is starting to create some pinch points. Maybe it’s in kids. Maybe it’s in adults. Maybe it’s their lobby. It’s they look around and they’re like, man, I just I feel like our facility might be holding us back a little bit. um And because I do bump into this in churches all the time.
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — And there’s like, there can be like a certain amount of anxiety and fear around, gosh, when do I, what do I do? So when you talk to pastors, what do you know notice as one of the kind of most common point of confusion when it comes to starting or pulling the trigger, moving on with a building project, expansion project, try to improve things. Where are we getting this wrong?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think ah like one, the whole process itself can just be completely overwhelming.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — Like immediately you’re confronted with, ah oh my goodness, like what’s the right solution? What is the, ah what is the town or the, you know, the jurisdiction going to allow us to do? What is this all going to cost? Where are we going to do church in the meantime if we’re having to fix this building or add on to it?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Stanski — I mean, immediately all of these questions start to kind of well up and it can become ah really overwhelming for a lot of churches.
Rich Birch — So good. So when when we step back, is there any one of those that you think in particular is like a piece of the puzzle that is the most kind of mysterious or is the most um confusing as as you that you bump into regularly with leaders?
Aaron Stanski — I mean, I think the most confusing is probably like, what’s the right solution?
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Aaron Stanski — A lot of times it’s a combination of like, you know, we feel like we’re out of space, so we have to add on. But if we do that, we’re going to have to modify what we already have. And what we have is old, or there’s some maintenance on it that we haven’t gotten around to. And like, what can we do in this space? And so actually the the right solution is is probably one of the most difficult things to kind of imagine for a lot of pastors.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And, you know, then right behind that is like. What’s it going to cost? Right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — I mean, you know, for the last four or five years, we’ve seen a lot of inflation. We’ve seen a lot of different things happening, like with pricing and stuff. And so what used to be a pretty easy calculation for us as churches now, it feels like it’s a lot foggier as far as like what what things are just going to cost.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So I’ve heard church leaders at this this juncture, they start thinking like, okay, like we got to get an architect. Get me the architect, the the person that designed this building 25 years ago. Where are they? Are they still in business? And, you know, we start going down that road. I’m not even really sure what an architect does. Like, I obviously, you you draw things. But, like, help us understand what what is the piece of the puzzle that, like, an architect brings to the table.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — And I know that’s, like, a subset of what you guys do. Pretend that I’m, like, super dumb because it’s probably not actually worry about pretending too much there. Explain what that is. What is that service? And is that actually what we need at this juncture? Is that the first question? Like, get the architect. Come in here. Explain that whole thing.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, well, I think we have to be careful. Sometimes hiring an architect is like picking up a hammer, right? And for a lot of architects who were, you know, traditionally trained and might have like one sort of, you know, viewpoint of the world. Like their job is to come in and draw something new um that’s going to sort of solve your problem. The challenge with that is a lot of times that architect is just looking for ah one type of solution, ah which is build you something new, add something on.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And they’re looking at it very narrowly through the lens of what the solution is going to be.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And a lot of times they’re not, you know, kind of able to kind of step back and take a look at strategically and say, okay, before we start drawing plans and blueprints and some of those sorts of things, let’s really talk about like what’s going really well at your church and how are we going to amplify what you’re already doing well? How are we going to add some, you know, some pieces around it? And then of course, how are we going to fix some of the big, you know, some of the bigger problems?
Aaron Stanski — So an architect technically, right? I mean, it’s a licensed professional. Their job is to lead your organization through the process from the very beginning all the way through the stages of design. Their job is to make sure that the solution is aligned with your with who you are as an organization and your budget. And they’re supposed to help all the way through construction, making sure that it gets built the way that it was designed and and that it gets you know all the questions get answered and that it’s ultimately safe.
Aaron Stanski — So that’s what an architect does. I think the I think the thing that we miss a little bit on the front end is in order for the architect to start, we really need kind of need to know what the scope of the work is and the budget first.
Rich Birch — So good. Okay. Okay. Good.
Aaron Stanski — If we don’t put those two guardrails on the left and the right-hand side, we’re really missing out. The left-hand side should be scope. The right-hand side should be budget. And we should nail those down before we get going into designing.
Rich Birch — Okay. I want to unpack that because I know, I actually texted you recently. Friends, getting you behind the scenes a little bit. I had a friend of mine, they had done exactly what we talked about here. They were like, we went and hired an architect to help with this thing. And they came back with a ginormous number um that was like, I would say a factor, you know, three or four times what I thought. And what do I know? I don’t know anything.
Rich Birch — And I actually think it was these guardrails where they went off off on it. They didn’t start with scope and budget. They started with, hey, here’s a problem, architect – solve it for us. And they came back with this, you know, very incredible initial drawing and all that.
Rich Birch — Talk us through how do we nail down scope and budget from the beginning? Talk us through what does that look like?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, so I would say, ah you know, you want to find a ministry partner who’s going to come in and really kind of help ah flesh out some of those pieces, really understand what’s working well, what’s not working well, what’s missing, where do we have to clarify what it is that we’re doing in order so to sort of establish that. And and there’s ah there’s a lot of great partners out there who can help you do that. But you’re really looking for someone in the building/design/construction space who has experience who has a lot of experience, honestly, with churches and understands what it means to, you know, serve people who’ve been part of your church for 20, 30 years and keep them on mission and disciple them up, as well as welcoming people who are walking into your doors for the very first time.
Aaron Stanski — So at Risepointe, we walk through a process called The Needs Analysis, where we get on site with, you know, a church for an entire day and understand their DNA and really understand what’s working and not working and stuff. And we start with that so that we can sketch out some ideas and some concepts and stuff around what is the what is the scope of work that’s going to solve the problem or fix the lid or add the seats that we need? And what’s the budget that we feel like God’s calling us to spend as a church in order to go do that? And we want to start with that before we jump into full architecture.
Rich Birch — Okay, so sidebar question. Is it possible for someone to help us at this early kind of scoping phase without doing some sort of on-site? Like, can I just call an architect and say, hey, here’s the problem. I need to add a thousand seats. How much is that going to cost? And then they go away and come back with a number. Or, or you know, are is there, yeah, can they do that? Talk us through that.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can. I mean, you can call up Risepointe and I’ll get on the phone with you. The, and, but there’s going to be a range, right?
Rich Birch — Okay.
Aaron Stanski — And I can say like, Hey, here’s the last 10 churches that we’ve done a thousand seat auditoriums at…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …and here’s kind of the range and stuff. The problem with shortcutting to that is you miss a lot of things, right? Each jurisdiction is different, like how the civil engineering works, the parking requirements and stuff.
Rich Birch — Right. Good. Yep.
Aaron Stanski — And those really affect the budget. And so we want to understand those first. And the second thing is, I mean, every church that we work with is and incredibly unique in the people that they’re reaching, and the values that those people have and whether they’re de-churched or unchurched and and who they’re running into and and stuff. And so really kind of understanding that context is so important um before we jump into, you know, sort of solution.
Aaron Stanski — But yeah, I mean, since we work with churches all over the country, I mean, if someone called me up, I could probably, I could probably put my thumb in the air and give them a ah swag on what that might cost.
Rich Birch — Yeah. And I would, you know, it’s funny because I’ve, I’ve recommended people have asked me those kinds of questions and I always actually say exactly what, you know, where you led, which is like, you should call my friend Aaron and, but, but what you should do, get on the, do the like free call or whatever, get on the book a time. But I said, you really should do this Needs Analysis thing. Cause the project that you’re facing is always much larger than you think.
Rich Birch — And I would rather people take time, invest the resources upfront and time, frankly, to slow down and say let’s actually understand the question we’re asking before we jump to answers, right? Like what because because we could get this thing wrong and actually that gets to this whole idea of how early is too early. My experience has been people wait too long before they engage with someone like you. They they get into like their third service, fourth service. They’re like, oh gosh, people aren’t going to the fifth service. Maybe we have to figure out how to get more space. Talk us about, you know, what mistakes do we make when we wait too long without engaging with someone like you?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I’d say, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that you’re, if you’re the average church that reaches out to Risepointe, you’re somewhere between two and a half and three years away from having any sort of new space.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Okay.
Aaron Stanski — And that’s on the short end. We have churches who are bringing new space online five years after they’ve reached out to us because they’re, they live in downtown areas…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Stanski — …very challenging jurisdictions and some things like that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — And so when we’re thinking about when is the right time, I think, yeah, earlier is definitely better. But we have to be careful ah that we’re strategically spending dollars even on the front end, you know, so that we, you know, we’re getting out of it what we need.
Aaron Stanski — As leaders, what questions are we asking that we need answers for in order to determine is it the right time to move forward with a building project? Is it a right time to launch a campus or go multi-site or some things like that?
Aaron Stanski — If you wait too long, typically what happens is either we’re we’re rushing through the design process to kind of hit the capital campaign stuff and there’s budget misalignment. All of a sudden we thought it might be this, but now this is the actual budget for what it’s going to work.
Aaron Stanski — And I think when that happens, there starts to be some vision confusion. You know, we’re looking at solutions that we kind of rushed through and it doesn’t feel like we really thought all of those things through. And so I think that’s another one.
Aaron Stanski — And then I just think, you know, there’s there’s some missed ministry opportunities if if we kind of wait too long. I think a lot of times when we’re planning out, here’s the multiple phases of how we develop this campus and expand it. You know, we miss out on opportunities to go get some smaller things done sooner…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — …capture momentum, you you know, fix the welcome center, like invest some dollars in something we know we’re not going to tear down, make it better for guests in a couple months. And we miss out on those things if we don’t have a bigger, more strategic plan.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah, kind of a step back and say, hey, how does this fit into where everything that’s going on?
Rich Birch — What would be kind of double clicking on that? What would be some indicators internally that would say, hey, um you know, these things are happening. I should really reach out to Risepointe. What would be some of the things that you would see as telltale signs that it’s now a time to to kind of take this step?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think if we’re, you know, if we’re really pushing towards our, those max numbers at our primary service, I think that’s a, that’s definitely an early indicator.
Aaron Stanski — A lot of churches just kind of reach out and say, Hey, okay, here’s, here’s kind of where we’re at. Here’s where the math is at. Like, can you look at this like from a, like how much kids area should we have? How much lobby space should we have? And we can run some quick math for them and say, Hey, you don’t have any other lids. You’re looking good. You, you probably have a few more years of growth in you.
Aaron Stanski — So that would be one. You know i think if ah you know we’re starting to talk about ah adding a third or fourth service, it’s probably a little bit too late, but we should probably get on it sooner than later.
Aaron Stanski — And then, you know, one of the, one of the other things too, is just kind of paying attention. It’s easy for us on Sundays to stand on the stage and look out and get a pretty good sense of, are there enough seats? Is there space for me here? And like, we look out and we see some empty chairs.
Aaron Stanski — Keep in mind that when you’re coming in from the back of the auditorium, it’s a lot harder to see some of those empty chairs.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And so what is the percentage? But the other thing is the things that we’re not seeing when more when we’re on stage on Sunday is we’re not seeing the parking lot. We’re not seeing the early childhood wing that’s basically a it’s a it’s a disaster back there. There’s kids running around like crazy.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Aaron Stanski — And so even if we’re ah even if we have enough seats, like or we’re not at the 80 or 90 percent capacity to our primary service. We need to be looking out at some of these other areas and making sure that there’s not a lid somewhere else.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. In fact, I literally just last weekend said that to a church. I was, you know, I was doing a weekend visit where I was on site and all that stuff. And, and it, to me, it felt like the building, the parking, and the kids, and the main auditorium, they, or the adult auditorium, they just didn’t match. It was like they, the three were out of alignment. And I think they had enough kids, but you know, I don’t know. There was, it’s interesting how that can happen. And you know the lead pastor typically is seeing um only the adult room and not you know not anything else.
Rich Birch — Early on, you know there’s my experience has been and projects that have been a part of that I would rather spend money as personally as a leader. I’m not saying, friends, if you’re listening in, that you need to necessarily do this.
Rich Birch — I would rather spend money on the front end with a designer like you. Because because the joke I’ve made is it’s a lot cheaper to move walls on drawings than it is in in the real world. And I’ve that comes from pain of building stuff…
Aaron Stanski — It’s true. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …of building stuff, and then being literally I opened up a new facility and then stood there with a kids ministry person. And the kids ministry person was like, oh, I didn’t think it was going to look like this. I was like, oh my goodness, what what are you talking about?
Aaron Stanski — Shoot.
Rich Birch — Like, we just opened this new facility. Talk us through, like, what’s an investment on the front end to reach out to someone like you?
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — How do you help churches see that hiring someone like you can actually save us resources in the long haul? Talk us through that.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, starting out at the beginning and getting really clear about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, it really helps us, you know, cart and like make sure we don’t overbuild or underbuild.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — It makes sure that like compared to all the other churches that we’re working with all over the country, that we’re in alignment with where the square footage is at and it’s aligned with how you do ministry locally, how you use these spaces seven days a week.
Aaron Stanski — And so it’s it’s really making sure that we’re not overbuilding or underbuilding anywhere because that’s ah you know that’s a huge that’s a huge miss if we do that. And that’s probably one of the biggest cost savings.
Aaron Stanski — The other thing is you know during you know during sort of that season of vision and master planning and when we’re talking to our folks about what God’s doing at the church and we’re telling stories of life change, like we’re really kind of laying out a vision for what God is calling us to do as a ministry. And people just naturally have questions around like, like, how is this going to help? And and how is this actually going to help us reach my lost coworker, my lost neighbor?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And, and so I think, you know, spending the time to do that, really translating sort of the mission and vision into physical space needs and producing some of those renderings that accompany that story. I mean, that’s just a really critical part.
Rich Birch — Okay, so let’s double click on that. That’s that I feel like I have been caught in this situation where I get I get like, it’s the hammer and nail thing you you say. Like, I’m I’m pretty sure I know what the solution is.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like, let’s go do this. And I like that what you’re saying is like, hey, we need to take a step back and like actually think through how does this fit in our vision and how’s that all? How do you actually do that? How do you help a leadership team discern what the problem is that they’re really needing to solve, or should be solving, rather than just let’s build a bigger box. Or, I know! We just need 25 new parking spots. Like how do we not jump too quickly to that? What’s that look like?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, it looks like, you know, spending time.
Rich Birch — Good.
And and, really getting to know them and what makes them unique. Like we have a fantastic set of tools that we use at Risepointe to like really talk about, you know, let’s talk about, uh, outside the walls, right? Like who, who are we called to reach? And, and what does it mean to do ministry in this place that God has uniquely put your church in the geographic area?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And let’s talk about the tension between this side of town and that side of town. And let’s, you know, let’s wrestle with, you know, some of those issues. And then let’s, and then let’s talk about like, like, man, who are we as a church on our best day? And what does it feel like when we’re like living up to our full potential?
Aaron Stanski — And then we even get into some of the things around like, man, what are what are some of the strategic drivers? What’s driving more people hearing about Jesus? What’s working really well? What do you see as opportunities or things that where if you had the right leader or finances that you’d be able to you know, accomplish even more of your mission.
Aaron Stanski — And so by starting there and then starting to work down towards, okay, where is your facility aligned with that with that exercise and where is it misaligned? Okay, let’s unpack that a little bit. And then without getting into ah the solution yet, I want to meet like individually with each you know ministry leader…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — …talk about what how check-in works and all of those things.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And so it’s really sort of this almost like a 360 review of what’s happening between the mission and vision God’s given us, and how are our facilities helping or hindering that mission and vision.
Aaron Stanski — And then it just comes down to budget. And so, okay, here are the possible solutions. Here’s what roughly what some of those things are going to cost. And then it’s going to the, going to God in prayer and saying, okay, what are you calling us to do? What are based on these options and trying to figure it out?
Rich Birch — I want I want to come back to the budget question in a second. But I’ve I think I probably have stole this off you. I have said to multiple church leaders that like our buildings were built, there was like a philosophical underpinning of the the buildings that we were built with. There was a ministry model that they were built on.
Aaron Stanski — Sure. Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then there’s been a lag between when we made those decisions, we’ve we built them. Now we’ve been using them for X number of years. And our ministry model may no longer be the same as the building, or probably isn’t actually the same as when the building was built.
Rich Birch — What’s your sense on how long that lag time is kind of between the, they they you know, we built something. If we built something more than 10 years ago, you know we probably want to readdress or look at our facilities afresh and say does this actually meet the needs of…
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — Because I feel like so many of us are in like the the cramped shoes that just don’t quite fit they work but they don’t quite fitWhat do you think that lag time is?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, the lag time is getting shorter and shorter.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Aaron Stanski — It used to be, you know, it probably used to be 40 or 50 years…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …you know, without major ministry model shifts and stuff. Obviously, you know, Willow Creek, North Point, you know, coming onto of the scene in the in the late 90s and stuff really shifted. We have churches all the way up into the 2000s, even into the 2010s that sort of copied the model of the Willow Creeks and some of those things. And I think we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing the model shifting a lot faster now.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Aaron Stanski — I’d say, you know, you know, we’re probably in a faster 10 to 20 year cycle, something like that. But I think we’re coming out of the, you know, the, you know, that model of Willow Creek and North Point and stuff. And we’re, we’re moving into a new season. And it’s kind of exciting for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — I mean, we get to, we get to sit on the front edge of all of that. Churches like in fantastic places, being creative, reaching, you know, people for Christ. And so it’s just interesting to kind of observe some of those things and, um and observe what’s working really well and, and where it we can improve, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re baiting me. What are those things that you’ve seen that have shifted? There’s got to be, or is that the magic? We got to call Aaron to find out.
Aaron Stanski — No, you don’t have to call Aaron. No, I mean, the thing, I mean, like, you know, I heard someone share this with me recently, right? I mean, every Netflix account homepage is different for every person, all billion subscribers or whatever that they have.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — They’re individually tailored to to those individuals. And I know that because when I had a bunch of seventh grade boys spend the night at my house, like my algorithm got so messed up on my Netflix account last weekend.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Aaron Stanski — But I think there is a shift away from you know some of the bigger, more institutional types of look and feel and trying to get down to, okay, how are we engaging one-on-one with people who are walking in and where they’re at.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — How do we, you know, instead of preach a sermon at them, how do we hear their story? And what does it look like for us to hear their story in in various places, whether that’s a welcome center, whether that’s, ah you know, side by side in the pew, whether that’s in sort of a first steps class. And so there’s a shift on that side of things…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s interesting.
Aaron Stanski — …just like as we look at the next generation and how we engage and reach the next generation.
Rich Birch — Okay, I want to loop back on the money question. So for folks that don’t know, a part of what I do is actually help churches with that. And don’t really talk about it publicly, but I do. And, you know, there is this interesting tension that churches often come to this. It’s like we think we’re different than our ourselves.
Rich Birch — And that if I was going to go build a new house, I would have to start with, well, how much income do I have? And like, what can the, you know, what can the, you know, what what would the what would the bank give me from a mortgage point of view? Like I start with reality around my finances. But so many churches start with, let’s build this giant thing. And it’s totally disconnected from the from what we could actually afford to either raise or carry long-term.
Rich Birch — How much variance can a church bring to a design? Like if they upfront are defining, Hey, like we can afford probably 5 million. I know I’ve got $35 million dollars in dreams or maybe not. That’s, that’s too crazy. I got $15 million dollars in dreams. Is it possible for me to, to actually get that into a tighter box? Help us understand how do we do that? How do we on the front end be realistic with our finances as we’re doing this design thing?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think we have to with open hands, we have to hold out the, you know, the dreams, the vision, you know, the stuff that God’s given us. And we have to prayerfully sort of go through that exercise and say, okay, ah but how much risk do I want to introduce into the organization, like via debt?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — What what is God actually calling us to do with those things? And we have to be creative in how we and and how we get across the finish line. I think when I when I hear sometimes a senior pastor sharing with me his $35 million dollars vision, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Aaron Stanski — …what I immediately try to do is say, okay, talk to me about what it is about that $35 million dollar thing that’s resonating with you.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And so even though he’s describing something that’s $35 million, dollars and as an architect, I might get really excited about drawing $35 million dollars worth of stuff.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — If he actually can’t afford it and can’t raise it, he’s actually not going to go do it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — So I need to go back to that vision and say, okay, what are the pieces in there that are from God, that are ah that are aligned with the mission that his church has and stuff? And I need to contextualize that. And then as an architect, as a designer, I have to turn around and say, okay, with my guardrails in place of budget and scope, how do I express those things…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — …in the $5 million dollars that God has entrusted our church with? And so there’s going to be a lot of difficult decisions along the way. We’re going to have to prioritize some things. And some other things might have to go on the back burner. But that’s the process that we want to help churches walk through um to to get them to that point where they’re walking into a space for the first time and going, oh, man, this feels like us. Like this is this is who God wants us to be in our community. And I’m so excited about doing ministry in this new space.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So it’s it’s not, from what I hear you saying, it’s not unreasonable on the front end to be like, hey, we should actually bring, like, be clear on this is this is what we think we can actually raise. This is that what we think we can carry. We think we could do a project of X, whatever. And that needs to be early on in the discussion rather than we’re disappointed on the back end. Oh my goodness, we got this this big number and we don’t know what to do with it.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I like to be doing it simultaneously. I like to be doing the Needs Analysis and working through, okay, here’s the eight different project options. You can relocate and spend $35 million. You can add on. You can you can do this. All right, here’s your here’s your four options, $10, $8, $6, $4 million dollars And at the same time, I like to encourage churches to like, okay, go talk to someone like yourself…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — …and say, okay, what do we think we could raise if we did a capital campaign? How much debt do we currently have? How do our elders feel about us you know borrowing some money if it if it makes a bigger impact on the project? Because if we can bring those two things together and pray through it and get clarity from God about what he’s asking us to do, then I can go ah help draw buildings and blueprints and things like that. Rich, you can help them raise some money and they and we can you know we can go through that process.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah, it’s great. And you know, my experience has been every one of those steps, friends, is, it’s a lot of work. It’s, it’s like a, it’s a faith ah stretching experience. There are late, late nights staring at the ceiling, but every one of those I’ve been a part of, literally 100% of them have been transformative in the life of the church. You know, when they, when you look back, you’re like, wow, that was an inflection point. I am so glad we went through that. It wasn’t this like we did that and I was like, man, that wasn’t such so good in the end. It was really was amazing.
Rich Birch — Well, there’s a resource that you’ve provided. It’s called 10 Things to Get ah Right Before You Build. Talk to us about this resource and then and then where can where can we want to make sure people get this. Tell us tell us a little bit about this.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, like with, you know, church, hundreds of churches calling us, you know, every year, asking a lot of the questions that we’ve talked about today. Like we tried to distill down what are the most common things the churches are like, okay, pause real quick. I got to go do something real fast before we decide that we can sort of move forward. And so some of these things are what happens like while you’re talking to Risepointe and some of these things might be before. But I think it’s just kind of a helpful reminder and ah a thoughtful list to kind of work through.
Aaron Stanski — And so if that’s helpful at all, or if that’s interesting at all, um you can just go to risepointe.com/unseminary. And a little ah little landing page will pop up there. There’s two things you can do on that page. The first one is to just give us your name and your email there and sign up and get that 10 things to download.
Aaron Stanski — I also threw another button on there this morning in case you’re like, hey, that sounds great, but I’ve got I’ve got a specific question I have about our building. Or like, I actually really need to talk to you guys about what our options are. And so I put another button down there at the bottom. If you want to schedule a call with myself or one of our architects, we’d love to hop on the phone with you. No charge for that. 30 minutes. Just kind of talk through where you’re at, what some of your questions are and see if we might be able to help. So ah once again, that’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And you can get all that, all that stuff right there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And friends, I’ve had multiple friends in ministry who have engaged with with Aaron across the entire spectrum. The like free 30 minute thing all the way up through, you know, the kind of full deal, help get a whole project out the door. And and just so happy with the work that Risepointe does. And just has been transformative for their churches. So you get a hearty endorsement from me. You really should do that. Again, that’s just risepointe.com/unseminary. You can pick this up. It is a helpful little PDF, and the schedule call is a great thing.
Rich Birch — Well, Aaron, I appreciate you being here today.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — If people want to track with you guys or if they’re anywhere else online, obviously risepointe.com. We want to send them to anywhere else online. We want to we want to send them to.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can always, uh, you know, follow us on the Insta or whatever you want to do there.
Rich Birch — Nice. Love it.
Aaron Stanski — If you’re into like, you know, cool pictures of like steel being erected, ah or, uh, kids ministry stuff or pictures and stuff, we’re trying to share a little bit more info there. But yeah, I mean, or just our website and, uh, yeah, stay connected.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Thanks for being here and have a good day, buddy.
Aaron Stanski — All right, you too. Bye.
Leading with Clarity: Lessons from Atlanta Mission’s Tensley Almand
Nov 27, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tensley Almand, President and CEO of Atlanta Mission, the largest and longest-running provider of services for people experiencing homelessness in the Atlanta metro area. Founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen during the Great Depression, Atlanta Mission now operates four campuses, serving over 800 men, women, and children nightly through programs that provide housing, recovery support, and Christ-centered transformation.
How do you lead through complexity while staying true to your calling? Tensley shares leadership lessons from his transition from church ministry to leading a $20 million nonprofit—insights that apply to every pastor or church leader navigating growth, complexity, or change.
Moving beyond shelter to transformation. // While many think of Atlanta Mission as only an emergency shelter, over 60% of its beds are dedicated to long-term transformational programs that address root causes of homelessness. The yearlong program includes counseling, trauma recovery, life skills, and vocational training. Clients complete a four-week “Next Steps” program focused on relational, emotional, and workplace health. The results are remarkable: 70% of graduates maintain stable housing and employment a year later.
Learning to lead by listening. // When Tensley stepped into his CEO role, he faced the challenge of succeeding a leader who had guided the organization from crisis to stability. Rather than arriving as the expert, Tensley began as what he calls the “Chief Question Officer.” He met with every employee to ask four key questions: What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s missing? What’s confusing? The responses revealed a clear need for strategic focus.
Building clarity and focus. // Using that input, Tensley led a yearlong process to create a strategic roadmap—a seven-year plan that defines the organization’s mission, values, and measurable outcomes. When there’s clarity in an organization, saying ‘no’ becomes easy and saying ‘yes’ becomes difficult. The new strategy gave Atlanta Mission a unified framework for decision-making, with every initiative measured against the same mission.
Measuring what matters. // Data fuels care. In order to better track client progress, the team at Atlanta Mission built dashboards, measuring not only how many people they serve but how lives are changing. When graduation rates dipped from 70% to 45%, they discovered the cause wasn’t program failure but economic change. That same approach can transform church leadership. Churches measure nickels and noses, but what if we measured progression—how many first-time guests become group members, or how many volunteers grow into leaders?
Partnership through presence. // Atlanta Mission thrives through partnerships with churches across the city. Tensley explains that relational poverty—people lacking healthy connections—is as debilitating as material poverty. Rather than only focusing on “do for” service projects, he encourages churches to create “be with” opportunities: hosting birthday parties, sharing meals, or building relationships with families at Atlanta Mission.
Encouragement for leaders. // Reflecting on his own journey, Tensley reminds church leaders who feel stretched or uncertain that often you’ll overestimate what you can accomplish in 90 days, but underestimate what you can do in a year or two. Take time to listen, build unity, and stay faithful in the process. Over time, that faithfulness becomes transformation—both in the people you lead and in yourself.
To learn more about Atlanta Mission, visit atlantamission.org or email to connect or schedule a visit.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a real honored to have an incredible guest on today’s episode. We’ve got Tensley Almand with us. He is the president and CEO of Atlanta Mission.
Rich Birch — Now, if you don’t know Atlanta Mission, I’m not sure where you’ve been. You really should know. This organization was founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen to feed men who were displaced by the Great Depression. And they just keep chugging along. They do incredible work. They now serve Metro Atlanta’s largest homeless population and bring hope in the face of homelessness, poverty, and addiction.
Rich Birch — Prior to serving at Atlanta Mission, he was in vocational ministry for 20 plus years, the last 12 of those, as we were just saying in the pre-call. He said, felt like he had the the best job in the world, was a lead pastor at Decatur City Church, one of the eight Atlanta City, Atlanta area campuses of North Point Ministries. Tensley, welcome. So glad you’re here.
Tensley Almand — Man, so good to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.
Rich Birch — No, this is going to be good. I’m excited. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit more of your background and tell us a bit more about Atlanta Mission, that kind of thing. Just help set the table.
Tensley Almand — Yeah, so I’m a native Atlantan. I grew up here, born and raised just north of the city. Yeah. Only child. Parents still live north of the city in the same town that I grew up in.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Tensley Almand — My wife and I, we have four kids. We have been married now, just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary…
Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s great.
Tensley Almand — …which makes me feel old, but it’s it’s it’s all good. So four kids, three boys, little girl, they’re all just amazing, doing great things and in their worlds. We live over in city of Decatur. So ah for those that don’t know, just kind of just right outside of downtown Atlanta. So we feel like we’re living in the heart of the city.
Rich Birch — Cool.
Tensley Almand — Like you said, I spent 20 plus years on the church side of ministry, which you had told younger me that that was going to be my future, I probably would have laughed at you. Grew up in a family that church just frankly, wasn’t that important to us. My mom gets mad if I say I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, um, which, you know, looking back, I think is really true. I just grew up in a home that we didn’t feel like the church was for us.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so, um, after, you know, meeting Jesus in college, giving my life to him, which is a whole nother really cool story, started down the path towards ministry. And eventually several years into that kind of looked up and thought, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like I’m working at these churches that I don’t even want to attend.
Tensley Almand — Like remember this very pivotal meeting in my life where our pastor asked us, he’s like, if I didn’t pay you to go to church here, is this the church you would attend?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — And every one of us said no.
Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness.
Tensley Almand — And they were all okay with it.
Rich Birch — Oh, no.
Tensley Almand — And I just like something broke in me.
Rich Birch — Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah.
Tensley Almand — And I remember going home and I told my wife, I was like, I can’t do this anymore.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so I started the process of just trying to find a job. But the problem is I’ve genuinely felt called by God to ministry. And so God used that to, to lead us down the path of starting Decatur City Church. And, um, our whole dream was just to create a church that people who didn’t like church would love to attend.
Tensley Almand — And so, which is really cool. Again, it’s probably a whole other episode, but really cool because we got to do that in one of the most unchurched cities in Atlanta. 70% of the people who live in Decatur ah don’t go to a church. And Decatur, for those who don’t know, small little town right outside of a big city.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — But literally, there’s over 600 churches in that town. So we used to say all the time, nobody wakes up on Sunday wondering where a church is. They just wake up wondering if church is for them.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Tensley Almand — And so that’s, that’s the thing we tried to solve. Right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so did that for 12 years, thought I would do that with my whole life. Just an amazing season. And then God called me out of there to Atlanta Mission. And so for those who don’t know, and we can get into that story here if you want to, but, for those who don’t know, Atlanta mission, like you said, it’s the largest and longest running provider of services…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — …for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness in our city. So for perspective, what that means is on any given night, we’ll have about 800 men, women, or children who are staying with us.
Tensley Almand — It represents that in our city, that represents about 35 to 40% of all the shelter beds in Atlanta.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Tensley Almand — So that’s, it’s a, it’s pretty remarkable opportunity that we do that across three campuses in downtown Atlanta.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tensley Almand — One for men, two for women and children.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — And then we have this really cool drug and alcohol addiction facility out near Athens, which is about an hour outside of town, on 550 acre farm that is just beautiful ah for men who are in recovery from addiction.
Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness. Huh.
Tensley Almand — So yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s, that’s incredible. i’m I’m glad you started with the kind of community size that you’re you’re serving. That’s, that’s amazing. Give me a sense of the operation from like a, you know, total number of staff, other kinds of metrics. Like I’m just trying to, I know, you know, you’re not a kind of person that’s going to brag about that kind of stuff, but just trying to help people kind of place, because this is a significant operation, friends. Atlanta Mission is it’s a world-class organization doing great work and honored to have you on this the show. But people might not be ah kind of aware of the the scale of it. Give us a bit more sense of that.
Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a good question. I appreciate you asking. Cause yeah, I definitely don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t like going there, but…
Rich Birch — Yes. And it’s even just, it’s a funny thing to, it’s a funny thing to even like, it’s like, well, we’re really good. It’s like, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s a tough thing you’re doing. So it’s like, man, it’s a weird thing to kind of try to but get ah your arms around. How, how do we talk about this? Yeah.
Tensley Almand — Yeah. So let me kind of give you scope and then let me talk a little bit about what we’re doing. So scope is ah we’re we’re about a $20 million dollars a year organization.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Tensley Almand — And so just like every church out there, that means, you know, we start July as the start of our fiscal year and we start at zero…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tensley Almand — …and then we go and raise $20 million dollars…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …to meet the need of our expenses. And we do that through mainly private and and corporate donations. And so…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tensley Almand — …we’re almost a hundred percent privately funded this year.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Tensley Almand — We, we, we took our very first government grant.
Rich Birch — Huh.
Tensley Almand — But I mean, it’s a $250,000 grant, which is not insignificant, but on the scope of 20 million. So that kind of gives everybody an idea. So you’re talking about, uh, you know, thousands of donors who come alongside of us to partner with us, which is just amazing.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.
Tensley Almand — We serve about 800 men, women, and children, like I said,
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — And we have right at about 180 staff…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — …who are who are either you know full-time equivalents basically here with us. And that’s across four different campuses. So we’re essentially like a multi-site operation. So I’m sitting here at my office today, which is basically our mission support center.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — So your accounting, HR, development team, all of your infrastructure, and we support the work that’s happening all over our city.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And then we also have three thrift stores across Northeast Georgia that’s included in that head count.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — And so a little bit of that 20 million that I was telling you about that that revenue comes from sales as well. And so, so yeah, it’s pretty broad organization. And then what we do, a lot of people think about you know Atlanta Mission, especially here in our city, and they just think emergency shelter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — Certainly what we do. But of those 800 beds, roughly only 40% of those go towards emergency shelter. And so if you…
Rich Birch — Oh, really? OK.
Tensley Almand — Yeah. And so if you show up at our door and you just need safety, security, stability, um, you’re just trying to like get off the street…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …we have a program called Find Hope…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tensley Almand — …and it’s a 30-day program. You can stay with us rent free 30 days. You know, bed meals, showers, really, really, really, really low expectation on those clients.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — It’s just like, hey, we’re here to meet your needs.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Tensley Almand — The other 60% of our beds go towards what we call our transformational model…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tensley Almand — …where we provide complete wraparound services. It’s about a year long program.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — You show up and we’re going to try to help you get healthy relationally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, vocationally. We’ve got counselors, we’ve got advocates, we’ve got social workers. You have a whole team…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …that works with you, walks with you for a year…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — …depending on really your core traumas, what’s caused your homelessness. And our main goal, our mission is to transform through Christ the lives of those who are experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction.
Tensley Almand — And so what we want to do, what that means to us is over the course of that year, Um, we want to give you the tools to identify your traumas, understand those traumas and ultimately break the cycles so that you don’t ever have to come back to our doors again. We we tell our clients, we love you, but we don’t ever want to see you again. Like this is just like, like, how do we…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. This was a phase of your life, hopefully, right?
Tensley Almand — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s the goal.
Tensley Almand — How do we end that for you? And so our program goes through all the counseling, all the services, and it wraps up in a vocational training program we call Next Steps that…
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.
Tensley Almand — …that gives our clients the soft skills they need to not just get a job. Because here’s here’s what’s really cool. You you would get this. Our clients are really good at getting jobs. But like so many people out there, we’re terrible at keeping a job.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Yes.
Tensley Almand — Like people don’t know the skills needed to like keep a job. Like how do you manage conflict?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Tensley Almand — What do you do with that boss who’s just overbearing? How do you have normal workplace conversations?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — And so we have a ah four week training program that gives our clients those skills. And what we’re finding is that for the clients who go all the way through our program, 70% of those who graduate our program, they still have a house or a living situation a year later.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — And they are maintaining that job a year later.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible.
Tensley Almand — And so it’s just been a remarkable, remarkable journey. And so we’ve got some transitional housing in there…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tensley Almand — …where you graduate our program, you stay with us, we help you save up and and we help you find an apartment. And then when you’re ready financially and you’re you’re stable, we help you move into that that apartment.
Tensley Almand — And what’s really cool, probably one of my favorite things is for alumni is that year after you graduate, you get a retention coach with us and they walk with you. And they just help you navigate life because, man, when you’ve stayed somewhere for a year and then you kind of come back in and you’re like, oooh, the pressures of the world are on me. That first year is so tough.
Rich Birch — So hard. Yeah.
Tensley Almand — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, that’s cool. I appreciate you sharing that. and And yeah, even church leaders that are listening in, um man, ah there whether if you’re in the Atlanta area, you definitely should reach out to Atlanta Mission.
Rich Birch — But even in your neighborhood, like there are, this is why you shouldn’t be trying to invent this yourself as a church. There are these are incredibly complex issues that you know when I heard all of the the different things you’re doing to surround people, try to help them, um that’s that’s inspiring. That’s amazing.
Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to pivot and talk about kind of your experience as you’ve transitioned in, like some try to extract some leadership lessons. It’s been said that one of the first things that leaders do is define reality or gain clarity for their for their organization.
Rich Birch — When you first started early on in your role, what were you listening for or look for that told you, maybe there’s some areas here that just aren’t very clear? What did you see as you were, you know, we got to bring some more clarity in the organization? Were there things you kind of saw that that made you think, oh, we maybe this is some areas we need to gain some better clarity as an organization?
Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, every leadership transition is different. One of the advantages I had is that what my predecessor was leaving me was so much different than what he inherited.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — And so he inherited an organization that was in crisis. He handed me an organization that was thriving. But, that organization really was, and he was, and it’s it’s all kind of wrapped up in our story, is that it was time for him to retire. It was time for him to move on. And so the whole organization was asking what’s next. And so that’s, that’s one advantage I had is that there was this collective, like, well, like what what is next for us? That was helpful.
Tensley Almand — The other advantage I had, and I did not think this was an advantage. But, you know, I, I came out of church ministry. I didn’t know how to lead a nonprofit. I didn’t know anything about homelessness.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — Tensley Almand — I didn’t know much about social services. And so, yeah I truly believe God called me into this, but I couldn’t come in like an expert.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so I literally was forced to, my I tell people my door said CEO, but I think I was really the chief question officer. I mean, my my first year…
Rich Birch — Help me understand. Help me understand.
Tensley Almand — …was, yeah, asking questions. I can I can vividly remember our clinical director coming into my office and saying, hey, we’ve got this massive clinical decision that we need to make and there’s this and this and this. And you know and then like trying to leave that way. What do you think we should do? And I’m like… you’re the clinical director. Like, what do what do you mean?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — But that was again, and this is and he would say this if he was sitting here, my predecessor had an organization that was in crisis. And so every decision had to center on him. And I needed to come in and teach our team how to have a decentralized leadership. How like, hey, look you’re the clinical director I’m going to support you, I’m to remove obstacles for you. But if I have to make clinical decisions, we’re we’ve got a really big problem because I’m not qualified to make that decision.
Tensley Almand — And so um really pushing leadership down…
Rich Birch — yeah
Tensley Almand — …asking a lot of questions, understanding what we do. And so that was that was a huge advantage that that i think a lot of people probably, they can like I did, they they think about the things that are stacked against them. To me, it’s like you don’t know anything about the space. That’s a big obstacle.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — Well, maybe lean into those obstacles because it’s a really good way to to get underneath the hood. And so it forced me to ask questions, forced me to listen. And then what I did is I I truly went on a just a listening tour.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — I set up a meeting, I think, with every employee of our organization.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Tensley Almand — And I asked everybody what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what’s confusing.
Rich Birch — Huh.
Tensley Almand — And I still have that notebook.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — I mean, my assistant like cataloged answers for days.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And what was so cool to me was that without having the same language, almost everybody in the organization identified the same rights, wrongs, missings and confusions. And so I was able to then take that and really come back to our senior team and say, hey, what should we do about this? Like we all…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — We all agree this is a problem. like What should we do do? And I think a colleague of mine, I remember walking into his office and he had this drawing on his board. I’m like, what is what is that? He’s like, well, is how I feel about our organization. I remember it was ah it was a circle.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — And all the arrows were pointed in every direction around the circle. And he’s like, that’s us. Like, we’ve got the right idea…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …but everybody’s pulling in a hundred directions to try to figure out how to do that idea.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — and I said, man, we need to take that circle and get all those arrows on one side. Cause if we can collectively pull… and that just kind of became our quest. And so we took all those answers and, you know, basically the the big thing was, um you know, and I don’t know where I learned this, but I feel like when there’s clarity in an organization, ‘no’ is really easy and ‘yes’ is is really difficult. It’s like really easy to say no.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — And what I found at Atlanta Mission was we were just saying yes to everything. And the reason we were saying yes to everything is because there was no strategy, there was no clarity.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — And so we took that first year and a half, wrote our strategic plan, identified who we want to be and why we want to be that. And then what would it look like to be that organization? And so we just kind of built it backwards. And that’s the journey we’ve been on now for the last four years since I’ve been here.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s, ah yeah, that’s incredible. I love that that feeling. In fact, i I took over a nonprofit ah kids camp and much smaller scale than what you’re running. But I remember those early days where there yeah people are looking at you and and and there is this sense of like, okay, so like you got to tell us where we’re going. What is the thing we’re doing next? Like and it’s easy to like… the easy thing is, let’s try this. Let’s try that. Let’s do a bunch of different things. And that can lead to that pulling, those hundred different, you know, it’s lots of activity, but it’s not focused.
Tensley Almand — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And trying to get everybody on a kind of a shared page of or shared picture of what the future looks like, man, that’s great through this, this process of kind of we’re going to do a strategic plan over a year. What, what would you, what would you say to a leader that is feeling the pressure of like, Hey, I want to define the future now, as opposed to that feels like a step back. We’re going to year and a half and define this stuff. What would you say to a leader? Why should we slow down? Talk us through why that, how that benefited now that you’re on the other side of all that.
Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is it’s it’s totally worth it. I mean, it it was hard. It was challenging. It it does feel like a step back. But I don’t know how to step forward without without clarity, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And that’s, you said at the beginning, I got to ah got to be one of the campus pastors at North Point Community Church for years. I can remember Andy always saying, The beauty of North Point wasn’t that we got to start with a blank page, just that we started on the same page.
Rich Birch — That’s good
Tensley Almand — And I just think that like that, that is always set with me. And so when I when I started here, I realized like, hey, I don’t I don’t get the luxury of a blank page. I mean, this organization has been around since 1938. You know, when I when I started Decatur City, it was so easy because I just told everybody what we were doing and why we were doing it and there was nothing else we were doing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so it was just like… But here it’s like, OK, if I can’t get to a blank page, the best thing I can do is we’ve got to get on the same page…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …or else we’re just we’re going to spin our tires. And, and you know, I think I’ll I’ll this story probably sums it up and maybe somebody can relate to this. I have a monthly breakfast with our board chair and our vice chair. And the very first breakfast I went to in this role, it was my predecessor’s last breakfast and my first. And so we’re all so it’s him, it’s me and it’s a board chair a vice chair, all of which have been around this organization 3x the amount of time I had at that point, I had been there like three days.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Couple weeks.
Tensley Almand — And and we got this email the night before the breakfast, and it was from a developer. And they were offering $14 million dollars for the piece of property that my office sits on, which is a widely underused piece of property…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …that we’ve always kind of wrestled with, like, what do we do with this thing?
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — $14 million dollars.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — That’s almost our entire year’s budget.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — And I remember showing up to this breakfast with this LOI and I asked the question, should we take it or should we not?
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And nobody could answer my question.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Tensley Almand — Nobody knew if it was a good idea to take $14 million dollars or to walk away from $14 million dollars
Rich Birch — And if that group doesn’t know, nobody else in the organization is going to know, right?
Tensley Almand — And that’s exactly what I said. I was like, if you don’t know, and I don’t know…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, exactly.
Tensley Almand — …nobody knows.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Tensley Almand — And so I started with that small group and I said, hey, would you give me the freedom to to take however long it takes for us to make sure we can answer that question?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Tensley Almand — And so in our first board meeting, I raised my hand and I just said, hey guys, I know I’m new, I know I just started. But I shared the story and I said, hey, we have to be able to answer questions like this. Or we’re never going to get anywhere. We may do a lot of good things, but we are going to have no idea if we did the best thing.
Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. That’s good. So kind of double clicking on that, continuing to kind of focus in on this. You know, there are churches, organizations that will do the strat plan or roll. We go away for the big retreat. We come up with the new value statements. It’s got great strategy on paper. But it doesn’t end up translating into practice. What are you doing at the mission to try to make sure that we’re going from that wasn’t just a great document that’s like in a nice book somewhere, but it’s actually rolling out. Maybe give us some examples of that. And what are those kind of rhythms, cadences, all that? How how are you making that happen?
Tensley Almand — Yeah, it’s wish I could really tell you we’re crushing it in this area. It’s this is a new habit for us.
Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Good.
Tensley Almand — And so we’re I’m four years in. We just finished our first full fiscal year under our new strategy. And so I can tell you what we’ve learned.
Rich Birch — Hey, that’s good. Yeah, good.
Tensley Almand — One, once you get it built you have to start small. We, I wish I could remember the exact number, I think as a senior team we committed and told our board we were going to do 392 new initiatives or something in year one, you know.
Rich Birch — Wow. Right.
Tensley Almand — And this is a seven-year plan…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — …we’re like we got almost for it and I think we got 100 through of the 392.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And we celebrated like crazy at the end of the year because it was like, that’s 100 things that were all in alignment that we’d never done before. We learned so much. So, start small.
Tensley Almand — The other thing is we built our plan. And I was I was very intentional about this because of what you just said. I did not want another notebook that was going to sit on my shelf. And so our strategic plan is really a strategic roadmap. And what I have told our board, what I’ve told our staff is I want an organization that knows how to think.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — And our our plan is really a roadmap for how we should think. It’s not overly prescriptive in necessarily what that means. Because it’s it’s designed to take us all the way through 2030.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — Well, I have no idea what’s going to happen between now and 2030.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Tensley Almand — But I do know that if what we said we want to accomplish, we’re accomplishing, however that looks, by 2030, we’re on the right track. And so that would be the other thing is just like, I would build, I wouldn’t make it so prescriptive that it tells you like, Hey, next week you’re doing this. And the week after… It needs to teach the organization how to think, how to act so that the person who’s brand new on the front line, if I’m not in the room, they don’t need to spend any time going like what, what would Tensley want me to do? They just, this is who we are as an organization. It’s how we think.
Tensley Almand — And then we at a senior level and then we pushed it all the way down to our organization. We built a meeting cadence around it.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Tensley Almand — And so we have our senior team meets once a week.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — That’s my six direct reports and plus my admin.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — And we, one, so we do that on Tuesday morning, one, the first Tuesday of the month is a strategy meeting. We talk all about the strategic plan. That’s like a, how how are you doing and your department doing towards what you said you were gonna do?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — And we have a dashboard to measure that against. And then the next Tuesday is an operations meeting. And it’s just like, hey, what are what are we working on? We can’t live at 50,000 feet all the time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — Let’s get down to 1,000 feet or whatever it is.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — And so we have that operations cadence. And then the third meeting is kind of like a catch-all, like, hey, what you know what needs to happen? And then our last meeting of the month is a monthly ministry review with the entire, not just my direct reports, but all the managers that sit under my direct reports.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool.
Tensley Almand — And they lead that meeting. I listen in that meeting. And I get to hear what’s happening at every campus, what’s going on. And I get to hear how people are implementing or not implementing the strategy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And then the very next meeting, if you’re keeping up, is then our strategy meeting.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — So then I’m like, hey…
Rich Birch — Here’s some stuff I heard.
Tensley Almand — …tell me more about this.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Tensley Almand — Or I didn’t hear like, Hey, I thought we were working on this. Why is that not happening? And so we have dashboards.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Tensley Almand — We’ve never had those before. We have data that we can follow. We have metrics we’ve identified as a, as a team, our wins. And so it’s like, Hey, how are we tracking towards those wins and just have created a layer of accountability that didn’t exist probably three years ago.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s talk a little bit more about the data thing. I’ve, or data thing. We, I’ve, I’ve said with younger leaders, you know, spreadsheets are the language of leadership. Like you’re going to have to get used to this stuff. This is just…
Tensley Almand — Yep.
Rich Birch — …this is how we care for people at scale is, is that is what it looks like. So data can either inspire or intimidate. How do you track outcomes? How do you, how do you how have you seen, you know, data over this last year actually change behavior and move things, improve care, better outcomes, all that kind of stuff. Talk us through what, cause you know, what we measure can get, can, you know, steer us in the wrong direction or steer us in the right direction. Help, help us think through that. As we’re thinking about what numbers should we pay attention to?
Tensley Almand — Yeah. So again, when I started, that was a big question I had. So if you were to look at our numbers, you would see that we serve, you know, let’s, these are rough, but right at about 3000 people a year come through our doors.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tensley Almand — Right. Which is huge.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tensley Almand — You’re like, man, that’s amazing. Well, then I, as I walk you through that, by the time you get to the end of our vocational training a year later, we may graduate like 400. And then 70% of those 400 are still doing well the the next year. And so, you know, on paper, you’re like, man, is that good?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Tensley Almand — Like that, that there’s a lot of attrition there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — Like should, is, is, are we fail… And that was, again, when I started, that was a question nobody could answer for me is, Hey, is that good?
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so even backing up before we built our strategy, our senior team spent so much time defining our outcomes. And we had all of these statements, you know, but it was like we want somebody to be healthy vocationally.
Tensley Almand — It’s like, okay, what does that mean? Crickets in the room.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — Wait, if you don’t know what it means and I don’t know what it means, does the person who’s leading that program know what it means? Better question: does the person who’s receiving our services know if they’ve actually achieved help in that area?
Tensley Almand — And so we went through, defined all of those terms so that there was a clear outcome to it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …so that we could then measure it. And then we built both a one-page dashboard that our senior team could look at at a high level. So I could I can open this dashboard on any Monday morning. It’s just in Tableau, so nothing super you know exciting.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Tensley Almand — And I can just see, i can see progression through our program. I can see healthy exits. We’ve defined what are healthy exits. I can see, ah you know, are people getting stuck? That was a big thing we were we were learning is like, people are just getting stuck in our program and we’re committing to somebody. You’re going to be at this phase of the program 30 days. Well, then they spend 60 days.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And what we were finding. We were, so this, this probably long winded way of saying this, but what we, we didn’t know what was happening or why it was happening and it felt good. But you know, you’re like, I don’t know.
Tensley Almand — And so what we were finding is it’s like, Hey, so that’s an example. Like, somebody gets stuck in our program. We promised them 30. It takes 60. All of a sudden, we were able to track that, hey, there’s a certain amount of fallout rate at this stage of the program. Why is that happening? Oh, people are stuck. They’ve been here too long.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — We got to fix that. And so it it enabled us to know what needed to be fixed and and not fixed.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Tensley Almand — And probably the the best real-time example of that is just recently. So I keep telling you the 70% number of graduates are successful. That’s kind of our historical data.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Tensley Almand — Well, this year, that number fell for the first time ever. It’s gotten better every year.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tensley Almand — This year it fell and it fell like dramatically. And this is one of those I don’t like to talk about it because it doesn’t look good.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Yes.
Tensley Almand — I mean, like it fell down to almost like 45, 50 percent.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Tensley Almand — You’re like, what’s happening?
Rich Birch — Almost inverse. Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Tensley Almand — Exactly. And so at first, you’re like, our program is no good. We got rewrite our program. Well, thankfully, we had been tracking all of the kind of whys and we understood what was happening in people’s lives. And what we have found out is no, like the economy shifted. You can’t get a job in 30 to 60 days anymore.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Tensley Almand — And so a gate in our program is when you graduate, you have 60 days to get a job. If you don’t get a job, you can’t move into our transitional housing because if we just allow you to stay, beds back up and then more people can’t get in.
Tensley Almand — Well, our clients then would stop taking our advice and stop waiting for a good job. And at day like 50, they would just go get that job that doesn’t pay well.
Rich Birch — Ohhh.
Tensley Almand — And they knew it wasn’t going to be a career builder job. It was just going to keep them sheltered.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Tensley Almand — And so it was our our like metrics were actually driving a behavior we didn’t like.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting.
Tensley Almand — And so we’re in the process now of like, hey, we’ve got to change this. The length of time it takes to get a job now takes longer. and
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — The job market’s more you know fierce right now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so we don’t want nothing against these types of jobs. We don’t necessarily want our client leaving to go get a job at McDonald’s
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — But for them, leaving it to go get a job at McDonald’s versus not having a place to stay, I’ll take the McDonald’s job…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Tensley Almand — …even though I know I’m only going to be there three months.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Tensley Almand — And so it was throwing off all of our numbers and it’s because we were incorrectly driving a behavior that we don’t want to drive. So.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s cool. That’s a great, very vivid example. And there’s lots of that in the church world. I know you I know you know that. There was a church I was doing some work with last year, large church, 10,000-person church. And they were we were talking one of the numbers I obsess with my clients over is documented first-time guests, the actual number of people that come every single weekend. And I was convinced that this church was just was missing a whole bunch of first time guests. And so they were telling me about how great their, their, their assimilation numbers were. They were like, Oh, this is so great. And I was like, I just don’t believe it. I’m like, because, because if you are not capturing the number of, of documented first time guests, then yeah and you’re comparing against half of what you probably actually have coming into your church, then then every number be below that, all your integration stuff looks twice as good as it actually is.
Tensley Almand — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And you know that that happens in lots of places across our numbers. We’ve got to get real clear and benchmark against other people.
Tensley Almand — If I could go back and if I could go back, no, no, it’s just, like I’ve often thought like, what would I do different if I was a church leader now?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good question.
Tensley Almand — And I would I would measure so much differently.
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting.
Tensley Almand — You know, historically we’ve measured nickels and noses, right? Like how much money’s coming in and how many people are sitting in the pews. But it’s like, those are important.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tensley Almand — I wouldn’t stop measuring them, but I would pay attention to like this. I would try to find a way to measure progression, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, 100%.
Tensley Almand — It’s like to your point how many first-time guests are you having okay well then of those first-time guests how many of them are actually moving to your small groups.
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.
Tensley Almand — Of those who moved your small groups do any of them ever volunteer like and and really understand the behaviors you want. And then measure to those behaviors and i think especially in a world where just church attendance looks so much so much different, we could gauge health of our churches so much more effectively if we were
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. I’d love to I’d love to kind of pivot for a few minutes in a slightly different direction.
Tensley Almand — Okay.
Rich Birch — So we have a lot of church leaders that are listening in and I’d love to understand how Atlanta Mission partners with churches. What does that look like? How do you work together? So specifically at Atlanta misha, and then what would you, Mission, and then what would you say to churches in general? Hey, um what advice would you give now that you’re on this side of the equation of actually partnering with an organization like Atlanta Mission? How can you be kind of the best partner? How do we what are what are people on your side of the table actually looking for from a church like ours? Because I’m sure there’s all kinds of stories of like, yeah, that didn’t work well. Talk us through what that looks like, partnerships specifically, and then kind of in general, how can we be better at that?
Tensley Almand — Yeah, and partnership is one of our pillars of our strategic plan. I think I think for nonprofits, especially when you’re large and you’re self-funded, you can it’s easy to get siloed. And we we fell into that category, not just with outside partners that wanted to come in and help us, but also with other service providers across the the, you know, continuum of care in our city. is It’s just it’s easy to kind of put your head down and do your own thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And so this is a huge emphasis for us, mainly because it’s really woven into the vision of our organization. Our organization is a community that’s united to end homelessness one person at a time. Well, I mean, it’s like partnership has to be built into that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, baked into it. Yeah.
Tensley Almand — So what who are we to then go get siloed? Like, that’s like, wow, you can’t even accomplish what you said you wanted to do. And so um we… I’ll back into this answer by telling you one of the things we’ve discovered at Atlanta Mission is that this isn’t this, you know, this isn’t novel, but, you know, material poverty, we all know is debilitating. Relational poverty is just as debilitating as material poverty.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Tensley Almand — And what we find with our clients is that almost 100 percent obviously are struggling with some version of material poverty, but they are just relationally broken and poor. They are void of healthy relationships. And so this is this is so much where partnership comes in, because we we literally have a metric that we track of how many healthy contacts does a client have in their phone before they graduate our program. And what we were finding is I mean we were their only healthy contact.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Tensley Almand — And it’s wait this is this is not good. And this is such a great place for churches to partner with us because we have so many opportunities that we just call we call them “be with” opportunities there’s like there’s “do for” service projects but there’s also “be with” service projects. And they’re just designed for you to establish healthy community with our clients, build relationships, throw a birthday party for somebody…
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Right.
Tensley Almand — …have a Christmas party at one of our shelters. Come, you know, we’re moving into the holiday season, you know, come and build gingerbread houses together with our kids who are staying with us and just create an hour in somebody’s life that’s normal.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — And I feel like churches are better at this than anybody. Our corporate partners are fantastic at the “do for” projects. They can then come in and beautify our campuses in 30 minutes in a way that none of us can.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — You know, Home Depot comes in and it’s like, we’re going to transform your landscape. Great. This is awesome.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Tensley Almand — I love it. But a church can come in and just be authentic and be real and be with our clients.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — And you would be amazed at how different somebody’s life looks after just that hour. And so, and I think that’s a huge thing. And then what I would tell churches, I think even as a church leader, I I probably overlooked how vital we were to nonprofits. You just you know, you think it’s an hour, but you know, even the day of, you know, you wake up that morning and you’re like, they don’t really need me. Like, I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — This is, am I not really going to make a difference? Yes, you are.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — You are going to make a huge difference. It is worth the hour. It is worth the drive.
Tensley Almand — And we we tell people all the time, and I’ve seen this in my own life. The thing that happens at Atlanta Mission is there’s always two stories of transformation happening. There’s the story of transformation that’s happening in a client’s life. But God transforms my life every day.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Tensley Almand — And it’s that’s the part I didn’t expect, Rich, is that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tensley Almand — …my life is being changed as much as anybody else’s. And so I would, I would tell a church, Hey, our clients need you. But you need this as well.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Tensley Almand — Like God’s going to do something in your life.
Tensley Almand — And then the other is just, um I think, especially for really big churches, it’s easy to think like, I bet they need my expertise. It’s like, actually, that’s not like. We need your partnership.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Tensley Almand — You know, we, we know how to do this. Come put wind in our sails.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah,
Tensley Almand — Come just serve, be a part of what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s super helpful. Love love that. Well, just as we’re coming to land, any kind of final words or encouragement you’d you’d say to church leaders that are listening in today that are, you know, wrestling with maybe clarity or wrestling with some of the stuff we’ve talked about today? This has been a really fruitful conversation. Thank you for it.
Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the, you know, probably the biggest thing I would say, and I have to tell myself this all the time. I mean, I’m an entrepreneurial type A. I’m going to like, you know, go conquer the world in a day is that, you know, remind yourself, you know, more than likely what you can accomplish in 90 days is nowhere near what you think it is, you know. But what you can accomplish in a year or two years is probably way more than you ever imagined you could.
Rich Birch — Right. So true Yeah, that’s good.
Tensley Almand — And so just again, kind of back to the strategy thing, it takes time. It’s messy. You know, you’re going to feel like, is this worth it? It creates conflict on your team. It feels uncomfortable. We were, we were joking as a senior team the other day. There was, it was about a year where I just, every Tuesday morning, I thought I want to cancel this meeting because I just didn’t enjoy, like we were just, we were at conflict because we were…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Tensley Almand — …hashing out who we are and why we exist and what are we going to do and why are we going to do it?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tensley Almand — But now it’s my favorite hour of the week. Like, I just love it. And so, you know, I would say that…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — …you know, and I think, yeah, I don’t know that I have anything, you know, much more.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tensley Almand — Yeah.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Well, I really appreciate being on the show today. Where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you or with Atlanta Mission? Where are the best places for us to send people online?
Tensley Almand — Probably the easiest place is just our website, atlantamission.org. You can find everything you want to about us. If you want to know more, you can email info@atlantamission.org. And that actually goes right to my assistant and we’ll get you connected to the right person. And you can, you know, next time you’re in town, you partner with us. You can help us. You can be happy to give you a tour, show you what we do.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Tensley. Appreciate you being here today.
Tensley Almand — Thanks.
From Scarcity to Multiplication: Lessons from a Prevailing Church with Jamie Barfield
Nov 20, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jamie Barfield, the Lead Pastor at Palmetto Pointe Church in South Carolina. Palmetto Pointe is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with four locations in South Carolina, a campus in Southern Illinois, and Spanish-language services reaching even more people.
Is your church in a season of slow growth or scarcity? Wondering how to stay faithful and creative when resources are tight? Tune in as Jamie shares powerful lessons from 18 years of ministry—how his team built a thriving, multiplying church by embracing perseverance, stewardship, and servant leadership.
The long road to growth. // Palmetto Pointe’s story is one of persistence and faithfulness. It took three years to break 100 in attendance, five years before Jamie drew a paycheck, and six before the church had its own building. Today the church averages 2,500 weekly attendees and continues to grow—up 31% last year alone. Jamie credits that perseverance to remembering the “why” behind ministry: reaching people with the message of Jesus Christ.
Stewardship over scarcity. // In the early years, Jamie says the constant feeling of “not enough”—not enough money, volunteers, or influence—could have been crushing. Instead, it shaped the church’s DNA around stewardship and innovation. Rather than throwing money at problems, the team learned to think creatively and maximize what God had already placed in their hands. That approach still drives their ministry today.
Faith that looks forward. // While rejecting the “name it and claim it” mindset, Jamie embraces faith-filled vision. Even when he doesn’t know how to get to big things, he continues to be faithful with what he has right now. This conviction shapes how he leads – every resource is treated as a seed that can grow if cultivated with faith and hard work.
Developing leaders intentionally. // One of Palmetto Pointe’s most distinctive practices is its 12-week leadership development process, a hands-on journey that every potential leader must complete before serving in a leadership role. Participants are recommended by current leaders and walk closely with Jamie throughout the course. During those 12 weeks, participants serve across multiple ministries and complete weekly assignments that build humility and discipline. Only after completing the program do they join the pool of eligible leaders.
Multiplying wisely. // As Palmetto Pointe has launched new services and campuses, Jamie has learned key lessons about healthy multiplication. Each expansion begins with identifying potential pain points, recruiting dedicated volunteers, and ensuring no one burns out. Before adding services, his team recruits a core group committed to that specific time slot for at least nine months.
Encouragement for church leaders. // As a district overseer, Jamie has a heart for pastors—especially those in smaller churches who feel stuck or discouraged. His advice: make one Sunday amazing. Pick one big day—Easter, Mother’s Day, or another big day—and go all in. Then pick one person and invest deeply in them. Small, faithful steps of stewardship often lead to exponential impact.
To learn more about Palmetto Pointe Church, visit palmettopointechurch.com or connect with Jamie on social media at @pastorjamieb.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad to have you tune in today. We’ve got a great conversation. Really looking forward to talking to a leader who I know you can learn from, talking about stuff that is really important as we think about our churches and think about the future. It’s our honor today to have Jamie Barfield with us. He is part of the leadership team at Palmetto Pointe Church. I don’t know why that’s stuck in my mouth coming out. Rich Birch — It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country with four locations in beautiful Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, a location in Southern Illinois and Spanish services as well. He’s an ordained bishop in the Church of God, serves as a district oh overseer for the Myrtle Beach and surrounding areas. He’s also served, he’s got a lot going on, in the State Evangelism Board for the Church of God in South Carolina. Welcome to the show, Jamie, a real expert on the show today. Appreciate you being here. Jamie Barfield — I don’t know about expert, but it is an honor to be here. I learned a lot from the school of hard knocks, so I will be definitely able to answer from that point point of view. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Palmetto Pointe is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Now multiple locations, which is we see that 73% of churches over 2000 have multiple locations. For leaders that don’t know the story, kind of give me the story of your church. Tell me a little bit of what’s going on. If it were to arrive this weekend, what would that look like? Jamie Barfield — Yeah, wild, wild story. 18 years. We just celebrated 18 years. Rich Birch — Congratulations. Jamie Barfield — Took us three years to ever break 100. Five years before I was ever getting a paycheck from the church. Rich Birch — Wow. Jamie Barfield — Six years before we ever had our own facility. Seven years before I ever had another staff member with me. Right before COVID hit, we were doing four services. And then obviously COVID shut everything down. And last year, God’s favor has just been upon the church the last few years. Last year, we grew about 31% last year – it was wild. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. And what does attendance look like now on the weekends at your church? Jamie Barfield — We had 2,500 last Sunday.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jamie Barfield — And we had but 2,500 last Sunday and that we we had about, of that probably 2,100 was here at our our main location here in Myrtle Beach. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Well, I appreciate that you paced out the timeline there, because I think there’s a lot of church leaders who, or church planters who are in these early days, and it feels like, and the early days could be half a decade, you know, it could be a long time. Rich Birch — Take us back when you think kind of the mindset of that, what what what was that experience like? How did you keep going? Talk us through what did that look like? Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Early on, you know, and I talked at a conference last weekend about your “why”, knowing why you’re in this to begin with, knowing why you started and never forgetting the thing that actually put you in ministry to begin with. You know, that moment God called you, that moment that he asked you to do something great for him. Jamie Barfield — And in those moments or those seasons, um early on specifically, when you were ready to throw in the towel and ready to quit, you always had to be reminded of, okay, God, why am I doing this? What is it that you put inside of me that pushed me to want to do something great for your kingdom? Jamie Barfield — It was never about a paycheck. It was never about being on an amazing podcast like this. It was never about speaking at conferences. It was always about reaching people with the message of Jesus Christ and doing our best to get that out there. And so in moments where you wanted to throw in the towel and you wanted to quit, you always go back to those seasons of, okay, God, why did you call me into this to begin with? Rich Birch — And what, what, when you answer that question in your own life, where does that, but you know, kind of, when you think about the why, how, what is what’s the kind of image that comes to mind or language that you wrap around for, for you? Jamie Barfield — I’m very visual. So I think of standing before the throne of God one day and him saying, well done, my good and faithful servant. Rich Birch — So good. Jamie Barfield —And I’m so it’s going to be such a beautiful moment, but it also also motivates me .bBecause I think in that moment that I’m going to go in there almost nervous of the time that I wasted or the time that I gave up or the time that I… And I’m so I’m so motivated by that moment that I just want to stand there and have him look at me with a big smile on his face and say, you did it. You did everything that I put before you to do. You did it. Good job, servant. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, early on, if we could talk for real here…
Jamie Barfield — For real.
Rich Birch — …like church planting, man, it’s it’s it’s tough. Jamie Barfield — It’s the hardest thing ever. Rich Birch — And those early years, yeah, those early years, it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like, you’re not rolling in cash. You don’t have the resources. You don’t have the people. Man, how how did that go for you? The kind of scarcity? How did that shape the way you lead, innovate? Talk us through that piece of the puzzle. Jamie Barfield — Yeah, lack of money, lack of volunteers, lack of influence in the community. You know, it it feels like you know the the word attached to church planting so often is lack. I don’t have enough. Rich Birch — Yeah, right. Jamie Barfield — And that mindset inside of church planters, it’s going to be the thing that either crushes them or is going to cause them to innovate. For us, we just decided it was going to be the thing that pushed us or that drove us. And so the scarcity mindset that you spoke about at you know the beginning of ministry was some some things that were birthed inside of us that created some stewardship principles that we still follow today at our church. You know, we’re very much penny pinchers. We’re going to try the best to figure out the best way rather than just throwing money at problems. Jamie Barfield — You know, I got buddies that, you you know, with the best of intentions, they just think that they can you you know, throw money at situations or at problems and it’s going to fix everything. And our mindset is just, we’re just going to be innovative. We’re going to try to figure this out and do it the best way we can without expecting that money is going to fix everything, or that volunteers are going to fix everything, or that influence is going to fix everything. So even at the start, all of that lack created or birthed something in us that has followed with us for the last 18 years. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d I’d love to talk a bit a bit a bit more about that. Well, first of all, I think it’s I think it’s good that you’re underlining mindset. I know for me as a leader, and it took me way too long to figure out that like kind of my approach. You know, I’m not like, ah you know, name it and claim it kind of person. I don’t think I can like, you know, I can’t just like make stuff up. Jamie Barfield — Sure. Rich Birch — But what I do know is if I don’t have the faith for it, if I don’t believe that God’s going to do something, then it doesn’t happen.
Jamie Barfield — Yeah, for sure.
Rich Birch — And so I’m not sure how that happens. There’s like a weird connection there between what I believe about faith and like, and I probably some people are like, man, this guy’s got bad theology. But talk us through that mindset and how, maybe give us a couple examples of how that has impacted you even today. Jamie Barfield — Yeah, yeah. So I agree completely. The the you know concept of name it and claim it versus you got to have faith and where is that balance? And I’m unsure as well, probably got bad theology as well. But I definitely think that, you know especially early on, like it was, God, I see big things in our future. And I’m not sure how to get to big things, but I know I can’t settle with these things that we have now.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. Jamie Barfield — So I have to press forward to make the things that we have in our hand now. I have to be a good steward of what you’ve given me. You know, he is faithful with little. You’re going to reward us with much. So, God, I’ve got to be faithful with what you put in my hands now. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Jamie Barfield — And I’m going to do the absolute best with this that I have in my hand now. But I’m going to do everything I can to make this thing better. Because I see bigger, because I see greater in front of us. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — And so I’m not going to just stop here and say, well, this is all that I have. This is this is all that I’m ever going to be. I’m going to do more for you with what you placed in my hands. I’m going to be that servant that whenever you walk away from me, you gave me two talents. I’m go to do my best to turn it into four. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s, yeah, that’s amazing. That’s that’s so good. I love, you know, we wanna be multipliers of what, you know, what’s given. And I think the the financial stewardship thing makes sense. I think that’s understandable. You can see where, man, we gotta be good we gotta use the resources we have. Rich Birch — What about on the people side? When you think about kind of being good stewards of your people, maybe developing leaders, that sort of thing, how does that work? What practices have you helped has have you kind of kept this mindset of innovation, kind of getting the most out of our people, that sort of thing. How has that impacted how what you do even today? Jamie Barfield — Yeah, so I grew up in a very small church, you know maybe 70, 80 people. Maybe on on big Sundays we had 120 on Easter or something of that nature. And I saw leaders being thrown into situations, not trained well, not knowing church culture, not knowing what expectations were, not knowing the pastor’s heart. I saw all of that growing up. Jamie Barfield — And those leaders that were thrown in oftentimes would find themselves burnt out by focusing on things that they really had no passion for. And the pastor maybe didn’t know what the thing inside of them that was the thing that really you know would drive them. And so we just decided whenever, you know, probably 10 or 12 years ago, we just decided we were going to create a process of knowing our our leaders and our leaders knowing me well. Jamie Barfield — And so so we we go through a you know, I tell them all the time as we do a 12 week course. It’s not really we call it leadership development, but it’s not really leadership development. It’s more about you have to learn this culture. You have to learn my heart and my expectations for you.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — But I’ve also got to learn your story, and your passion, and your vision. Because I want us to walk away from this 12 weeks together, I want to walk away better prepared for a future together. And so as you’re walking this 12 weeks out with me, you’re you you know they’re serving everywhere in the church and serving in kids ministry one week and you know making coffee one week and all of the things. But what we’re learning in that season together is expectation. And you’re learning me and I’m learning you, but we’re putting expectation on what it takes to be a leader. And so as they finish this 12-week process with me, they then go into this pool of just to even be considered to be a leader in our church. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s interesting. Jamie Barfield — So everybody that’s ever been a leader in our church, before they ever get to a leadership role, they’re a part of this pool because they’ve been through this 12-week journey with me. And I’m there with these people every step along the way, because again, I’ve seen it done so poorly that I just wanted to make sure that my fingerprint was upon leaders and volunteers in such a way.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. Jamie Barfield — You know, there’s again, go back to a parable of Jesus, you know, the sower and the seed, you know, there’s this, there’s this principle of where you sow, if you sow in good soil, that it’s going to produce a good fruit. And so these people that are, that are, have a passion for the kingdom of God and want to do something great for the kingdom of God, those are the people that I want to invest my time, effort, and energy into because those are the people that are going to produce the, the largest or most productive harvest. Rich Birch — Okay. I want to double click on this.
Jamie Barfield — For sure.
Rich Birch — There’s a ah bunch there that I want to unpack…
Jamie Barfield — For sure.
Rich Birch — …which is fantastic. So how, so how do you identify or how does your team identify people that land in this 12 weeks? And then I’d love to talk a little bit about, you know, the, actually the mechanics of it what’s going on in those 12 weeks. Jamie Barfield — They have to be recommended by a leader in our church. Rich Birch — Okay. Jamie Barfield — It’s the only way to join the 12-week journey. Rich Birch — Okay. Jamie Barfield — So a leader in our church sees them, watches them serve or whatever inside of the church, and then they recommend them to my assistant, and we we start the journey with them. Rich Birch — Okay. And those, is it like you run it in like a couple of seasons during the year? It’s a class and like a cohort matter. What’s the content? Just give us a ah a bit of, you know, a bit more about that. Jamie Barfield — Yeah, we do we do two… Yeah, we do two semesters of it. So twice a year we run it. And it is ah one night a week. We meet at the church. We go through ah hour, hour and a half you know class type setting with constant homework through the week. And homework looks as simple as, you know, we we read the book, Andy Stanley, Next Generation Leader. We read through that together. Jamie Barfield — Homework is serving assignments on Sunday. Homework is cleaning the church. You know, little things like that that just creates this culture, this this servanthood inside of them. So once ah once a week, we’re here at the church learning together. But then through the week, we’re constantly um connected and, um you know, again, working, efforting to to sharpen them through the 12 weeks. Rich Birch — That’s cool. And you know you mentioned it multiple times. So you’ve really kept ownership of this group. They’re meeting with you. That I want to underline for folks that are listening in. Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know, your church you said is 2,500 people. There’s a lot of pastors of a church of 2,500 that would say, hey, I don’t have time to meet with this. Kind of unpack that a little bit more. I know you mentioned this already, but I want to kind of unpack what what are you thinking about there? What’s the advantage? How far does that scale, you think? Jamie Barfield — Yeah, I am a huge advocate of whatever it is that you do, whatever’s on your plate. There’s some things that you have to do as a pastor or as a leader. And leadership development ought to be something that you have your fingerprint on.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jamie Barfield — Whether it’s [inaudible] as much as mine is or whether it’s just, hey, I’m creating class and I’m stepping in every now and then, but somewhere, somehow, you have to be touching your leaders in the church and they have to know your heart.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Jamie Barfield — Whenever they go away from this class and they’re serving wherever, and maybe even they’re on a campus or doing whatever they’re doing, when they walk away from me, they know me, they know my heart, they know my, my expectations. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Jamie Barfield — And so I don’t have to go into, you know, seasons and step into kids ministry and try to put out fires and fix problems because they know me from the start before they ever get involved in certain ministries. They already know me and already know my heart. And so it just makes the the family community atmosphere of the church healthier… Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — …because from from birth, this is from birth. This isn’t something that we’re trying to teach on the run. This is something we teach from birth to through the process. And then whenever they launch into whatever ministry they um lead or or serve in they already have all the foundational principles, all the pillars are built. Rich Birch — That’s interesting. I love it. That’s, that’s great to learn more about. Talk to me about an expectation that ah that you have of your leaders that might be a little bit different. That might be like, oh, hey, it’s, you know, kind of in the secret sauce category that you’re like, hey, this is a part of what God’s using when, you know, hey, if you’re leading here, this is what we want you to be like, or something activity or something like that. Jamie Barfield — Yeah. So so for instance, servanthood is something that I’m very passionate about. I am a servant. I expect leaders here at this church to be servants. I think Jesus is the greatest leader of all time, and he was a servant leader. It’s who he was. It was a part of his you know, character. And so, so servanthood is something that we, my wife and I portray to our leadership. And then we give expectation that this is what we expect from leaders inside of our church and throughout every department of our church. Jamie Barfield — I think that is, that is, you know, something as simple as when you see some trash in the parking lot, as you’re walking up, you pick it up. All the way to when we’re having church events here, my wife and I are the last ones to eat. We’re not first in line.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — We’re making sure everybody else is served because we want we want to make sure that we are servant leaders inside of our our team. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So I’d love to know, you guys have launched multiple locations, obviously multiple services within that. Multiplication is, to me, is a sign that you’re developing leaders. There’s something good happening on that front. You can’t do that unless you, you know, have multiplied leaders. Talk us through some of the lessons you’ve learned around multiplication as it relates to leadership development and how that all works together. Jamie Barfield — Yeah, I will say that good leaders multiply themselves, but so do bad leaders. Rich Birch — Oh gosh, that’s true. Oh man. Jamie Barfield — And so that’s and so that’s that that’s that’s dangerous as well.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jamie Barfield — And so as as we multiplied, you know, from multiple services to, you know, multiple campuses and all the things that come with multiplication, as we have walked through the seasons of multiplication, we’ve always identified early the needs that were going to be present and tried our best to make an effort to make them not as painful as they could have been if we wouldn’t have identified them. Jamie Barfield — And so something as simple as you know whenever we you know we were talking about launching multiple services, when when we launched into multiple times, we’ve launched into multiple services and been able to you know, through growth, knock out walls and go back to one and then we’re at two and then we’re at three, knock out a wall, back to one, two, three. And then right at COVID, we were doing four. But the the healthiest way that we ever launched a service was we did a 8 a.m. and a 10 a.m. The 8 a.m. was for volunteers only. So it was kids’ workers. It was, you know, we did, but did we did a full service. We did the band. We did I did my full sermon. It was volunteers only, but you’re welcome to come.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jamie Barfield — But this is strictly, you know, we’re focusing on volunteers. But then whenever we launched into two, as that second service filled up, we launched into two. We completely changed service times. What was a 10 a.m. service, now we went to 9 and 11. So then everybody was forced and instead instead of saying, oh, well, this is my service time. Now everybody was forced to choose a different service time. Rich Birch — Right. Jamie Barfield — So the 8 a.m. people we you know went to the 9 a.m., obviously, and the 10 a.m. people had to choose, do I want to get up an hour early or do I want to come an hour later? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Jamie Barfield — And so it was almost it was actually a 45 to 65 percent split whenever we went to the 9 and the 11. So it was the healthiest way we had ever done it, so incredibly beautiful. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — And so just, you know, if somebody’s watching this and they’re looking to go to two services, I would suggest have a volunteer service, go all in because that starts training your your band to do two services. It starts training your volunteers of what time they’d have to get there to be able to do multiple things. It kind of creates that buffer of a tension point in the future and being able to look look in advance to say, hey, let me let me work some of these issues out before we get there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. um Kind of related to that, I feel like this is the year of like the three service questions, third service questions. Like I’ve had so many people in this last year reach out to me. I’ve written, I think three or four blog posts, probably 10,000 words on different stuff I’ve learned um about this because it’s like just keeps coming up. Like even today, literally today, I got an email about it this morning. Rich Birch — So talk me through what what you’ve done at Palmetto Pointe around identifying when we pull the trigger for more services. Is that what mix of that is like opportunistic—we’re creating new space—or it’s reactive, like which of how much of it’s proactive, reactive? And how do you, you know, your church is growing, you’re growing quickly. How do you, how do you keep a far enough ahead? Cause you can’t just decide, Hey, we’re going to do new services. You got to do planning to make it all happen. Talk us through what’s that look like? How are you kind of the, how, how do we know how to identify when we pull the trigger? That sort of thing. Talk us through what that looks like. Jamie Barfield — Yeah, reactive is terrible. I’ve done it twice. Reactive to, oh no, you know the parking lot’s full. Let’s plan a second service. You know, hat’s terribly difficult. You know, the proactive approach of, I see growth, here goes what, you know, we’re already talking about Easter next year, okay? Here goes how many people are gonna show up. How many services do we need for Easter? And then how much did we grow last year for Easter? So if those people come back, what can they expect the next week? Jamie Barfield — And so for me, it becomes, opportunistic, yes. Launching multiple services are going to help your church grow. But as you’re launching multiple services, the growth versus the attrition, how is this going to wear your team out? Is this going to wear your staff out? Is this going to wear your band out or your kids’ ministry workers out? And that balance of, okay, at what point do you press forward and what at what point do you pump the gas or pump the brakes?
Jamie Barfield — And so I would just say for us, what we learned through this journey is, you know we want to make sure that when we launch into a another service that there’s a core group of people that are going to be a part of that service. I need you to I need you to say for nine months you’re going to be a part of this service and this is your thing. Jamie Barfield — And so when we launch into another service, we’re going to make sure that this group of people wants to be there, and this is their church and their service. And then for us, we’re going to make sure that we have a completely different staffed kids’ ministry, completely different group, so we’re not wearing out the already wore-out volunteers of kids’ ministry. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — And depending on the time slot, we’ve we’ve tried three different time slots for our third service, but depending on the time slot we choose, it potentially may be a completely different band as well. Maybe the same worship leader, but a completely different band. Because those are the really the two areas, kids ministry and band and the staff. Those are the three areas that are really going to wear you out with multiple services. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. That’s some really clear thinking there around that. Really appreciate that. You know, at 31%, if you continue to grow, I know you know this, you know, that’s like just less than two and a half years, you’ll end up doubling.
Jamie Barfield — Right.
Rich Birch — So you’ll be a church of 5,000 if you continue at this rate. Jamie Barfield — Crazy. Rich Birch — And that that becomes difficult to stay in front of. You know, I’ve led in churches that are growing at that rate. And it’s it’s hard to to keep the skis out in front, you know, keep things moving in the right direction. Rich Birch — Let’s pivot in a totally different direction. I want to take advantage of the fact that you’re a district overseer, in your movement. From your perspective, from your vantage point, what are you seeing across the church these days as it comes to growth and and challenges? And kind of what are you learning as you’re in that kind of coach seat? Rich Birch — I’m taking advantage of the fact that you’re coaching other leaders. Jamie Barfield — I actually love that you asked me this question because I was talking with a guy yesterday, and we were talking about how smaller churches specifically, those pastors are really struggling with grasping what their expectations of congregants are, and what the congregants’ expectations of the church should be. Jamie Barfield — We as small you know smaller church pastors specifically, but we expect them to show up and to give and to serve and to connect, but they don’t have those same expectations on their life. So 30, 40 years ago, those were the expectations of a church attender. Rich Birch — Right. Jamie Barfield — Now they’re not. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Jamie Barfield — And so we have these unrealistic expectations that are creating frustrations from the pulpit to the pew. And I think it’s it’s creating this disconnect, or or honestly, I’ve seen some pastors even preach maybe very angry towards their congregation because of the unrealistic expectations placed upon those people. And so I would say maybe just to the smaller church pastor, which again is 80% of America, you know… Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Jamie Barfield — …those those guys listening to this, maybe be more understanding of how life has changed in the last 30 or 40 years. I’m not saying lower our standards of righteousness or scriptural truth, but understand that travel ball is a thing and it’s always going to be a thing. And you know, school plays and you know, families going on vacation. Rich Birch — Right. Jamie Barfield — Man, we celebrate when families go on vacation. I’m not mad at you for taking a vacation because I want a vacation, you know? Rich Birch — Yes. Jamie Barfield — And so we celebrate when families go on vacation. So just creating realistic expectations for the congregation rather than what the, what the expectations were 30 or 40 years ago. Rich Birch — That’s good. I like that. You know understanding where people are are today and not you know not overburdening them with ah a previous model. I think that’s a really good word for sure. How can we think about that same pastor that maybe sees that frustration and and takes the, you know, the pastoral word of like, yes, I’m not going to exacerbate my people, but I want to help clearly articulate. I kind of want to point to a brighter future for them. Jamie Barfield — For sure. Rich Birch — How do I what what would you suggest to them? How do you how should we do that?
Jamie Barfield — Well, first off, I would say one of the things that I see giving life to pastors is them connecting with other pastors.
Rich Birch — So true. Jamie Barfield — I would just encourage a pastor watching this to make sure that he has or she has somebody in their life that’s outside of the bubble of their own church that may be going through something similar to their to what they’re going through. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — And I just think pastors encouraging pastors. We’re on the same team. We’re in this together. Pastors, encouraging pastors. I love what you do here where you celebrate ministries and what they’re doing. I just see that giving such life to um to other pastors that are discouraged and frustrated and aggravated. So I would start there. I would say, man, pastors, find another pastor and speak life into them. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — Maybe maybe the second thing I would say is you know maybe maybe an encouragement to, you know, to pastors who have wanted to try something new and try something different. Maybe just an encouragement to you know and to to do it, man. Just do it. Just try it. Rich Birch — Give it a try. Jamie Barfield — See what happens. Throw spaghetti up against the wall and see what sticks. Rich Birch — You get a lot of grace from most, I think most of the people in our churches, we have the the negative voice person in our head, the person that like doesn’t love what we do and is like a complainer or whatever, but that’s like a rare minority in most churches.
Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like most of the people in the church are cheering for the pastor, cheering for the leaders…
Jamie Barfield — That’s right.
Rich Birch — …and are like, man, I love that guy. I love that girl. And if you were to say, Hey, I’d love us to try this thing. It’s just a test. Let’s see what happens. Most people would be like, let’s do it, you know, and, and I, you know, that’ll be fine. And if it goes bad, then don’t take yourself too serious and say, well, we tried that. That didn’t work. And that’s okay. um Yeah, that’s good. I love that. That’s a great word for sure. Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Agree. Agree completely. Agree completely. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, just as we’re kind of landing today’s episode, any final words as we think about for people that are listening in about, you know, what you’ve learned through the years? I love the mindset stuff we’ve been talking about and just this whole area of like our our you know our approach to scarcity, how that works. But anything else you’d love us to think about today as we’re hanging up today? Jamie Barfield — Yeah, yeah um maybe maybe maybe just to um to the guys that are feeling guys and gals that are feeling stuck, um you know maybe maybe short on everything. Lack is a big thing. Here goes here would be my encouragement. Make every Sunday amazing the best you can, but pick one day and throw all of your energy towards that one day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Jamie Barfield — Maybe it’s Christmas Eve service coming up, or maybe it’s an Easter service or Mother’s Day or, you know, a manufactured big day, ah you know, a back to church Sunday or something of that nature.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jamie Barfield — Pick a day and throw all of your energy towards that one day. Pick a person and start investing in a person. You may not be able to do a leadership development process, but pick a person and start investing your life into that person. Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so good. Jamie Barfield — Pick one event in the community and just show up for it. Just you know wear a church shirt and show up for the event and shake hands and hug necks and tell everybody, hey, you know. Pick one area of ministry and you know you know go go to your kids’ ministry and say, how can I make this better? You don’t have to fix it all right now.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Jamie Barfield — You don’t have to you don’t have to be great at everything right now. You don’t have to have the most amazing, you know, Mother’s Day yet. But man, you can find one thing and just start focusing on something. And I think this is where that mindset of there’s more out there. I’m going to focus on something and make this one thing that God has put in my hand. I’m going to make this thing better. Rich Birch — Dude, that is such good advice. You know, don’t drown in the all the things you wish you could do. Pick one thing and just do it. I love that. Jamie Barfield — Pick one thing and do it. Rich Birch — A friend of mine was a church planter and i was like, I think it was either the first or second Easter they did they went all in on the like Easter egg drop, which I know lots of people have done. But it was a smash success for them. They, you know, it was like five times their normal attendance. It was fantastic. The local news showed up. It was, and it gave, man, it breathed energy into the church for months.
Jamie Barfield — Yes. Yes. Rich Birch — Like they lived off of that because it was like, hey, that was a win. Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. Well, this has been a great conversation today.
Rich Birch — I love talking to church planters. You know, I was recently with a leader of a church. We were walking around his facility and their buildings about 250,000 square feet, giant building. And he was talking about himself as a church planter. He was like, you know, referring to that. Rich Birch — And and I joked with him. I said, well, at what point do you stop being a church planter? Like when you, you know, when you you just are doing a $20 million dollars building or whatever, I think, you know, somewhere along the line. But he’s like, no, once a church planter, always a church planter. We’re always, ah you know, the same thing. So I’ve really appreciated this similar conversation today. Jamie Barfield — That’s exactly right.
Rich Birch — Jamie, if people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Jamie Barfield — Yeah, palmettopointechurch.com, it’s all over social media. Rich Birch — Perfect. Jamie Barfield — pastorjamieb, all of all of the social media handles are that. Love to connect with them… Rich Birch — That’s great. Jamie Barfield — …palmettopointechurch.com, I’d love to connect.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Jamie. Really appreciate you being here today, sir. Jamie Barfield — Thank you so much for the opportunity.
From Guests to Baptisms: Building Clear Next Steps with John Sellers
Nov 13, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with John Sellers, Executive Pastor of Locations and a location pastor at Journey Church in Central Florida. Journey is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with a thriving online community, three campuses, and a fourth location on the way.
Is your church struggling to help new guests take meaningful next steps? Wondering how to move people from attending on Sunday to fully engaging in community and serving? Tune in as John shares how Journey Church creates clear pathways for connection, builds consistency into its systems, and celebrates every step of faith along the way.
The power of simple next steps. // Journey Church, once a traditional congregation, has experienced steady growth over the past 20 years—especially in the last five, averaging 10–15% annual increases. Rather than overnight success, it’s been the result of consistent focus on helping guests take simple next steps. Many churches lose first-time guests because they underestimate the courage it takes for someone new to walk through the doors. When someone visits your church, it means God’s already working in their life. Our job is to remove every barrier that keeps them from taking their next step.
The “New Here” tent. // Every Journey Church location features a New Here Tent – the church’s first relational on-ramp for new guests. Volunteers greet visitors with warmth, celebrate the faith step they’ve already taken by attending, and offer a $5 gift card to a local coffee shop as a thank-you. This simple gesture opens the door for meaningful conversation, helps the team collect contact information, and lays the foundation for further follow-up.
Six-week follow-up system. // From the moment a visitor shares contact information in exchange for a gift card, Journey’s six-week workflow ensures consistent and personal connection. Every new guest receives a brief video message from the lead pastor, followed by texts, calls, and emails from their location pastor and staff team. The messages include vision, invitations to next steps, and reminders about upcoming opportunities. If a guest doesn’t take a next step within that timeframe, Journey continues periodic follow-ups, keeping the door open for future engagement.
A clear next steps pathway. // Journey’s Next Steps class provides the structure for moving guests toward increased connection. Held every weekend at every campus, the class runs on a monthly rhythm. Week 1 introduces the church’s vision and the gospel, inviting people to follow Christ or sign up for baptism. Week 2 focuses on serving, helping people discover their gifts and join a team. Week 3 is Baptism Sunday, offered every month across all locations. Week 4 celebrates new team members as they serve for the first time. Guests can join at any step, and every class includes free food, childcare, and relational discussion around tables.
Lowering fear, increasing clarity. // Journey intentionally crafts weekend moments to affirm guests and point them toward next steps. A brief welcome moment after the first worship song specifically addresses new people: “We don’t know what it took for you to get here, but you made it—and that’s a big deal.” That language of affirmation lowers fear and builds belonging. Clear signage, follow-up stories, and visible next step options make it easy for guests to respond when they’re ready.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s or school’s facility could be preventing growth? Are you frustrated or possibly overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that you could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe can help! As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead you to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Your mission should not be held back by your building. Their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to incorporate creative design solutions to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in and you’re gonna be rewarded for that because today we’ve got a great conversation. I know this is the kind of thing, in fact, I know this is helpful because I feel like every other day I get people asking about this area and this is the kind of thing that many of us can do just a much better job on and we’ve got really an expert on the line today to help us with. We’ve got John Sellers. He is Executive Pastor of Locations and is also a location pastor at Journey Church which has repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. If I’m counting correctly, they’ve got three locations in Florida and a fourth in the works, plus church online. They exist to help people connect with Christ, community, and their calling. Rich Birch — Super excited to have you on the the show today, John. Thanks for being here. John Sellers — Thank you, Rich. I’m excited ah to be on. God’s been moving here and we’re just so thankful for you. I know we’re one of those churches that I don’t feel like we do anything unique or novel. Like we just learn from other people and learn from other resources. John Sellers — And your resources have been a part of our story. And so one of one of your books, in fact, over the last couple of years about creating an inviting culture at your church has been one of the one of the best resources we’ve had in the last couple of years.
Rich Birch — That’s super kind. John Sellers — And so we’re one of those churches that’s benefited from you. Rich Birch — Wow. You and my mom read my book. I appreciate that. John Sellers — Yes, yes. Rich Birch — No, that’s good. I really appreciate that. Super kind of you to say. That’s that’s humbling, frankly, for you to say that. And so why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about the church? Kind of tell us about Journey. Give us a sense. Talk about your role. Kind of set the table for us.
John Sellers — Yes, you’ve, you said it pretty well. We’re in central Florida. We’re a little ways north of Orlando. So we’re in a ah county called Volusia County, which is the same county that has Daytona Beach in it.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice. John Sellers — And, uh, our area is a lot of kind of blue collar people. They’re just incredible, um, men and women of God. There’s incredible men and women who are moving here. Um, and they’re the kind of people that would just give you the shirt off their back. They’re ready to serve. They’re ready to be engaged, ah to make a difference in the world around them. John Sellers — And so for us, we’re not in a big metropolitan area. So sometimes when we hear from other churches that are in big, you know, massive cities, sometimes it’s hard to relate to how that translates into small towns like we’re at, and medium sized cities. And so for us, what’s been helpful is podcasts like these, where I hear the principles I’ve read in a book at a church that’s maybe normal size or a little bit smaller or more kind of a normal size city. And so that’s kind of us. John Sellers — We’ve been multi-site for about 10 years…
Rich Birch — Great.
John Sellers — …and we’re continuing to see God kind of multiply our ministry. And ah yeah, that’s about it for for where we’re at. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. What’s your, ah I know this is, this is germane because of what we’re talking about today. Give us a sense of the kind of growth trajectory of the church. I know you’re a humble guy, so you’re not going to be like, oh, this, is we’ve grown by this and this and this.
John Sellers — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But kind of tell us a little bit of that story. That’ll help set the table a little bit for where we’re going. John Sellers — So we were um kind of a traditional, you know, First Baptist Church of Orange City. And our lead pastor came a little over 20 years ago, and he brought just kind of a church planting mentality with him and really a new vision, a new direction for the church. John Sellers — And so I would say our growth has been really just steady growth over those 20 years. And really in the last five to six, we’ve seen some incredible back-to-back years of double-digit growth, you know, in the, you know, 10 to 15% growth year over year. Rich Birch — Love that. John Sellers — And it’s just been kind of a steady year after year, making slow, small progress is the way I would describe it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
So it has not been one of those overnight, hey, we went from a hundred people to 10,000 or anything like that.
Rich Birch — Yes. John Sellers — It’s just been a slow go every year. How do we get better? How do we continue to be a church that reaches people right here in our community? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And that’s actually really common. I’m working on a book right now about breaking the 2000 barrier. And typically, actually, one of the interesting benchmarks is when a church breaks the 2000 barrier, actually, it’s common the most common thing is for the lead pastor to have been there for 15 years. And so… John Sellers — Wow. Rich Birch — You know, I think oftentimes people think like, oh, you like you say, it’s like, oh, it’s just something happens. You know, those stories because they’re unique, you know, they’re… John Sellers — Yes. Rich Birch — And so, you know, that this is is great to kind of dig into some of, you know, like you say, the more normal…
John Sellers — Yes.
Rich Birch — …you know, obviously what God’s doing is not totally normal, but but we’re we want to learn from it.
Rich Birch — So one of the things that we all struggle with is this idea of getting people to take next steps and plugging into connection, get you know, how do we move new here guests, get them to actually make, um you know, some sort of connection to the church. From your vantage point, why is that hard for for so many churches or maybe so many guests ah to actually make those steps? John Sellers — Yes, I think there’s a lot of factors that go into that. I think the problem we keep running into or have run into over the years is we have so many new people walking through the doors and many times we find, hey, they kind of get stuck in this. They’ll visit once or twice, maybe three times. We don’t see them again. And we saw that gap of how do we connect those that walk in the doors and help them take that step um to really engage for the long haul. John Sellers — And so I think some of it, what I’ve found is it can be multifaceted. Like I think sometimes as people who’ve been in the church for maybe many years, we forget what it’s like walking through the through the doors of a church. Rich Birch — Yes. It’s true. John Sellers — And so we have to constantly, as leaders, keep going back to ah what is that like? John Sellers — And so the way we talk about it a lot at Journey Church is when someone walks through the doors um of your church, it means God is working in their life. The Holy Spirit is doing something to create a desire for them. Rich Birch — So true. John Sellers — And what that means is I think anytime God leads people to take any kind of step, um the enemy and the flesh and sin ah wants to creep in and use anything as a distraction to kind of keep them from taking the next step. John Sellers — And so what I found sometimes that ah where that can happen is um when when people walk in the fear of, am I accepted? The fear of, you know, what do I do? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. John Sellers — There’s not a, you know, clarity on what they’re wanting me to do. And so for us, what we’ve prayed about and what we try to hone in on is we want to do everything in our power to recognize that those who walk through the door, God has led them to make that step, that it’s a big step. And we want to do everything we can to remove the barriers. John Sellers — And so how we do that, I think, is greater clarity. Like what steps do we want them to take? And how do we make it as clear as we absolutely can can, as clear as possible…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
John Sellers — …for them to know when and how to take that step? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. John Sellers — And then beyond that, what we found is is a lot of times the question people are asking when they’re new is, do I belong here? Like, am I a fit here? So no matter what those steps are, what we found is it it needs to be relational. And you have to put some of those people on your team that are gifted with hospitality, with making somebody who’s brand new feel like they’re welcome and at home. And try to put them in those on those teams and on those next steps areas to help with that process. Because a lot of times people are asking the question, like, I don’t know if I’m a fit here. I don’t know if they want me here.
Rich Birch — Right. John Sellers — And so we have to go up above and beyond to to kind of help them know they’re welcome. We’ve thought of you. We’ve prayed for you. And here’s that very next step that we want you to take. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. John Sellers — Here’s it’s as clear as day for you. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I know, and we’re going to get into this, but I often say to churches that I do coaching with, I’m like, you cannot make this too clear. Like you’ve got to keep, we’ve got to work on how do we, what is the step we need people to take? How do we, how do we make it more obvious? How do we make it more clear? It’s literally a bottomless pit of like, we just got to keep making it. John Sellers — Yes. Rich Birch — And and I think it’s true. One of the things I’ve noticed in my own, so, you know, I’m in, you know, whatever my third, fourth decade of leading now, I guess. And which is weird to say, but the um I do think people have changed. I think there was a time when I first started where I think people showed up at church and they weren’t really sure why they were there.
John Sellers — Yep. Rich Birch — But I think that has shifted over time as we’ve become a more and more unchurched. All of our churches, all our communities are more unchurched today than they were 20 years ago. People don’t just stumble into a church and they’re not sure why they’re there. They’re showing up looking for something. They’re they’re asking questions when they arrive and we want to meet them with that. Rich Birch — So when someone visits for the first time, actually talk us through that. What are the first couple weeks look like? What is that experience like? How do you help move them from I arrived and I’ve I maybe have got some fear. I’m asking, do I belong here? What are some of those kind of meaning, the first steps you you you lead them through to get them towards meaningful connection? John Sellers — So at our church, every location has a tent. It’s a new here tent. And so the first step that we’re communicating, the the clear step on that first or second week is, man, stop by the tent. Like I know that’s a big step and we have to remind our serve team and behind the curtain, that seems simple to us, but like to a new person at a church, even going to a tent or making themselves known by filling out a Connect Card, even if it’s digital, like that’s a big step for somebody.
Rich Birch — Right. John Sellers — And so a lot of our communication is go to the tent. We’d love to meet you. We’ve got a gift card for you just to celebrate the step of faith you took to be here today. And so once they take that step, um it starts us being able to follow up you know through text messages, emails, phone calls, and really encouraging them to step into our Next Steps class. And so when they step into our Next Steps class, one of the things we’re even constantly trying to think through what we call it, because class…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
John Sellers — …probably isn’t the best ah way to describe it, and we’re actually revamping it right now. Rich Birch — Yes. John Sellers — But for us, even that Next Steps class is a round table, it’s relational, it’s getting them around our Next Steps team that wants to hear their story. You know, what brought you through the doors, wants to begin to hear you know about maybe what’s on their heart, where are they at, what’s their next faith step? John Sellers — And so those are are the first couple of weeks. If we can encourage them to stop by the tent, that allows us to stay in contact with them relationally. And then the next step would be, man, go to one of our next steps classes after a service. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Can we pull apart a bit of the detail there? John Sellers — Sure. Rich Birch — Just because I know people are wondering this because I get these questions. So it sounds like when you arrive at the New Year tent, there’s a gift card there. Where’s that gift card for? What is that and what is the value of that? John Sellers — Yeah. Rich Birch — What do you what do you, and why a gift card? Talk to us about that. John Sellers — Yes. So for now we’ve, and we’ve experimented, we’ll change, we’ll change this up like constantly. But right now it’s for a local coffee shop. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. John Sellers — And it’s, it’s literally a $5 gift card. Rich Birch — Yep. John Sellers — It’s just a thank you to say, thank you for coming. It’s it’s a little gift bag. It’s got information about our church, obviously. And um it’s just a step to the way we phrase it is we know it’s a big step of faith you took to be here today.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
John Sellers — And so we just want to celebrate… Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to celebrate that. John Sellers — …the fact that you have made it in the room. Rich Birch — Oh, I like that. John Sellers — And so that that’s what it is. Five dollars. On big events. We’ll do, you know, a Journey Church cup…
Rich Birch — Right. Christmas or something like that.
…and make it a little more, you know, more substantial.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
John Sellers — But it’s just a five dollar gift card to a local coffee shop. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And I love the, you know, the the thinking behind that, friends that are listening in, is sometimes when I see churches do, they’ll be like, hey, if you want to get connected, or if you if you’ve got interested about your next steps, or if you’re wondering where to go, drop by the the tent in the you know outside. People are not asking that question when they first come. John Sellers — Yes. Rich Birch — So we’ve we’ve we’ve got to take a celebratory ah step. And I like what you’re saying. I love that language of like, we want to celebrate the faith step by being here today. And we want to give you a gift in exchange for that. People will do that for a $5 gift card. They’ll or a you know or you know coffee mug or whatever. You know. That’s good. Rich Birch — And then the other thing that caught my attention, you said, was you said and we follow up with texts and emails. John Sellers — Yes. Rich Birch — Talk about how, you know, how many of that, what’s that communication process look like? This is another area where I see churches drop the ball all the time. John Sellers — Sure. It’s a variety. There’s a workflow that we use through our database system planning center…
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — …that is owned by our weekend experience, ah you know, team members. But basically it starts with an email from our lead pastor with a short video…
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — …for them to watch a message directly from him. It includes a text message or phone call from the location pastors within two weeks. It includes other text messages and emails. So it lasts about six weeks… Rich Birch — Yep. John Sellers — …and it’s more information about how to take steps at our church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — And so some of its vision, a lot of it is is geared towards stepping into the Next Steps class. But yes, it’s multiple and it’s a variety and it’s over the span of six weeks. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. John Sellers — And then we even have, you know, workflows built out that, you know, if somebody goes through that six week process without taking a next step, that periodically we’ll check back in with them just to see how we can serve them. Rich Birch — Now, I’m just because I know how this goes, would you be willing to share like a one pager that kind of explains what those six weeks are? Do you have that? Even just a screen capture of the workflows? John Sellers — Sure, sure. Rich Birch — Would you be open to that? John Sellers — I can put that together for you. Yeah. Rich Birch — Because what I know will happen is this is going to go out and then people are going to ask you, you’re going to get flooded with email. John Sellers — Yes. Rich Birch — So I’ll save you that step. You can look at the show notes below. We’ll we’ll link to that. People are very are interested in that, ah you know, that step for sure. So um that’s super helpful. Also love, how often does the next steps class? Talk us through… John Sellers — Sure. Rich Birch — …what does that look like? How often does that happen? Give us a sense of what goes on in that. John Sellers — I would say this has been one of the one of the biggest, it seems like a small tweak for us, but it’s been a game changer in kind of back to that question, how do you overcome the barrier of helping people get connected consistently, is we’ve just made it a consistent month-to-month process. John Sellers — So week one, weekend one is step one, no matter what weekend it is, there’s maybe a couple of weeks out of the year, you know, where we it may shift it a week, but week one is next steps one. That’s where you connect to, you hear more about our vision as a church. You can, learn about the gospel, like we’ll share the gospel, give people a chance to receive Christ, sign up to be baptized.
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — Step two is join a team. So you’re discovering how God’s wired you and what teams are on your location that you can plug in. John Sellers — Week three is baptisms across all of our location. And so if you went to step one, accepted Christ, you’ve never been baptized and you want to be baptized that month – every location, every single month on the third weekend. John Sellers — And then the fourth week is um typically there’s no class or any step that week other than that’s the week that most of our new team members on our serve team will serve for the first time or shadow for the first time. John Sellers — And so we want to celebrate them that morning. We want to make sure to connect them relationally as they join the team. And so we just do that every single month.
Rich Birch — So good.
John Sellers — And so it just it gives in those next steps classes happen after every service on every location. Rich Birch — Wow. John Sellers — Those were some of those little tweaks for us that seem small, but taking that step has actually allowed more and more people to take the step when they’re ready, when God moves in their life. Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to underline that. That is best practice. We’ve heard something similar like that in lots of churches, similarly modeled on Church of the Highlands Growth Track. Some of the lessons that they’ve learned around the consistency is a huge issue for sure. Rich Birch — Can you jump in at any one of those? Or do you, so like are all the people that are here this month, they’re going to be invited to the first step or can they jump in on any step? John Sellers — They can jump in on on any step.
Rich Birch — Wow.
John Sellers — And so the the communication to the new person is, man, here’s the…
Rich Birch — Next weekend.
John Sellers — …yep, here’s next weekend or today. Like if they’re in the service today, right after service…
Rich Birch — Wow.
John Sellers — …walk into the into the next steps room. We’ve got free food for you, lunch if it’s lunchtime. You know, we’ve got Journey Kids going on. So your kids will be taken care of.
John Sellers — And so we try to make that as easy as possible, whether it’s that day or, you know, sometimes it’s six months later after they visited for the first time. But we want to always have it available for when God moves and they’re ready. Rich Birch — That, John, that’s a gift where you just gave to people here. Like this, friends, I’ve joked in other contexts: boring stuff grows churches. And this is an example of one of those.
John Sellers — Yes.
Rich Birch — Putting together a class like that, that is going to go every single weekend, week-in, week-out, like, man, the the kind of the amount of momentum that builds for a church like Journey is, is incredible. That’s, that’s amazing.
Rich Birch — So when you think about weekends, you know, you, what moments in a weekend have you found is like the most effective for both lowering fear and inviting that next step? Are there times during the service or are there moments that you’re saying like, Hey, we want to make sure that we’re communicating clearly, doing what we need to do to make sure that we’re, we’re helping people take these steps. John Sellers — Yes. For us, obviously there can be fluctuation and variation week to week, but for us, most weekends after the very first worship song is just a quick welcome moment. John Sellers — And that welcome moment is specifically for new or newer people. And so it’s just a chance to say thank you for being here. We highlight the tent. Um, we usually, we’ve started using language that I don’t know how difficult it was to get in the room. I don’t know how smooth it’s gone, but you made it. That’s a big deal. You’ve made it in the room. Rich Birch — Yeah, I like that. I really like that. John Sellers — And we’ve been praying for you. Man, we’ve been expecting you. We just want to celebrate you. So, you know, you pass it on the way in, but if you haven’t had a chance to stop there on the way out, it’ll take, you know, less than a minute. Just stop by, let us meet you real quick and give you that gift. Talk about the gift card. John Sellers — And then usually that will be, if it’s a next steps class weekend, that will mention something there because we’ve already got their attention. But on those weekends, we will also allow that to be the very last thing that we say. And so if next steps class is that day, as you leave, we make it as clear as possible. People with signs. I mean, we we don’t want them to miss it. That remember next steps is today. Like we mentioned earlier in service, we’d love to have you, you know, step into next steps class.
John Sellers — And so kind of that welcome moment. And at the very end is the norm. And then periodically our lead pastor will mention it in his sermon time, like in his, in his main message. Rich Birch — Right. John Sellers — And sometimes we’ll strategically use a video, you know, how someone took a step into that class and and the difference it’s made. But I would say most weekends is that welcome moment in the very end. Rich Birch — Yeah, kind of the top and the end to kind of cap the service with that. I love that. I really like the language that you’re using there. I think I’m going to steal that. I love this idea of like, man, I don’t know what it took for you to get here. Man, you did an incredible thing. Like it’s it’s validating to people. You did the right thing by being here today. John Sellers — Yes. Rich Birch — And man, like God is already at work in your life. Like, and you may not say it like that, but that’s what we believe. John Sellers — Yep. Rich Birch — Like the fact that they’ve just showed up, man, we don’t want to miss that. Like, I often think of particularly when we deal with a lot of unchurched people who don’t normally attend church, like that first step, man, is a giant step. John Sellers — It’s a big deal. Rich Birch — Like that they’re changing something huge in their area. That’s incredible. John Sellers — And and I think that’s the thing that’s so easy to forget is like, especially if you follow Jesus for years…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
John Sellers — …you know, you forget what that experience is like and what God’s doing. John Sellers — I had someone explain this to me yesterday. He’s been at our church for a number of years now. And when he came in, he was absolutely broken. And he’s like, I just don’t want you guys to forget, like the people who walk through your doors on Sunday, he’s like, I was ready to end my life.
Rich Birch — Wow. John Sellers — And I was given one last shot and I walked through the doors. And the conversation I had in the parking lot. And the conversation I had and then the message and how God used it. And I just told him, I was like, thank you for sharing that because I don’t ever want to lose that perspective.
Rich Birch — A hundred percent.
John Sellers — I don’t ever want to lose what a big deal it is when somebody who’s unchurched or far from God or doesn’t know the Lord takes that step just to walk through the doors on a Sunday or a Saturday night. It’s a big deal. Rich Birch — Yeah. Not that people need more vision, but i’m going to layer on a similar story I had two weeks ago with a guy. And he was reflecting back on his experience when he first came. This is at our church. And he’s like, ah he’s a man’s man, drives a truck, all this kind of stuff. And he’s an incredible young, incredible guy. And God’s done amazing thing in his life in the last couple of years. And he was talking about the very first weekend. Rich Birch — And he said, you know, he said, when I showed up, pulled up in my pickup truck and there was some guy out front with the Mickey Mouse hands where like so many churches, you know, they got the guys with signs and Mickey Mouse hands and come and park here and all that. And he said, I remember I pulled into a spot where they told me to park and I sat there for like a few minutes and just watched people come in. Because I just didn’t know, like, are these, and it gets back to your belong thing. Who are these people? Like, are these, and he said, I saw a few people that were like, okay, like they’re, you know, they’re dressed normal. I guess I didn’t have to wear a suit. I guess it really is okay. Rich Birch — And, and I thought, wow, like, I would have, the way this guy presents himself, I would have never thought that like he would have struggled with like, oh, I don’t know if I can go in. I don’t know if I can go in. But man, people come with that, that kind of anxiety when they arrive for the first time. We can’t lose that. Rich Birch — Let’s talk about baptism specifically. John Sellers — Sure. Rich Birch — One of the things I want to kind of double click on is kind of focus in on that. I know many of us want to see people take that step. It’s an important step, obviously, in their spiritual journey. It also helps us understand kind of what’s happening in our church. How have you found kind of the right way to inject the baptism experience? It’s obviously step three. It’s a big part of the the the puzzle. But how do you build towards those moments? What does that look like? Kind of talk to us about how baptism fits into this. John Sellers — Sure. It’s it’s a big deal for you know for us as well. And um it’s been one of those things on our, as we think about new people, how do we continue to make this step available? It’s part of the command of what Jesus gave the church was to make disciples and baptize them. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes. John Sellers — And so um as we were thinking about that, that’s part of offering it every single month. The direct feeder of that, if you want to think about it behind the curtain, is Next Steps Class Step One. And so that’s where they’ll indicate that they’re interested or that they need to be baptized or want to be baptized. John Sellers — And then we have a volunteer team ah that follows up with them as well, just kind of hearing their story. Sometimes there’s gospel conversations you can have in those relationships there, just sharing the gospel you know with them. John Sellers — Sometimes that’s where they come to Christ is their they’re interested in this baptism thing. They don’t know what it’s all about. And so they’ll follow up, get their story, kind of listen to them, connect with them. John Sellers — And then the way that we do it right now is the baptisms are just a part of our worship moments. So as the band is singing, um you know, we use iMag up on the screen real close up in the baptistry. And, um you know, those are moments where they have a baptism shirt. So they’ll come that day, meet with the baptism team that’s already followed up with them. And that team just walks them through relationally through the whole day with pictures, kind of celebrating that. We encourage them to bring their family on those weekends. John Sellers — And so That’s probably the main kind of um stream for us…
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — …is we use that as our main on-ramp every single month, every single location we offer it. John Sellers — Now that’s to say, I know this will be encouraging to to some people out there. That doesn’t mean that there’s baptisms happening every service on every location. We offer it every single month, but depending on the size of the location and the congregation there, it doesn’t mean that that’s happening in every every campus, every service, every single month. But a lot of months there are because we offer it and we have that on-ramp. John Sellers — And then for us, we do two strategic events a year…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
John Sellers — …where that step is incorporated into our worship services and people can take the step to receive Christ and be baptized on the very same day in the very same service. And so those two for us is the weekend after Easter,
Rich Birch — Okay. John Sellers — And then we do a special event. It’s our only event that we do on a weekend that’s all church. So all locations in one place. And it’s actually coming up in October.
Rich Birch — Okay. John Sellers — The reason we strategically placed it there is many times for us. I don’t know about other parts of the country or the world…
Rich Birch — Yes.
John Sellers — …but ah right here in central Florida, October, November is like dead season for for us as a church. Rich Birch — OK, right. John Sellers — We would see attendance dip and all these different things. And so we just prayed through what what can we do to leverage this time to reach more people? And so we do that as an all church event. It’s outdoor. We call it church at the park. And we share the gospel, encourage people to invite their friends and family and they can be baptized on that day. John Sellers — So we’ve done that kind of rhythm for two years in a row.
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — And we’ve had over, so our church averages a little over 2000 people in person. It’s continuing to to grow. In the last two years, both years, we’ve had over 400 people take the step of baptism. Rich Birch — Wow. Praise God. John Sellers — And those are just students and adults. So we’re Baptist and we we don’t baptize infants. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. John Sellers — And so that’s just adults and students that are taking this the step of baptism. Rich Birch — Wow. John Sellers — And this last year, it’s felt like even beyond what we would ever expect, like 400, over 450 people across the the year. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Praise God. That’s incredible. John Sellers — So it just feels like God has breathed on that um in a way that we ah we didn’t expect. Rich Birch — Yeah. John Sellers — So… Rich Birch — I love I love that. So i I want to come back to those two times a year in in a second, but I just, I want to underline just so I understand in the rest of the year on that week three. So the anticipation that that’s week three, you’re doing kind of baptism Sunday every month during the year, except for in these two big months months of the year. That’s what, that’s what’s happening there. And again, not necessarily every campus, every service, but that’s kind of the kind of cadence is pushing towards that. John Sellers — Yeah. And every campus, every service is offering it. It’s just a matter of how many people sign up for that for that month. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Okay. John Sellers — So the expectation is, man, Lord willing, if God moves, we’ve prepared the way and we’re ready. If someone in every, you know, who attends every service, every location is ready to take that step. Rich Birch — I love that. That’s so good. And the, the do you, are they doing like a story? Do they give a little bit of their testimony? Does, how does that work? I’ve seen what you’re talking about with like during the worship experience. I get that, but is there some part of it where we get to hear from them or no? Obviously the baptism team hears from them. John Sellers — So the way the way we’re currently doing it, we we do not hear their story. So we don’t, um there was a time, it’s funny to how those iterations have happened. When I first came to our church, we had every person who was going to be baptized film a video…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
John Sellers — …with their story that would play. And then we’ve reached times where they would share, ah you know, in the moment. Rich Birch — Yes. John Sellers — Then there was times where the pastor would share. What we’re currently doing… Rich Birch — Yeah. John Sellers — (And I’m not saying this this may not change.) Rich Birch — Yes. No, that’s good. John Sellers — …is what we’re currently doing is they share the story with the baptism team, sometimes with the location pastor. And in that moment, we’re letting them know in the welcome moment, what’s about to happen. And, you know, we may share some specifics there. Like we had some, some middle school girls and it was almost their entire small group was being baptized on the same day. So in the welcome, we said, what you’re going to see is these are, these are middle school girls that have been taking steps of faith and bringing their friends. Rich Birch — Okay. John Sellers — And they’re about to get baptized. But in the moment, it’s during worship, people are celebrating, but we’re not stopping to share every single story. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. John Sellers — And in fact, kind of back to the barriers, that’s been one of the barriers that we’ve and we’ve encountered, where people aren’t ready to take the step of baptism because they’re afraid they’re going to be put on the spot to talk in front of hundreds of people or something like that. John Sellers — So, but that’s currently how we’re doing it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. And then let’s talk about these two times a year, the week after Easter and October, I get a sense of why you would do those. Then what are you doing differently to kind of prepare people to move towards that? Obviously, you know, apart, you know, I gotta be careful on all this stuff. I know that like the Lord is moving. I understand that. I get that. John Sellers — Sure. Rich Birch — There’s a part of this we can’t, we’re not manufacturing. I get that. But there must be some communication process we’re doing to kind of give people a heads up. Talk us through what that looks like leading up to those kind of big baptism days. John Sellers — Yeah, for the for the one after Easter, there’s not a lot in regard to communication to people who would be taking the step. It’s more behind the curtain preparation for our teams. Rich Birch — Okay. John Sellers — Obviously, the baptism team, the weekend experience and next steps teams, like they’re preparing for, you know, what could be 10, 20, 30, or even over a hundred, depending on the size of the location. Rich Birch — Right. John Sellers — And so they’re making sure they have enough. We do baptism shirts in all the different sizes on those days. We’ll even have all kinds of shorts available for people. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Spontaneous. Yep. John Sellers — We’ll have towels, all those kinds of things. They’ve got the whole system planned. But as far as that person who’s new to our church and the anticipation is they came on Easter. And the step at Easter is: join us next week. It’s a big, weekend. And we are following up that week from every new person from Easter, and probably the six weeks before Easter, just encouraging them to be there on that day with their families. John Sellers — And so a lot of it’s more behind the curtain and in that sense. So it feels like though, like it does feel like I get the question all the time, especially the last two years from our church members of like, man, did you have all those people pre-planned and ready to to go? Rich Birch — Right. John Sellers — And um And I’m like, no, like on the day, it literally feels like you’ve created the altar…
Rich Birch — Wow.
John Sellers — …and you’re praying, Lord, let your fire fall. Like we we don’t, it’s a step of faith, but God’s been faithful to do it. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah. John Sellers — With the one in the fall, so the one we do in October, we we do kind of our play like we would any bigger reaching event, like like like an Easter, as far as invite cards, marketing, social media, all that kind of stuff. And the idea is bring somebody with you. This is a reaching event in our community and we’re going share the gospel. And it’s the same kind of play as far as um obviously it takes a lot more to to lift off. So it’s an all call for our staff. We bring a lot of our baptism resources to the park. It’s it’s a pretty intense week before and obviously months of planning, kind of getting ready for it. But we kind of run a play as a reaching event for that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. And is the size of that event, like couple thousand people, ah you know, how big can that thing get before you’re going to have to find somewhere different? John Sellers — Yeah. That’s what we’re, that’s what we’re at right now. You’re exactly hitting it. Yeah. I mean, it’s we’re taking over a city park and it’s hard to count, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
John Sellers — I mean, we we take over a community building to do our Journey Kids experience that day and and pack out that building. Rich Birch — Yes. John Sellers — But as far, I mean, it’s just a sea of people, like it’s thousands and thousands of people. So I think we’ll we’ll be there soon. So that’s obvious. Rich Birch — Yes. John Sellers — One of those things where we keep evaluating, like when’s the time that we may not be able to do this anymore? Should we continue to do it? Are there larger venues? Rich Birch — Yeah. John Sellers — But for now, that’s kind of how we’re looking at it. Rich Birch — Yeah, I was talking to a church a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago now, and they do a similar once a year. And they’re like, we’re in the biggest venue that there is. They like they’re like, we’re not sure where to go. And so I said to them, I was like, well, you’ve got to find a bigger venue. Like, like you know, like.
John Sellers — Yeah. Rich Birch — I don’t know, or move it to a different time of year where you can get outside or, you know, whatever. Obviously that’s a nice time of year. have some friends live in central Florida. That’s a nice time of year. People, it’s like the opposite of up north. Up north they’re like going indoors at that time of year.
John Sellers — Yes.
Rich Birch — But there it’s, everybody’s coming outside. John Sellers — It’s pleasant. Rich Birch — You know, the, the, the might be reverse logic if you were, you know, in northern part of the country, you know, do something like that in the spring…
John Sellers — Right. Rich Birch — …because people want to be outside. So yeah, that’s interesting. Well, there’s obvious there’s an interesting balance here. How do you think about, this might be a bit of a curveball question. How do you think about and lead, we want to motivate people towards baptism. We want them to be like, hey, this is a positive step. We want to cast vision towards that. While at the same time, we don’t want to pressure them. We don’t want them to feel like… John Sellers — No. Rich Birch — …they’re being guilted into it. How do you balance that out? What’s that look like? How do we how do we kind of walk with people through that? I know that’s your heart to find that balance, but what what’s that look like for you? How do you think about that internally? John Sellers — Yeah, I think internally we think of it as we want to do all the work to prepare. So we use that kind of language, that idea that when it takes the Holy Spirit of God to move in someone’s heart in life, to lead them to have a desire to take a faith step. So whether it’s baptism, whether it’s coming to Christ in the first place. Rich Birch — Right. John Sellers — And we can’t do that. We can’t manufacture that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — That’s that’s the sovereignty of God. We pray for it like crazy, like we bathe it in prayer…
Rich Birch — Yep.
John Sellers — But we’re going to do all we can that when God does move in someone’s heart that we’ve made it so clear and we’ve prepped for them to take that step that it’s as easy as possible. John Sellers — But in our language, as we’re walking with those people, if they’re not ready, there’s always next month, right? I mean, there’s always, you know, if it’s not, you’re not ready at this big event. And that’s a common conversation that we have as team members, even our serve team, volunteer team that we have with people is, hey, you know, if you’re not ready today, don’t worry. There’s next month, there’s the month following. John Sellers — I do try to encourage them to have the conversation, but if the Spirit’s moving in your life, don’t hesitate, like don’t don’t wait. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good. John Sellers — And so that’s kind of how we handle it. Like I don’t think there’s any kind of set strategy or anything like that that we have in place other than that’s the vision we cast, that’s what we try to encourage our people to have. And so I would say it’s pretty common. Like there’s there’s people when they go through Next Steps class, they’re not ready and it may take six months. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. John Sellers — Sometimes they’ll go through a Next Steps class, they don’t wanna do it that month or even the months following. But then one of these big events comes and you see them in the, in the, in the baptistry. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, so good. John Sellers — And so it kind of works differently for everybody, but yeah, I would encourage, don’t put the pressure on, but use the language of man, but when God’s leading and be obedient to what he tells you. Rich Birch — Yeah, if you’re looking for a practical training on that, friends that are listening in, I’ve actually found it really, this is going to sound like a bit of an old school thing, but find a a couple videos of Billy Graham doing his crusades years ago. And I felt obviously he was so good at that moment of like not letting people off the hook because the Spirit might actually be moving in their life, but also not trying to pressure them.
John Sellers — No.
Rich Birch — It’s not like, Hey, we’re trying to, we’re trying, trying to humanly coerce you to the front. And obviously it’s, it’s a different, it’s a different ask, but I yeah I would, whoever’s doing your teaching or doing that moment, watch a couple Billy Graham’s and kind of pick up on your, you’ll get a sense of, Oh, wow. That’s a good, you know, that’s a kind of a good way to, to kind of find that tension in those things. Rich Birch — This has been incredible. John Sellers — That’s really good. Rich Birch — What I’m, I know, friends that are listening in, John had like a whole other bunch of stuff he wanted to talk about. And I was like, let’s talk about this one thing. John Sellers — This is awesome. Rich Birch — So maybe we’ll have you on again in the future sometime if you’re if you’re open to that. But anything else you’d love to say just as we wrap up today’s episode as we close things down? John Sellers — Yeah, I think I’m just encouraged like to anybody listening that we’re in a unique moment. I know if if other churches are like ours, we’ve had just people showing up. We had the numbers of people that would be like a reaching event, not like an Easter, but like a Christmas, like a big event on just a normal weekend that we did not plan, that God is causing questions. Rich Birch — Yes. John Sellers — There’s people coming, asking, you know i had someone come and say, how do I do that thing that you guys do? And I’m like, what thing are you talking about? And he was trying to describe baptism, but he didn’t know the word.
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. John Sellers — And he’s like, how do I how do I do this?
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. John Sellers — And so my encouragement is, man, in your community where God’s planted you, God is still wanting to use the local church to be the kind of catalyst to bring life change, transformation in people’s lives. And so I would just encourage you to pray through with the giftings God’s given you, the resources God’s given you, even in the next two to three months, what might you need to shift? How can you kind of change your language… Rich Birch — That’s good. John Sellers — …even small tweaks to make sure you’re speaking whatever sermon series you’re doing or whatever passage you’re preaching through, that you’re speaking directly to those people that are asking, man, I want to get back in church. Or man, I want to figure out this whole church thing and make sure my family’s coming there. How do you apply those scriptures to their lives and give them a very clear, very specific faith step? Rich Birch — That’s good. John Sellers — One of the things that that we did is we weren’t ready for it. We had just kind of um been through our groups onboarding season and, you know, still assimilating people. And now we’ve got all these people showing up and we created just, and God led us to create just a new group environment that’s literally launching this week. Rich Birch — I love it. John Sellers — We didn’t plan on it. Right. Rich Birch — Yeah. John Sellers — And, ah but it was God. Rich Birch — What are you doing? I’d love to hear what’s because that’s funny. We’re literally talking about the same thing at our church. What are you guys doing to to to kind of catch these people? John Sellers — Yeah. Yeah. So we just doing an eight, like a six, I think it’s a six or seven week short term group. And it’s literally just following, you know, it’s not a long commitment.
Rich Birch — Yep. John Sellers — The language we’re using is we’ve been hearing a lot of your questions. Like we’ve been hearing a lot of you coming and asking, man, what about evil? What about all these things? So we’re actually going to address some of those questions in our weekend services.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. John Sellers — And there would be this group environment where you can ask those questions and process with other people ah for a short term. And so, that’s what we’ve done. They’re launching this week on every location and there’s people signed up for all of them that we didn’t have planned. It was like God just kind of laid it in our lap. John Sellers — And so that’s my my challenge to people listening is just thinking that way of, Lord, you’re your Spirit is who has to move for people to take those steps. Rich Birch — Yeah. John Sellers — Help me. What can we do as a church to be good shepherds, stewards…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
John Sellers — …of that faith step and lead them with little one step at a time? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, John, this has been a great conversation today. Super helpful for people. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule to be with us. If we want to send people to somewhere online to track with you, to track with the church, where do we want to send them? John Sellers — Probably our Instagram page. It’s @journeyconnect. Our website’s journeyconnect.org. And so those would be the two spots. Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much, John. I appreciate you being here today. John Sellers — Thank you for having me.
REPLAY: Church Growth Launchpad: 5 Levers Fast-Growing Churches Use to Multiply Invitations
Nov 12, 2025
In this special workshop episode, Rich Birch unpacks the same five systems thriving churches use to move from hoping for growth to launching it. If you’ve ever felt like your church’s momentum is hard to sustain—or that your people love your church but don’t naturally invite—this episode gives you a simple roadmap to turn things around before Christmas.
You’ll learn:
The 5 levers that fast-growing churches pull to train, equip, and motivate their people to invite friends
Why building an invite culture is 15–25x more effective than marketing alone
How to design a repeatable 90-day plan that sparks new growth before 2026
Real examples from churches seeing breakthrough results right now
Plus: Rich shares a behind-the-scenes look at the Church Growth Incubator—a year-long coaching experience for church teams serious about sustainable growth.
Apply for the Church Growth Incubator by November 19th and unlock a special fast-action bonus — Rich will come to your church for a full on-site staff day in January–March 2026. This in-person strategy session (a $3,500 value) is designed to accelerate your church’s progress, align your team, and help you implement the five growth levers faster. Space is limited to those who apply before the deadline.
Listen now and take your next step toward a thriving invite culture.
Why Most 800-Person Churches Die of Niceness
Nov 11, 2025
Nice is not a growth strategy.
When I was a young adult, I worked at a Christian summer camp called Camp Mini-Yo-We. You know the place; canoes skimming across a glassy lake, worship songs around a campfire that somehow made the stars feel closer, friendships soldered together over bug juice and burnt marshmallows. It was the first laboratory where I learned leadership, not from a book, but from a cabin of eleven-year-olds who expected their counselor to be part sherpa, part coach, part mom.
Six campers. That was our number. Six guys barely fit around the heavy pine dining-hall tables. I could sit at the head and scan the whole universe in one glance, who needed seconds, who needed sleep, who needed a nudge to apologize. At night, everyone got airtime as conversation slid into the delicious randomness only Summer Camp can produce. Six names? Between the 10 a.m. opening-day staff huddle and the 2 p.m. arrival window, I could have them down cold, name and hometown, hopefully making those first few moments of my campers’ time at Summer Camp a little easier by knowing their names.
Then I moved up to an older program. Ten campers.
Ten changed everything. Now we needed two tables. Walking around Camp, I had to count in my head like a security detail, “one, two, three…” because a head swivel no longer covered it. Ten names felt exponentially harder than six, not 33% harder … impossibly harder. The inside jokes multiplied faster than I could track them. Dynamics shifted. I couldn’t “pastor” each kid in the same way anymore; I had to build systems … ask guys to look out for each other, delegate a table leader, plan check-ins, and enforce lights-out like clockwork. Leading six was craft. Leading ten required architecture.
I learned young: group size changes everything; the experience, the culture, and the leadership it takes to keep people safe, growing, and moving together. Scale doesn’t just add complexity; it alters the physics. And that truth doesn’t stop at the lake.
“Niceness Trap”: How Healthy Cultures Turn Hazardous at 800
Let’s be blunt: 800 is a trap size. Only a sliver of North American Protestant churches ever hit 500–1,000 in attendance, roughly 4 percent, and fewer than 2 percent ever break 1,000. [ref]
That’s not random; it’s structural. At 800, what got you here, tight relationships, consensus leadership, and that beloved “family feel”, quietly becomes the lid on what God could do next.
Tim Keller called this “size culture.” Every size behaves differently, and if you impose small-church expectations on a larger body, like expecting the senior pastor to be personally available to everyone, you wreak havoc. Decision-making slows to a crawl, six-hour elder meetings become normal, and leaders burn out doing shepherding that should be owned by teams and systems.
How the Niceness Trap shows up:
Consensus as a creed. “We won’t move until everyone’s on board” sounds godly; it’s actually institutionalized paralysis at this size.
The family becomes a club. Insider language, cliques, and a crowded calendar built around the already-committed signal to newcomers: this isn’t for you.
Comfort over clarity. Leaders avoid disappointing legacy members, so innovation dies in committee.
What once felt like unity becomes veto power. That’s not pastoral care—it’s organizational anemia.
Your Church Doesn’t Need Another Idea—It Needs a Plan
Most churches want to grow but feel stuck doing more without seeing results.
Join Rich Birch for a free 60-minute workshop that gives you a simple, proven way to reignite momentum
and see more people connected to your church.
You’ll walk away with a clear 90-day growth plan you can actually implement—no extra staff or budget required.
Wednesday, November 12th at 12noon ET / 9am PT Free online training for pastors and church leaders who want real results.
Niceness mimics fruit. It creates harmony, low conflict, and positive vibes. But harmony without movement is hospice, not health.
Mid-sized plateau churches show an uncomfortable pairing: insider satisfaction is often high while evangelistic engagement is low. [ref] Per-capita giving can even look strong precisely because the room is full of long-time Christians, not new believers.
Translation: your core is comfortable; your front door is closing.
This is where theology gets misused. “We’re being faithful; we’re not chasing numbers.” Faithfulness and fearlessness are not enemies. The Church in Acts was constantly adding people and was constantly in tension. When “peace” becomes an excuse to protect preferences, that’s not gentleness … it’s mission drift.
Litmus test: If a new person has to learn your internal slang, intuit your unwritten rules, and fight to get a seat at your proverbial table, your niceness is for insiders. Niceness that never risks, never disappoints, never decides isn’t love. It’s abdication.
<Sidebar Rant> Can we please stop with all the TLA’s in the church? Three Letter Acronyms! They obscure meaning and clearly communicate who is “in” and who is “out”. </Sidebar Rant>
When Consensus Kills: The Organizational Science of Stall
At around 800, you are too big to function like a living room, and too small to afford bureaucracy. You need clarity … not more committees.
Keller’s counsel is surgical here: as size grows, decision-making must shift from whole-church consensus to empowered staff and leaders, with the board focused on high-level governance. [ref] Refuse to shift and you produce exactly what you fear: burnout, ambiguity, and decline.
Playbook moves (read: non-negotiables at 800):
Clarify who decides what. If everything flows to the senior pastor or full board, you’ve already lost a year. Push operational decisions to staff; reserve mission/guardrails for the board.
Hire for scale, not sentiment. Move from generalists who “do ministry” to leaders who build teams and systems (e.g., Connections, Kids, Students). Leadership is the multiplier.
Time-box decisions. If a decision requires unanimity, it’s the wrong decision or the wrong table. Set deadlines; move.
Pre-delegate change. Decide in advance the thresholds that trigger action (e.g., “At 70% room capacity for 4 consecutive weeks, we add a service in the next 6 months.”).
Consensus is beautiful in a cabin of six. At 800, it’s a growth killer.
The Cure: Clarity, Courage, and an Invite Culture
This isn’t about becoming “corporate.” It’s about becoming clear. The courage to choose mission over maintenance will feel less “nice” to insiders and far more loving to the neighbor who hasn’t met Jesus yet.
The data is stubborn: growing churches actively equip and encourage people to invite their friends, 72% of growing churches emphasize invitation versus 43% of declining churches. [ref]
And on the demand side, the harvest is shockingly open: large majorities of unchurched people report they would attend if a friend invited them. Your problem isn’t interest; it’s invitation.
Make Invite Culture your operating system
Preach the why … relentlessly.“Every number has a name. Every name has a story. Every story matters to God.” Normalize invitation as ordinary obedience, not hype.
Equip the how. Give scripts, cards, and social assets every series. Run a 3-week “Who’s Your One?” push twice a year. Low cost. High output.
Fix the funnel. Invitation without assimilation is churn. Identify guests, follow up in 24–48 hours, and offer one over-the-top-obvious next step (New Here lunch, 101). Reduce options; increase movement.
Design for scale. Kids, students, weekends, groups—these engines must have capacity before you step on the invite gas. A room above 70% full feels “full” and quietly repels guests; act before you hit the wall.
A strong invite culture isn’t a program. It’s what a healthy church does when leadership is clear, structure is sane, and volunteers are equipped.
Five Strategic Pivots to Break 800 (and Live to Tell About It)
Think of these as your “from → to” moves—the shifts that turn niceness into leadership and momentum.
1) From Family Feel to Mission Clarity
Cast a crisp, repeatable vision for outsiders, not insiders. If your insider language requires a decoder ring, you’ve already told guests, “This isn’t for you.” Teach your people to see the church through a guest’s eyes… jargon-free, warm welcome, obvious next steps.
2) From Consensus Culture to Accountable Ownership
Rewire governance. Board = mission/guardrails. Staff = operations. Push decisions down to competent leaders, with clear success metrics and review rhythms. Replace “everyone signs off” with “the right people decide, on time”.
3) From Generalists to Builders of Builders
Audit staff and key volunteers for scale capacity. Do they recruit? Build teams? Delegate outcomes? Your church stalls at the ceiling of your leaders’ ability to multiply leaders. Hire or reassign accordingly.
4) From Program Buffet to Simple, Obvious Pathway
If new people have ten “next steps,” they’ll take none. Reduce to the one or two actions that most predict movement. e.g., New Here → Join a Team—then architect everything to drive there.
5) From Talk About Invite to Measure It
If you can’t see it, you won’t shift it. Track documented first-time guests, return rate, conversion to groups/teams, and invite touchpoints. Celebrate every baptism, every “I was invited by…,” every story—because what you celebrate, you replicate.
Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
“We’ll wait until everyone’s ready.” That day won’t come. Lead change with empathy, but lead—create listening posts, communicate early/often, and time-box dissent.
“We’ll just add one more program.” Complexity is your enemy. Prune to grow. Trade breadth for throughput.
“If we change governance, we’ll lose people.” Possibly. Keller’s sober truth: larger churches must entrust more to fewer decision-makers, or they will plateau and then shrink. Love the flock—by leading it.
Love People Enough to Lead Them
At Summer Camp, six kids at one table could be pastored by the presence and charisma of one person. Ten needed systems. Eight hundred needs leadership. Not mean, not brusque, but clear. Clear about who we’re trying to reach. Clear about how we decide. Clear about the path from the seat to serving to sent.
Niceness keeps insiders comfortable. Leadership makes room for the next person God is sending.
If your church is hovering at 800, your greatest act of kindness might be your next courageous decision.
This month:
Choose one “nice” behavior that’s actually avoidance, then replace it with one courageous act of clarity.
Name a capacity trigger and pre-commit to the action it demands.
Put the invitation back in the water supply train, equip & motivate your people towards it.
Because nice doesn’t change cities. Clarity and courage—animated by the Spirit—do.
Ready to See Growth Again?
If you’re tired of guessing what drives church growth, join Rich Birch for the free
Church Growth Launchpad workshop.
In just 60 minutes, you’ll discover a simple framework thriving churches use to build momentum
and reach more people—without adding more to your plate.
Walk away with a clear 90-day plan you can put into action right away.
Wednesday, November 12th at 12noon ET / 9am PT Free online training for pastors and teams who want practical results.
Faithful in the Moment: Staying Rooted in Christ While Leading a Growing Church with Jeff Warren
Nov 06, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Jeff Warren, Senior Pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. Founded 86 years ago, PCBC is a fast-growing multicultural, multilingual, and multigenerational church.
What does it mean to stay faithful when leadership gets hard? In this candid conversation, Jeff shares lessons from decades of ministry—what he’s learned about identity, calling, and staying grounded when the pressures of leadership rise. From navigating the complexity of a large, legacy church to cultivating spiritual vitality among staff and volunteers, his perspective is both refreshing and deeply rooted in grace.
A legacy church with a living mission. // Park Cities Baptist Church stands at the crossroads of tradition and transformation. Located in the heart of Dallas, the church gathers thousands each week across multiple venues and languages, including a thriving Spanish service. Jeff describes PCBC as “steeple people”—a legacy church that feels both historic and alive. Behind it all is a culture of warmth and hospitality, where five services, multiple worship styles, and vibrant connect groups reflect a single mission.
The beauty and challenge of intergenerational ministry. // Jeff calls his congregation “intergenerational” for good reason. PCBC brings together everyone from centenarians to newborns, creating a living picture of the kingdom of God. While multiple venues help serve diverse preferences, Jeff’s deeper goal is to foster relationships across generations. The goal isn’t to erase differences, but to celebrate them as part of the family of God.
Staying healthy as a leader. // After decades of ministry, Jeff has learned that sustainable leadership begins with identity in Christ, not performance. “Never base your worth on something that can be taken away,” he says, echoing C.S. Lewis. Ministry can easily become like a “drug,” feeding off the need to be needed or to see results. Jeff shares that his life verse, 2 Corinthians 5:21, grounds him in the truth that he is fully accepted, totally loved, and completely pleasing to God—not because of what he does, but because of who he is in Christ. This daily return to grace is what keeps him anchored through the highs and lows of leadership.
Building a healthy team culture. // Jeff believes church health starts with healthy leaders. At PCBC, he models and expects rhythms of spiritual formation and accountability. The entire staff reads the same daily Scripture plan and discusses it together before meetings. The team also sets holistic yearly goals—spiritual, physical, relational, and vocational—to encourage balance and self-leadership.
Living faithfully in the moment. // Through the challenges of COVID and cultural polarization, Jeff learned a lesson he now shares with his team: live in the present and define success by faithfulness, not outcomes. That posture of mindful obedience—serving whoever God places in front of him—is what what it looks like to be faithful with our moments, days and lives.
To learn more about Park Cities Baptist Church, visit pcbc.org. You can also find Jeff Warren on Instagram and Threads at @jeff_warren and discover his book Live Forgiven wherever books are sold.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. I know it’s going to be the kind of thing that’s going to be helpful for you. Hopefully inspiring, hopefully help you to think about maybe the future of your church a little bit. Rich Birch — Today, we have got Jeff Warren with us. He is from Park Cities Baptist Church and has served in multiple roles. If I’m getting it right, the young adults pastor, the minister the men’s ministry associate pastor, and since 2010, the senior pastor. Park City (PCBC) is a multicultural, multilingual, multi-generational church that meets in multiple venues, which is lots of multis in one sentence in Dallas. They’re also one of the fastest growing churches in the city. Jeff, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Jeff Warren — All right, Rich. Hey, great to be with you, man. And you about got it right. Yeah, I was here previously as student pastor right out of seminary. Rich Birch — Okay, nice. Jeff Warren — And so I was here for lots of years and then and gone.
Rich Birch — Yeah
Jeff Warren — I was in McKinney just north of here for 10, 11, and then back. The Lord called me back where I’m now ah dedicating babies of kids in my youth ministry and, you know, all that kind of thing. So really cool. Rich Birch — So good. Jeff Warren — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, well, um I’d love to hear a little bit more about PCBC. Kind of tell us the story, fill in the flavor. You know, if you were, if we came this weekend, tell us a little bit of what we would see. Jeff Warren — Yeah, so you would you would come ah here at Northwest Highway in Dallas where there are thousands of cars driving by me right now. We are I like to say we’re yeah we’re a legacy church. You know, we’ve been around. We’ll celebrate this next month 86 years of being here in Dallas…
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.
Jeff Warren — …and the church was was it was planted, like a lot of folks probably listening, we met at University Park Elementary School ah for a while. Small group of people said there ought to be a church in Park Cities, where just right north of me right now from my office um was really the kind of the highest furthest point of North Dallas. We have ah charter members who remember it was big field, which is hard to believe.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yes. It’s packed now. Yeah.
Jeff Warren — You you can’t get out of a field, you know, for, yeah, for miles and miles. So all that said though, you would show up at big, you know, giant traditional, church with a steeple, you know, we’re steeple people, all the things. Jeff Warren — But once you, gosh, step in, you would find that you’re greeted with a lot of love. It’s a challenging ah thing to find, okay where do I fit in? Wait, where do I go? So you find it all on our website. But we have multi-, as you said. I like to say intergenerational, right? Rich Birch — Good. I like that. Yeah, nice. Jeff Warren — We’re cross-generational, but intergenerational, that’s hard work, you know, we could talk about too. Jeff Warren — But yeah, we have we have five services on a Sunday morning. Two of those, one’s in a chapel, one’s in a you know giant sanctuary, a beautiful sanctuary we have here. And then two of those are in the Great Hall where we have a contemporary you know modern worship and then En Español that meets in the and a Great Hall as well. Jeff Warren — So we have all that. It sounds complicated, but once you arrive, we can point you to where you need to be. We have connect groups on Sunday mornings as well. So you have all those options with kids and all the things that happen here on Sunday morning. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s ah that’s a lot going on. That’s that’s incredible. I’d love to talk about the intergenerational. You know, that’s obviously something that you’re excited about and that God’s used. Talk us through when you say intergenerational, what what do you mean by that? What’s that look like? Jeff Warren — Yeah. So you can imagine in a legacy church, a lot of different, the tension, you know, of a lot of different opinions, different experiences, all the things can make you crazy you know half the time, used to more so than it does now. I’ve seen it as just a glorious and beautiful thing to be in ah an intergenerational church where people have different ways of worshiping the Lord, different ways to connect. Jeff Warren — So that’s why, in part, we have you know a lot of different options here. We have you know you yeah I know you talk to a lot of folks who have kind of one church, multiple locations. I like to think we we’re multiple venues in one church, you know one place.
Rich Birch — Yes. Jeff Warren — And we also have a couple of sites off campus too, though, with our Spanish-speaking ministry. But all that said, man, the beauty and the glory of of a church that has an older, you know, I called the gal two weeks ago. I called on a Saturday, called her on her 100th birthday, you know, to wish her a happy birthday. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Jeff Warren — And then to be dedicating, as we did this past week, dedicating babies, you know, parents coming to dedicate their kids before the Lord. It’s just a beautiful thing. The challenge, Rich, comes with, I like to say intergenerational, you know, and that’s the that’s the challenge is to constantly allow and and and leverage our older adults with all the wisdom and all the things where you have Gen Z who so wants more and more mentors. Jeff Warren — I talked to a gal last night. She’s in her 30s. I’m just looking for a mentor. Talk to a gal on Sunday. I need an older woman in my life. So the beauty of that is I know some older women. We can do this. You know, but it’s also the challenge. You come on our campus and it’s, hey, you’re young person, hey, they’re over there. And older person, you probably, okay, you’re probably over here in the chapel or whatever. Jeff Warren — And so we we like to have, we have events and gatherings. We had one last night, a prayer gathering where we had we talked about how to respond to all the violence taking place in the world. And so it’s cross-generational. And so that’s the challenge, I think, the tension not to resolve but to manage is to connect our people across generational lines. Rich Birch — Love it. Jeff Warren — We do periodically come together, as we will, a few times, probably four, maybe five times um a year, where we gather all together and worship the Lord. We’ll do that for our anniversary upcoming.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Jeff Warren — And yeah, so it that’s the challenge along with it. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to kind of double click on that. I like that you’re saying it’s a challenge, it’s a tension, it’s glorious, and it’s beautiful. You know, every, and and, you know, there was a time in the life of the church, there was this idea, and you’ll no doubt know these words, this homogeneous unit idea that like, churches are going to grow by like all being the same. But actually increasingly we’ve just found that’s just not working, frankly. And it’s actually not a reflection of the kingdom of Christ.
Jeff Warren — Right.
Rich Birch — We don’t really want to do that. It’s it’s actually quite a bad idea and you’re trying to live out all kinds of diversity—age is one of them, you know, ah ethnic, racial, you know, there’s lots of ways we’re trying to to have diversity as a church. And what are you learning about trying to walk that line? What’s kind of practical? How are you doing that? How are you trying to drive towards unity? Like you say, living in the tension or the challenge of that? Jeff Warren — Yeah, I think, as you noted, I remember that too, ho homogeneous unit a principle. I think it was Peter Wagner…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeff Warren — …in you know another age and era. But… Rich Birch — Yeah. Jeff Warren — …and you know and a lot of us like, okay, let’s go, thinking that was right and good.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.. Jeff Warren — We didn’t read Revelation 7:9, where all this is heading, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Jeff Warren — People from all tribes and nations. So, yeah, doesn’t look much like the kingdom of God. I think that’s the first step is to recognize, man, we we want to be that church. Now, if you know anything about Dallas, you come here, we’re in the Park Cities. So we’re we’re a township within Dallas, you know. And I don’t mind telling you, know we are we are white. I mean, we’re white up in here. And ah and very affluent ah part of, you know, part of Dallas as well. Rich Birch — Yep. Jeff Warren — But with that, ah we’re involved in a lot of ministry. I’ve heard others who’ve said, hey, you know, oftentimes the diversity around the community of the church, say within a one mile radius or so, is a lot more diverse than than the actual church itself. And so we have made some strides there, though. We we have become more and more colorful along the way, which is a greater picture of heaven. Jeff Warren — Our In Español ministry is flourishing in a place where, against all odds, um our our Spanish language ministry is flourishing. And they are an integral part of our church as well. So that just opens the door for all kinds of opportunities. We’ve been involved in a lot of racial justice and reconciliation across the city of Dallas where we’ve partnered with ah churches, pastor swaps, all those good things. Rich Birch — That’s great. Jeff Warren — But um more and more, I think you were asking for practical things. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeff Warren — I think it’s you know it’s that message of grace that’s got to drive everything. That everyone’s welcome here. I like to say it this way, we are radically devoted to hospitality and we are radically devoted to holiness.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — So becoming like Jesus. You know, I like to say, man, with all the theological debates we could have, you know, Jesus was perfect theology embodied, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeff Warren — So if you’re if you’re not, if you’re if you’re theology, the application of Scripture doesn’t look like Jesus in the end, you’re doing it wrong. And so grace is at the center. I like to say, you know, I don’t like to say we’re a centrist church – that feels like we’re sitting on the fence, right? Jeff Warren — But but but we really are. We’re not we’re you know We’re not hardcore right and left and whatever that might mean for people here in America in particular. We find our we we find ourselves at the deep center…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jeff Warren — …where Christ is at the center of the church. And with that message of grace ah constantly in the mix, people, I think, do do feel and sense, man, I think I’m loved here. It doesn’t matter my skin color, doesn’t matter what look like, how old I am, young. And so that’s kind of the driving point…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeff Warren — …I think, is are you you preaching that message of grace? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Jeff Warren — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, um I don’t think you’ll mind me saying this. You have been in the saddle for a few years. You’ve been ah leader for quite a while, been through a lot. I’m sure you’ve been through ups and downs, wins and losses, things that have been good, things that haven’t been so good. Jeff Warren — Yeah. Rich Birch — How do you as a leader, how do you keep yourself, your soul anchored in Jesus?
Jeff Warren — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How do you keep leading through when things are up and down and not get sidelined? How do you do that? Jeff Warren — Yeah, man. That’s a loaded one, right? We can talk a long time about that. Rich Birch — Yes, lot there. Jeff Warren — And I’ll try to center those thoughts. I was yeah I was at ah I was speaking at a seminary um ah not too long ago, and one of the guys said, the professor said, we need to have you back because our students need to see happy pastors. And you know I saw I think you probably saw, Barna recently came out, that what, 42% of all pastors are considering quitting. Rich Birch — Yes. Jeff Warren — Man, I haven’t seen those numbers since COVID, right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah. Jeff Warren — I haven’t. I get that. Rich Birch — Right. Jeff Warren — I’m in a great place right now. I’m grateful. I am in a happy place. But man, I’ve had some dark nights of the soul. I would just say to all of your young pastor leaders out there that if you stay at this long enough, you will have those. And what’s what’s kept me in, Rich, has been a clear calling to the ministry and to this place.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s been, Lord, I’m i’m there until you yank me out. And so knowing in those moments where, man, I could be doing this elsewhere, you know that kind of thing. We always kind of look into where the grass is greener, I think. But knowing that the Lord’s called me here, those have been in those dark moments, those have been the times when I’ve been, I’m still in, I’m still in. Jeff Warren — And I think a big part of that too, for me, a lot of us, we wrap our identity up in our work that we do. That’s not just pastoring thing. But we define our work by the maybe the approval of others or by performance. And in ministry, that gets real insidious. It gets twisted because I’m doing this all for God, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Jeff Warren — And then you start to realize um along the way that, gosh, maybe not. You know, maybe maybe I do have this high need to be needed. Maybe that’s why I’m in ministry in some ways. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Jeff Warren — That’s why he called me. I have have empathy is my highest you know strength finder, for real. It’s like the highest of the strength. Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. Jeff Warren — So I feel all the feels.
Rich Birch — Yes. Jeff Warren — It serves well as a pastor, but also wrecks me. You know, when I’m like, oh, man, I I I so I love people, and I, you know, there’s underneath the dark side of that is I want them to love me too. Jeff Warren — So I think staying centered, the main thing, Rich, that I would say is that—this is probably that moment you know in the in the sermon, in the teaching, if you hear nothing else, you know this is it. Rich Birch — Yes. Jeff Warren — For me, it has been to constantly, I never knew ministry would be this, constantly running back to Christ and finding my identity in Him. C.S. Lewis was the one who said, and I’ll translate him differently, but he said, never base your worth on something that can be taken away from you. Right? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah. Jeff Warren — So so I’m a you know I’m a father, I’m a son, I’m a brother, I’m a friend, I’m, oh, and I’m a pastor, you know, all those things. None of those things are the truest thing about me. And someday, when, you know, parents are gone, when, you know, whatever, name it, you know, it’s why professional athletes who have a career in ending injury, right, need to not just have therapy. Rich Birch — Yes. Jeff Warren — They need to have, I mean, physical, they need to have real therapy. They don’t know who they are anymore. And so if our identity is founded being a pastor in my case, then man, that is going to be a rough road. And because, right, it’s up and down all the time. Jeff Warren — And and oftentimes we base that on numbers. How’s my church doing? Are we growing?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Jeff Warren — You know, am I crushing it in terms of sermons?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeff Warren — And that’s been the thing is constantly going back to this private personal prayer, Rich, that I have often into worship before I come before the Lord in in my quiet time. Lord, to remind me again of how much you love me. Remind me again of how much you love me. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — And that’s the key thing. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. Let’s let’s double click on that. There’s an interesting tension there of having our identity firmly rooted in Christ, that’s obviously preeminent. And, you know, having a clear calling like that, you know, Jesus has called us to be where we are today. He’s called us to the role we’re in. Man, the lines can get blurry, though, between those two. You know, the kind of like our the call to have a, um you you know, a really strong call on our life for this, you know, this season or this place or this thing, this mission that we’re a part of can get wrapped up in like, well, maybe that’s the person I am. Rich Birch — How do you, how do you hold both of those at the same time? How do you hold both of those in a way that that’s healthy? Because it seems as an outsider, it seems like you’re you’re able to do that well. Jeff Warren — Well, um It’s been a journey, Rich. I do think I’m doing it better than I have in the past. So ah for me, I would say it this way, um as quick as I can, I guess, here. 2 Corinthians 5.21 is my life verse. It says, He made Him—we all know this verse—He may made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, right? Jeff Warren — The first half of that verse, that’s the gospel. Like, okay, yeah, Jesus, He’s our substitute more than just our good example, right? But then the latter part of that verse is what changed my life. Years ago, I was probably in my 30s, already in ministry, doing youth ministry at the time. But man, I was running like a wild man. Like I was at times, that’s a longer story, but I was so busy. I was married, no kids at that point. And I was like, who’s pointing a gun at my head? I can’t stop.
Rich Birch — Right. Jeff Warren — You know, I love what I’m doing. But Stacey, my wife, was like, are you you’re busy again this weekend? You know, it was kind of that moment. And I was like, what is what is happening to me? And it was this need to be needed. And and then I realized that ministry can become like a drug, right? Jeff Warren — But so I understood the gospel, all that. But the latter part of that verse, he made him and who knew no sin to become sin for us. Then it says there’s this henna clause, a comma in a Greek. Jeff Warren — I know just enough Greek to be dangerous, right? There’s ah but it’s a purpose clause that Paul used over and over again. He says, in order that, in other words, this happened in order that. And it says, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Right? And so so what that means, I mean, I’ve asked that question before college students, adults, you know what is the righteousness of God? And I often get crickets. Jeff Warren — And I think that’s because we don’t see we don’t know who we are. We are totally accepted, fully pleasing, completely loved, by Him. That is who I am.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — I am first a beloved son of the Most High King. That’s who I am. So much of ministry, I never knew… I mean, this is Christian life. But ministry is constantly, Lord, to remind me again. That’s the battle. And and I mean, you’ve asked the question. The battle is to stay there, to remain there.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s so good. Jeff Warren — And that’s for every one of us. And I never knew that ministry would be such a battlefield to constantly go back to Him and to be found in Him, is the phrase Paul loved, right? To be in Him-ness, the doctrine of of remaining in Him. That’s not to, in my case, not losing my salvation. I did nothing to gain it. I did nothing to receive it, so I can do nothing to lose it. But to stay in Him. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Jeff Warren — So that’s a it truly is, Rich, a constant spiritual discipline of of remaining in Him. And so, you know, not everybody can do this. You’ve got kids running around, you know. I’ve had twins and and I had three kids. But but now I can I can get up. My mornings are quiet. I get up early. You know, I think the key to life is going to bed on time, being early if you can.
Rich Birch — It’s true. Jeff Warren — And I like to hit the day in before the Lord and just get centered. So that’s what we do. And then, Lord, help me to how to live out of this.
Rich Birch — That’s so so good.
Jeff Warren — Help me live out of this. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, let’s pivot back to the church. You know, PCBC is is growing. It’s, you know, was flagged as one of the fastest growing churches in the country. You know, healthy things grow. How do you think about the kind of connection between growth and church health? How do those things fit together? How do you ensure that you’re not just, you know, weeds grow too. We don’t want those to we don’t want those to grow. Jeff Warren — Yeah, right. Rich Birch — We want something healthy to grow ah that’s got great fruit on and on the on the limbs. Talk me through how that works for you and how do you lead in that direction? Jeff Warren — Yes. So, um you know, I think it’s really hard to find healthy churches because it’s hard to find healthy leaders, right? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Jeff Warren — It’s hard to find healthy teams, leadership teams, because it’s hard to find healthy leaders. And so I I’ve really just, I think it’s it’s on me, it’s on key leaders in our church.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeff Warren — I’m constantly talking to our team about how to be healthy, what I just described to you. I want my team to walk, remain in Him. I challenged my team this week, Rich. You know of the number of pastors who’ve fallen, particularly here in Dallas. It almost seems like there’s one every every week, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s been it’s been quite a season in Dallas. Jeff Warren — And another just last week. And Yeah, so I’m, ah so my, you know, I I talked to our entire, we had an all staff. We have once a month, yesterday, Tuesday, and um gave them, you know, again, the big challenge. I did it with our ministers as well, just remain in the Lord. Let’s let’s not let’s not let that happen here. You know, how do we keep accountable with one another? And and so that’s that’s the great challenge. I think i think too often we it’s ministry pace can be so fast and so crazy. And we’re in a season right now that is wild. I like to say Jesus was often busy, but he was never in a hurry.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeff Warren — And so I love to talk to our team about opportunities to slow down, even in busy seasons. How can we be in a busy season, managing life, family, marriage, all those things, and and stay centered in Him? Jeff Warren — So I think more pastor leaders need to model that. We need to live that out and talk about it as a team. We read Scripture together. We have this Dwell reading plan. You can find it our website. All of our members are reading Scripture, the same Scriptures, every morning, every day. Rich Birch — So good. Jeff Warren — And so for years, Rich, I’ve wondered, how can I help my team be accountable? How can I be certain they’re in the Word? You know, I can’t I used to tell them, there’s only so much I can do for you. I hope you’re doing this.
Jeff Warren — But now at every staff meeting, every minister’s meeting, before we start, we’ll pray together and I’ll say, all right, hey, turn to your neighbor. Let’s talk about what you heard from God this morning when you’re in His Word.
Rich Birch — Right. Jeff Warren — And we’re all reading the same thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Jeff Warren — And so, yeah, that’s a relative past few years, a relatively new thing. And so we talk about what are we learning? How are we growing? You know, then BAM, let’s kick in. It doesn’t have to be a long part of the meeting, but it centers us, keeps us accountable. Jeff Warren — Back to your question, I think that’s that’s key, is is is keeping everybody is spiritually healthy, and then myself, executive pastor, keeping us on on target, on track. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. Jeff Warren — You know, and like we’re on a 100-day run you know right now as we’re doing a lot of vision planning. We’re doing long-range stuff towards 2030 right now for the next five years. And but centering in on, okay, what what’s the next? It’s kind that one four, one four, if you’ve seen that, that Auxano, others have used. That helps us. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I was going to ask for an example, but I love that idea of like, hey, we’re we’re on the same reading plan. We’re trying to keep everybody and hey, we’re going to even integrate that into our conversations. I think that’s that’s really practical. Rich Birch — I often hear, you know, like it might be easy for the lead guy or the leader, whoever the leader of the church is, to be busy, but not in a hurry because like they can control their schedule. But working in a large, fast growing church is it’s like relentless, right? The weekend is always coming. Is there anything else that you do to try to ensure the rhythms with your team that you don’t get to the place where your, your team is like, Oh sure. That’s great for Jeff, but that doesn’t work in my world. Is there anything else you do to try to help your team, you know, run at a good pace? Jeff Warren — Yeah, I think I think it’s staying it’s it’s staying in your lane, doing what you’ve called to do. Yeah that’s a great question, Rich. And because I don’t have the quick answer, I’m like, ha, we got to work on this one. Rich Birch — Yeah, you’re good. That’s good. Jeff Warren — Again, instead of just, hey, I’ll model that for you. Because truthfully, I mean, I love, like a lot of us, I love the work I do. I’ve got a really, I got a busy day today, you know doing a lot of things I love. But I’ll also model the role…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jeff Warren — …and then I’ll ask them one of the parts of our our evaluation even involves some ah some holistic health. And so the at the beginning of every year, I ask them to give to me and we share together the you know, kind of what’s your single word for the year kind of center in what are you what are you looking for God to do and desiring for him to do in you? Jeff Warren — And then we look at, literally, we look at physical, spiritual, interrelational, and then vocational life.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeff Warren — And then we talk about what are your goals for the year. And that plays into then how you’re doing. So I can come back to knowing every one of them. Hey, want to work out a few times a week. You know, I’m gonna I’m going to finally lose some weight. I need to go to bed earlier. You know, whatever the thing might be, try to keep each other accountable in that. Easier said than done. Rich Birch — Yes. Jeff Warren — But I think I think it’s true. If you model it as a leader, and I think you’re okay. You know, we all want to, I think a lot of times we think our members want us to, I hope my pastor is about to kill himself serving Jesus, you know? And they really don’t mean that, but it can feel that way. Rich Birch — No, no. Jeff Warren — So when I get a chance, like I want to be out on my bike, you know, I want to be. I’d love to ride. That’s my happy place. And so I’ll be be out at the lake these days. I’m trying to find some gap there. I think it’s real important that you you you set a schedule for the week and try to set a pattern. Jeff Warren — So there are certain times that are study times for me that can’t be touched. There are certain times where I do mark out, when am I going to get some exercise, you know, that kind of thing. Again, easier said than done ah because, you know, there’s going to come the crisis. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Jeff Warren — There’s going to come, oh, I’m doing that funeral. You know, that happens. Rich Birch — Right. Right. That pushes in for sure. Yeah that’s, that’s, that’s great. Well, you’ve written a book called “Live Forgiven”. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. We’ll link to that in the show notes, but why don’ you tell us a little bit about, uh, about that book? What, you know, kind of what was the, the germ of that? Well, that’s a lot of work to pull together, a resource like that. Talk us through that. What’s, what’s that look like? Jeff Warren — Yeah, so it’s a little bit of what I talked about earlier. It really is unpacking the gospel. What does it mean to live forgiven? In other words, what is grace? And then how do you appropriate grace in your life? Jeff Warren — So it really is built around my life verse, 2 Corinthians 5.21 that we talked about earlier. And a lot of what I’ve learned, the appropriation of grace to really, again, remain in Him, I think you know it’s possible today, Rich, and this is a big deal, this is what I’m preaching a lot, it’s possible to self-identify as a Christian in America and not be a disciple of Jesus. And those are two very different things, right? I know that you know John Mark Comer, among others, have talked a lot about that. He’s just riffing off Dallas Willard. We all know that. And that that there’s a real difference. And so anyway, it’s it’s about that. Jeff Warren — Once capturing grace and understanding the gospel that Christianity is not work harder, get better. It’s believe more deeply what He’s already accomplished for us. And then, okay, yeah, I get that. But then how to appropriate that? Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — How can I live forgiven, remaining in Him? And that’s my, you know, if you come around here much, that’s my constant message. We don’t have much of another message, really, do we, Rich? We’ve got one message, and it’s the grace of God. Rich Birch — Right. Amen. Yeah. Jeff Warren — And then it’s parsed out in all kinds of ways. But, yeah, that’s what the book’s about. Rich Birch — That’s great. So good. well Well, yeah, we’ll link to that. And this has been, this been a good conversation, you know, ah thinking through wrestling through you know, your own um relationship with Jesus, how that impacts your life, how that impacts your leadership, you know, leading a, you know, very busy churches doing all kinds of things and is reaching people. Busy is to the wrong word, in a very active church that’s, you know, making an impact, which is incredible. It’s been a good conversation. Anything else you’d love to share just as we kind of land today’s episode? Jeff Warren — Yeah, I would share something that ah um I’ve come to over the past few years and a new learning for me that I think would be really good for pastors, leaders listening. Another thing that’s really set me free um has been to to live in the present, to be mindful and and to live in the moment. We hear that a lot, but let me let me explain that. Jeff Warren — You know when COVID hit, um if we were if we were deciding that you know our worth and our value is found in how many people come into our church, that was kind of blown up, right? And so during that time, I was really I was really wrestling. Like a lot of us, was real dark time because any decision I made as a pastor… and I’m starting to have some PTSD you know right now with some of what’s going on our culture right now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true. Jeff Warren — You know the old the the old but the trope, you know if your pastor didn’t say this, you know this past week… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s wild, right? Jeff Warren — …I mean, you know, you ought to find another church. I’m like, please. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Warren — Okay, you’re not pastoring my church. Rich Birch — No, exactly. Jeff Warren — So so during that time, long longer story short, out of that then, where I thought, well, we’re going to bounce back, you know. We we were, think, a lot of legacy churches. We did not bounce back, right? We’re back. We’re beyond where we were pre-COVID. But it has been, I mean, it’s been work, right? Rich Birch — It’s a journey. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Warren — So so for me the the learning is this. I have a friend who is a recovering addict. He’s got a ministry that’s amazing. Michael Moulton, M to the Rock is his is this name. Jeff Warren — But he I sat down with him and I said, Michael, how do you do it, man? How are you sober? How do you remain sober? Jeff Warren — He said he said, Jeff, I’ve got to live in the moment. I’ve got to live in the present. Jeff Warren — And I said, okay, help me there. Help me. What do you mean? Jeff Warren — He said, man, if I go back to in the past, all I have is shame and regret. My guy’s got 23 mug shots, okay. He’s had he has a past, right. And he says, if I go in the past I have shame or regret. If I go into the future, all I have is worry and anxiety. He says, so I’ve got to stay right here.
Jeff Warren — And then I said, how do you do how do you stay right here? I mean I get that, but he said, I’ve got I’ve got to serve somebody. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Jeff Warren — I’ve got I’ve got to get outside of myself. And I’ve got to serve someone. Jeff Warren — So Rich, here’s what I’d say to to close all that. It’s been so freeing for me. It means that I’m going to…what is success? Okay, there’s not numbers in ministry or whatever, the you know, bigger, better church, something. What is success? I asked the Lord during that time, Lord, what is success in ministry? And he he kind of, you know, holy headbutt, kind of slapped me upside the head and said, no, there’s a question before that question. Shows you where your mind and your heart is. The question is not success in ministry. What is success in life, right? What is success as a disciple? Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — And what I came to, and this is not new for me, I discovered later that Mother Teresa, among others. It’s success is faithfulness. Full stop. Rich Birch — That’s good. Amen. Amen. Jeff Warren — Not faithfulness so that… Right? No, no, no. Faithfulness full stop. And so what does faithfulness look like? This is where all this goes. Faithfulness looks like being faithful in the moment. Like with whomever He’s put in front of me right now. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — Not not this afternoon. Rich Birch — Good. Right. Jeff Warren — Not my lunch appointment. Right now.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeff Warren — Whomever He’s put in front of me, focus! And whatever He’s called me to do in the moment. And man, that has been so freeing for me. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Jeff Warren — It’s a battle, but if we can live that way…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jeff Warren — …I can put, you know, you and I both, I can put this hour together. Next I got another appointment later. I’m meeting with another, you know, whatever. I can go home tonight, hopefully give my best emotional energy to Stacey, my wife, and I can put my head on the pillow tonight and go, I mean, I kind of messed up, you know, 2 o’clock, I blew it, and then 3 o’clock, that wasn’t a great meeting.
Rich Birch — Right. Jeff Warren — But I sought to be faithful in the moment. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Jeff Warren — And you put some hours together, you put days together, months and years together, and someday, you know, it’s what we long to hear. Hey you’ve been faithful. Well done. Been faithful. And those happened that just happens one moment at a time. Rich Birch — Yeah, Jeff, that’s so good. That’s so good. So helpful for people. I appreciate that. Great. Yeah, super helpful insights and great for us to wrestle through and think about those things. Rich Birch — If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Jeff Warren — Yeah, you can find us at pcbc.org. Find out everything about us. You can even find there. You can find, know, I’m on Instagram. You know, Twitter, less and less. Facebook, you know, dumpster fire, even less. Rich Birch — True. So true. Jeff Warren — I’m on Threads. You can find me. Rich Birch — Yeah. Jeff Warren — I think it’s jeff_warren, but just find, yeah, Jeff Warren. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much. Jeff Warren — Thank you, Rich. Thanks for all you’re doing, man. I love love you. Appreciate all you’re doing, bro. Keep it up. Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Jeff Warren — All right.
Stop Buying Church Marketing. Start Building Inviters.
Nov 04, 2025
Most churches are overspending on visibility and under-investing in invitations.
In the late 1900s I ran a dot-com back when saying “I run a dot-com” got you a seat at the cool table.
We obsessed over our branding. Fancy logo. Perfect domain. Debated five kinds of red like our lives depended on hex codes. Launch day came and… crickets.
Why? We were doing marketing when we should’ve been doing conversations. The growth strategy wasn’t a new shade of crimson; it was getting out of the building and talking to customers.
Churches make the same mistake. We assume the next Facebook hack, TikTok trend, or website refresh will push us over the top. But the channel we’re ignoring is sitting right in front of us every Sunday: people who personally invite people. The data has been shouting this for years: personal invitations beat paid reach … in effectiveness, in trust, and in retention.
You don’t need a new logo, Google Ads, or a slicker site. You need to build inviters.
If you want durable and compounding growth, stop buying marketing and start building inviters.
Call it Invite Propensity, the percentage of attenders who invite someone in a given period. It’s the church’s NPS (Net Promoter Score): a simple human metric that predicts future growth better than vanity numbers (impressions, followers, even raw attendance). When invite propensity rises, everything compounds — first-time guests, baptisms, small-group participation — because invitation rides on the rails of relationship, the most trusted medium on earth.
Your Church Doesn’t Need Another Idea—It Needs a Plan
Most churches want to grow but feel stuck doing more without seeing results.
Join Rich Birch for a free 60-minute workshop that gives you a simple, proven way to reignite momentum
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You’ll walk away with a clear 90-day growth plan you can actually implement—no extra staff or budget required.
Wednesday, November 12th at 12noon ET / 9am PT Free online training for pastors and church leaders who want real results.
We live in the attention recession. More posts, more reels, more ads, but diminishing returns. Meanwhile, trust in institutional messaging lags far behind trust in people we actually know. According to Nielsen’s global survey, recommendations from friends and family are the most trusted form of promotion, outranking every ad channel by a mile. [ref] McKinsey adds that word-of-mouth drives 20–50% of decisions, cutting through the noise in ways paid media can’t. [ref]
Translation for church leaders: the most persuasive “ad” for your church isn’t an ad. It’s a friend who says, “Sit with me.”
And it’s not just first-touch effectiveness. It’s stickiness. People who come through relationships are more likely to stay because relationships are the glue. Research on assimilation shows that those who remain active long-term average seven new friendships; those who drift away average fewer than two. [ref]
Friends don’t just get people in the door … they keep connected to the church long term.
Personal invite dominates first visits. Decades of studies converge on the same point: the #1 reason people attend a church is that someone they know invited them, far outstripping ads and programs. [ref]
Younger adults are even more invite-driven. Recent surveys of evangelicals show 71% of under-35s first connected to their church via a personal invitation, versus ~51% among 55+, authenticity and relationships trump exploration. [ref]
None of this requires marketing spending or media buy. It requires a robust invite culture.
Invite Propensity
Invite Propensity is the share of your congregation that has personally invited someone in the last 90 days.
Why it matters:
Predictive power. Invite Propensity is a leading indicator. Attendance is lagging. Track the leading indicator.
Compounding effects. One person invites one friend; some of those friends invite friends; the network compounds.
Budget sanity. The cost per retained attender via ads can run high (mailers, boosts, design)—while a personal invitation’s cost is near zero and comes with built-in hospitality.
If 12% of your people invite one person per quarter and half of the invitees show up, that’s a 6% quarterly lift in first-time guests before a single ad dollar is spent. If 30% of those guests connect into groups or serve via relational bridges, you’ve just shifted the growth curve … with trust, not spend.
4 Outreach Myths Draining Your Momentum
Confusing visibility with persuasion. // More impressions don’t equal more impact. Awareness is necessary, insufficient, and expensive. You can buy reach, but you can’t buy trust. People don’t show up because they saw your ad; they show up because someone they know invited them. If your communications strategy ends at visibility, it’s just brand maintenance, not mission advancement. Shift budget and attention toward equipping inviters. Measure personal outreach, not post reach.
Centralizing evangelism to staff. // When outreach becomes a department, the body atrophies. Staff-led evangelism looks efficient on a spreadsheet but weak in real life. And again … marketing feels safer. You can spend money, schedule posts, and avoid people. Stop that. The early church didn’t hire a marketing firm; it mobilized a movement. Make every role invitational. Train parking teams, kids’ volunteers, and greeters to ask, “Who could you bring next week?” Equip small group leaders to model invitation as part of discipleship. The job of the staff is to create inviters, not do the inviting for them.
Under-funding hospitality. // People won’t risk relational capital if they don’t trust that guests will feel welcome. If an attendee at your church isn’t confident that their friend will have a great experience, they’ll never send the invite. Confusing signage, awkward kids’ check-in, or “guess which door is the main entrance” kills momentum. Audit your Sunday experience like a first timer. Fix friction points before you ask people to invite. Hospitality isn’t a side ministry … it’s your front door. If you want more invites, fund the experience members are proud to share.
Only celebrating conversions. // Most churches platform the touchdown and ignore the drive that got them there. But people don’t start with conversions; they start with conversations. If you only celebrate salvations, you silently teach your people that the invite doesn’t matter unless it ends in a baptism. Celebrate courage, not just conversion. Tell the story of the invite text sent, the coworker who came, the “yes” that started a journey. Make inviting part of the discipleship story. When you normalize the attempt, you multiply the effort.
The Budget Question
Should you stop all advertising? Not necessarily. Paid media can prime the pump—but the conversion happens in the relationship. Ads can raise awareness; people create action.
Here’s the uncomfortable math:
Through decades of studies, personal invitations outperform advertising by an order of magnitude. The Institute for American Church Growth found that nearly 79% of first-time guests came because someone they knew invited them, while programs, ads, and special events accounted for single-digit percentages. [ref] Meanwhile, McKinsey estimates that 20–50% of all consumer decisions … in every sector .. are driven by word-of-mouth influence. [ref]
That’s at least 10x more effective than most paid channels.
So, if invitations are roughly 10x more powerful than marketing, then … logically … you should be investing 10x more in building an invite culture than investing in marketing and ads.
That doesn’t mean kill your marketing budget. It means repurpose it. Your spending should follow your strategy:
1. Training (Staff & Systems)
Most churches don’t have a marketing problem…they have a discipleship problem disguised as one. The job of your staff isn’t to post better; it’s to prompt better. Train your team to infuse invitation into every department: kids, worship, groups, and guest services. “How does this help people bring a friend?” should become a standing meeting question. That’s your new creative brief.
Budget for leadership development, invite-culture workshops, and ongoing coaching that helps your staff stay focused on mobilizing inviters, not managing impressions.
2. Equipping (Tools for the Congregation)
People want to invite; they just don’t know how. Make it stupidly easy. The most effective churches lower friction with shareable tools—physical and digital. Think:
Branded invite cards with simple copy (“Sit with me this Sunday.”)
Pre-built social graphics your people can post or text.
A clean, mobile-first landing page with times, directions, kids’ info, and an RSVP option.
Easy one-tap “share” buttons that let members tag a friend directly.
Budget for creative production that serves your members as marketers, not your brand as a product.
3. Motivation (Stories That Stick)
Vision leaks; motivation decays. You have to keep the invite story alive. Every Sunday, highlight someone who came because of a friend. Baptism stories? Trace them back to the first invitation. What gets celebrated gets repeated, and nothing reinforces culture like stories told in public.
Budget for story capture…video, social posts, short stage moments. Hire a part-time storyteller before you buy another ad campaign.
The gospel doesn’t spread through algorithms. It spreads through relationships.
If your strategy is “buy attention,” you’ll keep paying rent to platforms.
If your strategy is “build inviters,” you’ll own the asset … trust.
The most persuasive message your city will hear about your church won’t come from your page. It’ll come from your people.
Stop buying marketing. Start building inviters.
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Church Growth Launchpad workshop.
In just 60 minutes, you’ll discover a simple framework thriving churches use to build momentum
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Walk away with a clear 90-day plan you can put into action right away.
Wednesday, November 12th at 12noon ET / 9am PT Free online training for pastors and teams who want practical results.
Helping Your Church Engage with God’s Word Daily: Lessons from YouVersion with Lucinda Ross
Oct 30, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lucinda Ross, Central Group Leader of Communications at Life.Church, one of the most influential and innovative churches in the world. Since its founding in 1996, Life.Church has grown to more than 40 locations across the U.S. and a massive global online presence. Through initiatives like the Open Network and the YouVersion Bible App, Life.Church continues to equip millions of people and churches to engage with God’s Word every day.
As Global Bible Month begins, Lucinda shares powerful insights on how churches can inspire daily Bible engagement, leverage digital tools like YouVersion to disciple people beyond Sunday, and help believers experience lasting transformation through God’s Word.
Reaching everyone, everywhere, every day. // The heart behind YouVersion’s mission is summed up in three simple words—everyone, everywhere, every day. As the Bible App approaches one billion downloads, Lucinda emphasizes that the real win isn’t the number of installs—it’s the number of lives being transformed through consistent engagement with Scripture. The app is now opened more than one billion times every 39 days, and the past few weeks have seen some of the highest engagement rates ever recorded. Similarly, print Bible sales have increased, revealing a growing hunger for God’s word.
The power of daily engagement. // Research from the Center for Bible Engagement demonstrates that people who interact with Scripture four or more days a week experience significant life change. This “power of four” effect leads to greater faith-sharing, reduced anxiety and loneliness, and freedom from destructive habits.
Equipping churches to disciple digitally. // YouVersion Bible App was designed not only as a personal tool but as a resource for churches. Through YouVersion Connect, local churches can create a free digital home within the Bible App where members can find their church, access reading plans, and receive updates directly from their pastors. Churches can feature Bible plans connected to sermon series, post follow-up devotionals, and share key verses throughout the week. The app also provides anonymous engagement insights for church leaders—a “spiritual health dashboard” that helps pastors see what topics their people are exploring, how frequently they read Scripture, and how they can be better shepherded.
Celebrating Global Bible Month. // November marks Global Bible Month, an opportunity for churches worldwide to celebrate the power of God’s Word. This year, YouVersion and several partner ministries are uniting to encourage believers to take the 30-Day Bible Challenge—a commitment to read the Bible every day for 30 days. Churches can sign up and access free resources at globalbiblemonth.com, including sermon outlines, social graphics, and curated 30-day reading plans. The goal is simple: to help people experience the difference that consistent engagement with Scripture can make.
Technology as a tool for transformation. // Some critics argue that Bible engagement should happen only through printed Bibles, but Lucinda sees technology as an ally, not a replacement. YouVersion’s accessibility—through text, audio, or reading plans—makes it possible for people to engage with Scripture anywhere, at any time, in their preferred version or language. God’s Word is alive and active, and technology simply helps more people experience it.
Expanding global reach. // As YouVersion grows, the team is investing in new ways to make the Bible accessible to everyone in their heart language. In addition to the main app, the Bible App Lite serves users in areas with low connectivity, while the Bible App for Kids helps children engage through story-based learning. YouVersion now offers over 3,600 Bible versions in 2,300 languages, with teams at global hubs in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Australia ensuring content is contextualized for local cultures.
To learn more about how your church can get started with YouVersion Connect, visit youversion.com/connect or explore free resources for Global Bible Month at globalbiblemonth.com
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super honored that you are listening in today and you’re going to be rewarded for this. You might not know it, but here in November is Global Bible Month. And I’m super honored to have—you know, you feel like you’re talking to a rock star, like somebody who’s at the center of something that’s pretty amazing that’s going on. Today’s one of those days, Lucinda Ross. She is a central group leader of communications at Life.Church. Rich Birch — If you have been sleeping under a rock and do not know Life.Church, they started 1996. And it’s grown to this incredibly diverse group of people meeting with cities all across the United States and around the world. They have, if I’m counting correctly, if I can count all the slots, 40 physical locations in several states in the U.S. and an incredibly robust online community. Life.Church has several resources and tools for growth, ah for really helping churches grow, including their Open Network for churches and the Bible app from YouVersion, which really seeks to put God’s word in the hands of everyone, every day, everywhere. And um man, they have just done amazing stuff. And Lucinda, I’m super glad, honored really, to have you on the show today. Thanks for being here. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Thanks so much, Rich. That was just a kind kind introduction. Just humbled and honored to play small part what God’s doing here. Rich Birch — Well, I appreciate you being humble, ah but like YouVersion has just had such a monster impact on so many people’s lives. And I’m really happy to celebrate it this month and to kind of dive deep a little bit, tell a little bit more about that. Rich Birch — But why don’t we kind of start before we jump in? um Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get connected to this, this whole thing? And then I’d love to chat through what we’re talking about today. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. So I have had the honor of being on the Life.Church team for almost 13 years. So started out attending, never thought I would be in ministry. God had me in um corporate world and thought that that’s where my place was. And he had other plans for me. And so he’s used Life.Church to change my life, to draw me closer to him. And I’m just super honored that I get to play a part in it now. And so, and part of what I do as and the leader of communications at our church is I just get to tell stories. I get to do the fun part of just sharing what God is doing in our ministries like YouVersion. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, Life.Church, man, has had just incredible impact and reach in both physical and digital realms. And God’s used it in so many ways. From your seat, from your perspective, what’s kind of driving that transformation? What is it that God’s using ah in the kind of Life.Church community to make such huge impact? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, there’s no denying that God’s hand is all over this every step of the way. And so one of the things that are one of our leaders, Bobby Grunewald says is it’s it’s all him and it’s all his. And so when you approach things with that kind of posture, it’s um it gives you just the obedience to take risks. Because you know that we can have the faith to believe that something incredible is possible on the other side. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so seeing our leaders model that, um getting to play a part in that, where we are just going for it consistently thinking about, okay, what’s next? What does God have next? How, um if our vision truly is to reach people, everyone, everywhere, every day, it’s a vision of YouVersion, but also the mission of Life.Church is to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ. Lucinda Rojas Ross — If those are the things that we’re focused on, those are big. That three everys in the vision of YouVersion means we’ve always got work to do. That work will outlive us. And so um thinking about just taking risk, being obedient, and seeing where God has, where that momentum is, and just pouring fuel on that fire. Rich Birch — It’s so good. Well, you know, every pastor that’s listening in, ah you know, they want to see people be changed. They want to see people be transformed. They want, they they don’t, there’s this misnomer that, you know, pastors just want large crowds and they don’t really care whether transformation happens. That’s just not true.
Lucinda Rojas Ross — Absolutely not. Rich Birch — Those aren’t the people I interact with. They want to see people you know, their lives turned upside down in the best possible way. What are you learning about what actually drives change in people’s lives? What are you seeing from your perspective that that actually sees that kind of transformation take place? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. Yeah. We can all agree. Just like you said, like pastors care about people’s lives being changed. So we can all agree that there’s critical pieces to someone’s spiritual journey. So not not everyone’s on the same journey at the same time at the same pace, but those steps of faith are super critical. Finding biblical community, serving, giving. But one of the things that we’re focused on specifically at YouVersion is how do we get people engaged in God’s word every single day? Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so spending time in God’s word, we know is a critical part of their spiritual journey of their life, the transformation that God does in their lives. And so that’s the the part, the piece we get to play in in what he’s doing in those spiritual journeys. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so I think just you know thinking about pastors who wanna see that happen, it’s what it’s what happens outside the walls of the church. And so, and we know that that’s the case. We know we only have that limited time with them every single weekend. um And, may you know, maybe in some other spaces, but but what is God doing outside the walls the church? Rich Birch — Yeah. I want to—listen, pull back the fourth wall for a little bit. Just want to honor you and the team at YouVersion. Like guys have done just an incredible job. Like what a resource to give to the church. It’s had just huge impact, worth celebrating. I think I saw your crossing or have crossed a billion downloads. Like that’s just an incredible. Rich Birch — Even just in my little small group, couple years ago, I had one of those transformative experiences with a guy. He’s the kind of guy you want to reach, mid-30s guy, unchurched guy. And he’s taken steps towards Jesus. And like, it’s like stupidly simple what I’m about to share. But he was like, you know, I’m really struggling with reading the Bible on a regular basis. And so I literally took up my phone, fired up the app.
Lucinda Rojas Ross — Love it. Rich Birch — And I said, look here, you know, why don’t we do like a three day plan? Let’s try a three day plan this week. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Great. Rich Birch — And then how that goes, then if we do that, why don’t we then together do a five-day plan. and then a seven-day plan.
Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yes.
Rich Birch — And then, and literally just built up the streaks. And, and I remember a couple months later after that, he was sharing, he’s like, you know, that really changed my life. Like, he’s like, I never thought I’d be the kind of person that read the Bible every day. Rich Birch — And this is what, you know, I know you’ve done that on scale for literally millions of people. But many churches know about the Bible app. They know about YouVersion, but they maybe haven’t connected it to the weekly rhythms of the people at their church. Rich Birch — Like they they might say like, hey, go download the app, but they haven’t figured out how to really integrate it. I’d love to focus on that today. How can we integrate? What are you seeing kind of the best practices for integrating this app into their ministries? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, that’s great. Oh, I love that story. Like, that’s it. That’s literally what we want to see. Rich Birch — Part of it. That’s we’re hoping. Yeah. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, that’s just, you know, that those little the steps to just download the app, open it, and just start taking those like steps through along the way. I think if you just back up and think about, um you hit on this really quickly, but we are approaching a billion downloads. We’re getting really close. We’re actually going to celebrate that next month, which is really, really exciting. Lucinda Rojas Ross — But what we’re even more excited about than the number of devices that have ah God’s word is really the number of people who are regularly engaging in it. That’s actually growing really, really quickly right now. So the last five Sundays are ranked as some of the top 10 highest days ever for Bible engagement in the app. Like that’s where we are right now. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. So when you think back, I mean, where’re it’s ranking up there with like Easter and the beginning of the year when people are starting those, trying to start those habits. But we’re seeing that, that kind of momentum where the Bible app is opened a billion times every 39 days.
Rich Birch — Wow! Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so, yeah it’s it is it’s just so encouraging and it’s just so exciting to see people hungry for God’s word. And so I think just backing up, yes, we want to get people in it, but just I think getting getting ourselves in a place to think about the why. Like why do we really want people in God’s word? Lucinda Rojas Ross — We know that it changes their lives and we’ve all hopefully experienced the impact that it has. But when you back up and think about what will it do in their lives? How can you cast vision for what will happen on the other side of regular engagement in God’s word? Lucinda Rojas Ross — So one of the things we talk about a lot here is the power four. So if you, a lot you may be familiar with it, but if you’re not, the Center for Bible Engagement did a study that found that engaging in the Bible four or more days a week has a profound impact on someone’s life. Lucinda Rojas Ross — So in fact, hearing from God through his word is a single most powerful predictor of their spiritual growth. They’re more likely to share their faith. It decreases their struggles, like their felt needs, like fear, anxiety, loneliness, and actually reduce some of their like risky behaviors, like the things that they’re doing in their life that they want to stop doing. Rich Birch — Right. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so if you think about that why of like, oh, it’s yes, we want people to grow in their spiritual journey, but we actually just want their lives to feel different. We want them to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit every day and reading in his word and connecting with God in that way is such an important part of doing that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s that’s so good. I know that um like church engagement, kind of engagement as a church has been at the core of the YouVersion story right from the very beginning. I remember, well, whenever YouVersion started, years ago, I remember Andy at North Point talking about, you know, I was talking to Craig Groeschel and they’re doing this thing with the Bible and like with this app and like, we’re going to try it over here too. And like right from the beginning, this idea of like churches encouraging their people to has been kind of built in right from the beginning. You mentioned that, you know, we, we see that kind of engagement, but how, how do we actually use it? Walk us through, how can we better leverage this to really shepherd our people? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yep, absolutely. So I think just as as a local church, getting to steward this kingdom resource, like our heart is like, how can we help equip and empower pastors and church leaders to do that? So one of the ways we do that is through YouVersion Connect. Lucinda Rojas Ross — So there’s features in the app in the Bible app. So you might be using on a personal level, but if you haven’t kind of dug a little bit deeper, your church can actually have a dedicated space in the app where they can where people can find community, they can see who else is attending their church. And so they can find churches near them. So if you go to the discover tab or at the very bottom, you can search churches and it shows churches my friends go to, people that I’ve friended in the app, but also churches near me. Lucinda Rojas Ross — So that getting people connected into a church, that’s super important, of course. Also pastors and church leaders can feature reading plans within their page on the Bible app. So if you’re doing a specific series on anxiety, for example, you can find a great Bible plan that you feel confident about, you want to put in front of your people, people to engage in that way. Put it on your page, and then you can promote it as you’re talking every single weekend. Lucinda Rojas Ross — The other piece of that is there’s posts. So you can actually send passages, devotionals, sermon follow-ups it to the entire community – all the people that are following the church page. So when they open it, their your pastor’s guidance is right there with them. Lucinda Rojas Ross — I think beyond that, there’s you know live events where you can put sermon notes. People can follow along. They can highlight. They can add notes and thoughts. So that digital way of of being able to keep keep track of what what my pastor is talking about. I can go back to it. What was he you know What did what it he or she mention and in that specific verse? Go back. What did I think about that? And reflect on it. Lucinda Rojas Ross — I think one of the most powerful things in all of this, so when we, you know, get our church engaged in this way, you know, being able to see they’re connected, they’re following, I know, you know, what they’re, what they’re, what I’m leading them to do, but also you can get insights so that you can see what kind of engagement—on an aggregated anonymous level—but you can see what are the kinds of things that that my church is thinking about? What are they like looking for? What are they struggling with? What kinds of Bible plans? Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so when you do that, it’s you’re able to have just ah another little connection. Of course, those conversations and those relationships are a huge part of that, but just another like input. Just a little spiritual health dashboard for you to be able to have an input into how can you best serve your church and what they’re walking through right now. Rich Birch — I love that. I love the use of the data. What are that’s like you know being able to kind of see, like you said, an anonymized, but still the people that are following our church, that’s powerful data for a a pastor. You know, we often come up to this, even this time a year, lots of churches are thinking about what are we going preach on next year? What’s our calendar going to look at? Well let’s actually try to pull out some data from you know the YouVersion app to understand what our people are wrestling with. Rich Birch — How are some pastors or teams use that data to better shepherd their people? What’s that actually look like, if you give examples of what that’s what that looks like at a church level? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, think one is helping people connect to each other. And so being able to do Bible plans together. So I think that’s a good, like there’s an example there. But I also think you know finding that data just to think about what what might um what might my sermons look like? What might my series look like? Lucinda Rojas Ross — What, or you know, if people are really interested in finding community, like that’s something that it looks like they’re, they’re really interested in. Okay, so how do I help them get more connected, rather than it be something that they, they see, and they go seek out, how do I put it in front of them. Lucinda Rojas Ross — So I think those are the kinds of things of like, just picking up on those threads. And so there’s lots of there’s lots of, of of inputs that we can take. But I think it’s just really, okay, how can I combine what I’m seeing, the data in front of me, what what people are actually doing. Or you know even just their their frequency of engagement in the app? Like how can I know, okay, that’s they they’re doing well, or I can challenge them to more. And so I think in being able to see that, take those, you know that prayer, Holy Spirit guidance on, okay, now now where? How do I lead my congregation? How do I shepherd my flock moving forward? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And this is softball question here. So I’m a church. I want to set up my my church page. How much is that going to cost me? I know there’s like, that’s going to cost a lot of money. This kind of technology you’re talking about, reading plans, connecting our people, getting that all costs sounds like money. What’s it costing me? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Absolutely nothing. It always is free, will be free. And I think that’s the the piece of of the generosity of people all over the world to really see the vision of getting God’s word everywhere to be able to enable us to be able to do this for free. And so to be able to give it away, like that is that is the heart of of of who we are as a church, as a ministry, but it’s not without the generosity of of of believers all over the world. Rich Birch — Yeah, if you’ve ever done, friends, if you’re listening and ever done any app development work for phones or even just like web apps, it’s complex to do and to maintain and keep running. And at the scale that this app runs at is insane to be able to keep this thing you know up and running and so smooth. The fact that you can open the app every time and it works, like it’s insane at the scale that you guys are operating at.
Rich Birch — Well, Global Bible Month is here in November. How can churches leverage that moment to to kind of build better healthy spiritual rhythms in their people? How could we, this kind of an interesting month, I’ve never, I don’t know, um maybe I’ve been so under the rock somewhere. where I’ve never heard of Global Bible Month except for, I don’t know, I’ve been following you guys and you’re talking about it, which is great. So how how could we leverage this as an opportunity? What are some things we could do to try to encourage this, encourage Bible reading in our people this month? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s so as we saw, as we I mentioned earlier, just as we’re coming up on a billion installs, we looked at not just how do we celebrate ourselves? Like that’s not who we are what we’re about. We’re actually terrible at celebrating ourselves. That’s that’s so a point of weakness. But we recognized that this is a moment for the Bible. This is and one of billions of reasons that God’s word is is alive and active. And just like I said, the momentum that is building around it. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so as we looked ahead and thought about, okay, we’re going to reach this milestone. How do we just point everyone to the Bible? We’ve actually gotten to partner with lots of other ministries, organizations, other apps, Glorify, Hallow, who we’re all on board for Global Bible Month. Like we are celebrating the Bible. And one of the big ways that we’re doing that is through the 30-day Bible challenge. So 30-day challenge. Rich Birch — Yeah. Lucinda Rojas Ross — So what we’re encouraging people to do, and I would love for pastors to really you know encourage and challenge our churches in this way is is maybe that you’re someone who is just inconsistent. You’re in and out. You kind of really try, but it’s just not really stuck. That habit hasn’t quite clicked. Or um even all the way to the end of like, you know, I’ve tried so many other things. I don’t even know really what what I believe. I’m you know I’m doing meditation, mindfulness, all the things. Why don’t I give the Bible a chance? Lucinda Rojas Ross — So that huge spectrum of people, so encouraging the people who are in his word to keep going, to inspire, share, the people who make it consistent or the people just to give it a try, 30 days, every single day of November.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lucinda Rojas Ross — Open the Bible, experience God’s word and see what happens. Rich Birch — Right. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And that’s really like the heart of the challenge and and challenging people both to take it for themselves, but just to invite people around them to do it too. And so it’s been really exciting to see how many people are already committing to it. And we’re just, at you know, we’re still like a little over a month or about a month away. And so it’s exciting to see. And we know, we know that God’s going to do something really special through this. And so just rallying around, getting people to commit and to build that habit. Lucinda Rojas Ross — We know, um we’ve all seen studies about it takes about three weeks to build a habit, like that 30 days. That’s on purpose. Like get you get through 30 days, like you’ve done something and being able to create that habit and build it into before January, before, you know, the times we think we want to make those habits, like let’s do it now. Let’s all rally together and and do this. Rich Birch — Okay, let’s pivot in a slightly different direction. Rich Birch — So um I’m a fan, and this, remember, this comes from a spot of, like, I use the YouVersion app. I love it. ah So this is not a personal attack. But there are people out there who, like, are really down on app-based Bible experiences. They’re like, you got to read it in like a, you know, an actual physical book. And I’m not trying to pick a fight here. I’m not trying to like get in an argument over this, but I’m sure you’ve had people say that. And I don’t know what to say. I just say, I give the dumb answer and I’m like, listen, I just want people in God’s word. And I’m like, I am like, I don’t know, like yeah I’ve seen lots of people get engaged when they use YouVersion and I want to see more of that happen. Rich Birch — But what what do you say or how do you think about that, you know, that critique? It’s a weird critique to me. And it always seems strange to me when when when pastors, particularly when they take on, again, I’m not trying to pick a fight, but what do you think about that? Comment. Lucinda Rojas Ross — No, I mean, no, I think that’s something that we, and when we talk about the 30 day challenge, so like just really quickly on that, and it’s not even a complete different direction. Like, honestly, it’s however that works best for you, you know, paper Bible. And that’s the other exciting part of Bible momentum, like the Bible engagement momentum. It’s not just what we’re seeing. We’re seeing print Bible sales go up. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Lucinda Rojas Ross — We’re seeing like Gen Z buying, like the, the, the fact that God’s word is at the center of this, it doesn’t like, we have zero, like, just engage with God’s word. If we are a helpful way for you to do that, great. Rich Birch — Sure. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so when we go back and tell the story actually of of when Bobby Grunewald had the idea um to create the Bible app, one of the things he was trying to solve for himself is that idea of consistency, of like, I just want to be more consistent, but I like i wonder if technology can help me with that. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so as as you kind of fast forward through the story, one of the one of the things that happened along the way is we actually created a website. I don’t know if a lot of people know the story. We actually created a website first and people started going to it and then it failed. Well, this was in 2007. People didn’t necessarily have like, you know, it was like a a lot ah desktop experience. And so what he always says that always sticks with me is we moved it from their nightstand to there their desk, their desktop. Lucinda Rojas Ross — And so what the Bible app, what technology helps us solve for is the fact that we’re not necessarily always going to have our paper Bible with us everywhere we go…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lucinda Rojas Ross — …but we also will have it with us everywhere we go. And we can engage in different ways. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Some people, audio Bible is really helpful for them. Like that’s something that they, that’s a really powerful way that they engage in God’s word. Having the different versions, the languages, like they’re just different things that it solves for or helps with. But yeah, that’s absolutely not to diminish, you know, if people feel more power to if you. If you like your paper Bible, that’s your go-to, great. We love that. Rich Birch — Love it. Friends, listen to, go back and listen to listen to their incredible communicator. You do a good job at your thing and you’re not picking the fight. You took my, you totally dodged my question and answered in a super gracious way. Not surprised by that at all. Friends, we just want to see more people engaged with scripture. We know that it’s life transformating. It’s just such a clear picture of what it means to follow Jesus when we engage in his word.
Rich Birch — And so let’s get back to the 30 day challenge. I think that’s amazing. Are are do you know of churches that are doing this together, or is there is there a way that we could encourage? Is there, would you want to send them somewhere to kind of be a part of that? Or I’m sure there’s a bunch of different people are doing reading plans on, on you know, YouVersion. Talk us through how can we get more involved if we’re like, oh, we’re intrigued in that. We should do that. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yep. So if you go to globalbiblemonth.com. One, we’d love for for you to send people just to sign up for it, just so that we can show. Like that’s the encouraging part of seeing that number of people who’ve signed up, seeing that grow and seeing that momentum. But beyond that, there’s actually free church resources there. So there are sermon outlines, graphic slides, other things that you could do to challenge your church in this way. Lucinda Rojas Ross — So there are, we’re curating some 30-day plans so that we make it really easy. So if you wanted to choose one and challenge your church to go through the same one together. You could use, and you know, for smaller groups of that, you could use some plans with friends feature to be able to do that together. You can discuss it in other places. But really, it’s what it’s what you you guys as pastors, you know your churches best. Rich Birch — Yeah. Lucinda Rojas Ross — You know um you know what you’re what you’re teaching on, what you’re walking through, and how your people respond. But we definitely want to make sure that those resources are available so that you can take that, run with it. But I think definitely just encouraging to sign up so that we can help show and encourage other people to engage in that way. Rich Birch — So that’s globalbiblemonth.com. We want to send people over there and make sure they sign up, you know kind of flag that they’re interested and there’s some resources there. You can see various you know apps and that that are participating. That that would be a great ah first step from people.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s think a little bit about the future. As you think about the future at YouVersion, man, that vision of the three E’s and it stood out to me. I don’t know again where I’ve missed this, but somewhere along as I was prepping for this, I bumped into that. Everyone, every day, everywhere. As you think about the future, what are the questions that you’re that you guys are asking, thinking about the future, about how we can ah see more people engage with scripture? We definitely seem to have a moment now. Rich Birch — I’ve been saying this in lots of contexts. When we talk about this stuff, I’m like, let’s not miss this moment. Let’s not just, ah you know, let this go by, but let’s try to build a new foundation for a future. So what, what does the future look like for you as you wrestle with, you know, where’s God taking YouVersion as we go next? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yeah. So I think one of the things, there’s there are lots of different areas that we are looking at, but I think if you just collectively look at it one is is continuing to grow, continuing to get the Bible to more people around the world. And that also has expanded into, we talk about ability and we’re talking about family of apps now. So beyond the Bible app, we have Bible app light, which is for areas with lower connectivity and less capable devices. Bible app for kids, of course, has been around. So continuing to build on those and looking for more opportunities. Are there other things that we’re, that we need to pursue in that space? So that’s continued growth. Lucinda Rojas Ross — We’ve talked a lot about engagement. That’s a really important part that power for the idea of how do we create features? How do we continue to update the apps and and build opportunities for people to engage more? So if you go back to when we added streaks, which for some people is helpful, some people it’s not. But it’s it’s one of those things that it just helps prompt people to think about, oh, have I spent time with God today? And so really looking at engagement, how do we get people not just into God’s word once, but coming back every single day? Lucinda Rojas Ross — And then another part of where we’re looking at the future is really um is personalization. So one of the things we found makes makes a significant difference in consistency is when people have the Bible in their heart language, so more languages, and biblical content that’s really reflective of their local culture or what they’re going through in that moment. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Lucinda Rojas Ross — We can’t pretend to know from Oklahoma and the U.S. what someone’s going through on the other side of the world. So we’re actually um setting up, we’re we’re expanding, and we have actually global hubs where we have teams of people around the world who are focused on building relationships with pastors, church leaders, content partners, so that we can have more content in the app that meets people in their very specific context. So yeah, with the help of our partners, we’re now, we’re offering 3,600 versions of the Bible and 2,300 languages, and we just see that growing, especially with Bible translation efforts, accelerating. Like I said, those hubs, Latin America, European Europe, Africa, we have one Australia to really meet people, everyone, everywhere, not just in the context ah of where we are here. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Well, I just want to honor you and the team at YouVersion. You’re doing an amazing work. And, you know, this has been such a consistent player for years, you know, whatever that is now – almost two decades we’re coming up on, you know, of just helping churches and helping people take steps closer to and using, you know, engaging with scripture more. So just want to honor you and just everybody at the team that’s making it happen.
Rich Birch — As we wrap up today’s conversation, anything else you want to share ah just as we kind of close down today? Lucinda Rojas Ross — No, just thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you so much for what you’re doing, both on an an an individual level to lead someone in your small group to engage in God’s word, but also for, you know, using the platform that you have to help others, inspire others too to continue leading in this way. And so just thank you to you. And I think just um for everyone listening to just think about how can we play our our part in pointing people back to God so he can speak them directly through his word. So Just thank you for what you’re doing, for what your listeners are doing to serve the kingdom. Rich Birch — That’s great. So globalbiblemonth.com, that’s really the punchline where we want to send people. Is there anywhere else we want to send them online to connect with, to plug in more? Are there places, if I’m a church leader and and I’ve heard us talk about all these pages and all that stuff, is ah might open up the app and explore is probably the answer, but are there other places we want to send that are kind of helpful for that thing that we talked about earlier? Lucinda Rojas Ross — Yes. So if you are interested in getting your church um in the in the Bible app. And so it can be found youversion.com/connect is your first step there. And so that will open up. YouVersion Connect is where we would point um pastors and church leaders to be able to go find how how they can do all of those things and unpack those insights that I talked about. That’s your your best bet in that direction. Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much, Lucinda. I appreciate being here today. Lucinda Rojas Ross — Thank you so much, Rich. Appreciate you.
Stop Saying the Attractional Church Is Dead
Oct 28, 2025
Let’s start with a confession.
I’ve misdiagnosed “dead” more times than I care to admit…more than a coroner in a zombie movie marathon.
I have this bad habit of declaring the demise of trends that are, in fact, quietly entering their prime. I thought podcasts were “saturated” back in 2013 when I started the unSeminary podcast. Everyone and their cousin had one, and I thought I was arriving at the party too late. Yet, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Podcasting didn’t plateau… it exploded. It became mainstream. The biggest names in media…people who swore audio was finished…now build entire empires around long-form podcast conversations. Joe Rogan, The Daily, SmartLess…they didn’t just succeed; they defined a new era of attention. What I thought was a crowded space was actually an emerging medium.
Then, there were QR codes. I mocked those little pixel boxes like a pro. I remember my friend Kenny using them years ago, and I laughed out loud. “No one’s going to pull out their phone to scan that,” I told him, dripping with confidence. Fast-forward to 2020, when every restaurant menu, conference check-in, and even church connect card required a QR code. They went from “gimmick” to “infrastructure” overnight. What I once dismissed as clunky, and dead became the universal bridge between the physical and digital worlds.
And YouTube…don’t get me started. I was doing video podcasts and then 8 years ago I stopped because…I thought it was dead. I used to think YouTube was for cat videos and makeup tutorials, not serious long-form content. I said, “No one wants to watch a 30-minute video conversation on YouTube.” Yes,I said that. Out loud. Turns out, millions of people do. YouTube has become the world’s most dominant podcast player and arguably the most powerful storytelling platform of our time. The lines between podcast, video, and TV are gone. YouTube isn’t a side project anymore…it’s the main stage.
Even books fooled me. I was convinced the Kindle was going to kill print. I believed we would all be reading on glass screens by now, that bookstores would become nostalgic museum pieces. Yet, print continues to outsell e-books. Year after year. There’s something about paper, the texture, the smell, the way you can hand a book to someone, that we’re just not ready to give up. The “dead” medium has more life than ever.
And that’s why I roll my eyes when someone confidently declares that the “attractional church” is dead.
I’ve heard it at conferences, read it in think pieces, seen it in hot-take clickbait reels: “People don’t want polished anymore.” “The attractional model doesn’t work.” “We’ve moved beyond that.”
No, we haven’t.
Attractional church isn’t dead; it was absorbed into “normal church” …and the churches that win in 2025 are the ones that treat invitation as culture, not campaign, and pair it with clear next steps into community and discipleship.
Things don’t die; they normalize. They get woven into the fabric. So it is with the attractional church.
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Once upon a time, these were edgy moves. Now they’re table stakes:
Music people actually love. Not as a stunt, but as contextualized worship that lowers barriers for guests.
Teaching that connects to everyday life. Felt-need series, biblical clarity, concrete application, this is just effective preaching.
Buildings (and lobbies) designed with outsiders in mind. Wayfinding, hospitality, kids’ environments that kids beg to come back to.
The point isn’t flash, it’s hospitality. You don’t get extra credit for clean bathrooms, clear signage, and songs that don’t sound like 1998. That’s the bar, taken seriously by newcomers.
Call it attractive if you like; I call it normal.
Follow the data, not the hot takes
Big days still work. Easter and Christmas remain the largest attendance days in most churches. Many are doubling down on specific “Invite a Friend” Sundays, now embraced by roughly one in five churches…up from a decade ago. Crowds gather when we give them a clear reason and an easy on-ramp. [ref]
Invitation remains the #1 front door. Most churchgoers are inviting friends. In recent surveys, three in five Protestants had invited someone in the last six months, and among the unchurched, a friend’s invite remains the most compelling catalyst to attend. The channel is person-to-person. Always has been. [ref]
Growing churches train, equip & motivate their people to invite friends. Research on large, fast-growing congregations shows a straight-line relationship: the faster the growth, the more their people invite…and the stronger their pathways for incorporation (groups, serving, classes). Attractional momentum plus discipleship scaffolding. [ref]
Multiplication correlates with evangelism. Multisite and church-planting churches report higher conversion rates than peer churches. New campuses = new “front doors” + fresh invite energy. [ref]
It’s not just attractional, it’s transformational.
It’s attractional plus biblical literacy that roots people in the truth of Jesus and his teaching.
It’s attractional plus gospel-centered teaching that changes hearts and launches new lives.
It’s attractional plus the active work of the Holy Spirit providing an accessible encounter with God.
Together, that’s what makes the prevailing churches magneticandmature.
Church’s Leading the “New Attractional” Movement
Church of the Highlands (AL): “At the Movies” remains a massive newcomer on-ramp, and they report thousands of decisions for Christ tied to that series—because the creativity is welded to clear gospel invitations and next steps.
Embrace (SD), Union (MD), Crosspoint City (GA), First Orlando (FL): VIP guest processes, youth-led momentum, “Harvest Sunday,” language-specific services—different riffs on the same melody: make it easy to invite, then move guests swiftly into groups and serving.
None of these churches are “all show.” They are disciplined about next steps. That’s the quiet variable the think-pieces miss.
What actually died?
What died is the idea that you can run a slick weekend and call it discipleship. The vibe-only era is over. That’s good news.
In 2007, Willow Creek (is it safe to mention them?) dropped a bombshell study called Reveal: Where Are You? … a data-driven autopsy of its own ministry model. The results? Attendance and program engagement weren’t producing mature disciples. Cue the headlines: “The Seeker Church Repents.” The hot-take crowd declared the attractional model dead.
But that’s not what happened. Reveal wasn’t a eulogy…it was an evolution. Willow realized crowds aren’t the same as change. They didn’t scrap weekend experiences; they added spiritual coaching, personal disciplines, and next-step systems. In other words, they didn’t kill the attractional church, they deepened it.
Nearly two decades after that study, the lesson stands: the problem wasn’t being attractional; it was being only attractional. The weekend is still the front door, but now the smartest churches obsess equally over what happens next. The critique that was supposed to bury the model ended up refining it.
Like most “deaths” we announce in the church world, this one was just a metamorphosis.
Attractional didn’t die…it grew up.
The enduring pattern with prevailing churches today looks like this:
1) Warm invite → 2) Excellent weekend (clear gospel, real people, real stories) → 3) Fast follow-up (text within hours, personal touch within days) → 4) Concrete next steps (groups, serve, classes) → 5) Multiplication (invite others, launch campuses, tell the story).
When leaders say, “attractional is dead,” what they’re often reacting to is an empty, 2006 playbook…production without a pathway. That model is dead. Good riddance. But attractional as hospitality? As to lower friction for outsiders? As architecting moments that catalyze invitation? These are not dead; they’re disciple-making foundations.
The Playbook: Normalize invitation, then engineer integration
1) Make invitation a year-round sport.
Cadence: Anchor the year with a few clear invite moments (Easter, Fall launch, Christmas), but create smaller, monthly on-ramps (kickoff Sundays, “You Asked for It,” testimony weekends).
Training: Give a 3-minute “how to invite” moment quarterly. Provide scripts and shareable digital invites. Celebrate stories, weekly. Assume people want to invite; remove the social friction.
2) Design for first-timers without dumbing down.
Wayfinding & welcome: Parking → doors → kids check-in → seating. Test it with a mystery guest every quarter.
Message design: Preach the text; show the bridge. Put handles on doctrine—what it changes on Monday.
Music & moments: Choose songs that the room can sing. Test keys and tempos with real people, not just your band.
3) Build a two-week guest journey (from start to joining a small group).
Day 0 (Sunday PM): Text: “Thanks for coming, here’s one helpful next step.”
Day 2: Personal email/video from a real person (not a do-not-reply).
Day 5: Invite to a 20-minute “New Here Meetup” after any service…low-stakes face time.
Day 12: Direct ask: “Join a group” or “Jump on a serve team this weekend.” Churches that win speed up time-to-relationship. Clock it. Improve it. Repeat.
4) Tie big weekends to tangible next steps.
Baptisms scheduled within two weeks.
Alpha/start-here course every month; never more than two weeks away.
Group launches immediately after an invite series…sign-up on the spot. This is where “attractional” becomes “discipleship.”
5) Multiply front doors.
Services: Adjust times to match life patterns.
Venues: Add a smaller room vibe or a language-specific service.
Campuses: When you’re healthy, multiply. It raises your invitation ceiling and your conversion rate, not just your attendance.
Objections, answered
“Young people don’t want this.” They do…if it’s welcoming, authentic, and purposeful. Gen Z and Millennials are showing up more frequently than older generations in recent data. The more we give them real responsibility (serve, lead, create), the more they stick around. [ref]
“Attractional churches are shallow.” Only if you stop at the lobby. The fastest-growing churches are more…not less…obsessive about small groups and integration. The crowd isn’t the end; it’s the on-ramp. [ref]
“This is just entertainment.” Creativity is hospitality. It lowers defenses, opens ears, and earns you a hearing for the gospel. The message doesn’t change; the method contextualizes. And the fruit…decisions, baptisms, transformed lives…keeps showing up where invitation and follow-up are tightly coupled. [ref]
Don’t confuse needed reforms with funerals.
I’ve been wrong before about what’s “over.” I said podcasts were saturated—now they’re a primary channel with staggering reach and spend. I said QR codes were a gimmick…now they’re woven into daily behavior. I said YouTube wasn’t for long-form … now it is the stage. I said print was toast … yet it remains king. My point isn’t to relitigate old takes; it’s to warn us against throwing out working channels because we’re bored, bruised, or reacting to excesses.
Paul’s counsel to a young, outnumbered movement in a pluralistic world is still the brief: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.” (Colossians 4:5 ESV). Wisdom toward outsiders looks like lowering barriers, speaking plainly, and making the way back to God visible and viable. That’s not a fad. That’s faithfulness.
So, stop saying attractional church is dead. What’s dead is laziness, gimmicks, and vibe-with-no-pathway.
What’s alive…and working…is a church that gathers and scatters, which invites and disciples, that engineers moments people can actually bring friends to…and then walks with them toward Jesus. That’s not the old playbook. That’s the only playbook.
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Stop the Noise: Building Clear Communication in a Growing Church with Luke Cornwell
Oct 23, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Luke Cornwell, Communications Pastor at Realife Church in Indiana. Founded in 2007, Realife has grown into one of the fastest-growing churches in America with two thriving campuses, a STEAM Academy for preschoolers, and a partnership with Southeastern University. Luke brings a unique blend of strategic communications and pastoral care, helping Realife stay aligned, relational, and mission-focused as it grows.
Is your church struggling to keep everyone on the same page as you scale? Luke shares how Realife Church builds clarity, connection, and communication systems that foster alignment and strengthen relationships in a fast-growing, multi-campus environment.
Scaling communication as your church grows. // When Luke joined Realife three and a half years ago, the church had 15 staff members. Now that number has more than doubled, and the need for clear communication has become critical. As the church prepared to launch its second campus, they realized the importance of everyone “speaking the same language.” Luke explains that while systems matter, relationships must remain central. Realife intentionally invests in both structured communication and personal connection to keep unity strong.
Tools that simplify communication. // Internally, Realife relies heavily on Slack—not email or text—for 95% of staff communication. Slack channels allow focused, real-time collaboration across teams while reducing clutter and missed messages. Email is reserved for non-urgent updates, while Slack is for action and discussion. This separation helps the team stay responsive and organized as the church grows.
Leading with relationships, not control. // Luke emphasizes that communications teams can’t function as “brand police.” Instead of saying no, Realife’s communications team focuses on collaboration and clarity. They regularly check in with the lead pastor and executive leaders to ensure alignment before major changes or campaigns. The key is keeping leadership informed, not blindsided. When communication is proactive and relational, trust grows and silos shrink.
Excellence defined by stewardship. // Realife defines excellence not as perfection, but as doing what you can with what you have. The communications team works hard to balance production demands with spiritual priorities, asking God to bless their efforts. Excellence means faithful stewardship and surrendering outcomes to God.
Strategy over noise. // In an age of constant distraction, Luke urges churches to communicate strategically rather than reactively. Realife maintains clear “lanes” for communication. For example, text messages are used for personal contact while emails are for reminders and responses. The church limits communication frequency and ensures each message adds real value.
Knowing your audience. // Realife uses tools like Community Church Builder (CCB) and Nurture to understand their congregation, track engagement, and identify people at risk of disengagement. Their volunteer team includes captains who care personally for others, ensuring no one falls through the cracks. This data-informed, relationship-driven approach helps the church shepherd people well—even as attendance multiplies.
Discipling between Sundays. // For Luke, communication isn’t just about promotion—it’s about discipleship. His team’s goal is to “disciple people between Sundays” by creating content that reminds, inspires, and challenges people to grow in their faith. From social media to email, every message aims to connect people with opportunities to take next steps toward Jesus.
To learn more about Realife Church, visit realifechurch.org (that’s Realife with one “L”) or email Luke directly.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich here from the unSeminary podcast. Pumped to have you listening today. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’ve got a communications expert on the phone, on the call. And you know that communications is critically important for your church as you try to gain alignment and clarity with your people and ah move the mission forward. ah Today, we’re talking to Luke Cornwell. He serves as a communication pastor at Realife Church, which was founded in 2007. It’s one of the fastest growing ah churches in the country. And if I’m counting correctly, they’ve got two campuses in Indiana. They exist to create a place where Uh, people love, so they will experience a loving God and something that really for the entire family. Rich Birch — They, they include they, sorry, I’m stumbling. I’m talking to communications guy and I can’t talk straight today! What’s happening?! Luke Cornwell — We all we all have that problem. Rich Birch — They’ve got Realife STEM Academy for pre-K age and under and a partnership with Southeastern University. This is a fantastic church. Luke, welcome to the show. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Thank you for having me. This is a privilege. Rich Birch — This is going to be good. Realife is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, as we said. For leaders who may not know the story, kind of know about the church, can you give us a snapshot of Realife? Tell us a little bit about that and tell us about your role as communications pastor. What does that cover? Luke Cornwell — Absolutely. So, ah Realife Church started in 2007, like you mentioned. And, um you know, it was a slow start. Everybody has this dream that, you know, out of the, but you know, out of the gates, your your your church is just going to grow. Luke Cornwell — And it took some time. And Pastor Adam and Kristen, our lead pastors, um founded it 18, 19 years ago. And you know, it took years to grow um to the point where it’s like, yeah, this is a a church. You know, we feel like a church. It’s it’s it’s not a constant grind.
Luke Cornwell — And um it really wasn’t until um about 2018 that, you know, numbers aren’t everything, but they give you a metric, right? You know, numbers aren’t everything, but it wasn’t until about 2018 where they started to cross over the 5- to 700 mark, which is a really good size church. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Luke Cornwell — And, you know, it took that’s that’s like, you know, that’s 11 years. Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — And so since then, um it is just catapulted in both number and impact in the community. And this year we are averaging more than we ever have on our weekend services. This February, we launched our second campus. So our primary campus is in New Palestine, and our second campus is in Greenfield. And this last week, we are so we have 500 people attend our second campus nine months in. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. That’s huge. Luke Cornwell — So this is nothing that we’ve done. It is all God and God. We’re excited for what he has for us in the future. Rich Birch — Nice. Well, I’m looking forward to learning from what God’s doing in your midst and…
Luke Cornwell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and particularly around this communication stuff. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s so critically important. And, you know, one of the downsides, people like the idea of being inside a quick, fast growing church, but it’s like it’s difficult having lived in that space. And communication complexity is really one of the the and problems that we deal with. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — Particularly as a church’s growth accelerates, it’s like, man, there’s a lot to pull together. What challenges have you run into as the church has been growing or that you’ve seen other churches ah that are you know making sure that everybody knows what’s going on?
Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — What have been some of the complexities of growing quickly from a communication point of view?
Luke Cornwell — So when I started three and a half years ago as the communications pastor for Realife Church, we had about 15 full-time employees, full-time staff members. And we were just starting the STEAM Academy that you mentioned earlier. Luke Cornwell — Now we’ve more than doubled that. So one of the first things that we recognized is just our internal communications was just in dire need of tightening up. And so as we prepared to launch this campus, we had to make sure that we were all speaking the same language, that we were you know all working towards same goals. Luke Cornwell — And this is not to say that we weren’t before. We had a really tight knit group of staff. But as we grew in staff numbers and weekend numbers, we realized that we had to be on the same page, even more so. You know when you’ve got 10 or 15, it’s really easy to get into a room…
Rich Birch — Right.
Luke Cornwell — …and to just talk things out. But when you’re at 30, 35, where we’re at now, like it’s hard, like it’s a it’s a large group conversation. It’s no longer a small group. Luke Cornwell — And so there are have been a few things that we’ve had to do. We’ve had to change the makeup of um of our teams. We’ve had to have smaller meetings and then larger meetings. And we’ve had to prioritize just making sure that we ah keep our relationships strong through all of that noise. Because, you know, we all know systems are great. But it’s all about the people. And it’s all about relationships ah within those systems. Rich Birch — Well, I want to come back to the relationship piece in a second, because I think that’s critically important. But talk me through ah how from a communications kind of keeping your team all on the same page, you talk about small, you know, small or small teams, large teams. Rich Birch — How do you think about ensuring that you’re from a kind of system point of view, we’ll get to relationship in a second…
Luke Cornwell — Yep.
Rich Birch — …but from a system point of view, kind of keeping everyone on the same page and ensuring that the right people know the right things at the right time? Luke Cornwell — Yeah. So over time, we have implemented a series of, and this is going sound horrible because not everybody loves meetings, but really connection points throughout the week where we make sure we talk through our weekend services, where we’re planning of four, six months ahead on large events and you know just strategically thinking through what it looks like, what our calendar looks like. Luke Cornwell — Most people don’t realize that, but a church’s calendar can really dictate the ebb and flow of what is going on in the church. And so we’ve had to create some of those rhythms um and recreate some of those rhythms as we’ve grown, and as we’ve hired staff and brought people in. Luke Cornwell — And so even today, you know we’re having conversations about what do our teams look like? What are the structures? And so making sure that everybody is in sync with that. Luke Cornwell — And then we use simple tools like Slack.
Rich Birch — Yep. Luke Cornwell — We don’t text each other. We Slack each other.
Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — And that helps us to keep everything focused. It helps us because we can have lots of small groups, if you know about Slack. Rich Birch — Yep. Luke Cornwell — Slack has allows you to have channels and different groups. And that allows us to keep each other all the time in the loop and in the know of what’s going on. Rich Birch — Yeah, so so I’m assuming that also would include ah like you’re not emailing internally either. Like any internal communication really is on Slack. You’re trying to cut down the total number of channels, get a focus on Slack. Luke Cornwell — I would say 95% of our communication is all in Slack. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah that’s interesting. Luke Cornwell — Emails—so we look at it this way…Email is like, hey, you’re on vacation. I need to send you something…
Rich Birch — Right.
Luke Cornwell — …and I want you to see it, but it doesn’t need immediate attention. Slack is like, hey, and I need you to respond to this. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, please see it and engage with it. Luke Cornwell — Please see. Yes. Rich Birch — Can you talk us through what the your kind of weekly or like the regular meeting rhythm looks like? You mentioned like, hey, we’ve got, you know, meetings throughout the week. What does that, what are those, what’s the kind of form of that take? What’s that look like? Luke Cornwell — Yeah, so for the entire group, um every week we have a time of worship and what we would call our chapel on Tuesday morning. And that’s a time for us to ah get into God’s word with a short little devotional, to pray together, to sing a few songs, and to really just bond spiritually together and seek God for you know ah whatever we have going on. Luke Cornwell — And so there’s a lot of times where our lead pastor, Pastor Adam, will get up there and say, hey, yeah let’s let’s pray together about these things coming up because they’re important to us and we can’t do this without him. Luke Cornwell — And then after that, we have a time of just connection. Our executive pastor will lead a one church meeting ah that allows us to hear from both sides, from our two campuses and what is going on in those places. Luke Cornwell — And then ah we break into smaller teams at that point. Our pastors and directors get together and we discuss um what is going on detail. Our dream team, our volunteer core, what are some things that we’re ah maybe ah roadblocks we’re running into and and how do we how do we ah retain and and how do we recruit? And we’re talking through those things in a smaller core for our campuses. Luke Cornwell — So that’s just three of the things that we do every week. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And even, ah you know, listeners, the thing I love that’s built in there is um there’s like an there’s a natural um kind of echoing out cadence there. It’s like it’s naturally set up for like, hey, here’s ah here’s kind of a big direction thing. Let’s talk about it in a little more detail. And then we’re going to get down into small groups, into our individual teams and talk about it. Not that that’s necessarily the structure you’re going to follow every week. But we’ve got to cascade our communication, make sure that people…
Luke Cornwell — Yes.
Rich Birch — …you know, understand and get a chance to talk about it. Even just in your weekly meetings. I love that that’s, you know, set up already. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. And so another form of that is our executive leadership team meets on Mondays. Rich Birch — Okay. Luke Cornwell — So it’s a real, again, it’s a great cascading of information and then it just sets our week up to to succeed. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Love, you know, love that. Well, let’s loop back on the relationship piece. You’d mentioned this, I caught my eye. So true. You know, I think as a church grows, like when you were all, you could all sit around one table, you know, order a box of pizza, everybody knows what’s going on. Rich Birch — And it’s not just that information falls through the cracks, but actually you can, you know, step on people’s toes, lose relationship there. How are you keep keeping focused on the relationship side as you continue to grow? Luke Cornwell — So one of my roles as a communication director is to keep alignment with anything that is internally, but also you know primarily going out. And so that includes working with our worship experience pastor and what is happening in our Sunday and weekend services. Luke Cornwell — That includes working with our lead pastor, making sure we’re carrying his vision through what’s printed, through what’s on the web, ah through what’s in our social social markets, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all those different things. Luke Cornwell — And so one of the things that like I hold near and dear to my heart is this um passion for people and passion for relationships. So, you know, I mentioned Slack. My Slack is full of DMs and people. I’m constantly talking to almost every one of our pastors every single day about something that is going on in their world. Luke Cornwell — And our team, our goal is for our comms team is that we’re facilitating their ministry. So yes, we have our directives, um but we are not living and working in a silo. So we may own something, but we’re not working alone. Rich Birch — So I’m sure this never happens at Realife, but sometimes comms departments um can be seen internally as like, those are the people that just say no to things. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like those are the people that are like, no, you can’t get an announcement. No, we can’t make a video for you. No. Or like you did this thing that was off brand and like, stop it. You know… Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, it’s like, they’re like the communications police or whatever. How do you ensure that you’re not that for Realife? Luke Cornwell — That is a really good question. And if if you have a miracle drug, um I would like to know, because I think that plagues every communications team in some form or another. Rich Birch — Yeah, sure. Luke Cornwell — I don’t think you ever are perfect at it. But what we do is we you know, yesterday I had a phone call with our lead pastor. I said, Hey, I need five minutes your of time. I have a very specific question to ask you. Luke Cornwell — And he said, sure. So I’ll call you about, you know, 11 o’clock or whatever time it was. And he called me and I said, Hey, I have this very specific question for you. I want to ensure that what we’re about ready to do, you are okay with. Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — Not because we’re going way out of the bounds of our values, which are super important to us. Not because this is against our mission, because it’s a tiny little change, but it’s highly visible. It’s changing a name. Rich Birch — Yep. Luke Cornwell — And it was just a small change of that name. So we had ran that up through our executive pastor, our comms team, our events person, all in agreement with it. But I wanted to double check before we put it in print that our lead pastor was okay with it. So a two-minute conversation over the phone ensures that, one, he’s aware of it. Luke Cornwell — Two, if he has any concerns, he can speak into it. Now he was like, hey, I’m good with it. We’re good. Let’s double check this but and that, but we’re good. And that allows us to stay aligned, keeps him informed, and then allows us to proceed with confidence. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Luke Cornwell — So if you do that across all of your channels and have that respect up and across peers, then it really helps to break down those those conversations that you end up having of like, hey, you went off base here. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. ah that That aligns with ah some advice I recently heard um where like similar kind of advice that, you know, lots of times lead pastors, particularly, they’re they just they want to be they want to know what’s going on. They don’t necessarily need or want to even be able to like change everything, but but if they’re operating in a low information environment if they don’t actually know what’s going on they’re going to be more likely to step in and micromanage that actually by by doing lots of informing…
Luke Cornwell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that you know gives them the opportunity to kind of see what’s going on…
Luke Cornwell — So true.
Rich Birch — …a sense of what’s there which I thought was, you know, I think that’s good. That’s good. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve had to work at that. And I’m not perfect at that. Our team, we’re not perfect at that. Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Luke Cornwell — Because what we want to do is we want to ah we want to tell them, hey, we’ve got this taken care of. You don’t need to worry about this. Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — You worry about lead pastor stuff. We’ll worry about comm stuff. But the truth the matter is we the the church is a communication platform. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Luke Cornwell — Everything is communications. Rich Birch — Yes. Luke Cornwell — And so we really have to work hard ah to make sure that we’re aligned in that. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s good. Okay. So how how are you balancing? To me, there’s these two kind of tensions in communications that we deal with in particularly fast growing church. There’s like the urgency of needing to promote what’s coming next. Luke Cornwell — Yes. Rich Birch — Like there’s always something coming down the pipe, right? Luke Cornwell — Yes. Oh, so all the time. Rich Birch — Like it’s like, and, but doing that in a way, the other side of the tension is like, we want to reinforce our culture. We want to reinforce who we are. And we we want to build, we want to use the communication that we’re doing that to kind of build that culture. How do you, and and those, they can be at odds sometimes they can be kind of, there’s an inherent tension in that. Luke Cornwell — Sure. Rich Birch — Talk me through what that looks like. Luke Cornwell — So it really comes down to how you define excellence. Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — So we we strive for excellence. I believe that’s one reason why God has blessed our church is because we strive to be excellent in everything. We’re we’re not trying to be more than he wants us to be. We’re just trying to be excellent in whatever that we’re doing.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — We don’t want to allow things to fall through the cracks. We don’t want to do things halfway. And excellence, in our words, is defined by doing what you can with what you have. Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — And so when it comes to to the communications department, that’s rough. Like that’s hard. Because we we see what’s available to us via social media. We we see what other churches are doing. There is always something more that a communications department could do if they had the time. Luke Cornwell — You could always do one more video, one more social post, ah one more print piece. And so balancing the “enough” is difficult. And so some of that, I’ll I’ll be honest, some of that is a God thing. It’s like, okay, God, what is enough? We need you to bless what we have. We need you to bless. We need to bless we need you to bless what we’re doing. We’re going to do our best. We’re going to be as excellent as we can. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Luke Cornwell — And then leaving it in his hands. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah. How do you, as a communications person, it’s kind of a related issue, ah maybe adjacent to that. We live in a very noisy culture. Like there is, you know, our people are, you know, they’re distracted all day long. And so I think we’ve got to raise the value in what we do. Luke Cornwell — Yes. Rich Birch — It’s our responsibility to to push that up in their priorities to make it you know important for them. How do you balance that off with not just contributing to the noise that is you know the kind of broader culture? How how does that work out for you as you think about that with with the people at RealLife? Luke Cornwell — I think ah there’s a couple of things that are in play here. You need to have a strategy. Rich Birch — Good. Luke Cornwell — And by strategy, you need to know why you do what you do and then follow that. You need to have a plan. When you don’t have a plan, everybody is sending communication this way and that way. And, you know, the the average person in a church um is many, many, has many, many faces. So they’re a parent. They’re a a husband, they’re a man, they’re a, um, a giver. You know so like the the possibility of them getting multiple pieces of communication a week is super high.
Luke Cornwell — And so one, you’ve you’ve got to have a strategy and a plan and two, you have to bring value. I think you said that before, you’ve got to bring the, it can’t be just a reminder. Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — And then the last thing I’ll say is you need to keep certain lanes for certain things. So keep lanes clear. We will not text people just because that’s what they answer. We reserve text for personal contact. We reserve email for responses to something that they’ve done, but also reminders. And then we don’t send over, we over-send communication. Rich Birch — Yeah, what what would you say, how else would you define the kind of certain lanes? That’s a, it caught my attention. That’s kind of certain lanes for certain things. Are there any other kind of boundaries you follow there? Luke Cornwell — Sure. We try to balance so we don’t send more than one email a day. Rich Birch — Right, okay. Luke Cornwell — So if if kids are sending an email to the parents, we try not to send a giving email. We have a weekly midweek update that goes live goes out and goes live every Wednesday night, Wednesday afternoon, evening. That’s a reoccurring. So people know, hey, let’s not send an email unless we have to Wednesday. We try not to overlap. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, there’s definitely the kind of the air traffic controller part of your job, which is the like, hey, how do we try to coordinate all of that? That gets to the kind of the no, you can be the no person, ah you know, like or the not yet person. Luke Cornwell — For sure. Rich Birch — How do you balance, you know, that off at the kind of the intersection of staff expectations and then congregational or your church attention? You know, what have you learned about saying no, maybe there’s a new comms director that’s listening in. You do actually have to do that sometimes. What’s the right way to do that? How do you do that in an elegant way so that, you know, you don’t create enemies internally? Luke Cornwell — So true, so true. The best way is to not say no. The best way to communicate no is not in what you’re not going to do, but in what you’re going to do. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Luke Cornwell — So, hey, we we have a new strategy for email. This is what our plan is. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Luke Cornwell — Does anybody have any issues with the plan? You know float it through leadership, you know wherever you need to go with that. Float it horizontally to your peers, to other pastors, or to other directors. Hey, does this work for you? Is it okay if on Wednesdays? It’s not that you’re looking for their approval. You’re looking for their collaboration. And they might see something that you didn’t see.
Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — And so having that opportunity to float that up or float it horizontally allows you kind to kind of prepare them again, communicate with them, but also keeps you from having to say, oh, I’m sorry, we’re not doing that. Why aren’t we doing that? Well, we’re doing this and they don’t have to ask as many questions when they’re in the know. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. but So as you think about, you know, there’s a lot going on here to try to, you know, pastor the communication side. It’s not just like, hey, we’re trying to be good at communications. We’re really trying to move our organization closer to Jesus.
Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — How do those two sides of your role intersect?
Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — The kind of communication piece and the pastoring piece? How does this help us push people towards relationship with Jesus? Luke Cornwell — So our goal for communications is to disciple people between Sundays. Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — So that’s kind of what our overarching big goal. Then we partner with small groups and we partner with our dream team, our volunteer pool, and our next steps directors and pastors. We our goal is to partner with them to help their ministry succeed in the communications, in the technical side of things, we’re not really here for ourselves. We don’t have our own silo. We’re really just helping bring everybody together and to kind of be that glue amongst the church leaders so that we can really, like you said, we want to bring people closer to Jesus. And so that that is our goal. Any social media post that we do, any email is to either remind them, to inspire them, or to push them closer to Jesus, give them opportunities to draw closer to Jesus. Rich Birch — What’s your, so this is like ah um ah bit of a a slightly different direction. What do you see that’s like a low hanging fruit problem that lots of churches are getting wrong on the communication front that like you see it consistently, you’re like, oh, it’s man, where we keep fumbling this ball. Is there anything that you see that we’re we’re just not doing well that from your seat we should be doing better? Luke Cornwell — Yeah. That is such a good question, and it could go so many different directions. So many different directions. Rich Birch — Yes. Luke Cornwell — You know, there’s a couple things that are popping into my head. So from a graphic side, consistency. You know, when you’re a small church, it’s like, Hey, you’re just happy to have a graphic to stick up there for the potluck on Sunday afternoon. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Luke Cornwell — Or for the the ladies night. And you’re just, you’re just happy to have it. But as you grow larger, people expect things ah like graphics and they expect them to be unified. They don’t look the same, but they expect to have the same feel. Luke Cornwell — I will say probably one of the biggest things that I feel is low-hanging fruit is just truly understanding their demographics and their church, their people. Because if you know who you’re talking to, you change the way you’re talking. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Luke Cornwell — We’re in the process of creating some ah some drip campaigns for different demographics in our church. You know, after an event, we want to communicate consistently over time with our ladies, with our men, with our married couples, et cetera, ah from different events that we have at the church. And so like, What, who who are we talking to? What value are we adding to them when we send them an email and say, hey, you know, it was great having you at our ladies night. And here’s a short devotional, or have you considered ah these small groups, ladies? um This would help you build community in your church.
Luke Cornwell — So knowing who you’re talking to, your demographic is completely, knowing who your church is made up of. So, you know, again, this, you know, you go from like, what… Rich Birch — How do you do that? How do we do that? How do we, you know, beyond a couple hundred people Luke Cornwell — Yeah. Rich Birch — …it can be really difficult to understand who’s in our church. What what are you guys doing to try to understand your people better? Luke Cornwell — Yeah, so we have a um a bunch of tools that we use. One is our ah CCB, Community Church Builder. We use that to manage our people. So we are integrally in part of and in CCB, understanding who our people are. Luke Cornwell — We’re also using a new product called Nurture, um which helps us identify people helps us identify those who are at risk of going out the back door. Because, you know as your church grows, so do the number of people. And it’s super easy for somebody to come in on a Sunday morning and really not feel noticed, really not feel known. And it’s easy for them to walk out the back door. They had a hard week. You know, maybe they struggle with some kind of addiction. And you know, you know They love Jesus, but it’s just easy for them to stay home and not come on a Sunday. Luke Cornwell — Or maybe it’s sports. You know sports is like the number one killer right now of people coming to church without opportunity because they go, hey, we’ve got stuff going on this weekend. Sorry, we’re not going to make it.
Luke Cornwell — So knowing your demographic and who those people are and then using tools like Nurture, your church management software. And then we, our volunteer team, our dream team is made up of captains who care for people.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — And so we are constantly training and meeting with them, having them care um for those who are underneath them and making sure that people don’t fall through the cracks. Rich Birch — That’s cool. That’s great. Yeah, I think that’s ah that’s a real issue for so many of our churches, for sure. Again, slightly different category. You mentioned it at one point, the STEAM Academy.
Luke Cornwell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — This caught my eye ah you know, and and how does it all, tell us what that is.
Luke Cornwell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And how does that fit into the kind of overall family ministry strategy at the church or kids ministry strategy? Luke Cornwell — Sure. Rich Birch — How does that all fit together? Luke Cornwell — So when we moved into our new building just a little over three and a half years ago, at the time, our county, Hancock County, is one of the fastest growing in Indiana. And just exponential growth happening all around us. Like out my door here is is a cornfield. You know, so we’re surrounded by cornfields, but we’re also 20 minutes from Indianapolis. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Luke Cornwell — And so it’s one of the fastest growing areas. And one of the biggest needs in our area is a preschool childcare ministry. Call it a daycare if you’d like, but it it really is, it’s a childcare ministry. And so ah when I arrived, they had been in talks with the County and different groups of like, how could we do this? And within gosh, three months of my arrival, in 2022, we started the STEAM Academy. And we’re actually in a construction phase right now to double the size of our STEAM Academy. Rich Birch — Wow. Luke Cornwell — Right now we have 65, 70 kids every day that are dropped off to our building. And so not everybody goes to our church. So this is it’s available to the community.
Rich Birch — Yep. Luke Cornwell — And our goal is to double that over the next three years or so.
Rich Birch — Love it. Luke Cornwell — And um we see that as a huge ministry. And we’ve seen both teachers um that work in the academy, as well as um parents begin coming to our church, get baptized, give their hearts to the Lord, ah because we have this environment for them that is good for their kids. Rich Birch — That’s cool. And what does it run like five days a week? What’s the kind of frame of that? Luke Cornwell — It’s five days a week. It’s Monday through Friday all day. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. That’s good. I love that. You know, one of the things I find interesting about communications is from my from my seat, communications is a professional discipline like accounting or bookkeeping. You know, when a church is is starting, ah there might be somebody like a volunteer, somebody who’s doing the accounting, or maybe it’s even, you know, it’s like the you know pastor’s wife or the pastor’s spouse is doing it or something like that. Rich Birch — But then eventually get to the point where the church grows and you’ve got to bring on some help. You get a bookkeeper, maybe an accountant, eventually a CFO, that sort of thing. But communication for is exactly the same. The church grows to a certain size. And I think because pastors talk for a living, they think they’re good at communications. But communications is more than just like getting phraseology right. Like there’s a whole strategy, a part of it, that it it demands, you know, um an expert like you to really help draw this thing together. Rich Birch — If you’re thinking about a church that’s out there today, that’s maybe listening in, maybe they’re a church of a thousand people. So they’re, you know, that’s a sizable church, but they feel like things are just scattered and like, they’re, they’re not clear. They’re not aligned. What would you, what would be some first steps that they should take to try to get some more clarity, get some more alignment? Luke Cornwell — Yeah, I think that is so true. Communications is so broad. You know You could say, well, video is communications. Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — And print and design. These are all different disciplines within the communications. And then you’ve got you know some churches have their next steps programs under communications. Ours is separated out, but um we work very, very closely together because that’s texting and emailing and and those different things. And so you’ve got all of these micro-disciplines within this idea of comms. And it is super easy to kind of get lost in all of that and go, what do we need? Luke Cornwell — And I think um I love Pat Lencioni’s Working Genius Assessment because it helps us know how we work together. And making sure that you have not just disciplines, but also things like, you know, creative people and people who are tenacious, and people who like to help with things. And looking at your staff and your volunteer base and saying, do we have a complete package of people who are furthering the gospel? Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — Now, disciplines, you know, I can teach you how to use MailChimp. If you’re a smart person, which, you know, you’re a smart person.
Rich Birch — I might be able to figure out MailChimp. Luke Cornwell — Yeah. I could teach you how to use MailChimp. So it’s easy to learn some tools. What’s difficult and what you’re not going to do is you’re not going to change people’s personalities. And so making sure that you have a staff or a volunteer base that’s well-rounded to fill in those blanks, I think is great. Rich Birch — That’s good. Luke Cornwell — And then just growing your knowledge. um So looking at what the disciplines that your church requires. Some churches love videos. They want to do story videos.
Rich Birch — Right. Luke Cornwell — Other churches don’t. So if that’s something that your church is your church values, then maybe a second or third hire is a full-time video person, you know. But if your church is um somebody who values ah weekend services more and and it’s more auditory-based, maybe you you hire an assistant or a copywriter, somebody who can help write and help ah be creative in that. Luke Cornwell — Now, you know, these days we have AI and everybody’s an expert, but it still takes a skill set…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Luke Cornwell — …to even work you know the chat GPT to get what you want and make it sound good. So there are a lot of things, but I believe this. This is how we lead it Realife. And that is people are our biggest asset because they have God-given gifts. Rich Birch — So true. Luke Cornwell — And yes, ChatGPT can write better than all of us, but nobody can channel the Holy Spirit like his creation. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Well, just as we’re coming to land today, what any other kind of final advice – this has been really good. I’ve got a page of notes here, some stuff to think through on, you know, on our side, but, but anything else you’d like to share just as we, we wrap up today’s conversation. Luke Cornwell — I just want to encourage the communications pastors or maybe maybe the person who’s out there who’s just their job is communication. They’ve found themselves in that because yeah, maybe they were good at the video editing, or they were good at the design and it’s a a side thing for them, or it’s a gift that they’ve been given. Luke Cornwell — And I just encourage you to continue to focus on your relationship with Jesus and those around you. And like collaborating with people is the best way to see God’s vision and plan for your lives and for your church to succeed. And so I think that is the the biggest thing that I’ve learned over the last couple of years. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, look, this has been great. Super great, helpful, challenging. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Luke Cornwell — Sure. They can go to realifechurch.org. They can hit up our Instagram or our Facebook and watch it. Both handles are Real Life Church. By the way, that’s Real Life Church with one L.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Luke Cornwell — So R-E-A-L-I-F-E.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Luke Cornwell — And so that that is different. There are there are a couple of those and there are other churches where it’s one word and Realife. Rich Birch — Yes. Luke Cornwell — And that’s a ah whole nother story for another day. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Luke Cornwell — But autocorrect you know saved me many times on that. Rich Birch — Love it. Luke Cornwell — But yeah, so they can meet us there. And then I’d be happy to field any emails…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Luke Cornwell — …at luke.cornwell@reallifechurch.org. And my email is on the website. So. Rich Birch — That’s great. Luke, appreciate you being here today. Thanks so much for your being on the show. Luke Cornwell — Thanks.
Your Church’s Growth Is Killing Your Church’s Growth
Oct 21, 2025
In 8th grade, I thought I was unstoppable. A growth spurt gave me height, leverage, and what felt like destiny. I could clear high jump bars with a scissors kick while others struggled. No training, no technique, just raw advantage.
I beat everyone in my school, made it to my town’s track and field meet, and placed well. I was on top of the high jump world. (Albeit it was a very small world!)
In my freshman year of high school, I was toast. Everyone else had learned the Fosbury Flop…the backward roll that revolutionized high jumping. My height advantage evaporated. Suddenly, I couldn’t clear the same bars, and I didn’t even make the varsity team.
Lesson learned: Growth can make you lazy. It can trick you into thinking you’re great when you’re just tall.
Churches fall into the same trap. Growth feels like validation: more people, more buzz, more money. However, growth can be toxic if it masks underlying weaknesses. It’s a sugar high that makes leaders feel invincible when, in reality, they’re just riding momentum.
The hard truth: the very growth you’re celebrating may be setting you up for decline.
Let’s break it down. Five areas where unchecked growth quietly kills future growth:
First-Time Guest Capture Rate
New Donor Retention Gap
Follow-Up Speed to First Touch
Kids/Students Capacity Ratio
Staffing Leverage
1. First-Time Guest Capture Rate: Growth Without Names = Decline in Disguise
If you don’t know who your guests are, they don’t exist. Churches celebrate attendance spikes but often fail at the most basic task: capturing guest info.
Here’s the brutal math: in many churches, only 3 out of 10 first-time guests fill out a connect card or text-in form. That means, 70% leave without a trace. Imagine running a restaurant that never records who dines there. That’s not strategy…it’s negligence. [ref]
Unchecked growth hides failure. When 100 people show up, you don’t feel the loss of the 70 who disappear. But fast-forward six months: you’ll plateau, scratching your head about why your “record Sundays” aren’t leading to real growth.
If your church is growing, you should see new visitors each week—roughly 2% of your average attendance. If your attendance is 1,000, that means week in and week out, you are averaging 20 guests that you could contact, follow up with, and invite to be a part of your community. If you don’t see this regularly, you are missing guests.
Without this new guest information, you are just gathering a crowd that you won’t be able to move towards deeper community and connection. Your growth will plateau and slide into decline. You will be left wondering where all the people went.
Audit your capture rate for the last three months. Not an estimate, an actual number.
Set a benchmark goal: at least 2% of every single week should be first-time guests that you can contact.
Create frictionless ways to respond: text-in, QR codes, digital follow-up.
Use an “ethical bribe” …a gift that makes people want to give you their info.
Assign accountability: one staff member or volunteer owns the process every week.
Catch their contact information. No contact information, no long-term growth.
2. New Donor Retention Gap: The Revolving Door of Giving
Every pastor gets excited about first-time givers, but most of those givers will never give again. In the nonprofit world, donor retention hovers around 20%. This means, 8 out of 10 first-time donors vanish. [ref] For churches, the numbers aren’t much better.
Do you know your church’s donor retention rate? But even more pointedly, do you know the retention rate of new donors to your church? If the gap between these continues to grow, your church will run out of money, and your growth will stumble. Many churches have a core of faithful, long-term donors (that’s why the church around the corner from your place, with just a few people left, hasn’t died), but it takes more intentional effort to onboard new donors to fuel the future of the mission.
Growth masks this churn because new people continually replenish the bucket. But it’s a leaky bucket. Giving totals may rise, but the base is fragile. When momentum slows…or the economy dips…you’ll discover you’ve been funding ministry with one-night stands, not long-term partners.
Track your first-to-second gift rate. If 100 people give for the first time this year, how many give again within 90 days?
Build a 48-hour thank-you system: no generic receipts—only personal thanks, handwritten notes, and phone calls.
Report impact. Show donors what their gift did…student camp funded, families served, baptisms celebrated.
Push recurring giving. Monthly donors have retention rates above 80%. One-time donors: below 20%. The math is obvious.
Treat new donors like seedlings—early care determines long-term fruit.
Generosity follows gratitude. When people don’t feel valued, their support dries up fast.
3. Follow-Up Speed to First Touch: Delay = Decay
In our world, speed is the new currency. Amazon ships in 24 hours and Uber arrives in five minutes. If your church waits a week to follow up with guests, you’ve already lost them.
Here’s the reality: follow up within 24 hours, and your chance of a second visit can be five times higher than if you wait a week. Five. Times. Higher. [ref]
Growth hides this problem because guests keep coming. But look at your second-visit rate: it’s probably abysmal. People don’t return because they never heard from you.
For years, I’ve said to campus pastors at new campuses to grab the “new here” cards before they are whisked away to a central team member to enter them into a database. Take pictures of each one. Then, on Sunday night, call each of those “new here” guests. Yes, Sunday evening.
Too many churches are too scared to show some passion in the follow-up process. I bet that my dentist has more urgency in ensuring that I book my next plaque removal than your church does in inviting guests to return. Let’s change that.
Secret shop your own church: fill out a card, see how long it takes to hear back.
Benchmark goal: 100% of first-time guests contacted within 24 hours.
Build a system: Handwritten note written on Sunday by volunteers, Sunday afternoon text by campus pastor, Monday morning email from the church, Monday night phone call from a member of the team.
Train volunteers to share the load; don’t leave it to one overworked staff member.
Measure weekly: how many cards came in, how many were contacted, and when?
Slow follow-up is the silent killer of momentum. If you can’t respond fast, stop bragging about being “a friendly church.”
4. Kids/Students Capacity Ratio: The Family Filter
Healthy churches consistently see 20–30% of attendance made up of kids and students [ref]. That ratio isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the single strongest indicator of long-term health. Below 20%? You’re drawing adults but not reaching families. And without families, you don’t have a future.
You can celebrate growth today…more adults in seats, a buzzing lobby…but if kids aren’t in the mix, you’re quietly aging out. A church that trends older without bringing in the next generation is on a countdown clock.
Parents may love the preaching, music, and atmosphere, but if their kids aren’t excited to come back, the family will drift. Flip it around: when kids are thriving, families stick. Kids aren’t just a ministry; they’re your best retention strategy.
What percentage of your weekly attendance is under 18? Don’t guess—track it.
In small churches, staff do ministry. In large churches, staff equip people to engage in ministry. Fail to make that shift, and you’ll drown.
Here’s the metric: average churches run about 75 attendees per full-time staff. High-performing churches run 100:1 or more. If you’re at 40:1, you’re bloated. [ref]
Growth often hides inefficiency because staff are hustling to keep everything together. But payrolls balloon, volunteers disengage, and eventually the model collapses. You can’t hire your way to 10,000. You must mobilize.
This isn’t just organizational efficiency, it’s obedience. Ephesians 4 reminds us that pastors, teachers, and leaders exist “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” [ref] The goal isn’t to create a staff of superheroes who do everything; it’s to raise up a church full of ministers.
An insidiously dangerous pattern is when staff start absorbing work that used to be led by volunteers. That’s not progress…it’s regression. It appears that they are helping, but that behavior hinders the church’s development. The flow should run the other way: what staff carry today should eventually be released to volunteers tomorrow. If you see staff pulling ministry back from lay leaders, they’re not empowering the church…they’re shrinking it.
Audit your ratio: total weekly attendance divided by full-time staff equivalents.
Measure volunteer engagement: what percentage of adults serve regularly?
Redefine job descriptions around multiplication, not execution.
Hire leaders who can build teams, not just talented doers.
Launch a leadership pipeline: train, empower, and release lay leaders into real authority.
Staff who insist on doing everything aren’t heroes, they’re bottlenecks.
Staff who reach for another hire instead of mobilizing volunteers aren’t scaling ministry, they’re slowing it down.
The Hard Truth and the Way Forward
Growth feels like success. But it’s often camouflage. Behind the buzz of full services and rising giving are the cracks: lost guests, shallow donor bases, families turned off, and staff stretched thin.
Unchecked growth is like a startup with booming revenue and no margin. It looks great on stage but collapses in real life.
The good news: every one of these issues is fixable. But only if leaders stop drinking their own Kool-Aid and start confronting the uncomfortable data.
Your action plan:
Run the numbers. Guest capture rate. Donor retention. Follow-up time. Kids ratios. Staffing leverage. Don’t estimate, measure.
Set targets. Pick benchmarks that force accountability. 60% guest capture. 24-hour follow-up. 80% room max. 70% serving adults. 100:1 staffing ratio.
Assign ownership. Someone on your team is responsible for each metric. Not “everybody.” One person.
Communicate urgency. To your board, staff, and congregation. Do not sugarcoat. Growth without health is a future crisis.
Invest accordingly. Budget for capacity where it matters: kids’ spaces, follow-up systems, volunteer training. Cut fluff.
Because this isn’t about numbers, it’s about people. Each metric represents individuals who either connected or didn’t, gave again or didn’t, felt welcomed or ignored. These aren’t “corporate KPIs,” they’re kingdom outcomes.
Growth is a gift. But it’s also a test. The question isn’t, “Are you growing?” It’s, “Are you stewarding growth in a way that sustains?”
Don’t let your church’s growth kill its future growth. Build the systems. Strengthen the foundation. Make the shift from tall middle schooler to varsity athlete. Learn the Flop.
Pioneering Bilingual Multisite Ministry with Eric Garza
Oct 16, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Eric Garza, Executive Pastor at Cross Church in Texas. Founded in 1995, Cross Church has grown into one of the fastest-growing churches in America, with 12 campuses across the Rio Grande Valley and beyond. With a unique focus on bilingual ministry, Cross Church is pioneering new models of multisite ministry in a predominantly Hispanic region.
Is your church wondering how to expand across languages, cultures, or campuses? Eric shares how Cross Church has embraced a centralized, bilingual multisite strategy that unites excellence with contextual flexibility.
From one campus to twelve. // In just over seven years, Cross Church expanded from its original location to 12 campuses. Seven campuses operate in English and five in Spanish, often sharing the same physical site. The church’s regional strategy ensures that within 20–30 minutes anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley, people can access a Cross Church service.
Bilingual by design. // Recognizing the area’s demographics, Cross Church offers identical ministry in both English and Spanish. Worship services follow the same structure, prayer is offered in both languages, and even discipleship classes are recorded and taught in both English and Spanish. Children’s ministry and Next Gen programming is primarily in English due to generational language preferences, but bilingual leaders ensure Spanish-speaking kids are fully included. This high bar of excellence across languages makes Cross Church one of the largest bilingual multisite ministries in the U.S.
Centralized systems, local flexibility. // Cross Church operates with a centralized model. Ministries like Cross Kids, worship, first impressions, and discipleship are standardized across all campuses, ensuring consistency in branding, curriculum, and training. Campuses then have freedom to contextualize through local outreach, such as citywide prayer walks or community celebrations. This balance allows Cross Church to maintain quality while adapting to the unique needs of each community.
Unity across languages. // In locations where English and Spanish congregations share a facility and pastors work together closely. They attend each other’s services, providing a pastoral presence, and ensure smooth transitions between the 10 a.m. English service and 12 p.m. Spanish service. This intentional collaboration prevents silos and reinforces unity across language lines.
Discipleship through teams. // Instead of small groups, Cross Church emphasizes serve teams as the primary environment for discipleship and connection. With large percentages of members serving, teams become relational communities where people feel connected in a big church. Midweek discipleship classes, offered in both languages, supplement these teams with biblical teaching and spiritual formation.
Launching new services. // When considering a new service, Cross Church follows a deliberate process: surveying leaders and congregants, canvassing communities, starting with worship nights, building leadership teams, and branding months in advance. They also watch practical metrics—such as when a sanctuary hits 70% capacity or when kids’ spaces overflow—before launching. And above all, they pray to discern if the timing is from God, not just a good idea.
Looking ahead. // Cross Church continues to expand, preparing for new campuses beyond South Texas. They’ve also launched the 360 Global Network to share resources and lessons with other pastors and leaders, equipping churches to navigate growth, multisite challenges, and bilingual ministry in an increasingly multicultural America.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich here from the unSeminary podcast. Honored that you would tune in and listen today. Excited for this conversation. ah Literally this week, I had two conversations around what we’re talking about today with people ah who are wrestling with these issues. And I’m sure that many of you are wrestling with these as well. Honored to have another executive pastor. We love executive pastors at unSeminary. Rich Birch — We’ve got Eric Garza. He is the executive pastor at Cross Church. They were founded in 1995. They’re located in Texas and is one of the fastest growing churches in the the country. I think they’ve got 12 campuses, if I’m counting correctly, which is incredible. Cross Church is in a predominantly Hispanic area and and is likely has one of the largest bilingual ministries in the country. Eric, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Eric Garza — Rich, thanks for the opportunity. Happy to be with you and happy to have this conversation. Rich Birch — Wow, this is great. So obviously you guys have experienced incredible growth…
Eric Garza — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and, um you know, amazing things going on there. Why don’t you kind of unpack the story a little bit? Tell us a little bit about what the ministry looks like today and then about your role of executive pastor of campuses specifically. I know that kind of looks different in all you every church, but tell us, talk us through that. Eric Garza — Yeah. Eric Garza — Yeah, well, you said it. 1995, almost 31 years ago, the church started. Senior pastors, Jaime and Rosemary Loya here in deep South Texas. So for context, ah we’re about 20 minutes north of the border with Mexico.
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay. Eric Garza — So right on the bottom, ah deep South Texas, right on the tip of Texas. And so our our demographic is predominantly Hispanic, Latino. Eric Garza — And we’re in a part of the country um that sometimes we’re we’re the last to receive news or information, although that’s changed recently with ah SpaceX here in the region and LNG and just a lot of economic growth. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, that’s good. Eric Garza — Our church over the last, I would say five years, um we went from, well, let me backtrack. 2018 this way, we went from one location to now 12 locations. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s huge. Eric Garza — So it’s been about a little over seven years where we went from one site where we had in San Benito, our main campus, our original location, and then expanded to the upper part of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, then to the southern part of the valley. And then now, even in San Antonio, our first campus out of our our region. Eric Garza — So we got ah seven English campuses and five Spanish campuses. And so it’s been a challenging, it’s beena challenging season, but it’s been a very rewarding season. And God has just enabled us to really break the mold of what local ministry looks like here in our region and expand beyond one site to multiple sites. And in the last, Rich, in the last 18 to 20 months, we’ve doubled in size as an organization.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.
Eric Garza — And so that’s why Outreach Magazine, I believe this is the third or fourth time ah in recent years, have recognized it as one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And we’re just really blessed by that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Give us a sense of the the distance between those 12, like from the original location to the farthest. How does all that, what’s that look like? Eric Garza — So right now in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, within 20 to 30 minutes, you can be at a Cross Church location. Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. Eric Garza — So our our first campus was in the upper valley in the Mission area. That’s about a 35 minute drive from our original location. And then the other locations ah from our original site, they’re about 25 minutes or so, ah no more than half an hour. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, that’s great. Eric Garza — So that’s why we say anywhere in the Rio Grande valley within 30 minutes ah max, you can be at a Cross Church location for for service. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love… Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — I love that. You know, one of the things that we’ve seen about multisite is even to the way you’re talking about it there, you know, it really is a regional strategy. It’s like, hHey, we’re trying to reach the Rio Grande Valley.
Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — This is a, you know, is a particular cultural ah milieu. It’s an area it’s like people are, you know, have a lot in common and I love that you’re, you’ve saturated that area. Well, multisite ministry looks different from in every context, you know, like multisite, there’s like a number of different ways to skin the cat. Eric Garza — Sure. Rich Birch — At 12 locations, you are in the rare minority. Last last I saw, 50% of multisite churches don’t get beyond three. It’s like single digit percentage get beyond 10. You know, at 12, you’re in the rare thin air. So I’d love to kind of hear what does multisite look like for you when you say you’re multisite, you know, seven English, five Spanish, what’s that look like? Eric Garza — Yeah, so we got seven physical locations. And so so ah some of our locations double up. In other words, They have an English campus with their own English pastor, and then they have a Spanish congregation with their own Spanish pastor. Eric Garza — And so ah it’s for us, we are the, I believe we’re the largest church in in deep South Texas. And you’re right. We kind of broke the mold expanding to multisite several years ago. Our pastor had that vision and desire to, the biggest thing is we wanted to go to where people are at instead of expecting people to come to us. And so our our vision is to raise up an army, to lead a spiritual revolution.
Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Garza — And so we felt that in order to do that, we had to go into the communities where people are located instead of expecting them to come to us. And when we started doing that through multisite strategy and and campus ah campuses. Well, we just saw right our growth increase, we saw our reach increase, our influence in the region increase. Eric Garza — And so for us, we are a Latino predominantly area. And so we have a lot of speaking Spanish people um that want a modern, contemporary non-denominational type of ministry that in our region really wasn’t available up until several years ago. Eric Garza — And we were kind of the forefront, the pioneers of offering that. And then now that God has given us resources and abilities to really be at the cutting edge of providing ministry for the whole family and a lot of local churches are just not in a position to do that.
Eric Garza — And so we feel humbled, and we feel responsible, and we feel ah blessed that we get to go expand and do multisite with both reaching English speaking congregants, and then of course, diving into making sure that we cannot ignore, especially in our region, a predominantly Hispanic, excuse me, Spanish speaking, a demographic. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. What do what do you hold in common between the campuses? What like what does teaching look like? What does um ah you know music, kids ministry, that sort of thing? Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — And compare and contrast, you know both English and Latino, Spanish you know Spanish speaking, what does that look like? How do you how’s all that work together? Eric Garza — So our our services, our service formats, whether it’s in English or Spanish, are very much similar and identical. The only difference is the language. Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. Eric Garza — And so we’ll have worship set lists. The songs may vary differently, but as far as the structure of the service, the ministry we offer, whatever we offer in English, we offer in Spanish. Next Gen, pastoral care, prayer, first impressions, Cross kids, kids ministry, whatever whatever we offer in English, we offer in in Spanish. Eric Garza — And so for us, we’ve we’ve really been adamant about centralizing all of our ministries and our systems to where every campus location pretty much looks the same. The building might be different. The size might be different. The size of the congregation might be different. But as far as the ministry apparatus, it’s identical. Whatever you see in one location, you’re going to see at another location.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Eric Garza — And so when we launch campuses and when we launch services, we do so ah first making sure that we’re going to be able to provide as excellent a ministry as possible. And so for us, we offer the same, just just just in different languages. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Garza — And so you’re not going to go to one location in one part of the valley. And then go to a different location in a different part of the valley and experience different teams or different structure or different layouts or different branding. Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — You’re going to see very much the exact same stuff. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. And and that’s, um you know, as a commentary friends that are listening in, yeah know, I’ve been involved in multisite for a long time, 20, almost 25 years. And early on, there was a lot of debate around, um like, should we have lots of local contextualization, like as in, you know, from one campus that’s 25 minutes away from another, like how different should it be or how common should it be? Rich Birch — And for sure, we’ve seen over the last two decades that churches like Cross Church that are really trying to focus more on what do we have in common rather than, hey, let’s try to do a whole bunch of things different at all the various locations really are are prevailing in this model, in this approach. Eric Garza — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, so for us, that’s that’s great. For us, what we do is, like I said, the ministry we provide is identical across the board. But campuses do have a little bit of local autonomy in this regard. Rich Birch — Sure. Eric Garza — Maybe their community that they’re in is doing a citywide prayer walk or they’re doing a, ah you know, an Independence Day celebration that another community might not be doing. They have the the opportunity to dive into a local context that may pertain to that campus that another another city may not be having a similar or same event. So that other campus may not be doing it. Eric Garza — So they do have, especially with our community engagement endeavors, if something is happening in their community that that we can be a part of and that we want to be a part of, then we’ll allow the local campus to make that call and do so.
Rich Birch — Sure. Eric Garza — And then when we do like baptisms or child dedications, we’ll do them all on the same weekend. But then the local campus might say, hey, our campus will do it Saturday morning.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Garza — And then another campus will say, we’ll do it the same day, but we’ll do it Saturday afternoon…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Eric Garza — …or we’ll do it Sunday after. So in other words, we try to have a calendar where everybody is synced up. That way we can tell the everybody, hey, no matter what location you’re at this weekend, we’re going to offer water baptisms.
Rich Birch — Good. Eric Garza — But then we tell them, go to our social media or at your local campus, they’ll give you further details as to the time of those baptisms. So there is some local contextualization with community engagement… Rich Birch — Sure. Eric Garza — …with because not every community is created equal. Our ministry is similar across the board. It’s identical. But then the local context does play a part. And so the campuses do have to be a little bit flexible with with that. Rich Birch — Okay, help us understand, you know, you’re leading the way really here, ah particularly on, um you know, having services both in English and in Spanish, really reaching and discipling people across language and cultural lines. I think this is an area, this is the thing where I said I had multiple conversations about this this week. Rich Birch — I think growing church in the country is is asking this question. Every zip code is more multicultural, multi-ethnic today than it was 10 years ago, and it will be more multicultural, multi-ethnic 10 years from now. That’s just true. And so we’re all trying to figure out this question, but I think, frankly, a lot of churches have struggled with this. Rich Birch — So unpack that a little bit. how What are you learning? How are you keeping these things aligned? How are you working? You know, I’m sure it’s easy. I’m sure there’s no problems, but talk us through what you’re learning on that front. Eric Garza — Okay. Yeah. Wishful thinking, wishful thinking, my man. That is, yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, talk us about that. Eric Garza — So for us, there’s been a lot of trial and error, right? Rich Birch — Okay. Eric Garza — We say we have a great system, but it’s not a perfect system. Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — And as you grow and expand, you’re going to have to adapt and tweak some things in your current system. And then some systems that serve you in one season don’t serve you in another season. So a system that served us with four or five locations doesn’t serve us with six or seven or 10 or more, right? And so you have to adjust yourself. Eric Garza — So for us, um the then you know millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, those are the ones that, even though they may come from a Spanish background, are English speakers. So you’re going to see a lot of that English ministry. Eric Garza — In fact, even in our Spanish congregations, though we offer Spanish ministry across the board, you’ll notice or will notice that our next gen, a vast majority of them, I mean, 85, 90% plus are English speakers. And so we’re not going to do everything, you know, 50/50 bilingual. We’re going to do things that are going to help reach a demographic and reach people across the age spectrum, ah giving them their specific ministry and their required or or preferred language. Eric Garza — And so for us, how do you do multisite ministry in a bilingual context? If you know something that we don’t, please tell us, because we’ve we’ve grown to adapt this in our context, Rich. There is, to our to our knowledge, no ah thriving ministry in America that sets a precedent for how to do multisite bilingual ministry.
Rich Birch — I would agree. Eric Garza — We’re pretty much the trailblazers here. Our senior pastor, our our executive team, our our church, and in really pioneering what this looks like. And so that’s why I say, some things we’ve tried that haven’t worked. You know, when do you offer service times? When do Spanish speaking people prefer a Sunday service? English speakers? And so we’ve tried different things and we’ve just learned over the years what’s worked for us and what hasn’t worked for us. And again, it’s been through through a lot of prayer, through a lot of ah trial and error and figuring things out as we go. Eric Garza — Now, we have learned from other ministries, of course, that there’s wisdom in that. But in our context, reaching a predominantly ah Latino area and where you have a dual language demographic, that has been a challenge that we’ve really… And here’s the thing: we’ve become really good at it because we have a lot of our pastors and teaching pastors and speakers are bilingual, myself included. Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — So our senior pastor, phenomenal. The man will preach bilingual and translate himself live on stage. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Eric Garza — That’s is that he’s got a gift. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible. Eric Garza — He’s a phenomenal pastor, a phenomenal leader. And a lot of our our pastors, our campus pastors are bilingual.
Rich Birch — Right. Eric Garza — And so they’re able to flow in that dynamic that is attractive to families. It doesn’t slow things down and it gives them a greater footing in their community, being able to connect with dual language ah ah people. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s that’s incredible. I was going to ask the kind of, is there like a profile difference between people that are attending the English and Spanish services? Maybe you could unpack that a little bit more. In the Spanish services, are you doing, I can understand within the service, that makes sense. Rich Birch — But are you also doing Spanish kids ministry associated with that? Or is it English? Because I know some churches that will do, they’ll offer like a Spanish service in another room kind of thing, but then they’re sharing a shared English kids ministry. Talk us through kind of what is the the difference in the communities kind of double click on that on that uh you know that those dynamics. Eric Garza — Yeah, so it’s a wide – great question. It’s a wide spectrum, right? ah different You’re have guests and ah and congregants from you know different socioeconomic backgrounds, different income levels ah in both services.
Rich Birch — yep. Eric Garza — And in one campus, you might have more of one one specific socioeconomic background than another campus. When it comes to kids, for example, kids ministry, at our Spanish service, we will still offer kids ministry in English because like I said, really the next gen and and and kids, you know, between the ages of really, you know, it infants and adolescents all the way to to high school, teenage years and beyond, young adults are English speakers. So we’ll have a Spanish service going on in the main sanctuary. And in kids ministry, it’ll be in English, with this caveat. Eric Garza — We fully understand that there might be some Spanish speaking only kids that attend. And that’s perfectly fine. We’re prepared for that. Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Okay. Eric Garza — So we’ll have bilingual teachers, bilingual staffers, ah coordinators that are part of our kids ministry that, should that occur, they’re going to get exactly the same. We don’t water down. Eric Garza — Our curriculum is in Spanish. Our videos are in Spanish. We’ll have teachers that will speak to kids in Spanish including with special needs, right?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Eric Garza — And so there’s, we do our absolute best to ensure that we provide as excellent a ministry as possible to every, without, and I use the word watering down, with but, you know, I hope you get the the sense of what I’m trying to say…
Rich Birch — I understand. Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Garza — …without minimizing the impact and the quality of experience or teaching that they’re going to get. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s incredible. I love that. That’s, uh, Yeah, you’ve you’ve set a high bar in a in a really great, beautiful way, um you know, to to make that happen.
Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — Let’s double click on this again. You kind of already touched on this, but I’d love to circle back on the alignment and, you know, and autonomy issue.
Eric Garza — Sure.
Rich Birch — So, you know, the most, um we’ll call them single language, multisite churches, they struggle with this issue. You know, that this is like it’s a constant kind of battle. How do how much alignment, how much autonomy do we give locations? But then you’ve added this extra layer of multiple languages. Rich Birch — And so talk us through how you think about that. How do you work on alignment? How do you work on autonomy? I get the idea local kind of outreach community service stuff. That makes sense. But what else does, how else does that work itself out for you? Eric Garza — So we are a centralized ah ministry organization. And so what I mean by that is um every campus will have a kids leader and those kids leaders have a line to the central kids pastor or kids director. And so the central team is basically this central will set the systems. Campuses will execute those systems. Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Great. Eric Garza — So Cross Kids central department, right, our kids central department, Cross Kids because that’s the name of our church, um they will set the curriculum, they will set the lesson plans, they will set the videos that are going to be shown, ah the theme for that Sunday or for that month, and then the local campuses will execute. Eric Garza — Central will provide the training to all of our kids leaders and teachers and staff and personnel. The same. So every every kid’s team at every campus will get the exact same training from the central director from the central department. Same with next steps, first impressions, worship. And so our alignment is very centralized. Eric Garza — In other words, as far as our ministry systems are concerned. Even our finances, even our our our our our marketing. Our marketing, we do central, but then we also allow our local campuses to do different things based on one campus might be having a business breakfast with local business leaders that another campus is not. So their local marketing might look different. So we’re very centralized. And then the autonomy that we give is just that local context ministry. Rich Birch — Right, okay. Eric Garza — What is your community doing that we’re not doing? And so when we plant a campus, you’re going to get the same branding, you’re going to get the same banners, you’re going to get the same logos, you’re going to get the same signage, you’re going to get the same teams that any campus would have, regardless whether you’re a 200 member campus or you’re a 2000. We have both of those. We have that wide a spectrum of campus sizes. They’re going to get the same materials and branding and resourcing. Eric Garza — And so we’re very centralized. And then the local autonomy is just based on local context when it comes to engagement, to outreach, to reaching a local demographic or or something that might be a little bit different. And that’s the way we found, Rich, that allows us to ensure that number one, we’re providing as excellent a ministry as possible across the board at any location. We wanna be able to tell people No matter what location you go to, what cross location you’re at, you’re going to get a great experience, a very similar experience. And we’ve over the years found that to be true. Eric Garza — People love going to our Brownsville location. People love going to our Mission, Texas location. People like going to our Bay Area location because they found they’re not getting a different experience that they would at the original site from, you know, years ago. And so there’s people now that are part of our church, they’re members of our church who’ve never stepped foot in our original location. They’ve never stepped foot in other locations. Eric Garza — They’re just so adamant about their local Cross Church location, and they’re getting the exact same quality that they would at the original location. So I hope that answer is right. It’s we’re very centralized systematically, but then there is some local autonomy where a campus pastor might make some decisions based on his or her local context that another campus might not. Rich Birch — So this is like a super detailed church wonk question um at the level of at a campus level, um even this the way you you kind of set it up, we’ve got 12 locations. You talk about them all as campuses, but they’re really they’re sharing physical locations, if I’m if I’m correct. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — So how do the campus pastors who are sharing a physical location, English campus pastor, Spanish campus pastor, how do they relate to each other and in in that, you know, that location? what What does that look like for them? Eric Garza — Yeah, great question. And so one of our core values is unity. And so we always try to instill that across the board, especially in that kind of situation where it’s one physical location, but you have two two congregations, one English, one Spanish. So the English will have their us English pastor and the Spanish will have their Spanish pastor.
Eric Garza — And so the way we train our pastors and our our our top level leaders is this. We’re one team. Right? And so we’re not, you know, we don’t come with the attitude of, well, I’m just, I just do English and I don’t do Spanish. Right? Or I just do so do Spanish and I don’t do English. And that’s, and that’s perfectly fine in the sense that we understand you have a responsibility to serve your service. But at the same time, we believe that teams should help each other out.
Rich Birch — yeah. Eric Garza — And so for example, we have a 10 o’clock English service at at our locations and then locations have a twelve… That’s the other thing. Our service times are the same at every location. 10 o’clock in English. And then those that have Spanish, it’s 12 p.m. on Sundays in Spanish. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Eric Garza — So the teams will transition out. The Spanish has the exact same teams that the English does.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Garza — And so they’ll transition out between services to make sure that everything that the Spanish service is equipped and that the English service transitions well into Spanish. So basically, English service will be the first ones there on Sundays. And then Spanish will be the team that leaves in the afternoon on Sundays. And so those two pastors have to work very much in in in tandem with each other. Eric Garza — Hey, here’s what’s happened first service. Don’t forget about this. Or here’s what happened in the building the first service. Be aware of this. They both attend both each other’s service, right? It’s not, hey, my I’m done and I’m out of here. Rich Birch — Right, yeah, yeah. Eric Garza — No, they’re there to equip each other, to support each other, to help each other, to back each other up, to provide a stronger pastoral presence. And so they have the responsibility, but they’re not entirely siloed. In other words, where they abdicate responsibility and helping each other out. No, it’s a very pastoral structure where we help each other out and we’re there the entire Sunday to back each other up and to provide pastoral presence. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s that’s fantastic. Like, ah yeah, you’re you’re doing something really unique here and it’s it’s fun to kind of get a chance to dig around in it. Thanks for letting ask some of those, ah you know, detailed questions. Eric Garza — Oh, absolutely. And we’re still learning, right? We’re we’re still learning as we go. Rich Birch — Oh, yeah, for sure. Eric Garza — Yeah. And as challenges and situations come up, up we’ll figure them out as they come, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. You talked about um earlier, you met you said the we the the phrase, hey, we’ve got a great system, but not a perfect system.
Eric Garza — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And that does, it’s interesting, I’m working on this book um ah about breaking the 2000 barrier for churches. And one of the interesting things we’ve seen as I talk with church leaders who have done that is there’s this idea that under 2000, churches are trying lots of different things. Rich Birch — But then eventually you get to the point where you’re like, yeah, there’s like lots of different ways to do this, but this is the way we’re going to do it. Like, this is, you know, this is kind of our thing. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — And we’re not even convinced. It’s just like our approach. It’s fine. Like, we’re not hung up on it. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — What would be ah some adjustments to the systems that you’ve made over the years to try to improve to, you know, some changes, you’ve maybe dropped some stuff or added some stuff to try to um you know, push the thing forward? What would be one of those or a couple of those that you could, you could think through? Eric Garza — Yeah, um as I’m thinking about it, as you’re asking the question, ‘m thinking back to a couple of our campuses that underwent some building renovations and building projects to create more space. Eric Garza — And so it used to be that we could host our our membership courses or membership classes in a small space. And as the campus grew that space, we outgrew that space or that meeting room or whatever. Rich Birch — Right. That’s great. Yeah. Eric Garza — And so our our system, let me put it, let me put it this way. Let’s just say that our next step system, all of our first time guests get a ah blue bag with their gift, right? Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Garza — Well, That’s the system that every campus has to do. What every campus can do differently is perhaps what exit they’re going to have their station at…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Eric Garza — …or their next steps room at or where they’re going to host it. And so for us, the systems have had to be adapted as we’ve grown. And that’s what I mean. They’re not perfect systems because sometimes things happen that are out of your control. You plan for 15 and 22 show up, or 30 show up or 30 RSVP and only, you know, 17 show up. And so they’re not perfect systems in the way that they’re concrete and they’re cookie cutter in the sense that we can’t maneuver or or rework them to meet the demand of the local campus. Eric Garza — And so our systems are are the same, but the local implementation of those systems may vary campus to campus. Instead of using one mobile TV, you’re using ah an LED screen, right? because your your your spacing is different. Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Eric Garza — But you’re still teaching the same stuff. It’s the same books. It’s the same materials, same resources. And so as we’ve grown, Rich, from, you know, multi site and adding more and we’ll continue to add more into 2026 beyond. We’re obviously constantly evaluating our systems, right? Does this membership system fit, you know, for where we want to head, where we want to go? Does our Cross Kids curriculum, is it replicable across this so across the board to even more campuses? Eric Garza — Our current systems, do they, now that we’re expanding even out of the Rio Grande Valley and deep South Texas to other regions, San Antonio and beyond, does how we do ministry in this region need to change how we do ministry in a different region.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — And so we’re constantly evaluating and tweaking. And then, like I said earlier, what system served us in one season, you know, they’re not sacred cows or they’re not sacred, you know, things. Rich Birch — Sure. Eric Garza — And as you’re right, as long as it’s not sin and it’s not anti-biblical or scriptural, yeah you can change things, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, 100%. Eric Garza — Nothing nothing beyond the word of God is sacred…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Eric Garza — …and in this in the in the context of this conversation, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Garza — And so we’re always thinking, hey, does what we do in in this region, does it need to shift or change for the next region that we want to be in? And so that’s what I mean. Rich Birch — Yeah. Eric Garza — They’re not perfect because they’re led by and they’re implemented by imperfect people. And so all of that, right, as we go multisite and expand, man, we’re constantly thinking about all those thoughts, ah perusing through our minds and our meetings, and how do we get better at what we’re currently doing? Rich Birch — Yeah, this fantastic. So is there a difference or a kind of compare and contrast the discipleship pathway between English and Spanish is, you know, like you talked about, like, so you know, someone’s coming, they’re getting a gift and some sort of new here thing. And then, you know, you’re trying to get them connected to teams and groups somehow, I’m assuming. And, you know, then we’re hoping that they take these steps to kind of grow in their relationship with Jesus. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — What does that look like? And are you bilingual at at that level as well? Like are the right to the, you know small groups and all that stuff and talk us through all, what does all that look like that side of what’s going on across? Eric Garza — Yeah. So for us, we currently don’t have small groups at our church. We have serve teams. Rich Birch — Okay. Eric Garza — And so we push, ah we highly encourage people into our serve teams. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Garza — And a large percentage of our church is involved in serve teams. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Garza — And so that becomes kind of their church family, their church group.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Garza — We’ve found that people have often said, man, we’re so we’re such a large church, but we feel so connected because we’re on teams. And so in their local context, people form those relationships. Eric Garza — Yeah, our discipleship is bilingual. So for example, when we do Wednesday night discipleship classes or Bible studies, us English will meet in one room and Spanish will meet in another space. And but it’ll be the exact same teaching. So, for example, I’ll use myself as an example. When I record the content for discipleship, I’ll record the exact same content in English…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Eric Garza — …and then I’ll record it in Spanish.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Eric Garza — So that evening or that Wednesday night, right? Those seven English congregations are getting their set, their English discipleship teaching. Let’s say we’re talking about gifts of the Holy Spirit. Spanish is going to get the same exact teaching on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, just in Spanish. Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. Eric Garza — And so that’s why, Rich, we’ve, we’ve been so blessed and, and we’ve had to work at this…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Eric Garza — …where as best as we can. Now, not everything, right, not a hundred percent bilingual. But as best as we can, we want to offer what we do in English, we want to offer it in Spanish and then vice versa. Eric Garza — Maybe Spanish has a great idea that we’ve never done in English. We want to see if we can explore doing that in the English as well. Eric Garza — So we do our very best. And I say nine out of ten – 90, 95% of the time, everything we do, we’re doing it in both languages to accommodate and to serve. We’re not trying to please one congregation over the other. I think when you’re trying to please people, that’s when you get into some trouble and you get into some pressure you were never meant to have. We’re trying to serve the congregations as best as we possibly can. And I believe our growth has spoken volumes of, like I said, hey, it’s been impactful and it’s worked for us. Not perfect systems, but they’re very efficient and excellent systems. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. Years ago, I had Derwin Gray on the podcast and we were talking about multicultural, you know, how our churches should, you know, continue to pursue multiculturalism and and become, you know reflect our community. And, you know, I was coming at it from like, a hey, like our churches should represent, they should, when you walk into our church, it should look like the community we’re in. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — And he totally called me out on the podcast, and was like, Rich, like you could need to think about a bigger thought. This isn’t about some marketing trick. This is the kingdom of Christ. It’s like the, you know, every tribe tongue is represented, should be represented in our church. And I love what you’re doing to try to make, to operationalize that, to try to, how do we actually make that happen in our our context? I think it’s you know I think it’s I think it’s amazing. Eric Garza — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s it’s incredible. Well, if there’s leaders that are listening in today that are thinking, hey, we we are thinking about we might need should add a second language service experience, or we we should maybe we have that at one location we should be thinking about doing that at multiple locations what would be some of the first steps that you would encourage someone to take say in the next month maybe two months what would be some of those first steps? Eric Garza — Yeah. Great question. As a matter of fact, we’re actually in that exact scenario with one of our campuses right now…
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Eric Garza — …that is only they’ve only been an English campus since their since their launch, since their start. But the community they’re in now, they’re reaching, you know, they’re getting interest from from Spanish speaking, you know, residents. Eric Garza — And so we we don’t launch a second service from one month to the next. Right? It goes through a series of months before. So we do market research. We do surveys. I’ll give you an example. Last month in August, on one of the Sundays, one of our campuses, their Spanish service, they need to go to a second Spanish service because their Spanish congregation there has grown. Eric Garza — So we did a community, we did a congregational survey, right? We asked our team, right? Because those are the ones that have the biggest buy-in is your team and your leaders. You know, between these two or three service times, which one would you prefer? Eric Garza — And then we ask the congregation, hey, there’s going to be service available. Would you help us out and answer that survey? Just let us. It’s a one question survey. Just say if we had to open a second Spanish service. What time do you believe? Is that 2 p.m., 6 p.m.? Is it Saturday? What what what service? What does that look like?
Eric Garza — And then at the campus where I say we’re actually going through that scenario, So they’re going to launch a Spanish service, I believe, in December. So we’re still about three months away from that. But they already started a couple of months ago with worship nights…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.
Eric Garza — …with ah canvassing the community, with starting marketing in Spanish, getting the names the church’s recognition out there in a Spanish context, meeting with local stakeholders, meeting with people in the in the congregation. And then here’s the thing. Because it’s a different service in a different language, we also have to build a leadership team that’s going to serve that congregation in Spanish. Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — So right now we’re identifying candidates for leadership. We’re training our our executive Spanish pastor for the church is training leaders, identifying families. So that by the time we launch that second service, we have a leadership team in place. We’ve had several months of branding. We’ve had, we know what the community is saying to us. We’ve asked them through surveys, through conversations, through local events. Eric Garza — So by the time we open, and then we have families that are going to commit to being part of that service, worship teams, kids, teachers. I’m the, across the board, by the time we launch it, uh, we’re pretty much in place to sustain it.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Garza — And so what happens is if, if if there’s pastors or leaders who, it’s not, hey, we’re growing, we’re expanding, right? Statistically, if a service is 70% full, ah then you can launch a second service. A lot of people say, well, yeah I still got empty seats. Yeah, but your kid’s ministry might not. Rich Birch — Or parking or some other area. Yeah. Eric Garza — And so a lot of pastors, a lot of pastors consider, well, we’re not ready for a second service because perhaps they’re only contextualizing that decision based on empty seats in the sanctuary without realizing your kids space may already be overcrowded. Your nursery is overcrowded. You got, and so you got to consider. So when your sanctuary attendance is at 70% or higher, ah you’re probably in a good spot to consider opening a second service, regardless of the language. Eric Garza — In our context, opening a second service, we do a lot of back-end work. We do a lot of due diligence ah before but before we open the service. Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. Eric Garza — And then once we do a month, a month and a half leading up to it, we start promoting that service time so that people can become acclimated and aware that there’s a new service time in their community at our campus, at our church, and and they can be a part of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Eric Garza — So a lot of front-end work, but then a lot of it’s a process. It doesn’t happen from one month to the next. And then, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t say, we also pray about it. Is God leading us in that direction? Rich Birch — Right, what’s he telling us to do? Eric Garza — Because just because it’s ah it’s a good thing doesn’t mean it’s a God thing, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. True, true. Yep. Eric Garza — And so even in in the context of ministry, even in us as a multisite bilingual ministry, which I believe we’re the largest in the country, we’re very adamant that, hey, we want to do systematic, but we want to make sure that this is a God thing for our church or for that campus um before making the final decision. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. And, you know, a couple things I want to underline there for our listeners. I love that you start with listening to your people.
Eric Garza — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, you’re surveying, but it’s like, hey, let’s let’s get out and have some conversations, whether that’s through survey or, you know, focus groups or just listening…
Eric Garza — Right.
Rich Birch — …you know, get 10 leaders in a room, have have some conversations.
Eric Garza — Right.
Rich Birch — Because I think sometimes as leaders, we can get in our ivory tower somewhere and we’re like, we think this is what we should do. And it’s like, well, maybe we should actually talk with the people we’re trying to serve. Eric Garza — Right. Well, and and you have to, I didn’t i didn’t mean to interrupt you. Rich Birch — No, no, it’s fine. Eric Garza — And and you had you have to talk with the leaders because they’re the ones that are going to be helping you execute the ministry. Rich Birch — 100%. 100%. Eric Garza — And if they’re not, if if you don’t have a ah good segment of them on board, you’re going to have a difficult time getting that service off the ground. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah, it’s great. Okay. And then the other thing was, I love that you’re, there’s like the decision to launch and then that sets off a whole bunch of other actions. Like if you cannot just like pull the trigger and be like, okay, we’re doing this in two weeks. Like we got to work, we got to get ready for that. Eric Garza — Right.
Rich Birch — We got to actually, it’s the difference between starting that service and launching it. Like where we really want to push it forward and um you know, do it well. So love that.
Rich Birch — So, all right. Well, as we’re wrapping up today’s episode, anything else you’d love to share, ah you know, kind of final parting words to leaders who are listening in today?
Eric Garza — Well, Rich, thanks for the opportunity, man. I’m very grateful just to get to share. Our church, we we believe we’re in a season of of just growth and expansion really across the country. And our senior leadership, our senior pastor is very adamant about pouring into other churches and other pastors and leaders. In fact, he just recently launched a brand new um ah organization, the 360 Global Network that’s available. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Garza — You can go to 360global.network and we’re in a season and he’s in a season where he now wants to pour into other pastors and leaders. Rich Birch — So good. Eric Garza — And God has given us so much resource and so much wisdom. And ah it’s now a our responsibility and our desire to equip other pastors and leaders where they don’t have to face some of the pitfalls that we faced early on as we expanded and grew and serve and serve more people. Eric Garza — And as the demographic of our country continues to shift and change. And you have the Hispanic community just really growing in throngs and and thriving. Bilingual ministry, we believe, is going to become a key factor in how the church operates in different communities in the country. Rich Birch — 100%. Yeah, 100%. Eric Garza — And so anything we can do, please reach out to us. We’re more than happy to provide resources. You can be part of the network. You can be part of what God is doing. And ah man, it would just be our pleasure ah to help serve pastors and leaders around the country where it’s more blessed to give than to receive. And so we want to be a blessing to the body of Christ at large. Rich Birch — That’s great. Love that. So again, that’s just 360 global – so the numbers, 360global.network. You should check that out. Eric Garza — Correct. Rich Birch — A great resource, lots of, you know, stuff going on there. You can chase that down ah more and learn about that. Well, I really appreciate you being here today, Eric. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Eric Garza — Yeah, you can go to social media, @crosschurchrgv or crosschurchonline.com. And if I can be a resource to anybody, it would be my heart and blessing to be able to do so. It’s @ericpgarza on Instagram, social media. Man, thanks for the opportunity, Rich. Very, very blessed by our conversation. Rich Birch — Thank you. Thanks for being here today.
The Future of Large Churches: Early Findings from the 2025 Survey with Warren Bird
Oct 09, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Dr. Warren Bird—author, researcher, and one of the most trusted voices in church leadership studies. Warren has co-authored over 35 books for pastors and church leaders, including Hero Maker, Better Together, Next, Resilience Factor, and his newest, Becoming a Future-Ready Church. Known for his deep data-driven insights, Warren has spent decades researching trends that shape healthy, growing churches.
What’s next for large churches in North America—and how are they shaping the future of ministry? How are they adapting after the pandemic? Are they thriving, struggling, or transforming in unexpected ways? Warren shares early findings from his newest national research study—The Large Church Survey 2025—which explores how churches of 1,000 or more are changing and what’s coming next for the future of the church.
Exploring large church health. // Large churches have reshaped the landscape of ministry over the last fifty years. Yet following the pandemic, questions have emerged: Have they fully come back? Are they still growing disciples—or just attracting crowds? Warren’s latest study, available at bit.ly/largechurch2025, is designed to answer those questions by gathering data from churches with 1,000+ in-person attendance. The goal is to measure growth, transparency, discipleship, and community impact in a post-pandemic world.
Cultural distrust of institutions. // Warren notes that many people today are skeptical of large organizations, including churches. Scandals, media coverage, and declining trust in institutions have fueled the perception that “big” means “impersonal” or “unaccountable.” Yet Warren argues that healthy large churches can be powerful forces for good—offering specialized ministries such as special needs programs, counseling centers, and community partnerships that smaller churches often can’t sustain.
Early findings: community and young adults. // Although data collection is still underway, some surprising trends are already emerging. The second-highest area of growth since the pandemic has been churches’ service and impact on their local communities. Large churches are not retreating—they’re doubling down on outreach. Even more encouraging, the top area of growth is the spiritual response among young adults. Despite common myths, many large churches are seeing renewed engagement from people in their 20s and 30s who are hungry for spiritual depth and authentic community.
The power of small groups. // One consistent trend across every five-year survey Warren has conducted since 2000 is the growing emphasis on small groups and teams. In the most recent data, 92% of churches give their highest priority to small groups as essential for discipleship and connection. Warren summarizes the insight simply: “You get bigger by getting smaller.” Large churches thrive when they help people move from rows to circles—building relational environments where faith grows deeper.
Raising leaders from within. // Another major finding centers on leadership development. Among churches of 5,000 and larger, 92% report having a residency, internship, or formal leadership training program. The median number of participants per church is 15. This suggests that future pastors, missionaries, and ministry leaders are increasingly being raised up inside the local church rather than emerging solely from seminaries. Warren calls this a promising trend that could strengthen the next generation of church leadership.
Comeback stories. // The data also reveals a surprising recovery among large churches. So far, 53% of churches with attendance over 2,000 report being at least 10% larger today than they were in 2019. Some have even doubled or tripled in size. At the same time, a smaller group continues to struggle to regain momentum—creating what Warren describes as a “K-shaped recovery” across the church landscape. These insights will help leaders benchmark where their church stands and how to plan for the future.
A younger generation of leaders. // Contrary to the myth that megachurches are a baby boomer phenomenon, early data shows that the average senior pastor age has actually declined since the last survey. Many fast-growing churches are being led by a younger generation of pastors—some who planted their congregations and others who revitalized long-standing churches.
To participate in the Large Church Survey 2025 and receive the full results, visit bit.ly/largechurch2025. The survey takes about 20 minutes and is open until November 11, 2025. For more on Warren’s work, follow him on LinkedIn or explore his latest book Becoming a Future-Ready Church to stay ahead of emerging ministry trends.
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Check them out at Risepointe.com and while you’re there, schedule a FREE call to explore possibilities for your needs, vision and future…Risepointe believes that God still uses spaces…and they’re here to help.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We are honored to have a guest with us, Dr. Warren Bird today, who, what can I say about Warren Bird? He has co-authored 35 books for church leaders, but it’s more that, not that he’s just written a bunch of books. These are a number of the books that from my perspective are like the go-tos on their topic. Rich Birch — Hero Maker on leadership development, Better Together on healthy mergers, Next on pastoral succession, ah Resilience Factor on effective leadership teams. And his latest is incredible: Becoming a Future-Ready Church on these eight emerging church trends. He’s not only an author but he’s also a researcher and the work that he produces, I think, is among the best that’s out there. His background is a pastor, seminary professor. He was a research director at Leadership Network and was the executive vice president of research at ECFA, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Rich Birch — Warren, I am so glad to have you here. He’s also, one of the distinctions Warren has is he’s one of the few people that I’ve said, anytime you want to come on the podcast, you come on, we’ll make space. And so he reached out. Happy to have Warren on. Welcome. So glad you’re here. Warren Bird — Wow, Rich, you just rattled all that off. It’s like my life story. I could do that for you because you are so articulate and and the impact you’ve had on me. I listen to your podcast very regularly. The consulting insights when I you and I are sharing a speaking platform and all. So I could have done the same thing for you, but thank you for having me. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s kind of you. That’s kind of you to say that. And today we’re talking, you’re in the midst of one of the things I love about Warren, and and you might know this if you bump into him at a conference, he’s always working on some project. And he’s always wants to pick your brain about, Hey, like I’m working on this thing, got this thing coming up. And we were at a conference recently and he was talking about his latest research project. And so why don’t you talk to us about the study that you’re currently engaged in? Rich Birch — And friends, I want you to stay tuned because we’re going I’m going to try to pull some early results out of Warren. This is the first place that some of these results have been talked about. So you’re getting an exclusive here, which is great, or a first because you’re listening in today. But what is this study that you’re working on? Warren Bird — So Rich, the world of large churches—let’s let’s just say in-person attendance of a thousand and higher—you know, that was a big change in the face of the North American, actually the global church, the rise of the large church in the last 50 or so years. But now we’ve had the pandemic where large churches were hit the hardest, unless you were in like Florida or Texas, where they didn’t even participate in the pandemic. But the rest of us got hit hard. Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — And and the question is, have they come back? And if they’ve come back, are they different? And then there’s that growing skepticism of, well, are big churches actually an asset or a liability? To what extent do they actually make their communities better? To what extent are they really healthy and vital versus, you know, are, are they an inch deep and a mile wide? Warren Bird — What’s the level of financial transparency? I mean, you, you, you look at, you listen to ah headlines in the media and then they always have adjectives in front of the word megachurch, like rich megachurch or or something a even more disparaging. Well, how, how “rich” are they?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — Do people give more because they go to a larger church and more important, you know, what’s the level of transparency and discipleship that’s there? And, and fundamentally what’s the bar of discipleship and, and what are churches who are exploding with growth, in particular, are they giving out free coffee or are, are they giving out Jesus in a way that’s resonating with the population around them?
Warren Bird — So it’s it’s time to explore and to say, well, what’s happening? And the best way to do it, i mean, we hang out at conferences, Rich, because I don’t want to just ask questions out of the top of my mind. I want to know what people want to know about their world, their peers. Rich Birch — Yeah. Warren Bird — And I can put that in a question and find out from a bunch of churches and then come back to you and say, well, here’s the lay of the land. And more importantly, here’s what seems to be around the next corner… Rich Birch — That’s good. Warren Bird — …for churches that they are anticipating.
Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — Can you tell I’m excited about this project?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I was going to…
Warren Bird — Bit.ly/largechurch2025 Rich Birch — Great. that’s the That’s the link. We’re driving towards that today, friends. And you’re looking particularly for churches over a thousand is the is the kind of the…
Warren Bird — In-person attendance, yes.
Rich Birch — In in-person attendance. Warren Bird — And that’s adults and children, all your campuses, every nose that’s there on it on a given weekend. You know, is it somewhere around 1,000 to up to 100,000? And it’s… Rich Birch — All those people over a hundred thousand were asking you not to participate. Yeah, that’s great. That’s so, this is good. Warren Bird — Well, that’s another story. Yeah I just interviewed the pastor of Africa’s third largest attendance church, and they would be more than 100,000 on a weekend across their campuses. Rich Birch — Yes, it’s amazing. Amazing Warren Bird — But that’s another story. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So a couple things, just while we’re kind of establishing why this particular study. So there does seem to be this um undercurrent in the culture in general. I don’t know whether it’s just the church culture that’s like, it kind of looks down on large churches.
Rich Birch — In fact, I was at an event earlier this year of large church pastors where the vibe there for sure was like, and it’s one of these kind of like social things. They get all their people together. And it’s outside of they’re all from the same denomination, but it’s not run by the denomination. They just do it themselves. And the reason is, is because they feel like, oh, everybody else looks down on us. Rich Birch — So why is that? Why do you, why is it that we seem as, as Christians to kind of, I don’t know. It’s like we, we, we look at these large churches suspiciously. Why, why do you think that is? Warren Bird — A lot of reasons. The probably the biggest reason is the cultural distrust of institutions, church included. And and that’s all the major institutions. Warren Bird — Somehow we think, and I’ll just use a wild example, that going to GoFundMe where there’s zero accountability that my money is going to be better used than in an established non-profit or Christ-centered non-profit or church or whatever. And it’s like, really? But that’s the tenor of the culture. Warren Bird — And there have been enough scandals that the media has highlighted that people like, okay, yeah, you’re raising money for the church van, for the youth. I mean, that’s a great idea, but i you know do I have any confidence that that’s what’s happening? That’s just on the money side. There are so many other factors that influence the distrust in large organized religion. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. You were saying about the, you know, when you see any scandal write ups, if the something goes sideways at a church, they talk about a rich megachurch or an affluent megachurch or a whatever. Rich Birch — The other thing that bugs me in those reports is they always talk about, well, you know, they have rock and roll band. And like they they kind of talk about some of the stuff we do as if it’s like, well, that’s the reason, the only reason why people are there. So interesting stuff. Warren Bird — Yeah. So, so Rich, let me put this in context. Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — I am all for every single church, whether it’s three people, 30 people, 300, 3000, 30,000, whatever. Rich Birch — Yeah. Warren Bird — If they are making disciples of Jesus Christ…
Rich Birch — Amen.
Warren Bird — …and even more so if they are making disciple-makers of Jesus Christ. Warren Bird — Now, when a church is explosively growing and it’s genuine, I’m just thrilled by it. Because large churches have the opportunity to do things that other sized churches don’t.
Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — Like let’s say special needs ministry that that often is very volunteer intensive and sometimes staff intensive and may require a certain room. You know, it’s a a quiet room or or ability to do things structurally with your facility that just not every church can do. But but large churches can. So I’m trying to zero in on, okay, every church size can do something well. Warren Bird — And actually the survey at bit.ly/largechurch2025 is part of a series that’s going to compare against every other size. So for example, the average pastor age, or the average pastor tenure, or the average, whatever. We’re going be able to do across all sizes. I’m doing the very large church size and, and I’m, that’s, that’s what, that’s the size that’s hardest to get good data on. And I’m bullish on the outreach, on the impact on their communities. Warren Bird — In fact, let me let me leak one early finding. Rich Birch — Sure Warren Bird — We gave 15 things where we said, what has, have these changed since the pandemic?
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — Have they increased, stayed the same, and gone down? The number two vote at present is our service and impact on our local community. Rich Birch — Interesting. Warren Bird — Wow, that’s such a positive thing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …especially for large churches.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. You know, one of the things in in the coaching I’ve done with churches, we talk about magnetic community service as a key piece of an invite culture that people want to be a part of a church that is not only making a difference, but they want to be seen as being a part of of a church that’s making a difference, so that I can invite my friends to come be a part of that. Rich Birch — And it’s interesting, as I’ve talked with some large churches about that, you know, we’ll talk about this particular area. And they’re like, oh, we’ve never thought of that as like ah a way for us to reach our community. They’re like, it just seems like the thing we should do. And I’m like, no, you should be inviting first time guests to come and do that to be a part of. But that’s cool to see. Now, so what you said, number two, what was number one? Yeah, I’m going to try to milk more of this out of you here of these things, if you don’t mind saying. Warren Bird — Very exciting. Very exciting. It’s the spiritual response by young adults. Rich Birch — Interesting. Warren Bird — Wow. In other words, the the people that we’re able to impact as a church who are young adults, we have seen a clear increase in the spiritual interest of that group. Wow. Rich Birch — Isn’t that interesting? We’re seeing that in in a number of places, right? That that this is bubbling up. Warren Bird — And that’s another thing about large churches. They are disproportionately bulging in not only the the children, Next Gen, but also in that 20-somethings age is is usually a sizable percentage of of, especially, newer large churches. Rich Birch — I was just with the church a couple weeks ago and they were talking about—and they’re a large church—and they were kind of thinking, they were like, I would say disparagingly about their own ministry. And they’re like, you know, young people just don’t want large churches. They they want a small, intimate thing. And I challenged them on that. Now I’m looking forward because when the study comes out, I can give them an actual stat. Warren Bird — Okay, okay, Rich. I’m going to tease another finding then. Rich Birch — Yes. Okay. Warren Bird — Because this I’ve I’ve sat and listened to your… And and tell tell us the name of the title of your latest book where you talk about different growth strategies. Rich Birch — Yeah, Breaking Breaking the 200 Barrier or 2000 Barrier is the this the title of the book I’m working on. Warren Bird — Wow. Okay. So so this survey that I’m doing actually has been done every five years since the year 2000. Rich Birch — Okay, yeah. Warren Bird — And it’s fascinating to see the same question, the answer every 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, just before the pandemic, and now 2025 after the pandemic. Warren Bird — And one of the questions is, it’s an agree/disagree statement, that how important are small groups or teams for the Christian formation and discipleship in your church? Warren Bird — And the when it was first asked many years ago, it was right at 50%. Every single survey, it has inched up. And the last survey, it was 89%. And I thought, well, we’re not going to top that because you don’t get 90 or more percent in any survey. Rich Birch — Wow. Of anything. Warren Bird — But the responses so far, 92%…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Warren Bird — …give the highest rank to small groups, which translated is: you get bigger by getting smaller. And that intimacy that you were reflecting on, that’s what where people thrive. That’s the hub of discipleship. And that’s essential for the larger you get to know how to do that well. Plus, of course, that’s where so many of your lay leaders are developed and everything else. Rich Birch — Yeah. And and we, on ah from a practitioner point of view, we know that um like large churches have to get good at that. Like you have to get good at moving people into smaller communities. You’ve got to figure out how, you can’t, people will come for whatever you’re doing on the weekend, but they will not stick and stay long-term. Rich Birch — they They have to find a group of small, you know a small group of friends that they’re connecting with. My parents, most of their, ah my dad moved, I think, 23 times in his career, moved a lot and went to a bunch of different churches. I think like 18 different churches or something over the years, and mostly small churches. I’ve mostly worked in large churches. Rich Birch — And if I’m honest, they would never say it this way because they love me and they’re good parents. I always felt like they kind of looked down on the large church thing. They’re like, I don’t know. I don’t know. They, at one point we’re moving to Louisville, Kentucky. Rich Birch — And I said, you got to go to Southeast, at least try going to to Southeast and check it out. Just check it out for one weekend. They ended up getting connected there, stuck and stayed, loved it. And they would say too, and it’s a massive church, probably like it’s up there, top single digit, the largest church in the country, somewhere in that range. And it it they would say to this day, that was the church that they felt the most connected at, not the church of 200 people. You’ve we’ve got to get really good at that for sure. Rich Birch — Any other findings that are kind of interesting for us to kick around? Warren Bird —Yeah, what I did, Rich, before the surveys, I got a whole bunch of people together who work with churches and say, tell me what you think might be on the horizon that I can test for. Warren Bird — And one of the things Ithen worded questions to test for is are, is the locus of where future pastors, leaders, missionaries are coming from, is it is it less from the seminaries as points of origin? You know, I’m going to go to seminary and try to figure out what God has for my life. And more happening there in the local church. And and just for an example, if you take all the churches of 5,000 and higher in attendance that of ah have completed the survey so far, and you ask, do you have a residency program or equivalent? (And I give them a whole bunch of words because everybody calls it something different…)
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — But designed to train future church leaders.
Rich Birch — Right. Warren Bird — So far in the findings, 92% have said yes. Rich Birch — Wow. Warren Bird — And then when we said, okay, if yes, then how many people during the course of 2025 are you training? And the median is 15. Rich Birch — Wow. Warren Bird — Now, that doesn’t mean just really large churches are doing it. I also checked for 2,000 and up, 1,000 and up. And they’re all at different levels doing some kind of of serious ministerial training. Warren Bird — So this is pipeline, pathway, whatever you want to call it, that, you know, from to use the phrase of another church, starting with the irreligious person who comes and and finds a vital life-changing forgiveness relationship with Jesus Christ. And then if gifted, there is just no lack of steps you can take toward leadership if God’s calling should continue in that particular way – all the way towards a ministry residency, towards doing something vocationally full-time. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s incredible, 92%. That’s shocking to me, that’s surprising. That’s incredible for churches over 5,000. I wonder, one of the things I’ll look forward to when the study comes out is seeing how that gradiates with churches that are say at 2,000. Warren Bird — Right. And and that’s what we’ll do in the report. Warren Bird — For those who take the survey, by the way, they get the report first and… Rich Birch — Yes. What is that link again? Warren Bird — …and and but wait, there’s more. Those who take the survey get an exclusive webinar where we unveil it and do Q&A with us and special guests like Sam Chan there. And and and we’ve we’ve got a whole bunch of people lined up who are going to kind of ask the tough questions of the data. And again, it’s at bit.ly/largechurch2025.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Warren Bird — And so, and so participate and then be the first to get these wonderful reports that we’ll do.
Rich Birch — You know, that’s interesting because I, you know, I’m always looking for what are the behaviors at a kind of certain level of church that changes as they become larger. And um that’s actually that book I’m working on, that really is what it kind of is is based around. And one of them, there’s these eight different things that I’ve i’ve just seen. And and so I’m out talking to other church leaders. And one of them is they go from reactive volunteering to proactive volunteer growth. That like a church of a church of 800 or a church of 500 is like, oh, we need people for this. But then to really break that 2000 barrier, churches have to, they move to, or we see them move to, okay, actually we see that moving people into places of their gifting, their what’s kind of best for them. And also trying to find a way to create more space for more volunteers is a behavior that we see. Rich Birch — I wonder if in this one, as churches go from 2,000 to 3,000 to 5,000, there’s like, it’s just kind of that behavior even just extended all the way up through the kind of staffing experience where it’s like, hey, we’ve got to develop our leaders from within. That’s that’s amazing. That’s that’s incredible. Warren Bird — Yeah, it’s to me, it’s exciting. Rich Birch — Oh, for sure. Warren Bird — It’s it’s just thrilling to imagine the impact because frankly, last weekend of the people who went to a Protestant church, at least in the United States, um somewhat around half or more went to a large church.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Warren Bird — And it’s where you cut do the cutoff for what becomes large. But this is a a small number of churches, relatively speaking…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — 320,000 U.S. churches. And at least in the megachurch department, 2,000 and higher, they’re only like 1,800 or so. And then when you go into the thousand range, it it adds a chunk more churches. But this is a disproportionate number of churches. And if they get leadership development right, um the impact, the ripple effect to bless all churches and all communities has great potential. Rich Birch — Well, and this, absolutely, this has been um so much of the work that you’ve done over the years, which I think has been such a blessing to so many churches, is you have mined out these insights, these, that but then have become resources that then all of us can apply regardless of our church size. Rich Birch — So even down the road when the when the study comes out, if you’re not a large church, this would be a great study for you to read, to but to to to learn from. Warren Bird — Yeah. Yeah, and we will make it available to the public…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …but it’s just those who take the survey at – did I mention it: Bit.ly/largechurch2025. And it closes for those who may be listening to this later: November 11th, 2025. That’s your cutoff for midnight, that night… Rich Birch — Midnight.
Warren Bird — …whatever your midnight is. Rich Birch — Yep. Warren Bird — U.S. churches take the survey. So, but Rich, you know, let me just tell you some of the questions we’re asking.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Warren Bird — I’d love to get your feedback on, for example. Rich Birch — Okay, sure. Warren Bird — First, the stereotype of a megachurch, for example, is that they have this colossal sanctuary like like Lakewood Church, you know, the seats 16,000. But the reality is typically the largest venue, and we’re asking this, but I haven’t looked at it for this survey so far, is about 1,400, which means, you know, you have multiple campuses, multiple services and so forth. Warren Bird — Which leads to the question, is the is the spiritual commitment, is there any relationship between facility size and the amount of volunteering, giving, or anything else? Are there factors that proportion with the size of your largest worship venue? We’ll have some numbers on that, but Rich, do you have any predictions? Rich Birch — Well, um so I’m looking forward, this could be one of those areas where I have been giving bad advice, but I have I have been saying for a long time, 15 years, think smaller rooms, more more services, more campuses, rather than you know fewer.
Rich Birch — And um the logic, I the reason why I say that is like, let’s say you take, um like my friends at Flatirons, they have 4,000 seats in their in their biggest room. You only, “only”, you only need maybe five or six people on the worship band. um You know, and that room only has, I think there’s, I think there’s only four entrances to that room. So you’ll only need maybe eight people to actually be like usher greeter people at the door. Rich Birch — Man, I want to see way more volunteer engagement than that. I want to see, you know, for 4,000 people to only have, say, a dozen volunteers, man, that’s that’s like the wrong kind of efficiency. I’d rather go the other way. Let’s have a smaller room. Let’s have eight rooms of 500 where then now we require a whole bunch of more people to be involved to make it happen, which is then going to drive all kinds of the other positive behavior around inviting and them being leaning in more, all of that. Rich Birch — So I would say, I think there’s a sweet spot. I think, you know, it’s, well, and I’ve heard that 14-, 1500 number before. I think it’s, you know, 500, 1000, somewhere in there. There’s like this interesting sweet spot. If I was going to guess, I would think as it goes dow… as it goes up, that kind of engagement and some of those participation numbers go down over a certain number. So that’s my prediction. We’ll see. Warren Bird — All right. Rich Birch predicts. We will you see what happens. All right. Let me ask you another one, Rich. Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — There are a lot of definitions to the attractional model. And there are a lot of questions of people saying, you know, is the attractional model, they use strong words like dead. Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — But but is it lessening? And if so, what is replacing it? And we’ve asked enough different types of questions about involvement and, you know, where’s your front door, primary front door, and that most newcomers come and all, that I think we’re going to be able to tease out which churches are strongly attractional and and how strongly they’re growing, versus which churches are not and how strongly they’re growing. And which churches are doing other things like, let’s say, community service emphases, justice emphases – how that impacts growth. Warren Bird — Do you have any prediction as to where you think it’s going to land when all these listeners of yours in large churches take the survey at bit.ly/largechurch2025? Rich Birch — Well, you got me on a bit of a high horse. I’ll try and I’ll try not to preach about the death of the attractional church, but I can say, so ah last year, I turned one of those numbers on my birthday that had a zero at the end that started for me to think like, okay, I’ve been in this for a long time. And one of the things that I’ve noticed in the people we serve is I do think when I started 20, 30 years ago, you could do things that were classically attractional. Like, and and we would have never said, we’re trying to entertain people. Like we were more spiritual than that. We would have never said like, put on a good band, be funny, have like a standup comic, do… Like we wouldn’t have said that. Although those were all the things we were trying to do. Rich Birch — And I actually think that worked, but I actually don’t think that works anymore. Because the people that we’re serving has changed. I’m convinced that the people that are coming in our front doors in every zip code in the country is more unchurched today than it was 20 years ago. Rich Birch — And so people are coming, they’re pushing through some sort of cultural resistance to be there. They don’t just stumble into church like they used to. Even… Warren Bird — Right. They’re choosing church over…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …any number of other things they could have done on a Sunday morning.
Rich Birch — Yes. And they’re… Warren Bird — And they’re coming find God. Rich Birch — Yes, they’re coming with actual questions. Like they’re like, I, my marriage is falling apart. My life is not doing well. Who is Jesus? Does any of this make a difference? And so, you know, the classic attractional model I would think is in decline. And that comes from someone I’ll introduce myself in situation where listen, I came from the attractional church movement. That is my background. That is my heritage. But I, that I think model has has shifted.
Rich Birch — Now, It’s not like we’ve moved to repulsive church. It’s not like that works. We don’t want our churches to push people away. But I, but I, I, and I do think that there has been, I don’t know if you’re teasing this out as well. I have also noticed, man, a lot of our worship services, they look a lot similar. Rich Birch — I’ve been in, I think 22 churches in the last year where I’ve been like there on a Sunday in a church. Most of those churches north of 500, less than, well, guess there’s a bunch that are quite large, but north of 500. And it’s interesting how we’re, a lot of us are doing a very similar kind of participatory raised hands, come to the front, get prayed for – that, whatever you call that. That sure is a great band. And there is somebody that’s like, they know what they’re doing from a communications point of view, all that. But there there seems to be, I don’t know whether that’s just me, but it seems like there’s more homogeneity in the church and than I maybe even realized was there. I’m I’m not sure. Warren Bird — Well, at least… Rich Birch — So that’s what I would say. Warren Bird — …homogeneity in terms of experiential. And I think the pandemic, one of the silver linings is churches said, we need to distinguish what the value is in coming in person versus watching. Rich Birch — Yes. Warren Bird — And and you you can’t be hugged on on the… And and please don’t anyone hear me as disparaging the incredibly wonderful outreach by ah the the Internet that so many churches have with their digital ministries. But but to come in person, I can be hugged. I can I can be prayed over in person with somebody holding my hands to pray. I can tactilely, you know, take the Lord’s Supper, communion, whatever you call it, in person, in a way that that’s in community…
Rich Birch —Yeah.
Warren Bird — …that I just can’t do online by myself, even even with my family. And that’s that’s one of the many pulls for people coming back. And I’m hoping in the survey to learn a little bit more as to what is drawing people today in different aspects of a increased hunger for God. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I can see I can see that how, you know, there’s been a shift around that. And and again, super intrigued to see what comes out of – is there was there one last question that you, listen, you get to actually shape the questions that you’re like super intrigued. You don’t have to reveal the early results, but like you’re really looking forward to, I know that’s like picking which is your favorite children, I understand. But like, you know, are there any any other questions that you’re really hmm super intrigued to see what comes out? Warren Bird — Yeah. It’s just the whole idea of the comeback. I, we ask people, what was your worship attendance in 2019? Which would be, remember the pandemic was March of 2020. So this is well before anybody had in inkling of what was to come. And ask, what is the attendance in-person today? Total noses. And and to wonder, because the larger the church, typically, as I mentioned earlier, the the harder you were hit during the pandemic and the and the slower often you were to do the comeback. Warren Bird — So have they regained to where they were? And what is, first of all, so far 53%, limiting just, let’s say to megachurches, 2,000 and higher, 53% have come back at least 10% more than they were in 2019. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Warren Bird — But some have spectacularly, dramatically come back…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …three times the size, two times the size.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Warren Bird — And and I want to isolate those off. And there is a small group, but it’s still a definite group that has not. And they’re taking the survey. Warren Bird — And if that’s you, please take the survey. Rich Birch — We want to hear from you. Warren Bird — Because we want to say, OK, what’s happening in those churches that’s different from those? So so we’ll look across the spectrum of comeback. But if someone said, nope, the era of the megachurch is dead. Warren Bird — Oh, oh, oh. And the era of the people said, oh, megachurch is just a baby boomer phenomenon, you know, with pastors just getting older and older. And, you know, so far, the average pastor age is considerably younger, senior pastor, than when we did the survey five years ago…
Rich Birch — Interesting. Interesting.
Warren Bird — …which says there’s a whole new generation, at least enough of that generation of younger church planters or otherwise that are becoming large churches. Warren Bird — And I say church planters because from our survey five years ago, 82% of megachurches, 2,000 and higher, reached their size under the leadership of their current and founding pastor, same person. So I’m sorry, that’s a misstatement. Under their current pastor, the majority of which are founding pastors.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Warren Bird — But many people come into a church that’s 100 years old and you know for 100 years ministered effectively as a community of 50 to 75, and then just exploded under one pastor.
Warren Bird — So um all that to say, I’m excited by the reaching of young adults, by the the apparent getting younger of the age of the leader and the explosive growth of some. And I haven’t correlated the explosive growth ones with the average age of the pastor, but we will do that. Warren Bird — And the more people who take the survey, the more I’m able to slice and dice in that way. So please, before November 11, 2025, take the survey. It’ll make a difference and it will pay you back big time in terms of data informed, wisdom that the Holy Spirit uses to help you make wise planning and strategic decisions. Rich Birch — Well, the thing, friends, we really do want you to take this survey. You really should be tracking along with Warren. And, you know, he does just such great work. And this is going to be a valuable resource. I know it’ll be the thing we’ll be chewing on for a long time, probably for the next five years until the next one comes around. And then we’ll be thinking about that one. So super helpful. Rich Birch — This is great. It’s interesting that whole thing you were talking about. i have I’ve wondered, I heard, this is probably two years ago on the economic side, they talked about the K recovery in some industries, that there were some that have done quite well and then some that are doing not so well. And just intuitively, that has been my experience as I’ve talked with church leaders, that there are still, like there are people that COVID is in their rear view mirror and they’re like, man, we are just like we’re up and to the right. Things just are going. But then there’s some church leaders that are still like licking their wounds and are like, man, this just is, we’ve not been able to recover and it’s not, it’s not going well. Warren Bird — Well, and and for some, you know, the the prime industry in their city tanked during the pandemic…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …and there’s there’s been a massive departure. Or there was a leadership a change or there was, you know, something else that that could explain something that thwarted or or considerably slowed their growth and rebuilding impact. Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, so good. So give us that link again and the timeline. Just so just give us a whole blurb. Warren Bird — Yeah, I might not have mentioned it before, but it’s bit.ly bit.ly/largechurch2025. That’s all one word. And between now and November 11th, 2025, and please don’t wait till the last, but I mean, you can, but but we’d love to have you be part. And we’d love just to bless you back with all kinds of helpful ah guidance and information and benchmarks and ratios and everything else if you’ll participate. Warren Bird — This will be, assuming we continue the way we are the largest ever study…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s right.
Warren Bird — …of large churches in the United States. Rich Birch — What, how long does it take if i’m if I’m preparing to sit down to do it? How much time should I set aside? Warren Bird — Okay. The average is just under 20 minutes. That’s a big ask. Warren Bird — However, on the opening page of the survey, click here to get a PDF. Many people hand it to their admin and say, hey, there are certain numbers, things you fill those in and I’ll fill in the rest and then you can key it in for us or whatever. So so um while it is asking a very knowledgeable person to to give input. It’s often shared around the office. But that 20 minutes, up to 20 minutes will pay you back big time…
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.
Warren Bird — …in in the feedback you get. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I just I just referenced that because I know you got to set time aside. This is not like… Warren Bird — Yeah and and I know that people have survey fatigue everywhere you go. You’re asked to take a quick survey, which is really not quick. And so I’m just being upfront and telling you what the average is. Rich Birch — Yeah, no, it’s good. And it’s super valuable, friends. And this this will help not only your church, but will help shape so many churches. We want to learn from you. You know, that’s really what this podcast is, trying to learn from other churches. This is a great thing.
Rich Birch — Warren, where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you, um if they just kind of want to be in the the greater Warren Bird cinematic universe? Warren Bird — I am full time as a church researcher and writer. I probably post the most on LinkedIn. I’m pretty easy to find there to follow me. And and Rich, thank you for mentioning different books. And um that’s the most joyful thing that happens is somebody reads like “Becoming a Future Ready Church,” the latest book that Daniel Yang and Adelle Banks and I did, and then writes me an email. Just Google me. I’m easy to find. And says, I have a question or I’d like to tell you a story or whatever. So that’s the way to get even more connected with me. Rich Birch — Well, it’s an honor, privilege to know you, even for folks that aren’t watching the video. There’s Mike Slaughter’s book, “Unlearning Churches”, over your corner. And that literally was a book I read when it first came out years ago, and it shaped my own thinking. This is the thing that I was thinking this as we were preparing. I know I said this at the beginning, but I want to honor you with this. Your books are for sure the ones I recommend the most, like “Better Together”, “Hero Maker”, “Multisite”, “Church Road Trip”. Rich Birch — Like there’s a bunch of books that you’ve had your hand in, “Next”, that I’m always like – literally today, I was like, someone was talking about succession stuff. And I was like, well, you should buy “Next” first. Like before you do anything else, buy “Next”. That’s the book you should buy and go through that. And then, you know, think about your next steps from there.
So and they have that consistently with your work. So you do such good work. Thank you so much, friend. So glad you’re here. And let’s get a bunch of people to do your survey. Take care. Warren Bird — Rich, you’re a good man. I always go out of my way to hang out with you or if we’re at a gathering together to sit down at your table or to be in your session. So keep up the great work and I look forward to the next time our paths will intersect.
Teaching on Money Without Being Weird: 5 Churches Doing It Right
Oct 07, 2025
Early in our marriage, rent ate half our income. At the end of one of our first months living together, we had $35 total left for a week’s worth of groceries. Christine was stressed. (Totally understandable.) I started building a compelling, highly spiritual case for “maybe we skip giving this month.”
Christine cut through my rationalization with five words: “Of course we are tithing.”
That moment kick-started a lifelong journey into generosity. And here’s the honest headline: we’ve received more through generosity than we ever imagined we’d “lose” by giving.
So no, money isn’t some awkward side topic we avoid like a seventh-grade sex talk. It’s discipleship, it’s spiritual formation, and the way you handle it matters.
Bad money preaching feels like a timeshare pitch; good money teaching changes lives.
Why Teaching on Generosity Matters (Right Now)
The Bible won’t be quiet about money. There are somewhere around 2,350 verses on money, wealth, and possessions—far more than many other themes. The precise number depends on how you classify passages, but the sheer volume is the point. [ref]
Jesus talked about money a lot. Depending on methodology, many analysts count 16 of 38 parables touching on money/possessions. The exact ratio is debated, but the broader truth stands: money saturated his teaching because it reveals our hearts. [ref]
Culture is catechizing your people already. U.S. household debt hit $18.39T in Q2 2025; credit card and auto balances keep inching up. Translation: Your congregation is being discipled by debt, fees, and friction. If the church won’t preach a better story, Visa will. [ref]
Teaching influences behavior. Barna’s recent work highlights a “virtuous cycle”; people who experience generosity are more likely to practice generosity. Teaching that pairs theology with tangible experiences catalyzes that cycle.
And yet many churches go quiet. A recent poll found about a quarter of churches don’t teach on generosity at all. Silence is also a sermon; it just lets culture preach.
If you’re not talking about money, Amazon, Amex, and Apple are happy to.
If you won’t preach discipleship of dollars, Prime, points, and payments will.
The Rich Young Ruler isn’t a “rich guy” dunk; it’s a mirror. Money threatens to become identity, security, and scorecard. Jesus’ money talk isn’t fundraising …it’s heart surgery.
The church can’t heal what it won’t name.
And here’s a reality check on tithing language in the pews: only 21% of Christians say they give 10% or more to their church; among practicing Christians, the figure rises to 42%, but it’s still not a majority.
Clear, confident teaching matters.
So, here’s the deal: if less than half of your people are tithing, and you’re still allergic to talking about money, you’ve basically handed the keys of financial discipleship to TikTok finance bros and credit card companies.
The antidote? Stop reinventing the wheel and learn from churches already doing this well. Rip their best moves, pivot them for your context, and jam until it sticks. The following five examples aren’t theory; they’re field-tested, congregation-shaping strategies that actually move the needle.
Steal These Ideas for Teaching on Generosity
These aren’t “talks about money.” They’re systems that pair sermons with scaffolding—tools, prompts, groups, and follow-up. (Yes, steal this.) The summaries below draw on their public resources and the field notes you provided.
Crossroads Church (Cincinnati, OH) — Tithe Test + The Blue Team
Crossroads treats Malachi 3 like a lab: 90-Day Tithe Test, with public invitations, clear sign-ups, and—this is key—a refund guarantee if participants don’t sense God’s provision in that period. It’s not just a sermon; it’s an experiment with a feedback loop. They’ve also publicly talked about the tithe test/refund in weekend content: “we will refund your entire amount of money [after 90 days, if you don’t see God meet your needs].” They share stories from people who have participated and invite people to join in.
Why it’s smart
Behavioral friction is your enemy. A simple, high-trust on-ramp reduces fear.
Guarantee = confidence signal. It reframes tithing as testable, not mystical.
Tribe beats try-hard. Their “Blue Team” (declared tithers) creates belonging, updates, and social proof—discipleship with nametags. (Crossroads surfaces the 90-Day Tithe Test in their group and resource ecosystem.)
Steal this
Offer a time-boxed challenge with explicit sign-ups and a real follow-up plan.
Build a “finish line” story—share outcomes, testimonies, and next steps.
Form a named cohort for ongoing encouragement (think: “Founders,” “First Fruits,” etc.).
Liquid Church (NJ) — Generous Livin’ with Receipts
Bold offer = clarity. A guarantee signals pastoral confidence and lowers cynicism.
Drip content changes habits. Weekly nudges move people from intention to action.
Holistic framing. Teaching + tools acknowledges the money ecosystem (budgets, debt, goals), not just the Sunday plate.
Steal this
Stand up a simple microsite/landing page with one action: “Join the 90-Day Challenge.”
Script eight weekly nudges (video + email) before the series launches.
Pair the series with budgeting classes and coaching hours.
Pantano Christian (Tucson, AZ) — Altars of Generosity
They invited a small, concrete step: “Add $10/week to your tithe.” Small enough to be doable; specific enough to be measurable. And they framed it theologically as “worship in motion.” Series overview and message page.
Why it’s smart
Shrink the ask, grow the muscle. Micro-moves beat macro-vows.
Worship framing. This isn’t “fundraising;” it’s formation.
Legacy lane. Budgeting + estate planning workshops widen generosity beyond this weekend to this lifetime.
Steal this
Name a small weekly move and make it your default on-ramp.
Offer two tracks: Entry (budgeting 101) and Advanced (estate/legacy).
Capture testimonies in week 4; run them back in week 6 to reinforce momentum.
Life.Church — Making Change
They made a money series so simple it could fit on a T-shirt:
Sermons that travel. One-liners spread further than 45-minute word studies.
Daily reinforcement. Devotionals convert Sunday inspiration into Tuesday habits.
Group accountability. People do hard things with people; FPU is the scaffolding.
Steal this
Reduce each week to a four-word maxim. If it won’t fit on a slide, it won’t stick in a mind.
Publish a 7-day reading plan per week of the series.
Recruit host homes (short, time-bound groups) to practice the content—think 4–6 weeks.
Saddleback (Lake Forest, CA) — Uncommon Cents
They named the water we’re swimming in: skyrocketing consumer debt + low financial literacy, and then they built a resource hub (worksheets, tools), ran workshops, and launched Financial Freedom groups. Start here: Uncommon Cents series hub
Why it’s smart
They dignify the struggle. “Debt” and “stress” get named, not shamed.
They curate tools. One click from sermon to action.
They scale discipleship. Short-term groups translate content to community.
Steal this
Set up a Financial Tools page before your series launches.
Offer pop-up workshops during the series window (budgeting, debt snowball, saving).
Run 6-week Financial Freedom groups; publish a start/stop date to lower the barrier.
How to Preach Money with Clarity (and Zero Cringe)
Lead with purpose, not pressure. “We want something for you, not from you.” Then show how money discipleship grows freedom, margin, and mission. (Barna’s virtuous cycle insight is your friend here.)
Name the cultural liturgies. Debt, dopamine, and one-click checkout catechize your people daily. Quote the macro: household debt trends, high APR retail cards, etc., to be concrete about the “enemy.”
Make the ask measurable. A 90-day challenge or a $10/week step creates traction. (See Crossroads, Liquid, Pantano for models.)
Pair every sermon with a tool. App, worksheet, group, or coaching hour. If Sunday has no Tuesday, you’re just motivational speaking.
Use one-liners that travel. Life.Church’s four titles are masterclass-level sticky. Say less so people remember more.
Tell stories (yours included). People borrow courage. Whatever your “$35-grocery week” story is, use it to humanize giving and offer a parable of trust.
The Elephant in the Auditorium
Pastors often avoid discussing money for understandable reasons, such as fear of appearing self-interested, not wanting to trigger shame, or because it wasn’t covered in seminary.
But the bigger risk is malpractice by omission. Barna shows that only a fraction of Christians intentionally tithe; Stewardship’s polling reveals that churches rarely address generosity. People are already being formed—just not by Jesus.
If your church won’t disciple people’s wallets, don’t be shocked when Wall Street does.
From One Campus to Six: Building a Global Leadership Model with Lane Lowery
Oct 02, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Lane Lowery, Executive Pastor of Warren Church in South Carolina and Georgia. Founded in 1898, Warren is one of the fastest-growing churches in America, with over 7,000 members across its campuses. Known for its Southern hospitality, Bible teaching, and focus on whole-person ministry, Warren has also launched a Hope Women’s Center and is preparing to open a Hope Mental Wellness Center.
Is your church wrestling with how to scale leadership and maintain unity as you grow? Tune in as Lane shares how Warren Church transitioned to a global leadership model, developed essential staff practices, and keeps the large church personal and relational.
From single-site to multi-site. // When Lane first arrived at Warren Church it was a single-campus church of around 3,000 members. Today, with multiple campuses and ministries, the church has grown to nearly 7,000 members and employs 270 staff. Lane notes that what worked for one or two campuses no longer fit once the church expanded to six ministry expressions.
The global leadership model. // To address challenges of scale, Warren implemented a global leadership structure. Eight global ministry teams oversee preschool, next gen, discipleship, missions, worship, communications, counseling, and the Hope Women’s Center. Each leader is a “player-coach,” serving in a campus role while also providing oversight across all locations. This ensures alignment while keeping leaders grounded in local ministry.
Why unity matters. // Before adopting the global model, Warren found itself with competing ministry silos—at one point even running three different discipleship models across campuses. The new structure promotes collaboration, vision-sharing, and consistency, ensuring that ministries move together rather than in competition.
The player-coach advantage. // Asking leaders to both manage a local ministry and oversee their area globally is demanding, but it builds credibility. Leaders bring ideas from real ministry experience and share them across campuses. To prevent burnout, Warren Church emphasizes intentional rhythms, regular meetings, and clear communication.
Eight Essential Practices. // To embed culture, Warren Church developed a set of eight essential practices guiding staff behavior. These are celebrated in staff communications, reinforced during onboarding, and reviewed biannually. Practices like “Connect with People” and “Leverage Change to Move the Mission” ensure values don’t stay on the wall but shape daily ministry.
Keeping it personal. // Even as a large church, Warren prioritizes personal touches. Each location has a paid staff member who oversees the First Impressions Team at that campus, and every first-time guest receives a personal call within the week. With about 70 new guests each Sunday across campuses, that’s more than 3,500 calls annually. Hospital visits, prayer before surgeries, and care for shut-ins also remain a priority, modeling shepherding from the senior pastor down.
When it’s time to change. // Lane encourages leaders to admit when structures aren’t working, secure leadership buy-in, research and learn from other churches, engage stakeholders early, and clearly communicate the “why” behind changes. Transitioning Warren’s model took about a year of planning, listening, and implementation—but the results have unified and strengthened the church.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You are going to be rewarded for tuning in. Thanks for being here. I think we’ve got one of the oldest churches on the hat we’ve ever had on an episode. Warren Church, founded in 1898, is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, which I love that because so many times I think we think of fast growing churches and like there they’re like celebrate their fifth year and they’re so excited for how long they’ve been around. Rich Birch — But this church has been around for a long time. They’ve got four campuses in South Carolina and Georgia. Southern hospitality, generosity, strong Bible teaching, and a passion for making disciples and multiplying disciple makers have been a heart of Warren from the very beginning and behind all they do. They also have a sports and fitness center programs that really try to minister to the whole person. Lane Lowery is with us today. He is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, Lane. Lane Lowery — Thank you so much, Rich. I am grateful to be a part of this. Rich Birch — This is going be a good conversation. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit. That’s kind of the bio of who the church is. Tell us about the church. Kind of give us the flavor and tell us a little bit about when you say executive pastor. I know as an XP, it’s like every XP looks a little different. Tell us about your role. Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, as you said, Warren is about 127 year old church. We are multi-site and it’s happened just incredible. We launched our first multi-site campus, Grovetown, right at 11 years ago.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Lane Lowery — And then within the last five years, we’ve adopted two other churches.
Rich Birch — Wow. Lane Lowery — So we did a church plant, if you will, which you know but was our first multi-site. And then the the Lord brought us two other churches and it’s been incredible. Lane Lowery — We also have a Hope Women’s Center, which is a crisis pregnancy center that we oversee. And we are just about to launch what we’re calling the Hope Mental Wellness Center um that will open the doors of that in January. And so we’ve already had a counseling ministry going on here, but we’ve expanded that. And we’re really excited about about that. Lane Lowery — We’ve got a large church staff here and I get to serve as executive pastor. We have another executive pastor as well, which I’ll talk about later on, who is just a phenomenal leader. And and so just grateful that the the Lord allows us to participate in this together. And we’ve got an incredible leader, Dr. David McKinley is our senior pastor. He’s been with us 17 years…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Lane Lowery — …and the and the Lord has just done ah an incredible work here. As you said, we are in the in the deep South and it is it’s ah it’s a fantastic ministry. I’m grateful that that the Lord has allowed me to be here. I’ve been here 19 years. And I’ve seen a lot of change. I’ve had a front row seat to some exponential growth. And it’s been a lot of fun ah to to be a part of that. Rich Birch — Why don’t we talk a little bit of metrics there in the time from when you came 19 years ago to today? What does that look like from a growth point of view? Just to give people, I know you’re not like, ah you’re you not a bragging kind of guy.
Lane Lowery — Sure. Rich Birch — you don’t want to brag about it, but talk us through that. That helps give a little bit of context for the conversation we’re having. Lane Lowery — Great. Well, when I came here 19 years ago, we were Warren Church, Augusta. That was it. And, um and since then we’ve planted three other churches and we’ve launched a Hope Women’s Center. Like I said, the crisis pregnancy center, and we are in the process of launching a Hope Mental Wellness Center. Lane Lowery — So we’ve, when I got here, we were, um probably around 3000 members total. We’re over almost 7,000 now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Lane Lowery — Um, like I said, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve been able to adopt some churches and, and we’ve been able to, just really engage our community in just an incredible way. Lane Lowery — Obviously, you know, staff is growing. I remember when I got here, our full staff, we could meet in a, in a, in a, like a life group classroom. Now we have to meet in a large, you know, we’re up to 270 employees at this point…
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Yep.
Lane Lowery — …on our, our six campuses, if you will. So we’ve just seen incredible, like said, we just seen the Lord do incredible things over the last 19 years. Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, I’d love to talk about that, particularly the kind of leadership structure stuff. I know as we, it’s like, everyone sounds great. Let’s add a bunch of staff. Let’s grow that side. Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — But that does come with some tension. um I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve bumped into things along there that have been a little bit tricky. Talk us through what, what does that look like as the kind of, as your structure has changed over these years? Lane Lowery — You know, it’s kind of like going from, you know, having no kids to a child and then having two child, you know, two children. And then if you have multiples after that, you you’ve just got to change the way you parent. Lane Lowery — And, and as our church has gone from one site location to really six now…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lane Lowery — …as as we when you you know think about the other campuses, we just came to a place where we realized a single church model of leadership no longer worked for where we were. You know going from one to two was was was a stretch, but going from two to six, has been a huge stretch. Lane Lowery — And so as I shared with you, you know we’ve had ah exponential growth, especially over the past five years, Rich, you know adding the the additional campuses and and the additional, you know the the Hope Women’s Center and Hope Mental Wellness Center. You know, so going from two campuses to six campuses, we realized that our single single church yeah and then our dual church model, leadership model was no longer, it just wasn’t effective. Lane Lowery — It became evident that Dr. McKinley and myself, that we couldn’t effectively oversee the operations and staff on each of our campuses. you know we’ve got incredibly gifted campus pastors and we had to equip and empower them to lead with vision, not just give them tasks, but give them vision and responsibility. Lane Lowery — So the key tipping point that really caused us to to to regroup and to implement a new leadership structure was when we realized at one point we looked up and we had three different discipleship models going on at our four campuses. Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness. Lane Lowery — Yeah, yeah. And as we we we noticed that that that just that’s just not to work.
Rich Birch — No, absolutely.
Lane Lowery — And so we also noticed that our former leadership structure didn’t promote, it didn’t promote the the unity and the and the collaboration that we really wanted from our staff team. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Lane Lowery — You know, it felt like our ministry teams, Rich, were in competition with one another rather than really working together as a team. We always use a statement, we’re better together. We really believe that.
Rich Birch — Yep. Lane Lowery — But the way our our leadership model was structured, it didn’t promote unity. It didn’t promote um it collaboration. And we needed more team collaboration. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. So yeah, just kind of stepping back statistically, 50% or around 50% of multi-site churches don’t get beyond, still are not getting beyond three locations. And I’m convinced a part of the reason why that is, is because of these issues that this, even just the structure stuff and how we interact with each other, it’s like, it’s working against what we’re trying to do. It’s it’s working against the mission that God’s called us to. So let’s get a little bit practical there.
Lane Lowery — Sure. Rich Birch — Define in concrete terms. What do you mean? What are the roles? How does that all fit together? How do you, what’s the like, two minute explanation of how you talk about how you stuff gets done at Warren. What’s that look like? Lane Lowery — Sure. So we we developed this, we call it a global leadership structure. And basically our global leadership team is it’s led by Pastor Andrew Bryan, who’s our executive pastor of ministries and leadership development. One of the best young leaders I’ve ever been around. And this team consists of the following ministry areas. So we have eight global ministry teams. Lane Lowery — Our preschool and children’s team is led by Carol Young. Our next gen, which is our middle and high school team is led by Pastor Shane Padgett. Our spiritual formation and discipleship team is led by Pastor Corey Baxter. We have a local and and and global missions team, which is led by Pastor Mark Claiborne. We have a global worship team led by Pastor Joseph McKinley. We have a global communications and connections team led by Pastor Drew Robinson, a counseling and support group team led by Pastor Brett Legge. Then our Hope Women’s Center is led by Dr. Jacqueline Hyder. Lane Lowery — Each of these people are player coaches. They’re overseeing an area of ministry on one of our campuses, but then they’re also overseeing the the greater, the overall ministry for all of the campuses. Lane Lowery — For example, example Pastor Corey Baxter oversees our spiritual formation and discipleship. That’s our our life group ministry, our Sunday school ministry, if you will, and our discipleship groups and all of our discipleship ministry. Lane Lowery — So Pastor Corey, he’s on our Grovetown campus and he is the day to day operations for that. But then he also kind of rises up to the 30,000 foot view and he oversees the discipleship and and spiritual formation ministry for all of our campuses. Which is why, we like I said, we got to a point where we looked up one day and we realized we had three different discipleship models going on you know within you know three of our our church campuses. Lane Lowery — We thought this isn’t this isn’t right. This isn’t working well. So we thought let’s go to a global leadership model so that we have input and someone kind of overseeing over watching that for all of our campuses. Lane Lowery — Like I said, these guys and girls are our player coaches. They’re they’re on boots on the ground on a campus, but then they rise up and lead the greater ministry of Warren as well. Rich Birch — So like I’d love to double click on the player coach. That sounds like a conviction that you’ve had.
Lane Lowery — Yes, sir.
Rich Birch — That that’s like something, hey, we want to make sure we don’t just have like the head office people…
Lane Lowery — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …who like are like their whole job is head office. We want them grounded in local ministry. Talk us through that decision. What’s been maybe some of the upside of that, but then also some of the challenge of the player coach model. Lane Lowery — Well, the the the challenge is it’s it’s a lot more to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lane Lowery — You know, they’ve got plenty to say grace over. Just like Pastor Corey, you know, our Grovetown church, they’re running over 2,000 every Sunday…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lane Lowery — …or about 1,500 every Sunday, about 1,500, excuse me, and And so he’s got plenty to say grace over just dealing with his own stuff with, with you know, we we believe that every person needs to be in a life group. You know we, you know, we believe every person needs to be in a discipleship relationship. So the challenge is saying, now hey, Pastor Corey, you’re doing a great job, but I’m going to add more to your more to your your your your table, you know. Rich Birch — Yes. You’re so good at your job, we’re going to give you more. Lane Lowery — Isn’t that how it works? Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely. Lane Lowery — You know find the busiest guy and give them more. But the good thing is we do have high capacity leaders, Rich. I mean, these, these folks are, so we’ve got to be careful not to, to overdo it and not to, you know, meet them to death. But you know, as well as I do, you got to have meetings. I mean, you have to. Lane Lowery — And and so, so the, the, the, the stretch was, are we giving them too much? But they’ve risen to the, to the, to the challenge and they’ve done a great job. I’m so proud of our team. They’ve done such a great job. And they’re continuing to. So I think it’s a good thing that they’re still in, know, they’re still doing the work of the ministry because it to me, it brings credibility when they come to the table with an idea.
Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — They’re doing it.
Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — And so the down the only downfall we found is just that I got to be careful that I don’t burn my burn my folks out. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, that’s good. Well, walk us through kind of the decision matrix. This is my language, not your your language, but oftentimes there’s like a global versus campus. There’s like, okay, where who gets to own what? What about local expression versus we’re doing this together as a church? What decisions are campus level by default? What’s get what’s get escalated across the entire church? Talk us through what that looks like. Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, we we have an executive leadership team and it consists of our senior pastor, Dr. McKinley. It consists of our our Grovetown, each of our campus pastors. ah Pastor Joseph Humphreys is on our Grovetown campus. Pastor Steven Newman is on our Belvedere campus. Pastor Andrew Skelton is on our Crossbridge campus. And then, of course, Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor. So every Monday we we meet together and everything is funneled through that. Lane Lowery — So we are constantly every Monday at two. We’re going we’re going to meet every Monday at two o’clock. And, um, and, and so therefore, you know, everything runs through that filter whenever, whenever we’re together. Our senior pastor and executive lead team that they set the vision. We set the vision for the church and the ministry and, you know, an easy example of ah of a global decision and how it translates to the campus level is like our life group ministry, Sunday school, if you will, our life group ministry. Lane Lowery — We believe that, that biblical community is essential. And we expect every church campus to have a strategy to offer and promote promote life group ministry. You know, when a life group happens to determine, you know, it’s happened to determine at the campus level, you know, like, for example, Grovetown, all of their life groups meet off campus because they don’t have education space throughout the week. Rich Birch — Okay. Lane Lowery — So they all of their life groups are in homes during the week. Our other three campuses, we have a hybrid model where we have some groups on campus and some groups off campus. But at the end of the day, we’re going to do life group. We believe that’s a stack pole ministry, just like we’re going to have worship on Sunday morning. We are going to offer life groups. You can offer them on Sunday morning or you can offer them in in homes during the week. But we are going to offer life groups. Lane Lowery — So that’s kind of one of those big picture things that that we are that we make sure is happening on each of our campuses that we’re intentional about that. We are intentionally trying to get people from the pew into the life group. Lane Lowery — It’s a little bit more difficult when you take them from um you know being on campus versus in homes. You’ve got to be a little more intentional about it. But to me, that’s that’s one of those big picture items that that we you know we’re pretty hard, hard pressed. So we’re going to to have life groups. Rich Birch — So again, I’m I’m trying, cause I know there’s people that are listening in that, that are living in the tension of this and they’re trying to sort this out. Talk me through the kind of, in other contexts, we’ve talked about the dotted line, solid line responsibility. So like, who is the first mover? So there’s something, using your example, there’s something happening in a campus like, hey, we’re not seeing, you know, maybe enough people are experiencing that kind of life group, biblical community. That’s not happening ah well in one campus. Which team is that is going to be the team that’s going to be like, okay, we got to solve this. Is it the global leadership team or the executive team or both, or a combo of both? Or how does that, how does that work together? Lane Lowery — Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m counting on our global leads having their finger on the pulse of what’s going on with each of their areas of ministry.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Lane Lowery — You know, singly as as well as globally. Obviously as an executive team, we, we look at statistics every Monday. Rich Birch — Yep. Lane Lowery — I’ve got our, I get, I bring a report to that meeting every Monday on attendance on, you know, worship attendance, life group attendance, all of that. So you know, we’re, we’re seeing it as well, but, but I’m counting on my global leads to, to, to, that’s why it’s important that they’re also in the mix, not just leading…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lane Lowery — …but they’re also in the mix with it. So I’m counting on them to, to bring to us any issues or problems they may be facing or any hurdles that they need to try to get over. And then we can speak into that and help them do that. But that’s why we can’t be all places at all times, but, but that’s why we have teams that are doing that. So that’s really, has really helped. Lane Lowery — And, and also going to this global leadership model, it’s it’s allowed us to employ more people into ministry who, like i said, aren’t just task people. They’re casting vision, said leading, and and so we’re counting on them to do that. Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. That’s good. How do you, um, kind of an adjacent issue, the global leadership team is the expectation that they’re getting out and seeing other campuses, like actually getting onto other locations on Sundays. What does that, what’s the rhythm look like on that front? Lane Lowery — Yeah, that’s fantastic. Honestly, yes, Rich, they we need them to. And what we’ve challenged our staff to do, and it’s hard because like I said, you got enough to say grace over in your own on your own campus on a Sunday morning…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Lane Lowery — …but we’ve challenged all of our staff to try to get to another campus at least one time during the year. That’s all staff people. That’s not just the global leads. That’s, you know, that’s a you know Beth Power, our our our Augusta preschool director, I’d love for Beth to be able to put her eyes on each of our campuses at least one time during during during the year. And they’re doing that.
Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — And when they do, it it brings greater you know unity. And she sees ideas. Every time I go to a new one of our other campuses, I see them doing something new. It’s so cool to see. Like I said, we’ve got incredibly gifted leaders and they’re smart and they’re doing great stuff. But I would never know about it if I didn’t go get on one of their campuses. Lane Lowery — But we got to be intentional about it. It doesn’t just happen. Like I said, on Sunday morning, my home base, if you would be, is on the Augusta campus. But I’ve got to make myself say, no, I’m going to I’m going not be signed up for any new duties that this Sunday. I’m going to go to the Crossbridge campus this Sunday. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Lane Lowery — But it’s got to be an intentional. It’s like putting it on your calendar. I’ve got to do that or it won’t happen. Rich Birch — Yeah, you got to plan for it. Yeah, absolutely. Lane Lowery — So we constantly talk to our staff about doing that, especially for our global leads. I have to have them doing that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Pivoting in a kind of a slightly different direction, but talking about obviously these same issues, um you had passed along a document that caught my attention, the eight essential practices document that really defines, talks through, you you know the behaviors really of your team. Talk us through how has this these eight essential practices, how have they helped really take this kind of thing from being like, those are nice ideas sitting on a wall somewhere…
Lane Lowery — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to like actually making a difference in the way you operate. Talk us through this and we’ll put it, we’ll link to this in the show notes for folks that are listening in. Lane Lowery — Sure, sure. Well, what you said is exactly what we didn’t want to happen. This came out of a strategic leadership meeting that our executive team went on almost two years ago now. And that’s what we, you know, you’ve done this too. You know, you’re an XP. Lane Lowery — You go to a conference, something you get some great stuff and you and you bring it back. And next thing you know, it’s in a folder or it’s up on your shelf. We didn’t want to do that. So what we do, this is, so we constantly celebrate it. When we see somebody doing it, we celebrate it. Every person who is hired during the onboarding process, this is part of the onboarding process. They get a copy of this and their leader, their supervisor reviews it with them. Lane Lowery — We do biannual reviews. We have review in March and in April, excuse me, September and and in April. And our September review is literally, they are reviewed on how they are um working through the eight essential practices.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Lane Lowery — Each of these are on that review and we walk through that with them and we talk through that with them. You know, so, so we, like I said, so we make sure that that that we are, it but it’s becoming a part of our DNA. It’s only two years old, but it really is now becoming our DNA. Lane Lowery — We send out a a monthly email um staff email, because again, you’ve got so much going on try to keeping trying to keep everyone informed of what’s going on, upcoming events. We celebrate birthdays and and you know staff anniversaries. And we always highlight a an eight essential, somebody who who’s done the eight essential practices. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Lane Lowery — Plus there’s always a link in that, Rich, that if you see somebody doing that, you can click on that link and type up a little synopsis, you know sharing some information, how they saw so-and-so, you know, exhibiting one of these practices. So we’re really trying to push this in, making it part of our DNA. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. It’s so good. One of the ones that caught me, there’s a lot of—friends, I would encourage you to check out this document and go and do likewise. You know, don’t rip off their stuff, but come up with your your own on this. But one of the ones that caught my attention was ah connect with people. Rich Birch — So one of the misnomers about very large churches like yours is that people aren’t connected, that it’s just everybody coming to the show. That’s actually statistically not true. Churches over 2,000 have a higher percentage of people connected to small groups and in volunteering opportunities than a church under 200. What specific behaviors do you expect from your staff to keep the ministry as high touch as possibly can as a large church? Rich Birch — And how do you, how does it measure that? What’s that actually look like? Lane Lowery — Sure. Great question, man. That’s a great question. We always use the word, in order to grow bigger, we got to grow smaller. Obviously, we got to get people in life groups and in that small group community. But we place a high value on our First Impressions Team ministry. And therefore, we have paid. We have a paid person who oversees our F.I.T. ministry—First Impressions Team—on each of our campuses because it’s so important, especially on a large church. Lane Lowery — You know, we’ll have over 2000 people on the Augusta campus on Sunday morning. We want people to be seen and known and welcomed. And so we call every first time guest. Now, on typical Sunday, we’ll have 70 first time guest guests across our our four campuses, but they will get a personal phone call within that week.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Lane Lowery — We we make sure that that it’s happening within that week. And our Connections Pastor helps facilitate that. So we have, you know, first time you know guest calls. If you’re a first time guest on a campus, we give you a gift and we we want to engage with them. We still visit people in the hospitals. Rich Birch — Love it. Lane Lowery — We place a high priority on that, Rich. We you know we’ve got hospital lists from each of our campuses and we we have a person we have you know pastors on staff who go visit folks in hospitals. We pray with people before surgeries. We visit our shut-in our shut-in members. And so we we really do place a high value on that. Lane Lowery — One of the best things is our senior pastor has a gift of shepherding. He’s a pastor shepherd. And so he exhibits that behavior as well. But it is a high value for us. And we spend time talking about it and we invest money in it. Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love that. Friends, I want to underline something. You blew over it really quick, but I want to underline something here. You talked about 70, you know, guests a week, all getting personal calls. Rich Birch — I’ve said this in other contexts. You know, we’ve talked about that kind of thing being a best practice. Like, hey, we’ve got to reach out to people. We can’t just send them an email. We got to try to connect. So friends, that’s over 3,500 calls a year that this church is doing. That’s a commitment to, I’ve had churches much smaller than your church say, there’s no way we can organize to call five people a week, 10 people a week. Rich Birch — Friends, you got to do that kind of thing. That’s what a great inspiration for us. Another one of these, again, friends, check the link below that really caught my eye was, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in a change document quite, or like a culture document like, like this. Rich Birch — You said leverage change to move the mission. It talks about the idea of how flexibility and kind of looking for what’s going to you know need to be adapted in the future is embedded in your staff culture. So what did you stop doing? What’s that look like? How are you simplifying? Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — I love that that’s embedded right in your staff essentials. Love that. Lane Lowery — Well, I mean, something immediately came to mind is we changed our worship times, you know, um and and that’s no, I mean, that’s a… Rich Birch — It’s a big deal. Lane Lowery — …pretty big deal, but we changed our worship times on all four of our campuses. And two of our campuses, we added more time between the worship services so that they could onload and offload their campuses. Because of, so you know, praise God. I mean, it’s a winner’s problem, you know, because so many people are coming. Rich Birch — Yes. Lane Lowery — So at the end of the day, we said, you know, the we loved our our original times, but we we had to do something different to help with the with the growth situation. So we changed our worship times and you know and went through that whole process of doing that across. And we even allowed ourselves to allow different campuses to to to to set up times that’s bet that best fits them. Lane Lowery — You know i’m saying? We’re not like, well, bless God, everybody’s going to do it at this time, at that time. We’re saying, look, what what works best in your individual context? So we you know that’s what we did. We just that that was the thing that came to my mind immediately. That’s something we just did within the last year was change those worship times. And it made sense. Because we were setting away how we did it for many, many years, but it’s worked really well. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Well, I love how, you know, what you’re hearing, friends that are listening in, you’re hearing, here’s a church that took some bold steps to try to change their structure, to try to better have their structure better serve where they were as a church and looking to the future, which is fantastic. I think inspiration for lots of us as we’re thinking about those kinds of issues. Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to leverage you as a coach. Let’s say there’s a church listening in today who knows, maybe it’s an XP of a church of 1500. And they’re like, gosh, we know that maybe our structure not working. We’re at that, you know we’ve launched a couple locations. We’re trying to stretch to three or four. We’ve got vision for that. Rich Birch — What would be some first steps, maybe 30 day, 60 day, 90 day steps that you would suggest that a church leader would take based on where you’ve gone through as you’ve kind of, um you know, reoriented your structure, tried to get better on this front. Help us think about that. Lane Lowery — That’s a great question, Rich. First, I think you got to be willing to admit your structure is outdated or it’s not working.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Lane Lowery — You know, change is hard and and and, you know, not a whole lot of people like change, but it’s one of our essentials. So we’ve we’ve got to be able to embrace it and be willing to to look at things differently.
Lane Lowery — Second, I think your leadership um has to be willing to change. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Lane Lowery — You know, you you know, if if one guy on the staff wants to do it but no one else does. Well, that’s that’s gonna be tough. Third, you you need to identify where you currently are and where you want to go and the why behind It’s kind of like the old statement where you start with the end in mind. Lane Lowery — You know, don’t, I don’t think you need to change just for this you know to change, but if something’s not working, and and you need to you need to know the why. If this it’s not, then you got to be willing to embrace it and and work to make the change. Lane Lowery — Next, I think you got to develop a new leadership structure that’ll help you accomplish your desired outcome. Look at what you’re doing. I called a number of churches before we did this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. Lane Lowery — I mean, I really cut and looked and I saw some things that were happening. I tell you, Family Church down in for yeah down in West Palm is doing a great job. And honestly, I modeled our ministry after what they’re doing. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Lane Lowery — It fits us, our context. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Lane Lowery — But they had it figured out, man. And I’m not afraid to go find out you know what other people are doing. That’s that’s winning. Rich Birch — 100%. Lane Lowery — Then seek buy-in from your key leaders and stakeholders. What we did was was once we started, you know, developing this structure, I went to those those those team leads that we had identified. And I sat down and myself and Andrew Bryan, our other executive pastor, sat down and had conversation with them. And we really shared with them the why, because guess what? We’re getting ready to add a bunch of stuff to their plate. And and and they had to I had to have their buy in before it to work. And praise the Lord, they all bought in, man. They saw their they saw the need for it. They felt the pain of not doing it. Lane Lowery — So, you know, so we we met with we took the time to have hour long meetings with all of those key stakeholders and they got and got their buy-in. And finally, we made the change. You know, we just finally had to jump and do it. Rich Birch — What was the timeline, you know, in your from like, hey, I think we need to make a change through research phase all the way through to adoption? How long did that process take? Lane Lowery — I’m embarrassed to tell you about a year. I would figure it’s something like that. Rich Birch — No, that’s not unreal. Lane Lowery — Yeah. Rich Birch — I say that because it’s like, it doesn’t it it can’t happen overnight if you’re going to do it well.
Lane Lowery — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know and and you’ve got to walk people through it. That does that makes sense. So about a year, that that’s good. What part of it was the longest piece of the the puzzle? Lane Lowery — Figuring out exactly how it would work in our context. You know, I saw what Family Church was doing there. Now no they’re, I think they’re up to 15 campuses or something like that. Rich Birch — Right. Lane Lowery — But I saw, you know, and so seeing what they were doing as well as some other churches and then saying, OK, how can this really work for Warren Church? How can it really? And so really figuring that out and then presenting that to our our our senior pastor and our our global pastors. Because at the end of the day, their people are are are going to have to take on more responsibility and do some things. And so getting getting there buy-in. And the cool thing, that was a pretty quick buy-in on their part. Lane Lowery — And then implementing it. So just developing that whole structure and showing the need for it and then implementing it was about about about a year. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That that you know that doesn’t surprise me at all. I think it takes time to work it through. I love the idea of listening to other churches. Obviously, that’s actually at the core of why we started this podcast was you know we’re 800 and some odd episodes in. I really do think, man, there’s ah we should be working together as a body of Christ…
Lane Lowery — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and somebody else has faced most of the problems that we face as a church. Let’s go find them, talk with them, ask those questions.
Rich Birch — So this has been fantastic. As we come to kind of land today’s episode, anything else you’d love to share? Any kind of final words or encouragements that people might be listening in today? Lane Lowery — Yeah, I think, Rich, I think that the biggest thing is communication, you know, amongst our staff. Rich Birch — That’s good. Lane Lowery — You know, we we we’ve grown so much, which has been incredible. And we’ve added so many more staff members. And and I know a lot of people don’t like meetings and I don’t like to have meetings for the sake of meeting. That’s why I encourage every person if you’re gonna have a meeting, make sure you have an agenda, make sure you have a set time, but but you gotta get together.
Lane Lowery — And and so I think the biggest thing that’s helped us to make for this move to be successful. And it has been successful. I’m really encouraged by that is, is we have an executive leadership meeting every Monday at two o’clock. Lane Lowery — Our global leaders meet twice a month. Our global leaders meet with their teams twice a month. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Lane Lowery — Every campus has a Tuesday at two o’clock staff meeting every week. And and that’s for some people go, my gosh, that’s that’s six meetings. But yeah, it it is. But they’re meetings with purpose.
Rich Birch — Yep, that’s good.
Lane Lowery — And and they’re not, you know, three and a half hour meetings there, you know, 45 minutes to an hour um with with an agenda, with action steps. When the meeting’s over, people walk out of there knowing what the next thing with what the next thing is. Rich Birch — That’s good. Lane Lowery — But being willing to do that and seeing that that it really is important because there’s so many moving parts. And if we’re not all on the same page, something’s going to break down. Rich Birch — 100%. Lane Lowery — But it it takes getting together face-to-face, you know, email when you when you need to, but those face-to-face meetings are really important. Rich Birch — Yeah, I agree. Totally. And well And even the way you’re thinking about it there, I think is critical for folks to lean in on is thinking clearly on kind of what the system of meetings is, like when is the best time to have the right meeting? I love the idea of like, hey, all are the thing like you’ve said, hey, our campus teams all have a Tuesday at two meeting. It’s like predictable. We know exactly. Rich Birch — We’ve got to make this we’ve got to make the rhythm of what we do the weekly. Hey, every weekend so it comes, whether we like it or not…
Lane Lowery — Yes, sir.
Rich Birch — …use that rhythm to help us push the culture forward rather than being kind of overwhelmed by it.
Rich Birch — Well, Lane, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you investing time in us today. If people want to connect with you or connect with the church, where do we want to send them online? Lane Lowery — Yeah, just go to Warren.Church, and that that’s our website. And you connect with me right there my on the staff page. My email address LaneL at Warren.Church. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Lane. Appreciate being here today, sir. Lane Lowery — Blessings to you, Rich. Thank you.
From 300 to 2,500: Building a Leadership Pipeline That Fuels Growth with Chris Vaught
Sep 25, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Dr. Chris Vaught, lead pastor of Connection Point Church (CPC) in Missouri. Under his leadership, CPC has grown from 300 people in 2011 to over 2,500 today across multiple campuses. With a passion for raising up the next generation of kingdom leaders, Chris has built a leadership development pipeline and launched the Connection Point Leadership College to multiply impact far beyond the church walls.
Is your church struggling to develop leaders and sustain growth? In this episode, Chris shares how the church equips volunteers, creates leadership pathways, and empowers everyday people to lead with clarity and purpose.
Raise the bar for volunteers. // At Connection Point, volunteers aren’t just an extra set of hands—they are recognized as unpaid staff. Each role comes with a written job description outlining time commitments, responsibilities, and cultural values. This kind of intentionality elevates ownership, raises expectations, and ultimately increases the sense of purpose among those serving. Volunteers rise to the challenge when treated with dignity and entrusted with meaningful responsibility.
Find your Timothy. // Each staff member should develop a “Timothy”—a person they’re investing in who could step into their role if needed. This mindset of multiplication ensures continuity and creates a built-in culture of mentorship. By identifying and pouring into potential leaders, churches develop stronger teams and deeper bench strength over time.
Four-Step Discipleship Path. //Chris and his team designed a clear discipleship and leadership journey: Starting Point (intro to church/DNA), Life Groups (discipleship) or Serve Teams (leadership development), Equip Workshops (10-week leadership training), and the Leadership College (10month internship program). This structured progression gives people consistent next steps for growth.
Connection Point Leadership College. // At the top of CPC’s leadership pipeline is its 10-month internship program, designed for both future church leaders and marketplace leaders. Full-time interns spend two days a week in intensive theology and leadership training, alongside hands-on departmental experience. A hybrid model allows working adults to participate online. In partnership with Evangel University, graduates earn 12 college credit hours.
Marketplace and ministry. // The Leadership College trains vocational leaders, but marketplace discipleship is equally critical. Leadership competencies are meant to extend into schools, businesses, sports teams, and families. This mobilizes the congregation to carry out ministry wherever they live and work, not just inside the church.
Identify leadership types. // Drawing from Larry Osborne, Chris distinguishes between “big L leaders,” who drive growth and innovation, and “shepherds,” who nurture and care for people. Both are vital to church health. Place leaders strategically based on these traits to maximize impact and sustainability.
Develop a leadership pathway. // The number one gift to give your Timothy is an investment in them. Sit down with them and talk. Ask how you can pray for them and care for them. Then give a quick update of what is going on and teach them some leadership competency. Help them build confidence in their leadership and celebrate with them.
To learn more about Connection Point Church and their Leadership College, visit yourcpc.church
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. I know I say that lots, but I really mean it today. We’re talking about an area that I think, frankly, lots of our churches should be leaning in on and learning more about and asking the question, how can we improve this area? Excited to have Dr. Chris Vaught with us. We got a doctor on the episode today. Rich Birch — He’s the lead pastor of Connection Point Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And if I’m counting correctly, Currently two campuses in Missouri. They have a passion for raising up the next generation of kingdom leaders and they’ve developed the Connection Point Leadership College. Super excited to have you on the show today, Chris. Thanks for being here. Chris Vaught — Hey, I’m excited, Rich. So excited to be here and get to share a little bit about what God’s doing with us. And of course, we’re constantly learning from you and all the other great hosts or leaders you have on your podcast with you and just excited and humbled to be to be able to share a little bit of our story. So thanks. Rich Birch — Well, yeah, I’m, I’m excited to have you and to have, you know, I really do think this is going to be an area. I know a lot of us are wrestling with how do we do this well? How do we develop leaders? And, but, but kind of, you know, tell us a bit of the story, kind of set the table for us. Tell us about Connection and you know, what, you know, if what, if we were to come this weekend, what would we experience? Give us a kind of a flavor of the church. Talk us through that a little bit. Chris Vaught — Yeah, so Connection Point Church, we’re located in Jackson, Missouri. We’re about two hours south of St. Louis, down toward the Boot Hill, is what the area calls it, right. Just outside of Cape Girardeau. So there’s, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, total driving distance around the church, you know, 20 minutes. We’ll probably lean in to around 70,000 people. Jackson itself is a small town of 15,000. Rich Birch — Okay. Chris Vaught — But it’s ah it’s very it’s it’s a very fast growing area as far as young families moving in. The school systems are excellent. Sports teams, Southeast Missouri University is over in Cape Girardeau. And so um so there’s a lot of energy in the area. Chris Vaught — And so for CPC, we’ve actually kind of designed all our ministries to fit the mode of this area. I’m a firm believer we should bloom where we’re planted, right? And so how can we get into this community? And over over the ah the past 14 years, that’s been our goal. Chris Vaught — We came here in 2011 and church was running about 300 the time. We had a traditional service and a contemporary service and was just trying the church was just trying to feel that piece out and what that looked like and how to get into the community. Chris Vaught — And God just began to put the pieces together in 2012. We we changed our name to Connection Point because we wanted the people in the community to know what our church was about. I mean, there’s churches, you know, on every corner in our area. And so what set this church apart? What is our niche? And we wanted it to be about connections.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — Number one, a connected relationship with Christ. And then, relationships with people. So ah throughout the past 14 years, that’s become our emphasis, right? Getting out in the community, making those connections, and then making sure that the relationship with Christ is real and personal, not just religion. Chris Vaught — We’re a very religious area. So we wanted really to build off of the relationship aspect. So from that, okay, so by 2019, we had bought 28 acres across town, built a new campus, and we moved into this campus with about 800 people in 2019.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Absolutely. Chris Vaught — So we we made a lot of transitions from 2011 to 2019, and we’d grown from 300 to about 800. Of course, we all know what happened with 2020 and and covid. That all came four months after we built this brand new campus. Rich Birch — Oh no. Perfect timing. Perfect timing. Chris Vaught — I was literally teaching the membership class. We call it Starting Point… Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — …to get new people connected to the church, when the phone call came into the church… Rich Birch — Yes. Chris Vaught — …that the government, the governing leaders of Missouri was asking the churches to stop meeting in public because of COVID. Rich Birch — Wow. Right. Chris Vaught — And I was teaching the membership class when that night, when that came in. I mean, I was teaching and my staff was in the back waving me down, said, hey, we just got a message. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Chris Vaught — I was like, are you kidding me? Rich Birch — Wow. You’re giving me a little PTSD here. That’s those are those are dark days, man. That was, you know, hard to look back on. Chris Vaught — They were, man. But you know what? Our income jumped 18% over the four months that we were shut down because our our people just built this building. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — They were scared we were going to lose it. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. They leaned in nothing like adverse advert. Uh, can’t say that word adverity to draw people in. That’s amazing. Chris Vaught — Yeah, they they jumped in, man. That was incredible. Came back. We came back actually, I think Father’s Day weekend or right after Father’s Day that June to back in-person services. When we came back, we came back with 600 people. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Chris Vaught — So building back on that foundation of 600, what God did next was absolutely phenomenal to us. So from 2021, we’d gotten back up to 1100. From 2022 to 2024, we doubled in size. Rich Birch — Wow. Chris Vaught — And today, if you came here this weekend, there’ll be there’ll be a little over 2500 people on the campus. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Praise God. Chris Vaught — And three services, and then we have about 30 miles away, 10 months ago, we launched our first multisite campus. Chris Vaught — And I have to tell you, Rich, about this campus. It’s 30 miles away. Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Vaught — It’s in the second poorest county of our state. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Chris Vaught — It’s in a town of 1,700 people, a county of 10,000 people. And God has blessed that little campus Rich Birch — Wow.
Chris Vaught — And it’s been the largest church in the county since day one. Rich Birch — Wow. Chris Vaught — And they’re running about 350 in a town of 1700. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s incredible. Chris Vaught — So we have this motto. Rich Birch — Praise God. Chris Vaught — We want see God do something only he can get the credit for.
Rich Birch — Yep. Chris Vaught — And to be honest, right now, that’s that’s what you that’s what we’re seeing. But that’s the atmosphere you feel if you were to come on the campus this weekend. There’s just that anticipation. Rich Birch — Wow. Well, that’s incredible to hear. And, you know, it’s, it does seem like that kind of post COVID. I know it’s like, I don’t know at what point we’re going to stop saying that kind of thing, but like, it’s a big deal obviously. And, and it’s like an inflection point we all went through. And it does seem like post COVID there was like, they at one point they were talking about the K recovery that there was like, some churches have come out not doing well. They’re struggling. And there are churches like Connection Point that are accelerating.
Rich Birch — And in like an odd sort of way, we look back and are like thankful for that time. We say something happened there that focused us. And we came back with, you know, even more, you know, drive and and all of that, which is amazing to hear. But I can imagine in the midst of all that kind of getting to where we’re we’re talking about today, talk, you know, developing leaders, trying to scale up. Every church has a problem finding leaders. How do i get people to actually take the ministry and run with it? Rich Birch — You’ve made some changes on this front that, you know, have really helped, I think, accelerate some of this growth. But why don’t you talk us through when what’s that look like for you in the last couple of years? Chris Vaught — Yeah, so coming in right just before COVID, we knew as we were growing, we just could sense, you know, hey, this is picking up. God’s given some good opportunities. We have to spread this out. we’re We’re in Southeast Missouri.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — This is not a hotbed for people who don’t move here to take on a position. We started thinking through and looking at the New Testament, too. You can only hire out so much, right? Because even though our church has grown fast, budget always comes up last. So you have to look at other avenues other than just, oh, I’ll hire another position. So we started looking in the congregation. We began to develop our own leadership pathway or pipeline to develop, not only volunteers, but our future staff.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — We knew we grew really fast, we need to hire from within, but we still couldn’t hire every position. Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Chris Vaught — So we started looking at our volunteers as almost as non-paid staff positions. And so creating an atmosphere of expectation of roles and responsibilities, and also the value of what they’re doing. Rich Birch — So true. Chris Vaught — That the kingdom is dependent upon all of us using our gifts and talents. And so we started this pathway. And at first it was simply a challenge to every staff member. You go find your Timothy, you go find one other person that you can invest yourself into—a volunteer—so that if on Saturday night, and here was kind of the criteria for us, if on Saturday night, something were to happen and you catch ah COVID, okay, we’re at that time period or the flu, could this ministry run the next day because of the person you have personally equipped to hold the ministry? Rich Birch — I love that clarity. Yeah, that’s so good. Chris Vaught — And we began putting those little pieces says together. Rich Birch — I love that. So sorry. That’s right. Sorry, you go ahead. I cut you off there. That’s so good. Chris Vaught — No, no, no. I was just saying that’s this so’s what we began. We began this pipeline, and that’s that was really the basic level at first. Every staff member finding that one Timothy, if you will, if you want to use that terminology, that could run that ministry if you were out. Rich Birch — I love there’s a lot of clarity there. I love that. Even just the practicality of like, hey, on Saturday night, somebody calls. Who can take this? Who can take your piece? I think that’s that’s so good. Break up a mindset for us. You talk about kind of, you know, use the phrase non-paid staff members. You’re setting a high bar for volunteers, like a high, high calling. Rich Birch — I think there’s a lot of staff in our churches who are like, oh, like I can’t ask that of a volunteer. I can’t that they’re not, they’re like paid to do other things. And like, man, they either, they are not good enough is the mindset problem. There’s no way they could do it. Or that’s way too much for me to put on them. Break that mindset up for me. Chris Vaught — Yeah, because we’ve tackled that mindset over and over and over again. Bob Russell, who who I consider to be a mentor in my life, he challenged me years ago, early on in this process. When you’re hiring staff, he would tell his staff at Southeast, if I hire you to to develop and to coach others to do, if I catch you doing, you’re fired, right? I mean, it was that kind of mindset. Rich Birch — Yes. Chris Vaught — And getting that across, first of all, to your staff. That it doesn’t have to be 100% of your ability. That our ministry, according to Ephesians 4, is to raise up the congregation to go do the ministry. Chris Vaught — And now let’s paint a bigger picture of why that’s important. If we have a church of 150 and you’ve got two staff members, you’ve actually got 150 priests of God. Rich Birch —Right. Yeah, I love it. Chris Vaught — A royal priesthood. You can do more if they all do 30% of what you can do, spread out over the multitudes, then you can give all week long. And guess what? You don’t have to ruin your marriage or your health in the process. We spread this out. Rich Birch — Love it. Chris Vaught — It’s tackling that perfect mindset. The other issues we had to tackle, and you mentioned it, is this, well, I don’t want to ask them to do this. People will rise up to the level of expectation. Rich Birch — So true. Chris Vaught — So what we began doing was, is we actually created job descriptions for every volunteer row. And in that job description, it may say, this will require you on a weekly basis, X amount of time. Here’s how you prepare. Here’s who you report to. Here’s what’s expected. And here are the values we want you to conduct yourself with. People respond well to that. Rich Birch — 100%. Chris Vaught — People need clarity. People need to know, okay, if I’m gonna serve on the usher team or the parking team or the worship team, here is the level of expectation. They know whether or not they can get into it.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Chris Vaught — It clears up a lot of miscommunication. It makes people feel valued and you can do it in the right way with positivity and motivation. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love the clarity of job descriptions, getting it all written down. I think is is incredible. So, you know, what that it started with this simple idea, a simple idea, hard to execute. I feel like, hey, you find a Timothy, Ephesians 4. But it’s more robust today. When you say pipeline, give me like a simple definition of that. How do you explain that to like somebody who maybe is struggling with it? Maybe a staff member, elder, leader type person. When you say, you know, leadership pipeline, what does that mean? What’s that mental model for you? Chris Vaught — Yeah, for us, we tell them we’re putting them on a pathway. Rich Birch — Okay. Love it. Chris Vaught — You’re here, but we want to put you on a pathway to help mature you and grow you and develop you and your skills that God has already given you, because that’s where you’re going to find fulfillment. Chris Vaught — That’s where you’re going to find the energy and the motivation to go long term. But this is this is a process of development. Chris Vaught — ah You know, we come to faith in Christ and we often talk about our salvation like it’s a done deal at one moment, one little prayer, one baptism, you know, now it’s done. Chris Vaught — Yes, we may be instantly brought into the family of God, but there’s a whole life of sanctification and discipleship and development. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Chris Vaught — And so painted is a picture of this exciting pathway that we’re going to be on. And these are just this is a part of your path. We call it the discipleship path. And we kind of just draw it out for our people. We show them, hey, we’re getting ready to take you on a journey. And it’s a lifelong journey. Chris Vaught — We got I got the concept from the Jewish concept of a disciple to a rabbi called a Talmud. Rich Birch — Okay. Chris Vaught — And one of the cool definitions that learned years ago on what is a Talmud, one of the definitions is a Talmud is the shadow of their rabbi. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — In the in the Middle East, they would actually say a disciple knew they had arrived when they were mistaken for their rabbi out in the community. Rich Birch — Oh, I love that. That’s so good. Chris Vaught — So think about we are to become like Christ. We should be mistaken for his character, his heart, his attitude, right? But in a much smaller sense, part of that process comes into how we operate in and through the church, how we use our gift sets. The church’s responsibility is to help put them on a path… Rich Birch — Yep. Chris Vaught — …to begin to develop what that shadow looks like. Rich Birch — How do you, so I love that. It’s a very vivid metaphor. What does that look like practically going from metaphor to like, okay, that sounds like the kind of thing I want to be a part of. I want to be a shadow. I want to I want to you know grow. How are you structuring that and and doing that at scale? I think it makes sense in the kind of rabbi, you know, a follower kind of thing. But you know, you’re you’re talking about, you guys have grown by hundreds, thousands of people in the last few years. How have you been able to, to make those two things work? A relational, you know, discipleship experience that is, that is deep, but it has some sort of structure to it. What’s that look like? Chris Vaught — Yeah, so so the structure is going to be as people are coming into church, are new here, are next steps, so we’re always pushing them to that very first next step, which for us is Starting Point.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Chris Vaught — There they’re learning the DNA and we actually talk this language to them at that introductory night of us explaining, here’s who we are at CPC, here’s our DNA. And we give them that next step. What does that look like? Chris Vaught — For one, it’s maybe just joining a serve team. Now, not everybody’s ready to join something on a Sunday, but that’s a starting point. And we begin to teach these leadership competencies and explain to them, hey, there’s a path that we want to put you on. Chris Vaught — Then included with that serve team is something we call Equip Workshops. Rich Birch — Okay. Chris Vaught — These are about 10 week workshops. We do two to three times a year where people we market it to the congregation, to our serve teams. They sign up. We’re going to teach you about your circle of influence. How Replicate gave us this concept, um Replicate Ministries, and it’s helping them find their kingdom circle, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — Because everyone has a circle of in influence. And what does that look like as you use your gift sets to serve? Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — And so our goal of then is to not only get involved in Sunday Sunday morning or so or weekly serving opportunities here, we want it to stretch beyond. If we’re going to reach our community, I need them and taking the same competencies onto their job.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — I need them to take the same competencies to the traveling sports teams, right, wherever they’re living their life out. Then the next step we introduce them to is our leadership college, Connection Point Leadership College, CPLC. And that’s a 10-month internship program where it is it is straight on leadership, skill, competencies. We tell them, we’re going to teach you as if you’re going into vocational ministry. But we invite people who don’t feel a call to vocational ministry because we tell them, we need disciples living out their gift sets in the secular world, not just inside the church. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — And so there’s two ways of coming into that college, which is one step of it. There is the on-campus intern, where you’re actually taking classes and practical ministry, shadowing, being involved in the ministries here on campus. Chris Vaught — But then we have a hybrid edition, which is online. And that’s for those who have to work a full-time job, can’t come on the campus, and maybe they’re wanting to learn the biblical leadership competencies, and apply them to the secular world. Rich Birch — That’s fascinating. I want to come back to the leadership college in a minute. I want to put a bookmark in that, but taking a step back to the serve team and Equip Workshops, talk to me about, like, I think some churches would come to the moment of, like, when they’re trying to get people in connection and connected and into some sort of discipleship relationship, and they would actually push more towards groups, you know, rather than teams. Rich Birch — Now, I’m not trying to I’m not trying to pick a fight here. Obviously, we want people to do both, but talk to me about that decision around, hey, we’re going to kind of go the team’s route and then add Equip. Because I think it’s a really interesting model of like, then add these workshops, which kind of drives some of that depth discipleship stuff to people who are serving, I’m assuming, but talk us through that. Chris Vaught — Yeah, so just for clarification, we do we do do life groups as well. But if it’s more for leadership development, we push them toward the serving. Rich Birch — Yep, that makes sense. Yep, that makes sense. Chris Vaught — Kind of like two different pockets, if you will.
Rich Birch — Yep. Chris Vaught — And some are going to switch over to both. Rich Birch — Yep. Chris Vaught — Some will start and serve and eventually lead into a life group. Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. Chris Vaught — Others may start a life group and come over to a serve team. Life groups are going to be a lot more discipleship based while serve teams is discipleship with an emphasis on leadership competencies. Just because the faster we grow, the more we have to make sure we’re developing leaders not just attenders if you will.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Vaught — And discipleship carrying on that serving aspect. So if you looked at if if I drew my pathway out for you on this journey of course you go to Starting Point the next one is either join a life group or a serve team.
Rich Birch — Yeah, OK. Yep.
Chris Vaught — But then if you go into the serve team we’re going to really push you to these kingdom circles and circles of influence and then to the leadership college, if that makes sense. Rich Birch — That makes total sense. Yep. That makes total sense. Well, let’s talk about the leadership college. Like give me a bit more kind of framework for what that looks like. Is it literally like full-time internship, 10 months, 40 hours a week? Talk us through that. Chris Vaught — Yeah. So um first of all, we don’t make it easy to attend our leadership college. Rich Birch — I love it. We’re not going to make it easy. We’re not putting the cookies on the bottom shelf. Love it. Chris Vaught — We didn’t. And we say it up front. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — So if you go into this, you’re going into it with intentionality. Chris Vaught — One of the things I teach from day one is I can teach you competencies. I can’t teach you initiative. And so from the get go, this has got to be something you’re after, you’re coming after, right? Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — Because this is the highest level of our training. So it is a full time intern is 10 months. You’re serving every weekend. You for the first six weeks of the internship, you get to go through a discovery phase where we’ll put you in every ministry department for a certain amount of time, let you get exposure. We believe you need exposure. After that, you got to pick a direction, right? Chris Vaught — And so from then on, you’re here every Tuesday and Wednesday all day.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Chris Vaught — And that those are very in-depth biblical, theological, as well as practical leadership courses. Every morning up until lunchtime in the afternoons, you’re in the department in which you’ve chosen. That’s the avenue that I’m feeling led toward. And you’re going to be working under the leadership of that department. You’re going to learn the skills of that department. You’re going to go to their meetings, their departmental meetings. You’re going involved in activities. And that’s probably where you’re going to serve on the weekends.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Vaught — Or through the midweek, depending on what it is. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — So now one of the beautiful things we partner with Evangel University outside of Spring… or in Springfield, Missouri.
Rich Birch — Yep.
They actually looked at our program and said, anyone that wants to come to school here or take online classes, if they go through that leadership program, we’ll give them 12 credit hours of of college. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Chris Vaught — So there’s a bit there for the ones who are looking for more formal education. And we have students who will do that. We have many that just want the leadership competencies here. Chris Vaught — Some of them are going into vocational ministry and others, as I said, they’re they’re wanting to take it into the secular world. And part of our goal throughout the year is we tell them, we’re not here to convince you what your calling is. We’re here to equip you for whatever God calls you to do. Rich Birch — Wow. Give me a profile of the a kind of person or a couple, maybe there’s a couple different profiles of people that take that step into the the leadership college. Like is, is that, yeah, like give me a sense of some of the characters that you find in that, ah in that experience, if you know what I mean. Chris Vaught — You know, this is year number four for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Vaught — And it’s so interesting that it’s grown every year. Rich Birch — Yeah. Chris Vaught — Oh, and by the way, one thing I left out, I told you we don’t make it easy.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Vaught — They pay us $500 to join. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Cover the cost. Or not really. Chris Vaught — So they don’t get paid for this internship and they get all that back and resources. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris Vaught — It’s just a commitment, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Chris Vaught — But last year, it was primarily high school graduates or college age kids that were in our internship program. And we don’t know what the Holy Spirit’s doing. Chris Vaught — This year, we doubled enrollment. And half of the group, more than half of the group are non-traditional. They’re like, we have a husband and a wife who are both working side jobs on Mondays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays, so they can do the internship together because they’re both seeking what God’s will is for them. So they’re taking a financial hit. And they’ve got children. I mean, they’re having to get childcare so they can be here all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Chris Vaught — We’ve got others that are in their mid thirties up into their forties coming to the school. So we’re really watching God do something pretty unique because the the idea, this concept of growing and stretching…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Vaught — …is now reaching beyond just the college age. and we’re And we’re getting into really all age groups. The oldest intern right now that we’ve had was in 56. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s incredible. Chris Vaught — And he was so phenomenal, we hired him on staff after he graduated. Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, and we’ve seen this in other, you know, echoes of this in other prevailing churches like Connection Point where um there’s like a high bar and there’s like, and we’re really calling people to say, hey, why don’t you come join the mission? And people respond to that. And, you know, the ripple out impact of that is huge. It’s almost like, you know, there are churches that are struggling and they’re just trying to like, well, we’re just going to make it as easy as we possibly can. Rich Birch — And there’s something about that that actually repels people, ironically. Or maybe maybe attracts the right people or the wrong people, you know. And this idea of like, hey, we’re going to do something big for you. Like, it’s a lot of work what you’re talking about, pulling that internship together. But it also it’s ah it’s requires a lot from people. That’s ah you know that’s that’s incredible. Rich Birch — How do you identify like and call out…I get that it’s like, you know, people have to make that choice, but what are, what are, what are you doing? What’s your team doing to identify leaders to kind of help them take steps next in their, you know, in their leadership development, or is it mostly just kind of driven by them? They’re raising their hand. Chris Vaught — No, I mean, actually you apply for it. You have to go through an interview process. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — And and once we interview you then we kind of help navigate. Yeah, we believe you have the commitment level. You have the spiritual maturity for what you’re about to come into. You know we’re looking at your personality skills. You’re, you know, doing an assessment. And just to make sure, because it is a a commitment, right? And you don’t want to start, not finish. And and we will make sure you got the character for this.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chris Vaught — Because when you come into a leadership school like this, everyone know, you know, everyone knows that’s one of our interns. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Chris Vaught — The your personal disciplines, your character, competencies has to be at a certain level. So we even start there with an interview process. Then beyond that, once you’re in the system, and we learned this from Larry Osborne, there are two primary sides of leadership in every person, right? You’re either going either going to be that what he calls a big L leader, that one that lead the charge, and you know they’re going to drive a ministry or an avenue. Or you’ve got the shepherd. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — And both are needed in the church. And one’s not better than the other, right? Chris Vaught — Your big L leader, they’re the ones that make things grow. There are two criterias to look for for that big L leader. One, can they make things grow? Everything they touch takes off.
Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — You know, they’re able to grow it. The second piece is, well, I love how Larry Osborne says, it says it’s the Tom Sawyer effect. And you know the story of Tom Sawyer. Can they can they make people paint the fence for them and thank them for it when they’re done?
Rich Birch — I love that. That’s great. Chris Vaught — Can they motivate the people around them? Well, if they are, and we recognize that kind of skill, that then gives us direction on how to craft their experience. Rich Birch — Right. Chris Vaught — Where we want to emphasize them to be able really maximize those skills to be a big L leader. They’re going to lead a ministry. They may be potential future staff. They may go in a secular world, but they could really make an impact. They’re an entrepreneur, right? Chris Vaught — The shepherd, if we see that they have the caring gifts, that they’re not the big old leader. They need a system. They need the structure. They’re not going to create themselves, but everybody wants to be around them. They have a heart. They have a care. They’re loving. They’re prayerful. They’re very spiritually deep. That helps us be able to craft their experience in the leadership college. Chris Vaught — Because again, it’s not about us getting them to do something. It’s them to learn the competencies to be the best of what God has called them to be. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Chris Vaught — And so we kind of kind of keep our eye on that and watch those metrics. Some of that comes through how they respond in classes. It’s how they serve on the weekends. It’s just what a lot of observation pieces as they go through the process. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. So kind of related issue, but more, maybe less of the this the art part part of it, more the science. When you think of metrics or mile markers around this whole area, what are some of the the numbers that kind of come to the fore? Things that you think about like, oh, we got to make sure we’re hitting this. If it’s, this feels, or I know this is healthy when that’s happening. Do you have kind of metrics that you think about on this front? Chris Vaught — Mainly for us, it’s as as far as any kind of metrics is we’re watching as if the people are taking ownership and are they self-recruiting others, right? Rich Birch — Sure. Okay. Chris Vaught — If I have a ministry that’s self-recruiting, constantly growing, like for us, ever since COVID, our media outreach department exploded. We went from an average of 800 unique views on the weekend to now over 6,000 on the weekend. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Wow. Yep. Chris Vaught — So all of sudden we’re like, okay, we’ve really got to keep our eye on the digital marketing media aspect of our church, right? So we judge health by it. How big has that volunteer base grown? Are they replicating, right? I think right now we have 50 volunteers in that ministry.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Chris Vaught — Where they, with a full-time staff of three people, four people, four people. And so, you know, I can’t hire 50 people, but I got to have that kind of a base. Rich Birch — Right. No. Chris Vaught — Our kids ministry, you know, our church age dropped dramatically after COVID. It’s all these young families. So our kids numbers are through the roof. So can we, so what’s our volunteer ratio look like there? And are they replicating? Some of the metrics we look at is the volunteer ministry large enough that people can serve one and sit and worship in another.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — If the same volunteers are working every single weekend and they have no time to come and get fed themselves.
Rich Birch — That’s a problem.
Chris Vaught — And and even the ministry department leads, if they can never break away and come into a worship service and get fed themselves, that ministry is not healthy. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Chris Vaught — They need more volunteers and the department heads need to be able to train their team lead who’s underneath them well enough to run a ministry for one service once a month to come into a worship service and get fed themselves. You know that’s just an example. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So good. Well, this is a great conversation. There’s a ton we could talk about here, but just as we’re we’re wrapping up, if you were to coach, a maybe there’s a leader that’s listening in today and they’re like, gosh, like I know we’re at the place where we got to take that first step. We got to take the, hey, who’s your Timothy? Rich Birch — What would be some some advice you’d love to give? Maybe it’s like a pothole to avoid or like, here’s something, you know, that kind of early advice I would give you to to get as you’re getting the ball rolling on, you know, on trying to develop a leadership pathway. Chris Vaught — Yeah, straight up early on, whoever your staff is or your key volunteer leaders are, when they find that Timothy, tell them the number one gift they can give that person is time investment. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — Sit down with them, spend some time with them, and then lead into a competency. And it could be 15 minutes. We do this with our volunteer bases on the weekends. So they gather together for a huddle 15 minutes before their serving opportunity actually begins. And there’s only three pieces that you have to talk about there. One is caring for them. Hey, how can I pray for you? How can I care for you? Because remember, volunteers, it’s not just a job, though you give them responsibility to job, but you’re also a congregation. You’ve got pastoral care. Hey, how can I pray for you? Chris Vaught — Then a quick update of here’s some things going on. Just keep communication going. Here’s what we need to know for the day. But that third piece that I’m so big on, and you can do this sitting around coffee. It doesn’t have to be a Sunday morning huddle. It could be as you’re building the program. Just but then teach them some leadership competency.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — You don’t have to preach a sermon. It’s just bring that little competency to help them develop and build some confidence. So if you came to one of our huddles like this weekend for 15 minutes, they’re going check up on you. They’re going to share a win. Hey, here’s what God’s doing. Celebrate with them. They’re going to give them a quick little update. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — And then they’re going to share something like, hey, this weekend, our whole theme is we want to create hospitality. So whatever we do today, let’s just all be hospitable. Rich Birch — That’s good. Chris Vaught — And they’ll talk just quick minute about that, right? So as you’re building your teams, as you’re building your pipeline, that’s really all you’re going to want to replicate. Then however large you get, you just keep adding layers to it. But it’s really the same simple structure. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That’s so clear. This has been great conversation, Chris. I really, really appreciate it. I feel like there’s a bunch more, even just there around huddles, we could jump in on maybe a future podcast. We’ll have you back on or your team back on to talk through ah that piece of the puzzle. Because I think there’s even that alone. I think that’s the thing so many of us, we’ve got to do a better job on or just got to do a better job on. Rich Birch — Well, Chris, I really appreciate you being here today. As we land the plane, if people want to get in touch with you or get in touch with the church, kind of track with your story, where do we want to send them online? Chris Vaught — Yeah, you want to send them to yourcpc.church. You can send a message to us just simply by email and info@yourcpc.church. course, you can catch us with that same handle on any social media site, and you can send some direct messages straight our way. Rich Birch — Love it. It’s great. Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Chris Vaught — Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for the honor.
Clarity Is Kindness: Simplifying Next Steps in a Growing Church with Ashley Lentz
Sep 18, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ashley Lentz from Lutheran Church of Hope in Iowa. As the Connections Pastor at one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country, Ashley brings a wealth of practical insight into creating personal connection in a growing church.
Struggling to connect new guests and help them take meaningful next steps at your church? Tune in as Ashley unpacks how her team prioritizes clarity, simplifies the path forward, and builds systems that still feel personal—without overwhelming people or staff.
Offer more than one pathway. // At a large church like Lutheran Church of Hope, it’s easy for people to feel lost in the crowd. A website can’t be the only entry point. While it’s useful, relying solely on digital tools can confuse guests. People often want a conversation—not a scavenger hunt. Churches must create multiple, intuitive connection points beyond online portals.
Four paths of the Hope Circle. // Lutheran Church of Hope staff uses an internal tool called The Hope Circle to identify where people are in their discipleship journey and help them take next steps. The circle starts with Seekers, for people who are exploring what Jesus is about. Next are Believers, identified as people who have heard the message and are into Jesus, but don’t know what to believe or do next. Followers have been transformed by Christ and wanting to actively live out their faith. Finally is a Servant Leader – a mature believer leading and serving others through their transformed life.
Start with Alpha. // Ashley recommends Alpha as a go-to starting point for anyone in the Seeker, Believer, or Follower stage. For Seekers, it provides the foundational answers they need. Believers benefit from a supportive community. And Followers get a refresher and grow more confident in sharing their faith. This simple, effective course has proven to be a unifying tool across spiritual stages.
Personal relationships at scale. // Despite its size, Hope prioritizes personal touches. The “New to Hope” area is centrally located, staffed with volunteers in bright orange vests, and offers a free t-shirt to first-time guests. Visitors fill out a connection card (paper or digital) and are invited into further conversation, tours, or ministry introductions. Automated systems send follow-up emails and texts, but staff personally respond to replies to ensure people feel seen and valued.
The power of serving. // Serving is one of Hope’s primary pathways to connection. Volunteer opportunities—such as hospitality, communion, or the café—allow people to engage while they’re already attending worship. Serving builds natural community, makes a large church feel smaller, and creates discipleship opportunities in the context of teams. Ashley notes that service can be a more accessible first step than joining a class, particularly for busy families.
Clarity is kindness. // One of Ashley’s key takeaways is that clarity is crucial. Large churches can easily overwhelm people with too many programs. Recently, Hope streamlined its discipleship offerings, moving some content online and focusing attention on core pathways like Alpha, Foundations, and Tuesday night programming. By simplifying options and communicating them consistently, Hope has made it easier for people to know what to do next.
Metrics and insights. // Ashley has observed consistent patterns: from sign-up to actual attendance, about 20% drop off; and from week one to week four of a class, roughly 40% of participants fall away. To address this, Hope emphasizes shorter class cycles and practical on-ramps. These metrics help them refine offerings while staying realistic about engagement.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I’m super excited for today. We’ve got a church that I’ve been tracking for quite a while and excited to have a leader from there on. But then I know this is an area that so many of our churches are struggling with, and it’s kind of like an area that you might not be aware that you’re struggling with. And so I’m hoping that we open up a discussion today to help that will move you to really make some changes that will ultimately see your church help people get connected to it. Rich Birch — Today we have ah Ashley Lentz. She’s the Connections Pastor at Lutheran Church of Hope. It’s one of the fastest growing in the churches yeah churches in the country with, I believe, seven campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in Central Iowa. Ashley Lentz — Yeah. Rich Birch — Iowa. Sorry, it’s early in the morning, getting my lips going here, friends, ah multiple smaller local sites and opportunities to join online. They actively partner with and support other churches through their Hope Network. Super excited to have you on the episode today, Ashley. Welcome. Ashley Lentz — Thanks, Rich. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and help in whatever ways I can and just share, share what we learn. Rich Birch — Nice. Why don’t, for people that don’t know, kind of paint a picture of Hope today, kind of tell us a little bit about the church and your role as a Connections Pastor. Ashley Lentz — Yes, you described Hope beautifully. We are located in the metro Des Moines area of Iowa. Rich Birch — Love it. Ashley Lentz — So Des Moines is our capital for those who don’t know. And like you said, we have seven campuses and a whole bunch of local sites, is what we call them, and partner with churches all around the country to simply help them do ministry and meet them where they are.
Ashley Lentz — And so ah Hope is, we would call it a multi-site megachurch, right? But it very much feels like I’ve grown up in the Hope, what I would call the Hope system, the Hope Network. I did our middle school and high school ministry here and came back to be a pastor here.
Ashley Lentz — And so um I think we do a really beautiful job of reaching people where they are and inviting them into ah something deeper, but also meeting them where they are and saying like, if this is where you’re at, like we will, we will meet you there and walk alongside you and wherever you are in your faith journeys. Ashley Lentz — So my role as a Connections Pastor is just that. I get to meet people where they are and help them navigate ah what is next in their faith journey. We worship at our campus, the larger campus here in West Des Moines. We worship about 7,000 in person weekly. And my favorite way to meet them as a Connections Pastor is truly to have one-on-one conversations. Ashley Lentz — And sometimes that happens you know during weekend worship. Sometimes it happens during the week at other things. um But that’s what I love doing is getting to know people, helping them find the next best step for them in their faith journey and making a really large church seem intimate, seem like a ah community that is for them and finding a place where they can really feel like they belong…
Rich Birch — So good.
Ashley Lentz — …not just fit in, but where they can belong here. Rich Birch — Well, for friends that have been tracking with for with me for a while, they know this is like a passion area for me. I’m super excited to learn from you, clearly an expert in the field. And you mentioned it, you know, one of your campuses is 7,000, multiple thousands in the other locations. Rich Birch — It’s a large church by all, you know, all, you know, metrics, probably the top 0.2 to 5% of churches in the country. ah And, you know, when a church like yours is attracting thousands of people coming through the doors every single weekend, you know, helping them take the next step can be difficult. And one of the misnomers that I, that bug me is I know that a church like yours is very good at connecting people. That is a part of the reason why you’re the size you are. But there are challenges that you run into trying to connect with people at scale. I love that you started with, I love to connect one-on-one. I’m like, how do you do that at a so church that size. But what are some of those challenges? Talk me through why is it so hard at scale to connect with people? Ashley Lentz — For sure. We do not do this perfectly. I’ll be the first to say that. And it’s important that anybody listening knows we do not have this completely figured out. Rich Birch — Sure. Ashley Lentz — I will just tell you where we’ve been and some of the challenges we faced and what we do in the midst of those challenges to just navigate them as best we can, because we’re still figuring things out too. Ashley Lentz — One of the biggest struggles that we have is communicating effectively. When you have the the size of staff that we have, and by no means do we have a massive staff. I think many of our staff, people would tell you we’re probably understaffed. We could always use more. But we have so much programming. A lot of it is volunteer led. I help lead our women’s ministry and I have women facilitators leading those classes. Ashley Lentz — But we have things happening every day of the week in every ministry area. So it is hard to effectively communicate where I want people to plug in. Because it’s easy to say, hey, check out the website. Everything is listed on there. But really quickly, people get overwhelmed by that.
Rich Birch — So true. Ashley Lentz — And that’s one of, again, that’s one of the things that love is I tell people, come talk to me. Some people love that. They’re like, yeah, would love to sit in chat. And other people are like, no, let me just navigate the website and figure it out on my own. Rich Birch — Love it. Yes. Ashley Lentz — But when you have so many things, they’re all great. It is hard to effectively communicate. Here’s what we find most important. Here’s what we would say. Start here and then do these kinds of things. Ashley Lentz — Prescribing a discipleship journey is really hard. And probably not effective because everybody’s on a different journey.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ashley Lentz — So we do like to offer, like we just have different offerings and I get to help people navigate season of faith, season of life, and what might meet them where they are right now and be an effective discipleship pathway for them. Yep. Rich Birch — Okay. I’d love to unpack that a little bit more. You talk about, and there’s a great description. We’ve got lots of different things going on, lots of different ministries, ah and but we’ve got to simplify it. You didn’t quite least say that. You said, we got to start here. We have to you know make it kind of really obvious or have pathways. What does that look like in practice? Help us understand how you’re doing that.
Ashley Lentz — Yes. One of the tools that we use, and it is very much an internal tool is what I would call it. We call it the Hope circle. And it is what I would call a discipleship tool or discipleship pathway. And if I were to say that to our congregation members, they would really have no idea what I’m talking about. It is very internal. But it’s helpful to identify where people are on this Hope circle.
Ashley Lentz — And so the circle starts with being a seeker. At a church our size, we have people every weekend who have zero idea what the church thing is about. They’ve maybe never been introduced to Jesus. Someone just invited them to church. They maybe knew they needed church and walked in the door, but have no idea what to expect. And so they are seeking something that has been missing in their life. And so ah helping people identify if that’s where you are, here are kind of the very preliminary places that would be helpful for you to start plugging in. Ashley Lentz — As we move around that circle, we get to believers, people who are like, okay, I’m bought into the Jesus thing. I’ve heard the message. I believe. Now what? Like, I I want to understand this better. Like, I believe in Jesus. I believe in God. Like, I’m here for it, but I don’t really know the things. So where do we go from there and how do we help them then move into like being super excited about Jesus? Like, I don’t just believe like I’m on fire for Jesus. I’m a follower, right? Like I am, I am all in my life looks different. I’ve been transformed. How do I follow him? And then how do you serve people in that arena too? Because that’s going to look different than somebody who’s come in as a seeker looking for Jesus and somebody who’s on fire for Jesus. So how do we move them around the circle? Ashley Lentz — So it’s seeker, believer, follower, and then kind of the last part of our circle is servant leader. How do we move them then into serving and letting the transformed nature of the gospel pour out of them into the world around us? Ashley Lentz — And I would say our secret sauce here at Hope is we love volunteers. Like as we move people around the Hope circle, I and my colleagues, we want to equip people to lead.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Ashley Lentz — So being a servant leader inside these walls, but also outside these walls is really like, that’s what’s attractional to people is is letting them know like you’re on fire for Jesus. Go tell everyone about it and serve in the arena you find yourself in, whether in the church or outside the church. Rich Birch — That’s good. So how do you, how do you help people self-identify that? What’s that practically look like for folks that are at the church? How do you help them? And um folks, we’ll, we’ll put the Hope circle in the show notes. You can look down there. You can see it there if you’re, if you want to see that as a tool to kind of visualize that. But how do you help folks self-identify where they might be in that process? Or is it purely, they got to talk to somebody? Ashley Lentz — No, it’s not. I would love to say, please just talk to me, but you’re right. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes. Ashley Lentz — With 7,000 people worshiping on a weekend, there’s no way. Rich Birch — Yeah, I can’t do that. Ashley Lentz — Even if if everybody on staff talked to some people. We, I’ll talk about this as kind of like on ramps or pathways. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Ashley Lentz — One of the best places for people to start as a seeker, a believer, even a follower is the Alpha course. I’m sure you’re familiar with Alpha course. Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yep. Ashley Lentz — We love Alpha here at Hope. And Alpha does such a beautiful job of if you are a seeker, it gives you the foundation that you need to step into what’s next. Ashley Lentz — If you’re a believer, it’s going to connect you to community, which is a really important part of discipleship. If you are a follower, like you are bought in and you are learning the things, we tell people Alpha is a great place to brush up on the basics, but also get plugged into community. So would say one of our biggest on-ramps is Alpha.
Ashley Lentz — And then from there, this is kind of like my bread and butter in my role, is taking people as they finish Alpha and helping them self-identify what’s next. Coming out of Alpha, am I ready to serve? Is that like, am I on fire? Am I ready to come back and host Alpha or step into a different service opportunity? Do I need more basics? Did Alpha spark in me like, oh, maybe I don’t know as much about the Bible as I want to. Do we direct them back to a Bible class and learning like the foundations of a Bible. Ashley Lentz — This fall, we’re trying something new called Foundations. it’s a three-week class. The first class is, what’s my Bible? How do I read it? Second class is, how do I pray? And the third class is identity, like what God says about you.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. Ashley Lentz — And so there’ll be people who come out of Alpha, yeah, who we say, maybe Foundations is next for you. Like, let’s Let’s really get some of these foundational pieces put together. up We also have a ton of just general classes, right? Like if you want to study ah spiritual disciplines, we have a class for that. Ashley Lentz — If you want to really dive into the narrative of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, what is the story that’s being told? We have a class for that. We also outsource resources. So I’m always always directing people to BibleProject.com and other things that do a really good job of walking people through some of these basic parts of discipleship, Bible knowledge, prayer knowledge. How, how do I get plugged into community? These are the questions we continue to ask. Ashley Lentz — And people can self-identify. I like, I do like directing people to the website. If you’re excited about community or getting plugged into a small group, check the website. There’s a page for small groups. Like we will help you with that. Rich Birch — Right. Ashley Lentz — By far and away, the best way we have found to get people connected is personal invites and personal relationships. I can’t personally do all of that. It is our congregation that does that for one another. And that is super beautiful to equip people who are on fire for Jesus to invite their neighbors and their colleagues, and to help them to share their story and say, here was here’s what my discipleship journey looked like. And I’d invite you to check out Alpha or this class or come join our small group and see what it’s like. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, I love that you’re, you know, stressing that. I think there might be people that are surprised who are listening who would say, you know, here’s a person talking, you know, a large church, really stressing personal relationships. Unpack that a little more a little bit more. How do you practically cultivate those personal touches at scale? How do you encourage that beyond, you know, just, you know, you doing that or a small group of people doing that? Ashley Lentz — Yes, ah we build teams. And everything that we do, we build volunteer teams. So if you walk into Hope on a weekend, and this is true of any of our campuses, there will be a New to Hope area with volunteers who are clearly marked. They they wear bright orange vests here at our West Des Moines campus. You can’t miss them. The vests say: “New to Hope?” And we clearly tell people, if you are new, we love to connect with you.
Ashley Lentz — They can fill out an online form. They can fill out a paper form. They can have a conversation with a real person. But those people every week are being followed up with personally um by staff members, by volunteers. They are being checked in with because we so deeply believe in personal relationship and personal invitation. Ashley Lentz — Same thing with people who are just getting involved.They might not be new to Hope, but the fall is a great example of getting connected, right? Like rally weekend is coming up for us this weekend where all of our fall programming kick kicks off. So we have a ministry fair where we will have tables in our atrium and invite people to stop by the tables and really get to know the leaders leading those ministries or the volunteers involved in those ministries and ask your questions.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Ashley Lentz — Some people, again, some people won’t stop, right? Like they like, I don’t want to have a conversation with anybody, which is why a website’s a great tool. We have clearly marked women’s ministry, men’s ministry, general adult classes, everything’s on there. But if you are excited about what’s next and making a large place feel small, the best way you’re going to do that is by a conversation with someone or an email correspondence. Rich Birch — Love it. Ashley Lentz — But yeah, really having pointed conversations about where you’re at in your faith life and what you’re looking for. Rich Birch — Okay, let’s deep dive on that. You talked about some stuff there that I’d love to double click on and hear a little bit more about. Ashley Lentz — Yeah. Rich Birch — So talk us through, if I’m if I’m a guest that comes, um talk us through, I arrive at the New to Hope, I see. So like, give me a sense of like, how many people are there? What happens when I arrive there? What are they going to ask me to do? How do they get me connected? I’m assuming I fill something out. Maybe I get a gift. Then what happens? You know, kind of talk us through what the the experience of someone who chooses to self-identify, you know, through the New to Hope experience, what’s that look like? Ashley Lentz — Yes. Yes, I love this. Our New to Hope area is in the middle of our atrium. So we have our building is kind of, the worship center is obviously like big and there’s it’s kind of the main part of our building. But the atrium is very clearly when you come into the building, you are in the atrium. And so it’s a big old signs, bright orange. When you see that, you will see very friendly volunteer faces – usually like three or four and probably a couple of staff people lingering in that general area every single weekend, every single service.
Ashley Lentz — And it’s really funny, Rich, just this weekend, I was walking around the building and I saw a family. And it was a young adult woman and her parents. And they walk into our building. And you can tell when people are new because they just kind of stop and look around. Rich Birch — A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Ashley Lentz — Like they don’t know where to go, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Ashley Lentz — So I walked up to them and I said, hey, can I help you find anything? And they’re like, we’re brand new. We have no idea what we’re doing. And I so I introduced myself. And I said, here here’s where we’ll start. We’ll start at New to Hope. And so I had her fill out a connection card. We have paper connection cards, like a postcard. And it is name, address, email address, phone number. People can follow it as much or as little as they want. But I tell them, if you want us to get in touch with you, I need you to write your email and I need you to write it legibly.
Rich Birch — Love it. Ashley Lentz — And then they can opt in for our weekly newsletter, right? Like that’s and then there’s a blank space that says, what are you interested in? What do you want more information about? Some people fill that out, some people don’t. But that’s, they can fill it out virtually. We have little tablets at the New to Hope or they can fill it out on paper. And then what we do, we give them a free Hope t-shirt and we tell people in announcements, like if you’re new, stop by the New to Hope area. We’d love to gift to you with a free Hope t-shirt as a way of saying thanks for being our guest today. Ashley Lentz — So they get a free Hope t-shirt. And then I always ask them, can I help you find anything? Would you like a tour of the building? Like, I personally walked around this family this weekend. She was a young adult woman who had just moved here. And she said, like, where would I do young adult things? You have young adult ministry. And I said, yes. And I said, it’s not in the worship center. It’s in this, it’s in our chapel. Let me walk you around and orient you.
Rich Birch — So good. Ashley Lentz — So when you get here on a Thursday night for, for that, then you know where you’re going. Ashley Lentz — That’s what our volunteers will do for people too. We, I want people to feel seen, right? As It’s a large church. You don’t want people to walk in without being seen or walk out without being seen. Rich Birch — So good. Ashley Lentz — So yes, we I say hi to everybody that crosses my path. And some people purposely put their head down and don’t want to be said hi to. And it’s like, you’re in church… Rich Birch — That’s okay. Yeah. Ashley Lentz — …you don’t have to say hi back. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Ashley Lentz — But if you cross my path on a Sunday morning, I’m going to say hi to you because I’m truly glad that people are here and I want them to know that. Rich Birch — Yes. Okay, that’s that’s fantastic. When So let’s say I come, I fill out, let’s say i’m I seem eager, maybe like that family, I fill out all the information. I give you my my mailing address, my email, my phone number, the whole thing. What then happens from there? What’s my experience? Do I get certain amount of follow-up? So what all happens at that point? Ashley Lentz — Yes, our we have a team that that does follow-ups. Rich Birch — Yep. Ashley Lentz — So those all go, we have, I would call it a track. They’re going to get an email right away. If they fill out a card on Sunday, they’re going to get an email on Monday that says, thanks for stopping by New to Hope. Rich Birch — Love it. Ashley Lentz — And generally that’s a generic email. It will have their name in it, right? So it seems like it’s personal. And it comes from ah Pat Quaid, one of our pastors here. um He’s been on staff for like 20 plus years. He’s incredible. Ashley Lentz — And so Pat will say, you know, we’re glad. Thanks for stopping by New to Hope. And generally here’s some information. If people put on the card that they want specific information, he will put that in the email as well. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Ashley Lentz — Then I believe there are a couple other follow-up steps past that. We can send text messages. And so if people have put in their put their phone number down, they’ll get a text message later in the week that simply invites them back to worship. Ashley Lentz — It just says, hey, hey, Rich, this is Ashley from Hope. I just want to say I’d love to see at worship again this weekend. Reminder service times are…, or something like that. So they get a couple follow ups past that to know like we actually care. Ashley Lentz — While it’s automated, it also comes from real people. Rich Birch — Right.
Ashley Lentz — So the system is in place because we’re such a large church. Rich Birch — Yep. Ashley Lentz — But if people text back, like I get those text messages back through an app, right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Ashley Lentz — Like I’m, I have good healthy boundaries. ah Nobody has, you know, like I’m not texting 7,000 people at a time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ashley Lentz — But we can personally respond to these people and answer questions that they might have. Rich Birch — Yeah Yeah. I love that. So friends, I want to underline a bunch of things that Ashley said there, because this is best in class practice that we’ve seen in in other contexts. You know, the idea that the, you know, New to Hope is like in the middle of the atrium, it’s super obvious. It’s that orange. You’ve got lots of, you know, volunteers and staff there. The t-shirt I love, the free gift. People, you know, ah too many churches will say like, if you want to get connected, drop by the connection kiosk. That’s like way too, people are not interested in getting connected yet. Rich Birch — They’re like just ah new. And so, but they will stop by and get a free T-shirt. It’s fantastic. I love that there’s multiple follow-ups. You wouldn’t imagine how many churches drop the ball there. they go They do everything else, but then they only follow up once or they, because they don’t want to bother people. I’m like, we’re talking about trying to get people connected to the kingdom of Christ. We’ve got to follow up with them.
Ashley Lentz — Yes. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. There’s so much, so much good there. Rich Birch — Okay, pivoting in a different direction. So, there’s a dichotomy, false dichotomy of in the church world around, we want to get people connected to teams or to groups. You know, we, we, and ultimately want to see them connect to both. And I think that’s the best practice. We want to get them there eventually, but it’s hard to point them towards both. What’s your thoughts on that? How do we, if if you were trying to kind of move people in an ideal direction, teams or groups, what’s that look like? What’s your experience been like when you’re trying to get people connected? Ashley Lentz — Yep. I would tell you, we ask often around here, what does it look like for someone to be engaged? What is an engaged church member? Like, how do you define that? Rich Birch — Yep. Ashley Lentz — And I’m not going to quote the research because I can’t remember if it was Barna or Gallup, but it was one of the two. A few years ago released that a highly engaged church person, the research is that they attend church once a month. That’s a highly engaged church person…
Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true.
Ashley Lentz — …in our society. And so to to engage them, like the task of discipleship is so interesting because to say like, if I’m highly engaged, that means I’m coming to church once a month. To ask them to do anything beyond that means you’re like a super duper, highly, highly, highly engaged person, right? Rich Birch — Right. True. Ashley Lentz — So one of, I call this maybe ah another secret sauce, secret weapon, is I love to invite people into service opportunities as their kind of pathway to getting more connected. What people undermine in service opportunities, and by service opportunity, volunteer opportunity, I mean like our hospitality team or our communion serving team or the kitchen team. Ashley Lentz — We have a cafe where 100% of the proceeds go to missions. Somebody’s got to make that coffee, right? Like I invite them into these teams because I know that they will already be here for some of some of that time, right? Like if you’re coming to worship and I can get you on a team that greets before worship, I’m capitalizing on you’re already coming to worship. Ashley Lentz — But number two, you are going to be in community. Rich Birch — So true. Ashley Lentz — You will start to have great conversations with these people in community. You’ll start to get to know faces, right? Again, large place will start to seem smaller. Discipleship will happen in the context of volunteer teams without me ever teaching a class. It will just happen naturally. Rich Birch — Yep. Ashley Lentz — And so I think we forget that that’s a really great place to get people plugged in.
Rich Birch — It’s so true. Ashley Lentz — And then is it is an on-ramp to anybody who shows up in the in this space and says, I just want to meet people. I want to get connected. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. Ashley Lentz — They might be in a season where they want a class, but I’m a young mom, right? Like I got two little kids. It’s hard for me to get here on a weeknight for six or eight weeks to do a class. A really good invitation might be, well, if you want to get connected, get to know people, you love greeting. Like you love talking to people. Why don’t you be on our greeting team? You’re already coming to service. Your whole family can do it. Ashley Lentz — And discipleship will happen in that context in such a beautiful way…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Ashley Lentz — …that that I love introducing people to volunteer opportunities. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I would say that for sure we’ve seen that as a trend in lots of prevailing churches like yours. You know, I would say particularly post-COVID, I think there has been a stronger emphasis or emphasis, depending on how you say it, to, you know, move people towards serving opportunities as like, a you didn’t say it this way. I’m saying it, but like as a primary path. Or like a let’s let’s take a first step there ah because of all the stuff you talked about. You know, we can get people on a schedule. We can yeah you know, there’s there’s something about the kind of envisioning we do in teams where we’re like pouring in like, hey, this is what Hope’s about. This is what Hope’s about that doesn’t necessarily happen in in in groups. So yeah, that’s that’s great. Rich Birch — Curveball question. We didn’t talk about ahead of time. Hopefully you can take a curveball, Ashley. I’m sure you can. You’re an incredibly smart person. What are the metrics that you think about in this area? Like, are there numbers that you reflect on that you like come back to you time and again that somebody asks you about regularly? What what would be some of those metrics that you think about? Ashley Lentz — What a good curveball question. Yes. Here’s what is fascinating to me, as somebody who does discipleship and gets people connected. I know, and this is specific to our context because these are numbers that I have crunched. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Ashley Lentz — We can have really good intentions with groups and classes, but I will tell you that from sign up to show up, right? So if you’re promoting a class, amount of people who sign up versus the amount of people who show up just automatically will drop 20%. Because people have really good intentions. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s true. Ashley Lentz — But when it comes to coming to class, you’re going to lose about 20%. Rich Birch — Yeah. It sounded so good at church on Sunday to sign up for that class, but I did not actually come in. Yeah. Ashley Lentz — Yes, so that being said, the people who show up to your class, you’re already looking at 80% of people who are gonna come. But we’ll we’ll call that 100% of people who are showing up. Rich Birch — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. Ashley Lentz — From week one to week three or four, you will drop 40% by week four. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Ashley Lentz — I see this consistency, consistently across discipleship at Hope and and the groups that we do. Ashley Lentz — And so we have also tried to build Alpha. I would tell you is probably the only exception. Alpha, we do Alpha in nine weeks here at Hope. But everything else we have tried to build in three or four week chunks because we just know that by week four, you’re gonna lose half your class or so about about anyway, right? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a good insight. Ashley Lentz — So we have great intentions with six or eight week classes. And I love to teach the Bible in six or eight weeks. I also know that for people’s schedules, they see a six or eight week class and that’s daunting. So to do things in three or four week chunks is really, really helpful. And those are some of the metrics that I keep in the back of my mind. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. And you could see that, right? It’s like better to have two three-week classes than one six-week class. You know, you kind of re-up like this is part one, part two, how do we move people along? You know, that’s, you know, that’s fantastic. Rich Birch — Well, let’s say you’re at a conference and someone is, you know, pulls you aside and they’re like, Ashley, oh, you’re the connections person from Hope – you guys do such a great job. What’s the one thing that you think I should do to make it easier? I’m sure you give out like common advice to somebody, to churches, church leaders around like, Hey, here’s the thing you could do to make it easier for people to get plugged in. Ashley Lentz — I would tell them clarity is kindness. Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ashley Lentz — Be clear about what you’re asking people to do or or where you want them to get plugged in. Rich Birch — That’s good. Ashley Lentz — Yep. If that’s a conversation, be clear that like step one is a conversation. If it’s Alpha, be clear that Alpha is like the thing you want people to do. Clarity is kindness. Make sure your website is clear. We’re not perfect at any of these things by any means, but… Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah. Ashley Lentz — …the more clear we can be about where we want people to go, what we want them to do, what we know works. That’s a really loving thing to do for people is just be clear. Rich Birch — It’s so true. And, and I know that’s like an, that’s like a journey, not a destination. Like we’re clarity is something we keep working on. We have to keep refining, keep making it easier. I think even in this, that’s part of why I was double clicking on theNew to Hope kind of process. Cause I’ve, in other contexts I’ve talked about that, that, that piece of that. I think every six months you got to look at it again. Okay. What can we do to make this easier? Ashley Lentz — Yes. Rich Birch — How do we make it easier for people to connect? Can you think of some areas where you’ve had to gain more clarity? Where like we thought it was clear but then, no, it wasn’t clear – we had to change it and and make it a little more clear. Ashley Lentz — For sure, I will tell you, we kind of touched on this at the very beginning. We offer so many things as far as adult discipleship goes here at Hope, specifically even just our West Des Moines campus, ah that it’s kind of unclear where to even start. Ashley Lentz — So one of the things that we have done in the last year is really kind of cleaned up what our fall and winter adult discipleship schedule looks like. So that when people say, okay, I’ve already done Alpha and maybe I already took that class, that we kind of have a very clear trajectory for them depending on where they find themselves in their season of faith, season of life. Ashley Lentz — So we, Foundations is a good example. That will happen each semester. It’s kind of the foundational course. Here’s where you start. Then it’s Alpha. Then we then there are Bible classes and prayer classes, if that’s what you’re looking for next. Small groups. We always have a small group kind of class to help launch small groups. Ashley Lentz — But we cleaned up a lot of what I would call white noise around that. So people say, like, what do I do? As a team, we clearly know: this, that, and the next thing, if you’re looking for a prescriptive track. Otherwise, iI got a million women’s groups meeting. There’s a million men’s groups meeting. I can point you in that direction too.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ashley Lentz — But we’ve cleaned up a lot of that white noise to say, generally, this is what we’re offering. It’s going to continue to happen in kind of a cycle, a semester cycle. And so it just makes sense. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I know so many, so many models, you know, churches, every seems like every five years, it somebody comes out with some new approach to cleanliness and clarity. Rich Birch — And people are like, Oh, this is like the, you know, it’s Highlands’, you know, step one, step two, or, you know, 101, 201, 301. Or it’s like, you know, Saddleback’s run the bases. Or, you know, but the, the foundation of all of that is we’ve got to be super clear. We’ve got to make it as clean as possible. I feel like we cleaned up our schedule is like Des Moines nice for like, we cut a bunch of stuff or like, what did we do? Like that cleaned up. What does that mean? Like you, you are still doing everything, but we’re focusing people’s attention on just a few things? Is that what that means? Ashley Lentz — Yes, we did get rid of some things and it’s not because they weren’t good. Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Ashley Lentz — We actually moved some of them online. We said people can take this online at their own pace. It will always exist. It’s good stuff.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Ashley Lentz — But let’s be really clear about what we want people to jump into in the fall…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Ashley Lentz — …and in the winter and in the spring. And so we just kind of moved some of those things. Rich Birch — Yeah. Ashley Lentz — And then, yes, communicated it more clearly. A lot of our stuff happens on Tuesday nights. And so we have told our congregation, come on Tuesday nights. Men’s thing, women’s thing, general classes, dinner, stuff for your kids, right? Like we’ve also tried to make it super accessible. So it’s like, if you don’t know where to start, just show up on a Tuesday night and we’ll help you kind of a thing. Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s so good. Well, this has been an incredible conversation, Ashley. I feel like I’ve got a page of notes here that is super helpful for me. There’s lots of other stuff I’d love to talk about, but I know you got other things to get to. So we’re going let you go. Just as we wrap up, any final word you’d have to say for us or anything you’d like to say just as we close today’s episode? Ashley Lentz — I would just encourage listeners, like what you’re doing is great and continue ask to ask yourself and the people that you’re around, like what are they looking forward to? So many times we try to do things, like I live in church world, right? Like this is my frame of reference. It’s really when I start listening to the needs of other people that we really start gaining some traction, right? Ashley Lentz — So I would just encourage them, like what you’re doing is great. Keep going…
Rich Birch — So good.
Ashley Lentz — …and ask your congregation what what they need and and what they want. And then just clarify that for them. Rich Birch — So good. Well, thanks so much. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Ashley Lentz — Yes, LutheranChurchOfHope.org is our like landing page website. Rich Birch — Perfect. Ashley Lentz — From there, you can find our West Des Moines campus. You can find all of our other campuses. You can find out what you need to know at LutheranChurchOfHope.org. And I’ll be on our staff page and happy to connect with anybody further. My email, I think will be in the notes, but Ashley.Lentz L-E-N-T-Z at HopeWDM.org. Rich Birch — Perfect. Thanks so much, Ashley. Appreciate you being here today. Ashley Lentz — Thanks, Rich!
Who’s the Next You? Building a Gen Z Residency Pipeline with Dave Miller
Sep 11, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by returning guest and friend of the show, Dave Miller. With a background in worship and creative arts ministry across Las Vegas, Kentucky, and Michigan, Dave now leads Leadership Pathway, an organization focused on helping the next generation of church leaders take their healthiest first steps into ministry through two-year residency programs, training, coaching, and consulting.
How can your church build a sustainable pipeline of future leaders? Tune in as Dave unpacks the critical role churches play in mentoring Gen Z and why the old models of leadership development just aren’t working anymore.
Sit with Gen Z to lead them better. // Gen Z isn’t just another version of the generations before—it’s an entirely new cultural landscape. Dave challenges church leaders to see this generation as an “unreached people group,” calling us to sit with them, learn their language, respect their customs, and lead with empathy. Rather than forcing them into old systems, we must dignify their contribution and shift from transactional leadership to relational investment.
Leadership development starts with slowing down. // One of the biggest barriers to Gen Z development is our pace. Middle managers in churches—often overworked and overwhelmed—struggle to prioritize leadership development. But if we truly want to raise up the next generation, we must slow down. It’s about presence, not productivity—FaceTiming between flights won’t cut it.
Residencies are the future of staffing. // With ministry hiring taking longer and churches often “settling” after months of searching, Dave encourages churches to proactively invest in residencies. His new book, Who’s the Next You? A Call for 1000 More Churches to Invest in Gen Z Through Residency, outlines a practical framework for launching effective residency programs. From onboarding and legal concerns to mentoring rhythms and developmental milestones, the book equips churches with tools to build a leadership pipeline.
Seven ingredients of leadership development. // Drawing from years of coaching and residency work, Dave outlines seven essential ingredients for leadership development: training (sermons, small groups), spiritual formation, soft skills (emotional intelligence), best practices, ownership (clear responsibilities and expectations), mental wellness (planning and support structures), and developmental conversations (beyond content delivery). Many churches stop at training, but it’s the deeper relational and emotional investments that shape lasting leaders.
One size fits one. // Through Leadership Pathway, Dave and his team have worked with over 150 churches and more than 160 residents. What works for one young leader may not work for another. Whether it’s moving across the country or mentoring a senior pastor’s child, every residency journey is unique. The key is listening, adapting, and avoiding the “stupid tax”—learning from past mistakes so the next leader doesn’t pay the price.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, today, I really do want you to lean in. We have got a return guest, which you know, we don’t do that often, and a friend. This is like a legit friend, somebody that I know from the real world who has got something for you today that I want you to take action on. Rich Birch — We’ve got my friend, Dave Miller, who served as a Worship and Creative Arts Pastor in churches in Las Vegas, Central Kentucky, and Western Michigan, and also has spent a bunch of years helping churches on a variety of topics from strategy to technology and facility design. Rich Birch — However, the thing he is the most passionate about is helping young leaders take their first, healthiest steps into ministry. He leads an organization called Leadership Pathway. They offer a two-year residency program for future church leaders, as well as training, coaching, and consulting services. Plus, he’s a great guy. Dave, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Dave Miller — It’s great to be here, Rich. Thanks for the opportunity. Rich Birch — It’s so fun to have you back. Kind of fill in the picture there. You’re a return guest, so my mom, she listens to every episode, so she can skip ahead. But for folks that don’t, kind of fill in the picture a little bit. Dave Miller — Well, my mom, she still asks me on occasion, do you have a job? What do you do? Rich Birch — What do you do? Dave Miller — Yeah, she has no idea.
Rich Birch — I love it, yes, yes. Dave Miller — Fill in the picture. So the picture is, yeah, in ministry, thought I would be in ministry forever. Came, I don’t have one of those great testimonies about going to jail and coming back from the edge. I grew up in an amazing church, all that legacy stuff of my parents, what they handed me. An amazing youth group, an amazing high school experience, into college, and maybe I was an early adopter because upon graduation, I had no idea what I wanted to really do, but I knew I wanted to do something for God. Dave Miller — And the local church was really important. I don’t think I would have even said that when I was 22, but looking back, I’m like, I never really thought about the family business or doing something else with my life. And I thought I would do it forever. And then I was found myself at a church that was closing. And yeah, which is a, we won’t go down that exit, but I was like, what happened? And someone invited me to go on a consulting trip, which I didn’t even know in those days.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what is that? Dave Miller — What is it? And he said, we’ll figure it out, which was a foretelling of what was going to happen over the next few years. And I literally in those days, I’m like, okay, I think this will pay the bills for six months till I figure out where I’m gonna go.
Rich Birch — Right, what’s next? Dave Miller — And that was 20 years ago now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s crazy.
Dave Miller — So I mean, that is crazy to say 20 years. So anyway, that’s kind of the…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Dave Miller — …that’s kind of the high level story. Rich Birch — The thing, there’s lots I love about you and love about Kristen, your wife, and you guys do lots of amazing things. But one of the things I love is you’re consistently passionate about not even next generation. It’s like, I don’t even sure what the best way to say that. It’s like this gen, people that are leading today…
Dave Miller — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that has been a consistent drumbeat for you. And I realized, so I was born in 1974, the bottom of the bust. The lowest, I am classic Gen X. I literally at that lowest, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century, the pill was just kicking in well, wide adoption, do not have a lot of people in my cohort. And so I’ve spent a lot of my career either interacting with boomers and helping them do their thing. But now I realized, I clicked over one of those ages with a zero on it. And I realized I’m increasingly—a mutual friend of ours, Carey Nieuwhof, we joked about this—I’m like, increasingly, we’re the old guy in the room. Like increasingly look around and I’m like, oh, I’m now that guy, that’s my role. I’d love to kind of dive in on Gen Z specifically today.
Dave Miller — Yeah. Rich Birch — Cause you are a thought leader. You’ve got real things to say. Plus you have actual experience working with dozens of leading an organization that works with dozens of Gen Z leaders. What are we getting wrong when it comes to leading Gen Z folks? What is the church, you know, you take the average church in America, we’re not doing this right. What’s the thing that we’re not doing right on that front? Dave Miller — Well, first of all, a big change for me in the last eight, we started eight years ago. We’ll be eight years old this summer.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dave Miller — And a big change for me is the realization that there’s a lot of churches doing well. And by a lot, I mean, I’m gonna say hundreds. You know, I take a look at some associations that are going around around the country. I look at groups that help interns and residents raise money, see how many postings they have. And you just kind of total it all up and then add 50% to try to be positive. There are hundreds of churches doing well. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Dave Miller — Eight years ago, in fact, I was digging out some old documents that we’ve done to pass to give to someone. And I would have said eight years, we’re only gonna work with the best and the biggest and the most cutting edge. And you know, there are churches of 150 that are some of our favorite people… Dave Miller — So there are great churches. It kind of boils down to that senior pastor. Are they a developer? Do they naturally, not naturally, I don’t use that word. Are they a developer? Have they grown in such a way that they see as part of their mission of doing this? Dave Miller — And so whether they’re a church of 60,000, 40,000 or 100, there are churches doing well. To answer your question, fundamentally, what are we getting wrong? I liken it to Mike Shealy in Indianapolis said in a masterclass that we do, a training. He said, I liken this—he’s a youth pastor, veteran youth pastor—this generation is like an unreached people group. We don’t conquer unreached people groups, like we used to.
Rich Birch — Right, yes. Dave Miller — The stories of the way Christians has done this, right? Go in, make them sit in rows like Southern Baptists in Dallas in the jungle and teach them Sunday school curriculum.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — No, no. We go in and we sit with them. We learn their customs. We learn their language.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Dave Miller — We understand, we give them dignity, by the way. We give them little wins. We let them serve us as we’re serving them, right? And you can experience pieces of this. I’m not a missions expert, but I’ve experienced pieces of this on old missions trips to Haiti, where all the white people were doing the work and all the people that we should have hired standing around the edge.
Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — Just totally taking their dignity from them. We don’t do that anymore. No, we know better than that.
Dave Miller — If you can sit with this generation and learn their customs, learn their language, seek to understand, would be a boomer way of saying that. Then you’re gonna have a shot. If the goal of an internship or residency is just to get the kids working. Let’s get them on our page. Like we would have done, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep. Dave Miller — I’m just a couple of years ahead of you. There was this assumption. You went to college, no matter who was paying for it. You got that degree, you showed up. And then I don’t think we, you and I might’ve said this, but we probably did not like our boss, but we were just waiting for them to move on so we can take their job. This generation does not think like that. Dave Miller — And Dr. Tim Elmore, Gen Z Unfiltered, is like a book that has meant so much to us. He’s a great friend. And he talks about just the fundamental differences of the world they’re coming from and how they view their bosses, how they view their coworkers. Dave Miller — And it’s not just church.
Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — So I think sometimes church people, we all think it’s our fault or it’s not. It’s not. Just hop online and start reading up in Forbes and reading up in journals and things and business. It’s not going well out there. And it’s not going well for the 35-year-old middle managers.
Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — That’s who’s not doing well. And in the church, that’s who’s struggling. My peers are the senior pastors who are beginning to think about legacy.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Dave Miller — You said you’re the oldest guy in the room now. Even though they’ve changed their glasses and they have cool shoes. And the bald ones, the bald ones are the coolest because you can’t, is he 35 or 60? We can’t tell. And maybe a little eye work done, but let’s not get into that. Dave Miller — The oldest guys in the room, they understand legacy. They understand. They’re beginning to think things like you and I think. Like if I sit still, who were the eight people from age 22 to 25 that just did, they meant everything to me. I still talk to a couple of them.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Dave Miller — They’re beginning to think about legacy. They’re slowing down, getting their eyes on the horizon and all this. The 33 to 40-year-old middle managers. And in church world, these are the next gen directors and the kids’ directors and pastors and worship leaders.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes, yes. Dave Miller — They are running hard. They are running fast. And now enter something new to their world, which is: you must slow down. You must sit down. You must listen and talk. And these people are amazing people who for 15 or 20 years have run at a pace. And then people like us are saying, you gotta sit down. And they’re like, I don’t have time to sit down and talk. Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — That’s the long answer to what are we not doing well? It’s a systemic small business, right? Small business. And even large churches are small businesses.
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s true. Dave Miller — I mean, a church of 5,000 with 50 employees, that’s a small business. They do not have systems and processes. They do not think like this. They think get the job, hit the ground running. If you survive for three years, we’ll advance you or something. And that’s just not gonna work. It’s not working, period. It’s not working anymore. And it hasn’t worked for a long, and we’re just awakening to it. Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — That’s what we’re getting wrong. And so this book that’s coming, this book that’s coming, Who’s the Next You? Like literally answering that question. And I was with an executive pastor this week. Like, hey, if your kid’s pastor walked in and just quit, not in a mean way, but God called her to go do something amazing.
Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Or her spouse was transferred. A lot of this is like very positive reasons. What would you do?
Rich Birch — Yep, yes. Dave Miller — And he’s like, well, I’d hire one of the firms and we’d probably take a year.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Dave Miller — Like all of my friends’ churches have taken a year and these job postings, and then we would settle. Rich Birch — Yeah, I was gonna say that because that’s the real trend there. It’s not just that it takes time. Like we go into all these hiring things and we have this like ideal scenario. We’re gonna find this incredible person. And we go an entire year. And then really what we do is negotiate with ourselves at the end. And we’re like, well, this person from this other church. Dave Miller — These are some of my best friends in some of these groups, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. Dave Miller — In the time of that work. And how many times the first handful of candidates pass on, oh, there’s gotta be something better. Nine months later, I’m literally…
Rich Birch — You’re back at the same conversation. Dave Miller — And I would call him a guy that worked for us for a while. He’d call it dumpster diving. You go dumpster diving and you’re like, how about this one? We tossed this one away. It’s so great to think about people that way.
Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — But now we’re back. And actually that was the best person we’ve looked at. Let’s call them back and see if they’re still available. Of course, typically they weren’t, they’d moved on. Dave Miller — So I would just say this thing of going, it’s just sort of a principle, isn’t it? Like you have to go a little slower so you can go faster and farther. And this shows up big time on this topic. It shows up in every area of our life, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — People, what is it? Exponential, we’re gonna develop leaders like Jesus did and like Paul did. I’m like, well, they walked everywhere, man. I’m like, hey, Rich, let’s go hold a revival eight miles down the road. We’d get there at three o’clock. We started walking. You would not need a therapist. You would not need a coach. You would not need marital help. We would work it all out. Rich Birch — Yes, lots of time to talk.
Dave Miller — So like to compare ourselves to that or Paul on these boats that took weeks to get where he was going. How many conversations could you have? Dave Miller — We would be amazing leadership developers if we did not have any AI. Sorry, Kenny Jahng. If we had no modern tools, we would be amazing because we would be talking. Rich Birch — Right, we’d slow down.
Dave Miller — And one thing we’ve discovered, when a residence, there’s always a quit moment or a get fired moment in the first six months. And when we start digging, we start picking at that as coaches. We run towards the smoke is what Kristen, you know her coaching.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dave Miller — Run towards the smoke. Is it a barbecue or is the house on fire? We gotta run over there and figure it out, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Dave Miller — And like, well, but tell us about your one-on-ones. How have they been the last month? And you start digging in. They’ve not been in the physical presence of the resident or their down-line hire. Because of vacations and conferences and running fast and it’s summer. So you’re just like, okay. So to develop someone is not FaceTiming from the back of an Uber between airports or something. Rich Birch — Yes, or sending them a book and saying, you know, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Miller — And I think of my own trends. I think of me, age 25 to 33, thinking I was developing leaders, right? Developing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — And it’s just a different, it just doesn’t work anymore. My intern, my intern, when I…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dave Miller — She knew she had to sit there. Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — She had no options.
Rich Birch — She was compliant. Dave Miller — This was probably, she thought this was as good as it was ever gonna get. And I just think we’re in a, we’ve got these amazing, highly leveraged, highly talented, smart, you know, all of these adjectives. We’re trying to flip the script on all of this stuff. Flip the script. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Dave Miller — Changing the narrative on who this generation. They don’t, the biggest option is not doing it. It’s not becoming an astronaut or a doctor. The biggest option is they’ll just fall back on their 40,000 Instagram followers and monetize that and do what all of their friends, all of their, go make three times as much money.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — Through their 20s. Rich Birch — And have more control and all that.
Dave Miller — Have more control and their weekend’s off and they can do what they want. Anyway. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s interesting. So my daughter, she’s been, you know, we’ve worked in and been led in, you know, great churches, large churches, and I would say healthy, thriving environments. And she’s working for our city, which is, you know, is like exponentially larger organization, our city, than the largest churches we’ve worked for. Rich Birch — And I’ve worked for, you know, whatever, 3-, 4-, 5,000 person churches. And it’s interesting watching her, the thing that she’s loving is this development piece. It’s the, you know, when she talks about it, she talks about that her department head, who is two tiers up, coming down, sitting at the end of her desk, having a conversation at the end of the week, reviewing, hey, what, how did this go? How did that go? Here’s some stuff I would have done different if I was you.
Rich Birch — You know, it’s that advocating for. Let me test this hypothesis on you. I wonder if, because in the church world, we’re in the content business, like we make content. So, and particularly our senior leaders, they think of the world through content. They think of the world through 35-minute, you know, talks. Rich Birch — And so we think of, when we think of leadership development, we immediately go to 35 minute talks. What are the, I just need to put together a great talk and we’ll get in front of people. But that’s actually, my experience is not, that’s not what you’re saying. You’re not saying let’s talk at them.
Dave Miller — No.
Rich Birch — It’s something deeper than that. Unpack that for me. Dave Miller — Well, we would say there’s seven ingredients. There’s a chapter in the book, seven ingredients. You can get it on our website right now. Seven ingredients of what we would say is leadership development. So what you’re talking about really, a sermon is training, if you think about it. Like in a market sense, I’m gonna talk at you for 35 minutes. There’s four points. It’s very good. It’s inspired. It’s like Ted, Ted long Ted talk every, 52 times a year…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dave Miller — …plus Christmas Eve and whatever. And I would just say, we call that training.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dave Miller — Churches for a long time have done really, really well with training, right? It’s either it’s the sermon or it’s Sunday school. It’s even the AI delivered small group questions I get from my men’s group, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Dave Miller — It is staff. When I say, do y’all do leadership development? Yeah. Tell me about that. And they start talking about your book or Carey’s book or Craig Groeschel’s book. It’s a book of the month. It’s conversation even. Now we’ve taken training and we’re still delivering the content, but we’re discussing it and we’re filling in blanks, right? And we do that.
Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — And, or spiritual formation. I had a well-known keynote kind of person. We just need to disciple these kids and get out of their way. And I was like, oh, neat. Actually we don’t. Dave Miller — We did that once. It’s called the Jesus movement. I think that was the Jesus movement or the Jesus people in the early seventies…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dave Miller — …which kind of mirrors what’s going on on college campuses, if you think about it. We don’t need to just disciple them and get it. We got to go with them.
Dave Miller — So training, spiritual formation, soft skills, which is the pain point of all the bosses, the emotional lack of intelligence of things. Those would be the three core ones. And then we have to provide best practices. We have to provide ownership, which is a big thing for us in our small business, small church world at the 12 month mark, when we’re saying, well, she just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get, oh, what doesn’t she get? He just doesn’t understand.
Dave Miller — We talk about our downline people as if they’re executive leaders with 20 years of experience. It would be totally fine for someone to accuse me of something like that. But like when we think of sports, we don’t talk about individual players. We talk about the coaches. When the team’s losing, whose fault is it? As a lifetime Cincinnati Reds fan, we changed the manager. We don’t talk about number 78 and 14.
Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — When the team’s doing amazing, it’s about the player.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Dave Miller — He’s killing it. She’s killing it. He’s killing it. When the team is losing, we have to own it similarly. This is on us. Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Dave Miller — Mental wellness, one of the seven things, mental wellness. If you can’t prove to me that you know, I’m not here giving you even a theological construct because we work with all sorts of churches that believe all sorts of things, right? But mental health, if you can’t prove to me that you have a plan at least, or you’ve thought about it, that’s gonna be a problem we’re checking in on.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — And then finally, developmental conversations. This is not delivered only through training, to your point. Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dave Miller — Rich, if content was the key, I don’t have to finish the con…
Rich Birch — We’d be fine, we’d be fine. Dave Miller — From MDivs at the finest seminaries in the world…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Dave Miller — …not just the country, but the world, all the way down to hack your way to being smart for free online, right? Content is amazing. It’s what a world, what a world. Rich Birch — Well, I know that as a coach in the coaching that I do with churches, that the problem isn’t the training. The problem isn’t me coming up with great ideas. In fact, one of the things I’ve said with the clients I work with this year, cause I had my own coach ask me that, they said, are you more interested in your client’s results or them liking you? Which are you more interested in? And I was like, oh no.
Rich Birch — And my coach was like, you’ve got to be way more interested in their results. You’ve got to lean in and I can see this. I can out content my clients. I can out content the people I work with. But that doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily make the changes that we’re talking about. I’ve got to actually slow down, ask the question, see them take a step. They won’t, if they take the step, great. Rich Birch — If they don’t take the step, then I got to loop back around and say, hey, why did that? What happened there? Why didn’t you do that? What did you do that? Man, that’s convicting.
Rich Birch — So the thing I love, I had the honor of, assuming you didn’t delete it from your process. I had the honor of writing the forward for this book, which I just want to say thank you for letting me do that because I’m super passionate about this. I love the subtitle: A Call for 1000 More Churches to Invest in Gen Z Through Residency. That is a giant thing to put on the front of your book. Tell me about that. Dave Miller — Well, so when I first, we used to talk about the 3% of churches. So it depends on who you read and which piece of content you click on. But how many churches are there? 3% of them are at, we would say advancing, right? Not just getting bigger, but advancing. And of all sizes, by the way. This church of 150 is definitely the one I’m thinking of in Atlanta. It’s definitely advancing. It definitely is. There are more people who know Jesus this year. There are these marks that we all would talk about. So 10,000 churches, 10,000 churches. So can we affect 10% of those churches? Can we affect a thousand churches?
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. I love it. Dave Miller — The other reason it’s a thousand is I went to Bible college and I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. So I can’t really do complex math. So let’s keep it simple. But that would be an amazing thing. Now I will tell you, we’re turning eight. We’re turning eight and it’s taken us, we’ve worked with 150 at this point. So it’s 80 years. Rich Birch — Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Stop this. You know what I’m gonna say. Did you hear yourself, Dave? Dave’s like, well, gee, I make fun of Dave all the time. I’m just a guy from Eastern Kentucky. I don’t really know. Gee shucks, we’ve only worked with 150 churches. We’ve only had however many residents. How many residents have you worked with? Dave Miller — It’s 160 something at this point. Rich Birch — Yeah, which is amazing. I put that up against anybody’s residency. Who out there has done this as much as you guys? You are the experts on this thing. And so I can’t just let that float by. I can’t let that float by. Dave Miller — Thank you for that. Maybe your editor’s like, should I cut this right now? I would also then on the others, I would be like Kristen, who she’s now got, she’s onboarding coaches and handing work off, right? But she does about 40 a month. She’s been doing about 40 a month coaching sessions…
Rich Birch — Wow.
…which anyone who’s coached knows that when the Zoom turns off, there’s the text tomorrow and the email. So it’s not just 40 hours, right? So 40 of these things a month, which is if you’re at a great church with a couple of residents, that’s about what you’ll do in a year. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — So every month. So if you just think about it, my best AI is actually Kristen when I wanna know something because she’s just sitting there just curating all of this.
Rich Birch — Yes, in the conversations. Yeah. Dave Miller — In the conversations. So, yeah, I would say she’s the expert. She really is the expert. And it’s not, it is forged through, you know, hitting potholes and then helping the next one not. If like a lot of, if churches would just not make the same mistakes that we’ve made. There was a resident who finished, he’s the only one. He finished a two-year residency and did not get hired. Said he wanted the job, I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dave Miller — And that was the last one that I coached. That was like number nine out of 167.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — He’s the one. And so if we would just not make the same mistakes as just avoid, just avoid the stupid tax. She says that over and over. Paige on our team says one size fits one. There’s a lot in the book about recruiting.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Dave Miller — There’s a lot in the book about predicting success, which is still the hardest thing. She does all the candidate stuff. One size fits one. So when a church calls and says, hey, have you ever seen the senior pastor’s son be a good resident? Yes. The answer will always, we’ve seen most scenarios at this point.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — But if you, if they ask, have you ever seen the senior pastor’s son be a complete disaster as a, yes, totally. Have you seen moving cross country? Gabby, one of our board members, she’s now been full-time through four years at her church. She moved cross country. Everything she owned, the trunk of her car. And I’m just like, this is crazy. She’s going from Virginia to Denver. And that same month we moved someone from Denver to Virginia. Dave Miller — I’m like, this is so dumb. This is as bad as the headhunter.
Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — And she made it. She made it. She killed it. In the middle of COVID, all of this headwind. And she just, her origin story of growing up the way, she just was, she’ll be speaking at a masterclass with us in Denver next week. Success story. Dave Miller — Have we ever seen someone move across the country and be lonely and completely implode? Yes. One size fits one, every time.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. Dave Miller — And so just at this point, as you know, in my work history, this is the first time I can say, yeah, I’ve been at this for eight years. The same job for eight years. I’m a big quitter, like a lot of good consultants. I’m just a good quitter. And so we’re living out of the abundance of that at this point, I would say.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dave Miller — Will it grow and will it affect a thousand churches? I hope so. Man, I pray that the Lord puts enough opportunities in front of us and we stay after it. But we’re living the benefit of having now worked, we had our 1,000th applicant in December.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s great.
Dave Miller — Amazing amount of talking and hearing people’s stories and digging into why their Enneagram plus their disc minus their whatever equals that. The predictors of these things. We’re living the abundance of that. And a lot of that’s in this book. We took, this book is, someone challenged us right when we, well, actually before we started. You gotta have a book. I’m so glad we didn’t write some dumb book because it would have said completely different things. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — Gen Z, don’t forget, is turning 28 this year. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — So this, I think four or five years, it has to change to Alpha if we’re gonna do this.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Dave Miller — So, we’re just living out of the abundance of that. We took our masterclass. That’s what I was gonna say. We do these two day trainings, deep dive all day. I don’t know how people sit there and do it, but they do. We took the nine sessions of that. We put it in a book, added a few things. Dave Miller — So it really starts with what’s a resident? Why should we do this? Takes you all the way into the deep weeds of legal things, HR concerns, how to onboard and how to interview and how this is a little different than interviewing full-time staff. First 90 days, first day, first 90 days, the one year thing, the six month check in. It’s just a, from the beginning to the end, how do you launch them full-time in the ministry?
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Dave Miller — So that’s what this book is. So, people will say, who should come to a masterclass? Well, if you’re kicking the tires, thinking about interns, you should definitely come. This is gonna be amazing. Just like the book, I would say. Or if you, we’ve had people who’ve been at, they’re a thought leader. They truly are a thought leader and have been doing it at a local church for a decade. Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — And they leave this thing going, this has been so great. How do I get my other staff leaders through this material though? That’s what this book is. So, front end. Rich Birch — I would imagine, again, you’re the expert on this, not me, but seeing this kind of operate in a number of churches, it’s like, I would think you need like the subject matter expert internally. You need the person that’s gonna be the residency kind of flag bearer. Hey, we’re gonna run this thing. Rich Birch — But then I also need everybody else to be on the same page. To be like, no, these people aren’t just free labor. No, these people aren’t. And this would be a great tool to kind of get everybody up to speed, to kind of give an operating understanding of what we’re trying to do. Dave Miller — Totally totally. I mean, a residency director, once they get more than two or three residents rolling, they are dependent on half a dozen staff on their team to own this the way they own it. And right there, it break. It’s kind of like campuses. I forget, you’re the multi-siting one. What number does the campus thing break and you gotta reinvent it?
Rich Birch — Yeah, at like three or four. Dave Miller — There’s a point at which it works. Like one-on-one and then the youth pastor at that campus or the worship leader or the production or guest server, I want one of those. At some point, we then hire a residency director who’s now over the residency. They spend most of their time chasing staff around.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dave Miller — It’s kind of like an in-house version of us. We’re chasing them around, getting them to sit down, tell us what’s going on, trying to coach and handing this book to someone on the team, skim this. In fact, just skim chapters three, seven, and let’s talk. That could be an in-house way of helping bring them up to speed. Each chapter has a little case study, a little victory story of a resident that went through something and almost quit or almost got fired. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Miller — And now they’re still on the team. Or they got hired up the street or back in their hometown or whatever. So I think, I am hoping that the book is 30% inspiration, 70% instruction. There’s some tools in it, tons of QR codes to resources.
Dave Miller — It’s a lot like that masterclass. It literally, the first masterclass we did 18 months ago now and man, it was like our kitchen table was the war room for trying to like, all right, what are we gonna say? Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Dave Miller — It was so much work. And now we’ve done nine or 10 of them. We just roll into town and it works, right? I think this book was similar. Like, okay, let’s take that content. How do we put this in a couple of hundred pages that people will actually wanna read, honestly. Hopefully people wanna read it.
Dave Miller — Yes. Dave Miller — I guess we’ll see, but. Rich Birch — No, they will, for sure. Dave Miller — Your mom will. Maybe your mom will get it. Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Yeah, so we wanna, we can pick these up. Where can we pick these up? We wanna go to your website, leadershippathway.org. I’m assuming we can kind of find all the links there. Is there anywhere else we wanna send people? Dave Miller — Definitely go to Amazon. If you go to our website, there’s a big thing across the top of every page in obnoxious color that you can definitely find the book. That or Amazon and just search: Who’s the Next You? I think it’s the only book with that title, which is helpful. Rich Birch — Yeah, that is interesting. As an author, that’s actually hard to do. Dave Miller — I have a good friend who just released a book, his story. And when you search it on Amazon, be careful what you click on, because. We got none of those problems. So it’s out there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, friends, I would strongly encourage, you’re like, I am biased. This is not like, oh, I’m the sober second voice. I don’t really care. I do on this one. I really think you should pick up Dave and Kristen’s book. Dave’s okay. Kristen’s even better. You’re gonna love this. It’s Who’s the Next You? A Call for 1000 More Churches to Invest in Gen Z Through Residency. Rich Birch — It’s a fantastic resource. I think it’ll be super helpful. Even if you’re just on the fringes of thinking about residency, the reality of it is, I think for so many of us, particularly I’m thinking about executive leaders, executive pastors that are listening in. You get to any size and you are constantly dogged by your staff saying, I need to hire, I need to hire, I need to hire. And the reality of it is, man, what if we got up on top of that and said, what if we built a system for building young leaders that sure is not gonna deliver somebody today, but two years from now, it’s gonna deliver some people. Two years after that, two years after that, two years after that, we’re just gonna keep finding and cultivating next gen leaders. I really do think that this could be super helpful for you.
Rich Birch — Well, Dave, appreciate you. Where do we wanna send people online to track with you? Any other kind of final words as we wrap up today’s episode? Dave Miller — If they just go to the website, leadershippathway.org, they’ll find all the stuff there would be the best. Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Dave. Cheering for you. Dave Miller — You’re such an encouragement. It’s like, if we could just put all of that in a battery, it’d probably be the last battery we would have to buy. And it was, you know what we would call it? We’d call it the, “hey friends!”, battery. Rich Birch — That is true. The power of the world. You’re not the only person that’s made fun of me for saying, hey friends. I really mean it. Dave Miller — I know, you do actually mean it. I’m like, have you seen Rich do, that’s actually if you meet him in the hall or you sit down with him and have lunch, he actually is like that. Rich Birch — That’s funny. All right, well, thanks so much, Dave. Appreciate you. Dave Miller — Bye-bye. Take care.
$100M Book Launch? What Your Church Can Learn from Alex Hormozi
Aug 29, 2025
In this special rushed episode of the unSeminary Podcast, Rich unpacks the biggest nonfiction book launch in history: Alex Hormozi’s $100M Book Launch. Alex didn’t rely on TikTok trends, billboards, or mass media. Instead, he orchestrated a carefully choreographed campaign that leaned heavily on email — sometimes sending seven to nine emails in a single day!
So what can your church learn from this? I pull out three big lessons that every church leader should pay attention to:
Campaigns, Not Announcements Most churches think one announcement is enough. It’s not. Hormozi’s strategy shows us the power of multi-phase campaigns that build intrigue, reveal value, and lead to action.
Over-Communication Beats Under-Communication Churches often fear “sending too much.” But Hormozi proved that variety and frequency cut through noise. Different voices, tones, and urgency hooks kept his audience leaning in — something we can apply to big days like Christmas or Easter.
Compete in the Attention Economy In today’s distracted world, you can’t whisper and hope people will hear. Novelty, mystery, surprise — even Guinness World Record-style stunts — keep people engaged. Your church can adapt this mindset to make invite moments more compelling.
I hope this episode helps translate these lessons into practical steps for your church, so you can strengthen your communication, deepen your invite culture, and move more people toward Jesus.
A Next Step for You
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Use the code ALEX at checkout to get 50% off. This is the perfect next step to put these communication lessons into action. Click here to enroll today
IMAGE NOTE: No, I haven’t met Alex. The banner image is AI-generated and intended to serve as a pattern interrupt, following Hormozi’s style.
Reclaiming Silenced Voices: Women, Scripture & the Church with Taylor Scott-Reimer
Aug 28, 2025
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Taylor Scott-Reimer, a dynamic speaker, advocate, and author of She Believed: Recovering the Fierce Faith of the Women of Scripture — and Ourselves.
Is your church truly inviting the full participation of women? Are female leaders empowered to speak, shape, and serve—or are they silently sidelined? Tune in as Taylor shares a practical framework to help churches reframe the narrative, restore the practice, and reclaim the voice of women—so that the whole body of Christ can flourish.
Ask for the woman’s point of view. // Many women in churches carry a quiet pain—their stories aren’t preached, their voices aren’t heard. Over time it teaches women to shrink their faith to a mold that stifles spiritual growth, creativity, and courage and signals that their contributions are secondary. It’s helpful to call women to the table and ask them what their experience has been in the church. Making room for honest conversations helps surface unseen perspectives and fosters a truly inclusive church culture.
Three step framework. // Taylor’s book as a three step framework in recovering women’s spiritual growth in the church—reframing the narrative, restoring the practice, and rediscovering the voice. It begins with theology in how we teach, preach, and talk about women in scripture. How we create space for women to lead and serve in meaningful, visible ways is the important part of restoring the practice. In rediscovering the voice we help women reclaim agency and spiritual authority, allowing them to show up as their full selves.
Representation shapes identity. // Representation matters. When women see female prophets, leaders, and teachers elevated in sermons and stories, they begin to recognize their own place in God’s story. It empowers new callings and unlocks courageous leadership.
Reclaim your voice. // Taylor offers a free PDF resource titled 7 Days to Reclaim Your Voice, which reflects on seven women from Scripture to help women rediscover their spiritual boldness. Her book expands on these themes, providing a roadmap for deeper reflection and community engagement.
Look closer at your teaching calendar. // Look at your calendar for the next few months. Who’s preaching? Whose stories are being told? Are female voices and stories included? Are women speaking? Use small groups or leadership meetings to open these discussions and create space for women to express what they long to hear from the pulpit.
A Church that needs all of us. // The Church needs all its members—male and female—to live and lead fully. When women are invited to speak, lead, and preach, the entire Body is enriched. It’s not about tokenism; it’s about telling the whole story of God through the voices He has gifted.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Listen, you’re gonna wanna lean in on today’s conversation. I know that this is an issue in your church. It’s kind of thing that that you really should be wrestling with, thinking about. It’s not the kind of thing that should be on the back burner. Rich Birch — It’s the kind of conversation that you should be having with your staff team, you should be thinking about with, various leaders in your church. It’s going to be a super helpful and challenging and encouraging conversation. Excited to have Taylor Scott-Reimer with us. She’s a writer, speaker, and passionate advocate for building a church where women’s voices are not just welcomed, but they’re needed. Rich Birch — She’s written a recent book that I want you to pick up for your team called She Believed: recovering the fierce face of fierce not face fierce faith of women of scripture and ourselves. Through this book she’s invites you, our readers, to rediscover the fierce forgotten women of scripture the prophets, preachers, judges, and warriors who refuse to shrink from their faith ah or callings. Taylor, welcome to the show – so glad you’re here. Taylor Scott-Reimer — I’m so glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Rich. Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be great. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? Kind of give us the the story, the Taylor story. Tell us about your, you know, yeah, just tell us about your background. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up deeply immersed in church life. My dad is a Presbyterian minister. And as a kid, I seriously loved church. I was the kind of kid who really enjoyed ah youth group Bible studies, just being around and part of our community. Taylor Scott-Reimer — But over time, as I grew up and kind of moved away from my home church and encountered wider Christianity and the wider church world, I started to notice something that when we were having those conversations about leadership and calling and just more of the business and leadership side of church, it was really like the women in the room disappeared. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And of course, not physically, they were often there, but there was something going on spiritually. We were expected to serve, but not to speak, to show up, but to not shape. And as I worked in ministry myself, I started to experience this deep ache that maybe maybe my voice didn’t belong. Maybe I was wrong on this issue. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And “She Believed” was really born out of this ache. When I became a mom to my daughter and then to my son, I really was experiencing this tension of wanting to pass on a faith that affirmed and liberated and introduced my daughter to my personal savior, Jesus. Taylor Scott-Reimer — But that also was ah enough for my son to be able to respect and to understand women as co-creators of the new garden. So that led me to writing “She Believed”. And it’s a reclaiming of space for myself, yes, but more importantly, for the many women who love Jesus deeply and yet have been told that they’re not allowed to lead boldly. Rich Birch — Well, want to, so you’ve said something that really caught my attention that I want to kind of double click on and hear a little bit more. You said that there’s a deep but quiet pain. That that is a it’s powerful phraseology, uh, that many women experience in the church. Tell me about that. Talk that through, help us unpack that. What does that actually look like? What is that? How does that show up in a woman’s life? How is that, you know, how have you experienced that? How do you see that happening around us? How could that be happening in our church? Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think it’s the pain of just being spiritually disqualified whether explicitly or implicitly. It’s sitting in pews week after week but never really hearing a woman’s story preached. Never really seeing a woman and lead from a pulpit and never being asked what you think God is saying and being invited to bring your unique female perspective to the church. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And that that kind of exclusion isn’t always loud, but I think what’s really insidious about it is that it’s formative. And over time, it teaches women to shrink their faith to fit a mold which stifles our spiritual growth, our creativity, and our courage. And as a result, we as a church, we miss out on the fullness of discipleship because half of the church is watching from the sidelines instead of participating on the field. Rich Birch — Well, yeah, and I would echo that this this, you know, the issue you’re pushing on here has been my experience when I’ve interacted with prevailing churches that are making a huge difference. I look around those tables and I see it’s not all it’s not all men. There are often lots of women in the room leading, which is wonderful. Obviously a good thing we want want to we want to have have happen. We want to continue to kind of accelerate that. Rich Birch — But my so my assumption, my thought as you’re as you’re as I was kind of listening to you unpacking what you talked about in in “She Believed”, is that this kind of quietening, silencing, sidelining, like that can happen even in a church that would maybe even theologically be like, I’m totally okay with having women lead, you know, and in all positions. Even in that, we’re not talking about churches that even necessarily just have a theological, you know, can, you know, bent towards limiting women’s voices. It can happen even in, ah you know, more, you know, in other churches. Is that true? Help us understand that. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, 100%. I think that is completely true. It’s it’s that difference between it’s not necessarily explicit exclusion, but it’s insidious and it it creeps up into our churches, whether we realize it or not. And I think it’s helpful to have these conversations where we can call it out and we can work and really ask the women who are around the table, if they are around the table, what is your actual experience? And creating such an environment where we can really dig into that. Because, Rich, this is important stuff. This is half the body of Christ we’re talking about. Rich Birch — 100%. Yes. Yes. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And yeah, yeah, we can do better. Rich Birch — Absolutely. Well, and there’s that great irony of like, and I’ve said this in other contexts as well, not just in the kind of talking about this issue. The great irony is you walk into most churches and 60% the people, it’s even 50%, 60% of the people, 70% of the people in that room are women. Lots of churches skew towards there being more women engaged than men engaged. And even in those environments, there this I can see this happen.
Rich Birch — Well, in your book, you offer a three-step framework, something for us to think about. Can you help us kind of think through, even at a high level, to kind of talk that through a little bit? Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, totally. So high level, right off the bat, the framework is really simple. I think we need to be reframing the narrative, restoring the practice, and reclaiming the voice. So this really starts with our theology. Taylor Scott-Reimer — So how we preach, how we teach, and how we talk about women in scripture. While writing this book, I encountered so many sources that delved into the stories of women in the Bible, but were so obviously written by men and centering the male experience of those texts. Reading things about how, ah you know, Rahab, when the Jewish spies go and ah scout out the city and they join her in a brothel and the text doesn’t address why are they in the brothel. What’s going on there? And what what would it have been like for Rahab, a woman, to not only have been exploited economically and societally, but then have the opportunity to meet God.
Taylor Scott-Reimer — And that’s that’s such a different conversation, that’s such a different sermon when it’s preached by ah by a woman and through her lived experience. So this really, really starts foundationally with reframing the narrative. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And then it moves into church practice. So how we create space for women to serve and lead in meaningful ways. And meaningful ways is the important part here. Ways that allow them to show up authentically as their full selves. Taylor Scott-Reimer — I’m a new mom myself, so showing up at a church and being told that I can listen to the sermon, but it’s in the family room. Or I can listen to the sermon, ah but I’m going to be in the hallway with my children during it. These are real, real things that are happening. Taylor Scott-Reimer — So we need to think through our physical spaces, but also just the spaces and the culture that we’re creating as a church. Are we allowing, again, I’ve already said it, but half the body of ah believers to show up in a way that’s real to them. And finally, it’s really about voice.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Taylor Scott-Reimer — Helping women rediscover their agency and authority in community and in calling. And again, I really think this comes back to ah reading the stories of women in scripture and hearing their voices and interpreting it ah with a female-centered lens. Taylor Scott-Reimer — It’s not a to-do list for churches, but it is a reimagining of what a healthy, vibrant discipleship can look like when women are no longer missing from the story, but are able to see themselves as important aspects of of this story Rich Birch — Love it. I love it. And, you know, I got to say a part of what your work convicted me, even as I was reflecting on like, I feel like I’ve, I’ve worked, been a part of, led in great churches that are fantastic places. But even this idea of, I we we’ve never done, I’ve never been a part of like, hey, we’re going to do six weeks on, let’s look at six incredible female leaders in the Bible. Let’s look at six, you know, we just have never, and that would be, that would be the kind of thing that we’ve done in other kinds, like the kind of treatment of the text that we would have done in for other things, but we’ve never done that in this. Rich Birch — I would say we’re the churches I’ve led in. We’re not probably on the extreme where it’s like the only time we talk about it as Proverbs 31 on Mother’s Day. Like that’s the only time we bring it up. It’s not that. But I like this idea of reframing the narrative. Maybe we could unpack that a little bit. Help us kind of imagine and kind of think a bit differently around that. I think that could be a really practical step for people to take away, which is, hey, how can we ensure that we’re infusing, highlighting, taking more time to point out some of the parts of the narrative that maybe we’ve just overlooked in the past? Help help us unpack that. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, well I really think when women only get to see themselves in scripture and in sermons as helpers or background characters in God’s stories, they subconsciously assume that that’s all they’re allowed to be. Taylor Scott-Reimer — But when we can reframe this narrative and really claim it, everything changes. We know representation matters. Theological representation matters. Taylor Scott-Reimer — When we lift up women with voices like Deborah, like the Jewish midwives, Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, Phoebe, Dorcas, suddenly the story gets so much richer. And I really think this is what we’ve been missing as a church. When women begin to see themselves as part of God’s story, they’re able to preach, to build, to speak truth. And what really happens is it’s like spiritual oxygen. It makes room for new callings to emerge, new stories to be told. And the Holy Spirit to come through all of us. Rich Birch — I love that. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that you’re an expert in this area, ask you for some coaching on this. So let’s say I’m like, hey, that sounds like a good idea. Like my natural inclination or what’s that my hesitancy in the back of my brain is like, that’s like a fantastic idea for like a four or six week series. We’re going to do, we’re going to have like six weeks of women preaching on, I’ll have people on my team whatever, preach through all these things. That would be amazing. Rich Birch — But then there’s, there’s a part of me that says, am I just ghettoizing this, this, through that, is that actually helping? Or am I is it one of those situations where helping hurts actually by kind of highlighting um you know the you know, this in kind of its own special thing. It’s like, the you know, it’s the thing that it’s like the churches that do the like, it’s youth Sunday. It’s like, that doesn’t really mean that you’re integrating youth to the church. It just means that you gave as a Sunday up for them. Help me. Maybe I’m just like overthinking it. It’s like, no, Rich, that’s a good idea. You should do that. Help us think through that. What what should we be thinking about? Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, I think the first thing that just comes to mind, Rich, when you say that is if you are a church who isn’t highlighting women’s stories, let’s start with that. If you’ve never done speaker series where you highlighted intentionally ah the the voices of women, maybe this is the push you need ah to to do that. Rich Birch — Right. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Because representation starts with things like that. We need those initiatives. to kind of get the ball rolling. Now, if you’re a church that, you know, again, we said at the beginning it’s 2025, maybe you’ve had these conversations. Maybe this is something that’s already happening in your church. I think getting to the point where we have more mature conversations. One of the things I hear often when I preach through our “She Believes” series is, I didn’t know we were allowed to talk about that in church, or I didn’t know we were allowed to say that out loud. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And I think what’s really healing about these types of conversations is that it shows just the breadth and depth of God’s love for us within the human experience. And it lets us know that we can have these conversations, that God is big enough that we can challenge, we can ask questions, we can say, hey, you know what, what you just said really hurt me or that what you just said wasn’t fair. And be invited to really understand and move through those emotions as our full selves. Taylor Scott-Reimer — God created us with the full spectrum of human emotion. And I often feel that sometimes women are only invited to bring some of those emotions into the church. In small group settings settings, I’ve seen women cry, laugh, really challenge each other. And most importantly, remember who God made them to be. Taylor Scott-Reimer — So this devotional, “She Believed”, is designed to create that space. It’s less about arriving at answers or having a theological debate about women in leadership and spiritual headship and all of those kind of things, and more just about reclaiming that space and allowing people to wrestle honestly and faithfully and bringing in all of their questions. Taylor Scott-Reimer — We’ve seen a lot of conversation in the last little while about deconstruction, reconstruction, all of that stuff. I think this is part of the piece of naming, explaining, and just being ready to hold the whole capacity of human experience and human emotion because God created it and it’s not something scary. Rich Birch — So the, you know, in this you’ve provided, which is fantastic discussion questions, obviously it’s like a, Hey, we could do this in a group. We could have a, you know, conversation. You kind of touched on that little bit. I wonder if you could unpack stories you’ve heard or how has that impacted helped, you know, as you’ve invited people into this discussion to reflect wrestles, you know, and speak together, how, you know any kind of sense of the impact that that’s having or any kind of interesting stories along that line? Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, I would say one of the things that really struck me is I just finished preaching through “She Believed” at my home church where I grew up and where I was raised. Many, many women in our congregation came up to me afterwards with tears in their eyes just, and I realized in that moment that a lot of our older generations of believers haven’t been invited to have these conversations out in the open. Taylor Scott-Reimer — They’re conversations that have happened in the kitchen and in the nursery, but not necessarily from the pulpit. And allowing the older generation of women to be affirmed, and to have the ways in which patriarchy has hurt them named is a deeply, deeply healing experience. But also for younger women like myself, new moms, women working, being able to see the the stories of scripture without the sanitized lens of helpers, what have you, has been super helpful. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And cultural cues are powerful, especially especially in the church. So you can have all the right theology about women’s leadership on paper, but if your platform never reflects that, the signal doesn’t land. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Modeling is a ministry in and of itself, And when women see others women, women leading with authority, with authenticity, showing up as themselves with breast milk stained shirts and [inaudible], we normalize it. And that’s how we build a church that’s that’s more reflective of God’s kingdom and frankly, more suited for a ministry in 2025, where we’re stripping back the camera. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So good. And again, I think this would be a great ah great resource for church leaders to pick up, to wrestle through, to think about, you know, to have you come and speak. I think there’s lots that could happen there. I think that’s amazing. Rich Birch — This is a bit of an unfair question. I asked my friend Kadi Cole this when she was on the episode. I should have told you this ahead of time. I’m pulling the rug out from underneath of you. Taylor Scott-Reimer — All right, let’s do it. Rich Birch — But hopefully we’re friends enough to ask this question. So and I know this book is not really answering that question. You’re not really wrestling with what I’m about to ask you. But I just want you’re in this. You’re thinking about these things. Rich Birch — Do you think that if you think of the the broadly evangelical church, not like people ask me if I’m evangelical, it’s like, it depends on what you mean by that. Like, if you mean someone who takes the teaching of Jesus seriously, yes, I am evangelical. if If that’s what you mean, there’s lots of other cultural freight to that word that I don’t associate with. But I’m, you know, like in that in that church, whatever that church is, however you describe that, do do you think that this, the issue here is more of a sticky floor issue or a glass ceiling? Is it more that women are not leaning in where there’s maybe more opportunity there than then there they’re choosing to be a part of? Or is it a glass ceiling problem? There’s actually like systemic, and maybe it’s it’s obviously both. Rich Birch — There’s obviously both of those dynamics happening. But which of those do you think is kind of the the side of the equation that we need to be thinking about or should be wrestling with. Again, it’s not, it’s it’s adjacent to “She Believed”. It’s not directly what you’re talking about. But but what do what do you think? Again, unfair question. What do you think? Taylor Scott-Reimer — No, I love it, Rich. That’s awesome. I think you were already kind of pointed to it, but I do think it’s both. It is a glass ceiling issue of if there’s no room, there’s no room. We need to make room. But it is also a little bit of the the need to just empower daughters of Christ ah to to take that space. And if it’s not available to make that space. Taylor Scott-Reimer — I notice a lot of the times in my own experience of evangelical Christian world, however you define it, there’s a lot of mentoring opportunities for for Christian young men um that Christian women aren’t being invited into. I think of an example for myself. Taylor Scott-Reimer — I went to a Christian university. I absolutely loved my experience there. But I had professors who abided by the Billy Graham rule, right, of not being a alone with a woman. How does that translate into career opportunities and mentorship for daughters of Christ if their professors won’t sit down and have a conversation with them? How does that transfer into internships and pastoral ministry if people aren’t engaging with women in that mentoring capacity to affirm their gifts, but to also tell them ah how to use them for the church. Taylor Scott-Reimer — I think ah women are grieving this, and the church is grieving this. We’re missing out on half of the body because of it. But some of the most powerful leadership I’ve seen really comes through this grief and this acknowledgement that it is both of those issues, the glass ceiling, we need to make the space, we need to do the work, but it is also empowering daughters of Christ to to live to their calling. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, so good. and ah And I’ve talked about this on other episodes, but like my own personal experience with the Billy Graham rule, like I have a ah certain sense of I have been the benefactor. Listen, I am a like middle-aged white guy. I am like, I check a lot of the boxes that are, you know, born in a fairly affluent family in the West, white guy, you know, at ah at of a great time. Rich Birch — I was born in 1974, the lowest birthright year of the 20th century, which gave me a significant leg up. And I, in that particular issue, I have, there ah there was a a, and I’ve said that I’m only saying this again to to point out ah to other folks. I’m not trying to make this about me, but there was a week early on in my ministry. I was a young leader in my twenties where we were trying, we were stuck as a church. And like, there was another church, a very large church, literally like 10 times our size, who I knew they had solved this problem. And I reached out to a leader there and I said, listen, can I just come and hang out at your church for the week? Rich Birch — And he was like, what? And I was like, yeah, I just want to like sit in in all your meetings and like take a bunch of notes and you don’t have to talk to me. You don’t need to you don’t need to do anything. I just want to be around. I just want to try to see what I can learn from that experience. And he graciously said yes. By the end of that week where I’m like having dinner at his house, hanging out, um you know. We’ve become friends. We’re now lifelong friends. That week was absolutely an inflection point in my leadership. Like I was like, oh, my goodness, I saw things differently.
Taylor Scott-Reimer — Right. Rich Birch — I know that that leader, if I was a woman that had called him and said, hey, can I just hang out for the week? I don’t think that would have happened. I think he would have said, ah well, maybe come, we got a conference coming up next month or next year. Why don’t you come to the conference and we can, why don’t we see each other after a session or something like would have been probably what he would have said. That’s, and that’s not a slight on him. That’s just a slight on the culture. What’s all all around that. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah. Rich Birch — And so, yeah, that’s a, that is a very real issue. I think we have to create that space. So you touched the Billy Graham rule and it like touched a part of me and I was like, oh, I got to talk about that. So yeah. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Right? Rich Birch — Well, let’s get back to your content. So you’ve given us a ah PDF that we’re going to link to. It’s called Seven Days to Reclaim Your Voice, a devotional guide for women. And I would say men. I went through this. I think this is fantastic. I know what you mean by that. But I think this a fantastic resource. Talk to us about this resource. We’ll link to it. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, awesome. So this is this a great resource to kind of get the the ball rolling, whether that’s ah around the table in your staff meetings or for your own personal use. The resource works through seven women of scripture, and it’s a quick daily reflection. And then my book, “She Believed”, which is coming out later this summer and will be available on Amazon, really delves into these topics in a fuller way. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Again, I think we’ve mentioned this, but something I’ve really intentionally done with She Believed is this is not this is not the place for a theological argument.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Taylor Scott-Reimer — This is the place for women and men, by extension, who have been hurt by the church, have been hurt by the ways that patriarchy has played out in the church and that ah that need ah that pastoral hug um and that commissioning that you are doing God’s work and there is ah there’s a lot of work to be done. Rich Birch — Yeah, I really appreciate this fantastic. And I appreciate you redirecting. I’ve been pushing us towards, let’s talk about this issue. And I know obviously it’s connected to what you’re talking about, but but I love the underlying push of like, hey, we got to get back to scripture. Let’s look at these stories. Let’s engage women on this and let’s ensure that we’re looking at ah scripture from that lens. I think is is critically important. Rich Birch — Listen, there might be some pastors that are listening who want to do better. They’re like, they’ve they have listened to this conversation and they’re like, man, I really do want to take a new start here. I feel like we’ve got a you know, I would say a step they could take would be to buy your book, which we’ll talk in a minute where people can get that when it comes out. Rich Birch — But what what’s another kind of step or something they should be thinking about as kind of a first step in this direction to be like, Hey, we need to do a better job kind of regardless of where they’re at in this, in this area. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, totally. I would say ah next little bit, low hanging fruit look at ah look at the narrative that you’re telling from the pulpit. Look at your preaching calendar for the next few months and ask whose stories are we telling? Whose voices are we centering?
Rich Birch — So good.
Taylor Scott-Reimer — This might be looking and seeing who the preachers are, like we’ve already talked about. Are they male or female? But also, are we preaching about all male prophets? Are we preaching about all male disciples? Can we do better here? Can we include some of these voices that have been historically disenfranchised? Taylor Scott-Reimer — And then go deeper, invite women in your congregation into that conversation.
Rich Birch — So good.
Taylor Scott-Reimer — I wanna say to your pastors listening, particularly if they’re male pastors, is this isn’t all on you. Tap in, see who’s in your conversation, ask them what kinds of stories or sermons that they wish they heard of more often. I think oftentimes as pastors and ministers, people assume it’s all on them, but people in your congregation will be able to give you a sense of what’s actually happening beside behind the scenes.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Small groups are a great place to start these conversations where people already know each other more intimately and can speak more authentically. The goal isn’t to really overhaul everything overnight, but it is to start seeing what’s missing and to commit to filling those gaps with courage and care. Rich Birch — Well, where do we want to send people to ah pick up not a copy, but copies? I think this would be, to me, this is done best in community. It’s like, this is a staff team resource. This is a, hey, we’re going to do with our small groups. We’re going to buy couple hundred copies and do with the entire church. Like it’s that kind of thing. I think it’s it’s best made for in community. Where do we want to send people to pick up copies? Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, 100%. So the book is coming out this August. So you can find, or you will be able to find “She Believed” on Amazon, both print and ebook formats. And if you head to my website, which we provided for you, ah there’s a free downloadable discussion guide that we’ve kind of already highlighted and mentioned to help guide you to use it in starting these conversations. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And yeah, you can follow me on Instagram @taylorreimer96 and stick along for the journey. I’m really, really excited about this project. It’s it’s kind of a new thing for me to be stepping into. And I just, I’m really passionate about it. And I’m so thankful, Rich, for the opportunity to share it with you and your listeners. Rich Birch — Yeah, any any last words, last encouragements you’d say ah just as we wrap up today’s episode? Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, I was struck by a line this morning. I’m I’m of ah a certain demographic. I believe we’re called Zennials. I think that’s what it is. I’m the Gen Z Millennial kind of. Rich Birch — Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so full disclosure, was on TikTok this morning and I saw a TikTok… Rich Birch — That’s great. Taylor Scott-Reimer — …like why… Yeah, yeah. How hard could it be – boys do it? And it was young women showing what they don’t think that they’re able to do, but men do all the time. Taylor Scott-Reimer — And I was kind of struck by: how hard could it be boys do it? And I think that’s something we as women in the church need to remember. Rich Birch — That’s good. Taylor Scott-Reimer — People do it. We can do it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Well, this has been great. Listen, I want to like honor you publicly. I thank you for writing this book. I thank you for sticking your neck out here and raising a good question, doing it in just a super elegant way and helping us think through these issues and really hopefully encouraging, you know, some folks to, to think differently and to move forward in this. So I really appreciate this, Taylor. Thanks for being here. Rich Birch — And we’ll link to all of that in the show notes, friends. You can you can get all that there. But thanks for being here today. Thank you so much. Taylor Scott-Reimer — Thank you.
One Prayer That Changed Everything: Building an Invite Culture with Zenzo Matoga
Aug 21, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Zenzo Matoga, Senior Pastor of Impact Church in Boston, Massachusetts. Originally from Malawi, Africa, Zenzo brings a passion for evangelism shaped by the revival crusades of Reinhard Bonnke. Under Zenzo’s leadership, Impact Church has become one of the fastest-growing churches in America, thriving in one of the nation’s most unchurched cities.
Is your church struggling to move evangelism from a program to a culture? Zenzo shares practical strategies and spiritual insights that have helped Impact Church ignite revival in a spiritually dry place, equipping believers to impact one person at a time.
Finding your city’s key. // Every city has a spiritual “key” that unlocks its people, and every church has a unique calling. For Boston, Zenzo identified young professionals as a primary audience. By fostering authenticity and sharing real-life stories, Impact created an atmosphere where unchurched people feel welcomed and understood. Zenzo stresses that pastors must seek God for the specific key to their city rather than copy other churches’ models.
The power of authenticity. // Millennials and Gen Z are drawn to honesty and transparency. At Impact, leaders openly share personal stories—including struggles in marriage or faith—so that people see church as a place of grace, not perfection. This culture of authenticity empowers members to share their testimonies, creating an environment where evangelism feels natural and accessible.
Impact One. // Zenzo’s book “Impact One: The Epic Prayer That Transforms Friends and Family” grew out of a desire to help every believer reach their unchurched loved ones. The book teaches a simple four-step process: First, gain a burden for the lost—pray for God to break your heart for what breaks His. Pray for one—write down three names of people far from God and pray for them. Practice friendship evangelism—become a genuine friend with no agenda. And finally, seal the deal—when the time is right, share your faith boldly. This framework equips everyday believers to live as “producers” of disciples rather than passive attenders.
Embedding evangelism in the culture. // At Impact, evangelism isn’t a program—it’s woven into weekly practices. Every Sunday, the church prays the “Impact One prayer”: God, please give me one person to impact with your love and invite to church. Testimonies of changed lives are shared regularly, reinforcing a culture of outreach. Members are even encouraged to ask one another, “Who did you impact this week?”—keeping evangelism front and center.
Practical systems for connection. // Impact Church uses two creative tools to make disciples. “F15” stands for the first 15 minutes after service, when members are encouraged to treat the lobby like a mission field, seeking out new people rather than gravitating toward friends. The “C.L.O.N.E.” model—Chronology, Location, Occupation, Number, Encouragement—gives members a practical framework for conversations that lead to authentic connections and ongoing discipleship.
Radical worship as evangelism. // Zenzo bridges his background as a worship leader with his passion for evangelism. He believes radical, joy-filled worship breaks spiritual strongholds and attracts unbelievers seeking something beyond what the world offers. In a city defined by intellectualism and materialism, Impact’s passionate worship embodies the presence of God in a way that draws people to conviction and freedom.
From evangelism to discipleship. // Impact emphasizes that inviting someone to church is only the beginning. Members are encouraged to disciple those they bring—offering rides, inviting them to small groups, and walking with them through life. This relational approach ensures that evangelism naturally flows into discipleship.
To learn more about Impact Church and Pastor Zenzo’s resources, visit impactpeople.org. His book Impact One: The Epic Prayer That Transforms Friends and Family is available on Amazon and other online retailers.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation, an opportunity to dive in on a conversation that really all of our churches should be wrestling with. Rich Birch — Honored, privileged to have Zenzo Matoga with us. He is the senior pastor at a church called Impact Church that has, if I’m counting correctly, two locations in Massachusetts. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. He’s also a seasoned worship leader. And I think this is a first for our podcast, a Dove Award nominated songwriter and author. So excited to have you on this the show today, Zenzo. Thank you for being here. Zenzo Matoga — Thank you so much for having me, Rich. It’s such an honor to be here with you. Rich Birch — This is wonderful. Impact has experienced you know incredible growth in these last number of years. And I’d love for you to kind of tell us a little bit about the church, bring us up on the journey and and tell us what God’s doing in your church these days. Zenzo Matoga — Yes, so this next month here in September we’re going to be celebrating 10 years. So it’s been 10 years of ministry and we are in Boston, Massachusetts of all the places in the world. Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — It’s been named the fifth most unchurched city in all of America. And so um you know people told me Boston is a very dry place and I thought to myself last time I checked dry places catch on fire faster than any other place it’s so so that…
Rich Birch — Oh, I like that. I like that. Nothing like a a cemetery for if you want a resurrection, right? Same thing.
Zenzo Matoga — There you go. There you go. That got us excited, you know, but it’s been an honor you know to do ministry here, you know, 10 years of incredible ministry. I’m originally from Malawi, Africa Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Okay. Zenzo Matoga — Very, very small country. So it’s humbling to be in this nation and preaching the gospel. Yes, I’m a worship leader first. So I started leading worship in what we call the African revivals that were led by a man called Reinhard Bonnke, who literally saw 79 million salvations in those crusades. And so I just adopted this passion for evangelism, this this passion for evangelism.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zenzo Matoga — Except back then it used to happen through crusades, big crusades. And when I moved to America the Lord said teach the Americans how to win their unchurched loved ones.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zenzo Matoga — That’s gonna be the key to evangelism. So in a nutshell, we’ve built Impact Church on that, you know, the Great Commission. That’s why we named the church Impact Church. It says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. Zenzo Matoga — And so, yeah, make disciples. Who make disciples? Who make disciples? Who make disciples? And that’s church growth. That’s revival. It was never meant to be rocket science, if you’re making disciples, not converts. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I’m looking forward to digging in and learning from you today and and the good just the good stories, the good things that are happening at Impact. Rich Birch — You know, many pastors want a vibrant evangelism and discipleship culture at their church, but it really is can be really challenging for many churches to create that. Why do you think that is? What are some of the obstacles that you’ve seen other churches face, you know, why why do you think this is? It’s like so core to who we’re supposed to be, but why is it why is it so tough so so so many times? Zenzo Matoga — Yeah. Well, number one, I believe that the very art of making disciples was never meant to be too easy. There are challenges there, but there are beautiful challenges. So if you’re facing challenges, hey, welcome to the club. You’re heading in the right direction. Don’t be discouraged. Rich Birch — Yes. Zenzo Matoga — I also feel that many pastors and churches and leaders, they they copy from other churches, you know. And it’s okay to learn from others, right? But when you’re copying something and you don’t receive it by revelation, because listen, to Moses, he said, use a stick. To Joshua, he said, march around the city. The power was not in walking around and the power was definitely not in the stick. The power was in the instruction, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — And so I think it’s good to to pray, study your city. There’s a key that unlocks every city. You got to find that key. Whoever finds that key will unlock that city. Zenzo Matoga — And so, and I think, ah and you can learn what others are doing, right? But sometimes people copy things, but then they just, they don’t follow through, or they start and they stop and they try something else, and then they try something else and then they go to that conference, pick up something else and try. Because most of these strategies, you got to, you got to see them through and you got to be patient.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Zenzo Matoga — You got to be patient for them to produce, you know. It’s like, you know, revival sometimes is like pounding the ground so that you can build a spring or rather you can break ground so that there can be a spring that gushes out. But you can’t just do that. You can’t do that for two days. You can’t do that for one day, you know. And sometimes you encounter rocks and you’ve got to break through that and keep going. And so I feel like sometimes people start and stop, start and stop. There has to be a long-term commitment to the strategy that the Lord gives you. Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, there’s a lot there I’d love to unpack. You talk about ah you know every seat every city has a key that to unlock you know that and and leaders are part of our job is to find that. Unpack that a bit more. Tell me a little bit about that. What has that looked like for you at Impact as you’ve considered? I do think as, ah ah I think there’s an interesting advantage that you have as someone from outside the culture coming in to to see the culture. I actually think that’s a huge strategic advantage that God’s given you. So help us understand that. Unpack that a little bit more. Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, for sure. You know, every city has a key. Whoever has that key and will unlock it, you know. Zenzo Matoga — And so, yeah, I think it’s good to study your city. And also every church has a calling, right? I don’t think I don’t think our churches are supposed to reach everybody. I think you have to know who you’re called to reach, you know. And then find the key that unlocks those type of people. For us here in Boston, We wanted to reach you know young professionals. And amazingly, in doing that, they brought their parents and later on grandparents, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — But we wanted to focus on those. And so one, I wanted to create a welcoming a welcoming atmosphere, welcoming environment. I wanted to create a culture that was authentic because Millennials, Gen Zs, Gen Alphas, you know, you can’t reach them if you’re not authentic. Zenzo Matoga — So from the get, I knew that I was going to use personal stories. It was going to be self-duplicating stories, but with integrity, right? Like the like the young people say, not forcing anything, but just really telling them here’s a story. I started talking about the issues my wife and I had um at the beginning of our marriage. I mean we’ve been married 19 years and always say we’ve had the best 16 years of our lives you know because the first three, first three was very rough.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zenzo Matoga — She’s she’s Italian American. I’m African and I quickly found out that the the jungle spirit in me did not agree with the mafia spirit in our you know so we almost started World War III, you know.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Zenzo Matoga — But we we we were going to tell our stories, we were going to utilize humor, we were going to be honest, and we were going to train the young people to also be authentic. Tell your story. One the best things you can ever do is tell your story, you know. Zenzo Matoga — We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. you know And they did not love their lives to shrink back from death. Sometimes people are afraid to share their story, your powerful testimony. Let people know what God has done. It creates an atmosphere where where there’s a culture of grace where people are not afraid of church people and they think like they’re better than us, you know, or I’ll never be like them. Zenzo Matoga — I’ll never, you know, I’m drinking right now and I’m smoking and I’m doing this. I’ll probably never be like them. Well, a bunch of us used to do that, you know. So if you can tell your story, share your testimony, create an authentic environment. Zenzo Matoga — I don’t know how much to share now, but also, you know, from from the book Impact One, let me just jump in that. I wanted to teach our church members how to reach their unchurched loved ones. To me, the key to Boston was if I can teach a typical churchgoer how to reach your unchurched loved ones, if I can teach you to just impact one, right? Zenzo Matoga — In the next three months, if I can just teach you to impact one person, bring them into the house of God, and then, you know, some people can impact three, some can maybe do five, but every year, every believer has to be a producing believer, not a barren producer. I mean, not a barren believer. And so yeah, I wrote that book. I wrote that book just for the members of our church. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — It’s a small book, four chapters only. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — Chapter one is ah is is just get the burden for the lost. Ask God to break you with what breaks his heart concerning the lost. Start weeping again for the lost. You know, number two, pray for the one. So right just write three names down of people you want to win for Jesus, right? Rich Birch — I love that. Zenzo Matoga — Those people you’re eating Thanksgiving dinner with, you know, write write a few of those names. The people the the person who’s always next to you in the gym working out, right you know, write their name down. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Zenzo Matoga — And then chapter three was simple. Just become a good friend. Friendship evangelism. Just become a good friend. Billy Graham, before he passed away, he said he believes after doing all the crusades that this present day of America, that the best form of evangelism is friendship evangelism. Zenzo Matoga — Sometimes Christians are not good friends. Just learn how to be a good friend. Rich Birch — Sure. Zenzo Matoga — You know and we we taught our church just be a good friend for a season with no strings attached. Just really show interest in those people. Zenzo Matoga — And then number four is seal the deal. You know, sealing the deal means wait for the right moment. You know, they will ask you, they will ask you, where does your joy come from? You know, why are you not shaking about this? You talk about this church thing all the time. Tell me about that. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Zenzo Matoga — You know, a door open, then you seal the deal, you know. But ride the waves. Rich Birch — Step in. Zenzo Matoga — Ride the waves of the Holy Spirit like surfing. You know. And so let the opportunity be created. So to us, that was I think that was the key you know in a nutshell…
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Zenzo Matoga — …creating a welcoming atmosphere where there was authenticity and a culture of grace and then teaching these young people you know how to win Jesus. Zenzo Matoga — And I think the final thing for me being a worshiper was we wanted to create an atmosphere where there was radical worship, radical worship. I’m in Boston. You know, it’s the mecca of education. Rich Birch — Yes. Zenzo Matoga — We have a quarter a million students. We have the most students than any other city in the world. We have Harvard University, MIT. And I felt a bit insecure, if I can be honest, ah Rich. Zenzo Matoga — I was like, OK, I’m an African kid. I come from the third poorest country in the world. And I got no college degree, you know. Because I went into music route I wanted to go to school for music I couldn’t afford it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zenzo Matoga — …and I just dove straight into music and the Lord blessed that, but I felt insecure. And the Lord said hey one of the keys to Boston is the foolishness of worship. I will confound the wisdom of the wise with the foolishness of radical worship and joy. Radical worship and joy, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zenzo Matoga — And so we worship radically and I found that people are looking you know for for for… Rich Birch — That’s so good. Zenzo Matoga — …a radical version of believers again, You know, people are not looking for ah nice alternative of what they’re already doing. No, they’re looking for something vibrant, something that’s embedded in revival and radical worship…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Zenzo Matoga — …and joy, joy, joy, joy. Yeah. Rich Birch — I love that. I’d love to, we’re I’m going to put a a bookmark in that. I want to come back to that in a minute, but yeah I want to loop back on something you said earlier. You know, my sense is that one of the things you’ve been able to do at Impact is really see evangelism as a culture. It’s not a, it’s not a program. It’s not like a, hey, here’s a, you know, do this thing. It’s like a part of who we are. Talk us through how that um works itself out at Impact. What how are you ensuring that reaching out to unchurched folks in Boston, Bostonians, is a culture of impact rather than just a program? What’s that look like? Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, Rich, I believe that’s the that’s the key, is that sometimes we go on this journey of making evangelism or discipleship these systems and classes. And and nothing wrong with that to supplement and complement what you have. But I believe that evangelism and discipleship has to be embedded in the culture of the church.
Rich Birch — Yep. Zenzo Matoga — On our worst Sunday, we’re evangelistic and we’re making disciples. And so what what does that mean? For us, it’s simple. You know, yet again, for me, it kind of goes back to that book because I wrote that book to release that evangelism culture you know for our church. Zenzo Matoga — I think, one, it begins a prayer. Are we praying for the lost? Are we earnestly praying for lost? But before we pray for the lost, are we broken with what breaks the heart of God concerning our city, the burden to see them? You know, are we do we want them saved just because we want our churches to grow, or do we sincerely want them to know God and not go to hell, right? That simple. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zenzo Matoga — And so I think it starts there. And then after that, you know, we’ve started making it a culture. So every single Sunday, we pray this prayer, God, please give me one person to impact with your love and invite church. Rich Birch — So good. Zenzo Matoga — We pray that in our services every single Sunday. And then after that, Rich, we we show stories of people who have been impacted. Rich Birch — That’s good. Zenzo Matoga — Because yet again, testimonies are so powerful. Last Sunday, we showed the story of Teddy. You know, Teddy was coming to Impact Church because a family friend invited him to church. Remember the prayer, God, please give me one person to impact with your love and invite church. So somebody prayed that prayer, and then invited Teddy to church. That was, he was their impact one prayer. And there are times when we pray that prayer, remember, we write three names down, practical. We write three names down. So somebody had Teddy as one of their… Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Zenzo Matoga — …and then invited him to church. He started coming to church, you know, kind of still drinking and doing other things, you know, and then kind of started coming to church and started dating this young lady. Zenzo Matoga — And, you know, she got pregnant out of wedlock. But we continued to disciple them because it has to transition from evangelism to discipleship. We started reaching out to them one-on-one and some of our pastors and group leaders just discipling them. Long story short, those two are married now. They’ve got a child. And Teddy now leads our men’s groups, man. Rich Birch — So good. Zenzo Matoga — This young man is shepherding and caring for young men in our church, just men in general. And those groups have they’ve multiplied over and over and over and over, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zenzo Matoga — And this summer we’re believing God for another 20 or so just, you know and he’s he’s the coach over that. So so yet again after the prayer you write the names down, we show the story so that people see it in real time of a life that has been changed, you know. And then after that in service we have this 60 seconds, social seconds, where we tell people to go greet one another. And they ask each other the question, who did you impact this week? You know, so you you’ve prayed the impact one prayer and you’ve seen the impact story. Rich Birch — Right. Zenzo Matoga — We call them stories of impact. You’ve seen an impact story. And then you have the chance to walk around, greet somebody and ask them, and hold them accountable. Who did you impact this week?
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Zenzo Matoga — If they didn’t impact anybody, hey, come back next Sunday with the story of who you impacted, you know? Rich Birch — Right. I love that. Zenzo Matoga — And then that’s what’s happening in the service, right? So that that’s the evangelistic portions in the service, you know? And then I take ah take once a year and and in our series, and I do a whole series on how to win the lost. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great. Zenzo Matoga — But then also in all my messages, there’s going to be a portion somewhere in all my messages where I’m talking about evangelism. Zenzo Matoga — And then like was all this is happening inside the auditorium. Now, outside the auditorium, God gave us something called F15, and I wrote it in the book. So F15 is a code, you know, and it’s funny because when we got F15, I said, yeah, I think we officially code. That’s a joke, by the way. Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Zenzo Matoga — But F15 simply stands for the first 15 minutes after church.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah. Zenzo Matoga — Don’t go to your cliques in the lobby. Rich Birch — Okay, yeah. Zenzo Matoga — Don’t run to your cliques. Don’t run to the people you already know. We treat during F15 during the first 15 minutes of service being over we treat our lobbies like a mission field. You sacrifice wanting to run to Jimmy because you’re buddies, you probably know Jimmy’s phone number and you probably can hang out and go to lunch later. But we’re going to sacrifice the first 15 minutes after service to look in…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Zenzo Matoga — …our lobbies and parking lot for somebody who looks like they’re new to church, you know. And we’re going to and impact them, you know. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Zenzo Matoga — And how do we impact them? God gave us something as well called C.L.O.N.E., right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Zenzo Matoga — Because the Lord said, go make disciples. So go clone yourself, essentially. Zenzo Matoga — So so C.L.O.N.E., the C stands for chronology. So during the F15, you walk to somebody, ah chronology, and you say, hey, how long have you been coming to Impact Church? Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Zenzo Matoga — And they’ll tell you five months, six months. Or today is my first day. And the L is location. Hey where do you live? Where do you live?
Rich Birch — Oh, so good.
Zenzo Matoga — And the O is occupation, you know – hey so what do you do for a living? And the N stands for number or mode of communication, you know. And I hear these days you don’t ask for phone numbers, so hey stands for DM’s as well – hey what’s your DM? You know.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. What’s your Instagram handle? What’s your, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zenzo Matoga — Yes, there you go, there you go. What’s your Instagram handle, how can I find you? And what’s remaining? The E. The E is encouragement. Hey, I’m so glad you came to Impact Church. I can’t wait to see you next Sunday. Do you have a ride? We can come pick you up. You can sit with our crew. We can hang out together. Zenzo Matoga — I’ll see you right here, the same place next Sunday. And so I share with you all the stuff that are happening in the auditorium every single Sunday. Rich Birch — Yes. Zenzo Matoga — By the way, I’m giving you our secret sauce here, man. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, it’s good. It’s good. Love it. Zenzo Matoga — We need to give this because we need to win America for Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Zenzo Matoga — And then these are things that are happening outside the lobby, you know. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And are you… Zenzo Matoga — And then part of the encouragement… Rich Birch — Where are you talking about F15? Like, are you, how often are you, because I love that. I think practically training our people on, hey, this exactly what you should do at the end of the service. Man, I think that’s transformational. Are you talking about that in that once a year series? Are you regularly kind of encouraging people? Hey, remember after the service today, we’re cloning, get a chance to talk to someone. What’s that look like? Zenzo Matoga — Yes, I’m talking about that to the whole church when I do that that series in the year. But I’m telling Vision Sunday, I drop it again, Vision Sunday. Because I’m talking about our vision of the Impact Church. Our vision is to impact you so you can impact your world. To me, that’s the definition of discipleship. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. Zenzo Matoga — I’m not just impacting you to become a convert who comes, sit down. Zenzo Matoga — I’m impacting you so you can impact your world. What’s your world? Your world is your business, your family, your workplace, and all those people. So we’re talking about that, yes, from the pulpit. Zenzo Matoga — But in our leadership trainings, right, in our leadership orientations, in our growth tracks, next steps, classes, all that stuff, we’re talking about that. If you’re becoming a member of the church, if you’re getting assimilated into our church, we are putting this burden here, this beautiful, we call it the beautiful burden on you to be able to do that. Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — And not only are we talking about it, yet again, Rich, we’re doing it every Sunday. I’m praying the impact one prayer every Sunday after worship. We’re sharing the impact story. And then people are going to one another and asking, who have you impacted this week?
Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — And then I’m doing I’m doing the series and teaching people, get the burden, you know, pray for the one, you know, write the names down. And and friendship evangelism, how do you become a good friend? How do you do that? How, you know, Jesus became a friend to Zacchaeus, you know. And then he waited for the conviction. Zenzo Matoga — You know, it wasn’t Jesus who was like, change your life, do this. He just became a good friend. And the conviction came and then he sealed the deal. You know. So you teach the people how to seal the deal boldly with boldness.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Zenzo Matoga — You know, when somebody tells you, I’m struggling with this, don’t don’t don’t you bash, don’t don’t you become bashful. And you seal that deal with boldness. So I release the gift of faith over the people. I pray over them. And I during our impact one prayer, I tell them, hey, I pray and I’m believing God that before, you know, right now we’re in August. Zenzo Matoga — So I’m telling them before the close of this year, I am believing that every member of this church will be responsible for at least one soul coming to the saving knowledge of Jesus. And we release the gift of faith and the burden, you Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — Yeah. And then part of the E.
Rich Birch — Sorry. Go ahead.
Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, I got to say this part of the E in encouragement in the clone, right, is also, hey, you can be a part of our small group.
Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — So that E there is the final piece that transition you from evangelism to discipleship. If you invite somebody to church, you are responsible for also discipling them. So you’re responsible to not only bring them into the house of God, but you’re also responsible to invite them to your crew, invite them to your small group, give them a ride and see them through and just walk with them. Zenzo Matoga — You know, and so that’s what creates evangelism and discipleship as a culture versus making announcements on a Sunday morning for people to attend some class. Rich Birch — Yes. Zenzo Matoga — That’s supplementary, man. We have that stuff too, but it’s supplemental. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Zenzo Matoga — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s so good. I love, well, first of all, I want to underline, I think it’s great how practical you’ve made this. You’ve you’ve given really clear next steps. I love that you’re training your people around this. I want to loop back because I said I was going to, and I’m intrigued to hear your thoughts on this around radical worship. Rich Birch — I you know, I love that your background, you obviously are a passionate evangelist and you obviously are a passionate worship leader. And I think there can be a false dichotomy in a lot of churches that like those, that you can’t be a church that’s focused on reaching unchurched people at the same time as being a passionate worship environment. We sometimes see those as opposed to each other. Rich Birch — Unpack that for me. How do those two work? Cause I would agree with you. I think, one of the changes I’ve seen in unchurched people over the time I’ve served is I do think what you’re talking about there is true. I think people are coming to church looking for something different than they were 20, 30 years ago. They and I think worship is a part of that. So unpack that. Talk me through the connection between radical worship and reaching unchurched people. How do those two things work together in your mind or and how are they working themselves out at Impact? Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, and Rich, it’s Acts chapter 16, right? Paul and Silas ended up in the jail cell, and they were in there. What were they doing? Prayer and worship. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Zenzo Matoga — It was so radical the other jailers heard them. It says to me it was loud and it was radical. Because because it’s loud in jail.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Zenzo Matoga — But people heard them. People heard them. And it was so radical it caused an earthquake, man. Rich Birch — Love it. Zenzo Matoga — And what happened? Chains broke. It wasn’t just the chains of the two people who were singing. It was the chains of everybody who was exposed to the worship…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zenzo Matoga — …and the and the radical environment.
Zenzo Matoga — And what amazes me is that at the end of that, it says when the jailer saw that all the prisoners had ran away, right, he ran to them and and and they found him almost killing himself. He was almost committing suicide. You know, and they say to him, man, my guy, chill out, man. We’re good. You know, ah and then he says to him, what should I do? What should I do, you know, to be saved? You know, paraphrasing. Zenzo Matoga — There was, so two things happened because of radical worship. Chains broke and there was a conviction. There was a conviction for someone who was lost, you know. And I just believe that’s what happens, you know. And I may we be set free from gimmicks because the Jesus we serve is powerful enough to get the job done. If we can just bring him down. He says, if I be lifted up, he says, I will draw men to myself. Zenzo Matoga — And so don’t believe me. Believe the scripture. If we lift him up and if we praise him, I believe there’s a shaking. There’s a spiritual earthquake that comes to us to our regions and our cities. That’s that’s what people are looking for. I mean look at Boston, yet again the fifth most unchurched city. There are spirits of intellectualism here. There’s spirits of humanism here. Spirits of materialism and secularism, every ism you can ever think about, you know. Things are birthed here and then they go to, I always say that the truth is things are birthed in Boston, you know, and then they’re marketed, they’re marketed in in New York markets them, you know, and then California, you know, makes a movie out of them. But they’re really birthed here. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. No, it’s true. Yeah, that’s very true. Zenzo Matoga — And those those those are those are spirits, man, that are holding our cities. And so we you’ve got to pray and the worship, you know, it’s like when Saul would start to have these these tormenting spirits and and David would come and start playing and worship, and these things would be removed. And I think there are things in our cities that need to be removed and when that happens, you know bible says what is this is this, help me out, is this 1 Corinthians 4:4 or 2 Corinthians 4:4 somewhere say it says the god of the god of this age, you know, has has blinded people’s eyes. You know that blindness spiritual blindness has to be removed. And it’s radical worship, it’s a radical worship…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good
Zenzo Matoga — It’s childlike joy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zenzo Matoga — You know, the bible says the joy of Lord is my strength. The bible will also says you know for the spirit of heaviness I’ll give you it says the oil of joy every time you see oil that represents an anointing…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zenzo Matoga — …a yoke breaking power. And so when you lose your joy, you don’t just lose joy. You lose strength and you lose power. You lose this anointing. And so there’s something about this radical joy. You know, when you go to Fenway Park here in Boston, my goodness, there’s joy there. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Zenzo Matoga — When you go to ah the Boston Celtics, man, come on. We were champions before Oklahoma OKC took us off, you know. We got the New England Patriots. We had the days of ah Brady here. Rich Birch — Yes. Zenzo Matoga — You know, it’s you go there and it’s a religion. It’s worship. It’s joy. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Zenzo Matoga — It’s a radical joy. they They don’t bash away from being radical. Man, they take their shirts off. They cuss up a storm. They it’s radical. And the church of Jesus Christ is not going to be outdone by the world…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Zenzo Matoga — …because we invented this joy, man.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Zenzo Matoga — We invented this radical behavior, you know, and it can be done well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Zenzo Matoga — So don’t hold back. Don’t hold back. Rich Birch — I love that. That’s so good. I love I love your thinking and your leadership there. That’s that’s fantastic. Now, I want to point people towards your book. It’s again, it’s “Impact One, The Epic Prayer That Transforms Friends friends and Family”. Rich Birch — I do think this could be a helpful resource for people. I think it’d be kind of thing that church leaders could check out and would help them frame this conversation. Where do where do where can people pick up a copy of that if they want to grab a copy or copies of that? Where do we want to send them to to do that? Zenzo Matoga — Yeah, copies on Amazon, everywhere online. Rich Birch — Yep. Zenzo Matoga — Right now it’s just online. Rich Birch — Yep. Zenzo Matoga — Yet again, I wrote this church just to teach our church, so it’s out there. Rich Birch — Yep. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Love it. Zenzo Matoga — But three times, Rich, churches have reached out to us, and we literally provided books to the whole congregation. And I partnered with the pastor to do to do a series around that and just equip the churches on how to, you know, how to win the loss. And man, I’m telling you, in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, in Providence, Rhode Island, sorry, not Massachusetts, Providence, Rhode Island, man, we helped a church that was averaging about 130 people. Zenzo Matoga — And just this last Easter, man, they saw over a thousand, you know.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Zenzo Matoga — And and every single Sunday, they’re now averaging about 300. And we, it was a joy…
Rich Birch — So good.
Zenzo Matoga — …to to go through this book, yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, Zenzo, this has been an incredible conversation, super encouraging today. I’m just so thankful for what you’re doing at Impact and the the impact you’re having in a part of the country, like you said, that is is considered spiritually dry. I love that. I love what, you know, I just want to honor you for, you know, for that. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online just as we wrap up today’s episode? Zenzo Matoga — Yes, I love the church. I love the church so much. If a pastor wants to reach out, one of my greatest joys is to just stand with other pastors. You know we give God all the glory because what’s happening here, only God could have done that. But many others have helped us along the way, so would gladly do that. And my email address is simple, pastorzenzo at impactpeople.org.
Rich Birch — Love it. Easy. Zenzo Matoga — Pastorzenzo at impactpeople.org. And our website is the same, very easy, impactpeople.org. That’s it. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much, Zenzo. I appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you for for serving us and for what you’re doing at Impact. Zenzo Matoga — Man, to God be of the glory. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. And I’m humbled and honored to to do this with you. Thanks again, Rich. Rich Birch — Thank you so much.
Don’t Make It Hard: Welcoming Newcomers to Faith with Robert Watson
Aug 14, 2025
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of unSeminary!A quick heads-up: Rich experienced some sound issues during the recording; thank you for bearing with us. Fortunately, our guest, Robert Watson, comes through loud and clear, and you won’t want to miss the incredible insights he shares. Thanks for your grace and enjoy the conversation!
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Robert Watson, Teaching Pastor at Sun Valley Community Church, one of the fastest-growing churches in the U.S. With over two decades at Sun Valley, Robert has seen thousands take steps toward Jesus and is passionate about helping new believers grow in uncomplicated, practical faith.
Is your church making it easy for new believers to follow Jesus? In this episode, Robert shares how Sun Valley breaks down barriers to discipleship, creates clear next steps, and equips people to live out their faith in real relationships.
Removing barriers for new believers. // Many new Christians struggle with church “insider language” and cultural assumptions that can make faith feel inaccessible. Sun Valley intentionally explains biblical basics—like chapters and verses, or the difference between Old and New Testament—to ensure guests and new believers feel included. This approach doesn’t alienate mature believers; instead, it fosters a culture where everyone can invite friends knowing they’ll be understood and welcomed.
Simplifying without watering down. // Pastors can unintentionally overcomplicate teaching by focusing on academic discoveries or niche theological debates that don’t serve most attendees. Keep the main thing the main thing—offering practical, actionable truths while giving seasoned believers a “bone to chew on” for deeper thought. This balance helps churches disciple people at every stage without overwhelming newcomers.
Creating moments of decision. // Robert emphasizes the importance of “line in the sand” moments—clear invitations for people to say “yes” to following Jesus. Drawing from Jesus’ ministry pattern of “come and see” and “follow me,” Sun Valley uses high-attendance weekends and special events to present the gospel and call for commitment. Baptisms, held five times a year, provide a public step of faith and an opportunity to connect people into the life of the church.
Relationship and responsibility. // Long-term discipleship happens best in the context of relationships and shared responsibility. At Sun Valley, new believers are encouraged to join small groups and serving teams. Serving not only builds community but also engages people in mission—helping them grow by using their gifts to serve others. For many, serving feels like a more accessible first step than joining a small group, especially for those unfamiliar with church culture.
Simply Following Jesus. // Robert’s new book, Simply Following Jesus: Practices for Living Out an Uncomplicated Faith, distills foundational truths for new believers into a practical, accessible guide. Given to every adult and high schooler baptized at Sun Valley, the book starts with a clear presentation of the gospel, explores the habits Jesus modeled, and shows how to live out faith through healthy relationships. The goal is not to overwhelm with “to-dos,” but to invite people into rhythms that help them experience God’s grace daily.
Pursuing new believers. // Robert urges churches not to assume new Christians will naturally integrate into church life. Instead, proactively pursue them through personal connection and follow-up. Early faith is a fragile time, and intentional relational investment can help new believers remain rooted and growing.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You’re going to be rewarded. Today is a fantastic conversation around an area that I know that many of our churches wrestle with, and we want to try to give you some practical steps, some kind of resources to move forward today. Rich Birch — This is one of those episodes you’re going to want action on when we get to the end of it. Excited to have Robert Watson with us. He is a teaching pastor at Sun Valley Community Church. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country with, if I’m counting correctly, seven locations in Arizona. He speaks at camps and conferences across the country, trains communicators both locally and internationally. He’s also written a new book that we’re going to get a chance to talk about today. Robert, welcome to the podcast. So glad that you’re here. Robert Watson — Rich, thank you so much. It’s a huge honor to be here and and join you on the podcast. And yeah, I’m excited about what we’re talking about as well. Rich Birch — No, this is on this is our honor. Thanks so much for for taking time to be with us. Why don’t you share a little bit about your journey to come to Sun Valley? Maybe tell us a little bit about Sun Valley, kind of what led you to this this point. Talk about your current role. Kind of give us the Robert story. Robert Watson — Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I felt called into youth ministry when I was a student and my life had kind of blown up and there were people in the church world that kind of opened up their their lives to me, and it made a radical difference. And so I thought, okay, maybe God’s calling me to to be a youth pastor. And I’ll try to do this—you know, some, sometimes pastors can talk a little bit too long when they tell stories—so I’ll try and do this as condensed as I can. Rich Birch — It’s okay. It’s okay. Robert Watson — But basically, I was as I was going into college and going to Bible college and thinking about seminary and all of the things, I started thinking about who has you know, just great legacy in ministry. And I looked around kind of the East Valley. I’m from Arizona. And so the East Valley of Arizona, and there were a handful of youth pastors that had a massive impact. Robert Watson — And I said, okay, what is it that they all have in common? And the answer was absolutely nothing. They were all totally different. Like some were great organizational leaders. Some were really good communicators. Some could just, they knew how to, how to attract people. People they were fun to be around, but they were all so different except for every single one of them had longevity in ministry.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — And so I decided, okay, that’s going to be part of my strategy is I want to, I want to find a church that’s not just a job. I want to find a church that this would be my church community. This would be a place I could invite friends and family and neighbors and not be cringing when they walked in. And so I, again, long story medium, I got a phone call from Sun Valley Community Church and they said, Hey, we know you love where you’re at. Robert Watson — (I didn’t. They didn’t know that. I was actually going to go into banking.) And they said, would you consider taking on a youth pastor role out at Sun Valley? And so I went to the church service and I walked in and this was 20, over 21 years ago now, almost 22 years ago. And I walked in and I went, there’s just something about this place. I’m going to go to this church, even if I don’t work here. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Robert Watson — And I did. I ended up taking that job and I still feel that way about Sun Valley. When you walk into Sun Valley, there’s something about it. God’s anointing is on it. The Holy Spirit is working. People are being loved in Jesus name.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Robert Watson — And we see a lot of people meet Jesus in that environment. Robert Watson — And so I just committed to, yeah those days when you get tired and you’re like, maybe I should do something else, just to stick with it and and to work through conflict with people, get to the other side of it. And I found that’s been so rewarding just to stick with it long term. And so that’s how, so it’s actually my first ever full-time job…
Rich Birch — Oh nice – love it.
Robert Watson — …and I’ve been on staff now going on 22nd year. Rich Birch — So good. I love that. I love the idea of longevity. You know one of the things that we’ve said in other contexts from like a church growth point of view, one of the telltale signs of a church that gets to multiple thousand people is the senior leadership team has is going into or is in their third decade.
Robert Watson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like they they’ve been at this for a long time. Robert Watson — Yep. Rich Birch — And so I think we often, you know, we think of those churches that just seem to explode out of the box, but that’s just not normative.
Robert Watson — Yeah. Rich Birch — And I love what Sun Valley’s done. It’s a great church. If you’re if you’re not tracking with Sun Valley friends, you really should. Doing all kinds of things right. And today we want to talk kind of specifically around as people take steps towards Jesus. Sun Valley, your ministry, is known for people who are are actually coming to faith, which is amazing. It shouldn’t be like a rare thing in churches, but unfortunately it is sometimes. I said that, you didn’t say that. Rich Birch — So we want to talk through some of that today. Every church leader wants to see people take meaningful steps in following Jesus. From your experience, what are some common barriers that but new believers, people who are just starting to follow Jesus face when they’re starting out in their faith. Robert Watson — Yeah, there’s there’s this secret language in the church world that we don’t realize we pick up. If you’ve grown up around church, there’s so many things, and we use acronyms, we use letters, we’ll refer to things like, oh, VBS or whatever. And people are like, what in the world are they talking about? Robert Watson — Even when we open up the Bible, we’re like, what are the big numbers and what are the little numbers? Like, we we forget if you grew up around church, which a lot of people that are in church ministry, they they grew up around it or they’re somewhat familiar with it. We don’t realize how foreign some of the language and the thought process when we start singing songs about the blood and people are like, what are we…
Rich Birch — What are you talking about? Robert Watson — What is this place? Why are we singing? You know? And so one of the things that that we’ve tried to be intentional about, of making it really easy to understand what we’re talking about. Like we’re still going to open up the Bible, but we’ll explain, hey, the big numbers, those are chapters. The little numbers, those are verses. Rich Birch — Yeah. Robert Watson — And these are just tools to help us find different things in the Bible, because the Bible is actually a collection of books. Like we we do the same kind of introduction anytime we talk about Old Testament, New Testament. What is the Old Testament? What is the New Testament? And so we’ve found that by giving kind of those easy steps to understanding, one, it doesn’t make our church dumber.
Rich Birch — Right.
Robert Watson — Like people aren’t, you know, that grew up around church or people that have their their doctorates, they’re not sitting back going, I can’t believe they’re explaining this. We’re creating a culture where they know they can bring their non-Christian friend and they’re not going to feel alienated. They’re going to understand. But we’re going to get into what does the Bible actually say? What is the meat of it? But we’re going to do it in a way that we can take everybody on that journey with us. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I yeah, I think sometimes there’s this false dichotomy in churches where it’s like on one side are like the like trivia driven churches where it’s like they think like, hey, if we just get people understanding all kinds of trivia about the Bible, that’s somehow the goal. And that’s not the goal. That’s the goal is is discipleship, actually seeing people grow. And so we’ve got to take people from where they are to where we want them to be. Robert Watson — That’s right. Rich Birch — Let’s double click on that. What are some other ways you’ve seen kind of this over complexity, this kind of like our way of making things more complex than they should be as it relates to kind of um following Jesus that we might be not aware of – there’s like a forest for the trees thing, if we’ve grown up in the church. Robert Watson — Yeah, I think because a lot of times the voices that we listen to, first of all, are our own. And so if I’m a pastor and I’m putting together a sermon and I’ve done this sermon before and I’ve done you know I’ve done something on this passage before, I get excited about discovering new things when I when I’m preparing a message. Robert Watson — I get excited about a new book that I just read. Or I get excited about this new archaeological discovery. And we found this manuscript here and it actually matches that. So those are things that I get fired up about. And I’m like, oh, man, this would be great fodder for this message coming up this this next weekend. Or this would be great content. And instead of listening to those, or my friends that are you know church people or other pastors, we get excited about things that sometimes are confusing. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — And it’s a new it’s a new conversation that started in the academia world, and it’s things we want to engage in. It’s just not helpful, especially for the person that doesn’t have that framework.
Robert Watson — And so for me, I think one of the reasons why we do make things a little overly complex is because we’re just excited about a new thought, even though we’ve been growing in our understanding of the Bible for decades. And it’s been layer by layer. We’ve been building kind of this foundation of our understanding. We have to remember, most 99.9% of the people who are, you know, in church on a weekend, they don’t have that same background and foundation. Robert Watson — And so it’s, it’s important once again to go, okay, what is actually practical here and what is helpful? And I’m all for Bible studies. So don’t, don’t hear that I’m, I’m not a fan of… Rich Birch — Yes. Robert Watson — …you know, go read N.T. Wright, go study your, you know, do your commentary stuff and all of that. I’m, I love doing that. I get excited about that because I think God’s word is incredible and it’s full of so many deep truths, but sometimes the deepest truths are the obvious ones that we should do something that are very practical, that are very simple. Those to me are the deepest things. The other stuff is just interesting. It’s fun. It’s it’s exciting. Rich Birch — Yes. Robert Watson — And one of the terms, we have a a mentor, Chad, who’s our lead pastor. He and I have been working together. He got hired on just two months after I did. So we’ve been in this long run together. And we have a mentor who’s now a retired older gentleman. And he always says, sometimes when it comes to church people in the church, you got to remember every message, give the dog a bone.
Robert Watson — And what he what do he means by that is is people who’ve been around it for a while, they want something interesting, thoughtful to chew on. But once you give that to them and they can gnaw on that bone for a while, you’re good. Like you can actually now go back to the simple message and and the preaching. Robert Watson — And so we try to do that when we whenever we present, that there’s something that the church person goes, I never thought of it that way, or I never heard it explained quite that clearly or from that angle, or that was a new thought on that that old idea. And and and we just make it really practical from there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. ah You had a a friend, a mentor of mine who said, you got to put the cookies on the bottom shelf, like make the main thing the main thing. Robert Watson — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, how do we ensure that we don’t make things more complex than they need to be? And then also there’s there’s a profound thought there, friends. It applies to so many areas of leadership that I don’t want you to miss, which is we’re not the target for what we’re working with as a leader in all areas, you are, you’re leading. And so you’re in a different place. And so it’s not about impressing you or impressing, you know, your friends who are at the same spot. You’ve got to think about where are people at? You know, that’s why they’re called sheep. We have to lead them. You know, we’re called to be shepherds to move them from where they are to a more desired future.
Rich Birch — Well, at Sun Valley, ah let’s double click on this, kind of keep digging into this idea. You know, you see thousands of people come to faith every year and and we want to learn from that. What have you learned about helping people move from that initial decision? So let’s say they’ve decided to say, hey, I want to follow Jesus into a growing active relationship with Jesus. We we want to move people from that kind of like, hey, I feel something. I had this initial experience into an active growing relationship. What are you doing to to help see that happen? Robert Watson — Yeah, that’s a great question. So there’s there’s a few things that we see Jesus do in his his ministry, and and I want to cover them real quickly because I do think it is important. If you want to know how to help people who say yes to Jesus, you got to have a line in the sand moment where you invite them to say yes to following Jesus.
Robert Watson — And so if you look at if you look at like John and you look at the ministry of Jesus, it kind of had four parts to it. So there was come and see, which is woman at the well. Jesus has this interaction. She goes to the whole village and says, hey, come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could it be this is this is the Messiah? Come and see.
Robert Watson — Follow me. There are line in the sand moments where Jesus gives a hard teaching and he says, are you in or are you out? So he draws in a crowd and and then there’s a line in the sand. Are you following me? Are you just here because I multiplied fish and loaves and that that was impressive and you guys followed me around Galilee and you want to see it again? Robert Watson — So “come and see” and “follow me”. Those are things that we can do up front on stage. That’s kind of one on many. But then there’s there’s “be with me” and “remain in me” are kind of the the next stages.
Robert Watson — And those things only happen in the context of conversation and close up and community. And so at best as a upfront communicator, the the best that I can do is you know, the big crowd moments, the come and see, and then a line in the sand, follow me. But I do think the more we invite people to say yes to following Jesus, the more people we will see say yes to following Jesus.
Rich Birch — For sure. Robert Watson — I think sometimes we’re just waiting for that to happen organically. And it’s okay on a big weekend when we have like coming up soon, we’re going to have a big weekend with a lot of guests because we’re back to school in Arizona and it’s one of our highest attended weekends of the year. And so we’re going to do a line in the sand moment because people invite friends…
Rich Birch — Right.
Robert Watson — …we do some fun stuff and we’ll go, Hey, this is what Jesus did for you. And if you want to put your trust in him, he’s already said yes to you. If you’d be willing to say yes to his invitation, he’ll transform your life. And here’s how he does that and invite them to say yes. And we’ll have, you know, hundreds of people go, I’m in.
That’s good.
Robert Watson — And then we do baptisms five times a year, which is, again, this is now a public profession of that that inward decision. And from there, our goal is if we can get people into real relationship and then also give them real responsibility.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Robert Watson — Because if if they have real relationship, meaning there’s somebody who knows their name, there’s somebody who knows when they’re there, when they’re not there, they know what’s going on in their world. They know what’s most important to them that week because they got this big thing going on. It’s impossible to do that from stage one on many. And so that’s why we push things like small groups. We push things like serving because it’s one thing to go, okay, I’m going to show up. But if you say, hey can you, we’re doing small group at my house. Can you bring the soda or whatever? And, and I’m, now I have responsibility. Robert Watson — Now, if I don’t show up, like the group’s not going to have any Dr. Pepper, like I can’t do that to them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Robert Watson — And so there’s any time we can get people into that, that relationship and responsibility, now they’re into kind of the life of the church.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Robert Watson — And the goal of “remain in me” is that as they, as they start serving others, they start to experience more of Jesus, no longer just in their head of like, okay, I’m getting knowledge. Now I’m practically serving others.
Robert Watson — And if you think about in your own story, Rich, and if I think about my own story, one of the times we’ve grown the most in our relationship with Jesus is when we really started using the gifts that he’s given us to serve other people. Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Yep. Robert Watson — That’s Jesus, when he washes the disciples’ feet, he doesn’t say, I’ve given you a a really good teaching. You should go teach other people. He goes, I set you an example. Go do this, and you’ll be blessed if you do it. And he’s he’s telling us there’s something about serving others that’s kind of that that deeper level of understanding who Jesus is, and that’s his invitation to us. Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. yeah I love that. This is the thing we’ve seen. So I’ve seen in multiple contexts where on the like, I would say and maybe on the like church assimilation side, which is I realize is kind of connected to what we’re talking about, but it’s it like slightly different where, but it’s, it’s a related, it rhymes, that I’ve really seen I would say post COVID, like in the last five years, churches shift to a lot more, like we always want people into teams and You know, and or on, you know, on groups or sorry, on teams and in groups, you want to see them do both of those things. Rich Birch — But there has been, I would say, a stronger emphasis ah around getting people plugged into helping somehow. That there’s been like, hey, there’s a there’s an inherent understanding that people need to be a part of the mission. That’s actually a part of what discipleship is like. What is that?
Robert Watson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I know this is a little bit off from what we said we were going talk about, but tell me a little bit more what that looks like at Sun Valley. Because I think that is, I think this is definitely a trend we have seen. I’ve seen it echo in other other contexts. What’s that look like for you guys? As someone takes a step toward Jesus, you’re trying to say, hey, we want to help you actually plug in and and get connected, not just a learning phase, but like a doing phase as well. What’s that look like? Robert Watson — Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think a lot of times, especially you get a bunch of us executives together and we want a nice linear path, right? We want to we want to map it all out. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — It’s going to look really good on a whiteboard. Rich Birch — It’s going to be great on the whiteboard. Exactly. Robert Watson — Yep. They’re going to go from here to here to here. Rich Birch — Yes. Robert Watson — That’s just not how humanity works. People are messy. Rich Birch — That’s true. Robert Watson — People are in process. And so there needs to be, I think, a a willingness and an openness to go, okay, it depends on the person…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Robert Watson — …and and what is best for this individual might not be that they follow this exact assimilation track. And so I think the reason why probably you’re noticing and sensing more of an emphasis on plugging people into serving, because the things that you get out of like a small group or some churches, they’ll do, you know, more of the like Sunday school model or whatever. Robert Watson — When you plug somebody into serving, you kind of get all the good things that come from being in a group thrown into that. So if you’re, if you have a team, that’s a solid team, you have your coaches, your mentors on that team. Usually you’re teaching some kind of content and to kind of go back to even the premise of this conversation, the deep truths of Scripture, we’re teaching in our elementary school. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — We’re teaching these things in our with our students.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Robert Watson — The deep things of of Scripture, they’re accessible to everybody. And so even if you’re not in this context where it’s geared directly towards you, the content’s there, the relationship’s there. You have real responsibility. Kids are asking you questions. Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — And you’re having your leader huddle before the service starts or you’re hanging out afterwards. Robert Watson — I was just on a mission trip with 43. It was a high school mission trip. And me and the other leaders on that trip, man, we built great connections. We’re going to one of, they live far away. We’re going to their house next Sunday with our family because we just built these connections serving students together. Robert Watson — And I do think there’s a lot of that that naturally happens. I think in some people’s minds, though, they’re like, I’m not ready to serve yet. But for some, that’s before they ever go sit in somebody’s house and like knock on the door of somebody’s house…
Rich Birch — Yes.
…and go sit in the living room and talk about their feelings.
Rich Birch — Right.
Robert Watson — I invited—this is a funny story—I invited my next door neighbors in our previous house. They had just given their lives to Jesus. They came to Sun Valley, said yes to following Jesus. We had baptized them. And I was like, hey, we do Bible study at my house. We do the small group, you should come over. And they walked in and they saw a circle of chairs. And I saw them look at this circle of chairs like, what kind of a cult am I walking into right now? Rich Birch — That’s true. Robert Watson — And everybody’s sitting down in these chairs and nobody, there’s no alcohol. So for my, so I say all of this for my neighbors, they’re like, who does this? Like they, they understood a party. Rich Birch — Right, right. Robert Watson — They knew that you hang out at parties. People have drinks, you bring them food. It’s a potluck. Sitting in a circle in a living room talking about your feelings was very scary for my neighbors.
Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — But then when I was like, Hey, do you guys want to, we go a hour early before service and we we serve. They’re like, yeah, we’re in. And they were more than willing to jump in and serve. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — For them, that felt like that is the right next step for them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Robert Watson — And so I was just reminded, oh yeah, I’m so used to this. For the rest of the world, sometimes this looks a little weird what we do and we just it’s normal. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Robert Watson — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good insight for sure. And, and yeah, there’s something about asking people, they can kind of picture what the serving thing looks like. They can picture, Hey, this is what those first steps look like, but, but we don’t have a lot of kind of dynamic equivalents of the, like you say, sit in a circle and, it goes in all kinds of crazy directions. Robert Watson — Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, you’ve written a book. I want to make sure people pick up copies. Robert Watson — Yeah. Rich Birch — My bias is just right out there, friends. I think you should be buying copies of these with your team and maybe even as a resource as a church. It’s called “Simply Following Jesus: Practices for Living Out an Uncomplicated Faith”. This a huge deal. What led you? What was the kind of spark that led you to write this book? Robert Watson — Yeah. So because of the the context of our church and the number of individuals that that we’ve seen say yes to following Jesus and just in massive numbers, and it’s overwhelming for them because they don’t know, okay, what do you do first? Where do you start? How do how do you really get this thing? Like I’m all in, they hear the gospel, they’re excited about following Jesus, and they’re just kind of: now what? And, and, and so to go, well, you know, we do this class couple times a year, you know, you can join us for that. Robert Watson — And and so we just decided, what if we gave them a resource that really took, cause we’ll talk about all the things that are in, in the book that I wrote. We’ll talk about that over the course of a couple of years. Like what if we took really the foundational pieces, we put it together in one resource and we gave it just as a gift to people. Robert Watson — And so we’ve started now, we, we do baptisms five times a year. And now whenever somebody gets baptized, if they’re a high schooler or an adult, we give them a copy of this book.
Rich Birch — So good.
Robert Watson — And it really lays out, it starts with the gospel, because I think where a lot of people are confused, and this is Christians and non-Christians, is understanding the gospel. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — Is understanding that we are this is not a works salvation. We’re not trying to earn something. We’re not trying to earn back something, that this is a gift from God. And so really understanding the foundation of the gospel and and that it is because God loves us that he’s invited us into this relationship. It’s not if we do these things, then he will love us. No, God loves you no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s been done to you. So it really starts with kind of laying that foundation. Robert Watson — And I think it’s important if you grew up in church like I did, you know, you have to keep coming back to the gospel again and again and be reminded of it again and again. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. Robert Watson — And so really wanted to start with that foundation, understanding who is Jesus, the nature of God’s love for us. So that’s kind of the the beginning, which is a little bit theological. But I try to make it a simple as as possible. And I’m stealing that idea from Jesus who said, hey, all the law, all the prophets, let me take the whole Jewish scriptures and let me sum sum it up for you. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — It’s love the Lord your God with all your heart heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. And when Jesus does that, that to me is kind of the the model, the example. Okay, can we take these big truths that, I mean, you and I, we could get in a room and we could unpack verse by verse and we would love it. And it would be brilliant and beautiful and wonderful. And Jesus goes, okay, but also let me just sum it up and simplify it for you. Rich Birch — Right, right. Robert Watson — So that’s, that’s kind of that first part. So simple foundation. And looking at what are the habits that Jesus modeled and that Jesus taught. Because if you look at the early church, you had a lot of people that that were illiterate. You had a lot of people that they didn’t understand all the Jewish scriptures and everything, but they understood the example that Jesus set and that his disciples are going, here’s what Jesus did. Follow me as I follow Jesus. This is what this looks like practically. Robert Watson — And there are some habits. There are things that Jesus expects us to do, like spending time with him in prayer, you know spending time in relationship with others. And then the third part of the book is just simple relationships.
Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — It’s how do you take this foundation of the gospel, these habits that Jesus modeled, and apply it into your relationships? Because at the end of the day, the Bible, it’s it’s a relational book. It’s a book about how to have right relationship with God and right relationship with the people around us, which again, to back to where Jesus says, all the law, all the prophets hang on these two commands.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Robert Watson — And the and the first is like the second, it’s love God, love people. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, I want to dive into that a little bit, but but let me give a little hearty endorsement. I really do think that this resource could be, I think is is fitting in a great spot when I was going through it, I thought the same thing that that you said there, man, this would be so fantastic for people that are getting baptized, for people that are taking that first step. Maybe someone’s you know, just had some sort of encounter at something like Alpha and they’re like, hey, they’re looking for something next. Like, what is that? Is that resource? Rich Birch — But I want double clip click on the simple relationships part. So reflecting on my own early discipleship experience when I first became a Christian, I feel like there was that tension of like, the gospel is a free gift and you don’t need to do anything, earn anything. And then immediately the discipleship went into, and then here are things you should do. Robert Watson — yeah Rich Birch — Here are, do this, read that, all that. And you don’t handle it like that in the habit section at all. I love the way you frame it, but but I think early discipleship can kind of land in that way. Like it’s a free gift. Now here’s 10 things you’ve got to do. Robert Watson — That’s right. Yeah. Rich Birch — This relationship part I found as an interesting nuance. Unpack that a little bit more.
Robert Watson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Why was that in there as a, or why do you see that as a critical piece, ah kind of an an an initial conversation someone should be having around their faith? Robert Watson — Yeah, I think because there are there are things that are disciplines in following Jesus, but they’re not disciplines in the sense of like, oh, I got to do this difficult thing because it’s the secret handshake that gets me in, you know.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Robert Watson — Or it’s the I’m climbing this proverbial mountain. They’re just new ways to experience God’s grace. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Robert Watson — And so when there’s habits, the habits are actually invitations. It’s not you you ought to and you should, and and we feel like we’re just guilted into, I need to read my Bible more. I need to pray more. These are open invitations that God has provided these ways for us to experience His grace each and every day.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Robert Watson — And it’d be transformed by His grace each and every day. And so even just that that little different way of looking at it. It’s an invitation and it’s not one that God’s forcing upon you. It’s open to you. It’s available to you. And what, what I’ve experienced when I’ve stepped into that invitation. it’s scary in my mind, but it’s so rewarding in actual practice. Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — Like it’s usually just in my head space. I’m like, oh man, I’m gonna read my Bible every day. Now I genuinely, and I’ve been reading my Bible for a long time. I genuinely enjoy starting off my day. I have I use the Bible app now because I have a streak counter and I’m a little bit competitive. And so I can be like, oh man, I’m on this many days in a row.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Robert Watson — And I use that and I and I just go, okay, Holy Spirit, what do you wanna speak to me this morning? And I’ll start reading through ah a passage. Sometimes I’ll get through a whole chapter, sometimes just a section. And I walk away and it’s like, it’s recalibrated my day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Robert Watson — And and my day now is it’s pointed in a right direction. I’ve experienced God’s grace. Sometimes I get a little whisper from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I’m just groggy and I did it and I move on, but I’m experiencing God’s grace in new ways by doing that.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — And so that’s, I think that’s the important thing for any new believer to understand. God is not trying to like force you. He doesn’t want to rob you. He actually comes to to give. He comes to to share in his grace, to share in his love. And anytime he asks us to do something, it’s ultimately for our good. And it’s an invitation, not a, hey, I’m going to make you do this thing because now you you obey every every word that I say. No, it’s an invitation to to experience his grace in new ways. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. This is a fantastic resource. And have you seen, you know, any impact as, it’s been used at Sun Valley or maybe in some other context, maybe a story or two of like, you know, how it’s been particularly effective or been, you know, a tool in the hands of somebody who’s taken some next steps, some early steps towards Jesus. Robert Watson — Yeah, it’s, it’s always, it’s always fascinating to me. I just, as a, as an author, as a writer, I never know, like, hey, is this good? Is this helpful?
Rich Birch — Right. That’s true. Yes.
Robert Watson — Is this you know is this going to is this going to resonate with somebody? I don’t know. Rich Birch — Yeah. Robert Watson — And I’m always amazed at how God has has used these resources in in different ways. This one in particular. So the book’s only been out for a couple months now. And I there was an older gentleman who actually…he was being forced into retirement. And so his job, his time, his whole company was kind of disbanding and he was being forced into early retirement, but he was going to throw a retirement party for all his fellow employees. And this is not, these these employees are far from Jesus. And he goes, Hey, I read your book. And as kind of my last parting gift, I want to give it as a resource. You know, can I come by with a box of these books and you sign it? Robert Watson — And so at his retirement party, he gave, you know how like at kids’ birthday parties, they get the little bag of candy when they leave, they get the little door prize. Rich Birch — Yes. Robert Watson — He had my book there. And so I just wrote little notes about how how much God loves these individuals and prayed over them. And he handed them out as kind of a, hey, I would love for you to have what I have. And it’s this relationship with Jesus. And this this book will actually help you understand what it is. And and so he gave that out. I thought, man, what a cool evangelism tool. Robert Watson — And for this person, you know, and his kind of last is probably the last time these people all be in a room together. And he thought, hey, this is a great opportunity to maybe share the gospel with with my coworkers one last time. Rich Birch — That’s cool. That’s so cool. I love that. Well, if there’s a pastor that’s listening in that that wants to better serve people who are taking early steps, outside of buying copies of your book, because I want them to do that. But outside of that, what’s one thing you know you could encourage them to take kind of an early step they could take, maybe even the next month, to try to help those people who are taking early steps in their relationship with Jesus? What’s one kind of practical advice you give to them? Robert Watson — Yeah, I do think because so much of following Jesus has lived out in the context of relationships, what I what I think it’s important for all churches, especially large churches, and I know a lot of the people who listen on your podcast here, they’re churches over a thousand. It’s easy for people to become numbers in all of that. Robert Watson — And the reminder that every number has a name, every name has a story, every story matters to God. The the more we can get those stories, one, and think in front of our staff to remind our our staff, hey, these are real people. These are people that you know. These are people that you’ve been in conversation with. The more we can get those names, those stories in front of our staff. Robert Watson — And I would just say for those new believers, especially when somebody says yes to Jesus, Don’t just hope that they kind of naturally assimilate. Have some way that you pursue those individuals. Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — Let them know that they’re seen. Let them know that they’re known. Go out of your way because for some people, it’s going to take several times of saying, hey, we should grab coffee. Hey, we should hang out. Rich Birch — Right. Robert Watson — Let me hear your story before they say yes to that. I think those are people worth pursuing. And I think, too, if you look at you know the parable that Jesus gave, when that seed’s planted, there’s a lot of things. That soil can be rocky, can be thorny. The enemy can come snatch that away. I think it’s a fragile time in those early stages of a new believer that if ever there’s a time for us to go out of our way to relationally connect and pursue, that that is the time to do it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Love that. I yeah when I first became a christian when i was a student there was a guy youth leader in my church that he like jumped on it, and which was amazing and like we met every week for a year. Which when I look back on that this guy, Rick Peet, incredible leader in my life. Rich Birch — You know, I look back on that man, the impact that that had on me because he took the he took the kind of first step there. He was the first mover in that relationship. Hey, let’s let’s get together. Let’s talk about it. that’s that’s That’s fantastic. Robert Watson — Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, we want to make sure people pick up copies of your book. Again, it’s “Simply Following Jesus: Practices for Living Out an Uncomplicated Faith”. I’m assuming people can get it at Amazon. That’s usually where good books are sold. Robert Watson — Yep. Rich Birch — It’s always a funny question to ask. Robert Watson — Amazon, Baker Books. Rich Birch — Where do people get books? You know, that kind of thing. Robert Watson — Yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — And where else do we want to send them? Robert Watson — All those places, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Baker Books – usually they run some kind of a discount off their website. That’s the book publisher. And so usually they have some good deals run in there as well. Rich Birch — Great. Well, just as we wrap up today, any kind of final parting words you’d have for people that are listening in today? Robert Watson — I would, oh man, I would just say enjoy the journey. I think there’s so much… Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — …joy that comes from following Jesus. Like when I think about all the things I could be involved in, in my life and all of that, when I get to hear somebody taking, not, not just you know intellectually, I’ve got this new information and I’m believing it, but they take something and apply it. Rich Birch — That’s good. Robert Watson — And they experience the transformation and they experience a strengthening of their relationships. Jesus said that we would be known by the quality of our relationships, our loved one for another is how he he says it. And so when I see people that are new in faith experiencing forgiveness for the first time, or experiencing the the gift of listening to others and asking good, thoughtful questions and and something starts to come alive in them, I just, as a pastor, what more can you ask for than than seeing and life change? Robert Watson — And so the the relational life change, being around that, like constantly celebrating those stories, sharing those stories, being excited about that, I find no greater joy than to see people genuinely following Jesus.
Rich Birch — That’s good Robert Watson — And ah so I don’t know if that is the right closing thought, but yeah. Rich Birch — No, it’s wonderful. It’s great. It’s good. Robert Watson — Rich, thank you so much. Rich Birch — Well, I appreciate being on the podcast today. Where can we send people if they want to track with you or track with the church online? Robert Watson — Yeah. So Sun Valley Community Church is the name of our church. We’re in Arizona, sunvalleycc.com. And then we’re on you know Instagram and all of that. And I think mine is just robertsvcc is my Instagram. But yeah, you can you can look up us look us up online. And if there’s anything that anybody has questions about, you can reach out to me. You can find me through the the website, whatever, and I’d be I’d be happy to follow up with you. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much. Thanks for being on the podcast today. Robert Watson — Thanks, Rich.
Leading Staff Teams Well: Behind-the-Scenes Lessons from Growing Churches
Aug 07, 2025
In this special roundup episode of the unSeminary podcast, we highlight key insights from three previously recorded interviews focused on strengthening church staff teams. In celebration of the Summer 2025 issue of Executive Pastor Magazine, this curated compilation revisits rich conversations with leadership experts Dr. Ryan Hartwig and Dr. Warren Bird, executive pastor Ken McAnulty of Arise Church, and Diana Rush from Eastside Church. Each segment dives into unique aspects of staff development—from shared leadership and onboarding strategies to the art of leading from the middle in multisite churches.
Healthy Leadership Teams: The Power of Shared Leadership [Listen to the full episode] With Dr. Ryan Hartwig & Dr. Warren Bird
Hartwig and Bird, co-authors of Teams That Thrive, argue that shared leadership isn’t just biblical—it’s practical. Thriving church leadership teams intentionally embrace collaboration and commit to daily disciplines like running effective meetings and distributing leadership tasks evenly.
One surprising insight from their research of over 140 churches was that many teams couldn’t even agree on who was actually on their team. This pointed to a broader lack of clarity and intentionality in team design.
Bird challenges the myth that advising the senior pastor equates to real team leadership. Instead, churches must foster environments where diverse voices are heard, decisions are made together, and leadership is seen as developmental—not pre-baked.
Hartwig shares compelling profiles of senior pastors who made humility-driven shifts in their leadership posture—either by stepping back to allow others to lead or stepping in to fill critical gaps.
Onboarding That Sets the Pace for Staff Success [Listen to the full episode] With Ken McAnulty, Executive Pastor at Arise Church
McAnulty unpacks Arise Church’s robust onboarding week, a deliberate strategy designed to eliminate the awkward, often disconnected experience new hires typically face.
Instead of simply orienting staff to logistics, the goal is to shape culture, build community, and prepare new team members to run. Arise focuses on four key areas: Culture, Care, Competency, and Course.
From pre-arrival office setups to custom music playing on a new hire’s first day, the details matter. Arise also includes intentional relational components like storytelling sessions with existing staff, which accelerate trust and cultural understanding.
A unique highlight is their “Last Day at Arise” document, where new staff articulate how they want to be remembered. This future-focused exercise helps shape present-day behavior and sets a clear tone for engagement and legacy.
Leading from the Middle: Managing Up, Down, and Inward [Listen to the full episode] With Diana Rush, Senior Director of Build Community at Eastside Christian Church
Rush provides practical advice for navigating the complexities of middle management in a large, multisite church. She emphasizes that effective leadership begins with self-awareness and spiritual integrity—what comes out when you’re “squeezed” reflects what’s inside.
Trust is the currency of influence. Whether managing upward to senior leadership or downward to direct reports, trust is built through consistency, transparency, and a track record of responsible leadership.
Rush describes her role as a “salesperson” of vision—translating ideas both up and down the chain of command while remaining faithful to the church’s overall mission.
Her approach includes robust preparation, honest feedback loops, and an openness to negotiation. She advocates for creating shared ownership of ideas by involving others early and often in the planning process.
Ultimately, Rush calls leaders to be flexible, collaborative, and committed to turning vision into reality by aligning strategy with relational trust.
This episode is a powerful reminder that great teams don’t happen by accident. Whether it’s building collaborative leadership structures, creating intentional onboarding experiences, or navigating the tensions of middle management, strong staff culture is essential for sustained church growth. Each segment provides actionable takeaways and fresh inspiration for executive pastors and church leaders who want to lead better teams and foster healthier staff environments.
Download the free Executive Pastor Magazine Summer 2025 issue at unSeminary.com.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Yeah, hey friends, happy Thursday. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super pumped that you are tuned in. Rich Birch — Listen, today we are celebrating the release of Executive Pastor Magazine’s Summer 2025 edition. It’s completely free. Just drop by unseminary.com and pick up copies of it. This season’s edition is all about staff. It’s all about helping you have a more productive team. We’ve got great articles in there by Paul Alexander, Todd Rhodes, Dan Reiland, Gavin Adams, and Dave Miller. You’re not going to want to miss it. Incredible resource and it’s completely free. Just drop by and pick it up. Rich Birch — But today on the episode, what we’re doing is we’re pulling out three, what I like to call the heart of the episode, from the vault that deal with this same topic. In this first segment, you’re gonna hear from Ryan Hartwig, Dr. Ryan Hartwig and Dr. Warren Bird. They’re co-authors of a book called Teams That Thrive. Rich Birch — And 10 years ago, May 2015, we had them on the podcast and they unpack what makes healthy senior leadership teams tick and why shared leadership is both biblical and deeply practical. You’ll also hear some behind the scenes stories, including frankly a candid moment from my own leadership at Liquid Church. If you’re navigating leadership tension or wondering how to build a stronger team culture, this part is gold. Stay tuned for this. This is Ryan Hartwig and Warren Bird from an episode about 10 years ago on Teams That Thrive. Rich Birch — Stay tuned for this. And we’ve got two more great segments coming up…
Ryan Hartwig — What do we find? Oh boy, there’s so many things we find. Really, we identified five disciplines of collaborative church leadership. Ryan Hartwig — And I can kind of get into those five disciplines. But probably before that, probably if we could sum all that up, what we realized is that Teams That Thrive are convinced that shared leadership is a biblical way to lead and is a preferable way to lead. It was kind of the first thing. Ryan Hartwig — There was a strong conviction, like we’ve got to figure out how to do this thing well. So that was the first piece. Then the second piece was that they were willing to do the fundamental disciplines day in and day out to enable their team to thrive. Ryan Hartwig — I mean, quite honestly, a lot of the stuff we talk about in the book, I don’t know that it’s incredibly groundbreaking. It’s like, oh wow, I’ve never even heard that before. I mean, a lot of the things I think, generally, we’ve heard some of these things at least before. Ryan Hartwig — But really, these teams were the ones that said, okay, we’re gonna actually run our meetings well. We’re gonna actually really think through who’s going to serve on these teams. We’re gonna really make sure that leadership tasks and team are actually shared. And not just kind of have these things as platitudes, but we’re gonna discipline ourselves to do these things all of the time. Rich Birch — Very cool. Well, we had a surprise guest join us on the podcast. If you’re watching the video, you see Warren Bird jumped in. Warren, the co-author of Teams That Thrive also is joining us today. Warren, welcome to the show. Warren Bird — Thanks! Ryan, I love what you’re saying. I can’t wait to read that book. Rich Birch — No, that’s fantastic. So Warren, just to kind of bring you up to speed, we kind of talked a bit about the research process that went on, which you, I’m sure, had a part to do with. And then we’re just kind of getting into a little bit of what are some of those insights, some of those key insights that came out. Rich Birch — For you, Warren, as you talked with and interviewed so many churches, 140 some odd churches that ended up giving all the information, what were some of those insights that jumped through to you as patterns as you interacted with different churches? Warren Bird — Well, affirming everything that Ryan said, I just became convinced that everybody wants to do team, but they don’t know how to do it well. And they don’t even know, are we doing it well? They don’t even know. Warren Bird — We started the book with like these myths that people think, well, I guess a team means that we all advise the pastor and then the pastor makes the decisions and we’re working as a team. No, you’re not! You’re losing huge potential if that’s how you approach the idea of team. Warren Bird — And in today’s fluidity of who’s on the team, who’s not, we even, in our survey, we were amazed at how many churches the members of a team disagreed with who all was on their team. So it was quite a stretch. Rich Birch — That’s funny. Now, so playing a little bit of the devil’s advocate here. So team leadership, that sounds like a—I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t actually believe what I’m about to say—But team leadership, that sounds like some sort of Namby Pamby, wow, woohoo deal. Isn’t it, doesn’t God give the vision to a person and then we’re all just supposed to march in behind that person, Ryan? Isn’t that, aren’t that, isn’t that the evidence of like a great thriving church? Ryan Hartwig — Well, sure. I mean, we see that, yeah, certainly God gives the vision to people, but he doesn’t give all of the vision to only one person. The beauty of a leadership team is that, is recognizing that God speaks to everyone. Ryan Hartwig — And so why would we just limit ourselves to only hearing God speaking to one individual and not to many? If we believe that the Spirit lives inside of us, right, then he can speak to all of us. And so the beauty, I think, of the team is being able to come together and saying, okay, what is it that God is saying to us? Ryan Hartwig — How can we use different perspectives, the different expertise, the different experiences that we have, and ultimately be able to make better decisions and implement greater ministry throughout the church by sharing leadership together. So that’s really the idea there. I mean, we’re not suggesting that a leadership team precludes someone from providing strong leadership. Ryan Hartwig — In fact, a lot of the teams that we see, there is a strong leader. That’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with having a strong leader. But not so strong that that leader precludes others from also being able to fully contribute the things that God has put into them. Rich Birch — Interesting. Now, Warren, you know, you’ve been studying kind of leadership and looking at leadership over a number of years. Is there anything in this, what you found here, that you feel like is a kind of a shift, either culturally or kind of generationally? Are you seeing any differences on that front? Warren Bird — Yeah, the whole idea of leadership development, this is just one more piece of it. On your team, you don’t hire pre-trained people who’ve all got it together. It’s a team growing together, getting better together, making better decisions with a better process and building into each other. Warren Bird — So in a way, this models what you hope the whole rest of the church will be all about, that we’re forever taking people, to use a Willow Creek expression, from total pagan to a dedicated missionary. And that being part of a team is different steps on that journey. Rich Birch — Interesting. Well, when we had the privilege, I had mentioned this earlier, we had the privilege when you were in the process of writing this book to sit down and spend some time. And it was actually great. I loved the coaching that you both provided to our team.
Rich Birch — And actually, to this day, one of the things that Ryan said, kind of a challenge to us as a lead team, said, you need to not answer all the questions. You need to allow some of the questions to hang. And you need to create space for people to maybe deliberately allow a few things to kind of hang out there, create some space, so that your leaders who are around you will rise up and help and obviously push the mission forward. Which actually that has continued to shape our thinking over the last couple of years. So that’s, and that was just one kind of piece of an overall conversation, which I really appreciated.
Rich Birch — Tell us about some of the other churches that you ended up highlighting throughout the book. Is there any others that stick out for you, Ryan? Warren Bird — Well, before Ryan answers, let me just brag on you guys at Liquid Church. That was so, you were in the survey and then we kind of picked the top 10% of churches and tried to visit different ones. And that was you. Warren Bird — And I have to say, I’ve sat in a lot of church senior leadership team meetings and yours was distinctly different in the engagement level, in the buy-in, in the use of different people’s talents, in the humility that you expressed, in the esprit de corps. So I just wanna cheer that that was a great day for us too, to be able to learn from you. And you’re really different from a lot of churches that really struggle. Warren Bird — And I say all that to say, it can be different. Churches can incrementally come to that kind of thing where team members look forward to interacting with each other and taking another step in their journey of leading God’s church right. Ryan Hartwig — Yeah, yeah, two quick thoughts there. And I don’t remember if we actually named these churches in the book or not, so I won’t use their names. But two, I think, two kind of senior pastor profiles a little bit in terms of how they have tried to build these teams. Ryan Hartwig — One of the pastors realized that his predecessor was this very, very organized, organized guy who would have, in any sort of an event, would kind of pull out the color-coded spreadsheets and assign everyone a task and so on. Everyone would just kind of march out those orders. And as he took over the church, he really realized that was preventing, even though the team was able to kind of be cohesive in the sense of marching out orders, it was really preventing all the team members from offering their best to the team. Ryan Hartwig — And so he realized, okay, I really have to back off a little bit on some of this direction that I’m offering. And so he stepped back.
Ryan Hartwig — I thought that was kind of, that’s a little bit different than a senior pastor at another church, church down in Tennessee. As we listen to that pastor, he’s really realized that his gifts really don’t reside in kind of managing day-to-day. And I think a lot of senior pastors have realized that. They don’t reside there. Ryan Hartwig — And so he’s really handed that off to other folks, lets his executive pastor really manage the leadership team. But he said, it’s really important for me to stay engaged in the leadership activities.
Ryan Hartwig — And so there was a time when there was kind of a hole in their small groups ministry. This was a very large church, about 5,000 people. And rather, there was a hole there for small groups. He said, okay, I’m going to take on small groups myself for this season of time. Ryan Hartwig — And so he led the small group ministry as a senior pastor of the church in every facet, where I think it was about six months to a year. I think it’s such a great indication of what healthy teams do, is that leaders say, okay, what is it that the team needs right now? And I’ll go ahead and provide that. Ryan Hartwig — That senior pastor realized, okay, the best thing for me to do is to give up some of this more visionary kinds of things to others. And let me step into this place and provide leadership to our small group ministry in a way that he was kind of accountable to the other team members for small group ministry during that time.
Ryan Hartwig — I thought those two were just great profiles of, I think, the humility, of the thoughtfulness, of the strategicness, of how do we adjust things that we’re really able to lead collaboratively.
Warren Bird — Let me give one more example, if I could. Journey Church, Newark, Delaware. Ryan and I did separate visits on that. When Ryan was there, he captured the senior pastor, Mark Johnson, saying, you know, I used to lead the church, but now I lead the team as they lead the church. Warren Bird — And so on my visit, I met some of those team members, and I thought, you know, here’s a 30-year-old woman who’s overseeing kind of the assimilation piece, the welcome, how do we get you connected. And she has been really mentored and given challenges and invited to rise to the challenge, and I thought that just being one case of, okay, Pastor Mark, if that’s the kind of people you’re leading and they’re rising to the challenge, you are just multiplying yourself all over. Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Ryan Hartwig — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, one of the things I’ve found in just our little world is, as we take new ground as a church, so I’m a part of that four-part leadership team, senior leadership team, whatever we want to call it. As we take new ground, by definition, we’re moving into areas that it’s not really clear whose responsibility it is, that there are these areas where we’re doing new things, we’re trying to innovate, we’re trying to make something happen, and it kind of requires all of us on that team. We all have to pitch in, we all, you know, Tim from a teaching vision point of view, he’s got to talk about it, Dave from kind of a finance point of view, we’ve got to figure out how are the teams going to plug into this whole thing. Rich Birch — And so you do end up having, and in fact, I just had one this week with Dave, where there’s this like, okay, so what part of this is yours and what part of it is mine? Like, and, because we don’t want to step on each other’s toes, we’re not trying to like, you know, offend each other, but we have to kind of be cognizant of talking through the actual process of how we’re going to lead, not just go ahead and lead. Like, how do we actually, you know, how are we going to make this thing happen? Rich Birch — Because there’s enough potential there to rub each other the wrong way, which is, for me, is exciting, because I’m like, hey, we must be trying to do things that, you know, that aren’t just natural, don’t just happen, you know, independently, so, which is kind of cool, so. Ryan Hartwig — I love the fact, Rich, that you’re having to have those conversations. One of the other things we found is that, is that churches that tend to have these stronger leadership teams are also facing challenges related to growth. Rich Birch — Yeah. Ryan Hartwig — And I think that it’s tempting to kind of explain that, well, we have a good team, and so, of course, we’re growing. I would explain it the other way. I think it’s that we’re growing, which is forcing us to have a good team. Ryan Hartwig — Like, in your case, right, because you’re growing, there’s this unknown stuff that’s out there causing you and Dave to sit down and have conversations that you would otherwise not have to have.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ryan Hartwig — Now, because you and Dave are working through these things and making decisions together, and you’re making decisions that are benefiting from both of your perspectives, right, you’re growing in your capacity as a team, which is then, of course, fueling the church’s ability to grow and so on. Ryan Hartwig — So I love the fact that you’re pursuing this new territory, and you realize the only way we can actually do this well is if we do this together as a team, which is one of the things we found, is that the best teams tend to make decisions together rather than to have individuals who make these really key strategic decisions, but instead they do it together as a team. Rich Birch — Yeah, there was this moment a few years ago where, there was a distinct conversation where Tim, our lead pastor, who is our lead pastor, there isn’t, although we lead together with the four of us at the end of the day, he’s our lead pastor, he’s the founder of the church, and there was a real active conversation where there was some consideration of maybe we should hire or identify one of the four of us as kind of the second in command person, and that, from his perspective, and at the end of the day, he’s the only one that can make that decision. That is one of those things where it’s like, we can give our input, but at the end of the day, you’ve gotta figure out what you’re the most comfortable with, and we’re gonna talk it through, and there was this decision point where he said, no, I actually, and we obviously affirmed it in the end, we were like, no, I like the creative tension that it causes that we work together as a group rather than let’s make really super clear lines on everything. Rich Birch — Now, functionally, what that means is we end up talking a lot. You end up having a lot of conversations about things, but I think the Lord honors that, and I think it’s a positive way to move forward as we try to grow and develop and try new things. Because the reality of it is, if you’re a growing church, a lot of times, you’re in the largest church you’ve ever been in, let alone worked in the largest church you’ve ever been in, and so it’s all unknown territory for most of the people around the room.
Rich Birch — All right, fantastic stuff there from Ryan. You really should pick up that book. His and Warren’s book is a must read. And that’s really the secret of this episode. What we’re doing is pointing back to content that is so, we think, foundational. We think it’s super important for you. In fact, they’re things that we come back to time and again, and this next segment is one of those.
Rich Birch — We’re doing this to celebrate Executive Pastor. Just drop by unseminary.com. Pick up this season’s copy. It’s all about staff issues. Rich Birch — In this next segment, you’ll hear from Ken McAnulty. He is the executive pastor at Arise Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And listen, Ken unpacks what they call their onboarding week: a super intentional, high impact way that sets new hires up to thrive.
Rich Birch — It’s not just about orientation. Lots of us have orientation. Tell people where the bathroom is. It’s about shaping culture from day one. Rich Birch — If you’ve ever wondered, really, how do we start our staff? Well, this is going to be super helpful for you. This clip gives you some practical inspiration with a strong dose of vision. Let’s tune in.
Rich Birch — Onboarding staff. You know, I think as we hire staff, I think oftentimes, at least I know I do, and I think there’s a lot of friends who would be in a similar boat. Rich Birch — We identify a problem area that we’re looking for someone to solve, and so we’re like, okay, we really need to, maybe the area’s grown, or like there’s a part of our church that just is not going well, and so we’re like, we really need to get some more time associated with this, and so we hire some staff. And we spend all this time, effort, and energy, money, to get them, and then they arrive, and we just want them to start solving problems. But getting those first couple days, weeks, months can be really tough to kind of, what do we do, how do we onboard people? What does that look like for you?
Ken McAnulty — That’s a great question.
Rich Birch — How have, you know, what would be some of the, or why is that such a tension? Maybe we’ll start with the tension piece. Why is that such a tough time? Why is that such a tough place when we first have new staff arriving? Ken McAnulty — Well, Rich, I know that many of your listeners have been through that transition point, and I’ve been through that transition point, and man, it can be such an awkward time. This moment where, you know, like you said, all this time, and energy, and effort, and money even is spent on bringing this person in, and then so often, those folks are just released to the wild and expected to do ministry without an understanding of really what’s going on. And really, we discovered that it creates this awkwardness, this weirdness. Ken McAnulty — You know, one of my staff told me this. One of the weirdest feelings is to be brought into a place with an unspoken culture, an unspoken taboo, and unspoken jokes, and have no idea what things you’re gonna step on. And we really felt that tension. We really felt that problem.
Ken McAnulty — And so our lead pastor, Pastor Brent, looked at me, and one of my counterparts, my co-workers, Tina Blunt, and said, I would like for you guys to really kind of develop an onboarding. I don’t know what that looks like, and so we just began to dream, and we said, you know, well, what would it look like if we got to come onto, you know, a great team? What would we want that to look like? What do we want people to understand? What do we want their first week experience to look like?
Ken McAnulty — And so we really just began to tailor this one-week experience that we call our onboarding week that really helps resolve those problems, and sets the pace for our staff. Because what we really wanna do is we want to, we wanna set a healthy pattern and pace so that when they get done with that one week, they feel like they can run, and there are less hindrances for them.
Ken McAnulty — One of the things that we’ve just kind of discovered is the pace that you set the first week is the pace that they’re gonna live by for the first year.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Ken McAnulty — And too often, there are churches who don’t set a pace, and so then they wonder why their staff are not doing what they want them to do. Well, I think it’s our fault. We’ve gotta take that responsibility. Rich Birch — That’s so good, I love that. What a great word, hey, this pace that we said at the beginning really is how they run, how they’ll, you know, how they’ll be a part of it. So let’s pull that apart a little bit. Rich Birch — When you think about, I don’t know, well, the best way to do this, the first day, maybe even pre-first day, how are you setting that pace well? How are we kind of setting up this conversation in the earliest moments? What’s that look like? Ken McAnulty — No, it’s a great question. You know, some of the first things that we wanna do is we wanna make sure that before they get there their first day, that we have things set up for them. We don’t wait for them to arrive to begin to set things up. Ken McAnulty — So we wanna make sure that we have a dedicated space. We wanna make sure we communicate with them about office furniture. You know, we have a budget set aside for them to get office furniture, and we talk to them about pieces that we may have already that could be adopted into their office. Ken McAnulty — And so we set up a basic office setup for them. We make sure that we order their computers. So that means we have to communicate. Hey, do you want a Mac, a PC? What do you want on it? And then we put together a communication binder that’s ready for them on their desk. Ken McAnulty — And one of the cool things that we do, and this has been communicated to us by the staff that just kind of came organically, is we kind of do some research on them. And so we find maybe their favorite song or favorite type of music, and we make sure that’s playing on their computer the day that they come in their first day of work, which is kind of one of those really cool things. We try not to be too stalkerish with it, but, you know, we wanna make sure that… Rich Birch — How are you finding out their favorite song? What do you, are you, do you like a form ahead of time or like, what’s that look like? Ken McAnulty — So it really depends on the person. Sometimes we’ll reach out to the spouse who is, and we, you know, we kind of dig into that because their spouse oftentimes loves to have, you know, they want, they’re invested in their spouse being, having a great first day experience. And so we include them in on that. Ken McAnulty — Sometimes we’ll do a little research on social media, a little social media stalking we can find out there because some of that stuff is listed on Facebook and other social apps. Rich Birch — I love it. That’s so good. A little bit of research goes a long way. That’s a great thing. Ken McAnulty — It really does. Rich Birch — It’s amazing how the, we were joking earlier, we knew we were gonna head in this direction. I was talking with some friends recently about their first day experience. And I was like, hey, what was your worst first day experience? It’s amazing how quickly those conversations come up and simple stuff, even just the computer having, you know, so many people in that circle were saying, wow, like I showed up and there was like no computer there. Or like they found a computer under a back desk somewhere and like threw it on my table. You know, it’s like some terrible thing. It’s amazing how that’s, that’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Well, how do we go maybe beyond? So I love the physical setup stuff. I think that’s fantastic. What are we doing to kind of drive maybe a little bit deeper into what they can expect to be as a part of the team, as a part of, you know, what it means to be a part of the team. Ken McAnulty — Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it’s funny, this conversation that you and I’ve had have helped what we call put clothes on the baby that we birthed. Rich Birch — Sure. Ken McAnulty — And so we really have been able to kind of narrow down some things that we really wanna give to people in that first week that we really wanna impart to our staff. And so we discovered four things that we really wanna impart. And since I’m a preacher by nature, I did four C’s, you know, cause that’s how we work. Ken McAnulty — It wasn’t three, so I didn’t get the whole preacher thing in there. So we really want people to walk away from that first week with a sense of culture, a sense of what am I walking into? What’s OK? What’s taboo?
Ken McAnulty — We want them to walk away with a sense of care, that they’re more, about more than what they do. We want them to walk away with a sense of competency, of an understanding of how they can be successful and a sense of course, which way do they go? Ken McAnulty — So ideally after that first week, they’re gonna feel like they can run. Now we’re not gonna solve everything that first week, but those four big areas are the things that we’re trying to solve. And we did things intentionally, unknowing beforehand, because we were just creating the baby, but really intentionally to kind of resolve these four issues. Rich Birch — Love it. So let’s, I love, so first of all, preacher at heart, love that. Let’s walk through those. Let’s talk about maybe each one of those. Culture first. Man, this is such an important piece of the puzzle. Rich Birch — I love that you’re saying like, hey, what’s okay, what’s taboo? That’s an interesting way to think about it. What are you doing to ensure that people are kind of onboarding with the culture? Ken McAnulty — No, it’s a great question. First of all, we think that culture is way more important than competency. In fact, if you look at great organizations like Chick-fil-A and we’re associated with a great supermarket down here in Florida called Publix, they do a great job with this type of stuff. Ken McAnulty — Those kinds of organizations say that culture trumps competency just every day of the week. And so we wanna make sure that we communicate that well. And so we give our pastor two hours to take that staff member to lunch and to walk them through the history and the story of our church, to walk them through the future vision. Ken McAnulty — One of the really cool things that he does, and I don’t wanna spoil this for any future employees, but one of the cool things that he does is he takes them out to a local highway right by and really begins to talk about the percentage of people driving by that are not saved, that don’t know Jesus. And that’s the mission of the church, just to really kind of get their eyes in the right place. And then we take 30 minutes at a time and we set them down in front of the staff that they’re gonna work with and allow them to hear the stories of those staff members, which is really cool. Ken McAnulty — In fact, the staff that we’ve onboarded have said that that is the most impactful thing that we do this week, is to set them down in front of those people. One of our staff members said it like this. He said, it humanizes the staff and creates open doors for deep conversations later. Ken McAnulty — Another staff, I’m giving you quotes because I did my research. Another staff said: the intentional getting to know each other faster rather than hoping it occurs over time. And so it’s this intentionality of saying, hey, listen, we’re gonna plug you into relationships because those relationships will communicate culture. Ken McAnulty — And as part of those 30 minute stories, what we tell our staff is, tell them why you love working at Arise. Because oftentimes the why somebody loves working at Arise surrounds the culture and it surrounds the mission success. That’s why people love working at. Ken McAnulty — So when we allow our staff to communicate that, it just, man, it increases the impact of our culture. And then we do simple things like reviewing core values and proverbs and things like that. And then we do a couple of really cool things. We do, and this is gonna sound a little funny, but we do a truth or dare lunch with our staff. Rich Birch — Truth or dare lunch? Things get spicy right off the top.
Ken McAnulty — They do, they do. We do that the last day of that week, but we really do that to allow some authenticity there and to really open up the door. Ken McAnulty — What we’ve done at the beginning of the week is our staff has been authentic with this new staff person. And then at the end of the week, it’s really their opportunity to be authentic back. And man, when they walk out of that moment, they walk out of that moment, not feeling like they’re an outsider, but now all of a sudden they’re an insider because now they’re inside jokes that we all have together. Ken McAnulty — And so it’s not just about, well, I’m trying to find my way to fit into this team. Now I fit because I have the inside jokes with them. And then the last thing in this culture component that we do is we have a document that’s called our Last Day at Arise document, where we ask them to fill that out. Ken McAnulty — And then their last day of that week, they check in with their direct up and they go through that document. And what that document does is it really helps them to intentionally think about how they will be known at Arise, what they’re gonna be known for, who they’re gonna be. Because when we start at the end and we build a culture looking at the end, we can be intentional about that. Ken McAnulty — So if I say, I wanna be somebody who’s kind, who that when I leave the staff say, I was always listening to them, that empowers me to now be a listener.
Rich Birch — Oh gosh – this is so good.
Ken McAnulty — And so we wanna be really intentional about allowing those folks to really kind of create their own path in our organization and really build those strengths. Rich Birch — Oh, I love this. Now you gave me a sneak peek at this document. Would it be okay with you if we included this in the show notes for people?
Ken McAnulty — Absolutely. Rich Birch — I think this, to be honest, friends, this is one of those things, you should just rip this thing off. It’s a word doc and you should put your church name into it. If that’s okay, Ken. Ken McAnulty — Absolutely. Rich Birch — This would be a great thing for even to kick off the new year as a staff team and say, let’s actually think about this and then let’s build it into our onboarding. I just love that.
Rich Birch — All right, fantastic. Love that. We also have got that in the show notes. You’re gonna wanna pick that up. Rich Birch — Okay, so the first, the last segment, not the first segment, the last segment, I wanna remind you, drop by unseminary.com, pick up this month’s edition, this season’s edition of Executive Pastor. You’re gonna love it. It’s free there. Just give us your email. We’ll email it over to you.
Rich Birch — And this last clip from just this last spring, it’s been an instant classic. Diana Rush from Eastside Church unpacks the unique challenges and challenges and opportunities of middle level management in a large multi-site church. This really was a fantastic episode, super practical. She provides you some great wisdom on how to manage both upward to senior leadership and downward to direct reports while trusting both sides. Rich Birch — It’s really a fantastic clip. So listen to that, drop by unSeminary. Hope today’s episode has been inspiring to you. We’ll just end with this clip. I won’t be coming back at the end of this, but thanks so much. Thanks for being on this journey. Take care, friends.
Rich Birch — And one of these things that we’re gonna really dig into today is this whole idea of mid-level management in large churches. And this brings some really unique complexities. And we wanna unpack those for folks today.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about the tension between managing both upwards, so like executive pastor, senior pastor, but then also downward, direct reports, campus teams. Why are there, and again, I’m sure you never have any struggles at Eastside, but why do other churches struggle with that? Why is that? Why is this a common thing that we see? It’s a struggle. t’s hard to do that, to manage those tensions. Diana Rush — I think some of the tension, it first starts with self. Like I always say, you have to start with the source material, your own person. And before you can lead others, you have to really understand yourself and be able to lead yourself well. Diana Rush — And so it’s really getting to know who you are, who you’re made of. I love the illustration of, you have like an orange. And if an orange is squeezed from the top and bottom, it’s eventually going to burst. And what’s gonna come out is orange juice. It’s the same on the outside as the inside.
Diana Rush — And oftentimes in management roles, we are gonna be squeezed from the top. We’ve got the top coming down on us. Like we’ve got goals. We’ve got things to achieve. We’ve got expectations, but then we’ve got the expectations of those beneath us. Diana Rush — People that maybe they’re struggling in their own journey or whatever it is, everyone’s wanting something from you. You’re gonna get squeezed in management. And if you are presenting this, like I am perfectly okay on the outside, that I’m not letting God form me on the inside, what’s gonna come out is gonna be really obvious. Diana Rush — So if you’re struggling with anger, it’s gonna come out when you get squeezed. If you’re struggling with a multitude of issues, those will all reveal themselves. And so it starts really with like being good about making sure that you’re pursuing Christlikeness in your own life, that you’re actually asking, hey, Jesus, I wanna lead like you led others and I wanna shepherd my teams. Diana Rush — So I think that’s where it starts. And then secondly, I would say it’s about building trust, both with those above you and those below you. If you are known for success, people will expect success. But if you are constantly making mistakes or going outside the lines, going rogue, then you’re never gonna build that trust and you’re not going to be handed things to further your path, or even you’re just gonna feel that upward tension of being micromanaged, right? No one likes to be micromanaged, but how do you get out of being micromanaged? You build trust. Diana Rush — And then you have honest conversations with those above you. And so that, it’s a little bit of boldness as well. You have to not be afraid to ask hard questions. But again, when you have a trust in a relationship, I know for myself, I can talk to my executive pastor who I report to about nearly anything because we have this trust that we’ve built. Even before I started in this role reporting to him, I had already had an existing relationship with him where I felt like I could go to him if I had questions, concerns. So I had been building that trust even before I stepped into this role. Diana Rush — And then the same thing with the staff below you. My team trusts that I’m gonna advocate for them, that I’m not going to overstep them, that I’m gonna let them lead and them shine. And so we can work together to make something great, make their plans into realities because I’m gonna sell it. Diana Rush — I look at myself, middle management, I’m a salesperson. I’m gonna take their ideas and then I’m gonna sell it upwards and I’m gonna craft it into something so that I can convince everybody else that this is a great idea and we should try it out. So. Rich Birch — Let’s double click on that idea of the salesperson because you captured their a tension that I’ve seen, I’ve been in, I have felt as a leader in this kind of middle management is like my senior pastor, the person that’s leading the organization, they’re getting filtered information and it’s frankly, it’s being filtered by me. I’m telling them this is what we see happening. Here’s what’s going on. Rich Birch — Now, vice versa, the people who report to me, I’m filtering what my senior pastor would like them to do. And I’m helping kind of translate the vision of the church. I’m leading at the vision, at the intersection of vision and execution. So like, I’m trying to translate that.
Rich Birch — If I’m just selling, there’s an opportunity there to break trust because it could be like, I’m gonna just send, it’s all rainbows going up, rainbows and unicorns. Everything’s amazing. Everything’s going great. I tell my senior leader that and then vice versa. I can just report all good news to my direct reports. Rich Birch — How do I avoid that tension and make sure that the true information, that good feedback’s building, that we’re building trust and that it’s built on, yeah, actually care for each other and reality, not just kind of what everybody wants to hear, which I think is a tension in these middle, mid-level roles. Diana Rush — Yeah, so I’m just gonna say unpopular opinion, but we’re all in sales, and that’s just the reality. We’re all selling something, whether you’re selling an idea or yourself. But I think A, you have to be 100% sold out for the vision.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Diana Rush — So we’ve got the best product on earth, right? We are, you know, we’re representing Jesus. We’re representing eternal life and transformation and the hope that you can only find in Christ. And so right there, as long as your heart is connected to the vision of your senior pastor, it’s like, that’s not that difficult.
Diana Rush — Now, when you are presenting ideas, whether it’s a vision that your senior pastor is saying, hey, I have this idea of something I wanna do. You have to first wrap your mind around it. You have to get in with the vision, but it’s okay, in my opinion, no matter which way you’re going, to plant a naysayer. You have to think through all the complaints that might come or all the people will, but what about this? And so you have to be willing to prepare. Diana Rush — And so honestly, I prepare for any presentation or any conversation, probably a little too much. One of my top strength finder is communication. And so for me, it’s just a natural thing that I talk my way through any scenario and any conversation. But it does allow me to walk into any situation prepared to explain. Diana Rush — So whether it’s, Gene Appel, my senior pastor, has an idea for an all churchwide initiative that we’re going to be doing. We’re actually doing it right now. And I’m gonna be leading teams for this. I have to think, okay, well, what are all the pitfalls? What are the things that are going to cost us time? What are the negotiating tactics I need to have? Diana Rush — So if I need my entire staff to now show up on a Wednesday night, what am I going to have to give them in return? And where can I give them space in their schedule so that they’re excited to be here and they don’t feel like it’s a burden. And so it’s that way I’m selling it. Diana Rush — But then maybe Greg Curtis has an idea. He wants to get rid of our four week next steps program and move to one week first step.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Diana Rush — And so he’s gonna change our entire assimilation program. Well, I mean, for something like that, you have to really get prepared because I know I’m about to take a group of people on a journey who aren’t there with us already. I’m going to have to help some people who have long held sacred cows. Well, we always done it this way and release it.
Rich Birch — Yes. Diana Rush — And so, honestly, it’s in your prep work, but it’s in your constant communication. You have to, again, you have to be sold out and believe in what the person wants and have those questions. I mean, Greg and I, we would sit in my office and talk over and over and over again about what changes he was gonna make because I have to be prepared for any questions from an executive pastor, senior pastor, even our director of finance, all these roles, I have to be able to go in and say, that’s a really good question and let’s process that together. Diana Rush — And it’s never, as a salesperson or just anyone in leadership, you never wanna have a hard no and you never wanna be unbending. You wanna be flexible…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good.
Diana Rush — …and be able to receive the feedback and then say, okay, that’s a really good thought. And you wanna make the person feel heard at all times because that’s part of the process. It’s never a hard line. It’s never, you have to do this. Let’s talk about this. Let’s make it a conversation.
Diana Rush — Because I want senior leadership, but I also want those reporting to me to have ownership over any idea and any direction that we go, which means I have to let them speak into the plan and speak into the idea so that they do feel that sense of like, okay, I can be a part of this. I can do this. And I think this is gonna be a success.
When Tech Holds Your Church Back: IT Fixes You Should Make with Steece Hayes
Jul 31, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Steece Hayes, a bi-vocational pastor and account manager at Higher Ground Managed IT, part of the ACS Technologies family.
Is your ministry struggling with unreliable tech, security risks, or outdated systems—and you’re not even sure where to begin fixing it? Tune in as Steece brings practical insights to help churches focus on ministry—not troubleshooting printers or battling cyber threats.
Understanding the scope of IT. // IT infrastructure includes tangible devices like computers, servers, printers, routers, phones, and Wi-Fi networks. It doesn’t cover production gear like sound, video, or media systems—though those systems rely on strong IT infrastructure. Higher Ground Managed IT helps churches get their networks and devices talking to each other efficiently, reliably, and securely.
Top IT pain points in churches. // Many churches operate with outdated or underpowered equipment—especially phones and computers. Phone systems are commonly antiquated, difficult to manage, and lack proper support. Churches also often rely on cheap, consumer-grade devices not designed for larger environments, which creates more issues as they grow.
C.A.R.E. Framework. // To address these challenges, Higher Ground uses a four-step approach: Clarify, Architect, Reinforce, and Evolve. The process begins with an assessment to clarify a church’s current technology infrastructure, identifying equipment, systems, and security risks. Next, the Architect phase helps design a tailored IT solution that meets the church’s size, budget, and future goals—this can include options for full-service management or co-management with existing staff or volunteers. The Reinforce phase implements the recommended systems and ensures everything is operational and secure. Finally, the Evolve phase focuses on strategic planning for future upgrades, budgeting, and reducing long-term vulnerabilities. This gradual improvement ensures churches can move from a “band-aid” approach to a sustainable, well-managed IT environment.
When to ask for help. // If your church has five or more computers and your staff or volunteers struggle to manage IT, it’s time to call Higher Ground. Often, tech responsibilities fall to youth or children’s pastors simply because they’re “young” or know how to use equipment. Higher Ground comes alongside those overwhelmed staff or volunteers to lighten the load and offer scalable support.
Cybersecurity is a very real problem. // Phishing—emails or texts designed to trick users into handing over sensitive info—is the #1 threat churches face. Higher Ground proactively trains church teams using simulated phishing attacks and real-time coaching. Other key vulnerabilities include unpatched servers, open Wi-Fi networks, and the absence of proper firewalls.
The risk of network intrusion. // Churches are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals due to lax security practices. Some cases have involved hackers sabotaging worship services by penetrating a church’s network. Steece emphasizes the importance of treating your inbox as “hostile territory” and taking preventive steps before tragedy strikes.
Better than hiring full time IT staff. // For growing churches, partnering with Higher Ground is often far more cost-effective than hiring an in-house IT manager. The support allows churches to redirect funds toward ministry roles like youth pastors—without sacrificing operational excellence.
Learn more about Higher Ground IT and schedule a free call with Steece to walk through your concerns at www.highergroundit.com.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, our tagline here at unSeminary is stuff you wish they taught in seminary. And today’s podcast, I can guarantee you is one of those things that you wish they taught you in seminary because they don’t teach this stuff in seminary. Rich Birch — And so today we brought an expert on, you’re gonna wanna lean in because I know this is an area that you have had frustration and could actually be holding your ministry back and it shouldn’t. And there’s people out there that want to help you. Rich Birch — Super excited to have Steece Hayes with us. He’s a bi-vocational pastor, is also an account manager at an organization called Higher Ground Managed IT. They’re a part of the ACS Technologies family and they founded with a really simple mission they want to help churches focus on ministry and not troubleshooting or fixing technology. He has a doctoral degree in church revitalization and wants to help churches or struggling churches; this really is a passion of his. Steece, welcome to the show Steece Hayes — Thanks, man. Glad to be here. Rich Birch — Honored that you have taken some time. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? You sit in it you know an interesting vantage point, being both a bi-vocational pastor and working with in kind of helping IT solutions in churches. Tell us a little bit of your journey. How did you end up here? Talk us through all of that. Steece Hayes — Well, it’s kind of an interesting story. It’s a little bit part of my testimony. Actually, I was not really living as a Christian whenever I first started working at ACS Technologies. Uh, uh, shortly thereafter I got married to my wife, who had been at ACS for several years prior to me. Rich Birch — Oh nice. Steece Hayes — And she, and I’m sure there’s a lot of other guys out there who have the same story. She grabbed me by the nap of the neck and dragged me into church and said, you’re going to sit here and listen. And and, you know, so I did. And you know being at ACS, surrounded by other Christian brothers and sisters and working with churches, and then, of course, the influence of my wife and church, I really started feeling the call to ministry. And I was encouraged by my pastor at the time and just started down that road of learning, being engulfed in what it means to be a follower of Christ. And then also being able to, in a professional sense, work with churches every day and helping them with their ministries. Steece Hayes — And originally I was working with our our software and the the software side of things. And so, you know, several, about 10 years ago or so, did that. Just went to seminary, branched out, started pastoring small churches and have just continued that to this day. So I have a passion for the smaller church. Steece Hayes — Although we work with a lot of very large churches. You know, the small church is the majority. And so I love helping them, especially with IT, because they really struggle in that that regard. Even the bigger ones struggle with it as well. So ACS and and the church and me being a pastor are all kind of intertwined into one big story. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, let’s define terms ah even before we begin. Because I know even IT, information technology, that can be like a buzzword that people aren’t really sure, like, what does that actually mean? Like when you say IT, what does that cover? What is that kind of the spectrum ah you know for a church leader that might be listening in? Steece Hayes — Yeah, really, IT is going to be the network infrastructure, meaning the actual devices, the things, right? The computers, the servers, if you have any switches, which you may or may not even know what that is. But, you know, all the actual devices, the wireless in the building, the things that are tangible that you can touch. Rich Birch — The printers! Why can’t we get the printer to print? Steece Hayes — Yes. Steece Hayes — Yeah. And why my computer talked to that printer yesterday and it doesn’t talk to it today. Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — Why? Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes. Steece Hayes — Yeah. Rich Birch — They’ll never fix that. They’ll never fix that problem. That’s like a, you know, that my son and I were joking about that. My son just started kind of at his first full-time big person job. And we were joking about that. Like, listen, listen, I’m a few years older. It’s never, going back to dot matrix this has been a problem.
Rich Birch — So, sorry, I’m already explaining some of my pain to you as an IT professional. So it’s all the devices. It’s the things. It’s the network. It’s the switches, the laptops, the desktops, all of that. That’s, when when we say IT, that’s that’s the kind of scope of what we’re talking about? Steece Hayes — Yeah, yeah, it’s keeping all that stuff intertwined, working together, talking with each other, efficient, effective, those sort of things. Now, I will say that what it it does not include is going to be production, media, sound, video, all that. That that’s while they’re very related and the media side, the production side of a church, depends very heavily on the IT infrastructure, we’re not sound engineers and mics and and video and that sort of thing. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Steece Hayes — So that’s a little more specialized. Now we’ve worked with those folks quite a bit in churches. But we talk IT, we’re not getting to that point. Rich Birch — Okay. That’s good. Okay. That makes sense. So most churches obviously don’t have a full-time person who thinks about these things. This just isn’t, this is not, you know, and in fact it, it’s, you know, it may maybe be a rare exception of churches that have someone who they can call up to help with this kind of thing. What are some of the common problems, tech problems that you see churches struggling with? Maybe what are some of the pain points that bring them to even reach out to you guys? What’s that look like? Steece Hayes — Yeah, there’s several. And actually one we didn’t mention a second ago, but phone systems, we we help a lot of churches with phones. Rich Birch — Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, of course. Steece Hayes — Phones are a big one because churches are outdated. I mean, they’re they’re just antiquated with their phone system because most of us are in the mind that we go to the Bell, right? We go to Southern Bell or AT&T or one of the the legacy phone companies. Or nowadays, even the cable company will go to them for their phone system. Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — Generally speaking, they’re not great. Customer support is terrible. Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — The phones are outdated. They don’t work. We don’t know how to change the voicemail. You know, how do I transfer calls? Rich Birch — Okay. Steece Hayes — All these sort of things. So phones are a big thing right now. We’re seeing a huge shift in churches getting away from using personal phones, personal cell phones and stuff like that, and start to incorporate that into a more of a corporate idea or a church phone system.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Steece Hayes — So that now when you call the pastor, instead of calling his personal number, you’re calling him on the church’s number and it just rings directly to him. And he answers it on his cell phone, even if he’s you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Steece Hayes — …making a visit at the hospital or whatever. But it’s kind of bringing all of this. So so phone is a big area that we see a lot of churches really struggling with. Another one, which is sort of related, is outdated equipment. You know, when was the last time they updated their computers in the office or, you know, their switches or just the wireless, the Wi-Fi in the building? I mean, you know, we put that thing in 10 years ago and it’s sort of working, but we’ve been band-aiding it the whole time. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Steece Hayes — So, you know, that’s another one. Underpowered equipment, they they’ve grown, but they never updated their IT. They never updated their network. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Steece Hayes — And then I think probably the biggest one is security. They’re just not secure.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Steece Hayes — Churches are very insecure when it comes to cybersecurity. And we’re seeing a pretty huge trend of cyber criminals attacking churches because they see them as low hanging fruit, because honestly, they are. Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — So I would say those are the big ones. Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s we’re gonna put a pin in that. I do wanna come back and ask you specifically on the security question, because that’s an area wanna highlight a little bit. In fact, that might be like a whole other conversation, but well, I wanna highlight that. We’ll come back to that. Rich Birch — But talk to us about, um just because we’re getting a sense of the scope here, there there’s also this like um underpowered, overpowered thing where I don’t know whether this has been your experience, but my experience has been, you know, so all the churches I’ve worked for have been fairly large churches, like statistically a thousand plus, thousand to 5,000. There’s not a lot of those out there, but even in a church like that, it’s, it seems like the squeaky wheels get the get get the best computers. Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, it’s like you have some people have these like killer systems that feel like we could send someone to Mars with them. And then somebody who might actually, maybe they’re a graphic designer or they might actually need like a really a computer that does a lot, but they’re just like friendly. And so they don’t get the most powerful computer. They’re maybe are underpowered. Do you see that where there’s like an imbalance of like tool to meet task? Is that an issue that you bump into? Steece Hayes — Yeah, that and generally speaking, with in your scenario, it’s going to be the media guys, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
They’ve got the $5,000 supercomputer that they’re using to run production…
Rich Birch — Right.
Steece Hayes — …and and the soundboard and they’re they’re doing all these things.
Rich Birch — Yep. Steece Hayes — They’ve got all this equipment that’s really, really expensive. And yet the, you know, the ministry assistant or the secretary is using a Windows 7 computer that’s 35 years old. you know So we we do see that quite often. We that that’s a thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — What more specifically of what I’m referring to about underpower and overpower is things like wifi. You know, people don’t understand. And what most people, when they think of computers and technology, they think more power is better. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Steece Hayes — You know, let’s get more. And actually that can be counterintuitive. We’ve we’ve been in several churches where they had wifi in the building, but all their antennas or the, what we call access points are set to 11, right? They’re, they’re, they’re at max level. Steece Hayes — And what happens is, is that the signals are bouncing off of each other and the signals terrible in the building because everything’s turned up to the max. Or the other way is we’ve had churches that, you know, they they have 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 people, and they’re using equipment that they bought from Best Buy.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — And it’s like, that’s just not, that’s intended for your house.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Steece Hayes — That’s not great for this environment.
Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — And Wi-Fi is just an easy one to pick on, but that’s kind of an idea of… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Steece Hayes — …you know, churches will go down to Best Buy or order something off Amazon all the time that will, you know, kind of scratch the itch they have… Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — …but it’s not really designed for what we would call an enterprise application. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Totally makes sense. Okay. So yeah I know that you guys have something called the care framework for churches. Help us kind of unpack that a little bit. Talk us through what does that look like and how does it help us be effective on this front to think through how we manage our IT well? Because frankly, to be honest, this is one of those areas where I see churches stumble. Rich Birch — Like it’s like, this is, man, if like, it would be a sin for our computers to hold us back. Like we just, we should fix this. There’s people out there that can actually solve these problems. So how do you help them? What’s that look like? Talk us through that framework. Steece Hayes — Yeah, and kind of with that idea and what you had said earlier, you know IT generally, in a lot of churches, is a very, very bottom of the barrel budget item. Most churches don’t spend a lot of money on them. Most churches don’t even have an IT budget. And if they do, it’s very underpowered, to use that same phrase. So what we do is is we have care, and that simply means clarify, architect, reinforce, and evolve. Steece Hayes — So clarify would be our first engagement with a church, would be to understand what they have. You know, what devices do you have? What computers do you have? Are they up to date? Are they not? What are your security issues? Are you secure? Are you not secure? Kind of talk through educating them – basically getting a good understanding of what their IT system and situation currently is. So that would be the clarify side of it. Steece Hayes — Then we get into architect. That would be the A. And so architect would be starting to design and build out what should your IT look like for the church. And so that may be, do you need servers or do you not need servers? That’s a big conversation a lot of churches are having today. How do we want to work with you? Do we want to manage the entire thing for you and you are hands off? Many of our churches choose that because they don’t have anybody that knows how to do it anyway. So they allow us just to handle it all. Steece Hayes — Some of the larger churches are like, hey, we will co-manage with you. So in other words, they are still involved. They’re doing a lot of work, but we are are there sort of as an umbrella to help them, to guide them, to do a lot of the minutia that they don’t have time for. But it’s also sort of putting everything in place, making sure the reporting is there, making sure all the devices are hooked up, everything’s working, everybody’s there. So we build that architect for them and then show that to them. Steece Hayes — And then once they decide that we’re we’re a good fit for them, we implement it. So we put all those in place, all the workflows, the automations, making sure that all the tools are in place, helping them with any kind of remote workforce stuff that they may do, because a lot of people work remotely nowadays. Steece Hayes — But basically getting all that set up and running. And then they’re in good they’re in a good shape. And then the last would be evolve. And so evolve would be, okay, we’re we’re managing it. Everything’s working. Life is happy. Everything’s going well. Now let’s start looking at the next step. So back to those devices and that equipment, you know, how many of your computers are out of date? How many of your switches are 10 years old? All right. We decided in the whole process that you probably didn’t need that server after all. Remember servers are $6000-$10,000 to replace. Oftentimes, and in today’s cloud world they’re just not needed a whole lot.
Rich Birch — Right.
Steece Hayes — So maybe know after we’ve gotten everything set up and running, now we look at, okay, let’s start simplifying some of these things. Let’s put in a budget and a plan for replacing a few switches over the next year or two years. Let’s get you out of that server um you’ve got a handful of computers that are just out of date. What’s our plan for for doing that. So all of that is working with the church on budgeting. Churches don’t have unlimited funds, as we all know. How can we do this in steps? We triage it, what’s the most important. And over the next you know couple of years, we will evolve them from being a band-aid shop to really state-of-the-art, but inside of their budget. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great. Steece Hayes — So that’ that’s sort of the evolve. Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — So clarify, architect, reinforce, evolve. And there’s a lot of little small steps in all of that. Rich Birch — Sure. Of course.
Steece Hayes — But it’s trying to get them from where they are today to where they really need to be. Rich Birch — Yep. Steece Hayes — And we work with large and small churches. So that varies a little bit depending on their size and scope. Rich Birch — Yeah. What’s the kind of, what’s the sweet spot? Obviously, like, you know, you’ll work with, with anybody obviously, but what is the kind of sweet spot of a church that you would say, Hey, here’s a church where you probably should bring us in. I’m assuming if it’s like, even if you have just two staff, cause already you’re like, you’ve got some sort of network, you’re printing some stuff. You’ve got a couple of computers. You got to get them to talk well together, but what would that look like? What does it give us a sense of the size question? Steece Hayes — It varies a little bit, but I would say once a church, well, first of all, if a church finds themselves needing IT help, they they are struggling with it. Maybe they have some volunteers that are kind of helping with it. Volunteers are wonderful. We love volunteers, even corporate. I mean, we just, we love that the church has those volunteers and we never want to take the volunteer out of the equation because that may be their giftedness, right? That may be their way of serving the kingdom. So we don’t want to take them out. Steece Hayes — But oftentimes volunteers are limited in their time and their scope and what they can… And also volunteers tend to lot of times be limited in their understanding. They don’t know all of this. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. They’re not thinking about it all day long. Yeah. Steece Hayes — They’re not. And so really, once you get up, I would say probably five computers.
Rich Birch — Yep. Okay.
Steece Hayes — And you’re you’re working with a staff that is not knowledgeable, the staff is busy…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Steece Hayes — …and you you see your IT starting to kind of go backwards a little bit, we’re having problems. And we’re having to call the local IT shop down the street to come in and fix things. Generally speaking, that’s when we would like to have that engagement. So that five, maybe on the small end to 10, although we’ve got some clients that have two computers. Rich Birch — Right, right. Steece Hayes — But that 5 to 10 computer size, and everything is being run by by volunteers or staff that… and here’s what we’ll see a lot of times in churches is the youth pastor is usually the one that’s assigned to it because he’s the young guy.
Rich Birch — There’s some stereotypes that just are true. Steece Hayes — Yeah [inaudible] it’s either the the youth or the children’s guy or or lady…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Steece Hayes — …and they’ll tap them because hey you’re in your 30s, you know what this you know this technology stuff is.
Rich Birch — Yes. You seem to know how to use your cell phone. You can fix this. Yeah.
Steece Hayes — Sure, you know how to do all this stuff. And so they’re over their head and this isn’t their job.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Steece Hayes — And so that’s where we come in and we kind of take that burden off of them.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — And for the volunteers, we still use them quite often. You know, we’ll we’ll help. They’ll do some stuff around the church. They’re still involved in the process. But, you know, we’re taking all the heavy lifting and we’re doing all the minutiae and we’re there to to back them up and support them. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, and I can imagine if I, and this may not be the kind of thing you’re thinking about, but if you’re thinking, you know, in the next couple of years, I can imagine us hiring a few more people, that this would be like something you want to get done on the front end.
Rich Birch — It’s like, Hey, I’m envisioning a season of hiring. Hey, we should bring somebody in now and kind of get this set up right. Get it kind of clearly aligned before. So that by the time those staff land, man, things are are set up and and well. Rich Birch — I want to go back to the cybersecurity question. This is ah is a real issue, obviously. I don’t want to be like fear mongering to people, but I do also want to be really clear. What are some real risks that that we that frankly some leaders might not be aware of and that really we should be taking some steps towards? I know a friend of mine, they had their organization had a security breach that was like tragic, like it’s very bad for the organization. And so I don’t want people to live through that. So help help us understand what are some of those risks. Without a fear mongering kind of thing, what are some real things we should be thinking about on this front? Steece Hayes — Yeah, cybersecurity is a hard conversation to have with now without coming out sounding fear-mongering…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Crazy. Yeah.
Steece Hayes — …because it’s a it’s a very real problem and it’s a very real threat. So ah the the number one threat out there today is phishing.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Steece Hayes — So for for those of your audience that may not be familiar with phishing, although I think most people are today, it’s those emails. And and we even have smishing, which would be SMS, same idea. And it’s some bad actor out there, a bad guy has sent you an email with the idea that they want you to click on something or interact with it in some way. Right? Steece Hayes — And when you do interact with it, they are stealing information, whether it’s credentials or something they’re getting from you that they can then turn around and penetrate your network, penetrate your system, do something, do some bad act with it. And so it usually comes through an email or through an SMS or something like that. Steece Hayes — That’s number one. That is hitting everybody across the board. So one of the things that we do is that we engage the church with phishing. So we phish them. We have on staff what I call white hat hackers. I mean, these are really scary guys who are very good at that. Rich Birch — Sure. Steece Hayes — And but but they’re good guys, right? And they’re they’re serving the church. And they will use what’s called social engineering means they’ll go to your website. They’ll look around, they’ll see some events and things like this. And they will then send an email to the church saying, Hey, we see you’ve got this event coming up next week. Click here to enter in a, get an offering or not an offering, but a…
Rich Birch — Right.
Steece Hayes — …a raffle or something we’re going to have at the event you can enter here. And so they’ll click on that button because it sounds innocent. Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — And the bad guy, if it were truly a bad guy, has them. So we’ll do that. And then we follow that up with training. And, hey, here’s what you look for. Here’s how to recognize it. Here’s how to avoid it.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Steece Hayes — And our risk manager here at ACS, you know, his his whole mantra is your inbox is hostile territory. Just assume everything that comes in is bad. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah, it’s true. Be very suspicious. Steece Hayes — Oh, 100%. And it’s not only true for you know your professional world at the church or your job or wherever you are. It’s true in your personal life. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s very true. Steece Hayes — You know that this is is a big problem. So phishing is a big one. That’s a huge problem today. Rich Birch — Yeah. Steece Hayes — The next next one would just be network intrusion in general. That would be having vulnerabilities in your network, having servers that’s not patched, not having a firewall, you know having your Wi-Fi that’s open to the whole universe and anybody can just come in and have access to it and they’re in your network. So those are the two big ones. Rich Birch — Yeah. And and friends, this the interesting thing about this whole area is I think for some reason, there’s like shame or like embarrassment out there around when this stuff actually happens and people don’t talk about it. And so, you know, this stuff actually happens in organizations. It actually happens in churches. And it happened in my organization. My finance person got an email from me saying—and this is a really common one—saying, hey, could you get five ah gift cards online from for these volunteers? And um I’m just in between meetings – can you can you book them, and just send me back the codes and sent a link to it or whatever. Rich Birch — And she almost took action on it. She almost took the step. And she’s an incredibly smart person. Like this is this is not she’s but then she she gave me a ring and she said, hey, I just want to double check on these gift cards. Well, that’s the first time I heard about that. And then as she was talking to me, she was like, oh, of of course this was not true. But it was socially engineered close enough. That’s just outside of something I would do. Like it was it was like not that strange. Hey, we want to thank these volunteers. We you know, we and wouldn’t be crazy for me to say, let’s get gift cards and give to them like that’s not like a crazy thing. Rich Birch — But it, you know, smart enough. And another, and I’m just saying this friends, not to freak you out, but again, to make you aware: church I know, I’ve done some work with, church of a couple thousand people, they have, and all of their systems are super automated. They have a lot of production stuff that’s super automated. And um they were having repeated technical problems, like repeated technical problems. Like stuff in their audio, stuff in their lighting, stuff on their phone you know their phones, like all this over weeks and could not figure it out. Rich Birch — And finally came to the end of it and realized, oh, they have someone who’s intruded their system and is it’s just they’re just a vandal. Like they’re in, you know, destroying their lighting system, in destroying you know audio, at like during services, like canning stuff and like. So they had to go through a significant thing like, hey, we’re changing it all. We got to go back. Everybody, you know, two factor authentication, all that stuff again. Again, and this was this is a smart church. They’re doing good work. These people are not knuckle draggers. They’re smart people. But there’s like an embarrassment out there to even talk about this stuff. But it happens, friends. You want someone like you.
Rich Birch — So how how do you, let’s pivot and talk a little bit more specifically about the services that you provide. Give us a sense of how does this all fit together? How does Higher Ground or ACS, how do how do they actually help a church in this area? What does a typical engagement look like? Steece Hayes — Well, it would be the care would be sort of the the overall framework…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Steece Hayes — …but but it would basically be to talk to the church and find out, you know, where are you? You know, what what’s your current IT situation? And then trying to to raise them up a level. Like we want them to level up in what they’re doing. There’s almost no way that we’re going to 127 percent prevent all cyber crimes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Steece Hayes — I mean, unfortunately, the days of the Nigerian prince emails are gone. Rich Birch — Right. No, it’s true. Steece Hayes — Today, the cyber criminals are way sophisticated.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Steece Hayes — And so what what we want to do is is is really twofold is one, make them as secure as possible. So we want to take them from being really low hanging fruit to being a little further up on the tree. So if something, if a bad guy is out there kind of shotgunning, looking around for vulnerabilities, your church isn’t going to be one of those he’s going to find, because you’re going to be a lot more difficult, a lot more fortified for the bad guy. So that’s going to be one of the things we’re going to look at.
Steece Hayes — And the other thing is, is just internal efficiency. What do you guys, I mean, the number of churches that we run into that have both Microsoft 365 and Google workspaces, it’s like you guys aren’t efficient.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Steece Hayes — You know, they’re they’re not backing up their data.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Steece Hayes — They’re like, hey, we we’ve got all our stuff is in Microsoft 365. Yeah, guess what? Microsoft doesn’t back that stuff up. If one day it goes away, you’ve just lost it. And so how do we back up your data? How do we keep your data safe, right? And secure and accessible. Rich Birch — That’s good. Steece Hayes — So, I mean, there’s a ton of different things and ways that we engage with the church. It really is what does that church need today? And then that evolve part, of course, would be what are you going to need tomorrow and the next day and going so forth. Steece Hayes — But I want to hit on something you said earlier about looking to grow and add staff and things like that. Rich Birch — Yep. For sure. Steece Hayes — Generally speaking, working with a managed service provider like Higher Ground, we’re going to be significantly less expensive than hiring a full-time person. Rich Birch — Right, right. Steece Hayes — A lot less expensive.
Rich Birch — For sure.
Steece Hayes — And so if a church is looking to grow and you’re wanting to expand and things like that, we, I personally, would rather you spend that money in hiring a youth pastor or a children’s minister or growing the ministry…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Steece Hayes — …and not spend a whole lot of money in your IT staff. Again, some churches need it because they’re a large church and they need to have an IT person there. But we can do a lot of the work that a full-time person would would do and you don’t necessarily need to to add staff for that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Steece Hayes — Yeah, those those are all the different areas that that we look at. Rich Birch — So good. Now, this I didn’t we didn’t talk about this ahead of time, but let’s picture I’m a church of like a thousand people and I let’s say I’m an executive pastor and I’m like, I just have this niggling feeling that we’re not performing well on this front. Like this is an area that, you know, we, we have the kid who is like, I’m not sure whether they’re any good at this stuff or not doing it. And I’m like, I don’t know. Do you guys provide a service or is there a way for you to come in and kind of do like an audit, help us understand, even get clarity? Will you do like the first step and be like, Hey, just help us understand that kind of see where are we at? Is that, is that the kind of thing that you, you provide? Is there ah an opportunity for that? Steece Hayes — Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually have. And we we can provide a security assessment for them. Rich Birch — Okay, nice. Steece Hayes — What it is, is basically we we would send to them this assessment and they would go through it. It’s a series of questions, lots of different questions, and they would answer the questions. And at the end of it, it will give them a score where they scored on their assessment. And as you may imagine, the vast majority, and I would say probably 80 to 90% of, of every church has ever taken this assessment score at 50% or below, which is really bad. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is not like golf where you want a low low score. Steece Hayes — No, no, no. Rich Birch — But I’m also thinking more than just the kind of security stuff. Rich Birch — What about IT in general? Like, I feel like I’ve got problems on, you know, it’s maybe not on the security side, but it is in the like, I man, like we got problems with, in order to get that printer to work, we have to like, you have to stand on one foot and, you know, shake your hand a certain way to get it to work. Those kinds of problems. Can you help us audit that too? Steece Hayes — Yeah, I mean, that’s part of sort of the clarify is when we have that conversation is…
Rich Birch — Yes. Part of that service. Yeah.
Steece Hayes — …you know, come to us and say, hey here’s our problem.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Steece Hayes — And these conversations don’t cost the church anything.
Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — I mean I, you know, I do this every day. Rich Birch — Right. Steece Hayes — And this is, you know, here’s our problems. These are the things we’re running into. And then we can guide you. And I’ve worked with many churches where we never charge them. Imean, they never bought any of our services, but we had conversations just to help them. Rich Birch — Right. It’s not a great business. Just kidding. Steece Hayes — But at the end of the day, I mean, we still want to help the church. I mean, this is a ministry…
Steece Hayes — …even though it’s a business, it’s still a ministry. And so we can talk them through some steps on things that they can do. For instance, you know, having a password manager. You know, a password manager is a really inexpensive way for the church to control and to make all their passwords all in one place. They can keep them. They can make their passwords complex. They don’t need to spend a whole lot of money on that. It’s a pretty inexpensive, cheap way of doing that. Steece Hayes — The phishing awareness training and everything I was talking about earlier, they can do that up front day one, and it’s really cheap. I mean, it’s really inexpensive to do that. And we will even walk through, you know, what are your computers? When was the last time they were updated? Are you patching them?
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.
Steece Hayes — You know, things like that. So, you know, we have a lot of conversations with with churches about easy things that they can fix without spending a lot of money on. But that’s that conversation. We just need to talk to them and find out what what problems they’re having. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. I noticed, so friends, you want to go to highergroundit.com, top right-hand corner. There’s a “schedule a call” button. You can do that literally while we are on that while we’re wrapping up this episode. You could do that today. Rich Birch — If I go and click on that “schedule a call” button, what happens? Who do I talk to? Reduce some anxiety around that being like, oh, they’re just going to try to sell me on something. Tell tell me about how you can help me. Because what I hear you saying is, hey, you want to help churches, which I know that’s what you want to do. Obviously, I’m paying a little of the devil’s like a advocate here, but help us understand a little bit of, of, of what would that look like if I was to do that today? Steece Hayes — Yeah, and that would be it. I mean, we would just simply talk about your your system, where you are, what your struggles are, what your pain point, what you’re concerned with, your worries. And we simply talk through that. Steece Hayes — And again, I am perfectly happy with us having a conversation and getting off the phone and you never buying anything, but you feel better. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Steece Hayes — And you’re going to go do a few of these easy, easy fixes, right? I’m perfectly happy with that. But for many folks, they’re like, hey, we need this and we need it every day. We need it 24/7. We need you guys to help us be a part of the solution. And so in that case, we’ll we’ll have a longer engagement and work with the church to to make them better. Rich Birch — That’s great. So again, ah you want to go to highergroundit.com and click on that schedule a call button. That would be a great way to kind of get the ball rolling today. Anything else you’d like to share with us, Steece, just as today as we kind of wrap up today’s episode? Steece Hayes — I would say for all the churches out there, small, medium, or large, IT needs to be something you’re thinking about. Rich Birch — That’s good. Steece Hayes — It needs to be something that that’s important to you. Many churches don’t even have an IT budget. Have that conversation. Figure out where your budget needs to be.
Steece Hayes — And I will say, for all those out there that are weren’t running anything outside of Windows 11, Microsoft ends their support of Windows 10 coming up in Nov or in October. So as of October, if you are not using a Windows 11 computer…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Steece Hayes — …it is no longer supported, which means security is going to be a major problem for you. That’s a big tip there. Rich Birch — No, that’s good. That’s really good. So ah again, if you don’t know what that is, you can click the “schedule a call” button. He’d even help you understand if you’re using Windows 10, that might save you right there. So, or you maybe send an email. Maybe that might be an easier way ah to to do that. Steece Hayes — That’s right. Rich Birch — Well, this has been fantastic, Steece. I really appreciate highergroundit.com. Anywhere else we want to send people online to kind of track with you guys? Steece Hayes — That’s the main area. And all of those inquiries will come to me. Rich Birch — Great.
Steece Hayes — I’ll be the one that that will field those and we’ll have the conversations. We’ll help them out. So looking forward to talking to folks. Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much for being here today. Steece Hayes — Thanks, man.
Spirit-Led Strategy: Smarter Church Decisions Without Losing Your Soul with Yolanda Stewart
Jul 24, 2025
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of unSeminary!A quick heads-up: Rich experienced some sound issues during the recording; thank you for bearing with us. Fortunately, our guest Yolanda comes through loud and clear, and you won’t want to miss the incredible insights she shares. Thanks for your grace and enjoy the conversation!
Do you ever feel like your church’s decisions are more emotional than intentional? Is your church struggling with inconsistent processes or reactive planning?In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we’re joined by Yolanda Stewart, Executive Pastor at Mosaic Church in Tennessee—one of the fastest-growing churches in America. Tune in as Yolanda shares a practical, Spirit-led decision-making framework that’s helping Mosaic Church thrive at every level.
Emotional leadership to strategic clarity. // It’s not uncommon for churches to make decisions based on emotion and urgency rather than shared understanding and strategy. Drawing on her military experience, Yolanda began equipping the team at Mosaic Church with tools for clarity—helping them work smarter, not harder. But instead of demanding change, she approached the team with humility, offering help and building trust.
Define, Discern, and Decide. // Yolanda created a framework that her church has used that is called Define, Discern, and Decide. It is inspired the military decision-making model from an infantry handbook and was modified into three steps.
Define. // The first step is to clearly define your problem or objective as well as your non-negotiables. Without clarity on what you’re solving for, teams risk wasting resources or solving the wrong problem. What is the ministry culture in your church? What has the pastor established as the non-negotiables? The collaborations should be within the boundaries that the pastor has set or culture has established.
Discern. // Involve the Holy Spirit throughout the entire process. Leadership isn’t just practical—it’s deeply spiritual. Discernment guides when and how decisions get made.
Decide. // Rather than defaulting to one idea, generate multiple potential solutions. Yolanda encourages at least three courses of action, but underscores it is critical to at least have more than one. Discuss pros, cons, and alignment with the vision before choosing the best course—or blending the best parts of each.
Collaboration over command. // One of Mosaic’s core values is “we refuse to do it alone.” Yolanda emphasizes the importance of inviting the right people to the table—including those on the ground level—when making decisions. Collaboration leads to buy-in, richer insights, and stronger execution. Whether you’re the lead pastor or on the executive team, humble leadership and inclusive dialogue are key to implementing transformational change.
Spirit-led strategy. // While structure and tools are important, they must be anchored in spiritual discernment. Yolanda emphasizes that “your spirituality is your greatest asset.” Church leaders must integrate spiritual maturity with leadership excellence to avoid importing secular strategies that don’t reflect the heart of the Kingdom. Even hard conversations should be framed with grace, humility, and the fruit of the Spirit.
Download the framework. // Yolanda has created a free PDF outlining her Define, Discern, Decide framework, offering guiding questions and practical steps for church leaders. Whether you’re facing a big decision or looking to shift your church culture, this resource can help bring clarity and alignment to your leadership process.
Learn more about Mosaic Church by visiting mymosaic.ch.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich Birch here from the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. Today, we are talking about something that I know is going to be super applicable to all of us. We are often faced, how do we make decisions? How do we move forward? How do we push our ministries to what we believe God’s calling to us next and today’s conversation is going to help us think through those yeah those kinds of conversations. It’s going to be great. We’ve got Yolanda Stewart with us. She’s the executive church pastor at a church called Mosaic Church. It’s led by pastors Anthony and Julia Daly, it’s a multi-site church with locations in Tennessee as well as church online, it’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Yolanda, so glad to have you here – welcome! Yolanda Stewart — Rich, thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here. Rich Birch — This is an honor. Thank you for taking time. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the church and tell us about your role, maybe a little bit of the background, ah help us understand a little bit about Mosaic. Yolanda Stewart — It’d be my pleasure. So Mosaic, you mentioned it earlier, is a multi-site church, and we are mission-focused. Many of the things that we get to do for the kingdom happened outside of the United States, outside the walls of of our church. Rich Birch — Love it. Yolanda Stewart — So we have ministry in Africa. We have ministry in Honduras, ministry in China. And of the things that is near and dear to us is reaching people who are ah the underserved, if you will, those who are, there’s not a lot of people in mind to help those types of people.
Rich Birch — Love that. Yolanda Stewart — And and which we feel a mandate for us to to to do that. And so we are we are entrenched in missions and we love it. Also, Mosaic is very busy making an effort to impact our community. And so we have several nonprofits that we are are the pioneers for, and in they are in partnership with the city of Clarksville. Yolanda Stewart — Our there is that if the doors of our church close that the mayor would be beating on the doors asking what can he do to open our doors again? And so we we are busy doing that. We have a transitional home for ah foster care children. We do senior accessibility modifications so that they can age in place…
Rich Birch — So good.
Yolanda Stewart — …and we also have ah developed a community housing development organization where we’re building affordable homes, and I get the privilege to be the executive director of those three programs.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Yolanda Stewart — And so at the church, my role also includes executive oversight of discipleship, military support, pastoral care, um outreach. And yeah, so that’s what I’m busy doing. Rich Birch — That’s everything. Well, you’re busy. You’re not sitting around looking for stuff to do. That’s for sure. Yolanda Stewart — It’s an adventure. Rich Birch — Tell us. Yeah. Tell us that’s great. That’s so good. Love hearing about all the stuff that Mosaic is engaged in and the real difference, tangible difference you’re making in both here locally and internationally. It’s really great. Rich Birch — Tell us a little bit about your background. What what was your kind of life journey that brought you to Mosaic? Yolanda Stewart — Sure. Well, Rich, I’m a 29-year veteran. I served in the United States Army.
Rich Birch — Thank you.
Yolanda Stewart — And my last duty station was Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is just right up the road from Mosaic. I was invited to Mosaic by a a friend that that I’ve I’ve been friends over 30 years now. Our children ah grew up together. But um My time in the military really cultivated leadership qualities that I didn’t know that I possessed, but um you know that was a a training ground for me. And it’s really cool how Uncle Sam prepared me, and leveraged the Holy Spirit ah to, excuse me, leverage my military experience. And then ah coupled that with the Holy Spirit, um I’ve been able to ah bring many of the things that I’ve learned, tools and disciplines, if you will, ah into into ministry. So from the from the military to the marketplace to ministry. And so I retired just a few years ago. I started as an enlisted soldier and went through ROTC, Wright State University graduate…
Rich Birch — Very cool.
Yolanda Stewart — …and um retired as a lieutenant colonel 2015.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Well, you know, I’ve said in other contexts that I really do believe the U.S. military is the the greatest leadership development organization in the world, maybe outside of the church, but like doing amazing work, developing leaders. And it’s a, you know, it’s a real just incredible, you know, just a fertile leadership development kind of engine. And so I’d love to explore that a little bit today and, and talk about how, you know, and learn a little bit about how that journey from, um you know, the military to the marketplace, ultimately to ministry, how you brought some of those decisions along, maybe take us back to when you first joined the team and you were, you know, in that at Mosaic. When you compared the the kind of decisions that were being made, maybe in the military versus the decisions you were making at the church, how did they compare? How were they similar, different? You know, how did they, you know, how did that all fit together? Yolanda Stewart — It’s very different. I will tell you. Rich Birch — Yeah, I can imagine. Yolanda Stewart — The thing that stood out, and and our church was, the staff was very young and very small, was very small ah staff when I came on board. But it was very different in terms of how decisions were made. And what what stood out to me was that there was no ah real framework. It was, it was emotional. It was ah perhaps, um ah you know, opportunistic maybe. You know, and ah it it just, it it made for a very frustrating process for me, having come from an organization that is very structured in how we make decisions. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yolanda Stewart — And and so that really stood out to me that, hey, this is an emotional decision. It’s not a well thought-out decision. It’s spontaneous. Fly by the seat of the pants, last minute, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Yolanda Stewart — And it resulted in a lot of of frustration…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Yolanda Stewart — …wasted resources, missing the objective, repeating the same mistakes over and over again. And so, yeah, that stood out to me. Very, very different than what I come from. Rich Birch — Yeah, well, that I think you’ve described, and this is why I’m excited that you’re on the podcast today. You’ve described a lot of churches. That’s where a lot of us are at. We’re in this kind of, like you’re saying, you know emotional, opportunistic. We just kind of, um there’s like a “ready, fire, aim” you know, kind of mentality. Let’s just go. Yolanda Stewart — Yeah. Rich Birch — And, you know, we could, we might understand at a theoretical level, yeah, we need to have some sort of framework. Help me think through when you kind of started thinking about, hey, we’ve got to bring a framework here to make these decisions. How did those conversations go? What did were some of those initial kind of conversations to say, hey, we’re going to try to build a framework here for making decisions? Take us through that. Yolanda Stewart — And that’s a great question. Yes, it makes sense. um I will tell you just just a little insert in here. Coming from the military, going to the marketplace, and then coming to ministry, boy, each of those were were culture cultural differences that really, really stretched me as a leader. Yolanda Stewart — And so in in ministry, um because of just the mindset of ministry, it was it was a challenge for me to remind myself, these are not soldiers. And, you know, they’ve come from so many different backgrounds that I needed to take my time. I needed to throttle myself, if you will, and change my perspective and my approach. Yolanda Stewart — So I didn’t do it right the first time, you know, first you know because in my mind, I was the I just that it was the wrong approach. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, and I’m just telling you, the Holy Spirit is underrated. But with the Holy Spirit, it’s like, it’s not what you say, Yolanda. And it’s not that what you bring to the table isn’t valuable and meaningful and and suitable for this organization. You have to you have to deliver it better. Yolanda Stewart — And so once I worked through that leadership lesson, they were very receptive when I offered…offer. Not, let me tell you what you need to do to be better. It was like, hey, this is a tool that I’ve used in the marketplace. They were amazed. They thought, does everybody in the military make decisions like this? Well no, but listen I got wind of this tool many many years ago and I thought, hey, this works. And so I used it in the marketplace. And so I offered. And, um, pastor was very receptive, very receptive. The staff was very receptive. And to this day, and that was several years ago, Rich, to this day, I smile on the inside when I hear a staff member refer to a course of action, which is, you know, elements of the decision-making model that we’ll talk about.
Rich Birch — So good. Yolanda Stewart — But so they were very receptive. And, I was able to do a presentation to the entire staff and and all the pastors came as well. And yeah, that’s how we navigated it. I offered it, and then they accepted my offer. Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Well, that that’s great coaching there even um and um I want to make sure we dive into the the actual framework here for a second, but I think it’s good to pause and even just talk about how how you ended up kind of rolling this out. That’s a great insight for us, kind of regardless of what we’re trying to come with as from the second seat or executive pastor, you know we’re not necessarily the lead or not the lead pastor. And so we’re trying to, to offer help and assistance in a way that, you know, that is seen as help, not like, Hey, we’re trying to come down on you and, and clip your wings or whatever. Rich Birch — Well, talk us through the framework, help us understand ah what what is this framework that you’ve, you’ve installed that has been so helpful? Yolanda Stewart — Yes, it’s my privilege. And I did prepare a PDF…
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Yolanda Stewart — …that you’ll be able to make available to to your listeners. Rich Birch — Yeah, we’ll link to that in the show notes for sure. Yolanda Stewart — One hundred percent. So, so I call it, and this is, this is something that is so ingrained in me. It’s not like I, I pull my sheet out, you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Yolanda Stewart — …but I did my best to capture it on paper because this is just what I do. I just, you know, it’s second nature to me now. But I call it Define, Discern, and Decide.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Yolanda Stewart — And and I what I did was I, um this tool is inspired by ah the military decision-making model that I adopted from an infantry handbook, mind you. Rich Birch — Love it. Yolanda Stewart — I was a medical service corps officer and so they we heal them. That’s kind of just what we say in the army. But I got wind of this and and what I did was I modified it into three steps. Yolanda Stewart — Essentially, the first step is to clearly define your your problem or your objective. And you can’t sleep on this step, Rich, because it’s anchor for the whole ah process of making a good decision. And if you’re not clear on your objective, then you risk wasting resources, missing you know the the intent of the whole conversation, if you will, hold the whole collaboration, if your objective is not clear. So you’ve got to ah do the work to, take your time, not rush through it. Rich Birch — So good. Yolanda Stewart — You’ve got to clearly define the objective. And the the second step that that I lay out there in the in the document that I prepared for your listeners is to clearly define the non-negotiables. Because sometimes, and this is from experience, too often, one, if you don’t clearly define the objective, and if you don’t, secondly, clearly outline the non-negotiables, then you run the risk of, you know, collaborating and getting all excited about things that your pastor is like, we’re not doing that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yolanda Stewart — We’re we’re not doing that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yolanda Stewart — Now you’re frustrated because you didn’t consider what we call, and and they’ve adopted this term in in ministry at Mosaic, but we call it the commander’s intent. That’s what we call it in the military. So so you’ve got to know your pastor. You’ve got to know what has your pastor established ah that are non-negotiables or what is the ministry culture that should function as guardrails or boundaries, if you will, so that your collaboration is within the confines of the boundary that either your pastor has set or the culture has established. Does that make sense? Rich Birch — Oh, that makes that makes total sense. I’m familiar with the commander’s intent idea, but I think that’s really good to early on, why is that immediately after the kind of the problem? So clearly understanding the problem and then next clearly identifying non-negotiables. Why what’s the interplay between those two? Why is that so important right up front? Yolanda Stewart — Right up front, it’s important because it sets the the the the restrictions, the guardrails, the boundaries. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — If you start outside of the boundaries, you’re never…
Rich Birch — Right.
Yolanda Stewart — …going to make the the type of decisions efficiently without going back and and redoing and going back and redoing, if you don’t start with those two keys. If you don’t start with clearly defining the objective or defining the problem…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — …and if you don’t, um then establish what those or identify, because they’re already established, but identify those non-negotiables, you’ve already started on the wrong foot. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — Does it make sense? Rich Birch — Makes sense. Total sense. Yep, absolutely. For sure. Yolanda Stewart — Yeah, and so then from there, and let me just go back just for one micro moment to talk about the non-negotiables and talk about the importance of knowing your leader. Discernment is important at all three steps. And also just, you know, discernment, not just from the standpoint of your experience, what the pastor has said, um what the culture dictates, but what is Holy Spirit saying? Rich Birch — Very good. Very good. Yolanda Stewart — And and and I am I am sold on the necessity of the Holy Spirit. Rich Birch — Yeah that, which is good. That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — I’m entrenched. It’s too late to change my mind now, you know. Rich Birch — Well, and this this, I’d love to double click on this because this will actually, you’re pre-thinking a question that’s bubbling in the back of my head, which is, I think that there can be a really beautiful coexistence of a fairly defined process, not rigid, but defined process, while at the same time, a high value on pursuing what the Holy Spirit wants to do and holding those two in harmony. I think sometimes we think, or there may be leaders who think that those are in opposed to each other. Rich Birch — Maybe talk to a leader who who is saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m all in on the Holy Spirit, but why do if I’m all in on the Holy Spirit, why do I need to do all this other stuff? Why do I need to have this? You know, how do those two kind of coexist together? Yolanda Stewart — That’s so that’s such a great question. It it made me think, immediately, when you began to elaborate on that question, I thought about a physician. Okay, a physician at spirit field. He still needed to go to school. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Yep. Yolanda Stewart — And he had to garner the knowledge, the education that was necessary for him to perform that function. And so don’t negate the the the education that a physician and the continuing education necessary for that physician to achieve the objective. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — What the Holy Spirit does is he’s able to ah be the governor how that education is applied, how, what you do, how you do it, and leverage all that you have experienced by way of education, by way of practice and, and, and, and so on and so forth to achieve something far more than just the, the, the tangible, the, you know, the physical, you understand? Yolanda Stewart — And so for me, I am, I am a spirit-filled Christ follower that have been called to leadership. They’re not I’m not two different people. And for me to think that I can function in excellence and please the Lord in a place where I have to choose whether I’m going to apply the Holy Spirit, give Holy Spirit access, give Holy Spirit influence, it makes absolutely, I can’t even make sense of it. It’s like, I need the Holy Spirit and I want, and I invite him to, to, to partner with me. I bring something to the table. I bring education. I bring my due diligence. I bring my experience.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — And what I’m asking Holy Spirit to do is to leverage, do what only you can do…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — …you know, that is bigger than me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. Yolanda Stewart — But i’m not, and so what we do, Rich, sometimes is we idolize our intelligence so much so that we diminish the necessity of the Holy Spirit. Rich Birch — So good. So good. Yolanda Stewart — You understand? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So good. Yolanda Stewart — I don’t know if I answered your question. Rich Birch — No, you did. Absolutely. No, that was super helpful. That’s that’s great. Okay. So I understand kind of commander’s intent, clearly identify the non-negotiables. Then what’s the next step in in the process? Then I want to ask a couple kind of follow-up questions. Yolanda Stewart — Sure. And then the the final step is to begin developing the courses of action.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Yolanda Stewart — And so I do go into um more detail on the document that the tool I’ll refer to. There’s some key identifying, um excuse me, key considerations and and ah ah guiding questions that serve as just, you know, some good insight for a person that is new to this process.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Yolanda Stewart — I kind of do them in my head and sometimes I will capture them on the agenda and the in the the tool that I’m using when I’m leading a meeting or leading a collaboration, but it’s develop the courses of action. And my encouragement is always, and I’ve learned this from the process, is having more than one course of action is crucial. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — And so I always encourage three, but always more than two, more than one, excuse me. Rich Birch — More than one. Yolanda Stewart — Three ideally, but more than one, because it’ll stretch you. It’ll cause you to, it’ll force you to think outside of the box, be innovative, not get caught in this rut of this is what we’ve always done. So you, you know, you’re afraid to do new things. And that collaboration of, ah that takes place when you’re developing the courses of action. When you invite key people to the table, In collaboration, one of our core values at Mosaic is collaboration.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Yolanda Stewart — The tagline to that is we refuse to do it alone.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — When you collaborate, you get access to people’s experience, you get their buy-in, and you get to leverage their insight and their innovation to help you make a good decision. But developing that course, the three courses of action, ideally three, more than one always, is is going to give you the opportunity to stretch, give you the opportunity to weigh the the pros and the cons and help you go to this through this, excuse me, critical thinking process. So when it’s all done, you’re able to identify, hey, we thought that was a good idea or a great course of action until we developed or identified the pros and the cons. And do they ah speak well to the non-negotiables? Do they marry with the commander’s intent? So now you’re able to go through these processes of of elimination. And when it’s all said and done, you’re able to land on either one course of action…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — …or an amalgamation of the three to make a decision. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Oh, I love that. And man, I think that that right there is gold. I think so many times we get caught in binary thinking as church leaders. It’s like, well, we’re either going to do this or that. I love the idea of let’s force to three, or maybe more even, to try to get us to think outside the box, even if it’s at the front end seems like that’s a ridiculous, that third option is ridiculous, but let’s actually go down the course, figure it out, pull it apart. And and we might you might find some gold there that we can then apply ah you know, even to some of the others. That’s that’s fantastic. Rich Birch — So as you’ve run this process multiple times and helped you make some decisions, could you give me an example of how this process helped you make a clearer decision that that felt like hey, we’re we’re not just reacting, we’re we’re making a better kind of long-term, you know not emotional, not necessarily opportunistic, although it it may have emotions and opportunity involved in it. But how do, give me an example of of something that you feel like, hey, this process helped make better at Mosaic. Yolanda Stewart — Oh, that’s so good. Well, I’m in it right now.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Yolanda Stewart — And this is the the second iteration, by the way. And so so Mosaic, I’ll just preface my my example with this: Mosaic grew exponentially over the last few years. Rich Birch — Yep. Yolanda Stewart — And when I ah ah came to Mosaic, I want to tell you that we were about 150 people.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yolanda Stewart — We have since grown to, I think we’re around about 2,300 regular average weekly attenders. Rich Birch — Yep. Yolanda Stewart — That that include…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s huge growth.
Yolanda Stewart — Yeah. And that includes around 600 or so children.
Rich Birch — Yep.
And oh there there were um areas where it’s like we we crafted, I say we, but it predated me, but we’ve crafted these narratives that we weren’t quite achieving them. So let me say say use this as an example. So our our vision mission statement, if you will, was we make disciples and we release ministers. And so here I come along and I say, well, how? How are we making disciples? Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — And um the answer was inadequate because the answer was we do it through connect groups. And so then here I am with myself, you know, coming along and being the challenge to to just provoke us, right? Yolanda Stewart — I said, okay, if if if there’s if there’s a very low expectation for connect group leaders. If anyone can be a connect group leader, if you’ve been saved 20 minutes, you can be a connect group leader. Then tell me how a baby Christian who is just motivated to lead a group can be called a disciple-maker, when we have no way of of certainty that they’ve been, well, we do, but when they’ve not been discipled. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yolanda Stewart — And so I said, we need to do better. So let’s come to the table and let’s talk about what we can do to raise the level of expectation, rather raise the standard for what it looks like to be a group leader. And then let’s build what I call a transformational leadership pipeline.
Rich Birch —That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — Let’s build a real process, a framework that at the end of it, we’ve got to make sure it’s simple because that’s our pastor. He’s like, look, don’t complicate stuff to where now it’s a deterrent, right? Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — But I’m okay with it being robust enough to be effective, but it can’t be too too robust to be a deterrent for people. But I said, let’s build framework that’s simple, measurable, and meaningful so that at the end of the day, we can stand back and say, okay, we truly do…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — …make disciples and release ministers. Here’s the framework that we do that. Here’s the process. It’s measurable. There’s accountability in there. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — There is benchmarks, if you will. It’s simple and achievable and effective. And so anyway, I’m in the process. And and this, I said, it’s the second iteration. We’ve already made some progress, but we’re not done yet.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yolanda Stewart — But the culture that we’re in, I had to give my pastor time to to digest where I had already gotten us to.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — And so now he’s at the place where because of my approach and you’ve got to be humble, Rich, when you’re bringing ideas that is going to shift the whole paradigm of a ministry. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yolanda Stewart — If you come in—I learned this the hard way—if you come in with the wrong approach, it could take years for you to achieve a good momentum… Rich Birch — that’s good Yolanda Stewart — …you know, unnecessary delay because your approach your approach was wrong. And so I’m in the middle of taking a team of leaders that I invited to the table and we have identified our objective. Our objective is to establish a transformational leadership pipeline…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Yolanda Stewart — …that we can roll out to group leaders and group coaches that when they are gone through this process, it’s not a transactional process, it’s a transformational process. It can’t be classroom setting.
Rich Birch — Right.
Yolanda Stewart — So we we are identifying, we identified the objective and you’ve got to do one at a time, but we identified the objective. Now we’re putting the meat on the bones…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Yolanda Stewart — …and and what I call building the gooey center…
Rich Birch — [laughs]
Yolanda Stewart — …building the gooey center… Rich Birch — So good. Yolanda Stewart — …so at the end of it all, we will have a framework that we have gone through this process of different courses of action and we will land on what we know is is effective, simple, measurable, and transformational. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, when you think about these steps, is there one of them that seems to be the place that things get stuck? Is it that it’s like, or or is there a common pothole with one of them that, man, we want to make sure we avoid as we think about ah these these three steps? Yolanda Stewart — It’s step number one. Rich Birch — Right, okay. Not being clear on what the problem is we’re trying to solve. Yolanda Stewart — It’s not being clear on what…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Yolanda Stewart — …because it becomes emotional.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Yolanda Stewart — And you you’ve got to focus on the objective that you are trying to achieve or the problem that you’re aiming to solve, not what you feel or what you’re experiencing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah, I can see that. Yolanda Stewart — So so that seems to be a common pothole where people get stuck. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s… Yolanda Stewart — I’ve been stuck there before. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I can see that. Or you get it’s that whole, know, you’ve you’ve climbed up the ladder and realized the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. It’s like we’re solving a problem and get halfway there and you realize, oh, this isn’t actually the right problem to be solving. That, you know, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Rich Birch — Well, when you think, let’s, you know, let’s think I’m maybe an executive pastor or a lead pastor that’s leading it, that’s listening in today. And they’re thinking about, Ooo there’s a decision coming up. What advice would you give them for some initial steps to try to help build a stronger alignment around maybe even understanding what that problem is? If the first if step one is the critical piece of the puzzle, how can what what advice would you give to us on defining the problems that we should even push through a process like this? How how do you how do you help us help us think through what that could look like for us? Yolanda Stewart — That’s such a great question, Rich. Collaboration. Invite the right people to the table. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yolanda Stewart — That’s my advice. I mentioned that I started my military career as a private. If you know anything about the military, the private is the voiceless person, right? So we’re polishing pipes and doing, you know, police calling, picking up trash and things. But what I learned as a sergeant and what I learned as a cadet and what I learned as a colonel a commander, is that that private is the key to my success. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yolanda Stewart — I’m the ideator. I am the person, you know, at certain levels of leadership. Sometimes my head is is, you know, at the 30,000 foot perspective. And like I’m not aware that the the the real challenges are, you know, fill in the blank because I’m not at the execution level.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good Yolanda Stewart — And if you don’t invite the right people to the table, then you risk, you know, the the the you you forfeit the the the beauty of their contribution and the importance of of its influence to the outcome. Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yolanda Stewart — And so my my encouragement to leaders is humble yourself, humble yourself exclamation. And look around. Refuse to do it alone. Leverage the experience, the perspective…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — …of the folks who are going to be most impacted by the decision that you’re about to make. Leverage the the insight of the people who are going to be expected to execute, communicate, coordinate, if you will, the decision that you’re about to make. Invite them to the table…
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Yolanda Stewart — …so that they can get buy-in, you can get their buy-in, and you can get the benefit of their experience and their perspective. So that would be my advice. Rich Birch — Well, Yolanda, this has been great. I can see why God is using your leadership at at Mosaic. This has been a rich conversation today. I really appreciate this. And thank you for this handout. Super helpful for ah for people. As we’re kind of coming to land the plane, anything else you’d ah you’d like to share with us today? Yolanda Stewart — Yes, and and I want to circle back because I think, you know, what one of the things that we say at Mosaic is your spirituality is your greatest asset. And um sometimes, especially leaders at the level that I’m leading at, sometimes they come from the marketplace and they have been indoctrinated by the culture of of the secular, you know, market, if you will. And I want to just say, as as spiritual leaders, we cannot lose sight…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Yolanda Stewart — …of the importance of our spirituality being the greatest influence in all of the things that we do, especially our leadership. We are being trusted to lead. We have been positioned and assigned to lead. And if we choose to do it independent of, of total dependency on the help of the Holy Spirit and our spirituality, we risk many of the, the, the what I think are counter-kingdom, counter-kingdom consequences ah in church because leaders bring secular culture into the church and and and leverage those types of things to be leaders. And we lose lose sight of servant leadership, what that really looks like. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yolanda Stewart — And become transactional leaders, you know, disconnected versus transformational leaders. Rich Birch — So good. Yolanda Stewart — You know, people are used as tools and we ah we exploit people. And this just mindset from the secular world, my my encouragement would be just be careful as a leader. Don’t forget that your spirituality is your greatest asset. Bring it to the table every time, even when you’re bringing correction. You know, you should bring a basket of fruit. Galatians 2 conversations, the hard ones, you know, bring the basket of fruit and don’t lose sight that you are a disciple-maker.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yolanda Stewart — Even when you’re having the hard conversations to bring corrections. So there’s good insight from the secular market. But we must not allow the secular market to influence our dependency on our spirituality to lead God’s people. Rich Birch — Well, this has been fantastic. So helpful today. First, just want to honor you for your service. Thank you so much for what you’ve done in the military and then how you’ve brought this with such wisdom and insight and applied that to Mosaic. It’s just been fantastic. If people want to connect with the church or with you, how do how do we do that? Where can we point them online to connect with the church? Yolanda Stewart — Yes, mosaicchurch.us is how you find us. And we are in the process of of uploading some of these tools that we are developing in-house. Rich Birch — Love it. Yolanda Stewart — And um I’m looking forward to the opportunity for those things to be available online as well. But just to hear some messages and just to get some inspiration, that’s how you can find us online. Rich Birch — Love it. Great. We’ll link to that in the show notes. Thanks so much, Yolanda. I appreciate you being here today. Yolanda Stewart — Rich, thank you so much. Bye-bye now.
Why Your Church Isn’t Seeing Christmas Growth
Jul 21, 2025
You’re not alone. Many churches hope for big impact at Christmas but end up seeing minimal growth, and it’s not because your people don’t care or your services aren’t good enough.
In this final installment of our 3-part summer series on planning for Christmas, Rich Birch unpacks the real reasons why churches miss the mark—and how to avoid them. If you’re tired of putting in effort only to feel like Christmas could’ve reached more people, this episode is for you.
Inside today’s conversation:
You’re Skipping Steps Sending one email or making a single announcement doesn’t move the needle. Rich shares how churches unintentionally undercut their invite efforts by doing only pieces of the plan—and how you can fix it.
You Need a Full System, Not Just Hard Work More energy doesn’t automatically mean more guests. Rich explains how having a proven, start-to-finish invite system is more effective than just adding to your team’s to-do list.
Lukewarm Culture Doesn’t Spark Growth If you aren’t passionate and consistent about inviting people, your congregation won’t be either. Learn why clear, repeated messaging builds the kind of momentum that leads to overflowing Christmas services.
Repetition Is Not the Problem—It’s the Plan Don’t be afraid to sound like a broken record. Great churches aren’t afraid to repeat the invite over and over again in a clear, practical way.
This is part 3 of a special 3-part series designed to help your church plan ahead for Christmas—starting in the summer. Missed the first two episodes? Catch up here:
Let’s make this your most impactful Christmas ever.
Why Your Church Staff Might Be Out of Alignment (and How to Fix It) with Devin Goins
Jul 17, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Devin Goins, Executive Pastor of Strategic Development at Biltmore Church in western North Carolina, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country.
Is your church growing but you’re struggling to keep your team aligned and rowing in the same direction? Tune in as Devin outlines a simple yet powerful diagnostic tool that helps churches evaluate and improve staff alignment and organizational health.
Growth requires change. // Many churches resist change because they assume what got them here is what’s driving growth. Devin challenges this mindset, noting that growth itself creates complexity, which demands new systems, strategies, and adjustments. This means constantly reevaluating lids like parking, kids’ space, and worship environments—not just in moments of constraint but ahead of high-attendance seasons. Leaders must prepare for what’s coming, not just manage what’s current.
Layers of organization. // To truly understand what’s happening in your church, get to the ground level by listening to volunteers, attending huddles, and sitting with small groups. By observing how messages are communicated down the chain, you gain clarity on whether your team—and especially volunteers—are aligned with your vision.
Three care zones. // Devin introduces a framework Biltmore uses internally to assess team alignment and well-being. Based on scope of care, this tool identifies how staff are engaging with the organization through red, yellow and green zones. The more of your staff that you can help move to the green zone, the higher alignment will be in your church.
Red zone signs. // High stress or insecurity causes staff to focus only on themselves. They may appear withdrawn, burned out, or apathetic toward church goals. This could stem from external stress, misalignment with their role, or unclear expectations. They could have burnout from being in the wrong seat. They need honest conversations and be honest about why they do what they do.
Yellow zone signs. // The yellow zone is the most common zone in growing churches. Staff in this zone have shifted from self-focus to team-focus, but often at the expense of broader church alignment. Teams in the yellow zone may create policies that favor their own department, compete for resources, or unintentionally reinforce silos.
Green zone signs. // In the green zone staff have high security and low stress. Their scope of care extends beyond their department to the whole church. They’re vision-aligned, collaborative, and proactive. While not every team member can be in the green zone at all times, increasing this number improves organizational alignment dramatically.
Alignment is not passive. // Misalignment isn’t just operational—it’s spiritual. The enemy often works through disunity, and realignment requires intentionality. Leaders can support movement from red or yellow zones to green by removing resource scarcity, eliminating “zombie” processes, and clearly communicating goals and expectations. It’s also important to reward green zone behavior and affirm cross-department collaboration.
The role of executive leadership. // Executive pastors must lead the way by modeling unity. It’s easy to roll out new initiatives too quickly, but lasting change requires alignment at the top. Sometimes, slowing down for internal clarity results in faster organizational momentum. Avoid creating policies and procedures where structure replaces honest conversation. True alignment takes time and trust.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We are really talking about how we work together, what do we do as a team to kind of keep us focused and rowing in the same direction? I know. Listen, friends, if we’re honest, all of us are wrestling with this and need help in this area. Rich Birch — And so we’ve got a real expert on the phone today on the call the phone whatever man 1990 called and wants their podcast back. We’ve got Devin Goins with us. he’s in an incredible church, Biltmore Church, a multi-site church in western North Carolina with seven locations, if I can count correctly, maybe eight with another one, a Spanish location service online. They’ve repeatedly been on the fastest growing church list in the country. He serves as the executive pastor of strategic development. That’s a fantastic title. Devin, welcome to the show. Devin Goins — Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. My title, I think, has been voted repeatedly, is most likely to be created by AI, is what I’ve been told. So, for sure. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. That that’s a normal – I’ve joked in, in other contexts that, you know, leading in a fast growing multi-site church. I was like, we should just stop having titles because it’s like constantly changing, you know, there’s always new things coming.
Devin Goins — They’re buzzwords. Rich Birch — Tell me about the church. Kind of tell us a little bit about Biltmore. Give us some context. Talk talk about that. Devin Goins — Yeah. So a regional multi-site church, we’ve got seven campuses, including the Spanish campus, but about to be number eight is under construction.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Devin Goins — Number nine is kind of in the pipeline a little bit.
Rich Birch — Fantastic.
Devin Goins — So we’re building that that as we speak. And so yeah, just a day to day kind of feel like my, my job, even though it sounds like AI what we found is that functionally, our lead pastor decides the what. And along with our executive team, I try to help with the with the how each and every week.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Devin Goins — And so it’s been growing quite a bit and very thankful to our leadership for that. And just try to steward that the best we can. Western North Carolina is very diverse in terms of some of its, you know, political leanings. You got high, high views on either side, particularly with the town that we’re in near Asheville. And so we’re just very excited to continue to be able to serve this community each and every week. Rich Birch — So good. You know, I there’s a lot I want to dig into today, but I’m sure leading in your context, I love that you’re, you know, launching another campus, thinking about the one beyond that, you’re growing church. You’re trying to you’re leading at the—I’ve talked about this in other contexts as well—leading at the intersection of vision and execution. Hey, how do we make this stuff happen? When you think about kind of leadership challenges that you’re facing that kind of been bubbling up, what are some of the things that that you know that you see you’re kind of dealing with these days? Devin Goins — Yeah. Well, I think with growth obviously comes complexity. We hear that a lot. And so how do you keep people aligned with that? I think oftentimes we think that we’re growing because of something. And so we don’t we sometimes to be resistant to change in that because we think, hey, this growth is happening for some reason. Why would we want to do anything to change that? And the reality is, if you’re growing, that’s when you need to be changing. Devin Goins — And so I’m thankful to be able to serve our lead pastor, Bruce Frank – one of the hardest workers I know. He’s amazing. He is great at navigating through change with people. And so we’re just seeing that is that, you know, we aren’t content with the status quo, with, we believe that God’s called us to more. And so, you know, day to day, I think one of the things that we’re looking at is our lids. I’m sure that y’all have covered many times on the show parking, kids, and worship are lids. And so I do a lot of research of going, hey, not only where are we now, but y’all y’all know and your listeners know that there’s cadences for the week and for the year that you’re going to have. And so just because you have capacity in June doesn’t mean necessarily you’re going to have capacity in February.
Rich Birch — Right.
Devin Goins — And so I try to be proactive with that and kind of highlight both hot spots and some cold spots of where we could potentially improve. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s cool. There’s a, man, there’s a lot there. We might come back to that, you know that lids conversation because there’s definitely something there on the physical side. But when it comes to kind of managing your people, managing the team, you know, there’s the, the big ideas of like, okay, we want to do these things, but then we’ve got to actually then get people to do that. Like we gotta move people through that. What are you learning on that front about managing your people, helping them kind of think through managing change in their in their in their work, in their lives. Devin Goins — Yeah. Yeah. So I think you’ve got to pay attention to the layers of your organization. And I think that sometimes we forget the last layer. And that’s the staff to the volunteers. And so you have got to communicate something so clearly up at the top that your leadership tier, that your executive tier is sick of talking about it. They’re sick of hearing about it. Because that’s when it’s going to start going down into, you know, your coordinators, into your specialists that are actually doing things on staff. Devin Goins — But then, you know, we made a decision recently that affected one of our positions and, the volunteers that they were over. And I actually sat in on one of their huddles and, and I got to hear their take and how they were explaining the decision that we made in a room on a whiteboard, how they were having to actually explain it to these volunteers, and it affected them personally. And so I’m a big fan of, you don’t want to stay down there but get as far in the ground level as you can. I, last Sunday went to a mature adults group that we have at the church, and I just said, hey, can I sit? And they, you know, were poking jokes at me the entire time, but I got to see, you know, on boots on the ground, what are things like. So obviously saturating “the why”. The bigger you get, the longer runway you have to have. But some people are successful at first at, you know, being a church that has a one-year-runway and they have success because they’re agile. But then you add locations, you add staff, and you have to be more and more intentional with that. Devin Goins — And so now that we’re at, you know, seven about to be eight campuses, we’re really trying. We don’t want to lose the ability to move quickly, but we we need to make sure that we move effectively and that that vision drips all the way down, not just to our staff, but to our volunteers as well. Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. I love your clear thinking on that. That’s, that’s fantastic. You’ve, I’ve seen a framework that you use internally. You call it red zones, yellow zones, green zones. Can you talk us through what these zones are first and then where where did this idea come from? Kind of give us…
Devin Goins — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …the the germ of it. Where where did all this come from. Devin Goins — Yeah. So these zones are based on the scope of care. and so the scope of care, if you’re in the red zone, that means you’re highly stressed or you’re highly insecure. We’re talking about staff members here. Your scope of care tends to be yourself or themselves if we’re talking about staff members. Devin Goins — And then if they’re moderately stressed and this is what I see with a whole lot of churches, whether they’re growing or shrinking, is that they have a lot of people that are in the yellow zone. And that’s whenever they start thinking about, not just themselves, they’re beyond that, but they’re thinking primarily about, their team. If you’re a multi-site church, then you’re starting to think about your campus. Not that there’s ever any of that going on.
Devin Goins — But, and then finally, if you’re in the green zone, which means you’re low stress, high security, high vision, then you’re going to be thinking about the entire church, and that’s going to be your scope of care. And what we found is that the more people you can have, you aren’t going to have everybody in the green zone. But the more is an executive pastor or leadership team that you can move into that green zone, or at least out of the red zone, we really want them in the green zone. The more that you can have in there, you don’t have a high chance of high alignment in your church. Devin Goins — Moderate alignment happens because of the teams and all that when it’s in the yellow zone. But then low alignment happens when you have a whole lot of people that are in that red zone. And so we have this kind of framework that we use, and it helps us be able to identify, because we don’t want our people in the red zone. That’s not beneficial to them. That’s not beneficial to the church. And so it gives us a chance to pastor them through. And there’s many reasons for that.
Devin Goins — The kind of origin of it. I’ve been on staff now for, for 12 years, and I started as the communications director. And with the communications team, we had just gone multi-site when I got here. Our lead pastor, Bruce Frank, Carl Sutherland, our creative pastor – they had managed all the, like, really tough, like modernizing the worship service. What’s this idea of multi-site? And you’re given to all those things. And they had done that great. And we were experiencing a lot of growth because of that. It was being, rewarded, I think, for their efforts.
Devin Goins — But as the comms guy, I was starting to see under the surface. If you get nothing from this podcast, talk to your comms guy, because they’re going to see the underbelly of what is working. And there’s areas that were handling the stress very well. And there’s also areas that we’re still very much in that like one site church, or the number that we were, that we’re struggling to to kind of adapt to the new reality. Rich Birch — I, I love this. Friends, a little editorial note. The thing I love that you’ve done here—not surprising; you come from a comms background—you’ve tried to put to a a fairly simple, you know, red, yellow, green, on a complex and important topic. And that clarification, man, I can see how that would help drive internal. Because you have to get common language and understanding first before you can get that kind of alignment. So let’s talk about red zone. How do you identify that teammates, areas, departments are in the red zone. What’s does that look like to you? Give me some examples of that. Devin Goins — Absolutely. And, you know, I think it’s important to think through. This doesn’t mean an employee is a bad employee. I’ll kind of share a story about me two years ago when I was in the red zone. But it does mean that there’s a there’s something not working right that needs to be handled. So signs that we see… Are these people afraid or nervous in meetings with their supervisor. Whenever they have that one on one, or they always kind of shrinking away? Are they afraid that something, did I do something wrong? Things like that. They generally have an apathy towards team or organizational goals. Hey, we’re doing this whole new initiative and it’s going to be great. And we’re going to see, you know, this many baptisms. Hopefully next year is fruit of it. And they’re just apathetic towards it. But really what what kind of sums it up is their first thought or your first thought may be when something is presented or implemented. Hey how does this affect me? How does this affect me? What what is my, what what is the cost that I’m going to have with this? Devin Goins — Now again, we can easily go, hey, that means that somebody is, you know, a bad employee or in the wrong seat. Oftentimes, it’s an outside life stressor. And so, you know, for me, two years ago, my, my wife and I suffered a devastating miscarriage. It was something that I pastored some people through that before. But it wasn’t something that I thought that we were going to navigate ourselves. And so during that time, I was definitely in that red zone thinking. Hey, we got this great new, you know, project, and we’re rolling out this program, and I’m sitting there doing, man, I’m grieving. And I’ve also got a grieving wife, and we’re trying to grieve together but separate in timelines that that put us where I was thinking about myself. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it is something that we need to handle. Devin Goins — A couple other things that can lead to that. I’ll put this on our tier and executive pastors and leadership. Sometimes it’s a lack of clear vision and strategy and people not consistently hearing the why or the how. So it’s very important that we don’t go, you’re in the red zone. You’re bad. how do we handle this? How do you fix this? We need to look in the mirror and go, hey, are we actually consistently given that that how and why?
Devin Goins — The other thing is that it could be consistent redlining and burnout, possibly due to being in the wrong seat. Burnout is interesting. You can fake it for a while. But if you’re in the wrong seat and you know it, and you’ve got that imposter syndrome for for, you know, day after day, week after week, eventually it’s going to catch up to you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.
Devin Goins — And so we can see we can see that. So, and then we’ve got solutions just to get out of the red zone, obviously meeting with a counselor. That’s what I had to do, processing for the grief. Having honest conversations with a supervisor. I feel like supervisors know sometimes you’re in the wrong seat, but they’re waiting for you to be able to be the one. And I’m not sure that’s best, but sometimes that happens to to identify it. So everyone loses when you’re in the wrong seat and everybody wins whenever you’re in the right seat. And then finally, I know it’s cliche, but you’ve got to saturate yourself in why you do what you do and who you serve. Ministry is the best job in the world when you remember that. But when the hustle and bustle gets there and you forget why, there is a lot of stress in these roles and there is not a whole lot of credit sometimes or reward, at least on this side of heaven. It can be the best job in the world, or it can be the worst job in the world, depending on how connected you are with that. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that you’re there’s a lot there, but your clear distinction around, the kind of core behavior or mindset of someone in the red zone is it’s very much about them. Rich Birch — Everything – it’s… I’ve joked in other contexts, or not joked, I’ve said in other contexts there’s this idea of locus of control where it’s like, you know, external locus, internal locus of control. External locus of control people are always like: stuff happens to me. Everyone’s doing things to me. And that’s a, that’s a tough place to lead from for sure. So if, if that’s the red zone and then green zone is this idea of like, hey, I’m aligned with, like I’m thinking about the church. I’m thinking about the vision, the mission. I’m fully aligned with where we’re going. Explain the yellow zone to me. Help me understand where to… Because the two extremes I get, I get the like, oh, I’m super, you know, we all know that person where like, something happens and they’re like, oh my goodness. Or we know the person that’s strong in the line. What does the yellow zone look like? Devin Goins — Yeah. So this one’s hidden often. But I would say that particularly in growing churches, is one of the most common areas that people are in. And the reason is, you’ve, you’ve had this growth where you’ve whether you’re shrinking or growing. It’s applying pressure. And, and usually unless you’re just in dire straits, you have friends with the people that you work with, the department that you’re in, the campus that you’re in. And so you don’t just go all the way down to thinking of me, but you also realize that their survival and kind of like this group mentality, this herd mentality that the herd is just your your area. And so one of the things that we see common and I see this all the time, is policies and procedures are often created in a vacuum that favors a team or a department. So I’ll pick on myself here a little bit again – comms guy. We started getting requests that were, you know, like 7 to 10 days out for like full fledged videos. And we’re like, hey, the only way we could do this is if I say, if I call my wife and say, hey, am I going to see you for the next, you know, 7 to 10 days, and that’s not that’s not good. Devin Goins — So what we did, and it seems great on the surface, we said, hey, let’s create a policy and let’s create a procedure, but we’re going to create that procedure where it’s going to be a creative request form, a communications request form. And we’re going to put on there. You need to let us know this four weeks out in order for us to give you the deliverables. Now that seems great. And I’m high-fiving all of our you know, we’ve come up, we’ve had the great brainstorming ah meeting. But what we actually did there is we managed the symptom. We managed the symptom of getting things late. Well, when you actually dig into it, what was happening was we were growing at such a pace that smaller events were now big events because of their size. And so there was additional details that they needed to work through and they were waiting on their supervisors for. And so inadvertently, what I may have done is I may have put, if kids was waiting until, you know, ten days out, and they didn’t get their information, you know, ten days out. Devin Goins — Now I’m putting them in a double bind in a no-win situation where I’ve created a policy that helps me, but it doesn’t help them. And so that that’s very easy to do. It’s very easy to go, hey, we need this tool. But this tool is really geared towards lessening my load as a department. And that’s that’s easy to do. It’s natural to do. But as the executive team, executive pastors and leadership, we have to fight against that. Another couple of signs that could help with that or show that is competition takes place with other departments for promotional awareness. So they’re trying to outcompete each other of, hey, I’ve got you know, if you’re VBS and your student camp are like at the same time, who can be louder to, you know, kind of get an awareness of those events. But the key thing that they see and you’ll see, this is the first thought when something new is presented or implemented, how will this impact my team? Devin Goins — And so you’ll see this a little bit, something’s being revealed in an all staff meeting and there’s a text thread and it’s for, you know, that department. Hey, did you hear about this? How is this going to affect this? How is this? And you’re you’re bonding together, but you aren’t bonding together for the church. You’re you’re fighting for survival for for you. The thing that I will say, this is where the executive pastor, executive team can help with this. And so you can help look at organizational growth and scarcity of resources that can cause that. So you can look at that. Another thing that you can look at is look at inherited processes and goals. I call these, zombie processes. It’s a process that’s been there, and maybe a staff member is doing this… Oh, Rich, I, I got to tell you a story.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Devin Goins — I need to I need to tell her about this before this podcast airs. But, a couple of years ago, I was the comms guy, again, I kept going to our welcome desk throughout the week. And it was some of this great content. I think it was on like, spiritual warfare or something like that. And I think it’s like Billy Graham, good content. But the cover of it was like these angels and demons battling, and it just was not our brand. It was not anything, you know, that we would, we would want. And so I would go up and I would see it and I would take them and I would put them in the trash. I’m getting good content, but I’m like, I don’t know if this is approved. I don’t know where this is coming from. You know, all that. And then the next week I would come back to the desk and there was the same material again. And I’m like, okay, so I take it, I put it in the trash. Then it starts getting where I put it in the trash. The next day it’s back and I’m like, who is here? This is obviously a staff member. This is obviously somebody, you know, and so I go out to the lobby and I see one of one of our ladies that’s been on staff for many years, and she is so awesome and will run the play in for years upon years. Devin Goins — And I see her with these things, with these pamphlets in her hands. And I’m like, hey, you know, are you the one that’s, you know, putting these out here? And she goes, yes, Devin, I am. And you would not believe how popular these things are. I put them down and they are gone the next day. And so I keep printing them out and doing all that. I’m like, oh, man.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Devin Goins — So we had a talk and said, hey, can we modernize the cover? This is obviously, you know, went for there. But be careful, though, sometimes your most dedicated employees are doing these zombie processes. And then, you know, also just making sure that you don’t have competing goals and that you’re planning holistically with that. So…
Rich Birch — Right.
Devin Goins — …a couple of things just to get out of that: if the policy or anything primarily benefits only your team or department, you got to consider if that’s worth doing. Planning ahead and planning together, and then just aligning with a strategic plan we found has helped a lot with that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. How did how has this impacted the kind of internal conversations, this framework. What does this look like operationally kind of on the ground.? Like what is this is it does this bubble up or people like, they give you a stamp and say or a sticker and you’re like, you’re in the red zone. You know, what’s that what’s that look like? Devin Goins — Yeah. No, we definitely try to reward like, I’ve got a production director now that’s amazing. And he’s got a video background. And so he just filmed all of our videos for our adventure week, what we call our VBS, and they are amazing. And so I try to make a point of that to complement where, where we can, any sort of thing with that, to be able to say, hey, people really just when they know they’re doing a good job, you know what gets rewarded, gets repeated. And sometimes rewarded is just, you know, calling it out and saying it. So it’s that. Devin Goins — I think it’s also, and this is the frustrating thing, is whenever something pops up, and I have situations right now where I want to go yellow zone, so, so fast because there’s a stress point that’s there. And so I’ll have an employee say, hey, this happened and this is against, you know, our policy. Can we, you know, gate this so it has to go through another approval process. And it’s frustrating, but to sit back and go, okay, let’s put ourselves in the other department shoes. What what are some of the pressures that they’re facing, and how can we go green zone thinking of going, what’s the stress behind all this and how can we work together for it? I’m not saying that we do that perfect. It annoys some of my employees sometimes because I think they want me to just come down with the hammer. But I think ultimately, when we’re all on the same team, it’s felt and we know that we can get further, faster. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. I like particularly your your conversation around policies there because you know, and I’ve, I’ve said in other context that policies are if your policy is just trying to you have a policy to try to avoid a conversation, then we really shouldn’t have that policy. You should just have the conversation. Like so using the example of like we’ve all lived, you have a very vivid example. Hey we need this video in x number of days, weeks, you know whatever. And it’s not, how do you actually solve that then? If we don’t have a policy, if we don’t say it’s four weeks, what do you functionally do to try to drive alignment? Have more conversation? Is that the goal? Devin Goins — Yeah, yeah. I think the conversation has got to be key. I would say that sometimes we do a policy to avoid those conversations. And the other thing, whatever the structure is, whatever that tear down in your church from the lead pastor is they have got to be on the same page, and they have got to be willing to slow roll something until they get on the same page.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Devin Goins — So I’m one of four executive pastors, and man, I’ve got some ideas that I think are just amazing. I think that they would push us forward. I think they would be great. And and to be honest, I’ve been given by our lead pastor some positional authority to be able to roll some of those out. But if I do that, and I don’t have my other three teammates on the same page…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Devin Goins — …it’s probably not going to stick. And when something doesn’t stick that that trails off that that continues on in your organization, you start having questions like, hey, is this going to be another one of X, Y, and Z? I know we’re talking about it. I know Devin’s really excited about it, but I talked to my guy and and he didn’t know about it. Or he he’s got some questions about it. So that that second layer has got to be on the same page. And sometimes you gotta you’ll actually get there faster, being slower and waiting for everybody to come along to it, refining it. But you never want to put your teams where they’re against each other, and they don’t have the authority to solve it because their executive pastors upstream are not on the same page. Devin Goins — So a commitment to that. We meet, quite a bit, and sometimes it feels long. But I know that whenever we, we exit that room, we’re on the same page, and we’re all going to be saying the same thing, and that’s important. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. My friend Jenni Catron talks about the fact that our cultures are not as good as we think they are. You know, the we as as senior leaders, we think, man, it’s great to work here. This is fantastic. But it’s actually not the case. You got to get out and talk to people. There’s some resonance here with that. I think there’s a similar issue around alignment. We’re probably not as aligned as we think we are. Kind of dig that out a little bit more. You know, it’s it’s this is an important issue for us to really own at the senior level. Help us understand that. Talk that talk that through a little bit. Devin Goins — Yeah. No I think with alignment what we have to think through, one, I think that we believe that we can drift towards alignment. And sometimes we do say with the gospel we have this alignment so we should naturally, if we’re all Christ followers. And and the reality is nothing is not passive. It doesn’t it doesn’t happen. So I actually think alignment is is very spiritual. And I’ll take it from, from two angles. One, think about the Scripture in general. One of the main purposes of Scripture, I believe, is to align our life based off of biblical principles that we see in God’s Word, and biblical truths and the gospel. And so I think that you think of the word sanctification. That’s really just alignment of aligning your life personally. And so I think it is a spiritual concept that can have organizational stuff. The flip side is also true, is that I believe that that the devil knows that he can, if he can misalign, if he can use misalignment for a church, he can greatly reduce its effectiveness. Devin Goins — So it’s not just this passive thing. A well-resourced church, you may go, man, I’m not a well resourced church, you know, X, Y, and Z. If you have a church building, if you have a congregation, if you’re meeting, you’re you’re well resourced by the world’s standards. You can make a difference with your resources. And so I believe the devil goes constantly and goes, hey, a way for me to minimize their effectiveness, I can’t tackle their resources, but I can make them much more inability to be able to manage those and reduce their effectiveness, because I can get, you know, departments against each other. And if I can make the enemy Fran from kids, as opposed to the devil, I’m gonna greatly reduce that church’s effectiveness as opposed to, being able to do that. Rich Birch — That, Dude, that is so true. You know, I’m laughing. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s so true. Like, you know, we’ve we’ve seen that. It’s like, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about how we’re talking to each other rather than working on the thing that the mission that God’s given us. That’s that’s so fantastic. Well, maybe there’s a leader that’s listening in today and they think, man, my team, the people I work with, maybe me is, you know, shifting towards yellow to red. What’s like a step or two you think we could take to try to address that? Devin Goins — Yeah. So I think a couple of things. If you are in positional authority, use that positional authority. We sometimes think of that as being a bad thing. And we should, you know, not not lead through that, but use that for good and remove bottlenecks or resource scarcity. If there’s something sometimes we’re guilty of trying to be good stewards and we order just enough of a product or a supply. But really what we’ve done downstream is we’ve made departments compete against each other for that. And then if somebody doesn’t return it and then there’s these battles. So the, the okay with, you know, trying to reduce that resource scarcity, any bottlenecks that you see also. Devin Goins — Also, manage the calendar holistically. Just because it’s good doesn’t mean it’s best. And particularly if you are scaling these events and these things that you need to promote, they get bigger over time. So as you scale in terms of size, you may have to look at something and go, man, that was good, but is it best for right now? And then something that we touched on before is just continually highlight and reward, Green Zone thinkers. You know, some of the signs of being in that green zone is that you’re complimenting departments five times more than you’re giving a critique. So, you know, just being able to reward that whenever you see that. And then also make sure that you’ve got some sort of church wide strategy. We can very quickly do why aren’t they doing what we want them to be doing? Why aren’t they aligning around this? Do they know it?
RicH Birch — Yes.
Devin Goins — Have we have we actually talked about it enough that they know that inside and out? Do they know the objectives? Do they know our, you know, data points that we’re actually looking at? Do they know what we feel like our vision is, and why God has put us at this spot at this time? That that has to just be saturated in that continually. Rich Birch — Oh, it’s so true. It’s been said that, you know, there’s that saying vision leaks. But I heard someone recently add vision leaks and alignment evaporates.
Devin Goins — Ooh yeah.
Rich Birch — …like it just, you know, we we have to work at this constantly. Can I double click on the resource scarcity idea? I think that’s a particular for executive pastors. There are some XPs that can be seen as the “no” people like. And I know it’s none of the people listening to this podcast, but it’s, talk to us about that. I think you’re absolutely right. I think a part of our job is to there’s a train going down the tracks. Our job is to get far enough out and lay down tracks so that thing can keep going. But that means we got to be thinking ahead on some of these issues. What does that functionally look like for you, for your team? How do we ensure that we have enough resource so that we’re not getting people to fight over it down downstream? Devin Goins — So really going after those sacred cows, at first, I think is is good. Sometimes when there’s a period of growth we tie everything that’s been going on at that time is the causation for that growth. And sometimes what we found is that sometimes something can grow not because of something, but in spite of something. And that can be very dangerous whenever you get those two things confused, because you might be doubling down on something…
Rich Birch — That’s so true. That’s so true.
Devin Goins — …that something else is working so well that’s able to overcome that. But you’ve identified that as the thing that’s your special sauce. And so to to really look at that and go, hey, let’s discern what do we think is actually moving the needle here?
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Devin Goins — And how do we make sure that we, we, sufficiently resource that and there may be items that we have to let go of as, as we scale. I call it organizational sprawl. That’s a tendency that happens is we’re really excited about this thing. And so we launched it and it’s front focused and all that. And then it is this with some resources over here, but it’s kind of dwindling. But then we have this other thing over here where excited about. So then we resource that and inadvertently we end up with a budget crunch. And so everybody’s not resourced quite to their effectiveness.
Devin Goins — And so I think being able to identify, hey, what are some key focuses right now, work that into the strategic plan. And if you’re growing and you aren’t actively cutting something, again it’s most of us don’t have ministries that are bad. Most of us don’t have items that we’re like that is completely ineffective. But it could be stifling and it could be taking some resources that you really need to get to that next level and what’s working. So obviously that goes back to communication, that goes back to buy in, that goes back to some great leadership traits that our lead pastor has of being able to simplify as we grow. But that’s, that’s just key because otherwise it’s going to be a smaller piece of the pie as you continue to grow and you’re going to face that resource scarcity. Rich Birch — Yeah. I hope you were listening in, friends. That little nugget there is worth the price of admission. That has been my experience in leading in fast growing churches is what got us here, is not going to get us there. And we have to, I forget who said you got to shoot your darlings, you got to kill the stuff that’s working but isn’t pushing you towards, you know, the mission. And that is hard to do. That is that is difficult. It’s difficult, long work. But that’s why God’s put us in the roles we’re in. That’s a part of our job. And I just literally just recently last week, week, two weeks ago, was talking to a church leader about a program that by all expenses, they were on the outside saying, hey, this thing is working. Like it’s like if you were to judge you and say, this is working. But when you look up under the hood, it wasn’t pushing the mission forward. And they’re working with their team to say, well, this is the end of it. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re sundowning it. And I was like, good for you. That’s what we got to do. Rich Birch — We’ve got we’re going to link to a resource. This is a resource that you use internally. This is that working together document. Tell us a little bit about this document. We’ll make it available for folks. But this is a great resource for them. Devin Goins — Yeah, obviously we’re audio only. and so there’s, there’s a document that’s a PDF that we use. It’s actually the slide deck, that I use with it and the diagnostic tool. It’s got the scope of care and what you’re really leading people through. And there’s several points that that we didn’t even cover a day of helping people identify which zone are they in, what’s kind of some causes that might be putting them there, and then what what are some ways that you can get out of there. And then of course, with the green zone, how how if you are there, can you stay there? Because it’s not going to happen naturally. Something got you there. And we want to keep you there. And as leaders, we won’t be able to help you, and disciple you in that way. Devin Goins — And so hopefully it’s a blessing. It’s something that we did, you know, a 20 to 30 minute, all-staff, and then a lot of departments then went out and said, okay, let’s we’ve got our personal stuff that we’re dealing with. Where do we think we are as a department?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Devin Goins — And how can we as a department actually start to do a little bit more green zone thinking? How can we align objectives? Where are we doing passion projects that probably really don’t, it’s not that they don’t align, but they also don’t push it as far forward. So that’s been very helpful for us as well. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. So, so helpful. Again, I think there are listeners who are listening in who a light bulb has gone off and they’re like, you know, there’s this team member who just get under my skin because they don’t get it. They don’t get it. They’re always thinking about themselves. And they and we just have not given that person the words to lead them out of the red zone, you know, and get them into green. I think you’ve done a great task here. This is fantastic. Any kind of final words as we wrap up today’s episode? Devin Goins — No, I think, just don’t discount your value as a as a leader of the church. You know, be encouraged. These are these are good times. Don’t be afraid to to have these things take some time. That’s that’s one of the things our lead pastor, I think one of the great benefits that we’ve had with him is just consistency and planting seeds. Often with alignment, it takes time, it takes a lot of hard conversations, but it’s worth it. And I do believe that that, the Lord will will bless it. Because we, we ultimately we aren’t just aligning to ourselves or our ideals. We’re trying to align people towards, towards the gospel and that we can share that with even more people. So keep fighting the good fight. You’re valuable. And, I hope, today helped. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s super helpful. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them? Online? Devin Goins — Yeah. Please, please visit our, our social, for the church, @biltmorechurch, on Instagram, Facebook, all the above. I’m not in the comms team now, but I hired people that are much better than I was and so they do a fantastic job.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Devin Goins — I’ve got I’ve got an Instagram, but it’s just a whole lot of photos of the western North Carolina mountains.
Rich Birch — Hey!
Devin Goins — …that’s nice for that. So if you want that, that’s that’s good. If you want church stuff, the church channel and then our, our lead pastor, @pastorbrucefrank – you can follow him there. And he’s got great content as well. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Devin. I really appreciate you being here today and all the best as you continue to lead at Biltmore. Devin Goins — Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
3 Churches That Leveraged Christmas Well … and What You Should Copy This Year
Jul 14, 2025
What if you could double your church’s attendance this Christmas … just by doing what other growing churches already do?
In this second installment of our special Christmas planning series, Rich Birch unpacks three real-life examples from churches that didn’t leave Christmas up to chance—and saw incredible results. These churches represent different regions and contexts, but all share a key trait: they treat Christmas like a growth engine, not just a tradition.
Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:
The 2x Benchmark: Rich shares a healthy target for churches during Christmas—double your average attendance—and explains why this isn’t just about numbers, but about reaching people who are spiritually open during this season.
Lake Hills Church – Austin, TX: This church ignited a “Big Day Rally Cry” by creating a 12-minute pre-Christmas moment in their service, featuring testimony, vision casting, and a live invitation challenge. You’ll hear how they rallied hundreds to invite friends, right there in the room.
Verve City Church – Chino, CA: Learn how this innovative church packaged a “VIP Christmas Guest Experience” using mailers and digital ads to drive pre-registration, offer special guest perks, and radically boost first-time attendance.
NBUC / New Beginnings Church – Ontario, Canada: Discover how they turned Christmas into a leadership development moment by launching a “Volunteer Invite Challenge” that blended prayer, accountability, and a little healthy competition to motivate core team members to reach out.
These examples aren’t complex—they’re systems that any church can adapt and implement.
Rich reminds us: “Churches that grow don’t leave Christmas to chance.” Now is the time to put systems in place, build momentum, and prepare your team to make the most of the biggest Sunday of the year.
This episode is part 2 of a special 3-part series designed to help your church plan ahead for Christmas, starting this summer. If you missed part 1, be sure to go back and check out: “Why Christmas Can Still Be the Biggest Service of the Year At Your Church”Listen Now
Be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss part 3 next week, where we’ll explore why churches sometimes fail to grow during the holidays—and how you can avoid those pitfalls.
Dream Again: A Church’s Journey from Debt to Deep Impact with Mike Winger
Jul 10, 2025
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mike Winger, Executive Pastor at Mosaic Christian Church in the Baltimore-Washington area.
What does it take to launch a bold new vision while carrying the weight of financial obstacles? Tune in as Mike unpacks the multi-year process that led to Mosaic’s Unlimited campaign—one that wasn’t about buildings, but about unleashing ministry by removing financial barriers and reigniting the church’s collective imagination.
See the community with fresh eyes. // Mosaic’s transformative journey began with a simple question: What would it look like if Maryland resembled heaven? The team began viewing their community with fresh eyes, noticing the stark contrast between wealth and poverty—even in their own backyard. Mike and Lead Pastor Jonathan Moynihan were stirred by the suffering happening along Route One, an area plagued by human trafficking and hourly motels. Their conversations led to a renewed vision of spiritual and physical restoration in their region.
Vision first, then strategy. // Mike’s role as Executive Pastor is to turn vision into action. While Jonathan cast a grand vision, Mike focused on the how. They reverse-engineered a plan by identifying bottlenecks and brainstorming long-term steps to remove them—eventually deciding to launch a financial campaign. But unlike traditional efforts tied to buildings or facilities, this campaign was about removing the “weighted vest” of debt to unlock greater impact.
Prayer walks, not just planned meetings. // Before casting the vision to the church, the team engaged in prayer walks and “vision tours” through the affected neighborhoods. They asked God to open their eyes and hearts, and invited staff and volunteers to see the problem up close. The campaign’s purpose became clear: not just to raise funds, but to inspire spiritual growth and collective dreaming.
The vision is more important than the campaign. // Generosity campaigns aren’t about raising money for money’s sake. They’re about reaching more people with the gospel. Like past campaigns that helped Mosaic, this effort was merely a tool to advance the mission. Teaching from Jesus’ example, Mike explained that God could have provided everything miraculously—but He invites people to be part of the story through generosity.
Corporate goals and individual goals. // Mosaic encouraged everyone to dream both corporately and personally. The church asked, “What dream has God placed in your life?” and “What blocks have you allowed in your life that you want God to open up?” As people considered giving, Mike challenged them to see their gifts as spiritual steps representing their faith in God to move in their lives, not just financial contributions.
Results and reinvestment. // Though not tied to a building or campus expansion, Mosaic’s Unlimited campaign raised over $8.5 million in pledges—well above expectations. Just eight months into the 25-month campaign, the church had already received $4.4 million. Mosaic committed to giving 10% of all campaign donations to partner with 10:12 Sports, a Christian organization mentoring underprivileged youth in West Baltimore. The funds will help renovate space for them to further this work.
A Generosity Guide to rally everyone. // To keep the whole church aligned, Mosaic created a comprehensive campaign guide integrating sermons, devotionals, small group resources, and personal reflection tools. The church paused all other ministries and aligned every group to journey together. The guide provided a day-by-day roadmap and gave group leaders materials to help people connect their personal timelines with the broader vision of the church.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation – this is to be a great one. I know it’s going to be helpful and challenging. It’s the kind of thing we should be leaning in on. Excited to have Mike Winger with us. He is the executive pastor at a fantastic church in the Baltimore, Washington, D.C. area called Mosaic Christian. They were started in 2008, and it has consistently been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Mike, super glad to have you on the show. Welcome. Mike Winger — Thank you. It’s an honor to be here. Really pumped. Rich Birch — Why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about Mosaic and maybe the impact you’re experiencing as a church? And also, how does, ah you know, what’s the scale, the scope of executive pastor? I know it looks different at every church. And so it’s always good to kind of hear how different people have sliced up that role. Mike Winger — Yeah, so like you said, we were started in 2008, so we’re like 16 going on 17. And like our vision statement is that we want to be a church for people who don’t go to church. So everything that we do needs to be contextualized for someone who has never stepped foot in a church before. Mike Winger — And that’s really important to us. And so we like I said, we we we’ve kind of gone through the journey of like meeting in a movie theater, then going through different spaces. And now it’s just been awesome to see what God’s doing.
Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Winger — My role has shifted every single year. I think being on staff from being like the junk drawer, I came on staff and I was the junk drawer person. Rich Birch — The junk drawer. Mike Winger — Yes, I had to do like facilities, students, missions, the office and all the things.
Rich Birch — That’s hilarious.
Mike Winger — So then I got more focused with creative arts. Rich Birch — Yeah. Mike Winger — And now I’m back to the junk drawer position of like the executive pastor role because everything just kind of comes back to me. So I’ve seen God kind of use every single step on the chapter of my existence here at Mosaic and it’s all come full circle at this point. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. I love that. I’ve never heard the executive pastor role referred to as the junk drawer. I might steal that. I might steal that, Mike. Mike Winger — It’s so true.
Rich Birch — That’s true. It’s true, yep.
Mike Winger — Because I’ll go from like a budget meeting to like a pastoral care to something else. I’m like, you got to switch your lines all the time. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s that’s true. I’ve served for years in that role and it it does have that feeling of like, it’s like constantly shifting gears and trying to think about, okay, you know and has a lot of that. Obviously, that’s why we call it stuff they didn’t teach in seminary because there’s lots of times you’re like, I never thought I’d be dealing with this in church world, but here it is. Mike Winger — Oh yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Mike Winger — Oh yeah. Rich Birch — Well, Mosaic’s a fantastic church, prevailing church over an extended period of time. It’s always been about making an impact. But I kind of want to bring us up to speed. You know, you’ve talked a little bit about something, there was something stirring in your team that you needed to, you know, realize, hey, we’ve got to maybe change some things, think about the next level, think about where we’re going next. Kind of bring us up to speed on that part of the conversation. Mike Winger — Yeah, so back in ’22, we went through a pastoral lead change. So our founding pastor stepped down, went back to his home church. And then our new pastor, who was on staff with me for the previous 10 years, his name Jonathan Moynihan. So we were serving together for a long time and we’re both born and raised like in the area. So we’re from Baltimore. We didn’t parachute here. So like we know Baltimore because it’s in our DNA. Mike Winger — And so we live in a very wealthy area, part of the country, sandwiched right in between Baltimore and DC, but like it’s the haves and the have nots. And it’s not even just the case that’s like the inner city of Baltimore is the have nots. It’s like in our backyard here, outside of the city as well. And so as we’ve continued to want to like make an impact in the lives of people spiritually, like that’s the main thing. The win is when someone gets in the tub and gets baptized. Mike Winger — But we also didn’t want to turn a blind eye to like, the plight that was going on down the street where there’s hourly motels where human trafficking, sex trafficking, and everything is going on down there. So was like, we’ve started asking questions. What would it look like for Maryland to look like heaven?
Rich Birch — So good. Mike Winger — And asking those questions, seeing our community with fresh eyes, what would it look like? How can we make a bigger impact? So that just started a lot of conversations between Jonathan and myself. And he did a staff retreat. This was all like one of his sessions. Mike Winger — So then I come back to him and I’m like, hey, if you’re really about that, we need to have like some deeper conversations to make that possible because you have really big, grandiose ideas. But where I come into play is like, how can I make those happen? So he sets the vision and um my job is to figure how are we going to get there? And then that comes with dollar signs and all of that. Mike Winger — So that kind of got us on this journey to say, Hey, if we have a vision, what’s the bottleneck to this vision? How can I open it up? And so that’s when I started pitching to him the idea of doing a financial campaign. But that was still two years in the making before we would even launch anything like this to accomplish what we want to do long-term in our community. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the, well, there’s there’s a ton there to unpack, but I love this idea that, well, first of all, there’s a tool, a video that you guys have produced that caught my attention because right from the beginning, I think the opening line of the video is, you’ve probably all thought about leaving Maryland sometime, right? Mike Winger — Oh yeah. Rich Birch — And which I was like, what? Like, what a way to to lead out. Let’s kind of stick on this idea just for a little bit around, let’s make Maryland look like heaven. When you were casting that, like kind of before we got to the campaign, as that was kind of bubbling around, what was it that had you thinking like, oh my goodness, this is this is a big deal. This isn’t just like, oh, we’re going to rebrand some stuff. Like what what kind of led you to that thought? Mike Winger — Yeah. So I would say a lot, Jonathan’s very passionate about leading our church and growing up spiritual muscle. That was definitely like atrophied, the spiritual muscle prayer. So we even just started doing like prayer walks and vision tours up and down what we call route one, where a lot of those hourly motels are. So just getting our people, our staff, our volunteers, people that call Mosaic home around, the what’s going on in our community to get them to see the problem. Mike Winger — And we needed them to feel it, even before we even publicly talked about how can we be a part of the solution. So we just ask God to like open our eyes to these problems and just see them, and do what we could at the time, the best that we could to serve those within our own reach. But we just tried to say, God, what’s what open our eyes beyond just our own four walls. Rich Birch — I love that. That’s good. You know, this idea of getting our people engaged, starting with prayer, I think this is fantastic. So then bring us a little bit farther along. You know, I think we’ve all been there or if you’re in the executive pastor seat, we’ve been in that conversation with our lead pastor where it’s like, Oh my goodness. Like that, like what you can just hear the dollar signs in your head start going off. But I think some people could at that moment try to pull back, but you’ve chosen to lean in and say, no, let’s actually look at that. Talk, take us through that conversation. What did that look like? Mike Winger — Yeah. So as we were like praying through it, we’re like, what would it look like for us to buy one of these hotels and turn it into like a dream center? And in my head, I’m like, dollar signs are just going up and up and up. But I’m in the position where I’m not trying to like stifle vision. Like the how can totally stifle the wow. So I’m just like embracing this wow mindset. Mike Winger — And I’m thinking, man, wouldn’t it be awesome if we did have a dream center where we can start empowering people with job job training? and teaching people how to manage money and to bring families together instead of splitting them apart. Like, what would it look like for this building that was cause for division and actually have it be used to bring unity instead? Rich Birch — Wow. Mike Winger — And so just asking, having that long term vision, what would what would need to be true of us in order to make that happen? And so if we just started with the end in mind, with that clear vision of what could be, then we could reverse engineer and say, well, this needs happen and that needs to happen and that needs to happen. Mike Winger — So then our, Jonathan and I, the lead pastor, we just started asking the questions. Well, this needs to be true. This needs to be… And we started reverse engineering. And this isn’t like six months of like what needs to be true in six months. This might be what needs to be true in 25 years. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Now what, what, so love that. I think we can jump so quickly to the, the campaign. We can jump to like, okay, let’s get into the tactics…
Mike Winger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and there’s, we feel that rush, but I like that you slowed down and say, no, like, let’s, we gotta be really, it’s what the vision is more important than the campaign. Mike Winger — Yeah. Rich Birch — And it’s really easy for those to get confused. How did you keep the campaign from becoming preeminent rather than the vision being preeminent? What did that look like for you? Mike Winger — Yeah. So we’ve done many campaigns in our history. And so when I started gathering a team of people, the campaign team, I just called it quick timeout when we started like, giving out the task and the roles and all of that. And I did a reverse, I said, what was Greater for? And they said, oh, that was to get us into a building. And I said, what was whatever the other campaign name was? Mike Winger — And it was, oh, it’s to get us out of the movie theater. And so then I I called the timeout. I said, we need to readjust our mindset around those. Those were all tools. All of these campaigns were to reach more people. It wasn’t to get a building. It wasn’t to get out of the theater. We wanted to reach more people. We thought that getting out of the theater…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Winger — …or we thought that a permanent 24 seven space would be the best tool for us to reach people. So I said from the jump with this campaign, we need to teach people that we want to continue to reach more people. And so we’re going to do the campaign in order to reach people. Mike Winger — And so we we kind told the story of like Jesus, has he’s all powerful. He has everything at his fingertips. He could have looked at the dirt or sand and said, become money. And he had some money to go do his ministry…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Winger — …but he didn’t. He actually included women to fund his ministry, his gospel preaching tour that him and his buddies were going to go on. And he invited people to go in through generosity in order to enable him to go preach the gospel and do his ministry. He didn’t just say, “sand become money”. Mike Winger — So we would try to, how can we position ourselves to say, hey, we want to continue our ministry and ask God to do more. And we’re going to show him that we mean what we say through our actions, through a campaign.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Why I love that focus of, you know, the engaging people is a part of what he wants to do. It’s actually, you know, he could just write in your case an $8 million dollar check and just give it to you. Or he could engage a whole bunch of people to be involved. And I remember and last year, I got a call from a donor who had a very large sum of money and they could just solve a problem for their church. Rich Birch — And he was like, well, do you think I should give that money to church? I was like, well, you got to wrestle that with the Lord. But I said, if you’re asking me, I would say no, like, don’t just solve the problem. Rich Birch — Come alongside the church, find a way to like, what if, what if there was a maybe God’s got an even bigger dream for the church and you’re just one piece of that puzzle. And, you know, ask this bigger question to stay focused on, Hey, what is the vision of the church? Not just like, Hey, we were trying to do this tactic. Rich Birch — What practical steps did you take to kind of, to both craft and then clearly communicate this narrative to keep your people focused on the bigger thing rather than just giving, what did that look like? Mike Winger — Yeah. So there’s the aspect of like the corporate goal, but also the individual goal. So the individual goal is going to feed into the corporate goal. Mike Winger — And so we really try to say like, we have a problem as a church. We want to reach more people, but we have this debt that’s on our hand that we’re going to apply the campaigns for. But then we try to twist the story and make it like…let me start over. Mike Winger — We were saying like, what would it look like for us to dream again as a church? We kept on going to the dream analogy. And so we’re trying to open up, but then we went back to the individual: what would look for you to dream in your own life? Like what is being, what, what blocks have you allowed in your life that you want God to open up? Rich Birch —That’s good. That’s good. Mike Winger — And so we started hearing stories like on the individual level what people sacrifice would be. And it’s not just a dollar amount that they’re giving to so the church can accomplish a goal or reach a vision. But it’s saying, Hey, God, I’m asking for you to do something in my own life. And I’m showing you with my hands, with my wallet that I want you to do something through it. So there’s tons of stories of people sacrifice that really hit. And that is like the culmination, the collaboration of, of, of the corporate campaign. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, let’s jump ahead to ah the results side. How are you, you know, so where are we at in the process? How are you feeling that’s gone, um you know, on both sides, both the ability to raise the resources that you’re hoping to raise and then also the engagement with individuals, you know, people actually taking this more than, hey, this is a financial thing. It’s like, this is ah an opportunity to dream of what God wants to do in my life. Mike Winger — Yeah, so ah the people responded so well to this, we were really kind of blown away. The campaign that we did, ah our coach called it the phantom campaign because we weren’t doing a campus. We weren’t doing a new building. We already had that. We had enough space. But we weren’t we felt like we were running a marathon with a weighted vest. And we were like, what if we could run this marathon without this weighted vest? And our weighted vest was the debt. Mike Winger — And we could continue to ministry as a way we knew how to do it and keep going. But we said, what if God wants to do something a little bit more, but the thing that’s standing in the way is our own selfishness and not doing a campaign. So I just wanted to ask the church, what would it look like for all of us to sacrifice and see how they responded. Mike Winger — And they coached us through, like they were saying for a 25-month campaign, you could probably expect 3 to 6 million above and beyond like normal giving. And so we did the campaign series and at the end, our church committed almost $8.5 million dollars. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Praise God. That’s incredible. Mike Winger — So that was in October. It was unbelievable. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Mike Winger — Like we were really, really, really, really shocked. And so that was October. So we’re about um seven or eight months into the 25 months. And so we’ve, people have already given 4.4 million. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Mike Winger — It’s unbelievable. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Mike Winger — And so to really to show that we wanted to because we didn’t want the campaign even to just be about what’s coming in to like pay off debt. Rich Birch — Right. Mike Winger — Like we really fought hard, because we’re not like anti-debt. Like we may need to go into debt in the future. But to really say like, hey, we want to make a difference in our community in the future, but we want to make a difference in the community now. So we are taking 10% of what’s coming into this campaign and we’re partnering with an organization called 10:12 Sports. Mike Winger — It’s a Christian organization that serves underprivileged youth in West Baltimore, primarily men who grow up in like fatherless situations and they use sports to reach out to this community, whether it be football, basketball, whatever. And they do memory verses, they do sports, all the things. Mike Winger — And so we’re coming alongside of them because they were operating out of the the the president of that organization they were operating out of his basement.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Mike Winger — And so they were actually able to buy three row homes across from where they do ministry because there’s so many vacant row homes in Baltimore, so you can buy them for like a thousand bucks. But they didn’t have the money to do any renovations. So we committed to give 10% of the overall of the campaign to them. So we’re going to renovate and just come alongside and help them run further and faster than what they could do on their own. And we want to prop them up to be the heroes in the community and make a difference. And so, like I said, we want to make a difference in 25 years, but we also want to make a difference this year. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. What do you have a sense of, and this may be unfair. I didn’t tell I was going to ask you this question, a percentage of the church that participated or like any of that to get a sense of the, the depth of the, you know, the engagement. Mike Winger — Oh yeah. So it’s all written down. I’m so bad remembering the stats off the top of my head, but it’s it’s it was… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fine. No, no, that’s fine. Mike Winger —…it was pretty high. I’m gonna see if I can find it after keep talking. Rich Birch — Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s… Mike Winger — But it was it was a it was ah it was a large amount of people. Like I look at it in terms of family units that are giving.
Rich Birch — Yep. Mike Winger — And so we had 557 family units commit. Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s great. That’s amazing. Dude, that’s incredible. That’s, ah yeah, that’s that’s great to hear and great to see, you know, what God’s using to kind of push this forward. That’s that’s amazing. Rich Birch — Now, I’m sure, so that’s all the good news, but, you know, campaigns do get resistance. Mike Winger — Yeah. Rich Birch — There is the like, why are we doing this? It’s not all just, you know, hear we love the punchline, but there’s always usually some stuff we’ve got to push through there. What were some of the objections you or fears you heard from people? How’d you address them? What does that look look like? You know, how did you deal with that side of the equation? Mike Winger — Yeah. So when we were doing this for a year prior, we knew that we were doing this in October of going into November of 2024. So in our nation’s history, that’s election time. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Mike Winger — And we live in like Washington, DC. Rich Birch — Yes. Mike Winger — Like it’s like the world news is our local news. Rich Birch — It is going to be it. Love it. Mike Winger — And so we, we, we had some people advise like, you don’t know, like we, maybe we shouldn’t do it. You probably not a wise time to do a campaign. And we heard that. And we just said, what if we want to tell a better story than the typical narrative of people being anxious about something that really can’t control outside of their one vote. But what if we can actually cast the vision to our church that doing it during the campaign to actually make a bigger difference is going to be the perfect time to do it. And people responded to that. Mike Winger — So that was kind of one early on. Should we do this campaign during an election season? And then there’s always people that are going to ask questions like, is this the best time to do it because, you know, the economy. Rich Birch — Right, right. Mike Winger — But like, what does that even mean?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Winger — Who can actually really even say what the economy is anymore?
Rich Birch — Right. Mike Winger — But like, so we kind of joked about that. We heard some people say, well, we just did one of these like eight years ago. Should we be doing it again? And I’m like, well, we’ve had so much turnover in our church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Winger — There’s probably only 25% of our church who’ve actually even been through one. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Mike Winger — So we just coached a lot of people through it. And we had so many great conversations with people. And I could stand in front of people in integrity and say like, hey, if you and your spouse, because I would meet with people individually. And I was like, if you and spouse are at odds about like what the total amount should be, give the lesser amount.
Rich Birch — Wow. Mike Winger — I’m not after your, I’m not after your money here.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Mike Winger — Like, I want to know like, what’s the heart story? What’s the sacrifice story that the money is representative of? Rich Birch — Yeah. Mike Winger — And so we constantly had those conversations like what, okay, tell me the dollar amount, but I want to know what are you trusting God what is this number representing? Mike Winger — And so we’d had constant conversations with people. There was one single woman who her husband left her many years ago and I had a conversation with her and she just wanted to like write a bigger check, but the man who helps with her finances to keep her organized was kind of, he’s not a Christian and was a little leery about like saying you should give X amount. Mike Winger — I said, you know what? I’m going to tell you to give even lesser than what he said, because I don’t know what kind of influence you’re going to have in his life. But if he hears that a church said, take even less, maybe that’s going to be an in for him to trust the church. Mike Winger — And so my mindset from the jump was just like, Hey, I’m going to trust God for the end results. And I’m just going to just tell people to like, act in integrity with what they’re going to do. And like, let’s hear the stories of trust that people are going to be building through this experience. Rich Birch — I love that. I want to underline what you said there. I think, my experience has been when we come up against these opportunities that our mindset as leaders is so important and how we approach people is so important. And um if we say this isn’t about just trying to get money out of you, but then all the signals we give them are about just getting money out of them… Mike Winger — Yeah. Rich Birch — …people read that from a mile away, right?
Mike Winger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And we’re asking them to take a faith step financially, but we’re also taking a faith step and we have to exercise exactly what the kind of thing you’re saying. Like, hey, maybe you should take, maybe give the lesser number like that. I just love that. I just want to honor you for that. I think that’s fantastic. Rich Birch — The other part I want to underline for folks that you’ve just kind of rolled over, ah which makes sense because it’s it’s your lived experience, is the amount of time that this campaign has taken from like the initial conversation through to the kind of whatever the big pledge date was. That’s like, that was like a couple years of discussion, right?
Mike Winger — Yeah. Rich Birch — Talk us through that piece of it. Cause I feel like sometimes there are churches that feel the pressure of like, we got to solve this now. But it’s like, that’s, if you’re feeling that pressure now, you’re probably too late. Like, you know, we you’ve got to start way out. Talk us through the kind of timeline, you know, how long did it take to work through it all? Get it put together, that kind of thing. Mike Winger — Yeah, so I remember being on the golf course with John and we were probably on like hole four or five. And I said, hey, like you’re just coming back from your study break. I’ve been doing some planning, love forecasting three years in advance. But do you remember when you said that you want to make an impact on Route One? And what if we had a dream center? What if we could change lives and all that? I was like, if you’re really about it, here’s what I think we need to do. We had that conversation probably in like June of ’23. Rich Birch — Yeah. Mike Winger — Actually, probably even before that…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mike Winger — …because we we pitched to our our board of, hey, we feel like this is where God’s leading us. Will you join us in prayer? So we pitched it to them in May of ’23. So John and I talked before that. We didn’t even make a decision as a board to move forward with this until September. So we gave our board of overseers…
Rich Birch — Yeah, lots of time.
Mike Winger — …a full summer to just pray and feel like, is this is the is the soil right? God, are you prompting, or is this just me coming up with an idea, saying that we should run after it? So we I did the due diligence to come up with a full outline of here’s the steps we would take. We’re going to pause and commit this to you. And if you we all come back together in September and say, yeah, we should move forward, then we will. That was still a year out from even executing the five week series. Rich Birch — Right. Mike Winger — So we were way far in advance of like prayers. We’re going to coat this thing in prayer. And then we’re going to start working in September through the next year to make that campaign actually happen. Mike Winger — So this was a really like a two, two and half year process…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Winger — …before we even get to the 25 months…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Mike Winger — …of actually living in sacrifice. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s, that’s pre the 25-month countdown.
Mike Winger — Exactly.
Rich Birch — So yeah, in the end it’s a four or five year process, you know, but from, from that golf course all the way through. Yeah. And I, I highlight that, listeners, because um you know, this takes time. And you know, there are, you know, there’s a multiplicity of steps before the public phase and, you know, you know, they’re, they’re everything from, you know, all the private conversations all the way up through this. It takes time. You cannot, you know, had a friend of mine said the bigger the plane, you know, the longer the runway, it just takes time. It takes, it you know, you can’t just do it overnight. It’s not the kind of thing you can wake up tomorrow and say, Hey, let’s raise $8 million dollars. It’s not going to happen. Mike Winger — Yeah. Rich Birch — You’ve given us your generosity guide. This looks fantastic. In fact, I would, we’ll just link to this in the show notes, but this is a great kind of inside look to the campaign and to the at least the public facing side of it. Talk us through this. Give us a sense of of this document. How might it be helpful for someone else who who’s been thinking about these kinds of issues? Mike Winger — Yeah. So from my experience of participating and leading other campaigns that we’ve gone through, one of my critiques has been, I hate handouts and getting so many different things at so many different dates. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Mike Winger — And I was like, why don’t we just work ahead? Let’s work smarter, not harder. Rich Birch — Yep. Mike Winger — Let’s not overwhelm people and confuse them with, is it this handout? Is it that handout? It’s like, let’s just spend the four months before we go live and say, what is every single piece of paper document that we want and put it all into one spot? Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Mike Winger — But this this guide isn’t just information about how to give or the tax implications and all this sort of thing. We wanted to integrate it with what the series was going to be about on Sunday. So on Sundays, we rarely even mentioned, like we talked about, hey, we have a financial goal, but the even the sermons were more about what’s God doing in you, and stirring up. And so then we made sure that all of our groups for the fall are all on the same thing. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Mike Winger — We’re all we’re not doing a volleyball group. We’re not doing FPU. We’re not doing… We’re all doing these journey groups. We’re going to just come together and answer these questions so everybody’s pushing to it. And then we also created like a daily devotional. Mike Winger — So everybody like page by page, like, you know, for the next five weeks, we’re going on a campaign, but it’s really a journey together. And so there’s questions. There’s everything is 100% in order of like day by day, what do I want people to see when and how. And there’s we’ve gave these we’ve printed them out. We wanted people to bring them back. And like this is where you would take notes in the sermon and then have your daily devotional, but then also bring it to group. Uh, ’cause we were talking about like timelines, like what’s mosaics timeline then, but what’s, what’s God been doing in your own life and then bring that conversation. So we even equipped our group leaders with like big rolls of, uh, paper.
Rich Birch — Love it. Mike Winger — And we said, make a timeline and then go through and have a conversation for the group of like, just introduce yourself and you and your spouse and talk about your family timeline. Rich Birch — So good. Mike Winger — So this guide was just so important to get everybody rowing in the same direction. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great piece. You know, I, I love the, like throughout it, there’s, um, you know, like a little testimonies sprinkled throughout.
Mike Winger — Yes.
Rich Birch — There’s lot of content right down to like, here are the special events we’re doing. Here’s everything all in one place. There’s a ton of work that’s been put in up there. Are you using that kind of throughout the campaign too? Cause a part of this, I would assume a part of this is also, um, you know, you used as people who are, might be coming to the church new now. And they’re like, Hey, what is this all about? This could be a tool you could give to them as well. Mike Winger — Yeah, we could definitely dust it off and give it to them. We haven’t done a great job of like incorporating it since we’ve like gone live for the previous seven months. Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike Winger — But we do have a plan like midway through of this fall doing a three week series of like a halfway point…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Winger — …encourage people to keep going, give them an update, and then inviting people in who and may have joined the church or started coming since then. But we haven’t necessarily, like it was really just like for the 35 days of this campaign journey how are we all going to be on the same page? Rich Birch — Right. So good. Well, this is fantastic. Well, um there’s ah a lot here. There’s also a website we’ll link to, we’ll link to your, you know, the direct website, but then your church’s website, but then there’s also a campaign related website. It’s is’s super helpful. Lots of good. And that video I talked about earlier is on that ah site friends. Rich Birch — Anything else you’d like to share just as we wrap up today’s conversation? Mike Winger — I would say if I’m speaking to primarily executive pastors, I would say our excitement behind something like this is a lot of the how. I love executing. I love thinking of how to make a plan come to reality, but it has to come with vision first. Rich Birch — That’s good. Mike Winger — So you have to make sure that you know why you’re doing something and like what the goal is. Like I said, our goal was not to just raise funds. Our goal is to change lives spiritually, but physically as well. Mike Winger — And so that’s what I want to accomplish. It’d be like me going to the store, a construction store, go to Lowe’s and buying a hammer. The goal wasn’t to get the hammer. The goal is to use the hammer to build something. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Mike Winger — And so the campaign, I’m inviting people in to use a hammer, not go buy something. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. It’s great. Super good. Well, I appreciate you being here, Mike. This is super great. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church? Mike Winger — Yeah, so mosaicchristian.org is our website, mosaicmd on Instagram. And I’m kind of not that active on Instagram, but it’s just mwinger87. So I’m right there. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Mike. Appreciate being here today. Mike Winger — Thank you.
Why Christmas Can Still Be the Biggest Service of the Year At Your Church
Jul 07, 2025
Is your church treating Christmas like the massive growth opportunity it truly is?
In today’s solo episode, Rich explores why Christmas remains the most strategic moment in the church calendar for reaching new people, even in a post-pandemic world. Drawing on compelling stats and years of experience helping churches grow, Rich makes a compelling case for why Christmas shouldn’t just be a warm, nostalgic season—it should be one of your highest-impact outreach moments of the year.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
Cultural Opportunity: With 84% of adults celebrating Christmas, this holiday season still holds a unique cultural weight—even among those who rarely attend church. Rich explains how this opens the door for meaningful invitations and deeper community connections.
The Power of a Personal Invite: Research shows that 57% of people say they would attend a church service if personally invited by a friend. Rich reflects on why this stat matters so much during Christmas and how churches can reframe their planning around it.
Growth Mindset Shift: Many churches unintentionally miss the full potential of Christmas by treating it as a “maintenance” Sunday or simply a tradition to uphold. Rich unpacks why growing churches view it as a launchpad for the new year—and how that shift can change everything.
What Growing Churches Do Differently: You’ll hear stories and observations from churches that have doubled their attendance on Christmas weekend—not because of gimmicks, but through strategic, intentional systems that align vision, volunteer culture, and invite momentum.
Planning Starts Now: While it might seem early to talk about Christmas, Rich makes the case that what you do this summer determines how effective you’ll be this December. From team conversations to invite campaigns, now is the time to prepare.
This episode is a reminder and a rally cry: Christmas still works when you work it.
This episode is part 1 of a special 3-part series designed to help your church plan ahead for Christmas, starting this summer. Whether you’re looking to increase attendance, improve your systems, or reach more people than ever before, this series is packed with insights to help you make the most of the biggest season of the year. Be sure to catch all three episodes!
Leading Through Stress Without Burning Out with Charles Stone
Jul 03, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Dr. Charles Stone, seasoned pastor, author, and leadership coach.
Feeling overwhelmed by the constant demands of ministry? Looking for biblical practices that can help reduce anxiety and fuel long-term health? Tune in as Charles shares insights from his latest book, Stress Less, blending timeless biblical wisdom with modern brain science to help leaders build resilience and manage stress more effectively.
Two sides of the coin. // Charles defines stress as both the events we face and our responses to those events. While acute stress can motivate and alert us, chronic stress is damaging—affecting memory, sleep, emotional balance, and ultimately our ability to lead effectively. The goal is to build resilience, the ability to bounce back, grow, and adapt when under pressure.
Nine resilience-building practices. // In Stress Less, Charles outlines nine resilience-building practices drawn from both scripture and science: breathing, emotions, thinking patterns, contemplative practices, cultivating certainty, gratitude, relationships, and sleep. Each habit targets a key area of health and renewal for stressed-out leaders.
Breathe to reset. // One simple yet powerful tool is deep breathing. When we breathe deeply—especially with a longer exhale—we activate the vagus nerve, which signals our brain to lower the stress response. Charles encourages using the “sniff breath” (a double inhale followed by a long exhale) to quickly calm the body and mind in tense moments.
Meditate on Him. // Neuroscience has found that spiritual practices like prayer, meditating on God’s word, and contemplation on Him promotes the relaxation response and decreases the stress response in our bodies. Charles uses the CASI acronym as a framework for contemplative spiritual practices that lower stress and deepen our faith. CASI stands for: Collaboration with God, Awe and Wonder (through worship), Sabbath Rest, Identity in Christ. These habits reinforce the biblical truth that we are not alone in our struggles.
STOPP to deal with stress. // Ministry can be very stressful and never ending. Experiencing stressful circumstances is normal. To counteract reactive leadership under stress, remember to STOPP: Stop, Take a Breathe, Observe your thoughts and what’s happening around you, Pray, and Proceed. This helps leaders shift from stress-induced reactions to thoughtful, faith-rooted responses.
Optimize Your Schedule // Know your body’s natural rhythm. Are you a morning “lark” or a night “owl”? Plan your most mentally demanding work during your peak focus hours and save administrative or routine tasks for lower-energy periods. Aligning your work with your internal rhythms enhances productivity and reduces burnout.
Practical tools for your team. // Charles designed Stress Less to be used in community. Each chapter ends with questions, making it a perfect resource for staff teams to walk through together. Stress doesn’t have to define us—it can refine us. By integrating biblical truth with practical neuroscience, pastors and church leaders can find hope, healing, and strength for the journey.
Learn more about Charles Stone’s book, Stress Less: 9 Habits from the Bible and Brain Science to Build Resilience and Reduce Anxiety, here. Plus view all the resources Charles offers on his website at charlesstone.com.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re really looking forward to today’s conversation. Today we’re diving into something we all wrestle with: stress. And how we can actually build resilience and find peace in the middle of a crazy, busy ministry schedule. Rich Birch — I’m thrilled to have Charles Stone with us. Dr. Charles Stone, he’s a pastor on the podcast, and you know when we have repeat guests, that means I think you should be paying attention to him. Charles is a seasoned pastor, a leadership coach, and author of many books, but today is a particularly timely and deeply practical book called Stress Less. Rich Birch — Charles, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Charles Stone — Rich, great to be with you again. Rich Birch — Always great to connect. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture for folks that don’t listen to every episode? So like my mom, she can skip the next 30 seconds, but for folks that don’t listen to every episode, give us kind of the Charles story. Charles Stone — You bet, you bet. Well, for Canadian listeners, I spent 10 years in Canada at leading West Park Church in London, Ontario. Great experience. We moved to Laurel, Mississippi a couple of years ago, and it’s a little town where my wife grew up. We’ve been married coming up on 45 years.
Rich Birch — Good for you. Congratulations. Charles Stone — Yeah, which is the delight of my life. Three adult kids. My son has five kids, so I have five grandkids. He’s in Boise, Idaho as a pastor.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Charles Stone — My oldest daughter’s in California, and my youngest, real proud of her. She got a dual citizenship. She stayed in London. So I’m kind of a normal guy, kind of a geek, love to learn, go to bed early, get up early. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Charles Stone — That’s kinda me.
Rich Birch — The thing I’ve loved about, and we’re going to get into some of this today, but one of the things I love is your kind of area of, I like to call it specialty or expertise, is really this whole area of kind of brain science.
Charles Stone — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — How does that connect with what we’ve known in scripture for years? We’re really going to dive into that today. So many leaders feel overwhelmed.
Charles Stone — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — I know there are folks that are listening in, anytime we kind of scratch this topic, people lean in and they’re interested, but they really can’t put their finger on why. How would you define stress in simple terms for someone who feels like, man, they’re just not holding it all together? Charles Stone — Yeah, great, great question. I answer it kind of in two or three levels. Just imagine I have a coin in front of me, the proverbial two sides of a coin. On one side of the stress coin is the stress event. What causes stress? That’s something out there, or even sometimes what we make up in our mind. So that’s one side of the coin. Charles Stone — The other side is how we respond. Now, some of the responses are just automatic, but basically our behavioral response and how we think about stress. So those are the two sides of stress. Charles Stone — Another point about stress and kind of unpacking this definition is that there are two flavors. There’s acute stress. It’s like, I’ve had a couple of interviews where the sound did not work starting out. My stress went up, so I was in solution mode, trying to figure it out, and then once I figured it out, it came back down. We all have acute stress. It motivates us. It gets us going. So there’s acute stress, but the bad stuff is called chronic stress. Charles Stone — When our response to some stress event, either in our mind or out there is over a pair of days, weeks, months, that causes the problem. Now, having said that, here’s the definition of stress. It’s our body, it’s the way God’s wired us, our body and brain’s natural response to real or perceived threats or demands. And pastors have a bunch of them. Rich Birch — Right, absolutely. Yeah, I love that. And you’ve already kind of hinted towards where I want to go in this conversation. One of the things I love about this book, Stress Less, is how you blend biblical insight and neuroscience, these two things together, and you mentioned it right there. Can you kind of help us unpack that a little bit? God has designed us with this.
Charles Stone — Yeah. Right. Rich Birch — This is like a normal thing in our bodies. God’s put stress in there for a reason, but what does the Bible kind of speak to stress, even though it may not use that exact word? Charles Stone — Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, we’ve all heard the phrase, all truth is God’s truth, and here’s a way I kind of explain that. Imagine an umbrella. That’s God’s word. That’s truth, capital T. All other truth falls underneath that, like engineering principles are true.
Rich Birch — Right. Charles Stone — Math is true. Good science is true, small case “t”.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Charles Stone — I think St. Augustine and Calvin and others have said all truth is God’s truth, so I’m not afraid of that, but I always had that umbrella idea.
Charles Stone — Now, when it comes to stress, in the most common versions, you don’t find the word. Now, in the New Living Translation, there’s one verse I’m going to have on my screen here. Let me read it to you. It’s Psalm 119:143. It does include the word stress. It says, as pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands. But you only find that a couple of times in the NLT, a couple of times in the Message paraphrase. Charles Stone — However, all throughout scripture, you have these similar words that cause stress, that describe what causes stress: tribulation, persecution, burdens, testing, and temptation. So the concept is all throughout. The tribulations of life, although it doesn’t use the word stress, those cause stress, so it’s really all through the Bible without using the word. Rich Birch — Yeah, like when we think of, I like how you kind of pulled apart chronic stress and acute stress, this idea that, and I think we can, I’m sure leaders that are listening in can, like you say, with the podcast, when the tech didn’t work, they could think of something in the last 24 hours that drove acute stress. But chronic stress, help us unpack that a little bit. What impact is that having on us as leaders or on our teams? What is that doing to us? Charles Stone — Yep. Well, when we’re under chronic stress, that is, we’re responding in ways that cause this chronic stress. What it does, it causes the brain to release the stress hormone, cortisol. Now, we need cortisol. It’s not a big bad bully of hormones. We still need it. But when we stay at an elevated level for long periods of time, it does its damage to our body and our brain. Some of the things that it impacts, it impairs our memory. It impairs our thinking. It reduces motivation. It actually harms our body, can affect our heart. We can gain weight, affects blood sugar, disrupts our sleep, magnifies emotional pain, and lowers our reactivity threshold. And it actually degrades our ministry effectiveness because we aren’t fully present there. And because we have a lot of cognitive stuff going on, worry, rumination, those kinds of things, that detracts from being able to lead well.
Charles Stone — So we live in a world of stress, but I think it’s really acute for pastoral leaders and leaders in even the business world as well. Rich Birch — Right. Absolutely. And so what are we supposed to do then? So we live in this pressure. How does the Bible help us understand? I like that you point towards this: Hey, this is an ancient problem. What are the kind of solutions that have been around for a long time? How does the Bible talk about this? And then how does that relate to what we know is best in science today? Charles Stone — Well, the response we want to develop is the term I use that I call resilience. That’s really another term for character. Romans 5, 3 and 4 says we also rejoice in suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance: character, and character: hope. Charles Stone — And Rich, here’s the way I describe resilience. When I was a kid, I loved show and tell. I loved show and tell, I loved lunch, and I loved recess. And show and tell just basically captures the way God created our brains. We’re very visual. Here’s the way I describe resilience, which is what we want to develop in the face of stress. Charles Stone — Let’s say I was at a speaking event, and I was explaining this, and I had a prop on stage, and it was a glass table, like a glass end table. And I had three things in my hand. One was a big rock, one was an egg, and one was a tennis ball. Charles Stone — And so I asked the audience, okay, so I’m going to hold this rock up six feet above the table and drop it. What’s going to happen? Well, it’s going to break. It’s going to shards are going to go everywhere. I won’t be called back to that venue again to speak. Charles Stone — So that would happen there. Now with the egg, if I drop the egg, what’s going to happen? It’s going to break and just make a mess. Some people respond to stress in that way. They don’t have resilience, so they just break stuff. They can break churches. They can break their health. They can break families.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Charles Stone — Others are like the egg. They don’t have any resilience. They break up, and they make a mess of things, mess of churches, mess of boards, all that kind of stuff. Charles Stone — But then the other item I bring in, tennis ball. Used to play tennis. Don’t play anymore. If I drop the tennis ball down, what’s going to happen? It’s going to bounce back up. Now, if you Google slow-mo tennis ball, you’ll see these really cool videos of someone throwing a tennis ball, and the camera follows it. Now, here’s what it does. That ball squashes a little bit, and then it bounces back up. Charles Stone — So resilience, the big picture thing responding to stress is developing resilience, which is our ability to bounce back from stressful situations. But not just bounce back, but adapt and learn, grow, character. So that’s the starting point. And then I describe in the book these specific ways that we can build resilience and deal with stress. Rich Birch — I love that. That’s a very visual metaphor you’re using there. I love that there. Let’s unpack a little bit, if there are some habits that we should be building or helping our people build around resilience. I think this is such a critical and important piece of the puzzle for us. Charles Stone — You bet. Well, the genesis of this conversation, this book, A Road Stressed Last, came from when I was a pastor up in London, Ontario. And my wife and I were on this vacation. It had buffets everywhere, and I love buffets. It was a great vacation. Except one thing, it had Wi-Fi everywhere. I’m a news junkie. I had my nose in my iPhone way too much. And this thing called COVID kept rising up in the news. Charles Stone — I said, Cheryl, they’re going to shut us down. And they did. You were there, you know, the draconian shut down for months and months and months. And I distinctly remember that I was going to now have to lead a church of a thousand through a little tiny pinhole camera on my computer. And I said, you know, God, I didn’t sign up for this. Well, during that time, I was diagnosed having an AFib. That’s when your heart rate does not beat right. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. And I exercise, I eat right. And I was diagnosed with cancer all during these few months. Rich Birch — Oh, my goodness. Charles Stone — The irony was, I was doing a PhD dissertation on stress. So I thought, well, God, you have a sense of humor.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Charles Stone — I guess that I’m going to be a lab rat. And that was kind of the genesis of this book and these nine resilience-building practices. So that’s a little bit of background that we can go a little deeper on those practices. Rich Birch — Well, I love that. First of all, that’s like the preacher who’s, and this happens to me when I speak. I feel like the thing that I’m preaching on, it’s like the Lord sends in my direction. Like, man, I got to be thinking about that. I used to joke with preachers. I’m like, we got to preach about like health and wealth and maybe something magical will happen, you know, as opposed to that. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. All of those things coming in on you in a, you know, we all carried the stress of COVID, but all that cancer and, wow, that’s crazy.
Charles Stone — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — So what, what are, maybe quickly outline the nine and then if you wouldn’t mind, and then maybe we could jump in on one of them and kind of talk, talk about one. Charles Stone — Yeah. Well, I kind of get thematically. One involves how we breathe. These are, these are practices that can help us develop resilience. One has to do with how we breathe. Two have to deal with our emotions. One has to do with our thinking. One has to do with contemplative practices, you know, spiritual practices. One has to do with something called certainty. One has to do with gratitude. One has to do with relationships, and one has to do with sleep. So any of those, I’m game for any of those that you feel like we had a touch on one or two of them. Rich Birch — Well, what about maybe breathing? Why don’t we start right at the top where you started? And, and, and then, you know, we’ll scratch the surface. There’s a ton we could, we obviously, we want people to pick up a copy of the book, but let’s start with breathing. That might be kind of interesting. Charles Stone — Yep. Well, actually this ended up being the first one because it’s very easy to do. Now, if you, I think around 75 times plus, you’ll find the word breath or breathe in the scripture. And Genesis, God breathed into Adam. He became a living being. I think his early part of Acts, Jesus breathed on the early church, the Holy Spirit came. And then David, the psalmist wrote, let everything that has breath, praise the Lord. Charles Stone — Now here’s the interesting neuroscience insight. Deep breathing activates a key set of nerves that come directly from my brain. It doesn’t come from my spinal cord, but these are, these are key nerves. They’re in pairs. One of them is called the vagus nerve, comes from the word vagrant. What does the vagrant do? He wanders around. So this nerve wanders around our hollow organs, our heart, our lungs, our stomach. So there’s a lot of communication back and forth. Charles Stone — Scientists have found that deep breathing, especially on the exhale, when you exhale a little longer, it actually engages this nerve, which lowers the stress response. And here’s, here’s where you practice it. I call it the sniff breath. Charles Stone — Now, the actual term is a psychological sigh, but here’s how it would work when you’re facing some stress. Just breathe in, you know, a little more and then breathe out through your mouth. Now on the out breath, you want to be a little longer than the in breath. Doing that three or four or five times. Labs all around the country found it lowers the stress response.
Rich Birch — Wow. Charles Stone — So that is a simple, a portable tool you can take, anybody can use, anywhere. So yeah…
Rich Birch — Love it. I love that. Charles Stone — That’s a good one. Rich Birch — I’m sure there’s people listening right now, thousands of church leaders across the country as we’re driving into work, you know, breathing deeply. I love that idea. I’ve heard that before that. Rich Birch — And I’ve, when people have led kind of the breathing exercises where it’s, you breathe in and then you keep going. It’s that kind of extended. That’s interesting.
Charles Stone — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Interesting. Well, that’s cool. Now you also talked about contemplative practices as one of those. Why don’t you unpack that one? Talk me through that. Charles Stone — Yes. Well, the practice I call it a soak your soul. You look at the life of Jesus. He was God in the flesh, perfect in every way, but he’s often spending time alone with his father. Mark 1:35 says Jesus regularly withdrew to spend time with his heavenly father. Got it before everybody else got up. Charles Stone — What neuroscience has found that spiritual practices like prayer, like meditating on God’s word, on God’s greatness, like contemplation promotes the relaxation response and decreases the stress response. And there’s a little acronym I use. It’s called C-A-S-I, CASI, that would be the application. Charles Stone — One is understand that when we face stress, our response must be collaboration with God. And this comes from a guy named Paul Gaumont. And he calls it religious coping. Three ways that we respond when we face stress. God, I got it. God, you just take care of it. Or in a partnership with God. Now, it’s not 50-50, obviously. But if we’re going to be able to really leverage these key spiritual practices, we must see ourselves as a partner with God. Charles Stone — That “C” stands for collaboration with God. “A” stands for awe and wonder. That’s worship. Science tells us when we worship, it decreases the stress response. So “C” is collaboration with God. “A” is awe and wonder. “S” is Sabbath rest. And we know about Sabbath. Then the final one, “I” stands for your identity in Christ, reflecting on your identity in Christ. Charles Stone — So that little acronym, C-A-S-I, gives a brief outline of some of these spiritual practices that the science and of course, scripture too. It’s amazing how science is catching up with scripture. It tells us it really helps us with these stressful experiences. Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. This is fantastic. We’ll get to where people can pick up the book and all that, but I know this will be super helpful for people. I know there’s a lot of pastors, leaders who are leading people. Either they feel stuck in this kind of work, stress, burnout, repeat.
Charles Stone — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s a treadmill that they do not know how to get off of, or we see our people on that treadmill. It’s almost like they’re addicted to stress. They’re addicted to that feeling. What would you just say to someone that just doesn’t know where to begin? How do we start this? How do we break that cycle? Charles Stone — Yeah. Well, I think first of all, acknowledging that ministry is very, very stressful. It’s never ending. We’ve got to have a deliverable every week or more than once a week. To experience stressful circumstances is a very normal part of living in a broken world. It just is. Charles Stone — Now, we spoke earlier, as we were going through this list, we focused on the breath. Well, another acronym, if you’re looking for a place to start, it’s the little acronym STOP, but with an extra P, S-T-O-P-P. The S stands for literally stop. Develop a discipline of stopping in the midst of your stress.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Charles Stone — Pulling away for a few moments. So, “S” is stop. “T” is take a breath. That’s that breathing I was talking about, the sniff breath. “O” stands for observe. Just really notice that. What is really going on inside of my mind? What’s going on around here? First “P” stands for pray. Lord, I’m in a stressful situation. Really need your grace right here. Then “P” is proceed. So, S-T-O-P-P. “S” for stop. “T”, take a breath. “O”, observe. “P”, pray. Proceed. A little acronym that you can start there. Charles Stone — Now, I’m going to add one more thing here. There’s a big word that everybody ought to understand, keep in mind. It’s called metacognition. Metacognition means to think about your thinking. So much of our stress is tied to our erroneous thinking, unhealthy thinking, worry, and ruminative thinking. Developing the discipline of building throughout your day to stop and notice the O is observe.
Rich Birch — What’s happening here? Yeah, yeah. Charles Stone — To ask yourself, just what am I thinking? Are these thoughts being sponsored by the evil one, being sponsored by my worry…
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Charles Stone — …or is the word of God informing them? Is truth informing them?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Charles Stone — So, metacognition is another tool. It’s another simple word. It’s a big word, but a simple way. But we have to remember to do it.
Now, what I do sometimes on my phone, I have it beep at me every hour, hour and a half to remind me, like, oh, okay, I need to step back. Okay, Charles, what are you thinking about? Oh, boy, you really need to change channels, don’t you? So that’s another simple tool. Just remember to do it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Stop. I love that. And yeah, I would say part of my life’s journey, it’s been like, I wish, it’s a little embarrassing to say. I wish that this hadn’t been kind of a consistent conversation, I would say, with the Lord is, we are people who just react. We are humans who just, something happens and then react. Rich Birch — And I would say for years, decades, I’ve been asking the Lord: Lord, when something happens to me, give me the ability to just stop and observe and ask him, hey, what is it that you want in this moment? Not just to jump right to reaction, not just to jump to bias, to like, oh, hey, this is what we’ve got to do.
Rich Birch — I love that stop acronym as well for, I think we can be tempted as leaders to pile on our days, to go one thing to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, and that’s not good. Is there any kind of science around even how we schedule our days to help have more resilience around stress? Charles Stone — Yeah. I think it’s important to know kind of your, your pattern. First of all, your sleeping pattern, you know, some people are night owls, some people are, they’re called, you know, larks early. I’m an early riser. So you need to know that and try to build your day around that. If you, if your day, if you’re a night person, sleeping later is not a sinful thing.
Rich Birch — Right. Charles Stone — But if you’re not a night person like me, staying up is not a, is not a sinful thing. So understanding that. And secondly, just understanding how your cycles of your hormones travel throughout the day. Charles Stone — You probably know if you’re, if you pay attention to your productivity, there are certain periods when you’re most productive. I try to put my most productive time, my deep thinking time early in the morning. Now, some people that may be early afternoon. So being aware of where you’re most productive, partly protecting those times. And then the other times doing the kind of drudgery stuff, I got to answer emails, you know, do tactical stuff. So that’s a really helpful practice, I think. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Carey Nieuwhof talks about that kind of, you know, concept in his book, At Your Best. And I know that is, is a very simple framework, green zone, yellow zone, red zone. It has like burned in my brain. I know my red zone starts about three o’clock in the afternoon. I’m like, nothing good happens after three o’clock in my life, but it’s helpful to say like, and I, so now I’ve tried to like, even yesterday I had to go run some errands, get in the car, drive around town, do a few things. I just organized, Hey, that’s red zone time. Like I’m, let’s not sit down and think clearly time. That’s like, I got to go pick up some stuff, go to the store, do this kind of stuff…
Mindless kind of stuff.
Rich Birch — …mindless stuff. Um, you know, listen to a few podcasts, that kind of thing. Man, that’s, that’s critically important. Rich Birch — Now this book, let’s talk more specifically about Stress Less. I think when I see this, I think this could be a great tool that teams could use together to acknowledge with the people on our team. Hey, ministry is, uh, it’s, it’s a lot of work. I used to have a friend of mine who would say a ministry is a black hole. Rich Birch — And he would say that with like a, a fun kind of smile on his face. It’s like, when will the mission ever be done? When will we have reached everybody in town? When will every marriage be restored? When will every person come to know Jesus? It is never ending and we have to build resilience in the midst of that. I think this book could help us, um, wrestle that with our teams. Talk us through how you could see a team using this as a resource, um, as they’re kind of trying to lead our people. Charles Stone — Yeah, it can be very, uh, easily used like in staff meetings, first 10 minutes, take a chapter, you know, read it, read the week before and then interact around that because at the end of each chapter, I have some questions, some interactive questions. So they’re already there. You don’t have to spend a lot of cognitive or, you know, deep thinking time on that. Charles Stone — Read it, go through the questions. And I think it’d be very, very insightful. And, and of course, hold each other accountable when you’re going through those nine practices. Like, you know, how’d you do this week on this? How’d you do this week on that? And that’s always, you know, not in a pejorative way, but in a positive way and a developmental way. So yeah, easy to apply there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. Well, the book is called Stress Less: nine habits from the Bible and brain science to build resilience and reduce anxiety, biblically sound and research informed. I’m sure we can pick this up at Amazon. Are there other places we want to send people to pick up copies of this book? Charles Stone — I just tell everybody easy, Amazon, just search “stress less”. It’s right there, free shipping. And yeah, I don’t sell them myself.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Charles Stone — Just, just Amazon best place. Rich Birch — Yeah. Nice. I, like I say, friends, I do think this could be a great resource for a team. It could be great for, you know, like maybe you’re thinking about this fall. Hey, what’s the kind of a book we could read together? I do think this could be a little different. It pushes, it rings a different bell. That’s a part of what I like about your work is it’s like, that’s a fresh voice, a fresh perspective on this. You know, you can trust Charles. He’s, he’s, you know, biblically-sound backed up with great research. This is a fantastic resource, you know, for your people. Rich Birch — What does the future have for you? You know, Charles, as you look up over the horizon, as you’re looking at, you know, various, you know, things you’re working on, what’s next in the Charles Stone universe? Charles Stone — Well, I’m at the geyser age. I’m 70 now. So I’m just a geyser. Rich Birch — I don’t know about that. Charles Stone — Around the house. I’ll pull up my pants. You know, for me personally, I’m really working on health. I’m weight weights, resistance training.
Rich Birch — Good for you. Charles Stone — I row during the winter. I swim during the summer, working on getting appropriate protein, adding green to my morning smoothies. Because we age, we can’t avoid it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Charles Stone — Our bodies are temple of the Holy Spirit. So I’m really focusing on that.
Rich Birch — Good for you. Charles Stone — I’ve been thinking about getting another degree. I know there’s probably something more that I’d love to learn. Rich Birch — Oh, I love that. That’s fantastic. What are you thinking about getting another degree in? What would that, if you’re, you know, I won’t hold you to it. But what are you thinking about?
Charles Stone — Well, I really want to look at what is going on in our brain and how does that work with spiritual formation?
Rich Birch — Very cool.
Charles Stone — It’s like, there’s stuff going on inside of our brain that influence how we are formed and disciple. A lot of questions there. So when I’m swimming, I’m kind of thinking through that. So that’s, that’s another real interest. And I also mentioned to you earlier, we’re going to book on sleep in scripture. So tying those two together. Rich Birch — Nice. Very cool. Well, that’s, that’s fantastic. Well, just as we wrap up, what would you, what would your final encouragement be to us? Last thing we should be thinking about as we wrap up today’s episode. Charles Stone — Yeah. The final thing I’d say is stress need not define you, rather let it refine you. Stress need not define you, let it refine you.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Charles Stone — I quoted Romans 5:3, 4. We also rejoice in suffering because we know the suffering produces perseverance, perseverance: character, and character: hope. And the second thing involves that last word, hope.
Charles Stone — Every single one of us absolutely can manage the effects of the stress response. We don’t have control over that stress event. Stuff happens. Life is difficult. But we absolutely have some tools that are Bible-based, evidence-based, science-based that can help us in a more healthier way, respond to stress. So those are the kind of two final things I’d say. Charles Stone — And by the way, Rich, if you go to my website, charlestone.com, there’s a little thing that comes up that says you can sign up for my blogs. When you do that, there’s a lot of free stuff. People can get totally free.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Charles Stone — And one of them is a template, like a 21-day or two-week building stress resilience. It’s free. It’s a good tool to go with the book. So that’s the one way that you can. Rich Birch — Yeah. And that’s charlestone.com. We want to send people there. That’s fantastic. Rich Birch — Charles, I just want to honor you to just do such great work. And I appreciate you being on today. Charles Stone — I appreciate your work, too. Rich Birch — And that final word there, I was like, oh, man, there’s so much packed in there. So friends, I would strongly suggest you pick up copies of “Stress Less”. Again, you can get that at Amazon: 9 Habits for Biblical from the Bible and Brain Science to Build Resilience and Reduce Anxiety from Charles Stone. It’ll be a great resource for you. Thanks so much, Charles. Appreciate being on today’s show. Charles Stone — Thanks, Rich.
Reaching Gen Z Starts with Rethinking Church with Russ Ewell
Jun 26, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Russ Ewell, Executive Minister at Bay Area Christian Church (BACC) in California and founder of Deep Spirituality.
How can churches meaningfully engage and empower the next generation of leaders? With campuses across Silicon Valley and a deep commitment to developing future leaders, Russ shares the practical strategies BACC is using to integrate Gen Z into leadership while staying grounded in spiritual formation.
Build for the future while leading the present. // Many churches struggle to reach Gen Z because they unintentionally lead only within their own generational context. Resist the comfort of the status quo and instead build a culture that invests in young people while still meeting the needs of the present. This mindset shift is crucial to sustaining long-term health and growth.
Let relationship with God be the foundation. // The foundation of everything is a relationship with God. You can’t build the culture you need in your church unless everyone is focused on walking with God and obeying Him. Because the congregation at BACC was surrendered to what God wanted to do, they were eager to see the younger generation of leaders developed in the church.
Create a church culture that welcomes the next generation. // Gen Z needs to feel seen and heard in church life. Examine everything from the worship experience to leadership opportunities. By inviting young people to write songs, develop areas of focus, and make decisions, you create a space where the next generation is shaping the future of your church.
Make room for mistakes and growth. // Raising up young leaders means letting go of perfectionism and allowing space for failure. Russ models this by stepping back, staying quiet, and resisting the urge to micromanage. Through internships and mentorships, BACC provides young adults with practical experience and spiritual training—essential ingredients for long-term leadership development.
Deep Spirituality. // With Gen Z’s growing skepticism toward organized religion, Russ created Deep Spirituality—a digital resource platform filled with devotionals, podcasts, videos, and tools to help people explore faith on their own terms. The Best Life series, for example, offers life skills like goal-setting and financial literacy through a biblical lens, meeting Gen Z where they are.
Be intentional about developing leaders. // Bay Area Christian Church’s goal is for more than 50% of its leadership to come from Gen Z and Millennials. Russ is working directly with young couples and individuals to teach, mentor, and prepare them to lead. By investing early—in some cases, as young as 15—the church is building a deep leadership bench for the future.
Be adaptable and innovative. // Russ’s book, He’s Not Who You Think He Is, reflects on his journey from focusing on the church and its structure to focusing more on God and how His Spirit was moving. He encourages leaders to be adaptable and innovative—especially if they want to remain relevant and impactful in the 21st century.
Learn more about what’s happening at Bay Area Christian Church by visiting BACC.cc and check out the many resources Russ mentioned, including The Chemistry Lab newsletter, at deepspirituality.com. To connect with Russ and see what he’s doing with special needs kids, E-Life, and special needs adults, visit russewell.com. Plus, tune in to Gail Ewell’s unSeminary podcast episode, Beyond Accessibility: Gail Ewell’s Vision for Church Inclusivity.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So excited for today’s conversation because we’re talking with someone who’s right in the thick of a conversation that I know that you and I are interested in – something that all of our churches should be wrestling through, which is reaching and raising up the next generation of church leaders. Russ Ewell is the Executive Minister at Bay Area Christian Church and the founder of a few innovative companies as well. Russ, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Russ Ewell — Thank you, Rich. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. Rich Birch — Oh, I’m so honored that you’re here. Why don’t you fill in the Russ Ewell picture, kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us about your background, that sort of thing. Russ Ewell — Well, ultimately, it’s, you know, my life situation is always about team and family and people. So everything I’m doing in my life is doing with other people because that’s what God has done.
Russ Ewell — I am the executive minister, as you mentioned, of the Bay Area Christian Church. We’ve got nine campuses here in the Bay Area so that just about anyone, anywhere can get to one of our services, which is exciting. We have two lead minister couples. My wife and I are the executive minister and she’s the women’s ministry leader here. But we’ve got two lead ministers and their wives who lead the day-to-day work now. So we’ve been in the transition to a leadership for the future for a while. And that plays in, of course, to our topic today. Russ Ewell — I started out, though, in being an agnostic. And eventually, through a number of circumstances, ended up finding the Bible and reading the New Testament for the first time in college as a sophomore. And that’s when I became a Christian. And it was a couple of years later, I decided not to go into politics and instead to do this.
Rich Birch — Nice. Russ Ewell — And so part of that, I loved chemistry. I’ve just recently started the chemistry lab newsletter. I love chemistry and I wanted to be a scientist at first and then politics and then ended up in the ministry. So it’s a little bit of a journey. But that has led us to be in Silicon Valley. That’s where we are in the Bay Area. And we’ve developed, obviously built the church here and it’s been a great church. We have great people in our church, great leaders.
Russ Ewell — But also, we’ve built an eLife ministry, which basically is for inclusion of kids and adults with special needs and the community. It includes sports, it includes all kinds of different things from tutoring to buddies to being able to go to our camps. And our camps are inclusive, our teen devotionals are inclusive, our campus devotionals are inclusive. We’re really into that. And that’s been a big part of helping our young, the younger people in our church, I think, find enthusiasm about doing good.
Russ Ewell — And that’s really the basic focus and model of the Bay Area Christian Church, is we’re a church that believes in making God known and doing good. And you mentioned the company. I started one for my boys and people like them that have speech challenges, that develops inclusive software and utilizes tools in the market to be able to see how they can be part of being inclusive software.
Russ Ewell — So there’s a number of different things we do. And Deep Spirituality, which I think we may talk about later, which is a place we’ve created for people who don’t go to church maybe or don’t know how they feel about God. They can learn about spirituality there and learn about God and learn about the Bible there. And do it in a way that is, I think we try anyway, relatable and relevant to their day-to-day life. Rich Birch — Love it. We’re definitely going to get to Deep Spirituality. I want to make sure we connect with that. Rich Birch — But we want to start, I want to start with the Gen Z question. You’ve said that churches often want to reach Gen Z or lead with Gen Z, have them a part of the conversation, but actually are struggling to do it. What do you think we’re missing when it comes to understanding this generation? Russ Ewell — Well, I think church leadership is a challenge. And I think sometimes that people outside of churches don’t always understand even how that works. But inside church, even sometimes people don’t understand how it works. It’s very difficult for a leader of a church to go outside of the demographic of his current membership, so to speak, or the body. Russ Ewell — So if he’s in a church that the median age is 40, then it’s going to be real difficult to do a great job reaching people who are 15…
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — …while also reaching people who are 50. And one of the reasons for that is that when you speak, teach, and put together everything you do to make the gospel known and to meet the needs of people in the church, oftentimes we as leaders, we speak to our own generation first because that’s the most natural.
Rich Birch — True. Right. Russ Ewell — So I speak to a lot of people that are younger. So one of my favorite guys is Bruce Springsteen. I love Bruce Springsteen.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Russ Ewell — But when I mentioned Bruce Springsteen, you see blank faces. They’re like… Rich Birch — Sure, who? Russ Ewell — I think I heard about him and Washington and Adams and Hamilton. I think they’re the ones…
Rich Birch — One of the founding fathers.
Russ Ewell — Exactly. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s hilarious. Russ Ewell — Which I agree he’s a founding father. I’d put him right on it. Rich Birch — Him and Bono, all the founding fathers of rock and roll. Russ Ewell — That’s it. That’s how you figure it out. That’s how you know.
Rich Birch — That’s funny. Russ Ewell — So part of it, I think, is understanding or getting the culture of the church to understand that you always have to build for the future. Historically, you see a lot of churches that can get to 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, or 500, 250. But then once the people who were the leaders of that church or the founders of that church, once they get old enough, they no longer can do that. Their generation ages out, and suddenly you see no young people and these churches die out.
Rich Birch — That’s true. Russ Ewell — In fact, the building we own is a building that was a church that had, at one point done fairly well, but they had to sell it because once the current population of people got older and passed away or moved away, the church was no longer vibrant. So I think it’s essential that we do it. The challenges are, can we build a culture that says it is essential we build our future even while we build our present.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Russ Ewell — And will you have a body of people who say what’s most important is that we reach out, then we always meet our own needs. Because one of the challenges in a church, any organization, a company as well, they may have a software that’s selling great now, but when AI comes into the picture, that software is not going to be super relevant.
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — So you either build for the future or you end up dying. The phrase in Silicon Valley used to be used all the time, change or die. And so I think a lot of the challenges are, can you get yourself, ourselves, to be able to relate to and build for future, and can we build a culture in the church that does that? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I think a lot of church leaders, I think, would give mental assent to that. They’d be like, yes, that sounds like a great idea. I understand that the message of the gospel is one generation away from extinction. I’ve got to work to pass this thing on. I think you’ve done a good job at kind of outlining that problem. Rich Birch — What is it though that Bay Area Christian Church is doing to kind of structure in a way that’s actually helping to reach Gen Z and beyond? What’s that look like? Russ Ewell — So I think the foundation of everything, and I’ve listened to you before, so I know you agree with this. The foundation of everything, I think, is a relationship with God, and it sounds cliché, but the reality is that you can’t build the culture you need in your church unless everyone is 100% focused on walking with God and doing what God wants. And so the platform that we use, when I look at scriptures, 1 Corinthians 9, “become all things to all people”. Russ Ewell — And so one of the great things about our church is we have people that are 45, 55, 65 and older who believe deeply in the need to develop young leaders. And one reason they love it is it’s their kids. And so when you see your kids becoming Christians and then your kids contributing to leading the future, that’s exciting. So it starts with a relationship with God. Russ Ewell — Secondly, I think it starts with examining what does it feel like to walk into the church? I had a friend of mine come to church with me once, and he goes, man, all these songs are so old. Like, where do you get these songs from? I had never thought about that before, ever. Even when I was younger, I didn’t think about that because they’re classic spiritual songs and they are relevant and important. Russ Ewell — What we did during the pandemic when we were doing a live stream is we had a contest where we said, hey, we want to have a contest for writing new music. And we were going to give out prizes and awards for those who won. We had a top 10, I think it was. And what happened is about a half to three quarters of the winners turned out to be Gen Z people.
Rich Birch — So good. Russ Ewell — And so we now sing in our church songs that have been written by Gen Z. The same with everything, themes, what we focus on, projects we take on. We try to allow people that are younger to be a part of leading us, and they’re involved in decision making. So that means that when you have one of the campuses, and one of the goals we have is to at least get to 50% here in the next few years where we have Millennial and Gen Z leading the campuses. And we’re close to that right now. Russ Ewell — And I personally am working with my wife with three couples who fall right into that category. And so we’re building all the time to develop leaders, but that means you have to allow them into the decision making. And I made a lot of mistakes when I was that age. So you have to also allow mistakes. So you have to have a church that’s resilient. And instead of being critical of young leaders, you encourage them and you help them develop knowing that the mistakes they make today provide the experience they’ll need tomorrow to build the church. Rich Birch — That’s so good. And I wonder, I recently was listening to a kind of culture person talking about Silicon Valley culture specifically and said, you know, one of the unique innovations of the part of the world you’re from is it introduced this idea that mistakes are good, that we’ve got to make some mistakes along the way towards, and that there’s lots of cultures in the world where that just is not accepted. Like it’s like we can’t make a mistake, but enabling a church to say, yeah, it’s okay for us to take on for the greater good to take on next generation leaders. Rich Birch — That means we’re going to make a few mistakes along the way. There’s going to be a few bumps, but that’s okay. I think that’s incredible. That would be a big change for lots of churches. Maybe double click on that. What has that actually looked like for you as you’ve given away leadership to the next generation? What are you doing to ensure that we’re making appropriate level mistakes that aren’t blowing the whole thing up, that aren’t pushing the thing over the edge? Talk about that. Russ Ewell — Well, first of all, I have to deal with my own perfectionistic controlling behavior…
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — …that has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit or righteousness.
Rich Birch — Yes. That’s good.
Russ Ewell — It just has to do with my sinful nature and my human nature.
Rich Birch — So good.
Russ Ewell — So I first of all, have to deal with that. And I’ve not conquered that. So I can get worked up, bent out of shape by things that aren’t done the way I would do them or the way I think they should be done. So I have to first tackle myself. Russ Ewell — The other thing is that our church has allowed myself and others to grow here because I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And one of the things I love about the church is I can make mistakes in things I say. I can make mistakes and have us going in a certain direction and then have to change that direction. I just try to change it quickly.
Russ Ewell — And so I think they’ve already learned to do that because they’ve allowed those of us who lead here in the Bay Area Christian Church, they’ve allowed us to make tons of mistakes. And those mistakes have helped us develop the experience. Russ Ewell — And so I think part of what it is is more us, those of us who are older, being willing to say, let’s give the younger folks a chance to make mistakes. And so what it practically looks like, Rich, and your question is so great, is I have to be willing to stay out of the way, keep my mouth shut, not give off body language that says, “oh no”, not overreact, and be a great teacher. And that’s one of the things that I think has really challenged me, is that how great of a teacher am I? How good am I at helping someone maximize their potential and develop their skills and teach them from the ground up? How do you want… Russ Ewell — Like, for instance, this summer, we hired 17, what we call scholars and interns, men, young men, and 17 young women. And so we’ve got a total there of 34 this summer who will be interns and scholars, and they’re all Gen Z. And the whole idea is to give them a summer where we help them a little bit financially, but we also put them in situations and circumstances where they can be trained in how to be in the ministry. Russ Ewell — Now, they don’t have to go into the ministry. So we help them with their careers as well, their career path, but we’re trying to develop a group of people who have that experience. And so it looks like, I’ll just quickly enumerate it, one, me as a leader, letting go and not gripping and holding tight for control. Russ Ewell — Two, giving them the opportunity to make mistakes. Our church is already there, so we built that culture because we kind of have, as you said, Silicon Valley, but the whole Bay Area is pretty tolerant and friendly. And then three is giving them the financial support to be able to give them summers and years where they can have an opportunity to learn what it means to be spiritual and to make an impact on people. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, let’s pivot and talk a little bit about Deep Spirituality, this platform that you’ve launched and how does that fit into this whole idea of reaching a generation that lives online, that is, you know, is actively engaged, you know, on all things, phone, apps, all of that. Talk us through how does Deep Spirituality fit into this? Russ Ewell — I feel like you’ve already figured out what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Russ Ewell — So, I think that the statistics, the numbers say that in society in general, that people are gravitating more toward wanting to be spiritual and less toward the institution of church. I don’t think churches should feel bad about that. Every institution is being doubted in question right now. We’re just living at a time, or some people would like to say a season, of institutional doubt in question. So we know that. Russ Ewell — Gen Z is more among the nones, N-O-N-E-S, you know, when they give them options of the different churches they might go to, they say none of the above.
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — And so what we realize is that there’s got to be some place we meet people where they are, and spirituality is where they are. And I personally love the topic and love the idea and have really tried to learn a lot about it myself. Russ Ewell — So we create content there for people that may not be church goers, may not believe in God. They may come from a science background. That’s why I started a newsletter called The Chemistry Lab, to try to help people understand that science and God are not in opposition to one another. We have a Best Life series that we started specifically for people that are younger; the older people need it too. It’s basically life skills that are laid out throughout the year. We put, I think it’s 20 different ones together. Russ Ewell — And so you can learn how to build your finances, you can learn how to get self-awareness, and you go on there. And what we’re able to do is we’re able to have people partner up and be buddies and study and work on these things. And especially with the pandemic, it took people out of life development, not just educational development, life development. Especially here in California, where we were off the streets and out of social for a long, long time.
Russ Ewell — And so we try to provide those tools so people can get the life skills they need socially, emotionally, mentally, in regard to work and education, to be able to have success in life. Because at the end of the day, if Christianity doesn’t practically change your life for the better in day-to-day experiences, not a lot of people are going to look to it for being able to help their life in even the crisis moments. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I was actually, The Best Life, that series caught my eye when I was looking through your resources. You know, I’ve said in other contexts, following Jesus is best for you and makes you best in life or makes you best at life. And I love what you’ve done here, practically packaged up discipleship with really, I would say a fairly fresh new perspective that it feels like, yeah, like a fairly, I think pretty progressive approach that is helpful and packaged for a generation that’s looking for this kind of thing.
Rich Birch — Oftentimes, you know, it’s talking about goal setting, planning, time management, effective communication, all from a biblical perspective, all from, hey, how can the Bible help you? The stress management, financial literacy. Talk to me why taking this kind of practical approach, is this something that you’ve seen as you’ve worked with Gen Z and beyond- this kind of a doorway to these kinds of issues? Russ Ewell — Oh, yeah. I mean, well, one, you’re seeing amongst Gen Z, higher, they say, the statistics say higher rates of anxiety and higher rates of depression. You’re seeing more ADHD diagnosis. There’s lots of opinions about that. One opinion I’m developing just antidotally is that they tend to be more comfortable talking about those subjects. So the question is, are they really having more cases, which I think that’s probably true, but I think that they’re also much more willing to talk about it, especially young men are more willing to talk about emotional issues. Russ Ewell — So in working with them, like all the time, which is what my wife and I do, and working with Gen Z, and especially again, because of the pandemic, they’re trying to figure out, how do I move out of my parents’ house and get roommates?
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — How do I pay an enormous amount of money it costs to live in the Bay Area? How do I go to school and work a job at the same time? They’re very practical things they’re trying to figure out how to do. How do I date? How do I build a relationship with a young man or a young woman? Those are real questions that people have that oftentimes we just assume they’re going to figure out. And the church ought to be a place where they can come and they can learn those things.
Russ Ewell — And so, yeah, it’s been day-to-day hands-on work, and being in groups, having our scholars, our interns, these 34 kids, that’s helped us learn what they need. And they tell us, these are things we have questions about. How do I even have a budget? What’s a budget? My budget is called my parents. That’s my budget.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Russ Ewell — You know what I’m saying? Those are some of the ways we’ve learned. Rich Birch — To be honest, I was a little shocked as I went through Deep Spirituality. I’m like, where am I paying for this? This is incredible resources. It’s well done, well packaged, great design. It’s just available out there. How are you guys using this? How are other people using this resource? How is this fitting in? I’m trying to picture how this is actually being used. It’s very well done; compliments to you and the team. Russ Ewell — Well, yeah, and we do have a great team. And I think, again, it goes to our church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — The people in our church, they believe in doing good and in helping other people.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Russ Ewell — And they believe in doing that regardless of what they get back. And so they support it. And I think locally in our church, for instance, I’ll give you a story. One of the guys in our church met with one of the professionals in our church, one of the (he happens to be single) and he was having financial trouble. He actually took, these are older guys, not old, but older than teenagers or college students, they sat down and had a time where they went through the financial literacy one. And the guy was blown away. This person in our church never looked at Deep Spirituality.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Russ Ewell — He wasn’t looking at it at all, didn’t see the point. But once he saw it, he goes, where’d you get all this? He goes, it comes from Deep Spirituality. And so we give it to our leaders. We make sure they know what’s on there. So they can use it to help people in our church be able to conquer some of the challenges they might be facing. Russ Ewell — But we also have churches outside who will email us. We had actually a set of churches in Canada that reached out to us…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Russ Ewell — …and said, is it okay for us to take your stuff and use all your stuff? And we’re like, yeah, that’s what it’s for. And we’re not in some doctrinal debate or doctrinal. The point we have is the more we can spread and make God known, the better life gets for all of us. And if it empowers other people’s work, we’re really happy to have it happen. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, let’s loop back on something you said earlier that you just blew over, that I was like blown away when I saw this. It sounds like the kind of thing that people would say, well, that’s a good idea, but man, you guys are actually taking steps towards it. Rich Birch — You have a vision of having 50 plus percent of your church led operationally by Gen Z and Millennials. That’s wild in the very best of ways. I love it. That’s so good. How are you making that a reality? I know you’re taking steps towards that. What are you noticing about Gen Z as they lead differently? And what really can the rest of us learn? Rich Birch — I think that’s a noble goal for all of us to think about. How can we pass this thing on to the next generation? In fact, I was a part of, or was aware of, really more than a part of it, a group of leaders who had a similar pledge around, hey, we were going to hand our ministries off by a certain date. And only one of them did it. Most people continue to hold onto it and not give it away. So when I saw you’re actually doing this, I was super encouraged. So talk me through what that actually looks like. Russ Ewell — Well, one of the things I’ve tried to learn from Silicon Valley, from corporate world, is—in how they build and how they innovate—is the idea that, for instance, when I got here, all the technology companies from Apple—Facebook didn’t exist when I got here. And neither did Google.—But Apple and names of companies many people here wouldn’t necessarily know, they all called their corporate locations campuses. Russ Ewell — And so I went and visited and got to know people. And then that’s why I came down to Silicon Valley. And we started with a pretty small group and it grew because I went, I want to immerse myself in this and I want to learn from it. Because I’d come from DC, which is the opposite in many ways, culturally. Russ Ewell — And so one of the things I realized is they weren’t afraid of young people. In fact, they saw younger people as a way to be able to innovate, new ideas, new thoughts.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Russ Ewell — And so that’s part of what we do. So what we do is we start by trying to just teach them how to do basic things, get with people and help people. And that’s a lot of work. Like even in our own church, some of the challenges are people that are older who lead, they don’t like the hassle of having to work with somebody who’s still trying to figure out how to keep his gas tank full…
RIch Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — …and get from point A to point Z on time. They don’t like that. But that’s what you have to do. So what we do is we look and say, okay, we got a 15 year old kid who’s got a lot of ability, just like a college football team or a college basketball team would be. They have a lot of potential. And so we look at it as: in six years, they’re going to be 21. And in eight years, they’re going to be 23. And they’ll be capable of leading a lot of people. So we start young and we try to give them opportunities when they’re young. Russ Ewell — So every year is about development, the spiritual relationship with God. That’s foundational. Relationships with people, that’s foundational. They have to learn resilience and to take input. And a lot of times it’s hard because a lot of the kids I work with, they have a lot of negative thoughts about themselves already. So if you tell them something they need to get better at, they can become defeated inside. And so you have to work, that’s something I’ve had to learn how to deal with. Russ Ewell — Now, here’s the positive thing. They’re collaborative. They tend not to be power hungry. They tend to like working together with each other. And sometimes one of these we have to work more on is them taking more leadership and directing and not just kind of waiting and that kind of thing. Russ Ewell — So it’s really, it’s a comprehensive effort to try to figure out how to develop them in their character, their faith, then how to teach them leadership. And so that’s a lot of what we work on and then giving them opportunity. So we’re about to hire another set of about three new couples that all have potential to be in that space where they can be a leader of the campus. Russ Ewell — And in some ways we’ll throw them in the water and go, okay, let’s see how it goes. Our church is great. Last thought on this is our church is great because we have older people who are more than willing to be the deep center fielder, to catch the balls that go over their head. And so it’s really a collaborative effort on the part of the young, the staff, and those who are older in our church to make sure they’re successful. Rich Birch — If I was to come like this weekend, I show up at one of your campuses, what would I notice? What would I see that might be like a bit distinctive that this is kind of working its way out? You mentioned the music piece, obviously you’re singing songs that have been written by folks that are in this demo. Are there other things I would notice that would be like, oh, this is a little different than maybe if I went to insert other multisite church in another part of the country? What would I notice, you think? Russ Ewell — I think the first thing you’d notice is that we’re deeply committed to the Bible. I think it would be a huge part of our culture.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good. Russ Ewell — The second thing, I mean, these are in no particular order.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Russ Ewell — You’d also notice the God-focus. People are very God-focused. The other thing you notice is when you come in, now every church has weaknesses and we do. So I wanna be clear on that.
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah, for sure.
Russ Ewell — But when you come in, people are gonna, they’re gonna meet you where you are. And we have people who’ve been going to our church for three or four years who don’t feel comfortable with being a member of a church and they’re a part of our church. We have people who are deeply committed and they become Christians and they’re deeply committed. It all forms a community and a culture that’s inclusive. Russ Ewell — So probably the biggest sort of relational thing you’d notice is the number of people with special needs and families with special needs who are included. There’s a children’s ministry aspect just for kids with special needs to make sure they’re included. But I think if a person walked in and this happens all the time, they’d go, oh, I’m accepted here. I can be who I am here, just the way I am. And whether or not I decide to believe in God or not, I’m gonna have friends and I can be participant in it.
Russ Ewell — And the final thing you’d notice is we have a number of events like Easter egg hunts that are inclusive. You can come to our event. You don’t have to come to our service.
Rich Birch — Right.
Russ Ewell — You can come to one of our soccer things and you don’t have to become a Christian, believe in God. You can be Hindu, you can be Buddhist. You would definitely notice that. Rich Birch — Very cool. Well, I know you’ve also written a book, He’s Not Who You Think He Is. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I’d love to kind of include that into the kind of conversation here, as we’re chatting through these things. Russ Ewell — Well, one of the things I had to do is, and you’ve asked a lot of great questions and they kind of point to the book in a way. I had to change the way I thought about God. I had to change the way I thought about church and that meant I had to change me. Russ Ewell — I had to change some of the ways I was trained to be in the ministry. And the book in some ways explains that journey and explains how much I was people-focused, how much I was structure-focused and how much I was built in a way that I wasn’t focusing on God and the way the spirit was leading. I was focusing on the church and the way we were trying to structure and implement our structure. Russ Ewell — And I’m not saying you don’t have structure, but I’m saying you have to be adaptable and you have to be innovative in order to meet people where they are, 1 Corinthians 9. And a lot of that started for me in my relation with God, understanding that being legalistic, a lot of people out there understand that term. Some people who are not familiar with church won’t. Russ Ewell — Being legalistic is not effective. You have to be spiritual and you can be powerful and that way you can be adaptive. And so the book really is great for people who are maybe an agnostic, an atheist. Maybe they don’t go to church, but they’re interested in God. It’s a great book for them. But for people who are Christians that have been going to church a long time, I think it’ll help you consult and look and reflect on, do I need to change the way I think about God and change the way I think about church in order to make a difference in the 21st century? Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, you know, I really do think your church, I think you specifically are the kind of ministry that people should be following and tracking with. I think you’re asking questions that, and finding answers to, that frankly, lots of us are wrestling with. They’re not even sure what question to ask. And so I wanna encourage people to track with you. Where do we wanna send them online to connect with you, to connect with the church, Deep Spirituality – where do we wanna send people? Russ Ewell — So the BACC.cc, Bay Area Christian Church, that’s a great place to go to find out everything we’re doing and keep up with what we’re doing. Deepspirituality.com is different, and it’s where all the resources are. And I hope you’ll take a look at the new newsletter called The Chemistry Lab, because it’s built exactly on what you’re talking about. And then any of the stuff I’m doing with special needs kids, e-life, special needs adults, you can find at russewell.com. So those are three places you can go, and you can find out probably everything you would wanna know about what we’re doing. Rich Birch — Love it, so good. Well, any final words that you’d have for leaders who are listening in? Particularly, we’ve obviously talked a lot about engaging next gen, engaging Gen Z in our ministry. Anything kind of encouragement or direction you’d give us today, just as we kind of land the episode? Russ Ewell — Well, two things I’d say to end. One, I don’t wanna give the impression that we’ve mastered all this.
Rich Birch — Right. Sure. Russ Ewell — We’re in the learning mode, and we’re trying to grow and trying to understand it. The second thing is don’t get discouraged. Every single victory we’ve had started small, took time, and eventually was successful. And so be patient, and don’t get down on yourself and get discouraged and feel like, why am I not being successful? Russ Ewell — Pick one thing, work at it, and over time, God will come through. He’ll bless it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Russ. I really appreciate that. Say hi to Gail for us.
Russ Ewell — Will do. Rich Birch — Great to see you guys. We were joking early on. I think this is the first husband-wife combo that have been on the podcast, but not at the same time. So, which says a lot. 800 plus episodes in to have a new combo. That’s pretty amazing. Rich Birch — So Russ, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. All the best in everything you’re doing. Appreciate you being here today. Russ Ewell — Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
From Living Room to 5,000: Leading a Fast-Growing Church with Jason Hanash
Jun 19, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Jason Hanash, the founding and lead pastor of Discovery Church in California—one of the fastest growing churches in the country.
How do you restructure your staff leadership to keep pace with rapid church growth? Tune in as Jason shares how Discovery evolved from a living room gathering to a thriving church reaching nearly 5,000 people—and the leadership shifts that increased alignment, ownership, and execution.
Train your team as you grow. // As Discovery grew past the 2,000–2,500 attendance mark, Jason realized their existing pastoral team model was no longer scalable. The team was too broad, meetings were inefficient, and execution lagged. In response, Jason transitioned to a leaner executive team structure, developing four key leaders over two years and empowering them with oversight based on their unique gifting.
Hire from within. // Rather than recruiting externally, Jason believes in developing leaders from within. Each of Discovery’s four executive team members aligns with the church’s culture, vision, and values, making them ideal for executive leadership. This long-term investment in development allowed for high trust and deep synergy across the leadership team.
Don’t skip the training runway. // Discovery spent two years intentionally developing its executive team. The first year was spent modeling leadership and included seasonal staff meetings, goal setting, and retreats focused on strategic management. The second year involved gradual empowerment and coaching. This slow-build approach created leaders who understood the organizational DNA and could lead with confidence.
Navigating change with vision. // Organizational change inevitably causes friction—especially when some staff members lose direct access to senior leaders. At Discovery, staff are reminded to “marry the vision, not the position,” and flexibility is woven into the culture. Involve key influencers early, explaining the “why,” and selling the benefits of change.
Weekly and monthly rhythms. // Discovery uses a two-tiered meeting system for their executive team. A quick weekly huddle every Tuesday creates space for real-time coaching and decision-making. Then, once a month, the executive team meets for a deep dive focused on five pillars: advancing the vision, influencing the culture, managing the systems, multiplying the leadership, and stewarding generosity. Each season emphasizes one pillar, helping the team stay mission-focused and proactive.
Daily department huddles. // Each department also holds a five-to-eight-minute daily huddle. These quick stand-ups increase alignment, clarify priorities, and offer real-time coaching. The brief check-ins save time, prevent costly miscommunication and provide a space for the team to exchange ideas.
Yearly themes that drive culture. // Jason and his wife take time each summer to fast and pray over the coming year. In 2024, the theme was “Year of Freedom,” which led to a yearlong focus on emotional, mental, and spiritual healing. The theme shaped sermon series, events, small groups, and even the launch of a counseling center. In 2025, the theme is “Identity,” with a new devotional, curriculum, and book—Christ Formed in You—guiding a 12-month journey of spiritual formation.
In this episode, Jason Hanash shares how Discovery Church grew from a living room gathering to a thriving church of over 5,000 without losing clarity, culture, or team alignment. One key system that supported that growth? Daily 15-minute leadership huddles.
To help you implement the same high-impact rhythm, we’ve created the 15-Minute Daily Huddle Toolkit, available exclusively to unSeminary Extra Credit members.
What’s Inside the Toolkit:
Toolkit Overview – A one-pager that explains what daily huddles are, why they matter, and how to lead them with impact
Email Sequence – Pre-written copy-and-paste emails to launch the 6-week challenge, keep it moving, and close it strong
Printable Prompt Cards – A set of creative conversation starters to keep your huddles focused and engaging throughout the challenge
Weekly Leader Tracker – A reflection tool for team leads to identify patterns, highlight wins, and capture learning
Celebration Ideas – Fun and flexible ideas for wrapping up the challenge—whether you continue the huddles or pause to reflect
Not a member yet? Support the podcast by joining unSeminary Extra Credit. It’s just $7/month and as a thank you, you’ll get access to this toolkit plus a growing library of practical resources designed to help your church lead better, grow faster, and stay healthy.
Join today and start your team’s next 6 weeks stronger than ever.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited to have you with us today. Looking forward to today’s conversation. We’re we’re talking with Jason Hanash today, great leader. He is a lead pastor and founding pastor with his wife, Veronica, of Discovery Church. And it’s repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. So you know, I’ve got a lot of questions. We want to lean in and learn more.
Rich Birch — The church is located in beautiful Bakersville, California. Their ministry includes a counseling center that offers biblically-based therapy. And in partnership with Vanguard University. The church hosts a partner site on the church campus called Discovery College or Discover College, which offers students affordable degree programs. I am so glad to have you with us today, Jason. Welcome to the show.
Jason Hanash — Hey thanks so much, Rich. Excited to be here, man.
Rich Birch — No, I’m excited to talk to you. Kind of fill in the picture for folks that, ah you know, that aren’t aware of the church. Kind of tell us a little bit of the Discovery story.
Jason Hanash — We started in 2013. And just to tell the story, I probably take 30 minutes to all the God stories, to be honest, ah to be where we’re at today at reaching almost like 5,000 people after 11 years, almost going to be 12 years this year, is just miracle after miracle, to be honest, doors that were open that I couldn’t open, just grace and favor and provision that we look back and we just say, man, that was that was God.
Jason Hanash — So there’s so many God stories to get us where we are, but it truly has been year after year, knocking literal walls down after walls down, expanding and expanding because the Lord has been bringing lost sons and daughters to his church. It’s been beautiful.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, there’s a ton we could talk about there, but I know one of the things that often kind of happens in a fast-growing church ah is we start to see some cracks on kind of the leadership side and being able to find enough leaders, release them. This is a critically important issue. Can you talk us through what has your church’s journey been with that whole side of this this trying to manage what God’s doing at your church, trying to keep up with what he’s, you know, what he’s sending your way.
Jason Hanash — Yeah, you know, when you start a church, your church plant, you’re like, do you have a pulse and are you breathing? Let’s go. You can serve. Let’s do this. We used to say at the the beginning, If you can open up a bag of chips and, you know, open up your home, then you can lead a small group. And my goodness, the Lord’s grace on us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jason Hanash — So there’s…Yeah, there’s there’s some things that happened probably in that season that could have been prevented. But honestly, we were so fast moving, fast growing, and there is a messiness on the side of grace. But yes, as you grow, um yeah those cracks become wider and wider.
Jason Hanash — And so we have always been a leadership development church focused on leadership development and raising leaders. And we did that, have done that in a variety of ways, but we probably saw the most glaring gap was in our 2000s.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jason Hanash — And and I say, that because leadership development and in teams and multiplication has has always been part of our DNA and part of our systems and processes. But at the 2,000, 2,500 mark, we hit a lid…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jason Hanash — …that we were not ready to grow beyond. And and that was where we had this pastoral team model. And I’m leading, and you know my wife as well, we lead together, but we’re leading the pastoral team. It’s one meeting. It’s a large team. It’s all the pastors, all the ministry pastors. So It just became too broad…
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Jason Hanash — …too slow, lacked execution and detail at the level that ministries and ministers needed needed it.
Jason Hanash — So um this was probably, don’t know how many years ago now we’re at at that stage, maybe just after COVID. It was probably leading into COVID and after COVID, they just COVID kind of lengthened everything. But it was that stage that we were at this 2,000, 2,500 mark that we needed to restructure.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — And we moved to this executive team model where I was able to focus on some mission-critical things and raise up some leaders to another level.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — So we kind of identified four leaders on our team, and we took them on a journey of about of two years…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jason Hanash — …pouring into them and and helping them understand what executive leadership looked like and modeling it for.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Jason Hanash — So even like the first year, what do you doing we didn’t even call it an executive team. We called it an admin team. This is our administrative team.
Rich Birch — OK, great.
Jason Hanash — We didn’t give them the name.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — It was like, no, they were right you you haven’t earned that label, that title yet.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jason Hanash — So administrative team. And and we, one year we poured into them and and modeled ah for them. And then the second year they started, they started carrying more. And so now we are in a very healthy executive team model now where…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — …and we’ve been able to grow, not only grow to the 3,000, but now reaching almost 5,000 people. So it’s it’s been a tremendous shift for us.
Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s great.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s double click on that. When you, because there’s a bunch there I want to unpack. But before we think about kind of where things are at now, how those four roles are structured, that sort of thing. What were some of the kind of things that led you to the place where you’re like, um I’m just not sure, you know, that this is really working.
Rich Birch — I’m thinking for leaders that are listening in, they might give a few hearty amens to like pains that you were feeling at that time, that they might see that, hey, may um maybe we need to make a change.
Jason Hanash — You know, when when you start noticing the the lack, the gap, the deficiency or the decline…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jason Hanash — …in ministry or in baptisms or in team members or in leadership, when you start noticing those pain points after the pain happens, you’re just it happens you’re like, what what happened? You go, oh, we we don’t have that team meeting. We don’t have that, we’re not running that system the way it’s supposed to be. Why aren’t we? And there was so much that we just, we just, we missed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — And so we we were now looking in hindsight going, how did we miss that?
Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah.
Jason Hanash — And whenever that starts to happen, it’s because there’s probably too much bureaucracy or there’s not enough intentional leadership being given to your, to your pastors or your departments. And so where we were planning and looking ahead and we’re able to support our ministries, we got too big to where we were, we were looking behind and see it react…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jason Hanash — …rather than rather than acting.
Rich Birch — Then proactive. Okay. So then you ended up restructuring around kind of a four-part leadership team. Talk to us about how those roles kind of work out. What are the kind of various buckets that the people have? And then and then we’ll talk about the transition to that.
Jason Hanash — Yeah, so I’m big on on you know the answer’s in the house, and raising up your leaders that you have…
Rich Birch — That’s good. So good.
Jason Hanash — …your your pastors, your leaders, your team. And we have have not hired out at Discovery.
Jason Hanash — And I’m not against it fully. I mean, if there’s a need for that, I’m open to it. I just have always tried to develop the people that God has given me and raise them up. And so that’s why it it took probably two years for our executive team to start humming. But I have people on our executive team that have been here for 11 years and…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — …and I’ve been able to raise them, them up. So, they have culture, they have the vision, they have the heart of our, of our ministry.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jason Hanash — And there is, there is relationship that there. We have chemistry. There’s a lot of alignment and synergy with that. So, and I say that because, you know, what buckets that they have, are really a reflection of their their gifting and their leader capacity…
Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good.
Jason Hanash — …their their passions. And so in working with who you have and raising them up, I think you have to leverage people’s gifts. So our leadership structure is leveraged towards the the giftings of of the elders…
Rich Birch — Of the people. Yep.
Jason Hanash — …that God has called to lead this church. And so um we you know we have a zone who oversees our experience and creatives They lead all communications experience, creative ministries. We have someone leads all of the worship and and services and moments across all ministries. We have another executive that leads all of our next gen and as well as guest experience. And then we have some leads all of our what we call freedom ministries and our counseling center, pastoral care. And so those are the the four primary executives. And then myself and my my wife, we we you know have some mission critical things ourselves, but we oversee the the executive team.
Rich Birch — So that’s great. I love your word there around, um you know, really taking this from who are the people God’s put in in your church and trying to build their roles around them rather than like where we’ve got some artificial, you know, org chart that we’re trying to fit people into. That’s not how you said it, but I but I really appreciate that.
Rich Birch — That’s, now you did this, talk to me about this training, this kind of before you launched, what did that look like? I love the intentionality of that. Like, Hey, we’re going to march towards it. We’re bridging towards this, not just saying like, okay, go for it kind of thing.
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Tell me about, tell me about that.
Jason Hanash — Well, there’s a lot of things that we do in leading a high impact ah action-oriented, change-oriented staff and and ministry. So from um the goals that we set, how we set goals, our lead measures, lag measures, the org charts, how we plan our staff meetings. We have seasonal you know seasonal meetings with with department heads and what are the goals you’re focusing on.
Jason Hanash — So there’s there was a lot that hit just show we had to walk them through and we took them on a few retreats and showed them how to manage a staff and a team, and different departments goals and teams and how to keep keep them looking forward. So it it was just come along let us we’ll do it with you and we’ll actually break away a couple times to to to have you ask questions and and build it out build it out together. So um it was it was a year of modeling what what that looks like.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — And then this second year was us kind of um but releasing a little bit to them while we coach them is is what it looked like.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. Now, what about the people? So I’m assuming that these folks and this this may be a foreign question to you because everybody always gets along at Discovery Church. There’s never any tension. Everything’s perfect. But I’m assuming from what I hear you saying that, like, you know, you’re you’re raising up a few people by definition.
Rich Birch — And you know, that might have, there might be some stepped on toes in that feeling. How you know, again, how did you avoid that? Or what did that theoretically look like to try to avoid that? If that’s not really an issue, how how did you navigate that? Do you understand the kind of question I’m wondering about there?
Jason Hanash — I think change in any regard is going to cause friction…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — …and especially when you’ve got organization structure change, organizational change.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — So there there is that. I think what we have going for at Discovery though is we have um grown every year and had to restructure quite often.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Jason Hanash — And so kind of in our culture, to be change oriented.
Rich Birch — Right. Good.
Jason Hanash — And of our staff in our, in our, so that, that is going for us where that is something that is embraced structure changes, meeting rhythms change. We tell people to marry the, the, the vision, not the position. And so you’re going to might have to shift on, um, you know, what hats you’re you’re wearing depending on what season we’re in and and what what the needs are.
Jason Hanash — So there’s there’s that in the culture, but inevitably there is going to be, hey, well, I was sitting at this table and now I’m not at at that table.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — And so with that, I think you have to be, use some change strategy and have conversations with key, not only key influencers, but but people that it’s going to impact the most.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jason Hanash — And share vision with them, you know, get embodied on the vision and and the why. And that is something that hopefully that they’re going to be able to grow through.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — That they’re not meeting maybe with me anymore or with Pastor Veronica…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — …but they’re actually meeting with another executive. And, you know, there’s still value that I add in coaching them. And these are the rhythms of of what that looks like and how I can speak into your life and really selling them the benefit. It’s a benefit to them and a blessing to them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — …because I’m not able to give them, honestly what they need to do.
Rich Birch — Right. The care they need.
Jason Hanash — I cannot. And they need so much more than what I’m able to. And with this structure, here’s what they’re able to do. And I’m able to lean into where I’m strong at. And I can mentor you.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Jason Hanash — I can care for you. I can stretch your leadership. And and they can actually help you see the details and stay on track and grow faster and larger. And so they just need to understand the why.
Jason Hanash — And we try to try to do that, but inevitably there is going to be, you know, feelings and and to navigate people’s very real feelings so its is important.
Rich Birch — Yes. Feelings are part of working with people. There’s ah there’s definitely is feeling there.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about your ah the you’re meeting rhythm. This is like typical unSeminary question, like love to get in the weeds there. How often do you meet one-on-one? How often do you meet as a group with that executive team? And did that change from before? I’m assuming you reduced your your total, your direct you know headcount that you’re managing. So to talk us through maybe before and after what’s that look like?
Jason Hanash — Yeah, so it’s it’s looked different throughout the transition.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Jason Hanash — And and honestly, our meeting rhythms shift quite often, probably more often than and went then we should, and to be honest with you. And I feel like it is, but honestly, it is because people come and go and hats get shifted and leadership assignments get shifted. So that necessitates maybe some movement.
Jason Hanash — So but currently where where our rhythm is at is we have a weekly huddle with our executive team. And this is on our first day.
Rich Birch — Okay
Jason Hanash — We have a Monday Sabbath because Sunday is a week packed into one day for us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jason Hanash — We have five services, range from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. And so it’s Monday Sabbath.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jason Hanash — And then so but Tuesday, when we come to the office, the first thing that that we do is the executive team meets together. And this is where we just, it’s just a huddle, really. This isn’t a detailed meeting. It’s not we we just want to have FaceTime with with them. What are the the the projects and priorities? What are any problems? And if there’s any people conversations that we need to discuss. And it’s it’s pretty quick. And we we let our our executives give them a room every week to just share. And that’s where we can have some real time conversations. So coaching real-time answers to to barriers or challenges that they’re having and where we can get alignment across our executive team.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jason Hanash — So it’s time for us to so huddle. They have a weekly a daily huddle that they have with their with their departments, and it’s like a five to eight minute things. It’s standing up and they get to, they just do that a quick huddle. And so we kind of model that as well, where it goes a little bit longer though. We probably have about 25 to 30 minutes that, that we, we try to stand too and not sit down.
Jason Hanash — And then we do a monthly executive meeting. In the monthly executive meeting we try to stay bigger picture and, and looking ahead. And to do that, we actually, we have a a rhythm that every month is a different a little bit of a different focus. Every month we’re talking about vision and we are going to have our vision metrics that are that, how are we moving people toward the process of discipleship here at Discovery and their the, their vision goals in their specific departments. But we have a different focus every month that we move through. And these are and this is probably going to be more in the weeds that you’re probably looking for, but it’s…
Rich Birch — No, no, it’s good.
Jason Hanash — Okay. We we have really, there’s five, the five focuses of of an executive at Discovery is: advancing the vision, influencing the culture, managing the systems, multiplying the leadership, and stewarding generosity. And so these these are five focuses that the executive team is is, it’s like a heartbeat that they, they, so every month we shift from what the focus is. So vision is actually going to be the one that’s in every every meeting.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s cool.
Jason Hanash — But we shift from influencing the culture, managing the systems, multiplying the leadership and stewarding resources. So what it works out, because it’s four of them, it works out, we do a seasonal calendar. We actually focus on one of those habits, if you will, or one of those um pillars every season.
Jason Hanash — And so we get to do a deep dive in our systems every season.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — We get to do a deep dive in our in our leadership pipelines and our leadership ah team and the goals that we have for leaders every season. Culture…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Jason Hanash — …how are we influencing the culture of our church? What what is the culture of our church? We have culture conversation and how we are, we get to talk about how are we shaping the culture of our church this season and how are we going to shape it next season?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Jason Hanash — What are the stories that need to be told? What are the things that need to be highlighted? There’s a we get to just do a deep dive into that. And then as well as every season, we talk about stewarding generosity. And so we get to do a deep dive into how we have stewarded their budgets.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Where are we at and all that.
Jason Hanash — And where are they at? And how are we looking? And so it’s it’s both reflective of what has been done and where are we moving moving forward. So we’re able to do just a deeper dive with this team…
Rich Birch — I love that.
Jason Hanash — …that is that influences the the the background, the heart, the foundation of of the church. It isn’t we’re not talking about events. We’re not talking about you know who’s speaking there and and what what is the that conference looking like. That’s not what we’re talking about in that meeting. We are shaping the heart of the church and moving it forward toward the vision.
Rich Birch — Love it. I love that. And I love the just—listeners, as you’re listening in—I love that you’re using the rhythm. Like we have a very, what we do is very routinized in the church. Every seven days, we’re doing a giant event. And you guys in particular, five services that we were joking about this before we went ahead of time. Oooh, that’s a lot. I get tired just thinking about it. But you know we have this rhythm already in what we do. Let’s leverage that. And I love this idea of like, hey, we’re just going to march through these five things and talk about them. We’re going to every, you know, I guess that’s like a third of the year, we’re marching through every one of those areas. I think that’s so good.
Rich Birch — You caught my eye with daily meetings, daily huddles with your team. I know we’re not talking about your executive, but they’re having daily huddles.
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I have a friend of mine who runs a business who swears by daily huddles. He’s like, why are you not doing these? And pushes me on it. So, and I do, I, in fact, I don’t know any churches that do daily huddles. I think you’re the first church that I’ve heard of that does that. So tell tell me about that. Tell me what that looks like. Unpack that. Convince us that we should be doing that.
Jason Hanash — Well, it gives an opportunity for the executive to look in the eyes of their of their staff and and for that department to get alignment and to talk about their their projects and and priorities, what their focus is for the week.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Hanash — And when they when they come together, they are saying again, what the focus is for the week, what are they accomplishing, what challenges or questions that that they have.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jason Hanash — Real-time decision-making feedback is is it so important, man. I think people, there’s so much that doesn’t get done and get stalled because they just didn’t have the line of communication that was that was open, the clarity that was needed, a question that went unanswered. So I think it creates that open line of communication. It creates an opportunity for there to be collaboration across the different team members of your department. But it is a good rhythm of accountability where everyone can work on what they’re working on instead of being in the weeds and like just grinding, they actually have to pick their head up and go, what is my focus this week? What should I be accomplishing? And be able to articulate that in a succinct way.
Jason Hanash — And so this is an opportunity for them to become great administrators and time management and task management and project management And as well as an executive or a leader who’s leading them to discern where people are at in that, if they need coaching in that, if they need redirection, if they need focus. Sometimes in a huddle, they’re saying, I’m I’m working on this, this, this. And an executive has to go, and actually, let’s talk about that because I actually I have I have some redirection for you there.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jason Hanash — I need you to focus on a few more things this week, and and we’re going to table some of those. Oh oh, yeah, you didn’t. There was something we actually canceled that or we changed that. We need to connect. And so it creates so much alignment and and focus and momentum when you get people in the room…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jason Hanash — …talk about what they’re going to be working on. And it gives opportunity, like I said, for coaching. So it’s been huge for us. We’ve been able to, I think, save so much time…
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.
Jason Hanash — …and energy and mistakes in wrong direction…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jason Hanash — …by dedicating 10-15 minutes…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — …in the morning first thing to just talk about what you’re actually going to be working on together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I can see that. I remember reading, I think I’m going to butcher the number. I think it was 40% or 45% of staff time is occupied with waiting on management or feedback around, you know, it’s literally just like I’ve communicated. I just need to wait for someone to respond.
Rich Birch — And, you know, the the the kind of theories of constraint idea behind that is if you can just get people talking more, you can speed up at the pace of your organization because it’s like, and if you know, in this case, every day you’re going to have a quick check-in, man, we can move from, because then the question becomes, hey, what did you do on that project yesterday? Or I can just wait till tomorrow morning to ask my supervisor about that. And we’ll, you know we’ll move as opposed to like, well, I’ve got a meeting up three weeks from now or whatever. So yeah, I love that.
Jason Hanash — Right. And there there’s ways, I mean, you can use systems as well.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — We have we use Basecamp.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jason Hanash — A lot of people use different different software. We we use Basecamp for, sometimes they they don’t do the huddle because people are in different towns, in different cities.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jason Hanash — They’ll do Basecamp. Basecamp is an ongoing system of communications as well. Must must happen.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Love it. So good. Okay. So let’s pivot in a slightly different direction. You did an initiative called Year of Freedom.
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It caught my attention. Tell me what is Year of Freedom? Give us, give me a sense of that.
Jason Hanash — So every, it was 2024, last year…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — …we we just ah really felt like the Lord leading us in a direction. And every summer, I take a month off, not just a vacation, but I take about two weeks. I pray, fast—my wife wife and I both—and we’re seeking God for his voice and direction. And not just for like ministry and the church, but for my life and for God to align me…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jason Hanash — …as a father, as a husband. It’s our marriage. It’s
Rich Birch — So good.
Jason Hanash — …it’s in that time in the summer we’re we’re praying and we’re fasting and we’re seeking God that the Lord will show us some things about our our children. He’ll give us insight as to importance in this next year that we’re leading into and what they need to learn and grow and how we need to lead them.
Jason Hanash — And so it’s in that time though, that that we also seek God’s direction for what everything we’re stewarding, including including the ministry and the church. And the Lord has been pretty faithful these last I don’t know, four or five years to to just give us clarity of focus. And and this year was just um was ah one that focus was around freedom. And that was the word that Lord just spoke to our heart. And and it it came in birth out of the the need. There’s such a great need of healing of mental and emotional and spiritual strongholds that that that people have. And and um…
Rich Birch — So good.
Jason Hanash — …we felt that the Lord wanted to wanted to set people fee free. And and we were going to take people on a journey the whole year of freedom…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jason Hanash — …and crafted that journey and through our series and our men’s and women’s nights and experiences, even our youth and young adults and the retreats that we went on – the thread of the year was was freedom.
Rich Birch — So you organized, I love this idea. Like I, you know, I’ve heard of churches doing the like, like, you know, whether it’s a word or it’s a focus. Peal that back a little bit. How did that drive your planning process? How did it drive, you know, series selection?
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Give us some examples of what that looked like.
Jason Hanash — So it starts for us in the summer. And then when we take our staff on our annual retreat in October, we share the vision with them and they begin to craft the experience and their events and moving into the year with this thread of freedom.
Jason Hanash — But for me, with our sermon series, that the the planning is is around that how does this how is this reflective of this this year of freedom that we’re moving into? I began the year with a series called Freedom. We released a curriculum called Freedom as well.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yep. Yep.
Jason Hanash — A book we wrote that was like small group curriculum called Freedom. The, and then throughout the year, it’s not that every single sermon was about, you know, freedom…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — …but we, we had like, you know, The Relationship Rehab is one of the series. So we’re relational freedom. We did a series called Anxious for Nothing and it was about anxiety and depression. And we did a spiritual warfare series called Battles and Breakthrough. And this was on a spiritual freedom. We did Truth Over Trend and the deceptions of culture. And so the the thread throughout the year was, was freedom. We were going to see people set free.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Jason Hanash — And then when we did like a men’s night or a women’s night, we were leading intentionally men and women, specifically in the things that they deal with. So we’re addressing some of those things to lead them out and into freedom.
Jason Hanash — We did Freedom nights in in January and August. We have those 21 Days of Prayer. And so we we have worship nights during those times. And so those were nights of of freedom…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jason Hanash — …that we were intentional about the focus every time we’d gather, a different area of focus where we’re where we were going to break strongholds, and we were going to believe that people were going to be set free and and start walking out a new freedom journey.
Rich Birch — I love this from a clarity point of view. I love this. Like, Hey, we’re, where this is like an organizing principle for the, for the year. Have you done this multiple years or is this like a one year thing? Has it been, you know, is it gaining momentum internally? Like we’re thinking, cause I hear you say like, Hey, we’re thinking about in the summer. So that would mean, Hey, you’re thinking about next year. You know, how, how’s that all work?
Jason Hanash — Yeah, it really, this last year in 2024 probably was the greatest year of alignment with it that we’ve had.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Jason Hanash — We’ve had focus and and clarity on on maybe a theme and and it would thread through maybe sermons, and um but not the kind of alignment that we had this year. And this probably is, again, a result of empowering people our our leaders to lead at higher levels…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Jason Hanash — …seeing that kind of traction thread through…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — …all of the church. I it was it was a result of that. I got to share the vision…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — …to a team that’s carrying it and they get to mobilize.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jason Hanash — And it just thread through everything. We have small groups and like as a curriculum. We launched our counseling center. We launched a freedom prayer ministry. We we started LGBTQ support small group and saw people set free that were going to take hormone blockers and confusion and and homosexuality and and saw people saved and set free from from all of that. It was all like it was it was all because we we shared vision and invited the team into it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love how those two connect together. Obviously this, you know, taking what’s an idea, you know, given to you, but then, hey, accelerated through your team, expanded and even, you know, greater alignment and then obviously impact from all of that. That is, yeah, that’s that’s so good.
Rich Birch — Well, when you think about the future, this has been great today. First of all, this has been so good. Lots of, I got a page of notes here, stuff to think about and chew on. But when you think about the future, ah you know, at Discovery, kind of where, what are the questions you’re asking or wrestling with in in the future?
Jason Hanash — I think where we’re at right now is is this is 2025…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — …and the year or theme for us was identity. And I really felt like it was an identity crisis and has been an identity crisis. And not just culturally that we see maybe with with with gender, um but I think in the kingdom, people do not know are in Christ. They don’t know their identity in Christ.
Jason Hanash — And so so I I believe there’s a hunger for for that in the body. There’s a hunger for that in the world because what the world has told people where they would find belonging, fulfillment and meaning has has just leaving them broken, lost and confused. And so there’s a I believe there’s ah there’s a message in a revival coming to the church where we are bringing people into understanding into their, their identity, who they, who they were created to be and their identity in Christ.
Jason Hanash — So this year we kind of, we we wrote like a devotional for it.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jason Hanash — And in I’m actually, you know, finishing up a new curriculum, a book I’m writing called Christ Formed in You is launching in July 30th, I believe.
Rich Birch — Nice. Love it.
Jason Hanash — And we’re [inaudible] spiritual formation and a culture of [inaudible] faith.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jason Hanash — And we’re going to take people on a year long journey…
Rich Birch — So good.
Jason Hanash — …where our foundational new believers curriculum needs to be 12 weeks. We’re stretching it out to a year and the 12 habits of the disciple.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jason Hanash — We’re just taking people on a deeper journey of spiritual formation so that they’re just not practicing habits, but the habits are shaping Christ’s likeness in them.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s so good. I love that. Yeah, I was thinking that, you know, the interesting thing about launching, you know, you talk about launching a year like that.
Jason Hanash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — If you launch at the beginning of January, that means you’re writing at the in, you know, the year before. So you’re trying to balance out this year, next year, trying to keep it all straight. That’s, that’s cool. I love, I love that. It’s interesting to hear.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. What what else would you like to say just as we come to land today’s conversation?
Jason Hanash — Man, it’s it’s been a pleasure, been a pleasure, man, to hang out with you and to share. I think that that there’s, I what I would say is I’m seeing across the the nation, as I talk to pastors, it truly is the sparks of revival.
Rich Birch — I would agree. 100%.
Jason Hanash — There is such a hunger for the the word of God and the presence of God. And, and what is, what used to be, I don’t know, we’ve moved away from, guess, the teachings, the word of God and, and we tried to attract people and wow people and lights and, and, and music and, and that’s, there’s nothing against that. I, we, I use that. But, but I think what, what’s really attracting the next generation is truth. And this generation is starved of of truth and there’s so much deception and the truth is is is in the Word of God. And as we teach the Word of God and we teach the truth, they’re coming. And I see young adults coming with their Bibles and they want to read the Bible, they want to know the Bible.
Jason Hanash — And so I think a church growth recipe is, is you know, teach the Word of God. Get back into the Word of God.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. Absolutely.
Jason Hanash — Open it up and dive into and you’ll see a ah spark, I think, in your congregations.
Rich Birch — No, that’s so good. What a great encouragement, great place to, uh, to end. Where do we want to send people online? If people want access, is there a way to access some of these resources that you’ve used for the entire year? Is there a place we can send people to kind of see that or where do we want to send them online to track with you track with the church, that sort of thing?
Jason Hanash — I mean, you can go to our website, ilovediscovery.church to see a lot of our, all of our content. We’re actually putting on our first ever leadership conference on July 12th.
Rich Birch — Oh, great. Good.
Jason Hanash — It’s just a one day Saturday. We’ve we’ve been getting a lot of just, you know, questions from pastors and ministry leaders on on how we’re doing what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Good for you.
Jason Hanash — So we’re kind of opening up the house and giving our playbooks and resources and workshops and bringing in some speakers and hopefully going to be a really great value add.
Jason Hanash — But we’re, we’re we have a ah website, I believe it’s leadershipconference.church.
Rich Birch — Ooh, that’s good.
Jason Hanash — And if you want more information about that, leadershipconference.church, you can check that out. I believe that’s it. I’m probably murdering it. Let me see. Rich, I’m good my team’s going to kill me here if I don’t get this right. Yep, leadership.
Rich Birch — No, that’s right. That is. Yep. That’s right. That’s, that’s the, that’s the address. That’s good.
Jason Hanash — That’s it. So if you want more information um and more resources and how we do what we do and how we grew from a living room to 5,000 people, that’s that’s what we’re going be sharing there.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. That’s great. You got some great speakers there, Natalie, Ryan, Chris, and yourself. That’s going to be a great. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll link to that in the show notes. Incredible value. Uh, you know, you should check that out if you’re in the area for sure.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Jason. I really, uh, really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for being on the show.
Jason Hanash — Thanks, Rich.
Leading Change Without Losing Your Team with Craig Smith
Jun 12, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast! Today we’re talking with Craig Smith, Lead Pastor of Mission Hills Church in Colorado—an 80+ year-old multisite church and one of the fastest-growing in the country.
Is your church growing faster than your systems can handle? Do you ever feel like your team is working hard but not aligned? From shifting teaching paradigms to reworking systems, tune in as Craig unpacks what it takes to align a historic church for long-term mission impact.
Change is inevitable—prepare for it. // Churches must constantly adapt as their environments, congregations, and staff change. Revisit systems and culture regularly to ensure they support growth rather than hinder it. Leaders should resist nostalgia and instead anticipate future needs by assessing current practices with an open hand.
Purpose before mission. // A major source of confusion in churches is a lack of clarity between purpose and mission. Purpose is why a church exists, while mission is what the church does in response to that purpose. Many churches get caught up in activity without anchoring it in clear purpose, which can dilute culture and cause drift.
Preach for transformation, not just information. // While Mission Hills was known for its Bible teaching, they lacked clarity on the why. Reestablishing the purpose of Bible teaching—to help people follow Jesus—helped guide everything from sermons to discipleship. Use the Bible to lead people toward life change rather than just sharing information. While biblical knowledge is important, it should always lead to transformation and a deeper relationship with Jesus.
Build systems to support growth. // Craig inherited a high-capacity church with very few systems in place. Over time, he implemented clear decision-making processes, established team structures, and clarified how different leadership roles (elders, executive team, department leads) fit together.
Dismantle silos through honest conversations. // A months-long culture audit revealed both strengths and barriers across departments. By facilitating open conversations about what people valued and what they hoped to see, Craig helped unify teams around a shared vision.
Repeat it—consistently. // Language creates culture. Leaders must say important things not just often, but consistently. If you change the phrasing every time, the message gets lost. Mission Hills is intentional about memorable language that reinforces vision and values over time.
Speak in clear, accessible language. // In a post-Christian context, leaders can’t assume shared language or knowledge of the Bible. Speak plainly and avoid churchy jargon. Teach with language that invites non-believers while still challenging mature believers. Reaching people today means speaking with clarity and compassion.
Mission Hills Association. // Mission Hills Church has launched the Mission Hills Association—a support network to help churches strengthen their health and reach. It includes coaching, collaboration, and shared resources aimed at building a regional gospel movement.
Visit Mission Hills Church at www.missionhills.org to learn more about the church and their Beyond initiative.
EXTRA CREDIT // Download The Clarity Conversation 1-on-1 Worksheet
This episode with Craig Smith is all about navigating change without losing your team – and we’ve created a practical tool to help you do just that.
It’s a simple, printable guide with five powerful questions to help you align your staff, surface tensions, and build trust during seasons of change. Members can download it here.
Not a member yet? Support the podcast and unlock this resource (and many more!) by joining unSeminary Extra Credit.
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Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’ve got Craig Smith with us. He is the lead pastor of a church called Mission Hills Church, which was established more than 80 years ago, if I’m counting correctly. A multisite church, it’s been one of the fastest growing churches in the country for multiple years. They’ve got three locations and a Spanish campus in Colorado, and they’re currently engaged in this initiative to accelerate towards their 100-year legacy. Rich Birch — Super excited to talk to Craig today. Thank you so much for being here today. Craig Smith — I’m really honored to be here, Rich. You have been you’ve been really helpful to me as a leader, and so I’m really honored ah to be part of this. Thank you. Rich Birch — Well, that’s kind of you to say. Why don’t you fill in the picture about Mission Hills? Kind of tell us a little bit, give us some context there. Craig Smith — Yeah, a lot of this is actually in my head right now, because as you said, we’re thinking towards that 100-year milestone. So I can tell you that this church was founded July 26, 1942. Craig Smith — So right in the middle of ah World War II.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Craig Smith — Everybody was being shipped off to, some of them were being shipped off to boot camps, their people were being shipped off to internment camps.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Craig Smith — I mean, there’s just a lot of uncertainty in the country, and there was a group of people that said, the best thing we can do for this next generation is to plant a church. Rich Birch — Wow. Craig Smith — And so they they did that. And here we are – we’re 83 years later, and it’s ah it’s been pretty incredible to see what God has done with this church over these last 83 years. And we know he’s not done. We’re looking forward to the next 17. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Exciting. The you know, one of the things that’s yeah unique about your church is, um you you know, you’re it’s a fast growing church, but you also have this legacy. It’s been around for a long time. And and those are two things that don’t normally fit together. Rich Birch — A church that’s 75 years old that has obviously seen some accelerated growth. So when you think about, there was must have been some shifting of the culture here when you started. I wonder if we can kind of elaborate that, talk about any kind of cultural underpinnings that needed to transform to kind of help the church in its current state. Craig Smith — Yeah, so the the church had a season of really substantial growth before I got here. God kind of orchestrated a move from their existing location to a new location, and there’s a whole story in there about what God did. Craig Smith — But then the new location really it was a more strategic location. I think it was it was the right place. It was the right time. There was the right leadership in place at that time. And so there was some pretty rapid growth that came from that. With with that growth came also some challenges. I think it broke a lot of the systems. And not too long after the the church had moved into the new location and really began to see some substantial growth, the the the executive pastor and the lead pastor sensed God’s call elsewhere. Craig Smith — And and I think that was true. That was God calling them elsewhere. But it was also, they were a little overwhelmed with what had happened with the growth. And soI and it was about a two-year period before I got here.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Craig Smith — So I came in and sort of looked around and went, wow, yeah, this is a great church, great bones.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Craig Smith — I tell people a lot of times, I feel like I got handed the keys to a Ferrari. It was maybe a Ferrari sitting on a sheet of ice spinning its wheels a little bit. And I think that was mostly systems and processes. They just hadn’t quite caught up to being the size of church that they had become. So we we settled into trying to figure out like what needs to happen, systems process, what needs happen culture-wise to to begin to to move towards the next season. And by God’s grace, I think we’ve been able to figure a fair amount of that out. We’re still working on it. Craig Smith — But yeah. Yeah, there were definitely some culture things that had to shift. It’s a Baptist church. We don’t we don’t say that anymore. We’re Converge. Rich Birch — Yes. Craig Smith — Converge worldwide, you know which used to be the Swedish Baptist Conference. Rich Birch — Yes. Craig Smith — And somebody figured out Swedish wasn’t helping us reach people. And then eventually they became the the Baptist General Conference and they figured out Baptist wasn’t helping us reach people. Rich Birch — Funny. Craig Smith — So now we’re Converge worldwide. Rich Birch — Converge worldwide. Craig Smith — Yeah. But there, yeah…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Craig Smith — …there definitely was some culture shifts that that needed to happen. Rich Birch — Yeah, what would be some of those when you look back at this? That’s a good framework of culture and then systems. Why don’t we start with the culture stuff? What were some of those things that you’ve seen evolve over the time you’ve been there on the culture side? Craig Smith — Yeah, I think from a cultural perspective, the biggest challenge is probably one that I think a lot of churches in the Western world have, and that is not a lot of clarity went around the difference between purpose and mission. And I know people use these words differently, so I’m just, this is the way we use them. Craig Smith — But ah for me, purpose is why we exist, and then mission is what we do. And so mission flows out of purpose, but I think we get that wrong in the Western church a fair amount. Craig Smith — And I think what happens is that what happens we we end up focusing on what we do without an underpinning, understanding of why we do it. And so i so here at Mission Hills, we would say our purpose as a church, not just Mission Hills, but the Church in general, is we exist because God loves the world and wants them to know it. Craig Smith — That’s why we exist, right? Because God loves the world and wants them to know it. And then our mission, which is what we do, flows out of that. And so, I mean, the mission is it’s discipleship and evangelism. I mean, we’re not going to come up with something new for the church, right? Rich Birch — Right. If you do, there’s something, you’re not a church, right? It’s got to be at its core. Craig Smith — There’s something wrong that has happened. But I think what happens is we get focused on the mission. So we you know we end up like, well, we’re doing discipleship or evangelism. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And sometimes I think the split in churches today is, are you a discipleship church or an evangelism church? And I’m like, even that question bothers me. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Craig Smith — Because I even i you know I often hear it in the discipleship context, and people go, well, the purpose of the church is discipleship. And I’m like, no, it’s not. That’s like saying the purpose of the Marines is physical fitness. It’s not. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Right. Craig Smith — Now, is physical fitness fundamental to doing what the Marines exist to do? Absolutely. Is discipleship fundamental? I feel like all I do every day is discipleship. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — That’s that’s my gifting.
Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — But my discipleship is built on this understanding that the church exists for a reason, and that is to reach the world with the gospel. And so you can’t do that without discipleship. But when you get that purpose and mission confused…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Craig Smith — …that creates a culture that can get in the way. And so I think that was probably the biggest challenge was beginning to shift the church to: no, no – understand your purpose first. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And then all this other stuff is building on or building towards that, that purpose. Rich Birch — How did that exhibit itself in the culture? Like, or where did you identify as like, Hey, here’s some stuff we’ve got to shift because we were not clear on, you know, purpose and and mission. Craig Smith — Yeah, so Mission Hills has a really long history and a legacy as a strong Bible teaching church. And and I hear this at Mission Hills still. I’ve been here eight years working on nine. I still, you know, we’re a Bible teaching church, and I think that’s true. Craig Smith — But I would say even in my own personal growth as a as a leader, early on, if you had asked me what my job was as a preacher, I probably would have said my job is to teach the Bible. And then God kind of began to to work some stuff in me, and I I began to grow increasingly uncomfortable with that. And I wasn’t quite sure why, because I love teaching the Bible. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Craig Smith — But I but I just felt like something was missing. And I was talking to a trusted mentor, I was sort of explaining what was going on in my heart. It was it was inarticulate. It was just kind of babbling. And he goes he’s kind of stopping. He goes, oh yeah, I know what you’re saying. You’re understanding that your job isn’t to teach the Bible. And I was like, Yes, it is. Craig Smith — And he goes, no, it’s not. Your job isn’t to teach the Bible. Your job is to teach people how to follow Jesus using the Bible as your only authority. And it was just a light bulb moment when I, like that’s what I’m feeling. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Craig Smith — That’s what I’ve been feeling my way towards. Rich Birch — Yes. Craig Smith — That’s what I think the Spirit’s been convicting me towards. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And and, and, and so like, does it fundamentally change what I do? Not necessarily, but it does change how I think about it.
Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And so when I got to Mission Hills, I think I was, and I was still in that process, but I was like, Oh yeah, what I’m seeing here is like the focus on the mission, which is teaching the Bible, but that’s disconnected from the purpose, which is why am I teaching the Bible? Which is to help people follow Jesus, which means not only spiritual growth in their own personal lives, but also joining Jesus on mission in the world.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Craig Smith — That’s why there’s a church.
Rich Birch — Yes. Craig Smith — And so i definitely saw that there was a church that’s very focused on Bible teaching. Very proud of the fact that there have been multiple pastors here with PhDs in biblical studies. And I had to begin to go, okay, we’re not getting rid of that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Craig Smith — …but we do need to make sure we understand why we’re teaching the Bible. Rich Birch — That’s good. Craig Smith — You know, and sometimes it manifests even in like, how do we teach the Bible, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Craig Smith — Like the the previous pastor before me, who I love dearly, he’s become a very good friend. He was very fixated. That that’s a negative word. He he was his his preferred mode of preaching was a version of expository teaching. And I say a version because his version was, we’re pretty much going to go all the way through a book of the Bible. And that’s the only way we’re going to do it. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Craig Smith — Nothing wrong with that. It’s not really my way. I’m an expository teacher. like almost I’ve probably preached four topical messages in my life.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Craig Smith — But what I mean by expository is I’m going to unpack. I’m going to expose the meaning of a passage of Scripture. But I may or may not do that as part of a whole book study. Sometimes it it is. Sometimes I’m going to section of a book. Sometimes I’m going to do what people would call topical because I’m going ah walk through a passage about this issue. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And then i’m on ah next week i’m going to walk through a passage about this other issue. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — Which some people go, that’s topical. I would say, yeah, but for me, topical is I’m bouncing around picking verses. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — Nothing wrong with that either. Rich Birch — Here’s 10 verses that ah on this. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Craig Smith — But yes, I think Mission Hills was a little bit locked in on a very specific version of teaching the Bible. Rich Birch — Sure. Craig Smith — And and maybe not a really clear understanding of why are we teaching the Bible in the first place. That’s kind of how it manifested. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like that. That’s a good distinction there. I think there’s that’s a clear drive. I think sometimes this can, it can just drift towards, it’s almost like a trivia approach to the Bible. It’s like, I want to give you knowledge, information about the Bible. And then I feel like I’ve done my job. If you walk out with some more, you know, facts that you can impress people with.
Rich Birch — But at the end of the day, we want to, we preach for life change. We’re preaching to see people take steps closer to Jesus. I love that. What about on the system side? You said there was some system stuff that needed to change as you looked at this kind of like, okay, we’re, we need to make a bit of a renovation here at the church. What were some of those systems that that need to improve? Craig Smith — Yeah, i’m honestly, we just needed some systems. Like that that was a big piece of it. Rich Birch — Okay. Yes. Craig Smith — I think the Mission Hills was not a small church before they built their their broadcast location that that I’m I’m leading in right now. But in some ways, if I’m going to be perfectly honest, and again, I I don’t want to dishonor anything that’s come before me…
Rich Birch — No, no, no.
Craig Smith — …because I I love the leadership. And the and the former pastor is such a good friend. The former pastor, his name Mike, and Mike would say and has said to me, I wasn’t a an organizational leader. He’s a shepherd. He’s got an amazing shepherd’s heart. In fact, he’s he’s told me, like one of his favorite things to do is funerals. He loves those tender moments with the families, which I, man, I respect. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — I love that so much. Rich Birch — Yes. Craig Smith — That’s not me. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — But when the church grew and he found himself going, wow, now there’s this there’s all these people here. What what do I do with this? Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — He just, he felt like he wasn’t really equipped to think that way.
Rich Birch — Right.
Craig Smith — And he had an exec pastor, but but honestly, the growth kind of overwhelmed the executive executive pastor. And so when I got here, I felt like I’m not entirely sure how you guys functioned as a church the size you were before you grew. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And we’re we’re woefully ill-equipped to lead in this particular context that we are now, let alone to continue to grow. So yeah, I don’t see it with a lot of us just establishing systems. How do we make decisions? Who gets to decide what decisions get made? Who has responsibility for certain kinds of decisions? What’s the role of the elder team versus the executive team versus the the department leaders and all those kinds of things. So a lot of it was just thinking through that philosophically. Rich Birch — Wow. Craig Smith — Yeah, the church, the the departments were very siloed. So there wasn’t a lot of cross communication going on. There wasn’t a lot of fun. I don’t think we, I don’t think we felt like when we got here that there was a sense, oh, we’re doing something incredible together because God’s leading us. It was more like… Rich Birch — Right. It’s like we got our individual pieces. we do our thing and it’s good. But you know, wow. Craig Smith — Yeah, it was, it was head down and let’s get the job done. And… Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — You know, I started seeing things like I remember early on, I discovered that we had a quarter where there were three separate parenting seminars from three separate departments, none of whom knew the other department was doing those. Rich Birch — You’re doing what? That’s funny. Craig Smith — Yeah, yeah. And that was it was just it was a result of the growth and the lack of systems and and and…
Rich Birch — Communication.
Craig Smith — …really thoughtful ways of dealing with those kinds of things. Rich Birch — Wow. That, by God’s grace, when you think about like the delegation and decision-making and how does the elder team relate to staff team, all that stuff, man, it’s by God’s grace that it didn’t blow up. Cause that, the fact that that wasn’t super clear, that could have been, you know, tragic in the life of the church. Rich Birch — When you, let’s double click on the silo thing. How did you go about breaking down? Cause that’s and a natural thing that happens in churches. As we grow, they kind of become, you know, everybody gets their own little fiefdom and it can be difficult to get them to talk together. What have you done to try to stitch those together? Craig Smith — So if I’m going to be completely honest, God was really gracious, and we stumbled into some things early on that ended up being helpful. I should probably tell you, I didn’t have any experience in big church. Craig Smith — There’s there’s a weird story about how I ended up here. I didn’t apply for the job. I wasn’t interested in the job. I made the mistake of guest preaching, and I was a brand new lead pastor. Rich Birch — And you’re still guest preaching. You’re still guest preaching all these years later. Craig Smith — I’m I’m still guest preaching all these years later. So I all that’s to say that I came into this role without any real experience. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — And I was pretty new as a lead pastor, honestly. I’d only been about a year in that role at a at another much smaller church. Craig Smith — So I I was trying to figure things out. So I was I was collecting mentors in my life, and I was you know I was in a crazy learning mode. And and again, unSeminary was very, very helpful to me in that season. So again, thank you for that. Rich Birch — That’s kind of you. Craig Smith — One of the things I started to to realize I needed to do is we needed to figure out who are we as a church? What’s our culture? What’s our cultural values? And so I spent a lot of time ah talking to members of the staff as well as the congregation to go, hey, what’s true of this church that you want to make sure we don’t lose? And then, you know, what do you think could be true, but we’re not quite there yet? And that was about a six month process.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Craig Smith — But what happened in the process of doing that was we had a lot of conversation across departments. Because I was kind of moving down into each department and not staying up at the higher level. And I think that actually began to start some of the the movement away from silos. Because I was then going to other people going, well, okay, these people said this. What do you think about this? Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — Oh, yeah, we like that, but I’m not sure that one’s quite true. And then I’d go back to the first team and go, hey, so they said this about what you said, and what do you but do you think about what they’re responding to? But also, they said this, what do you think about that? I think that was the beginning of breaking some of those silos.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Craig Smith — And then just putting some stuff into place where there’s regular conversation and and meaningful ways to talk about decision-making, about programming. And and so maybe maybe we stumbled into it a little bit.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Craig Smith — But it was it was communication, like big surprise there. It was just creating formal processes of thinking through communication. Rich Birch — Right.
Craig Smith — So the informal benefits of communication began to happen. Rich Birch — That’s good. Well, even just in today’s conversation, you know, you’re clearly a gifted communicator. Everything from the spinning tires of the Ferrari on the ice, you know, this purpose, mission, conversation. Language is obviously a powerful tool for to drive culture and to communicate. Rich Birch — I wonder if you could unpack a few examples of maybe where language or messaging strategies have been particularly helpful for you to kind of embed values, what we’re doing, how we do it deeply into what the church does. Can you talk us through what that looks like from your seat? That’s a unique seat that lead pastors have.
Craig Smith — Yeah. Rich Birch — There’s a language piece that you have that is different than even a senior like executive pastor person. A lot of this language stuff is driven by lead pastors. Craig Smith — Yeah, so, I mean, you you’ve heard it said that words create worlds. And I think that’s absolutely true. You know, they they say in marketing, what’s the what’s the rule of thumb? You got somebody’s got to hear something seven times before they act on it. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Craig Smith — And I have I say to our staff all the time, and it took me a while to figure this out, because as ah as a lead pastor and as a communicator, like the worst thing I can do, the greatest sin I can commit as a communicator is to bore somebody. Which means that I’m always going, I I want to say this a new way and a new way. But the problem is every time you say it a new way, it hits different people differently. And and so and they receive it slightly differently.
Craig Smith — So I began to realize, and I tell my staff this all the time, just because you’ve said it doesn’t mean they’ve heard it. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — Just because they’ve heard it doesn’t mean they’ve understood it. Because they’ve understood it doesn’t mean they’ve agreed with it. Just because they’ve agreed with it doesn’t mean they’ve done anything with it. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — Just because they’ve done something with it once doesn’t mean they’re continuing to do something with it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good Craig Smith — And just because they were doing something with it doesn’t mean they have haven’t forgotten it and need to be reminded of it.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Craig Smith — Which is just really just a way of saying, yeah, they they need to hear it a lot.
Rich Birch — Right.
Craig Smith — I think language begins to beat the drum. And if you beat the the backbeat steadily enough, people begin to bob their heads and like, OK, we’re moving in rhythm together. The problem is if you say it differently every time, you can’t quite count that as a second saying. Craig Smith — You’d like to think that you can. I used to like to think that I could. I can say this creatively and in a new way and accomplish exactly the same messaging. And I began to realize that’s just not, I’m not able to do that. Rich Birch — That’s a great insight. Craig Smith — So I started going, I need to figure out how to say this in a way that feels like me, and also is memorable, so that people can remember it even when I’m not there. Rich Birch — Yep. Craig Smith — And I need to say it a lot. So I gave you one example earlier, when we started talking about purpose, we started saying, hey, yeah, the church is here because God loves the world and wants them to know it. And sometimes we’ll say, i mean, what does the Bible say? He loves them so much, he gave them his son. And he wants them to know it so much, he gave them his church. And a lot of times now, I’ve said it enough that I can i can leave off the last word of those, and people will go: son, church. Rich Birch — Right. And people repeat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh good. Craig Smith — I actually kind of want people to roll their eyes a little bit on some things that are so important that I’ve said them so much, they’re like, yeah, yeah, I got it. Rich Birch — That’s a good… Craig Smith — Maybe you do, but not everybody else does.
Rich Birch — Yeah,
Craig Smith — So yeah, we started figuring out how how do we say these kinds of things. You know, when we talk about discipleship, I’ll say things like, listen, it’s not big leaps, it’s small steps. Because enough small steps in the same direction will take you places you never thought possible.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Craig Smith — So thats that’s a phrase I say a lot: enough small steps in the same direction will take you places you never thought possible. So I don’t need you to make a massive life change today. I need you take a small step. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Craig Smith — And then another one. And then another one. So those are the kinds of things like I have a, we call them plumb line statements. And when we’re onboarding new staff, like my my development director goes over a lot of those plumb line statements because there’s a lot of them. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — They’re just, here’s how we say this. And and we we tend to say it pretty consistently. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Craig Smith — Sometimes you got to vary it because some people just, they can’t handle saying the same thing over and over again. But but I think the more you can say it the same way, the better you’re going to get this sense of oh, we’re all bobbing our heads together and, you know, we’re dancing to the same tune. Rich Birch — Yeah, I think that’s such a good insight. I, you know, I’ve joked in other contexts that, and you obviously said it way better than I say it, that, you know, people have to start making fun of you for these things. They have to, you know, they have to be like, okay, come on. Craig Smith — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, but it’s true. I was with a i was with a staff member of one of my favorite communicators last week, and I was listening to them. They were presenting, and I was listening to them talk, and it was like I could hear that their leader coming through in their voice. Because it was, you know, they were repeating, like you’re saying, repeating these plumb lines.
Rich Birch — And, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t in like a copy and paste routinized way. It was just like, oh, that, that language is just has seeped into this person and has become a part of who they are. Which is what, what a powerful example. And I think that as a non-communicator, I don’t, I’m not a preacher. I think sometimes we can forget that that kind of repeating thing is such a critical piece of the puzzle and we’ll want to always come up with some new way to say it. But I just love that. I think that’s such a great a great insight for sure.
Rich Birch — One of the things you’ve talked about is the part of the country you find yourself in, Colorado’s front range. That’s a unique part of the country, but as an outsider, it appears like you’re passionate about reaching that part of the country. What’s unique about that? What is it about the front range that has you fired up that, what you know, what is it that’s, you know, kind of given your church, you as a leader kind of a unique mission with that aspect of what God’s called you to? Craig Smith — Yeah, the Front Range of Colorado, which is kind of a, we we use that, it’s a civic designation. It runs from a city called Pueblo, Colorado in the south to Cheyenne, Wyoming in the north. It’s just east of the Rocky Mountains, which are obviously a big feature here and probably a big part of the culture. And I think a lot of places in the country will say this. It’s absolutely true here as well. This is a graveyard of church plants. Very difficult to get church plants that survive here. Craig Smith — And and I think there’s a number of things to do that to that. Part of it is it in some ways we probably feel a little bit like the Pacific Northwest. There’s there’s a little bit of a Seattle vibe to to Denver, Colorado. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Craig Smith — There’s a lot of California. We’ve had a lot of transplants from California coming out to to Colorado. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — There’s a little bit of that. At the same time, there is a difference. You know, where’re we’re on the plains right next to the big mountains. We don’t have an ocean. We’re not the Bible belt by a long stretch. We’re probably more similar to the the northern parts of the country and the Pacific Northwest. There’s a very strong ah financial component to the Front Range. It’s not cheap to live here. Rich Birch — Sure. Craig Smith — So so money is often part of the culture. The mountains, as I said, are a big part of the culture. Let’s go to the mountains…
Rich Birch — Right.
Craig Smith — …and let’s let’s ski or let’s camp or let’s hike or let’s whatever. And so the weather has massive implications even on weekend church attendance. I… Rich Birch — Okay. Craig Smith — …you know I coach some guys around the country that will sometimes lament to me like, yeah, I mean depending on you know with the weather, we might see a 10% shift in our weekly attendance. Rich Birch — 10%?
Craig Smith — And I’m like, dude, 30% is not at all unusual.
Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — A really good weekend, I can drop 30%. Rich Birch — Yes. Right. Craig Smith — A bad weekend, it’s got to be just the right kind of bad.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Craig Smith — It’s like, oh, it’s not good to be in the mountains, but it’s not unpleasant to go outside, like 30% up, like wild shifts. Rich Birch — Yes. Craig Smith — There’s there’s a fair fair amount of culture of apathy here about spiritual things…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Craig Smith — …because of the money and because of the mountains and and the recreational culture. So yeah, it’s it’s not an easy place. We we think less than 10% of the front range is engaged in ah a life-changing, life-transforming relationship with Jesus. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve that’s amazing. On the weather thing, I’ve joked in other contexts that like perfect church but weather is like 70 degrees and overcast. Like it needs to be like, you know, not not crazy hot, not crazy cool.
Rich Birch — But now, so obviously, and you didn’t use these words, but, it you know, the front range is heading towards post-Christian or post-Christian, you know, which is a challenging environment to communicate the gospel in. How have you as a communicator and as a person trying to build a church, how has that context impacted how you talk about Jesus, talk about… Yeah because I think the the rest of the country, we have to learn from environments like yours that are that are really in in some ways, I don’t know what you say, ahead of the rest of the country. There you know It’s a context that most of us are heading towards. Help us understand what how does that impact your your communication or what you do as a church? Craig Smith — Yeah, nothing real new here, Rich. I’m not I’m not breaking any new ground on this, but I think what it means for us is you can’t assume a common language about spiritual things.
Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — So we’re super careful about what we would consider churchy language. You know, we’ll talk about growing to be more like Jesus. I mean, our our mission statement is helping people become more like Jesus and join him on mission, right? Evangelism, discipleship, right? But we don’t we don’t say sanctification. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — We don’t talk about justification. You know we’re just going talk about like growing in your faith because that’s, it doesn’t assume a knowledge.
Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — We can’t ever assume that they know the Bible stories.
Rich Birch — Yep. Craig Smith — So, you know, I will never say, and I will coach our younger staff when they’re communicating, don’t say, hey, you know the story of Moses. Because a lot of them don’t. Rich Birch — Right. No, they don’t. Yep. Craig Smith — A lot of them, I was actually, this is this is wild. I was in um I was in a I was in a screening of a ah a Christian film recently, a Christian TV series. And and the the room was filled with church staff. Okay. That’s key. They they were professional Christians, right? Craig Smith — And and there was there was a scene where Jesus was making a whip. He was obviously getting ready to go into the temple and do that whole kind of a thing. When the thing was over, somebody asked the, there was a person who in charge of the screening. They said, hey, you know, what are your thoughts? What are your questions? And people said, oh, I really like this. I really like this. And one person says, “I’m I’m super curious – what’s he going to do with the whip?” Craig Smith — And again, it’s church professionals, right? Rich Birch — Wow. Craig Smith — And so the the person who was overseeing it clearly thought it was a joke cause he kind of laughed. And then he had that moment where you could tell he was like, oh, you don’t you real you’re serious. Rich Birch — Yeah. You don’t actually know. Craig Smith — And he so he said, “Well, what do you think he’s going to do with the whip?”
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Craig Smith — And this this person and this person said, “I have no idea. That’s why I’m I’m so curious.” Rich Birch — Oh, my goodness. Wow. Craig Smith — And I just thought that’s a pretty good illustration of where the where the culture has gone, at least in Colorado. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Craig Smith — You’ve got church professionals who don’t know the stories, right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Wow. Craig Smith — So you never never assume that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Craig Smith — So we yeah, we just we’re just very careful about our language. It doesn’t change the kind of things we’ll preach on, but we’re just always assuming we’ve got nonbelievers, in part because our people are living on mission inviting people to come to church with them.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Craig Smith — And we don’t want the cringe moments…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Craig Smith — …where that person who brought their friend is suddenly going, oh my gosh, they feel so lost because the way we’re talking about this or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Craig Smith — So a lot of it, again, kind of comes down to language. Rich Birch — Yep. That’s good. Good stuff. Well, it’s one thing to be a part of a church to see the kind of culture change and then, you know, be the the culture change agent, and and be a part of all that. But then, you know, the the culture around us keeps changing. Our organization demands something new as we grow. Rich Birch — As you look to the future, the next, I don’t know, 5, 10 years, what do you anticipate as maybe some changes or questions that you’re wondering about, thinking about in the future to kind of support what you believe God’s calling the church to do? As you kind of look to the horizon, what would be some some questions you might be wondering, Hmm I wonder how we’ll have to shift to to anticipate those. Craig Smith — Yeah, so god God’s given us a pretty big vision. We call it the Front Range Vision, and that is that that Mission Hills would become a catalytic influence for reaching everyone in the Front Range. Rich Birch — Love it. Craig Smith — And that that’s very general. Specifically, what we think that means is that we we’re looking at our 100-year anniversary going, when we get there, I think what we want to do is to be able to look around and go, there is no one on the Front Range that lives more than 10 minutes from multiple healthy churches. Rich Birch — Wow. Craig Smith — And there’s a lot of gospel deserts. Rich Birch — That’s a giant vision. Craig Smith — It’s a giant vision. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Craig Smith — And and and the key word there is catalytic influence. We’re not obviously not going to do that ourselves. Rich Birch — Yes. Right. Right. Craig Smith — But we think God’s calling us to to be part of what the church is doing and maybe to maybe to light some fires, maybe to grease some skids, maybe to to provide some encouragement and support. And so we have two strategies around that, and multisite expansion is one of those. We’ll continue to do campuses. Rich Birch — Love it. Craig Smith — We’re we’re Like you said, we we’re at we’re at four campuses. One’s a Spanish campus. The other two are are video, and then there’s a broadcast. We’re still figuring out what it means to be a multisite church. But we think there’s going to be additional campuses. But a lot of it, we’ve we’ve got something that we’ve launched recently called the Missionals Association, which is an all give to churches in the front range…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Craig Smith — …just designed to help them become healthy where they recognize they’re not. You know, we’re not going to walk in and go, hey, you’re unhealthy. But when churches are going, hey, I want to be this and we’re not quite there, how do we get there? Yeah, we’re we’re providing all kinds of resources and and cohorts and and learning opportunities and encouragement and equipping and supporting and those kinds of things. Craig Smith — So that that’s that’s the vision. And yeah, we’re going to be a catalytic influence for reaching everyone by making sure that we’ve got these healthy churches. Because we more and more believe the only way to reach the front range is to unleash an unprecedented movement…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Craig Smith — …of missional followers of Jesus that are fueled by local congregations. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Craig Smith — So local congregations, whether they’re Mission Hills or other other congregations, we just want to see healthy congregations helping people live on mission with Jesus here. So that that what does that mean for us? I mean, It means raising the money to do that, which is a little tricky because it’s not the, it’s not direct benefit to our people. Rich Birch — Sure. Craig Smith — We’re in a campaign right now and I’m realizing that’s one of the challenges. We’re not going, hey, you’re going to get a nicer building to sit in. No. Rich Birch — Right. Here’s a new kids area. Here’s a whatever. Yeah. Craig Smith — Yeah, this is actually, this is a little bit like the centurion who helped build the synagogue. You know, we’re going to build places that you’re going to pay for them, but you’re never going to pray in them kind of a thing. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Craig Smith — I think the centurion who was, who was Gentile probably wasn’t allowed to go into the synagogue, but he helped build it. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — That’s a little bit of a mantra. Like, yeah, we’re going to, we’re going to pay for places we’re not going to pray in. That’s a little bit, that’s a culture shift. Rich Birch — Wow. Yep. Craig Smith — That’s, that’s about helping our people think of themselves living on mission. So that’s, that’s a change. And then there’s, there’s structural issues as we continue to grow. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — I more and more find out that growing churches have really messy org charts. Rich Birch — True. Yeah, absolutely. And constantly changing. Craig Smith — Constantly changing, which I kind of like change. Rich Birch — Right. Craig Smith — Not everybody that I lead likes change…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Craig Smith — …or don’t like the way I lead change, which is often, that’s my fault, right? I’m I’m still learning how to do that effectively. But yeah, we’re we’re in the midst of figuring out some more structural stuff going forward. What got us here isn’t going to take us there. Again, lots of people have said that, but we’re seeing it for sure right now and trying to figure out, well, okay, well, what is going to take us there? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. That that vision of, you know, a life-giving church within 10 minutes of everybody in the the front range, that’s that’s incredible. That’s a huge vision, you know, to benchmark that for listeners, I know Walmart’s thing is to put, and it’s they’ve achieved it, is 90% of Americans live within a 20-minute drive of of a Walmart. So you think about, man, you’re, you’re trying to have twice the density of, of Walmart is amazing. Obviously for much, something that’s more than twice as important. I just think that’s and incredible. So fantastic.
Rich Birch — Craig, this has been a great conversation. There’s a lot we could dive into, but this has been super good. Anything else you’d say to listeners as, just as we wrap up today’s episode about this whole area around clarity and alignment and how do we keep churches headed in the right direction? Craig Smith — You know I think probably the the one thing that I would say is you’re probably not as clear as you think you are…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true. Craig Smith — …and you have you’re not as constant as you think you are. You know, I’ve just learned this over and over again in my life. Rich Birch — That’s good. Craig Smith — What I thought was clear was not nearly as clear as I thought it was.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Craig Smith — And so I had to work really hard, like, how how can I do it again? What what process of distilling it down to its essence do I have to go through again? What what filter do I have to run it through to make sure I’m getting rid of the extraneous so that I’m really focused on the essential? Yeah, I just realized that you’re not as clear as you think you are, Craig, and you’re not as consistent or as constant as you think you are. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Craig Smith — You think you’ve said this so many times and you think everybody’s got it and they’re so bored with it. They’re not. They’re they’re not because you haven’t said it nearly as much as you think you have, know. Rich Birch — That’s so good. That’s so good. Well, this has been great, Craig. Appreciate your leadership, cheering for you, cheering for the church, what you’re, you know, what you’re up to. If people want to track with you or track with the church, learn about what’s going on, where do we want to send them online? Craig Smith — Yeah, missionhills.org. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Craig. Appreciate you being here. Craig Smith — Great, Rich. Thank you.
Cultivating a Staff Culture that Drives Church Growth with Shayla McCormick
Jun 05, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Shayla McCormick, Executive Pastor at Coastal Community Church, a thriving multisite church in South Florida known for its authentic culture and rapid growth.
How do you build and protect a thriving staff culture as your church grows? Tune in as Shayla offers practical, actionable insight on shaping culture, defining staff values, and creating systems to keep your team aligned as your ministry expands.
Creating a culture that feels like home. // Shayla and her husband planted Coastal Community Church from scratch, starting with no connections in the area. Recognizing South Florida’s often disconnected and transient culture, they prioritized building a church that feels welcoming, relational, and like home. From day one, they wanted people to feel seen and valued. Their authenticity—sharing personal struggles, not just victories—has helped foster a genuine sense of belonging for both staff and attendees.
The critical role of values. // As Coastal grew, Shayla saw the need to ensure staff alignment around organizational values. Many churches struggle with dysfunction not due to poor strategy, but because values are aspirational rather than actualized. To combat this, Shayla developed a practical process to define the values Coastal wants to see consistently lived out in staff. Instead of starting with abstract concepts, she asked herself what characteristics were present in people she loved working with—and used those real-life examples to shape their core values.
From wall to hall. // Coastal has seven staff values: We Believe the Best, We Own It, We Think People, We Live From the Inside Out, We Make It Better, We Have Risk Taking Faith and We Set the Tone. Values only work if they’re acted upon, not just printed on posters. Coastal implemented a quarterly staff values evaluation tool where staff self-assess how well they’re living out each value using a plus, plus-minus, minus system. Supervisors do the same, and both compare notes to spark meaningful conversations. This regular rhythm has become more impactful than annual performance reviews and has helped create a culture of continuous growth.
Quarterly check-ins drive accountability. // These evaluations include three key questions—Do I get it? Do I want it? Do I have the capacity to do it?—which help surface deeper issues of calling and alignment. The result is clearer communication, fewer cultural blind spots, and, when necessary, healthy offboarding of staff who aren’t aligned. Shayla notes that conversations are now regularly centered around values, and team members frequently reference them when making decisions or reflecting on behavior.
Modeling values from the top down. // Values must be modeled by senior leaders. As Coastal grows and adds campuses, Shayla is continually asking how to transfer the heart and vision of top-tier leaders down through the layers of the organization. Her team is currently developing onboarding materials that communicate each value directly from senior leaders like herself and her husband, ensuring clarity and consistency from the start.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super pumped that you’ve decided to tune in today. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’ve got Shayla McCormick. She is the executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking with, Coastal Community Church. They’re a multisite church with, if if I’m counting correctly, two campuses in Florida. And they’re repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Honored to have Shayla with us today. She is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Shayla McCormick — Thank you so much, Rich. It’s so exciting to get to be here and to share about one of my favorite topics in leadership in the church and investing in other leaders. So thank you. Rich Birch — I’m honored that you’re here. Why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about about your role? Tell us, ah because, you know, the executive pastor, that’s been my background. It looks a little different at every church. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — Tell us a little bit about your background, your kind of role and andCoastal in general. Kind of give us this, paint us the picture. Shayla McCormick — Yes. So what’s crazy is I I had never really worked in the church world or the nonprofit world until my husband and I moved to South Florida 15 years ago to plant our church. Rich Birch — Nice. Shayla McCormick — We moved here like knowing no one. So starting from the ground up. it’s Rich Birch — Wow. Shayla McCormick — And it was crazy journey. We did a lot of things wrong, but figured it out along the way. And just, you know, I think what we were great at was consistency. You just keep showing up and keep showing up and eventually… Rich Birch — So good. Yep. Shayla McCormick — …it kind of it kind of worked out. And so my husband and I actually lead very much together, but he’s he’s his strength is as a visionary. And my strength is strength is really as like the implementer of that of that vision.
Rich Birch — Love it. Shayla McCormick — And so we work really well as a team. And so I pretty much manage the day-to-day operations of the church and the staff and and just, you know, seeing the vision begin to actually have legs to it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Shayla McCormick — And I enjoy every moment of it. Rich Birch — So good. Well, we’re honored you’re here. Could tell us a little bit about Coastal. Give us like the flavor. If we were to come this weekend, kind of talk to us a little bit about the church, kind of help us picture your church. Shayla McCormick — Yes, I would say, you know, one of the things that we always said here in South Florida, my husband and I come from the Bradenton, Sarasota area Florida, which is just south of Tampa. Shayla McCormick — And over there, everybody knew everybody, right? It was like, good old boy. Everybody knows everybody. You you have a friend when you walk into church. South Florida is very different. Like people aren’t the friendliest.
Rich Birch — Yeah, okay.
Shayla McCormick — So they all you could easily walk into a store and people are just going to look the other way and not say hi to you. Rich Birch — That’s because they’re all from New Jersey. You know, they’re… Shayla McCormick — Exactly. Rich Birch — I lived in New Jersey for years and that’s where they all end up. They all end up down there. That’s fun. Shayla McCormick — Exactly. They come down 95 and they end up with us.
Rich Birch — They just keep going. Shayla McCormick — And so we were like culture shock. This is, this is crazy. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s interesting. Shayla McCormick — And so we were like, we are determined to have the friendliest church.
Rich Birch — Okay. That’s cool.
Shayla McCormick — That when you walk in that you feel seen, that you feel welcome. It just feels like home.
Rich Birch — So good.
Shayla McCormick — And we would say that all the time when we, when people walk through the doors, we just want them to feel like they step through the doors of, of, of home. Rich Birch — So good. Shayla McCormick — And consistently people that come, they’re like, they come in and they’re just like, something’s different about this. It just feels like home.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Shayla McCormick — And that’s sometimes the greatest compliment, you know, that we could have. So we’re a very authentic, um, church, like what my husband and I are walking through or what our team is walking through. You’re going to hear about the mistakes and the failures and the difficulty. And I think really people connect with us a lot of times in our weakness more than they do our strength.
Rich Birch — True.
Shayla McCormick — And so we try to, to really make everything relatable and that we don’t have it all together. And so i think I think people would probably describe our church as just a safe place that they can just be themself. Rich Birch — That’s great. Shayla McCormick — And you feel that when you walk through the doors, we have a big sign at all of our locations that says, everyone’s welcome, nobody’s perfect, and anything’s possible. Rich Birch — So good. So good. Shayla McCormick — And I think you really feel that in in the life of our church. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I loved as you were, you know, there are multiple things you said there resonated with me, leading a staff team, being consistent, keeping the values aligned. You know, you’ve done things wrong. We want to learn from you, particularly on the staff leadership side. Lots of XP’s that’s a part of our puzzle. How, you know, when you think about ensuring that you’re kind of keeping staff moving in the same direction, kind of living out those values, what are some kind of obstacles that you’ve encountered or you maybe have heard other churches and encounter…
Shayla McCormick — Sure.
Rich Birch — …when it comes to trying to ah keep the team aligned around common values? Shayla McCormick — Yeah, i think I think in any organization, right, you have you have people that are coming in from from somewhere else. You know, they haven’t always experienced your church or your leadership. And there’s going to be some things that are very unique to to how you lead and the culture of your church. And if we aren’t really focused on what those values are, you can tend to have people that come into your organization that just don’t embody or or model those values.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — And so you can have a very, ah I don’t know what the, like division, I guess, in in your church and in the vision and in the culture. And so I have gone into a lot of churches and my husband and I love to invest in church plants. And one of the questions that I’ll always go in and ask because they’re having challenges, maybe with their volunteers or their teams. And it’s like, oh, this person’s complaining or this person’s doing this. Shayla McCormick — And I’m like, but okay, well, what, what do you value? And I just start asking, you know, some of those questions. And what I’ve realized is a lot of people don’t really know a value in the organization or what they want to see actually lived out in the life of their staff members, their key leaders, and ultimately into their their volunteer teams, you know, because it it is a trickle down. And so if if you don’t like what’s happening in your church, a lot of times you got to look at your team, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. That’s good. I love that. You know, there’s that pivot that happens. We go from like producing great services, doing making of the ministry, all of that. But then there is a shift that happens as we grow where we have to shift towards, we actually have to make a great organization that makes those things. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — And we’ve got to push that down. And part of that is through this values process. When you think… Shayla McCormick — Yeah. And I, I… Rich Birch — …I love that idea of they don’t know. And, oh, sorry… I love that idea of they don’t know. How did you come to that? How did you guys define that? What did that look like for you? How did you define your values as an organization? Shayla McCormick — Okay. This is, this is really interesting. So I think, as leaders, I started thinking about, okay, if I could think about one person that, whether they’re in my church, one person that I’ve been on a team with, whether it be at another organization or anything like that. And I was like, man, that person, I would love to work with them again.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Shayla McCormick — I would um like, they displayed these things in their life. And I started asking myself, what are the things that I consistently see in that person that I’m like, I always want that person around me. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Shayla McCormick — I always want that person, you know, close by. And so I said, okay, I need to start looking at those might be the values of the person that I want on my team.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — So we started going, thinking of the person first, and then going, what did they display? And that’s really kind of what I valued. And then I was like, okay, what’s, what’s kind of that middle ground person…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — …that is like, okay, they’re great. But you know, and then there was like, the third person that’s like, I don’t ever want to work with that person again, honestly. And so I’m like…I know… Rich Birch — You’ve had those people? i don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah. Shayla McCormick — And so I tried to like picture those three people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — And then that kind of shaped what we wanted to see modeled in our, in our leadership. And everybody has different values that they want to display or that they want to see in the life of their church. And I think the hard work is really asking ourself, what are the things that I actually value? Because people, a lot of organizations, a lot of churches have aspirational values, right? Like we want this, but how how are you actually facilitating or or communicating what that means? Shayla McCormick — I I heard Craig Groeschel one time say like, it doesn’t matter what’s written on your walls if it’s not happening in your halls, you know? Rich Birch — That’s good, that’s good. Yeah. Shayla McCormick — You you might think that that’s a value, but is that actually being displayed, you know, on your team? And so, again, for us, it went back to really thinking about who are those people…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — …and then what do they display in their life? And that helped us shape some of those things. And so I as senior leaders, executive pastors, any any of that, like, we’re really going to shape the values of that organization. So we have to ask ourselves those questions, I think. Rich Birch — Yeah, when that idea of taking what’s, you know, internal or intrinsic and making it extra extrinsic is is a difficult process.
Shayla McCormick — Yes.
Rich Birch — That is you know because it’s there’s a lot of assumptions we have inside of ourselves that we’ve got to kind of get outside. Now you’ve defined, if I’m counting correctly, seven values. These are kind of like organizational values. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — We believe the best, we own it, we think people, (and we’ll put these on the show notes, friends), we live from the inside out, we make it better, we have risk-taking faith and we set the tone. There’s so much I’d love to talk about there. Are is there any one of those that what you would say was, as you were developing them, you’re like, ooh, this has been the kind of the tool that has shaped us the most. That’s and that could be, it’s been the hardest you know to to achieve. But has there been any one of those that really stood out as been the most formative? Shayla McCormick — Yes. I would say the one that we talk about the most and the one that we go back to the most is the one that says we believe the best. Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — And really, this doesn’t mean that we walk around with like rose-colored glasses trying to look at people and going, oh, I’m just going to ignore that because I’m going to believe the best. It actually means that we have hard conversations that allow us to eventually believe the best about that person. So it allows us to maintain unity.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Shayla McCormick — Because unity is the, probably the biggest thing. And so we tell people like we believe the best about each other. So that means we have to fight for the unity. And that means if I’m struggling to believe the best, I need to have a conversation with Rich…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good.
Shayla McCormick — …and I need to go, Hey, I’m struggling to believe the best right now because of this. Can we talk through that? Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — And it really helps us shape that. It also eliminates a lot of gossip. Like go to the person, don’t talk about the person. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Shayla McCormick — And so that’s really one that we talk about quite a bit. And we have, I feel like that one has defined very much of the healthy team culture that we have.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Shayla McCormick — Because if somebody comes and has a conversation, our first response is, have you talked to them?
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — Have you gone to them so that you can continue to believe the best? Rich Birch — Maybe give us another example of that, you know, ah working that out. I can see that. Hey, ah you know, come to me.
Shayla McCormick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is there another, can you think of another time where we believe the best has you’ve had to, it’s pushed some operational, like, ooh, we’ve had to make a change or have some conversations that are around that? Shayla McCormick — I don’t know about about like make a change necessarily operationally…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Shayla McCormick — …but I will say like forward facing, let’s say the church to the church and somebody comes to one of our staff members and says hey I’ve got an issue with that person this person I can’t believe they did xyz, you know. Our staff, because we first of all believe the best regardless of how we feel about that, we’re gonna say, hey that really doesn’t sound like Rich’s character. You know, like I appreciate you coming to me about that. And in, you know, sharing those things, and then we’re going to go back and we’re going to conversation with that person.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Shayla McCormick — But forward facing, we’re always going to have the back of, you know, our, our teammate. And so that, that changes the, I think the dynamics and the interaction and the confidence of the people on our team, knowing that somebody is always going to have my back. They’re not just going to allow, you know, people to come and make accusations or, you know, be frustrated. But we’re going to we’re going to choose to to have each other’s backs in those moments.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — And I think that has helped you know shape shape a lot of things. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So you said it, I wasn’t gonna say it, but like sometimes these values, it’s the easy part is writing them, even though it’s a lot of work and like making a great graphic, putting them up on the wall. What have you done to take it from that to actually, you know, can walk us through how you’ve then made this like work itself out? Is there any kind of repeatable system or anything you’ve added to to ensure that we come back to these time and again? Shayla McCormick — Yes. So one of the things that I started asking myself is like, okay, we have these great values, right? We’ve we’ve worked really hard to go, what are our values and to really, you know, solidify those. Shayla McCormick — But now how am I holding people accountable to those values, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — Because we can say something, but if there’s no accountability that allows us to have difficult conversations to make sure we’re actually embodying those things in the life of our organization, then we’re just going to kind of be aiming at nothing. And so what I started doing was going, what are some tools and ways that, that we can actually make sure people are living these out within our organization. Shayla McCormick — So we actually came up with almost a self-evaluation tool for our team. And we listed out all of the values and, we began to say like, okay, let’s give ourself a plus or a minus on, on each of these values or a plus minus. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And so a plus would be like, I embody this value. A minus would be like, I struggle with this. And a plus minus would be, I do this sometimes, but I’m not really consistent at it. Shayla McCormick — And so we develop this tool with all of our values. And then what we do is quarterly, our team sits down with their direct report and they self-evaluate themselves on how they feel they’re doing on displaying those values. And then their boss basically evaluates them. And then they talk through like, hey, we’re different here. Why are we different? Rich Birch — Right, right. Shayla McCormick — Like, here’s how I see that you could maybe embody that a little bit differently. And explain to me why you feel like you’re weak in this, because I see you as being strong in it. And so it’s a chance to like celebrate. But it’s also a chance to have some corrective behavioral conversations around maybe where we feel like we’re missing the mark on some things. Shayla McCormick — And so there we also added a couple of questions on there that says, I get it, I want it, and I have the capacity to do it. And that’s really like their job. Like I feel like I get what I’m supposed to be doing. I get it.
Shayla McCormick — And then the I want it question is like, I still want to do this because I actually want to know, like, are you still in this and do you love what you’re doing still? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Shayla McCormick — And then the other one is I have the capacity to do it. Because we all know in the life of the church, sometimes things outgrow our capacity.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Shayla McCormick — So I want to know from that employee, like, do you feel like you still have the capacity to operate in the role or are you overwhelmed by all of this? And do we need to have a different chair kind of conversation? Shayla McCormick — And this has really helped us carry this out and and like keep it in front of people. Cause honestly, Rich, I think there’s so many times in the church where we hire people for their gift and talent, but their like character and adherence to the to the values of that organization, they don’t really care about. And I would rather hire people based on values and teach talent and, you know, teach the skills. Rich Birch — The stuff you need to do. Yep, for sure. Shayla McCormick — But values are way more important to me because that’s what people are seeing displayed. Rich Birch — That’s so true. That’s so true. Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, and we’re not doing rocket science. I would agree with you on that. Like it’s not, you know, what what we, what we do is not, it’s not incredibly complex. You know, we can teach a lot of it. Rich Birch — The thing I love, I saw this on that evaluation forum. I’m so glad you brought this up. I love that: I get it. I want it. I have the capacity. I think that’s, man, that is so wise. One of the things I’ve known and growing in a, in a fast growing church, particularly, I always tried to model and have tried to model, like, hey, my role, I this thing might outgrow me.
Shayla McCormick — Yes.
Rich Birch —And there and there may come a time where I have to step aside for the sake of the mission. And that has created a culture with my team being able to say that. But I love that you’re actually literally every quarter asking your people to reflect on that. Rich Birch — How have these evaluations then ended up translating into like steps, actionable changes in staff development or alignment you know around this? What are some things that you’ve seen? Oh, hey, here’s some positive change that’s happened because of this. Shayla McCormick — I think what I hear, what happens since we’ve implemented a lot of this is I hear more conversations centered around the values because…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shayla McCormick — …so I feel like the values are really driving the decisions that they’re making. So I’ll hear people saying, Oh, okay. Our value is, you know, we own it. And so, you know, the other day there was a bunch of trash just sitting outside the door. So you know what? We own it. And so I took out the trash, you know, or whatever.
Shayla McCormick — So you just see the conversations beginning to shift.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shayla McCormick — And then I’ll also say that as we implemented this, there were also some people that eventually exited the team because the dial was turned up on on, like, this is, this is what we’re displaying. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And I think some people self eliminated because they’re, they were just like, I’m not going to live up to that. And so there were several people actually that, you know, exited. And that was a healthy thing and a good thing um because those things weren’t going to be modeled. Shayla McCormick — And, you know, we we do shaping conversations even even at our staff meeting. Like I’ll i’ll give you an example. The other day at our staff meeting, we were sharing like we do wins at the beginning of our staff meeting. So stories of life change or how people are embodying the the life of our church. And one of the guys that is very new to our team, he’s been on the team for about three weeks. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yep. Shayla McCormick — He was sharing and he was like, man, this weekend there was like this, this huge carafe of coffee that got spilled in the lobby. Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — And he was like, all of these people like run over to the coffee spill and everybody’s grabbing stuff and trying to clean it up and whatever.
Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And he was like, I’ve been in churches where people wrote a walk the other way. But he’s like it kind of looked like somebody threw money on the floor and people were going to grab it, but it was actually a coffee spill. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Love it. Shayla McCormick — And I was able in that moment, because it’s a new staff member, and I said, hey, you know why you’re seeing that? It’s because the team in this room, our staff has modeled the value of “we own it” well. And they’ve seen us go first in all of those ways. And so they embody that too. So great job team owning it when there’s something that’s not even your job that you went and took care of, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Love it. That’s… Shayla McCormick — And so it’s kind of cool how how you can shape or, you know, facilitate conversations even around what they’re saying to highlight, this is why it’s happening and let’s celebrate that. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s, that’s like 201, 301 leadership there. That’s to capture a moment like that and be able to point back and say, hey, that’s because of this value, the framework that you’ve designed and have been able to, you know, point your people towards. That’s, ah yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Rich Birch — How else do you, do how else, I know so in some churches, they’ll like go through these values, like once a staff meeting. They do a different one every time. Do you do anything like that? Is there teaching done around these? How, what does that, that part of it look like? Shayla McCormick — Yeah. So we typically we typically pick one and talk about them in a staff meeting. Right now, we actually have one that is our theme for the year that we feel like God’s asked us to focus on kind of this one thing. Rich Birch — Okay. Shayla McCormick — And so we talk about that regularly at staff meeting. Because we do this, here’s what we’re going to do this week, you know. But we try to speak about at least one of them every staff meeting or highlight something like I just talked about, connect it back to a value. Shayla McCormick — And then we do staff development days where where we do teachings, you know, specifically…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — …on these on these, you know, values. But I think our biggest add value is that is the quarterly.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — But especially like as you’re onboarding new staff, I’m I’m seeing this now. We’ve we’ve had an influx of new staff. And I’m even rethinking like, okay, how am I being super intentional about connecting people to these values consistently?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Shayla McCormick — Because we all know a couple of people can disrupt your culture if, you know…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Shayla McCormick — …if they’re not modeling something well or they don’t understand it. And so I’m even like, okay, new season of like figuring out how am I gonna incorporate these even more…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Shayla McCormick — …into those conversations in different environments.
Rich Birch — Yeah, culture is so critically important. It is, you know, like there’s all those sayings, right? Like culture eats strategy for lunch. And, you know, we you can have all kinds of great plans, but man, if our team is not aligned around the right culture or, you know, it can become toxic, man, that’s—it can be really terrible.
Shayla McCormick — I would say we have more conversations…
Rich Birch — Talk to me about quarterly… Oh sorry. Go ahead.
Shayla McCormick — I would say we have more conversations about our values than we do job performance, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Well, because if you’re violating culture stuff, then that does start to get to like who you are as a person. It is more core to them than—yeah, like you say, I can teach you to get better at Planning Center…
Shayla McCormick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …or how to make better videos or whatever. Like there’s lots of what we do that we can train you to. But like, if you—at your core—if you really don’t want to, if you don’t believe the best in other people, or if you can’t, think about people first or, you know, live from the inside out. Like if you’re constantly guarding yourself, like that’s really hard to get under.
Rich Birch — So talk to me about quarterly. Like why so lots of churches, or I’ve heard churches, do this like on an annual basis. What led you to think about, you know, checking in quarterly?
Shayla McCormick — Yeah. So on an annual basis, we do a performance evaluation.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Shayla McCormick — But quarterly is when we do the values evaluation conversation.
Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. Right.
Shayla McCormick — It’s—again, it’s—you have to keep things in front of people so that they understand how important that is. We’ve all heard the term like “vision leaks,” right? If you don’t talk about those things consistently, it’s easy for people to forget about that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shayla McCormick — And most of the time, our corrective or harder conversations are going to be centered around these values.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — And to be honest, Rich, if we have too many of these conversations where people have like two negatives in their boxes, we’re talking about a performance improvement plan and/or an exit from the team. Because we believe in the culture that much and that it shapes our church. So really the quarterly is because we want to keep it in front of people…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Shayla McCormick — …and we want to keep them changing and growing in these areas so that we see that trickling down into the life of our church and even in our volunteers. And I think what this has done is really shaped—even though these are our staff and leadership values—it’s shaped so much of the culture of the church…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Shayla McCormick — …because you actually see our church begin to embody these things because that’s what they’re seeing the leadership do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Love that. So, you know, I think Coastal will continue to grow. You guys will reach more people, launch more campuses.
Shayla McCormick — Yes.
Rich Birch — When you look up over to the horizon, what are your thoughts, questions you’re asking around how are you going to plan or adapt what we’re doing, evolve this thing to continue to push forward the staff culture? Any kind of questions on the horizon that you’re wondering about or thinking about for the future on this front?
Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Like my constant thought is, you know, as we grow, as we launch new locations, as we add staff—and the further my husband and I get—the more layers you add to your organization, the more difficult it is probably to maintain that heart, that culture, that vision. And so I’m a constant tinkerer. How can we do this better? How can we make this more available or visible? How can we continue to have these clarifying conversations? And so I think I’m asking myself in this season, how do I get the heart and vision from this top tier of leadership to be felt way down the organization?
Shayla McCormick — And so we’re even coming up with some things right now to be able to, when we’re onboarding staff, creating some little talks around those values that are coming from TJ or I, just so that they see that. And honestly, the thing that they always need to see is their pastors and their leaders modeling those things as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Yep.
Shayla McCormick — So it’s this constant evaluation of—for me—even those top tier leaders that I’ve put in those positions have to be the ones that are that are modeling that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Shayla McCormick — And so I think I just keep asking myself, as we grow…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shayla McCormick — …what can I add or perfect or make better that allows this guy to continue to drive this organization and that we don’t lose just the authenticity of who we are as leaders, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Shayla McCormick — So…
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. And just as we come to land today’s episode, anything else you’d love to say? Any final thoughts, maybe for a leader who’s listening in and thinking, “Yeah, we got to take some steps towards this.” We’re going to link to this PDF in the show notes to show about the staff values, staff evaluation that we’ve been talking about here, friends. And the thing I love about this: it’s super clean, simple, easy to understand, but super powerful. I can see how, man, if we did this, it would make a huge difference. But, anything you’d love to share with us just as we land today’s episode?
Shayla McCormick — I would say all of this, like I just want to encourage those top-tier leaders is all of this starts at the top, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Shayla McCormick — We’ve heard that it’s more caught than taught. And I think as senior leaders, sometimes we underestimate what people are catching from our behavior and what we’re doing, not just what we’re saying.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Yes.
Shayla McCormick — I think it’s easy to say all of these things, but what are they seeing you model? And I think that is of the utmost importance—that that happens at the top and that we never forget why we’re doing this and the value that it brings to our organizations. Especially as we grow and we get bigger and we have more demands on our time that we can’t forget the simple modeling of the things that we’ve put in place.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good.
Shayla McCormick — So, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. And that’s probably key to the core problem we talked about at the beginning—of values just staying on the wall somewhere. I think that the caught versus taught is a big piece of that. You know, at some level, I think in those organizations it’s like, “Yeah, we don’t actually believe that stuff.”
Shayla McCormick — Exactly.
Rich Birch — It looks good, but you know, we don’t believe it.
Shayla McCormick — Right.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, Shayla, this has been such a helpful, encouraging, super practical conversation today. I really appreciate it. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Shayla McCormick — Yeah. So they can follow our church on Instagram. It’s @coastalchurch – it’s probably the best way to get a window into our church. And I’m not super active on social media…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Shayla McCormick — …but it’s @shaylamccormick.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Shayla McCormick — But life is crazy. And I’m like, “Social media? I don’t know how to do it all.”
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Got to live life, not document it.
Shayla McCormick — Exactly.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much, Shayla. Really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for being on the episode.
Shayla McCormick — Absolutely. Thanks, Rich.
Burnout, Breakthrough, and the Road to a Healthier Ministry with Bob Riedy
May 29, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Bob Riedy, Senior Pastor of Church of the Open Door in Pennsylvania. After leading one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, Bob found himself facing a personal and professional breakdown. In this deeply transparent episode, he shares his journey through burnout, anxiety, and loss—and how a season of pain became a catalyst for healing, reflection, and renewed leadership.
Feeling overwhelmed by ministry demands? Struggling with unprocessed grief, exhaustion, or the weight of expectations? Listen in as Bob offers honest insights on burnout recovery, emotional health, and the kind of leadership that builds both soul and church.
Deal with loss to move ahead. // Years of accumulated grief—personal loss, staff transitions, and post-COVID declines—had taken a quiet but devastating toll. Like many pastors, Bob had failed to grieve deeply. He admits, “Ministry is a series of ungrieved losses,” and shares how shame—over not being able to “hold it all together”—compounded the pressure he felt to appear strong and capable.
Combat shame with grace. // The enemy uses shame to isolate and weaken pastors who feel they should always have the answers. Returning to Scripture reminds us that even biblical heroes experienced loss and hardship. God works through those seasons in new and powerful ways.
Let the Truth transform you. // Pastors can fall into the trap of preaching truth without letting that truth transform their own hearts. Bob realized he had been carrying more weight than Jesus was asking him to. True rest came when he began allowing the gospel to minister to his soul, not just his sermons.
Getting help and doing the work. // Bob’s road to recovery began with a doctor’s visit, counseling, and time away from the pulpit. He leaned into scripture, read books on mental health and burnout, and began integrating new rhythms into his life. Practices like contemplative prayer, Sabbath rest, and cultivating deeper friendships helped him reestablish emotional and spiritual health.
Set boundaries for rest and health. // Create clear limits on your time and energy. Leaders must learn to fully engage in ministry and fully disengage to rest. For Bob, this meant prioritizing his family and carving out time to be with God without guilt.
Lean on trusted relationships. // Burnout taught Bob the value of authentic friendships. For years, he was surrounded by people who knew “Pastor Bob” but few who really knew him. Through intentional efforts, he built deeper relationships where he could be vulnerable and receive care—not just give it.
Share the burden. // Appoint someone to step into your leadership role and divide responsibilities among the team to give yourself time to step back and rest. This lightens the load and creates a healthier rhythm for the entire staff. Leadership doesn’t have to mean carrying everything alone.
Burn Out and Life Lessons. // Today, Church of the Open Door is stronger than ever. Attendance is rebounding, spiritual growth is flourishing, and Bob is leading from a place of authenticity and freedom. His honesty has invited others into healing as well, and he’s become an advocate for soul care among pastors. Through his downloadable resource, “Burn Out and Life Lessons Talk“, Bob outlines the journey he walked through, the disciplines that helped him heal, and practical steps pastors can take to guard their emotional and spiritual health.
Learn more about Church of the Open Door by visiting www.codyork.org.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Today, we’ve got something really unique on the podcast. We don’t typically do. We’re looping back around to get a bit of an update on the story, particularly the personal story of Bob Riedy. He is the senior pastor of a fantastic church, Church of the Open Door, that you should be following. Bob was on in 2019 and has come back now a few years later for a bit of an an update on where things are at. At that point, the the episode he was on was called “From Plateaued for 30 years to One of the Fastest Growing Churches in the Country. Bob, so glad that you are here. Thanks for being on the show today. Bob Riedy — Yes. Thank you, Rich. So good to be with you. Rich Birch — Yeah, I appreciate you being on today and taking time and and spending some time with us again to kind of update us on you and where things are at. Why don’t you give us some context before we dive in? Kind of tell us about the church. Tell us about your role, that sort of thing. Bob Riedy — Yes. Church of the Open Door is a church that was established in 1951 with a really unique story of of a church coming out of a mainline denomination and where a whole bunch of people came to know Christ. And they established the church, and the church grew very rapidly for probably the first 25, 30 years, then to plateaued, as you mentioned. And then ah somewhere around 2007 or ’08, the church began to grow again very rapidly. Bob Riedy — I’m the senior pastor of the church. I’ve been here since 2006, and I’ve been in ministry about 43 years. And love ministry and have really loved my time here at Church of the Open Door. It’s it’s a great church. It’s a multi-site church and with a staff of about 45 people that really continues to reach people and see them experience life change in Jesus. Rich Birch — Yeah. Well last time we spoke your church was named one of the fastest growing churches in the country, like we talked about. And a lot has happened since then. Bring us up to speed, tell us to give us the story. What happened since then. Bob Riedy — Yes. So we, we ah you know, as you said, we were named one of the top 100 fastest growing churches in America. And we were really doing well, I think. Bob Riedy — And ah and then somewhere around 2000, the end of 2019, we had a difficult transition with ah some one person, a couple people actually on our staff. Of course, the pandemic hit in 2020, and that was you know a difficult thing for our church, especially guys as a ah multisite, large church, and know how to handle that. The politics, were certainly a part of of of all of that as well. And so we got through those challenges. Bob Riedy — And then ah in yeah mid 2021, just hit a wall personally and had to take some time off and, you know, get to a better place. Rich Birch — So mid 2021, what kind of led you to that? You described the fact that you hit a wall. Talk us through what led you to the place where like, oh, something is not up. This is more than just tired. This is more than like, oh, I need to have a nap this afternoon.
Bob Riedy — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, there’s it was obviously more profound than that. Tell tell us about that. Bob Riedy — Yes. So on Sunday, June the 27th, 2021, I woke up like I had for the last, you know, 40 years and showered, shaved, had breakfast and could not come in and do my job that day. And I you know went back to bed and my, you know, I certainly alarmed my wife. And I just said, I’m not feeling well today. Bob Riedy — And fortunately at that time, we were still taping our services ahead of time and we hadn’t been live streaming yet. And so um you know I text my my team and said, you know you guys just need to play the tape today. But the truth of the matter is, is that I was just totally exhausted. Bob Riedy — And, you know, that later on that day, my children who all attend my church, you know, they were texting mom, what’s going on with dad and stuff. They all showed up at our apartment that afternoon. And, you know, they they they saw that, you know, their father was, you know, just not himself, just just totally, really totally exhausted. Bob Riedy — The first thing I did was call my doctor. He responded right away and put me on medicine and and whatnot. And you know I began to go to counseling, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that later on. But at that time, I really didn’t know what happened to me, Rich. Rich Birch — Right, right. Bob Riedy — I knew that I was tired. I knew that I was wrestling with profound anxiety, which was just kind of overwhelming me. And so I realized I just I couldn’t keep going on. So I ended up taking the summer off. And, you know, you know, by God’s grace, picked up again in the fall, ah but in in a totally different way. So it was yes, it was scary.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Bob Riedy — It was it was traumatic. You know, I mean, I was the yeah I was the Energizer Bunny. You know, I I could work I could work, you know, 12 hours a day and, you know, work weeks at a time. At that time, I was preaching, you know, six, seven times in a row…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Bob Riedy — …which now that I realize was not healthy, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Bob Riedy — But I think and we had had we had just experienced some loss on our staff, some difficulties and turnovers. I had had some personal disappointments as well. We had bought ah some property with our son and we were going to build with him. And we just kept running into these, um you know, walls. And and then we were I was, you know working at the church. And at the same time, ah you know working on these properties and stuff. And so there was um it was like a perfect storm…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — …of of you know exhaustion that that but really brought you know brought me to to a wall. And in the end, it really revealed that there were some faulty, there was some faulty thinking, there were some faulty ways that I was living and doing ministry that I think, you know, really caught up to me. And it it took me going to counseling and things to figure some of those things out. Rich Birch — Okay. I want to put a bookmark in that…
Bob Riedy — Okay.
Rich Birch — …and come back to your understanding of kind of the faulty ways that you’ve kind of undone, but let’s just stay a little bit longer in the tension part. You’re a smart leader leading a prevailing ministry. And what you’re describing is I think what a lot of us find ourselves into, like there’s lots of opportunity. You’re, you know, you’re doing some investment stuff. You’re there’s lots going on. Rich Birch — I had a friend of mine has said, you know, leading a ministry over an extended period of time is a series of unmitigated losses. It’s like things just fall apart in life and you just kind of, they just, they just add up and you just kind of move on. But can you kind of pull apart a little bit from the the side of the loss, the side of the pressure, kind of what what led to the the kind of profound anxiety? Help us understand that. Rich Birch — I’m thinking from the perspective of people that are listening in that are saying, hey, like, ah we don’t want to get to the place where we’re waking up on a Sunday and we can’t get in. But what would be some of those signs ah that that you now see that maybe you didn’t quite see so clearly at that point? Bob Riedy — Yes. I I really do think that loss and especially not properly processing and grieving loss was a big part of what was behind all of this. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — In 2018, I lost my brother, um my younger brother, who was, you know, really my wingman in so many ways. That was a loss that, you know, I think in some ways I’m still wrestling with. We, during the pandemic, we lost, you know you know, pick a number…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — …you know, a lot of loss as far as, um ah you know, attendance and stuff. At first, we were off for, you know, we were off for about four months. But then when we came back, ah you know, it was people began to trickle in. And it was clear to me that we lost hundreds of people, you know, as well from our church that during that time. Bob Riedy — That was probably a profound thing for me. We lost some key staff members members as well, you know, during that time. I lost some friends because of the politics and some of the difficulty of that. And so I think loss was ah was a big part of that. My counselors really helped me a lot with that not properly grieving loss.
Bob Riedy — You know, Terry Wardle is one who said that, ah you know, ministry is a series of ungrieved losses. And and and if we and and I found that I I really wasn’t doing that good. I was shaking it off and just moving forward, shaking it off and moving forward and not really grieving it and and and bringing God into it and surrendering it to him. Bob Riedy — And, and I think part of, part of what happened with that as well was I was, I was concerned about what people thought, you know, with we were, you know, this powerhouse of a church growing like crazy. And all of a sudden, you know, like every other church we were, we were struggling. Bob Riedy — And, you know, I remember the day that, you know, I burned out that afternoon. My children all came to our apartment. My wife and I were living downtown. And ah my daughter reminded me of this the other day. And she said, Dad, do you know what you said to me that day? And I said, no. She said, Dad, you said to me, “What are people going to think of me that this happened to me?” And I you know, that was a that was a loss that I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t able to really properly wrap my head around. Rich Birch — right Bob Riedy — And I was more concerned about how this was going to look, you know, with me as, you know, a Christian leader in our community. And and then I think one of the places that the anxiety came from as well was shame. Like one of the things the enemy, I think, came after me with was like, you’ve been telling people here in York how to live for the, you know, the last 15 years, and you let this happen to you. Rich Birch — Wow. Bob Riedy — And wow, I wrestled with that as well. And I so I think, you know, that that loss and, you know, worrying what people were concerned about or what they were thinking of me. And then the shame of wrestling through that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — …as a senior pastor, you know, whose church had been top 100 churches.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — You know, I mean, I I taught church leadership and and biblical preaching at Lancaster Bible College. And, and this happened to me. And, and so I really wrestled with, you know, just the fallout of all that. Rich Birch — Well, there’s a ton there.
Bob Riedy — Yes.
Rich Birch — I have I wrote like half a page of notes of like, oh, there’s so much there I’d love to unpack. Let’s start with the grieving piece.
Bob Riedy — Yes.
Rich Birch — So proper grieving of loss. I think anybody that’s listening in, I mentioned this already, like we don’t have to come up with a list of, it’s very easy for us to come up with a list of things that we have lost in ministry. Bob Riedy — Yes. Rich Birch — It’s like we’re consistently, that’s like a part of it. It’s what what did you learn about proper grieving? What does proper grieving look like for you now? How how have you found a better path forward on that front? Bob Riedy — That’s a great question. You know, I think for me, I had to go back to the word of God and the example of so many people in scripture who experienced loss. You know, Joseph, Moses, Job, Jesus, Paul. I mean, it’s all throughout. David, it’s all throughout the Word of God. And, you know, I had one of the things I had to do is go back to just the the understanding that, ah you know, in the midst of loss, God is doing things in my life that he wouldn’t wasn’t doing when everything was amazing, you know? And so I realized that ah that that this was you know a big work of God. Bob Riedy — I also began to, you know, study some of the people in in Christian you know ministry, specifically D.L. Moody, you know who lost so much in the Chicago fire. Everything was destroyed. And yet you know it was through that that Moody Bible Institute and some of these amazing things, you know, happened. And just began to think about, you know, Martin Luther and John Wesley. And and then just, you know, present day people who have been honest about their issues. Louis Giglio, Craig Groeschel, Jenny Allen. I mean, these people, you know, really, really ministered to me. Bob Riedy — And I think another thing for me, another piece was was being somebody who really experiences and sits in the love of God. Rich Birch — That’s good. Bob Riedy — You know, Rich, I have preached the word, I’ve preached the word of God for 40 years and I’ve talked about God’s love over and over again. But honestly, there were parts of that, some big parts of that, that I really never applied, you know, to my own life. And, you know, like, and I I remember Tim Keller saying, nothing changes us, you know, like the a deep understanding of the love of God. Bob Riedy — I think as well, just reading, widely from people who also had experienced burnout and loss. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — You know, a young woman by the name of Bethany Dearborn Hiser wrote a beautiful little book called “From Burned Out to Beloved”. And, ah you know, she has a great line there: “Behold the one beholding you and smiling.” And honestly, I I didn’t ever see God smiling at me. Isn’t that crazy? Rich Birch — Wow. Bob Riedy — And I’m not a legalist. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — You know, I mean, I’m not a legalist, but I I really never, I think, really grappled with the gaze of God. The love… You know, the Bible says that Jesus saw that young man that time. He looked at him and he loved him. And so these were all things that I had to learn to process to help me understand that even in the midst of loss, I have a God who loves me profoundly and that is and that he’s doing things, that he’s sovereign, he’s over the loss. And just like he’s done in so many other lives, he’s working in my life as well. Those were powerful things, I think, that have helped me deal with loss. Rich Birch — That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. One of the things you mentioned resonated with another conversation I had. A friend of mine, mentor, someone who I’ve looked up to, super influential in my life, they had stepped out, retired from ministry, came to the end. And we were out for, you know, coffee maybe a year later. And I asked them, I said, hey, what what’s been your biggest surprise now that you’re out of the kind of weekly rhythm of all of this? And they said, without hesitation, looked at me and said, you know what? I didn’t realize the pressure I was feeling to speak on behalf of Jesus every week, Bob Riedy — Wow. Rich Birch — That the that the weight that that had on me, I didn’t realize. And you talked about, you know, this idea that a part of you you were wrestling with, you know, Hey, here you were telling people how to live. I think it’s the language you used. Talk about that pressure. I think particularly for folks that are living, listening in one of the things I’ve tried to do as an executive pastor, and I’ve tried to coach other people towards is, Hey, a part of what we’ve got to do is create space in the lives of our lead pastors and communicators so that they can properly carry that weight because it’s unique. It’s, it’s it’s very different than the kind of pressure I see many of us under. Talk about what that weight was like. How you know when you what what impact do you think negatively was having on that? And then we can pivot to whats what are some changes you’ve made.
Bob Riedy — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But let’s talk about that that weight particularly.
Bob Riedy — Yes. I think that for myself, I was I was carrying I was carrying weight that Jesus didn’t want me to carry. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — You know, one of the verses of scripture that really ministered, has ministered to me is Matthew 11:28-30, where Jesus says, come to me, all of you who are weary and weighed down by cares, and I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am, you know, gentle and humble in heart and you’ll find rest for your souls. Rich Birch — Beautiful. Bob Riedy — So, you know, like like I said, I was preaching six to eight times in a row. I shouldn’t have been doing that. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — Especially when I was trying to, you know… So I think I was so, it was, it was for some reason, I thought I had to be the person who was speaking. I had to lead clearly during this time. And I think I was I was taking too much of that on myself. And and it is a weight. And I should have been sharing that weight.
Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — To me that was to me, that was the big lesson for me. And, you know, you’ll see when we talk a little bit later here about what’s what’s changed. But you know I put it all on my shoulders. And and it’s crazy because I had a staff who was more than willing to help me. And… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Bob Riedy — But when it came to speaking, you know, for God, and I I put that on myself. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — And that’s that was, it was unnatural. And what what what happened was, and I think this happens a lot with pastors who preach, you know, as much as I did. It was to the place where I was preaching truth. So I’m I’m I’m committed to expository preaching. So I was preaching truth. but But that’s about it. I wasn’t I wasn’t taking time to really let that truth, ah you know, go deep into my heart where I could preach from the overflow…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Bob Riedy — …of what God was doing in my soul, you know.
Rich Birch — Wow. Bob Riedy — And I have to admit that.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Bob Riedy — I I I wasn’t a heretic.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — I was always preaching truth.
Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — And I think that’s a trap that pastors can get into. Okay, I preach truth today. I gave people truth. But if it’s not truth that ah we have really lived and um and that’s really made a difference in our lives, it’s not going to sustain us. I think that’s the big thing that I learned. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s wow. That’s profound. That idea of you were carrying more weight than Jesus was probably asking you to carry. And you weren’t sharing that. It’s like the double whammy of like, oh my goodness. Bob Riedy — Yes. Rich Birch — Well, let’s let’s talk a little bit about what has changed. What are some of those new rhythms look like? Yeah. When you said, you know, six, seven, eight, wow, that is a lot. But what, what are some of those kind of new rhythms in life and ministry that have been helpful in this shift? Bob Riedy — Yes. So, you know, when I burned out, I went on medicine, Lexapro. And, you know, my joke has been, Jesus loved me. This I know, for he gave me Lexapro. Because it… Rich Birch — Wow. Bob Riedy — Yeah, it really helped me.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Bob Riedy — It simmered it simmered me down, you know. Rich Birch — Yeah. Bob Riedy — I went to counseling. You know, I was like Carrie Nieuwhof, who said, I send people to counseling.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — And I was the same way until I needed it. I’d never been to counseling in my life. I found out that after knowing Jesus and marrying Karen, going to counseling was the best thing that that I could do. And I’ve had… Rich Birch — Just before, how did you find your counselor? How did you talk about those? Because I think there’s a lot of people in the exact boat you’re in there where like, I’m not even sure where to start. I’m not, I know our church has a list of people I’ve met with and think they’re great counselors. But do I really want to go talk to those people? How did you find that person? What what does that look like? Bob Riedy — That’s that’s a great question. I mean, here, thankfully, in central Pennsylvania we have and we have a lot of great Christian counselors. And so I knew of a counseling agency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is about 45 minutes from where I live. And I knew the guy who who runs it because he was a fellow adjunct professor at Lancaster Bible College. And so I didn’t want to go to counseling in my own city.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Bob Riedy — You know, I didn’t want to show up in an office where, you know, I know somebody and whatnot. I really needed privacy, you know. Rich Birch — That’s good. Bob Riedy — And and so I drove to an amazing place in in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, New Life Counseling. And my first counselor was a young woman whose father was a pastor. And she got me. She got exactly what I was going through. And then she then she went off and got married and moved away. And so I II got another counselor. He is an amazing, insightful man. And so he and so he kind of picked up where she left off and, you know, really, really has helped me. So that’s where I started with a place that I you know, that I knew. And those those were really my two first steps. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — And then I I just began I began to read about what happened to me. The first book I read was Craig Groeschel’s book, “Winning the War in Your Mind”. I knew that there was something going and on in my mind that was causing this anxiety, you know? And, I took the summer off summer of 2021 took off completely. And you know, I probably read his book three times that summer.
Rich Birch — Wow. Bob Riedy — And I read other books that really helped me. Bethany Hiser’s book, J.P. Moreland’s book, “Finding Quiet”. These are all books that deal with you know you know what’s going on when you’re wrestling you know with anxiety. And so then I just began to realize that I had a to I had to change a lot of things. I had to change the way I walked with God. Honestly, Rich, I always had my devotions. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — I have read through the Bible for the last 35 years. I usually have, ah you know, I’ve really been helped by “Emotionally Healthy Spiritualit”y by Pete Scazzaro. Rich Birch — Yep. Bob Riedy — And so I I was doing all of those things. But honestly, I have to say that, you know, I would spend that 15 or 20 minutes or so in the morning. Rich Birch — Yep.
Bob Riedy — And then I was off to the races, man.
Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — And, uh, and it, I, and I wasn’t reconnecting with God throughout the day. And so that’s changed, you know. You know, I really do. I practice silence, stillness, gratitude, reading scripture slowly, contemplative prayer, I’ve memorized scripture. I’ve put one of the things that Craig Groeschel talks about is his declarations. I’ve I’ve put those together. And so it really began, I think, with my walk with God. That had to change. It had to be more profound in my life. Bob Riedy — I think secondly, I mean, that’s probably third or fourth…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s good.
Bob Riedy — …but you know after that, I had to learn to put limits on my time and energy. I had no limits, Rich. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — I had I had no limits on my time. I was always on.
Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — I never really disengaged. You know, I didn’t realize what Henry Cloud says, that the most productive leaders engage fully, and then disengage fully.
Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — I wasn’t really practicing that. And of course, the pandemic was a perfect storm for that.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Bob Riedy — You know, everything was changing so quickly. You just had to be on all the time. Rich Birch — Right. Rich Birch — And everything felt super consequential, right?
Bob Riedy — Oh yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — It was like every decision, every like what we do this weekend is going to define the future of our ministry. All of that. Yeah. Bob Riedy — Yes. And then, of course, you know, you got the the the nasty letters from people…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Right.
…who thought you were capitulating to the governor and, you know, all that. Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s a no win. Yeah. This it was a perfect no win scenario. Bob Riedy — Yeah. Rich Birch — It doesn’t matter what we did. People on both sides are not happy. For sure. Bob Riedy — And especially with somebody like myself who, you know, was it was it was always important to me what people thought. I mean, honestly, deep in my soul, you know, that that was devastating to me. And so… Rich Birch — So how how did you go from the always on? I’m getting a picture of you, Bob, like, and I wish it wasn’t a mirror, but, you know, ready to go, you know, making stuff happen. Always, you know, kind of jump into the next thing. I get that. How did you go from that to, okay, now I’m measured, I’m taking time to be contemplative, I’m practicing gratitude. That obviously had trickled down in how you organized your day, how you organized your week, how you organized your team, the people around you. I would imagine that would have seismic impact.
Bob Riedy — Huge.
Rich Birch — What what did some of those impacts look like? Bob Riedy — Yeah. I think the reason why I did it is because of the trauma of burning out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — That was traumatic for me…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — …and the the exhaustion, you know, and and I knew I had to change. You know, I I just knew I had to change. And and so the result of that is, you know, I mean, I’ve taught, I, and I’ve talked very, very freely to our church, to my staff, you know, about all of this. And and so I think that, you know, to answer your original question, just the trauma of that and me saying to myself, I don’t want to ever go back there again. Rich Birch — Right, right. Bob Riedy — You know, I can’t go back there again. And so, yeah. I think another thing for me was just the importance of good sleep. Rich Birch — That’s good. Bob Riedy — Taking time for things that fill me. I never practiced Sabbath, Rich. I always had a day off. And so now I practice Sabbath. Every Saturday is my Sabbath. And I’m religious about that. And I love that time of just, you know, I exercise, walk, read, spend time with my wife. I don’t, I don’t, I try not to do work after five o’clock. I mean, in the past I was on my computer till 9, 10 o’clock at night.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Bob Riedy — You know, um another thing for me was deepening my friendships So here I was, a pastor of you know, 2,500 people. I know so many people, scads of people would say, oh, yeah, I’m ah I’m a friend with Pastor Bob. But, you know, the problem is, is that there weren’t a lot of people who really I allowed to really see me, you know. And so that has, you know, that has changed. Bob Riedy — And, you know, my counselor said that to me, my second counselor, Josh, he can be salty at times, but he’s he’s such a godly man. And he said to me, he said, you know, Bob, I meet with a lot of pastors just like you. And the problem with pastors is that you guys all have crap just like everybody else does, but you have nowhere to go with it. Rich Birch — Right, right. Bob Riedy — And so you’re all alone. And, and the enemy then just creams you, you know, with shame. And so I I learned that shame is lifted when you are honest with somebody about your issues. And, you know, I joke with my counselor. I said, you know, i pay you $120 an hour to be my best friend. But that relationship and then other relationships that I’ve but i’ve grown and worked on, ah that that’s just been golden, you know, for me. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting. Isn’t that interesting? Like I, you know, this is one of those, it’s like, it’s like what old guys say, but the older I get, the the more I realize the like friends that I have in my life that are really are friends. And there, I once heard a definition of: a friend isn’t someone that would call you and ask you for help. It’s someone that you would call and ask for for help. It’s like somebody that you would call and be like, and know that they would reciprocate without like, you can cash that in kind of thing. Bob Riedy — Yeah. Right. Rich Birch — And I remember years ago, I had a friend or a person was saying to me, like, how many people in your life are like that? And was like, oh, not as many as I would think. Like there’s a ton of people who, who would, could call me and I would help them for sure. But other the way around, I don’t know who those people are. And so maybe talk a little bit more about that, the the friend piece. What does that look like? How have you cultivated those relationships? What’s, you know, kind of what’s been helpful there. Bob Riedy — Yes. So, you know, for me, it’s been I had I’ve had I had to be intentional about this because I knew I needed it. But, you know, let’s face it. I think one of the reasons why pastors respond the way you just responded is because everybody turns to us. And so we’re expected to be the answer person or the the one who helps. And, you know, we’re not good at receiving ourselves.
Bob Riedy — And so, you know, for me, it was it was like I have a friend here by the name of Andy. And you know, it’s it’s been Andy and I, you know, we we go for walks now on on Sunday. A lot of times on Sunday, Sunday afternoons, we go a state park and we just hike and we talk and we’re honest with each other about, you know, our issues. And, you know, we pray for each other, you know, regularly. It was, I have a a couple people on my staff, similar to that. Don, one of my good friends on our staff. Bob Riedy — And so I think for me, it was, ah it was finally being honest with the people who are close to me…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Bob Riedy — …that, hey, I need some help.
Rich Birch — Right. Good.
Bob Riedy — I can’t, I can’t live, you know, the way I was living, ah you know, previously.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. What about your staff team? I’m I’m assuming that there was like a certain amount of restructuring. I know there’s executive pastor type people that are thinking about org charts and all that kind of stuff. I’m sure there was, because frankly, I would think as ah trying to get outside of this, the organization was taking advantage of you. They were they were overusing you and you allowed it to be structured that way. There wasn’t like a nefarious, there weren’t people sharpening knives behind your back…
Bob Riedy — Right.
Rich Birch — …but it got to that point. Bob Riedy — Right. Rich Birch — And in order for that to readjust, the organization would have had to pick up some stuff. Bob Riedy — Right. Rich Birch — So what what did that look like? Bob Riedy — Yes. So immediately at that particular time in the life of our church, we didn’t really have an executive pastor, believe it or not. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Bob Riedy — Now think about that. So I was in too many meetings. Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — You know, too many meetings. I was dealing with too many problems. And so one of the things I did that fall was moved a young man by the name of Jeremy in our church into the role of executive pastor. Bob Riedy — And for him, it was a baptism by fire because, you know, I was incapacitated, you know, and everything just kind of went on his plate. Rich Birch — Yeah, you figure this out. Bob Riedy — You figure this out. Again, our other pastors, Pastor Don, Pastor Brett, they had to take a whole bunch of things. So that was, I think that was probably the key thing.
Bob Riedy — Another thing was, I you know we we weren’t live streaming at that time, believe it or not. We were still taping. So I was, at that point, I was having to put a sermon together by Thursday morning. And that was part of the exhaustion because I was trying to take Monday off, but I wasn’t really taking it off because I had to start working on the sermon.
Rich Birch — Right. Bob Riedy — So it would be perfect by Thursday morning. And so if we could got it get get it in the can and send it out. And so that was another thing that we did. We stopped doing all that. And we ended up you know purchasing and and and putting live streaming in. That was that’s been, I thought that was a huge you know thing that that we did. Rich Birch — Yep. Bob Riedy — Those two things really helped us. And and then I just determined there are a lot of things that I am going to truly delegate and and not worry about. And, you know, honestly, I this was my fault. You know, I operated by this mindset that if I wasn’t in the meeting, you know, the right decision wasn’t going to happen. And that was, again, that was part of the faulty thinking, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Bob Riedy — And so, yeah, so those were some big pieces, you know, that that really helped me. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Super, super helpful. So there’s probably, I know there’s pastors that are listening in today…
Bob Riedy — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that find themselves either at the beginning of, or maybe in the middle of a raging burnout, you know. What would you, and there’s a lot, even just listening to this conversation, there would be like, man, there’s a ton there to, to unpack, but what would be step one for them? What would you, as a friend who’s been down this road, you would say, Hey, this, this would be, this is where they should begin. This is what, you know, what they should do. What would be a first step? Bob Riedy — Yeah. I think the first thing I would tell them to do is to gather a few trusted people around them and be honest with them about what’s going on. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Bob Riedy — Maybe it’s anxiety, maybe it’s depression. Shame. I mean, the enemy uses this kind of exhaustion to just come in at our weak spots. I think that’d be the first thing. Secondly, you know most of the time with with burnout, there’s a lot of exhaustion. I think I would go to my doctor and you know tell my doctor what’s going on. Thirdly, again, I would go to a counselor. That piece for me was was huge.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Bob Riedy — Because most people do not burn out just by exhaustion alone. It’s it’s the faulty thinking…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bob Riedy — …that really contributes a lot to it, you know? And so I think those would be the those… And then I think, you know, depending upon what your counselor and what your ah doctor says, you know, fourthly, you’re going to probably have to take some time off, right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Bob Riedy — Like for me, it was three months almost. And sometimes I wish I would have taken six months off, you know? And, but, you know, you need that time to pull away and to, you know, figure out what’s going on in your in your head.
Bob Riedy — Wayne Cordeiro, Cordeiro, I mean, he, he, he, you know, he had a burnout a number of years ago and he wrote a beautiful book about it. And, you know, in the book, he says, even though you work through burnout, it’s it the woods, you can always see the woods.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s good.
Bob Riedy — And so, ah you know, you you realize that with the the right perfect storm going on in your life and you not thinking correctly, you can always drift back to it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bob Riedy — And and so that that’s been, that was ah that was a great book that really helped me. I’m forgetting the name of his book. I probably have it here somewhere. But that book helped me a lot. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I remember a couple years ago, a friend of mine, pastor, friend of mine, dear friend, was was in, you know, was in pretty burnt out state and was pursued their board over like, hey, I need to take some time. And so this friend, I thought, did the brave thing and came to me and said, hey, I need you to help me advocate for myself to my board. Like I need… And I was like, let me at them! You know, like, you know, and and the board wasn’t, the board was very supportive. Like it was not, that they they wondered, you know, hey, what my friend wondered, I wonder what that’s going to be like. And they were, in the end, it was really, I was kind of a non-job. I didn’t have to really do much. Rich Birch — I but really, I as another pastor, I felt it an honor to stand by my friend and say, you you know, you need to take that time.
Bob Riedy — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And they similarly, you know, they were thinking about, well, maybe I’ll take six weeks. And I was like, man, I think you’ve got to start with at least three months. Bob Riedy — Yeah. Rich Birch — If not more. And, you know, they were a teaching pastor, are a teaching pastor of a church. And and I and I was like, I spoke was trying to speak on behalf of the church. I said, selfishly from the church’s perspective, we need you to be healthy. We need you to go away and then come back in a better place. And then there’ll be many years ahead that we can repattern all this stuff. Bob Riedy — Right. Right. Rich Birch — But if we if we don’t address this now, man, there’s we have the there’s just a train wreckage of people out there that this has gone sideways on. Bob Riedy — Yeah. Amen. Rich Birch — So yeah, I would i would echo the like, hey, you you are probably going to need to take some time. And it probably sounds a lot longer than you need. It sounds scary. Whatever the amount of time, it sounds scary. Bob Riedy — Yes.
Rich Birch — You’ve put together a resource. Speaking of resources…
Bob Riedy — Yes.
Rich Birch — …you put your together a resource, “Burn out and Life Lessons Talk”. Tell us a little bit about that. We want to make that available to people. You’ve been, I appreciate it – even today, you’ve referenced a number of resources, but here’s here’s another one. Talk us through that. What were you hoping about how would you help it would how would you hope it would help in the midst of all that? Bob Riedy — Yes. Before I do that, I want to just put a plug in here for my staff, the board of our church and my church. They have been amazing to me during this time. If it weren’t for them, I would not be in ministry. Honestly, that was one of my big fears. What’s going to happen to me? This I was 63 when this happened to me. And ah I thought, you know, what am I going to do? And my church, people, I mean, the letters, the notes, and especially when I started getting vulnerable and letting them know what really happened to me. Man, people have come out of the woodwork. Rich Birch — Yeah. Bob Riedy — And I’ve sent so many people to counseling as well. But I just want to say, to me…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Bob Riedy — …having such a supportive church and staff and board has been truly amazing. And I praise God for that. I’m actually in the process of writing a book. Probably about you know halfway done. And the resource that I gave you is like just a little compilation you know of what happened. Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Bob Riedy — I’ve given this talk, you know, in a number of places. I gave it at our church. I’ve given it to mission agencies, retreats and things like that. And so what what I’ve just tried to put together there is hey, here’s what happened to me. Here’s what I needed to wrestle through. And then, here are the disciplines that I’ve put in place in my life, you know, to get to a better place. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Bob Riedy — And so, you know, I hope that, you know, people who are, you know, wrestling with the same thing can read it and at least be encouraged to take the right, you know, the right steps. Rich Birch — Yeah, I really appreciate that, Bob. And we’ll we’ll link to that. It’s in the show notes there. But I, you know, I know there are people that are listening in that are thinking through these issues. And I also just want to underline what you said there. You might be listening in today as a staff leader, as a volunteer, as an elder. And, you know, what happens is when someone comes with this kind of, when they’re when they reach out and say, hey, I’m struggling with this, what you say in the first 30 seconds really does matter. Bob Riedy — Yes. Rich Birch — And, you know, being reflexive to support and to say, yes, like we want to help you get healthy. We want to help you find, we need more leaders. Like it sounds like your church has been, you know, they were there. They, they helped you walk through it, help you get the time you needed. And then look on the other side, like you’ve continued to serve there and you know, it, it, you know, didn’t end up in all the negative situations that we have seen.
Bob Riedy — Yes. Rich Birch — So yeah, it’s, it’s great. Bob Riedy — Glory to God for that. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s amazing. Bob Riedy — In fact in fact, here’s what’s happened. So now you know we’re on the other side of a lot of things. And I believe our church is stronger than it’s ever been before.
Rich Birch — Praise God. Bob Riedy — We’re seeing more we’re seeing more life. We’re we’re almost back to our pre-pandemic numbers. But we’re seeing more life change than I have ever seen in 40 years of ministry. And I and one of the things that taught me, Rich, was that when when it it stopped being about me… I think there was too much about me. I have to be honest about that. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Bob Riedy — There was too much that was about me. And when it stopped being about me and when I was at my weakest, Rich, Jesus was at his strongest. Rich Birch — Yeah. Praise God. Bob Riedy — And the church, I think, is stronger than it’s ever been. And it, you know, it took a burnout for me to see that in living color. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Bob Riedy — And and we saw, I see that in living color and I praise God for it, you know. Rich Birch — Well, and I want to honor you. It wasn’t just a burnout because you then went through the work to pursue Jesus and get healthy and readjust your life and and then walk through the other side. Like that, you know, God’s using that. He’s using all of that. And yeah, there was a time, and I I’m sure that you remember this time, where I think people were looking for religious leaders that seemed superhuman, that were like, those people are they’re transcendent. They’re like totally different than us, but that just isn’t the case. People today, they’re wanting someone, their question they’re asking isn’t, is it true? They’re saying, does it work? And they’re they’re looking at you as you go through that and say, wow, like it it’s changed Bob. And man, if it can change Bob, maybe it can change me. And so that doesn’t surprise me at all. That doesn’t surprise me at all that you’re seeing the kind of impact in your community. Because at the end of the day, people want that. Bob Riedy — They do. Rich Birch — I think too many of us, we build up these walls around us where it’s like, oh, I don’t want to let you in. But actually, ironically, I think that’s the thing that that ultimately Jesus is asking us to do. Bob Riedy — Yeah. Amen. Rich Birch — Well, Bob, this has been amazing. Where, I want people to connect with you, to connect with the church. Where do we want to send people online? Bob Riedy — Yes, they can go to codyork.org. And that’s our church’s website. And really everything ah is on there that people can…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bob Riedy — …they can connect with me. There’s a place where they can reach out to me if they’d like to do that. But our resources and and all that is, is they’re all there. Rich Birch — Yeah. Appreciate you, Bob. Appreciate you being on and just want to honor you. Bob Riedy — Yes. Rich Birch — Thank you for taking time to come back and and look forward to the that continuing story. Thanks so much, sir. Bob Riedy — Thank you so much, Rich. God bless you and your ministry.
Cracking the Outreach Code in Your City with Quovadis Marshall
May 22, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today, we’re talking with Quovadis Marshall (Pastor Q), Lead Pastor at Hope City Church in Waterloo, Iowa. Caught up in a life of gangs and violence, he became incarcerated at nineteen years old. However, Pastor Q experienced a life-transforming encounter with Christ through the Prison Fellowship Academy Program. Now he leads a thriving, outreach-focused church that’s deeply embedded in the life of its local community.
Is your church truly aware of your city’s needs? Are you engaging in a way that brings hope to overlooked or hurting parts of your community? Tune in as Pastor Q explores how churches can build bridges to their local neighborhoods and become known for joy, healing, and transformation.
Find your city’s needs. // Every community has a story beyond its polished exterior. Start by asking questions: What are people struggling with? What are students and teachers experiencing in the school system? Where is there pain? Look for the deeper needs that may not be visible on the surface.
Crack the outreach code. // Every city has a unique “code” for outreach, and every church has a core strength or competency. The key is aligning those two things—cracking your city’s code and contributing your church’s unique gifts. That’s where you’ll see the biggest spiritual return for Christ.
Listen in the local community. // Pastor Q encourages leaders to get out and talk to people at the “watering holes” of the city—those central hubs where families, students, and residents gather and you can get a pulse on the community’s needs. Reach out to schools, civic leaders and nonprofits in the area. Ask residents what their pain points and aspirations are. Listening with empathy is the first step in meaningful outreach.
Create partnerships. // Rather than creating new ministries from scratch, find local nonprofits already meeting needs and partner with them. Cultivate rhythms of celebration within your church in order to build relationships with people in the community, hear their stories, and encourage one another.
Be the church known for joy. // Strive to be the kind of church people associate with joy—much like how people were drawn to Jesus. At Hope City Church they intentionally work to build a life-giving culture through three rhythms: internal celebrations (big days like Christmas and Easter), external celebrations (such as fall festivals), and external communications (stories of life change).
Angel Tree: A practical next step. // Through Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree, Hope City began serving children of incarcerated parents. For Pastor Q, this was personal—his daughter received Angel Tree gifts while he was in prison. The church now delivers gifts, hosts Christmas parties for Angel Tree recipients, and uses the opportunity to build long-term relationships with affected families.
Planting a campus in prison. // Hope City didn’t stop with Angel Tree gifts. In partnership with Prison Fellowship Academy, they now run a full prison campus where 100 incarcerated men worship, serve, and are discipled every week. Thirty men have been baptized. It’s not just a broadcast—it’s church. Volunteers serve weekly, and the church views this ministry as a full extension of their body, not merely a project.
EXTRA CREDIT // Inbox to Impact – Outreach Email Swipe File for Churches
In this episode, Pastor Quovadis Marshall shares how listening well unlocked transformational outreach at Hope City Church. Want to do the same in your city?
We’ve created a helpful resource to help you take action: Inbox to Impact is a swipe file of copy-and-paste emails your church can send to civic leaders, school officials, nonprofit directors, and more — all designed to open doors for listening and relationship-building.
Not a member yet? Join now and get instant access to this and other practical tools for church leaders.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You’re going to want to lean in. This is going to be a conversation that’s going to impact all of us. I really think it’s we’re talking through an issue that all of our churches should be thinking about and wrestling with. And we’ve got a real expert on today, someone who ah is going to help you think differently and hopefully take some different steps today out of this conversation. Rich Birch — Excited to have Quovadis Marshall with us. He was caught up in a life of gangs, violence, and robbery until at 19 years old, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While incarcerated, he became involved with Prison Fellowship’s Academy program, where a relationship with Christ transformed his life and gave him tangible skills to succeed in life beyond prison.
Rich Birch — Now, he goes by Pastor Q. At In 2015, he planted Hope City Church, a prevailing church, that you should be following in Waterloo, Iowa. He also works with Prison Fellowship today to advocate for legislation that changes the lives of those behind lie law are behind bars and their families. Pastor Q, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Quovadis Marshall — Oh man, it’s a great joy, kind of kind of a dream come true. Listen faithfully to unSeminary, read your books. Just man, love being here. Thanks for having me, Rich. Rich Birch — Well that that well, that’s super kind of you to say it. That’s humbling that that you would you’d say that. We were joking earlier, you and my mom, I always wondered who’s the other listener. So, you know, ah that’s a great thing. Quovadis Marshall — It’s me, it’s me, bro. Rich Birch — Really, that’s super kind to you to say. Well, you know, your your life story transformation from, you know, incarceration to pastoral leadership to accelerated influence to just making all kinds of difference is remarkable. Unpack that for us. Maybe talk us through how your life experience ultimately shaped what has become Hope City Church? Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, Rich, I mean, we you know we know the miracle worker. He always takes more than, well, he takes the little that we have of our lives, and he does a lot with it when we put it in his hands. And that’s true for all of us. We’ve all got a origin story, you know, you’ve heard the adage, every, every, every saint’s got a past and every sinner’s got a future, right? And so that’s true for all of us. Jesus got the bad end of the deal when he got all of us. Like yeah we we got the upgrade, you know. He’s the cute one in the relationship, not us, you know? Quovadis Marshall — And so, yeah, man, I am born and raised here in ah Iowa, and in a good old Midwest, a single parent home, kind of run the gamut of, you know, poverty, grown up around crime, all those kinds of things. My life changed at 17, was in a crisis, knew I needed God. Knew… Let me say it a different way. Knew I needed something different. I didn’t know that I need God. Quovadis Marshall — And and and that’s true. Every Sunday morning, people show up to our churches not looking for Jesus. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Quovadis Marshall — They come looking for hope and healing and change and transformation. And we know they need Jesus. So at 17, in my living room, cried out. Guy showed up the next day at my door. Door-to-door, old school door-to-door evangelism, that old evangelism explosion flow. And ah…
Rich Birch — Oh, hey, me too. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah, man. Come on, bro. Come on, bro. Rich Birch — I got two questions for you. You know, knock, knock, knock. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, you know what? That that shaped my outlook and approach to ministry. Rich Birch — Me too, for sure. Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — You know, I’ve got a philosophy. Don’t know if it’s true, but either you get saved in the church or outside the church. And that shapes the way that you view evangelism and the role of the local church. And I find a lot of folks who get saved outside the church naturally have a bent toward ministry outside the church because that was their experience. Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s true. Quovadis Marshall — Whereas those who got saved in a church setting, they see that as the birthplace of their new beginning. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — And so really, Rich, met the Lord. I knew four things that day. I was 17 years old. It was 1997. Number one, I knew God was real. Number two, I knew my sins were forgiven. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew what I would do for the rest of my life. That’s number three. And I knew exactly where I would do it. Quovadis Marshall — And, um you know, I like to say that it went from glory to glory, but, you know, I spent a little time building my testimony, in a as they say. And so, you know, you know salvation happens in a moment. Transformation takes a lifetime.
Rich Birch — Amen. Quovadis Marshall — And about 18 months after following Jesus, I committed a crime. I robbed a store and I did it a guilty. Worst day of my life. Praise God ah that he’s a comma God, you know, he’s a but God, you know. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Quovadis Marshall — And so ah while in prison, got connected with PF, but knew that I would spend my life doing what had been done to me, right? That God sees, he knows, he hears, he wants to deliver, and there are people who are crying out. And that’s why our churches exist in response to someone’s cry. God sends someone to answer that cry. And Prison Fellowship was instrumental in that change and transformation. Rich Birch — Very cool. Well, I want to dig in today around the difference that Hope City is making in your community. And, um you know, you you as a church have really positioned yourself to try to meet the needs of the community, address, you know, real issues. When you began, what were the pressing needs there in Waterloo that you aim to address through the church’s outreach that you kind of said like, hey, here’s something we’ve got to lean in on? Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, every every community, every city has a, there is a life happening outside the life of what seems to be good about our community. So your downtown could be thriving and booming or whatever, um you know, whatever thing it is, if it’s a college ah town, if it’s whatever it is, there’s always an underbelly, so to speak. And that’s where the need is. That’s where the ah physical, um more expressive need is, because we’ve all got needs, right? Quovadis Marshall — And so what we did, um honestly, was we we tried to crack our our city’s code, our outreach code is what we call it. It was the outreach code of the city. Where are the felt needs? And we started with our school system, actually. We just know, I mean, you know, Gen Z, millennials, you know, now coming up Gen Alpha, um there’s obviously a pressing need for mentorship, for relationship. Teachers retired. This is 2015. Quovadis Marshall — I’ll never forget at one of our social gatherings before we launched the church, we got done with the social gathering and we could hear sirens and we got the report that a little girl in our community had just been shot.
Rich Birch — Oh, man. Oh, my goodness. Quovadis Marshall — And that was a marking moment. It made sense. Rich Birch — Yes. Quovadis Marshall — That was a key trigger in that core team, at least. You know, only about 75% of them, you know, 75% of them will kind of seventy five percent of them will will kind of off load within the first three years, but that initial group, it got in our DNA that there’s a need, we get to be the answer to the problem.
Rich Birch — Wow. Quovadis Marshall — And and so we started with our schools and then we started looking around and asking ourselves, by asking the people, not guessing, we started asking the people…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Quovadis Marshall — …um really, what are the pressing needs? What are the things you’re struggling with? You know, you look at data, you look at trends, Barna, ah who’s who’s great, you know they had just come up with a survey about our city being one of the least 100 biblically minded cities in the nation. Rich Birch — Oh wow. Quovadis Marshall — And so it it made a lot of sense to find the felt need. And that’s going to be different every city. Just the headline there is every city has got a missional code or an outreach code to be cracked. But then every church has a core competency where it can contribute to those needs.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Quovadis Marshall — And it’s aligning those two things. That’s really where you see Christ get the most out of what it is he’s put within your your church context. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let’s let’s double click on that. This idea of really trying to learn our communities. And I like the distinction you made. There’s like, there’s the how our cities present themselves. And then there’s this kind of what’s actually going on. And that’s very true. You know, you peel back the onion and you start to get a sense of that. Let let’s, you I like that you talked about, hey, we actually asked people. We actually got out and talked with folks. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Can you talk us through what that looked like? How did you, how did you actually engage with real people and understand rather than just like, oh, I think this is what the problems are. These are the things I think we should, it’s not even problems. This is how, is how we want to engage with our community. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, I think you know ah step one is um is is look for people within proximity. And so you ask the people who are gathering in your local congregation, you know if you’ve already launched a church. First, we were planting the church, so it was a little bit different. But if you’ve you’re in an established church, start asking those people. Do focus groups.
Quovadis Marshall — Hey, what are your felt needs? What are the things that make most sense to you? um Where are you feeling the pain? What are your aspirations? What are your goals? And I would do that. And you want to know how to really meet the needs of your families. Don’t ask the children ministry workers; ask the families in the children’s ministry. Rich Birch — Right, right. Quovadis Marshall — So so one, I would start with people who have the closest proximity to. Number two, I would I would start for what we said is we wanted to go to the watering holes in our city. We would look for the watering holes. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Quovadis Marshall — And in the jungle, the watering hole tells you everybody that’s in the jungle. You know, watering holes are are demilitarized zones unless you’re alligators. You know, they’re eating anything and everything, you know, that comes near them.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — But you’ll see antelope and buffalo and everything. And so what are the watering holes? Well, um a couple of the watering holes are going to be the local school system, which was for us, it is our our missional strategy, ground zero. Whenever we go into a new city, it’s the first thing we do. We look to partner with the schools. And all we’re doing is trying to be good news to them. And so we’re asking them because they know the most.
Rich Birch — Yes. Quovadis Marshall — They’re interacting with all the kids in that zip code…
Rich Birch — Every day. Yes.
Quovadis Marshall — …yeah, every single day. Hey, what are you finding are struggles for the kids? What are you finding um families need? What are you finding are pinch points? Is it mentoring? Is it is it food insufficiency? Is it support for the staff? You know, honestly, asking the mayor of your city if you can get access to your city officials. That’s another great watering hole because they’ve got a great pulse. Quovadis Marshall — Number three would be nonprofit organizations and agencies that are already meeting felt needs. And so instead of duplicating services, can we partner with you in the services that you’re already that you’re already providing. Quovadis Marshall — And then number four, one of the things we did is started building rhythms of celebration, which gathered the community. And in that context, we got to build relationships and hear stories of people and what they were going through. And then honestly, you know, Waterloo or not Waterloo, but for us, it’s Waterloo. It’s your police, fire departments and asking them what are the felt needs of the community. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — And so again, every city is different. Some cities are battling immigration. Some cities are battling food insufficiency. Some cities are battling crime. In more affluent cities, they’re not battling external crime and food insufficiencies, but they’re battling loneliness. They’ve, they’ve, the thing, you know, it’s a lot of brokenness in the home because you, it it takes a lot to build a great business, right? It takes a lot. It’s a a lot of wear and tear on a family…
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — …to kind of excel through the corporate ladder.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Quovadis Marshall — And so those felt needs are going to be more relational and spiritual than they are going to be physical.
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — That’s been our experience because our downtown campus is in the heart of our city. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — It’s, it’s, you know, it’s it’s where it’s it’s where the crime happens at and in poverty and all of that. Whereas our broadcast campus is in a more affluent community. And so um you learn the different needs of just those social you know, socioeconomic demographics. And so, yeah.
Quovadis Marshall — But I do think if you will listen, I find it interesting, Rich. Jesus spent 30 years walking among us before he ever started correcting us. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s a great insight. Quovadis Marshall — So he had a lot to say because he’s the Word…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Quovadis Marshall — …but but right but the Bible says, let your speech be seasoned with salt so that it can help the hearer. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Quovadis Marshall — And and so learning to listen, people will talk if you ask them. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I remember years ago we had, ah we were doing, you know, a similar heartbeat. As a church we wanted to serve our community. And what we had ah kind of charged our campus pastors to connect with the highest kind of official in, in their community that they could as possible. If you get to the mayor, great… Quovadis Marshall — Yep.
Rich Birch — …but kind of whoever they could. And this one, I love this story. I had nothing to with it. I just heard it, which is fun.
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But the, um the campus pastor, one of our campus pastors ended up getting to the mayor in, in town…
Quovadis Marshall — Wow. Rich Birch — And, and, let’s just say that this mayor would have a reputation of not necessarily someone who would engage with church people. We’ll just say it that way. Quovadis Marshall — Right, right. Rich Birch — And but the mayor took the took the meeting and our campus pastor met with them. And and the way we phrased it was we were saying, hey, we’ve got X amount of dollars and X amount of volunteer time.
Quovadis Marshall — Yep. Rich Birch — We want to just serve the community. And we want you to direct us. You tell us what that, how you’d want to do that. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — And it was interesting that the the mayor, again, no right right reputation, leaned way back in their chair and said, you know, people come in here every day and are asking for things. They come in looking for stuff from me. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — And he’s like, I’m not really sure what to say…
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because it’s, you know, normally ah people want to get something from us.
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But the fact that you’re coming wanting to help me, I really want to measure this and think about this.
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — And then they ended up, you know, it ended up actually, you know, flourishing into this incredible relationship. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s amazing when you just listen to people, the difference it makes. Quovadis Marshall — That’s right. Rich Birch — One of the things you had said there was rhythm of celebration, actually celebrating with your community. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — That caught my attention. What what does that look like?
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How does that, you know, I feel like so many times we’re inviting people to our stuff, but that sounds not like that. Let me tell you, tell us about that. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. You know, there’s there’s um there’s two thoughts that you just reminded me. One of the things we did is, which is key, is we didn’t just ask the community what it needed, but we asked ourselves, what are we good at?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Quovadis Marshall — like who’s in our church, right?
Rich Birch — Yes. Quovadis Marshall — What what need are we um able to meet?
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — Which which really built the relationship with Prison Ministry, Prison Fellowship. And so I would love to talk a little bit more about that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Quovadis Marshall — But um yeah, rhythms of celebration, I mean, it’s so interesting. You know, Jesus shows up on the scene and they say, this guy likes to party too much. Rich Birch — That’s true. That’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Quovadis Marshall — Right, right. This guy, he’s always throwing parties. Rich Birch — And lots of churches don’t have that reputation. Quovadis Marshall — They do not, they do not. It’s like everybody in the church sucked on the lemon before they came. You know what I mean? Rich Birch — That’s so true. That’s so true. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — Love it. Quovadis Marshall — The psalmist says, I was glad when they said to me, let’s go to the house of the Lord. And…
Rich Birch — That’s good. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. And I think we’ve lost some of our joy. And and I get it. Satan, you know, if I can, if I can go this direction, Satan wants to sap your joy because then he can he can sap your strength. Because the joy of the Lord is our strength. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. So good. Quovadis Marshall — And so churches that don’t have a high celebration culture at times, I’ve noticed, aren’t very strong. They can be very disciplined, but but discipline and strength are not the same thing. Discipline is is just…
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s good. Quovadis Marshall — Right? It’s doing what I know to do, which becomes ah it can become autopilot almost. Rich Birch — Right, right. Quovadis Marshall — Whereas there’s ah there’s a real strength. Let’s let’s be the kind of church that when our city thinks of joy, when our city thinks of serving, when our when our city thinks of a life-giving culture, they think of us in the same way they would have thought of Jesus. Like they looked at the Pharisees and thought, no way. Looked at the disciples and thought, maybe. But the prostitutes looked at Jesus and said, that guy…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Quovadis Marshall — …I can go to him. Yeah. Rich Birch — Dude. Yeah. Wow. That’s the reputation we want.
Quovadis Marshall — That’s the repetition we want. Rich Birch — We want that reputation. Quovadis Marshall — Absolutely. Rich Birch — So so, what did that, what’s that actually look like? How have you, how have you tried to model that as a church in your community? Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s, I’ll i’ll give three three ways we do that. Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — There’s three ways we do that. So one, there are some internal rhythms that we’ve created. I can talk to you about that, that we’ve done. Quovadis Marshall — Number two, there are some external rhythms that we’ve created as in terms of things we do. And then number three there are some external communications that we intentionally kind of push out.
Quovadis Marshall — And so internally what we’ve created most churches live with the mindset of there’s three primary big days on a Sunday where we get to celebrate, or where attendance is going to be good and if we’re wise we’ll turn those into celebrations. They’re not going to remember what you said they’re going to remember how they felt. Right? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true. Quovadis Marshall — And so I want them to walk away going. I really loved that. What I remember launch Sunday, realizing I had a moment of panic because I realized so I can’t make anyone come. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — I’ve done the mailer, I’ve done the social media, but for them to get up and get here, I can’t control that. And so, you know, and so it was the Lord helping me kind of get me over the attendance stuff and all of that. But what I did discover is that I can’t make them come, but I can make them not want to leave. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Quovadis Marshall — And I can make them, can’t, you know. I can build within them a desire to go, this is over, but I can’t wait to go back. And so most churches think about that opportunity, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day. Rich Birch — Yep. Quovadis Marshall — And those are the kind of three big days.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Quovadis Marshall — What we’ve done is we’ve built out 16 big days outside… Rich Birch — Wow.
Quovadis Marshall — …outside of Mother’s Day, Christmas and Easter. And I’ll tell you what they are. It’s Baptism Sunday, Baptism and Child Dedication Sunday, our fullest dedication. If you do infant baptism or something, that could be a day. Those are big days. Those are big days, right?
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. Quovadis Marshall — Because we’ve trained our people, invite your family, bring them in.
Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — And so when they come in, we you know give them that loving touch, you know give them special seating, address them specifically in the room. Thank you for being here. Those are 16 different times. So that’s 12 because we do baptisms once a month. And then the fifth Sunday of of the year, we bring all our kids on stage and they lead worship during the offering moment. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s fun. That’s fun. Quovadis Marshall — Now, you know, as you get bigger, you got to kind of manage how many kids you can bring on stage, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
But but I’ll tell you what, man, you you put little Susie on stage, grandma, great grandma, auntie… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Quovadis Marshall — …the auntie, that’s not really the auntie, but this mom’s, you know, cosmetologist is showing up. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah Quovadis Marshall — And so you get those 16 big days plus plus those three other big days…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Quovadis Marshall — …and it invites the family into a celebration. That was the question, right? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good. Quovadis Marshall — What’s the celebratory thing? And then externally in your calendar, you look at what are some big days. And so for us, we lean into Father’s Day, a car show, barbecue. We do a Fall Fest, kind of our version of trunk or treat. And um you know then you got Christmas, another big day that the community… And actually my perspective is I think more people are likely to go to Christmas than they are Easter.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Quovadis Marshall — Because Christmas, Christmas right? It’s everything’s Christmassy. And I think you talked about this a little while ago. And then Easter is like, it’s the resurrection is Easter bunnies.
Rich Birch — Yep. Quovadis Marshall — So those are internal things. And then externally, what we try to do is intentionally communicate what’s going to be a benefit to them, not necessarily who we are. Rich Birch — Right. OK, good. Quovadis Marshall — So the the the communication, when it comes to celebrating, is um we, you know, ah an example would be real time. We just came out of Easter, but we didn’t we didn’t put our numbers up. Right. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — We didn’t we didn’t say here’s the numbers from the church. I’m not opposed to that. But rather what I would what I would rather have us do is communicate a story of life change of somebody whose life has changed. Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s good. Quovadis Marshall — Someone who looks like someone in our community…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Quovadis Marshall — …to kind of go, that could be me. Right. And so um creating rhythms, which really goes down to calendaring. How do we make an impact? And yeah. Rich Birch — Love that. I love so much there. there’s a you know That was like a masterclass there. So much there about how do we create rhythms and using the calendars. That’s that’s so good. Rich Birch — Let’s pivot and talk about PF. I love that you know you obviously were impacted, deeply impacted as…
Quovadis Marshall — Yes.
Rich Birch — …you know an individual by this ministry and then have continued to build this partnership with them. What does that look like for your your church? I love how you talk about, how your church talks about even your ministries into institutions where, you know, it’s like, Hey, we’re, you’re not a project. You’re not, there’s not, you know, you’re not just something we’re trying to do. You’re a part of our church. Unpack that. Talk us through, what does that look like for you? How have you been partnering with Prison Fellowship? What does that look like? Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Well, you know, there’s a little unique story in that, you know, I went to prison and and so while I was in prison, I went through the Prison Fellowship Academy. You know, the part of the story that really for us makes a lot of sense because it resonates so deeply is that not only was I in prison, but I left my daughter and her mother behind. And so PF in the local church came around them…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Quovadis Marshall — …and walked with them while I was in prison. Prison fellowship program called Angel Tree. And so every year my daughter got a Christmas present from her dad, but delivered through the local church. Now, the truth is is, I didn’t pay for the gift. The local church did. So the church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — But the church didn’t make itself the hero. The church made me the hero. And so they said, hey, your dad bought you this gift and he wrote you this note. And it helped strengthen that relationship with me and my daughter and her mother while I was in prison. And at the same time, it it provided an on-ramp for my daughter and her mother to be a part of this local church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Quovadis Marshall — And so when I was released, guess what church I went to? Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — I went to the church that cared for my family.
Rich Birch — Yep. Quovadis Marshall — And so that’s actually where we started as a church family. We started doing Angel Tree. Quovadis Marshall — Through no fault of their own, those children have been left without a parent, right? And the Bible says, pure and undefiled religion is this, to visit the widow and the orphan in their time of need and keep one unspotted from the world is what what what James says. One of my favorite verses is in Psalm 68. The writer says, the Lord sets the lonely, I think it’s 68.6 says, the Lord or or God sets the lonely in families. It causes the prisoner to sing. Rich Birch — That’s so sweet. Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — And so what’s the pathway towards freedom getting sent in the family? because he’s sets the lonely in families.
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — And it’s in that place you get free from the things that had you bound…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Quovadis Marshall — …which gives you the freedom to do what you were made to do, which is worship. And so we started out just saying, how can we set these kids in families? And so we started with Angel Tree. It felt safe, right? It felt safe for our church to go, you know, I don’t know about the parent, but I can start with the kid.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Quovadis Marshall — And, you know, then you celebrate those stories. And, you know, we do a Christmas party and the kids are picking up Christmas presents.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Quovadis Marshall — And, Some kids hadn’t heard from their dad in years. And you just you watch the joy and you watch the impact. And again, in the mind of that parent, the church has now become a safe place, not just a religious place. Rich Birch — That’s good. Quovadis Marshall — What a place of celebration, a place of safety, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Quovadis Marshall — We we have our students help deliver the gifts to the kids. And so these kids are meeting kids that are their age. And so they’re building some natural relationship and connection. And you invite them back to kids church. You invite them back to youth group. And by God’s grace, you know doors continue to open to be involved in the things that Prison Fellowship is doing to help the church fulfill its mission.
Quovadis Marshall — I’ll say one more thing. You know, Jesus shows up on the scene, Luke chapter four, and he’s quoting Isaiah 61. And I appreciate the spiritualizing of the text. I do. I really do. You know, we’re all free. We all, you know, set the prisoners free, set people blind. You know, I love the spiritual, all of that. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — But what I find interesting, Rich, is he says he’s come, you know, to proclaim liberty to the captive, right, in the opening of prison doors. And I appreciate that. Yes, I need freedom. Yes, open those prison doors in my heart, Jesus. But then Matthew, you know, Matthew 25, doubles down. Right?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — So his opening and closing sermons are the same. Rich Birch — Interesting. Quovadis Marshall — Hey, right? Matthew 25. Then I’ll say, you came to visit me in prison. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — So he like doubles down on this literal reality. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. It it seems to be more than just a metaphor. This is not this is not a metaphor. Quovadis Marshall — Yes. Rich Birch — There’s something about engaging with prisoners. Quovadis Marshall — That’s right. Yeah. And and then, you know, because the foundation of his throne is is righteousness and justice. And so the salvific nature of Christ’s work was, I am guilty in the courtroom of God. I am a prisoner sold into sin. Therefore, who more could relate to a physical prisoner than ones who’ve been spiritual prisoners?
Rich Birch — Love that. Quovadis Marshall — And then he puts an exclamation point on it. You ready? Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — Who’s the first person to enter paradise with Christ? Rich Birch — Yeah. The thief on the cross. Quovadis Marshall — The thief on cross. Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — He goes, I’m serious about this. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Quovadis Marshall — I’ve come I’ve come for the prisoner. Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — And I do I do believe we’ll see, you know, the joke, not the joke, the cliché statement is, we in America, we took the Bibles out of school, so God put them in the prisons. And ah Frederick Douglass said… right, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Quovadis Marshall — And So Frederick Douglass said, um it’s it’s it’s um it’s easier to train the child than it is to fix a man. And when you can’t train the child, the good news of the gospel is that he can fix the man. And so we’re able to do that. And so we launched the campus and yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. So, I well, first of all, we will we’ll definitely link to Angel Tree. I think this could be, I hope there’s people that are listening in today that would say, you know, that that could be a step we could take. We’ve got time now to even line that up for this Christmas. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — That could be a real practical next step for churches that are, for leaders that are listening in. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — But let’s talk about kind of the the campus the campus, your work in prisons. What does that look like? Kind of give us a flavor you know, of that. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — I think Angel Tree is a great starting point. Quovadis Marshall — It is. Rich Birch — And and would be, like you say, it’s kind of a safe step for most churches.
Quovadis Marshall — Yep.
Rich Birch — They could, you know, every church that’s listening in could do that. Quovadis Marshall — Yep. Rich Birch — There could be too many churches signed up and they would still have opportunity.
Quovadis Marshall — Right?
Rich Birch — Prison Fellowship would fine would find kids for sure. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — So, um but let’s talk about what does that look like for you…
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …kind of when you took beyond that step? Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah. On on that note, you know, kind of ah as a pivot, you know, there’s 1.6 million children and who have an incarcerated parent. Last year, PF serviced 270,000 kids. The thing that I try to tell pastors about Angel Tree is it’s the easiest way to grow your church. And here’s why. You’re going to get the address, phone number and location of people in your community who are waiting for you to show up.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Quovadis Marshall — Like if you can’t, I’m handing you a handful of families. If you If you can’t grow your church…
Rich Birch — Who have said we’d be willing to talk to these people. Yes. Quovadis Marshall — Yes. If you can’t grow your church, you need to get into insurance with that number. You know what I’m saying? Like my brother, you need to pick a different profession.
Rich Birch — That’s great. I love it. Love it.
Quovadis Marshall — So, you know, so um ah so yeah, you were, you were asking about the campus.
Rich Birch — Yes. Quovadis Marshall — And, and so for us, really, it was, it was, it was the, it made the most sense as a next step. Not all churches have a prison around them. But what we found was that there was a group of men in a prison about an hour away who had been tracking with us. And part of the the way they have been tracking with us is that some of the people who were in our church had committed crimes and went to prison. But also we, during COVID, didn’t double down online because Iowa is so rural that internet, like like I’m in a city of 100,000 and we just got fiber. You know I’m saying? Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Quovadis Marshall — And so like internet wasn’t the the winning strategy. Television was. Rich Birch — Yep. Quovadis Marshall — So we went to television.
Rich Birch — Yep. That makes sense. Yep.
Quovadis Marshall — And so a lot of guys started watching and then they started sending in letters is all they did was send it in letters. And, you know, the Bible says a person’s gift will make make make way for them and bring them before great men. That’s what it says in Proverbs. And and so we did the same thing as we did with the schools, with the mayor, we just said to the prison, how can we help? Rich Birch — That’s good. Quovadis Marshall — Are there any volunteer slots? And and so that door opened we started partnering with Prison Fellowship Academy that’s already in that prison. So they were really the gatekeeper for us to get into the prison. And kind of full circle now we’ve we’ve been in that prison about a year.
Rich Birch — Wow. Quovadis Marshall — And about 100 men gather every Sunday morning. Rich Birch — Wow. Quovadis Marshall — We take the the teaching from Sunday, the worship and everything, put it on a thumb drive. We load it up. And they so they are they’re what they’re literally they’re worshiping on Sunday mornings. They’re serving on teams. They’re ushers. They’re greeters. Like they’re involved at a high level in the overall service. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Yep. Quovadis Marshall — And then many of them are getting baptized even, you know. Rich Birch — Wow. Praise God. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, they’re getting baptized. And I think about 30 guys have been baptized since we launched the campus. And so they’re a small group. I mean, everything we’re doing as a church outside the prison, we’re doing in the prison. And and so, because the truth of the matter is, is like ah Hebrews 13 says, remember those who are in prison. And if in for those in prison who are believers, if you could think of it this way, your arm or your leg, if you’re a part of the body is in prison. Right.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Quovadis Marshall — And 95 percent of those men and women in prison will be released.
Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — And so the question isn’t, are they coming home? But but but who’s who’s coming home? Rich Birch — Yeah. Quovadis Marshall — Have they met Jesus? Have they found life-giving community?
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — And so by God’s grace, it’s a thriving community. We’re so grateful to be in those prisons and and a part of what’s happening there. We love those men. And in Prison Fellowship, honestly, they opened the door for us to to be able to do that. Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. Well, I love that. And that, you know, could be a natural extension. You know, I know that the, I don’t know a lot about the prison system, but I don’t do know one thing I do know it’s designed for isolation, even where they put these things…
Quovadis Marshall — Yes.
Rich Birch — …they put them way far out in the middle of nowhere. Quovadis Marshall — Yes. Rich Birch — So it’s hard for people to get to them. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s hard for, you know, families to get there. Quovadis Marshall — Right. Rich Birch — And the fact that your church is, you know, making that effort to be there week in week out is incredible. I know that that would be life giving ah to folks that are, you know, that are there in that, in that prison. So that’s incredible. So thank you for, for doing that.
Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, it is. And I think it’s mobilizing to our churches. I think we underestimate ah people’s desire to make a difference at times. I think there was a thought process coming in the nineties with churches where let’s not ask a lot from them. Let’s give them a lot of anonymity. Let’s, you know, let’s kind of let them kind of find the way. And that’s great. And I’m all for that. I don’t think you have to, I don’t think you have to choose between attractional or missional. There is the, there is the, the attractional model is the Nathaniel or Philip to Nathaniel, come and see. Right? Rich Birch — Yep. Quovadis Marshall — He says, hey, man, just come and see. Rich Birch — Yep. Quovadis Marshall — And I appreciate that. But Jesus said, go and tell.
Rich Birch — Amen, amen. Quovadis Marshall — You know, and so and so i don’t think you have to choose between the two. And as I look at Jesus’s model for for ministry, it was high invitation. Anybody can come. But then it was high challenge. You know, you got to drink my flesh, you eat my blood. It’s like, what? And and my mentor says, he says, and this is going to be gender specific, but the idea is not gender specific, just the analogy. He said, call men to play a man’s game and men will show up. Quovadis Marshall — And and I think when you call people to make a difference, you know, I tell our church, I said, hey i’m not trying to I’m not trying to make you safe. I’m trying to make you dangerous. Like, I want you to be a force for God’s kingdom. And not all people buy in, but those who do change the world.
Quovadis Marshall — And eventually that middle group, you know, those kind of, you know, you’ve always got the the early adopters, you’ve got the middle group and then you got those that are not coming. That middle group will start to follow as you celebrate what you’re doing and life change and all that. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s so great. Well, when you look to the future, kind of up over to the horizon, what aspirations? Where’s kind of the, what are the questions you’re asking? You’re thinking about the future at Hope City Church and its role in your community. What what would be some of those things you’re wondering about as you look to the future? Quovadis Marshall — Bro, ah man, it’s been great. It’s been great. Yeah, we like to say we’re big plate people. And so I like ah I like my food falling off my plate. And so we just we’ve just got into our broadcast facility and we’ve kind of we’ve outgrown it. Rich Birch — Nice. Quovadis Marshall — So now we’re trying to figure out what to do next. And you know, so for sure, campus launches, you know, there’s a plan, there’s a strategy to launch campuses throughout throughout the state. Rich Birch — Great. Quovadis Marshall — There’s some favor there. Getting to more prisons, for sure, but also building that leadership pipeline. You need resources, leaders, and vision. And so those three things you’re always working on as a point leader. So, um yeah, man, the future’s bright. God is good. The the gospel must go forth. And he’s with us, man. So let’s let’s get after it, baby. Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s get after it. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — So good. Quovadis Marshall — Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, any final words just as we wrap up today’s episode? Quovadis Marshall — Well, one, I want to just honor you and tell you thank you.
Rich Birch — Oh, thanks, man.
Quovadis Marshall — Honestly, you you didn’t know me up until 45 minutes ago, but but for years, Rich, I’ve listened to your podcast faithfully…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s sweet. That’s sweet.
Quovadis Marshall — …to be stretched, to be to be challenged, to learn new insights, getting things from you and the people you have on that I couldn’t get anywhere else. So just honestly, sincerely, thank you for that.
Rich Birch — Thank you.
Quovadis Marshall — The other thing I say is that, man, I just encourage churches like, man, guys, we’ve got the good news of the gospel… Rich Birch — Amen. Quovadis Marshall — …and we have an opportunity to impact the world. And shameless plug, Prison Fellowship has been the easiest. All the other stuff I talked about, we had to build. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — We had to put the structure behind. We, you know, have to develop the leaders for. Rich Birch — Yes. Quovadis Marshall — I don’t have to do that with Prison Fellowship. Rich Birch — Right. Quovadis Marshall — It’s literally plug and play.
Rich Birch — Right.
Quovadis Marshall — And it’s been transformational in terms of lives being touched. It’s been transformational in mobilizing our church. And it’s been transformational in our reputation in the city as the good news people.
Rich Birch — Love it. Quovadis Marshall — So ah get plugged in. Keep listening to Rich’s podcast. Buy Church Growth Flywheel, and like let’s get it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Love it. Thanks so much, Pastor Q. Appreciate the, really appreciate the kind words. That’s so nice of you. Where do we want to send people online? We’ll link to Prison Fellowship, specifically to Angel Tree, just to make it super easy for people to take that step. But you should check out Prison Fellowship in general. Anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you or with the church? Quovadis Marshall — Yeah, yeah, you can check out, ah you can follow me on socials, Quovadis Marshall, Q-U-O-V-A-D-I-S Marshall on Instagram. I’m I’m pretty active on there. Go to our website, myhopecity.net. Yeah, and you’ll find some links to some other stuff I get to do, coaching. And I wrote a book a little while ago. Rich Birch — Love it. Quovadis Marshall — And ah yeah, man, I love I love to connect with you guys. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today. Quovadis Marshall — Thank you.
Leaving Well: A Behind-the-Scenes Story of a Healthy Staff Exit with Rachel Long & Danny Anderson
May 15, 2025
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we’re joined by Danny Anderson, Lead Pastor of Emmanuel Church in Indiana, and Rachel Long, founder of the Joshua Center. They share their story of navigating a significant transition when Rachel moved from being the Executive Pastor at Emmanuel Church to working full time for the Joshua Center, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting grieving children and families.
Is your church facing the challenge of a key staff member transition? Wondering how to handle leadership changes in a way that honors both the individual and the mission? Tune in as Danny and Rachel discuss the importance of fostering a healthy organizational culture where open communication and support can thrive, especially during times of transition.
It’s okay to talk about transitions. // Staff transitions can feel threatening for church leaders, which often leads to avoidance and breakdowns in communication. Conversations about change should be welcomed—not feared. Leaders must create environments where team members feel safe to explore God’s calling without being met with suspicion or disappointment.
Create safe, coaching-based conversations. // As an employee, be open and honest about what God is doing in your life. As a pastor or church leader, embrace your role as a shepherd, not a gatekeeper. Regular check-ins, prayer, and coaching allow conversations about transition to evolve organically over time, giving both parties space to discern God’s will. When staff members sense they are truly supported, they are more likely to leave well and continue to champion the church’s vision from a new place.
Each departure is a culture shaping event. // Team members are always watching how transitions are handled, and poor exits can instill fear across staff. By proactively discussing what it means to leave well, leaders can model open-handedness and reinforce a healthy organizational culture. Without surrendering their staff members to God, church leaders open themselves up to feelings of offense and betrayal, leading to toxic staff transitions.
Work through the gap. // When a key leader leaves, the gap is real—but it’s also a chance to elevate others. What follows a staff transition is one of the indicators of how good a leader was. Danny shares how Rachel’s former direct reports stepped up and excelled, thanks to her development and empowerment. A well-prepared team can carry the mission forward, even after a major transition.
Follow where God is leading you. // For anyone sensing a shift in their calling, follow God’s leading with courage and integrity. It’s your responsibility to be authentic and follow God’s leadership in your life first. Don’t wait until you’ve made up your mind to speak with your pastor. Engage early, pray fervently, and seek wise counsel. You’re responsible for obeying God’s voice, not for managing your pastor’s emotional reaction.
Start the conversation now. // If you’re a lead pastor, assume someone currently on your team needs to have this transition conversation. Don’t wait—create the space. Even dedicating a staff meeting to discuss how to leave well can set the tone for a more open and trusting culture.
To learn more about Joshua Center, visit them on their website at www.joshuacenter.org and reach out to Rachel Long here. You can follow along with Danny Anderson on Instagram @dannyanderson23 and check out the Church Growth Unleashed conference at churchgrowthunleashed.org and the podcast here.
Listen to previous unSeminary podcasts featuring Danny Anderson or Rachel Long:
This episode is all about leaving well — and we’ve created a practical resource to help your church do just that.
Whether you’re a lead pastor, executive pastor, or team leader, the Staff Exit Debrief Template gives you a clear framework for holding honest, honoring conversations when someone transitions off your team. It helps you celebrate their contribution and capture valuable lessons to strengthen your culture going forward.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. It’s going to be a really helpful one. You know, over the years I’ve had people reach out and say, Hey, you should talk about this thing that we’re going to talk about today. And frankly, I’ve resisted talking about it because I haven’t known what to talk about and how to kind of refer to it. We’re talking about team transitions today, and specifically two people that have been on the podcast before who used to work together that are now leading in two different organizations. And we’re going to talk about what that looked like. Rich Birch — We’re honored today to have, again, Pastor Danny Anderson with us. He’s the lead pastor of a great church, Emmanuel church, a multisite church with seven campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in Indianapolis, Indiana plus an online, a number of microsites. They’ve repeatedly been been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And ah Rachel Long, who was one of the executive pastors there. In 2022, she founded the Joshua Center that we’ve talked about before, a non-profit bereavement center for children and families. We’re going to link to all of that so that you can find their two organizations. But welcome to the show, again, Rachel and Danny, welcome. Glad you’re here. Danny Anderson — Thanks for having with us, Rich. Rachel Long — Thank you. Danny Anderson — It’s an honor.
Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with you, Rachel? Kind of give us a little bit of, tell us a little bit of your story. Talk to us about, you know, remind people that maybe don’t listen to every single episode. I know for my mom…
Rachel Long — For sure.
Rich Birch — …she, she will have listened to every episode, but not everyone listens to every episode. So ah tell us a little bit about you and your background again. Rachel Long — Sure. Well, I started at Emmanuel Church after a season of being a developmental therapist. So I’ll start with the Emmanuel piece. About 13 and a half years ago I started working in Emmanuel, but before that I Emmanuel had been my church for 10 years. And I was a key impact team member there and both the students and in the children’s area. And so raised my kids there. I am married for 26 years and have three kids a girl and two boys. And so we had been at Emmanuel for years and years and so getting to work there was certainly an honor and a privilege.
Rachel Long — And in, like you said, in 2022 I started just part-time, you know, just part-time working founding the Joshua Center. And it is a bereavement Center for grieving children, adolescents and their families in Greenwood, Indiana and ah it grew faster than it’s we call it unfortunate growth, right? Like it’s bereaved children.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rachel Long — It’s not something that I’m like trying to raise the bottom line on.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rachel Long — But so…
Rich Birch — Let’s increase the amount of breathing children. No one wants to set that KPI.
Rachel Long — No, no, no. However, I will say I’m happier that they’re here than the than with not getting help. Rich Birch — Yes. Good. Rachel Long — So my husband and I launched Joshua Center. It is in honor of my little brother that we lost in ’05. And when that happened, there was ah really nothing for my children. And then specifically speaking to grief, I had a highly negative encounter with a therapist. Now I will say this, my church was there for me every step of the way, my small group was. So they helped me get back on my feet and keep moving. However, I needed more mental help with it too.
Rachel Long — And so I went into what’s called delayed grief. And I don’t wish that on anyone. And it was about seven years of like…
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Rachel Long — …if I heard the word Josh crying and like there was no hope and healing. And that’s what Joshua Center is really all about, helping those families find hope and healing. That’s why we exist. And so it grew and grew and grew and I was spending evenings and Saturdays here at Joshua Center.
Rachel Long — And there just came a crux, a time when it was time to talk to Pastor Danny and he had set the stage. And I mean, just 30,000 foot view, it we were able to talk through what was going on. It took a little while, which is fine. We didn’t want to rush anything. I loved Emmanuel and would never cheat my church. And so. But Danny loved me and so he didn’t want to cheat me. So there was a lot of support there. Rachel Long — So that’s like, uh, just a little snapshot of what has happened to us recently. And so over the past three years, it doubled the first year and has already doubled again since leaving, since my leaving of Emmanuel in October. So it’s more than doubled, but not tripled yet. So. Although thats that’s, again, not great news. There’s kids with grief, loss, and trauma that we’re working with. The the good news is is’s that they’re receiving faith-based interventions. So. Rich Birch — Cool. Danny, why don’t you fill in the picture about Emmanuel again for folks that that haven’t, you know, that would that would haven’t listened to your episodes or don’t track closely with you who kind of tell us a little bit of that story. Danny Anderson — Yeah, you know as you mentioned, you know we’re a multisite church in central Indiana, and I took over as the lead pastor in 2006 for our founding pastor and made it through that transition barely. And you know since then, you know we’ve we’ve been building a great team. God’s been so gracious to us. Rachel’s been ah a part of that from the beginning. Danny Anderson — And yeah, it’s just been a ah fun journey to figure out the multisite strategy and reaching people. And our passion is to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ. You know, we we say we’re on a relentless pursuit of people who are far from God. And you know it’s pretty simple vision. And we try to you know basically use our campus model to to fulfill that vision. And so, yeah, I’m here with Rachel because, you know, she decided it was a little bit less than a year ago to to part ways with our church. And and that has been probably the best transition we’ve had so far off of our team. And we were and we were really super intentional with that. So, yeah…
Rich Birch — Yeah. but Let’s talk about that.
Danny Anderson — …that’s where we’re at. Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with you, Danny? Like I I feel like so many times these transitions don’t go well. You know Rachel was a senior leader, executive pastor in your organization, and from your seat as the lead pastor, why do you surmise that that these transitions maybe don’t necessarily always go well. You know what why am I hesitant to even talk about this? What is you know what why is why do I feel anxiety about today’s conversation, Danny? Talk to me about that. Danny Anderson — Yeah, I, you know, I think it’s a hard thing because senior leaders, man, they’re, we’re weird people. We are control freaks, we, we, ah we like we think we own people sometimes. They’re they belong to us. You know, we don’t want to talk about or even think about departures. It’s it’s just it’s uncomfortable conversation. You know sometimes we think we’re going to do the ministry with the same people forever.
Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — So we we function in that and that idea, which is not true. But I think I think a lot of it the tension around this topic comes because there’s no, kind there’s no, there is no communication. And I would say the first, the the first thing that helps that we’ve tried to do, Rachel and I have seen it. We’ve been together so long. She was together with me for seven years on the leadership team, but on staff for 13. We’ve seen three or four or five, six scenarios that just did not go well. So we’re, you know, we had this conversation like, how do we fix that? I don’t want that culture.
Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — I want the type of culture where we love each other so much, we respect each other so much that it’s okay to leave our team without there being hurt feelings or a feeling of betrayal. Or and so how do you do that? And the first thing that that we discovered is that you have to start the conversation. Rich Birch — Right, right. Danny Anderson — I have and it starts with the senior pastor… Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — …you know… Rich Birch — You’ve got to you’ve got to lead. You have to kind of like even I would imagine even that’s a gift of even saying, hey, like we want to kind of be counter cultural on this thing here. Like we want to be open to having that conversation as opposed to giving off, like people can read that a mile away where it’s like if you ever leave, I will cut you.
Danny Anderson — Absolutely. Rich Birch — You know, like so even just being open, ah you know, to the conversation, I think is is that’s a big deal. Rachel, what about you? Danny Anderson — And it starts it… Rich Birch — Oh, sorry.Go go ahead there, Danny. Danny Anderson — Yeah, sorry.
Rich Birch — What were you going to say? Danny Anderson — No, I was gonna say and it it starts with get really giving permission to have the conversation and letting your team know that it’s okay for them to communicate with you.
Rich Birch — Right that’s good. That’s good.
Danny Anderson — And that you’re for them in in that ah because you’re on their team and you want what’s best for them. And so that is what I think kind of triggered the I guess the openness on Rachel’s part, but that that’s the only thing I wanted to jump in on. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Rachel, from your perspective, kind of unpack a little bit of what was going on in your mind and heart. Obviously, this was growing. And then it it looked like, okay, it’s going to reach a tipping point here. How did you you know, how did you kind of try to keep that conversation open? And what would you suggest to other people to try to broach that conversation? Rachel Long — Sure. It is what Pastor Danny said. Before any of this happened the stage had been set by saying, like, I don’t know why people just throw a two week notice at us and walk out the door. If they have transitions in their life, like he is our pastor first. So he wanted to help us work through that.
Rachel Long — But and honestly, um I would love to say like, oh, I was so self aware that this happened this way. But the truth is being in close connection with Danny, like he knows I would have worked both jobs until like we celebrated that at my funeral. So, uh, that being said, he, he also was still there as my coach. So I was open and honest about like, Hey, this is growing. Hey, I’m working these nights. Hey, I need, I need to talk to you about this in my check-ins. And then there was coaching, just like there was coaching when I led the first church adoption for Emmanuel. I still have my coach with me all the time in it. Rachel Long — So it wasn’t ever like this chomp. It was more like, okay, I’m feeling this. Okay. Let’s separate and pray about it for a couple of weeks. We come back. Okay. This is happening. Then he went on a study break. And so that gave us more time to think and pray and come back and talk about it. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t an abrupt quit and it wasn’t a quiet quit. It wasn’t, he helped transition me off of staff and launch me into what God was building in our lives. And I think that takes a leader that has a bigger than themselves vision, like a kingdom mindset. And it takes an employee that um that knows that even though it’s going to be hard and you’re going to have to make space for the conversations, you got to tell the truth when you know it, as soon as you know it. Rachel Long — Yeah, I would say that um there was also some coaching around that too, like, okay, let’s look at this. Because at that point, your pastor’s looking into your life as this third party, you know, and but still with you in it. And they’re able to see some things that maybe you aren’t able to see. But none of it would have happened if I worked under a spirit of fear or like as an employee, if I didn’t feel psychologically safe to say what I needed to say, then that… Rich Birch — Okay. Let’s talk about that issue. Because I don’t think there’s any—this is a part of, I think, with the tension in this—I don’t think there’s any lead pastor out there that believes that they’re cultivating an environment that is psychologically unsafe. They all say, every lead pastor, and I love the lead pastors who are listening in, everyone, we all believe that we create these positive work environments that actually, of course, just come to me, tell me anytime I’m happy to. But that isn’t actually what happens.
Rich Birch — When you think about Danny’s leadership, and then Danny, I’m going to ask you kind of the mirror of this question. But when you think about his leadership, Rachel, what was it that indicated, Oh, he actually means this. Like he actually wants to have the conversation. He doesn’t just say, Oh, let tell me, cause I think there’s lots of pastors that would say that. Oh no, come and talk to me. But actually everyone knows now that isn’t what we should do. What was it about Danny’s leadership that led you to believe, oh, he actually wants to engage on this conversation. He’s not he’s not scared of this. Rachel Long — Oh it’s future behavior is predicted by past behavior. The only time that we’ve had issues that were significant in departures, there was always a chance for that individual to leave well. There was always a chance. Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — There was always an opportunity for that… Rich Birch — They chose not to for whatever reason. Rachel Long — Yes, you’re correct. Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Yep. Rachel Long — You also have to be the employee that knows that like you’re not working for a robot. You’re working for a pastor. Like they love their congregation. And so when you come to them with something hard, if you got to give them space to be a human too. I mean, like but you can’t just expect, oh, that’s what you want to do here. Let me write a a plan with you. I mean, there is back and forth. Rachel Long — So I feel like I watched the behavior. I mean, when my brother died, he and his wife drove an hour and a half to go be at the funeral when I was one of his volunteers in youth ministry. Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — That’s not a person who’s going to say: Get out. This is dumb. What are you doing? Rich Birch — At your desk! Rachel Long — Like you’re fired; get out.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel Long — You know, like that’s nobody’s taking a cardboard box with me when you when you have invested so much. As an employee you invest a lot in the church, but also your leaders are investing in you. And so he’d already invested in me, why would he not want to see like a kingdom return on that investment? Rich Birch — Yeah. Rachel Long — That was that’s how I felt safe in it. Rich Birch — Sure. Rachel Long — Because it was always about me more than my product. Rich Birch — Right. Danny, I’d love to hear your perspective on that. Like the, you know, a part of the tension in, in these, I think in these transitions to be, obviously I was kind of kicking lead pastors there, but the reality of it is our, we’re consumed with the mission. We’re like, man, what we’re doing is, you know, is so important. And for, and I know you weren’t the founding pastor, but you, you’re a long time pastor, long term, long time lead pastor. It’s even more so with founding pastors. And I’ve said this to many founding pastors. I’m like, they, you care the most about this. This thing started in your living room.You know, and, and they, the thought that anyone else would ever want to transition. It’s not that they’re evil people. They just are like, love the the vision so much and the and our mission, there you cut them and they bleed it. And and so they give off, ah inadvertently, they give off this like, if you even think about it, I am you know I’ll be disappointed in you. Are there are there things that you’ve tried to do actively to try to cultivate a trust environment, to cultivate you know a ah place where people would be willing to kind of reach out and talk about it? Danny Anderson — It’s a great question, Rich. I think that we’ve learned that each departure is a culture shaping event.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Danny Anderson — And so if you, how did you handle the how how did you handle the last staff departure? Because staff members talk to each other they’re observing they’re watching…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. That’s true.
Danny Anderson — …and so they’re they’re actually learning the culture of whether or not it’s safe to talk about these things from the last experience. Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — And so I I after two or three poor, you know, departures. I’m like, man, um I think we don’t we don’t have a healthy culture. We don’t have a we don’t have a culture where, so I’ve got to change that. How do I change that? Well, you know, the the only way I knew is is to start having the conversation with people. And in my mind, I had to make a shift um from these people don’t belong to me, they belong to God.
Danny Anderson — I am I have to be open-handed with Rachel. Every senior pastor has has to be open-handed with their staff. They do not belong to me. But that’s really difficult because, especially if someone on your leadership team like like Rachel was such an integral part of everything we did at this church. I mean, she had her fingers in everything, almost. And, which was a good thing. And so when she and it even when she initially shared with me what she was feeling, I bucked it. I’m like, oh, no, that’s not true. That’s not what the Lord is doing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Danny Anderson — You know, we got to rethink this. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — You know, I’m not sensing that. You know, but so even when I told her that, I even felt after that conversation like, dude, who do you think you are? Like you’re not, you don’t own Rachel. And of course, the Holy Spirit was working on me. And and and so I had to I had to repent of that. Like, OK, Lord, these are like this this staff is your staff. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — And I’m more interested in what you are calling them to do in their life…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson — …than how they can help me to fulfill the vision of Emmanuel. And so I think a big decision is to decide in your heart to be open-handed with your staff…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson — …and give literally surrender them over to God.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson —And I know that might sound mushy, and but but that is ah that is a conviction that you have to have. Or else you’re going to get mad. You’re going to get ticked off. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Danny Anderson — You’re going to feel betrayed. And then you’re going to once they share it with you, you’re going to be like, OK, well, your last day is Friday. You know you you you’re screwing me. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Danny Anderson — So you know let’s let’s get you out of here as fast as possible. Rich Birch — Let me bite back at you or whatever. Yeah.
Danny Anderson — Oh, man, it’s so so toxic. Rich Birch — Yeah. Now let’s double click on that, Danny. I’m glad you brought it up because I’m I was like, there’s there were had to have been a moment where where, I’ll put it this way, it would have been natural at some point to have thought, no, I want to steer this conversation back to, let’s serve Emmanuel. Like, you know, Rich Birch — Talk to us about that internal tension. How, what did that look like? How did you wrestle through that? And then, you know, then you probably, obviously you came to a place where you’re like, no, like, obviously I think this is probably the best for, for, for Rachel. And then ultimately the best for us. Like we, you know, we got to believe that the Lord is working this out somehow. Talk us through what did that transition look like? I’m assuming at some point you wanted to kind of steer that conversation back. How did you kind of weather that as a leader, Danny? Danny Anderson — Well, I definitely tried. And and and that was part of what Rachel said. We we had several conversations, and we created space in between those conversations to…
Rich Birch — Yeah, great.
Danny Anderson — …you know I would I would say, hey, I think we could work this out. I don’t think it’s coming to an end. Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — You know let’s let’s let I gave her some thoughts. I gave her some ideas. And then I let her have space to pray about it with her husband. And and so but then when I realized you know that that the burden that God had put on her heart for children who’ve lost loved ones and the experience that she had with her own brother, like this this is the work that God is doing in her life. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — And I if I stand in the way of that, I’m I’m blocking, you know, what God wants to do in her life. And I don’t want to be that guy. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — And so I think I finally got it took me a while to get there, honestly.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — Because there is, Rachel knows this, there’s a lot of work to be done and where would it’s not a, so I did feel that like, oh gosh who’s gonna pick up who’s gonna pick up all the work that she’s leaving behind?
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Danny Anderson — And so there was a bit of that you know, I guess the space, there’s a void there that t was left. But you know I had to trust God with that. You know like, okay, Lord, I’m going to trust that you’re going to provide other people. And other, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Danny Anderson — So I just didn’t want to be that person that was blocking what God was doing in her heart, if that makes sense. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. I hope you’re listening in, leaders, today. I think what you’re leading us here, Danny, with even just the way you’re you’re reflecting on that.
Rich Birch — Rachel, what about you? How did you continue to lead? And you’re doing this in today’s conversation. So I’m I’m asking you to kind of think about this at a meta level. My my experience has been that you have continued obviously to honor Danny, to honor his leadership, to honor the place that you know he has had in your life and has in the community. Talk to us about some of those decisions, actions that you took through this process to continue to you know to honor the the place that that Danny’s had as a pastor and leader in your life. Rachel Long — Wow. I don’t I don’t know that I could fully honor all that he taught me there. Every single day I have some leadership piece that I’m like, yes, I learned that at Emmanuel. I learned that from pastor Danny. But I will say something that I would want all senior pastors to hear that he did was, if I can, is that the beauty of how this transition went is like, I got to serve at Christmas at my church. And people were coming up to me asking me how my, the number one thing is how’s your project going? I love that. But how’s it going? How’s it… like people genuinely wanting to know how Joshua Center is. Rachel Long — My son got to keep his youth group. My other two are adults and they live on their own. But my son, who’s still a junior in high school, gets to gets to still go to youth group and not feel awkward. So basically we got to keep our church because of this. So deciding early on that like, when when I left, there were two ah new multisites in the and the pot. They could choose which one was going to come next, or, you know, or based on how attendance and and things like that go, and availability of other churches to adopt. Rachel Long — And so leaving feeling like okay, I’ve left our left my church in a good spot because it wasn’t just my pastor, it’s my church…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rachel Long — …and I served there for ten years before I left. So really keeping focus like I want to honor Danny, but I want to honor Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rachel Long — I mean when I meet with him every morning if if at any point during this conversation I would have felt like I No, you did what, this was Abraham and Isaac moment. You did what I asked you to do. You don’t have to give up your job at Emmanuel, which by the way, I loved and still love my church. Then I I would have gone back and said…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rachel Long — You know, I think I was wrong. Oops. You know… Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Rachel Long — And I know there would have been grace and space to talk it through. But I think continuing to seek God’s will in it and and take the steps allows me not also to be a saboteur for for Emmanuel which I would love to see them reach, us – I’m still part of that’s still my church. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes, yes. Rachel Long — Like so I would love to see us reach our 12 campuses. That’s that’s still in my heart. And I think that’s something, I’ll stop in just a sec. I think that’s something the senior pastor needs to know is you’re still on vision, even if you’re in a different capacity. Rich Birch — Yes. Rachel Long — I live to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ.
Rich Birch — Yep. Rachel Long — I’ve gotten to lead two kids to Christ in the counseling room with their parents there. Like there don’t negate that like that person might still be on vision, even though they don’t get the privilege of being on staff anymore. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — Absolutely. Rich Birch — Yeah, I can I can say that I’m I’m also attending a church that I was on staff at. And I’m like a volunteer. I was about to say just a volunteer, but I’m you know, I I actually it’s a privilege and honor to and I’ve you know, it’s fun to like stand back and be like I am a cheerleader and excited for that and excited for, you know, our leadership as we continue to move forward. Rich Birch — Danny, what about you? What happened to the Rachel-sized hole in the organization? You know, like, you know, when a senior leader like this leaves, that that does create, you know, you’re being kind, but that can create a bit of chaos in the organization. Because it’s like, okay, well, every my experience has been, and I’m sure this is the case with Rachel, the little bit I know her. She’s incredibly competent and you know there in some ways the organization ends up getting built around these people. That you know that we kind of end up we massage the org chart and it’s like there really is one person that could do this job. Their name’s Rachel Long and that’s normal. I don’t think that’s bad. That’s a normal part of this process. Rich Birch — So what did what did you do? How did the organization shift? What happened? Because I think it’s actually an interesting opportunity to think about it more from the positive side. Hey, we can make some changes here. We can look at this in a slightly different way. What happened in that you know, after Rachel stepped out? Danny Anderson — Yeah, so we’re in that right now. Still, it hasn’t been that long. So I think one of the indicators of how good a leader is, is what happens when they leave.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson — And you know, Rachel had three people that were reported to her directly: Allison, Aaron, and Cody. And those three people carry a ah heavy heavy lift across our entire church. And she led our church basically through them and others, but those were the three the three big players. And so those those team team members report directly to me for now. And it’s actually been it hasn’t been easy but it’s been it’s been delightful to learn like, okay these guys, like Allison’s incredible. Aaron Beasley’s a hustler, and you know Pastor Cody will do he’ll he’ll run through a wall for you. And so Rachel has she did there is a gap but there’s people there that are able to do the work. So so right now, I I have stepped into her role. It’s temporary until we until I can find another executive leader, but it hasn’t been chaos. It’s like, holy cow, what’s going on? Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — It hasn’t been that way. And so, Rachel, I don’t know if I haven’t had a chance to tell you this, but they those guys are killing it. And and I…
Rachel Long — I love it.
Danny Anderson — …and I attribute that to you training them, empowering them, building them…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson — …giving them confidence. And so, ah yeah, it’s it’s it’s pretty cool right now what’s going on. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. The the way I hear that, it Rachel, is that he replaced you with three people. That’s the way I hear it. But you know. The work that used to be done by Rachel is now done by three people. That’s what I hear.
Rich Birch — Rachel, kind of pivoting in a slightly different direction. It’s related, but it’s kind of in the neighborhood of this conversation. Let’s say I’m on staff at a church. I’m, you know, just give me a picture, a church of 1,500 people, maybe not quite as large as as you guys, but and I’m thinking, I’m thinking maybe I should reach out to my lead pastor. Maybe I’m an executive pastor. And I’m like, I’m I’m, I’m thinking the Lord might be leading me to this. Rich Birch — I had someone recently say this to me and they were like, what should I do? Um, should I go and, and there’s probably more than two options, but should I go and start having, should I talk to Vanderbloemen first, or should I go and talk to my lead pastor? You know, what help us through that, navigate that conversation. Rachel Long — Sure. Well, the first thing I think that you have to remember in this, as an employee, is it’s your responsibility to be authentic and to be following God’s leadership in your life first. Rich Birch — That’s good. Rachel Long — It’s not your pastor’s responsibility to make sure you’re following what God has led you to do. And you’re not responsible for your pastor’s reaction to what you’re going to say. Rachel Long — I think if you come in there, like Joshua Center was never an exit strategy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rachel Long — So if you come into a situation and you’re like, Hey, I’ve got this exit strategy. I’m ready to, I felt this way. I’ve talked to these head hunters. I’m ready to go. I mean, that is one way to do it, but you have to understand you’re choosing a corporate path. You’re not choosing a church path. And so, although we have a business to run inside a church to be good stewards, we are not a corporation in that manner.
Rich Birch — Good. Yep. Rachel Long — So there has to be space to prayfully consider it, seek wise counsel, like you would for anything as an executive pastor. And then you have to have the courage, the courage is in the telling. Rich Birch — That’s good. Rachel Long — And then knowing that you’re telling this to a human, that you could be hurting them…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rachel Long — …and God’s plan could be hurtful to them. So leave space for that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rachel Long — You would leave space if you were counseling a couple and you had to tell them something hard. Rich Birch — Yep. Rachel Long — You would leave space if you were telling something hard to an employee you manage. So, I mean, pastors are people. Your lead pastor’s a person. But you have to act in your own integrity in it.
Rich Birch — Right. Rachel Long — And and I wouldn’t say that I did that perfectly. I would say that there were pieces of the coaching that were super helpful to bring clarity. So if your pastor is for you and they’re seeking God’s will for like their staff, then then you’re going to get some more clarity in this. Rachel Long — Because we always think like, oh, it could go so terribly wrong. But what if it goes… Rich Birch — What if it’s a go terribly great? Rachel Long — …like hard, but good. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yes. Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Rachel Long — It doesn’t have to be easy. This has not been easy. I miss my staff every day. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Yeah, that’s good. Rachel Long — Every day. Danny Anderson — We miss you too. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good coaching. Because I think there are people who sit on this conversation and and are thinking like, hmm, you know, like, I don’t know, like I’m I’m feeling, I’m sensing the Lord might be moving me on, but I just don’t know what to do with that feeling. I don’t know what to do with that sense. And… Rachel Long — Sure. Rich Birch — and yeah, I think having the bravery to say like, Hey, I want to talk about this. But then also giving space. I think that’s a good word there, Rachel, like giving space to be like, Hey, this may not go well. This may be, and that’s okay…
Rachel Long — Yeah. Rich Birch — …but just because it won’t go well, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
Rachel Long — Yeah Rich Birch — Danny, what about you? So you yeah maybe there’s a, maybe you’re a lead pastor and you sense that there might be somebody on your team that is thinking about this. And maybe it’s just through, like, this is a unique situation because, you know, Rachel had, which I understand, folks that are listening in. Rachel had been working on this. It’s obviously an incredible passion project. And so in some ways you could kind of see that, but what would you say to a lead pastor who sees something like this bubbling in their team with a senior leader, somebody, you know, like an executive pastor type person? Danny Anderson — Yeah, I mean, I think that senior leaders, can they have an intuition about this stuff. You can see you could see some things ahead, otherwise you wouldn’t be the lead pastor. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Danny Anderson — And so I think you when you when you sense that, I think it’s it’s appropriate to start the conversation…
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — …to initiate the conversation and let the person know on the front, I am for you personally. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Danny Anderson — I am I am I am more passionate about you as a person than the product you produce for the church. And and you have to mean that and in in the core of your being. And that’s hard because we’re pastors, as you’ve already mentioned, Rich. We’re so focused on the work product and the productivity and the loss of the productivity, if this person should leave. And who’s going to fill that gap? And that’s going to cause, you know oh my gosh, do we have enough money? Like what where we…
Danny Anderson — There’s all kinds of things that that happen. But you have to you have to get in a mental space, in a spiritual space, where it’s like, Lord, I care about this person. I truly want to shepherd them through this process. And I want to be for them. I want to help i want to help them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Danny Anderson — God, if you have something else for this person, let me be part of helping them get to that space. Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — I mean, and that’s our jobs as pastors. We’re we’re trying to take people from where they are to where God wants them to be…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson — …in every aspect of their life.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Danny Anderson — And so why would that be any different for Rachel or anybody else on my team? It’s like, hey, let me be part of the solution with you. I love you. And, and so that. And now if you’re not there, you got to get there. Because that’s the ball game. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Danny Anderson — If you, if if that’s not true about you, you’ve got to kind of mature into that space. And, you know, I don’t know what to say to a person who’s not in that space, you know, other than you got to get there. Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, that’s good. Well, and it feels like um this, if you’re a lead pastor listening in today, or you’re any, we’re using that as the framework, but it could be any, so any person that oversees people. And you suspect that you don’t have the kind of relationship where someone would come to you, that that’s the place to start. It’s like, oh, okay, we’ve got to have a lot of that. What’s it like to be on the other side of me conversations?
Danny Anderson — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch — How, how can I grow? And what, you know, how can I serve you better? And what, because if you sense that your people aren’t, are so afraid to talk to you about this, then it’s like, we’re on a whole bunch of fronts, we’re losing already, right? We’re already behind the eight ball and we’re not able to, you know, necessarily live out the vision that God’s called us to. That’s good. Danny Anderson — Rich, I would I would also say, I know we’re coming down to the stretch here, but I would also say the pastors have to understand that that fear is there. It is there. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Danny Anderson — So it’s not like, is it you don’t have to wonder, it’s just there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Danny Anderson — So you have to be the one to to to alleviate that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Danny Anderson — And I would even go as far as to say that senior pastors should teach should do a staff development on this with their team.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Danny Anderson — Like devote a whole staff meeting. Like, hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna do 35 minutes of teaching on how do you leave well from our organization. And here’s my heart on the issue. And that, I mean, just coming from you in a staff meeting, that would be so, that’s setting the culture. That’s not gonna solve it necessarily, but it’s definitely gonna make it a little bit easier ah to that conversation.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. We wedid an interview a number of years ago with Jesse DeYoung from Flatirons. And they, Flatirons had a moment where um they actually asked their people if they would like to step off their team.
Danny Anderson — Wow.
Rich Birch — They provided, it was they kind of, it was during COVID and they they said like, hey, we would like, and I forget the number, but it was like 30 or 40% of their staff raised their hand and were like, yes. And that led them to this massive cultural change that they that they led through. And it was like, it was a a concrete moment when they realized, oh my goodness, there’s a large portion of our people would prefer not to work here than to work here. And but now on the back end of that, and they would say, man, God has used that transition.
Rich Birch — And I’m not saying you should do that, but but that idea of us going first and leading and raising the hand and saying, hey, we want to make this the best place for you, the healthiest place for you to to work at, which in this case, in the context of this conversation means you should be able to raise this conversation and not be in fear of it. That’s so good. Rich Birch — Well, as we come down to land, um why don’t we do kind of last words, Rachel, what would be your last piece of advice? Maybe for somebody from your seat that’s sitting in an organization thinking the Lord might, you know, have something for them. What would you say to them? And then Danny, same thing. But then the reverse of that from your seat. Rachel Long — Well, this is going to be a churchy answer. You need to pray through this. You need to fast over it. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep. Rachel Long — You need to seek wise counsel…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rachel Long — …and you need to do what you know you’ve been instructed to do in your own life. Because again, you don’t know if this is Abraham and Isaac moment, or you don’t know if this is Esther – at such a time as this. You don’t know. So and then I would say engage your leadership as soon as you can. I would have probably, if I had it to do over, have engaged even sooner with my leadership because…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Rachel Long — Engage them as soon as you can. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good little piece of advice there. Like, Hey, that’s a good nugget here at the end of that. Like if anything, default towards early is, you know, the way I would say that. Let’s get the conversation out there rather than, you know, don’t get so far down the road that it’s like, you’ve already decided you get one foot out the door. Let’s have the conversation early. That’s good. I like that.
Rich Birch — Danny, what about you from, from your seat as a, as a lead pastor? Danny Anderson —Yeah, I mean, just a closing thought. I again, I guess I’ve already said this, but you know put put your people in God’s hands. They belong to him. They’re not yours. They’re, God has loaned them to you for a period. Everybody’s an interim pastor. My friend, Shawn Lovejoy says that. And so hold them loosely, love them well. And when it’s time for them to move on, be their biggest advocate. You know, just go go to bat for them and honor them. You just can’t go wrong with that. Danny Anderson — And then I’ll the last thing I’ll say, Rich, is that for for senior leaders listening, ministry leaders, executive pastors listening, I guarantee you, guarantee you right now on your team, there’s two or three people that need to have this conversation, right now. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — And not and they’re not having it because they don’t have permission. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — And so I would I would act immediately…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Danny Anderson — …and because it’s it’s real. And so anyway, just put that little thought in people’s minds there. They need to take action quickly. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good nugget again, a great nugget at the end here. Hey, like the next all staff meeting, we should be talking about this. I should, I should reference this. You know, we need to create this kind of culture. That’s, that’s fantastic. Well, this is great.
Rich Birch — Rachel, where do we want people? We’ve got past episodes we’ll link to that you’ve been on. But where, if people want to get in touch with you, kind of track with what you’re up to these days, where’s that? And then the same with you, Danny. Where do we want to, what do we want to let let people know about on on each of your sides? Start with you, Rachel. Rachel Long — You can go to joshuacenter.org, very simple, joshuacenter.org. And if you want to email me rachel at joshuacenter.org, you’ll find everything we’re doing there and what the organization is about, upcoming events, information, everything’s there. Rich Birch — Love it. What about you, Danny? Danny Anderson — Yeah, you guys can check check things out on Instagram @dannyanderson23. I also have a podcast, Church Growth Unleashed. Rich, you’ve been ah an honored guest on that podcast. And also just wanted to let people know that we’re doing a leadership conference, Church Growth Leadership Conference in September. And Rich, you’re gonna be there.
Rich Birch — Love it. Looking forward to it. Danny Anderson — It’s very, very exciting. You’ll be one of our breakout speakers. So if people are interested in that, they can find that at Church Growth Unleashed. I think there’s a new website that just came out for that. So yeah, it’s pretty exciting. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s churchgrowthunleashed.org. You should check that out. It really will be a great, it’s gonna be a great conference. The lineup’s amazing. Except for me, somehow I squeaked in. So I’m excited to be there. That’ll be fun and to be there for sure.
Rich Birch — So thanks so much, friends. I appreciate you being here. Thanks for what you’re doing and just want to honor you for the good things that have happened in this transition. Take care, friends. Danny Anderson — Thank you, Rich. Rachel Long — Thank you.
Cut Prep Time, Boost Engagement: The Future of Preaching with Eric Smith
May 08, 2025
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Eric Smith, founder and lead pastor of Hope City Church in Florida and co-creator of SermonDone.
Are you a pastor who’s feeling the pressure of sermon prep each week? Wondering how you can save time on research and content creation without compromising the quality of your messages? Tune in as Eric shares how his experience as a church planter and pastor led him to create a tool that helps pastors streamline the sermon preparation process, saving valuable time while ensuring biblical accuracy.
Leveraging AI for sermon preparation. // Eric created SermonDone to help pastors simplify the sermon writing process. Recognizing that 83% of people choose a church based on the teaching, he developed a “sermon assistant” that provides biblically sound, personalized content to save pastors time on research without compromising theological accuracy.
Built to match your own style. // With SermonDone, pastors build a personal profile by uploading 15 of their best sermons. This allows the platform to learn each pastor’s teaching voice, theological background, preferred Bible translation, and style. Then the ideas and outlines generated by SermonDone feel authentic rather than generic.
Accelerate the research process. // SermonDone wasn’t created to write sermons for pastors but rather to accelerate research and brainstorming. It saves time on the heavy lifting of initial idea gathering and structure, allowing pastors to invest more energy into refining and internalizing their messages.
Series planning made easy. // The Planning Tab within SermonDone allows pastors to quickly outline sermon series, whether a six-week topical series or a 20-week walk through a book of the Bible. If the initial suggestions don’t fit, pastors can easily generate more options until they find the right fit for their context.
Designed with pastors in mind. // Unlike general AI tools like ChatGPT, SermonDone has theological guardrails and a pastor-centric design. It prioritizes scriptural integrity and helps pastors create small group questions, discipleship resources, and sermon slides—all from a single sermon upload.
Focused on better sermon delivery. // Eric’s vision for SermonDone is not just faster sermon preparation but deeper sermon impact. By saving time on early stages of writing, pastors can spend more time letting the message take root in their hearts, leading to more dynamic, engaging preaching.
Access SermonDone at www.sermondone.com and use it for free for five days, or use the code Rich20 to get 20% off the price. Learn more about Hope City Church at www.hopecityflorida.com.
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Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. We have got a repeat guest and you know what that means. We don’t, we rarely have repeat guests. We’re 800 some odd episodes in and it’s only been a handful of people that we’ve had on more than one time. And so you know what that means. You’ve got to lean in today because we’ve got somebody that we want you to hear from.
Rich Birch — We have got Eric Smith with us. He’s a part of an organization called SermonDone that I want to ah introduce you to today, if you’re unaware of them, but he’s also a practitioner. He is leading a church in Florida. He’s the founder and lead pastor of a church called Hope City Church, HopeCityFlorida.com. And he was ah previously a part of a church called Vaughn Forest City. Sorry, Vaughn Forest Church. Excited to have you on the show today, Eric. Welcome. Eric Smith — Thanks so much for having me back. It’s an honor to be with you and excited for our conversation today. Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be a good conversation. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit of the Eric Smith story. Tell us little bit about what you’re up to now. What what’s been on what’s been going on in your world since we last connected a few years ago? Eric Smith — Yeah. So, uh, since we last connected, ah my family and I moved to Southwest Florida, planted a church down here called Hope City. And we launched three and a half years ago. It’s been a wild ride. It’s been amazing. Eric Smith — And yeah, God’s just been doing incredible stuff, seen a lot of incredible growth numerically, spiritually. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m also in the business world with my wife, in the medical business ah that we have. And then ah about a year ago, started learning more and more about AI and just kind of had this conviction of how can we as the church leverage this tool to serve churches and to serve pastors. And so that’s what led me down this journey of SermonDone. Rich Birch — Love it. Why tell us a little bit about Hope City? Kind of unpack that story a little bit. It’s been pretty amazing what God’s been up to. You’re a humble guy. So I know you you know you don’t want to brag about it. It’s obviously a whole team of people. God’s at at work there. But tell us a little bit of what’s gone on the last three years, three and a half years. Eric Smith — Yeah, so we moved here December 19th of 2020. We knew a handful of people… Rich Birch — Great time to move. Great time to move. Eric Smith — Great time to move right in the middle of COVID. Yeah, I know. I had a lot of friends that were like, are you stupid, man? What’s wrong with you? You’ve lost your mind. Why are you moving to plant a church? Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — And I was like, I don’t know, man. I’m just you know I’ve already planted once in Jackson, Mississippi, the Metro Jackson in ’09. And God did incredible things there with a church called Vertical Church that’s still going and doing great things. Eric Smith — But anyway, so we, yeah, we moved here and we started ah medical practice that we have. And we started building our launch team. We launched the church 10 months after we moved. We went from 15 people to about 160 on our launch team. Rich Birch — Amazing. Eric Smith — Launched the church with over 400 October of ’21. And yeah, it’s just kept growing. Right now we’re seeing over 1,500 people in attendance…
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Eric Smith — …each weekend and we’ve launched a second campus back in October of late October of 24. It’s doing really, really well. But we’ve got we’ve got an incredible team. I’m blessed to have guys who’ve worked with me in the past who are part of my team again here.
Rich Birch — So good.
Eric Smith — And so just a lot of comfort familiarity and understanding of what we’re doing. And so, yeah, it’s been a blast. God’s doing some incredible stuff. We’re in a big capital campaign. We’re building a future facility for our Bonita campus, which is the original location. And so it’s just full speed blazing ahead. So we’re having fun. Rich Birch — Love it. Good. Well, excited to to watch that journey. It’s fun to watch for sure. So want to talk about SermonDone and AI. One of my convictions is there are two kinds of church leaders out there when it comes to AI. There’s those that are attempting to leverage it and figure out how can we use this tool to advance the gospel, to ah you know to lift those things that we do that you know maybe we can get a computer to help us with that. And then there’s those that are being left behind. Rich Birch — And I want to convince friends that you’re listening in. I want you to take steps towards um learning more about SermonDone, leaning in. But let’s talk about kind of the genesis of this. Where did SermonDone come from? Why you know why why are you investing time, effort, and energy into this? What’s the problem that you’re attempting to solve with SermonDone? Eric Smith — Yeah. So just a tiny little bit of a backstory. Pretty much my whole ministry career, and I’ve been doing this over 20 years, uh, has, I’ve just had a burning desire to help other churches and pastors. So I’ve, I started a church planting network in Mississippi called 242 that’s still going, helping plant churches. I’m part of Strategic Launch Network here, ah in the US now, and I get to volunteer and help with them. I’ve consulted, done all different types of stuff.
Eric Smith — And so um it was about a year ago as the conversation of AI was continuing to grow and accelerate. I was like, man, I love this tool. And I’ve always been kind of a forward thinking, open to using tools to be better in technology. And so it’s never been something I’ve been scared of. And so I was like, how do we utilize this to really serve pastors? And we all know that the top thing that pastors wrestle with is is delivering the sermon each week.
Eric Smith — 83%, according to studies, 83% of people come to the church based on the sermon. It’s it’s a big deal. And so how can we serve these churches? And so I began to research what’s out there what’s going on?
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Smith — And I’m not being critical of anything else at that time that was out there. I just couldn’t find anything that I felt like this really works for pastors which led me on a journey to connect with John Michael, who’s my business partner in this whole project. And we came together. He’s kind of the marketing/tech side. I’m the pastoral, and he’s been a pastor as well. Eric Smith — But after writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sermons, I was like, how do we create something that really comes alongside of a pastor and is the sermon assistant that they’ve always wished they had…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Eric Smith — …that could accelerate and generate content that’s biblically sound, that lines up with their theology, ah that lines up with their unique voice? How do we create something that’s like that? And so that began the journey of developing SermonDone. Our team of developers started working together, and that’s how we developed where we are today. Rich Birch — Love it. You know, one of the things, so I, you know, most of my career has been in the executive pastor seat, that kind of secondary seat, supporting some incredible communicators. And, you you know, one of the things I’ve seen over time, and you mentioned it, you know, 83% of the reason why people attend a church is because of the teaching. Rich Birch — And, um I remember, I don’t know, 15 years ago when that really, that light bulb went off inside of me. I’ve been working in church for a long time. I realized, man, we’ve got to organize as an executive pastor, I’ve got to help organize the life of the the rest of the stuff in a senior pastor’s world, a lead pastor’s world, to make it so that they can produce great messages, so that they can do a great job at that piece. It’s critically important. Rich Birch — And I when I heard about SermonDone, I was excited to learn more about it because I do think that, man, this is a tool. Love that idea of a sermon assistant you’ve always wanted. Tell us more about that. What how are you kind of living out that that dream with this tool? Eric Smith — Yeah, so we, one of my primary visions and passions in developing this was how do we create something that’s going to be really easy to use, because most pastors are new to new to AI, so that they can easily use that’s very easy to understand and learn, that also would line up with their voice and their unique writing style and come alongside them and give content to accelerate the research side of things. And so when we developed this, we wanted to make sure that there was almost like these guardrails or a fence, a protection ah that the pastor would have ah a confidence and a trust in what it was delivering and the content it was giving them. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Smith — And so we really worked hard on that. And yeah, so it’s it’s got several different elements within the platform. You know, you can sign up for free and use it for five days and use it as much as you want for those five days and play with it. And you’re going to see…
Rich Birch — This weekend’s sermon. You could do this weekend’s sermon. That’s great. Eric Smith — Yeah, well, and you know, it it has a lot that it offers.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Eric Smith — But I always tell pastors, use each element that it has or each section that it has based on your convictions, right? Everybody’s got different convictions about technology. And what we’re seeing, though, even since we launched SermonDone, is a lot more pastors are now warming up. Because what happened when AI first came out, everybody was like, oh, no, I don’t want the robot to write my sermon. I don’t want the robot to help me. I don’t It’s all going to be, how’s it going to be accurate and sound and all these type things? Eric Smith — I think some of those fears are starting to come down. And really creating SermonDone was to help pastors have something they could use and have confidence in it rather than just any type of chat that would be available online. This one actually has theological guardrails. Eric Smith — You build your own personal pastor profile, with your teaching style. You have the ability to upload up to 15 of your own sermons that you’ve written so that it knows your voice. And so when it’s giving you stuff, it’s understanding who you are, your theological heritage, your preaching style, the Bible translation that you prefer to use when you preach. All those type things to really come alongside you and help you and building out, outlines, planning sermon series, doing research.
Eric Smith — I’ll tell you one of the things that’s been so cool to me because sometimes you hear AI and people are like, oh, it’s going to make us all dumb. It’s just going to do all the work for us. Actually, it’s the reverse. I don’t know if you’re experiencing this, Rich, in many ways, but with me, with SermonDone, and I use it constantly, obviously, was the research side of things, it’s connecting dots in scripture that I never saw.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Eric Smith — And I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve got an undergrad degree in biblical studies, two masters, and I have a doctorate. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — Now my doctorate is a DMin. I’m not a PhD. I’m a practitioner. Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Eric Smith — But I mean, it’s just connecting dots. And I’m like, oh my goodness, I never saw this. This is amazing. And it’s just bringing things together for me. And I’m learning more than I’ve ever learned before. Rich Birch — Love it. I want to underline one of the things you said there. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve done research and worked with very large, fast-growing churches is we often, we get this perception that the teaching, it’s like some lone person, they go into a room and pull all that together and do it themselves and then get up there. Rich Birch — Now, that’s actually just not true. Teaching is a team sport in in lots of churches across the country where it’s a group of people behind the scenes. I’m literally talking about researchers, writers, comedians, people who are helping these communicators do what they do. And the part of what I love what you’ve done here is you’ve said, Hey, we want to give that to everybody.
Eric Smith — Yes. Rich Birch — Like, how do we hand that off to, because if I’m a church of, you know, 200, 500, 2000, I can’t afford to have a bunch of people working on my message, but I can’t afford SermonDone. Rich Birch — Let’s talk about the pastor profile. Cause this is one of the things when you told me about it, ah that really got me intrigued. You kind of blew up through a bunch there. Talk about the sermon style, the theological kind of tradition background settings. How does all that work? Eric Smith — Yeah. So just to be you know clear, SermonDone in general has a fence around it. Rich Birch — Yes. Okay, good. Eric Smith — And then and then what what brings it in even tighter for you that personalizes it is your profile. And so everything from uploading the 15 sermons, I think that’s maybe the most important element. I have 15 of my sermons and pick your favorite 15 that you’ve written. Oh, this is how I like things. Put those in there. Pick your theological heritage, because there are some nuances that in the sermon builder that it will pick up on on that. And then also what translation you use, right? Eric Smith — I don’t want it to be giving me ideas and then I’ve got to go in and change…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Smith — …the, you it’s like only giving me NIV and I use New American or whatever translation you use. And so that’s, that’s a big part of it. And then your preaching style, right? Eric Smith — So it’s going to help It’s really, it’s we never created this to like write sermons for you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Smith — It was created to be a partner and to assist you. And I loved what you said. Some of the greats that we’ve all looked up to, whether there be Charles Spurgeon, ah John Wesley, all these guys had assistants.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Eric Smith — Like they had people that served them. And so this is now available to all of us. And so the technology, it’s a beautiful thing. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — But yeah, so it takes all that information, along with already the fence we’ve built, and it curates that content uniquely to you. So it’s just an idea machine. It’s it’s giving you incredible ideas. I’ve had pastors that are using it and we’ve been trusted by hundreds of pastors now, which is pretty cool to see, even though we’re very early. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s amazing what some of the pastors have told me. Some of them that are like, man, I just, I get stuck on not knowing what to call the points that I have that go back to my main idea. And and they can put that in there and it’s it’s speaking in their language and their voice and it’s giving them those ideas. Eric Smith — And I know that, yeah, there’s an investment financially. It’s $99 a month. You can get it cheaper if you do a year, but you’re thinking 20 bucks a week. How much is your sermon worth? Rich Birch — Yeah. Eric Smith — If it’s the key factor that grows your church… Rich Birch — Right. Eric Smith — …we I spend more than that every week on coffee creamer in our church. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes. Eric Smith — And I mean, I listen, I love the coffee. We have really good coffee at our church, like really good coffee. Rich Birch — Yeah. Right, right. Eric Smith — But the sermon is a little more important.
Rich Birch — 100%.
Eric Smith — And I can make that investment, even if it just gives me a little bit extra, even if it just helps me a little bit more with my my research. The research is amazing in there as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, the way I think about it when I’ve been in there and messed around with it, I think about it like, you know, it’s a well-educated seminary student who’s doing my initial work. It’s like, hey, I’m going to do a message on this. And can you gather up a bunch of ideas for me? Which which I don’t know that that’s got to save hours, an hour, two hours. It’s the initial kind of, I find the highest value of it is the initial kind of heavy lift part of this, which isn’t, isn’t actually sermon writing. That’s like the, that’s the initial part. It’s like the gathering together, but then I got to get before the Lord wrestle with him. Eric Smith — Sure. Rich Birch — Hey, what is it that you want to, what is it that I should be saying? How do I um you know, how do I, whats what’s the kind of unique thing that I want to say? What is he wanting me to say to my people this weekend? But like, all let’s pull together all those initial ideas. Let’s get AI to do that initial work so that I can actually have more time and more energy to focus on the part that actually has got more, I would say, it’s more important to the overall kind of delivery ah you know of the message itself. Rich Birch — I love, I don’t want to go over. You talked about this, but I want to underline it for us. I love this idea of uploading your sermons. I, I think that’s super unique because it’s not just generic ideas. It’s like, here are some messages that when I think about what are kind of my core messages, I upload those and then your engine will will kind of take that into consideration as it’s producing.
Rich Birch — Can you give me a sense of how that’s modifying? Not the backend, the technology side of it, but what’s it doing to kind of modify or you know influence messages going forward? What’s that look like? Eric Smith — Yeah, so if it’s giving you ideas of, like, say say you’ve got your sermon, and you’re looking for, like, a big idea.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Smith — Or you know some people call it a big truth or or big idea…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Smith — …whatever your your main statement, ah just as this one simple example, right? It’s going to give you ideas that are in your, the way you would talk…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Smith — …not just generically…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Smith — …where it’s like, that doesn’t sound anything like me.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Smith — Because it’s got 15 of your sermons where it’s already studied you and understands uniquely how you communicate your unique voice, um your style, how you write. And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s super helpful in that way, how it can help develop that content for you that’s unique and that fits your unique voice. Rich Birch — Love it. There’s a ton we could talk about here. I want to jump to the planning the planning area. To me, as somebody who’s you know involved in worship planning, but not necessarily speaking, you know, I’m in the room when we’re talking about, hey, we need a six-week series on, we’re thinking about three weeks on that. I’m in that conversation pretty consistently. Talk to us about the planning tab. What how does that work? what give Give us some examples of what that looks like. Eric Smith — Yeah, so you just go into that tab and you put in, I want to a five-week sermon series on fear or whatever your topic is, and it’s going to give that to you. Or you could say, want to do a 20-week series through the book of Acts, and it’s going to give that to you. And if you don’t like what it gives you, just ask it to give you another option. Rich Birch — Give some other options. Yep. Eric Smith — And it’s just going to keep giving it to you until you get what you want. Eric Smith — But yeah, that’s that’s a really powerful tool. I’ll give you ah a real practical story.
Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Smith — Last last year, during the summer, I try to back off my preaching schedule a little bit like most leads pastors do. And so me and our campus pastor for our Alico campus, we were working and we spent like a day and a half, two days going through the Psalms. And we were like, we don’t want any Psalm to have the same theme. And and and and every different pastors are going to preach different things. And so literally we spent like two days just working on that. Eric Smith — And it was like, it was meaningless. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but it was, it was work it really didn’t, I mean, it just was organizational work. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — After I created SermonDone, it hit me one day and I put the same thing in and I was like, I did that in two minutes and it took me two days. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eric Smith — So that’s, that’s, that’s the kind of stuff where it’s like, man, that just saved me an insane amount of time. Eric Smith — And just just to be clear, the vision behind why I wanted to create this was I wanted to help pastors save time on the research and create an idea machine that would accelerate the writing process. Because I’m convinced that most pastors spend the vast majority of their time writing their sermon. They run out of time to work on the prep of delivering the sermon. And the result is sermons that are not that engaging. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Eric Smith — What if we could create a different reality? What if we could cut the sermon prep in half and then they could take that time and really focus on the delivery? There’s a there’s a option there’s a section in our website on SermonDone where I’ve created a masterclass on delivering sermon content. It’s completely free. It’s just part of the platform. And so that was the reason I created that masterclass.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Eric Smith — I created that masterclass because the heart behind this is not to just write people’s sermons. I don’t want a robot writing my sermon. I want as much assistance as I can get to write better sermons faster so that I can allow that sermon to take root in my soul. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Smith — Because what makes a great sermon is not what’s on the paper. It’s what’s in the pastor’s heart. Rich Birch — Oh, amen. Amen. Eric Smith — And when it gets into your soul, you’ve heard the analogy. We don’t want to microwave our sermons. We want them in a smoker or a crock pot. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s true. Yep. Eric Smith — You know, we we those sermons that get in the crockpot, that get in the smoker, man, when those are delivered, they’re fire. I’m convinced that most pastors are not engaging in their preaching, not because of what’s written on the paper.
Eric Smith — If you took… Pastor A and Pastor B, and one of the sermons was super engaging and amazing, and Pastor, the other one was not. You could look at their notes and go, wow, those are pretty much the same. Like they had the same points for the most part, scripture, all that. What is it that sets them apart? It’s the pastor who’s willing to spend the time in prayer and preparation…
Rich Birch — Amen, amen.
Eric Smith — …not just what’s written, but for what’s written to get into their soul, to get into their heart. And so if we can accelerate that, that’s the vision behind SermonDone, right? Let’s accelerate that. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Smith — And help a guy curate that information, help the the person curate that information faster so that they can really spend the time that they’re not getting now in the actual study of the sermon, getting it into their hearts so that when they deliver it, it is dynamic, it’s authentic as it should be. And it’s, it’s truly connecting with the hearer. Rich Birch — Amen. That’s so good. I love that. One of my, um I worked for Tim Lucas at Liquid Church, fantastic leader. I, you know, I put him up against, he’s like top five in the country in my mind. This guy’s a monster communicator. He is so good. And had the privilege of years of, you know, journeying pretty close with him on the sermon side of things. And I know still to this day, um I really am convinced a part of why he is such a good communicator is exactly what you’re talking about. They he does um out loud practicing of the message. Still, he’s you know almost 30 years in on this, you know church of 5,000 people, master communicator and he still stands in front of virtually empty room and is like I’m going to redo this and then gets feedback on that. Rich Birch — Man, if we could get people to to let’s get the boring, and again this this is my words not Eric’s words, don’t don’t send him emails, don’t send hate emails to him, send them me. If we can get the boring heavy lift part of it, the research part of it, the early steps… Eric Smith — Yeah. Rich Birch — If we can pull that off and give pastors more time on the the part that I agree is the part that actually connects with our people, man, we’re going to drive up engagement in in in churches all across the country, which is just incredible. I think that’s that’s amazing. Eric Smith — Well, and and I don’t want to sound like a heretic, but somebody may say that I am. I don’t know. But I’ve studied the Bible and I haven’t found a scripture yet that actually tells me to write a sermon. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Eric Smith — I’ve actually found a lot that say to preach the word. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Smith — And so now I’m not saying don’t write your sermon. I write sermons.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yes.
Eric Smith — I’ve written hundreds of them. I’m just saying, if you really want to get technical about it, our calling is to preach God’s word… Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Eric Smith — …to preach the Bible in an engaging and dynamic way that in the art, the art. And I have what you just said about preaching out loud. I have all that in the in the free masterclass. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Smith — And I talk about the art of preaching. The art of preaching is really, man delivering the message contextually where you are to connect with the people that you’re talking to in a way that makes sense. Rich Birch — It’s so good. Eric Smith — And a lot of guys, I’m not being mean, but they’re just not making sense.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Eric Smith — And I really believe it’s because they’re spending all this time writing and they’re getting bogged down in the writing and they’ve written it and they think, oh, I know it. And then they step on stage and they really don’t know it. Eric Smith — And what Tim has done, I’ve done as well. I mean, I’ve preached my, I used to preach my sermon to my dog when I didn’t have anybody but me. And we started the church in Mississippi.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Eric Smith — My dog heard every sermon. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Smith — That dog was, that that that dog was a strong Christian, man. Rich Birch — Sanctified, that’s a sanctified dog Eric Smith — That’s a sanctified dog. He got saved and born again so many times, man. It was wild. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Rich Birch — Absolutely. Love it. Yeah. Well, Mark, Mark Clark, we had Mark Clark from ah Bayside on early in this year. Eric Smith — Yeah. Rich Birch — And I I dove in with him around teaching and same thing. I was like, hey well, let’s let’s pull the lid off. Tell me about your actual process. And he talked about the same thing. He’s like, listen, Saturday morning, I’m out in a shed in my backyard and I’m, and I am preaching. And again, giant church, hugely influential communicator working on the delivery part of it. Man, if we could get more churches working on that. Rich Birch — Now, I I would be remiss if I don’t ask. I know there’s people that are listening in and they’re thinking, like, wait a second. Why don’t I just use ChatGPT for this? Why don’t I why don’t I just use Llama or you know some other AI model that’s out there? Um, why why invest with you guys? Why spend the money to do that? Uh, playing a bit of a devil’s advocate, help us understand that. Eric Smith — Sure. Yeah, no, that’s that’s a great question. I use Chat for a lot of things um that are, you know, outside of my my Bible, biblical research, sermon research stuff. But one of the things that’s unique about Sermon Done is it’s built with those biblical guardrails. And so it’s going to deliver content to you that you can be confident in. Eric Smith — Where Chat, you know, it’s it’s it’s kind of more open, where this is going to prioritize the answers to be scripture driven. It’s designed to reflect that that biblically grounded response, the scripture rooted responses. It’s also understands that you’re a pastor because of your profile, it knows your voice, all those unique things. Eric Smith — And so it’s delivering that content uniquely to you. And so I think those are the big things. And then the other thing too is we’ve spent, I don’t know, I can’t even tell you how many hours…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Smith — …building out these prompts on the backend that you can’t see as the user… Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Eric Smith — …that are helping, you know, even on the research, when you go in there, all the different prompts that are prebuilt to help you. And so it’s a great, great tool, especially for those who are just getting into AI for sermon writing. And so those are some of the other, some of the things, obviously. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Eric Smith — You know, that’s that’s the big thing, right? Is the theological framework, your sermons, all those type things compared to using ah any other source. Eric Smith — And you know every pastor that would watch this, and I know there’s a lot of XP, so make sure to share with your pastor on this one, if he whoever preaches at your at your place. But I would say that we all, most pastors have a budget for research and books. Rich Birch — Yep. Eric Smith — This is only $100 a month. Rich Birch — Yeah. Eric Smith — And actually, I think people can use RICH20 and get 20% off. Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s great. Eric Smith — And so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a small investment. Give it a shot. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it, at least download and use it for five days for free…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Smith — …and go watch the sermon masterclass that’s on there for free. And then you can, you know, you can cancel your membership if you don’t like it. But at least do that because I’m telling you truly my heart and desires to just help pastors to be more successful, to build the kingdom, to reach more people. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Smith — And I believe the greatest way we reach more people is by writing sermons that connect and preaching sermons that connect. At least that’s what the stats tell me. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Listen, friends, I want a hearty endorsement. I really do want you to try sermondone.com. Drop by there. Like you say, try the five, five day trial, use that code rich done. You’ll, get you’ll save some there. The amount of money we’re talking about is small in comparison to the value of the importance of the teaching. Even if you try it for a couple months, I’ll push back on Eric a little bit and say, I would try it for a couple months. Rich Birch — Like, you know, there are going to be, there are going to be a time, use it week in, week out, and you’re going to, you’re going to hit on a week where you’re like, man, things are extra busy this week. There’s a crazy thing going on. The fact that I was able to jumpstart into my process, still do all the stuff I need to do to make it deliver. Man, you’ll see you’ll see huge value you know throughout your time with it. Rich Birch — So again, just drop by SermonDone. I would strongly encourage you to do this. There’s a bunch of stuff in here we haven’t talked about. There is kind of post-sermon resources, discipleship resources. You can upload upload your sermon and it’ll generate for you. Talk us through what does what is that part of it as well. Eric Smith — Yeah. So it does small group curriculum, does small group questions. You can upload your sermon and it’ll extract and create a TXT file that you send to your production director for your sermon slides. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Smith — It really has a lot. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — And we’ve got some other amazing features. I don’t know when this ah podcast is going to air… Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — …but we’ve got one that being developed right now when you upload your sermon, it’s going to help curate develop a children’s curriculum that goes along with the sermon. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Smith — Now, in your Sermon Builder, you can actually write youth sermons. You can pick your audience when you get into the Sermon Builder. But this is going to be a little different where you upload the completed sermon and it creates that content. So we’ve got pre-sermon research. We’ve got outline ideas. We’ve got sermon planning, series planning. We’ve got the discipleship side of things. There’s so many different features that are in there. It’s really… a one-stop shop for all sermon content development. And we’re continuing to improve and make it better every day. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s two things to to underline there that I want people to hear. This is just at the front end. You guys are working on new stuff that’s going to make this even better down the road. At some point, I’ve told them, I think 100 bucks is too cheap. I think they should charge more, but that’s just me. Rich Birch — And you eventually they’re going to say, hey, we’ve added all this other stuff on. I would get in now. Now’s a good time to jump on board – SermonDone. And the other thing, i I had sent this tool to a number of teaching pastor friends of mine. I said, hey, can you mess around with this? And one guy came back and said, Dude, the resource, the discipleship resource tab alone is worth $100. Like ah coming up with those questions at once the thing is done is painful. So, you know, ah just doing that alone um is is worth the, you know, the price of admission.
Rich Birch — So ah friends, I would, ah you really should pick this up and, and you know, get this ball rolling again, sermondone.com. Just as we as we come to land, I’m sure we’ll have you on in the future, there’s going to be new stuff that’s going to come out. I want to make sure people try this. Anything else you want to say eric just as we wrap up today’s episode? Eric Smith — Yeah, just thanks so much for taking the time to hear about what’s going on. And, you know, I’m just I’m thankful to have the time together and excited to see how the Lord’s going to use this to serve pastors, to help you get better to develop content faster. And I was joking about just cancel. I agree with Rich. Give it given a couple months. Rich Birch — Yes. Eric Smith — Give it a couple months. And once this becomes part of your process, and I just want to say one last thing. When we created SermonDone, a lot of the sermon writing assistant type things that are out there, they want you to change your process and fit into their box. Rich Birch — That’s good. Eric Smith — One of the things I did not want, I’ve been preaching for over 20 years, and a lot of the listeners on here have been preaching for many years. They’ve got a system. And once a pastor finds a routine and a system, they like it. Rich Birch — Oh, 100%. Yes. Eric Smith — Right? This is a tool to improve and speed up your process, not change your process.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Eric Smith — I think that’s a… when I, when I built the way it works and I saw it in my mind, I wanted it to fit. And this is created by pastors for you as a pastor to preach and to create content. Rich Birch — Love it. Eric Smith — And even for XPs that preach, you know, just a few times a year, it would be well worth your investment. Rich Birch — Absolutely. For sure. Eric Smith — And you can get even a bigger discount with the annual membership. So. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Great. This has been so good. So we’ll send people to sermondone.com. If people want to track with you, ah Eric, or at the churches, where do we want to send them on online if they’re interested in kind of tracking along with you? Eric Smith — Man, I have to confess, I’m pretty terrible when it comes to building a brand. I’m like…
Rich Birch — All good. All good.
Eric Smith — …just Hope City, hopecityflorida. Florida is spelled out dot com. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. Eric Smith — And then, you know, my name is so generic. You can find me on Facebook, though. I think I need to open some other social media accounts, but I’m I’m not good at that. So maybe I’ll have my team focus on that. Rich Birch — It’s all good. Yeah, that’s great. Eric Smith — Thanks so much, though. Rich Birch — This has been great. Thanks for being here today, friends. Again, heartily endorse SermonDone. I really would encourage you to to try to check it out. It really is a great way to get the the kickstart to your sermon process. Thanks so much for being here, Eric. Appreciate you being here today. Eric Smith — Thanks.
The #1 Question Growing Churches Should Be Asking Now with Aaron Stanski
May 01, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re joined today by Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, a church design and project management firm that helps growing ministries align their physical spaces with their mission. With a background in engineering and church leadership, Aaron brings unique insights into how churches can strategically plan for future growth through facility design and proactive planning.
Are you leading a growing church and starting to feel the squeeze? Wondering what to prioritize when your parking lot’s full, your kids’ spaces are stretched, and your worship center is near capacity? Tune in as Aaron shares a practical framework for addressing facility constraints, avoiding project panic, and preparing now for sustainable growth in the future.
Not all churches are in decline. // Despite negative prevailing narratives, Aaron affirms what many leaders are seeing: healthy churches are growing—rurally, urbanly, and everything in between. These ministries are investing in evangelism, discipleship, and their communities. With that momentum, however, comes the inevitable question: are your physical spaces ready to support your growth?
The constraints framework. // To help churches think clearly about facilities, Aaron introduces the “constraints framework.” Ask: If your church attendance doubled in the next year, what would break first? By identifying constraints early, leaders can focus resources strategically—before growth stalls.
Predict the pinch points. // Common facility constraints include parking shortages, overcrowded kids’ environments, and limited worship center seating. But other “second-tier” constraints—like insufficient special needs space or lack of adult discipleship areas—can also hinder growth in less obvious ways. Proactively identifying and solving these limitations is key to unlocking your next wave of impact.
Don’t skip the site plan. // Church expansion is often slowed by regulatory issues related to zoning, parking ratios, or city permits. Many churches underestimate the time involved in updating or expanding a site plan. Aaron recommends master planning early so leaders have options when space gets tight.
Plan, don’t react. // Too many facility projects begin in panic—after leaders realize they’ve hit a wall. Instead, Aaron encourages a posture of proactive planning. A key part of that is Risepointe’s Needs Analysis—a one-day, on-site process that results in a strategic plan outlining opportunities, costs, and next steps to prepare for the future.
Stewarding the opportunity. // While building costs and material prices fluctuate, Aaron warns against letting fear hold churches back. Instead of being reactive to market pressures, leaders should focus on what they can control—clarity of vision, alignment of resources, and readiness to act when God opens doors.
Facilities as a gospel stage. // Aaron shares the inspiring story of Downtown Cornerstone Church in Seattle, a congregation that endured significant delays, regulations, and even seismic retrofitting—but ultimately moved into a new building that now serves as a powerful platform for mission in the city. Facilities, Aaron reminds us, are not the mission—but they enable the mission.
To learn more about Risepointe’s Needs Analysis, visit risepointe.com. Download the free resource, 10 Things to Get Right Before You Build, here.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am really looking forward to today’s conversation. Got both an expert and a friend on the podcast, a return guest, which means we got high value here. We’ve got Aaron Stanski with us. He is the founder and CEO of Risepointe. They’ve got 15 plus years of church design, leadership, project management experience. They provide creative design solutions that really remove lids ah that prevent growth in ministries. They work with churches and schools and nonprofits on architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, so much more. They are incredible leaders. And Aaron is the guy at the tip of the spear. Welcome to the show, Aaron. So glad. Welcome back. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Thanks, Rich. Good to be here. Rich Birch — Always good to always good to see you. And yeah, maybe for folks that don’t know, give us the Aaron Stanski story. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — Compress that down, and then we’ll jump into today’s I got a burning question for you today, Aaron. Aaron Stanski — Sweet. Yeah. Well, I mean, I grew up in ministry, Rich. My dad was a pastor. We actually planted a church out in Boston when I was a kid. So I like to think I have some church planter blood in me there. Rich Birch — Love it. Aaron Stanski — Went to school for engineering, did that for a while with Harley Davidson motorcycles before ending up leaving that and ah joining staff with Cru and then with my church. So I was on staff at my church for a while. Aaron Stanski — We went through a big building project. And since I had engineering experience, I sort of got tapped to help out there. So I had to hire, interview architects and engineers and AV consultants and all that stuff. And so I loved it. I actually got to take the engineering mind that God had created me with and sort of the ministry heart and bring those two things together. Rich Birch — Love it. Aaron Stanski — And now that’s what I get to do. I get to help churches and Christian schools all over the country figure out how to align their facilities with their mission and vision and go through big projects. So it’s super fun. Rich Birch — Love it. I love I love to have Aaron on when we’re thinking about, you know, really anything to do with facility stuff. He is, if you were to email me and say, Hey, I’m thinking about facility stuff. Who should I talk to? I would say, talk to Aaron cause he’s a great, he’s super generous. Thing I love about him is he actually does love the local church. There are folks in this space who are like, they’re just trying to sell you something, or at least that’s the impression I get. I don’t know if that’s true. I can’t read a person’s heart, but I get that impression from other folks. That’s definitely not Aaron. He really loves churches. And I was thinking about this question recent, Aaron…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and I thought, man, I want to get him on the show to talk about it. So, you know, I my mission is to help a hundred churches grow by a thousand people. I interact with growing churches…
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — …all across the country and which is fantastic. And just recently I had a mutual friend say, you know, there’s this, this neg this negative narrative about the local church that it’s like, oh, all churches are in decline. They’re all not going anywhere. Things are terrible. But that’s just not true.
Aaron Stanski — No. Rich Birch — There are hundreds, thousands of churches that are making a difference all across the size spectrum of all different sizes.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, 200, 2000, 20,000 that are growing. And I’d love to kind of talk about it from that perspective today. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — Hey, let’s assume that our churches are growing, and I come to you and I’m like, hey, we’re growing. What should I be thinking about? What are some kind of questions we should be wrestling with? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. And I mean, I get that same thing too, Rich. I mean, I had ah an interview with a potential employee last week, and he was like, you guys just work with churches and Christian schools. He’s like, is there going to be work like next year? Are churches doing well? Rich Birch — Yes. Aren’t they all closing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aaron Stanski — And I was like I was like, well, first off, we’re working with amazing churches that are like rolling up their sleeves, that are getting after it when it comes to evangelism and discipleship and serving their local community. And I was telling this guy, I was like, man, I don’t put a whole lot of stock in like political solutions for some of the problems that we’re facing. Rich Birch — Right. It’s so true. Aaron Stanski — But man, when I see the local church just rocking it and engaging their community… Rich Birch — So true. Aaron Stanski — …wrestling with tough questions, serving the poor, preaching the gospel. I mean, those churches, they’re growing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — And we see those all over the country um in really difficult, ah you know, downtown urban environments, all the way out to rural ah people driving 45 minutes to an hour to experience what God’s doing. So it’s really exciting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. It’s true. The local church done well is an unstoppable force for good. Aaron Stanski — It is. Rich Birch — I really do believe that. And, you know, it’s a privilege to serve some of those folks. But I know, like, let’s try to get in the head of a growing church. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, you know, maybe you’re ah maybe you’ve gone from two services to three services and you’re like, oh, gosh, I and how many services are we going to do? Are we going to end up with 25 services? Or like you stand out on a Sunday morning, you just happen to come in late and your parking lot is like completely full.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — Or like your kids ministry people are sending you pictures mid-service of like, there are way too many kids in this room. What what would what are some of the questions? How would you help a church like that start to wrestle through this question? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and those are great questions. Those are great problems to have. Right?
Rich Birch — So true.
Aaron Stanski — But one of the things ah that we’ve been working on a little bit is, is kind of what we call our, the constraints framework. Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Stanski — And this certainly isn’t original thought with Risepointe. I mean, this is just a business principle that says, Hey, ah if you had to, if you, if you had to grow or double the size of your business, what would be the first things to break? What are the constraints that are preventing you from doing that? Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And you take that first constraint and you throw all your resources, you attack that first constraint until it’s solved, and then you move on to the next one. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Aaron Stanski — And I’d say so, you know, we’ve been walking a similar process through with churches and saying, OK, you know, if you had to double your attendance over the next year, like what would break first? Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Aaron Stanski — Or if you had to bring online twice as many seats in the next year, like how would you go about doing that? And so to, you know, predictively look at, okay, what breaks first, certainly like their systems and their strategies, there’s people processes involved in there. But when we’re looking at buildings, right, when we’re looking at projects and facilities and sites, those problems tend to take years to solve. Aaron Stanski — And so we have to look at those things and say, okay, when is the building, when is our parking, when do seats or kids space, when do one of those things become the lid? And then start to plan around that solution.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Aaron Stanski — And there’s lots of different solutions, right? I mean, multisite and add like you mentioned, adding services and stuff. But measuring the cost of those and figuring out what we are going to do in order to continue to grow. Rich Birch — Are there… Well, first of all, I love that. What you know, what would happen if your church, if your attendance doubled in the next year, what would break? That is a compelling question. That’s, man, that’s a great even let’s pull our leaders together for an afternoon and ask that question together and say, hey, let’s let’s think about this really clearly. Rich Birch — Because, man, what I would hate is that it’s actually constraints we’ve put in. Maybe we’re we’re actually preventing that growth because of the way our facility or whatever is built. Now, are there areas that you’re seeing on the facility side that are just common constraints that are like, you know, man, we just see people bumping up against this issue or that issue time and time again. Is there an area that you would kind of direct people to be thinking about? Aaron Stanski — Well, the easiest ones to just sort of see and observe, ah you know, if you’re in church leadership…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — …you know, parking lot is pretty easy to see and observe.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — Like you’ll probably have some volunteers report back to you or even your first impressions guests say, hey, we saw some people drive through the parking lot, not find a spot and drive out. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Aaron Stanski — And that’s just heartbreaking, right, on the ministry side of things. Aaron Stanski — Also seats in the auditorium. That’s a really easy one to measure and see just because we can observe it. I’d say we we tend to look out at a 60% full auditorium and think like, man, this is it’s pretty full. There may be some capacity there. So you do want to like actually count, ah but seats are a little, an easy one. Obviously kid space. If you’re If you’re like, hey, we had to start turning families away. The second grade classroom was you know at capacity for volunteers or something. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — So those are those are the easy ones. I think the the second tier of things tends to be a little bit more difficult. And that tends to be like, hey, like meeting some of the you know maybe specific needs in and around your community. We’ve had lots of churches say that, hey, we didn’t realize there was such a need for you know special education, ah you know, you know, people with disabilities and things like that for our kids ministry. And so opening space for them actually really grew that ministry because we we weren’t even thinking about it. Aaron Stanski — Same can be true for like adult education or like, you know, providing small group space for people that might not want to meet in homes, ah maybe people who recently accepted Christ, you know, young Christians, things like that. So there’s sort of a second tier of space that we take a look at to say, hey, is there something else where if we if we could provide that space, we’d help we’d see our ministry grow. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, you can see, you know, the kind of those big three, the adult space, the kids, the parking, how those would bubble to the top pretty quickly. But there might actually be some of these other, you know, special needs for kids or adult meeting space that could that could actually be holding us back that that we’re not seeing clearly.
Rich Birch — Is this related to, I know there’s this whole area in your, I’m going to sound dumber than I actually am on this question. So, because I want to be like, I know a little bit about this, but just enough to be dangerous. This connects to like site plan type stuff too. I often wonder, like I’ve heard of churches, they’re like, oh, we’re going to add on to this thing. But then they bump into a site plan issue. Aaron Stanski — Right. Rich Birch — What is a site plan? And why is it that why should we be thinking ahead on that when we think about here are these things that take multiple years to wrestle through. I’ve heard of people like, oh, it took us two years to get the site plan sorted out with our town or, you know, X number of months whatever. Aaron Stanski — Right. Right. Rich Birch — How does that relate to this issue? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, part of it is just like, it it’s a process of planning ahead, right? And so being intentional and strategic with our planning.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — Hopefully the site plan doesn’t take a couple of years to pull together. That seems a little ridiculous to me…
Rich Birch — Excessive.
Aaron Stanski — …just as a church guy out here. But what we really need to do is is start to measure and say, okay, what are what are some of the need, once we have the constraints, what are the options that we have to solve those constraints? And if you go to try to start solving those things, whether it’s parking lot flow or access or more kid space or something, and your site taps you out, that’s an indication that you might need to relocate or look at a different strategy, multisite or something else like that. Aaron Stanski — And so that master planning, that needs analysis looks at all of your needs and that would include like deferred maintenance, roofs, air conditioning units, all of those things, and then future planning, and then combining that with costing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …and saying, okay, what are what are the steps we’re going to have to take to continue to make room for more as we grow? And so when we see churches doing an amazing job of this, they’re planning ahead. They have a strategy for their facilities, like they would um their programs and things like that. Rich Birch — Yeah, groups ministry or whatever, yeah. Aaron Stanski — And they’re saying, OK, over time, this is where we want to move to. And those same churches, I mean, they’re due they’re overlapping the the strategy for their physical spaces with um like hiring leaders, right? And getting the right staff people in place, people who have been there before, have gone through projects, have led multisite stuff. And so it’s ah it’s a planning, it’s process, and then it’s the the physical as well. And and having sort of an all-inclusive strategy for all three. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve I got to be honest. I feel like a lot of the projects I’ve been involved with are mostly reactive. It’s like, we’re like, oh my goodness, we’re growing. Or like we had this building given to us. Or we’re thinking about, you know, this opportunity and we’ve kind of scrambled rather than, I love that idea of kind of being, hey, let’s be a bit more thoughtful, methodical. Hey, when we hit this, you know, we hit this level that should really trigger us to be thinking about that sort of thing. Is that what that looks like when I’m literally trying to imagine…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …what would it be like to be proactive on the facility…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …side rather than just constantly reactive. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, if we’re fighting fires, that’s a, that’s a bad sign, right? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. True. Aaron Stanski — Especially since, I mean, and I deal with this a lot. I mean, churches will call us and say, Hey, we’re out of space. And I’m like, shoot, if we had started a year and a half ago, like we could be having a much, a much more productive conversation around some of this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …rather than ah putting together a plan to get us through the next couple of years, instead of putting together a plan, they’ll actually like multiply impact over the next couple of years. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And this is what this is, you know, editorial note for folks that are listening in. This is part of the reason why I love Aaron and his team is really, you you should see them as like ah a facility partner, a, you know, somebody that’s going to journey with you over an extended period of time. You actually do this thing called Needs Analysis that I’ve I’ve recommended multiple friends do. Can you kind of tell us about what that process is? I find, I you know, I bet you every couple of weeks I’m in conversation with somebody like, do you know so Aaron Stanski at Risepointe. You should talk to him about Needs Analysis. What is that? That’s Aaron Stanski — Well, thanks for telling people about us, Rich. I appreciate it. No, um the Needs Analysis is a customized process for each individual church or ministry…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — …where we get on site with you and your team for an entire day. And we really wrestle to the ground ah the issues that you’re facing with your facility, the questions that you have. And we we come back to you 30 days later with sort of a master plan, some some sketches, some recommendations around how to move your facility forward. And we do that alongside of some costs. So what are most churches spending in order to solve these issues? And so for a lot of church leaders, that’s what they need, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — They need a report that says, okay, here’s the three options. Here’s what it costs. Great. Now we can pray through those things and figure out what God’s calling us to move forward. So ah most churches that work with Risepointe, like have us do a Needs Analysis at some point in time. Rich Birch — Right Aaron Stanski — It’s a great first step if we’re you know trying to get out ahead of things and really plan. Rich Birch — Yeah. And it’s, it’s, uh, I think, as an outsider, as I’ve seen churches that have benefited from that, it’s the this great kind of peanut butter and honey or peanut butter and chocolate of it’s high level enough that, Hey, we can make some strategic decisions on this thing. Like it’s like, Hey, we’ve, we can see. But it’s detailed enough that we can dive in and get a real clear sense of where things are at. Obviously it’s not a full plan it doesn’t drive to the you know the the the final paint color on a wall somewhere.
Aaron Stanski — Right, right.
Rich Birch — But it does give you enough it gives you a enough knowledge as a leader to say, okay here’s something we should be thinking about. Here’s you know here’s here’s where here’s some decisions we need to be making in this next step. I think it would be great for folks.
Rich Birch — I’d love to pivot in one other direction. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — And then actually two other things I want to talk about. One, it’s little bit of a curve ball. It’s up on, you know, the tip of our tongues. Tariffs, ah you know, is this impacting on the facility side? You know, we got to but buy lumber. We had a project that we were a part of…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …where we literally delayed, because of the price of steel, we delayed the project by six months. Because we thought, hey, that we can, and we it worked out. The price of steel went down and we, because we we’re buying this giant hunk of steel for the roof for the roof of this building. Aaron Stanski — Wow. That’s great. Rich Birch — Talk to us about, you know, are you getting those calls? What do you think it’s going to impact your people? What do you think? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely getting that question a lot. I mean, you know, there’s a lot more, you know, energy and hype around the social media than actually exists…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Aaron Stanski — …when you talk to contractors and suppliers and some things like that. We’re definitely seeing some prices go up and some prices go down. And really, there’s more of an emotional response to the tariffs at this point…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …than than an actual physical response that we’re seeing. So, yeah, I mean, I’m sure it’s going to affect some things positively and some things negatively. For most churches that are going through a construction project, though, there’s enough variety in what it is they have to buy…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …that if one item was a little bit more and another item was a little bit less, it typically would offset each other. Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Stanski — I mean, in the example that you gave where you had like this huge chunk of steel, if you have someone that can predict what the the market is going to do and predict what ah the president may or may not tweet, then I would definitely recommend that strategy. Wait until prices come down. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aaron Stanski — But for the most part, I mean, it’s unpredictable. There’s definitely a cost there. We’re just paying attention to it. We’re just like leaning into the things that we can control and we’re leading out with what God calls us to do. Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And, and we’re kind of leaving the the rest of him, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s very similar. I’ve said in other contexts around this, like, I don’t think we should let this hold us back. You know, they if you’re, we don’t want to be on the back foot. We want to be on the front foot. Aaron Stanski — Yep. Rich Birch — And, you know, the reality of it is, I think from a kingdom opportunity point of view, we’re in no better season than I’ve seen in my ministry career. I think it’s a great time for us to be out thinking about projects like this. And so, man, I I would hate for us to hesitate in this moment. I understand, even when I asked the question, I realized the tariff situation can change really quickly. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — It’s like, you know, by the time we do this, maybe there’ll be no more tariffs. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, who knows? Rich Birch — But actually get it out. But but I wouldn’t want it to hold us back. Like let’s keep focused, friends, on what we, you know, what we’re called to do. And we want to be wise. We don’t want be silly, but I also don’t want us to to delay. I think we want to keep focusing on the future for sure. Rich Birch — Related to that, would this whole idea of like, how do we keep you know leaning in and keep moving forward on this front? I was in a building recently that I was a part of. It was not a Risepointe project that was a part of. It’s it’s now 15 years old. Aaron Stanski — Okay. Rich Birch — I walked into that building and I was like, oh, wow, this feels very old. This feels out of date very quickly. When we built that building, it was like very modern. It felt very but it’s amazing how quickly things get kind of out of… Aaron Stanski — Trend. Rich Birch — I don’t know what. Trend, or whatever. And, and it didn’t, it wasn’t even that it was like we were using colors that… it just felt the thing felt tired. How do we avoid that? How do we, and are, are there rhythms we should be thinking about on this front? Like not always just thinking about the next campus, but going back and kind of backfilling, you know, our existing locations. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, ah design changes and it it feels like design is changing about as rapidly as technology is changing these days. You know, so you know one of the things that we’re really kind of you know trying to lean into, you know is this this idea of creating like almost canvases. So how do we create canvases? How do we create you know sort of these these neutral palettes where we can come in and accent those things with things that feel on trend, relevant, ready to go. But then we can actually, you know, kind of replace some of those things, whether it’s furniture…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …or, you know, materials or signage or some things like that, so that it doesn’t like sit stagnant for 15 years. Anything that just sits there for 15 years ah is going to feel old. Even, i mean, even car manufacturers and what they’re trying to do to reinvent car designs at a much rapider pace than they used to. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — So a car that’s like five years old looks like an old Honda Accord versus the ones that just came out. Right? Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — And so we’re going to see the same thing. And so, yeah, I mean, just trying, you know, trying not to be too trendy to begin…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …with is actually really going to help you out. Rich Birch — Yeah, I think that makes sense. I can see that. When we’re doing our projects on the front end, let’s think about the fact that five years from now, we’re going to have to come back and do something. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — So how do we design it in a way that, you know, we can make a few replacements, we don’t need to like, you know, rip out this entire wall or whatever, you know, it’s that’s interesting. Rich Birch — You were telling me a story about a church. I want to make sure we tell that story… Aaron Stanski — Oh, yeah. Rich Birch — …to folks that are on, that are listening in. This is incredible. You should lean in friends. This is a really cool story of kind of how God has used this whole conversation ah to really help a church make impact. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I’ll go for a little bit here for sure, Rich. But yeah, I mean, I was just reflecting on the fact that, I mean, construction projects and raising money and and dealing with our facilities. I mean, this is not the reason most of us got into ministry, right? Rich Birch — So true. Yes.
Aaron Stanski — And there’s definitely you know these seasons ah you know that God calls us to anyway ah that just require a different level of resilience and a different level of stick-to-it-edness. Aaron Stanski — I was thinking ah ah back about Hebrews 10:35-36. It says, therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance so that when you’ve done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. Right? And the writer of Hebrews, it’s like, you know, um you know, really pushing this idea of resilience and living a life that glorifies God. Right? And he’s exhorting us to preserve, to persevere ah during hard times. Aaron Stanski — And so I was just thinking about some of the most difficult projects at Risepointe that churches have kind of gone through. And one of them ah is actually the story of downtown Cornerstone Church. This is a church that we worked with in Seattle. And ah they were a church plant about 14, 15 years ago. So they did the whole portable thing for a few years. And then they actually leased an old nightclub. And so they moved into that nightclub, ah saw God do some tremendous things, but they really quickly, you know, kind of ran out of space there. Rich Birch — Wow. Aaron Stanski — And they’re just in a jurisdiction that doesn’t like church, right? Like they don’t they don’t they don’t like seeing, you know, very expensive real estate, you know, being taken up by nonprofits and things like that. And so they prayed for years ah to find a space, to find a building, and God provided this awesome building for them. That’s a story in and of itself. Aaron Stanski — But it turned out that this this building was historically protected. And that means that they had to go through, you know, yeah we had to walk them through a completely other process with the historic board in the city of Seattle. And then the building itself had some really difficult challenges with code issues and energy. And it just felt like it kept dragging on and on. We had to seismically upgrade the building. So it it stood it stood fine for 60 years. But if there’s an earthquake, we have to seismically upgrade it so it won’t fall down. And it was just like delay after delay, either on the permit side and stuff. And then, of course, this is right in the middle of COVID and trying to even get materials to the site. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Aaron Stanski — And, you know, ah we got to walk alongside them through all of that. Rich Birch — Wow. Aaron Stanski — And the week before they moved in, ah their senior pastor, Adam Sennett, he wrote he wrote this in a blog about what spaces mean to them as a church. And so I was just going kind of share this with your audience. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Aaron Stanski — He said, he said this about their experience: “We endured a once-in-a-century pandemic, political chaos and social upheaval all at once. COVID effectively cut our church in half. Yet by God’s grace, here we are stronger, more mature and deeply rooted than ever. Rich Birch — Wow. Aaron Stanski — “God uses spaces. Yes, of course, God uses people, but notice that he uses people in specific spaces. Gardens, arcs, prison cells, tents, deserts, whale bellies, castles, baskets, stables, islands, and more. Such spaces are unexpected miniature stages upon which his story continues to unfold in ways big and small. Recognizing the temporary nature of God’s stages helps us be thankful for them in every season, without growing too attached to them. After all as in any play the stage is merely a platform for the drama.”
Rich Birch — So good. Aaron Stanski — And so then he goes on and talks about you know some their story and their buildings but then he comes back and says: “So DCC [Downtown Cornerstone Church], let’s remember this as we move into our new building this weekend. Let’s pray that the Lord will use this space as yet another stage for his unfolding drama of redemption in Seattle, and through Seattle to the nations. Let’s pray that he would use this space as a gospel outpost and megaphone for generations to come. Imagine how many people might come to know Jesus there. Imagine how many missionaries and church planters may be sent from there. Imagine how many hearts will be thrilled with the excellence of Jesus, sins defeated, marriages reconciled, and legacies forever redeemed there. Let it be, Lord.”
Rich Birch — So good.
Aaron Stanski — And so like when I when I hear that story and like, man, what a beautiful written testimony, but what it took to get him there was so hard. I mean, four or five years…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …of like slogging through it and wrestling through it and dealing with the city. But on the other side, is is even more room to be able to invite their neighbors, you know, invite the people of Seattle to, to come and hear the gospel. So it’s just ah an amazing testimony to kind of walk through that. We’re going to be posting some ah brand new pictures and stuff of that project up on our website pretty soon here. Rich Birch — Oh, cool. We’ll link to it for sure. Aaron Stanski — So, so stay tuned for that. Yeah. Rich Birch — Dude, that’s great. I love that. What a great encouragement. Like these projects are like, we don’t want to make it sound like it’s just super simple. Like all you do, it’s work. Like it is a ton of effort. It’s literally, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands of, feels like hundreds of thousands of decisions. It’s like, you know, you you’re, you’re pushed through. They all have complexity in them. You got to raise money to make it happen. And then, you know, then the hard part comes, actually doing it. Rich Birch — But I love that encouragement, even for maybe people that are listening in today that are in the midst of some of that push to realize, no, there is something on the other side of that. And I could say that even in my own church, where the campus I attend, we were portable for 17 years, and which is crazy. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — And then now we’re in a, you know, we’ve just since last fall, we’ve been in a building. And just recently, we’re recording this shortly after Easter. And I was standing in the lobby of that location and, you know, record attendance. And I I was really struck by, we were giving away Bibles to people. And we’re handing out Bibles to folks. And I was like, so excited to see all of these people. And I thought, man, like all of that work we went through was worth it for this. Like all of that, if, if, if all it’s, if all of, all of this is comes at the other, at the other end of all of that comes this amazing life change, man, let’s just get after it.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — Let’s, let’s figure out what it looks like and and do the hard work, do the heavy lifting to, to make it happen and not be super intimidated. Like, oh, there’s no way we could ever do this. Like, no, you can. You can get experts, friends like Aaron and his team to help you with it, uh, to get out the other end of that. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. And part of the hard work, right. Is just, is being able to navigate some of these like really difficult challenges.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Aaron Stanski — You know, like you mentioned, it’s like a, it’s a leadership exercise in walking your church through this. It’s a project management exercise in kind of walking through these things. Rich Birch — Yep. That’s great. Aaron Stanski — And, you know, I mean, we’ve seen inflation kind of go crazy, right, over the over the course of the last couple of years. Tithing hasn’t gone crazy like inflation has, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Stanski — And so we have this situation where, you know, we have less dollars than we used to, and those dollars only buy us half what they what they did a few years ago, right? Rich Birch — Right, what they used to buy. Yeah, yeah. Aaron Stanski — And so we have to be really clear about how are we deploying those dollars and and what are we accomplishing with these projects… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — …versus all of the other things we could spend on. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And that reinforces if it sounds like I’m trying to get you to call Aaron and his team, trust your instincts. All of that is because, you know, in an environment like we’re in that you just described there, it’s even more reason why early in this process, you need to find friends like Aaron to say, hey, how can please help us with this? Rich Birch — You know, this for most church leaders, a process like this is a, you know, it could be a once in a career experience. It’s a, it could be a once every decade or once every couple decade experience. And you need to get someone like Aaron and Risepointe on your size or them specifically. There’s a resource we’re going to link to. I want to make sure people pick up on this. This is 10 Things to Get Right Before You Build. Tell us about this resource and we’ll, we’ll make sure we link to it. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, we just wanted to, I mean, we polled a few of our previous clients and said, Hey, going back, what are some things that you wish you would have gotten in place first before you started the process? Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — And some of it’s pretty self-explanatory. Some of them, you might be like, man, I’m doing good. Check, check, check. Oh, that’s something I didn’t think of before. And so just kind of trying to provide a resource to kind of get your head, start thinking about if you think you might have a project coming in the next couple of years, definitely grab that resource. Think that through. Walk that through with your leadership team. If it if it elicits questions, if there’s things that you’re not sure about, reach out. We’d love to connect with you um on that. Rich Birch — That’s great. You can look for the link in the show notes here. It’ll be in the email and all that we sent out this week too. Yeah. Number two, I thought was interesting team consensus and this I would echo. You know, we’ve got to make sure we have the conversation upfront and get a real clear picture and be all on the same page. Because when we say we’re thinking about a project like this, we can have multiplicity of different ideas. Aaron Stanski — That’s right. Rich Birch — And that’s, that’s where having a trusted partner like Risepointe actually can help you with that process. Let’s get let’s do a needs analysis, get a sense of where we’re actually at. What are the actual constraints that are that we should tackle first? Here’s what that could look like. Here’s the scope scale of that kind of thing. Could be super helpful for sure. Rich Birch — Well, I want to give you the final word here, Aaron. What would you say encouragement or challenge would give to church leaders today as we wrap up today’s episode? Aaron Stanski — Oh man. I just say, you know, as I get to travel across the country and and hang out with a lot of your amazing listeners and a lot of just amazing churches, it’s so cool to hear the story of life change that is happening at the local level. Rich Birch — So true. Aaron Stanski — And I think keeping, you know, keeping our eyes and our perspective on what God is doing in and through our communities. We were sharing at staff meeting today, one of the one of the churches that we worked with, they baptized 47 people last weekend. Rich Birch — Amazing. Aaron Stanski — And I mean, we can get really excited about like building launches or projects or some things like that, but man, 47 people making a decision… Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Aaron Stanski — …to follow Christ and getting baptized. I mean, that’s what, that’s what it’s all about. And so, I mean, if you’re, if you’re scared of going through a big project or you’re not sure, you know, where to turn to, we would love to come alongside you and partner in with you in that, so that you don’t have to carry that burden alone, so that you do have a trusted partner that can walk you through a difficult process, ah but one that we’ve done hundreds of times before. So you have any questions on that, we’d love to connect, you know, definitely reach out. Rich Birch — Yeah, where can people go online if we want to send them to to connect with you? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, just go to risepointe.com. That’s Risepointe—we got an E at the end there—dot com. There’s a “schedule a call” button. You just fill out some information about your church and where you’re located and then that just links right up to our Zoom account. And then myself or one of our other architects will get that call scheduled with you. We want to hear about your church uniquely. What are some of the unique challenges that you guys are facing and really kind of understand that to see how we can serve. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Aaron. Appreciate you, sir. We’ll have to have you back on. I’d love to have you on in the future. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, let’s do it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Take care. Aaron Stanski — Thanks, Rich.
LCBC: 19 Campuses in the Rust Belt with 25,000 Attendees? Keys to Multisite at Scale
Apr 24, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast during our All About Multisite month. Today we’re talking with David Ashcraft, CEO and President of the Global Leadership Network (GLN), and former Senior Pastor of LCBC Church in Pennsylvania.
Are you wrestling with growing pains as your church multiplies? How does an expanding multisite church keep its vision clear and equip its staff and leaders? Tune in as David shares his invaluable experience leading a thriving multisite church and now, leading an organization that is equipping leaders worldwide to make a lasting impact.
From rural roots to statewide reach. // David recounts LCBC’s growth from a church of 150 people in Manheim, Pennsylvania, to over 25,000 attendees across 19 campuses in the state. A major turning point was the township’s refusal to allow further expansion of their original campus, leading LCBC to embrace the multisite model in the early 2000s.
Be the gatekeeper of the vision. // Clarity of vision and consistent messaging are critical for keeping a growing church aligned. Vision leaks and leaders must repeat the core mission often and creatively to keep it alive. Weave the vision naturally into communication, culture, and decision-making. David served as the gatekeeper for the vision, helping the church discern between “good” opportunities and those which truly aligned with their mission. One key filtering approach was the 90/10 rule: LCBC aimed to excite 90% of their people and accept that 10% might be unhappy. This mindset protected the church from trying to please everyone and allowed leaders to stay focused on their mission.
Take strategic risks. // Young leaders sometimes want to try new ideas that could be detrimental to try throughout the whole church. David advocates for testing innovative ideas on a small scale—at one campus—before rolling them out church-wide. This mitigates risk while fostering a culture of experimentation.
Structure for scale. // As LCBC grew, so did the need to restructure. The church went through six or seven major organizational shifts over 32 years. These changes were often prompted by rising communication challenges or blurred responsibilities. Simplifying communication lines and reestablishing clear reporting structures helps the church maintain momentum.
Utilize video teaching for alignment. // David holds a strong bias toward using video teaching as the backbone of multisite strategy and believes that if you want to expand beyond 6 locations that video teaching is almost a necessity. Video becomes a core teaching strategy when a church branches out because it helps maintain alignment among multiple congregations and prevents campus drift.
Strong teams, thriving church. // A cornerstone of David’s leadership was hiring people better than himself in specific areas. From kids’ ministry to communications, his goal was to empower others to lead beyond what he could do alone. That culture of excellence and humility helped LCBC build a team-driven organization. Hire people with the potential to become experts and give them room to grow.
GLN’s Summit as a tool. // Today, David leads the Global Leadership Network, home of the Global Leadership Summit. His goal is to be an “advantage to every pastor,” helping churches raise leadership capacity and thrive. GLN offers world-class leadership development from both church and marketplace leaders, equipping churches leaders to grow their influence and mission. LCBC Church hosts the Global Leadership Summit annually as a way to equip and inspire staff and community leaders at their church.
To learn more about the Global Leadership Network and register for the upcoming Summit, visit www.globalleadership.org and use the promo code GLS25UNSEM to get $10 off the registration rate online or at local host sites.
EXTRA CREDIT // Is your structure built for where your church is—or where it’s going?
Inside unSeminary Extra Credit, we’ve created the Restructuring Readiness Checklist—a powerful tool to help you assess whether your current staff model and systems are holding you back. Inspired by LCBC’s journey to 19 campuses, this resource helps you:
Spot signs it’s time to restructure
Ask the right questions with your team
Avoid common mistakes that slow growth
Realign your structure for long-term health and scalability
This resource is exclusively available through unSeminary Extra Credit, our affordable membership that fuels the podcast and provides you with valuable tools like this and many others!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. You’ve reached us during our All About Multisite Month, where we’re having conversations with leaders from prevailing multisite churches. And today, we’ve really got a two-for-one. We’ve got a leader who has been in the trenches leading an incredibly prevailing multisite church, and now is leading an organization that’s literally making difference all over the world. It’s our privilege to have David Ashcraft with us. He is the CEO and president of GLN. If you’re unaware, GLN is the Global Leadership Network, is a global organization passion about inspiring and equipping leaders to transform the world for the better. Rich Birch — David was formerly the senior pastor of a church, LCBC, which is in Pennsylvania, a multi-site church with—if I’m counting correctly, although it’s hard to count, they have so many—19 campuses, and he’s also involved in lots of other great stuff. David, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. David Ashcraft — Thank you, Rich. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It’s fun to talk to you and your audience. So thank you. Rich Birch — Oh, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. Well, for folks that are unaware, why don’t you kind of share a bit of the story of LCBC’s growth, from a single location of less than a couple hundred people to 19 locations serving 25,000 plus people. Give us I know it’s like, summarize all that in three minutes. I get that’s hard, but kind of tell us a little bit of that story for folks that are unaware that don’t know LCBC. David Ashcraft — Yeah, definitely. Well, Rich, LCBC stands for Lives Changed by Christ. And so we just say that’s who we are. We’re a community of people whose lives have been, continue to be changed by Jesus Christ. And in 1991, I had opportunity to come to this little church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, actually Manheim, a small town in Pennsylvania, about 150 people. David Ashcraft — And I had been a pastor in Dallas, Texas. And so God brought us here to what all of my friends in Texas called the Rust Belt. And they thought, why in the world would you go to the Rust Belt? But you God brought us here. Rich Birch — Why are you going there? Can anything good come from Manheim? David Ashcraft — Exactly. Yeah. So the first five or six years were incredibly difficult. Just trying to figure out who we were, what we were trying to accomplish as a church. Had three different board chairmen over three years get up in the middle of meetings and resign.
Rich Birch — Wow. David Ashcraft — And so I’d say that only to say I understand what it’s like to have turmoil with the board, and turmoil in the church. There was there was a guy named Abe, and every time I would speak, he would tell me all the things that I was doing wrong. He would stand up in congregational meetings back then. And back then, congregational meetings were well attended because there were going to be fireworks so they wanted to be there to see what was going to happen. Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — And so anyway, we somehow survived those first five or six years and God began to really work and do amazing things. So ultimately over a 32 year period, we grew from 150 people to 22,000. Two and a half years ago, the church has continued to grow. And so it’s about 25,000 people now. And we got into multisite in about 2003 or ’04. We had grown to about 8,000 people in our first location. And several things were happening. David Ashcraft — One, our little town of Manheim has about 4,000 people in it. And so there were people driving 45 minutes, an hour to come. And then the township told us that we were taking up too much space. We were creating there were problems on the roads. And so they said, we couldn’t expand our facility anymore. And we were devastated and thought, oh man, you know that’s going to kill us as a church. And yet multisites were just kind of starting then.
David Ashcraft — And so we went around the country, looked at several different models and landed on one and thought, okay, we can do this. And so the fun thing is now, if there are 25,000 people attending LCBC, 20,000 or so are at other locations.
Rich Birch — It’s amazing. David Ashcraft — And so it’s just fun to watch that see. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. David Ashcraft — Yeah, so God’s been doing cool things. It’s just been fun to be a part of that. And one of our kind of unwritten rules all the way through it was let’s not do anything stupid to mess up what God is doing. And oftentimes I think church leaders do stupid things and it messes up what God’s doing and they miss out on being a part of what God really wants. So. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. There’s there’s a ton to unpack here. And I like I feel like we could do five episodes on the stuff you just talked about there. And friends, I’ve had a chance to visit multiple locations of LCBC and you just rolled over it. You were like, well, you know at that point we were 8,000 people. Manheim has 4,000. I remember the first time I was at that that location, it is a mind bender to be like… This is not like I’m used to suburban, large, you know, population areas. And the fact that LCBC has thrived and continues to thrive is I love it. It’s a great story to to kind of just to be a part of. Rich Birch — Now, you’ve pivoted to this new role as president and CEO of the Global Leadership Network. Connect those two together. How does leading at LCBC connect with what you’re currently doing? David Ashcraft — Yeah, so probably about 10 or 12 years ago, Rich, had opportunity to sit in a group with Jim Collins, the good to great author and other books. And in that group, there were probably about 15 of us. And so he’s talking about his levels of leadership. And in my mind, I’m hoping that I’m his level five, which is his highest level. But as he’s talking, he said, you’ll never be a level five leader until you’ve actually left your organization, the organization you’re leading.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
David Ashcraft — And when you’re gone, it’s actually better when you’re gone than when you’re there. And so that kind of messed me up because I was hoping that one, that I was already a level five leader. Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — And I was probably on the dark side of my mind, hoping that when I stepped away from LCBC, that there would be a little bit of turmoil and people would be crying. I told the congregation I was hoping for weeping and gnashing of teeth when I stepped away. And he just said, if that happens, then you’re a bad leader. And so it started me on a trajectory to say, how do I need to be setting things up for LCBC so they’ll thrive when I’m gone? David Ashcraft — So that was kind of the first step. And so I mapped out a 10 or 12 year plan to kind of work to that direction. And so about two and a half years ago, it just was the right time for me to step away. And Jason Mitchell, who’s the new pastor, was ready. He’d been a part of our team for a long time. And had spent six or seven years getting him ready for that leadership role. And the church was ready and so I stepped away. And told the congregation, I’m not retiring, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going to be doing.
David Ashcraft — And so I had been on the board at the GLN for a number of years. We’ve hosted the summit for a long time. There was a change in leadership there. And, So they invited me to step into that role. It was one of those kind of things where um I was wrestling, trying to think, okay, is Ruth, my wife, is she how’s she going to receive this? Is she going be happy? Is she not? David Ashcraft — And so you know how when you have something to say at home and and if things are going real well, then you don’t want to say anything because you don’t want to disrupt that it’s going really well and you’re connecting well. If you’re not connecting well, then I don’t want to anything because I don’t make things worse. So I was kind of hem-hawing around for three or four days to bring it up to her. And once I did, she was like, oh, it’s a no-brainer. It’s like you’re made for this. David Ashcraft — And um and then the other thing she had told me probably two or three weeks before that, I’d been away from LCBC for about three or four months. And she just at one point sat me down said, you need to go find something else to lead. And then she followed that very quickly with, but it’s not me.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
David Ashcraft — I was trying to give too much direction to the house and she wanted to me out. So so anyway, um so stepped into that role.
Rich Birch — I love that. David Ashcraft — Yeah. Rich Birch — I’ve joked in other contexts about my wife, Christine. I’ve said, you know, the voice of the Lord and the voice of Christine, they’re they sound very similar. Like there’s ah there’s definitely a rhyme there between ah those two. I love that. David Ashcraft — Rich, it’s funny you say that because one of our early decisions at LCBC, we would meet as a board on we met every third Monday night of the month, and um we would bring up a decision, it discussion, would make a decision that night.
David Ashcraft — And then we would go home and we’d come back the next month and would all say, oh, that probably wasn’t the best decision. And so we would like to say that we went home and prayed about it for a month. What really was happening is we were going home telling our spouses. And they were going, that’s a terrible decision. And then we’d all come back and say, yeah that probably wasn’t such a good decision. So we came up with an unwritten rule that we’ll discuss something one month, come back after praying about it and after talking to our spouses about it and make the decision the following month. So, yes, it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit, the voice of the Lord, whatever you call it, seems to speak through our spouses as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good. Well, I’d love to kind of dig in a little bit on the LCBC story. As as a lead pastor, part of your role is to cast vision, provide clarity. And and there’s been a tremendous amount of change from that, you know, you know the town of Manheim saying, hey, you can’t keep growing, all the way to, okay now what it appears like as an outsider, and and I’ve said this behind your back, behind the church’s back, I’m like, there’s lots of churches that talk about wanting to reach their entire state. LCBC is getting busy doing it. Like, you know, there’s all kinds of great things going on. Rich Birch — Discuss you know talk me through when you’re in that kind of lead role, keeping your team aligned and keeping them around the vision, how, what were some of the things that you did as a communicator, as a leader to ensure that people were aligned? To, you know, to help things, you know, continue to kind of stay focused as a church? David Ashcraft — Yeah, well, Rich, one of the things, and it’s been said countless times, I don’t know who said it first, but vision leaks. And what we tend to do as leaders is we say it once, and we assume everybody’s gotten it, and they’re not ever going to forget it. But it does leak. And I think probably when I first heard that statement, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, the idea was you needed to repeat it every 28 days or so. And I think the reality now is you have to say it a whole lot more because what happens…
Rich Birch — It’s true.
David Ashcraft — …you know, the number of weeks that people actually show up in church. I mean, I’ve heard everything from it used to be 1.6 times a month to now I hear a lot of people saying once every six weeks people show up. And so if you don’t say it a lot, then people aren’t going to hear it. And if you don’t say it a lot, they’re going to forget it, even if they’re there. David Ashcraft — And so, and we always just focused on let’s be very clear of what we’re about. And it’s just introducing more people to Jesus and then together fully following him. And so we’d find different creative ways to say it, but we’d say the same thing over and over and over. And I think sometimes people worry about if you repeat it too much, they’re going to get tired of it. But that wasn’t our case. And sometimes we try to get too creative and people don’t even know it’s the same vision or you’re saying the same thing. Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — So I think redundancy is real important. Rich Birch — And and what how did that work its way into your rhythms as a communicator? Like, were you finding ways to weave that in on Sunday morning through, is it just kind of every way possible? What did that look like? How did you kind of think about that? How do how do we keep that in front of people? David Ashcraft — Yeah, so I don’t know that it’s so much saying, okay, let’s talk about our vision, but you just kind of weave it in a natural conversation…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
David Ashcraft — …and just becomes who you are, I think. And so even with the staff, I think the leader’s responsibility is kind of set the boundaries or the guardrail of where you’re going as an organization. And then my job if I saw starting to get out of the boundaries or out of the guidelines, guardrails that were going to take us towards introducing more people to Jesus, or fully following him, then it’s my job to say, oh wait a minute, we’re straying some. And because what happens, Rich, is everybody in the church has some good idea of what you ought to be doing as a church. And so they’ll come and I mean, just umpteen different. Your imagination can run wild of what it is. And they will say God spoke to them and this is what we ought to be doing as a church. And so we would constantly evaluate and say, okay, that may be a good thing, but it’s not best for us. David Ashcraft — And so I felt like one of my jobs was to kind of be the gatekeeper. And so we just say to people, man, that’s a good thing you’re involved in. It’s cool that God put that on your heart, but here’s where we are as an organization. This is what we’re striving for. And son man, we’ll do everything we can to encourage you as you go do that good thing, but we’re going to stay focused on what’s best for us. And so I would say the last 10 years or so at LCBC, for me, a lot it was just saying, man, that’s good, but it’s not us. Rich Birch — Right.
David Ashcraft — And we’re not going to kind of step but into that that area you want us to step into. Rich Birch — Let’s double click on that because I think that is um that’s a real tension ah for particularly senior leaders to hold this balance of because there are sometimes those ideas are actually great and and they’re innovative. And LCBC is, as an outsider, I would say that’s an innovative organization. You guys have tried a bunch of different stuff, but have been able to stay aligned. How, what kind of filters were do you use or have you used to try to filter out that? Okay, what’s just a good idea or what’s maybe a God idea that, Hey, we should take a risk on ah to to try something here, that and we’ll see maybe it’ll change the trajectory of what, where God’s leading us. David Ashcraft — Yeah, you know, it’s funny, Rich, when when we were small, 150 or 200 people, it was easier to try new things because if it didn’t work, it’s not like we’ we’re going to hurt all that much. And yet it was hard then, too, because if we tried something and it failed, the church wasn’t big enough to bounce back from from a failure. David Ashcraft — But some of the guiding principles for us, I mean, one, we constantly talk about the 90-10 rule for us. And I know everybody’s heard of the 80-20. For us, 90-10 means that you can’t keep everybody happy. And what I watch a lot of pastors do is they try to keep everybody in the church happy. And so if you come to me with a good idea, then I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Rich. And so, yes, we’ll do your idea. But then somebody else comes along, yes, we’ll do your idea. And then all of a sudden, you’re doing so many things…
Rich Birch — Right.
David Ashcraft — …that you’re not doing anything well. And so when we talk about 90-10, we just said we’d rather 90% of the people be wildly enthusiastic about us. 10% of the people can be wildly upset with us and we’re okay with that. Rich Birch — Love it. David Ashcraft — And so we just kind of operate that way. And and so we say, here’s who we are. Here’s how we behave. Here’s how we’re, where we’re going. If it’s not for you, that’s totally okay. But if it is for you, then jump in. And so it pretty well works out.
David Ashcraft — I don’t know that we’ve ever hit 10% wildly upset with us. Where that rule has helped us is we’ll do something and it doesn’t quite go the way we think, or there may be people upset with us and we’ll get all worried about it. And then we’ll say, okay, wait minute, let’s stop. We’ve 22,000 people, or now 25,000. We just got 40 or 50 emails from people that weren’t happy. So let’s say 10% of 25,000 is 2,500.
Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — So we got 40 or 50 emails. We’re fine. Rich Birch — Yes. David Ashcraft — We’ve got another couple thousand to go and then we’ll start getting worried about it. So just not trying to please everybody was a big piece of it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
David Ashcraft — And then constantly, is this is this a good thing or is it a great thing? And let’s focus on the great things. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. yeah I had a mentor early on in my ministry talk about, he said the exact same thing, he but the way he cast it was he was like, we really should have about 10% of the church upset with us at any given moment. If we’re not, then we’re probably not taking new ground.
David Ashcraft — Amen.
Rich Birch — They, you know, and I was like, oh – that that has stuck with me for sure. David Ashcraft — Exactly. Yeah. And we would definitely say the same thing where, man, we’re not getting much, many complaints. So maybe we need to be trying some different things. Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s try something new. David Ashcraft — The other thing we kind yeah, the other thing we kind of learned as we went, Rich, is you know, a lot of times young leaders want to try things that could be devastating to the church. And what’s nice is we’ve gotten bigger and we’ve got more locations. If we’ve got an idea…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
David Ashcraft — …then let’s try it in a location and see how it goes there. And instead of doing something that’s going to sink the whole ship, then it might have a negative impact on that one location, but at least it’s not going to hit all of the locations. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. David Ashcraft — And if it works well, then we’ll go ahead and spread it to the whole church. So there’s some advantages of multisite from that standpoint. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, kind of sticking with that same theme, you know, LCBC has experienced incredible growth, you know, in a lot of ways. It’s like your history is, you know, the the shift to multisite was a transformative moment. You know, the the the growth of the church has accelerated, um you know, beyond Manheim and all these other locations. Rich Birch — That has, I’m assuming, has forced a certain amount of organizational change over the years. You’ve had to make some shifts. What what did some of that restructuring look like? Very few churches, you know, some of the stats show that um close to 50% of multisite churches aren’t getting beyond three locations. Rich Birch — And so, and some of that, I think, is because of some of this restructuring. What were some of those that was that restructuring that you went under, that you led the church under, that you think were particularly helpful as you look back on it to accelerate the mission? David Ashcraft — So Rich, early on, I used to listen to Carl George. Fuller Institute used to have a number of different people. And so they would, back then they were cassette tapes. Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. David Ashcraft — Carl George was one. And he had a thing he talked about where churches are kind of like animals and animals are animals, churches are churches. But then he would say, um not all animals are alike. And so he would talk about a mouse and he’d compare a mouse to a cat, to a dog, and say they’re all animals, but they’re very, very different. A cat is very different from a dog that’s different from a horse or and so on. And he would say churches are the same thing. Just because you’re a church doesn’t mean all churches are equal. David Ashcraft — And so he’d say a mouse church might be 35 people, a cat might be 75, a dog 200 and so forth. And his whole point was, as you grow from a mouse to a cat…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
David Ashcraft — …to a dog, to a horse, you’ve got to restructure every time because you’re a whole different animal.
Rich Birch — Yep. David Ashcraft — And so I would say over the course of 32 years, we restructured probably six or seven times at least.
Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — And we could tell when it was time. And it was some of it was just feeling, but you’d start noticing that communication wasn’t going well in the organization, that people were frustrated with each other. And it wasn’t, you know your tendency is to think, oh it’s just some bad actors on the team. And it really wasn’t that, it was a lack of clarity. What are we trying to do? It was a lack of communication lines.
David Ashcraft — And so we would simplify and say, okay, let’s go and simplify. Let’s make sure everybody has direct lines of communication and redundancy. And so we did that probably, like I said, six or seven times in the process. Rich Birch — Well, that’s a good insight. Even the fact that because I think we can if we’re the people that led the restructuring last time, we can really love our restructuring. We think, hey, that was a great you know that this is the perfect system. We took all this time, effort and energy, pain, all this pain to get to this restructuring. And then now here we are two years later… David Ashcraft — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and it can be hard to give that up. I think that’s a great insight. Hey, we had to restructure six, seven times over all those years. And, you know, that’s that’s a pretty regular cadence to be thinking about that. David Ashcraft — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s good. David Ashcraft — Rich, I don’t know. You made the comment that a lot of multisite churches are struggling and don’t get past three or four. And I don’t know if we’re sharing strong biases or if you want to hear strong biases…
Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. David Ashcraft — …but I have a strong bias towards that. Rich Birch — That’s why we have you on. David Ashcraft — Yeah. Well, what I watch happen all the time is guys decide, churches decide they want to go multisite. Typically, they go multisite. One, they want to see their reach expand. But oftentimes, they’ll also be somebody else on staff. So if I’m the senior pastor and you’re one of my associate pastors, I start thinking, okay, Rich has strong leadership gifts. He’s got strong speaking gifts. Rich is getting antsy to go and lead on his own. And so I’ll send him out and he can start a new location for LCBC. David Ashcraft — And you want, Rich wants to do it so badly. He says, yes, I’ll, you know I’ll follow the party line and I’ll, I’ll be LCBC, whatever. And I’m wanting it to happen so badly. Then I’m that’s a great way to send you out. And so we do that and you go out, maybe somebody else on staff, and all of a sudden we’ve got three locations.
David Ashcraft — But what happens over a couple of years is you drift apart and you start realizing you do have speaking gifts, you do have leadership gifts. And before you know it, you start thinking, even though our communities are only 20 miles apart, we’re just different in this community than you are in your community, 10 or 20 miles away. And so I really need to lead differently than what you did at the original location.
David Ashcraft — All of a sudden you get this split, this divide and frustration. And I just, um my strong bias, Rich, is I think if you want to scale, if you want to go beyond three, four, five, or six locations, um video teaching is almost a necessity.
Rich Birch — That’s good. David Ashcraft — Otherwise you’re going to have, and to my knowledge, I don’t know of any churches that are truly multisite, um, that have more than six or seven with live teachers. There are some that say they do, but they’re almost like little denominations. Their churches all have the same name…
Rich Birch — Right.
David Ashcraft — …but each church is very independent, doing its own thing. And so I just have a real strong bias towards video teaching and, and replicating the model, not just sending out new people. David Ashcraft — And there’s nothing wrong with me sending you out to a new location if I know that essentially what I’m doing is planting a new church 20 minutes away. And that’s… Rich Birch — Right, right. But that’s different than multisite. David Ashcraft — Yeah, and that’s a great strategy for planting churches, but it’s not multisite. Rich Birch — Yeah. David Ashcraft — And if you really want to scale, then you’ve got to replicate the model. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. And statistically, that’s true. The larger a multisite church is and the more locations it has, the more it implements video as a core teaching strategy. So you statistically, you see it’s it it is, um and I’ll say that because but lots of even teaching pastors have this bias against video teaching because it feels like, oh, no, we should find someone to do that. Rich Birch — And I’m I’m not a teaching guy. And I’ve had this conversation, ah you know, hundreds of times with with teaching guys where I’m like, no, like this, the what you’re doing is super unique. And it is core to what the church is doing. It’s three quarters of the reason why people attend, statistically. Man, we’ve got to, you know, I think that’s great. That’s a good I would I hold the same strong bias. So I agree, um which is. David Ashcraft — Yeah. And Rich, I would say it also just helps you clarify everything…
Rich Birch — Yes.
David Ashcraft — …if you know you if you know you’re doing that, because then you know what kind of campus pastors to hire. Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — And so we’ll just say if if you’re wanting to be a teacher, and we’ve got a couple of our campus pastors that are great teachers, and so they’re part of our teaching team. Rich Birch — Yep.
David Ashcraft — But if you really want to be a teacher, ah campus pastor for us, it’s not where you ought to land.
Rich Birch — Yep.
David Ashcraft — And um our campus pastors are incredible leaders. We say so they’re the strongest leaders in our organization, but they’re not wanting to teach on a regular basis. And that’s not, it shouldn’t even be in their skill set for most of them. So they’ve got to communicate and talk from the stage. They’ve got to teach in smaller environments, but if they want to preach, it’s not the right place. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s pivot in a slightly different direction. Talk more about your kind of own, your own personal leadership leading through all of that and your, and and about how you balanced all that out. Just, want to honor you in front of our audience. You know, they’re good things radiate off of LCBC when people talk about you behind your back. They are thankful to lead, to be led by you. You know, there, people don’t have to say nice things to me, but they do. And, and that is, unfortunately is ah is a notable exception. And and you seem to, you’ve you’ve held your life together. You know, you you haven’t train wrecked, you know, your family, ah you know, and and all of that. I honor you for all of that. That… David Ashcraft — Thank you. Rich Birch — That’s incredible. But talk us through what practices have you adopted to balance the demands of leading an aggressively growing ministry and your own life, your own kind of internal life, family wellbeing, that sort of thing. What what have you done to try to keep that all together? David Ashcraft — So I’ll go in a couple different directions, Rich. On a professional level, ah just realizing I can’t do it myself. I need a team around me. And so my practice was always to hire the best possible person I could. And there’s a tendency sometimes to if you are on a scale of 1 to 10, if you see yourself as an 8, then there’s a tendency to hire 5, 6 and 7s, people that you can still be a little bit stronger so that you’re perceived to be the leader. And for me, I just said, I’m looking to hire people that can be better than me…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
David Ashcraft — …in their specific area of expertise. And so when we were smaller as a church, we didn’t have the money to hire experts yet, but we hired people that we thought could become experts. And so then I would meet with them and we’d go visit other churches and we’d figure out what style we wanted to be. David Ashcraft — I would keep them pretty close to me the first 6 months or so, maybe even 12 months. And um then once they were able to take off, I would just say, and the mantra we always had that I had with everybody we hired was I really want you to be the best kid min person, the best student ministry person…
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.
David Ashcraft — …so that people are going to come from all around the country to learn how to do student ministry from you. And I want you to take it way further than I ever could possibly take it.
Rich Birch — That’s good. David Ashcraft — And so I think part of our, and I don’t want to use the word success, part of our growth was that we just kept hiring people, I kept hiring people better than me. And didn’t want to limit it that way. So from a professional standpoint, we would do that.
David Ashcraft — And then personally, um you know, sometimes people complain about the busyness of ministry, but one of the beauties we have is we’ve got flexibility. And so we’re not locked into an eight to five schedule. And yes, we have to work on the weekends, but we get to take other times off. And so like when my son was fourth, fifth, sixth grade, he was into baseball. So I coached as a little league team for three years. I knew nothing about baseball, but I got other people to help me with that. But I was, I was able to do that. And so another kind of job I might not have been able to. So yeah, we work a lot of hours and, you know, 55, oftentimes 60 hours a week, but we’ve got flexibility.
Rich Birch — Yep. David Ashcraft — And so I think really putting the family first that way was real important. My kids now are grown. Our, my son is one of our campus pastors. My daughter just stepped away from being a student min director at one of our locations for 10 years. And it’s real fun to have them involved and be a part of that.
David Ashcraft — And, the one other thing I’ll just say real quick is…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
David Ashcraft — …one of our mantras at LCBC is let’s not do anything stupid to mess up what God is doing. Rich Birch — Right. Right. David Ashcraft — And so, I mean, stupid is a lot of things. It could be just relational issues where you and I get crossways and we don’t resolve it quickly. Rich Birch — Right. David Ashcraft — And so one of our unwritten rules is keep short accounts and don’t let things fester. Rich Birch —That’s good. David Ashcraft — Stupid could be crossing or playing with lines around morality or sexuality that we shouldn’t be playing in. And so we get burned all of a sudden. So we’re just constantly saying, man, let’s not do anything stupid, not to mess up what God’s doing because he’s doing great stuff. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. You know, kind of tagging on, just double clicking on that. Sometimes you’ll see it’s like, well, the lead person, they seem to have life balance, but the rest of the team, like that, not so much. But that isn’t the case with what I’ve seen. And obviously, I don’t know all your team, but with the people I know in your orbit, that seems to have rippled out Anything that you’ve done to model that for your people, to try to ripple that down? I love that, you know, let’s not be stupid. Or is there anything else on that front to kind of model that with your team? David Ashcraft — Well, so even in the early days, I was a senior pastor when I came. And it’s always funny that I was a senior pastor. I was the only pastor…
Rich Birch — Sure.
David Ashcraft — …for the first about four years. Rich Birch — Yep. David Ashcraft — And we were gonna hire a worship leader. And we did hire a worship leader. When he came in, he, like a lot of worship leaders, he’s not most creative early in the morning. He’s most creative late at night. David Ashcraft — And so his hours, I gave him lots of freedom. And as long as he was putting in the 45 hours or so that we were asking, then it was fine. But I had an elder come to me and say, well, I come by the office on Monday or Tuesday morning and you know it’s 8:30 and—his name was Brian—Brian’s not in the office, and we need him in the office. And so I just said, well, so wait a minute, let’s think about this. Did we hire him to be a sit in his office from 8:30 to 5, Monday through Friday? Did we hire him to be great on the weekend and great to lead people in worship? And so my philosophy is always whatever it takes to be best at your job. So we try to get flexibility that way. Rich Birch — That’s good. David Ashcraft — And there’s certain times, usually Mondays and Tuesdays, everybody needs to be in for team meetings. After that, we, you know, once we know that you can manage your time well, then we’ll give you lots of flexibility. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. David Ashcraft — And so I think that’s but something that permeates through the whole staff. And then, now, as we’ve gotten bigger, then we have lots of opportunities to help staff in a variety of ways so that they stay strong in their marriage, stay strong in their relationship with Christ. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Love that. Okay, pivoting to your current ah your current role, talking a little bit more about Global Leadership Network. When you talked about cassette tapes, that took me back. I, early on in my ministry, I was a monthly subscriber to the Global Leadership Network tapes, and those tapes would come in, and and literally, I can say, they were like this encouragement, that I I I still think of like talks…
David Ashcraft — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …from 30 years ago that that still impact me. And then I remember the first time I had, like thousands of leaders, I had an experience in the Lakeside Auditorium where I just came on a weekend. It was not and it wasn’t a conference, and it was a transformative experience for me where I I literally the experience I had was, oh church doesn’t have to suck. Like I I, and I was working in a church at that that that point. Like it it was ah and and GLN has had has influenced so many people has had, you know, it’s ah has it had monster influence, done incredible work for years. Rich Birch — But let’s talk a little bit about it. What’s kind of bring bring us up to speed on what’s going on with the summit? What’s kind of the most recent things? You know, what are your aspirations for the Global Leadership Summit? There’s a lot there. But but what what do we think of these days when you think about Global Leadership Network? David Ashcraft — Yeah. So Rich, yeah, like you, it has had a huge impact on my life. I think I’ve only missed one in 31 years. And so, like you, I would listen to cassette tapes, especially early mid nineties. And so whether it was Bill Hybels or whether it was John Maxwell and my kids, my family would complain whenever we’d go on vacation because we’d get in the car and I had all these cassettes we were going to listen to. And so they always say, oh man, does John have to come with us again on vacation? And so they grew up on that, but real impactful for me. David Ashcraft — And um there’s been a couple of hard years at the summit after just leadership situations, 2018, COVID, was hard on the summit. And so when I stepped in, there were a couple of things we wanted to correct. We just wanted to get back in balance with our vision, mission, and then just get us sound again financially. David Ashcraft — And our mission, our vision is really to be a tool for pastors. And when I say that, it’s not meant to be a pastor’s conference, but it’s meant to be a tool so that a pastor can come in, he can get better, she can get better as a leader, but so that they can lead their church and leaders in their church to thrive as a church, so ultimately more people can come to know Jesus. David Ashcraft — And so not a pastor’s conference. We bring leaders in from around the world, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, educators, things like that, church leaders as well. And it’s also a huge evangelistic tool for people in the community that are strong leaders, want to grow in their leadership capacity. Would never come to your church for anything else, but they come for the summit because it’s so strong. David Ashcraft — So bottom line, we just say, we just want to be a tool to more more pastors, help your churches thrive, help them reach their community. Ultimately, so more people can come to know Jesus. And that’s, that’s the real focus. Though it’s, I would talk about about it as being more pre-evangelism where again, it just begins to soften people’s hearts towards Jesus. We don’t do altar calls. We don’t do worship. It truly is a leadership training development thing, but we love it when um leaders, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are there, they’re speaking, and they just happen to say, I’m a follower of Jesus, just subtly in their in their comments. So it’s that kind of thing. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s and obviously the centerpiece of the strategy is the summit. It’s obviously not everything that GLN does, but that’s kind of the the core of it. We’re coming into summit season. Friends that are listening in, this is like—and David didn’t ask me to do this; it’s like unabashed—you should get to the summit this year. If it’s been a couple years since you’ve been there, like go to a site close by, go join the studio audience, you know, in, in Barrington there. It really is. It’s going to be an incredible summit. Rich Birch — When, when you would say to a church leader, they would say that this is the kind of church that’s benefiting the most from a partnership with GLN. What does that look like? Like what the people that are kind of leveraging it, if you were to have like a hundred more of these churches, you were like, man, we could change the world. What what would be some of those things that you’d say like, Hey, that that’s a church that’s really kind of on board with what we’re doing and and we’re, it’s a good partnership. What’s that look like? David Ashcraft — Well, I’ll use LCBC as an example because we’ve hosted for over 20 years. We typically have between 2,500 and 3,000 people attend the summit at our different locations. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. David Ashcraft — And so, if as a church you think, oh, let’s have the summit, but you just view it as an event where somebody wants to come in and use your building to put on this event, it’ll be a flop. It’ll be a failure because it needs to become part of your, just who you are as a church. And so for us, it’s kind of the capstone of how we do leadership development at LCBC. Rich Birch — Love it. Yep. David Ashcraft — And it’s not going to tell you a church model and how to do church or how to do kid min. That’s not the purpose of it. You’re going to have to teach your people that. But what it’s going to do is bring leaders in that’ll speak at the summit. They’ll say, this is how to create culture. And it’s up to you to create your culture, but this is why you need to have a healthy culture. Here’s how to create a healthy culture.
Rich Birch — That’s good. David Ashcraft — And it’s going to look different from church to church, but we’ll talk about culture. Or we’ll talk about you know why it’s important to cast vision and here’s how to cast vision. But your vision is going to be different than my vision. And so we don’t tell you how how your church ought operate. We just tell you how to be better at all those different areas that are required for a leader. So what it’s done for LCBC, we teach the basics of how we want it to happen at LCBC. The summit though, just kind of gives you this overarching, man, if every leader that’s in the church can be there, it just raises the capacity for them. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. David Ashcraft — And so then everybody’s better. And what it does, you know, a speaker will talk, they’ll tell a story, they’ll tell a joke, they’ll make a point. And all of our leaders are there. And so then all I have to do as the leader of the church is just, man, remember when so-and-so said this and everybody’s got it. And it just seems to just catalyze and move you forward faster.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. David Ashcraft — So huge from that standpoint.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And, you know if you just go to globalleadership.org, you can see, ah like, you know, obviously, it’s too late to host this year, I think, it’s still too late to host, but you could get a group of leaders together and say, hey, let’s go to what let’s go to there’s, there will for sure be a church that’s within a reasonable driving distance of you to go and, ah you know, to go be a part of it. Rich Birch — And I love that. I think the common language thing is a massive deal. I know over the years, it’s been really helpful to have like the same people in the room to be like, hey, when, you know, Craig Groeschel talked about that thing, or, you know, Christine Cain there this year, or John Maxwell, John Acuff. You know, any any of the folks that are there this year, incredible leaders, ah David Ashcraft, when he spoke, you know, ah yeah all of that to then link back to that and say, okay, let’s talk about what difference that makes at our church, man, what a gift that is. And it’s so incredibly inexpensive. Rich Birch — I’ve always thought that about the GLN stuff. I’m like, I can’t believe we’re getting this. Like if this was a normal business conference, it would be 10X what the cost is. And so… David Ashcraft — Oh yeah. Rich Birch — …it’s it’s incredible. So I just want to honor you for that. I think it’s a great, great thing. Is there a particular speaker this year you’re you’re looking forward to? Anything, you know, kind of a highlight this year or something behind the scenes we can be we should be looking forward to? David Ashcraft — Yeah. And I’ll just comment on the price real quick. It is incredibly inexpensive. And so oftentimes the board will say we need to raise our prices, need to raise our prices. But one of the things in our in our bylaws is we want to make it accessible to as many people as possible in the local church. Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. David Ashcraft — There’s actually another organization that pretty much waits each year for us to announce our speakers. Then they get the same speakers, but they charge $4- or $5,000 a person…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
David Ashcraft — …where we charge $150, $170 a person…
Rich Birch — Yes.
David Ashcraft — …and they sell their [inaudible] out.
Rich Birch — Yes.
David Ashcraft — So we could charge more, but that’s not our goal. So yeah. Rich Birch — Yes. David Ashcraft — As far as speakers, we’ve got great speakers. And one the things that’s fun at the summit, we’ll have people that are well known in different environments, but then we’ll also have people that are kind of unheard of yet at this point…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
David Ashcraft — …but they’ve got great, great content, great experience. So we’ve got several of those that would be new or unheard of. But we so one of the real fun ones, we try to have somebody that’s just kind of a fun but great leader. And so Nick Saban, the Alabama coach, will be that speaker this year, which I think is going to be incredibly exciting. David Ashcraft — We’re going to recognize John Maxwell. We do last several years, a what we call a legacy leader and and just thank them for, honor them for the difference they’ve made. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great. David Ashcraft — And so John’s going to be honored that way this year. So yeah, we’ve got a great lineup. It’s it’s going to be real good and excited about it. Rich Birch — That’s good. David Ashcraft — And you mentioned different sites. We’re actually at about 450 sites the United States. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. David Ashcraft — And then around the world, another 700 more. So about 350,000 people take part in the summit around the world. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. David Ashcraft — And so, yeah, it’s just really exciting to see. Rich Birch — This has got to be one of the largest of this type of event, right? Like I don’t know anything else that runs that size. That’s um that’s incredible. David Ashcraft — It is. And especially to do it for 30 years now…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
David Ashcraft — …is also not the norm. So, yeah. Rich Birch — No, that’s amazing. Well, that’s, that’s great. So friends, again, I would strongly encourage you to go over, go over to globalleadership.org. You can see all the local sites. You can, they’re, you know, still announcing some speakers. You’ll see there’s lots of information there. Again, I wouldn’t do it by yourself. Don’t just go you and and one person like, pack the car out, get a van, go with 10 or 15 people. That will exponentially make it more valuable to you as a leader as in what you’re doing. The more people you have around you doing this, ah it will help you as you lead at your you know at your organization. Well, just as we as we come to land, any kind of final words you’d have for us today, David? David Ashcraft — No, I just, you know, one of the things that changed for me probably seven or eight years ago was coming across a passage in the book of Acts about Apollos. And Apollos, it describes in very glowing terms. And so as I’m reading that, I’m thinking, I’m nothing like Apollos. And was almost discouraged. But then there’s just one little phrase that was at the bottom of a passage I’m sure I’ve read many times before. It just said he was a great benefit or advantage to every believer that he came in contact with. And reading that, I thought, okay, I can do that. I can be a benefit. I can be advantage. And specifically, I said, I want to be an advantage or a benefit to pastors.
David Ashcraft — And so just kind of at that point said, that’s what I want to do the rest of my life. And so um doing that here in Pennsylvania, we work with the largest churches in Pennsylvania, but also with a GLN and just a real natural tie in to say, whatever I can do, we can do to help pastors thrive and their churches thrive. Then that’s a win and more people come to know Jesus. And so I just encourage each person listening, whatever their role, whatever capacity they can be as well a benefit or an advantage to others. And so I hope that’s really their focus as they step away from this. Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, thank you, David. Thanks for your leadership. And, you know, I’m cheering for the GLN, cheering for your leadership there. Thanks for for leading and thanks for being on the show today. David Ashcraft — Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Good to talk to you, Rich.
The Money Question: How to Fund, Sustain, and Grow a Thriving Multisite Church
Apr 23, 2025
Let’s face it: talking finances can be uncomfortable, but it’s a critical conversation, especially in multisite ministry. Today, I’m tackling one of the toughest—and most essential—questions in multisite: How do we fund, sustain, and scale financially healthy campuses?
Throughout our All About Multisite series, I’m providing practical answers every Wednesday and hosting insightful interviews with leaders from thriving multisite churches on Thursdays. Now, let’s dive into the details of multisite financial strategies to help you avoid costly pitfalls.
Episode Highlights:
Choosing the Right Financial Model:
About 71% of multisite churches use a centralized budgeting system. Personally, I advocate for this “one pot” approach to avoid unhealthy competition between campuses.
An alternative is the “central tax” model used by churches like Community Christian, allocating funds with clear percentages (70-20-10) to campus operations, central operations, and expansion.
Determining Financial Sustainability:
Only 7% of campuses break even at launch. However, by year two, 53% achieve financial sustainability, and by year three, this number climbs to 79%.
Aim to become financially sustainable by year three. If you can’t foresee a clear path to sustainability after two years, you likely need to adjust strategy quickly.
Increasing Generosity Without Campus Competition:
Teach stewardship church-wide regularly. Integrate new givers from day one, making generosity part of the volunteer onboarding process.
Promote transparency with your finances, regularly communicating budgets, needs, and successes openly.
Conduct unified generosity initiatives, reinforcing the message that every campus contributes to—and benefits from—shared success.
Hidden Launch Costs to Anticipate:
Many campuses underestimate startup costs, typically averaging around $200,000, significantly higher than the average church plant ($25,000).
Be aware of hidden costs such as increased insurance premiums, custodial fees, additional equipment for rental venues, and expenses related to being a generous tenant (meals, facility improvements, etc.).
Staffing Costs and Strategies:
Staff your new campus based on projected attendance, typically one full-time equivalent staff per 75-100 attendees.
Consider central staff requirements. Plan for roughly one central support staff for every three campus-based staff.
Key initial roles often include a campus pastor, worship and kids ministry coordinators, tech support, and a connections director responsible for guest assimilation.
Balancing Economies of Scale with High Standards:
While multisite launches tend to cost more upfront, aiming for economies of scale is crucial. Launch effectively but economically to increase your potential for future growth.
Portable setups are typically more cost-effective initially, with organizations like Portable Church Industries providing significant long-term savings through efficient equipment solutions.
Practical Tips to Implement Immediately:
Clearly define and communicate your financial model to all staff and volunteers.
Regularly evaluate campus financial health quarterly.
Prioritize generous transparency in all financial communications.
Invest strategically in initial equipment and staffing to balance immediate needs with future scalability.
Don’t let finances stop your multisite vision. Equip your church for sustainable growth, keeping your ministry thriving long-term.
Explore more multisite insights in the Spring 2025 issue of EXECUTIVE PASTOR digital magazine available now.
Christ Fellowship Miami: Homegrown Leaders, Global Impact in a Thriving Multisite Model
Apr 17, 2025
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this All About Multisite month podcast episode we’re talking with Omar Giritli, Lead Pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, Executive Pastor at Christ Fellowship. With campuses spread across Miami, the Caribbean and South America, Christ Fellowship has truly become a model of how to lead a diverse, multi-generational church with a powerful mission.
What does it take to lead a multisite church with a global reach? Tune in as Omar and Carlos share how they’ve developed a robust leadership pipeline, fostered a culture of empowerment, and navigated the unique challenges of international church planting.
A leadership development culture. // Leadership development at Christ Fellowship is not an option—it’s a requirement. Each staff member has annual goals, and one goal is always centered on developing other leaders. Staff are encouraged to delegate responsibility, not just tasks, helping others grow into influential roles. Their internal development program, “Level Up,” formalizes this process, encouraging team members to train potential successors—redefining success as equipping others to step into greater leadership.
Raising up leaders from within. // Recruiting from outside rarely works in Miami. The cultural uniqueness of the city—especially its heavily Hispanic influence—means long-term success requires deep contextual understanding. One of the secrets to Christ Fellowship’s healthy culture is staff longevity. Many leaders—including all members of the directional leadership team—have been with the church for over a decade. This consistency creates visible pathways for growth and strengthens team culture. Staff can look up and see real examples of advancement built on trust, integrity, and commitment to the local church.
Global campuses, local DNA. // When Omar stepped into the lead pastor role, he reevaluated the church’s missions giving strategy. Rather than sending money to organizations with little oversight or visibility into outcomes, Christ Fellowship decided to launch and support its own global campuses. This strategic shift allows for greater accountability, stewardship, and relational investment. Each campus receives support in leadership development, sermon content, graphics, and operational tools, resulting in a globally unified movement that shares one vision, one strategy, and a recognizable culture.
Building global campuses. // When establishing international campuses, some of the relationships have been mergers with dying churches. Other times Christ Fellowship begins with small groups led by an identified local pastor. These pastors are mentored and assessed for alignment with Christ Fellowship’s vision and theology. Once critical mass is achieved, a public launch is held with leadership support from Miami.
Ongoing training and support. // Launching an international campus can fail if the global campus pastor does not share the mission and strategy. Christ Fellowship maintains strong relationships with global campus pastors, providing regular Zoom training, creative workshops, and even hosting an annual global leadership conference. This depth of investment ensures that international locations mirror the Miami experience in quality and culture—despite contextual differences.
Missional generosity fuels growth. // Local outreach is just as important as global expansion. Through Caring for Miami, Christ Fellowship operates mobile markets, dental clinics, and clothing buses to serve under-resourced communities. The result? People give more generously—not because of flashy campaigns, but because they see their gifts changing lives in tangible ways.
You can learn more about Christ Fellowship at www.cfmiami.org and follow them on social media @cfmiami. For local outreach updates, check out @caringformiami.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in during this All About Multisite month. We’re having conversations, getting behind the scenes with some prevailing multisite churches. And to be honest, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. Rich Birch — Excited to have a couple of leaders from Christ Fellowship. This church was founded in 1917 to impact Miami by helping people and their families follow Jesus. Today, Christ Fellowship really is a model church, a church you should be following, multi-generational, multicultural, international church with multiple locations. I can’t keep track in Miami, the Caribbean, Latin America, and online. We’ll get to how many later. Excited to have Omar Giritli with us, ah lead pastor, and Carlos Cardenas, the executive pastor and leads the directional leadership team. Welcome, guys. So glad you’re here. Omar Giritli — Hey, glad we’re here. Carlos Cardenas — It’s good to be here. Yeah. Omar Giritli — Absolutely. Rich Birch — This this is going to be good. Why don’t we start with kind of filling out the picture a little bit. Omar, kind of fill out tell fill out the kind of the picture. Give us a bit more kind of on the bones of that description that I gave there. Omar Giritli — Yeah, you know, we we are a church here in Miami that really even started before 1917. We’re the oldest church in Miami. In fact, our downtown campus opened a day before the city of Miami was incorporated. Rich Birch — Wow! Omar Giritli — And so we have a long, rich history here in Miami. Our downtown campus, back in the day, you know, sent sent off the the Palmetto Bay campus back in 1917. And ah that grew, God you know really showed a lot of grace to our to our church here in the Palmetto Bay area. And from there on out, we kept growing. The downtown campus, which was Central Baptist Church, became us, or like our sending church, merged with us. And so now we have five campuses all throughout Miami-Dade County in the different key regions in Miami. And then we also have ah campuses all throughout kind of Latin America, the Caribbean, and South America. Rich Birch — Wow. Well, we’re definitely going to get to that ah today. Rich Birch — Carlos, why don’t you tell us little bit about your story? How did you get connected to the church? You know, oftentimes the the great thing about, people understand what lead pastors do and they talk about executive pastors. It looks different in every church. Give us a bit of a profile. Talk to us a little bit about where you spend your time. Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s good to to be here with you, Rich. And I actually have been on staff for 15 years already. And when I transitioned, when I came to Christ Fellowship for the first time, I actually started as a volunteer. I was a volunteer, worship ah member. I was, well, still played music, but I was a musician, played a keyboard, was part of band directing and things like that. And so I started as a volunteer and I became an intern for just a couple months, like three months. But right when I became an intern, a couple months later, I was was I was given the opportunity to come on staff as a worship director at one of our campuses. Carlos Cardenas — That being said, throughout the years, you know, with other previous leaders, you know, I’ve been able to be developed as a leader, you know, and growing my leadership, growing my not only knowledge of God’s word, but knowledge of, you know, ministry life and and all that. And so I’ve had several positions here, from being a campus pastor, to eventually, you know, being the pastor of campuses. And then um became officially ah an executive pastor, you know, our, our lead pastor, Pastor Omar, he became the lead pastor in 2019. And a couple years after that, you know, um, the previous executive pastor was only here for a season. It was just a transitional thing and I would become a successor. So officially I became an executive pastor of Christ Fellowship about two and a half years ago. Carlos Cardenas — So it’s been ah a fun ride. I mean, you know, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve made a a lot of mistakes and but but it’s been interesting and it’s just been a great experience to to learn the ins and outs of multisite, of ministry, of being in a city like Miami. You know, ah there’s there’s challenges that we have that other churches, other cities, you know, you may not come across these challenges. So, but it’s been ah it’s been an interesting and a good, really good experience, healthy experience overall. Rich Birch — Love it. that’s That’s so good. Rich Birch — Omar, you were talking earlier that you started as a part-time role at the church as well. To give us a little bit about your history, because this is, I think, super you know fascinating. Here’s two leaders leading at a senior level in a really influential growing church. Talks about how your journey from where you started to the role of lead pastor. Omar Giritli — Right. So, you know I was you know, I was going to the University of Miami. I went to I was going to be an attorney, actually. And so, you know, I got i was going to be an accountant and then I and then went to law school. And between my first and second year of law school, I felt like God called me to the ministry. Omar Giritli — So I decided, felt like God called me to ministry, but I decided just to finish off law school. And so after law school, instead of going to the law profession, I literally went to I started working at Christ Fellowship.
Rich Birch — Love it. Omar Giritli — And I started working as an intern um during law school. I was not an intern at a law office. I was an intern at church. And and when once I graduated, ah by the grace of God, there was an opening here at CF, and it was a very entry level you know, position in small groups ministry. I was an intern in the student ministry. Then I came into in the small groups. Omar Giritli — And then from there on out, kind of my journey is very kind of very similar to Carlos. I was a ah small group associate. I became the small group director, small group pastor. Then it became, then I transitioned to a campus pastor later on. Then I became the director of campuses. And then after that, there was a season where I kind of was doing executive pastor role without the official title. But then eventually, ah yeah, then eventually I just transitioned into the lead pastor when our former lead pastor, Pastor Rick Blackwood, transition retired. Rich Birch — Love it.
Omar Giritli — But we both had a very similar similar journey.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that I love that. And that speaks to, we were joking about this ahead of time, your reputation as a church is you have like a great robust leadership culture. And, you know, have done a great job but um kind of helping people develop and helping, you know, your people develop people. Rich Birch — Carlos, talk to us a little bit about maybe at a staff level, at when you’re encouraging your staff to develop. I think this is one of these things that all of our churches, we say we want to do, but it’s actually very hard to operationalize. What does the developing of particularly volunteers look like for the team at CF? Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, absolutely. We we definitely try to create ah and cultivate a dynamic and an environment where there’s a lot of leadership development that takes place. Not only do we encourage that, we it’s part of our goals. So every year at our church, we, our staff, we have about four to five, sometimes six, you know, goals that we want to accomplish. And one of them always has to do with leadership development. Rich Birch — Love it. Carlos Cardenas — So, you know, you have your attendance, you have like small groups, you have volunteers, which is great, right? But one of them always has to do with developing a leader. And so, and so it is it is the norm here to to empower volunteers, to empower other staff members to do some of the some of the responsibilities that you’ve been entrusted with. Carlos Cardenas — And one ah jokingly, I always tell people, listen, ah we don’t want Superman leadership here. Like, we don’t want you to be a Superman and do it all, right? Like, you’re the one that’s going save the world, and you’re the one that’s going to save the day, and you’re the one that’s going to know all the answers. No, we want to be able to delegate and empower as much as possible.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Carlos Cardenas — You know, if you, you know, I heard Andy Stanley many, many years ago share, if you, you know, delegate tasks, you’re just going to create followers. But if you delegate authority, you’re going to create leaders. You’re going to develop leaders. And so that is very, you know, as part of our culture, you know, something that we talk about often. And and we’ve actually throughout the, so, a lot of the leadership of development, ah some of it happens sort of organically, right? Because it’s the culture and you’re bringing alongside alongside someone with you. You know, when you go into a meeting, you’re, you know, you bring someone just to be a fly on the wall so they can hear how the dynamics of that meeting goes. You know, people that you entrust, right? Second Timothy 2.2, you know, entrust into reliable men who will entrust into others, you know, entrust into people that you’re going to, you trust and are are competent and have the character. Carlos Cardenas — But throughout the years, ah several years ago, we actually formalized our leadership development process and we call it Level Up. So it’s like you’re leveling up someone ah to take on more leadership and possibly even taking on your position.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Carlos Cardenas — And so I know at times people can become insecure because they’re like, oh, my gosh, is this competition? Carlos Cardenas — You know, I’m leveling up this person and then they’re no longer going need me. But vice versa. We we actually ah reward those who have leveled up someone to take on their position because if you level up someone to take on your position or another one, you’re you’re always going to have a job or a seat in the bus, right? Rich Birch — 100%. 100%. Carlos Cardenas — Because you’re just helping you know God’s mission move forward. Rich Birch — Yeah. Carlos Cardenas — And one of the things that will will will be a hindrance to the mission that God has given us as a church is lack of leaders. Omar Giritli — Yeah. Carlos Cardenas — You know if you don’t have, you you can have the the resources. You can have the venue. You can have the finances. You know you can have even like the volunteers. But if if you if the Lord provides a campus for us, right? And we don’t have the right campus pastor or the the right person to lead that campus, then guess what? It’s it’s going to create a a lid or it’s going to create a barrier into what we want to do in the future.
Carlos Cardenas — And so not not only do we encourage it, Rich, but we we make it part of our goals to to you know that you are required to develop someone or develop leaders. Rich Birch — That’s good. We’ll come we’ll come back. I’d love to talk about Level Up, kind of the formal program, what does that look like in a minute. Carlos Cardenas — Sure. Sure. Rich Birch — But Omar, let’s talk about the culture side a little bit first. Rich Birch — How do we develop, before we just jump to a program, how do we develop a culture? How have you been seeing the culture encourage at CF around leadership development? It’s that nuance. It’s that caught versus taught thing, right? Somebody can get up and say, hey, we got to develop leaders, but it’s a whole different thing when it becomes a part of who we are. What does that look like? How have you been able to develop that culture, Omar, at the church? Omar Giritli — You know, I I think just to like what Carl’s saying, I think, you know, you know we I think part of it is that, you know, we have a a system in place. And I think part of it is, is the the the the, when our staff looks up to the leadership of the church, not only Carlos and I, but even like our directional leadership team and our campus pastors, I can’t even think of one person we brought in from the outside. Rich Birch — That’s good. Omar Giritli — So what happens is, is anybody that’s in our staff and looks up in the organization, they, you know, they, they can, you know, you know, they can see, wow, if I stick around it long enough, if I’m faithful, if I work hard, if I’m a man of a woman of integrity…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Omar Giritli — …if if I do what is asked of me and I’m faithful, what Ii have to do, there’s always opportunity for me here at Christ Fellowship. I, you know, I’m not a big fan of bringing people from the outside.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Omar Giritli — And really, the few times that we’ve done it, it’s very expensive, and they don’t last.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Omar Giritli — Good people, they just, they just don’t last. I mean, it’s they they’re here for two or three years, and they go. And whether, you know, Miami is very different. Miami is very Hispanic. I mean, little you know, you cross a Broward line, which is a county above, you know, Miami-Dade. And it’s it’s it’s a very unique place. It’s it’s it’s a very unique place. There’s a lot of, you know, Hispanics. It’s a melting pot of South America. And so there’s a lot of things going on here that, honestly, it’s not it’s not for everybody. Omar Giritli — And so um so usually people just come and they’re here for just a few years and it’s not even us. It’s sometimes the cost of living, and the people, and you know the i just they just rather go somewhere else. But the people that stick around for long-term are all people who’ve been here 10, 15 years. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Omar Giritli — I think, if you think about it, like between Carlos and I, we’ve been here both over 15 years. The directional leadership team, every single person has been from 35 years to somebody else is probably like, all of them are over 10 years in directional leadership team here within CF. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Omar Giritli — The campus pastors, for the most part, have been here easily six, seven to 10 years. So what happens is you start looking up the organization and at any young intern, any young staff member entry level position, they see you know, we can talk a lot about leadership development and we can talk about, hey, but where the proof, you know, where the proof, you know, the proof is in the pudding, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Omar Giritli — Look up and everybody here are people that have been here for a long time. So I think that in itself screams, you know, you know, you know screams, um says a lot more than anything we could ever say. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Omar Giritli — And I think people recognize that. And I think um the people that ah that are in our staff are here. And the truth of the matter is you want people that you raise up because not only are they they, they, you know, you know, you, they know, you you know who they are. You know that they love the Lord. They understand how we operate as a church. They understand our history of our church. But the reality is that they also love our church. There’s a deep passion not and love, not only for the Lord, but for our church, our church family.
Rich Birch — Yes. Omar Giritli — And so I think that’s, you know, you know you can have all you can have all the leadership development pipelines and strategies in your in your church. But if the top people are not longstanding people that have developed through the ranks, it’s it’s kind of like you’re you’re you’re preaching something, but it it’s doesn’t really come to fruition, you know? Rich Birch — Right. Carlos Cardenas — You’re not you’re not modeling you’re not modeling we’re not you don’t not be modeling what you’re preaching what you’re what you’re you know vision casting for. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good insight. You know, and and there’s no doubt, you know, Miami obviously is a unique place, but every part of the country tells the same story, which is like, hey, this part of the country is just different for one reason or another. Omar Giritli — Sure. Right. Rich Birch — And it’s everybody’s convinced that they’re, but you know, that is obviously true in Miami. And you can see that where, you know, and we I think we get tempted by the cross country hire. We get tempted by the like, oh, here’s a person that was in a similar church and like we can just transplant them into here and like they’ll, but that it really is, it’s the rare person. And I did that. I made the 12 hour move and thought I was going to live there forever. And eight, nine years later, we moved back. I didn’t even think that was going to happen, but there it is. Rich Birch —Carlos, tell us, talk… Carlos Cardenas — And I think, and just to add to what Omar said about it, if you don’t mind if I can just add to what Omar said, because I completely agree with that. Rich Birch —Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Carlos Cardenas — I think when you don’t when the culture is not healthy and it and it it’s in a specific ministry, then you may need to hire from the outside…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Carlos Cardenas — …like someone that may need to fix you know the ministry or fix whatever area department because the culture is toxic and and all that. But by the grace of God, we we’ve tried as much as we can within the last four to five years, especially when Omar became the lead pastor, to, to make sure the culture is healthy.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Carlos Cardenas — Like we work hard at trying to, you know, you know, reward people, you know, care for them, celebrate them, and encourage them.
Omar Giritli — Yeah. Carlos Cardenas — And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people but fail in ministry is that they don’t want to let go of responsibility. They don’t want to like, and we are all about like, man, releasing, here’s an opportunity for you. You’re young, whether intern or yeah or a volunteer. I mean, we have volunteer staff that that and we hold accountable to. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Carlos Cardenas — Like they we hold them accountable. They go to staff meetings and they’re volunteers. Rich Birch — Love it. Carlos Cardenas — Lay men, lay women, you know, that love our church. But, you know, the the I think Omar brought up an excellent point. The high-performing leader stud from across the country, they know a lot, but they they don’t have that love for for the church…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Carlos Cardenas — …like like like like someone else who may not be, you know, a five-star, you know, leader, but they they’ll get there. They’ll get there, you know? So, yeah. Rich Birch — Right. Well, yeah and I’ve, so I’ve said in other contexts, like what we do is not rocket science. Like I think sometimes we make it more complex than it is. But the culture stuff—and I love that both of you have hit on this—the love for the church, man, you can’t replace that. Carlos Cardenas — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like the, the, the heart, the heart for the house, man, we love this place. Omar Giritli — Yeah. Rich Birch — You know, God’s changed my life here. I want to be a part of that. That’s a very good, that’s a very good insight. Rich Birch — Omar, pivoting in a totally different direction. As an outsider, Miami seems to be the capital city of Latin America, and your church has is in is taking that mission on very seriously. You’ve done the international campus thing. I’d love to hear more about that, just to put ah in a little bit context for our listeners. The vast majority of multisite churches are, in fact, less than 1% are more than an hour away from the original location. So the fact that you’re doing international campuses, very rare. It just doesn’t, statistically just doesn’t happen. Rich Birch — But I’d love to hear the story of that, Omar. How did you get into that? What’s the vision behind that? Tell us a little bit of that story. Omar Giritli — Yeah. So what happened was when I stepped into this role of lead pastor, one of the things that, and and it was a little bit also when I was doing the kind of the XP role, you know, I was noticing that we would send a lot of money to our, to different mission organizations. And what I noticed was we’re sending a lot of money, and I had no clue what they were doing with that money.
Rich Birch — Yes. Omar Giritli — I mean, it was so much money. Yeah. Mission, mission, mission, but okay. Where’s the report?
Rich Birch — Right. Omar Giritli — Where’s, help us understand how do we know what how you handle that money? You know, and again, it’s not I don’t think anybody was you know doing anything fraudulent, but there wasn’t any any real, you know, you know, what was the fruit of that? What was the fruit of all of our sacrifice to give to this mission organization, you know? Omar Giritli — And so at some point we we we started we we have like ah we’re supporting some churches in Cuba. And at that juncture, we went to go see them and um the previous um executive pastor before Carlos, ah his name is Jim Tomberlin, you probably know who he is. Omar Giritli — You know, I started thinking myself, why we start funneling all of our missions budget, not just to some random mission organizations that we have no clue how they’re using the money and how effective they’re using that money. But what about if we just plant our own churches? How what about we establish our own churches? Omar Giritli — And these will be churches that have our same mission, vision, strategy. Our same name. Some places would have Christ Fellowship in some Latin American countries where there’s English speaking people. If not, they’re called Familia Cristiana, which is a very similar name with the same low, same thing. And they will be independent churches. They’re not ours, but they’re independent churches that ah we support the pastor. We provide resources, graphics, a sermon. I mean, anything that they they need. And how come, you know, what about we did this? Omar Giritli — So we what we started doing is instead of giving all this money just to some, you know, random mission organization that we don’t know how effective they were being. We know that when we establish, when we plant our church ourselves, we know how to do it. We know that’s going to be effective. And we know that we can, with integrity, I could stand before the congregation and everything that you sacrifice and you gave towards this church, we know what every penny went to. And we, and here’s the proof. These are churches you have started or helped revitalize. Omar Giritli — And it’s been awesome. It’s been awesome because they they, lot of these churches, we plant them and with the strategy, hey, we want to get you off the ground. And you’re free to go. You’re you’re like you’re you’re literally free to go and become your own church if you want to. But most of them just stay with us.
Rich Birch — Right. Omar Giritli — They just want to just stay with us really.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Omar Giritli — And they have a great, great partnership. And it’s been really a really great, a really great thing for us where, you know, we’re able to establish all these churches in all these different places and, and we’re learning and we don’t have it perfected. But if you look at any of these other campuses globally, they’re going through the same series we are.
Carlos Cardenas — Yeah.
Omar Giritli — Same graphics, same, you know, sermon, you know, same teaching. I mean, It’s kind of funny. Some people have said that they go to these global campuses and they look more Christ Fellowship than some of our local campuses. I mean, they have really taken the identity, our strategy, our logos, pictures, and they’ve own it. They’ve taken ownership of. Omar Giritli — And I think with those churches, when they realize, well, we’re being led by by a church who is not trying to you know be over-controlling, but we’re here, we’re together in this, right? We’re together we’re and we’re and, man, they really appreciate it. So, so yeah, so we have um campuses. I believe we have nine campuses right now um all over. Omar Giritli — We’ve there’s been times that we’ve had 15, 16. There was a moment, for example, in Cuba where we came to a point, we had about six, seven campuses in Cuba that they said, you know, with the political tensions, better if we completely go independent because of everything going on. Rich Birch — Yeah. Sure. Omar Giritli — And so they they went off and they’re still doing great and we love them. They love us. But, you know, that’s, you know, our goal is not having a Christ Fellowship campuses. It’s really establishing and and planting new churches where there are no churches, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Omar Giritli — It’s been great. And I think our people are really appreciate it. Because they really feel that when they give their tithe and their offerings and they sacrifice to give to Christ Fellowship, that we’re really funneling that to to to to further the gospel to all nations. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Carlos Cardenas — Yeah. Rich Birch — Could, Carlos, unpack that a little bit. When you say that you guys have planted, what does that typically look like? Like, are you identifying planters in the communities that you’re, you know, that you’re launching in? Talk us through some of the, how does some of the mechanics of that work? Carlos Cardenas — Yes, some of them have been a—great question—some of them have been a church merger, you know, so it’s a church, a church that is, you know, a dying church. And then we’ve so we have a global pastor, you know, and our global pastor is the one who is ah but building these relationships with these men or these pastors, right? And and in those countries. And so then some of them have been of church merger.
Carlos Cardenas — Others have started just like we would start a local campus where they start with small groups. You know, we first of all, I identify the leader. So we have the pastor. Then that pastor, I can tell you one campus in Colombia, Villavicencio, this was the their their their pathway. Actually for several of them, on Honduras as well and Guatemala, where they begin ah small groups, right? In someone’s home. Carlos Cardenas — And then they start having multiple small groups. And then they identify a venue. So usually they they lease space, you know. We do help them financially in that in that process. And then from there, we have our our grand our our our launch date, like our grand opening. For the most part, either Omar, myself, will be a part of that. We’ve even done ordinations and in in in some of these pastors. Rich Birch — Wow. Carlos Cardenas — We’ve gone there to do ordinations, like do the whole ordination process and the the ceremony. So it usually starts with identifying the pastor, starting off with small groups, investing and serving the community. And then we have our grand opening launch, launch date in, in, in, in that, in that community, in that city of of of the country that we we go to. Carlos Cardenas — And just to, to really just to kind of add to what Omar shared, you know, there, if you were to go to one of those campuses, it feels like you’re at Christ Fellowship Miami. Like in in the context of that nation, it’s like, oh, like same graphic branding, um you know, even the vibe like guest services. Carlos Cardenas — Because the other thing too, is that our ministry directors here, they spend some time ah developing their leaders there. So for example, Like our creative director will have a Zoom meeting with all the creative leads from all the different global campuses. So you will have like 15 people from all over the country, from all and over the world, right? From all over really South America, and Latin America and the Caribbean. So you have someone from several people from, you know, um Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, you know, Honduras. Carlos Cardenas — And, and, and we’ll, you know, they’ll still have like a a workshop, you know, on hey here’s, here’s some of the best, you know, common practices when it comes to, you know, graphics and when it comes to, you know, ah videos on social media, think things like that. Right? Carlos Cardenas — And then um not last year, but in 2023, we were going to do it this year, but we had to we we we we pivoted and we’re not gonna do it this year. But in 2023, we had our our first global conference… Rich Birch — Wow. Carlos Cardenas — …where we had about 200 volunteers. Some were staff, but most of them were volunteers from all these global campuses. And we did a full-on conference for them. So we took about 25 staff members, including myself, you know. That included the band. So we took like the bands, you know.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carlos Cardenas — We did a full on, you know, main session, like I was able to preach in one of the main sessions. And then we have breakouts, you know, like, it was ah it was I think it was a day and a half. No, sorry, it was a it was a full day of a conference. And then we visited many of the locations that we we had in that in that country that we went to. Carlos Cardenas — So um we not only do we want to provide financial support, like, you know, to Omar’s point, you You know, one thing is to write a check. Another thing is to, like, we’re going to invest in your leadership. We’re going to invest in you as ah as a as a leader, as a volunteer, as a person, as ah as a congregation, as a campus. We’re we’re going to invest in you. We’re going to walk alongside you and…
Rich Birch — I love that. Yeah, I love that.
Carlos Cardenas — …and tell you, you know, here’s how we do follow-up. Here’s how we do small groups. So we’re one church. You know, it’s it’s just a it’s we call it global campuses. Omar Giritli — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yep. Carlos Cardenas — And and every year, at least once a year, we bring our global pastors together. We have them on stage. They share, you know, we have a video. They share something. We cast vision. We remind, you know, God’s people like, hey, part of your giving, part of your generosity…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it goes to this.
Carlos Cardenas — …you know, goes to fund these ministries and these campuses that we have in all these different countries. So it’s it’s it’s been very fascinating. Pretty cool experience. Rich Birch — Yeah, when sticking with you, Carlos, ah there may be churches who have had, you know, maybe interest from ah pastors in a different part of the world, or, you know, they might have people that are tracking with them. What would be like ah a pothole, like a thing that you would suggest, hey, watch out for this, because this part of it is the way that it could you know go bad or not go great. Is there something in that maybe you haven’t necessarily directly experienced that, but you could see, oh, hey, this could go bad if we don’t navigate this well in these kinds of relationships. Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with the leader, with the pastor. Rich Birch — Okay, good. Carlos Cardenas — And and I think of it the same way with local campuses. Rich Birch — Yep. Carlos Cardenas — To me, the pastor is everything. Rich Birch — Yep. Carlos Cardenas — We call them campus pastors, global campus pastor. If the global campus pastor is not excited, fully on board, doesn’t believe in the vision, mission, and strategy. We’ve had different meetings where we’ve identified pastors and they, let’s be honest, like they they want to go into in a relationship with us. They want to get some funding…
Rich Birch — Right. Sure.
Carlos Cardenas — …but we know that their heart is not there. Like they don’t want, they, they, they don’t want to, ah ah you know, and, and contextually we, there’s, there’s certain things that we are, are flexible on, right? Like contextually, you got to tweak couple of things, right? Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Yep. Carlos Cardenas — Because you you can’t be so boxed in and and we’re not in the States, right? So you have to, you have to also be contextual to the nation that you’re in. But but for the most part, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to adopt our discipleship pathway.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Carlos Cardenas — You know, our strategy, which is, you know, connecting to God, connect connect to God, connect to others, connect to ministry and connect to the mission. You know, and you have to, you know, doctrine is important, of course. And and understand, like, we’re we’re we’re aligned when it comes to our teaching, right? Carlos Cardenas — Now, are there are there certain weekends that the pastor may have a one-off? Like, you know, it may not do the the not be a part of the sermon series. That’s okay. We we we we have to navigate those tensions, right? Rich Birch — Sure. Carlos Cardenas — But for the most part, they’re they’re aligned with us. So you you got you got to identify the right person.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Carlos Cardenas — It always starts with them. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. Well, just as we’re coming to land, Omar, as you think about the future, you think about the future of Christ Fellowship and you know campuses, multisite, what what’s on the horizon? Or maybe what are some questions you’re asking as you think about the future as ah you know as a church, as related to this, all the stuff we’ve been talking about today? Omar Giritli — Well, as we look to the future, um you know, I think one of the things that we want to continue just to increase is, um you know, when it comes to here at Christ Fellowship, it’s really our local outreach. Because, know, we’ve been talking about our global outreach, our local outreach here at Christ Fellowship. Rich Birch — Yep. Omar Giritli — And one of the things that um that that really that we’re really just proud of as as ah as an organization ah is that we have two missional arms of Christ Fellowship. One of them is to families, which is Christ Fellowship Academy. We we have a school.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Omar Giritli — But we also have Caring for Miami, ah which is ah really a nonprofit that really focuses on reaching the under-resourced and hurting in our city. Rich Birch — That’s good. Omar Giritli — And, man, we have it’s an amazing thing where ah we have a, Caring for Miami does, you know, different things. For example, we have a more a brand new state-of-the-art mobile market that goes through all the hurting parts of the city and people…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Omar Giritli — …you know, the the Miami-Dade down the the county down donated one of their their buses and we gutted it and we renovated it to be a state-of-the-art market that they goes through all these different hurting parts of the city. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Omar Giritli — And people could go on there shop free of charge. We have a mobile dental clinic that goes to all these different parts and provides free resources, free services to cancer patients, to all these hurting people. Omar Giritli — We have our, we’re just about to launch our mobile clothing market, which is a bus that actually goes to all the same places and people go on there and shop for, and not shop, but pick the clothes they want ah free of charge and and and all that. Omar Giritli — We have a park marketplace. We have a backpack program which gives to children in schools. And so one of the things is that, you know, we need to continue reaching out, you know, being very missional. Omar Giritli — One of the things that, you know, Carlos and I were talking about that part of our our giving has really increased in the last several years. And I think it’s not because we’ve done a great a huge sermon series on giving. We do talk about it you know regularly, and we’re not you know we’re not afraid to talk about giving. Omar Giritli — We’re giving as examples. We’re taught to be good stewards of what God has given to us. But I really do think that when the people of God see the church being missional, whether it’s locally…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Omar Giritli — …for example, through Caring for Miami, or globally, really it’s, I think it really motivates people to want to really sacrifice and give towards a mission because they see that what they’re sacrificing for is not just to keep the lights open, but it’s to really reach more people for Christ, not only here in Miami, but abroad. Omar Giritli — And so that’s one of the things that we do. We really want to celebrate what a God is doing through us and locally and and globally. And whether you know we’re you know ministering to a cancer patient through our dental clinic or whether we are planning a new church and do an outreach you know in you know in Costa Rica, they know that, hey, when you give to this church, we might not be perfect, but man, we’re going to be our best, do our best to be the best stewards of what God has entrusted to us through the generosity of God’s people, and and do that. So that’s one of the things that we’re that we’re looking to do as we move forward is continue just to be as missional as possible. Rich Birch — That’s good. Omar Giritli — And and I think our people really buy into that. And they they really their hearts are really behind that because you know we all want to see people reach reach people you know. We all want to see people being reached for Christ, right so. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Omar Giritli — That’s one of the things, you continue to be missional and and and develop leaders because as as people give, as we’re missional, as people give, more opportunities come up, which is that we need to be have the leaders ready to go, you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Omar Giritli — …which kind of ties into the inner circle of like leadership development. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, I really appreciate you guys being on today and thank you for letting us look under the hood a little bit. Carlos, if people want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Where where should we get to send them to stay connected with what you guys are up to? Carlos Cardenas — Yeah, our website, cfmiami.org.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Carlos Cardenas — cfmiami.org, yeah. Rich Birch — Love it. Omar Giritli — Yeah, and social media. Carlos Cardenas — Follow you can follow us on social media too, Instagram, you know Facebook, @cfmiami as well. That’s our account. Rich Birch — Nice. You’re going to say something there, Omar, as well? Omar Giritli — Yeah, so our social media handles are CFMiami. Omar Giritli — And then also, if you want to look more and into like our Caring for Miami, which I just mentioned, it’s just @caringformiami. Omar Giritli — It’s on social, on, on, on, and you’ll see it’s like, it’s pretty amazing.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool.
Omar Giritli — So on our main website, you’ll see us celebrate their global campuses. And then on Caring for Miami, we’ll celebrate all that we’re doing in the community. Rich Birch — Love it. Rich Birch — Thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you. Omar Giritli — You got it. Thank you so much, Rich.
Multisite Myths Busted: How to Overcome the Biggest Multisite Growing Pains
Apr 16, 2025
The multisite journey isn’t always smooth—even thriving churches experience growing pains. Today, I’m busting some of the biggest myths and offering practical insights to overcome common struggles within multisite churches.
Every week during All About Multisite month, I’m diving deep into practical solutions on Wednesdays and hosting behind-the-scenes conversations with multisite leaders on Thursdays. Today’s episode specifically tackles the tricky realities that don’t always get airtime at conferences: the tensions, structures, and struggles that come with scaling beyond a single location.
Episode Highlights:
Myth: Campus vs. Central is Always a Battle
It’s a common belief that campus pastors and central leadership will constantly clash. While tensions can exist, proactive management can make this partnership thrive.
Clearly define responsibilities: campus teams focus on people, execution, and alignment; central teams provide curriculum and resources.
Invest in regular communication (monthly meetings, shared Slack channels) and cultivate trust through strategic relationship-building across teams.
Myth: Launching Small is Just Fine
Reality check: Launch big or don’t launch at all. The most critical factor for multisite success is the size and health of your volunteer core at launch.
Small launches typically struggle to gain momentum. Start with a robust, enthusiastic volunteer team to create lasting impact and excellence from day one.
Myth: Launch and Leave
Avoid the “launch and leave” syndrome. Successful campuses need ongoing support, training, troubleshooting, and resource investment.
Keep central teams engaged until campuses become model locations capable of planting additional campuses.
Diagnosing and Addressing a Struggling Campus:
Financial Sustainability: 54% of campus closures stem from financial issues. Aim for financial independence by year three, and sound alarms if you don’t see a clear path by year two.
Attendance and Growth: Track first-time guest percentages (aim for at least 2% weekly). Investigate quickly if a campus is flat or declining while others thrive.
Reaching New People: Ensure campuses focus on unchurched individuals rather than transfers from other churches. Consistently monitor spiritual background surveys.
Leadership Fit: Campus pastor alignment is crucial—27% of closures relate to campus pastor issues. Consider leadership adjustments if necessary.
Location and Facility: Facility issues can significantly hinder growth. Relocating campuses can sometimes lead to substantial attendance boosts.
Practical Steps for Turning Around an Underperforming Campus:
Relaunch: Reintroduce your campus to the community with renewed marketing and outreach efforts.
Resource Surge: Temporarily boost central resources and visibility at the struggling campus to demonstrate support and stimulate growth.
Contextualized Ministry: Allow campuses some flexibility to experiment with targeted outreach and ministry adaptations suitable for their context.
When It’s Time to Close or Reset:
Move swiftly once you’ve identified that closure is necessary. Close gracefully, caring for your congregation by facilitating transitions.
Consider rebranding, merging with another church, or repurposing the location strategically.
Learn from closures. Conduct thorough debriefings, possibly engaging outside consultants, to ensure future launches are better informed and more successful.
Remember, encountering challenges in multisite growth doesn’t mean you’re failing—it means you’re growing. Let’s tackle these myths head-on and keep your church moving forward.
Explore more practical multisite insights in this month’s EXECUTIVE PASTOR digital magazine.
One Church: Preaching, Prayer & Presence—A Fresh Take on The Multisite Model
Apr 10, 2025
Welcome back to another special All About Multisite episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re joined today by Bo Chancey (Senior Pastor) and Jeremy Peterson (Executive Pastor) from One Church, a growing multisite church based in New Hampshire. With four physical “outposts” and a thriving online presence, One Church is reaching communities across rural and suburban New England with a mission rooted in prayer, simplicity, and incarnational ministry.
Is your church considering multisite but unsure how to maintain culture and avoid personality-driven models? Wondering how to develop more leaders or foster unity across locations and teams? Tune in as Bo and Jeremy offer practical insights into developing communicators, creating alignment, and launching new outposts with prayer and purpose.
Pray for One. // At the heart of One Church’s model is a simple prayer: “God, please give me one person to share your love with.” This guiding prayer fuels the church’s evangelistic culture and aligns every ministry around loving neighbors and multiplying disciples. It’s not about growing attendance—it’s about stewarding people to become everyday missionaries where they live, work, and play.
From video to incarnational teaching. // One Church made a deliberate shift away from video teaching at their outposts. Instead of relying on one communicator, Bo preaches a recorded message for their online service while local communicators deliver live messages at each outpost. This move has allowed for authentic, in-person ministry and increased leadership development. A weekly sermon planning table with 12 communicators fosters collaboration, feedback, and consistency across outposts.
A multisite model without a mothership. // One Church rejects the “satellite campus” model of multisite as a way of avoiding the cult of personality issues that can develop within growing churches. Outposts are sized and shaped according to the communities they serve and no one location serves as the dominant hub. One Church feels increasingly called to planting outposts in rural communities of New Hampshire which have fewer churches reaching out to them.
Alignment through clarity and collaboration. // Jeremy shares how alignment is driven by close collaboration between central and outpost teams. A detailed church-wide “playbook” defines ministry expectations, culture values (like creativity, love, and fun), and the balance of support versus autonomy. Worship, kids ministry, and preaching content are centralized, but each outpost can tailor community engagement based on local needs.
Prayer as the foundation. // Bo and Jeremy both emphasize the power of prayer in creating culture and solving tensions between teams. Bo prays daily for every staff member, and One Church encourages its staff to pray for one another regularly. This practice has transformed team relationships and sparked a culture of mutual trust and grace. Waiting on the Lord in prayer has also allowed One Church to move farther faster and with fewer setbacks as they expand their reach.
Raising up leaders through residency. // The church’s residency program has become a critical part of its expansion strategy. Residents receive hands-on experience in preaching, worship, production, and more. Oftentimes residents go on to staff roles or other ministry leadership positions. Bo and Jeremy believe developing leaders before launching outposts is essential for sustainable growth.
To learn more about One Church, visit them at church.one and check out their Residency Program to develop hands-on ministry experience.
EXTRA CREDIT // What if your greatest leadership breakthrough started with prayer?
Are you leading your staff with prayer… or just with plans? The Prayer-Powered Leadership Rhythm Guide is a hands-on resource designed to help you build the daily habit of praying for your entire team. Inspired by One Church’s leadership rhythms, this guide includes:
Reflection prompts to align your leadership with what God is saying
A daily and weekly prayer rhythm
A staff prayer tracker with space for notes and next steps
This resource is exclusively available through unSeminary Extra Credit, our affordable membership that fuels the podcast and provides you with valuable tools like this and many others!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’re in the middle of a great month of episodes all about multisite where we’re talking with some prevailing churches, trying to look under the hood and learn a little bit more about this incredibly important and movement that continues to impact churches across the country. Rich Birch — I’m excited to talk with two leaders who I know are going to open up some insights that are going super helpful for you. From New Hampshire, One Church – this is a multisite church in the new Northeast ah with four outpost locations in in New Hampshire plus online. Bo Chancey is the senior pastor and Jeremy Peterson is the executive pastor. Welcome to the show. So glad you guys are here. Bo Chancey — Thanks. Thanks for having us. Jeremy Peterson — Thanks for having us, Rich. Bo Chancey — Yeah, appreciate it Rich Birch — It’s going to be, it’s excited that you guys are taking time to be with us. Bo, why don’t we start with you? Kind of tell us a little bit about One Church. If people were to come this weekend, what would they experience? Kind of set the picture for us. Help us know a little bit more about it. Fill in the painting for us. Bo Chancey — Well, we are by every definition a church. So we love the Lord our God and love our neighbor. Those are the the two key components. And then we want to make disciples. Rich Birch — Yes. Bo Chancey — We want to reach as many people as fast as we can, ah the most people in the shortest time. And so that’s that’s who we are. The way that we um do that as far as a community, a local church is that we pray for one, which is very simple. It goes like this, God, please give me one person to share your love with. And so that’s what we invite everyone who is connected to One Church to participate in daily. Bo Chancey — And that’s our primary strategy is to steward the church um and the church’s people. So lot of times when we think about church leadership and programming and stewardship, we think, um you know, programs, buildings, budgets, but really the the key thing is people. And so that’s what we’re about. We want to help people connect to God and then to people and then to the mission of Jesus. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Love love that. Jeremy, why don’t you fill in the picture there? Tell talk to us about the the kind of four different outposts. I love that you call them outposts. I love that language. Kind of give us a sense of the the communities that you serve. Tell us a little bit about that. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, so our four outposts are, um I would say two of them are located in probably two of the larger communities in New Hampshire. So all of New Hampshire, Manchester itself is about 100,000 people. Concord, where one of our outposts is, is about 50,000 people. Bedford is another community. It’s about 20,000. And then the newest one, which is in the Lakes region, it’s a community of about 7,000 people. Jeremy Peterson — And what what we realized is we’re feeling more and more called to go to to some of these rural communities. There’s more and more churches that are dying in these rural communities. There aren’t a lot of church plants going um to these rural communities. And so really have a heartbeat um to go to some of these areas. And and we feel like that’s really what God’s called us to. Jeremy Peterson — And and it’s really kind of shifted over the last several years where we feel a call to to to make ah a big shift from moving from from video. And so when I first came here, multisite was about to capture the message on video. We would broadcast it at the other um locations. And and we’ve made ah a shift where we really felt called to develop communicators and a lot of a lot of those time has been spent on that developing communicators. And Bo’s a phenomenal communicator, um but really developing some of those communicators that are communicating in person at the outpost on Sunday mornings. And so really pouring more and more time and into that. Jeremy Peterson — We really feel like it allows for incarnational ministry. So whoever’s, whoever’s sharing, whoever’s preaching that week gets a chance to not only interact with people, um but actually like give somebody a hug, ah lay a hand on the shoulder as their praying over them. And we feel it felt like that’s really, really powerful, especially in this region. Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. One of the kind of mis- common misnomers about multisite is that they’re all video. Like that’s like, it’s like, that’s the way to do it. And you guys are obviously not going in that direction, heading in a slightly different direction. Bo, unpack that a little bit from your perspective as a communicator, finding communicators, developing them, that that is a high task. You know, that’s a high calling. Why, why invest there? Why, why do you feel like that’s such an important piece of the puzzle at, at One Church? Bo Chancey — A couple of reasons um that start with really, I think, the problems some of the problems of multisite. So there was the problem of kind of the megachurch world and the cult of personality stuff that was really troubling for me and and I know many others. That was that was something I was really struggling with. Bo Chancey — And then the multisite model where no matter what it felt like you did, it was a satellite, no matter what. You had a mothership or a broadcast venue or whatever language you might want to use for it. There was one central location that everything else kind of orbited around. And I felt like we were losing kind of the best of what the local church in communities might have to offer. Bo Chancey — And so a solution for that um would be to develop other communicators. And then I don’t preach at an outpost on Sunday mornings. That’s another key component. I fill in about once a month somewhere, different places, but I’m there to evaluate the communicators, the preachers, to give them notes. I’m coaching them. I’m there for support. But I preach 10 days ahead of them on a Thursday night for our live online recording. And so we look at online not as an outpost. Online is a separate thing. Bo Chancey — And so our outposts are where incarnational ministry happen in community. Our online service is a primarily a distribution model. And so it’s methodology for distributing content, information, good news, music, sermons, all the things that we’re doing there and communicating back and forth.
Bo Chancey — So in order to do that, I shifted my planning ahead four weeks is a key thing to do. Turns out the same Holy Spirit that was working the week of, he’s working four weeks out. Rich Birch — Love it. Bo Chancey — Pretty cool how God does that. Rich Birch — Love it. Bo Chancey — And then inviting others in. And so it starts with them evaluating what I’m doing. And so ah we begin each each week we meet for about two hours um on sermon prep, but they have they have four weeks out to the each of the preachers do to look at. Bo Chancey — We usually have about 12 people around the table every single week who are evaluating each other. Not all of them preach that week, obviously, so they’re evaluating each other, providing notes, taking a look at what I’ve just preached, because they’ll be preaching it the next week, and then working on the thing that I’m gonna preach that week. So and then they have a fourth sermon, so they can be reviewing that ahead of time. And then we’re also scheduled out for the year. Bo Chancey — So the planning component and coaching pieces became integral, but because of that, now we we don’t have personality-based ministries happening. We are able to utilize personality and allow people to be who they are and use their gifts. And then we also don’t have any kind of satellite where things are revolving around. Bo Chancey — I mean, we have two outposts that are seven miles apart. One of them was the original one. One of them’s newer and has a much bigger auditorium, which is where we record. But the other one runs a couple hundred people bigger than that one. So it’s like we have ah a thousand people at one, 800 people at another, 350 at another and 100 at another. So where it allows for a variety of size that is really more tailored to the size community and place that they’re in. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So, ah Jeremy, when you think about alignment, so I love the, you know, the the heart to, you know, to feel, you know, we want to feel local, we want to feel incarnational. But then by definition, if you’re one church in multiple locations across the region, they’re you’re obviously at some level trying to to drive some sort of alignment. Rich Birch — How do you guys think about alignment? And what are you trying to do or to to to manage consistency? What are the things that you are trying to manage consistency across all those? How have you approached that? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I mean, we definitely want to have consistency across all of our outposts. And so I think a big part of that is Bo and I work really closely with our central team. So our central team has a pulse on what’s happening. And so the central team rotates every single week. We’re not locked into a specific outpost. Jeremy Peterson — And so I think that that’s a huge part of it is is if I show up at the Lakes, is it going to feel like a service at the Bedford outpost? Is there going to be a similar feel when you show up as far as the way that you’re greeted, um what we offer for kids is going to be the same as the message. So Bo works with the preaching team. They’re working on the message together. And so we want so our worship set, the message, all those will be consistent. Jeremy Peterson — I think one of the things that’s been really helpful for us is several years back, we created a playbook. And so in the playbook, it it outlines all the ministries across the church. And so not only is it talk about um the culture of love ah that we want it to be so prevalent, we want to have a high level of creativity. And so we put a high level on creativity. We put a high level on fun. And we feel like those things are essential. Jeremy Peterson — We really want to create and innovate instead of trying to like copy or replicate. So it’s something that we really, really focus on. But the playbook really helps kind of centralize what’s taking place, what’s happening at an outpost level, what what support the central level is is have is is having. And then where’s the collaboration taking place between the two of those? And so I think the clearer that that’s outlined, it’s helpful for the outpost pastors. It’s helpful for the central team to all know, okay, these are these are our lanes um and we’re focusing on this area. Jeremy Peterson — So like an outpost pastor would have oversight of the staff at that specific outpost. The central team is more of like a coaching providing support, but then there’s always collaboration that has to take place. And the more that there’s collaboration taking place and everybody’s clear on what’s happening, I think that really helps drive um the mission forward. And so I think having that in place is really, really helpful for that clarity. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’d love to kind of double click on that. I love the idea of a playbook and articulating clarity, obviously, as kindness, being super clear on here here he is, you know, this is what it looks like to be a One Church location. Can you talk us through an area that um maybe you were struggling on alignment? And how have you been able to kind of get, you know, better alignment over these last few years, Jeremy? Could you talk us through that? What what that’s looked like? How is the how has the playbook helped with that? Jeremy Peterson — Yes, I think it it helps in several in several regards, Rich. I think part of it is, yeah so the typical church… So I went to a ah Christian college, and a lot of the training was, okay, as a pastor, you’re going to pastor this group of people, and you need to spend 20 to 25 hours a week working and and preparing your message.
Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — So if you’re doing that that, that really limits the amount of time that you can actually spend in the community, developing people, investing in leaders. And so a huge part of the the the preaching team, the teaching team that works together, is that there between the time that Bo’s putting into it, the other outpost pastors, the ones who are preaching or putting into it, nobody’s spending more than like six, seven hours a week specifically on message prep, which then obviously frees you up for a lot of things. Jeremy Peterson — And so so there there’s a lot of things that we centralize in like the message will be the same across all the outposts. Kids curriculum will be the same. We do offer some freedom, though. So every outpost has different needs in that community. Jeremy Peterson — And so the freedom there is the outpost pastor and the team at that outpost, like knowing what are the specific needs of that community. We’re not trying to make it cookie cutter and saying, OK, well, you need to do this with a food pantry, for example, because that may not be a need in the community that you’re in.
Jeremy Peterson — We have some communities that are more affluent. We have some that are much more blue collar. And so a big part of like being the church, um regardless of where we are, it’s finding out who are those strategic partners that are there in the community that we can love, that we can pour into, that we can invest in. And I think that’s where there’s some freedom um at every outpost level to figure out what are those needs and how can we meet those needs. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Bo, one of the things I love about what you’re doing, you’re modeling ah developing leaders, even within your teaching place, often, ah you know, the teaching seat, oftentimes that’s like the, it can be an exception in a video-driven environment where it’s like the the lead person is like, okay, everybody go develop leaders, except in my area. I’m not developing any leaders. Rich Birch — I love that you’re modeling that. What is what is developing leaders look like in the rest of the church? How, how is, we know that this model is, it’s a, it’s a resource hog. It takes lots of leaders to make it happen. What is developing leaders look like for, you know, for you, for One Church, uh, beyond just the, the teaching stuff that we’ve not just, but the teaching stuff we’ve talked about there. Bo Chancey — Yeah, I love that question. I want to dig into that. And I think it’s important because of what Jeremy was just talking about with alignment in that um having the the preachers ah aligned that are preaching there. Because there was a lot, and when we started this, there was a lot of talk around and even questions that we’ll get asked a lot would be, well, how do the guys make the sermon their own? And we don’t make the sermon our own. It is our own. Instead of trying to individualize every message, we’re working on it together and preparing it together. So getting outside of that mindset of going, okay, now here’s some great content. Now now I’ve got to go make it about me. No, let’s make it about Jesus. And let’s let’s keep it focused on Him and and and actually get some more of self out of this. He must become greater. I must become less. Bo Chancey — And so the stripping away of self, and me personally living that out. We’ve always said to do whatever God’s called us to do is going to involve more dying to self than any of us are ever ah could ever imagine or be comfortable with, but we’re going to step into that. Bo Chancey — And so the key component in developing leaders is prayer. Same thing with even considering multisite ministry. That’s the thing I tell everybody is don’t figure out if it’ll work, because we don’t even know what “work” means, you know, what success even looks like. Rich Birch — Right. Bo Chancey — I mean, God, we we’ve we’ve opened seven total outposts in the time that I’ve been here. Currently, we have four and a fifth one coming, but those the ones that we have closed down are are no longer a part of, we’re not failures in that sense. God called us into those. And so prayer is the key thing. Bo Chancey — Are you, are we listening to the Holy Spirit? Before you ever consider multisite, is God calling you to multisite? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Bo Chancey — Is God inviting you into that and asking you to do that? Is that being confirmed in community? Not just you as an individual, but vision, but vision oftentimes comes to a person and it’s confirmed in community.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Bo Chancey — And so when that happens, then you have a higher degree of confidence in the voice of God and to trust him, regardless of the outcome. And now that gets to be really freeing and important. So the same would be true with developing leaders. Bo Chancey — So we have a residency ah ministry where we invite residents to come be a part of One Church. So they, like this past week, we had six residents who were sitting around the preaching table, and they’re all giving coaching feedback to the people who preached. So they sat in and listened to messages and took notes and gave feedback. Bo Chancey — And, you know, in between services, the residents sat down quickly with the preacher and gave them, hey, here’s something I thought you could do better or that could use some more clarity. The preachers then did those things and reported back in the meeting about what they was shared with them. So we’re creating, I guess, a culture around saying, hey, we’re all in this together.
Rich Birch — Right. Bo Chancey — But then that goes back to prayer as well. And this is something I want to tell every leader everywhere. Pray for every single person on your team every single day. Bo Chancey — The the one regret I have in ministry is that I didn’t do this sooner. This is the the thing that that would haunt me if anything did is that I didn’t do it sooner. But for the last several years I’ve prayed I pray every single day for every single person on our staff, for all of our leadership teams, and our key volunteers. And if you don’t have time for that…might I propose to you… Rich Birch — Yes, we could just leave a big, giant, pregnant pause there. If you don’t have time for that, why are we doing this? Bo Chancey — …[inaudible] a radical shift in thinking…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow.
Bo Chancey — …new change of mind a change in mindset as someone who was missing that and is now living in that. It is night and day. Like wanting to develop leaders and putting systems to develop leaders and having structure develop leaders and having amazing people like Jeremy Peterson helping create all that. It wasn’t happening until we started praying like that. We start praying like that and the fruit explodes. Rich Birch — I’d love to double click on that because I think that’s, you know, caught my attention when you’re like, I want every leader to hear this. But but I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What does that look like for you? How are you, you know, just kind of get us inside that world a little bit. I think that’s a great challenge of even, hey, let’s pray through all of our teams every day. Talk talk us through what that looks like. Bo Chancey — Well, for me, I mean, it’s part of how I begin every day. So, you know, two hours in solitude and about an hour, hour and a half of that’s in prayer. That’s just a time component. You know, we we currently have about 35 staff on the team. And it doesn’t take, sometimes I pray, you know, just mention their name. Sometimes I know something that’s going on and and pray over them a little bit longer. But I can tell you relationally, when I see them, ah there is instantly something different. Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Bo Chancey — You know, different in me for sure. And I’m not in a hurry. So I spend time with residents. I spend time with staff. I enjoy and love, I mean, I don’t just love our staff. I enjoy them. I enjoy the team. I enjoy the preachers. It makes me want to coach them and they trust me. And it… Bo Chancey — So, and and so that prayer, and then a lot of time, mean, for me now, this is gonna sound maybe crazy in our kind of busy obsessed culture. I usually spend another hour in solitude right after lunch every day, just being still, quiet… Rich Birch — That’s so good. Bo Chancey — …praying, meditating. And so more of my time is is spent doing that than anything else these days, which feels pretty amazing. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. No, that’s, that’s a great, that’s great coaching for us, you know, in our culture, like you said, and you referenced it there. You know, we live in a, an overworked, you know, a self-obsessed, I can do it, worry, worry, worry, rush, rush, rush culture. And if we’re not careful as church leaders, we’ll just, we just jump on that train and run with it. So I, I really appreciate that, Bo. Thanks for, for, for leaning in there. Jeremy Peterson — Well, just a quick…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeremy Peterson — …a quick tag on that, Rich, is Bo shared this with our staff um couple of years back. And it was interesting because some of the frustrations between like Central and the Outpost level, like we realized there was some frustration and some tension that was there. Rich Birch — Right Jeremy Peterson — And when we simply asked the staff, like, can you take 30 minutes a day just to be still and pray for the staff members that you work with? Rich Birch — So good. Jeremy Peterson — It really changed culturally, even the way that people interacted with each other. I mean, even times now we can have conversations that, you know, I’m frustrated with so-and-so because, you know, this ministry didn’t do this and Central is supposed to provide the support. And usually when somebody is like amped up and frustrated, my first question is typically like, hey, when was the last time you prayed for them?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jeremy Peterson — And I sometimes get this look on the ah you know they this look on their face like, oh, I haven’t been doing that. And and man, praying for that, even you know years back, there was some challenge with our eldership team and praying for them every day. When I sit on the elder team, I mean, that’s drastically changed the way that we do things, praying together each week for them. It’s just been a game changer. And it really has changed culturally ah things in our staff. But man, for some of them, it was a lot of dying to self to be like, I don’t have 30 minutes. I’m so busy. I’m busier than everybody else. Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — It’s like, no, you have 30 minutes. Pray for your staff. Pray for volunteers. Rich Birch — Right. Jeremy Peterson — I don’t have volunteers. Then take time and pray that God would bring you some volunteers. And so I don’t want to undermine that just the power of prayer. I know it’s something we’ve heard and we’ve talked about, but I mean, it really is a game changer for to to put like, man, how how essential that’s been. And to Bo’s point, something I wish we would have done years and years ago. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. You know, so many churches inherent, and this has come up in multiple of these conversations this month, you know, there is an inherent tension in the campus/central relationship. That’s just that is it’s baked into the model. And I love the perspective of like, hey, maybe maybe maybe this is a prayer issue. Maybe it’s ultimately we got a wrestle rather than let’s find the next tactic. Let’s pull the right lever, get the right piece of paper. Hey, let’s let’s take a step back. I love that. Rich Birch — Jeremy, could you unpack a little bit more about the residency? I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. How does that fit into your strategy as you think about developing the church, just thinking about the future, that kind of thing? How does all that fit together? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I um the residency is something that started several years back. Currently, we have six full-time residents. We can have up to 10 at a time. And why I really believe in the residency is that it it really is truly a hands-on experience. And part of the beauty of the Outpost model is we’ll have some of the residents who are coming on and they’re really passionate about preaching, like preaching something that they want to do. Jeremy Peterson — Most megachurches, you would not get a chance as a resident to ever get a chance to preach. But we’ll give them reps in that in that capacity because they’re they have the Outpost pastor poured into them; they’re coaching them. Bo’s doing that as well. And so they’re getting like coaching and feedback all the time, something that they love and something that most of them have never experienced. Most of them, even if they were preaching in college, like they didn’t, you know, all you hear is you leave and it’s like, hey great job. You know, great to hear that. It’s like, you’re not really…
Rich Birch — Slap on the back or whatever. Yeah. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, you’re not really getting coaching on that. And so that’s something that they’ve really enjoyed.
Jeremy Peterson — People on our our worship team—they’re doing like a worship residency—that are showing up – incredible vocalists, but, you know, trying to understand things like stage presence, even being able to play instruments. Like we have a couple of residents who came in with like very little or no musical ability. I mean, they’re now leading for our online service, which, you know, which reaches, you know, three, 4,000 people every single week. Jeremy Peterson — And so given them some of these like tangible, real life experiences where whether they’re doing a one or two year residency with us, we will oftentimes hire some of those residents. Because at times we’ve hired somebody outside, you bring them in and it’s almost like you have to break some of these bad habits that were learned over time and to retrain them. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Jeremy Peterson — We have a resident who’s praying for one, who understands the culture, um who understands like what we’re trying to accomplish in the mission that we’re doing. It’s been become incredibly powerful. And so our prayer has been like, as God sends us residents, okay, how do we truly pour into them? We’re not just trying to get extra workers. Really we’re trying to get people that we can pour into, that we can invest into. Jeremy Peterson — And if God continues to call them to New England, um whether that’s with oOne Church or there’s another church in the area or elsewhere, we really feel like this is an incredible opportunity to develop them um and to help them grow as leaders. And, and just to watch some of them flourish. Jeremy Peterson — I mean, Rich, I wish I could show you some of the residents that, went from the interview process where we’re almost like borderline, I’m not sure that this is going to culturally fit. Rich Birch — Yeah, is this going to work out? Jeremy Peterson — Is this even going to work? Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Jeremy Peterson — To then like watching some of them thrive um in preaching, leading worship, even with our kids, production team. It’s just been incredible to watch them like grow and blossom in that space. And if we want to keep doing more and more um of that because I feel like that there’s, that’s a huge part of us um launching more outposts is is continuing to build this residency. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s, that’s so good. Is it open to people from outside the church? Like if there’s people that are listening in that might know a leader that’s interested, can they do check out your website, get connected that way, if they’re interested in learning more? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, actually, yeah, you can just go to church.one/residency.
Rich Birch — Great.
Jeremy Peterson — It’s it’s open to anybody that’s been out of out of high school for at least a year. Rich Birch — Okay.
Jeremy Peterson — And so we’ll have anybody, you know, typically 20 to like the 28 in that kind of that age range. And and yeah, they can come and spend, we’ve had some spend a summer with us, like do 10 weeks. Most of them will end up doing a year long residency. and then there’s some that are doing a second year um residency. And so, yeah, by all means, we want to try to develop as many people as we can. And it’s just, it’s truly incredible watching, I’ll just talk about our worship team for a second…
Rich Birch — yep
Jeremy Peterson — …because Bo’s talking about the preaching side. But to watch some of our worship people come in that are almost like almost borderline fearful, like not really sure what to do. And then just to watch them bloom to where they could lead worship at just about any mega church around the country, to me, is just incredible to watch that. Jeremy Peterson — And it really is our amazing team of leaders, not only the central, but the outpost level, like really poured into these individuals on a daily basis. Like I’ll walk by their office and literally just kind of breaking things down and getting some hands-on experience that I’m not sure I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m sure it’s happened other places, but that’s just really special to watch and see see some of them grow um in that area. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And, you know, just we’ve seen this in multiple churches that we’ve talked to this month, this intentionality around a residency, a longer, some sort of longer structured leadership development process. We’re really seeing as a key part of this movement. It’s a critical piece of the puzzle for sure. Because as we’ve even, we’ve referenced multiple times through this conversation, you know, the finding the right leaders is critical to us expanding more outposts.
Rich Birch — Bo, shifting in a slightly different direction, so and I didn’t prep you this for ahead of time. So, you know, I’m throwing you a bit of a curveball here. But, you know, I feel like New England in a lot of ways, New Hampshire specifically, it’s like in some ways looking into the future. You know, that it is a um more post-Christian community than large portions of the country. And, and your church is thriving. God’s using it. Uh, and so are, there are lessons that I think churches across the country can learn about from One Church to help us thrive for the world that’s on, on its way. Rich Birch — Talk to me a little bit about what you think some of those lessons would be. What is it that God’s using in the culture you find yourself in, ah at, at One Church? Bo Chancey — Yeah, um that’s largely, I think, why I’m here. Definitely when I think about the the context we’re in I don’t, I personally don’t like the term post-Christian…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Bo Chancey — …just because Jesus is the alpha and the omega.
Rich Birch — Yep. Bo Chancey — He’s the beginning and the end. And so there’s nothing after him. It’s him. Rich Birch — Yep. Bo Chancey — And, but we are definitely in a post-religious context, which turns out to be incredible for inviting people to follow Jesus um when they’re, they’re kind of done with the rules and regulations and, the rigmarole and you know the all the ah language and you know all the ah the things that kind of come with that. Bo Chancey — This cultural context is largely over a lot of that. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying really hard to resurrect that particular thing, as they do. We love our religion. It’s a lot easier to control ah people with religion than it is an authentic Spirit-driven relationship with the Savior. But um that’s what we’re striving for. So I love being in the context. Bo Chancey — And then, we at One Church, um we don’t look at our outposts as kind of the ultimate expression of the church. It’s a piece. It’s really one leg of a three-legged stool. The other, one of the other legs would be online. And so we are unapologetic about our presence online and how we utilize online to disseminate information and and to share good news in good news ways. Bo Chancey — Outposts matter, but they’re not the be-all end-all. It’s not about butts and seats and buildings and brick and mortar and you know names on the back on the front of buildings or or even this kind of notion of, you know, closing the back door. We dropped the retention thing and said, we’re not gonna close the back door, we’re gonna blow out the back wall. And bless and send, bless and send, bless and send all day long. Cause God has a long history of of moving people and leading them and we want them to listen to him.
Bo Chancey — And then the third leg of the stool though is what we call life posts. So which is really just a matter of being the church where you live, work and play. And that is the most neglected because it’s the most difficult to evaluate, the most difficult to ah count, um control, everything else. Bo Chancey — But so we’re looking to say, how can we resource people to be the church in their home, in their neighborhood, and the communities that they’re involved in and where they’re working or going to school, and that they understand that that’s what the church is and that that’s what they’re a part of. Bo Chancey — And and so is where so even as we evaluate what we’re doing at the outpost level are we doing that or are we trying to get churchy people in churchy places doing churchy things, as opposed being the church um wherever they are, because we produce a lot more fruit. So we really want to reach the most people in the shortest time and release the church and steward the church to be the church. Bo Chancey — This is a phenomenal context for that, ah because there’s not as much recent history holding them to that. So with that though, innovation is hugely important. Creativity. And so it’s, It’s not that we don’t learn from other places and other contexts. We certainly can and do. It’s very important that you know we’re creating. And so we’re creating music. We’re we’re creating the messages that we’re doing. We’re creating the the the methodologies that we’re using. You know, because and when you have a copy of a copy of a copy, it loses clarity every single time. Rich Birch — That’s good. Bo Chancey — And the the freshness and so that is required here is really refreshing. So we get to step into that. So that’s the thing i always want to encourage everyone is is really look at where you are this time and place and go, what are the opportunities that are before us? And how do we step into those? Because it’s going to be uncomfortable. And it’s going to you know disappoint certain people’s expectations for sure. You know, but to count the cost of really being a part of building the kingdom and doing that. Bo Chancey — We get to do that here in New England and feel a strong responsibility to do that and to continue into that. And but it’s also I will tell you, like only 4% of the population in in New Hampshire would consider themselves to be, you know, followers of of Jesus in the evangelical sense or anything like that. So it’s like shooting fish in a barrel up here. Like, I mean, they’re… Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Bo Chancey — …they’re everywhere. Like we we got to baptize 400 people last year. And…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing.
Bo Chancey — Yeah, so we’re just sharing good news in good news ways, loving people with God’s love like he loves, and having a lot, a lot of fun while we do it. Rich Birch — Love it. This is part of why I want to continue to point people towards you guys. I think you have so much to teach so many of us. And so I, I yeah, I really appreciate that. Thanks so much, Bo.
Rich Birch — Jeremy, kind of as we’re coming down to land the plane here, when you look to the future, what are you guys thinking about in the future for Outposts and your multisite journey? What are questions you’re wrestling with as you kind of think to the future? Where does where does that lend you as you, yeah, just as you’re wrestling with those things? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I think we realized that part of the what we need to do to carry out the vision is to have more worship services and more places to reach the most people. And so one thing we’re really working on is and we’ve already identified where the next location for our next outpost will be. And I think we’re trying to do that within like a 30 minute proximity of another outpost. Jeremy Peterson — And so part of the challenge in the past is we had a church in in Vermont approach us. The the distance of like over two hours between us and them, it became a challenge. And so I think part of the some of the culture, some of the chemistry with the staff, I think some of the consistencies I think a lot of that is just is how do we continue to collaborate together. And if you’re not closely connected it becomes really really difficult to do that. Jeremy Peterson — And so so, I mean, Bo and I have talked about, you know, we really want to, you know, we want to see us in having 10 outposts in the next, you know, three or four years. And and a lot of that, I think, is going to some of these more rural communities where people aren’t necessarily, I’m not hearing lot of church plants go into communities of 5,000 people, right? Rich Birch — Yes. Right. It’s true. Jeremy Peterson — They’re trying to find a community of, you know, 50-, 100,000 or more and trying to go to some of these areas. Rich Birch — Right. Everyone’s reading the same statistical studies and planting their churches in the same places. And they’re not in New Hampshire, rural New Hampshire. Jeremy Peterson — Yeah. And so we really feel a call to find out several things, like where are people coming from? Rich Birch — Yep. Jeremy Peterson — Like we have we have people that are driving an hour to come to One Church. And so finding out where are some of these families coming from? How can we go there? How can we be, you know, how can we be Jesus in those communities? And so that’s that’s what we really have kind of on the forefront. Jeremy Peterson — And a lot of that goes to continue to build the residency, continue to build leaders. I think one of the things that we’ve done this round is we brought on um the next outpost pastor in August…
Rich Birch — Oh, nice.
Jeremy Peterson — …and we probably won’t launch the next outpost until the following August.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeremy Peterson — And so having people on our team to understand like like who we are a bit of deprogramming and reprogramming what we, what we’re trying to accomplish a church, I think is a big part of what we’re focusing on and really just developing leaders. And I think, as we continue to develop leaders, God’s continuing to open up more and more opportunities for those next outposts. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Love that. Exciting, exciting times. Bo, I’m going to give you the last word here. What would you say to leaders who are thinking about multisite, wrestling with this? Maybe they’re thinking about new campuses. They’re wondering, hey, is this what God’s you know leading us to? What would you say to some leaders that are thinking about about this approach to ministry? Bo Chancey — Pray. I know I mentioned that before…
Rich Birch — No, it’s good.
Bo Chancey — …but I’ll give you even a little little prayer strategy in this regard. Get a a group of leaders together and share what you think is on your heart, what you’re hearing from God in regards to multisite ministry, or new outpost, or location, or campus or um whatever terminology you might be using. And share that with them and then invite them in to confirm or not confirm what you’re hearing in prayer um by joining you in prayer.
Rich Birch — Love it. Bo Chancey — And so what we do is we’ll agree on a specific question to ask God. And so the question we we would have would be, um you know, God, we, or God, you want us to plant an outpost in this specific community. And then we’ll pray over that for a week, um fast and pray the last 24 hours, and then we’ll get together, break our fast, sing a worship song, and then share what we’re what we’re hearing from God.
Rich Birch — So good.
Bo Chancey — And so far, every time we’ve done that with anything, we have come to conclusions faster than you could ever imagine.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Bo Chancey — And so slowing down, praying and and waiting on the Lord a little bit in that way has enabled us to move further and faster and with fewer hiccups, you know, and and massive mistakes um than ever before. So the the prayer component is, I think, the most important one. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you guys taking time out to be with us today. Encouraging conversation, challenging conversation. I really appreciate it. Jeremy, if we want to send people online to track with the church, to track with you guys, where where would we send them? Where should we send people online? Jeremy Peterson — Yeah, I think the best place is just go church.one. And that’s probably the best place. Jeremy Peterson — If they want to check out our YouTube page, um just type in um One Church, New Hampshire, and ah you’ll be able to see, um yeah, just ah kind of a glimpse into what God’s doing in this area. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, friends. Appreciate you being on today. Bo Chancey — Thank you. Jeremy Peterson — Thanks, Rich.
Many Locations, One Church: How to Keep Your DNA While Adapting to Local Campuses
Apr 09, 2025
Multisite ministry sounds great—one church, many locations—but practically speaking, balancing centralized consistency with local campus adaptations is a real challenge. In today’s episode of the All About Multisite series, I want to help you manage this important balance effectively.
Throughout this series, I’m sharing practical wisdom every Wednesday and insightful interviews with successful multisite churches every Thursday. Today, we’re diving deep into a core multisite tension: How do you maintain your DNA while empowering local campuses to thrive?
Episode Highlights:
The DNA Challenge:
About 60% of churches with 1,000+ attendees are multisite, yet only 15% expand beyond three campuses. A key reason? Struggling to balance central alignment with local autonomy.
Most multisite churches (75%) maintain a single central parent board, highlighting the importance of clear governance and unity.
Centralized Constants vs. Localized Adaptations:
Successful multisite churches identify clear “centralized constants”—elements like teaching, worship style, branding, children’s curriculum, and key events. These are non-negotiable across all campuses.
At the same time, churches must empower campuses with “localized adaptations,” allowing flexibility in things like local imagery, specific worship song choices, and tailored campus-specific messaging.
Life.Church, one of the largest multisite churches in North America, exemplifies this by replicating their services down to the minute, yet giving local leaders strategic freedom within this framework.
Avoiding the Independent Campus Syndrome:
Beware the “independent campus pastor”—leaders whose vision subtly diverges from your central DNA can fragment unity over time.
Campus pastors should be strong second-chair leaders who embody and champion your church’s DNA. They’re leaders passionate about implementing, not reinventing, your proven model.
Practical Systems to Maintain Alignment:
Clearly Define Decision Rights:
Campuses focus on execution, people care, and alignment. Central teams manage curriculum, quality standards, and defining campus constants.
Build Central Support Teams Early:
Anticipate the need for central roles (teaching, creative, administration) before expansion pressures arise.
Regular Cross-Campus Meetings:
Hold weekly or bi-weekly face-to-face alignment meetings with key campus leaders. This maintains relational unity and operational coherence.
Shared Planning and Calendars:
Collaboratively develop shared ministry calendars, synchronized events, and sermon series. Involve campuses in the planning process.
Develop Playbooks and Guides:
Document core processes in playbooks (assimilation, volunteer training, safety protocols) to standardize and simplify operations across campuses.
Create a Leadership Development Pipeline:
Use cross-campus training to foster unified leadership DNA and build a cohesive culture among all campuses.
Prioritize Intentional Communication:
Maintain clear, consistent, two-way communication with campuses. Avoid surprises with a “no last-minute changes” rule, ensuring teams have ample lead time for adjustments.
A Word to Leaders:
Central Leaders: Approach campuses as servants, not inspectors. Show up with encouragement and practical help, not checklists.
Campus Pastors: Care deeply like shepherds but think broadly like ranchers—overseeing systems of care rather than trying to personally handle every detail. Your role is multiplying leaders and empowering others.
I hope this episode helps you maintain a cohesive vision across campuses while equipping local teams to thrive. Thanks for leaning into this important multisite conversation!
Additional Resource:
Check out the latest edition of EXECUTIVE PASTOR digital magazine, featuring more insights into multisite strategy.
The Summit Church: Clarity, Culture & Core—Keys to Leading 13 Campuses
Apr 03, 2025
Thanks for joining us for this special episode of the unSeminary podcast as we kick off All About Multisite month. In this conversation, we’re joined by Rick Langston and Daniel Simmons from The Summit Church in North Carolina. Rick serves as the Executive Pastor of Strategic Initiatives, and Daniel is the Executive Pastor of Campuses and Central Discipleship.
Are you thinking about expanding your church through multi-site? Wondering how to do it effectively while maintaining mission and vision alignment?Tune in to learn powerful insights on how to grow a multi-site church that stays united, impactful, and rooted in mission.
One church with many locations. // The Summit Church began in 1961 and experienced a pivotal shift in the 2000s under the leadership of J.D. Greear. Embracing a church planting mindset, they transitioned into a multi-site model that now includes a dozen campuses throughout the Raleigh-Durham (RDU) area. Initially driven by necessity—after selling their building and meeting in a high school—they soon recognized multisite as a strategic advantage for reaching their city.
Identity and mission clarity. // It’s important for campuses to identify primarily as The Summit Church, not just their local location. While each campus has freedom to contextualize ministry to its community, all locations remain unified under shared mission, values, and vision. This alignment allows flexibility in how they bless their neighborhoods while preserving alignment in purpose.
Who is the decision maker? // In a multisite environment, there is often a tension between campus teams and central teams around decision-making. To reduce confusion and clarify responsibilities, The Summit has developed two frameworks: CORE, for central teams, and PACE, for campus teams. These dual frameworks operate as two different sides of the same coin, functioning together to achieve the vision.
CORE and PACE. // CORE is an acronym which represents: Collaborate across ministries, Own the vision and set common strategy, Resource campus teams through coaching and training and Evaluate ministry effectiveness and strategic goals. Similarly, PACE stands for: Pastor and shepherd the congregation, Advance the church’s mission and vision locally, Collaborate with central teams and peers and Execute ministries with excellence and creativity.
Build relationships and culture. // Strong relationships between teams are essential. As their staff has grown, The Summit intentionally prioritizes relational health. They host monthly all-staff meetings with worship and learning, and biannual retreats for rest and bonding. These regular touchpoints help reinforce culture and foster trust, which is vital for collaborative success across campuses.
Create a leadership development pipeline. // The Summit’s leadership pipeline has been instrumental in its growth. The church benefits from proximity to a seminary and has a robust internal development track through The Summit Institute, an apprenticeship and residency program for individuals pursuing full-time ministry. Participants raise support to work at the church and they receive hands-on training, spiritual development, and real leadership opportunities, which can lead to permanent staff roles. The church benefits from getting to know potential hires and identifying those who align with the church’s vision.
Both multisite and church planting. // While The Summit Church is deeply committed to church planting nationally and globally, its multisite strategy remains regional—limited to the RDU area. Outside of RDU, The Summit supports church plants rather than additional campuses.
Visit The Summit Church at summitchurch.com and explore their church planting collaborative at summitcollaborative.org. Prepare for ministry with The Summit Institute Apprenticeship and Residency by visiting summitrduinstitute.com. You can also find information about J.D. Greear Ministries at jdgreear.com.
EXTRA CREDIT // Struggling with decision clarity in your multisite church?
Inside unSeminary Extra Credit, you’ll get access to our Multisite Clarity Worksheet—a practical tool inspired by The Summit Church’s CORE & PACE model. It’s designed to help your team define decision-making roles, align central and campus leaders, and avoid the confusion that stalls growth.
Use this resource to:
Pinpoint who owns what across key ministry areas
Help bring clarity to central vs. campus responsibilities
Evaluate your current leadership structure
Take actionable steps toward better alignment
This is just one of the powerful tools available in our All About Multisite bonus content inside unSeminary Extra Credit.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you’ve joined us for All About Multisite month here. This is going to be an incredible discussion today with The Summit Church. This church began in 1961 when Pastor Sam James founded a church with the mission of reaching the world with the gospel. You maybe have heard of The Summit uh this is a prolific church. They’re involved in church planting, multi-site, J.D. Greear is the lead pastor there. They ah have repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country and currently have, if I’m counting right, a dozen locations in the triangle in North Carolina, plus services in Spanish, and church online, have planted churches both nationally and internationally. Today we have, not one, but two leaders: Rick Langston with us—he is the executive pastor of strategic initiatives—and Daniel Simmons—he is the executive pastor of campuses and central discipleship. I am so glad that you guys are with us. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Daniel Simmons — Yeah, thanks. It’s great to be with you. Rich Birch — Nice. So good. Rick Langston — Yeah, thank you, Rich. Rich Birch — Rick, why don’t we start with you? You know, The Summit has evolved over the years and you’ve been around for a few years. Kind of give us the history, for folks that aren’t aware, and that with a particular emphasis on church planting and multi-site. How does that intersect with The Summit story? Rick Langston — Well, the church, like you said, has been around since the early 60s. I came on staff as associate pastor in the early 90s, actually. And it was a church that really had a, um, had a lot of potential, but did not have unified vision as a church. It was like, as a multi-site church, I always, I always get to share church history with our new staff. And I tell them we’re, we’re one church in many locations. We used to be many churches in one location.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Love it. Rick Langston — And, uh, everybody had their own idea about why we existed. Um, and it was a, it’s a, it’s a, actually went through an interim in the late 90s that lasted over three years where God really used that kind of bring a core group of people together with a vision to like, we’re going to put our yes on the table and we want to see at least us to start reaching our community. God had started to move among some of our leaders in terms of international missions. We had interim pastor who was um a professor of of missions. And so that kind of started to take root in the church. Rick Langston — And actually at the time, J.D. Greear was in the area. He was a PhD student. He was, he was, had been connected the church before just as, you know, coming to help out some while he was in seminary. And so he came on our staff as a college pastor during that time. Eventually as the church kind of really really kind of gelled around this idea of like, we want to see, be a church that reaches our community and reaches the world. Rich Birch — Love it. Rick Langston — We turned the J.D., who was in his 20s at the time, and and called him to be our our lead pastor. And he kicked off right off the bat of like, let’s let’s look at ourselves as a new church plant. Let’s put everything on the table. This is when we made a and ah shift in our name. We were Homestead Heights Baptist Church at the time. And called, you know, came with the name The Summit Church. And just tried to do, just tried to think like a church plant. And God just moved. Rick Langston — We were seeing people come from—we’re in The Triangle, Raleigh-Durham, RDU, as we call it. And we would have, it we were having people, we were in ah one point of the Triangle, the Northern, North Durham area. We started having college students come from Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill. We were having families come from Raleigh. And were first, we thought, like well, we need to sell our building and buy a property where we can build a big mega building. Rick Langston — And so we actually sold our building. We couldn’t find the land. We kept looking for the land, but we sold our building in the meantime to another church. And we had to move into a high school after we’d been around for 40 years and we’re moving into a high school…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Rick Langston — …you know, with this established church and that we were there for a couple of years. It just was like, God closed a lot of doors to lead us. If yeah that makes sense. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. Rick Langston — Like, you know, he shepherded patiently, he, you know, our mission statements, following the Holy spirit, um, to make disciple-making disciples in Raleigh and around the world. And following in the Holy Spirit, that part is just like, you know, we have a plan, but God’s plan is always better. And he just, he kind of just keeps opening and closing doors. And so, ah you know, our people were really trusting because otherwise you would think they thought we didn’t know what we were doing.
Rich Birch — Sure. Rick Langston — You know, they were like with us on it.
Rich Birch — Wow. Rick Langston — And, um, so eventually we ended up, you know, not only having to sell our building, but basically relocate the church to about, about, about 25, 30 minutes to a new location. Rich Birch — Wow. Rick Langston — And when we found a kind of a permanent, semi-permanent facility, we can move into. And so at that point we were like, we actually had bought a small building in our, near our original location, but we couldn’t get the land around it to develop. But we had a small church building that sat 200. Rich Birch — OK. Rick Langston — And so we were going to make this, and we were running like 1,500 in a high school. Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Rick Langston — And so…
Rich Birch — That’s a lot of services. You got to do 23 services every Sunday to make that work.
Rick Langston — Yeah, well, the high school was…Yeah, that little… So, so um but we’ve been reaching a lot of people like that were driving 25, 30 minutes. So the new location was closer to a lot where a lot of the new people were coming from. Rick Langston — And so were just like, I remember J.D.’s just like… You know, that the book, Multisite Church Revolution… It was not, hadn’t been out that long, you know, since like 2007. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Rick Langston — And we were just like reading that, talking to people at Life Church, different churches. And it was kind of like this. And then somebody was like, hey, Rick, why don’t you be the campus pastor? And we’ll just use that building over here for some folks. And it was like, so I I pastored sort of like where the original congregation came from.
Rich Birch — Okay. Rick Langston — So I had I had all the senior adults in the church… Rich Birch — Okay. Rick Langston — …and some of the families. And we went, and in 2007, we went straight, you know, video, streaming. And there were only complaints where we didn’t have a choir anymore. So, I mean, they were, they were like watching the video, like it was just normal. And we moved, so the majority of the congregation moved in the new facility. Rick Langston — So we’d really backed it to multi-site. We started a third campus location, very much the same way, just like because, you know, found somebody a place and was like, it was like grab a staff member in a hallway and make him a campus pastor like three weeks later, you know. Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Opportunistic. Hey, there’s something here. We got to go make that happen. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
Rick Langston — Yeah. We got a lot of coaching like Jim Tomberlin. We engaged, worked with him and that those early days. He helped kind of help us game plan. um I just spent an hour with him on the phone one day and wrote up a plan for our fourth launch…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rick Langston — …which was the campus that Daniel, was the campus pastor of.
Rich Birch — Okay. Love it.
Rick Langston — So it was like for the fourth one, we actually had a strategy…
Rich Birch — Yes. I love that.
Rick Langston — …for a beginning strategy for multi-site. And, um… Rich Birch — So Rick, would you say it was around there that at the, somewhere around three or four that it went from, Hey, like, we’re just trying to keep up to like, maybe, oh well, maybe God’s leading us to do this. Like maybe we should strategically, you know, was was that, was, it was there a turning point somewhere in at that point, Rick? Rick Langston — Yeah, I mean, just having this kind of mindset that we put our yes on the table and we do whatever it takes to to to reach our community. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Rick Langston — When we started doing multi-site, we started seeing some advantages right away. Well first, like going from one to two sites, we were we we tried to coach our people, choose your location, not just based on where it’s going to be best for you to reach your community. And so our vision for the city just expanded. We’re we’re are a multi-site church that works in like all of our campuses are in this this metropolitan area, the Raleigh-Durham Triangle. So we have them, they’re all within an hour of each other and probably all within kind of a half hour of the center of this this area. And but we started to see, we’re having an impact on the city in multiple locations. you know when we Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s great.
Rick Langston — And because we one of the things that God had done our church is we started to have a heart to you know be a blessing to our city, bring joy to the city. So when we be like launched the North Raleigh campus that Daniel led, there were already people that lived in that community. They were already serving schools and under-resourced areas. And so it was like there was a congregation already there. Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Rick Langston — And the campus became a place for them to meet and and do ministry at. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. Rick Langston — But it was definitely kind of a learn as you go process, you know. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Daniel, how would you kind of sticking with the helping us get our heads around what’s happening at The Summit? If you were to bump into somebody at a conference and they were to say, well, describe multi-site at The Summit in those we so we’ll start with those in that in that kind of 30 hour, 30 minute radius. How would you describe what does multi-site look like for you guys? What do you have in common? How like, how does how does it all work? Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Rich Birch — What’s that look like? Daniel Simmons — Yeah. I mean, I I think that like a lot of multi churches, multi-site churches are going to say we’re one church in many locations.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Simmons — But we really do try to to live in the tension of, we are primarily The Summit Church. And so, uh, like if I, if I visit a campus and, and I hear them talk about their identity and they only talk about their identity, as the campus and they never talk about The Summit Church, then I’m probably going to talk to that campus pastor, uh, pull them together at the end and say, Hey, uh, I love that you love this congregation. I want you to, I want to be passionate. I want you to be passionate about this community, especially reaching and blessing this community. But you are primarily The Summit Church in this community, not the campus that is in this community.
Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — And I think the reason for that is because ah our our mission and our values are what make us distinct. And I think those are worth living for. Rich Birch — That’s good. Daniel Simmons — And I don’t, I want to keep a tight focus on those things. It’s not really a tight focus on control. There’s actually, I want to give some freedom in how we live those out, especially how we live out reaching lost people with the gospel. I think there’s a lot of room for creativity, especially how we do life on life ministry and especially how we how we bless that community. Because I think those things can be very contextualized. But when it comes to the values of who we are, our mission, and the things that we we really long to accomplish long-term, that is what makes us The Summit Church. And so I want to be very clear with people that that’s how we do multi-site.
Daniel Simmons — Another thing is like how we launch our campuses and where we launch our campuses. So kind of what Rick said is really right, and and it’s and this probably helped even shape what I just said. But when I stepped into being a campus pastor, you know, I was 31 years old. I’d been doing college ministry. But what I stepped into was a group of people that were dedicated to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which I had already seen because we had been attending The Summit Church, and they were dedicated to reaching their area. In fact, they wanted a campus there because that what they were saying ah was that, like, we’re willing to drive 25 minutes. But our lost friends…
Rich Birch — Yeah, they won’t.
Daniel Simmons — …are that that there’s about 10 minute drive that they’re willing to make. And after that, they’re like, hey, it’s just a reason not to go.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Daniel Simmons — And so they were living out the mission and the values of The Summit. And I was like, well, man, we’ll just we’ll put a campus there and I’ll continue to lead out that mission just in a different location.
Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — And so I would say that, like, we need to have a group of people there, about 200 to 250 people to launch a campus. Rich Birch — Okay. Daniel Simmons — Obviously, you’ve got to have a location. That’s just logistics that can that can support the type of growth that we’re praying for and and hopefully living in such a way to see happen. And then obviously, you’ve got to have a good you got to have a good leader and a good leadership team to go. Daniel Simmons — So I would say that those are some of the things if someone asked me right off the bat, I would say like we’re one church and this is what that means ah around mission and and vision. And then obviously, we want to have we want to have some kind of launching point…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Simmons — …a group of people that are that are dedicated to the church. Rich Birch — Okay, so you you brought up the T word, tension, not me. So ah you know that I appreciate what you’re saying that, hey, we’re trying to align around the mission and values, but I know that that can cause some tension on, hey, like in our local expression, I this is what that looks like for us. Unpack that a little bit more, Daniel, just around… Okay, so explain that a little bit more. What what is what is that tension that maybe other churches have struggled with? And how do you manage that? Really, we’re talking about this kind of campus versus—I know you don’t think about it like that—
Daniel Simmons — Right.
Rich Birch — …campus versus central, but but how do we how do you manage that at The Summit? Daniel Simmons — Yeah, I mean, I think it really comes down to just, and if I can just boil it down, would be who makes the final call on decisions. Rich Birch — Good, yep. Daniel Simmons — So who is the decision maker? Honestly, I don’t think it gets a ton more complicated than that. Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — You’ve got one group of people that thinks something should be done one way. You’ve got another group of people that thinks it should be done another way. In a multi-site church, ah there ah the the question just becomes who makes the final call? Rich Birch — Okay. Daniel Simmons — That’s the tension. Rich Birch — And yeah. And how do you, how do you define that? What’s the shorthand for that? Helping someone understand when, or, or maybe when you see someone trip over, Oh, you’re, you’re making a final call on something you shouldn’t be. Or you think you’re making a final call, which it’s not your final call. How do you, how do you define that for someone, Daniel? Daniel Simmons — Right, well, so we’ve actually created multi-site philosophy. Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — It’s ah we’ve got we’ve got a philosophy for what central ministries do and how they should approach their jobs. And these are the things that you are responsible for. Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Simmons — And that document covers all of our central ministries for the most part. Rich Birch — Right. Daniel Simmons — And then we’ve got the same the same document um with the same purpose for all of our campus ministries. So every single job on a campus…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Daniel Simmons — …I kind of tell our teams, if you don’t know what to do in the morning, you look at this document. And if you do one of those four things, because it’s four things for both teams, if you do one of those four things, at a pretty high level, you can go home and feel great about what what you’ve done that day. Rich Birch — Love it.
Daniel Simmons — And we call it core and pace. So our central ministries are core and our campus teams are pace and they’re in an acronym and I can walk through those eventually if you want to. But so we lay it out for them. So we want to communicate very clearly. This is what you do. And then also kind of at the end of the day, I think a lot of people want a real clear answer to who is the decision maker. Is it this one person?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Simmons — And I would say the truth is, is that in a big organization that is as complex as ah as as a church like ours with 13 different campuses and tons of great leaders, there is almost no decision that is a single person who makes it. Rich Birch — Right. Daniel Simmons — Almost all of our… Rich Birch — Multiplicity of leadership. Yeah, for sure.
Daniel Simmons — That’s right, collaboration is key. Rick Langston — Right. Absolutely. Daniel Simmons — In fact, in core and pace, you’ll notice the letter C…
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.
Daniel Simmons — …and and both sides, it’s collaboration. Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — The best decisions are made in plurality. Rich Birch — Love it. We’re going to come back to core and pace there um in ah in a minute. So I want to double, we’ll put a little bookmark in that. Rick, um related, similar issue, but looking at it from just a slightly different lens, how how does The Summit ensure that you continue to foster strong relationships? So more on the relational side, less the kind of job description-y type stuff, because we know, hey, if I if i trust that person, then I can make core and pace work. But what are you doing to ensure that you kind of relationally are connected on those two sides, Rick? Rick Langston — Well, it really starts with the staff and serving the staff. And so, know, our really lead pastor of ministries who oversees all the staff, number two to J.D., I would say that whenever he talks about his role, is David Thompson, that’s really kind of one of the first things he talks about, just like serving our staff well and trying to help them, you know. So we we invest a lot in terms of developing staff, and training and just trying to create an environment where they just enjoy being with one another, which is our staff has become very large. Rick Langston — And I think we went through these growing pains where I described having come from the background I did in the church and the, you know, the parking lot conversations you can have in churches and things like that. I got, we got to a place where I’m like, our staff is like work is like a small church
Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.
Rick Langston — And they can have all the problems of a small church… Rich Birch — Right. Rick Langston — …unless they are also focused in the same direction. So we actually, you know, for a long time, our, our mission was pretty loosely defined, you know, it was, and J.D. would just want some, you know, he would, he would talk to staff. He would normally say just two things like, Hey, we just, when we started this, we wanted to follow the Holy Spirit, do whatever we could do to reach everybody. Rick Langston — And we had, we had come back in 2019. We, rewrote or or really just kind of expanded on that with our mission and values. So this is, you know, almost 20 years into our relaunch. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. That’s good. Rick Langston — And, but we had do that because we would start to have staff asking questions like, why are we, why are we at another campus? And it’s like, almost like, you know, that’s like a church member. Haven’t we reached enough people? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Rick Langston — And we’re like, that’s not the core of who we are. That’s not our heartbeat. That’s not what got us here. And so just making sure, you know, reinforcing those values, reinforcing our staff values with staff. And it is just, whether you’re in a multi-site church or not is, you know, you can do that in a, in a, you know, there was a day when all the staff went to lunch together. You know, we’d have staff meeting and then go lunch. And then one day we showed up and we didn’t fit in the restaurant.
Rich Birch — Right. Rick Langston — And so it’s like, you have to start to, you have to start to create teams and try to scale that and reproduce that. And it’s just, I’ll tell you, it’s it’s challenging. And I think that a mistake we made for a long time was assuming the best. Like we actually teach our staff to assume the best. Like that’s a value.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Rick Langston — Like we want them to assume the best towards one another, but we were you can’t assume that an organization is just going to function like that with that value without reinforcing it constantly. Daniel Simmons — Right. Rick Langston — And, you know, so… Rich Birch — What what would be what would be some practical steps that as you as the team has grown, that you’ve taken as ah as an organization, Rick, to kind of reinforce that value to ensure that you, because it goes from, um you know, it just kind of happens to, okay, now we intentionally need to make sure that we’re in embedding that. What would be a couple of those things you’ve done to embed that into the culture? Rick Langston — Well, I think Daniel could speak to some of this. and I think because I one of the things I think is that we we need to evaluate towards it. I mean, it needs to be an expectation that people are prioritizing their relationships, not only within their own teams, but with the teams they work alongside. Rick Langston — We do have we just we have a monthly all staff. That’s a mandatory time. But it’s also really like, you know, you get to get fed. We’re going to worship together, going to we’re going learn together. And we’re going to enjoy that time together, you know, an annual or semi or a biannual retreat that’s mostly ah focused around rest and restoration and having fun and not ah not a calendaring retreat. Rich Birch — Love it. Rick Langston — um You know, a a just let’s get away and have a break together. you know
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rick Langston — So ah those are kind of ah some of the practices.
Rich Birch — …I’d love to hear about how you’re helping, you know, that your your campus leaders and central leaders, really this set core and pace idea you kind of hinted towards. Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Rich Birch — How are you structuring those conversations so that there’s clarity there? And what’s that look like? Daniel Simmons — Right, well, I try to approach it from the sense of like, I’m trying to build a culture. And so the documents just give words to the type of culture that we want to kind of have. Rich Birch — Yep. That’s good. Yep. Daniel Simmons — And and so I also think like if I were to kind of tag on just a little bit with what Rick said, I think like building this kind of culture takes a lot of work. Rich Birch — So good. Daniel Simmons — And sometimes it takes more work than we think it will, especially with we have, as leaders, I actually think that’s one of our primary jobs. Our primary job is creating the culture and reminding people all the time. Rich Birch — That’s good. Right. Daniel Simmons — And I don’t think that ever actually ends. And so core and pace, the reason I even kind of bring it up is because I try to talk about it a lot. And I try to talk about it from the sense of I want both sides to know core and pace. Usually when I hand it out, ah oh they’re both on one page. So core is on one page, pace is on the other. And I try to put it on one document in the sense of like, we’re one church. Rich Birch — Right. Daniel Simmons — So we’re kind of like two sides of the same coin. The coin functions, the coin does the same thing. Like if I hand you a 25 cent piece, a quarter, it’s, it doesn’t matter what side you’re looking at, you understand it’s a quarter. Um, uh, and so the same thing is true about The Summit. We have one vision, uh, and we’re, we’re both doing different things to help that, to help that vision happen and achieve that vision. And so I just think like, I think Patrick Lencioni uses the term chief reminding officers.
Rich Birch — It’s true. Daniel Simmons — And so I think that that’s what our leaders do. We’re trying to build a culture at The Summit Church, uh, where we where we really do give each other benefit of the doubt. We’re dedicated to the mission. We live out the values really well. And that just takes, I think that takes a level of intentionality. Daniel Simmons — And so a couple of things that I’ve done, especially with like core and pace. I mean, one is that ah our central discipleship team, so adult discipleship and next gen, used to be under ah under two different executives. So I was over campuses, Another executive was over those ministries. And one of the things that I saw was they just don’t spend enough time together.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Daniel Simmons — And so the natural questions that like um our campuses are talking about, like in their meetings and ah kind of, especially around their, their, their non-meeting meetings, like around the water cooler and ah the type of things, right. Rich Birch — The meeting after the meeting? Daniel Simmons — Which is usually the more important meeting, right? Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Rick Langston — I don’t get invited. Rich Birch — That’s funny. Daniel Simmons — They needed to be in the same room together. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Daniel Simmons — So I basically made a proposal. Let’s pull them together. And in our weekly meeting that I had with campus pastors, uh, especially our adult discipleship guy, he’s there every single week. He’s got at least about 15 minutes every week in that meeting to talk about whatever he wants to talk about. And if he needs more, he kind of gets preference. You get, ah you can take as much of my time as you want. If there’s something kind of going on, if there’s questions you need to ask, um, I think that that’s, I think that’s really, uh, that’s really critical. Daniel Simmons — And then we’ve, we bring in our, uh, our central discipleship team leads frequently, and we’ll go down in the organization too. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, love it. Daniel Simmons — You don’t have to lead the team. Sometimes the best person to talk to for the campus pastors may not be the leader of it. Uh, it may be like, uh, a couple of people that are working on very specific things. So the person that’s working on the new membership process, or the new curriculum coming up in small groups. And ah ah that that really helps. So almost every single week in our meeting with the campus pastors, they they’re engaging with a central ministry head.
Daniel Simmons — And then I try to lead those men to think of themselves, you you are the pastors of the church. So we’ve got J.D. Greear, who’s the who’s the lead pastor of the church. He’s preaching the gospel. But you really are the hands and feet of that message. You’re the DNA carrier. And so I’ve really tried to task our campus pastors. When someone walks into this meeting, I want you to see yourself as the the shepherd that is in this room, the the the shepherd leader. So man, listen carefully, engage fully with them like a leader would, but also just remember like those those people, our central ministry heads are all on somebody’s campus. And so they’re all underneath your care.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Daniel Simmons — So love them, care about them, seek to understand. And I try to tell both sides always like could we coach our central leaders when you come in the campus master meeting, we we’re we’re kind of always coaching them. This is how you enter into that room and can succeed. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah.
Rick Langston — It’s really good. Daniel Simmons — And so when they do that, they actually live out core well and they help work with our campus pastors to live out pace well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. When you, so the one of the things I love there is I’ve heard other um campus pastors actually kind of, it’s a sad statement. I once heard a guy say, you know, being a campus pastor, he was kind of dogging his own job. And he said, you know, being a campus pastor, it’s like, it’s like being a pastor with training wheels. Like they’re not really letting me lead.
Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Rich Birch — Which is unfortunate. So how do you, kind of sticking with that, we you were talking there about empowering, particularly the campus powers pastors, how do you ensure that they’re in, they’re empowered with the right thing? So they feel like they’re actually leading and because they are actually leading.
Daniel Simmons — Right.
Rich Birch — What what are you doing to define the scope for them so that they are like, okay, I’m, I’ve got this ball and I’m running with it, Daniel. How how do you, how how do you do that for them? Daniel Simmons — Yeah, I mean, you know, Brené Brown says “clear is kind”, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Daniel Simmons — And so one of the things that we try to do is this, these are the areas that are kind of set in the church and they’re set because these are our, these are our, this is our values.
Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — Um, these are the things that unite us across the board, um, actually in core and pace underneath core with our central ministries, uh, C is collaborate. O, is our central teams own the the vision of the ministry across the church. And one of the ways they live that out is they set the common strategy. So what’s the strategy across our church uh be very clear about that.
Daniel Simmons — So when we do student ministry uh what differentiates student ministry at The Summit Church. What do we want to see to be true across all of our campuses in student ministry, so that if I walk into one campus and I and I participate in student ministry or serve in student ministry. And then I go to a different campus the next week, ah which I don’t want people doing that. But if they were, they would be like, man, this student ministry, I see it’s the same church. It’s the same student ministry. Daniel Simmons — And so we want to define those as much as we can. And what I tell our central staff is make them very clear. Make them thorough enough so that we’re able to achieve what we want to achieve. But make but but limit them as much as you can. Make as few of them as you can. Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Daniel Simmons — So make them as thorough as we need to, but make them as few as you can and push everything else down to our campuses. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good insight. Daniel Simmons — And I think that those three things help us. Like clarity, um make them as thorough as we need to, to accomplish our mission, because that’s what we’re really here to do. But then also ah try to make them make the list as as as as short as you can ah so that you can push down leadership. When those three things happen, typically we’re giving at least enough autonomy for people to thrive. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a really good insight because i there can be a tendency, I love our central teams, but there can be a tendency to be like, we’re just going to keep adding things to that list of stuff that’s important. And the problem is every time we add something to that list…
Daniel Simmons — Right.
Rich Birch — …by definition, it makes the other things less important. Daniel Simmons — It does. Rich Birch — And so it it becomes it becomes tricky to then, if I’m on a campus and I’m thinking about the whole different, all these different areas, that’s a lot of different balls to keep up in the air. I think that’s a really good insight. What what are the R and the E in core? What do they stand for? Daniel Simmons — So the R is resource. And so that’s actually one of the main jobs when I ah when I’m either hiring a ah ah central person or i’m I’m helping to coach them, I tell them one of the one of the things that you’re going to do is you’re going to help um your campus counterparts become masters at that job. Rich Birch — Love it Daniel Simmons — You’re like you you don’t have to. I don’t want you to be a jack of all trades if you’re a central ministry lead. I want you to kind of become an expert…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Simmons — …and I want you to multiply that expertise out…
Rich Birch — Good.
Daniel Simmons — …because people on the campuses kind of do need to be a jack of all trades, right? Especially your campus pastor. But but if if you can train and coach and develop those people in those ministry areas, how do you be a how does a worship leader become ah a great worship leader? How does a student… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Daniel Simmons — …pastor become a great student pastor. So that’s that’s R. And then the E stands for evaluate ministry effectiveness and strategic initiatives and processes. So I actually task our central ministries, Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — I want everybody evaluating. Leaders evaluate all the time. But they need to be the ones that are initiating that evaluation. So if you travel to a campus, campuses understand ah when a central person shows up, they’re there to help you serve…
RicH birch — Love it.
Daniel Simmons — …but they’re also probably going to give you feedback on ministry execution. But I also tell them just as important, ah at least once to two times a year, you need to be pulling people together to evaluate are the things we’re doing effective. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Daniel Simmons — And a central person can’t know that by themselves. You have to ask the campus people ah and because they’re going to tell you, hey, on the ground, this is what’s happening. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Just, and Rick, I want to get to you in a second with a question about leaders and finding leaders, but, and developing them, but just because we went through core, can you run through pace quick? Daniel Simmons — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And give give us that that that that acronym? Rick Langston — I can’t wait to hear it myself. Come on. Daniel Simmons — So ah P in pace is pastor and shepherd the congregation. Rich Birch — Okay.
Daniel Simmons — I mean, the campus teams are the tip of the spear of the church. They’re the people that know and love and serve and disciple that congregation. A is that they are that they advance the mission and the vision of the church in their location. Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — C is they collaborate because collaboration and communication needs to go both ways. Rich Birch — Yep. Love it. Daniel Simmons — And E is that they ah they execute our ministries with excellence and creativity. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. That’s great. What a great, I love, that’s a great tool. A great framework for sure for people to be to be thinking about. Well, Rick, one of the things that it’s obviously clear that’s happening behind the scenes at The Summit is there’s somewhere you’re doing something to develop a pipeline of finding and sending leaders. Something is working in The Summit on this front. Not only, and we’ve been talking just about really the campuses within this kind of 30 minute radius, but that’s not even to say what you’re doing with church planting and other areas. What what does that pipeline look like? How how would you describe that? How how do you find good leaders, identify them, raise them up to the system? What’s that look like, Rick? Rick Langston — Well, we’ve had some really great leaders that have helped us develop that pipeline and run it right now. Before I do, I want to tag on to that that that ah discussion that you guys just had. I think a lot of pastors need to recognize there’s difference between leading and controlling. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Rick Langston — And we are, you know, some are called primarily to preach, but not everybody is called primarily to preach. But everybody’s called to make disciples and equip the saints if you’re called to to serve in a leadership role in the church. Rick Langston — And so I think when you ask that question about that tension of like, I’m a pastor with training wheels, it’s because you don’t get to do every single thing you want to do. But you probably get to do the main thing you’re called to do…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
…which is really the hardest work, which is making disciples and pastoring people. Rich Birch — Yes. Ephesians 4, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Rick Langston — And, um, exactly. It’s like we can find a lot of other things to do besides that…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
Rick Langston — …and get kind of drawn to that.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Rick Langston — So just really kind of I think that multi-site and the whole structure that’s that that’s allowed us to create just force people to kind of focus in on like the main ah main thing.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Rick Langston — When it comes to developing leaders, as you just as you’re asking that question, I first of all, it’s the type of person that you want to get on board. I think this is, I heard this was a quote by Leonard Sweet and I heard it years ago, but it stuck with me that he’s he said the great divide within the church today is not, is between those who get it and those who don’t. It’s like, do they just get it? Do they get who we are and what we’re trying to do? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Rick Langston — Or are they trying, or they or they don’t? And that’s a, that’s an intangible to a certain degree, but you spend a little bit of time with people and you start to recognize whether they get it or not, you know? Rick Langston — So I think ah having an internal pipeline is like, number one, the best thing. We’re we’re fortunate as a church. We’re close to a seminary that a lot of people have come and gone through The Summit and been sent out as church planters or come on our staff. Kind of, you know, they were in the area. So we kind of got together. But we’re not not right next door to the seminary. Rich Birch — Right. Rick Langston — We are closer now as we’ve expanded. So ah we always said in the early days, we kind of got the ones that were willing to drive a half an hour to be a part of The Summit. So they they they liked us enough to be here. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. Rick Langston — But, down you know, having it some kind of internship, apprenticeship, residency um is is great. So like like Daniel mentioned, he was on staff with another ministry, but attending The Summit. So that being able to have people that be a part of you and and develop. Rich Birch — Right. Rick Langston — And that’s, we have a long history of that, but we definitely got to a place where that just doesn’t happen naturally. So developing some kind of residency where you’re getting people in early and allowing them, you know it gives us a chance to see and and the thing I think that’s been effective about residencies, people who want to, you know, we have a residency here where people raise support to work at the church. They get a very intentional training while they’re here. They get to actually have a position, um you know, on and a team somewhere and function part time or full time in those areas. It doesn’t mean they’ll have a job when they finish the residency, but it does mean that we are we get sort of like the first pick… Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rick Langston — …at the end. We don’t have a job for everybody that comes through, but we’ve gotten to know them and they know who we are as a church. And we do hire outside and that’s, that’s, ah Daniel’s got some excellent processes for that. But like, what we look inside first, but when we go outside.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Rick Langston — It’s usually somebody that’s kind of familiar with The Summit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Langston — And, you know, people have like, I’ve, we’ve had people that have moved here to get a job before they got the job. So, because they’re, you know… Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rick Langston — …they, they, from the outside had somehow gleaned enough about the church to like, I want to be in that area.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rick Langston — And so, um, it is, and it comes back down to that, like being able to, ah you that you believe in the vision, the mission of that, that church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Rick Langston — And even, you know, have a, have, and that culture, um, it’s not a place to build your own kingdom. Even even for our church planters, you know, sometimes I would jokingly say, if you want to do it your way, maybe you’re a church planter. But think even or our healthy church planters don’t really have that, like, I just want to do it my way.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Rick Langston — You know, they might have a and might have a unique, um a unique you know, kind of flavor to their their their vision, but we all got the same mission. Rick Langston — So, you know, and that’s a little bit. Rich Birch —Yeah, we were talking before we got on air and I’ve had some interaction with Mercy Hill the church that the regional kind of team was sent out from from The Summit. And there’s a lot of overlap there. Like there’s a lot of cultural overlap, obviously, between as and they’re obviously in a different part of the country, all that. But yeah, that’s that’s interesting. That’s cool. Rick Langston — Yeah. I mean, they’re, they’re like an hour from us. Rich Birch — Yes. Rick Langston — They’re very close. I remember, so Andrew Hopper was a campus pastor here.
Rich Birch — Right. Rick Langston — And I told him one time, you should be able to take like a hundred people. I don’t think he took a hundred, but they were probably close to 50. Rich Birch — Right. Rick Langston — A lot of young college graduates and stuff. And when they went and launched and got, they’ve, they, he learned a lot here and he and his, you know, since his executive pastor, Bobby, they, Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re great people. Rick Langston — they just whatever they learned here they’re doing better there, you know. It’s like they’re just killing it you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. They’re they’re good guys good good good guys like that team for sure. Well, Daniel, as we kind of come down to land the plane here, when you kind of look up over the horizon, you know, as you continue to grow, multiply, launch more campuses, what are some of the things that you’re wondering about? Questions you’re you’re asking, you’re thinking about in the future, kind of what what’s the future for, ah you know, for The Summit from your vantage point when it comes to multi-site? What are you thinking about in the future? Daniel Simmons — Yeah, I mean, I think honestly what I look out at, I look out at our city and I look at all the different places that don’t have a campus within about a 10 minute drive of most of the people that would call that place home. And my heart really goes to the lost people that are there. And my heart really goes to our people ah because I mean, I love the people at our church are amazing. And they’re sharing the gospel. They’re sharing their lives. They’re inviting people to church. And I want to I want to I want to help. I want to help knock down one more barrier to to to to ministry for those people. Rich Birch — Good. Daniel Simmons — And I want to put a campus in those areas. And I think that there’s, I mean, off the top of my head, I could probably think of five or six more campuses we could put in this area that would really help facilitate ministry…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Simmons — …and reach people with the gospel, bless the most broken parts of those cities. Because that’s kind of how we say it. Like we want to we want our campuses to bless. We don’t we can’t take on every problem, but at least three or four of the most broken, ah broken areas and that’s in that area, whatever it is, we want to bless that and and hopefully bring bring the light of Christ ah there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Daniel Simmons — And so I see that. And then I see, you know you know, one of the challenges is as we grow, how do we scale this?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Daniel Simmons — And I think that’s a challenge the leaders at The Summit Church have to face and think about and, you know, talk to other ah talk to other great churches out there that are that are living out the Great Commission and and have done it really wisely.
Rick Langston — Yeah. Daniel Simmons — So I think those are two of the things that I think about a lot. Rich Birch — That’s good. Now, am I picking up on, which I’d love to hear you unpack a little bit more, um you know, you when you think about campuses, you’re thinking about in the triangle, in RDU…
Daniel Simmons — Right. Right.
Rich Birch — …as opposed to church plants, which are outside. Explain that logic a little bit, because I think this is a nuance that I think people…
Daniel Simmons — Yes.
Rich Birch — …when you look in on multi-site, sometimes people don’t understand why you would why you would limit like that. Daniel Simmons — Right. Rich Birch — Explain that a little bit. Daniel Simmons — So, i mean our our I mean, I’d probably tell somebody this too, kind of if I go back to the first question you asked…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Daniel Simmons — …like what does a multi-site look like at Summit? Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — So our our kind of conviction is that we’re not going to plant a campus, um at least not something that will stay a campus for more than a few years outside of the Raleigh-Durham area. So if you live in some area and you would look to like Raleigh-Durham, maybe Chapel Hill as your city center, we are willing to plant a campus there. In fact, we want I’m not just willing, I want to plant a campus there. Rich Birch — Yep. Daniel Simmons — But we also plant churches in RDU. um there’s There’s some context ah that probably feel like a church might be better. And then also there’s just guys that that raise up, that… Rich Birch — Right. Daniel Simmons — …where God is leading them is to plant here. We’re not going to stand in the way of that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Daniel Simmons — Outside of RDU, we are going to primarily plant churches or at least help somebody facilitate a ministry that will one day become a church. And so that’s that’s kind of our ministry philosophy. That’s how we do it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I would agree. I think as a observer and practitioner multisite for years, I really do think for the vast majority of multisite churches, multisite is best understood as a regional strategy…
Daniel Simmons — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …as opposed to trans-regional or national. Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like we look at Life Church or Elevation, these other churches that have gone national. But they’re the rare exception
Daniel Simmons — Right.
Rich Birch — And that most churches can’t make that that jump. It’s that the the shorthand I’ve said in other contexts is like, I really think it’s good for reaching people who all cheer for the same sports teams. Like, who are all the people in, you know…
Rick Langston — Right, yeah.
Rich Birch — …and and that the the triangle RDU has a has a cultural milieu, I might be say that is kind of around there, but, but an hour and a half, two hours away, you know, it’s it’s a different, it’s a different world. Um, even when, when I was in New Jersey, you know, we’re North Jersey people, Manhattan facing suburbs are very different than South than South Jersey, you know, Philly- based suburbs. Rick Langston — Yeah. Daniel Simmons — Right. Rich Birch — They cheer for different sports teams, different cultural, even though they’re in the same state. Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Rich Birch — Um, so I, I think that’s a good nuance that you guys are are drawing a line around. I think that’s great. Daniel Simmons — Yeah. It also comes from a conviction that that we want to plant churches. We want to we want to grow leaders. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Daniel Simmons — Like we like In fact, on the campus pastor job description, the second thing that I hold them accountable for is I want you to raise up the next generation of Christian leaders. Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — And a part of that means growing up another generation of pastors and church planters. Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — And so I think also our focus with not planting campuses too far afield is that we understand that the greatest long-term impact for the the advancing God’s kingdom is probably not going to be advancing The Summit kingdom.
Rich Birch — Yeah, good. Daniel Simmons — It’s going to be planting new churches. And so we want to do as much that as we can. Rick Langston — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s great. I think that’s a good distinction. Sorry, go ahead, Rick. I cut you off there. Rick Langston — And they, well, they do, they do, you know, there’s a synergy between those, both of those things. And I just had a cool thing happen years ago where we had planted a church in Charlotte. So that’s two hours from here. Spence Shelton, Mercy Church in Charlotte. They were meeting a mobile location. I got a phone call at the office here from a church leader, you know a senior adult at ah at a church that was in, you know, and plateaued and declined in Charlotte. And He literally said, we want to be a campus of The Summit Church because they saw us online or something. Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Rick Langston — I said, well, we don’t do campuses in Charlotte, but you should call Spence. And they got their first permanent facility that way.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good.
Rick Langston — And I and so there was a little bit of like, I kind of hated giving away a building because no one has ever given us a building.
Rich Birch — Yes. Rick Langston — I mean, and so I always remind him of that. Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Rick Langston — You like this place? You remember who got it for you? Rich Birch — Well, at least return your phone calls. Rick Langston — Yes, he does that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s amazing. Well, this has been great. There’s a lot we could talk about. And you know there’s ah yeah we’ve really focused just on the multi-site side, but there’s a whole story here around what you’ve done in church planting as well, which I think is amazing. Daniel Simmons — Right. Rich Birch — Again, we’ve seen that statistically that churches that it get involved, deeply involved in multiplication through multi-site end up ah they have a higher likelihood to be church planting as well.
Daniel Simmons — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s a common misnomer about multi multi-site that it’s actually, it’s somehow competing with church planting. That’s actually not true. um So ah but there’s a lot we could talk about maybe for another day.
Daniel Simmons — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But I I really appreciate you guys being on and being, and and just want to, you know, just publicly honor your leadership for what you’re doing at The Summit. You’re leading the way, excited to see what happens in the future. Rick, as we close today’s conversation, if people want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online? Rick Langston — summitchurch.com and there’s also J.D. Greear’s ministry at jdgreear.com. You can follow what he’s you know his teaching ministry and the resources that he he’s got out there. We have a church planting collaborative called Summit Collaborative. I think that’s dot org. It’s churches that we we network with. And but we also I mean we’re happy to resource churches um the best we can. Rick Langston — Because I mean, Rich, I have been aware of you for many years. And I love that you know there’s guys like you that are putting out resources available to all, but, you know, whether it’s, um, we’ve learned, we’ve, we’ve learned from other churches and, uh, we want to be, uh, generous stewards of what God’s done for us too. Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — Yeah, there might also, can I throw in one thing with that? Rich Birch — Absolutely. Of course. Yeah. Daniel Simmons — Is it ah is that all those things are exactly right. And then Rick mentioned earlier in the podcast something called The Summit Institute, which is where we ah we we very we focus on people that are thinking and praying about going into full-time ministry.
Rick Langston — Yes. Daniel Simmons — They do raise support for about two years, but it’s probably, I would put it up against any organization a leadership development program for young people who want to go into into full-time ministry across the country. Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel Simmons — We’ve got we’ve got an amazing seminary, Southeastern Seminary, right here in our backyard. So a lot of kids, what they do, I say kids, young people, what they do is they go to seminary, they get into this program, they get the best of what a seminary has to offer, and then they get incredible development and hands-on experience. So if you are out there and you’re listening to us and you’re thinking about that, we’d love to have you. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much, gentlemen. I appreciate you being here today. Daniel Simmons — Yeah, thank you. Rich Birch — Thank you for taking time ah to be with us. What ah what an honor. And it’s a great it’s been great to have you. Thanks so much. Daniel Simmons — Yeah, thank you.
Is Your Church Ready for Multisite? Avoiding Costly Mistakes Before You Launch
Apr 02, 2025
Multisite churches have dramatically increased—from just a few hundred in the early 2000s to over 5,000 today. I’ve had the honor of being at the core this movement for nearly 2.5 decades, having led 13 multisite launches and coached many more. My goal in this solo episode is to share insights from my own experience to help you determine if your church is ready for multisite and how to sidestep common pitfalls that could cost your church significantly in the long run.
All month on unSeminary’s All About Multisite series, join us on Wednesdays for practical solo episodes, diving deep into the essentials of successful multisite strategies. Plus, don’t miss helpful Thursday interviews featuring prevailing multisite churches that maximize this model to reach more people effectively.
Episode Highlights:
Why Multisite? Multisite as a powerful method for reaching more people, engaging more volunteers, and significantly increasing conversion rates. Multisite is not a solution for declining or stagnant churches, you “reproduce what you are.”
Key Preconditions for Launch:
Healthy Momentum: Your church should already be growing faster than your local community. Only 6% of churches meet this criterion, which makes your church a standout candidate if you do.
Clear Vision & Mission: Everyone involved must clearly understand the “why” behind launching new campuses. Multisite should focus on mission-driven outreach, not simply convenience or ego-driven expansion.
Strong Volunteer Core: Aim to mobilize about 10% of your current congregation as a dedicated volunteer team for the new campus. We discuss the three-to-one ratio; for every volunteer, expect roughly three regular attendees at the new site.
Financial Margin: Greater upfront investment correlates directly with stronger initial attendance and long-term campus success. We talk about how the “launch large” philosophy leads to sustained impact.
Reproducible Model: Ensure your ministry systems—such as weekend services, children’s ministry, assimilation processes, volunteer appreciation, and financial stewardship—are standardized, scalable, and reproducible.
Mergers vs. New Plants: Approximately half of multisite campuses today come from mergers. You should consider mergers/rebirths due to their inherent benefits, including established community presence, history, and trust. Nearly 90% of merged churches report positive outcomes.
Common Mistakes to Avoid:
Fuzzy Vision and Lack of Unity: Launch only with complete leadership and theological alignment. Clear, mission-focused vision is crucial.
Underfunding: Investing adequately in the launch budget ensures stronger attendance.
Poor Location Choice: Ideal multisite locations are within a 15-30 minute drive of your original campus. We discuss “Marchetti’s Constant,” highlighting people’s willingness to travel around 30 minutes.
Weak Launch Team: Your initial volunteer core should include 50-150 dedicated adults. The health of this group significantly impacts long-term campus success.
Wrong Campus Pastor Selection: Successful campuses predominantly choose internal hires who embody the church’s culture and DNA. Prioritize internal leadership pipelines for campus pastors.
Inconsistency Across Campuses: Maintain programming consistency across all campuses to replicate original campus learnings. Avoid treating new sites as experimental grounds for entirely new approaches.
Leadership Readiness:
Assess leadership readiness by confirming unity among senior leadership, ensuring clarity of vision, fostering an apprentice-based leadership culture, and confirming Spirit-led confidence in your decision to expand.
Future-Focused Churches: Why Relational Discipleship Matters with Kara Powell
Mar 27, 2025
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. In this episode we’re talking with Kara Powell, the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute and Chief of Leadership Formation at Fuller Theological Seminary.
How is your church engaging with the next generation? Building connection and trust with young people can be difficult in today’s world. Kara’s work is all about helping churches equip leaders and engage young people, and in this conversation, she shares powerful insights for creating a church that truly connects with today’s youth.
Hope amidst declining trust. // One of the biggest reasons young people are stepping away from the church is a crisis of trust. Many view the church as hypocritical, unkind, and full of moral failure. However, research shows that while many teenagers are hesitant about church, they remain deeply intrigued by Jesus and His teachings. This means churches have a unique opportunity to rebuild trust by embodying Jesus’ love and authenticity.
Five keys to faith formation. // Kara outlines five essential components for fostering faith in young people and what it means to relationally disciple them. To start, young people need adults who share their faith and invest in them personally. Second, young people crave authentic spiritual practices, like prayer and worship, and need to be learning them in trusted communities. Third, this generation is passionate about justice and serving and wants to contribute meaningfully. Fourth, families are partners in shaping the faith of young people, and churches must equip them for that role. And lastly, a thriving church intentionally integrates young people into its vision and ministry.
Diversity is an expectation. // Today’s younger generations expect diversity because they experience it daily in their schools, extracurricular activities, and communities. If a church does not reflect the ethnic and economic diversity of its neighborhood, young people perceive it as out of touch. Ask yourself, does your church really reflect the diversity of your neighborhood? If not, how can you be more intentional about engaging with the broader community in authentic ways?
Love your neighbors. // Evaluate what percentage of your church’s resources are focused on yourself versus serving and loving your broader community. Too often, churches focus inward, investing the majority of their time and finances on internal programs. Seek ways to love your community through service and outreach, as these acts of love make a profound impact and draw people in.
Build a Transformation Team. // To implement meaningful change, Kara recommends assembling a Transformation Team—a group of 5 to 12 individuals from different areas of the church who are committed to driving change. This team should include young people and representatives from various ministries (for example, children’s ministry, worship, missions, etc.). By working together across departments, churches can ensure that engagement with young people is woven into the fabric of the entire church.
Four zones to help change. // Kara’s latest book, Future-Focused Church, co-authored with Jake Mulder and Ray Chang, provides a roadmap for enacting change in the church. The book introduces a four framework that includes: Who (who can help catalyze change), Here (what’s your church’s current reality), There (where is God calling you), and How (how will you actually make the change). This structured approach helps churches strategically plan for the future and avoid common pitfalls in implementing new initiatives.
Visit futurefocusedchurch.com to learn more about Kara’s new book, Future-Focused Church Leading Through Change, Engaging the Next Generation, & Building a More Diverse Tomorrow, and explore the resources available.
Plus, check out Fuller Youth Institute at fulleryouthinstitute.org for help coming alongside the young people in your community, and connect with Kara on social media @KPowellFYI.
Click here to listen to the unSeminary podcast episode Healing the Racial Divide in Your Church with Derwin Gray.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, this is one of those topics… in fact, I was reflecting recently, it revolves around one of the saddest things I ever heard a church leader say, which was, “It’s been decades since there were young people at our church.” And man, we don’t want that to happen at any of our churches. Rich Birch — And today we are in for a real treat. It’s our honor to have Kara Powell. She’s the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and the chief leadership and the chief of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary. That’s a lot. That’s a long title. she’s really an expert in this whole area. She speaks regularly at national parenting and leadership conferences, and is an author and co-author of a number of, from my perspective, must-read books. She’s got a brand new book that’s just come out that we want to make sure you read. But, Kara, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Kara Powell — Thanks, Rich. It’s wonderful to be with you and all of your awesome listeners and viewers. Rich Birch — This is great. I’m I’m honored that you would be with us. For for those that might not be familiar, kind of unpack a little bit about your role at Fuller Youth Institute and Fuller Theological Seminary in general. Kara Powell — Yeah, well, I’m a faculty member, and I certainly love that role at Fuller Seminary. You already mentioned another role I’m passionate about, which is I’m the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute. And our mission there is to equip diverse leaders so that faithful young people can change our world. And we do that by turning research into resources.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — So we take the best research that Fuller and others are doing and turn it into practical resources. One of FYI’s major initiatives is the ten by ten collaboration. So an additional role is that I’m the founder of the ten by ten collaboration, which seeks to help faith matter for 10 million US teenagers in the next ten years in the spirit of John 10:10.
Kara Powell — And then my broadest role at Fuller is I’m the chief of leadership formation, as you said. And that means I oversee all of Fuller’s non-degree training. And so really, in all these roles, I’m about turning research into resources.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kara Powell — And in many cases, that aligns with the needs and opportunities of the next generation. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. Well, you’ve been influential in my own thinking. And so many. I know you’ve helped so many people. And so I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, one of the things that I mentioned, this on the top, literally one of the saddest conversations I had was with a church leader in a church that we ended up that the physical building we ended up adopting. And one of the things they said was, man, there, it has been decades since there were young people at this church.
Rich Birch — And, you know, this is a major challenge for many of our churches engaging young people. I’d love to dive right in. What are some key reasons younger generations disconnect from the church and and what can we do to address that? That’s like a huge question, but let’s start there. Kara Powell — Yeah, absolutely. Rich Birch — I feel like you’d say, well, that’s my life’s work. So, you know… Kara Powell — Sit down. We’re gonna have a long conversation about it. Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Kara Powell — So, you know, it’s impossible to point to just one factor that is causing young people to distance themselves from the church. But I’ll say, one that we’re hearing about more and more these days is that young people are not trusting the church. Now let’s let’s back, you know, zoom out a little bit. I will say, in general, people are not trusting institutions.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kara Powell — Young people are not trusting institutions. And in particular, young people are not trusting the church. They view the church as unkind, hypocritical, full of moral failure. And so as a result, young people are skittish about being connected with the church. As one pastor’s 13 year old daughter said to him recently, like, why should I tell others I go to church; people who go to church or jerks?
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Kara Powell — And that’s that’s kind of the reputation in our world. Now, I’m an optimist. And so, you know that that’s the bad news. But I’ll say, here’s the good news, and the Barna Group has done some fantastic research on this, that while well, while teenagers in the US and globally are often, distant from the church, like, they’re very pro-Jesus.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — There’s a lot about Jesus that they find really intriguing and appealing. While they might say the church is unloving, they understand that Jesus is a person of love. So the good news for us is the more and more that we can all state the obvious: be who Jesus wants us to be…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kara Powell — …and do what Jesus wants us to do, I mean, that’s gone on for so many reasons.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kara Powell — But we also think and have seen that that’s really attractive for young people. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s like, so I’m classic Gen X and, you know, when I get to heaven, I think Bono’s going to be leading worship there.
Kara Powell — Totally.
Rich Birch — And he said, you know, I love Jesus. I’m just not so sure about his friends. And you know, that that seems to continue to resonate in, you know, in generation. I know in your work you’ve emphasized, you know, trying to break that down a little bit more. How do we build trust, relational discipleship, kingdom diversity and loving neighbors? Why are these important? Why are these important to kind of unpack those? What do you mean by those? Why are those important for us to be thinking about? Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, here’s what they all share. First off, I want to say they’re very grounded in scripture, and scripture’s invitations and commands. Secondly, they reflect some of the most important opportunities according to what we’re seeing through research and real recent data. And then we also have seen them be really powerful catalysts for churches. And so so that’s what all three of them have in common. You know, when it comes to relational discipleship, especially of young people, too often we in the church, and this is very much Kara including herself in that “we”, we’ve offered program maybe we’ve offered teaching, but we haven’t offered real relational discipleship. And when churches do that, especially when the next generation, especially investing in the next generation, what’s so exciting is not only our young people changed, but the whole church has changed.
Rich Birch — So true.
Kara Powell — So we think one of the most, you know, exciting catalysts for revival, renewal, whatever you want to call it based on your theological tradition is, is emphasizing relational discipleship.
Kara Powell — And secondly, when it comes to kingdom diversity, you know, God’s made us in God’s image and yet we all reflect that in different ways, different ethnicities, different cultures. And, you know, in the US, we crossed a line in 2020, according to the US census, that now half of those under 18 are young people of color. So, you know, the US has never been more ethnically diverse than it is now. And how can churches not force that, but how can we reflect the communities in which we live? I mean, that’s our that’s our ongoing question to churches.
Kara Powell — And then lastly, I mean, we just can’t get away from the importance of love. I was on an early morning prayer meeting this morning with folks, and we were looking at what’s going on in our world. And, you know, one of one person said, what we need to do is kind of move away from culture wars and instead lean into love wars. Now, you know, I don’t love military, violent metaphors.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kara Powell — So I’m I’m not saying let’s like, go brand that and hashtag that and all that, but but like, wow! You know, back to what young people think of the church. Like what if, what if we could be known…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kara Powell — …as some of the most loving people on the planet? What a difference that would make. So we think that young people and kingdom diversity and really loving our neighbors is Jesus’ command. They just offer amazing leverage right now for churches. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Why don’t we why don’t we step through those, double click on each of those and kind of unpack it a little bit at a practical level, this idea of relational discipleship.
Kara Powell — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I went I found it convicting when you said that I’m the one that’s thinking systems and scale and like, okay, how do we scale this thing up? Let’s come up with a new program.
Kara Powell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But it’s deeper than that. Unpack that. Relational discipleship. What do you mean by that? Kara Powell — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we we especially expand this on the ten by ten website, but we’ve identified five keys to faith formation, for young people, and what it means to relationally disciple young people. And I’ll just I’ll just hit them real quickly. Kara Powell — Number one, it starts with an adult young person relationship where faith is shared with adults. Adults are sharing faith with young people. As Paul describes in first Thessalonians 2:8, I was so delighted to share with you not just the gospel, but my very life.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Kara Powell — Second, that young people are engaged in spiritual practices and learning. I mean, that’s something exciting we’re seeing with this generation. They really want to experience God. You know, they love prayer and worship, when it’s in a community they trust. They’re really drawn to that, as well as interesting teaching. Third, that young people are serving, like that’s one of the great things about this generation. They want to be involved, sharing their faith, seeking justice.
Kara Powell — And then the fourth and fifth are that families are partners in the faith formation of their young people. And then lastly, that the overall church prioritizes and emphasizes young people. So when, as we’ve looked at the research on youth discipleship as well as scripture, those are the five drivers that we think are most important. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s specifically on the adult, the kind of adult-young person relationship…
Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …there’s I know you’ve done a lot of work on this area, but that to me that that is a profound understanding. I think we’ve so much of our programming bands to like, let’s keep everybody together…
Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …as opposed to cross-generational. Talk a little bit about that. Kara Powell — Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the metaphors that I like to use is, you know, growing up when Grandma and Grandpa Eckman—my grandparents—had all of us over, it’s way too many people to sit in one room, say, on a holiday meal. So they created the adults’ table and the kids’ table. Rich Birch — Kids’ table. Yes. Kara Powell — Yeah. And that’s what we tended to do in churches…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Kara Powell — …is create the adults’ table and the kids’ table, two separate experiences. And let me tell you, we’ve been well intentioned, like I’ve been part of the professionalization of youth ministry.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kara Powell — I have championed that. And yet we’ve been so well-intentioned. And yet the, the, the backlash is that young people are separate, silo-ized, segregated, which is not a verb I use lightly. And so, you know, when they graduate from high school, they they know the youth group, they know their youth pastor, but they don’t have a vision for what it is to be part of church. So, you know, do 16 year olds need to be on their own, some talking about life stage issues? You bet. Just like 46 year olds and 76 year olds do.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kara Powell — But how do we find the right balance when, yes, there’s some of that, but there’s also a lot of intentional mentoring that’s happening in a faith community. Rich Birch — Yeah, I know in my own life this when particularly when you’ve talked about this in the past, this has had profound impact on me, reflecting on my own experience, where I’ve had this weird disconnect in my own life, where the churches I lead in, I’m not sure the church would that would be that would appeal to my parents. When we first became Christian…
Kara Powell — Interesting. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, we we were in a very small church and very multi-generational.
Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And, you know, then I’ve led in these very like you say, kids table, adult table churches over the years, which has been fascinating. Rich Birch — Let’s talk about kingdom diversity.
Kara Powell — Yes.
Rich Birch — Every zip code in America is more diverse today than it was ten years ago.
Kara Powell — Yes.
Rich Birch — It will be more diverse ten years from now. And and it seems like young people have always been appealed, you know, have always wanted kind of a diversity. Is this different than just normal kind of maturation we’ve seen, or is there something behind this that’s even more like, hey, this is an emphatic thing we need to really be leaning into? Kara Powell — Yeah, well, I think all of us, but especially our young people, are experiencing diversity more, so they expect it more…
Rich Birch — Yes. Oh that’s good. Yeah.
Kara Powell — …other spheres. And so when you know, when they’re when their school experience from 8 to 3 is very ethnically diverse, culturally diverse, and then they show up at youth group that night or church on the weekend and it’s not that way, well, then they get a sense that the church is out of touch.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kara Powell — And is it really engaged in the community.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kara Powell — So so yeah. And you know, we constantly say you mentioned zip codes, like we encourage churches like ask yourself, do I reflect the ethnic and economic diversity of our neighborhood? And if not, then how do we be more intentional in building relationships, and who we have up front in leadership and the kind of communities that we create? So, you know, we’re not asking you to force diversity, but if you’re loving your neighbors, then hopefully that’s reflected in your neighbors being part of your community. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. I had Derwin Gray on this podcast…
Kara Powell — Oh, great.
Rich Birch — …take me to town on this issue.
Kara Powell — Great.
Rich Birch — And I would highly recommend you go back, friends, and listen to that. I think it could be, you know, just an eye opening experience for sure. So loving neighbors is the last one of these. This is can be a soft thing, but I know you don’t mean it that way.
Kara Powell — Yeah
Rich Birch — There’s like it’s got to have hard traction make a difference in our churches. What does it look like for a church that’s actually loving its community, and how does that connect with young people? Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, I think a poignant question that I’ve been convicted by when I’ve been a pastor is what percent of our churches’ resources are focused on ourselves, and what percent are focused on what it means to love our neighbors.
Rich Birch — Ouch!
Kara Powell — And, and for a lot of churches, it’s like 90/10, 95/5, maybe 85/15. But, you know, as we think about Scripture, I’m not going to suggest a percentage. I’ll let the Holy Spirit convict all of us on that. But you know what? What kind of allocation would we think Scripture would have to say when it comes to our own internal community versus understanding the needs of our external community, and then tangibly responding? And, you know, the good news is we tell churches all the time, like, please don’t start a bunch of new programs. There’s probably already nonprofits and other ministries in your community already trying to love people. And so, you know, let’s let’s let that kind of love be what’s compelling. You know, we’re we’re recording this not too long after the fires in Los Angeles. Kara Powell — So I’m sitting in my dining room in Pasadena, and we were evacuated for five days.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Kara Powell — And we know so many who have lost so much. And we have a 22 year old living with us who’s been displaced, and a friend of our family, and honored to do that. There’s just a lot of brokenness, but I’ll tell you, there are bright spots in churches when churches are loving.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Kara Powell — What one one friend was telling me that, you know, when they were evacuated, they they came to our church, which had opened its facilities in the middle of the night to be a home. And their parents live in their back house. Dad’s an atheist. He’s had no interest in church. What he saw in our church’s community in those first 24, 48 hours. Like he started coming to church now, because he saw the body of Christ in action, loving each other and loving the neighborhood.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Kara Powell — And so, so it’s often I mean, at least what we’re seeing in in LA is in the midst of the brokenness, there’s some real beauty that comes from us loving others. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. Just even in my own backyard, there was a tornado that went through a number of years ago, and I was super proud of our church. We leaned in and and in fact, there’s a whole ripple. I was just reminded yesterday, there’s a whole ripple in our church of like, families that got connected to our church, not because of some fancy program…
Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah. Totally. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …not because of some thing. It was like the tornado ripped through and within, literally within hours, people from our church were over there helping…
Kara Powell — That’s awesome.
Rich Birch — …and and that had huge impact. That’s, yeah, that’s great. Okay. One of the things I was struck by in your work is this idea of a transformation team.
Kara Powell — Yeah.
Rich Birch – It’s it’s like a super practical kind of we’re thinking about change. What is the transformation team? Why is it important to help us understand this concept? Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, I’m guessing most people who are listening or watching this right now, like you’re probably watching it on your own.
Rich Birch — Yes. Kara Powell — And while you can listen to a podcast on your own, you can’t bring about change on your own.
Rich Birch — That’s true.
Kara Powell — And so as we’ve journeyed with over a thousand churches who have successfully made changes toward what we’re talking about, as well as other areas. Like, well, while our book focuses on young people, kingdom diversity, and loving our neighbors, this is true for any change you want to bring about. You want to become more prayerful. You want to become more worshipful. You know, whatever it might be, we highly recommend starting a transformation team. And that’s a group of 5 to 12 who are very focused on the change, who are really who are really dialed into that. That’s probably 1 or 2, pastors, but maybe it’s not led by a pastor. Maybe it’s led by a member of the congregation who really has the vision and skills to lead. One of the interesting things that we’ve seen is transformation teams—like, let’s just let’s double click on young people for a second. A lot of churches want to become more, you know, mindful and more focused on the next generation. Well, we would encourage your transformation team then to have a few young people in it.
RIch Birch — Right, right.
Kara Powell — You know, have people who who you’re trying to better love be part of what you’re of your transformation team. But, you know, we’ve also seen churches have great success by having a few young people, but then really bringing together people from all different areas of the church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kara Powell — Someone from children’s ministry, someone from worship, someone from tech, someone from missions, someone from prayer. And so, you know, you can think about now, how can young people or whatever change you’re wanting to make, become woven into the fabric in all these areas? So, you know, we have a lot of specific recommendations: meet every 2 to 4 weeks, you know, commit to something like six months, most likely, etc. But really, it starts with getting the right people. And we, we recommend some of some who are really core to what the change you’re trying to be and represents that change, but then also diversity across the church. Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. What about the mixture of like kind of the big idea people versus the like, guys that love the spreadsheets or people that love the spreadsheets. Talk us through. What does that look like on that? Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like with most everything, we love all of that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kara Powell — Like, it’s important to have, it’s important to have both. So you know I think a question becomes where what is our team biased toward, and how do we need to correct for that?
Rich Birch — That’s good, that’s good.
Kara Powell — So, you know and I see this. In fact, I lead two teams at Fuller where one is very big picture and struggles with execution. And the other is awesome at execution, but sometimes can lack vision.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Kara Powell — And so so, you know, we’re we’re constantly trying to compensate for that. Who who can we add who can we bring in, even for just a time period to really help with execution or to really make sure that we’re dreaming the right big God sized dreams? Rich Birch — That’s cool. That’s good. Rich Birch — Well, yeah. There’s a lot we could talk about there but I love that. Just even practical takeaway. Kind of a bit of a meta conversation or discussion about you as a leader. I, so this area, working with young people, thinking about the future, I feel like there’s a lot of people in this area who are like all doom and gloom. Who, like, are like, oh my goodness, the world is falling. It’s all terrible. But you seem to be able to hold this balance of like you’re realist. I don’t get the sense of like, oh, your head’s in the sky, like, hey, things are everything’s perfect. But you do come to the best days of the church are ahead of us.
Kara Powell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Which I love. I find as I just want to honor you for that. I think it’s incredible that you have that kind of posture. At least that’s my opinion of you.
Kara Powell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s what I’ve seen you lead from. What gives you confidence in that belief?
Kara Powell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What gives you the confidence that like, hey, there’s good days coming when you’re staring into some tough realities that we face as a church? Kara Powell — Yep. My theology gives me that confidence. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Yes. Kara Powell — So, so, yeah, I, I’m very realist. I’m married to an engineer. Like, we are two realistic people. We are a realistic family.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. Kara Powell — But. And I think I’m realistic about the struggles that young people have connecting to the church. I see it in, you know, close friends of our family, etc. But in the midst of those challenges, I believe in a big, loving God…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — …who’s constantly renewing, who’s constantly reforming, who’s constantly drawing people to God’s self. So, you know, we would say we’re not we’re not necessarily in an era of decline and decay, but we’re in an era of reimagining and renewal.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — So I would say it starts with my theology, but then I’ll it a second less important but still important reason is it has to do with what we are seeing with young people these days. Like young people, again, open to Jesus, they are open to Jesus. And then secondly, when adults can build trusted relationships with young people, young people are hungry to get time with adults. Kara Powell — So, you know, it takes time. But, you know, some of the very encouraging research on trust by Brené Brown and others is that when it comes to building trust in general, it’s not grand, heroic gestures that build trust. It’s small, everyday acts of listening…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — …remembering, caring, asking again. And so, you know, for listeners right now. Like if you want to build trust, maybe there’s a young person who’s come to your mind like, why don’t you just text them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kara Powell — …and right now and say, you know, thinking of you, how can I be praying for you? And then, you know, if they respond, then ask 3 or 4 days later, hey, I was praying for you. How did that test go? How are you doing in that conflict with your girlfriend? You know, whatever it might be. And so the good news is, any of us really, any adult, can build a trusted relationship with young people, and young people are hungry for that. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, you’ve got a book that just came out “Future Focused Church: Leading Through Change, Engaging the Next Generation and Building a More Diverse Tomorrow”. Talk to us. So this is a big project, pulling together a book with a couple co-authors on this. What’s your what was the drive? What’s the thing that kept you up at night that you’re like, we’ve got to get this into a book? What are you hoping that people will get from this? Kara Powell — Yeah. Well, I’m so glad that Jake Mulder and Ray Chang, my two co-authors, they shared my hunger to help churches understand what needs to change. A lot of what we’ve been talking about here, Rich. But but I think a tougher question often is how do you bring about change?
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Kara Powell — How does the church actually change? And, you know, leaders listening to this now, you know, this struggle of bringing about change. According to Harvard Business Review, about 70% of changes that leaders try to enact end up failing. So, you know, if you’re if you’re batting average is around 70%, well, then you’re right on par.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kara Powell — Jesus sometimes struggled to bring about change. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kara Powell — So so based on scripture, based on really good research that others have done and based on how we’ve journeyed with over a thousand churches at the full youth institute, we’ve come up with a four-step map, a four-zone map that any church can use to make change. The three areas we’ve been talking about are really any area. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, I want to encourage friends that are listening. And you know we don’t do this. We don’t typically have authors on. I really I personally, I think, you know, I got a chance to kind of sneak a little bit into the book, and I think this could be a great book to do as a leadership team, maybe elders, your staff team, that sort of thing…
Kara Powell — Yeah, yeah, yep.
Rich Birch — …to really help us think through, hey, what does the future look like? So, you know, there may be a pastor who’s listening in, who’s feeling stuck. They’re like, you know, things are are not going well in our church. What’s kind of one practical insight from the book that, you know, could help them be a future focused church, that could help them think about, okay, how do we get unstuck? How do we how do we kind of become more ready for the future? Kara Powell — Yeah. So I mentioned we have a four-zone map in the book.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kara Powell — And it’s who, you know, who is trying to bring about the change. Who’s your community here? What’s your current reality there? Where is God calling you? And how, how do you actually make the change?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — So in the book we start with who and we start with who are the people who can help you catalyze change?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — And how do you start listening to your community. You know, really, almost without exception, when churches listen to their community, they’re better able to love their community.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Kara Powell — I can’t tell you how many churches have come to us with, well, we just started this new thing for young people. And we just started this new thing for our neighborhood. Rich Birch — I’m laughing because I feel like I’ve been there.
Kara Powell — You’ve done that. Oh, thank you. Yes, Rich, I’m actually confessing here. In addition to sharing our research. Rich Birch — I started this thing. Why are they not coming? Kara Powell — Exactly. It’s like because you talked to none of them.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kara Powell — And so so, you know, and we have seen churches pause and say, okay, wait, we thought we thought young adults, for instance, we thought we’d host a young adult new worship service. Or a young adult Sunday school.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kara Powell — And they offer it. Young adults aren’t drawn to it. You know, a lot of times what young adults want is they want like vocational mentoring.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kara Powell — They they twenty-somethings want to have dinner with people in the church.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Kara Powell — And so they don’t necessarily want a more separate programming. They want more cross-pollination.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kara Powell — But you only learn that when you’re spending time with them. So. So, who? First step, first zone. And it starts with actually listening to those you’re trying to serve and creating that transformation team. Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love that. Any, can you think of any kind of interesting stories you’ve run into? Churches that have done a particularly good job on the listening piece, that like, oh, hey, they did a great job listening. You can think of an example of that? Kara Powell — Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell, actually. There was a church that we studied in the Upper Midwest that had really struggled with their growth and had shrunk quite a bit, like they were contemplating shutting their doors. They were a church of 50, 75, something like that. But the leadership came together and said, you know what? We are not too old, it is not too late, and the road ahead is not too hard, and felt called by God to to do what we’re talking about, loving their neighborhood, prioritizing and listening to young people. They were near a college, and so they deployed more resources to build relationships with college students. Listen to college students. Well, that church that was about to shut its doors, it’s now a church of 1500 people, a thousand of whom are under 30. Kara Powell — Now, in all fairness, Rich, that was actually one of the more dramatic turnaround stories.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Kara Powell — It’s much more likely to be slower incremental growth.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kara Powell — But you know, I thanks for asking me to share a story because I love that story just as a sign of you never know what God’s going to do.
Rich Birch – Right, absolutely.
Kara Powell — And so, you know, we say not only the best days of the church are ahead, but we believe whoever you are, the best days of your church are ahead. Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. See this is, friends, this is why you should be following Kara and and doing read everything she produces and this great stuff. It’s super inspiring. So let’s talk a little bit about the book. I’m sure people can get it at Amazon. Are there other places we want to send them to pick up copies.
Kara Powell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, where do we want to send them online to to get this? Kara Powell — Yeah – futurefocusedchurch.com, futurefocusedchurch.com – one word. We have a host of resources there that you can check out as well as order the book. So that is a great place to dive into our content. Rich Birch — Nice. That’s that’s so good. I’m I would love for, like I say, friends, I really do think it’d be a great kind of team study. Something to do together. Don’t buy one, buy ten. And, you know, get together with a group of people. Because I think, by definition, like you were saying, I think there could be a problem with this book in that you read it and then you’re like, yes, I want to change.
Kara Powell — Right.
Rich Birch — But really, we should be doing this, like you said, in a team, in your group.
Kara Powell — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — And let’s talk about this, you know, this together. Any other kind of thoughts about the book or anything else you want to share just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode? Kara Powell — Yeah, I will say we see this all the time with churches. And this was true at my own church as my own church went through the change process. Churches often under… excuse me, overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in 2 or 3 years. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. That’s great.
Kara Powell — Part of what we map out in the book actually, is we have a six month and a 18 month change process that helps you set the right goals for that first year, and then continue towards God’s best future for you over that years two and three.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Kara Powell — So I wish there were really quick fixes. There’s certainly some quick improvements, but it usually takes months if not years to really change culture. Rich Birch — So yeah, that’s good. I’ve joked in other contexts that, you know, some of the stuff, some of the work I’ve done is like similar. It’s like how to grow your church in 1000 days, but no one would buy that resource.
Kara Powell — Right, right, right.
Rich Birch — Like no one is interested in that. They want the quick fix.
Kara Powell — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — But that’s not how it works. It’s got to be methodical and process oriented. Kara Powell — So true, Rich. Rich Birch — Well, Kara, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on today’s episode. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you with FYI all of that, where do we send them to connect with you? Kara Powell — Fulleryouthinstitute.org is our website. I’m on I’m on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram at @kpowellFYI. It’s my first initial KPowellFYI as in Fuller Youth Institute. Rich Birch — That’s great. And I know I said this earlier, but I do want to honor you for the great work you’ve done. Thanks for being a gift to the church and thanks for being on the show today. Kara Powell — I am honored in return to be on your show. Thanks, Rich.
The Leadership Balancing Act: Building Trust as a Middle Manager in a Large Church with Diana Rush
Mar 20, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today, we’re talking with Diana Rush, the Senior Director of Build Community at Eastside Christian Church, a multisite church with locations in California, Nevada, and Minnesota.
Are you a middle manager in a church trying to balance the pressures from both your senior leadership and your direct reports? It’s not an easy task, but in this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, Diana Rush, Senior Director of Build Community at Eastside Church, shares powerful insights that will help you manage these tensions with grace, clarity, and effectiveness.
Balancing leadership tensions. // Mid-level leadership in churches face unique challenges leading both upward to senior leadership and downward to direct reports. Managers in these roles act as translators between vision and execution, ensuring alignment while maintaining strong relationships.
Knowing yourself to lead effectively. // Effective leadership starts with self-awareness. Leaders must understand their own strengths and struggles before they can lead others well. If unresolved personal challenges go unchecked, they will inevitably affect team dynamics. Seek spiritual formation and growth, asking Jesus to shape your leadership approach.
Build Trust. // Trust is a critical component of leadership, both with those above and below you in the organization. Demonstrate reliability and transparency to earn trust, ensuring that your team feels supported while also maintaining alignment with senior leadership. Advocate for your teams while effectively translating the vision and strategy from above you.
Sell vision. // Diana believes that every leader is a “salesperson”, whether they are advocating for ideas with senior leadership or gaining buy-in from their teams. To do this effectively, leaders need to be fully committed to the church’s vision before presenting ideas. Prepare thoroughly for meetings and presentations in order to address questions and concerns while also remaining flexible and making sure people feel heard.
Make necessary shifts. // One example of how Eastside’s leadership “sold vision” includes how the church transitioned small groups away from increased on-campus meetings to more home-based settings. Although challenging at first, this shift ultimately strengthened the church’s discipleship model, reduced complexity, and allowed for more organic community growth and campus alignment.
Never waste a crisis. // Be transparent about metrics, as they tell a story about performance. Investigate declines to understand the underlying reasons. Encourage your team members to take ownership of their areas and conduct their own research to find solutions to problems that arise. Difficult situations are opportunities for creativity and improvement.
One-on-one meetings. // Consistent one-on-one meetings with your direct reports are crucial for growth and alignment. Diana suggests starting with a personal connection to build trust and open the door for candid dialogue. Next, discuss their goals and any challenges they’re facing. Wrap up by leaving space for them to provide feedback to you as their supervisor.
Visit eastside.com to connect with Diana and to follow along with what Eastside Christian Church is doing.
EXTRA CREDIT // Get Your One-on-One Meeting Guide for Middle Managers
Looking to lead more effective meetings and build stronger relationships with your team? The One-on-One Meeting Guide for Middle Managers is designed to help you foster trust, improve communication, and stay aligned with your staff. Based on the insights from this episode with Diana Rush, this practical resource offers a proven structure you can use right away.
This is just one of many helpful tools available through unSeminary Extra Credit—created to make your leadership easier and more effective!
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so excited that you are here today. Listen, friends, I’m excited you’re here for a couple reasons. First of all, we’re talking to a church that we’ve had multiple leaders on and who I think is is a church that all of us should be learning from. And so that’s one reason why you should lean in. But then also, we’re 800 plus episodes in and we’ve talked about a lot of different things in in leadership and local church, and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this.
Rich Birch — When we’re today, we’ve got a real expert in this area who’s going to illuminate this for us and really help us think through these issues, particularly if you’re like an executive pastor type person, lead pastor, you’re like a manager of people, ah today is going to be super helpful for you. So lean in. We’re excited to have Diana Rush with us. She is the senior director of Build Community at Eastside Church. They’ve got, if I’m counting correctly, six campuses, four in California, one in Nevada, one in Minnesota, plus Church Online. Founded in 1962, currently pastored by ah Gene Appel. We’ve had Greg Curtis on in the past. This is a fantastic church. Diana, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Diana Rush — So glad to be with you all today.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit more about Eastside. That’s just the kind of boilerplate stuff. Give us the kind of, you know, and tell us a little bit about your role as the Senior Director of Build Community. Tell us about that.
Diana Rush — Yeah, Eastside is just an active church on the move. Gene Appel started here about 15 years ago and it had been a thriving church for years. But when Gene came, he prayed for a fresh wind. And really, God really has delivered upon that. And each season, no matter in the pandemic or anything else, we’ve just seen God moving in miraculous ways in our church. And so in this past season, um I’ve been here about 10 years, on staff for nine. But God definitely blew my family in. And we were just just captured by the vision of this church.
Diana Rush — I did not start at Eastside with the ah the plan of working here. I just was like looking for a place to serve and a place just for God to work in my life in that season.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Diana Rush — And I actually started working or serving with the church’s social media. And in that season, I had been at a law firm for about 14 years as an office manager. So coming from more of the business side, working in the field of labor and employment law. So got to see a lot about management and when it goes bad.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Diana Rush — Right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Diana Rush — But then I found myself here and really feeling this call to maybe take a step out of what I had been doing and into something different. And so a door opened up and I took the first position I took here was actually the Director of Communications. So I was leading a team of creatives, definitely different than leading a team of attorneys. But I definitely have a creative bent to me. And honestly, I will just say for most things in reality, everything’s transferable from business to you know different types of teams that you lead. And especially in the realm of middle management, if you can lead people, you can lead people no matter what kind of area that you’re overseeing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — You just have to be a student of kind of the content that you’re doing. So I stepped into that role. But after a couple of years in that role, and I really felt God leading me to something different. And so I, uh, a position opened up actually working for Greg Curtis. So everybody knows if you’ve experienced this podcast, Greg is amazing. And, um…
Rich Birch — He’s fantastic. He’s great leader.
Diana Rush — Yes. And so getting to work in a season where ah Greg really became the person developing me um was just such a gift. I had never had really any public speaking experience. And so Greg kind of took me through a journey of of instructing me and really helping me develop some skills that I didn’t have. But of course, I went from a management position to non-managerial position.
Diana Rush — And then over the last several years, I’ve actually changed roles so many times. So I was the Director of Assimilation. Then I was the Director of Pastoral Care. and And then I stepped into this role, which just recently became ah was added to our senior leadership team here at Eastside. And so now I oversee several different department leads here Eastside, everything from guest services, assimilation, small groups, care and recovery, pastoral care, and our volunteer systems.
Diana Rush — And I would say i get to serve alongside some amazing folks and they do amazing work. And I just really get to be their cheerleader, the one that gets to advocate for them and just serve them and see, hey, how how does what God’s calling you and your vision for your area fit into the overall vision of Eastside?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Diana Rush — So it’s been a wild ride and um And I am at a church where I’ve been allowed to grow and step into different roles. And so I’m definitely a product of a leadership development program that is here at Eastside um that are our executive pastor really oversees. But yeah I’ve been allowed to grow and explore and do different things, which is great for me.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Diana Rush — I know a lot of people love what they do, but I’ve just really found my sweet spot. I was saying this last season of, again, stepping into that more managerial position, leading others and helping to champion them.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. And when we were preparing for the the podcast, I loved kind of seeing your journey in so many different roles at Eastside. You’ve really seen this from a bunch of different angles. And obviously Eastside is a unique church because of its size, because of the, like it’s unique in a lot of different realms, the size that your approach to multisite, there’s lots of different ways to kind of look at this. And one of these things that we’re going we’re going to really dig in today is this whole idea of mid-level management in uh, large churches. And this, this brings some really unique complexities. And we want to unpack those for folks today.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about the tension between managing, both upwards—so like executive pastors, senior pastor—but then also downward—direct reports, campus teams. Why are there, and again, I’m sure you never have any struggles at Eastside, but why are, why do other churches struggle with that? What, why is that? Why is this a common thing that we see that’s a it’s it’s struggle? It’s hard to do that, to manage those tensions.
Diana Rush — I think some of the tension, it first starts with self. Like I always say, you have to start with you know the source material, your own person. And um before you can lead others, you have to really understand yourself and be able to lead yourself well. And so it’s really getting to know who you are, who you’re made of. You know I love the illustration of you know you have like an orange, and if an orange is squeezed from the top and bottom, it’s eventually going to burst, and what’s going to come out is orange juice. It’s the same on the outside as the inside. And oftentimes, in management roles, we are going to be squeezed from the top. We’ve got the top coming down on us. Like we’ve got goals; we’ve got things to achieve.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — We’ve got expectations. But then we’ve got the expectations of those beneath us, people that, you know, maybe they’re struggling in their own journey or whatever it is. They everyone’s wanting something from you. You’re going to get squeezed in management. And if you are presenting this like, I am perfectly okay on the outside, but I’m not letting God form me on the inside, what’s going to come out is going to be really obvious.
Diana Rush — So if you’re struggling with anger, it’s going to come out when you get squeezed. If you’re struggling with a multitude of issues, those will all reveal themselves. And so it starts really with like being good about making sure that you’re pursuing Christlikeness in your own life, that you’re actually asking, okay, Jesus, I want to lead like you led others. And I want to shepherd my teams. So I think that’s where it starts.
Diana Rush — And then ah secondly, I would say it’s about building trust, both with those above you and those below you. You know If you are known for success, people will expect success. But if you are constantly making mistakes or going outside the lines, going rogue, then you’re never going to build that trust and you’re not going to be handed, you know, things to to further your path, or even you’re just gonna feel that upward tension of being micromanaged, right? No one likes to be micromanaged…
Rich Birch — True.
Diana Rush — …but how do you get out of being micromanaged? You build trust.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — And then you have honest conversations with those above you. And so that, you know, it’s a little bit of boldness as well. You have to not be afraid to ask hard questions.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — But again, when you have a trust in a relationship, I know for myself, I can talk to my executive pastor, who I report to, about nearly anything because we have this trust that we’ve built. Even before I started in this role reporting to him, I had already had an existing relationship with him where I felt like I could go to him if I had questions, concerns.
Diana Rush — So I’ve been building that trust even before I stepped into this role. And then the same thing with the staff below you. You know, my team trusts that I’m going to advocate for them, that I’m not going to overstep them, that I’m going to let them lead and them shine. And so we can work together to make something great, you know, make their plans into realities because I’m going to sell it. I look at myself, male management, I’m a salesperson. I’m going to take their ideas And then I’m going to sell it upwards, you know, and I’m going to craft it into something so that I can, you know, convince everybody else that this is a great idea and we should try it out.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Diana Rush — So…
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s double click on that idea of the salesperson, because you you captured their attention that I’ve seen, I’ve been in, I have felt as a leader in this kind of middle management, is like my senior pastor, the folks the person that’s leading the organization, they um they’re getting filtered information and its frank frankly, it’s being filtered by me. I’m you know I’m telling them, this is what we see happening. Here’s what’s going on.
Rich Birch — Now, vice versa, the people who report to me, I’m filtering what my senior my senior pastor would like them to do. And I’m helping kind of translate the the vision of the church. I’m leading at the vision at the intersection of vision and execution. So like I’m trying to translate that. If I’m just selling, there’s ah there’s an opportunity there to to break trust because it could be like, I’m gonna just send, it’s all rainbows going up, rainbows and unicorns, everything’s amazing, everything’s going great. I tell my senior leader that.
Rich Birch — And then vice versa, I am you know can just report all good news to buy my direct reports. How do I avoid that tension and make sure that the true information, that good feedback’s building, that we’re building trust, and that it’s built on, yeah, actually care for each other and reality, not just kind of what everybody wants to hear, which I think is a tension in these middle mid-level roles.
Diana Rush — Yeah. So I’m just going to say: unpopular opinion, but we’re all in sales.
Rich Birch — Yes. I love it.
Diana Rush — And that’s just reality.
Rich Birch — Yes. True. That’s true.
Diana Rush — We’re all selling something, whether you’re selling an idea or yourself. But I think, A, you have to be 100% sold out for the vision.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — So we’ve got the best product on earth, right? We are, you know, we we’re representing Jesus. We’re representing eternal life and transformation and the hope that you can only find in Christ. And so right there, as long as your heart is connected to the vision of your senior pastor, it’s like, that’s not that difficult. Now, when you are presenting ideas, whether it’s a vision that your senior pastor is saying, hey, I have this idea of something I want to do. You have to first wrap your mind around it. You have to get in with the vision. But it’s okay, in my opinion, no matter which way you’re going, to plant a naysayer. You have to think through all the all the complaints that might come or all the that people will, but what about this?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — And so you have to be willing to prepare. And so honestly, I prepare for any presentation or any conversation, probably a little too much.
Rich Birch — Good.
Diana Rush — I would say one of my my top strength finder is communication. And so for me, it’s just a natural thing that I talk my way through any scenario and any conversation. But it does allow me to walk into any situation prepared to explain.
Diana Rush — So whether it’s, you know, Gene Appel, my senior pastor has an idea for an all churchwide initiative that we’re going to be doing. We’re actually doing it right now. And I’m going to be leading teams for this. I have to think, okay, well, what are all the pitfalls? What are the things that are going to cost us time?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — What are the the but the negotiating tactics I need to have? So if I need my entire staff to now show up on a Wednesday night, what am I going to have to give them in return? And, you know, where can I give them space in their schedule so that they’re excited to be here and they don’t feel like it’s a burden?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Diana Rush — And so, you know, it’s that way I’m selling it. But then, you know, maybe Greg Curtis has an idea. He wants to get rid of our four week next steps program and move to one one week.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Diana Rush — First step. And so he’s going to change our entire assimilation program. Well, I I mean, for something like that, you have to really get prepared because I know I’m about to take a group of people on a journey who aren’t there with us already.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Diana Rush — I’m going to have to help some people who have long held, um you know, sacred cows, “well, we’ve always done this way”…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Diana Rush — …and release it. And so honestly, it’s in your prep work, but it’s in your constant communication.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Diana Rush — You have to, again, you have to be sold out and believe in what the person wants and have those those questions. I mean, Greg and I, we would sit in my office and talk over and over and over again about what changes he was going to make because I have to be prepared for any questions…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — …from the executive pastor, senior pastor, even you know our director of you know ah finance. All these roles, I have to be able to go in and say, you know that’s a really good question and let’s process that together. And it’s never, and you as a salesperson or just anyone in leadership, you never want to have a hard no, and you never want to be unbending. You want to be flexible.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.
Diana Rush — And be able to receive the feedback and then say, okay, that’s you know that’s a really good thought. And you want to make the person feel heard at all times because that’s part of the process. It’s it’s never a hard line. It’s never, you have to do this. It’s let’s talk about this. Let’s make it a conversation.
Diana Rush — Because I want I want senior leadership, but I also want those reporting to me to have ownership over any idea…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — …and any direction that we go, which means I have to let them speak into the plan and speak into that the idea so that they do feel that sense of like, okay, I can be a part of this. I can do this. And I think this is going to be a success.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So can we talk, this is slightly different direction now. So one of the things that’s interesting about your, about Eastside is just very different size of campuses, ah different locations, different time zones. How are you developing systems communication approaches within your area that can scale and build trust, you know, yeah, across the different, all the variety of locations that you’ve got. What does that look like for you at Eastside?
Diana Rush —Yeah. You know, scalable ministry is difficult when you’re thinking about, I’ve got a congregation of 300 and I’ve got a congregation of 8,000.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Diana Rush — How do I make it work across the board? And for Eastside, we would say that we’re more of a franchise model. So we’re going to do the same thing everywhere. We follow the same message series. If we’re doing a small group in our Anaheim campus, we’re doing it in our Minnesota campus.
Diana Rush — And so we have to create systems and processes around that. So it starts with, you know, really simplifying things. I think that is key for us.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — It’s we don’t want to do too much. We don’t want to overcomplicate things. So we don’t have a women’s and men’s ministry. We don’t have all these extra things. We do small groups. That is our ministry as, you know, as it happens.
Rich Birch —That’s good.
Diana Rush — And we do, you know, you can have small groups, for about just anything. So we really put that in the hands of our leaders, which makes it easy and transferable for any campus size. But we also do larger on-campus experiences that we we come together and we all do the same thing.
Diana Rush — And I mean, we go as far as, okay, everyone’s gonna do this. We’re all going to do it on Wednesday night at 6.30 p.m. And we’re all having childcare. Because if we align every campus on something, then our senior pastor, or whoever’s on the stage, can talk about it centrally. Then that really simplifies our communication to the congregation, but also to the staff.
Diana Rush — It also saves a central team, which is what I lead, um from having to create lots of versions of the same thing, because we’re saying, okay, we’re all going to do the same thing. But again, it comes back to this trust. I have to be working with campus pastors and campus teams to making sure that we understand their needs at the campus. And so that for the congregation of 300, that’s going to have 50 people in a small group, um that they can run the same play as we’re going to have, you know, 600 people in a small group over here. And so what does that look like and making sure that it’s easy. And so technology is a big part of this for us.
Rich Birch — It helps for sure.
Diana Rush — And so it’s really being on the forefront of what is out there that can simplify this…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — …that can deliver content in real time to campuses. And so, you know, our our creative teams are working on this constantly, but even in the area of discipleship, we’re working on this as well.
Diana Rush — And so we’re creating, you know, I’m going to create a script that everyone’s going to use. I’m going to create a slide deck that is simplified that a volunteer can use it, but also an expert communicator can use it as well. That just really lays out for them.
Diana Rush — We do a lot of video content because then the content is provided. You’re not asking too much of a campus team. And then ultimately the feedback loop is so big in our organization. We have regular meetings where we have our central team and our campus teams coming together to run the play. But we also, you know and like I said, we keep it simple. So you’re not going to come to Eastside and be like, oh, this weekend they did this and next weekend and it was very different.
Rich Birch — Good.
Diana Rush — No, we’re running the same play over and over and over again. And we’ll do that until, you know, it kind of doesn’t work anymore. Like I said, we changed our assimilation program. It wasn’t working for us anymore. And so we went through about a year long process in strategizing what it was going to look like, laying out the plans, communicating to campus teams, equipping our volunteers until that was ultimately unveiled.
Diana Rush — Because we want our changemakers—and we have a small staff—and so our volunteers, which we call changemakers, we have to make sure that they’re bought in. It’s not just about the staff for us, it’s about bringing in ah volunteers as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Diana Rush — So we have a strategic planning process that we do twice a year where we plan six months in advance. And it essentially starts with ah you know coming together, senior leadership team and campus pastors, presenting plans, getting feedback, having plans challenged, being okay with your plans being challenged.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Diana Rush — And then once those plans are solidified, we then kind of unveil the six months to the staff.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Diana Rush — And then after it’s unveiled to the staff, then it starts trickling down into our volunteer teams. But then it really creates this okay everyone knows the plan. We create kind of how that plan’s going to work, how it’s going to play out everywhere. We stick to the plan and we run the play. And so centrally we’re coming up with executable plans so that the campuses can execute it. We try to never over complicate it but again it is all about simplification. How can I make it simple enough that I can have it scaled no matter what the size?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I want to double click on this idea of simplicity and alignment because that, for friends that are listening in, like man, this is so critical. As a church grows, we it can naturally drift towards complexity. If we and and here you have a senior leader the top, you know, at top of a very large organization who’s, who’s driving towards simplicity and alignment.
Rich Birch — Can you give us a real world example of maybe an area that has naturally drifted towards complexity, that as an organization, you’ve had to push back towards, no, actually we’re going to do it more simply and to to ultimately to try to drive towards more alignment across our locations. Because what we’re seeing with multi-site church is exactly what you’re describing, those churches that are more aligned, this model is working better for them. The more that we can get alignment, the more that we see these churches succeeding and reaching more people. So what’s an area that you’ve seen, it’s kind of naturally wanted to become more complex, but you’ve had to make it more simple.
Diana Rush — Yeah, I have an immediate one that comes to mind, and that really is our small groups model.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — Like I said, we try to keep it pretty simple…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — …but over time, ah we had seen that our campuses were adding all these additional groups on campus. We’ve got a people of the word group that meets on Thursday mornings. And then we’ve got this group on Thursday nights. We’ve got, you know, oh, this was a nice to have. And so it’s like all all of a sudden we’re creating ministries where we don’t normally do that. And and we’re having all this additional activity on a campus.
Diana Rush — So for us, a campus staff is maybe four people, six people, and they have a small staff. So you you can imagine they’re doing their normal daily work to prepare for the weekend. Then now they’ve got all this campus activity happening in the evenings.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — We’ve got to do set up, tear down. There’s a lot of costs, not just financial costs, but also, you know, person cost when it comes to all these additional things. And so we had seen that we’d kind of grown into all these extra activities happening on campus.
Diana Rush — And we sat down in one of those six-month planning meetings and had a really honest discussion of, okay, we’ve drifted away from our small group model and we’ve added all of these things, which has kind of chained us to not being able to develop something that we think strategically would work better at campuses. And so we decided that we were going to have all of these on-campus groups go away.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Diana Rush — We the only thing that we kept was a couple of our Friday night care groups. We do regeneration. We also do divorce care, grief share. So we were gonna keep those, but we were gonna go through a six month period of slowly having conversations with these group leaders, reminding them of the vision of Eastside. And our vision is for our small groups to meet in homes and to be out in the community and not have Eastsiders have to come here on campus, but to really establish these small groups in homes where they can invite their friends, their neighbors.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — Again, it’s part of ah an evangelistic view of small groups. And so ah we spent weeks having very difficult conversations at multiple of our campuses that had drifted. And they, some of them were hard conversations. But honestly, most of them, and this is the reality of God going before you. Most of them were great conversations where you were just recapturing the vision.
Rich Birch — Good.
Diana Rush — And these leaders, even though they were sad that their group wasn’t going to be able to meet on campus, that they were going to have to find a solution that they realized, this is the right move. And I understand the decision.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — I trust leadership. That was the thing I heard over and over again. Our small group leaders trusted the leadership. And so they were okay with the move. And I’ll be honest, it was a very, very hard season of working with these groups, helping them define solutions.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — And we did see an immediate decline in our group attendance numbers. But, what it opened the door to is what we’re doing now, which we do now on-campus group launches that are aligned across all campuses at the same time with child care. And it’s providing new people an opportunity to find informed community in a very well-crafted small group and you know way, that we do kind of together around tables.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Diana Rush — And then the goal is that they launch as a table after five weeks or however long we deem the group launch to be, they launch then into an off-campus group. And we’ve had great success with that. And we’ve actually seen, you know, small groups growth in the correct direction. Instead of just saying we’re going to do all sorts of on-campus activity. No, we’re launching groups into home groups, into coffee shop groups, into community groups, into even serving groups, groups that are serving in our community.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Diana Rush — And so that was, you know, it was short-term pain for long-term gain.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Diana Rush — That’s what I will say. And, and we are experiencing, honestly, where we just launched our groups last night on campus.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Yeah.
Diana Rush — And this is the largest group launch we’ve ever had ah in our history of our church. We’ve had at this point over 1,500 people signing up for groups in this season. That doesn’t even include the people that were already in groups.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Wow. That’s great.
Diana Rush — But because we went through that process of really simplifying, of aligning at every campus, it opened the door for us to be able to do something like this that gets now our whole congregation aligned. And we’re asking our congregation to do one thing – we just want you to sign up for what we’re calling a New Testament challenge group.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — And the path is super clear for people. So they’ve just said, all right, that’s what we’re all doing. We’re going to, we’re going to do it together.
Rich Birch — You’re doing it. Yeah, that’s great.
Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, I think that’s incredibly important, particularly in this kind of mid-level manager role, because I think that is where complexity comes in. It’s like, because we hear everybody everybody’s good ideas and it’s our job to try to compress and say, no, we’ve got to get to more simplicity.
Rich Birch — Kind of embedded in what you were talking about there is there must be times when things don’t go well, where it’s like people in your area, it’s like you’re trying something, it’s not working. This isn’t, you know, this isn’t happening well.
Rich Birch — How do you how do you balance that with the sales? And I agree with you that we’re all in sales. How do you balance that with always being positive, trying to sell things? How do you talk about stuff when it goes sideways? Or maybe the flip side, how do you talk about stuff when things go well in your area? What are some tips you could give us for middle-level managers as we’re you know as we’re publicly kind of interacting about areas or things in our area with other people in the organization?
Diana Rush — So I’m definitely a numbers and spreadsheet person. It’s just natural bend for me. But the reality is for us in church, our metrics, they tell a story.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — They they tell us how we’re doing. And so being able to say “we’re going to measure things” is really important.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — But that’s really my key indicator for how things are going. And it does take a lot of time to track down numbers, to track down trends, to see, okay, how have we performed you know over the last 10 years in this area? What did it look like pre-pandemic? How has it looked post-pandemic? And then you start letting the numbers tell the story.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — Honestly, if you’re like, if your numbers are going great, that’s like a celebratory moment. But if you’re like, gosh, like we wanted to hit this number and we’re seeing a decline in this area, it it immediately opens up the question of, hey, you know, I’m noticing this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — What’s the story here? Can you start doing research? And so usually what I do, if it’s, you know, a number from one of the ministries that I oversee, I want that leader to go and do the fact finding for me.
Rich Birch — Good.
Diana Rush — I’m not going to start digging into their area. I want them to tell me the story. I want them because I first, I need them to see like, oh yeah, I need to do something different.
Diana Rush — And um I just was thinking about, we were over budget in an area severely. And so I had to put it to the leader and say, hey, I need us to figure out a solution long-term because this is costing us more and more. It was guest leads. We were paying about $10 per guest lead, way over budget.
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — And so I put it out to our director of guest services and she went through a research period. She came up with a solution and, um, and it’s been great. We’re now at $2 per guest. We have more guests than ever. And yet it’s costing us less. So she was able to work through slow work through some problems and get a solution. But ultimately, it was like a tough conversation of saying, like we can’t keep overspending on the budget. We have to be stewards of our finances.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Diana Rush — And honestly, when ah any and time it’s connected to a dollar amount, that’s like some of the hardest conversations.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Diana Rush — Nobody wants to hear, like I need you to trim your budget.
Rich Birch — Yes. Right.
Diana Rush — But, you know, any of those situations, whether it is ministry is not going well, it it opens the door to what I would say, I call it a crisis. And I always tell my team, never waste a crisis because that’s where your creativity is going to come into play.
Rich Birch —Oh, that’s good.
Diana Rush — You’re going to be able to take a fresh look at something and say, this isn’t working. So is it a dial turn or do I need to completely refresh it? And so knowing, but knowing the end goal, and having established goals for where we want every campus and every ministry to perform really does help because that points us towards a target. And if we’re not hitting that target, they know, you know, we don’t hide metrics from anybody. The staff knows where we’re doing. They know where they’re at. And we’re always having key conversations.
Diana Rush — And you know I think those conversations ongoing are really important kind of in the middle management stage because I have one-on-ones with my team members regularly. So we’re constantly dialoguing. We’re constantly looking at where we’re going. We’re looking at not only their ministry goals, but their personal goals. Each one of them has six goals for every six months. And so we’re looking at those, evaluating how they’re doing. And so it’s an open conversation.
Diana Rush — That, you know, it doesn’t feel like I’m pressuring them or I’m putting you know the fire under them because it’s just a dialogue. And I they know that I’m a champion for them, that I want the best for them and their area, that I want them to win and see you know be the successful leader that I know they are. And so when something’s not working, it’s not like I’m not going to come down on them.
Diana Rush — And, you know, I have different types of leaders that serve on our team. And some of them really are perfectionists. And they’ll be like coming into my office. Oh, my gosh. Like, I’m so sorry. And I always I jokingly ask two questions. I say, did somebody die?
Rich Birch — Right.
Diana Rush — Now, I do oversee pastoral care, which is funerals. So sometimes somebody did die.
Rich Birch — Yes, sometimes that does happen.
Diana Rush — But my second question is, is someone going to lose their salvation? No. Okay, let’s work through a creative solution. And so they know, like, we’re not going to like freak out. We’re not going to come down on them. You know, nobody’s losing their job. We’re just going to be talking through, okay, well, what’s the next step that you want to do and get creative?
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good.
Diana Rush — Nothing’s off the table. And let’s brainstorm. Let’s come up with a solution together. And I think, you know, it makes those hard conversations easier because it’s an ongoing conversation. It’s never a surprise.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Diana Rush — I’m really big on, I don’t like surprises. I don’t like to be surprised and I don’t like to surprise my team. And so we’re going to constantly be looking at where we’re at, how we’re doing and how can we make the turn so that we can get where we want to be.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. So good. Can we double click just even quickly on the one-on-one conversation piece? That’s a key piece of the the puzzle here for middle managers. How often, how long, what’s the cadence look like? Who sets the agenda? What’s your kind of, what happens in ah in an ideal one-on-one? You walk out and you think, okay, that’s gold star. We did exactly what we should do. Talk to us about that a little bit.
Diana Rush — Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a little flexible depending on the person. I have two former senior pastors that report to me, Greg Curtis being one of them.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Diana Rush — And um and so, you know, for those two, ah we do it every other week and we go a little longer. I have I give a little more space for them because we’re not going to meet as often…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — …but we get more into deep discussions. And um and so but then I have a other staff members who are more, you know, we’ve got weekly execution things that are happening, faster moving ministries, or if I’m intentionally seeing someone on my team that I really want, I really want them to be developed. And so they’re more of like an investment. Then it’s going to be every week. And it might be 30 minutes. Sometimes we might go longer. Sometimes they are going to be like, hey, I just need a little more time with you today.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Diana Rush — Or can I pop in again later in the week? Absolutely. I try to also make sure I walk around to their offices and I’m touching base with them during the week as well. But really, a one-on-one, I like to start with more of like care connection. How are you doing?
Rich Birch — Yep. Right.
Diana Rush — Because honestly, we are called first to shepherd and and pastor and love these people. They God has put them in our care to steward their giftings and their call. And so I want to find out where they’re at, what they’re experiencing in their life. And so connection, you know, and sometimes maybe we take too much time with that. Maybe we just start, you know, going on a rabbit trail, talking about life or our kids or whatever’s going on. But I do think that’s like a really important part because if you know a person really at like who they are, their soul…
Rich Birch — 100%. Yeah.
Diana Rush — …then it opens the door to so much more.
Rich Birch — Definitely.
Diana Rush — And so like you go from care connection into more of like coaching. Okay, let’s start looking at where you’re at. Maybe you’re going to look at your goals or what’s going on in their ministry area. What are the challenges they’re facing? What are some things that I’m seeing? That’s when you would have those hard conversations of like, hey, let’s talk about your budget, where you’re at, or I’ve noticed, you know, this campus isn’t hitting the numbers that we were hoping for. Can you maybe work with that that campus team to see what’s going on there? And those kind of conversations.
Diana Rush — And then ultimately, we like to end with time of feedback.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — Okay, what are some feedback that um that you need to give me as a supervisor, right? We don’t want to just be speaking at people, we want them to feel like they’re invited into this conversation. So what’s some feedback you have for me? You know, sometimes you really want to lean into it. How can I be leading you better in this season?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Diana Rush — But then but then also, OK, I have some feedback that I need to give to you. Maybe there was an interaction that didn’t go so well with them and a campus team member. And and you’re hearing about it so you’re like wanting to help them navigate that situation. But ultimately, you know, depending on how it ends, sometimes it’s just like, okay, great meeting. That’s great. Let’s, you know, we continue on with it. We’ve got our action items that we walk away with. Other times it’s, if you’ve had a hard time, let’s let’s just close in prayer…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Diana Rush — …ah you know, because ah we need to, we need to just like pray over this and see what God’s going to do next. And also, because you want to, ultimately, you are building a relationship in these one-on-ones…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Diana Rush — …at all times. And so you want to make sure that you’re preserving that relationship. Again, always going back to that trust. You are constantly building trust with team members so they know they can talk to you. They can come to you. They can be honest with you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s so good. This fantastic. Super helpful. We’ve, there’s a lot we could talk about and um that you’ve been super helpful today as we’ve really tried to wrestle through this issue.I’m I’m thankful that you’ve been here. Just as we’re kind of starting to land the episode, land the plane. What, anything else you’d love to say that we should be thinking about from a mid-level management point of view, any kind of final tips that you’d have us wrestle with?
Diana Rush — You know, I would just say no matter where you’re at on an org chart, I I think that you are you know called to first really be that person that God’s formed you to be.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — But then also stewarding those gifts in in everybody. You know, as church leaders, it’s a unique position that we’ve been put in. And your congregation, but also the staff, you know your staff teams are gonna be looking at you differently because you are in this position of power. And so do not waste that, and do not look at yourself as the boss if you get elevated into that leadership role. But constantly, it’s it’s keeping that heart check ah throughout because we’ve seen so many leaders that have this problem with power, right?
Diana Rush — Every bad church headline, it starts with a leader who moved into management, whether upper, mid, and they started misusing that power that they were given. And so, and they started, they started misusing their position in the organization. And so just remember, like, that’s my best advice is like, be the leader God’s called you to be.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Diana Rush — Try to model what Jesus modeled. And honestly, we just have to go to the source. We just need to look and see how Jesus led his disciples…
Rich Birch — So good.
Diana Rush — …how he could have done, you know, he could have said and done anything he wanted to, but what did he do? He washed his disciples’ feet.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Diana Rush — And so that’s the last call.
Rich Birch — So good. Diana, this has been so good. So great. Great conversation today. Super helpful. If we want to send people online to connect with the church or to connect with you, where do we want to send them to to track along with what’s going on?
Diana Rush — Yeah, I I have nothing to sell you. So I’m just here. But you can go to Eastside.com is our church website.
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. Perfect.
Diana Rush — And if you want to reach out to any of our our leaders here, you can go to hello@eastside.com. That’s a great email address. And our ah team will connect you.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Diana Rush — We’re very open. Our staff is very empowered to sharing our ideas, our experience with other churches. Gene Appel, our senior pastor, he models that. He’s always out there sharing with other senior leaders. And so we’re also empowered to do the same thing. You could follow me on social media, but I’ll probably be posting about like my kids and my coffee life.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s real good.
Diana Rush — So it’s probably really boring content. I wouldn’t suggest that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Diana, I really appreciate you. Say hi to Greg for us.
Diana Rush — I will.
Rich Birch — And appreciate what you’re doing at Eastside. Love what you guys are up to. So thanks so much. Thanks for being here today.
Diana Rush — Alright. Thank you.
Right People, Right Seats: Rethinking Church Staffing for Growth with Amy Anderson
Mar 13, 2025
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Amy Anderson, the managing director at The Unstuck Group. Unstuck helps pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them through experiences that align vision, strategy, team, and action.
Is your church feeling stuck or overwhelmed by its growth? Wondering if you have the right people in the right roles to move forward? Tune in as Amy shares valuable insights on how to assess and rethink your church staff and structure to enhance growth, productivity, and alignment with your vision.
Assessing and restructuring for growth. // Unstuck provides resources like podcasts, webinars, and quarterly reports to help pastors identify growth areas. However, their core work is on-site assessments that pinpoint where churches are stuck and how they can move forward. By conducting staffing and structure reviews, they help churches organize and leverage their most valuable resource: their people.
Create a staffing plan. // Many churches struggle not because of ministry but due to ineffective structure. They unknowingly hinder growth by keeping staff in the wrong roles or overloading certain areas. Evaluate your staffing strategy and proactively plan for future expansion. Create a staffing plan to strategically shift where people will be placed as your church grows.
Key indicators to watch. // Two primary warning signs suggest a church may need structural changes. The first is your staffing budget. If more than 50-55% of a church’s budget is allocated to staffing, a strategic review is needed. Second, look at how many staff you have per average attendance. A best practice is one full-time staff member per 75 attendees. As this number drops, overstaffing becomes a concern.
Common areas of overstaffing. // Churches often fall into the trap of hiring more staff to compensate for inefficiencies rather than developing existing team members. Overstaffing in next gen and adult ministries is a common problem area. These ministries frequently see unnecessary staff increases due to ineffective volunteer mobilization.
Leadership and span of care // The number of direct reports a leader should have depends on leadership capacity and style. Leaders should maintain a manageable span of care to ensure effectiveness. Balance strategic oversight with personal engagement, ensuring you are working on the ministry rather than only in it.
Building strong lead team relationships. // The relationship and trust built between the lead and executive pastor is crucial at any church. The executive pastor is responsible for executing the lead pastor’s vision and ensuring that strategic goals translate into action. If an executive pastor disagrees with their lead pastor, the executive pastor should echo what matters to the lead pastor before presenting alternative solutions. It’s also critical that the lead pastor engages with the senior leadership team regularly. These leaders need to hear the heart and perspective of their lead pastor because that’s how culture gets transferred.
A free roadmap PDF. // Amy and her team have created a free PDF, How to Restructure Your Church Staff for Growth, offering a step-by-step roadmap. This guide covers assessment strategies, staffing evaluations, decision-making frameworks, and structural planning to help churches navigate staffing challenges effectively.
To learn more about how The Unstuck Group can help your church with a staffing and structure review, visit theunstuckgroup.com. Plus download How to Restructure Your Church Staff for Growthhere.
EXTRA CREDIT // Looking to strengthen your church’s staff team?
Don’t miss the Church Staffing Health Assessment—a practical tool designed to help you evaluate and improve how you place the right people in the right roles. Inspired by “Right People, Right Seats: Rethinking Church Staffing for Growth with Amy Anderson,” this resource will guide you through key questions to assess role clarity, team culture, leadership development, and more.
This resource is exclusively available through unSeminary Extra Credit, our affordable membership that fuels the podcast and provides you with valuable tools like this and many others!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. You have tuned in for something really special. This is going to be super helpful conversation. This is one of those conversations where I’m pretty sure that I know that you’re listening in and you are asking some of the questions that we’re going to answer today. You’re wrestling with these things. You’ve been thinking about it in the back of your head and we’re going to provide you with real helpful solutions, walk-away-stuff that you can apply today.
Rich Birch — It’s our honor to have Amy Anderson with us. She is the managing director at The Unstuck Group, which they help churches get unstuck. They help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them through experiences that align vision, strategy, team, and action. They offer consulting in several different areas, including multisite staffing, digital strategy. And these folks are amazing. Listen, friends, I just love the work of Unstuck. I love what they do. I feel like I’m constantly interacting with churches, either the churches I work with, ah either they’re they’re going to work with Unstuck or they’ve just come off working with them. They have ah they love the local church. Amy loves your church and she doesn’t even know you yet. But we’re so glad to have you, Amy. Welcome. So glad you’re here. Amy Anderson — So good to be here, Rich. Thanks for having me on your podcast. Rich Birch — No, honored that you would would do this. What an honor for us. Give us a bit of your background. Fill in the Amy story. Rich Birch — Tell us a little bit about Unstuck. Kind of fill in the picture for folks that don’t know you. Amy Anderson — Sure. Well, I’ve been um on the team at Unstuck for 10 years. And ah most of that time I’ve been the consulting director, a new role this year as the managing director. But prior to that is really my ministry story. I uh the local church changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my life, my husband’s life, our three kids. Rich Birch — Amen. Amy Anderson — It was back in the late 90s, excuse me. We walked into the front door of a church that finally was what I thought church was going to be like. Meaning, they weren’t perfect, but they were I heard great Bible teaching every week. It applied to my life. I felt like I called the pastor every week and said, can you talk about this this week? Our kids went right into their rooms. And anyways, God, we were My husband and I were both believers, but we were not followers, if I could put it that way. Rich Birch — Oh, OK.
Amy Anderson — We had I was raised in a very mainline church. I knew the rules, but I didn’t really have a relationship with Jesus and all that came together at this church when I learned to follow Jesus. So anyways having the church changed my life. Well, Jesus changed it. Four years later, we were on staff. Both of us. Rich Birch — Love it. Amy Anderson — Husband went back to school, Masters of Theological Studies. Anyways, Eagle Brook is the church. It’s in Minnesota. Rich Birch — Fantastic church.
We’re kind of neighbors, Rich, here in Canada.
Rich Birch — It’s true. Amy Anderson — So we might sound alike. Rich Birch — It’s true. We got the same weather. Amy Anderson — But I was… yeah I was then hired to oversee the front door of our church, the weekend services. So I left my corporate job. Rich Birch — Love it. Amy Anderson — My husband was in Groups, became a teaching pastor, a campus pastor. Today, he’s a lead pastor. But I spent 12 years at this church on this little corner in White Bear Lake. And it was about 1,800 people when I started. And when I left in 2014, we were six locations across the Twin Cities with over 20,000.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. Amy Anderson — So you know, this multi-site was kind of a mystery back then.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Amy Anderson — So it was trial by fire, fail forward. But it was an absolute amazing experience to be a part of that team. And so I thought I was born to do that. And then when I connected ah with Tony Morgan and he invited me on to The Unstuck team, I honestly, I think I was born for this. I just love the local church. And when it’s operating on all cylinders, it is absolutely amazing the lives that are transformed.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, I, friends, if a little editorial note, there are folks that are in this market in serving churches who, you know, sometimes they make me feel a little bit queasy and a little bit like, Oh, I think they’re just see this as a market. They just are trying to extract value out of us. That’s not Unstuck. That’s not Amy. That’s not your group. Uh, this, this is a group of people that love the local church. And, um, frankly, I’m having Amy on because I love what they do and I’m hope that some of us will get more connected with them.
Rich Birch — Tell us kind of give us a sense of for folks that don’t know Unstuck, give us a sense of the scope, the scale of your ministry. You guys interact with a lot of churches on a regular basis. What does that look like? Help give us a sense of that. Amy Anderson — Yeah, a lot of what we do is we actually just provide a lot of content for pastors. Rich Birch — Yep. Amy Anderson — That’s through our podcasts, our webinars, our Unstuck quarterly church reports, to help pastors just hear what’s going on currently in the church, what we’re learning, what we’re sharing. So that’s a lot of what we do. But obviously our business is being on the ground with churches. So I believe we served, I think we were on the ground with over a hundred churches last year across the United States, some in Canada. Rich Birch — Amazing. Amy Anderson — And what we do is we help them assess like, where are we at today? How are we doing? You know, very rarely in church world do we pause and just say, how are we? Because we’re on this treadmill of Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Amy Anderson — We have 52 events every year. But we pause and we just spend a day talking about perspective. Where are we healthy? What’s stuck? And so we we identify a starting point. Then we come in and we help them plan. So now that we know who you are, where’s God calling you? Rich Birch — So good. Amy Anderson — And so how can we bring clarity to what the next three to five years might look like, and then actually break that down into key priority initiatives for ’em. Rich Birch — Love it. Amy Anderson — And then they work those plans. And then the third part is what I want to talk about a little bit today is then we do a staffing and structure review. So once you have clarity where you are and where you believe you’re going now, how do we organize and leverage our most important asset, which is the people side of things.
Amy Anderson — So that’s where we spend our time when we’re on the ground with the church. Usually multiple consultants are involved with the church. So we get multiple eyes on there. And a lot of it’s, uh, you know, we want to draw out the wisdom in the room, but staffing and structure is actually a little bit more, if I could call it prescriptive. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now. I mainly work with large churches because that’s where my experience is. But I’ve been able to watch these churches over the last decade, see what’s working, what’s not working. And so I’ve got a lot of confidence. Of course, every church has decision rights on the recommendations, but I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Amy Anderson — And it just, it, yeah, helps them get some, some churches are not stuck because of ministry. They’re stuck because of their structure.
Rich Birch — Right. Well, I’d love to dive into that. I know as we were kind of preparing for this, I know from my seat and kind of that executive pastor second seat, you know, managing managing the organization side, there are times where—and and, friends, if there’s if you’ve worked on the churches that I’ve worked for, it was not about you it was other people—where I wondered, do we have the right people and do we have them in the right seat on the bus? Like those are really common fears, concerns, and it’s like we’re kind of staring off into the distance wondering, you know, but this this ah like you said, it really struck me there. It’s our most important asset.
Rich Birch — This is obviously true at kind of the cosmic level. We want to care for people. We want to love them. You know we want our people to thrive. But it’s also true, frankly, frankly from a ah dollars and cents, close to 50%, lots of churches, 50 cents out of our dollars being spent on staff. Man, we got to make sure we’re leveraging that well. Unpack this, help us understand why is this such an important issue for us? Why is kind of our staffing, the who and if they’re sitting on the right bus, why a part of the right bus, why is that so important to us? Amy Anderson — Yeah, there’s there’s some things that come to mind. One, I want to go back to the pace of ministry life. You cannot compare church to corporate. It’s very different because of the deliverables that that a church has um on them every week. And so, when we’ve got this fast pace and now you add in growth, right?
Rich Birch — Yep. Amy Anderson — We have a lot of churches in in high growth right now. More and more people are coming. There is no pause button. Rich Birch — Right. Amy Anderson — And so we’re just doing the best we can to keep everything moving. And typically, we really like the people that are on our team. But you start to notice some symptoms, right? That that gut check that a lot of lead and executive pastors have like, do we have the right people? Do we have the right people in the right seat? Or there’s a transition – someone leaves and all of a sudden we’re just scattering and trying to cover the hole. And, you know, one of the headline questions this whole year was like, where do we find people, Amy? Where do we find future staff? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Amy Anderson — And I’m like, oh, you’re really behind the eight ball. Because you need to have a system.
Rich Birch — Right. You started two years ago, developed them.
Amy Anderson — That’s right. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Amy Anderson — Cause it’s, can I say it’s a crap shoot, you know, to hire externally. Rich Birch — Sure, you can say that. Yes. Amy Anderson — And there are great organizations that help you do that, but that’s just my experience. The the best hires tend to come from within through an intentional development plan. But anyways, just those types of things add um to the chaos. And when we do sometimes pause and take a step back, we recognize we have a structure that we’ve just been adding on to for a decade. We’ve never… Rich Birch — Yeah, bolting stuff on. Amy Anderson — …bolting stuff on. Rich Birch — Yeah. Amy Anderson — And it’s very it’s fracturing and people have worn multiple hats and they’ve gotten attached to some of those things, but now everyone’s got, it’s just convoluted. There are not clear ministry lanes. There are not clear owners over certain… You know, we track a lot of things like vital signs and we’ve, you know, we, no one owns it. I remember when I was over the weekend, it was so clear to me at Eagle Brook when our attendance started to flatline, we all cared about that, but it was my job to lose sleep at night. It was my job to look under the hood and figure out what’s, what’s, what’s drifting right now. What do we need to change? If I didn’t feel that ownership, we would just kind of, you know, my joke on our podcast is what’s the best way to kill a dog? Give eight people the responsibility to feed it. Okay.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Amy Anderson — So if eight people have it, that dog’s not going to get fed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — And so that’s, that’s another symptom like, well, who’s actually watching that? Who owns that?
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — And so in all that chaos, that’s why I just bring it up. So many churches are feeling the people pressure coming through. I don’t know if this was your view of the world, but in our view of the world, there were three headlines last year. One is we need help with staff and structure. Two is we’re ready to go multi-site. And three, we are dealing with crazy growth. The large churches that I worked with last year, I really, I think they were all growing between like 20 and 35% year over year. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, I would agree. Yeah. Amy Anderson — So you just have to stop the insanity…
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — …and pause and get it figured out. Because once you have a staffing plan, once you, you know, one of the things I do when I work with these large churches, let’s say they’re a church of 3000 right now. I’ll say, let’s actually, when will we be a church of 6000? Let’s just play some math forward. And we actually create a plan for that…
Rich Birch — Yes. And then work backwards.
Amy Anderson — …so that we can step backward to a phased approach. So now they’re not manically adding and changing things. They’re strategically shifting where people are going and how they’re being placed. Rich Birch — Yeah. Amy Anderson — But that’s just kind of a high level perspective on all of this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. We’re going to double click on some of that there because there’s just a bunch there i want I want to follow up on. But I agree that it’s interesting. I in fact, I was talking to our mutual friend, Warren Bird…
Amy Anderson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …he’s in getting another story a study going and we were talking about this issue. I said, it feels like that kind of K recovery that we talked about coming out of covid, that that has just accelerated that there are kind of prevailing churches, life-giving churches, that are accelerating.
Amy Anderson — Yes.
Rich Birch — And then there are churches that are struggling. And the churches that are struggling are really struggling. Like they’re you know behind the rate behind significantly behind the eight ball. That, I I’ve heard that time and again, kind of both of those realities which is interesting. Rich Birch — Your idea that hey there’s no pause button, it’s true. There’s that like 12 noon on Sunday, it’s like, okay, we’ve got now how many days until we do this again? But what would be some of those symptoms when I’m looking around in my organization that I maybe have got the wrong people in the wrong seat? What would be some of those either things that come out this idea of like not ownership? I think that’s a good one. Rich Birch — Are there other things kind of telltale signs that you see that you’ve seen churches like, Ooh, that’s evidence that we we just don’t have the right people in the right seats. What would be some of those things you see in churches? Amy Anderson — Yeah, let me point back to our vital signs again. You know we we really believe that there’s no one metric that will tell you the health of the church…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Amy Anderson — …but a couple of vital signs that also may indicate something’s askew. One is that percent ah money ah percent of your budget spent on staff. When that when that sneaks past 55%, there should be a light going off, a yellow light at at the least. Amy Anderson — When we look at how many staff we have, per average attendance when we call, you know, full-time equivalents. Our best practice is that you hire one full-time person for every 75 people that attend your church. When that number’s dropping to 60, 55, 50. I mean, I’ve seen it go. This is embarrassing, right? I won’t tell you the church. It wasn’t this year, a couple of years ago. They hired one full-time person for every 15 people that attended their church. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Amy Anderson — I was just like, that’s crazy. Anyways. Rich Birch — Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Amy Anderson — That’s right. Rich Birch — I talked to a church recently that was at 33…
Amy Anderson — Yes!
Rich Birch — …and which is crazy, right? You start, I’m like, that is nuts. It’s like you got one staff for every couple of families. It’s amazing. Amy Anderson — You’re basically paying volunteers at that point. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right. Amy Anderson — But those two numbers, when they are off, it means that we probably have too many doers on our team. And they’re probably great people. But if those doers, and what I mean by doer, they just have a lower level of leadership capacity. It’s not a bad thing. Rich Birch — Rich Birch — …and which is crazy, right? You start, I’m like, that is nuts. It’s like you got one staff for every couple of families. It’s amazing. Amy Anderson — You’re basically paying volunteers at that point. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right. Amy Anderson — But those two numbers, when they are off, it means that we probably have too many doers on our team. And they’re probably great people. But if those doers, and what I mean by doer, they just have a lower level of leadership capacity. Rich Birch — Right. Amy Anderson — It’s not a bad thing. But I think back in the days of the Global Leadership Summit, we were all convinced we all had the leadership gift. and And we may, you know, we all lead ourself…
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Amy Anderson — …but you go back to Exodus 18, you know, there’s different levels of leadership.
Rich Birch — Right.
And so when we have people in positions with a lower leadership capacity than the position demands, that’s when we start hiring all the time. And we see our volunteer numbers drop, which admittedly, volunteer numbers, that has been the hardest number to recover from since COVID, to get people engaged again. But churches that do not have multiplying, equipping leaders, particularly in the discipleship areas and in the next gen areas, that that’s going to be those those numbers will indicate we may need to make some shifts here. And maybe they have the leadership capacity, but it’s undeveloped, or maybe we reward the wrong things.
Rich Birch — Right. Amy Anderson — Maybe we don’t tell that, you know, that the discipleship leader, um, you know, what the expectations for the role is. Or maybe next gen’s even a better one. You know, if we haven’t really cast the vision, I know you’re a kid’s pastor, but you are primarily a team builder. You are a people magnet. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Amy Anderson — So sometimes those just need to be re-envisioned, but those are some of the symptoms, um, that would also indicate we’ve got some challenges in this area. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s super good. I remember years ago I had a a mentor who was ah just a monster leader in kids ministry, like an incredible leader. Amy Anderson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And they said, you know, one of the problems with most children’s pastors is they like kids too much. You know, they you know they it’s really more about leading adults than it is um you know leading kids.
Rich Birch — I was going to ask you that if there are common areas where we see overstaffing kind of creeping in and maybe unpack that a little bit more. Because it feels right at the time, right? We’re like, oh, with the discipleship, they can only have so many coffees per week. So let’s just hire somebody else who they can go have more coffees with. Are there how do we see that kind of overstaffing start to creep in? What would what would be some of those ways we see that? Amy Anderson — Yeah, and by the way, you know overstaffing, it’s such an interesting dilemma because we’ll have churches that feel like, I think we’re overstaffed and we’re understaffed.
Rich Birch — Right. Amy Anderson — But I don’t know where that is. And they’re usually right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — And we’ve had a bit of ah of a data deficit in this area for churches to be able to do some comparable, you know, comparisons with other churches. Like how many do you staff in next gen, how many do you staff in adult ministries versus operations versus the weekend. And so we actually started this last year, our Unstuck church report Q2 last year gave the first data thatI’ve seen where you can compare by church size how are we spending our staffing allocations. Rich Birch — That’s good. Amy Anderson — And actually Q2 of this year, we are we are providing that again.
Rich Birch — Updating it. That’s great.
Amy Anderson — We’re we’re in the midst of creating that survey and updating it so your listeners can watch for that. I find that that’s helpful just to to ask that question.
Rich Birch — 100%.
Amy Anderson — Because um we have this overall staffing ratio 75 to 1, but you could spend that, if I could put it that way…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Amy Anderson — …you know, in a lot of different ways. I see it all over the place where they have under and overstaffing. You know there are some churches that are just saddled with a huge building, a huge complex building.
Amy Anderson — I was working with the church in Philadelphia and I always forget how hilly Philadelphia is. Well, their church is, you know, over like three or four levels and additions and all this. They’re going to spend more…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Amy Anderson — …on their operational side because they have to care for that facility.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Amy Anderson — But where I see fat in the organization is actually in those adult ministry areas…
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting.
Amy Anderson — …and in next gen. Those are the primary overstaffed areas I see. Because in adult ministries, I hope I’m not going to offend anyone too much. Rich Birch — No, no, this is good. This is good. Amy Anderson — But we we talk about, ah you know, not having leadership capacity, but they have a great guy or gal they love. And so they make a change and they make them the care pastor. And the challenge is, now that care pastor isn’t developing the body to go care for the body.
Rich Birch — Right. Amy Anderson — They’re doing a lot of care.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Amy Anderson — They’re doing a lot of counseling and then they need more staff because I can only care for so many people. So then we have another care pastor or another counseling… Rich Birch — Yeah. And their their their view on the world is the way we do this is I have 40 coffees a week.
Amy Anderson — Yes.
Rich Birch — And so I can meet with 40 people and then, okay, if we’re going to grow, then we need, we need to keep scaling up…
Amy Anderson — Yes.
Rich Birch — …the number of people that can have 40 coffees a week, right? Amy Anderson — That’s right. Rich Birch — That’s their kind of, they would never say it like that, but that’s kind of their, you know, their, their orientation. Wow. That’s good. Amy Anderson — And then in the next gen area, and I I feel the tension for this. But if, again, if we don’t have those, that mindset of I’m primarily a team builder on the staff teams, then you think about all the diversity in just birth through, fifth grade. I mean, a first grade boy is very different than a fifth grade girl.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — And you have all these rooms and large groups, small group, pre-K elementary. It’s very easy to just hear that drum, we need more staff, we need more staff, we need more staff, instead of building out that tiered volunteer structure where we can give um ministry away. So your big number will tell you a little bit about your overstaffing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — …your understaffing. Getting into some of this comparative data hopefully will help as well to kind of evaluate your, you know, the leaders listening, you know, your team. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And I would echo your reports are, you know, kudos to you. Literally the day they come out, when I get an email to your report, I pause whatever I’m doing and I read your reports. I think they’re they’re there and I share them, you know, in the cohorts I lead, I’m always like, Hey, here are the five things that I saw out of this that I think you should pay attention to. Here’s some stuff that’s… they’re always good. And so make sure you’re looking for that Q2 report.
Rich Birch — So that’s kind of on the, we’ll call that the staff size. Like, do we have enough people? What about on the structure side? What are a few kind of, you gave us a few handles there around the total number of staff. But what are some things, again, let’s let’s envision a church of 1,500 people. We’ve got we’ve we’ve maybe hit the 1 to 75, so we’re not overstaffed. But I’m not sure that really we’re structured right. What would be some of the questions that we should be thinking about? You know, beyond call Unstuck…
Amy Anderson — Oh absolutely.
Rich Birch — …what would be some of those questions that we should be and we’d be we’d be thinking about? Amy Anderson — Here’s some low-hanging fruit in this area. One is um just assessing your span of care. Rich Birch — OK, good. Amy Anderson — We find, again, when we’re bolting on, ah we start to feel like, oh, that person has to report to me. Or that person has to stay reporting to me because they’ve reported to me forever, and that would feel like a demotion if I changed it. So now you just added another direct report. And usually in churches of 1,500, we’ve gotten to the point where there’s an executive pastor in place. But that’s not always true at 1500. So you can have a lead pastor who suddenly has like seven direct reports…
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — …and it’s like, hello…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Amy Anderson — …that’s not, you are not going to have the time to do the four things that you cannot delegate, which is being the spiritual leader and overseeing the teaching, driving culture, right? Being the primary vision caster and leader of leaders. Amy Anderson — And so, but the big mistake i we often see churches make is they, all right, well, well then we need an an executive pastor. We bolt that one in. And then you know what? Now the executive asterisk has seven direct reports.
Rich Birch — Yes. Amy Anderson — So that’s an example of how we don’t really fix the problem. But span of care, when that gets out of here out of hand, ah it’s time we’ve got to look at our structure. Amy Anderson — Another one is when we take these kind of core ministry areas and we don’t have them grouped together in alignment.
Rich Birch — Okay. Amy Anderson — So it’s really in ah often from you when I first get an org chart from someone before I do a staffing structure, um I’ll see on the direct line, maybe to the executive pastor, we’ve got like outreach and missions to his right. We’ve got the weekend leader. Then we’ve got groups ministry. And then we have, you know, the next gen area. And it’s like, why don’t we take all those adult ministry things, like groups and serving and outreach, let’s get them all tucked under that same ministry lan.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — Because at the end of the day, ah those are all next steps we want people to take. But I often get pushback at first, like, well, that’s way too big of a job. And I’m like, it’s not. It’s it’s having a conductor for all those next steps, because when you don’t do that, you end up they end up competing, right? They end up competing for announcements. They end up competing for volunteers. They compete for any kind of promotional stage time…
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — …where really you need a leader to kind of know here’s where we need to put the spotlight right now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — And to make sure all of those steps are integrated versus separate programs at the church. Rich Birch — Yeah, that… Amy Anderson — So those are a couple that come to mind. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Do you have a my experience with span of care is there are some leaders that just seem to have a bigger capacity. They can they can have more people report to them and those people seem to flourish and thrive. And then other folks, it’s smaller. Is there are there, you know, so seven is too many, but is three too little? it Talk us through what, what, what are their kind of rules of thumb that when you see that even just on an org chart level, you’re like, Ooh, we should be thinking about this here. Amy Anderson — Yeah, some of it depends on your leadership capacity and your style, right? So with a lead pastor, there are some that are wired for that executive pastor role. Others kind of push back a little bit. By the way, I think they often push back more so because of fear of being separated from the staff. We’ve all seen, you know, not so good turnouts with that. Rich Birch — Yeah, they hold too close. Amy Anderson — I find it works very well to have a key executive pastor who’s really conducting and making sure we’re executing on the vision. But you know, for like my preference, I can have four or five direct reports and I can I can lead them well. And, you know, it’s I know Tony used to say to me, Amy, if I don’t know the name of your husband and your kids and what’s going, you know, what I can be praying for, then I’m not really leading you. I’m just checking a management box.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Amy Anderson — And so I think we all have that tipping point when we get from being good leaders to good checking box managers of what we’re doing. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Amy Anderson — So it’s different. And then of course, um you know, at a high level, you need to have some thinking capacity to keep your eyes above the waterline.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — So we we always have to remember we need time to work on the ministry, not just in it all the time.
Rich Birch — In it. Yep. Amy Anderson — Yeah. So yeah, I think four to five is good for me. I think every leader has to wrestle with that. And that needs to be part of the input when you’re designing the new structure. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So yeah, not so much just a standard. Here’s the ideal. Just apply this, you know. Amy Anderson — Right. Rich Birch — It’s like understand your people. And similarly, I would say in my own world, like I like to have at least, you know, um one significant monthly one-on-one…
Amy Anderson — Yes.
Rich Birch — …that’s outside of the like, Hey, what are we doing? It’s like, I want to actually get into your life and help you.
Amy Anderson — Yes. Rich Birch — And it’s a one-on-one where we’re not, ah the goal is not that I’m dumping stuff on you. It’s I’m coaching you. We’re working through stuff. And I find frankly, if I do more than four or five of those a month. It’s like, that’s a lot. Like it’s a lot to try to keep on top of. And so, yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. Amy Anderson — Can I jump in on something you said there?
Rich Birch — One hundred percent.
Amy Anderson — So one-on-ones, just an off-the-cuff comment. Rich Birch — Yes. Amy Anderson — One of the things that also might be an indication we don’t have the right ah staffing structure plan is if you have one-on-ones every week with your team members. Like you have the wrong people…
Rich Birch — Good call. Good call. Yes. Amy Anderson — …if you have to meet with them every week in a church context, yeah I want one solid one-on-one… Rich Birch — Ooh, I love it. We are dropping the mic here, friends.
Amy Anderson — We are dropping it!
Rich Birch — Cause there’s lots of people that do that that, that are like, I got to stay on top of my people. And so we’re, so yeah, that’s interesting. If you don’t have those, particularly at that level, I’m assuming. Hey, if we, if we got to check in with you every single week, things are not going right. Amy Anderson — Yeah. I mean, if it’s a brand new employee, great.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Amy Anderson — But in general, no one should need that much meeting and oversight. So you can quote me…
Rich Birch — That’s good. Love it.
Amy Anderson — …you know, Amy said, if that’s you right now and you need a break from all those one-on-ones. Rich Birch — No, I was I was going through a period where we we were managing a team member, I was managing a team member on my team that was struggling. And I generally would do monthly one-on-ones outside of team meetings. Rich Birch — But then we went, you know, and when they would start, we would do more and then, you know, kind of phase back to monthly. But this person was going in the other direction. We went from monthly to every other week to weekly and actually eventually got to daily. Amy Anderson — No! Rich Birch — And I I said to them as we went to weekly, I was like, you know, this isn’t good, right? Like this is not the fact that I’m having to sit with you and talk about, okay, what are you doing this week? Let’s talk about your is not, you know, it’s not a good thing. And they were a little surprised, which was that led me to like, then we definitely have the wrong person, the wrong, wrong person sitting in this seat. This is not about, this is about a different conversation that we need to have. Rich Birch — Um, adjacent to what you said there, you talked a little, you kind of hinted towards executive pastor, lead pastor relationships. We didn’t say that we were going to talk about this, but I’d love to get your thought a little bit on that. I notice oftentimes when I’m in a church, not all the time, but oftentimes I’ll have like a lead pastor pull me aside and say, man, I love my executive pastor. They’re amazing or pastors. They’re amazing. They’re great people. Great at checklist, great at getting stuff done. They’re fantastic. Great operational leader. Hey, can you help me though help me understand—there’s no but in the sentence—but it’s like, help me understand how to work better with them. Rich Birch — Or I’ll have an executive pastor pull me aside and say, I love my lead pastor. So good at casting vision. Man, I’ll run through a wall for that person. That person’s incredible. Can you help me understand how to work better with them? I’m trying to kind of, you know, work on that relationship. I want that to be… What what are some of the things that you’ve seen from your seat that are kind of critical to that relationship really functioning, thriving well, an important kind of flourishing relationship in the life of a church? Amy Anderson — Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is how important it is that they spend time together. Rich Birch — Oh, good. Amy Anderson — They’re both busy, but the lead pastor, again, having that final exam every Sunday that’s going public, uh, you know, that message becomes really important. But I, I think one of the sins that I see in this area is where these two people don’t spend enough time together. Rich Birch — Right. Good. Amy Anderson — The truth is the the executive pastor to do his or her job well needs to have regular connection…
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — …because they are the ones who are making the vision actionable.
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — So there just needs to be a high level of trust. Trust comes through time, comes through relationship. Amy Anderson — When I talk with executive pastors about working with the senior pastor, lead pastor, number one, you have to pay attention to their rhythms and in advance decide what’s what’s a good time for us to have that weekly connection. Rich Birch — That’s good. Amy Anderson — It could be a brown bag lunch on Monday for a pastor who has those rhythms. It could be Wednesday because they have to get you know some of their message written. But a lead pastor’s rhythms should set the tone for how we do these meetings and intersections… Rich Birch — That’s good. Amy Anderson — …so that you get the right energy into that meeting. I also think whenever there’s pushback, like if the executive pastor has a different opinion than the lead pastor, I think it’s always important—I think this is from John Maxwell’s book, the 360-degree leader—you always need to start that pushback by echoing what matters to the lead pastor first. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Amy Anderson — Like, I know that you want us to be a church that does this. You need to, anytime you’re going to disagree, because they need to know that you’re for them and you’re for the vision that they’re setting. And then bring the appropriate challenge um to an idea or something that just goes so much better. Amy Anderson — To the lead pastors, I would say, again, you need to spend time with your executive pastor. It’s probably the most important relationship you have on your work team. Here’s the sin I see from that direction is the the lead pastor who starts to go, I don’t really need to be in the senior leadership team meeting this week. Yeah, you’re going to talk about Acts and that’s, I really need to get back to this. Or the executive pastor who says, I don’t think we need the lead pastor in this meeting. Here’s the deal. That is the beginning of a crack that’s going to turn into a larger gap and a fracture between the lead pastor and the team.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Amy Anderson — It’s critical that that lead pastor is regularly around the senior leadership team table because each of those leaders needs to hear the heart and perspective of that lead pastor because that’s how culture gets transferred.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Amy Anderson — So I think the executive pastor needs to pull the meeting together, has to facilitate the conversation, but that lead pastor needs to be present and engaged in those conversations. So by doing those couple of things, that’s, I think, how that relationship increases and improves between the executive and lead pastor. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good. Wow. That’s, that’s super helpful. And you can see that where, you know, there’s, there in some ways it can mask, well, we’re Christian, so we’re good at making things look, you know, maybe more holy than they should be. It’s like, there can be an elite pastor side, like an acquiescence, like, Oh, I don’t want to step on your toes. Like you lead that stuff. I don’t want to, I’m really, frankly, I don’t care what we do with t-shirts at the thing. I’m not interested in that stuff.
Rich Birch — Or the executive pastor will be like, you know, ah just let me take this ball and run with it. Like I Let me help you, serve you. But there’s in there we got to watch that.
Amy Anderson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That there’s like a there there can be a so potential separation there…
Amy Anderson — Yes.
Rich Birch — …that can you know open up a really negative situation. So yeah that’s good. That’s good. Amy Anderson — Yeah. Rich Birch — Good. Well, this is super helpful. um We actually have a resource that we’re going to link link to. This is a PDF, how to restructure your church staff for growth. This is a fantastic resource. It’s not that long, six pages, but is super helpful. Tell us a little bit about this. What you know what were you guys thinking when you kind of put this together? Who who do you think this would be a helpful resource for for folks that are listening in today? Amy Anderson — Yeah, we put it together because this whole issue of restructuring was such a headline need for churches last year. But ah let me speak truth about it. It’s a great roadmap. This is what we do with churches when we help them restructure.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Amy Anderson — You know, there’s a first step where we have to just do a level of assessment on the health and performance of the team. We do an assessment on the actual team members. That gets into also assessing leadership capacity. And then um we talk through decision rights, how do we make decisions, and then we kind of start to create the the construct of the structure. Amy Anderson — So everything we do um is mentioned in this resource, but here’s the tension. This is really hard—I’m just, to be honest—it’s really hard for churches to do on their own. So read it, man.
Rich Birch — Right. Good. Good. Good.
Amy Anderson — And you might even have people in your church who are great at it. But anytime we even start to think about making changes, uh, you know, the, the leaders can sometimes get a stomach ache.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Amy Anderson — Because a lot of them are wired on, we do the leading from your strengths wheel, the disc. They have, they’re on the people side of it.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Amy Anderson — And when we’re on the people side, we, I’ll quote my friend Lance Witt, you know, as leaders, our job is to be clear and kind as we move through things, right? Those of us on the people side tend to be really kind, but sometimes we aren’t super clear. Rich Birch — Yep. Amy Anderson — And when it comes to staff ah changes, it it it causes stress for the organization. And so you have to be very thoughtful and working through a restructure. And a phrase I use all the time is, you need to make all your plans, you need to pray that you can you have peace about this, that you can afford it, that we’ve thought through how we’re going to roll it out. Because if you tip a domino before it’s ready to be tipped…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Amy Anderson — …it can be very hurtful to the organization, harmful to the organization. It’s just in a restructure there’s really only a few of you who have decision rights. Rich Birch — Yep. Amy Anderson — And everyone gets really nervous. I just actually met with our church staff team and I just went through kind of a staff development exercise, and I think even there, they were nervous. Like, why is she coming in? What are we talking about? So there’s always this fear when we get into this topic. And so that’s why we find most pastors bringing someone from the outside in to help walk through this. Amy Anderson — Here’s really what they get. They often have a lot of the right instincts. That gut is right on the things that are broken. But what pastors really need in this is a little bit of expertise, but also a lot of confidence. They just want to have confidence they’re making the right move…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Amy Anderson — …because they are moving the cheese, per se, around and they they want to minimize anything that could be hurtful in that restructure. Rich Birch — Well, yeah, I would echo that. You know, this is one of those situations where having a strategic outsider, someone who has been through this before, has walked through this. You’re being very humble, Amy. You’ve done this in literally dozens of churches and have been able to help them think about these issues in a really critical way. And then frankly, have the accountability to say, OK, so we’ve talked about this enough. We got to actually make some moves here. Like let’s actually, because like you say, I think a lot of us have the we have the intuitive like, um, I’m thinking there’s something here we need to change. But then we’ll just keep, well, yeah there’s next Sunday’s coming…
Amy Anderson — Yep.
Rich Birch — …and then Easter’s coming and then, well, then it’s Christmas time or there’s summer. And, you know, but having, you know, someone to say, like Amy, like good folks at Unstuck to say, okay, let’s actually put a plan in place. Let’s think about this. We’re not going to be willy nilly about it. We’re going to make really smart decisions, but we also are going to make some moves forward. Rich Birch — I would hate for your church to be held back, for the message of Jesus to be held back, or for you to hit a lid or maybe even be stuck as it might be…
Amy Anderson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because we didn’t make a change in this area. So i so we’ll we’ll link to that, but really I think you should, people should reach out and you know get a chance to talk with the team. What does that typically look like? Like that kind of engagement? Obviously you work well you walk through this in this document, obviously you do some sort of assessment and then we’re developing. What does that total process look like? Is that like a year? Is that you know, ah six months, how does that kind of work? If, if I, even before I would want to reach out, give us a sense of what that could look like. Amy Anderson — Yeah, great question. um Typically, we get through those first three engagements that I just mentioned—that assessment the planning and staffing structure—within 90 days.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Amy Anderson — So sometimes it takes us a little bit longer to get started…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Amy Anderson — …because you know, I’m i’m booked through June right now.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Amy Anderson — But usually need 30 days to kind of get some of the assessments done and then we do the three onsite visits about four weeks apart…
Rich Birch — Yep. Amy Anderson — …with churches. And so once you’re there, then you have your plans and then we roll into, we call it implementation. You know, the biggest feedback we would get early on when I started was, Hey, it was great. What’s your biggest challenge? Implementation. They basically got caught up in the whirlwind again. And so we have…
Rich Birch — Right.
Amy Anderson — …R and D’d this area several times. And how we’re running it now, basically we have every three months, we are back together to see how they’re moving their plans forward… Rich Birch — Checking in, checking in. Yep, for sure. Amy Anderson — …helping them, make sure that they don’t get stuck. And of course, you know we’re available to them the whole time as they walk through that. Rich Birch — Yeah. Amy Anderson — I just wanted to add one more timeframe on here. It might be helpful. When when I work with a church through a restructure, so I worked with a large church down in Louisiana this past year, church of about 3000. Amy Anderson — Started with them in February, and we spent, it we we just did staffing and structure. They didn’t go through the other parts of our process. It took them until, I think, it was July/August to actually pull the trigger and actually restructure, meaning they spent five, six months getting ready for it. Rich Birch — Wow, yep. Amy Anderson — And they are on the other side of it now. It is a new day. It went extremely well. Rich Birch — Love it. Amy Anderson — But that’s also when I think about restructuring. It’s not like, hey, this is a problem, and four weeks later, we’re in a new we’re in a new place. Rich Birch — Right. Amy Anderson — That’s that’s that that heaviness, I say, with making sure we’re thinking it all the way through. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. There’s definitely, you can see the tension on the other side, right? Where it would be like, let’s just, you know, the, we’ve all been in those situations where it’s like, we’re lying awake at night. We draw the org chart and then we’re like, I’m going to change it. Come on. Amy Anderson — That’s right. Rich Birch — Let’s just pull, pull people together. That’s probably not as good and maybe as dangerous as the, we’re going to constantly what you know ah we you’re um we’re not moving on things. That’s got its own kind of struggle to it as well.
Amy Anderson — It does. Rich Birch — So, well, this has been amazing. I know we could keep going. There’s lots we could talk about there. But anything, just as we come to land today’s episode, around structuring and staffing, anything there that you’d you’d like to say just as we kind of go to wrap up today’s conversation. Amy Anderson — Yeah, I just just way to go out there, churches. Again, the churches that I was able to be with this past year, thanks for your your persistence. And you show up every day. And I mean, the church is just in a great place right now, the churches that are really trying to both reach and disciple people. And I hope you’re encouraged. You have the most important mission, you know, on the planet. Amy Anderson — And boy, if these people things are challenging, there’s there’s here’s a good word. Some of them are solvable problems. Now, some of them are perpetual. You’ll have them your whole life. You just have to manage it. But on the staffing side, there are some solvable problems and proven ways to go at them. So if it is a pain point, dive into that resource, even some of our other content. We’ve done several podcast series, if that would be helpful. And if you’re ready to take a step further, ah you can just find us at the unstuckgroup.com. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, this has been fantastic, Amy. I really appreciate you. You know, all the best to you and your team. We’re cheering for you…
Amy Anderson — Thank you.
Rich Birch — …cheering for the work you do. You do such great work, really from like we said earlier, from a place of love for the church. And so just want to honor you for what you do on that front. You mentioned unstuckgroup.com. Is there anywhere else we want to send people online to connect with you, to connect with your organization, that sort of thing? Amy Anderson — Yeah, you can find us @theunstuckgroup on Instagram and on YouTube. And then of course our webpage is where you can start a conversation if you’d like to do that. Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much, Amy, appreciate you being here today. Amy Anderson — Thanks, Rich.
Seven Days, Not Just Sundays: Using Technology to Engage Your Church All Week Long with Tyler Vance
Mar 06, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tyler Vance, the COO of Apollos, a digital platform designed to help churches thrive by using technologies for personal growth.
Despite being more digitally connected than ever, people lack deep, meaningful relationships. Gen Z has often been called the loneliest generation in history. However, churches are uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Tune in to learn how you can leverage technology to foster authentic community in your church and help people grow in their faith.
Daily habits that drive discipleship. // Healthy habits are a necessary part of growth. Apollos prioritizes daily time with God, prayer, and gratitude. These three habits are the most transformative for a person’s spiritual development. When consistently practiced, they not only strengthen individuals’ faith but are also leading indicators of increased church engagement, generosity, and attendance.
Prayer connects the church. // One of the most impactful features of Apollos is its ability to facilitate prayer within a church community. The app allows users to submit prayer requests in about 60 seconds and receive immediate prayer from others in the congregation. Prayer connects the hearts of believers in a powerful way and this real-time interaction fosters a deeper sense of belonging and community.
Leveraging data for ministry impact. // Church leaders often want as much data as possible, but many struggle to effectively use it. Apollos not only collects data but also helps churches interpret it to guide ministry decisions. For example, understanding common prayer requests can help pastors equip the church by developing sermon series, courses and other resources to address their congregation’s needs.
Be customer-centric. // Tyler emphasizes that a great digital product is not the solution, but rather churches need a comprehensive strategy to integrate digital engagement with their overall mission. By encouraging profile creation, the app functions as the new connection card, helping churches identify felt needs and track engagement. But churches must provide real value to members rather than just using apps as donation portals. Just because you think something is valuable doesn’t mean that your congregation will. Be customer-focused and demonstrate how the app benefits your people.
Apollos as a strategic partner. // Rather than merely providing a platform, Apollos functions as a team behind the scenes, ensuring that churches have a seamless, high-quality digital experience. Unlike many church apps that are merely content repositories, Apollos integrates engagement, community, and discipleship. With a white-label approach, churches maintain their own branding while benefiting from the expertise and support of Apollos’ team of developers and strategists.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, you are in for a real treat today. Super excited for today’s conversation. It’s a follow-up conversation, which you know, that’s like us double clicking, getting a little bit deeper, peeling back the onion on a conversation that we had last spring. And we’re going a little bit deeper today and talking with Tyler Vance.
Rich Birch — You might be saying, who is Tyler? He is the COO of an organization called Apollos. Apollos is a digital platform that helps churches thrive. They’re working to reverse the trend of disconnection and help people flourish. Apollos believes that strong community and healthy habits are necessary ingredients for personal growth. And they leverage technology to make those realities happen literally for millions of people. Prior to, or at least you know in in kind of a part of his past life, Tyler was also a part of Life Life.Church. You might’ve heard of them before. He was both a pastor and technology leader over there. Tyler, welcome. So glad you’re here. Tyler Vance — Thank you for having me, Rich. Man, that’s quite an introduction. And yeah, I have spent many years as a pastor in a local church. And ah so I I get the opportunity to have a different lens when it comes to technology. I don’t approach it as a technologist first, but as a pastor first. And I love that. And I’m I’m super grateful for that. Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Declaring my bias upfront, leaders, you should be leaning in and listening to today’s conversation. Cause I think you’re going to be, you might be a little bit surprised and you might look at some of your current technologies and be like, Hmm, I feel like they weren’t designed by a pastor. So, uh, we might challenge you a little bit today, which is good.
Rich Birch — Now you make this bold claim about the, well, first of all, fill in the picture, give us anything else there, kind of your background, anything that I missed or kind of just from a general open report of you that you want to make sure we talk about. Tyler Vance — Well, I I always assume, but I don’t I don’t want to make the assumption. Apollos is a name that, um you know, depending on your historical background, you might think, oh, this Apollos mission, we’re going to the moon. But it’s actually from the writing of Paul, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. I just don’t want to miss the connection for what the heartbeat of Apollos is. We firmly believe in the work of what pastors are doing, the the thing that God has called them to. We want to come alongside and water the things that you are planting, pastors. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Tyler Vance — And we trust that God does His work in the midst of that. So I just don’t want to miss that.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good.
Tyler Vance — As ah as it’s nothing to do with the moon. Rich Birch — Yeah. No, that’s good though. And I appreciate that. That’s, uh, yeah, that’s, I love that. That’s what a, what a, what a vivid picture for sure. Well, you guys make this strong claim about the fact that you believe in strong community and healthy habits, and which is a lot for a technology company. I’d love to take a step back and talk about why it seems more than ever community is like a big deal. Why is that? Why are we facing this need for community? And then, you know, we’ll narrow down into specifically how technology can help with that. Rich Birch — But it just, I think people agree, but kind of unpack that problem for us a little bit. Tyler Vance — Yeah, I think, Rich, I mean, if you go back to and the the first model we have of the early church in Acts, community is the the driver of it, right? And so I think the local church, yes, to empower the gospel, yes, to um to make disciples, but that happens in this context of community. And so you look at the the vision, the picture that that Jesus gives us of the early church, and then you compare it to the statistics that are overwhelming in our society is, you know, this has been coined as the loneliest generation in history. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tyler Vance — And we have the answer, we we have the model for that as the local church…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Tyler Vance — …to be the solution to the largest problem our generation is facing. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I was gonna say I love that. I don’t love that we’re the loneliest generation, but I think that’s a good thing for us to point out. A friend of mine, Jeff Brody, says that, ah hey, at the time, at the very moment when the world seems to be the hungriest that it’s been in decades, and I think in generations…
Tyler Vance — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …for what we do as a church, there are a lot of churches that are kind of turning inward and not, you know, even solving like this, helping to solve problems that are in the real world, which is this idea of, you know of loneliness. How do you think the church is good at that? What is it about ah but what we do that drives community, that makes community work in you know in people’s lives? Tyler Vance — Well, it’s a fabric of ah being a disciple of Jesus, right? Rich Birch — Right. Tyler Vance — It’s confess your sins one to another. It’s it’s it’s this tangible, deeply connected tissue of doing life together, having community that you can be engaged with, that you can grow with, that you can cry with. My wife and I, for example, Rich, we ah live many hours away from our closest family, you know. How many times has our small group been there on Christmases where we got snowed in and we couldn’t be there, right? Rich Birch — So true. Tyler Vance — Where Thanksgivings, the birth of our children, our small group was the first to the hospital because our families were… this is the this is the fabric of the church when done well, when leaned in. And yeah, we have a loneliest generation. That’s that’s a that’s a ah ah title that has been applied to to that, but we have such opportunity to come in and rewrite that story for people. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. Tyler Vance — And and it’s very odd juxtaposition because we are probably the most connected…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tyler Vance — …generation ever.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tyler Vance — But those connections aren’t deep in in the things of God. They are not spiritual in nature. And we know intuitively that that they become lacking for what they produce. And so if if there’s ever an institution to be able to solve that is the local church. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And then, you know, the other side of of what you’ve talked about, and and I want to get to what Apollos does, but I I wanted to try to lay the framework here a little bit more at kind of a philosophical level. You talk about healthy habits are a necessary ingredient for personal growth. So when when you say that, unpack that a little bit more. I think people would agree with that, but what how how are health, why are healthy habits a critical piece of, you know, a disciple’s journey? Tyler Vance — Yeah, I I mean, so the the healthy habits, what we we would say is our are the daily habits that are core to what we do, and and I will lean in a little bit to to the product of what we do. Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good. Tyler Vance — They are ah daily time with God, prayer, and gratitude. Rich Birch — Yep. Tyler Vance — And those aren’t ah those aren’t by accident. We didn’t just you know come up with some great thing. The the history of our of our product is is deeper than 10 years old and it’s built on trying different habits. And so the data overwhelmingly shows that those are the three habits that move the needle most in an individual’s daily spiritual kind of, maybe maybe a different way to phrase it would be their spiritual fitness, or their discipleship, right? And also they become ah leading indicators of weekend attendance, of generosity, of these other things that historically in the church we have counted as the ah the measures of success.
Tyler Vance — And so that’s what our data is showing ah in in and that. And so we’re making very data-informed decisions. One of the things we used to say as I led data at Life Church was, um data has a seat at the table, but the Holy Spirit is still the head of the table, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Yep. Tyler Vance — And and so like we want to make sure that we’re making data-informed decisions by allowing God still to be the final say in the direction and and the things of what we’re leaning into. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So um friends, we back it’s about six months ago, we had Lauren from Liquid Church on and and we were talking about their app, Apollos. And she mentioned this on there. Apollos is the provider behind ah what they’re what they’re doing at Liquid. And so we’ll link to that that episode if you want to kind of talk and hear about a specific church’s application of Apollos. There’s a bunch of churches across the country that are benefiting from this.
Rich Birch — But um but but let’s let’s unpack those three habits. So ah prayer, scripture reading, gratitude, help help us unpack, what does that look like ah at an app level? And and then and layer on top of that community, because this to me is, I think, a part of what makes what you’re doing so unique, that these are really, they so those seem to be ah woven together in a really beautiful way. So talk us through that. Tyler Vance — Yeah, um so I’ll actually use some stories to illustrate how how this functionality works. Rich Birch — That’s great. Yeah. Tyler Vance — First off, as a pastor, I believe in the power of prayer. And um as ah I was in a situation, an environment where we received prayer cards, like many of probably the pastors that that are listening. And you’d go through and as a staff pray for those prayer cards. And then you know probably most of us would have a prayer team that we give those prayer cards to. And you you know that that would kind of be the it. We wouldn’t be able to hear the final story or follow up. I mean we just we were kind of at the mercy of that being the the end of the story. One of the great things that we found by allowing prayer to happen in an app experience is, first off, it takes about 60 seconds for someone to submit a prayer, and then someone else in the church to respond to that prayer, right? Tyler Vance — So we have cut down the time for the church to really become the church together. We’ve actually empowered this thing to happen that is independent of a pastor, not meaning that a pastor can’t engage in it, but that we’re allowing the church to be the church. And actually Lauren from Liquid shares one of the most powerful stories of this. She was actually on her way to a doctor’s appointment for her kid and shared a prayer in the app. By the time she got to the doctor’s appointment, she had people praying for her. Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Tyler Vance — She got to the doctor’s appointment, had a great appointment. She’s checking her kid in the next weekend. And one of the ladies helping her check her kid in says, hey, I was actually one of the people praying for you this week. A, I want to know how your appointment was. But also, if you didn’t know, I spent 20 years in that very specific field of industry. Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Tyler Vance — And I would love to help you out in a very tangible way. Prayer connects the heart of believers together in such a powerful way. And we’re seeing that across the board. Faith Promise Church in Knoxville, their XP shared a story with me of you know a kid, same similar story: parent praying as they go to a doctor’s appointment, kid had a concussion, and they were really looking for how extensive the brain damage was. Tyler Vance — Church surrounds them on their way to the doctor’s appointment in prayer. Ends up no no brain damage. And the the kid says to the doctor, as a three-year-old, I know why you can’t find brain damage because my church is praying for me. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Tyler Vance — All of that is not, that’s not from a prayer card on a Sunday to a Sunday. Tyler Vance — That is real time, the church being the church. That’s that’s a power of what we’re seeing when you put prayer in an app. That is the context of your church body. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love I love that. And I um so I’m you know I’m lurking on the Liquid app. I’m you know and I’m you know friends with some folks on there. And it’s amazing how, you know as a user, just as a person on the app using it, like that’ll happen. A friend will come up and a prayer will come up and I’ll stop and pause and pray. Rich Birch — And it doesn’t, you know, and and people are sharing things of you know all different kinds of stuff. And as a as a just a person using this app, it really does draw me in towards them, obviously towards you know what’s what’s going on in their life. So those are vivid examples at kind of the personal level. I remember you you know for years an executive pastor when we would do prayer on a Sunday with prayer cards, we would do exactly that. We would have you know we would take the cards, and we would ensure that they’re getting prayed for by our prayer team. We take that very serious. We’d have, you know, hand them out to people. We would divvy them up and like, we’re going to make that happen. Rich Birch — But then there was another part of this, which was about frankly, looking at data from people in our church and trying to get a sense of what’s happening in their lives to help us as we’re speaking for the future. Is is there an opportunity through Apollos to leverage data in that way, in a way that’s elegant and, you know, non creepy, obviously, but talk to us about that. Tyler Vance — Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Data is a big, a big thing. And I think in my time leading data specifically at Life Church and the whole initiatives around that, I think pastors have the the tendency to want to get what I call data drunk. It means that they want all the data in the world. And they have no clue what to do with it. They just want it. Rich Birch — Right. Tyler Vance — And so to to your point, we want to be very strategic. We have opportunities to provide whatever data you need. But we want to be strategic in the use case, the purpose of it. Not that we can’t get it, but what we really want is we are we are more strategy than we are a product. And… Rich Birch — That’s good. Tyler Vance — …we just really want to help you understand what it is you’re trying to do, what… to to your point, Rich, that such a great example of if I knew what people in my church were praying for, I’d teach differently on the weekend. Yeah. Or I’d create courses or the felt needs, you know, articles or blogs that I’m putting out would would reflect that. Yes, absolutely. We want to equip the church ah in in ways like that. And so absolutely everything is possible there.
Tyler Vance — One of the one of the things that um I think I will highlight is just the, since we’re talking about communication cards, the opportunity for profile creation. And a lot of pastors are missing this, and I wish that they understood this more. An app profile creation is the new communication card. And so what we also are trying to do is we’re also trying to give unknown people in your congregations a known voice and entity, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Tyler Vance — As a pastor, it’s really hard and you stand on stage and you look out and you go, I can identify maybe 20, I know the names of maybe 20% of these people, right? How do we begin, as a church, to know the names of more people?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tyler Vance — And really profile creation in a digital experience is, is a new way to do that, and we need to be looking at digital experiences, ah not just for the digital experience they offer but for the profile creation and the ability to know people – that they exist, that they then we can understand demographics, we can understand who our church is reaching, we can really listen in for the heartbeat of where God is moving in our individual churches instead of, and I’m going to hit a soapbox item for me, instead of trying to predict or create a space for God to move, we can listen to where he’s already moving and just move with him. Rich Birch — That’s “Experiencing God”, Henry Blackaby. That’s great. Where’s God at work? Move towards that. That’s fantastic. Let’s double click on that. When you say profile creation, give us the kind of, give us some free coaching here. We’re taking advantage of the fact that you’re on the call. If you’re thinking of a church that’s you know that wants to ensure that we’re getting, you know, we’re we’re kind of fully taking advantage of this kind of profile creation idea and then management of that. What would be a few of the kind of best practices we should be thinking about on that front? Tyler Vance — Sure. Well, let me let me actually start off with some real-time data here. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s perfect. Tyler Vance — Two two weeks ago, ah we launched a brand new app in a church near Orlando. In that timeframe, in two weeks, they push the app from stage and they did a great marketing strategy around it, and they did a lot of great stuff that was outside of the digital product, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tyler Vance — And so free coaching number one is a great digital product is not the solution. A comprehensive strategy is the solution. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Tyler Vance — 20% of their church created a profile. And you think, man, that’s great. Rich Birch — Wow. Tyler Vance — But what is ah what if as a pastor I could tell you through a great strategy, you could know an additional 20% of the names sitting in your auditorium? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Tyler Vance — That’s crazy. And so um the the double click on that is, I mean, you have to have a great place for them to go. We believe at Apollos that our app is world-class and it’s a great place for people to go. But you have to have a great way to get them there. And we don’t think about this enough, but the fact that we believe something’s valuable as a local church doesn’t mean that the people sitting in our seats think it’s valuable. So we always have to be customer-centric, right? Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yeah, that’s so true. Tyler Vance — And and that we miss that as pastors. I know you you laugh at that, but um we we so oftentimes miss that as pastors because we are used to developing the strategy, creating the vision, doing the weekend message, and people show up for it. Tyler Vance — And we now live in a society where there has to be a branded value. There has to be some reason why I would want to engage in that. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Tyler Vance — And it has to be customer-focused and customer is not like the the sexy thing to say when we’re talking about church and it’s a different way to say it, but we need to be customer-focused. Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, so yeah, you’ve hit on a, I would say as, again, an observer, someone who’s been in this space, I feel like there’s a lot of, and you’re not talking down about other apps. So this is me saying this, not you. But I feel like there’s a lot of churches out there that have apps that really are just a shortcut to their revenue. They’re like a, you know, it’s ah it’s essentially just a wrapper around a webpage that says, please give us money. And there isn’t really any other reason for people to use the app. And so then we roll this thing out thinking, oh, like, you know, everyone’s going to want to do this. This will be so easy. Well, no, like that isn’t what happens. And there’ll be, there’s low adoption rates. But it seems like to me, Apollos’ focus on these daily habits, bringing people back time and again, for things that actually help them…
Tyler Vance — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …man, that’s like beneficial for us as a church. It’s we’re seeing more as a platform than just like, ah it’s not just one more thing to kind of bother them in their in their lives. Is that Is that kind of the strategy behind it from it from a church and from a you know user point of view, from from your point of view? Tyler Vance — Absolutely, Rich. And and I I will I will say this and I will say it sensitively. There are a lot of strategies that are solely based on content distribution. And that’s great, but everywhere else in our society, you have content distribution wrapped in community, right? And and the local church has not embraced that to the level that the rest of the world has. And so we really aim to do that. And and to go back to some feature set…
Rich Birch — Yep. Tyler Vance — …and not to highlight feature set, but to highlight strategy here, we talk about communities. One of the things that we’re seeing in communities is, you know, five years ago, we might have put a felt needs article on our website and understood that that might get someone to engage. We’re seeing incredible traction from taking those felt needs articles and creating short-term experiences and groups around them. Tyler Vance — An example of this…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …a church in Dallas ah did a 21 days to a better marriage, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, wonderful. Tyler Vance — $100 Facebook ad spend, ah sign up of like 980 people, Rich Birch — Wow. Tyler Vance — 23% of those people had never walked in the door of their church. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Tyler Vance — And they stuck around for 21 days. So we track that over the course, 12 months later, 17% of those people were still engaged with their church, of of the new. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing. Tyler Vance — It’s incredibly sticky because they offered something that no one else offered, and it wasn’t just content…
Rich Birch — It’s community.
Tyler Vance — …it was community around content. Rich Birch — Well and that I think is a good insight that we that I think a lot of churches haven’t embraced. We know that intuitively that it’s not the content, that content’s a core a core part of what we do on the weekend, say, in our in-person experiences. It’s critical to what we do. You’ve got to have great preaching. You have to actually say something. But it’s a it’s a community-rich experience. The reason why people come back, the reason why they join teams, the reason why they connect in small groups is because of the relationships. Rich Birch — But it’s like we get online and we forget that. We forgot that you know that that port that part of what we do um which is you know… And then we’re just like, how come we we we look at it like a giant megaphone. Let’s just keep broadcasting. And we’re all screaming online as opposed to saying, hey, let’s try to create a community around that. That’s powerful.
Tyler Vance — Yeah. Rich Birch — Did they, so are you saying in this example from Dallas with the 21 day kind of marriage tune up or whatever, did that drive ultimately to their website, to their app? How did that all work? How did, like, what, what did that look like? Tyler Vance — It was all experienced through their app. It was an app-driven experience. So… Rich Birch — Wow. Okay. Tyler Vance — I mean, in order to to get into that, their their app is set up to where you had to create a profile, you had to log in. Rich Birch — Yep. Tyler Vance — That’s how we knew to go back to your data point of these were new people. The next 20%, this is what I didn’t share, the next 20% were people that were sitting in the seats, but had never done anything in their church. Rich Birch — Right, right. Tyler Vance — Right? Rich Birch — Disengaged. Yep. Tyler Vance — And so the it just became this incredible experience. And actually, Rich, to go back to your point, this isn’t new. Rich Birch — Right. Tyler Vance — Like to to to To your Henry Blackaby nod earlier, the church has been doing this since I’ve been alive, right? We’ve been connecting people around needs in small groups, but we’ve been asking them to come to buildings. And we’re really comfortable still asking them to come to buildings. And all we’re doing is taking those similar experiences that we know to be ah integral to a discipleship journey. And we’re saying you can do them asynchronously via your phone and still have the same level of discipleship and community. Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about the, from my perspective, the fit and finish of what Apollos does is industry leading. It’s ah fantastic. Your apps are, they’re snappy. You push a button and it actually works. Like, which should not be the benchmark for apps, but you’d be amazed.
Rich Birch — I was joking with another member of your team where I was, I do these visits where I did 22 of them last year, where I’ll be on site at the church and where they’re Sunday, Monday, and we’re looking at stuff and trying to help them, I’m trying to help them find some actionable insights, things that they could apply.
Rich Birch — And I was standing in the lobby at this church, large church, 10,000 plus person church, and they were trying to check their the person who I was with, who’s on staff, was trying to check their kid in to their kid’s thing and they were doing it through their app and like the app was totally broken, did not work. It was not an Apollos app – don’t worry. You know and the and they were joking and they didn’t know that I you know was thinking about these things. They were like, oh yeah, that just happens all the time. like it’s just It’s a piece of junk. And and they just kind of were resolved to like, that’s the way it’s like, that’s just the way it is. It just is like it’s broken. It’s always broken. That’s the way it is.
Rich Birch — How are you ensuring at Apollos that you’re keeping on top of, you know, the fit and finish side of this, that this feel like your app’s—and that’s like kind of a weird question, because it’s like a broad… “how do you be good” is kind of the question. But what are you doing to ensure that the app continues to perform? Because to me, that seems like a differentiator as a person looking in at what you do. Tyler Vance — Yeah, ah well, um I would say strategically, we are we are a scalpel. And so from leading technology within the local church, I would say one of the hardest jobs I had to do was say no to good ideas.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.
Tyler Vance — Right? And we, I mean, gosh, how many leadership talks have been on that concept? But when we when it comes to technology, it seems like we lose that perspective that if if it’s an app, if it can be done digitally, it should be done digitally. And it’s like, no, we actually, not everything in your church needs to reside on that. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tyler Vance — That is a lack of strategy. We wanna bring strategy to the why and the what.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tyler Vance — From a really tangible standpoint, Apollos is a white label app, meaning when you buy Apollos, you get a whole team of developers behind you, supporting you. We brand it like your app. No one in your church will ever know Apollos exists. It is your church app, but you have a world-class team behind you that is making sure everything works great. We’re building new features. We’re listening to community. We’re we’re doing everything behind the scenes for you. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. When you kind of think to the future, so give us a kind of a poke up over the horizon. One of the things I’ve noticed is it seems to be the churches that are benefiting from Apollos, it’s not like a tack on, it’s not like a bolted on kind of thing. They’re trying to figure out how to um make it central to their experience.
Rich Birch — The example I’ve used in other contexts has been, I still like Starbucks. And I like the Starbucks app. It doesn’t, but I don’t get coffee from the Starbucks app. I don’t press a button and coffee comes out. The Starbucks app helps my Starbucks experience be better. It seems like the churches that are using Apollos or are leveraging it are thinking about it in the same way. It’s not just like this we, you know, we’re, we’re a church and then, oh yeah, we also have this app thing. They’re trying to find ways to integrate it.
Rich Birch — How are churches doing a good job of that? What would be and maybe another example or two of that? And then what does the future look like? How where is the kind of future up over the horizon with Apollos look like you know as you as you dream a little bit about the future? Obviously knowing things change. Tyler Vance — Well, first off, the higher level strategy decision-maker you can get that’s thinking about all of the things, the the better you get. What what we find on a lot of churches is the technology gets buried at best three or four layers deep in decision-making, right? Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yeah. Tyler Vance — So by the time you’ve planned your weekend sermon, and you’ve got your production team and your marketing team, and then someone underneath them, two or three layers is thinking about, oh, we should probably also blank with the app. And so the higher up you can you can get that decision making. The concept, and we say this as like a tagline, but seven days not just Sundays.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tyler Vance — The senior pastors and the the executive pastors that understand I have the ability to have 10x the number of touch points. They they get it. And so that that’s one thing. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tyler Vance — Leaning into a future, golly, Rich, it is so ripe. The harvest is plentiful, um is what I would say. Rich Birch — So true. Tyler Vance — And and digital um is never a replacement for in-person church experiences. And so the better we get at creating digital experiences… Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Tyler Vance — …that pull people to in-person, I think the more we win. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tyler Vance — And so if if that is not our aim from day one, I think we fail. We want to see the local church grow. I want to see my church adding services. I want to see my church you know growing exponentially, but I understand that digital is a tool to make that happen. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, friends, I really strongly recommend, highly endorse your ah reaching out to Apollos and connecting. Maybe you’ve got an app that’s not working well. Maybe this is an area that you’ve been thinking about, hey, we got to take some new steps. I would strongly recommend that you need to take some steps toward them. You know, it’s interesting because You talk to pastors and we all know that the phone in the grand scheme of things has done a lot of not great things in people’s lives. Like we, you know, we see that, we see that. But a part of what I love about Apollos is again, you may not like it that I refer to it like this, but I’ve said this behind your back. I’m like, I feel like you guys are like the Robin Hood of the technology world. You’re like taking the riches of all these, like, “how do you engage people” that we know lots of other apps do that, and they’re they’re trying to mine money out of that. They’re trying to mine, you know, they’re they’re taking my attention and turning it into cash, where you’re using the same kind of learnings, but you’re trying to use that ultimately to drive a deeper community connection with my church, trying to drive a deeper prayer life, scripture reading, gratitude, man, like that’s all amazing. Like, I just think that’s incredible. Rich Birch — So as we wrap up, kind of final thoughts you know that you’d say before we wrap up today’s conversation? Tyler Vance — Man, Rich, thank you for the conversation. Anytime we have a chance to to reshape or just to continue the conversation around what does digital need to look like versus what it has looked like, and we’re game. And so thank you for the opportunity to come and and you’ve been gracious with that. I appreciate it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Nice. If people want to track with you or with Apollos, where do we want to send them online? Where’s the best place to send them? Tyler Vance — Yeah, you can go to apollos.app. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. You can find me @atylervance and I’m I’m out there as well and love to connect with you. Love to hear the stories of what God is doing. We also want to learn. You know, if you have something that’s working really well, ah share it because we are big “C” Church people and we want to make sure other people know it too. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you being here today. Tyler Vance — Thank you, Rich.
Building Bridges, Not Barriers: A Gospel-Centered Approach to Immigrant Ministry with Rick & Patti Love
Feb 27, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Rick and Patti Love, founders of the organizations Love New Canadians and Love New Internationals. These ministries equip churches to serve new immigrants, refugees, and international students in their neighborhoods. Since 2014 Rick and Patti Love have worked with more than 700 churches and ministries in 20 countries around the world, helping churches develop pathways to Jesus for immigrants in their neighborhood.
Is your church eager to make a meaningful impact in your community, but you’re unsure where to start? Have you considered reaching out to the immigrants living right in your neighborhood? Tune in to learn how your church can be more intentional and welcoming to this often-overlooked group of people.
Do the research and know your community. // Many churches either fail to recognize the growing immigrant population in their community or feel overwhelmed about where to start. Others may be hesitant to reach out to immigrants due to cultural differences or fear of unintentionally offending newcomers. Do the research and get to know the community around you. Intentionally engage with immigrants by offering structured programs rather than relying solely on casual personal connections.
Start with friendship. // Rick and Patti developed a three-stage model which helps churches create structured pathways through which they can connect with and serve immigrants. Stage one focuses on friendship and helping immigrants settle into their new communities through social programs with little to no spiritual content. It might include offering programs such as ESL classes, employment classes, citizenship classes, cultural celebrations and field trips. Consider the skills and hobbies of your church members and how they could be used in classes or events. The key is to create environments where immigrants feel welcomed and supported.
Use the life and teachings of Jesus. // Stage three focuses on more spiritual elements like church worship service, Alpha, small groups, and ESL bible studies. But bridging stage one and stage three is stage two, a class for the spiritually curious. Stage two is a weekly pre-evangelistic class in which immigrants study something about culture, read a gospel text, do a vocabulary lesson based on words read from that text, and then participate in discussion questions. The class uses the life and teachings of Jesus to help us understand the immigrants by asking them about their lives and how it connects with what they are reading in the gospel text.
ESL and hobbies. // Churches can get creative about how they want to connect with immigrants. Aside from focusing on needs such as citizenship or employment, consider hobbies and common interests that could also be used in conjunction with ESL, such as baking, music, gardening, weddings and more.
Leading an effective immigrant ministry. // The need for ministries serving immigrants will continue to grow and churches can play a vital role in making their communities more welcoming and supportive. Remove barriers such as complicated registration processes. Don’t turn people away because a program is full or because of how they look or dress. Be respectful of different cultural backgrounds and language proficiency levels. Small-group discussions, rather than large lectures, foster friendships and create opportunities for the students to talk and interact. Many of the best volunteers are immigrants themselves, offering empathy and firsthand experience.
EXTRA CREDIT // Get the Welcoming Checklist for Newcomers!
Is your church truly welcoming to newcomers, especially those from immigrant communities? To help you put insights from Rick and Patti’s podcast into action, we’ve created the Welcoming Checklist for Newcomers—a practical guide designed to help church leaders evaluate, plan, and implement best practices that foster a welcoming and inclusive environment.
Equip your team with cultural awareness & hospitality training
Make first visits meaningful with translation services & newcomer connection points
Foster deeper community through mentorship, small groups & outreach events
Extend hospitality beyond Sunday by partnering with local organizations
Create lasting change with feedback loops & ongoing learning
Welcoming isn’t just a moment—it’s a mindset and a ministry. This checklist will help your church reflect the Kingdom of God and embrace the diverse people He brings into your congregation.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. Today’s topic is one of those things, it’s literally in the news, it might be every day of the week. Like if it’s not every day of the week, it’s it’s four out of five days of the week. And today we’re talking with some incredible experts that are going to help us think about how our churches can lean in on a real issue that is facing in our communities in a way that we can lean in and ultimately point people towards ah Jesus. Excited to have Rick and Patti Love with us. ah They lead an organization called Love New Canadians.
Rich Birch — Now wait, Americans, do not turn off. Stay tuned. Because you’re going to want to learn listen ah in. It’s a ministry that equips local churches to serve new immigrants, new Canadians in their neighborhoods ah to be more intentionally welcoming with immigrants, refugees and international students. ah Rick and Patti are just incredible folks and excited to have them on the call today. Welcome. So glad you’re here.
Rick and Patti Love — Thanks for having us. Great to be here. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Now, before we get rolling, again, I said, I joked there about our American friends. So friends, if you’re listening in, you know, this, this organization, Love New Canadians, obviously is focused on helping Canadians. But I think it’s important, obviously, not just as a Canadian, but as a leader who served for a long time in the States. It’s important that we learn from other leaders in Canada. Frankly, in some ways, it’s like Canada is a few steps ahead on issues like this. And I think Love New Canadians is the kind of thing that ah that you should be listening to and learning from Rick and Patti. ah So so don’t don’t, I know I made that joke, but please don’t, don’t you need to tune in and be here for the day. So Rick, why don’t we start by kind of telling us about the organization, tell us what you do, give us a bit of the history, that sort of thing.
Rick Love — Sure. Well, my wife started at our church, this ministry, 18 years ago.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Rick Love — And she was she was just trying to connect with immigrants in the neighborhood. And she has training as an ESL teacher. So that’s where she started. And our first class, we had five volunteers and two students every week.
Rick Love — We weren’t sure if anyone was going to show up.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s a good ratio.
Rick Love — So we just kept working on making those connections because we always want to have a conversation with immigrants in the neighborhood we never met before. And over the time the ministry is growing. It’s grown phenomenally well in our church. Last last Last fall we had an average of 480 students and volunteers coming to our ESL classes each week.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Rick Love — 10 years ago, we started Love New Canadians to help other churches develop pathways to Jesus for immigrants who were right in their neighbourhood. So we we have we focus on coaching, curriculum and seminars, webinars, ah using the resources we’ve developed ah through this ministry in the last 18 years.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Patti, you know, I know one of the things just kind of being, you know, checking out your website, being around you a little bit, you mentioned that churches kind of have this heart or church leaders might have this heart to try to reach and connect with immigrants in their neighborhood, but they frankly just don’t know where to start. It’s like, and I think there’s a lot of people that are listening in that see that, right?
Patti Love — Right.
Rich Birch — It’s like you’re, you know, you’re at the gas station, you’re you know in the grocery store, and you’re like, man, there are lots of folks here that I would love to connect with, but we just don’t know. Can can you share what what why what’s the kind of common challenges that that churches face when they attempt to try to engage with immigrant communities for the first time?
Patti Love — Some some churches don’t see the number of immigrants in their community. They just think, oh, we’re historically, you know, a Euro-Canadian community. And then if you look up the statistics, there’ll be like 30% of the people in their community were not born in Canada. That doesn’t mean they’re all recent immigrants. So that can be one, just doing a bit of research.
Patti Love — Another one would be a lot of people are overwhelmed and they don’t know where to start. It’s just like they’re the opposite. Oh, there’s so many new Canadians. I don’t even know what to do, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — And and we can help with that. And then thirdly, I think that a lot of Christians can be intimidated or a little nervous or worried about interacting with people from another culture. They don’t want to offend them. Or maybe they think they can understand their accent, you know, and there’s those kind of hindrances too. Can you think of anything else?
Rick Love — Well, I know that often what we’ve been told is just make friends with your neighbors, which is great.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — But there’s so much more we can do when we work together as teams. So when we’re in the local church, we can use our various skills to have like an ESL class or an employment class or a citizenship class. Or we do parties, banquets, sports, field trips. We just try to figure out ways that we can invite some new person in the neighborhood who we haven’t met yet.
Patti Love — And that really helps with both the people who are overwhelmed by numbers, but also the people who are nervous to do it because they’re working in a team with other friendly Christians in their church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. What what does this look like? Like in a, you know, there’s in a church that you work with, you feel like, okay, they’re, they’re kind of doing the thing. They’re they’re they’ve got kind of ah a great, robust model. Um, maybe Rick, why don’t you talk us through that? What does that kind of look like? What’s the, and and we may never actually see a church achieve that, you know, but it’s like, this is what, you know, this is what kind of the ideal is, or or the kind of, what you’ve seen is is super helpful in this and situation?
Rick Love — Well. Historically, churches focus on evangelism and discipleship. That’s what churches are good at. But we found most of our neighbors, they’re not at a place where they’re ready to move in that direction. So we encourage churches to experiment with a three-stage model. It’s the model that we’ve developed our local church.
Rick Love — So the stage one is about friendship. It’s like little or no spiritual content. It’s like ah it’s like the classes I mentioned. It’s it’s ways that it’s appeals to people’s self-interest. What could they benefit from?
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — And it really just depends on the creativity of each church and the the skills and hobbies of of the volunteers that you connect with. And then stage three, for us, it’s like yeah ESL Bible studies, church worship service, small groups. But we found how do you go from like, you know, a ping pong club or an employment class…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — …and end up at an ESL Bible study or Alpha?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Rick Love — Well, it’s not an easy connection. So in the mercy of God, we started what we call stage two. It’s a class for the spiritually curious.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah.
Rick Love — It’s really a pre-evangelistic class where we study something about culture each week. And then we read a gospel text. And then we do a vocabulary lesson based on words ah from the the text we just read. It looks and feels like an ESL class because it is. And then we do discussion questions.
Rick Love — And what’s different about this class is, you know, you most Bible studies, the goal is to understand the Bible, which obviously that’s a great goal. But in this class, we use the life and teaching of Jesus to understand our new immigrant friends. So we ask questions like, you know, questions about, you know, if Jesus is by a lake, we ask them questions about a lake in their birth country.
Rick Love — Jesus is feeding ah the 5,000. We ask questions of what would you like to eat with bread? What do you like to eat with fish? It’s like, it’s just very gentle, easy questions, but we’ll do one gentle spiritual question each week. Like when you’re talking about forgiveness, Jesus says, forgive your brother 77 times. We’ll say something like, tell us about a time when you forgave someone or someone forgave you.
Rick Love — And the goal is just to have honest conversations. And what happens is, I’ve asked those kind of spiritual questions before and it’s like, you know, the tumbleweeds are going across the mesa. Nobody says anything.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love Patti Love — But they keep coming week after week, month after month. And and our students will say things like, you know, I’m not a Christian, but…, or if I was a Christian….
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — Or they’d say something about God or prayer, and we just know that the Holy Spirit of God is speaking to them, and we trust that that that ah spiritual interest will develop.
Rick Love — Most of the people who come to the Stage 2 class come from countries where they couldn’t even ask questions about the Bible or Christianity or Jesus or the Church.
Rick Love — So they come, and then and then some of those move on ah to the stage three. We found that ah when things are working well, for every 10 who come to stage one, about four will move on to stage two, and about half of those, or two will move on to stage three. So 10, 4, and [inaudible].
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s yeah, that’s interesting, kind of like it. So ah so Patti, fill that out from like a stage one. That’s a really good helpful rubric there, even if you can picture, OK, so we we need to be doing kind of social-oriented, kind of fun stuff, get people connected. And and frankly I can see that. As a person I moved from Canada to the States obviously not the kind of immigration we’re talking about here you know if I’m moving from you know somewhere on the other side of the world obviously there’s a lot of difference a lot of similarities in the cultures. But frankly as an immigrant when I moved in that in environment there was stuff where like just having people locally that I could talk to and ask questions was a huge value.
Patti Love — Right, right. Yes.
Rich Birch — Like that was a massive thing. And I, and I didn’t have a language barrier and didn’t, felt like I know lots, but I still, talk us through what does some of that stage one stuff look like? How would, you know, what, what is that when it’s done well, how does that look?
Patti Love — Yes. So we call it settlement programming because we’re helping our immigrant friends settle into the neighborhood…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patti Love — …or into the country.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patti Love — And we have a lot of things like ah like English language classes. And over the years we’ve developed you know beginner, intermediate, advanced, technical classes like pronunciation, grammar. But lots of conversation classes. And our students love that. Some of them are actually enrolled in language schools, but they said, we don’t ah get a chance to actually practice our English skills…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — …with a friendly Canadian, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — We do…
Rich Birch — Well, and there’s something about a volunteer, right? There’s something about volunteers who are saying, Hey, I want to do this. I want to help.
Rick Love Patti Love — Yes. Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s like, it has a different texture to it.
Patti Love — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And like the conversation has a different texture to it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Patti Love — Yes. And what we try to do is um have all of our classes or most of our classes formatted in small groups. So it might be opened up, led for 10 minutes by a lead teacher, and then everybody breaks into small groups. Every group has a volunteer. They have the material right in front of them. We we write material that’s really volunteer-friendly. ah You don’t have to be a grammar teacher or anything to volunteer.
Patti Love — And when we got really serious about changing our formatting from a large group to small groups, that year our attendance doubled…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patti Love — …because students were making friends with volunteers, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — We also do interesting ESL classes in module form, like ESL for baking, ESL for gardening, ESL for weddings or music or art.
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting.
Rick Love Patti Love — Whatever our volunteers have a hobby for, we go, hey, let’s develop that into a five-week course instead of a whole semester.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — And a lot of those have turned into semester classes like ah studying for the citizenship test, employment classes. We do a public speaking class for people who are learning English. and we’d call it project confidence. And from the beginning to the end, you can see confidence is growing and they’re using more of their English skills.
Rick Love— Yeah, so the students project confidence. It’s basically Toastmasters for ESL.
Patti Love — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow, that’s cool. Yeah. It’s it’s interesting you say that because I in my own personal experience, I was I was talking to an immigrant. now this was in the last couple of years and they were reflecting on their own English and they were they didn’t feel confident in their English. They were like, oh, um I’m so sorry. And I was like, Your English is amazing. Like it’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Like, I don’t, I don’t know what to say. Like, uh, it’s in, you know, you should feel confident. You, you know, ah and they were like, Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. And so I can see how even having, you know, some regular feedback and people helping to build that confidence would be, would be amazing.
Patti Love — Yes, yes, yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah. yeah
Rick Love — And little short-sightedly, we assumed that our volunteers would all be Euro-Canadians. But we found some of our best volunteers are immigrants themselves.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Rick Love — They empathize with the the people, what they’re going through. And and the thing the fact of the matter is, wherever you are, you’re going to be teaching speaking with people with accents.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rick Love — So it’s good to have some of our volunteers with accents. Our students develop that skill as well.
Patti Love — Yeah, that’s that’s our country, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patti Love — That’s normal.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Patti Love — That’s our country.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Patti Love — We supplement a lot of the classes with things like, um, Rick was mentioning parties and field trips and lessons and banquets. And we have a lot of fun teaching culture through some of those monthly social events, like curling.
Rick Love — Thanksgiving, Christmas. Yeah.
Patti Love — Yeah. And Easter egg hunt and curling lesson. And the area we’re from is fairly cowboy. We do a line dancing lessons, that kind of thing.
Rick Love — Yeah.
Patti Love — And that is an opportunity for our friends to bring their family more into the realm of friendship with friendly Canadians.
Rich Birch — How does the church, if if they were saying, okay, I, this sounds interesting. I, you know, I can see this as the kind of thing would be interested in, um, you know, maybe Rick, how how would they get the ball rolling? What would, what would you suggest are some of those initial steps that move beyond… Maybe maybe you’ve got a leader who has, who has immigrant friends who has like some heart for this, but they’re like, I’m not sure how to go from that to like what you’re talking about. Cause this sounds like a lot, you know, what’s that look like?
Rick Love — Sure.
Patti Love — It just grew grew slowly over the years. We’ve been doing this for 18 years, yeah.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Right.
Rick Love — So obviously, churches can just dive in and try and do things to connect with the neighborhood. We’d love to have a conversation with any church leaders who would like to talk. Usually, we we have an introductory session where we talk about who are the immigrants in your neighborhood? What are the ways that your church is connecting? What are the who are the immigrants that are attending your local church? What what’s something that you might do to begin? We do a lot of coaching because we have pretty much made every mistake there is to make, so we can help churches avoid other mistakes.
Patti Love — Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
Rick Love — And we work for churches as small as 25, as large as 5,000 plus, everything in between.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yep.
Rick Love — And we found that three-stage model works in any size of congregation. Obviously, the smaller churches will start with one class. But some of the larger churches are able to start with two or three classes and start with a good volunteer team right right from the beginning.
Rich Birch — What would be some of those, like, maybe non-obvious mistakes that we can make, ways we can stub our toe? Maybe even before we get into this, you know, Patti, that makes our church kind of less friendly to to the immigrant community around us? Are there common things you see churches do that you’re like, ah, I can’t believe they did that. You know, it’s and a lot of times it comes out of a good heart.
Patti Love — Yes. Yes.
Rich Birch — It’s not like we’re but it just is like we do dumb stuff sometimes.
Rick Love Patti Love — Right.
Rich Birch — I know that’s the case with me. What would that be, Patti? What would be some of those things?
Patti Love — Well, we were making some stupid mistakes, ah just assuming certain things and ah not being intentional about welcoming people. In a couple of years into our ministry, the volunteers and I got together to work out our values in our intercultural ministry. The programming and the people, we decided, we want them to be welcoming. So that’s like not making it hard to register, not limiting a class size.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — Oh, sorry, we already have our 20 students – try next semester. It’s like, why would you turn away, you know, an immigrant from the neighborhood? Those kinds of things. So being welcoming.
Patti Love — Secondly, being respectful and that’s not making people feel uncomfortable if they’re dressed differently. Or if um if they have a strong accent.
Patti Love — You know, we we have volunteers who love working with people who are very beginning English speakers. We started writing material for both beginner and intermediate. And that was a huge step in being respectful and welcoming of Canadians who are more at the beginner level. We hate saying no to anybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love —It’s like we have a place for you that you can, you know, feel welcome and make friends and settle into Canada.
Patti Love — Our third value is being interactive. And an example of that is the the small group formatting that we changed to fairly quickly in our experience at the church where students get way more opportunity to talk in a small group.
Patti Love — At first our class, we made the mistake of making our classes with a teacher at the front and all the chairs in the room are full. And the teachers doing 80% of the talking, and right?
Rick Love — Which has [inaudible] validity because that’s what most of our immigrant friends experienced when they were learning English in their birth country…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rick Love — …but it’s just not the most effective way to learn it…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patti Love — …and certainly not a great way to make friends. You know, there’s one person at the front.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — And when our volunteers can work in teams like that, like their class has regularly 30 students and they have six or seven volunteers, there’s one volunteer and four or five students. And we say, as a volunteer, if there’s five of you around your table, you should not speak more than 20% of the time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — Like this is respectful of the students.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patti Love — Let them talk, make it interactive, you know, our values, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yes. let the Let the silence hang in the air for a little bit and give space for people to talk and you know all that.
Patti Love — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. You know, I one of the things I know in my own life, like I have ah you know I’ve lots of times where I feel like I’ve stubbed my toe on this this particular issue, but I remember a couple of years ago, this was um yeah a couple of years ago. I was I was doing some work with a summer camp, a kid’s summer camp, and had a friend who was a professor at a local college who ran this like big ah big data class. And he reached out and he said, well, you probably have like lots of registration data over all these years. Would you mind having a group of students run a project on your actual data?
Rich Birch — And, and I was like, well, that sounds interesting. That would be great. And, and so we met and it was all over Zoom. We were meeting over Zoom and, and we met probably every other week for a number of weeks. And, um, actually it wasn’t over Zoom. It was just, it was a, um, uh, like a, what do you call those? Like a, you know, like a conference call kind of thing.
Patti Love — Sure, sure.
Rich Birch — And we were a couple weeks in, and I I was like, I don’t I’m I’m having a hard time. The folks in this class, and they don’t think they understand what a summer camp is. Like they they and so then as I talked with, I I was debriefing with the prof, he was like, oh yeah, like in your work group, there’s six people in your work group, five of the six are from India, probably have no sense of what you’re even talking about.
And I was like, okay, well let’s take a back, let’s take a back up and you come, how about we have people come to camp for a day, come and see what we’re doing.
Patti Love — Yes.
Rich Birch — And it was like, it all made sense then, right?
Rick Love — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And it was like, okay, we got to slow down. And actually I thought this when you said the respect thing, we did a bunch of activities around camp. And um one guy had a great turban on and we were going on the high ropes course and which requires a helmet. And I knew enough that uh you know we’re just gonna let him go without, you know he’s gonna have his turban on that’s fine. And we’re not gonna make it put on a helmet. And it was interesting because that did create this like this internal tension with the people running the program. And I was like, I just, I had to have this quick sidebar conversation. And I was like, we’re just moving on, friends. Like it’s going to be fine. You know, we’re creating space for this guy. We’re glad he’s here. Um, you know, we don’t want to go out of our way to, you know, create any offense here. So it’s interesting stuff.
Patti Love — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But, you know, Rick, as you’re thinking, unfortunately, um this might be like the elephant in the room for some people who are listening to this. Unfortunately, this area has become like really politicized. And that to me seems like a change in the last X number of years, that this is like become a thing that both and on both sides of the border went from like, hey, like this is a positive thing to like, now there are segments of our culture that just are not interested in the immigration stuff at all.
Rich Birch — Not talking about the fast but think about the past, but thinking about the future. How do you see the needs of immigrants and refugees and international students evolving in the coming years? You’ve obviously got your pulse, hand on the pulse of this. And how can we prepare for that as we kind of think to the future?
Rick Love — Sure, so thanks for not asking me to speak on on the politics of it all.
Rich Birch — No, no, not asking to do that.
Rick Love — Each local community has to figure that out. But in terms of the future needs, it’s like it seems to be recurring needs, which is when people come to our country, they need to learn English and they need to get a job. And many are quite desperate to do that. In our country, um most immigrants do not qualify for federal or provincial education ESL classes.
Rich Birch — I didn’t know that.
Rick Love — And the ones who do, most of them are on a waiting list.
Rich Birch — Really?
Rick Love — So what are they supposed to do? Our vision is for our country to become the most the best place for immigrants to come because no matter where they go to, across the country, there’ll be a local church that’s trying to figure out how to help them, welcome them to our neighborhood, and for those with spiritual interests, spiritual curiosity, move along a pathway to Jesus.
Rick Love — It’s regular, we regularly find that when people come, they start learning English. If they get a job, it’s very likely they’ll stop coming to the ESL class. That’s okay.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Patti Love — Hey, that’s real life. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s normal.
Rick Love — But we we keep offering the ministry. And what happens is you keep building credibility. And over the years, something’s going to happen in their life and they’re going to come back because they know this is a friendly place.
Rich Birch — Right. That makes sense.
Rick Love — This is a place where people smile. This is a place where people will listen.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — And that that’s what we do is we we keep becoming that place where are our new immigrant friends can and that find safety. And then As things develop, it’s like we trust the Spirit of God to draw them to Himself. And thanks be to God, that happens often. We know, like I gave that number 10-4-2…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rick Love — …that means out of every 10 immigrants we connect with, 6 will not move any further along the spiritual pathway, at least at least at this time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rick Love — We don’t know the future, right? And we do find that so many who do move along a pathway to Jesus, they’ve had some kind of connection with God or church or Christian sometime in the past.
Rick Love Patti Love — You know, some it’s like a grandma. My grandma was praying me. I’m an atheist, but my grandma was always praying for me. And then they start meeting.
Patti Love — Years later, they come to faith. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Which is, that’s normal in, like, in everyone’s life, right?
Rick Love — Yes, absolutely.
Rich Birch — Like, that’s the story, right? That we’re, you know, they we’re immigrant or not, people have their, have all different experiences. And, you know, Jesus, I think, you know, this is like a New Testament kind of some people water, some people, you know…
Patti Love — Yes.
Rich Birch — …cultivate and harvest. And yeah, that, that makes sense.
Rich Birch — So, but I, actually, I think that’s helpful, that kind of 10-4-2 thing. It’s helpful for us to think about that, that, hey, this is a part of us serving in our community. There’s this idea, which I think is a noble one that churches should be interested in, which is like we should be considering, we should be um wanting the best for the communities we’re in. We want to serve the communities we’re in. We should be known as a life-giving place. And hey, there’s good things going on there. This is a potential way to do that. Anything, Patti, you’d say about that as we think about kind of the needs in the future?
Patti Love — Yes, it all sounds so positive, but you know our church, which is probably like other churches, has had people attending that kind of resent that the resources maybe that we’re putting towards helping new Canadians, or they’ll say, oh, they’re just using the church to learn English or that kind of thing.
Patti Love — And and our response is, but how many people come to church because they want to find a husband or a wife?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — Or maybe they want their kids to make friends in Sunday school, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — There’s lots of different reasons why people come to churc.h And the human…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Or, or how, how many people were sitting on the side of that hill that day and when the five loaves and two fishes were, were broken out that were there for the meal.
Patti Love — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch You see that in scripture, right? It’s like, do another, yeah, do another trick, right? They’re like, you’re just here cause you want to see me do some sort of, you know, magic thing. That’s, that’s like, as Jesus, I guess it comes. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Patti Love — Yeah, and we try to be welcoming to everybody. Yeah.
Rick Love — And like we we’ve become convinced, so we focus on ministry with immigrants, but we think this model, the three-stage model…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — …could be used in any facet of the church, where we have a stage one where our churches are thinking, what can we do so we can keep having new conversations with people in our neighborhood we never met?
Rich Birch — Right.
Rick Love — And then from that, figure out what can we do for those with some sort of spiritual curiosity? And then, or stage three, that’s what churches are good at. They know how to do evangelism and discipleship.
Patti Love — And then our people…
Rich Birch — Well, and the reason the reason why this caught my attention is, ah well, lots I think there’s lots of great about this, and my brother told me so we should talk. But outside of that, when I looked a little closer, I 100% agree with you on that. Most, one of the things in the work I do on you know church growth and helping churches reach more people is, most churches have a front door problem. They have a, if they’re not growing the the issue, we often look at the back door. We’re like, Oh, somebody dropped out of groups. They’re drop off teams. But actually the more systemic problem is there’s not enough people coming in on the front end. There’s no, we’re like not making any impact. And so yeah, I totally agree with you on that for sure.
Rich Birch — Did what did I cut you off there, Patti? I felt like I did.
Patti Love — We often schedule our events and our classes when there’s a lot of other things going on in our building, so that the new Canadians see, oh, lots of people come into church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — Or, oh, what are they singing about over there?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — Or how come there’s a whole bunch of teenagers, you know, being wild, whatever.
Rick Love — It’s amazing how many people who they’ll hear the singing in the church and they’ll attend a worship service just because they’re curious about the music.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah. Which is wonderful. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. That’s interesting. Go ahead.
Patti Love — We have like um yeah ESL, baptism classes to prepare people, ESL communion classes, that kind of thing. And then our our volunteers and leaders involved in small groups are very aware of welcoming people into those small groups. We took a survey a while back among our small group leaders and 100% responded, yes, we would love to have somebody ah who was born outside of Canada join our small group. And that really encouraged us.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That starts to see cultural shift and change you know in the in the church as a whole for sure, you know. And and there you know I’ve said this in other contexts that you know every for our American friends, every zip code in the country is more ethnically diverse today than it was 10 years ago and will be more ethnically diverse 10 years from now. That’s just true. That’s a sociological truth. And a part of that is what we’re talking about here today, you know, immigration and we can’t just ignore this issue. This can’t be the kind of thing that we’re like, well, we’re just going to look the other way. That that is ah churches that have done that. It just has not ended up well.
Rich Birch — We’re going to link to ah this pathway diagram that summarizes your ministry model. Rick, why don’t you kind of talk us through this? I think this will be helpful for people to kind of picture it, but why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?
Rick Love — Sure, well you can, so people who have access to this…
Rich Birch — Yeah, we’ll link to it for sure. Yeah.
Rick Love — Very good. So it it really just shows that three-stage model. We call it an intercultural ministries pathway diagram. We really took this model from Isaiah 61 which talks about um make a pathway ah for the nations…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Rick Love — …so they can [inaudible] to the land, right? And what we think of is we just want to get rid of obstacles, get rid of barriers. And for us, get rid of barriers to Jesus. And the first thing we do is just making, focusing on friendship.
Rick Love — So we just find every way we can think of to have a conversation so we can start making friends. And yeah as you can see on that pathway model, there’s, you’re only limited by your imagination in terms of ways.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — And some people say, oh, why are you offering that? You know, there’s some place downtown that has a class for that. And we go, that’s great. But, you know, many of our neighborhood friends can’t get down there.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patti Love — So someone in our church is qualified to teach that. And then at the end of our course, we’ll say, hey, take it again. If you can, get downtown. Take it again. It’s good for language learning and networking in the city, that kind of thing.
Rick Love — Many will have local libraries that will have classes. So we don’t think of it as either/or. We always think of it as both/and.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patti Love — We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re just trying to make access to friendly Christians available in every neighborhood of our city.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Rick Love — And then so stage two is that general introduction to the gospel. We tried to make the most gentle introduction to the gospel we could. We had friends who were working with a people group in the Philippines. We were in the Philippines for 11 years. And we’re trying to think, what can we do ah for those who Christianity isn’t very far away from them. Their worldview, they don’t think like a Christian. So that’s the goal of this class is for people to learn a little bit about Jesus, laugh, make friends, learn some English, and come back next week.
Rick Love — That’s our only goal, at this stage. And then the stage three is like, like I mentioned, is a bio studies, Alpha, worship, where everything the church does, small groups. Because that’s our goal, of course, is for new friends to become part of the church so that they’re making their decisions, for them and their family, based on the teachings of our Lord Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I I hope folks that are listening in will want to track with you. Why don’t we talk a little bit about where, um, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about Canada, but I know you’ve actually worked with a, with a number of American churches as well.
Rick Love — Sure.
Rich Birch — How, where do we want to send people to connect, you know, to kind of get the ball rolling if they’re interested in learning more of that sort of thing?
Rick Love — Yeah, so we focused on Canada. That’s who are we from. We’re Canadians.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rick Love — So we’ve worked with about 20 churches in the US in about 10 different states. And ah what we did is we started, ah so we have a Love New Canadians website, but we also have a Love New Internationals website, which is more ah American friendly. I lived in the US for six years while we were students in the Chicago area.
Rick Love — So we yeah, so people can connect through lovenewcanadians.ca or lovenewinternationals.com. Connect with us and let’s just have a conversation.
Rich Birch — So good.
That for us, that’s the first step is let’s learn about each other and see if there’s something we can do together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. I love, you’ve provided a lot of resources here and I think it’s pretty, it’s well laid out, easy to understand, kind of good first step. I would encourage people. We’ll put links to all of that in the show notes, but, um, really appreciate you being here today.
Rich Birch — You know, final words, since Patti, it started with you, volunteering at the church, what would you say to a church leader that’s maybe on the fence a little bit, thinking like, oh, I wonder if I wonder if we should start thinking about this in a more concrete way here.
Patti Love — Yeah, I would keep it simple. I would say you want to reach the people in your neighborhood and, take a look at, how many people in your neighborhood were not born in your country. And then I’d say if you’re friendly, if you’ve got a nice smile, if you can listen to people instead of doing all the talking, you’re set. You’re set to start this ministry for sure.
Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s great.
Patti Love — It pleases God, pleases God when we treat the immigrant like we treat a citizen. Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Patti Love — You’re on.
Rich Birch — Well that was wonderful. Appreciate you guys being here today. Thank you so much. Thanks for being on today’s podcast.
Patti Love — Thanks for having us.
Rick Love — Thanks, Rich.
Healthy Things Grow: Building a Unified and Thriving Staff Team with Chad Bickley
Feb 20, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Chad Bickley, the executive pastor at Skyline Church in California.
Is your church experiencing growth, but you’re struggling with how to maintain a healthy team culture? Wondering how to create a culture that drives growth while ensuring your staff remains aligned and healthy? In this episode of the unSeminary podcast Chad shares valuable insights on building a staff culture that defines how to achieve the church’s vision while maintaining health.
Keep your team focused. // Skyline Church has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing churches in the U.S. and has ambitious goals under its 10/10/10 Vision—reaching 10,000 people in 10 years in 10 campuses or church plants. The growth of a church requires more people on the staff, but it’s critical to hire people who are the right fit. Fast growth with an unhealthy staff can be disastrous. Be intentional about clarity and health in your team in order to keep them focused on your church’s mission.
Six core behaviors. // Churches often create vision statements but they don’t identify the behaviors required to achieve their vision. At Skyline Church there are six core behaviors that they look for in their staff and constantly drill into them. These are: attitude, commitment, work ethic, accountability, trust, and love. Skyline actively reinforces these behaviors through cultural spotlights in weekly staff meetings, hiring processes, and performance reviews.
Start with the right attitude. // The number one core behavior Skyline’s staff focuses on is level one: attitude. The standards surrounding the right attitude are humility, gratitude, and being a teammate. A person’s attitude is foundational because it affects all of the other core behaviors.
Your work ethic is like a traffic light. // The level three core behavior is work ethic. It emphasizes working more enthusiastically with grit and with a mindset of how you can be more efficient and better today than yesterday. Think of your work ethic as a traffic light with each color representing your mood. If you’re in the yellow, you’re getting frustrated and need to think about what is going on inside you. In the red? You need to step all the way back to level one and work on your attitude. Skyline emphasizes to start every day in the green.
Pastor/director meetings to stay healthy. // To keep staff aligned and pulling in the same direction, Skyline Church has a weekly pastor/director meeting with about 20 staff. The meeting includes a cultural section, an awareness section, and a discussion section. The cultural portion involves cultural spotlights where team leaders highlight stories from the past Sunday. They also report “wins” as well as “stucks” which they are trying to work through. The awareness segment highlights what the team is hearing and seeing, and they wrap up with a discussion which covers any other items of note.
To learn more about Skyline Church and connect with Chad, visit www.skylinechurch.org. Plus, to see how Skyline uses its six core behaviors, download their core identity book here.
EXTRA CREDIT // 10-10-10 Vision Planning Retreat Overview
Do you want to inspire your leadership team to dream big and align around a unified church vision? The 10-10-10 Vision Planning Retreat Overview is your step-by-step guide for hosting a two-day retreat that will energize your staff and refine your ministry strategy. With actionable discussions, engaging team exercises, and prayerful worship moments, this resource will help you map out a bold 10-year plan broken into achievable steps over the next 10 quarters and 10 months.
Ready to take your learning to the next level? Access this resource now in unSeminary Extra Credit and bring clarity and focus to your church’s mission. Get it here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited that you’ve decided to tune in. You know, today I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation because I know this is going to be one of those things that all of us can relate to and it can be really super applicable to our churches. Excited to have Chad Bickley with us. He is the executive pastor at Skyline Church in ah in California. It was founded in 1954 and has a rich history of growth and overcoming obstacles become one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Rich Birch — Currently, if I’m counting correctly, Skyline has two locations in ah California, one in Arizona, and one in Tennessee, which is a fantastic story, as well as services online. Chad, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today. Chad Bickley — Thanks for having me. Rich Birch — Why don’t you fill in the picture there? Kind of tell us a little bit about Skyline. You know, if we were to come this weekend, what we would experience, and and tell us a little bit about your role. Chad Bickley — Yeah, I think Skyline, like you said, has a very rich history. We’re 70 years this year and only four pastors.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Chad Bickley — And so, um you know, it started with Orville Butcher who launched the church and it and then John Maxwell was after him, who is who has taught us all a lot of leadership skills. And then it went to Jim Garlow and in that transition from um Maxwell to Garlow is when the campus moved to its current place. And that’s a that’s a huge story of of a miracle on the hill, to be honest. But those guys really battled through to to build this place. And then Jeremy um came on about six years ago. And actually, yeah, six years ago and has been the fourth pastor there. Chad Bickley — And really, you can you can see God’s hand in each each four guys. And and Jeremy has ah as a major heart for the lost and and and so if you’d come on our campus it would it would be very um ah outreach focus…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chad Bickley — …very he he he tailors his message that reaches a first time person but also people who’ve been there a long time. So he has a he has a great gift of of, you know, whoever you are in that message, you know, you walk away with, you know, being challenged and motivated to be able to, to move forward. We have a, our strategy is called OIKOS. And, uh, that, that strategy is it’s, it’s in the Bible and touch talks about it’s a relational network of 8 to 15 people. Chad Bickley — So everybody, has a relational network of 8 to 15 people. And we provide cards that write those people down on your on the cards. We want you to pray for them. And that will give you an opportunity you know when it presents yourself that you know we always say an invite can change a life to invite them to church. And that’s our responsibility as Christians, right? And so we really drive that that strategy into our people um to you know to go out to their OIKOS. And it and it’s really taken off and it’s really been um you know put put, you know us as pastors, you know, we’re responsible as well. But it’s it’s it’s also everybody that’s in the church to be able to equip them with the things we reach their community as well. So. Rich Birch — Nice. Chad Bickley — Yeah. Rich Birch — Love it. That’s so cool. I, that’s really got my attention. I’d love to drill into that. And we might get to some of that today ah because I think there’s a ton there around even just how do we make it make it visible in our people’s lives around who should we be inviting and who you know who are the people that we should that – I love that. That’s such a great, so great practical strategy there.
Rich Birch — You know, pulling back the curtain a little bit. We, you know, are often pursue people to come on the podcast because they end up on Outreach 100 fastest growing church list. And I loved when I saw Skyline bump up on this list this year, I think for the first time. And I was like, I’m pretty sure that was the church Maxwell was at. And then dug into your history a little bit. And I love this because oftentimes we see churches on that list that are like 10 years old or 12 years old. They’re like the the ripe old age of 15 years. But you know here’s a church founded in the 50s that is obviously experiencing um you know some great great things going on, which is is great to see. Rich Birch — And I can imagine leading in that environment has been challenging that as an executive pastor, we we see the like, oh, it’s all positive and upside. But what have been some of the challenges that you’ve had to face as an executive pastor on the like, looking under the hood a little bit, stuff that you’ve had to kind of tackle in the midst of all that. Chad Bickley — Yeah, I mean, I would say the biggest thing is just growing pains and what comes with that. You know, you’re your staff, I feel like, you know, we’re very culture-focused. We’re very, you know, we we have a a vision right now of 10/10/10, which is 10,000 people in 10 years in 10 campuses or plants.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chad Bickley — And, um you know, as a part of that, our our church has bought in and and movin’ and and ah but but it also requires more more people. And to balance that in San Diego where the cost of living is super high… Rich Birch — It’s so true. Chad Bickley — …and to get the right people because that’s everything to us. And and really give them the clarity to move forward because ultimately we don’t want to get to 10,000 people and we have an unhealthy staff.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good.
Chad Bickley — And we really don’t you know we put out numbers for numbers sake because we we say every every name has a story, every uh every story matters to God. And well for us It is it is it is less about the numbers but it is definitely a target for us to go after. And then we get the process of how we got there, right? So so it’s really important for us that, that, you know, we have given God the results, like whatever you want, you take it. But are we doing our part that we’re a team and we’re driving in the right direction? And, you know, in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is just a great illustration of roles and responsibilities and how that the body makes up the team. And and so we really, we really are intentional about health in our teams. And and so really, that is the focus. And and because we believe healthy things grow. So. Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, let’s dig into that. Cause I think there’s, there’s lots of folks that would be leading their executive pastor of a, you know, maybe not a church as large as yours, 1,000, 1,500 people. And they would say, yeah, I want a healthy staff team as well, but I feel like we’re struggling on that front. What have you been able to do to try to keep your staff aligned, keep them healthy, keep them focused on, you know, where you’re going as a church? Chad Bickley — Yeah, you know, just a quick, my background, Pastor Jeremy and I, um we actually we played college basketball together. He he he went his story is incredible when it come when he became a Christian. He was in professional baseball, didn’t know the Lord. And and then he came to Christian Heritage College where we met. And we played we played college basketball. Again, I went I went the route of administration and coaching. And he went into ministry. But we’re we’re very close. Chad Bickley — Actually, my wife and I helped him start a church. And and which which has led to where we are now, which is kind of ironic. But I I my passion you know is more in teams, coaching. And so you know about 20 years ago, just really had a you know, when I was, ah I’ve been coaching for just a really long time. And, and, and so when, when I got, I don’t coach anymore. I gave it up two years ago, but in the midst of all of that, I’ve, I, I had this desire of just like, you know, what, what are the best doing?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Chad Bickley — You know know they all had a a philosophy. And that philosophy comes out of, you know, you and and who you are. And and so we we implement that in a little little basketball team at a Christian school. And and really Patrick Lencioni has been a big influencer in my life as well. Rich Birch — So true. Chad Bickley — And he has six questions that you need to ask, answer. Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What’s important now? And who does what? Rich Birch — That’s good. Chad Bickley — And the leaders are actually at the bottom pushing everybody back to the top. And and so when so when, I never wanted to come to Skyline, to be honest. [Inaudible] very close, I was very happy where I was.
Rich Birch — You’re like, no, it’s good. I’m good. Love it.
Chad Bickley — My family was, was my my wife teaches at the school, my kids went to the school. And so when when when this went through, it was definitely a a journey of, a I always tell people it was a 45 day journey that was nuts to me. But it was super, super, super clear in the direction that that God was calling me to do. Chad Bickley — And I actually remember the day that I was going there and I was I was actually sad. Because I was just like, you know, what is this? But I know at the time, Skyline was going, you know, needed, you know, Jeremy was a perfect timing for this. He came in, um started to create, you know, culture. And when I came in, just help with this. You know, I think a lot of people, a lot of churches have vision. A lot of, you know, we created a vision statement, but we have a purpose statement. But I think the thing that’s missing is just how do we behave to reach that? Rich Birch — Right, right. Chad Bickley — I would say the number one thing that most organizations, you know, places, churches miss is they don’t define how we behave…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chad Bickley — …to reach the vision.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chad Bickley — And then get the people, because every interview we look through and when we look for these six things in in the people that we hire and then we drill it. And it’s been amazing to watch how this has started to go deep into the roots of our teams. It’s starting to go into our volunteers and they’re starting to speak the language because culture is a language that you speak. Rich Birch — Love it. Chad Bickley — And all these phrases that we have, you know, are are embedded in the different situations that take place. And so, you know, we have a ah core identity book with six core behaviors that that we really drill into. We do our annual reviews on them. We do our six months reviews on them. We we do cultural spotlights on them. We just have every month we do something um like we drill it into our team to be like, I mean, this is how we behave. You have a conflict, that’s level four accountability. Rich Birch — Right. Chad Bickley — We don’t want drama, because drama slows us down. So you gotta attack that. You’re either water or gas in a situation. And so we really use these phrases to really end drama. And that’s where my trigger goes off, is when I see a little bit of drama, it’s like, okay, how are we handling this? Because that’s gonna slow us down, and the mission’s bigger than all of us, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Chad Bickley — And so, the best part about being this job…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chad Bickley — …is I can hire for my weaknesses. And so I had an awesome team that that really is is experts in their areas, and yet they’re not they’re they’re not siloing people. They’re bringing us together because we’re one team. And I think the biggest caution I would have in churches is you’re siloed. If your teams are siloed, and then then they’re not coming together. If we’re not celebrating, you know, youth had ah five baptisms and the worship department isn’t celebrating, like how can we help you even, you know, on on those days. And they’re helping them succeed and they’re, and all this. That’s health to me and that’s been very, very important. And really, that’s what we control. We control our attitudes and our effort. Rich Birch — Yep. Chad Bickley — So we control those things. And so that’s what we’re gonna control. We can’t control the numbers…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chad Bickley — …but we can control the clarity…
Rich Birch — Yeah, what we do.
Chad Bickley — …in which we believe God’s vision that’s given to Pastor Jeremy can get going. I’d be kind of passionate about this stuff because I know it works and… Rich Birch — Well, yeah, its well, there’s a bunch I want to dig into here. So the one of the insights I want to underline that you said you said is, yeah which I think is so true, why we exist. You know, at the end of the day, all churches exist for some combo of either the Great Commission or acts one go into all the world. Like we’re we’re, you know, we’re a combo of those things. Most churches, or we probably should be. That’s what Jesus told us to do. But how we do it, how we behave – I love that distinction of like, hey, we got to be super clear with our people. And we’ll provide a link to this, but you’ve given us this ah this playbook that really outlines these six um behaviors. Rich Birch — And, you know, level one to level six: attitude, commitment, work ethic, accountability, trust, love. When you think about those six, maybe let’s dive in on one of them to start that is maybe where you see your team getting tripped up, where it’s like, hey, we’re having a lot of level three conversations or a lot of level four conversations. Or, you know, where is it that we’re, you know, we we kind of, you’re getting the kind of most, either resistance, or you’re getting the most traction on kind of but pushing towards the kind of culture you want to you want to create. Chad Bickley — You know, when we first came in and you you you start to do a different culture per se than what was in the past, you have to clearly identify it. And I would say if if we received any resistance to that, it was probably in the beginning. But the great thing is with the clarity, some people are like, yeah, that that’s just not me. And it ended healthy. Rich Birch — Yes. Chad Bickley — Right? And so, but it also, what it also did, it took people that were in it that gave them clarity that they, they shined and they, they grew. But I would say the number one thing we focus on is level one attitude. Rich Birch — Okay. Chad Bickley — And there’s standards that we talk about is humility, gratitude, and being a teammate. And so those three things, and we just say it starts every day with that one. It’s not like you get to level three and um you go, you’re you’re there. No, it’s every day you start with level one. And if you’re struggling with your work ethic, go back to level one.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Chad Bickley — Because you are thanking the good Lord for the things that he has brought your way and then all of a sudden it helps your commitment, it helps your work ethic, it helps your accountability and so forth. Chad Bickley — So really that that foundational piece is so huge and really what these core behaviors are, are a mindset. And that mindset, the more you get people pulling in the same direction with the same mindset, the more you’re going to see God can take you know you to a whole new level. Chad Bickley — I mean, we use the example of the Clydesdale horses we’re using it in staff meeting yesterday. It’s like one horse can pull 8,000 pounds, two horses, you know, that are working together can do three times their weight, can do 24,000 pounds. But two horses trained working together with the same mindset, they can do 32,000 pounds.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Chad Bickley — And so, when you have that same mindset and we just talk about our mindsets, level six mindset. It’s those six things. And if we’re all doing that together, you’re going to see things like the fourth fastest growing church. And if that’s what God has in mind, right? And now we can’t walk around just being like, Oh no, we’re the fourth fastest. No, it’s like, man, thank, thank you guys. It’s all in our approach to him and our gratitude to him because it’s, he’s the one, you know? Rich Birch — Love it.
Chad Bickley — And we can’t, it doesn’t make sense. You know, God can do immeasurably more what you ask or think. And that’s what he’s done. And now we’re like, okay, God, what do you have next that’s beyond our imagination. And so really that foundational level one attitude is just huge for us. Cause are you being humble? Are you grateful? Are you being a teammate or are you being a player on a team? Because those are two different things. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Very good. I love that. I love that Clydesdale horse example as well. I’m sure I know somewhere there’s pastors writing that down. They’re like, Oh, I’m going to rip that off. We’re going to use that in a team meeting next week, which is wonderful.
Rich Birch — Level three: work ethic. So this one, to be honest, stood out to me. I was like, it’s interesting to me. So level three: work ethic – work enthusiastically with grit and with a mindset of how you can be more efficient and better today ah ah than yesterday. So love this idea. I love that you’re calling this out. Sometimes the church is looked at as being like, Oh, that’s where people that don’t have good work ethics go to work. And you’re pushing against that here. Man, there’s like a lean in, Hey, we’re going to make stuff happen. Talk to me about what are some ways that this level kind of works itself out with your, with your team. Chad Bickley — Yeah, I mean, sports background, my dad was a farmer in Wisconsin before we moved out to California. It’s just, there’s there’s things, you gotta get after it. I mean, you gotta to work hard, but there’s also this like, work ethic could be a um a negative thing, but we want to change it into a positive thing. And again, it builds on itself. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Chad Bickley — So you you start with, I’m a team name, I’ll do whatever, you know, Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ll do whatever for you. Yeah, I’m going to help you. We’re going to pull on this together. Chad Bickley — We’re we’re in this together. I’m gonna be a teammate. Rich Birch — Yep. Chad Bickley — Worship’s gonna help youth. Youth’s gonna help worship. This is gonna, you know, and it’s like, you start with that. All of a sudden, your commitment level, we identify all the commitment levels, but when you get to work ethic, we identify it in, three three uh like a traffic light – green, yellow, red. So you can identify your mood, right? So if you’re in the yellow, you’re frustrated. You’re, you know, you’re you’re complacent, you know. And if you’re in the red, you’re you’re gone, right? And so you go back to level one you need to take a thankfulness walk. You need to do something to get back going, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Chad Bickley — And so really that mindset, and this is how me personally so much, cuz it’s like when you walk into meeting it’s like, man, what color am I right now? Why is everybody in the yellow? Oh wait, I’m in the yellow. So I need to change…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Chad Bickley — …where I’m going with. And we always say, man, start your day in the green – win the morning. Because if you come to work in the green, it’s hard it’s it’s it’s harder to move forward it’s hard to go from yellow, red to green than it is from green to red. Because [inaudible] back to it rather quickly. So we we just talk about all this stuff. That’s that’s, you know, identify your mood, man. You’re in the yellow man and speak that language to people. Man, you’re in the yellow.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chad Bickley — And and really hold people accountable to the culture because we’ve all signed up for this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chad Bickley — So if we signed up for this, this isn’t personal.
Rich Birch — Right. Chad Bickley — This is actually like we’re trying to help people find and follow Jesus seven days a week. So if you’re in the yellow, that’s not going to help people find and follow Jesus seven days a week. And and I’ll be honest, it it it really has helped me.
Chad Bickley — I’m I’m more of an introvert for sure. I love the behind the scenes stuff. And so I’m really challenged every day, man, win that morning. Make sure you’re walking into that environment. Let’s go. And we’ve created such a fun environment too, because part of that’s don’t take yourself too seriously, but take the mission very seriously. Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah. Chad Bickley — And so we have fun. We do fantasy football. We do, you know, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. But when it comes to people, you know, accepting Christ and starting that, that journey, that’s very serious to us. Rich Birch — That’s a big deal. Yeah. Chad Bickley — And that’s a very heavy, heavy mission that that we’ve all chosen to be a part of. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I I think this is fantastic. It’s, you know, I love your passion for it. I love the clarity. I love how you’re, you know, even in these tools you’ve created to try to make it super easy for your people to understand and to onboard new people. Obviously in a church like yours, you know, youre you’re onboarding new team members all the time. That’s an issue.
Rich Birch —You mentioned a couple of ways. I’m looping back on something you said earlier. You mentioned a couple of ways that you reinforce these levels – evaluations, team meetings. Is there, you know, maybe flesh that out a little bit more. What are some other ways, or maybe a surprising way, that you ah reinforce these levels with your people to keep them in front of people to keep defining, hey, this is how we work. This is how we work. Chad Bickley — Yeah, I heard a story, um the Home Depot, there was a new guy that took over Home Depot and he and he completely changed the culture with with handwritten notes. And and he, and so for us, we have a we have a weekly meeting and we have a section every week that’s called cultural spotlights. Chad Bickley — So within that cultural spotlight, we’ve created um the six levels and someone, and to embed this, someone, you know, hey I saw Johnny uh level one teammate and he identifies it. And we we really, and this is where it gets a little tricky because everybody wants to highlight the individual and we’re like, that’s great, but we’re highlighting the core behavior. Rich Birch — The behavior. Chad Bickley — Because Johnny, tomorrow, can not be a teammate. That’s in him. Today he was a teammate. But what that does is it it sends it sends a message to everybody it sends a message to everybody on the team of, that’s what a teammate is. Not Johnny, but what he did.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Chad Bickley — And what that has done is iron sharpens iron. It is taking these six levels to a whole different level in our minds. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Chad Bickley — That’s that’s been probably the biggest way. Now huddles are doing it in volunteers. You know, we’ve we’ve done a culture warrior award of the month. We’ve done those things at our all staff. And and so when you start it’s like I said culture is a language and you have to teach people to speak a language. It takes a while. And so… Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Yeah. It’s not overnight. It’s not one time. You know, you’re not just going to do this. I love the weekly meeting thing. That that’s incredible. Can you give us a flesh that a little bit more? What’s that look like? This is a behavior that we’ve seen time and again with prevailing churches that they are not leaving this kind of defining what is it that makes us us to like, uh, we’re going to do it once a year. It’s like, we’re repeating this time and again. And I love that you’re doing that on a weekly basis. So kind of pull pull that apart a little bit more. What’s that meeting look like? When is it, who you know, what’s other things happening at it, that sort of thing? Chad Bickley — Yeah, so it’s a pastor/director meeting. There’s about 20 of us. And and we come in the meeting and we have a cultural section. We have a cultural section, we have an awareness section and we have a discussion section. Rich Birch — Yep. Okay. Chad Bickley — And so the cultural section is just, it’s basically, we we do win, stuck… or sorry, we do cultural spotlights. Does anybody have a spotlight? Then we say, does anybody have a story from this past Sunday? Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Chad Bickley — Which trains our pastors like, go find us a story, go talk to people. Rich Birch — To be looking for it. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. Yep. Chad Bickley — And, dude, some of the stories are just like, what? Rich Birch — Yep. Chad Bickley — Go ask them, how did you come to Skyline? And we want to know, we want that information. And then it’s we usually have one or two people give what we call our win/stuck priorities. Chad Bickley — And they give their wins of what they had since their last one. They give their stucks. I’m stuck here, and this is what we’re doing, and this is my priority for the next you know few. So they give like a department update…
Rich Birch — Update. Yep.
Chad Bickley — …and we go into awareness. You know, What are you hearing? What are you seeing? um And then at the end if we have something, Pastor Jeremy has a section and then and then if there’s any other discussions that need to take place, we we take place in in that meeting. So that’s kind of how it’s structured.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good.
Chad Bickley — And you know, sometimes, man, this is when you know, you’re healthy when after 30 minutes you’re still on your cultural spotlights and win/stuck priority [inaudible] cultural spotlights and stories and you’re like, this is unbelievable. And it’s just rapid fire. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Chad Bickley — You’re just like, this is, we’re healthy right now. And when you’re not getting any, then you’re like, okay…
Rich Birch — We’ve got to spend some more time. Focus on it. Yeah.
Chad Bickley — …we need bit a of challenge, a little bit of training and and the importance, but our people have, you know, and you have to create the environment where it’s, you know, where it’s okay.
Rich Birch — Love it. Chad Bickley — So that’s the part that has been pretty cool. Rich Birch — That’s so good. When you look to the future, ah you think about this whole area, you know what’s what’s in development? What are you thinking up over the horizon? Maybe questions you’re asking about how you can continue to, you know, expand this, continue to um you know push deeply the kind of cultural stuff. What what are your what are the questions you’re asking on this front? Chad Bickley — Yeah, I think the at the the more you grow, the more it’s like, okay, how do we keep it in front of everybody… Rich Birch — Right. Chad Bickley — …and making sure they’re training? Because you can you know you can so you can say that the six, levels. Okay. That’s knowledge. Okay. Rich Birch — Yes. Chad Bickley — But you have to be able to incorporate those into your daily actions. But honestly, you know, in our interview process, it’s very intense. They have to go through several things. And really, it’s like, do they fit our culture? Chad Bickley — Not can they do the job. Rich Birch — Right. Chad Bickley — They have to have those traits already instilled in them. Or they’re gonna be miserable, right? And so I think it’s exciting and and fearful of just like, okay as we grow, we have to stay healthy. Like that’s that’s the key.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chad Bickley — You know when I when I first took this job I went to You know, I honestly when I came in Skyline it was like, oh my goodness, where is everybody? Like, why is everybody, we…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chad Bickley — …this, this isn’t working. And, and then, you know, I went to a conference and, and it was like, to listen to churches, big churches and kind of hear behind the doors. I’m like, man, they’re not healthy. And so honestly for me, and my drive and desire is that we have a healthy staff.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Chad Bickley — And and if you get unhealthy, we’ll work with you. Come on, let’s go. More clarity. But at the end of the day, you know if you’re coming in and you’re you’re gossiping and you’re causing, it’s like, and you’re not you’re not being a part of the mission, like this is not the right place for you, you know? And and I think it’s it’s kind of like, you know, we got to put our hard hats on and and be construction, be a farmer, let’s go. We have to get after it. And so that’s the biggest, you know, I guess to answer your question. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, yeah, that’s super encouraging. And and this has been a great conversation, super insightful. And obviously with your 10/10/10 vision, you know, you’re in in a lot of ways on the front end of what you believe God’s calling your church to do. Like you still got a long ways to go on expanding and new locations and, you know, more staff and all of that. So I’m excited to see how this develops in in the coming years. Any kind of final words as we wrap up today’s ah conversation? I’ve really appreciated this. It’s been a great conversation today, Chad. Chad Bickley — Yeah, I mean I would just again, the phrase that comes into my mind is is healthy things grow. They just grow and and you have to weed them, you have to water them. You have to put effort into healthy things. If you want a healthy body, you have to exercise, you have to eat right. So it’s work Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Chad Bickley — But it pays off. Rich Birch — That’s good. Thanks so much, Chad. Appreciate you being here. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Chad Bickley — skylinechurch.org is our website. I mean, it has our staff, our emails are on there. Rich Birch — Perfect. Chad Bickley — So if you want to connect, happy to yep. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much Chad. Appreciate you being here today, sir.
Big Dreams, Healthy Rhythms: Avoiding Burnout in Growing Churches with Danny Anderson
Feb 13, 2025
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Danny Anderson, the Lead Pastor at Emmanuel Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Is your church growing quickly, but you’re feeling the pressure? Wondering how to balance church growth with spiritual health for yourself and your staff team? Danny shares his journey of leading a fast-growing church while maintaining soul care and healthy leadership practices.
Give people time to grieve. // Danny joined Emmanuel Church as a high school pastor in 1999. In 2006 he transitioned into the lead pastor role following the retirement of the founding pastor. Danny was eager to cast a fresh vision and implement changes in order to reach more people. However, he didn’t initially recognize that people needed time to grieve the departure of their previous pastor. This led to a challenging transition and attendance dropped significantly within the first 18 months.
Honor the past while casting vision for the future. // Honor the past when transitioning leadership. People need time to adopt a new vision and accept the coming changes. Clear, unwavering vision needs to come from the lead pastor, however, when formulating a new vision, look at who Jesus spent time with and why He came.
The pressures of growth. // As people at Emmanuel bought into the vision of reaching people far from God, they began inviting friends and the church regained momentum. Since then, they have continued to expand, opening a new campus nearly every other year. However, with growth can come pressure. It’s not uncommon for pastors to experience either burnout or moral failure amidst fast growth. But Danny emphasizes that this is not inevitable for leaders—provided they actively care for their souls.
Take care of your own soul and faith. // The most important job of a leader is to take care of their soul. Effective leadership begins with the senior leader doing the work to care for their soul and follow Jesus well. Danny wakes up every morning and incorporates daily routines such as scripture reading, prayer, confession, and journaling to maintain his spiritual health and stay grounded and aligned with Jesus.
Keep your mind in the right spot. // The mind controls how we think and feel, and our soul relies on how we feel. The way we feel will shape the way we act. In order to make godly choices and live a righteous life, we need to fill our minds with scripture and be thinking correctly. By making sure our minds are in a good spot, we make sure our souls are too.
Be the example. // When it comes to staff health, everything starts with the senior leader. A leader’s demeanor and attitude will shape the church culture. Danny challenges his staff to care for their souls, whether it’s in staff meetings or in practices the church implements. For example, at Emmanuel they prioritize the spiritual well-being of the team by instituting a strict Sabbath policy where no one is allowed to work on Fridays. This practice underscores the belief that the health of the soul is more important than church productivity. A pastor needs to follow the same challenges they give to their people, thereby setting an example for them.
Balance the key issues in your life. // Danny’s book Church Growth Unleashed: How to Grow Your Church Without Losing Your Soul was written to help church leaders grow a healthy, thriving congregation without sacrificing their churches, families, or health. Often failure at a church is not because of the size of the church but because a pastor didn’t care for their soul. The book talks about key issues in a church leader’s life that help provide balance, such as how their physical health helps them serve and lead, and the importance of having friends that a pastor can be vulnerable with.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation. Really looking forward to this because this every time I interact with this leader, it feels like a kindred spirit. You’re going to love this conversation. You want to lean in carefully because we’ve got lessons both for your church and for you as an individual. Rich Birch — Today we’re talking with Pastor Danny Anderson. He is the lead pastor at a church that you should be following, Emmanuel Church, ah it which which was established in 1977. It’s a multisite church with, I think if I’m counting correctly, seven campuses in Indianapolis, an online campus, and a number of ah microsites. It’s repeatedly on one of the fastest growing church lists in the country. Danny’s been a lead pastor there since 2006. He also served as the high school pastor, which we all know the best people come up, from Student Ministry. Has got a podcast as well, so I know his audio is going to be good. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, Danny. Danny Anderson — Thanks, Rich. Appreciate you having me. What a privilege. Rich Birch — Yeah, this. Oh, come on. So our honor. Glad you’re here. Why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of tell us a little bit about about you, about the church, that that sort of thing. Danny Anderson — Yeah, so ah I graduated from Liberty University in ’99 and actually interviewed with Emmanuel Church coming out of college…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Danny Anderson — …because it was my wife’s home church.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice.
Danny Anderson — And they they were like, hey, who’s this guy? Maybe maybe he’ll be a good high school pastor. Rich Birch — Nice. Danny Anderson — And did the interview process, got the job. And yeah, did did youth ministry for five years, loved it. And then my found our founding pastor ah decided to ah pursue enter into retirement in 2006 and kind of tapped me on the shoulder. Church voted me in.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Danny Anderson — And the wild ride of senior leadership began in 2006. Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Danny Anderson — And it went smoothly.
Rich Birch — Yeah, no problems at all. Easy, easy. Well, actually, why don’t you give us a bit of some of the milestones along the way? When you look back, here we are, 2025, you know, coming up on 20 years, that’s a long time, ah which is wonderful. Give us some of those milestones that kind of are, have been key and when you look back over these years. Danny Anderson — Well, I’ll tell you what, the first year and a half was incredibly difficult, you know taking over for a founding pastor. Pastoral transitions are tough anyway, but when you when you transition after a founding pastor ah who’s beloved, um adored by the people, it was really tough. I had some people tell me, look, I don’t care if you were Andy Stanley, this would not have gone any better. Rich Birch — Right, right. Yes, yeah. Danny Anderson — But so it was it was tough. I like to say that I successfully led the church from 2000 to 900 in about a year and a half.
Rich Birch — Okay yes.
Danny Anderson — And so it was it was very difficult, very challenging. So a big milestone was in two thousand ah late 2007, 2008, people started to bring their friends. And I remember I remember it vividly. People started to get saved. I was casting vision. I was trying to stop the bleeding. And then people started to believe the message that, hey, we’re here to reach people who are far from God. Like the church exists to see people who are far from Christ you know come to to know Him and grow in a relationship with Him. Danny Anderson — And those who chose to stay under my leadership began to invite their friends and people got saved, started to get baptized. And yeah moving into 2010, we were so packed that we had to start a Saturday night service. That was a big milestone for us. Rich Birch — Well, that’s a huge deal. Yeah. Yeah. Danny Anderson — You know, launching that, we’re like, man, we’re out of space. What do we do? Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — And then moving into 2013, we launched our first campus, and that ah was about a 500-person solution, you know? Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Danny Anderson — We sent out 500 people, and ah that church is is doing wonderful. They just celebrated 10 years um ah and into in 2023. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s amazing. Danny Anderson — And since then, we’ve kind of launched one campus every other year or so, and and…
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great.
Danny Anderson — …and it’s it’s just been um you know an incredible journey. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. I love to kind of double click on something. You talked about casting vision. That’s a unique challenge coming in after the founding. I know the stats on the guy that comes in after the founding pastor, not great. You know, like I don’t want to discourage anybody that’s listening in, but it’s like lots of times those guys last about 18 months.
Danny Anderson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But you were able to cast a new vision, interestingly, at that same kind of timeframe, 18 months, two years in, you’ve got to clarify. What was going through your head in that moment around clarity of vision, you know, kind of because there’s ah a balance there of like casting a new vision, but then, but you also don’t want to trample on the past and all that. You want to build on where we get, what would, how, how did you cast a vision in that season and how did that impact the church? Danny Anderson — Well, I I definitely was naive and some of that played to my advantage and some of that hurt me. Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Danny Anderson — I could have done a much better job honoring the past. And if there’s anybody out there listening and thinking about transitioning or in a transition, it’s very important for the person coming in behind the pastor, especially the founding pastor, just to honor honor the past, honor where you’ve been. I kind of jumped past that um and I was so excited. I was eager. I was 26 years old and I wanted to talk about the future. I wanted to talk about how we are going to do things differently to reach people who are far from God. And so I started canceling programs. I changed the music. I did all these things that I had heard others did to reach the next generation. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — And that that was fairly easy to talk about. We did a series about it. I talked about it. But what I didn’t understand because I was so young is that people were not ready to receive that vision yet.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Danny Anderson — They were still um grieving the loss of their founding pastor, still not sure whether or not they should buy into my leadership. Rich Birch — Yep/ Danny Anderson — I didn’t really understand the law of buy-in…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Danny Anderson — …you know, ah by John Maxwell. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Danny Anderson — And I just got, I went right into vision. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — And so we paid the price for that. It it really hurt us. But in the long run, those who did choose to stay bought into that vision. But you know the I guess the question you asked me was, how did I maybe formulate that vision? Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — You know for for me for me, it was just the New Testament just reading like, who did Jesus spend time with? What was this heart? Why did he come? You know I was radically saved in high school as a 17-year-old kid. I was not a church kid. My life was totally revolutionized, did a 180. So when I put my faith in Christ, it was it was because I knew he forgave me. I knew he was real. I didn’t really care about church. I just loved Jesus, you know? Rich Birch — Good. Danny Anderson — And I just, I wanted, I want people to experience that. Danny Anderson — And and so my vision was, hey, let’s let’s be a church that reaches people who really need hope. They really need meaning. They need purpose. They need forgiveness. They need grace, all these wonderful things that I had received. And that only made sense to me. Like, why why else would we do church? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah, yeah for sure. Well, but it’s interesting, right? Like I think a lot of times I know as a person that sat in that kind of executive pastor second chair, I know a part of what I’ve tried to do over the years is encourage the lead pastors I’ve served for to to continue to clarify the vision. And a lot of it like that, that’s a thing that a lead pastor can’t outsource. We can’t be like, we can’t pull 25 people in a room and go, So why do we think we should exist? Like no, no, like you’ve you got to feel it at in your bones. like It’s like, hey, this is I’m willing to drive the and the bus over the cliff over this issue. And that ultimately is what gathers people. And and yeah, that’s that’s good
Rich Birch — Okay, so pivoting in a slightly different direction. So you’re coming up you know two decades, almost two decades as in in this lead role. That’s amazing. Incredible. Congratulations on that. Danny Anderson — Thank you. Rich Birch — You know, we often see that, you know, churches of a certain size. One of the kind of common characteristics is you’ve got leaders that are in their second, third decade there that that’s normal. It is not typical that it like happens overnight. It takes time. But one of the downsides, the negative kind of tragic realities is many parents experience or parents, pastors experience either burnout or moral failure amidst the kind of growth that your church has seen. Rich Birch — You know, can we explore that a little bit? Talk about kind of your own personal reflections on how do you navigate that? How do you kind of keep your soul connected to Jesus in the midst of that? Danny Anderson — That’s a great question. You know, one ah one of the things that really broke my heart several years ago, and I think many pastors were brokenhearted over seeing some of their heroes and of the faith, the church leaders that they’ve followed for years, looked up to, gone to their conferences. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Danny Anderson — You know, we’ve all watched some of these guys kind of shipwreck their their church for, you know, ah moral reasons, power struggles. And, you know, I I’m watching this happen, as as everyone else is, and I’m like, man, is it inevitable that this is going to happen to me? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Danny Anderson — You know, because I’m I’m I’m on the same path these guys are on. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — I’m trying to grow the church. Things are happening. And we’re launching campuses. You knowis it inevitable that I’m going to have an affair or or or do something stupid with money or abuse power? Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — And and I got to thinking about that. And I was like, no, that’s not inevitable. Rich Birch — Good. Danny Anderson — And and the reason why it’s not inevitable for me or for any pastor out there is that if you do the proper work on your soul, which is the most important thing that we can do, you know, the Proverbs 4:23 says, guard your heart above all else because out of it flow the issues of life, right? Like everything we do, our leadership, our sermons, the way we lead our team, it all comes from our heart. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — So the most important, I’m convinced, the most and important job of a leader is to take care of their soul. Rich Birch — Right. Good. Danny Anderson — Because if my soul is healthy…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Danny Anderson — …and it’s aligned with Jesus and it’s surrendered to his will, like then I can lead well. And I won’t shipwreck my faith, and I won’t fall into temptation. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — I’m not talking about perfection. Nobody’s going to be perfect.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah.
Danny Anderson — I’m talking about patterns of sin that will destroy your church, destroy your minister, and disqualify you from leading. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. 100%. Danny Anderson — And so I spend a ton of time, Rich, working on myself. I did it again this morning. I wake up every morning at 5.30. I have a whole routine I go through. And it’s it’s it involves the scriptures, surrender, prayer, confession, journaling, um reading other books. And and I do that, not because I’m a pastor, but because I want but because I want to take care of my soul. I want to have a healthy soul. Rich Birch — Yes, that’s good. Danny Anderson — And so I have practices and rhythms that I keep to make sure that I maintain that in the midst of the chaos of leading our church, which there’s never a dull moment, as you know, leading a church, it’s it’s crazy. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Danny Anderson — But so yeah, I’m I’m hyper focused on that. Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to talk a little bit more about that, kind of drilling, because one of the I appreciate the way you framed that. Because one of the realities of it is like all the people who that you’re thinking of that have shipwrecked their ministries, shipwrecked their lives, they all would have said that they would have said no, I’ve got practices. I’ve got you know and that’s the sad reality here right? And then there is this cynicism I think for me one of the most corrosive parts of this is there’s a cynicism against large churches. And to me that that’s like that’s like gets to you know effectiveness of the gospel kind of stuff then we’re like well we should just keep all our churches small and that’s the answer. But that isn’t the answer. Rich Birch — We need to be able to lead large churches that are having huge impacts on our community and keep our soul healthy at the same time. So is there one of those practices that maybe it’s like, Hey, I’ve never heard people talk about this. Or like, it seems like a different thing or like this is particularly, has been particularly effective for me or helpful for me, or as I’ve shared with other pastors, they’ve resonated been like, Oh, that’s, that’s different. I I appreciate that. That that’s really helpful for me. Danny Anderson — Yeah, you know, I think the most effective thing that I have practiced or put into my life in terms of a discipline that cares for the soul is, and this has been talked about, so it’s not it’s not fresh. Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Danny Anderson — It’s just a matter of, are we doing it? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. True. Yep. Danny Anderson — You know, I hear I hear pastors say this all the time. You know, I I have practices, okay, but are you really doing it? Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — And so here’s here’s here’s how I would explain it. I would explain it um it’s it’s the practice of meditation. And and and I don’t I don’t mean the Eastern type of meditation way emptying yourself and emptying your mind. Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — I’m talking about filling your mind with Scripture…
Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep.
Danny Anderson — …to the point where, like in Psalm 1, it says that with that the man of God meditates on it day and night.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — In Joshua 1:8, you know, we meditate upon your law day and night. Is that really true about us? Because here’s how, you know, Dallas Willard and and and many others have explained the way the soul is wired. And I don’t want to go too deep here, but we do have to kind of go deep a little bit. Like the mind controls, predominantly, for the most part, how we feel, like we think and then we feel. And then the will or the place of action at the center of our soul is dependent upon how we’re feeling and how we’re thinking. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep. Danny Anderson — So if I want to make proper choices, godly choices, live a righteous life, or treat my staff well, or have patience with my assistant, or whatever, then I have to be thinking correctly. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — My mind has got to be in the right place, which is why the Apostle Paul says, you know, set your mind on things above, not on things on earth, right? That we’re transformed by the renewing of our mind. We can we’ve preached sermons like that, right? But do we live that way? Where’s our mind? Rich Birch — Yep. Right.
Danny Anderson — Every single day?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Danny Anderson — Like not just not just at certain times when we’re preparing a sermon or or something, but like throughout the day, are we actually thinking Scripture?
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good.
Danny Anderson — Because if we are, then that’s going to be shaping the way we feel…
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good.
Danny Anderson — …and then the way we feel is going to shape the way we act. And so I teach that, I try to live that out. And that’s how that’s the primary practice of of tending for my soul. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Danny Anderson — So if I want my soul to be in a good good spot, I got to make sure my mind is in a good spot. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like I like even how you frame that there around I’ve got to be thinking scripture. And and that’s even a good benchmark for me that got me thinking, okay, so when I go to solve a problem, something that comes up today, is the first thing that comes to mind scripture or is the first thing that comes to mind some book I read, or some podcast I listen to? Is it, you know, and that’s I’m not saying that there’s not ah good things to come from podcasts, obviously, but you know but but what is the knee-jerk reaction of my mind? Is it, am I brought back to the teaching of Jesus ultimately? That’s good. I really like that. Danny Anderson — So let me push in a little bit more on that one thought. You know Dallas Willard teaches this, and and if your listeners haven’t dove in to Dallas’ stuff, I would strongly encourage them to do so. “Renovation of the Heart”, “Divine Conspiracy”, “Spirit of the Disciplines”, “The Great Omission”, all fantastic stuff. But what he actually teaches about scripture, scripture memorization, and the power of it is that as we’re meditating on scripture through the day, we actually interpret life through the lens of the scripture. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — So so it’s like the scriptures are like the lens that we’re looking through as we’re leading our team or we’re talking with our spouse. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — And so we’re interpreting the events of life through scripture. And if we’re doing that, then we’re actually thinking the thoughts of Jesus. And you know as Dallas has said in his books that spiritual maturity is being able to act the way Jesus would act if he were in your place, right? So if I want to do that, I have to think the way Jesus thinks…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Danny Anderson — …if I want to live the way he lived, and that ah one idea has changed my leadership and has changed my life. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So good. Well, then extending that out kind of beyond you to your team, I’ve had a little bit of interaction with some of the Emmanuel team. And, you know, there, if I can just kind of say the thing that some people are thinking is oftentimes, you know, the teams in large churches, it’s like, man, they’re burnt out, they’re struggling. And it’s like, that’s fine for the lead person. They got it all sorted out, but like the team is in a bad spot.
Rich Birch — But that hasn’t been my impression of the Emmanuel team. It’s like, well, these people are healthy and they seem to be leaning in. And so how have you been able to navigate the challenges of both scaling? Because you seem like an ambitious church. It seems like, hey, we want to take some ground, but at the same time, balance out health of your staff. Danny Anderson — Yeah, so I have to live it out that everything starts with the senior leader, right? So I talk about this stuff at staff meeting. I challenge my team to do this stuff. We incorporate the Sabbath very aggressively here at the church. Rich Birch — That’s good. Danny Anderson — So nobody’s allowed to work on Friday. And that is a very that’s huge.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — Like, hey, this that communicates that your soul is more important to me and to God than getting results at this church. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — So you will you are not allowed to work on Friday.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Danny Anderson — Like it is a rule unless somebody has died or something, you know.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Danny Anderson — So, you know people know I’m serious about it. And they know that I care more about their soul than I do about the work that’s actually happening. Now, that does not mean we don’t care about the work that’s happening around here. Rich Birch — Yes. Danny Anderson — We want to launch one campus a year for the next 12 years.
Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — We’re very ambitious. um So I think it’s ah it’s this balance. Like what are you talking about in staff meeting? And what does your staff see from you? Like if my staff sees me walking around the office, and I’m barking out orders, and I’ ‘m they could see my face is frustrated, or I’m upset, you know what is that saying? Like there’s some pastors that lead their church that way. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Danny Anderson — They lead their church through anger… Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — … and their face. And everyone’s like, oh, well, look at his face. He’s upset. What’s pastor do… Like, that is not the way Jesus led, you know?
Rich Birch — No, it’s true.
Danny Anderson — So the the so everyone’s really watching my tone of voice. They’re watching my facial expression. Is he upset? You know, is he calm? Is he poised? And so that stuff all goes back to my personal disciplines of meditation and quiet time and prayer and weekly Sabbath. And and so it starts with me and you have to push that down, those values down into your staff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — And give them the space to practice those things that you’re telling them to practice. Rich Birch — Right. And there there’s a key there around, you know, when I’ve been around healthy leaders, have worked with healthy leaders, there’s something about you talking about it that then creates, and living it out, and like, like you’re saying, is even simple things as crazy as it sounds like, Hey, we’re not going to work on one day a week. Friday’s the sabbath day. Uh, like even something as simple as that, talking about it enough so that your team will hold you accountable. Like they’ll come back. If you talk about that enough, they’re going to be like, well, wait a second, Danny. Like you said, we’re not supposed to work Fridays, but why is it that you keep sending me the slides Friday morning at 9:30 in the morning to be done for the weekend? Danny Anderson — Yeah. Rich Birch — I can’t do what you want me to do. And so, yeah, that’s good. I love that. So, so good.
Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to pivot it in another direction. So you’ve got a book that came out last year and you’ve got a podcast by the same same name, Church Growth Unleashed: How to Grow Your Church Without Losing Your Soul. We’ve obviously been talking about some of these issues today, but this is a huge task, putting together a book. You know, tell us, kind of why why did you drive towards that? What what are you hoping to get out of this? Who are you thinking about as you pulled this book together? Danny Anderson — Yeah, I’m thinking about the the the pastor who has the passion to see lost people enter the kingdom, but today you’re being told that, you know, big churches are bad…
Rich Birch — Yeah. 100%.
Danny Anderson — …and you shouldn’t want to grow your church. And I’m like, man, I almost fell prey to that, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Danny Anderson — Like, I really I actually picked up one of those books that had that message in it. Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — And I’m like, man, maybe we should stay small.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — Maybe we should just be be content with what we have and the people that we have. And it’s like, I felt guilty about about my ambition. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes. Danny Anderson — And then I’m like looking at the apostle Paul and the gospel and he’s like, man, let’s go reach the world. Rich Birch — Let’s go. Yeah, yeah. Danny Anderson — And he’s ambitious to to preach and plant churches where no one’s heard the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — And and I’m like, man, this God’s heart, is to reach lost people – lots of them, millions of them. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Danny Anderson — And so I wrote this book to help pastors strike the balance of, okay, I know I want to reach people. I want to fan that flame, right? Yes, that is God’s heart. For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son, right? But also on the other hand, if you don’t do that in a wise way, you’re going to end up like some of these other guys. Rich Birch — It’s true. Yep. Danny Anderson — And you’re not just going to lose your church, you’re going to lose your family. You could lose your health, your your physical health Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Yep Danny Anderson — …because you overdo it and you over you become a ah workaholic. And and so there is a balance. Rich Birch — Yep. Danny Anderson — And I feel like I haven’t always gotten that right, but man, I sure have tried. Because I want to make it to the end, Rich. I’m 47. I want to go all the way to the end…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Danny Anderson — …hand this church off to somebody else in a healthy way and still have a family and a healthy heart. And um and and set this church up to reach the even the next generation.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — So I’m passionate about you know helping pastors to find that path. Rich Birch — Well, I know, I you know, I love that you said church growth right in the title, because as a fellow author with a book with the title, with church growth in the title, that’s like it that’s like a dangerous decision in some circles. Danny Anderson — Right. Rich Birch — They’re like, well, church growth, isn’t that like guys in the 80s that got like tapes and they’re you know they’re like old, dodgy you know kind of a little bit like you know slick salesman kind of thing. So I love that you did that. I love I love that you did that. I love your heart both to balance the issues around, hey we want to reach people. I agree with you. I think there is this dangerous um, it sounds good. It sounds like even like noble to be like, well, we should keep small. We should, you know, we should play small and like, I’m only going to reach the people on my street. And we’re we’re going to stay under a couple hundred people. And that’s like what God has called us to. Why do you think that is such a pervasive idea? Why why has that become such a pervasive idea in the church? Danny Anderson — Well, I think I think part of it is, it’s a great question, but i think I think a big part of it is that when people see these mega church pastors screw up…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Danny Anderson — …whether it is because some sexual sin…
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — …or they have abused power or something…
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — …they immediately make the connection that, see, the problem is not his, the problem is not his soul. The problem is that the church is too big. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Danny Anderson — And so churches are not designed to be that big. And so that, and I just don’t believe that. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Danny Anderson — I do not believe the problem is the size of the church.
Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — The problem is the pastor did not take care of his soul. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Danny Anderson — Let me think about Billy Graham, Rich. I know Billy Graham wasn’t a pastor…
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — …but that guy took care of his soul. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Danny Anderson — When you read his stuff, when you read his books, his his he was so diligent to watch over his heart with meditation and his scripture, the scripture. He never missed a time with God. He never missed time with God. So my dedication is I never miss my time with God.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — I don’t say I don’t say that to brag because that would be ridiculous. There’s nothing to brag about. Rich Birch — Right. No, yep. Danny Anderson — I do that because I need it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Danny Anderson — To keep my heart humble and aligned with God’s will. Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. 100%. Danny Anderson — So, you know, I don’t believe the problem is the size of the church. I believe Jesus wants the whole world to be saved. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — So, and I’m part of that solution. So are you. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — So that means we gotta we got to grow our churches. Rich Birch — Yeah, and there’s way more people in Indianapolis in your backyard who don’t attend church that do.
Danny Anderson — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — And we’ve got to do what we can to get out in front of them and reach those people. I’ve never said this publicly, but I’m going to say it here because I’d love to get your reaction to it.
Rich Birch — Years ago, 10 years ago, I was talking to a lead pastor of a fairly large church, a name brand church, and they said, you know, we we’re talking about this exact issue, growing a church and why do so many people fail and all of that. And this individual said you know I think the problem is or one of the problems is a church—and this is gonna sound crazy—if you’re leading a church of a couple hundred people what I’m about to say, you’re gonna say, that is nuts, but it resonates with me. I actually was like um I think there’s some truth to this. They said, you know, one of the problems is you get to a church of four or five thousand people and as the lead pastor, there’s not enough challenge. And I was like what?
Rich Birch — And I leaned in and I said what are you talking about? And they’re like well At the end of the day, like i if I’m doing my job right, and I’ve told my people to do to do the work, and I’ve built amazing teams, and I’ve got a lot of people around me, and I and they’re they’re making it happen, my core job, sure, is to preach. I’m gonna get up every week, I’m gonna do you know maybe 30 times, I’m gonna preach, and sure, we’re gonna cast vision. But if i’m not if I don’t watch, I can create, ah I can build an empire, essentially, is what this person was saying, where I’m actually not being [inaudible]. Where I can kind of build this thing around me. And I was like, oh that’s an interesting idea. Because that there’s but I think there’s something there. It’s like these people you can you if you don’t have the right rhythms in your life stuff starts to get into your schedule you start doing stuff that you shouldn’t be doing you start thinking about things you shouldn’t be thinking about. You get distracted from the you know, because the thing is running because the thing is systemized. What do you think about that? React – nothing, you know, crazy idea. What do you think? Danny Anderson — Yeah. You know, that’s I have not heard that. That is a very interesting. I’m processing that as you say that like, huh?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Danny Anderson — Our church is like we reach about 8,000 people on a weekend now and I’m thinking holy cow! Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re not sitting around looking for stuff to do. Danny Anderson — No. I have I’m like, wow, I have to say no to stuff…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Danny Anderson — …because I’m meeting with you know donors…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Danny Anderson — …and I’m I’m meeting with my team and on my schedule. My assistant keeps telling me, um hey, I think we’ve we’ve committed to too much. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Danny Anderson — So I that does not resonate with me. I guess if my, if my goal was to, to kind of build something so that I could maybe have some free time in golf, I could see that being a problem, but I don’t golf, and I like to be busy. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yeah, no, I get that. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was an interesting idea. I thought the part that resonated with me was I think as the church grows, as we, you know, when you’re a church of a thousand, a church of two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, each of those phases demands something different Danny Anderson — Yes. Rich Birch — And your leadership has to change. And these kinds of things ah managing our own soul care, although there are some foundational things, like you say, stay committed, stay in the word, what you’re doing at 5.30 in the morning, you have to keep thinking about these at at every level. What does it look like? How do I how do I massage and change? I’m sure you’ve seen over time that your process has changed, what you’ve done, your rhythms have changed because, you know, just things look different.
Danny Anderson — Absolutely. Rich Birch — So that’s interesting. Danny Anderson — And my kids have gotten older too, so that really helps. Rich Birch — Right. That does open up time for sure. Talk to me about on the book, the Church Growth Unleashed, we’re going to put a link in the show notes where people can pick up this. This actually struck me as the kind of thing that a team could read together. It was like, hey, this could be a good framing for us. I talked about earlier this idea of like, you need to talk about these things so that your team kind of like mirrors back. To me, this was like one of these like, hey, let’s let’s let’s have Danny talk to us about these things through this book. And then that will kind of create a conversation for us where we can get outside of it and look at it and say, what do we think about that? How are we doing? Rich Birch — Can you picture that? What but what could this look like if I if I went through this with my team? Danny Anderson — Yeah, I think it’s ah it would be a great discussion starter. I don’t think pastors talk about this stuff. Like I have a whole chapter in there on friendship. I don’t think pastors talk about that. They don’t talk about their friends…
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — …because it’s really hard for a pastor to have friends. It’s really hard for staff members to have friends. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — Like how do you have friends? Like all the people in your life go to your church. Like how how does that look? Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Danny Anderson — How do you strike that balance? I have a whole chapter in there on your physical health and how your physical health affects your your your ability to to serve and lead and do your job. like Pastors don’t talk about that stuff. Listen, most pastors are out of shape and overweight.
Rich Birch — It’s true. Danny Anderson — So why would you why would you talk about being in healthy when you’re not healthy? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Danny Anderson — So this is a book that really puts its finger on like some of the key issues ah that affect ah leadership and having a healthy balance between being really good at your job, but also ah being super healthy in your… Like I have a whole chapter on family where…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Danny Anderson — …how do you balance the this the the tensions of, like I know some churches and staffs, they’re so out of balance. Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — Oh my gosh, I was i heard about a church the other day that did six services on Christmas Eve. Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — Six.
Rich Birch — Right.
Danny Anderson — And look, i’m all I’m all about reaching lost people. I think it’s awesome. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Danny Anderson — But six services on Christmas Eve? Rich Birch — Right. Danny Anderson — Like and and they’re like rejoicing and praising God. And hey, I’m sure a lot of people got saved. I’m sure it was awesome. But I’m thinking about guess who I’m thinking about, Rich? Rich Birch — Yeah, the families. Yeah, for sure. Danny Anderson — Their staff, their staff, they you know, they just had services on Saturday, on Sunday, and then you turn around and do six Christmas Eve service. Anyway, I’m not dogging the church. I mean, I love reaching people. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Danny Anderson — But but man, if they don’t get that balance worked out, their staff will get burned out.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Danny Anderson — And then they’ll resent the work, you know? And so, you know, it’s really it’s really a book about, you know, helping people talk about the the important things that need to be discussed and work through to have a healthy balance of of ministry and life. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, like I say, friends, we’ve got a link to the show notes in link in the show notes. You can also pick it up in Amazon and I’m sure where other where books are sold, that sort of thing. We want to point people to that. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to talk about the podcast as well. I had an honor of being on an episode.
Danny Anderson — Yes, you did. Thank you for that.
Rich Birch — But tell us a little bit about, now, tell us a little bit about the podcast. I will put a link to that as well. We want people to check that out. And I think it would be a great kind of companion to what we’re doing here on unSeminary for sure. Danny Anderson — Yeah. So, I mean, the Church Growth Unleashed is a podcast to help pastors, church leaders, and ministry leaders. I mean, I had the host of the unSeminary podcast on there last month. Rich Birch — Oh, sure. Danny Anderson — So that’s the quality. Rich Birch — Yeah. Danny Anderson — No, no, no. Listen, that’s the quality of people I try to have on there. And we just, hey, we just talk about this stuff. We talk about everything that that pastors go through, ministry leaders go through in ah in an authentic way. Like I’m an open book. Like I talk about everything. Because I want pastors to to have a place where they could be like, man, this guy gets me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Danny Anderson — Or I was wondering about that, or no one’s ever talked about that before, or I needed somebody to say that. Because that’s what I needed as a young pastor. Like, I need help. And so that’s basic it’s basically, it’s basically the same heart as your podcast, just to help pastors, help ministry leaders to be effective as possible. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Good, I’d love, like I say, we’ll put we’ll put links to the show notes down there and do the podcasts and the books and all that stuff. Danny, this has been super encouraging. conversation today. I love what you’re doing. I love what Emmanuel’s up to. I love the balance that you, you know, have that you’re striking. You know, Emmanuel is, I love a church that’s aggressive for the gospel. That’s like, hey, we want to do stuff to reach people. And you can see that in the way you guys act, which is great. But then at the same time, you’re raising all these values and us, you know, frankly, some of these deeper questions that it can be easy to just not think about. And so I i just want to honor you for doing that. I think it’s incredible. So, so great to connect today. Danny Anderson — Well, thank you, Rich. You’re doing a great job. Love everything you do. Love your books. They’ve had a huge impact on my life. Keep writing them. Keep keep pumping into us. Rich Birch — Yeah. Nice. Danny Anderson — I know your audience is it gets tremendous value from this podcast and so do I, so thanks for what you do. Rich Birch — Where do we want to send people online to connect with you or to connect with the church just as we wrap up today? Danny Anderson — Yeah, so on Instagram, it’s @dannyanderson23. And that’s my Instagram handle. And then the the church website is eclife.org, eclife.org. Rich Birch — Love it. Danny Anderson — Yeah. Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Danny. Appreciate you being here today. Danny Anderson — Hey, thanks, Rich. God bless.
Great Leaders Over Great Content: Secret Sauce to Thriving Groups with Adam Ader
Feb 06, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Adam Ader, the Groups Director at Parkview Christian Church in Illinois.
Is your church looking to improve how you connect people into life-changing groups? Wondering how to lead a growing group ministry that truly impacts people’s lives? Tune in as Adam shares valuable insights on building a thriving group ministry that focuses on leadership development, group engagement, and real-life transformation.
Raise up great leaders. // Parkview’s groups strategy uses term-based, free-market small groups to foster community and spiritual growth. Groups run in three 10-week terms per year, allowing participants to engage in short-term commitments while maintaining flexibility. Parkview believes that, at the end of the day, a great leader will outweigh perfect content and they can turn mediocre content into something more engaging. Parkview works hard to raise up great leaders, helping them identify who is the segment of people they are trying to reach with their group.
Types of groups offered. // Parkview also leverages leaders’ passions to create groups that resonate with people. There are five categories that the groups at Parkview fall into. The first is Rooted, a foundational group for new believers which starts them on their journey. Then there are shared interest groups, general Bible-based small groups, support groups for people going through difficult circumstances, and Alpha groups for skeptics and seekers.
The ten-week model. // Ten weeks can seem like a short timeframe to really grow and connect with others, however small groups can fizzle out if they stay together too long. Having an open-ended strategy can set a lot of the groups to end in failure. The goal of these ten-week groups is not to take participants from point A to Z but to help them take a meaningful step forward in their faith. By giving groups a well-defined end date, you provide them with the opportunity to end well and either recommit going forward, or explore new groups.
Great leaders outweigh content. // We can become so focused on finding the perfect content that we miss out on the things that are truly important in small groups. We need to be disciples and help others grow, so focus on identifying and empowering leaders who can guide others effectively.
Identify what you’re looking for. // Have clarity about what you want in a leader. Parkview encourages potential leaders to see their role as facilitating community rather than delivering lectures.
Recruiting new small group leaders. // The best recruiters of new leaders are existing leaders. Encourage group leaders to be thinking, from the beginning, about who might be someone that can step up and do what they are doing. Emphasize relational skills and a love for Jesus over theological expertise.
Offer training and support. // Parkview has a 90-minute initial training for all potential group leaders that covers the church’s mission, vision, values, and group systems. Once a person has committed to becoming a leader, they undergo ten weeks of training while they lead their group. These trainings include a mix of bite-sized video content and in-depth discussions. This modular approach allows leaders to engage with essential topics such as building community, managing conflict, and fostering spiritual growth. In addition, new leaders are paired with a coach—an experienced volunteer leader who provides guidance and encouragement throughout the initial stages of group leadership.
Visit Parkview Christian Church at parkviewchurch.com and download the Parkview Groups Leader Guidehere.
EXTRA CREDIT // Get the Ready-to-Edit “When to Refer” Decision Guide for Small Group Leaders
Are your small group leaders equipped to handle sensitive situations effectively? This exclusive resource from unSeminary Extra Credit is a ready-to-edit document to make it easy for you to provide your small group leaders with a training resource on when they should refer people in their group to someone else for assistance. Complete with a customizable decision tree and practical prompts, this tool empowers leaders to confidently care for their groups.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am super excited for today’s conversation. This is one of those conversations that’s got in the middle of it a common tension that it’s a misnomer that um that lots of people have that we’re going to bust today. We’ve got some myths we’re going to bust. Plus, it’s going to be super helpful for you. Super excited to have ah Adam Ader with us. He is the groups director at Parkview Christian Church. It’s a multi-site church in ah in Illinois and church online. They’re repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Super excited to have you on the show today, Adam. Welcome. So glad you’re here. Adam Ader — Hey, thanks, Rich. Appreciate it. Rich Birch — This is going to be wonderful. Thanks for your time. Really appreciate that. Give us a sense of Parkview. Kind of tell us the story. If, you know, if people were to arrive this weekend, kind of give us a sense of that and then tell us a little bit about your role. Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I had the good fortune to land at Parkview as my first job out of college. Landed as a student ministry intern in 2005, actually.
Rich Birch — Love it. Adam Ader — Had a little bit more hair growing up top at the time then I do now. But I got lucky. I didn’t know a thing about the church and landed there to find out that they were one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And I was like, Oh, what what have I gotten myself into?
Adam Ader — But Parkview has been through like an incredible journey, really over the last 20 plus years of of just explosive growth. And we’re we’re in the south suburbs of Chicago. Our original location is in Orland Park. We’ve we’ve grown to the point where we have three locations, and they’re all kind of within a 15-minute drive with each other in a little sort of Bermuda triangle of Parkview campuses. And, you know, our our lead…
Rich Birch — But in in that Bermuda triangle, good things happen, not bad things happen. Adam Ader — Yeah, we don’t see too many planes almost, thankfully.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Adam Ader — But yeah, so the church has just been growing incredibly fast. We’ve seen God breathe incredible life just in people being kind of drawn into the church. We’re in a heavily Catholic and ex-Catholic area. And you know and that brings all kinds of exciting and interesting challenges with it. But um but God has just used what we’re doing and blessed it in incredible ways.
Adam Ader — And you know there have been times where we’ve been white knuckling in it and just trying to hang on for dear life as more and more people showed up. And we’ve tried a lot of different things and and God has seen scene fit to to bless some of them in some really powerful ways. So it’s been an exciting place to kind of cut my teeth doing ministry. I’ll hit my 20-year mark in June of this year, actually. Rich Birch — Congratulations. Adam Ader — Thank you much. Thank you much. I’m waiting on that gold watch. I don’t think I’m going to get it. Rich Birch — Nice. Adam Ader — But yeah, I met my wife my third day at Parkview. And I had my kids here, and I couldn’t imagine a better place to get to do ministry and just feel incredibly blessed every time every day, I get to do this. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so great. So fun to hear. You know, we often talk with leaders in fast growing churches, and that’s definitely kind of a substrate of, you know, kind of under all the different people that we talk to. And one of the things I want to kind of pick apart today and understand from your seats, your seat as the what’s multiple seats is you do lots of different things in this area – that’s for sure in groups – is how are you getting people connected to groups at Parkview?
Rich Birch — So maybe let’s start with kind of an overview, kind of talk us through, let’s say you’re talking to an executive pastor or maybe another groups pastor, you’re at a conference and they’re like, tell me about groups at Parkview. What’s what’s all your short hands, open, closed, seasonal, you know, you know, how long do they stay together? All that kind of stuff. Give us a framework for what they are. And then we’ll dig in a little deeper. Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s that’s great. I’ll I’ll talk you through kind of our our current strategy. Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — And then there’s like some history that’s going to have to go go into this a little bit. Rich Birch — Sure. Adam Ader — [inaudible] But where we’re currently at, we we focus largely on term-based free market small groups.
Rich Birch — Okay. Adam Ader — Um, so we you’ll hear more about this down the road, but we we have leaned heavily into Rooted in the past. And we have a handful of sort of core content pieces that we will offer groups for each of these terms. Three times a year, we’ll offer 10-week groups terms. um And people can kind of opt into the group that seems best to them through a group finder tool that’s kind of housed on our website. Kind of a common thing, in a lot of churches do that. We’re not reinventing the wheel by any means in any of those areas. Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — But but really, we lean hard into leveraging like the passions of our leaders. We think that at the end of the day, a great leader is going to outweigh content. Adam Ader — And really what it comes down to, you know, our belief is a great leader can make average mediocre or even substandard content work really well, but a poor leader can take just to about any content off the tracks.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Adam Ader — So we we lean hard into raising up good leaders and helping them identify who are they trying to reach with their group? What kind of people along the road of faith do they want to invite in the community and help them just take at least one step forward? Rich Birch — Wow. Okay. Adam Ader — So, um you know, we do we do have long-term groups that run and, you know, they kind of do their thing and we love them, but most of them are closed groups. We’re leaning really hard into these term-based semesters, 10 weeks usually. And again, that’s kind of a rhythm that we picked up from Rooted along the way, that 10-week piece. Seems like a sweet spot…
Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — …for us to help people get in the good community. So give them an off ramp before it gets weird. You know what I mean? Rich Birch — Okay. That’s good. Well, tell us about, give us a sense of when you say free market, you talk about, it and I definitely want to drill in on that. I think it’s a huge insight, great leaders, outweigh content. We’re going to definitely come back to that, but give us a sense of what some of those kind of free market groups. What we, some of the passions, if, you know, if I was attending Parkview will be some of the things I would see on that tool to pick for the kinds of groups. Adam Ader — Yeah, great question. We kind of dropped them into a five sort of buckets, but there’s some flexibility with them. The first one would be that Rooted. We’d offer Rooted groups, and we see those as being kind of like a foundation point. People who are, you know, early in their journey can step in, really starting to gain a foundational understanding of who we are, what we believe, how we practice faith. Adam Ader — We offer shared interest groups. This one is kind of our newest deal. And this is, if we have a leader that has a passion that’s not even a Bible study based content, but they want to get people in the community around that hobby, we allow them to launch a group through our finder with some tools and support from us. And, you know, we see that happen. And we’ve seen some really great fruit from it, especially around a phenomenon that I don’t even understand yet, but it’s pickleball, man. Rich Birch — I was going to ask, are there pickleball groups? Adam Ader — Yes, there are. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Adam Ader — The first pickleball group we launched, man, we had to close that 40 registrations. Rich Birch — Oh, sure. That’s great. Adam Ader — Yeah, just people love the pickleball. They love it. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s fun. That’s fun. Adam Ader — Yeah, so so we had those available and and we’ve seen some great stuff there and we set we try to set the understanding that you know this is about community. But we want to help every person even in those groups take some step towards Jesus, right? And that’s where [inaudible]. We offer what we would just call a general small group type, which is for leaders that are choosing their own content, but it’s still a discussion-based, Bible study-based group type.
Adam Ader — Support groups are an important leg for us as well. Groups that are just available for people who are going through difficult circumstances or common times in life. And then we also have Alpha groups available. And alpha is, ah you know, Nicky Gumbel and England’s content. And this is stuff that is, ah exists for skeptics, people with big questions about faith. It’s a great content to invite people who maybe aren’t all the way on the bus, maybe have one foot on, one foot off. And we’ve done some some creative things in the past with launching Alpha and bars and restaurants and things like that. Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — And we have those groups now available as well through our finder tool. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Adam Ader — So those are kind of the broad buckets. Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s really cool. I love that. So, so we’ve got Rooted, shared interests, small, small, typical kind of small, not typical, but small group kind of content, support groups, and then Alpha – love those five. Rich Birch — So talk to me about 10 weeks. I’m going to pretend to be the devil’s advocate. Don’t know that I should say that on a church podcast, but there I just did. 10 weeks. Like I, you, I, you, I understand the like, okay, where it can opt out before it gets weird. But what about on the other end, is 10 weeks long enough to actually accomplish the kind of, you know, community goals, faith goals. Talk talk us through that. Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s great. And I And I do think that it’s easy to look at this and say, how can we really how can we really get into it and grow together in such a short timeframe? I was one of those people who was skeptical of that model for a while, if I’m being totally honest. Rich Birch — Sure. Yep. Adam Ader — I’m like ah But you know what we’ve seen is that under the right circumstances, people open up really quickly.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s true. Adam Ader — And this is something we learned [inaudible] immediately. And I think coming out of out of COVID, out of lockdown, out of having to learn to use tools like Zoom and and Teams meetings to do school and all these things, um man, I don’t think people take as long to break walls down because there’s just a sense of maybe an unspoken desperation for a real community and real relationships out there. And we don’t think that 10 weeks is the thing that’s going to take person from A to Z…
Rich Birch — Right.
Adam Ader — …but we do believe that 10 weeks is enough time for a person to take one solid step forward in their faith. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Adam Ader — And so we feel like if we get people through 10 weeks and we can point to that and say, here’s the way that God has shaped or changed you in this time period. Oh man, that’s a win worth celebrating. And there’s something that happens, I think, when when small groups stick together too long, right? And I’m sure we’ve all seen it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Yep. Adam Ader — You know, where where you end up in this awkward sort of like a double dutch routine where everybody feels like they kind of want out and they’re no longer putting the effort into it but nobody wants to be the one to say that the marriage is over, sort of. You know?
Rich Birch — Sure. Sure.
Adam Ader — And and what we see, you we were seeing a lot of these groups that would they would fizzle after a certain amount of time. And then they wouldn’t be able to make eye contact with each other in church. Right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Okay. Adam Ader — And it becomes weird. Rich Birch — Yes. Adam Ader — And suddenly they don’t know if they’re welcome to try a new group. They don’t know if it’s you know acceptable for them to try something different or if they’ve failed somehow. Right? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Adam Ader — So I feel like by having an open-ended long-term strategy, you’re setting a lot of your groups up to end in failure. And I believe that how you end things is almost as important as how you start them.
Rich Birch — right Adam Ader — And while by giving groups a solid end date, you give them the chance to end well…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Adam Ader — …and also to recommit going forward. We hit the end of the 10 weeks and we’re like, man, this group, we’re we’re going places together. We love each other. like Let’s recommit to each other for the next period of time.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Adam Ader — And I think there’s power in that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I can, I’m a huge fan of Alpha. I, at my church, outside of my job, I volunteer as an Alpha host. And so I get, I’ve often said like, it’s amazing in 10 weeks. It’s i actually kind of like the beginning of it because it’s like, these are all people I don’t know. And I’m like, I know by the end of these 10 weeks, we’re not only going to see some great progress happen in people’s lives, but we’re also going to see, you know, they’re going to form some friendships, which is incredible. So love that. Rich Birch — Well, let’s loop back. Great leaders outweigh content. That’s a huge saying. I think that’s true. Huge learning. So talk to us about that kind of philosophically. And I’d love to get in how do you find leaders, you know, doing these term based? I feel like, man, aren’t you on a treadmill all the time trying to get into leaders training them? Let’s talk through all that. Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s, that’s great. You know, I, I like like every guy who goes to Bible college, I ended up playing some guitar, right? And, you know, and, ah you know, I went through a period like much to my wife’s horror, where I spent way too much time and money trying to find like the the perfect guitar and the perfect, you know, amp and pedal and all these things. And and a quote from a, from a jazz musician named Philemonius Monk stood out to me at the time he said, um you know he said, he said, gear is important. But he said you got to figure that stuff out early and fast so that you can focus on things that are more important.
Adam Ader — And for me, I think that that holds true with content, especially in group settings…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Adam Ader — …where we can sort of get so focused on finding the perfect content that is going to do you know everything that we want it to do. And that’s going to create these you know these saintly, fully-disciple, fully-on-mission people.
Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — And I think we can get so bogged down in the weeds that we miss out on the stuff that is that is truly important. Because I think that, man, people are the thing that make the engine go, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. Adam Ader — And and if we’re if we’re helping people become people who can disciple, who can help others grow, right? Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — that’s kind of the that’s the money spot. That’s where wherere where we need to be pouring gas on the fire if we want to really make a difference. And I’ve seen it play out time and time again. You know we’ve had you know we we had a long period of being heavily invested in Rooted. And in fact, for years, it was almost our only group offering outside of the corporate… Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Just kind of pushing everybody through Rooted. Yeah. Adam Ader — Yeah, everybody all in, and it was that it was a beautiful season of like top-down involvement from our from my church and our leadership that ah that helped a lot of people grow. And I was one of those, again, early naysayers who was like, you you mean to tell me we’re just gonna keep shuffling out the same content over and over again, right? How’s that gonna work? And then you start to see it in action and you see it snowball and gain momentum…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — …and you see people who participate multiple times, and yet come out of it looking a little different each time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Adam Ader — And then you see the leader step up and come out of it looking a little bit bit better and a little bit stronger, and the fruit is a little bit more visible each time. So that was enough to kind of break me of my my obsession and focus on content, and instead say, you know what, if we can find something that aligns with where we want to go, where we want to see people go, who we want them to become, right? We can…that’s that’s enough, right? Because if we put good leaders that we trust on guiding people through this content, we can feel very confident that good things are going to happen. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let me challenge a little bit though. Where do you find all these great leaders? Like that that that sounds amazing. I think our, maybe it’s just me, but I’ve leaned on the crutch of content in the past because I literally have thought I probably haven’t articulated like this until you said it but I’m like, yeah, but if we just get some good content, we can kind of take a mediocre leader and make it work. But man, if I’m putting more weight on finding leaders, how are you finding them? What are you doing to to extract these leaders out of you know your community to find them? Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s really good. I think um for us, you know I think a big key has been has been clarity about what we want from a leader first and foremost. Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Adam Ader — And when you when you say, you know hey, I have a stack of mediocre leaders and I’m going to try to let the content be you know be a champion, I think we we have leaned hard instead into saying, what do you actually need to lead a good experience through this season? Right? Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — And trying to set the bar for for people help them understand we don’t need you to be a preacher, a theologian, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Adam Ader — You don’t need [inaudible] certificates to lead a good group. Man, you just got to have some relational chops and care enough to go in on this. And, and then reframing group leaders as as guides, right? Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — You know, its sometimes we’ll use the term Sherpa. But now I think according to my daughters, that means that’s a clothing item. And more than it is, they know. Rich Birch — Nice. That’s funny. Adam Ader — But, you know, um but if we can reframe what we actually expect from them, and sort of like remove some of the terror, being asked to lead, right? Rich Birch — Yes. That’s good. That’s good. Yep. For sure. Adam Ader — You know I mean, that that helps us get people on the bus. And then you know we like to say that, you know, we can take a willing heart with some relational skill and a love for Jesus, and we can we can get them to the place where they can lead a great group. Um, I think we’ve been guilty in the past of kind of saying, you know, Hey, here’s, here’s your stuff, right? Here’s, here’s, here’s your content. Here’s, here’s a, here’s a one hour training…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Adam Ader — …and, uh, good luck. You know, go go forth us and, uh, and change lives. Uh, and I think that, uh, both through the way Rooted the structured and through the lessons we’ve learned around that over the years, we’ve learned that, um, having a, having a robust investment in helping those leaders figure it out, um, walking alongside of them, not just in a and it kind of a vague address sense, but, you know, weekly, we’re connected to these leaders and um helping them troubleshoot issues. Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — In that sense, right, we are able to get leaders there. The second part of this is, and this is another lesson learned from Rooted for us. I swear, I don’t work for the Rooted network, but you’re going to hear that from me. Rich Birch — No, it’s good. We’re fans of Rooted. We’ve had, we’ve had the Rooted guys on. We’ve, it comes up for sure. Like it’s, it’s a substrate and particularly, you know, fast growing churches, people across the country, it’s really had a huge impact. We, we love, I love the guys at Mariners and love, you know, their gift to to all of us through Rooted. It’s amazing. It’s great. So yeah, no, that’s good. What’s what’s the other lesson you’ve learned through that? Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely, is um that the the best recruiters of leaders are leaders for us. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Adam Ader — So yeah, and that’s that’s a Rooted foundational principle. And we’ve been able to sort of transplant that from Rooted to all of our group types. Adam Ader — We start with that end in mind, where we’re asking leaders to from week one, be considering who’s who’s the person that can step up and do what you’re doing right now. Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — And since most of them have come from this place of, hey, we got shoulder tapped by our leader, right. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Adam Ader — And ah they were crazy. But I took a step out and and I received what I needed to complete a good group experience. So that that has been really helpful for us. And then, you know, our group of pastors on the ground are just, man, they’re really good at casting vision…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — …and making making compelling asks. So that’s kind of a secret sauce for us. Rich Birch — That’s good. Talk to me about the support and training, just a little bit more, kind of flesh that out. If if I if one of those great groups pastors came to me and said, hey, we you know, you’d be interested, we’d be interested in you leading a group, um how how do you provide some training and support for me for, you know, a term or multiple terms? What’s that look like? Adam Ader — Yeah, for us, it really comes down to we we do have an initial ah about a 90 minute training that we’re going to take all leaders through. And that’s where they’re going to gain base level understanding of our mission, our vision, our values and our systems in groups. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Love it. Adam Ader — You know, that’s that’s the starting point. But then from there, once we sort of would get the yes, we seal the deal, you know, we close the sale. We get them connected to do a couple of things. The first one is we get them connected to a coach. And that’s a volunteer leader for us who leads leaders. Not a crazy concept. But that’s just one more voice in their ear, kind of telling them, hey, you can do this. And I got your back, right? I’m praying [inaudible] all that good stuff. Adam Ader — And then we’re really committed to 10 weeks of ongoing training that happens around the first 10 weeks that their group meets. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Adam Ader — And that’s been really helpful for us. we’ve We’ve just kind of developed some pieces in-house that can be delivered in anything from a 10-minute bite-size ah video message to an hour-long discussion.
Rich Birch —That’s cool. Adam Ader — But so it’s kind of modular for us. And for groups that meet on our site locations during the short term, those ten-week terms, they’re going to receive from one of our group staff members or coaches weekly guided training through those 10 topics.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Adam Ader — And they’re just around you know basic vital things you need to do to lead a group well. Things like how to you know create community from the start, how to serve together, how to deal with conflict, how to help people grow, all these things. And for our groups that generate that need offsite in homes or locations, we have that content in video format, and it can be sort of administered by their coach or by a staff member. Hey, watch this video. Let’s have a back and forth conversation about it. Let’s see how your group is doing in this area. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. And you know, both from Alpha and from Rooted, there’s there is some power you can see in the like, hey, we’re leading this together. We’re all together. We’re kind of doing some sort of pre-huddle thing, you know, a little bit of training, a little bit of um even like, hey, I’m having the trouble with this person or I’m not sure how to draw them out. It’s amazing how that kind of on-site in-person feedback really helps leaders grow and step into you know something great. So you can see how taking similar lessons and then applying them to the rest of your group system. Yeah, I can totally see how that is ah is working for sure. Rich Birch — Pivoting in a slightly different direction I know when you know over the years sitting in the kind of executive pastor seat, the communication seat, trying to kind of you know we got a lot of different things we need to communicate. And I’m thinking three terms a year group stuff like that’s a lot of talking about groups to get people into groups. What does that look like for you guys? How do you actually communicate like how are you you know promoting groups what does that side of it look like? And then um yeah let’s start there that’s the starting point. Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s great. And, you know, it can’t it can kind of feel like a let’s just keep shoveling coal on to the same fire…
Rich Birch — Right.
Adam Ader — …you know, over the course of the year thing. Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — But ah but what what we found is actually kind of the regularity of it has really helped us kind of create some rhythms throughout the year that have like created a sense of expectancy in our people that have been with us for a while.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — And helps even with things like, hey, when we’re talking speech and calendar, promotional marketing things, the The good thing is we you know we lean hard into celebrating wins of all sizes and we lean hard into gathering stories, right? I mean, if you’ve got the numbers and you’ve got the stories…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Adam Ader — …then you know you can feel strongly like you’re winning. So if we’re if we’re gathering those things and we have a bucket of those stories, those testimonials, it makes marketing a little bit easier, right? Adam Ader — And you know and then when we have a a marketing and communications team that has bought in with us, and when our upper leadership is also bought into the vision and the approach for groups, those conversations do become quite a bit easier, right? Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — Obviously we all we all have one sandbox to play in, right? And we know that you know the weekend announcement um you know is kind of the thing that we all vie for, and the the sermon topic mention is you know, even oh that whole question…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the holy grail. Yeah, for sure.
Adam Ader — Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it’s but ah thankfully, you know, it doesn’t turn into a game of who can butter up the senior pastor best to to get a toss in. When the vision is there from the top, it makes that stuff a little easier. And so when we can go back and say, hey, this is the thing that that is both moving and growing, right, and we’re seeing life change happen in it for us in our context, it’s not really too hard to get the buy-in for the mention we need. Adam Ader — The other thing that’s been really helpful for us is that we’ve learned, because we now have multiple group types available on this group finder, that trying to create a sense of FOMO, a fear of missing out for people, is, is a real thing that can lend some, uh, that can give us some kind of heat going into a group season.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Adam Ader — Because when we can say, well, we can say, Hey, but we’ve got a group for you, no matter where you’re at on your journey, but they fill up fast and there’s not an unlimited set of spots for just the one big thing we’re all doing.
Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — You need to get up, you need to get up on that group finder on January 4th, when those groups go live…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Adam Ader — …if you want your “pick of a litter.” So. Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — That’s all you know that that thing I think has been able to replace some of that ah, Oh man, we have got to get the main stage announcement every week this month. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Adam Ader — You know? Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s good. Well, and you can see the, as somebody who’s mildly interested in marketing stuff, you can see how that kind of open window, hey, enrollments open, jump in, ah you know, a couple times a year, you could build some serious insight, excitement around that. We kind of, we kind of, you know, joked about it, but loop back on a lead pastor think of a lead pastor’s listening in and talk to us, you know, what would you say to a lead pastor about the like, random throwaway comment in their message about groups, something they’re learning in a group, you know, how important is that to the, you know, the the group’s culture at at your church? Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, you know, for us, um what it comes down to is that’s the most trusted voice in our organization for our people, right? Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — We know it all. And um sometimes, you know, you get the sermon, right? Okay, we’re going to do the one big, “this is about community” sermon this year. Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — You know, if it when you get that, you know, that’s gold. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Adam Ader — We know that. But people are listening to that, to the things that are sort of in between the big points, right? So if, if your lead pastor can say, uh, you know, I did Rooted this fall…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — …you know, and in my Rooted group, this is something that happened. In my Rooted group, here’s something I learned. Or here’s a way we connected or in my prayer experience during Rooted, I got, you know, I felt God speak to me in this way. Uh, man, to me, those, those reinforced the importance of the big announcements, and they turned people’s ears. Because we have to battle constantly the idea that all of our ex-Catholics, a lot of them don’t have a strong context for just the things that your mainline denominational churches do, right?
Rich Birch — Yep. Adam Ader — So the idea that somebody came to us from the maybe the Methodist church down the road that they probably have some idea what a small group is, we can’t assume those things. Rich Birch — Right. Adam Ader — We can’t take those things for granted. So to hear personal stories, the impact stories, or have stories shared of life change from those things, those are those are invaluable to us. You know? They’re they’re also not things that we can count on at every moment because, like like you alluded to earlier, and in a church that is growing rapidly and whose decision making is filtered through the lens of how are we going to reach the prodigal. We have to fit in and align with that, or you know we’re just pulling sideways energy away from the mission, and that’s something we never want to do or be. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Um, do you do in any of your, um, types of groups in that maybe it’d be in that kind of small group, the kind of more typical small group content kind of group. Do you do sermon based groups, like groups that follow along and generate questions or maybe do you guys generate questions based on, you know, what you guys are talking about on the weekends? What tell me about that. Adam Ader — Yeah, great question. We we have a weekly sermon study guide that’s developed in-house.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — And goes out via just an email subscription list that can be accessed through our website.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Adam Ader — Goes out weekly service over the course of the year. And we make that available to any of our long-term group types that want to engage that way. It’s not a primary push for us, but it is available and an option.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Adam Ader — Last data for us was that out of groups that are not meeting ah just in a 10-week window, those long-term groups, about 25 to 30% of them are using that weekly service study guide. Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. That’s cool. Well, you’ve given us, then and then we’ll link to this in the show notes. You’ve given us the Parkview Group’s leader guide, ah which is a fantastic resource. I would encourage people to, you know, pick this up and, you know, take a look through it. It’s a, it’s a great resource even to inspire you, but tell us a little bit about where does this work in the training process? How are you using this tool? Talk to us a little bit about this. Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s great. So all of our leaders, regardless of group type that they’re leading, even if it’s a group type like Alpha or Rooted that would have some of its own distinctive training elements, is still going to get walked through this handbook…
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Adam Ader — …by a member of our team as their first step into groups. We feel like it’s really important for them to start with the overall mission, vision, and purposes of of our church, and then how groups fits into that. The last thing we’re trying to do is create offshoots, right…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Adam Ader — …or or little [inaudible] that meet in people’s living rooms…
Rich Birch — Yep, yes. Yes.
Adam Ader — …you know we don’t want that.
Adam Ader — But this handbook tool is meant to just give them grounding of you know what a group leader is, what we expect from them. You know the we have four traits listed in there that would a factor into what we think a successful group leader even is. And then it introduces them to our kind of our systems and processes, which you know are are essential to keep people on track with all that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Adam Ader — So that’s really the place of the handbook. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great. i I’d encourage people to take a look what the part what there’s a bunch of it that I loved. I love the clarity of the language is clearly you spend have spent a lot of time to hey, let’s get to something that’s like super practical. Later in the book, there’s a whole or in the booklet, there’s a whole conversation around, hey, you are not alone. And it clearly outlines what a coach is and what a coach isn’t, which I loved. I love that language, particularly. I think it frames that discussion very well. And then also, which I think is so important because I’ve seen too many group members kind of die on the vine on this issue. It’s when to refer.
Rich Birch —So like, if there are things happening in your group that are going sideways, like because these people want to help folks, they just keep taking it. And it’s like, no, there are times where we should you know refer to other people. Let’s let’s escalate this stuff. I thought, again, what ah what a helpful, even just downloading that and ripping it off, sure, give them credit. But you know using that kind of language would be helpful ah you know for you friends that are listening in. It’s a great resource. Thanks for providing that for us. Adam Ader — Oh yeah, no problem. You know It’s like every every group leader’s worst nightmare, right? That rogue group member that you don’t know what to do with. And man, we we feel like the quicker we can put those fears at ease for people, say it’s not your job to manage people in crisis through these things. You can support, pray and love, but man, send them where they need to go. That’s important. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Great, great, great resource. Thanks for for sharing that for us. As we kind of look to the future, what are, you know, when you think about groups down the road, what are the questions you’re asking, things that are on the horizon, stuff that you’re thinking about, you know, that we’re, you know, you’re wrestling with, or maybe some stuff you’re experimenting with, that kind of thing. What what are you thinking about for the future for groups at Parkview? Adam Ader — Yeah, you know, I mean, one of the things we’re thinking about is how to help people sort of self-select into the right group for them at any given moment. Rich Birch — That’s good. Adam Ader — And, you know, we we want to be able to offer with each of these open groups terms, we want to be able to offer something that can catch people no matter where they’re at along their spiritual journey. Right. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s great. Adam Ader — And that’s where content’s helpful. But it also means when you have more options, you have more ah more potential for confusion, right? More opportunities to sort of lose people in the weeds of what do I do?
Rich Birch — Right.
Adam Ader — And we’ve also, you know, we’ve all seen what happens when somebody gets in the wrong kind of group, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. Adam Ader — And but so figuring out ways to help people gain a greater understanding of what’s available. But also um we’re having conversations about what maybe a short assessment tool for people might look like through through our app or our website to help people, you know maybe if they can answer a few questions and we can spit back some group suggestions, maybe even alongside some personal like growth resources and serving suggestions. That’s that’s the kind of tool that really has my ears perked.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Adam Ader — Because you know we all know that there’s no one size fits all group type or even personal growth tool that’s going to be exactly what everyone needs along the way. But trying to help people find the right avenue and the right step. We want simplicity, but we also want enough flexibility that we can yeah really help people take sort of a custom-made step forward. Rich Birch — That’s great. I love that idea of, you know, you could imagine a survey that’s five or six questions that kind of helps get a sense of that. And then it spits out a likeliness score or something like that. Here’s a couple of different types of groups that you could try. um Yeah, I could see that could be really helpful paired within your online group selector. That could be super helpful for sure for helping people self sort. Rich Birch — Yeah the the the upside of self-sorting on a you know a menu is, wow, there’s lots of options. The downside is, wow, there’s lots of options. You know?
Adam Ader — Right!
Rich Birch — So um you know helping people with that, is you can see where that’d be helpful. Well, this has been incredible, super helpful, Adam. Anything you’d like to say kind of in as we close today’s conversation, I really appreciate you being here today. Adam Ader — Yeah, no, no, I would just I just like to say that, you know, the the real journey for me has been people, people, people.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Adam Ader — And, you know, through my whole time in student ministry here, where I was kind of running programming and and doing all of your standard student minister stuff. Um, you know, over, over that 13 year stretch, uh, it really became about, man, all these hours spent in front of the computer, uh, planning and writing, um, are they impacting people as much as, as the leaders that we’re pouring into? And the answer came back to me no over and over again. Adam Ader — So when I had an opportunity to, uh, to jump into groups world, it made, it made perfect sense to me. And, um, man, every, every hour spent pouring into a leader, pouring into people, man, that’s not one wasted. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Adam Ader — And that’s where I want to continue to pour my, my energy and I hope others will too. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I appreciate you being here, Adam. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely, parkviewchurch.com is our church’s website. You can see what we’re doing, see what we’re doing to try to continue reaching people in the south suburbs, in the south side of Chicago. And um you know my contact information is also available on the website. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks for being here today, sir. Thank you so much. Adam Ader — Hey, thanks Rich, appreciate it.
Breaking Free: Addressing Sexual Brokenness in the Church with Nick Stumbo
Jan 30, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nick Stumbo, the Executive Director of Pure Desire Ministries.
According to a Barna study, 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women view pornography at least occasionally, with 67% of pastors having a personal history of porn use. How can churches effectively address pervasive issues of sexual brokenness and foster healing within their congregations? Tune in as Nick shares his personal journey of healing, and how churches can create both a safe place and a safe process through which people can experience transformation and freedom.
Finding healing. // Despite the traditional approaches of using tools like accountability groups and software, Nick still found himself trapped in a cycle of pornography use during his time pastoring at East Hills Alliance Church. It wasn’t until he encountered Pure Desire’s deeper, more comprehensive approach—focused on understanding the “why” behind these behaviors—that he and his wife found lasting healing. His public disclosure to the church body led to a revival of forgiveness and healing that ultimately launched Pure Desire groups for men and women.
A pervasive issue. // Sexuality is a deeply ingrained part of human identity and many people grow up without proper teaching or guidance on how to handle their sexual desires. This, combined with the pressures of living in a highly sexualized culture, creates a perfect storm for addiction to thrive.
Addressing the root cause. // Pornography becomes the false solution to a real problem. We all have a warped view of our own identity and value and worth, and as a result, we have a warped view of who God is. Brokenness from past trauma or pain or lies we believe about ourselves stems from our early years. These emotional and psychological aspects of sexual brokenness need to be addressed for true healing to occur.
The church’s key role. // Churches often outsource healing in the area of sexual brokenness, encouraging individuals to seek professional counseling rather than providing support within the church. However, Nick believes that churches can and should play a key role in providing healing through small group-based ministries. The church, as a body of believers, is uniquely equipped to offer a safe space where people can share their struggles, find support, and experience long-term transformation.
Create a safe place. // Creating a culture of grace within the church is critical if we are going to shift the narrative surrounding sexual brokenness away from shame and secrecy and towards openness and support. Churches must become a safe space where people can confess their struggles without fear of condemnation. Leaders and staff may also feel pressured to present themselves as perfect. Rather than waiting until a crisis arises, begin creating a culture where issues of sexuality and pornography are discussed openly and regularly, without judgment. Provide opportunities for your staff to be discipled and pursue healing in this area as well.
Create a safe process. // Pure Desire Ministries can help churches provide clear pathways for people to get help, such as offering group ministries that focus on long-term recovery. Men and women can walk through a structured healing process, unpacking their personal stories and addressing deep-rooted issues of identity and worth.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is a topic that I know that people in your church are wrestling with. I know people on your team are probably wrestling with. It’s the kind of thing that we maybe don’t want to talk about, but we really should be talking about.
Rich Birch — Super excited to have Nick Stumbo with us. He is a third generation pastor, started his ministry career at East Hills Alliance Church in Washington state. He served as the lead pastor for more than a decade, observing the fallout of sexual brokenness and devastation in the lives of the men and women in his church. Rich Birch — Confronted with his own addiction to pornography, Nick and his wife found hope and healing through counseling and group ministries of Pure Desire, and it radically changed their lives. Really looking forward to this conversation. His public disclosure to the church body led to a revival of forgiveness and healing that ultimately launched Pure Desire groups for men and women. Nick has stayed connected to Pure Desire and today serves as executive director. Nick, I am so glad to have you here today. Welcome to the show. Nick Stumbo — Yes, thank you. So glad to be here. Rich Birch — Okay. Fill in the picture there a little bit. If there’s, you know, what, what did I miss? How, how, how else do I want to, uh, you know, if people bump into you on the road, what, do what do you, what do you want to know about Nick Stumbo? Nick Stumbo — Yeah, I think it’s so crucial that the ministry I get to help lead is the ministry that changed my life.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Nick Stumbo — Because my wife and I were really on the brink of of divorce because of my binge/purge issues with pornography. And I always like to clarify that like many, I think sincere Christian men, I believed my own lies. I believed that, okay, that time was the last time. I’m never going to go back to pornography. I’d apologize to my wife. I would own it. You know, I had accountability software. I did all the things that my Christian upbringing had taught me to do about this subject, and yet I would still find myself going back. And you just, you feel like you’re stuck in this cycle that you can never break out of until we found Pure Desire Ministries and really found ah still a very deeply biblical approach, but with a a much different angle than anything we knew before. Nick Stumbo — And the way that that transformed our marriage and and my life is what led to, you know, the steps we took with our church and then ultimately becoming a part of the ministry was just seeing that there is real healing, that that Christ does set people free. But sometimes the answers we’ve given in the church are what I describe as being too thin. I mean, they’re they’re very true. Read your Bible and pray and trust God and confess. And all those things are vital elements. Nick Stumbo — But what we have so often missed is the “why” question. Why do I keep going back to this thing? And when you understand the why, when you understand some of the deeper parts of your soul and your heart and your mind that need to be renewed, it’s a life-changing process. So I think that’s kind of filling in the blanks. It’s like, this isn’t just a job or another ministry. It’s a passion that we’re living. And then getting to see other people find freedom from something they’ve believed, maybe for decades. Well, this is this is the thorn in my flesh, right? This is the, all well, all guys struggle a little bit, don’t they? So I guess it just, it is what it is. It’s like, no, when when Christ said that we could be free, He meant it and we really can experience it um as we walk this road. Rich Birch — Well, yeah, I don’t think there’s anybody that’s listening in today that’s like, oh, that I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is you know not an issue, but there’s some really compelling statistics. You did a study with Barna that reveals that 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women view pornography, at least occasionally. And something like two thirds of pastors have a history with pornography, nearly 20% are still struggling, something like that. Nick Stumbo — Yep, yep. Rich Birch — Not, not… ah yeah This a pervasive issue. Let’s start with, from your perspective, why is this issue so pervasive even within the church? Like why why is this why does this seem to be one of those struggles that’s like defining our age? Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Well, I think one of the pieces we often miss is just the origin of this is not sin. You know, the origin of this is we are sexual beings made in the image of God as sexual beings. You know, male and female, he created us. And in that sexuality, our male and female-ness is tucked the image of God, that we’re image bearers of God, even in our gender and our sexuality. Rich Birch — That’s good. Nick Stumbo — And so it makes absolute sense that the enemy of our souls would want to get to the very core of our sense of identity and who God made us to be and create brokenness. Nick Stumbo — And so what we like to bring up is that there’s not just a few people that struggle with some sexual addiction, but that we all have been born into a sinful world. We’ve had things done to us or by us that often are not discussed. And so ah what I find is so common in churches and Christian homes, and I mean, it’s my own story, is we just don’t talk about this topic. We don’t know how to address it. And yet everybody is a sexual being experiencing some level of fallenness in their sexuality. Nick Stumbo — And so you ask, why do we struggle? It might be similar to if we said, you know, what if parents never taught their kids like just how to eat, like when to eat, what foods are good, what foods are bad. And just from day one, we just kind of left the fridge open and said, well, eat what you want, when you want, you know, and then if they got into their twenties and they had terrible eating habits. We’d say, well, well yeah, and no one ever trained them how to how to eat well, how to be a healthy human being. And yet that’s almost exactly what we’re doing in our sexuality. Nick Stumbo — We’re all born into it. We all have desires and longings and hormones and and things that that God gave us and that Satan and sin have twisted. And if we haven’t been discipled, If we haven’t been trained, if we haven’t been given opportunities to learn and grow, then we’ve gotten stuck in some really unhealthy patterns. And for all that we know about Christ and the gospel and the truth, if that area of our life hasn’t been touched by others who helped train and disciple us, I think we shouldn’t be surprised that people are struggling.
Nick Stumbo — So it’ it’s really, I think, a combination of all those things, a lack of conversation, a lack of training, and just the reality that sexuality is a part of our human experience. And then maybe you add to that the fourth component that we’re we’re living in such a sexualized culture that if you put you know immature, and if I could use that word about our sexuality, we’re often immature in our thinking, immature Christians into a world that is just overrun by sexuality. Well, of course we’re going to struggle.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Of course.
Nick Stumbo — Because we haven’t really ever learned or been taught a better way. Rich Birch — Yeah, well, I we’re already hearing a little bit of where I think Pure Desire, you know, your ministry has a, I think, a really healthy and, you know, so maybe a slightly different approach to this area than than we’ve maybe seen traditionally. But, you know, you talked about at the beginning that you found that, you know, Pure Desire had a unique angle that, you know, maybe other ministries or other approaches or maybe just our traditional approach was too thin. How does Pure Desire help in this situation? How can you either help an individual or help a ministry that’s that’s trying to wrestle with these issues? Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Well, I think some of my own story plays into that. You know, as I mentioned, I was doing the things the church taught me to do. In college I had an a men’s of accountability group where every week we would meet together. And, and I think this is really common in churches and kind of say, are you struggling? You know, did you have a bad week? Did you relapse? Did you look at pornography? You know, someone said no. We’re like, Hey, great job. Keep it up. And if someone said, yeah, I had a bad week, like, man, we’re so sorry. We pray for you. Nick Stumbo — And when you think about that environment, while it it is wonderful and appropriate to have other men or women in our lives that can ask us the hard questions, it really is very performance-based and very much sin management. Did you do the thing this week that you don’t want to do? And if you did it, try harder not to do it this week. Nick Stumbo — But what is so often ignored, um and what I didn’t see in those days of weekly accountability and all the steps I was taking to be free, was what were the deeper issues that were driving my use of pornography? Like, why was I going to that? And I think that’s what’s made Pure Desire’s approach so revolutionary is understanding that pornography is not necessarily the problem. Nick Stumbo — It is a problem, but in our lives, it’s not the problem. That pornography is the symptom of much deeper issues. And I think that’s where we start to see the commonality for, whether you’re a Christian or a non-Christian, is we all have a little bit of a warped view of our own identity and value and worth. And because of that, we have a warped view of who God is. And there is parts of our brokenness that because of past trauma or pain or just lies that we believe about ourselves that come out of our early years. Nick Stumbo — I mean, I’ve I’ve done groups with like hundreds of men now and I think every one of them has some version of the lie of believing I’m not good enough. Do I have what it takes? Do I measure up as a man? Maybe I’m not, I’m not a real man. I’m not good enough. And and that comes from experiences that we’ve had in life as a child and our growing up years. And what happens with those lies, those core beliefs that we’re carrying around is we need to have an answer to them. And of course the right answer is understanding who we are in Christ and in God. Nick Stumbo — But the challenge is those lies have been rooted in our soul through experiences and through negative relationships or things that happen to us. And when we just preach at it or or throw a verse at it or pray about it, that tends to be a very cognitive response to something happening deeper in our soul. Nick Stumbo — And so if we cannot understand why I go to pornography, because pornography becomes a false solution to a real problem. Because in a moment, for all of us, whether it’s pornography or fantasy or acting out in any kind of sexually compulsive behavior, for a moment, those lies get answered. Nick Stumbo — We feel valued. We feel seen. We feel heard. We feel important. We feel wanted. And even if it’s followed a few moments later by guilt and shame, our brain, as God designed it, latches on to that feeling of being good enough and says, man, that reward was worth it. Because it was answering my my deeply held questions. So what we try to help people see is that, yes, pornography is a problem, but actually in your life, it’s functioning as a pseudo-solution. And if we can help you get into some of that deeper stuff of why you go there, and and then learn how to have real accountability…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …which isn’t just telling other people ask me how I’m doing, but is saying I’m learning to be accountable to other people by having commitments that I’m following through on. I’m taking responsibility for my own journey, and not just telling people to check in on me, ah then healing and transformation really can be possible. Nick Stumbo — And I think what what also goes with that is you start to talk about, you know, soul lies and understanding where we need to experience God and and relearn some of those negative messages. You see how it can be a long process. You know, we’re talking about transform. One of the things we say at Pure Desire is we’re not here to change a behavior. We’re here to change the way you do life. Nick Stumbo — And changing the way you do life, you know, for any one of us, like that takes work and effort and consistency.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Stumbo — And I think it’s an area where churches have been challenged because, you know, we want to have a great men’s weekend and talk about pornography and, and men confess and we’re all like, man, and God forgives. And it’s awesome. It is. I’ve been in some of those experiences, but then we kind of send men home, or women, you know, women can have similar experiences and we’re like, all right, thumbs up. We did it. We dealt with that. Rich Birch — Right. Check that off. Nick Stumbo — But if we’re talking about changing the brain…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Stumbo — …like this is going to be a long process.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — And churches, I think need to um embrace that as part of a healing structure in their church. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that’s ah what a fresh perspective, and I think a realistic perspective. If you’ve walked with anyone who has struggled in this area, you realize this is true. And there’s like an interesting vicious loop there, you know, I’ve seen…
Nick Stumbo — Yes.
Rich Birch — …of like people look for some sort of quick fix and they think they’ve had, they found it and they find the quick fix, but then that doesn’t work over time. And then there’s more shame and more hiding and more, you know, and it it just keeps going on.
Rich Birch — One of the things it’s, um one of the things that I see about Pure Desire, just as a learning about you kind of from the outside looking in, it really appears like you um have a belief that really the the healing, this process should be local church centered, that really the local church offers a unique kind of angle on this and help towards this. What are some steps that church leaders could take to really kind try to create a supportive environment where this these issues are acknowledged and addressed? Rich Birch — Because I feel like this is one of those areas where we we all know that this is out there, but maybe it’s not just not coming up in conversation. So help me understand, what could we do as a church to try to be the kind of place where, hey, you know we’re a supportive environment that people would actually be willing to even talk about it. Nick Stumbo — Yeah, yeah, I love that. And we truly believe that the church is the context where healing takes place. And unfortunately, too many churches have outsourced healing in this area. Because it feels too big, it feels too messy. It’s like, you know, go see a counselor, go see a professional, get help and come back when you’re better. And we might not say it that way, but I think that’s the feeling people get is my church doesn’t know how to handle my issues. I have to go somewhere else to get healing. Nick Stumbo — And yet we have seen so consistently that what creates healing is walking through a transformative experience with a small group of other people who are committed to you, committed to the process, and committed to their own healing. And as men and women walk in that small group environment, and for us it’s a period of eight to ten months that those groups take… Rich Birch — Wow. Nick Stumbo — …to really help someone process all of the different steps and stages. That’s where they start to find traction and healing. And and they also find relationships with other men or other women at a level they’ve never had before. Because not only did they tell someone their secrets in kind of like a confessional moment…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …but then they kept walking with that person through the healing process. So so when you think about like a safe confidential small group environment, like what better place than the body of Christ? Rich Birch — Right. Amen. Yeah. Nick Stumbo — Author Sam Black, who wrote the book, The Healing Church, and is a part of Covenant Eyes, he says that you know churches really need to think about being a safe place and having a safe process.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Nick Stumbo — And I think those are probably the two primary components for churches to think about, and they really have to go in conjunction. How do we be a safe place? How do we create an atmosphere where we really express to people, it is okay to be a sexual being with brokenness and come to our church and ask for help. Nick Stumbo — Like and and one of the primary things I communicate to pastors in churches where we need to shift our language there is to stop talking about pornography like “those people”. You know “If a few of you…”
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Nick Stumbo — You know if anyone in our church has a sexual addiction, like raise your hand. Like right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nick Stumbo — Nobody wants to be part of that club. And we treat it like, well, there’s there’s maybe a few people that need to be helped. And yet as the data with the Barna report so clearly shows, a majority of people in church would say, I have an unresolved struggle with pornography. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — So how do we change our language to say all of us are sexual beings? All of us need to be trained and discipled. We’ve all got room to grow. And so we have a program to help all of us learn and and walk in a healthier way of freedom. Nick Stumbo — And just and then continuing to say that as a church, because I I think what we’re up against, and I mentioned it earlier, is this has been such a taboo topic for so many churches.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — It’s like, we maybe mention it once a year in kind of like a sex is for marriage kind of sermon, and we we prep it weeks ahead, and we’re like, don’t bring your kids, and this is gonna be PG-13.
Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — Like, we make it so weird and different…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …that it almost amplifies the problem… Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — …to feel like we really don’t know how to talk about this. But if we’re regularly you know mixing into our sermons and our talks and our communication, like including sexuality is one of the areas we might be struggling with brokenness and saying…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …and and we are so ah here for you in that area. So how do we create that culture of grace? How do we create that safe place where people know my church helps people in this area? Nick Stumbo — Because when someone hits their moment of crisis, you know, that’s what we find people are usually going to reach out. You know, we know we should be proactive. We know we should deal with this earlier. But frankly, many people wait until she catches him with something on his phone. He catches her in an emotional, you know, texting affair with someone else. Like stuff blows up. And in that moment, the question is who will they reach out to? Because if they haven’t consistently heard and seen that your church offers help in this area, I can tell you they’re not going to reach out to a church. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — And what we find when people come to us is they don’t know anyone. They’re like, we don’t even know where to go with this problem because nobody talks about it. Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s good. Nick Stumbo — So I think that’s step one, being that safe place that when, when people hit a crisis moment, or they catch their teenager, you know, looking at something on their smartphone or like. I remember our church talking about this. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — I remember that they help people. So you’ve been a safe place, but then you have to have a safe process. Rich Birch — Right Nick Stumbo — It’s like, well, what do we actually do to help you, right? Rich Birch — That’s good. Nick Stumbo — We can’t just talk about it and then say, now go get better. And that’s where Pure Desire can come alongside a church and help create a group-based ministry that is lay leader led. It’s not meant to be led by the pastor or a professional counselor. We’re here to equip volunteers that have a passion for this ministry to facilitate the groups. And it doesn’t even need to be Pure Desire, but it’s that idea of when people come to us and say, we need help, that we don’t just say, oh, go see a counselor. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — And counselors are valuable and counselors have a role to play…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Stumbo — …because they do have expertise to walk into our story. But really that healing experience is going to be community-based. It’s going to be peer-based…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …and the church is the place for that. So how could you develop a process when someone does, they see you’re a safe place and they raise their hand and they I mean they’re not going to raise it publicly…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …but they maybe send a private email or text to a pastor and say, Hey, I I need help…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo —…for the pastor to say, hey, our men’s groups are on this night. Our women’s groups meet on this night. Here’s the contact. They’re gonna walk you through how to get started. Well, now you you can be a healing church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Stumbo — Because you’ve got not only a safe place for people to come forward, but then a safe process to engage them in…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Stumbo — …that doesn’t just involve sending them away to a professional counselor.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Stumbo — And and we’ve just seen when churches are equipped, man, the impact they can make in their community really is phenomenal. Rich Birch — Love it. Now I know there’s like a ton and you offer a lot of training and resources around this. So it’s a little bit of an unfair question, but like, can you give us a peek up under the hood a little bit on those groups? Can you unpack what it looks like in both practice, in in both the individual and group settings? Like what does that, what’s that actually look like? I get it’s 8 to 10 months. Give us a sense of kind of some of the telltale signs. And again, I realize that there’s a ton of training that you do. So obviously it’s again, it’s unfair, but give us a sense, a little bit of a peek into what that looks like. Nick Stumbo — Yeah. I think for us, it’ it is really key to see that we want to treat sexuality as a people problem. Too often churches still want this to be a man’s problem. But as the data shows, 40% of women in church say, I have struggles with pornography. And in fact, if you look at younger women, Gen Z and millennials, it’s 64% and 62% of women… Rich Birch — Wow. Nick Stumbo — …say on some level, I’m viewing pornography. Rich Birch — Okay. Nick Stumbo — So that’s that’s a big part of what we do is we say this is a people problem, not a men’s problem.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Stumbo — And we also acknowledge that if this is happening in a marriage, there are two people being impacted. And those two people both need help, but they need very different help. The one who’s been struggling needs it to go on a recovery journey, to overcome their behaviors, to learn what’s driving them to it, to develop healthy patterns moving forward. Nick Stumbo — But that betrayed spouse is hurting. They’re wondering what to trust. They’re wondering what they did wrong. I mean, there are all kinds of questions. And if we only help the struggler, we can almost communicate a double shame message to that spouse who feels like, what did I cause this? Can I fix it? And they just feel isolated and alone. Nick Stumbo — And so that’s why we have groups for men who struggle. And groups for women who struggle. And then we have groups for men who are feeling that on the betrayal side and for women who are betrayed. Because when a couple can walk through some healing together, have a supportive group around them in their journey, that we have found is the best recipe for the marriage ah to succeed long term. Nick Stumbo — And so, the The materials are you know they’re there it’s not only group-based, but there are actual materials that people walk through. And I think it’s one of the uniquenesses that sometimes ah groups at church can be like a book study.
Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — Like we we just come together to talk about a book and and we then we go home and don’t really do much with it. What you’re doing in a Pure Desire group is you’re doing your own work to really unpack and understand your own story. You’re writing out during the week answers to these questions.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Stumbo — And then when you come to group, you’re not necessarily talking about the book as much as you’re answering questions about your life. In in a safe, programmed kind of way, you’re learning how to unpack everything and share openly by simply reading what you wrote.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Nick Stumbo — And it’s that interaction as I do that and someone else does that that, you know, we’re not just there shooting from the hip about, well, here’s what I think about sexuality or here’s what I… No, you’re actually saying, here are, here in my life, some of the the worst moments that I had as a child and here are the messages I remember believing after that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — Man, and you share that, and then someone else does, and someone else does like, the eye-opening kind of light bulb moments that come as I tell parts of my story out loud that I’ve I’ve never really connected the dots to how much they’ve impacted my way of seeing myself and God and others, it’s it’s transformational. Rich Birch — That’s good. Nick Stumbo — So group-based but also curriculum-based and really rooted around doing my own work and then bringing that work to the group in a safe environment to share things that I really need to have others hear. And then when I share those things and I’m accepted, I’m valued, I’m affirmed. That’s what really begins to change those negative messages that have been taking us to pornography all along. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Nick Stumbo — So it’s it’s very relational, it’s very meaningful. And I think what surprises people, I mean, this was my reaction too. In some of the lessons, people are surprised how little we talk about sexual brokenness or pornography. It’s like, well, you know, I thought we were here to fix our porn problem.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Nick Stumbo — It’s like, yeah, we are. But the problem again is the symptom and what we’re going after in group is the roots. Nick Stumbo — And so some of the lessons I’ll tell people like upfront, you may not completely understand right away how this connects, but trust the process. Trust that this has been, you know, tried and it’s become tried and true material over 25 years. And it’s leading you to a place of understanding and recognition. And because we need to recognize part of the reason I’m stuck is I can’t see what I can’t see. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Nick Stumbo — Like part of why I continue to struggle is because I can’t see the things that have been tripping me up and I’ve got these blind spots. Rich Birch — That’s good. Nick Stumbo — And if I just assume like, well, I know how to manage my own recovery. I know what I need. We’re probably just going to keep stuck in that same cycle. Rich Birch — Right. Just end up right back there. Nick Stumbo — But if, if we’re willing to trust a process to say, we’re going to help you unpack and unlearn some things that you maybe didn’t even know you needed to unlearn. That’s where it becomes life changing. So its ah, yeah, and we provide leader training. We provide tons of support around frequently asked questions and issues that come up in group. Rich Birch — Yep. Love it. Nick Stumbo — And you know what if someone has a legal issue? Like we get that sexuality gets messy…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Stumbo — …and it might be something that’s new for you or your group or your church, but we’ve handled it before.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — And we can answer the question, and we’re here to be the coach, the guide, the friend that empowers you to do the ministry in your church. And so that’s a little bit more about our approach of working with churches. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So let’s pivot to maybe think about the same issue, but from just a slightly different lens. You know, let’s say I’m a leader, I’m maybe an executive pastor on team at a church, and I want for my staff team, I want to be the kind of place where people can raise their hand and say, hey, I’m I’m struggling with this. Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Rich Birch — And and I want us to be that. I’m not entirely sure how to do that. I think there’s an interesting kind of dual pressure in our culture that’s like set up to just make failure happen.
Nick Stumbo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Which is, you know, there’s like a spectrum of decisions that people will make. They’ll make somewhere on the end of the spectrum is like silly, foolish, unwise. And then you you step over sinful. And then it goes from sinful to like, you know, really like terrible sin and then like ultimately like antichrist, like this person’s like evil. Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Rich Birch — And, but what I, it seems like what happens when people um confess a sin in this area, oftentimes we can treat them with, um you know, they just become canceled. We just flush them out.
Nick Stumbo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then I think what happens is people watch that and then then we all just stuff our issues down.
Nick Stumbo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’re like, well, I know what I learned from this experience is don’t ever raise your hand. Nick Stumbo — Because that got that guy kicked out. Rich Birch — So what can we do for our teams? Yeah, that guy, that guy got kicked out. So how do we create cultures with, particularly with our staff teams where people can raise their hand and, or we talk about these things in a way that, you know, it’ll, it kind of creates the kind of culture, particularly with the people that work for us. Nick Stumbo — Yeah, that’s a great question. And I believe one of the items we miss is that men and women who enter into full-time ministry are still men and women who have a story…
Rich Birch — That’s good. Nick Stumbo — …who are on a journey towards Christ-likeness, but, but that’s a journey and we all know it. Like we’ve got weaknesses and you know, we’re comfortable saying, Hey, we’re all sinners saved by grace. And then, you know, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, we’re unthinkably shocked when we find out there’s an actual sinner among us. Like we didn’t really mean that. It’s like, well, no, we are sinners.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — And just because you got the title Pastor or leader or Reverend or whatever title you get, like that doesn’t magically cleanse you of your weaknesses and your sins. And then you add to that what we have found is that there is not a single seminary or Bible college that is proactively equipping future pastors in the area of their own sexuality. Nick Stumbo — That’s always left to like, well, that’s your own spiritual development. That’s something you do on the side. Like we’re going to train you to teach the word of God and to run a church and to lead the ministry. And we just hope those other pieces take care of themselves.
Nick Stumbo — So you’ve got men and women who have their own story and their own brokenness that are receiving no training on how to handle their own sexuality in a healthy way. But then we ordain them or license them or hire them. And we just assume like, well, you’re good to go, right? And then as you brought up, there’s not this safe expectation that the pastor or leader can pursue help.
Nick Stumbo — And so I think if someone’s listening and they’re in that position where they’re overseeing a staff, they’re helping lead a team, I think it begins there with an attitude that says, hey, we know you love the Lord and we know you’re called to ministry and we know you’re gifted and we know you’re a sexual being that likely has unaddressed sexual brokenness. And as part of your employment here, we actually want to be a part of your healing, not a place where you have to hide what’s going on.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Nick Stumbo — And so for a church to think about how can we provide opportunities to say to our staff, we want you to pursue healing. We want you to be discipled in this area. You know, we we too often wait for it to be a discipline issue when we could start out with it being a discipleship issue. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good, that’s good. Nick Stumbo — And so if churches had that attitude, we’re just here to disciple you. And if you’re new to ministry or young in ministry, we’re just going to assume you probably haven’t been helped in this area.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Nick Stumbo — One of our board members was on staff at a church of, you know, six, seven thousand people in Northern Idaho. And ah he was the executive pastor and really in charge of developing new staff. And he said, anytime we hired a young man, I just grabbed him and put him in my Pure Desire group. Cause I said, I you know, I know you’re on worship team and you look great in skinny jeans, but I also know you’ve got sexuality in your life and probably no one’s helped you. So you’re just going to be in our group and and they would just make that assumption of if you’ve never addressed this area, we’re just going to help you. We’re not even going to wait for you to ask for help. We’re just going to provide opportunity. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — And what that did to that staff culture said, it’s okay to need help. And we’d rather be on the helping you side than wait until it blows up in your life. Because there, I mean, we know there are issues that when they cross certain lines, like they can cost a career, they can cost a job, and they they should, it’s appropriate that a person in that place be removed from ministry. But I always ask the question, what help could we have provided them 5, 10, 20 years ago… Rich Birch — Yep. Nick Stumbo — …to equip them for a lifelong ministry of health and freedom. So I think just getting in and wrestling with that, you know, at Pure Desire, we have online groups for pastors only that are safe, confidential, that walk people through that experience. Because very often that story I told of like staff or pastors doing it in the local church, while that’s ideal, that may not be available.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — And so we’ve got groups that meet online where a pastor could go through a healing experience and then really be equipped maybe to be that voice in the congregation that can help launch groups or help other staff ah find healing in their own story. Rich Birch — Love that. i what ah I want to just underline something you said there. I think we have a huge upstream kind of cultural opportunity. We we don’t assume that our people are perfect when we hire them. We don’t assume. I remember a couple of years ago, I was watching a leader that I deeply respect had you know one of these like mentors from afar, somebody who um, you know, your, I just thought the world of. And they, they, their life blew up. They made all kinds of decisions that just like exploded, blew up all over everybody. Nick Stumbo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And I was watching an online service where it was kind of mid blow up and this person got up and was still kind of trying to defend themselves and all that. And I had this very sad feeling come over me because I was like, Oh friend, you think that we think that you’re perfect. Like you, the way you’re positioning yourself right now, you’re trying to kind of present yourself as if you’r… Nick Stumbo — Yeah. All okay. Nothing to see here. Nothing behind the curtain. Rich Birch — Yeah. and And I had a tremendous amount of sympathy for that person at that moment.
Nick Stumbo — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Because I was like, oh, brother, like, like, no, like, if you just would have raised your hand and been like, yeah, I’m like, the gospel still works. I am a sinner. I’m I’ve screwed up in this area. I’m not perfect. I I and I and would have, if they would have submitted themselves, I think if they would have submitted themselves to some sort of process by which they would have like, you know, been able to take some steps forward. Yeah, I think we would have as the body of Christ responded and been like, wow, like, yeah, we wanna help. Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Rich Birch — But but we had, and I I so for me, that was like, I I think us even just creating the kind of cultures where we realize, hey, we’re not asking you to be perfect. We know we know you aren’t perfect. Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Rich Birch — And so, and nor am I. Like, that like let’s let’s just talk about this as an open way. Yeah, that’s that’s great. Super, super good.
Nick Stumbo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, you’ve actually given us our links to a couple eBooks, Five Steps to Freedom from Pornography and Seven Keys to Overcome Betrayal. Could you kind of tell us a little bit more about these and and how could how could they be used? Where would they be helpful in this kind of dialogue discussion, either with our teams or in our church or that sort of thing? Nick Stumbo — Yeah, these eBooks were really meant to be a good starting point…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Stumbo — …where someone says, I’ve I’ve done, you maybe like me, they’re saying, I’ve done the try harder. I’ve got the accountability software. I’ve told people to check in on me and I keep going back. Those eBooks would help them understand what does a process of freedom look like? How could you get started? And the hope is that it might present our structure in a way that they go, you know what? One of those groups sounds like exactly what I need. Because we get that upfront. eight to 10 months feels like that’s so long. Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. Nick Stumbo — Like there’s gotta be a plan B that I can do in three weeks, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Stumbo — Like, so the five steps really is meant to be like, Hey, let’s get you started. Let’s help you think about some things. Start to put some, some of the pieces together, and then lead you to a place where you might see that there’s more work to be done here than you thought.
Nick Stumbo — And then on the betrayal side, I think so many spouses don’t even realize that there is something legitimately happening when they’re feeling betrayed that creates a very natural trauma response in the brain and in the soul. And that the questions that women are asking when they find out, or men, when they find out their spouse has been viewing pornography or acting out in other ways sexually, like the way our heart and mind respond are actually very common to one another. Nick Stumbo — And if we can begin to understand it through that lens of betrayal and trauma and woundedness, then rather than putting blame on ourself or what sadly still can happen is where people feel like, well, if I’m just more sexual or if we have sex more, that’ll fix their problem. And it’s like, no, their problem isn’t actually about sex, and you didn’t create it and you can’t fix it. And the seven keys to betrayal trauma is, or to understanding betrayal, and is going to help someone begin to understand their own story and what’s happening to them. And what does a ah road towards health and recovery and and finding grace and forgiveness, what does that look like? Nick Stumbo — And in a similar way to help a betrayed spouse, see, you know what, a group environment might be what I need as well to walk through this. So we, we wanted people to understand, you know, what we do is still a little new and different than I think people have understood. Um, but those eBooks can help someone take that step, understand ah what the road might look like, and then be willing to maybe take the longer journey, uh, in one of our groups. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good. And we’ll, like I say, we’ll link to those in the show notes so that you can, you know, pick up ah copies of that for yourself, for people in your, your church. I think that would be super helpful. I also noticed this eight-part video series. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? That kind of caught my eye in this whole discussion. Kind of tell us a little bit more about that. Nick Stumbo — Yeah, we wanted to help people understand our approach to healing, to understand the ways in which this goes beyond just being a bad decision people make to how is it rooted in our ways of thinking and believing that probably go all the way back to childhood. Nick Stumbo — And we understand that that can be a little challenging to understand or to think through. And so this eight part video series is meant to be the 101. So it’s Sexual Integrity 101. It’s your entry level class to understand sexual addiction from a biblical perspective.
Rich Birch — Good.
Nick Stumbo — And to see a pathway to healing that may be more robust and a little bit more involved than you’ve expected before. So it’s ah a wonderful starting point for a church, for a staff, for a staff team to go through and say, hey, we we want to understand this topic better. Nick Stumbo — We used to present this primarily as a two-day workshop. And as you might expect, it was difficult at times to get people to attend a two day conference on pornography and sexuality. Because what we found is if people had the problem, it felt exposing to go to a conference and talk about it.
Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — Like then people will know I’m struggling. And if you don’t have the problem, then people felt like, well, I don’t think that’s for me. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — So whichever side you were on, you didn’t feel like you should go to the conference. Rich Birch — Right. Nick Stumbo — And we’d have people after they came, they’ll say, man, my whole church needs to hear this because this is actually unpacking our common struggle…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — …how God made us, how sin and Satan trip us up and what does healing look like. And so that’s what the eight part video series is meant to do. It’s for men and women equally. We have men and women on our team teaching. We interview couples in recovery. You hear from male and female experts like Jay Stringer and Juli Slattery. And so it’s a powerful introductory tool for a church or a leader to understand what is Pure Desire going to do and what will their groups be like because it really establishes that foundation. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, friends, I want to encourage you to get connected to Pure Desire. I’m sure there are people that are listening in that are like, hey, this this sounds like, you know, so helpful, either for me, for people on my team, for my church. So where do we want to send people online? And then what kind of final words would you have for us as we kind of wrap up today’s episode, Nick? Nick Stumbo — Everything I shared about can be found on our website, puredesire.org. So at puredesire.org, you can find a list of local groups that might be meeting around you. We have ah around 1200 churches that have groups in them. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Nick Stumbo — And so we have a map on there that would show that. You could also find out what online groups are happening. It’s where you can find and purchase Sexual Integrity 101, which by the way, is a DVD set or a streaming option through our website. you There’s no subscription required. It’s just a one-time purchase. And then you can find out all the information about our counseling department and other materials that we have available. So all of that’s at puredesire.org. Rich Birch — Great. Nick Stumbo — I think my my final word, especially as I think of leaders, pastors, churches, this is an area that can quickly begin to feel overwhelming. I’ve actually had a couple of leaders say to me, Nick, we feel like if we open this door, too many people will come through and we won’t know what to do with them.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Wow. Nick Stumbo — And I get it, but then their response is, so we just haven’t done anything. And to me, that feels so incredibly sad that we we recognize it’s a big problem. We suspect there’s probably more people in our church that need it than we realize. But then we get overwhelmed and we don’t do anything. And we’re here at Pure Desire to say, you can do this while the the topic itself can be challenging, a healing a system of groups isn’t as difficult as it it might sound. We’ve done all the hard work. I heard a pastor the other day say, Nick, what I love about Pure Desire is I feel like it’s an 80/20 relationship. I do 20% of the work and you guys have already done 80%.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. Nick Stumbo — And if I just create a little bit of structure around it, like I bring in your tools and your training and our people run with it. And that’s what we want it to be is to feel like you’ve got the tools you need. We can provide the resources and expertise and together we can make a kingdom-sized difference in people’s lives in this topic that so often gets left unaddressed.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Nick Stumbo — So if you’re in that place of feeling like this is too big, it’s too messy, it gets legal, too fast, like. Yeah, we’ve been there. And we can help you and you can do this because when the church becomes the healing place for sexuality in our world, I think it’s going to evangelize and reach people in ways we are only beginning to see. Because the darkness that’s in our sexuality isn’t just in the church, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Stumbo — Like we know our world is lost in sexuality and in their brokenness. And if the church can shine a line on it, not in a condemning way, but in a helping way to say there’s, there’s freedom, there’s hope, your marriage can be saved. Rich Birch — Yep. Nick Stumbo — I think the church will just be winning people over in a whole new way. And um there’s a tremendous opportunity. So don’t run from it. Don’t think it’s too big. We’ve done the hard work and we’re here to help. And as you step into this, I believe the light will shine through you and your church ah in ways you never thought it could, especially in this area of our sexuality. Rich Birch — Love it. What a great way to to end. You can do this, we can help. I think that’s fantastic. We want to make sure people check out your website. Again, so that’s puredesire.org. We want to send people over there. It’s a great starting point, all kinds of resources, great way to to step in. You can also have the link there and to those ebooks in our show notes. Nick, I really I I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much, sir. Nick Stumbo — Yeah. Thank you, Rich. Love being a part of it. And thank you for having this conversation.
The Art of Preaching: Balancing Depth and Accessibility in a Secular World with Mark Clark
Jan 23, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This month we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re learning from Mark Clark, the founder of Village Church, a multi-site church with locations in multiple cities across Canada and online around the world. He is now one of the Senior Lead Pastors at Bayside Church in California. In today’s podcast we’re discussing how the Bible will need explanation.
Every week, the pulpit provides a unique opportunity to connect God’s Word with the questions and struggles of a modern, often skeptical world. But how do we preach with both theological depth and cultural accessibility? Tune in as Mark offers valuable insights into effective sermon preparation and how to communicate in a way that’s accessible to both skeptics and believers.
Engage religious and secular audiences. // During his time at Village Church, Mark balanced seeker-sensitive models of preaching with expository preaching. He emphasizes the importance of teaching the Bible while addressing both religious and secular audiences, using Tim Keller’s example of the Prodigal Son parable. Engage both the “older brother” (religious) and the “younger brother” (secular) in every sermon, ensuring that the gospel is presented in a way that resonates with all listeners.
The art of preaching. // Regardless of a preacher’s experience communicating from the pulpit, they constantly need to refine their craft, preparing thoroughly to ensure that their sermons are both biblically sound and culturally relevant. Dedicate specific times during the week for sermon preparation, ensuring ample time to study, reflect, and refine the message. Rehearse the sermon multiple times to become comfortable with the content and delivery, allowing for a more natural and engaging presentation. Finally, incorporating stories and examples from everyday life to make biblical truths more relatable and understandable for the congregation.
Keep things fresh. // Preachers face a real challenge to keep things fresh over time, particularly after years of preaching on the same content or passages. The pressure to deliver high-quality sermons is particularly intense during big days on the church calendar, such as Christmas or Easter. To stay fresh and keep sermons engaging, Mark is constantly collecting illustrations and practicing his delivery. He emphasizes the need for preachers to work hard, dedicate time, and ensure their messages are winsome and persuasive.
Offer honest feedback. // Preaching plays a critical role in church growth. Church staff and executive pastors can support their lead pastors by creating space for them to focus on sermon preparation. If you’re a trusted voice in your lead pastor’s life, provide them with honest feedback and practical help in order to improve the overall quality of preaching.
Preaching resources. // In addition to his preaching, Mark hosts The Mark Clark Podcast, where he shares his sermons, often accompanied by a brief introduction. This format not only provides biblical content but also offers insights into the mechanics of effective preaching. Mark also has an upcoming book, The Problem of Life, which addresses fundamental questions about the human experience, such as the search for meaning, the nature of suffering, and the quest for joy in a seemingly disenchanted world. Find these resources and more on his website at www.pastormarkclark.com.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. You’re reaching us at the end of our month of Unpredictions. All month long, we’ve been talking about things that were true last year, will be true this year, and are continuing to be true next year. Super excited to have Mark Clark with us. He’s the founder of a church in my home and native land, Village Church, a multisite church with locations across cities in Canada, but now serves as the global senior pastor at a fantastic church, Bayside Church, a multisite church in California. Has authored several several books, hosted a great podcast. Bayside was founded by Ray Johnston and has grown to over 20,000 people a week, which is amazing. They have eight locations in California. Mark, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Mark Clark — Thanks. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Always good to hang out with a fellow Canadian talking church stuff. It’s good. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good to connect. So we’re today we’re going to talk about ah the Bible and and helping people understand the Bible before we get there. Kind of fill in the Mark picture for folks that don’t know you. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about the church. Mark Clark — Yeah. Um, so like you said, uh, you know, founded a church in Vancouver in 2010. So I grew up in Toronto, um, and then moved across to Vancouver to do, uh, studies, actually. I was, I was going to be a youth pastor. I went to a school up in Toronto, uh, near you, did a bachelor’s degree, and then was going to be a youth pastor. And then God through a whole bunch of crazy circumstances got my heart, uh, jacked about like academics and and scholarship. And so I wanted to be a professor really. So I moved across to Vancouver to go to Regent College, which, you know, it’s a very internationally renowned school. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Mark Clark — You know, um J.I. Packer was there, you know ah Eugene Peterson taught there, Gordon Fee, all these great scholars. So I went over there and I and I said, I’m going to be here for two years and and then I’m going to go overseas, hopefully to Oxford or one of those schools, because they have connections with Regent. And I’m going to do a master’s thesis at Regent in Vancouver and then go overseas and do a PhD and become a professor and read footnotes for the rest of my life and it’ll be great to you know teach teach snotty nose students in college or something.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Mark Clark — And so on so that was the plan. And I moved to Vancouver I did my thesis on Romans 9-11 and spent you know a few years doing that and then God called me to stay in Vancouver, don’t go overseas don’t go to do a PhD and plant a church, start a church, reach people for Jesus, teach the Bible. And so that’s what we did. In 2010, we gathered about 16 people in my house. My church ah blessed us, gave us about 35 more people and said, and we moved 30 minutes away from the church that we were serving at at the time. And we planted our church and and and really, I mean, to the point of what you’re what we’re talking about today, really had this conviction that I didn’t need to choose between kind of seeker, you know…
Rich Birch — So true.
Mark Clark — …models of preaching where I could just do topicals every four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks and turn things around and, and… Or being an expositor, I could try to fuse both those worlds together every week.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mark Clark — And, so you know, Keller talks about the idea of um ah preaching to the older brother and the younger brother in the prodigal son parable every week. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep. Mark Clark — You have the religious religious older brother who actually needs to hear the gospel and you have the secular, irreligious, progressive brother who needs to hear the gospel and ever and they’re both lost in different ways and you need they need to come to repentance. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — So I put that filter on my preaching every week. Rich Birch — Love it. Mark Clark — And I grew up as a skeptic, didn’t grow up as a Christian at all. I became a Christian when I was about 18 and did a lot of, you know, ah study – science, philosophy, psychology, history, literature. And so that drove a bunch of my preaching. So I almost started a church to go, yes, of course I’m going to preach the Bible, but I’m also going to constantly, and I guess we’ll get into this, constantly be talking to the skeptics.
Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — So anyway, started our church. did that and God just blessed it. And a ton of people got saved and we got to plant the campuses and all that. And it was is fantastic. Rich Birch — Love it. Mark Clark — So I did that for 12 years, 12 and a half years or so, and then felt God calling me and my family down here to California ah for a new adventure. And so we’ve been here for two and a half years and having a blast down here. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Friends, you should be following you should be following Mark. You should be following Bayside. ah So much good here. So the thing we’re talking about today is the thing that will not change this year is that the Bible will continue to need explanation. It needs preaching. You know It needs people to ah you know um a a friend of mine said you know that when you look at the book of Acts, the clearest point of life change is a preacher and a crowd. It’s someone standing in front of people explaining. You know, the majority of the 181 million people in the country who owned and opened a Bible last year find it confusing. Churches need to double down on making scripture scripture accessible and relevant to understand this life-changing truths that apply into our lives. Rich Birch — I really want to dig into that with you today. And we could pick up right where you said there. I think there’s a false dichotomy out there that like grow, and this is true – we see this all the time. People think oh growing churches they’re watering down the bible.
Mark Clark — Sure.
Rich Birch — It’s all like you know it’s all just like how to have a better marriage kind of stuff. Talk to us about that your experience around those issues. Mark Clark — That’s great. Yeah. Great question. And how to have a better marriage will grow your church as well.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Clark — I remember actually we did a, uh, so what our philosophy was I would do like Bible stuff for, you know, so so I remember the story, the story, uh, I tell it conferences in order to help people feel, feel, uh, you know, like they can do this too – is when we started our church, everyone’s like, well, no one in Canada is going to want to hear a bunch of Bible preaching, whatever. And so make make sure you only do topical and yada, yada, yada. Mark Clark — So we started our church and ah and I did a sermon series on the gospel of Matthew. And it took us three and a half years to preach through the gospel of Matthew. Rich Birch — A quick series on Matthews, on Matthew. Mark Clark — And amazingly, that series was called—are you ready for this? The gospel of Matthew. Rich Birch — Love it. Mark Clark — Oh, the creative… Rich Birch — In secular Vancouver. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark Clark — Yeah, exactly. It was like, yeah, we didn’t need any creative titles. We weren’t juggling balls and dee-dee-dee. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark Clark — You know, we weren’t, it was like, here’s what we’re going to do. Secular Vancouver, three and a half years. The church grew during that time by, you know, whatever 2000 people and 700, actually more importantly, because you can get 700 people got baptized during that three and a half years. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. Mark Clark — So, so, and I say all that just to say, to your point, you don’t have to choose, you can grow a church by preaching the Bible. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — And that’s what our foundation was. It was like, so we did a ah three and a half years of Matthew. We did a year and a half in, in 1 Corinthians, uh, probably nine months in Philippians. Um, you know, so, wait so basically if you just go to the website, you can just scroll down and look at, we did Ecclesiastes. It was basically just Bible books. But then of course. We would stop every once in a while and do like a topical, you know, a marriage series, I remember one fall. And we would leverage the fall. And I think that’s important. You know, you you know, there’s calendars, rhythms, don’t fight them…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Mark Clark — …you know, roll with them. So everyone’s away in the summer. Don’t pull out your best stuff. But, you know, so we used to leverage, you know, after Easter and new year and and in Canada, ah first week of September down here, ah first two weeks of August, um the fall comeback, people come back to vacation. Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — Do the handouts do the…
Rich Birch — It’s like a reset. Yeah.
Mark Clark — Yeah. Do the door knockers, give your people invite cards to a series that is felt needs enough that it’s like hey we’re gonna talk. So we used to do ah skeptic stuff. So we did a series um Where we would answer and this is what my first book grew out of preaching the series where it was like hey all the big skeptical questions: science, the Bible, hell… Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — …hypocrisy in the church – you know all that – evil and suffering. Hey, we’re gonna preach these. Here’s the weeks. Bring your friends if they have these questions and then it’ll launch into it. So we used to grow. You know I remember when we did a skeptic series, we grew one year by 900 people in one weekend. And I thought, well, that’s gonna be the biggest we ever grow in one weekend, which is crazy. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Mark Clark — Then we did a marriage one the next year. And I think we grew by 1200 people in a weekend. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Mark Clark — And the crazy thing is, is then they stayed. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah, they didn’t leave. Mark Clark — So so it was like, so so it wasn’t like we had this incremental growth where we grew by 1400 that year. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — We grew by it in one week. And then they just, that was the church now…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Mark Clark — …which was, which obviously that’s that’s crazy. It’s not normal. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s wild. Mark Clark — So don’t like beat yourself up if that’s not your experience.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark Clark — But um so those topical moments are important, of course. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — But then you come out of them and I would say 75 to 80% of our stuff was you know expository stuff, but with a caveat. Because some people hear that and they go, oh good, I can just get up and give my boring Bible sermons. And you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Clark — …and you and you know those preachers, right? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Read read through the concordance and you’ll be fine, you know, kind of thing. Mark Clark — Exactly, yeah, I’m just gonna preach Isaiah. Mark told me I could preach Isaiah for three years and my church will grow… Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — …and not give any cultural commentary or illustrations or stories or be fun or whatever. It’s like, no, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — I’m saying you got to tell, it’s a sin to make the Bible boring.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Mark Clark — You gotta take the Bible and now you gotta go, you gotta work hard to create those cultural connections to be…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Mark Clark — …to be as Keller would say, winsome and persuasive. You gotta constantly be engaging your audience now with a very low attention span. Rich Birch — That’s good. Mark Clark — So the way I would do it is, you know, read a verse or two and then riff of how that verse connects to culture and gauge with, um you know, coming back to the skeptical hermeneutic of like…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Mark Clark — …if I put the filter of a random guy who lives on my street or gal who lives on my street, who’s somewhat educated, who has a job, who didn’t grow up with Christianity and thinks all of this is a joke. And every sermon I put that filter on.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Clark — And I said, if I’m going to preach this text, how do I explain everything I’m saying to them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — …in a winsome and persuasive way that will keep them engaged, get them laugh a little bit, have them understand what this means culturally. You got to be doing that every every three minutes, you got to be hitting something like that. You can’t just, well, I have my one illustration. Rich Birch — Yes. Mark Clark — I will start with a story and now I will just be boring for 35 minutes. You know, it’s like, no, no, no.
Rich Birch — That doesn’t work. Mark Clark — That’s not what we’re talking about, right? Yeah. You got to come in and out, you know, of the tech. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Mark Clark — Yeah. So. Rich Birch — Yeah. I think, you know, I think a part of this has been, you know, I, unfortunately, I’m at that age in my ministry career where you you realize, Oh, I’ve been around for a while. And there has been a shift, I think in the people we’re reaching where I do think there was a time 30 years ago that, you know, there was like a general understanding of, of the Bible. There was more kind of understanding of the things we were talking about. Mark Clark — Yeah. Rich Birch — And, you know, we used to joke, um, ah we ain’t your mama’s church. We used to make that joke. That was the thing. Like we would actually say that, Hey, we ain’t your mama’s church. But the reality of it is like mom didn’t go to church. Grandma didn’t go to church now.
Mark Clark — Right. Rich Birch — People are arriving at church with questions. They’re not, that’s been my experience that the people that are coming now that don’t normally attend church that show up, they’re coming with questions. They’re not saying, Hey, like, um, you know, can you please just entertain me for the next hour? They’re, they’re coming with like some pressing questions. You, you mentioned there this idea of working hard, that you got to work hard. Rich Birch — I’d love to kind of peel the veil back a little bit and hear about your process. What’s that look like? How do you, you you know, prep a ah series, you know, individual message? How do you talk about that? If you’re sitting across from somebody who wants to improve what they do on that front? Mark Clark — Yeah, great question. Yeah it’s great question. So when I get to meet with preachers and talk to them, one of the things that that historically when up when I’ve done seminars or whatever that really connects with people is I just kind of call out the fact that some of you, the reason you’re not… So so it’s good to great, right? Jim Collins. Most of you are going to settle to be good preachers versus great ones. The country of Canada needs great preachers. The country of America needs great preachers, not just good ones. And the only way to get there is through hard work. And most of you are not willing to do the work it’s going to take to become great. And usually that… Rich Birch — Thanks for coming to the seminar. Mark Clark — You know, exactly. But they they kind of laugh at themselves and then almost to the person they go, Man, you’re reading my mail bro. Like you are totally right.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Mark Clark — Because what it takes is sacrifice. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Mark Clark — What it takes is for you, there’s this great um episode, you know, that coffee in cars with comedians or whatever that.
Mark Clark — Yeah, in season, I think it’s season one, he he goes out for coffee with Kramer, you know, Michael Richards, the guy that played Kramer. And there’s this great little interaction that they have where Kramer, he’s talking about, hey, Kramer, I used to go into your, you know, cause we watched Seinfeld, we think Kramer’s just sliding in the door and making it up, right? But there’s a very technical thing that he was doing. And what he would do is he would sit in his dressing room like two inches from the wall, and he would practice all his lines all day. And Jerry says to him as they’re having coffee, he’s like, hey, I used to accidentally come into your room once in a while, and I would see you doing that.
Mark Clark — And and Michael says, oh really, ah you saw me doing that? That’s really weird. And then he says, the one regret, at Michael says, the one regret I have is that I feel like I didn’t enjoy the nineties because I was in a room just like slaving away at this process and this character. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — And Jerry looks at him and just like in a moment of inspiration, he says, no, no, no, it wasn’t your job to enjoy it. Your job was to do the sacrifice so the audience enjoyed it. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Mark Clark — And for me, that’s the message to preachers. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Mark Clark — It’s like, bro, if you’re, you know, if you’re 45 years old, here’s the sacrifice. You got a family, you got a life. So my process, to go to your question, um so usually for me, um I’ll do, for for a sermon in particular, a series is a bit different because we work with you know groups of people and say…
Rich Birch — Yeah, right.
Mark Clark — …what should we preach and come up with a series and design and production also. But for ah for a sermon in particular, I would go, let’s say the text is, you know, whatever, John 1, 1 to 3, right? So I would, I would sit with my, probably Thursday, sit with all my commentaries Thursday afternoon, you know meetings all week, and then Thursday afternoon, get some commentary reading. And usually look, I’m at home. My kids are running around. We’re talking. I got a commentary open on my lap at 9 PM with a pen and in a coffee, you know, whatever. Right. Um, so it’s all just part of life.
Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — Um, I’m constantly thinking of illustrations every moment of my life, every line I’m in, every car ride, every thing in life is an illustration. Rich Birch — And are you gathering those somehow in a system? Are you like, do you write those out or notes on your phone? Mark Clark — Just mostly in my head, but then I’ll throw it on a phone if I think, oh, I’m going to forget this. You know, I’ll just put it on my Apple. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — I’ll just be like, you know, you know, plane ride, flight attendant, book or whatever. Rich Birch — Yeah, funny thing or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Mark Clark — It’s just, okay, I know I know what the story is. Rich Birch — Yeah. Mark Clark — And, um but, ah but you’re constantly, and you gotta be, you gotta be liberal with this. You have to be like, I know this event happened and it doesn’t directly connect to this, but I think with one or two sentences, I can make this connection. Rich Birch —Make the connection. Yep. Yep. Yep. Mark Clark — And make a funny moment here or make a profound moment here with the most mundane situation that happened in my life. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Mark Clark — so So for instance, this past weekend, I did Hebrews. Okay, great example. So Hebrews 12 verse one and two, for for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Mark Clark — Okay, so we can just say that. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — And just move on. But it’s like, okay, what is that? What do you mean? So so here’s a principle for Jesus. He can endure the cross because of the joy that was on the other side of the cross, i.e. providing salvation for us. We in life, can ah endure almost anything if there’s joy on the other side of it. Joy is one of the great drivers and motivating factors of our life. Mark Clark — Okay, great, I can say that, but now I illustrated it in a story. I talked about getting up at three in the morning, taking my family on this thing, and and we exchanged, and we lost bags, and we the one’s puking, and there’s a flight attendant telling us, this there’s there’s just you know and I just kind of tell this funny story for two minutes… Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — …or three. um And it’s all these like, ah you know, all these a comedy of errors that are terrible. It’s awful.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — There’s suffering, there’s pain, but we could do it because we knew that once that flight landed, we were going to have nice sunshine for a week and we were going to spend time as a family.
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — So I could endure all this nonsense because of what, way anyway, point being, you’re looking for these mundane, things in life to become great illustrations… Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Mark Clark — …for your people and have fun along the way. So one of the principles I say is, look, if you’re not a comedian, don’t tell jokes. Tell stories that are funny. Right?
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Mark Clark — Don’t like, right? Don’t tell a joke. A joke is, you know, it can be rough. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. Mark Clark — But tell stories that are funny and be very self-deprecating. Don’t make yourself the but the hero of the story. You know, always beat up on yourself a little bit and and play the fool a little bit because people connect to that. So anyway, all that to say, um, Thursday commentaries, Friday commentaries, I’m writing it out. And usually what I do is by the end of Friday, I have a page uh, now it’s a Google doc. Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — It used to be a word doc, but a Google doc. So I can sit on my phone anywhere or whatever. And I got a Google doc that probably equals, you know, eight, nine pages of, of words… Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — …where I’ve just like written sentences, paragraphs out, illustrations out, to some degree. So I can remember them, um, bolded through the manuscript. And then by Saturday, now it’s Saturday morning, it used to be Saturday night because ah now I preach Saturday night.
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — So Saturday morning, go out to my office and my family knows, man, we don’t see our dad all day Saturday and all day Sunday, right? Rich Birch — Right. Those are work days. Yeah. Mark Clark — Because Saturday, yeah, those are work days. So 9 a.m., I’m out in the office and I’m getting this nine pages down to four or five. I know every page is about 10 minutes. And I’m supposed to preach 35 minutes here, so it’s always stressful. But Saturday night… Rich Birch — You always do. You have the best intentions. Mark Clark — Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Rich Birch — 35 minutes, best intentions. Mark Clark — And you guys, you know, yeah Jeff, your pastor puts me on the clock too. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I got this big clock ticking. And I’m like, I can’t do this. So, ah so I try to get that down to four or five pages. And then I will say for about 15 years of my life, I would, you know, would so back when I had Sunday services, that was all Saturday, I would say goodbye to my family at 5 p.m. And that’s the discipline.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Mark Clark — My family knew I was not around after 5 p.m. That means I’m not going to any ah friends birthday parties. My life, that is my life.
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — And then I would preach it out loud back then. I don’t do this now, but more pay attention to what I did do. I would preach out loud for three, four hours over and over.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Mark Clark — Every story, every turn of phrase, every sentence right in front of me and i’m memorizing it in my brain. So I don’t have to look at my notes. And i’m preaching it out loud. Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Mark Clark — So I’m hearing it and i’m hearing whether it’s interesting whether it’s not interesting. So I would do that till about midnight every Saturday night. Then I would sit in my bed and on my iPad and look at the notes with my pencil and color code it. Then wake up at 5 AM, go out to a parking lot, preach it again out loud for an hour with…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark Clark — …so I’m getting it all in my brain. Now this, now Rich we’re talking about, I’m doing this when I had 150 people at my church, not thousands, just 150. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yep. Mark Clark — That’s, that’s the sacrifice, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, but that that’s what I want people to pick up on though. Because I think there are folks, um like I have just such a high value on this part of what we do as a church. I’m not a I’m not a preacher, I’m not a communicator, but as a person in the seat that I sit in, the kind of executive pastor type seat, for years I I had a lead pastor I worked for, and he would say like, hey, what can I work on this week? Rich Birch — And I would literally always say, I would be like, your message, like the thing that you can take time on. Then the rest of us will take care of everything else, but you’re the only person that’s going to be up there for those 40 minutes. And yet the picture of you preaching that out, that’s that’s that’s humbling. Because I don’t think lots of people do that kind of thing. they you know There’s a lot of phoning it in, we’re doing the first part, and then we’re just kind of winging it at the first service and punishing all those people. Mark Clark — Yeah, it’s true. Rich Birch — Right? I think that happens, unfortunately. Mark Clark — And that, and that’s why, and that’s why I go back to what I say at the beginning. Most of you aren’t willing to do what I’m about to explain.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Clark — And most of the room just sits there and goes, shoot, now that you’ve explained it, you’re right. Rich Birch — Yes. Mark Clark — Um, you know, and part of that came from, I was doing this in my mid twenties and then all the way through my thirties. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Mark Clark — And there was a, and there still is an obsessive, um, and it really is an obsession. It has to be, right? Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — Now it helps that I actually have a mental disorder called the OCD and Tourette’s that actually my brain does obsess. Rich Birch — It’s your superpower.
Mark Clark — Yeah, exactly. literally obsess about every turn of phrase…
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — …and every every joke and every exegetical point and every illustration and everything is obsessed about, so that I can make as much eye contact as possible, so I can be as culturally connected and biblically sound as possible. All the things, um but I think a little bit more obsession to your point. Rich Birch — Right, right. Mark Clark — …would be helpful if we realized that this 40 minutes of, as Carey, our colleague has pointed out many times that, you know, 80% of people go to a church because of the preaching. And um it’s like this 80 minutes, but but even more than that, I was watching, excuse me, I was watching someone preach the other day and what struck me, this really important was this was like, there was no urgency. in their preaching. Rich Birch — Oh wow. What a crime. Mark Clark — They were checking a box. And I guess this might come from someone who grew up outside of a church. When I preach, I have like a a fire in my bones…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Clark — …that like this will be the last sermon every person in this room ever hears before they all die in a car accident between this Sunday and next Sunday.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Clark — They’re all dead and they’re all gonna face eternity. And I have to plead with them for 40 minutes at the at the tip of my toes with absolute urgency that they would come to Christ, they would treasure Christ above everything. Rich Birch — Yes. Mark Clark — And every Bible text is the most important Bible text. If you walked in and I was preaching Zephaniah 3, you would think I thought this was the most important Bible verse ever. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Well, it’s funny you say that because recently you did a series, graciously did a series for our church and you were preaching at a table. They had you sitting at a table for this series and you had your Bible open in front of you. And I was making the joke behind your back. I’m like, it looks like he’s going to flip that table, like you are like you’re kind of you know it’s like the table is between me and our and our audience you know, which which loved.
Mark Clark — I want to get out. Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — It was come let me at you, let me at you. It like it was like the table was the only thing that was holding you back…
Mark Clark — That’s funny. That’s funny. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …which i think is great so you know speaking to that one of the things I want to say this publicly, mark, I’ve watched you for years preach, and you continue to step up your game. Like I… Mark Clark — Oh, thanks man. Rich Birch — …there’s not a sense of like, Oh, here’s a guy who’s kind of hit his stride and he’s just like… I think very few people obviously at your level are phoning it in. That’s not true. Lots of people are they’re working hard, but like you seem to continue to polish too. And so what what has happened over the last, I don’t know, say five, 10 years in this kind of the most recent you know that you continue to kind of improve the process, what are you doing to kind of stay fresh and stay stay…
Mark Clark — Yeah, that’s great.
Rich Birch — Because i think it gets harder over time.
Mark Clark — Sure.
Rich Birch — As an observer on the outside I think the second decade and the third decade are much harder than the first, and the yeah like i think they get progressively harder to stay fresh. Mark Clark — Yeah, that’s, good that’s a great point. Because like with anything, naturally, psychologically, when you’re not doing something fresh, uh, it gets stale. And so how do you keep [inaudible]? Rich Birch — Right. Well, and we teach, we teach to a fixed text. Like we don’t want you to be creative. Like we, you, you, you’ve got to preach to the Bible. And so a guy like you every time, like you’ve taught it, you’ve taught on lots of scripture. And so it’s like, how do we keep that fresh? How do we have one more Christmas Eve message? Gosh, like how many times can we preach Easter? We love preaching Easter. Obviously this is insider. Obviously it’s the death and resurrection of Jesus, but like people know the punch line. People know what you’re going to talk about.
Mark Clark — Great, great point.
Rich Birch —And so how how are you keeping it fresh? Mark Clark — Yeah. Great, great question. So I, um, this past Christmas Eve it’s interesting. Um, so we had 12 services and, and Ray’s like, like, how many do you want to do? And I was like, well, I’ll do nine, give somebody else some reps in front of a Christmas Eve audience, which down here is crazy. Uh, like literally probably 35,000 people just at this campus alone through those 12 services. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Mark Clark — And they come jacked up. They come, they bring their friends. Like it’s a I mean, Canada has a little bit of this, but definitely more in America…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mark Clark — …with the whole Christmas Eve, Easter, everyone shows up and brings everybody. So so there’s like this, to your point, I’ve I’ve now done Christmas Eve for 20 years of my life, literally. And down here, done it three years in a row. And it’s seen as like a really big deal, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — Like this is Christmas Eve, this is a super bowl of of preaching. Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — and Ray’s point backstage after he heard my first ah sermon. And you’re always tweaking, you got nine chances at it, so you’re gonna mess them around with it. He’s just like, what what’s really encouraging is like, this is your third year here, and everything you said was super fresh, and like, there was no going back to the barrel or whatever. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. Mark Clark — So but that, to your point, takes a lot of hard work.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Clark — I can tell you, I felt the pressure, and feel I feel the pressure of the Christmas Eve service, maybe more than any sermon all year. It’s just such a staple here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — They put in so much time and energy and effort.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — And they do this, ah which we didn’t do. I mean, this is very interesting. We didn’t do a lot of raise your hand to come to Christ at Village. Our our thing was like, hey, we I would constantly give people an opportunity to come to Christ. But um baptism was almost seen philosophically, methodologically as like, this is the raising of the hand. It’s like, hey, if you’ve come to Christ every two months, we’re gonna do a baptism. And if you’re a Christian, this is your public, you know thing. But here, they do a lot of like, hey, I’m gonna give you an opportunity to raise your hand. And I just don’t have a ton of experience in it. So I work really hard at like trying to figure out the mechanics of that and all that. But every Christmas Eve service, you get people to raise their hand, to accept Christ, we pray for them. Rich Birch — It’s amazing. Mark Clark — And it’s beautiful. And all these hands go up and then all these candles. It’s a really powerful thing. But again anyway, to your point, I got um I start writing I start taking notes for a Christmas Eve sermon, Rich, probably I remember I think there’s probably a Google doc where I started taking illustrations in August.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah. It’s kind of constantly in the background.
I was like I was like oh this is I don’t want to waste this for a normal weekend. This is so good, I’m gonna wait. Rich Birch — Yes. I’m keeping that bullet in the holster.
Mark Clark — Yes.
Rich Birch — We’re not firing that one. Yeah. Mark Clark — No one’s going to hear this story until until Christmas Eve.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.
Mark Clark — And so you pile a bunch of those up and then, you know, you’re you know um one of the things your audience could do if they want is they could go find the Christmas Eve maybe in your show notes or whatever. Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — Find the Christmas Eve sermon I preached at Bayside this past weekend…
Rich Birch — We’ll do that. We’ll link to that.
Mark Clark — …because you’ll see a lot of the mechanics of like I’m not letting as, as Ray kind of says, he goes, you know, in most communicators, there’s like dead space. And then there’s live space. And he’s like, that was just 30 minutes of live space.
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — There was no lull, like there’s constant, you’re just boom, boom, boom. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Mark Clark — Every, every 30 seconds, there’s a thing. There’s a it’s almost like, this is probably a bad illustration. I just thought of it. So you can delete this. It’s almost like when you watch, um, Have you ever seen Deadpool and Wolverine in that movie? Well, you don’t have to admit this, but anyways, there’s there’s ah there’s a movie hypothetically called Deadpool and Wolverine. Rich Birch — Yes, hypothetically. Mark Clark — That is, it’s very dirty and there’s a lot of, f-bombs, but the the thing about it is when I watched it with a crowd, there’s a laugh and something’s happening where you’re reacting like every 30 seconds. Rich Birch — Right, yes. Yes. Mark Clark — There’s like a boom and then a boom and then a boom.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Clark — It was like, it’s just two straight hours of every 30 seconds of something.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Mark Clark — And anyway, Christmas Eve service feel felt like that.
Rich Birch — Had that feel to it, yeah.
Mark Clark — Yeah. So anyway, so, but to your point, that takes a lot of work.
Rich Birch — That’s good. With less f-bombs, hopefully, a few less.
Mark Clark — Less F-bombs. Yes. Yes. Most most it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good.
Mark Clark — It takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of practice, a lot of out loud, a lot of, you know, even for that one, which I rarely do anymore, but I would say this is a good, I actually ran it through with my wife. I didn’t preach it to her, but I went, I’m going to do this. Then I’m going to do this. Then I’m going to do this. Then I go, what do you think? How should I move that around? And I was doing that right up until the final sermon.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — You know, the, the, the ninth one.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — I was still fiddling with order…
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — …and cut that and move that over there. And that’s boring and you know, whatever. So anyway, all that to say, keeping it lively, keeping the urgency, um, making sure you illustrate, I mean, just, just really quick – making sure you’re illustrating enough. Oftentimes what I find is in a 40 minute sermon, what I would do is add three or four more illustrations to most sermons that I hear, mostly when I’m like what I’m helping mentor people, I’m like, listen, you need more illustrations in this sermon. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Mark Clark — It doesn’t mean they need to be 18 minutes long. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — That’s not what I mean. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — And I don’t mean… Rich Birch — Two, three minutes on this, move on. Two, three minutes on that, that kind of thing. Mark Clark — Yeah, or even 30 seconds.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Mark Clark — You know, a quick like, hey, this situation happened with my daughter the other day and it’s, and then a boom. This is how it has to do with the gospel and the text that we’re talking about.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. That’s good.
Mark Clark — You know, just let it, yeah, let it naturally flow out of the text. Um, and, and not it be like, uh, as some communicators, it’s like, what is he telling the story for? I don’t, what does this have to do with anything? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, it’s a long story to get to a short point, right? Like it’s yeah. Yeah. Mark Clark — Yeah, which I’ve been guilty of as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Mark Clark — But it’s like, make your, make your points come out of the text, make them pointed, make them fun. But, but you can you can do a bunch of 20, 30 second illustrations throughout too. Rich Birch —Sprinkle those in you. Mark Clark — You don’t need to feel like I’m going back to the classic, like in World War II, General Patton said to the people…
Mark Clark — …you know make come make it come out of your own life too. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So kind of one other I’d love to explore just as we’re kind of looking to land the plane. But so think of a church of maybe 1500 people. We’ve got a lot of executive pastor types that listen in. And I have said in my coaching, my conversations with those folks, I’ve been like, listen, a part of our job as an executive pastor is to create space in the lead pastor’s life so that they can do that part well. Like they we need to take stuff off their plate. We need to do things so that they’re not you know they’ve got the space to do this. What would your coaching be to the staff teams that are supporting lead pastors or communicators? How can we help you ah do your thing well? How can we…
Mark Clark — Great question. Rich Birch — You quoted that stat, 83% of the reason why people attend church is because of the preaching. And I’ll say that to staff leaders, I’ll be like, listen, You think what that means. 83% of the reason why people show up is because of those 35, 40 minutes. The rest of us are the other 17%. Mark Clark — Yeah, that’s great.
Rich Birch — So we’ve got to do what we can to try to create space for that. What would your advice be? What what would you say to try to help encourage? What what what could we do to support teaching guys well?
Mark Clark —Yeah, that’s a great, great question. It’s it’s really hard because what I wanna say is making sure that you’re giving honest feedback ah about the quality. Um, because obviously quality is, is, is key. Content is number one, but content needs to be heard. So quality is how content is heard. um But what’s really hard about it is it’s so personal that it’s really hard for a staff member who in the power dynamic…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — …you know, like I always tell lead pastors and senior pastors, I’m like, everyone laughs at your jokes, but it’s because they’re paid to, you know. Nobody…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of true.
Mark Clark — …nobody, yeah it’s like, if you think all these staff are your friends, you know they they think you’re the greatest thing. It’s like, dude, they you pay them to to not tell you you’re not funny or whatever, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Clark — So there’s a power dynamic that’s really hard when it comes to like… I was actually, Adam Grant, you know, Adam Grant, of course, I saw this great clip from Adam Grant the other day. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but he talks about, I forget his phrase. It was actually genius. He talks about when you’re in a room and ideas are being thrown around, um, about what you should do. Like, hey should we do this? Should we do that? The problem is, uh, what, did what did he call it? He called it like the HP something. It was basically the dynamic of the highest per paid person, HPP or something. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes. Mark Clark — Is this a normal, you know this? Rich Birch — Yes. It is HPP. No, no. He, this is, he has talked about this. Yeah. Mark Clark — Yeah. So HPP, I think. I’m just remembering this.
Rich Birch — Their opinion matters the most on whatever you’re talking about.
Mark Clark — The highest paid person in the room always sways. Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — And and that’s just a normal sociological dynamic. Rich Birch — Yes. Mark Clark — The question is, is that actually the best play? Rich Birch — Right. Right. Mark Clark — Or is it just, well, the highest paid person has said it, so now we’re all just gonna do it, you know? So in that vein, it’s really hard to look at your lead pastor and go, look, bro, or sis, that sermon was like a 5 out of 10. Like you could you could do it better. Rich Birch — Yeah, you’re phoning it in. Mark Clark — Or yeah, or phoning it in or, Hey, I know you really gave that thing a shot. That was not great. And I think you have eights and nines in you, but you have constantly been delivering fives and sixes. I think we can grow our church. If you, if the quality got better. I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your communicator to be able to do that. I think if you can, that would be super helpful to them. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Mark Clark — Now it might not be in a, it it shouldn’t probably be in a room full of people.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Mark Clark — Because a sermon is very… Rich Birch — Like around the water cooler when everybody’s listening in, probably not the time to do that. Mark Clark — Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s like, man, I just been, I’ve been listening. I think you could, you don’t want me to help. You want me to, you know, is is there, a is there a room? Do you want to strike a room to help you with content? Like there might be some private conversations, or cause they might be feeling stuck. Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — Like, Hey, I’m not passionate about this anymore. I don’t feel like I have great content. Like, I don’t know where to get good. What, you know, whatever. So that would be super helpful. Um, if you think they can do better. But if they’re already killing it and it’s just like, you feel like, you know, that maybe, yeah, just some conversations around, Hey, what can I take off your plate to free up your time? Rich Birch — Right. Is there more stuff that free up yet? That’s good. Mark Clark — Yeah, to almost justify their time on it. Like you said, like telling them, cause sometimes they feel bad.
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — Sometimes they feel like, oh, I shouldn’t be sitting here for 15 hours working on a sermon in the office or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark Clark — And it’s like, no, no, that’s literally what we pay you to do. Rich Birch — Yes, a hundred percent. Mark Clark — Like we’re all going to be better paid if you do your job well, we’re going to have more money, more people, more ministry. Do your like, kill it. Go in your office for 15 hours. We don’t care. Rich Birch — Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, and that, yeah, that that’s been my experience more that more lots of communicators, they under they ironically undervalue what they do in their mind…
Mark Clark — Yes.
Rich Birch — …more than they should. Like I’m like, no, no, it’s like critically important. Like it’s not. Mark Clark — Yes. Rich Birch — And and particularly, even if you’ve got some gifting in this, where you can, you know, hey, I can I can pull a two hour prep and get up and and, you know, I can hit a base hit, I can get on second…
Mark Clark — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …kind of thing, then there can be this like, well, I’m just going to keep it, you know, I’m just going to keep hitting base hits. And it’s like, well, what would it take for us to give you more room so that you could knock it out of the part every single week? Mark Clark — Yes. That’s great. Rich Birch — Because it’s critically important.
Mark Clark — Love that.
Rich Birch — Like, I think that it’s not like a secondary piece of the puzzle. Well, it just as we’re coming to land. I want to make sure people are tracking with you. So first what I want to do is point them to your podcast. Tell us about the podcast. We’ll link to it. Because I think this would be really practical. I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like, Oh, I need to stew on this a little bit more. Tell us a little bit about your podcast.
Mark Clark — Yeah, so it’s called the Mark Clark podcast, again ah very very ah creative, took us a long time to come up with that. Rich Birch — Creative genius. Yeah. Mark Clark — Yeah. And basically what it is is it’s my sermons every week. So so I’m I’m you know I’m not like you where I’m I’m a disciplined person that gets to sit down and have a lot of conversations with great people. I just I’m just so all over the place. I can’t get myself disciplined up.
Mark Clark — So and what we came up with was what let’s take certain, I mean you’re preaching every week anyway. You have this 10 years of sermons that are online probably. Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Mark Clark — So let’s grab some stuff and start. So what we do is we post a sermon every week. I think it’s Thursday morning with a little intro from me, but it could be a sermon from five years ago. It could be something I preached three weeks ago and it’s, you know, packaged in, in series usually. So it’ll be like, if we did a sermon on the Mount, we did a sermon on the Mount series here at Bayside last summer. And it was probably 20 weeks, but I preached, let’s say six or seven of them at the main campus. We’ll just take that. We’ll say this is Mark’s, you know, Sermon on the Mount series, you know, so six weeks in a row, you’ll get a sermon on the Mount sermon.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Mark Clark — So they’re basically, it’s just me preaching sermons on stuff. And you’ll be able to see all what we’re talking about, the mechanics of going from the text to the illustrations and all the stuff we talked about every single week and hopefully be helpful for you with biblical content too. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s, it’s, again, I would highly recommend that. I think it’s a great listen. I think it’s great, obviously, on two levels. It’s great teaching. But also, I think for communicators, it’s good to listen in and be like, okay, here’s, here’s a guy who, you know, has a proven track record is making a difference is is just doing all kinds of great stuff. I think that would be helpful for you.
Rich Birch — Also, you’ve you’ve written, which we haven’t even really got into, you’ve written a number of just really compelling books that I found ah you know personally so helpful…
Mark Clark — Oh, thanks.
Rich Birch — …and you know we found so helpful at our church. But you’ve got a book coming out here that’s coming up called “The Problem of Life”. Tell us a little bit about that and where can we send people to make sure they they pick up copies of that. Mark Clark — Yes, so, um so a couple years ago I wrote, as I mentioned earlier I wrote, “The Problem of God”, which was like a skeptics um book. You know, top 10 questions that skeptics ask about Christianity and the challenges and all that. Then I wrote “The Problem of Jesus”, which is, you know, basically everything I’ve learned about Jesus and discipleship and, you know, the gospels and all this stuff. Mark Clark — And ah now “The Problem of Life” kind of rounds off the [inaudible]. You know, there’s this great there’s this great quote um by opening, you know, Calvin’s institutes, one of the great, you know, they say maybe the greatest the greatest treatise on theology ever written. And the opening line is basically, we we need to find two things. We need to find the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. So the way that what this book is, is it’s the second one. It’s like a whole book about ourselves. What does it mean to be a human being?
Rich Birch — Right. Mark Clark — What does it what what is this longing in us um for something more than the brokenness of our world? How do we deal with suffering? How do we deal with joy? How to find joy, meaning, purpose in a disenchanted world is actually the subtitle. Rich Birch — Love it. Mark Clark — And so it’s this this idea that like we need to be fusing our our life can just be normal, mundane, we get up, we have marriage, we raise kids, we go to work, blah. Or we’re part of a big epic story and all of this has meaning and purpose and value. And so it goes through um everything about the the human experience.
Rich Birch — Yep. Mark Clark — From from life to death, the question of eternity, the question of soul, question of suffering, ah purpose, meaning, all this stuff. So um it comes out ah February 18 and people can pre-order it right now on Amazon. Really excited about it. So. Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s great. we’ll like We’ll link to that in the show notes, but I’d strongly encourage, you know, pick up copy. This could be the kind of thing you do with your staff team. Hey, let’s read through this together. Mark Clark — Yeah. Rich Birch — Could be a good framing for a series down the road. Maybe you buy a bunch of books and give them away to people, that sort of thing. I would ah highly recommend that you, uh, you check that out again. That’s “The Problem of Life”. Mark Clark — Yes. Rich Birch — And it comes out here in a couple of weeks. So we’d love for you to pick up copies of that. Well, Mark, I appreciate you brother. Thank you for being here today. Mark Clark — Appreciate you. Yeah. Rich Birch — If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Mark Clark — Probably Instagram mark_clark, um, is where I post most things. And then obviously Facebook and then Bayside church, um, the, the podcast, the sermon, the YouTube. It’s, it’s a great church doing a lot of great things and 2025 is going to be awesome. So we’ve got a lot of cool creative stuff coming out of the pike. Rich Birch — Thanks, Mark. Appreciate your brother. Have a good day. Mark Clark — Thank you, sir. Thank you for what you do too. Thanks, Rich. Rich Birch — Take care.
Repurpose, Reach, Renew: Unleashing AI for Your Church’s Mission with Kenny Jahng
Jan 22, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This month we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re learning from Kenny Jahng, founder of Big Click Syndicate and AI for Church Leaders, and Editor in Chief of Church Tech Today. We’re talking about how the world will be smaller.
What can churches do to better engage their online visitors and encourage people to take next steps with Jesus? How can technology, particularly AI, play a role in enhancing church communication and furthering the spread of the gospel? Tune in to learn how AI can be used to repurpose your sermons into content across multiple platforms and effectively reach wider audiences.
A new tool for the gospel. // Church leaders need a theology of AI for the church in order to consider how it can best be used to advance the gospel. One of the core questions Kenny believes church leaders should weigh is if can God use digital tools for His glory. Just like Roman roads were “new technology” used by the early church to spread the gospel, we can use today’s technology to do the same. If you believe that God can use AI to serve the mission of the church, then it opens up a new sandbox to play in and offers endless possibilities.
AI is perfect for translation. // Generative AI, the latest evolution in artificial intelligence, not only processes data but creates new content. This includes generating text, audio, video, and images—capabilities that can be used for church communication. This technology can replicate a pastor’s voice in different languages, providing a more authentic experience for audiences around the world without the need for constant re-recording. Global ministries and missionary organizations can also use AI to translate the Bible into heart languages to increase the spread of the gospel.
Use AI to expand your reach. // We live in a YouTube world where the average video is viewed for about four minutes. Would someone get to anything meaningful, material, or significant in that first four minutes of your sermon before they abandon it? We now have tools that will identify the key points of our sermon videos and repurpose them into short pieces. AI can help churches engage their local communities by repurposing sermon content into bite-sized pieces for social media, blog posts and more. This approach allows churches to reach people who may not have time to watch a full sermon but can engage with shorter, more digestible content.
Train staff and volunteers to use AI. // AI tools like Sermon Shots can automatically generate short-form shareable media, making it easier for churches to maintain an active online presence without overwhelming their staff. Encourage your team to brainstorm and implement new ideas for online engagement. Invest time and resources into exploring AI and other technologies that can enhance your communication strategies. Training volunteers to help with AI-driven tasks is also a way to activate more volunteers in your ministries.
AI can help answer FAQs. // There are people who are watching your videos and have questions. AI excels at transforming sermons into FAQs, glossaries, discussion questions, and more to maximize your outreach and better serve your audience.
Use AI to reach more people through your website. // Many people don’t think of the church website as being a place of ministry, but rather as a directional sign that tells visitors where to go. View your website as a platform to actually engage and influence people in their quest to learn about Jesus and a biblical worldview.
Repurpose your sermon. // Kenny offers a website for church leaders at www.repurposeyoursermon.com which provides practical guidance on using AI to maximize the impact of sermon content. It takes your sermon and walks through a dozen different ways to create devotionals, sermon clips, quote images, and more.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you are fired up and here to be here today. You’ve caught us in the middle of these Unprediction episodes where we’re looking at things that were true last year, are going to be true this year and are going to be true next year. I’ve got my friend Kenny Jahng on and today we’re talking about the fact that this year, the world will be smaller than it was last year as global connections grow, leveraging technology for communication and learning. It’s just going to continue to be critical in our mission. Churches, you and I should aim to develop global relationships and share their ministry more widely. Rich Birch — If you do not know Kenny Jahng, what rock have you been living under? He’s a certified StoryBrand copywriter guide, the founder of Big Click Syndicate, a strategic marketing advisory firm that really helps Christian leaders build marketing engines that work. In addition, Kennedy well, I’ve made you a Kennedy. Kenny is the editor of chief of also of a Church Tech Today and is the founder of AI for Church Leaders. Plus he’s a friend of mine. Kenny, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Kenny Jahng — You make me sound like a really busy person Rich. Rich Birch — You are, what are you talking about? You’re so busy. I love it. Kenny is like, you know, I don’t know how many segments of trips you did last year, but you definitely did more than mine. We’re always on the plane, going places. Fill out the picture, kind of tell us a little bit more about Kenny. And then we’re going to jump into this conversation. Kenny Jahng — Absolutely. I guess someone called me a ministry entrepreneur recently and I think ah that kind of fits the bill. Rich Birch — Love it. Kenny Jahng — I basically have been able to identify problems that I see that are solvable and a little bit arrogant enough to think that I can make a dent in that problem. And so um I’ve you know basically have a bunch of different ventures helping church leaders ah resource, whether through conferences or through um resources like ah courses or templates and workshops and books and stuff like that. So there’s all these things that I’m trying to do to basically empower the church leader to have much more impact wherever they are.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, in my mind, one of the hats you wear is the Bishop of AI as a mutual friend has called you. You’re the guy that, now the good thing is like, you and I, we’ve known each other for whatever 15 plus years. Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — And you’re always the guy who I think of like, I wonder if there’s an app that does this, or I wonder if there’s a website that does this. Kenny is the guy who knows that. And that over the last couple of years, really since ChatGPT came out, has ah really blossomed into this incredible, you’re just an expert on this whole area of artificial intelligence. And so I want to leverage that today for this whole idea of communication. And okay, how how can we leverage these tools to kind of communicate better? Rich Birch — I’m a firm believer, I’m pro-tech. Listen, I think when I look at the New Testament, um are you know the writers of the day, Paul used the technology of his day, which was the Roman roads and the Greek language to spread the message of Jesus. We want to be doing the same thing today. Challenge us. What should we be thinking about when you think of this idea of leveraging you know AI for communication, particularly with a global bent? Tell us what we should be thinking about these days. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, AI is a tool. It’s not gonna necessarily come take you, your job away immediately. um You know, I like to say it’s taken my job, but to a whole nother level.
Rich Birch — Oh, I love it. Kenny Jahng — And I think this is one of those things where um we need a theology of AI for the church. And I’m working on a book and some other resources around that. Because I’m trying to explore the questions that actually determine how do you get to a point of understanding how we should best use AI for the gospel? Rich Birch — That’s good. Kenny Jahng — And one of the core concepts or core ideas, I think, Rich, is this, if you look at the Toyota 5Ys, you know that process where you’re asking, why do you believe this? And then why do you believe that? And you get down to it five levels deep. Kenny Jahng — I think the question that church leaders need to answer for themselves is, do you believe that there actually could be any divinity in the digital tools that we have in front of us today? Do you think God could use digital tools for His good and for His glory? And if the answer is no, then we must compartmentalize it, we must block it, we need to shut it down, etc. And for those that are um against AI um immediately, I would say then, let’s you know let’s call you out and say then, are you consistent? Kenny Jahng — So are you using the internet? Are you using smartphones? Are you using GPS? Because if AI is evil and it’s not of of God, then so is all this other technology that we have that’s pervasive all over.
Kenny Jahng — And so that fundamental question is the first place, square one, we have to go, Rich. And then after that, um if you were able to say, yes, God could use it to redeem our world, we could use it to become um much more impactful heralds of the gospel…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Kenny Jahng — …then it just opens up this play, you know, sandbox that we can play in. And it’s just an amazing world together. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love what The Economist said, the newspaper, they talked about, I love their definition of AI. They said, AI is the label we give advanced technologies when we don’t understand them. And ah eventually what will happen is once you start to understand their use, their functionality, we stop using that term. So like in a very real way, I still remember, this is years ago, 15 years ago, I remember auto-complete on Google search…
Kenny Jahng — Yes.
Rich Birch — …like where you would go and you would start typing and then it went And I remember my mind being blown away. I was like, oh my goodness. What is happening? Like what is this thing? This is ridiculous. That was a form of AI that literally is a forum of the very actually very close to what what ChatGPT is doing today. It’s it’s a taking information and extending it. But there’s a specific kind of AI, generative AI. Can you define that for us, maybe for church leaders that have heard that before? What does that mean, generative AI? Kenny Jahng — Yeah, generative AI. So again, you’re right. AI has been around for decades in different forms. This latest flavor genre called generative AI hit the media by storm when ChatGPT was launched in November 22. And the difference between all the other stuff and this stuff is it is now able to actually create, generate, create new things. So the old AI, the stuff that we’ve known AI historically, um IBM Watson being able to play chess against the chess grandmasters. I think of it as like these this brainiac computer that the old AI just does computations, large amounts of massive data computations in the brain. Kenny Jahng — Generative AI is to do that and then actually create new outputs. And so we are in a world, if you want to be a little bit nerdy, Rich, you’re hearing the term multimodal AI right now, which only means it can talk about text, audio, video, um images, both inputs and outputs. It’s able to converse across all of that now. And so this is the wild, wild west because AI is now creating brand new things. It’s actually generating new content. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I saw a study recently that said 11% of American workers you a use AI on a daily or use AI on a daily basis, which I thought was amazing, 11%. 40% do on a weekly basis. This is clearly a trend that were you know is happening all around us.
Rich Birch — Let’s get kind of practical here. What would be a use case particularly on the communication side, maybe a tool that we could be thinking about and a way that our churches, either a way that maybe you’ve seen a church or you kind of wanna poke us towards, hey, we should be thinking about maybe using a tool like this this way. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, there’s very um funds novel things that we could use AI for. There’s some practical productivity stuff. I think that if you’re talking future forward, um things that really do have a massive impact is translation. AI is perfect for translation. Rich Birch — Yep. Kenny Jahng — So one of the reasons why AI has taken the world by storm is because um it is relevant to every single language because it understands every single language.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — It’s relevant to every single industry because it’s pretty much read every single book under the sun, every single webpage out there.
Kenny Jahng — And so language is just one of those things that it’s completely conversant in and allows you to translate not just text, not just audio, but now video. You’re able to actually take a video, say, let’s say your sermon, um speaking in one language, it could translate it and clone your voice and clone your video of yourself and lip sync you to that new translated audio, even though you don’t speak that other language. And so once you start to see that technology in action, your creative mind just starts to expand of how you can use that in so many different practical applications. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love this. When this, when we first started to see this being used, there was like a real negative backlash against these kind of, what was that term that kept getting kicked around? There was like the, you know, what was it? Fake deep fakes, you know, like, oh, this is a deep fake or whatever. Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — And oh, that’s, this is going to take over the, you know, world and be super negative. But there are some positive use cases for translated video like this. What would be an example or two that you’ve seen? And then I’ve got a couple I can think of as well. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, so um but I’ll give you two. One is I’ve worked with some organizations that are missionary organizations that are basically translating the Bible into the heart language of hundreds of other languages around the world, right? The gospel needs to actually reach um all the ends of the earth. Um, they’re doing that on video where there’s a person who’s actually speaking and they’ll, you know, is translating the video. Kenny Jahng — But the problem with that methodology is in five, 10 years, my hairstyle, my clothes goes out of style. And so if you’re trying to reach unbelievers in a secular culture, um, that matters. And so they have to invest in rerecording reading the entire Bible in multiple languages over and over. You can just imagine the expense for that. Rich Birch — Yeah, the complexity of that. Kenny Jahng — Now with AI, you can completely do that um in an instance and update their clothes up that they look, etc. And then here’s the super thing that I think who can argue against this using AI for translation when you put that into countries where there’s security and sensitive issues when Christians are being persecuted. You don’t want to put a human being on camera.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — Well now you can actually use the voice and cloning um and translation. Rich Birch — Wow. Kenny Jahng — But you know you basically keeps someone safe. ah So that’s the first case. The second case… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s powerful. I love that. I know we had our friends from The Chosen, ah the foundation that’s behind The Chosen, and they’re using AI in that exact case… Kenny Jahng — Yes. Rich Birch — …where they’re translating that. I think the most translated television show of all time is Baywatch, which believe it or not, it’s like 50, isn’t that funny? 50 some odd, you know, translations. But they’re aiming for like 120 translations. So like way more than the most. Kenny Jahng — Wow. Rich Birch — And they’re closing the gap using AI that they’re, you know, they’re, they’re taking, literally taking their raw video content, dumping it into generative AI, and then having it produce entire episodes of The Chosen in multiple languages ah for exactly the reason that you’re saying there. That’s that’s so cool. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, I I think that’s powerful. And like for all the opponents of AI, I dare you to call me up and let’s have a discussion about that. How can you argue against using AI for that type of use? Rich Birch — Yes. Right. Kenny Jahng — The other one is every or most churches have some sort of ministry for missions, oversee missions. Rich Birch — Yep. Kenny Jahng — And so, for example, my church, um you know, has a long-standing over a decade, I think, relationship with a ministry locally in Guatemala. My previous church had one in Dominican Republic. Imagine, um as you build the relationships over the years, and they know the pastor, and they have this relationship, imagine now um instead of having translation issues or having to have a translator present whenever you’re there, that you can actually translate your sermons into their native tongue and then send those videos. Rich Birch — Amazing. Kenny Jahng — And now you’re able to actually start to disciples of them in a much more meaningful way than just a periodic trip once, twice a year, um that you can actually send them materials and resources that are translated that completely um is able to be received very well by the people overseas. So um I think that’s just another um interesting way that translation could work in our favor and takes very, very little time, very low cost, and it’s accessible to every single church that’s listening here today. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy like that, ah you know, that’s and that’s a great example, great use case and relatively simple to do. um We were talking beforehand, you know, I used a tool called Hey Gen, which I think you put me on to probably. I’ll credit you if you didn’t anyways. Which is, ah you know, the ah ah low cost, does exactly what we’re talking about here. And I’ve done it where I’ve made, I made a video, I don’t know, six months ago and posted it on Instagram where I translated myself into multiple languages. And it’s fun to hear yourself speak Russian and, you know, whatever, you know, Cantonese and different languages. ah But I did the reverse. I took ah a speaker, a French speaker and translated into English because I wanted to hear what does that sound like? Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — And I was blown away with how good the translation was. Like It was like, oh, wow. Like it it the accent was great. It was easy to understand. Man, that opens up all kinds of opportunities. And I think there’s something about when we know that it’s happening, I’m willing to adopt that technology like as a viewer. Like if I know if I’m not if someone’s not trying to trick me and they’re you know in this case the case you’ve just given like hey you know this pastor, you know they don’t speak Spanish or you know whatever language you’re speaking in the you know the location. But we’ve got another way to try to make it accessible to you. I think there’ll be high levels of adoption there. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the demographic trends in all the major metro areas and even the smaller ones in this country, you are seeing that um many, many communities, most communities are turning much more multi-ethnic, multi-lingual. Rich Birch — Oh, a hundred percent. Yes. Kenny Jahng — And so um I think it’s going to be an even more pressing need. If your church is serious about reaching your own zip code, you’re going to need to start to think about the populations that don’t that are not native English speakers, at least here in America.
Rich Birch — Yeah. A hundred percent. Kenny Jahng — And how do you serve them? How do you bring them in? How do you actually present the gospel to them in a way that is much more receptive um so that you can get more decisions for Christ and baptisms and all all the other things that we are trying to do in our call and ministry. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve done that for years with human translators. This scales that up faster. And I would argue in a more compelling manner, like it’s compelling to watch this content. um you know it doesn’t the lip sync is better, you know all that stuff. They’ve solved some of the technical problems with you know with this kind of translation. I literally was talking to a church leader last week that was asking this exact question. They’re saying, hmm, I wonder if we should be thinking about Portuguese, French… um and I can’t remember what the third language was, you know, launching some sort of experience that translates that isn’t trying to hide the fact that it’s an English speaker, but it’s translating this. That’s that’s great. What other ways? So go ahead. Kenny Jahng — So here’s here’s the translation tool I want, Rich. It’s the English to English tool. And I wanted to take my message. So it’s going to take my message, whatever I i give as a presentation or talk, and then it’s going to transcribe the ChatGPT. And then ChatGPT is going to make it much more logical, much more clear, much more compelling, and then make me say it in the video. So that’s a better version of me. How about that? Rich Birch — Yes, a snappier version. Take put the look put the the Tim Lucas filter on. How do I say this? I’d have to say it louder. You know and and there and there’d have to be spaghetti or some sort of prop every time.
Kenny Jahng — Yes. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. That’s that’s so good. Well what about so I love this idea. Even when you got me thinking there when you said that too was you know, international partners, you know, all struggle in another language. You know, I might only know five words in Spanish, but like I have a relationship with these people. We’ve been you know there are a bunch of times. And like and when we’re when we’re on site, all struggle through and we’ll like all use Google Translate…
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and like try to have a conversation. It’s wooden. But it does feel like there’s some sort of relationship there. Another thing we could do is like when we’re on, you know, yeah oftentimes those in those environments, they’ll like want to shoot a video to say something back to the church instead of like putting, you know, subtitles on that, we could take that video and very low cost, like, you know, less than the definitely less than the cost of the, you know, a coffee at the airport. We could translate that and show that to the people at our church back home. Man, that would be powerful, a powerful way to use that kind of technology. I love that. So good. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, and i’m I’m looking waiting for the future, right? We we talk about innovation right now in dog years, right? And in given 365 days a year…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Kenny Jahng — …we’re seeing seven leap frogs in the innovation right now. And um just like I don’t know if you know, there’s a Google Translate app where you can hold it up as ah your camera and it will translate in real time signs that you see in other languages. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Kenny Jahng — I’m for sure that that’s going to be with video translation, that I’m going to be able to hold up a camera to you speaking and it will actually change your voice, not just subtitle you…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kenny Jahng — …but that’s the future. And so I think it’s it’s bright for us, especially for talking about translation as a use case. Rich Birch — Dude, I literally used that app last week. I was in Quebec, French speaking and, you know, predominantly French speaking. And we literally were walking around like using it on signs, using it on our, you know, menus at restaurants. It’s wild. Like I’m like this, I’m living in the future. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. I’d seen it advertised, but never used it before. And it’s free somehow. Kenny Jahng — It’s a great time to be alive. Rich Birch — Crazy. It’s crazy. I’m like, how does this happen? And it doesn’t cost me anything.
Kenny Jahng — yes
Rich Birch — I don’t have any perception of how it’s costing me is probably a better way to say that. What about are there any other uses, maybe close to home? I love that global, but are there ways that we should be thinking about this year using generative AI to help us reach people in our neighborhoods, around the corner, that sort of thing? Kenny Jahng — Yeah, I mean, how many days do you have? Can we start the list alphabetically? I mean, there’s so many ways that we should be using AI to reach more people. I will say this, every single church has a website, I hope, and every single church has a sermon archive on there. And I think the problem right now is that we live in a YouTube world, right, where the average view of a video is four minutes or so. Kenny Jahng — um If I actually pulled up your website, anybody who’s listening today, we go to any given sermon page and hit play and then start the YouTube countdown clock before someone abandons a video of you, four minutes. Would they get to anything meaningful, material, significant, memorable…
Rich Birch — Oh, dude. Come on. Come on.
Kenny Jahng — …in that first four minutes before they abandon your website page? Rich Birch — Dude, that is, you know, that’s a great way to think about this. You know, stop complaining about the fact that we have low, you know, memory and like we all that stuff. Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — Let’s think about the practical use case. Like that’s a great example. So many people, they’re just warming up in the first four minutes. They’re not getting to it. Kenny Jahng — Yes, exactly. Rich Birch — So so what do we what can we do? How how do we how do we live in a in, like you say, in a YouTube world ah where that’s yeah people’s primary orientation or even more so like you know TikTok, Snap, all that. Kenny Jahng — So I mean we we live in a short form video world. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — And so this is where AI, it used to be you have to the reason why no one does it in the past 5, 10 years is because you need to hire a video editor. Someone needs to literally sit through your entire sermon, transcribe it, read it, highlight, pull out the clips, um you know edit it. It it’s it’s tedious. It’s laborious and it’s expensive.
Kenny Jahng — And now you’ve got ah tools like Sermon Shots that basically you upload your video or just put in your YouTube link, and it will automatically identify the hotspots, the the the key points of your sermon, automatically clip them, resize them to whether you want vertical video, square video, horizontal, and then it will repurpose them into short form pieces. You should post that. Now you should post it on social, you should send an email, but you should also put it on your sermon page. Kenny Jahng — There’s all these other types of forms of content that you should actually be reformulating your long-form sermon into and putting it on your sermon page. I think for me, there’s over 10 different types of short-form content that should be on a given sermon page and AI is here to help. And it costs pennies, and it also takes like um um less time than you would ever think. And so um and here’s the other kicker, Rich. You and I are always nerding out on this. How can we activate more volunteers in our ministry? Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Kenny Jahng — And that’s a perfect volunteer role. That’s something that can be done asynchronously, off-site. They don’t need to drive to the church. And it’s something that there’s someone in your church that is has got an hour a week to actually start to do some of these things for your sermons. And the and the the ROI is limitless, right? Because once you put the stuff on the internet, it actually has traction. So anyway, repurposing your content. Rich Birch — Let’s slow down on this, repurpose your sermon, I love it. So you said 10, that caught my attention. I’m like, oh my goodness, 10. I love the idea of taking the, obviously we’ve got the general sermon, lots of people write discussion notes. So that’s two, I get a couple of clips that, like what would be some of those other 10 that I should be thinking about? Kenny Jahng — Yeah, so one is FAQs. So there are people who are watching your video, and there’s questions. So this is this from me. For me, it’s from my history as a Church Online pastor, right? So what’s the difference between in-person church and Church Online? There’s a couple of things. Church Online is not always um a degraded version of in-person services. And here’s the one place where I think Church Online shines that’s better than in-person. And that is, in in-person church, the pastor is upset when people chat during their sermon. When people are talking and murmuring and asking questions with each other and chatting with each other, people get upset. If you talk to any church online pastor, we get upset when no one’s talking during the sermon. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. I love it. Kenny Jahng — Right?
Rich Birch — Yes, true.
Kenny Jahng — And what what actually comes up in the chat, the live chat is there is people are asking questions. They’re asking basic questions…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kenny Jahng — …like, why are we taking snack in the middle of the sermon, bread and juice, and what what’s going on here? Like people have never been to church are asking these questions. Like, what is this Christianity’s jargon? and So all these things come up. So asking FAQs about the topic is a great thing that AI is perfect for doing that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Kenny Jahng — And then related to that, I’ll just give one more. What about a glossary? Rich Birch — Oh, I love that. Kenny Jahng — Why don’t you take out all the jargon and Christianese terms and then just put those definitions there on the sermon page so that someone who’s not…
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s great.
Kenny Jahng — …a believer, that doesn’t have that didn’t grow up in Sunday school actually wants to know about these terms. Don’t make them look it up, put them right there. So those are just two additional easy things that you can do with AI that can be done in an instant with a transcript that takes you no time, but it will serve the viewer someone who comes to your site, oh, tremendously, right? You can imagine that…
Rich Birch — Oh, I love that.
Kenny Jahng — …how how how helpful that is. Rich Birch — Well, and I love the glossary idea. That’s like close to home because that man, I’m I’m passionate about how do we help unchurched people. And we often trip and this is one of those things I found that but ChatGPT particularly is so good at is helping us think differently than ourselves. Rich Birch — And so I could see take your transcript, drop literally get the text file, drop it into ChatGPT and just say, thinking like a person who doesn’t who who doesn’t normally attend church, pull out at least a dozen ah phrases or words that ah that they would not understand, define those in a way that, you know, whatever, aligns with evangelical thought and, ah you know, generate that term. Rich Birch — Or and you could also say, like, you know, reference a ah code time code in the message if you’ve got time codes in your thing. And literally that, you you know, you copy and paste that, do that every week. It takes, well, it takes a lot it takes way shorter to do than we just talked about it.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like, it’s like 15 seconds every week to do that and goes out of our way to, you know, hey, make it easier for people who don’t attend church on a regular basis. Love that. Kenny Jahng — Absolutely. Absolutely. So, like, shouldn’t we merchandise the page, as we say in in business? Rich Birch — Yeah. Kenny Jahng — Shouldn’t we dress up the sermon page with not just that long-form content, but ways to engage it in short-form ways in different angles? Because some people might be more attuned to enter from the angle of text. So maybe it’s a summary. Maybe it’s um doing discussion questions. Maybe it’s pulling out the Bible verses and having some commentaries about those. There’s so many different ways to engage the same topic. The point of your sermon archive page should not be for them to actually play the whole video. The whole point is to engage them so they ask more questions and they take whatever their next step is…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kenny Jahng — …in their relationship with Jesus Christ to take that one little step further. And I think this is the this is the opportunity that the church has today, especially with AI here to support us. Rich Birch — Well, and I love that because it what it’s, it’s looking at people and the like, in this case, people that come to our website or people that come to our church and saying, Hey, people are going to engage at different levels. Like there are going to be people that are just going to watch your four quote things that are fun to watch. Kenny Jahng — Yes. Rich Birch — There are, and then there’s going to be people that are going to want to look at the glossary. People might read your notes. People might write, read the thousand word, you know, article on what you’re talking about. And then some people might be so intrigued by all of that that they’ll sit and watch the 45 minute message. But we start with just the 45 minute message. Why is that? Why do we, it’s like our bias is towards you got to watch this whole thing as opposed to, you know, serving them. Why, why do we do that? Kenny Jahng — Well, I don’t think people at this point in the church, the staff look at the website as the place of ministry.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kenny Jahng — So it’s not, you you get them to the website, but the website is just a pointer, a directional sign. It’s a map in the whole building of where you’re supposed to go. And the only place you’re supposed to go from the website is to the church building, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — And so I like, it and it’s almost, I say it’s almost like a bait and switch. You’re just trying to get them to the website. So they get them into, I say a timeshare presentation inside your sanctuary. Rich Birch — Oh! Kenny Jahng — Let’s close the door, lock the door for 90 minutes. And then promise them what ah a mug or a t-shirt at the end of it instead of a tickets to a show. Rich Birch — Oh, dude. Kenny Jahng — But like backing up to be serious a little bit, Rich.
Rich Birch — That’s true.
Kenny Jahng — That you’re not looking at the website…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — …as the place to actually engage and influence people in their quest to learn about Jesus and the biblical worldview that you have to offer. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, friends, the thing I love about this is, and what you’re pushing us here on, you know, repurposing our, you know, our sermons is like for years, I’ve had this, and you and I’ve had this back and forth about Church Online for, I don’t know, more than a decade…
Kenny Jahng — Yes. Rich Birch — …where I’m like, I love Church Online. I’m a pro Church Online guy. Some people are going to say I’m not by what I’m about to say. But I’m like, the form of what we do, most of what we do, doesn’t fit or the what the the product that we do doesn’t fit the form. The 45-minute, hour-long thing, it does that doesn’t feel like the internet to me. That feels like something else. But this idea of breaking it up into all these different bits and pieces This feels a lot more, I’ve written about this. I’m like, I think the best church online out there is the IF gathering people, because they figured out how to do it in a whole bunch of different ways, small groups. Kenny Jahng — Yes. Rich Birch — And mean sure, they’re doing in-person, they’re doing you know the kind of you know synchronous event online, all of that. But this makes it much more approachable for an average church. I’m a church of 500 people, I could do this. I could find a small team, an AI team, a digerati, who would say, all we’ll do this every week. And um you know the take a couple hours a week and generate or not even take an hour a week and generate all kinds of great stuff. Rich Birch — So I want to make sure people check out repurposeyoursermon.com. Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — This is a resource you’ve put together. Friends, I am unabashed. Like I want you to check this out. What you should do right now is stop this episode and go to repurposeyoursermon.com and engage there. But tell us about that. For the people that didn’t do that, ah tell us what is repurposeyoursermon.com. Kenny Jahng — Yeah, so we’ve built a community of thousands of church leaders on Facebook. There’s a group called AI for Church Leaders that you can join. And what we’re hearing from our community is they want practical ways of using AI.
Rich Birch — Right. Kenny Jahng — And so the sermon is the one of the most popular things like we know that we have opportunities to actually do something with a sermon, but we just don’t know what. And so that’s why we built this resource. So it takes your sermon and we we walk through, um I think, a dozen different ways to take your long-form content and create discussion guides, sermon clips, um your the the quote images, devotionals, um summaries, blog articles. There’s all these ways that I think you should do it. Kenny Jahng — And then we’ve actually mocked up a sample sermon page, right? SoI’ve I’ve gone on this rant with you today and I say, look, this is what you should be doing. So my worldview, I think my point of view is like there’s a sample sermon page outline that we’ve actually built and you can download and look at it and use as inspiration and then learn how to create every single one of those things.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Kenny Jahng — And so It’s a practical thing. I think every church could benefit from it. If you don’t follow it, the whole point is at least it will start a discussion internally with your teams and say, hey, maybe there’s one, two, or three good ideas that we can start to figure out how to repurpose our sermon for greater impact. And really the original reason why you are preaching the sermon. And I think this is, again, the caveat, Rich, I think here is many pastors forget that the number of people that might listen to the sermon that they’ve invested 5, 10, 15, 20 hours in, is not limited to the people in the room.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. Kenny Jahng — The people that actually end up benefiting from that gospel message could be 10x, 100x, 1000x the number of people in your actual room. Rich Birch — Yep. 100%. Kenny Jahng — So why don’t we bless as many people as possible with the sermon that you’ve been called to preach? Rich Birch — Love it.
Kenny Jahng — And so this is one of those, a drop in the bucket to help you you know get to that goal. Rich Birch — Love it. So yeah, that’s repurposeyoursermon.com. I would love for you folks that are listening in to drop by there to check it out. I love that you’ve made this so practical, this templated page that says, hey, here’s what that should look like. Kenny Jahng — Yeah. Rich Birch — And and friends, the reason why we’re talking about this and during this Unprediction series of of interviews is because you know, a year ago, you were thinking, I should be thinking about something with AI and communication. And you’re still thinking that now. And we’ve been talking about it for 31 minutes and you haven’t done anything about it. And unless you take action now, a year from now, you’ll be thinking the same thing and you’re going to be behind on reaching your community. So I want you to double down and invest in this area, like all the areas we’re talking about this month. But this is a really important one that I want you to, you know, spend some time, focus, find some volunteers to pick up this ball and run with it. Rich Birch — Well, Kenny, you are a gift to me. You’re a gift to the broader community. I’m so thankful that you are here today. As we wrap up today’s episode, anything kind of final thing you’d love to say as we wrap up today’s conversation? Kenny Jahng — I just want to say it’s ah it’s a word of encouragement. We have so much available to us today um in the technologies, not just AI, in so many things that we have available to us. And I think we just need to lean into that growth mindset…
Rich Birch — So good.
Kenny Jahng — …and let God order our steps in front of us. If we just have the willingness, open heart to do that, um great things can happen for ministries all over the place. Rich Birch — Love it. So repurposeyoursermon.com is where we send people to. If people want to follow you on socials or anywhere else, where do we want to send them for that? Kenny Jahng — um You know, I’m pretty easy to find. as Someone said they couldn’t find me recently. I was like, I dispute that. If you Google my name, Kenny Jahng…
Rich Birch — I would agree. Oh my goodness. That’s hilarious. Kenny Jahng — I’m available on most of the I’m i’m available on the the new kid on the block, TikTok. So if you want to look at some of the my viral videos there, I’m available on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want.
Rich Birch — Love it. Kenny Jahng — So I love engaging with church leaders everywhere, invite you to have a conversation. And I want to, more importantly, I want to learn from everybody, right? we got We have to learn together. And so just hearing what’s working for you in your neck of the woods is a blessing to me. And so I just invite you that conversation. Rich Birch — Thanks, Kenny, really appreciate you being here today.
700 Million and Counting: Your Church’s Role in the Fight Against Extreme Poverty with Mike Mantel & Jonathan Wiles
Jan 16, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This month we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re hearing from Mike Mantel, the President and CEO, and Jonathan Wiles, the Chief Operating Officer, of Living Water International (LWI), a faith-based global humanitarian organization. Together we are talking about how the poor will still be among us.
How can churches effectively combat poverty and make a lasting impact on communities around the world? LWI focuses on addressing the water crisis by providing safe water, sanitation, and hygiene to impoverished communities. Tune in to learn about the transformative effects of these efforts on thirsty communities and partner churches alike.
Water, for life, in Jesus’ name. // Living Water International has been involved in over 25,000 water projects, impacting 7.1 million people globally. The organization partners churches in the US with local churches in thirsty communities to deliver water interventions that also involve teaching sanitation and hygiene, with a strong emphasis on sustainability.
Celebrate the progress made. // The mission to provide clean water is seeing encouraging results. In 2001, 1.1 billion people lacked access to basic water, but in 2024, that number decreased to 703 million, even with a growing global population. The collaboration between various organizations has accelerated this progress. However, the remaining challenges are more difficult due to the increasing complexity of needs in poorer, often disaster-stricken regions.
Focus on a community. // LWI has learned from past experiences that water projects need to be long-term and community-centered, which led to the development of their “WASH Program Areas” (WPA). This model focuses on geographical areas, with a commitment to stay for 5-7 years to ensure that communities have lasting access to clean water and that local churches are strengthened as discipleship centers.
The local church is key. // In WASH Program Areas, local churches are uniquely positioned to serve their communities due to their influence and knowledge of local issues. When LWI partners with these churches, they are not bringing God to a new place, but rather supporting the work that God is already doing through the local churches in these communities. This approach fosters long-term, mutual transformation both in the WPA and the partner church back in the US.
Partnering with LWI. // US churches can engage with LWI’s work through knowledge-building, experiential learning, and co-investing in projects. Church members can raise awareness through education, take part in “discipling trips” to communities in need, and help fund projects. LWI encourages churches to go beyond just sending money, urging them to make the partnership a part of their ongoing mission.
Mutual transformation. // The goal of discipleship trips is not mission tourism but mutual transformation. These trips provide opportunities for both US churches and WASH Project Areas to learn from each other and deepen their relationships. The trips are a step in a long-term process of engagement and discipleship, not a one-time event.
Get involved. // For church leaders who are interested in engaging with LWI, Jonathan explains that churches already committed to specific mission areas can easily integrate clean water initiatives into their existing efforts. By linking their mission work to the pressing need for safe water, churches can create meaningful connections and foster a deeper sense of purpose within their congregations.
Visit water.cc to learn more about Living Water International and how they can plug into what God is already doing at your church. Check out the Advent Conspiracy that Mike mentions here. Plus, don’t forget to download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am super excited that you have decided to join us today. You have joined us amidst these Unpredictions episodes. These are a set of special episodes that we’re kicking off 2025. And today we’re focusing on this idea that the poor will be among us. This was true last year. It will be true this year. It will be true next year. My question is how are our churches dealing with that globally, if the numbers are still correct?
Rich Birch — 700 million people live in extreme poverty. Churches, your church and mine, can and should play a role in addressing this through partnerships, both locally and globally, advocating for social and economic process ah ah policies and just creating opportunity all around the world. And and today I’m excited to have our friends from Living Water International on. If you do not know them, they’re faith-based global humanitarian organization. They link arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. ah And an experience with Living Water is just, it’s amazing. These guys do an incredible job. I deeply respect them. I’ve been on the field with LWI, see the work they do. I highly recommend them.
Rich Birch — Today we’ve got Mike Mantel. He ah has since 2008 served as the president and CEO of LWI. And we’ve also got Jonathan Wiles with us. He serves as the chief operating officer. We got the big guns with us today. Welcome to the show, Jonathan and Mike. Glad you’re here.
Mike Mantel — Rich, what a delight, man. Been following you forever. And thanks for doing this podcast and letting us chat with you this morning.
Jonathan Wiles — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — This is going to be great. I’m excited. Jonathan, glad you’re here as well. Why why don’t we start with you, Jonathan? Fill in your story a little bit. Tell us about your connection to LWI. Tell us about ah Living Water as well a little bit.
Jonathan Wiles — I’ve been involved with Living Water for going on 25 years in various roles, but but really my focused engagement on staff and in leadership has been since 2007. Mike came on in 2008 and the two of us have been working together to to really kind of develop this organization in a direction that we feel is really honoring to God and and helping build his kingdom. And yeah, love getting to make a difference with Mike every day.
Rich Birch — Love it, so good. John ah um Mike, why don’t you tell us a little bit about, what does LWI do? you know I kind of gave the boilerplate, but if you were to bump into somebody, maybe you’re you know you’re at a conference or somebody and says, oh, Living Water, I think I’ve heard of you. What what do you do?
Mike Mantel — Like you said, we’re a faith-based organization. We believe that water is the fundamental intervention in people’s lives. If they have access to water, kids get healthy, healthy kids are in school, educated kids have a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. But what’s special about Living Water is we work with and through local churches. Wherever we work, the church is really at the center of what we do.
Mike Mantel — We’ve been doing this for 35 years. We’ve completed about 25,000 water projects. We call them WASH projects, water sanitation hygiene. About 7.1 million people…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mike Mantel — …now i have access to safe, sustainable water in the name of Jesus because of our partners and churches in the United States and around the world.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is amazing. Now, the thing about the water crisis in general that I have found encouraging as an outsider to this humanitarian issue is there’s real progress being made against people gaining access to clean water. Like I remember when the number is bigger than the number we talk about today. Jonathan, why don’t you talk to us kind of at a global level. What’s the progress that’s being made there? Which is incredible when we think about this idea of the poor ah of being among us. This is an issue that, man, we’re taking we’re taking steps against. Talk to us about what that looks like kind of at a global at a global level.
Jonathan Wiles — Sure. Well, back in 2001, when the Millennium Development Goals were first developed and there was a lot of benchmarking happening, yeah the number was 1.1 billion people in the world that didn’t have access to basic water.
Jonathan Wiles — And today that number is down to 703 million. So that’s that’s huge progress.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jonathan Wiles — And yeah as we all know, the population is growing. So the you know the the the mile the the you know the the goal line is moving and we’re still making progress. So that’s super encouraging to see what’s happening around the world. And that’s happening because a lot of organizations are starting to work together, find their lanes and really and and hit a good rhythm of of doing this work that we’re all called to.
Rich Birch — Love it. Now, Mike, I can imagine that like the first 700 million was the easiest 700 million. The next 700 are going to be the hardest. Like, you know, there’s an increasing, I would imagine, I again, I don’t know your world, but I would imagine that’s the case. How does LWI—kind of get into the details here a little bit—how do you work with churches? I like this idea that you partner churches together ah to make a difference. What how does that work? What’s that actually look like for LWI?
Mike Mantel — You know, we’ve been we’re a learning organization. We’ve been learning for since we started. And in the olden days, we’d encourage people to get together, drill a water well, teach a little bit about sanitation, and hopefully that water would keep ah serving ah thirsty people.
Mike Mantel — But we found water wells, the mechanics break. You know, people forget their sanitation and hygiene lessons. And a number of years ago, working with Jonathan, we said, you know let’s let’s just take a big old cookie cutter and carve out a geographical footprint of about 50 to 100,000 people, people that need access to water. And let’s do a baseline study. Who’s got the water? What churches are in that environment? What are the statistics for health and hygiene? And let’s just stay in that footprint for years – five to seven years – until everybody has water, everybody has appropriate sanitation and hygiene, and the church at the center of this work becomes more visible and more relevant so they can continue to make disciples long after the water interventions are done. And that was called a WASH program area.
Mike Mantel — It was a crazy idea. It costs way too much money. We found somebody that supported the idea, and we launched our first WASH Program area, WPA. But what we learned was that the church is the institution in these environments. They can link arms across denominational divides. They can work with municipal leaders and community leaders, and the church really did become the hero. It emerged as the network, the living body of Jesus Christ, that not only brought water in Jesus’ name, but continued to make disciples.
Mike Mantel — And we got to know these church pastors and these church leaders, so we started introducing them to others. And as we moved to new WASH program areas, we were ah and there was advocacy from the last WASH program area.
Mike Mantel — And then we said, hey, let’s go tell the churches in the United States that they got sister churches in low-income areas across the world, let’s just invite them to participate, to link arms with church leaders they may not even know. They they may be denominationally aligned, or they may be stretching a little bit, but let’s just build relationships and see what the Spirit of the Lord does.
Rich Birch — Love it. I remember, so I’ve heard that before. And then years ago, I remember I was in a community um with LWI, friends that are listening in, and this was in one of these communities where the average person was making around a dollar a day. Like it’s a very extremely poor situation and open sewers, which is a you know a fancy way to say ditches with, you know, poop in them like it it was a tough community. I’m like, but the thing that I it it was a moving experience to stand there and be like nobody else was there. That was what was clear to me. The government was not there. There was no other NGOs. Like people were not. This was so far down the developmental, like there’s so much need to be. But you know who was there? There was a pastor there in that community. And that that moved me, moved me big time.
Rich Birch — Jonathan, double click on that. Why is the church on the the field side? So like on the communities we’re trying to help, why is it a great partner for an organization like LWI to deliver? What is the kind of bedrock of development to kind of tackle extreme poverty?
Jonathan Wiles — Yeah, theologically, I mean, the church is is called to be not only the voice, but the hands and feet of Jesus.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — So when they have thirsty neighbors, the church is in a is is it’s just it’s part of the church’s identity, that it’s DNA, it’s calling, to do this work. But just on a practical level, churches have local knowledge, they have local resources, they have convening power, they have influence. um People listen to their local pastors or local faith leaders in a way that they don’t listen to us outsiders.
Rich Birch — True.
Jonathan Wiles — And so when we begin to really in empower and work with the local church, and you know when we enter into these communities, it’s, you know, we’re not bringing bringing God to this place, God’s already at work, right? So we’re entering in with the spirit of service and inquiry. We’re asking questions or maybe telling stories from what we’ve seen God do and in other places to excite the imagination, but we’re really there to say, what is the Holy Spirit already doing?
Jonathan Wiles — What is the vision that you have, if the kingdom were to break into this place in an amazing way? And how can we work with you toward that by addressing this these needs around water and sanitation and hygiene? And as we do that work, see the church thrive, the community become more resilient, and people be served with safe water for for the the sake of their kids, and for the community, and the then the poor among them. And so that that means such ah it’s such a powerful dynamic and it so lines up with God’s calling on the church and with what he’s already put in place with them that we get to help activate and support and resource it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Sticking with you, Jonathan, but then thinking on the side on the on our on this side, churches here in in the in our country, you know, that I know that a part of what I’ve seen you do partly front row, you know, at our our church when I was at Liquid Church, and then consistent I’ve seen other churches who have have said like, hey, this is a thing that we’re going to pay attention to. Like this is this is a part of what we’re we’re going to actually take this partnership thing and and actually try to live that out. What impact does that make on churches here back at home?
Jonathan Wiles — Well, I mean, it it awakens the the kind of the prophetic imagination of churches of what’s possible in the world.
Rich Birch —That’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — It creates opportunities for cross-cultural discipleship. um You know, we’re obviously supporting the the discipleship of people who are in churches in, you know, that we have 912 active church partnerships…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jonathan Wiles — …in our program areas and in these WPAs Mike was talking about, but we also have 429 vibrant church partnerships here in the U.S. of churches that are seeing their story connected with the story of what’s happening in the world. I mean, that Bryant Myers years ago said that that really the story of Christian development is when our story engages with their story, whoever “their” is in this case.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — And this in this case, it’s the thirsty with and alongside local churches um in the context of God’s story and all of us being transformed together. And that’s really the vision of what we’re after.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Mike, why don’t you lean in a little bit more on that in the churches on, you know, in our country, how have you seen, um you know, engagement with LWI help that church with, um you know, things that we might wake up and worry about, which is like discipleship and seeing people take steps closer to Jesus. And, um you know, and and and how does this kind of your mission, how do you how do you practically do that? What’s that look like?
Mike Mantel — You know churches begin that journey in various places. We’ve kind of framed up a couple of three big doors, you know ah expanding, growing in knowledge, like what is the water crisis? And really? People are drinking out of rivers and they’re not healthy or are um what is the state of evangelism in in developing countries? You know, a lot of people Don’t really know. So the one big door is growing in knowledge. you know How can we provide resources on both ah water the water issue, evangelism, and discipleship, and the interplay of those in low-income communities? Here’s some information, some videos, some data, some sermon series, some Bible studies, or Sunday School material. Here’s some knowledge. You can grow in knowledge.
Mike Mantel — The next is expand your experience. You know, as adult learners, we don’t really learn by listening to facts. We got to touch stuff. We got to feel stuff.
Rich Birch — True.
Mike Mantel — We got to talk about stuff. So we invite people to take a a trip. They used to be called mission trips. Now they’re called discipling trips where a group of a dozen people go to, they cross a line. They cross a geographic, economic, cultural line where they’re more sensitive to what’s going on in the Holy Spirit. So we get out of our comfort zone, call it a mission trip. We go to Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and I could probably trace every dynamic, ah impassioned advocate for mission or change to a cross-cultural experience.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — So we we invite people to come on a trip, but not everybody can come on a trip. So what do you do? Well, you can fake a trip. You know you can you know stop drinking Coca-Cola and coffee for 10 days and drink only water and think about the water issue. You you can run a marathon. I know. Did you ever run a marathon at Liquid? I know they they do ah they did a lot of…
Rich Birch — This body’s not made for running, Mike. Mike, this body is not it.
Mike Mantel — I’m still suffering from my running.
Rich Birch — I’ll cheer on the sidelines.
Mike Mantel — You could run, you can walk, you can climb, you can bike, but experience, expand your experience.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep, that’s good
Mike Mantel — And then the third is a co-invest for impact. You know, we can make a difference, especially you know coming out of COVID. People are eager to make a difference. They they want to move change. But you know often you know an individual is too far from the action. They are a little concerned about how their money is going to be spent. Is it really going to equip churches to help people access water?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — Is it really going to happen? Well, you can only trust that if you build your experience and you grow in knowledge. So it’s kind of like these three doors. You can enter and any one of these three doors. But collectively, we call that a co-laboring church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — And a co-laboring church will change the world.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well, I’m you know, I’m going to play the ah I don’t know, devil’s advocate. That’s probably a bad thing to say on a church podcast. But, ah you know what, there it is. We’re going to say it there. Jonathan, you know, the idea of missions trips like, man, is this we’re sending people tourism to pet poor people, take pictures with them, you know, like, look at me. I’m such a great person.
Rich Birch — That’s not your, I know, I can’t even, I can’t play the devil’s advocate. I know that’s not what happened that’s not what’s happening on LWI trips. But for the person that thinks, Hey, isn’t that what that’s all about? What do you say to them? How do you ensure that this is a discipling – I like that – a discipling experience, an experience that helps the the people that we’re sending helps them grow. Talk us through how do you ensure that helps with the LWI experiences?
Jonathan Wiles — Yeah, and you know, ah we and I have have wrestled through those kinds of questions over the years, and we really want to stay away from kind of mission tourism, um or or just creating experiences that are about us.
Jonathan Wiles — And, you know, on the surface of it, you know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to send a bunch of you know, Western people who don’t have drilling skills out to do work to serve a local community with their hands. I mean, we can, I mean, you know, Guatemalan people and Kenyan people, you know, in these communities where we serve are some of the hardest working people I know. It’s not like we need the manual labor, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jonathan Wiles — So on a certain level we don’t need you to go on one of these Living Water trips. But we would love for you to go because it’s transformative for you and it opens up doors for transformation locally in ways that are difficult for our local teams to create on their own. When a group of of Gringos or Zungu show up in your community, it’s a convening moment. it’s ah It’s a moment that validates what’s happening in the local church. I mean, because often they’ll look to these Western people coming in to visit and say, oh, we we want to learn from you. And when we when we say, no, we’re here to learn from you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Jonathan Wiles — We want to understand what God’s doing and be able to be part of this mutual transformation process. That’s a beautiful thing. And and our goal really is for these trips to not be the thing. They’re a step…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — …they’re part of a long-term multi-year, you know, potentially generational transformational process as US s churches are engaging in the story of local churches in the communities with thirsty people over time. And and there’s some mutuality to that. They’re engaging in these stories you know ah sometimes we begin to have people come from the context where we’re working to show up on mission week at your church and to learn from you in the same way that you’re going to learn from them. We’re we’re creating this kind of back and forth dialogue that’s part of a two-way relationship that our goal there is that the transformation happens both ways. And when you create those cross-cultural moments…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — …you create story, you build energy, and you open up new possibilities in people’s minds of what’s even possible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That, you know, it’s interesting you say that the kind of convening, um you know, the how that’s effective or helpful to the local community. I remember one trip I was on, um and I don’t know if this is still a thing on your trip. So if they don’t do this anymore, like you can, you know, say we don’t do that anymore. But I think it was on Thursday or Friday. It was late in the experience and it was after the well. We had you know finished the well and like, yeah, you figure out very quickly. It’s like, oh, like, yeah, like I sent a lot of emails for my work. Like I’m not a hard worker. Like, you know, I, you know, and, but I’m happy to jump in and try and get muddy and do it all. And like, it’s great. It’s fun. But, and then, but then I remember, you know, on that the end of that week, Thursday or Friday, that the church that we were working with graciously put together like a fun, you know, like we had dinner together, a lunch together. And um They served a meal for us and you know kids came and like people came from around the community.
Rich Birch — And I I loved it because the path there’s a crowd and the pastor got up and he talked he talked about the well but talked to he you know talked about the gospel. And I knew I was it was one of the had that moment where I was like, oh like the fact that we’re sitting here having a meal right now is helping this pastor communicate with his community. We’re, our presence here is, is helping. And he was so thankful. I also remember that it was a, we had chicken, some sort of chicken soup thing. And I remember I had seconds and people still to this day, they’re like, I can’t believe you had seconds that day. Did you see the chicken? And I’m like, it’s a mission trip. You can’t get hurt on a mission trip, right? Push it down to the bottom of the bowl. It’s hotter down at the bottom. It’ll be fine.
Rich Birch — But that’s a that’s a real um, you know, ah for someone who I would say I have been skeptic of these kinds of experiences. I’m like, what what can what difference can this really make? I was like, oh like I can see that now and obviously, you know it had a profound impact on me and my you know and my my leadership.
Rich Birch — So Mike, when you said you said earlier that there are 429 active partnerships with churches here in America. That’s amazing I think if I caught that number correctly. Give us an example of like a church, um not Liquid Church, somebody else, that is like ah a great church that’s like, you know, is is plugged in. What does that look like? If there’s church leaders that are listening in today, they would say, we would like to be a part of this. We’d like to help. You know, ah maybe ah this is a year I’d like to lean in. What, what could, what kind of, what does that look like? You know, practically.
Mike Mantel — There are so many great churches, you know the ones that come to mind, you know Sugar Creek, Ecclesia, Living Stones. There’s so many great churches, but the the one I would talk about is The Crossing in St. Louis.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mike Mantel — You know, we became friends when they were like a small church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — And they committed to cross the lines that divide us to pursue unity of the body of Christ and to help people access water. They early on, one of the pastors, Greg Holder, co-created Advent Conspiracy. Now Advent Conspiracy…
Rich Birch — Fantastic.
Mike Mantel — …was just the result of three frustrated pastors, Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder. They said, Christmas is so hard for pastors.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — All of our congregants are burnt out, they’re overspending money, we’re putting on so many services, we’re burnt out. And so what they did through Advent Conspiracy, it says, well, let’s let’s reconsider what leading up to Christmas really is.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Mantel — It is, you know, to four tenets, worship fully, spend less, give more, and love all.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Mantel — And they they were addressing a pastoral issue. So what happened, because they hope to fund and you know one water well in Liberia. What happened was over time, kids fired up. And over the last 15 years, 600 specific churches have engaged with Living Water to love all.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — Now, that was just a great idea. It was spiritually serendipitous. Wow, wow. That’s But what happened at the church, in The Crossing is, as it grew, they began to field ah educational ah conferences for church pastors that wanted to sort through issues of unity, forgiveness, reconciliation. This is an American church…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Mantel — …culturally sensitive, but bringing together hundreds of pastors in multiple countries.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — That was their mission, which, Rich, blew my mind because what that helped us do was organize churches within these footprints I was talking about earlier. A U.S. church changed our organizing efforts to deliver water, sanitation, and hygiene and strengthen the church. A U.S. church did that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — They fielded team Living Water trips. Now you may not run, but a lot of people do run.
Rich Birch — Yes. A hundred percent. Yeah.
Mike Mantel — And so 16 years later, this church is still going on trips, still hosting what they call Genius of One unity conferences, still running marathons, and still preaching about how crossing lines that divide us um are transformative.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Mantel — They’re part of disciple making. And that now it’s a big old church. And there’s an engaged hundreds of people from thousands of members that see Living Water not as some organization they fund, but they see Living Water as their extension to churches around the world.
Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Yeah. And that, that’s a great practical, I’ll put an even finer point on that for folks that are listening in, Mike. You know, we just came out of Christmas. Here we are. It’s January. I know you’ve still got some of those burnout, like, gosh, remember those days, late December. Man, it was crazy for you as a church leader. What if you now looked into Advent conspiracy for 2025? If we said, Hey, maybe we look ahead and that is like a it’s an entire movement of churches that it’s still you know partner with that. That could be something and maybe your your leadership team would be a little more motivated this time of year to think about it because we’re this far out and we’re feeling you know pastorally even you know what goes on with people you know at that time of year. That could be a real practical um you know step for 2025 uh you know for you.
Rich Birch — Jonathan, let’s think about a church that – I love The Crossing as an example. Greg’s an incredible leader. He’s a great follower. If you’re not following The Crossing, you should be. They do all kinds of amazing things for sure. ah You should you should do that.
Rich Birch — Let’s think about a church that is or a leader that wants to kind of dip their toe in. They’re like, OK, you’ve got my attention. The thing I love about the water cause is, like I think, you know, yeah we see that our people see it or our friends of friends see it as a good thing. It’s an easy thing for us to communicate. It’s like, I can show you a ball, a glass of water and say there are people, there are 700 million people that wake up today who don’t have access to that. We got to do something about that. That is, and people who don’t follow Jesus get it. Now they see it as a good thing. We see it as a God thing. We see it as a way to see transformation take. I think it’s a great, you know, to it’s a great cause to be a part of for sure.
Rich Birch — But let’s say I’m a church leader that’s like, okay, I want to do something about this. I want to kind of dip my toe in. I want to take some initial steps this year. What would be some of those that would be, you know, knowledge, experience, you know, co-invest. What would be some of those kind of initial steps that we could take this year, Jonathan?
Jonathan Wiles — Well, I yeah I mean, I think the story is, as you say, you know so compelling and so easy to get to step into. You know ah it’s it’s it’s also, there’s there’s layers of complexity behind that really simple idea that people in the world need safe water. And so there is a lot to learn as we as we grow in knowledge. So I mean I think I think you know knowledge is a good place to start. um And I think, you know for a lot of churches, they’re really wanting to engage in stories ah of what God’s doing in the world. And they may already be committed to someplace in the world where, hey, we’re really you know focused on working in you know and and you know the Northern Triangle of Central America.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jonathan Wiles — We’re focused on West Africa. We’re, you know, and so in those those kinds of, um you know it’s it’s so easy for us to just hook into those kinds of existing…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — …ah mission mission focus areas that a church might already have. And and to do some discovery about, well, what it what would it look like for us to, you know we’ve as we’ve been on trips, or if we’ve been engaging with other partners in these places, we’ve been supporting local missionaries, or whatever that looks like for your church, um what would it look like for us to link that to addressing safe water needs? Because as we’ve been on mission trips to those places, or as we’ve heard those stories…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — …we know they’re dealing with that as a problem, and we just haven’t thought about that. What would that look like?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jonathan Wiles — So I mean, just just connecting this aspect into this that your church’s existing mission efforts is something that’s really easy to explore and to understand what what what a what something could look like. And and that gives us an opportunity for a toe in the water that’s in the context of something that God’s already doing in your church.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.
Jonathan Wiles — You know? Because it’s it’s really easy to to say, well, hey, we could we could raise a little money through a little campaign during Lent or Advent or whatever whatever season makes sense and and sponsor ah you know a WASH project in that context. But we’d love to figure out a way to make that even more meaningful than just getting you know saying, well, we did that one thing. And we got a report and we know that there was some transformation, but how do we make that something that’s really becomes part of our church’s story and invites us into what’s next? So, I mean, there there are a lot of really simple first steps, but we’d love to love to make that part of the story of the church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of, you know, there’s church leaders that are listening in, they’re like, hmm, maybe we should add this to our existing, or at least explore, you know, get some more knowledge about, hmm, maybe there’s a way for us to kind of add this to what we’re doing already. If you just go to Living Waters website, water.cc, great website. At the very top, you’ll see a ah link, “Why Us”, which talks all about kind of what Living Water is all about. If you scroll down to the bottom there, you can see the communities that they serve in. um you know it’s it’s ah That would be a great way to kind of get the ball rolling um and then you know reach out, maybe think about the initial trip or something like that. That’s that’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Just as we’re coming to land, ah Jonathan, I want to stick with you for kind of last comments here. I don’t want, I don’t want to skirt by this. We’ve got the operations guy, the guy that really knows what’s going on here. What’s on the horizon for Living Water? When you kind of look up over to the horizon and think, okay, where are we, where are we going next? What, where does kind of our, the stuff that we’re thinking about, the questions we’re asking um down the road a little bit, where’s, where’s your head at these days?
Jonathan Wiles — Well, there there are a couple of ways I can answer that question. One is that, I mean, you mentioned it earlier, you know the first 700 million were easier than the next 700 million, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jonathan Wiles — So you know the the yeah and so we’re we’re really challenging ourselves at Living Water to think about people who are really particularly overlooked and excluded in the areas where we serve. So we’re we’re we’re you know pushing that envelope even more than we have. I mean, on a certain level, we’ve been focused on serving overlooked and excluded people since the very day we were founded, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jonathan Wiles — But this is pushing pushing ourselves to think even harder about going to some of those hard places in the in the footprints where we’re already committed and then asking questions about where we might need to go next.
Jonathan Wiles — And so that’s that’s a big question. um For us, um knowing that you know they’re that we’re in an increasingly volatile world, um you know a lot of the the the communities that we’re serving, thirsty and extremely poor communities, are the ones that are disproportionately affected by disasters, ah by environmental degradation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — And so we’re asking questions around how do we help these local churches develop a ah posture toward creation care and taking care of the local environmental resources, so that water can be there for the next generation, and to help these communities build resilience to be able to resist you know to to weather the shocks of you know just the the disasters and the crises that we’re just seeing pop up and increase and in frequency in our world.
Jonathan Wiles — Those are those are the kind of the the challenges we’re wrestling with. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re leaning hard in those directions…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jonathan Wiles — …as we try to figure out how we continue to solve this crisis.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Love that. Uh, that’s, yeah, that’s a super good insight. Mike, I want to throw it to you for, for last words. I know one of the things I like about you and LWI in general, but you specifically is, I know you have a heart for pastors, a care for pastors. You want to encourage them. What would you say kind of an encouraging word to, uh, pastors that are kicking off 2025, uh, as they’re thinking about this coming year. How would you kind of encourage them as we kick off this year?
Mike Mantel — Hang in there. The Lord is with you.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — Continue to lead. You know often the stress of leadership gets you know really, really heavy, but you’ve been called into this work. You’ve been equipped for this work. Living Water and other faith-based organizations want to get behind you so that you can share the good news of Jesus, so that you can make disciples, so that you can love the poor. Just hang in there. um You’re not crazy for doing this work. You’re making a difference. You’re changing the world.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — What you do today will have eternal consequences. So we love you. Have a great New Year.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Mike and Jonathan. I really appreciate you being here. Again, friends, I would encourage you to check out water.cc, follow Living Water on all your social medias, you know, to even just kind of stay up to date on what they’re doing throughout the entire year. Really appreciate you guys being here today. Thanks so much.
Preventing Marital Breakdown: Creating Proactive Support Systems in Your Church with Nicky & Sila Lee
Jan 15, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This January we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re joined by Nicky and Sila Lee of The Marriage Course // Alpha International, and are talking about how marriages will still be struggling.
Nearly half of all marriages in America are experiencing difficulties. There’s a huge opportunity for churches to step in and offer proactive, structured support to marriages in their communities. Tune in to learn how to use The Pre-Marriage Course and The Marriage Course to overcome the stigmas surrounding marriage enrichment and provide couples with practical tools and biblical principles for maintaining a healthy relationship.
Create space for conversation. // The courses Nicky and Sila have developed have reached over 1.5 million couples worldwide, serving people from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds, including non-churchgoers. Their goal is to provide couples with practical tools and biblical principles for maintaining a healthy relationship. However, the most important part of the course is not what Nicky and Sila teach, but rather the one-on-one time couples have talking through a structured topic. This aspect makes the course unique for every couple, regardless of their background and situation.
Proactively offer support. // Churches must take proactive steps to support marriages in their communities. Rather than waiting for a crisis situation, we need to help people address struggles before they become serious problems. A once-a-year marriage weekend at our churches isn’t enough. Marriage health requires regular enrichment and support.
It’s normal to need help. // Using these courses at our churches helps to remove the stigma that can be associated with marriage enrichment programs. It’s important for churches to normalize the conversation around marriage support, with pastors and church leaders leading the way. Demonstrate that seeking help is a sign of strength and make these conversations a regular part of how you care for the people in your community.
Arrange a date night. // Part of The Marriage Course emphasizes the importance of creating a date night feel during the course sessions. By setting up a romantic evening for couples, it will alleviate the nervousness that many couples feel when attending marriage enrichment events. In addition, creating a welcoming environment will encourage them to enjoy their time together and return to each of the seven sessions.
Privacy over group discussions. // The Marriage Course is unique because it avoids group discussions unlike many other marriage classes. Many couples may be good at talking to other people, but not with each other. So the course provides space to encourage that one-on-one communication. Giving couples their own table and space also allows them to explore their relationship privately without fear of judgment.
Experience the course yourself. // Nicky recommends that leaders who are considering offering The Marriage Course in their church experience it within their own marriage first. Whether you run a small pilot course, or go through the course at home, the experience will help leader couples to understand the course’s impact before encouraging others to join.
Visit The Marriage Course on Alpha USA’s website or The Marriage Course to learn how to use it at your church and take a look below at the training video that Nicky talks about. Plus, don’t forget to download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode here.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You’ve caught us in the middle of our Unprediction episodes. These are seven episodes. We’re talking about things that were true last year, that’ll be true this year. And unfortunately with this one, we think it’ll be true next year. And we think that your church should be worrying about it, thinking about it. Rich Birch — Today we’re talking about this idea that marriages will continue to struggle this year. Nearly half of all American marriages are facing challenges. Churches must bolster, do what they can to bolster their support for church or for for um marriages. And today we’ve got experts to really help us with this conversation. Rich Birch — We’ve got Nicky and Sila Lee. They developed the marriage course and the pre-marriage course to offer practical support to couples in person and online. They’ve run the pre-marriage course, if I’m doing my math right, at Holy Trinity Brompton in London since 1985 and the marriage course since 1996. And many couples have found their marriages enriched through these courses. At last count that I see, 1.5 million couples have taken these courses. So we are in for a treat today. Nikki and Sila, welcome. So glad you’re here. Nicky and Sila Lee — Thanks, Rich. So good to be with you. Rich Birch — Oh, this is going to be great. what Why don’t we start, Sila, fill up the picture there from a, like a bio point of view. What did I miss? What’s the part of the story that I, that we got to make sure we tell. Nicky and Sila Lee — OK, the main thing is that Nicky and I have been married for 48 years. Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s amazing. Nicky and Sila Lee — And um and actually, when we had um when we were developing these courses back in 1985, you were absolutely right about we started with pre-marriage. We’d been married for nine years then and had four young children. And um that was actually quite key because we had personally learnt a lot in the early years of our marriage. Nicky and Sila Lee — We had met, fallen in love as teenagers and were not Christians. And then we had come to faith at a university mission and together, the same night, same night, same moment. Rich Birch — Oh nice. Nicky and Sila Lee — We won’t know till heaven who got there slightly before the other [inaudible] same moment. Anyway, that had profound impact on our relationship. Rich Birch — Right. Nicky and Sila Lee — We’d been doing it our own way up until that point. After that, really God came and showed us a whole different way of doing relationships. We then got married two and a half years later. And we had a lot of things to learn and we learned God’s ways of loving are good. Nicky and Sila Lee — And we we hadn’t done any pre-marriage. There wasn’t, I don’t think there was a pre-marriage course running…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky and Sila Lee — …when we got married back in 1976.
Rich Birch — Very cool.
Nicky and Sila Lee — But we got some advice from some older Christian married couples and oh my goodness that advice made a difference. Rich Birch — Love it. Nicky and Sila Lee — And I think from that moment onwards we both felt, do you know, we really want any couple preparing to get married to have these very practical tools and skills and the biblical principles. So really, you you say about why we started then with the pre-marriage in 1984.
Nicky and Sila Lee — We joined the staff I was ordained and we joined the staff at a church in central London called Holy Trinity Brompton, we’ll just call it HTB for short. And one of the things we were asked to do was to prepare the couples for marriage those who were getting married at our church. And we had five couples in our sitting room. Nicky and Sila Lee — And we we the idea was we’d run this about three times each year, but these couples started talking to their friends who weren’t getting married at our church. And many of them weren’t churchgoers at all and saying, could they come? We said, sure, as long as they understand based on Christian principles. Nicky and Sila Lee — And we got more and more couples coming. We had to move out of our home. We couldn’t fit them in. But people kept telling their friends about this course. And they just grew and grew. And over, I think, about 30 years, it grew from those five couples initially to 160 couples or so…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nicky and Sila Lee — …every time we ran the course.
Rich Birch — Wow. Nicky and Sila Lee — And of those couples, up to half of them were not churchgoers. Wouldn’t describe themselves necessarily as Christians. Rich Birch — Interesting. Well, that, you know, and and this obviously is a part of kind of the I don’t know what you call it, the Alpha cinematic universe. It’s like a part of the, you know, the Alpha ministry. I know our church, we’re an Alpha church and we use this in the kind of. We try to use it to reach out to people who have who do not follow Jesus. And your resources, one of the things I love about your resources is they are somehow you’ve been able to strike this balance of they’re very gracious to people. If you don’t don’t follow Jesus, you’re you’re able to follow along. But then at the same time, they point back ah you know to principles, obviously, that are timeless, which I just think is amazing. That’s incredible. Well over 1.5 million couples. Oh, sorry, Sila, go ahead there. Nicky and Sila Lee — No, I just wanted to say we why we then followed up with developing the marriage course, which is really key. And that was because of two reasons, really. When we got more and more of these engaged couples, you know, couples exploring marriage, in-love, engaged, they are infatuated, they’ve got those rose-tinted spectacles on. And we could see when we talked about resolving conflict and stuff, it would kind of like their eyes would glaze over and you could tell they were thinking, we’re not going to have any conflict. Rich Birch — Yes. Nicky and Sila Lee — We are in love. And then we kind of kept thinking, oh, gosh, if only we could get these couples back…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky and Sila Lee — …about two years in, when the rose tinted specs have come off, and they really start to hear some of this native experience, some of their differences and some conflict, etc. And that was really why we developed the marriage course with – the pre marriage is five sessions, the marriage course is seven. And and really we wanted to get them in those early years because all the all the evidence shows the early years are key. Rich Birch — Right. Nicky and Sila Lee — The other real real reason was because we were starting to get inundated with couples coming to us and saying we’re really struggling. And they’ve been married 10, 20, 25 more years. And we kept saying to ourselves oh gosh if only these couples had come in the early years…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nicky and Sila Lee — …they wouldn’t be in such a mess now. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. I know as a pastor, one of the questions I’ll ask in those kind of pre-marriage situations, you know, not on the first time I’ve engaged with a couple that’s getting married, but further on, I’ll say, listen, you know, the stats are not good ah around marriage and like, so what do you think? Why do you think you’re the one that’s going to, you know, buck the trend? And, and my, what my one piece of advice kind of when it all boils down is I’m like, I would love to book something a year from now, two years from now. Like, let’s, let’s not, not wait, you know, look up over the horizon. Sure. Happy to do pre-marriage, but let’s look at something a couple of years down the road. Rich Birch — So over 1.5 million couples have participated. This was just crazy. That’s a huge number – millions of people. What what makes these resources resonate across so many cultures, languages? This is obviously a huge issue. Nicky, why is that? Why why do you think that is? Nicky and Sila Lee — And let me say, Rich, we had no concept that these courses were going to go anywhere outside our own local church. We thought we were just developing them for our situation…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky and Sila Lee — …the need that we saw, a couple. So the fact that they’ve now gone around the world, they’re in over 120 countries, this is this is extraordinary. And we can only put it down to the work of the Holy Spirit. Nicky and Sila Lee — But what we have seen is that some some very practical tools, which actually are biblical principles for relationships, for for making a marriage work, these apply universally. They apply in every country. And and we’ve seen that from all the different countries we visited [inaudible].
Nicky and Sila Lee — And I think the other thing we have seen that the most important part of these courses is not what Nicky and I say, but actually during every session there is a significant amount of time where couples have an opportunity to talk together in a conversation, just as a couple, and and completely just between them, and on a very structured sort of topic and so on. And that makes the marriage course and the pre-marriage course totally unique for every couple…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky and Sila Lee — …it depending you know where they are, what their situation and so on and that kind of even in different cultures it enables them to talk in their own context uniquely for them in their marriage and we know those conversations, during every session, are probably the most important transformative parts of the marriage course. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. And we’re going to get into some of the mechanics here in a minute, because I do think a part of the way you’ve structured this, I think is just I think it’s unique. And I think it is a part of why God God uses it. But, you know, many churches, they face this challenge of overwhelming couples, they have or either just or straight face the challenge of an overwhelming number of couples struggling in their their are marriages. How did you identify this gap? What did this you know this is obviously a an issue that is faced in lots of churches, lots of ministries, and what were some kind of early hurdles as you were piecing these these materials together that you were able to kind of overcome to launch them ultimately? What what what kind of what were the things that you had to do to get this thing rolling?
Nicky and Sila Lee — When you say about you know pastors being overwhelmed by the need of couples wanting help, we we were hearing that again and again. And I think, and this is true in the UK, in our own country, the churches tended to be reactive, reacting to crises in marriage and family life. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Nicky and Sila Lee — But to to make a difference, we’ve got to become proactive. Nicky Lee — I remember one church leader saying to us, this is many years ago, he said, before we started using the marriage course, I felt I was only firefighting. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Nicky Lee — But once I started running the marriage course, then they were starting to invest in marriage, invest in the health of marriages. Rich Birch — That’s good. Nicky Lee — And the courses are based on the principle that prevention is better than cure. Now, that’s not to say we don’t have lots of couples who are struggling, who need help, who come to look help. But ideally we want to help them put these things into place before they hit problems. Sila Lee — And I think the other thing we realize in our own church, 100%, that churches have very busy calendars. There is a lot going on in churches. Rich Birch — That’s true. Yep. Sila Lee — And so easily, this sort of ah proactive marriage support can become a day a year for the couples who are married in the church. And we realize that is not enough. That’s not going to help. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Sila Lee — This create a very positive marriage culture where everybody is sees that this is something we all need to do to invest in our marriages. And you know, nothing is more important than marriage. I remember a sociologist back in the 19th century saying, we neglect marriage at our peril.
Nicky Lee — I think you meant 20. Sila Lee — Oh, 20 – sorry.
Nicky Lee — You weren’t around in the 19th century.
Sila Lee — I did mean that. And that really resonated with us. We do neglect marriage at our peril. And the church, we need to have it in the forefront. Rich Birch — That’s good. Sila Lee — This needs to be something that is absolutely front and center. And actually, that’s why we realized the need out there. There is a felt need, not only in the church, but in the community. And therefore, we saw more and more people coming, and we needed to run this on a regular basis so that it’s becoming a norm. This is what we do as a church. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. It’s I love that idea of it’s consistent. It’s ongoing. It’s not just a one-off, you know, it’s not a special day. It’s not a seminar. It’s not one weekend message. How do we stay on top of this?
Rich Birch — Okay. Let’s get real for a second here, Nicky. There is stigma that surrounds marriage enrichment programs. I don’t know whether it’s just me, but I can say as a guy, like I hear like, Oh, we’ve got a marriage thing coming up. And like, there’s something inside of me that just is like, Oh! It’s like, I know, I know that’s like, ah, that’s something I want to be a part of, but I’m, I’m resistant to it. How have you overcome this perception in, you know, in your church through the program, you know, how, how did, how have you overcome that? Nicky Lee — Well, one way is by just constantly promoting the course. And the absolute ideal to promote the course is when the church leader, the senior pastor, other pastors in the church, say, we did the course and we enjoyed it, it helped us, we benefited from it. And in promoting the course, we we want to make this very clear. This is, as Sila said earlier, this is normal. This is for every couple… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Nicky and Sila Lee — …whether you’ve got a great marriage or you’re struggling, whether you’ve been married a short time or a long time. And and because of the privacy of the conversations, nobody nobody else knows why a particular couple are there. And it’s sometimes only when a couple at the end of the course write to us.
Rich Birch — Right. Nicky and Sila Lee — And say, we were having huge issues, sometimes saying we were practically coming apart. And we had no idea.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky and Sila Lee — They just come together with all the other couples. Sometimes separated couples have come they meet at the church door they come in as a way of seeking to get back together and no one else knows they are there. So gradually and it took time no we didn’t do this overnight. It took time to break that stigma… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Nicky and Sila Lee — …to say this is a normal thing to do, as normal as…
Sila Lee — …wearing a seatbelt.
Nicky Lee — …well I was going to say going to the gym.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Yes.
Sila Lee — Yeah we go to the gym to keep in good shape and that is completely accepted in our society both in the US and the UK.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Yep. Absolutely.
Sila Lee — And it’s the same with marriage. We want to say marriage investment and particularly in the church is the norm if we want to keep our marriages in good shape – everybody does it. Rich Birch — Okay, there’s a couple things about the kind of mechanics of the way that you’ve set up um these courses that I think are that are unique and I think you’re part of what God uses. One is you really emphasize the importance of creating like a date night feel in this. This isn’t like a um and this, you know, to me flows out of HTB, but at least as an outsider looking in. You have a hospitality culture, like it’s like, hey, this is a church that wants to serve and this is, is of natural outcome. It has this kind of date night feel. Sila, can you kind of elaborate on that? How important is that in this kind of role of setting an environment where they can kind of invest in that relationship? Sila Lee — Well, you already nailed it, Rich, by saying as a man, when you have anything that says like a marriage evening or whatever, you’re like, ah, really? Rich Birch — Yes. Sila Lee — Do I want to go to that? Rich Birch — Yes. Sila Lee — And ah we realize that most people are nervous about coming on something like a marriage course. Rich Birch — Yep. Sila Lee — And so this creating of a special atmosphere, like a date, we try and make it as like going out to a restaurant as possible. So we have you know lots and lots of tables for two, low lighting and background music and and it all looks nice. We have you know nice fairy lights and we serve couples, take them to their table, serve them something to eat. And you know when couples come in, they’re nervous, but they look at the atmosphere, they see how nice it is and they go, whoa, this is nice. Rich Birch — Yes. Sila Lee — They’ve done this for us.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sila Lee — And then they see there are quite a few other couples and and and that immediately relaxes them. And the other thing is that that actually is a very powerful way to communicate to couples. We care about you. We care about your marriage…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sila Lee — …enough to take this effort to create a lovely environment. And, you know, that is a sort of message we can say louder, than with any words, through the environment.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sila Lee — And one of the other things in that we always serve, I mean, different churches do different things. We serve a meal, a simple meal, and some serve snacks, some do dessert, some do, you know, but we’re always serving them when they come in. And all of our team serve. And that serving again sends a powerful message that in a marriage that’s at the heart of a marriage, we should be serving one another.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Sila Lee — And so you know the whole setup and environment is sending a powerful message.
Nicky Lee — And I think that’s why these these courses have grown because people have talked to their friends or their colleagues or their family members, whoever it is, about them and saying we had a great experience wasn’t just what we learned we enjoyed as well. Sila Lee — And I remember one couple who were actually struggling in their marriage and the wife signed them up, didn’t tell the husband, and – I know.
Rich Birch — Gosh.
Sila Lee — And and they arrived and he really didn’t know what he was coming to and he walked in, and it happened to be it wasn’t in our church it was another church, and it happened to be amazingly well set up and he went whoa oh this isn’t a free date night. Amazing.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s great.
Sila Lee — He had no idea that it was seven nights. And and when he discovered he said, well great – it’s seven free date nights.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.
Sila Lee — So you know it really does have an impact. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I know on those those right at the beginning, I get like emotional, particularly, you know, trying to read guys’ eyes and stuff, particularly, you know, where I’m thinking, man, I know that there are, and again, maybe it’s just a stereotype, but I know there are husbands that have been brought to this, then they’re like, okay, fine. I’ll give it one shot. Like, Hey, we’ll show up. And I love that impression of, Hey, this is going to be a date night. It’s fun.
Rich Birch — How do you translate that online? What have you found to kind of the churches that have been doing this? How do how do you continue to make this kind of a positive thing in the online environment as well? Nicky Lee — Well, we never intended for the courses to be run online. Rich Birch — Right. Nicky Lee — We only ran physical courses until the COVID pandemic hit. Rich Birch — Yes. Nicky Lee — And then that was the only way we could run them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky Lee — And of course, it was also at a time when many couples particularly needed something like the marriage course, and they had the time and the space to do it. Rich Birch — Right. Nicky Lee — So we put them online and suddenly, you know, hundreds of thousands of couples were doing it. But what we always said to them, ah make this a special environment for yourselves. Be alone together in a room, like candles. You might you know create have some background music yourself. Make it like a date night at home. If you’ve got young children, do it after they’re in bed, and so on.
Sila Lee — And put away phones.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sila Lee — Phones are the biggest issue if people are, you know… Rich Birch — Right. Sila Lee — …are doing it online and we say definitely put those aside don’t answer them, set aside this time to focus just on you.
Nicky Lee — And then we heard again and again from couples who’ve done the course online things like I don’t know if we’d still be together if we hadn’t done it.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Wow. Yep.
Nicky Lee — And we thought gosh this really works it works in person – that’s still the best. That’s still the gold standard.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Nicky Lee — But it also works when couples do it in their own homes online. Rich Birch — Yeah, I know for our church, when we do it online to kind of carry that through, just as an idea for folks that are listening in, we actually make our team makes up like these gift bags for every family and actually delivers them to their home.
Sila Lee — Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — And it includes like, some sparkling grape juice and like, you know at some candles and a few you know ah little things to try to hint towards this date night feel. Like hey we want you to set this aside we don’t want this to just be like you’re not having dinner and this is just like playing on the end of the table kind of thing. We want you to set it aside that’s… Sila Lee — Oh, your church is a model church. That’s brilliant. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. So one of the things, uh, you know, your courses of do, which may be a surprise for people are listening in is they actually avoid group discussion, which is I, when I first heard this, that surprised me. I was like, well, wait a second. Aren’t we all going to sit around and like talk about how great our marriages are, but we all know things aren’t actually that great. So what led to that decision, Nicky, and how has it impacted engagement particularly? Nicky Lee — We did this right from the start. And I think it was principally because we knew couples have to learn to talk together as a couple. Rich Birch — Right. Nicky Lee — And we we recognize that some people are very good at sharing in a group discussion, but not so good at listening to their to their husband or wife. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Nicky Lee — So we wanted to ah to help them to both learn about good communication, resolving conflict, but also to create habits that they would then continue um on their own at at home. And we also know most couples, probably, I don’t know, 90% of the couples who come on these courses wouldn’t come if there was any group discussion. Rich Birch — Right. Nicky Lee — And in a sense, they’re right not to, because they they don’t want to be required to air dirty laundry to other people. And they certainly don’t want their spouse to have the opportunity to wear dirty laundry to other people. Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep. Nicky Lee — We keep talking about the privacy. This helps people to come and it helps people to get the most out of the course.
Sila Lee — And the other thing, it gives us as the the leaders in a church, the confidence that we can say to any couple, you know, again and again and again, um there is no group discussion. This is totally about you and and in a nice environment. And you know we have people who come where one or other or both of them have had affairs. And we have absolute confidence to say to them if you want to try to work your marriage ah out, then you can come, nobody will know. You will just come in with everybody else and and but you will have those discussions privately.
Sila Lee — And honestly, we have over all of these years had great confidence that even where there are quite extreme situations, if a couple come and are willing to commit to those seven evenings, that is a big step.
Rich Birch — Yep. Sila Lee — And actually, yes, sometimes they we need to suggest they go on and get more counseling, and that’s great.
Rich Birch — Yep. Sila Lee — But for many, many couples, these conversations in this setting actually is is the catalyst for them to start to connect properly again. Rich Birch — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I think you’ve done a masterful job creating um resources that do push to some significant issues like in there. And um’ it’s always and intriguing to when you hear feedback from people who have been through it to kind of talk about like, oh, there was a week. This week really was profound for us. This, and this conversation, not so profound. It was interesting, but you know, not so profound. And you’ve modeled that with your courses to be able to like, Hey, let’s have this conversation, give you some time. But the fact that it’s time bound is nice too. It’s like, okay, we’re going to take 10 minutes, 20 minutes, long discussion, short discussion. I think it’s just, I think it’s masterful. It’s great stuff. Nicky Lee — Rich, can I just jump in and say, I think as well because the conversations are a limited time. Rich Birch — Yeah, of course. Sila Lee — Yes, like you just mentioned.
Nicky Lee — People have more more courage to address sensitive issues that otherwise they might avoid if it was just open-ended.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nicky Lee — Or might not know how to start those conversations. They know they need to talk about it, but they don’t have a ah forum. They don’t have a setting for it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Love that. Yeah. Cause it’s like, you know, do I want to open up this can of worms? It’s going to take us five hours to unpack. Uh, but you know, the reality of it is you might have to open up one of those things. Let’s talk about it for 20 minutes. But if we can get that going now, man, imagine the impact. Rich Birch — So when you look kind of up over the horizon, Sila, how do you envision these courses continuing to serve the global church? Maybe especially in regions where marriage dynamics are a little bit different than you know that than the Western norms. Obviously, things are different than in Kensington, you know. There there you know the world not the whole world is Kensington, you know Sila Lee — Well, no, but you don’t know what Kensington is like. I mean, we felt, oh, Kensington was quite challenging because we, British, are pretty reserved. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Nicky Lee — We’re way behind you, North Americans.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Nicky Lee — Way behind you. We don’t talk nearly as easily as you do. Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Sila Lee — Yeah, I mean, you talk about emotions and feelings and everything that we British tend to be a bit more reserved about that. um So actually, that is why the privacy is so key. But you know, there are some other countries around the world where they’re even behind us, which is rather amazing. And actually, but what we have seen is that this format um is a very um sort of safe, structured environment in which people, there’s a sort of expectation, this is what you do. And yes, sometimes we’ve been to some countries where for the first ah session or on ah on a session we’re doing, um you will see couples just sitting, not even communicating. Nicky Lee — In some cultures where husbands and wives really don’t talk to each other. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Sila Lee — But that’s the norm. Rich Birch — Wow. Sila Lee — But this the the the the structure that that the marriage course is in itself creates a bringing together. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Sila Lee — And and that in itself you know, bringing together of a husband and wife, especially perhaps in some cultures where, where sort of men are sort of seen as the leaders and women are sort of inferior. This brings them together equally into the same place to facilitate conversations. Rich Birch — That’s cool. Sila Lee — And we’ve heard remarkable stories, um even, you know, even in arranged marriages where there’s been some quite big issues. Rich Birch — Wow. Sila Lee — But bringing them together into this place where they both can contribute. One has to listen, one has to speak, et cetera. And it it sometimes takes quite a bit of, you know, encouraging um them to do that. But… Nicky Lee — And it’s and it’s all about building emotional connection between couples.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Sila Lee — And ultimately, a strong marriage is built on that emotional connection, that understanding and going on understanding.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Sila Lee — As we change, as we realize our partner changes, are we still understanding where they’re at, what their needs are and so on? Rich Birch — This is like total inside baseball thing I’m going to say here. But I remember the first time I watched the, uh, the, the marriage course materials and there is one of the couples that you interview or is interviewed that is in a, in an arranged marriage. And they mentioned that just in passing. And I was like, what? Like back up. I want to hear more about that. Like they, it’s a great little throwaway kind of like, uh, thing, which is, is amazing. Rich Birch — So, it’s a fun fun deal. Nicky Lee — Yeah we we call them our sofa couples.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nicky Lee — Because we interview loads of couples and we intersperse them through the but marriage course films. They’re easily the best part of the film. We love them too. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so cool, it’s so cool. Well, friends, I I’m not you know impartial on this thing. I really do think that you should be thinking about um implementing the marriage course, the pre-marriage course in your church. Like i’m not on the you know I’m not impartial on this. I really do think you should do this. First for listeners that are are leaning in this, let’s say I’m a church leader. You know I’m I’ve I’ve been kind of intrigued today. How what would be my first steps I should take, Nicky, to kind of explore this, to understand how you know, how could, where would we start if we were interested in in getting you know this ball rolling or exploring this for our church? Nicky Lee — I would say to any leader if you’re married, do the marriage course yourselves first. And you may be able to there may be a local church you can join. I think you know any couple will benefit from it. There’ll be things that you talk about perhaps you haven’t talked about for years or perhaps never talked about. You will yeah there are there are always areas in our marriage to grow. And I say that when when a leader couple do the marriage course, pastor couples do it. They understand it at first hand, and then they’re able to talk to others. Nicky Lee — Some couples have done what we call a little pilot course, they get two or three other couples together, they might do it in a home or they might rotate around their homes.
Sila Lee — And ah but do the do the recipe. So everything, you you know, you might have a meal together, and then you watch the film, but you do the private conversations and all of that. Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good. Nicky Lee — And add in in that way, couples, then they’re in the position to start promoting the cause to others if they feel they want to do that, and that would be helpful to them. Nicky Lee — And we’ve done a there’s a resource which is… Rich Birch — Yeah. The video you’ve provided. Yeah, that’s wonderful. Nicky Lee — And that actually is the first of our online leaders training videos.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Nicky Lee — And and this is people who are thinking about running the course. But it’ll give people a very good idea of the sort of nature of the course, what it looks like and opportunity to hear from church leaders, including the person who was our senior pastor, Nicky Gumbel, talking about the benefits to him and Pips of doing the course and why they encourage every couple in the church to do the pre-marriage course or the marriage course as a group. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, friends, I is there a place online we want to send send people like a website? Where would be the best place for us to so to to link to? We’ll link to that video. We’ll put that video in the notes so they can see that here. Rich Birch — But where else do we want to send them online? Sila Lee — Yeah, the the um Alpha USA um ah website… Rich Birch — Perfect. Sila Lee — …and then you just put in the marriage course. Rich Birch — Love it. Nicky Lee — And there’s also one that is just themarriagecourse.org.
Sila Lee — Which is the global site. Rich Birch — Love it. Nicky Lee — That’s the global one. Rich Birch — Right. Sila Lee — And then the the specific to North America would be the Alpha USA and then marriage course. Rich Birch — Perfect. Yeah, that’s just great. Well, I want to just thank you for for what you’ve done with these resources. And, um you know, friends, like I said, I cannot highly, I can’t recommend these anymore. These are is incredible resources. You really should ah lean in and get a chance to to know that. I also just want to honor you guys for your ah work in this area. The fact that you’ve spent so much time, effort, and energy on this, the fact you come on this podcast is is humbling to me.
Rich Birch — You know, there is something about, particularly leaders who are listening in, we need to learn from churches like HTB who are serving in pre-Christian, post-Christian environments around how to engage on these issues. And um you know HTB has obviously been a leader in this and in many ways. This is one of the ways. And so and and every time I interact with somebody from HTB, I’m always struck by your humility. And so You know, I know if I had a resource that one and a half million couples had done, I would be making a much bigger deal of it than you guys are. Rich Birch — It just seems like, well, we just did this thing in our church and lots of people use it. But I think that’s a part of what God uses. And and I I think that about about Nicky and Pippa as well. Like I’m like, the humility is is is disarming in a beautiful way. So I just want to honor you for that.
Nicky and Sila Lee — Thank you very much.
Rich Birch — So again, give us that website address. Give us that website address again, and then we’ll wrap up today’s episode. Nicky and Sila Lee — Themarriagecourse (all one word) dot org Rich Birch — Perfect. That’s great. Thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate you helping us with these Unprediction episodes. Nicky and Sila Lee — Oh, thank you. Goodbye. Rich Birch — Thanks. Thanks so much.
Mentoring Gen Z Leaders: Insights from Leadership Pathway’s Residency Program with Dave Miller
Jan 09, 2025
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This January we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re joined by Dave Miller, co-founder of Leadership Pathway, and are talking about how the next generation will matter more.
Are you curious about how your church can effectively engage and empower the next generation of leaders? Tune in to learn how your church can benefit from a residency program and how to set young leaders up for success for the health and growth of the church.
Empowering Gen Z. // The success of young leaders depends not on their education or even their passion for Christ, but rather on the quality of coaching they receive from their supervisors. Strong mentorship and intentional development are pivotal in helping these leaders thrive in their roles. Unfortunately, many churches struggle to provide this support due to full schedules and generational disconnects among staff.
Age of authority. // Gen Z is more self-reliant, skilled, and innovative, with access to tools and platforms that were unavailable to previous generations. These leaders are reshaping the dynamics of leadership by seeking opportunities that align with their unique talents and ambitions. For example, Dave recalls a young leader who considered social media monetization a viable alternative to being a youth pastor, reflecting a broader trend of independence and resourcefulness.
Listen to young leaders. // Churches need to rethink their strategies for engaging young leaders. Start with simple, meaningful conversations to understand their ideas, values, and motivations. Invite them to participate in strategic decision-making or leadership discussions to foster a sense of ownership and make them feel valued.
Create a customized residency. // Leadership Pathway’s residency programs address the challenges churches face by providing structured mentorship for young leaders. The two-year program is customized to fit the unique needs of each church, whether they are launching new campuses, planning for succession, or addressing internal growth challenges. These residencies go beyond internships by emphasizing coaching and practical experience, with the goal of producing highly desired, hireable leaders by the program’s end. Leadership Pathway also equips supervisors with coaching skills so they can effectively mentor their residents.
Build a leadership pipeline now. // Church leaders constantly face the need to replace team members. Many leaders get caught in a cycle of reactive hiring rather than proactively building a pipeline of future leaders. Start the conversation about developing a residency program now, even if you don’t have an urgent need at the moment. Even a basic landing page on your church website can serve as a starting point for attracting potential residents.
Visit leadershippathway.org to start a conversation about what residency could look like at your church. Plus download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you decided to tune in here early 2025. We are in the midst of this Un… these Unpredictions episodes. Super excited for these conversations. Today we’re we’re all month long. We’re focusing on these ideas that all of us, really they’re Unpredictions. These were true last year. They’re going to be true next year. We need you to focus on these things. And today we’re talking about the next generation will matter more. That was true last year. It’s even more true this year. The the you know the with lower church attendance rates among millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, it’s critical for us to engage and empower this next generation.
Rich Birch — We want to be focusing our efforts we should be focusing our efforts on uh really bringing this group into leadership bring them as a part of our um our leadership circles, and today I couldn’t think of anybody better than my friend Dave Miller to be a part of this. He runs an organization called Leadership Pathway. They offer a two-year residency program for future church leaders, as well as training, coaching, and consulting services. They match future leaders to the right church and find the ah that find the best team fit. Rich Birch — Dave Miller has served as a worship and creative arts pastor at churches in Las Vegas, Central Kentucky, and Western Michigan. He’s also spent the last 15 years on the go helping churches at a variety of topics from strategy, technology, facility, redesign. He’s super passionate. He’s a good friend. Dave, so glad you’re on the show today. Dave Miller — It is great to be here. And when I’m on your podcast, two things happen. One is you pray for us before you hit record. I’m on a lot of podcasts. You’re the only person that does that. Secondly, I just want to talk faster, faster, faster, faster. And I wonder where do you get this content that you read after you hit record? Because half is any of that true, I don’t know, but I appreciate it. And I’m happy to be here talking to you about this topic. Rich Birch — Well, yeah, Dave, ah Dave’s a friend, ah is a great leader. You should follow Dave and everything Leadership Pathway does, but I just. Dave Miller — Not a great leader. Why do you say that? Cause listen… Rich Birch — Stop, stop. I’m cutting you off this and but behind your back to mutual friends, whenever we talk about you, one of my standard go-to lines is I’m like, you know, Dave does this thing where he’s like, I’m just a good old boy from Kentucky. I I don’t know. What do I know? But then when you lean in, you’re like, This guy has got he’s got so much to say on this, you know, on so many things. He’s a he’s a great leader. And so I’m I’m excited to have you on. Rich Birch — Fill in the picture. Tell us a little bit. You readjust our writing on Leadership Pathway and on you. Tell us the story. Dave Miller — Well, Leadership Pathway started with some friends. And like a lot of things that start, I, in my arrogance, I was like, well, surely by year five, Vanderbloemen or Slingshot will buy this, right? And I’ll get out of it and run. I want to go work for a cycling shop or something. And, uh, you know, and it started with surely they’ll buy it to surely they’ll take it off my, to like, what what would it cost for me to get out of it? So leaders, we’re crying. People say to me, man, you guys are killing it. Well, I think we’re trying. I think we’re reaping, for those people out there today, and there’s a lot of them starting something, I’m reaping the benefit of being able to say, we just celebrated our seventh year in ministry. Rich Birch — Amazing. That’s amazing. Dave Miller — …trying to make it work. We are now, I think our team, it’s not me, it’s the smart people on the other side of the wall, we’re at the point where now that we’ve launched 150 of these, man, the first 40 were rough. And mainly because it was me and a buddy trying to do it. And then we were able to add in some expertise and some smart people with grit and determination and a different thinking genius than the rest of us. And so the last hundred and so have been have gone much, much better and we are trying.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dave Miller — So anybody out there starting something, launching something in my church or anything, you know this idea of getting beyond year four, so you can now start looking a little longer game, it makes me excited for the next decade. And I have never thought that very much in about 20 years. Rich Birch — Amazing. Dave Miller — I’m excited for the next 10 years to see where this is going. I mean, when you talk about something that has been true forever, right? This what we’re gonna talk about today has been true for 2,000 years. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Paul said to Timothy, try it like this. Do it, like I was reading Titus this morning. Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — He’s like, try do this, Titus. And you know in 2,000 years from now, all of the theorists have their ideas of what the church is gonna be. Is it underground, or is it only Life Church? Craig cloned them and it’s little Craig Groeshel’s and we’re all singing Elevation songs. There’s only three songs left. Rich, we’re singing that. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly. Dave Miller — Who knows what it or it’s underground, right? It’s underground, um it’s subversive. Rich Birch — Right, right. Right. Dave Miller — We’re but in 2000 years, we will need an older leader. And by old, I mean 33, telling the younger leader. Do it like this, try it like this, avoid this, avoid this pothole. That’s all we’re doing. We’re bringing intentionality to what most of us benefited from, but we’ve lost the handle on for sure. It is getting getting harder and harder. And at the summation of it, we have a we have the most dynamic, talented, express… I mean, this generation is amazing. Rich Birch — For sure. Yeah. Dave Miller — We don’t know what to do with them. We don’t, and it’s in athletics. It’s in big business and it’s in the church and small business and startups. We don’t know what to do. And we can go back years and take a lesson for sure. Rich Birch — So much there. Yeah, I love it. Rich Birch — So this is why you can tell already, friends, why I love to have Dave here. Now, this is again, you just rolled right over it. Like you offer residency, you coach. And like, I know lots of churches and organizations that celebrate, like we just had our fourth resident and you just rolled over. Rich Birch — Hey, we’ve done this 150 times. That’s incredible. Dave Miller — We’ve onboarded, these numbers aren’t big, right? It’s another thing about starting stuff. I am the worst at this. I don’t want to talk about how small it is, right? Last year, we onboarded 10 residents. Dave Miller — The year before that, we onboarded 11. This year, we’ve onboarded 29. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — We don’t know why, by the way, which is a problem. So I always, I’m telling people, I tell other people like coach, you got to know why you lose, but you really got to know why you’re winning. So you can repeat that. My team is sick of me drilling. Somebody asked me this week, is this baseball? Like how many stats do you want of the common that are making this thing roll? So I don’t know. I would just say we’re going with it.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Dave Miller — We’re going with it in more and more churches. And our assumptions, ah some I actually some, it’d be my, I wouldn’t say our. My assumptions a decade ago on this topic, before long before Leadership Pathway was a thing. I think I have shed a few of those in the last couple of years, last year for sure. Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, so bring us up to speed. Like you’re in the thing I love about what you you do is you have your pulse on both churches that are trying to wrestle with this issue. They’re coming to you. They’re saying, hey, we’re trying to figure out how to create some sort of structure where we can have younger leaders be in the mix and coach them well and all that. But then you also have a connection to young leaders who are who are in that those circles and trying to make that happen. So so we can save everybody who’s listening, pull back the, what are the two or three kind of latest ideas that you’re seeing in working with churches or with young leaders as they’re trying to, you know, as churches particularly are trying to create space for young leaders. What are the couple of things that come to top of mind for you? Dave Miller — Okay, number one, I heard this about 10 months ago. Kristin, who does leads all of our coaches. She’s the frontline of ah helping leaders. She does about 40 a month. It’s unbelievable. Rich Birch — Amazing, amazing. Dave Miller — Her grit just stays on Zoom talking to pastors. She said, your resident’s success is going to rise or fall with their supervisor’s ability to coach them, period. Rich Birch — Yep, that’s good. Dave Miller — It’s not hinged on level of education. It’s not even hinged on do they love Jesus. Now, people will call me a heretic, right? Where we’ve got some baseline things like, of course, we assume about Christ and his role in our lives and who we are as believers and all those things. But for a couple thousand years, we’ve been wired up to do education and spiritual formation in churches, right? It starts with a sermon. And there’s a Wednesday night or Thursday night thing with the kids. And then in kids ministry on Sunday morning, there’s lessons. And then we’re circling them up groups one on one, whatever it is at your church. We’re forming our spiritual life. And so why are we in this? Why are we in the spot that we’re in, right? It’s that along the way we have like good. Gosh, if I just spoke at the highest level, I just think we hire amazing people at these churches. These people we work with are amazing.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — What do amazing people do? A lot of stuff. They cram 60 hours of work into their 46 hour calendar. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They are running at such a pace, they’re killing… this is my own story through my 20s and 30s, killing it. Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — Probably it might, at least I don’t want to project this, but in my story, workaholism and [inaudible] got me great promotions and pats on the back through my 20s. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — I will tell you. Rich Birch — But didn’t necessarily make you a good coach. Is that, is that what you’re saying? Dave Miller — Don’t call people who work for me in those days. There are a few interns who are still in the ministry. And I can tell the story of how I’m proud of that. I can also tell the story of how, probably how they developed, they just kept up. You know, it’s not because I woke up on Wednesday going, what am I going to do to strategically invest in the next generation? Dave Miller — And more and more when we hear when we hear kids these days, you know? Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Dave Miller — It’s not 50-year-olds saying that. It’s 35-year-olds who are a little, they’re a little, ah the nice word would be angered. They’re a little bit triggered that this 20-year-old twenty is not going to have to go through, they believe, the same hoops and walk uphill both ways to to get the approval. And nobody did that for me. You know, we hear that a lot. And we’re like, well, you came to the school of hard knocks, right? For every one of you… Rich Birch — Right. We don’t want to pass that on. Yeah. Dave Miller — No. We don’t. Rich Birch — Yeah. Dave Miller — Anyways. Dave Miller — Oh, 2000, you know, your, for, for, and this is louder and louder and louder. That person’s success is will rise and will crash on your supervisor’s ability to coach them, not instruct them or teach them or pray with them. Its discipleship is in there, but it’s it it’s bigger than that, man. It’s bigger than that. Rich Birch — Yeah, so so if I’m a church leader today, I’m listening in and I’m like, hey, there aren’t enough young leaders around the table. Like I I was saying to this to you earlier, like one of the things that has struck me with this last year, just the way my stuff has evolved, I’ve ended up at some of the leadership tables of some name brand churches. Insert name brand church that you people who are listening would know. And the thing that has struck me is, man, those the people around those tables are in their 20s and early 30s. The people that are actually running these organizations, they’re very young leaders. Now, I might be listening in, I’m i’m a i’m a leader at a church and I look around and I’m like, that’s just not what’s happening here. What I hear you saying is it could be our issue. We’re just not coaching them well. We’re not, we’re, we’re not… what would be some of those telltale signs of a leader that is coaching next generation leaders well? They’re, they’re, you know, they’re leaning in, they’re doing this. I know there’s a ton that we could talk about there, but what would be some of those, those things? Dave Miller — I would say number one is their boss, where where it really takes root well, is their boss has an expectation on them. So your your youth group grew by 30% and you baptized a bunch of kids, and you but your intern quit, and your resident has decided suddenly they’d rather be an astronaut than be the next you, right? Dave Miller — You’re not doing it. It shows up on whatever it is, the scorecard, of the KPI. I’m going to evaluate you on how you’re doing in this area. So where it really takes root, in other words, if there’s more than four people on the team. So we’re, I’m not talking about churches of 15,000. I’m saying 500, 300…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah. Yep.
Dave Miller — …some of our favorite places are some of these small places. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Dave Miller — Their boss has an expectation, which would imply somehow they have carved out time. Every church talks for a year about what they’re going to spend per resident, and they’re going to spend about 20 grand. It’s not very much money.
By the sixth month, no church is talking about the money. They’re all talking about once we begin… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Dave Miller — …leaders go, wow, this is, I’m talking to them again. I’m developing, I’m getting, well, when we say a feedback loop, when we say a developmental conversation, once you dig into those conversations, what does that create? More conversation, more conversation. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — So how can we carve out time? When these things go sideways, we’ve learned, you know, this might be the second one. We’ve learned when they go sideways, it’s really not on whereas the young resident. That’s another thing I heard from one of one of our people in a room with someone raising their hand, Q and A. Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — So what’s the number one reason why when these things go sideways, what’s happening? It’s not the curriculum. It’s not the level of education. It’s not that we all love Jesus. And some of these people get up early and pray more than you and I combined, Rich. They know the word. Rich Birch — Sure. Dave Miller — It’s they haven’t had a conversation with their intern for a month. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Where I’m like, what? She did what she hadn’t said. Yeah, the last one on one, she was on FaceTime heading to the airport, calling it… Rich Birch — Yeah, right. Dave Miller — …calling it a development. No, all you’re doing, all you’re doing at that point is just you’re trying to get more out of them than you’re putting in. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — We’ve learned for 2000 years, that doesn’t work.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — It really doesn’t. The thing that’s different today. This generation is smarter. Dr. Tim Elmore, Gen Z Unfiltered. It is the Bible around here. Dr. Tim Elmore, Gen Z Unfiltered. He’s sort of our go-to and he worked for John Maxwell and he lives in Atlanta, you know, not far from. And these amazing churches have been doing this. Now he talks about the the age of authority is lower than ever. Dave Miller — Here’s how I see this. I’m a huge baseball fan. Rookies come up to Major League Baseball—look it up—younger and younger, what happens? They root for each other. In the 70s, I’m unfortunately a Big Red machine, Cincinnati Reds fan. I was a child. I studied that team. Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — They went all the way. Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — They would haze each other. It was a miserable experience to be a young baseball player. And Young was 24, 28. These guys today were 18, 19, 20 years old. They’re rooting for each other. There’s no hazing anymore. The age of authority has dropped.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Dave Miller — They’re they show up. They’re smarter than me. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They’re better than me. They understand they use language that I don’t understand. They get things. They’re watching television. I’m still using Cheers and Friends in my sermons as illustrations. They’re talking about platforms that I don’t even know exist, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — That’s what’s going on. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — It’s frustrating. So for the first time ever, my generation, your, we looked at our bosses and thought we maybe not could have verbalized this, but our parents, or our grandparents, they showed up to the institutions and they saluted because the… We showed up and we kind of rolled our eyes, but we knew we had to put up with our boss. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — This generation, they’re wondering, why do I need a boss? Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — You know, seven out of 10, they’re already monetizing their social media [inaudible]. Kristen was at a thing in Nashville put on by Think last week about the next…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Dave Miller — She met a young leader and he’s he literally said to her, Well, if I don’t get a youth ministry job, I do have 140,000 Instagram followers. I’ll just I’ll fall back on that. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — And I think five years ago, she might have stiffened up and been insulted and wanted to reach out and discipline that kid like it was one of her own. Today, she’s like, yeah, he’s right. Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, let’s do his own thing. Dave Miller — He’s right. How are we going to get him to show up at a church and go to staff meetings and sit through things where people 20 years older than him, 10 years old. When I was his age, my boss was super old, Gene Appel, and he was a decade older than me. Think about that. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — I was 25, he was super old, 35. Rich Birch — Yes. He was. Yes, yes. Dave Miller — Not a 22 year old, their boss is 40, sometimes older, and the bosses are like, what’s wrong with these kids? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the kids. Rich Birch — Nothing wrong with the kids. It’s you. Interesting. Dave Miller — Yeah. I mean, Forbes this month, Forbes go just look up Gen Z getting fired. I mean, and I’m assuming Forbes is talking to major employers, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dave Miller — Like large places with really smart ah HR departments with developmental plans. 75% of the Gen Z hires in the last year, they’re dissatisfied with. They believe are unprepared. Six out of 10, 60% of these employers admit firing a Gen Z already. Dave Miller — I mean, where they just graduated in May, or the May before, already fired. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Dave Miller — Now, I would just say any stat you read like that, I don’t know how much of it’s made up or I don’t know… Rich Birch — Right. 62% of stats are made up. Dave Miller — So yeah, and I would say our stats are worse because every church, the small business outside of the top, you know, 20 or 30 in America.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — We’re all small business and small business is harder. It is hard. Small business, we don’t have three HR people to help us with this stuff. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — It’s on us to get it done. Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. That’s super clear. I get that. um Again, you’re I know you’re blowing some people’s minds today, which is super helpful. Glad that you’re, you know, on the call. So the first, this whole idea of like, okay, if, you know, the residents that aren’t working out um or if, you know, put it the other way around, the residents that are working out, they’re working out because their boss are coaching them. They’re they’re leaning in on that conversation. So the corollary of that is, hey, if you’re looking around and things are not working out with next generation leaders, we need to be looking in internally at ourselves.
Rich Birch — What other, you know, on this whole area of saying, let’s say I’m a church again, 500 people, and I’m like, okay, I want to create a bigger table. I saw Rich post on this last year and we haven’t done anything on trying to get young leaders around. What would be some practical steps that you would think to try to create that, that early momentum to try to make some space for some, you know, next generation leaders? Dave Miller — Well, if you could find them, if you can find people younger than 25, college kids. I don’t know how you find, I mean, in a lot of, in a normal church, they, uh, it’s like rare white tigers. I mean, there aren’t very many.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — But if you can get them around the table and just engage, just talk. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — What do you listen to? Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — What are you reading? What do you believe? What do you believe? How, why are you showing up here? You know, my church is not the hippest. We’re up here in Tacoma, Washington, outside of Seattle. There aren’t, there’s not a prevailing church. There are in Seattle, but you know it’s geographic and you gotta get there, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — But but I would say our church is not the hippest place in the world, but there’s a few 20 something year olds. They struggle, they struggle. When you actually engage them, they struggle because they they they have all sorts of ideas, they know how the world works. They have friends that they would never invite to this thing. Never. We still think about, and and you do a great job at this, creating an invite culture whether it’s Sunday morning or in anywhere any at any place in this organization… Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — …are we inviting friends? Dave Miller — And they’re struggling to do that. They have ideas, but what I think they’re hearing is ah, you know, take the trash out. We’ll let you will let you do this piece of it. We just forget. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — We just forget. I mean I think of back in my 20s, there was the super old 35 year old. There was one guy that was like probably 50. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — I think of being like 90. Rich Birch — Yes. Dave Miller — He probably, he did the hospitals. You know, we all love these people.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dave Miller — There are the people when it’s hitting the fan, I’m going in his office, closing the door, having long conversations cause he has time for me.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dave Miller — And the rest of it, there were 12 people around the table and the rest of us, I don’t think there was a 30 year old.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Dave Miller — But we were all 22 to 26 leading this big church in a big thing, kind of a leading tip of the spear sort of existence in that era. Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — None of us were thinking we don’t know what we’re doing. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Dave Miller — We’re just clueless, we’re just getting up thinking well of course we can do this. How much more times 100 this generation but actually was smart. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Dave Miller — Man, they are smarter than ever. I was sensing this, yeah gosh, 12 years ago, I was running for a small college. These kids, they’d show up already more talented than the grads going out of there. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They could speak, they could sing, they could write songs, they knew technology. They also um, you know, maybe they were immature as ever, but they understood what their Enneagram was and their Strength Finders. They were well aware of things that I probably didn’t even get into until my mid to late thirties. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They’re already there. Now I’m watching them as super old 30 year olds. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — And they’re doing things like leading some of the name brand church production areas or the ones that have continued to walk…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Dave Miller — …they are in some chairs influencing things at the highest level. That’s who we’re dealing with. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Why would I say in that person’s way?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dave Miller — We’re afraid, we’re afraid. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Dave Miller — Here’s the number three, who’s caused more harm to the cause of Christ? Name one that’s younger than 30. Rich Birch — Oh gosh. Oh my goodness. That is a… Dave Miller — Dude, the public tanks that have taken us down are guys like us, 50, 50-year-old. Rich Birch — Right. That’s true. Yep. Dave Miller — I mean, like four in one month in Dallas or something this past summer. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — The though though one in a couple in Chicago, right? One up in Seattle. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Dave Miller — It’s a bunch of white guys that are in their 50s and 60s. Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Dave Miller — It’s not the 23-year-old. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — The ones I meet that are doing stuff, man, they’re amazing. So… Rich Birch — Yeah. Dave Miller — Why would we? Rich Birch — No, that’s a good insight. That’s a good insight. And and I think, you know, we we have to figure out, you know, I would put myself in this camp for sure. I was I was born in 1974, do the math friends, the lowest birthright year of the 20th century. And so I am classic Gen X. Literally, I am like middle of the, I am like right down the center Gen X. every All that stuff about Gen X is me. And you know we I’ve spent a lot of my time you know trying to take stuff from the Boomers and give it to the next generation, but we’ve got to accelerate that. We’ve got to figure out, okay, we we can’t we can’t wait. You know, we can’t just keep kind of wondering about these issues. We’ve got to keep you know taking some steps on this. Why don’t we talk ah specifically about Leadership Pathway? Talk to me about, I’m not sure why my dog is barking at me. It’s the you know… Dave Miller — You’re such a pro. Rich Birch — …Grizzly, the ah the podcasting dog dog. The yeah it’s my That’s my 20-something daughters dog who’s at our house today. So ah very appropriate. That’s why she’s that’s why he’s barking at us, I’m sure. Dave Miller — It’s very authentic unSeminary. Rich Birch — Anyway anyways, yeah, very authentic, very, yeah. So Leadership Pathway, talk to us about what you actually do. We’ve kind of danced around a little bit. What what is the, how do you help churches with this issue? I’m sure there’s people that are, man, gosh, I got to figure out how to get young leaders around me. How do you help, you know, from that perspective, from the church’s side, say, we got to, we got to fix this this year. We’re not, we want to leave this year with more young leaders engaged in the conversation, leading in our church. What does Leadership Pathway do? Dave Miller — We convince them to start. That’s what we do. And we call it residency because we know what an intern is. Rich Birch — Yep.
Dave Miller — People are like, this is a residency? What, is there a master’s involved? If you want there to be, there’s a master’s involved.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — We work with churches offering masters and MDivs and full on accredited courses in their building or online or just paying for whatever level of education they want to pay for with these residents. But a residency is a two-year process of coaching by which they are landed, we would say, highly desired and hireable at the end of that.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Dave Miller — It’s a conversation. It really is. It is a coaching um platform. I was talking to one of those large, what’d you call them, name brand, one of the top 45. Rich Birch — Name name brand churches. Yep. Dave Miller — And he’s like, so what are you monetizing and what are we getting? And I’m like, we’re gonna push you off the diving board. We’re like the people that walk up behind, you’ve been thinking about this for years. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — And I mean, for years. We’ve had conversations now for seven years. And they’re still like, well, we’re praying about it. And the 30 something year old is now a 40 something year old. And the last four rookies all quit.
Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — You don’t have to follow them. They’re going to quit. Because, it’s you know, they’re like, why am I doing this? Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Um, so we help churches architect a customized, very custom to their location, who it is beyond even denomination and geography and temperature and size of the church. What’s going on right now? Did your, are you going through succession plan? Rich Birch — That’s good. Dave Miller — Are you launching four campuses in the next four years or are you in decline? We’re working with all of those places. We’re working with all. Dave Miller — It’s one of the assumptions I probably made a decade ago that I’ve backed off of, which is, well, we’re only gonna work with the best and brightest and name brand, big… No. Some of our favorite best success stories, are churches smaller than 500, if they’ll commit to it. The ones that are desperate, honestly. They’ve hired a couple of rookies, they didn’t make it for a number of reasons. They’ve tried internships. They didn’t like what they got out of it. They’re still doing internships, but they want to take it up and not lose them. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — So it’s all of that. It’s a conversation. There are general, I would say, um markers along the way. But man, when we say pathway, it’s like we’re all going to the summit up there, and there’s a bunch of us, and some go east, some go, and we circle a few times this mountain… Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — …some take the well-worn path, others are just, they need ropes, and it gets crazy. We’re all We all sort of get there, and I think our coaches would say, ah they’re very talented, they start on a sprint. At some point in the first 90 days, we need to have a we we need to have a safe fail.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Dave Miller — And we start talking, and then it’s a a lot of talking and coaching. First Christmas, first Easter, first summer…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — …all of those things that we all forget. Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.
Dave Miller — We all forget. It’s moving faster, and it’s harder than ever, by the way. It’s harder today than when you and I started. Expectations are through the roof. Oh my goodness. The pay hasn’t moved, by the way. But the expectations are, times three, add 50%. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — The second-year, Rich, why do churches only do 10 months, I don’t know, or a year? Because the second year is the payoff. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — It’s the payoff for the people who now believes and trusts. They believe and they trust these people actually do want more for them, and now the deeper work gets to happen in their personal life. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — And the payoff for those church leaders who now, they might be paying, you know, 20 grand, they might be spending 20 grand on this person, and they’re making, up in air quotes, a full-time contribution, running, we’ve seen them run guest services, lead worship at a campus, lead production at a campus. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They are, in essence, functioning like a middle school pastor.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Dave Miller — Or they they’ve architected and now launched the fifth grade ministry to help kids transition to middle school in these churches, but they’re a resident. Rich Birch — Love it. Right. Dave Miller — And it’s sort of like, it’s sort of like the last few months of a medical residency where this person is doing everything the doctor’s doing. Rich Birch — Right, right. Dave Miller — They’re just clocking time until they sign the paperwork…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — …and they are officially now the doctor, but they’ve really been doing this once. Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — That’s what we see in the second month. I’m sorry, in the second year. Rich Birch — In the second year. Dave Miller — That’s what we see. That’s what we do. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Dave Miller — It is It’s a coaching platform. We coach the coaches. We coach your downline leaders, how to develop Gen Z, how to develop young leaders. Rich Birch — Love it. Dave Miller — And we’ve learned we have to sort of hand it out over time. Like if I just back the truck up and unload it, they’ll never do it. It’s like… Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Right, right. Dave Miller — It’s like, if you knew what we’re going into, when you and Chrissy first got married, would you have ever had, kids? You love your kids, would you have ever done it? Rich Birch — Yes. Right. That’s true. Dave Miller — If you could have really seen the future. And I think a lot of college, I mean, I’m sorry, a lot of church leaders were like, they haven’t started a residency yet, but it’s sort of like a young couple saying, so what is it, what’s up with how to choose a high school in college? Dave Miller — No, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. Just start. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Let’s just start now. Start start baby steps and… Dave Miller — And so we, gosh, we’re on our 11th, eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th resident. with Some of these churches were in our fourth and fifth year. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They start with one. They add two. They add five. One doesn’t make it. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — They add four. And these-term relationships where this stuff has taken root in this church, it’s sort of like they can’t go back. It’s it’s like a lot of these things. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Organizationally, we will never go back to just cramming as much as we can get done in a week.Because we’ll never multiply our… I got the company shirt on. Who’s the next you? This idea, you know John and Dave Ferguson, you know multiplication instead of addition.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yes. Yes.
Dave Miller — The base level, the number one place we’re missing it. We expect this to happen in our groups or our campuses. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — But the youth, kids, worship, production, guest services person, have they is there anyone on their team that could do their job tomorrow? Because that’s really what we mean. Rich Birch — That’s what we’re talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Long term for sure. Dave Miller — And that we struggle right there to give it away…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Dave Miller — …and then know how to follow up. It takes grit. It takes some grit to get there…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dave Miller — …to have developmental conversations every week on difficult topics. Once they learn how to do it, it’s like these organizations are not going to go back to just banging it out and getting it done. Rich Birch — Right. No. Dave Miller — Everybody is looking at who’s the next them. And it goes back to Paul and Timothy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — The stuff I, 2 Timothy 2:2… the things I’ve shown you, go show to somebody else. And maybe in the eighties, we missed that. Rich Birch — Love it. Dave Miller — I don’t know. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Well, and the thing that I love about what you guys do is, listen, I’ve spent a lot of time in that you know executive pastor seat. And it you know once your church gets to a certain size, it feels like we are constantly looking for team members. Like we are every Monday morning, we’re waking up thinking, okay, who we who do I got to replace? Who do I need to go find? And but but what happens is we get caught on this treadmill. We don’t get up and over and look at ah at ah the bigger issue, which is, okay, well where like we need to be building a pipeline or maybe even a leadership pathway, one would say, of you know leaders that are coming in that could be ready two years from now, three years from now. Rich Birch — And friends, if you’re listening in, what I know is even if today you’re not, here we are, January, 2025, you don’t have like a burning hole in your organization you need to fill, but I can guarantee you, at the end of the next two years, you’re going to have one. And so what if we started now, got a couple of residents in and started that that conversation. So I want to encourage people to drop by leadershippathway.org. What you should do is actually schedule a call with Dave and his team. Just click on the link there. You can jump onto a call. They’ll get specific with you. Today, we’ve kind of talked at the philosophical level, you you know, kind of the high level 30,000 feet. Let’s get into your specific issues. Tell them that on the call. Say, hey, I heard you guys on the unSeminary. Rich Birch — Just cut out all that stuff. I want to talk to you about my issues I got. And leverage that time to actually get to the to the heart of it. What other ways do we want to point people to kind of connect with you guys to connect with Leadership Pathway? Dave Miller — Yeah, they should they should literally go to that website. There’s a connect button. I don’t…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dave Miller — Talking is free and it’s inexpensive. Rich Birch — Right. Dave Miller — Whether it’s an hour or a 30 minute phone call on the way in the car, it’s fine. It’s fine. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Dave Miller — Starting talking about it is the thing. Rich Birch — Yeah. Dave Miller — It is not the canyon to get… I tell church at least twice a week, I’m in a conversation. Rich Birch — Yep. Dave Miller — And it’s like, you have a Squarespace website? Yeah, okay. A ninth grader could put a landing page up by 3 p.m. today that says, my church’s residency, click here, name and email, start talking.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. That’s good. Dave Miller — I mean… And you’re like, really? That’s it? What about accreditation with the state? You know If you go down that road, I’ll see you in three years, but start talking about your residency right now. And we get there by… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Dave Miller — …you know, taking our own advice. We’ll talk really about it because it’s talking is what it is. And so go to the website and click the contact button or something. It’s there. Rich Birch — Dude, so good. So good. All right. Well, I really appreciate this. Appreciate you, Dave. Cheering for you. I’m a fan. I love, I’m also, you know, on this advisory board team, whatever that is. And it’s happy to get your emails and say, this is great. More people should do this, um which you know which is which is wonderful. So ah thanks so much, Dave. Appreciate you being here today. Dave Miller — All right, man. Thanks for having me. Go unSeminary. We’re fans, we’re big fans.
Healthy Digital Habits: How Churches Can Support Families in a Tech-Driven Culture with Natalie Frisk
Jan 08, 2025
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re continuing with our special series called unPredictions 2025 – these are timeless topics that will keep shaping church leadership in 2025 and beyond. Today we’re talking with Natalie Frisk, the director of curriculum at Raise Up Faith, about how parents will be worrying about their kids.
Raise Up Faith is an organization which offers a subscription-based platform, providing kids ministry content which communicates the stories and truths of the Bible in rich and meaningful ways.
In a world where digital media is deeply integrated into daily life, parents often feel overwhelmed—unsure how to guide their children in developing healthy digital habits. Tune in as Natalie shares her insights on how churches can address the challenges parents face while navigating technology’s rapid evolution and how innovative digital tools can enhance kids’ ministry.
Parents in today’s digital world. // Parents of every generation have felt in over their heads at times and don’t understand what their kids are thinking or doing. Today a lot of this disconnect centers around technology because the children growing up today are digital natives, fully immersed in this way of life. Parents and ministry leaders alike need help guiding kids, and organizations like Raise Up Faith are here to support churches as they come alongside parents.
Recognize that today’s kids are digital natives. // Today’s children are fully immersed in technology and have been part of the digital age from the beginning. The screen isn’t just a form of entertainment for them, but is fully a part of how they experience the world. There is no distinction between online and offline lives and we need to recognize this reality.
Foster healthy media consumption habits. // The idea of “digital doughnuts” suggests that while some media may not be inherently bad, it should be viewed as “sometimes food” rather than a staple. Encourage families to create a balanced “media diet” by distinguishing between healthy and sometimes media. Churches can help parents teach children to reflect on their media consumption—asking questions about how specific content makes them feel and whether it fosters connection or disconnection. This process helps develop digital discernment from an early age.
Offer resources to parents. // Not having grown up as digital natives, parents don’t have the same level of familiarity with digital spaces and the complexities of being a teen or child in a digital world. Parents struggle with questions like when to give their child a phone or how to manage healthy digital habits. Churches can step in as guides, offering resources and fostering open discussions to empower families.
Demonstrate wise use of digital media. // Churches have the opportunity to model wise use of media right from the pulpit and stage. Incorporating high-quality, biblically-based video content can create engaging and meaningful learning experiences for kids. However, it’s important to strike a balance, using video to complement live teaching rather than replace it. The curriculums Raise Up Faith offers provide resources for churches to integrate rich, creative content alongside in-person instruction, enhancing both engagement and spiritual growth.
A resource to help guide leaders and parents. // Raise Up Faith has a resource called “Mix It Up: Digital Media in Your Kidmin Space” – great for ministry leaders navigating conversations with parents who are digitally hesitant. It covers three reasons why to use video in kids’ ministry and links to organizations that will be helpful in your church context, plus resources to share for at-home use.
You can learn more about Raise Up Faith at www.raiseupfaith.com. Register for free at their website to try out sample resources and see how they can work for your church. Plus download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode here.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you’ve decided to join us today. We are here in the midst of these conversations we’re calling unPredictions 2025. You know, we’re looking at things that were true last year, are going to be true this year, and I’m convinced are going to be true for years to come. Rich Birch — One of them we’re talking about today is parents will still worry about their kids. The digital age continues to present new challenges for parents. Churches have a unique opportunity—your church does—to provide guidance and support, particularly in the realm of kids ministry. Kids ministry is so critically important, ah whether it’s from, you know, sermons focused on raising kids in a digital age or offering comprehensive family counseling, that sort of thing. There’s ample space for your church to jump in and make significant impact. This is the year you could do that. Rich Birch — Today we’re excited to have Natalie Frisk with us. She is with an organization called Raise Up Faith, RaiseUpFaith.com. They’re an international team of Jesus followers with thousands of hours of kids ministry experience, theological degrees, and unique partnerships ah partnerships with leading faith and media or and they’re sorry with leading faith and media organizations around the world. They’ve mo mobilized their experience as kids ministry experts to build an incredible platform that provides everything you need to build a thriving ministry. And Natalie is the big dog over there, curriculum director. Natalie, welcome. So glad you’re here. Natalie Frisk — Oh, so happy to be here. Thanks for having me again, Rich. Rich Birch — Yeah, so honored to have you back on the episode. And when we were thinking about this, ah literally, you are the first person on my list. I’m like, we got to get Natalie back on. Super excited to have you on today. So fill out the picture, kind of give us a bit of about you, ah you know, about the organization. Tell us a little bit more before we jump in. Natalie Frisk — Yeah, absolutely. I was in church ministry for 15 years and jumped into this role. It’s been almost two and a half years, which has been amazing. Raise Up Faith is a beautiful organization, really um Jesus-y. I have prayed more intensely with this team than any team I’ve ever been on in the past. It has been incredible. Natalie Frisk — um I am here in Canada. I am just outside of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. And I’m married to Sam, and I’ve got a 13-year-old named Erin. And the new addition to our family has been a dog, Casey, who is… Rich Birch — Love it. Casey, the podcasting dog. Natalie Frisk — Oh, man, just wait. Put a mic in front of her. Forget it. Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. Natalie Frisk — So that’s been fun. And, um, yeah, I am the director of curriculum for Raise Up Faith and it has been a joy and a privilege to get to, um, just deliver really great quality, uh, content to to folks and also see what else is out there and kind of curate content and, um, bring in some partnerships, um, for us to share other content on our site. It’s been awesome. Rich Birch — Yeah, fill out tell us a little bit more about Raise Up Faith for folks that haven’t heard… Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Rich Birch — …like, if you bump into somebody at a conference and they’re like, Raise Up Faith, tell me about that. What what is that? Help us kind of fill that out a little bit more. Natalie Frisk — Yeah, thank you for asking. Great question. We’re a curriculum platform. It’s a subscription model. So think Netflix for curriculum. So instead of um locking in with one curriculum, which is is not a bad thing, um you have actually access to 18 different curriculum, including we’ve got three VBSs up on on there as well with a fourth coming out in like hours.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Tis is the season, right? Natalie Frisk — It sure is. Rich Birch — People are thinking about VBS right now. Natalie Frisk — It sure is. And yeah, and and like heaps of music and and worship songs and stuff like that for kids. And um it’s just a really neat, it feels really like kingdom to me because you’ve got some of the best quality content from different organizations and all pulled together and then you can access it. So if you choose to kind of lock and land in one scope and sequence of a specific curriculum you absolutely can do that and access it all. But then if you think oh man I’d love to have a couple of extra songs…
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — …about that thing you can really easily kind of find them and add them in. Or you need extra, I mean, you fill in the blank, coloring pages, games, activities, whatever, because your church has decided to run a couple of extra programs. You can you can get it all there. So it has been really fun to kind of um research and and get my feelers out into the world ah to see where there are some gaps as well.
Rich Birch — Yep. Natalie Frisk — And so we’re starting to into the into this new year, kind of um look at places, new partnerships of where we can develop new content um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Natalie Frisk — …or pull in existing content. And so nothing is out in the open air yet, but some exciting stuff is on the way.
Rich Birch — Pay attention!
Natalie Frisk — Yes!
Rich Birch — Pay attention for big announcements. Natalie Frisk — Stay tuned! Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, and yeah, I have been impressed friends when I’ve had a chance to kind of dig around a little bit in your service. And it’s funny, I, you described it as the kind of Netflix of curriculum and I hadn’t thought of that, but I I was struck by just how much variety and how much is there. It’s, it really is incredible. It’s, it’s a great resource for folks for sure. Rich Birch — But today, I want to leverage the fact that you see a lot of different churches, a lot of different contexts. You know, what we’re trying to do in this time of year is to encourage people to be thinking, hey, like in this conversation, we should really be thinking about our kids’ ministry in a strategic way. We should be thinking about how we’re interacting with kids in ah and families in a strategic way. What are some of those issues that bubble to the surface that when you think of parents that like at a you know, almost universal, almost global level that they’re wrestling with that as us as church leaders, we should be thinking about what would be one of those or or a handful of those that would pop to the surface for you. Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Oh my goodness. I think that parents do now presently and always have felt in over their head in some way, shape or form. Rich Birch — True. Natalie Frisk — Whether that’s been, I think historically it’s been, you’d hear the phrase, I don’t know what my kid’s thinking. I don’t know what is going on, you know… Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — …the you know you look back various generations and you you you know you can see the the the traits come out and bubble to the surface you know. You know think back hippies had parents too.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Natalie Frisk — And i’m sure those you know those parents were like i don’t know what my kid’s doing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — You know you jump into the grunge scene of the 90s and those parents i’m sure went i don’t know what my kid is doing.
Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — And and so parents, they feel in over their heads. And today we’ve got parents who feel in over their heads. And I think a lot of that centers around um technology, um ah ah helping their kids navigate this technological landscape that parents didn’t have to navigate when they were kids or teens. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Natalie Frisk — And so parents are feeling not just like, inexperienced in how to parent that, but didn’t have the experience. They’re inexperienced in what it was like to live it. And so feeling that gap. And and I think you know no one feels confident to navigate a digital landscape that um hasn’t been navigated before. And um we all we all, ministry leaders and parents included, need help in trying to parent well while guiding um kids… Rich Birch — Yeah. Natalie Frisk — …through ah these these we I love the phrase healthy digital habits. Because what is what does that even mean and do you know anyone with those? Because I would like to meet them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — So what does that all look like I think is a really important conversation to have, and to have in front of our kids because that’s how they’re going to learn um what that looks like for themselves too. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, maybe let’s, let’s dig into that a little bit. What, you know, when you think about for a church leader, it’s listening in, you know, I, what you’ve described is a, is a, you know, the kind of question that we see in front of us. It’s not like we see parents wrestling with this. What would be a few things that you would suggest we kind of think about or frame our discussion with ah the parents in, in our churches? How how should we, how should we work through this?
Natalie Frisk — Yeah, I think, um, was it Dallas Willard that used the phrase being a non-anxious presence? Was it, was it Willard? Rich Birch — Oh, I think so. I think that was Willard. I think that was Willard. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — Okay, yeah, um, I think that’s something that is really important, is even more so important within a digital landscape. We we get kind of frenetic when it comes to to to digital things. I realize this is not a ah visual medium, but I picked up my phone just to, like, there’s this sense of when my phone’s in my hand, I’m not really focused on the person in front of me. And that’s probably true 98% of the time. Natalie Frisk — Occasionally, there’s a some type of rationale for it. But so then I think we just need to, like, take a breath, admit the reality that we don’t have a great perspective ourselves. I don’t have a great perspective myself on really kind of like a healthy, balanced digital experience. But I am learning every day and I’m trying to sort out what this looks like in my own life, in my life as a parent. And being honest about the ah pitfalls, I guess. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Natalie Frisk — We we haven’t caught up um to the advancement of technology. Rich Birch — No, right. Natalie Frisk — Like we we haven’t been able to. So when you think about the rate of technological advancement and then us trying to like build our own kind of guardrails around it, we’re just getting to the place where we realize, oh yeah, we need guardrails. Rich Birch — Right, yes. Natalie Frisk — So there’s there’s that there’s that bit…
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — …just like the honest, open reality of the grappling with that we’re doing. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, this is an issue.
Natalie Frisk — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And even even you know the ah the idea of, hey, we we need to acknowledge that parents are struggling with this. This this is a real issue that there’s not um you know It may not be an issue for you, senior leader, but it is for parents in your in your church. They’re they’re thinking about these issues. They’re wondering, you know hey, should I when do I give my kid a phone and do I give my kid a phone? And that’s like a real conversation that they’re, that they’re having. Natalie Frisk — Oh man. Absolutely. Rich Birch — How how do you, how do we help them? How do we help families wrestle with this idea that like, um, this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that we’re going to be able to put back in the box. It feels like, Hey, this is here to stay.
Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Rich Birch — So, so, you know, I don’t know, although I might want my kids to become Amish, I don’t know that they will. Like, I don’t know that we’re all going to move on to the farm and just have a phone out in the garage. Like, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Rich Birch — But so how do we, how do we work through that? How have you seen that? Um, how do we do that as a church? Natalie Frisk — Yeah, I think it’s just like recognizing, identifying, um admitting that our kids are, they’re digital natives. They’re they’re beyond…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Natalie Frisk — …they’re they they have been born into a world where their parents birthing them probably had a phone in their hand in that moment. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — You know what I mean? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. A hundred percent.
Natalie Frisk — Like there’s there’s no there’s no question that our kids have been fully immersed. And so the screen isn’t just an entertainment piece for them, like the TV screen probably was for us when we were growing up. It’s actually part of their communication sphere. Rich Birch — That’s good. Natalie Frisk — It’s it’s it’s actually fully how they experience the world. There’s no um distinction anymore between online and offline lives. They’re integrated. um And we just need to recognize that that that is part of the the reality of the situation.
Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — And and not I think that there are there are certain battles to be fought within that, but I don’t think the battle is let’s get rid of all the screens. I just i think that’s silly um at this point. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — Even how brains have been you know shaped and shifted and how kids learn has been changed and challenged by the digital world. Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing? I don’t know that it’s either. I think it just is. Rich Birch — It’s a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Natalie Frisk — Throughout history, when we have shifted our, you know, educational platforms and models, like there was time when a book didn’t exist. Rich Birch — Right, right.
Natalie Frisk — And then a book existed. There was time when radio didn’t exist and then it existed, right? Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — Like we have gone through these seasons before, but we’ve just never experienced it in a rate that is so, um, fast and fast and furious coming at us. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — So, um, it definitely takes some time to absorb that and then to be able to respond appropriately. But I think that we’re shifting into the phase of whatever this generation is that is learning how to respond appropriately. Rich Birch — Yeah.
Natalie Frisk — So I think we’re on the cusp of something, Rich.
Rich Birch — I want to come back to something you said there ah in a minute. Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Rich Birch — I want to put a pin in this idea of, OK, how do we do this corporately? But you said earlier um this idea of like healthy habits, like what what is that? There tou know, what were the kinds of things that we we should be thinking about or maybe even like people look to us, you know, in the church ah to help with their kids. And they they look to us to help them. And this has been, you know, for thousands of years, actually, they’ve looked at the church to to kind of help them navigate. What would be some of those kind of healthy habits that we could try to help families to encourage? What could that look like? Natalie Frisk — Yeah, so I actually have stolen this line from a colleague of mine, past colleague of mine named Duncan. He coined this term, I think. Maybe he stole it from someone else. Who knows? We’ll just keep passing…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Natalie Frisk — …the the the gratitude along. This idea of digital donuts. Are donuts bad for us? Well, we know now as kids as kids are taught there’s no “bad” food, there’s just “sometimes” foods. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — So there’s certain media that’s probably just “sometimes” media. um But there is actually, in the same way that there’s healthy anytime foods, there is actually healthy media. And so helping kids understand what it looks like to have um some…
Rich Birch — Good.
Natalie Frisk —…they’re learning some digital discernment is what they’re learning. So, you know, prompting kids from a really early age, you know, like after watching that, do you feel do you feel good or do you feel kind of kind of bad?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Natalie Frisk — Like, like getting that down to that really simple kind of helping kids feel…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Natalie Frisk — …what is the experience like for them?
Rich Birch — What is that doing to me? What is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Natalie Frisk — Exactly, exactly. Natalie Frisk — I mean, you can do this with lots of different things, you know? There’s a certain genre maybe of of reading a book that a kid might… Actually, it it does it ah it doesn’t do good things for them. And so helping them to to navigate, do I feel better or worse after reading that kind of a kind of a ah story? I feel worse. Well, maybe that’s not the type of story that you want to read.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — Similarly with media. Do you feel better? Do you feel worse? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Natalie Frisk — Do you feel closer to people in community somehow? So, I mean, video games are such a great kind of um thing to to consider with this. I know that um my my daughter’s 13, she’ll jump on at some point in the evening for maybe half an hour, or 45 minutes, an hour of playing some game online with her friends. Natalie Frisk — Now these are friends who for a number of different reasons she wouldn’t get to hang out with um in physical proximity and she’ll jump on and I hear gut-wrenching laughter. And I hear you know just like everything you would hear if you had kids sitting around playing a board game in your living room you know. Rich Birch — Right, right. Natalie Frisk — Just and so I can tell when she steps out of that experience, it has been so much joy for her. And so you know if if that had the opposite effect, if she walked out of that and you know the world was hanging around her shoulders, I would say maybe…
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Yeah.
Natalie Frisk — …is that a good use of ah your your your evening time or… Rich Birch — Your evening. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — Or was that, did that make you feel closer to your friends and um the experience of what it is to be in community with them? So there’s that. Natalie Frisk — And I think just taking those checks…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Natalie Frisk — …whatever the media is that our kids are consuming. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — I was in the doctor’s office the other day…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Natalie Frisk — …and there was a two-year-old and he was very loudly watching something on a parent’s tablet.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Natalie Frisk — And you know this is the thing we do we hand their kids a tablet when when we’re in those spaces. Rich Birch — Yes. Little Bluey or something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Natalie Frisk — You know I would have given anything for it to have been a little Bluey. It was it was something called Skibbity Toilet…
Rich Birch — Oh yes. Oh my goodness.
Natalie Frisk — …which just saying that i’m embarrassed that those words have come out of my mouth but there you have it.
Rich Birch — Yes. There it is. It just happened.
Natalie Frisk — And and not only was it so if if he was just watching that I would think um it’s kind of a you know…
Rich Birch — It’s kind of weird.
Natalie Frisk — …it’s a sometimes food…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Natalie Frisk — …you know um but he turned it into a communal experience for us all in the waiting room…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Natalie Frisk — …by by providing commentary to us all.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — So i’m sitting this this young kid that’s sitting beside me we’re both laughing our heads off at this kid and it turned into actually a really adorable just kind of found community experience. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — And so you anyway it’s a mixed bag.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Natalie Frisk — And I think that we need to recognize that it’s a mixed bag. And we also need to help our kids discern um how all of this is navigated in that way. Rich Birch — I don’t know if I want to encourage people that are listening in if they’re not aware of what Skibbity Toilet is…
Natalie Frisk — I I can’t.
Rich Birch — …to to either go and check it out or to avoid it like at all costs. Like well I’m not sure what’s better for you, friends. So yeah I’m going to leave that to your own discernment. If you don’t understand what we’re talking about, it’s fine. You’re probably fine, actually. You can move on. Natalie Frisk — You probably yeah have a better, richer, deeper life, yeah. Rich Birch — Yes, OK, I’m going to play a little bit of devil’s advocate here. So which I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say on a on a church leaders podcast.
Rich Birch — But so we know this like I think you’ve established. Well, OK, this is there’s this is not going away. There this is how, you know, our children are being formed. um You know, this is a part of yeah I think that’s a very that image of parents ah birthing children with a phone in their hand. That is very that’s a that’s powerful image. I think that’s true. Rich Birch — Um, so what do we do as a church? Like, should we just avoid all digital media then? Like maybe this should just be like a, you know, a digital free zone. We’re not going to, we’re going to rip down all the screens. We’re not going to do anything. Or should we be, you know, how should we be thinking about this in our context, kind of as like organizations trying to help people navigate this stuff? Natalie Frisk — Yeah, I mean this is a question that I kind of wrestle with and wrestle through every single day in in the job that I do. I think it’s modeling wise use of media. Rich Birch — That’s good. Natalie Frisk — It’s modeling it right from the quote unquote pulpit or stage. Natalie Frisk — Man, there are ways that we can utilize really rich media. I mean, I think of the Alpha course. It’s a beautiful, beautiful example of that.
Rich Birch — Yep. Natalie Frisk — You have these short videos that are rich and powerful, and if somebody attempted to teach the same kind of thing or or kind of navigate those conversations, it would take a really highly experienced individual to do that. And it would limit um what’s able to be done um right around the world. um And so similarly within um kids curriculum, we we view that the same. um We have these brilliant Bible stories that are taught in rich and meaningful ways um with utilizing um all of the different digital mechanisms that kids are used to in their learning.
Natalie Frisk — Just as an offshoot, my team picked up on the fact that um YouTube houses so many different things that um um she has wanted to know how to do. For example, um she took basically took Photoshop courses, and I’m air-quoting…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Natalie Frisk — …but off of YouTube…
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — …has learned how to do Adobe Animate.
Rich Birch — Yep. Right.
Natalie Frisk — Has learned all of these things off of YouTube. The skills that are able to be translated from video in a short period of time are incredible. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s powerful. Natalie Frisk — And I think the same can be said for our um certain aspects of biblical teaching. um There’s the learning some of the key nuts and bolts, getting story across presented in that way. There’s always going to be space to contextualize a message to the ministry setting that you are in. I don’t think this is just saying the screen only forever and ever. Amen. I think it’s a both/and.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Natalie Frisk — And it’s learning how to navigate that in a in a wise way, recognizing people’s attention spans and and you know kids attention spans are more limited than they used to be. I think they’re actually longer than we give a lot of kids credit for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Natalie Frisk — It’s that they don’t have attention for boring. Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Natalie Frisk — They they have attention for things that engage them. And so I think one of the things that media can do well is engage meaningfully.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Natalie Frisk — There are, my goodness, um one of our organizations that have partnered with us on Raise Up Faith is Minnow. I’m not sure if all of your listeners would be familiar, but I really love the folks at Minnow. They um provide you know, an episodic but shows for kids. It’s like a subscription service that families can have at home um to watch, you know, biblically-based media. And they do it with such a high quality…
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — that that kids want to watch these things. Rich Birch — Yeah, kids lean in. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — And I think that we go, okay, kids are seeking out this stuff.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Natalie Frisk — If they’re seeking it out, that means that they have an appetite for it and they want more of it. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — If we can get kids into the Bible in that way…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Natalie Frisk — …you know, like but what a phenomenal way to to to interact with um this generation. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. But it let’s, I want to double click on this. Help us understand, cause you’ve, you’ve been, um, you’re an expert in this area. Like, I don’t know how else to say this. You’re like, you you know, this stuff well. Rich Birch — How long, when did one story start? When did you first start making content in this way for the local church? Is it 20 years? Has it been… Natalie Frisk — Gosh.
Natalie Frisk — No, no, no, no. Rich Birch — Not quite. Natalie Frisk — No, I I was, I was but a small child 20 years ago, Rich. Rich Birch — Yes, but you yes, yes. Natalie Frisk — I don’t know what you’re talking to about. Rich Birch — Yeah. What are you talking about? Natalie Frisk — No, I’m gonna say 12 years ago, maybe 13. Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. Natalie Frisk — We started kind of the early, early days process of things. Rich Birch — Right. So this, well I bring that up because this is okay… Natalie Frisk — Yeah. Rich Birch — …so you’re into your second decade—we’ll say that—into your second decade of wrestling with these issues of what what is inappropriate use because I, you know, to be honest, when I, like, I, when I first started in ministry, our kids ministry curriculum was, was all literally printed and, it was like you would get a box at the beginning of the quarter and you would take out a piece of paper and then you’d give it to somebody and they would stand up and read. That one is like we did that at our churches. And then you know organizations like One Story came along with this really novel idea, which is, hey, we’re going to produce videos that are going to be and you’re, there’s kind of like… And and again, I’m not an expert in this area. You are. I’m trying to describe this as a… there’s almost like this relationship between a local instructor, a host leader person, and then you as the curriculum producer. And and where is the line? What is video really good at for kids, engaging kids? What is the local kind of person that we still need people locally to do? Help us understand. Because I think sometimes I’ve seen churches overuse video…
Natalie Frisk — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …where it’s like, they’re going to sit for 30 minutes and watch something, and that is their Sunday morning. That’s not what I see you doing. And I so help us understand, where’s those lines kind of go? Natalie Frisk — Yeah, I love that. I think um I’m going to borrow from Sesame Street for a second because why not? Rich Birch — Cause Sesame Street. Natalie Frisk — So Sesame Street, I mean, don’t even get me started, but I will start just the same. Sesame Street really introduced us to the kind of like um the segment like segmented kids programming. So there, I think it was three minutes, ah three minutes, three minutes, three minutes. And um in in many similar ways, we attempted to think about that in a kind of in physical proximity space. And in the the visual media of of ah ah videos.
Rich Birch — Good.
Natalie Frisk — And so we’ve got interspersed with the physical proximity small group or large group kind of scenarios. These videos that are crafted so that a fair bit of deep rich content is delivered in three to five minutes so that that Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s astonishing really how much how cut far you go. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — So that can be um then unpacked in the the the physical ah space. Rich Birch — That’s good. Natalie Frisk — So how that’s unpacked, and this is I think, I mean, the Lord definitely went before us on this because I could not have fathomed how like the Holy Spirit would have worked through this curriculum, this One Story curriculum in in such a way. But like churches right across the um denominational spectrum have utilized this curriculum. And it’s because we’re really trying to just like unpack the the biblical narrative um and then allow for the um individual expressions of the church to then to then make um application pieces really prominent.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Natalie Frisk — And so as as leaders are asking kids, you know, what stood out to you? It’s very open-ended in that way, not to say that we leave every single piece of it in open-ended ways. I think there are certain things, you know, Jesus is Lord.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Natalie Frisk — Like there are certain absolute statements we can make that are true right across the board. And so, yeah, getting to to that kind of like episodic segmented place was really helpful. So we do um Bible story content in that way. And and and honestly, like does that mean that a Bible story is never live taught? Absolutely not.
Rich Birch — No, yeah.
Natalie Frisk — We give the opportunity, we we provide notes. for folks that want to deliver that themselves or you know i have a backup in case there’s a power outage and you’re teaching kids by candlelight…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Natalie Frisk — That sounds dangerous, don’t do that. And then we also ah have created like ways to memorize scripture. We we that we call them key verse games. And they’re super fun and super… actually I had a a group with Rich, ah you you up ah you guys were, I think I had you running on the spot…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Natalie Frisk — …ah learning a key verse from a screen um that we all learned together and it was great fun. Although I have learned that I can’t run on the spot for more than 60 seconds.
Rich Birch — Quite as long – yes, exactly.
Natalie Frisk — But you know, there’s learnings all around. um And then the other bit with One Story that we did that to me was a new thing and I think we’re starting to see it more with children’s curriculum is, for lack of a better kind of phrase, it was like these mini testimony videos. They were done in such a way to share someone’s story connected to a big idea that came out of the biblical narrative. And that story is somebody from a completely different setting than your own. Rich Birch — Right, right. Natalie Frisk — Well I mean, there could be some similarities, obviously, but um we were able to get such a diversity of people on camera. And so if you have a really, for whatever reason, a really really heterogeneous church population within um the content of One Story, you’re going to see just the most incredible variety of people in different places, in different spaces, um from different backgrounds, from ah yeah different different parts of the world, um lived out what it looks like to follow Jesus in real life in their setting.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — And then still find ways that connect with your own story as a you know, a leader or a kid. um And I think that’s the other beauty of it is that it story kind of transcends our ages sometimes.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Natalie Frisk — You know, um I hear from leaders um how um they have learned from these stories themselves. As they are meant to be kind of teaching and facilitating, they are learning and growing as a result of this content, which just, again, I can’t couldn’t have fathomed what the Lord would do with this content when we first set out to create it. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s cool. It, again, I think um the thing I love about your content is it is it feels like it’s like the best of what should be on video. Like, oh, that’s like really resident to what should come by video. It’s like you’re doing, like you say, a testimony like, I can’t inject some other kids story into today’s conversation. Like I can’t bring a kid up and say hey let’s interview you around your… that’s just not gonna happen. Or you know the creative stuff that that does you know fire all the you know brains is just different than it’s made for the you know for the screen. Which I think then I think when you pair that with a great communicator or a great leader they can take that in this kind of partnership dance, not to replace that teacher, not to replace the person locally…
Natalie Frisk — Exactly.
Rich Birch — …but to really enhance their ability to connect with kids. I also think that up that episodic idea too, you know, when I was a kid, they used to, it was like the best day in school, you would see, they would roll down the giant TV and you knew that the teacher was gonna put on like a two hour movie. Now I know looking back on that, that was like the teacher taking a break. They were like, I am done. And, uh, that’s not what this is. This is not like, Hey, we’re going to… They’re still very engaged in the process, which I think is, you know, is fantastic. Rich Birch — So, man, there’s a lot we could talk about here. So many things you’ve given us this, uh, this resource I want to talk about, which kind of gets back to what originally we’re talking about, mix it up digital media in your kids min’s space. Natalie Frisk — Yeah, yeah. Rich Birch — We’re going to link to this in the show notes, but kind of tell me what this is and how it’s helpful. Natalie Frisk — Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, as we, interact with parents, especially as ministry leaders and directed with parents who are maybe, um we’ll call them digitally hesitant. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Natalie Frisk — This resource is helpful to help navigate some of those conversations or even um get ahead of some of those conversations that are inevitable. I mean, there are folks in every church that will say, oh, I don’t I don’t know about you know my kids. You know, this is the one hour in the week, maybe that they are not bombarded by media. And it’s like, well, let’s think of it in a different light. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — It’s not about being bombarded by media. It’s actually about speaking to them in a way that they have been accustomed to that is actually helpful and meaningful in their settings. So um this covers over um three reasons why to use video in kids’ ministry. A few different links to some great organizations, including Raise Up Faith…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Natalie Frisk — …that will be helpful in your church context. And then um for ministry leaders to share some resources that are helpful for at home um context. um There’s some phenomenal stuff for at home use as well that honestly, I think even as a ministry leader to um help to curate a video playlist on YouTube…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a great idea.
Natalie Frisk — …for families to engage with at home, Man, um I know a bunch of children’s ministry leaders who um curate their own Spotify playlist so that families can jump in a car and know that their kids are hearing the same songs that they will sing on Sunday morning in their car rides in the week, which helps enhance their experience as well as the discipleship practices. So I think those things can be so helpful and a bunch of this stuff is on that handout. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love at the bottom here—and again, friends, you just get this link it’s we’re linking in the show notes—ah you know you’ve listed a ah ah bunch of YouTube accounts like from different churches and organizations that provide great content. Like that even that alone, I’m like, man, that’s worth of the price of the download here. Rich Birch — Because you know like you could see I thought the same thing like what if you know for this coming year we’re trying to acknowledge like hey this isn’t this a real issue I think as as leaders, as a senior leader, executive pastor, lead pastor I’d be saying let’s get our people together let’s get our our kids ministry people together and and talk about this issue. How are we helping our people with the fact that their kids are living in an increasingly digital age? I think that’s one takeaway from today’s conversation.
Natalie Frisk — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — Another thing we could do is like, hey, every month we could feature one of these, our kids ministry group could feature one of these. Here’s some great content if you’re looking for some extra stuff, doesn’t cost you anything. I know, you know, you go onto YouTube and you’re like, I don’t know where to send my kids. And if you, if you don’t, they’ll end up on Mr. Beast eventually. And you know, that’s where, you know, that’s where the algorithm will push them towards. And well, less Skibbity Toilet would be great.
Natalie Frisk — Oh man. Yeah.
Rich Birch — So like, let’s, you know, you know, let’s point them towards some great content. So this is fantastic. What a great resource. I appreciate you putting that together. That’s super helpful. Natalie Frisk — Oh, thank you. Thanks so much, Rich. Rich Birch — And then tell us more about Raise Up Faith. Like let’s talk about this. Like your maybe there’s many people that have been listening in today. What’s the kind of church that would really benefit from Raise Up Faith and should be exploring? You know what ah What’s the kind of problems that you feel like you solve particularly well for churches? And that’s just at raiseupfaith.com. I want to send people there to check that out. Natalie Frisk — Yeah, and I’ll just add before I answer your question um that that we have a free sampler account.
Rich Birch — Oh, love it.
Natalie Frisk — So people can go on and they can try out. Gosh, there’s like a ton of lessons that are for free. So even if you’re, I mean, I know some churches that they never know if a kid is going to show up on a Sunday morning. So if you’re just looking for some activity pages to be able to have to hand out to kids that might just happen to show up on a Sunday morning, you can you know download some freebies there as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. Natalie Frisk — Yeah, I think that this has been a really interesting question for us as a company to be um considering. And I think that our, the realities of our experience has shown that Raise Up Faith is for a much more diverse um kind of spectrum of churches then perhaps we had um been I guess…
Rich Birch — Originally thought.
Natalie Frisk — Yeah, yeah. So you know initially we were really, really focused on recognizing that there are so many small churches, like small small churches under 200, that don’t have a paid a paid professional, ah maybe even pastor…
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — …ah let alone a children’s ministry, youth ministry, family ministry person. And so we really wanted to provide excellent quality content for the kids that happen to be in those settings and to make it as accessible and um just kind of low prep as possible for those those those folks who are doing it in a… I’ll be honest with you, um having been at um a really large church for oh gosh, 17, 18 years. I am now in this really, really small church that’s really it’s really sweet. Rich Birch — Yes. Changes your perspective a little bit. Natalie Frisk — It it really does.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Natalie Frisk — And it has helped me um be able to speak into kind of both ends of this, but um I’m presently the the interim children’s ministry director.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Natalie Frisk — And yeah, yeah you can’t you can take a girl out of something and something, something. There’s a saying that I’m sure somebody can figure that one out. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah. Natalie Frisk — But this small church experience is often patchwork. It’s often um one person is teaching on one Sunday and they have no idea what the person the following Sunday is gonna teach. No idea, no connection to what the person the Sunday after that is gonna teach.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Natalie Frisk — And it really becomes this kind of, um I don’t know, wild ride for kids that maybe they’re hearing the same story a few weeks in a row, um all of these kinds of things. So we we kind of thought, this is a helpful resource um where folks can easily get connected to a scope and sequence. They can get logins for their various volunteers so that they can just track along together with very low prep. And so we thought small churches, those are that’s our sweet spot. And then we started to get larger churches using this. And we’re like, oh, this is actually helpful for multisite. Rich Birch — Yeah. Natalie Frisk — I mean, when we created One Story, um we were utilizing it at a multisite church. But recognizing that having multiple curricula on our platform um allows a multi-site church or or a church with heaps of campuses in a variety of different um kind of demographic areas allows them to just kind of personalize or contextualize certain aspects of their their teaching…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yep.
Natalie Frisk — …based on where they are. So, you know, there might be, gosh, um there might be a campus that has a really like musical worshipy kind of foundation to it. And you want to help the kids enter into that same type of thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — Well, many, many curriculum ah have somewhat limited music availability.
Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — And what happens is that um children’s ministry leaders or family ministry leaders are often buying the add-ons. Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — So there’s this and then I add on and then I add on. Rich Birch — Right. Natalie Frisk — This is this has got it this has got all of the pieces so you don’t have to pay out of pocket…
Rich Birch — Add on. Yeah, that makes sense.
Natalie Frisk — …every time you’re looking for something. So um we’ve got this adorable um adorable British ah ah curriculum on our platform for kind of the early years called Little Worship Company.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Love it. Yes. Natalie Frisk — And it is there’s there’s heaps of songs, songs that you would sing in your church community on a Sunday morning. Songs that you probably wouldn’t with grown-ups. So there’s ah like this range of worshipful songs that I just think like, yeah, that’s such a gift to to a certain kind of style of church. And then there’s, you know, we’ve got um heaps of Bible content um that in various ways that will speak to different communities in different ways. And I mean there’s there’s activities I mean the whole gambit of things.
Rich Birch — So good.
You can search for you know if if Rich Birch is in a church and gets tasked with running for example a family ministry night which I know you know your sweet spot… Rich Birch — Yes. Sure. Natalie Frisk — …completely being the the MC up front, getting everybody going um and you need some large group games.
Rich Birch — Right.
Natalie Frisk — Well, you can search we have a search an awesome search function search function…
Rich Birch — Function. Yeah.
Natalie Frisk — …that you can um search for those large group games or the the the messy games or the um whatever that might be as you as you go. Natalie Frisk — So I when I used I would have answered your question. Yeah, we’re for like a small to medium church, because that’s what we kind of were experiencing those as our early adopters. We’re recognizing that actually, we’ve got some extra larger mega churches that have started to use this content and are opening our eyes to the just way that this serves a variety of different churches in different ways. Rich Birch — For sure. And you can see one of the things that I know has always kind of, um as but not always, I have often puzzled about is like lots of these curriculums are four weeks long. They’re like, we’re doing four weeks on this. And we just ignore the fact that there’s four months every year that have five weeks. And we’re like, which is a third of all months? Like that’s like a non-trivial number of months. Natalie Frisk — It’s a lot. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. And yeah, I get it. It’s not every month, but it’s a lot. And if you’re the person that’s got to come up with stuff to do, like those, those weeks come up with uncanny regularity where you’re like, okay, what are we going to do today? Rich Birch — And so having a platform like yours that yeah, maybe you try something special on those, those weeks, right? Hey, we’re going to do something that’s slightly outside and maybe we deliberately are going to, you know, find something that’s like so different than everything else we’re going to do. Natalie Frisk — Exactly. Rich Birch — You know, you’ve got that kind of variety rather than being locked into just a single curriculum. You know, I think that’s a great, you know, there could be a great use for, uh, you know, what you’re doing as well. So. ah This is fantastic. Natalie, I really appreciate you being on today. If we want to send people to kind of get connected with ah Raise Up Faith, where do we want to send them? All that kind of stuff. Give us the coordinates online. We should send people to. Natalie Frisk — Yes. We want to send them to raiseupfaith.com.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Natalie Frisk — And when they get there, they can, I heartily encourage them to sign up for a free sampler account. Rich Birch — Love it.
Natalie Frisk — You don’t have to give your credit card or anything like that.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Natalie Frisk — So you you can feel very confident in that process. And then when you do that, you can access a bunch of free stuff and poke around there. Rich Birch — Love it. Natalie Frisk — If you want to shoot me an email, you’ve got more questions, I’m so happy to interact with folks. My email address is natalie.frisk[at]raiseupfaith.com. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for for being around. Great to see you again, friend. Thanks for being on the show today. Natalie Frisk — Thanks for having me.
Faster Connections, Lasting Community: Effective Church Assimilation with Greg Curtis
Jan 02, 2025
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. To kick off the new year, we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless topics that are consistent and crucial for church growth in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re joined by Greg Curtis, the Director of First Steps and Content Development at Eastside Christian Church and founder of Climbing the Assimilayas. Today we’re talking about how gathering together will still matter.
Wondering how to effectively connect with newcomers in both online and in-person settings? Curious about how assimilation strategies are evolving in this digital age? Tune in as Greg offers valuable insights on successful assimilation strategies following changes in church attendance patterns, and the critical first step of volunteer involvement.
From the screen to the seat. // Physically gathering together will still matter in the future, however Greg reframes the traditional model of “from the street to the seat” to “from the screen to the seat.” Most people have vetted your church by attending services online before they will ever set foot in the building.
Your front porch is now digital. // Online platforms are now a critical “front porch” for churches, with websites and live streams shaping first impressions. A user-friendly, guest-oriented website with visuals that reflect the church’s diversity will help visitors understand what to expect at the church. Take time to evaluate what people are seeing on the digital side of your church and make sure it accurately reflects your church and its culture.
Engage virtual attendees. // Because of your website, social media, and online services, first time guests are also pre-vetted before they visit in-person. They will be warmer leads and more ready to connect when they do attend a physical location. Offer personalized engagement during online worship services, such as addressing virtual attendees directly and offering incentives to encourage physical attendance. Offer them welcome gifts that you can mail to their home.
Volunteerism over small groups. // In most churches, new attendees are opting for volunteerism now as a primary first step instead of small groups. There are two things that make volunteerism a great first connection point. The first is that belonging is a two sided coin—people want to feel both needed and wanted. The second is that there is a safety zone shift since COVID and people aren’t as willing to go into homes of people they don’t know well. They are willing to serve where they are needed around the church on rotation instead.
Increase the speed of connection. // To address declining attendance frequencies, churches need to increase the speed of connection. Committed church members now attend less frequently and so assimilation programs must adapt. Greg advocates for streamlining multi-week programs into a single-session experience that encourages the next step of volunteer involvement. This approach accommodates modern schedules while maintaining a focus on connection.
Three checklists for building experiences. // To support churches in their connection efforts, Greg and his team have developed checklists designed to optimize guest experiences during high-attendance events like Easter. The resource includes checklists for first impressions, guest follow-up, and volunteer recruitment, tailored to maximize connection opportunities on big days.
Complete Easter Engagement Guide Looking to make the most of Easter at your church this year? Check out Greg Curtis’s Complete Easter Engagement Guide! This resource is specifically designed to help churches connect with their Easter guests through practical tools like first impressions checklists, guest follow-up strategies, and volunteer recruitment plans. It’s tailored to make a lasting impact during one of the most important weekends of the year.
Get your copy today for just $15 at this link. You can also connect with Greg via email. Plus download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode here.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. You’ve caught us in the midst of our 2025 Unpredictions episodes. We’re really talking about things that were true last year. I really do believe they’re going to be true this year and for years to come. These are areas that your church should be focusing on and we’re bringing on some incredible experts who are here to help you and help you take steps towards really be it to be more an effective church. I’m excited to have my friend Greg Curtis on and he’s helping us think through this idea: Gathering together will still matter. Despite the rise of digital platforms in-person church experience really does remain irreplaceable. Focus on you know our job is to focus on unique engaging in-person experiences that really can’t be replicated. Ultimately we’re trying to get people to connect online.
Rich Birch — If you don’t know Greg, what what rock have you been living under? ah He’s a part of the leadership team at East Side Christian Church. They’re a multi-site church with six campuses in California, Nevada, Minnesota, and somewhere else I might be missing. ah He is the the Director of First Steps and Content Development. ah He’s also found an organization called Climbing the Assimilayas, which is a a series of tools, some coaching that you’re going to want to make sure you get a connection to because he really is a ninja in this area of helping us help our people get connected. Greg, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today. Greg Curtis — Oh, it’s awesome. Love doing this with you whenever we get to do it. Rich Birch — It’s such an honor to connect with you, friend. i’m glad you know I know um you’re so helpful to so many churches, and and i’m just I’m looking forward to helping them today as we have this conversation. Why don’t you fill in the picture a little bit there? For Some people have probably heard you on on episodes in the past, but for folks that don’t, kind of give us the 30,000-foot view of of Greg Curtis. Greg Curtis — Yeah, well, I’ve been a lead pastor ah for 17 years, and I have been, for since 2012, basically overseeing assimilation and connection, connecting new people at church, at Eastside with ah Gene Appel, ah ah for you know since that time. Greg Curtis — And since I took on that that ministry, um just what kind of erupted is we became the second fastest growing church in the US for a period of time. It was my job to chase that with a connection strategy. And so as we did so, we saw results that that surprised us and that we were really encouraged by. Ah you know, like one out of four getting a small group, one out out of seven guests becoming a volunteer, one out of three getting baptized…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Greg Curtis — …and all of crossing a border on an international church. We really had some great connection, stuff that we learned along the way. And so as other churches were asking us, well, how do you do this? I formed something called Climbing the Assimilayas all around the idea that ah new people at our churches, especially as they come physically, as we talk about gathering together physically, that when they come, um we always think it’s a coast because our church is friendly, which usually means we’re friendly to each other, right? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Greg Curtis — The truth is a a new guest, any of us when we’re in a new environment, it’s not a coast, it’s a climb. And all of us use a Sherpa to help us reach that summit.
Rich Birch — So good.
Greg Curtis — And in the case of church, at the summit is connection with this community and with God. So we’re raising what I do is like to raise up and equip church staff to and and volunteer teams to become the best Sherpas, finding the best route for people ah to reach that summit and and experience full connection. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — That’s what I give. Rich Birch — Well, friends, you’re if you do not know Greg, buckle up. we’re You’re about to have your mind blown on this area, you know, all the time. Literally, it’s close to 100% of the time. I’m doing direct coaching. I’m saying, you know, you should talk to this guy, Greg, ah because he’s just so helpful on this area.
Rich Birch — So I’ve heard you talk about you know this, for years we’ve used this idea that hey assimilation is something like from the street to the seat and then eventually from the seat to the circle. I’ve heard you kind of nuance that, add some new perspective on that. What is that again, remind me, what what what are what are you talking about these days around that? Greg Curtis — Okay, so if we’re talking about how physically gathering together is still gonna matter in the future, if we’re gonna foster that physical presence of people, we need to expand our vision for connecting so that it doesn’t start from the street to the seat, but start from the screen to the seat. Rich Birch — Mmm. Oh, that’s good. Greg Curtis — Because most people, ah and when I say most people, almost all, I mean I’m 95% plus…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — …ah have vetted your church already by attending services…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.
Greg Curtis — …before you ever come online. So it’s the screen, it’s the website where they find you. And then the screen where they experienced that online worship service.
Greg Curtis — I was working with the church recently. I was doing a cohort on increasing the speed of connection at your church. And in so doing, there was a church that really took the time to study how their guests were engaging with the screen, their screen before they came physically. And in their case, the average amount of online worship service that that a first time guest experienced was four.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Greg Curtis — Had done four online worship services before they came physically. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Greg Curtis — And that’s a big shift because before COVID…
Rich Birch — That’s a big deal.
Greg Curtis — Yeah, our online presence was for the for our members who were sick or out of town. Post COVID… Go ahead. Rich Birch — No, I was going to say so, but yeah, finished with this pre COVID post COVID thing. And then I want, I want to jump back to, so what, what are we, should what should we be thinking about on the screen side to if we’re trying to connect people in? So to kind of, are there some practices there we should be thinking about? Greg Curtis — Yeah, but those those changes are built on this idea of the shift since the pandemic. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — Is that before? Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — For sick and out of towners. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — Since then, there are people who experience church online uniquely. It could be because they’re disabled. It could be because there’s a number of factor, their work schedules that may cause church now to be an online experience for them. But in addition to that, and largely, your your screen now, your screen presence is your front porch. Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Greg Curtis — It used to be COVID that it was your church lobby, basically was like your front porch and that’s where people start to make connections and get welcomed and whatever. But your front porch is now digital, it’s virtual. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — And it really means that for the first time ever, I mean a generation ago, that you didn’t find out anything about the church.
Rich Birch — That’s true. Greg Curtis — Not its worship, ah you not its teaching, what it looked like. You didn’t even know what the the the basic demographic was.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — You’d only assume maybe from its denominational thing, but you didn’t know till you physically went. People would would visit physically many churches to see if they could find that fit. And now you’re pre-vetted. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — So that means the first time guests are actually more… to use business terms, they’re warmer leads…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Greg Curtis — …than they ever were because they’re pre-vetted because of that. So also your website, ah is they found you through the website. They Googled for certain things, they started looking, and your website made them want to attend your service online. Greg Curtis — So the goal of the front porch, right, there’s people who will only come on your front porch, which those are neighbors and people that you may not go deep with. But the people that you go deep with are the ones you’re able to invite into your living room. And then it goes deeper when you get them into your kitchen and you start cooking meals together and hang out in your den and let your kids play, you know.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — That’s the the journey that we’re hoping to get from the screen to the seat, so to speak, in the auditorium. So a couple of things that that we definitely do is we make sure that we’re always addressing ah uniquely ah in the worship service the online people. Rich Birch — Nice. Yeah. Greg Curtis — And when we we we welcome all of our campuses, we welcome the online campus. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — We so we we will say, now, if you’re online, we want you to take Communion with us. So go grab something in your… Like literally, we are speaking to them…
Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — …and as if they are with us because they are. Rich Birch — Because they are. Exactly. Greg Curtis — And um that’s that’s really important to do. We also ah offer them a welcome gift. And sometimes there are aspects of the gift, once we send it to their home, that they can only experience if they come physically. So there’s incentive to continue to connect, but in a physical way to experience maybe the last half of the gift. Like if you’re giving a tumbler or something else that there’s a coupon for a free combo meal at your grill or or your cafe or something like that, you know. Something that they can redeem for something else when they come. Greg Curtis — um And so ah those those things are are super, super important to do. And um so it starts too with your homepage.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — Because even before they experience ah you on the screen of a worship service, they’re experiencing you via the screen on your website. So your homepage, you know, if you go to eastside.com, you can see how we do it…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — …but ah you it’s what to expect if you’re new. This is what the homepage is, it’s geared to them.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Curtis — Your members don’t use your website unless they’re registering for something, you know… Rich Birch — No. Yes. Greg Curtis — …you just don’t. It, your website is for your guests. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — It’s for the people you’re reaching that you’re hoping to make followers of Jesus out of. And so you do it for them. So on your homepage, it’s what to expect when you come, where your locations are. What was last week’s sermon topic? What’s the one coming up this weekend?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — We put our first step, our one program, our assimilation program up there. And as as you move to holidays, like Christmas and Easter or fall kickoff, what you’re wanting to do is to say, we we’re you know, you say things like, we’re going to have photo opps for you and your family. Rich Birch — Right, right. Greg Curtis — I mean, Christmastime, you know, people used to go to the mall and take pictures with Santa. Rich Birch — Yes. Greg Curtis — You know, there’s a lot of these traditions that parents almost feel a little guilt of because they barely have time to…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — …buy the Christmas gift. Rich Birch — True. True. Greg Curtis — They buy them all online on Amazon and they don’t go to the mall.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — And as all of a sudden your church is kind of filling in this gap of something…
Rich Birch — A hundred percent.
Greg Curtis — …that it can see by going on your website that this is what’s coming. And there’s some free food or there’s a giveaway that kids love, you know.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Greg Curtis — We we were able to have a record-breaking first-time guest identification last Christmas simply because we offered a gift, and this could be done at Easter or fall kickoff, I asked the our next-gen teams what is a a welcome gift that kids would drag their parents to get? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a great benchmark. Greg Curtis — And it would their contact info so we could start building a relationship with them. Rich Birch — I love that. Greg Curtis — And we we had 10% of the room at all of our Christmas services [inaudible] first time guests. Rich Birch — Wow. Greg Curtis — So um being able to do things with your screen, you know…
Rich Birch — Yep, that’s good.
Greg Curtis — …um you know from the screen to the seat. So… Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s talk about, um so I it’s amazing how many times I’ll be on a church website and they’ll even have maybe a what to expect tab and they’re missing ah photos of their experience. Like it’s all words. Greg Curtis — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is that a good practice? Should we be… And it’s the same on social. Like I’m always saying to people, hey, you should have, like a significant part of your social presence should be photos that, so people can look at it and it’s not all there should be some pat pictures of the pastor. That’s fine. And the band, but like, it should be just of the audience and people enjoying the experience and that sort of thing. Is that the kind of thing you’re, you’re talking about here when you talk about what to expect? Greg Curtis — Oh, totally. I I had a there was a video stream on our first step page for our assimulation program, and it was all stage stuff. And I said, I need a new one. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — I want people in the halls. I want people greeting. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — I want people at table. I I want you know It’s OK to have a expression of that, because they you know but ah we wanted to change that. And here’s why, because you don’t attract who you want. You attract who you are. Okay.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Greg Curtis — You for a first time guest, we all have there’s this unspoken question that they’re that they ask themselves that all of us do when we’re in a new environment. And we’re unconscious of it. But the question is, is there anybody here like me? Rich Birch — Yep. That’s true. Greg Curtis — And so it’s an uncomfortable feeling, picture this, you know, if you drive it to a church parking lot, ah especially pre-online service where you didn’t know, but you can drive it to the church parking lot and everybody’s got a Beamer and a Mercedes and you drove up in in a truck, or on a motorcycle. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — Or you come there and it’s mainly motorcycles, you know what I mean? Rich Birch — Right, right. Greg Curtis — And you drove up in a minivan Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — Or everybody’s hair is gray and yours isn’t. Or everybody’s complexion is darker, or everybody’s complexion is lighter, or everybody, you know, ah it’s there’s a million things. And what this allows them to do in their vetting process is to see the level of diversity at your church, both age and ethnicity and culture and everything else, and and to see, do I is there somebody there like me?
Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. Greg Curtis — And if they see that, the answer is yes, they’re much more likely to come physically and gather with you. Rich Birch — That’s good, that’s good. Okay, so pivoting in a it is slightly different direction as we’re talking about, again, love this idea of from the screen to the seat, love that. I think that’s ah that’s a good framework for us to be thinking about. I know one of the things that we’ve struggled with is so we do things in our services that actually don’t replicate very well online. And they it’s like they ah you know they’re they’re not um you know you know there I almost feel bad for the people who are are watching online because it’s like you’re kind of missing out. Rich Birch — What what should we be thinking about on that front? Is that okay? Is that not okay? Is that, you know, how far should we try to go on to try to make that a good experience for them? Or could, you know, I’ve been, I’ll tell you my bias. I’ve been on the side of the conversation that I kind of want that FOMO. I kind of want them thinking like, Oh, I wish I was there. But am I, am I agitating a problem that I shouldn’t be agitating? Greg Curtis — I think… I I love your concept of FOMO. I think that that needs to be considered. We tend to err on, not i’m trying not to, for lack of a better term, alienate…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. That’s good.
Greg Curtis — Maybe the better term is disengage, the online ah participation. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Greg Curtis — The the truth is, though, ah there is online engagement that the physical people can ah who are there physically don’t get to participate in. We have moderators, like most churches do, that are you know having conversations with people during worship, asking for prayer requests, supporting them, and and linking them to resources that would help them. That doesn’t happen to those who are there physically, right? So um there is a give and take on that. And acknowledging that I think is and leveraging that so that people know that ah so allows it to be okay that there’s a slightly different experience for online…
Rich Birch — Sure. That’s good.
Greg Curtis — …and a slightly different experience physically, but the knife cuts both ways. There’s benefits to both. You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Curtis — And I another way that we’ve done it is that, you know, we can cut to ah announcements that are they can be done ah certain communications can be done by the online campus pastor, you know, or the person that you have doing that, so that it’s covered in a different way. Otherwise, we make sure that announcements are always ah that that we we understand that there’s something in mind that we have to remember when we’re making that announcement and declare it, even if it’s something that they’re going to have to participate in it differently. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Greg Curtis — You know but you just say it. You just say it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So I know one of the things that we talk about all the time is this idea that like, you know, people used to attend, like when I started ministry and I suspect is the same when you started we have a similar generation, you know, we had Sunday morning, we had adult ah Bible study or, you know, Sunday school Sunday morning, but then we had actual like Sunday morning service. We had Sunday evening service where you got to wear jeans. Then we had like Wednesday night prayer service. And then we, when we were doing small groups, cause we had started small groups and we told people to volunteer. And then I was in evangelism explosion on Thursday night. So it was like five or six or seven connections during the week. And now I’m like, if we could just get people to show up once a week, that would be amazing. Let alone seven times a week, right?
Greg Curtis — Yeah. Rich Birch — How, how how do you think about that? Like, are we, you know, ah what’s your, what what’s your coaching around how, what is the kind of connection model, the commitment model we’re trying to drive people towards and, and are there things that we’re doing maybe in our churches to actually slow people down from, from connecting and coming back time and again. We don’t want to just blame people. I don’t like answers that are like, ah, the stiff-necked people, they don’t know what they’re doing. What are we doing that’s making it so they’re not connecting as much? Greg Curtis — Oh, that is so huge. You know you you were brought up like I was. For those of us who grew up at church, what you just explained was very typical, right? Rich Birch — Yes, yep. Greg Curtis — But the unspoken drive of that is to spend more and more time at church.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yep.
Greg Curtis — More and more time at a physical campus like in the language we use today. And we need to to kind of step back and go, Okay, our job isn’t to get everybody to… Jesus didn’t say go go into all the world and get everybody to come to church. He said go… Rich Birch — Build buildings and have them come to them. Greg Curtis — Yes, go into all the world and make followers of me. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Greg Curtis — Make disciples. And if that’s the case, I think the question should be how many times a week or how many times a month…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Curtis — …does discipleship require? Because if you’re at church all the time, they’re not they’re not that they’re… I think that there is a very real correlation between the amount of times a person spends at church and their evangelistic capacity and their ability to make disciples themselves. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Greg Curtis — Because all of a sudden all their relationships have huddled around this church and they’re minimizing their connection with neighbors and other people because of this new thing that they’ve discovered that they’re excited about. And so what we’ve done is the the expectation pre-COVID, and now I’ll talk about maybe post-COVID. But where we we chose a simple church format that looks a lot like Acts, you know, when the whole movement launched. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Greg Curtis — Basically, they were at the temple courts on on on Sundays, because, you know, that was a free day, because Saturdays were really the big deal at the temple. They were at the temple courts, and then they were meeting house to house, and then they were helping the poor. So what we do is ah we want them only at our church really once a week, max. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Greg Curtis — And then small groups, a small group experience midweek. And then to participate, um you know, probably two, three times a year in real compassion initiatives for those who have need for marginalized. Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Greg Curtis — That’s it. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s good. Greg Curtis — We don’t want them to go beyond that because they’re they’re losing their evangelistic capacities. And so that’s the way we’ve looked at it pre-COVID. We understand now that we have moved from ah, since COVID, what was a church attendance pattern of people coming two to three times a month, the average, and we’re talking church member now.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, yeah.
Greg Curtis — You know, two to three times a month, now since COVID, it’s one to two times a month.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Greg Curtis — Some places and regions it’s like 1.2 times a month. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — And so with that ability, I’m just finding that we need to increase the speed of connection at our churches because we don’t have as many chances to connect them. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Greg Curtis — And ah many of your listeners, and certainly if anybody’s ah heard my stuff, we’ve talked about that there’s you have to get somebody ah connected in four to six months, or their attendance wanes. And within a year, they’re gone. Even though they didn’t choose to be gone, they just did it. And by connected, ah the industry standard by 2012 was that they know the names of four to six people who know their name, and some general things about them within the four to six month range. Well, that was based on two to three attendances a month. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — Well, what if it’s one or two times a month? How does that even happen? Rich Birch — Right, right. Greg Curtis — And so, um you know, there’s some things that we’ve been doing to help encourage the physical attendance. ah Things like, you know, well, this helps with the the the screen to the seat, is we’ll do “At the Movie” series where we have to show movies that there’s no copyright ability legally to broadcast. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Greg Curtis — So that is our number one series. So people with that’s… When we do that once or twice a year now, we’ve actually done it twice a year now, is that you see our online attendance go down and our physical attendance shoot through the roof. Because they want to experience that and they can’t at home. So that’s one way we do it.
Rich Birch — Good. Greg Curtis — Another thing we’ve just started doing since summer that’s really worked out good is we have Saturday services and afterwards we will show a movie out on our green. Rich Birch — That’s good. Greg Curtis — Now we’re in Southern California You have to do it during a time of year in your locale where you can pull this off.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — We have a huge screen out there that when we were meeting outside ah during the pandemic, you know when we were regathering, we left it up, and we’ll show like some family friendly movies and offer a discount at our grill so but so there’s like food that people could grab.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Greg Curtis — We have half… We’ve done it three times, half of our attendance has stayed with families on this watching a movie, they bring their their their chairs.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — And people online, that’s something that they want to experience. And things like that also allow people to get to know each other a bit…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — …and it increases the opportunity to connect a little bit ah a little bit faster, so… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Love that. What about so um ah another piece I kind of want to um and maybe another can I want to open and this is I know where we’re headed here because I’ve heard you talk about this. So volunteerism. How does that fit into this whole thing? You know, we for years I felt like we were saying get get in a group, get on a team, you know like do both of these things. And um like even earlier, I heard you talk about you know differences in connection stats. Are there how do we think about these things? What are you seeing in kind of prevailing churches that are helping people get connected? What are they doing around getting people onto teams? Greg Curtis — Well, um like you already hinted, the big surprise to me that ah the pandemic did is it shifted from the majority of kids making their first connection step being a small group. You know, their first connection step is now volunteering.
Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — So ah in 2013, 14, we were seeing um one out of four guests get in a small group within their, yeah that was their first connection point. And then we had one out of seven become a volunteer. So that was, you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — Now it’s absolutely the flip, whether you’re talking of a church of 35,000 right now. I can think of a church I’ve worked with of 150.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Greg Curtis — And they’re all seeing, ah ah they’re doing it right. And they’re seeing 50% or slightly better of new guests opting for the volunteer thing first. And that, when it comes to regathering, we need to think about that, that people now post COVID coming to gather physically, that’s a ah bigger step. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — And there’s two things about this that I think make volunteerism a great first connection that increases that speed of connection, right, for them. And ah one of them is is that I always say that belonging is a two-sided coin. Belonging is feeling that I’m wanted and that I’m needed. Rich Birch — That’s good. Greg Curtis — Wanted is kind of your small group thing. I have friends here, and so I’m wanted. And volunteering says, I have a job here, which means I’m needed. And I think there’s been a shift as to which one of those comes first. Greg Curtis — So the second thing is that um there’s a safety ah zone change and shift since COVID. People got really cocooned. People got a little bit more stressed out to have people in their home they didn’t know and and go into homes of people they didn’t know. So the big thing is, you know what’s the easier ask to a new person? Is it to go to a house they’ve never been to to meet people they’ve never met who have a history they’re not a part of?
Greg Curtis — Or since you’ since you’ve become familiar with this campus where you’re going, hey, while you’re here, we can tell you have something to give that would bless other people and really make a difference. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Greg Curtis — Would you be willing to join this team while you’re here or stay in extra service while you’re here or during the service you’re at or whatever and and give that on this team? And that we are seeing, along with other churches of all sizes and all stripes, that that is the easier and even ah better ask. Because what that will do is volunteer rotations, though I think maybe ah a lot of your listeners, including us, have adjusted our rotation so that they’re not every week or nothing. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yep, true. Greg Curtis — With that, you adjust the reasonable rotations, but you’ll see them come more often because they’re needed. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Greg Curtis — Because they need to. And people, all of us, you know, want want to know that that um we’re needed. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — We we’re so we have something to give to somebody else. And it really becomes the first ask unless the guest has come to church or is sick of God because ah of of ah addiction maybe that derailed their life. Well then it’s going to be maybe a recovery group. Or or maybe it was a loss of a loved one they need to go into a grief support ah kind of situation. There’s situations where the small group would be better first. But predominantly we have seen a huge shift…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Greg Curtis — …to the first ask and the first connection is volunteerism. And if we can pull that off, you’re going to be able to see them more often and they’ll make that connection with other people…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Greg Curtis — …those four to six people, much, much quicker because they’re on a team. Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well, yeah, and I remember that connects with some stuff that I’ve, you know, been reading on the kind of we know that in our in our culture, there is like an anxiety crisis, a stress crisis, there’s like mental health stuff that is struggling, for sure. And one of the the kind of remedies for a lot of that is people having the sense of being needed or like that they’re required of something. Someone needs their help. Like they that people you know humans need this, like, oh, there is someone that’s depending on me is actually the kind of the the… Rich Birch — And and if if there is no one, if I have no one in my life that depends on me, that’s like kind of the ultimate sign of loneliness. Like if there’s no one, it’s not the other it’s not the other way around. It’s not like I’m depending on someone. It’s actually that someone is depending on me. Someone needs me to show up and do something somewhere. um And if people don’t have their that in their life, that’s like a huge sign of loneliness and you know creates all kinds of issues. And so, man, we can help people in our community by saying, we need you on this rotation. We need you to help us with this thing. This is, you know, this is an important thing. So love that. That’s, you know, that’s so fantastic. Greg Curtis — I would love to expand that just a little bit if I could.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Greg Curtis — You list we both just listed some strategic reasons why inviting somebody to serve alongside of you is is a great ask and maybe the predominant ask right now.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — But it’s also a biblical one.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — And by saying that what I mean is that what Jesus invited the 12 into looked a lot more like a ministry team than it did a small group Bible study. Rich Birch — Mm. Oh, that’s good. Good insight for sure. Greg Curtis — Yeah, and they, as he did that, what he was doing was inviting them into this thing where they were still even figuring out who he was.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Curtis — They didn’t really understand who he really was, but that’s okay.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Greg Curtis — Because he invited them to serve with him and to learn how to be part of the thing. Rich Birch — Yep. Greg Curtis — And as they did that, um he was able to apply scripture in real time to their challenges. Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — And when you think about being on a ministry team it’s the same things. Like how to not compete with each other, how to deal with, say, a person, or in the case of guest services maybe a guest that that just has a bad attitude, it is hard to deal with how do you patiently deal with that.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — How do you forgive other people when they step on your toes? How do you ah not power up? How do you, you know, practice servant leadership, but they’re… How do you forgive 70 times seven? All of these lessons came in the context of a ministry team, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Greg Curtis — Now what Jesus had was an edge that we don’t, and beyond who he was, and that’s, he was pulling those fish, so to speak, out of a barrel that where they had memorized huge portions of the scripture.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.
Greg Curtis — They were biblically literate and he could apply it in real time. We’re living in a culture right now that is that has a pretty high level of biblical illiteracy.
Rich Birch — Yes. Understatement.
Greg Curtis — So that being the case our small groups, so here’s the big shift in my thinking – our small groups are no longer our our primary discipleship pathway. Rich Birch — Good. Wow. Greg Curtis — But small the purpose of small groups is not discipleship because that happens in a ministry team. Let’s face it, all your listeners, you and me, we’re on this screen. We’re listening to this podcast right now. It’s not because we attended a small group Bible study on being on staff or leading or serving. We are here because somebody invited us into the game. Rich Birch — No, that’s so true. That is so true. Yep. Greg Curtis — I still remember, you know, co-teaching fifth grade boys with the pastor’s son. I got invited into the game ah playing keyboard in the high school band. I got invited into the game and it changed everything. It changed everything. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true. That’s so true. Greg Curtis — And that’s what we have to do with first time guests. Invite them into the game, not just through a small group Bible study. So the purpose of small group Bible studies then, is they’re your pastoral care unit. And they are your biblical knowledge dispensary so that the ministry team leaders who now, instead of just being schedulers, your ministry team leaders are the disciplers, but they don’t have to teach because the small group leaders do that. Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — They’re able to apply it in real time. Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so good. Greg Curtis — And that yeah that’s the big shift. Rich Birch — That’s a huge shift. Yeah, that’s a huge shift. Greg Curtis — What that what that means in how we’ve done volunteerism is two things. One, we need to stop thinking as small group small groups are for the serious christians who really want to be discipled. Serving is of extra credit for those people… Rich Birch — Right. Greg Curtis — …man, if they’re really spiritual.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — No, but that serving is what we do as a church. You roll up your sleeves We’re in this together people get to share their unique gifts and that always makes them them feel good, right? Rich Birch — Yeah. Greg Curtis — That’s that’s the normative experience. And then um ah the second thing I just forgot. What what were you saying just a minute ago because I was trying to key off that is that… Rich Birch — Well, like ultimately this, this whole serving experience is the front door is the first step is the, is people’s kind of initial integration. Should we point towards teams or groups was where we were headed. I think you covered that well. Greg Curtis — Well, here’s here’s what it was, is that we now, volunteerism has to look differently, because it’s not just to to get a job done or get extra credit. Rich Birch — Yes. Yep. Greg Curtis — If this is how we make a disciples. You’re never recruiting a person to a job. You’re recruiting them to a team. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Greg Curtis — And a team doesn’t exist unless there is a team leader. Rich Birch — Yep. Good. Greg Curtis — And that team leader now has to have a paradigm of it’s, I’m not just, we’re not just a ministry that’s that’s accomplishing a certain thing. Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — I am a discipler of the people are on this team. Rich Birch — Yep. For sure. Greg Curtis — Huge paradigm shift. And I just could not be more excited about a future that looks like that. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. Greg Curtis — It’s just not all driven by a Planning Center invite. Rich Birch — Well, and I think too many churches, listen friends, I, so I’ve worked in and coach fast growing churches. And one of the things I know, and this has been true for a long time, but the part that you’re clarifying, I think so well for us here is we’ve known for a long time that our staff and leaders that can recruit and release volunteers, that they’re like the most valuable people in our organization. Rich Birch — Like, and and we we looked at it and we’re like, there’s good things that happen in that team because man, look at all those volunteers, look at all those people. And like a telltale sign of a leader that’s not doing well is they’re like, either either I can’t find enough volunteers or they’re like, I have enough volunteers, please don’t send me anymore. It’s like, no, no, no, that’s not the name of the game. The name of the game here is how do we create more opportunity, create more space, draw more people in, raise up more leaders to pass on to the next generation, all of that. That is where this is headed. Rich Birch — I think that is so good that you’re you know clarifying that on this front. Well, just kind of as we’re coming to land, a couple of things. So first of all, friends, I feel like we just scratched the surface. There’s a ton here around how do we help people? Rich Birch — You know, well I’m just convinced that the gathered body of Christ means more today than it ever has. I think what we do is so incredible incredibly important. That’s why we’re talking about it in this Unpredictions series and I’ve just loved having Greg with us. I would strongly recommend if your church is thinking about like, man, maybe we’re not doing as well on the assimilation side as we potentially have. um I want to make sure you get connected with Greg. But before we get there, I want to poke a pain point that I know I’ve got. I was standing in our Christmas services hosting, you know, a couple times 3X our normal attendance. Ah you know, literally thousands of people. Rich Birch — I’m looking out and I, you know, my wife and I host those things and they’re, which is fun. I love doing that, but I’d look out and I’m like, gosh, man, how, how do we get these people connected? I feel like there’s, there’s a lot of these folks come and we maybe missed an opportunity to connect them. You know, but we’ve got another big day coming up here in, in Easter. Is there anything, I know you’ve got a resource that we want to point people towards to help with that. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Greg Curtis — Yeah, the resource is something that we’re just, we’ve just developed and it’s called, it’s really a complete Easter engagement guide.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis —And what this acknowledges is that Easter guests are really different than the guests you have another weekend so similar to Christmas guests is that they’re not there because ah there may not be there necessarily because they’re searching for God because of some event that God has allowed into their lives that caused them to seek Him. That’s really the other 50 weekends of the year. But there are reasons that people might come to Easter, maybe an invite, a family invite, or family traditions…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Greg Curtis — …or the sense that Christmas and Easter is part of what punctuates my year as as somebody who grew up in church and does something like that, right? So they are different. And so we’ve developed three different checklists that allow you to interact with your staff. Greg Curtis — The first one is a first impressions and guest experience checklist to to be a little bit different, to position different for those weekends like Easter. The second is a guest follow up and engagement checklist because the follow up may be slightly different to these people than it would normally. Rich Birch — Love it. Yep. Greg Curtis — And third, it’s a way to recruit you know, your Easter, fall kickoff, Christmas guests, your Easter guests specifically. I’m sorry, to recruit volunteers for just serve that first serve experience. You haven’t served before. We need more people volunteering on these big weekends like Easter. Can you serve on a team for Easter?
Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — And then even better though, in light of what we we’re saying, how do you how do you then do that in a way that it creates an opportunity and even some momentum to their serving on that team moving forward…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — …and becoming part of that team so they can experience all we’ve been talking about. So that’s what that complete Easter engagement guide we’ve we’ve ah ah we we offer it for 15 bucks…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Greg Curtis — …and it just it you it allow you for ah for a couple months ahead of something like like Easter to go through all of those things, the from the first impression to how we follow up with them… Rich Birch — Love it. Greg Curtis — …and to how we were volunteers for that event that will stick. And it’s a really valuable thing that you can use with your whole team… Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And 15 bucks is crazy. Like Greg is a Greg and Tommy, they’re these guys are coaches extraordinaire. They they’re complete ninjas on this stuff. I’ve had churches that I work with and also work with with Greg and Tommy, and they are like blown away by how helpful they are. And so the fact that you’ve made this this resource that’s like accessible for everybody that’s listening in. Like $15, you can invest in that. I’d strongly recommend, folks, that you pick this up. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that, but where do we want to send people to pick up a copy of that if if they’re forwarding this to somebody, where do we want to send them online? Greg Curtis — We want to send them to assimilayas.com/easter. Rich Birch — Easy. Come on, that’s easy. Greg Curtis — assimilayas.com/easter and pick that up at we’ve never offered it for $15. This is going to be something that guests get to do. Rich Birch — It’s crazy. Greg Curtis — And and I’m excited because it will be very useful to you. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great. Again, friends, I highly recommend it. at You know, anything, Greg’s one of these people, I say to people all the time, just follow him and do what he says. Like it’s just, he’s he’s so good on this front and is and is not, he’s he’s like the triple threat of, he’s incredibly helpful. Like he really loves church church leaders. He’s not in this because he’s trying to make money or whatever. He actually does love you. He he is comes from a practitioner background. So like this isn’t theory, it’s based in like actual, stuff like going on in a real church.
Rich Birch — But then he has that third rail of he’s got his pulse on what’s happening in this area and continues to evolve his thinking. And so you’re getting not just kind of, Hey, this is Eastside’s approach. You’re, you’re getting to learn from kind of the best practice churches across the country. So I would strongly recommend that you pick that up and connect with Greg. Any kind of last thoughts? And then let us know where we can follow along and kind of track with you. Greg Curtis — Yeah, I think my last thought, this is a big tactic, all right…
Rich Birch — Okay. Great. Love it.
Greg Curtis — …ah in light of everything we’ve been talking about. My last thing is in light of the need to increase the speed of connection at our churches because of the change in physical gathering and how often and everything post-COVID is we got to connect them faster. And um when I realized and finally made the connection to why we were seeing less attendance at our four week assimilation program, then we did pre-COVID, and ah why we had less volunteers, even our church members were leaving their volunteer roles because they didn’t want to be there every week. I never realized, hey, if our church members don’t plan on being at church every week post-COVID, how can we expect first-time guests to come to our four-week assimilation program? Greg Curtis — And so my big tactic here is, I know a lot of lot of your listeners followed me and other churches probably in their orbit to having these, you know, four-week assimilation programs. Rich Birch — Wow. Greg Curtis — But we’ve reduced ours to one week. Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Huge change. Greg Curtis — One week, ask the ask is to become a volunteer. Rich Birch — Nice. How long is that? It’s one, it’s like a 60 minute, 90 minute kind of experience? Greg Curtis — It’s an hour and 15 minutes schedule. And if you want to know the details of that and this gets question how to connect, you could connect with me at my website assimilias.com.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Yep. Perfect.
Greg Curtis — Or my email’s greg@assimilayas.com. And um but when you go to assimilayas.com, I have, it’s one of my my last two, I think, posts, is increasing the need for speed part one and two, break down how to change your, the why, the what and the how of changing your assimilation program down to one week and how to do it, what the components are. It’s just all there in the blog and they can get all of that right there. Rich Birch — Yep. Love it. Well, thanks so much, Greg. Really appreciate you. Thank you for, ah you know, all the work that you do to help churches and looking forward to what you’re going to do in 2025, helping even more. So thanks so much, buddy. Have a great day. Greg Curtis — Awesome. Thanks, Rich.
Rebuilding and Relaunching: Lessons in Church Renewal with James Griffin
Dec 19, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with James Griffin, the lead pastor at Crosspoint City Church in Georgia.
Is your church working through a difficult season and struggling to see fruit? Wondering how a church can overcome significant challenges and emerge stronger than ever? In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast James shares about the church’s growth following a difficult replanting phase, the hurdles they faced—such as rebuilding trust inside and outside the church—and the effective strategies they used to enhance community engagement.
God isn’t done. // Crosspoint City Church was planted in 2006 but an event within the church rocked it to the core early on, causing a mass exodus of people. James took over as lead pastor during this time of recovery, inheriting a wounded congregation and a challenging staff environment. He knew he had to stop the bleeding in the church and earn the trust of its members while also being a positive force in the community and letting them know that God isn’t done with them yet.
Build relationships. // People can’t know if you’re a man or woman of character unless you spend time with them. From the start, James made it a priority to be present and accessible, engaging with congregants through conversations, lunches, and community events. By building relationships, he wanted people to see that he is a man of character, hoping it would lead to trust sooner than later.
Honor the past. // Things may not have ended well in the church with the people who came before you, but acknowledge the accomplishments and positive impacts made. Don’t dishonor your predecessors. Be honest about the current reality and the challenges being faced without ignoring the good that has been done.
Work with other churches. // James also actively sought to establish relationships with local pastors, attending meetings and reaching out for one-on-one conversations. He firmly believes that God puts churches in their communities to be a blessing to them. If you want to have a Great Commission church, you need to think about the impact God is calling you to make on your city. Work in partnership with the other churches in your community to be more effective in your mission.
Create a culture of care. // As your church grows, the pastoral care can’t fall entirely on the senior leader. Everyone needs to feel loved, but you can’t worry about everyone feeling loved specifically by the lead pastor. Instead build a culture of care by pouring into your leadership team and empowering them to offer pastoral care to the rest of the congregation. One leader can’t carry all the weight of that burden on their own.
Service and compassion. // One of the most significant ways Crosspoint City Church has sought to serve its communities is through the establishment of their Compassion Center, which aims to address various community needs. The Compassion Center includes a counseling center, educational programs for kids and adults, resources for the homeless, support for women escaping sex trafficking, and a mobile medical clinic. This multifaceted approach demonstrates the church’s commitment to not only proclaiming the gospel but also actively demonstrating it through service and compassion.
Focus on what each city needs. // Contextualize ministry based on your locale. Before planting a church or launching a campus, go into those communities and identify partnerships with local pastors, churches and community leaders. Start with service. How can you go in and bless the city based on what it needs before you even begin gathering?
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast! So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. A fun chance to deep dive with a great church! If you’ve never heard of Crosspoint City Church, it’s a multi-site church with three, I think, soon to be four campuses in Georgia, and has repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country.
Rich Birch — Today it’s our honor to have James Griffin with us. He’s the lead pastor, and it also serves as a church planting network leader in metro Atlanta with NewThing and Engage Churches. He’s passionate about seeing the Great Commission fulfilled, the church engage in a number of global and community outreaches. Super excited to have you on the show today, James. Welcome.
James Griffin — Thanks, Rich. I appreciate you having me.
Rich Birch — Oh, it’s going to be great. Kind of fill in the picture. Tell us a little bit more about Crosspoint City. Kind of give us a, you know, the thumbnail people arrive this weekend, but what they experience that sort of thing.
James Griffin — Yeah, yeah. Well, a brief history of the church. We are a replant. So I’ve been pastoring the church now for a little over a decade.
Rich Birch —That’s amazing.
James Griffin — Inherited somewhat of a difficult situation. And then we just took the resources and people who were left and we started over. And so, you know, if somebody showed up this weekend, I think what they’d experienced is, a deep commitment to the word of God. I think they would experience a church that is sold out to the Great Commission, the mission of God, and a great openness and dependency upon the Spirit of God. And so we’re just trying to press into to the work that God’s called us to do in the world. And and it’s a joy and an honor to be a part of it, for sure.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, you have multiple locations, and we love to talk multi-site here at at unSeminary. Maybe give us a thumbnail about the kind of various, you know, what does that look like? The kind of different locations. Tell us a bit of those stories.
James Griffin — Yeah. So, original location is in a city called Cartersville, Georgia. So this is where it all began back in 2006. And then in 2011, things here, they went off the rails. And so I was actually on staff at the church that planted our church.
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — And in the season where things blew up, my wife and I were, were praying about going to plant a church. And then my pastor asked me if I’d come here and do this instead. And my original answer was absolutely not. Like, I don’t know I don’t know what idiot’s going to do that, but it’s not going to be this one, you know? And then here we are over a decade later.
Rich Birch — Yes.
James Griffin — But started in Cartersville and from about 2013 to 2018, I mean, things were just going really well, better than expected, which led to conversations about, hey, we need to think beyond just Cartersville. If we’re going to continue reaching people with a gospel, it can’t just be us trying to get people to one spot. And so we planted another location in the fall of 2019, in a city called a Adairsville, which is in the north part of our county, just about five months before the pandemic. So that was great timing.
Rich Birch — Perfect timing.
James Griffin — Yeah. So we joke and we said we did that one twice. You know, we launched it five months before…
Rich Birch — Yes.
James Griffin — …and then shut it down and reopen. And it’s going great. And then in 2022 launched a third location in a city called Rome, Georgia. Just had a great group of people driving about 45 minutes to Cartersville to come to church and asked us if we do something there. So we’ve been doing that for a couple of years, going really well. We just launched, about three weeks ago, our fourth location…
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — …in Hay State Prison in North Georgia.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
James Griffin — So we’re in the middle of this discipleship journey right now. Call all to him. just felt a great burden to take the gospel into prisons and started praying for God to open a door. And he opened a door at one of the hardest prisons in the state of Georgia.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — So just to that, and then we’ve got a fifth location coming in January in a city called Acworth, south of Cartersville.
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — So we’re we’re in the trenches of that right now, just getting ready to send a group of people out. So that’s a that’s a quick look.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, this idea of like, you know, relaunching, replanting, rebirthing…
James Griffin — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, that comes with the, the inherent undercurrent there is like something wasn’t working. Like, you know, obviously you don’t take a church that was like, things are going great, let’s shut it down and restart over. Can you you know, I don’t want to dwell on the pain here…
James Griffin — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but like, can you talk to us a little bit about, you know, what that inheritance, what that look like and how did you rebuild from there? I think this is a great story of hope. I think there are people who are thinking about this. And man, now to hear all the growth that you’ve had as a church. But let’s go back and kind of look at where things started.
James Griffin — Yeah. Well, I will say first and foremost, there is no good reason that our church should be here right now. Honestly.
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — Other than other than God is kind and God is faithful.
Rich Birch — So good.
James Griffin — And I will say as well, the fact that that the church that planted our church stepped in when they did. Westridge Church is the name of the founding church. If if Westridge and Pastor Brian Malloy had not stepped in when they did, our church would not be here right now. So I praise God for that. But, you know, the quick story is, church is planted in 2006, about four and a half years into the life of the church, the founding pastor had a moral failure. And and it was significant. It involved, more than one staff member, a few staff members. And it just rocked the church to the core.
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — And so immediately there’s a mass exodus of people. Left behind is a very, very wounded staff. A lot of confusion, a lot of brokenness. And so I stepped into that less than a year after it happened.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — And and I just remember in year one it was like, all right, we’ve got to stop the bleeding. We’ve got to stabilize. I’ve got to earn the trust of these people. We’ve got to love these people well. And I need to to let this community know that we’re not going anywhere.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
James Griffin — That that God is not done with us yet and that we want to be a part of what he’s doing here. And so in year one, it really was about just getting healthy, man. And, I tell this story. I still remember the moment that I knew we were going to be okay. I was in the lobby after preaching a gathering, and this little old lady, she comes up to me and she gives me a hug and she said, thank you for talking to us. And I was so confused, like, what do you mean? As she said, the guy before you never talked to us. She said he’d preach and tell us that he didn’t really like people, and then he’d hide in his office between gatherings. And he never talked to us. And she said, I’m just glad you talk to us. And in that moment, I knew if all I have to do is love these people, well, I think we’re going to be okay. And and we’ve been okay by the grace of God.
Rich Birch — Right. Well, let’s double click on that a little bit. You talk about earning the trust of these people. Let’s let’s dig in on that a little bit. What did you do when you look back on it? You know, I love the simple thing of like, hey, you should talk with people. That’s a good you know, that’s a good insight. But other things that were, you know, you look back now and say, oh, wow, like, the Lord really used that to help us rebuild trust here.
James Griffin — Yeah. Well, I mean, I remember at 16 years old, I read the very first leadership book I ever read by John Maxwell, “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”.
Rich Birch — Love it.
James Griffin — And I learned that leadership is influence. Influence is gained by trust. Trust is gained by character. And I don’t think people can know if you are a man or woman of character unless you spend time with them.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — You have to be real and vulnerable and transparent and present. So that is what I tried to do, man. I just I started trying to get in front of as many people as I possibly could, whether it was on Sundays or scheduling lunches or coffees or whatever it might be. But it was like, I’ve got to build relationships with these people so that they can see I am a man of character. And the prayer was, this will hopefully lead to trust sooner than later, and then we can start to make some forward motion. I knew that what I couldn’t do is just come in and, you know, be guns blazing, which is…
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — …very much how I’m wired. We got work to do. So let’s get after it and pull back on what came naturally to me and go, okay, I just I’ve just got to be a pastor and love people and build relationships. And really, that’s what it was both inside and outside the church.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. Let’s talk about, you know, one of the signs I think of a of a weak leader is they they dog the guy before them. They dog the leader before them. They’re like, but in this case, you’re like, there was actually some stuff that went sideways.
James Griffin — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And so how did you face that? What did that look like? How do you actually like okay, we gotta kind of acknowledge that’s where it’s at. And like both inside the church and outside the church, what did that look like? How did you kind of actually stare down, you know, owning that.
James Griffin — That’s great. Well, number one, I thought it was very important to honor the past because everything that had happened in the past was not bad.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
James Griffin — And in all honesty, the first four and a half years of the life of the church, they were doing some great things and they were reaching people, and they were meeting a need in this community that that needed to be met. So I wanted to honor that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — I have a mentor that always talks about how God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks. And so let’s not fail to give God glory for the things that have happened. So that’s first. Secondly, I did not want to in any way dishonor the guy who came before me.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — Dude, at the end of the day, here’s the reality, man. We’re all one bad decision away from blowing our lives up. And, I didn’t want to be that guy acting like, you know, he did something that that none of us could do. And so I didn’t want to dishonor him. But then we also needed to be honest about current reality. Hey, there there were problems. And there are issues that we still need to overcome. And I even needed to address with the other pastors and churches in our community, hey, this this church was not on your team for a while. We we we weren’t fighting for the kingdom alongside of you. And so I needed to own that and be honest about that without being dishonoring, because that was the reality is that that the church in the community had positioned itself against the other churches. And we were not playing well in the sandbox the other churches that were here, which was very problematic.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Talk a little bit more about that. Like that that’s interesting to me that, you know, it seems like you see, which I think makes sense, the connection between, hey, we’ve got to kind of restore some relationships internally, but then, hey, there’s these external other pastors in town. Talk to us about what that looked like. How did those those conversations go? What did you learn to that process? How did you kind of rebuild those relationships? And then maybe draw the connection for I think there’ll be some people that are listening in there, like, what does that have to do with restoring your church? How do those things, how does that connect, solve the problems internally? Yeah.
James Griffin — Yeah. That’s a great question. Well, again, it was very relational in nature. So when I first got here, one of the first things that I started trying to figure out is where do all these guys hang out? Like where, where are these pastors…
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — …and and how can I put myself in environments where they are present, where I can just let these guys know, hey, man, I’m on your team. And I want to be on your team.
James Griffin — And so and I remember in the early days I would go, we’re a non-denominational church, but in our community there are several Southern Baptist churches that all get together once a month and they have their meetings. So I just invited myself. I was like, hey, man, I’m coming out.
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — And and some of the meetings were fine and some of the meetings were a little painful, but…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
James Griffin — But I showed up, but I showed up every month because I just wanted to be in the room with these men and get to know them. And just let them know, like, moving forward. It’s not going to be like it was before. And so I just wanted them to know that. And then I started hanging one-on-one. I was just trying to find the most influential guys in the community, lead the most influential churches, because I felt like if I can establish trust with them, hopefully they’ll go to bat for me and our church…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
James Griffin — …and the other guys know, hey, he’s legit. So I just started having coffees and lunches and meeting with guys one-on-one and really working to build relationships in that respect. And so going back to the second part of the question, what did that have to do with like reestablishing our church? I mean, from the beginning, I’ve wanted our people to know God has put us in this community to be a blessing to the community.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — Like, we’re not just here to meet together on Sundays and to do all the church stuff. But if we really want to be a great commission church, we’ve got to think about the impact God is calling us to make on our cities. And if we’re going to do that effectively, we have to work in partnership with the other churches here. We have to be unified with the other believers in these cities for the sake of the gospel. And so we can’t be at odds with these other churches.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — We’ve got to work in partnership with these churches. So that was an important piece, I think, of seeing our church move forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. I love that. That’s great. Great insight there. A part of what you’ve talked about is, you know, this idea of communicating with your people, which ultimately they have to feel, which is like, hey, we’re not going anywhere. Like, I’m I’m here. And I’m sure there are leaders that are listening in today that are there in that phase where it’s like where it’s like the long-suffering phase. We’re not really sure. Like I don’t see that, we’re not launching campuses, we’re just not seeing the fruit. But like, we’re we’re when you look back on that, what were some of the signposts that were, you know, there’s that one conversation. Hey, thanks for talking to us. Were there other signposts that were like, oh, we’re moving in the right direction here. Things are are heading and kind of talk through what that timeline looked like.
James Griffin — Yeah, that’s good. Well I remember one of the signposts was the relaunch. So as I said earlier, you know I took over January 2012.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
James Griffin — And for a year we operated under the umbrella of our mother church. So Westridge basically took us back in for a season. I came started leading the church under Westridge just covering. And and that first year was really telling, you know, we got to see God show up, restore health. And then by the end of that year, my pastor came back and said, hey, I think we need to turn you guys loose and you need to replant. And so mid 2013, when we relaunched the church as Crosspoint City Church, that was like a new stake in the ground, you know? God, God took what was dying and and on the verge of of being in the grave. He has breathed new life into it, resurrected it from the dead. And and here we go, man. It was like a rebirth, you know.
James Griffin — So that was huge. Now, during that same season, not long after, I remember another moment where I was like, okay, I think we’re going to be all right. We needed to refinance our building. At the time, we were trying to get it out of the former name and into the current name, which forced a refinance. And, we needed to come up with $100,000 in ten days to be able to to refinance.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
James Griffin — Okay. Now at the time…
Rich Birch — That’s clarifying.
James Griffin — …you know, at the time, our church was considerably smaller. Our annual budget was like $650K a year. Right. And because of the former issues, we didn’t just have a bunch of money in the bank. And so I remember I met with our leaders on a Thursday night and I said, hey, guys, here’s here’s the reality, here’s the need. If we don’t do this now, mortgage costs go way, way up. That impacts our ability to do ministry. So, hey, I think we need to just challenge our people to give 100 grand in ten days. And so the next Sunday, I stood up, told the church, ask people to pray and to give. And ten days later we had $103,000 that was given.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — And we were able to refinance the building and save a ton of money. So that was just another moment where I knew…
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — …okay, God, God has us and and and we’re going to make it and we’re going to be all right. So and we’ve just seen God be faithful like that time and time again. And so it’s been a fun ride, man.
Rich Birch — What would you coach leaders in that or in that phase around, like there’s got to be a tension in that moment between like we’re going to push forward, we’re going to do new stuff, like we’re going to try to take some new ground. You know, the kind of the former’s behind us. And then all the relational stuff you’re talking about, like, you know, hey, we’re going to hold people’s hands. We want to have conversations, build trust. How did you pace that out? How did we you know, that’s like a there’s obviously no easy formula there. But what how did you do that? What did that look like?
James Griffin — Yeah that that pace conversation. That’s a fun one because I feel like since my time here, we’ve just been trying to keep up, man. It’s funny.
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — We, an executive team recently and it’s like we have done a lot of responding, and reacting over the years because God has just been on the move, which has been amazing. But I will say a couple of things, man. I had to make dramatic changes to my schedule. Dramatic changes.
Rich Birch — Okay. Right.
James Griffin — And it continues to happen until this day, like the relational piece I had to start and even to this day, I had to start pouring a lot more into executive team, key staff leaders, key leaders within the church, and then release a lot of the other, pastoral care, situations and things like that to my other guys. I have a mentor who who said to me years ago that there comes a point as your church grows, you’ve got to stop worrying about everyone feeling loved by you. And you just have to worry that people feel loved.
Rich Birch — So good.
James Griffin — And there’s a lot of ways, a lot of ways that you can make people feel love that doesn’t all fall on you as the leader. So again, it’s I think for us, it was building a culture of care and a culture of relationship that wasn’t entirely dependent upon me.
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — And so we had to take a shared approach to that so that we could continue driving the work of mission forward. so I do think that’s a really important piece to this, is, is that the leader can’t carry that weight and burden alone.
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — Whether it’s other staff or elders or key leaders within the church. You’ve got to lean on other people to get that right.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. This is like, well, first of all, super rich conversation. This is fantastic. So helpful. I’m hoping people that are listening in that are in these kind of situations are feeling encouraged, because I think you’ve you’ve offered some really great insight here.
Rich Birch — Kind of going in a slightly different direction, super tactical. So you rebranded new name, all that stuff. How big deal was that? How, you know, what did you learn through that process? Was there anything that, you know, any kind of transferable lessons there as you, you know, thought about the future and how did that all fit together?
James Griffin — Yeah, yeah, it was a massive deal. You know, I think what what we saw there were a couple. I will say one thing that surprised me, and maybe this will help somebody. One thing that surprised me, you know, we put this new stake in the ground. Here’s the vision for the future. Here’s where we’re going. It surprised me that not everyone wanted to go with us.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yes. Interesting.
James Griffin — What I mean by that is we had people. We had people live through the the train wreck. That was before. They stayed with us through this whole period of transition. They they got a chance to see God resurrect this dying church. And then we put a stake in the ground and and we said, here’s where we’re going. And again, I was a younger leader at the time. Now, I’m not so surprised by this, but it did surprise me. I’m like, hold on, you guys are leaving now?
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — Bro, we’re we’re full steam ahead. We’re about to charge the gates of hell together.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
James Griffin — And and you’re going to leave now. But I will say on on the other side of that, what surprised me in a good sense is I think that was God pruning people away that needed to be pruned so that we could make forward progress.
Rich Birch — Yep.
James Griffin — And so when we got a little bit further down the road, I started to realize we would not be where we are right now if those people hadn’t left.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.
James Griffin — They would they would have stood in the way of the missional work that we set out to accomplish. So it was actually a strange blessing that that they left.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
James Griffin — But man, after the relaunch and the rebirth, we picked up a lot of steam. Within about two years, we needed to start looking for another facility.
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — So in our former facility, we, we had 320 seats and 29 parking spaces.
Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness.
James Griffin — It was crazy. Old renovated bar in the downtown area of our city.
Rich Birch — Yep.
James Griffin — So we, we started looking for property, man, and had a Christian school here in our city that was, meeting in an old church building was the old Cartersville Church of God. And they approached us and talked to us about buying their property, and we could not afford it. And we just basically told them, here’s what we can do and here’s what we can offer.
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — And, praise God, they ended up saying, alright, we’ll work with that.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
James Griffin — So we in 2018, we, we moved facilities and, and went from 300 seats to 900 seats and 12 acres of land. And, you know, it’s been a fun ride.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — And, and again, shortly after that started launching location so that, I mean, that rebirth, like I said, it was like stake in the ground.
Rich Birch — Yes.
James Griffin — And then we were off and going.
Rich Birch — Yes.
James Griffin — But without that year of just building trust and building relationships, I don’t think any of that would have happened.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good, that’s good. Yeah, that’s an encouragement. I love you know that that other that church of God like they’re heroes in the story…
James Griffin — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — …because they, you know, they they could have they could have held on tightly and said, no, forget it. And you know, who knows? You know, obviously God can do anything you don’t know. You can’t live in two different worlds. I don’t know what would have happen. But man, what they’re heroes in that story.
James Griffin — Yes.
Rich Birch — So I, I’m, I feel a little bit dumb. Here we are like two thirds into the interview and I’m just asking this question now.
James Griffin — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What was Westbridge connection with this church originally like? Why did Brian step in and help in the first place? Because there might be leaders that are listening in that are like, hey, maybe I’m that person in this story.
Rich Birch — I need to think about that.
James Griffin — Well, Westridge has a long history of planting churches. And, several years ago, they they started a church planting school. And the guy that planted the church that I now pastor was graduate number two from their church planting school.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Okay.
James Griffin — Did a year long internship at Westbridge and they actually sent him out to plant. So there was a partnership and a part of the story that I haven’t shared. I’ll make it really quick, but this is it just it just shows the sovereignty of God. So this guy was going to leave and go plant another church in another city. While there was hidden sin in the back stage of his life, and he had come to Crosspoint in 2010 or Crosspoint excuse me, Westridge in 2010, and asked Brian if they would consider taking the church on as a campus. And so Brian and the elders prayed, hey, yeah, we’ll do it. They decided in in 2010 will do it. And so in January of 2011, this church officially became a campus of Westridge. And the news of this moral failure broke two months later in March of 2011.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
James Griffin — So man, it was the providence of God like God before the situation in a very significant and apparent way.
Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yes.
James Griffin — And again, if Westridge wouldn’t have stepped in, I don’t know if we’d be here. So I’m just so grateful for them and for Pastor Brian.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, that that’s one of those like that’s you know, you can’t just say that’s a coincidence, right? Like that’s the Lord at work and stepping out in front and and saying, hey, we’re going to we’ve got I’ve got a different plan for this. We’re not letting this one go.
James Griffin — Sure.
Rich Birch — That’s that’s amazing. So changing directions. Totally this is an incredible story. I want to make sure people track with you on this, but I want to hear a little bit about what you guys are doing with the Compassion Center. So this is a way that you’re investing in the community. Can you tell us kind of a little bit about that and how that fits in? It seems to connect to your story you were talking earlier about, man, we want to be we want to be a blessing to the community, want to improve the city that we’re in, that sort of thing. Talk to us about the Compassion Center. What’s that look like and how does that fit in the overall mix of the church?
James Griffin — Yeah. So the idea for this came back in like 2019. We had already moved into our facility and renovated a portion of the facility. What we bought was 83,000 sq ft of building space on 12 acres of land.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
James Griffin — So initially we renovated about 30,000 of it for kids, space worship, all of that. And then in 2019 we were getting ready to launch another financial initiative. And we just knew because I mean, we had prayed for a property that we could give back to the community, told our elders, like if we buy this and it sits empty throughout the week, we are horrible stewards. So we had to figure out ways to keep the doors open…
Rich Birch — Right.
James Griffin — …Sunday through Saturday. So we just started praying for clarity on that, and I went and met with our county commissioner. I met with our city mayor, and I met with our school superintendent, and I just said, hey, we’re getting ready to raise money. We want to bless the community. We’ve got about 50,000 sq ft of building space we’re trying to figure out what to do with.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — And I just asked, what does the community need?
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
James Griffin — What are needs exist that are not being met, that we could meet if we renovated this space in the right way. And so between the three guys, they said, hey, we need more counseling space. We need more space to mentor our kids. We need space to serve the homeless population. We need space for adult literacy, job training, all this stuff. So they gave us all these answers. And so we came back and as an elder team and executive team, we started praying through it. And we just decided, man, let’s let’s make this happen. So out of that came this vision for the Compassion Center.
James Griffin — So it’s basically, there’s four pieces to this thing. One piece. We have a counseling center so people can come and and they can get professional biblical counseling at discounted rates. It’s all on a sliding scale based on income. A part of the center is devoted to education. So we’re mentoring kids. We are teaching adult literacy, those types of things.
James Griffin — Another portion of the center is dedicated to serving the homeless population. So we have a laundromat. We’ve got bathrooms and showers. We’ve got resources available for them. And we got people serving in there that are praying with them, hearing their stories, sharing the gospel. It’s absolutely incredible.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
James Griffin — And then two other pieces, we’re also serving women who are being rescued out of sex trafficking through the center.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
James Griffin — Which was happening previously, but we we just relocated them. And then the final piece of this, we have a mobile medical clinic.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — Because because part of it was, hey, we’ve got under-insured and uninsured families in our communities that don’t have access to medical care. So we’re like, I think we can do something. So, when we were working on the project—this is when the pandemic hit—inflation went through the roof. And our building costs went up by a million and a half dollars.
Rich Birch — Wow.
James Griffin — So we step back and we said, how do we still make this work? Because we can’t afford that. And then we came up with the idea of a mobile approach. Well, what if we what if we buy a big RV and retrofit it and we take it on the road and we serve people where they’re at?
Rich Birch — That’s so cool.
James Griffin — So we found a company that does it, man. They just they take RVs and build out mobile clinics on top of the the frames.
Rich Birch — Yes.
James Griffin — We’ve got this clinic that we’re taking into all of our cities and it’s it’s taken off, man. So it’s been cool to see it all working.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yeah, again just want to commend you for that. You know we see this time and again with fast growing churches that there is a clear imperative for the the proclamation of the gospel. But there’s also a clear demonstration of the gospel at work in people’s lives that there’s like this, hey, we got to actually make a difference.
Rich Birch — And that, you know, we don’t see those in conflict with each other. We want to we want to really work both sides of that equation.
James Griffin — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And I just love that. You I answered the question there a little bit at the end, which was, as you’re looking at new locations, how are you keeping that embedded in the in the story? This idea of, you know, being, you know, improving the cities you go in, when it’s, you know, when you have something like the compassion center embedded in one location, how do you spread that to other locations without, you know, necessarily duplicating all of that in all these different locations. What does that look like?
James Griffin — Yeah, yeah. Great question. You know, part of it for us, when it comes to locations, we try to contextualize ministry based on the city that we’re we’re starting in.
Rich Birch — Okay.
James Griffin — So we have always been very intentional about going into these cities before we ever launch and trying to identify partnerships, establishing relationships with local pastors and churches and community leaders. And we start with service. We don’t start with gatherings.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — We’re like, how do we go in and bless the city based on what this city needs? And so some of it’s unique, based on city, and then some of it is very much the same. So like in Cartersville and Rome, we’re placing a big emphasis right now on foster care. And so we’re working with local organizations that really do a great job with foster care. The mobile clinic, we can take anywhere, and that’s what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
James Griffin — And then some of our bigger initiatives, like all church initiatives, we do a big Christmas event and we just serve thousands of kids in our cities. We have just reproduced that. So like Acworth, that we’re planning in ’25, that starts in January, but we’re actually doing Hope for Christmas event this December of 2024.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
James Griffin — And we’re starting with that because we just want people to know…
Rich Birch — Love it.
James Griffin — …we’re not just showing up and like singing and teaching on Sundays. Dude, we’re here to love and serve. We want to be a blessing to the to the cities that God’s called us to.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. And what a great way to enter into a city. You know, even people who don’t necessarily aren’t excited about what the church is about. They look at that stuff and say, well, that’s a good thing. Our our hope over time is that they see you as not just a good thing. It’s a God thing. It’s what what God’s called us to do. So yeah, I love that. This is this has been just what, a rich conversation. So fantastic.
Rich Birch — You know, anything else? Just as we kind of. There’s a lot we could talk about here. There’s a ton we could continue to dive into. But anything else you’d love to kind of make sure we’re aware of just as we wrap up today’s episode.
James Griffin — Yeah, I would say with anybody trying to figure this stuff out. Any church leaders trying to figure this out, I would just encourage you be patient. Be patient.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
James Griffin — I think, shifting culture, building trust, establishing a strong reputation in the community of what you talked about earlier. We’re not just here to tell you stuff. We’re here to do stuff. We’re going to proclaim the gospel, and we’re going to do justice because both matter to the heart of God. It just takes time. And so I think you got to plug away. You’ve got to be consistent, stay focused on mission, keep doing what God’s called you to do. And over time, the tide will turn. But, but, but be faithful. Be patient is what I would say.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. What a great way to end. I know there’s people that are in that seat today and have, you know, our hope, our prayer is that they’ve been they’ve been encouraged. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?
James Griffin — Yeah, a couple places. The church: crosspointcity.com. That’s our website. So you can find us there. Reach out to us. I have an Instagram page, @pastorjamesgriffin. I don’t manage that at all, but, but you can find me there. My team does that. But you can find us there as well. And and, stay connected. So, yeah, man, would love for you guys to to look us up – if we can help in any way, reach out.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, James. I really appreciate you being on the show today.
James Griffin — Yeah. Thanks, Rich.
Power of a Map, Not a Menu: Transforming Ministry Strategy with Mariners Church’s Jared Kirkwood
Dec 12, 2024
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jared Kirkwood, the Executive Pastor of Ministries and Lead Pastor at the Irvine location of Mariners Church in California.
A church’s mission isn’t much without a strategy. How are you aligning, training, and equipping people at your church to take their next steps to move the mission forward? Tune in as Jared unpacks Mariners’ “transformational loop”—a four-part discipleship strategy through which they align all ministries and campuses to increase the church’s impact.
A mission and strategy // The transformational loop, Mariners’ strategy for achieving their mission, is pivotal to discipleship at the church. The transformational loop has four parts, each with their own ministries, programs, events, and teams. The parts of the loop are Follow Jesus (weekend experiences), Grow Together (life groups, care and recovery, and discipleship courses), Serve One Another (volunteer ministry teams), and Change the World (local and global outreach ministries).
Have a map for the strategy// Mariners wants to disciple people through a “map” rather than a “menu.” By acting as “tour guides” and getting to know people, the team can pastor people through a process, inviting them to join in groups or teams within the church. Identify how your church’s initiatives are connected to your mission and fit into your strategy.
A year’s worth of planning // Everything Mariners Church does aligns with the mission and connects with the transformational loop. For example, the Senior Pastor maps out the teaching series and key scriptures about a year in advance. The team then uses the teaching to create cohesive planning and alignment for events or programs. By harnessing energy from and building upon the teaching, they create greater momentum to move the mission forward.
Three tiers of events // Once they see the teaching calendar for the upcoming year, Jared and his leadership team can identify more easily what to say yes to and what to say no to. Their ministry roadmap has three tiers. Tier A are all-church events and are put on the calendar first. An example of Tier A is Rooted. Tier B are all-church but are contextualized at different congregations. These include life groups or deep dive discipleship courses that are open to everyone. Tier C are congregation-specific events and require approval from central ministry leaders to ensure alignment with the church’s overall strategy and effective use of resources.
Evaluate programs // Evaluate your ministry programs and events as often as you feel necessary. Jared and his team use a framework that categorizes initiatives into four quadrants. The bottom left of the quadrant are the things that are Weeds and need to be pulled. The upper left are Problem Trees, things that have potential but aren’t performing well. The upper right are Flourishing Trees, the high potential and high performance items that are feeding the whole garden. Finally, the bottom right are high performance but low potential. These are Nice Plants that you don’t want to get rid of though they aren’t nourishing to the entire church.
Address Weeds and Problem Trees // Weeds drain resources from the church, are outside of your strategy, and need to be removed. However, there will still be people who love them. As a leader it’s your job to help people see a more beautiful future and move them there. Similarly, Problem Trees need to be addressed so they can be made more fruitful. Identify what’s not working and take steps to help them become Flourishing Trees.
EXTRA CREDIT // Cultivate a Thriving Ministry with the Ministry Program Evaluation Toolkit
In this week’s episode, we unpack practical strategies for refining your ministry programs to maximize impact and align with your church’s mission. But what if you had a hands-on tool to guide this process? Enter the Ministry Program Evaluation Toolkit: A Garden-Inspired Framework to Assess and Refine Your Ministry Programs—your ultimate resource for evaluating, nurturing, and realigning your church’s efforts.
This toolkit uses the garden metaphor to help you categorize your programs as Weeds, Problem Trees, Flourishing Trees, or Nice Plants. From identifying programs to phase out, to cultivating the ones that are thriving, this resource provides clear steps and worksheets to help you confidently lead.
Take what you learned from this episode to the next level by accessing the Ministry Program Evaluation Toolkit as part of unSeminary Extra Credit. Start transforming your ministry programs today by downloading it here. Don’t miss this chance to create a thriving ministry strategy!
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really excited for today’s conversation. Been looking forward to it for quite a while. Excited to have Jared Kirkwood with us. He’s a part of Mariners Church. If you’re not familiar with Mariners, they have seven locations in California, if I’m counting correctly, and they’re on the brink of launching a couple more, plus an online community. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country for the last number of years. Jared is the lead pastor of Mariners Irvine and the discipleship pastors…he…or pastor. He is has been at Mariners Church for 16 plus years, has served as the junior high and high school pastor, lead pastor for the Rooted Network and as a teaching pastor. Jared, welcome. So glad you’re here.
Jared Kirkwood — Hey, thank you so much for having me, Rich. I really appreciate it. Your podcast has been such a benefit to so many of us and your insights even helping us in the last couple of years has been so beneficial to us as well. So thank you.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s, that’s awfully kind of you to say. I I love Mariners. This is one of those churches—and don’t say this about a lot of church—if I lived in your backyard, I’d be going to your church. And so I just, I just think the world of what you guys do. And, um, you know, you have huge influence as a church, you know, the Rooted Network that come came out of, out of here. We’ve, we’ve talked about Rooted in the past. We’ve you know had multiple conversations, uh, with you guys and just honored that you’d be here today. So why don’t you fill out the picture, tell us a little bit more for folks that don’t know about Mariners, maybe give a bit of sense of that, and then tell us a little bit about your role.
Jared Kirkwood — So I’ve been at Mariners since I was a college student. I had given my life to Jesus as a senior in high school. I moved out to Southern California to go to Vanguard University. And within just a couple of short months, I started attending this mega church. And I thought, I have no idea who this Jesus guy really is. I better get plugged in somewhere fast so I can learn more. I had this interesting experience of sitting in Old Testament Survey hearing the story of Moses for the first time in my life, you know?
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Jared Kirkwood — I’m like this is ah ah a wild, like paradigm shift. I had no clue what I was really doing with my life, and yet…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Jared Kirkwood — …my time at Vanguard and being here at at Mariners Church was so pivotal and foundational to to really the trajectory of the rest of, not only my life, but of course, eternity because of of Jesus. And so i I started volunteering pretty quickly. I served in our our junior high ministry as a life group leader for a couple of years. And then just before I graduated, I joined our staff. So this is 2005. I did about 11 years in our youth ministry, did about every job you can do in that world and and loved every minute of it, of course.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jared Kirkwood — But then as a lot of you know a lot of times happens to us guys, as we get to that point where we think, okay, what’s next? What else is out there? And I found myself in a place where I actually left the church for a short period of time. And then came back because I missed it, craved it, my family was so connected here, and never stopped attending the church. And that’s when the Rooted Network came into the picture.
Jared Kirkwood — Got to spend a couple of years training churches on how to run Rooted, which was beautiful and exciting. And then ah during that time is when we went through that senior pastor transition. So from Kenton Beshore, who was here for 35 years, ah we moved to Eric Geiger. And it was ah an incredible transition. Those two guys, I think, led a master class of what senior pastors succession looks like.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Jared Kirkwood — It’s amazing. They’re they’re still friends. They still gather together regularly. Kenton still goes on trips with us. He still teaches occasionally in our church. I mean, it’s amazing. It’s so so beautiful. And then Eric has been able over the last seven years to really make the church his. It’s been a beautiful thing to not only witness, but to be so close to him in that process.
Jared Kirkwood — So Eric asked me to move into the discipleship pastor role, which then within two years of that became the lead pastor for our Irvine campus, which is uniquely the broadcast and kind of primary of our our seven campuses. In fact, back then it wasn’t seven, it was maybe two or three actually. And I have the uniqueness of serving as the lead pastor for the campus in which he is the teaching pastor at. So, you know, there’s some fun things there that we have had to figure out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a lot we could talk about.
Jared Kirkwood — Yes, yeah that’s that’s true.
Rich Birch — Yeah, definitely.
Jared Kirkwood — Happy to go wherever you’d like to go. But then in this last year moved into more of a central model. And so I am our lead pastor for Irvine, as well as now the executive pastor of ministries for all of our our campuses.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Yeah, there’s a ton that we can unpack there. And, you know, there’s a lot there that, you know, there’s so much that Mariners does at such a high level of of excellence. And I think there’ll be a lot that we can draw out. And I’m sure we’d love to have you on in the future. There’s others, so we won’t get to all of it today. But but let’s start with this whole idea around like keeping those seven and growing more. My understanding is obviously you guys, I feel like every time I turn around, there’s like, an oh, we’re launching a new congregation, which is wonderful. I love that. Um, you know, keeping those various locations aligned. How, what, how do you guys think about that internally? What, what are you kind of processes, internal structures are you using to ensure that, Hey, we’re kind of all heading in the same direction?
Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, so as every church should, we have a mission that is directly connected to the Great Commission, right? So we wanna inspire people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. That’s what we are setting out to do here. And that mission is not much without a strategy. So the way in which we help people to actually inspire, you know to to be inspired to follow Jesus and then change the world around them is through what we call the transformational loop.
Jared Kirkwood — It is four stops. Each of them have their own ministries, programs, events, teams, and et cetera. Those four stops are Follow Jesus. That’s our weekend experience. Grow Together is rooted in life groups, care and recovery, some of our discipleship courses. Then we have Serve One Another. Those are our volunteer ministry teams for the church. And then Change the World are our outreach initiatives that’s local and global.
Jared Kirkwood — So for us, the way we train our pastors, the way they equip our volunteers, the whole goal is that we would pastor people through a process, through a strategy, rather than being a program manager.
Rich Birch — Okay. Jared Kirkwood — The last thing I want my staff to do is spend their time just managing programs…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — …just thinking about the next great event they’re going to do. But instead, we really want to disciple people. We want to be that unique story of a church that can grow numerically, but also deepen as well. That’s easier said than done, but that’s kind of like we spend most of our time thinking about how do we…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — …just continue to know the amount of people that show up to our church and help them get connected to one another. And the transformational loop, our strategy, is pivotal to that. We must hold onto that. We really don’t do very much outside of it. And anything we do really takes me to have to say yes to it. Rich Birch — Right. Okay, good. And I love that idea that I want to underline something you said there, this idea of leading your team, your pastors to be really pastoring, leading people through a process rather than a program manager. That I think is such a key insight because we can get stuck on running our individual boxes. We run these like, well, I run this program. I’m the groups person. I’m the whatever ah person. I run junior high and I get…
Rich Birch — And this is particularly as churches get very large, this becomes a bigger problem because it’s like I can grow my own kingdom and not think about anybody else and how it all fits together. How are you ensuring that you’re really trying to drive people and drive your teams and your even your programs to think about there are the elements or environments, whatever we call those things, to to move people along in that process? What’s that look like? Jared Kirkwood — Right, so a couple things come to mind. We have a weekly team meeting with my direct reports. Our staff is all, we could talk about organizational structure if you’d like to, but everybody that’s on my team is a ministry leader for Irvine and is the strategy leader for our whole ministry area for the church. And so anytime we gather, we’re talking about whatever ministry, the program, the event they’re going to do, and how that’s connected to our strategy. Because if it’s connected to the strategy, we believe that it is, by default, it’s going to disciple people.
Jared Kirkwood — We want to be a church that is about having a map rather than a menu. And the irony behind that phrase is that, honestly, when I started 20, almost 20 years ago, we actually had printed menus. There was like, got you know…
Rich Birch — I love it. Yes.
Jared Kirkwood — …four pamphlets, you know, you open it up four fold pamphlets where you could see…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. 112 ministries. Yes.
Jared Kirkwood — …all the things, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jared Kirkwood — And guess what? we We kind of felt like that was the right thing to do back then.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — What we’ve realized now is it it kind of turned our team into travel agents where you’d meet somebody on the lobby or the patio and you’d say, you know, you get to know them and then you open up the map and you just help them go, this is where I think you should go. And then you just send them off on their way. As opposed to who we want to be, which is tour guides.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — We want to get to know people. We want to invite them, hey, come and do Rooted with me, come and be a part of this this team that I’m leading, come serve with us, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — So join us in what we’re doing as opposed to, hey, there’s this thing over there, go and do that.
Jared Kirkwood — So when I have my team meetings, that’s a large part of our conversation is just going, let’s go back to the loop. Let’s go back to that map mentality. Let’s try to treat ourselves as as these tour guides who are inviting people to join us in this great adventure of discipleship and becoming more like Jesus. It has to start with us, otherwise we’re just in-house consultants and that’s really not at all who we want to be.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. I think that’s a that’s a great clarity. The other thing I want to underline, which we can come back to later, but I like that that as a church, you have clarified, hey, our Irvine campus is not only leading here in Irvine, but they’re also, you know, strategy leaders for our individual areas across the entire church. Rich Birch — When there’s fuzziness around that in multi-site churches, this is one of the areas where it goes sideways, because it’s like, who who are we actually supposed to be looking at? Who is the person that’s actually making these decisions? Or or who is, you know who which is the area that we think is doing a great job? And if we’re not clear on that, then just whoever’s the loudest ends up getting the the voice on that. Jared Kirkwood — It’s so true. Rich Birch — And that’s not necessarily what we’re, what that that that doesn’t provide the kind of alignment that we’re looking for. So I love that you’ve provided that kind of clarity.
Rich Birch — Let’s kind of focus in specifically as you’re building out that map, talk me through what that looks like from maybe like a teaching perspective, weekend teaching? How does that rad radiate out into impacting, you know, Eric’s obviously a ah compelling communicator, one of the best communicators in the country, maybe the world, and, you know, a high teaching environment value on teaching as an external someone that appears to be what’s there. Rich Birch — And you know so many times I’ve coached churches through, man, we’ve got to focus on that part. That part of what we do is so critical to who we are. It’s not secondary. You’ve got to spend extra time focusing on that. But how does that how does that impact your planning process? What’s that look like? Jared Kirkwood — So we’re very fortunate in that Eric is incredibly planful. He is way out in the future and he provides for us about at any given time, we were going to be about a year in advance of knowing kind of what the teaching calendar is going to look like.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jared Kirkwood — We know the series by title. We know…
Rich Birch — Okay. Wait a second. Time out, time out. So you a year out, talk to me when you say a year out, cause I hear people say that and I’m like, well, they’re they’re what they’re saying is we’re still talking about Jesus a year from now, obviously. But what kind of level of detail is he a year out? What’s that look like?
Jared Kirkwood — So we’re prepping for Christmas right now, but I could tell you the scripture for each week of the Christmas series in 2025.
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay. Yeah.
Jared Kirkwood — So when I say a year out, I really do mean that we are…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — …so far in advance that we have the sermon briefs. It’s not every bullet point…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Jared Kirkwood — …but it’s the key scripture and the primary idea behind that passage.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Jared Kirkwood — We can see how that series is gonna link together. And then the real fun part of the work is aligning the this beautiful scripturally-based you know, series that Eric comes back with, with the momentum of the calendar and really try to sync those two things up.
Rich Birch — Love it. Jared Kirkwood — Here’s the strategy and here’s the teaching calendar. And Eric is like the chief proponent of having a strategy. Like he’s all about the transformational loop. And so he never shows up with an element of the teaching calendar that’s going to be in conflict with our strategy. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jared Kirkwood — Instead, what he does is says, here’s the teaching calendar. Let’s do, I’ve done everything I can to match up the the momentum of the year. Now match the ministry events and programs and any kind of extra stuff we’re going to do, harness the energy that’s going to come from this annualized plan that we have put together that is both teaching content but also ministry strategy. So we’re lining all of those things up and then my responsibility really is to take his plan, turn to my team, and do the hard work of figuring out what do we say yes to, what do we say no to. Rich Birch — That’s good. Jared Kirkwood — If we say yes to something that is not particularly inside of our strategy, our transformational loop—this might be like ah an event that’s gonna draw people from the church. The ownership on that event is to funnel people to join us on this weekend. So ideally we time those events right before the kickoff of a new series so we can invite them to that because if we know they come to the new series, the the message is gonna be so powerful and compelling. They’re gonna want more of that that hopefully they’ll stay with us for the duration of that series. Jared Kirkwood — So then one second example would be that if we have something that is in the teaching um the teaching calendar that is going to cause someone to go, oh, and I want to know more about that. Well, then I go back to my team and say, what do we have or what can we create to create a special environment where somebody can go deeper on that concept, whether that’s ah ah a theological course that we’ve written, or maybe it’s something in our care and recovery ministry where we can help process through anxiety or depression or whatever the theme of that that message became. Rich Birch — Love that. And you know, for friends that know anything about Rooted, ah you’re getting a bit of the peak behind the scenes. You, I know churches that have really implemented Rooted well, they have taken on that kind of rhythm within their church where you see like it it becomes this like crescendo of the season, right? It’s like we kind of end up, man, there’s like a a real momentum that builds through those weeks. You can see how that just makes sense that that’s how you’re approaching ah kind of the calendar and your planning in general at the church.
Jared Kirkwood — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk me through um how you coordinate between things that are like, they impact everybody, that you know but then there’s maybe stuff. How do you allow for local congregation level or campus level stuff? How does all that fit together? What what what are you doing on that front to ensure that there’s alignment? Because that sounds good in one location. You multiply it by seven or by a couple more, it just becomes exponentially more difficult to do. Jared Kirkwood — All right, so this is a podcast with a bunch of like executive pastors, discipleship pastors.
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.
Jared Kirkwood — This is the best like talking shop we can do right here, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
Jared Kirkwood — Like this is getting into the the tactics…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jared Kirkwood — …of of really doing ministry road mapping, right? So we get in, in July, we get a first preview of what the teaching calendar is going to look like. I sit down with my close team, my leadership team, and we start to place what we call our Tier A events. Jared Kirkwood — Our roadmap roughly has three tiers, A, B, and C. A is defined as all church. Rooted is like the classic example. We know when we’re going to do Rooted. We know how it’s going to happen. Rich Birch — Right. Jared Kirkwood — We know when the trainings are going to take place. We put the the launch of Rooted, the celebration, we put it on the calendar before anything else. Jared Kirkwood — So now and and and Eric knows when those weekends are going to be. In fact, I give it to him before study break. Here’s when it’s gonna happen so then he can shape the start of a new series to invite people into Rooted. Just like you said, Rich, it’s like it’s so hand in glove for us. We hardly have to think about that.
Jared Kirkwood — But there are a bunch of other things that we do have to think about. So then we have these Tier B events. These are the things that we still say are all church, but they’re going to be contextualized at one of our other congregations. Rich Birch — Okay. Jared Kirkwood — A good example of this would be after Rooted, we have when somebody’s in a life group, we have ah kind of a suite of discipleship courses called Deep Dive. And these are things around the story of God, the the big picture of Scripture. this you know it’s um it’s theology and the mission of God, which is essentially a way to talk about systematic theology. Jared Kirkwood — We want our congregations, every one of them, to provide and offer those courses throughout the year. We have the best practice of when they should happen. We tell the congregations this is when you’re going to do them. They figure out how. The method is on them to make that thing happen.
Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. Jared Kirkwood — It might be through life groups, it might be live teaching, so on and so forth.
Jared Kirkwood — And then we have Tier C events. These are our congregation-specific events that are things that we, as the central ministry leaders, we’re going to provide as options. We’re going to approve them before they make the calendar, meaning we’re going to agree that that is in line with our strategy and a good use of their time. And a momentum marker that has a clear next step back into the loop. Jared Kirkwood — So there’s an approval process for that. It’s not as nitty gritty as it sounds. It’s actually quite fun. Because we get to talk about the beauty of the uniqueness of our congregation. It’s very different when you talk about Irvine to Santa Ana. You know, Santa Ana is the highest, you know, population of Hispanic families in in Orange County, or California. So the ministry opportunities we have there are a little different than we have in Irvine, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — So we get to talk about the uniqueness of the cities that we serve and create some events or programs that might be really beautiful and beneficial to the uniqueness of the cities in which our congregations are in.
Jared Kirkwood — So that all comes together, but the reality is A happens first, B kind of happens with A and it’s directed, the C is where all of the rubber meets the road. It’s dirty, like roll your sleeves up. Rich Birch — Yes. Jared Kirkwood — Because it’s like, it’s complicated. Everybody wants to do their, their favorite thing. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Jared Kirkwood — And I have to be the guy to say, I don’t know that that’s the wisest thing for us to do. That’s not the most strategic or you try to find great ways to package that. Rich Birch — So give us a sense of, so two two questions. One, ah kind of package together. You can take them whichever way you want to go. First, that process, so I used to get cut get it come back in in July, we got the teaching calendar, then we start kind of laying out what is the timeline that to which you would say, okay, we’ve kind of got, we feel like we’ve got the year nailed down at a fairly detailed level? Rich Birch — And then number two, connected to that, those C-level things, um are those can those be ad hoc? Can they happen throughout the entire year? And you know how do you how do you deal with stuff that just comes up? Because in a campus that’s trying to be maybe a bit bit more opportunistic or saying, hey, I see an opportunity to jump on, does that fit into the planning process? What’s that look like? Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, so the the quick picture of the calendar, Eric comes back in July. Throughout the month of August is when we are really, um when I say come back, by the way, he he takes a few weeks of a study break where this this is where…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jared Kirkwood — …he he’s dedicating time. He’s not teaching on the weekend services. We rarely see him, but he comes back with a full year of sermon briefs. So we know he’s working. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Jared Kirkwood — But when he comes back in August, this is where we’re trying to then um really place those on the calendar. We’re lining up, if Eric’s not teaching who’s going to do that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Jared Kirkwood — And then by September, really my team is deeply involved.
Rich Birch — Right. Jared Kirkwood — So in the September timeframe is when we are committed before the month ends, we’re going to have the the calendar year completed for the following year. So just at the end of this September, we finished 2025. Rich Birch — Yep. Jared Kirkwood — Now then what my leadership team does is once a quarter, we look at the following quarter, and then the quarter after that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — So um October 1st is the start of our second quarter of the year for us. We’re going to look at, hey, what do we need to know for this upcoming quarter? Let’s get excited about it. But then let’s really spend some time on January through March and really make sure we agree with that plan we set out to do. Do we need to move anything, adjust? Do we need, you know, because sometimes things change and that’s totally fine. We don’t want to be bound to the thing that we put together, but we do want to trust that when we built it, it was a good idea.
Rich Birch — Yep. Jared Kirkwood — Like there was a reason we put it there. Let’s talk about that stuff. Rich Birch — Right. Jared Kirkwood — So I do that every quarter. We’re getting about six months out into the future. Rich Birch — That’s good. Okay, that makes total, total sense. That’s good. Sorry. Keep going. Yep. Jared Kirkwood — So then. So. No, it’s all good. You you asked that question, though, about, OK, what happens, though, in that those those C events…
Rich Birch — Something happens. Yeah. Curveball.
Jared Kirkwood — …or or some of these other things. So we are allowed to break our rules any time. Right. I just know that I know that um there’s a great quote. I can’t remember who said it, but leadership is what you allow. Oftentimes, we we sort of think leadership is the the collection of great decisions that I make, and the plans that I put out there. Yes, that that is true. But more often than not, the results of your leadership is what you allowed to happen.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Jared Kirkwood — So the more things you say yes to when it really is outside of that plan, you know it’s coming at a cost. You’re going to have to say no to something else. Jared Kirkwood — So then the other thing that we do is we will evaluate, as often as we feel necessary, we will evaluate our ministry programs and events. And we have a simple framework for this. It actually comes from um a business model from the the late 1970s, but we kind of adapted it to um a ministry context. It’s four quadrants. It’s kind of a bell curve. And as you know, with any any business leader, you’re thinking about how do I find that that the right at the tip of the top of that bell curve, not waiting too long, but I want to insight growth as fast as I can or at the strategic right time. So the the framework, if you can imagine a quadrant bottom left, it’s a, it’s kind of a gardening metaphor, which by the way, I love because I just, I that picture is so biblical, so beautiful…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Jared Kirkwood — …um and it’s easy for us pastors to kind of hang onto it, right? So the bottom left are the things that are nice, I’m sorry, that are that are weeds. They’re just, they’re they’re pulling nutrients for the rest of the garden. You gotta have a hard conversation about pulling those things.
Jared Kirkwood — Above those means it has potential, but it’s not really performing well. Those are gonna be problem trees.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jared Kirkwood — We need to have honest conversations about replanting those problem trees.
Jared Kirkwood — Then you move over to the right, high potential, high performance, these are your flourishing trees. Those are the ones that you do everything you can to feed those, give it as much nutrients as possible because it is feeding the whole garden. And then below that one, which is high performance, but low potential, these are the things that we call nice plants.
Jared Kirkwood — And honestly, there are a lot of our Tier C events. These are good things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — …that we don’t want to get rid of, but we are not going to fuel and fund and resource and build new teams. We’re not going to over market and promote those things because they’re nice to have, but they’re not nourishing to the entirety of the church.
Jared Kirkwood — Rooted, sorry to keep going back to it. Not only is that our pinnacle Tier A event, it is our our model example of a flourishing tree because of Rooted, it it launches new life groups, people um understand their their purpose in life. They start to jump into ministry teams. They start to give for the first time. They understand beautiful concepts around um sin and repentance and God’s grace in their life. People give their life to Jesus. It is truly nourishing for everything in our church. It extends into every ministry of our church. So we’re going to fuel that with everything we have.
Jared Kirkwood — Now to the left of that, again, those are the things that we have to find a way those those um those problem trees, which means they have the potential to feed the whole garden. And yet for some reason, something’s not working.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — These are my favorite conversations, because what we get to do is go. Oh, I love the potential with just a little bit of reworking, re-tweaking, maybe it needs a new leader or it needs ah a new initiative, a new level of of prioritization within our decision making. Then we know that that thing as well can become a flourishing tree. Jared Kirkwood — So that kind of helps maybe a ah framework understand…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like that.
Jared Kirkwood — …around how we make decisions, how we place certain things, how we prioritize things within our church calendar as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Can you give me an example? It can be theoretical, but like, is it, is it possible for problem trees to be trending in the wrong direction and be like, okay, this is like, it’s a problem tree becoming something that we want to pull. What would be an example of that? And is it, can you turn it, you know, have you, have you been able to see like, Hey, what does that replant look like functionally? Like what does that actually look like to ensure that we can try to push that towards flourishing rather than just having a kind of atrophy into like a weed that we want to pull out?
Jared Kirkwood — Yeah. So I’ll give you the real time example that we’re doing right now. Rich Birch — Yeah. Jared Kirkwood — We have noticed that while Rooted is a flourishing tree, Rooted generates life groups and candidly our life groups have become problem trees. They should, they have the same level of potential as Rooted does. Because if you’re in a life group, you should be hearing regularly about serving and generosity and repentance and and all these other great things, those seven rhythms of Rooted are carried into our life groups as well. Rich Birch — Yep. Jared Kirkwood — But why are we not seeing the same fruit from life groups as we do in Rooted? Why is it at our church that you could walk around here, you could attend a weekend service and be so utterly convinced that Rooted is incredible and yet not really ever hear about life groups? That’s kind of a problem.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Jared Kirkwood — So now a little a little bit of an interesting thing is that rarely do you see a problem tree become a weed. And the reason is with something is a pro… if something is a tree, it has the potential to feed the whole garden. Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Jared Kirkwood — If it’s truly a weed, it is taking a life from the garden. It is sucking nutrients, right? Rich Birch — Okay, and okay. Right. Right. Jared Kirkwood — And we got rid of most of those things. There’s still some lingering stuff. But what that looks like is that thing that’s like, we always do this. So I guess we’re just going to keep doing this. And it lives on the calendar. Somebody’s like, you see it move from one person to the next. Who wants this thing? I don’t really want to do this anymore. Then you got to send an all staff email. Hey, who wants to oversee this thing now? Those are those are your weeds. You got to pull those things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — When nobody wants it, it’s probably a weed.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — So the problem trees for us, life life groups has become that for us. And so what did I do? Just this week, well over the last couple of weeks. We promoted a new person onto my leadership team. I moved four people underneath them. I had a series of strategic meetings with them to talk about what would it take for life groups to become, to perform at the level of and of ah of a flourishing tree again. We identified those things. I took it to the ah senior leadership team with Eric as well. Looked at, looked at all of them and said, this is what we want to do. Everyone was like, absolutely. How can we help? Now we have our plan and our runway for over the next probably six months to really move that thing from high potential to equally as high of a performer. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. Jared Kirkwood — So it’s, it’s as fast as we can do it. You know, as soon as we assessed it, it only took us a couple of weeks to restructure and to find a new plan in order to really get us out of that, that problem tree category.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, and you can see, friends, that as you’re listening in, that even just having a a relatively simple framework, man, can be a powerful tool as we’re looking at the various aspects of what we’re doing. And there are a lot of churches that, um you know, we I used to joke, like when I started in ministry, that I I worked in… there were there were churches that bragged about the like, we’ve got 112 ministries. That was like, so that was a common way to to talk about church. And we realize, um you know, through wisdom of people like Eric who wrote “Simple Church” that like, Hey, this just doesn’t work. Like we can’t, we can’t do all of those things and we’re off task and we end up just creating fiefdoms and all that stuff. But having, having the guts to say, okay, let’s actually try to categorize what we’re doing, get some clarity on performance potential um and then start moving forward. That’s that’s that’s fantastic. Rich Birch — When you say um you know you feel like you’ve been able to eliminate all the weeds as an organization, that’s great. Maybe reflect back on that season. What was it, were there any telltale signs that as you looked across or as you’ve looked across maybe in other churches, they’re like, hey, this is the kind of thing, what you said there about like, oh, you’ve got to pass it around. That’s a good one. The like, hey, we got to give it extra energy beyond what it’s producing. That’s a good one. Any other kind of telltale signs of of weeds that we see in our organizations? Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, they’re usually things that are outside of your strategy.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jared Kirkwood — They’re things that are legacy, those sort of golden calves that are still walking around.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jared Kirkwood — They they tend to be things that it was handed off from one person to the next. Like it started as a great idea and then that person left or no longer wanted to do it and then the next person had to do it. It’s that thing where you keep seeing flyers and you go, wait, we still do that?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes. That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — You know, it’s like those those little things where you know you You walk in the men’s restroom and you’re like, wait, that we’re still promoting this thing? You know, whatever it is. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Jared Kirkwood — It’s it’s a bunch of little things where if you’ve forgotten about it, it’s probably a weed.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — And then you have the hard work of honoring the people who love it, because there are always people who love whatever that thing is.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — There’s going to be a contingency of people who that is their thing. And so change management requires of us to listen and understand, but then help them see that there’s a more beautiful future down the road and you’re gonna help them get there. There’s another thing, there’s something that’s more in line with our strategy or more updated with where we’re going of which you can see and they can’t. So it’s our responsibility to acknowledge that it’s painful for them…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jared Kirkwood — …to experience that a little bit with them and then bring them somewhere.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jared Kirkwood — You don’t just cancel it and be the guy that sends the email and it’s just over. You gotta walk people with it. Rich Birch — Right. Jared Kirkwood — And then one last thing I’ll say with this, with this Rich, because I I do think that this is a way for, for maybe those of us who have some staff teams that are excited about creating new things and they want to generate a bunch of new events and programs and ministries and all of that. My audit on when somebody is starting to generate and create new things, I tend to stop and ask them, Hey, can you tell me a couple stories about what’s happening in your ministry from your experience?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Jared Kirkwood — So just check them a little bit and say, what’s going on in our kids’ ministry? Tell me about a new family that just showed up. Or tell me about the the Rooted group that you just led. Or tell me something that is kind of showing me that you are shepherding the people of our church. You’re not just leading them and making decisions independent on your own. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s really good. Jared Kirkwood — Does that make sense? Rich Birch — Totally, for sure. Jared Kirkwood — It’s like this it’s like if if you’re doing the work of ministry, there’s so much time that we can spend just caring for people, discipling the individual. Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep. Jared Kirkwood — That that really can take a lot of time, as it should…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jared Kirkwood — …because we’re talking about the spiritual formation of a bunch of people.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jared Kirkwood — You probably don’t have a bunch of time to whip up a whole bunch of new ideas, you know? Rich Birch — Let’s go. Yeah, let’s go dream up some new stuff. Jared Kirkwood — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. No, that’s good. Stop starting things. I’ve heard that before. You know, that’s the, you know, we don’t want to just start stuff. You know…
Jared Kirkwood — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …let’s, let’s work on what’s in front of us and the people that are in front of us, the community that’s in front of us. That’s ah yeah, that’s so good. Love it. Love it. Jared Kirkwood — So if I added one last part, stop starting things…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jared Kirkwood — …and just keep shepherding people. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good, dude. Jared Kirkwood — Just keep shepherding. Rich Birch — That’s so good. That’s so good. Jared Kirkwood — Cause if you just keep shepherding people, you really will, the stop starting will take care of itself. Rich Birch — Right, that’s good. Yeah, because there is a tendency I think to, well, there’s ah definitely a shiny objects shiny object syndrome that we that some leaders have, we have, I have, where it’s like, man, if we just did this, this would be the thing that would unlock that. But oftentimes the thing that actually helps people take steps towards Jesus is stuff we have been doing for a long time, but we just have got our eyes off it. We haven’t been focusing on it. We haven’t been spending the time, effort, energy to do it. So yeah, that’s a good word for sure. and As we’re coming to kind of land the episode today, any kind of final words that you would say is just where we’re kind of wrapping up today’s conversation? Jared Kirkwood — Well, you know, when I think about the beautiful thing that God is doing right now, he he he is on the move. Rich Birch — Amen. So true. Jared Kirkwood — And and has been for thousands of years, and it is such a gift to be a part of this this kingdom that is now and not yet, that the world as it grows seemingly darker around us, and who knows what people attach their hope to. People attach their hope to all kinds of things. But if it isn’t Jesus, it’s going to rise and fall with whatever the current climate is of of culture. Jared Kirkwood — And as pastors, I’m just so grateful that not only do we place our hope in Jesus, but that’s the main mandate that we have as as leaders, is that we might be able to point people towards Jesus. Because when we do that, we can eliminate some of the doubts, the distractions, the pain of unforeseen circumstances. We can remind them that Jesus is with them in this very moment. Jared Kirkwood — The reason I say that is is even as pastors, what we get distracted by oftentimes is the management of people. It is the leadership of programs, ministries, and events. We can get sidelined and sideways around the business of the church.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — And if we remind ourselves of the hope of Jesus in our life and our family’s life, then we lead our teams that way. What you pour into your teams is what will overflow into their teams and will overflow into the church. So let’s just keep our eyes on Jesus. Rich Birch — So good. Jared Kirkwood — I know it’s so simplistic…
Rich Birch — No, no, not at all. That’s good.
Jared Kirkwood — …and yet I’m a pretty simple, I’m a pretty simple person if I’m being honest.
Rich Birch — No, no, that’s good. No, that’s such such a good word. That’s that’s a good encouragement for us, a great place to end today’s episode. Friends, you really should be following along. You should be following Mariners and tracking what they’re doing. If you you’re not familiar with Rooted, you should definitely check that out. Where do we wanna send people online to track with you or to track with the church? Where’s the best place for us to send them? Jared Kirkwood — Yeah, I would be I’d be honored if you just checked out what our church is doing across all social channels. We’re at, I almost forgot, @marinerschurch. That would be embarrassing. Like @marinerschurch. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Jared Kirkwood — And and I lead our Irvine campus @marinersirvine is is that one. um I’m really boring on Instagram. It’s @jaredkirkwood, but really you’re just going to see pictures of my kids. So hey, as long as you enjoy that, that’s great. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Jared Kirkwood — um And then one last thing that I would just say is is we have chosen our our online church model to be um not a live look in, but instead where we teach direct to camera. Rich Birch — Yep. Jared Kirkwood — In fact, later on today, I’ll be filming one of our weekend messages. And we have decided, we have made the decision back in the COVID days that we were gonna be committed to building an online community that is not peeking in to the people in front of us. So we contextualize our messages to those who are spread all around the world. Like if you really are thinking about an online strategy for your church, we have decided that this is best for us.
Rich Birch — Yep. Jared Kirkwood — And I’d love for you to just take a look at what we’re doing. If you watch a couple of messages, you’ll really understand how we shape and direct um and contextualize to ah did um a community that will never really be in the in in relationship with one another. And they can be in relationship, but not in person. Rich Birch — Yep. Jared Kirkwood — And so if you’re interested, we’re committed to it and would love to teach, you know, however we’re doing it. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I, yeah, I would encourage that. That’s a great that’s a great word. Maybe something we can have down the road, having to have more conversation about, but it it is… ah Mariners is one of the churches that I point to, because it seems like, you know, there is like this movement of saying, hey, we should get out of all this stuff. And I’m like, eh, that’s not what I see in churches that are prevailing. And Mariners is one of those saying, hey, we’re trying to invent the future and figure out how do we connect with people. And yeah you’re doing a great job on that front. So Jared, I really appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much. Honored to get a chance to spend some time with you today. Thank you, sir. Jared Kirkwood — Thank you, Rich. Thanks for all that you’re doing. Thanks for the unSeminary podcast and all the resources you provide. Big fan, man. Appreciate it.
Building Leaders for the Next Generation: Insights on Developing Residency Programs with Pat Gillen
Dec 05, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Pat Gillen, the Executive Pastor of Families and a teaching pastor from First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church in South Carolina.
How are you cultivating leaders at your church? Are you trying to figure out your next step for developing Gen Z? Tune in as Pat unpacks his church’s innovative strategy for nurturing young leaders through their comprehensive residency program.
The need for more leaders. // As one of the fastest growing churches in the country, First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church is currently operating eight campuses, with plans to add a ninth. A distinguishing feature of their approach is the commitment to live teaching at each campus, rather than relying on video sermons. However, as the church has grown, so has the need for effective leaders who can embody the church’s vision and mission. This need for leadership development led to the establishment of a residency program aimed at nurturing young leaders who can step into various roles within the church.
A two-year program. // The residency program is designed for recent college graduates and spans two years. During that time, residents are integrated into a ministry team, working closely with ministry leaders who act as mentors. This structure allows residents to invest around 30 hours a week in various ministry roles, gaining practical experience and exploring their calling while contributing to the church’s mission. At the end of that two-year timeframe, residents have the opportunity to apply for a position within the church, or take what they’ve learned and use it elsewhere.
Look within your church. // Sourcing residents can be a challenge, but Pat suggests starting by building and nurturing the leaders you have growing in your church. Begin by developing students in your youth ministry who are looking for opportunities to lead and serve. By investing in and nurturing their leadership potential, you can create a pipeline of future leaders who are already familiar with your church’s culture and mission.
Set expectations. // Pat explains that working in the residency program at the church won’t necessarily guarantee residents a job there. The focus is on personal and professional development, helping residents discover their calling and equipping them for future ministry roles. Pat recommends that after the first year of residency, mentors should have a conversation with their resident about their next steps and how the church can best equip them moving forward.
Assign a mentor. // During their time learning from the church, assign the resident a ministry leader to mentor them. Residents should be integrated into the church’s ministry teams, where they participate in discussions, discipleship, and practical training. Mentors are responsible for guiding residents, helping them identify their goals, and providing the necessary support to achieve those objectives.
Offer expert sessions. // First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church also has equipping sessions for their residents. Some of the church’s best leaders will spend two hours on Wednesday mornings sharing their expertise on a variety of topics, such as counseling, budgeting or other real-world ministry challenges. These sessions gives residents the benefit of the entire staff and not only the ministry leader they work alongside.
Developing leaders takes time. // Pat warns against viewing a resident as free labor to help out with menial tasks, rather than a chance to invest in future leaders. It’s a time commitment to develop leaders effectively. This investment not only benefits the residents but also multiplies the church’s capacity for ministry.
Invest in future leaders. // Prioritize investing in the next generation, starting with your kids’ ministry and youth ministry. By identifying and nurturing potential leaders early on, your church can create a pipeline of talent that will sustain your ministries for years to come.
Visit upstatechurch.org to connect with Pat and follow along with what First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church is doing. You can also find our interview with Brian Owens, the Executive Pastor of Operations here.
EXTRA CREDIT // Get the Leadership Residency Program Progress Tracker Templates!
If you’re serious about developing the next generation of church leaders, the Leadership Residency Program Progress Tracker Templates is an invaluable resource. This fillable PDF includes:
Monthly Progress Check-In Tool – Help residents reflect on their growth and stay focused on their goals.
Reflection & Goal-Setting Prompts for Residents – Encourage deeper thinking and alignment with the church’s mission.
Quarterly Performance Review Template – A structured way to review progress and set actionable plans for future growth.
Perfect for churches looking to support their leadership residents, this tool streamlines progress tracking and goal-setting in a practical, easy-to-use format. Available exclusively through unSeminary Extra Credit.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. Wow, I’m so excited for today’s conversation. Really looking forward to this because two reasons. One, ah it’s another leader from a church that we had on a few months ago and it’s always good to keep leaning in and learning from churches that are prevailing, making a difference. And then the second, what we’re talking about today is one of those areas that I know all of our churches are wrestling with. We’re thinking about how do we do what we’re going to talk about today. So you’re going to be rewarded by ah leaning in today and and learning. I’m super excited to have Pat Gillen with us. He is from First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church, a fantastic church located in South Carolina. ah They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country with, I believe, eight or nine campuses, if I’m counting correctly. Rich Birch — They offer services in Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English. Brian is the executive pastor of operations. Sorry, Brian is executive pastor operations who we had on in the spring. Pat is the Executive Pastor of Families and Fountain Inn Teaching Pastor and has established a residency program in the church. So really excited to have Pat with us today. Welcome. So glad you’re here. Pat Gillen — Yeah, so glad to be here with you today. Rich Birch — Yeah, it was great having Brian on back in the spring and excited to have you here today. Why don’t you fill out the picture a little bit? Yeah. I, when people say like good things about other people they work with, that’s positive. Pat Gillen — Yeah.
Pat Gillen — Yeah, nobody doesn’t like Brian. He’s so. Rich Birch — Ah, that’s fun.
Rich Birch — Well, why don’t you kind of fill out the picture there a little bit, maybe for people that didn’t catch our episode in the spring or how, you know, people say, Oh, tell me about the church. What’s it kind of describe it to us? Tell us a but little bit about it. Pat Gillen — Yeah, sure. We’re we’re kind of an established church that probably 20 years ago got into multi-site and didn’t really um fully get into the model we’re in until ah about eight years ago, where we started replicating ourselves in other places instead of just having sort of a daughter campus, you know, that was somewhere else.
Pat Gillen — And so it’s been a part of our DNA, maybe even in the background for quite a while, but in the past eight years, truly, God’s used it in a special way. So you said eight or nine campuses that’s actually pretty accurate. We’re at eight and voting on a ninth right now…
Rich Birch — Oh, oh great. Love it.
Pat Gillen — …trying to figure out that step so we’re in that same kind of limbo stage where we’re about to get nine locations. But it’s such an exciting thing for us because what’s unique about us is we do live teaching at each campus so we don’t do ah video venue or anything like that. We’re not against it. We don’t think it’s bad. But especially in our area, there are a lot of other churches that are doing that. So kind of what helps us stand apart and be unique is having campuses with live teachers.
Pat Gillen — And so and that’s kind of created even our conversation today. What’s brought us to that is it’s almost created a vacuum of of need for leaders that can step up that are a part of our vision and understand it and kind of step into those spots. So that’s been an exciting thing for us as we’ve grown from, when I got here, we had three campuses. Two of those, like I said, we’re almost really like daughter churches. They kind of did their own thing. And then we we covered the bill if they didn’t cover everything. And now ah those campuses have have been reformed once spun off as really truly a mission or daughter church in that way.
Pat Gillen — The other one is was our first ah Upstate Church campus, our Harrison Bridge campus. And then since then, we’ve added so many more. And so it’s such a great thing to be a part of ah communities here in the Upstate. And that’s really our goal and our mission is to reach the Upstate of South Carolina for the kingdom, to connect people to Jesus here. So it’s been awesome.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well, I, you know, just to kind of put this conversation in context for folks that are listening in that may not know, but we’re still at a place where over 50% of multisite churches don’t get beyond three locations. So your church is rare air. I know you know that is rare air in the fact that you’re eight looking at nine, you know, that we’re down into single digit percentage of multisite churches in the country that have that many locations, which is amazing. Rich Birch — But then even more notable, like you said, on the teaching front, so the shorthand we say all the time, which is statistically true, but you got to have somebody that bucks the statistics is the larger the church and the more campuses they have, the more likely they are to to use video content. So the fact that you are continuing on with um you know, in-person teaching at all these locations does put you in in a rare air. Part of why I think it’s a great conversation to have today.
Rich Birch — Maybe before we get into specifically about residency programs, which we want to kind of dive into, how are you training those people? Talk to me through that kind of campus pastor, teaching campus pastor, teaching pastor role. Why is that, you know, you kind of gave us the the quick answer, oh, all the churches are doing video. But talk us through that a little bit more. Because it’s a huge investment to say like, hey, we’re going to try to keep, you know, growing people and making that happen. Why are you doing that? What are you learning on that front? Why do you think continue to think that’s the best move for the church? Pat Gillen — Absolutely. Yeah I think a lot of that comes from our lead pastor and his humility.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Pat Gillen — And this is not in any way to say that a pastor would be prideful on video. But his humility and letting other people lead and and have that ah pulpit in those locations is such a um a great leadership tool for him.
Pat Gillen — I think ah part of the way we’ve looked at it is like we can be more effective if we know the people and we’re face to face with the people, if we have that opportunity. So ah most of our campuses we operate in kind of a huddle model, hub model where ah within our original campus or original location there are four churches or four other campuses rather that are within probably 12 to 15 minutes of that.
Pat Gillen — So we’re kind of hitting um the extension of where people you know may still feel like it’s it’s possible to drive here, but they would love one more in their community. So it’s also a little unique because one of our campuses is 3.1 miles away.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Yeah, that’s very close. Pat Gillen — So it just feels like it’s a crazy idea, um but it’s something that really birthed out of our pastor. If we’re going to reach the upstate, then we need to have ah campuses that are in these communities that are trying to reach those communities for the kingdom. And so it’s really less about um us trying to put everybody in one building or try we say, instead of building up, we’re trying to build out.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Pat Gillen — So a lot of our efforts are that way. It does mean we duplicate a lot of processes in those campuses that other a church that runs our size that maybe in one location would not have to reproduce You don’t have to have ah nine communicators on a Sunday morning.
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — You just need one. And so there’s a lot of that that I think we’ve had to figure out through the years. But it’s really allowed us to have a touch point in the upstate that’s unique and different and um kind of have our own um and flair and ministry. Rich Birch — Love it.
Pat Gillen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So good. And well, let’s talk about the residency program. So this is a part of kind of there’s there’s ah there’s a problem in churches, which is how do we develop leaders? And you’ve you know clearly outlined why there’s even kind of you’ve decided to have a whole other layer on top of that, which is you know nine communicators. That’s a big piece of the puzzle. But let’s talk through first just the you know the kind of problem part of the equation.
Rich Birch — So um why residency, what got you into this? Why what what led you to the place was there you know that said, hey, this is the area, then we need to spend more time on this. what do what’s the What’s the itch you’re trying to scratch? What’s the pain you’re trying to solve through you know this effort? Pat Gillen — Well, I probably like a lot of people. I went, I graduated from Liberty University. Went from Liberty to Southeastern, right Seminary in North Carolina, right out of high school, or right out of college. And I was just figuring life out. Rich Birch — Yes. Pat Gillen — And I joined a church staff and it was ah it was a great church. I loved it. I still love the people, still connected with those people there, even though it’s been over 20 years. But I just didn’t have anybody pouring into me. I didn’t have anybody helping walk along with me. And of course I had seminary classes but the whole point of your podcast they weren’t teaching practical leadership ah skills. You know we were learning how to teach the word and we’re learning how to preach exegetically. Um, we did a lot of great things there, but, uh, learning some of those practical skills, I had to learn on my own.
Pat Gillen — And if so, it was just a difficult thing. Um, I feel like I didn’t figure out till maybe I was closer to 30 in ministry before I really started, you know, kind of hitting my stride and feeling like I’m, I’m getting a lot more effective here and I know what I’m doing and I’ve kind of figured things out. So really kind of started even almost from that standpoint for me, how can I help young leaders, not be thrown into the fire or or thrown to the lion, so to speak, where they’re trying to figure it out. They’re making mistakes that could be career ending mistakes for some of them, even if they’re not a moral failure, but just um they lose the leadership of the people, or they deal with all kinds of other things. Pat Gillen — And so we wanted to create a scenario where we could develop leaders, help them walk them through that process, help them discover their calling. That’s really the the itch that we’re trying to scratch. Obviously, here, every time we launch a campus, we we launch it with a campus pastor, a worship ah leader, and then a kids coordinator. So for every one of those campuses we launch, we’ve got to have another kids person in the boot. Rich Birch — Yeah. Pat Gillen — And then soon after that, a student person, ah depending on size. Rich Birch — Yep. Pat Gillen — So um it’s it’s something that we’re constantly trying to find new faces and new leaders. And so as a church, we are feeling that pain at the pace we’re growing. You mentioned I think we’re a ninth fastest growing church in the nation ah this past year and the fastest growing Southern Baptist Church. So for us, it really has been a pain point of how can we get the right leaders in there, not just a warm body, not just somebody who um you know can can stand there and do a halfway decent job. But how can we get the right leader that’s going to help and and actually be somebody we can trust in that campus? Rich Birch — Love it. So let’s let’s talk about when you say residency, what does that mean? You know what is I’ve heard churches use that word. When you use the word residency, what do you mean by that? Pat Gillen — Yeah, we’ve talked a little bit about even changing the name to School of Ministry or something along that lines. But essentially for us, what a residency is, is two years post-college. We encourage them to do graduate school, seminary, depending on what they do. ah So if we we may have a communications person or a worship person that doesn’t pursue a seminary degree but gets a certificate instead…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …or um does a different kind of training. But we pursue seminary education as a part of that and that’s that’s really a process. So college graduates, they spend two years with us and after that two years, man, we’re just we’re really hoping whether it’s a two-year job interview that they are able to come on with us, or we actually get to send them out. And our hope and our prayer is to impact the upstate of South Carolina, so you know we want people that we can feed into churches to be leaders in the upstate and lead their church to healthy models too. Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s talk about where you find these residents. Cause I think people could agree like, Oh yeah, I’d love to find…
Pat Gillen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like, that seems like a sweet spot. Man, if I could, if I could find a regular batch of, you know, post, you know, graduate kind of folks that are just finished school and they’re looking for this kind of thing, how how are you finding them? What’s been your, your sweet spot on finding folks? Pat Gillen — Oh, that’s great. I think part of it for us is we’re not in a college town.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Pat Gillen — We’re also we’re not close to a lot of seminaries or anything like that. Anderson University is about 45 minutes to an hour away. We have a campus there.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Pat Gillen — And North Greenville is about the same distance away. We don’t have a campus up there yet. But we do have some connections. So there are some relationships that have helped, I think, through that. But I think the main thing for us, we’re actually trying to develop um our leaders here when they’re in high school. We’re trying to pour into them, disciple them…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Pat Gillen — …nurture that calling that they have, and actually create a pipeline to to keep building into them. Because we know, and you know you’ve heard it said, like students are not the leaders of tomorrow. They’re the leaders of today. We’ve heard those kind of sound bites. But a lot of people aren’t giving them opportunities to lead, giving them opportunities to serve. So we elevate those leaders, give them opportunities to lead, and then always try to develop in them a sense of…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Pat Gillen — …hey, when when you are ready to discover that calling, we wanted you to be a part of this back. So I would say probably a number of of our residents are ones that were either a part of our ministry before or at least while they were in college, ah connected with us to some level. And so that’s probably the majority of us.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good
Pat Gillen — We’re trying to say, hey, how can we develop leaders in-house. And honestly, the people that we may even hire one day out of the residency program, and we hired two full-time just recently with this last group that graduated for us, is they know us better than anybody that we could bring in, you know? Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. They get a huge head start. That’s great. I love that. I remember um just recently I was at a church where they were talking about a young adult weekend. They had like a bunch of young adults went away to a conference. And at the conference, it was like a weekend thing, and the um the speaker, they had like a it felt really old school like back from when you and I seemed like similar generation when we started ministry where there was like a, do, are you sensing a call to full-time vocational ministry we want to get you, you know, come to the front now we want to pray for you kind of thing. And I was and I was encouraging this church I was like man we got to do that.
Pat Gillen — Right.
Rich Birch — Like because it feels like we dropped that out of the equation in a lot of our student ministries that was like it’s just not a part of the conversation. And we’re missing that. So I love that you’re, hey, even with high school students trying to raise the value of that and trying to get out in front of that.
Rich Birch — Talk me through the tension of, um you know, this is a ah training process. We’re trying to actually develop leaders. um This isn’t like a ah two year job interview. Like they, it’s they’re not guaranteeing people like, hey, you’re going to get a job. How do you talk about that with people with potential residents? And then how do you think about that? How do those two things kind of relate together? Pat Gillen — Yeah. I mean, we, uh, we tell them from the beginning, it’s not a promise…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …to a job here at our church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Pat Gillen — And who’s to say we would even be in the financial situation by that point…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …that we could hire them on. Um, so we, we, you know, would be willing to have that conversation, but we’re really just upfront from the beginning about that.
Rich Birch — Right. Pat Gillen — Usually about a year into the residency, we start talking, all right, next steps. Uh, what do we need to start looking at? How can we help equip you the best…
Rich Birch — Good.
Pat Gillen — …to be prepared for those, whatever’s next for you, whether that’s here or somewhere else. And even ones that we would really love to hire, I’ll I’ll get phone calls from people and I’ll still pass their information along…
Rich Birch — Oh, really? Good for you. Yeah.
Pat Gillen — …because I want I don’t want to stand in the way of what God may be leading them to do. But that’s not what what we’re about. We’re really kingdom-minded in the way that we’re approaching this to say, that’s That’s our goal is not to say, hey, how can we build up ourselves? But really, how can we build up those next leaders? Pat Gillen — You’re right, man. Like I don’t know I don’t want to blame student ministries or student pastors, but as a church as a whole, we are not um inviting people to step up and pursue the calling that God has on their lives for ministry. Rich Birch — Right. Pat Gillen — And so oftentimes it’s like, well, they just don’t make money, or they work crazy hours. And that’s true. Those those things are all a factor. Rich Birch — Yeah, those things are true. Pat Gillen — But in reality, the best part about this program that we tell them is we’re helping you discover your calling. Rich Birch — So good. Pat Gillen — So, you know, I came out of ministry. I felt like I had a specific calling to student ministry when I started out. And that’s where I started while I was in seminary. I’ve been in several different roles since then, obviously. But I felt that kind of clarity. A lot of ah Gen Z is coming out of college and going, I don’t know yet. I don’t know what I want to do. Rich Birch — Right. Pat Gillen — I don’t know how I want to fit. And so part of what we’re trying to do is say, okay, let’s let’s investigate that. What are you interested in? What do you feel led toward? Let’s kind of steer you that direction. And then six months in, if that’s not a fit, you know, and it’s not working, let’s try something else. Rich Birch — Right. Pat Gillen — And I love that because it really gives you the ability to have your finger in multiple ah levels or multiple areas of ministry to see this is the one I’ve been really passionate about that God is leading me down that path. And so that I mean I wish I had that even though I felt that certain conviction of myself myself in the student ministry at the beginning. I love that heart and that passion that that students can have or or our ah residents can have to to discover that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. Now what about, I’m sure a part of what you end up doing is having a conversation with the leaders at your church and trying to help them catch a vision for like, Hey, there’s like a, my impression of, of this kind of situation is it’s like, it’s two steps backwards to go one step forward or other way around two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward. Like there’s a, we’ve got to slow down and develop leaders. Pat Gillen — Yeah. Rich Birch — I’m sure, or is it just everybody at upstate, it’s like, we’re all for developing leaders and I don’t mind spending extra time on this stuff. How do you work that through with your team internally who might be hesitant to you know want to invest in a resident, spend time with them, that sort of thing? Cause they’re like, I got lots going on already. Pat Gillen — Yeah, you’re right. Everybody’s schedule is full. I would say it’s probably less that they’re not interested in developing leaders than we do have some that may not know how to. Or know how they’re supposed to invest in those leaders. Pat Gillen — Kind of what we do is in the residency program is we bring them in. We are a team and we function as a team. And there are things that we cover as a team that we talk about, we discuss, we do discipleship together, we do what we call equipping, which is practical ministry and in many ways, theological ministry, ah discussing through, um you know, some even deep theological issues through that as a team to kind of really help them develop ah depth ah to what they believe.
Pat Gillen — But we set them in a ministry and we consider that ministry leader their actual boss. So um that ministry leader has the ability, for instance, ah Steve, our missions pastor, executive pastor missions, has the ability to actually pour into the resident that he has, spend an extreme amount of time with him, finding out what his specific goals are and how he can help him meet those goals. Pat Gillen — And so it’s kind of a, um it’s kind of a win-win because we’re helping the residents meet those goals. They’re helping us reach goals. Rich Birch — Yep. Pat Gillen — You know, they’re a part of our team. um We get somebody who’s here that is ah not just an, not an intern or anything like that. They’re putting in you know, 30 hours a week with us.
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — And, uh, and able to help us move the, move the ball forward, especially as we continue to expand. But really we’re able to put that time in. They’re not just moving chairs, you know? Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. Pat Gillen — We’re trying to develop as a leader. I mean, that was the old idea, like, Oh, you got an intern, have them set up the tables.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Pat Gillen — Like this is, this is not that at all. Rich Birch — You’ll pick up the Chick-fil-A or whatever. Yeah, it’s not that we’re doing more than… Pat Gillen — Yeah, exactly. Now there may be, so there may be some of that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, but that’s normal in ministry. That’s not That’s a part of life for sure.
Rich Birch — Well, one of the things I I love about this is, and I’ve said this for years, I’m like, man, you can in school, you can learn like the right thing to say or the right kind of theologically true stuff. But there’s it’s very different when, you know for instance, the first time someone that you’re sitting across the coffee table with, a volunteer, somebody that we’re at your church says, I’m thinking about leaving my wife. You know, man yeah what we don’t want is people you know to flub that interaction. And you know the getting people real world experience like that in ah in a in a safe environment where that’s not all lies on you, because um unfortunately, like you know, what you say in the next 30 seconds after someone says that to you matters. Like it it’s it’s…
Pat Gillen — Yeah, that’s right.
Rich Birch — You know, and there’s lots of those. There’s lots of examples of that kind of stuff. Talk me through, um you know, what does that look like? I’m trying to give people some real world, um whether it’s pastoral care or, you know, maybe it’s like a preaching thing where it’s like, hey, the stakes are a little bit higher here, but we’re doing it in a way that gives them some support so that they can gain that experience, but that we’re not also dropping the ball with our people. Pat Gillen — Well, that’s so true. And I iI think a lot of us learn that the hard way.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Pat Gillen — And, you know, I tell people you can never surprise me when when I’m in a counseling session. And there’s sometimes I’m like…
Rich Birch — Just did.
Pat Gillen — …that actually I’m just not a game face right now. Rich Birch — Yes. Pat Gillen — So I think what we do with our equipping sessions, we bring some of the best leaders on our church staff to actually adopt one of those times.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Pat Gillen — And they’ll spend two hours with them on a Wednesday morning and they’ll pour out like ah their expertise on counseling, or their expertise on how to handle a funeral, or how to handle a wedding, or um or just how to how to deal with somebody who’s struggling with same-sex attraction, or or somebody who’s depressed or has anxiety, or even just like how to how to create a budget.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
Pat Gillen — Like these are things that you did not learn in class. Rich Birch — No, sure. Pat Gillen — So we have our top leaders just just meeting with them, helping them develop ah pipelines, making sure they’re they’re making disciples who are making disciples. And ministry can easily become just, hey, I’ve got to get there to set up the chairs. I’ve got to make sure the lights are on. And we’re not truly pouring into people. And so equipping them to to look at ministry, not as the tyranny of the urgent…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …but to look at ministry as this is my opportunity to develop leaders, even as a 22 to 24 year old…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Pat Gillen — …looking ahead. And so they really get the benefit of our entire staff. It’s not like it’s…
Rich Birch — Yeah, just you.
Pat Gillen — …there’s one of us. I’m certainly not the expert that goes in there every week and tries to tell them how to how to do everything. So they get that benefit. Probably something our entire staff would but would really benefit from us doing um if we needed another meeting that would [inaudible]. But it is it is a ah great advantage for them.
Pat Gillen — And so we scope kind of a two-year curriculum for that, if you want to consider it that way, so that we can repeat it every two years. So no matter where somebody comes in on our residency program, they’ll ah they’ll actually get all of those pieces. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Yeah, I love that. Rich Birch — I love that. That’s, you know, that’s so fantastic. So it’s just you and me, Pat, you know, there’s nobody else listening in. Pat Gillen — All right. Rich Birch — What’s that thing about, you know, it’s kind of like the dirty secret or the pothole to avoid about residency programs that like, hey, nobody told us this. Nobody said there would be this problem. You know, I know that there’s like real issues with doing this. What are the thing that you, you say to friends, that they’re they’re like, Hey, we’re thinking about this. You may not say it in a podcast in front of people, but you know, you’re, you’d you’d love to [inaudible] it’s just us. We’re just just just chatting about what’s going on. Pat Gillen — Right, right, right. Well, I think the biggest thing when I’m talking to other people is churches see what we do and they think, oh, I get free labor.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Pat Gillen — And so um I can take advantage of that and get some free labor. And they’re looking just to offload work…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …instead of looking to develop a leader.
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — So the number one thing I would say, and you kind of hit on earlier, that people overlook is the time investment…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …that it actually takes to develop a leader. But ultimately you’re multiplying yourself. You’re able to do far more than you could by doing that. I think a lot of people don’t see that.
Rich Birch — Appreciate that.
Pat Gillen — And I would I would also say the the generational thing is probably always a challenge. Just um with Gen Z, we tell our our group, we’re like, this residency is designed for you to take initiative. And so there’s a fundraising component to what we do.
Rich Birch — Okay. Pat Gillen — And we thought, we’re like, hey, at one point, maybe we should do what we can to pay them instead of doing the fundraising, if we could ever get to that point, which would be great. And then really, the more we prayed about it, the more we thought about it, we’re like, this fundraising component actually helps them realize they’ve got to get out there…
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — …they’ve got to make connections, they’ve got to talk to people, they’ve got to hustle. And that’s what our residency is about. It’s about kind of putting them in scenarios where, excuse me, it putting them in scenarios where if they’re waiting on somebody else to tell them what to do. This is going to be a long two years.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Pat Gillen — But they’re connected with the ministry leader. They’re seeing holes that they can uniquely identify um because they have fresh eyes. They have fresh experiences and trying to fill those holes and step up…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Pat Gillen — …and help us excel and improve as a ministry. So I think a lot of people overlook that. They think, hey, it’s this is just going to be a a free person and they should be lucky. They should be thankful for us that we’re giving them a house to live in or whatever the case is. Rich Birch — Right. Pat Gillen — And so instead, we we feel grateful that we have these young leaders who’d be willing to spend two years with us and develop their skills as a part of our community. Rich Birch — That’s cool. What what do you say, you know, what’s the kind of time commitment on on your side? Like if you were to say, like one of those, the super people that’s a supervisor, what does that look like? And then what would you say at kind of a central team, whether it’s yourself or like, give us a sense of what that kind of time commitment is on both sides. So if I’ve got a resident in my area that, what does that look like? And then kind of as an organization, what what do you, what do you feel like you’re investing? Pat Gillen — That’s good. Basically, it’s like having a part-time employee with you. Rich Birch — Okay. Pat Gillen — So what we have been doing in the past is almost probably the opposite way of what we should be doing it. We have a resident that would apply and that resident is interested in student ministry. I’ll contact our student ministry and say, let’s interview this person. Let’s see if they would be a good fit.
Rich Birch — Okay. Pat Gillen — And we go that direction. What we’re trying to move toward is actually having those ministry leaders say, hey, I’m looking for somebody and I would love to have somebody develop.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Pat Gillen — And so that way we can be more intentional as we interview these residents and bring them on to to plug them up with a need that we have specifically as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Pat Gillen — So it’s just going to help us maybe multiply a little better in that way. But yeah, I would say 20 to 25 hours that they spend with the ministry hands on, depending on the ministry, some of those can be, um you know, nights or or weekends. And some of those are in the office, you know, just a regular type job. It just depends on what type of ministry they’re in. And I tell residents or future residents, if we have it at our church, you can do it. So, communications ministry, or um senior adults, or kids, if if you’re interested in any of those things, you can apply as a part of our residency. And so… Rich Birch — That’s cool. Pat Gillen — …part of that’s going to really be birthed out of now those leaders saying, okay, I could really use somebody to work with senior adults. And that may be a more difficult resident to find, but there’s some out there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pat Gillen — And so we’re going to try and and dig into what that looks like. And um a lot of our residents have two responsibilities or or what we call dual roles.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Pat Gillen — So they may have, ah they may be in one ministry for 10 to 15 hours, another ministry for 10 to 15 hours,. Or one one for 15, one for five or something like that. So just kind of gives them a little opportunity to to put their toe in a few different spots and see which one they’re more passionate about too. So um it really helps us having them around. I would say as part of our central resident team is is about a five hour or so commitment every week with us. Rich Birch — Okay. Pat Gillen — And then we tell them they’re full-time seminary students and they’re part-time with us. So we really want them to have time to focus on education and we believe that’s important. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Pat Gillen — So the way we particularly set that up from a financial standpoint is we actually give them a scholarship to pay for their seminary.
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting. Pat Gillen — And then we contribute toward their fundraising and then they raise the remaining of that fundraising on their own. And so ultimately, our church’s commitment is around $15,000 a year per resident…
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s great.
Pat Gillen — …ah but then they raise an additional amount of money ah for them as well. And then when we have a how housing option, we make that available to them. So I’ve got three houses right now that were parsonages from a church that merged with us.
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — Or a church that we or a house that we bought that’s because we wanted to to get the land next to our church or whatever. And so I’ll I’ll house them in there when that’s available too. So that really does become a ah huge benefit when they start counting the number. Rich Birch — Oh, yeah. Pat Gillen — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Well, and you can see where that, you know, that makes a lot of sense. I can see if somebody’s going to seminary, they’re like, okay, I could piece this together. I know there’s like that part of it. And I, you know, I like that, that fundraising piece. I could see, you know, that’s a, that’s, those are helpful skills to kind of work and exercise and, and yeah, the housing, all that. That’s yeah, that’s so good. Good stuff.
Rich Birch — Well, when you think about um kind of the future of the program and you’re thinking about where where did this could go, what are some of the questions you’re asking, or you look up over the horizon and you’re thinking, man, it’d be kind of fun to do this someday. It’s not necessarily today. What’s what’s the future look like for this, ah for Upstate?
Pat Gillen — Yeah, the future is exciting and scary all at the same time. As we continue to put campuses, ah you the most recent one we’ve been talking to is about an hour away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Pat Gillen — As we continue to do that and think through how do we develop this program and have leaders in that program, we’ve really got to think next level about that connectivity and making sure that we’re all on the same page and where we’re going to. Pat Gillen — So that’s a big challenge for us for any multi-site churches that are looking into that. I think I would love to learn from them too on how they’re best communicating with one another in that central team and looking at that ah from these guys. Because they won’t really be a part of a central team except for their connection with the residency. So um that’s probably the biggest question mark for us moving forward as we…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Pat Gillen — …if we get two and three hours away, how do we stay connected? How do we set that up? But it’s exciting as God continues to bring um amazing leaders our way. We’re we’re really still ah learning at this in many ways, but we have 10 residents starting in January…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Pat Gillen — …and we’ll open up a few more spots next year. Rich Birch — Yep. Pat Gillen — And so we hope to continue to be able to grow that as we move along.
Rich Birch — Yep. Rich Birch — That’s great. Man, it’s so exciting. I love it’s been so good to kind of get a little bit of behind the scenes curtain look into this. It’s just so ah we’re behind the curtain look in this. It’s so so exciting. Anything you’d like to share just as we kind of look to wrap up today’s episode? Pat Gillen — Oh man, just my heart to see leaders developed and my heart to see us lean into the next generation is something I feel like, you know, God’s given me a passion for. And certainly just as a challenge for churches if they’re trying to figure out where to start, um they should start with their kids ministry.
Rich Birch — Good call. Pat Gillen — They should start with their student ministry. I think sometimes we look for a leader to come in and fix things and we ourselves are not discipling the next generation to be leaders today right now where we are. So my challenge would just be that. I’d be like, hey, you you have what you need in front of you. And the churches that are struggling, the churches that we talk to often that are even closing their doors, are the ones that did not prioritize…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Pat Gillen — …the next generation and letting them lead.
Rich Birch — So good.
Pat Gillen — So that’s certainly my challenge and encouragement, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. I love a part of what I you love about what you’re saying here is for me, what is strikes me about churches like yours, yours specifically, um who are doing a good job on this residency, you know, thing or developing next generation leaders in even more broader sense is, you know, you’re not thinking about solving today’s problems residents are gonna solve they’re gonna solve some but they’re not gonna solve your January, February problems this year. You know what they are but but what you do know is, man, if we can train some people now and get really strategic about that now and apply effort to that and do that consistently. Man, two years from now, three years from now, four years from now, you’re going to have this pipeline of of of young leaders that you can plug in that, man, that gives you a huge leg up long term. So I just think that’s that’s just so encouraging to see, ah you know, your church you’re really trying to get intentional about this. So so good on you. Great stuff. Pat Gillen — Well, that’s true. One more thought, Rich, is a lot of churches will not have a problem with paying a fee to a hiring firm to get a pastor in. And if you think about what that fee generally costs and you invest that in the next generation instead, you can develop those same leaders…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Pat Gillen — …for probably less money than you’re paying just somebody else to to bring somebody in.
Rich Birch — Oh, absolutely. Like that. Well, that to talk about dirty secrets, like that is the dirty secret. The like man, like we all the reason why and I have friends that are in the kind of search business, like I get it, you know, that want to go and find… Pat Gillen — It’s a great ministry; it’s needed. Rich Birch — It’s very it’s needed, but those people end up hired. And I’ve hired those folks in the past when I’ve like, I’ve got a burning hole right now that I’m like, we have got to solve this problem. But the thing is, those come around with fair regularity, and if we can get ahead of it and think, okay, I don’t know, you know, I don’t know like In four years, I’m going to need more leaders. I know that. I don’t know what they’re goingI don’t know what we’re going to need them to do, but we’re going to need them somewhere.
Pat Gillen — Right.
Rich Birch — What can we do today to try to even get, like you’re saying, get into student ministry even earlier in the pipeline, starting to think about who are the young leaders? How do we identify them? What can we do? I just love that. That’s so good. Well, Pat, this has been a rich conversation. I really appreciate you ah being here today and helping us through this. Pat Gillen — Yeah. Rich Birch — Where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with you or with the church? Pat Gillen — Yeah. Upstatechurch.org would be a great place.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Pat Gillen — So I’d love to talk to anybody that wants any help or can help us. That’d be great. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Pat. Appreciate you being here today. Pat Gillen — Yeah. Thanks a lot, Rich.
Staying Aligned as a Staff Team in a Growing Church: Insights from Andy Hill
Nov 28, 2024
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Andy Hill, the Executive Pastor at Mobberly Baptist Church in Texas.
How do you keep your church’s staff aligned? The more your church grows, the more challenging it is to keep everyone connected and moving in the same direction. In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, Andy delves into practical strategies for communication, unity and relationship-building on staff, and encouraging self-care.
Gather staff to stay aligned. // Mobberly Baptist Church, which is located in East Texas on an 140-acre campus, may seem big at first glance. However, the church strives to maintain a smaller, more personal feel, desiring for both attendees and staff to feel seen and connected. While leading a large staff team can be beneficial, there can be practical challenges as well. At Mobberly the staff can’t be housed in one office building and so are scattered throughout the campus. As a result, staff members have to be intentional about time together. Mobberly holds a Ministry Leadership Team meeting once a week where 20-25 leaders gather to discuss key issues, worship, pray and laugh together, and develop their leadership.
Connection and planning. // The weekly Ministry Leadership Team meeting is held on Tuesday mornings for about two hours. The first half is facilitated by the lead pastor and includes prayer, a devotional and other activities that foster personal connection. The second half of the meeting is the tactical part and led by Andy.
Send out an agenda ahead of time. // In addition to personal connection, communication plays a critical role in keeping staff aligned. Every Monday, Andy meets with the lead pastor to talk about what needs to be discussed in the Ministry Leadership Team meeting the next day. They then send out an agenda to the leaders so everyone knows what will be covered.
Have fun and get to know each other. // Andy believes a staff team shouldn’t just do ministry together but get to know each other and build friendships. You don’t always have to see eye to eye and get along, but you should know more about your team and care about them. One of the unique aspects of Mobberly’s Tuesday meeting is the “hot seat” segment, where a staff member is put in the spotlight to answer a series of fun and light-hearted questions. This practice is designed to build a sense of camaraderie among the team members. Questions can range from: “How did you get your first name?” to “What is your favorite movie?” or “What is a quirk you have?”
Communication is key. // You can communicate in a lot of different ways and preferences often vary across generations, with some staff preferring emails while others respond better to texts or phone calls. Be mindful in the way you communicate with your staff team, understanding and catering to the communication preferences of different team members.
Communicate value. // How and when we communicate, or our lack of communication, will then communicate value to someone. If we don’t relay information to our staff in the right order or right way, they can feel frustrated, disempowered, and conclude that they don’t matter in the ministry.
The foundation for effective ministry. // Self-care is critical for all church staff. A healthy relationship with God and personal well-being are foundational for effective ministry. Andy encourages staff to prioritize their spiritual growth by setting aside time for personal devotions and prayer, separate from their responsibilities to prepare for sermons or lead Bible studies. Without caring for the different aspects of their being, church leaders’ capacity for life and ministry will be diminished.
To learn more about Mobberly Baptist Church and connect with Andy Hill, visit mobberly.org.
NEXT STEPS // Looking for a way to keep your church leadership team aligned and effective?
Check out our free Weekly Leadership Team Meeting Template, inspired by insights from Andy Hill’s podcast episode. This template breaks down Andy’s approach to balancing personal growth with tactical planning in a two-hour weekly meeting. It’s packed with practical tips to help your team stay spiritually grounded while navigating the complexities of church leadership. Download it now and start implementing these strategies in your next team meeting!
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. ah You’ve got lots of things you can do, but the fact that you’re listening for this next half an hour, you’re going to be rewarded. Today’s conversation, I know is going to be the thing, one of those things that we all think about, kind of regardless of our church size, what’s going on, how do we, um it’s one of these problems that we often are all thinking about. And so excited to have Andy Hill with us. He is the executive director at a fantastic church, multi-site church in from Texas, Mobberly Baptist Church. It was founded in 1938. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And on on top of having, you know, the in-person services and online, they also serve ah the local Hispanic and Vietnamese population. This is a fantastic church. If you’re not tracking with them, you should. Andy, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Andy Hill — Thanks for having me, Rich. Excited to be with you this morning.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be great. Why don’t you tell us a bit more, kind of fill out the picture about the church. If people were to arrive this weekend, what would they experience? Kind of give us the flavor of the church, help us kind of place us there a little bit more.
Andy Hill — Yeah, so ah we sit nestled in the piney woods of East Texas.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Andy Hill — We’re kind of deep into East Texas and ah The church itself is a pretty large campus. We actually have a lot of ah property, a lot of facility. And so we have a lot of people who, when they first see it, they say, man, this is big. But they tell us all the time that once they kind of get in the doors and they step into a service or start interacting, engaging with people, ah that it doesn’t feel big. It feels still like a ah little smaller church.
Andy Hill — And we’re pretty intentional about that. We we definitely try to do things to ah continue to help people feel connected, engaged, seen, right? We want people to feel seen because a lot of people come to ah a larger church to try to disappear, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — And we we want to help them ah grow in their relationship with Christ. And so and We believe that happens life on life. We believe that happens when when they’re seen, when they’re known, and when they know someone else. And so and when someone steps in the door, they’re going to be greeted by someone. There’s going to be multiple ministers and pastors standing there who are going to talk to them and ah try to connect them to one of our small groups, try to help their kids, if they have them, get connected to whether it’s youth or kids ministry or some of the different things we’ve got going on.
Andy Hill — So um we’re just very intentional about trying to keep a little bit of that ah smaller, more personal feel towards what happens here. And I think it’s making a difference. I think it’s having an impact.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. I know in the coaching I do with churches, you know, a lot of churches that are, say, above 1000 trying to push 2000, you know, I’ll often say that are a real quote unquote competition, although we don’t have any competition, but our, you know, that when if people were to leave our church and go somewhere else, oftentimes, if you were to do exit interview type conversations, trying to learn from those experiences, they will typically leave, people will typically, you see a trend there, they’ll leave a large church and not go to the other large church. They typically go to a very small church. They’ll go to like, you know, there’s a church around the corner and it’s 72 people and I feel known there.
Rich Birch — And so I love that you identified right up front, hey, we’re trying to help people get connected. We want them to be known, to be seen. Andy Hill — Yes.
Rich Birch — That’s that’s a huge deal. We got and we got to think about that strategically and we got to work on that, you know, in an intentional way. Well, I got to be honest. So I went on your website and we were, you know, learning a little bit about you. You’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And so we wanted to learn.
Rich Birch — And I went on your staff page and I had a bit of an experience. I was like, wow, there are a lot of people on the staff at, you know, Mobberly Baptist, one of these experiences of like…
Andy Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …I think your staff size is the size of the average church in the country, that which there’s people that are listening in that are like, that’s amazing.
Andy Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — that’s Isn’t that all good news? It’s like that’s just it’s just you know sunshine and unicorns all day long, but there’s like real challenges with that.
Andy Hill — Yes.
Rich Birch — That’s that’s got some real kind of tension. And so we’d love to talk today about keeping your team aligned, you know. What does that look like? Maybe first for for people, who help us understand maybe some of the struggles with that, having a large staff team trying. You know what is why would we even say like, hey, there’s a problem here that we should be thinking about um when you know when we have so many teams. And again, maybe it’s purely theoretical because there’s never a problem with your team, obviously. Everything’s always amazing. But what what would be some of the challenges of of leading a large staff team?
Andy Hill — Yeah, it’s not theoretical. It is very real and practical. So there there really are, when you have such a large team, I mean, there’s both just some practical challenges that we face um ah practically, like just, we can’t have all of our staff housed in office in one single kind of location
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — Which practically if we could have them all kind of in the same building during the week, Monday through Sunday, um you know, it would be a whole lot easier to keep ourselves aligned. Well, we we can’t do that. I mean, we didn’t, we didn’t get to this size overnight.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — You know, the church has grown over a long period of time. So, you know, we, we kind of have people in offices scattered throughout our, our property. And our property, we have, uh, we actually have 140 acres right here.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Andy Hill — And so, uh, over the 40 that house our, the heart of our campus and facilities, um, you know, we’ve got about five different buildings and we’ve got staff in three of those.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Andy Hill — Um, so, so we’re, we’re not together, uh, day to day as we just go throughout the week. And so um, that’s just a practical challenge.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andy Hill — And practically to address that there’s things that we have to be intentional to do. So, um, one of the things that we do is we gather together the leaders of those ministries. We call it a ministry leadership team. Um, and we gather them together once a week.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Andy Hill — And there’s 20, 25 people that get in a room, um, and, uh, we we talk about some key things that are coming up.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — We worship together. We pray for each other. We read a book together. ah So we’re we’re going through a book just as a team. We talk about it. Someone in that team is going to lead a devotional that day. So everyone in the group is going to do that. We also do something we like to call it ah kind of, it’s ah the hot seat.
Rich Birch — Yep. Oh, that’s great.
Andy Hill — And we do hot seat questions, which is kind of a rapid fire thing. And so we’ll put a staff on the hot seat and we…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — …we ask them quick questions. First thing that comes to your mind, just so we can continue to get to know each other. Um, and, and then we get vulnerable with each other too. Um, and so we’ll share hurts, struggles, things that we’re facing in our life, uh, and pray for each other.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Andy Hill — So, um, So we, we intentionally pull that group together. Uh, that meeting is led by both our, our lead pastor, uh, and then, uh, me, we each have different pieces of the meeting…
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Andy Hill —…that we lead after some of our other staff have, uh, had their roles.
Andy Hill — So we, we do that every week. Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s dig into that. I’d love to hear about that.
Andy Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s a, um, you know, what a fun kind of practical tactic to kind of talk through. So that was one of the questions I was going to ask is who leads this. So you co-lead it. Um, talk to me about like, when is it every week? You know, what, why do you have it at that particular time? You know, talk us through, you know, even just that practicality to start.
Andy Hill — Yeah. So we, uh, we meet on Tuesday mornings.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — So we don’t do Mondays, uh, you know, coming off Sundays…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — …we want to give everyone an opportunity to try to, uh, one kind of rest recoup a little bit…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — …but also they get a chance to kind of plan their week. They get a chance to, um, you know, get some things done…
Rich Birch — Tackle their stuff a little bit.
Andy Hill — …before we come together as a team.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Andy Hill — So we come together, uh, in the morning at 9:30. And then we will go, that meeting goes for about two hours.
Rich Birch — Okay. Wow.
Andy Hill — Yeah, so it’s it’s a longer meeting. um A lot of people you say, man, that’s a long meeting, you know. How do you do that? Well, the time goes really fast, I’ll be honest. And I don’t know that this is ideal for every church. I know it’s working for us, but ah you know the first half is where we do a lot of that personal stuff, ah where we worship, read the book, devotional, prayer, hot seat, all of that kind of stuff.
Andy Hill — The second half of the meeting is where we get a little more ah granular…
Rich Birch — Right, tactical.
Andy Hill — …and practical about ministry and all, yeah, the tactical stuff. So um…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andy Hill — So the second half of that meeting is that. So the pastor leads, the lead pastor leads the first part.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Andy Hill — He does those things and then he punts to me and I handle the second part as the executive pastor. So those are the kind of two, two components of that meeting. Um, and then oftentimes different groups will meet after that or go to lunch together, do different things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — It just kind of creates opportunity for the team to be together, get together. But, um, so that’s kind of the, the breakdown and when we do it, how we structure it. Uh, and we do send out an agenda for that meeting. So every Monday…
Rich Birch — Okay. Right.
Andy Hill — …at the end of the day, uh, the lead pastor and I meet and we, uh, make sure we’ve got all of our things in a row and we will send out that agenda so everyone knows exactly what’s going to be covered that next day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Andy Hill — So that’s kind of the, this the, the idea behind it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Are there um the books that you guys have read? Are there a couple that jump to mind that were particularly helpful for you as you were, you know, leading your team, keeping them aligned as you think about? Because I think we’re always, ah you know, we’re always looking for that kind of thing. Hey, what what’s been a great resource on that front?
Andy Hill — Yeah. Um, man, the first one we went through and I’m trying to think it’s, uh, uh, it has the word “fools” in the title.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Andy Hill — Uh, it was a good one. Servants, uh, like servants and fools, man, it’s been, so that’s been two years ago.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — It was a good one. Ah Pete Scazzero…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Andy Hill — …did one on healthy leadership. We went through that book. Those those were two really good books that we’ve gone through. We’re gonna do a…
Rich Birch — Was it so “Servants and Fools”, the the Eugene Peterson? Yeah, that book was the first one?
Andy Hill — Servants and fools. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Hill — So those those are two that really stand out that. We’re going through one right now that I can say, I think it’s good, but I’ll be honest, a lot of our staff don’t really like it. And it’s, uh, uh, kind of Things That Leaders Get Right. That’s, that’s kind of the gist of the title. We’re still in it. And, um, I think it’s 10 things that, uh, good leaders get right. Uh, I’m not getting that title exactly right, but…
Rich Birch — That’s OK. Yeah, that’s fine.
Andy Hill — Yeah, so, um, I, I’m that is just one piece that ah ah those first two in particular ah have were were good books. It challenged people’s thinking. And a lot, I will say one of the emphasis in those books that has really hit home with our staff um really is the idea for the individual to self care, soul care.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Andy Hill — Not, you know, we’re we’re not just human yeah human doings. We are human beings. Think about…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Andy Hill — …who you are; think about your own walk. And so, um, those are things out of those two books that have really resonated with the staff, continuing to turn them to…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Andy Hill — …to take care of themselves.
Rich Birch — Is that the the is it “5 Essential Things Every Leader Must Get Right” by Richard Osibanjo? Yeah, great. Perfect.
Andy Hill — You got it. Yep.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Rich Birch — Yeah, but but yeah, all great books so just to give that to listeners if they’re looking that’s that’s great.
Andy Hill — Yep. Those are three, three good resources.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s perfect. Um, the hot seat questions, I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. That’s an interesting kind of unique thing. What would, what would you say? How do you frame that part of the discussion so that it’s helpful and you know, it it’s encouraging what what’s like after a good hot seat session, you’re like, Oh, that was good because, you know, this happened. What, what would be some, you know, example and to make that great?
Andy Hill — Yeah. So, um you know, that one really ah it’s intended to help us just get to know someone, not at ah a ministry level, but at a personal level.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, that’s good.
Andy Hill — Um, and so, um, you know, we, because we can do ministry together, but we ought to not just, uh, work together. We ought to do life together. We ought to be friends. We ought to enjoy the people that we work with, right? We ought to have great relationships and friendships. So, um, you know, we don’t always have to see eye to eye. We don’t always have to get along with, but, uh, we need to know something more about these people because we need to care about them. Uh, they need to matter. They need to be seen, you know, just, just like we do.
Andy Hill — So, um, so really the way we frame that is we call them up. We literally put them on a ah stool. We set them up on a seat in the middle of kind of the room. And, and we just tell them, I’ve got a list of about 150 questions. I’m always gathering more. Uh, there are quick questions, you know, um, Things like, uh, you know, how did you get your first name? What’s something that, uh, people don’t know about you? Um, you know, what is, uh, you know, a quirk that you have? What is favorite movie, favorite food? Do you, uh, you know, do you tie your untie your shoes when you take them off, when you walk in the door, right? They could be real low level and they could be, some of them are, are a little, uh, more serious at times. Could be favorite superhero, type of movie, movie, you know, uh…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. I like that.
Andy Hill — …it’s just all different kinds of simple questions, quick questions. Um, and I will say, you know, we, we’ve had some that have been really good. Uh, we’ve had one with one of our staff. He came from, uh, we didn’t know this, but he had just come from like a really stressful meeting and his, mind was really tapped out. And we put him on the hot seat. And, uh, the next time he came back, he was like, man, I feel like I was a dud on the hot seat. I need to do it again, but you know, my mind was drained.
Rich Birch — Give me another run at it.
Andy Hill — And so he said, give me another chance.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool.
Andy Hill — So it’s kind of become, become a fun thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Andy Hill — And so we, we, we try to make it, um, not just all lighthearted, but it’s a lot of lighthearted. It’s a lot of just to try to have fun with each other. And the idea is really get to know them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that.
Andy Hill — So, yep.
Rich Birch — When I love the intentionality of like, Hey, we’re, we’re going to try to, you know, we’re trying to expose, you didn’t say it this way, but what got me thinking of when you’re thinking of those questions, it’s like, I want to try to open up new information about this person that we might not know. Right? That it’s like, this is This person is more than just the kids ministry director or more than just whatever their role is.
Andy Hill — Yes.
Rich Birch — How do we see them as a human? That’s I love that that. What a real practical, this kind of Tuesday morning, couple hour meeting, you know keeps things rolling. That’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Are there other things that you feel like you have been really helpful to keep your team aligned, keep kind of people you know focused in in this in the same direction ah as a church, as you’re growing, reaching people, trying to make an impact in your community?
Andy Hill — Um, yeah, there certainly have been. I will say that, um, you know, the last thing I’d want anyone to think is like, we have this down pat and we’re just…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Andy Hill — …always crushing it at this. Right? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Andy Hill — Because there are times when we’re better at it, you know, this is an ebb and a flow.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — There are times when we can sense that, man, we’ve started to drift a little, right. Um, and, and so we we can see that. I would say that um and you know this gets said a lot. And I know some people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it just is true. Communication is key.
Rich Birch — Good.
Andy Hill — You have to communicate. And you can communicate in a lot of different ways. Now, I’m having to learn, right, that um some of the I have to try to find out the ways that our staff communicate. Right.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andy Hill — Um, it’s not the way that maybe I best communicate. It’s the way, you know, how do they communicate? So I’ve we’ve got staff here. I mean, we’re across all generations. You know, we’ve got staff that are young. Um, and then we go all the way up to, you know, uh, senior adults. Um, I mean, we’ve got Gen Z’s, we’ve got Millennials, we’ve got Gen X’s, we’ve got Boomers, you know, we just have, a wide variety of of the generations.
Andy Hill — Well, some of them like email. Man, email is what they do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — They’re not a phone person. They don’t use mobile devices. Uh, they’re not on social media. They’re not texting, you know, that’s not their thing, but then other staff, man, texting is it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Andy Hill — You know, you want, you want to get a response, give them a text. Now, if you shoot them an email, uh, they’re probably not going to read it all and, uh, and they may not see it for 24 hours or 48 hours.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Andy Hill — So, um, I have to learn and be specific with the different staff. How do they communicate? What’s the way that…
Rich Birch — Right, that’s good.
Andy Hill — …so certain staff, I’m going to shoot a text to. Certain staff, I’m going to send an email to. Certain staff… Uh, you know, now I’m an executive pastor, so, you know, I gotta be care… I can get real frustrated with some of our staff pretty quick at times. You know, I can pick up a phone and try to, call some of our staff and ah they’re never at their desk.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — I always have to remember though, you know, ministry doesn’t always happen at their desk.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — But, um, but you know, uh, some of our staff, it’s better to call. Um, cause there are certain things that, uh, you don’t hear tone in the text. Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — You don’t get things can easily be misread. So, um, you have, you know, you have to be intentional. You have to be mindful. You have to be thoughtful with your staff when it comes to all those kinds of things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Andy Hill — And then you communicate. And so, um you know, we do some all staff kind of communications, but we try to do some intentional communications with different groups, different people and communicate in a way that works for them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. If you were if you were going to communicate something, maybe like a major initiative, or like there’s like an important change coming um…
Andy Hill — Sure. Yeah.
Rich Birch — What does that look like for you? How does that how does that, Hey, we we got to make sure everybody hears about this. What would have been some things you’ve learned? because because I do think that is a key thing you’ve hit on that you know there there’s the whole the problem of like, man, staff, the first time they heard about it or the team first time they heard about it was somebody got up on a Sunday and talked about it in an announcement…
Andy Hill — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …which man, that’s very disempowering.
Andy Hill — Yes.
Rich Birch — You feel, people feel very isolated. So how do we avoid that? How do you avoid that?
Andy Hill — Right. um and That is a great question and a great point because um we do ah often, we don’t realize that how we communicate and when we communicate, or our lack of communication, it communicates value to somebody.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andy Hill — Now we don’t see it. We’re just trying at times to inseminate information. But, um, if, if we don’t share it with our different staff in the right order, in the right way, some of them will say, well, I guess I don’t matter. I guess, right.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andy Hill — Now we’re not trying to say that.
Rich Birch — No.
Andy Hill — They do matter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — But they don’t feel like that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andy Hill — So, um, whether it’s our administrative assistants, which, uh, and the frustration that they have, right? So if you have a, uh, a support team, that is ah broad or big or small. Um, you know, if, if they don’t hear something, oftentimes they’re the front line.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — They’re the ones who’s going to get that first phone call. And when someone says, Hey, what’s the deal with this thing? Right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — And they say, I don’t know what you’re talking about, right?
Rich Birch — Not no idea. Yeah, exactly.
Andy Hill — Man, you talk about that’s very, exactly what you said. It does not empower them. In fact, it deflates.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Andy Hill — They feel like they, they’re not a part of a team. They feel like they’re just someone out there grunt, doing some work. That’s the last thing here in ministry we want anyone to feel.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andy Hill — So we are very intentional to say, okay, who are the groups? So whether it’s lay people, whether it’s our pastoral team, our ministerial team, our support staff, uh, our maintenance staff, those who do all of our setups and tear downs, you know, we, we do it in different ways. We, we will shoot little quick videos. Man, uh, with, with phones today, the pastor just pulling out his phone and shooting a quick video.
Rich Birch — Huge deal.
Andy Hill — Hey, I want to share a quick update, important update when they hear it from him and it’s sent to them. Now they know they feel empowered. It’s like, okay. Just information there is just so important to them. Um, so we do it that way. We do it through, um, emails. We do it on Sunday mornings. We make announcements. And a lot of times we do all of the above.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — And we do, we sit down and we plan that out. We schedule that out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — And we say on Monday, we’re doing this on Tuesday, we’re doing this on Wednesday, we’re doing this.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Andy Hill — And it could be Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon. Our communications department is involved in that process. Our pastors get involved in that process. ‘Cause we also, whoever leads a team, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andy Hill — Well, they should hear it before their team does.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes
Andy Hill — So, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Andy Hill — So we just, there just really needs to be an intentionality to make sure the people… And it’s, it’s probably a little different for every church. Who are the people that need to hear it in what order…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Andy Hill — …so that everyone hears it before it just goes out to everybody.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good. You had mentioned there um kind of while we were getting into that, something caught my eye where you said like, yeah, there’s times where we feel like we might drift a little bit.
Andy Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like, hey, there’s a bit of drifting away from the the mission from what God’s called us to do. Can you give me an example of um you know, how you notice that, what was it that’s like, Oh, here’s, here’s an, you know, you know, we don’t always, you don’t need to out somebody on the podcast, but like an example of the kind of thing, the category of thing would say like, Oh, this is maybe a little bit off. Cause we know it’s not the person or it’s not the department that’s 90 degrees against them the mission. Like that’s obvious. Like we see those things.
Andy Hill — Right.
Rich Birch — It’s typically the like people that are five degrees off, you know, man, that’s, those are the hard ones because over time, man, that just ends up being this huge gap between us and them or them and the the mission
Rich Birch — So how do you, how are you identifying that? What are some things you’ve done as an XP to, uh, to address that, to pull, you know, pull people back in line, get get people back, you know, rowing in the same direction.
Andy Hill — Yeah. So, um you know, as an XP, I kind of have some ah processes that I regularly work through. So I regularly, ah I collect data. I just go out and I am regularly looking at our website, talking with our different ministries about whether it’s an event, whether it’s Sunday morning, whether it’s something that happens through the week, just give me data, give me information.
Andy Hill — And, and I track those things, right? I, I love Excel. I’m a, I’m an Excel junkie.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andy Hill — And so I put everything in worksheets and workbooks. And, you know, um, I’ve, I over the years have built out, built out what my kind of workbooks and structures look like and the things that I are important for me.
Andy Hill — But I also, uh, data is just one piece. There’s just information too. So I, I talk to people and i I will gather that information. You know, Hey, tell me, what was your intent with this? What was the purpose behind it? Um, what were you guys trying to accomplish? Do you feel like you accomplished it? Right.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andy Hill — Just challenge them to evaluate things, but share that with me. Um, and then finally make some assessments, right?
Rich Birch — Right, that’s good.
Andy Hill — Just to sit down and say, okay, based on the data, based on the information, um, here’s kind of some thoughts. Here’s some assessments. And, you know, part of the challenge with staff and being the executive pastor at times is oftentimes if they get a call from me or if they’re called to my office, right? It’s like, Hey, am I getting called…
Rich Birch — The principle called.
Andy Hill — …to the principal’s office? Rich Birch — 100%, 100%.
Andy Hill — Yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Andy Hill — So, you know, it’s like, Hey, no. You know, they need to know that, um, I’m here not to just be over them. That’s not it. I’m here to support them.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andy Hill — I’m here to help steer. I’m, I’m here to shepherd. I’m here to, uh, you know, so at times they do need kind of the, the staff needs to give them just a gentle nudge, not because they’re doing anything horribly wrong, but just because, Hey, we’ve just noticed, you know, um, some of these things you’re doing doesn’t really align with kind of where we’re going.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Andy Hill — Sometimes that’s practical too around budgets, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andy Hill — You know, any, anytime you’re in the budgeting process and you tell people, Hey, we have a new vision emphasis coming in the next year. And so we’re going to shift some budget dollars. Well, if an area’s budget is cut, they’re like, man, why am I getting punished?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Andy Hill — Well, no, we’re not punishing you, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andy Hill — This isn’t punishment. This is all of us trying to steer in the same direction, row the boat and go so that, so that we’re headed towards the same goal, the same vision, the same mission.
Andy Hill — And so we just have to really. spend a lot of time communicating those things. If you don’t ever tell them, Hey, the vision is going to change or shift or, uh, we’re refocusing a little bit or, Hey, we finished this aspect of it. And so now we’re into phase two of something. So if we’re not communicating those things far, far ahead of time, uh, you know, I think a big mistake a lot of churches make is they don’t communicate early enough, far enough ahead of time, they try to communicate short, quick things.
Andy Hill — Well, you got to start internally a whole lot earlier and communicate, communicate, communicate before you start rolling things out. If you really do want them to stay rowing in the same direction.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So, so good. That’s this has been great, great conversation, for sure. Just as we’re kind of coming to to to the end. Anything else you’d like to share? Just as you’re thinking, hey, this is something that God’s using these days in our church to help us stay focused and aligned.
Andy Hill — Yeah. Uh, actually, uh, so I’ll kind of go back to one of the things I mentioned and, um, it’s not, it is directly related, but it doesn’t necessarily sound directly related. And that is, truly, uh, challenge your staff and your staff need to, they need to take care of themselves. They need to be, staff need to have a daily quiet time, right? Daily time in the Word, daily time in prayer, and not not time where they’re studying for or preparing for a Bible study to teach something, to lead something, just time where they are ah taking time for themselves, for their own growth, for their own development. ah You know, I heard it said just this last week on Tuesday, we had a guest speaker who came just to talk to our staff.
Andy Hill — just for this very purpose, self-care.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Andy Hill — And not just our ministerial staff, our whole staff. 65 people ah in the room, just on the church side. We had all these people in a room. And he said, you one of the things he learned as he goes and travels and speaks to pastors, one of the first things pastors stopped doing when they got called to a church was having their quiet time. He would ask them…
Rich Birch — That’s heartbreaking.
Andy Hill — …You know, do you do you have a time, do you have a quiet time? And and many of them would say, well, you know, I’m always in the word studying for a next sermon series or this or that.
Andy Hill — He’s like, no, I’m not talking about that. Just personal time in the word. And so I would, I would just say that one thing: people’s capacity to engage in life is directly related to some of these self-care type things. Your emotional quotient, your intellectual quotient, your physical quotient, and ah a relational quotient, a spiritual quotient, all these things make up who someone is. And if they’re not spending time caring for those different pieces on a regular basis, they lose…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Andy Hill — …their capacity is diminished for life and for ministry. Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so good. What a great way to to focus us at the end. I you know I think our heart, I love that you you ended there. But our heart and our ability to keep our teams, their relationship with Jesus fresh and their who they are as an individual and growing and developing, that is directly tied to what God wants to do in our church for sure. You know, we can’t, if we just, if we’re just producing all kinds of great stuff and other people and it’s not impacting the folks that we’re leading with, man, that’s I think where we get into a dangerous zone.
Rich Birch — So and Andy, this has been so good. I really appreciate your time today, taking time out of a busy schedule to be with us. I really appreciate that. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Andy Hill — Uh, if you go to mobberly.org, M O B B E R L Y dot org. And, uh, that’s our website. If you do slash follow, it goes to our social media. Um, and so whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s different things that we do, uh, you can go there, connect with us, connect with me. And…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Andy Hill — And I thank you for having me. Man, I’ve enjoyed the conversation. And ah It’s just great to know that there’s a lot of XPs and ministers and people out there who want to continue to grow and develop.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Andy. Appreciate you being here today.
Andy Hill — Thank you very much.
Embracing Digital for Church Growth: Insights from Saddleback’s Online Pastor Jay Kranda
Nov 21, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jay Kranda this week, the online campus pastor at Saddleback Church in California.
What are you doing with online church? How does it fit in with your digital strategy? How can digital tools strengthen in-person community? Tune in as Jay discusses a team-based approach to digital integration, how to align digital initiatives with your church’s mission, and avoiding the pitfalls of over-reliance on technology.
Be strategic with digital ministry. // Be wise and strategic about how you use the online aspect of your ministry. Streaming services have become a staple in many churches, but Jay advises leaders to consider the purpose behind it. Digital elements should complement rather than replace in-person interactions. Ask your team what they are trying to accomplish and explore how digital can help achieve those objectives.
Enhance the church experience. // Jay uses the Alpha Omega tool, a resource for church teams to identify and focus on one digital integration over the next 6 to 12 months. This tool helps in tracking progress and encourages digital involvement from all ministry areas, not just the online pastor. Talk with all your leaders about one way they can use digital to enhance what they’re doing in their ministry areas. It could be as simple as sending parents a text about what their children learned in kids ministry in order to foster family engagement at home. The idea is to enhance the church experience through digital with the goal of helping people produce more fruit in their lives.
What is the role of digital in your larger strategy? // One of the significant advantages of digital tools is the ability to engage with newcomers immediately. Instead of relying solely on large events, Saddleback also uses a podcast strategy for connection and support in certain contexts. Determine where your line is when examining what could be done digitally versus in-person. Bring together everyone with influence in your church and discus what you believe needs to happen in the room versus what can be decentralized.
Don’t be distracted by trends. // It’s easy to get distracted by all the new digital trends out there. Be aware of the allure of “silver bullet” tech solutions where a single app or tool is seen as the answer to all ministry problems. Focus on tools that align with your church’s overall strategy and objectives. Avoid replicating what others are doing without considering its fit for your specific community.
Enhancing discipleship. // Jay’s book, Online Church is Not the Answer: Beyond Just Streaming Church to Hybrid Disciple Making, delves deeper into these concepts, urging church leaders to move beyond merely streaming services and instead use digital platforms to enhance discipleship. Pick up copies for your team and discuss how to embrace digital in your various areas and determine how it fits with your church’s objectives.
Visit jaykranda.com for a hybrid disciple making starter guide, information on his book Online Church is Not the Answer: Beyond Just Streaming Church to Hybrid Disciple Making, and more helpful resources.
EXTRA CREDIT // Level Up Your Church’s Digital Ministry: Exclusive Resource!
Are you ready to transform your church’s digital presence? In this episode, we’ve tapped into the wisdom of Jay Kranda, Saddleback’s Online Pastor, to help you expand your reach and engage your congregation online. But listening alone won’t get you there. We’ve crafted a downloadable guide to take this learning further and turn it into action.
Introducing the 10 Essential Tools for Church Digital Ministry, a resource designed to give you the step-by-step tools to engage, grow, and serve your community more effectively online. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to fine-tune your digital strategy, this guide will help you make the shift and keep your church moving forward.
Don’t miss out—unlock your church’s digital potential today by downloading this resource through unSeminary Extra Credit. Grab it here.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. We have a repeat guest today, which if you’re a longtime listener, you know, that just does not happen that often. And the reason why is because you are going to want to lean in and listen to ah this conversation. And I think it’s going to just have huge impact on you and your ministry. It’s asking one of those questions that literally I get all the time. This is not theoretical. This is this is like a real conversation that’s impacting churches today. Rich Birch — Excited to have Jay Kranda with us. He is a part of a church you may have heard before, Saddleback Church, ah which was planted by Rick and Kay Warren. Their first public service was in 1980. They have 14 locations in California, Spanish locations, five locations internationally, and a robust online community. This is why we’re talking with Jay today. He is the online campus pastor, has helped build an online community of thousands viewers thousands of viewers weekly, hundreds of online groups in small to mid-size in-person gatherings who are just connected with Saddleback. This is really incredible. He has a website, jkranda.com. Jay, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Jay Kranda — Thanks for having me on. I’m, I’m excited to be back. I’m, I’m excited that I’m one of the few repeat. So I’ll put that on my trophy case. Rich Birch — Yeah, it does not happen that often. So I knew, ah you know, I wanted to get you back on. So I’m honored that you’re you’re here. Let’s kind of catch people up before we, well, first of all, what did I miss on the just bio? What was it, you know, what did I miss about you or about, ah you know, Saddleback that we need to make sure people are aware of? Jay Kranda — Yeah, I I would just say at a high level, you know, we are a, um you know, obviously a very big church, but we’re all also very practical in the sense that we’re always trying to be, um you know, even big organizations have limited resources in the sense we have to be super narrow and focused. Jay Kranda — So one thing that I think most people don’t understand is When we’re doing something, we’re trying to align it with our objectives pretty clearly. So even online has been this, and because I’ve been, you you know, the online pastor full time since 2013…
Rich Birch — That’s old school.
Jay Kranda — …um, there’s been waves of what does that look like pre COVID, during COVID, now post COVID.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — And so I would probably add that we’re pretty practical and dogmatic with like how we think about digital. And, uh, it’s been fun. And a lot has changed even as we’ve transitioned from our founding pastor to our our new pastor, Pastor Andy, and it’s it’s been a fun fun journey.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I’d actually love to start there. You were on ah before the transition to Andy, who we’ve also had on the podcast. Love him. He’s a great leader. And it’s been, I’ve said to him and other members of your team, I I love as an outsider cheering for you guys in that transition. And it’s like, man, so much of what ah he and Rick, you know, not surprising, world-class leaders have done such a good job in the handoff. But what about in your area? What is your diagnosis on like, here’s a few things that have changed or shifted in our approach under Andy rather than under Rick.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, you know, the thing that I I always notice with Pastor Rick was Rick was always a believer in um using technology to accomplish the objective. But I think at times Rick was an anti-technology. He just was probably, you you had to convince him it was a good idea because um probably because of when he was born, he had seen a lot of things come and go.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And, um, and so with, he he was never against what we were doing. He was just, okay, we got to prove it. And so I think there was a little bit of a generational, like, okay, the great idea. Let’s see if it delivers.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Where I’ve noticed with, uh, Andy, because he is younger, you know, he’s in his early forties. We’re only separated by a couple of years. I’m only a couple of years younger than him. He is more in the, in the arena like he just kind of uses technology and he gets it. And so it’s been really interesting to watch somebody that’s maybe grown up around it in a very different way where it’s not a, you know…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — …I know this with my kids, you know, I have a 13 year old, 11 year old and an 8 year old, you know, I’m not gonna be arguing why the internet is a thing. Like they’re not even gonna have a concept of what the internet is because it will just be like the air they breathe.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — And with Andy, it was more of just the air he breathes. And so I just noticed, like for example, like a big thing with Saddleback starting in the eighties, we were one of the first churches on the internet. We were one of the first churches in the early 2000s to stream. But we did it primarily as a, uh, it accomplished like, for example, we started streaming in the early 2000s because we have a location in Orange County. People go to John Wayne and travel for work during the week or the weekend. And we wanted to just provide this very simple, uh, supplement.
Jay Kranda — I think now what we’re seeing more and more, and this started under Rick, but I think Andy more just believes like, hey, you know our job is not to ah get people in a building, our job is to produce fruit in people’s lives.
Rich Birch — Amen.
Jay Kranda — So can digital enhance that objective?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And so it’s and it’s almost like, and we can get into this, but one of the things I always kind of encourage church leaders is this idea that you’re asking your people to do a lot at a base level. Like come on Sunday, serve in a ministry, maybe be part of a Bible study or group. Then they’re probably bringing their kids to things. And then anytime you add another thing, that’s another thing on top of their work, their marriage.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And the question is, does it need to be another, hypothetically, does it need to be another event in your building? (Let’s say, as as an example.)
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right.
Jay Kranda — Or could a deliverable be a digital experience? And those are the things I’d like to bring up. Like, I think, for example, I don’t think the core physical experience is ever going anywhere, but I do think digital can be laid on top of things in such a way, if the objective isn’t just to fill a room. And I always like to challenge, like, I think there’s a lot of things we do as churches, like we just always run the same play because we’ve always run it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — But maybe like, for example, like a great example is this podcast. Like you could do a in-person event.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Or you could do a podcast…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …and maybe in some cases the in-person event’s super valuable, or maybe the monthly podcast or the weekly podcast is a better deliverable.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And so I think I’ve just noticed more of the question of like, can we use digital this way…
Rich Birch — Oh, it’s good.
Jay Kranda — …while also keeping the in-person experience as kind of maybe our core kind of thing we offer.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well, man, it’s so good. There’s a bunch there I want to dig into. But before we get there, I want to frame up the conversation a little bit. So friends, if you’ve been listening in to the podcast, you know, it’s actually very rarely have authors of books on like, I get people all the time reach out to me and are like, I got this book. And like and it’s like, oh, I’ve really been lit paying attention to your podcast. I’m like, yeah, that’s not true. I know why you’re coming on. Like, I know that.
Rich Birch — Jay has a book that just came out that I wanted to get him on the podcast, and I want to be really explicit about this, because I think every church leader that’s listening in should pick up copies of this book.
Rich Birch — This question of what are we doing with online church? How does this fit in? It’s like, if it’s not top of mind, it’s like in the top five questions that I keep hearing people wrestling with. And so his book, so what I’m hoping is you’ll listen in, well there’ll be some helpful stuff in here, but the outcome I’m going to ask each of you to take is to buy 10 or 15 of these, put it on your list for, it might have to be 2025, kind of your next reading round with your team. And wrestle through and get more clarity on why your church is doing this. So the name of the book is Online Church is Not the Answer—fascinating when I saw this with the title of your book…
Jay Kranda — I know.
Rich Birch — …ah Beyond Just Streaming Church to Hybrid Disciple Disciple Making, I think, and that’s Jay Kranda. So what I want to do is is dig into this. Let’s start with that opening volley question. So what do what we’re thinking in-person versus how do these tools, how do these digital tools, how can they strengthen in-person community and not just run in some sort of parallel ministry?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, so I think at a high level, and and I’m kind of obviously, I’m playing around with ah with my title in a very direct way.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jay Kranda — And I was afraid I was afraid I was going to lose some of my friends in this space.
Rich Birch — Oh. Kenny wouldn’t like you anymore.
Jay Kranda — Like yeah, Kenny, Kenny, Kenny wouldn’t like me. Uh, Dave wouldn’t like me.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Dave Adamson.
Jay Kranda — I would have, I’ve all sorts of friends. There’s a, there’s a, I have a couple of friends that I will say that I feel they haven’t texted me back as quickly.
Rich Birch — That’s funny. Love it.
Jay Kranda — So, um, and so, um, but I, I, but I, so to me, one of the things that I just noticed is I am a strong proponent of, and I think it’s really hard for anybody to argue against this, that in-person ministry is the, is at the top of the experiences. So I use this example in my um and my book that I got from another friend, um this idea that digital should be used as the way you use digital in a relationship or in your marriage.
Jay Kranda — So like my wife and I, we text, send each other reels and we’re constantly interacting. I was just traveling earlier this week and you know I text her an emoji when I landed in Texas…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …and we’re texting, but I come home to her.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — And the reason is because I think our primary way that our relationship should function is proximity based. And I think that that is a, that’s a good illustration that um digital, that’s how you should think about using digital…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …and any technology in the context of your geo type of ah strategy of a church. And so like, yes, don’t be afraid of digital, use it in a way to enhance, but always come back to the primary expression, which is in-person.
Rich Birch — I love that.
Jay Kranda — And, but I also am very aware that digital can get in the way of our relationship. I can send the wrong texts. I can look at the wrong thing online. I can get disconnected. Like there’s all these things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And so you got to be aware of this tool. It’s both a something we got to wield very wisely and strategically. And so to me, I, this is where like, there are a lot of cool things that are happening online.
Jay Kranda — But I also like when somebody does a story like we we launched a couple a year ago, we launched a virtual reality service online. And the problem is with that is we did it because we have somebody in our community that builds VR spaces. We didn’t have to spend a dime.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And but everybody wants to talk to me about it. And and I’m like, I’m like, our VR ministry is not for everybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — It’s for like the one, one-percenters.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — And the average church shouldn’t be thinking about this.
Rich Birch — No, yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Jay Kranda — Because really VR is just modern day evangelists. That’s all it is. Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, it’s so fringe.
Jay Kranda — And so they want to look at guys doing this or and and don’t don’t get distracted.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jay Kranda — So with with kind of what I lay out some tools and I have I have this on my website too if somebody doesn’t want to buy it. But like one of the one of the things with this is to kind of go, okay, getting your team together and going, okay, everybody on the team, if it’s staff, volunteers, whoever, what are we trying to do with our team, our ministry? And going, okay, our primarily, this is what we’re trying to do. The question is, can digital help with that outcome?
Rich Birch — Right. Oh, good, good, good.
Jay Kranda — And so it’s being very practical. And healthy 100% digital integration doesn’t mean replacing physical. It just means it’s integrated.
Jay Kranda — So I have this example that um I was like with our kids ministry. Like if you look at most kids ministries at church, the healthy, a hundred percent healthy digital integration into kids ministry is not canceling your in-person programming on the weekend And during the week.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Of course, of course. Ah during, even during COVID, um, my kids, I’m here in Southern California and we were like crazy locked down during COVID. I remember when our kids ministry launched Zoom groups during COVID…
Rich Birch — Love it.
…I didn’t want to do it.
Rich Birch — No?
Jay Kranda — Because my, because my, my kids were on Zoom all week…
Rich Birch — Right, right
Jay Kranda — …for school.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Don’t need more Zoom.
Jay Kranda — And I told, and I remember one of my friends was like, Jay, how are you not like, you’re the, online… I go, no, no, no, it’s a balance.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. That’s good.
Jay Kranda — It’s a, I believe in it, but when they’re on Zoom all week, like I don’t want, I, I, you know, and so we figured out some other things. So like a practical example is…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …like I remember I had a I had this moment where my my daughter was, I was talking to my wife about something I was learning in my own devotion time and it was about the flood and there’s something cool I read in a commentary and my wife kind of like glazed over. Like she didn’t care about, she like jokingly didn’t care about something I thought was cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Jay Kranda — And she said, but do you know your daughter just learned about the flood in um our kids small group this past week.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. That’s cool.
Jay Kranda — And I had this realization that I had no idea what my kids learn in our kids small group.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And I actually, I went to our kids pastor at the time and I said, Hey, have you thought about maybe monthly or weekly sending a text to every parent of a talking point?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — Like, hey, you’re your kid just learned about this. Here’s one question you can ask to engage. And so I bring that up as as as an example. The digital technology integration for our kids ministry could be a simple texting plan, like strategy.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jay Kranda — It doesn’t need to be, you’re going full YouTube and you’re introducing, you know, VR chat and no, no, no, no. It’s a very simple integration. And so part of it is going, telling all your leaders from staff to volunteer, what is a simple integration that can enhance what you’re doing?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — And this is the flip side. Everybody thinks digital is going to transform everything. No, no, no. Some things will be transformed and some things will be enhanced. A taxi industry was transformed by digital because of Uber.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — The hotel industry was enhanced. You still go to a hotel…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …just your experience has been enhanced.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — And so I think the church experience is not being transformed. I think it’s being enhanced. And it’s just, what are the small little things that we can do to really focus on your objective? And I think there are things you can integrate that are really simple and help you do more of what you need to do.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love that. I had a friend, we were talking about apps in the church and they said something very similar, just a different way to frame exactly what you were saying. They were like, you know, Starbucks doesn’t think about their, you can’t get coffee from the Starbucks app that, you know, like you can’t, you don’t go to your phone and like beep, beep, beep. And then, you know, ah whatever mochaccino comes out or whatever. You know, Carmel Macchiato, that’s not what happens. ah But the app makes the in-person, in their case, delivering coffee makes it better, more efficient. It solves problems. It makes that a better experience. And this this church leader was saying, that’s really what we’re trying to think with our app. We’re not trying to replace the, you know, the in-person. But we do want an app that will end up improving that experience. Rich Birch — So help us frame this. Let’s double click on that idea of like, Hey, we’re trying to in, in use a digital tool, the drive that. You give some good examples there. Let’s think of the church of like a thousand people. You know, maybe I’m an executive pastor listening in and like, there’s a guy, there’s like a 23 year old who oversees this stuff. And how do I, how do I help that person discern what would be a few things that we should be thinking about?
Rich Birch — Cause I think so many of us got streaming our services and we just did it before whatever reason, but we’re not sure what kind of the, you know, what would, should some of these steps look like? What could, what could be a couple examples of things that churches of that size should be kind of wrestling through?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, I think one of the best exercises as like a team, a leadership team potentially is to figure out where your line is of what you are more open to be done digitally and what should happen in person. I think everybody’s line is going to be a little different. And so II usually kind of like one of the helpful exercises that I kind of lay out is um getting everybody that has influence in your church um in the same room and kind of going, Hey, like, here’s here’s what we believe needs to happen in the room and here are the things that we believe we can decentralize.
Jay Kranda — And I think sometimes just having a very honest conversation about it, like we had this conversation during COVID and I remember like I had one of our senior leaders who’s a super wise dude. he I remember we were talking about moving our, ah we were exploring at the time, ah stop printing our programs and moving to a, digital program.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — And we’re having this tension because we were kind of being forced because of COVID and some of the restrictions.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And I remember we were going to kind of move more to a digital app strategy. And one of our senior leaders said, um he said, I just don’t want to encourage people to pull out their phones in church because they’re going to start doing other things. And…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Jay Kranda — And I, it was a good thought…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s an issue. Yep.
Jay Kranda — …like it is a, it is a thought. And I, so and I, I just push back. And I bring this up as an example, because you need to have these conversations. so everybody understands the role of digital in your larger strategy. But I said, I go, I go, I totally understand that. I go, but what if, what if we don’t treat the phone or the device as like this plague that’s ruining them, but we actually talk about it in a way to help them have better discipline with it.
Jay Kranda — So like, for example, I’ve seen some churches do this and we’ve stole this like, Hey, by the way, you know, we have, we have this, we have some notes in front of you, or you can download our app. Hey, I want to encourage you, if you open up your app, can you put your phone on do not disturb and just zero in the next one hour.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — And I know it’s going to be easy to go add something to your card on target or Amazon, but just, to you know, right, right now, just put your phone or do not disturb, but you can use this. But use it to help them reign that device in like. And so I think we need to have these questions around how do we think about this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And like, for example, like very practically. Um, we like a funny example would be like, uh, we’re, we’re a church that believes baptism is by full immersion. That’s one of our convictions. We’re never going to do an online baptism. And so like, like I I’m, I’m not going to argue against what somebody’s doing online.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, you’re not dissing the people that do that, you know, yeah.
Jay Kranda — But like, I know my lines. Like even like simple things like communion, all these things, you got to figure out what are the things that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And this is where like a younger person can bring those things. And if you can have an open dialogue about the role of digital, and I lay out some things in, in kind kind of the resource to kind of think about this. Like, where’s the line?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — And to go, and then you might find out, like, one of the things I really encourage younger leaders especially is, you you want you want an older leader to give you all the authority right away. And I would encourage you to prove yourself in small ways that you can…
Rich Birch — Right, take some steps.
Jay Kranda — Because because ultimately you’re a steward of your pastor or your elder board’s vision. And you got to function under that leadership.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And so I’ve done this where I’ve proven myself in small ways over years, and I’ve been entrusted with more. And so this is where it’s like, sometimes the young leader wants to do all this crazy stuff. And I would just say, take small steps. So I think having a, a really honest conversation where the lines are, and then I would even encourage, even if that conversation doesn’t go right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Check in.
Rich Birch — Oh, good. Yeah, I love that.
Jay Kranda — Like you check in like six months, a year later and go, what has moved? Because I’ve noticed that I’ve seen things my church changed their mind on…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …stuff that I pitched a long time ago.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And I’m like, Oh my goodness. And I could be like, I could be whiny about it. Or I can be like, Oh no, because we were faithful in these areas, stuff has grown.
Jay Kranda — So I think that’s one area. And then, and then I I just think at a high level, one of the biggest things is figuring out what the real win is. So like, for example, Like I think a lot of churches are, are talking about this idea of the role of streaming your church services.
Jay Kranda — Like what, why do we do this? How do we do this? I think practically you don’t need to stream everything.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — You can stream one thing; you can let’s talk about that. And, and then how do you drive those people to take next steps? But those are some of the outside of having, you know, I have this Alpha Omega tool where I encourage every, every team to kind of think about one integration over the next six to 12 months. And then you kind of track that. And I think that’s one of the more helpful things is to get, um, every team member, every volunteer thinking about digital integrations.
Jay Kranda — Cause that’s, that’s the one thing I’ll say, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …that drives me crazy is when you hire an online pastor, which is not a lot of us, that’s not a normal thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Get them to think about it. None of us need to think about it now.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, yeah, nobody else has to think about it. And I go, we have, I’m an online pastor at my church because we’re one of the largest churches in the world.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Jay Kranda — Like the average church is not going to have an online pastor…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep.
Jay Kranda — …doesn’t need an online pastor. I just need the, I just…
Rich Birch — Shots fired.
Jay Kranda — I know. I need the kids pastor, the student pastor, the executive pastor, the secretary, whoever they see, I need them thinking about digital.
Rich Birch — Yes. This is so good. Dude, that’s good.
Jay Kranda — And not, and not outsource it to one team member.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.
Jay Kranda — And I need all the volunteer teams.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — Like I need everybody. Because honestly, and that’s half of my job now is like, I’m trying to paint that vision of like, let’s think bigger than just, Hey, Jay does that in his team.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Cause I think that’s the future.
Rich Birch — Right. They’ll Jay will tell us; Jay will figure it out.
Jay Kranda — I know.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. And that’s a part of why I’m encouraging people to pick up copies of the book. Cause I think that’s actually a much more compelling position…
Jay Kranda — Yes.
Rich Birch — …which is how do we find, how do we embrace digital in our various areas? All of us saying, okay, what’s our, where how does this fit in what we’re doing? What’s that look like? um And this could be a way to kind of encourage that. One of the things you talk about in the book, one of my core convictions of a leader is that one of the definitions, the things we do, is we leave things better than we found them. That are, by definition, you know, are you leading? It’s like, well, things should actually be getting better. You’re you’re taking people from where they are to a more desired future. That is kind of its core with leaders.
Rich Birch — And you really talk about, ah you know, always be improving, looking for ways to, you know, how do we, you know, kind of keep on top of our strategy, keep it fresh, keep it improving, like looking at like, what should we be doing different? Talk us through what that looks like. How do we balance the like, we want to improve, do a better job on this front versus we’re constantly chasing the latest, you know, silver bullet, you know, the latest. Do all of us really need to be on TikTok, and whatever came after TikTok? You know, how do we, how do we, bring how do we brace, you know, kind of work through that? And this feels like a tension in this area.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, there I I I just came from a tech conference, a church tech conference, and and it was a really good one, but I I was funny. I was sitting on like the conference floor…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …kind of where they had all the booths, and I kept hearing all these pitches, you know…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …things. Jay Kranda — And I understand the role of that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — But I really have disliked the save your tech model of if you get this app or get this thing, it’s going to solve all your church’s problems.
Rich Birch — All your problems. Yeah. That’s just not true.
Jay Kranda — And I think the answer is, that’s not going to happen most likely.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — I think it will solve a problem if it’s a problem for your church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — But I saw this with, um you know, we were one of the first churches um to get an app, a mobile app. And I remember hearing some of these pictures how the mobile app is going to like help you do this, this, this, this. And I was just like, really, a lot of our apps are just media players. Like the YouTube app can do the same thing.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — And, and I, that’s an exaggeration…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …but I think to think the average church needs a media player that’s, that’s, you know, folded into an app. No, like that doesn’t solve problems. And so I think first I, and I, and I think this is why it gets distracting. There are so many things that we need to be doing. and so many new trends that um it’s easy for us to get clicks or say the thing like, this is going to save you. This is going to, if you buy this thing, it’s going to, you know, AI. Like if you, if you use AI, it’s going to help you do this. And I’m like, yeah, if it aids in your objective, like.
Jay Kranda — And so this is where like one of the things is I think church leaders, unfortunately, you know, one of the, one of the strengths of the internet is an abundance of information, but the weakness of that is that it’s super distracting. And so I think church leaders leaders have to be more focused on their target on their objectives. And so like the problem is it’s really easy for you to copy and paste what I’m doing. But the problem is that might not work um in Florida, in Washington, in Canada. Like you have to know. And so the platforms that are relevant to me may be different.
Jay Kranda — And so this is the the strains we’re the strange aspect of the internet is that we’re connected to everybody, but we’re more segmented than ever.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — And it’s it’s a really, I mean, you you see this with TV shows and movies, it’s really hard to get people to go to the movies now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — The type of viewers that are showing up to the movies or even watching TV shows is a fraction of what it used to be back in the day, because it’s so distracting. You can just go on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram. Attention is the new kind of scarcity type of thing. And so I say that like, I would encourage any church leader, like do not get distracted by the new thing, but ask the question, okay, if we get on TikTok, hypothetically, how is that helping us?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Where does that help in our methodology of how we’re producing disciples? And this is where I’m going. Yeah, like I believe in being on those platforms. But I believe on it because of my church’s strategy and our objectives.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — And so like for a very practical example, um I I’m I’m the online pastor of my church. I have a community of people that engage online and we also start house churches connected to our online stream. I’m not on TikTok, I’m on Instagram.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And I zero in just on Instagram. And there’s reasons for that. And, and so now could I easily duplicate our strategy on TikTok?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, I could, but I’m not because I don’t believe, um, that’s where my community, I would rather have a hundred percent of my people on Instagram. Then 60, 30 kind of split it between two.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — Now that doesn’t mean TikTok isn’t a bad platform, but I’ve made this strategic decision to introduce a little bit of scarcity of our time and our kind of our platform. And so this is why it’s tough is that there will always be something new around the corner another device, another thing and I think you just got to be super focused. And but the the the I I’ll say it this way that the crappy part of this is the average pastor doesn’t get to think about this stuff.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda —Like they just don’t have the bandwidth. And this is why this is why um I I wish we could be better at being honest about what the thing delivers.
Jay Kranda — This this is why, for example, I have an iPhone 13 and not an iPhone 16…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda —…because my 13 does 95% of what the iPhone 16 does.
Rich Birch — Yes. Ouch. Ouch. You’re sounding like an old man, Jay. You’re sounding like an old man. Just kidding. Just kidding.
Jay Kranda — I know, no, and I know, I know, I know I I am, and I I am aware that, you know, I think the older you get, you do have to be more aware that maybe I could get a little bit more, uh, you know, grounded in my own history.
Rich Birch — No, no, I’m just kidding.
Jay Kranda — But I think you got to ask, like, of course it would be fun to have that. It’s funny. My, my, we just got our oldest, his first phone. He’s about to turn 14. And he has an iPhone 15.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jay Kranda — And I had to have this real conversation with myself internally. Like, does it really bother me that my son has a better phone than me?
Rich Birch — Or what does it say about me that it bothers me?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, I know, I know.
Rich Birch — And that’s the question I would be, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jay Kranda — And I’m like, so I keep, but it’s funny, like, like my, my internal dialogue, that’s dumb. Like, no, like I’ll just get a phone.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Jay Kranda — Cause we were going to upgrade, but I haven’t seen this. But like the, I say all this like fun and games, but I think it’s like, don’t just get the new thing cause it’s a new thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, don’t get to get the latest thing.
Jay Kranda — Like, does it move your strategy forward? And and that’s hard. It’s hard. It’s even hard for me at times to navigate. B ut I provide some things to kind of outline, to kind of think about that more strategically.
Rich Birch — Well, and yeah, this is true on, you know, this is listen, I’ve had that a version of that conversation with a lot of church leaders where um I’m and this is I i get now i’ll it’ll be take my turn to sound like the crabby old man. But like, so many churches will be like, man, we need to get—and it’s like whatever the latest thing is—like the app, the whatever, whatever everybody’s thinking about. But then I’ll come back to him like, yeah, but like, what are you doing with your new here guest data that you collect every single weekend? Like people show up to your church and they fill out a card, or they fill out some online form. Are you leveraging that? Like, how about we start with the kind of low hanging fruit, stuff that’s right in front of you while we’re also looking at all this other, um you know, kind of the latest thing.
Jay Kranda — Which like one of the most ah compelling reasons to move to a more digital type of um program or next step in your service is before, for example, somebody fills out a response card or whatever you call it at your church.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — Somebody would have a card. Then that would have to go to some volunteer that documents it, maybe puts it on an Excel spreadsheet or something. And then that information gets to a team and hypothetically if you’re really quick, maybe you’re doing it on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. Or maybe in some cases, a lot of churches Monday or even Tuesday, because they take Monday off
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — But one of the things we got to do when we went to primarily digital in this moment, like, Hey, scan this or go here and fill it out. We get to say stuff like… and Pastor Andy’s like a master at this. But We get to say, hey, if you fill out this response code right now, by the time you get to your car…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jay Kranda — …we’re going to have the information in your inbox.
Rich Birch — Love it. Jay Kranda — And like that. So why did we go to a digital program? Not because we’re scared of COVID, not because of whatever. And yeah, did we save money on printing every week?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, we did. But primarily it was because if we moved to digital, we can respond to them immediately.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah. Love it. Jay Kranda — That’s a compelling reason to do that.
Rich Birch — Yep. For sure.
Jay Kranda — And so I think you gotta you gotta think, what are the areas that are compelling? Like like i I tell this story in the book of like, we ah we had this big parents event and um and this is kind of like a famous story internally at Saddleback where we we wanted to encourage parents to raise biblical kids and do all this stuff. But we planned this big of event. It happened on a but on a Saturday and it kinda, it was a dud. It didn’t go well.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Jay Kranda — And we kinda had this big internal, kind of conversation around, well, we’re asking parents to come on Sunday, serve in a ministry, be part of a group.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — They also have kids activity. They’re married. They’re doing… Like maybe doing a Saturday morning event…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jay Kranda — …isn’t the great deliverable. And because there are other priorities, um, maybe the deliverable shouldn’t be a twice a year big event. And we actually decided to move that event to a podcast strategy.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Love it.
Jay Kranda — And, and, and again, podcasts are not the savior.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — I know like so many people are doing podcasts, but I would go like, that’s a very, like maybe, like, I think there are a lot of affinity type of strategies at churches, like men’s women’s podcast, single, single pay, like you can do a monthly or a couple of times a year, but maybe a podcast or some kind of group experience, um, could be a good deliverable.
Jay Kranda — And that’s where I go like that’s where digital can enhance the strategy, doesn’t have to completely transform it. But those are the type of things um and then this is why I will say I want to get everybody in the room together to kind of walk through what the lines are…
Rich Birch — Let’s talk about it.
Jay Kranda — …because you need more people pulling triggers and figuring out what are the integrations that make sense.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — And you as the senior leader cannot be the one figuring this out. I do not have all the answers.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
But if you get trust me I know there are people small business owners or you know large business owners that at attend your church. They’re thinking about this and they might have a really good idea. ah to help you integrate digital and technology in a very strategic way. I’m always being introduced to new stuff and I’m like, Oh, I had no idea.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — But again, this is where like, if you’re the curator and you’re the one only figuring out the answers…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …I think your strategy can be very limited, but you got to empower more people. And this is why this is why having an exercise where you get everybody in your room, you talk about this, and you go through the Alpha Omega tool and you kind of think about it. You’re going to have a lot of cool ideas. And and that’s what I try to encourage is get everybody engaged in thinking about integrations.
Rich Birch — So good. So good. Well, as as you can see, friends, this is why I want to encourage you to pick up copies. Obviously you can get it at Amazon and and, you know, Jay’s website and stuff, which we’ll come to you in in a minute. But any kind of final words, just as we’re looking to land today’s episode, that you want to make sure that, you know, leaders think about this whole area, um you know, of digital strategy, church online streaming, all that stuff.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, I would say one of the things is I would really encourage you to, especially as church leaders, one of the things is that church leaders, we tend to be a good at preserving the truth. It’s part of the strength of Christianity. Like we we kind of have preserved the truth. But at the same time on the flip side, we have a long history of killing people when we introduce too much change at once.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jay Kranda — And I think it’s very natural to revolt against change. I think there’s reasons why we preserve things. So I say that like, I think some of the internal muscles that ah Christianity has is that we don’t adapt sometimes quick quick enough. And I say this as, there are tools and technology and things you might need to use at your church that may not be your preference, but it may be the preference of the people you’re trying to interact with or reach.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — And I say that like, I get it. Like like I watch this with my own kids. There are things they do even with the generation difference between us. Like I don’t really love how much they scroll on YouTube. Like like they scroll so quick. And I’m constantly ah like, I’m like, Oh my goodness. They have the spazziest brains sometimes because of these 30 seconds, 60 second clips. But I also am aware, like I have on the flip is the people I’m trying to reach that might be how they’re wired. And there might be opportunities for me to, I need to adapt.
Jay Kranda — I’m way more adapt to make stuff that’s 30 minutes long versus 60 seconds long. And I might need to adapt if that’s my thing. And so I would say try to focus on what are the people you’re trying to reach. Um, and even if you’re less digitally savvy and you’re less on new tech, again, I kind of jokingly say this, if, if Paul, uh, Paul got Timothy circumcised for the sake of the gospel, I think we can use some tech and digital in a way that, uh, that I know that’s going to be the lasting thing.
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s good. That’s the quote.
Jay Kranda — I think we can use some things that we’re a little uncomfortable with.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — So I would encourage you for, for the sake of the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good, so good. Well, friends, you can see why I think you really should be tracking with Jay and picking up a copy. I said Amazon, are there anywhere else where we want to ah you know encourage people to pick up copies of this book?
Jay Kranda — Yeah. So you can get on Amazon and Apple books. There’s also an Audible version…
Rich Birch — Oh, nice.
Jay Kranda — …that you can go through. And then the Audible, I do provide a PDF…
Rich Birch — Great.
Jay Kranda — …so that all the graphs and tools you can follow along. I also sell some team bundles. If you wanted, uh, the MP3 and kind of a PDF, I sell some team bundles on my website that are way more affordable as well.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — But thank you, Rich. You’re, you’re, you’re like a life coach too. You’re super encouraging. So thank you for, uh, I love this. I love, I love being on.
Rich Birch — Well, I appreciate you. What would give us your web address again?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, jkranda.com, j-a-ykranda.com.
Rich Birch — Okay. Great. Thanks so much. I really appreciate being here and I hope, uh, you know, wish you the best and, uh, you know, just thank you for what, for all you’re doing both at Saddleback and in this part of your world. You could just be working away on your own thing and the fact that you’re trying to help people, I really appreciate that. So thanks so much, Jay.
Stability in Transition: Insights on Church Succession from Drake Farmer
Nov 14, 2024
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m looking forward to talking with Drake Farmer, the Executive Pastor of Ministries from Beulah Alliance Church in Alberta, Canada.
Are you curious about how churches manage leadership transitions smoothly? Learn about the strategic and intentional planning behind the leadership transition as Daniel Im (interviewed here) succeeded Keith Taylor as Beulah’s lead pastor. Tune in as Drake highlights the critical role of proactive succession planning, building trust, and maintaining a mission-focused mindset to ensure successful transitions.
Get ready ahead of time. // Keith Taylor initiated the succession conversation at Beulah Alliance six years before Daniel Im stepped into the role. This foresight and intentionality were crucial in preparing the church for a smooth transition. Think not only about the immediate future, but about the next 30 years of leadership for the church. Start preparing five to ten years before the lead pastor might be ready to leave. Be intentional about talking about succession in your church’s growth stage in order to set it up for future success.
Remember the mission and plan. // Focus on the mission during this time of preparation and searching for a new pastor. Remember it’s not about the departing pastor’s accolades or personal legacy, it’s about Jesus, the church and spreading the gospel. Have a plan in place and foster trust so that when the time comes you won’t be scrambling to get through it. Cultivate a mindset of readiness, always being prepared for the possibility of being called to a different role.
Gradual transition. // There was a strategic overlap between Keith Taylor and Daniel Im, allowing for a gradual handover of responsibilities. Clear communication and collaboration between the outgoing and incoming leaders were essential in building trust and ensuring a smooth transition. If possible, identify when various responsibilities of the previous lead pastor will be transitioned during the succession process.
Strategically roll out the announcement. // Daniel had previously worked at Beulah in adult ministry, but when he returned as the Senior Associate, the succession process wasn’t immediately revealed. Because the transition between Keith and Daniel was a 24-month process, Beulah’s leadership had to discern when to make the announcement. Strategically invite your staff, your key leaders, and your congregation into the transition at the right time so they can process the change without the runway being too long.
Role clarity. // Clearly defining roles and responsibilities during leadership transitions is crucial. Key areas such as preaching, staff leadership, and strategic vision need to be addressed to ensure a smooth handover. Identify who is leading the meetings. Who is laying out the org charts and who is reporting to whom? Role clarity behind the scenes aids in a seamless leadership transition.
Don’t be afraid to ask. // As you consider pastoral succession, who would you like to see step into that transitioning role? Don’t assume “no” from a person before asking. Identify who would be at the top of your list. Don’t be afraid to approach them and ask if they would consider coming to your church and leading. Finally, churches may benefit from partnering with organizations that specialize in consulting and coaching for succession planning. External support can provide valuable guidance and resources during transitions.
Visit drakefarmer.com to learn about Beulah Alliance Church, The Unstuck Group and connect with Drake.
NEXT STEPS // Are you navigating a leadership transition in your church?
Download our 2-Year Succession Timeline Template, inspired by insights from the episode Stability in Transition: Insights on Church Succession from Drake Farmer. This free resource offers a step-by-step guide to planning a smooth, strategic transition over 24 months. With clear phases, actionable steps, and tips directly from Drake’s experience, this template is perfect for church leaders looking to make their next leadership handover stress-free and successful. Get your copy today and ensure a confident path forward for your church!
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Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. Man, I am so looking forward to today’s conversation. This is one of those conversations that I know that there are leaders in the midst of this situation that we’re talking about, or on the brink of this situation that we’re talking about that are gonna lean in and get so much value out of this, not only because the leader that we’re having on today is is ah has living through this, is working through this, but he’s a repeat guest, which you know when we have repeat guests, that means I think they’re great.
Rich Birch — And so super excited to have Drake Farmer with us. ah Drake is at a church called Beulah Alliance Church. It’s a multi-site church with three locations as well as a Spanish campus in Alberta, Canada, was founded in 1907 in the growing city of Edmonton, has become a multi-ethnic and multi-generational church experienced rapid growth in these last few years. Drake sits in the seat of executive pastor of ministries. ah Plus, he’s also a friend. He’s a great guy. Super excited to have you on the show today, Drake. Thanks for being here.
Drake Farmer — Awesome, I’m happy to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, the other Canadian Drake. That’s what I like to say. You know, there’s there are two in Canada that that we know of. You’re one of them.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, but before nobody would ever get my name right when I introduced, but now, cause you know, Drake the rep.
Rich Birch — ah Just kidding. Oh, really? That’s hilarious.
Drake Farmer — Oh, Greg, Craig, Frank, I got truck once. That was a, yep, yep.
Rich Birch — That’s great. I love it. No, that’s that’s great. Well, yeah, that’s an upside for sure of of Drake. So why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of tell us a little bit more about Beulah. Give us, you know, if people were to come this weekend, what would they experience? That sort of stuff.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, like you said, we’re a multi-site. We’ve got, what’s interesting is we’ve got, as you said, three locations, but four campuses. So there’s an English campus and a Spanish campus in one of our locations.
Drake Farmer — And so we’re in, our our vision statement is to awaken greater Edmonton to King Jesus. And so even even through COVID, even understanding, we have a ah quite a ah large online presence, but our focus isn’t to have necessarily an online campus because really, you know, and it’s been true of the church the last 103 years as Greater Edmonton, it’s kind of grown up with the city um in that sense. And so we’re really focused on that incarnational, how are you how is that, you know the you know, now the screen door is, you know, online church. And so being intentional there, but then wanting really to drive people in.
Drake Farmer — And so, um again, it would just it would depend a lot on the campus that you’re you’re at. So with with real estate and what you have and the buildings you can get, we would say, you know, we want to we want to have the experience, our values, our philosophy, our vision, the experience would be really much Beulah, but at the same time, it could be size and location. Edmonton is ah is a a hugely, diversely cultural um city. And so we have multigenerational multi multi-campus, multi-ethnic campuses across the board. um But the biggest thing is going to be if you come to our West Campus, which is running around 2,000 people or three services.
Drake Farmer — We’ve got a campus in there in the southwest part of our city that’s running about 600 people with two services and then all the way down to you know our our Spanish campus and our smaller campuses ranging from around the 50 to 100 or you know to the 200 mark with our Spanish and our English one there is our newest and we’re in the midst of long-term planning in the next couple of years launching our next campus. So.
Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, we, we, you might remember if you’ve the name Beulah is not a name you run into all the time in churches. It’s not like another, you know, whatever Northview, you know, Community Church or whatever.
Drake Farmer — Yep.
Rich Birch — And now I just made fun of way too many people who listen to our podcast. But ah you might remember we had Daniel Im on the the podcast. We had him on multiple times. And Daniel is the lead pastor. We’ll link to that episode. And the reason why so oftentimes, you know, I I go to a church and I’m like, I’d love to what’s going on, I’d love to hear… But actually, in this conversation, I’ve seen from afar what’s happened with ah yeah Daniel stepping in as the lead pastor, the kind of succession stuff that’s happened there. And I really wanted to get Drake’s kind of vantage point on this view on this as executive ah pastor, or senior leader in the organization, kind of get his perspective on that.
Rich Birch — This is an issue that I know is just, it’s incredibly important for so many of our churches. So talk us through kind of at a high level first, uh, what, what, tell, talk us through what has happened on the succession. What does that look like? And then we’ll get into what did you learn through that? What would you say some of your, your learnings for 30 years from now, when Daniel leaves, you can think next guys can pull out this one and and talk about what that looks like then. But yeah, let’s first tell us kind of describe the succession that has taken place there.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, totally. Oh, it’s interesting, like, even from my my vantage point was, in our in our greater Edmonton area, ah probably all the major, there was a lot of successions are happening right around the time, even before COVID. And especially some of our larger churches. And so it’s fascinating to see what was happening.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And then a lot of even taking the risk of going a little bit younger than what we expect, you know, the 30s mark and even some being 20. And I was just like, oh, this is so fascinating to watch. You know, I’m from an outsider’s perspective, and I wonder how it’s going to turn out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — You know, and then I joke around that I’m like, Oh, yeah, now i’m I’m, I’m hitching my, you know, my my wagon to that being part of Beulah, you know, and even through COVID, what was what was what was crazy was, um you know there was a season there where in our and our district, in our denomination, in our province, there was 21 vacant lead pastor roles, just lead pastor roles.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Drake Farmer — And so there was this crisis, you know. And we’ve been talking about an aging demographic of lead pastors for a while now.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — But but you know the intentionality of going, oh, we’ll think about it eventually. And COVID hits, it expedites all of this stuff. And all of a sudden now, all these churches and our our district, our denomination is scrambling, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Drake Farmer — And so what what was a privilege, I would say, for me, um being walking into this, probably about a third or a quarter into the process I guess of this of, or at least I’m sorry not the process of there was much more intention which we’ll get into later. But of the third end of the process of of the actual overlap between our previous lead pastor, Keith Taylor and then our current Daniel Im um and being able to kind of watch that happen . And seeing the intentionality that there was that in that Keith brought that he started this process like six years I think before it was done or six years before Daniel came on. I can’t remember the exact number.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Drake Farmer — But he I think he even triggered this even though like we should think about this, like ten years before.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Drake Farmer — You know and and always just kind of going, and eventually was like, alright guys, we need to seriously start looking at I know you don’t want you know they didn’t want him to. You know he you know those sort of things and I think this would be a really good kind of you know succinct way to put it of Keith’s heart. You know it’s my second week he’s taking out for lunch. um COVID hasn’t hit yet. So my claim to fame is I started here at Beulah, two weeks later COVID hits, and I become the COVID crisis manager.
Rich Birch — Wow. a Great time to start.
Drake Farmer — Yeah. COVID crisis manager for all of our campuses and we have to rethink ministry from the get-go.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — But yeah, so that hasn’t hit yet. Keith’s taking up for lunch and I just, I asked him, I say, Hey, Keith, you’ve easily got another 5 to 10 years. Like, like why now? Why are you, why are you thinking succession now? And he goes, cause I’m not thinking for this church. I’m not thinking about the next five to 10, I’m thinking in the next 30 plus. And the next 30 plus needs a new leader.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Drake Farmer — um And it’s not that I couldn’t keep leading it. But if we if I’m doing it on the high and that kind of growth stage, this is the time to do it. And and and let’s be intentional about it instead of waiting until it’s needed, in a sense.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. One of the things, this struck me, I don’t know Keith that well, having a little bit of interaction with him, um you know, over the years. A great leader and, you know, incredible guy, obviously loves the Lord, has been there for 30 years so that, you know, he was, you know, had been obviously deeply loved in the community, loved in the church.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about, like one of the hallmarks, I think, of these successions. A lot of it does rest in the heart of the leaving or the departing pastor and their orientation towards this. Maybe talk to a a person that’s listening in today that so finds himself there like at some age where they’re like, I should start thinking about this. How how what how would you encourage them to be kind of cultivating their own inner life in these this moment…
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …even before they kind of flag it and say, okay, I think we need to start talking about this?
Drake Farmer — Yeah, I think I think part of it is just, I mean, I say this to any staff person to kind of alleviate when they feel like it’s time for them to step off the bus.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And they’re handing me that letter of resignation. And and they’re a little bit like conflicted about it, obviously, because it’s like, I’m feeling called out of it. But I don’t want to give this sense, like, I hate this place or something.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — And I’m just like and I have I had to learn too because I was like I don’t want to overreact emotionally or under-react, like oh you don’t care that I’m leaving.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — So says I just need you to understand like, hey I’m I’m super sad, like you’re you’re amazing that you’re stepping off the bus, but I don’t own you, like Jesus owns you. And then Jesus and and so if Jesus is moving the pieces across the board and is wanting you in a different location, then he has somebody for us. So I think and think the difference there is that you’re needing to be in that kind of almost like I’m I’m here now because I’ve been called here…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …um but always being ready, the sense of going at any point, right? I could be called out, and what we’ve seen so much over the years is, well, now that call’s there, so now I’m leaving, and then the church now needs to walk through that. um So I think more so than any other role as that as that voice, as that lead pastor, um is going, how do I prepare my church? I think I think the difficulty is um I mean there isn’t I mean, there is an employment risk in that to say, hey, I think i think it might be time and you’re you’re putting your neck out there. So so I can understand there’s there is a sense of like, what does that look like? um
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And so I I don’t want to assume and the um the unique dynamic. Because I said our story here at Beulah is going to be different than your story.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Drake Farmer — So I’ll i’ll just share it from this perspective to go what Keith did…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — …and why it worked well for us, but recognizing the dynamics that were there. He was a loved beloved leader that he had the trust and the relational credit with the board of the church and you know all of that stuff. And and ah and it did revolve around retirement which also helps.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — So to keep that in mind as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — um But yeah, so I mean, he was, I don’t know if it was GLS or maybe it was some other conference he was saying that he was at, and they were talking about succession. This is about 10 years before, and he’s like, oh, that’s, yeah, that’s a really important conversation. So he he kind of let the board know, hey, this came up, you know, I don’t have any plans, but at some point, we if we’re gonna do this, we should be intentional about it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And then it was ah the five to six year mark that he said, okay, guys, Well, guys and gals, we’re egalitarian, but um okay, team.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — ah to say, hey, we need to think about this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — We need we need to be intentional about this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — So let’s start praying. Let’s start discerning. Let’s start planning, you know. And a big part of that was, well, who who do we believe the next person is? And and what what is the prayerful discernment of that and then and then the plans of like what is the overlap and those different pieces. And so there was a lot of intentionality there and a very open posture of the sense of like it’s about the mission, it’s about Jesus…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …it’s about you know you know continuing to see the legacy. And when you’re and part of being a part of a church, and for some churches it might seem like 100 years is normal, um but in the west of Canada, 100 years is is very abnormal for for a church to have that legacy. 50, maybe 60, sure, but you know having that legacy in this area um definitely builds into that as well, that we’ve seen multiple pastors come.
Drake Farmer — And there are people in this church Church is 103 years old. We had somebody um who who recently um who passed away that was like 102 years old…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Drake Farmer — …and had been a part of that church the whole entire time.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Drake Farmer — So i like there’s some of these dynamics that you have these voices and trust and stuff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, a big part of that posture and that thinking was, you know, it’s not about me and having that sense and praying into it and wondering when, you know, Jesus, let me know or let me think about it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — Or let me be prepared. Or, or maybe, maybe for you, it’s just, well, I, I got in a situation where we’re not in a situation that we could be as intentional as six years. But do you have a plan in place to say, Hey, let’s think about that now so that when the call comes that we can enact because we’ve thought through it and we’re not scrambling. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Right. Yeah. That’s great. I’d love to hear about the kind of intentional plan. You know, there’s, there was this overlap. I’d love to, you know, pick apart what that looked like. And, um, you know, kind of set that up for us, help us understand what that kind of intentional, those intentional steps look like.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, and what’s interesting is like, for Daniel, when Keith approached Daniel, he said, would you consider putting your name forward and be a part of this process? There was two main candidates that they had kind of fought through and reached out to to consider. And Daniel wanted, and he was at Lifeway, he was at Nashville. I mean, like he legit just got his green card and then was back to Canada.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Drake Farmer — right like So it’s just like, oh, we were we were there planning the roots deep, they weren’t looking. um And one of the things for Daniel was because there was an intentional overlap, if that wasn’t there, he would have said no.
Drake Farmer — Now I know another contexts, having that intentional overlap may not be helpful. I know of other, I could share stories of churches I’ve spoken with and and walked with as well um that because of that but it was because of the attitude or or the posture…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …maybe of the of the exiting pastor where it didn’t allow for that, where there needed you almost need to have like ah a season where there’s like a reprieve or like a gap. But because of Keith’s posture because of how how he saw and how he spoke about publicly and how Daniel spoke of Keith. And there was a big part, what was interesting, was it was so fascinating. I would get these text messages from, you know, people from churches across, you know, the nation and internet, you know, North America as well. But I just knew there were, kind like you said, we’re looking and outside looking in and we’re going, man, is it, is it actually going as well as it looks?
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Drake Farmer — And I was like, and I could say, actually, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it is.
Drake Farmer — You know, being able to sit in the you know as an exec team and and senior leadership team, was it perfect? Were there never any tensions, and especially going through COVID? Of course not. You know, and and I know that there were conversations, because at that point, you know, Daniel was reporting to Keith, this wasn’t a, like, dual leading thing.
Rich Birch — Yep. Right.
Drake Farmer — It was I’m bringing you in, and then helping you move that forward. And so there were reporting systems there, Keith was still our lead. He was leading. And I’m sure there were probably some, you know, some good, healthy, you know, conflict type conversations behind closed doors. But when it came to in front of the staff, when it came to at the congregation, it was all just, you know, how they spoke of each other was huge.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And then another part that was a big part was there was an intentional plan of knowing what pieces in this lead pastor job description would be passed over, you know. And and in what part through those two years at the at the one mark mark, you know the three month, at six month, at the nine month, at the one year, they are very strategic about the different pieces that way they would hand over.
Drake Farmer — And and it was interesting. So when covid and covid happened and covid hit. We had to go online, 100%. And I think there was the the strategy side piece of the church. I think it was still at least another three or maybe six months—I don’t know what the exact timeline was—that was still supposed to be firmly in Keith’s you know purview. But he said, at his age, and he was looking, moving online, he goes, I’m the least informed person. And Daniel’s way better equipped to help us as a church right now strategically to as a lead side of things to be able to lead us through that. And so he said, Daniel, I need to hand this over to you sooner. And here’s why.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah.
Drake Farmer — So it was Keith that was driving some of that stuff and recognizing the benefit. And so he was driving that posture. He, you know, same thing. He said, Daniel, it’s like, if there’s some hard decisions that we need to make as a church, be it who’s on the bus, or who you want to bring on the bus, or change a vision or values, let’s do that now, so that i can you can lend my voice or I can echo in that. Right?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Drake Farmer — And so there was a lot of reframing of going, what is our vision? What is our values? And what was amazing when when we un we did our values and did a message series on it, the message series was called Unchanging. Because it was like, these have been the values…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Drake Farmer — …of Beulah for the last 103 years and they’re they’re they’re the same. They’re just packaged differently.
Rich Birch — Yeah. And maybe different words, but yeah.
Drake Farmer — And and and Daniel did that and Keith was a part of that message series, even though he had already retired. And even now, we’re going into a capital campaign in or in sort actually we’re in the middle of one in this in this month, and Keith is a part of that because of the voice and the weight that he has in that.
Drake Farmer — And you know, but even now, like it was so fascinating, even after the fact, where Keith you know, he was going, okay, I’m retired now, but he still attends Beulah and he’s still a part of this church. And people still view him as their pastor, which is totally cool. And he was like, how do I how do I have a posture of supporting Daniel? So at first he was sitting up front to show, I’m for him, I’m for him. And then he started realizing people were watching how he would react. And he was like, no, no. So now he sits in the back.
Drake Farmer — It was just like, okay, if this, because if it if it if it impacts mission, if it impacts our reaching people…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Drake Farmer — …and stuff, he’s like, not going to do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — It’s not about me.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — You know it’s about the church and it’s about Jesus and it’s about the mission. And a big part of that is how do we set up you know Daniel. So that was really his posture. And Daniel reciprocated in the same way of how he respected him and how he he honored, you know even in the baton pass and everything. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s even that intentionality of like sitting up front. You know, I’ve said I like that he’s at least started there. That’s an interesting, um even tactic. I’ve said that to teaching pastors in the past when we’re trying to have, you know, somebody who on that or join the teaching team.
Rich Birch — It’s like I’ve said to them, I’m like, I need you to sit down front when they’re here. Don’t take that weekend off.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Please show up and you know, open your notebook, take notes.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know because that and people do pick up on that, right?
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — They do pick up on that, you know, subtle cue. I get why he doesn’t I understand the like hey, I don’t want to be the other people are looking at all the time. I get that.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, yeah. And, and, and that would have been the posture.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — I mean, and that’s how Daniel leads too.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — He’s upfront worshiping, he’s upfront and part of those things too. And, and, but it just had the unexpected negative consequence with some people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Drake Farmer —And he said, well, we’re going to do what makes the most sense.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about, when you say Daniel started as he was intentionally, so when he joined the team, it was known publicly: Hey, he, this is the guy who’s going to be the successor. Was the timeline known?
Drake Farmer — No.
Rich Birch — Talk us about what…
Drake Farmer — We we joke around.
Rich Birch — And, and, and, you know, pull pull apart what was in his head, what was in Keith’s head, what was in the team’s head, the community’s head, all that.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, if I were to have any question, if I were to go back and ask, would we do something differently? The one thing that was like…
Drake Farmer — So they hired Daniel functionally and you know as a title, which is just a different version of my role, which was kind of fascinating. So he had the title of my predecessor, Senior Associate. And that’s where he was hired as. And then as at the congregational level, they were like, oh, Daniel. Like Daniel used to be on staff at Beulah before he went to Lifeway.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — And he was in Adult Ministry. And so like, oh, Daniel’s back, and he’s our Senior Associate Pastor. But there was no like right up their get-go…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Context or whatever.
Drake Farmer — But so was it was fascinating at the congregational level, I don’t know if they fully understood that, but at the staff, and there was some conversation there. But even at the denominational level, we just joked around, it was like the worst kept secret that was coming back.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Drake Farmer — Right. So and I, you know, and it’s one of those hard things to go. Well, it’d be hard to know if you were to do it differently, you know, would that get the results? Because a lot of these things are, you’re throwing a dart and you’re you’re taking the best out of the information you have and you have to make a decision where you’re gonna go.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — So yeah, there wasn’t this there wasn’t this very public, that and again, there was a very clear you know we’re going to start with this. We’re going to get used to them again. You know the staff level, they understand it. He gets more of that strategy thing, the staff development, and you know those pieces. And at some point, as things are going, then they’re going to announce it. So that because that two-year mark of, I think this is probably where the wisdom comes in. If you announce it from the get-go, hey, here’s my successor, and then it’s two years…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — …like it’s like mourning somebody dying, but they haven’t passed yet.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for a long time. Yep.
Drake Farmer — And I thought, obviously, Keith died, because that’s a…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — …very morbid way to look at it.
Rich Birch — No, no. Yes, yes.
Drake Farmer — But it’s there’s this sense of like, oh, you’re in this weird space.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — And when do you strategically invite your staff, when do you strategically invite, you know, key leaders, when do you strategically invite, you know, the congregation into knowing that, so there’s enough runway, um but not so much that you’re just like, so what does this mean? And you know, and then yeah, this, this, sense. And I mean, for us, it was it was interesting because obviously with COVID, it it and both made things very difficult.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — Everything was difficult. um
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And it was it was it was, I think, hardest on Keith because he’s such an extrovert and such, you know, very pastoral where some of his, we had to do some stuff after his succession because, you know, he did, we did a succession baton pass with nobody in the room at the time. And to serve him we got people to send in pictures and we do these cardboard cutouts and put them in the seats and stuff so we could see the faces of the people that he’s been pastoring for 30 years.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s hard. That’s a hard season.
Drake Farmer — But he couldn’t he couldn’t say like eyeball to eyeball so we got to do that later. But some of that was difficult. But some of that too was like I think people were just like you know Beulah’s always been great, we’ve always trusted them. Why is this any different?
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to live my life. And so there’s a couple of town hall meetings that I was leading with, I was going to be interviewing the two of them. And and it’s all on Zoom, right? So then maybe that was pretty…
Rich Birch — Part of it.
Drake Farmer — But it’s like a church of 3,000 plus people and six people show up.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Drake Farmer — And then you do a second one and six people show up. And I remember saying to both of them, this is either a really good sign, or not.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Drake Farmer — And I don’t know which one, right? Like, you know, and, and it turned out to be…
Rich Birch — Well, I think there’s something…
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — There’s an interesting principle there where I think our, like this stuff is really important to us.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And, you know, that, that I would take that as the, like, yeah, the people trust the leadership at the church…
Drake Farmer — Yep.
Rich Birch — …and are like behind you, but yeah, there is some of this where it’s like, and but and that was obviously an extreme season for that, where it was like…
Drake Farmer — Yep. For sure.
Rich Birch — …yeah, I got enough fish to fry in my own world. Like, you know, I, you know, we we want to walk through that. I’m interested in that. But like at the end of the day, just tell me when it’s done and we’ll be great.
Rich Birch — You know, kind of thing ah this idea of kind of um the the typical lead pastor’s role being carved up, and, you know, um hey, so this is this is Keith’s up until this point. And then it gets handed off to Daniel.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — All of that. Was there any part of that looking back on that process uh, that you would say, Oh, that, that was either like a transferable lesson we should pass on or like, is there something that people that are listening in should think about when they’re thinking about how to kind of carve up the role? Are there any kind of advice you’d pass on to that? I think cause I think that’s an interesting way to to process it.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing, because, without getting into the specific of details…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — …because I would want to be real careful that you don’t go…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — …oh, this is how Beulah did, so this is how I’m going to do it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — I think you need to look through what are some of the big mantle pieces that if we don’t figure out who’s leading what and when—things like you know preaching.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And it was like basically during that season nobody else preached on our you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …our main stage in broadcasting other than a few exceptions because they need, we needed to hear from both. Like that was very strategic.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And when you’re looking at the HR side of things, who’s leading our senior leadership and exec team…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — …you know like at what point does that turn over the strategy for ministry, you know and and the in the the pieces of that. And yeah the part that I’m not doing I obviously isn’t exact, but the the part that the lead is giving vision and understanding of like, here’s the lens that we see everything through. Those those different pieces, the the staffing and culture pieces and stuff like that. You know, who’s owning the staff, all staff meetings. And and and re-thinking through org charts and who’s reporting to who and you know and how you want your team to be you know managed.
Drake Farmer — So it’s like there are some of these pieces and going, and then it’s I think it’s laying that out. And a lot of it, and like that was done before Daniel showed up. That was the board.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And Keith that walked through that so that when he was invited into it, this is the plan as we’re going to walk things out.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And and a big part of it too is because Daniel’s coming into the posture to go like, yeah, I’m not Keith.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And I recognize I’m not i’m not trying to just learn to to be mini Keith because that wouldn’t have served anything. But at the same time, there’s so much I can learn from Keith. So how do I in these two years not only are we figuring how to co-lead…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …and how do we pass things off, but it’s good to do that because then I get to I get to sit walking into it and not just getting everything at once…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …I have all this relational credit that Keith has. I have all this leadership experience that I get to pull from. And I get to get piece by piece by piece kind of handed to me and then continue getting coaching. And then Keith giving him the freedom to go here’s my advice but recognizing…
Rich Birch — That’s your thing.
Drake Farmer — …you got to lead and you’ve got to walk out the consequences of your decision. So you always had this posture… And there’ll be some things that you know, yeah like I said, you would have good healthy dialogue because it’s different convictions and understanding in that. I think the one thing I think ah that we kept trying to right size, because at the congregational level, you know, I think for the most part, that came clear. There was good people. They knew Keith was honored. They knew that they knew that, you know, because it was around retirement, that there was the right steps to honor him, both on stage and off stage.
Drake Farmer — And, you know, did a thing in the parking lot where every person can come and he could shake hands and stuff like that. um People felt like, OK, and you he wasn’t leaving. Right.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Drake Farmer — And because of the healthy relationship…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — …obviously, sometimes that doesn’t work. But because of that, you know, they get to still see Keith. He’s still is doing funerals. He’s still, you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …like um less obviously, for a lot of different reasons. Drake Farmer — And then, but for us, I think the biggest thing was for the staff, it was like, what does this mean? and And I think part of it too is even just making it clear that’s…
Drake Farmer — I remember chatting with one of our teams and they were struggling with something and they said, it just feels like the succession is just the most important thing. And I looked at him, I said, yeah, because it is. And they’re like, what? I said, I get it. Like boots on the ground, ministry is important. But and and we wouldn’t want to pause all that stuff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And we’ve got to figure out the tension of doing both these things. But if we don’t do succession right…
Rich Birch — Yeah, stakes are huge for sure.
Drake Farmer — …then there might not be a ministry for you to run.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Drake Farmer — Or you might not have a, like I hate to say, you might not have a job, because there’s not enough payroll because the people left and the giving went down.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — And you hope and you hope that people don’t do that. But we’ve seen examples where done wrong, I mean, the church can implode there, you know, they can’t bounce back. There could be church splits because of unhealth and all that stuff. So it’s like, yeah, this is really, really important because it trickles all down from that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — Now is everything about the lead? No, it shouldn’t be that. and we’re seeing the opposite it is a new personality driven thing…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — But still, like if this isn’t done well…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer —And you know and for us, it was like a joke around because we… And this was actually helpful for our staff, you know where our strategic ends. We don’t have attendance as one of our strategic… We still track attendance, obviously, for loads of reasons. But as our one of our main priorities isn’t there. But during COVID, it was you know our strategic end stretch goal is a negative 15% in attendance in this next year and the first part of the succession.
Drake Farmer — And part of it was like, well, you know with succession, that’s about what you’re supposed to expect, 15% drop at least…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Drake Farmer — …and you hope if your strategy will bounce back. But you add succession and COVID into the mix.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — We joke around the big great shuffle of everybody switching churches, depending on where people landed on stuff.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yep.
Drake Farmer — So we’re like, yeah, it’s a stretch goal because let’s not go to negative 30%.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Drake Farmer — But it also communicated to go, in this season, it’s not just all about up and to the right.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — The season for right now is recognizing it isn’t just go, go, go.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep.
Drake Farmer — Now, we don’t ignore opportunities and the movement of you know Jesus and to evangelize and to disciple, but hey, in this season, as you think about growth stages of any organization, it’s normal when they when they’re doing the flow to go up to the next stage, there will be a dip and to not freak out.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — It’s okay.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Drake Farmer — But a lot of it too, just to be, I think, I think if we would have done more um town halls with our staff, I think, and kind of like inviting them into instead of relying fully on the cascading, you know, um communication. And maybe if COVID wouldn’t have happened and a lot of needing to reorg everything because of COVID, maybe that would have been better.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Drake Farmer — But with that combination, there was a lot of people that felt kind of like displaced.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And with that, felt like in the dark, unintentionally…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — …because it it wasn’t like this is just some secret. But so I think if I were to go back in light of what we’re walking through would have been more, hey, let’s just talk about this. Let’s have these two [inaudible]. And so we did that and more in the tail end because we were noticing this. But if we were to do a front load hat would probably had…
Rich Birch — Do a bit more of that. Yeah.
Drake Farmer — …a less angst for people. So that would have been one definite learning lesson.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, the the the interesting thing there, you know, you had brought up with this, which I think is good, is just kind of practical. Like, hey, you might see a dip in attendance. That’s just a normal thing. That’s a factor. You know, I’ve said that to people on the, you know, in the fundraising side. That’s like one of those things fundraising consultants won’t tell you. They’ll be like, you’re probably going to take a hit in your in your attendance during the public phase.
Drake Farmer — Yep.
Rich Birch — And ah that’s okay. Like, don’t freak out. It’s going to be okay. and You’re not losing people.
Drake Farmer — Yep.
Rich Birch — Your church is going to have a church on the end of it, but it’s a normal part of the process.
Rich Birch — But I appreciate that you brought it up because um there is a dynamic, and Keith will be an an example of a leader like this where, um so three quarters of the reason why people attend church—and this is any church, three, according to our friends at Gallup—is because of the teaching on Sunday morning. That’s that’s a true statement. People, teaching is a teaching leads. It’s a critical part of what we do. And obviously when you switch out the person who’s doing a lot of that teaching that’s going to have impact on the organization. That is just true. And as staff, executive whether you’re an executive pastor or a staff leader in a church, we have to stare down that reality.
Rich Birch — I do think that that is fuzzy in a lot of our team’s heads. It’s not clear what that looks like. And the reason why I say that’s that’s apropos for a leader like Keith, is Keith is not a, my, my impression of him. He’s not like a super self-centered guy. He’s not like, Hey, it’s all about me. He’s not, and Daniel’s definitely not that way. He’s not like, Hey, this is all about me. But it is a critically important part of, you know, of what we do. And so obviously if you’re going to switch people that you you know you’re going to see, um you know, an impact on that. We just have to be sober about that. That’s going to be be normal. what
Rich Birch — What is Keith doing now? Like, I know retirement is like a very funny word. What does that mean? Where is he spending his time?
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — This is a critical piece of the equation, kind of what these people do on the other side of transition is important.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, so um without getting into too many details, because it’s it’s not my story to tell, but there were some health stuff with his wife…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yep.
Drake Farmer — …that came right around that time. He’s been public about it, so I know I’m not breaching confidence.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — But and so a big focus for him is is caring for his wife. And then the other part on the sides is, yeah, he has he is doing some with, well, they’re called the pastorate now, but the Canadian Church Leaders Network we have here.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Drake Farmer — And he does with emerging leaders, and so he’s a part of that.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Drake Farmer — He gets to do that on the side of his desk. And then, I mean, he just recently walked the church through a succession, and then there’s other some church consulting. And then there’s some speaking here and there, but he’s just very picky and choosy about how that is…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Drake Farmer — …so that he can manage some of that stuff. And so part of it is he gets to continue using his gifts. And then, yeah, just he gets to be part of our congregation. And then there are places where he’s still doing funerals, he’s still speaking at you know on stage you know as a pulpit fill. And like anybody else, we give him an honorarium.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And and then other other different pieces where he’s a part of, and so he gets to still utilize those pastoral gifts and still gets to use those leadership gifts.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Drake Farmer — And there’s moments where it’s like, hey, we should probably get Keith’s input on this, right? Because it’s just knowing the history and the relationships. And and he’s just he just ah he just continues to be a cheerleader…
Rich Birch — yep
Drake Farmer — …for us as a staff, for the church, for the organization and the relationships that he’s built.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — He’s still he still shoulder taps those because he just he really wants the kingdom to win. He wants Jesus people to be awakened to Jesus for him to be made to be made you know known. And And with other people just to help them get on mission and to get clarity, he just he’s just he’s in the hallways and he’s yeah galvanizing in in in the alleyways and the hallways and things like that.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Drake Farmer — So that’s kind of, I mean, far as far as I can tell.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great. No, I totally get that. Obviously not asking you to speak on his behalf, but just as a team leader in the, you know, in the midst to see that I think it and is an important piece of the puzzle for sure. There isn’t. You know your retirement is a funny concept when it comes to you know serving the kingdom.
Drake Farmer — Oh, yeah.
Rich Birch — Right? It’s always a strange you know you know a strange thing. So um I think this has been great. What a ah great conversation. The other kind of encouragement I would say to people that are listening in is, um and we’ve kind of talked around this a little bit, but um obviously Keith pursued or the church pursued Daniel and like went after him and was like, hey, we would love for you to come and and think about this. I would encourage leaders that are thinking in, thinking around that, like but like there there are probably people out there…
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that are on your short list of people that you… And you you, I think in those situations, we discredit those, like we say no for the people before they say no.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like we, and we don’t even ask them, because we think there’s no way, and I would have. Like I remember we’re hearing when Daniel was going back to Beulah, I was one of those people that was like, really, wow, fascinating, I did not see that coming.
Drake Farmer — Well, on and yeah, on his resumé, I mean, Daniel’s never been a lead pastor.
Drake Farmer — …like with his leadership chops, he did a lot of like his speaking, he was a, when he was a national, you know, as a communicator in the church he was at.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Drake Farmer — Obviously with all the church consulting he’s done with LifeWay. But it wasn’t your, the obvious at his at his age, at his experience, his resume…
Rich Birch — Yeah
Drake Farmer — …and but when you pray into that… I think another example I would go is, you know, the church that I came from, um you know When that lead, he had been he had been working with somebody and they figured you know the next five to 10 years, it’d be great. I think you know he could be the next lead. And a lot of it was just due to his age, you know? And and then it was this very clear call…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — …to say, like he this does lead is needing to leave. And it was funny, his first reaction was even when he told me, he asked me, would you come back and become the lead? Now, out of respect, I said, I’ll pray about it. But I came back and said, you like you know, I’m not a lead pastor.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — I’m not wired that way. It’s not what the church needs. And then him and and they’re his associate were both like, yeah, but both were saying, well, I’m not ready. I’m not ready. And as I was praying about it, I was like, why not? And so I challenged them.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Drake Farmer — I go, don’t like, yeah, okay, on paper, sure. But is could God be something in it? Now, of course, pray about it and discern because you guys have to walk out of the consequences. And then I got to, in my my consulting side of things, I got to actually come back and coach with them. Because I said, i you know, I’m not going to come back on staff, but I’d be happy to help Bridge because we’re in the same city.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drake Farmer — And so getting to be a part of that and seeing that, but it was even there it was fascinating the age gap was crazy and you know this guy’s like not even in his 30s. And the church just they accepted him you know.
Rich Birch — Good.
Drake Farmer — And they and they walked within this. Al of his staff are older than him but they follow him. But there was a risk there. And it wasn’t, but so, yeah, so what exactly what you’re saying is going, that person might be in your midst and you don’t even know it. So be praying and wondering, if I feel called out, who do I have that I am working with that at any point I can hand the baton off to you?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Drake Farmer — And maybe you don’t have that person, then you need to think differently. And maybe it’s networks and um organizations or your part of a denomination or you know have sort of having those conversations to figure out what is the global pipeline…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Drake Farmer — …or the national, or states, or province, or whatever that is. But you we need to be thinking differently…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh, for sure.
Drake Farmer — …about who are who are you raising up and who is in the wings. And it may not be in your congregation. Because I know for us in our country and Canada, it’s like predominant churches are rural and small.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — So you don’t have these multi-staffed circumstances.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve been I’m kind of a peek in on a transition succession situation where they did exactly that where they they went and they they it was like, um and I, you know, my one encouragement was I like was like swing for the fences, like who, because they didn’t have somebody inside and they were like, who I’m like, who is that person? I was like swing for the fences. And so sure enough there, it’s not a done situation yet, but it’s like that person that one of the people, or actually two of the people that they reached out to, that were in there like, man, it would be amazing if we could get them to come and think about this.
Rich Birch — Both of them are engaged in the conversation.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like they’re like, oh, we’re actually talking with them, which it would have been easy on the outside to be like, no, there’s no way. They will not, you know. You just never know what God’s doing in in inside a leader and and so I’d encourage people that’s… This has been great. Drake, this has been super helpful. I appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on the show. Anything kind of final words you’d say just as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Drake Farmer — Yeah, I think um you know something we were talking about offline beforehand was just going like, you know, one of the things I’d really recommend is obviously some intentionality. But there might need to be you know an outside partner in your or you know from your organization.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Drake Farmer — Especially if you you know haven’t walked through this or those other things. And I mean, there are loads of of organizations that actually help consult and coach in this area.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Drake Farmer — And you know and so I’d I’d offer a couple of things. I mean, one for us, like I’m i’m a part of the you know The Unstuck Church Group. um And so one of the things that we do, obviously, helping churches get unstuck.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And so, you know, that’s one one of those organizations that, you know, heavily… And actually, before I even joined The Unstuck team, we actually worked with Unstuck…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Drake Farmer — …as a church to kind of figure out with our multisite and stuff. And it was such a great process.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — And then that evolved into something and you know so. I’m one of the Canadian reps so um but as an organization that’s a great partnership. The other thing too is I you know I just be happy like hey if it a phone call you know just as you know subjective, you know I’m not you know just looking to kind of pick pick my brain, happy to do that as well. um you know And and all all of that information, both like you want to learn more about you know Beulah, us as is a church. um If you want to kind of just understand a little bit more about Unstuck and what we do, or just want to connect with me, all that information you can find on drakefarmer.com. And you click there, it’s got the church link, it’s got Unstuck, and then there’s ah there’s a personal way you can reach out to me.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Drake Farmer — And I’d be happy to I’d happy to to connect and whatnot, but and but those could be some different options. And and to not be scared to go, hey, you know I we could figure this out alone. um But because of how important this decision is and how like you know um sometimes just getting some of that bench strength, even if you are in a larger organization, to have that outside perspective…
Rich Birch — For sure.
Drake Farmer — …to be able, that’s not closest to it, to help coach you and has some of the data and experience um finding… And maybe it’s not Unstuck. Maybe it’s you know, I know Daniel was a part of a cohort that walked through some of this. We were very intentional about that as well. And we also worked with Unstuck with some of our structural stuff to go you know… We as an organization as Unstuck to be happy to work with any churches, I’d be happy as a phone call. But it’s figuring out that partnership to know who could come alongside us. And maybe maybe maybe it’s a maybe it’s another church or another lead pastor or somebody who’s gone through it…
Rich Birch — 100%.
Drake Farmer — …um that you just kind of go, hey, could we have some coffee together, right? Like, it doesn’t need to be complicated. But there, I think there’s just some different layers there to just like, don’t walk that out alone. um And if you can’t find that, that network isn’t there and your denomination or a church or something like that, yeah, reach out to me and I would be happy to help make some connections, be it with Unstuck or maybe another church that I know that might fit well with your context to just kind of go like…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Drake Farmer — …hey, we can learn from each other and that’d be amazing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, just to give a hearty amen, particularly on the ends. Well, Drake, that’s really super kind of you to say, hey, reach out. I’m happy to jump on the phone. I would encourage you to do that, friends, if you’re listening in, that Drake is actually that kind of leader. He is like, we’ll actually want to talk to you. So please do that. Just drop by drakefarmer.com. And then also to give a hearty amen to the Unstuck side of the equation. I know obviously Um, we haven’t actually talked about it publicly on the podcast, but you man, just so sad to see the passing of Tony Morgan and, um, and you know, what a, what a monster, uh, loss for the kingdom.
Rich Birch — What an incredible guy he was, but the thing, The Unstuck Group has always been a group of leaders. And, um, I want to give an extra endorsement for like for them in general…
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …on this specific issue on multi-site, you know, and if you’re, if you feel stuck, you should reach out to The Unstuck guys…
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and they’re, you know, they do great work. Drake’s one of their, their coaches, but they got a lot of other folks too that can help.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — They’re just incredible organization for sure.
Drake Farmer — Yeah, and let me let me just say one thing because I just just, as you said to talking about with Tony, obviously, our prayers for us as a team and Tony’s family is is very much appreciated but also like, as as we were meeting, it was a testament to Tony’s leadership…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — …that he had been building a team, he didn’t want it to be about him.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — He assumed he had another five to 10 years, and that was his plan.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Drake Farmer — But because he was building a team and was handing things and has you know wasn’t all thrown around him, there is a team now that that he was moving people into these roles…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Drake Farmer — …that they are now just stepping into this. So during this season, that the legacy that Tony started with Unstuck and the work that they do with churches, it’s the model. It’s not the person.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drake Farmer — Right. And you get that same benefit if it was Amy or Tony or any other one that would be working with the church and all the infrastructure built around it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drake Farmer — um You know, that Unstuck will continue to move because because of what he built and and how he raised up leaders.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. Yeah, that’s obviously, that is, it’s funny. I didn’t even think of that. It’s an interesting angle on the whole succession thing.
Drake Farmer — Yep.
Rich Birch — Obviously we’re, you know, it’s unfortunate that when there, but that kind of transition can happen in…
Drake Farmer — Yep.
Rich Birch — …you know, lots of organizations where like, you know, nobody, you know, Tony didn’t think that day, was at work in his backyard, that that would have been kind of the beginning of the end.
Drake Farmer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so, you know, and that unfortunately can happen. So, Drake, I really appreciate it. Again, that’s drakefarmer.com. um If you’re, if you want more information, please drop by and see him and connect with him um and you can connect with the church and all that from there. So it’s a great, a great starting point. Thanks so much, Drake. I appreciate you being here and be on the show today.
Drake Farmer — My pleasure.
Leadership People Will Trust: Insights from Jenni Field’s Nobody Believes You
Nov 13, 2024
In this deep dive episode of the unSeminary podcast, we explore Jenni Field’s insightful book Nobody Believes You: Become a Leader People Will Follow. This conversation delves into practical strategies and timeless leadership principles tailored especially for those guiding teams in a church context. Field’s book offers a fresh perspective on becoming a credible leader that people genuinely want to follow. Here’s a look at some key takeaways from the episode:
The Credibility Conundrum
Many leaders struggle with what Jenni Field calls the “credibility conundrum”—doing all the right things but still failing to earn the trust and buy-in of their teams. This issue is especially pronounced in church environments, where leaders face high expectations and complex dynamics. It’s not just about authenticity but about blending several core leadership practices to connect and lead effectively.
The Eight Practices of Credible Leadership
Jenni Field outlines eight essential practices that leaders must embody to build credibility:
Empathy: Understanding and valuing the diverse experiences of your team members. Field emphasizes the importance of recognizing others’ experiences as truthful, even if they differ from your own.
Trustworthiness: Built on honesty, reliability, and transparency. Especially in church leadership, trust is foundational, and it’s eroded when leaders become overly focused on external tasks at the expense of their team.
Vision: Clearly communicate the ‘why’ behind your plans. Field highlights the power of storytelling and visual imagery in casting a vision that resonates and motivates the team.
Support: Balancing guidance with autonomy. Creating an environment of psychological safety allows team members to share ideas, admit mistakes, and feel valued.
Vulnerability: Being real without oversharing. Vulnerability is about acknowledging your limitations and showing your humanity, which fosters a culture of authenticity and openness.
Likeability: It’s not about being everyone’s friend but about being approachable and having a sense of humor. Field stresses the importance of creating an environment where people enjoy working together while still respecting the leader.
Integrity: The cornerstone of credible leadership. Integrity involves aligning your actions with your values and being consistent, even in challenging situations. It’s about being transparent, accountable, and building a foundation of trust.
Capability: Demonstrating competence without needing to be the expert in everything. Effective leaders know when to delegate, seek outside expertise, and focus on continuous learning and growth.
Applying the Principles in Church Leadership
The conversation emphasizes how these practices are interconnected. For church leaders, embodying these qualities not only builds effective teams but also reflects Christ-like leadership. Integrity, in particular, is highlighted as the foundation upon which all other practices are built. Without trust, no amount of empathy, vision, or support can truly connect with the team.
Practical Takeaways for Leaders
It’s a Journey, Not a Destination: Leadership is a continuous process of growth. Focus on blending these eight practices authentically into your unique context.
Seek Support and Accountability: Don’t be afraid to ask for help, whether from a mentor, colleague, or therapist. Building a network of support is crucial for sustainable leadership.
Prioritize Self-Care: Leading a church can be demanding. Set healthy boundaries and take time for rest and renewal, recognizing that you can’t pour from an empty cup.
Reflecting Christ in Leadership
Ultimately, this episode encourages leaders to see these practices as strategies for effective leadership and ways to reflect Christ in their roles. By building on the foundation of integrity and continually seeking to grow in empathy, trustworthiness, and vision, church leaders can foster a culture where their teams thrive, and their ministries flourish.
Grow More, Send More: Building a Sending Church with Andrew Hopper
Nov 07, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Andrew Hopper, the founding and lead pastor of Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina. Andrew has also started Breaking Barriers, which provides pastors and churches with biblical strategies to help them grow in order to go.
Are you curious about how to effectively grow your church while maintaining a strong focus on discipleship and outreach? Don’t miss this insightful discussion as Andrew reveals the correlation between invite culture, discipleship and sending members out on mission. Plus discover how the multisite model is the best tool you can use for leadership development at your church.
Connect crowds to mission. // Andrew observed a clear ratio in his church’s data correlating the number of sent ones, baptisms, and first-time guests, which he believes is consistent in churches focused on both evangelism and sending. Over ten years, his church saw approximately 150 individuals committed to long-term missions, 1,500 baptisms, and 15,000 first-time guests, aligning in a 10:1 ratio at each level. This means that for every one sent one, there were ten baptisms, and for each baptism, there were ten first-time guests.
Focus on the lead measure. // Effective church growth relies on focusing on the lead measure rather than the lag measure. This approach helps connect the church’s larger attendance numbers to its mission goals, showing how initial engagement leads to disciples being sent out.
Crowd-based evangelism. // Based on the examples shown throughout the New Testament, Mercy Hill Church believes that most life change happens when there is a preacher in front of a crowd. While both one-on-one encounters and larger gatherings can lead to conversions, the latter is more effective in reaching larger number and so the congregation is encouraged to invite friends. Andrew believes that when congregants see the church service as the most impactful time for both evangelism and discipleship, they are more likely to embrace inviting others, making the process of reaching new people feel natural and significant.
Multisite and church planting. // Andrew argues that the multisite model complements church planting rather than competing with it. In multisite contexts, there is a continuous need to cultivate new leaders for multiplying groups, services, and campuses, which naturally prepares individuals for the challenge of church planting. At Mercy Hill most leaders who have joined their church plants come from the satellite campuses rather than the main broadcast campus. These members have already shown commitment to the mission by adjusting their lives, and this willingness to adapt primes them to take the larger step of moving to a new area to support a church plant.
Develop communicators. // The multisite model allows the pastors on your team to grow and do more preaching than they’d get the chance to do at just one location. Mercy Hill has had numerous leaders—27 in the past year alone—preach, demonstrating that multisite structures can facilitate the growth of multiple communicators. To develop other teachers, church leaders should create opportunities for different leaders to preach and lead services, which can be done through multiple services and campuses.
Breaking growth barriers. // Breaking Barriers helps churches break through barriers that hinder mission success. It celebrates church growth and doesn’t disconnect it from going after the lead measure. Visit their website to listen to their podcast, check out events and connect with other like-minded leaders.
NEXT STEPS // Unlock the Power of Public Proclamation!
Dive deeper into the Book of Acts with our Preachers in Front of a Crowd: A 16-Day Study on the Power of Public Proclamation in the Expansion of God’s Work. Inspired by Andrew Hopper’s insights on the unSeminary podcast, this guide is designed for church leaders and communicators looking to explore how public preaching has transformed lives and built the early church. Each day includes scripture, practical reflections, and thought-provoking questions to help you uncover the timeless power of sharing the gospel boldly. Download today and discover how you can grow more, so you can send more!
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, Rich here from unSeminary. So glad that you decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, sometimes I get a chance to talk to people that I’ve interacted with in real life and today’s one of those days. Super excited to have Andrew Hopper with us. He is, if you don’t know Andrew, first of all, you should know him. He’s the founding and lead pastor of a great church ah in North Carolina called Mercy Hill Church. They’re they’re constantly on the one of the fastest growing churches list in the in the country. They’re really a gospel-centered church. They have five locations.
Rich Birch — This is an incredible church because they’re not only growing in North Carolina, but they’re encouraging church planting ah in a bunch of different places. And he’s recently started, or in the last little bit, has launched ah Breaking Barriers, which is is on mission to guide churches to lead with biblical strategies to help churches grow ah so that ultimately they can go. So Andrew, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Andrew Hopper — Thanks, man. Excited to be here, man. We’ve ah we’ve really learned a lot from you and gotten some of our foundational stuff from you around growth years and years ago. So this is fun, man.
Rich Birch — Yeah, nice to get a chance to connect. Well, why don’t you fill in the picture there a little bit. Give me the Mercy Hill story, the Andrew story, fill out the picture a little bit.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, we planted Mercy Hill in 2012. We had a chance to be fortunate enough, I got mentored in a great church in Raleigh during North Carolina. They’re called the Summit Church so um people might know Pastor JD Greer. So he’s probably 10 years ahead of me. So it was a really good relationship there, just being mentored by him. And and then I was a campus pastor there at that church. And so, man, I love the multi-site model. I think it’s probably the best leadership development tool that I’ve ever seen in churches and obviously it was benefited by that. So um you know I got a chance to learn
Andrew Hopper — And and then we moved here in 2012 to plant a brand new church, an autonomous church. We have a team of 30 young professionals that came with us, um you know 10 graduating college students, and they they turned down job offers all over the country…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Andrew Hopper — …to come and landscape and paint houses and and that kind of thing. We had about 20 others that ah quit jobs and moved over here. And and um yeah, we about an hour and a half from Raleigh Durham. And man, it’s it’s been awesome. We’ve been here, we’ve been at it for 12 years. There was never just some big flash in the pan. There was a couple of moments where God just kind of, you know, really brought brought some kind of unique growth. But but generally speaking, it’s just sort of been added to their number uh, month by month, almost, you know, for the last 12 years.
Andrew Hopper — And, um, we started planting churches in 2019. So we were, we partnered with church churches forever, you know, just giving money and and people, but we actually moved from partner planting to parent planting in 2019. And so we have five, um, five little duckling church plants from Halifax, all the way down to Tampa. And and then we we’re multi-site also. We have a five we have ah six campuses, five locations. One of them is an Español campus. So that gives you a little bit of picture of of maybe who we are.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. One of the things when I think about your church is sometimes people lodge the unfair criticism against growing churches. They say, ah, they’re just all about fluff. They’re all just, you know, they’re they’re they’re just about gimmicks. It’s about doing things that will just, you know, get in the door. But, you know, then there’s no real depth there. They’re not gospel centered. And and to be honest, you and your church come to mind all the time when I think about that.
Rich Birch — Because I’m like, no, man, like, a church like Mercy Hill is is doing a good job holding up the message of Jesus ah while at the same time really growing rapidly, and then and then also ah helping churches, you know, up and down, you know, all over the place, which is pretty amazing.
Rich Birch — But what do you say? I’m sure people have lodged that kind of complaint against you as well. Like, hey, isn’t it just all like, why are you so obsessed with seeing churches grow? Why why do you keep talking about that?
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I’ve, you know, I’m 40 years old. So I’ve I’ve realized there is a generation that has wrestled with this before us, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — And it’s, um you know, I pendulum swing. I understand that, you know, I think, I think, you know, the 80s, 90s, you had a lot of church growth stuff. Before that as well. And, the you know, with Peter Wagner and different, different guys. I’ve I’ve gotten back into some of the original you know, literature they had. It was no different. I mean, it was exact same stuff. You have a ah ah brand a brand of Christianity when they think of evangelism, they think of, you know, ah the Ethiopian eunuch. And you have another brand of evangelism that when they think of evangelism, they think of the 3000 at Pentecost.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — Why people are wired in different ways like that, I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — Generally speaking, I don’t mean to take a shot here. I don’t think the people that are wired for the crowds take much of a shot at the people that are wired for one-on-one, but I do see it the other way, big time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I know. I think that’s true.
Andrew Hopper — You know, I don’t know why. I’m like, man, if you got the gift of evangelism and you’re a soul winner, I love that. I have no problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — I love seeing people get saved on a college campus, one-on-one evangelism. But you know, that’s just not, that’s not where most of it’s going to happen. And, um, and so I don’t know why it’s that way.
Andrew Hopper — So anyway, I’ve taken, yeah, I’ve taken some, we’ve taken some shots like that, but I just, man, I don’t really care that much. I mean, I think for us, uh, sending is, is the ultimate goal. And we see that as a big fruit of discipleship. And so, uh, we’ve sent just under 200 of our members out long-term that’s two years or more…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Andrew Hopper — …ah either with a church plant or with um a you know with international missions. We want to share the gospel, baptize people, we get them in groups. We feel like if they jump in the stream, they’re going to move in the river. And um as long as we’re getting to see that output side of people you know continue to be sent out, then I’m not going to be too concerned with your shallow or whatever, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That’s good. Well, so there obviously there’s like a mindset shift there. It’s like, hey, we got to get our head around, you know, that that we want to see both of these things happening. We want to be um reaching people in our community. And that I love that, you know, when you said there that going is really an outcome of discipleship, that that that really should be ultimately kind of the aim.
Rich Birch — What does that actually practically look like for Mercy Hill? Like 200 people is is a lot. I know that just rolled off your tongue like it’s not a big deal, but like that’s a big deal. That’s a lot of people to go long-term somewhere else. I know that’s how your church started, but how do how do you continue that? That feels like the kind of thing the first generation does and it doesn’t get passed on to other people.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, yeah, totally, man. I get that. I mean, I think for us, we’ve just sort of rejected the either you’re a missional sending church or you’re a big evangelism church. um And we talk about all of them all the time. I mean, we talk about it all the time. So I will like, we’re, we’re, we’re in a new, we’re about to be in a new facility at some point here in the next couple of months and, um, triple the seating size. It’s 80,000 square feet. It’s, it’s everything that the anti-church growth movement hates. Okay. And, and it’s like, I mean, it’s…
Rich Birch — You got lights, you got smoke, you got projected screens, all that.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah. Oh man, we got it all. Huge lobby, you know, 70 foot ceilings or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, you know, it’s it’s like you walk in this building and people are going to be like, well, you are who we thought you were, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — But what we’re going to do is, like I was talking about last night, we have sermon, we have, you know, service on Thursday night. I was talking about it last night. I will never talk about that building and the evangelism that we can see in it without connecting it to church planting and campus multiplication and and sending missionaries.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, our church had the most, we’ve we’ve multiple times the largest sending agency in the country, the International Mission Board, we’ve had multiple times now where our church had the most people. And they they do you know they do like a like three or four times a year, they do kind of a class that goes through and then they get mobilized. And we’ve had a couple times now where we have the most most people there from any church in the country. And I will I will always connect that to seats, to crowds to I will never let that… So I mean what we want to do is bifurcate that every discipleship conference or or church thing you go to nowadays…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Andrew Hopper — …it is a giant wedge that they’re trying to push between church growth is is a different category than discipleship and we’re not we don’t care about church growth, all we care about is depth and discipleship. And we just say, well, I think the ultimate fruit of discipleship is sending. So if we can keep sending you know connected where we never talk about crowd seats, new sermon series without talking about the fruit of it may be one day being these kids that are in these families that are getting saved. They’re going to go out and they’re going to be, you know, some of our missionaries one day or whatever. So we just try hard to keep that stuff together. You know, I’ve tried…oh, go ahead.
Rich Birch — No, you go ahead and go ahead. You go and finish.
Andrew Hopper — I’m trying to teach our church. So we came, we got to the 10 year anniversary of our church. Okay. And I knew, I knew the numbers were going to be very close, something like this. I didn’t know how exactly they were, but I knew it was something like this. um And and I bet I bet if you go test this against a bunch of sending churches that are serious about um evangelism and they’re serious about sending, you’re gonna see this to be true.
Andrew Hopper — I went in and I said, okay, what’s going on in our church? And this was two years ago. We said, okay, we’ve seen about 150 sent ones. And I’m talking about two years or more. This is not like going on a mission trip or six months or something, okay?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And then I said, okay, we’ve seen 150 sent ones. Guess what? We had seen 1500 baptisms.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting.
Andrew Hopper — Okay. And then I was like, I was like, I know what this is going to be. Guess how many first time guests we had? 15,000.
Rich Birch — Wow. 15,000. Oh, wow.
Andrew Hopper — And so it was 10 to one, 10 to one. And so I’ve taught our church like, Hey guys…
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
Andrew Hopper — …if you want to get one sent one, you got to see 10 baptisms. If you want to get one baptism, you got to see 10 first time guests. But the big connection that I think that the anti-church growth movement, um, you know, really just wants to reject um is that you don’t focus on the lag, you focus on the lead.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, that’s the kind of leadership 101, man, you focus on the lead measure.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Andrew Hopper — The lead measure for us is every time we see 100 people come to that first time guest head, I’m like, dude, down the road, there’s gonna be one set one that goes out.
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s amazing.
Andrew Hopper — And if I can keep that, if I can keep that tight, then I think it it helps people connect the crowds to the mission and and that kind of stuff.
Rich Birch — Dude, I I have I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that connection before. What a fresh ah connection. I think it’s, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about the top end of the funnel, a lot of time about that piece of the equation. But I love that, that idea of, hey, what is the ratio connection ultimately between those?
Rich Birch — Let’s talk a little bit about that. how how What is God using at your church at that kind of top end? Why is it that people are arriving? What is the you know what are some of the things that you’re seeing to be able to, frankly see a bunch of guests come in an environment where ultimately you’re asking people to take steps that are…
Andrew Hopper — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, go live somewhere else or, you know, a bunch of years. What’s that look like?
Andrew Hopper — That’s exactly right. Well, I mean, it’s, you know, we did, we did see this modeled incredibly well at The Summit. The summit…
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Andrew Hopper — …is a, I mean, Pastor JD said, I mean, they, they can be a punching bag for, you know, everything that the anti-church growth movement thinks. But at the end of the day, they have more missionaries on the field than any other Baptist church in the country. It’s 40,000 Baptist churches.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — So it’s like, we got the see very up close. You don’t divorce these things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …you know, the, the weekend stuff, and the sending stuff, and discipleship stuff, it doesn’t it all has to go together. So we we saw that. I would say for us… so I’m grateful for that. I would say for us, man, ah I and I know this gets into La La Land a little bit for people, but I really I really believe it’s philosophy and it’s how you think about stuff.
Andrew Hopper — Like our church um you know, we our our church buys into, and you you helped us with this years ago, our church buys into the concept that, and this is where you’re gonna get comments put on your on your podcast here. I think they buy into most life change happens when there’s a crowd and the preacher.
Andrew Hopper — And because of that, inviter evangelism is not demonized. And it’s it’s like, man, we want, you know, we try to equip, you know, in every way we can, we talk about it. And we don’t, you know, we don’t, we don’t downplay. We don’t do the normal Christian thing now, in my circle. And and all circles not like this, okay?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — The circle I’m in is like this, the Baptist world…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …um where, you know, the one-on-one evangelism story over years that happens in a coffee shop is so high elevated above…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …the student who comes to Christ in a crowd at a youth camp.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And we just don’t do that. We’re like, man, I don’t, I’ll put those two right together.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I’m glad and And also what we have no problem doing, and our people know this, is I’m like, hey, people can get saved in one-on-one encounters, and they can get saved in you know where there’s a preacher in a crowd. But don’t kid yourself to think they’re both equally as effective in terms of numbers.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Yes.
Andrew Hopper — 99.9% of everybody that got saved in the book of Acts, it happened when there was a crowd and a preacher.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — That’s just facts.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, I’ve gone through at our breaking barriers conference, I literally went through every single time that people were baptized or whatever. And it’s like almost every one of them, there is a crowd and there’s somebody preaching the gospel.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — Now the crowd might be 10 people, it might be 3000 people. but that And so I’m like, hey, that is just, it’s just what it is, man. And our um…
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right.
Andrew Hopper — And in our church, we have no problem saying the most effective hour for both evangelism and discipleship during the week is is the church service.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Andrew Hopper — If our people believe that, they don’t you know they really believe that, then suddenly I think inviting their friend to come is not second class…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …and they’re not getting graded because they’re not a one-on-one evangelist, soul winner all the time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — I want our people to be able to share the gospel, and I think many of them can, especially the ones that are gifted.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — But you know I think that that’s probably… And so then, man, from there it all just kind of flows, man.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Andrew Hopper — Then then then we’re like, once once your people are bought into inviting, um, you know, then we do all the stuff everybody else does kind of, we do…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …but we just, we just don’t [inaudible] about it. You know… Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. Dude, I love that. Yeah. And I’m doing a totally steal that because, you know, when people ask me that question, I go right to the pragmatic. Because people will go after me on the church growth stuff. And I mostly don’t engage, but sometimes I’ll engage when it’s a friend or somebody and I’ll be like, Hey, well, let’s talk about it.
Rich Birch — And and I go to the like, listen, I, cause they’ll be like, yeah, but shouldn’t we really be teaching people evangelism? And I’m like, yes. And I I give my my EE qualifications. I’m like listen when I was in high school I did Evangelism Explosion. I’ve knocked on a lot of doors, hey if you were to die tonight what, you know? I’ve done that. But what I do know is not everyone will do that. Not everyone will that that is such a high bar. And do I wish everyone will do that? Uh yeah, I do. I wish everyone would have that kind of conversation. But actually, what I what I do know is, man, if I can move a bunch of people in our church to take the step towards just inviting someone, that’s like the first step towards evangelism. It’s like the first step in that ah direction.
Rich Birch — But I am going to rip off the crowd in a preacher, look at the book of Acts. That is a great, that’s so good.
Andrew Hopper — It’s crazy. I mean they got, Rich, they have like, you know, the the thing that is so elevated is three years of relationship finally won them over at a coffee shop, sharing the gospel.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And I’m like, hey that never happened in the Bible one time ever.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Dude, that’s so good.
Andrew Hopper — Nobody ever nobody ever in the book of Acts did pre evangelism. So there’s no pre-evangelism, there’s evangelism, even the one-on-one encounters. It’s like, hey, they happened within 20 minutes or two hours, or but it was never like…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — …we’re gonna go make a friend for a year so we can share the gospel with them one day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, dude, that’s good.
Andrew Hopper — You know and ah you know I just think we’ve got to kind of try to stick to the text a little more.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Okay, so pivoting in a slightly different direction. Help me understand how you think about and another, what I see as a false dichotomy. So I’m going to set this up a little bit as a devil’s advocate, but I don’t actually have the energy behind this that I’m going to express. Multisite versus church planting. Like one of them is better than the other. Like, you know, that you one of them is efficient. The other is a resource hog.
Rich Birch — How do you guys think about that? Because you’re doing both. You’re actively engaged in both of these. You seem firmly committed to both. How do you talk about that? How do you think about that as a leader?
Andrew Hopper — Well, one one leads to the other and that’s that’s what people don’t understand. They look at them as if they’re in competition. What they don’t understand is almost every really awesome church planting network that is actually planting churches, not affiliating a million churches, they are born out of, guess what, multi-site churches.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Andrew Hopper — So, you know, I mean, just go down the list. Fellowship, you know, Fellowship Associates…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Highlands, whatever.
Andrew Hopper — …Acts 29, Seacoast, Summit, Summit.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — Okay, well, what is it about the multi-site model then that produces so much church planting? It’s the the radical commitment to leadership development.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — When you when you multiply anything, you need more leaders. And so what happens is you end up with, you know, if you wanna multiply a group, you gotta have another leader. You wanna multiply a service, you gotta have more serve teams. You gotta multiply a campus. Now you gotta have elders and leaders. It’s just that next step of of going to church plants.
Andrew Hopper — So we, for example, man, we um we’ve sent out 124 of those almost 200 that have gone to domestic church plants. We have five, okay? The the ah overwhelming majority of that 124 do not come from our, “broadcast campus”.
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting.
Andrew Hopper — They all come from satellite.
Rich Birch — That’s an interesting insight. Interesting insight. Andrew Hopper — They all come from the, so the “satellite campuses”. And the reason is, it’s very strategic. The reason is that they have already said yes to moving their life for the mission once.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Andrew Hopper — They’ve already said, you know what, convenience wise, I like going there. I like seeing him live. I like being at the big thing. But you know what? I live in this community. I’m going to plant my life here.
Andrew Hopper — And what what people keep doing is, you know, the way churches get planted are when people ultimately say yes to something that is very uncomfortable. Well, they’ve already said yes to moving to group. If they’ve already said yes to moving to service time, you know, we’re very strategic. Hey, you need to go to Thursday night instead of Sunday to make room for the mission. I don’t wanna go to Thursday night. I know, but you need to go. Now now go to the campus. Now by the time we plant a church, we’re like, hey, you know, it’s like, well, okay, I can go move somewhere else.
Andrew Hopper — So I think that for us, um I think multi-site church, and it’s a tool for me, man. If I saw a better tool, I’d throw it down and pick something else up tomorrow. I’m not philosophically committed to it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — I do believe it’s the best leadership development tool I’ve ever seen. And, you know, I know this is not exactly what you asked me, but most multi-site critiques, are listen, they’re not just wrong, they are exactly backwards, okay? So what people will say about multi-site? Well, it’s just a celebration of one leader, you know? I mean, one one guy up there.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s not true.
Andrew Hopper — Do you know how many guys preached in our church last year? 27.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Andrew Hopper — You know why? Because we’re multi-site.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — You know, that’s why people get in that plant church. It’s not about, I mean, it’s not about one leader.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — It’s about the ability to, I mean, you tell me what’s more about the leader. Let’s build a huge building where 10,000 people crowd in and hear you on the stage live versus planting little things all around. Like I could go on and on. But you know, so some of that stuff is really just kind of, they’re potshots that don’t hold a lot of weight.It’s not church planting or campus-ing. It is one that leads to the other.
Andrew Hopper — And the last thing I would say about it, Rich, is I think what people say is, well, if our church grows, we’ll plant a church. It takes 10 years to develop a church planter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And I know that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — We’re we’re about to plant our first church in Greensboro ah that we’ve that we’ve planted we’ve planted campuses in our town, obviously. But we’re about to plant our first church in our town. Nico’s gonna go plant this church. We met him when he was 19 years old on a college campus. He’s 29. It takes 10 years.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Andrew Hopper — you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — And and when you go, the most people I’ve ever seen go on a church planting team is like 40, you know? Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — It’s very, you could plant a campus in six months and 500 people go. My point is, church planting is not a viable option for a real growth problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — Okay. I mean, it’s just not. It’s a different category. You’re talking about apples and oranges.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Andrew Hopper — And so, man, we love multi-site because we think that we think it helps us get to more church plants, and raising up pastors and preachers.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. I kind of related to that. Talk to me about the video teaching, because that’s the other kind of kind of criticism that comes up. So statistically, the more the larger a multisite, this is just true, statistically larger a multisite church is, and the more campuses they have, the more that video teaching is a part of what they do. That’s just universally true um like from a from like an industry point of view, or from like a movement point of view.
Rich Birch — And so sometimes people will lodge against the multisite movement. They’ll say like, well, it’s it’s all about whoever’s on video, which we all know is not true. But talk to me through how you how you think about that and developing communicators and how does all that fit together?
Andrew Hopper — Well, I think that, I think that, I mean, I just would reject the premise that something inherently about video is more, um is more celebratory of the lead, whoever the lead communicator is. I mean, like when people say that they’re like, hey, you got five campuses and four of them are on video. That’s like a big celebration of you. I’m like, well, our church is 3000 people. I mean, we could just build a three or 4000 seat auditorium in the old days. Would that be less celebratory of me?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes. Yes.
Andrew Hopper — You know, and what if we build a 5,000 person building, and we pack them all in and they all are there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper —We’re all 5,000 eyeballs are on me on the stage.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I’m the only one on the stage. Like so kind of analytically, like I’m just like, man, I just that doesn’t really make, like in my head, that don’t make a lot of sense.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hopper — I don’t think something inherently about the video um you know is more celebratory or not. So then to me, it’s a pragmatic issue, a consecrated pragmatism type issue. And the issue is…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — You know, man, you can, you know, there’s a reason why multi-site has taken off. It is so much easier to develop smaller venues. It’s cheaper, it’s easier, and it’s more strategic because of where you can put them. And so to me, that’s, it’s just more of a pragmatic issue. And but I do, but I do, I will say this, man, there is no doubt that the raising up of communicators happens at an exponential clip in multi-site churches compared to a single site church. Um, you know, and I don’t, I mean, I got, I got friends that are really committed to the single site thing and committed to live preaching and that’s fine.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Andrew Hopper — Like I’m not, they can do whatever they want.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Andrew Hopper — I mean, they’re, they’re getting after it. I’m getting after it. Um, but you can’t, you can’t deny that the, ah you know, the preaching opportunities are multiply. I mean, you got one single site and the guy preaches 40 times a year. That’s only 12 opportunities.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Andrew Hopper — You got five different sites. You have 60 opportunities in that same time.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Andrew Hopper — And that’s just what we’ve experienced. I mean, I think that why we have so many guys that can preach, why guys, this is my story. I’m 24 years old. I’m getting a preach to five, 700 people, 24, 25 years old. The only reason for that was because of how many services and how many campuses we were having. And I feel like it was really beneficial for me.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent.
Andrew Hopper — You know so I think the leadership development is such a big deal.
Rich Birch — Well, a hundred percent. And and there’s that there’s the whole context on multisite that not only were you preaching, but you were doing that in a team context that was giving you feedback, that they loved you enough to not just be like, well, do whatever you want, Andrew. Or, you know, or some nice person at the end of the service was like, that was great. It was like, well, yeah, there was a lot of that that was great, but here’s some stuff you could do to get better, which in a lot of churches, that just doesn’t happen. But that’s naturally built into the multisite system because there’s like some standards there around, Hey, we need to be, in your case, you know, when you were at Summit, it needs to be kind of fit our thing. It needs to be a part of who we, you know, we are. Yeah. I love that.
Rich Birch — We did a study last year…
Andrew Hopper — And I see, yeah…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Go ahead.
Andrew Hopper — Go ahead, go ahead.
Rich Birch — I was going to say, we did a study last year of, ah so we have this, this group, we do this private coaching group called Church Growth Incubator, and it looks at, you know, invite culture stuff. And we do research on fast growing churches, firsthand research. And one of the things I was actually shocked when I was working with an associate who was helping us with this, and we were actually looking at a different issue.
Rich Birch — We were looking at, um, some stuff around teaching, but this person said, you know, I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of these churches have a lot of different people that are on stage on Sunday morning in their main campus over a year. And he said, I just happened to look at a couple of them. And I noticed it was like more than a dozen people on their main stage preaching in a in a given year.
Rich Birch — And I was like, that seems really high. And then we went and actually looked. We looked at 30 churches who they, who is actually preaching on the main stage at these locations. And the average for 2023 in 30 of the fastest growing churches was like 11.2 individual different communicators on the main stage.
Rich Birch — Now, obviously there’s a lead communicator who’s there a lot, but there’s a lot of other people that are rotating through. Again, think about then all that development that’s happening. And these are the largest, most influential churches in the country.
Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I totally agree with that I mean and and I think another thing is for the discipleship model, because people people naturally say, well, hey, that’s fine. Well what you’re saying is great. Well, then do it all the time, you know, don’t do any video.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — And what I would say is, again, this is a pragmatic issue, but it’s um it’s it’s twofold. Number one, we love to develop, but let’s don’t let’s don’t kid ourselves. If somebody’s got their 10,000 hours in, it’s a different level of communication. Okay.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Andrew Hopper — So, you know, we want to develop, but when you, when you say, Hey, we’re going to have seven of these churches and they’re all going to be preaching live…
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — …there’s a…you know, you can end up with some real sort of… The other thing I would say is, um, you know, we, we are a group model. We have a group model that is sermon-based. And so, you know, the idea of having seven different communicators and then people from different campuses that co-pollinate, you know, cross pollinate with groups, that doesn’t work.
And so, you know, cause we do a lecture lab. So we’re going to go talk about this during the week.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah.
Andrew Hopper — So we need that sermon to be pretty streamlined. And one of the most effective ways to streamline it is to just do all the same sermon and do it on video.
Rich Birch — Yeah, dude, so good. Well, so you’ve, you’ve launched a podcast, a conference, one day, that kind of stuff called ah Breaking Barriers. You can check this out at breakinggrowthbarriers.com. Tell us about this. Why, why did you do this? What does this got to do? What’s the heart behind this? Talk, talk to us about this.
Andrew Hopper — So I um I I just have a real burden and and God has put a kind of a fire in my belly. Number one, I really believe that to whom much is given, much is required.
Rich Birch — So good.
Andrew Hopper — And I feel like our church has grown and we’ve we’ve we’ve seen some cool stuff and we want to try to and we have been poured into unbelievably. And I’ve I’ve been in a situation to to receive such good coaching and stuff like that. I want to try to multiply that.
Andrew Hopper — But the the heart of it, really, man, is that that we are we really believe that a lot of the church non-success that we’re seeing and the plateauing and all that kind of stuff is by our own design. And I think that you know what you believe about success is probably the greatest determiner of whether or not you’re ever going to have it. And trying to help free people from these sort of anti-church growth you know kind of chains that they’re in.
Andrew Hopper — I mean this this is my world okay and I know this is I know your podcast goes out every you know a lot of different worlds. But it is regularly reported in the Baptist world that between 70 and 80 percent of Baptist churches are plateaued or declining. Okay? Well we have this is what’s crazy to me, rich. We have figured out how to simultaneously mourn decline without celebrating growth. I…
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s a great insight!
Andrew Hopper — You know what I mean? We will say, the church is dying, the church is dying. And then someone says, hey, man, my church is growing. And we’re like, oh, we’re cynical about that. And I mean, it’s it’s just kind of crazy.
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so true.
Andrew Hopper — And so Breaking Barriers is ah fundamentally all about trying to make some shifts in the way we talk.
Rich Birch — Right.
Andrew Hopper — We want to celebrate church growth. And the way we want to do it is what I was saying earlier. We don’t disconnect it from growing. And I’m sorry, from going. So our our tagline is churches can grow without going, but they can’t go without growing.
Andrew Hopper — And so we just try every time we talk about a sent story, we want to talk about a growth story, and we just want to put those things together. Then what the, what the podcasts, what the, um, the one day things we’re doing, you’re coming to do one of our one days – we’re really grateful for that. It’s going to be great.
Andrew Hopper — Um, and then, uh, certainly our conference is all about saying, okay, if that’s true, that, that going after the lead measure is, is something we should do, need to do, be excited about we need to speak more positively about the lead measure of people coming in the door. I’m talking to icky stuff, man. Website views, first-time guests, raising money, like all that.
Andrew Hopper — Okay. Then um then, yeah, we’re gonna we need to be talking about that stuff positively. Then then we need to equip people for it, which you do a lot of, you know. We want to equip people for it very practically. So like on our podcast, I mean we’ll have three podcasts in a row that are just all about the pragmatics around how to go to two services…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — …for example, you know
Rich Birch — Love it. Yep.
Andrew Hopper — …or, you know, just all that. I mean, just super practical in the weeds. And it’s gotten some traction, man. I think it’s cool. I think a lot of, um a lot of you know, lead church, like leaders in churches are are are are learning from it stuff. So we’re excited about that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I really would I’d strongly encourage you to drop by breakinggrowthbarriers.com. The podcast is is great. I love your guys um affect like great conversations, engaging to listen to, ah really fantastic. And so I would strongly, ah you know, endorse you you guys, you really should, ah you know, follow along.
Rich Birch — And and Andrew, I really appreciate your your candor, I appreciate your passion for this stuff. I appreciate how God’s using you. And I think you do have a unique voice ah in the in the church landscape. Multiple things I was writing down today. I’m like, man, that’s just so good, so fresh. So is there anything else you want to say just before we wrap up today’s episode?
Andrew Hopper — Nah, man, I appreciate it. I hope people will go and check it out. I just think people have got to sort of get freed up to run hard because if you have a divided heart, you will always stop short. You know? If you feel internally a little bit of slime and ickiness around some of the real practical matters, you will not chase them as hard as you as really what’s needed to see some movement happen. And so um, yeah, that’s it, man. Excited for what you guys are doing and looking forward to the one day event.
Rich Birch — Nice, that’s great. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Andrew Hopper — Yeah. So, um, my, my primary outlet is just, uh, you know, you can go to, you can follow me on Instagram. Um, but our, our, our church stuff in terms of this Breaking Barriers stuff. Yeah. You said it breakinggrowthbarriers.com. We have an Instagram Breaking Barriers, Instagram,
Andrew Hopper — Um, and, uh, really that website is pretty good. I mean, it’s always just about the next thing. We also have a private Facebook group that you have to have come and sort of be buying into what we’re doing to get in.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Andrew Hopper — And that, that, that Facebook group is awesome because it’s like, it is just so dripping with pragmatism. I love it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Andrew Hopper — You know, it’s just like, man, it’s just, how are you guys doing this? How are you doing this? And it’s not just us. I mean, it’s everybody just kind of firing off and people are putting stuff in chat.
Rich Birch — Right. So good.
Andrew Hopper — And so that’s a really cool thing to jump into if you’re into this stuff as well.
Rich Birch — So good. Appreciate you, Andrew. Thanks for leading today.
Andrew Hopper — All right, thanks, man.
Kids Ministry in a Changing World: Building a Thriving Children’s Ministry with Justyn Smith
Oct 31, 2024
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast! This week we have with us Justyn Smith, Executive Kids Pastor at Cornerstone Church in Arizona and a story catalyst at Plain Joe.
What does an effective children’s ministry look like? What does kids’ ministry at your church look like when you put yourself in the shoes of a child, or their parents? Tune in as Justyn shares how to transform your kids’ ministry into a thriving ministry that serves the families at your church with vision and intentionality.
Challenges in ministry. // Kids’ ministry is an interesting place in today’s church because of growing challenges that church leaders are facing. Navigating societal divisions and strong political opinions, changes in technology that have affected both ministry and parenting, and a lack of clear vision or understanding of what effective kids’ ministry looks like lead to a reactive approach.
Questions to ask. // Effective children’s ministry is about much more than simply the curriculum or administrative duties. What does it look like when you put yourself in the shoes of a child at your church. What does it look like when you put yourself in the shoes of a mom or a dad? What could that partnership look like? What questions are parents asking when they drop their child off and they pick their child up? All of these things help shape and inform what an effective children’s ministry should look like at your church.
Engage with parents. // Meeting a practical need is a part of what makes an effective kids’ ministry. Strike up a conversation with a visiting parent, asking them to observe and provide honest feedback on their child’s drop-off experience. Reach out to long-time attenders and inquire if kids’ ministry is partnering well with them and meeting the needs of their children. Organize roundtable discussions with parents to gather their thoughts and experiences. Opening yourself up to honest feedback can help shape the direction of the ministry.
Listen to children. // You can put yourself in a child’s shoes by literally bringing yourself down to their level. Justyn suggests getting on your knees and walking through your kids’ experience. Observe what you see, hear and feel. Engage with children to understand their preferences and interests. Ask kids what they enjoy and what would draw their friends to the church. This feedback can help shape programming and events that resonate with the target audience. Justyn believes that using “hooks” to attract kids is acceptable as long as there is substance behind those efforts. The ministry should remain focused on effective discipleship while creating engaging and memorable experiences for children.
Welcome neurodiversity. // Children’s ministries need to be inclusive of diverse learning abilities and styles. This trend is not going away and churches must be proactive in creating environments that welcome all children. Your church doesn’t need to do everything, but every church can do something. Begin where you can and develop a long-term plan. Engage with families who have children affected by special needs and have open conversations about how to make the ministry more accessible.
Invest in kids’ ministry. // Many churches are beginning to recognize the importance of investing in children’s ministry, moving away from the notion that it is a lesser priority. Executive pastors need to conduct an honest assessment of their funding priorities. If children’s ministry is consistently underfunded compared to other ministries, it can lead to unrealistic expectations for performance. Investing appropriately in children’s ministry is essential for its success.
Email Justyn with any questions and find him on social media @pastorjustyn. He also invites listeners to download this interview with Theron Skees from his book, Kidmin, Trust and Pixie Dust: Unlocking the Magic of Children’s Ministry.
NEXT STEPS // Is Your Children’s Ministry Thriving?
Whether you’re a seasoned children’s pastor or just getting started, it’s essential to regularly assess the health of your ministry. Is your volunteer team engaged? Are kids excited to return each week? Are parents feeling connected?
Download our Children’s Ministry Health Assessment Checklist and take a deep dive into key areas like volunteer engagement, parent involvement, spiritual growth, and more! This practical tool will help you identify strengths and opportunities for growth, setting your ministry on a path to long-term success.
Get the checklist today and build a thriving, impactful children’s ministry!
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Rich Birch — Hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for you to listen in today. You know, I’ve said in other environments that I think some of the most creative people in the local church are kids’ ministry people. They just do incredible things. And today we’ve got not just a kids’ ministry person, but really a person who’s an expert in this whole area.
Rich Birch — We’ve got Justyn Smith with smith with with us. He really carries a couple different hats. One, he’s a story catalyst at Plain Joe. This is Storyland Studio. Plain Joe partners with churches, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and educational places to create unbelievable ah strategic, digital, and spatial stories that ultimately lift the spirit. We’ve had a number of folks from Storyland on in the past. We just love these guys. They do such a good job. But he is also the Executive Kids Pastor at Cornerstone Church in Chandler, Arizona. So not only is he an expert, he’s also a practitioner. Super glad to have you on the show today, Justyn – welcome.
Justyn Smith — Rich, thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here. I mean that, and I’m looking forward to our conversation for sure.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture a little bit? Tell me a little bit about ah what the last couple decades of kids’ ministry has looked like and, ah you know, before you joined Storyland, but but talk to us about kind of your background and and all that.
Justyn Smith — Yeah, so for sure. Well, one, I mean, I’ve I’ve been married for over 24 years. I’ve got seven children myself.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Justyn Smith — So all the way from young adults, all the way to ah five years old.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Justyn Smith — So I feel like I have a children’s and student ministry built into my own home, which is which is phenomenal. Ask them, we’ve experimented on them many times, which has been fun. And we’ve been all over the country. So we’ve been ah in places like Las Vegas, Southern California, Minneapolis, Tampa Bay, in Phoenix, Seattle. I’m just all over the U.S. ah ministering in churches in all those places, really been in next-gen ministries. Justyn Smith — So I’ve been serving the church either in children’s ministry, student ministry, ah both, parenting, all those types of things. So I’ve got but really over 22 years of experience ah working with ah churches from start-up churches to mega churches of 10,000 people. So I feel like I’ve just I’ve just been blessed to have just a a broad ah stroke of just what what church looks like across the board. And ah one thing I’ve learned over the years is no matter if you’re a startup and you have a budget of whatever you made working your other job…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Justyn Smith — …cause because there is no budget. Or whether you’ve got, ah I mean, $1.5 million dollars to play with a year, ah Ministry is not about is not all all about the money. It’s not about all about the resources. It’s really about your heart, your calling…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Justyn Smith — …ah and ah all all those intangibles. Although let’s admit those tangibles do help a lot, which I’m sure we’ll get into a little bit today. But it really starts with some of those intangibles.
Justyn Smith — And ah kids’ ministry is I think it’s it’s it’s an an interesting place today ah specifically because there’s this tension of ah, one, just our culture. Our culture is is a little bit, if you’ve paid attention to any sort of news lately, I mean, it’s it’s out there, right? I’s ah no matter where you land on ah the political spectrum, societal spectrum or whatnot, there’s definitely um ah some division, there’s definitely some strong opinions. And so that’s made children’s ministry ah maybe a little bit challenging, more challenging than it has been in the past.
Justyn Smith — Technology has has has made it interesting. There’s been a lot of positives with technology, but with it has also brought a lot of ah a lot of negatives. And so how do how do you maneuver through that? That’s impacted kids’ ministry, parenting, and everything across the board. So I’m I’m sure we can dive into a lot of things, but those are just a few of the things that that come to mind ah come up to mind.
Justyn Smith — But ah real quick, it is um it’s thriving today, though. It’s it’s ah It’s a lot of fun.
Rich Birch — So true.
Justyn Smith — Kids’ Ministry was in a position, I think, years ago where ah didn’t feel very valued. Maybe it felt valued, spoken from a lead pastor or leaders from the stage, ah but wasn’t really resourced well, ah didn’t really have high quality leaders. Although the church would say, we want to give them our best, ah rarely would give them their best. We’re starting to see all that change where churches are are really seeing the value. Like no when we say we want to give them our best, we really want to give them our best.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Justyn Smith — So sorry, that’s a long answer to probably your short question, but… Rich Birch — No, no, no, that’s good. No, no, I love it. I love your perspective. And I kind of want to take advantage of the fact that you do see, you know, wide swath, like you say, the kind of the entire, for lack of a better word, industry and um really want to camp on that and understand, you know, what’s happening across the country. And maybe let’s talk a little bit more about the challenge.
Rich Birch — What would be like, if you think about a common challenge that, you know, kids’ ministry pastors, children’s pastors are encountering today um or faced with, what would what would be a challenge or or two that would kind of bubble to the surface for them?
Justyn Smith — I think something that I like to challenge children’s pastors with is ah really I mean why do you why do you do what you do, at the end of the day? Like hat does an effective children’s ministry look like? I think when you talk to maybe some children’s pastors of some well-established, ah we’ll call them, you know, maybe larger churches, ah they seem to have, you know, um I don’t want to say they’re ducks in a row, but they definitely seem to have to have an order and an expectation that’s different from 95% of the churches out there.
Justyn Smith — Because because most churches in America, they’re they’re they’re rather small and um and I think some churches out there, it’s, you know, they’re they’re desperate looking for someone to lead ah children’s ministries. So what it looks like is a pastor walking through the lobby and seeing maybe a…
Rich Birch — Hey, you!
Justyn Smith — Yeah, really. It’s like, Hey, you’re breathing. Hey, you’ve got kids. And they assume, Hey, you’re not doing anything. And Hey, would you do this? And some people that just the goodness of their heart, maybe an obligation or whatnot, they’re like, yeah, we’ll give it a try. And, um, two years later, they find themselves still in it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — But with that comes, I mean, they they didn’t really go into it with vision. They didn’t really go into it with expectations or or or or ah education or or any of that kind of stuff. They went in there to really kind of fill a need. And I think that’s that’s a lot of churches that are out there. And I’m not saying that’s not a ah bad place to start, but because of that, some people don’t know, like, where do I go from there? And so what happens is like, what does an effective children’s ministry look like?
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — They don’t really know because all they’re trying to do is they’re trying to hang on from week to week. they They know that, hey, we’ve got to prepare for Sunday. And really in a lot of churches, then we got to prepare for Wednesday. And really every three days or so you’re you’re preparing um a lesson, and and and trying to find volunteers, and ah do special events outside of that, and maybe a child care moment. And there’s so much going on that what is effective ministry looks like? And so I I like to start there is is to kind of if we can slow people down, ah take take a few days, and and let let’s talk about what what it looks like.
Justyn Smith — It’s not just about the curriculum. It’s not just about administrative duties. It’s not just about all all those things. Those things are important. But what does it look like when you put yourself in the shoes of ah a kid? What would it look like if you put yourself in the shoes of of a mom and dad and what that partnership could look like? Or what it looks like when ah they drop their child off and they pick their child up? And and have you asked yourself the questions, you know, what are mom and dad asking them when when they get picked up? All these all these little things I think would help shape and inform what an effective children’s ministry could and should look like.
Justyn Smith — And and I think that obviously I something that’s great about—sorry—the the children’s ministry community is I think they’re very ah collaborative. And um I don’t want to and want to pick on other ministries in the church, but I think there’s some who are maybe a little more competitive.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Justyn Smith — In in this space, I would say there’s there’s a there’s ah massive willingness to collaborate.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — And you’d be shocked if you reached out to people and just said, hey, could I have some time?
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — And and they’ll give you your time, and and help you and not not charge you or or make you do something crazy. So I encourage people, you know reach out to other ah children’s ministries that you feel like are doing a a good and effective job. But put yourself in the shoes of of parents. I mean, have the conversation with your pastor on on their expectations, and and and and figure out, like especially putting yourself in the shoes of parents. Because they don’t sometimes know um the questions to even ask or or what to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — And so so when you do that, I think that you can you can meet a real practical need, ah which is a part of what makes an effective kids ministry, meeting a real practical need…
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — …not just the spiritual growth, which also is, you know, huge priority.
Rich Birch — Yeah, incredibly important. But I, yeah, I totally agree on the, you know, people are, you’d be amazed how many people will answer your questions or be willing to talk. That’s actually really the core of what started even our podcast.
Justyn Smith — It’s awesome.
Rich Birch — Like, you know, you’d be amazed. People people are willing to to help each other, which is amazing. But ah you you talked about, I’d love to kind of zero in on one thing you talked about. You talked about the fact that um you’ve got to put yourself in the shoes of kids and adults, parents, that that are dropping their kids off. Give us a few ways that we could do that. I think that’s a good insight. How do we, because we can always see our thing just from our perspective. We see what we do from our vantage point, um which is one vantage point, but it’s not it’s not obviously the entire picture.
Justyn Smith — Yeah, so, I mean, a couple of really practical things ah is, one, is you can literally ask a parent—I’ve done this a couple times, and you’ve got to be pretty confident, I think, in ah maybe a visitor or whatnot. I’ve literally done this with with with a visitor. I’ve struck up a conversation in the lobby, and I was like, I literally said, hey, I know this is going to sound really strange, but as you drop your child off and you go through our kids’ ministry, would you just take note of what that experience is like for you?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Justyn Smith — Uh, I, really I just, and I really, I had no background with them. I had no, I didn’t know what they would say. I didn’t even know if they were saved, to be quite honest. And, but I just, I just felt like I wanted to do that. And one, because I knew I was going to get a very real, raw ah answers, and I wasn’t going to get someone who’s kind of hopped from church to church, or who grew up in the church and gave me some churchiness and and be you know a little too kind. I wanted something real and and honest, and they did that.
Justyn Smith — But if that’s too far out there for you, I think it’s just literally just just ask ask a parent who attends your church, “How is the experience like ah for you?” And and you know maybe just do like a little roundtable. Bring you know four or five you know parents, ah take them out for coffee or just just come into one of your kid’s spaces and and just talk for 60 minutes. Maybe there’s ah maybe there is someone who’s who’s somewhat new to the church. you know maybe they’ve been coming for six months. That’s enough time for them to remember their experience um there is especially their first time experience, what it’s like.
Justyn Smith — But then and then don’t forget about the parents who have been attending for a long time. They have a lot of they have a lot to say. And they probably [inaudible] the backbone of your church and I think sometimes we might forget about them. Because they start to blend into to the background.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Justyn Smith — Bring them in. Hey, you’ve been attending here for 5 years, 10 years or or whatever. ah Do you feel like we really partner with you? Do you feel like we are meeting the needs…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Justyn Smith — …of of of your children? I mean, just ask the questions. It puts you in a vulnerable in a vulnerable spot, but that’s okay. We’re leaders. And leaders need to put ourselves in in that spot and be humble enough to say, hey, we’re missing the mark here and we want to do better.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Justyn Smith — Or we ah or we’re we’re doing a great job and we just want to keep building upon it and and and and doing better. And then I think when you put yourself in the in in a kids’ shoes, you can literally do this. You can literally get on your knees and you can walk through your kids experience and what do they see, what do they feel, what do they i mean what is that like for them literally, physically on that level?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Justyn Smith — And then two, ask ask the kids. You know I think it’s sometimes funny, we’re always racking our brains around, man, what would be a fun thing to do for kids? What would be ah ah what would they want to do? You literally talk to them every single week…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Justyn Smith — …um sometimes twice a week. And so i would I would take time and say, hey, what do you guys think would be fun? What would be what what would be something that we could do that would draw your your friends to our church? I’m not against hooks at all, as long as there’s substance behind the hook. If it’s only hook and facade, we’re not being effective. But if you’re using that hook to get people into your church, to expose them to effective discipleship, I think that’s a win.
Justyn Smith — And so um ask them. They they they know and they’ll come up with some maybe absurd things, but they’re going to come up with the answers because it’s the things they like to do. And then it’s our job as leaders, okay, how can we take what what they want to do and and and and make that work and and brainstorm that with creative people in your church. And so, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. It’s funny you say on the oh yeah to get on your knees, we did a training thing a while ago, probably a month ago, and they were handing out like, it was like a guest services thing in our church. And so we had like all these random different kind of personas that we were supposed to play. And so I was with someone, was paired with someone, and that was exactly what it was supposed to be. It was like a parent and child. And they were trying to check their kid in. And it was like a slightly different check-in situation.
Justyn Smith — Sure.
Rich Birch — And so I got on my knees and walked through ah you know with the with the person that was supposed to be my parent. And it was it was fun. And a part of what you know my takeaway from it was like, yeah, man, the kids are standing there a long time…
Justyn Smith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …waiting for their parents to do some sort of administrative thing. And I said the exact same thing. I’m like can we put something fun here like what can we do something, you know give them something or have I don’t know candy or something…
Justyn Smith — That’s brilliant. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …in this environment um that I wouldn’t have thought of if I wasn’t and obviously my knees were hurting too. So I was like, oh man. But yeah, I love that. Put put them in their in your shoes. Ask lots of questions. Participate in the experience. that’s ah you know That’s so great.
Rich Birch — Can you think of a time from your leadership where your perspective has been changed by maybe talking to kids or talking to parents, engaging, um that it’s actually changed a bit of what you’ve done?
Justyn Smith — Yeah, I would I would say, I mean, to your point of, of you know, you put you were on your knees and and and walking through that. We’ve done that exercise, and and we found out that, yeah, we wanted to put something in the kid’s hands. And so we would have a welcome, like a little welcome bag ah with, you know, had our had our logo on it and had a couple things in it. So had ah had a first time button, had a little thing they could fidget with. And so literally as mom and dad are are completing you know, the the short form for check-in, they were able to ah fidget with some things.
Justyn Smith — But not only that, but we also tried to make it personal where we have a someone there who’s giving the kids attention. And so mom and dad can focus on, you know, typing the stuff in, writing the stuff in, however, however you would do that. And we’d have someone asking kids questions, hey, what school what school to go to? Hey, what’s your favorite part of, you know, and just um and just really kind of engaging them. And then what that did for mom and dad, it kind of gave them a sense of, oh, man, these people really do care…
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — …about our children. They’re giving them attention and really kind of on on their level. And so I i think it it it just built some trust in right away, which I think is really important, especially if you’re a first-time guest. You’re leaving your kids. I don’t know this organization. I don’t know this church.
Rich Birch — Right. Who are these people?
Justyn Smith — Are you guys a cult? Are you like what are you?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Justyn Smith — And I’m just giving you my kids. And so it’s important that trust right off the bat. So that helped with that. And I think like yeah with a with mom and dad, um, some of the things that we’ve we’ve changed is, you know, we found out that, you know, handouts on a weekly basis, they don’t like those.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — And some of the churches, I’ve been in some churches and they do value those. But I’ve been in some, they’re like these end up… we don’t do anything with them. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, you know, we’re spending so much time and thought and effort, uh…
Rich Birch — Right. Producing this stuff. Yep.
Justyn Smith — …producing this stuff and and you’re not using them. But we do it because, because I think it’s effective. Because it’s what I like to do. And I’m like and like, I’m not here for me. I’m here to serve, to serve Jesus. I’m here to serve you. And, um, if I’m not being effective, if I’m wasting these resources, that’s ridiculous.
Justyn Smith — So then we went to, um you know ah you know, we did like a seven week series, so we just produced something that we made available for at the beginning of the series. And and that’s it.
Rich Birch — Here it is. Right. Right.
Justyn Smith — And and that kind of went with it. And and parents appreciate that. They’re like, oh, hey, it felt bite-sized enough where where they could get into it.
Justyn Smith — And then we just moved some stuff to social media. So if some people still wanted a a weekly connection or questions, prompts, et cetera, they could still get that on a weekly basis. But in a not not wasting resources and things like that.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, exactly. When all the time we spent printing all that stuff, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense for sure.
Rich Birch — So let’s let’s roll out a scenario. Let’s say I’m an executive pastor, church of 1,500 people, and you know I I really like our kids’ people. They’re good folks. But like I just have a sense that we’re not you know keeping up. That it’s like It feels like we’re like it’s like the same as it was 10 years ago. Like obviously, there’s new kids, new leaders, all that, but but it just feels like maybe we’re not um you know learning, growing. What advice would you give to me as an executive pastor as I’m working with my team to try to help them um stay current. Because I’m not an expert in it. It’s not my this isn’t my area.
Justyn Smith — Right.
Rich Birch — But I it’s it’s a hunch. So what should I be thinking about? How do I explore that kind of hunch? What what what kind of advice could I be, you know, could I give to the kids, ministry people in my church?
Justyn Smith — Yeah, I mean, I think I think the first thing I mean the first thing I would do is I would be reflective as an executive pastor. So is this a is this a specific ministry challenge that you’re having, or is it an overall church challenge that you’re having?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Justyn Smith — So I think it’s easy sometimes for us to sit in a chair and say, oh, hey, this could be better.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Justyn Smith — But then if I’m being really if I’m being honest and reflective of myself, hey, our whole church is down 20%. Or our whole church is struggling with this this this cultural thing. It’s not just the kids’ ministry. It seems like an easy target, or the student minister, or fill in the blank. It seems like an easy target. So I would i would encourage them, first, just be reflective and and make sure you’re really asking the right question. Ifif you do come to the conclusion that, hey, yeah, this children’s ministry is the lowest um hole in the bucket and and and that that’s where we’re leaking. Then, yeah, ask the tough questions.
Justyn Smith — And I think what some of those questions are is, for you for an executive pastor, one, do we have do we have the right leader ah in place? And um again, just just you know how did we get this person? What’s what’s the backstory? Some executive pastors didn’t hire this person. So I mean, it’s it’s important to understand who who this person is.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — Where where are you going as a church? You know, I’ve been a part of some churches who, it’s like, there’s there’s there was nothing necessarily wrong with the children’s pastor, but the but the church made a a a dramatic shift in in their strategy and how they approach ministry in their community and reaching out. And they found out this children’s pastor who wasn’t doing a ah bad job, just didn’t have the gift mix and the capabilities to make this shift. And so um that’s a hard that’s a hard conversation um to to have, but but it’s one that’s necessary if you want, obviously, your children’s ministry or whatever to to to to get on board and go the direction you’re having.
Justyn Smith — And so it could be a shift and in in leadership. If it’s someone you’re like, no, I think i think this person has it. They’ve got they’ve got the capability, they got the capability, they’ve the gifting, all that type of stuff, then um how are you resourcing this person? I mean, there’s there’s great conferences out there that you could send them to. there’s ah roundtables. I mean think I would say I as an executive ah as an executive pastor, all those things that you might be a part of, why would you not want your staff to also be a part of?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. That’s good.
Justyn Smith — And so um help them find a community and your kids pastor again um could have just been thrown in there, may not have the experience. Or or when ah and and and surround them, find a community of kids pastors who um who are are are big on leadership or big on spiritual disciplines and discipleship. I mean, what is it that you want for your church and and help them find that church, those people, and get them, expose them to what you are are wanting, if they don’t have that experience.
Justyn Smith — Because I found that many kids’ pastors, they’re open. They just they don’t know. They feel under they just feel under-resourced, undervalued.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Justyn Smith — And I think sometimes when you start to encourage, you start to show value. And some of that is is the resources you give them. It’s the um It’s the budget you give or don’t give them. All those things communicate something to them. And so ah you know that’s why I said earlier, you know, it’s one thing to say, hey, we value you. We we value Kids’ Ministry, but then they have the lowest budget ah line, you know, they have the lowest budget in the church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Justyn Smith — Or or the student ministry, they’ve got you know they’ve got a full-time student pastor there, but we’ve got this part-time stay-at-home spouse that is running the Kids’ Ministry. But yet our expectation is that the Kids’ Ministry is at this level.
Justyn Smith — And so it’s like, I think sometimes, and that’s where you got to take an internal and an internal inventory of of how, of your expectations and and what you’re doing in kids ministry. But but all those types of things. But I think it’s i think it’s mainly like what what helped my growth the most was me being exposed to people who um who our church wanted to emulate, who I wanted to emulate. And that just radically changed and put me on on the right trajectory. So I think that that’s a big deal.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s good. So I want to come back to the under-resourced question in a minute. So I’m just putting a little a little pin in that. But but kind of related to this whole area, I think one of the things that’s changed a lot in the last, maybe even the last 10 years, for sure in the last 20, 25, is we’re trying to create, particularly kids ministries that really are can host a series of kids from a wide variety with a variety of learning um abilities, learning styles, neurodiversity, all that stuff. Talk to me about that both from like the volunteer team side and from you know put your Plain Joe hat on and and think about it from that perspective. What should what are some of the kind of key questions we should be thinking about when we think about that issue? Because this seems like one of those big changes over the last 10, 15 years.
Justyn Smith — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me just, yeah, let’s be honest. It’s it’s not going away.
Rich Birch — No.
Justyn Smith — it’s it’s it’s only It’s only expediting. And I find that you’ve got a couple churches you’ve got churches that are um they’re pretty resistant. They’re like, this is just how we do ministry. And to be honest, I’m I’m a little I’m I’m a little ah I’ll just use the word disappointed with churches who are just unwilling to um entertain the idea that that they could make some changes ah to minister, to maybe not the whole spectrum that’s out there, but but to to to some, to to what you can do.
Justyn Smith — And so I have ah I have a lot of ah respect and high regard for churches who um who are also honest with themselves. They’re like, hey, we know this is a challenge, um but ah we can’t do it all, but this is what we can do right now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — But then to maybe have a long-term plan of like, hey, how can we get there?
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — Because again, it’s it’s not it’s not going away. And some churches are just like, we’re just not going to do that. I’m just like, it’s just kind of a bummer because I feel like there’s a whole, and I feel like maybe you mentioned it, so you you might feel it as well, is there’s just a whole community out there that is just looking for a faith community…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Justyn Smith — …um that will invite them in. And I think a lot of times we’re either intentionally or unintentionally unwelcoming them. And I think it’s important that that we strive to do what we but we can do. But then I hope that our churches would would get together and and and create a plan to to invite them in in the long term. So maybe, hey, ah this year we can do… you know we can you know handle this level, but maybe you know two or three years we can increase that. And I think those are positive strides.
Justyn Smith — And then there’s some churches who kind of go all in and and they’re just doing a fabulous job at reaching that community. My Plain Joe had ah had on is just just being mindful of of people who um ah who are not, I guess what people say would call typical typical kids. And so when you’re designing, when you’re creating a space, when you’re creating environments, make sure that they’re ah inclusive of of all all kids of of of their abilities. I think it’s it’s it’s not as challenging as it seems to be. It’s as easy as this: it’s as easy as connecting with a family who has a child who who who’s going through that and having a conversation with them. Hey, how can we make our ministry more ah more friendly, more welcoming an environment for your child?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s so good. I yeah I agree. Like we don’t want to get be caught asleep on this one. I think particularly as churches grow…
Justyn Smith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …it it we end up in a really responsive, you know, way with this. It’s like we’re reactive because it’s like there’s families that are showing up and they are like, OK, you basically deal with my kid. And then we’re caught like, oh, I don’t know what to do. This is an area where we really should be thinking ahead…
Justyn Smith — Right.
Rich Birch — …getting ahead of the curve, trying to figure out, you know, there’s some studies that show somewhere between I think it’s I think it was 17 to 20% of kids in America are neurodivergent. So that’s like…
Justyn Smith — Yeah. Yeah. they’re They’re saying, yeah, they’re saying, yeah, it’s it’s more than one in 10 kids are doing with something.
Rich Birch — …one in five. Yeah. Yeah.
Justyn Smith — And then just real quick too. And I feel like there’s a place I can just kind of be blunt ah with of my assessments is that I think sometimes we don’t do it because it takes work. Um, and and, and it, I’m, I’m just being real. It’s a, it takes a lot of work.
Rich Birch — That’s true.
Justyn Smith — It gets us out of our comfort zone and we don’t know. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Justyn Smith — And so, and so let’s just, let’s just call it what it is.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a new skill. We got to learn, right? We got to lean in.
Justyn Smith — And as a leader, go out there and learn it, go out there, do the research, talk to the people and do the work to meet that need. So there you go.
Rich Birch — Okay, so sticking with the being blunt theme. Let’s go back to the underfunded question. So you got a bunch of executive pastor people that are listening in. And I know that they, when they hear that, and that like oh our area is underfunded, I know they’re like, yeah, like everybody’s. Like they’re trying to balance the budget, they’re like give me a break, like you know, it’s it’s all underfunded. But what what is the thing that you would say or that you wish you could say on behalf of kids’ ministry people all across the country if you had an earnest executive pastor that was sitting down and saying, Hey, like, help me understand. Are we underfunded? Are we? I know everybody wants more money. You know, they’re not going to go to their people and, you know, if you go to, I’ve never had a staff member say, you know what, I need less staff and I less need less resources.
Justyn Smith — Right.
Rich Birch — They’ve never said that. So um but let’s say it’s like an earnest person. They’re like, really, hey, ah help me understand, Justyn. You’re an expert in this area. What does what kind of funding percentage wise? Is there a way for me to think about that that really would be an appropriate level of funding for, you know, our church
Justyn Smith — Yeah, I mean, and I think it’s like really two conversations. One, it’s to the kid’s pastor. Like don’t don’t take on a victim mentality.
Rich Birch — Right. No, that’s good.
Justyn Smith — Like like I would I would I don’t know if the executive pastor says that, it probably comes off differently. If I said that to peer, a children’s pastor, they’d take it better because I’ve been in that like the victim mentality, woe is me.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Justyn Smith — Like don’t do that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Justyn Smith — You said yes to this, and and you know what you’re getting into.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — And so ah but but yeah, the the underfunded thing, I think it’s, again, it’s just having an honest assessment. So as you look at the ministries, how are they being funded? And if you have like, I’ve gotten some churches where student ministry is like, you know, 50, 60% more than kids ministry. But yet there’s this there’s this expectation that kids’ ministry is doing, you know, XYZ. And I’m like, dude… and it’s not necessarily about like, like the the like you get more, I get more. I I don’t like that per se.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — It’s just that um oftentimes you’re getting you’re getting what you’re paying for. And so if you’re paying um if you’re paying someone like, ah a low yeah, if they have a low budget, if you if they have low salary, I just often say, you get what you’re paid for.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Justyn Smith — And so I have that honest assessment. It’s hard to say; every church is different. I just say, man, what what do you value?
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — If you like you value kids, Oh, hey, your your budget’s $25,000 for ministry. Man, and and and you can make some changes to to do whatever. There’s some churches here, they’re trying to be they’re trying to minister to everyone and everything. And there’s it’s it’s a hard conversation to have, but um I get the I get the idea that, hey, woe is me, everyone wants more money. I’m I’m a very practical, I feel like very realistic, but I think that most executive pastors, if you really just reflected um on your stuff, I think I think you could figure out like if you’re underfunding it or not
Rich Birch — Sure.
Justyn Smith — it’s It’s challenging without knowing what the vision is, the values are…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Justyn Smith — …it could be any number of things. So I know I’m not really answering the question, but.
Rich Birch — Well, no, no, that’s fine. That’s good. I get it. I understand that your, you know, yeah people could reach out and ask you if they got specifics, you know, I’m sure you’d be happy to help.
Justyn Smith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But it’s it because I think that’s a real issue. I do think, um you know, from my seat over the years, we’ve, you know, I’ve been such a champion for kids ministry specifically. I think it’s strategically important for the church. It’s the gospel from a big picture point of view. The gospel is one generation away from being extinct. We’ve got to invest in that. um but it But then just also from a like, I would say like a pragmatic church growth point of view, like prevailing churches invest heavily in kids ministry.
Justyn Smith — Yes.
Rich Birch — Like, you know, if you if you were to go visit really in kind of every stream of you know, Christian church, if you were to find the churches that that that stream considers prevailing, one of the common things that you’ll see in all of those, kind of regardless of the stream, is when you walk around their kids’ ministry or talk to their kids’ ministry people, they’re very well led…
Justyn Smith — Right.
Rich Birch — …they’re well-funded, there’s like energy coming off that. There’s like, wow, there’s lots of good stuff going on there. And so it’s highly unlikely that your church would become prevailing without ah without a killer kids’ ministry, I think, personally.
Justyn Smith — Correct. Rich, I love you, man. That’s awesome. Yes, yes, yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ll give you a hug across the across Zoom.
Justyn Smith — I know, right?
Rich Birch — Well, let’s you know you’ve given us a chapter of ah your book. It’s its so I want to hear a little bit about this. So first of all, I’m a Disney guy. I love Disney. So the fact that it’s just a former ah Disney Imagineer you’re talking about. But tell me about this chapter and then tell me about your book.
Justyn Smith — Yeah, so the book, Kidmin, Trust and Pixie Dust. I’m a big Disney guy. And so in the Children’s Ministry world, I’ve I’ve got a few resources written on on Disney and and do a lot of that. And I know it gets it’s it’s like it goes back and forth with how people are receptive to it because Disney is always in the headlines…
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — …for whatever. But I like to if I like to focus a lot on like classic Disney, Walt Disney the person, and just the thing that he built. I think there’s no doubt that ah Walt Disney built something I’m gonna use the word magical, even though some people are allergic to that word in the church, ah but it but it really is. It’s like he he he created something that was ah brought a lot of value to families and to communities and has really was a pioneer in shaping a ah yeah entertainment today.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Justyn Smith — I mean, we do what we do today in large part because of Walt Disney. And so um I think there’s a lot of things that we can take from Walt Disney and even the Disney company today and apply that to Kids’ Ministry and take the best from it. I’m not saying everything they do is great.
Rich Birch — Right.
Justyn Smith — Everything they do is is is replicable or or or that. But there is still a lot of ah good things that we can learn from that apply. And so this book does that. It’s Kidmin, Trust and Pixie Dust. It takes some practical ah leadership lessons and creative lessons that Walt Disney and um and and that the Disney ah teams over the years have put into place and how does that what does that look like in a kids’ ministry environment?
Justyn Smith — And so and obviously, was like with my Plain Joe hat, I’m really big on environments and creating memorable experiences. I think those are super important. I think our organization does a phenomenal job at storytelling and helping churches tell their story, ah which includes, um you know, children’s ministry spaces and environments, you know, whether you’ve got 50 grand or 5 million, ah you know, we can make come to life.
Justyn Smith — And this chapter specifically talks with a ex-Disney Imagineer, Theron Skees. And ah he talks about his story and just all that he he created and led throughout the years. And he’s a person of faith, ah which is amazing. Some people think, you know, there’s no way there’s Christians there, but there is um a faith community within the Disney Company. And Theron was one of them for many years. And his stories and the way he is so passionate about um about just ah the the local church and and creativity and telling the story is is um it’s it’s yeah it’s it’s it’s exciting and fun. And so I so I wanted to include this this chapter because I wanted it to inspire people to um to put their ah best into kids’ ministry. And I feel like i feel like this is a chapter that that can do that. And I hope it i hope it’s helpful for people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well, I would encourage friends, listen, I back talking back to that executive pastor that we were talking about earlier, go click the link, read this chapter. And then maybe what you could do, a practical next step is why don’t you buy copies of of this book um and read it with your kids’ ministry people. Say like, hey, I you know I heard this interview. What if we spent the next couple months we read through this and then we just talked about it, all got got the copies. It’s on my budget, not yours. Don’t worry about it. And would love to talk a little bit about you know what can we do to kind of increase the, try to get a a learning environment going with with your kids’ ministry people? I think that would be a really practical. I know when I saw this book I thought man, this would be a great book to kind of um use in that kind of training environment. I think it could be a really cool tool Um, yeah, Mel McGowan, uh, from Storyland, he, he knows, uh, the path to my heart.
Justyn Smith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — He once hosted me at Club 33 there at Disneyland. So it was like, I feel like I’m forever indebted to Mel. So, um, which is, uh, you know, if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it friends, but, um, yeah, I appreciate the, uh, appreciate Disney for sure.
Rich Birch — So, well, this has been great. What a great conversation today. Is there anything else that you want to cover just as we wrap up today?
Justyn Smith — I mean, on a search, I know we’ve kind of gone over time a little bit and we talked a lot ah a lot, but I mean, I just, you know, I guess I would say, you know, I never thought that, you know, that I would have to, in kids’ ministry, be a salesman or a talent a talent seeker. And it’s just it just goes with…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Justyn Smith — …with with with ministry and and we need people to do ministry. And so that’s something that I learned along the way. And I’m just appreciative of you. I’m I’m thankful for unSeminary. I’m thankful for your ministry and what you’re doing. ah You’re helping a lot of people and it was definitely an honor to to be part of this.
Rich Birch — Well, thanks so much. If people want to get in touch with you or, you know, track with, uh, you know, with Plain Joe or any of that stuff, where do we want to send them online?
Justyn Smith — Yeah, I mean I mean, you can go to plainjoestudios.com. You can find me on any social media. I’m usually the you know hashtag or ah yeah ah Pastor Justyn is usually my my name on ah on everything. It’s Justyn with a Y, so J-U-S-T-Y-N. ah Pastor Justyn, so you can follow me on any of the social medias. ah Find me on ah on a yeah the the Plain Joe or Storyland website. And I would love to connect with you, have conversations, and help in any way that I can.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much for being here, sir. I really appreciate your time today.
Justyn Smith — Thanks, Rich.
How to Make Your Church Irresistible: Proven Strategies for Creating an Invite Culture
Oct 30, 2024
In this Deep Dive episode of the unSeminary Podcast, the hosts explore how to make your church irresistible by discussing Rich Birch’s book, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture: Strategies for Church Growth That Work Today. The conversation unpacks Birch’s insights on how churches can cultivate an environment where members naturally want to invite others into the community. This episode centers on five practical “gears” that drive a thriving invite culture:
Shareable Weekend Teaching: The hosts discuss how impactful, relevant sermons can become topics of conversation that members feel compelled to share with others. Birch’s advice is to make messages feel like “painkillers” that address immediate needs rather than “vitamins” with general advice.
Eventful Big Days: By making the most of holidays and major events like Christmas and Easter, churches can create engaging, buzz-worthy experiences. The hosts share examples of churches that take an innovative approach to draw in those who might not usually attend, transforming these days into memorable outreach opportunities.
Captivating Online Conversations: More than just live streaming, Birch emphasizes creating engaging, shareable online content that feels authentic and connects with people digitally. The hosts explore ways churches can boost their online presence to build digital community and increase shareability.
Magnetic Community Service: The best community service is both meaningful and fun, creating a welcoming space for all. Birch recommends organizing service activities that not only help others but also foster a sense of connection among participants, making it easy for members to invite friends to join.
Appealing Volunteer Service: By creating an inviting, easy-to-join volunteer experience, churches can help members feel invested from the start. The hosts discuss how Birch’s insights show that a strong volunteer culture can lead to greater community involvement and natural growth.
Throughout the episode, the hosts emphasize Birch’s approach to building an invite culture step-by-step, celebrating small wins and focusing on intentional growth. For church leaders looking to make their church a place people can’t resist inviting others to, this episode is packed with actionable insights and examples.
Disclaimer: This episode was generated with the help of NotebookLM, an AI tool from Google designed to enhance content creation by analyzing documents and providing in-depth insights. NotebookLM assists in generating summaries, exploring themes, and crafting key points from the material provided. We used it in this episode to bring you an engaging and thorough exploration of Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture by Rich Birch.
We’re always looking to improve, and your feedback is invaluable to us! If you have any thoughts on the episode or on how we’re using NotebookLM, please reach out—we’d love to hear from you.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 — All right, let’s jump into this whole idea of invite culture. I’m sure it’s something you’re already thinking about…
Speaker 2 — Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 — …especially as church leaders, you know trying to figure out how to reach more people and build a thriving community. We wanted to take a deep dive into Rich Birch’s Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. He’s got some great insights on how to create that kind of environment.
Speaker 2 — It’s interesting because he really focuses on it’s not some like magic solution, right? He breaks down this concept of an invite culture into five key areas that churches can focus on.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — And kind of gears working together to propel the church forward.
Speaker 1 — I like that. Like a well-oiled machine.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — So what are these gears? What’s what’s the first one?
Speaker 2 — The first one is shareable weekend teaching.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so that’s really about making your sermons and teaching so compelling…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …that people want to share them.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. So it’s so good, they can’t help but talk about it.
Speaker 1 — But how do you actually do that? How do you make a sermon something people want to talk about on Monday morning, you know at work or with their friends?
Speaker 2 — Well, he uses this great analogy of painkillers not vitamins.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — And he argues that your teaching needs to address real problems people are facing.
Speaker 1 — Felt needs.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, not just offered general spiritual advice.
Speaker 1 — So it’s like when you have a splitting headache, you’re not reaching for, you know a multivitamin. You’re looking for that that Advil that Tylenol.
Speaker 2 — You want that quick fix.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, something that’s gonna address that problem right now.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, people are drawn to things that offer solutions to their immediate problem
Speaker 1 — So, how do you how do you as a church leader even figure out what those what those problems or what those headaches are?
Speaker 2 — Well, he suggests looking at things like Amazon bestseller lists.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — And you know, they can actually give you a window into what are people thinking about, what keeps them up at night?
Speaker 1 — That’s so interesting. So it’s like market research but for but for the soul, it’s like what are people really struggling with at their core?
Speaker 2 — Yeah, and then how can you craft your teaching to address those needs directly?
Speaker 1 — I like that.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — And and you know, it’s not just what’s being said, right? It’s also who’s saying it.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — Birch stresses that you know leaders need to embody the message they’re preaching.
Speaker 2 — Authenticity is key.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, are you living out what you’re asking others to do
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — You know, there’s that whole, you know practice what you preach kind of idea.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — He gives the example of Crossroads Church and how they’re known for their creative and really visually engaging sermons. It’s not just you know, someone’s standing behind a podium.
Speaker 2 — Right. It’s an experience.
Speaker 1 — It’s an experience. You want people to leave right feeling inspired feeling energized…
Speaker 2 — And wanting to share.
Speaker 1 — …and wanting to share what they’ve experienced. Okay, so we’ve got shareable weekend teaching. That’s gear number one. What’s the next gear in this invite culture machine?
Speaker 2 — Gear number two is eventful big days.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so we’re talking about like Christmas, Easter – those big holidays?
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — Those marker points in the year.
Speaker 2 — Yes, times when people are already thinking about you know, faith tradition.
Speaker 1 — And he’s arguing that churches should really lean into those moments.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely. Go beyond the expected. Don’t just you know have your regular service
Speaker 1 — Right.
Speaker 2 — He actually shares a story about Liquid Church in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 — Oh, I’ve heard of them.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, they did this incredible Star Wars themed Christmas…
Speaker 1 — Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 — …a couple years ago, complete with dancing stormtroopers.
Speaker 1 — Wait, seriously like stormtroopers in the church?
Speaker 2 — I mean they had Chewbacca in the manger scene, Darth Santa.
Speaker 1 — Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 — It was a huge hit.
Speaker 1 — Okay, I can see that generating some buzz – that’s thinking outside the box.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, and they actually drew people in who might never have stepped foot in a church otherwise.
Speaker 1 — So you’re meeting people where they are and and using something that they’re familiar with and comfortable with…
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — …to kind of draw them in.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — That’s really cool.
Speaker 2 — And then there was Hope City Church. They dropped 10,000 easter eggs from a helicopter.
Speaker 1 — A helicopter? Okay, that’s that’s next level.
Speaker 2 — It’s memorable.
Speaker 1 — It’s definitely memorable.
Speaker 2 — Right. It’s exciting. And it’s something people would naturally want to invite their friends to.
Speaker 1 — Right. It’s it’s something people would talk about. I can imagine people being like hey, you’ve got to come to our church. We’re dropping easter eggs from a helicopter this year.
Speaker 2 — Exactly
Speaker 1 — And they’re not even thinking about it as like, oh I’m inviting you to church. They’re thinking about it as I’m inviting you to this awesome event.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. It’s about creating an experience that’s both meaningful and fun and something that gets people talking and wanting to share it with others.
Speaker 1 — So that’s shareable weekend teaching and eventful big days. What’s the third gear in this invite culture thing?
Speaker 2 — The third gear is captivating online conversations.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so that’s that’s really relevant these days.
Speaker 2 — Very relevant.
Speaker 1 — As we think about how how present everyone is online and how much interaction we have in that digital space.
Speaker 2 — And he really emphasizes that it’s not just about live streaming your services.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — It’s really about creating genuine connections online and fostering a sense of community in that digital space.
Speaker 1 — So how do you do that? How do you translate invite culture into the online space?
Speaker 2 — Well, he actually points to groups like IF:Gathering as a great example. They really nail that native to the internet feel.
Speaker 1 — So their content It just feels it feels natural right in that digital space. It’s not like you’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — It’s just it just works.
Speaker 2 — Yeah. Think you know short shareable videos, interactive discussions, visually appealing aesthetic.
Speaker 1 — So it’s it’s designed for how people actually consume content online.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — And it feels authentic and relatable.
Speaker 2 — He also mentioned some Barna research that shows people are willing to invite friends online if the experience is engaging.
Speaker 1 — So it’s not just about reaching people online.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — But it’s also about equipping…
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — …your current congregation to feel comfortable inviting others into that space.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Okay, that makes sense like creating that digital welcome map. Okay. So gear number four -magnetic community service.
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — I think this one is really at the heart of what it means to be a church, right?
Speaker 2 — Absolutely. It’s about putting your faith into action. And serving those in need. And he makes this crucial point, it needs to be both meaningful, and fun.
Speaker 1 — It can’t just be like, you know drudgery and and you know work. People need to enjoy it.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — Want to be a part of it.
Speaker 2 — He talks about churches organizing service sprints, you know providing t-shirts, having great music, creating volunteer care teams. So you’re you’re making it an event.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — An experience that people want to be a part of
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — He also shares a powerful story about His church rallying after Super Storm Sandy.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — And it wasn’t just about helping people clean up. It was about creating community.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — It was about sharing meals.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — And it was about embodying the church’s values in a tangible way.
Speaker 2 — And it’s not just about doing good for the sake of doing good.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — It’s about making it something that people naturally want to invite their friends to join.
Speaker 1 — Yeah. They see you making a difference and they think I want to be a part of that…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …and I know my friend would too.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Okay. What about the last gear in this invite culture framework?
Speaker 2 — The final gear is appealing volunteer service.
Speaker 1 — And that one almost feels a little counterintuitive, right, because we often think of volunteering…
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — …as something that we ask people to do…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …once the church is already thriving.
Speaker 2 — Once you have momentum.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, it’s not necessarily seen as a driver of growth. Yeah.
Speaker 2 — Yeah. But he argues that attracting volunteers is actually crucial to building an invite culture.
Speaker 1 — Okay, how so?
Speaker 2 — Well, he talks about how multi-site churches are particularly good at this.
Speaker 1 — Okay,.
Speaker 2 — When you give people ownership of a new location it creates massive buy-in.
Speaker 1 — It makes sense. Because they feel like they’re a part of something from the beginning.
Speaker 2 — From the get-go.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, they’re not just coming in after everything’s already established.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — They’re they’re part of building it from the ground up.
Speaker 2 — He mentions East Side Church’s Climbing the Assimilayas framework, which is all about moving people from being guests to being contributors.
Speaker 1 — I like that.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — It’s a good visual. So the key takeaway here is you don’t wait for growth to magically produce volunteers…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …you focus on attracting volunteers…
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — …as a way to fuel growth.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. When people feel invested in the church, they’re actively serving, contributing. They’re much more likely to invite others to be part of it.
Speaker 1 — Makes sense. They’re they’re bought-in, they’re invested. They want to share that with others.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so we’ve we’ve covered a lot of ground just in these first five gears: shareable weekend teaching, eventful big days, captivating online conversations, magnetic community service, and appealing volunteer service.
Speaker 2 — It’s a lot.
Speaker 1 — It’s a lot. I mean, what are your initial thoughts, as you think about this framework and you think about these five gears does anything stand out to you?
Speaker 2 — I think what’s striking me is how intentional each of these gears is.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, it’s not just hoping people will invite their friends.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s actually creating a culture…
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — …that leads to invitation
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — So it’s it’s being proactive about it. It’s looking at everything you do from your Sunday services to your online presence to your volunteer programs through the lens of how can we make this more inviting?
Speaker 2 — And I think what’s really helpful about Birch’s approach is that he breaks it down into these manageable chunks, right?
Speaker 1 — Right.
Speaker 2 — So it feels less overwhelming.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, you can kind of focus on one gear at a time…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …and kind of master it and then move on to the next one.
Speaker 2 — So we’ll dive into some specific examples and actionable steps in the next part of our deep dive. But for now, I’d encourage you to think about which of these gears feels like the biggest opportunity for your church right now.
Speaker 1 — That’s a great question to ponder.
Speaker 2 — Where could you make a small tweak or adjustment that could have a big impact on your invite culture?
Speaker 1 — That’s fantastic. We’ll be back in just a moment to explore even more practical tips and strategies from Rich Birch’s book. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2 — Welcome back. I’m excited to kind of dig into some real world examples of churches that are putting these five gears of invite culture into practice…
Speaker 1 — Yeah me too.
Speaker 2 — …and seeing incredible results.
Speaker 1 — Let’s hear it. Give us the inside scoop. Who are some of these churches and what are they doing that’s so effective?
Speaker 2 — One church Birch highlights is Mosaic Church, which has locations all over the U.S.
Speaker 1 — Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 — And they’re known for their incredibly diverse and welcoming atmosphere.
Speaker 1 — I’ve heard great things about Mosaic’s. They seem to have a real knack for connecting with people who might not feel comfortable in a traditional church setting.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, they’ve really cracked the code on creating a space where everyone feels like they belong.
Speaker 1 — So what’s their secret sauce? What are they doing that’s so effective?
Speaker 2 — Well Birch points out that they’re very intentional about creating a culture where people feel comfortable inviting their friends regardless of their background or beliefs.
Speaker 1 — It’s not about fitting into a mold.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s about being yourself.
Speaker 2 — It’s about celebrating diversity and making everyone feel welcome and valued
Speaker 1 — So you can bring your your friend who’s you know may be a little skeptical or may be from a completely different background…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …and know that they’re going to be accepted and loved.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — That’s awesome.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — So it’s about creating a space where people can truly be themselves…
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — …and they feel safe bringing their friends into that space.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — I love that, and it’s clearly working for them.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, they’ve seen tremendous growth and a lot of it is attributed to their strong invite culture.
Speaker 1 — It’s amazing what can happen when you create that kind of environment
Speaker 2 — Absolutely. Birch also talks about New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California. And they’re a great example of a church that leverages those eventful big days we discussed earlier.
Speaker 1 — Oh, yeah those high felt need campaigns.
Speaker 2 — Yes. They’re masters at tapping into what’s already on people’s minds and creating events that address those needs in a compelling way.
Speaker 1 — So it’s not just about fun and entertainment.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s about offering real solutions…
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — …to the challenges people are facing.
Speaker 2 — It’s about meeting people where they are both emotionally and geographically.
Speaker 1 — I love that.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — And that approach has created this infectious energy within the church. People are excited to invite their friends because they know they’re going to experience something meaningful and impactful.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, it taps into that deep desire within people to be a part of something bigger than themselves, something that makes a difference.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so we’ve got mosaic church. We’ve got New Song Community Church. Any other churches we can learn from?
Speaker 2 — One more that stands out is Beach Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 — Okay
Speaker 2 — And they have a fascinating story because they were actually in decline for a while, but they managed to turn things around by focusing on building a strong outward-focused culture.
Speaker 1 — That’s encouraging.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — Proof that it’s never too late to shift gears and start building that invite culture.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely, and their ethos statement really sums up their approach: to become a connected people cultivated by Christ whose changed lives are changing lives.
Speaker 1 — I love that. So it’s about discipleship transformation and empowering people to reach out to others.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. And they’re living proof that focusing on creating that inviting life-giving culture can lead to incredible growth.
Speaker 1 — They’re a great example for churches that might be feeling discouraged or stuck.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 — So as we’re hearing these success stories, are there any common threads?
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — Any key takeaways that we can glean from these diverse approaches?
Speaker 2 — That’s a great question. There are definitely some overarching themes that emerge from these success stories.
Speaker 1 — Okay, let’s hear them.
Speaker 2 — One thing they all seem to have in common is a deep understanding of their community.
Speaker 1 — Makes sense.
Speaker 2 — They’re not just throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. They’re taking the time to really understand the people they’re trying to reach.
Speaker 1 — So it’s like they’ve done their market research, but it goes deeper than that.
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — It’s about empathy, about really connecting with people on a human level.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — And it’s reflected in everything they do.
Speaker 2 — Right. Another thing that strikes me is that all of these churches are very intentional about creating a welcoming and inclusive environment.
Speaker 1 — They’re not just focused on attracting new people.
Speaker 2 — Right, yeah.
Speaker 1 — They’re focused on making sure those people feel welcome, valued and loved…
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — …once they walk through the doors.
Speaker 2 — It’s about creating a sense of belonging. A feeling that this is a place where they can truly be themselves and connect with others.
Speaker 1 — So that leads to another key takeaway.
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — These churches are all about empowering their members to be inviters.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — It’s not just relying on the staff or a few key volunteers.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s creating a culture where everyone feels equipped and encouraged to invite their friends
Speaker 2 — Yeah, it’s about creating a movement a ripple effect that spreads throughout the community.
Speaker 1 — It’s about recognizing that everyone has a role to play in building this invite culture.
Speaker 2 — And they’re doing this in all sorts of creative ways from providing simple conversation starters to hosting invite-focused small group gatherings…
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — …to celebrating those who are actively bringing new people into the church.
Speaker 1 — It’s about making invitation the norm…
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — …not the exception.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — Okay, this is all fantastic. But I have to ask is there anything Birch says about navigating the potential pitfalls…
Speaker 2 — Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 — …of building an invite culture?
Speaker 2 — Sure.
Speaker 1 — Because it all sounds great…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …but I can imagine there might be some challenges along the way.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Are there any common mistakes churches make or anything leaders should be aware of as they’re trying to cultivate this kind of environment?
Speaker 2 — Yeah, you’re right. It’s not always easy and Birch doesn’t sugarcoat the potential difficulties.
Speaker 1 — Okay, good.
Speaker 2 — One challenge he addresses is the risk of becoming too focused on numbers and losing sight of the bigger picture.
Speaker 1 — That’s so easy to do, especially when you’re talking about growth and reaching new people.
Speaker 2 — It is and Birch cautions against becoming so fixated on attendance figures that you lose sight of the real goal, which is to connect people with Christ and help them grow in their faith.
Speaker 1 — So it’s about keeping the main thing the main thing
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s about remembering that behind every number Is a person, a soul, a story.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely. What are some of the other challenges?
Speaker 1 — Yeah, what else does he talk about?
Speaker 2 — He also talks about the importance of balancing the desire to attract new people with the need to nurture those who are already part of the church.
Speaker 1 — Right. You don’t want to create a culture where long-time members feel neglected or overlooked…
Speaker 2 — Exactly
Speaker 1 — …in pursuit of new faces.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, he emphasizes that a healthy invite culture is not about replacing existing members. It’s about expanding the circle to include more people.
Speaker 1 — I like that.
Speaker 2 — It’s about growing together as a community.
Speaker 1 — So it’s not us versus them.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s we.
Speaker 2 — It’s all of us together.
Speaker 1 — All of us on this journey together.
Speaker 2 — And that requires being sensitive to the needs of both long-time members and newcomers, making sure everyone feels valued and connected.
Speaker 1 — That’s a great point. It’s about creating a sense of belonging for everyone.
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — Regardless of how long they’ve been a part of the church.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely. He also acknowledges that you might encounter pushback or resistance from within the church…
Speaker 1 — Oh, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 2 — …as you begin to implement these five gears.
Speaker 1 — People don’t always like change.
Speaker 2 — Right. Change can be difficult and not everyone might be on board with the idea of actively inviting outsiders, especially if they’re comfortable with the status quo.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, they might think, we’re doing just fine. Why rock the boat.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. So, how do you navigate that?
Speaker 1 — Yeah, how do you bring people along on the journey?
Speaker 2 — Well, he emphasizes the importance of clear communication, of explaining the why behind the shift towards invite culture.
Speaker 1 — So it’s not just telling people to invite their friends…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It’s helping them understand the vision…
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — …the purpose, the potential impact.
Speaker 2 — It’s about casting a compelling vision that resonates with people’s hearts. Not just their heads.
Speaker 1 — So you’re painting a picture of what’s possible, of the lives that could be changed, of the community that could be built if everyone embraced this idea of inviting others in.
Speaker 2 — And it might take some time.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, because people have to have to get on board with that vision.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so that’s the why. What about the how? What are some practical tips…
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — …for actually implementing these gears?
Speaker 2 — Well, Birch is a big believer in starting small.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — Not trying to overhaul everything overnight.
Speaker 1 — So don’t try to do all five gears at once.
Speaker 2 — Right. It’s about taking incremental steps, celebrating small victories, and building momentum over time.
Speaker 1 — So it’s a process.
Speaker 2 — It is.
Speaker 1 — It’s a journey.
Speaker 2 — Yes, and it’s about being patient, recognizing that changing a church’s culture takes time, effort, and a lot of grace .
Speaker 1 — What’s something specific churches can start doing today…
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — …to move in the direction of creating a more inviting environment?
Speaker 2 — One of the simplest yet most effective things churches can do is to simply start using language that encourages invitation in all of their communications.
Speaker 1 — Oh, okay So instead of just saying come to our new series…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …you say: invite a friend to our new series.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. It’s subtle but it shifts the mindset from inward to outward.
Speaker 1 — It normalizes the idea of invitation.
Speaker 2 — Yes and you can do this in your bulletins, on your website, in your announcement.
Speaker 1 — It’s just kind of weaving it into the fabric of how you communicate.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely. He also suggests leveraging small groups and teams as a way to create natural accountability and support for inviting.
Speaker 1 — So instead of just relying on announcements from the pulpit…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …you’re creating a culture where inviting is happening organically…
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — …within those smaller communities. I like that. And of course don’t forget to celebrate success.
Speaker 2 — Yes, celebrate.
Speaker 1 — Make sure you’re acknowledging and appreciating those who are actively inviting others.
Speaker 2 — It reinforces that this is a value that your church embraces and celebrates. It creates a positive feedback loop
Speaker 1 — The more you celebrate it, the more people will do it.
Speaker 2 — The more likely people are to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 — Yeah.
Speaker 2 — …and it helps create a contagious enthusiasm that can spread throughout the church.
Speaker 1 — This has been such a great overview of the potential challenges and rewards of building an invite culture. As we wrap up this part of our deep dive, what’s one final thought you’d leave with our listeners?
Speaker 2 — Okay.
Speaker 1 — Something to really chew on as they start putting these ideas into practice.
Speaker 2 — What’s really resonated with me throughout this conversation is Birch’s belief that a thriving invite culture isn’t just about getting more people in the door.
Speaker 1 — It’s about more than just numbers.
Speaker 2 — Right. It’s about moving beyond a consumeristic mindset when it comes to church.
Speaker 1 — So it’s not just about what we get out of church…
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — …it’s about what we can give back…
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — …how we can contribute to something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. It’s about shifting from being passive consumers to becoming active participants, inviting others to join us on this journey of faith and transformation.
Speaker 1 — And when that happens, something truly remarkable is unleashed.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. It’s about creating a movement of love grace and generosity that extends far beyond the walls of the church building and into the very heart of the community.
Speaker 1 — We’ll be back in a moment to unpack some practical strategies for putting these five gears into action.
Speaker 1 — All right. Welcome back to the final part of our deep dive into Rich Birch’s Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. We’ve talked about the why, we’ve looked at some inspiring examples, but now let’s get down to the how.
Speaker 2 — Exactly, let’s get practical
Speaker 1 — What are some tangible steps our listeners can take right now to cultivate that magnetic inviting atmosphere in their churches?
Speaker 2 — Birch is all about practical application. And he packs the book with actionable advice. But for our deep dive today, let’s zoom in on some key takeaways for each of the five gears we’ve discussed.
Speaker 1 — Sounds good to me. Let’s break it down gear by gear, starting with shareable weekend teaching.
Speaker 2 — Okay, great.
Speaker 1 — We’ve already talked about making those sermons relevant, authentic, really hitting those felt needs. What else can churches do to turn those Sunday messages into something people can’t wait to share?
Speaker 2 — One thing Birch highlights is being strategic about how you promote those messages. Are you simply announcing the topic? Or are you giving people a sneak peek into how it will connect with their lives, the lives of their friends?
Speaker 1 — Yeah, it’s like those movie trailers.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — You know, you see a good trailer and you’re like, I have to see that movie.
Speaker 2 — Gotta see it.
Speaker 1 — You’ve got to know what happens.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — So, how do we create those kind of trailers for our sermons?
Speaker 2 — Birch offers a whole menu of promotional tactics. Give us a taste. For instance, imagine sending a text blast a week before a series kicks off.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — Encourage people to reply with the name of someone they plan to invite.
Speaker 1 — I like that.
Speaker 2 — Gets people thinking about inviting right from the get-go.
Speaker 1 — It’s so simple, but it plants that seed.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — It gets them thinking outwardly.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — What about after the sermon is over. How do you keep those conversations going?
Speaker 2 — Birch is a huge proponent of providing follow-up resources that are easy to share.
Speaker 1 — So things like?
Speaker 2 — Discussion guides, social media graphics, even short video clips of key takeaways. All of this can help extend the conversation beyond Sunday morning and into people’s everyday lives.
Speaker 1 — It’s equipping them to share the message in a way that feels natural.
Speaker 2 — Exactly, not just handing them a bulletin and hoping for the best.
Speaker 1 — Right, and maybe even think about having the teaching pastor record a short behind-the-scenes video…
Speaker 2 — That’s a great idea.
Speaker 1 — …about the series. Let them share their heart for the message. Why they think it will resonate with people.
Speaker 2 — That personal touch can go a long way.
Speaker 1 — Okay, that’s great. Let’s shift gears now to eventful big days.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — We had some fun with those over the top examples: helicopter egg drops…
Speaker 2 — Right. While those might not be for every church, the principle behind them is gold.
Speaker 1 — Okay
Speaker 2 — It’s about being creative thinking outside the box and leveraging those cultural moments when people are naturally more open to invitations.
Speaker 1 — So thinking about like what’s already generating buzz.
Speaker 2 — Exactly, and how you can tap into that energy.
Speaker 1 — So you don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel.
Speaker 2 — Right. You’re just finding those existing opportunities and putting your own spin on them,
Speaker 1 — Right. And it doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate.
Speaker 2 — No, it doesn’t.
Speaker 1 — Even something as simple as a themed potluck or a movie night…
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — …can be a great way to attract new people and create a natural environment. And what’s powerful about those big days is that they create a shared experience.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, something people can talk about afterwards.
Speaker 2 — Something they can bond over.
Speaker 1 — All right. Let’s jump into captivating online conversations. This is where I think a lot of churches feel both excited and overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 — Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1 — There are just so many platforms and trends.
Speaker 2 — It can be a lot.
Speaker 1 — Where do you even begin? What’s Birch’s advice?
Speaker 2 — He encourages us to think about creating content that is native to the internet.
Speaker 1 — Okay. So what does that mean?
Speaker 2 — In other words, you need to understand how people consume content online, and tailor your approach accordingly.
Speaker 1 — It needs to feel authentic…
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — …relatable and designed for how people are actually engaging.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. Like we talked about before, it’s about meeting people where they are.
Speaker 1 — He mentioned IF:Gathering as a prime example of a ministry doing this well.
Speaker 2 — Yes, their content feels so organic to the platform. Think short shareable videos, interactive discussions, visually appealing aesthetic.
Speaker 1 — It just feels like a natural extension of their ministry, not an afterthought.
Speaker 2 — Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 — It’s important because people can spot in authenticity a mile away.
Speaker 2 — Especially online.
Speaker 1 — Yeah.
Speaker 2 — Yeah.
Speaker 1 — What about social media specifically?
Speaker 2 — Birch encourages churches to think beyond just posting announcements or sermon quotes.
Speaker 1 — Okay, so what else?
Speaker 2 — How can you use social media to spark conversations, share inspiring stories, and highlight the real-life impact your church is having?
Speaker 1 — It’s about creating content that people actually want to engage with.
Speaker 2 — Yes, he talks about using humor, asking questions, responding genuinely to comments, really being social.
Speaker 1 — Be social on social media.
Speaker 2 — Exactly!
Speaker 1 — Novel idea, right?
Speaker 2 — It is.
Speaker 1 — I like it. He also suggests leveraging those those social media holidays. You know National Donut Day, International Dog Day. It might seem silly.
Speaker 2 — It does. It’s a fun way to create light-hearted content that people are more likely to share.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, you know and tag their friends in.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Okay, I’ve got to admit those are always my favorite posts to see.
Speaker 2 — Mine, too.
Speaker 1 — It humanizes the church.
Speaker 2 — It does, makes it feel more approachable.
Speaker 1 — Okay on to magnetic community service. We’ve talked about making these events both meaningful and fun. What are some specific things churches can do to create those irresistible service experiences?
Speaker 2 — Birch emphasizes starting by truly understanding the needs of your community.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — Connect with local leaders schools or non-profits. Find out what the most pressing issues are it’s about being a good neighbor…
Speaker 1 — Demonstrating that you care.
Speaker 2 — Yes. He tells the story about a pastor who asked the mayor what the biggest need in their city was.
Speaker 1 — Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 — And the mayor was taken aback. Apparently no one had ever asked him that before.
Speaker 1 — That’s amazing.
Speaker 2 — It’s a simple question.
Speaker 1 — Yeah.
Speaker 2 — Yeah, but it speaks volumes about the church’s posture.
Speaker 1 — It’s about being proactive not reactive.
Speaker 2 — Exactly.
Speaker 1 — And then of course, there’s the fun factor.
Speaker 2 — Oh, yes.
Speaker 1 — We got to make it fun. Big t-shirts, great music, maybe even a dedicated volunteer care team.
Speaker 2 — Yes, to make everyone feel appreciated.
Speaker 1 — Birch is a big fan of those service sprints, too.
Speaker 2 — Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 — Those short focused bursts of activity.
Speaker 2 — Much less intimidating.
Speaker 1 — Yeah, than a long-term commitment.
Speaker 2 — Right. It’s about making it doable, enjoyable, something people will naturally want to invite their friends to.
Speaker 1 — Create that camaraderie…
Speaker 2 — Positive energy.
Speaker 1 — Okay, last gear – appealing volunteer service. This is the one that feels a little counterintuitive.
Speaker 2 — Right.
Speaker 1 — But we’ve talked about how vital it is for building an invite culture.
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — What are some specific things churches can do to create those, I want to be a part of that volunteer opportunities.
Speaker 2 — It starts with having a clear and streamlined onboarding process.
Speaker 1 — Okay.
Speaker 2 — Make it easy for people to sign up, understand their role, and feel equipped to serve.
Speaker 1 — So no one wants to feel lost or confused when they’re trying to get involved. It’s like rolling out the red carpet for your volunteers.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. Create a welcoming environment. Supportive, provide adequate training, make sure they feel like valued members of the team.
Speaker 1 — Make them feel appreciated. And just like with those community service events, think about ways to create opportunities for volunteers to connect outside of their serving roles.
Speaker 2 — That’s a great idea.
Speaker 1 — Host social gatherings.
Speaker 2 — Yes. Team building activities.
Speaker 1 — It’s about creating a sense of community
Speaker 2 — Not just checking tasks off a list.
Speaker 1 — And don’t forget to celebrate and appreciate your volunteers.
Speaker 2 — Absolutely.
Speaker 1 — Make it clear that their contributions are essential.
Speaker 2 — Yes.
Speaker 1 — It goes a long way in creating that culture where serving is seen as a joy, a privilege…
Speaker 2 — It really does.
Speaker 1 — …a way to connect and make a difference. This has been such a fantastic deep dive. We’ve covered so much ground from the big picture concepts to the nitty-gritty steps. What’s a final nugget of wisdom you’d leave with our listeners?
Speaker 2 — I think the most important takeaway from Rich Birch’s book and from our conversation today is that creating a thriving invite culture is a marathon not a sprint.
Speaker 1 — It’s about small changes consistently applied over time.
Speaker 2 — Exactly. So don’t get overwhelmed trying to do everything at once.
Speaker A — Start small. Pick one gear to focus on.
Speaker 2 — Yes. And build from there.
Speaker 1 — And he talks about the aggregation of marginal gains It’s the idea that small improvements in a lot of areas can add up to a significant advantage.
Speaker 2 — Right. It’s all those little things.
Speaker 1 — You’re not looking for that magic bullet.
Speaker 2 — Nope.
Speaker 1 — You’re cultivating a culture.
Speaker 2 — And that takes time, intentionality, and a whole lot of grace.
Speaker 1 — And speaking of going deeper, if you’re ready to really dive into these ideas, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Rich Birch’s Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. It’s full of even more insights examples and actionable steps you can start implementing today.
Speaker 2 — It’s a great resource.
Speaker 1 — Well, it’s been such a pleasure unpacking these ideas with you. And until next time, keep diving deep and keep unlocking that invite culture.
From Despair to Connection: Helping Youth Overcome Mental Health Challenges with Will Hutcherson
Oct 24, 2024
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Will Hutcherson, a Next Gen and Student Pastor who has become increasingly passionate about finding practical ways to bring hope to kids and teens who are facing anxiety, depression, and despair. This led to him starting Curate Hope, a non-profit that focuses on suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and partnering with schools, churches, and parents to help heal despair in teens.
Recent years have shown an alarming rise in mental health challenges among young people. Adolescents desperately need connection, and the church is uniquely positioned to help them take healthy next steps using practical strategies as well as spiritual tools. Tune in as Will shares his insights on how churches can come alongside youth struggling with anxiety and depression.
People, places, and purposes. // Recent statistics underscore the urgency of addressing mental health issues among young people. These diagnoses are not just a medical issue, but also come from social, political, and environmental influences around us. In order for people to recover from mental health challenges, they need people, a place, and a purpose. The church can play a crucial role in providing a sense of community, belonging, and God-given purpose as people discover who God has called them to be.
Conversations and connections. // The foundation for helping kids and teens through these issues is to cultivate more opportunity for conversations and connection within church settings. For decades, as a society, we’ve been trending towards less and less connection. The church needs to create more face-to-face opportunities where kids and teens feel seen.
Ask yourself these questions. // Explore with your team what it might look like to create programs and environments to have more conversation spaces. What would it look like to build in more connection time in the Sunday service? How can you create more conversations?
Build connection first. // Connection is like vitamins to the brain. When we feel seen on a deep level, it releases happy hormones and builds resilience. When someone is experiencing despair, hopelessness, or high anxiety, physiologically it’s more difficult for them to receive left brain logic. Instead, speak to the right brain first and meet them with heart. Help a person “emotionally exhale” before you work on reframing, focusing on the truth of scripture, and taking healthy steps towards building resilience.
Student small groups. // Small groups are a core need of adolescent development. Youth need connection and creating spaces for them to have conversations with a caring adult is one of the best things for their mental health. Through student small groups, you’ll have a better chance of seeing when a mental health issue arises and helping guide adolescents through it. Coordinate youth ministry small groups to be on the same the night as adult small groups to make it easier for families.
Emotions and God. // Churches can unintentionally demonize emotions. Emotions like fear and anxiety are natural human experiences and should not be viewed as indicators of being far from God or lacking faith. Instead, churches should create an environment where individuals feel safe to express their emotions and seek help without fear of judgment.
Practical connection tools. // Will’s book Seen: Despair and Anxiety in Kids and Teenagers and the Power of Connection is a great tool for church leaders to read with kids and youth ministry leaders. It offers practical connection tools that are very simple to understand and will help move the brain towards healing.
To learn more about Will, his books and access the resources on his website, visit willhutch.com.
Looking for practical ways to build deeper, more meaningful connections with the youth you serve? The Connection Strategies Cheat Sheet offers five powerful, actionable tools to enhance your relationship-building efforts, inspired by the latest episode of the unSeminary podcast with Will Hutcherson. Will explains how connection is “vitamins for the brain”—a necessity for emotional and mental well-being. This resource distills his expert insights into easy-to-follow strategies, like leveraging the “3-Second Rule” for engagement and using small wins to boost confidence. Download the cheat sheet now and start fostering stronger connections that support the mental health and spiritual growth of the next generation!
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is one of those conversations that ah quickly we’re gonna get into and you’re gonna be able to apply. You’re not going to be wondering, hey, this doesn’t apply to me in my ministry context. I just know ah that so many of us are wrestling with ah the issues that we’re going to be talking about today. Honored to have Will Hutcherson with us. Will has been a next gen and student pastor for over 15 years.
Rich Birch — Over the past several years he has become increasingly passionate about finding practical ways to bring to hope to kids and teens who are facing increasing amounts of anxiety, depression, and despair. This led him to starting Curate Hope, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and partnering with schools, churches, and parents to help heal despair in teens. Will is also the co-author of a couple books on anxiety for kids and teens. Welcome to the show, Will. So glad you’re here.
Will Hutcherson — Oh, thanks for having me, Rich.
Rich Birch — This is going to be great. Tell us kind of fill out the picture. That’s, that’s the bio, but kind of give us a bit more of the will story.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I’ve been an next gen pastor for many years and I remember early on in my ministry, you know, kind of as youth pastors, it was really about reduced risk, you know? Help kids make good choices, right? Follow Jesus. And somewhere around the mid-2000s, mid-teens rather, around 2015, 2016, I started to notice a change that I think all of us in ministry started to notice, that there was an uptick in mental health challenges. Will Hutcherson — And I remember as a pastor feeling like I had these amazing spiritual tools. Like I knew that there’s power in Jesus name, there’s power in scripture reading. I knew that there’s there’s power in biblical community and getting people plugged into biblical community. But oftentimes I just wondered what can I do practically to help these kids and these students, and these parents, who are really facing some some challenges in regards to mental health. And so at the time, the best the best response was, you know, we’ll send them to a counselor. But even even you know nearly 10 years ago now, like we had affordability issues, we had access issues. And now post COVID, that’s increased even further.
Rich Birch — A hundred percent.
Will Hutcherson — And so um so that’s where the passion came from. You know oftentimes people ask me, how’d you get into mental health? Did you have a mental health challenge? And it really is ah, no, I really care about the next generation, feel called to the next generation.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — And so this is their problem, so it became my problem.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think yeah you we were talking a little bit before we got started. This is not one of those that I think everybody that’s listening in is like, ah yes, ah we have seen this in our context.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We are wrestling with these issues. It’s not like, I don’t know what you’re you’re talking about. So let’s let’s talk about that uptick. You know, is your sense that you know this kind of uptick in mental health issues that we’re seeing in our ministries, is this is this like an actual rise, or is it that we’re more aware of it, or is it a combo of both of those things? You know, what’s what’s your sense around around that?
Will Hutcherson — Yeah. That’s a great question. You know, I think sometimes leaders and parents ask that question of like, okay, we see the rise of anxiety disorders being diagnosed. Or we see the rise of depression and disorders being diagnosed. Is it just that all of a sudden it popped up, or are we just better at catching it, diagnosing it?
Will Hutcherson — I would say when you look at the hard data specifically, when it comes to, ah let’s say, self-harm. We can see that non-fatal self-harm admissions to a hospital have increased drastically for ah each demographic, both for 15 to 19, but then the biggest one was actually 10 to 14 years old.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Will Hutcherson — Specifically for non-fatal self-harm hospital admissions, just for the 10 to 14 years old, we’re looking at 188% increase for girls.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Will Hutcherson — And so when you look at those hard data points, you’re like, regardless of the diagnoses, we’re seeing some behaviors that didn’t exist in previous generations…
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — …that show us that there is a a challenge. Now, The other very startling statistic in the hard data is the suicide rates as well. And so, again, ah that’s not just a better diagnosis, quote unquote, that we can we can say that that really is like things that are happening.
Will Hutcherson — Now, I will say here’s the ah good news. We have started to see that those statistics are getting a little bit better in the last year to 18 months. So I think we’re moving in a good direction. I think the church plays a huge part of helping communities cope. In fact, mental health professionals are recognizing that, by the way.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Will Hutcherson — ah Mental health professionals are recognizing, you know what? Hey, the solution is medical, but it’s not just medical. In fact, Dr. Thomas Insel, who was a former national director of mental health institute ah did it for 10 years. He, about two years ago, came out with a book and said, the problem isn’t just medical, it’s also social, um it’s political, it’s environmental. And he said this, he said, the solutions have to be medical, but also people, in order for them to recover from mental health challenges, especially severe mental health challenges, they need—listen to this—people, place, and purpose.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Will Hutcherson — Now this is a doctor, a scientist, who’s saying the research shows in order to have long-term recovery with mental health challenges, they need people, place, and purpose. Now what institution exists in our world that gives people…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Will Hutcherson — …people, a place where they feel safe and they belong, and a sense of purpose knowing that God created them and they’re here for a reason.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Will Hutcherson — It’s the church. I believe 100% that we are uniquely designed to help move people away from mental health challenges and illnesses to exactly who God’s called them to be. But we have to recognize that there’s spiritual tools and there’s also practical tools to that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — And I think that’s what we’re we’re moving towards. we’re we’re We’re becoming a lot wiser in our approach um than previous decades. I think, you know, the church is kind of moving along with this as well. Previous decades is kind of like we solve every problem with prayer, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah, just keep praying and it’ll be fine. Yeah, yeah.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah. Just pray, pray the anxiety away. And and that prayer is good and it’s powerful, but the brain is also an organ. And so there’s practical things that we could do to, to help that organ move in a positive direction. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. And, you know, there even the question around where where did all this come from in some ways is like a head fake. It’s like, well, you know, it’s here.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so the reality of it is we, you know, I know there’s so many leaders that are listening in today that are, um they’re like, hey, I we want to know what we can do. Like what, how can we be the kind of church that supports parents, that supports um you know young people who are wrestling with these issues? What would be some of those kind of common telltale signs of a church that is structuring their ministry in a way to help support um a ah young people that are wrestling with you know with these issues?
Will Hutcherson — So, I mean, the basic foundation that I could say, and it’s gonna almost sound too cliche, so but but go with me for a minute.
Rich Birch — Go with me. Yeah.
Will Hutcherson — It it’s cultivating more opportunity for conversations and connection. Because the core root problem that we’ve kind of ah evolved to, because you know everyone wants to point it to social media. Like mental health crisis was caused by social media and Instagram. That that didn’t help. I mean, social media did not help, especially youth mental health. However, for decades, we’ve been kind of trending in a direction as as a society of less and less connection. And that influences the brain in a big way. So we need to create more face-to-face opportunities for people to feel seen, where they feel connection with another person.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — And so what can we do within our churches? I think, ah one, there’s some practical things that we could do, and we can get into those in a minute. But just even programmatically, what does it look like for us to create ah programs and environments, redesign our our churches to have more soft spaces and conversational spaces?
Will Hutcherson — What would it look like for us to figure out how to create more ah connection time within the Sunday morning gathering, you know? I don’t know how this would work, but you know look at your neighbor and ask them this question. You know it’s like It sounds too cheesy, but like how can we create more conversations?
Will Hutcherson — Because, conversations are the seeds to friendship. Every friendship starts with a conversation. And friendship really is the seed to discipleship. It’s through a trusted relationship that people are able to be discipled. And so one of our best discipleship process happens to also be very good for mental health. It’s just creating more connection where people can feel seen, where they feel that they have a place where they belong, people that they belong to, and a sense of purpose.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — And so that’s kind of a ah bigger philosophical macro side of it. But the practical side, I think it really looks like um creating trainings for ah small group leaders, for leaders on how to slow down, how to see someone. It really stems through understanding, I would say, how God has wired our brains.
Will Hutcherson — So going back to that, that illustration I said, or I’m sorry, the ah analogy I said, that um our brain is an organ, right? And I was i was talking about the brain as an organ. If I were having a heart attack, my hope would be that you would say, Will, you’re having a heart attack, I’m going to pray for you and I’m going to call any ambulance, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yeah.
Will Hutcherson — We understand that there’s faith and action together. When it comes to the brain, I think we forget sometimes that it’s an organ of our body, and we just kind of result to, well, let’s just work on steps that you can take, or reframing your thoughts. You know, kind of almost keep it only in the head space. You know, I’m going to pray for you or focus on scripture, you know, and and it’ll go away.
Will Hutcherson — And again, those are powerful things. I don’t want to minimize the power of of ah all of those things. But knowing that the brain is an organ, there are sometimes some very practical things that help the brain move in a positive direction. Connection is like vitamins to the brain.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — So when we feel seen on a deep level, it releases happy hormones. It helps build resilience.
Will Hutcherson — Specifically, when we face stress and anxiety, ah cortisol floods the brain. Well, cortisol tends to increase processing on the right side of the brain, the amygdala fires off, blood flow increases on the right side of the brain, and actually decreases on the logical left side of the brain. So when somebody is experiencing despair, place of hopelessness, or they’re experiencing high anxiety, and we try to give them left brain logic, like here’s how you should think or focus on the truth of scripture, the problem is is that the left brain is actually decreased in processing, and it’s hard for them to actually even grasp it. Will Hutcherson — So it’s kind of like the, like think of like the right side and the left side of of the brain are almost like dis-paired, like detached when somebody is experiencing despair. So when we recognize that as church leaders, we could say, okay, this is a dis-paired brain or this is right brain energy that this person’s experiencing. Let me meet them first right there. Let me meet them with right brain.
Will Hutcherson — As we meet them with right brain, we’re going to meet them with heart. We’re going to meet them with emotion. We’re going to help them to what Dr. Chinwé and I like to talk about a lot is emotionally exhale. That decreases the right side of the brain activity and actually increases the left side of the brain. So then you could do the work of reframing, focusing on the truth of scripture, um helping them take some healthy steps and and processes towards building resilience.
Rich Birch — That’s so great.
Will Hutcherson — So ah when somebody feels connection, when they feel seen, um oxytocin, yeah which is the hormone that’s resulting or responsible for emotional attachment, oxytocin is released and it can actually bring the two sides back together in reengage logical processing. So this is why when I talk about conversations, I talk about connection, it’s really the science behind how God has wired our brains of why that’s so powerful.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — It’s not just a nice little catchphrase of like, we just need more connection. No, it’s like research back.
Rich Birch — Right, yes
Will Hutcherson — Like we need more face to face connection to help promote healthy mental health.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And and you know, I think that’s what a great, I love that connection is, is like vitamins to the brain. That’s a great sticky statement. But also just a great thing for us to be thinking about framing it as we’re thinking about our own ministries, our own student ministries. And for sure, you know, I started in student ministry, have been, you know, in senior leadership for a bunch of years. And one of the things that’s changed for sure in student ministry is like, and I sound like an old man, but it was like back in my day, like it was like, it was all about like entertaining kids. It was like, and oh, we would never say it like that. We would have a lot more spiritual words to say that, but it was like, let’s put on the biggest show. Let’s get them in, you know, rows somewhere, you know, we’ll have something funny happen.
Rich Birch — But for sure, we’ve seen over time that actually it seems like prevailing ministries, particularly to students, Man, there’s ah there’s a there’s a real groups undercurrent there. Like how do we get people talking with each other? What would be some of those things that particularly, maybe on the student ministry front that that we should be thinking about um, you know, adding to our ministries on the practical side? Like what what are some you know is there, are there certain habits we should have in the way we do our programming to try to increase ah you know that connection particularly with students? What would that look like?
Will Hutcherson — Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that question, by the way, because I’m still surprised that despite um where student ministry has gone, that we still have quite a few churches that do not prioritize small groups within student ministry. And I just want to pause and say…
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — …if you are not doing small groups, in your student ministry, you are missing a core need of adolescent development.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Will Hutcherson — Adolescents desperately need connection, and it’s really helpful for their mental health. Like so creating spaces for them to have conversations, intentional conversations, with a caring adult is possibly one of the best things you can do for their mental health. Because if a mental health challenge pops up, as a youth ministry, you’re going to have a better chance of recognizing it, seeing it, and being able to help guide that student towards some some healthy steps, whether that’s seeking professional help, having a conversation with their school counselor, um whatever those extra steps are. If you don’t have a ah small group ministry that is really intentional about connecting once a week, at least, with their kids, with a small group leader and students, it’s going to be really hard to to identify that.
Will Hutcherson — And and you know if you’re listening to this, you’re you’re a senior leader, and you’re like, ah, but our student ministry is only like 15. Our youth pastor, it’s a small group in itself. I would I would say um, even with a ah small group of 15, you still need to have a small group ministry because you can’t track with the stories of more than maybe eight people.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Will Hutcherson — And so you can’t show up at the games and it takes a lot of relational building, as we all know as pastors. It takes a lot of time to build that relational trust. And so empower leaders to be part of the ministry, create a small group ministry within your student ministry if it’s not already existing.
Will Hutcherson — And I would also say, so here’s the last caveat to that, I would say in terms of student ministry, I would say um don’t necessarily put your small groups at a different time from your youth ministry programming.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Will Hutcherson — Put them on the same night.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — Parents are way too busy. So what often happens is we want to check the box of small group ministry and we say, well, we have student ministry at this time and then our small groups happen at all these other times. And what I’ve seen is that usually you have 10%, maybe 15% participation because they’re busy.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — They got soccer games, they got football games, they got a whole bunch of other things.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — And depending on your city, that can be really, really challenging. So, put it in the same night, the same time. Youth pastors don’t need to preach for 45 minutes, even 30 minutes, 25 minutes, and then put them in small groups. Let the preaching happen…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson —…in the context of conversation.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. That’s great. I love that. Beyond kind of um the over-spiritualization, which for sure happens, right? There are churches that, you you know, we kind we kind of made the joke earlier today, right? Like, pray the anxiety away. But, you know, beyond that, because I think there’s a lot of churches that obviously understand that that’s ah a pothole that we’re you know we’re not going to fall into. But what would be some common potholes that churches fall into on this front that they’re like maybe a common mistake they make, or a common um thing that you’ve seen where you you know you’re in a church, maybe you’re visiting you’re coaching a church, and like you wince a little bit and you’re like oh I kind of wish we weren’t doing that. And you know you can be totally honest because you don’t have to be nice to people. You’re they’re just listening in now. What would be ah you know a common pothole that you’ve you’ve seen um you know churches or maybe ah you know run into um from time to time?
Will Hutcherson — I mean, the one that comes to my mind is, you know, I was, I was at a conference not too long ago. And that they there was a speaker before me who was giving an altar call. And he was having, you know, people come forward and, he’s you know, he’s just praying. He’s like, we’re going to pray in Jesus name that the anxiety will be, will be gone, you know. And, and like, just kind of that, again, praying the anxiety away.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Will Hutcherson — And, and I’m not saying that there isn’t power in prayer and there isn’t power in something being “broken off of us” you know if, I’m just saying that sometimes there’s a process of how God moves us into um that peace and stillness and the fruit of the Spirit, you know?
Will Hutcherson — I think about the disciples. I’m like the disciples, they they were a mess throughout those three years, you know? Like they still had anxiety. They still were fearful.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Yeah.
Will Hutcherson — You know like there wasn’t a moment that they just believed that Jesus was the son of God and all of a sudden they didn’t face mental health challenges to a degree, you know? Now, despite those mental health challenges, they still took steps towards Jesus, right? So it’s like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — …it’s it’s I think just maybe even recognizing that, especially with anxiety, anxiety is like the common cold for the brain, by the way. So it’s it’s sometimes it’s a big problem. Sometimes it’s like, you know, you get a cold and sometimes it turns into a sinus infection, right? Or it turns into bronchitis. Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — So it can become more, but then sometimes anxiety is just a common cold. Like sometimes it just kind of comes and it goes away and it doesn’t mean that there’s necessarily something that needs to be “broken off of you”. It’s just something to be even aware of.
Will Hutcherson — I would say the other pitfall is that churches will unintentionally, at times when we’re preaching, we will kind of, for lack of a better words, demonize emotions, where in our phrasing, in our language, um will put emotions in such a negative light that it makes people feel like, if I feel this emotion, I’m far from God. Will Hutcherson — And again, like take fear, for instance. You know, some people will say like, you know, the Bible says do not fear 360 times. Based off of what I I did with a lot of research and looking at all the instances that I could find in both Hebrew and Greek, I found the specific phrasing of do not be afraid. I think I found it 167 times throughout the scriptures. So we can look at that and say, so if we are afraid then we’re obviously not doing what God calls us to do.
Will Hutcherson — But the reality is is that fear is just an emotion. And again, we were created with these emotions. It’s what we do with that fear.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — Like did Jesus feel the emotion of fear…
Rich Birch —Right.
Will Hutcherson — …on the cross. Possibly. Did that mean he had no faith? No.
Rich Birch — Yes, right. Yes.
Will Hutcherson — Did that mean he didn’t trust God? No.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah.
Will Hutcherson — But did he feel the emotion of fear? Sure.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yep.
Will Hutcherson — He felt all the emotions of humankind. So I think it’s important for us to recognize that emotions are just emotions.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Will Hutcherson — Like and it’s okay to acknowledge those emotions. It’s okay to let people kind of sit in them for a little bit. like Don’t be afraid to let someone just sit in the emotion for a little bit. It doesn’t mean that they’re somehow moving away from Jesus. In fact, sometimes our emotions can actually draw us a whole lot closer to Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I like that. So, um you know, well, first of all, I think that’s great kind of coaching, great, um you know, reminder, great direction for us. I was thinking specifically on that whole, you know, like, um you know, “break off the anxiety, Lord”, kind of prayer that could, you know, that, you know, and I can imagine myself saying that. Like I can imagine myself ah so I appreciate you call that out cuz I’m like yeah that’s true. I guess would you is a better way, and I realize it’s like maybe a bit weird to say it that way, but like a better way to pray in that kind of situation it’s it’s more about like, you know, Lord, give them more, more peace, more comfort, Lord, extend, you know, your goodness, restore what has been, you know, uh, you know, isn’t necessarily, I don’t know, I’m not sure what the language is to use there.
Rich Birch — How would you suggest is kind of a better way for us to pray? Um, obviously we know from a theological perspective, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and translates all that, but you know, we’re also leading in the room that we’re in and we want to, we want to ensure that we create a place where I don’t want somebody who’s in, I don’t want a student, because we’re talking particularly about student who’s in our environment today, to feel like we’ve somehow, you know, [inaudible] them, made them feel terrible um through my prayer, but I do want to show care and I do want to kind of point towards like, Hey, I would love for them to take steps in a new direction.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is that the kind of thing, like more, more peace, maybe fruit pray through the fruit of the Spirit. You had mentioned that.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like, Hey, love more joy, more peace, more of that kind of thing. Will Hutcherson — I think you just mentioned it.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Will Hutcherson — Like we want them to take healthy steps, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — And so pray those prayers, like God help us to to take the healthy steps to overcoming our anxiety.
Will Hutcherson — God help us to acknowledge and know that you’re with us…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yep.
Will Hutcherson — …in the midst of our anxiety or in the midst of our fear. God help us to be brave and to do the hard thing even when we’re afraid, right?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah.
Will Hutcherson — Like it’s it’s the recognizing that “even when, help us do” …and move in the right direction. So it just, I think it’s a little bit more mindful…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Will Hutcherson — …that this is where we are and it’s okay for where we are, you know? And we don’t want whether it’s a student or someone in our church to feel like just because they have anxiety or because they’re facing fear or depression that somehow they’re disappointing God or they’re far from God.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s good.
Will Hutcherson — It’s just a condition. It’s just something that they’re experiencing. And and I think the more that we can use language that helps people to recognize mental health challenges, because our brain is an organ, is just part of how our bodies sometimes get out of whack.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Will Hutcherson — And so yes, we do need the healing of the Lord, but it’s both faith and action.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Will Hutcherson — And so just like you know if I had a heart condition, we would never ever say it’s because of my lack of ah faith that I need to take…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Will Hutcherson — …you know ah cholesterol or…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Will Hutcherson — …or high blood pressure pills, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — But sometimes I think unintentionally, whether it’s within our ah you know our sermon, I don’t I don’t think it’s really within our sermons, but I think people just tend to generally equate because I’m struggling with a brain thing, it must be that I’m not, you know, close enough to God or God’s not helping me in some way. And it’s like, no, that’s not true.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — Like it’s just a condition that you’re facing and and God is very much present in the midst of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good. I appreciate that. And I know he just even in my own family. Like we, my uncle tells, he had a really ah terrible internal, um, you know, disease, condition. And he was really pressing in with the Lord asking for healing. And he ended up at a church where like the pastor, you know, they were praying for him like over a bunch of time. And then eventually the pastor literally unrolled the like, so let’s talk about the unacknowledged, the unforgiven sin in your life. Because we’ve been praying about this for a long time and it hasn’t been healed and what, you know, what it’s got to be a problem with you. And and literally my uncle like walked out of the church that day and it was decades was like, you know, because of that. And this is the kind of thing that we’re, this is the weight that we’re carrying as we engage with students, with people around these issues. We’ve got to be very careful with the language we use.
Will Hutcherson — We do. We do. We got to guard and have good theology. I mean…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s bad.
…because I hear those kinds of things all the time and I’m like, what about Paul’s thorn?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Will Hutcherson — How do you resolve that? You know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, no, absolutely. Well, this has been good. Well I know there’s a ton we could talk about here. And I know, like I say, I know there’s lots of people that are leaning in asking questions, but I actually do want to get to a resource that I think would be really helpful for ah leaders that are listening in today.
Rich Birch — You’ve written a couple of books, but one of them particular is called Seen: Despair and Anxiety in Kids and Teenagers and the Power of Connection. I bumped into this book and I thought, man, this would be great for leaders. It could be a great tool for maybe, maybe you’re a senior leader listening in and you’re like, Man, what if I should read this with my student ministry team or with my kids ministry team? We could kind of go through it together, help us try to cultivate a more you know positive environment on this front. But tell me about this book. What were you thinking when you ah put this together?
Will Hutcherson — Yeah. So Dr. Chinwé and I wrote this ah specifically because of the youth mental health crisis.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Will Hutcherson — But these principles apply regardless of the relationship. So whether it’s a parent to a child relationship or a small group leader to a child, or even just a leader to a staff member you know, or pastor to a staff member or pastor to an adult. Because they’re connection tools and there’s really a lot of science and research behind how God wired our brains and how connection asked believe actually influences the brain towards healing, especially when they’re facing mental health challenges.
Will Hutcherson — So I’ve actually had a few few senior leaders actually ask me to rewrite Seen even in the context of leadership because it’s easily applied to leadership. So…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah, the the principles are are very simple to understand, but it’s really ah practical connection tools and how those connection tools will move the brain towards healing
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. So good. I also loved as a just as ah a sidebar—this caught my eye as an author—I love that you right up front you said a two hour read to build strong relationship with your kid or a teenager.
Will Hutcherson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Which is wonderful. Like I love that. You’re calling out like, hey, you’re not going to get swamped by this book, like, which again, you know, a team member, you could give this to your team and say, hey, we’re going to read this next week. You you can find the time in the next week for us to, you know, to read that.
Rich Birch — Any um you know kind of reaction or response as you’ve had this book out there you know that has been particularly encouraging? Any stories of like, oh, it’s been kind of cool how this tool has been used by you know churches or people or individuals over the years?
Will Hutcherson — Yeah, I’ve been, I mean, surprised and shocked at how much um this book has helped so many parents, ah small group leaders, youth pastors. We get stories nearly every week…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Will Hutcherson — …from somebody who says, hey, this changed my parenting. Hey, this changed the way that I led. It changed the way that I connected with my kids.
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — And it’s ah you know I don’t think Seen is necessarily something that people read and it’s like, oh wow…
Rich Birch — Right.
Will Hutcherson — …this is like revolutionary. But I think what people enjoy about what we did is we made the neuroscience really simple.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Will Hutcherson — In fact, almost almost too simple where sometimes I apologize to the smart people. I’m like, I’m sorry.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Will Hutcherson — I made it, you know, we made it this simple, but, um, but we wanted like the average person to be able to read it and… Let me redo that. We wanted the average person to be able to read it and read it within two hours, you know, very quickly. And ah be able to process the information and apply it to their life right away.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so great. This is fantastic. Well, just as we wrap up today’s ah episode, anything else you want to share just as we we close out today’s conversation?
Will Hutcherson — No, thank you so much for what you do. Thanks for empowering leaders and helping leaders to to lead this church.
Rich Birch — Appreciate that. Thanks so much, Will. If people want to track with you, ah kind of connect with your ministry, where do we want to send them online?
Will Hutcherson — Yeah, you can go to willhutch.com and that’ll kind of direct you in any direction you like. We have a couple of books, like I said, that we have and then courses and you can reach out to me there.
Rich Birch — Nice. Thanks so much, Will. Really appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you.
Rethinking Your Kids’ Ministry Spaces: Aaron Stanski with Practical Tips for Church Leaders
Oct 17, 2024
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with return guest Aaron Stanski, the founder and CEO of Risepointe. They provide creative design solutions so that your church’s mission isn’t held back by its building.
Is your kids’ ministry space feeling tired? Churches often take more design risks with kids’ environments through use of color or theming, but that also means they age faster than spaces for adults do. Tune in to learn how you can improve your kids’ spaces and make a positive first impression with your guests.
The first impression. // Kids’ spaces are often the first point of contact for new families visiting a church. While adults can tolerate less-than-ideal conditions, children require environments that are engaging, safe, and conducive to both learning and play. A well-designed children’s space can significantly influence a family’s decision to return to a church.
Address security. // Churches need to strike a balance between creating a secure environment and maintaining an inviting atmosphere. The biggest risk is something happening internally at your church. While a large part of security is making sure volunteers are screened and trained properly, there are steps you can take to improve your environment too. For example, security can start at the kid’s check-in area, but then you can open up the space past that. The key is making sure you have good transparency in and out of kids’ spaces, you’re using security cameras, and eliminating blind corners around your church.
Flexible kids’ spaces. // Creating large, flexible spaces that can accommodate various activities and age groups is a growing trend in children’s ministry design. Design kids’ environments that can be easily adapted for different types of programming, such as worship, games, and small group discussions. Flexible spaces also allow for more efficient use of volunteers, as they can be reconfigured to meet the needs of different activities. Ensure that larger areas have proper acoustic management to maintain an environment conducive to learning and interaction.
Design for children’s needs. // Consider the wide range of needs for the kids coming into your church. What are they walking into church with? How are you providing them spaces to play and get their energy out? Where are you providing them a place to sit down and learn about Jesus? Create spaces that are inclusive and accessible for children with special needs. Include sensory rooms or quiet areas for children who may feel overwhelmed. Reducing stimuli in kids’ spaces and providing calming areas allows children to retreat if they need a break from the main activities. Ensure that all children have opportunities to engage in play and learning, regardless of their abilities.
Design for parents and volunteers too. // Make it easy for parents to navigate the kids’ space with clear pathways and signage. Providing a lobby outside the kids’ area can encourage parents to slow down and connect. Considering volunteers is important when designing children’s space as well. Include dedicated areas for them to store materials, prepare for activities, take breaks, and securely leave their personal belongings.
Today’s design trends. // Gone are the days of having over-the-top, boldly themed kids’ areas. We live in an overstimulated world and kids can easily get overwhelmed. Today’s designs are trending towards creating kids’ environments that are calming with simple geometric shapes and colors, bringing down too much noise and color clash. Remember to create environments that help kids feel like they’re maturing towards the next phase in their lives.
Needs Analysis. // Risepointe offers the Needs Analysis for churches, where they come on site to take a look at your entire facility. They meet with your team and go through fun exercises to get a sense of who you are as a church and what your ministry DNA is like. They then work to align your facility to your mission and vision by drawing up plans detailing how your ministry spaces could be altered.
NEXT STEPS // Risepointe Collection, V.25
Grab Risepointe Collection, V.25, a fun and FREE resource for churches that highlights the latest design trends, and will help you freshen up your kids’ spaces. Visit www.risepointe.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to download it.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m super excited that you’re tuned in today. We’ve got a return guest today. And you know, when we have a return guest, it means because this person got so much good stuff to say that we cannot contain them to a single episode. And that is so true. We’ve got Aaron Stanski today. He is the founder and CEO of Risepointe with 15 plus years experience of church design, leadership, project management experience. If you don’t know Risepointe, where have you been? You’re living under a rock.
Rich Birch — They provide ah creative design solutions to really remove the lids. I love their help because they really are helping churches figure out how do we keep growing ah to really prevent growth in their ministry. Their church architects and designers have years of experience working in churches, schools, nonprofits, really fantastic people doing interior design, graphic design, branding, lots of stuff to really help churches like yours. Aaron, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming back on.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, it’s great to be here, Rich. Thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, i’m you know it’s gonna be good, I’m looking forward to to talking. You know we’ve had you on in the past, we’ve had a couple different episodes. One about a campus opening that you had had to you know a part of, and the impact that had happened and kind of a general design stuff. And I was talking to Aaron, I said, man, I’d love to have you come back on, because you might not know friends, but a part of what I do is actually I’ll visit churches, I do this, it’s kind of like secret shopper, but it’s not secret. I’ll end up in churches. And I feel like when I’m in the churches in churches all the time, I’m walking around kids’ spaces and I’m like, they feel tired. They and I um… And so I’m, frankly, I’m using Aaron here…
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — …to try to um um trying to suck the brain information or information out of his brain to learn about kids in spaces. Why are kids spaces so important to churches? Maybe let’s just start there. What why should we even be worrying about that part of what we do?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, it’s super important, especially for guests and stuff like that who are checking out your church for the first time. I mean, we can put up with a lot as adults, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — I mean, we can like make excuses for things, like we can find a chair that’s a little bit more comfortable or in a place that we can hear a little bit better or something like that. But for our kids, right, like we’re dropping them off, we’re handing them to someone. We really just want to make sure they’re gonna they’re safe, they’re going to be taken care of. We want to make sure they’re going to have fun, they’re not going to be bored. And so really some of those first impression pieces, I mean, it goes a long way for guests in walking into those environments.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s so true. And you know so many churches I talk to when they say, hey, our target is to reach a 32 year old couple, or a 32 year old male, or a 35 year old whoever…
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — …you know those people have kids and they’re thinking about kids…
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — …and they’re wrestling through, hey, what what does that look like? And so this space is, um yeah, it’s critically important. Well, I’d love to, if you’re if you’re up for it…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to maybe walk through some of the, low hanging fruit, you know, think about maybe we’re a church of a thousand people and I’m, you know, I might wander around my space. Are there some things that I should be thinking about ah that really maybe I should be improving on in my, you know, in my kid’s space?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, and I think what happens a lot of times too, right, is we take some design risks with kids spaces. We introduce lots of color, ah like lots of theming, or, you know, I’ve seen a lot of bad murals and stuff like that painted in churches. And so because we take those risks, our kids ministry spaces actually age faster than a lot of our adult spaces do.
Rich Birch — Yes. Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so that’s why that’s why you’re feeling that way, Rich, when you walk in.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — It’s like, man, why does it feel tired?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And it’s like, well, we took some big risks and some of those things trended out very quickly. But yeah, I mean, I came up with a list of things here that I’ve just seen lots of churches really kind of go all in on to make sure their kids’ ministry is aligned with their mission and vision and helping them grow.
Aaron Stanski — The first thing that like every church talks about that is security, right? It’s always on the top of the list. You know we don’t, we don’t want security at the expense of like really great space. Right? Like we don’t want it to be so secure that it’s creepy. So we’ve seen lots of churches say, hey, we really want to make the entry points right behind ah sort of that kid’s check-in area. That’s where we want our security to start.
Aaron Stanski — But then we really want to open up the interior spaces, allow lots of visual connection between all of those, um oversize the rooms, make sure the parents feel really comfortable kind of coming in and out of all of those environments. And that’s always security is always number one on the list.
Rich Birch — What how do we balance out those two? It feels like, it’s almost like they’re two contradictory ideas. One is like, you want it to feel secure…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but then the other is, I want it to feel welcoming and engaging. And are there kind of some things we should, I like what you said there even about like oversizing the space a little bit, making sure, but are there other things we should be thinking about as we look at our space?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, ah you know the biggest risk is you know always something happening internally at your church. And so ah you know when we when we think about security, we’re talking about like making sure we don’t have any blind corners, ah using security cameras, and really like making sure we have good transparency in and out of all of those spaces.
Aaron Stanski — And I’m sure you get into this, Rich. I mean, that’s just the architecture. That’s just 5% of what security means. The rest of it is making sure our volunteers are trained, they’re screened, that we are always have two adults in the classroom at the same time and stuff.
Aaron Stanski — But from a design perspective, like that’s really what it’s about, making sure all those spaces are are open and connected and transparent as as as we can make it. And then making sure people aren’t back there who shouldn’t be.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — So having some security at the check-in spots to to provide that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I know I remember years ago I was visiting a name brand church that you you all would know and I, you know, I’ve said this to a bunch of leaders over there. I’ve I’ve retold this this story. i I just happened to be there and I was, you know, I was a leader from a church and I um was just poking around and was kind of looking at stuff and trying to see, you know. And then I was like, well, let’s go take a look at the kid’s space. And I like, and it was in between services, but like their security guy, he, he totally picked me out of a crowd.
Rich Birch — Like he comes up. He was friendly. He was a guy with a thick neck, uh, super friendly, but was like, Hey, sir, so good to see you. How can I help you today? And, uh, which I loved.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I was like, listen, if I’m, if I’m a parent…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and you know, the, you know, that they he identified quickly you’re, you’re a person by your, with no kids and you’re looking around, you look kind of like.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, you don’t want creepy Rich ah back in your kids ministry area.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Guy with no hair. Yeah, but that’s to say, you know, obviously the people side of that is a big, you know, this the physical space can do so much, but the the the people is ah is a big place.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Okay, so security was first on your list. What what else were you thinking about?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, another trend that we’re really seeing in kids ministry today is like large, flexible spaces. So, you know, it doesn’t matter if you’re running a couple hundred on a Sunday or a couple thousand. We’re seeing lots of churches say, hey, let’s open up some of these smaller classrooms and let’s actually create some of these larger, more flexible environments for ah either more kids or multiple age groups. And so…
Rich Birch — Really? Interesting.
Aaron Stanski — …it opens it up. There’s there’s less volunteers required because then you can go, you know, one volunteer per smaller group of kids. It gives you some more flexibility with things, for like worship, group worship, and games, and crafts, and even small group times. And so we’re seeing, we’re really seeing that as a trend as well as like providing some of those larger environments.
Rich Birch — How do we, so that’s, let’s talk a little bit about that. So I was in a church recently where, um, literally they’re asking that question. And they do have quite large open spaces, but their concern, then they were thinking about going in the opposite direction. They were like, Oh, like maybe we’ll close some of these in, because they were like, when we get an, you know, a hundred kids in this room, it, man, it’s loud.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is there stuff we can do to treat those spaces…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to, you know, or or should be thinking about treating those spaces to try to make them so they’re not crazy? Aaron Stanski — Yeah you’re You’re jumping down to the bottom of my list. Rich Birch — Oh, I’m so sorry. Aaron Stanski — No, no, that’s acoustics is a big deal, right? Because kids are loud.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Stanski — And so how do we trap the sound and make spaces indoors…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …that are conducive to play, but still feel good for parents and volunteers and it feels like it’s under control? So there’s a few products and stuff that we use quite often to really make those larger spaces feel that way. And then ah we have done quite a bit with ah like movable partitions and some things that can fold out from the walls…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — …that provide acoustic separation when you go into small group time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — I’m a small group leader. I have sixth grade boys ah in my small group at church.
Rich Birch — They’re very quiet, very quiet.
Aaron Stanski — And so trying to keep 11 sixth grade boys like on task, it’s important.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — So, you know, where where we meet, ah you know, is it helpful for that or is it something that kind of hurts ministry?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. I love that. Good for you being a volunteer there. Aaron Stanski — Oh, yeah, they, yeah yeah, they take the energy out of me. I mean, they they they run me ragged, that’s for sure.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. I like it. You’re a, you know, you you speak not just as an architect, but as a, as an operator as well.
Aaron Stanski — That’s right. Put me in, coach. I’m ready. I’m ready to go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — All right. That’s great. What else should we think? So large, so we’ve got security, we’ve got these kinds of large flexible spaces. What else should we be thinking about? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, and another big trend that we’re seeing is, I mean, churches that are growing that are really getting after it are addressing a really wide range of needs for their kids.
Rich Birch — Oh, so good. Yep.
Aaron Stanski — And so, I mean, every kid is unique, right? And so when we think about, man, what are they walking into church with, right? Like, what is their home life like? Like, what are ah What are their emotional needs, their spiritual needs, and how do we address that? How do we pay attention to all of those things?
Aaron Stanski — And so, I mean, we see a big trend in addressing special needs as well across a wide range of spectrums. And so, um whether that’s calming areas or break spaces, or even you know churches that are having dedicated environments for special needs, ah we see that as ah you know as a big trend, as well as just realizing, hey, kids need to be kids. So how are we like providing them space to play? And providing them space to like get some energy out and really kind of learn in tactile ways? As well as, you know, like we mentioned with the acoustics, a place for them to sit down and have a conversation about Jesus and what that means in their life. So, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. We’ve had a number of conversations um about, you know, really creating accessible opportunities for kids. We did a podcast podcast back with Kerri-Ann Hayes. That was maybe two months ago. And then…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, that was a great one.
Rich Birch — …ah Gail yeah, and then Gail Ewins or Ewell on, you know, really trying to create a church that’s that’s inclusive. And I would agree, this is one of those areas where I would say expectations have shifted in the church world , um definitely from when I started serving years ago, that um you know that the creating space whether and and having a team of people who are serving kids of a wide variety of backgrounds um and trying to figure out how to integrate them into or what that looks like, really asking that question, and It looks different in different places…
Aaron Stanski — That’s right.
Rich Birch — …but is um is critically important. Are you seeing um You know, when you think about that kind of chill space, are there, you know, rules of thumb on the kind of percentage of space that people are dedicating to that? Like, is it like a, you know, or or how do you think about that chill space thing? Or is that not really maybe developed even into a ah rule of thumb yet?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, it’s not it hasn’t really developed like that far yet. I think um more often than not, it’s it’s letting the parents know that we’re listening, that we’re caring, um that we’re capable and ready to address a need.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — If a child is like, wow, this is just way too much stimulus. I’m really struggling emotionally here. We have a plan to be able to kind of like take them, ah allow them to like sit down, refocus, and then kind of rejoin the group. So it doesn’t take up a lot of space for the kids who are like participating in regular church ministry, but just might need some of that chill space. For churches that are like really kind of getting into like more advanced special needs, it does require dedicated space. You do have to have volunteers that are trained a little bit more ah to be able to address some of those needs. But we I mean, we see it a lot. We see parents like asking for ah those types of things you know from their church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and this this, like I’ve said to a lot of churches, if they don’t have a ministry or space like this, and they’re a church of a thousand, let’s say, if they made it without this kind of thing, I will say, listen, you you, and you know, often I’m talking to like an executive pastor or lead pastor. And I’m like, talk to your kids ministry people. I bet you that they have families who are asking for this; that this is a part of the conversation that’s already there.
Rich Birch — And you know for my seat, I think it’s a table stakes kind of thing. It’s like, we’ve we’ve got to provide this. We have to figure out, you know as the church grows. Just you’re ignoring too big of a population you know to to say, hey, we’re not going to do something on that front.
Aaron Stanski — Yep.
Rich Birch — You know, you you can’t just ignore that. You can’t just be like, ah, we’re gonna, you know, we’re just not gonna do that. We’re gonna leave… there’s a church across town that does that. I think, man, it’s too important to, you know, to do that, so.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, and we should talk about it on our website, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And we should, you know, we should have that entire, you know, stream of communication ah with the parent, right, all the way throughout. And it’s ah it’s a big deal.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, let’s let’s talk about whatever, what’s what’s next on the the list.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, a few of these we could probably shoot through really quick.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Aaron Stanski — But ah like some of them end up being really important. We see a lot of churches, you know, wanting to provide some sort of like secondary lobby or gathering area for families. So sometimes that’s either like right outside the the kids area or the kids check in area or even back inside there just as a secondary place for families to to gather, some furniture, allow the kids to kind of run around and play. Aaron Stanski — Again, you know, we’re not what we’re not trying to do is create the most efficient engine for getting parents in and out as we possibly can in a single file line. We’re trying to provide like some eddies and some places for them to like stop, connect, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — We want to we want our kids’ environments, like we want to resource parents. Like we want to come alongside them on this journey. And so we have to have some of those conversation places. And so we see that a lot in some of the design trends and some of the spaces that we’re creating and and designing today is trying to figure that piece out as well.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about, um, so when I’m thinking about my kids space, am I, there’s like an interesting dual, um, kind of target audience here. One is like the space for the kids, but then there’s, then there’s the, the parents. Um, and I would think the needs are different. Like there’s the actual program needs and then there’s, hey, does this space actually deal with… How do you think about, you know, that issue and how you balance those two kind of distinct groups out?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, they have to be, ah from a design perspective, they have to be considered simultaneously. You know, none of the kids are choosing to drive themselves to church either, right? Like, and so, like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …the parents are the ones who are ultimately making that choice. And so understanding…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …like, what is it like for mom ah with a couple kids to navigate down, is this hallway like narrow? Is it Is it hard to navigate? Is it easy for her to understand where she needs to go next or what needs to happen? And so, yeah, we have to pay really close attention to that, what it’s like, you know, how are we dropping off? Are we inviting the parents into the classroom to pick up, and doing the security check on the way out? Or are we doing that at the door? And, you know, how do we make it as relational as we can and less transactional, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And so like that’s ah that’s a big part of it. And so we’re designing for the kids. That’s super important because we want them to be like, that was fun.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — I learned something about Jesus. I want to go back.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — We have to design for the parents because like they’re like navigating it and they’re trusting us with their kids. And then I’d say the third thing we have to is we have to um design it for the volunteers as well.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — You know, you know, people do ministry, not buildings.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And so, you know, those volunteers, they’re coming in early, and they’re, you know, they’re staying after, they’re taking care of our kids, like they’re loving on them. So how do we set them up for success? What kind of spaces do they need? Do they need a secure area, you know, to be able to drop off their stuff on Sunday and and be able to grab a cup of coffee or something? How are we creating those types of environments?
Aaron Stanski — And so we see churches like having dedicated volunteer space um at the at the ministry level. We see them paying really close attention to how volunteers interact with storage and all their supplies, right? We want it to be a great experience for those volunteers…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — …so they can spend more time loving on the kids and less time you know fighting with ah storage or setup or any of those things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this this is, so I totally echo what you’re saying there for sure. That’s like a hearty Amen. There’s like an interesting connection between I think a lot of times when we’re so when we sit down and design, we’re thinking about like on the church side rather than, you know, on your side of the table as a professional. I’m thinking about where are the kids going to check in? What is the program space? But then there are things that can get squeezed out of our program really quickly. One of them is volunteer space because it’s like, we don’t think about that as like, uh, that’s not worth, you know, it’s like, ah it’s a support area, but it’s a critically critical support area.
Aaron Stanski — That’s right.
Rich Birch — If it’s done well, people will love it. They’ll be like, this is amazing. Like what it’s a, make it a great experience. I got a place to put my purse, all that. It it feels great.
Rich Birch — And then the same on the storage issue. It’s like that gets squeezed in so many of these projects. Cause it’s like, yeah, but I need more space for kids to sit. But it’s like, but if we don’t have any place to put the googly eyes, it will not matter. You know, when they, you know…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …they’ll have a place to sit, but they won’t be able to do anything. Or it’ll be a hassle for, you know, for your team.
Rich Birch — So that’s one of the reasons why partnering with Risepointe when you’re thinking about this, or really thinking about redesigning, I think is critically important. Because there’s some of those kind of secondary, but but critically important, not secondary in the like, it’s not so important. It’s like it’s like a support area. It can be easy to overlook that.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Can we talk about bathrooms, washrooms, toilets? I like I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time in my ministry career thinking about sinks. What’s the…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It feels like this is an area that it it is we know, and I don’t want to get into all the issues around this, but we know like in schools, it’s a real issue that these are like have become like a hotbed. How do we do this? What’s the kind of state of the art on that front? What should we be thinking about in kids areas for bathrooms? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, so I mean, i’ll I’ll skip the obvious, right? Like you got to have bathrooms for kids and stuff like that. I mean, you know lots of ministries do like do a great job. We can put a large bathroom bank inside the secure area for elementary kids to kind of use. I would say a design trend that we’re seeing ah is utilizing like single occupancy toilet banks.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Aaron Stanski — And so like the way that’s helpful, especially for the younger kids, is a volunteer can send a younger kid into like a single occupancy, like toilet stall. They can close the door and use the bathroom and then they can come out and we can help them wash their hands at the sink and stuff. And so rather than having two adults go in there into a larger bathroom bank or a bunch of kids go into a larger bathroom bank and mess around, um we’re just seeing it. It’s easier to manage. It’s safer for the volunteers. It’s cleaner for the younger kids.
Aaron Stanski — And so we’re really seeing that as a design trend, um you know especially for like the preschool age group, kindergarten age group. And then you know it takes up less square footage. And so there’s some less you know there’s some cost savings and stuff there. But we’re seeing a lot of churches kind of go in that direction.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. we did a We did a building years ago, this is 15 years ago, where we did, in all of our preschool spaces, we did like a dedicated restroom um you know for each each one of those. And it was right in the room, which was was great.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, because then a teacher can just send the kid in, right…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — …and they can use the restroom and come out. I think if you have a room of 100 kids…
Rich Birch —Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — …like you mentioned, right…
Rich Birch —Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …well, you can put dedicated boys and girls restrooms with like, let’s say two girls and two boys, but then like they have to just kind of go in there by themselves. And are there other people? And you got to check, and you’ve got to go in there with two adults, right, and all of those things.
Aaron Stanski — Well, instead of doing those two restroom banks, you could just do three stalls or four stalls. And a and a sink on the outside, and you you reduce all of those problems that you get with sort of that traditional bathroom.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good. As as crazy as it sounds, man, critically important.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch —Restrooms are a big deal in, you know, in these spaces, important to think about for sure.
Rich Birch — What about, um it talk me through, so I was in a ah church recently in the last couple months where they’re redoing their kid’s space. And they have on the walls, like this floor to ceiling, hand done, like drawing stuff, cartoons, which like looks great. And they were reflecting the internal leadership stuff of, there was a person on staff that did that and then now they want to change it. And there’s all these interesting conversations around that. So we’ll ignore that for a minute. But but what they were saying, what they wanted to go to was something that was less stimulating. It was less kind of like, it was, it was like, they felt like they’ve overshot, you know, it’s kind of like, and some of it, I think it’s just the style has changed…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but like, hey, they they overshot. It was kind of too stimulating. What’s the balance there? How do we, how do we have environments that are fun? We don’t want it to look like a school. We wanted to walk in and it’d be like…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …this is something great. But we also, you know, we don’t want it to be so bonkers that it’s hard for, for kids to focus.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think gone are the days where, you know, we’re having these huge themed kids areas, and and let’s kind of taking it up over the top. Most of the time, you know, kids, I mean, like us, I mean, we we just live in an overstimulated world, um you know, whether it’s screens or, you know, technology or any of those things.
Aaron Stanski — And so a lot of times we’re trying to create kids environments that are calming, ah that are you know that reduce some of that stimuli. And ah so I’d say you know we’re we’re moving more towards you know geometric shapes and colors, vinyl graphics, and things like that. And and so we’re trying to kind of bring down ah you know, like too much noise, that kind of gets back to what the we said with the acoustics. And same thing with too much color clash, too too much of that that over- overstimulating idea.
Aaron Stanski — And I think that kind of leads into you know sort of the next thing that ah that we’re seeing is we’re really kind of trying to design up ah for a lot of kids ministries. And so um you know we’ve been doing a lot with you know what we would consider pre-teen ministry, right? So how do we ah how do we make the fourth and fifth grade environment feel like it’s a middle school environment? Right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — How do wehow do we create a space for them that’s separate from the kindergartners that feels like it’s something that’s elevated. And then same thing with middle school, right? Like we’re designing, you know, middle school environments to feel more like high school environments. And we’re designing high school environments to feel more like adult, right? And so we’re kind of designing up ah in a lot of those trends to kind of help those kids, you know, feel like they’re maturing towards something. And we see that as a huge trend, especially as you get up into student ministry spaces.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s a ah, yeah, you can see that where, even just programmatically, there’s a lot of churches that are doing like Club 56…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and it’s like a fifth grade, sixth grade kind of thing. It’s like a interesting kind of in between.
Rich Birch — That got me thinking about kind of a related issue, which is um, the balance of dedicated kids space versus making, designing these spaces in a way that they can be used for other things during the week.
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — You know, the kind of extreme example is like the men’s group doesn’t want to meet in the the fluffy kingdom, you know, you know…
Aaron Stanski — That’s true.
Rich Birch — …preschool space or whatever, right? They’re like, it’s a great room, but like, we’re not, we’re not meeting in there. Um, you know, ah how do you think about that?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Or if there’s some kind of interesting ways around that?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Well, I mean, if you if you design a space for all things, it’ll be really boring, right? I mean, it should be a gray room with like big storage closets and stuff.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — So at some point, we do have to pick who is going to win, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — Are are the fluffy bunnies gonna win or is the men’s group gonna win? And so what I’d say is, you know, for spaces that we know are going to be multi-purpose, we’re gonna we’re going to take some intentional design choices and we’re gonna kind of put those in and throughout.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Aaron Stanski — So we’re still gonna have the accent colors, we’re still gonna have those sorts of things. But if we have enough storage, then we can move a lot of those kids things out of the way and sort of reset that room. If we have the right technology in the room, that can play a big role. And so, you know, trying to identify those spaces that we want to be ah used a lot more multi-purpose and adding some things to of them ah goes a long way in helping that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — But I’d I’d say you have to pick a winner.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good. That’s good advice. Yeah
Aaron Stanski — Like you have to pick like on Sundays, like we want this to knock it out of the park for a mom who’s dropping off her second grader.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — Well, then let’s let’s knock it out of the park and ah you know, the men’s group, we’ll figure it out. We’re good.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. That’s even good kind of practical advice around like, hey, we’re you might it might think like you can get or make everybody happy, but that just isn’t going to happen.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like, it’s just not going to take place. And so, you know, let’s let’s pick one. There is no, you know, it’s like there’s no one room to rule them all. This is the ideal room that will be, you know, that’s just not going to happen. So let’s start with, OK, what’s the primary use and and how do we go from there
Rich Birch — You know, when i’ve when you’ve been talking today, it’s got me thinking about it. I know you have a solution where you’ll come actually on site at a church and help us think through these issues. I know there’s leaders that are listening in today, and I didn’t tell you this ahead of time, so but if you could tell me about that Needs Analysis.
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — What is that? Because I feel like this is one of those things. We’ve raised a bunch of questions. I’m thinking about our kid space, and I’m a little bit overwhelmed, but i’d I’d love to get your team’s help. What does that look like?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. So most churches that reach out to Risepointe, I mean like they’re just not sure. Like ah should we do we have to demo out all of the kids space? Do we need to build new kids space? Like is our kids space even big enough? You know, they have lots of questions. And so most churches, yeah I mean they bring us on site to do a Needs Analysis. And that’s where we’re taking a look at your entire facility. We meet with you know your team for an entire day. We walk through some really fun exercises about who you are as a church and your DNA and what it’s like to do ministry, specifically where God has put your church.
Aaron Stanski — Um, and then we, yeah, we take a look at the entire facility. We draw it all up in, uh, in our AutoCAD program. And, and we sort of come back to you and say, Hey, based on what you told us and the trends that we’re seeing and and how other churches are using their space, here here’s a list of things that you would have to do in order to align your facility to your mission and vision that God’s given your church.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Aaron Stanski — And so, yeah, that might be, Hey, we think you need a ah light renovation of your kid’s space. And so we we’ve done all the math and all the square footage. And so here’s what it would cost to do that. And it might be, hey, you need to you know fix some things on the exterior to help people understand where the entrance is. Or ah you know you know might think about moving some things around.
Aaron Stanski — We did this recently ah with a church and um they were out of kid space. Kids was packed. And I mean, packed.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And the auditorium was about 60% full. So they still had some room there.
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting.
Aaron Stanski — But they were trying to figure it out. And so we did the whole Needs Analysis with them. It was a great day. Got to meet their entire staff. And then I met with the pastor at the end. And I said, hey, man, I don’t i don’t know how tied you are ah to junior highers meeting on Sunday morning. But they also meet on Wednesday nights and they have a space that’s really it was a great size space. Aaron Stanski — And I’m like, for a season, if you ask those junior highers to either sit with their parents in church or even better, volunteer in kids ministry on a Sunday morning, ah you would free up that space for fourth and fifth graders. And then if you moved the rest of your kids around. And so we did the math. They’re running ah they’re running three services on a weekend. They could add 500 people in attendance at their church…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Stanski — …by simply making that shift and moving those things around.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Stanski — Now, I’m not sure like that’s that’s what they want to do or if that’s what’s best for their church or their programming. But the Needs Analysis is meant to evaluate all of those types of things and say, man, are we using our space the best we can? And is there anything we should do ah to help it improve?
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. That I love that. Like that, what a great example. And you know, this is the part of what I love about you, Aaron, and your team is it’s like. You could have easily said, you well, you need to build a whole new thing. And like, here’s all that stuff.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And like, it’s going to cost you a gajillion dollars. Uh, but you’re like, Hey, before that…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …what if we did this? Um, this might be an interesting, uh, middle stuff. I love that. You can obviously reach out to, uh, Risepointe. We’ll put a link in the show, show notes there. You also have a, um, a tool that you’re going to hand out to people. We’re going to link to it here.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — Talk to us about the, uh, The Risepointe Collection 25. Tell me about this. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, ah ah we like to release The Risepointe Collection. This year it’s version 25. This is really just kind of what are some interior design trends that we’re seeing? What are some really hot colors and palettes? What are some of the carpets and finishes that we’re seeing that we’re really loving? How are they being applied? What are some example pictures and stuff of some churches that have applied some of these things? ah We really just kind of see it as ah as a fun resource for churches to kind of pick it up and say, hey, ah we were thinking about repainting something. ah What are some of the hot colors or what are some of the things that Risepointe’s recommending? Aaron Stanski — So we’re gonna be ah we’re releasing that. It’s actually already already completed here. It’ll be up on our website right down at the bottom. But if you’re interested in that, yeah, go to our website. It’s risepointe.com – risepointe with an e. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find The Risepointe Collection, Version 25. Just click that. We’ll email that. It’s a big PDF, but we’ll email that over to you. It might be something fun for you just to kind of check out and see what see what we’re recommending and what’s what’s coming.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool. What a great tool for folks, you know, as you’re, as you’re thinking about, you know, these kinds of changes in the, in the coming year. I just love that. That’s, that’s so fantastic. Oh, Aaron, I I appreciate you. Thank you so much. I got a couple of pages of notes here, stuff to think about in in kids ministry area in areas, which I really appreciate. So is there anything else you want to say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Aaron Stanski — No, I just say, I mean, you know ah you know, kids are the future of the church, right? And so like loving on our kids and loving on our families, and knowing that, I mean, there’s a lot of crap they’re dealing with out in the world and with schools and all of that stuff. If we can welcome them in and resource our parents and love on them and teach them about Jesus, I mean, that’s gotta be at the top of the list for why we, like why we got into ministry, right?
Rich Birch — So true.
Aaron Stanski — And so I mean, the environment plays a small role in all of that. And I i know that. But if that’s something that we can help you with, like if that’s something that we can, I mean, just give you a fresh idea on, would love to do that. So if we can help out in any way, reach out to Risepointe, um and we’ll we’ll figure it out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. You know, and and the thing many church leaders they do, if they do renovations like this or this kind of project, they do like one in their entire career or maybe two…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like that’s the, you know, the where you guys do this all day long, you know, you really should bring in ah the folks at Risepointe to help you think through this. So I can’t, I heartily endorse Aaron and his team. You really should, ah you know, talk with them. Again, we’ll have the link in the show notes, but you can also just search Risepointe with an E and find them online. Thanks so much for being here, sir. Thank you for for being on the show. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich.
Portable Church Success: Systems that Last and Leaders that Thrive with Jeff Beachum
Oct 10, 2024
Thanks for joining in the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Jeff Beachum with us. He’s part of Portable Church Industries (PCI), which has helped thousands of churches launch and operate successfully in mobile settings. Jeff serves as the Multiplication Specialist and Director of Marketing.
Is your church running out of capacity, but looking for ways to keep momentum growing? Are you ready to establish a presence in a new community? Tune in as Jeff walks us through how to leverage our time, capacity and money to open up more seats and send out our congregations on mission.
The advantage of rental. // There are only five ways a church can establish a presence in a new community: a new build, commercial buy, commercial lease, a rental, and a merge. PCI assists churches in utilizing rented spaces such as schools, community centers, and even unconventional venues like movie theaters and bars. The flexibility of a rental will allow you to reach your community more quickly and cost-effectively while you grow your congregation. By leveraging portable solutions, churches can also focus on building their capital for that next environment.
Maintaining church culture. // Your church has a culture that has begun to shape the expectations of the attendees. Even if you want to open another location, congregants will still expect to be a part of the same kind of church. PCI’s designers go to great lengths to design a system that maintains the DNA, culture, branding, and expectations across a church’s locations so people feel at home in a new environment.
Handling expansion. // When you’re stretching the limits of your current location—whether its parking, seating, kids’ space or service times—it’s time to explore the alternatives. Do you need to open another location, or move into a bigger one? Solutions can include going multisite or planting a segment of your congregation in a nearby community. Jeff recommends reaching out to PCI early on in the exploration process and getting answers to your questions sooner rather than later.
Design process. // The Portable Church design process begins with an in-depth consultation with your church leadership to learn about your unique culture, vision, goals and environment. This process includes discussions with the children’s team and tech team to assess operational needs. Finally Portable Church explores the venue that you’re considering. After gathering this information, PCI’s team spends time designing a custom solution that meets your church’s requirements.
Launch weekend. // When the product is delivered, a team from PCI travels to your church’s location, typically on a Saturday, to assist with the setup and training of your volunteers. The goal is to make the setup process as efficient as possible. Jeff notes that with the right number of volunteers, all equipment can be unloaded and set up in a remarkably short time—often in a little over an hour. After everything is torn down and put away, the team returns on Sunday morning, stepping back while your team leads the setup process. Afterwards they review what went well, what needs improvement and anything that was missing.
NEXT STEPS // Executive Church Leader Resource Bundle
Visit portablechurch.com/jeff for the Executive Church Leader Resource Bundle that will help you operationalize your vision, plus grab a $10 Starbucks eCard and a FREE zoom pre-consult opportunity with Jeff.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. This person, if you haven’t had a chance to interact with them, ah you’re going to be blessed by leaning in and learning from this individual. You’re going to ah be encouraged and hopefully inspired to take some new steps. Excited to have Jeff Beachum with us. He is a part of an organization called Portable Church Industries. If you don’t know, Portable Church, these guys are amazing. For over 25 years they have helped literally thousands of churches, thousands and thousands of churches, launch strong in mobile settings. They designed custom solutions that are fit for every budget, every vision, and literally every venue. I’ve seen some crazy places that these kids have helped ah people launch into. They provide everything ah that really you need to launch for a mobile mobile church. This is really from an inviting worship space, kids ministry, welcome area, storage case, all the way from like sound systems to a place to put the diapers. Really is amazing. Jeff, so glad you’re here today. Thanks for being here.
Jeffrey Beachum — Oh, I’m so glad to be here. I love talking about the church and expanding it.
Rich Birch — Nice. So your title is multiplication specialist and director of marketing. Tell us what you do at PCI; kind of fill in that picture. Tell us more about PCI in general.
Jeffrey Beachum — So I got ah a variety of things in my background that I am just amazed at the way God brings it brings it all together. I never thought that what I did in my past, he could figure out and use. And marvelously, I’ve done commercial real estate appraisal work a couple of times. I’ve been a pastor for 15 years, ah marketing and sales, organizational leadership, all kinds of things.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — And God brings me to portable church industries and and sets me up really well…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeffrey Beachum — …to hopefully understand the church, understand the kind of decisions and how hard it is to be a church leader, whether it’s a lead pastor or ah an executive pastor or a campus pastor. And to come alongside of them and help them ah sometimes figure out their strategy and sometimes just be able to help them with their strategy and get to where they want to go. So that’s really the the nuts and bolts of what I get to do. And I love my job. Rich Birch — So good. Jeffrey Beachum — I’ve had ah opportunities to go somewhere else, but I just love what I get to do and who I get to do it with. And so my role at PCI has has changed a little bit. I used to strictly come alongside of pastors and work with them and and getting them to where they want to go. And now they’ve asked me to, for a little while, fill in on the marketing role, which is my skill and background. So I’m just having the time of my life. Rich Birch — That’s so good. I love, ah you’re like such an encouraging leader to interact with. I know at the times we’ve had a chance to connect over the years, I’ve been you know encouraged by you and your and your leadership. So I’m i’m hoping that, I know, that’ll rub off with folks that are listening in today.
Rich Birch — So but the we want to kind of talk, for folks that don’t know Portable Church, don’t know your organization, um I yeah I remember the first time I heard about PCI and I hadn’t reached out to anybody. And they were like, I know there’s this organization out there that like helps churches do stuff portably. And I was like, man, that is so smart because the, where we meet is a critical piece of the puzzle. And you guys have really opened up a lot of different opportunities for churches when they’re thinking about. But kind of define, when you say portable church, what does that look like? Like who are the kind of churches you’re helping? What are they, why do they come to you? What does that look like? Jeffrey Beachum — So um in an elevator, giving my five-story elevator pitch. From the first to the second story is we help churches that are are dealing with capacity issues. Now, it might be first time launches, it might be multi-site, it might be churches that love to plant and are good at it. And we help them get into portable facilities such as a high school, any any place that can be rented—a high school, middle school, um ah elementary school, YMCAs, movie theaters. And you were talking about some of the oddest places we’ve been in. We’ve helped churches launch in bars and we’ve helped them launch in a train station, right between train tracks that are working.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s crazy.
Jeffrey Beachum — So, we can go into all kinds of situations, but we help churches go into rented spaces that helps them leverage time, um capacity, and money. If you look at the, there’s only five ways that a church can put a new presence into that community, and it’s a new build with new grass, commercial, commercial buy, commercial lease, a merge, or a rental. Those are the only five ways. And we help them do that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — The rental is we can get you in quicker, we can get you, than any of the others. We can be cheaper than all of the others.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And we can be at least as effective or better than all of the others. And so if you’re trying to develop capital, it’s a really good idea to leverage the idea of portability, so that you can go in and while you’re already building your congregation, you can be developing your capital for that next environment, like the permanent building or the merge or the commercial build out. Jeffrey Beachum — So that’s that’s generally what we do. We are all about capacity and giving churches a better opportunity to send. A growing church typically gets the woo and win phase down. They get the disciple and equip phase down. And they get the serve phase down. But it’s harder—and I just wrote an article about how the church needs to become uncomfortable—it’s harder to do the sending. Rich Birch — Right, right. Jeffrey Beachum — And so we help churches with the sending process. We make it financially feasible and leverage to whatever is next in that growth pattern.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I know in in um you know the times we’ve interacted over the years, there’s like there’s a lot of churches, if they are thinking about either church planting or maybe they’re thinking about going multi-site, they start to see some signs internally. And one of the sticking points can be like, but there’s like just some of the like logistic problems. Like, gosh, like it it is, you know, sure, we want to go into this community. um We’re sensing that we should go there. But if we dig a piece of dirt, it’s going to be X number of years to before we can make anything happen there. And I’ve got people now that I want to you know get into that location.
Rich Birch — When you think about the the helping a church go portable, what is it that you think PCI kind of brings to the table to make um that that move into, say, a school or into a movie theater. How how do you guys actually do that? Like, what does that look like? When if someone calls you up, what does that look like?
Jeffrey Beachum — Well, um, and that’s a great question because there, I’m I’m just amazed within the church, how many people don’t understand the portability concept. Um, for us, we, we have the capacity to take a, uh, a group of people, and I like to call them a momentum of people. So if a church wants to go into that community, they can heat map their congregation and, and determine what that momentum is and grow that. And that at some point they have to launch. And we can launch them into a portable facility, again, that is cheaper and faster and um really, really effective. And it’s a street to seat mentality. So we’re not just thinking that you can go there and worship in the up auditorium.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — We’re thinking that it’s a balanced system. And it cuts out the chaos that could be involved.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeffrey Beachum — It creates an opportunity for people to flow through that and leaders and volunteers to flow through that nice and evenly. The wayfinding from out on the street all the way through the building, the first impressions and having a good impression is important. And and when we talk about street to seat design and thinking, even in a school or a theater or in a YMCA, we think about the children’s area. And no family is going to come into any environment and put their child in an iffy children’s environment. They’re just not.
Rich Birch — That’s true. That is so true.
Jeffrey Beachum — And if they do, they’re going to put them in there and you won’t have their minds in the worship setting.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — Because they’re going to be thinking about what they just did to their child.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — So we we think of the holistic environment…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Jeffrey Beachum — …paying attention to all of it, and then doing it with a level of expertise that your church requires. Your church has a culture. It has DNA. It has already begun to shape the expectations of its attenders. Now, if you take them and you want to move them over there and say, you’re still a part of us, you’re just going to be away from us. They still expect you to be that kind of a church. And so our designers go to great lengths to design something that is keeping the DNA culture, branding, ah expectations. The children could go from the sending facility to the new facility and see all the same branding…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — …and feel very comfortable with what’s there. So it’s really important that we ah design a system so your people can feel very comfortable going into those settings. And yet, usually they’re going closer to home…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — …which is another aspect of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Jeffrey Beachum — So we that’s what we do is we help churches who may be surprised by their growth be an alternative until they can figure out next.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — In fact, we’ve got a… surprisingly enough, we’ve got a couple of um churches now that are trying to figure a few things out. And and proposing they leave their environment, their permanent facility, and using portability as a leverage to whatever is next for them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — …because their building became too expensive.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — So we we kind of come alongside the church, determine where they are, where they want to go, and what we can do to help.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. I love that. You know, I know, um you know, when when a a church is maybe thinking about this, when really do they reach out to you, typically? I’m I’m sure there’s like a there’s kind of a ah ah number of points along the way. They’ve either they’re they’re in like the hunch phase. They’re like, we’re thinking about either launching something or we’re wrestling with that. Is that when they should call? Or is it like they should call once we get the actual location, or should they call the week before they want to open?
Jeffrey Beachum — You know, um one of the painful things that I’ve discovered is that pastors, like all of us, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Good.
Jeffrey Beachum — And oftentimes, it will surprise us what we need to know. And so I would I would encourage you that if you are in a growth phase, and you’re at the level of growth where your, man, our our auditorium is getting filled. Our children’s space is getting filled. We need to add chairs. We need to add services. We have two services. We need to add a third. Or you could be at at a place where you’re, how about if we turn the cafe into a worship space? You know? You’re stretching the limits of what you already have. If you’re already there and God is just blessing you, then that is the time when you begin to figure out what are the alternatives.
Jeffrey Beachum — And, um, you know, then you then, and with my real estate background, it’s real easy for me to to reach back in and help pastors think through, uh, so what does it take look like for us to make this facility bigger? And do you really want to do that?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And what does that do to the maintenance costs, the upkeep? And, uh, then you, you know, you have a Willow Creek on your hand where things change and all of a sudden you’ve got massive buildings.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And a lot of churches have been surprised by that.
Jeffrey Beachum — Or an option could be to begin either multisiting, or planting a piece of your congregation in a nearby ah community. And we’ve got churches now that are building a family of churches. And they all have the same DNA, culture, branding and everything except they have a different name. But so they they react differently in a community. And yet they work together because of who they are, their family.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. Yeah, that’s cool.
Jeffrey Beachum — So there’s a variety of ways to handle it. The idea is get get your answers sooner rather than later.
Jeffrey Beachum — We had, in fact, the whole reason I was hired on a PCI back in 2015, ’16 was to help lengthen the runway in which churches that were growing would engage us.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Jeffrey Beachum — And so the longer the runway, the better.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So I love that. Like if you’re, if you’re in even that early hunch stage, it’s a good time to reach out. I know I’ve said that behind your back, I’ve been like, you should call the friends of PCI. They’ll jump on the phone, have a call with you. Even if it’s early stage, there’s a couple of signs I know I’ve said to churches before.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — These are like super tactical. So if you are launching a third service, you should be talking to PCI. Because the third service is not going to do what you did when you went from one to two services. You’re, you know, you, you go from, and we’ve talked about this before, you have 50% of your services. When you have two services, you have 50% of the services that are in a non-optimal service time.
Rich Birch — When you go to three, two thirds of your services in a non-optimal time. You’re not going to get the bump that you need. If you’re having to add a third service, it’s going to be just a stopgap measure. You’re going to have to think about something beyond that. That’s the first one. The second one, when I’ve heard people say, we’re having to buy extra chairs to like pile them into the back of our rooms, like to figure out how to get, you know… I’m like, you need to call PCI. Like you’re going to spend a bunch of money on chairs.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, like why not think about a system? Why not think about maybe we should plant? Or the other one that I’ve said before is if you’re more, if you’re big days, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, if they’re more than 2X your normal attendance. So if you have more than two times your normal attendance on those days, which some churches do…
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …um that’s an indicator of like, oh, we’re not, we’re not, ah we’re not reaching every week the normal, ah the the people we could be reaching. You’ve got like an assimilation issue and you could assimilate those people into a new location. And the more than 2X is a telltale sign that like, okay, we should we should find new ways to try to potentially launch or launch a campus or church plant or something like that.
Jeffrey Beachum — Absolutely, absolutely.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Jeffrey Beachum — Those are all the scenarios…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeffrey Beachum — …that we love to come alongside. And and I mean, those are exciting problems.
Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re good problems to have, for sure. Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yes, it’s it’s it’s difficult and you got to figure it out. You have to be innovative, you have to be creative. But that’s who God made us to be.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeffrey Beachum — And so it’s exciting to work in that environment and help churches and and really good leaders say, oh, this is great, let’s do this. And you were one of those leaders back in the day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, early on. Yeah, it’s true.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s true. Yeah, like we’re kind of playing coy. Like, I don’t know about PCI, but yeah, I’ve we’ve bought a lot of systems over the years from PCI and and love what they do. In fact, I was I was joking ah earlier before we got recording, we one of our campuses, we just moved um from a movie theater, into a permanent location, like literally just open the last month. And ah that location was open for seventeen years. And in fact on the last day we had like a clean out day at the theater. I was getting like a little choked up. Because there’s these cases that were, and I’m literally taking pictures of ’em, that seventeen years later, they’re like still on the road. And yeah, they’re vacuum them out and they look brand new.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yep.
Rich Birch — Like they they, you know, all these years later continued to be ah you know well used and really helped, empowered our church to literally reach thousands of people. We wouldn’t have been able to do that. And and we’re in that location for all of those years because ah the system was designed with volunteers in mind, designed to make it easy for those people. Yeah, incredible. And and you were saying, tell me the thing you were saying about your competition, because I thought that was funny. Jeffrey Beachum — Well, so our our um our second ah our second piece of competition against us is ourselves.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeffrey Beachum — Our cases have been so durable over the years.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeffrey Beachum — The shelf life of our cases is long.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — And um what so what that tells me is that churches, even when they get out of portability, I’m guessing that you guys didn’t drop your cases or leave them…
Rich Birch — No, no.
Jeffrey Beachum — …but you took them into your building.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah. And i I go into a lot of permanent facilities and I see a lot of our cases because they are just functional, and they’re very helpful. And so they just renew what’s in the case and keep it updated and they utilize the case into perpetuity.
Jeffrey Beachum — And then there are some churches that they know the cases and the system, and I don’t want to go too lightly on that thing, a system helps create continuity and clarity and gets rid of chaos.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — And that’s really important when you’re offsite. Um, but, um, those, those cases, um, can, um, because a lot of churches say, so if we’re in this three to five years, what do we do with the stuff when we’re done? Well, you can keep it and use it in your permanent facility, or you can, uh, bless it and move it on to a planter.
Rich Birch — 100 percent. Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — And again, that kills our business, but it builds the Kingdom. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve said similar things to other churches that, you know, it’s the same thing. Like I’ve, like another thing is to think, OK, well, we could we could be in this location – maybe we’re there three to five years. But our hope is that we’ll keep opening locations and you could, again not great for PCI, but great for the church. Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah. Rich Birch — So we’re going to take that system. We’re going to pull it back in. We’re going to change a few things, maybe change some signage and stuff like that. But then we’re going to go into a whole new community because, PS, it’s portable. We can roll it somewhere else and reuse that stuff. It’s amazing.
Jeffrey Beachum — So, you know, to that point, I was going to share in a little bit, um the the Outreach Top 100 came out, and for whatever it’s worth, we did a little bit of an examination of what it was there.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Jeffrey Beachum — And 60% of the fastest growing churches and 85% of the largest churches are multi-site.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeffrey Beachum — And over 40% of them have utilized Portable Church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeffrey Beachum — Because it is a a good, solid system that they can leverage to get to their next. Jeffrey Beachum — And another piece of that was, so we were curious about the longevity of our cases. How do the churches do? And so we went back to some of our previous years, 2019, and just finished this. 95.6% of the churches with Portable Church that launched in 2019 through COVID are still up and running. Rich Birch — What? Wow, that that’s incredible. That’s amazing. Jeffrey Beachum — 95.6, yes. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing. That well and so, friends, I think the thing that that speaks to, and this it’s like hard to articulate, but a part of what I have found, like front row seat with with a Portable Church system, is it’s designed with longevity in mind. It’s designed, at the core, one of the reasons why portable doesn’t work is you burn out your volunteers. Like it they just are not excited to show up. They’re not excited to, um, you know, to do this thing. And the thing about PCI systems is they are, they’re built for simplicity. They’re built for how do we make this easy? How do we, um, you know, not have people carry things?
Rich Birch — Like the telltale sign of your portable system is bad is you have people you know walking around with items around your spot. Well, no, like there’s put everything on wheels, figure out how to get it into a box that, you know, that rolls. And, and that…
Jeffrey Beachum — Everything’s on wheels.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and and put it into a spot that that your volunteers will actually enjoy ah you know serving. How do you guys balance in kind of your process a system where you can leverage all the good things from the thousands of churches, like the kind of shared learnings with the customization piece? How how do you how do you actually functionally do that? Because I’ve seen you do that. What does that look like?
Jeffrey Beachum — Well, it is actually a cornerstone of what we do. And churches love this piece, and that is the custom design piece, as well as the custom launch and training weekend that we have with the church where we’re actually face to face with them. Jeffrey Beachum — But in the custom design piece, we’ve learned a lot in the last almost 30 years now. We’ve learned a ton of things. And we learn it from what the church is telling us they want to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And and so if they say, yeah, we’re a little odd, so you might not be able to do that. To our guys, that’s a challenge. And they come back. And and that actually…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — …was one of the catalysts for us working with a um ah TV screen, LED wall.
Rich Birch — Oh, LED walls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
Jeffrey Beachum — So we worked with ah a company that produces LED walls. And we they helped us design a portable LED wall.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeffrey Beachum — And so we are able to go into many environments that are light rich, which is fine, but we’re able to help them instead of throwing a video, we can actually use LED walls and that’s helpful. Many times we’ll say, ah you don’t want the expense of an LED wall, but then there are churches that that’s who they are. And that’s the quality that they want to have.
Jeffrey Beachum — So our design process is we we come in, and we we spend a day with you in your sending church. And that gives us the idea to visually see what your church is like. We talk to the the lead team and say, why on earth do you think God wants you to create another church? You know? What is your vision? What are you trying to do? Jeffrey Beachum — And then we talked to the kids environment, the directors and ask them, so what are you trying to do, so we see what it looks like, so we can see the branding and the process. The tech team, you know, what’s the environment like when people come into worship? What do you want them to feel?
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Jeffrey Beachum — What do they see? Who do they touch? All of those kind of things. And we take all of that information. And then they show us the venue that they’re looking at.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And we apply all of that together with them in the venue. And we say, here’s here’s what we see this becoming you by utilizing these pieces and this function and flow and these different pieces of who you are. Jeffrey Beachum — So our guide will take all that on the first day, spend a whole day ah up in a hotel room, and he designs. And then on the third day, we present back to them what we think we heard them say.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Jeffrey Beachum — And we say, you told us that you would like your environments to look like this, that your price point is this, that your goals are these, and this facility gives you A, B, and C, and we can put that together.
Jeffrey Beachum — And then from there, it’s just a matter of them fine tuning what they told us and us what we heard. And then when they pull the trigger, it’s usually, well, back in the day when supply chains were friendly, it could have been 10 weeks. But now it’s 12-ish weeks.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — 12 weeks later, we’re building a custom product to deliver to them in the weekend.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yep. Yeah, it’s amazing.
Jeffrey Beachum — So that’s our process.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s incredible. And again, having seen that up front, I love the work that PCI does to really try to understand. It’s funny, I’ve had telling a little secret behind your back. I’ve sometimes had people say like, you know, they they’re like, oh, I’m so nervous. Like, I don’t know. It’s so it’s like they feel like they’re in this relationship. Like sometimes with vendors, you’re like, you don’t want to tell them everything. I’m like, tell them everything. Like, be super clear the more clear you can be up front that you’ll you’ll end up with a system that’s closer to. And that that gets back to like scale of like how much money do you want to spend. And like you know what what kind of restrictions do you have. Like we do not want, we want this system to be able to set up in x amount of time with x number of people, all that kind of stuff so that you know that that our our friends at PCI can ultimately figure out how to get all that and make that happen. And they’re they like the constraint. They like the like help us understand the way to do that.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about Launch Weekend because it’s not just that you build stuff and then you FedEx it to our house um or to our you know office. What what happens on the kind of Launch Weekend training weekends?
Jeffrey Beachum — So let me make one distinction, then I go to launch weekend. Rich Birch — Yep. Jeffrey Beachum — You said something, and you keep doing that. So um I I personally don’t like “vendor”…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeffrey Beachum — Because, and it’s not not anything I have to do with you.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeffrey Beachum — But i for my whole career, I’ve occasionally been a vendor. And I know what that is. Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeffrey Beachum — But at PCI…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — …everybody at our facility, it has the heart to be with every church that we work with…
Rich Birch — That’s 100% true.
Jeffrey Beachum — …and what they’re trying to do. We we our main metric is how many open seats how many seats can we open up for the hearing of the gospel? Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Jeffrey Beachum — You know? So we open up seats at the sending campus and the new campus.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeffrey Beachum — So anyway, we love to be a partner, not necessarily a vendor, but I get ya.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, definitely.
Jeffrey Beachum — So now launch weekend is very exciting because it’s like a vision becoming a reality. And we, on launch weekend, we fly in to wherever you are. And there’s a team of usually two to four of us, depending on the size and what we need to do. And then our, before we fly in, your system has been shipped, either by trailer or by freight to the site. Jeffrey Beachum — And it’s in trailers. Everything is in trailers. And I could talk to you offline about that. But your trailer or trailers show up. And we spend all day Saturday morning with all of your volunteers introducing your system. And the key part of a system is that we got to get everybody to understand how it works, the process, the orderliness, what goes first. And in in the system that we build, every volunteer ah can make it happen because…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — …everything has a place.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — Everything has a place in the case. And every case has a place in the trailer. And we’re very meticulous about weighing all of that out because we can’t have cases falling on any kids. And we can’t have trailers breaking the axle of trucks. We just, it doesn’t work. So we’re very meticulous about that.
Jeffrey Beachum — And so we spend an hour or so orienting the the volunteer team to what is going to happen and the products themselves. And then and they divide up by teams and they run the cases in. And usually, um no matter how many trailers you have, if you have the right number of volunteers, all of your gear can be in the building within nine minutes. Rich Birch — Love it. Jeffrey Beachum — So everything is out of trailers in place in nine minutes. And then you spend maybe an hour setting everything up. That LED wall I told you about, 9 by 16 LED wall – it takes two guys 45 minutes to set up in its entirety…
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.
Jeffrey Beachum — …if you if you have the right stuff. So it’s within an hour.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And that’s one of the things we sell the best is time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — If you are having your volunteers spend three hours in the morning setting up and four hours tearing down, you’re killing them.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — And a system can help save you money because you’re not paying rent. And it can save your volunteers.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeffrey Beachum — So anyway, we go through it and we put it all up in the facility once and then we take it all back down. That’s typically a Saturday, and it’s all back in the cases. The next day we designed so that it is a real life service. Now it might be just a practice, or it could be real service. But our team then is a little more hands off and your team is a little more hands on. And we actually go through everything like you would on a Sunday morning.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — And it’s it’s very exciting because on Sunday morning we get to, um if they do a video venue, we get to have the video come in and the pastor at the sending church says, Hey, to our new site…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — You know, and everybody says, Hey, and, and it really happens. And then we, after the service or services, we crash it all down back into the trailer. And then we kind of gather up and we pray with the, uh, the volunteer team, and we we say, all right, so what worked, what didn’t work? What do we need to fix? Because it it is a a pretty big system. And so there are typically you know little things that we have to fix and, oops, we forgot to add this piece and and we’ll go and do that.
Jeffrey Beachum — So if you’re in a venue where you think, man, what you just described is not what we have. We really aren’t doing portability very well. We have a thing called efficiency upgrade and we’ll come in to your venue and we’ll help you figure out how to put it into a system…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeffrey Beachum — …where you can get control and time back.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. Like I know there’s a lot of churches out there, surprising number, who like rent space on a Saturday to set up because it takes like four or five hours to set up. And then, um, and you know, and I’ve said to those folks over the years, I’m like, you know, you can do this and actually should do this all on Sunday morning. Like it’ll save you resources. It’s actually easier for your volunteers. It’s easier on your team. I know it sounds crazy, but you should be able to get this all done in…
Jeffrey Beachum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, on Sunday morning.
Jeffrey Beachum — Yep.
Rich Birch — So yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Well, I know there’s a ton we could talk about here…
Jeffrey Beachum — All day.
Rich Birch — …but this has been a great, ah yeah, really great kind of primer introduction. Now we want to send people to portablechurch.com/Jeff and tell me what this…Well, first of all, I think this is great. What what are they going to get when they would drop by portablechurch.com/Jeff?
Jeffrey Beachum — So we put together a landing page that will give you four resources having to do mostly with multi-siting. In the operational, operationalizing the vision resource bundle, we have mapping your multi-site journey. And so that gives a timeline of that process that we were talking about. How soon should a church engage? So that’s just a map on how long it takes.
Jeffrey Beachum — A facility comparison, cost comparison, building out mistakes to avoid, some recommendations that we’ve heard from design, build firms, and then 10 bonus benefits of portability. 10 reasons why, and to be honest with you, I consult to the church’s needs. And if the church really believes they need to be in a different kind of facility, that’s fine. And I’m glad to defer and say that commercial environment is awesome. That’s what you should do.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jeffrey Beachum — However, in probably 80% or more of the cases, I think they could benefit by leveraging portability. It would make them stronger. It would give them time to raise more funds so that they can go into that new environment stronger. They could grow their congregation. They could develop their volunteer team. They could develop new leaders. But there’s 10 bonus benefits of portability there. And the best thing is if you land on that page and pick a date, just have a conversation with me. I will buy you a cup of coffee.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeffrey Beachum —And you can get your cup of coffee and then come on and we’ll do a Zoom together. And we’ll just have a good old time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I would encourage you to to to to do that. So that’s again, just portablechurch.com/Jeff. Even if you’re early, like maybe you’re an executive pastor, a couple thousand person church and you’ve you guys have kind of kicked around, maybe we were thinking about this down the road. You really should start early in the conversation that, you know, I would do that. Or if you’re like a church planter and you’re like, you know, even you’re like thinking it’s going to be maybe 2025 before we do that. You know, reach out now. it It would be great to kind of get in the pipeline, have a conversation. Uh, that would be fantastic.
Rich Birch — Anything else you’d like to say, Jeff, just as we, as we kind of land today’s episode.
Jeffrey Beachum — No, the only the only stat that I don’t think I was able to share is one that kills me. Warren Bird and Ed Stetzer did ah a study a little while ago, and probably the stat needs to be updated. But they determined, on the positive side, 68% of all new location launches are still viable after four years. So of course, me being me, I looked at, that means 32%…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeffrey Beachum — …of all churches that are launching were not successful. And that that kills me. And so I don’t want any church that I ever have to work with or get to work with to be in that 32%. I want to put them in a system that they may not realize it upfront, but is really good for them, and will give them everything they want in their wish list for launching a new location.
Rich Birch — Nice. That’s great. So good. So again, friends, drop by portablechurch.com/Jeff. Is there anywhere else we want to send people online if they want to track with PCI, kind of track with your story, that sort of thing?
Jeffrey Beachum — Our website, we’re in the process of redoing it.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Jeffrey Beachum — We’ve got a ton of resources. And actually that is a place you could catch on to our newsletter, which is kind of rich – we’re sending out once a month. And so ah portablechurch.com is is our our website. That would be a good place.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Jeff. Really appreciate you being on the show. Look forward to having you back in the future.
Jeffrey Beachum — Thanks, Rich.
Prepare for the Unexpected: Crisis Communication Strategies for Your Church with Kim Tarlton
Oct 03, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to talk with Kim Tarlton, the General Manager of Church Communications Group which helps church communicators navigate the complexities of the modern communication landscape.
Many churches operate under the misconception that crises won’t happen to them. However, crises can arise from various sources, including issues in the larger community, financial scandals, or natural disasters. The key is to acknowledge the possibility of a crisis and prepare accordingly. Tune in as Kim delves into the strategic planning to effectively communicate about and manage various crises that may arise both internally and externally.
Get a plan in place. // Not only do churches need to be prepared for crises, but also crisis communication with the congregation and the public. What message do you need to convey? What is your brand communicating? What are people hearing from your church? Who needs to be the one communicating? Churches need to be prepared for what God is calling them to do and preserve the message of Jesus. Acknowledge that any number of crises may occur at your church and put a plan on paper so you know what you have agreed to.
Get a crisis response team. // One of the first steps in crisis preparation is forming a crisis response team. Who are your go-to people? This team should include key staff members who are integral to the church’s operations, elder board members who can provide outside oversight and guidance, and legal counsel to navigate any legal implications that may arise. Create a crisis management plan that clearly outlines who is responsible for what during a crisis and how to communicate with the congregation and handle media inquiries. Include each individual’s contact information so everything you need is readily accessible.
Plan out your areas of response. // Develop good relationships with your local news groups. Invite them to events your church holds and have coffee with them. By taking time to build these relationships, you will be able to use them as a resource when you need to interact with the press during a crisis. Additionally, prepare press releases ahead of time that can be used in these situations.
Levels of communications. // Many churches fail to communicate effectively during a crisis, leading to confusion and frustration among staff and volunteers. Share information first with the elders and executive leadership. Then inform the staff of the situation and how it will be handled. Finally, communicate with the congregation. This tiered approach helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and reduces the likelihood of misinformation spreading.
PRAY with your crisis team. // Every crisis situation is different and it can be difficult to discern what information to share. Kim underscores that before doing anything, church leaders need to seek God for wisdom and cast all of their cares onto Christ. Use the PRAY acronym—Pause, Repeat what is true about God, Ask God and others for help, and Yield, taking time to listen to God and each other. Don’t be in crisis response mode, but rather crisis management.
Get together to look at the plan. // Gather the crisis management team annually and audit the team and the plan every year. Fill empty positions if a member of the crisis response team is no longer there. Spend a couple of hours to review your plans for crisis management and make any necessary changes.
NEXT STEPS // Editable Crisis Communication Manual Template for Churches
To get help from Church Communications Group in crisis management or any other aspect of church communications, visit their website at churchcommunications.com and connect with Kim there.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation with Kim Tarlton. This is going to be a fantastic conversation if you are in your church today and you’re thinking about the future and you’re wondering, are there things I can be doing today to get ready for stuff in the future, even if it’s some stuff I don’t want to think about today, will be a great episode for you. Rich Birch — If you’re not familiar, she is the General Manager of Church Communications Group, which began really as an idea to create a space where church communicators could find support, resources, and inspiration, needed to gap navigate the complexities of the modern communication landscape. She has 26 plus years of being a creative leader in mega churches and excels in communication, strategy, and leadership. Super excited to have you. You’re a bonafide expert, Kim. Glad you’re on the show. Thanks for being here today. Kim Tarlton — Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. And and, you know, obviously not a great like exciting subject, but still being able to lean in in this way um is really is really something that like we want to do. And so thank you for inviting me into this conversation. Rich Birch — Yeah, I know it’s going to be great. So why don’t you kind of fill out the picture? You’re kind of owns a little bit of your story. Tell us a little bit more of the but Kim story, kind of fill out that a little bit before we jump in. Kim Tarlton — Yeah, so um like you said, 26 years full-time ministry, I was working in the church. And I have been, I’ve been at three mega, well, I guess they’re like giga churches now because that’s the thing. And so I’ve been a part of three churches that ah the first one that I was a part of, there’s 300 when I left there, not because of me, all because of God, but like when I left there, they were running upward of 10,000. Kim Tarlton — And so these churches and the church growth and the multi-site and all of that, being able to be a part of that for so many years, leaning in on um all areas, from production to creative ministry to stage management, and all those things as well as communications, ah God called me to the Big C church. And to allow the use of what he was giving me and training me and um leaning into me with…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Kim Tarlton — …for so many years, allowing me to take that to a bigger audience outside of these walls into multiple walls. And so um I was able to join the Missional Marketing Group of Companies, which is where the Church Communications Group is a brand under the Missional Marketing Group of Companies now. So yeah…
Rich Birch — Love it. Kim Tarlton — …that’s just the the elevator version. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Love it. Well, you know, today we want to talk a little bit about crisis communication. Which um again, this is one of those episodes that I think it’s so good. It’s like leaning us forward thinking about the future. Rich Birch — And we’ve got a dog, which is great. I love dogs on the podcast. Kim Tarlton — Sorry about that. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s all good. The um but but but first, let’s talk about like what do we mean by crisis communication? Like how do I know? Like obviously, there’s like the super extreme version that we probably can think of and we wish we never had to think of. But but but what does that look like, crisis communications? What is that? Kim Tarlton — Yeah. So, um, for us, you know, first of all, I’ll start with the fact that like, when it comes to churches, we are, we’re kind of is some, not everybody, but some of us are kind of in denial mode. And we’re kind of thinking through this lens of like, that’s not going to happen to us. Rich Birch — So true. Kim Tarlton — Um, and maybe that, that might not be something that’s happening in our church or with our pastors or our people. But the bottom line is is that like the church is actually in crisis right now. It is becoming more and more obvious. We are seeing things that have happened in the past, like years ago, coming to light now. Kim Tarlton — And so crisis is an actual thing. It’s something that we need to not be scared of.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — But we need to be prepared for.
Kim Tarlton — And so when we lean in for crisis communication, it’s saying there’s crisis management that your church needs to lean into, your staff, your pastors, everybody. But then there’s also crisis communication. And there’s that side of like, what is it that we’re saying? What is our brand like putting out there to people? What does this what are people hearing from us as a church? Kim Tarlton — And when we look at crisis, there there’s so many opportunities for crisis to happen. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — It’s not even just in our walls, right, Rich?
Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — Like there’s crisis internally. There’s the church crisis. There’s community crisis. There’s there’s shootings in schools right now. There are things happening within our communities that are causing crisis and we need to manage those well. Kim Tarlton — And then there’s world crisis, you know. Like right now where I am at, I’m probably dating this a little bit, but like where I am at in Indiana, we’re fine. But Florida is looking like it’s getting hit by hurricanes. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — How do we help manage that? That is happening not here in my state or with my church, but it is happening with churches around the world, or in cities, states, regions outside of our walls.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Kim Tarlton — So when looking at crisis, it’s really going, how do we manage it? But how do we communicate better? And and making sure that we are thinking through that process too…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …to make sure that we we don’t go into it kind of stumbling through our words, not sounding right, and not not really like following after what God is calling us to do…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — …and care for people. Not protect the accused, but to protect the church, to protect the all around idea of like, and not protect Jesus even, I don’t even want to say that, like protect him, but protect the message really. Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. That’s good. Like and so you know to put a little more meat on the bones, we’re talking about like you know the the unfortunate situation, you you know. The ah report comes out that the youth pastor was having inappropriate sexual relations with a kid in the youth group. Unfortunately, friends, like these things are they’re like so common that it’s not even hard to think about what the problem is, right? Rich Birch — It could be in a situation from 10, 15 years ago. There could be a financial issue. But it also could be, like you’re saying, like maybe one of your campuses burns to the ground. Or like you know which is or you have um you know some some sort of you know problem like that that happens to your church that does nothing really, it’s not like a sin issue, it’s just something terrible has happened. Kim Tarlton — Right. Rich Birch — Like you say, shootings in in in town, that kind of thing. Rich Birch — And and so um you know we wanna be thinking, that’s kind of the frame that we wanna have as we’re as we’re thinking about these things today. But when we think about, you know, we’re sitting here today, first of all, before we get to kind of what we should be doing, why is it that, and I’m putting a little bit on the spot here… Kim Tarlton — No worries. Rich Birch — Why is it that there seems to be resistance with executive pastors, lead pastors—I say that as an executive pastor—on seeking help around communications? Like we don’t do that. I’ve said in other contexts, and maybe I’m just going to answer my own question. I’ve said in other contexts, yeah, when the church is really small, you have, you know, maybe the church planter’s doing the bookkeeping. And then eventually you pass it on to somebody else. Rich Birch — And then eventually you might have like a whole department of people, CFO, the whole thing. And like, but there’s a something with communications where I would say communications is a professional function similar to finances, but there’s like a resistance to wanting to interact with an organization like yours. Why is that? Kim Tarlton — Honestly, like, and I don’t have any, a lot of backing to this…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kim Tarlton — …but what I hear is like, as soon as you bring light to something, a couple of things end up happening, right? So like I had a pastor give me this example, and this is like this is a terrible example, but I’m going to share it anyway, because it came from a pastor. He’s like, you know like when you are young and you like the girl, um but you don’t know if she likes you, and you’re kind of like unsure, but all that stuff. Kim Tarlton — And then it comes out. And all of a sudden it’s like, Well, okay, I like you. Whether she liked you or not, now she’s thinking, I like you too. Or maybe there might be something there.
Kim Tarlton — And so there’s this idea of like, as soon as we start talking about it, as soon as we bring light to this, is that going to now shine like this extra spotlight on us at the church? Is this going to make it seem like we’re having that we have something that we’re looking into or that we want to hide or that we’re trying to figure out how to get our way past it. Instead of us looking at it and going, we’ are we want to prepare ourselves. We want to be prepared as a church, and we want to be prepared as a community. Kim Tarlton — Instead, we’re looking at it and we’re going, oh, that might not make me look good. So I’m going to hide. I’m going to kind of hide it in the background. And so that’s kind of one… Rich Birch — Interesting. Kim Tarlton — …probably there’s multiple reasons…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — …but that’s one of the reasons I am hearing most from churches right now. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — Yeah. Rich Birch — Okay. So what, what can we do to be prepared for this? Like with this, is one of these things we don’t want to think about, but like insurance, we’d none of us want to pay insurance, but like, cause it’s like, where does all that money go? But this is similar. It’s like, we’ve got to be thinking ahead about these things. Kim Tarlton — Yes. Rich Birch — How could we start thinking ahead, um, for kind of a multiplicity of, of situations? Um, obviously by definition, it’s it’s a crisis so we don’t, you know, we didn’t plan for it. But what what can we be doing now? Kim Tarlton — Yeah, so um there’s there’s there’s obvious there’s levels and layers to preparing yourself. And when we talk about crisis, you know you mentioned some some of those things as well. Like there’s there’s not ah It’s not always just sexual abuse… Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — …or or something of sexual nature. I think there’s that this list that’s out there, um and if you it might be Barna Group or somebody has a list, like the top five areas that um cause crisis management to happen within a church. And sexual abuse of a minor is number one. And then I believe on that list is like zoning issues, um and personal injury.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Kim Tarlton — Somebody actually like getting hurt on site, property disputes. And then I think the other one is insurance issues. Kim Tarlton — But like one of the things that we’re also seeing a lot in the church right now, um and I believe um I believe I heard this from ah one of our team, um is that like what we’re seeing in church right now, too, is um there’s a high percentage of, even when it comes to the finances of the church, um embezzlement things like that are happening, and it’s happening behind closed doors. And we’re not we’re not prepared for that. We we think, okay, that we’re okay there in the finance side. And then all of a sudden it comes out and it’s like, well, maybe somebody’s been pocketing a few too many of the the giving and the tithes. Kim Tarlton — And so there’s kind of this like layers and elements of like there’s so many different things and so preparing how do we prepare for all of those things that could happen? And the first thing that I’m going to say is being prepared. Like, that’s probably just being willing to say, you know what? We are willing to, as a church, understand that anything could happen. And even if it doesn’t happen in our walls, like I was saying, there’s stuff happening in your community, happening in your world, and being prepared. How do we respond in these situations? Kim Tarlton — So number one is just actually leaning into, it’s time to be prepared. I would say every single church staff needs to come together. They bring their staff in the room and they need to say, we are willing to be prepared. And so we’re going to invest in that. And you have to look at your budget and you have to go, what does this look like financially? Kim Tarlton — It probably is going to look like your communications person, which a lot of those communications leaders are coming right out of college. They maybe have not experienced a crisis of their own. They’re not really… Rich Birch — They’re good on Instagram. Give it to them. Kim Tarlton — Exactly, exactly.
Rich Birch — There’s a lot of that in the church world. Kim Tarlton — There’s a lot of that. And and and that like, as much as we need them to step in because they are our communications leaders, at the same time, they don’t know what they’re supposed to do. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kim Tarlton — They don’t know how to write a press release correctly and and all those things. And so getting them the help that can help them prepare. Bringing in the right people to help go, let’s put a plan together. And I think that’s like such a huge need, is making sure you put your plan on paper so that when something happens, we all go back to the book and we pull the book out together and we say, we know, we have agreed, this is the plan.
Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — And we’ve put our team together and we’ve put our, you know this is what this is what a press release is gonna look like, and how this should feel. And this is who should be sending it and doing it.
Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — I had a i had a situation come up um at a church that I was working with that we had the plan, right? Like the plan was there it was visible it was ready to go and then when crisis hit, all of a sudden the pastor went, oh i should be the voice. No, no, no we had discussed this…
Rich Birch — This is why we did it
Kim Tarlton — …that that you are not the voice. And so you have to make sure you plan, you put it on paper, and we all agree to it. So bringing everybody into that conversation is really important.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — You don’t just have the pastors and the executive pastors do that. You bring your communications team in. You bring your family ministry team in. Because they need to know when that kid breaks their arm at camp, what do we do? Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — We need to call. Or when that kid is at camp, um I’ve had that experience. When this kid’s at camp and they’re like, hey, my parent, something’s happening at home that shouldn’t be happening at home. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kim Tarlton — You know what the wrong thing is to do is to be like, okay, yeah, let’s go home. No, no, no. I’m going to talk to your parent about that. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — I, again, I’ve experienced it myself. We’re we’re going to talk to your parent. Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That is the wrong thing for us to do. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kim Tarlton — We need to report this. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — That is the first thing we should be doing is reporting that. Because that is an actual complaint of something that we need to lean into and deal with. And our churches are going, but I don’t want it, I don’t want it to come out. Like I don’t want us to be linked to that. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Kim Tarlton — Like I don’t want to report that. And so making sure we have a clear plan as a team, bring in the right people. If your communications team, or your executive pastor, or somebody has experience in this, make them the crisis management lead, and allow them to lean in and start start preparing your church. If not, start reaching out… Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good. Kim Tarlton — …finding the right people to help you build this plan. You have to have a plan, or you’re just going to go into it.
Kim Tarlton — But I literally, a church I was at, we found out about a crisis as we arrived to the office and the news reporters were there. Rich Birch — Wow.
Kim Tarlton — And we were just like, I don’t know what to say.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — Like we didn’t know who to say, you know, talk to this person or do this. We were just all like, what are you talking about? Like, I i don’t know what to say. Wait, what’s happening? What’s in the news? Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — What are you reporting on? Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Kim Tarlton — So prepare yourself for sure. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’d love to talk a little bit more about some of those things you think would be in that plan ahead of time, but I should have a personal experience with this. I for years ran a ah large Christian camp and ah literally my very first summer being in charge of the entire thing, we had a kid go missing…
Kim Tarlton — Oh gosh.
Rich Birch — …and it was, um yeah, it’s like the it’s like the worst case scenario. Like by definition, when people send their kids to camp…the the end of the story was very happy in the end. It was it was fine. But this this person went missing and we have this like alarm and it went off and and it went ah and we all this was thought out ahead of time. When that alarm got to a certain point it had been going for a certain amount of time, it triggered our crisis response. Rich Birch — And it’s funny how to this day, I still have this very positive visceral memory of taking the crisis manual off the wall and flipping to the page where it’s like, OK, what do I do? And and it included all what you’re talking about. It was like, here’s who you call. There was a pre-written, like, basically fill in the blank you know press release. Here’s the only people that are going to talk you know to the press. Here’s, even just simple stuff for me, like please call you know like, and I was the Executive Director, but it was like the board chair that like and it was like listed their phone numbers had that all right in front of me.
Kim Tarlton — Good.
Rich Birch — Because in that moment you’re like, oh my goodness, like all you’re just seeing red, right? You’re like you know and now it was thankful that it ended up in a positive situation. Kim Tarlton — Yeah. Rich Birch — But it man, if I hadn’t done that ahead of time, we would have been scrambling. Rich Birch — So what would be some of those things when you think about, okay, we’re gonna work on this ahead of time, what would be a couple of those things that we should think about that maybe are not intuitive that we should be planning ahead? Kim Tarlton — Yeah, yeah. So a few things. One is getting a crisis response team is what we would call it. And so putting together, who is your response team? Who are the people…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — …that are going to be our go-to, right?
Kim Tarlton — Um, one person from, from your church staff, absolutely. An elder, um, or the elder board, maybe. Your leadership team, your executive pastor – who are these people, these key people who are going to be the people that number one, when this happens, we call them in and we go, here’s what’s going on. What do we need to do? And let’s all start leaning into our areas. Kim Tarlton — Don’t make this just all about your staff. Do not just have your pastor, your executive pastor, and your communications person. You need to bring in some of those outside resources. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kim Tarlton — You need those key volunteer or a professional who is maybe associated with your church, um an attorney, something along those lines. Kim Tarlton — You always want to in, in most given situations that are crisis, you want to contact your attorney and get them on that team. But then also making sure that we have this, you know, a crisis management plan is super important. Kim Tarlton — So that’s the first thing. And, and I would document that, like you did. I would document that and have their names, their email address, their phone number, like what is our easy access?
Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — Um, I, you know, I would even like in the day and age of cell phones and text messages, I would even build a crisis response kind of text message chain that it’s like, we’re not going to always be, this isn’t a group text where we’re sending like cat memes or anything along those lines.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
But this, this is like that group that when something happens, we basically, we have our, it’s all in, you know, all hands on deck and everybody knows where you meet up and it’s time to talk. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Kim Tarlton — Um, and I think that’s, that’s just so key. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kim Tarlton — I would say another thing is, um, kind of, plan out um your your areas of response. So there’s there’s media response, right? And one of the things that you can start doing is—there’s so much you can do—but like one of the things I highly recommend to churches all the time is let’s start leaning into um our local news. Let’s start building that relationship. Because nothing can save you more from bad press than having a good relationship and good press.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Kim Tarlton — And so if you start building that relationship now with somebody and you are inviting them, you know, every quarter come and have some coffee and let’s chitchat about the church. And we have this big event coming up and come out and see what’s going on there. When that crisis hits…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kim Tarlton — …and you have that person to call and you say, hey, you know we’ve been building this relationship and I need to I need you to step aside as the journalist for just a second and help me know what questions are going to come my way and help me prepare for that. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Kim Tarlton — I will absolutely talk with you and I will absolutely lean in because we have this relationship, but can you help me…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …build into what I’m about to say or or these conversations I’m about to have.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so critically important.
Kim Tarlton — I would say um also preparing you know some of those press releases, like have that prepared ahead of time? Just a general note, you know, for immediate release press release. We’ve received this information or we know this information and this is ah what you need to know and how we are handling it. Being prepared in that kind of way to where you can go, let’s just say your communications director is is involved in the situation that is happening. For your leadership, your volunteers to be able to go, great, we now have a well-formatted press release. We have well-formatted email that would go out to all church. Um, we have this and it’s, it’s taken care of like, it’s already ready to go. We just fill in the gaps. What a win, right? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Kim Tarlton — Cause we don’t want to send out something that has spelling issues and all of that’s never fun. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. Kim Tarlton — Um, and then I would talk, of I would like from there, I would just go through like, what are the levels of communication? Um, one of the things that I’ve seen done really wrong. And again, this is, this is churches that I’ve been at. And so, you know, I, I was there too. Um, and we didn’t handle things right all the time. Um, and it’s those levels of communication. And what we end up doing is we go, there’s a crisis. We need to tell everybody what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Kim Tarlton — And we need to let everybody know. And then there’s this small group of people called our staff. And then there’s other group of people, our key volunteers, and then this other group of people, our church, that all start to go, gosh, why am I finding this out when the world is finding this out? Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah. Kim Tarlton — Why am I being communicated to when everybody else is being communicated to? Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s so true. Kim Tarlton — Um, and we’re not honest too. Sometimes we’re like, Hey, there was a problem and we took them off our staff list and like, everything’s going to be great. You know what? No, there’s a problem. Here’s what the problem was. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — We’re going to be honest with you. But build up that levels of where do we start? We’re going to start internally, and we’re going to make sure all the elders and all the executive leadership know. Then we’re going to make sure all the staff know what is the situation, how are we handling this. Then we’re going to build and we’re going to build those layers. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kim Tarlton — I think one of my staff members calls it something about like communicate to the egg. And so I like you know you the yolk. And then you have the like messy part of it, the egg white.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.
Kim Tarlton — And then you’ve got the frying pan, you know, you’ve got all the pieces. Rich Birch — That’s good. Kim Tarlton — And so like starting like, we have to start with the yolk and we have to build it out from there and put together our plan. I could go on and on and on, but I would definitely be leaning into um all these. And honestly, like you could you go into Chat GPT right now. Who doesn’t love Chat GPT nowadays? And you could say, Chat GPT, what are the things that I need to prepare in order to prepare my church, my organization for potential crisis? And you will get a list of things just like this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — …that you lean into and questions to to get answers for. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. It’s interesting that there seems to be, I think in these situations, there’s like two tendencies. There’s what you talked about, which was the like, it’s almost like an over communication. Rich Birch — It’s like, okay, you are like very quick to like, I think there’s a lot of, and and some of my best friends are lead pastors. Kim Tarlton — Yes. Rich Birch — They believe if I just get in front of people, I can solve this. Like we can stand up and just figure it out. Kim Tarlton — Right. Rich Birch — Or there’s the opposite, which is, leaders just go silent. Like something happens someone’s making accusations, they’re posting stuff online, and then we don’t say anything. And it’s almost like and in some cases they’ll even have like a like a gag order. We’re not talking about this and they believe if they just turtle, it’ll it’ll pass over. Kim Tarlton — Yeah. Rich Birch — Help us to discern, and I know every situation is different. It’s really hard to speak in generalities about this. But help us to discern when should we be thinking about, okay, we’ve got to do some kind of strategic communication here, or maybe we should just be quiet. What is too much? Again, I know, I know it’s a super nuanced question…
Kim Tarlton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but help us through that. Kim Tarlton — I’m probably not going to give you the answer that ah that you expect. Rich Birch — Yes. Sure. Kim Tarlton — Um, and for me, it’s like, one of the first things we have to do is stop and pray.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — And I I do believe, like and now now I’m not one of those, like I need a new job, so I’m gonna sit on my couch and I’m gonna pray, and then God’s just gonna drop a job into my lap. Rich Birch — No, no, that’s good. Yep. Kim Tarlton — I don’t believe that at all. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Kim Tarlton — But I do believe that if we go to God for wisdom and we go to God for what is it that we should be doing…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …in this situation, I believe that pastor that is maybe frustrated, that pastor that maybe is like, okay, we gotta do this, and we gotta do this, and we gotta do this, yes, we do. I want you to stop for a second and I want you to lean into prayer…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …and I want you to lean in heavy. And let’s let’s come together, this crisis management team that we’ve put together, we’re gonna come together and we’re gonna start by the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna pray.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — And Putting that prayer time in there is gonna allow you to now go, Okay, we’ve now cast all of our cares on Christ.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kim Tarlton — So now now, what is it that we need to do? And we’ve calmed and we’ve relaxed ourselves and we’re going, okay, let’s think through this responsibly. Let’s think through this well. I think the the prayer acronym, there’s like a prayer acronym, it’s ah p the P-R-A-Y, so you pause, you repeat, like repeat, God is good, he’s in control, he’s got this, right? We ask, God, we ask news reporters. We ask those people that that relationship, we ask. And then we yield, right? And so making sure we’re leaning in in that way and we’re learning and we’re listening to each other and we’re not, we’re not like in that crisis response. We’re in crisis communication, crisis management…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …not crisis response. So that’s, that’s what I would say. Stop. And just remember who who were her we’re for…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …like who are like this is this is all about. This is all about Jesus. And so like, let’s start there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. Yeah, I think that’s a great word ah for sure, because I think there are times where, um you know, we want to jump… by definition, leaders are biased for action kind of people. And even if that action is, we’re definitely not saying anything. But but slowing down and saying, no, like let’s let’s take this to the Lord and say, hey, what is it that you, how do we, at the end of the day, we want to see, kind of regardless of what the impact on our ministry is, we want to see the message of Jesus lifted up in this. And what is that? What? That’s hard to that’s hard to discern, right? It’s hard to know, okay, what and what is the best way to go from here? Kim Tarlton — It’s really hard to discern. And and um what it’s ah fear, it’s like fear-based, right? We we have a we, our discernment ah we have an inner fear that comes and we start to ask these questions like, you know do people really need to know what’s going on there? What you know what what’s what is this all about? Like is this is this reflection of the church, or is this a personal thing? So it’s like and then that those are all things that start to build up in us with fear. And so we start to respond wrong instead of saying, you know, I’m going to cast, ah I’m going to cast my cares on God. The fear of the Lord – that’s like, that’s the only fear that I have to deal with right now. Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Kim Tarlton — And so, yeah, bringing it, bringing it to God is like, um, it, it helps us calm the fire, you know? Cause like, as soon as crisis hits, it’s like this flame ignites, right? Rich Birch — Right, right. Kim Tarlton — Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, are there any principles there around, you know that we should be thinking about? And again, I understand, friends. I’m sure there’s people are listening in like, Rich, every situation is different but, but are there some general principles for us to be thinking about? You know, should we try to do a cascading communication here? How quick do we respond? Is it generally like is, or is it asymmetrical? Like, you know, over responding has a greater risk than under responding. So you would default towards, well, maybe we’ll try to take a more measured approach. Is there, are there any principles around that that we should be thinking about in this area? Kim Tarlton — I would, ah but you know, I’m, I would, for me, being prepared…
Rich Birch — Right. Sure. Sure.
Kim Tarlton — …you’re going to answer those questions before they come. Okay? Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — So like, in you being prepared, you’re not gonna go into this and go, are we responding too much, or are we not responding enough? Because you’re gonna think about the situation…
Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — …and you need to think about every, like we talked about like property disputes.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — Okay, that’s like a thing. You know, we had a ah church the within Church Communications Group that we were working with where um there wasn’t anything that happened like within the church. They they went and they did flyers on doors. And somebody was not happy that they received a flyer on their door. So they went into their social media account and posted a really ugly thing about the pastor. Not true, not at all true, but they were unhappy about this situation…
Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — …so they said something about the pastor, which now all of the sudden people are like, oh, well, this church is a massive mess.
Rich Birch — Yeah, wait a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Kim Tarlton — If we’re not, we didn’t talk about like, how do we handle this, which they hadn’t. Like, you have to be able to go any situation that could happen…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Kim Tarlton — …whether it is it is this, or it is that, how do we handle it? And that preparedness is going to allow you to respond the correct way.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Kim Tarlton — Now, there are things that you probably need to be doing as a church um that, like you can prepare your crisis plan, but there’s things that you need to be doing as a church on the regular that help keep you away from and help protect the church from potential crisis. I would say things like a background checks, right? There are so many churches out there that, number one, are not running background checks. Why? Because it’s expensive.
Rich Birch — Crazy. That’s crazy. Yeah. Kim Tarlton — That’s the worst reason to not be running a background check. Rich Birch — 100%. Kim Tarlton — Number two, they’re only running background checks with kid people that works with kids’ ministry. Okay? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kim Tarlton — That’s a problem because you now have some, you know, you now have open volunteer positions. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kim Tarlton — That’s hard. You’re you’re hiring on staff. If you’re only working with kids ministry, that’s one layer. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kim Tarlton — So I always encourage like do the background check. I know it’s expensive. but do the background check on anybody that comes into contact with people. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — And that’s like people go, whoa! Hold on! Rich Birch — No, no, no, that’s true. Kim Tarlton — So lot, now, obviously, if you’re coming into the church, that’s one thing. But if you are serving, if you are directly you know working with student ministry, kids ministry, if you are handing out flyers and um and and programs on the weekend, and you are coming in contact. There was a church that um, that reported like there was some, there was a guy just looking at women. Interestingly enough, they ran the background check and he had a background with women. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — And so it’s one of those like, you need to know who it is that you’re putting into service. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — I’m not telling you don’t have them serve. But what I’m telling you is make sure you have that background check. And make sure if you have somebody and you’re like, okay, this is somebody that maybe has had, uh, a questionable past, but we’re going to put them behind the counter doing guest services. Okay. So now you got to put a plan together with that person. We’re going to do a monthly check-in or a quarterly check-in and just see how you’re doing. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep. Kim Tarlton — Because if you’re struggling with coming in contact with men or women or anything like that, I want you to know that I’m a safe place to talk about that. And we are not going to like, we’re not going to put you in front of the church and make you feel bad. I just want us to have an open conversation and know that I am here. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — I am here to check in on. If you are struggling with something and I know that you want to follow what God has for you. I know that. And so but if you’re struggling, I want you to know I’m a safe place for you to come to and struggle. And and that I might have to pull you out for a season. But know that I am here for you, to care for you, and to love on you. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — And that I am a safe place. Doing those background checks, did you know like ah too, um you were supposed to, ah most churches are doing it, like if they do it, they do it with kids ministry. And then um one, they’re either not redoing the background check ever again, or they’re doing it every three to five years. Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Kim Tarlton — But you’re supposed to do it every year. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — Every year. Rich Birch — Right. Kim Tarlton — These are those kinds of things that like, oh my gosh, it costs so much money. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — But let me tell you how much it’s going to cost you when that crisis happens. Rich Birch — No, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kim Tarlton — Because that… Rich Birch — And and ultimately, like I think on these things, that’s a really good good word for sure. And I’ve definitely seen that with the churches I coach, that where the standard is shifting to anybody that is in a regular volunteer position, regular by defined as it’s ah you’re on a schedule. We’re moving towards getting all those people um background checked.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah. Yes.
Rich Birch — Because they have a level, even if they’re never over in the kids space, they have a level of influence because they have a name tag that says staff or volunteer. And you know there’s there’s risk there. And it also, I think the other piece of this, which is like um well back to when I was running that that summer camp, this is a really kind of dark way to think about these things. But oftentimes, when we would think about this, I would put it through the lens of, OK, so when I’m standing in front of the judge down the road, because something really negative has happened in our midst, and I have to explain what got us here, I want to be able to say, I’m I feel really terrible that XYZ thing happened. But let me explain to you the layers of stuff that we did that that could have prevented it.
Kim Tarlton — Absolutely. Rich Birch — And we still had an accident. We still had something terrible go wrong. But we weren’t negligent. We weren’t like we don’t have like years of email saying, we’re not affording the $25 thing for for this. Because, man, you do not want to stand in front of a judge eventually and say, well, Yeah, we it would have been an extra thousand bucks a year. Kim Tarlton — Right? Right?
Rich Birch — Like, what are you talking about? Like, that just isn’t, it’s just not worth it.
Kim Tarlton — No.
Rich Birch — And so, yeah, that’s a good word. How how often would you encourage churches to to review the this kind of crisis communications manual? Is this like an annual thing, every couple of years? What would you suggest?
Kim Tarlton — Yeah, I would suggest every year…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kim Tarlton — …that our crisis management team gets together.
Rich Birch — Yep. That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — First of all, you need to audit the team every year.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kim Tarlton — Um, let’s just say something happens within the team, or somebody leaves the church, right? You want to replace that position.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kim Tarlton — You don’t want it to just be like, Oh, we’re fine. We can do it without Susie or we can do it without Rob. Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — No, no, no. There was a reason they were in there. So let’s make sure we’re replacing if we, if we lose somebody we’re replacing. And then we want to look at it every year. The reason I’m saying every year, is because COVID, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — Like, did we know COVID was coming?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s true.
Kim Tarlton — No.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — Were we prepared for COVID? No. We don’t know what is coming. We don’t know what we don’t know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — And so us just continuing to refresh it, to keep our eyes on it, to know what is our plan and to make sure we’re building that right team. It’s it’s something, once a year, for a couple hours get together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Kim Tarlton — That’s not that big of an ask, again, when it comes to protecting your church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Yeah, good. It’s it’s again, it’s like insurance. It’s it’s preventative work. I understand every church has stuff that is crisis related in the fact of not this kind of crisis, but the like there’s always things right in front of you, but this is one of that stuff that we’ve got to push back and say, okay, let’s let’s take some time. You know we can we can invest a couple year couple hours a year, bring up the Google doc, let’s talk, let’s take a look at it.
Kim Tarlton — Yes.
Rich Birch — Do we need to update? What are we missing? That sort of thing.
Kim Tarlton — Yes.
Rich Birch — Um, this has been, this has been fantastic. A little bit depressing, Kim. We got to have you come back on and have, I don’t know, like how to make great Christmas flyers, like something very fluffy… Kim Tarlton — We can have a better conversation. Yes. Rich Birch — …next time. Kim Tarlton — Count me in. Count me in. Rich Birch — Yeah. Is there anything else you’d like to say just as we wrap up today’s episode? Kim Tarlton — No, I’m I you know I like I so ah like I said earlier, um you know I come up with a plan um and there are there are a lot of resources out there. Church Communications Group does work with churches on your crisis communication plan. There are some great great options out there and I would just encourage every church, like I can’t say that enough, encourage you to start building that plan and and reach out and find somebody that can help you dig into that plan.
Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. Kim, this has been great. Yeah, I’d recommend you reach out to Church Communications, Kim, specifically. If you’re, you know, you might be listening in, maybe you’re listening to this a couple of years from now and something is happening at your church that you need some help.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You should reach out. If people want to get in touch with you or with Church Comms, how can they do that?
Kim Tarlton — Yeah, you can just go to churchcommunications.com and um and right there um is all of our information. You can schedule a call. You can even just say on there, hey, I would like to talk to Kim directly and we’ll make sure that that happens. It’s a lot easier for me to give you churchcommunications.com than to try to give you my email address…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, I get that.
Kim Tarlton — …which is probably too hard to remember.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, I appreciate you, Kim. Thanks for being on today and thanks for all the help. Take care.
Marking a Milestone: Carey Nieuwhof’s Change Leadership Insights 10 Years Later
Sep 26, 2024
Thanks for joining us for today’s unSeminary podcast. Carey Nieuwhof has been a guiding light in the church leadership space for decades and this week we’re celebrating the ten-year anniversary of his podcast. To mark this special occasion, we’re revisiting an interview we did with him 10 years ago.
Do you have things at your church that you wish would just change? Do you have people that are resisting change, pushing against what you think is God’s vision for the future of your church? Tune in for the timeless wisdom and powerful insights Carey shares on leading change in your church.
Don’t expect automatic change. // Leading change is a skill, but the good news is that it’s a skill that can be learned. Leaders want change, but may expect others to buy into it before it’s been rolled out. Leaders then become frustrated when people don’t change. The reality is that people don’t automatically change and typically don’t like change. As the leader, it’s your job to show people a preferred future and to lead them there.
There will be resistance. // Opposition is a normal part of leading change. Everyone who is in your church today is there because they like it as it is now. There will be alienation among some of the congregation who will think things were better before the change. One mistake a lot of leaders make is assuming that loud equals large. Often the loudest opponents are only a small part of your congregation. It’s up to you to do the math and see what percentage of your people is really pushing back against the vision you feel God has given you. This group usually doesn’t have a competing vision for a better future and it’s not worth sacrificing 90% for the 10% who are discontent.
Have the humility to listen. // When you are addressing opposition, ask two questions. One, is there a biblical argument in the pushback? If there is, you do need to listen. The leader doesn’t always know best and doesn’t speak for God. Have the humility to listen but the wisdom to act on the things that will determine a better future.
Is this your target? // Secondly when facing opposition, ask are these the kind of people you are going to build the future of the church on? You need to focus on who you are going to reach, not who you are going to keep. You’ll only ever hear from the people already there, not from the unchurched people you’re trying to reach. Think about the person who isn’t in the room, not just the one who is.
Focus on the why. // Disagreements usually aren’t an issue of character, mission, or vision. Instead they are usually an issue of strategy. When leading change it’s critical to explain your “why” in all of your communications before talking about the “what” and the “how”. Why almost always unites while what and how almost always divide.
Rolling out communication. // Communicate change in concentric circles, starting with the core team to gather input before expanding the conversation to broader circles. This approach helps build support and creates a sense of ownership among team members and congregation.
Innovate and experiment. // Maintain core successes while exploring new ideas on the side. The longer you’re in leadership and the more successful you are, the more tempting it is to avoid change. An organization that loses it’s experimental and entrepreneurial side will fall off the cliff at some point. Preserve what God has built but never stop pushing yourself to innovate, experiment, and fail.
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Rich Birch — Happy Thursday, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s episode. You know, my friend, Carey Nieuwhof, has been podcasting for ten years. I just want to say that unSeminary was launched before Carey’s – I remember we got started the year before and but man, his podcast has gone just meteoric. He’s become so incredibly influential, through his podcasts, through all the different things that he does. And I just want to celebrate him. Carey’s a friend of mine, personal friend, know him from the real world. We actually live in the same town. I’ve had the privilege of working for Carey and we continue to do stuff together, but I thought what would be fun to celebrate the launch of Carey’s podcast is to actually go back into the unSeminary vault from ten years ago and replay a podcast interview that we had with Carey all the way back then. Rich Birch — And I was really listening to this episode recently, and man, it just does not get old. Carey is really evergreen when it comes to content. And in this particular episode, I was talking to Carey about change, and he talks about the fact that change is a skill. He gives some great stuff around handling resistant resistance, focusing on who you want to reach, building consensus, navigating personal challenges. It really is a fantastic episode. So I thought in celebration of Carey’s ten years of podcasting, that we’d go back and look at an episode from ten years ago and you’ll catch some of the brilliance of Carey that really is timeless.
Rich Birch — Carey, my hat goes off to you. You, I love that your influence continues to grow. I love that you continue to help people. For friends who are listening in, Carey’s the real deal. You should follow him. He’s a man of integrity. He’s the kind of leader that you should spend time getting to know. So for a long time listeners, you’re going to hear some retro unSeminary goodness. Our old opener, and some other fun stuff that we haven’t done in a long time. But here we are. Without any further ado, a ten-year-old interview with our friend, Carey Nieuwhof.
[unSeminary Opener]
Rich Birch — Hey everybody, happy Thursday. Rich Birch from the unSeminary podcast. Thank you for tuning in.
Rich Birch — Do you have things at your church that you wish would just change? Do you have people that are resisting change, that you’re just are pushing against what you think is God’s vision for the future of your church? Well, today you are in for a treat because we’ve got a special guest, Carey Nieuwhof, who I think is one of the smartest leaders in the country on the whole organizational change issue.
Rich Birch — He’s got some great stuff to say. Let’s jump into the podcast and make sure you come back after the interview because I’ve got a few resources I want to share with you.
Rich Birch — Alright, well welcome to the show. I’m so privileged to have Carey Nieuwhof on with us. Carey is a leader, writer, he’s a pastor, blogger, author. And I’m privileged to call him a friend.
Carey Nieuwhof — Yeah, Absolutely.
Rich Birch — And so thank you, Carey, for being on the show.
Carey Nieuwhof — Hey, thanks for having me, Rich. I’m really excited to be here, and excited about your podcast too.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much! Well, you know, Carey, you’re one of those leaders I feel like has been through a lot of change. You’ve seen a lot happen. I wonder if we could take a little bit and tell the story about the current ministry you’re at, and just a bit of your background, get people to introduce you a little bit, get to know you more.
Carey Nieuwhof — Sure. Yeah, you know, change has been the one constant over the 18 years that I have been in ministry. And it’s one of those things, Rich, that never goes away. So my story, my background, is I was not one of those people who ever thought I would be in ministry. When I was 8 years old, I decided I wanted to become a lawyer. I don’t know what needs to be wrong with you at 8 years old to want to be a lawyer, but it’s true of me.
Rich Birch — (laughing)
Carey Nieuwhof — So, I went to law school, and it was in the middle of law school that I really like, and I’m not a really a supernatural, charismatic person, but God intervened. And even though I was a Christian, and God made it very clear to me that there was a call to ministry. And it took me a few years to discern that. I finished law school.
Carey Nieuwhof — And in 1995 I came up to where I currently am, about an hour north of Toronto, in a little community called Oro, which you know, Rich. And I started with 3 small Presbyterian churches. My background was Presbyterian. We lead those churches through a significant amount of change over a decade. And then about 6 years ago, I left and we started Connexus Church. And, um that was a transition. Some of the same people but certainly not all of the same people, who were part of those Presbyterian churches went on to start Connexus, a church for unchurched people, and a North Point strategic partner. And even in that, even in the midst of that, there has been an awful lot of change in the last 6 years. So change has been the one constant, I guess. That, and Christ.
Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly. Man that, ya know, I often say to people, “Carey, like I said, he’s just been through a lot.” Now what would you say, you know a lot of people who listen to this podcast are obviously leading churches of all different sizes, but I think we’re all trying to figure out how to change our churches. Right? We’re all, you know, I think as in, bred in leaders is this desire to say “Hey, we want to make things better.” Um, how have you navigated, what were some handles that you come back to, time and time again, you’ve seen, Hey, this is some of the things we have to do as leaders to kind of successfully navigate that change?
Carey Nieuwhof — Well probably, and I didn’t know this right away, but I figured out over time that change is actually a skill, and leading change is actually a skill, and the good news is that it can be learned. There are principles that just work. And I think sometimes leaders find themselves in a trap where they really want change—I don’t know a single leader with his or her salt that doesn’t want change of some kind – that’s what makes us leaders—but we kind of expect other people to buy into that change before we’ve sold it, before we’ve really delivered on it. And so we’re waiting for people to change and then we get frustrated because they don’t change. And I think there is something, at first it was just instinct, that told me that that was just wrong, like people do not automatically change, and people don’t like change. And so, it’s up to you as the leader, ah, to really show people a picture of a preferred future, and to lead them there.
Carey Nieuwhof — Now there are good ways to do that, and there are bad ways to do that. And you know the one question I got all the time, because our little Presbyterian churches what we did was, we started to grow, and um, we sold three historic buildings within 5 years, and we moved into an elementary school. And that elicited some opposition.
Rich Birch — (laughing)
Carey Nieuwhof — You give up everything that they had known for over a hundred years. I mean, these are beautiful little red brick, historic buildings, ya know “Anne of Green Gables” type churches. And they sold them and we moved into an elementary school in the name of reaching people. And then we built a two million dollar facility, and then we left it a few years later when we left the denomination to start over again in movie theaters. I mean, because we thought it would help us reach more unchurched people in a non-denominational context, and with the model of ministry that we wanted to run with. So that’s an awful lot of change, and people don’t just stand up and wildly applaud when you announce what your strategy is.
Carey Nieuwhof — So we did get a lot of opposition. The question I would get, and that’s a long way of getting to this question. The questions that I always got is “Did anybody leave?”
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — And there’s a point at which, “well of course people left!” Like, what do you think?
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — Everybody who’s in your church today is there because they like it the way it is now.
Rich Birch — Hmmmm.
Carey Nieuwhof — That’s something every leader…like everybody that’s at Liquid Church right now, where you serve, likes the way it is now. One way or another. Maybe they may don’t like everything, but they like something about it. So if you are going to change, there is an inherent alienation that’s going to happen with everybody that’s currently a part of your tribe. It just happens, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes.
Carey Nieuwhof — We liked it better when Rich didn’t do podcasts.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — Right? I mean, you have that. It happens in your tv shows where they start a new character and your’e like, well, it was so much better when they didn’t have that character. Yeah know, it’s like, people don’t like that. And so the opposition get’s intense. But what happens…Here’s one mistake that I’ll share that I think a lot of leaders make, and I had to figure out how not to make this mistake…We assume, because opponents are loud, that loud equals large, loud equals large.
Carey Nieuwhof — So because your inbox is blowing up, or because your congregational meeting didn’t go very well, or because you keep getting pigeonholed after the service, “Hey, can I talk to you?” There’s fingers pointing, you just assume. And if you listen to the opponents, they will always tell you, “Everybody’s upset with this”, yeah know? “I’ve talked to everybody”. Really, you’ve talked to everybody? Ok, just checking. And so they, you just assume as a leader, loud equals large.
Carey Nieuwhof — But if you actually do the math, if you actually go through it, we learned early on, we should just do the math here. Probably that loud group of your organization is probably about 10%. And in the worst days it might be 30. Maybe it’s 50. I doubt it. I don’t think it ever got to 50%…
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — …in our worst moments. Um, but they’re just loud. And so you just have to convince yourself, I have to do the math and wait a minute, am I going to sacrifice 90% of the population of our organization for the sake of 10% who are not content? And often the people who are opposed to your vision don’t actually have a competing vision for a better future. So if you ask them, so where, what do you want to do, what do you want to accomplish? They’re like, “I don’t know, it just can’t be that way.”
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Carey Nieuwhof — Well you can’t go back, you can’t go back. So what’s your vision for a preferred future? And often the answer is, they don’t have one. And so then really, ok, so you are going to listen to the 10% of the population that doesn’t have a clear destination, that actually isn’t going to make it better. It doesn’t mean they are bad people, they’re just not going to make it better. And you’re going to sacrifice and jettison your whole organization for the sake of that?
Carey Nieuwhof — And then, if you’re involved in the church, or you’re a business and you think about, well that’s my existing customer base, those are existing users. What about all the market out there? What about, in my case, unchurched people? You’re going to let 10 people in a church of 100 control the future of 100,000 people? You’re going to let 100 people in a church of 1000 control the future of 100, 000 people? Do the math. So those are some lessons I had to learn early on, and we were fortunate enough to try to figure it out.
Rich Birch — Well, Carey, this is why I love you talking about change, cause, ya know it just falls out of you. It’s like, OK, well there might have been a bit of opposition about selling three buildings and merging and all this stuff. That’s amazing. Break down to, you know, maybe a personal story, or a time you remember when there was a bit of opposition there, um maybe from a source where you didn’t anticipate it. How do you deal with that?
Carey Nieuwhof — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because it’s not so much, I think for leaders that it’s like, there’s that person you don’t like. Maybe it’s just you, but there’s always people in every church where I’m like ah, I don’t really like them.
Carey Nieuwhof — I’m not going to listen to them.
Rich Birch — But then there’s the people that are a little closer, um, ya know, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with, you know, talk about something personal?
Carey Nieuwhof — Yeah. Well let’s do two ways. Number one, in the early days, you do get a lot of opposition, you get people standing up, emailing or pigeon-holing you or whatever. We learned as an elder board to ask this question, or two questions. Number one: Is there a Biblical argument in what they’re saying? Because if there is, I need to listen. And just ’cause I’m the leader doesn’t mean I always know best, doesn’t mean I speak for God. And wisdom does come to us, sometimes, even in the face of opponents. Even with your worst opponents, there might always be a grain of truth in what they are saying, even if their motivations aren’t great. So have the humility to listen, but the wisdom to only act on the things that really are going to determine a better future. The humility to listen, but the wisdom not to act on all of it. So, is there a biblical argument to what they are saying?
Carey Nieuwhof — Second question we learned to ask, and this one I still ask to this day is: Are these the kind of people we are going to build the future of the church on? Are they? And, um, in the early days, a lot of them were older, and there’s nothing wrong with older people. We have some very, very wise, older, senior adults in our congregation that we listen to. But sometimes, ya know, in our case, they were people we just couldn’t build the future of the church on. And even younger leaders, when you look at their lives, it’s like, I don’t really see a track record where you’ve accomplished a whole lot, or maybe your life, you sit in the critics chair all day long, and you say, this guy’s wrong, and that guy’s wrong. That’s just your life. You cannot build the future of the church on people like that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — People who are cynical, and negative and always opposed to something -you can’t build the future of the church on. Now, where it get’s tough, I remember about 10 years ago I had a letter from, and I haven’t talked about this publicly, but you asked so…
Rich Birch — (laughing)
Carey Nieuwhof — I got a letter from a key elder. She sent me a note and she just said, “I support you 100% and but this time I think you have gone to far.” And we were getting rid of the last of the old hymns. And I sat down with her and I mean we cried together, and I said, I just gotta disagree with you. I’ve gotta focus on who we are going to reach not who we are going to keep. And we tried to keep up our friendship, and she continued to serve in leadership. And I mean, I see her now, I don’t see her as much, our church is bigger and the whole deal. But whenever I see her, I get this huge hug and I mean, she’s well into her senior years now, but just an incredible woman.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carey Nieuwhof — And sometimes I think you just have to work through that. And I think one of the reasons that people get out of sorts with wise leaders, often it’s not with your best people, it’s not a character issue, it’s not a mission issue, it’s not a vision issue. Usually it’s a strategy issue. And so sometimes if you get to the point where some of your best leaders are saying like, if I’ve got five great leaders telling me I’m wrong, I’m probably wrong. So this is not like, you just go ahead and you just blaze trails. Every once in a while you have a Moses moment where you are going across the dessert all by yourself, you’re speaking for God. But I think a lot of time leaders think they are in those moments when they are not.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — But if you get to the point where if you’re with a leader, if you can isolate that to strategy, and I think the disagreement between this great woman and me, was a strategic disagreement.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — And it was a lot of change at once. So when we work through the strategy, it was just one of those things where I just think that the style of music that we are going to do in the future is going to be more effective at reaching unchurched people, you can sometimes reach an agreement. Or at least you realize why you are disagreeing, at the time, and that one was tough. Actually that incident, combined with a really, really tough month, I remember it was November 2002, sent me to a counselors office for the first time ever.
Rich Birch — Wow!
Carey Nieuwhof — So that was very personal.
Rich Birch — Ya, absolutely! Now, does she continue to be connected to the ministry today?
Carey Nieuwhof — Absolutely! She was there last Sunday, will be there this Sunday, gives, serves, I mean…has a great heart.
Rich Birch — Ya know Carey, I think that commends, that’s a good personal story. I think sometimes when we talk about change, right, that’s amazing. It obviously really meant a lot to her, obviously meant a lot to you, that you can come to a point of disagreement, but still not break relationship, is amazing.
Carey Nieuwhof — I did a couple of her grandchildren’s weddings, you know.
Rich Birch — Ah cool.
Carey Nieuwhof — She had a big birthday and the family invited me, Toni, my wife and I were there last summer. I mean, you can work through those things, but I would say you just have to figure out why you are disagreeing. I know with our current leadership, we try to find people whose character runs deep and who we also have a great chemistry with personally. That often the misalignment happens, never on a mission or vision level, not in the church. We believe in Jesus, we love Jesus, He’s great, ya know we agree on that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Carey Nieuwhof — The disagreement is strategic. And if you can isolate that, you will often at least understand why you disagree and sometimes find agreement even in the midst of that.
Rich Birch — So now what would you say to a church leader that says, “I want to make a strategic shift this fall or early next year, and I’ve got a core group around me that agrees with that,” but they anticipate a bit of resistance. What are couple just practical tactics to start with – you know, it’s not going to be the whole thing….
Carey Nieuwhof — Right.
Rich Birch — But one or two little first steps toward that change.
Carey Nieuwhof — Number 1: Focus on why. I think a lot of leaders get tripped up on what and how. And so the reason…its what Simon Sinek says that people buy why you do it, not what you do. And I think that’s true. You know, every time you open your mouth as a leader you need to explain why. So lead with why. Pepper all your private and public communication, your written communication, your vision casting with why, and then talk about the what and the how. But why almost always unites, and what and how almost always divides.
Carey Nieuwhof — The other thing I would talk about is, Patrick Lencioni calls it cascading communication. You can also look at it in terms of communicating in concentric circles.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — So start with your core team where you actually get input, then go a little bit wider to your next level. So we have a level of government in our system, the North Point system, call MTR’s, Ministry Team Representatives. We’ll bounce change off them first. Like, hey, this isn’t a decision, we just want to get your input. And then when people who are close to you, and share your strategic alignment but aren’t necessarily around the table, when they get input, just like well what about this, or what about that, buy in is much higher. And then you sorta go to the crowd, you know, and then you go to the community. So start layering it. And you know what else, people love to be the first to know. If you can give them…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Carey Nieuwhof — ….an inside track and we’ve just really in the last year really ramped that up. It’s like hey, I want you to be the first to know that this is something we’re looking at. And really not keep any secrets. I think once in a while a personnel decision is something you don’t talk about, but we always say, there’s no secrets at Connexus. We’re not going to communicate this publicly yet, but you’re in the room and you can know….we’re negotiating with Cineplex Odeon on a permanent deal. You know, if you can make it public, do. And then people feel like, I’m part of this. They feel some skin in the game, some ownership, even before it get’s trotted out publicly. And when you’ve got a hundred people sitting in a Sunday service where something is announced and they already knew it, you’ve already got 100 evangelists for change.
Rich Birch — Oh totally. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Anything else on this change topic? There’s a lot here. You’ve written a book on it. Anything else that you want to make sure we get in?
Carey Nieuwhof — I would just say, you know the big goal, and real short, is focus on who you want to reach, not who you want to keep. And the biggest thing that I find hangs up leaders in the midst of change, is that you are only ever going to hear from the people that want you to keep them. You’re never going to hear from the people who you want to reach. Unreached people don’t randomly email you and say, hey if you did this I would come to your church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carey Nieuwhof — They don’t do that. They don’t call you, they don’t text you, ya know, they’re silent. And so in the same sense that if you’re in a position of power, or influence, you need to think about how God wants you to use that power and influence and affect people who don’t have power and influence. I think when you are a church leader, or even if you are an organizational leader, you’ve got to think about the customer you haven’t reached, not just the customer you have. You gotta think about the person that isn’t in the room, not just the people who are in the room. And I think leaders that are able to maintain that focus and are able to share that focus widely in the organization are going to do the best when it comes to change, and creating a culture of change.
Rich Birch — Ya, friends, if I can just reinforce what Carey is saying, he actually lives out. A part of what I appreciate about Carey, his leadership, Connexus (their church), is when you cut them, they bleed “Hey, we wanna be a church for unchurched people.” That’s what they talk about all the time. They’re obsessed with it. Which really, I think does drive, like we were talking about there, leading with the why. It becomes the conversation piece – that is the benchmark upon which they judge everything. I appreciate Carey, your leadership, not only on the change, but then also on the focus of staying clear on that mission.
Carey Nieuwhof — I appreciate that Rich and you know just to encourage people, when we started to grow, most of our growth did not come from unchurched people. I’m 18 years into this. In the first decade it was probably about 30% unchurched people and 60% church growth. But that’s flipped. In the last few years, we’re 60% of our people are self-identified unchurched people. We don’t think, hey I think they are unchurched. They tell us they’re unchurched. And that’s great. And so remember that you can change something in 2 or 3 years, but it takes probably 5-7 years to transform it. And the transformation happens with change when it becomes part of who are and embedded in your culture. And so if you’re in the middle of change, don’t give up, you’re probably going to be most tempted to quit moments before your critical breakthrough.
Rich Birch — Alright, I said we are coming to the end but I have one more question I want to slip in.
Carey Nieuwhof — Go ahead.
Rich Birch — This is, again, a bit more personal. Do you feel, as you progress along in your leadership journey, just personally, you’re more open to change and more open to risk, or less? What is your own personal dynamics on that?
Carey Nieuwhof — Yeah, you know what, that’s a great question and I’m kinda in the middle of that right now. I think as you get older, and I think the longer you’re in leadership, and the more successful you become, the more change-averse you become. Particularly if something is successful, you’re really worried about wrecking it. I also think we are in the middle of a massive cultural shift. You write about it all the time, Rich, and you’re up on trends like crazy. So the way I am looking at it now, and I hope to write another book. The third book in the change trilogy will be on creating a culture of success. But the early notes on that for me at least are, maintain what you’ve got but constantly innovate and experiment.
Carey Nieuwhof — You can experiment on the side, and I think an organization that loses it’s experimental entrepreneurial, let’s just preserve at all costs, you just coming close to the cliff. And it’s just only a matter of time until you fall off. So I think when you’ve got success, and you’ve got momentum, and we’re in a season of momentum right now, you want to make sure that yes, you’ve got to preserve what God has built and what you’ve accomplished, but never ever lose. So I am pushing myself to innovate and experiment and fail. But you have to fail in areas that isn’t…Sometimes you gotta fail in areas that might cost you the whole organization. But I think it’s smarter to experiment on the side.
Carey Nieuwhof — And so we’re doing an social media experiment right now, and we don’t even know whether it’s going to to work. But it doesn’t cost us $50,000, it costs us $5,000. And we’re going to find out whether it works. We’re always adjusting the sails, and always playing around. And we’ll play, like we are doing something off model for a North Point Church, you know, we are not being disobedient or whatever, but we’re just trying some stuff that we’re just experimenting with. And if it doesn’t work, you just shut it down. So I think you can lose that and I think the older you get, the more successful you get, older in age but also older as an organization and the more successful, the less you will innovate and the less you will experiment.
Can a Church Stay Mid-Sized and Still Multiply? A Conversation About Growth and Vision
Sep 19, 2024
Welcome to an Office Hours episode of the unSeminary podcast. In our Office Hours episodes I’m happy to answer your questions that you can submit via an audio file through our website.
Mark Strickland is the lead pastor at Milton Bible Church in Milton, Ontario, Canada. His mid-sized church has about 300 attending on Sunday mornings, has a relational family vibe, and also ministries that connect with the community. They don’t want to stay comfortable with just filling two services and cruising along. They want to fulfill the Great Commission and expand, whether with church planting or multi-site.
Mark asks: When is the right time to church plant or go multi-site? What are the best practices when considering expansion as a mid-size church? And lastly, are there any permanently mid-sized, healthy churches that are models to look at?
When is the right time to multiply? // Healthy things multiply. In the ECFA New Faces of Church Planting study, one of the indicators for church multiplication is conversion growth. Take a look at the people who are coming to your church. If 51% or more of them are new people coming to know the Lord, that’s a good indicator that you should be thinking about multiplying.
Start casting vision now. // What is your current vision for multiplying? You may not be ready to start a new campus or plant now, but how can you start casting that vision, even if it is a couple years down the road? Start casting vision with your elders and your team around what God’s calling you to do in the future. Don’t look just at a growth spurt but a pattern of growth over time. Ask yourself if you are seeing sustained growth from people coming to know Jesus.
Are members ready to launch? // Post-COVID, the average church plant core team size is 18 and the average multi-site core team size is 45. The size and health of the launch team is critically important. Are there a healthy 45 people you could send to a community on the other side of town to launch something new?
Prepare for the financial side. // Another aspect to think about is the financial side of expansion. It’s financially taxing to launch a new site or plant a church. Often church planters rely heavily on fundraising the first few years. How could you start building financial resources to gift to a church planter to help them launch strong in a couple years?
Questions to ask yourself. // Not every church needs to be big, but every church needs to have a big vision for what God is calling them to do. What is the big vision that God could call your community to? What is it that He’s calling your church to that ultimately looks like the transformation of your community for the message of Jesus?
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Rich Birch here. Super excited for today’s Office Hours episode. What is an Office Hours episode, Rich, you might be asking? Hey, great question. I’d be happy to answer. I’m already starting off the top talking to myself. Rich Birch — Man, this is going to be a fun episode. So Office Hours are where you go over to our website, unseminary.com, and you’ll see at the top, there’s a place where you can drop an audio file, and I would be happy to answer your question. So why don’t you do that after today’s episode. Rich Birch — Super excited to hear from Mark Strickland. Let’s listen to his question, and then I’ll come back and try to offer whatever insight I can. Let’s listen in: Pastor Mark Strickland. Mark Strickland — Hey Rich, Mark Strickland here, hope you’re keeping well. I’m currently serving as a lead pastor at Milton Bible Church in Milton, Ontario. We are a Fellowship Baptist church, word and spirit church, kind of a Bapto-costal flavor, if you will. Mark Strickland — And we are a mid-sized church. We’re about 300 butts in the seat on Sunday mornings, and over two services, we believe we could be around 400 or 500 potentially, and we probably have about 500 people who call our church home. Mark Strickland — And so the question our elders are really wrestling with right now is this: We believe that being a mid-sized church is our sweet spot. We have a great kind of tension between having kind of a relational family vibe, but also providing a lot of great ministries and programming to both our church and our community. So that’s great. Mark Strickland — But we don’t want to get comfortable filling two services and then just kind of cruising. We want to fulfill the Great Commission. We want to see churches planted in our region. And so we’re aspiring towards that end. We’re planning towards that end. Mark Strickland — And I guess some questions we’re wrestling through is like, when is the right time to church plant or go multi-site? I’d say for us as a church, we’re at 300 right now, but we could grow still probably comfortably to be 400 or 500 on a Sunday morning. Mark Strickland — And then on top of that, coming from a larger church setting of say 1,500 people, when we went multi-site, it was a bit easier to say to 50 to 100 people, hey, would you consider going to plant this new site? You didn’t really lose that many people from your congregation. Whereas being a mid-sized church, if you send 50 to 100 people to go do a church plant, then you are sending away maybe 25, 30 percent of your congregation. And that can absolutely impact many things in your current context. Mark Strickland — So yeah, we’re wrestling through, when’s the right time to church plant or go multi-site? What are best practices when considering church planting or multi-site as a mid-sized church? Mark Strickland — And then we’re also wondering, are there any permanently mid-sized 300, 600 person churches that are exemplars or models to look at of churches that have done this well that are functioning healthily, mid-sized, but also fulfilling the Great Commission in doing church planting or multi-site or something like that? So yeah, those are just questions we’re wrestling through and would love to see if you have any thoughts on that. Thank you so much. Bye now. Rich Birch — All right. Great questions from Pastor Mark. Thanks so much for leaning in and for asking this question. Rich Birch — First of all, I need to declare my conflicts of interest right up front. So Mark doesn’t know this. I don’t think Mark knows this, but I actually lived in Milton, the town that he is currently ministering in when I was a kid. That’s part of why this question caught my attention. I lived there for a couple of years when I was in grade school. And so that’s probably good and bad for this question. Rich Birch — So really Mark is asking three questions. When is the right time for a church to multiply? Then there’s really this whole question around best practices of launching out of a church of 300. And then finally, are there really any exemplars of permanently mid-size churches? Rich Birch — Well, let’s take each one of those in order. First of all, when is the right time to multiply? So Mark, if I was sitting across the table from you, I would say, listen, healthy things multiply. At the end of the day, healthy plants, healthy people, healthy organizations multiply. Healthy churches multiply. Rich Birch — I was doing a little bit of research getting ready to answer your question, and I’ll link to these in the show notes. But the ECFA study on the New Faces of Church Planting might be interesting for you to go through your team with. And often one of the indicators for multiplication is actually conversion growth. Rich Birch — So I would look at the people that are coming to your church, the kind of new folks that are coming in. And because the reason what happens there is, as a church is seeing people come, if it’s brand new people, that would ultimately say, man, you are unlocking something in your culture that’s making a difference. In fact, specifically, churches with a conversion growth rate of 51% or more. So that’s half or more of your people are coming from people coming to know the Lord. Man, that’s a good indicator that you should be thinking about multiplying. Rich Birch — I think there’s a vision gap here. I think there’s an opportunity for you. When I think about this whole idea of when is the right time to multiply, I would be asking the question around, could you be casting vision to this? I’m going to talk into both sides of my mouth. I’m kind of tipping my hand where I’m going, Mark. Rich Birch — But being permanently midsize, that’s fine. But I would say, man, the mission is still to reach more people in Milton and beyond. And so what is your current vision for multiplying? Maybe there’s an opportunity for you to reach out and say, hey, we anticipate church planting down the road. We’re not sure what that looks like. We’re not sure what that looks like or when that looks, but we believe that God’s calling to us. So how could you start casting vision even now, even if it’s a couple of years out? Rich Birch — Maybe you take your leadership team to the Exponential Conference. Now, I know the Global Conference is sold out, but the Regional Conference in Chicago this fall. Or maybe you go to California for one of those regionals. You start to try to cast vision with your elders and with your team around maybe God’s calling you to plant a church down the road. Maybe there’s an opportunity for you there. Rich Birch — So interesting, one of the patterns that we’ve seen for churches that multiply, that either church plant or do multi-site, it’s not just a growth spurt, but it really is a pattern of growth over time. So multi-site churches that launched in the pandemic still have a median launch size of 60 people, and they grew to 95 within a year. Rich Birch — So think about that. Could you send out 60 people, which I know in a church of 300 is like a real number, 20%. That would be hard to do, could be hard to do. Rich Birch — But in order to sustain that, really what you want to discern is, is our church having sustained growth over multiple years, or have we just experienced a growth spurt? Because if you’ve been able to show sustained growth, then your ability to launch either multi-site or church plants long-term will be easier. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I’m saying there? Rich Birch — So when is the right time for a church to multiply? I really think healthy things multiply. I think you should be thinking about it now. I think you should be casting vision towards it. Even if it’s up over the horizon, the diagnostic tool I would ask you to think about is, are you seeing a kind of sustained growth? Rich Birch — Or is it the kind of thing where it’s not just that we had an extra 50 people show up, and there are 50 people from because our community grew, and there are people from out of town who moved into our town, but we’re actually seeing people who’ve come to know Jesus. All of those things would lead me to the place that would say, man, we should be thinking about. So does that make sense? Rich Birch — All right. So best practice number two. Best practice for launching out of a church of 300 or so. So this one is close to my heart, and I think you expressed the actual problem or concern of multiplying out of a church of 300, and I’m just going to declare my bias right now. Rich Birch — So I’ve talked about in other locations, in other… I talk about it all the time. It’s literally every week in my email. I say, I’m on a mission now to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. I do think that churches should grow larger, and there’s all kinds of reasons for that. And a part of the reason is to help with this multiplication issue. Rich Birch — So I think you have rightly diagnosed that sending 100 people could be really difficult. Now, that isn’t actually the normal size. So if you look at the actual statistics of people that were sent out, it’s actually quite smaller than that post COVID. The average church plant core team size was 18. Multisite, it was 45 on the core team. But this is my issue for you. Rich Birch — What I do know on both church plants and multisite campuses is the size and health of the core team is critically important. And oftentimes, we just think about the size of that team. But the question I would ask you is the health. Rich Birch — Could you send out a healthy 45? Is there a healthy 45 people that you could send to a community to launch something new? What could that look like? Could you find a planter and go to an outlying community or to the other side of town? Is there an opportunity for you to do that? Because I think you have rightly diagnosed the issue. Rich Birch — Another piece to think about is really the financial piece. And when I think about multiplying, whether it’s multisite or church plants, one of the things we just know is that it is expensive. It’s financially taxing to either be a church planter or to launch a multisite campus. You’ve lived in that world, but it’s difficult to pull all the cash together to make it happen. Rich Birch — And I wonder if there’s an opportunity for you now to even begin to build a war chest for your 300 people to start building financial resources to gift to a church planter, to give them, instead of giving them $25,000, which is apparently the number that church planters are using, according to this study, post-COVID. What if you tried to build a war chest of $100,000 or $200,000 to give to them in a couple years to launch them strong? Rich Birch — Because one of the things I do know about church planters is one of the things they joke about is, man, the first couple of years, they become really good at fundraising because that’s what they have to do all day long. Financial is a real issue, often. So 73% of church plants become financially self-sustaining at the end of year three. Rich Birch — So if you’re thinking about planting, multiplying, you’re going to think about how do we give them enough resources to keep them sustained over those years? I would start wondering about that now. Could we start setting those resources aside and try to accelerate the financial sustainability, basically give them more cash up front and shorten that runways to the point where they could be on their own? Rich Birch — Does that make sense? Okay, then number three, are there any exemplars of permanently mid-sized churches? Rich Birch — Okay, this is the part. First two answers, you’re probably going to like me, Mark. Third answer, you’re not going to like me. So I would challenge you on this. I’m not sure that staying small is a great vision. I’m just not sure. So this is where the fact that you’re in Milton is going to be a disadvantage for this question. It’s not just a random town. Rich Birch — So I know that Milton has exploded. I was looking up some statistics between 1991 and at 2021, Milton has grown by 350%. And it continues to grow at a rapid rate. And so my question for you is if all the churches in town just stayed the same size, the influence of Jesus is a third of what it was in 1991. And if we all stand around and say, man, we believe that God’s called us to be a church of 300, 300 and no more, then we’re limiting the message of Jesus in our community. Rich Birch — God has clearly given you something. You know that. God has helped you and your leadership team to figure out how to reach your community. Why would you put a cap on that? I would love for you to cast vision. Rich Birch — Listen, I don’t think it’s about, I don’t think all churches need to be big churches. I don’t think everything needs to be a giant church. I totally understand that. But maybe you, I do think you need to have a giant vision, even if your church is not giant. So could it be that God’s calling you to plant 30 churches of 300 in the next 10 years? Rich Birch — Before Jesus, before the 2000 anniversary of the birth of the church, before 2033. Maybe there’s some big vision there. So I understand that why you don’t want to be seen as like, hey, we want our church to be a big church. But my question for you is if Milton stays on the trajectory where it is now, and your church stays at 300, and it triples again in size over, you know, the next 15 years, 20 years, man, the voice of Jesus will continue to be extinguished in your community. Rich Birch — So I would challenge you to think about what is a big vision that God could call your community to? And what is it that he’s calling your church to that ultimately looks like the transformation of your community for the message of Jesus? Rich Birch — Well, Mark, man, love you so much. Thanks so much for stepping in and leading. I love what you’re doing at Milton Bible there and excited to see the future.
Rich Birch — If you’ve got a question, if you’re listening in and you’d love to get a question answered, I would love to do that for you. So just drop by unseminary.com. See at the top, you’ll see a link there. Click on it for Office Hours. Rich Birch — Thanks so much, friends. Have a great day. Take care.
Building an Inviting Church: Greg Griffith on 60% Growth in Two Years
Sep 12, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Greg Griffith, Lead Pastor at King of Kings in Omaha, Nebraska.
If your church does what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. But when you take a risk and step out of your comfort zone, who knows how God can use it to reach your community. Tune in to hear how King of Kings has taken some risks to reach out to their community in unique ways and the impact and growth they’ve seen.
Keep it simple. // As with many churches, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted King of Kings, cutting their attendance in half. Despite these challenges, Greg focused on the new attendees who began to come during this time, many of whom were eager to engage with the church and share their faith with others. To encourage growth and help foster a culture of invitation, King of Kings focused on a couple of simple, actionable items that they could put into place.
Big Sundays. // One of the key strategies they implemented was to create four big “inviteable Sundays” outside of Christmas and Easter services and encourage their people to think of at least two where they could invite someone to church. One example of a Big Sunday is “Jersey Sunday” which is held over Labor Day weekend and everyone wears their favorite sports jersey. Around Halloween, King of Kings holds “Super Sweet Sunday” and children are encouraged to dress up in church-friendly costumes and enjoy the candy that’s distributed.
It’s ok to be attractional. // Greg acknowledges that some people may view these initiatives as gimmicky, but he believes that they serve a greater purpose. If Jesus used simple elements like turning water into wine and feeding people with bread and fish to connect with them, then churches can also use creative and fun events to draw people in. Take a risk and do something that may make you a little uncomfortable and see what happens. You won’t see different results if you just keep repeating what you’ve always done.
Other invitable days. // King of Kings also holds four non-church invitable events. These are community events that don’t include a church service, for example a back-to-school event where school supplies are distributed, or offering a gift-wrapping service to the community around Christmastime. Greg underscores that the community events are meeting a need and helping in an area that stresses out non-churchgoers. The events are a gift to the community and have to be free. If someone wants to give money at the event, Greg encourages people to instead come to a church service to give, or donate online.
Church Growth Incubator. // Greg and his team are taking part in Church Growth Incubator, which is a one-year coaching experience that includes two calls a month and two retreats a year. It’s designed for churches who want to increase their invite culture. The program has offered actionable steps that have helped King of Kings grow and work toward their attendance goal.
Honor all generations. // As they look toward the future, one thing Greg and his team are wrestling with is how they lead to truly be a church that honors all generations and households. Regardless of where people are in life—single, widowed, empty nest, married with kids, married with no kids, divorced—King of Kings wants to help the church to honor one another in their neighborhoods and worlds so that all people can feel welcome and connected to each other.
You can learn more about King of Kings at their website www.kingofkings.org, and find Greg on Facebook and Instagram under the name “GregGriffithLeads.”
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. Today we’re talking with a good friend of mine, Greg Griffith, from an incredible Lutheran church in Omaha. First of all, Omaha is a great city. Lots of good things happening in Omaha. King of Kings is an incredible church in Omaha, and Greg is a friend. This is a fun podcast because often I’m talking to people who I’ve just met online. But Greg I know from the real world.
Greg Griffith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So it’s so great to have Greg on the show today. Greg, welcome. So glad you’re here. Greg Griffith — Thanks so much. It’s so great to be with you, Rich, and good to see you. And it’s been too long since we’ve seen each other in person. So. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. It’s true. Well, why don’t you fill in the picture? Tell us a bit of the King of Kings story. Give us kind of the flavor. Fill out the picture a little bit. Tell us more about the church. Greg Griffith — Yeah, I’ve been at King of Kings for five years. Started in August of 2019, so I was called here to stand on the shoulders of a giant, in our church body and a giant in Christendom, I believe, named Mark Zehnder. And, I had a charge to just take off further where he went. And then obviously, eight months later, I did the unthinkable, which is we had a church attendance of zero, so, due to Covid. But, so we’ve navigated through that over the past five years. Greg Griffith — But, King of Kings has been a church that’s always been innovative. They’ve been a pioneer, really, in our church body, from music style in the 80s, obviously making a shift from more traditional into a contemporary style, to making their own music. And then even moving from a church that look like a church into a 250,000 square foot industrial software microchipped warehouse, and making that their church home. And then and then today we’re continuing to innovate in how we do multi-site. And, King of Kings is a place that, truly, the people have a wonderful heart and posture to say, let’s do anything short sin to reach those who don’t know Jesus. And, it’s really been a joy and a thrill to be a part of this great church and this great community. Rich Birch — Nice. Yeah. It’s fun to, you know, to to interact with your church and get to know your team a little bit. Over these last couple of years and we’ve had I’ve had a chance to visit your church, which is which has been great. And so I’m really looking forward to kind of diving in a little bit. Rich Birch — A part of what caught my attention was, you know, I don’t know, at some point, you know, we’ll stop talking about Covid, but like it is a benchmark in all our brains. Like, I don’t know, you know, it’s like a it was such a dramatic moment. And then, you know, you’ve you’ve seen some really significant growth at the church…
Greg Griffith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …really from that milestone to today, which is, you know, there’s so many people, even I know there’s people that are listening in when when you said, oh, I started August 2019, every everybody knows, like, oh my goodness, what a crappy time to start in a church right before all that. But, you know, kind of post Covid, talk us through, you know, what does that look like? You were running about where and then today. And then what I want to do is unpack some of that. So tell us a little bit of that story. Greg Griffith — Yeah. So, post-Covid, as we came out and really got back up and running we experienced, what every church in America and maybe the world, I think experiences. We we had people that stayed fully engaged. We had new people that came, but we also had a lot of people that left. And so we went from worshiping pre-COVID of around 13-, 1400, to about 750. And so it was about, two years in, we started, I think, 500 and then about, two years into Covid, right around 2022 or so like that, we were like right at that 750 mark and it was like, gosh, we know these are raving fans. We have new people that are on board. They’re loving what we’re doing, but there’s a significant drop here. And, and church just looks different. And so, so what are we going to do? And how do we do this? Greg Griffith — And so, we really began looking at certain things to say how do we increase our invitability? Because I think one of the the keys that was important for us is we did have a significant portion of people who were new, new to King of Kings. And, kind of had come out and said, I’m like, I’m in for Jesus. Like Covid has taught me that, that I needed something stable and church and Jesus is that. And so they’re actually the dream of like when you have new people, they want to be your number one cheerleaders. They’re ready to tell their neighbors, they’re ready to invite people. So but we needed to say, here’s, here’s the things that are invitable and the things that we can do for those invitability.
Greg Griffith — And so we really began to hone in and say, all right, for our campuses, and at that time, we only had one campus. We, we looked at a couple just really concrete, actionable items that were simple that we could put into place. One of the things I think I had heard on your podcast or heard part of our, our, our incubator group, was that, you know, every one of us, as pastors, always wants people to invite every single weekend. The reality is people aren’t able to invite every single weekend.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Griffith — And so it’s an unrealistic expectation. And if you just keep laying it out there, eventually people go, I can’t do this. So it just becomes white noise to them. And so we really honed into that and we said, all right, let’s find for invitable Sundays and let’s, let’s really dive into this and say, hey, church, we’ve got four and invitable Sundays. We’re asking you to just find two, outside of the Christmas and Easter…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Griffith — …but like find two that you go, this really resonates with me, my neighbor, my friend, someone like that. And so we identified four, really big, identifiable Sundays. Big Sundays, as we call them. And then we also, said let’s, let’s press into four non-church invitable events. What are what are four things we can do for the community that aren’t church events, that you can invite someone to that isn’t inviting them to church? Because a church invite is a high bar, and that’s really hard for someone to go to. Greg Griffith — A back to school event for my kid, which every parent I mean, you know, my kids are all back to school here, this week. And, you know, every parent, my wife, as I was leaving the house the other day, said to me, “Hey, by the way, Greg…” She’s the money person in our family. She goes, “By the way, Greg, it’s been a really expensive month with, shoes and backpacks and this and that, and the other thing. If you could not spend money the rest of the month, that would be great.” And so luckily, I just bought my new running shoes. And so I was like, yeah, I can do that from now on. Rich Birch — I can do that. Yes. Greg Griffith — So I think we just really tried to press into, how do we get people to invite into the community? And and then I and then I think the other piece that we really look…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Greg Griffith — Yeah. Go ahead. Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to lean in on those big days things…
Greg Griffith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to start there. So, you know, I don’t one of the ways I describe a church like King of Kings, it’s like the it’s like the church of record, like it’s a, it’s a large church that has had, you know, a have a well-established, kind of, for lack of better word, brand or reputation in town that’s positive. People know the church. And Christmas and Easter, I can imagine that those are big days already in the in the life of your church because of that. What would be a couple of those other days that have been particularly helpful for encouraging your people to invite? And what does that look like from your side? Like, what have you done to try to help encourage those? Greg Griffith — Yeah. So one of our big, big Sundays, we call them is we do something in October. And it’s called Super Sweet Sunday. And so, our, our thing is we actually invite our all the kids. We invite the adults, we invite everyone. We have our our worship team wears them on stage. And so what they do is we say, hey, it’s usually the week before Halloween. And we say, you know what? Come to church in a church friendly, Halloween costume. And, and then we have more candy everywhere. I mean, the entire corridor is with all the candy. The entire kids area gets all the candy. I mean, kids walk out with more candy from church than they do from going out on the evening that that is actually where they’re going neighbor to neighbor and door to door. Greg Griffith — And, and and really what we want is this is where kids get super excited to come to church. They hear, I can wear my costume to church. And they just think it’s so fun. They invite their friends because they say, hey, why don’t you come with me? and they come to church and they have a great time. So that’s one of them.
Greg Griffith — Another one that we do. Labor Day is always a hard day. And so it’s what we do call a big Sunday. It’s a hard day for the church. And and so what we do on Labor Day, that’s fun, kind of invitable is we actually call it Jersey Sunday. And we have some jerseys that are King of Kings jerseys that people can buy.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Greg Griffith — But also we say, wear are your favorite sports jersey. College football’s big in Nebraska. We really still believe that we will win a national championship again in Nebraska, we believe that. Rich Birch — This is the year! This is the year! Greg Griffith — Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a God of miracles in Nebraska. So, so we do that. But then the other thing we do that’s, I think a lot of fun is, and it’s a lot of work on our worship teams, but they do it. They will have songs, and they’ve got two songs cued up for each one of our song sections. And the congregation live votes which song they want to sing. And so they do it via texting. Rich Birch — Oh, wow – that’s fun. Greg Griffith — Yeah, it’s so fun. People love it. And actually we also love it because we get due their texting, we get their information and can correct either cell phones we don’t have, or add cell phones that we need. So there’s always a piece there. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. I like that. Greg Griffith — Yeah. So so those are those are a couple of our kind of big Sundays that we do. In July, it’s not one Sunday, we actually July we call Sundays are for Sundaes. And so all of July, we just give ice cream away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Griffith — So your kid can have ice cream for breakfast. I can have ice cream for… like, who doesn’t want ice cream for breakfast? Like, we’ve just been told we can’t have this. Well, at church you can. And it’s calorie free…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. I love it.
Greg Griffith — …because, you know, Jesus has made it, turned, He turned water into wine. He can turn ice cream into healthy. So, I’m just kidding. But, you know, so.…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I love it.
Greg Griffith — …so those are those are the types of things we do. Just super low invitational. And and our goal is we want to attract people that go, hey, you think church is like what you think in your head. Come with me this week. You’re just going to it’s just going to be radically different.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Griffith — And and we know some people will say, well, that wasn’t for me. Some people though, or their kids, they love it. We’ve had many, many families who come and say, our kids say, can we come back? And that’s our goal. We really want kids to say, can we come back? Rich Birch — Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And you know, your church is has served so well, you know, so strong on the kids ministry front. Definitely, you can see that. What do you say to a leader who is listening in who may not know you? You know, I know the church. You guys love Jesus. You like actually talk from the Bible. You have like actual, you know, like you really want people to take steps towards him.
Greg Griffith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But they hear all this stuff and they’re like, it just all feels very gimmicky. Like I, you know, I are, man, I just why am I a part of it? I wouldn’t, I don’t want to do that stuff. What would you say to a church leader who’s who’s who would say that to you about these kinds of things? Greg Griffith — Yeah, I do think it’s gimmicky. And I think gimmicks are okay.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Greg Griffith — I, I’m okay with that. And, and I get it that that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I would say this: I think if, if Jesus can use, right, water into wine, if he can use a couple breads, loaves of bread and, and fish and, and if Jesus is always looking to grab people where they’re at and then take them to a step that they didn’t even know they were wanting to go. And it really comes, I think, from our our theology is, you know, I think I really believe everyone everyone wants to love Jesus. They just don’t know it yet. And and so if you can get them in a door to, to have that preconceived notion that they have that they’re not welcome, church isn’t fun, Jesus God doesn’t laugh. Yes he does. I think God laughs all the time, I think. And so so if we can get people to see that, that God is good and God is gracious and God is fun, and that your kids can have fun. And and faith, is not this just kind of what we have in our mindset of like or what we grew up with that we think as a child that probably wasn’t fully true. I think we can. Greg Griffith — I also I I think when you were on our site visit or I think it was maybe an, in a podcast, I heard with you, right? Every one of us has attraction in some way, right? If you have a sign outside your church, that’s an attraction.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Greg Griffith — If you clean your bathroom.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Greg Griffith — Like you are saying, we want you to say, this feels nice. Like I can go to the bathroom here. Like that’s attractional. So we’re all attractional to some level. And and I do think you as a church have to just find where is your level, and, and that’s okay. And then and then sometimes I would say if your level is pretty low, maybe, maybe just say, hey, what if we tried one thing, right? What if we…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.
Greg Griffith — …what if we tried something, something a little bit different? Maybe, maybe if you live in a beautiful place, like like I used to be in, in Michigan, one of the things they tried is they said, let’s move service in the summer outside because Michigan summers are amazing, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Greg Griffith — And so, yeah, have an outdoor service…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Griffith — …like that’s a new attraction, a way to invite someone. So that’s what I would say. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. I love that. I think there’s something to there too about like, hey, you know, if you, if you’ve always done what you’ve always, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.
Greg Griffith — Right.
Rich Birch — You know, if you just keep repeating what we’ve always done, you’re not going to see new results. And so, you know, trying something new, trying to say like, hey, well, maybe we could take a risk here and do something that maybe makes us a little bit uncomfortable. And and see what happens. You know, I think is, is good advice. I think, you know, at the end of the day, you know, why people arrive as the people arrive at our church for all different kinds of reasons. The question is, when they actually get here, you know, what are they, what are they encountering and they encountering, you know, teaching that points them towards Jesus? Are they encountering a community of people that love them, that want to care for them? Rich Birch — Let’s talk about those non-church events. You know, back to school. What would be some of those other things that you’ve done as a church that have helped you, you know, become more invitable, help you be the kind of place where people will, you know, invite their their friends and connect with their, their community? Greg Griffith — Yeah. Our back to school event is a huge invite. And that’s something where we just we give away backpacks and school supplies. It’s grown every year. When we started here at King of Kings, we had just under a thousand people come. Last year, we had about, 1800 to 2000.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Greg Griffith — This year we just had it. We had 3000 people on campus. It just continues to grow and grow. We also do, at our northwest campus, our second campus, they do a, they do a Trunk and Treat, and, invite just congregation and community to, you know, decorate their trunks. And then kids and families can kind of walk around and pick up candy and do things in their costumes. And that started that started with a thousand people on their, their first year doing that. So I’m not sure what it will look like this year, probably even greater.
RIch Birch — Wow!
Greg Griffith — And and our key, so we have two keys in, in all of our community events that we do. First, they have to be free. So that’s just us. We really say if we’re going to invite the community in, we want it to be free. And and so when, and occasionally someone will walk up to one of our staff or me and say, hey, I have some money, can I give a free will donation? And our answer’s: no, you can’t. And they go, why? And we say, well, this is this is our gift from our congregation to the community. And they say, well, how can I do this? And I say, if you want to come on Sunday and put it in the offering plate or you want to give online, you’re welcome to do that. But but this is a free event for our community. Greg Griffith — And, and then one, I think that that actually is not necessarily a community event, but we’ve seen some really great traction out of it is we do we are we are one of the site locations for the Tim Tebow Foundation Night to Shine. And, people love to serve. And we’ve been noticing we we have more non-church people, and I would say even some just non-Christians, but they have a heart to want to make a difference, especially in the lives of kids and people with developmentally disabilities. And so, so, so that’s been something where people have experienced just a heart of Jesus in a way, that’s for our community, and, and where they’re actually then serving into our community. So those are, those are a few of the things that we do. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. We talk about those, you know, community service type events as magnetic community service. This idea of getting people, you know, out of out of their seats and into the streets to actually make some sort of difference. And, you know, people want to be a part of a church that not only makes a difference, but is seen making a difference. And they will, you know, they’ll tell their friends about that. They’ll, they’ll communicate that. And, and the the Tim Tebow Foundation has done just such a good job packaging up that experience into like a… It’s still a ton of work. It’s not like it’s plug and play. It’s not it’s not easy. I don’t want to give that away. It’s a it’s a ton of work, but it is a compelling idea. This idea of like, hey, here’s some kids who don’t, have a prom. And what if you were to provide that experience as a as a church. Like, it’s also a huge volunteer ask, which and, you know, it’s, it’s the kind of thing that people want to be a part of. They want to engage and they want to say, hey, I would I’d love to be, you know, I’d love to do that for sure. Rich Birch — That’s good. Well, you and I are a part of I lead a thing called the…Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Greg Griffith — Oh, no, no, no, I was just going to piggyback off that, Rich, real quick. I think one of the things we’ve really learned with, especially community events, is asking the question, around our community and our non churchgoers, of what are some things that stress them out, and then how can we do a community event that meets that need? And so the back to school event is there’s a lot of families like like this time is a really expensive time for them. It’s really hard. And for many families living paycheck to paycheck, it just gets really tough.
Greg Griffith — I think the other thing is, you know, we do a Christmas event, and wrapping gifts and getting gifts when your kid is always around. So we’re like, hey, give us your kid. Go shopping for the day. And then when you come back, we’ll wrap the gifts you bought for your children. So so really, how do we… We’ve learned here in Omaha, one of the biggest needs right now is people feel super stressed out. And so we’re saying, how do we alleviate some of that stress and not add on to it through our events? That was all. That’s the last thing I want to say. Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. No, that’s good. Well, you you I’m a part of it. I run a thing called Church Growth Incubator, and it’s been such an honor to have you be a part of that. That’s a it’s a one-year coaching experience. Includes, you know, remote calls we do, or two calls a month, and we do two retreats a year. It’s really designed for churches that are wanting to increase their invite culture. We try to provide some kind of consistent coaching feedback, really pressure on this issue, trying to help, you know, help churches ultimately increase, you know, their invite culture. What part of that for you has been the most helpful? When you think of like, oh, hey, this this piece of Church Growth Incubator, this, this part of it has been the part that, man, has has been the most helpful for us through these last couple years, as we’ve been as we’ve been plugged in. Greg Griffith — You know, I think I would say this, I’m I’m always thankful for anyone that’s willing to pour into another church and expertise that they have. I’m especially thankful, Rich, when it’s in ways that are applicable that can be implemented. And and it’s not like, here’s 45 things. Choose the ones you like. Like that’s too much. It’s really it’s you give actionable steps, and simple things to do, and we do them.
Greg Griffith — So case in point, right around before Christmas in our first year, you asked the question, what is your Christmas recall? And and you said, here’s a couple things I do, right? What is your January series? have that marketed out in your A-frames. have that on your guest information cards. And then and then here’s a couple templates for how to send that out after Christmas Eve to invite people back to the January Sunday. Greg Griffith — And New Year’s, people have resolutions. And church is always a resolution for those who aren’t attenders. I mean, it’s just one of the ones. It’s like losing weight, right? Like I’m going to lose weight this year, right? I’m going to go to church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Griffith — And so, we employed that. We did, we did. And we plan on that series. We employ that. And the the weekend after Christmas that we meet again is is now in our top five highest Sundays, which before was always a lower Sunday.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s incredible.
Greg Griffith — But but now it’s just, it’s, it’s right up there. So the, the, the Church Growth Incubator for me has been really helpful because our teams can take a couple things and say, oh yeah, and then put that into place. We’ve changed all of our, our terminology. We’ve, we’ve now gone to, Are you newer here? Right? Rather than necessarily first time guest, or go to our next steps rooms. Now it’s a new here area. And because some people be coming in for a month and you go, are you first time? And they go, no, I’m not a first time. I’ve been here a month, but I haven’t wanted to engage. And so so this this allows them to still do that.
Greg Griffith — We’ve just gone to for, for our newer here people, one of the things we learned was give people options. So now we offer a coffee mug, a water bottle, or a t shirt. And we’re seeing connections of more connections now, people going, Oh, yeah. I would love to pick one of those. Right? Because if I bring another coffee mug to my house, my wife’s going to kill me. So I can’t bring any more coffee mugs, right? You know?
Rich Birch — That’s hilarious. Yeah, sure.
Greg Griffith — But a t-shirt? Man, I love a t shirt. I mean, for some reason people love t-shirts. I don’t know why. So, yeah, it’s been it’s been. Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true. Greg Griffith — This is a been a coaching thing, a coaching incubator, not only where I’ve met really great pastors who are all, have the same mission, mindset and teams that are saying, let’s go and just reach more people for Jesus. But the the actual implementation of ideas, is stuff that we can actually do. And, and that when I bring them to our teams, they don’t go, oh. Like, because as a senior pastor, we can bring ideas and ideas and ideas. But a lot of times we bring ideas and your teams are exhausted already and they’re just like, okay. And they have a pressure.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Griffith — And this has been, hey guys, here’s here’s what we learned today. And they go, oh yeah, we can do that. We just haven’t had that system all fully put out. And so then they do it. And then we see these great results. So, yeah. So today I mean since we’ve been a part of this we’re now worshipping over 1200 people a weekend. So in the last two years…
RIch Birch — That’s amazing.
Greg Griffith — …we’ve had a growth of 500 people, new people. I love it. Our staff continually say, we look around and we’re not we don’t see people we always recognize. And I go, amen. That’s great. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. That’s great. Well, it’s it’s super encouraging. It’s encouraging for me as a coach to hear that. And, and, you know, I’m on my personal mission is to help 100 churches grow by a thousand people. And like, I, you know, I’m super, it’s an honor to engage with you guys as you’re on that way, you’re on that path towards, you know, you’re halfway there towards seeing…
Greg Griffith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, that kind of growth. And I and I think the trajectory is heading in that direction. When you think about the future, Greg, you kind of look up over the horizon, what are some of those questions you’re asking? What’s kind of coming down the pipe for you at King of Kings? What are some of the things that you’re looking at, looking at or up over the horizon, you know, that you’re wondering about as a leader? Greg Griffith — Yeah, I think we’re we’re wondering right now about, and actually we’re just really wrestling through this, how do we, as a church lead to be truly a church that honors all generations?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Greg Griffith — I think we’re we’re discovering and I think it’s a subconscious issue. You know, all of us kind of look at, like, right now, boomers are not seen in the greatest light. And and gosh, that’s not honoring. I mean, we’re standing where we stand because of what boomers have paved the way for. And then and then too, it’s really simple to cast shade. Every generation has been cast shade upon by generations above them. And and we’re really saying, I think God’s calling us to honor all generations, right? Love your father and your mother.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Greg Griffith — Right? And so so we’re saying, how do we, as a church, honor all generations and and all households? Single, widowed, empty nest, married with kids, married with no kids, divorced. Like, so so we’re really pressing into how are we, how are we as a church helping one another honor each other, in our world, in their neighborhoods…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Greg Griffith — …and where they’re called to minister as a priesthood of all believers. So so that’s something we’re really wrestling through. Not only what will Sundays look like for that, but even our language and even who’s on stage. Who’s, you know, who’s on our websites? Who are the pictures? All those things. Rich Birch — That’s good. I love that. I love the, you know, as a church looks to try to reach, you know, more of its community as you start to wrestle with, like, oh, like, I think, you know, God’s given us a shot here to make a huge impact in Omaha, as you link arms with other churches. And, I love that heart of trying to say, hey, like, maybe, you know, maybe that means we’ve got to figure out how to to broaden who we connect with. Not just like, hey, this is it’s just a church for people with kids. And, you know, if you don’t have kids, forget it, you know, kind of thing. So that’s cool, man. I love that, Greg. Rich Birch — Well, Greg, I appreciate you, love you, love your church. I love, you know, you’re you have such a huge heart. And it’s it’s fun to see you lead and to see you connect with, you know, with your people. So I just want to honor you today, on the podcast.
Greg Griffith — Thanks, man.
Rich Birch — So thank you so much for that. I want to give you the last word. Anything else you want to say just as we wrap up today’s episode? Greg Griffith — You know, I think my last word is, I would say I thank you, Rich, because you’ve helped us. And I hope you help many, many more churches figure out how to break through the, the ceiling that they’re at. We all get to a ceiling and we either get to where we say, you know what? This is just who we are, and we get stuck there. Or we get and we say, oh, there’s no way to get to get higher. And we fail and we quit. Or we figure it out. And, I thank you for helping churches like us, and I pray many, many more, to figure it out and to break through that next ceiling. And know when they hit another ceiling, like we’ll hit another ceiling that we know, Okay, we can just figure this out. So so thank you. Rich Birch — Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate you, appreciate your leadership. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Greg Griffith — Yeah, you can track with our church at our website: kingofkings.org. And then on social media, my handles on Facebook and Instagram are @greggriffithleads. And, yeah, and anyone can reach me anytime.
Building Trust and Unity in a Fast-Growing Church: Drew Karschner’s Insights on Empathy and Authenticity
Sep 05, 2024
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. This week Drew Karschner is joining us. He’s the Lead Pastor at Northridge Church in Rochester, New York – one of the fastest-growing churches in the country.
While church growth is a blessing, it often comes with hardships that must be navigated carefully. Whether your church is wrestling with racial tensions, political division, or simply difficult life events, your leadership skills and resilience will be tested. Tune in as Drew shares how to foster an environment where all voices are heard, lead with empathy and understanding, and build the resilience of your staff.
Acknowledge the hard times. // Church leaders often find themselves in a position where they must balance optimism with realism. You may be trying to cast situations in a hopeful light when people aren’t ready to see it. Acknowledge when things are hard and be honest with your staff and congregation about the challenges they face. Make space for lament and empathize with your congregation’s struggles, but also cast a vision for the future and where God is leading you to go.
Be open and honest. // People want their leaders to be real; they know when you aren’t being authentic in your leadership. Drew believes that being real and honest with your congregation helps to bridge the gap between different perspectives within the church.
Be a “church in the middle.” // If churches want to grow and reach their communities, by definition they have to get used to a wide variety of people. Rather than taking a polarized stance, Northridge Church seeks to empathize with all the people they shepherd in order to lead them all to Jesus. Listening to different perspectives and engaging in conversations that may be uncomfortable are necessary for growth. This approach has allowed the church to grow in unity and diversity as they strive to represent the entire community.
Navigate through the pain. // Leadership can take a toll on you personally, particularly when navigating pain and conflict. Your capacity is often determined by the amount of pain you can endure. Yet Drew expresses that it is a joy to navigate through the pain and see how God uses it on the journey. Similarly, it’s important to maintain relationships and trust even when faced with challenges. Resist the urge to become isolated and stay open to connection and support from others.
Create open conversations. // It’s critical to build a resilient team so that you can stand strong together when facing difficult times. Hold open conversations with the church staff so people can talk about their feelings surrounding complex issues. Create a safe space for expression and dialogue to help people heal. Drew also maintains an open-door policy, letting his staff know that he’s available to them.
Let staff know how valuable they are. // Staff members want to know they’re valuable. They want to be paid well, but churches don’t always have the budget to give their staff the money they wish they could. However, you can come up with creative ways to let your team know they are appreciated. Northridge Church demonstrates this in a variety of ways, from monthly catered lunches and family retreats, to honoring staff members with sabbaticals for their service, gift cards and more.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You’re gonna wanna lean in for this one. Today, we’ve got Drew Karschner with us. He is the lead pastor at Northridge Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And I can tell you, it’s in a part of the country that frankly, they don’t make fast growing churches there. Rochester, New York – they’ve got three locations if if I’m counting correctly, and they aim to make more and better followers of Jesus by creating environments ah for people to belong, ah to belong, sorry belong, believe in Jesus, and become more like him. Ah Drew, so glad you’re here today. Thanks for for being on the show.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, dude, I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Nice to get a chance to connect. I’ve actually had a little bit of a chance to interact over the years with Northridge. This is a fantastic church. And so I’m pumped to get a chance for to introduce you to some new friends. So kind of fill in the picture. Tell us a bit more about Northridge. Kind of give us the flavor of the church. Kind of tell us a little bit of the story.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, we’re your typical modern church. We got we’re multi-sites. We have three locations. We aim to saturate Rochester with the gospel. We’re growing. It’s amazing to see what what God’s been doing in an area where I feel like the church has been forgotten. Um he’s bringing it what’s cool about Northridge is he’s really bringing people who with no church background and they’re experiencing and getting to know and growing in Jesus. And so, um man, I love it here. Rochester is our home and I love taking back what the what feels like the enemy stole.
Rich Birch — Oh, so good. So good. Well, I know that leading in a fast growing church, it’s just easy all the time. There’s just never any problems. Obviously, that’s tongue in cheek, obviously leading. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your your kind of history with Northridge to kind of set up the context? How long have you been there? Kind of tell us a little bit of that story.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I’ve been at Northridge for about eight years. Um It was really an answer to prayer. I served in the South for 10, 12 years in ministry. And I’m from the North. So Ashley and I started to have kids, and we’re like, okay, God, like it would be awesome if you brought us home. And Northridge was an answer to prayer. And so it’s like you said, it’s just been an easy, amazing eight years, right? Seamless, no problems, perfect picture of what I wanted it to be.
Rich Birch — Yeah, obviously tongue in cheek. There’s obviously always a certain amount of hard stuff that we’ve got to navigate in, ah you know, in any church. But we were joking about this before we got started. I, you know, I think there’s lots of people that say, man, it’d be so great to lead in a fast growing church. I’ve had a chance to do that. But it is ah just a lot of hard work. There’s always seems to be something going on.
Rich Birch — Kind of tell us a bit about that. Give us some context. What would be some of the things that come to mind when you think about navigating kind of difficult situations as a lead pastor of a fast growing church?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, just for the record, I was one of those young bucks who thought leading a a large church would be amazing. And let me just preface this. It is amazing. It’s a blessing from God. But sometimes blessings from God comes through difficulties. And so over eight years, we’ve had to navigate some hardships, right? From, you know, COVID was just a wild, transition disaster of like, what what in the world do we lead? And to make matters worse for me, um my dad died surprisingly two months before COVID ever came out.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Drew Karschner — So like, I’m trying to navigate grief and lead a church through a really difficult time from disease to racial tensions. Um We had racial tensions in downtown Rochester. One of the clips on the news was right in our backyard.
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.
Drew Karschner — Um, so we’ve had a lot of staffing issues…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drew Karschner — …transitions. And so I, you know, when things are going good, I have this running joke with our executive pastor. We’re all like waiting for the shoe to drop. Like what…
Rich Birch — Waiting for the other shoe.
Drew Karschner — …what’s coming next.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s that’s incredible. What about, you know, so when you think about these things, um I’m sure you’ve had a chance to reflect a little bit on them. What would be you know some of your go-to kind of advice or axioms that you would give to another lead pastor or another, you know, leader when they’re trying to navigate some of these? What would be some of those things that kind of come to top of mind for you?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I think one of the biggest thing I’ve I’ve learned is usually when you’re leading people, there’s two camps, right? You have your half glass full, and you have your half glass empty people, right?
Rich Birch — So true.
Drew Karschner — I am a positive person, okay? And so like, it doesn’t matter what I’m going through, you can ask my wife, my favorite expression is, “the good news is, baby,” because I can see light in any darkness. Here’s the problem when you’re leading people is you might be casting that light and they can’t see it. And so one thing that I’ve learned when you go through a hard thing with a team or a church or a business or whatever it is, you have to be willing to admit it sucks.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Drew Karschner — You have to be willing to just be honest with ah you’re the people you’re leading. Like, guys, this is hard. And really meet people in the midst of the hurt or what they’re feeling. Because there have been times where I’ve tried to lead and just just express the positive, express the positive…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — …and and I really lost trust because people are wondering, like, does he not see what I’m seeing?
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Drew Karschner — Like, is he not feeling what I’m feeling? And you can almost alienate people who are feeling different than you. And so I’ve learned, hey, man, I gotta to be willing to admit the hardship and not try to spin it in a positive way, but just sit in the darkness, right?
Drew Karschner — I think this is scriptural, right? Lamenting is not something we love to do, but it’s something we need to do. And I’ve learned, as a positive person, it’s okay sometimes to just admit when things are hard and difficult.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I can see that tension. I know as a leader, you know, by definition, we’re trying to move people from where they are to ah to a more desirable future. And so we live in the future. We live in the like, hey, how things could be. And when things are negative, part of what our job is to try to cast a vision for a better future.
Drew Karschner — Yep.
Rich Birch — And but if you’re so far out in front of people, man, you can just let people look at you like, who is that guy? That guy’s just not, he doesn’t live in the same world that that you and I live in. How do you, how do you manage that tension? Maybe give us an example of that where you’ve tried to acknowledge where we actually are, but in order, but also try to catch a cast a vision for a better future. What’s that look like?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I think just admitting it’s hard, you capture those people, right? I’m not saying, hey, we need to camp out in the darkness and get to a place, like I think people, you can go too far that way as well, where you just depress people and they can’t see.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — So the the hard job as a leader is to help not lead half your church, but all of your church…
Rich Birch — So good.
Drew Karschner — …including people who are negative and people who are positive and say, hey, I’m going to walk with all of you. And if that means I got to admit some things are hard, but I’m also going to say, hey, this is hard, but here’s where we’re going. I’m gonna cast a vision to like, God’s gonna use this; he’s gonna move us to a better place. But some sometimes we have to admit God uses, like almost all the time God uses hardships in our lives…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — …to make us more like him. And so you gotta be able to admit the hardship, but cast a vision for the future and where you want people to go. And I think when you do that, you lead everybody, not just people like you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. There definitely seems like there’s a generational thing. I know when I first started in ministry, when I looked at the kind of generation that was ahead of us, um that generation, I think people were actually looking for leaders to be completely disconnected from real life. It was like they were, you know, they were wholly different, where I i don’t think that’s true now. I think people are looking for authenticity.
Drew Karschner — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How do you balance that out as a key ah key leader? Obviously part of what we’re talking about here is this authenticity to kind of acknowledge where we are, but that also bleeds into your teaching, bleeds into, you know, when you communicate. What, how does authenticity work out in your, in your leadership?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I’m you get what you get, right? Whether you like it or not.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — And I’m real. I think you’re right. I think the culture is shifting and people just want real, authentic you. And when you’re not that, they can tell. They’re really good at being like…
Rich Birch — Yeah, they can smell that for sure.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, you’re faking it.
Drew Karschner — And so I just be me, right? And God wired me the way I am. And I’m an emotioner, emotional guy, I’m a feeler. And so when I feel something, people are going to see it in my face, they’re gonna, they’re gonna see it in my expressions. And so I am real, when I lead. And so when things are hard, I’m just like, guys, this, this is hard. And man, I don’t want to be here. When things are good, I’m gonna you’re gonna see it in my face, I’m gonna be full of joy. I’m gonna walk around joking. And so I’m like, If I got a bad day, there’s going to be times where people are like, you’re having a bad day.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — I’m not going to try to spin things. And I’ve learned that. When I was a young, insecure leader, I think I think some of it is we have to be secure leaders, right? And we have to be OK leading people from a place of hurt or pain and letting them in into that. And I think some people are afraid to do that. I was when I was younger, right?
Drew Karschner — I wanted people to like me. I wanted them to think like, oh, everything is, you know, rainbow peeking unicorns. Everything’s good. Um but what I failed to realize is people saw past that anyway. So I might as well let them in and see what what the real Drew is feeling and going through.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. That’s so good. I love that. That’s a great word, uh, for folks, you know. Hopefully we can go there, hopefully our our relationship can sustain this. You know, so many of our churches over the last number of years have been navigating, um, you know, racial injustice in our, in our communities. And, you know, as you, you mentioned this, you know, right off the top, obviously Rochester was, was on all our news stories, you know, for a long time there in, particularly in 2020. And then. But, you know, that those issues, I know when we’re we’re not in the kind of the heat of it or not in the neighborhood where those things are going on, it can kind of slip out of our mind and be like, okay, that was something that happened.
Rich Birch — I’m sure leading, you know, that has has been a continued dynamic for your church. Unpack what that looked like for you. What did you learn through that, you know, that this season? I don’t want to talk about this, even bringing this up, at it’s like, how do I talk about this in a way that’s you know that’s appropriate, but I’d love to learn from you. I think so many leaders that we’ve I’ve talked to over the last number of years, when we say, hey, what are the things we’ve wrestled through? This has been an issue. This is in um, you know, this is on their list of stuff they’re wrestling with. Obviously unique situation where where you are in Rochester. Ah talk to us about that.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I think one of the greatest things I learned was the value of having different perspectives in my life.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Drew Karschner — Disagreeing perspectives. I think our culture has just gotten to the place where we dig our heels in the camp that we live in.
Rich Birch — Oh, it’s good.
Drew Karschner — And we only surround ourselves with people who affirm what we already believe. And one thing that I did during this whole unrest was like, man, I’m going to hear from different sides. And what it did is it allowed me to empathize with all the people that I shepherd, right?
Drew Karschner — I have ah, like one of my big passions is leading all of my church. And we we’re in Rochester, so we have all kinds of people who believe different things about different different areas of topics. And so I called ourselves the church in the middle. We weren’t we weren’t going to pick a side. We were going to stand up, empathize with everybody to lead everybody to Jesus.
Rich Birch — That’s good, that’s good.
Drew Karschner — And so I think it’s really important to be able to hear opposing sides and being able to say, hey, what what’s the chicken and what’s the bones and and and leave some on the table…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Drew Karschner — …and just be okay. People are afraid to read people who they disagree with. And I just think it it makes us shallow.
Rich Birch — Well, and there’s no doubt that’s a dynamic that I think many of our churches are facing as we grow, which is we we have to get used to a wide variety of people. We want our churches to be an expression of our community, which means by definition, we can’t narrowcast.
Drew Karschner — Right.
Rich Birch — We can’t just be like, hey, we’re going to be assert. And we’ve seen some churches do this in the last number of years where they’ve pivoted one way or the other. And Uh, part of what I admire about your church is you’ve tried to say, like you say, their church in the middle, we’re trying to be a place for all of Rochester. Um, which I think is really commend commendable.
Rich Birch — How have you been able to do that? It’s like, ah you know, I was talking to a friend recently that was wrestling with similar issues and I was like, I to them, this wasn’t to you. I said, you know, I feel like you’re trying to get people to move, to walk across the road, but you’re, so you’re now stuck in the middle and it’s like just trying to dodge cars. Um, how have you been able to, to lead in that space? You know, what has there been anything, you know, that you’ve been kind of, as you’ve been processing and learning that has kind of enabled you to continue to, uh, you know, to lead well in that, like you say, and you know, church for everybody.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I think the one thing I’ve learned is being in the middle is the most painful place…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah. Good.
Drew Karschner — …because you got people yeah people shooting you at both sides, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s so true.
Drew Karschner — So it’s not a fun place to be, um but I think it’s the right place to be, at least for our context. I think some people, maybe it would be different. Um but I think being in the middle allowed us to speak to both sides, to guide both sides, not just speak to one side of of the coin or whatever the argument was.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drew Karschner — And I think it gave us influence um in both camps. And what was beautiful is we saw God grow our church in unity and diversity, which was something that we’d been praying for. And so we stood up for—it was so hard—but like we stood up for cops and minorities at the same time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — We we didn’t we weren’t like, we’re gonna, we’re not picking sides here. We we clearly said that.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Drew Karschner — Like no, we’re not picking sides. We’re going to stand up for both people because both people deserve it. And so I think people appreciated the realness and the authenticity and the fight we had for everybody.
Rich Birch — Well, they’ yeah, and it’s a very Jesus approach. You know, I commend you on that. You know, we know this, that people, when they would have looked at Jesus’s closest group of friends, his followers, they would have said, those people don’t belong together.
Drew Karschner — Right.
Rich Birch — Like those, that is a crowd of people who don’t normally hang out. And I love that you’re trying to live that out, um you know, in in today. Were you going to say something else, sir? I think I cut you off.
Drew Karschner — No, you’re good. I was just gonna say in that journey, I’ve had to deal with a lot of pain.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drew Karschner — And I think that’s one thing I’ve also learned in leadership is like, the, your your capacity of leadership is ultimately the amount of pain that you can endure. My mentor told me that and I was like, Oh, wait. Do I want to do this? But…
Rich Birch — Yes! Yes, true.
Drew Karschner — It is a joy, honestly, to navigate pain and see how God uses it. And to stand up at the end of the day and be like, that was worth it. Man, God used that.
Rich Birch — Well, why don’t we talk about that then on the personal level? You know, I love that Sam Chan idea for sure that you’ve brought up. What what have been some of the practices, some of the habits, some of your go to ways that are healthy ah to deal with the pain that you’ve experienced in leadership over these years?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, ah one of the things that I’ve tried to do is not stop trusting people.
Rich Birch — So good.
Drew Karschner — In ministry, um it’s so easily to become isolated and alone. And when you’re isolated and alone, when you walk through pain, it just it it causes you to become recluse and introverted. And what I’ve learned is I can’t allow myself to do that. No matter how much pain, no matter how much people have maybe turned their back on me, walked away, said hard things, I constantly have to open myself up to relationships because I need them to help me navigate and to pray for me as I lead our church.
Drew Karschner — And so one of the things that is so hard for me is trust. But God keeps teaching me I have to trust the right amount of people and the right people and because I I need them as much as they need me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I know our friend, Carey Nieuwhof, talks about the fact that, you know, when you’re leading for any amount of time in a local church, there is, ah I think the phrase he uses, unreconciled loss, ah you know, ah unreconciled relational loss, where you you get used to, like, people just leave, or they you know they they storm out and they they really have no intention of wanting to ever reconcile with you. And that, man, you’ve got to deal with that. If you don’t, you’ll end up in a really a really negative place. So, that’s good.
Rich Birch — What about your staff team? In the midst of all of this, it’s one thing for you to be in a healthy place, it’s one thing for you to be able to deal with the pressure. How have you been able to bring your your team along in navigating hard things? What have been some of those practices that have been helpful, as you’ve looked at with the you know the people that you’re you’ve been given to lead?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I think one thing that we’ve done pretty well is when we do face hard stuff staff-wide, we have open conversations. So we gather everybody together and we just say, guys, how are you feeling about this?
Drew Karschner — How are you processing this? And we we literally, and we’ve we’ve spent, you know, two hours in the room just letting people express, ask questions. You know, hey, this is a safe place and these are hard things. And so um and then we we, outside that large group, we give people a chance to say, hey, if you need to talk to anybody, you know, I have an open door policy. I think every pastor says that, but I genuinely like, dude, I’ll cancel any meeting for our staff, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — They they they to me, they’re my family. Um I’ve lived far away from family, and so the church staff has become my family when I was away from family. And so, man, I love our staff. I deeply, genuinely care for our staff, more than they probably know, and I should probably tell them more. Um but anything and everything, you just come talk to me and I’ll I’ll fight for you. I’ll I’ll cry with you. I’ll mourn with you. We’ll laugh together. Whatever you need, I want to be that for you. And so we just have open dialogues. We try to build a culture of you know just honesty and openness. And I think it’s allowed us to heal and just talk about hard things.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about what that looks like with with, I don’t know whether it’s rhythms or like, how often are you meeting, that sort of thing. That I know, you know, you talk about the family feel, I think we can have that early on in our churches, but as we grow, man, that’s hard to sustain, because you know the the family, it’s like the the family becomes a family business, becomes some sort of organism, then becomes an organization, then becomes a corporation. Like It’s very hard to fight that trend.
Drew Karschner — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um how what’s that look like for you? How are you kind of keeping connected? Because your church is, you know, you continue to grow and add new people and add staff and all that. So talk us through that. What’s that look like?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I mean, you’re definitely right. The the larger you get, the larger your staff gets, the harder it it does get. And so I think you got to just put systems in place. One of the systems I’ve put in place, as I told my assistant, you need to schedule me time to float, right? To just go knock on staff doors…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Drew Karschner — …and be like, yeah hey, how’s it going? How are you? Um we meet as a staff, you know. We have a staff meeting once a week, and so our our whole staff is together. We rub shoulders.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Drew Karschner — We have donuts. We have we actually have a lunch together once a month, so all staff…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Drew Karschner — We have lunch. It’s made. We bring it in, and we do training there. Um I’m a relational guy. So I feel for the lead pastor or the, you know, business owner who’s an introvert, I love people. Right? I’m in ministry because I genuinely love being around people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — And so for me, being around our staff as much as I physically can within my job parameters is a joy to me. Um I think it’s one of my gifts. I’m a relational guy. And so I try to be around as much as I can. But I’ll be honest, right? I think there are some staff members that wish probably they had more time with me…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — …or or whatever. And that’s why I try to at our staff meetings, and I need I honestly need to do a better job of reminding them: guys, if you need anything, my door is always open. Come see me. I’m available to you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. There is something about even just the like creating space, like you’re saying at staff meetings at once a month, kind of something a little more casual, having a meal together. I remember years ago, lead pastor I worked for, we were doing um, you know, it was like, we were serving a staff lunch, just, you know, it was like a buffet kind of thing. And I, it really stuck with me. He, he kicked this person off of serving and it was like, no, no, let me do that, I want to be… And a part of the reason why for that is, Hey, he wanted to see every single person as they went through, here’s your, whatever lettuce or whatever it was that he was, you know, dishing out. It’s like, uh, it would have been easy for him to just sit, sit on the side, talk to, you know, his other lead team folks or whatever.
Rich Birch — Uh, but he was going on his way to say, no, I want to make myself available. That’s, uh, yeah, that’s, that’s so good. Uh, good, good stuff.
Drew Karschner — One thing we do too is we do a staff retreat. So we’re getting ready to do it. We do two days in the Adirondacks.
Rich Birch — Oh, nice.
Drew Karschner — And we don’t we don’t schedule anything.
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — So like it is basically, it’s for you, your spouse and your family. So you bring your kids, you bring the whole family.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow.
Drew Karschner — And we want to just be together.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Drew Karschner — So we’re playing volleyball. I got no problem smashing a volleyball and in staff members faces, right? Like talking trash. Some of that is just builds that camaraderie, being together, eating together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Drew Karschner — You know, something that we’ve, it’s expensive, but it’s it’s worth the dollars that it builds back into our team, and and the trust it builds just being present with each other.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s talk about that. That’s that’s incredible. I love that. I that’s ah what a cool thing. But that touches a bigger issue around, you know, generosity with staff. I’m sure it’s not just this thing in general, you’re trying to… I feel like there’s a balance in all that stuff. We’re always trying to figure out like, hey, you know, how do we how do we find ways to be generous to our people, you know, you know, it’s not just paying them while it’s all this, the kind of the full thing. What does that look like for you guys? How does that fit in your head around it? And what’s the connection between that and, and building a resilient team that can, that can deal with all this hard stuff when it comes?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I think one thing I’ve learned leading staff members is one of the biggest things they they want to know is that they’re valuable. And we often, you know, equal value to dollars and cents, but I’m not sure that’s accurate, right?
Drew Karschner — Obviously, people want to be paid well. So we we do our best. You know, I think some people lead from a place of being stingy. I just lead like, hey, I want to give as much as I can to our team and honor them.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Drew Karschner — I want them to feel valuable. But let’s be honest, we’ve we’ve served on ministry teams.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drew Karschner — We always wish we had more money.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, yeah.
Drew Karschner — Like the budget is the budget.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Drew Karschner — So we’ve come up with creative ways to tell our staff they’re valuable. So like right now, um our worship pastor is on a five week sabbatical. And so we’ve created a system at 10 years, you get a sabbatical.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Drew Karschner — It doesn’t cost us anything, but it allows us to say, “You’re valuable to us.” We do anniversaries, we give away stuff, we play games together. We just try to build a culture that just constantly reminds our team, whether it’s dollars and cents, a gift card, a trip: we love you, you’re valuable to us.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah. And there’s something there around, you know, that I think a lot of times the comp… the pay compensation can just get lost in the, you know, you know, and an extra 500 bucks or whatever. It just doesn’t really go anywhere. But man, if you give that as like like you’re saying a gift or, uh, you know, something for the family or, you know, some sort of special experience to someone, man, that goes a long way. It, it, it seems it grabs people, people’s attention more. That’s uh, yeah, that’s really good. Good stuff.
Drew Karschner — Another thing I do, Rich, I think this might be one of the most impactful things I do at Christmas time. So we, if we do, we give out bonuses. I shoot a personal video to the family.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.
Drew Karschner — It’s about two to three minutes long where I just honor their family, and I just speak from my heart. I’m not, it’s not, it’s not to say it’s different for every person, and I just tell them how much I value them, what I’ve seen from them in their year. You know, it’s what I call the new handwritten card. Because we have video, I’m a communicator. I hate writing on a card. It’s my handwritten video card to them, just literally honoring them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Drew Karschner — And I’ve gotten so much like good feedback from our team being like, you don’t know how much those words you said that my wife listened to meant to our family.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s, yeah, I I get choked up just thinking about that. That’s amazing. I love that. Like when you think about like somebody that’s serving out your staff on their staff and their kids get to see you, the lead pastor, honor their their mom or dad who’s serving on your team. And man, let’s talk about a context shifter for them. Like I know a mom or dad’s hardworking and they love their work, but the you know the person that’s in charge of that organization slowed down and said, hey, this is why I love you know, whoever this person is that’s serving on the team. That’s amazing.
Drew Karschner — Yeah. We get, we get the kids gifts as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Drew Karschner — So like when it comes to Christmas time, we’re not just blessing the employer because ministry is a family thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Drew Karschner — And so we want to break that PK mold.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drew Karschner — I want the kids of our team to be like, I’m a pastor’s kid. And at my church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Drew Karschner — …that means something awesome. Not like, aw…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Drew Karschner — …I got to, my dad’s got to do this. You know, my mom’s got to do this.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. That’s so cool. Well, Drew, this has been a great conversation today. Is there anything else you’d love to say just we wrap up around this whole thing around how, as a lead pastor, are you you know really handling, navigating some of the hard stuff that comes your way, or or or just anything in general, really, as we’re wrapping up today’s conversation?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I mean, I think through all the hard things, I’ve been reminded, man, we serve a God who’s so faithful. And through the hardship, like God’s always there with you. He walks with you through the hard things. And man, over and over again, as I see hard things coming over the horizon, man, I just know I’m not alone. I am not alone.
Rich Birch — Amen.
Drew Karschner — And what a, what a gift that is to walk with a God who sees the storm before it comes.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Thank you so much, Drew. Appreciate you being here. If we want to send people online to connect with you or with the church, where do we want to send them for that?
Drew Karschner — Yeah, you can go to NorthridgeRochester.com. Our emails are there. I mean, you can connect with me at my email, send me a text message, whatever. I’m um i’m open to whatever you contact, so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much, Drew. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you.
Drew Karschner — Yeah, I appreciate you.
Creating Inclusive Spaces: Making Churches Accessible for All with Kerri-Ann Hayes
Aug 29, 2024
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kerri-Ann Hayes today. In addition to being a senior consultant at Ministry Architects, Kerri-Ann has worked in children’s and family ministry for over 20 years and has a heart for making churches more inclusive for families with special needs.
At our churches we want to create a place where families have a place at the table. Increasingly this looks like supporting children and youth affected by special needs or trauma. Tune in as Kerri-Ann shares practical advice on fostering a welcoming environment at your church.
How much focus do you give special needs? // The CDC reports that 1 in 6 children ages 3-17 have a diagnosed disability, 1 in 36 are diagnosed with autism, and 6.1 million have ADHD. Looking at these numbers, if these people are not represented in our churches, the question we need to ask is why?
Initiate communication. // Parents may not share the special need when first attending or registering their child at church. It’s up to churches to provide a place where parents not only can identify information such as a child’s allergies, but also note needing additional support for their participation in kids ministry. During a child’s registration, include an area about special needs they may have.
Start with the one. // Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the need to create an entire special needs ministry from the outset, start with the one. Who is the one child you have in mind who you can help? How do you create a plan for this child to participate in your church? Create a volunteer position in the children’s ministry that will be this child’s “buddy”. Their entire role is about becoming an expert on what that child will need to successfully participate in church. By creating a supportive environment for one child, churches can gradually expand their efforts to include more families.
Seek advice. // Church leaders do not need to be experts in special needs to make a difference. Seek out local experts, such as occupational therapists or speech therapists, who can provide guidance and support on what could be improved in your children’s ministry. What are the physical barriers? Is the size or lighting of the room holding the ministry back?
Simple changes. // Signage throughout a church can help visitors navigate the space with ease. Clear signage is particularly important for families or youth affected by special needs, who may already face challenges in social situations. In addition, provide clear directions and what-to-expect in your different environments. This guidance will help the neuro-divergent teenager to feel more independent and comfortable in the church and student ministry.
Sensory rooms. // The sensory room Kerri-Ann’s church created was strategically placed in a back section of the children’s ministry. Placement of sensory rooms are important, both to accommodate situations where children might try to run away, and also to provide a quiet space away from noise and activity. Sensory items and dimmable lighting in the room are also key.
The Accessible Church. // Kerri-Ann’s book, The Accessible Church: Making the Church a Welcoming Place for Children with Special Needs and from Traumatic Backgrounds, is a great resource for churches that are thinking about these issues. Kerri-Ann provides practical tips and tools that will help your church be more welcoming for families with special needs as well as families fostering or adopting children. In addition you can follow the stories of several children who have found their place within the church through a team that learned to serve them well.
Focus on teenagers too. // As churches learn how to serve vulnerable and neurodivergent children, doors will open for them to serve teenagers as well. Rather than buddies, provide a hang-out sensory room for teens with appropriate lighting and cooperative versus competitive activities. Rethink your youth and worship spaces and how you can create awareness in your volunteers that these students are coming to the ministry.
You can reach Kerri-Ann to talk more about working with families with special needs by emailing her. Find her book The Accessible Church: Making the Church a Welcoming Place for Children with Special Needs and from Traumatic Backgrounds on Amazon.
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Really excited to have Kerri-Ann Hayes with us today. She has been in children’s and family ministry leader in central Florida since the late 90’s. She’s led children’s ministry in both a single and multi-site church context. During her years serving family Kerri-Ann has developed a passion for and really an expertise, particularly for those struggling to find their place in a church due to the special needs of their children. She loves supporting and equipping churches to be accessible to families with special needs or from therautic ah therapeutic background. So super excited to have Kerri-Ann with us. She also serves as a senior consultant with an organization called Ministry Architects. Kerri-Ann, so glad that you’re here today. Thanks for being on the show.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Thanks so much for having me, Rich. I’m so excited to be here.
Rich Birch — Oh this is going to be great. I’m really looking forward to kind of diving in. I think this is incredibly important topic. But kind of fill out the picture there a little bit tell us a bit of the Kerri-Ann story. tell us a little bit more about your background to kind of fill in the picture for us.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Sure. I live in beautiful Claremont, Florida and I love that ah you mentioned I’ve been in ministry to children and families since the 1990s. I always say for over 20 years because that’s what you say when you don’t want to give the exact years you’ve done something.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yeah yeah, yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — But I I did over that time really develop a specific passion, which is to serve families who struggle to be a part of our churches. Beyond being a ah, children’s and family Ministry Leader, I am also a consultant. I’m a lead consultant with Ministry Architects which allows me to now work with churches all over the country.
Rich Birch — Love it. So Good. So glad to have you on. I think this is a critically important area around, you know, our church is becoming more accessible. And I had a friend recently tell me that, and I don’t know if this is true but they said it sounded true, it resonated true, that 1 in 5 kids in the country have what could be deemed as a special need. Um, but only only 15% of churches in the country actually do anything around this. 85% of churches don’t do anything around special needs. And to me that’s just tragic. Like we want to create a place where where families have a place at the table. But what is why don’t we start with kind of talking through the problem. Like what, you know, this is a huge issue for all of us. Why should we even be thinking about this as an issue for us in our churches?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Well I think it comes down to ministry math. If we do understand the statistics, and you know the CDC says that 1 in 6, which is 17% of our children ages 3 to 17 have a diagnosed disability.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Then 1 in 36 are diagnosed with autism and that’s a brand new. That’s a fairly new statistic.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow. One in 36. Yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And 6.1 million have ADHD.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So if we look at those numbers and then we look at the number of people who are participating in our churches, if these people are not represented in our churches, there’s another question we need to ask, which is why? Why are they not in our churches?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, what’s happening there? Yeah. Yeah, it seems like you know if if ah, you know if a family showed up with a child in a wheelchair and we didn’t have a ramp. We would notice that. We would be like, oh my goodness. And what I know of the church leaders that are listening in is that tomorrow we would figure out how to get a ramp in. We’d be like okay we got We got to figure this one out…
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Definitely.
Rich Birch — …because people are loving and caring. But it’s not the same with you know when you talk about autism, ADHD, you know, even like severe anxiety, those sorts of things. Help us understand why you know why that is. Why why is this the kind of thing that is has been difficult or could be difficult for churches to try to think about how do we create space for kids or families that are, you know, that are struggling with these kinds of issues?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Well some families may not share that when they initially register their child to come into children’s ministry, or their teenager. And it can be because we might not be asking the right questions.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — We may have a space when we’re registering them that asks them, do you have a medical need? Do you have allergies? But just adding, “Will your child or student need additional support to participate in our ministry?” might get parents thinking in the direction of, okay, now I need to share if there’s autism, ADHD. Is there something else that can be put in place so that their child can be successful in the ministry? Because when parents don’t share this, we usually find out when it plays out in a behavior in in our ministry context.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I can see that for sure. If we don’t it’s like if we don’t create the space, they don’t communicate and then there’s like a bit of a vicious cycle there. Well you work with churches all across the country and help them in so many different ways. I’m sure, let’s assume, I’m I’m sure there’s leaders that are listening in today who are like, man, we want to create space where I don’t feel like we’re doing enough on this front. What would be some of those first steps that you would in encourage a church to think about. Like they maybe be understand in a broad sense that, hey we should be doing more, but they they haven’t you know they don’t they haven’t set anything up. They haven’t done… What would be some of those first steps that we should be thinking about.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So my favorite thing it seems to be that every time I’m working with a church…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …the first thing that they have to say to me is we’ve got this one child. We’ve got this one.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — There’s this one. And as they start to tell me about the one I’m thinking, I’ve seen that one before. So I think that the first thing to keep in mind is that we start with the one. We don’t necessarily need to create this entire ministry within the church. We need to start with the one. How do we create a plan for this child to participate in our church.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And and that was our story. We started with the one who turned our Sunday morning, my very well crafted message and worship and ah volunteers in place, and the one child came in and turned things upside down, but also changed the face of our church for for the better because we became passionate…
Rich Birch — Yeah, tell me more about that. I’d love to hear that story. Tell us tell us more about that.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah. So well this little guy who came in, he was in first grade and didn’t even have a diagnosis yet.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — But because of his behavior that played out in our children’s ministry environment that started a conversation with mom and dad which helped me to find out that they were in the process of trying to find out what was going on with him. And the church was able to walk with the family through a diagnosis, finding out that he had ADHD and autism, and then we needed to create a plan that was going to help him to be able to be a part of our church. Because it’s just again, it’s ministry math. If we could figure out a way for this little guy to be successful and participate in children’s ministry, then mom and dad were going to be able to be a part of our church as well.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So we started with the one. We created a position in our children’s ministry, which we called a sidekick, who came alongside this little guy and they didn’t have to be an expert on anything besides him.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — They needed to become an expert on what did he need to be a part of our church. And it grew from there.
Rich Birch — I love that. You know, I this I think this area can be a little bit intimidating for for church leaders. And I think I can imagine um how you know this area could be the kind of thing where we like feel like, gosh, I’ve got to start so many things. I’s like we need you know it’s like we need a bunch of special super-specialized volunteers. We need people with all kinds of background in this. I’m like I’m not I don’t have those people here. We don’t have the space. Talk us through those kinds of concerns.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — The first thing I want to say is I’m not that person.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Love it.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Like I came into children’s ministry with a hospitality management background…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah. Love it.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …when the Lord called me into it. And now I’ve been in it for well over twenty years. So when I started you know this passion started burning inside of not just me, but the people serving in our ministry to be able to open the doors to other families, we didn’t have the experts. So I did go looking for the experts. I looked in my local area. Like who out there could come in and even assess my ministry? What can we do better? Ah, what do I need to look at? Are there physical barriers for our children? Because if a child has autism or sensory processing disorder, just the lighting in the room, or the size of the room and the amount of children that we’re packing into it, bringing in somebody who helped me have fresh eyes to the ministry was very helpful. But an interesting thing happened: the more that our volunteers and families started talking about people with disabilities and special needs, I felt like experts came out of the woodwork in my church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool. Yeah. Love that.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And so so many people that were um, occupational therapists physical, physical therapists and speech therapists started coming forward and saying I hear you have a need. How can I help?
Rich Birch — Love that.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So I I think what has helped me most when I’m talking with other churches is the fact that I’m not an expert.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I I didn’t study this.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I learned from the children. I’ve learned from the families and from the people who have come alongside our ministry.
Rich Birch — Is there, you know when you talk about low hanging fruit, is there particularly say in the in kids ministry specifically, is there like changes that most or like, you know, you walk into a church and you’re like, here’s change that you see all the time. You’re like, man, if we just did this, it would at so many churches across the country we it would make us more inclusive as an entire movement. Um, what would be a, you know, couple of those things that kind of come to mind, that low hanging fruit?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Okay, so I’m not going to direct this just at children’s ministry.
Rich Birch — Sure.
I’m going to say all areas of the church.
Rich Birch — Yep, for sure.
Signage, signage, signage.
Rich Birch — Oh okay, good. Tell us about that.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So so um, I’m share I visited a church recently and I was I was speaking there and I wanted to find the restroom before before the message began. And I stepped out into the lobby and I went walking through this cavernous church and could not find it. Okay, no one wants to have to go and ask.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Let’s let’s think about the teenager who comes into Youth Ministry who has autism, who already struggles building relationship. They don’t want to come in and have to ask questions to get their needs met. They want to come in and they want to feel independent. The same thing goes for do we post or share what to expect in our service.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So some churches might share in a bulletin or something like that. But when we’re talking about a youth coming into Youth Ministry and they’re going to participate ah in your Wednesday night, maybe. Do they know when they walk in the door that this is a time of fellowship, that we’re moving into a time of worship, that there will be message, and small group, and that we’re eventually going to send them home.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Those clear expectations help people feel independent, but also move through transitions because they can anticipate them.
Rich Birch — They know where things are going. Man, that’s just great practice in general for for all humans, which is good signage. I’ve said in other contexts you know next time you’re in an airport, you know, dear church leader, look around at the amount of signage that’s there. And that’s the benchmark. That’s like your baseline, starting point of the kind of the amount of signage you should have at your church. Because you think about an airport is designed for people who’ve never been there before to move them along and to try to not slow them down and that’s the same thing that you’re saying. Is like hey we want to make it super obvious.
Rich Birch — And I love that what to expect. Again, that’s just a good practice in general. But if we went out of our way to make that, I can see that, particularly if you know if if there’s parents or kids that are coming, you know, to be able to talk through and know, hey, this is what’s coming next. That you know, that makes that makes total sense.
Rich Birch — When you think about kind of where, so those would be some kind of low hanging fruits, when you think about um, where this is headed, and you’re like down the road you’re thinking about, Okay, we’ve we’ve gone beyond caring for the one. I love that idea of being like an expert in the one. And we’re thinking, man, we might want to add like a ministry. We might want to actually build some infrastructure there. Where is that headed? Is that headed towards like um, like an inclusion model where we’re trying to have, or what’s your best approach – inclusion where we’re having kids or families or young people or adults included, or is it like we’re going to have a whole separate thing, um where we do kind of ah a separate service a separate experience? What is the best practice from your perspective as the person who’s not an expert but really is, you know?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I’m not an expert in that is not my education.
Rich Birch — I get that. Yeah, I understand what you mean.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — It has been my on the ground learning, which honestly I think might be the best way to learn is from from the kids, from the families.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So…And I forgot your questions.
Rich Birch — Oh no, that’s fine. I was saying like, so yeah, let’s say we’ve taken a couple steps, and we’re caring for the one, and then we’re thinking down the road is are we really heading towards inclusion, or like an exclusive ministry.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yes, so no. I I prefer inclusion, inclusion all all the way. But in saying that there are also people who will be a part of our church that the accommodation that they will need will be something separate.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So in in my experience we started with that one. We created a ministry within a ministry. So our church never had a disability ministry. They never had a special needs ministry. We had a way to include families who had special needs or disabilities. That started in the children’s ministry. So just by creating a position that someone could fill, which for us was a sidekick – some churches call them pals or buddies. But creating that position that people can be a part of – got to have a job description, have to have an invitation into being part of this. That ministry within our ministry grew and grew on on its own. So that’s where we started.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — In our original church building we did not have space to have a separate room if if a child needed that type of accommodation. And we had to take an approach of that we would never say no but we might say not yet, or not now can we take that child in without having a family member present.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — When we moved into a larger church building, we were able to strategically build a room that was for these children. That allowed us to serve children across a spectrum of needs.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve found a similar thing as our church years ago 10 while more than ten plus years ago now is we added ah ah you know more and more kind of accommodations for kids with special needs. It’s word spreads, right, in a good way, in a beautiful way where families, these families are very networked and um, which is a wonderful thing. That’s what you’re yeah, that’s what you’re hoping for. We want to serve more families. And so, you know, over time, you know, we um, you know, we found that we had to add more infrastructure, more people, which I loved as a leader an executive leader in our church. It’s it’s a it’s a really fulfilling area to serve in. It’s it’s um, you know, it can be challenging volunteer service but it’s, and there’s kids that you know are to be able to create this kind of experience is just amazing for ah the families and they’re so thankful, and so you know appreciative of it.
Rich Birch — When you say that separate space, what what is what what did we typically see that, you know, this would be like a sensory room? You know, a place where they can have a bit of a, you know, a place to kind of distance themselves a little bit? Talk us through what that looks like.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yep.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yes, so a sensory room. And what we did when when our new building was being built was strategically placed our sensory room in the farthest area back in the children’s ministry.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And are are thinking in this was we had a few children that we were not able to accommodate. And we wanted to move to a place that we could, but they were elopement risks meaning they were going to run away at any chance they were given. And we wanted to put as many doorways between them and the parking lot as possible.
Rich Birch — Nice. Okay, yes, yes. That makes sense.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So just the placement of where this room was. But then also the room was outfitted with things that would be needed in a sensory place. So the ability to turn the lights down. It was was a quiet space just based on its location. And then there were sensory items that were in the room as well. We had very few children who use that room only, because our goal was we wanted them with our typical kids. But that room quickly became the room that everyone wanted to be a part of.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Because sometimes we all need a moment of quiet…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …to step away from all of the activity.
Rich Birch — Right. Well and I think there’s, particularly I think in in kids ministry, we can, on the programming side, our programming can lead towards you know, loud, energetic you know, ah over the top which can be fun is fun for some folks, but is not universally fun, right? It’s not. It’s not like not everybody loves that. And and particularly as the church grows you get a lot of kids, like you said earlier, in a room. Um, that can be just very overwhelming…
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, for some people for sure.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah, and I’ll tell you, Rich, a funny story because we we were in this church that was really known for how they served families so we had tons of kids. We could have 150 children in one room. And that’s a lot of energy and could be a lot of sounds.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And we had to train the volunteers who are up on the stage leading everything not to get the kids to cheer, to yell, or to clap.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — We had to come up with other ways for them to show their enthusiasm. Otherwise that room was not a welcoming place for a lot of our kids, not even those who are neurodiverse, but for some of our typical kids as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, that’s a good, yeah I would agree. I think that is a that’s a shift for sure over the time I’ve been in ministry where it like that we didn’t even think of that when I was in student industry or kids ministry. But now it’s like a real thing. You’re thinking about it and you’re thinking about, Okay, how do we what’s the best way for us to do that. That’s, you know, that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — I know for me one of my journeys in this area has been even just the terms we use. Um, you know, I remember years ago so, you know, I I talked about special needs kids and I had a loving friend ah you know and I thought I was using a term that was like appropriate and I and I was saying it in an endearing way. And they’re like, oh that’s actually not a great way to use that term.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s it’s kids with special needs. And I was like, oh of course. Like that’s a way better way to talk about this. And it’s a fairly that’s a nuanced switch.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — It is.
Rich Birch — But how do how does someone who maybe isn’t in this space all the time even just keep up with the the language changes, and even the words you use there neuro-typical or, you know, neuro-divergent neuro-divergent. Um help us understand how how do we keep there?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah, oh so they call it disability etiquette. And it is not an easy thing to keep up with. I I remind ah, church leaders often that in Luke 14 Jesus referred to people with disabilities as the lame, crippled, and blind.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — We would never use those terms today.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And then we used handicapped, and then it became disabled, then special needs came in. And now the the buzz word, which has been around for a long time, ah is neurodiverse. It’s just not been used in everyday language…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …by by families, by teenagers, by ministry leaders. So I think the important thing for us to is to not get too caught up…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …in the wording. The best thing that we can do is ask our people what are they comfortable with.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I I sat in a ah conference setting recently where somebody was sharing that as ministry leaders we get very caught up in all of the terms.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Ah, but families who have special needs don’t get caught up in those terms as much as we do.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — One thing to keep in mind is that an adult with a disability doesn’t like to be referred to as special needs. Yet families who have children with special needs often don’t like their child with autism to be referred to as disability. That’s where the nuance comes in that we need to know our people and and ask some questions.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I had a young woman who served in our 2-year-old classroom who was deaf. And I actually asked her one day how did she like people to refer to her?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes —And I was thinking is it hearing impaired, is it deaf? And she was so quick to respond to me and say, I am deaf and nothing about me is impaired. And I went, Wow.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — But she wasn’t offended by my question.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And I think that’s an important thing for us to keep in mind that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I I have found similarly around this issue, I think that’s a good that’s a good insight there around, I think sometimes maybe we we might get more um, worked up about this than than than the folks that we’re interacting with. And just having an open heart and open spirit to be like, hey, like and being willing to learn and be like, hey, we it’s okay, like I need to learn, is ah goes a long way as you interact with people and even if you stumble on the wrong term. Ah you know, not not there’s no need to get defensive, or no need to, you know, it’s okay, like it’s fine. You can just change and be different. It’s really okay, It’s not a big deal at all. That’s good.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — Well you’ve actually written a book about this that I want to make sure people check out. It’s called “The Accessible Church: Making the Church a Welcoming Place for Children with Special Needs and from Traumatic Backgrounds”.
Rich Birch — This is I think a fantastic resource for so many churches as they’re thinking about these issues, wrestling with what a great kind of resource for them to pick up. But talk to me about you know what led you to this a huge project to pull a book together, and you know think about these things in an area that is constantly changing. That’s a that’s a struggle. So yeah, what what brought you to the point of saying, yeah, this is this is what I should be doing next. This is a good step here.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So as as our church began to grow, as more and more of these families started coming in, and the reason why the book refers to traumatic backgrounds as well is because we started off in special needs and then all of a sudden saw this huge influx of families from foster care and adoption. And we realized that some of the trauma that they had experienced caused them to struggle to be a part of our church. But, what we were doing for our families with special needs…
Rich Birch — Is similar. Yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …worked for them as well. So as as I was learning, as I was walking alongside these families I was journaling as well and through this process, I had a local church reach out to me and say, I have a family with autism. We’re sending them your way because we know that you can serve this family well. And immediately my thought was, but this family didn’t choose our church. They they chose your church…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …and I want them in your church. So how do I take what we saw work in our church and package it in a way that I can hand it to you and say, you could do this too. It’s part of there not being a PhD behind my name to say, here ministry leaders, you you too can do this. And in the book we actually, ah you know, someone recently referred to it as case studies. And I said, I didn’t think about that. But there’s actual stories of kids that if you read their story you might say, oh, I’ve seen this child in in my church. And hopefully the tips and the tools that that are shared there will help that child in your church as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well I’d love for people to pick, ah you know, pick up there’s ah there’s so much in here. You know we’ve got The Beauty of an Accessibility Ministry, Rethinking Ministry, Redefining Effective Ministry, The Power of Story, Special Needs, Trauma in the Church – there’s so much here. Um, yeah, that’s interesting the connection on trauma. Literally just this week I was talking to a parent of who they identified their child as um, struggling with PTSD. And I was like, oh that’s interesting. Like and had a fascinating conversation with them around those and was struck by the same, you know, the same kind of stuff that they, you know, here’s a kid that’s been through some really tough stuff, but, you know, we were able to help them and have tried to create some space, you know, for them.
Rich Birch — When when you think about, um, you know, churches out there who’ve maybe taken the first couple steps or, you know, they’re thinking about this area, they’ve they’ve tried to serve a few people and now they’re starting to get more and more families, you know, come on board, is there a tipping point here where it goes from we’re just helping a few families to like, okay, I think I think we have declared we actually do have a ministry to, you know, kids with special needs. What is that, you know, what’s that line look like or is it fuzzy in different churches? What’s that look like?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Well I would say it’s definitely fuzzy in different churches.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — But I will say for from my experience what happened in our church was we started out with the one. And we started to develop some practices in our ministry that we didn’t just focus on the one, we started saying, well what if we did this for the whole ministry? Like if this child can’t sit still through our teaching time, maybe we need to rethink our teaching time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Maybe we need to break it up into segments that are are easier for the child to consume and to be a part of. As we did that, more and more came in. So I would say when we reached a place of 5 to 10 was when we started saying, okay, this is an actual ministry within our ministry. And it really did grow from it really grew from there. And it was word of mouth.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And we all know that when a pastor stands in the front of the church and says we need volunteers that that tends to fall on deaf ears. But I will say that as this story played out in our church, our pastor on one Sunday shared a story of a boy with autism who was going to be baptized.
Rich Birch — So sweet.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — He had brought his whole family to church and now he’s going to be baptized. And he shared this story. And I’m standing in another wing of the church. And 26 people come up to me to sign up to be part of the special needs ministry.
Rich Birch — Wow, Right. Wow. That’s amazing.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — You know, that’s the that’s the power of story. And I would say it’s it’s word of mouth that helped us to organically create this team that allowed us to welcome more and more children in.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. Now what happens, so as obviously as kids grow, they become adults. You know that one year after another. And then in a beautiful way I’ve seen churches as a whole start to say hey we need our entire ministries need to become more accessible. What are we seeing as now churches like yours in Florida, and others across the country who’ve been you know, really pioneering this, seeing this journey over decades, what impact is it is it having on the broader really beyond children’s ministry and looking at the entire you know entire ministry? What’s that look like?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So it’s interesting because I think that children’s ministry got the largest focus in the beginning because, like I said, if the child can’t participate in the church then the entire family can’t participate in the church.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — But what has happened is once some churches have figured out how to serve those families, those kids are now moving into youth ministry as well. What I’m seeing across the country right now is more of a focus on how do we welcome youth who are neuro-diverse, who are coming in with those invisible challenges. Ah putting a buddy with a thirteen year old in a middle school youth group is not attractive. So there’s a different way that we have to serve them so how how do we walk that out? I’m also seeing churches, I worked with a church in Indianapolis that put in a sensory room for their teenagers. It’s probably one of the coolest places. They called it…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — The Chill Out Spot. And it was an inexpensive endeavor for them to take on. They hung Christmas lights from the ceiling. They put in ah puzzles and you know more cooperative activities versus competitive. There has been this theme in youth ministry, and I think we kind of get away from it then we come right back into it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And it’s that big game competitive, but that doesn’t work for our kids…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — …who have autism. But you give them something that’s collaborative and they soar.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — And it’s great for them. So I think what we’re seeing is the rethinking of youth ministry now as well as how do we create spaces? How do we create awareness in our volunteers that these students are coming in?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Here’s the interesting thing. Our teenagers know the term neurodiverse.
Rich Birch — Yeah, hundred percent.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I have had I’ve had teenagers introduce themselves to me as, I am neuro-divergent. They’re okay with this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — We need to make sure that our volunteers who are serving them know the best practices for getting to know them. Ah, who said it, was it Ted Lasso or was it Walt Whitman, nobody knows. But we need to be curious, not judgmental.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So finding out by working with teenagers to ask what is going to be the best way for us to incorporate them into our worship environments.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, that’s so good. I love that. And that’s true. You know about about young people and and, man, we want. Um I think that’s amazing. Like you think I think I think it’s great that we live in a world where. You know a young person can can introduce himself as neuro-divergent, and then we can be, roll with it and say, hey, let’s – great! We’re so glad you’re here. Come on in, you know, we’re happy for you to be a part of our ministry. And and um, yeah, that’s just beautiful. That’s a beautiful picture for sure. I hope the church can get this right as we continue to move forward in this area.
Rich Birch — Well, I would love people to pick up, if people want to get copies of your book, where… To me, what I was struck about this was this seems like the kind of book that we should read as a team. Like maybe if I’m if I’m you know on the next gen team at our church, like hey maybe 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 of us we should all buy this and and read through it together. That really struck me as a way to kind of use this. But where where do we want to send people to pick up copies of the book?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah, the book is available on Amazon.
Rich Birch — Nice. That’s where people get books these days, apparently.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — That is where they get them.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Well this has been fantastic. As we wrap up today’s episode, anything else you’d like to share?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Yeah I just I want to encourage churches and church leaders to not feel like they have to do everything.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I work with churches that say, you know we do respite events and we do it really well and we’re working to include families on Sundays. There are some churches that do big events like Night to Shine and that’s really they there that’s where their position when it comes to disability. I think that every church can do something.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — But I will so and I and I want to end with this. I shared that 1 in 36 children has autism. I worked with a church recently with 100 children and fifteen of them have autism. We as the church need to ask the question why? Why is there a larger ah population of children and teens in our churches? I think, as I’m researching, I think the answer is because they need community and they want to find it in our church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you being here today Kerri-Ann. If people want to get in touch with you reach out, maybe they’re you know wrestling through these questions. They’d love to get, I know you’ll you’ll definitely help them, even with some one-on-one support. What’s the best way for for them to reach out to you?
Kerri-Ann Hayes — So the best way would probably be by email and now I can give it to you now.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — It’s super long but it’s ah ah K-E-R-R-I kerri-ann.hayes@ministryarchitects.com.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — I’m also on Instagram and Facebook.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. And that’s Hayes with an “e” so H-A-Y-E-S.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Y-E-S, yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Kerri-Ann, I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much for what you’re doing and for, you know, just pointing us to I think a better future in so many of our churches. So thanks for being here today.
Kerri-Ann Hayes — Thanks, Rich! Thanks for the opportunity to talk about something that I think is so important to our churches today.
Redefining Ministry for Men: Brian Tome on Man Camp and Spiritual Awakening
Aug 22, 2024
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. This week we’re sitting down with Brian Tome, the founder and senior pastor at Crossroads Church in Cincinnati – one of the fastest growing and most innovative churches in the country.
Whether we realize it or not, the systems in our churches are often set up to cater to women more than men. Many Christian men are dissatisfied with their faith and the current state of men’s ministry. How do we attract and engage more men in our churches? Tune in as Brian talks about men’s ministry, Man Camp, and spiritual awakening.
Understand your church’s systems. // Many churches aren’t naturally set up to to attract men. The current demographic makeup of a church is not accidental; it reflects the underlying systems in place. Church leaders need to examine the structures at their churches consider how they might be unintentionally excluding men. Even the programming or worship songs we choose can appeal more to women while alienating men.
Challenges men face. // If we want to reach our culture, Brian believes that we need to acknowledge that men are a vulnerable demographic that we need to focus on. Men face significant challenges in society, including higher rates of suicide and substance abuse, a declining life expectancy, and gradually being locked out of opportunities. Churches need to recognize and address these issues to effectively reach men.
Engaging men. // To address the challenge of attracting men, Crossroads Church chose colors and messaging that resonated with a male audience from the beginning. Over time, the church has continued to evolve its approach, focusing on creating environments where men feel comfortable and engaged. One of the standout initiatives at Crossroads is “Man Camp,” which Brian describes as a transformative experience for men.
Man Camp. // Inspired by a motorcycle trip where he witnessed the power of vulnerability and connection among men, Brian envisioned an event that would facilitate similar experiences in a camp setting. Man Camp provides an opportunity for men to bond over shared activities, engage in meaningful conversations, and step out of their comfort zone in the great outdoors. The weekend includes a variety of activities, from competitive events to more relaxed gatherings around a campfire. Participants are required to bring their own food and supplies, creating a primitive camping experience that challenges men to take ownership of their time together.
Spiritual awakening. // Looking ahead, Brian’s desire is for Man Camp to contribute to a broader awakening among men, and women, in the church. He believes that the church is overdue for a significant spiritual revival and that initiatives like Man Camp can play a crucial role in facilitating this change. Church leaders need to think outside traditional church growth strategies and explore new avenues for outreach and engagement to continue to reach our culture with the gospel.
Challenge your faith. // Man Camp isn’t just for members of Crossroads Church, or even just believers – it’s open worldwide to men who are ready to be challenged physically, mentally and spiritually. If you’re ready to move beyond your spiritual comfort zone, this year Man Camp will be held from September 27-29 in Ohio. Register before September 1st at mancamp.us.
Authenticity in ministry. // Many men, both believers and non-believers, are dissatisfied with their lives, faith, and the current state of men’s ministry. Church leaders need to create environments that are genuine and relatable, rather than overly polished or traditional, when trying to engage the men in their communities. Authenticity in ministry can help men feel more comfortable and open to exploring their faith.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’ve got Brian Tome with us. He’s the founding and senior pastor at Crossroads Church in the cultural epicenter of the world, Cincinnati, Ohio. Crossroads has started in 1995 under Brian’s leadership. Crossroad has since expanded to becoming one of the largest churches in the country. But these guys are super innovative. Everything that Crossroads does, every time I interact with anybody from Crossroads, I’m leaned in, I’ve got my notepad open, and I’m learning. So honored to have Brian with us. He’s an author of a number of books, including The Aggressive Life, The Aggressive Life, which is a podcast that he hosts. And he leads a movement called Man Camp. Welcome to the show, Brian. So glad you’re here. Brian Tome — Great to be with you, Rich. I actually don’t have a book called Aggressive Life. That’s the podcast. Five Marks of a Man – not that I’m trying to hawk my wares right now. But no, it’s good. No. It’s good. It’s good to be with you, man. Thanks for having me on. I’m honored. Rich Birch — I appreciate you correcting that. That’s good stuff. Talk to us about Crossroads. Kind of give us the story there. If people were to arrive this weekend, what would they experience? Give us a sense of the church. Brian Tome — Oh, gosh. Well, if they arrived here this weekend, they probably would be very similar to any mega-church, really. I mean, we all look the same, you know. You know, a lot of people, a lot of loud music, you know, some half decent teaching and a lot of video. And you know, free coffee and away you go. Brian Tome — Now that was that was not the way it was way back when. You know, when we when we started Crossroads, there were a lot of things that we were doing that no one was doing before.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — But those things are very common. Like we were giving away coffee before I think any anybody was. They would have to have a little, you know, coffee cup that was there. When people were selling tapes, literally selling tapes, we were giving it away with with stickers on the tapes that said, please reproduce.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — When we were making sure we had 100 DB in our worship music because we knew people needed a concert environment. When believers would come to our midst, it was, you know, that was not what they expected.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Brian Tome — So but right now it looks pretty much like any other church. A lot of people, a lot of people don’t, wouldn’t be willing to say that or admit it, but there’s differences. There certainly is. But but they’re very similar…
Rich Birch — Right. Brian Tome — …which is kind of what I’m most excited about, Rich, if you just want me to babble for a little bit here.
Rich Birch — Sure, yeah.
Brian Tome — I love unSeminary. You know, when I was, when I was in seminary, cemetery, seminary, I was when I was in seminary…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Tome — …I chose the seminary I went to because I was in a local church that I knew was undergoing a lot of changes, and I would get a lot of leadership lessons there. So I went to a small seminary in Pittsburgh, knowing that I would also get a practical education from North Park Church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — …in how to transition to church from traditional hymn singing pews into something contemporary and all that stuff, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Brian Tome — That’s why I stayed there. I knew that seminary was not going to be preparing me practically for ministry.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — That’s why I thought I needed theologically. But second, prepare me, prepare me, practically.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — And then from there, it was about innovating and thinking through, okay, what is it that I’m supposed to do? How does God want to use me?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — And a lot of the moves you make when you first start a church or first start leadership, they’re copy and paste moves.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — You find out what works and you copy and paste, but then eventually, you start innovating and branching out. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. One of the things that for me as an outsider looking in at Crossroads that has, I think, been a hallmark of, of your ministry… So many of our churches, we talk about what we’re trying to create, a place for guys to come. You know, we’re trying to create a place where, you know, whatever it is, 35 year old male, 28 year old male, what we all talk about in different ways, we would love for those guys to come. But when we look at the actual people attending our church, it’s 60/70% women, which is not a that’s not a not degradation of the women that are attending our churches…
Brian Tome — Right.
Rich Birch — …but our churches don’t seem to be naturally set up to want to attract guys. Why is that? What what what’s happening there. Diagnose that problem for us. Brian Tome — Yeah. Well, you you to build a large church or a large organization, you have to understand the basic rule. Your systems are set up to give you exactly what you’re currently getting. You’re not getting what you’re getting by accident. Rich Birch — Yep. Brian Tome — Your systems are set up for it. And so when and you may not even know you have a system.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Tome — You may have never planned it, but you have a system that’s producing the results that you have right now. Excuse me, excuse me. So you’re right. When we look at churches, we’re clearly we have a system, clearly, that works for women and clearly not for men. I mean, can we just start there and admit that?
Rich Birch — Admit that. Yeah.
Brian Tome — And there’s a bunch of signs, a bunch of reasons for that. I could go into the normal litany, of course, that a lot of people know, but we just got to just say, hey, if we want to reach a culture and we actually want to reach right now, believe it or not, the most vulnerable part of our culture, which is men. Men. Rich Birch — Unpack that, unpack that, talk about that a little bit more. Brian Tome — Men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women. Rich Birch — Right. Brian Tome — Men are decreasing in life expectancy, unlike women. Men are two times more likely to have an alcohol abuse related or chemical dependency issue than women are. Grad schools right now are 70% female. We know from our history he or she were the best education that has the most money. So we’re men are being locked out of opportunities, or at least will be very very soon. We have an ongoing discussion about toxic masculinity.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — It’s it’s I when I get asked I get to ask that all the time. And my, my first response is, have you ever heard the phrase toxic femininity? Rich Birch — Right. Brian Tome — Of course you haven’t, because you would get stoned if you did.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Brian Tome — But yet we talk about toxic. Like if someone has a gun and a pickup truck, then is that toxic masculinity? We say if someone drives a pink car and wears eyeshadow, is that toxic femininity?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — Not everybody has to have those things. But I’m just going, like, even how we talk about it with men. We we belittle men. If a man is having a friendship, we don’t know how to categorize it. So we call it a bromance. We call it a man crush. Because we we…
Rich Birch — Yeah, we don’t know what to do with it. Brian Tome — And our churches are structured to have women. They just are. Our worship songs or love songs to Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — They’re not the kind of songs that men connect with from of old. Things like Our Mighty Fortress is Our God. My gosh, Onward Christian Soldiers! You couldn’t even do that today. I don’t know what you’re saying about Christian Soldiers. Are you saying we’re pro gun? Are we are we saying we’re going to… Just freaking relax? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Take a take a breath. Yeah, yeah. Brian Tome — Take a song. You know what a beautiful name it is. Wait, no, no, no. What a beautiful name it is, the name of Jesus. You know that that that that thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yah. Brian Tome — That’s weird. I love that song. It’s weird.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — What a beautiful name, Rich, is the name of Rich. What a beautiful name. Rich Birch — Right, right. You would never say that. Brian Tome — You’ll be okay hearing wonderful name, powerful name, but it’s just. And we don’t think much about it because it’s in the water. It’s our system to reach and communicate women to, not men. Rich Birch — Right, right. Okay, so so I know churches will do they’ll be like, okay, we’ve got to fix this problem. And so then we end up with, like I would say, real milquetoast solutions. We end up with like, Saturday morning, you know…
Brian Tome — Pancake breakfast.
Rich Birch — …pancake breakfast, which is not what Crossroads is doing by any means. Compare and contrast why is that? Like so that is like so, you know, repulsive to me. I’m like, I don’t want to be a part of that. I don’t want to sit around in a, you know, a pancake breakfast. But yeah, talk to us about what is it that that Crossroads has done to try to tap into guys to connect with them? Brian Tome — I so we started, at the very beginning, even before we started to have a focus on men, and God started to refine some things in me, from the beginning, this came from our marketing team. We used to have a mailer – all of our people were all volunteers…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — …a lot of them from Proctor and Gamble, which at that point still arguably today is still the the king marketer in the world. Right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — I mean, they’re making money convincing people that soapy solutions, they should buy theirs versus somebody else’s. Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah. Brian Tome — I hate the target is men. We have to reach men. There they were saying. And a woman led that up, Vivienne Bechtold. We got women, if if we reach men, then we can get women. And men are decision makers and all that. That’s what we believed in 1995. So we chose the colors we had, and we chose the copy we had, thinking about men. So that was the that was the beginning of thinking that. Right? Brian Tome — And then as and then as time went on, you start to say, all right, well, who is God uniquely made me? He’s made me a man. And what would I like to do as a man? Well, let’s start doing that at Crossroads. And so we just kept building from there, really.
Brian Tome — And I don’t think I don’t think our church can do that, Rich.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — I think, I think, nor do I think all churches should do that. I’m really big right now on 2 Timothy 4:5 where Paul’s talking to Timothy and he tells them things. Three of them everybody should do. One of them, no. One, he says be sober minded. Great. Let’s be sober minded. Let’s think clearly. Two, two is endure affliction. We’re all going to have crappy times. And the reason we have so many people deconstructing, leaving the faith, not giving people a proper doctrine of difficulty, that life is just hard. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and embrace the suck. Brian Tome — Third thing he says is do the work of evangelism. Doesn’t say have the gift of evangelism. All of us, no matter what our gifting are, we’ve got to be sharing our faith. And the fourth thing and this is the thing that’s unique to everybody. He says, fulfill your ministry. Emphasis YOUR – fulfill your ministry. Timothy never wrote any books that went in the New Testament. Timothy never went to other countries on ships to share the gospel, at least not that I know of. Timothy never, as far as I know, you know, went and started a bunch of other churches.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — Maybe maybe on that. But he didn’t. What I’m saying is he didn’t have the Apostle Paul’s ministry. Fulfill his ministry.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Brian Tome — And we’ve got to get more people in the kingdom of God that know uniquely what they can do in fulfilling your ministry. Not Steven Furtick’s ministry…
Yeah, it’s true.
Brian Tome — …not Brian Tome’s ministry, not anybody. Your ministry. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. I’ve said in other environments that one of my impressions of being around, you know, multiplicity of lead pastors who have led churches that have grown, you know, they’ve gone beyond a thousand, 2000, 3000, they’re growing 4- or 5000 people, is it does seem like over time those ministries become, you know, it’s like the lead pastors and the leadership of the church. They become more of themselves. They become more of like they take on a unique personality. That’s a part of what I think God uses. So I love that. That’s a great a great reminder from Scripture.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s talk about a specific outworking of this kind of approach to trying to connect with guys. Man Camp. What is Man Camp? Explain this to me. Brian Tome — Okay, so I was on a motorcycle trip once where we camp off of our motorcycles. And it was a tough day before. It rained at night. We got up in the morning, we were having coffee around a fire, and somebody opened up and shared something real vulnerable about their life. And I realized this happens all the time. We’re pushed. We’re in an uncomfortable place. We’re standing in the fire. We’re having some beverages at night or in the morning or whatever it is. And someone and someone opens up and stimulates a great conversation.
Brian Tome — And I said, yo, we should do this, but not expect people to have a motorcycle. What could you do? You know…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Tome — …what could we do that would give people a sense of adventure, a sense of mystery, of unknown, where they sit around a fire and talk? And that’s when man camp was born. And all those people around that, around that campfire, were the leadership became the leadership core for Man Camp and are still serving at Man Camp, to this day on everything. And we we did a we found a guy with a farm in Indiana, and we sold out tickets. Like, people put credit cards in to open up at 6 a.m. Sold out 90 seconds. 500 tickets sold out in 90 seconds.
Rich Birch — That’s crazy.
Brian Tome — We said, okay, let’s do that again. So we did another one. A make up in two weeks. Same thing. 500, 500 gone like in minutes, you know. Done. And then we went to an abandoned ATV park and then did. And then we bought our own land, and then we just bought more land to add on to our land. So, and, and we’re seeing, yeah, we’re seeing, quite breakthrough in men’s lives and people coming to Christ like crazy supernatural stuff like, tongues…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — …tongues, breaking out in the prayer tent where people are hearing Portuguese that they have never spoken or heard.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Brian Tome — And we had four countries come to the last one. Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Brian Tome — 41 states and four countries. And we had the situation with, people came from Portugal.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Brian Tome — And one of the guys speaks the gift of tongues inside of the personal prayer language thing. And he said, I’m, I’m just gonna try this and see what it goes with this thing. And he did it. And they all there was one of them spoke English, and the guy who spoke English said, we don’t know what you’re speaking. But we all understand, stood every word you heard you said, and we understood it exactly. Here’s what you said. Rich Birch — Wow.
Brian Tome — It’s interesting when you read Acts 2, you’re not sure if there’s a supernatural ability for people to speak ah speak Portuguese who haven’t heard it, or if the people in Portugal are hearing it the way they can understand. Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian Tome — It’s uncertain. So, and we got right beside that is that crazy stuff is happening. We’ve got a beer a beer truck right beside. We went through 100 kegs of beer last time. And, and that’s kind of the magic of Man Camp. It’s all the things that men normally do, all wedged together. And you think it shouldn’t work, but it does.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — When you have guys together camping, someone’s going to be drinking.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — And when you have guys who are together and they, a good percentage of them know Jesus, they’re going to be talking about Jesus. Let’s put it all together. And that’s really where the power is. Rich Birch — How does the programming work? Is it is it overly programmed, or is it just kind of like a menu? Here’s a whole bunch of stuff to do. How what are you finding is working on that front from a like how you know what’s actually happening during the few days that you’re away? Brian Tome — Yeah. All I mean, all men are different, you know, some drive minivans, some drive trucks, some like to shoot guns. Some people hate guns. Some are married. Some… But there’s no prototypical man. I don’t think. So Man Camp has to be, meets different men where they are. If you want to do a machismo arm wrestling competition, if you got muscle mass, great, we got it for you.
RIch Birch — Sure.
Brian Tome — If you want to, you know, have some, have some beers. Great. If you don’t, we make a big thing like a lot of people shouldn’t drink. And some of the most manly men are in recovery and some people here should be in recovery. Great. We, you know, we we do that sort of thing. But we do the common thing is we try to meet men where they are and let them be off. Let them be themselves. Let them have a different environment with other men who understand them, quite frankly, more than any other woman. Rich Birch — Right. Interesting. Now our so people are bringing all their own stuff. It sounds like they’re bringing their own food. It’s like, you know, it’s pretty primitive. Is that by design…
Brian Tome — Yes.
Rich Birch — …or are you hoping long term, like, talk us through that part? Brian Tome — No, it’s very it’s primitive by design.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — We are we are not looking to give you another thing you can buy, we entertain you with. You got to figure it the freak out. You got to figure it out. That’s that’s a major problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — So we’re not going to build, like, retreat facilities because it would be a financial and maintenance nightmare. No, you got to bring something to the thing. We’re going to give you one lunch, and we’re going to give you a program and structure. But no, your group have to figure out who’s doing breakfasts, who’s doing dinners, how all that stuff’s happen. No, that that that’s very intentional. Rich Birch — Yeah. Interesting. Now what is when you think about the future, you know, as you’re obviously this has grown. It started you know, with a couple of weekends and you know now you’ve got a lot of folks showing up. What’s your heart for this for the long term? Obviously this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing, this isn’t a passing fad. You guys are committed to this. You bought land. You’re trying to you know, this is like a significant deal you’re thinking about here. But talk to us where do you think this is going? Brian Tome — I think where it’s going and where I’m praying for is a is an awakening. An awakening on a mass scale in our country for men and women. That’s where I think it’s going. I think we’re way overdue for an awakening. And I’m tired of just incrementally growing the church on pastoring. I’m tired of just adding another campus that needs to happen, and I knighted somebody else here to do that work while I’m still engaged with it. Brian Tome — But like, you know, if an if a church growing by 20% was going to change America would, if another campus was, it would…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — We got to start trying some new things. Where where are the future Jim Rayburns, who started Young Life and ship people from all over the country and got his bus company to take kids out? Where where’s the Bill Brights that had a vision put Campus Crusade on every single campus and four spiritual laws and people raise money. Where are those ideas? All we’re doing is trying to replicate somebody else’s success. And I think this may be the thing that maybe God is asking us to do. And it may be the thing that unlocks the masses of people. We’re way overdue, Rich, for an awakening on a mass scale.
Rich Birch — Yeah, amen. Absolutely.
Brian Tome — And they all happen outside, by the way. Rich Birch — Well talk to you about that. That’s an interesting idea. Talk talk to me about about your conviction about a revival is happening outside. Brian Tome — Yeah. Well okay. So revivals if you’re going to revivals, like Christians having their faith revived, that can happen inside.
Rich Birch — Sure. Brian Tome — But if you’re talking about awakenings, which is where the Spirit of God descends in a region and there is conversions on a large scale and the structures are changed and shifted, we have a bunch of those that we can study. George Whitfield, George Whitfield, gosh, Wesley, all that stuff. Well, the most recent revival that took place, which was amazing down in Asbury. I’m so bummed I didn’t go to that because it’s an hour away, and I found out about it. I could have gone the next day after it happened.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — And I just waited too long. Too late. But, you know, Francis Asbury was named for Francis Asbury. Francis Asbury wrote 300,000 miles on horseback…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — …going outside, preaching in the settlements, 300,000 miles, you know.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — And so these things, is it outside because it’s cheaper? Is it outside because people aren’t boxed in? Outside you feel closer to God. Outside because the walls are blown out and you can see. Outside because the most palpable presence of God seems to be in the tabernacle versus the temple. Brian Tome — You know? You ever notice that? Like the description in the Pentateuch is very clear – pillar of fire, cloud. It’s, and then when it goes inside the temple, it’s like, waa-waa.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Brian Tome — Like there’s some stuff going in there, but it’s just. So there’s something, I think, in the history of the Spirit of God, there’s something about the sanctuary of outside. We’re ready for another one of those things. We’re ready for a Woodstock of spiritual proportions. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a great insight. You know, I think, like, even in even you look in the book of Acts, right? Like Paul is going from place to place to place. He goes somewhere, a riot breaks out, then he’s got to go somewhere else, like, that, you know, that’s a fascinating insight. I can see where, you know, I wonder if a part of it is when the church kind of settles down and finally gets reasonable and has a, you know, a building and all that, the risk goes out of it.
Brian Tome — Right. Rich Birch — The, you know, the our faith isn’t stretched as much. And so we’re not, you know, we’re not leaning out there where, you know, by definition, if you’re if you’re taking people out into the middle of nowhere, there’s a ton of risk in this. Brian Tome — I’m pro-buildings.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Tome — We’re building a very expensive building in Dayton, Ohio right now. Very, very, very, very. The construction costs are ridiculous. So I’m pro-buildings.
Brian Tome — I just also know that if you look at the history of Christendom, there’s big jumps that happen spiritually outdoors. And if I look at some of the things I’m really excited about, it’s, It’s what’s happening in our camps. Are you familiar with that that study that came out of, came out of Gordon Cromwell, what was it? Four years ago, about how much it cost to baptize a person? Rich Birch — Oh, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian Tome — Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna look up the up the things right now. They they they basically looked at all of all the money given to Christian causes, churches, non-profits and the number of people who were baptized. Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — And they divided it, which that’s a pretty big deal, right? It’s like… Rich Birch — Right. Brian Tome — …great commission. And and in 2017, the number, the number per baptism, what it costs, excuse me, 2014, is $753,000. So to get someone saved and baptized cost $753,000. They’re projecting that 2025, it would be $1.4 Million dollars…
Rich Birch — Right, it’s unscalable. Brian Tome — …per baptism. Wow. Now so I just looked at Crossroads and I said, okay, I’m curious, where are we?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — At 70 million bucks given last year, we baptized 2000 people, it was came out to be like, I don’t know, 30,000 bucks or what is that, the person in my room, whatever it is. So not bad. But I tell you what was really crazy when I looked at, when I looked at what it meant for camps, you know what camps was?
Rich Birch — How much? Brian Tome — Camps was it was, oh, where is it I’m giving $769 a baptism. When we factored in all the land, all the staff, all the all the, the program 769. So that is like the most… Rich Birch — Super compelling. Brian Tome — Oh my gosh. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.. Brian Tome — I don’t know. Is that what it is? I don’t know. I just think we’ve got to get back to our roots, and our roots as human beings is spending more, more time outside. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Now, is is Man Camp open? Like, is this just a Crossroads thing or is it open to guys outside of Crossroads? Talk us through that. How does that work? Brian Tome — Well, we have 41 states and four countries. So Crossroads is not in 41 states and four countries.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Brian Tome — No. This is a this is a movement of men. In fact, what we have is we have some churches bring some of their men. Like, well, pastor, come and bring some folks. Or another guy one guy comes, just he saw it on social media, and then he’ll come the next year with three people, and it builds that way. So it certainly is a Crossroads, Crossroads is the financial engine behind that where the creative driver of it, but no, this is this is a man thing. This isn’t this isn’t a Crossroads thing. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Rich Birch — So if I’m if I’m listening in today, I’m, you know, I’m a church leader, you’d encourage people to say, hey, like, maybe load up a maybe there’s even a small group of guys, a van load. Hey, let’s let’s jump in the car and go check this out. This year’s Man Camp is at the end of September. September 27th to the 29th. If people want information, they go to mancamp.us. What else we want to say to that kind of leader that’s listening in? I’m hoping they’ll be inspired to think outside the box, but is there anything else around, you know, Man Camp specifically that we want them to be thinking about? Brian Tome — I think it’s like with the rest of life, Rich. If you want something different, you got to try something different.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — This is something very different. I don’t meet many people who are satisfied with what’s happening with men. I don’t meet many people who are satisfied with the ministry endeavors that are gone towards men. Brian Tome — In fact, I meet very few Christian men who are satisfied with their faith.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Brian Tome — I and this is we’re talking unbelievers. We’re talking believers. This this is not like a Christianese event. If it was a Christianese event, we wouldn’t be wouldn’t be going through 100, 100 kegs of beer last time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — We had to make another beer run. You know, this is like…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — It’s not Kumbaya or trying to impress all the churchy people. You’re going to hear language here that you might not like. We’re it’s men. It’s a it’s a men’s event. So I would say, why don’t you push yourself? Why don’t you try something.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — God’s using something here. Give yourself a different experience. There’s something that happens to us where we stop trying new things and exposing ourselves to new ministry methods. Rich Birch — Love that. Brian Tome — I push people to try it. Give it a try. Rich Birch — Well, so let’s talk about, so this is working. This is in the category of working. I think oftentimes we talk as church leaders. Hey you should try something new when we are referencing the things that are working. What’s something that you guys have tried at Crossroads that was like a giant wet fart that just did not go anywhere. That was like, oh, that didn’t work out. Like that was, you know, not a great. Brian Tome — A wet fart. I love that. Rich Birch — Sticking with the Man Camp theme. Brian Tome — Right. Well, we’re pretty, we’re pretty, we’re pretty, we’re pretty well, we’re pretty well known in church circles for our digital strategy, and our app, and how we engage people. We actually don’t count attendance anymore. Well, we do count physical attendance, but we count engagement. And we track a bunch of different things to tell people where they’re engaged. But the failure thing. We wasted millions of dollars. Millions. We’re having huge success right now. But we were a bit too, too rambunctious, too whatever, too high ourselves just to having rooms full of coders who were coding stuff that shouldn’t have been coded. That was a, that was a, a really, really huge, huge failure. Brian Tome — Our first our first Christmas show. We thought, man, Cincinnatians love Christmas things. They go to the same right Ebenezer Scrooge thing again and again and again. We should we should try to do a Christmas show that’s that’s spiritual in nature that has the Christian message in it. First one was just horrible. It was horrible. I mean, we wrote it; it was awful. It was called Imagine. You can’t imagine how bad it was. Seriously. I was getting I was getting emails like, what are you?!? I mean, it was so bad, like we didn’t have Christmas music. It didn’t even mention Jesus. It was really weird.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — I’m serious. It was weird. We had light bulb guy that sort of looked like Christmas tree. That was it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — It was it was horrible. Like people left the church over it. It was like, this is what we give you a Christmas. Boom. Well, but that was the beginning of, Awaited, Christmas show that we did that reached when we, before we shut down, it was last year. There was 125,000 people…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Tome — …at that thing. And, we’re actually working to bring it back. But that was a massive wet fart…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — …That that that led to that. We’ve, our student ministry. Oh my gosh. Our student ministry has struggled since day one.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Tome — And it’s only been we’ve had a lot of people doing some good work there, but never been happy with where it’s been until the last two years. And like, we’ve got the right guy and it’s going it’s going good. But it’s been horrible. So we’ve had a lot of duds. Rich Birch — Right. Well this has been great. That on the innovation side, I think that’s one of those things, churches that have or organizations that have innovated do you have a long list of things that have not gone well and I appreciate you just even, you know, tapping into that.
Rich Birch — Well, Man Camp, I really do want to encourage church leaders to check out mancamp.us for more information. I would, you know, I think this is fantastic. I love what you guys are doing. I just want to honor you for your leadership, for the good things that have happened at Crossroads over all these years. And in this kind of current iteration, I think it’s inspiring for sure. Going to give you the last word. What’s the last thing you’d love to say just as we wrap up today’s episode? Brian Tome — Jesus is Lord. Rich Birch — Love it. Nice. Brian Tome — Okay. That is that is the most important thing. But…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Tome — …I would encourage I would encourage people, look, hey, fulfill your ministry. Your ministry.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Tome — Cover bands don’t change the world.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Tome — You’ve got you’ve got to learn your instrument by playing cover man cover band tunes, but if you want to change the world, you got to start writing your own stuff and doing something and it hasn’t been seen before. We need more people doing that. And seminaries aren’t preparing people for that. And the megachurch culture isn’t even encouraging people to do that. But we need more people who are doing their ministry, fulfilling it and finding it. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much, Brian. Again, I would want to get people to check out mancamp.us. Is there anywhere else online we want to send people as we wrap up today’s episode? Brian Tome — If you want to do a deeper dive, you can go to briantome.com. And, if you want to see my day job, it’s Crossroads.net. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today, Brian. Brian Tome — My pleasure Rich. Thanks for having me. A huge fan of what you’ve done and how you’re serving people. Really, really great, man. So I’m honored to be able to spend some time with you.
The Volunteer Playbook: Secrets to Building a Thriving Ministry Team with Nick Blevins
Aug 15, 2024
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. Today, we have repeat guest, Nick Blevins, the Children and Student Team Leader at Community Christian Church in Maryland. He is also the cofounder of Ministry Boost which helps leaders fast forward their growth in ministry through training, coaching, and consulting.
Every church out there could use more volunteers. How can we recruit them consistently, not only when there’s an urgent need? Tune in as Nick offers a proven framework to help your church recruit, train, and empower more volunteers.
Take time for recruitment. // Most church leaders don’t learn volunteer recruiting in seminary, have a strategy for it, and don’t spend much time doing it. Yet volunteers are the backbone of our churches. Nick has written a book called “The Volunteer Playbook: A Proven Framework to Help Your Church Recruit, Train, and Empower More Volunteers” which provides a structured approach to building your volunteer team. He recommends taking 2-3 hours a week to get started with this process.
Five-part framework. // The first step in the framework involves identifying and making initial contact with potential volunteers. Think about how many volunteers you need and multiply the number by ten. This is the number of prospects you need, or your volunteer conversion ratio. For example, if you need 50 volunteers, you’ll need to look at 500 prospects.
Identify prospects. // Use your updated church database to identify individuals who are not currently serving but could be potential volunteers. Nick recommends sending two emails and a text message over a span of three to four weeks. The initial email should invite prospects to a conversation, allowing them to share their stories and experiences with the church. Remember many potential volunteers may need a gentle nudge to engage. This process is about building connections.
Have a conversation. // Once you’ve identified prospects, the second step is to have a genuine conversation. The framework is not just about recruiting, but about ministering to people. Put your pastor hat on and think about what someone’s next best step is. Listen to what is going on in their lives. Volunteering may not be the next best step right now, but what other connections can you make, or steps can you help them take?
Cast vision. // The third step, orientation, serves as a bridge between initial interest and commitment. Orientation isn’t about policies and boring handbooks, but rather gives potential volunteers the opportunity to learn about the ministry, its impact, and the specific roles available. Cast a compelling vision during orientation and help potential volunteers understand why they should say yes to serving.
Onboarding and placement. // Once individuals have committed to serving, the last two steps involve onboarding and placement. These steps are essential for ensuring volunteers feel supported and equipped in their roles. If you onboard and train well, then volunteers get placed and serve well, and that sets up good retention. Have new volunteers apprentice with experienced ones for a few weeks. This mentorship approach allows new volunteers to learn the ropes in a supportive environment, increasing their confidence and commitment to the role.
Build a foundation. // Once you have your volunteers in place, then you can focus on building your foundation. Creating a culture of volunteerism within the church is crucial for long-term success. Focus on structuring for growth and empowering your volunteers. Identify the things that will move the needle and boost future recruitment.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a repeat guest which is, you know when with that happens that we’ve got good things coming. Today we’ve got Nick Blevins with us. He is he serves currently as the children and student team leader at Community Christian in Maryland. He’s also the co-founder of a great organization called Ministry Boost. He started it with two friends of his, Kenny and Kevin, and where they help leaders fast forward their growth in ministry through courses, training, coaching, consulting. I I just think the world of Nick, think the world of what he does. He is in the corner of church leaders. Friends, like I say this totally honestly, there’s folks like Nick who are selling things who I think are just trying to sell things, but Nick’s not one of those guys. He actually wants to help you. So I’m honored to have Nick on the show today. Welcome, Nick – so glad you’re here.
Nick Blevins — Hey, Rich. Thanks for having me. That’s quite the intro there. Because I got to say you I mean you know you’ve actually helped my church far more than I’ve ever helped you. We still refer to like the way you helped us with our guests and assimilation and kind of like our whole re- kinda we basically redid it years ago. I mean it’s been so good ever since. And so thank you, I um, appreciate your podcast and your writing, and everything you do.
Rich Birch — Nice. So glad it’s fun to connect a little bit in chat today. But kind of fill out the picture, tell us a little bit about you, just kind of fill out the Nick Blevins story a little bit, and the details there that I didn’t catch.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ve only been in two churches my whole life. I grew up going to church but was in one church until I thought I’d attend church my whole life. I went to school for information systems management, thought I’d be a you know volunteer that gives lots of time and always love the church, but didn’t think I’d work for the church until my young 20s, and felt like you know what? Maybe this is where God’s calling me.
Nick Blevins — But we wanted to be part of a new church. We felt like where I live north of Baltimore, Maryland we needed a lot of churches. We still need a lot of churches, Rich. It’s kind of like Canada; it’s it’s all over the northeast…
Rich Birch — So true. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — …and northwest. And we heard of a new church starting and I jumped on board as the Kids’ Pastor. It’s been 18 years now, I lead kids, I lead our next gen and our operations. I joke that I approve my own budgets, but that’s not really true. Um, but it is two fun worlds to live in, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — Kids, student ministry, operations with building budget finance. And then like you said we started ministry boost. We have online courses and coaching, primarily for next gen leaders.
Nick Blevins — And then I also work with Slingshot Group, helping churches hire next gen staff, which has been fun.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — So I love doing lots of things to help the church – that’s kind of my heart and passion and I’m I’m glad, you know, God led me here so many years ago.
Rich Birch — Nice. Well for folks that are longtime listeners, you know that I don’t really love to just there’s lots of people that reach out and say, oh I’ve got a book. And we turn down probably for everyone that someone that says yes they send us something, we probably turn down 15 or 20, like we turned down the vast majority of them. But Nick actually he’s got a book and I’ve wanted to have him come on. And so the fact that here we are a year later, ah you know, I’m just so honored that we’ve have you here. You got a book that came out last year called “The Volunteer Playbook: A Proven Framework to Help Your Church Recruit, Train and Empower More Volunteers” and I want to talk about that today. This is such an important topic. Kind of set this up. What led you to the place where you’re like, hey, now’s the time. We got to pull this together, got to pull this playbook together. What kind of got you in that in that when you were back working on this project?
Nick Blevins — Well, that’s a good question, Rich, because it actually took me 10 years to write. But that’s because I’m an awful writer, I’m not the most disciplined worker.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Nick Blevins — And so and and ten years ago my thought was, I’ve learned so much from so many other people about recruiting. Because like very little in the book, Rich, is me or my ideas, or my thoughts.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Nick Blevins — I mean like literally maybe 3%. But I learned so much from other people that I thought was helpful and was working and I’d seen it work in other churches. What if I could put it together in a playbook of sorts, like almost ordered. You know do this first, and do this.
Nick Blevins — And and then there’s so many things that impact volunteerism, right? Both positively and negatively. Like how how can we address a bunch or at least the most important ones. And so that was the idea. And then finally it took some some big time accountability for me to get it finished ah last year.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — Which I could share that story. But essentially I had to deliver a chapter every week to the editor or else I owed money that I wasn’t going to get back. That was the agreement I set up.
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Nick Blevins — And it worked, it worked. I didn’t have the money. So I finally wrote it um, which is great.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — And my whole goal was like let’s take this stuff that we’re doing with churches, that we I do in my church, we just did it—I told you about that before we hit record…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — …and put in a book that hopefully would help, you know, so many people get access to it. Because books are cheap…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — …relatively speaking.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. I love it. Well there’s a ton we could talk about in here. And and, friends, the punchline in this: I think you should pick up a copy, go to Amazon, grab a copy. Go to nickblevins.com, pick up a copy. Um, but I want to try to leverage the fact that you’re here for this half an hour or so and there’s ah, part of this book that I think is particularly helpful, literally for everybody. Every every church I know out there, um, whether you think you need more volunteers or not. Like whether you feel the pain or not, you do like your your church needs more.
Rich Birch — And so you talk about this kind of five-part ah framework to recruit volunteers more consistently. I’d love to unpack that. What’s some of the low hanging fruit? You know you’re into a lot of churches. You’re talking to a lot of churches. Let’s assume I’m a church of, I don’t know 1500 people, I’m the executive pastor. And what’s the advice you find yourself giving those churches all the time around ah recruiting, particularly.
Nick Blevins — Yeah I mean, when we whenever I talk about this, before I hit the 5-part framework, which I would consider that to be like in the weeds. That’s like on-the-ground, nuts-and-bolts how to recruit. Kind of like 10,000 foot level…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Nick Blevins — …is most leaders don’t spend enough time recruiting, or have any type of strategy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — Ah, your your podcast is a great ah example of this. Like nobody learns volunteer recruiting in seminary…
Rich Birch — Yes, true.
Nick Blevins — …at least not when I ask.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — You know when we teach when we teach this in like a conference breakout or with a church, we’ll say, how many of you learned how to recruit, like somebody taught you how to recruit volunteers? And typically, I don’t know like 2 or 3 out of people out of a hundred might raise their hand. You know most people didn’t learn this, so they have no strategy for it. And and ah the other question we’ll ask is be honest, how much time do you spend a week recruiting volunteers? And you could probably guess the most common answer is zero hours.
Rich Birch — Zero. Yeah, yes.
Nick Blevins — One a guy one time at one of the times we were doing this in a workshop um, we asked them to hold up their hands and show how many hours, with their eyes closed. So nobody’s boss is looking at them. And this guy had half a finger. He held off like you know, not a whole one hour…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — …like a half hour a week is like…
Rich Birch — 20 minutes.
Nick Blevins — …that’s great. Ah, it’s very honest. And every now and then you know you’ll see a handful of people say two, three hours. But most of us if we’re honest, it’s like, yeah, I don’t. I mean I probably spend 10 hours a year. And then you need them, when it’s Sunday or Wednesday night or whenever your ministry is meeting.
Rich Birch — Right. You feel the pressure, and it’s like oh my goodness. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, you do. Yes and then you go back and the pressure’s off again. You know it’s like that next meeting or that curriculum to write, or that message. And so that’s the the principle mostly is if you could give it the time, and we recommend I would recommend starting out, especially 2 to 4 hours a week.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — Because you’re probably going to build some of the things we’re going to talk about in the framework. Maybe even more than that. Maybe 8 hours a week if you’re really building some of these other pieces. Which a lot of people listening are like, wow, 8 hours a week. I don’t know if I have that time. But it’s like, if you want a full volunteer team. And it’s not 8 hours a week forever.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — You’re like there’s ah, there’s a benefit where eventually it’s maybe 2 hours a week on maintenance mode. And you use a strategy. You know you can you can see success.
Nick Blevins — So we put together the five-part framework. It’s really just a way to think about somebody in your church. You said the church at 1500. Imagine those people that are attending. They’re involved. I don’t know if they’re attending once a month or once a week or whatever. Maybe they’re in a…
Rich Birch — Yes, who knows. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, maybe they’re in a small group. Maybe they’re not. But they call your church home. They attend.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — What are the steps to take them from there to serving on a team? And it’s you know as we broke it down to 5 steps, 5 parts. And and I say you could make you can change it make it 6, make it 3. Don’t make it 24, like nobody’s following that, you know I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes, nobody’s going to do that. Yep.
Nick Blevins — But you know have your steps that that you can follow. And so for ah for us our framework that we teach – the first part is prospects.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — People that aren’t serving that could be serving.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — And for me the way I define it is anybody who’s not currently serving. Like I don’t want to go recruit you know the volunteers who are already serving over here in Student Ministry or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yes, get him to come into our thing.
Nick Blevins — All the churches certainly do that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — Um, but you know who are the all the people that aren’t currently serving? They are prospects. Now you haven’t vetted them yet. Like you don’t know if they’re a fit, if they’re interested. But they’re prospects. And this is the number that probably shocks people the most, Rich, and I think you’ll appreciate this as a numbers guy. We recommend that you figure out how many volunteers you need to recruit, which that’s another problem. Sure a lot of leaders don’t even know how many.
Rich Birch — Yeah, right.
Nick Blevins — Like how many how many volunteers do you need? A lot. Like exactly. How many? Ah whole a whole lot.
Rich Birch — A lot. Yes. More.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, yeah. More. You have to know how many. You know you got to clarify the need to figure out how many do I need.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — But let’s say in that church of 1500, I’m a ministry leader, I’ve got a team of 50 volunteers, but I want a hundred. Like I’m 50 short which, would be a lot.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you’d notice it.
Nick Blevins — I mean you’d be really in in desperate mode there if you only have the volunteers. Well if you need 50 volunteers, we have a thing that we call the VCR. Not the old video device that some of us of a certain age are used to using.
Rich Birch — Yes, remember.
Nick Blevins — But yeah, we call it the volunteer conversion ratio. And we recommend that it’s 10X…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nick Blevins — …meaning if you need 50 volunteers, you need 10 times that number of prospects: 500 prospects, right?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, and a lot of people that’s their response, which I get.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a lot.
Nick Blevins — It is a lot.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And a lot of people like your church of 1500 is a good example. Rich, and I’d love to ask you this I would like to get your thoughts. In a church of 1500, average attendance, how many people do you think really call that church home? Like they show up at Easter and Christmas or, you know what I’m saying? Like what’s the total number of active attenders?
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s well a lot lots of lead pastors love this number and live by this number. They’re like oh they, you know they’re they’re averaging 1500, but they’re like you know we’re really a church of three thousand or four thousand or something like that.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And and some of that can be true. You know I think it’s probably you know it’s probably in that range 2500/3000 doubling…
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …is probably you know, we see that. The the number I’ve talked about in the past on that is you know on those big days, you should be seeing double attendance…
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …so Easter, Christmas. And and that’s us that that community is people that are within like you don’t have to do Facebook ads to get those people. They’ve already arrived.
Nick Blevins — Yes, true.
Rich Birch — They’re connected to your church. And so I would say whatever the size of however many people came at Easter last year is a good starting point for you to think about, okay that that’s probably the size of our community.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, and I would agree with you – I think it’s 2X to 3X…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — …depending on the church, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — So that church of 1500 would have 3000, not usually, I wouldn’t usually see 4500, but let’s call it 3000.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — So when you think of 500 prospects are there 500 prospects in a church of 3000? For sure.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — That aren’t serving? 100%.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, I mean like your church could have really good volunteer numbers and you have at least 500. And every now and then ah you know somebody will say I’m in a church of 120, ah I need 10 volunteers. You’re telling me to get 100 prospects from a church that averages 120. It so it’s like it’s it’s not exactly a one size fits all. It’s just that what we have found is most church leaders reach out to far too few people.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nick Blevins — Like they they need that 50 volunteers, like that number I said…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Nick Blevins — …and they’re thinking I need to contact 50 people.
Rich Birch — Who are the 50 people.
Nick Blevins — Well that’s just not going to work.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, I mean so many of them aren’t even going to reply to you. So many of them are going to say no. So we say 10X. It might be different. It might be 8, whatever. But I actually I used to teach it as 4.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — But what I learned was church leaders wouldn’t get even four…
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Nick Blevins — …so I raised it feel like I graded on a curve…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — So it’s like okay, let’s increase it to 10 and maybe you’ll least get 4.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — And so that’s the first step is just making your list of prospects and it can literally be a database search. A church database search of who’s not serving
Rich Birch — People who are not serving.
Nick Blevins — Yeah. And you can either whittle it down if you want, or segment it by, you know, these are parents or these people have been active in the last six months. I mean you could do whatever you want there. And that’s you know that’s another problem church leaders face is most of them don’t have an updated database. You know that’s that’s a chronic thing.
Nick Blevins — But that’s the easiest way to do it is figure out who’s not serving and that can be your prospects. And then after that the whole our whole thing that we teach is you reach out to them. And I like to send two emails and a text over a span of 3 to 4 weeks.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — So I would email you, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — …and like and I wouldn’t even know you. If I knew you I’d send a different email.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — But if I didn’t know you, it could be a mass email too that’s merged. And it’s like, Hey Rich, I’m Nick one of the pastors on staff here at CCC. I was wondering if you’d have 15 minutes to talk before or after a service one Sunday. I’d love to hear your story, how you got connected here, and what it’s been like so far. You got time in the next couple weeks? And I’d send send the email. And then I would do that to, like if I was recruiting 50 volunteers which is a lot…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — …um I would send that to 500 people. So imagine that, 500 automated emails you know going out.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — But I’d merge I’d merge names – it’d say “Hey Rich”, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — Some people would respond. And I’d start setting up meetings. And some people won’t and I’ll email them next week, you know, kind of a reply.
Rich Birch — Okay. I see what you’re saying. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — And ah I like to do a little hack too where I kind of put the reply in and make it look like it’s a reply to the original, even through an automated thing. Like I will go.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I Love it. I Love it. Yes.
Nick Blevins — Yeah I’ll remerge it. Like at the bottom it’ll say “hey <first name>” and then up the top it’s like “hey <first name>” again. Um, and I just say like, hey, did you see my email last week; I’d love to connect if you’re up for it. And that’s great because most people are used automated emails.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — So even if you merge their name, they know. And so they’re going to a lot of times ignore that first one. But then that second one it’s like, oh Nick’s paying attention.
Rich Birch — Grabs their attention.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, like ah he noticed I didn’t respond. And then I’ll text the third or fourth week, but only if I don’t have enough people responding already…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …if that makes sense. Like that’s kind of like my last resort.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that makes total sense. Well and I think the thing to underline there, and I’ve seen this… so this is going to sound like a bragging kind of thing. It’s not trying to… But when um so I’ve done a lot of multisite launches over the years—thirteen of them—and directly recruited 1500 volunteers for all of those. And the one of the things I learned through all of that was that second step of following up with people, I think way too many church leaders they do the initial ask, and then they don’t actually follow up with the people that they don’t hear from. They don’t…
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I don’t know why that is. It’s like you’re like you feel bad or you’re like oh I don’t want to bother them or whatever. But it’s amazing how many people just in the follow-up will be like, oh yeah, absolutely. I’d love to get connected. Let’s let’s let’s grab a coffee.
Rich Birch — So now you in the first step you’re going immediately to let’s get face-to-face. Like you’re, you know, like let’s let’s try to… Why that? Why first to like, you know, the relational…
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …let’s grab a coffee after church on Sunday kind of thing?
Nick Blevins — Good question because there is a shortcut method, which I can mention later. I prefer this method, if you have the time, either individually or as a whole staff or whatever. And mainly because what I like about it is the second step is conversation. So first step was prospects. You know they could serve. You may or may not know them. The next step is when they’ve responded to your communication. Now they’re in conversation with you. And that could literally just be that reply to email, or reply to a text. Like you haven’t actually had the conversation yet…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …but here’s where you do. And the reason I like this method, Rich, is because the way I say it is, in this moment, you pastor those people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — Like it’s not just about recruiting. In fact, the thing you’re asking yourself while you’re talking with them, like if I was talking with you and meeting you for the first time, in my mind I’m thinking what is Rich’s best next step in faith?
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Nick Blevins — Not and I’d love for him to serve in my ministry – that’d be great if that’s the fit. But what’s Rich’s best next step. And so in that moment I put my pastor hat on, and again always say it doesn’t matter if pastor is your title or not or not. In this moment we’re all ministering to people. And you know it might be serving in your ministry and that’s great, and you’ll keep moving them forward in the the framework. But if it’s, I mean I think of a guy I talked to a couple years ago, where he had moved to our state probably a year before. He had just lost his job. He told me about how he had been in prison about ten years ago.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nick Blevins — Ah he had 3 kids. And so the urgent thing in his life is getting a job and you know…. And so I’m thinking at the end of the call I’m like serving is probably not his best next step. But I know a guy who works in the same industry he just worked in. And that guy also leads a great group at our church. I’m gonna get him connected to John.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Nick Blevins — John’s gonna be great for him. So sometimes, and then sometimes you talk to somebody, I talked to a guy, he actually is a my small group, his name’s Kyle. We do these volunteer tours which I can mention later. And Kyle did one about serving. And at the end of the tour Kyle says, Ah he either wants to serve in pre-teen ministry, which would be in my world, or worship arts because he can play some instruments. And I was like well dang it, I really want you in pre-teen ministry. We need we literally need some guys in pre-teen ministry right now.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — But not everybody can play instruments.
Rich Birch — Right..
Nick Blevins — Not everybody has that skill.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — So let me connect you with Andrew, our worship arts pastor. And sure enough he did. And then Kyle actually played for the first time about seven weeks ago…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nick Blevins — …played again three weeks ago. It’s so cool.
Rich Birch — That is cool.
Nick Blevins — And I miss that he’s not in pre-teen, but that’s an example of like the conversation helps me figure out what what is your best next step. So it does take longer.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Nick Blevins — That’s the downside is I mean you know if you were doing this if we were using our number of 50 volunteers, I’m contacting 500 people.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — If it works, I’m having 60 to 70 conversations over the span of a few months. It’s a lot.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — Now most churches 50 is a large number.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — A lot of churches don’t have to recruit 50 volunteers by themselves.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — Like one person, you know what I mean? Um, so yeah, you do that and you get those conversations going, and hopefully this goes back to the the VCR number, the 10X. Hopefully you’ve got 70-ish people that responded from the 500.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep, yep.
Nick Blevins — And that’s why it’s 10X.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — Because 430 people may never write you back.
Rich Birch — Yes, Yes, Yes, yes.
Nick Blevins — You know what I mean? So it’s kind of like it’s only 10X because you know so many people are just going to not reply. Um I’ve had people, um, actually this is another real story recently, where I contact a couple that I know. They live, I’m pointing on my camera here, they live through the woods right over there.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — Um, they’re a great great couple. And I was recruiting them like specifically, like this wasn’t even a mass thing. And they never replied to any of my three emails. It was a way it was a soft way for them to say no.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — And I could tell it was even awkward when I’d see ’em in person. You know it’s almost like can they look at me, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — And I want to be the guy that’s like I want to be bold enough to push you to take the kind of steps that I feel like we should all take.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — Like we’re not selling time shares…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — …so I want to be bold.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — But at the same time if the answer’s no, the answer is no, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fine. Yes.
Nick Blevins — So I think a ton of people just aren’t gonna reply – that’s their way of saying no without you know getting into it, like the awkwardness of it.
Nick Blevins — But now you have these 70 that you’re working with, and again if your church think your church is 150, maybe it’s seven, seven people. And now they’re in conversation with you.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — And the next step is what we call orientation.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — It’s a little confusing because I feel like orientation usually means like I just started a job. It’s my new orientation.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — We treat it more like the sales pitch.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nick Blevins — It’s not it’s not policies and boring handbooks, you know. Save that for after they say yes
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — It’s it’s here’s why you should say us to serving in this ministry.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Nick Blevins — Here’s why you should give two two to three hours a night on Sunday nights with our students for the next 3 years, maybe 7, you know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — Or you know an hour a week with our third graders ah you know playing in a band once a month. And you just cast vision and tell stories at that orientation, and and get them the whole goal get them to say yes to serving.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we’ve…
Nick Blevins — And so this oh go… I was gonna say the first 3 steps are really the core of the whole framework. You know you’re just getting people from you don’t know them, to now we’re talking, to now I’ve said yes to an orientation.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. A couple things to underline. I love the focus on conversations because I do I do think that the conversations, you know, lead to relationship. And and that you know ultimately leads to them taking some sort of step. I love the focus on, hey we you know we’re I’m trying to help you find your next step, not necessarily into this. You know obviously you know I need to fill my issues. But I you know we should be caring for people more where they’re at.
Rich Birch — You know we we’ve called that orientation step “shadow serve” in other environments where we deliberately say to people like, hey you’re gonna come and um, we’d love for you to just actually see it. Like you’ll you know whether it says you say you’re coming on the greeting team, like you’re going to spend Sunday morning with a team member and you’re gonna get a chance to see 3 or 4 different roles. But this is before they’ve even committed. It’s like we’re not asking you… this is you haven’t said yes yet, you’ve just it’s it’s kind of an information step.
Rich Birch — Um, why do I think there are churches that that skip that step and jump too quickly to like okay, let’s get you on a schedule. Let’s get you signed up.
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Why is that kind of orientation step an important piece of the puzzle do you think, Nick?
Nick Blevins — Oh good question. I think well you alluded to it. It’s a big step. So if I imagine me talking to, like pretend like Kyle did want to serve in pre-teen, or let’s say Kyle wanted to serve in student ministry. We really do want our student small group leaders to serve with a group of kids—let’s call it sixth grade guys—for at least 3 years: sixth, seventh, eighth.
Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Maybe all the way through twelfth.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — That’s two that’s three hours of the night on Sunday nights during the school year…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …plus trips and retreats retreats. I mean that is the biggest ask.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a big ask.
Nick Blevins — Now that’s, you know, there’s other smaller ones. Let’s say it’s every other week in some role for an hour. It’s a smaller ask. It’s still a big step from like I’ve never served maybe in a church to that. And so the way I say it is, there’s something in marketing, I’m sure you’re familiar with this called “the yes ladder”.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — And it’s the idea that in marketing they try to get you to say yes to one small thing before yes to the next thing, before that… You know, it’s a small steps on a ladder as opposed to the big jump of, hey, buy this boat. I don’t know whatever whatever it is. So I don’t know what the boat store does, but maybe they’re like, you know, here download this PDF about you know scams to avoid in boats.
Rich Birch — Yeah, sure.
Nick Blevins — And then come in for a visit and drive one. Like and of course again, we’re not selling boats or anything like that. I think you know serving is a huge part of discipleship. So I want to make the steps as simple and easy as possible. And so an orientation saying yes to that, like you said, where there’s no commitment yet, way easier than yes, let me give, you know, 3 years of my life away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — And I just think you’ll get people, especially if you can get them there, one of the secrets of the orientation is if you do it well, most people do say yes.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Because by the time they got there, they’re warmed up. And then you tell him like I tell stories about Keith in our church. Keith has probably baptized at least thirty fourth and fifth grade boys. At least. Because he’s been a fourth fifth grade small group really for multiple decades.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — I think of Shannon who’s a small group leader that’s had, you know, kids in kindergarten and right now she’s got a group of ninth grade girls. Um, she shows up at their soccer games. She gets prints like big pictures of their face, you know, like these huge like and it holds them on the sideline to embarrass them.
Rich Birch — So well.
Nick Blevins — Ah I tell stories about Shannon because it’s like think about the difference Shannon’s making in these kids lives.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Nick Blevins — I literally just joked with Shannon a few weeks ago. My our oldest daughter is 8 and I was doing the math and I was like, Shannon, you’re gonna be finished with your girls in twelfth grade the same year my daughter goes in sixth. I think you should come back around.
Rich Birch — Another seven!
Nick Blevins — I will pay you to be my kids small group leader. You know I’m just kidding.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — But anyway, and then you know we all have volunteers like that who just… So I think you just cast a vision for like, man, this is why this matters.
Rich Birch —Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Like you’ve got 83 priorities in your life. We’re not asking you to make this 84. We are asking you to make this number 4 or 5, which is a big deal.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Nick Blevins — But here’s why you should do it. Here’s why you should do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, talk, talk to us about that. Because I’ve the people who I’ve seen that are really good at recruiting um, they’re ah good at doing exactly what you’re talking about, which is not lowering the bar. It’s actually raising the bar. It’s not saying, hey we’re gonna, all I need you to do is just… all I need you.
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s like no, like you’re going to change the world, and let me show you how that’s going to be. Um, talk to us about that. Like I think we we feel it can it can be, but we can believe this lie that like if we just make it real easy for people, more people, like when they actually get to what they’re serving, more people will come in. But that’s not actually true. Talk to us about that.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, and you you could get more people serving and then they’re not the people you want.
Rich Birch — Yes, good call. Good call.
Nick Blevins — And you know with a culture of low commitment and low turnout.
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah.
Nick Blevins — Yeah, I think, I mean my mentor Jim Wideman was big on this. He could recruit, literally Jim has recruited people off the street to serve who don’t even go to the church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — Like so Jim was the ultimate like that kind of recruiter.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — Most of us are not that person. I’m not that person. But with this system I don’t feel bad at all, calling you to something bigger. Because I think deep inside all of us, you know we want our lives to matter. But the problem is we’re all spinning so many plates. And so you just need somebody to come along and say, here’s why you should drop some of those plates and pick up this one.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — And and you got to make the case that this is why this matters both for your faith. Is the church going to be fine without you? Probably. Aways has been. It’s God’s church. But will will you look back, you know, a year from now, three years from now…
Rich Birch — Man, so true.
Nick Blevins — …after serving in this role and regret it? No, you will thank me, even though this is a ah, huge commitment. So I think and then that’s what you want to raise the bar because that creates then the standard and the culture.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Nick Blevins — Um I think of like my elementary director years ago. Um, you know we have weekly volunteers as the commitment in our our elementary ministry, and most of our kids all of our kids in student ministries really, but especially if you’re leading a group of kids or students. And one of the moms who they’d been attending for a while, she had two boys, she wanted to serve as a small group leader in elementary, but she only wanted to do every other week. And it was almost like the standoff between her and our elementary director, like no that I’m sorry but the commitment’s weekly. And my elementary director wanted to cave and say yes…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …because she liked this lady a lot.
Rich Birch — Yeah, great person and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Uh-huh. Yeah, you know, she wasn’t just a warm body with a pulse or whatever, you know I mean like she was great. And so she knew but she stood strong and she held her ground and she said um, you know we could find some other roles, you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …but this one is weekly. And that lady ah, said all right. Yeah, sorry I’m not gonna be able to do it. And she left she walked back in like 5 minutes later, and she goes, all right I’m gonna do it. This has been so good for my boys. I’m gonna do it.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s great.
Nick Blevins — And so as part is like Lisa just had to hold her ground. And then she did she did that for years. And and then, you know, it doesn’t always work out like that. A lot of people say no.
Rich Birch — Right
Nick Blevins — You know they they don’t rise to that level…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …of the commitment, but some do. And that’s those are the ones you want, right? You have enough of those leaders and you’ve got the kind of volunteer team you want to have.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well what what are the others, so we’ve got up through orientation.
Nick Blevins — Orientation.
Rich Birch — What are the last two steps?
Nick Blevins — Yeah, and those are the easiest because at that point at orientation, hopefully…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — …they’ve said yes.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — And the way I say it is probably 90 to 95% of people that come to orientation should should say yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Nick Blevins — And that’s true if it’s a churchwide volunteer orientation, or even just your ministry.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nick Blevins — Because at that point you’ve already decided this might be their best next step, right? You’ve filtered that out, and you are starting to do some vetting. So people that don’t make it here. There might be something questionable about them. And you got to be careful about that that might be a reason they don’t make it, but most of them will make it.
Nick Blevins — And then the last two steps are just onboarding and placed. And we can skip over these but we really shouldn’t because to me these two determine how long they serve.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nick Blevins — Like if you onboard well and train well, then they serve and they get placed and they get help and you meet with them, and you know get feedback and how are they doing. Like if you do all that well, I just feel like it sets up good retention.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Versus if they just get thrown in there I mean we we all probably experienced that on one side or the other…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Nick Blevins — …where you just show up and it’s like, what am I supposed to be doing?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, so true.
Nick Blevins — Or maybe you’ve done that to a volunteer.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — I’ve certainly done that to a volunteer. And that’s you know, sometimes they don’t survive that. You know, that they’re like oh I got to get out of here. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — The last two steps, I get it. They’re the easiest in some ways, but you got to be careful not to just make them too short and do too little. Like you got to interview well, gotta to vet people. Well I mean think about protecting you know, especially if you’re in kids or student ministry.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Nick Blevins — And then you kind of play some well like you mentioned the shadow thing as an observation. We’ve done that too. The other thing I love is if you can get new volunteers to apprentice with existing volunteers for like four weeks.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, love that. Yep.
Nick Blevins — And I’d rather, if I had to, I’d rather leave a group empty without a leader and just make it work for four weeks so the new leader can apprentice, then to throw them in by themselves, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Nick Blevins — And you know, in any example, you can put that in. I just think it helps, you know, train them up and set them up well for the long run.
Rich Birch — Well and that’s respecting, you know, respecting the leader, the the new volunteer well. It’s like hey ah we want to, you know, it’s not just that we want you to fill a slot. We say that, hey we don’t want you just to fill a slot, but the way that we prove that is when they finally say, Yes, we don’t just slot them in. We actually, you know, have a way to kind of process them and onboard them, do some training, give them some exposure, answer questions, and then ask the feedback. Hey is this, would you think now that we’ve done all this, do you think this is still good?
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Or you know should we should we find something else and be okay with that? Of those 5 steps, where are churches dropping the ball most consistently? Is it way at the beginning like they’re just not even doing the asking, or is it maybe an onboarding, or where do you see? Or is it all 5 it’s just you know consistently we’re just not doing it.
Nick Blevins — Yeah I would actually say it’s I think it is the beginning.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — Which I think is shocking, Rich. Because think about it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …of all the things we just talked about, what is the easiest? Putting 500 names on a list and sending an automated email.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — That is the easiest thing. Like we worked with a leader who did one of our courses online that has the same content. And in follow-up calls, you know, she told me, hey it’s it’s not working for me. I was like okay, let’s get under the hood. Let’s it’s not exactly magic, but let’s figure it out. And I said how many volunteers do you need to recruit and I think the number was something like 30. And I said how many prospects do you have? And she said 23. I’m like okay hold on.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, hold on. Time out.
Nick Blevins — Let’s go back to the beginning.
Rich Birch — This is how math works.
Nick Blevins — 30 volunteers times yeah times 10 equals 300. You have 23 that’s definitely not going to work. And what happened was what I didn’t know was her church did like a push from stage and she got 23 filled out a card.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah.
Nick Blevins — I said, okay, here, let me reframe this a little before you. Because in my mind when you’re talking from stage everybody in the audience is a prospect who’s not serving.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nick Blevins — The 23 that filled it out, they’re actually now in conversation. So that’s great. They’ve I mean, you know, now my experience of course is the hit rate on those is a lot lower. I’m sure you’ve seen that too.
Rich Birch — Lower. Yes, yes.
Nick Blevins — But still, they’re in conversation. You still need another, you know, whatever 200 and whatever the math is on that in there to get to your 300 prospect level. So I told her, let’s do that, and then let’s do another call in a month. So we come back and do the next call next month. How many do you got? 47. Like she’d added like very few.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — And it turns out and it’s not all her fault. Part of it is it’s the classic example where the church didn’t have a great maintained church database. So it was not easy for her to just search for who’s not serving. I think she wasn’t sure if she could contact them. And it’s funny, Rich, how many times we run into that. We we coached a church, a very large church through this whole thing, taught their whole next gen team. We helped them kind of build the teams and the pieces of this whole framework. And then they came back and it it turns out at the same tim the campus pastors were meeting, creating a different strategy.
Rich Birch — Oh hilarious.
Nick Blevins — Basically a so a push from stage strategy.
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Nick Blevins — Which I love. It’s great. Ah so they run in two different directions, and so this one took a back seat, which is fine. But it’s funny how many churches just in this early phase, I think is’s the easiest part of the whole thing.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nick Blevins — And they just you just don’t contact enough people.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — You like there the rest of it I mean the conversations doing the work. The orientation. Um, it’s definitely harder. But the people don’t miss the easiest thing…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — …which I think makes the biggest difference.
Rich Birch — Well and we’ve seen, I’ve seen in other work I’ve done um, really as churches grow, as you get beyond the thousand, two thousand, three thousand – those that grow to that size get really clear around maintaining that contact information. And they they understand that that information is how we stay connected with people, and if people fall through the cracks there, that’s it’s not just like we’re losing data in a database. It’s like no, no like those are contacts that are could potentially fall out of relationship with our church, and all kinds of bad things can happen. And so we do have to get really good at that phase.
Rich Birch — I’ve also found too that there is like ah again, and I think some of it might be even a spiritual dynamic, I think the the leaders the churches that take the care of people in this way, like hey we’re going to try to contact five hundred people, hundred people, and I’ve got the names and I’m going to really diligently reach out to them and actually talk with them, and actually try to have those conversations. It’s like the Lord blesses that kind of activity, right? He’s like okay well these people are trying to care for the these. That’s a shepherd that’s trying to care for their sheep. And so like let’s make sure we send them some more sheep.
Nick Blevins — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know because they’re ah, you know, they’re they’re caring for those people. Well we’ve obviously just scratched the surface of this. This has been fantastic I love that. I’ve got like a page of notes here are things to think about. And like oh we get ah to that’s a little different um, which is good.
Rich Birch — But what what else is covered? So this obviously just one piece of it. You talk about recruiting, training, empowering – what other kind of give us some of the the other big rocks that you’re you’re dealing with in the volunteer playbook that um, you know, that churches will find particularly helpful as they as they think about this as a resource they could potentially use?
Nick Blevins — Yeah, and I actually wrestled with the order of this book so many times, Rich, and then part of maybe that’s part of why it took me 10 years.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — But because part of me like I wanted to write it like, hey let’s start and build the foundation.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — Let’s create a healthy, let’s get your mission, vision, strategy, values. Let’s get all your volunteer systems in place. But what I of course learned, you know, doing this with other church leaders was like they just need volunteers now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — They can’t work on these other things without this in place.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — So I put this first in the book. And then it kind of shifts gears and you get into, Okay, let’s build your foundation. You know now that you’ve kind of plugged all the leaking holes on the ship…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — …you have enough volunteers to spend time on other things um…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — And which I mean that right there for a lot of leaders is like, you can have enough time to spend on other things? It’s like, yes, you can. You actually can. And so you know building that foundation of values and culture and mission/vision. What is that? Structuring for growth, I mean I know you’re big on this but the whole section of the book is dedicated to okay, now you have maybe you got your 50 volunteers. You have a hundred.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nick Blevins — You can’t lead a hundred volunteers yourself. So how do you get, I call them coaches, but you know 10 coaches to each lead 10 people…
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Nick Blevins — …and build that out. You know and give ministry away to them. And then I finish with, and I’m sure a lot of people would love this section first, I finish with empowering them. So kind of like think just leading volunteers. But the last section is like boosts, almost like hacks. What are the things that, you know, kind of move the needle, sometimes quickly. Think of a push from stage. Um think of students serving…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Blevins — …removing some competition, like different things like that that, hey, if you need a big jump in recruiting volunteers, here are some hacks you can try. Can’t do them all the time. Can’t rely on these only, which I think a lot of churches do.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Nick Blevins — I kind of put it at the en. It’s like please do some of the important work first, save save the one-offs you know for the end.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Nick Blevins — And that’s that’s essentially the book right there, hoping to help people you know, recruit enough volunteers to get it, you know, sustainable and then make it really healthy.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, where do we want to, ah friends, listen I think this would be a great resource here. We are in the summertime. This would be a great resource to pick up with a team and say, hey let’s look at this over the summertime. Yeah, you know I know we don’t have like lots of extra time, but it’s like a different it’s a different kind of energy going on at our churches. What if we took some time to read this together, go through it together? It’s a great resource to do use as a team, pick up some things we could try, and to try to implement even this year at our church. But where do we want to send people if they want to pick up copies? What’s kind of the best place for that?
Nick Blevins — Ah, probably I mean it’s on Amazon. it’s where you get it but volunteerplaybook.com has a page on my site where we you can get some of the all the supplemental resources too.
Rich Birch — Yep, love it.
Nick Blevins — If you like if you someone likes audio books, you can buy the physical or the Kindle copy and then get an audio version free.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — You’re gonna get two for one if you like that. And my biggest recommendation for especially if you are going to do this with other people on staff or with some volunteers, or even if you do it alone, is get accountability for it.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Nick Blevins — You know I was listening to a podcast the other day, Rich, about um, what was the stat something like 5 or 10% percent of people finish an online course.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Blevins — And that saddens me, as a company that has courses to help leaders.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Nick Blevins — But it’s I’ve also so I’ve also seen it, you know, sadly on our end. So That’s why we like coaching more, but you know it takes more time and costs more money. So what my recommendation is either get with your a team and meet every every week, or every other week. And you’re just talking about where are people. Here’s who I’ve contacted, here’s where they go. Ah, my staff has done that many times – it’s been really really helpful.
Nick Blevins — Or if you’re by yourself, go to your boss and say, hey, please hold me accountable. Ask me every other week how my, you know, my framework is going, how many people I have in it. Because man what a shame if we learned about it, but didn’t actually do it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — We’d be back in the same place six months from now. You know like I need more volunteers.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Blevins — And so volunteerplaybook.com has all that stuff.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well Nick, I really appreciate you being here today. Is there anywhere else we want to send people online? Obviously nickblevins.com, is there are other places we want to send people if they want to track with you or with the church that sort of thing?
Nick Blevins — Yeah, Ministry Boost is where we have all you know we have a lot of courses. It’s really geared towards next gen leaders, kids and youth pastors, and next gen pastors. But because half of our content or more is about volunteers, we get all kind of people that engage with that, from executive pastors to assimilation directors, and all those kinds of things.
Nick Blevins — And then um, yeah, if any church is looking to hire a kids or youth pastor, wants the Slingshot’s help, they can email me…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nick Blevins — …might be able to help them out.
Rich Birch — It’s good. All right. Well thanks so much, Nick. Appreciate being here today. Cheering for you and I highly recommend folks reach out to Nick. He’s a great guy, has been in this for a while, and is super helpful when it comes to helping churches on these issues. So thanks so much thanks for being here today, sir.
Nick Blevins — You bet. Thank you, Rich.
Out of the Seats and Into The Streets: Leading Effective Community and Global Outreach with Kristin Flynn
Aug 08, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Kristin Flynn, the Outreach Director at Liquid Church in New Jersey. She leads the charge in both local and global outreach.
Putting our faith into action through loving service is an important part of following Jesus. So how do we help the people at our churches do this on a regular basis? Tune in as Kristin shares about the power of a few focused outreach initiatives, creative ways to engage your church, and cultivating long-lasting relationships with community partners.
Limited focus. // At Liquid Church they’ve limited their outreach focus to three primary compassion initiatives locally: serving the hungry, serving the homeless, and making space and inclusion for the special needs community. Concentrating on specific areas allows for very strategic partnerships where they’ve been able to multiply their impact. At the same time, however, there is room on the campus level to expand service into some niche areas that address critical needs in specific neighborhoods.
Collaboration, communication and flexibility. // There’s a tension to manage between different campus needs and the Liquid’s narrow outreach focus. Maintain open communication and collaboration between campus leaders and the central office. By fostering a culture of creativity and flexibility, unique campus initiatives can be integrated into the broader outreach strategy while staying aligned with the larger mission.
Choose partners that work best. // By understanding the goals and needs of community organizations, Liquid Church can align its outreach efforts with their partners’ missions. Kristin encourages churches to start slow in a partnership, beginning with an exploratory conversation about what they’re doing currently, and what is their five-year plan and “wish list.” Start with a small group of volunteers serving with the organization and review their experience. Maintain open lines of communication with partners and volunteers, and implement regular feedback sessions to address any issues and improve future initiatives. As trust is built, you can expand the scope and depth of your partnership.
Two types of outreach. // Liquid engages in two types of local outreaches: churchwide, evangelistic outreaches, and campus-specific, community outreaches. Large churchwide events, such as a Christmas outreach, include church-branded t-shirts, attract new people and create excitement. Meanwhile smaller campus-specific initiatives allow for deeper engagement and relationship-building with your neighbors.
WASH Program. // Globally, Liquid Church partners with Living Water International to help with their WASH Program, providing Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene to communities around the world. In addition to working in countries like Rwanda and Zambia to provide clean water, Liquid keeps the community at home engaged in this mission through a variety of creative approaches. For example, they’ve opened a coffee shop which is run by adults with special needs and all proceeds go toward the clean water cause. In addition they’ve raised money and raised awareness about the global water crisis through a community 5K run. Use out-of-the-box ideas to both educate your community and fund outreach initiatives while keeping your church connected to the mission.
Funding outreaches. // Liquid Church tithes 10% of its income, allocating these funds specifically for outreach efforts, both locally and globally. This commitment to tithing is a significant aspect of Liquid Church’s financial strategy and allows them to actively partner with other organizations throughout the year. In addition, they keep the congregation informed about specific ways their contributions are being used. Regular celebration encourages future generosity and generates excitement about the impact the church is having in its community.
You can learn more about Liquid Church at www.liquidchurch.com and connect with Kristin through email.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today. You know every once in a while I get to bring on friends who I know like in the real world and expose you to them. And today is one of those days. You need to lean in. Turn off whatever you’re doing – if you’re cutting your lawn, stop cutting your lawn. You’re going to need a notepad. You’re going to lean lean in and listen. Today we’ve got Kristin Flynn with us. She is a part of the leadership team at Liquid Church. She’s the Outreach Director there, really really leading the charge in both local community outreach and global outreach, like clean water cause. Ah for folks that don’t know Liquid Church is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. About a month ago we had Lauren Bercarich on, if you remember that episode. Ah they have 7 campuses, if I can count correctly, in New Jersey, plus church online. Um this is a fantastic church, had an opportunity to be on the team there a number of years ago and got to work with Kristin and so honored that she’s on the podcast today. Welcome, Kristin.
Kristin Flynn — Thanks, Rich! Thanks so much for having me today. It’s great to be back and working with you and connecting. You definitely ah left your mark at Liquid. So thanks for having me here today.
Rich Birch — I don’t know if that’s a positive thing… that could not be positive.
Kristin Flynn — It is! No way!
Rich Birch — I’m just kidding, just kidding.
Kristin Flynn — So good. Yeah.
Rich Birch —That’s great. Well why don’t you kind of fill in the story a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your role, about you, about Liquid – kind of what what do we miss there in the internet introduction about you and what you do at Liquid?
Kristin Flynn — Sure. Yeah, so um, as Rich said I’m the Outreach Director at Liquid. I’ve been in the role just about 10 years, which is wild, um…
Rich Birch — Amazing. A decade!
Kristin Flynn — A decade’s crazy. Um, and I have the honor of supporting our campuses. Like Rich said we’re a multi-site church and so um I help drive our initiatives and our compassion focuses, which is hunger and homelessness, special needs, and our global cause is clean water. And so year after year we’re looking on our calendar planning where we can serve our community locally. How do we bring our global cause even locally to our for people to experience. And how do we make an impact for Christ in each of our counties that are we have campuses. So I strategize that work with our teams and then help our campus implement those as their boots on the ground, taking ground for Jesus in their community.
Rich Birch — So good. You know I’m really looking forward to unpacking this. Kristin, it was ah it was a while ago… maybe it was last spring, you helped out in our church growth incubator, which is a private coaching group that we do, and unpacked a lot of great insight. And so I’m really excited to have you bring ah, some of that to our our our community today as we’re kind of listening in on this conversation. But why don’t so there’s I think there’s a lot of different things we could talk about here, but one of the things that Liquid’s been known really from the beginning has been, you know, a church that really is trying to put faith into action. That it’s not enough to just kind of create, you know, or ask people to have a faith that’s just kind of between their ears or is just their kind of thinking um but it ultimately needs to kind of work itself out in in how we kind of react in the world around us. Can you kind of expand a little bit on that part, just even on the philosophical or, you know, discipleship or kind of big picture?
Kristin Flynn — Sure.
Rich Birch — Why is that important? Why do why do we see that as you know a critical place critical thing for us to invest in to ultimately try to move people towards?
Kristin Flynn — Absolutely. I mean I always go back to the passage where Jesus saw the crowds and he had compassion on them. Then that sprung into action.
Rich Birch — So good.
Kristin Flynn — And so for me I’m always thinking like how do we get our people—we say out of their seats into the streets—to meet the needs of their neighbors and start building those relationships. And so um I think it’s a huge part of our discipleship process because God’s gifted all of our people with amazing talents, unique perspectives, and gifts. And so those are able to be expressed through outreach.
Kristin Flynn — We might come to church and be on the worship team or guest connections and that’s beautiful. But there’s a pocket of your people that are your activists that want to activate their faith and be part of bringing Jesus to their neighbors, to the shelters, to the schools, all of that. And so ah outreach is a real key piece to have um, everyone in every age and stage say like, I can be a part of what God’s doing outside of my church and my community and show that love of Christ and ah have our actions show who he is before sometimes they’ll even step in church. And so outreach really is that vehicle for our people, which are our best ambassadors, to serve their community and show Jesus. But then also um, allow people to see the church in action and to be like wow, what what who are these people and what’s different about them? And so um, yeah, so…
Rich Birch — So good.
Kristin Flynn — …I think outreach is just such a key piece for discipleship.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so great. I love that. And you know one of the things that, frankly has been just inspiring to watch over the years as you’ve led this area, has been your tenacity around staying focused. You talked about this in the introduction – you have a few areas that Liquid focuses on, which I could be this is one of those kind of principles we see in general. That um, you know, Liquid’s a large growing church by kind of every metric you can look at. And and this follows the principle that like large churches do less. You know there’s lots of small churches I talk to where they ask about community outreach and they’ll rattle off a menu of a hundred things they do. But but Liquid has really, and you’ve done such a good job keeping Liquid focused on a few areas. Can you talk us through those three areas again and then why. And then, is it important to stay focused? How does that fit into kind of your thinking around outreach?
Kristin Flynn — Sure. Yeah, and and, Rich, there’s really it could go two ways, right? But for Liquid we’ve said, hey we were going to focus what we felt God called us to is to serve the hungry, to serve the homeless, and to make space and inclusion for the special needs community. And so our our outreach um focus has stayed really in those channels, but they’re very broad, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kristin Flynn — So that may mean providing lunches for school children. That may mean um helping those that are with that are in transitional housing that are just about to be on their own with job placement, and and resume writing or just even, like a spa day for the moms, right? Like things like that that, you know, don’t you don’t traditionally think of of helping, you know, serving the homeless, the unhoused, or the hungry. But that’s like kind of changing the curve a little bit to before someone finds themselves homeless.
Kristin Flynn — Um here in New Jersey, like the cost of housing is insane. So everyone really is just on that cusp of being unhoused. And so we’re we partnered with organizations that are serving those that are currently unhoused, but also those that are trying to get ahead of that, right? So young adult training, after school programs, things like that. But also working in shelters – those that are really face-to-face with those aren’t housed right now. And so having that focus has allowed us to be really strategic with our partners and who we link arms within in the community. However, there is space for us at the campus level to have a kind of a once in a while expansion of that.
Kristin Flynn — And so an example would be young lives our Middlesex County campus has a great relationship with Young Lives, serving young parents, women and children. And so we’ll support them with ah like a meet the need every quarter or so, twice a year, with a diaper drive served maybe at their ah their special event. And so it’s not necessarily falls into the categories of our compassion focus, but it’s still something that we can integrate at a campus level. Maybe just not our churchwide ah focuses.
Kristin Flynn — So we do deviate a little bit because each campus is in different communities, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — And the communities are different. We are our Passaic County campus that is our their neighbors are Patterson, right, which has great need. Um and then you have Middlesex County which is a little bit different. So we have to be able to be flexible at times um, but our churchwide initiatives, our large outreaches as well as most of our ah midsize outreach, you know, do triyto stay within ah serving the homeless and and that food insecure, so or special needs. We love the special needs community.
Rich Birch — Yeah let’s let’s kind of pull that apart a little bit.
Kristin Flynn — Sure.
Rich Birch — So you know I’ve said in other contexts about multisite that it takes one kind of leader to get ten leaders around a table and, say okay, everybody think something different. And then it takes a different kind of leader to get 10 leaders around the table and say we’re going to focus on these things. Like you know, and and I think frankly I think it takes um, a more adept leader, I think it takes a stronger leader to do that, to keep people focused, to keep particularly leaders focused.
Rich Birch — And you talked about kind of the differences between campuses. I think this is one of the things that we can struggle with is, you know, you’ve got different campuses that all see their communities differently by definition. You’re in different locations, and so things are a little bit different. Can you talk us through how do you have those conversations, or is this a non-issue? Everyone’s just happy to be aligned and happy to do whatever Kristin says. Do you, you know, what’s that look like for you?
Kristin Flynn — Um, listen this is a great like tension and challenge we face, I would say quarterly, right?
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kristin Flynn — Someone from our congregation, they’re part of a mom’s group that wants to do X, Y and Z and so the campus leaders come like, hey we want to get around this thing. And so it is a conversation, right? A lot of it I would say from what kind of ah dictates or informs how we move is really what’s happening on the calendar, right? So if we have a big church initiative happening and we need to be focused on what we’re putting our all our resources to, then maybe that thing won’t happen this quarter. But I always try to say like, where in your campus calendar can it fit in, right?
Kristin Flynn — And again, it’s not something that is going to be an ongoing monthly community outreach for us. It probably wouldn’t be something that we would ah do churchwide, right? But I do want to kind of fan that flame – if you got someone on your church that’s like, “hey, I’m really into this,” do look for ways to say, how can we partner? And it could be resources, right? They may say, hey we’re going to go out the streets and we want to pack out hygiene we want to hand out hygiene kits – can can we do that as a life group? Yeah, let’s maybe perhaps do that on your campus. You guys can pack them and X amount are going to go to our partners at City Relief and the others we’re going to have this other group that’s going to go out in the streets in New Brunswick and they’re going to hand them out, right? And so it’s really getting creative.
Kristin Flynn — I’ve I think ah him over my time I’ve learned just kind of pull back and hear what they want to do and that those they want to serve and say, okay, like how can this fit it? And sometimes it is like ah it’s not a no; it’s just a not now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — But I do I do my best to keep it in my head to say this is something unique for this campus. That’s fine. Our Union County campus is gonna be different, but to really be open to the possibility of where it can fit in at the campus level, and how we can support it. So yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s good. I want to come back to the partner question in a in a second…
Kristin Flynn — Sure.
Rich Birch — …because I think there’s I think there’s some really valuable insight there, but I’m saying that mostly for myself so I remember. Ah but you know you talked about um kind of big I don’t, you know, community-wide, like we’re gonna, or churchwide – we’re gonna do these big, you know, pack a million meals kind of thing. Those are flashy, or like in other contexts that’s like love week, or you know I know at Church of the Highlands there’s Serve Day. It’s like, Hey we’re going to put we’re going to put special t-shirts on everybody and do something, get the social media team there. We do all that.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then there are the like um, you know, smaller things where it’s like we’re showing up and maybe my small group is going to serve. Talk to me about how you think about those two different things. How do they work together? Are they in competition with each other? Are they, you know, how how does all that fit together in in outreach at Liquid?
Kristin Flynn — Yes, so this is a ah nut we’ve been trying to crack for a really long time…
Rich Birch — Okay, good.
Kristin Flynn — …and try to figure it out. But I think um, what we’ve identified is ah kind of inserting these community outreach partners is key for us to be woven into the fabric of our community. We can do the big things and have the promotion which is amazing. It’s a huge activation for our church, a space for new people that have never walked into a church or heard of Liquid, but they’re like, yeah I can pack a million meals for the hungry. I I want to serve at Night to Shine to serve the special needs community. That’s amazing. I would never want to do to choose either/or. I always want to ah move towards both/and.
Kristin Flynn — And so with community outreach, it’s really key the partners you select. And so I’ve kind of just ah created, we’re almost like dating each other for a little bit…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Kristin Flynn — …to build trust, right? So like Liquid Church – maybe we’ve they’ve heard of us. Maybe they haven’t. But we want to get to know the organization as well as them to get to know us. And so I move this process really slow. So starting with an an exploratory conversation, hearing what they’re doing now. And I always ask like, what’s your 5 year plan, like what’s on your like dream list, just to see like how could we partner and and come into line with them.
Kristin Flynn — Um, and then what we do is that we’ve like started starting with our small groups and our campus teams to serve. However, that organization has like ah a serving opportunity, we’ll serve just exactly how um, a typical volunteer session would be. And then we evaluate like, hey was this a great was this a great volunteer experience? Did I know where to go? Did I get communication?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — Was I walking in totally blind, which is just like us getting information so we know how to better prepare our people should we more move forward…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — …with the partner and the ongoing serving opportunities. Um and so there’s kind of a strategy behind that, but the key of community partnership is that you’ve got these nonprofits that are busting every single week, serving the ah the homeless or the food insecure, and they’re running super fast, right? And so my heart is that we would be able to encourage them and take some weight off once a month and be a solid group of volunteers that can come help move their mission forward.
Kristin Flynn — And it’s key, right? Because not all our people can um, go to the big outreaches. But also it’s part of our group strategy, right? So we have tried to make big church small and bring it into a group context where you’re in a group of maybe 12 people meeting weekly. This is a great opportunity for them to say, hey we’re going to go serve and have this experience together and activate our faith that way.
Kristin Flynn — So um I love our community partners. Our campuses have done such a tremendous job this past year in taking ground and really linking arms with community teams. And the beautiful thing is is it kind of sets us up then to say, remember that thing you mentioned that initial meeting about how you wanted to…
Rich Birch — Oh, so good.
Kristin Flynn — …revamp your your food pantry and create this community center. We’re like, hey we would love to partner with you on that in this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — …you know campus specific churchwide outreach, which is what we’re about to get ready to do in a week so um so…
Rich Birch — Oh wow, nice. You get to be everybody’s best friend.
Kristin Flynn — Yes…
Rich Birch — You say, hey we want to help you with this…
Kristin Flynn — Yeah, I mean it’s it’s a beautiful part of being part of a church that really wants to put their faith in action, and um, it desires to make an impact in the community. So yeah, we’re really blessed.
Rich Birch — That’s great. What so I’m sure I love that even that vision that picture of like the positive side of partnership, hey things are heading in the right direction and it’s like we’re going to start with like maybe a couple small groups serving there. And then eventually come back around and say, hey we might do some kind of bigger project.
Rich Birch — I’m sure that there’s been some partnerships over the ten years that have been here that have not been that positive, that maybe have been more negative. Give us some of the telltale signs of like, ooh this is not going how we thought it would go, and or or have they all been perfect? Maybe there haven’t been any that have gone kind of sideways. But have there been any kind of things that if something starts to happen you start thinking, Oh we might want to address this. Or maybe we want to take a step back or reevaluate, or have a crucial conversation with them. What what’s that look like? Ah
Kristin Flynn — Yeah, that’s that’s no, it’s never happened, Rich. It’s just been great; roses…
Rich Birch — Roses every time.
Kristin Flynn — …um roses every time. Listen it it can happen, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — And so um my goal is that our volunteers have a wonderful experience so that they, ah serving, so that they want to return and serve at that organization. And that their service is meaningful and making the impact, right? But sometimes it could be that we’re not receiving receiving communication, right? Or a lot of times, to be quite honest, it could be like their registration process has so many clicks, no one’s ever going to complete it, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — And so we’ve had to figure out how do we have a conversation? And you know we’re in these conversations now of like how can we get you the data you need, and have this be a really simple sign-up process for our people, right? I remember you saying like one click, one click – you don’t want people clicking through [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — And make it as easy possible. Yeah, yeah for sure.
Kristin Flynn — …as easy as possible. Yeah. Um, and so that’s really actually informed how we actually plan our year with our community outreach. So it used to be, all right, we’re going to do every every second Thursday of the month. Well your church calendar changes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — The relationship might be going sideways and you need to ah, you know, recalibrate. And so what we’ve been doing is planning by quarter. The the key that what’s that’s been a gift to us because one we’ve be able to say what’s happening in the next quarter? Like you know, the fall is insane.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kristin Flynn — Do we need to pare back? Do we need to go to every other month?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — Um, or you know are we doing every other month, but you got people asking you, hey I want to serve; I want to serve. Do we need to add another session and start having those conversations…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kristin Flynn — …halfway through, you know, the the current quarter. So that flexibility, and it’s actually ah I find it very like it’s kind that the organization wants to do it, but allows us to do that, but it’s also kind to them to say, hey like I don’t want to say we’re coming and we can’t, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kristin Flynn — And so it allows us to continue to have communication. And that’s that’s another key thing is it’s easy to schedule these things, and then be like okay sending volunteers, but not…
Rich Birch — Done!
Kristin Flynn — Yes, done. And not fostering that relationship…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Kristin Flynn — …and not having those touch points to check to your point of contact there. Even simple things of like bringing doughnuts and be like, surprise! Here’s a little sweet treat; just thinking about you guys. You know want to encourage you, outside of what’s scheduled. Um, really nurturing those relationships so it becomes a really healthy partnership, and they know they can call on us and we know when we send our people it’s going to be a great organized… You know, it doesn’t have to be clean. It doesn’t have to be grit like not gritty. I’m okay with a little grit. You know getting our people’s hands dirty. Um, but you know, I just want to make sure that it’s it’s it’s impactful…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kristin Flynn — …and meaningful for both parties.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. You know, I know in in this area there can be this tension. And you even just there at the end you were kind of um you know hinting towards it. There’s this tension, and I’ve joked about it earlier. It’s like that get everybody with a nice t-shirt on. You know, make sure there’s like really good snacks when people arrive – all of that stuff – which is is like positive volunteer experience type stuff. But some people might criticize that and say, oh that’s actually taking away from whatever the good work that this organization is doing.
Rich Birch — How how do you help manage that tension as, you know, I see um—and again, you know I you know I love Liquid obviously, obviously—but like it would I think it could be easy to be, and maybe you don’t get this criticism. It could be easy to look from the outside and say we’re going to pack a million meals and, which is an amazing experience. But then I look at those videos and I’m like there’s a lot more going on there than just packing meals. Like man, there’s all the other kind of elements and that all costs money. How do you think about all of that in the greater kind of picture of, Okay, we’re we’re trying to do good in these areas. We’re trying to actually push forward God’s Kingdom in these various things.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah, for me, Rich, there are two different lenses to look at, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kristin Flynn — So our our Christmas outreach that’s an evangelistic ah outreach, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kristin Flynn — We know ah that people want to serve at Christmas. It’s an outreach that can host 6000 volunteers – it’s 2 hours.
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Kristin Flynn — Like it’s in and out and and allows us to really roll out an amazing volunteer experience…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kristin Flynn — …of greeting shirts, all the holiday stuff, which quite honestly our campuses do an amazing job Sunday to Sunday with their dream teams and having…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — …shirts for them to serve so our new guests can identify who’s there to to greet them, answer their questions. And so it’s a little taste of you know, not all the the all of all the celebratory things…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kristin Flynn — …that you might see the Christmas outreach highlight video.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kristin Flynn — But um, when it comes to community outreach, that’s really pared down. That’s like more heart work in the sense of…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kristin Flynn — …I want our people to know their neighbors. And so we just come as we are. There is no like t-shirts for that. It is we are serving as another team would from Pfizer, or from another organization just to come and be what they what but they need our hands to do that day. That’s what we’re doing.
Kristin Flynn — And so um, and really the the care comes from comes from the campus leadership of preparing them to serve, as well as a follow up. Um and then at the campus level taking some like ah pictures while they’re making a meal or something that I like that and hosting it on their campus social media. It’s not the big flashy outreach. It’s where we go deep. So if you think of ah churchwide outreach. It’s ah we cast a wide net, it pulls a lot of people in, which is amazing. But then what with the vertical and going deep is a community outreach where it’s smaller pockets of people saying, yes, I want to serve my community in this intimate way. Um. And and so both are needed, but they both look a little bit different. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that and you know obviously I’m play a little bit of a devil’s advocate. One of the things I love, and and you have been I think been such an elegant advocate for this over the years that um I really do think that ah that what’s best for all of these partners, from our perspective as a church, what’s best for the the causes that we’re trying to partner with is that our church grows and that we get more people in on this stuff. And it’s like’s there’s ah, there’s a virtuous loop there that if we, man, if we work on those kind of large things that are, like you say 6000 people all doing something on a weekend, man, we can convert some of those people into helping out a you know food soup kitchen, you know, monthly. But if we don’t get a chance to actually have a conversation with them in the first place, we’re never going to get there.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s pivot to a slightly different kind of part of this, which is the global aspect of what Liquid’s up to. One of the things, you know breaking the third wall, that I would say one of the things I’m the proudest of is how Liquid has stuck with the water cause over all of these years. And it’s encouraging for me to see the global numbers continue to come down, the number of people who who don’t have access to clean drinking water, and Liquid’s been a part of that. Um, first before you, brag on Liquid first, talk because I’m sure you’ve got them start a statistic…
Kristin Flynn — Yes.
Rich Birch — …around how you know how many people Liquids helped.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then let’s talk about how you how you’re doing that. What’s that look like?
Kristin Flynn — Sure. So um, yes I would love to brag on Liquid. Um, so we’ve actually completed our WASH program in Rwanda. WASH Program is Water access, Sanitation, Hygiene – so an entire community in Rwanda now has access to clean water.
Rich Birch — Incredible.
Kristin Flynn — We’ve had the people are incredibly generous. We’re able to buy a purchase a deep water drill ah drill so that we can you know access, clean, safe drinking water. Um, and now because we’ve saturated that area, our partner Living Water International has asked us to move into Zambia.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kristin Flynn — So we’ve recently moved into Zambia last year drilling wells there, partnering with a school for kids with special needs. I had the opportunity to go and it was it was just eye opening and like so inspiring to see the work that LWI is doing and that we get to be a part of it is just a huge blessing. And then we have some future plans too to stay tuned towards that for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Kristin Flynn — But yeah, we’ve definitely, our church is passionate about bringing providing safe, clean, drinking water to those that don’t have access to it. So when you turn on our tap, we’re like, wow, today my friends in Rwanda in some areas don’t have access to this, right, or in Zambia.
Kristin Flynn — And so um, yeah so clean water is our global cause. We recently opened up the Clean Water Cafe which it’s a cafe run by adults with special needs, and the proceeds go towards clean water. So it’s bringing our global cause locally um and spreading that mission through a coffee shop, which is incredible. Um, and you know the challenge can be though, Rich, is that we have 3 teams this year going internationally…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kristin Flynn — …to serve on the ground, boots on the ground, teams of 12, right? And so it’s one of the challenges is how do we bring the global cause locally to ignite our people and to have them engage in this. And so a few years ago we did ah a run for Rwanda, which was a 5K um, you know, chiptimed race. So we were able to invite the community and everyone else that was trying to build their their race stats. And it was all ages and stages and that you know that event which it did it had had the t-shirts. It had the DJ. It had a water walk with statistics of like how many hours ah a day, or year, that a young girl is going to catch or to fetch to dirty water. And then you know on the backside it showed the statistics of the impact of clean water, and the education that children can can receive, and all these amazing things when you provide clean water to a community, how it transforms it.
Kristin Flynn — And so we use that opportunity to say, you know, let’s engage our entire church in this 5K run, all ages and stages, and they raise money for Rwanda. And so it went towards our goal in of supporting that cause there. And so sometimes at the global cause you do have to get a little creative um to say…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Kristin Flynn — …how do I do this? But that worked for us really well. I’ve had so many people say, “Are we doing that run again?” so many times, so we’ll see – maybe 2025. Um but yeah, yeah, we’ll see, we’ll see um…
Rich Birch — That’s so good. What else can you do so that, you know, obviously there’s only a certain number of people that can go, you know, ah to to Rwanda or to even really to anywhere you know internationally. I love the idea of the run. Are there other things, maybe Sprint for Zambia, trying to think what is you know of other names that are you know how’s that work. But how could you how could what are other ways that you’re trying to engage people in that cause ah, that you know maybe not everybody can go yes, yes.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah, so it is challenging, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kristin Flynn — But we do pack like Hygiene kits and salvation bracelets and things like that. So small groups have the ability to do that. Um, that way they’re meeting as a group and having this impact of supplies that will then go with our teams. Um, there are ways to run for our do different races that raise money to for clean water. Um, it’s it’s it’s a little bit more of a a challenge quite honestly. Um, but definitely sharing stories at our campus level. We’ve had the founder of LWI come and speak to our legacy teama. So I know we’re trying to bring some things, you know, once a year, or twice a year to the greater, our churchwide audience just to keep this cause on the forefront. So it takes a little more creativity Um, but we’re we’re getting there.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, we had Mike Mantel from LWI, the partner, your partner.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — On the podcast in the past. I’d encourage folks that are listening to go back and listen to that particularly. I really do think that the water crisis is a fantastic kind of global initiative for churches to partner with, and LWI Living Water International does such a good job. Um, they’re great people for sure.
Rich Birch — Can we talk about the money side of this? Man, there’s a lot of different stuff that’s going on here.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How is Liquid funding all of this? How does this how how… I think there’s a lot of churches that would be like wait, man. We would love to do this, but where does all the money come to do this?
Kristin Flynn — Sure. So um, Liquid tithes 10% that we receive. 10% of that goes out to the community. It’s outreach allocated, right? So that would be their clean water, that would be our our community outreach, our churchwide outreach. Um, and then there’s folks, there’s ah, there’s a beautiful couple in our community, our church community that every year they’re like, hey, I want to do the Night to Shine sign. This is like this big billboard type sign and they donate donate it. So there’s people in our congregation that have donated resources or their time…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kristin Flynn — …or physical items to help enhance those things. Um, and but but, you know, true I’m truly best in my position that that is Liquid structure that 10% goes out to the community, and so that really sets our budget for the year as to you know what things we can do to reach the unreached, and to serve the unserved.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. And, friends, um like this is what I love about you, Kristin, you just blew past that like that was no big deal. That’s a massive deal. There’s a bunch of executive pastors just like spit their coffee out and said 10% goes external – that is that’s amazing. Like that um, that is super rare. Like I know there’s lots of churches that would count the percentage that would be deemed, you know, that the way Liquid counts this in like single digit percentages or fractions of percentages. Um it it it really is amazing. And I think it is a part of what has made Liquid I think it’s a part of frankly why God has blessed continue to bless Liquid is because of this kind of thing.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So yeah, so friends, I don’t want you to miss this. Part of the reason why this happens is because at a leadership level they made a decision, hey, we’ve got to we if we’re going to ask people to tithe, maybe we should tithe. Maybe this should be, which doesn’t sound at at a high level as that big of a deal, but it’s significant. That’s that’s a huge deal.
Rich Birch — How do you report back on that stuff. What does that look like? How does Liquid kind of celebrate these things? You know, because obviously when people give to Liquid, good things happen like this.
Kristin Flynn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What does that process look like for the church?
Kristin Flynn — Yeah, so we have an amazing Communications Director – you might know her Lauren Bercarich, who was on recently um and our creative team. So we’ll…
Rich Birch — Yeah, she’s incredible.
Kristin Flynn — …yeah, love Lauren. Um, so we’ll actually help we’ll celebrate these things um usually typically like a week or two weeks on a Sunday, whether it’s in the highlight reel or the offering prep, because we want people to know like where they’re giving is going and the impact…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kristin Flynn — …that it’s making outside our walls. So typically that’s over we’ll highlight that. It’s also part of our quarterly updates that Pastor Tim and Pastor Dave send out. Um, so people are knowing where the impacts that their resources are having, as well as highlighting perhaps they were boots on the ground serving, right? And so our creative team, our video/photography team will be at these events, take amazing shots and videos, put them together as an inspirational piece. And really it’s it’s I think our responsibility to highlight these things as people are giving up their Saturday, they’re giving up you know time from their job to come serve. And so I want them to be celebrated, like I think God celebrates that they’re serving, right? And so we’ll highlight these typically in our Sunday services.
Kristin Flynn — We have thank you postcards that go out to our volunteers. That’s been a key one for our campus teams after, you know, hours upon hours that some of these large outreaches take and are volunteers are moving the project forward. We want to thank them. And so our campus teams write thank yous to key volunteers that really made a difference in making the outreach happen.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you being here today, Kristin. And and just so helpful and inspiring. And I hope, listeners, as you listened in today you were inspired, that you could be the kind of thing that would move you to action. One of the things we’ve seen time and again is in fast-growing churches the language I’ve used is they’re involved in magnetic community service. This idea that, hey, we want to serve the community in a way that ultimately um, you know, we do what Jesus says, we’re not going to do our good works in a hidden off somewhere. We’re going to let our light shine to the community around us. And that does resonate with people and it does help us ultimately reach folks and and, Kristin, you’ve given us some inspiring ideas today, so I really appreciate that. Any kind of final words you’d like to say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Kristin Flynn — Yes, I’m so glad you asked. I just want to circle back on that community outreach partnership. And like you said, Rich, big church can move fast. You’ve got to slow down when you build in your community outreaches and those partnerships…
Rich Birch — So good.
Kristin Flynn — …that we’re we’re moving now in a partnership that’s fifty/fifty, right? So our Liquid timeline may not align with theirs, and that is okay.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kristin Flynn — We have to be able to be willing to kind of meet in the middle, and just take time. If that’s if if they can’t if we can’t do something together now, then maybe just let it simmer for a little bit and revisit it in a couple months when they’re out of their gala season or whatever it is.
Kristin Flynn — Um, and so I don’t want you to be discouraged. It will be a stop, go, stop, go with those relationships, and that’s okay. Um, we really just need to be flexible and open to the meeting them where their needs are and when they need us. And so it’s a little bit different then having the agenda and pushing it forward. You got to pull back and slow down and let that relationship build.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. I love the relational um angle push. You know, I think so many times we can particularly, you’re right, in large growing churches. It’s like well can you do this next week and that’s just the timeline we’re used to. And lots of organizations are like, no. That’s not going to work. And that doesn’t mean that we can’t partner with them long term. That’s that’s so good.
Kristin Flynn — Right.
Rich Birch — Well Kristin, if we want to send people online to learn more about outreach at Liquid or Liquid or you, where do we want to send them if they if they want more information?
Kristin Flynn — Sure. Yeah, you can reach me at kristin@liquidchurch.com k-r-i-s-t-i-n and I’d be happy to connect with you, even jump on a Zoom, whatever. Our resources at Liquid are open to anybody. So even it’s not just outreach or there’s something else that you want to ask about, I am happy to connect you with some of our amazing leaders there too. So thanks so much for having me, Rich. This has been great.
Rich Birch — So good. So good to see you today. Great to connect a little bit. And yeah, just all the best as you continue to push forward in the areas that you are. Thanks, Kristin, for being here.
Kristin Flynn — Thanks so much.
From Blown Up Lives to New Beginnings: How Summit Christian Church Transforms Communities with Bryan Smith
Aug 01, 2024
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Bryan Smith, the lead pastor of Summit Christian Church in Sparks, Nevada.
We are increasingly living in a culture where many are completely unchurched, having no preconceived notion of what church looks like. Yet this can provide just the opportunity where people are open to learning about Jesus. Tune in as Bryan talks about the power of invitation, vulnerability, and embracing people with messy lives.
The power of vulnerability. // Summit Christian Church has a unique story, having been founded in response to the area’s status as one of the most unchurched regions in the United States. Bryan highlights the importance of creating a comfortable and welcoming environment for newcomers, emphasizing that vulnerability and authenticity are key to connecting with unchurched individuals. At Summit the pastors will share personal struggles and life experiences, countering the stereotype of judgmental Christians. Rather than telling unchurched folks what they need to do, invite them into community and a journey with Jesus.
Make time for pastoral care. // One of the telltale signs of a church that’s reaching unchurched people is that you have messy, complex, pastoral care. Summit Christian Church is dedicated to creating a welcoming environment where individuals who have faced challenges in their lives can find hope and healing. Pastors and elders have a rotating schedule so each day someone is available to meet with people seeking counsel or help.
Use events to reach out. // Summit also works to create a noticeable presence in the community to ensure that if the church were to disappear, the community would notice its absence. From teacher appreciation initiatives and community service projects to outreach events such as RC car races and dodgeball tournaments, get creative about drawing people in who might not think about attending church. Surprise unchurched people with fun outreach events to show them church isn’t what they may have expected.
Four team values. // To keep the staff moving in a positive direction, Summit has four team values they embrace: health, focus, whole life generosity, and achievable excellence. Bryan emphasizes that achievable excellence is particularly pertinent to staff health. The church wants to set the bar at a place where they can achieve without feeling defeated or putting in too little effort. The goal is to create sustainability in their staff, encourage healthy relationships and practices, and have them committed for the long haul while still pursuing excellence.
Build relational health. // Health is a huge priority among the leadership and staff team, especially because Summit is a fast-growing church. Weekly staff meetings incorporate elements of fun and celebration, such as recognizing birthdays and engaging in team-building activities, like an optional, 30-minute 9-Square tournament each Tuesday. Have fun together, but don’t force these activities. Enjoy each other’s company in order to have a greater impact in the church and community. Building a strong relational foundation among the staff team makes it easier to tackle challenging issues. Setting realistic expectations, encouraging a sustainable work-life balance, and offering free counseling to the staff also helps prevent burnout.
Trust what He’s doing. // Bryan wraps up by encouraging church leaders to stay humble and hungry for that one more person to come to Christ. Rather than worrying about the outcomes, continue to look at what God is doing and where He’s leading you. Surrender to His plan and He will help you lead your people well.
You can learn more about Summit Christian Church at www.summitnv.org.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve gotta that you’ve tuned in. You’ve really tuned in for a great conversation today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and I’m real excited for today’s conversation – get a chance to meet a new friend, ah, Bryan Smith. He is the lead pastor at a church called Summit Christian Church, a nondenominational church located in Sparks, Nevada. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country and they’re launching a campus this fall, and somehow Bryan found his time in the middle of all that to sit down with us. Bryan, so glad you’re here. Thanks for being on the show today.
Bryan Smith — Awesome. It’s great to be with you. And I appreciate that you pronounced our state’s name correctly. “Nevadda” not “Nevahda” -that is painful. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Oh ok, that didn’t even know I was doing that right.
Bryan Smith — You crushed it right out of the gates. Way to go.
Rich Birch — Ah okay, that’s good. Well, that’s good. Well, tell me a little bit about Summit, kind of give me this story. Tell us a little bit about, you know, if I was to come this weekend, tell us give us a bit of the flavor of the church, that sort of thing.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, Summit’s been around for 25 years, since Sparks; it’s a right I mean adjacent to Reno, Nevada, which is for people listening about 7 hours north of Vegas. Most people think we’re real close. We’re not. So it’s light years away from sort of what people think of in terms of Las Vegas.
Bryan Smith — But Summit launched, our our founding pastor and his wife, Steve and Pam [inaudible], they launched because at the time Reno was the number one unchurched place in the nation. And so they said we’re going to launch a church there. Um, and so Summit has been in two different locations. We started you know at a YMCA, bought property kinda what felt like, at the time, out in the middle of nowhere. But right now it’s in the middle of everywhere…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Bryan Smith — …as our community is expanding. Yeah, we’re on a sort of a highway, but it’s it’s got stop lights on it. And the the city put in a stoplight right in front of our church…
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.
Bryan Smith — …that is the dumbest stoplight in the community. So lots of people get stuck and we joke about why’d you come to Summit? Was it our stoplight? So that’s kind of been kind of cool. So that’s worked out really well for us.
Bryan Smith — But um Summit is from from day one just been about introducing people to Christ, seeing them grow the Lord, experience life change. We welcome in. We’re kind of messy. We don’t celebrate the mess, but we’re definitely messy as folks come in in our community they they are extremely unchurched, usually have blown up their lives, and show up and want to know, you know, what do I do at this blanken church? All right. We can work with that. You’re not churched. I like it.
Rich Birch — I love it. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Bryan Smith — I have one time—this a fun story—I had a guy come down the risers, our stadium seating, and and say, “hey pastor;” he’s kind of a bigger dude. And I’m like ah yeah? He goes I just want to tell you, and he starts crying. He’s like this church has f-ing changed my life.
Rich Birch — Oh love it. Love it.
Bryan Smith — And I’m like, you’re not from around here. Okay. And and you could tell the church people because they all kind of, you know, their head popped and around their neck jerked and they looked at me, and and I just gave a hug. And about a year after that got to do his wedding.
Rich Birch — So good.
A year after that just a couple months ago we got baptized. So.
Rich Birch — So good.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, so we’re and we’re known in our community as a church that serves, which is great. We we wanted to be that church if we disappear the community would notice. And man, we’re just humbly serving downtown. We’re serving in the schools this week. Teacher appreciation we’re serving meals breakfast or lunch to a bunch of different schools and caring for the teachers.
Rich Birch — So good.
Yes, we work really hard in welcoming people in and serving in our community, introducing them to Christ, and just seeing life change…
Rich Birch — So good.
Bryan Smith — …which is fantastic. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Bryan, I love that. And I you know people already are hearing why we’re so excited to have you on the on the podcast. I love the focus of reaching unchurched people and actually seeing that happen. I think lots of churches talk about that, but then when you have evidence like that, it’s just such a good thing to see.
Rich Birch — But why don’t you give us a bit of context fill up fill out the picture a little bit more. To me if I was thinking of places in the country where churches would grow, Reno would not be on the list, and the fact that you’re growing there seems amazing, by God’s grace. Kind of tell us about that story. What’s what’s happening there? What’s God using at Summit to see that that happen?
Bryan Smith — Yeah, it’s it’s fun. The the northern Nevada no one ever says I want to move to northern Nevada, but once they get heren once they get here… Like I’m a So. Cal. guy, came up in ’05 from Orange County, and and once once you get to northern Nevada, it’s a beautiful spot. And so we’ve got lots of like the community is growing. We’ve got lots of political refugees, they call themselves, from from California. But we’re we’re growing as a church because we make the place comfortable. Every church wants to be welcoming and and we work hard at that. We’ve we’ve got folks that come in and say, I felt welcome from day one.
Bryan Smith — Um and and then we’re pretty vulnerable, whether that’s teaching from the stage or in our kids ministry, student ministry. And and I think we need that in an unchurched environment the the vulnerability where people have this preconceived notion of what Christians are – the judgmental, the kind of putting up a facade, and we work hard to push back against that and be just vulnerable and open and honest and present and show lots of grace. Um I do wish that everyone in our church sinned just like I did so I wouldn’t have to show as much grace, but they sin differently…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good; I like that.
Bryan Smith — …and and so yeah, so I’ve got to extend grace to them. They extend grace to me. Our our staff is, you know, we we hire people that we have to pump the brakes on, not light a fire under. So they’re going to get after it regardless of what we’re putting in front of them. And so that that filters down into our volunteers, and and then into the congregation of people that are like, man, this is a place where I feel loved, and I meet Jesus, my life has been changed where, you know, that that old thing a bunch of beggars telling other beggars where the food is.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Bryan Smith — So we’re not. We’re not pretentious. We’re not showy. I think probably we work hard at just being understated…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — …because that’s who we are.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Bryan Smith — And and that’s our community too. Our community is not flashy. Um, we’re not terribly showy. But um, yeah, so I don’t…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Bryan Smith — …there’s some shooting from the hip things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d love to talk a little bit more about that. Even you know, pulling back the curtain a little bit, I love before our our interview today you’re like, I’m not sure why you why you called us. And I’m like well, which I which are you’re living that out here. You know that you’re living out your you know, kind of not flashy, just kind of norma, which I love, I think is great. Let’s talk about the vulnerability thing a little bit. From your perspective, how do you cultivate that as a leader? There was a time—I think you and I are a similar generation—there was a time I think when we first started that there were it was like people wanted religious leaders to be like something different and like they’re like we want them to be like a totally different person, but that’s just not true anymore people are looking for people that are like them that are vulnerable. Talk to us about how do you cultivate that kind of culture where people can come as they are um, and you know it’s it’s not doesn’t matter why you came but obviously it’s because of Jesus that we stay. And and but so talk us through that. What’s that look like for you as a community?
Bryan Smith — Yeah, I think the vulnerability part is we we don’t tell people, “and you need to do this.” We’re inviting them into something that that…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Bryan Smith — …and hey if if your life you’ve blown up your life, I can tell you what you need to do. Like I know I should probably eat less fast food, but I’m going, to I love Del Taco it’s like Taco Bell but way worse. And…
Rich Birch — Yes. Or better, depending, you know.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, it’s all about perspective. But but if you tell someone what they need to do, ah, you know there’s that backfire effect and and they’re just going to dig their heels in. So we go, Okay, here’s here’s where you’re at; here’s where you could be. Let’s let’s invite you into that life change.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Bryan Smith — Let’s invite you into interacting with with Jesus, interacting with the community. And that the things that are um, destroying your life, let’s get rid of those. I think so the invitation the the inviting culture.
Bryan Smith — I think too um, we’re we’re pretty open about our past. And and not celebrating our past. Like I hate to say it, but my past um, in in high school convinced mom to get cable, and found Cinemax, became Skinemax late at night at the age of 16 without a dad in the house, and so porn was part of my story for 10 years until I came clean and I thought I’ll get married and and that’ll solve all the problems. No, it didn’t. And and so like I’ll share that from stage. And I always have dudes come up afterwards in hushed tones, “How’d you do it?” And and so you know and every time I share, I’m I’m trying not to cry right now. But when I share it, I I cry because that that part of my story sucks. And I wish it weren’t the case.
Bryan Smith — And so we can be vulnerable with that, own it, and say, but God’s got something better. And and our other teaching pastor, he’s just really open and honest, wisdom and and how we share what we share. But when people see that from the stage, when people see that in the lobby when they’re talking to our staff, where we’re like, hey I remind our staff God’s got a deep depth chart and he could choose from the 8 billion other people to do what we’re doing today. We’re pretty lucky that he chose us.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Bryan Smith — And and and so we just kind of, you know, we’re not going around crying in our beer kind of thing. But we just know man we’re blessed be doing what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Bryan Smith — And we’re we’re nothing special. God us breathed life into us on purpose, and we got a story and we’re hungry to see other people experience the the um life to the full that Jesus promises us in John 10:10.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Bryan Smith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I love the, you know, the focus on, you know, how are we going to kind of create a community where people can be just truthful and honest and open. I’ve said in other contexts that one of the telltale signs of a church that’s reaching unchurched people is that you have messy, complex, pastoral care. That’s just normal. Like it’s normative that okay we’re wrestling, if you’re just reaching church people, it’s not that they’re not messy. They’re messy. They just hide it. They just don’t know…
Bryan Smith — They know better.
Rich Birch — Um, so how do you how do you kind of build a staff team that is able to um, you know, kind of accept people and, you know, pastor them and lead them when people are coming with, you know, that kind of messiness? Ah talk us through what that that’s looked like for you and your team.
Bryan Smith — I think, yeah, half of our I don’t know, don’t quote me on this…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — …but a lot of our staff will say that comes…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — …from didn’t come from a bible school or seminary background.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Bryan Smith — My degree is an aquatic biology from U. C. Santa Barbara.
Rich Birch — Okay, nice.
Bryan Smith — And in in God’s humor, I’m pastoring in a desert. So thank you, Jesus.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s true! That’s funny.
Bryan Smith — Um, so I came into student ministry, I mean I was involved with Intervarsity on the college campus when I was a student and then in lay ministry after that. And so I kind of came in through the back door. And then we’ve got a lot of our staff that we’ve hired from within. And and so they don’t have that bible college background, which Ilove bible college, seminary. I went back to seminary. Um, but but I think having folks that that didn’t grow up in the church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — …didn’t grow up with a ministry mindset, had been invited into it, there’s they have a different perspective. And then we get the wisdom and the knowledge from the bible college or seminary background folks, and and that really kind of helps create this this kind of cool mix of people.
Bryan Smith — I think the the other thing um that that has helped is we we schedule we’ve had to schedule a pastor each day to be available to counsel and meet with people. Because what would happen is…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, we have lots of people that are coming in and they’re they’re looking for help. And then it’s the secretary’s responsibility, and suddenly it’s like whack-a-mole, and all the staff disappeared. Ah yeah, and and she’s like, hold on – let me find a pastor… is there anyone? You know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Bryan Smith — Um, and so we scheduled that and just said, hey we’re going to be available.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Bryan Smith — And and and so we make sure that we’re available when people come in, when people have a need. They’re going to meet with a pastor, or an elder. Our elders are part of that as well. Um, does that answer some of your question?
Rich Birch — That’s great. Absolutely. I love that even practicality of like scheduling people. I can see that, have been in exactly the scenario you’re talking about where it’s like, I got stuff to do. Um, yeah, that’s good. So kind of sticking with this this theme, um, you know, a church of 25 years, you know, quarter of a century, over time churches become more insider-focused. That’s just true. Like unless you push against that they become actually older and more insider- focused. But but your church hasn’t. You you’ve been able to keep a focus on reaching unchurched people. How are you doing that as ah as a senior leader? What does that look like for you? How are you keeping your people focused on that mission?
Bryan Smith — That’s so your your premise is interesting to me that the older churches get the more internally-focused they become. And that’s never been my experience in ministry. So that’s part of it’s kind of like, hey you know ask the fish, how’s the water?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Bryan Smith — I don’t know because that’s water I’ve swam in.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — So with Intervarsity at the college campus, we were always hungry for for one more student.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Bryan Smith — Ah in the dorms I moved into the freshman doors my sophomore and junior year which was like social suicide. Um, and but it was just what we did…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — …because we want to lead kids to Christ. Um, and then Eastside Christian Church where I came from in in Fullerton, California at the time, man, it was the same way. And and so then when I moved up here, took over as the student pastor, um at it Summit, man, ah that was our our whole thought process is, you know, we were giving invitations all the time. We were baptizing like crazy. So this has been something that that has been part of the church. And this is why um during covid we—yeah, that was a fun season to lead through said no one ever—um during covid we said, hey, we’re going to build a building and we’re we’re and we didn’t let off on that…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Bryan Smith — …and finished the building and moved in in ’21.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Bryan Smith — Um and yeah 1200 seat worship center. And it it was kind of empty at first. We had a lot of online folks. But they’ve been coming back, and now we’re we’re seeing record attendance, record baptisms, and looking at launching a campus east of us by about 45 minutes. And and this is all we, like our from our kids ministry, we’re creating events. Where can we bring, how can we get these kids who invite their friends, student ministries having events that are um, you know, not terribly church-focused. So that… and that sounds bad but ah, you know, like a dodgeball tournament.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — There’s nothing Christian about that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — But it’s super fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — And so kids come…
Rich Birch — Yeah..
Bryan Smith — …and then they go church isn’t what I thought. This this place doesn’t suck; I want to come back. And with adults you know, like for Father’s Day, they don’t know this yet, but we’re going to we’re doing like all these activities in our plaza, and doing an RC car race. Like…
Rich Birch — So fun.
Bryan Smith — …this is not rocket science kind of stuff, but it’s like how can we create space where people want to be there, and they go, wait a minute, this isn’t what I expected. And so we’re we’re just staying hungry like crazy – that’s hungry for one more that we we talk about at Summit a lot. In fact, we put plexiglass boards, lit up boards, in our in our entry into our worship center and, said who’s your one? Write their name on that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Bryan Smith — And I had this few weeks ago I had a lady come and say, hey I want introduce you to my one. She got baptized a couple weeks ago.
Rich Birch — So good.
Bryan Smith — And and that lady said, I want to introduce you to my one that I invited.
Rich Birch — Wow. Praise God. That’s great.
Bryan Smith — And I’m like oh this is working. Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s good. I love that. I love the practicality of like, hey we got to operationalize this. We got to come up with things that will, you know, keep that in front of people and just even the plexiglass stuff. That’s, you know, that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Pivoting in a slightly different direction, so you like you lead a staff team, fairly large staff team. Um, you know keeping people as hard. This is one of those times where, and and you know I’ve led within fast-growing churches. And it sounds great. Everyone’s like, oh that sounds like a fun place to work. But it’s just a lot of work. It’s it’s ton of you know, to keep the thing running is a lot. Talk to me about what you’re doing on the staff health front to kind of keep your team focused on, you know, and on their own well-being and kind of keeping them positive and serving. What’s that look like for for you guys?
Bryan Smith — Yeah, um, that we have four team values, and they’re health, focus, whole life generosity, and achievable excellence. And two, two of those are really pertinent I think to staff health, obviously health and then the achievable excellence. The achievable excellence – I’ll start there. Um, we we want to we want to do things that are excellent, but we we only have ah so many dollars, and so many people, and so much time…
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — …and so let’s set the bar reasonably high. But not so high that we’re gonna be defeated, or so low that we’re just going to sandbag it. And and so I’ll push on our staff and and like I said earlier, oftentimes so we hire folks we got to pump the brakes on rather than light of fire. Um, yeah, and so oftentimes I’ll say, hey, with this achievable excellence idea, you’re you’re burning the cantle at both ends. And we want sustainability. We want you in it for the long haul. I want your marriage healthy. I want you to have joy. And you got it now, but you’re not sowing seeds in that direction for the future.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — So let’s let’s pump the brakes a little bit. Then health, health is a huge priority for me. Um, and and this isn’t like ah a circle to wagon, so we got to kumbayas, fours no mores. No if we’re going to be if we’re going to reach others, then I have to be healthy. Our elder team has to be healthy. Our ah staff team has to be healthy, because somehow in God’s economy what happens in in the the elder team filters into the staff filters into the…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Bryan Smith — …the church. And and so as an elder team, we’re we’re meeting with our wives for dinner for an hour. Then my wife takes the elder wives and they talk and pray. And then us elders, we get down to business. And our elders are a bunch of guys, number one, I always tell our in our our—we call it the trailhead lunch—but newcomers lunch, you probably wouldn’t ever know an elder is an elder at our church. Because they’re already serving and they’re not wearing it as a badge.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — Bunch of humble dudes that love the Lord and want what’s best for the church. And they’re critical thinkers and they get after me at times, and and encourage me, and we laugh together and we cry and we pray, and so there’s that health aspect. Then um at the staff level, um, man we want to keep our people around who are creating an environment that is fun, that is welcoming. Um, and and so I have an open door policy. If my door is open, it doesn’t matter who you are on staff, you can walk in and we can sit down and talk. I like that most of the time except when I’m about to close the door cause I got to get something done. But I’m I’m an extrovert and so I would rather be hanging out with people than doing something on my computer.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — Um, we have month… or weekly staff meetings, rather. I know a lot of folks have ah, monthly. But we have weekly staff meetings and there’s ah, a regiment, not a regiment that sounds not fun. There’s a routine that we go through monthly whether it’s celebrating birthdays or worship or a fun game, and then some kind of huddle or teaching. We have I talk about crucial conversations and part of health is you got to talk about the hard stuff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — We celebrate the wins like crazy. Um, we cast vision of why we’re doing what we’re doing and lead with the why (thank you Simon Sinek) um and and lead with that so that people know this is what I’m about and then we help define the win so that they know they’re winning.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — But and then we also we provide counseling for our staff. So we have a counselor that we have two sessions a month and it’s a use it or lose it, kind of like a gym membership. And those are never empty. People have been very grateful for that. And then…
Rich Birch — Um, two for your per staff, or two…
Bryan Smith — No, two just two standing meetings a month.
Rich Birch — That are open slots. Okay, great.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, and so they work through my assistant to get signed up, and and they always come in to say, hey thank you. Um, but here this is the lowest hanging fruit that we fell into…
Rich Birch — Okay, love it. We love the low hanging fruit here.
Bryan Smith — I know. Nine Square. We play…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Bryan Smith — We have. Ah yeah, our our it it just happened like in 2021 our our middle school director, now pastor, she said, hey um, can we play Nine Square for half an hour today ah, with the staff? And I’m like, yeah I guess. I mean it’s always set up. Let’s do it. So what ended up from that conversation was we play there’s a weekly standing Nine Square tournament on Tuesdays for half an hour from 1 to 1:30.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, and and then it’s morphed into we had to buy more so it’s now 18 square because we’ve got like facilities showing up. We’ve we’ve got the preschool director showing up. Um, if there’s a volunteer in the office they’re like, can I play? And I said how good are you? No. In fact in it we we have we have a trophy. And so the last ten minutes is is single elimination, and we have two trophies – one for the winner that week. And if you win you get to write your name on the trophy, kind of like Stanley Cup.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
But you have to then play opposite-handed for eight weeks after that just to even it and…
Rich Birch — Oh ah, you’re punished!
Bryan Smith — This is great. We have we have a little um like ah we serve in Cambodia and someone brought home this little miniature kind of version of Angkor Wat, and we call it immunity idol. And if you’re the first person to lose, you get back in the next week after single elimination is down to 8 people.
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Bryan Smith — So we’ve created all these rules. And and what happens is we’re goofing around. People love it when they spike on me or or block me. Um, and and we’re we’re just having a ton of fun. So we work hard at playing together, enjoying each other’s company, and then being reminded that that we’re we’re a crucial piece of the mission of what God is doing. And and this is where so it it sounds internally-focused but then we’re like, no wait a minute. What we’re doing in the health of this team has an impact in our church, has an impact in in Sparks High, or out in Fernley, where we’re going to launch, or that marriage that is struggling that that we’re seeing in the community group is getting healthier. And so people are just stoked. Our team is excited about… now that not to say we don’t have our tough days and we go to have our tough conversations.
Rich Birch — Sure.
It’s It’s not all you know, whistling, skipping down a yellow brick road there. There’s some hard parts to it as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well and I think the rhythm of I love the encouragement around you know the Nine Square, kind of fun weekly thing, you know, for you as an organization you as a leader to say, hey there might be something here. That’s kind of fun that a a team member came to you and then we, hey let’s put some energy on that. There’s probably churches that are listening in they’re like, oh we we do something similar around ping pong, and I never thought of it as being something we should really try to build into. I also love the thing there too around, it being it sounds like it’s like an optional thing. It’s like, hey show up if you want to. It’s between this time. If you’ve got time, we’d love for you to come. Because there is sometimes when you do fun stuff like that, mandatory fun never feels fun. You know, like if it’s…
Bryan Smith — forced fun isn’t fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah. The like, you know, and sometimes you have to do that as a team. Sometimes you have to um, you know, find ah like we’re going to see a movie or we’re going to go do some activity together. Like that that that has its place, but I love to kind of like hey if you’re available Tuesdays at whatever you said twelve thirty one o’clock, come by and have fun. That’s I think that’s fantastic. That’s so cool.
Bryan Smith — Yeah, we had best Christian workplaces come in and assess the health of our team. We’ve done that 3 times with them, and then they did a 360 assessment of me. I still have yet to read that – it’s too painful probably. No, I was actually it was, it was insanely helpful. But…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Bryan Smith — …one of the things in the open-ended responses. There were so many mentions of the the half an hour of Nine Square…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good insight.
Bryan Smith — …in terms of the joy factor on our team. And it helps I have the play drive of a golden retriever. And and so wanting to make things fun and light is really important so that then if we’re enjoying each other’s company and having fun together, then we can really get down to the the ministry stuff, and it doesn’t feel like we’re carrying ah this heavy load. It’s like man we’re carrying a load…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Bryan Smith — …but we’re doing it together, and there’s this fun atmosphere. And when one person wins, we all win. We’re all going to celebrate…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Bryan Smith — …and and that really helps with the the team dynamics. And then the retention that you’re asking about it and keeping people here, keeping them hungry was proven very beneficial.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and I think there’s something to, you know when there’s a connection there on even like the crucial conversation side of day of having a you know a high performing team where if there’s strong relational connection, it does make it easier to have a more pointed conversation with someone because they see, oh this person is for me, like they’re in my corner. They you know their total view of me isn’t just this one issue that we got to get traction on. They you know they and and as goofy as Nine Square sounds, it’s like hey I I played Nine Square with them, I see I see that they like interacting with me. And then I’m I’m willing to take the feedback or the, you know, hey we got to work harder on this, or we got to stay focused on this when it’s in the context of, I know for me, that’s for sure the case.
Rich Birch — Um, one of the things you talked about kind of as we were preparing was you were in um Virginia, you served there and then you came to Reno. Um two different contexts two, you know, you got the beach you got like you say the desert, um talk to us about what that’s been like to kind of serve in you know, two different contexts. Any learnings from for you as a leader you know, serving in those different environments?
Bryan Smith — Yeah, I think um so I came to to Reno in ’05 at Summit Christian Church. Then I moved out to Virginia Beach in a lead role from 2014 to ’17. And then I was invited back to Summit in a co- like a shared leadership position with our founding pastor. And so I’ve worked I’ve worked at ah, two physical location churches, but very much three churches. Because the the church I I left to go to Virginia to pastor, the Summit of ah the first part of my career, is different than the Summit now. So that’s why I say it’s kind of…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Bryan Smith — …two locations, three churches.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Bryan Smith — Um, but in in Virginia, you know, it’s it’s very much in kind of in the bible belt of sorts even though it’s way east. And I remember talking to my neighbor when we moved in and and I said, oh yeah I pastor ah, Real Life Christian Church down down the road here, and love to have you come. He goes, ah nah, me and the big man upstairs are okay, right? And we hear that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Bryan Smith — And then I realized… and this isn’t a critique of the church, it’s just the cultural differences.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Bryan Smith — In where I was in Virginia, people were comfortable with God, comfortable with their sort of faith that they decided that faith level they’ve decided to walk in, which is really no faith at all. And it was hard because ah, you’d have to deconstruct that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Bryan Smith — …to have them see their need for God, their need for grace, what relationship with God looks like on his terms not dictated by our terms, and then supported by popular culture kind of thing. And and so there was always a struggle when when folks would come in I’m like, man, if if we could just break down this idea of, you know, me and the big man upstairs are okay. And you would really see your need. You would really jump into it, embrace the grace that God has for us, and and live as the church name said that real life that Jesus offers us. And again not a critique of the church, but just the culture.
Bryan Smith — Well here in Reno, like I said earlier, and people come in and they’ve blown up their life. They’ve never gone to church. And and I realize in our post-Christian ah, context kind of thing we’re we’re really going to see more and more of this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Bryan Smith — But it’s especially seems more prevalent here in in the community that I serve and where people they’ve never been to church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Bryan Smith — They they don’t know what it looks like and and they have these these notions, and I’ll say it from stage and I’m glad that you’re here. I don’t know what brought you here, but maybe you wanted to prove that Christians are weird. And you’re going to discover we are but not the weird you kind of thought of, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Bryan Smith — And and and so it’s just been in some ways I would rather take someone that that has zero idea of what it looks like to walk with God and say let me introduce you to Jesus. Let’s disciple you. Let let’s you know see see what God has for you. Versus having that kind of you you built your life on a lousy foundation. We got to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch. Yeah, and and so this is I think this is why God has me in in Reno because I love that kind of challenge and I I love…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Bryan Smith — …I just I like messy people. Um I like people that don’t have it all together that um I love teaching with um to that kind of mindset and and topic, and really introducing Christ and the the the aha moments where people go… And I been doing like I think this is why we’re we’re seeing this this resurgence of Church attendance and baptism. Buddies and I’m talking to across the US are like, man, God is on the move. Because people had decided I’m going to build my life on this, Covid destroyed that, and they said that I’m going to try these other things. And they’re realizing, wait a minute, this feels just as empty. Maybe there’s something to be said for church. And and so in our community we got lots of folks that are coming in saying, you know, the world sold me a bad bill of goods. I don’t like where I’m at. And so what what does Jesus have to offer me?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I know, you know, I think it’s really important for us as the kind of broader church to continue to learn from places like Reno, or like I’ve served in the northeast and Canada. Um in these kind of for years I used to say post-Christian context, where it was… But but I really feel like that’s shifted and I’ve increasingly heard people using the language of pre-Christian context, which I which resonates is true. That I feel like in the first half of my career, we spent a lot of time deconstructing people’s ideas of church. You know there was the joke of like we ain’t your mama’s church kind of thing. Well the reality of it is most of the people that we see in these contexts, and sounds like this is true in Reno, that are coming in that are unchurched, their their mom didn’t go to church, their grandma didn’t go to church. They’re a couple generations away from this. They don’t have any preconceived notion of what this thing looks like.
Bryan Smith — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so it’s not like we’re trying to deconstruct from there. We’re trying to start from the ground up, like you say, hey, let’s start from the very beginning, which I just think is an exciting time so that, you know, this would be a great church. You would be your church would be great church for us to be learning from as we think about the future. So this has been a great conversation today.
Bryan Smith — Awesome.
Rich Birch — Just as we kind of come to to land land the plane, is there anything else you’d like to say to to leaders that are listening in today that are thinking about, hey how do we make our church, you know be the kind of place that’s always looking to reach one more, that’s kind of got that, you know, you know, in their mission, or anything that we’ve talked about today you want to reemphasize?
Bryan Smith — Yeah, it’s not easy if I if we were just if we did circle the wagons and just preach to the echo chamber of us. It’d be a lot easier.
Rich Birch — So true.
Bryan Smith — But it’s not as fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah.
Bryan Smith — And you know, I think um it’s incredible, like so there’s there was ah a guy that he he kind of blew up his life. And he had a good life from from outside looking in. And then he got connected to the church. His son had a medical issue. He joined our Rooted group. We we were in Rooted through our church, which is awesome, a great discipleship tool. And and he gave his life to christ in my living room and then I got to baptize him. And to see where he’s at now and helping facilitate another group is just incredible
Rich Birch — So good.
Bryan Smith — And I think, man, had we just circled the wagons and said, Bro, you’re a little too messy for us. We miss out on all that joy. And I don’t think that that I “us four, no more” is definitely not in line with the great commissioner or Acts 1:8. In in all of this too, I have a friend and in um the Baltimore area Ben Cachiaras. He talked about staying hungry and humble, and that has resonated with me. We’re going to stay hungry for that one more, and we’re going to stay humble, like you know God’s got a deep depth chart. He chose us. This is great.
Bryan Smith — Um, and then Psalm 181 it says “the Lord has done this and it’s marvelous in our eyes.” And and so we just continue to look at what God is doing, whether it’s our vision for one more ,vision to launch a campus and and help out in Kenya. We’re we’re going to be building ah an office building on our current site because and then pull all of our offices out of our other buildings so that we can have more ministry space for kids because…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Bryan Smith — …we got a lot of young families coming and we got a lot of young families that like to reproduce. And and so we got to make space. And and we’re just going, man, this is awesome – like look what God is up to.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Bryan Smith — And I feel like my biggest role right now is to continue ah to shepherd our people well, and and to die to self, my own concerns of is this thing ever going to spin so fast that it gets out of control? I hope not. But in the meantime God help me raise my lid, help me lead well. Help me be available to your people.
Rich Birch — So good.
Bryan Smith — And and we’ll, you know, kind of trust God with with the outcome.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, Bryan, this has been such an encouraging conversation today. Thank you so much for your time. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church?
Bryan Smith — Well, it would be to the church. I’m not on social media at all. I I got off of that just a few months ago. And but you can check us out summitnv – our states initials – summit and then nevada.org summitnv… wait a minute…
Rich Birch — It is summitnv.org.
Bryan Smith — I I don’t know why I blanked; you’re gonna have to edit that, bro, or just allow it in there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s all good. It’s all good.
Bryan Smith — So you can check us out at summininv.org and see what we’re up to, see what we’re doing and check our church out.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Bryan. Appreciate you being here today, sir.
Community First: How Century Church is Redefining Outreach and Church Spaces with Patrick Quinn
Jul 25, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Patrick Quinn, the lead pastor at Century Church in Alabama. Century has a vision to plant one hundred churches across America in order to see more people brought into a life-saving communion with Jesus Christ.
Can you imagine a church so ingrained in a local community that the core values of that local congregation become the core values of the entire town? This is precisely the goal for Century Church. Tune in as Patrick unpacks this innovative approach where a church transforms its community through loving service.
Build the town. // Churches are no longer seen as the hub of activity for their communities as they were in American history. But Patrick believes the church is always at its best when it’s solving problems for its local community and loving it in very specific, tangible ways. Rather than building the church, early on Century Church made a decision to prioritize building the town they were in and then let the town build the church.
Community first. // The community-first mindset of Century Church is reflected in everything they do, from staffing to budgeting and programming. A lot of church budgets are focused primarily on church programming. Century decided to flip that, prioritizing community initiatives and their programs, which are designed to serve the entire community rather than only church members. The church then works off of a smaller portion of the budget. Similarly, the staff members are all very involved in the community, even having bi-vocational roles, such as serving as chaplain of the local football team.
Partner with the community. // What it would look like for us to lose the church in order to find the true essence of the church? Where is the church supposed to serve? Previously Century Church used pole barns on their 23-acre property to host outdoor church services. As they grew, they took a unique approach to property development by inviting the community to design the church’s space based on the town’s needs. They hosted a five-day charrette involving architects, town planners, and engineers from eighteen states and two countries to create a mixed-use space that prioritized community needs. The church would then use some of that space for weekend services.
Adapt your plans. // Initially the church was going to build a performing arts center, but they tabled the plans in favor of constructing a gym and recreational space, which better met the needs of the town. Listen to the community and families around you and be willing to adapt your plans based on the evolving needs of the community. This builds momentum and demonstrates your commitment to making a difference. People not looking for Jesus will realize Jesus has been looking for them as they make use of these spaces and programs.
Expand your reach. // Century Church operates its 23-acre space as a separate entity called “The Well.” The church has a voice on the board and has put guardrails in place that outline how the space can be used within the community. They also seek like-minded partners who are committed to excellence and want to bring opportunities to the town. With lease agreements and contracts, these partnerships fall under the umbrella of The Well rather than falling other the umbrella of Century Church. Partnerships can amplify your impact and reach. Look for organizations and groups that share your values and commitment to excellence.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation with Patrick Quinn. He is the lead pastor at Century Church. This a church plant that was established in 2017 in Alabama. It’s an independent Methodist Church and this church, man, they, Patrick and I got a chance to interact a little bit at Exponential earlier this year I was inspired by what was going on. Ah but this church really has a vision to plant 100 churches, which is amazing, in communities all across America in order so to to see more people brought into a life-saving communion with Jesus Christ. Patrick, we are so glad you’re here today. Thanks for being here.
Patrick Quinn — Rich, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be a part of the conversation today.
Rich Birch — Well, fill out the picture. Kind of tell us a little bit about Century. You know, if people were to come this weekend, what would they experience? That kind of thing.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so what they would experience currently is probably something that’s not happening in many other places in America.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Patrick Quinn — You and had talked about that at Exponential. But during covid we were meeting in a public elementary school in a fast-growing small town ah, that doesn’t have a lot of other facilities. And so when covid hit we needed to get out of the public elementary school for obvious reasons. If everybody goes back to thinking about what was going on there and how you had to have everything clean for five days and all of those things. And so we did not want to be a church that all of a sudden shut down our public elementary school for the next week due to ah worshipping.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — So we moved out of there. A lot of people went virtual. We certainly did that but we had purchased ah a 23-acre piece of property. It’s completely raw land, and we ultimately ended up ah building an outdoor venue. And we thought that this was going to be somewhat…
Rich Birch — That sounds real fancy. That sounds fancy. Outdoor venue sounds very fancy. That’s not necessarily what I picture.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, okay, I’ll bring it down for you because we’re in Alabama. We we have two pole barns.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it.
Patrick Quinn — Pole barns, now they’re large, they are large pole barns.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — Fifty feet wide by eighty-four feet long…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — …and 9 shipping containers which I’m sitting in one right now while we’re doing this recording that we built…
Rich Birch — Really, this is in one of those? But if you see the video it’s that I wouldn’t even know you’re in a shipping container.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, yeah, I’m in a shipping container right now.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — So not headed to China.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — But but we are we are here on the property. So we have 9 shipping containers, 2 pole barns, lot of raw land, and we are currently building our first building. But we went outside and our people did not want to go back to the elementary school when it was all said and done. They wanted to stay where we were on this property. They felt called to it to then begin the process. Well we have been an outdoor venue every Sunday for the last almost four years now.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s incredible.
Patrick Quinn — No matter if it’s snowing, raining, hot Alabama summer.
Rich Birch — Gosh.
Patrick Quinn — No matter what it is and somehow, Rich, people keep showing up, like it looks like the field of dreams out here every Sunday.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I there’s so much of this story. I I we just before the episode I was like, I’m not entirely sure how we’re gonna tell this whole thing because there’s so much here. Tell tell us about when you put up the tents. This is a to me this talks about resilience. I think there’s a lot of leaders that when you put up the tents and then what happened, you tell us that story…
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so…
Rich Birch — …I think would be like, okay I’m not sure the Lord’s called us to this, you know.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so we’re outside and we’re and we’re literally on a raw piece of property, nothing on it. No utilities, nothing. And we are outside and we have fire pits for the winter. We’re trying to like figure out what to do next. And I was like okay, we’re going to build this outdoor venue. What could we do that would be ah, you know, enticing for the community to want to come check it out? So we we purchased two huge tents – Barnum and Bailey style tents.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — I mean big massive tents. And you know, one we were going to put the children’s ministry in, the other we were going to do worship in. And Rich, we got one worship service in before Hurricane Zeta came up through the Gulf of Mexico…
Rich Birch — Oh no.
Patrick Quinn — …went went across the beach, you know, down in the panhandle of Florida, and we are about 2 hours north by driving distance and we still had a Cat 1 hurricane come through and it wiped our tents out.
Rich Birch — Oh gosh.
Patrick Quinn — We literally only worshipped for one Sunday with the tents.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Patrick Quinn — So yeah, we were standing out there on the field after the hurricane came through and we had worked so hard to try to, you know, we don’t have any facilities. Our people have been worshipping completely outside. It’s cold, rainy, all of that. We put up these tents. We finally are excited. And there’s no doubt my team and a lot of lay leaders, we just stood there on that property pretty dejected at first, you know, like what are we doing?
Rich Birch — Yes, understandable.
Patrick Quinn — Like this doesn’t seem to be some something maybe we should be doing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — And but the community showed up and cleaned it all up. And then the town helped us with some zoning…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — …to allow us to get these really nice pole barns constructed on the property, and for us to continue the mission and we’ve been growing ever since. We started with 100 people at Century Church – that’s part of Century.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — Psalm 100 is another part of that in scripture. But um, we started with about 100 and now we we shrunk back like everybody did in covid and we grew it back to we’re we’re approaching 600 people out here on a raw piece of property.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. That’s amazing. Well you know you might be listening in, friends, and think, oh we’re going to talk about the zaniness of being meeting outdoors for 4 years, but that’s not actually the part of the story. That’s a part of it. But that’s not the part that caught my attention. This was it. You know when I hear ah, Patrick and his leadership team talk, um I really hear a church that is trying to be for the community in a very real way, and has done all kinds of things to try to engage and serve and love the community they’re in. And frankly to be honest I found a little bit convicting. Because I feel like we try to be that in our church, but and sometimes I feel like maybe it’s just a marketing thing as opposed to you know the actual acting it out. I said that; Patrick didn’t say that. Don’t worry, friends. Ah but tell us about, you know, how is it that Century Church has been for your community. What’s that actually look like? Give us kind of a picture of what that is and then I’d love to unpack that for us as we think about our churches.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so when I I have a lot of my experience was in the megachurch previously. And I ended up in a small town. I’m a military kid, originally, so I didn’t have a lot of small town experience. But I end up in a small town that is fast-growing with a brand new school system.
Patrick Quinn — And you see all of the needs in in a small town, sometimes more clearly than in a large metropolitan area that that ah you know I’ve obviously had the opportunity to pastor in. And so as you start looking at it, we had a choice early on. Do we build the church, or do we build the town?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Patrick Quinn — And I think that’s where we made some decisions early on to say, you know what? I feel like God’s called us to build the town, to really embed the gospel of Jesus in this community is to build the town, and let the town help build the church. And so that’s where we started leaning into this idea of putting our community first.
Patrick Quinn — And I started thinking through it a lot and a lot of research – I’m ah I’m a researcher by nature. I stay up all night, read too much, do all sorts of things, all kinds of conversations. A lot of things I’ve I’ve followed you and a host of other people. And so ah, along the way we just started thinking through, how how can we, in a small medium-sized, growing town have influence with the current generation.
Rich Birch — Um, so let’s talk about that. Like so I think there’s lots of us that talk about putting our community first. We say that. Like we’re like we’re like… but what does that actually look like for you? What what are some examples of where you’ve said, hey we’ve we’ve actually tried to, whether it’s been strategic or whether it’s just been by positional opportunity, like hey, we see an opportunity. What have been some of those examples of that?
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so for the beginning of this we we just started talking about the fact that a lot of ah churches in general that I’ve even pastored are not seen as the hub of activity for their communities, like they were in American history and even in the history of the church where where people can come and dream big dreams, reach ambitious goals, get loved through hard and sticky situations. But mostly this: solve community problems, be an incubator for new growth, help build the community around some excellence based on, you know, Jesus’s teachings. So in short I would say that the church is always at its best when we’re loving on the community in very specific, tangible ways. And so I’ll tell you about a few of those.
Patrick Quinn — So so for instance for us all of our staffing, um, we we expect our staff to actually be involved in our community and not just at our church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — And that works out in some very tangible ways. Like for me, I am the mental coach chaplain for the local football team. I I am constantly in meetings with the town council, mayor, school board. I I am very much engaged in the community as a whole. And we are one of the places that when there’s a problem in the community, they call us to help be a part of the solution.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — And and I mean in a very not like come paint a fence or we have like a little local mission project.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — I mean like we have issues in our community, how do we solve them? But that’s because we have positioned ourself early on that we really care about the direction of the community. Another thing that happens with our staffing is like, for instance, we have one of our staff members is a bus driver. And um, you know he drives the bus every morning and every afternoon, and he’s our youth minister and our director of operations, and he’s a bus drive full time bus driver.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — And that is part of the mission of the church is that every single one of us find a, if you will, a bi-vocational role.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — And so so our staff is geared out into the community. Our budgeting, so a lot of times in church world, our budgets are—I mean if we’re honest with ourselves and we really reflect, and I and I’ve had 21 years to do this now,—a lot of our church budgets are focused on church programming.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — And I mean to to a large extent that’s okay. But what we’ve endeavored to do is to flip the model a little bit and look at our budgeting as how can we take the dollars that God has given us and truly put them into community efforts, and and initiatives, and ways that we can help build the community. And then let the church function off of, you know, a smaller portion, if you will. nd so we look at that from a budgeting standpoint.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Patrick Quinn — Um, so so in in staffing, and budgeting, and then also our programs.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — So our programs are not… We have very few. And I mean very few internal programs.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — Like it’s it’s it’s almost a rarity for Century to have ah a program that would be centered primarily on church folks. So much so that sometimes, Rich, one of the challenges is actually getting church people to to our church folks to come to the event because they almost feel like the event is actually for the whole community, and maybe they’re they’re not as an… I mean we’ve had some challenges on trying to figure that out because we’re like, oh this isn’t the church potluck. It’s the community, you know, huge festival.
Rich Birch — Right.
And so whether it’s an easter egg hunt, a trunk-or-treat, or we’re hosting fundraisers on our property.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — You know, here’s one ah one story that I would say was ah was a catalyst for putting our community first.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Quinn — We’re meeting in the elementary school early on and this seven year old little girl, her name was Zana, and I still see her face and I still think about her family. And um, she she passed away in a in just, you know, a shocking way through the flu.
Rich Birch — Oh.
Patrick Quinn — And the school called me and said, hey can you come help us with this family. And I’m like, sure no problem. I’ll be glad.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Patrick Quinn — But there was a there was a wrinkle to this. The the little girl’s family was Muslim.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — An active Muslim family. And so I come up there to meet and I had no idea what I was exactly getting into.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — And through the course of the next hour this mother who has lost her 7-year-old little girl looks at me, a Christian pastor in deep south Alabama…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — …and says, ah, will you do my little girl’s funeral?
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow, that’s so cool.
Patrick Quinn — And I’m like what? Um and then and then I said yes. I said yes, we’ll absolutely do it. Well here’s the problem, Rich. We didn’t have a building…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — …to do a funeral in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — So we had to unroll our box portable church…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — …into the school, do this whole funeral. Well I leave there and I’m thinking to myself, I have not consulted my leadership team.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — I have not asked my staff. We are about to have to unroll all of this portable equipment on a day that we normally wouldn’t have to do it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — People are gonna have to take off of work.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — I mean there’s all of these things that are going to have to happen. And by the way I’m gonna tell them it’s not a church member.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — It’s not even an unchurched person.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — This is a Muslim family in deep south Alabama.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Quinn — And we gave ah and I say that the way that I’m saying it because this was a this was a moment early on in our church to say, are we gonna put our community first…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Quinn — …and love people right where they are?
I love that.
Patrick Quinn — And our community was shocked. I had so many people coming up to me and saying, I’m pretty sure our church wouldn’t have done that.
Rich Birch — Right. Well, that’s what I was thinking as you as you were saying that. I think there’s a lot of leaders who who would have made even the reasonable, you know, like I don’t know, I’m not sure. Ah you know, but I love that your knee-jerk reaction was like, hey we want to serve. And then my assumption is that that then has opened up other opportunities to partner in town. And you know that must have kind of ended up, you know, creating those kind of discussions where then as a church you’re trying to come up with how do we decide, how do we figure out who to partner with? How do we figure out who to align with?
Rich Birch — I know a lot of churches have pretty, you know, really clear boundaries on that kind of thing, which does which we think of as boundaries, but really sometimes just create um you know obstacles to folks in our community. Talk us through what does that look like for when you’re trying to, you know, forge partnerships with with organizations, or the you know government all that kind of stuff. How how how are you doing that with your town?
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so two things that guided us in our development of this church in in our town was really two statements early on. One of them was I wanted to create a place where people not looking for Jesus come to realize that Jesus has always been looking for them.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Patrick Quinn — And if and if I could do that then I have the opportunity to reach new people. Because when you plant a church, obviously you’re you’re not wanting to just steal everybody else’s sheep, you want to reach new people with the gospel. The other thing was ultimately, if we’re going to put our community first, what would it look like when Jesus says lose your life for my sake and you will find it? What would it look like—I would tell our leaders this early on—what would it look like for us to lose the church in order to maybe find the true essence of the church?
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Patrick Quinn — Like where are the churches supposed to serve?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — Where the church is supposed to grow and go? And so like when we did that little girl’s funeral, you’re right, Rich. I mean what happened next was the whole like several people in the community were like, whoa. Why? How?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Quinn — And so all these questions and unchurched people started looking at us differently. And I’ve baptized probably half our church members now, and I mean unchurched people coming to this church and being a part of what we’re doing. And I think it’s because, you know, you always grow up you you grow up in churches and people say oh you, you know, people should be curious about your faith. They should, you should be contagious.
Patrick Quinn — But I mean really and truly a lot of times I look around—I’m not being, I don’t want to be judgmental about this, but I want to challenge everybody—like are people today really curious? Like are they?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — Um and I think when you do some stuff like what we’ve done. And some of it has just been put on our doorstep. I mean that that situation got put on our doorstep, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Quinn — But it was an opportunity to say, all right, I think Jesus would do this.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Patrick Quinn — I think Jesus would walk with this family.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — And it made a whole bunch of other people curious. And so yeah, we ended up with visitors. We ended up with people having theological conversations with me. People that had that walked had walked away from the church for 20 years or more going, wait – why did you just do that? What’s going on? And it messed with people theologically. It messed with their constructs of what a church looks like and should behave like. And so before you knew it I’m in conversations that I would have never had…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — …had I just played the normal role of a pastor in a small town.
Rich Birch — Well, I love it. I think this is such a great, powerful example to me. It feels very Jesus. It feels like that feels, smells very much like when I you know the kind of thing that Jesus would do. He had the reputation of being, you know, he was surrounded by people that the religious people in town were like I’m not sure I want those people hanging around with me. And you know doing a a funeral for a Muslim family, um, you know you were leaning in and trying to care for people. Your heart obviously open to them and were like man, what a terrible, tragic, like we can get on the same page here. We know that it’s a tragedy that your kid. It’s no parent should ever you know bury their child. That’s just unnatural. That’s not how life is supposed to go. And the fact that you stepped in there. But to me I look at that and I’m like, man, that feels like Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman, right? People, you know, same kind of like oh are we really supposed to talk with them, are we, you know, are you when you’re doing a funeral, what does that mean? Are you questioning, you know? Are you saying you know? Are you agreeing with everything? Like no, no, we’re we’re trying to love a family and who’s going through a tragic moment which does very much feel like ah, that feels like Jesus. Has that spilled out you know that are there other examples of that where where when you think, oh this may be a bad idea, but it feels like Jesus is leading us in that direction?
Patrick Quinn — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, you know there’ve been other of those that have have kind of come across your path over the years?
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so then I would say another primary example is, so this church with no facilities on a raw piece of property hosts today the largest fundraiser in our community for our schools.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.
Patrick Quinn — We will and we do it in the next couple of weeks. It is called the Crawfish Boil. It’s by the Patriot Fund. Our mascot for the local schools – the patriots.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — And so the Patriot Fund puts on this ah, crawfish boil. And they outgrew their space next down the road from us in a local neighborhood. And when they outgrew it, they were looking for a place, they couldn’t find one, couldn’t find one, and it looked like it was actually gonna die off. And these are seriously needed funds for our for our schools.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — Um, and and so we we said we would host it. But here’s the problem. Um, once again I’m in deep south Alabama, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yes.
And and they they allow you, for years, when it was in this local neighborhood, they allow you to bring your own alcohol to the event.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yes.
Patrick Quinn — And so, you know you’re allowed to bring your own, they don’t serve it. They don’t they don’t, you know, provide it but you can bring whatever you’d like to bring in your coolers or whatever. And so we had another decision to make.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — We had a piece of property. We have the facility to to be able to pull it off. Um do we let this thing go by the wayside and let $100,000 go out of our schools…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — …or do we try to figure out how to make it work and our leadership team looked at it again and said this is the type of thing that we feel like Jesus would figure out. Um and so we started figuring it out. And we didn’t we didn’t become teetotalers um, in in Alabama.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — Um, we we still allow it. But we also put some guardrails…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Patrick Quinn — …and turned it a little more family friendly.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — But we still got people asking, you know, obviously some folks that are a little more hard line. Why are you allowing this? What are you doing? Is this really what a church should be, you know, about?
Rich Birch — Yeah, engaged in or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Quinn — Yes, all of those things, and and yet today we’re 4 years into providing this event, and I cannot tell you the amount of conversations that I have on our own property with people who yeah, maybe even have had a few drinks. Or people who haven’t but are looking around going, wait a second. This is a church?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, this different kind of thing.
Patrick Quinn — And you all are having this huge festival.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — And it’s it’s pretty incredible. Ah so we are we are known as that kind of place that we’re we are going to support our community. We are going to love people where they are. And if we can even get them on our property and you know people not looking for Jesus that come to realize Jesus has been looking for them. And so we’ll we’ll wade into the messy and into the gray areas of life in order that we might earn the right to have a conversation.
Rich Birch — Now that’s this this kind of there’s so much here. Like we could talk that we could have 5 episodes here, friends. There’s like so many things I want to talk about. But this kind of intention um to like serve the community has ultimately led you to think about how you develop that property. Um, it’s led you to a place where you’ve made a bunch of decisions and kind of pulled together, you know, I think a different kind of approach to land development. Tell me about that part of the story. This is fascinating, friends, lean in.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so I I started out a long time ago in management at Sandestine Golf and Beach Resort…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Quinn — …in the panhandle of Florida. And so I learned a lot in hospitality management, resort management, learned a lot in in just how spaces and places matter to people – those kind of things. So you take that as the backdrop and then I end up in theology school and on as a pastor. And so as we started to look at the property and what we could do and helping to build the town and what the town needs. How could we put our community first? and a lot of times we design things in the church for the church first—what does the church need—and then we’ll let the community come use it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — What if we could create a different model where we actually invite our community onto our property and into an incubator, if you will—we called it a charrette—and we let the community design our own space.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Patrick Quinn — Like what are the needs of this community that the church could uniquely try to meet, and then the church will figure it out on the backend. So what that looks like today is we we ended up with a five day charrette that we, through a, through a lot of different relationships, we were able to host 23 architects, town planners, engineers from all over America – from 18 states and 2 countries.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — We have them even from Canada. And so so we had some from Canada, Rich, that was good.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Patrick Quinn — And and they came here for five days. And I mean they had resumes that would blow your mind.
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Patrick Quinn — And they were mostly from the Christian Caucus of the Congress for New Urbanism.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Quinn — So you could look them up.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Patrick Quinn — And and they came and they helped us map this out, invite our whole community, and what we have now today is is really a mixed use 23-acre space that is designed for profit for for-profit entities, nonprofit entities, incubator-type opportunities, mission and ministry, but it’s all been leaning out toward the community, and then the church would figure out ways that we’ll use it. So every space is intended to be dual use, but dual use in the way that the community wins first, and then the church. And I’ll explain just here’s a here’s a anecdotal piece of how that works.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — So a lot of churches will have, let’s just use coffee shops for example. A lot of churches will have coffee shops. But if we’re honest with ourselves, most of the coffee shops that I’ve ever been around in in all of our churches, they are um, well, they’re not sustainable, one.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — And they they just we’re not coffee people.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Patrick Quinn — Like we’re just not. We’re we’re church. We know how to run churches.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Quinn — We we don’t know how to run coffee shops.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — And so what I endeavor to do on this property and what our leadership has has said Okay, let’s do this is. There’s somebody in this community that can run an amazing coffee shop, and wants the opportunity to do it. And and and will and we’ll also give glory to God in doing it. So let’s let them come run a coffee shop…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — …and do it with excellence. And then we will support it. We’re not going to make our own coffee on top of you. Um, we’ll we’ll support it and let you be a part of our overall master plan. So if you could take that example and extrapolate it out over every other type of business opportunity…
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Patrick Quinn — …mission opportunity, all of that. So what will ultimately happen on these twenty-three acres will be we’ll have dozens of partners…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — …with dual use spaces that the church will figure out how to utilize as well as as the community.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s literally turning upside down, I feel like there’s a lot of churches that and and in one way this is like a noble thing. It’s like we’ve got 100,000 square feet and but it sits empty for most of the week – let’s figure out some use of that. You’re you’re literally looking at it the other way around which is, hey let’s design a space—if that’s what I understand—design is that’s designed spaces—it’s not just a space, a number of spaces—that will get used all week long. And then we’ll figure out how to shoehorn into it on the weekend or when we need it. Um, I just love that. And you’re in the process of building a first space. Talk talk about that space. What is that? What’s that going to be used for and then how how does that fit together with this whole vision?
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, so um, well one thing about the coffee shop by the way that I’ll parlay into the building is that um, you know, then the coffee shop can become a place on Wednesday nights where youth meet for a small group
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — Or where on Sunday mornings um, we use it for what you’d maybe even think of as a traditional Sunday school class. So that’s what I mean by the church figures out what to do with it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — We’re not going to dictate the space on the front end. We’ll figure out how to utilize it through some dual use lease agreements, bringing down the cost, share it across these different platforms, and then ultimately the church gets to figure out how to… And let’s be creative about it and that looks more interesting to people than you just build your children’s wing and then say, all right, y’all can come use some of the space if you want to during the week, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Quinn — So like it’s a lot better approach and more fresh for a community. And unchurched people to go, geez you really care. So get to the building. We are building a gym. And in our community, we don’t have anything like this. Like we’re building a we’re building for our first building is ah is a large gym, high school basketball-size basketball court that’ll also be able to turn two volleyball courts and or basketball or two smaller basketball courts…
Rich Birch — And hopefully some pickleball courts, You gotta be pickleball.
Patrick Quinn — Yeah, actually there are pickleball lines.
Rich Birch — You know there better be.
Patrick Quinn — And and we have positioned a couple of large soccer fields next to it.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Quinn — Because in our community there’s not a lot of recreational space yet.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Quinn — And so we have found that I mean, once again, and this was not the original plan. The original plan was to build more of a performing arts type center where we had a worship space.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — But as, and and and this is an important point, Rich. As we started to finish up the construction documents of that, inflation was a part of the decision um to move away from it. We moved away from our initial building, but we also realized that wasn’t the biggest need in our community right now. And so we literally are putting on the shelf…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — …completed construction documents that we will have paid, you know, a large sum of money for.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Patrick Quinn — And we’re putting it on the shelf in order to build another building that we actually feel will benefit our community even more.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Quinn — And so we’ve listened to families. We’ve listened to the community. We’ve we’ve we’ve heard how um, so many of them are looking for things that are more recreational…
Rich Birch — That’s so cool.
Patrick Quinn — …and so, okay, well if that’s what our community wants, then we’ll build that. And so now we’re gonna worship in a gym instead of worshiping in the space that we thought we were gonna worship in because our community throughout the week will be able to utilize it so much more.
Patrick Quinn — And people not looking for Jesus will come to realize Jesus has been looking for them. Because they’ll be here with their kids doing all those kinds of things. And by the way this isn’t upward. This isn’t like for us I’m not saying anything bad about any other program.
Rich Birch — Oh no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Patrick Quinn — But what I’m saying for us, we’ve decided that we want everything that we do out here to be done with absolute excellence. And so we want developmental athletic programs to come that will raise up kids to even become D1 athletes.
Rich Birch — Cool.
Patrick Quinn — Um, now that doesn’t have to be for every child and other children will find ways into these programs that they can still have fun and develop. But our partners – you get back to who’s partnering with us. We want partners that want excellence in everything that we do. So we would so we have already partnered with a soccer/football club.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — They call him a football club…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Patrick Quinn — …you know, because if you’re really serious, you’re a football club. You’re not a soccer.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, love it. Love it.
Patrick Quinn — So we have a football club. They’re called the Yellow Hammer Football Club.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Quinn — And they have started out here and they are a developmental soccer program. And so when we say that we’re doing things for the community, it’s not your typical um least common denominator type of activity.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Quinn — It is we want we want people being wowed by the… The church historically has been able to solve problems. I feel like when I read church history, the church when we are at our best, we are solving problems for our local community.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. Yep.
Patrick Quinn — And somewhere along the way, and I don’t know if it’s our fault or just, you know, natural vision leaks if we’re not careful, I don’t know, but somewhere along the way, we are not, if we’re honest if we look at ourselves in the mirror as leaders, we are not the first stop where people think to solve problems in our communities anymore.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Patrick Quinn — And I just wanted to do something where hopefully we can position ourselves every step of the way, whether it’s a soccer program, or a coffee shop, or something with the town council that they look at the church of Jesus Christ as a place. It doesn’t have to be the only place. But but we sure should be in the in the conversation if we’re doing our job well. Where we are helping to solve the community the community’s issues. And if we’re doing that then a whole new generation of unchurched type people, I feel like, start looking at the church differently.
Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so true. I love that. And that’s great historical context. It’s true. Like universities and hospitals and so many kind of public good institutions that now have either been taken over by the government, or are just you know there are independent nonprofits, that sort of thing, when you trace back their history they were you know Jesus-loving leaders who saw a need and said, hey we can help with this. We can pull this together. And I love that I love that you’re kind of standing in that stead in that history to try to see something great happen in your ah community.
Rich Birch — Well there’s so much more we could talk about, but I know there’s like executive pastor type people that are listening in that want to get into some of the details around how are you structuring those those relationships, or or how do you think you’ll structure those relationships? There’s a lot we could talk about there, but like take the football club you’re working with. So like did you are did you build the building, like you you raised the money to raise it, and then you’re leasing it back? How does all that work, just to give us just give a sense of that. And if people can reach out to you and talk to you if they got questions about that, I’m sure.
Patrick Quinn — Absolutely. I would love to talk to anybody who wants to look at the model more. But I would say the the way that we’re trying to structure it is we call the twenty three acres The Well.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — So century church meets at The Well.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Quinn — And what we endeavor to do is to make The Well a 501c3. We’ll put a board in place. Church governance will have a big voice in that, obviously.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — We create partnerships that fall up underneath The Well. And then what happens next is we have these dual use relationships that some people smarter than me, obviously, XPs that are listening know already, right, that the lead pastor is not the one that’s going to be doing all of this, right?
Rich Birch — It’s good vision. It’s good vision. It’s good… Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Quinn — Right. Yeah, like I’ve run out of my bandwidth pretty quickly on this. So so we we will create these partnerships through these lease agreements and contracts that will that will help our church, you know, we’ll have some guardrails.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Quinn — But you can already see the type of church we are where we’re willing to you know flex into some gray.
Rich Birch — Yeah flex on that stuff. Yep.
Patrick Quinn — But but we will create some guardrails, and then ultimately these contracts will will fall up underneath The Well. They will operate not not under Century Church’s umbrella. Century Church will be another entity that meets at The Well. And then and then as what we look for in partners are obviously some like-minded people. But we look for people who want to do things with excellence. And we want to bring opportunity to ah both the people that want to do something, but also to the town.
Patrick Quinn — So in other words, another way to look at this is that I heard someone once say that I loved is that we want to create a canvas where other people can come paint their dreams.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Patrick Quinn — So if we can figure out how to do that, and we’re still in the beginning stages of this, but the football club is our first you know example of that that I could that I could share with you, is they’ve come out and they have a contract with us. We will share the space, the fields, and things of that nature. But we give them priority to set their schedules, and we will work with our calendars. But ultimately we want them to be very successful. We want to root them on. We want them to be very successful in all that they do. Um, but communication is obviously going to be key.
Patrick Quinn — And look some people listening to this are going to say that’s way too messy, like I don’t want to get into all of that. But for me, the brain damage of figuring that out means that we get to sit at the table in our wider community. And the brain damage is worth it to me. Also what I hope will be um something that the Lord uses even through this podcast is that the brain damage of us figuring it out means that the next small/medium-sized town that has a pastor that may be listening to this that wants to figure it out, maybe we’ve paid some of the stupid tax. You know? Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it.
Patrick Quinn — Maybe we’ve gone through some of the brain damage and we can help be a catalyst. That ultimately gets us, when you said we want to launch a hundred churches, um I’m just fine with if Century ever is called into a hundred churches that that are that are absolutely part of Century I’m I’m fine to go to more small towns and be a part of that. I’m also fine in resourcing other pastors and helping other church leaders figure out how to launch something very similar with similar principles. And I feel like that’s every bit as much a part of what the Lord might be doing through our church family.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good. Well I just want to honor you, Patrick. I just love what you’re up to here. To me this just smells so much like Jesus. It just it smells like him. You know it’s it’s very, you know, Jeremiah 29 – seek the prosperity and peace of our community. It feels like Luke 10, hey find a man of peace and, you know, work with them. There’s like it’s it is messy. Like it’s not you know, but but I think it’s the kind of work that God’s calling us to. And I think you’re, you know, you’re kind of projecting for us a new way to think about these things. There’s a ton we could have talked about here, but I want to encourage people to connect with you. So where do we want to send them online if they want to connect with the church, kind of hear more of the story, where where do we want to send them?
Patrick Quinn — The the best place, I mean we have our church website, but the best place to go if you want to learn more about the model of what we’re doing is centuryproject.org – centuryproject.org. And I actually have put my cell phone number literally on that website, so they could text me if they want to, reach out to me via email. But I love to talk about this. And I love to be a part of brainstorming and dreaming with other pastors. I literally was doing it in Huntsville, Alabama just a few days ago, standing on a 40-acre piece of property…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Quinn — …and having an opportunity to have a conversation with another pastor about what they are looking to do to bring a similar type concept of what we’re doing here. There’s about probably 10 to 12 other pastors that have reached out to me in the last even couple of years that we’ve engaged in conversation all over America about what this looks like in their small/medium-sized town context and how to actually implement some of these core principles. So, I enjoy doing that work and look forward to hearing from some people.
Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so good. I would love, friends, obviously a part of what we’re talking about is like the development of land and pictures and you know obviously you can’t do that in audio format. But I would encourage you to drop by centuryproject.org ah, to even get a sense of when you talk about the development of the property and that there’s some images on there that give you a better sense of what we’re talking about here. Um, it’s pretty inspiring stuff. So I really appreciate you being on today, Patrick. Thank you so much for taking time to be with us, and you know and just Godspeed as you take steps here towards you know, just the next things that God has for you and your ministry. Thanks for being here today.
Patrick Quinn — Thank you so much much, Rich, for having me. I appreciate it. It’s been a great conversation.
Strategic Growth and Alignment: Lessons on Mergers, Multisite, and Ministry with Brian Owens
Jul 18, 2024
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to talk with Brian Owens, Executive Pastor of Operations at First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church in South Carolina.
In American culture it’s very normal to want your own voice and identity. Yet this can be challenging when you’re trying to align a church with multiple campuses to function as one unified whole. Tune in as Brian talks about campus alignment, recruiting talent, what to expect with church mergers, and more.
Alignment essentials. // One of the significant challenges of a multisite church is maintaining alignment. Committing to unity from the top down is essential to ensure all campuses are one, pursuing the same mission. Communicate that each campus is important and has a vital role in the mission, regardless of their size or location. At First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church, each site has the opportunity to interact with all of the teaching pastors and leadership staff.
What are the constants? // In order to create a unified weekend experience across all of their locations, Brian explains that they’ve established a set of core campus constants. These guidelines ensure that for everything, from worship and teaching to kids ministry, each campus knows what to expect, what approach will be taken, and how everything will flow. Core campus constants also offer confidence to congregants that they will have the same experience no matter what campus they attend.
Prepare ahead with staff. // When hiring staff members for any level, Brian and his team look for talent that is high capacity, high caliber leaders, and people who buy into the mission and vision. It’s critical for growing churches to be proactive when recruiting so that you aren’t left with a sudden empty spot that remains unfilled for an extended amount of time. Consider partnering with a seminary and implementing a residency program to develop future leaders. Give recent seminary graduates hands-on ministry experience that will grow their skills while helping you develop potential leaders for your church.
Take time before merging. // First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church has a passion to reach the upstate of South Carolina, and along with that, a heart to revitalize struggling churches. When considering a church merger or rebirth, take time to discuss everything with the senior leadership of the struggling church. Talk about what would be the benefits of the merger and what it would look like and mean for everyone. Let the people of the joining church have the time they need to decide if the merger is what would be best for their mission.
Consider the liabilities. // Churches want to have a nice facility no matter how many attend, but buildings do depreciate over time. When considering a merger, look at both assets and liabilities, and the impact of older structures on insurance and risk management. On average, Brian estimates that mergers will cost $750,000 to a million dollars, between updating an older building and installing the necessary technology for services. Finally, be prepared for the legal aspects of merging, including any voting and filing paperwork with the secretary of state.
You can learn more about First Baptist Simpsonville / Upstate Church at www.fbcsimpsonville.org.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We have got Executive Pastor of Operations at First Baptist Simpsonville Upstate Church – one of the fastest growing churches in the country with, if I’m counting correctly, six campuses which I which I think 7 coming up this fall, ah in South Carolina. They offer services in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. They also have a child enrichment center for infants and toddlers through fifth grade, and their Upstate Sports Ministry which provides sports and recreation for the whole family. This is a robust and growing ministry. Brian, welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here today.
Brian Owens — Thank you so much, Rich. Glad to be here.
Why don’t you kind of fill out the picture. Tell us there what did I miss? That’s obviously kind of the boilerplate stuff, but kind of give us a a broader picture; tell us a little bit about the church.
Brian Owens — Yeah, the church is an amazing place. My family and I, we moved here fifteen years ago. I’d been in Kentucky in Louisville for about 14 years at Citibank. And coming here, it was a great experience to be able to plug into a great community.
Brian Owens — Um, Upstate of South Carolina in general has been growing crazy, especially over the last 8 to 10 years. They’re anticipating, you know, within the next six years or so another 1.53 million people total living here in the upstate. And so our passion and our goal is to try to hit each of the 11 counties that make up the upstate…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Owens — …and figure out that we need to have a gospel presence there. Not that there isn’t already gospel presence there. But we just feel like that’s the kind of the vision that God has given us – the calling to is to reach the upstate.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. That’s that’s fantastic. Well obviously multisite is core to your strategy, and although we kicked off at the beginning um, you’ve got 6 locations now and I think launching another one soon. And you know, that that puts you in rare air. Like that we were saying this beforehand. You know we’re still seeing about 50% of multisite churches not getting beyond 3 locations. And the fact that you’ve you know six, seven locations, plus you’re doing gatherings – obviously something’s working there. What the one of the questions that jumps to mind right away is alignment. Why is alignment so difficult in so many churches – you know, multisite church is hard to kind of keep things rowing in the same direction. Why why is that?
Brian Owens — You know I think some of it is ah reflective of just the culture that we have. Everybody seems to need to have their own voice. Everybody wants to have their own identity. And so that happens quite a bit. So working against that to say, as a church, we’re going to be one. And we’re going to be one for the same mission. It doesn’t happen by accident, I can tell you that. It definitely takes a lot of energy and a lot of commitment. But it starts from the top down. I think that’s really key.
Brian Owens — Our leadership and especially our Lead Pastor, Wayne, has been very, very focused on this since at least 2018, 2019 when we started a couple of initiatives, one around “all in” and then “one”. Both of those drove the same general message that regardless of what campus that you are sitting at, wherever you’re having your weekend experience, wherever you’re doing your life, we’re doing it together. And on the top of that, you get the opportunity to interact with all of our teaching pastors and all of our leadership staff.
Brian Owens — So we are intentional about going to see each of the campuses. Um, and so each campus pastor isn’t just parked there for fifty-two weeks a year. They will go and spend other other weeks during there in the church year at other campuses. It’s very intentional – about once every six weeks we do a fruit basket turnover is what I call it. I don’t know if there’s another term for it or not, but that’s what we call it. Yeah.
Rich Birch — I like that – fruit basket turnover. That’s good – I like it.
Brian Owens — And that’s where even our lead pastor, he will go to our campus that’s running 600 on an Easter to, you know, two months later he’ll be at the one that’s running 175. So it’s not about the size of the congregation. It’s about each campus, wherever they’re at, are vital. They’re important. They’re plugged into the mission. And they deserve the opportunity to hear from everybody that’s on staff and make sure that we focus on doing that consistently.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Brian Owens — So that’s one of the key things that I think we do that’s unique from other things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. You know I’ve said in other contexts, you know if it doesn’t it takes a certain kind of leader to get 10 leaders in a room and say, Okay, everybody think a different thought. It takes a different kind of leader to get 10 leaders in the room and say Okay, this is what we’re going to focus on – let’s focus on these, you know, this in common. And um I love that you’re trying to figure out how do we do that. How do we kind of keep people pushing in the same direction. Can you kind of talk us through, when you say multisite, what what does that look like from like a programming, teaching, um, you know, kids ministry? How do that, you know, what do you hold in common among your various locations? Kind of give us – I realize that’s a giant question, so try to give us a thumbnail sketch of that.
Brian Owens — Yeah, we we used to have different we’ve tried different models over the fifteen years that I’ve been here. Some have been successful, most were not, but I think the one that we’ve kind of hit our honey spot here in the last six years or so has been driven around we established like ah Wayne, our lead pastor, established with the team a set of core campus constants, so that each campus this is exactly what you’re going to get regardless, this is how it’s going to flow. This is the approach that we’re going to take. That being like, for example, just music, it’s the same music on any campus. It’s a live band regardless, but it’s it’s gonna be the same track list. It’s gonna be the same music and [inaudible]. We have two different styles that are on all of our campuses – modern and then we also have a vintage which is a little bit more pullback. It doesn’t have all the lights and the haze and all the other It’s just really more kind of a forward sound experience. But we have both of those happening on all of our campuses and so regardless of where you go, you’re gonna get the same experience.
Brian Owens — And likewise it goes to the kids. It’s been very intentional. It took us about a year to hire our Director of Kids, Emily Toole. She came to us from up in Northern Indiana and she has been great because she and her team have come together and our target is, although we want to reach everybody, our target is young families in the upstate with kids at home who are unchurched. And so we want to create an environment where families will feel safe coming, bringing their children. And when the kid leaves they’re like, you know, that was a great experience. Mom, Dad, I want to come back and be a part of that. And a lot of that is driven around the kids. So not only consistency in the worship experience but also in the kids experience.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brian Owens — So that if you’re at one campus on one side of town, or you’re even in another campus thirty, forty miles away, you’re getting the same core teaching. You’re getting the same setup. You’re getting the same experience each one of those locations.
Rich Birch — That’s good. And are have have you defined those, when you say campus constants, are those um is that like a ah written document? Are they all, how are you kind of communicating those among the various locations?
Brian Owens — Yeah, we we work with each of our campus pastors and our leadership on the team. We have, for our structure-wise, we’ve we played around with this over the last couple years. We have now what’s called our executive team. And our executive team is made up of Wayne, our lead pastor, our director of strategy, Kathy, um Wes Walker, who is our executive over creative services, Pat Gillen, who’s our executive over family ministry, Steve ah, Genoble who’s our executive over mission, Stephen Williams who’s our executive over discipleship, making it myself. And we get into a room once a week and our our our philosophy and our approach is, as far as vision is concerned as far as where we’re going direction wise, we take that responsibility. That’s our that’s our tool to play and use for leadership.
Brian Owens — But then the execution of that goes to the campus pastors, the teaching pastors, and then the directors who are over all of the sites. And so what we’ve done, we created a document “Upstate Constants” and its core around unified foundation, ah, unified identity, a unified leadership and our unified function. So all those things kind of pour into the, if you will, it’s the gasoline in the tank that drives everything that we do and all of the decisions that we make.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Now is there, this all sounds great. You know it sounds like man, this is great alignment. I’m sure there’s never any problems. There’s never any disagreement. It’s always all day long at Upstate. But if you were going to imagine, where there could be potentially conflict on defining (obviously I’m saying all that tongue in cheek…)
Brian Owens — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know around constants, are there common areas where you do see rub or or you maybe in the past have seen like hey it took us a while to kind of get alignment, you know, in this particular area on our constants?
Brian Owens — Yep. I think one of the big areas and this is just because of the experience that we had, we grew so fast…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Owens — …we were having ah many of our staff and to ah to a large degree most of our our senior leaders serve in dual roles.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Owens — They’re doing not only like a teaching pastor but they also could be serving over connections, or they could be serving over recreation. And so we had to share a lot of staff and leaders in different seats during the week, and even on the weekend experience. And so um, there was a lot of um, not that we were siloed or we were in our lanes. It wasn’t any of that because we very we have very much a collaborative environment of how we work and our model is set up on that. But when you are trying to go as fast as the growth was happening and we just couldn’t keep up.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Owens — We were just we were pulling that rubber band as, a way Wayne kind of refers to it, and it just just stretching, stretching, stretching. And it’s only so far you can stretch it before it snaps.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Owens — And I think when we were just having to utilize so many staff in so many positions for example, creative arts, worship arts, bringing somebody in who not only handled the weekend experience leading on the the praise band, but then likewise immediately take that hat off and run upstairs and do students and kind of be a director for student areas we’re growing.
Brian Owens — So kind of like your split personalities was some of the the feeling that you could get when we were when we were having folks doing that into a degree. We still have folks that are doing it. But these guys and gals that are on the team, they’re amazing. They’re doing a great job, but we’ve we’ve kind of worked through that I think. But we’re continuing to grow.
Brian Owens — One of the things we’re doing different now I have to say, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Owens — …is we’re trying to be proactive in our hiring. We’re trying to identify and recruit talent now, even though we might not have an official place on the bus for them to sit at the moment.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Owens — We know we’re gonna need them.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Brian Owens — And so we’re trying to go ahead and go after folks and anticipate what our needs are instead just being reactive and trying to say oh, there’s a hole. There’s a need. Let’s fill it and get whoever comes along.
Rich Birch — Oh I love that because yeah, by the time you see the hole and feel the pain, it’s too late.
Brian Owens — Exactly.
Rich Birch — And you know, it’s like you know we’ll start it’ll take a year before we can find the right person. So what does that look like? How are you kind of proactively, you know, looking for people out there, kind of pursuing, and then how does the multisite thing fit into that, you know, trying to ensure that they align with your approach to the way you’re doing church?
Brian Owens — Yep, regardless of the position that we’re bringing in, whether it’s kind of a a director level or above or even just from a support position, it doesn’t matter. We look for talent that is high capacity, high caliber leaders, folks who buy into the vision and the mission.
Brian Owens — One of the things that our executive pastor of family ministries, Pat Gillen, has done in the last three years is he’s helped us establish a residency program.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brian Owens — And by that is if you are in seminary, you just graduated with your undergraduate when you’re going to work on your graduate degree, your master’s degree. We bring you on for 2 years it’s a split half and half. We provide the covering we pay your tuition for your master’s degree and your study, but you raise support to live off of. We provide you housing…
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Brian Owens — …we provide you opportunities to serve and those kind of things but that process has allowed us to identify young talent who gets into the ditches with us while they’re growing, whether it’s in students, whether it’s in worship arts, whether it’s in recreation. They get to feel what’s happening, be a part of what’s happening, they buy in to the vision, they buy in…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Brian Owens — …to what we’re doing. And then we’re able to continue to use them once they’re done with that 2-year process. We’ve got openings that we’re going to be filling. As a matter of fact, we’ve got two individuals that are going to be finishing up. We’ve got more than that that are finishing our residence program right now, but two have expressed interest in going into full time ministry.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Brian Owens — And so we are looking at spots for them on the team already, just moving them over a little bit. And since they’ve already been here, they know they know what we’re all about, who we are, and and where we’re going. And so that’s building a lot, I think, of a longer runway for retaining top talent as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. That’s like, you know, um, we’ve had Dave Miller from an organization called Leadership Pathway on which is ah they they help churches like yours build a residency program. And you know the the thing that he says all the time is it is like the, well he doesn’t say it like this, but I always think it’s like the JV team. Or the you know it’s like the up and coming. It’s the, you know, the you know, the the pool that you can draw from, and people that there are and it’s a way for you to serve even if they don’t end up at your church. Man, what a what a huge experience for them to be able to be at a growing a growing, thriving church that’ll take that with them wherever they go. And that’s a great way to kind of expand the the influence of the church.
Rich Birch — Well again, this is I’m sure never comes up comes up at at your church, but there can sometimes be tension in multisite churches between um, the kind of campus leadership and then the central leadership, the people that are responsible for stuff across all locations. How do you work that out at you know, obviously we talked about constants. That’s a part of it. But was there anything else around that that that you found that has been particularly helpful to to kind of drive alignment and keep everybody rowing in the same direction?
Brian Owens — Yeah, I think right out of the gate one of the things that we did, because we had been doing multisite since the mid two thousands.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brian Owens — We had multi-campuses previously but each of those campuses were very unique. So we had one campus that was kind of built around a horse cowboy horse cowboy culture.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brian Owens — So it was our cowboy church. We also had one that was kind of like 20 young pros. It was downtown Greenville kind of had a yuppy, bougie feel to it, if you will.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Owens — Then we had one that was kind of just here on the west side of Simpsonville. It was our west end campus. So we just had different approaches, and each one of those um had a live teacher. Some of them at at that time our our lead pastor was Randy Harling, he would go and actually teach on Sunday evenings or wherever it was at. But it just had very unique styles. Kind of a Henry Blackaby model, I guess. If God is moving, we just gonna are gonna join him there and…
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s just get behind it and do it. Yep.
Brian Owens — …just do it, which is great. But each one of them were going in the same direction but we were completely misaligned. So you could go to any of the campuses and you didn’t really feel that connection.
Brian Owens — So what we have really worked towards in the last couple of years as as a staff is we brought in Tony Morgan and The Unstuck Group back in 2016, 2017 and they did an assessment with us. And one of the key things that we walked away from in that is the decision making rights. And so for that it was a major turning point for us to decide, Okay, who gets the opportunity to so have the influence in the decision, but where on this decision making rights chart are those executed against.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brian Owens — And so it really clarified for the teaching pastor on the campus, Hey your your day of game on something’s going on, you need to make a ah call, you don’t have the ability to get on the horn and find somebody at the central campus to say, hey this is what’s happening. Make the call, do the decision. We’ll go with whatever happens on that Sunday morning. If the computers break down or whatever, don’t worry about it. We’ll just we’ll we’ll work through it and then we’ll get up on the other side and try to figure it out. So that kind of helped alleviated each of the campus pastors having to feel like they were having that decision rights always hanging over them.
Brian Owens — Plus when we instituted each of the directors, for example Emily – I talked about her earlier. She handles all the kids’ stuff for any campus. So she’s the one that’s on each campus ensuring the constant um rollout of all of it and ensuring that you’re getting the same experience. And so for a lot of campus pastors that alleviated them from even have to worry about, well are we hitting our targets for folks checking in in the quicken amount of time? Are we getting the security badges back? You know all the other things that you would normally think of in the day-to-day, campus pastors didn’t have to worry about that because that decision-making chart, decision-making right process clarified that for all of us going forward. And we still tweak it and adjust it as we go, but by and large that really was a huge defining moment for us.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. Yeah, like just taking the time to define that and to get real clear on exactly, you know, who’s responsible for what what is the sandbox that we’re asking you to play in, man, can be can alleviate so much pain within a multisite church for sure.
Rich Birch — So let’s talk a little bit about um you know mergers or rebirths, that sort of thing. We see this pretty common. I would imagine in a church or size that you’ve had at least one or two of those. Talk to us about that kind of experience. Obviously mergers is a really broad category for lots of different kinds of relationships as you you know have worked with other ministries, but talk to us what that’s look like for your church.
Brian Owens — Yeah, for us it’s been a very unique opportunity. We have been able to partner our denomination is this Southern Baptist denomination and we have what had historically been called Directors of Missions who were kind of like associational missionaries that were in each of the associations and had a network with all the churches, like the 68 churches in the Greenville baptist association, and they were all plugged in to the 2,100 other churches in the South Carolina convention. Our partnership that we’ve had for the last several years with Al, our director, he knows what churches are struggling. He knows which ones are prime and ready. He takes them through, he’s got his own program that he uses for revitalization to help them try to replant, repurpose, revision where they’re at.
Brian Owens — But in in that process sometimes they come to a place where they’re like, you know, we’ve got 30,000 square feet of facilities. You know, we’ve got $300,000 in the bank. We’ve had four pastors in 7 years, but you know we we just keep going back and we’re still doing the same thing and we’re not getting the results. And we know that God’s called us to have a vibrant active part in the gospel and in the kingdom work. And so sometimes Al will connect us to have those conversations. Sometimes we just naturally have those connections with other people. And when that happens we have been able to come alongside and it’s incredible. The the process that we go.
Brian Owens — It’s not it’s it’s not a very light or flippant approach; it’s a very intentional approach. We meet with senior leadership of of the the church that we’re talking with. We lay it out on the line and say you know if you move forward with this, this is what this is going to look like. And each of the times that we’ve done it, they have gotten to a place where they’re like, you know, we see that the mission is so much bigger than us. You’ve got resources…
Rich Birch — Praise God.
Brian Owens — …not that we are the the end all be all, but you know they’re just like you know this this this is what this church was founded on 80 years ago.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Owens — Or this is what this church has been about for the last 30 years.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Owens — We want to see a gospel presence. We want to see the kingdom keep advancing. And so they make that decision and and we merge. And we do it legally just like any church. They vote, we vote, we have to file the paperwork with the secretary of state…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Owens —…do all the things behind the scenes that have to get done to make it legal and official. But it’s been an incredible process for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s cool. First I just want to call out Al and say man, great job. You know being, ah there might be people that are listening in today that they they you could play that kind of matchmaker, encourager kind of role. You might be engaged in a conversation with a church that’s either, you know, that that could maybe take a step towards joining another church. But but frankly, your encouragement could really help that process that, you know, you could play a role as a third party in. That that could be just so effective. So you know good on Al for being, you know, open to having that kind of voice. That’s that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — What about some of the nuts and bolts part of that, you know, some of that, you know, we don’t get into those. My experience has been that the malt I’ve been through multiple of those as well and I found them just amazing kind of from a kingdom point of view. That’s so cool to see. And lots of good stories that you know come out. And um, but let’s talk about maybe some of the practical side around facilities and properties and that sort of stuff, from your seat in operations. Um has that been smooth sailing, super easy, anything any potholes we should be looking out for there? Advice you’d give to us as we engage in those conversations?
Brian Owens — Yeah, man, absolutely. I’ve slept like a baby through all of them. I’ve never had a restless night ever once.
Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly.
Brian Owens — Ah, no man, it it really has not been all that bad of process because typically most churches want to to have a great facility. They want to have a safe facility. So even if they don’t have a hundred people showing up there each week, they still try to take care of the best they can of the facility. But like any fixed asset, it will depreciate over time.
Brian Owens — And so when we go into these situations after now doing this about 4 or 5 times, we finally figured out there’s some key things you want to be looking at on the front end. And it’s not just ledger. It’s not just how much money is in in the the savings account, or how much money they may owe still on a bank note, but it’s the totality of the property and what is there. And um with that you also um, you you acquire new new new footprints, but you also acquire new liabilities.
Rich Birch — Oh yes.
Brian Owens — And so one of the things that we picked up in this last year is, um and and it’s to be understood, and there’s a lot of changes that’s happened with the insurance agency, but we merged with a couple of churches that have older structures, older buildings with more things that need to be mitigated. And our insurance company didn’t like it. Not that we filed anything against it. But just that we’re taking on a greater degree of risk.
Rich Birch — Just increased risk. Yeah, yeah.
Brian Owens — Exactly. And so we had it there some policies that got dropped. So we’ve had to go back out and and shop the market for that. But that’s one of the the things that we view as essential for the kingdom is is that, not that we have deep pockets, because we don’t. We have very limited um amount of money that we’re able to operate with. But if we feel that the mission that God is called that campus to have, whether it was with us, or eighty years ago when it was a completely different campus. Um, if there needs to be a gospel presence there and we feel God is moving there, we’re gonna we’re gonna step up to the plate and do it.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brian Owens — And each one of those typically require um on average three quarters of a million dollars, $750,000 to a million bucks that we have to invest over two or three years in fixing that footprint, whether that’s foundational issues, that’s plumbing, windows. We need to mitigate issues with lead paint or asbestos…
Rich Birch — Asbestos. Yeah.
Brian Owens — …or any of those other things, you just kind of get that on the front end knowing full well that yeah, you’re going to get a you’re going to get a building. You’re going to sink half a million dollars in there for AVL production when you have a worship, but you’re also going to need to sink in more just to take care of the bones of the building.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good kind of even round number to have in in mind and to be able to… how have you typically funded that? Have you funded that through like additional special offerings or have you tried to, you know, have you bankrolled that some of that into debt or what’s that look like?
Brian Owens — What we do is we have done a little bit of all. We’ve bankrolled at some of them by going back to the bank, getting a little loan. Likewise we’ve used to raise it within initiatives, two-year initiatives like our “One” or our “All-in” which kind of fall [inaudible] Generis approach for 2-year vision mission initiative. Or ah likewise we’ve also had some scenarios where folks have um, gifted the church through their estate. And that’s for example, our upstate church Haywood campus um had a gentleman who passed away this last year, Mr. Leland, um basically left us almost $1,000,000 out of his estate.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Brian Owens — That was able to be poured right back into the same campus that he had been worshiping at when it used to be Laurel Baptist for 90 years. We took that and was able to to do some upgrades and things within the facility and now it is it’s a church that when we merged with them were running around 30 or 40 um, this past Easter Sunday they had almost 500 people there.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Brian Owens — So [inaudible] do incredible do things like that. God’s faithfulness to his people is amazing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s so encouraging. Yeah, as you look to the future, are you when you’re looking I’m assuming you’re thinking about new campuses, is the merger rebirth this kind of thing is that on the kind of priority scale, is that high priority or kind of low priority? Just wait and respond? Or are you is there anything you’re doing to kind of, you know, actively, you know, kind of inculcate those conversations?
Brian Owens — Yeah, we are doing a little bit of both of it. It’s some of it is a wait and see, hurry up and wait…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Owens — …because we know that, you know, things could come together with of the churches reaching out to us proactively. But at the same time, for example, our Fountain Inn campus that we’re launching this fall and just six miles down the road from where we are, we’re going into a community center and we’re going to launch out of there. We have no idea what the timeframe’s going to be, but we just bought eleven acres for our Five Forks campus which has been worshipping where they are for 7 years and they’ve been waiting. Um I hope we don’t have to wait seven years for our Fountain End campus to find a permanent location but we’ve already started meeting with real estate agents and folks within the church who have connections with land in that area to say, you know what, if if you think you can connect us with a place that’s got 8, 10, 11, 12 acres of land, we’d love to be able to think about building, which could be anywhere from 7, 8, 9, 10 billion dollars to build on some dirt. Or merging, and if you merge with a church, you know you go in you update the facilities, you spend about a million, a million and a half in a couple of years to update. So there’s cost scales you’ve got to look at on both sides. And so we we’re just keeping our ear to the ground and just kind of seeing which way the wind blows.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. That’s good. Well that’s fantastic. Well this has been a great conversation today, Brian. I’m I’m just so thankful that you’ve taken some time out. I know you got a lot going on. I’m honored that you took some time to be with us. Any kind of last words as we wrap up on anything we’ve talked about today, keeping your campuses aligned, or you know, the campus merger type conversations? Anything else you’d love to kind of, yeah, you’d like to encourage us today as we as we leave the conversation?
Brian Owens — Yeah I think one thing I would remind everybody who’s listening is is that have fun. You know, ministry is hard, but it is also there’s nothing in the bible that says you can’t have fun while you do it. And so I would encourage…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brian Owens — …everyone no matter where they’re at, where God’s planted them, find the joy, find the fun that’s there and have a good time. I believe that there’s joy and laughter in serving the kingdom. I believe that there’s something attractional to that. And mean people are just stink so there’s just no need to be mean, you need to be nice and have fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh I love that. That’s a great word to end on. You know I’ve ah in other contexts I’ve reflected on the fact, you know, we have the good news, and you know if we have good news and it really is good, that should be generating joy within us and we should be known as a community that’s having fun. You know we we shouldn’t be known as like oh that’s place is a drudgery to be a part of for sure. That’s a good encouragement, Brian. Appreciate that. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church? Where’s the best place for us to send them?
Brian Owens — Yep, they can go to our website: fbcsimpsonville.org, or they can go on our social media page and like us on Instagram or on Facebook.
Rich Birch — Thank you so much. I’m honored that you were here today. Thank you, sir.
Brian Owens — It’s great to be here, Rich. God bless you and thank you for giving me the chance to visit with you.
Mastering Communicating Change in Your Ministry with Dawn Nicole Baldwin
Jul 11, 2024
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Dawn Nicole Baldwin from Mavericks, an organization which helps churches be more effective in their communications.
Is there a major change your church is thinking about, but you’re not sure how to communicate it? How do you ensure that your messages are aligned and you are communicating the right things to the right people at the right time? Tune in as Dawn talks about the keys for communicating change in your ministry.
Three reasons why change falls apart. // How change is communicated can make or break your efforts. Dawn explains that from a communications perspective, there are three reasons why rolling out change tends to fall apart for leaders: People either don’t agree with the change that’s coming, they don’t understand the change that’s coming, or they don’t know what to do. Tackling these three areas will make it much easier for church leaders to accomplish their goals.
Two sides to the change. // There will be people who aren’t on board with every decision you make and that’s okay. Help the people who have the most to lose from the change feel heard, but don’t water down plans to satisfy them. Help them understand how the change fits with the church’s vision and how it benefits the church as a whole. Giving them permission to leave if they’re just not on board is a good thing. On the flip side are supporters who are really bought into your vision and have the most to gain from the change. Equip them with tools and messaging so they can help to be advocates and motivate the masses.
Communicate from the inside out. // Communicating change to everyone all at once is overwhelming. Look at communicating change as if it were a bullseye and work from the inside out. The inner-innner circle includes just a handful of trusted elders or advisors that you feel comfortable sharing something that is only “half-baked”. They will help you get to where you can have a pretty good feel for where you want to go before you roll out the idea to other groups. Then, your inner circle might be your directors, senior staff, key lay leaders, and high level donors. It’s important to communicate to these people before laying it out to the whole church, giving them the chance to ask questions and give support.
The pain of staying the same. // Another common mistake senior leaders make is focusing on what the change is but not why its necessary and why the church should care. Making the pain of staying the same feel greater than the pain of changing is a critical part of the communication process. Many times leaders will be tempted to skip this part and move on to the exciting, feel-good part of where they’re going. Help your people first understand why things can’t stay the way they are.
Get everyone involved. // Once they have information about the change, helping everyone participate in a meaningful way plays a huge role in creating momentum. Leaders need to motivate their people and make sure they have a vested interest in the change. However, don’t overwhelm them with options during the process. Instead, provide them with clear, simple next steps.
Coaching with Mavericks. // Mavericks comes alongside churches to help them reach more people more effectively. They partner with senior leadership, offering one-on-one coaching around how to get the rest of the team on board and how to be more effective in communications. They also provide community coaching groups to help participants learn from each other while being exposed to best practices from the world of communications. Dawn describes it as the best parts of conferences, one-on-one coaching, and community learning all rolled together in an online environment.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, Rich here from the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation – we’ve got Dawn Nicole ah Baldwin. She is from an organization called Mavericks. They are about helping ministries reach more people more effectively. They are for a number of resources including downloadable blue downloadable blueprints…(that’s I don’t know why that’s sticking in my tongue today) a focus on specific ah topics like community coaching leagues, workshops, coaching calls, and so much more. Dawn is the founder and the lead strategist. You might know Dawn in this organization, they used to have the name Aspire One. She’s definitely a friend and I just I love talking with Dawn because she’s been in this game for a few years and not reveal, you know people’s ages, but has been around the block a few times. So so glad to reconnect Dawn. Thanks for being here today.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Thanks so much for having me, Rich. I really appreciate it.
Rich Birch — It’s great to see you. What fill out the picture kind of tell tell us a little bit more about Mavericks, tell us about kind of your area of expertise.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Thanks, Rich. Well we, actually you’re right, we’ve been under Aspire One for a very, very long time. And with that we’ve done a lot of one-to-one custom help with churches, um specifically churches that are wanting to go the next level.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Um, but with that we also want we realized there’s an opportunity to help more people more efficiently. And so we’ve adopted ah a one-to-many approach by packaging a lot of these resources and making them more accessible for churches. And so that was what Mavericks is all about, why we had changed our name. We’re offering some new resources. So in addition to one-on-one help we’re packaging a lot of these things so they’re either downloadable, or the community coaching you’re talking about, or one-day workshops, just so it’s more efficient both in time and in cost.
Rich Birch — I love it. Well this idea of reaching ah more people more effectively, that definitely gets my attention. So kind of fill out the picture. What are the kinds of either problems that people are coming to you for, or you know, how you’ve helped, what kind of solutions have you been offering to people.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — You know, oftentimes the churches that we work with they they feel like they’re the best kept secret. You know they’ve been in their community for quite some time they’re doing everything that they can, but it’s like ah how can we get the word out. There’s so much that’s competing for someone’s attention. And not even just against other churches just anything that they can do with their time. And so it’s like we we need to get on the radar in a more intentional way. And so that’s what we help them to do, whether it’s reaching new audiences, or raising their awareness, or really rethinking how they’re communicating to people. It’s all part of helping them grow and to take that next step.
Rich Birch — No, that’s cool. That’s cool. Well I want to take advantage of the fact that you’re an expert in this area particularly. If when I think of you I think, man, Dawn’s just so good at the communication piece and how do we ah you know, ensure our messages are aligned, and ensure we’re communicating the right things to the right people at the right time. But you know, when we think specifically about change, you know, I think so many leaders are listening in and they’re thinking, Yeah there’s a we either need to launch a new campus, or we’re going to be you know, maybe changing our name. Or you know maybe we’re maybe maybe there’s like ah a change in theological position or you know something like that where there’s like a major change that we’re thinking about. And sometimes we can get stuck just because of the communication. Like we’re convinced that change is the right thing but we’re just not sure how to communicate it. We’re not sure where to where to begin. And I’d love to kind of unpack that today with you. When you think about that, unpack that problem. Why is it that we get stuck there? Why is it that even just thinking about, you know, communicating change just seems to raise our temperatures and get us nervous?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Well, you know it is so true. Most of the churches that are probably listening to your show or that we work with it’s like if they’re not in the middle of some sort of change, there’s one probably right around the corner.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And how it’s communicated really can make or break their efforts. I can’t tell you how many senior leaders have come to us frustrated because their plans had failed just simply based on how they had communicated it. And as doers, you know when we’re thinking about executive pastors, we’re in the business of getting stuff done, right? And so we’re not always thinking so much about all of the steps needed to make sure folks are on board from ah from a um, big picture perspective. And so there’s really kind of three reasons that we found from a communications perspective with why this tends to you know, fall apart for a lot of leaders.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And it’s usually that people either don’t agree with the change that’s coming.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — They don’t understand the change that’s coming. Or they don’t know what to do.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And so a lot of leaders, they will spend time talking about what the change is, but not thinking about why people should care about the change, why it matters to them, um, how to get them on board. If we try to get everyone on board at the same time, it tends to be a very difficult process because we can’t make everyone happy, you know, they’re not going to all come on board equally. And so there’s some strategies to make that easier. Or we’ll give them a million different ways to get involved and then they get overwhelmed. And so you know that’s that paralyzed, you know, decision making sort of a thing. It’s like there’s so much going on. We have no idea how to get involved. So they tend to not want to do anything at all.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — So don’t agree, don’t understand, don’t know what to do. And tackling those three things can really make it easier for leaders to accomplish their goals.
Rich Birch — Let’s talk about the understand and agree. You know, I I sometimes think people don’t get… I think that’s a really good framework, those three are really good framework framework, but particularly this kind of understand and agree idea, that you know, we sometimes we make the problems more complex than they are. A part of our job is to try to streamline and clarify them. Pushback on that. Is that a bad theory? React to that; you know, unpack that for us.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — You know, the don’t agree thing. Um, when you have a clarified vision, there are going to be people that don’t think that that’s for them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And that’s actually not a bad thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — As soon we take a stand on anything and say, “This is where we’re going moving forward,” there’s going to be some folks that are like, you know what? I don’t I don’t think that I’m on board. This doesn’t seem like it’s the place for me. That’s okay.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — I think oftentimes leaders will um, for fear of disappointing people, or people are going to leave, they may try to water it down or try to make everyone happy. And my advice would be don’t don’t let people hold you or your vision hostage, you know, um by their own version of what reality should be. There are going to be some people that leave because they are not excited about the direction that we’re wanting to go. Um and that’s okay. Because that just makes room for people who are excited about where we’re wanting to go.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I’ve heard I had a mentor early on in ministry who said, if you don’t have 10% of the people in your church upset at you, you’re not really leading. I think there’s some truth to that, right?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Whether the number is right or not, right? But it’s like, hey, if we’re not being the goal is not to get everybody to agree, right? The goal is to is to, you know, align with the mission and um, you know, push forward. What would be some common mistakes that you see church leaders make when they’re trying to build consensus, they’re trying to get agreement, they’re trying to get clarity of understanding? What are the kind of low hanging fruits? You’re like oh gosh, once again, I see us making the same mistake. Are there any of those?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Yes, there’s actually two of them. One is trying to get everybody on board equally at the same time. And if you want to picture like ah a bell curve. And if there’s like in the middle is the masses. That’s where the majority of folks are. But on the left side you may visualize people who have got the most to lose. And on the right side you’ve got the people who have the most to gain. Focusing on the fringes, these are your influencers, will really help to motivate the masses in a much more efficient way.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — When we think about, let me talk a little bit more…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — …like when we think about those who have the most to lose, like these are folks that they’re your Negative Nellies. They’re they’re threatened by any kind of change. They’re going to fight you tooth and nail no matter what it is that you do. Helping them to understand how this fits in with the church’s overall vision, how it’s going to benefit them, or giving them permission to leave—you know, if that’s something that they’re just not on board with—is a good thing. And then with those that have the most to gain, these are your biggest supporters.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — You know it’s going to benefit them or they’re really bought into your vision, so you want to equip them with tools and messaging so that they can help other people get on board. So focus on the fringes, not trying to get everyone on board. But your influencers can motivate the masses.
Rich Birch — Okay, so this is good. We’re already I’m like you’re already getting my my gears going, thinking about something differently. So I, you know, I’ve said in other contexts, count the yes votes. You know I understand with the most to gain, Hey let’s run with those people. But unpack the most to lose. I like I I’ve kind of swum a little bit in the school of thought of like ah just ignore those people. Why do we care about those folks? Don’t… but but convince me I’m wrong on that. Why why should we spend a bit more time with the most to lose people?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Because those folks tend to have very loud voices. And if they feel like if they’re being ignored, they can start to pick up momentum that may or may not be based in reality.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And so I’m not saying you address every person who disagrees, or every single person who’s not on board. But think about who are those that have got the loudest voices who probably view themselves as having the most to lose, and spending a little bit of time on the front end, sitting down with them, helping them to feel like they’re being heard, and that they truly understand where this change is coming from, how it benefits the church as a whole, can really going a long go a long way to sometimes converting those folks. Sometimes they push back just because they feel like they they don’t understand or they’re being ignored. And so sitting down with them, spending some time, can really really benefit you know leaders in the long haul.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that makes sense. I can I can see that. You know there’s there’s something about, you know, it’s like a double whammy – if I disagree with where we’re going, and I don’t feel like I have been heard, or I’m trying to express some concern about it and like I’m a person that has, you know, I’m a volunteer, I’m a donor, I actually help here on the church, I’m staff or whatever, and it’s like no one’s listening to me. Well, then that’s really going to agitate me if I’m in that “most to lose” category. I not only don’t agree, but it’s like I don’t even feel like you’re listening to me. You’re not even, you know, connecting. How how does that, what does that look like for churches in that, you know, what have you seen some kind of effective practices there for for connecting with those that kind of most to lose, or most to gain, really those people in the fringes. How do you weed out who those people are?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Well usually they’re the ones that are going to have super loud voices.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — So they can be fairly easily, you know they self-identify so that does help.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — But when we think about tailoring communications and tapering it, that’s another part of that process. And so if we try to tell everyone everything all at once, it tends to be overwhelming. Um, and so if you try to picture a bullseye of sorts that have different rings. And at the very center of that bullseye is your inner circle. Um people who are closest to the vision, closest in to what it is you’re wanting to accomplish. You’re going to want to give them more information sooner than people that are all the way on the outside.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — So if we think about kind of your inner circle, weeding out your advocates and your Negative Nellies, there is a great place to um to focus your time and energy. You don’t want to worry about the Negative Nelly that might be in the community or just weekend attenders, because you know, who knows who those people are. But the ones that are on your inner circle, the ones your next level out, might be your directors, your senior staff, key lay leaders, high level donors. Like those two circles those are the ones that it does matter to try to weed out the ones that are having a hard time. Set aside some time to connect with them, whether they might be roundtable discussions. Maybe they’re one-on-one discussions. You know it really kind of depends on the type of change that you’re wanting to initiate. But you’re going to hear from them sooner versus later and sitting down with them and hearing their just their concerns and addressing those is is ah an important part of that process.
Rich Birch — Yeah, how much of that at that level, and and this the answer might be it just depends, but I’m thinking about a change initiative and we’re trying to you know, push things forward. And, you know there’s there’s that moment where maybe as a core leadership team, we’re pretty sure we’re going to make this change. We’re pretty sure things are going to go in that direction. We haven’t really made the decision yet. We’re still wrestling with it. Is that inner circle ah is it about going to them to kind of get their input? Or is it, Hey this is I’m trying to sell you on something that we are already have, you know, decided. And again, it might depend on what it is. But I’ll help me understand the kind of nuance there. Um, how far along should this thing bake, be baked before we start talking to the more to lose, more to gain, you know, group?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — That’s a really good question. Um, the inner circle is usually your taking shape stage. You know, you’re you’re half baked.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep, yep.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Um, that’s your your inner circle, your directors, staff, key lay leaders – that would be a level out is how I would view it. Usually you want to have a direction established.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And you’re looking for maybe input in buy-in you’re looking for that second level um to help support the vision. Maybe they’re the ones that are asking questions. These are the ones you’re starting to equip with information or addressing concerns.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Your inner inner circle – these are the people that might be your elders, a handful of trusted advisors, people you would feel comfortable sharing something that is half-baked. You don’t want to take something that’s half-baked to your staff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — You know they’re going to poke all kinds of holes into it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — They may have some questions or suggestions to refine the direction a little bit or to shape it a little bit, but you should have a pretty a good feel for where you want to go when you’re wanting to roll it out to that group.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good, that makes that makes sense. Any other when you think about kind of the the rollout the conversation. You know this kind of particularly they don’t agree. They don’t understand. Any other common mistakes you see, you know, making beyond, you know, just trying to make sure that, you know, we we can’t we we can’t just dump it on everybody at the same time. We’ve got to kind of segment our audience, get out and and talk about most most to lose, most to gain. Are there any other kind of common mistakes you see that that we should be thinking about?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Well with the don’t understand, a lot of times is that they they are they don’t understand why the change is necessary. And so as senior leaders a lot of times we focus on what the change is, but not necessarily why the change is necessary, or why they should care. And so um making the pain of of staying the same feel greater than the pain of changing is is a critical part of the process. A lot of times leaders will skip this part just to get to the good part, you know talking about where we’re going. And everybody loves to think about where we’re going. That’s a good thing. But helping them to understand why things can’t stay like they are is super important.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — So a quick example. Um one pastor we are working with, he wanted to raise funds for a new air conditioner. And when he originally had pitched it to the congregation, they’re like, oh you know, ours kind of works. Do we really need it? You know I mean maybe it needs some maintenance and they were not super excited. So he he was like, okay, and he let it ride. You know by the time July rolled around and it was hot and it was sticky and things, you know, everyone was super uncomfortable, they were a lot more motivated, you know, to want to support the sacrifices to invest in a new HVAC system. So I mean now that’s like a real simple example. But helping people to see why things can’t stay the way they are, and then share where we’re going and how we’re going to get there is really important.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Yeah, the idea of I think sometimes particularly I can see that with, listen I spend most of my time in that’s that second chair executive pastor type seat. I’ve worked with some amazing lead pastors who are great people. But one of the things that makes that person a great those great people is they are so good at defining the future. They’re so good. They’re like optimists. They’re so like, hey let’s go take this hill. But sometimes we’ve got to stop; what I hear you saying is we’ve got to stop and define why, before we can take that hill, we got to define why this hill is not the hill we want to stay on. We got to go. You know, that there’s problems here that, you know, that people, you know, unless they see, hey it’s important for us to move, they won’t they won’t move. That’s I think that’s a really keen insight.
RIch Birch — Um, when you think about you know, then this whole idea of they don’t know what to do next, man, talk to us about that. I think this is so true. People, um you know, it’s like we define the problem, they have a clarity where they’re going, but with but then now what am I supposed to do? What I’m supposed to do with all this information?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Well, there’s two things. Um one, helping everyone to feel involved is ah is is super helpful. And so this is kind of it doesn’t mean that everyone is involved in the decision making or the direction setting process. But they feel like they’re taking part of where we’re going is ah is a big thing. And so this is um, what Jim Collins he’s the author of “Good to Great”. He described this as the flywheel principle. And so once it starts to pick up, it’s hard to stop. It’s kind of the power of everyone. When you get everyone involved and help them to see how this matters to them, really it’s great.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Like Nehemiah was a great example when he was building the wall of using this technique, where he asked a lot of the people to work on the part of the wall that faced their house. You know? And so they felt involved. They had a vested interest in what was going on. They were participating in a meaningful way. And so leaders motivate others to get involved so that’s important.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — The second big part is not overwhelming them with options. Sometimes um as leaders will we’ll give folks you know, 80…485 ways to do something, you know, whether it’s listed on the website or it’s a verbal announcement or it’s whatever. If people get overwhelmed with options, they’re they’re not going to make any choices, if they are given too many. So provide some clear simple next steps for how people can get involved is ah is a good thing to do.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — One other thing that you had mentioned um with senior leaders. When we think about executive leaders and then we’ve got our our pastors, especially visionary pastors um…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — I don’t know if this is something you’ve run into, Rich, but we run into it often with ah visionary pastors who kind of have a flavor of the month mentality.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — They get so excited, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — They get they just are so excited about all of the ideas and the opportunities that they see, you know, for what God can do through their church that they get they they have a little bit of a flavor of the month mentality.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And what I I think where executive pastors can really help um, those that they team up with from a senior or a lead pastor, is that focuses their friend. And that not now doesn’t mean not ever. You know those are like the magic words for visionary leaders and and trying to contain the crazy that they ah can unleash on their teams. Because if we’re not allowing at least 12 to 18 months to a foreign idea to take root…
Rich Birch — Right
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — …your congregation, they get whiplash.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — You know they they just see one thing after another after another, you know. So try to encourage them to to focus, allow an idea to take root, and that “not now” doesn’t mean “not ever”.
Rich Birch — Yeah I think that’s that’s really good, Dawn. There’s there’s something, again this is a positive part of visionary leaders, like that in that they’re good at defining the, and the reason why that works, the kind of like “hey this is the next hill we’re going on – let’s go over there” is there is nothing like new to generate new momentum. Like when you do something new in an organization, it generates new momentum. But if we do so many new things all the time then it can be like you say it it can grind the organization down and a part of our job is to try to help get some alignment, some some you know some wisdom around what are the things, you know, that we should, you know, be focusing on.
Rich Birch — So pivoting it kind of in a bit of a different direction, but or maybe more of a kind of a meta question, a larger question. You’ve been journeying in this whole area of communication for a few years, what has changed over the years? When you look at kind of like how has our you know our needs as people who communicate, our need as people who are trying to steer this kind of change, you know, with our communities, what has what’s changed? What’s been like, okay this is something ah, we need to think more clearly about today than we did um, you know, whatever number of years ago, ten, fifteen years ago?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — That’s another really good question, Rich. Um I think that there is more competing for people’s attention than ever before, you know.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And so being clear, trying to focus our efforts our and initiatives and our communications is is absolutely critical. And especially with churches, because oftentimes we’re competing with ourselves. You know, not even outside when we have ministries that are competing with each other for the congregation’s attention. We’re trying to give people all of these different ways to get involved and to get you know to grow in their relationships. They just get overwhelmed. And so there’s this like information overload
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And clarity is kind, but it takes discipline.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And I think that the reason why this happens is we want to make sure nothing is is left out. And so we tend to give everyone all these options, all this information, but it’s just it’s like drinking from a firehose.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, that’s good. So why is it um, so I’m asking this question, I’m not I’m not saying that you’re that you’re the one that said this. But for whatever reason I feel like, so from my perspective communications is a it’s a professional function. It’s it’s like um the example I use with senior leaders, I feel like more and more these days, is I say to them you know, similarly to say the financial side of your church, when you’re when you just get started you might have you know a volunteer that looks after the finances and then eventually you start to think like you know, maybe we should hire a bookkeeper and then eventually maybe like a CFO and that sort of thing.
Rich Birch — The same is true on communication. It is a professional function. Like you, you need to approach it with an air of professionalism. But it seems like there is like resistance to that with some church leaders. And I don’t know why that is. Again I’m the one that asking – maybe you don’t think it’s true. But why do you think that is? Why do you think there’s like a there’s some resistance to saying, hey maybe we should get some help in this area? Maybe this is an area that we shouldn’t just kind of wing it. We should we should actually talk with someone like yourself.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Well not just with me, but with thinking of the roles that they have internally, communications historically has been viewed as a tactic, and when we—instead of a strategy.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And we really view strategic um communications as a strategic channel for connecting people to the church and helping them to grow in their relationship, not only with the church but the relationship with God. And so when we’re thinking about it from a tactical perspective, it tends to not get the attention of senior leadership. So when we first started teaching about this, um almost thirty years ago, you know, oftentimes the church secretary would be the one that would be updating the bulletin or or something like that.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — You know, they didn’t really have the skills. Now we have made some progress over over this period of time where we have Communication Directors and folks that do have skills and and the talents needed to manage it. But it still isn’t taken seriously by senior leadership. You know, a lot of times the ministries are treating communications as kind of a drive-through service, you know, when they want to promote opportunities and events. It’s like do you want fries with that? You know and it’s like here’s all the things that we want done.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — And these communication leaders are just order takers, when they really should be viewed more as like a Chief Marketing Officer for the organization.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Just like the the weekend worship is viewed as a strategic channel for connecting people to the church, helping people from a communications perspective is the exact same thing. Because if they can’t connect to your church, if they don’t hear what your message is, then does it really matter how great are weekend service is…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — …if we’re making it hard for people to connect.
Rich Birch — So true.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — That’s the role of communications. It’s so strategic but oftentimes not viewed as such by senior leaders just because it’s not something that they were taught you know or that they think about or it’s not super [inaudible] um, but it needs to change.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I wonder too on that literally just last weekend I was at it I was at a church and I was talking with the person that kind of sits in that communications um seat and you know I was saying to them, because we were talking about some of the challenges they were having, and and I was trying to encourage like give courage to this person to say like, hey you you are the expert in this area. Like you are the person that can help give direction. And like you don’t just keep coming to these meetings with the notepad open saying okay, how high do you want me to jump? Like come and proactively say like, hey you want to, I’ve got some ideas on how we could help you know use communication to push the mission of the church forward. Ah yeah, I just think there’s so much so much there.
Rich Birch — Well let’s pivot and talk a little bit about Mavericks. So you provide a number of services and you know, approaches and helps for churches. Um talk to us about the kind of coaching that you do that the kind of assistance. When if you if you wanted if you were if we were thinking, hey maybe you’d like to have somebody come alongside us and help us with that. What does that look like?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Well, we can do one on-one coaching,. Um, one in-one coaching is something that ah churches have teamed up with us for a super long time. You know whether it’s kind of partnering alongside senior leadership of thinking through how can we get the rest of the team on board? How can we be more effective in our communications? How can we use this to get the church to the next level?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — But we also offer community coaching groups, you know, we call them leagues. And this is where they can really learn from each other. So the idea here is that we’re taking the best parts of conferences, one-on-one coaching and community learning, and kind of mashing it all up together in an online environment. So that not only can folks learn from each other but they can get best practices from you know what’s going on in the world of communications and um the one-on-one coaching that I’m able to provide.
Rich Birch — So good. Well this is this has been a great conversation today. We do have a PDF we want to? um, we’ll link to it’s called The Keys for Communicating Change – obviously is around what we’re talking about here. Anything else you want to say about this ah, this resource? I’d encourage people, we’ll put a link in the show notes, go down there, click that so you can pick up a copy of that. But anything else you want to say about this this resource for folks?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Um, it’s really just kind of a great overview of what we were talking about today. But if there’s anyone who wants to go a little bit deeper or if they want to think about how they can be more intentional with communicating change, you know, I’m more than happy to to have a conversation with them. We can talk about what potential next steps would be, and so shooting us an email would be a great place to start.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Dawn, I really appreciate you being here today, cheering for you. I think, you know, highly recommend, folks, if you’re if you’ve been intrigued a little bit, I would reach out ah to Mavericks. That’s just mavericks.cc for more information. Dawn’s an incredible leader. Super helpful. She wants to get in your corner and help. Ah, so I’d highly recommend her, but is there anywhere else online where we want to send people if they want to connect with you or connect with Mavericks?
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Um, the website’s a great place to start. Um or they can shoot me an email. You know if they have a specific question I’m happy to answer, I’m happy to help. And so just dawn@mavericks.cc is a simple way to get in touch with me.
Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much appreciate; you being here today.
Dawn Nicole Baldwin — Thanks, Rich, for having me. I really do appreciate it and I’m so excited about what you’re doing to to help ministry leaders to to go to the next level. So thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Thank you so much.
The Disciple Dilemma: Insights from Fighter Pilot CEO Dennis Allen
Jul 04, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dennis Allen today, a former fighter pilot who became a six-time Turnaround CEO and now helps churches rethink discipleship.
The vast majority of younger people who were raised in the church are leaving at alarming rates. 80% of the people sitting in our churches are spiritually inert and disengaged. What’s the problem? Tune in as Dennis explores the symptoms and root causes of the disciple dilemma in our churches and how to move forward.
The dilemma in the pews. // Many people sitting in our churches today aren’t fully engaged in the mission. About 65% of millennials (age 45 and under) and 70-80% of Gen Z (age 25 and under) who were raised in the church are walking out because they say the church is intolerant, irrelevant, immoral, and irrational. In addition, 93% of evangelicals believe that talking about Jesus is not their job, it’s the pastor’s responsibility. 80% listen to sermons but have no small group, prayer, or bible study in their lives.
Mission versus institution. // The church, while being the body of Christ, is also an institution. Institutions, by nature, tend to prioritize the urgent over the important, often losing sight of their mission. This phenomenon, which Dennis refers to as “churchianity,” can lead to a focus on maintaining the organization rather than making disciples. If everything we do isn’t driven by the mission of our churches, the mission will slowly be subsumed by the institution.
Recognize the root causes. // Once you’ve identified the symptoms of a discipleship problem, it’s time to dig deeper and address the root causes. In his book The Disciple Dilemma, Dennis lays out six very old traditions that are not right, good, or biblical, but they’ve been around so long they are seen as normal and may be hindering true discipleship. The second half of The Disciple Dilemma lays out a path for how to biblically go after the problem.
The dynamic of power. // One of the root causes of disciple issues is the dynamic of power that began with Constantine. Modern Western Christianity thinks about power as a means to achieve the end of serving God. Because of our fallen nature, power infects the system and it becomes about dominating and being in control. Churches and the people who occupy them want their agendas to be picked up. However what we see in Jesus, and in discipleship, is a servant who connects with people in humility and builds relationships.
Discipleship over growth. // Dennis challenges the notion that numerical growth is the sole indicator of a healthy church. Growth is good, but when you start packing growth into the pews at a rate that exceeds your ability to disciple, you’ll have a problem. Assess whether your programs are fostering genuine discipleship or merely attracting attendees. Encourage personal relationships and mentorship within the church community.
Discipleship at the top. // One of the tell-tale signs of whether churches are discipling well is looking at the leadership team and asking if they have actually been discipled and who is walking alongside them right now. Church leaders must be actively involved in discipleship, modeling it for the congregation. Is the leadership doing what it wants the rest of the church to do? Is the church launching other churches? Does it have a structure that allows one-on-ones and one-on-twos of disciples on disciples to develop?
Help from The Disciple Dilemma. // By understanding the scale of the disciple problem, diagnosing the symptoms, and addressing the root causes, church leaders can cultivate a culture of discipleship that prioritizes the mission over mere institutional growth. For those interested in diving deeper into this topic, Dennis is offering a dozen free downloads of his book, The Disciple Dilemma. You can enter to win a free copy of the e-book here or pick up a physical copy.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’re so honored that you’ve decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire, equip you, and today I’m excited to have Dennis Allen with us. New friend, he’s a six-time turnaround CEO. That alone should get your attention. But he also would like flew fighter pilot was a fighter pilot at one point in life and has helped all kinds of you know people across the country, and has got a real passion for discipleship, and we’re really looking forward to diving in on this conversation. Dennis, welcome to the show today.
Dennis Allen — Rich, amped to be with you on unSeminary.
Rich Birch — This is going to be good. Fill in the picture, kind of give us the story, the Dennis Allen story. I know that’s hard to do, but kind of tell us a little bit about your background.
Dennis Allen — Yeah, well my background looks like an attention deficit disorder nightmare, if you take a look at my resume, right?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dennis Allen — I’m just kind of tracking through. Um so I was raised in a Christian home. At the age of 8 my parents, exasperated with me, decided to drag me down to the pastor’s office to try to understand who Jesus really is and how broken my life really was. I became a believer at that point and then I went inert. That’s a conversation I’d like to carry on a little further today when we talk about discipleship. Off into the military, got to fly airplanes. That was crazy, wild ride. Um the Lord had some really interesting issues to throw out at me there which was basically I was told my heart is got the same problem that Pistol Pete Maravich’s heart had on the Boston Celtics…
Rich Birch — Oh no.
Dennis Allen — …and you’re going to die in a couple of years.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dennis Allen — That didn’t happen but I couldn’t fly anymore…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — …and that sent me reeling off into the business world. The business world I’m working on turning around companies that are either underperforming, struggling, or in just disaster mode. And along the way my bride, Karen, and I are living in lots of different places, and we’re in different churches as members, and we’re getting a chance to watch discipleship live, full and free. And that led me to think a lot about it. And then as I mentioned to you, we were chatting before the podcast, a bunch of theological thugs at gunpoint made me write a book, and that was The Disciple Dilemma. So, here we are.
Rich Birch — Ah, ah well one of those thugs was Os Guinness.
Dennis Allen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And listen, when his recommendation on your book, like anybody who knows him, obviously is giant, has had so much influence. It’s definitely one of those quotes you want to lean forward and be like, ooh I should probably pay attention to what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about the disciple dilemma. And man, there are so many people, you talked about this inert people that are sitting in our pews or in our seats that are not engaged fully in the mission. They’re, you know, they’re kind of floating through life. But then you’ve got, you know, so many nones in our cultures, ex-evangelicals, deconverted, all that. But help us understand the problem, the scale of this problem. You’ve obviously seen it as a person in a lot of different churches across the country and are now obviously thinking about it. But let’s unpack that problem a little bit. What’s what’s actually happening here with discipleship, or and maybe not happening with discipleship across the country?
Dennis Allen — That’s a great way to set it up, Rich. So here’s here’s kind of the framework of this. I’m gonna I’m gonna lean to some statistics for a couple of minutes. And I’ll start with some of the more recent ones. If your folks are probably familiar with The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis, Michael Graham’s book. There’s work with Pew, there’s Barna, IPPR. Even The Humanist Society of the UK. And let me just lay some numbers out…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dennis Allen — …so pastors can go, hey this really isn’t my fault; this really is going on all around us, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dennis Allen — So what’s what’s happening in the world? About 65% of millennials, think sort of 45 down, and about 70 to 80% of Gen Z’s, think now 25 and down, who were raised in the church are walking out. They’re saying, this isn’t for me. The church is intolerant, irrelevant, immoral, irrational. I’m not a part of this anymore. I can be a part of a running club or whatever and go do that. So they’re walking out. Those people exit the church. That’s one problem.
Dennis Allen — Second problem that you face in the pews today: 93% of evangelicals would tell you that talking about Jesus is not my job – that belongs to, Rich, the pastor, the guy in the pulpit. He’s supposed to do the heavy lifts on this sort of thing. 80% of the people in those pews are spiritually inert. They have no bible study. They have no prayer life. They have no small group. They have nothing more than 1.7 times a month going to a sermon series. That’s Protestant, mainstream…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dennis Allen — …and the evangelical traffic altogether. So when we think about the people walking out and the folks that we’ve got in the pews, the question that began to taunt me is, do we have a problem? And if so…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Dennis Allen — …what’s the symptom and what’s the root cause? What’s going on here? That’s kind of the setup.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. I love that. I you know, I know I wondered for a while, you know, if when we the the average church in the country is 75 people. That’s you know that number is super sticky. And you know, ah the the irony of that and, listen, we’re all friends here that are listening in, just a couple of friends sitting around having a coffee. You know, the irony of that in that number to me in other contexts I’ve wondered, I’d love for you to get your thoughts on this, 75 people is about the number of people that you need in a church to pay for one pastor. Um, and that may sound like a really cynical thing but I wonder if so many of our systems in the church really are kind of reinforcing the system, rather than making disciples, rather than making people who ultimately follow Jesus. We’re really, it’s like we’re building organizations. Ah, react to that. Am I just way too cynical? Is that too dark of a thought? Talk to me about that.
Dennis Allen — I love the way you’re setting this up, Rch. So when you think about the world of a church, I’m going to say some things that some of the people in the pews that would get really mad about.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Dennis Allen — But if you really really get angry and upset about this, it’s Rich’ a’s fault for let me on not mine. So.
Rich Birch — Sure, yes.
Dennis Allen — So here’s kind of the setup. The setup is that we have the body of Christ. We have the community of believers that gathers together to worship. But the flip side of that exact same entity is an organization. And when you have an organization, you have an institution. Now here’s where we get into the tension that you’re facing as a pastor and executive pastor. Institutions always want to strip away mission. Institution wants tyranny in the urgent, Charlie Hummel’s book, to take over. You need to fire fight, you need to work the crises, you need to work the budget, you need to work the PowerPoint decks that make all the elders or the board of directors or whoever really happy. You’ve got to churn out administrative, you got to crank out great sermons, you got to take care of the kids on Sundays, bury the in-laws, you got to do all this sort of stuff. That’s the institutional side of the church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Dennis Allen — And as a CEO in the turnaround space. What’s always killing businesses is they get lost in institutional world, in our terminology we might say churchianity. You get lost in the churchianity and you lose the Christianity. There’s a mission statement and if everything we’re doing doesn’t drive by the mission, the mission doesn’t drive everything we’re doing from the flavor of the donuts at the coffee break to the sermons that we’re teaching and the way we’re interacting with human beings. The mission will slowly be subsumed by the institution. And that’s something that in seminary I bet you don’t have a lot of conversations about.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that that is a that’s a really fresh idea there that you know institutions drive towards the tyranny of the urgent, that you know at the end of the day we we ignore the long-term is is the mission is why are we here? Why are we kind of driving, you know, why why are we doing all these things? And how are we aligning towards that. That’s that’s ah, that’s a bold idea.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s unpack this at a local level. How how does a church leader when, let’s say we’re looking around and it’s like you, you know, you go into a room and it’s like I feel like there’s like a piece of rotten, you know, tomato under the table and you can kind of smell it, but you’re not sure where that smell’s coming from. Let’s assume that we know we have a sense that something’s wrong, but how do we diagnose that? How do we find the root cause? What do we, in our own church, what do we how do we figure that out for us?
Dennis Allen — Well, the first thing that I would want to say is it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Dennis Allen — If you’re a pastor. It’s not your fault. This problem ranges back, arguably 1800 years and more deep into the church.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Dennis Allen — And in our book, The Disciple Dilemma, we tried to lay out six very, very old traditions that have been around us for so long we think of them as good, right, and normal, but they are not good. They are not right. They’re not biblical. They’re not normal. And so, shall I toss one or two out for fun?
Rich Birch — Yeah I was going to say, that’s a you we’ve got to unpack that. Because I feel like we often hear that like, oh things were so much better. But we talk about like that was like thirty years ago. You’re you’re saying we got an 1800 year old problem here. Let’s talk about those good, right things that are not actually good or right.
Dennis Allen — Let me start with the thing that we were just conversing about. It’s the sixth root cause that we talk about that kills discipleship. And we call it in the book “the not main thing”. It’s we’re chasing stuff, but it’s not the mission. It’s the stuff that’s on fire, screaming and yelling for attention.
Dennis Allen — And as you think about some of your churches that you were just setting up. You know we’ve got churches that are very small, churches that are very large. The dynamics of the urgent in a megachurch can be quite different from the poor, lonely pastor who doesn’t even have enough cash to keep the lights on in a church. However, comma, “the not main thing” is to fail in what Christ called us to be as leaders making disciples, to go after the symptoms instead of chasing the symptoms hoping that eliminates the problem, which it never ever does. So “the not main thing” is one. Let me let me park that one on the table. Let me put one other one on the table, just as ah as an example.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s have it.
Dennis Allen — It’s the dynamic of power. Modern Western Christianity thinks about power as a means to achieve the end of serving God. In other words, for Christendom’s sake, for the nationalists sake, for the ability to dominate the world for the Lord, I’m going to go out and conquer these people and beat them down and bring them into subjugation so that they will either by my logic, or by our social influence, surrender. They’ll fall; they’re gonna say oh, you beat me up, you’re right. I give up. I want to be a Jesus person. That power dynamic actually began with Constantine. It began with Constantine because Christianity used to be 5, 6, 7, 8 people meeting in a little barn somewhere and hoping that the soldiers didn’t come in and take them out and kill them or throw them in the arena.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — Constantine switched that to a power dynamic that said, hey, it’s legit; I’m on board with it, and you better get on board with it too.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — Now I’m all for leaders saying, I’m a believer and I’m really into this. However, there’s a problem. When you start packing growth into those pews at a rate that exceeds your ability to disciple, you’re about to have a problem, whether it’s a commercial business or a church. Growth can kill you.
Rich Birch — Um, okay, let’s talk about that. This is one of the the oddities of and this goes back to when I was school in school. It’s like we have lots of historical examples of when the the gospel, the good things of Jesus, the good news are fused with political power, like it’s not good long term. Like it’s like we got tons of examples of that. This is not good for the message of Jesus, but I feel like we just keep reliving that as as a movement. We keep coming back to this. We keep coming back to this place right back to Constantine. Ah, why is that why? What’s driving that?
Dennis Allen — Well I’d reach in first to Francis Schaefer and “the manishness of men”. It’s kind of in our recipe. You know we’re broken. We’re fallen and we like power. We want to be in control, and hey I love it when I walk into a room and I say, thus speaketh Dennis, here is my wisdom, and everybody goes, oh that is so cool. Oh that’s so profound.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dennis Allen — Okay, that’s a little cynical. But the flip side of it is, churches and the people that occupy them want their agenda to be picked up. Some for the most noble of reasons: I’m following Jesus I want people to get to know Jesus. Some for some darker angel’s reasons which might be the idea of, I just want to get rid of those people over there. If we get them out of the way we have a lovely nation. We have a lovely government. We have a lovely church. Power is always infesting the system. And what we see in the Lord, in discipleship, is a servant who is connecting with people in humility, and reason, but building relationships. This this is that ethos. But power has told us you got to have a brand, you got to have a venue, you got to have growth, you got to have cash flow, you got to have people in the seats, you got to have baptisms…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Dennis Allen — You got to have great programs. We stole that from the commercial marketplace, Rich, and interestingly, they stole it from Constantine. So we’re in a “do” loop.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Okay. Now let’s kind of similar area but pivot to slightly different conversations. So you know, I think so many times when we when we hear the word “discipleship,” we think of like programs and products and um, like the, you know, the latest system or like some, you know, do these 12 steps, that that sort of thing. That’s not what you’re talking about, is it?
Dennis Allen — Not at all, not at all. Let me let me set this on the table and you can um if you could just have somebody tell me I’m irrational and stupid and ridiculous. I can quit doing this and go back to the regular stuff I do in life.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Dennis Allen — Um, we tend to think of discipleship in the truncated view of the Old Testament. What I mean by that is the the Old Testament and the New Testament and Jesus’s model of discipleship showed three phases of a disciple’s life.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Dennis Allen — And here’s some terms I’ll be familiar to some of you guys, this, I’m talking to a bunch of theologians so I know you guys will get it…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Dennis Allen — …but let me just throw this out. There is the Bet Sefer S-E-F-E-R, the Bet Sefer which is kind of elementary school. Typically it was children learning about the Torah. It was children learning about being in synagogue. It was children learning about the community of believers they were around. That’s the Bet Sefer. And actually in the west we do that quite well. We have fantastic preaching. We have wonderful resources online, ministries like unSeminary. We’ve got these magnificent things going on in the Bet Sefer stage. The problem that we find statistically, Rich, is that most people don’t get part 2 and part 3.
Dennis Allen — Part 2, Bet Midrash. Think of that as vocational school for disciples. You know you might have a vo-tech school that’s going to teach you how to weld to repair cars or cook. Jesus’s model, the New Testament’s model, the Old Testament’s model was you’re going to come alongside a Rich and you’re going to learn how Rich thinks and how he talks and you’re going to start actually imitating him, using his phrases, using his style. And it may not ultimately and forever work for you. But you begin with the basis of somebody showing you the pragmatics in a laboratory environment. That is the Bet Midrash, that is this middle vo-tech phase that is so very rare. Statistics say 90% of your people have never been through this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — 80% of pastors have never been through this, so go the surveys.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dennis Allen — Then we get to the third phase, which is the Bet Talmud. And the Bet Talmud, T-A-L-M-U-D, Talmud, is where you become a practitioner. Now you’re walking out with your mentor, Rich, into the public square, into life. It might be at work. It might be in your community. It might be in recreation. It might be in church. You’re walking out amongst other people. And you’re watching Rich for a little while, but all of a sudden you notice Rich is a little quieter and you’re talking a little bit more. And pretty soon you’re looking around and Rich isn’t even there anymore, and he slid somebody up alongside you who needs to start learning how to imitate you. This is not a small group of 10, or a congregation of 75 or a 1000 or 10,000. This is one on one, maybe arguably one on two. Deep, infinite, transparent, intimate walking alongside somebody else. How’s that for a start?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great. I love what you’re pointing towards here. Um, because I I think ultimately I think within your bang on is that discipleship is ultimately about a culture. It’s about how, you know, there there isn’t it’s not step 1, step 2, step 3 – that can be a part of it. But it’s ah, really about how are we helping people transform their entire lives, to reform their entire lives in the way of Jesus, ultimately.
Rich Birch — The thing I find interesting is there is like a years ago, maybe 2, 3 years ago, I heard the CEO um, of a large company. They somebody asked them, it’s like off the top of their head. They said, hey, what are the three things you worry about all the time as a CEO? And I was a little struck by this. They said without hesitation they were revenue, culture, and vision. They said, you know, I I I’m the chief salesperson’s, it’s a big company, chief salesperson. Um, but then the other two culture and vision, I’m worrying about how we’re interacting with each other. And then I’m worrying about the vision, are we staying aligned to what we’re called to as an organization. I thought, man, there’s a lot of churches that aren’t doing that. There’s, you know, we’re not worrying about how we’re cultivating the culture. Talk to us more of on the culture side, maybe bringing in some of that CEO turnaround stuff. How does all that fit together in this thinking around the disciples dilemma?
Dennis Allen — Well, I mean I’m going to really tee up on what you just said because it’s really important. And the question that I want to ask everybody just to pause for a moment and think about is, what is the fungible currency, the revenue of the church of the most high God. And the answer to this actually is, I’m gonna I’m let you just pause on that for a second, just think about it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good question.
Dennis Allen — But the answer to this is really quite fascinating.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dennis Allen — I’m going to tell you that the fungible currency of the church of the most high God is not what’s in the offering plate. What it actually is, is it’s disciples who make disciples who make disciples. That’s capital formation. That’s the kind of stuff CEOs are really thinking about when they talk about revenue, they’re talking about how do I form capital at my bottom line after all my costs have been paid so that I can move forward more powerfully, more strongly, more…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Dennis Allen — …more deeply into the market to do more of what I do.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Dennis Allen — That’s that’s the currency of disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Now, you brought up the idea of culture, which is so incredibly important. And a lot of people don’t get culture. And I bet your seminaries don’t talk an awful lot about church culture…
Rich Birch — No, no, no.
Dennis Allen — …other than you know, yeah you got to have one.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dennis Allen — I find that all of my turnarounds, it’s a common script. Number one, nobody knows why they’re there. They know they build widgets or they sell stuff, but they really don’t know why they’re there.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Dennis Allen — If you want a Millennial or a Gen Z to get excited, tell them why. That amps people up when they know the why. My generation, it was a little different. It was like, tell Dennis to go do this, the what and the how. Don’t don’t talk to him about the why, we don’t have time to do that. Go out and produce stuff, right? But what we see in this generation today, and I suspect many of your exec pastors are in this role is, our people in the pews, and I don’t mean this to be an insult, but perhaps a lot of people in leadership don’t know the why that they’re actually there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — And I’m going to say that the mission of the, here’s where here’s where you can burn me at the stake, right – send your cards letters and ethanol to Dennis. And the mission of every single believer is the same mission as the church. It is to be and make disciples. That’s what a church is. It’s disciples. And that’s what we do as a church. And when you have disciples, as Jesus defined those disciples, the symptoms are worship, praise, ministries, missions, passion, evangelism, conversations, relationships, statesmanship in political dynamics and in civic spheres, this stuff goes wild when you really get what Jesus was doing with discipleship. That’s the kind of culture that we’re trying to build inside a church. If the mission is actually discipleship, if that’s really the mission and Matthew 28 got this assert if that assertion is right, that everything else we hear Jesus talking about is saying, disciples do these things, all these other things, then we’ve got this preeminent statement before us.
Dennis Allen — Leaders you got to go first. You got to eat your own dog food. You’ve got to disciple someone else, even if you’ve never been discipled…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — …so that people can see you doing that and then you can turn around and say, and now my expectation, the culture, the atmosphere, the DNA of this community of believers, is we make disciples.
Rich Birch — Right? Yeah, I love that. So good. You know so you wrote this book, The Disciple Dilemma; let’s pivot and talk about it. You know, specifically to give people a bit of sense of that. Tell us a little bit about the story. What drove you to this point? What you know you got lots of other fish to fry in your life. What what got you to like, okay, I want to spend some time effort and energy you know pulling this together?
Dennis Allen — I kept noticing in churches, even when I wasn’t in leadership roles, I just kept looking around and seeing families going, my kids don’t believe. My kids are angry. My kids are walking out. My kids think we’re hypocrites. My kids have become X, Y, or Z other faiths, no faith, whatever. And of course as we all knows he mentioned a few minutes ago, we’re seeing the nones, the dones, the deconverts, the ex-vangelicals, the spiritually but not religious people, on and on it goes. And I’m watching this and I’m going this is interesting and it echoes in a way my commercial world. I walk into broken companies and people are leaving because they don’t know why they’re there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — There’s no purpose to it, right? We sing songs and we speak words up into the air and hope that somebody or something hears us, and then we have this TED Talk and, you know the music is awesome, but it’s not exactly doing anything for me. And so I’m watching these people leave, and I’m going, that’s fascinating. What’s what’s the root cause underneath this? What’s going on? And…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — …it drove it drove me to start giving some talks about this. And eventually I gave the talk in the wrong place and a bunch of theological thugs made me write a book about it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. What what are you hoping for? What’s the kind of target that you’re like when I, so taking a look at the book, getting a sense a little bit about it, to me it strikes me as this would be a great conversation with my leadership team. Like let’s let’s pull this together, read this book maybe over the summertime, and you know and really try to you know, reflect on, Okay, how do what should we shift about what we do our own behavior based on this. But what were you kind of hoping for, what kind of church were you hoping to impact, that sort of thing.
Dennis Allen — The goal that we set when we got the book out was we’re going for 3000 churches to actually scrimmage this issue. Now there’s 300,000 protestant churches-ish…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dennis Allen — …in the in sort of the North American space of which, you know, if you if you look at the numbers you can you can kind of debate how the the people of the world all flow into. But about half the people that go to church go to a megachurch. And the rest go to the 75 that you were just talking about that’s kind of sort of the starkness of this thing. I wanted 3000 churches—small ones, mid-size, large, and megas—I wanted them to start look at this and go like we do have a problem. Maybe we don’t have their problems, but we have problems. What’s going on here? And is it really at the root a discipleship problem, or is it just we need to preach harder, teach better, have more programs, which I think statistically and historically have proven, they don’t work. You could just keep plowing them and you get one generation of a disciple and then they leave or they quit and then it’s done.
Dennis Allen — So the book is really trying to say, there’s a deeper root cause, a historical set of root causes, and you’ve got to evaluate which of those six belong to you. And then start scrimmaging as a leadership team. Do you want to take the second half of the book which says here’s how you take a path forward out of this, biblically, to go after the problem. That’s really what we were aiming for with with the book.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. When you think about churches ah that are doing this well that is like our, you know, beacons of hope for you. What are some of the telltale signs of that that are like, oh here’s here’s a church that’s actually discipling, kind of regardless of size and all that. What is what does that look like for you? What are some of those kind of like oh that that’s when it’s actually working well?
Dennis Allen — Well some of the first symptoms that you can pick up on is when you look at the leadership team and you ask the question, have you ever been discipled, and who’s walking alongside you right now as a follower Christ in your life? I don’t mean like the amazed student who’s looking up and going, Oh gosh you know, Rich, you’re so awesome, so cool. But who actually can look at you and go, you’re not doing very well, Rich. I’m looking at you. Or Rich, it looks like things are going really well. I know you really well, that’s that’s sort of piece one for me as I walk in as a turnaround guy and I look at an organization. Ah is the leadership actually doing what the leadership wants the people to do.
Dennis Allen — The second thing, which are interesting symptoms, is not growth. Growth is a really poorly understood concept and the church tends to run for it saying growth, growth, growth. If you’re not growing, we need to fire the pastor and find somebody else. And heavens, how many pastors I’ve interviewed that are in despair over the way they’re being banged about because you haven’t delivered the numbers, like some stockholders report, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — So challenging. So the second piece that I look at is is this a church which is launching other churches and has structure that allows one on ones and one on twos to develop. Small groups are wonderful. Big worship is wonderful. And we need all that and we want all that and God encourages to have all that. But do we see disciples on disciples…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — …moving and working together? And so that gets to be a much narrower slice of our “market”. When you start saying leadership is in it, and the people in this world, some percentage of them, are actually engaged dynamically in disciples. Living as disciples who make disciples who make disciples.
Rich Birch — Okay, let’s talk about that growth thing. You’ve cut you you’ve tapped that a couple times. So one of the one of the I think ah personally I think it’s a false dichotomy is that there’s like a you know real churches that we comfort ourselves with like, oh real churches that are really discipling people, like they don’t worry about growth at all. Like you know that’s not, you know, there if we really were doing what we would we do and it doesn’t matter whether we grow, which I know is not what you’re saying. But unpack that a little bit more. You know, you know you talk about growth being poorly understood, a poorly understood dynamic in the church. Talk to us about that a little bit.
Dennis Allen — One of the quickest ways you can wreck a business is to grow it too fast.
Rich Birch — okay.
Dennis Allen — You’re not prepared to take on either the client load or the production load or the marketing load. Growth kills businesses and it kills it rapidly, if you think about it. 75% of all businesses at startup die in the first five years because they overgrew.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — Churches are equally susceptible to that because there is an organization there. And as people begin to load up, one, you have to ask yourself the dynamic is this a cash rich area that I’m living in so I’ll have plenty of cash resources. It can build lots of buildings…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dennis Allen — …hire lots of staff. Or am I in a cash poor region where I don’t have enough resource to be able to build and scale on this sort of thing and and get running with that. But I would wager that the growth paradigm is pitched both in seminary and I’ve talked to the seminary professors about this. I’ve had a lot of pastor talk about this. If you ain’t growing, you ain’t going. And that’s the falsity. What’s actually true, I think biblically, is if you ain’t discipling the rest of it doesn’t matter. But if you are discipling, some of you are going to grow numerically. Some of you are going to spin off numerically, launch other ventures…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dennis Allen — …and some of you aren’t going to grow an awful lot for a long time but you’re going to start replicating disciples and your growth’s coming. It may take you years, but your growth is coming. And then you got to decide how you allocate that capital formation we were talking about, the revenue of disciples who make disciples who make disciples.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I…
Dennis Allen — We are looking at ah there’s there’s a book called the great evangelical recession. And the great evangelical recession is an economist theologian who is saying today that by the year 2040 30% percent of our churches in North America will not be able to afford the facilities that they’re in.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely.
Dennis Allen — Growth has its lovely side and it has its challenges. Growth’s not a strategy.
Rich Birch — Yeah, no I get that. You know there’s some stats of there that show that 94% of the churches in the country are losing ground against the growth of the communities they’re in. So there you know there’s there’s the more encouraging statistic that 80% of churches are plateaued are in decline. But actually there’s a whole percentage of churches that are growing that aren’t growing as quickly as their communities. So the problem with that long term is we’re losing influence. Now I agree with you that um you know there’s we have a there’s a discipleship sublayer for sure in this issue that we’re not actually converting people to actually follow Christ. We’re just making more you know Christianitians and not necessarily Christians, you know people who are followers of our organizations, but not necessarily followers of Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this has been this has been a great conversation. Well where do we want to send people if they’re if they want to pick up copies of The Disciple Dilemma. This is Rethinking and Reforming How the Church Does Discipleship. Where do we want to send them to pick those up?
Dennis Allen — Well, all the usual places. If you want to pick them up and if if it’s at all worthwhile to you, Rich, I’d be happy to toss 25 copies of Kindle, Ebook, Nook codes out for people to get a free download if you got folks who would like that. Um.
Rich Birch — Oh that’d be great. Yeah, that’d be amazing. Yeah, that’d be great.
Dennis Allen — So you can find all that stuff. You can also check us out at www.thediscipledilemma.com…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dennis Allen — …or Youtube or Linkedin or Instagram or Rumbly or Facebook – we’re out there @thediscipledilemma.
Rich Birch — All that stuff. That’s great. Good stuff. Well, Dennis, this has been a great conversation I really appreciate you being on today, and and love your book. And I really would encourage you listeners to pick up a copy I think. A great time of year to be thinking about you know staff training that sort of thing and I think Dennis’s work here would really help us think about and ultimately take some new steps as a church. So Dennis, thank you for being here sir appreciate being on the show today.
Dennis Allen — Thanks for your ministry, Rich.
Elevating Your Church’s Funding to New Heights with Phil Ling
Jun 27, 2024
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with generosity expert Phil Ling today. He offers strategic and energetic leadership to The Giving Church consulting team, helping churches fuel their ministries.
The largest transfer of wealth in the world is going on right now. With four generations alive at the same time, churches must adapt their strategies to cater to diverse age groups and their distinct giving behaviors. Tune in as Phil offers help on creating a culture of generosity, understanding giving metrics, and executing successful vision campaigns.
Increase participation. // 45% of the people in the average church give less than $200 a year. While there’s no silver bullet to fixing this problem, it’s important to remember that God built His church around intentional generosity. Every year churches lose 18% of their people. Even when you grow in attendance, more people don’t necessarily solve your money problems. Instead, your number one goal should be how to raise participation while building intentional generosity.
Offer more to the community. // Some churches tackle fundraising by creating multiple revenue streams. Think about a way your church can serve the community you’re in. For one church that looked like building a state-of-the-art event center attached to their location, creating a steady income stream. Instead of constructing a church building, another church transformed an Anheuser-Busch distribution center into an athletic training facility, attracting 500,000 paying visitors annually. Then their portable church meets in the facility on Sundays. You can use something your community needs to both draw people to your church and increase revenue.
Pay attention to giving metrics. // Your job as the pastor of a church is to lead by example, cast a compelling vision, and raise the generosity quotient. People aren’t giving to the church like they did in the past. If you want to change that, it’s crucial that you understand and analyze your giving metrics in order to gauge the church’s financial health.
Celebrate giving. // Vision campaigns create an opportunity for people to feel a sense of urgency to take steps to participate. Ask yourself how do you encourage someone to give money for the first time? What is your strategy? How do you celebrate and communicate about people doing that? How much an individual gives isn’t important, but celebrating the fact that they contributed to the mission is. Communicate the impact of generosity and provide multiple, convenient ways for people to give.
Fuel vision. // If you’re going to do a vision campaign, you need to measure mobilization. How many people will get attached to your vision? Leaders cast vision, but generosity fuels vision. Churches must build a track record of transparency and accountability to gain the congregation’s trust. This involves providing regular updates on the campaign’s progress and financial status, and celebrating key milestones and achievements to keep the congregation motivated and engaged.
Financial analysis. // Phil advises churches to conduct a thorough financial analysis before embarking on major projects. This involves examining giving data over time to understand income sources, giving patterns, and capacity for funding projects. Use The Giving Church’s financial analysis as a tool for discipleship and stewardship. By categorizing giving units based on their trends (above pace, on pace, falling down, or in the watch category), churches can proactively engage with members facing challenges and provide support.
You can learn more about how The Giving Church can help increase your generosity, and download the free PDF 5 Ways to Grow Your Giving at www.thegivingchurch.com.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church
Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it’s time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it!
Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, every once in a while I get to have somebody on the podcast who um, you know, I know in real life, have had an a chance to interact offline, and today’s one of those days. Excited to have Phil Ling back on the podcast. Ah, he provides both strategic and energetic leadership and direction to The Ling Group and The Giving Church consulting team. They’ve worked with nearly a thousand churches of all sizes and over 40 different denominations, if we’re counting correctly. And this is the number I say all the time, I said you know you know that Phil Ling guy? He’s helped churches raise a billion dollars that’s with a “B” – that’s incredible. So he’s amazing guy, been in this for quite a while, worked with friends like the Billy Graham association, Franklin Graham, um Injoy with John Maxwell, great great guy. Phil, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Welcome back to the show.
Phil Ling — Honored to hang out with you.
Rich Birch — Thanks for being here. This is going to be good. Well fill in the picture, you know, there are people who would have listened but kind of give us the the 2 minute Phil Ling story, fill in that picture a little bit, tell us a little bit about ah yourself before we jump into today’s conversations
Phil Ling — I call it the “how great I am” part. This is the “how great I am” speech. Ah so yes, when you’re trying to sell something. It’s like let me tell you how great I am. So first I am ah I grew up in a pastor’s house. My dad was a church planter and planted a church in Ohio. And so I grew up there and he never moved so I was one of those preacher’s kids that never moved. And then when I came out of college I planted a church in Seattle in the Seattle area and hung out there for 10 years. God blessed us, did a lot of cool stuff, got to help start school.
Phil Ling — And change gears, ah, did some radio talk show stuff with Salem radio that’s across all across the country. But that introduced me to a guy named John Maxwell. Ah I became executive president of John’s company and for 8 years ran around the country with John and which was ah a hoot.
Phil Ling — And whenever the phone rang and at Linda that meant John that was his assistant and that meant it was fun either I was in trouble or something fun to do. And that was cool ah, but at long story short he wanted to downsize some things and I didn’t want to work for anybody else because he’s too good. And I slid over to become vice president Billy Graham Association. And they were going through a huge change. They had just moved the headquarters from Minneapolis where it had been for 50 years to Charlotte, North Carolina. If you fly into North Carolina and Charlotte and the airport you’re on Billy Graham Parkway. And so that’s right where they are. Address, I think, is number 1 Billy Graham Parkway.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Phil Ling — And they built the library and all kinds of cool stuff. I got to fly in on Mondays, home on Thursdays for a period of time and helped them build ah a revenue stream that was more twenty first century. Because they had invented direct mail basically in the 50s. They were the kings. And now direct mail is different and everybody’s aging and how do we do that and embrace technology and all that kind of stuff. So they were gracious, but they also opened the door for me to have my shingle and work with folks and so I did both. And eventually transitioned.
Phil Ling — So we’ve got two little worlds. The Giving Church – we work with churches. The Ling Group – we work with faith-based nonprofits. Those those are our two little worlds. We’re a boutique group, relationships, all that stuff. I love church planters because I used to have hair and I used to be a church planter.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Phil Ling — And that is our deal and I here I this is longer than the two minutes you asked for. Why do I still do what I do?
Rich Birch — It’s all good. It’s good.
Phil Ling — I’ve got I got two and a half million Delta miles just so that registers – all domestic. Not not international. Those guys cheat they go really long trips.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — I do national. So the reason I still get on planes and do that stuff. I know that if I show up at a church or a organization and say, hey what are you guys really dealing with right now? It’s going to be usually facilities, finance, um facilities, finance and personnel. It’s one of the three areas. And all those relate back to money. And it’s like Okay, how do we pay for that stuff?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — What are we gonna do? How are we gonna do it? And most leaders… I always tease, the only guys that like to ask for money go to jail. Most leaders aren’t well aren’t comfortable with that stuff. And they haven’t had a lot of training in that stuff.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.
Phil Ling — And they haven’t really the people that they’re helping with it often have never sat in their chair. And so I’ve got those scars and sat in that chair.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — And so that’s where I come from. It’s like how do we raise leaders attached on the vision?How do we build intentional generosity? And how do we do that in 2024?
Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, so good. Well Phil was ah part of ah a retreat we did with… We do this we have a small cohort called the Church Growth Incubator and Phil was with us for a couple days and it was it was incredible. I we were joking beforehand. We did a feedback at the end of that survey with everybody that we surveyed everybody that came. And you know all the different parts of the event and all the stuff we did, and Phil was the only thing that was 5 out of 5 of in the thing. People just could not believe how much value he dropped in. And so I’m honored to have him on the podcast today to try to extract some of that. Obviously we can’t get into everything but there’s really kind of a couple conversations. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that you’re coaching and leading churches all across the country around, you know this whole you know how do we help raise more money raise generosity in our church.
Rich Birch —So a couple different questions. First, you know we’re feeling pressure points. Ah you know the the idea of raising money and creating kind of multiple revenue streams. How do we do that as a church? Is you know it it feels like you know how does that connect to creating a culture of generosity? What’s that actually what is that looking like in the here and now today you know, not you know, not fifty years ago? That’s a part of what I love about you. You’re on the cutting edge of you know helping churches in the real world today. When we’re thinking about, particularly multiple revenue streams, help us think that through. What’s that look what is that looking like for in churches today that you you’re working with, that you’re seeing out there?
Phil Ling — Okay, so first of all, it’s a subject I love and I got some great examples I can share with you. But what I always warn everybody: be careful, don’t look for silver silver bullets. There’s there’s not a silver bullet. There’s this to all kinds of little bullets. There’s all kinds of things that we have to do.
Rich Birch — Good. Yep.
Phil Ling — And and one of them is understand understand the landscape today of church, especially North America, of church. So largest wealth transfer in the history of the world going on right now. For the first time in the history of our world. We have four generations alive at the same time. It’s never happened before. So a lot of the folks that have kept your church going as they age and die are transferring their wealth to their heirs. The people that are receiving that are much more consumers of church than stewards of church.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Phil Ling — They sample, they like certain stuff, they move around. Okay, it is what it is. It’s the blameless autopsy. That’s the patient and in the average church in America—and this is less stat that I’ll throw out just because I know nothing about stats except for what smart people do for us—45% of the people in the average church give less than $200 a year. 45% of the people in the average church give less than $200 a year.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Phil Ling — So they’re they’re pre-donors. They’re really not donors. Collectively that whole 45% so nearly after your people give about 1% of your income.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Phil Ling — So you have a couple of different issues. One when I talk about alternate revenue streams, they are important, but they’re they’re not the stable they’re not that, Okay, this is what I need to do.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep, yep.
Phil Ling — It does not take the place it does not take the place of God’s design for his church. So hear that piece.
Rich Birch — Okay, good, good.
Phil Ling — So I believe God designed his his church around intentional generosity.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Phil Ling — So how do we build intentional generosity? And a reason I I shared those stats first because I think why you’re building your intentional generosity, your number one goal in that world is: how do I raise participation? How do I get more people to do it?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — It’s not how do I squeeze and dry. It’s not how do I shake them upside down. It’s like how do I broaden that participation. Because one other stat I’ll throw in there: in the average church in North America, you lose 18% of your giving units every year. Every year 18% are gone or replaced by somebody else. That’s a churn.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — So those new people coming in are gonna give less than the people that left because they haven’t been there very long. So you’re ah, more people attending doesn’t necessarily solve all your your money problems just because you grew in attendance.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, so true.
Phil Ling — So it’s like okay, that’s that piece. The revenue piece I think there’s I can probably go into a lot of sociological stuff. But what I’ve seen from some of our clients are some really interesting ways to use how people think today to help fund God’s church. So I’ll give you an example. So I have I have a church in the midwest that they, and they’re a large growing church, and God’s blessed them. Um I think they had ah a big baptism they recently and had like 700 baptisms or something crazy. So you know, they’re they’re they’re a cool church. Ah they…
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Phil Ling — …they said, you know, if you’re an unchurched person, if you’re a secular person, when do you when are you more open to spiritual thoughts? And they said well one there’s couple of times in your life that often happens. One is when you’re thinking about getting married and when somebody dies and you need to [inaudible]. And so like many at our contemporary churches, they were kind of a big box church. You know it’s really utilitarian, but it’s not necessarily pretty.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — And they said what if we built a a section of our facility, really went face forward into it, and built a really nice state-of-the-art event center kind of a thing that would be fantastic for weddings, fantastic for funerals, and some other stuff like that. And why don’t we do that as a separate org that’s owned by the church so it could actually generate revenue. And then push those funds back.
Phil Ling — Um, and so I started working with them at conception early on. So they’re they’re like a ten year client, and worked all through those those issues.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — We raise money. I think we raised like $8,000,000 ah to get the thing off the ground.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Phil Ling — I was able I’ve been back multiple times, going back next month, but to celebrate with their leaders when the 8,000,000 came in and when the facility was actually finished, and so forth.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Phil Ling — Today they have that facility; it’s called The Reverie. It and I’m not you know my my son’s already married so I don’t have to worry about wedding crap. But in that world if you’re studying do wedding you get on and you look you look at Knot. That used to be like Knot Magazine. Knot everything, deal with Knot.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep, yep yep, tie the knot.
Phil Ling — So they’re the number one Knot wedding venue in the state of Ohio. Number one rated two years in a row.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yep.
Phil Ling — They, it is fantastically thought out from how the kitchen works to how they do events. They’ve got over two hundred events scheduled there this year. Some weddings, funerals, those kind of things of course…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Phil Ling — …but they do corporate events. They worked out deals with hospitals for ongoing education. This is fantastic and they worked out the security how that part of the building can be separated from the other part when it needs to be. All that. And fast forwarding…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — …it now throws back positive cash to the church. And ah…
Rich Birch — Wow!
Phil Ling — …and in they pass the million million dollar mark very quickly. Ah so I don’t…
Rich Birch — Huh, fascinating.
Phil Ling — …when I share those stories and it’s really cool and I take people through it say, hey come visit. We’ll walk you through and show you how they’re doing this stuff. It’s not say, hey do this so you don’t have to ask your people to be generous. That is not how it works. But it is an opportunity using understanding of our society, it says you know what? People expect to pay for these things. And they want to do them in a really cool and nice environment, and hook to ah a healthy church…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — …is a good thing. It gets unchurched people walking into your building…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — …looking around and say, well this is not the freaky thing I thought it might be. You know this looks really cool. This is nice. Maybe I should come back?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Yeah.
Phil Ling — And then they’ve got great stories.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — Now because it’s been up and operational for a couple of years they got great stories now of people that first came to event, first had a wedding there, ends up coming back to church, accepting Christ, getting involved. They have volunteers that work in The Reverie that came through The Reverie. And now they’re circled back around. The coolest story recently is they had…
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Phil Ling — …a couple that got married there had their first child and they named the child Reverie. So I thought that was hilarious. Ah so there’s one one story.
Phil Ling — Ah I’ve got a another client that went a different angle. They bought an Anheuser-Busch distribution center. So this thing is huge. You could pull your semi-truck in, unload all the eggs…
Rich Birch — Wow!
Phil Ling — …and wash it before it went out the other side. Monster.
Rich Birch — Yeah, huge thing. Yeah.
Phil Ling — They were a church that had it been they’ve been in existence in a school bouncing around, even though they’re a good sized church, bouncing around for like 15 years. Never had their own space until they bought this. But when they bought it, they did not build a church.
Phil Ling — They built a state-of-the-art athletic training facility. Indoor soccer fields, basketball, anything you can imagine, and they have church in it. So when you go, I’m I’m honored to preach there every fall, and they’ve got this one one section of it that’s for basketball is 3 high school sized gymnasiums all in one big room. And they set it all up.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — Put carpet squares down, pull out the chairs, all that kind of stuff for their 3 services because they do church in this facility that invites unchurched people to come. They have 500,000 paying people a year come through it. Do the math.
Phil Ling — …their motivation was they live in a very secular city of our country…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …that were not receptive to big churches coming in and building big red buildings with steeples
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — And said, what if how do we build something that the community might view as a positive income see…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — …and at the same time it creates revenue. It’s ah it’s a revenue stream.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Yes.
Phil Ling — So I loved doing the revenue stream stuff got other stories…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — …but I always say this is not in place of generosity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. That’s good. The um, yeah, that’s something for us to be thinking about I think as we look to the future. I’ve heard this in multiple conversations as you know churches are looking to the future realize, hey we need to kind of stretch our thinking, be thinking you know thinking about a bit outside the box, color a little bit outside the lines, to think about what are some different ways we can engage with the community, and you know how does that kind of work from a ah, revenue model point of view. You talked about something earlier. I love that idea. And we’ll kind of loop back into kind of more traditional kind of the generosity side.
Rich Birch — Um, you talked about increasing participation that, hey that should be our goal that there’s you know where we’re when we’re trying to think about the kind of mass of our church, the people who are are disengaged or aren’t giving or are giving less than $200 a year, talk us through that a little bit. Unpack that – what does that look like? How do we do that? How do we increase participation? What are churches seeing? Because I think we often just think about like the other end of the spectrum when we think about generosity. It’s like I got to engage with high net worth individuals to try to extract more cash out of them. But this is kind of the opposite end of the the spectrum. How do we what does that look like?
Phil Ling — So first of all, this is my soapbox. So you know if you can shut me up on I just keep going rambling on. This is my soapbox. This is nothing. It’s jacked up. I’m jacked up on Mountain Dew. Ah, the I think this is a if you look at what your job is as the pastor of a church, leading leaders never goes away regardless of how large your church gets. You always lead leaders. You always cast vision. You want a vision castor and a lot of echoes of vision. So it’s all clear, clear and it’s all the same vision. And you’re always raising that generosity quotient. Well one of the things in order to do the race to generosity quotient, because I’ve already painted the picture. Society’s changing. People don’t just hang out in your church and decide to tithe. That ain’t happening. And we’re going to have more and more of our church’s crater in the next ten years that still have people in them.
Phil Ling — So we we were used to churches dying where there’s 5 cars. There’s one down from my house. But I see every Sunday when I drive by and I it usually has 9 cars and it’s a cute little church, probably been there 130 years. And it’s got 9 cars. So we’re used to that. Okay everybody has died. It’s it’s dying. What we’re not used to is, well attendance isn’t that much isn’t that far off what it was a year ago, but we keep going down financially. Because the people that are there are consuming your product, not necessarily stewards like their moms and their grandmothers were. So all that’s changed. So all right, if you’re going to change that paradigm, one is you have to to actually pay attention to what’s real. What are the metrics?
Phil Ling — And I’m not a huge numbers person. Hired a guy with a degree in statistics years ago. We studied 4000 churches and how they give money. And we came up with an analysis that we use with our our clients. And it’s it’s what I call and I said I think I said it earlier the blameless autopsy. This is the patient. Let’s look at the patient.
Phil Ling — So number of giving units – at what levels do those those units give you dollars? How many are below that $200 ah year threshold we talked about? We’re 45% usually or below that – let’s see about your church. And then we break it down 200 to 1000, 1000 to 5000, 5- to 10,000, 10,000+. Those are the categories for every church in America – big ones, little ones, doesn’t matter, all those. So you want to see where are you in those categories.
Phil Ling — When we talked about the churn rate – 18% of the your giving units leave in a year. All right. Are you different than that? Maybe you’re higher. Maybe you’re lower. Let’s see what that looks like. Those are things you have… If you don’t know this, and I like I say I’m not a numbers guy, but if you don’t know this then you’re what you do is every year when somebody says, how’s church doing? You go by emotion. Well, it feels good. Feels really good.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …[inaudible] on Sunday? How things? Oh felt great. People told me it was a great message. It felt great. But if you don’t have some kind of a metric to say, all right, how many new people are coming in? You know, I I come from a a background of churches that that really stressed baptism, water baptism. And one old pastor you say are you getting your arms wet? You know, are you getting your arms wet? So it’s like, all right. Let’s let’s [inaudible].
Rich Birch — I love that. Yeah, yeah. I love that.
Phil Ling — One of the things you want to count is, how many people give us money? So it’s not just, did we hit budget?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — Where the money? Did we bring in the money…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — …that keeps this place operational? But how many and how many are we losing and how many are we gaining in the year…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — …and then break it down and say, are they moving up as they’re here? So if I’m in your church…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — …and I love what you’re doing and I feel called to your vision, then the longer I’m here I’m probably feeling more and more comfortable and I’m growing in my generosity. If you don’t look at that measure, you don’t know that. So A, you got to do that. You gotta do that.
Phil Ling — I still, and I know I’m the old guy yelling “get off my lawn”, and I’m I’m that old guy. But I still believe in initiatives. We call them campaigns.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Phil Ling — I know that’s not sexy. We call them vision campaigns not capital…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — …because it’s not always capital, it’s not always buildings, but it’s still an initiative where you create an opportunity for people to feel a sense of urgency to take a step to participate. So I’ll give you an example. We had a church recently—a good church, growing church, all this stuff, and and strong financial—but they did a a an initiative and a project. And we stressed participation in entry; people that really weren’t participating before getting involved. 39% of the $5,000,000, 39% – they raised $5,000,000 – 39% of the people that gave that $5,000,000 had never given to the church before. They were there…
Phil Ling — And so it’s the reason you do it is not it’s not like for sermons on generosity and tithing. It’s not, you know it’s got to be ah…
Rich Birch — Vision.
Phil Ling — …a whole process ah of building a culture generosity that celebrates how many people are doing it. You know, my big thing with pastors…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — …is that never talk about money upfront unless you talk about how many people did something. Because it’s it’s the number of participants…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Phil Ling — …that actually get involved. You your number one message in the big room on Sunday is we want everybody to get in the car and go on the trip or we don’t go. That participation…
Phil Ling — …is how we’ve used this, how many people did something. That’s why I don’t jump up and down say, hey, Bob gave a million bucks. Well Bless Bob’s pea-picking heart. I would love to have Bob give a million dollars, but I’d also like to have 500 Marys and Bobs and Joes and Johns all give a thousand bucks or something too.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — So it’s like I have to celebrate that. So you when we’re hanging out out west, you heard me do my small, medium, large room stage. You know it’s like the rooms we communicate in. So the big room is participation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah, and so when we’re trying to encourage participation in that in that big room is that so part of it is not stressing that you know it’s not about like, like you say, Bob gave a million dollars. It’s more like, hey we’re all we’re all in we all want to be engaged in this. We all should be engaged in this. This is ah kind of an all skate. Everybody’s in. What are what are some things that churches are doing to try to increase that participation that are trying to encourage that um, you know that aren’t thermometers hanging on the wall. What is what is that? You know how how do we do that?
Phil Ling — Ah, okay, so in in my world when you talk about generosity in church. You’re always trying to get people to do one of three things.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Phil Ling — Why three? Because I used to be a preacher and everything’s in three. You know, you got to have three.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — So number one, how do I win the first gift? So how am I encouraging somebody to give us money for the very first time? What’s my strategy?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — How do I celebrate, how do I communicate and talk about how many people are doing?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — That that can be a very simple thing. I’ve got churches that really buy into it and get it and there’s one in Delaware that we work with. And they might get up on a Sunday and say, man I am so excited we just talked to our financial secretary and they let us know that we had 27 families last month give money to our ministry for the very first time. How much they gave is not important.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yep.
Phil Ling — It’s just that we’re going to celebrate that.
Phil Ling — So talk about the appropriate things and talk to rooms. The big room which is the most diverse audience.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
People don’t know God, people been walking with God…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — …all over the place in the big room. So what am I doing in the big room? It’s the same. I’m always stressing participation.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — I’m talking about what that looks like. I’m celebrating those numbers. I’m telling the stories of people that do things for the first time. That’s big room conversation.
Phil Ling — Medium size rooms are like-minded groups. How do they look at things? How we’re going to identify the likeminded groups and what their key questions are? And then small room conversation are are my leaders. My high capacity those folks. It’s like I have to keep my leaders a safe place to ask me a question. That’s why you have small room talks.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — Biggest checks come from [inaudible] smallest room. And they’re the only people that ask questions in groups, want audiences more than answers. But that doesn’t mean the question [inaudible]. So like give me a safe place to ask my question.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — So so my long-winded answer to you on that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Phil Ling — …is understand which room you’re communicating in. What is your what is your goal in that room’s communication for the next twelve months?
Phil Ling — And then how are you going to actually measure it to see if it’s working? So if I’m trying to win a first time gift, like I said one, of our strategies, well then I can measure that. How many first time gifts did we get this year? You know that’s ah that’s a win. Second is I’m trying to lift…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — …people that that give us funds. Well, that’s that’s maturation. So can I kind of look down say you know what we had 83 families last year give month ah give more than they did the year before. How much is not important. That’s growth.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So that is that lift. And then third…
Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good.
Phil Ling — …how am I keeping my donors? And keeping is just the care and feeding, is how am I showing love and appreciation and gratitude to those people that that financially drive our ministry?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well so you you mentioned it, you know they’re not capital campaigns, their vision campaigns. Do people still do these things? Like you know, I feel like the interesting thing about folks in this particular kind of slice of the Christian world is I feel like like they… I’ll sometimes hear people who do similar work to you and and um I feel like they spend a lot of time trying to convince us that we shouldn’t it’s almost like, well don’t do capital campaigns, like they’re terrible. You know, which is kind of weird. It’s like isn’t isn’t that what you do? But to be but I do that does it still work? Do is this still a strategy we should be thinking about, you know, or is that just like something that’s like when I… Listen, I talk a lot about church growth and the joke I make there is I know when I say church growth what you think of as a guy standing with a you know ah a folder of cassette tapes from the 80s. I get that.
Rich Birch — Um, is this the same kind of thing? Like the capital campaigns that that vision campaigns, that all went out with the Carter administration? Or where where are we at here?
Phil Ling — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, like I say, I’m the old dude. So I as a church planter I had 18 years as a lead church planter that was never a year when I was not in a project or campaign. Because you’re when you’re planting, you don’t have anything…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …so you’re always raising money, or doing something. And then now for the last twenty years you know I’ve been running all over…
Rich Birch — Yep, sure.
Phil Ling — …the country working with folks. And you said I’ve worked with a thousand churches. So here’s the deal. Um I don’t try to be clever. I don’t try to call things different names so that it sounds different so I can sell you a product that was probably the same thing, but you think it’s different and new, improved, like toothpaste.
Rich Birch — Right? yep.
Phil Ling — You know it’s like it’s like no. What I describe to you, you can call it whatever you want to call it, and you don’t have to do it, but you need to do something just like it. It it it is what is because if you’re going to do a vision campaign—that’s just what I call it; you don’t have to call it that—the vision campaign.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — It is all about what are we gonna measure? We’re gonna measure mobilization. How many people did we get attached to our vision?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — Unanswered questions are stumbling blocks to my participation. You’ve got a great idea, a great vision. If you cannot answer my questions, I don’t participate or I don’t participate very deeply. And that’s why if you just get up on Sunday and say, let’s talk about this cool thing we want to do, and you haven’t done the hard work behind the scenes, you’re might not going to be very successful. So what is my mobilization strategy, my participation strategy? How are we going to measure that? And how are we going to have those conversations in those three rooms? Leaders cast vision; generosity fuels vision. Now think about this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — So when I was a young pup, you know, I grew up in churches where you walked in in the auditorium had a ah, number are a little board up front with little black numbers. They’d slide in what the offering was last week.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Phil Ling — And then might even have a [inaudible] off, you know, or or budget need…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — …you know this is how much we need.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — And so everybody’s gonna watch see what it is.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — Those worlds that that’s over. That day’s over. A lot of the folks wandering in your in your building, it’s not that they don’t want to give to God. They don’t know if they should give to you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — If you will get money to people, not projects. So your trust level.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — Do you do what you say you’re going to do?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rich Birch — The first time you ever raise money. You do it on a promise. If you give me money I promise to do this. From then on, it’s a track record. And you can’t outrun bad track records.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So all that to tell you, do campaigns still work? If if they’re well run with a clear purpose, they’re hugely successful. The best thing I can say is after all the years I’ve done this thing, half of the people that we work with every year, we’ve already worked with in the past. So…
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. That’s good.
Phil Ling — …that to me is the endorsement. We’ve got some that we’ve literally…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that tells you for sure.
Phil Ling — …um, 3, 4, 5 projects with. Why are you doing them? It’s not to get the people that give you money just to give you a little more. That’s the problem with fundraising. I hate that term.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — You have to increase the participation. That has to be an intentional plan.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — So now if you can do all that without doing a campaign plan, fine and fantastic – do whatever you’re going to do. But you got to still measure and accomplish the same things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — I’ve not found anything better. They’re they’re they’re fads that come and go, and and all that kind of junk. And that I get that and that’s fine. Um I think that there is in this my last 2 seconds on the on the campaign. I believe in my heart that the people in your church have different pockets with money that they give. And so their ongoing gift and participation in your ministry is one pocket.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — A specific project, appeal, vision to do something unique is another proj… or another pocket. So every so often you create those…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — …because that second pocket could actually be the first pocket for a lot of your new people.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s so good. Phil, that’s fantastic. So here we are in the spring, I know oftentimes and maybe it’s just me but I feel like a lot of churches think about this stuff in the fall. It’s like you know I know I’ve had that as an executive pastor. It’s like I’m looking at, man, we are running behind. We’re like. Or there’s some new thing we want to do next year and I start thinking about in the fall. But you know should we get started now? Is is spring/summer a good time to you know, even engage with you, start the conversation, start working on things? Are there things we could be working on now to kind of set us up good, either for the the fourth quarter this year, or even into next year if we’re thinking, man, we might need to raise some additional funds in 2025. Talk to us through that.
Phil Ling — Okay, so first of all, all my answers are self-serving.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — So of course, Rich. Yes, you’ve got to.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes, of course now’s the time.
Phil Ling — Okay here here here’s here’s the world I work on.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — Number 1, the bigger the plane you have, the longer the runway you need. So if I’ve got…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — …I’m just trying to raise a little bit of money for a bite size project, well I can run with my face on fire for a few weeks and maybe you do that. But if I’ve got to raise a ah, a large amount of money and participation for a large project, well then of course I need more time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — You always want to start earlier, doesn’t cost you anymore to start early start earlier. We selfishly like being at the table early because the first thing we’re going to do with you is that financial analysis I talked about. Which is to me, it’s kind of like preapproved before you go shopping for your house. It’s scary accurate it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — There’s capacity and giving trends in your church. So then when we sit down with you and and this happens all the time, and you know I’ll sit down with the church and they’ll say, hey we don’t want to go into debt. We want to do this and and cash flow with this project, and we would like to do $10,000,000 project, which is a huge project – $10,000,000. And so I come in…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — …and do the analysis and say okay, that’s great. I think you can safely raise 5 to six million bucks.
Rich Birch — Wow, yes.
Phil Ling — I think that that is within your capacity based upon what I the analysis.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — And and you know then it’s like, well what we think God could could do more. And I said I know God I can do more. I can tell you those stories. But I can also tell you what he does on average. So let me let me just know that what the problem…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s good. Yeah, talk to us a little bit more about the…Oh sorry. Nope go ahead. Sorry.
Phil Ling — Ah well the problem is where far down the road on saying this is what we want to do before you come back and say, well how how do we know what our capacity looks like? So so that’s why my my argument bring somebody like us to the table earlier, so we can do an analysis with you. It doesn’t limit God. But it says, all right look the blameless autopsy number of giving units.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — At what levels they give…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — …how often you gain a new one. That paints the picture forensically of what people will do. Now there can be outliers.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — You can have, you know, Edith decides to give you two million bucks and and historically she gives about $20,000 a year. Okay, that’s cool. That’s an outlier. That’s fantastic. That’s great. But do that.
Phil Ling — As far as seasonal, um you want to raise money because we’re going for participation so we want most of our people to be here. So in most churches that’s spring and fall projects. So it’s like all right if we want money for the fall of 2024, then right now in the spring we should be building this machine. If we want money in the spring of 2025 and it’s a good big plane that’s got to get off the ground, and we still want to start about now. So pick when and then back up and say, okay, do we have enough time? I won’t be a lightning rod for your failure. I will stand on the table if you don’t have enough time. I say you’re you’re, you’re smoking dope; that this is too much this is too short a window. Um, ah…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, too fast or whatever…
Phil Ling — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you got to push it back. We got to push it back a season or something like that. Yeah.
Phil Ling — Correct, correct. So so let somebody like us help you figure that out as far as when you want to do that as far as scope of project. But that means you start earlier have these conversations early summer goes dead so you want to get a lot of stuff in figured out in the spring before you get into a dull time in the summer. And then what’s that fall look like. Fall windows are different for different churches in different parts of the world. People like you up in Canada have a little snow sometimes in the winter. Not much where I live.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — So so go ahead I interrupt.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Well and I think that you know and it probably goes without saying but I would strongly suggest you reach out to Phil um, before like if you’re thinking about a building project, like to get to super tactical, if you’re thinking about like we’re you know we got a new campus or we’re trying to build something, man in the same way that you’d be crazy to you know to start shopping houses before you looked at the mortgage, you know you know, this is the same thing. You really should talk with Phil before you even really get too far down that process. This should be the first step. Not the second or third step. Not after you’ve talked to some architect who’s drawn some pretty paper. It’s like no, let’s let’s have this conversation early on. The size, having been through a number of these, the size and scoping is so important on the frontend financially and will save you so many hassles, you know, down the road. Um, you know that’s that’s a great, you know, that’s a great thing.
Rich Birch — Um, talk to us a little bit about the financial analysis. We’re kind of wrap up here. I think this is a great practical step. You know I’ve said to multiple church leaders, you should just hire Phil’s guys to do the financial analysis. This is what a great tool. You know your numbers better. Talk to us about the financial analysis a little bit more detail. What is that? How do I access that? All that kind of stuff.
Phil Ling — So it’s great. Honestly, if somebody reaches out and tries to hire us to do something, most of the time I’ll say, hey, slow down you know before you you hire the the whole enchilada, buy this little piece. I’ve never had anybody buy this little piece in all these years and complain that it wasn’t worth the money, because it’s it’s worth it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So the analysis, like I said, we’ve analyzed a whole bunch of churches to try to figure out what churches should look like on paper. And then we look at yours. We’ll go back a couple of years and you’re you’re giving and we use everybody’s databases. We can figure it all out. Sometimes we just get backdoors to their processes and and pull those numbers. What I tell churches, they’re your numbers. So when I sit down with the church board, it’s like some of you guys, know these numbers, and gals. You know these numbers. I’m going to tell you what they mean.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — So when I look at it and say, all right, your church brings in $2,000,000 a year. It’s like, all right, where does it come from? Well it comes from this many units. And they come in these categories. So we have this percentage in this category, this category, this category. Every one of those things means something about you going forward. So what does your capacity look like? So you say well we like to do a project that this size. All right. Well that that’s within your capacity.
Phil Ling — If if God has laid something on your heart that’s bigger than what I see, that doesn’t mean you don’t do it. It’s just that means, Okay, how are we going to eat the elephant one bite at a time.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — It doesn’t mean that we’re going to say no to the vision. It’s like we just want to be prudent…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …about don’t build a tower without counting the cost right.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — The analysis in my humble but accurate opinion, (that’s what I tell my son: my humble but accurate opinion), analysis…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — …is something that you do every year for the rest of your life. Once we do it for you and show you how to do it, it’s like here, this is how you pull your numbers, run them through. You can have us do it or you can try to do it yourself. That’s fine. And it it will it’s a discipleship tool. So this one little caveat, one little caveat. We’re going to break down your giving units and put on in four categories. So if Phil and Georgia Ling, if my family is in your church, and Phil and Georgia were there in 2023, and they were there in 2024—so both years—how much did they given 23? How much they given 24?
Phil Ling — All right, what we’re going to look at is that are they above pace where they were the year before? Are they kind of about on pace of where they were the year before? Were they a little off pace or falling down a [inaudible] percentage is falling down. And then the fourth category is what I call watch.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — The watch category says Phil and George are giving less than half the year before, or they quit giving completely. Here’s what I know. People quit giving you money before they physically walk out your door. And so it’s one of your disciples opportunities…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Phil Ling — …where they’re waving their hand and saying I’ve got a crisis; something’s going on in my life. It’s usually not that they’re mad at you. Pastors always think everybody’s mad at and that’s why they left. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just stuff happened.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — And so now what if you had a list and you printed it off and said, hey you know what? There’s 32 families here in the watch category. Are they physically still here? Are their kids checked into our children’s ministry? What’s going on in their lives? Are they in any of our small groups? It’s a discipleship tool for you. So that’s why I say you need to do that every year for the rest of your life.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. That’s good. Well friends, I would encourage you, I’ve said that off the podcast, I’ve said that to lots of church leaders. This is a super helpful first step, great way to kind of begin ah the conversation. And you know, Phil, you’re just just a wealth of knowledge as I’ve been taking pages of notes here today. Again I really appreciate that. If let’s, as we wrap up today’s conversation, if people want to track with you ah or with the organization, where do we want to send them online? I know we’ve got a ah resource that we want to download. Talk to us all about that.
Phil Ling — So go to our website is thegivingchurch.com, thegivingchurch.com and there’s some things there you can download for free. There’s ah a pdf that’s “5 Ways to Grow Your Giving” and it’s worth it. Of course it’s free. Of course it’s worth it. But it has value. There’s a book on there that we wrote a few years back that talks about the changing giving patterns in North America. It’s The coming tsunami. So that’s a little bit of a horror show on things that are happening.
Phil Ling — So covid was a wake up call. Covid and the pandemic…
Rich Birch — Man, so true.
Phil Ling — …and and shutting down churches was a wake up call. We were told by society that we’re not an essential institution.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy. Right.
Phil Ling — And it’s like okay so strip clubs are essential, bars were essential, liquor stores were essential. We weren’t essential. I don’t blame the world. I’m not a person who screams at the world. I think that’s our fault that we weren’t essential.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Phil Ling — So what are we doing to be healthier going forward. If all you try to do is hope your offering is good every week so you can pull off next Sunday, eventually you’re going to have something crater. Ah, it’s just the patterns are changed. So what is your intentional plans? We try to give you some values.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — Go and get the “5 Ways to Grow Your Giving” PDF – it’s free – thegivingchurch.com
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, we’ll put links to that in the show notes as well. Phil, I really appreciate you being here. Thanks so much for all that you’re doing to help so many different churches. Appreciate being on the show today. Thank you, sir.
Phil Ling — Honored to be here. Thanks, man.
Beyond Sundays: Liquid Church’s 24/7 Ministry Model with Lauren Bercarich
Jun 20, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re joined today by Lauren Bercarich, the Digital Director at Liquid Church, with seven campuses in New Jersey as well as a robust online campus.
Digital ministry is no longer a supplementary aspect of church operations; it has become a cornerstone for reaching and engaging people. Tune in as Lauren delves into the strategic launch of the Liquid Church app and how to use digital to both invite and disciple people.
Digital is your front door. // The stories of so many visitors have digital beginnings, whether they discover your church on social media, stumble across an ad on Google, or begin attending church online. But more than a reach strategy, Liquid Church wants to use digital ministry to encourage seven days of discipleship. This approach extends gospel influence beyond 90-minute Sunday services, fostering continuous spiritual development 24/7.
Engage in the app. // Rather than a static “billboard” of announcements, the Liquid Church app is designed to encourage ongoing spiritual connection between congregants. The homepage includes three daily habits—gratitude, prayer, and scripture reading—and is intended to shepherd people through experiences based on what’s happening in the church. The prayer requests feature allows users to submit requests and pray for each other in real time. Devotionals and reflection questions include space for journaling and sharing responses. And users can journey together with others in similar life stages while engaging with current teaching series.
A three-legged stool. // Lauren underscores that there are three essential components needed to launch an app well: financial resources, leadership buy-in, and promotion. Adequate funding is needed for developing and maintaining digital platforms as well as building a dedicated team to manage and create content. Support from church leadership is critical, ensuring that digital initiatives are prioritized and integrated into the church’s overall vision. This is a cultural shift for your organization, not just a departmental initiative, and your leadership needs to become advocates. Lastly, promotion needs to go beyond the initial launch to include an ongoing adoption strategy.
Maintaining your church app. // It’s essential to have a plan beyond the launch of your church app. It won’t create engagement on its own; you’ll need staff to maintain it and create new content that connects with what’s happening in the life of your church. Look at the people already in your organization and identify those who are super engaged and passionate about digital. Rather than hiring from outside, elevate people internally.
Digital and in-person. // For the first time since the pandemic, Liquid Church is seeing both in-person attendance and online church attendance go up and to the right. Rather than seeing these two options as competing, view digital and in-person as a dual strategy. Digital is your front door and reaches people. But it also can shepherd people seven days a week, making them feel more a part of your community and helping to close your back door.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, Rich here from unSeminary. Super glad that you have decided to tune in today. This is, listen, you’re in for an incredible treat today. Ah you know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, but this week is like par excellence. We’ve got Lauren Bercarich with us. She is the Digital Director at Liquid Church, which is one of the fastest growing churches in the country with 7, if I’m counting correctly, in-person campuses in New Jersey, plus a robust church online. Ah Lauren is a friend. It’s always fun to meet new people online ah, through the podcast, but today it’s great to talk to someone who I know in the real world. So Lauren, welcome. So glad that you’re here today.
Lauren Bercarich — Oh I’m so honored to be here, Rich. Thank you so much.
Rich Birch —Yeah, this is going to be great. Fill in the picture like tell us that that’s like the super boilerplate about Liquid kind of you know, paint that that picture a little bit more vividly. Give us a sense of the ministry and your role within the church.
Lauren Bercarich — Sure. So Liquid Church, we are in New Jersey, which sometimes we joke we’re like, yes there are Christians in New Jersey, folks. We do have 7 physical locations. Our vision is to saturate the state of New Jersey with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but we also have a very robust online and digital ministry. Um, we are just a very dynamic ah church. We like to be culturally relevant. We like to be bold and engaging. You know we often people would describe us as seeker-friendly. We want to get people in the door but man we want to go deep with you once you get inside.
Rich Birch — So true. Well friends, I Liquid is…so there’s a number of churches across the country that I that I point to all the time and Liquid is one of them ah for a lot of reasons. But I was so you know pulling back the curtain a little bit, I was saying to Lauren, I keep telling people you should be downloading Liquid’s app. And like literally I’ve stood there and got people to download it while we’re meeting face-to-face. And I’m like you need to register for this thing and engage and then you need to do what they’re doing. And so I’ve said that enough times that I said I actually probably should get Lauren on the on the podcast to actually talk about it and kind of look up under the hood a little bit. But so we’re going to get to the app. But but before we get there, let’s take a step back and just talk about digital ministry in general.
Rich Birch — When you think about digital ministry at Liquid, kind of set that parameters for us. What do you mean by digital ministry? What is that? What are you trying to do? How does that fit into how do you think about that? How does that connect to the kind of overall mission of trying to saturate the state with the with the message of Jesus?
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah, that’s a great question because digital is all encompassing, really, but my vision is that we would um, pursue seven days of discipleship.
Rich Birch — So good.
Lauren Bercarich — That church is more than just 90 minutes on a Sunday. We want to encourage people to read their bibles, to pray, to go deep, and to grow throughout the week and we can use digital tools like the app um in order to do that. And so we’re creating amazing content that’s different content that we’re creating. And when I try to paint the picture for people, I tell them about my team. And it’s like hey we’ve got the techies, right? We’ve got the the developers and the people who are making it all happen. We’ve got content creators who are creating amazing devotionals, written blogs, and audio content, etc. We’ve got our communications and marketing team who’s helping getting the word out there. And then we’ve got church online, so you can actually have that service experience in community and feel like you’re part of that campus as well. So it’s kind of all of that. But really I’d hone in on the idea of like we want to be available, reaching people and discipling people 24/7.
Rich Birch — So good. I love that. And you know, friends, I’ve said in other contexts that I really do think the future of the this is exactly what we’re going to be getting ourselves into in in the future. That we are our, for lack of better word, our business model, our approach what we’ve done, we’ve typically been seen as an event organization. You come on the weekend. We provide a 90 minute compelling experience. But what we’re seeing increasingly with fast-growing churches and churches that are making huge impacts in their community is they’re seeing themselves in that same way. You you know the way Lauren described with their seven days of discipleship. It’s really a flow and yeah events are a part of that. The weekend is a part of that, but it it doesn’t end with that. Talk us through um ah so I want play bit of a devil’s advocate…
Lauren Bercarich — Sure.
Rich Birch — …and and be um, you know the person who is super skeptical of that. And say like yeah isn’t that all just razzmatazz, like don’t shouldn’t we just be trying to get people to show up on Sundays? How does it relate to, how does all of this online stuff and digital relate to the in-person stuff we do?
Lauren Bercarich — Oh my goodness. It’s it’s just incredible. So first of all, let me say that digital is your front door to your church.
Rich Birch — So true.
Lauren Bercarich — So it is directly connected. We just had a staff meeting at Liquid Church and each of our campus pastors got up and shared a baptism story. We had baptisms and they’re telling the story of one individual that stood out to them. Let me tell you how those stories started. Um somebody they found us on social media. We were telling them to put their football jerseys on, they decided this is wacky, let’s go to church.
Lauren Bercarich — Ah somebody was googling. They had some concerns and they found one of our Google ads – digital got them in the door, right? That’s part of our SEO strategy. Somebody else actually asked a friend. The friend told them about Liquid and they thought, you know what? There is a physical location 6 minutes from my house. I’m going to go to church online. I’m going to be there for six months or so…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.
Lauren Bercarich — …feel comfortable, and then show up. So many of the stories have digital beginnings. So think of it as both a reach strategy, right? The first time somebody walks through your door, I just want to be clear. They’re not just showing up…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — …having never researched you, looked at you, checked you out, all of that. So that’s part of it. Um, but also, you can go deep digitally. Um, so on our app it’s just incredible. There’s the ability, we have a lot of discipleship tools to pray for others in community. You can submit your own prayer requests, um, you can pray for others, and really get a sense of what’s going on and support them. You can be reading the bible and going through um, bible reading journeys with us and devotionals.
Lauren Bercarich — And just to make this real for you, I want to paint a picture that some of these digital interactions lead to deeper physical interactions. So I attend a physical campus on Sundays. I go to our um…
Rich Birch — How old fashioned, how old fashioned.
Lauren Bercarich — I know, right? I’m a Digital Director who goes to physical campus. But I’m always in the app. I’m submitting my prayer requests.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — And you know, um, one of my children has been struggling this year in school, had a really important meeting at the school coming up, and man did I need prayer. Not only did I put it in the app, I told them the exact time of the meeting, be lifting me up in prayer. I show up to church on Sunday and my child’s um, small group leader in Liquid family in the kids ministry pulls me to the side and says, how did the meeting go?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lauren Bercarich — I’ve been praying for you.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s vivid.
Lauren Bercarich — Oh my goodness, I wanted to know how it went.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — So we had this deep interaction. She reveals to me, I had no idea, she’s been an educator for 27 years.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lauren Bercarich — She knows all about the process we’re going through. She offers her support. How can she help us, how can she support us through the season. I mean we’re hugging we’re crying in the lobby.
Rich Birch — So good.
Lauren Bercarich — It would have been one of those cursory, hey how you doing interactions. Oh fine. You know I’m not just going to kind of spill my beans um at the check-in station at Liquid family. But what I found is when you’re putting yourself out there in some of these digital ah formats, we’re forming these deeper bonds that are spilling over into our physical location. So…
Rich Birch — Um, that’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — it is not just um, smoking mirrors. It’s the real deal.
Rich Birch — Oh I love that. So let’s talk a little bit about the app. So you know you’ve caught, friends, as you’re listening in um, even just this one function of like, hey I want to share a prayer request. So kind of talk us through for someone who who hasn’t seen it hasn’t you know it isn’t isn’t on your app. Talk us through kind of how are you going beyond, what like I’ve seen and maybe it’s just maybe I’m just not looking in the right place. But I feel like I see so many church apps that feel just like billboards they feel just like oh this is just an ad or it’s just a wrapper on their webpage. It’s like, yeah, I know it’s an app but it’s like this is all the stuff that’s there. That’s not what you’re doing. Talk us through how you’re making these kind of these digital engagements with real people.
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah, sure so we actually relaunched our app um this past year. So I just want to share with everybody that previously we were in that same camp. Our app was kind of just this marketing billboard. It was kind of static content. Um, you know, maybe it had the give functionality that you could use weekly, but there wasn’t really a reason for you to engage in that app beyond a Sunday. And Sunday was really kind of cursory functionality.
Lauren Bercarich — We actually found a strategic partner in Apollos. They’re um, a company out there who is developed this beautiful app template that you can take and make your own by being part of their community. And the goal there is to create an app that really promotes um, discipleship and community and engagement. So it isn’t static at all. So if you downloaded the Liquid church app, which I encourage everybody to do, when you landed on our homepage what you’re going to see are our daily habits, which we want to promote to everybody out there. There’s 3 daily habits: gratitude, prayer (which I was just speaking about), and scripture, which is reading the bible. But we actually shepherd people through um experiences so we have seasons of what we’re reading through a particular book of the bible or it’s thematic or we’re doing video devotionals. And then there’s always reflection questions and you can actually journal in the app and you share those journals with the community as well. So you’re like learning from each other and seeing each other’s personal reflections.
Lauren Bercarich — And you can go beyond that. Like we’re putting in custom digital content for our core audiences. Um, you might think of them just as blogs, but for parenting, for young adults. Um, we have ways that we’re just going to um launch new communities where people can engage in communities and go on these journeys together by location, but also by felt needs. So we’re going to launch here shortly a 21 day journey it’s 21 days um to foster a thriving marriage.
Rich Birch — So cool.
Lauren Bercarich — And so we’re all going to be in there doing that together. So it’s really about community engagement, spiritual habits. Um, it’s not a marketing billboard at all.
Rich Birch — So I love that. So gratitude prayer and scripture. You know you can get a sense even by what you’re when you’re hearing what that looks like, friends, that how those could be kind of engagement pieces or designed for kind of community engagement. There are like social network-esque feel to it, right? It’s like you can, talk us through what what does that look like. So how how do I , you know, how do I kind of identify myself within the app?
Lauren Bercarich — Right. So you have a profile. So if you went in there and you were to follow me, you could, you’d see my little photo holding my daughter. You can follow people, right? So you could search for your friends, follow them in the apps. You get notified when they submit a prayer request or they submit a journal. So that way you’re really tracking with those individuals.
Lauren Bercarich — And I hear that from people. they’re like I’m praying for you all the time like they’re they’re tracking with me in the app you can like somebody’s journal, right? So you’re saying, oh wow, I really liked what they wrote on that give them a heart.
Lauren Bercarich — You pray for people so you actively you see their prayer requests and you’re actively pressing that button saying that you’re praying for them, and they’re going to get notified that hey the community is praying for you right now. So you get that gosh I feel so good when you really need somebody praying for you and you get that. So it really is this give and take.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — And what I’d say is it’s just the beginning.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — Um, what’s so exciting is that, you know, digital’s always evolving and there’s always new features and I think it’s just going to get better and better.
Rich Birch — Yeah, the thing that struck me and it correct me if I’m wrong on this. This is one of the things I’ve said behind your back, is you know like I’ve got the Starbucks app and the Starbucks app is a digital experience. But it actually enhances my in-person experience. So like I can order ahead of time. And I get those stars and stuff – I really don’t know what those stars are for. I I feel good when I get them I’m like wow that’s nice. Um, but it it enhances the I it it makes my like it makes my better experience when I go in to to go to Starbucks.
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And there is all kinds of other content. They have the like if I really want to know where the beans come from. My my impression of your experience. What we’ve done with Apollos here is similar where it’s like it it I get that it would be a standalone experience that it could be a standalone digital experience. But it’s even better when you pair it with and in person. Is that how do you think about that? How do those two work together?
Lauren Bercarich — Oh my goodness. So we think about this in such incredible detail. We have our year mapped out with like every day what is getting in the app…
Rich Birch — Oh very cool.
Lauren Bercarich —…and how are we partnering what we’re doing with our teaching series and what we’re going through on Sundays.
Rich Birch — So good.
Lauren Bercarich — So let me give you an example that just knocked our socks off. We did a prayer series um called Moving Mountains…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lauren Bercarich — …for six weeks and you know we were teaching people essentially how to pray in new ways. Really pushing them outside kind of these comfortable prayers to pray dangerously, to be bold, to try to follow God’s will instead of our wishes. But there was a challenge from the beginning you’re going to do two things with the series, guys. You’re going to get in a group and you’re going to be in the app praying for each other. And we even set a goal – we are going to pray 100,000 prayers in this app over the course of the next…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — …six weeks. And we reported back every single week. In fact, when you walked into any physical location, every TV in that location was scrolling prayers from the app.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Lauren Bercarich — Our teaching pastors were showing them up on the side screens, actively praying for them in the middle of the sermon. I mean it was interwoven. You couldn’t separate…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Lauren Bercarich — …the app from this series. And then at the end um, we reported back hey it was 150,000 prayers prayed.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — And you could feel a spiritual temperature just rising.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — Um, it was really incredible. So it is not like, ok yes, there’s this private practice. You can do your daily habits and that can be a part of like your morning devotional routine. But this is something we are weaving into everything we’re doing at church. And it doesn’t stop there so you know you go from Moving Mountains.
Lauren Bercarich — Then you might say hey um at Easter time we did some Lenten devotionals. We read through the gospels of Mark and Luke um up to Easter. We had seven of our pastors reading them. This was an audio product. And they would read the gospel, one chapter a day, reflect on it…
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Lauren Bercarich — …give everybody a reflection question to journal on in the app, pray us out, and that was leading us up to Easter. People loved it.
Rich Birch — Yes, so good.
Lauren Bercarich — We had thousands of people in there. And even hearing from people who’d never been in the app before saying, that was the thing that got me in…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Lauren Bercarich — …like that really spoke to me. And so we are constantly creating new content, new ways of reaching people…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — …and tying them to our teaching.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Love that. Yeah, this was ah so ah, friends who are listening in to you know Tim Lucas is the lead pastor at, and a friend of mine. And you know we’re on the texting relationship. We’ll text it quite a bit. And he was, I remember when there was that whole prayer thing going on. And that was like his bullet point. He was like we had, so you know and I was like you know come on. He’s a friend so I could say this kind of thing. I’m I’m like that seems like a teaching pastor kind of thing to say. 150,000 prayers? I’m like how is that possible? Like I that was actually one of the first times I sat up and was like, you’re doing what? What is happening over there? That’s that’s crazy.
Rich Birch — Talk talk to me about the launch of the app. Because I think um, you know my impression is that there’s a lot of churches that kind of halfheartedly commit to this kind of thing, but that isn’t my impression of what you’ve done. It’s like you’re trying to figure out how we integrate this thing in and talk us to what that looked like. So the launch, and then how do you keep it on kind of people’s radar as we go forward?
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah, so I’d say so one of the challenges I feel like for people, Rich, is I I feel like you need three things to launch an app well. And a lot of people don’t have all three.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Lauren Bercarich — And I say it’s like a 3-legged stool. So if you’re missing one and then the stool topples over. One is that you actually need the money, right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Lauren Bercarich — So you need the money to um, get your strategic partner, like we did with Apollos, partner with them. You need the staff to run it, all of that. Some people get the money, but nothing else.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — You actually need leadership buy in. So if it’s just a departmental initiative, this is not going to win. Guys…
Rich Birch — If it the nerds are the ones that are going to do it, like go get that, let the nerds do it, that what doesn’t work?
Lauren Bercarich — Ah, yes, sometimes it’s just like a techie project…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Lauren Bercarich — …and it doesn’t even take on in the staff.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lauren Bercarich — Guys, this is not a departmental initiative. This is a cultural shift for your organization.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Lauren Bercarich — And um, you need total leadership buy in because you can’t get it to partner with like a prayer series like we did if your lead pastor and your executive team aren’t fully on board, right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Lauren Bercarich — So you need them on board. And then they help to be evangelists for this as well. And then third, you need promotion if you build it. They will not just show up. They’re not going to just come.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — Um, that’s something as a former coms director I’ve always pushed against. You really need to tell people what this is, how to get it, how it will serve them. So when we launched the app we did a six week um launch period where there was no way that you could escape the fact…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — …that we were launching an app. I had it it was total communication saturation, right?
RIch Birch — Yes, great.
Lauren Bercarich — But that is a season and that’s honestly the easiest part. The hardest part is what I call the adoption time, app adoption. And that to me never ends.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — That is when we calendar out our whole year and give you reasons always to get in the app, to experience something new. We’re always launching new features and new reasons and ways to engage people. Because my ah goal would be that everybody’s in the app that people would understand, Oh this is how Liquid Church does things. Everybody’s in the app.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — Everything we do is through the app. And so it really becomes ingrained in our culture.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so let’s pick kind of a hypothetical situation. Let’s assume I’m a church of you know like a thousand people.
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So it’s it’s they’re not um, it’s not a giant church is not, you know, it’s not 10,000. It’s a thousand, but it’s also not a small church. These people have some resources. They’ve got some staff, time. You know what would be some potholes that we should avoid now that you’ve launched or that you’ve talked with other churches that like oh you can see where this kind of launch or, you know, branching out into this kind of thing falls apart. Where it’s like oh that just that didn’t go how we were hoping it would go. What would be a put some potholes to avoid?
Lauren Bercarich — Um, I think that people need to have a plan beyond launch. I think a lot of people don’t have that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — There is a lot of energy that gets put into the maintenance of the app, right? So if we are doing um, scripture readings. That’s 365 days of scripture readings.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — Now there’s the there’s the way to do that that’s not too complex, but somebody actually has to go in there and say, what scripture are we reading on what date, when does that go live. So I think sometimes people want to make this run without actually devoting any staff or permanent resourcing to it. It is not a tech tool that can just thrive on its own.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lauren Bercarich — You actually need the staffing behind it to help run it. And I think it pays dividends, of course, you know, hey I’m a digital staffer.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — But you do need to invest in that and I think that’s one of the pitfalls that I’ve heard about.
Rich Birch — Yeah, can you talk to us a little bit about what that what is the staffing structure look like. You know, so folks forget to give some perspective, you know, Liquid Church is 5000 people, in that general in that range.
Lauren Bercarich — Yep.
Rich Birch — You know, this a fast growing church. Um, but so talk to me about kind of staffing investment. What does that look like for, you know, for you? Where are you at today? You know what did you launch with? Obviously you always want more so what, you know, what is what’s it going to look like down the road?
Lauren Bercarich — Ah, so true.
Rich Birch — Advocate for I’m sure Tim’s listening in, Dave’s listening in…
Lauren Bercarich — That’s right…
Rich Birch — …Kayra’s listening in, so now is the time.
Lauren Bercarich — …approve that new staff role.
Rich Birch — Yeah fun.
Lauren Bercarich — Um, so I was already on staff at Liquid Church. I was the Communications Director. Um, but I was just you know banging the drum that we need to lean into digital. We need to invest here and they said hey, you know what? We think you’re right. Why don’t you lead that? Um, which was not the direction I thought we were going to go.
Lauren Bercarich — So it started with me and it’s like what’s your division of what this department needs to be? And what I really wanted it to be was, hey we need the techies kind of under my purview. So what we did is we actually split our IT department.
Lauren Bercarich —So we have a traditional IT department, right, that’s running the infrastructure of our buildings, and the computers for everybody, and taking care of all of that and purchasing products, etc. But we have a Digital Products team that is helping me…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lauren Bercarich — …with um our church management system Rock RMS, that is helping with the app development, website development, and leading on all of that. So they help us run incredibly fast, and they’re specialists in what they do. I can’t do what they do.
Lauren Bercarich — Then I have digital content creators and to be creative guys we took two part-time employees, made them full time, and halftime. They are doing digital content creation, but it was amazing because they already knew our culture.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — They knew our voice, they were people that we could put out front, right? So we took a teaching pastor who was doing 20 hours teaching. Now he’s full time, and he can be ah front facing on our digital content. Same with one of our worship leaders. Um, then we actually invested in a church online pastor. So before it was like oh church online just happens in the margins.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — No, we’re actually going to fully invest in the care. And so we actually moved somebody. So we moved staff as well. So we took somebody super equipped for that. So one of the things that I like to say is look in your organization right now. Who are some of the most dynamic people…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — …super engaged, really passionate about digital, and maybe elevate them, shift their role. Because initially I was thinking, hey there’s an expert out there, and they’ve got it all figured out. But there really doesn’t exist because this is a new frontier for churches. So I think that elevating people internally is a great way to advance your digital ministry.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So what is you know when you look up over the horizon, what are some questions that you’re wrestling with on the digital ministry side, as you kind of think about the future? You know, I’m thinking like additional, you know, channels or other, you know, other you know new things. You’ve got these kind of core, you know, gratitude, prayer, scripture. You’re doing content. Is there other things within the app or other areas that you’re thinking about as you look to the future?
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah, so I’d say one of the challenges with digital is there’s always so many options.
Rich Birch — So true.
Lauren Bercarich — What are the best things to do?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — What can you actually get done?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — What is should you prioritize? So that’s one of the biggest things. Because sometimes I will just say you can get that shiny object syndrome. Oh! Got to do this new thing.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, let’s try this.
Lauren Bercarich — Oh no, we got to do this.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — And then you just end up being a little frazzled and frenetic. So where we want to lean into this is actually continuing to enhance some of the features that already exist. So like doubling down in the prayer feature which we feel like as an MVP and we’re working with our developer on that, right? So you can have more interaction, more care, more engagement on some of the existing features.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — Um I mentioned to you the community feature. That will be a whole new tab on our app that we’re releasing here in a couple of months. And we’re putting people through this ah, we’re piloting this marriage journey, these ah campus communities. But if it takes off, I mean we’re going to have tons of journeys, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — We’re already talking about what are we going to do for our parenting series? Should we launch a parenting journey? Should we be helping moms? Should they have their own community within the app?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool. Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — So that’s one avenue that we’re really leaning into and I think pursuing. Um, yeah…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — …I’d say that’s where we’re really focusing right now.
Rich Birch — Um, talk to me about the um this is kind of taking 6 steps back, but to something we talked about you know earlier on. What what is the connection that you’re seeing between all of this digital work and in-person attendance? Like how are are you able to kind of connect those two? Are you seeing any kind of connection? How does all that you know work together? I know there’s church leaders that are listening and they’re like, yeah that all sounds good, but like I really just want people to show up on Sundays. What are you seeing on that front?
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah, so we truly believe that digital is a contributor to the growth that we are seeing at Liquid Church. Um I’ll just give you an example that um, just a few weeks ago we crossed the 5000 threshold in in-person attendance on a Sunday nd we hadn’t hit that mark ah, post-covid. Ah we had hit that mark pre-pandemic. And it was like wow that’s incredible. Now if you just look at that, you could say, hey we’ve arrived. We’re back. We don’t need to focus on digital. But let me tell you there were another 2700 people on church online.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — Both church online and in person are up and to the right. For the first time ever both are growing and thriving.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Lauren Bercarich — And I believed that that was possible when we started launching this ministry back in 2022. I’m like I know both can be up and to the right. And we’re there because we’re investing in both. And I believe that’s a digital products too, and shepherding people seven days a week is bringing them back in through the doors. You know we talk about closing the back door. Digital actually does both things.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — It reaches people, brings them in the front door. Um and it gives you all these new avenues, ways to reach them. But I also think it helps to keep people because they can feel connected…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lauren Bercarich — …more than just at that event-centric Sunday service or any other, you know, events that they’re attending, that they can really feel part of a community.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s great. And and yeah, we’re seeing the same thing in our church. That our the statistics on church online, our digital stuff are accelerating while at the same time are, so very similar, we’re hitting, you know, largest attendance non-holiday attendance ever. Um, and both are driving, you know, we’re in the middle of a capital campaign right now. And it’s like I was just joking with our lead pastor this week, I was like I don’t know that we raised enough money, or are we raising enough money. Like so Both of them are you know are accelerating. And I’ve I’ve seen that from multiple churches that it’s like hey people that are are continuing to invest on both sides are seeing, you know seeing great results. We we live in a digital age.
Lauren Bercarich — Yes.
Rich Birch — People, it’s like it sounds like so um, you know like apple pie, of course we do. But I but there are church leaders that are missing that they’re missing that connection ah between those two things. I want to take this is like side kind of like sidestep this content for a second…
Lauren Bercarich — Sure.
Rich Birch — …and just honor you for your leadership at ah, you know at Liquid. You know, ah so you’re doing such a great job. You’re killing it. You’re doing an amazing, you know I I said earlier in the podcast, friends, that Lauren’s a person I know in the real world. And to me you’re an example of the kind of person that the body of Christ is just so thankful to have working day in day out.
Rich Birch — Tell us a little bit about your background because I’m sure people are listening in are saying, Lauren like speaks in sound bites and is like incredibly articulate and knows her stuff. What is she’ve done all her life? Where does, what is happening? So talk to us a little bit about your your background. And I I say that because there could be church leaders that are listening in today, again that church of a 1000, 2000 people are like, I’m not sure who can run this thing.
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And it might be someone like who has a background similar to yours so talk us through that.
Lauren Bercarich — Ah yeah, that’s a great point. I’m so glad that you asked that. Actually my background is in journalis. I was a TV news reporter. So I always tell people I’m like, you know those people who stand out in the snowstorm, or like blowing sideways in the hurricane, that was me.
Rich Birch — Yep, that was you.
Lauren Bercarich — So I did local TV news reporting. And then I transitioned into public relations which is, you know, promoting the products and books of your clients. I was attending Liquid Church – it was my church home. And then my campus pastor was just like, well hey, you know we’re hiring a communications director. I had no intention of moving into ministry. And can we peel back the curtain a little bit? Guys, Rich was my first boss at Liquid. So um, I’m just so grateful um, that that that door opened for me and that I was able to walk through it.
Lauren Bercarich — But yes, I was in the role of communications director for 7 years at Liquid Church, running all our um communications and marketing. But I was super passionate about digital and I would say the pandemic gave me a nudge because I just started saying like, hey um we need to be running online things for our parents for liquid family.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — We need to be running these online things for um, emotional health and wellness with our discipleship team.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — And I was just so passionate about it and honestly deflated when we started to think that, oh we got to put digital aside in order to lift up in-person.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lauren Bercarich — But I’m so glad that we recognized actually both can thrive together and at the same time. And so I was promoting it, I was pitching it to our leadership, and then they tapped me on the shoulder, and said you run it. I will say I had a little bit of that impostor syndrome of I don’t know. I it’s the first time I got offered um a job or a promotion, you’re like are you sure? Am I the right person? But.
Rich Birch — Did you get the wrong name? Is there someone else supposed to be here?
Lauren Bercarich — Yes.
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Lauren Bercarich — But I will say it served me really well because I I can be that strategic thinker. I can be that communicator. I can see the vision for it. But I have the team to do the things that I’m personally not equipped to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lauren Bercarich — So I can have the tech teammates who are just phenomenal um, who can help me push forward into the future. And so um I think we make an incredible team.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lauren Bercarich — But maybe there is a coms person in your organization right? And maybe they’re the right person to lead this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally, I love that. And and, yeah, I think when I think about, like one of the things there’s there’s a lot that Liquid Church has done well as a church. And a lot of that does you know though, there’s lines that line right back to you and this is an example of that. You know, the digital stuff, you know, I think it’s amazing. You know there’s somebody who could be sitting in a church today who is doing something that they are happy with and are you know you know they like and whether it was in you know journalism, PR, communications, but maybe a switch to them coming and serving in the local church. Man, that that could open up unlock all kinds of new amazing opportunities for churches that are listening in today.
Rich Birch — So we want to send people to obviously pick up the Liquid Church app – we’ll link to it in the notes. Um, but yeah, just as we’re kind of coming to land, as we’re getting close to the end here, what else would you like to say just as we kind of close out today’s episode?
Lauren Bercarich — I would just say that um don’t consider yourself knocked out of the box here because this is an area where everybody’s learning. You don’t have to be an expert.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — You don’t have to know it all now. You can learn. There’s a lot of people out there to learn from and to see what they’re doing. And what I love about ministry, right, is we’re willing to share and teach and talk with each other. I feel like some people find digital just to be so intimidating that they’ll say you know what? I’m just going to do what I’ve always done because I don’t know how to do that.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lauren Bercarich — But I don’t think that’s the winning strategy for the future of our church, um of your church, of the big “C” Church, and so I just want to encourage people to to lean in.
Rich Birch — So good. This is great. I feel like during ah particularly during the height of Covid when there were people, including friends of mine, who were like they were like it’s the age of digital. We’re all going digital. No one’s ever going to come back to services. I was like, ah I don’t know that that’s the case. Like I think we’re going to get back to services at some point.
Rich Birch — And then but then now it’s like it’s swung the opposite direction and there are churches out there that are like, we’re getting rid of all that digital stuff and we’re just in person. And I’m like well I don’t think that’s the answer either. Like I think we you know it’s it’s been a funny couple years on this stuff. But I’m just so thankful for what Liquid’s done. I think you continue to lead the way. And I just want to honor you and your team today. So thank you so much, Lauren. We really appreciate you being here today and we’ll link to the the app down below. Um, if people want to get in touch with you or to track with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Lauren Bercarich — Yeah, so if you just want to see what we’re doing, our website is liquidchurch.com. And our website is designed for the new guest so you can kind of get that experience. If you want to reach out to me, I mean honestly email’s the best way. It’s just laurenb@liquidchurch.com.
Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much, Lauren. Appreciate you being here today.
Lauren Bercarich — Absolutely. So much fun.
Setting Roots, Spurring Growth: Thriving New Campus Location Growth with Aaron Stanski & Aaron Mora
Jun 13, 2024
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with two Aarons—Aaron Stanski, CEO and Founder of Risepointe, and Aaron Mora, the Alma Campus Pastor of Community Church in north central Michigan.
If your church is growing, chances are you’ve wrestled with questions about your location or building meeting your ministry needs. Tune in to hear the story of Community Church’s growth and how Risepointe walked alongside them as they tried to find a suitable location for their Alma campus.
The Needs Analysis. // Like Community Church, most of the churches that reach out to Risepointe go through The Needs Analysis process. This information helps Risepointe understand who they are as a church, problems they’re trying to solve, their unique ministry DNA, and who they’re trying to reach. For Community Church, not only did The Needs Analysis answer many of their questions, Aaron Mora recognizes it was critical to helping Risepointe get to know them and design what they wanted and needed.
Take the next step. // A building project is a step of faith. Anxiety and fear that might keep you from moving forward. Aaron Mora admits that while it’s tempting to stay comfortable, Community Church sensed God leading them in this direction. He recognizes that God provided Risepointe and their wealth of experience to offer the encouragement and expertise Community Church needed to move forward with confidence.
Set the guardrails. // As Aaron Stanski notes, buildings aren’t going to do ministry, people are. Risepointe is aware that they are handing over a tool to church leaders so they can further grow their ministry. As a result, Risepointe approaches a project with a church by measuring kingdom impact and how to unleash it in the area. Laying out a clear budget and cash flow positive plan that lines up with giving in the early phase is critical. Set guardrails in place regarding what is needed and what the budget is so you can drive the project toward success.
Don’t let doubt creep in. // Expect that people will have opinions on what’s being done in a building project, but don’t receive it all as negative. Recognize that change will be hard for a lot of people; don’t let the comments cause you to doubt your decisions.
Renovating vs building new. // When considering a building project, it’s important to understand how you’re using your buildings. Be really intentional with the decisions you’re making and examine the pros and cons of building new versus renovating an existing space. Risepointe walks their clients through a decision making matrix to help them understand how they want to develop their sites. Aaron Stanski explains that, in general, you’ll spend about twice as much money building new as you would doing a renovation.
Follow God’s calling. // If you’re trying to decide whether to move forward with building or renovating a location versus portable church, ask yourself, is this what God is calling you to do? God leads us to different strategies in different seasons. Walking through The Needs Analysis with Risepointe doesn’t obligate you to a building project, but rather can help clarify the direction that’s best for your church in your current season of ministry.
You can learn more about Community Church at www.communitymi.org. Visit Risepointe’s website at www.risepointe.com to schedule a free call, walk through The Needs Analysis, or explore recent projects.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to having you tune into today’s conversation. You know every once in a while we have a conversation where I’m like man I wish that you know thousands of leaders could tune in because I feel like I’m having this conversation time and again and today is one of those conversations. Really excited to have Aaron Mora with us. He’s the Campus Pastor of church called Community Church. It’s a large multisite church in North Central Michigan. Ah he leads the Alma campus and today we’re talking about their transition from portable to a permanent location.
Rich Birch — But we’re this is the two for one Aaron show today because we’re also joined by our friend Aaron Stanski, friend of the podcast. He is the CEO and founder of Risepointe and with fifteen plus years of really helping churches design you know and launch, project manage incredible projects at churches but not just churches also schools and nonprofits all across the country. He’s an expert in this area. Super excited to have both Aarons on welcome. So glad you’re both here today. Thanks for being here.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Aaron Mora — Yeah, thanks.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich. Happy to do it.
Rich Birch — This is going to be good. Now I’m going to use your last names ah because you know I don’t want people to get lost. Um, you know so hopefully we’re like friends it’s like friends on a baseball team or something. Ah, but so Mora why don’t we start with you tell us about what was going on. Give us the kind of the the 50,000 foot view of Community Church. Tell us a bit of the story. What’s what was happening at the Alma campus here?
Aaron Mora — Yeah, and so um, Community Church initial campus in Mount Pleasant, Michigan – right in the heart of the mitten, if you’re a a Michigan familiar…
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes.
Aaron Mora — …and ah church was growing. And so actually a number of years. I’ve been on on staff about 14 years, you know, do you build a bigger building in Mount Pleasant and ah, an increasing radius of people that were driving. And so good things, you know growth, and so like many churches we we kind of walk down the road of multisite as an option of being able to grow. And so the Alma campus launched in a January of 2020 which in our
Rich Birch — Perfect, perfect timing.
Aaron Stanski — Strategy.
Aaron Mora — yeah, all of our strategy planning, ah pandemic was not part of it. But we launched about 20 minutes down the road in a town called Alma…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Mora — …our first multi-site location. And ended up it was actually a launch with a good core, about 150 people who were already from that community plugged into the church And we started portable. And so we met in a Youth for Christ building. Great ministry partners of ours. Had thirteen weeks before the pandemic actually hit. But you know still through that you know praise God navigated, still still growth, still momentum.
Aaron Mora — And um and so ah, probably a year, two in – probably ’21, end of ’21, start of ’22 – we were starting talking about, you know what is that permanent location.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — And um, yeah, so that that kind of a quick snapshot of what what connected us initially with Risepointe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well I’m going to give away the punchline. So amazing thing, you guys launched here in ah right at the end of last year, 2023, in your permanent facility. And and here we are kind of end of April. Give us the punchline where are you at today. This is astonishing. I just love this. Where are you at from a growth point of view?
Aaron Mora — It’s it’s ah it’s been incredible. In fact, um, you know through through the good portion of last year, 2023, was the project. In fact I think we were doing demolition in the the spring of 2023. Opened Christmas Eve 2023, and the average attendance over the last three or four months since we’ve launched I mean almost ah it’s been about 80% growth.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow!
Aaron Mora — So almost double which…
Rich Birch — That’s crazy.
Aaron Mora — …which praise God has exceeded our expectations. Those that are walking through the doors, it’s been lots of people who have have ah a category we’ve called de-churched. You know they haven’t been attending church for a number of years. And um and so to have a I think a beautiful, contemporary facility, you know a vibrant church, there’s just been God’s been using it powerfully. And so it’s it’s exceeded I think my my greatest expectations in a way that you know can only be I think something God’s doing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Well I’d love to kind of pick apart that process a little bit. I’m I’m sure I know there are leaders that are listening in today that are you know they’re they’re portable in a location and they’re thinking about this. They’re wondering about this. And I want to kind of pick apart that story. So Aaron Stanski, do you remember when you first got connected with Community and kind of what what did that some of those initial contacts look like?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean I I remember some phone conversations, Aaron. I think I think we might have even hopped on a quick Zoom. I know you guys were you know trying to figure some things out. We might have even popped up on a Google search or something…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Aaron Stanski — …ah, that you were doing. And so connected with them. We talked on the phone and then I think initially we were already over in your area like working on a different project or something. So we went ahead and swung by and I remembered zigzagging all over Alma, Michigan. I remember ah, looking at ah there was a weird abandoned hotel. Do you remember this?
Aaron Mora — I do remember this.
Rich Birch — Oh fun.
Aaron Stanski — It was like it had been abandoned for like five or six years. It’d be perfect for a haunted house or something. So we looked at some farm fields.
Aaron Stanski — And and we looked at ah yeah, a few buildings and stuff. We’re just trying to imagine…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …what a permanent facility would look like for for them, which was great.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Aaron Mora — Yeah, that and and so it going back to that initial look, um and and and, Rich, I think this this ties so well into what you were talking about. It’s our first time doing a building project for most of us on staff at at the church. And so we’d done a building building projects, you know, thirty years ago but it was before…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — …most of us were there.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Mora — And so in that was it was ah absolutely a Google search. It was jumping online…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Mora — …saying you know, who do we look up? And and so I think I had ah I had a list of like 8 or and and then campus pastor Aaron, and they’re like, Aaron go find somebody.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Mora — Um, and so I I went line some architects. Um, you know so from from both the church world and and also just ones that just came up that did great designs that we saw we we tried to get some referrals. And I think initially for Risepointe it was a sense of a design and build, so not just designing but also you know, walking through the building project. And then even some of the other pieces that were there I think that initial conversation, and Aaron alluded to it already, was just so like, oh you’re telling me all the things I wanted to know are are here. You’re you’re talking about you know, planning and and more than just the build of having a great building. What do you need.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — And so it was ah it was an easy fit to where you know we’ve we’ve vetted through and end up going with Risepointe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well the thing you know, Aaron Stanski’s a friend. I love him, and I literally all the time we were saying this before we get started, I feel like I’m consistently saying to church leaders, like have you talked with the guys over at Risepointe? Like they’re they’re so helpful. And um now I think you you do this thing called Needs Analysis, right?
Aaron Stanski — Ssure.
Rich Birch — That what what that sounds fancy, but what what is that, Mr. Stanski. Tell us about what is the ah you know the is that this zigzagging across the you know the Alma thing you did?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean The Needs Analysis for us, and it’s a process that most of the churches ah like Community that reach out to us go through. And so it’s a process for us at Risepointe to really learn who are they as a church? What are some of the problems they’re trying to solve? Like what is their unique ministry DNA?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — Who are they trying to reach? Um and so The Needs Analysis is a process where we spend an extended period of time, usually an entire day, ah walking the the team and the staff through a series of exercises and questions and really getting to know them. And and then it’s asking and answering some specific questions around facility and saying okay, how do we solve these problems? So ah, if Alma already had a campus and they were already up and running we would probably be asking the question, How do we maximize ministry on site? Ah, how do we know when we have to expand or add on? What’s some low hanging fruit that just some some things that we think would be helpful for them to consider with their facility that we might have learned from other churches?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And then the last thing is like, man, what’s it all going to cost, right? And so if we can answer those questions and present that back in ah in a format that’s clear to understand, and we’re um and it’s answering those questions, then it gives church leaders a lot of times the what they need to kind of move forward and make some decisions.
Aaron Stanski — And so for Alma campus it was not only those things, it was like what what options exist for a building, right? I mean they could have bought a field and built new. They could have you know they could have you know bought some of these other properties. And so we sort of laid that framework out for them. And then they ended up you know, just finding a gem of a property a ah just a ah, really spectacular looking JCPenny building. And I I say that sarcastically. Ah just this JCPenny building that had been sitting there vacant – it was like five or six years right?
Aaron Mora — It had been a but been a while.
Aaron Stanski —Like it wasn’t it wasn’t occupied, right, Aaron?
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And so, ah for them, it was like man, Okay, here’s this huge JCPenny building.
Aaron Stanski — Ah, it’s for sale. Ah, do we want to buy it? Ah, do we want to buy some of it, or all of it? Ah, and when we renovate it, how much do we want to renovate? What’s it going to cost? And so we walk them through a Needs Analysis to help them figure those things out.
Rich Birch — Right? yeah.
Rich Birch — Okay so ah, just sticking with The Needs Analysis there for a second. So the thing I’ve said to other people—correct me if I’m wrong on this—is man, I would call Risepointe early in the process, like as you know even when you’re in the like we’re not even sure really the questions we’re asking. Is that true? Because the thing I’ve said behind your back, Aaron Stanski, is like if you call them early, you’re going to leverage all their thinking on some of those early foundational questions that could save you huge dollars and time. And you know sure, you could come and say, ah this is the building. We’ve got this building already; help us renovate it. But man, is it better to call earlier, you know, Aaron Stanski?
Aaron Stanski — Um, yeah I mean the earlier the better.
Rich Birch — Right, okay.
Aaron Stanski — If you feel like you’re getting to a point where you’re either running out of space…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …or if you’re getting to the point where you feel like man, we’re not meeting the needs of the community. We’re not able to say yes to some of the the requests that we’re getting.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — Or we feel like the facility just isn’t working as well as we think it should. Then definitely reach out.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — Ah for a lot of churches like yeah, it’s time to go. It’s time to raise money and stuff. And for a lot of them. It’s like oh these are the things we need to be thinking about…
Rich Birch — Thinking about this stuff. Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — …as we manage our largest capital asset, right? Our our building. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. And I know you’ll even just book it on a ah call. Which I think is crazy. Like I’m like you’re not even charging for those first kind of discovery call kind of things, which is crazy to me. I’m like that’s nuts, but people should take advantage of that.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — Well, Aaron Mora, let’s talk about maybe some surprises in that in those early, the early phases. As you were thinking about the project, what was something that you know, kind of bubbled up in the process that was like, oh here’s some you know some kind of thing that I didn’t anticipate or didn’t really see um, through this that you know maybe was a bit surprising?
Aaron Mora — Sure, and and even going back to that Needs Analysis, um, and um I imagine those listening there’s probably a few out there that are similar to me – we’re pretty cheap, you know frugal.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — Like trying to say you know how how can we get through this spending the least amount of money…
Rich Birch —Yes.
Aaron Mora — …at least not spending needlessly.
Rich Birch —Yep.
Aaron Mora — And so for a Needs Analysis, I think in that first call was a sense of, you know, is this something that we really need? You know we we know we need a building, so is that something that that’s worth the time? And I think I think um on on one hand um, quick quickly walking through it, that process is first of all gold for us. I think there were a lot of answers that we came to that we wouldn’t have otherwise. But then also I think it was also so helpful for Risepointe to really get to know us as part of the the process of getting to that design, so they were able to design something that just fit what we were wanting to do.
Aaron Mora — And so yeah, that initial kind of drive around exploring the community getting to know the community. That particular hotel that that Stanski was was talking about, I think that their their response was you know, maybe buy it and bulldoze it. Like that’s not that’s not worth going into. But even that sense of like, I I don’t know is that just options that we’re looking around at um.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Aaron Mora — One one of the pieces even even related to the the space that we landed on which was a JCPenny, ah it was the JCPenny itself was about 60,000 square feet.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Aaron Mora — It’s right on the main drag going through… Alma’s ah, a small Michigan town of maybe 20,000 people. And so the the main kind of line through town where all the Walmarts and Meijers and everything’s at, ah this JCPenny was right there. So beautiful location. And the initial thought was oh well, let’s buy the whole thing. Um, and so the the thinking though is if you buy 60,000 square feet based on even with some significant growth, what we’d actually need going back to even that budget question of you know what can you afford for for the congregation? You know what do you need it to to do? And I remember us going through you know. feeling this, like well if we don’t buy it now and you know will we regret it in the future? And Risepointe was instrumental to say you know based on your current attendance, based on growth, this is the square footage that you need.
Aaron Mora — And actually made ah something that would have kept me up at night, just a major decision—like do we buy all of it, do we buy part part of it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — …was saying you can do everything you want to in this footprint that you buy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — So we ended up buying about 30,000 square feet.
That’s great.
Aaron Mora — And in that we we initially built in this phase about 22-, 23,000 square feet of that.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Aaron Mora — And it and it’s ah it’s for right us right now ah, a perfect footprint of what we’re in.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Aaron Mora — And so even walking through those types of decisions, I think it was a sense of saying I don’t know if I don’t think I could have Googled an answer to that solution.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — I think there there was a part of this process that kind of walked us through um in that. And that didn’t that didn’t finish through the design. I think that Risepointe also being a firm that walked all the way through the project, um like Aaron and then ah Chris, one of the the chief architect on the on the project, were just a constant connection, which not every not every organization does, not every designer does.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Mora — Um and it it really was a relationship.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. Well and I love that, you know, we and when you come to a key decision like that, like there’s one thing you can’t sure you can Google you can find some sort of calculator online. But man, you want to talk to somebody who’s been through this a bunch and has done a bunch of projects. And you know Aaron and the team you know over Risepointe can do that.
Rich Birch — Talk to us from a kind of a campus pastor, pastoral care, you know the kind of spiritual dynamics that that you went through as a church. There’s a part of this that’s you know 20,000 square feet – it’s colors, it’s color swatches, it’s you know, picking chairs, all that stuff. But what what was some of that kind of internal transformation that you went through as a team? How did that, you know, it’s not just about buildings, obviously. What, talk to us about that.
Aaron Mora — No I think that anytime you’re like a building project is a step of faith. Like you’re probably stepping out into the sense of will will the money come in? You know will will people step in? Will people show up? Is it is it going to be something where you put all this money into something and you don’t grow? And so there is a faith aspect of saying um you know, God we’re we’re we’re we’re sensing you leading us this direction. And that started you know before that even even before we got to multisite. And so there’s there’s a bit of you know, anxiety or fear could keep you in this place of saying, well let’s not do anything. You know, we’re comfortable.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Mora — And um and so I think that the part of the relationship with Risepointe could be the sense of someone who’s there giving you confidence beyond, you know, the Holy Spirit, beyond God. But even this this sense of saying, God using, you know, a firm to be able to to walk alongside and encourage and say, oh nope, we’ve seen this done before. You know other people have walked this road. Different problems or things that we bumped in during the project, even say hey we’ve we’ve seen this in other spots. You know, we we can show up at a town town meeting conversation zoning thing, talk the language. I think all of that was incredibly helpful.
Aaron Mora — And I think in that was this this sense of ah the stress didn’t necessarily go away because a building project, there’s lots of different moving pieces and decisions and and things going through there. But I do think having a good relationship with your designer, um with with the architect allows you to be able to navigate that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — And that was incredibly helpful for us.
Rich Birch – Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, there’s that Proverbs 12:15 right, the the way of the fool is right in his own eyes. But the wise listens to counsel. And you know I think this is one of those examples of that.
Rich Birch — Well, Aaron Stanski, talk us through when you you know you approach ah ah, church like this comes to you and is like, hey we’re we’re thinking about this kind of thing, give us some of the steps that your or some of the questions those kind of early kind of decision-making points. How are you helping guide them through you know, this decision making process? How do you come alongside them and kind of integrate with their leadership development, or their leadership not leadership development their leadership process for making decisions?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean I think at Risepointe like we’re we’re constantly measuring kingdom impact, right?
Rich Birch — Good.
Aaron Stanski — And so we want to figure out, man, how do we unleash kingdom impact ah in Alma, Michigan? And so we know buildings aren’t going to do ministry, people are. And so like as we as we grow this thing and build it and stuff like as architects, sure, like 60,000 square feet sounds twice as big and twice as much stuff.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — And if it was about us and like you know putting projects on our website that would be one thing. But we know we have to hand over a tool ah, to Aaron Mora and his staff and his team that they’re going to use and continue to grow. Ah so yeah, that one big piece that like we’re always trying to you know, develop a plan, a budget plan, a cash flow plan ah, that’s going to set us up for success. So.
Aaron Stanski — Um, you know when we sat down with their leadership and we were looking at their options like the ability to say, no, we can we can only buy half of the building. And then we’re not even going to build all of it out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — But we’re going to design it in a really unique way with a phase two in mind so that they do have options to grow. Um, and we’re going to create an entrance that looks really cool ah in sort of the corner of this JCPenney building and we’re just going to bring it back to life, you know. And so being able to lay out a really clear ah budget and cash, you know, cash flow positive plan that we feel like ah lines up with um, you know giving and all of those things is really critical in the early phases. Because if we can if we can set set those parameters in place, if we can get the guardrails in place, and say okay we we need this many seats, we need this type of a tool when we’re done, and this is the budgets and you know sort of the things that we feel like God has given us from a resources standpoint, ah then as as Christians and as designers and as partners with the church, we can say, all right, this is the highway we’re on and we can drive that project toward success.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Yeah you you brought up the money question. I appreciate you bringing that up Aaron Stanski. Um Aaron Mora, talk to us about that piece of it. I’m sure there’s lots of churches out there that are portable right now…
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and they would say, yeah, we’d love to get into a permanent location, but man we just there’s no way, we we can’t afford that. And maybe they haven’t even looked into it. Talk to us through what kind of how did that piece of the conversation – whatever you feel comfortable sharing um, you know on that front.
Aaron Mora — Um, yeah, well and and I think it was ah it definitely was part part of that that part of that step of faith was we’re rural central Michigan. There’s not necessarily deep deep pockets. And not that that you know and every church I think that probably is an aspect of trying to gauge, you know, what is a step of of faith. But for us there really hadn’t been this sense of, you know, ah you know certain individuals that could give write a check…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — …you know, and build a building type type thing. And so in that was a sense of you know what is what is responsible? What’s reasonable? You know what are we able to to walk into?
Aaron Mora — Um, and so ah and with that having Also you know a faithful foundation that’s within the church. But absolutely it was a sense of how do we get into this to get an amazing building for for the least amount to be good stewards. And you know even going back to the initial thought of looking at fields. There was this thought of you know if you build it from scratch, you get exactly what you want.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — But you know you know what what would it take to make something that right now is an empty box, ah former store, into something that’s incredible. And and I think that ah, this was also helpful in that none of some of those initial conversations just looking at Risepointe’s portfolio and saying oh this is actually stuff that we’ve done in other spaces, in other places. And you can kind of see, okay, that that gives you an example of you know what could be done.
Aaron Mora — Um I I also appreciated I think that Risepointe former projects that they had done, they were able to also talk to ah builders, construction firms in Michigan, and be like hey can you give us right now like you know you just did a project last year, what’s the cost per square foot that you can expect?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good.
Aaron Mora — And then even beyond the construction, looking at FF&E and you know furniture, fixtures, and all those extra pieces. And those were all things that probably wasn’t on our initial list…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — …but part of that part of that strategic that that ah that initial plan was to say, okay, here’s here’s looking at the whole picture to get into the building. And so it gave us ah a sense of confidence and a plan. Um and praise God I think also a congregation that was saying, but you know let’s keep going; we feel like this is where this is where we’re heading. This is the next step. And so we had you know a lot of unity on that as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — I love that you threw out just FF and E
Aaron Mora — That’s right and learning the jargon.
Aaron Stanski — That’s right. Like you’ve you’ve learned…
Rich Birch — Yes, that yeah that tells you’ve just come through a project. Yeah, yeah, when you’re saying FF and E. Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, you’ve learned a lot on the construction and design side through this whole thing.
Aaron Mora — Well and even so even going back to the heart of you know your your ministry, Rich. Like like even going to the heart of of unSeminary. I did not, when I went through seminary, went to reform theological seminary, there was not a class on building projects and…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Mora — And I I think in that there I mean what a what a great topic to say there is a lot of it. I remember one of the that initial Needs Analysis, ah the term FF&E was thrown out and I had to Google it on my phone under the table because I had no idea that and no idea what that meant.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — Ah, but it is It is amazing to see like through that um, yeah, it is kind of a ah learn as you go. And you want wise people around you to help you figure it out.
Rich Birch — Okay, so talk to us about, so you’re you know four or five months into the building. Have you had any experiences now that you’re up and running and you’re like, oh, we should have done this different, or we should have done this different. Is there anything like that that’s kind of, you know, you you pass on, because I’m hoping you’re gonna do for your other campuses you’re gonna do more buildings.
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So you know what you what what lessons are you learning?
Aaron Mora — I think one of the biggest lessons actually is before before you get to anything that we’re like I wish I would have done this differently, is um I felt like I was talking to my staff, and also talking to some of my key leaders to say, change is hard.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Aaron Mora — And even if it’s a good change, even if it’s a exciting change, we’re moving into a new building, all this thing, there are some people where change is just hard. Um I want to go back. I want to go you know to you know I liked it, you know, the old way. And so in that to say, you know, people giving comments or responses, A- expect it. It’s going to come. People are going to have opinions about the color. People are going to have opinions about the sound system PA. People and have opinions about everything. Um, expect it. And then also don’t take it just as negative. And I think that was very helpful…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Aaron Mora — …as I was talking to my staff because you just get this barrage of people saying things. And it would be easy to have this negative mindset of saying, oh man did did we did we mess up or something? Or you are all these mistakes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — And I think it’s a sense of of you have overwhelming change with things like a building project moving in. We fortunately have a ah I think amazing congregation. Um, but you know through a lot of the design process we kind of kept a certain number of select leaders in that because you didn’t want everyone’s input…
Rich Birch — Right right.
Aaron Mora — …into a lot of those, you know, decisions that are going through. But that being said I think that ah you know, expecting that change is going to be a little bit hard for people.
Aaron Mora — And then there are going to be so there’s ah, there’s a short list of saying, oh yeah I you know I might have changed, I might have done it differently. Nothing overwhelming, but even you know, one small example that I’ve I’ve been going back and forth with Risepointe a little bit is, in our our lobby we have this beautiful lobby as you enter into the building. None of our other campuses have such an intentional space
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Mora — And but sound treatment. So like in that space, it’s a little echoey.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Mora —And we really didn’t know until you had 200 bodies in there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so you actually run it. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Aaron Mora —You know what’s it what’s it going to sound like.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — And and then even Risepointe ah Chris who was kind of our our primary connect with saying you know some people love that, you know, kind of the ambient noise echo going through. Um, sometimes it can also be a little overwhelming.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — Um, and so that’s one thing we’re like we got to figure something out, but that’s not so not something we need to figure out today.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — You know in the meantime we have an amazing space that we’re in.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Mora — Um, other other small things I think that there were there were things that we figured out getting into it that now that we’re now that you’re in the building, you’re kind of living with it, but nothing that was like a complete miss. I think they’re all small tweaks and changes that you expect…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Mora — …when you’re moving into a new space.
Rich Birch — Well that, good for you. Like I we opened um I’ve opened a bunch of buildings over the years, and this was not a Risepointe project. Another with another outfit and we opened 107-, 8000 square foots of big, giant building.
Aaron Mora — That’s huge.
Rich Birch — And literally on opening weekend I’m standing watching. We we have the one side we had like this big ramp and all this to get you know help people get in because it was on we was a renovated building as well. And um, I’m standing watching moms pick up their strollers and come up this set of staircase. We put the ramp on the wrong side of the building.
Aaron Mora — Oh no.
Rich Birch — I literally opening opening weekend I’m standing there looking and I was like, oh my word. Like we got all the kids ministries here, but the ramps on the other side. Why did we? Ah! You know so good for you that the fact that you don’t that’s like a pain point for me in my life. And it’s still to this day that project’s 20 years old and that ramp’s never been fixed. So it’s ah it’s a funny, a funny project. But and again not a Risepointe project. So you cannot blame our our Risepointe friends for that.
Aaron Mora — Yeah, there you go.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, see there, you go.
Rich Birch — Stanski talked to us about just going back to that decision point around green field versus renovating a box. Talk to us at kind of a principles level around that because I think there’s something there for us to kind of think through a little bit if we’re early on in a project if other people are wrestling through that. Talk to us through just in general maybe not specifically this project..
Aaron Stanski — Yeah I mean in general, ah I mean we have to be really intentional with the decisions that we’re making and understanding how we’re using our buildings and how we’re leveraging those things. Ah so you know for churches that are looking at, for churches that are multisites or ah, you know, or trying to understand how they’re developing their campuses and their sites, like there’s a whole decision make making matrix that we kind of walk through. Ah but in general I mean you’re gonna be so you’re gonna spend about twice as much money building new as you would renovating. Now there’s…
Rich Birch — Okay, wow.
Aaron Stanski — …there’s a little bit there’s a cost, right? You have to buy the renovated building and so you have to add that in just like, and it’s going to be more expensive than buying flat land. But in general, it’s about twice as much to build new. And so ah in in situations where you know churches have, you know, they’ve already, you know, planted or sent multisites out several times, and they no longer have the option of sending out 150, you know, folks to launch the next campus or places where they’re completely landlocked, or may or may not have an open JCPenny, it’s certainly an option to take a look at what does building new look like and and how do we get there. But yeah, if you can if you can find ah a space that’s ah that works for assembly and is going to meet code and do all of those things, ah, it can be an option to you know to buy an existing space and you’ll definitely save some money there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. We’ve done we’ve done multiple of of those. In fact, I don’t think any of the projects I’ve done have ever been from a green field. But the the thing about a renovating I found as just a leader renovating a space, in a weird way if the church is looking and you’re actively kind of like paying attention to the market. Um, we can move faster in some cases we can move faster than other people can, which on the people that are selling these properties can actually be really positive.
Rich Birch — And so we we had one of our our campuses was exactly that. It was a it was a company that was they were shutting down this particular operation. They were literally and it came down to like there was a guy from Texas who was still running this project, and he was like I want to go back to Texas and like they were done. They had already written off all their their loss as ah as a corporation. And it literally was like, if you guys can move fast enough, we’ll sell it to you. And it was like a significant discount – 30% under under market.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Because they were just like, hey you know we’re done. And so we were like, let’s jump on it…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and see if we can make it happen. That’s so…
Aaron Stanski — Now what you have to do with existing buildings though is have more contingency…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Stanski — …because you’re going to run into things that you don’t expect. And ah…
Rich Birch — Yes. You open up a wall and that did not anticipate there was that there.
Aaron Stanski — Now we did we did open up a wall on the Community Church project after we had done all of the inspections to make sure there was no asbestos anywhere, and we were good to go.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — And we went and opened up the first wall—do you remember this, ah Aaron Mora…
Aaron Mora — Yeah, it was on the the outside facade.
Aaron Stanski — …and here’s the first wall…
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — …and it was spray painted ah asbestos. Do not do not demo.
Rich Birch — Ah, oh my goodness. Oh gosh.
Aaron Stanski — And so that was that was a stinger right at the very beginning of the project, right? You’re like shoot.
Rich Birch — Ouch. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Aaron Mora — Hard hard to ignore it when they they write it on. But and that was I think that some of that some of thats that you expect walking into it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — And I think rolling with the punches like I feel like my skin’s a little thicker after walking through…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Mora — …even just a sense of expecting some of those surprises as they come through. Um, but overall I think that you you you can just keep persevering and you get to the finish line.
Rich Birch — Yup. I kind of liked frankly the the constraint of an existing box to fit the thing into. We’re we’re going through a building project right now. It sounds similar size 20,000 square feet. And and I like I walk in there and I’m like this is fantastic, like it’s great. And a part of it is because it’s like we’re not thinking about how big the box is. We’re trying to figure out what we can do to get it into this box.
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — And all the creativity’s around that which is is fantastic. Well Aaron Mora, talk to us you know, there’s leaders that are listening in who are hesitating on even maybe starting this kind of project. They’re like ah, you know, I’m not this feels like they get indigestion just thinking about it. Talk to that leader who, and I want to push them over the edge to say, hey let’s let’s actually get the ball rolling.
Aaron Mora — Um, yeah.
Rich Birch — What would you say to somebody now on this end, you know you’re a couple years in. You know you now have actually opened. Talk to us what you’ve learned, how what what kind of words of encouragement would you say to them?
Aaron Mora — Yeah, I think even thinking back to our initial steps. Um I think that you have to say is is this what we’re called to?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Mora — You know because I think that there is different strategy for different times. And honestly I think that if God if we felt like God was saying, hey stay portable. I think I think we we hope that we would have responded to that well. Because sometimes you can just chase growth for growth’s sake, and I don’t know if that is always good. One of the things that allowed us to even I think land with Risepointe was I think one of the lines Aaron I think you you shared with me one of our first conversations is like, we know churches. We talk church language.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Mora — You know, even as we’re getting into some of those kind of Needs Analysis. It’s also this it’s this faith component of saying, is this something that A, God is leading us towards? And then B, is feasible? And I think that those should correlate, right, between the the two of them. But even just a sense of saying um ah A Needs Analysis didn’t obligate us to break ground…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — …or to to get into a building.
Rich Birch — No.
Aaron Mora — It also you know is part of that that discerning part of that figuring out you know where are we sitting? Um, and then I think in all of it like for us um I think that we we felt pretty confident that even as a portable campus, permanency, having a permanent location was going to was gonna also communicate to the community that hey we’re not just trying this.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Mora — We’re not, we’re not you know as the maybe the bigger church that’s up the road in another town. We’re not just trying to you know, kind of see if we can fleece you know people coming in or whatever else. Um I think that permanency also communicates a sense of, hey we’re part of this community.
Aaron Mora — Um there was also even just some being portable some challenge of ah of even being associated with the the wonderful ministry that we were meeting in. But sometimes that could even create some confusion…
Oh sure.
Aaron Mora — …around like well is is it a church or is it h it is it this Youth Ministry thing…
Rich Birch — Is that a YFC thing? Or yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Mora — …and is it YFC thing? And I think that’s just inevitable just from, again, not not being visibly there. And so walking through the whole thing I think there was a sense of permanency did bring a certain level of hey we’re we’re here to stay. And then surprisingly you can do all the social media advertising you want, all the word of mouth, but just having ah a big old building with ah with a sign on the main drag, I had no idea you guys existed. And so I think there’s also just a sense…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — …of you know, if you build they will come. Um, we built a auditorium that was actually a pretty big step of faith, and I think that was going through Needs Analysis saying you know what what size auditorium could we build? It was built with a stage that can actually expand to be slightly larger, which is which was wise, and you know thinking about a potential phase two down the road. But we are already at at two services ah close to, I mean we’re we’re at 90 were 95% full in first service last week…
Aaron Stanski — Wow.
Aaron Mora — …which is significant. And then in our other service, it’s a little more open but it’s you know, 70% full. Most metrics I’ve seen is 80% tends to be when you’re feeling kind of…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Mora — …ah too full on Sundays. And so we’re already looking at a third service which makes me also say, man, my faith should have been bigger. Like why why didn’t we build this bigger?
Rich Birch — Where’s that expansion with with here’s those other 8000 square feet – let’s go!
Aaron Mora — But but in but in that is a sense also also the sense of saying though, you know, we couldn’t have known.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Mora — And I think that um and not every situation is going to be that way. There’s been other areas of growth where we’ve not seen that same automatic return. So it’s not even like you know that we did something right. But for whatever reason I feel like God is using this, this project and saying, hey like you you just see people walking in who I mentioned before a lot of them walked away from church…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Aaron Mora — …five years ago at the start of the pandemic, or they walked away from church. They just stopped attending years ago. Lots of wonderful churches but very traditional churches in this area. Not many that are that are, you know, more contemporary in in Mid-Michigan.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Mora — And so even just that, this sense of coming in and hearing the gospel. Um, ah those who are far from God and you think, man, God’s using this to reach all these people who had disconnected from the the body of Christ. And and I’m like man that was that was worth it because you know there there were a lot of months last year that were a little stressful, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, oh for sure.
Aaron Mora — Yeah that were, you know, kind of ah long hours working through different things. But seeing the fruit of it causes me to say, man, that was that was so worth it. I’ll do that again in a heartbeat…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Mora — …if that’s something that leads to this this sense of you know, expanding ah, God’s reach through this local church.
Rich Birch — I love that. That’s such a great encouragement. And and I’m ah I’m a big fan of portable. This is not like an anti portable conversation. I think there’s a good developmental step for lots of churches.
Aaron Mora — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — I think it’s a great way to get rolling. And but there is I would echo what you’re saying. Um, I’ve said this in other contexts there is a tangible intangibility that about going permanent that is it’s hard to get onto a spreadsheet. It’s hard to know like how does that how does that fit? Um, you know what I do know is if I was to walk around Alma, Michigan today and say, Hey tell me about a good church in town. Where is a good church? And I just talked to people on the street they’re going to point at buildings. They’re going to point at, now we know that the body of Christ and the church is the collected body of believers – that it’s it’s a group of people. It’s not a physical building. We know that.
Rich Birch — But that’s not what people who don’t go to church that’s not what they think about.
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Rich Birch — They think about the actual physical building. And there’s something to that that is that makes a difference to or the excel it can be an accelerating factor ah in our growth. Aaron Stanski, talk to maybe ah, an executive pastor person who’s leaning in today who’s listening. And they’re like maybe a little bit more of the nickels, and you know measuring the the pencils, and thinking about that. You know I love Executive Pastors, friends who are listening in. I’m not making fun of you. Ah, but what would you say to them if they’re thinking about this kind of step? What should their takeaway be from that side? Um you know, if they’re thinking, man, I wonder if we should move these campuses in or this campus into a physical location?
Aaron Stanski — Ah, yeah I mean, I think there’s a lot of things to count there. Um, but I know I know one of the things that we that we quickly noticed and you know Aaron Mora had pointed this out at their portable location is that there were lids that were preventing them from growing. Um.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Aaron Stanski — They had plenty of seats in the gym that they were you know setting up in and stuff, but there were other places of the facility, some kids rooms that were completely maxed out, zero community space with hallways and some other things. And it it does get cold in Michigan so it’s kind of important to have some indoor gathering space. So there were some lids that were going to prevent them from growing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And so like how are we going to address those lids. And you know I’m sure if my wife and I I mean we’re christians already, if we moved over to Alma, Michigan we’d find community and like we’d participate and stuff, and that would be great. Um, but the question becomes like if if they were still portable and those lids were existed existing there, and the Holy Spirit told me, man, I need to invite my lost neighbor or my coworker to come to church with me. If the next thought out of my brain is but I got to tell them to get there early so that they get a parking spot.
Aaron Stanski — Or I have to explain to them, go down the weird hallway and like the, or kids or if there’s some sort of excuse that I have to make ah in that invitation, then that’s a problem, right? And you can address it a lot of different ways, right? And we’ve talked about them on this podcast, and we should consider them, like adding more services ah like, you know, expanding expanding campuses, all of those other things. But when we’ve exhausted those resources and those families live in that community and want to go to a place that loves on their kids and they can learn about Jesus and stuff, that’s when it’s time to make room for more.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Aaron Stanski — And we have to figure out the best most effective way to do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. What what um, give us a sense ah if a church has A Needs Analysis, I want to underline something that that was said. Like the assumption isn’t that oh you’re necessarily going to do a building project like.
Aaron Mora — No.
Rich Birch — You know I’ve said to church leaders who are facing facility issues, I’ve said man, you should you really should get Aaron and his team in from Risepointe because you know they they might convince you out of a building project and say actually, let’s make these three changes and that’ll get you another 2 years and then that gives you more time. Talk to us about that Aaron Stanski…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah I mean we’ve done that.
Rich Birch — …that kind of dynamic. Right. Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — We’ve done that plenty of times.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — I mean at the heart of what we do, we’re church leaders ourselves.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — We’re all actively serving and like at our churches and stuff too. And so the assumption isn’t that building is the solution, right?
Rich Birch — Right. It’s good.
Aaron Stanski — The assumption is God is doing something unique in and through this community and we have to understand how are we using our building.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — How are we aligning our building in our facility to our mission and vision and is there an opportunity to do it at ah at a better scale.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — And so yeah for lots of churches iIt’s like man, what what makes you unique? What are how are you serving your community, and what does it look like to do some of those things? Some churches it’s It’s like we’ve moved offices out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And by doing that that’s high space and we’re able to add more seats and and some of those other things…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — …and for a fraction of the cost of what it would, you know you know, be to do something else we’ve identified a solution that yeah is going to unleash them for the next two years three years four years, and if God continues to bless, you know, then we can look at brick and mortar.
Rich Birch — Love that. Again, bad for business. Great for the kingdom. I’m like you should every solution should be build a new building. Ah, but again, this is why I love Aaron and the team at Risepointe because they really are trying to come alongside. These people love churches and they want to help. And this has been just such a great conversation today.
Rich Birch — Well it’s kind of have last words. Aaron Mora, if people want to kind of track with Community Church and you know track with the church, where do we want to send them online to kind of follow along, to check out the story, that sort of thing?
Aaron Mora — Yeah, because Community Church is kind of a generic name. In fact, a couple years ago we went through a process of rebranding.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — And we went around, had a whole process of finding finding names for churches and we actually loved, came back to our name, Community Church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Mora — Which um so community MI – MI as in Michigan – communitymi.org…
Rich Birch — Michigan. Yep.
Aaron Mora — …is our website. And of course Facebook and other spots as well. Um, and so you want to check it out. I think that ah you know even looking at the the Alma campus specifically, um, we just finished the project but I think there’s some pictures probably getting posted on Risepointe’s site um, to be able to to peek in and see what it looks like. And I just have to tell you I am so stinking proud like of what we ended up with.
Rich Birch — Aw that’s good.
Aaron Mora — Um, you know, even like some of the the colors coming from between the carpet, going up the walls in the kids space, and indoor playground, which in Michigan is killer…
Rich Birch — Big deal. Yep.
Aaron Mora — …place for for moms groups to be able to already start meeting in. Um, it just it it looks fantastic. In fact, I think ah we’re in a more rural context. We’re about an hour north of Lansing, about 2 hours north of Detroit, Michigan. People walk in and be like, I can’t believe this church is here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Aaron Mora — So check it out – I’m ah super super happy with the project.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s good to hear, man. That’s that that makes me happy because there are a lot of church leaders who go through these things and they come to the end of them and they’re like, man we just burned so much money, time, effort, energy. I lost way too much time with my kids…
Aaron Mora — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and I walk around this building and feel like, it’s okay, you know. So I love the fact that you’re you know you’re feeling that. And I did see some of those pictures and it’s funny as we’re going through, I’m like this is the problem with podcasts is like, it’s a beautiful facility – just trust us!
Aaron Mora — It’s good.
Rich Birch — So Aaron Stanski where do we want to send people to actually see pictures of this project?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And if they want to you know, connect with you and do A Needs Analysis, all that stuff, where do we want to send them online?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, you can just go to risepointe.com – that’s Risepointe with an E dot com. And ah yeah, actually the ah the Alma project is going to be right on our homepage. You just scroll down there and you’re going to see it. There’ll be 2 projects down there but you can click on that one. There’s going to be tons of photos. So you’ll see some of the finished photos of the space. Ah there’s also going to be some of the renderings. So some of the initial renderings of what did we what did we pitch and how did it actually get done. And then I think we’ll even have a cleaned up site ah floor plan.
Rich Birch — Oh great.
Aaron Stanski — So if you kind of want to get a sense of what does that floor plan look like, what are some things that ah you might compare to you know, kind of some of your spaces at your church – that’ll be on there. You’ll also notice that we took the entire floor plan and we just kind of kinked it about 15 degrees or so. I think we’ve all walked into a big box store and we didn’t want it to feel like a box. We wanted it to feel very community-oriented. So just a little bit of ah of a tilt there on the floor plan will give you a sense of of some of the things that we did.
Aaron Stanski — Um, and yeah, if you want to get connected with us, there’s buttons right there on the on the homepage of Risepointe as well. Ah, you can click right on that if you want to have a conversation, you just fill out a little form and pick a time that works for you. We’d love to connect, hear more about what God is doing at your church, and how we at Risepointe could help.
Rich Birch — That’s crazy again. I say that right on the front page. I’ve said this to Aaron before, it’s just a click a schedule to call schedule a call button – that’s nuts that they make it so easy. So that’s ah, you really should do that friends I know there’s people that are listening in that you as we’ve been talking today, you’re like, man, that really does describe a campus or that describes our church and man we’re early. We’re not even sure. I feel nervous talking to these guys. No no, reach out click that button, book the call. That’s a great next step.
Rich Birch — I appreciate you guys being on this on the on the call today and being a part of the podcast. Ah, thanks for being here, the two Aarons. It’s been a great.
Aaron Mora — That’s right.
Rich Birch — The first time I’ve had a double Aaron podcast. So glad for you guys being here today. Thanks for being here. Take care.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich.
The Discipleship Opportunity: Blueprint for a Post-Everything Church with Daniel Im
Jun 06, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We have Daniel Im joining us, the Lead Pastor of Beulah Alliance Church in Alberta, Canada.
The world is a very different place from what it was just a few years ago. While it’s tempting for churches to try to find a way back to how things used to be, is that actually the best way forward? Tune in as Daniel challenges churches to change their leadership strategies and approach making disciples, evangelism, and preaching in a different way.
Spiritual hunger. // Beulah Alliance Church has experienced significant growth while accommodating the expanding population of Edmonton, Alberta. The city is a microcosm of the global shifts we’re seeing, with its post-Christian culture and increasing diversity. Yet even in this context there’s a noticeable spiritual hunger and a quest for deeper meaning. People are more open to exploring the supernatural and are seeking purpose beyond the material world, including exploring Christianity.
Post-everything world. // Everything in today’s world is vying for our attention as church leaders. During the pandemic it was racial tensions and masking mandates. Now it’s everything happening politically. Jesus needs to be our North Star above everything else. Experience the move of the Holy Spirit and share the truth from scripture. Orient yourselves around King Jesus and hold to your convictions.
Church and growth. // Daniel began digging into the church growth movement asking what assumptions are we still believing? He looked back seventy years to the beginning of the movement and discovered we have assumptions about church and growth, which lead to a lot of shame. We need to lay aside assumptions that, of course, people will come to church and, of course, the church will grow today.
Focus on the interested. // Most churches focus either more on discipleship for believers or evangelism for unbelievers. Daniel challenges us to consider another axis. Rather than trying to attract and create interest, what if we shifted our focus to engaging those who are already interested? Shift your focus in preaching, discipleship, and evangelism to be focused on the interested, whether they are Christians or non-Christians.
Leaving room for the Holy Spirit. // Rather than trying to be better than the church next door, give people the truth and word of God in a way that peaks curiosity and holds attention. Be compelling in preaching and have excellence, but also leave room for the Holy Spirit to move.
The Great Commission. // Daniel wrote a book called “The Discipleship Opportunity: Leading a Great-Commission Church in a Post-Everything World” which digs more deeply into this framework. Here he explores the four quadrants of engagement which include: sleepers (uninterested non-Christians), consumers (uninterested Christians), seekers (interested non-Christians), and fully discipled individuals (interested Christians). The first half of Daniel’s book focuses on deconstructing our assumptions about the church growth movement. The second half explores strategies for reaching, discipling, and preaching to the sleepers, seekers, consumers, and disciples in our post-everything world.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited about today’s conversation. You know from time to time I get to have repeat guests, and you know when we have repeat guests on they’re they’re on because they’ve got something really important to say and today is no exception. Super excited to have Daniel Im with us. He’s the lead pastor of a church that you should be tracking with – Beulah Alliance Church in Alberta, Canada. This is a fantastic church. Daniel, you might know him from there, but he’s also a podcaster, a bible teacher, writer and really has an incredible passion for the local church. He’s got a book coming up that I want to make sure that you pick up for your team. But before we get to that we’re going to hear, talk about lots of other stuff. Daniel, welcome to the podcast.
Daniel Im — Rich, it’s a joy just to hang out with you and to see you know have the record button pushed as well. It’s going to be fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, glad to have you on today and it’s nice to always connect with other podcasters because you know you got good mic…
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and I know that we’re going to get good audio.
Daniel Im — Yes.
Rich Birch — We’re definitely going to get a good audio.
Daniel Im — It’s important.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s a good thing. Okay, so fill out the picture a little bit give me the Daniel Daniel Im story and give us talk about Beulah kind of tell us a little bit more there.
Daniel Im — Yeah, so in a nutshell Beulah is 102 years old, a multiplying church, over 30 churches have been started from this.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Daniel Im — Started streaming not in 2020 but in the 1930’s. So’ve been doing that for a little bit. And yeah, just a a legacy of multiplication in this church. It’s my second time back. So I had served here before and then I lived in Nashville, worked at Lifeway, consulting with churches across North America and and in Australia quite a bit doing just what does multiplication look like? Started something called newchurches.com, did that with Ed Stetszer. So yeah, it’s essentially was loving that, loving living in Nashville. The country music thing didn’t work out so life way was my backup.
Rich Birch —Nice. That would be good, I would love that.
Daniel Im — Not really, not really.
Daniel Im — No, really no, but I ended up coming back to Canada after 5 years living there to do succession. So it wasn’t necessarily something that was on my radar, but as we prayed through the opportunity to come back I was following the footsteps of a incredible leader, Keith Taylor. Led for 30 years so faithfully. And yeah to to do succession here was it’s a long story but definitely sensed God’s leading in it. And it’s been 3 years since, 5 years since I came back and 3 years being in the lead pastor seat. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. When when did you actually move back to Canada? Was that was it 2019, was it right before covid?
Daniel Im — Yeah, August 2019. So, yeah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Daniel Im — Succession not trying not to be the scapegoat following a 30 year legacy guy…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Im — …but also doing it through covid was lots of fun.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — …lots of fun. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well there’s there’s so much we yeah we could talk about there. But ah, but the thing I want to talk about today. So for folks that aren’t listening I think… so first of all things are really happening at Beulah Alliance. There’s some really so exciting times. I want you to tell us a little bit about that. But but before we get there. Um, just some context. So folks that don’t know um Alberta, you’re in Canada, Edmonton. Um, you know I really do think that the context that you’re serving in, man, so many of us can um, can learn from. I think you have a really unique seat as a as a person as a Canadian serving in Canada.
Rich Birch — Because in a lot of ways I feel like our culture here, it’s like 2 or 3 steps—I don’t know is it forward? Is it backward? I don’t know—then then the States.
Daniel Im — Um, yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s kind of like where it’s where our American context is is heading. It feels like the kind of thing and then it’s inside of all of that man, you’re leading a church that’s thriving that’s multiplying. Man, there’s so much there. But kind of give us some of the bullet points about what’s happening at Beulah and then let’s talk about, you know, the context that you’re in.
Daniel Im — Yeah, a hundred percent. So Beulah so we’re four campuses. We just got our a new building that we’re going to be launching a fifth campus in.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Daniel Im — So we’re multiplying within greater Edmonton. We do multi-site outside of greater Edmonton. Our focus is church planting. So that’s a strategic decision in that. Um, but when it comes to Bula and when it comes to Edmonton and we’re the home of the Edmonton Oilers. So that’s often why people know us. If you ah speak at conferences, you probably have come to Edmonton for something…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …conference that was called Break Forth ah, for some reason always happen in the winter.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — So that’s typically the second reason people might know Edmonton but…
Rich Birch — Yes, ah their impression plays to stereotype, Edmonton plays to stereotype in the winter time for sure, you know, so cold.
Daniel Im — Ah yes yeah winter five, six months out of the year.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — But beyond that we’re around 1.6 million people as a kind of a metropolis area, very multiethnic, multigenerational. Just to give you a sense, Canada is about 10% the size of the States. So Canada in 2023 grew by 1,000,000 people, okay, which may not seem like a lot compared to how big the US is, but compared in Canada that’s that’s quite a big jump for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — And 200,000 of those 1,000,000 people moved to Alberta. Okay, so…
Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness.
Daniel Im — Yes. So just if you think about that growth and then you think about the city of Edmonton and and and the fact that about 50,000 people have moved from elsewhere in the country into Alberta.
Rich Birch — Yeah
Daniel Im — So a lot of the growth is immigration, but 50,000 people are from other provinces. And then in Edmonton over the last five years has experienced probably a 200,000, 300,000 growth in population. Okay,
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Daniel Im — So all of that to say the world is moving, You know…
Rich Birch — To Edmonton!
Daniel Im — The world is moving to Edmonton. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Im — Experiencing a real winter for the first time. Right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, oh my goodness.
Daniel Im — But having said that, there are so many people who are moving here. And as a result when it comes to our church context, we are seeing rapid growth happening by and large by a lot of the new people that are coming here and and and either, and um, it’s not just christians but non-christians as well. Just it’s change. It’s transition.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — And in this post-pandemic, post-truth, really post-everything world that we’re living in, there’s a I’m seeing a greater hunger spiritually than I’ve ever seen before. It’s not it’s not the atheists that are saying God is dead. No, people are like no there is a supernatural. There is more to life than what I see with my eyes…
Rich Birch — So true.
Daniel Im — …and they’re they’re they’re coming to a church.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — They’re they’re finding us. And and I’m not only seeing that in our church, I’m seeing that in other sister churches across Edmonton too.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. I love that. There’s so much I want to unpack there. That part at the end, um, so I would agree. There seems to be some sort of movement. I remember when I started and this is me talking about me, not about you, Daniel, because I’m about to say something self-deprecating. Most of my experience has been in the broadly attractional church movement. You know that’s where and and I was thinking about this and talking about this recently with a leader, a friend of mine who I’ve been leading with for years. And I said you know when we first started leading a lot of what we were trying to do well we used to say we ain’t your mama’s church.
Daniel Im — Yes.
Rich Birch — But now I feel like so many people come into our churches who they they’ve never been to church. Their parents haven’t been to church.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Their grandparents have not been to church. This deconstruction, people are showing up hungry.
Daniel Im — Yes.
Rich Birch — They’re showing up. No one is no one is stumbling into our churches, like oh I came because you got a great band.
Daniel Im — No.
Rich Birch — It’s like I’m showing up, I’ve got questions and I am looking for some sort of encounter. You said this here and you said this in another context and it grabbed my attention: post-everything. That really struck me. Talk to me. What do you mean by post-everything?
Daniel Im — Yeah, so so when I sat down and I’m trying to do succession, I’m trying to lead this church to emerge out of the pandemic. I’m trying to make sure that Jesus is our north star. Okay because it was so easy for it to be the racial tensions that was going on politically, masking mandates. Everything was vying I feel for our attention as church leaders. And for us here at Beulah and with our board we were like, no how do we just make sure that King Jesus is our north star, right? And that’s why that’s why we even put that in our vision awakening greater Edmonton to King Jesus.
Rich Birch — So good.
Daniel Im — So with that being our filter um, the the context that we are living in, it’s fascinating right? Because the truth the truth is, according to our world, in you, right? I hate when people say “you be you”. I like I hate that because I know it’s It’s one of those popular slogans.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it sounds good.
Daniel Im — People just say it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Im — Yeah, sounds good. It sounds accepting.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — And and I actually think a lot of Christians say it without really understanding the worldview that they’re perpetuating.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Because you be you essentially is saying truth is inside of you. The truth isn’t objectively, here are the scriptures…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …here is the truth.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — God is the truth creator, the maker, all… the truth isn’t what you feel, you know. Here’s the truth. It’s outside of you. Tim Keller’s talked a lot about it like before he passed. Um, so with all that being said, yes we live in a post-truth world. We live in a post-christian world. Um, we we live in this world where where people actually now we are seeing that it’s it’s not necessarily, Oh you’re Christian no I’m going to check out everything except Christianity. We’re not seeing that anymore, right? People are like well not actually…talk to me about what you believe. What what what what who is Jesus. Like what what is this all about? Like we’re seeing that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — And and some call it post-Christian. Some now say it’s pre-Christianian.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Im — There’s there’s there’s all these terms flying around. But we’re really seeing a a fresh, it’s really a fresh opportunity to not attract people with our tactics and strategies, to not try to stir up interest but to actually share the truth, be real about our convictions, talk about Jesus, experience the move of the Holy Spirit. People are longing for the supernatural. We’re not we’re not an overly charismatic church. We’re a Christian a Missionary Alliance Church which is a little bit of a centrist middle of the road sort of denomination. But we are seeing the Spirit of God move and and that’s that’s that post-everything world we’re living in.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. A. B. Simpson’s tribe. Love love…
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …love them. Savior, sanctifier, healer, coming King – gotta love it.
Daniel Im — Yeah, you got it man.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. That’s that’s fantastic. Now so let’s let’s talk about that a little bit more. So if so I think you’re I think you’re assessment of the culture is really true. I think we are living in this culture where you know things have shifted. They’ve changed. That is obviously going to impact the way we ah lead people closer to Jesus, the way we help them grow. What are you seeing, maybe some of the shifts and changes that are different than say. 20 years ago or when, you know, five years ago when you were in seminary, you know
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I like to have yeah like I saw to think it was just a few years ago…
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but I know it was longer than that.
Daniel Im —Yeah, full on full on.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — So so, Rich, you you said earlier that you were you grew up in this attractional movement and and I think most pastors that are pastoring today are heavily influenced…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — …either positively or negatively or some ah it’s in the air that we breathe right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Daniel Im — The attractional movement, which you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — …the predecessor is that that church growth movement right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — So so it it is just in the air that we are a part of. It’s in the air that our seminaries were formed out of. I graduated from Fuller, which was the center and hub of the church growth movement in many respects. So with that being said, what’s changed? Because as we’ve emerged out of this pandemic, so I didn’t want to write a pandemic book or a post-pandemic book. But as we have emerged out of it, it’s interesting how normal some things feel and how different other things feel. And and and when I think about the books that are on my bookshelf, and the things that I’ve that I learned in seminary, and didn’t learn in seminary, and all that, it’s so easy in a world that sort of feels like it used to, it’s so easy just to go back to what worked and what I was taught.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — And to go back to those tried and true resources. But the world that we’re living in is actually very different.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — It’s very different the the philosophy the worldviews. All of that is is very different. So what I essentially did was I went back as far as I could, seventy years, seventy years to the beginning of the church growth movement. I did a literature review, went to the fathers the fathers and the grandfathers of that movement. And then I was like, my my main question was what are we still doing that is actually from all the way back then, seventy years old, what are the assumptions that we are still believing? We would never attribute it to church growth movement.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — We would never attribute it to seeker sensitive, attractional and we would never do that. But it’s just ah, such a part of our the foundation of our thinking.
Rich Birch —Yeah, it’s just in the water, right? It’s in the air. Yeah yeah for sure. Yeah.
Daniel Im — Yeah yeah, and and the two assumptions I uncovered were, of course church, and of course growth.
Daniel Im — And that those two assumptions are still in the bones. It’s in our water that that actually I’m not going to say who said this who wrote it because I don’t want to throw shade. But this is from the 50s and one of the fathers of all this said this: a shrinking church is a sinning church.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Daniel Im — Like you never you never hear anyone say that today, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, right, right.
Daniel Im — Ah, but but but he said a shrinking church is a sinning church. And I think for most pastors if your church isn’t growing, and and I’m I’m I’m so grateful that we are actually larger than we were pre-covid. And and I’m not the only one saying that there’s many who are saying that. But for everyone who’s like actually we haven’t recovered, we’re smaller than we were. That line, right…
Rich Birch — Weighs heavy.
Daniel Im — No one’s going to say that.
Rich Birch — Yeah for sure.
Daniel Im — But it weighs heavy, and I think how we feel it as church leaders today is we feel shame. We feel guilt. We may not say, “I’m sinning,” but we feel the shame. We feel as, we feel as if what am I doing wrong? What is wrong with me? And what shame says is, you are not enough.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — So so it’s this sense of it’s this weight that church leaders are carrying around. And I just start off I’m like no you know those are assumptions that are no longer true, right? We can’t lead our churches believing that, of course people are going to come to church. Of course people are interested in church, or of course growth is natural. Of course. No, we we need to lay those assumptions aside and lead in a different way today.
Rich Birch — Well, that’s yeah, that’s you know convicting. Obviously it’s you know there’s those that notion that you know hey if we’re shrinking we’re sinning. You know I think that lands hard for people. I you know I think and there are you know I I talk to a number churches who are um, you know who are kind of above covid numbers. As much as we’ve said like I feel like it was two years ago we kept saying please stop talking about you know, comparing ourselves there.
Daniel Im — Right.
Rich Birch — But we’re still you know four or five years later…
Daniel Im — We still are. Yeah yeah.
Rich Birch — …we’re still thinking about that right? And you know the the reality of it is, it’s all of our churches are a brand new church…
Daniel Im — Yes.
Rich Birch — …from where we were in 2019, and you know in more ways than one. So being that that’s the case. So I understand the kind of deconstruction part of it. What were some of those steps that you believe, either you’re taking at Beulah or you believe as churches we should be pivoting towards? What would that what what would be some of those?
Daniel Im — Yeah, okay, so the so the major one would be, it’s it’s from the Engel scale. It is the Engel scale. And and if and if you’re not familiar, if listeners aren’t familiar with that scale, essentially it’s it’s a linear scale left to right: How far away are you from God on the non-christian side of things and how and then and then zero that point is conversion. And then on the other side, the plus side is your discipleship journey, right? So by and large most of our churches either focused on the left side. We’re evangelistic. We want to reach the non-christians, or focus are the non-christians and then we’ll disciple.
Daniel Im — Or you had churches on the right side who are like, no, our focus is discipleship. It’s reaching Christians, and then we’re going to do evangelism. And whether, and this is broad strokes, but but whether you are on more focusing on reaching non-christians or focusing on christians, both had their strengths and both had their weaknesses. What I noticed, and this is that the major paradigm shift that I want to propose and that I propose in this book, is instead of forming and focusing your churches either on the left or the right, either on reaching non-christians or Christians.
Daniel Im — What if we realized that there’s another axis? That there are both the uninterested and the interested. And this wasn’t a pandemic thing. I think what happened in the pandemic is these people revealed their levels of interest and we begin we began seeing this in our churches and in our communities. But this is this has been in in around for a while. I was just harder to see.
Daniel Im — So when you think about it and you think about your community. Yeah, you know what, through the pandemic I’m sure you heard people and and I’m sure you heard people saying, hey wow like I love that I’m watching you. And then watching them and what… Like in following Jesus, watching is not a verb that should be in our vocabulary.
Rich Birch — Right. Come watch me.
Daniel Im — Right? That’s not that’s that’s all so heavily consumeristic, right?
Daniel Im — And and and I heard Christians talking about it in a positive regard…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …and a positive way. We’re watching. It’s like no, we should worship…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — …actively follow. So so we saw that, right? We saw this this level of interest and faith level of interest in discipleship to Jesus where Jesus says come and die. We saw that interest level go down among many people. They became uninterested Christians, which I call consumers. But I also saw the interest level go up. I don’t know if you saw this too, but I saw so many people I’ve never seen people as frequently come and worship and get involved than I’ve than I’ve ever seen. And and it’s it’s like is frequency every other week, is frequency once a month?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Among some yes, but among others, no, it’s more than once a week again
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — And I’m seeing that interest grow. So I saw that interest/uninterest divide happened on the christian side but I also saw it happen on the non-christian side where it’s like all of a sudden Mother’s Day, Christmas Eve, Easter I’m not going anymore…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …because there’s no point.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — There’s no benefit. I want to be safe. I’m gonna stay at home. I’m gonna watch. Are you actually watching, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — And there’s this there’s this sense where people spiritually on on we saw this divide some went to sleep, right? They’re the sleepers, and others actually increased in their interest to the point where, I’ll I’ll share a quick story…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — …where where this one guy he had not been in church for over two decades.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Daniel Im — He moved to Edmonton from Toronto last year and stuff’s going on in his life that he doesn’t have answers to. He’s not a person of faith, doesn’t have answers. He’s seeking. Last time he’s been in church is over two decades.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Daniel Im — And he grew up going to catholic school. So he was like, you know what, I’m going to let me try Christianity.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Let me see… right? And it was an option. So he googles catholic churches near me.
Rich Birch — And he gets Beulah Alliance.
Daniel Im — Beulah Alliance Church is the number one top result. Okay, and I gotta tell you, Rich, I gotta tell you this…
Rich Birch — Ah, don’t tell the arch don’t tell the archbishop.
Daniel Im — …yeah, yeah! I got to this isn’t this isn’t some like ninja style…
Rich Birch — Yeah yes, it’s a church growth hack.
Daniel Im — …search engine marketing search engine optimization hack.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — We are not doing any sort of Catholic Church keywords.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — We’re not targeting. That’s that’s not a part of this at all.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — And we tried repeating this on multiple devices and it doesn’t work.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — We were the number one search result we can’t repeat it. And every other search result is a Catholic Church in Edmonton.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Daniel Im — Okay, you try to tell me that that’s not God working through Google.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Im — Right?
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Daniel Im — So so what’s interesting is this individual, he would not maybe he would have been asleep.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — But what’s happening in his life. God is stirring, right? He’s moving. We know that Jesus leaves a ninety-nine, goes after the one, that he’s pursuing people. He’s calling people to himself. He is calling this guy to himself
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Stirs him up. He now moves from uninterested to interested. We didn’t do that. It wasn’t our ads.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — The Holy spirit is moving people from uninterested to interested, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — We are mindful of our Google reviews. We are mindful of of of being visible. There there’s all the best practices that we are very mindful of he finds us not by our own accord or our own effort. He comes, and he experiences church like he’s never experienced before. He experiences God moving.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Daniel Im — This isn’t a dead religious thing that some people are observing. He experienced a vibrant church family where the Spirit of God is moving powerfully. He experienced that. He experienced people crying in the service. He experienced people singing with all of their heart.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — He experienced a full room of multiple generations and not just gray hair and a dwindling church right? He experienced that. Like you try to tell me that that’s not God…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …stirring in the stirring in his heart, calling him back to himself. And that’s what we’re seeing that there’s this interested and uninterested divide happening.
Rich Birch — Okay so I’ve got the quadrant on my paper in front of me.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’ve got kind of the the far from God and then the fully discipled.
Daniel Im — Yes.
Rich Birch — That’s one way. And then we’ve got uninterested and interested.
Daniel Im — Yes.
Rich Birch — So the far from God uninterested, they’re asleep. That’s the category title. Is that the title you’re using?
Daniel Im — Yeah, yes, sleepers.
Rich Birch — They’re sleepers.
Daniel Im — Then the uninterested non-christians yes sleepers.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and then you’ve got consumers are uninterested christians.
Daniel Im — Yes, that’s right. Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then you’ve got the ah the ah the the interested non-believers are stirred…
Daniel Im — Seekers.
Rich Birch — …seekers. Okay, oh nice, we’re using that word again.
Daniel Im — Yeah yes, read yeah exactly, because they are, right? They are using they are seeking.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, and then and then the fourth quadrant that kind of interested…
Daniel Im — Yeah, yeah would be disciples.
Rich Birch — …disciples, fully discipled.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so when you when you think about our opportunity, like are what we should be thinking about or wrestling with, which of those quadrants should we really be thinking through and and you know if we’re rallying our team together. Um I love a good four-quadrant conversation.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So yeah, let’s talk to us about that.
Daniel Im — And and and what I’m not doing is I’m not saying, hey we were you know bilateral linear, left or right, non-christian or Christian, and now there’s four. No, within each quadrant there’s a spectrum, right? Because.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — Because you can be a brand new disciple and you can grow to be a disciple maker…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — …and you’re right, there’s all of that within there. So what I’m proposing and what we’re doing at Beulah and what I’m seeing happen more and more is instead of focusing on either non-christians or christians, and wrestling with that age-old are you more discipleship or evangelism or evangelism or discipleship?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Like that’s been a ah constant conversation…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — …for the last couple decades.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — What if we actually flipped it and said I’m I’m I’m going to be our everything that we do, our preaching, our evangelism, our disippleship, our everything is actually going to be on the interested.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Daniel Im — We’re going to reach actively both the interested non-christians and the interested christians.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Daniel Im — So what we’re not going to do is we’re not going to try to attract, right? And and we’re not going to we’re not going to try to be better than the church next door. We’re not going to be we’re not going to try to do any of that sort of stuff anymore.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Because the reality is no matter how great your band was and playing um, ah, Coldplay decades ago…
Rich Birch — Right, yep.
Daniel Im — …like no matter how good even if you try to pull off a Taylor Swift song today, like no matter how good you are today…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — …right, people don’t care anymore, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s true.
Daniel Im — That’s not that’s they don’t because they’re you’re not going to be as good, right? And we were never really as good.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, that is true.
Daniel Im — We tried right? We tried.
Rich Birch — Yeah and we tried. Yeah.
Daniel Im — Yeah yeah, um, Snow Patrol remember.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true.
Daniel Im — So instead of doing that, right, instead of doing that and instead of trying to to teach actually more like a TED talk or with less time because people’s attention spans aren’t as long as they used to be, right? What would it look like for us instead to to give people the truth?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Daniel Im — To give people the word of God in a way that my preaching coaches taught me, in a way where you’re both your peaking curiosity and your holding attention. So so what I’m not saying is be boring.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — …and right you you need to be compelling. You need to have excellence.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — That’s that’s all there. But how do we do so in a way where our assumption isn’t we’re trying to stir interest. Our assumption is people are interested.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Daniel Im — Now let’s give them the truth.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Now talk to me about how this paradigm has shifted. But maybe we’ll talk about just you know there’s a lot we could talk about I can see the implications from this even in you know I in my church I volunteer as an Alpha leader you know, an Alpha helper. And like I’ve seen this I am constantly amazed at the people that end up in my Alpha Group.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I’m like the you know I last time round we we had this woman you know, a couple, I don’t know, we’re a couple, maybe week, two week, three couple weeks in. And she sits down at the discussion time and she’s like my mind is blown away. So you’re telling me that Jesus is God? Like you’re telling me that, you know tell me more. Like she’s she’s interested.
Daniel Im — Yes, yeah.
Rich Birch — She’s leaning in like she’s not, you know we’re not having to do jazz hands like that you know which is great. But let’s talk about maybe even just the teaching piece, particularly using this kind of paradigm. How how does this impact the way you communicate or the way you structure services or the way you do you know weekends or that sort of thing you know in your context? What’s that look like?
Daniel Im — Yeah, full on. So we are trying to create an experience with moments, right? So so if our if our if our focus is the interested, and we know that there are both non-christians and christians. What we are seeing in our society today is there is an acknowledgement that there is more to life than this, right? that there is more to life than what we see with our eyes. I don’t know if you ever saw this at Costco, but I recently came across a magazine for witches. And it looked…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Daniel Im — Yeah, it looked like you’re watch you’re you’re picking up Home and Garden. It looks like it looks like a Oprah magazine…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …and it was witches.
Rich Birch — Wow. Crazy.
Daniel Im — Yeah yeah, so the normalization of of the of the supernatural.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Daniel Im — The expectation that yeah, there is a supernatural. How do I access the supernatural? What we are saying and what we are doing is, hey yeah there is a supernatural and its God and Jesus is the way. So let’s create moments and experiences where yeah, we’re going to leave room for the Spirit to move in the way that only the Spirit can move.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Let’s sow prayer into our service. That old Charles Spurgeon, right? Like what what did what he do? There is like a furnace room underneath his auditorium, underneath the sanctuary of people praying, right?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Daniel Im — Like that’s the fire. What does it look like to do that and to expect God to move in supernatural ways…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Daniel Im — …not getting weird, right? Um, um, we’re not, we’re not trying to to to chase an experience over the truth. But we know that Jesus said to his disciples in John 20:21, As the Father has sent me so now I send you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Daniel Im — And then we know we know that the very next verse that 22 comes after 21. Like we know that, right? In math 22 always comes after 21.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Daniel Im — But in our mindset of of being tribal in our in our faith and tribal in our theology and tribal in all of that. And we’re like oh yeah, mission missions first, missions. You know as a Father of sent me I send you. Let’s go. Let’s do this. Let’s ah, let’s accomplish the great commission. Let’s go. But we forget that Jesus in the very next breath said to his disciples receive the Holy Spirit right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — Like like it’s not a different book. It’s literally the next verse.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Daniel Im — And and and we forget that.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Good.
Daniel Im — So how do we do this? Yeah we expect the spirit to move. This this isn’t something that we try to do that we are planning to do. Um but I can’t tell you the number of people who when they enter into our space of worship, they just start crying.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Daniel Im — Like and and it’s not not like ugly crying right? But there’s there’s there’s some there. It’s the Spirit of God right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — Like it’s it’s it’s it’s the prayers of the saints over the last 102 years that’s being poured out right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — It’s the presence of God, people are entering into the presence, right? And we know that yes we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are you know temples of you know there’s all of that. But when they enter into this space of worship that’s been saturated with prayer, it’s amazing to see how people are like Okay, what what is this place? What is going on?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — And they want to seek God, so let’s give him God right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Daniel Im — Let’s give him the truth.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Our you know our mutual Friend Carey Nieuwhof and he said for years like wouldn’t it be sad if people came to church and all they found was us, you know.
Daniel Im — Wow.
Rich Birch — And and, you know and I’m like oh that’s so true right?
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like I you know I Tim Lucas lead pastor I work for at at Liquid Church, I deeply respect, well respect Carey too. I remember him years ago saying he went through a personal I would say kind of transformation where he he came to the end of himself and it was like listen if if this is just about me, if this is just about coming up with some sort of sticky statements, this isn’t enough.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like this will not transform people’s lives. We we have to provide an accessible encounter for people. We have to find a way to usher people to the throne room ultimately.
Daniel Im — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Love that, love that.
Daniel Im — Yeah, and I and yeah, and yeah…
Rich Birch — Well you’ve got a…
Daniel Im — And I don’t think it’s through the newest tactic.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Hundred percent. Yes
Daniel Im — I don’t think it’s through any kitschy thing…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — …or or through like airy worship music trying to stir up emotions, right? That’s that’s not the tactic…
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — …and that’s not what you and I believe nor it’s what either of us write about.
Rich Birch — No.
Daniel Im — There’s best practices. And there are things that we need to do create to create welcoming environments and not be distracting, right? And all this isn’t an excuse to throw all that away. But we’re not trying to manufacture something, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — We’re we’re crafting our services. We’re preaching the truth. And I love what John Stott says about preaching. And and this is this is it’s my it’s my motto. It’s how I it’s how I live. I love this. And and I’m going to butcher it because it’s just to paraphrase right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — But he said the most holiest moment in a service, right, it’s not the music. It’s not the preacher. It’s not any of this. The most holiest moment in a service is the moment after the preacher has spoken, and before the words have entered into the hearts and minds and ears of the congregation, right?
Rich Birch — So good.
Daniel Im — It’s that split second where the spirit of God transforms what’s been prayerfully prepared and said and transforms it into manna, right? It transforms it into our daily bread, transforms it into what we all need to hear. And and and who does that right? Yes I got to I got to I got to grow as a preacher. I gotta got to learn how to build tension. I got to learn how to craft compelling talks and sermons. But it’s not that’s not what’s going to change people right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — It’s the ministry of Holy Spirit.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Love it. So good. This is fantastic. Now, you’ve got a book coming out that I I want to make sure people pick up. It’s called “The Discipleship Opportunity: Leading a Great-Commission Church in a Post-Everything World”. Obviously we’ve been kind of talking around those those issues today, but give us some context a little bit more kind of flesh out specifically around the book. You know what were you thinking when you pulled this together? What are, you know, what are you hoping for, that kind of thing?
Daniel Im — Yeah, yeah, so the premise of the book is let’s focus on the interested. Let’s stop doing this old divide of being a church that’s more about reaching the lost or more about ah equipping the saints and and discipling. What if we actually could focus on both…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Daniel Im — …through a new paradigm of the interested. This isn’t a both/and, either/or sort of debate either.
Rich Birch — Right.
Daniel Im — It’s a new quadrant. It’s a new perspective on that, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Daniel Im — So what would it look like for us to do that. So essentially the first half unpacks the the foundation of that deconstructing some of the assumptions we believe about the church growth movement, not in its entirety because there’s so much good that’s come out of that. But what are the things that we need to stop assuming and carrying. I present this new framework and then essentially I wanted to write, I mean this is the shortest book I’ve ever written.
Daniel Im — When I did “Planting Missional Churches” with Ed when we rewrote that I think that was like 120-, 130,000 words.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Daniel Im — Ah “No Silver Bullets” was like 77-, 78,000 words. “You Are What You Do” was like 60-
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — 50-, 60-. This is like 30-something thousand words.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Daniel Im — So I’m like my attention spans lower.
Rich Birch — Yeah way more compressed. That’s good.
Daniel Im — Yeah, so I want it to be punchy.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Daniel Im — And essentially the second whole part of the book is there’s a chapter on how do we reach disciple and preach to the sleepers, to the seekers, to the consumers, and to the disciples. Basically evangelism, discipleship, and preaching – what needs to shift what needs to change.
Rich Birch — So good.
Daniel Im — What does our focus need to be for each of those categories as we move into this post-everything world. So.
Rich Birch — That’s great. It’s this struck me as a great book, you know we’re coming up here maybe this fall, as like a fall leadership book. You could read it together as a team. Um, you know, go through it and really ask the question, Okay, so in light of what Daniel’s unpacking here, what does that mean for our ministry? How you know how I would really encourage leaders to do that. Where do where can people pick up copies of this book? Where do we want to send them online to kind of learn more to dive deep?
Daniel Im — Yeah, totally. So you can get it anywhere books are sold anywhere you like buying your books. It’ll be available everywhere. But if you go to my website danielim.com/thediscipleshipopportunity or and I know that’s a crazy long url. Or you just go daniellem.com and you’ll find the link. There’s some preorder and order bonuses and all that stuff just for more helps as you unpack this with your team. But yeah, you can get the book anywhere.
Rich Birch — Um, so good. Yeah I would encourage people to pick it up. I really do think this could be a great resource for you and for your church as a you know as we look forward as we’re all trying to figure out how do we lead in ah in this context. Well Danielle, I really appreciate you being here today. Where do we want to send people online, obviously daniellim.com, is there anywhere else if they want to track with you, with the church, that sort of thing?
Daniel Im — Yeah, so daniellim.com will get all the links. Beulah Alliance Church is the church. And I I all preaching all that stuff is there and on Youtube. And on social media I’d love to connect. I’m probably the most active on Instagram. Facebook’s a little bit of a necessary evil.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Daniel Im — Ah X or Twitter is just whatever it is now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly remember when it was fun? It used to be fun.
Daniel Im — Yeah, so it it used to be fun. But yeah, so I’m on the I’m on all the platforms and my my handle is Daniel and then it’s my korean name SANGI – @danielsangi – so love to connect.
Rich Birch — Love it. Daniel, appreciate you being here today cheering for you and thanks for being on the podcast. Look forward to having you come back at some point in the future. I just love what you’re up to. Thanks so much, brother.
Daniel Im — Hey Rich, you have been a staple in my podcasting my podcasting rounds. Like not sorry, not rounds, but what I listen to…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Daniel Im — …and and your books…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Daniel Im — …and your influence. I’ve just been and your friendship has just been I’ve just been so grateful. So thank you, Rich.
Rich Birch — Thanks. Thanks so much, man.
The Staff Health Puzzle: How Central Christian Operationalizes Alignment with Joe Platania
May 30, 2024
Thanks for joining in the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Joe Platania today, the Executive Pastor of Human Resources, Staff Development, and the Central Leadership Institute at Central Christian Church in Arizona.
Maintaining a healthy staff culture at a growing church is no small feat, particularly when you have multiple campuses. How do you lay a healthy foundation and build upon it well? Tune in as Joe shares a wealth of wisdom about leadership modeling, staff development, deep dives into organizational health, and more.
Health starts at the top. // Functioning with a healthy staff culture all begins with the foundation being laid by the leadership. A church’s senior leadership needs to model healthy behaviors, being transparent, vulnerable, and accountable. These are the pillars that support a thriving organizational culture. At Central Christian they’ve also developed leadership promises, a set of commitments that guide their leaders in fostering this positive environment.
Build it and then sustain it. // With the leadership creating a healthy foundation, it’s important to continue to cultivate that health by keeping the church in certain rhythms. Create a church calendar, policies, processes, and practices that keep the church moving forward in ways that sustain health, and then drive it through the organization. Build trust with your staff by addressing the problems they see. Ask them for feedback and then focus on process improvement.
Be accountable with each other. // Some things that Joe and his team worked on to improve their team culture at Central Christian were leadership promises, model clarity, and role clarity. Every January the leadership go through a 360 review process based on the leadership promises, which allows staff to provide feedback and keeps leadership accountable.
Maintain alignment. // One of the most challenging aspects of a multisite church is maintaining alignment and role clarity across campuses. Like other churches, Central Christian has their mission and vision. However, they are also crystal clear about being a centralized model of ministry and ensuring decisions, staff roles and job descriptions across their campuses support that model.
Deep dive with your team. // Joe maintains organizational health by meeting with his ministry teams for “deep dives”. These data-gathering sessions are crucial for celebrating wins, measuring important metrics, evaluating systems and processes, assessing leadership effectiveness, and pinpointing areas for improvement. The data collected from these sessions is then used to develop actionable plans and measure the success of implemented solutions.
Learn more about Central Christian Church at www.centralaz.com and click here to download a Team Reflection Deep Dive PDF which details the six deep dive questions that Joe discusses.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man I’m so excited that you’re tuned in today. Really looking for today’s conversation with Joe Platania. He is the Executive Pastor of Human Resources, Staff Development, and the Central Leadership Institute at Central Christian Church. This is a multisite church in Arizona that if you’re not tracking, you should be. They’ve got, if I’m counting correctly, 5 locations plus church online. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country and they’ve got a mission to lead people to discover and fully own a faith in Jesus. So Joe, just so glad that you’re here today. Thanks for being here.
Joe Platania — Thanks, Rich. I’m excited to talk to you today.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t we fill out the picture – kind of tell us a little bit more about Central. Kind of give us the flavor if people were to come this weekend. What would they experience?
Joe Platania — Yeah, you know I think they’d have a great experience with worship, incredible messaging and a culture that is ah, an inviting culture. We we want to create an environment on weekends where people feel comfortable, they feel welcome, but they are also getting a message that’s very biblically centered. We’ll a lot of times preach really almost in an expository fashion but in a way that’s applicable. So a lot of people really these days seem to appreciate that authentic approach to God’s word.
Rich Birch — Oh absolutely.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure, we’ve seen that that’s one of the you know, kind of misnomers of fast growing churches is is they think, oh like they don’t really preach from the Bible. That’s not true at all and Central is a great example of that.
Joe Platania — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, just if that’s what people are looking for. Ultimately they want timeless truths that’s applicable to today. That’s great. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your role; give us a sense of kind of the every executive password looks a little bit different but give us kind of a sense of of your piece of the puzzle.
Joe Platania — Yeah, and that’s a great way to put a piece of the puzzle. At Central there are 4 of us who sit in that executive pastor space and my part of it is the human resource space, I guess for lack of a better term. I certainly oversee our hiring and are handbook and our practices and um policy when it comes down to that. But I also get to work on our culture and I get to help ah my teammates my peer group ah work on you know, healthy processes and kind of digging in when something’s not quite right in their Ministry space and I’ll tell you that’s.
Joe Platania — That’s tricky sometimes because there has to be a lot of trust between us. Um, you know we’re we’re clearly in it together and I think we the the 4 of us recognize that so that allows me some some true in route to their ministry where I get to work and support them. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. Yeah that I’d love to really dig into that. Anybody that’s led a church of any size knows that developing a healthy staff culture can be difficult. It can be hard and you know there there can be this kind of misnomer out there – let’s use that word twice in one podcast – that you know people come and work, everybody loves Jesus and the staff will be amazing because of that.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah, but we know that it can be difficult. Why is that why do so many of us seem to struggle to have healthy staff cultures? What’s what’s your diagnosis of that issue?
Joe Platania — That’s a great question. I think I think if you and I could figure that out today, we could retire and and live well and the kingdom would be advanced because of it. Ah boy, I’ll tell you I I think it’s different from place to place. But I think there are some foundational truths that are in place when you have a healthy culture. And then I think there’s a layer on top of that that continue that healthy culture.
Joe Platania — So I I think you have to have that healthy foundation. You know I think that looks like first your leadership from from the top down has to be healthy. They have to act healthy. They have to interact with each other in a way that’s healthy. They have to model health.
Joe Platania — Um, and and then that looks like them being vulnerable, them being transparent even even when it’s hard to be transparent, and them to be accountable. And when when your leadership is that way, boy it’s kind of hard for the rest of organization to to not follow suit. So.
Joe Platania — So I think first of all those foundational pieces have to be in place. But then you have to continue to cultivate that health. And that’s just what I’ve learned. It’s like okay, let’s get this big rock in place, this foundational health in place. And now let’s continue it well, how do we do that.
Joe Platania — Now part of this by keeping the church in certain rhythms and and you do that with with a healthy calendar, with a process um and policies and practices that keep the church moving forward in ways that are healthy um and and driving it down through the organization. I think it’s hard at any size church. I think the bigger the church is, it It gets harder, especially when you start getting into multiple campuses. You know we we I don’t want to use the word struggle but it’s definitely a tension for us to continue to manage alignment not only through our ministries but through our campuses. I have to believe anybody who works in multisite church understands that alignment is tough and and clarity role clarity is tough.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Joe Platania — And those are those things though that you have to build on top of that healthy foundation. So build it and then sustain it. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that that challenge of even for us at the senior leaders table, hey like it’s got to start with us. It’s not like we can’t point at everybody else and say, hey you got to be healthy.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But then when we look at around at our relationships we say, man is this because really I really do believe that that kind of what starts at that level ends up rippling throughout the entire organization, staff team and then ultimately out from there.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch —Let’s talk about some of those rhythms. You talked about calendar, processes, practices.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Help us unpack that. Try to get a little practical there around some of those things. What are you doing at Central to try to help drive the healthy staff culture through you know, great calendaring, processes, practices, that sort of thing.
Joe Platania — Yeah, it’s it’s a great question. So with our calendar process, it’s something that we are really developing right now. We have it in place. But when I say developing we’re working on improving even in on that process. Um.
Joe Platania — We did a best Christian workplace survey in the fall of last year. And our score was good and but there’s always room for growth. And you know one of the tension points that our staff shared with us is hey we feel um, overwhelmed. And sometimes it feels like we’re doing too much. So we said hey we need to look at our calendar and make sure that um, it’s clear what we’re doing when we’re doing it that the the return on it. Um, and not only that, what is required for everyone to be at and what is something we’re doing as a church.
Joe Platania — So we went to work on that. We we went through a problem solving process where we we collected a lot of data from our staff after um the survey and then we we went through an orderly process solving um, a solution developing mandates and then really an approach. And now ah where we’re about to execute that. We’ve also put in place some hey how do we know when we’re successful with that approach.
Joe Platania — So we’ve gone to work on our calendar and I’m really excited. We just shared with our lead team on this last week hey here’s here’s some things we’re doing to provide you with clarity, and better detail in organization. And I was just listening to it I’m like wow we are we followed a process of improvement and now we’re providing really, the ask of our staff last fall when they said, hey this is a hard thing about working here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania —Like help us, fix this. And like, okay here we go. So now it’s sharing that so we shared it with lead team…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Platania —…next next month at staff meeting we’re gonna share it with them. And then we’re gonna ask them, hey hold us accountable to it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania —Like here’s what you said, here’s what we’re doing to fix it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — And here’s how we think we’ll know we’re successful, but you got to help us. You got you know, but that’s where that foundational stuff, Rich, that we talked about. Like if they can’t trust us, if they can’t believe that we’re there, that we’re not going to give them like a beat down for sharing feedback with us…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — …then we’ll never hear it. So that foundational health has to be in place ah for for that layered health to continue.
Rich Birch — Oh I love this. I’m fascinated by this. I’d love to kind of pick that apart.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I’d love to get to the process of how you got to that. So like kind of the meta idea of…
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …okay, how did we how do you go about listening? And then you know and then okay so we took that feedback, now we’re trying to actually live it out. But let’s stick with just the calendar thing there for a second. Unpack what you kind of discovered. It sounds like there was a tension around, we’re not sure you know even what people should come up, show to, you know what is you know… I know this is like a common thing. It’s like I know I work here. We do you know, Easter’s got 78 services…
Joe Platania — Right.
Rich Birch — …do I need to be at all 78 services for Easter?
Joe Platania — Right.
Rich Birch — Is it that kind of thing you’re wrestling with? Help us understand that a little bit.
Joe Platania — I would say on some level it is. It’s really interesting, I think there’s two things I think first of all, we’re a really active church. We’re trying to reach people um, who who are either far away, who don’t know Jesus. And then we’re trying to provide ah environments for people who know Jesus to grow in him. So you know because of that and that sounds like well yeah, every church is doing that. Well some churches are a little more direct in one or the other.
Joe Platania — One of the things I I find about Central is we try to do a little bit of both. You know we we want to provide environments and ways that we’re reaching the lost but also ways that we’re developing and helping the church grow spiritually. So that probably won’t surprise you kind of ends up in a busy calendar. So yeah, we’ve got Waster and a lot of services. But then we’ve got a lot of other different things that end up on our calendar.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — And so then when you have 5 campuses what you realize is, well, you’ve got these big rocks that you know Central services is putting on the calendar. Then each campus has their own things that they’re doing to try to reach their community to try to you know foster ah community amongst their their congregants. And then, what’s funny is then some of those things are like groups and and ministry settings. Well those ministry settings have things, you know.
Joe Platania — So like last weekend I was talking to one of our campus pastors and I was saying man, it’s so funny. I said we we have one thing on the calendar this weeken. But I don’t know about you but I’ve got 5 church things to do in the next day and a half.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Platania — And so so you know, um, and so we we’re trying to solve that – that’s a second tension. So the first thing is we need to do as a church is make sure everything we’re putting on a calendar is in alignment with our mission, our vision, our strategy, that there’s an ROI, and we’re measuring that ROI, and we understand that. But then we’re giving our staff clarity is like hey these are things you really have to do – these are tier 1.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — And then these are tier 2. These these are, hey we hope you’ll do them, or if you have time to do them, or capacity to do them, if tier 2. And then I’ll tell you it’s a part of it that we haven’t solved yet and we’re going to need to go to work on—maybe it’s solving 1 before you can solve 2—is like how do we help our staff to even organize things on that third level of like, hey on my campus in my community…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — Because you know even though Central’s got one thing in ten days, I’ve got nine. So yeah and it’s helping that. And I think some of that, and you probably you know know this, Rich, in ministry we don’t do so well with boundaries. So we’re often our own worst enemy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Platania — And I do wonder if some of that’s like ah ah you know teaching our staff on setting boundaries…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — …and understanding like, hey it’s okay to say no. Because it doesn’t always feel okay to say no um, in ministry you know. And so that’s it. So that’s I would say we’re we’re making good traction. I love um the work we’ve done in our calendar. I love the the rigor we’re putting to it that’s going to only help keep it keep us in rhythm, but provide clarity. But um I do think there’s work to be done um, on that next level.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. There is something about I had a friend who you know always joked. He said you know our mission is a bottomless pit.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Kind of a little bit of surgeons black humor there of like ah…
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but it’s true, right?
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like there is always more to do, but the reality of it is we’ve got to help our teams kind of pick and choose and prioritize because there will always be more to try to accomplish the mission that we’re you know a part of, so. Let’s let’s talk a little bit more maybe about another aspect of your culture that over the last number of years you’ve looked at and said, hey here’s an area where we could pursue towards health. I understand this calendering piece. Are there other things other initiatives that you’ve kind of attacked as an organization to help improve your team culture?
Joe Platania — Yeah I’ll give you three right off the top and we could talk about any of the ones that you’d like.
Rich Birch — Yes, okay. Yeah.
Joe Platania — One kind of speaks to that foundational health I was talking about. And one thing we developed was called Leadership Promises. And I can share a little bit about that if you’d like. But then there’s two other things that we’ve really had to work on, I would say in the last two years that have been really helpful. And they’re they’re that second tier of of health. Um, and one is model clarity and alignment, and then role clarity and then alignment to model. And so you know ah we have mission, vision, model, strategy, you know. I think we’re really clear, in my opinion, very clear in our mission and vision. Um I think we’re clear in our strategy. But I think when we start to get into you know, model, alignment again, especially with multiple campuses and diverse communities, it gets tricky. So you know. So leadership promises was foundational…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — …and that’s going to help keep a strong, and then model and role clarity.
Rich Birch — Let’s talk about Leadership Promises. That that that’s intriguing. What what did you mean by that? What was the problem you were trying to solve with that?
Joe Platania — Yeah, so it’s it’s funny. I’ve been with Central for about two and a half years now and so I wasn’t actually part of this, but um, some of my teammates were telling me right before I joined the team they were in an interview with a candidate. And the candidate said, Hey you you guys ask a lot from the staff. Um, we had something that we shared with them called cultural distinctives, and they were just like hey um, here’s what it’s like to work in a church. And it’s awesome, but it’s hard. And so we were sharing cultural distinctives with them and this was what it’s like really. And they said but what do you promise? What do you promise to the people who work there?
Joe Platania — And and I remember um one of my teammates said to our executive group, hey I think it’d be really wise for us to develop um some things that we promise. So we went about the work. We worked with our executive team, with our lead pastor, and and then our lead team, and we developed like here are promises. These are commitments that our leadership is going to make. These are those foundational things which I was telling you about that. We’re going to commit to you. And then here’s what we’re going to do. Because ah promises are great, but if you’re not going to be accountable, your promises are pretty much useless. And honestly I think they’re negative.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — Um, and so what we do is each year, and we do it every January, um we do a 360 review and everyone in leadership. And the basis for that 360 review is our leadership promises. So we we cascade our leadership promises out to our entire staff, and we ask them to evaluate their leaders. And then we also send that to um peers and and supervisors. So leader is going to get feedback once a year on how they’re living out our leadership promises from their their teammates um who they who report to them, their peer group, and their supervisor. And and said it’s an accountability thing. So hey we promise you these healthy behaviors…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — …and now we’re going to hold ourselves accountable to them. And yeah I love that. That’s been in place, this is our second year – we’re in or in April now. So we just came through our second cycle of that. I love it. I love it. Big fan of it. We’ll probably go to work this summer on making some improvements to that process now that it’s two years old. But ah it’s working.
Rich Birch — Yeah, talk to me about what some of those leadership promises are – maybe maybe 1 or 2 that ah provided kind of the the biggest leverage point, or maybe area of concern or improvement that you need to as ah as a team. What would be some of those Leadership Promises? What’s the kind of thing you’re you’re holding yourselves accountable to for your team? Which I love that idea, I think it’s fantastic.
Joe Platania — Yeah I would say a lot of it was based on narratives that we had heard from our staff and we talked to them about, but also things we wanted to make sure that we reinforce. So first of all, we wanted to make sure that we committed to our staff that we we were going to our leadership are going to be men and women of prayer. That we were and that’s the first thing on the, hey church, we are going to be praying. We’re going to ask God for guidance and clarity ah above and before all things. So that’s the first
Joe Platania — And then there’s other things in there that are really helpful that we’re going to be living transparently and we’re going to share authentically. We’re going to ask for feedback. You know we’re not going to wait for you to come. So one of the things that was an output of of our leadership promises was something that we do in our monthly reviews. And we call those reps, but it’s ah every thirty days everybody gets a 1 on 1 with their supervisor. And go over the normal things that you would go over in a 1 on 1. But one of the things is like, hey what feedback do you have for me? What can I be doing better? How can I support you better? But that came out of that like, hey we’re going to ask for feedback regularly. So of course we do our 360 once a year, but every month every supervisor should be asking, hey you know what what can I do to help?
Joe Platania — Other things and I’ll just give you one more that’s interesting and maybe this will resonate with you. Um, in the church world we I always like to say I think we’ve we have ruined the word family. I you know, starting in church it’s like, hey my church family. Well we’ve weaponized that word to some degree as a as a capital “C” Church and we use it to make people feel guilty about leaving, or growing and going elsewhere. So one of our promises was like, hey we’re gonna pour into you. We’re gonna invest in your personal and professional development, and then if you take that and leave we are gonna celebrate you for that.
Joe Platania — And and so that is, and you know my previous experience in church. And and not so much even with the church I’m with, it’s just the culture of church that wasn’t it. When you said, I’m leaving, the answer was like, how can you do this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — You’re, you know, you’re traitorous!
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — And now we’re saying the opposite. Like we’re going to make a kingdom investment in you and we hope you stay forever.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — But if you don’t, go with God and and grow the kingdom and we will celebrate that. So those were just some of the things.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Joe Platania — I I think we have about 10 or 12 different leadership promises.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Platania — And um, you know, and it’s just again, it’s a promise to our staff…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Platania — …ah that we’re going to be healthy.
Rich Birch — I love that. I love that even that idea of you know how we what’s our posture as we leave, if you’re leaving…
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …if you’re, you know, I like that going on to a new kingdom assignment.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because that is one of the telltale signs, I think, of a culture that’s maybe gone sideways a little bit is, you know, is you… and I’ve had this happen as somebody who’s in the role I’m in. You know, I’ll hear from leaders who are saying like, hey, I’m thinking about moving on, but please don’t tell X. Please don’t you know.
Joe Platania — Yeah, yes.
Rich Birch — And and and the problem is like I I which, I understand. I’m not there’s not any judgment behind that.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I understand why people say that. But that is I think once once we trip over that in our brains and realize, man I can’t even talk to my person about the fact that I’m thinking about leaving, or it’s like you’re dead to me, right?
Joe Platania — Right.
Rich Birch — They’ll be like, you know, you’re cut off you know, kind of thing.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I love that. That’s so good. Can we pivot and talk a little bit about multisite? I think…
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know ah, let’s picture there’s a lot of multisite churches that are listening in, executive pastor of maybe a church of a couple thousand people.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’ve got 3 or 4 locations. And I hear you talking about church health and I’m like I have a hard time getting handle on where things are at in multiple locations. It feels like as church leaders were trained to kind of lead things when we’re in the room, but when we’re not in the room, it’s hard for our influence to continue to ripple, and multisite is you know that on steroids.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So talk us through how how are you wrestling with kind of ensuring alignment around some of these health issues across all your locations. What are you learning in that process?
Joe Platania — Yeah, I think that kind of goes to the other things I was talking to you about where I think you have to have some really important things in place like model clarity, model alignment and then you know from that, hey this is what we are we – ah a centralized model church are we decentralized? Okay, great. What does that mean to be and and how should we act?
Joe Platania — And then from there it’s role clarity. Like do our roles align with that model. One of the things that I talked to some friends in the church world that I hear as a disconnect in multiside churches. They have a good idea of what kind of model church. They are not everyone does, honestly. But some do. But then they’ll they’ll create roles and job descriptions that are just not in alignment with that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — Or at least their their staff and we had some of that for sure at Central. And so one of the things we’ve been working on is first like hey guys here’s who we are. This is our model. This is the kind of church we want to be on all 5 campuses. And then here are our roles, here are job descriptions.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Platania — So we yeah, and you know that sounds so easy. But as you can imagine you have I think we’re a well over a hundred staff right now. That’s a lot.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Platania — Yeah, you know it’s a lot to do across 5 campuses. Um, so it’s it’s only a full time job. And and ah yeah, it takes a ah lot of collaboration among all of our team. Not only our campus staff. Our central service staff but our executive and lead team as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Joe Platania — But that’s that’s how we drive it. It’s like hey you know, healthy healthy culture, clarity at the model alignment level. And now let’s push that down to the “me” level, the person level, through role clarity. And I you know I do have some some tools that I use that I’ve just developed over the years that help ah deliver us at at spots of role clarity, and and even model clarity. And so when we we kind of start to feel those tensions. We’re like hey, maybe this team needs to do a role clarity exercise and help us.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, let’s talk about that. Um, you’ve talked about model clarity a few times. And um I suspect that there are people that are listening in that are like, I’m really not sure what he’s talking about there.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What what do you mean by model clarity?
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, and then let’s kind of scale that down then into role clarity a little bit.
Joe Platania — Yeah, so you know when when you’re a multisite church, there are things that get easier honestly and there are things that get harder. And one of the things that’s harder is keeping everyone on the same page. So you know the way I’ve learned to help keep larger groups on the same page is to be as foundationally strong and to build good solid brick levels at each spot.
Joe Platania — So one of the first spots is just understanding what operating model we’re going to follow. So are are we a church that is going to be, you know one church many locations. You know so really centralized. Are we going to be a church that really allows a lot of autonomy at the campus level. So we’re going to have some synergy and some redundancy from from the broadcast campus. And will allow those efficiencies to help our campuses but largely they’re going to be autonomous to reach our communities the way they think is best
Joe Platania — And I think you know there’s a spectrum of that. And I think you need to decide as an organization, are we going to be…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Platania — …and these very well may be my words. I don’t know that everyone uses decentralized and centralized, but it was just the easiest way I could think you know are you going to be a decentralized organization or a centralized. And at Central we’ve chosen to be a centralized model church.
Joe Platania — So we we’re one church, multiple locations, and so everything kind of falls under that banner and follows that order. So then you start to get to a funnel, what I would call a clarity funnel of, okay so everything falls on – we know who we are, now here’s what we do and how we do it. Because of that.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s let so yeah, this is ah so I’ve been doing multisite for you know 25 years, since really since 2000, 2002 – so almost twenty five years. And I was at a thing recently um, was speaking at this conference and we were talking about multisite and and I was joking with a friend of mine. I said you know you, could take the questions from today’s from the leaders in this room today are like the same questions that we were asking in 2001, 2002. It’s like dotted line, solid line. You know campus versus central.
Joe Platania — Yes.
Rich Birch — You know, all of that kind of stuff. It’s like man, we we find ourselves asking the same kind of questions. How do you talk about those issues when you try to define so you say centralized. What does that mean for like staffing and you know those kind of things.
Joe Platania — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — What’s some of the language help us understand how how you talk about that at Central.
Joe Platania — Yeah, that’s really that’s a really good, and and so I would say what we start with with that… First of all, there is always a tension when you have that centralized approach who who leads the staff at the campus level. So you know you have ah you have an executive level that sits under the lead pastor. And then you have a lead team. And then you have a central service, central support level, and then you have your campuses. And that’s not necessarily a hierarchy. Um, but you have to decide, do our campus staff, which is a lot of our you know church-facing staff – the people who are neck deep in ministry, who do they report to?
Joe Platania — So you know we have an org chart that provides really clarity of that. You know we have we have straight lines and dotted lines and everyone knows the answer. And for us what we’ve chosen in this season and, and again I don’t want to say that this is the only right way.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Joe Platania — This is just the way we chose. Rich, I don’t know about you, but the older I get the more I figure out there’s more than one right way to do something. So you…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely oh for sure for sure. But I think the take, the key on that though that I want to that I want to underline for people is I think the thing that you’re 100% or 110% true on is you’ve got to be clear in your church what your your approach to these issues. Because if it gets I literally was saying this to somebody two days ago – they were talking about multisite, they got a couple locations. And I was like you got to get clarity because if if you don’t then you’ll leave your team hanging out there and they’ll just guess, and you know and then you’ll have problems.
Rich Birch — So yeah I agree. There’s not there’s not one way to do this, but you got to be super clear on it. Sorry I interrupted you there.
Joe Platania — No, no.
Rich Birch — I was just giving you a hearty amen.
Joe Platania — Yeah, no and I and you’re so right. And so we try to provide that and so what we’ve chosen for this season is that our our campus level staff are going to report to you know central central service leader. So like our our kids staff on our campus report to our lead kids pastor, our student… Now they have a dotted line relationship with the campus pastor who sits on lead team as well. And and then of course the campus staff, associate campus pastors, they’re reporting to our our campus pastor.
Joe Platania — But we have that that we have that organizational alignment. We have a org chart. Again, some of this is just communicating who we are clearly. And so we have that. But it it can’t stop there. You you know you, then you have to continue to add texture and layers and context. And so while we have an org chart, now we have to build job descriptions that are really clear and in line with that that model of church that we want to run. And um and one of the things we’ve done with some of our groups and this will be a summer project is with some others is we not only want to have um, a job description that supports our the alignment of our model. But we want to have success behaviors that fuel our job description. So this is another layer, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Joe Platania — So you have a model, you have clear job descriptions. What… Okay, that’s great, but what is what, you know, I can have 15 tasks or actions on my job description. That’s not super helpful. So I got to practice with this a little bit a couple of years ago with our campus pastors. And here’s what was kind of mind blowing. Um, we had we we developed some clarity for them, and and then we worked on hey let’s develop some success behaviors. I think we developed the 123 things that they do on a regular basis. I don’t know about you, but that feels like a lot.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a lot. Wow.
Joe Platania — It’s a big job that our campus pastors have.
RIch Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Joe Platania — And I’m confident like no matter who we looked at at staff, it’s going to be in that ballpark.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Platania — And we’re just we have a lot going on.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — But what that does is is it allows now them to understand, Okay, here’s what it looks like for me to be successful. And then there’s another level of that like, hey I need to rank. I need to rank these behaviors. Like these are the behaviors I need to weigh and put first. So if I’m gonna only be able to do eighty of these 123, here’s the 80 I’m going to do first. But this is a multi-generational thing. So it’s like let’s start with this and you gotta work your way down. So these are things I’m hoping to continue to develop as we go into the summer and into the fall and yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s good. I love that. I love the you know continue to just push for for increasing clarity and increasing um helpfulness, really for our team…
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and and really to define hey here are the success behaviors that we’re attempting to drive towards. When you think about alignment, are there other areas that have been particularly helpful, whether it’s you know across campuses or within your team that have you know any processes or approach or practices that have been helpful to kind of drive clarity for for you?
Joe Platania — Yeah, yeah, so again, maybe we go on to like the maintenance phase of all of this.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Joe Platania — Like hey, it’s great. You have organizational health, and you have model clarity. Now you have role clarity. And okay, well, that’s great. So then we’re going to put all of these best practices in. And we’re going to go into execution mode. We’re gonna operate, right? There’s what we do, every every day every week. And so um, here’s here’s what happens: it doesn’t all work. Um, you know it’s not like the best laid plans, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Joe Platania — You know, um I’m confident. There’s a lot of you know, football coaches who develop a game plan and they they go into the game confident they’re gonna you know, blow out the other team. And they doesn’t work, it don’t work that way. So we go in execution mode.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — And um and so we need to measure, hey how is this going? So one of the things that we’ve been working on and again I’m gonna use the words that I use.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — But I think maybe some of your listeners might be able to, you know, understand it better as a SWOT analysis or something like that. I don’t use that word and I use ah a different process. Um, you know I spent some time in in the secular world and we I was taught a process called DMAIC and it was ah a ah, process improvement process. And so I’ve adopted some of that. And ah we go through the – I call them Deep Dives. So we we meet in a ministry setting and man, I’ll tell you ah the more nuclear the setting the better.
Joe Platania — So what I mean by that is ah I want um I have 6 different questions that you know we’ll go through so you know to help ah, uncover how things are going. Not only what’s working well so we can keep doing, but hey what needs to be changed, what needs to be modified, what needs to be improved.
Joe Platania — Um and we can do that – let’s say we can pull the whole kids staff together. Like you know we have 9 or 10 different kids team members. That’s good. You know what’s better is if I go to our Queen Creek campus and I meet with the kids staff there and 8 of their key volunteers and some campus staff and we do the deep dive at that nuclear level. So I don’t think it’s unimportant to do it at the higher level. But, boy, you just get all sorts of deeper, richer information the deeper you go into the the heart of the church.
Joe Platania —And so we we what happens is because I’m weird, I like to type with my thumbs. I sit there on my phone. I ask these questions and um and I’m just making notes. And ah then I share those notes with with my teammates on lead team and the executive team. And and it just depends on you know, leader to leader how they want to handle it from there. Sometimes they can use those notes um to work with their team. Sometimes I work with them to develop solutions and approaches to improve. But here’s the thing. Um I would say that doing regular, what I call deep dives, is really important to maintain our maintenance mode of of this health.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — And I can just tell you what I learned. Again I’ve only been at central for a little over two years. At other churches ah when I hit the third year of these, and it’s Central I’m really just in about the first year of this practice. Um, The third year was really weird because the first year we had we we uncovered a lot. In the second year we uncovered a few other things. The third year I would say we spent more of our time saying, this is so awesome. You remember the first year we talked about that? It’s better! And and this…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Platania — Now that doesn’t mean we’re perfect and there’s no problems. I’m just saying there’s less. Less problems
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Joe Platania — And we have just a better grasp then hey there’s always going to be problems I feel like are unsolvable.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — Um, you know what what what are the two things that you know we all wish we could control but we can’t. You know time and often money so. You know those are problems that we want to address authentically but you know you got to be really careful about like hey this isn’t a utopian thing where like we can pour all the money in the world on this. So you got to be careful with that too. So.
Rich Birch — I love that. I the thing I think you’ve hit on, well there’s a lot there. There was so much. Friends, if you if you missed anything you got to go back there and unpack there. There was a bunch there that you said was super helpful. But one of the things I think that would be really helpful for many of our churches is as our teams grow, as our church grows, as the complexity of what we do grows, yeah are the information that we get as a senior leadership team can become very filtered, and become very like unclear.
Rich Birch — And you know people know what they want people your people know what you want to hear and so they’ll tell you what you want to hear. They’ll, you know, and it’s not that they’re lying but they’re they just will things get changed. And so this idea of like let’s have some these kind of nuclear deep dives, I love that.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, and man, even just doing that adding that to our practices I think could be super helpful.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What are those, you said there were six questions that you ask, common questions.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Do you mind running through those quickly, even just for documentation? What would those what are those six questions? I’d be intrigued to hear what those are.
Joe Platania — I I don’t mind. Um, you mind if I I’m gonna pull them up on my phone?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely for sure.
Joe Platania — Um because you know I did turn fifty this year and I don’t remember them as well as I’d like to tell you I remember them.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Joe Platania — But I will first of all, um, the first thing I do is I share rules.
RIch Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — And and the rules are are things like, hey this is there’s no fixing. Um this this is not time to be in problem solve mode. So you want to establish that ah, first. Like this is a data dump. This is like a brain dump…
Rich Birch — Yeah, weere just listening. Yeah yeah.
Joe Platania — …of what you feel. Yeah, because what happens is you get a bunch of passionate ministry people around a table and what they want to do is they start identifying problems and they want to go right into problem solving mode. Like yeah, there will be a time for that. So you know also no arguing. No no, no negativity, but disagreeing is okay.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Joe Platania — So Rich, if you’re like, you know, Joe, I feel like this is it. Yeah I don’t feel that way but let’s share it. Let’s have that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Joe Platania — Yeah, and then um, here are the questions though. And I’ll I’ll read them to you. The first one is: what do we have to celebrate over the last year? Where are we winning? Why is that happening? How can we keep winning and win bigger? And then I’ll stop and you know we’ll collect things but just let them kind of marinate.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — Second question is: we measure what is important – does this team have an established set of metrics? Do you know what they are? How are you doing in relation to them? How can we improve our metrics? The next one is…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Joe Platania —Yeah. Systems. Systems and processes are the highways that vision travels on. Are our systems and processes the right one for our teams and church? What needs to improve?
Rich Birch — So good.
Um, couple more. One is leaders. Leaders are vision ambassadors. Do we have the right people in the right places? What changes to our organizational structure do we need to make to be more effective and efficient?
Joe Platania — And actually there are two more.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Platania — One is: we must be consistent in all we do; the rhythm and planning of the church is is critical. How does your team make plans and set goals? How can this be improved? What is coming next that we need to be prepared for?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Joe Platania — And then finally it’s a it’s it’s a catch-all category. Um, you know, what what did we miss? What what is right that needs to be amplified? What is wrong that needs to be fixed? What is missing that needs to be developed? What is confusing and needs to be clarified? Um, so those are the questions and I’ll be typing away. I would say um I get when we do that exercise usually takes about three hours, two and a half, three hours.
Rich Birch — Wow, yeah.
Joe Platania — And I usually get between 70 and 150 data points.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Joe Platania — And it’s amazing and just the information you get. And man, and you’re sitting with people who like are these are their their babies. They are so passionate and they’re like yes, let me tell you about my baby, and you know, all the… And but then it’s an interesting thing because they also want to tell you some of the things that they don’t like that’s happening with their baby.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Platania — And so you just get the to hear. And then you got to take all of that information and process it and develop plans. Um, and then really one of the worst things you can do is to spend that time and get that investment from folks and do nothing. .
Joe Platania — So one of the things we talk about is like hey this is great information. Let’s glean what we can and let’s really be good about sharing, hey here’s what we heard and now here’s what we’re going to do and executing that. And then checking in, like that’s where I said that’s always cyclical.
Joe Platania — How do I know now that I was successful on that fix? So I did a deep dive, I gather data, I’ve prepared a solution. Um, then I’m going to measure how’d I do. How’d I do, how’d we do with this? Um you know so you’re constantly evaluating and Rich, it never and it shouldn’t.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s so good.
Joe Platania — It’s this we’re living, we’re living a breathing organization, right? So.
Rich Birch — Yes, so good. Well Joe, this has been very rich, super helpful. Thanks for for running through those, but then just all of this has been super, super helpful. As we wrap up today’s episode…
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …is there anything else you’d like to share with us as we kind of you know, look to land the plane here today?
Joe Platania — Yeah, first just thank you for the time. Great to talk to you. Ah the work we do is so important and and the the only thing I would say is um I would encourage people if if they haven’t figured this out, and I’m sure many have, that that health is in my opinion layered.
Joe Platania — And it is does start with a bedrock foundation. Um, and then you just build on top of that. I that’s biblical I guess. Um and so looking at it that way, and so when I’m trying to manage health I want to understand how’s my foundation? How’s my next level? How’s my next level? And just breaking it down um in that kind of detail is so important…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Joe Platania — …not only to just to developing it, but sustaining the health. Because it’s again, it’s not easy, but a lot of us can make health. The trick I think is sustaining it, like how do you keep it going. That would be it. You know make sure we keep it going.
Rich Birch — So good.
Joe Platania — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So good. I really appreciate this. Joe, if if people want to track with you or with the church online where do we want to send them?
Joe Platania — Yeah, centralaz.com is is the easiest place to go.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Joe Platania —You can watch us. You can connect with with me or any of our our leadership that way. Yeah, absolutely.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Joe Platania —Would love to love to connect with anybody who wants to talk more this. Much like you, Rich, I’m sure, this is a passion for me. I would do it for free…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Joe Platania — …if I could afford to. I can’t, but nonetheless um I love it. So love talking about it…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joe Platania —…and love to talk to other churches and learn.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today, Joe – really appreciate you being on the show.
Joe Platania — Yes, sir. Thanks, Rich.
From 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 Days: Most Churches’ First Steps
May 29, 2024
This is part four of an ongoing series where we explore the “Goldilocks growth rate”—a concept aimed at helping churches grow at a pace that’s impactful yet sustainable.
Understanding the Goldilocks Growth Rate
The Goldilocks growth rate is all about balancing rapid growth with the ability to effectively integrate new members into your church community. The goal is to grow faster than the natural population increase in your community while avoiding burnout among your team. To maintain momentum, churches must address the inevitable 15% attrition rate caused by people moving away, disagreements, or life changes.
Three Crucial Metrics
15% Attrition Rate: This is a baseline assumption. Every church loses about 15% of its members annually due to various reasons.
3% Documented New Guests Weekly: For a church of 1,000, this means capturing contact information for 30 new guests each week.
26% Retention Rate: Retaining 26% of new guests to become regular attendees is essential. This helps achieve an overall growth rate of 26%.
When these metrics are met consistently over 1,000 days, a church can effectively double its size.
Focus on the Front Door
Many churches concentrate on retention (the back door) but often overlook the importance of attracting new visitors (the front door). Most churches need to increase their efforts on inviting and documenting new guests to ensure sustainable growth. Simple yet effective strategies to enhance your church’s invite culture include:
Shareable Weekend Teaching: Make your weekend messages compelling and easily shareable to encourage congregants to invite their friends.
Eventful Big Days: Leverage special events like Christmas and Easter when people are more likely to invite their friends.
Captivating Online Conversations: Engage with your community online to spark discussions and keep people connected.
Magnetic Community Service: Organize community service events that attract both volunteers and attendees.
Appealing Volunteer Experience: Create volunteer opportunities that are enjoyable and fulfilling, encouraging participants to invite others.
Resources to Boost Your Church’s Growth
To support churches in these efforts, we offer two key resources:
Church Growth Incubator: A year-long program featuring bi-monthly calls, quarterly intensives, and two in-person retreats to equip church leaders with the latest research and proven tactics for growth.
Success Stories and Proven Results
Churches participating in the Church Growth Incubator have seen remarkable results, with an average of 4.22% documented new guests weekly, far surpassing the 3% target. This significant increase translates to over 2,000 new guests annually for a church of 1,000 members, showcasing the effectiveness of sustained, strategic efforts.
Read the Book
Unlock the potential of your church’s invite culture with our latest book, “Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture“. This book is designed to be a practical guide for you and your team, offering a primer on the five gears of invite culture. Packed with actionable examples and strategies, it’s an essential resource for any church leader looking to make a real impact. You can purchase your copy at unlockinviteculture.com or on Amazon.
Join the Cohort
Take your church growth strategy to the next level by joining the Church Growth Incubator. This year-long program includes bi-monthly calls, quarterly intensives, and two in-person retreats, providing you with the latest research and proven tactics for growth. Collaborate with like-minded leaders, gain direct access to expert advice, and see measurable results. Interested in joining? Email me with the subject line “Church Growth Incubator” to secure your spot this summer. Let’s work together to achieve your church’s growth goals!
Beyond Accessibility: Gail Ewell’s Vision for Church Inclusivity
May 23, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Gail Ewell a leader at Bay Area Christian Church and Hope Technology School.
Gail’s story is one of personal struggle and triumph. As a mother of children with special needs, she faced significant challenges in attending church. Her experiences shed light on the isolation and strain that families with special needs often endure. It was through these personal trials that Gail’s passion for inclusivity within the church was ignited.
Tune in as Gail shares how the simple step of a church extending friendship can transform a community.
Focus on the isolation and strain. // It’s estimated that about one in five children are neurodivergent and yet 85% of churches don’t have ministries that can support them. In California, 1 in 22 children are diagnosed with autism and other types of disabilities are on the rise. Bay Area Christian Church (BACC) is committed to inclusivity and working to address the isolation and strain of special needs families.
Spiritual Resource Ministry. // It’s not uncommon for parents and children to miss church because it can be difficult to attend with a child’s special needs. BACC has developed spiritual resource ministries which promote the inclusion of people and families with special needs so that they don’t feel isolated. It began with smaller classes that are more sensory-friendly and include both neurotypical and neurodivergent children. From there it grew to creating E-sports and E-life which offer inclusive programs for a variety of activities, from soccer and karate to gardening and photography.
Partner with others. // Because the goal is to include rather than segregate, Bay Area Christian partners with other youth ministries, professional sports teams, guest speakers and more. Identify the needs in your community and the gifting in your church and how you can pair the two together. Partner with organizations, schools, ministries, businesses and teams in your area to provide inclusive opportunities for children with special needs.
Start small. // Gail encourages churches that feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin to start small. Extend friendship to the special needs community in your area because there is often a friendship deficit here. Anyone can give the gift of listening or friendship. Not only are you building relationships among the children, but their families also benefit from being able to connect with others.
Provide training. // The success of inclusive programs is largely dependent on the volunteers who bring them to life. Gail emphasizes the importance of training these individuals, underscoring the biblical principles of friendship, encouragement and support for the vulnerable. Recognizing and appreciating these volunteers is crucial, as they are the ones who make a tangible difference in the lives of special needs individuals and their families.
Seek understanding. // If you’re facing challenges and concerns, open a dialogue with the family affected by special needs in order to know how to best interact with their child. Seek to understand what is needed and what you may not have considered in your program or outreach.
Meeting a critical need. // While it can feel intimidating to step onto the path of developing a spiritual resource ministry, Gail encourages churches to just begin. Remote areas may not have a lot of services for special needs children and families. There’s a big opportunity for churches to step in and offer purpose and occasions for inclusion. It begins with a heart to love people, extend friendship and meet a need.
Want to learn how to build a spiritual resource ministry at your church? Visit Bay Area Christian Church’s website to download the SRM Manual that Gail mentions. Plus explore E-sports and E-life for examples of inclusive community service programs.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You’re in for a real treat. Super excited to have Gail Ewell with us. She’s at Bay Area Christian Church. It’s a fantastic church in the Bay Area, obviously. She’s also a part of Hope Technology School. Bay Area Christian Church is deeply committed to creating environments where children and adults with special needs can thrive alongside their neurotypical peers. And ah the the school that she’s a part of, Hope Technology School, is a fully inclusion nonprofit school located in Palo Alto. Ah, super excited to have you on the show today, Gail. Thanks for being here.
Gail Ewell — Hey Thanks Rich! Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Rich Birch — Now this is going to be great. I’m honored that you would take some time to be with us. Tell us a little bit about Bay Area Christian. Kind of fill out the picture. Give us a you know a flavor of the church. Help us understand more about it.
Gail Ewell — Yeah, we’re we have 8 campuses throughout the Bay area, and Bay is really big and we’re spread all over the place. But yeah, we’re church committed to inclusivity for those with different abilities And it’s been a definitely work in progress. So it’s it’s really been a great light for we’re very um, focused on God and good, doing good and so a lot of our focus is outreach to the community. So we do a lot of community activities and programs. That’s a central focus for our church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well I want to kind of zero in a little bit on what you’ve done to create a more inclusive church. And let’s talk a little bit about why this is such an issue. I had heard that and I and I don’t know whether this is true, but it’s one of those things I heard and it was stuck in my brain. I was talking to a friend who’s involved in similar ministry and they were talking about children specifically. But they were saying 1 in 5, I think was the number that they used, of children would be considered ah neuro-divergent different, you know than than everyone else. And 85% of churches don’t do any special needs ah, ministry whatsoever.
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, and ah those that that struck me. I found that you know, really shocking. So talk to us tell us talk to us about why this is such an issue.
Gail Ewell — Ah, well in California 1 in 22 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yep.
Gail Ewell — And and other types of disabilities are on the rise as well across the United States. But around maybe 15% of US children between three and seventeen years old are affected by a developmental disability. And emphasizing of course the need for ministries and churches for inclusion. I actually recently heard of a study conducted by the university of Wisconsin that monitors the stress levels of ah mothers for eight days.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Gail Ewell — And they measured their hormone levels on specific days. And the study found that chronic stress levels experienced by these mothers was were similar to that of a combat foot soldier.
Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness. Wow.
Gail Ewell — So yeah, so what we the problem I guess that we or the need is that we were trying to address the isolation and strain of special needs families that can be a significant problem for not only in our congregation, but also in our communities.
Rich Birch — So how did what was the kind of journey the starting journey for this at Bay Area Christian? Where did this where did this begin?
Gail Ewell — So as a mother and a leader I was going to church and um, we have a strong women’s ministry, and that’s my primary focus – women’s ministry. I’m an executive women’s ministry leader for very large church. And I couldn’t get into church because I was at church the building but because my child had autism I was unable to be a part of the whole service because I was always getting called out at the children’s ministry. And my first son John was born with ah down syndrome – that was a surprise to us. We didn’t know.
Gail Ewell — And then two years later our son Jordan was diagnosed with autism. So we had significant needs in our own family and we experienced our own barriers. Um, and I knew and understood there must be a lot of other people facing this kind of challenge.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Gail Ewell — So we created programs for that because I knew the community probably at back then had you know needs. And I just ah understand that you know I realized that a lot of moms and children are missing church because there’s just no way they can even fathom going to church with their child’s needs, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Gail Ewell — And um, one you know it’s just and so I become you know all, most parents become strong advocates when this they get these kind of needs in their family. For those that have less support needs there’s more advocacy out there. But I always think of Proverbs 31 that says we should speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Gail Ewell — And my my children at that time were nonverbal…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Gail Ewell — …and I had a strong conviction about speaking up for the nonverbal…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Gail Ewell — …and those literally the had no voice. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So What does this look like at Bay Area Bay Area Christian? Like if I’m a parent who’s exploring, thinking about coming to the church, how do you actually engage with them? What does that look like?
Gail Ewell — Yeah, we had two programs we developed out of these needs that we saw in my own life, and in the community, and in our church. And that’s um we developed a spiritual resource ministry that was founded in 1996 but that was mostly to help families who felt isolated and ah couldn’t participate in church. And so what we did is we developed what we call our SRM Ministry – the Spiritual Resource Ministry. Which basically you know for me I didn’t understand sensory sensitivities back then. Now it’s a little bit more known. Sensory friendly is a more common term. But back then I didn’t understand my child was experiencing experiencing sensory sensitivities in church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — And so you know there’s the loud, there’s the music, there’s the crowds. And you know even for us that are neurotypical, we can experience sensory sensitivities at times, right?
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, for sure.
Gail Ewell — So we’ve had to develop a smaller class and we started from there that was more sensory friendly. And then we did kind of a reverse mainstream where we allowed children to come in who are neurotypical. And it just and from there it kind of exploded and ballooned into over 20 locations.
Gail Ewell — The six sports that we did E-sports and E-life. And E-sports is more like soccer, basketball, football, karate, dance, fitness. It just kind of exploded because the members expertise or talents, they could take their talent and use it wherever their community was. And they caught a vision and it exploded. And then it’s more of late it’s turned into E-life, which is more like activities versus sports.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Gail Ewell — And so not everybody does sports. But you know we anyone at any level can come. I mean even our E-sports program, you know we have ah a child… I’ll give you an example of a boy and who came with a wheelchair and he had Spina Bifida and he did not want to go to the wheelchair programs that were out there. And so what the volunteers did is they gave him a walker and he’s the goalie and he was so excited. Parents are in tears. You know like we’re trying to constantly modify and adapt our program so anyone could come at any level.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Gail Ewell — And the E-life kind of came out of that and that’s more like gardening and theater and photography and academics. And we had a professor do an e-stem class recently for his community…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Gail Ewell — …and then gaming. That’s a big one – the e-gaming. So we have a couple that’s awesome. The Combs and they they run that as well for their children…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Gail Ewell — …and for the community.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, well I I love this.
Gail Ewell — And sorry – tell me when to stop.
Rich Birch — I know – I love it. I love it. Because you know as people that are you’re listening in, you’re realizing, man, there is so much going on at Bay Area Christian in this area, which has been my experience in the past. It’s like when we take some first steps in this direction, we realize oh my goodness, there’s this tremendous need in the in the community and it’s an opportunity for us to step in, and and it does start to balloon. But let’s take a step back to, maybe if a if a church is thinking about or or maybe at Bay Area when you when you first started to offer, you know, the the classroom and stuff like that. How did you build say awareness and education with the church in general? Like you know, obviously the parents who who are wrestling with these issues understood that, hey this is a there there’s stuff here I this is something I need help with.
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But with the broader church, what’s that look like?
Gail Ewell — Well we kind of did a needs assessment in our church where we just understand the specific needs of our church community and identified areas that required additional support. The members that needed the support. We are fairly large church. So there were a lot more when we kind of looked at it opened our eyes and looked at it and were able to see the needs. And then we did identified church talents and then we’re able to assess talents. But also looking at professionals who in the field had experience, right? Whether it’s healthcare providers, or teachers, or special educators, or therapists. They were just a lot, boatload of people that we didn’t always understand. We had such a wealth within the church. We just had to go assess that and identify the talent. And we created those programs out of that talent.
Gail Ewell — But early on it was, you know, ah humble beginnings. We across the street was a big field and it was full of duck poop and um geese poop, and that was our first E-soccer.
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — And you know and it was just humble beginnings. Yeah, we just started and and it grew from there. And for a lot of churches, I think it’s just honestly believing that you can do something. And I try to encourage people that um, you can start with friendship because there’s a friendship deficit in that community. Um, and so I think anyone can give the gift of listening or being a friend. And that’s that’s where we started. We started with just outreach and friendship and listening and started small.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Gail Ewell — So I don’t know if that answers the question.
Rich Birch — Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s really good. Yeah, maybe unpack that a little bit more. When you think about what some of those, what would be some of your advice. I’m sure you get calls from churches and they you know leaders see the need. They’re like I understand but, man where do we start? I’m a little you know I look at everything Bay Area has done. That’ll be great 5 years from now, but what’s my first step into this area?
Gail Ewell — So we did our first step, I think we started with some sort of evangelistic type outreach for workshops that we did.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Gail Ewell — And so I just took an interest I had and I remember just reaching out to doctors in the field, whether it’s natural medicine, or [inaudible] medicine – something interesting to all people. And I invited a a guest speaker.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Gail Ewell — And we just created our, you know if you have a church building, you can have it there. And then you reach out to your community to come to the guest speaker. Because there are a lot of people who want to hear different topics, whether it’s anxiety or depression or you know or just could be tailored to a specific special need. And…
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — …and that’s when we realized we had so many people come that that’s when we realized, wow, you know we could build a ministry from this because the outreach was actually easy. Um, and sometimes we get frustrated with that. But this was so easy. I mean my son went to preschool at special needs preschool, and I invited his friend his little buddy and his mom. And his mom came and then from there she came to church and she became a Christian. Then he grew up, he became Christian. Now he’s trying to help all his friends become christian.
Gail Ewell — And he you know he’s he’s autistic. And how he’s going to school and he wants to be a broadcaster.
Rich Birch — Oh cool.
Gail Ewell — You know he’s been on television. And and that was just a first workshop we did and that was the first thing she came to, and then from there you see the evolution of how you can change lives and help people and serve people in the community.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so cool. Yeah, I love that. I think there’s you know there’s a lot there. When you think about what have you learned in kind of interacting with the various ministries of the church because as you start to provide say hey we’re trying to open our door here to, say kids kids with special needs or you know the broader community with special needs, that starts to have impact on lots of other ministries. You know you start thinking, hey we want to you can’t just have like a there’s just like a special needs ministry and then that’s totally disconnected from the rest of the church. It’s got to be integrated into what do we do. What have you learned on that front? How do you collaborate with existing ministries?
Gail Ewell — Absolutely, yeah, the goal is inclusion not separation.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Gail Ewell — So you you don’t want to have a special needs, you know children’s ministry or a special need… you know the goal is not to segregate, it’s to include. And so we collaborated like you said with existing ministries that we partnered with ah, the youth ministries, and so a lot of our middle school and teens came out. You know they maybe did their high school service hours. So there was ways that we partnered with other ministries to get things kind of rolling um, and that really helped us a lot. We promote volunteering in our church and you know at all the time. And did we did a lot of, I thought back because sometimes you don’t think about what you do, you know you don’t think about I did this now,
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes.
Gail Ewell — You know God gets all the glory – I mean he had it explode. But but um, we offered a lot of training sessions, you know, where we could just help enlighten people about different areas or needs of special needs, and that helped the volunteers with their skills and knowledge. And um, you know I always like to start with a biblical motivation. So Matthew 5 says be the light, and you know if you shine bright people are gonna be they’re gonna see that light and want to come to it.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Gail Ewell — You know, ah every church community, like you said, you know, it’s it’s unique. And you know the tactics you find are are going to be specific to your city and your needs. But recruiting and dedicate yourself to volunteers is really important for a thriving ministry. And we just went out to the community and we found, you know, university sports teams, the USF, University San Francisco, they actually have their men’s and women’s basketball team come out and help us with e-hoops…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Gail Ewell — …you know and help us with the clinics. And then the major league, our major league teams like the Earthquakes and the Warriors, we actually partnered with them to do activities and clinics. And our kids were able to go out and play on play where the play pros play. And and ah play you know sometimes they play on the the actual you know, um place where they’re playing it for the halftime. Or sometimes they’re having a special clinic, and even Ron Adams, one of the assistant coaches came out and spoke to the kids. So we like to partner with, you know, universities or or major leagues in your area, or existing ministries, or just looking for outreach where people want to do good…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Gail Ewell — …because that’s our our conviction to God and good.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s so cool. I love that. When you think about the training of you know, your existing ministries and some of that coaching that you’ve done within your you know your existing you know things that were already running. Was there, is there some go-to advice that you find yourself coming back to time and again to try to help various ministries be more inclusive? Is there like a piece of advice that it’s like, oh you know, I would say these two things to everybody every ministry? What what would be some of those things?
Gail Ewell — Yeah, I think um training for training definitely did a lot of sensory-friendly. Matthew 25 says that you know the parallel shoots a groats it says there’s a part where it says when when did you see you friend…this is The Voice, it says when did we see you friendless or excluded, without friends when did we see you weak or without friends? And Jesus respond when you when you saw the least of these and you ignored their suffering, you ignored me. And I think something we can all relate to is loneliness and friendlessness and and needing friends.
Gail Ewell — And that’s really a critical part of building and training the volunteers because our volunteers aren’t just doing their duty. They’re making friends.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Gail Ewell — They’re going out and being friends.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Gail Ewell — You know they’re volunteering in other ways that we don’t even know. They’re going to homes and you know they’re serving the community on a, not just a buddy. You know a good buddy. It’s their friend, you know? And they’re helping to break that friendship deficit and that isolation and that stress of those families in an incredible way because of their big hearts.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. Well I’m sure over the years you’ve you know there’s some volunteers, speaking of volunteers that have really stood out and have been like, wow these these people are doing an amazing job and…
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know what what would be some of the ways that you’ve shown, you know you’ve recognized those people, you’ve shown appreciation, you’ve you’ve tried to you know, celebrate them internally?
Gail Ewell — Um, yeah, we do recognition appreciation all the time, regular acknowledgement, appreciation of the volunteers. One one of the guys that really stands out to me is Jason Collette because we had volunteered to do a sensory [inaudible] vaccine clinic and the family said that they called him personally and asked if he would come to another time of his doctor appointment…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Gail Ewell — …because the only way this child would get it her his shots was, I think he, was through having Jason there.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Gail Ewell — And so, you know he’s a really bighearted guy. And he went. And you know his own you said, oh sure I’ll come to your doctor appointment, help ya. And you know that he got all his shots and everything you know. And the family was so grateful because there’s so many needs in the community they get so isolated and they can’t do some of the basic things that we take for granted, just go to the doctor, you know.
Rich Birch — Right? Yeah, that’s cool. What a cool story. I love that. You know, going that’s, talk about going above and beyond.
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like it’s you know it’s so much more than just showing up for e-sports or whatever…
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …whatever he’s volunteering with. It’s like how do I really get into these families’ lives and help serve you know their their total life.
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s that’s amazing. What when what is the kind of the support for volunteers look like? How do you what kind of training do you are you doing? I’m trying to kind of get a sense of what that looks like. Obviously there would be whatever you would normally do for for every other volunteer, but then there must be more that you’re doing on top of that to provide additional support and help.
Gail Ewell — Yeah, yeah, definitely. We’ve definitely developed trainings for, especially from some of the sports programs for the volunteers that come out…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Gail Ewell — …on how to interact specifically with the special children with special needs. And we’ve utilized and accessed our own talent in our church to do that, and including um, you know this special some of the ones that have more expertise to come out and help the coaches. We’ve also, so specifically they’re talking about how to interact and how not how not to react, and how to be a friend. And you know how to encourage participation. And you know these are children who otherwise would have no sports.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Gail Ewell — You know they would not be it. They would not be at sports.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Gail Ewell — I mean it’s beautiful to watch, because you just realize, wow, this is definitely God’s work, you know. Because this wouldn’t otherwise happen. And these these events are they’re they’re monumental in the child’s life. They’re what they remember. They’re their favorite time of the week, you know, when they come.
Gail Ewell — And but we have had to so you know we’ve learned by doing. It’s a work in progress and a lot of hands-on field experience. So we’ve learned by doing and so then we access the talent from the church, and then we continue to have volunteer recruitment, but trainings that can help them learn to be more sensitive sort of to the special needs. You make mistakes, but honestly the parents are so grateful and it’s free, and and they make friends and otherwise at school many times they’re friendless, you know. So not always, but you know they are a lot. And the parents get to have a little break on the sideline…
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — …and talk to other parents.
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s some networking that happens there for sure.
Gail Ewell — And get yes and just get support and encouragement.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Gail Ewell — So that’s just that’s the the favorite time for those families. But yeah, the volunteers are getting trained as much as we can and much as we know, and we’re learning from our mistakes. But I don’t know if that’s specific enough for you.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good.
Gail Ewell — But that’s what we um do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I remember um once I was talking to a parent who was reflecting thanking, you know our our our church for having you know of a similar kind of ministry. And they were saying you know my son um, who would have been a teenager at this point you know everyone in my son’s life because of his his special needs are various care workers that are paid to be with him, that are you know these are and and um, and I get choked up every time I think about it. And she said you know when we come to church, these people are choosing to be with my son. And you know they’re they’re you know they’re they’re saying hey I want to be here. This is you know, um and she was reflecting on, man, what that what what that meant to her as a mom…
Gail Ewell — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that you know there’d be people that were going out of the way to say, yeah I I want to be with your kid. And and like you say it develops into that kind of friendship; it develops into… I like that you keep coming back to that. That this whole idea of isolation and you know friendship ultimately and how do we develop relationships. It’s not about providing some sort of program. It’s ultimately trying to get people connected with each other. I love that.
Gail Ewell — Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great story because we see that happening and um I appreciate that those ministries so much, because I think it’s sometimes the only thing they have, you know. Like you said the paid versus a real friend or…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Gail Ewell — …someone not being paid to be with me. We like to empower the adults, and that’s on my heart because my kids have grown up…
Rich Birch — Grown up. Yeah.
Gail Ewell — …and are adults with special needs. But um because you know we’ve empowered them to become coaches now. You know they went through the program now they’re learning and training to become the coaches, and that really is inspirational because they’re seeing their purpose you know?
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah, that’s cool. Talk to me about I’m sure there are um, once once you open up as a church and say hey we want to do more of this, and and I I do want to talk more about the adult side of the equation as well. So this is I’m going to ask a kid question, but I want to get to that. You know part of what we’re we’re trying to do is you say hey we want to be inclusive for anybody. And that ends up you know which is wonderful and we’re trying to figure that out.
Rich Birch — But then there can end up being kids or adults that come that have very severe, you know, ah medical needs that are, you know, they’re like complex that they’re you know there’s something we need to think really delicately about. We need to ensure that we you know we handle that relationship in that individual well so that we don’t you know, create any you know further problems. How do you handle that? How do you how do you ensure that kind of the right information is getting the right people that we’re you know we’re handling people correctly, doing everything we need to do? Um, yeah, what what does that look like?
Gail Ewell — So like I think that if you open the dialogue with the families, they know they’re the experts.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Gail Ewell — They’re the seasoned parent, you know. And when you open that dialogue and you have good communication with families then you know best how you can accommodate or modify or meet needs. Ah, and and when you have that listening ear and you’re open to hearing the the the needs and what they need for support. I know we have one family and their child, you know is a wheelchair and has some special needs as far as their physical mobility, et cetera. And that you know coming to Camp was hard because our Camp had hills.
Rich Birch — Yep, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gail Ewell — Um, some of those camps was like alone pushing the wheelchair up and down the hills…
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Gail Ewell — …you know is wearing her out you know. And there was some other complex needs. So you know we just communicated in a way where we could get volunteers to push and make sure her cabin’s on the flat level. And just accommodated make sure her our classes were on the flat levels you know. And thinking about mobility needs right? And that was just talking to the mom and get hearing her feedback and hearing, oh yeah, I’m not even we’re not even. We’re so sorry we oversight you know. We’re not even thinking about the hills, you know…
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Gail Ewell — …and how hard that would be for someone to go up and down them hills for the classes a camp, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, that makes total sense. Well let’s pivot in a little slightly different direction. Tell me about Hope Technology School – tell me a little bit about this.
Gail Ewell — Yeah, um, Hope Technology School is an inclusion school which means that everyone’s included in education. There’s no separate classes. Um, it basically we have neuro 60% special those with special needs and then 40% are actually neurotypical .
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Gail Ewell — So they so a lot of people but you know that’s a a nonprofit private school, um and a lot of people it’s non-sectarian it’s not religious. Um, but it’s an incredible light because we include. And and we’ve seen I mean we’ve seen the neurotypical people graduate, go to college, get incredible jobs, you know. We’ve seen this kids with special needs go go to college. I mean it’s just the power of inclusion is amazing. And um we’ve learned a lot in the years we’ve done it. You know whatever is a twenty plus years um. And you know we do collaborative teaching and differentiated instruction and you know we have ah kind of a universal design approach to education and modeling. And for anyone out there with education background, they know, kind of these terms. But you know it really helps us have a really successful inclusion model. Um, so is that helpful?
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, that’s wonderful. I love that. And you know I think this is that kind of thing is at least that’s been my experience as well. You see as churches or individuals or leaders, they they start moving in this area. And you start to realize, oh man there are just so many needs. There’s so many pieces of the puzzle here around how do we create a world where you know we can include more people where people can be ah, be you know, get a place at the table. And you know like it’s it’s you know there’s lots of different pieces here which I just think is so inspiring and you know just so incredible.
Rich Birch — So when you look to the future as at the church when you think kind of you know where where does this go next for Bay Area Christian as you think about inclusion down the road? What would be some of the questions you’re wondering about as you look up over the horizon?
Gail Ewell — Um, as far as new programs and outreach and things like that I think our E-life is something we’d like to develop more because we were primarily focused initially on inclusive sports programs and getting people out who otherwise wouldn’t have any opportunities. Ah, so E-life I mean there’s just a whole world of things we can do with that, you know. It basically if they’re cooking or doing yoga or whatever you can make it an inclusive activity and you know. And the E stands for exceptional. So we think they’re all exceptional.
Gail Ewell — Um, so that that’s something we’d like to develop more. And then I think the isolation is something I’d like to tackle more in the adult ministries. It’s something I like to tackle more and do more for the adult ministries. So there’s just not a lot when people age out of the system, so to speak that’s a term, they the parents and adults lose a lot of their support. I mean there’s these day programs they can go to – it depends on the city and the area you’re in what kind of services. Sometimes people in remote areas just don’t have a lot of services. There’s not a lot. And the church can do a lot as far as providing purpose and opportunities for um inclusion.
Gail Ewell — I I don’t know if I should keep so you know hopefully you could edit this out if it’s not a good story there. Yeah, but but ah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Gail Ewell — You know I don’t know um, but what if some part that inspired but also challenged and convicted me was when I moved to the city I’m in now, and um I heard ah a neighbor asked me at a block party, did you hear about this story? And and I and then I didn’t know what she was talking about. I went and looked it up and it was basically a person in our area who aged out of the system—a mom —and she ended up shooting her son and shooting shooting herself. And…
Rich Birch — Oh how sad.
Gail Ewell — …and it for me I mean we don’t ever want to hear the uplift you only want to hear the uplifting stories. But really honestly that burned a hole in my soul.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, oh man. Yes.
And I said I want to provide something for the adult because she reached out to her neighbor and her neighbor didn’t know what to do. And there was I just keep thinking if someone had reached out to her…
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — …her and her son would be alive, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — She was so distraught, obviously probably had mental health issues and depression and whatnot. But so that gives you just a window into the isolation that can sometimes occur for those with more support needs. And that there’s just pinnacle moments in my life where like something’s burn in your heart and you go, I’m gonna do some about that, you know.
Rich Birch — We got to do something about that. Yeah. Yeah, totally, yeah.
Gail Ewell — Yeah I’m gonna do some about that. There’s something I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get a conviction about that. And I’m not going to forget about those those individuals who are who are really in need.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I think you know that that is such a great example of I think as churches, think a lot the churches that I’ve seen that have got engaged in trying to create an inclusive environment, it typically starts when kids ministry. But then what happens over time…
Gail Ewell — Right.
Rich Birch — …is you know these those young people though they they go from kids to young people to young adults to adults…
Gail Ewell — Yes.
Rich Birch — …and and and which is a wonderful thing, right? Then it creates these new opportunities for a church to say hey what what can we do? And you know man look forward to a future where that’s just a normal part of um, you know what’s happening in in the church.
Rich Birch — Do you have a sense…so ah like this feels like ah it’s still a minority of churches that are doing something. Like this this feels like ah you know what do you have any sense of the kind of percentages what that looks like, how many churches out there?
Gail Ewell — Yeah I don’t know the percentages but when I’m ah in social media and I’m on support groups and I’m following ah parents that have huge followings…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Gail Ewell — …you know with special needs families, there are so there are good works out there. There are people reaching out. There are activities. Um, but I think it’s what you said, it’s It’s few.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Gail Ewell — You know there’s not compared to how many people there are and how many churches there are.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Gail Ewell — I think most people can get intimidated by it. I was telling one of my friends a story about when um I was in high school and you know they ask you what do you want… they kind of help you with what do you want to be career building or whatever. And they sent me to back then an institution where all the ah people with down syndrome were put. And it was terrible experience for me. And I remember walking out of there going I never want to work with people with special needs. I was too afraid of what I saw.
Rich Birch — Right.
Gail Ewell — Of course now they don’t have those institutions, but it’s much different for people now in that sense. But um I think a lot of times fear…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Gail Ewell — …can keep us from opening up our ministries because we fear of the unknown, I suppose.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Gail Ewell — I don’t know anything about it. Or I don’t know oh that’s going to be too hard or it’s going to burn us all out or it’s going to take up too many resources or. And they don’t understand that really it it just starts with a big heart to love people and be a friend and reach out and meet a need. And and I think God blesses it. He he you know was at John 9 where he talks about the man born blind and he says that the parents didn’t sin. It’s because the work of God was meant to be seen through his life.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Gail Ewell — And I think that that’s what God can do.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Gail Ewell — He can show the he can show the light. He can show the work. He can show your hearts.
Rich Birch — Yeah, amen. That’s so good. Well I think that’s a great place to to to land it. I think that’s a great kind of even you know, kind of final thought there. But as we wrap up, kind of any any final words then I want to make sure that we give out contact information, websites, all that stuff so people can track. Because I think this is a great story and there’s going to be churches that are going to want to know more about it. But any kind of final words and then how can people track with you and the church.
Gail Ewell — Ah, final word. My final words would be believe that you can make a difference. Believe that you can listen. You can be a friend. Reach out to your neighbor. Reach out to the people at school. Understand and believe that you can really help, you know.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Gail Ewell — Try not to judge. You know when you see the boy at the Target having a meltdown, you know be just reach out and be a friend. Is there anything I can do for you?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Gail Ewell — Um, you know I think we’ve developed a spiritual resource manual that’s coming soon. We have updated an old one and so you can register for access and um on that on the website I’ll I’ll give to you all the websites. And you can access that manual which will give you a lot of hands-on tactics and practical advice about how to start your spiritual resource ministry or how to start an E-sports or an E-activities in your community. So there’s a lot of ah resources we have online if people want to register for access…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Gail Ewell — …to the spiritual resource manual.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I’ll I’ll put a link to that in the in the show notes. But I think that’s just at bacc.cc/srm for folks that are listening in.
Gail Ewell — Yes.
Rich Birch — Um, but we’ll ah we’ll we’ll put a link in the show notes as well for that. I would encourage people to pick that up. Well this has been a fantastic conversation, Gail. I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks so much for being on.
Gail Ewell — Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Key Takeaways from XPS 2024: Navigating Organizational Doubt, Leadership Stages & Target Audiences
May 22, 2024
This week, we delve into the highlights of the XP Summit 2024, or XPS, as it’s affectionately known within the executive pastor community. Held at the vibrant Flatirons Church in Denver, this year’s event was a powerhouse of insights, connections, and practical takeaways for church leaders. Here are some key points from my solo podcast episode recapping the event.
The Essence of XPS
The XP Summit is an annual gathering that brings together executive pastors from across the country to share, learn, and grow. While the content is always top-notch, what truly sets XPS apart is the emphasis on building lasting relationships. It’s not just about what you learn, but who you meet. These connections become invaluable when navigating the inevitable challenges of church leadership.
Organizational Doubt: A Model for Understanding
One of the standout sessions was led by Jesse DeYoung, the lead executive pastor at Flatirons Church. Jesse unpacked a fascinating model for understanding organizational doubt, breaking it down into five levels:
Suspended Doubt: Complete confidence in the organization.
Operational Doubt: Questions about the efficiency of processes.
Ideological Doubt: Concerns about the mission and relevance of the organization.
Ethical Doubt: Doubts about the integrity or capability of leadership.
Absolute Doubt: Pervasive doubt affecting all aspects of the organization.
Jesse emphasized the importance of addressing doubts early, as unresolved doubts can escalate, ultimately leading to disengagement or departures. A key takeaway was that individuals often express doubt one level higher than they actually feel, making it crucial to dig deeper into their concerns.
Kayra Montañez from Liquid Church shared insightful strategies on identifying and targeting different audience segments. Liquid Church focuses on both actual and aspirational target audiences to align their ministry efforts effectively. The key groups they are addressing include:
Millennial Moms: Helping them navigate the chaos of daily life.
20-Somethings: Supporting them through the challenges of adulting.
Men in Midlife (Aspirational): Addressing the struggles of midlife crises.
Singles Seeking Support (Aspirational): Providing a community for singles across all age groups.
By clearly defining these audiences, Liquid Church can tailor its outreach and support efforts, ensuring they meet the needs of their community effectively.
Conclusion
XPS 2024 was a treasure trove of insights and practical advice for executive pastors. From understanding and managing organizational doubt to recognizing the unique contributions of leaders at different stages and targeting key audience segments, the takeaways were both profound and actionable.
If you missed this year’s event, I highly encourage you to register for XPS 2025, which will be held at Bridge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Don’t miss the chance to connect with fellow leaders, gain new insights, and build relationships that will support you throughout your ministry journey.
Vision to Reality: How Executive Pastors Shape the Church’s Future with Phil Taylor
May 16, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re welcoming back Phil Taylor, a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience in various pastoral roles and a passion for helping pastors turn vision into reality, which he does through his ministry, Backstage Pastors.
Tune in as Phil shares insights on the importance of the Executive Pastor’s role in the church and how they can build their relationship with the staff and Lead Pastor.
The Executive Pastor role. // Over the last ten years, there’s been a big shift in churches accepting and understanding the need for the executive pastor (XP) role. Churches recognize that they are more effective when they have strong second-chair leaders that have both the skills and authority to make change happen. Many churches now have multiple executive pastors, often dividing responsibilities between ministry and operations. Sometimes an XP even takes on more of a co-pastor role with the lead teaching pastor.
When do you need an XP? // Deciding whether a church needs an executive pastor can be based on the style of the lead pastor. A big vision thinker will often need an executive pastor to work with him sooner. A lead pastor who is more comfortable thinking strategically about details may be able to get by longer without an XP. But when you get to the 1500 range in attendance, Phil recommends that your church explores hiring an executive pastor.
Be attentive to the soul. // Phil has found, in his coaching work, that executive pastors aren’t always as attentive to their own souls as they could be, being focused more on getting things done. Given the task-oriented nature of XPs, they must be intentional about attending to their emotional and spiritual well-being. The updated edition of Phil’s book, Defining the Executive Pastor Role, delves into this crucial topic, encouraging leaders to cultivate emotional intelligence and engage in spiritual disciplines, such as observing a sabbath.
Be aware of your impact on the staff. // Because executive pastors tend to be more driven and high capacity, it can create feelings of unrest on the church staff when people feel they need to be doing as much as the executive pastor. Don’t make others feel guilty for being gifted differently. Approach your people with a soul-focused attitude, and step back from the focus on the work, turning again to worship.
Ease into the role. // Two of the chapters in Phil’s book talk about next steps for the new or aspiring executive pastor and their first year in a new church. One thing new executive pastors often forget is that people can struggle with change. Don’t jump into making a lot of changes in your first year unless they are immediately necessary; rather, take time to earn trust.
Build the LP/XP relationship. // The relationship between the executive pastor and the lead pastor is the most important one in the church because it sets the tone for the church and the staff culture. It requires weekly time together, open communication, honesty, and a commitment to avoiding triangulation. It’s essential to honor each other publicly and work collaboratively to steer the church towards its vision.
Plain Joe Studios. // Another way that Phil helps pastors turn vision to reality is with his work at Plain Joe Studios. Plain Joe helps churches, Christian schools, and not-for-profits tell their stories more effectively. They have a personality profile that can help churches better understand who they are and how they are different from other churches in their city.
You can find Phil’s updated edition of Defining the Executive Pastor Role on Amazon and learn more about his other resources at www.backstagepastors.org. You can also email Phil for help or coaching.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in today. Really looking forward to today’s conversation, with today we’ve got Phil Taylor with us. He’s been on before and we’re having him back, a return guest. And you know when we have return guest that means people we really like and we want to continue to tap their expertise. For people that don’t remember Phil spent twenty plus years serving in churches of all different sizes as executive pastor, lead pastor and you know while simultaneously serving pastors across the country through leadership cohorts, individual coaching, teaching at conferences. He’s author of a number of different books Defining the Executive Pasture Role, Elder Leadership ah Development from Application to Affirmation. Really these are two books of a series called The Backstage Pastor Series. On top of this coaching he helps churches through ah um, an organization called Backstage Pastor Backstage Pastors. Plus, he also works, his day job on top of all that, his day job is at Plain Joe. We love the Plain Joe guys – A Storyland Studio. Super excited to have Phil on. Phil, ah glad you’re here. Fill in the picture, kind of tell us a bit what did I miss there? That’s obviously the the bio stuff but what did I miss that we want to make sure people hear about?
Phil Taylor — No, that’s great man. it’s it’s it’s so good to be back on the show. And you know, really the the orienting direction of my life is to help pastors bring vision into reality. And sometimes that happens. Through Plain Joe Studios helping ah a new building get built, or a new brand get realized or something like that. And sometimes it happens through ah coaching an executive pastor, or somebody who wishes they had an executive pastor. Or um, speaking at a conference or writing a book, whatever it might be. But the the orienting direction is bringing vision into reality and how do I how do we help leaders do that most effectively.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so cool. Well friends, I want to be completely honest. I think that Phil’s book, well first of all, you know that we love executive pastor here at unSeminary. You know we’ve got a lot of folks that are in that seat or executive pastor adjacent roles. And Phil’s book, Defining the Executive Pastor Role, from my perspective is ah a must read for anybody in the executive pastor role. It’s I think it’s must read for like a lead pastor who’s thinking about adding an executive pastor. This is a great resource. And I noticed that there’s a second edition coming up and we’ve got it’s a 10 year it’s all I can’t believe it’s been almost ten years since the release of that book, and so I wanted to get Phil back on to talk about really the executive pastor role and kind of what’s changed and what’s new. He has a unique perspective on this because of his ah, you know his vantage point.
Rich Birch — So I wanted to talk a little bit about that so why don’t we start there. When you think about you know the executive pastor role, what has happened what’s changed over the last ten years?
Phil Taylor — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What are some of those things when you look back and you say, oh this is maybe a little bit different than where we were ten years ago?
Phil Taylor — Yeah, it’s crazy. Ten years ago it was still really a new role that a lot of people just didn’t even understand or know anything about. Churches where sort of still discovering that role. And so I think one thing that’s changed is that there’s there’s really wide acceptance…
Rich Birch — So true.
Phil Taylor — …on the part of churches and church leadership on the need for it. So that’s one really big change. Like nobody’s saying like what what now? Why do… who? what? executive what?
Rich Birch — Um, what is that role? Yes, yes.
Phil Taylor — You know so people are a lot more open to just even having one, which is great. And of course that has triggered a lot more people ah, wanting to enter into the space so you’ve got a lot more people that are are aspiring to that role, which I love to see, because I really do believe the churches are more effective when they have strong second second chair leaders that are not just not just operating out of a good skill but also have the permission or authority ah, to be able to make change happen and to bring good things into reality. Um, and so there’s some awesome things that are happening there. I think another big change that I’ve seen is um, the idea that um, many churches have multiple executive pastors now.
Phil Taylor — So that’s that’s ah a really new thing that just wasn’t around before. Churches would have one if they had any, and and maybe you know if you were in a church of 20,000 people or something they might have a couple of people. But ah the idea that that you in a church of say 1500 it’s become much more common to have multiple. Usually it gets split down the lines of ministry or leadership, like staff oversight, and then the other side is usually operations. So you’ll see a lot of churches that are kind of bifurcating the role. Some are having three ah, you know that’s become much more common. And then I think an an interesting trend recently is that sometimes the executive pastor is actually taking on a lead pastor title and functioning in more of a co-pastoring role with a lead teaching pastor. So just some interesting developments happening there. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, that’s interesting how it keeps you know evolving and I think we see this as a real critical role so much for sure for churches as they grow beyond that, you know, eight hundred or a thousand. Actually that might be an interesting reflection, where do you see this role, you know, start to be common. You know where it starts to be like hey this is you know is there a church size, is there a kind of telltale signs that churches end up, you know, starting to see in their environment that drive them towards saying hey maybe we should add this?
Phil Taylor — Yeah I think it actually has more to do at the smaller sizes with the the style of the lead pastor. So if you’ve got like a kind of a classic big vision thinker who is the lead pastor, um, that person is usually going to need an executive pastor at smaller size. Ah whereas um, if you’ve got an executive pastor who, excuse me, a lead pastor who has a little more of an administrative mind ah they perhaps are a little more comfortable thinking strategically, not I don’t mean big picture strategy, but like a little more of the details, they can often get by longer without one.
Phil Taylor — But by the time you’re up into the 1500 range pretty much you know every church nowadays is going to have an executive pastor or at least somebody doing that role whether they carry that title or not. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, they might be called something else for sure.
Phil Taylor — Exactly.
Rich Birch — I’ve had that happen you interact with leaders and and they I’m like well what do you do? And they tell you a little bit about. I’m like, oh you’re the executive pastor. You don’t have that title, but that’s that’s what you’re doing.
Phil Taylor — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, now so let’s help me ah, ah, kind of debunk this. So executive pastor – there’s people who would say, hey man, those two words don’t fit together. How can you be both an executive someone who is like maybe interested in systems and, you know, it can even come off as like business-y.
Phil Taylor — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then pastor isn’t that about being a shepherd, caring for people. How do those two fit together?
Phil Taylor — Right. So I think there’s I think we actually tend to fall on one side or the other. In the book I talk about the idea of the the capital “E” versus lowercase “p” executive pastor, right? So do you lean on the executive side, or do you lean on the pastor side? And it’s been my experience that people that lean on the executive side, you know, they often are coming from the business world. Ah, and those that lean on the pastoral side maybe were in a different role in the church before.
Phil Taylor — And so it’s it’s really just a matter of of saying. Okay there are times when I need to put on the executive hat and I need to operate out of out of that part of my skill set. And then there are other times when I need to put that away and put on the pastor hat and and really operate out that out of that skill set. And the trick is to know which, you know, which hat you’re supposed to be wearing when. And I find actually that that can that can be difficult sometimes when you wear the wrong hat at the wrong time that can be that can create some problems in your church. So.
Rich Birch — Um, well one of the chapters I noticed that you added that I’d love for you to unpack a little bit is the the soul of the executive pastor, speaking about really heart issues and kind of the interior life of of these roles.
Phil Taylor — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What was it that led you to the place where you’re like, oh this is the conversation we need to have. We need to to kind of turn up the volume on that?
Phil Taylor — Yeah, absolutely yeah I’m I’m really excited about that particular chapter and the impact that it might have on perhaps even the executive pastor culture. So you know one of the things that I’ve noticed in coaching executive pastors now for, I don’t know, 15 years or so, is that um we as ah, a species of of pastors – the executive pastor type person – we’re not always as attentive to our souls as we could be. We could be a little driven, right? Or a lot driven, you know, or kind of the get stuff done kind of people, kind of task oriented, right? And so um I see that in in the pastors that I coach and I see it in myself as well. And so um, the idea of of looking at matters of the soul sometimes doesn’t come out as strong for us, right? In fact, even the idea the soul of the executive pastor, I had one person joked that it was an oxymoron.
Rich Birch — Oh gosh.
Phil Taylor — That we actually do have souls.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah.
Phil Taylor — So um, so you know for for me that journey of discovery it really started not long after I wrote the first edition of the book. And so for me, it’s been about 10 years digging into that and really looking into you know the concepts surrounding emotional health or emotional intelligence EQ, right? Some of the softer skills of leadership and just really paying more attention to the way that I even practice the spiritual disciplines. And adding that layer of ability to my leadership I think is super important.
Phil Taylor — For me personally I have to work extra hard at those things. I have to work extra hard on emotional intelligence. I have to work work extra hard and active listening, and just some of the the important pieces around being aware of some of those those less task-oriented skills. I’ll say it that way.
Phil Taylor — And so you know I’ll do this thing with with pastors that I coach in the first session world. We’ll talk through some of the things that they really want to go after in their time with me. And I would say like 75% of the time that I’m coaching a a new or existing executive pastor, the idea of emotional intelligence is almost always in their list of things they want to go after. And the reason why is because they’ve tripped over it, and so have I.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Phil Taylor — And so when you when you trip over that and you end up you know, causing hurt for somebody or you end up being too direct with someone and you’re not reading the room properly, whatever it might be um, you recognize then that there’s ah, there’s a layer of leadership here that needs to be added for my effectiveness to continue. And so I think that’s super super important.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Can you give us an example of maybe some coaching that you give to executive pastors to be more aware of their emotional intelligence or to lean into that more or, you know, a telltale sign that maybe they need to do that more. Give us a little bit of what how that conversation goes with that looks like.
Phil Taylor — Sure, sure. So I think um, you know, there’s a lot of different directions that it goes but I’ll try to just pick maybe one or two. Um a lot of times as I’m talking with an executive pastor, one of the things that will that will sort of rise to the surface is that they’re they’re not super aware of how their pace of work is impacting the people around them. So I you know I had somebody tell me one time that that executive pastors seem to have like this, at least some of them, perhaps the classic type of executive pastor seems to have like some sort of superhuman ability at just getting stuff done.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — Like it’s it’s it’s confusing to other people around them. They’re often like threes on the enneagram or something like that, and they just get stuff done all the time. Well, the interesting thing is that for those around them, that can actually create feelings of unrest. That can create you know feelings of like well I’m not doing as much as that person. Or whatever it might be. And so even just recognizing that perhaps God’s giving you a bigger plate. You know we talk about how much can go on a plate and I think God sometimes just gives certain people a bigger plate for whatever reason he’s given them the ability to squeeze more in.
Phil Taylor — And so to be able to say, hey you know what, like one, let’s not make others feel guilty for for being gifted differently. Um, but two, um, where where do the spiritual disciplines fit in for you? What does sabbath look like for you?
Rich Birch — Oh That’s good. Yep.
Phil Taylor — Are you taking a sabbath, you know, or does sabbath feel like an afterthought? Are you actually going to church when you go to church on Sunday? I remember you know realizing one Sunday that our church had had 6 services that day and I had sort of danced around the edges of church all day long. Like I’m standing outside of some amazing party and never going into it, you know. And it was because I was just running around putting out fires and shaking hands and dealing with you know, a big, a big church and thousands of people, and saying, gosh like I actually didn’t go to church today. That’s not good for my soul. And so just you know recognizing that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Taylor — And and just see looking for ways to um, approach your people with a different attitude, more of a soul-focused attitude. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. I know for me one of the, yeah, I definitely have seen that pace of work and that may not, can be interpreted, you know, in a like by people around you as like either, you know, you can send messages that you’re not necessarily sending wanting to send.
Phil Taylor — Right.
Rich Birch — And so I know for me a practical thing on that front has been to have a really kind of open conversation around, you know, the form of communication that I use with you articulates what I’m thinking about…
Phil Taylor — Yes.
Rich Birch — …on response time. So like if I send you an email, I’m not anticipating that you’re going to get back to me right away.
Phil Taylor — Right.
Rich Birch — My expectation is that would be within a day.
Phil Taylor — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know if I send you an email, if I email you on Saturday I’ll have a random thought Saturday afternoon, I send you an email, I do not expect you to get back to me until Monday…
Phil Taylor — Yes.
Rich Birch — …or whenever your next you know, kind of workday is. And then text messages, same thing. Like hey if I text you I’d love to hear back in an hour, but you know it’s not like a, you know it’d be great to hear quickly, but you know you know it’s not, you know you do you don’t have to step out of the conversation you’re in now give it in in another hour. It’s totally fine. Now if I call you, if I actually pick up the phone and call you, then that’s when I’m saying, I actually really do need to talk to you.
Phil Taylor — This is important. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like there is something… And it’s amazing how much just defining those with people can relieve the pressure. And obviously for the people among us who yeah, most of our staff are not people that are struggling with the opposite problem, which is you know they’re not responding, but that does help with those folks as well. But most people they are like, oh okay I feel better I feel better because I realize the way you’re communicating to me, you know, it kind of matches the communication that I’m expecting back. Because I think it’s that there is that problem of like just because I’m working on stuff doesn’t necessarily mean, I’m clear trying to clear my deck, doesn’t mean that I expect you to be doing the same thing at the same exact time. Um, you know that I found that helpful, um, particularly on that you know you know we have different work pacing and all that as as leaders. Um, yeah, that’s interesting. That’s cool.
Rich Birch — But one of the things I noticed in the book was you talked about um, really new executive pastors, new aspiring first year as a new, you know, at a new church that kind of stuff. Are there some telltale maybe mistakes that executive pastors make where they… help us avoid the pothole, help us avoid maybe the landmine even, of like oh this is a thing I see happen all the time where it goes sideways when someone starts in this role.
Phil Taylor — Yeah, that’s that’s um, two of the chapters. One of them is next steps for the new or aspiring executive pastor and then the other one is your first year in the new church. So I think um I love new executive pastors. I love working with new executive pastors. That kind of freshness is is really fun to work with.
Phil Taylor — But you know one of the things that that I think a new executive pastor might frequently mess up is um, they they recognize that they’ve been hired as a change agent, right? So they know that they’ve been brought in to to bring bring some order to something or get things moving in the right direction. Whatever it might be. There was a need and they were brought in to fill that need. But what what is easy to forget is that people really struggle with change, right? So um I will usually say, hey be really careful what you change in your first year, you know?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Taylor — It’s important that you don’t step into that too quickly. And really ask yourself like is this a change that could wait until like year two when I’ve got a little more trust, you know?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Taylor — So I’ll I’ll give ah I’ll give a negative example from my own journey. Um in in one of my churches there was ah a real need for a refresh of the branding. And and for some unknown reason I decided to tackle that in my first year. And and it it really ah, it really burned some some credibility and trust with the team that I was trying to get to know. And in retrospect I wish I’d waited a few years…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Taylor — …I think I probably could have gotten a better results if I waited a little bit longer on that. Um, but then on on ah on a more positive side, sometimes you step in and there’s change that’s needed right away and the reason why you were hired was to have the courage to make it, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Taylor — And so it might be something as silly as like um, you know there’s there’s no ushers helping people find seats and you say, well gosh, like where are the ushers? You know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — We want people to just find their seats on their own…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — …you know, haphazardly. Let’s let’s maybe help them a little bit. It’s a big church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes.
Phil Taylor — Yeah um, and and so sometimes you solve a problem when you’re solving a problem that everybody knows is an issue that nobody’s going to complain that you made that change. One of the churches I was at was really paying its its staff well below proper rates. Nobody complained…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Taylor — …when I fixed their pay in the first year, right? Nobody said could we wait a couple of years to do a raise for me I’d really rather wait…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d like to take longer on that. That’s funny.
Phil Taylor — Yeah, nobody complained about that one. So yeah I think just recognizing like what change is appropriate for early and earlier and what needs to wait a year or 2 until you have to trust to do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. One of the things you know I do a fair amount of coaching with churches as well and one of the um, kind of it’s a little bit comical, but also speaks to I think some of the issues that we face as as executive pastors is there are two conversations that happen on a fairly regular basis. One would be with an with a lead pastor who at some point in the couple days I’m with them pulls me aside and says you know I just I just love our our executive pastor, man. Phil’s just so good. He gets everything done. So good with the team that guy’s amazing with the checklist. That guy is good on the email but can you help me get along with them, like help me kind of relationally.
Phil Taylor — Rght.
Rich Birch — Or at some point the executive pastor pulls me inside and says, man I just love my lead pastor – that person, Phil’s incredible. Preaches like nobody else – I think they’re God’s gift to communication and cast a big vision, and man, I would follow that person into the fire, but can can you help me with the relationship, like I just feel like maybe we’re we’re missing each other.
Phil Taylor — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about that. What what are you I want to take advantage of your expertise. What what do you say if somebody on either side of those, really, it’s about this relationship with the lead pastor. How on either side of that conversation, what can we do to make that even better?
Phil Taylor — It’s so important. It’s the most important relationship in the entire church staff…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Taylor — …because it it sets the tone for everything. It sets the tone for the church and staff culture. It sets the tone for the staff feeling at ease with their leadership. And and the staff knows when the LP and XP are not getting along very well. They know it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Taylor —They sense it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor —Just like kids know when mom and dad are fighting. And so it’s super important to give that relationship more attention than probably any other relationship on the staff. And so I think you know very similar to a marriage um, you know time is going to be the absolute key. You’ve got to get a regular amount of time together. I think meeting weekly is critical for the XP/LP relationship. Um, there’s got to be a great deal of honesty between those two people. Um, if if either person is is not sharing fully with the other person…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — …it’s a recipe for disaster. Um, there can be zero triangulation, right? So in other words, if if somebody comes to the lead pastor and says a staff member comes to the lead pastor and says I’m struggling with the executive pastor in this way or vice versa, right? Somebody comes to the executive pastor and says I’m struggling with the lead pastor in this way, you cannot give in the triangulation.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s so good.
Phil Taylor — You’ve got to figure out right away. Well wait a minute is this something that you should have just gone to him about and talked directly to him? Because if you haven’t I’m going to send you back there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — And and so if you ever if you ever find yourself getting into you know triangulation, three different people. No one’s talking to the right person. You know the lead pastor or the executive pastor has to shut that down…
Rich Birch — Yeah, you got to shut it down for sure. Yeah.
Phil Taylor — …right away. Because it’ll it’ll it’ll just create a toxic culture right away. So yeah I think time, honesty super important. And then I think like honoring each other publicly.
Phil Taylor — So you know let let’s say you’re the executive pastor and and in your church that means that that you preach say 10 times a year, right? Um when you get up to preach you know and you’re referencing perhaps the passage of scripture that the lead pastor was in the prior week. You know, toss in a little man Pastor Steve sermon from last week, I got so much out of that.
Rich Birch — So good.
Phil Taylor — And yeah I learned this from it, and so now as we head into chapter 2, you know, so you’re just got to you’re doing a little plug there, right?
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Phil Taylor — Um, and and just kind of honoring each other publicly I think is super important.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I know I found very similarly I think a part of what I found when I was in that role, I found that with our staff team there is like um a weird thing that can happen in a church where if the lead pastor is the primary communicator and they, which is obviously really super common. You know they’re teaching thirty forty times a year. There’s like an assumption that can happen internally around like well we just kind of assume that that person, you know, ah, is going to do that every week and it’s going to be amazing. And and there can be an undercurrent of like how hard is that anyways?
Phil Taylor — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like all they do is pull that message together. And I found that a part of my job was to defend that internally and to extinguish anything that smells like that internally and say, listen, I am glad—like you said the example of Steve—man I am so glad that that Steve works week in week out to ensure that we’ve got great teaching at the church and that takes you know the the toll that that takes on him as an individual, the toll that takes on her to prep all that to pull that together, man I am just so thankful that they’re willing to do that for us. Um, that even that alone that gets noticed by the you know the lead pastor. They see that kind of like oh they’re really in my corner. And and they also can um you know they can you can say that as an XP and and kind of value raise the value of teaching as an XP in a way that they that’s good for the church but in a way that is the lead pastor Frankly, just can’t do because they’re the one that speaks on a regular basis, you know.
Phil Taylor — Right exactly.
Rich Birch — And it’s just kind of weird for them to be like, you know, teaching’s really important, you know? So um, yeah, interesting. Interesting. Yeah, that that’s I to me I think is such a critical piece of this this relationship piece is so ah, you know is so important to the overall picture of you know how this this works.
Rich Birch — So let’s talk a little bit about the book. So you pulled the book together. You’ve you’ve re- kind of cast it. You’ve you know gone over it, added a few chapters. Was there anything else about this update addition you want to make sure people are aware about that that you know you made changes that you want to kind of highlight to folks?
Phil Taylor — Yeah, I think every page is different. You know it’s It’s even more than just adding a few new chapters. Every single chapter has been expanded or updated.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — There’s not a page that that remain the same.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Phil Taylor — So it’s it’s truly ah, a brand new book. Um, and I’m just super excited to see you know the first one kind of traveled around the globe unexpectedly, and and and had an impact in places that I just wouldn’t have anticipated. And so I’m I’m just really I’m humbled by that and I’m excited to see how God uses this next one.
Phil Taylor — I think um you know I’m sure you’ve seen this with some of your podcast work rich but it’s always amazing to me when somebody says that they actually changed careers based on something that you’ve written or or done, right?
Phil Taylor — And and I’m I’m so humbled by that to know that there are actually executive pastors who chose the role after reading the first edition of the book. And so you know some of the new chapters that I added really are are written for those people who are ah maybe you’re functioning as a discipleship pastor, or you know some other role in the church and you’re you’re thinking perhaps I might actually be called into the executive pastor role that critical second chair role. Ah this book is for you. It’s it’s meant it’s meant to encourage you, and and help you discern that, you know to really listen to the Spirit’s guidance and direction and um and and find some discernment there for your own life.
Rich Birch — Love it. Your your book also tell us a little bit about the second book in your series. It’s Eldership Development from Application to Affirmation. Again, one of these, not a lot, in fact I can’t think of any other books that are on that specific ah topic, but man critically important. We all know that the you know the selection and kind of care and feeding of elders. There’s stuff out there on like nonprofit boards. Sure, some of that’s applicable. Um, there’s overlap there but eldership has its you know has some uniqueness to it that we need to do well. Talk to us a little bit about that resource as well.
Phil Taylor — So there’s lots of great books on on eldership that focus on the theology of an elder, right? Or the theory of an elder – how how they should look, what they should do. There’s lots of great books on that. Half a dozen, you know think of Alexander Strauch or Gene Getz, or just a bunch of different good books on that topic. And and usually they’ll those books will spend maybe a few pages or at best half a chapter on what it looks like to actually develop those others. How do you actually get them, right? And so I’m ah I’m a systems guy – I think in strategic systems. And so when I when I built a system over a number of years at a couple of different churches, I had a number of pastors asking me for it and so I…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Taylor — I just put it together into a book and said well, if it’s valuable to me, maybe it’s valuable to others. And so my my goal with the book was to save pastors a hundred hours…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Taylor — …in in building their own system, right? Like I said the the first time that I see an Amazon review that says this book saved me a hundred hours…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Taylor — …I’ll know that I succeeded.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Phil Taylor — Right? And there’s there’s a few of them on there that say that actually…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Phil Taylor — …so I was really pleased. But yeah, that’s that’s the goal is to just say, look um if I happen to be good at thinking this way, let me take what I’m good at and give it to you as a as a gift…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Taylor — …and you can now take it and and build it in your church. And I even I give away the Word files that are associated with it. So people email me and say can I get those Word files. Great take them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Phil Taylor — Edit them at will…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil Taylor — …I don’t care what you do with it. You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Phil Taylor — So yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well where where can people pick up… I want to so like, friends, I said this at the beginning I think. You know both of these are great resources. Obviously we’re primarily talking about the executive pastor book. But I I really do think that this is essential reading. This is you know it’s it’s a great book for people who are either thinking about this, are you know wrestling with it. Are you know like I said lead pastors who are thinking, hm maybe I should add an executive pastor? Maybe you’re wondering what that could look like or or maybe you know you’re you’re talking about that you know relationship thing that I talked about earlier that. Maybe you’re a lead pastor or an executive pastor and you’d say hey why don’t we read this book together…
Phil Taylor — Read it together. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to help us, you know, as a third party. Um, obviously on top of that you could actually just get Phil. He’ll help you work through that as well. Ah, but where can people pick up this. So again, it’s Defining the Executive Pastor Role. It’s a part of the Backstage Pastor Series – Bringing Vision into Reality. But where where do we want to send people to pick up copies of that?
Phil Taylor — Yeah – amazon.com easiest place to do it. And the funny thing about republishing a book, Rich, is that Amazon takes a little while to figure out that you you you want to point people towards the new book. So ah…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — So when you go to amazon.com you’re just going to want to make sure that you you grab the one that has a little badge on the front that says 10 year anniversary edition.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Taylor — It it should be pretty obvious when you go there. But otherwise you may end up accidentally buying the old one because it’s somebody’s used copy that they listed for sale or something like that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s…
Phil Taylor — But but yeah, it’s it’s should be there on Amazon ready to go.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Phil Taylor — And I’m excited to see see it impact others.
Rich Birch — Well, that’s good. Yeah. I’d love like again, friends, I’d love for—we’ll put a link in the show notes to that as well—but we would love for you to pick up ah copies of that.
Rich Birch — So talk to me about your day job as well. So you work with Plain Joe Studios – love those guys. They do good work. But talk to me about what you do with Plain Joe for people that are unaware of Plain Joe.
Phil Taylor — Sure.
Rich Birch — What ah how do you help churches? What are the kind of problems that you’re helping churches solve?
Phil Taylor — Yeah, so we we come alongside of churches, Christian schools, not-for-profits and help them tell their story more effectively. And that’s going to happen in a few different ways. I think a lot of people come to Plain Joe when they’ve got a building that they need to build, perhaps brand new, and they want to think through what that building should be. Or they’ve got a building that they’ve perhaps purchased and they want to renovate it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Taylor — Or they’ve got an old building, they’ve been living in for 50 years and it’s time to update it and bring it up into current worlds, whether that’s kids ministry or lobby space or whatever it might be. Just breathing some new life into an existing building. But the the important thing there is that we’re we’re figuring out what your story is and we’re telling that story well. That’s the goal.
Phil Taylor — And then of course you know you you start to look at this building that you’ve just updated and you say, well gosh, do we want to put our old logo back up on that new building? And so that triggers a lot of conversations around branding and ah, thinking through what that looks like. And a lot of churches really don’t have a good handle on what their story is, and so a lot of times we’re we’re starting off the whole process by just taking a church through what we call our personality profile where we help them really understand what who are you? What is your story? What is what is different about you and in your city compared to other churches? And so you know taking a day to really discover that together.
Phil Taylor — Even renaming a lot of times we’re renaming churches and and helping them think through I’ve renamed gosh, half a dozen churches in the last year and a half.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Phil Taylor — And and that’s a lot of fun to be able to just take a church that maybe has had had a name that made a lot of sense a hundred years ago and and that name just means something different today that those words meet something different today than they did a hundred years ago. So yeah, telling your story well. Buildings, brands, websites, AR, VR, strategic thinking, all of that, storytelling. That’s it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Well, that’s maybe a topic for the next ah, next time we have you on. That would be a fascinating tap tap your expertise around renaming and what are some things that churches should think about if they’re if they’re wrestling through that. Because I feel like I bump into that all the time where people are… it’s like ah it’s like a question that’s floating in the back of a lot of church leaders brains.
Phil Taylor — Should we? Yes.
Rich Birch — They’re like ah, man, should we do this? And and then they get tripped up on the you know I’m not even sure what that would look like, so that might be an interesting thing we could talk about.
Phil Taylor — Yeah, so we got a whole process we take churches through on that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Taylor — It’s it’s it’s actually really fun. It’s it’s it’s pretty fun to help church rename. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Great. Well thanks so much, Phil. Is there anywhere, you know, we want to send people online to connect with you…
Phil Taylor — Sure.
Rich Birch — …or to connect with, you know, Plain Joe, Backstage Pastors – give us where we want to send people online.
Phil Taylor — Yeah, ah my website is backstagepastors.org. And you are welcome to email me phil@backstagepasors.org. And I generally answer all of my email…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Phil Taylor — …so you can be you’ll be sure to get a response back. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, sir, appreciate you being here and all the best on the relaunch of the book.
Phil Taylor — Thanks, Rich! Good to see ya, man.
From 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 Days: Engagement Pathway Best Practices
May 15, 2024
We’re aiming for what might be called the Goldilocks growth rate—quick enough to make a substantial impact but sustainable so it doesn’t overwhelm your resources or team. To achieve this, we’ve identified that retaining 26% of new guests is pivotal.
To effectively double a church’s attendance from 1,000 to 2,000 members over 1,000 days, or about three years, it’s crucial to focus on both attracting and retaining new guests. Aiming for a 3% increase in new guests weekly means approximately 30 new guests each week for a church of 1,000 members, totalling about 1,560 new guests annually. The goal is to retain 26% of these guests, which translates to around 406 individuals becoming regular attendees over the year. This strategic approach of engaging and retaining new guests is essential for meeting the ambitious growth target and ensuring a vibrant, expanding church community. These figures highlight the importance of a structured engagement pathway that supports sustainable growth through clear, actionable steps.
The Concept of Engagement Over Assimilation
We’re shifting the focus from assimilation—a somewhat outdated and impersonal concept—to engagement, which centers on the guest’s active participation and integration into the church community. This strategic pivot is more about inviting people into an ongoing interaction rather than merging them into a pre-set mold.
The Three “Ones” of an Effective Engagement Pathway
One Experience: Create a clear, engaging first step for newcomers. This could be a simple event or orientation session designed to introduce new guests to the church community. Examples include “GT in 60” or “Welcome to Liquid,” which are tailored to be straightforward and accessible.
One Next Step: Encourage a single, clear next action for newcomers. Focusing on team involvement over group participation initially can be more effective in building connections and integrating new members into active roles within the church.
One Connection Team: Establish a dedicated team responsible for maintaining and nurturing the connections made during the initial engagement. This team ensures newcomers feel valued and are smoothly transitioned into their chosen areas of involvement, with regular check-ins and personal attention.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
The Velcro Myth: Beware of creating too many entry points, which can dilute the focus and effectiveness of your engagement strategy.
Shiny Object Syndrome: Stick to proven strategies rather than constantly shifting to new trends or ideas, which can disrupt the continuity and stability necessary for sustained growth.
Call to Action
We discussed how to incrementally increase your church’s capacity to welcome and retain new guests, focusing on the importance of regularly scheduled connection events and the need for a cohesive, community-oriented approach.
We look forward to seeing how your church can implement these practices to not only grow in numbers but also deepen the sense of community and belonging among its members.
In this episode, we also reference into the innovative approaches of Greg Curtis from Climbing the Assimilayas. Greg’s insights into church engagement are reshaping how churches think about integration and connection. His coaching and courses offer deep dives into effective strategies that can help your church not only grow in numbers but also in community strength and cohesion. If you’re looking to further explore and master the art of church engagement, Greg’s resources could be the next step in your leadership journey. His practical, experienced-backed approach provides tools that are both actionable and transformative. For those interested in taking their church’s engagement strategies to the next level, checking out Greg Curtis’s offerings at Climbing the Assimilayas is highly recommended.
Additional resources and coaching are available for those interested in further expanding their understanding and applying these principles. We talk about them at the end of the episode.
Exploiting Limits for Church Growth: Insights from A Better Theory’s Nathan R. Elson
May 09, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Nathan R. Elson. He is the founder and chief theorist with the organization, A Better Theory.
Every ministry, every church, and every leader has problems they have to deal with. Regardless of the size of your problems, it is possible to develop a pattern of behavior around solving them and continue to push forward in your mission. Tune in as Nathan provides a framework through which you can tackle your problems and accomplish more from less.
A framework for problem solving. // A common misconception in problem solving is the belief that our problems are unique. While the nuances may differ, the underlying issues are often universal. By recognizing this, we can apply proven frameworks to address our problems in better ways.
More from less. // There are two things that underpin the framework Nathan has put together: the idea of exploitation and the idea of limitations. We often don’t make full use of the resources God is giving us, whether it’s time, talent, treasure, people, and so on. The result is we end up throwing more at a problem trying to overwhelm it rather than solve it. The idea of exploitation puts the focus on challenging ourselves to do more with what we already have. God also created us with limited capacity so we need to look at how to maximize those limits.
Think creatively. // Look at your situation and ask: What do we have? What are we limited by? Problem solving is a creative endeavor. Outlining our parameters allows us to exercise creative problem solving more effectively.
Three maxims in problem solving. // The framework in A Better Theory’s methodology has three maxims: Be realistic, seek simplicity, and remove friction. Being realistic is important because you have to be honest with God, yourself, your team, and your congregation about where you are and what specifically you need. Ask yourself if you’ve really taken the time to think about what it will take to achieve what it is you want. Often leaders start building before knowing what is needed.
Complex yet simple. // As you approach problem solving, the solution needs to be complex enough to solve the problem, yet simple enough to be replicated. If you can’t replicate what you’re doing and teach it to someone else then it won’t be sustainable. Lastly, identify where you might be introducing friction to your problem and how you can stop that.
How A Better Theory helps. // The team at A Better Theory can help you identify the problems your church is facing, and find a better solution by doing more from less. To get the free e-book that dives deeper into Nathan’s problem solving framework and start applying it in your church, visit www.abettertheory.com/unseminary.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. I’ve been looking for this for a while. You know, oftentimes on the podcast, I’m interviewing somebody who maybe I’ve just met, but Nathan’s actually a friend who we’ve had a chance to do a number of a bunch of work together over the years, and I am just super honored that he’s come on today to talk about his role with an organization called A Better Theory. Rich Birch — These people are theorists and problem solvers. They’re not consultants. Don’t call him that. He doesn’t like that. As a theorist, they focus not just on the state of things as they are, but they offer solutions of what you want them to be really looking to the future. They look to take a broader view and apply, you know, how they solve problems to really look for a specific outcome. They offer fractional leadership, personalized help, and really a different way to approach the projects that your, your organization, church, obviously today. So Nathan is the founder and chief theorist. Nathan, so glad that you’re with us today. Nathan Elson — Thank you, my friend. I really appreciate it. Rich Birch — Why don’t you tell us a little bit about, about yourself? Kind of give us a bit of the background. Obviously that’s the that’s like the corporate, you know, who-is-Nathan bio. But tell us a little bit more about yourself and then a little bit about A Better Theory. Nathan Elson — Sure. I could go into a lot of different aspects of myself. But in regards to your audience in the church world, there’s a couple of things that I think are pretty relevant. I’ve been in and around either serving in or helping churches since the late 90s. And, and really, I got my start in ministry really early on after becoming a Christian when I was in college. And, just really interesting. I had a background in Near East History…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — …so I have a minor in Antiquity Studies is what it used to be called.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nathan Elson —And so, my I guess it would be my senior year in college is when I, found my way to Christ. Or rather, I finally listened to the knock on the door that God had been knocking most of my life. And because I understood the geopolitical framework of the Near East at the time Christ was alive, I helped the college pastor at my church teach people what was actually happening as we’re going through the book of judges. That was the very first Bible study I ever participated in as a leader. Rich Birch — Wow, that’s a great way to jump in. Nathan Elson — Yeah. So, you know, it’s the shallow end of the theological pool there. Rich Birch — Yes. Nathan Elson — But I I had the pleasure of working with denominations, working with churches since early on in my Christian walk. So right around 2000, I started working with a Christian denomination at the headquarters, and I got to just work with a ton of churches through that. Went on to help churches and some consulting aspects after that, and most of my career, up until a certain point, I was a full time minister, did children’s ministry, youth ministry, college and career ministry, executive pastor work as well as a full time employee. And that took me to places like I was up in Washington. I worked at Logos Bible Software, but eventually I made it down to San Diego and was executive pastor over production, communications and marketing for Rock Church in San Diego for a number of years. And that was the first time I had one job, which was ministry and and work at the same time. And I kind of been in that space since, and that’s over a decade ago when I was down there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson —And so my background is really been in the marketing communications, business development, sales space as far as career, but also in the ministry space. And so I’ve always had this kind of dual viewpoint of everything I did. Is it helping people? Not for any other sake, then the fact that we’re called to help people. That’s why we do ministry, because God’s calling us to help people. Is it helping people? And is it achieving goals that push the kingdom forward? And those have been the two big things about my career. So whether it’s been my own company, whether it’s been working for a group like CDF Capital, one of your main sponsors, or whether it’s been working for denominations or churches, those have been the two overriding questions that I’ve got in my career. Am I helping people as individuals? And I helping advance the kingdom forward through what I’m doing? So that’s kind of my background…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson —…have been everything from project manager to C-suite along that particular pathway. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, the part of what I love what you do at A Better Theory is you is if you stated so, so plainly, we help solve problems; you help organizations. And today we’re obviously we’re talking to churches, solve problems. And so I’d love to kind of take advantage of the fact that you’re the expert in this area and kind of pick apart a little bit, help it to really sharpen us as we’re thinking about, problems. I’m sure everybody who’s listening in can think of one problem or another that they’re facing in their in their church or maybe nonprofit or business if they happen to be listening in. So let’s let’s talk about it. When you think about problem solving, I’m sure you end up interacting with lots of different organizations, and they have various things that you’re trying to get done, stuff that they’re running into, you know, barriers that they have, what would be a common either mistake or pothole that they, you know, end up in or, you know, some common way that we go off course when it comes to solving problems where we kind of head in the wrong direction. It’s like, gosh, we’re already kind of, you know, we’re doing the wrong thing even right from the beginning. Is there a common something common we could think about to try to avoid when we think about problems? Nathan Elson — Yeah, actually, the biggest thing that I deal with in conversations with people around the idea of problem solving is that their problems are somehow unique. And I’m not saying that they’re not nuanced. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Nathan Elson — What I’m saying is that a problem is a problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And the reality is, if you believe in Scripture and diving back into theology for a moment, there we have Ecclesiastes tells us there’s nothing new under the sun.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — It tells us a time for all these different things. And it ends by saying, vanity, vanity, it’s all vanity, like a passing wind…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Nathan Elson — …like a vapor and a wind. So what’s left? To fear God and obey his commandments. The Bible makes it very clear if you in certain areas where there’s a simplicity to the theological thing, and that’s really that nothing we deal with has not been dealt with before. Nathan Elson — Now, the circumstances, the nuance, and the environment it takes in is unique to your situation. But the problems you want to solve aren’t unique. And…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Nathan Elson — And that’s what that’s what underpins the framework that we use as an organization is because our, our framework isn’t geared towards a marketing problem or a business development problem or any of these classic consulting constraints that people look at and look at consultants. There’s nothing wrong with consultants. In fact, quite often the solution to the problems we help solve are consultants. But what I’m saying is that, if you look at it, take a step back, a problem is different than a challenge and it’s different than an obstacle. Right? A challenge is something that, your cost you’re asked to rise to. Can you rise to this challenge? Can you can you meet this thing head on and can you overcome it? An obstacle is something you want to avoid. Like, is there an obstacle to what you’re doing? If you’re marching down the road and with your church and you have this mission, and then there’s something in the middle of the road, well, can you go over it? Can you go around it? Can you shift your course? Those are different. Nathan Elson — A problem is, hey, Houston, there’s a problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — I mean, it’s not an obstacle and it’s not a challenge. There’s something inherently, foundationally that needs to be addressed in what we’re trying to push forward in order to see the most come to Christ. And how then can we view that problem as something to be solved? And most often we don’t think about it in the simplest terms. And the reality is, is that everyone has problems. Every ministry, every person, every leader has problems they have to deal with.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And some of them are small, some of them are big. But if you look at them all the same way, it you begin to be able to develop a pattern of behavior…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — …around solving them. And and you work out your problem solving muscles.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — Which most of us in the Western Hemisphere, who with American and Canadian style educations are taught basic problem solving in school.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — It’s just not reinforced as you grow in your education, and especially not in the in the workforce. It’s just really isn’t.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — We have a workforce that’s becoming increasingly specialized, and it has devalued the idea of general problem solving, which is kind of where kind of we sit…
Rich Birch — That’s the space you fit in.
Nathan Elson — Mainly because, you know, I like doing it. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s great. Well, and I love this idea what that reminds me of is like, hey, how do we get back to the first principles? What’s the thing behind the thing that we’re trying to solve? What’s the kind of irreducible piece of this puzzle? I remember years ago hearing Elon Musk, he was talking about this was before they kept land… they, you know, they, you know, now we see their rockets land and it’s just like, well, that’s just a normal thing. Before he had done that and he was talking about how this is really, you know, how we need to go forward and what we, you know, if we’re going to really make space accessible, we need to reuse these. Rich Birch — And people thought he was crazy, right? People are like, there’s no way. And and they said, well, space is just inherently expensive. And he was like, no, the reason why space is so expensive is because we blow up the engine every time we go. And he’s like, imagine how expensive a cruise ship would be is at the end of every cruise we blew up the cruise ship. It would be… And I remember when he first said that, I was like, yeah, that’s wow. That’s like a really, a searing insight, right? It’s like a… So how do you help a leader or how could you help us think about our problems? You know, in that way that kind of pushes back to first principles, that gets it to, you know, kind of up underneath. What’s the thing that, you know, could help unlock for us? Okay, what is the principle behind this? What is the thing that I’m kind of missing here? The problem behind the problem, the irreducible piece of this that I should be thinking more clearly about? Nathan Elson — Yeah, I think that’s a really great question because, you need some sort of framework in which to attach these ideas to.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And I developed this framework over the years. And well, before we get into the methodology that we use, this framework is crucially important. And I, I call it more from less, because one of the hallmarks of my career has always been getting a high level results by spending less money to get there. And so a long time ago, I was asked, well, how do you… Rich Birch — All the executive pastors just leaned in. They were like, what are you talking about? More for less? That’s crazy. Nathan Elson — Absolutely. One of the first things I do when I walk into an organization and help them is tell them to stop spending money. Rich Birch — Love it. Nathan Elson — To stop.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — Because you don’t know, most of the time, the effect of spending that money is in the first place. So, like, whatever you can stop spending money on, just don’t spend it. Let’s figure this out.
Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Elson — And then spend money well. And and so when I first started pondering this and trying to articulate it, I came up with this framework. And and there’s two things that underpin this framework. This is idea of exploitation and this idea of limitations.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — Right? In the human language, this idea of exploitation has become really interesting, especially in English. Because we hear this word exploit, especially Me Too Movement, especially in the current cultural environment. Exploitation is not a good thing. But if you actually look at the definition of of exploit, it’s actually comes into two batches. One to use a resource for the benefit of something else.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — Which is where the negative implications come when it comes to human interaction.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Elson — Or a grand adventure. And so… Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. Nathan Elson — So I have this concept, it’s like, okay, I like grand adventures. How does this work.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nathan Elson — But as I dive further into that word, I use it on purpose because I want us to shift our thinking, and I want us to be challenging our presumptions from the very beginning. So we have to learn how to exploit what we have. And this is why I, I’ve always challenged myself to get more results from less spending less or doing with less resources. Because if we don’t make full use of what God’s giving us: time, talent, treasure, people, whatever the resource is you identify, then we are just throwing more at a problem trying to overwhelm the problem rather than solve it. So that’s the first thing we have to understand is that it’s okay to exploit yourself. It’s okay to exploit the resources that your organization currently has. That’s okay.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nathan Elson — The second part, when it comes to problem solving that you hear often, is this idea of thinking out of the box. Now, I’m a kid in the 90s. I’m square Generation X, so I’ve been hearing that my entire adult life…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nathan Elson — and I’ve always drove me nuts.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — Because you can’t think of the box if you don’t know what your boxes in the first place. Rich Birch — Oh, okay. Nice. Love it. Nathan Elson — And the reality is, is that human beings were created for limitations. God created us with limited capacity. We are not fully an image of God. We were a reflection of the image of God. We can only show parts of the body of Christ, the part that we assigned, the part that God created us for. So we all have limits. And I always tell jokes about this, but I usually when I talk about this, I’ll put a picture of a baby or a little puppy trying to lift a barbell and saying, that dog’s never gonna lift that barbell. He’s got limits, right? Rich Birch — Sure. Nathan Elson — So we have to understand that those are the two foundational philosophical things we have to keep in tension.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nathan Elson — It’s okay to exploit what you have.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And we all have limits. So how do we maximize those limits? And in the creative space, if you’re going to an art graphic designer, an artist and say, I need X and say I need your best flyer for an event. And you come back a week later, there’s going to have nothing or the artist is going to have nothing. Nathan Elson — But if you say, I want a 8.5×11 trifold flyer with six different panels, and this panel, I want this on this panel, I want this. On this panel, I want this. On this panel, I want this, so and so forth. And I want it to look similar to this. Here’s the color schemes I want to look for. And here is the reason why we’re doing this, and the audience that we’re trying to reach with this. You’re going to come back and they’re going to have four things for you to look at. Because the limits that are placed on the creative process allows us freedom in order to overcome a lot of things. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. I like that. Nathan Elson — I’m a video game guy. Some of the best video games were on a system called the Commodore 64, and what they’re able to do with 64 bit processing, which, by the way, 64 bit processing is so limited that there’s nothing in the current environment for anyone who’s younger than 30 listening right now to tell you what 64 bit computing looks like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — …other than to, say, get 64 matchsticks and move them around with your fingers, and that’s just a slightly below 64 bit computer. Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Love it. Nathan Elson — But some of the best video games came out of that because there were severe limits…
Rich Birch — So much restriction. Yeah…
Nathan Elson — …on the environment. And people had to come up with creative ways to overcome it. And that’s the underlining thing
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Nathan Elson — Problem solving is a creative endeavor.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Nathan Elson — It’s not an intellectual endeavor as much as a creative endeavor. And so if you start there, if you look at, okay, what do we have. What are we lim ited by…
Rich Birch — Right. [inaudible] our own resources. Yep, yep.
Nathan Elson — And what are we limited by. Start there and start applying that type of thinking to whatever problem you’re trying to engage with.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s so good. I know in the in the church growth space that I, you know, the work I do on that side, that idea of exploiting what you already have, man, that’s like a power that definitely undercurrent is under a lot of what we talk about. So many churches have lots of avenues to communicate, to encourage people, to, you know, to grow their church that are, that they’re under exploiting, using the language that you’re using, you know, they’re not taking advantage of it. Rich Birch — And even just the core idea of, have we done everything we can do to encourage our people to invite their friends? People are always looking for the like, well, there’s some magic Facebook ad campaign. Or there’s some magic…and I talk about it being silver bullets. We’re always looking for the one thing. But actually it’s like, hey, how do we exploit what we’re, you know, we already have access to?
Rich Birch — How do you help an organization? You know, sticking with that idea kind of assess what they are, what they have? Because I can imagine that they’re, you know, there’s a forest for the trees issue there. You can’t even sometimes see what what your you’ve actually got. It’s hard to understand even what your limitations are or even the potential resources you have. You know, how do you help organizations actually just even define what they do have that they could exploit? Nathan Elson — That’s a great question, because actually this means what I want to talk about next anyway. So this is kismet here.
Rich Birch — Oh bam! Nathan Elson — This is divine providence, whatever you want to call it. Rich Birch — Love it, love it. Nathan Elson — So part of the framework that underpins our methodology are three maxims. Be realistic, seek simplicity, and remove friction. And these are key fundamental things. You can apply these not just to problem solving but to most things in business dynamics. And the first one—be realistic—is really the answer to that question. You have to be honest with yourself, your team and your direct reports. Everyone around you. You have to be honest with your with your congregation and you have to be honest with those your volunteers. You have to be honest. This is what we need and this is why we need it. And here’s where it becomes really, really powerful. On the book of Numbers, God counts the entire nation of Israel that left Egypt. And it teaches us that God is a God of numbers. He tells Abraham, your descendants will outnumber the stars in the sky, or this or the sand, the grains of sand on the ground. Nathan Elson — Right? God is always referring to numbers, so God likes numbers. It’s one of the first things I do when I work with a church or a Christian organization. And this is even before I get into the exploitation limitations, I have a conversation say, have you ever really sat down and figured out the difference between where you want to go and where you are right now? Have you counted that difference? Rich Birch — Oh good, good, good, good. Yeah. Nathan Elson — May I ask him a simple question? Have you prayed to God to fill that gap, instead of praying to God: God, we want to accomplish growth. We want to grow by 10%. Well, if you have a church of 100, 10% is ten people, why don’t you pray to God: I want to grow by ten people. You have a church of 10,000 and you want to grow by 25%. Why don’t you pray to God: we want to grow by 2500 people. Count the difference and be realistic about it. This is where we are and this is where we want to be. We don’t know how we’re going to get there yet and we’re trying to figure that out. But God, this is the difference. Let’s pray for that. Have realistic ideas in your mind.
Nathan Elson — And one of my favorite questions to ask any leader in in the totality of the process is this: Have you spent time really trying to figure out what it’s going to take to achieve what you’re trying to achieve? Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Have you counted the cost?
Nathan Elson — Have you counted the cost?
Rich Birch — Have you have you measured the size of the tower? Have you. Yeah, exactly. That’s cool. Nathan Elson — Because quite often leaders start building before they have an idea of what’s needed. And again, go back to Scripture. Nehemiah, I love Nehemiah because he did this, right? And he sat down and said, this is what I need, King Xerses, this is what I need. Can I have this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson —This is what’s going to take to rebuild the wall.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson —And the king said, sure, I can give that to you. It wasn’t some theoretical thing for the king. It was a very specific ask. And so the first thing you have to do is just have to be realistic about where you are, where you want to be, and count the cost of what’s going to take to get there.
Rich Birch — Right, yep.
Nathan Elson — Because sometimes it may not be worth it, and sometimes it’s going to be a whole lot simpler than you believe it’s going to be.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Nathan Elson — Which leads in the second piece, which is Seek Simplicity.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nathan Elson — Now, I was a debater in college, and when I went to seminary… Rich Birch — Hey, I was in debate and the debate club, too. That’s why I knew I liked you so much. Nathan Elson — I talked about my wife. We met on the debate team. Rich Birch — Dude. Oh, wow. Well, yeah. My wife, she doesn’t. She’ll say, stop debating me. I’m not I’m not in your debate club. You know, that has happened at some points in our marriage. Nathan Elson — I’m sure. So Rich Birch — Less now. Less now. Nathan Elson — So shout out to Cal State Long Beach where we went. They just won the national championship.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Oh great, good.
Nathan Elson — That’s great for the club. So I have a philosophical bent into how I do everything.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Nathan Elson — And so there’s this idea of simplicity has been simplified in Western culture as keep it simple, like K-I-S-S. And that’s a misnomer about a common idea of simplicity. So there’s two philosophical concepts of simplicity. One was from someone named Ockham, a medieval philosopher, and someone with my name, Einstein. You may have heard of him. He did some physics and math stuff in the 20th century.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nathan Elson — Ockham’s razor says it’s not necessary to multiply things more than they need to be multiplied, or do not multiply things unnecessarily. And what he meant was, when we solve problems, when we do things, we have to make the solution complex enough to solve the problem, but not too complex. Conversely, Einstein said, whatever you solve for, make this solution as simple as possible, but not so simple it doesn’t do its job.
Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Elson — So we have to attack simplicity from both ends. So as you approach problem solving, you have to say, how can this be complex enough to do its job, but simple enough to be replicated?
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And that is a fundamental key about church dynamics.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — If you can’t replicate something you’re doing, teach someone else and have it be transferable, chances are it’s not going to be sustainable. Rich Birch — Yes. Well, and this is for the system side of us. I’m so glad you’re talking about this. For the people who love systems and love, you know, thinking about the world from a systems point of view, we can, geek out on making the checklist so many steps. We can make the process so complex, that you have to have a degree in, you know, project management to get anything done, which then ultimately slows down growth. It ultimately slows down the effectiveness of that tool. I think that’s a great, super great insight. Rich Birch — You also talked about removing friction, you know, making things, you know, beyond simple, just actually removing friction. I love that that’s I’ve seen, you know, many times in my, leadership and ministry career just focusing on reducing friction on a process, on a, you know, something we’re doing, man makes it can make a huge difference. Talk to us a little bit about that. Nathan Elson — Yeah. So this one, when I do talk about this I usually put a a picture of an old medal slide.
Rich Birch — Okay [inaudible].
Nathan Elson — I talked about how in in the winter they were really fun because they were ice cold and you flew down them. But in the summer when you’re wearing short shorts back in the 80s.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nathan Elson — You went down that thing in the summer, you’re a hero…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nathan Elson — …because chances are you can leave some skin on it. But friction is ideal when you have two two objects that rub against each other energy is transferred from one object to another. That’s friction. And anytime two human beings are involved in anything, transfer of energy is involved. So sometimes some form of friction is involved. Now friction can be good and it can be bad. Nathan Elson — And so what I usually encourage people is to think about areas where they’re introducing friction into whatever they’re trying to solve, and to stop doing that. Whether it be a relationship, whether it be a way of communicating. Because that’s the simplest thing – you can look at removing friction, but that’s a down the pathway constant thing. The easiest place to start is where my creating friction, and how I can not create that friction anymore? Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. What would be an examples, it may be from a from a church, you know, that you’ve worked with, or I’ve seen you know that that we, we have we there’s more friction in a process that there should be? Nathan Elson — Well how about example from my leadership.
Rich Birch — Sure, yeah.
Nathan Elson — When I was at Rock, I had a sufficient number of departments underneath me that I had to have a certain level of knowledge. So when the lead pastor would ask me what’s going on, I can I can acknowledge things. So I had to induce artificial friction into the process where I had to get reports weekly about what all my, all the teams were doing so that I can speak to them intelligently.
Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Elson — Well, over time, this necessary friction became unnecessary friction because it created a culture where people are afraid to make decisions without running it by me first. So I had to undo good friction I introduced because it became bad friction. And I said, I don’t here’s your guardrails. Make decisions. Just tell me the decision you make.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Nathan Elson — So I had to go go away from a formal reporting process which initially worked great to more of an informal process because by, by introducing a little bit of friction it, became a lot of friction down the road. And so… Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nathan Elson — And so I had to remove myself as a choke point in a process, more than once.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — And so kind of the arc of this is you have a process. It’s simple, repeatable, sustainable. It gets more complex over time. Because it gets more complex over time, it introduces new sources of friction. The new source of friction causes it to be ineffective. And then you have to go back and be more realistic, make it more simple, and remove the friction as possible. Nathan Elson — So the key to this is understanding that once you think you’re done with something, you’re just starting over again. You’re not done. It’s just go back to the beginning and…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — …and look at it again. So so that’s an example from my own life where I introduced friction because I needed to. And that friction became so sticky of a point, it became a hindrance to moving forward. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s cool. That’s great. This has been, this has been fantastic. You know what can you kind of give me a sense of, like, maybe two or three examples of churches that would reach out to you. Let’s say, like, I’ll give you an example. Like maybe I’m a church of 1500 people and we’re hitting our head against what? Like, what is the thing that that I would say, you know, I should pick up the phone and give Nathan a call? What would be the kind of, you know, the neighborhood of problems that you would be, you know, very open to wanting to talk to a church about? Nathan Elson — So a couple of areas that would come to mind would be resource maximization. Hey, we’re at 1500 people. We have a certain amount of income coming in. Things are getting paid, but we want to grow. But when the [inaudible] growth is not knowing how we’re financially going to get there. Well, okay, let’s take a look at things. Let’s look at where the specific sticking points are and how we can create a set of problems that you need to solve or identify some problems you need to solve around that. And then figure out how to overcome it. But it could also be in logistics. It can be in how do we how do we make better sense of the data that we have? Like we know we have people coming. We just don’t know who they are, where they’re coming from, and these type of things. Or maybe it’s in the sense of volunteer motivation. Like we have 1500 people, but we only have 50 people that show up on a consistent basis. How do we overcome those things? Nathan Elson — And here’s… I’ll be I’ll be quite honest. We’ve we work best when we are in that space, in between the conceptualization of an idea and the and the strategy of how of what to do about it.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — Because what we do, it covers everything that’s going to be, not seen from the surface when you’re trying to solve something. So our process that we run organizations through is a collaborative process that’s team-based, that really gets underneath and diagnoses the blocking issues. And and different challenges need to be overcome. We were one organization that wanted to grow. They wanted to grow four times their size. And…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nathan Elson — …and currently working with them. Great organization, do wonderful things. And we’re looking at it going, okay, there’s an easy path forward. You know how to get the growth done. Why is it not happening. So we ran through our process and what we realized it’s a the senior leader’s new to senior leadership in the last few years, and their executive team, while all seasoned executives, is new to the organization. So when they converse and they talk about things, they’re not speaking the same language. Nathan Elson — One person says one word. Another person shared in a different way. So and they weren’t aware of the misalignment that they had.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And so as we as we’re working with them, we’re in the process of helping them overcome that misalignment. Once that misalignment happens and there’s clear understanding who’s responsible for what part of the new things, not their existing work they’re doing for the new things, it’ll move forward towards it. So the problem in their mind was we need, we can’t, we need to grow four times our size and we don’t know how to do it. But the real problem was, well we have some blocking issues that we need to overcome. And so that’s kind of where we sit in that space between it.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — So it’s a we have a process. It’s a it’s a team-based collaborative process. that takes through five distinct pieces that is a, not a it’s a framework, our methodology for solving problems. And it works within any problem set because it’s not geared around a solution. It’s geared around more of a diagnostic type of understanding of what is going on. So we can remove the friction, do the simplicity, bring in some realism into it, and solve those help organizations solve those problems. Rich Birch — I love it. So good. This is, this is fantastic. I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like, hey, I’d love to think a little bit more about this. Think about this framework. Is there any way, any resources or stuff like that that you could kind of point us towards that would be helpful for folks that are listening in if they’re thinking, you know, they want to learn more, they want to kind of explore this, maybe even before they take a step, to reaching out to you? Nathan Elson — Yeah. So a book I, I recommend to everybody—it’s a psychology book—it’s called The Paradox of Choice by Dr. Barry Schwartz. Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Nathan Elson — It’s probably on the shelf behind me. It’s one of these yellow books over here. I do have a couple copies. And the reason why I do that, it’s a book that’s geared towards the philosophical understanding of how consumers make choices, but it really helps us understand the different modalities of thought that people have when they make choices. Nathan Elson — And, and, and that’s really important because quite often in what we do when we work with the organization is we help make a decision making matrix. And this is one of the fundamental things you have to understand about problem solving. In any problem, there’s probably going to be an ideal way to solve that problem. Rich Birch — Right. Nathan Elson — But the ideal way is not the best way for most organizations. Rich Birch — Oh yeah. Tell me more. You’ve got me intrigued. Nathan Elson — Because organizations have limits.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — And they have issues of exploitation. So what might be the ideal one may be out of reach for an organization.
Rich Birch — Okay. Got it.
Nathan Elson — And that’s where our name comes from.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nathan Elson — Our name comes from the fact that we’re not after an ideal solution. We’re after a better solution. And we believe that it’s just a quirk back from my debate days. Everything’s theoretical until it’s proven true. So…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — So you don’t know if if a way to solve a problem is going to work until you try to solve your problem with that, with that way, to solve it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Elson — So until it’s implemented and works, it’s theoretical. So that’s what we’re after.
Rich Birch — Right…
Nathan Elson — After organizations come up with the better theory for them. Not the best solution. Not the ideal solution.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Elson — Because if you were trying to solve an organizational dynamic issue at your church and come up with a better way to do HR, you would not do it the same way Amazon does it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Nathan Elson — Amazon may have the ideal solution. You can’t afford that. Rich Birch — No. No. Yeah. True. Nathan Elson — So what is the better idea, the better theory for how you can solve it.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Nathan Elson — And and that’s and that’s a space to be in. And so the paradox of choice really helps you understand how people make decisions and how you make decision, what influences your decision making and how you can reset the way you look at things so you can make decisions based on more objectivity and less subjectivity. Rich Birch — Right, okay. That’s great. So good. And I think you’ve got an e-book, right, we want to point people towards as well. Where would we, you know, tell us a little bit about this and we’ll, we’ll link to it in the show notes. But tell us a little bit about that. Nathan Elson — Yeah. So I actually have an e-book around the framework I talked about today. The…
Rich Birch — Oh great.
Nathan Elson — …more from less. And it’s and it hits the points, goes in deeper dive into them and kind of lays out how you can apply them to your situation. And again it’s kind of that underpinning for our methodological process for solving problems. But I’ve given this talk at church conferences and other places and so I just want to give it away. And you can get it at abettertheory.com/unseminary. Just go there and that’s where you can you can grab it and it’s free for anyone listening to your podcast. Rich Birch — Great. So good. We’ll also link that in the show notes, friends, if you’re looking for that. So it’s just abettertheory.com/unseminary. Rich Birch — Well Nathan, this has been great. I know there’s a lot more we could talk about. This is just the beginning of this conversation for sure for folks. If people want to get in touch with you or connect with A Better Theory, where do we want to send them online? How do we want to do that? Nathan Elson — Well, if you want to check out our website, which a side note, our website was written entirely by ChatGPT. So…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Elson — …if you don’t like AI, forgive me. I just want to see if I could do it. I just want to see if I can create a website entirely with ChatGPT. Rich Birch — Sure. That’s fun. Nathan Elson — So, but it’s pretty good. We’re working on a new version of it, but it’s abettertheory.com.
Rich Birch — Yep. Love it.
Nathan Elson — There’s a phone number on there. It’s a 714 area code phone number. So if you get on there and you look at that phone number, I don’t have it memorized because I don’t answer that phone.
Okay.
Nathan Elson — So one of my team will ask that phone, but if you want to reach out to me directly, feel free to. Nathan Elson — It’s just nathan@abettertheory.com.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nathan Elson — And I’d be more than happy to answer any questions that you have, and listen to any stories you have or tell you stories about debate. Because [inaudible] it’s funny to talk about. Rich Birch — Well, Nathan, I, I, I really appreciate you being on today. Thanks so much. And again, my friends, I would encourage you to check out abettertheory.com. Check out Nathan’s work. He’s a great guy and trusted friend. And you, you can, you should definitely spend some time with him. So thanks so much, Nathan. Appreciate you being here today. Nathan Elson — Thank you, Rich, for having me. As you know, I’m a huge fan of your of your podcast and have been for a long time. So it’s an honor for me to be here. Rich Birch — Thanks so much, buddy. Appreciate you being here.
The Four Key Factors of Magnetic Community Service That Drive Invite Culture
May 08, 2024
In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we delve into the transformative impact of magnetic community service on building a vibrant church invite culture. Drawing inspiration from outreach initiatives at prominent churches like Elevation’s Love Week and Church of the Highlands’ Serve Day, we explore how strategic mass outreach can drive your congregation’s growth and engagement.
Key Factors That Shape Magnetic Community Service:
The More Volunteers Factor: The first key to driving invites is the sheer number of volunteers mobilized. When 60-70% of the adult community actively participates in impactful community service, engagement skyrockets, leading to natural conversations and opportunities for members to invite their friends to church. By empowering people to leave their seats and make a tangible difference, they naturally want to share their experiences.
The T-Shirt Factor: Visibility is essential. Wearing matching shirts and being seen doing good in the community reinforces the positive image of the church. People feel a sense of pride and fulfillment when they’re visibly making a difference, and this visibility motivates them to share their stories, post photos, and invite others.
The Day Of Factor: The holy ruckus created by community-wide outreach spills over into conversations, social media posts, and networking opportunities that naturally generate buzz and invites. Mobilizing large groups to help neighborhoods, host events, or run awareness campaigns creates a memorable spectacle that leaves people curious and engaged.
The Afterglow Factor: The positive ripple effects from a mass outreach initiative can last months or even years. People who participate continue to talk about it, share photos, and tell stories, all of which reinforce the culture of generosity and outreach that the church embodies. This afterglow can be leveraged in future outreach, campus launches, and community engagement efforts.
Ready-to-Implement Outreach Ideas:
Shop of Wonders: Create a dignified and empowering Christmas shopping experience for hundreds of families in need. Display donated gifts like a shop, providing families with hope and joy.
Serve Day: Mobilize your entire church to serve the community by cleaning parks, running garage sales, offering free services, and more.
Night to Shine: Host a prom for individuals with special needs using the resources from the Tim Tebow Foundation.
Magnetic community service, as outlined in this episode, can catalyze your invite culture and make a lasting impact on both your congregation and your local community. It’s time to unlock new potential by moving your members from their seats and into the streets!
Calling the Next Gen to Leadership: Insights on Empowering Emerging Changemakers with Brad Dreibelbis
May 02, 2024
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Brad Dreibelbis, Next Gen and Operations Pastor at The Journey, a church in Delaware.
How do you identify and find high caliber leaders, particularly from the next generation? Too many churches wait for young leaders to be trained in other places instead of raising them up from within their church. Listen as Brad shares how The Journey is raising up young leaders and providing opportunities for them to develop both character and competency.
Take risks on young leaders. // No church ever feels they have enough leaders, and at The Journey they’ve taken a proactive approach to this issue by investing in students and young adults. Think of it like Moses turning over the reins to Joshua and Caleb and leaving that legacy to the next generation. Help people early in their faith to grow in their character and calling to support what God is doing in their leadership.
Focus on the next generation. // The target demographic of who The Journey is trying to reach is framed through the lens of an 18 to 30 year old man. It’s important to have on-ramps for older followers too and remind them they are important in the church, but investing in and taking risks on the next generation ensures that you are building for the future.
Make disciples. // Brad’s team completes monthly reports that include identifying an 18-30 year old who could move into their leadership pipeline. Talking about potential leaders as a team adds a layer of accountability and encourages the staff to bring others alongside them and make disciples. It’s important to give young leaders opportunities even though it will be messy at times.
Play the long game. // Don’t neglect that your kids and student ministries are your best feeder for young leaders because they’ve already been baked into your culture. Start investing in them when they’re young children. Teach them biblical principles and give them chances to lead as they grow.
90-day contracted internships. // There aren’t always open staff positions at The Journey so they have created 90-day contracted internships for young people in the church who have potential. The interns are paid as employees for 90 days and are in charge of a particular ministry or objective. This short-term opportunity offers young leaders a chance to grow and build skills while allowing staff to evaluate their character. After the 90 days, some interns may stay on for more growth opportunities or be offered a staff position.
Ministry boot camp. // The Journey runs a ministry boot camp for 10 weeks during the summer for students and young adults—anyone who has finished eighth grade through 30 years old. The camp is a 20-hour-a-week commitment to help young leaders grow in their relationship with God while learning practical ministry. Participants commit to attending 12 hours during the week on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and then serving during weekend gatherings so they gain ministry experience while interacting with people.
Learn to listen. // All of us are wired by God for a calling, even if it may not be in paid ministry. Help young people at your church to hear from God and create enough space to prioritize their faith. In The Journey’s ministry boot camp, the first hour is spent sitting and listening to Him—a new experience for some of the participants.
Monthly focus. // Every month The Journey sets a different goal as part of their monthly focus strategy. This strategy sets a vision area that the whole church should be focused on, defines a vehicle to achieve it, and establishes measurable goals. Staff connects throughout the month to discuss how they are contributing to the goal and what they have or have not achieved. This approach fosters accountability and unity, aligning the entire church towards a common objective.
You can find out more about The Journey Church at www.yourjourney.tv and download The Journey’s monthly focus document here.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is going to be a good one. It’s going to be particularly helpful for you as you’re listening in and thinking about how can you help your church reach more people and build teams and all those kinds of things. Super excited to have Brad Dreibelbis with us today. He is from The Journey, The Journey Church. This a fantastic church, started in 2007 and has repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Its senior pastor is Mark Johnson. They have, if I’m counting correctly, three locations in Delaware. You know, there’s 1.8 million people living in a 30 mile radius of Newark, Delaware. And I love this: they call this region Journey City. They are owning their part of the country. Their dream is to plant locations all across the area. Brad is the Next Gen and Operations Pastor. Brad, welcome. So glad you’re here today. Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah, Rich, thank you so much. It means the world to have me on. I appreciate it. Rich Birch — I’m so honored that you’ve taken some time to be with us. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? You know, so there’s lots we can learn from your church – that one of the things I just want to point out is people don’t wake up in Delaware and say, hey, we should go to church today. It’s just not, you know, this is like, if there’s if there’s the Bible Belt, this might be the opposite of that. I’m not sure what the opposite of the Bible Belt is. People just don’t go there. And this is a prevailing church in that context. And so I’m excited to share and for you to learn from you. But kind of fill in the picture, tell us about The Journey and then tell us about your role. Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah, very much so. And first I got a, I got a delineate. You know, I heard you say Newark, Delaware. And, we passionately say it is Newark, Delaware. We are… Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. That’s a that’s my Jersey coming through. That’s my Jersey coming through. Brad Dreibelbis — It is. It is. We had to we had to delineate within Journey city. Hey, we are Newark, Delaware. So anybody who is from the region, you know, what’s you know what’s being talked about.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, fun.
Brad Dreibelbis — We’ve got a fantastic church. And just so thankful for what God’s doing and for the heart of our lead pastor and the vision that God has given him to reach those 1.8 million people that are in our region. And just so many of them need the hope and the message of Jesus. You know, we’re in a region where, to your point, not everybody wakes up every morning and says, hey, I want to I want to go and be a part of a church. So, Pastor Mark, whenever he planted The Journey, felt like the word that he got from God was to be a church that unchurched people wanted to go to. So we are ridiculously passionate about and even militant about keeping our focus on unchurched people, and having ways that that they can come and experience God. Brad Dreibelbis — So if I had to guess for our people that call The Journey home, I would say that at least at least 60 to 65% of them, The Journey is the place that they would consider their first home church, since they’ve put their faith in Jesus, or become a follower of Jesus.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Brad Dreibelbis — And it’s just been the great entry point into their their spiritual walk with the Lord. And so our mission is to help people find Jesus and follow him fully. And, I’m so thankful that we get a chance to do it in a region where, to your point, it’s not the Bible Belt. There’s not a church on every corner. And, there’s there’s Bible literacy that is lacking. And, there’s no place that I’d rather do battle than, than do it here. Rich Birch — So good. Pumped for this conversation. Well, that’s probably a great place to start. You know, too many churches when you look at where they get their, their, their young leaders, their kind of next generation, the people who are going to push the church forward, if you if you peel back the, the wrapper, you figure out, oh, like, these were leaders that were identified or trained in other places, and then we’re just kind of like taking their transfer growth. Like we’re, you know, and when you’re experiencing 60 or 65% of your people are coming in with some sort of, you know, unchurched background or like, you know, having some sort of fresh experience with Jesus, man, that’s got to be hard to find to identify and find high caliber leaders, to kind of make the church happen. Kind of pull that apart, help us understand that problem a little bit. What does that look like for you guys? Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at if you look at the church as a whole, you know, every I don’t think there’s a single pastor in America that would say, you know what? I’ve got all the leaders that I could ever need. I’ve got all the people on the team that I could ever want to be a part of it.
Rich Birch — Right, yes.
Brad Dreibelbis — And, you know, the average age of our staff is 24, and they’re just killing it. They all love Jesus, are fully committed to God, and it’s just amazing. You know, no one’s saying those things. But we don’t just want to be a church that has leaders for the sake of just leading ministry and helping people find Jesus. We want to have next generation leaders. We want to have people that we can pass it on to. We want to like if we are, if we’re Moses, we want to have a Joshua and Caleb that we can turn and hand things over to and say, hey, I’ve got I’ve got something that’s going to leave a legacy, legacy that’s going to go beyond me. And so that’s part of what we’re doing here that especially in our in our next gen environments, this is where I first started leading in our student ministry. You know, in those next gen environments, we are we are teaching kids and students how to how to know God, how to understand who he is. And we are starting from a very base level, like they have zero Bible literacy. Brad Dreibelbis — And then so many people, we’re we’re one and a half miles from a from the University of Delaware, which has 25,000 students from all across kind of this northeast region. And basically, if you look at it, I mean, they are coming in, they they know Jesus as a name. They do not know anything about him. They don’t they don’t even know, like feeding the 5000…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — …is not even something that registers in their brain.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Brad Dreibelbis — They like, if I ask who’s Jonah? They don’t have an idea.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — Like if I ask who’s Daniel? The first word is is not like lion’s den.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — It’s just they just don’t even have a have a clue. So a lot of what we’re doing with these young leaders is we we are having to take some risks and take some shots and help people who were, you know, who are early in their faith, grow and develop in their character and in their calling so that that can support what God’s doing in, in their leadership and how that can kind of translate. So, you know, that’s that’s what I’m really passionate about, that we are we’re taking some risks on people.
Rich Birch — Totally.
Brad Dreibelbis — And just like Jesus with the with the disciples, they were they were all young people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — They were not 45 seasoned, you know, ministry veterans. They were fishermen. They were people who had everyday jobs. And Jesus said, hey, come follow me and let’s do life together. And, you know, that’s what he did.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — So we we follow that same model going, we’re going to take some risks on some people like Peter and some people that just say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, create a mess, and we’ll walk up behind them and just kind of scoop up with a shovel and, and, you know, follow up and try to help clean up where we can. And when it gets off the rails, we we’re quick to correct it. And we, we do our best to kind of temper, but we’re always we’re always trying to take risks on some young leaders. Rich Birch — Yeah. Let’s double click on that. Particularly the the young leader piece of that equation. So you know, challenge us a little bit on that. I think this is one of those, so this has been one of the things I’ve noticed, as I do coaching and consulting with churches all across the country and have had a real privilege to be and help with some of the fastest growing churches in the country. And one of the things that I would say is a stark difference that I noticed when I’m engaging with those churches, churches like yours, that there are a lot of young leaders around that, that it’s it’s like a, it’s a it’s very normative. Where when I look at stuck in stagnant churches, I’ll, you know, if I’ve ended up interacting with some of those, it’s like, it’s like the opposite. It’s like, man, these are a lot of people who are holding on in their 50s and 60s. Double click on the why, particularly next generation. Why young leaders? Why do you think why have you kind of articulated internally, it’s like, hey, that’s an important it’s not just that we’re looking for leaders; we’re looking specifically for next gen leaders. Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah. And I’d give a little bit of a qualifier to say we we are still growing in this. We’re not like killing the game left and right.
Rich Birch — Yep. Sure.
Brad Dreibelbis — We we honestly have had to grow in this out of necessity, going, hey, who do we have? So, you know, average age of our church target demographic of our church is a is an 18 to 30 year old unchurched guy. ‘Cause we say if we can get that 18 to 30 year old guy to come to our church, he’ll he’ll bring his girlfriend or he’ll bring his, his wife or he’ll bring somebody that’s important to him versus if you if you’re targeted towards a young, a young woman, so the guy will kind of sit on the couch and go, okay, have fun. And he clicks the remote and keeps watching TV kind of thing. So everywhere from the beginning part of our target demographic of who we’re trying to even reach as a whole, as a church, that is framed through the lens of this next generation, this 18 to 30 year old. How are we doing it? Brad Dreibelbis — Now obviously, there’s on ramps for everybody, as there should be in the body of Christ. In every church there needs to be on ramps for the 75 year old person who has tons of wisdom and has been following Jesus for 65 years. I want them to be a part of this. But if we say disproportionately we’re going to put energy here, it’s going to be on that next generation, that target demographic, that 18 to 30 year old unchurched guy. And so the same thing gets translated where we start doing that when we start talking about leadership. So in in like, to get real practical, like in some monthly reports that I get from members of my team that report to me, I have a section where they have to list their leadership pipeline. And in that they must record a person who is between the ages of 18 and 30 who is, they think, could move into leadership. And so every single month they have to report a person. And I don’t let them keep the same person on, or I don’t let them, you know, go several months without putting somebody there, without a conversation going, hey, who are you investing in? Who are you taking a shot on? Who are you who are you kind of bringing in to come alongside of you and just check this out? Brad Dreibelbis — Because you have to give opportunities. You just have to say, hey, come follow me and recognize there’s going to be a mess because it’s messy. Think about all the times that Jesus had to correct, had to rebuke, had to clean up, had to reorient the disciples, had to point them in the right direction. The same thing is true with us.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — And yes, everybody wants the 27 year old person on their team who has been following Jesus for 30 years who wants to be paid $30,000 a year…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brad Dreibelbis — …who doesn’t have a family and wants to work 94 hours a week at the church.
Rich Birch —Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah, everybody wants that person on their team, but they don’t exist. They’re like a unicorn. You look at them and you want. So what do you do? You find the next best thing. Who’s the sharp, young, talented, hungry, driven, loves Jesus, is pointing their life not not perfection, but they’re aimed in the right direction. They’ve got a teachable spirit. They’re likable. They light up a room, like, who are those people? And then just invite them to do life and ministry with you. Brad Dreibelbis — That’s the entry point that we’ve started to to get behind, and we’ve started to see some success stories there…
Rich Birch —Love it.
Brad Dreibelbis — …which has been really cool to watch. Rich Birch — Well, let’s dig into the some of the practicality of that. So what kind of what are some kind of approaches… you know, I’ve talked in other environments, I’ve talked about like what are the fishing ponds? Where are you kind of out finding these people? Help, you know, how are you engaging them kind of moving them from there attending, or maybe they’re in a group or they’re on a team to like, hey, we want to move you into a leadership role. What does that look like? Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah, So I think of a couple of different things. You know, the most natural one is don’t don’t neglect that your kids and student ministries are your best feeder for young leaders. So if you are not seeing young leaders come through your church that have baked in the culture of your kids and student ministry over the course of 10, 12, 15 years in your church, you’re you’re just missing out.
Rich Birch — Yes. Brad Dreibelbis — Like something’s wrong in your kids and students programs if they’re not graduating out some young, hungry leaders. So there’s a there’s a young woman who’s on her team who just turned 21. We just hired her in a part time role to be our students director. And she grew up in our student ministry. I mean, she she got she took shots and she went through, she would tell you if she was right here with us, she would tell you, hey, I ran away from this. I spent, you know, six months in Mexico doing my own thing. I, like, went through the whole kind of story of her running away from God and eventually came back. And God’s like, I’ve called you. I’ve put something on your heart. Just say yes. And so she did. And we took a shot on her and gave her gave her a chance. But that’s a seven-year long game that was baked into our student ministry, where when I was the student’s director, it was her over at our house eating dinner with us. It was her spending time in her basement when her mom got deported. It was it was all those kinds of conversations that like, you just have to do as a in your kids and students programs that bake in this ability to build up leaders. Brad Dreibelbis — So my my number one encouragement is like, hey, play the long game and recognize…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — …if you want young leaders, you’ve got to start when they’re in second, third, fourth, fifth grade.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — Start when they’re two. Like, teach them the biblical principles, and then from there give them chances. So we didn’t just hire this 21-year old. She taught in our student environment when she was 15. She led teams when she was 17 and did a crappy job at it, to be honest. But we gave her a chance.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brad Dreibelbis — And we cleaned up everything behind her. We gave her a shot at a part time contractor, an internship on our team, going, can she get there? I don’t know. And 60 days in went, I don’t know if she can make it. And eventually she turned the corner and had a moment where she settled it with God. And so we gave her another 90 days. And here she is on a permanent role on our team. And so it’s just like, you got to play that long game.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brad Dreibelbis — It’s a little bit of a case study, but that’s what’s really worked for us. Rich Birch — Yeah. Let’s pull apart. One piece of that you mentioned in there there was like an internship. What does that look like for you guys? How has that, you know, what is what does that look like? Is it a paid thing, is it volunteer? What do you mean when you say intern? It’s like, that’s one of those…
Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like, you know, it means something different and lots of different locations and, yeah, help me, help us understand that. Brad Dreibelbis — Sure. So we, we’ve done multiple iterations of this, all kinds of different ways that we’ve made it work. We’ve tried paid internships that are, you know, one way. We’ve tried, hey, we’re going to do all volunteer internships. We’ve done it, you know, a student internship model that summertime focused. And really, you know, we’ve tried different things. And right now we’re about ready to innovate for this summer. We’re going to be rolling out what we’re going to call our ministry boot camp for the summer, which is basically a ten week accelerated program where students and young adults, anyone basically who has graduated or finished eighth grade all the way through age 30-ish is what we’re trying to say.
Rich Birch — Wow. wow.
Brad Dreibelbis — So we’re going to put them in a room. They’re going to get a chance to spend time with God and grow in their relationship with God. They’re going to connect with other like minded young people who are trying to grow in their leadership and explore their calling. And we’re going to give them practical ministry. So they’re going to plan our summer camp for students. They’re going to plan our our outreach events that we’re doing this summer. They’re going to plan and run gatherings and weekend environments. We’re going to put them in production where they’re shot callers. We’re going to have them be in environments where you just let them do it, like let them be a part of it. Brad Dreibelbis — I think that’s what Jesus was trying to do. Just let them go, do it. And now you don’t let them by themselves. Don’t worry. Like if it gets messed up, we will make sure…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brad Dreibelbis — …that like church doesn’t fall apart on a weekend.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — We are at that scale where we need to make sure it doesn’t fall apart, but we’re going to give them shots. So that’s this ministry boot camp that we’re going to do that none of those people are paid. It’s just this compelling vision of, hey, do you want to grow in your leadership? Do you want to grow in your calling and understand what God’s doing in your life? Then come be a part of this. And then we’ve got a couple of young people in our church that we want to that we just, like, see God’s hand on their life. We’re not even sure that there’s like this ministry opening or this staff position that they’re best tailored for. We just see God’s hand on their life and we want them on their team. So we’re creating these 90-day contracted internships where they are paid…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brad Dreibelbis — …they are part time employees for 90 days, and we give them clear deliverables. They’re in charge of a particular ministry area, or a particular thing or objective. So last summer we did this – that 21 year old that I told you about, she was in our student ministry as an intern. So she got paid for 90 days to help lead our student ministry and plan our summer camp and run with it and really, really explore what that looks like.
Brad Dreibelbis — We had another person, very young, new to her faith, probably been following Jesus two years, but I mean, God’s hand is just on her life and her potential is astronomical. So we just said, are you good at communication stuff? Can you run our social media page? So we made her the communications intern and we said, hey, can you run the social media page and make sure that emails go out whenever they’re supposed to and help us think through communication as a church? And six months later, like we we extended her internship as well because we said we think we need to see a little bit more before we turn the reins over…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — …because we’re like, we don’t want to have to fire you for character things, or we don’t want to have to let you go. That’s a whole different kind of conversation. But we did all of that vetting over the course of six months while she was doing it, and then she just was a part of the team afterwards. We transitioned her into a permanent full time role after that. So recently she sat in our pastor’s office, and I think this is a good case study. So if you’re a pastor listening to this and you’re like, what do I do when I take if I take risks on these young leaders? This young woman sat in our pastor’s office, Pastor Mark. And she said, hey, I’m scared that one day you’re going to wake up and realized you hired me for something that I have no idea how to do, and you’re actually going to let me go. And he said to her, Yanni, I didn’t hire you to do communications. In fact, that’s the role that you have to do right now. I hired you because I see God’s hand on your life, and I see the potential that you could, could be.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Brad Dreibelbis — I see what God is doing in you, and your character can support that right now. So I’m giving you a shot. I don’t think your role is going to be communications over the next ten years. I think your role could be limitless if you’ll raise up people and empower people and lead teams. But right now I need you to do the communication stuff.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — So know your spot’s secure on our team. We love you. We’re for you. Go charge hell with a water pistol and let’s go get after it kind of thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brad Dreibelbis — So that’s that’s what we’re doing where we’re just giving some shots to some young leaders. And ultimately, I mean, 90 days at $17.50 an hour times 20 hours a week. I mean, you’re talking a pretty minimal financial commitment to this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — …that as long as you’re clear on the front end not dangling any carrots. I’m not saying that this is going to go for the next, you know, nine years or whatever. It’s a 90 day thing. And we actually have three last summer, two of them, two of them swam and one of them sunk.
Rich Birch — Sure. Brad Dreibelbis — And so we let the third one sink. So. Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That’s such a clear, that’s a great idea, a great tactic and a great ,you know, there’s, there’s that idea of like, hey, let’s just provide a, it’s a test case. It’s a we’re going to it’s a project. It’s a short run. Let’s see where, you know, where you can do. And hey, we can always roll those into longer. On the ministry boot camp, so, you said there’s a bunch of stuff there I want to loop back on. The one thing you said on the ministry boot camp, you’re saying it’s ten weeks this summer? Is that, like a full time thing for those ten weeks, or are they are they there for like, a part is it like a 20 hour week thing as well? Or how’s that how’s it work? What’s their time commitment? Brad Dreibelbis — We’ve done different things where we’ve tried to make it a 12 hour a week…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brad Dreibelbis — …where basically you just need to be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then because we have multiple gatherings, we said, gather one and serve one.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brad Dreibelbis — But this year, what we’re doing with this ministry boot camp is we’ve, we we want to put some more skin in the game. So we’re saying it’s a 20 hour a week commitment. It means that you’re going to be here Tuesday mornings and Thursday mornings. You’re going to be here every gathering on the weekend. Because ministry happens on a weekend. You want to explore your calling, get in the café and talk to people. You want to learn what it looks like to like, do ministry or to serve people…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — …or [inaudible] people. Get around some people don’t. Ministry doesn’t happen in an office with an email address. Ministry happens with people. So you got to get around those people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — So that’s what we we do with them is give them a chance to do that. And they have a practical ministry lens. So, you know, they they basically have to be here Tuesday, Thursday. But then the other, you know, 6 to 8 hours of the week, they’ve got clear deliverables and clear projects that they have to work on and come back, whether it’s, hey, you need to build out all the tracks to make sure that our worship team is ready to go. Or you need to work on kids programming because you want to have a kids focus. Or you’re coming back with what’s the cool, creative, fun, crazy idea that we’re going to do for our student summer camp?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — So you want to buy, you know, inflatable bunnies that do whatever. Okay, fine. Go buy every pool noodle at Walmart and come back. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it. Okay. Okay, that makes total sense. And something you’re saying, I’d love for you to kind of talk a little bit more about—you’ve used this language multiple time—explore your calling. You know, helping people wrestle through and think through their calling. I do think, one of my theories is the reason why, one of the reasons why we have a leadership crisis in the local church is at some point in the last—and listen, I’ve been at this long enough, it was it was during my generation, sometime in this Gen X time—like in the last 20, 30 years, we dropped this idea of calling as a regular… Like there was I remember when I was a young person, there was like, you went away to youth camp and there was the like, get to know Jesus call. And then there was the like, hey, Jesus may be calling you to go into full time vocational ministry.
Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah. Rich Birch — Come to the front now, we’re going to pray for you. And we dropped that somewhere along the line. We dropped that. But I love that you’re picking that up and using that as, help us think through that. How do you talk about that kind of language with young leaders? How do we challenge them? Think about those things. Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah, that’s so good. So my story is I had a moment when I was 16 where I just felt like God told me, go up on the hillside. And whenever I went up on the hillside, I heard from God. And I heard him say, Brad, you’re going to be a pastor. And so it was a very clear moment for me that any time I’ve gotten discouraged, shaken up, wondered what I should do, even all the mistakes that I made early in ministry. I got I got kicked out of a volunteer role once. I got told I wasn’t going to be hired at The Journey because I was arrogant and unteachable. My pastor told me that. And I still gutted it out and stayed because my calling was the thing that I kept going back to.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Brad Dreibelbis — I had heard from God, I’m going to be a pastor. And I want young people, I want everybody, but especially young people, I want them to hear the voice of God. Maybe not the audible voice of God, but I want to teach them how to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and what he is leading, because I believe that every single one of us has a calling. Every single one of us is uniquely wired for a purpose that God has for us on this planet.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — And it’s not limited to vocational ministry. So that’s where some of those summer camps, I think, might have gotten it wrong. They said, maybe you’re called to ministry.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — It’s like, that’s not the only way to be called. Maybe you’re called to go start a business that makes $50 billion a year, and you’re going to fund the next wave of ministry happening. That’s your calling. Maybe you’re called to be the best killer stay at home dad that has ever walked this planet. And in a fatherless generation, you’re going to father your kids well, so that they change the world for Jesus. Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Brad Dreibelbis — Like I want people to hear from God, and that’s what I’m trying to help them see and help them step into.
Rich Birch — So good.
Brad Dreibelbis — So I’m having conversations. How do you how do you create enough space where you can listen to the Holy Spirit, not just listen to the voices when you’re scrolling? How do you create enough space where you’re prioritizing your faith, prioritizing what it means to hear from God? So that’s why our ministry boot camp, the first hour of it, the first hour is sitting and listening to God.
Rich Birch — That’s good. So good.
Brad Dreibelbis — Spending time connecting with him. It’s there’s worship music playing in the background. If you don’t want to be in the room, go somewhere else. Journal, pray, do something.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — And yeah, there’s a bunch of 14 year olds in the room that have never spent an hour connecting with God in their entire life. But what God will do with twice a week, one hour a day, that’s 20 hours of connecting with God uninterrupted…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — …that they’ve never had before.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Brad Dreibelbis — And that’s where they get to hear their calling, and just explore what could it be. If they can build that muscle, when they turn 22 or 27 or 29 and God opens their eyes to see what’s next, they’re ready to flex that muscle because they know how to be sensitive and hear from God and say yes to the opportunities that are in front of them.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brad Dreibelbis — Or be corrected whenever they need to be corrected so that they can say yes in the future. Rich Birch — So good, so good. This has been a rich conversation so far. One of the things you’ve talked about is you referenced there this whole kind of in some conversations, it’s like a dichotomy between character and competence or between, you know, who we are versus what we do. And how are you helping young leaders…because we for sure have a character problem in the broader body of Christ. Right?
Brad Dreibelbis — Sure.
Rich Birch — Like there’s sure like we are always it seems like we’re always a few weeks away from some major blow up at some church, unfortunately, right?
Brad Dreibelbis — Sure.
Rich Birch — That’s it’s just what we seem to see. But I love that you’re, you’re, you know, you’re tapping on that issue. Hey, we want we want people to think about who they are, not just what they do. Because I could see in these kind of training environments, could lean towards like, we’ll give you the skills to be an amazing host or be a great video person, or being a great kids person, but then not actually deal with some of the character stuff. Talk me through what that looks like for you guys. Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah. So we always look at it as it’s it’s not something that can be resolved. It’s a tension that needs to be managed.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — So there’s always this tension between do I focus more on character, or do I focus more on on competence? Do I focus more on helping you be a great preacher and teacher and host on stage and be great with kids? Or do I really just help disciple you to be a better follower of Jesus?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — And the answer is yes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — The answer is both. And different seasons require different things. So it requires this leadership art that every person who’s a pastor, or every person who’s listening to this podcast, you’ve had to do this. But I think sometimes we get it wrong, myself included, where we think, oh, what this person really needs is character development, or competence. They need to grow in their ability to do something. And it’s like the answer is both. So it’s this tension…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — …where if you can, if you can help somebody grow in their ability to to hear from God, to submit their life to the Holy Spirit, to be renewed each day, if you can help them grow in that, that’s going to carry them further than their competence ever could.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — Because you can always teach new skills. I can teach you how to run a social media account. I can teach you how to, you know, look at a spreadsheet and make sure that all the finances are right. I can teach you how to do it because guess what? That was me. Nobody, nobody came alongside and said, oh, here’s how you be a pastor, and here’s how you do it. I just did it.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right, right.
Brad Dreibelbis — So that’s part of what happens is if I had somebody helping me grow in my character, calling out whenever I would, whenever I needed to be. My pastor called me arrogant and unteachable so that I would grow.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brad Dreibelbis — And I leaned in. I didn’t lean out. I leaned in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — And from there, because my character was strong and was getting stronger each and every day, I got more opportunities, and I got more chances to flex some new competence muscles in a new way. And ultimately, that’s what helped. Rich Birch — So good, so good. Well, pivoting in a totally different direction. This is something you had sent this to me ahead of time and I want to I think this is such a great, simple tool, powerfully, you know, deceptively powerful in its simplicity. Talk to us about your monthly focuses as a staff team. As a, you know, as a church, you’ve kind of defined these. You document them, you track them. And you’ve given us a PDF version of, of kind of like a one pager that kind of shows these. But talk us through how, how does these, how does this work at The Journey. And, you know, work us through this. Talk to us about this talk, this document. Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah. So this is, I would say this is our, our ministry superpower right now as a church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brad Dreibelbis — This is like our secret sauce. This is this is the thing that, like, when we trace everything back, this has helped us the most, practically speaking. So, you know, as we’re as we’re thinking about raising up people and raising up leaders, we came into this month of March going we need to focus on leadership development. We need to raise up some young leaders. So we have an existing mechanism in our church that we call our monthly focus, which means that we have a particular vision area of our church that we’re that we’re trying to focus on. Brad Dreibelbis — So for us, our vision as a church is to gather, connect and serve, born out of Acts 2. And so we said, okay, serve is the area that we want to focus on this month. Then we have a vehicle – that that’s what we call it. It’s the thing that is the tool to help us get there.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brad Dreibelbis — So for us, our vehicle is steps of leadership. We’ve created these different abilities for people to have different levels of leadership, different steps, different ways that they can have influence. So that’s our vehicle. And then we have a goal associated with that where we say this month we want to see 30 people fill in a steps of leadership assessment, basically raising their hands, saying, I want to be in leadership. I want to I want to have some influence. And now what we can do is every single month, everybody is rallied around this…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brad Dreibelbis — …from a staff member to a J-team leader to, you know, anybody that’s in our church, they’re aware of what this monthly focus is. Brad Dreibelbis — We’re talking about it on a weekend. Pastor Mark’s mentioning it in his messages. We’re talking about it in our pre-gathering huddles, getting everybody fired up. Pastor Mark always says every tag-in, every meeting, every conversation, every department meeting starts with, hey, here’s our monthly focus. Here’s where we’re at.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brad Dreibelbis — We’ve even built-in this mechanism where our staff meets once a week. And we have to come together, we share some quick wins and life change stories, and then we do this, Hey, what’s one thing that you can do to contribute to our monthly focus? And we actually review what somebody said last week. So the whole staff standing in front of each other. And if they said, I’m going to talk to Bill about filling in a steps of leadership assessment…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Brad Dreibelbis — …I leave the environment and go, hey, Rich, did you talk to Bill last week because you said you would? And the staff member has to go, yeah, I did. Great! Or no, I didn’t.
Rich Birch — No, I didn’t. Brad Dreibelbis — All right. Let’s hold each other accountable.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Brad Dreibelbis — But that way we’re all focused on the same thing. So it’s become this this monthly focus where it’s not just about the goal, it’s about the vision area of our church…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brad Dreibelbis — …and the vehicle that we think is most important. And ultimately we measure it with a goal. And so it’s become the superpower for us, where if you look at that document, you can see our different monthly focuses over the last couple of months and how they’ve had influence. And it’s been really cool to see how it’s helped us push the ball down the field and stretch, in really cool ways how God has shown up when our entire church gets focused on one thing for the power of those 30 days and then we pivot. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love it. And are you okay if we link to this in our show notes for people to see this? Are you okay… Brad Dreibelbis — Absolutely. Go right ahead. Steal everything. Put your church name on it and take credit. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Redo this. The thing I love about this is, well, I think the focus piece of it is so critically important. I think to, you know, you get up over ten staff and there’s people do wonder. They sit they sit at home or they sit at their desk or whatever. They wake up on Tuesday and they’re like, what am I supposed to be doing today? And by providing the clarity of like, hey, this is the thing that we’re focusing on this month, here’s the big win. So I love that. I also love that you guys have the guts, and again, friends, I encourage you to click the show notes and download this to actually take a look at it. You know, each of these a lot of these have, in fact probably all of them, have like some sort of goal that’s a measurable goal. And then there’s you’re at the end of that month tracking that goal. So it was like last month’s February 2024, to see an average of 3,100 people gather across all locations. And it was 2,998 was the actual average. And that marks as a as red NO, did not meet that goal. Rich Birch — The thing I love about that is I think too many times in the church we, we feel, well, we don’t have the guts to put down a goal like that. And then we don’t have the guts to say, like, let’s actually follow up on that. And we would just we kind of get spongy, and we’re like, well, but we did. We were two short of 3000.
Brad Dreibelbis — No.
Rich Birch — Like, that’s good enough.
Brad Dreibelbis — Nope.
Rich Birch — But to to say no, like, hey, that, you know, we weren’t there. So I just you’ll see lots of examples of it. That’s not to be hard on your people, but it’s to say, let’s keep let’s keep the goal out in front and keep, you know, keep conversations going and have the guts to be able to talk about it.
Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Have has that been helpful as you’ve looked at those in internal conversation? Brad Dreibelbis — Absolutely. I mean, it’s the only way to hold people accountable.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Brad Dreibelbis — We’re we’re recording this podcast in the middle of March Madness…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brad Dreibelbis — …and nobody would watch the tournament if there was not a scoreboard. Rich Birch — Yes. Brad Dreibelbis — What would be the point? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Brad Dreibelbis — People that are highly motivated on teams, in staff and leadership positions, especially marketplace leaders…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Dreibelbis — …they want to know that there is a goal and a scoreboard, and they want to know if they hit it or didn’t…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Love it.
Brad Dreibelbis — …because no marketplace leader is in their business saying, well, I just kind of maybe fell short or I’m not really sure. No. Did you hit it or did you not?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brad Dreibelbis — Now don’t wallow in it. I’m not, you know, punching people in the mouth because they didn’t do something with like, hey, this is really heavy-handed. No, I’m sitting there going, here’s what we learned. Here’s what we should have done differently. Here’s where we dropped the ball, and here’s where we went forward, and here’s what we’re going to do next.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep. Brad Dreibelbis — And if we won, Rich, it’s not this place of it felt good. I’m excited that we won. No. Here’s why we did it. Here’s how we did it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it connects back…
Brad Dreibelbis — Here’s to be celebrated because of it. And we do that in every all staff meeting every month. The person who was responsible for that monthly focus, like who the buck stopped with, they give a report…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brad Dreibelbis — …and they’re the ones that say, here’s what happened. Again, accountability for the whole team so that you get your worship guy thinking and caring about steps of leadership. And you get your kids person thinking and caring about groups.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brad Dreibelbis — And you get your finance person thinking and caring about weekend attendance.
Rich Birch — So good.
Brad Dreibelbis — We’re not in our silos anymore. We are one church helping people find Jesus and follow him fully.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Brad Dreibelbis — And we are all focused on one thing these next 30 days. Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. It’s great. Again, I encourage people to to take a look at that. And and it’s probably a whole conversation we could have right there on that. So that’s that’s a fun that’s great. Thanks for sharing that. Well, we’re coming to the end of our our episode here. Anything else you’d love to share kind of in this neighborhood of of calling up young leaders and, you know, motivating folks to reach the next generation and raising up, you know, folks for our teams. Brad Dreibelbis — I mean, the only thing that I’d say is, is a little bit of what I talked about at the front end. Just be willing to give somebody a shot.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Brad Dreibelbis — If you’re if you’re a pastor here listening to this, somebody gave you a shot before you were ready. I’m just telling you they did. You had some area of hidden sin in your life that you did not submit to God.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Brad Dreibelbis — And someone let you be on a platform or be in a meeting that you had no business being a part of. That’s my story.
Rich Birch — So true. So true.
Brad Dreibelbis — So put somebody else in that place.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Brad Dreibelbis — If they’ve hidden some area of sin, try to flesh it out. Try to get what you can. Trust your gut. If you’re like, hey, I can’t put them in front of somebody, don’t do it. But don’t let this you have to be an expert with a with a seminary degree. You have to have graduated from, you know, Southeastern or you have to have graduated from Highlands College. You have to have, you know, a degree of something. Guys, ministry is with people. And the disciples did not have any of those certificates, degrees, or anything. They just did life with Jesus, who was the ultimate leader. And that’s what we need to do together. Rich Birch — So good. Brad, this has been so helpful. I really appreciate you being on the show today. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Brad Dreibelbis — Yeah, our website is yourjourney.tv and is a great place to to see any of our resources. We’ve got we’ve got stuff that we will give away. So if you want any of this, my email address is on there and we’ll be able to help you. Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today, Brad. Have a good day. Brad Dreibelbis — Thanks, Rich.
From 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 Days: Understanding New Guest Metrics
May 01, 2024
Today, we’re continuing our series on how your church can expand from 1,000 to 2,000 members in just 1,000 days. We’re focusing on the practical steps and metrics essential for managing such significant growth without overburdening your team or losing touch with the community’s needs. This discussion builds on our ongoing series, where we explore strategic engagement of new guests to achieve a sustainable and impactful growth rate—a growth rate that outpaces the community’s growth, ensuring that our church not only maintains its presence but also amplifies its influence. Join us as we unpack the crucial metrics that can help us double our congregation size while fostering a welcoming and vibrant church environment.
Sustainable Growth Rate: We unpack the “Goldilocks” growth rate that is neither too fast to exhaust the church team nor too slow to impact the community. The ideal growth rate should outpace the community’s growth, ensuring the church gains influence and doesn’t lose ground.
Attrition and Growth Metrics: Churches typically face a 15% annual attrition rate, including departures for various reasons—ranging from natural attrition to discontent with church dynamics. A growth of at least 15% annually is necessary to maintain current congregation sizes. However, to achieve a doubling in size, Rich advises targeting specific metrics:
3% Average Documented New Guests Weekly: Aim to attract new guests equivalent to 3% of the church’s size each week.
26% Retention of New Guests: Of the new guests that visit, retaining 26% is crucial to achieving the desired growth.
Focus on New Guest Metrics
Average Documented First-time Guests: It’s vital to have documented evidence of first-time guests, which includes obtaining contact information (email, phone number, and ideally a mailing address). This allows for effective follow-up and integration into the church community.
Weekly Consistency: The focus should be on consistent weekly engagement rather than sporadic bursts, ensuring that every weekend offers opportunities for newcomers to visit and feel welcomed.
Best Practices for Guest Information Collection
Ethical Bribe: Using incentives like mugs, water bottles, or t-shirts as a welcoming gift can encourage guests to provide their contact information.
Dedicated “New Here” Area: Churches should have clearly designated areas for new guests, staffed by personable and engaging team members, to make newcomers feel acknowledged and valued.
Ongoing Engagement: It’s important to maintain an ongoing strategy for guest engagement, with regular prompts during services and events to remind and encourage participation.
Future Steps: The discussion on retaining 26% of newcomers will continue in future episodes, outlining specific strategies and follow-up actions to help solidify the initial contact and integrate new individuals into the church community.
This episode of the Unseminary Podcast lays down a practical blueprint for church growth, focusing on the crucial first steps of attracting and documenting new guests. With a systematic approach to guest engagement and information collection, churches can set the stage for substantial and sustainable growth, moving towards doubling their congregation in a realistic timeframe. The insights discussed provide actionable strategies that can be implemented to help churches make a significant impact in their communities.
40 Day All-In Campaigns for Your Church: Unleashing Discipleship & Growth with Zach Zehnder
Apr 25, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Zach Zehnder, the co-founder of Red Letter Living. Zach is a pioneer in creating 40-day challenges that have transformed discipleship and church growth in over 1000 churches. He’s also the teaching pastor at King of Kings in Omaha, Nebraska.
You know that disciple-making is important, but do you feel stuck on how to make it happen at your church? Wondering how to align your whole church, from kindergarten to adult, so everyone is focused on the same teaching and growing together? Tune in as Zach shares how a 40-day challenge can jumpstart your church’s growth and discipleship.
Discipleship-centered challenges. // The 40-day challenges offered by Red Letter Living are not just about absorbing information; they are about taking action and experiencing life change. Included are message series, daily readings, and small group materials. There are also resources for kids and students. The beauty of this approach is its ability to align the entire church around a common idea, focusing on Jesus at the center. Whether you use one of Red Letter Living’s 40-day challenges or not, Zach recommends that you rollout an all-in church series once or twice a year.
A huge impact on churches. // Over 1000 churches have participated in Red Letter Living’s 40-day challenges and the results speak for themselves. Most notably, it has helped to grow church small groups by about 40% during the 40-day challenge. A church could spend about 700 hours creating just first drafts of all the resources Red Letter Living already provides. Taking advantage of this turnkey solution removes a huge burden so church staff can focus on other aspects of ministry. And in times when division can easily creep into our congregations, these challenges also serve as a unifying force, centering us on Jesus and his teachings.
The best way to follow Him. // The premise of the Red Letter Challenge is that the best way to follow Jesus is to simply do what he said and did. Rather than reinventing discipleship, this and other challenges by Red Letter Living focus on the words, life, and habits of Jesus. The Red Letter Challenge revolves around five key targets found in Jesus’ words: being, forgiving, serving, giving, and going. The first five days of the challenge introduces those five targets, and then a full week is spent on each of the targets, equaling 40 days. Each week participants engage in daily challenges and devotions that bring Jesus’ words to life.
More challenges to offer. // In addition to the Red Letter Challenge, Red Letter Living offers other 40-day challenges that zero in on a particular topic Jesus talks about. For example, the Being Challenge focuses on practicing the five keystone habits of Jesus. The Forgiving Challenge is about receiving God’s freedom for yourself and then giving it away to others. The Serving Challenge looks at five aspects of how Jesus served us and then how to implement them.
Special offer and more resources. // Any pastors and church leaders who would like a free copy of a Red Letter Living book can request one here. You can choose which book you’d like to sample and Red Letter Living will cover shipping costs within the United States. If you’re outside the US, a free digital copy is available. There are other supplies for the challenges that are offered for free on Red Letter Living’s website, including sermon manuscripts, videos, kids church curriculum, small group guides and videos, and more. Plus check out Red Letter Challenge in Spanish too.
You can find out more about the Red Letter Challenge and the other 40-day challenges available at www.redletterchallenge.com. Plus, join us Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 12:00pm ET/9:00am PT for a webinar with Zach to talk about discipleship processes churches should be thinking about.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, listen – this is not a normal podcast. Today you are going to want to listen in, lean in. This is gonna be packed full. You’re gonna try to pack as much value into the next thirty minutes of your life as possible and I really do believe what we’re talking about today could not only grow your church but help your people take steps closer to Jesus. We’ve got my friend Zach Zehnder with us. He has he and his wife Allison founded Red Letter Living. They’re really on a mission of challenging all people to become greater followers of Jesus. They offer turnkey churchwide 40-day challenges that are simple to understand, challenging in concept, highly practical and always squarely aimed at Jesus. Zach has written and co-authored 10 books that have helped people literally hundreds of thousands of people ah, become greater followers of Jesus. And he currently serves as a teaching pastor at one of my favorite churches in the country, King of Kings in Omaha, Nebraska. Zach, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Zach Zehnder — Thanks, Rich! And yeah man, super pumped to be back with you. Thank you for all that you do. You know, you you said we’re gonna pack as much value into 30 minutes as we can. You are a value packer, my friend, so I appreciate I appreciate all that you do. I’m ah I’m a longtime listener and and great supporter and friend of yours and um, and really just super super honored to be with you today, my friend.
Rich Birch — Yeah, good. Okay listeners I want to tip off tip you off here. You’re going to want to listen right till the end of today’s episode. Because Zach just before we got on told me something crazy that he’s going to do but it’s going to be at the end so you’re going to want to stay until the end. Ah, because yeah, yeah, he’s doing something pretty amazing for you. So you’re going to want to be here um all the way to the end. But I wanted to get Zach on because he’s really, he’s an expert in these 40 day challenges that we’ve seen many churches do. And I love these because really I like to say they’re like the peanut butter and chocolate of church growth and discipleship. They they are great from a church growth point of view because they focus us they are you know they’re something that we can kind of rally our whole church around. They’re easy to invite friends to. But then they’re also like this amazing discipleship opportunity because you’re getting people into groups. You’re focusing them in a short period of time on like a great common idea and it all points towards Jesus. And Zach really is the expert on this. He is the guy who who you want to talk to about this today. And so I’m just going to say it right upfront folks my bias is I want to convince you to do one of these this fall. That’s that’s where we’re headed here. I want to spend the next thirty minutes of your life trying to convince you that you should do it at your church. But Zach, let’s let’s unpack that. When you say 40 day challenge, what do you mean by that? Kind of unpack that – what does that look like?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, thanks, Rich. So for us a 40 day challenge would be for forty days what would it look like for each of us to be challenged in our faith to grow as disciples of Jesus. So our 40 day experiences, um, they’re not just any type of experience. They are discipleship-centered experiences as well. And so for us we love working with churches. We worked with over a thousand churches up to date now through these 40 day experiences. And several of them done multiple with us.
Zach Zehnder — But but really it’s an opportunity to for everybody to come in and be doing the same thing um for 40 days. And so on a weekend message series, the message series is all all there about the topic. You’ve got daily readings through the books for individuals. You’ve got small group materials for those that want to jump into a small group. And then we even have kids and students stuff to go alongside of it. So it really is kind of an all-in – we want everybody in.
Zach Zehnder — You know as pastor, you can’t all the time every single week of the year get everybody in on the same thing. But growing churches um, ah usually can pull that off once, maybe even twice a year. And so that’s our plea to churches is whether you use our material materials or not, once or twice a year you should be doing an all-in church series because it does exactly what you just said. I like the chocolate and peanut butter analogy – I might use that. It gets all the church growth stuff but it also adds the discipleship metrics that were really um, important for each of our churches too.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love this. So just to be completely honest friends, like at Liquid Church—church I was at in in New Jersey—this is a part of their strategy. Twice a year they do one of these – in the fall in the spring or in the winter um, and you know and kind of the Lent timeframe. And and I’ve seen this you know, front row I’ve seen the stats. It drives more people into small groups. It increases our overall attendance. We see you know all kinds of great stuff come back from families as they’re kind of all talking about stuff. So this is not, you know, it’s like the hair club for men guy. I’m like not only do you know do I love it, but I’ve also seen it for myself. So, you know this is a great thing. Talk to me more about why why the alignment is so important for us. Why you know going across both our adult teaching, kids, kind of the you know small groups, having all of those kind of, you know, hammering in the same direction. Why does that why is that so important with these series?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, I think it’s super important whenever you are wanting to really reinforce like what some of your values are, what what’s important to your church. Again I don’t I don’t think every single week you have to although I think it’s really great when when we’re aligned with our whole church.
Zach Zehnder — And so there are certain things, and to me discipleship is one of those, where we want to really make sure we’re speaking the same language um from from newborn all the way up until ah 100+ years old. Um and that’s really I think the the problem with so many churches in our day today is ah when it comes to discipleship is we don’t know what we’re even shooting at. We know that we need making great disciples. Um, but but what where churches really struggle is identifying what targets they ought to be shooting at.
Zach Zehnder — And so that’s what our materials hopefully hopefully provide is common language that everyone in the church can be using throughout the forty days that we hope then of course would be language that carries on um into into the future. And so that’s really the power of alignment is we’re all sort of saying the same thing for forty days.
Zach Zehnder — And, Rich, I know you’re unSeminary but I’m I’m thinking back to my seminary days of you know there were certain classes—I’ll be real with you—where I didn’t always do the homework and didn’t do the reading.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Zach Zehnder — Shocker, right, I know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Zach Zehnder — How how dare I. But then there were some professors that really did pull the best out of me and I actually wanted to do the homework because I knew the discussions were gonna be really great. And I’ll tell you every time I went into a class where I’d done the reading, my energy level and my focus was so much better.
Zach Zehnder — The energy is just palpable when everybody’s doing the same things, hearing the same things. They’re doing the readings. In ours, we actually make them a challenge. So there’s actually things to do each day outside of just the reading because a disciple is a hearer and a doer. And so there’s just this real palpable, tangible excitement and energy when everybody’s doing the same thing for forty days um that you can capture that we believe and we’ve seen um, doesn’t just impact the forty days but can carry on into the future as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true. That’s that’s amazing. I love that. Talk to me a little bit about what you know maybe think of a church who has gone who’s done one of these. Talk to me on the results side. So I get a sense I get ah you know hopefully people have a sense of the kind of thing we’re talking about. It’s a lot of work. You got to pull things together. You gotta, which we’ll get to, but it’s like you know how can you help, but but we’ll get to that in a minute. But let’s talk about the results side first. Maybe a church describe, you know, how what do they what do they do, what kind of impact do they see, how has that helped them as they’ve done maybe one or multiple of these over the years?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, it’s great. So so first off, there’s lots of individual wins as well. So if a person is really going through this, they’re going to see fruit in their own life.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — But but you asked about the church. So let’s talk about the church. What what happens in a church when they do an all-in series, at least one of ours. What we’ve seen and what we what we love talking about is more than anything else they’re going to learn great discipleship stuff, but they’re going to you’re going to grow your small groups. We’ve we’ve done this enough we actually have a free downloadable that I’d be happy to send um called Our 5 Step Simple Super Simple, Easily Doable Guide to Grow Your Small Groups. Ah, we’ve seen small groups grow by an average of 40% in just forty days.
Rich Birch — That’s crazy.
Zach Zehnder — Now Rich, what I what I want to be careful here because what I I want to pitch this in the way that’s most appropriate. And so like what I look at this as as a pastor is if you’re like out at the ocean and you’re riding the waves…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …um, what what a 40 day challenge or what an all-in series will do is it’ll give you a really a nice wave. It’ll be a big boost. You’ll see 40% increase. Now what happens after the wave is the current will come. And so the current will come and it will draw back and that’s normal and to be expected. And we can talk about things and it’s important to make sure that as the current draws back, we don’t lose all the momentum.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, but what these once-a-year or twice-a-year things do is they *boom* they bring another wave, they bring another wave, they bring another wave. And we’re hoping that as they do this year after year after year that of course that wave is bigger every year.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And so we can be a catalyst to either jumpstart small groups from nothing to something really great, or we can grow your small groups by 40% in just forty days. Um expect some current but it’ll be better than it was. And then when you come back six months or a year later with another one. So that’s a huge piece is the small small group piece.
Zach Zehnder — On the church side as well, Rich, we I am a pastor. I’ve led a church myself and now I get to serve in team ministry as a Teaching Pastor. Ah I know the grind of what what it takes for Ministry day in and day out. And so ah we say a church can create their own stuff. Any church can do that. We’ve estimated it takes about 700 hours to create first drafts of all the resources we provide.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Zach Zehnder — And so you have ah you you probably have in each of ours 3000+ hours of work…
Rich Birch — Wow. Right.
Zach Zehnder — …that have gone into each one of these. And so there’s just so much. And so we love creating every resource from scratch so that everyone on your church team doesn’t need to create anything from scratch. Now they can add to it. They can take our graphics and insert their logo. Um they can look at my sermons and nitpick what they want and take what they want but nobody’s starting from scratch. And so from a church burnout side of things, staff burnout um, these things are are wonderful.
Zach Zehnder — And then the last thing—there’s so many more I can tell you about—but the the other tangible one that I think is going to be even more evident this year in 2024, um is our challenges really focus on the words, life, and habits of Jesus. And and trying to get people to do his words and practices, habits. And we have found that an all-in series that includes kids and students and has stuff to do during the week, it really brings great unity.
Zach Zehnder — And and so I’m thinking fall of 2024 there’s going to be a thing happening here in the U.S. of A.
Rich Birch — What what possibly could be that that will potentially strain the unity…
Zach Zehnder — Right.
Rich Birch — …of our churches…
Zach Zehnder — It happens. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …in say you know early November?
Zach Zehnder — It happens every 4 years and we’ve seen this…
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.
Zach Zehnder — …cast characters before and how divisive it was…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Zach Zehnder — …just four years ago. So here’s what I’m saying, it’s going to be a divisive time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — So one of the best things you can do for your church is to bring unity in a divisive time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And I’ve just found there’s nothing more unifying in a Christian church than centering in on Jesus – what did he say, what did he do – let’s focus on his words. Let’s do what he said. That’s a premise that’s really hard to argue against and brings just a ton of unity as more and more jumping in. So those are a few things um that we’ve seen from from churches that implement these.
Rich Birch — First of all, ah that I love that you’re hitting on that. Because this is a conversation that I’ve had with multiple leaders as we’ve gone into this year. I know we were kind of joking about you know the election and all that and what’s going to happen there. But but this is a real issue. People are worried about this. Like I I was at a church a month ago and they were having their all staff meeting. And I pop my head in and they were at the all staff meeting talking about the boundaries around posting about political things. And they were you know and they the boundary was don’t do it um on social media. And um, you know and they it was all in the context of, friends, we don’t want to do anything that would you know that would drive disunity in our churches. And so I could see I think that for that reason alone if you’ve never done one of these, doing an all-in series this fall could be a great thing. Like if you started maybe after Labor Day, somewhere in there, it wouldn’t look like you’re trying to just avoid, you know. But it would line up and it would be like, hey we’re in this this same timeframe, really trying to push towards unity. I love that.
Rich Birch — Can we take a step back? You talked about groups – coach me on this. We might have been doing this incorrectly. When we’ve launched these in the past we’ve talked used language like, hey join us for the, you know, the Red Letter Jesus series, or the whatever we’re calling it. And and we’re saying this a very special series. It’s only forty days long and it’s so X number of weeks. And we would love to we want everyone to sample a group. And we’ve deliberately said hey why don’t you try a group. We tell people you don’t have to be in it. You only have to do it for the weeks of this series. Is that a good idea or is that like bad practice and we should think about something different when it comes to small groups?
Zach Zehnder — No I think it’s great, Rich. I think and I think that’s the key to jumping and and bolstering small groups to being a catalyst, or to go from X number to Y number – whatever that is…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …is offering a season that has an an easy entrance and an easy exit. Now we hope and we believe that as people are jumping into our small groups and through the small groups that you’re providing, especially if they’re ones that like you are really focusing on and everybody’s in this. Like it’s got to be a material you believe you believe in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And so if it’s a material you believe in and that’s actually doing something in somebody’s life, we of course believe that um a number of those people, significant number of those people are going to want to continue in groups afterward. And so it’s it’s good to think about what to do following one of these. But but we also need strategic times—again I say at least once, maybe twice a year—we need strategic times where we’re helping ourselves by offering something that is really polished, well done, produced, got proven results um to get those numbers up.
Zach Zehnder — And then of course as you’re going through this and even in the early process, training those leaders on on identifying potential future leaders, and what does it look like to then proceed after you know, a 40 day series. What does that what does that look like? And we we love, like one of our partners is Right Now Media, all of our stuff’s on Right Now Media so if yout churches, I know many of them are. We love Right Now Media and you know the library of small group studies they have, and so there’s so many great ones on there that people can jump into after one of these all-in series. And maybe even find some of those on Right Now Media as well. Um, so I think that’s a totally ah absolutely great strategy. Keep keep at it and again, if the material you’re providing is is moving people in the right direction in their lives, they’re going to want to stay in groups.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, here’s I think maybe a key distinction with our materials than than most others that I think is really important and why they want to keep in it. Is the the word “challenge” at the end of ours is intentional. Um, it’s it’s we want you to not just read and get the information from this particular study. We want you to do something with it.
Rich Birch — Right right.
Zach Zehnder — And so life change for me, Rich, happens um with information at times. But it also happens with experience.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And with me me being challenged.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And I’ll tell you, the times in my life where I’ve grown the most are the times when either life has come at me and it’s been a challenge, or when I’ve challenged myself. And that’s when the Spirit of God moves and does something. And so that’s where I think if you can if you can match um, a small group series that has ah a cause where people are doing something with it, I think you’re going to find the retention in the future seasons to be higher than just an information only series, which I’m all for those – we need those.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Zach Zehnder — But that’s what I’m saying that there’s a difference there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. That’s that’s so great. Well, let’s talk about specifically your challenges. So um, if people want more kind of information on this, they can dive in at redletterterchallenge.com, but kind of talk us through so the thing that I’ve I’ve been impressed with what you do is the quality of of your work, the actual like printed materials, everything you provide. It’s like ah you know it’s like a whole menu of different resources that you provide for each of these. But kind of talk us through maybe the core offerings. What are the challenges? How do they fit together, that sort of thing.
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, so yeah, our initial our initial 40 day challenge is called Red Letter Challenge – obviously the red letters of Jesus. And it’s a 40 Day Challenge where our premises is this: the best way to follow Jesus is to follow Jesus. We don’t need to reinvent discipleship.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Let’s get back to see, to do what he said. He he already told us that in the final words in the sermon of the mount, blessed are you who are hearing these words and putting them into practice. And so it’s a 40 day challenge to help people put his words into practice.
Zach Zehnder — The human element I think, Rich, is I looked at all the red letters of Jesus with specific emphasis on the commands, the imperatives, um, especially in the Greek language – not that I know Greek but I I know enough to find where the imperatives are. And and and in that I located what I believe are the 5 targets that came out of his mouth the most often.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Zach Zehnder — And so it’s organized around those 5 targets which for us are being um, being in a real relationship, growing in a relationship of God being, forgiving, serving, giving and going. And so we spend the first five days just introducing each one of those 5 targets. And then we spend a week on each of those 5 targets, and obviously that equals a perfect forty days.
Zach Zehnder — And and so the Red Letter Challenge what it’ll do is it’ll take a command of Jesus and then it will um have a little devotion on that, something to read as well um, from the word of God. And then it will give them a challenge to practically do that day.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — So a couple quick examples. So like in the “being” week, you know, uh Jesus once said, abide in my word. And so the challenge that day is hey let’s everybody spend 30 minutes reading God’s word and reflecting on that. Um in the serving week, that you know Jesus once said, um, let us love our neighbors as ourselves. And so the challenge that day is to physically, literally do something to love your neighbor.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — Do something. And then of course share what you did. And and so as we do these things, and obviously there’s way more than just that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — …as we do what Jesus said, um, what happens is your church grows, your community’s always better when you put the words of Jesus into practice, and the one that surprised me the most—because we did this at our church and that I planted in Florida several times before it even became a book—the one that surprised me the most, Rich, was people who had been longtime Christians talked about how fulfilling and rewarding it was, even though it was outside of their comfort zone to actually do the words of Jesus. But because they knew we were in a challenge and they knew other people in the church were doing it, they were more inclined to do it and it took them out of their comfort zone.
Zach Zehnder — And so um, that’s what started it was Red Letter Challenge. And um from there you know churches had great ah experiences with it and many pastors were um asking my wife and I to consider writing more discipleship centered stuff. And so we really prayed and pondered that. Um and and and we stepped into that and actually left being the full-time lead pastor of that church in Florida to be a part time teaching pastor at a church I love, that I grew up here in Omaha. Um, so that I can spend time so that we can spend time creating these resources.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And and so we have more challenges than just that. We we encourage a church to start with Red Letter Challenge.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — That’s kind of our our pinnacle one.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — But since then we’ve got ah ah 40 day challenges and we’re we’re in the process of writing one on each of those 5 targets.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — And so we have Being Challenge which is all about practicing the 5 keystone habits of Jesus. We have Forgiving Challenge which is all about receiving God’s freedom for yourself. And then of course giving it away to others. And then we have Serving Challenge which is looking at how Jesus served us and implementing the 5 aspects. And and then we’ve got a few more years of writing to finish Giving Challenge and Going Challenge. So…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — …anyway, it’s a chance for them if they had a good experience in Red Letter Challenge to go deeper in one of the 5 targets, or maybe even all 5 if they would consider going, you know, every year, annually perhaps um through this just to reinforce the importance of discipleship.
Rich Birch — Love it. And so help me understand at like a church level. So if I’m let’s say so let’s say I’m listening in. I’m like, okay, I’m a church of a thousand people. I’m like,Hey I’d be interested in in talking a little bit more about this. So the idea would be we would have books that we make available for people at our church. They pick them up, but we also have kids materials. How how does that part of it all work, like how. um, yeah, how to talk us through what that kind of the practical like takeaway side of it is.
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, great question. So what we always say is to really have an effective 40-day like all you all you really need from a ah purchasing standpoint is the books. We have books that we we have a regular books and then we have kids books…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …that are designed for K through 5. Um, the the the normal books I write in a simple enough way to understand um that student ministry, middle school and up actually do really well with them, including older adults as well.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, so um, get the books on site for your church. Get them ah there a few weeks early. We we recommend about a four week lead in time with promotion and distribution.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Zach Zehnder — And and we have we can coach we can coach churches on how to do this well um, that get in. But then outside of the books, there are a few other things you can purchase but you don’t have to. And then everything else is free.
Rich Birch — Right, It’s crazy.
Zach Zehnder — So if a church wants to purchase wrist bands or shirts or something too, you know, because atmosphere and vibe is important. Awesome. We’ve got that ready to go. But you don’t need those things. And then everything else is free. So Rich, I’m talking we have sermon manuscripts for the pastor. Both manuscripts that are fully written out as well as videos if they’d rather watch it by video. We’ve got um Sunday school or kids church curriculum that is free. The kids’ books are a cost, but the kids’ curriculum for Sunday school or kids church is free that’s going to reinforce what you know we’re learning um in big church. We’ve got small group guides and videos that are free on our website. They’re also on Right Now Media, as I mentioned earlier for those that have Right Now Media.
Zach Zehnder — We’ve got a graphics package that has graphics for you every day of the challenge um, as well as things that lead into the challenge to help with promotion, distribution. And again we’ve done this over 1000 times. And so we typically listened early on like what more can we provide? And we have provided all of that. It is very rare that someone says, hey do you have this? And the answer for us is no. It’s like of course we do.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yes.
Zach Zehnder — Um and so again, our hope, I have a pastoral heart to want to help a not just a lead pastor but an entire church staff. So for forty days, think, you don’t have to think from scratch. Which means you can get ahead on your other sermon planning. Or you can plan um more deeper um conversations with your staff for those forty days. Or you can plan to see more people in the hospital those forty…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Whatever it might be because you’ve got this ready to go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So friends, like just to recap here. So a thousand churches have done this. The question is why hasn’t your church? That really is what we’re trying to get you to think about today. I really do think um, you know, like friends like Zach’s not paying me to say this. He’s not like he’s a friend. I would I love his resources. I’ve seen churches, churches that I’ve coached have used them. It’s been super helpful. And I want it to help you as well. It’s here we are the end of April, we’re still in time for this fall. I know, friends, that you there’s a bunch of you that don’t have your fall planned out yet. I know you I know that’s true and you’re thinking about what are you going to do in October, November, September, October, November, somewhere in there. This would be you know great for you. I love all the resources you provide to try to make it so easy for a church. I also notice that you provide your core book in Spanish as well, which is fantastic. Am I seeing that correctly?
Zach Zehnder — That’s correct. Yeah, we have the original Red Letter Challenge also available in Spanish.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — So for those that have the the dual speaking or ah Hispanic Ministry…
Rich Birch — Yep. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — …Yeah, we wanted to come alongside and provide that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And you’re you’re definitely right about the fall. Earlier you said, Rich, um that fall any falls a great time. This fall is a really great time because of what we talked about earlier. But that Sunday after labor day is really ah a awesome time to launch, and again that’ll get you kind of through mid -October…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …and and and so that’s a really strategic time.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Zach Zehnder — Of course it’s totally good if a church launches, you know, in October as well. But yeah September…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Zach Zehnder — …that’s Sunday after Labor Day is a great one.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I also thought this could be an interesting you know launch kind of backing up against Thanksgiving. So like going from this into the Christmas season could be a really cool, so a little bit later in the fall could be another time. Okay, so again, I I had told you, friends, that the Zach’s got this crazy thing he wants to give people. You’ve listened here. You know, you’re 26, 27 minutes in. Ah so what is it that that you’re going to give people – this is crazy. I can’t believe this.
Zach Zehnder — Hey Rich, we’re happy to give free copies of our books away…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Zach Zehnder — …to ah to pastors and church leaders…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — …and well we’ll cover the shipping too. That’s of course to anyone in the United States.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — To Canada we can send a digital sample…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …and and work out it deal with shipping only if if that’s of interest. Um, but we want to get this book in your hand. We’re we’re confident in it. Um, we’ve got the proven results of over 1000 churches.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And so we want you to thumb through it and see it for yourself. There was like, you mentioned earlier, heavy investment on the the graphic look feel design. Um, it’s ah it’s a unique book size. It’s a lay flat bind… like it’s just a really like awesome…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Zach Zehnder — …thing to hold and to look through that your people get excited about too. And so we’re happy to do that. And so I imagine link, Rich, the link will be kind of in the show notes for folks.
Rich Birch — Yep, we’ll link to it there.
Zach Zehnder — I can send you that link and…
Rich Birch — Yep for sure.
Zach Zehnder — …we’ll send them directly to it, and they can choose a challenge of their choice. If they want to see a kid’s book too, just put it in the notes. But we want to be as generous as possible as getting this material to you. Um, as we said it’s it’s late April now. Um, this fall’s a great chance and so that way you have time to look through it a little bit with your leadership team and and see. And we’ve we’ve got plenty of time to get ready for fall. Our materials get to you super quick as well.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — And so we’d be happy to resource any church that would want to link in with us. But yeah, free book for any pastor leader out there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. I was just thinking while we were talking here what about like if if I’m say a network, you know, I’m I’ve got a network of churches that I meet with with you know that are folks that I either lead. I’m in a denomination – that sort of thing. Would you send me a book that I could take a look at? Ah, what would that look like?
Zach Zehnder — Totally. Yeah, we’d love to do that. We’ve worked with a couple denominations and then a couple of districts as well, inside of a denomination.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — And and so yeah, we’d love to send that. I would say if that’s you, um and anybody can email hello@redletterchallenge.com – let’s talk about that. We’ve done some things before where, you know, obviously the the more churches that can get in on one…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Zach Zehnder — …um, we can do even greater rates than you can find on our website…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — …when we do it in bulk um through discount or through denominations in districts. And so ah, it can really save and it can be something that a denomination or district can help even fund, and get into their their district or denomination for a really powerful forty days that that we know is going to not just change each church but could change a whole denomination or district in forty days. It was pretty cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I could see where like, yeah, let’s say yeah maybe I had maybe we had three or four churches in our in our kind of direct close, you know, network you could get them all shipped to one place. Get cheaper price for everybody. You know, we’re all going to be together in the summertime anyways. We’ll put the boxes in the back of your car, go home, that kind of thing. I think that could be ah, you know, super amazing. We friends, so again, the link’s in the show notes we’ll make it super obvious there. Click that link, pick up that that free copy.
Rich Birch — Now’s the time though, friends. Don’t don’t wait. Don’t like don’t put this off till like next month. Pick up that copy now. It’ll arrive in a bit and then you can make that decision here in May and get that slotted in for this fall. I think that would be that would be amazing. Actually, we also have another thing that we want to say to folks that are listening in. Next week on May 1st, Wednesday May 1st we’re at 12 noon Eastern, or 9am for our friends on the Pacific coast, we’re actually going to host a webinar with Zach which will be amazing. Kind of dual purpose of this – one if you if you want to talk directly to Zach, you got questions you could come to that. We’ll make sure we get those questions. We can talk specifically about if you want to you know more questions on you know 40-day all-in church challenges. But then we also this is really one piece of an overall kind of discipleship process that churches should be thinking about. Help us help me understand a little bit about what we’re gonna be talking about on that that webinar.
Zach Zehnder — Yeah. Rich, we’ve seen our materials work super well and and give 40-day experiences that are unparalleled. And and early on a church would say, now what? And I’m like I don’t know, man. I’m a lead pastor. You you do, you do you and I’ll do me.
Rich Birch — You go figure it out.
Zach Zehnder — But but over the over the last um 7 years especially, but really decade, I’ve been blessed to be able um to sit in this discipleship space more than most, and really look at Jesus as the answer. And not just create materials for forty days, but my heart, like where I find the most fulfillment and joy is when I can help a pastor.
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — Um, I’m a 4 generation pastor myself and I love resourcing and helping pastors. And so, Rich, I’ve taken everything that I’ve kind of learned in the discipleship space over the last seven to ten years, and I’m I’m really now wanting to help church leaders and pastors develop a full-on disciple-making strategy at their church.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — So think going beyond the forty days, but long term what does it look like to do disciple making in our nation right now? And I’m just convinced that it is the answer um to the perennial problem we’re having in the western church that we know how to create believers but we don’t know how to create followers.
Zach Zehnder — And and so I’ve spent years in this and tailor-made some content specific to pastors and church leaders for how to help them get going. And I’ll say one last thing about that and then I can’t wait to talk with you more. In 2022 Lifeway Research did a study, and on the greatest needs of pastors, the one that they knew they needed to invest needed to invest in and were willing to invest in, at the very top of the list 63%—above technology, communication, internet, all those things—63% said disciple-making which tells me pastors and church leaders know it’s important but they don’t know how to do it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — And and I get the grind of daily taking care of your people. And to to know that disciple making is important and to not think that you’re crushing it can lead you to feel guilty and with a lot of shame. And so I want to come alongside as an ally and say I’ve got a decade into this. I can I can help you get started. We can help you get started. And that way you can do what God’s called you to do, but hopefully with the start we can give, we can really start making disciples, not just for forty days…
Rich Birch — Right.
Zach Zehnder — …but for 40 years and and beyond.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — So anyway I can’t wait to get into it and talk about more of the disciple-making high level church stuff for pastors and leaders.
Rich Birch — So good. This is going to be good. So that’s next week, that’s May 1st. You know click the link in there, you’ll you’ll see you’ll see all that. Sign-up, we’d love to see you. I love that soundbite. Hey we you know we’re going to have a conversation on that day that’s going to help you. It’s going to help frame this whole idea around, you know, not just creating believers but ultimately followers. How do we how do we become the kind of church that that is behind us is a wake of discipled people who are following Jesus ah, you know for years to come? That’s the kind of change we need to see in our churches. So really looking forward to that conversation. This is going to be fantastic.
Rich Birch — Zach, this has been a great conversation today. Thank you so much for ah for being on. Any kind of last words as we before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, for me, you know, this whole thing started with ah sometimes pastors, church leaders can be guilty of this as well. Sometimes that we you know, we can put off that following Jesus is a burden and ah we have a cross to bear. And I don’t want to minimize the fact that ministry has its challenges and its burdens. Um, but following Jesus is the opportunity of our lifetimes and none of us deserve it. And not only have we been saved but we’ve been called to follow. And my heart just reaches out um to pastors and church leaders specifically um because for far too long like we’ve struggled in this area of discipleship specifically. And God’s been too good in all of our stories to settle for this mediocre, halfhearted, unintentional shadow at best representation. Um, and we have answers and we have answers in the name of Jesus.
Zach Zehnder — And and so um, yeah, I’m just really grateful for pastors that care about discipleship and are intentionally trying and and want to help in as many ways as possible. Because this really is the opportunity of a lifetime that none of us deserve and I’m grateful. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, it’s so good. Well Zach, I appreciate you being here where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with you, learn more about what you’re up to, that sort of thing. Where do we want to send them?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah, they can go to our main website redletterterchallenge.com and again I’ll give you the link, Rich, that you can put in, you can hyperlink it on the show notes for where to find the free book. They can also Google “free book for pastors Red Letter” and it’ll it’ll pop up at the top there too.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Zach Zehnder — But, yeah, redletterterchallenge.com is the best place and if you want to email me or my team hello@redletterterchallenge.com. We we’re there and would love to ah would love to help.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Zach – appreciate you being here today.
Zach Zehnder — Appreciate you, Rich! Thanks, man.
5 Counterintuitive Truths About Hiring for Church Leadership
Apr 24, 2024
You’ve often heard me stress the importance of culture, revenue, and vision in our churches, and our approach to hiring is at the heart of shaping our culture. Let’s explore five counterintuitive truths about hiring that I’ve uncovered through my experiences and coaching other church teams.
1. Judge by the Past, Not by Potential In our line of work, we are naturally inclined towards seeing the potential in people. However, when it comes to hiring, I’ve learned that it’s crucial to focus on what candidates have actually accomplished rather than what they might achieve. This approach reduces the risk of being disappointed by unmet expectations. In interviews, it’s vital to map out a candidate’s past behaviors and achievements to the needs of the role they’re applying for. Ask yourself, “If they replicate their past performance here, would it be a success?” This shift in perspective can lead to more reliable hiring decisions.
2. Enthusiasm is Overrated It’s easy to be charmed by a candidate’s zeal to join our team. However, enthusiasm does not always equate to effectiveness. We must dig deeper and evaluate the substantive skills and real impact a candidate brings. A high energy level can be a great asset, but it’s the combination of passion and proven ability that truly makes a difference. During interviews, look beyond a candidate’s excitement and assess their ability to contribute meaningfully to our goals.
3. Momentum vs. Metamorphosis Deciding between hiring internally and externally can dramatically affect the trajectory of our church’s development. Internal hires often help maintain momentum, sustaining the ongoing operations and preserving the culture. Conversely, external hires can be pivotal when you’re aiming to transform or significantly improve an area. Each hiring decision should be strategic: choose internal candidates to keep the wheels turning smoothly, or bring in fresh external perspectives to catalyze fundamental changes.
4. Hiring Can Hinder Growth It sounds paradoxical, but adding more staff doesn’t always accelerate growth. In fact, it can do the opposite by diminishing volunteer involvement and adding to our operational costs. Remember, every team member should ideally contribute to scaling up our efforts by equipping and empowering volunteers, not just by executing tasks. Reflect on this when considering new hires: Will this person enable more volunteers to engage, or will they fill a role that could be a growth opportunity for a volunteer?
5. Adaptability Over Skill In the dynamic environment of church leadership, the ability to adapt is invaluable. When hiring, prioritize candidates who demonstrate flexibility and a proven track record of adapting to new challenges. The future will likely ask them to handle roles that don’t even exist yet. During the hiring process, explore scenarios with candidates where they’ve had to adjust to significant changes or take on new responsibilities.
These insights into the hiring process are designed to foster stronger, more adaptable teams that align closely with our mission and values. As leaders, we must be intentional and thoughtful in our hiring practices to truly enhance our church’s capacity to thrive and grow.
As we continue to navigate the complexities of church management and leadership, let’s keep these counterintuitive truths in mind to refine our approach and achieve better outcomes. Thanks for tuning in, and here’s to building teams that make a lasting impact!
Volunteering as Mission: Cultivating a Culture of Engagement with Mary Ann Sibley
Apr 18, 2024
Thanks for joining in the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mary Ann Sibley, church leader cheerleader and volunteer ministry ninja who works to make you look like the hero as you improve your volunteer culture.
Does it ever feel like there’s a lack of ownership when people serve at your church? How do you create an experience where your volunteers are excited to be there and make the mission happen? Listen in as Mary Ann offers practical help for shifting your volunteer culture to one of excitement, connection and discipleship.
Hold things loosely. // During the volunteer recruitment process, never be desperate for volunteers. It’s better to have four who are on-fire for the work you’re doing than twenty who are just showing up to check the volunteer boxes. Let people know they aren’t required to volunteer and it’s okay if this isn’t where they should be right now. Continually cast vision and hold things loosely, trusting that God will bring the increase.
Find the purpose. // Volunteering is a ministry, not only to the people coming to church, but also to the “one anothers” involved in serving. Part of vision-casting is helping volunteers realize that they are there for a bigger purpose. Discipleship comes into play when volunteers recognize that they aren’t only helping to fulfill what God wants to do at the church, but also allowing Him to work in their lives.
Debrief and listen. // Bookend serving with a huddle at the beginning and a debrief at the end. A five-minute debrief keeps leaders and volunteers connected. Ask the volunteers two questions during debrief: what was a win that day, and how can you as the leader make the serving experience better. Teach your volunteers what a win looks like – even small wins create a sense of community and family. Debriefing gives volunteers a voice and helps them understand that they are more than just a cog in the wheel.
Changes and wins. // By sharing wins and receiving feedback, we are valuing what our volunteers are doing. Don’t just listen to the feedback for improvement, write it down and act on it. Mary Ann suggests creating something as simple as a Google sheet that all of your leaders have access to. Then you can review the document to see what could be changed and where there is positive feedback in your church.
AVERI the volunteer. // One of the barriers to serving could be your current volunteers. Mary Ann has a fictional volunteer she created named AVERI, which is an acronym for volunteers who might be Aloof, the Veteran, the Erratic, the Rebellious, or the Indifferent person. The Aloof person is cold and uninterested. The Veteran volunteer who is involved in everything may be an obstacle to others joining in and may be the most resistant to change. You never know when the Erratic one will show up for services or events. The Rebellious one will argue with you on everything. And the Indifferent one is nice but boring and disconnected.
Find the AVERIs. // Take time on a Sunday and figure out who the AVERIs are among your volunteers that day. They may be still volunteering because they don’t want to be seen as unfaithful or feel that they need to stay in this position. Provide clear off-ramps to serving and let your volunteers know they can take a break or do something different anytime they need to; they are not required to stay on when they don’t feel this calling anymore.
Encourage the VICCs. // The other fictional volunteer Mary Ann created is VICC—a volunteer who is Valued, Included, Challenged, and Connected. Someone with these qualities is engaged with the ministry and other volunteers, having fun, excited to serve, owning the mission and seeing God work.
Volunteers are the mission. // Mary Ann wraps up by underscoring that volunteers are not just supporting the mission—they are the mission. Identify where there are barriers to serving and how you can better serve your volunteers. Intentional leadership and forming genuine relationships with volunteers will lead to discipleship opportunities.
Head over to maryannsibley.com to pick Mary Ann’s brain on a free consultation call and learn more about how she can help your church.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is one of those topics that I’m pretty convinced that 99.996 percent of the churches that are listing in are worrying about this. They’re thinking about it. They’re wrestling with it. They’re trying to figure out what to do about it. This is an incredibly applicable topic to you and for the .004 percent of churches that aren’t, you need to be. So lean in, friends. We’ve got our friend Mary Ann Sibley with us today. She has a really compelling background. She came out of corporate America, worked as a commercial banker, then as a CFO for a global tech company and then God really got a hold of her life and pulled her in, originally to serve as in children’s ministry. But then ultimately saw that blossom into this incredible opportunity to work really in volunteer engagement, volunteer ministry in general. She was a part of seeing a group of 30 volunteers grow to over a thousand. I saw that and I leaned forward I said, man, we got to talk to Mary Ann. She’s a cheerleader for church leaders. I know that you’re going to be encouraged by this conversation. Mary Ann, thank you for being here today. Thanks for being here.
Mary Ann Sibley — Thank you, thank you, Rich. It’s an honor. Thank you.
Rich Birch — This is gonna be this gonna be great. Kind of fill in the picture there a little bit. Tell us a bit about your background. Kind of fill in the details there for us.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, okay, well thank you again for having me on. And just telling ah again what God has done in my life is ridiculous. Even we hearing again from 30 to hundred.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — I just it’s crazy. He’s insane. I did not grow up in church. I grew up Buddhist. And my background being in business, you know, everything looked great on the outside. And the other thing I think is important when church leaders hear this, I had never been invited to church ever.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting. How did you get connected then? How… Yeah what did that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — …for 40 years. I know. Well um I got I was divorced, a single mom at that time. And I moved into a neighborhood with a family that came and was living right behind me to start a church.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And because I’m from the South, I never heard of such a thing. And so I thought it was a cult. And so I didn’t want my boys playing with their boys.
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Mary Ann Sibley — And they kept asking these questions at dinner, and I kept getting angry and defensive. And it took two years of me saying no.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — When um I always say I didn’t know God, but I knew Becky. She was the mom.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — And Becky was so patient and she kept saying, you should come. Um, and I was like never in my life. And so as I like to say, Rich, is I was certain because of, you know, growing up in the south and seeing how church people behaved around me. I was convinced that I wasn’t going to like you church people.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I was sure you weren’t going to like me either.
Rich Birch — Yeah, wow. Right. Interesting.
Mary Ann Sibley — So let’s just not meet. So you know that was never going to happen. And but after two years God did what only he could do. And we went to go visit. My primary reason for my very first time in visiting this church was to make sure it wasn’t a cult.
Rich Birch — Mmm checking it out.
Mary Ann Sibley — Because I really thought it was something weird.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley —Yeah I’m like what is it, but this is their meeting in a school, and then they you know this is all new to me. And this was way back long time ago.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — So like over twenty years ago. And um, of course it wasn’t and it wasn’t long before you know I kept thinking I should probably come here. But I remember I had to talk to the pastor and ask permission because I was Buddhist.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Interesting.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I thought I said and you know and I’m a college grad.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — I was an international banker. Like you know, I knew stuff. I was smart.
Rich Birch — Yes, you’re a full-on adult.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, but when it came to church, and that was intimidating and I knew nothing.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um and I remember just saying you know I think I want to come back, but I don’t know if I’m allowed. I’m a Buddhist.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And you know of course Yes, yes, come.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um so wasn’t long before then then I met Jesus, and then my two boys so and everything exploded.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Well, that’s a great that’s a great reminder encouragement for us, you know to continue to try to drive the invite cultures of our church, because you you just never know right? like and you know God’s obviously ended up using you in in huge ways and so. You know, really cool to see that story. You never know, you know, the people that you engage with and um and I love the persistence there too. Like I’ve heard that so many times and in my own life. There’s been people who you know it’s It’s a long-term conversation. We’re not this isn’t a one-time thing. It’s like we’re trying to build relationships over an extended period of time. So great reminder.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, oh my gosh, Rich, I mean that’s the key righ there – the relationships.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um because Jeff and Becky, um, they just included me with their family things even though I was saying no, it was like like a natural thing. Oh hey, you know, even if I didn’t have my boys, hey we’re just cooking out. You want you come on over? Or um, something was wrong with my house. Her husband um was a carpenter. Imagine that. And she would say, I’ll send Jeff over – he can fix it.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Oh wow. So great.
Mary Ann Sibley — And you know things like that. So that relationship building is really was the really key you know?
Rich Birch — Hugely.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, that’s amazing you use the word “include” because I’ve in coaching I’ve talked about invest, invite, and then include. That you know lots of people talk about invest and invite. But then I’ve I’ve talked about that that third “i” which is include, which is, hey friends, we’ve got to we have to train our people, so the people that are part of our churches, to include people in their lives in their lives.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like doing exactly what you’re saying. Hey come over for dinner. Why don’t we hang out? Like and it’s not people are not targets. They’re not like hey you’re you know it’s like some sort of project. It’s like no just extend your social circle beyond people at the church.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yes.
Rich Birch — And yeah, that’s great. And God does amazing things.
Mary Ann Sibley — I love I love that you said that, Rich. Because that inclusion part, we’re smart enough, we outside the church to know that you may have an ulterior motive.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — So it’s going to take longer sometimes, so don’t be discouraged.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so for me, my guard was up even though Becky was being nice to me and until one day I decided I need to ask her point blank what is this church thing all about? Um but I had pre-decided that if she started down this road of like preaching to me…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — …I was going to kick her out of my house. Like I had already thought if she says this, this, and this, they’re out.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um and because I didn’t want to be another notch in her.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — thing uh trophy. Like oh I got Mary Ann. And she didn’t she just answered a two sentences, and stopped talking, and moved on to something else.
Rich Birch — Right, good for her.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I thought, oh she can stay. Yeah, so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and she had the faith to be like it’s not it’s not all up to me. I don’t I don’t need you to say some magic words to try to wrestle Mary Ann to the ground right now, you know that kind of stuff.
Rich Birch — Well let’s pivot forward in your story. I love hearing that. Thanks for sharing that. So this like 30 to 1000 – that’s impressive, Mary Ann. That got my attention. Tell me that story. What what is going on there?
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, ah so not growing up in church, I I chalk it up to not having a lot of church baggage. Or I also people would say well that’s on how we do things. I don’t know how you did things.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, love it. Love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — Right? So people were saying well we always, and I’m like why? and it didn’t make sense. So I think on the one hand it was I was one to try different things. And if it didn’t work then let’s try something else. So I was doing things that people shake their heads and go I don’t understand.
Mary Ann Sibley — The other part of it I think, I don’t think I know that God um was so gracious in allowing me to be in the desert for forty years before I met him, is that I have a keen like I was not only depressed those last few years, one suicide attempt like it was a bad bad place.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so when I consider what he has done for me and he brought me out of it, was and I started serving like first as children’s ministry because I didn’t know anything about church, and I thought well I’m a mom I can hold a baby. Like…
Rich Birch — Yes, I’ve done that before.
Mary Ann Sibley — …that’s kind of where as I don’t know anything about church and um, but through that and and growing and as the years passed, it is to this day so keen in mind that that I’m going to be unapologetic about how we serve God. And I’m gonna always know why we are serving him.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — And I continually was just intentional about saying y’all are not even praying before you’re serving. Who are you? Like I don’t understand what’s happening around here. And you know everyone’s running around [inaudible] Mary Ann we’re at church. We’re fine. Well we’re gonna go in service and we’ll pray. And I’m going I I think that’s backwards.
Rich Birch — Right, fascinating.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so and so I think it was a combination and deciding early on of Lord I may be the only one standing here in this room. I listened to your podcast about huddles which is I’m a huge fan of. And twenty five years ago nobody was talking about it, but I knew we had to do something like that. And I said if I’m the only one standing in this room, I’m going to stand in this room.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mary Ann Sibley — Because I cannot slap a name badge on after the week I just had. And think I can do anything that will glorify you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like I need to take a breath right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I need to take a minute and invite people to join me. And a lot of them were like didn’t. But God’s like, you need to decide if you’re gonna do this because you’re gonna come with a lot of opposition. And so I think um, that determination I know that day I knew where I was standing and God honored it. Like a lot of this was just God. Like I had some strategies.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I had some ideas, you know I had a lot of fun.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I was you know the ninja cheerleader…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — …but God took all that and then he did the increase.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I mean his word actually is true. Imagine that.
Rich Birch — Yes, amazing. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It actually works out.
Rich Birch — Why let’s talk a little bit about that. So you know so many people seem to be, when they serve in our churches there’s there um, there’s like ah can be a lack of ownership, right? It can be it can feel like you’re saying. Like I I just show up. I just you know I punch a card. And man that’s they’re really missing out. And and man, I feel bad that we’re even creating those kind of experiences in our churches. We want it to be a kind of a fulfilling incredible experience. How do we how do we do that? How do we or what have you learned to try to create an experience where people actually own it, where they actually are excited to be there and and want to make the mission happen.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah. First of all, never be desperate for volunteers. Never. I always say desperation never looks good on anything except for Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like in dating. It’s not good.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Yes, yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like, you get the wrong people in the wrong season. And so I had to just decide first of all I’m not going to be desperate. And I would rather have four on-fire volunteers and see what God does with that than 20 that are checking the boxes.
Rich Birch — So good. Yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like and I would get permission for people. They would come to my orientations and I would say, you’re welcome to walk out of here. No strings attached. Won’t hurt my feelings. If if you’re here to check a box, this is not the right time for you. And that’s okay. You know someday it will be. But this is this is who I’m inviting. So right from the beginning, it was vision, vision, vision…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — …and holding loosely, not being desperate so that the ones that it would click with all of a sudden would be telling me, like if it was greeting. They said you know I have to be honest with you, Mary Ann, when you said I had to come to some orientation just to greet I thought you were crazy. Like…
Rich Birch — I could stand in a door be nice to people. Why do I need to come to your thing?
Mary Ann Sibley — Exactly. Yeah, when I when I meet with pastors, I said has anyone in this room ever said, it’s just greeting, how hard can it get right? How hard can it be?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, lots of people. Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um I’m like no no, no. It’s not about that. Because that’s not what it’s about. It is a ministry. It’s twofold. Yes, it’s a ministry to the people coming in, but it also is a ministry to the one anothers that are greeting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Mary Ann Sibley — And that’s where discipleship comes in and that’s where the volunteers start learning, Oh oh I’m here for a bigger purpose. Not only, yes to fulfill what God may be doing, but also in my life. Like because I believe in bookending huddle. Yes, we do all the talking. And then we debriefed every single time.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mary Ann Sibley — And that gave volunteers a voice. So now they knew, oh I’m not just a cog in a wheel. They actually want to hear from me. They want to hear my ideas. They want to hear things that I think aren’t working well and they’re inviting me into it. So now I’m going to pay attention, right?
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mary Ann Sibley — Now I’m going to be more engaged. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s talk about debriefs. That’s that’s ah I don’t know a lot of… I know churches that do huddles, but there always seems to be this velocity at the end of a serving experience towards like people just want to get home. They want to leave. And but but it does feel like a missed opportunity. Like hey, let’s grab those people together even if it’s for a moment to be like, thank you for being here.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about debriefs. What’s that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — Oh my goodness. Um debriefs, I’m telling you is a game changer. Like if it’s even easier—people would disagree with me, but that’s fine—it’s easier than huddles. Um, and yes I said here’s here’s the thing about debriefs at the end of church. Um I want volunteers, after they’ve served, to um, the question I always want to say is what do you want someone to say at work the next day, or when they get home, or even at lunch?
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Mary Ann Sibley — So do you want them to say, oh yeah I was at church yesterday and that’s it. Or oh yeah I greeted. Or I held a baby. Or or do you want them to tell stories, right? And do you want them to know, and you have to get it in the moment. And so in the beginning when we they didn’t believe us, no one trusted us, or like hmmm I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’ll really hear what I have to say, a, and, b, I don’t think it’s really going to be just 5 minutes because nothing in church takes 5 minutes, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so we had be really diligent and intentional to say not kidding at two questions. What was a win today, and how could make it better? That’s debrief.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — What was a win, and then we had to teach people what a win was.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like the obvious wins. But there could be some of the most beautiful small wins and that creates community and family. And then we’d always say how could we have made it better? Or I would tell my leaders. How could I have served you better today? And they would tell me, right?
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Mary Ann Sibley — And then the leaders would go to their teammates and say the same thing. How could I have served you better today? What could we have done differently?
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. I love, you know, I love a high kind of feedback culture I think is super important. In fact, recently I was we we did this thing and it was like an event, and we we did like a post event survey. We sent it out to people. And then at a at a subsequent fall on a subsequent call, we had like a you know an online call, I actually just opened up the feedback and showed people, you know, hey here’s what you said about it, and so here’s what we learned. Like this didn’t go well. Here was the thing; look at the graph. This thing shows you did not like this.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah, we got improved that for next time. and then it was like there was one thing that was off the charts. Everyone loved that. And to me that didn’t seem like a big deal. And I so I said hey next time the one thing that was not very good. We got to get better at that. And I appreciate your feedback on that and I had a guy loop back to me and he said, I don’t know that I’ve ever had anyone actually tell me after we’ve done feedback the difference you know that you’re gonna you’re gonna make.
Rich Birch — So when you’re taking that kind of feedback when you’re saying hey what can we improve on next week, um what’s the kind of thing that people were giving you, and then how did you actually follow up on that? How do you keep because but will get cynical, right? If you if you just ask, hey how what are we gonna change? What are we gonna change and if they don’t if you they don’t actually improve anything.
Mary Ann Sibley — Okay, so um your podcast is about very practical things. So this is as practical as you can get – you make a Google sheet…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — …and you and you let all the leaders have access to it.
Rich Birch — Right.
And I had a high level leaders, not me – this is about again replace ourselves, disciple, let go, let people go. Um, we don’t let enough people go in the church. We’re afraid we’re the only ones that can do it. That’s another talk? Anywho um. So um, so the directors would sit there and ask those questions, and as they were take they I gave a laptop and they would just type the answers. So then I would have them on Monday morning. So if there was something crazy happening I as a staff person did get blindsided by the pastor going, did you hear what happened? I’m like yep, already did. And I know who who’s on it. And all the good stuff.
Mary Ann Sibley — But it also had a thing that would say, who’s to follow up? And if it was me I’d say, got it, got it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — …sent it to facilities. If it when a greeter tells you door number five doesn’t stop squeaking. I’m walking out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — You know, something as simple as that, right?
Rich Birch — Ah yes, yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, and so or how did we handle a 911 call?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like we had someone that completely fell out and just as church was letting out, and so they had that report in there. And other and then the wins were the big thing though. Like the wins and what people did, I would have other leaders say, I know this is really going to be weird, but I hope it rains on our watch because we are going to crush it. Like we are going to have all the wins. Like I want we want to be on that report, and say it was raining cats and dogs and then da-da-da-da happened.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so that was a great way to communicate it just in a Google sheet and had everyone have access to it, and they could just track it every week. What was going on…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s great.
Mary Ann Sibley — …and it was a great tool for me as well.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s very cool. All right, so pivoting in a slightly different direction, tell me about AVERI and VICC. Tell me about these two these two characters in your world.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, oh poor AVERI. Yeah AVERI um, AVERI’s the volunteer I talk about some barriers to serving. And one of the barriers could be your current volunteers. And I know when I go and I see you know go to churches. And what I see on the website, people smiling and doing, and handing things out. I show up and they’re not doing that. And I’m like that’s not…
Rich Birch — Really? I I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mary Ann. That’s funny.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, and the ones that are there…um, AVERI stands for that it’s just ah, an acronym – aloof, um, the veteran, the erratic, the rebellious, and the indifferent person. So real quick, the aloof person, your current volunteer. They’re cold. You know, they’re uninterested. Like why are you here? Why are you even here?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And so that could be a barrier, and that doesn’t do anything. Um the vet – a lot people think the veteran is your best one. I said not if they’re doing everything and not allowing anyone else to be a part of what’s happening.
Rich Birch — Not letting, not not giving space, right? Not creating opportunity for other people.
Mary Ann Sibley — Right. And they can be the most resistant to change.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — So now they’re a barrier for trying to create new ideas and and energy. The erratic one, you never know who’s going to come, when they’re going to come. Rebellious – everyone knows the rebellious ones. They want to fight you on everything just because they like a good fight.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, very true.
Mary Ann Sibley — And those are the conversations you have and ask them to serve somewhere else or take a break. And then the indifferent one. It’s different from aloof because the indifferent one, they’re nice, um, but they’re very boring, ho-hum. Like where’s the mission here, right? Where’s the mission?
Rich Birch — Disconnected kind of, yeah, yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — So when you see a group of AVERIs standing around in a church or in anywhere in a ministry, um if I’m looking to come serve or attend your church, that speaks. Like I get that I am highly sensitive to those issues, I get it. It’s what I do. But I can also tell you that um I’m amazed at how often we forget the God-factor when I talk to church people. And because I’ve seen I’ve had so many beautiful stories of what God did when we were able to step up and really, not extravagant, but were able to really provide intentional service that God comes in and does the things that he does. Like people feel seen. And they’re like, I just feel like I want to come back. I really feel very like my family was taken care of, and and that everyone seemed like they genuinely wanted us there.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like I can’t put my finger on it, but that’s what can change, if you have…
Rich Birch — Right. I love that that. Yeah, even just identifying like so how would I as a church leader like those are good handles. I think aloof, veteran, erratic, rebellious, indifferent um, those are I think good kind of, you know, even for me to think about the people… You know we don’t sometimes we don’t see this though even in our own cultures, right? It’s like it’s hard… this is where you know, ah, you know a strategic outsider like yourself can be super helpful because it can just help us like you you see things that we don’t see. But what would be some of the signs that like, hey we’ve got too many AVERIs hanging around – what does that what’s that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, well I think what’s interesting, Rich, when I do talk to church leaders and go through they are immediately nodding. They they can identify them.
Rich Birch — Right. They know people. Yeah well I did as well…
Mary Ann Sibley — They know, they’re going, oh I do have AVERIs. But they are so on the spin of every Sunday’s a Sunday, no one’s taking the time…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mary Ann Sibley — …to do. So they know but it’s like I would say really like you have got to, if you’re sitting there, and I think this is one of the biggest complaints that I hear from church leaders, it’s about volunteers. It’s It’s the least resourced in terms of time attention, whatever. And so really take take the time on a Sunday, not all Sunday, and really go, who are my AVERIs today? And you will, I mean we know them, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — And it doesn’t mean we don’t like them. It doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. They’ve maybe they were never given the mission why. Maybe they’ve forgotten. You don’t do it we don’t do a good job reminding them. They’re in the wrong spot. And they did it for a little while and they don’t know how to quit because they don’t want to feel like um I don’t want to be seen as unchristian or unfaithful.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Especially your your veterans, and they will hang on and hang on. But you know when I was working and people were starting to come serve, I would say like, you know, so what brought you to start serving? And they’re like well it sounds like you have a, you know, the system we’d set up small baby steps – very caring, very open-handed – and they said because at my last church It was like a ball and chain. And once I got in I never… And of course not growing up in church I thought what?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley —A ball and chain? That’s awful!
Rich Birch — That’s awful. Exactly.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like that’s terrible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, oh my goodness.
Mary Ann Sibley — And they’re like, well I just couldn’t or didn’t believe that I could, you know. So when we talk in church about onboarding, onboarding, onboarding, I also talk about offboarding, offboarding…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — …being just as intentional and told upfront, in advance so people are now like trusting you, I can come try it, because you really mean it, and I’ve seen you display it, act on it, that there is an off-ramp that is honoring and healthy as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Well yeah, that that yeah I think the off-ramp thing you know on-ramps and… easy off, easy on and easy off-ramps are a critical piece of this puzzle for sure. So then obviously we want to transition from AVERI. I’m assuming that VICC is like that’s like the positive character we’re trying to move towards, you know, VICC or what. Tell us about that.
Mary Ann Sibley — Ah, VICC well there’s no perfect volunteer, but VICC comes awfully close to it. So VICC the volunteer is valued, included, challenged, and connected.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like if you have someone that feels valued, to your point earlier, I feel included um I’m challenged. And here and talk a lot about that. And I’m really connected, not only to one anothers here, but I’m connected to the mission and what’s happening. Now I can own it. That’s a volunteer that oh boy, they’re having a good time. They’re seeing God work, ministry’s happening across the board.
Rich Birch — Why don’t why don’t we dive in. Can we dive into maybe one of those. Like is there, when I look at those—valued, included, challenged, connected—I feel like the valued one is maybe one that our churches don’t do a great job on. How do we articulate to and ensure that our our volunteers understand how much they’re valued…
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …understand how ah critical they are, you know, to the mission?
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, well first of all the most simple thing to do is we don’t say thank you enough. We don’t say it very specifically. And that costs no money.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — Um I’ve I’ve talked to several people and they would just jump in and I know that they’re going through a hard, hard season. Like bad things were happening and they jumped in, they go I didn’t even get a thank you. And lot of volunteers don’t do it for that. But God doesn’t have to do a lot in our lives, but he loves us and he’s so generous and he just wants to just pour out, right? And so just sometimes taking the time to on the spot, I talked to a leader last week and she said I think I have a win. I said tell me, and she said um, one of our ushers actually smiled. I said wow.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — I said did you tell him? She said well no. And I’m like it’s not too late…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — …so send him an email and let him know that um… because I’m kind of over the top I get it – we don’t want a lot of Mary Anns out there. But um.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — I went up to this one guy and he just had this really sense of humility and you know the fruit of the spirit, just calm and patience. And um I walked into our auditorium and I walked out to him and I said oh my goodness, thank you for just being here. I said I walked in and you immediately made me feel welcome.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Mary Ann Sibley — And he looked at me and went, oh my gosh. He said, Mary Ann, I’m sitting here thinking I don’t measure up because I’m not going to be the cheerleader like you. I was like no, no, no, no, no, we don’t want to be all this. You, you have done an amazing work today. So I think really specific. thank yous and taking time. I think when we can share our wins as part of debrief, we value the work that the volunteers are doing. When we talk about…
Rich Birch — Yep. When I when I saw Mary Ann do this thing, man, that was amazing…
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because that reinforces our mission.
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And then I the trickle down impact of that is this. And you know isn’t that amazing that kind of thing.
Mary Ann Sibley — And that would have never happened if we didn’t have volunteers here, and volunteers here.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — Like one person can’t be in fifteen places.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mary Ann Sibley — And and when we really make sure, again that the non-desperation part. Um, that we care more for them as a person than filling a role anywhere. And we say that a lot but I practically it’s like what does that really look like, right? And it’s like what I call building real teams instead of just gathering pools of people.
Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — Most churches just have pools of people and they call it a team.
Rich Birch — Yes. Oh man! Wow that is a mic drop moment! Gathering teams rather than pools of people. Oh my goodness, Mary Ann – that’s good. I love that.
Mary Ann Sibley — True story, as my grandson will say, true story.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.
Mary Ann Sibley — But I think the value in the very beginning—and this is this may step on some toes you may have to edit this out—um is um churches are looking for volunteers. They’re like we want you, we need you. We want you. We need you. And when I go on websites to say, okay, what does serving there look like? The first thing that pops up is I have to fill out a form blindly. I have to I have to give you all my information and I don’t even know anything about that ministry. I don’t know what the timeframe is. I don’t know how long you want me to serve.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — I’ve got baggage of ball and chain. So I’m gonna be really hesitant. So you may have some amazing volunteers that would be great, but they have so much baggage and there’s a loss of trust. There’s a lot of that in the church. Like people are trying to re-feel their way around. So when we value someone, we’re gonna really extend and say let me tell you all the things and let you decide.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — Because I trust God’s gonna bring the right people. I’m go to lay it out for you. And then you’re going to make the decision. We’ll have the right people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Mary Ann Sibley — So little things like that.
Rich Birch — So good. That’s great. There’s so much we could unpack here. Um, another kind of again pivoting in a similar like in this same neighborhood but slightly different approach, I’ve heard time and again, um, you know, just as I’m interacting with churches and as we’re working on like church growth issues and trying to work on um, you know, how are we getting people connected, that I’m I’m hearing oftentimes you hear teams or groups, or you know teams and groups, like two different kind of things, but I’ve increasingly heard churches talking about really teams as a primary discipleship thing. That it’s like, man, this is a place where people it’s like a faster way to get people connected, and it’s like they’re man, you could see some real life change take place there. But then I’ll I’ll often hear church leaders push back against that and say no like that’s just about us, you know, we have it’s almost like they it’s like they wish they didn’t have volunteers. It’s like because it’s like it’s like if we could do this without volunteers we would. But I know you’ve got a passion for seeing this be a great experience. Help us think through how volunteering or being a part of a team, whatever the best language is there…
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …could be a great discipleship experience for someone who’s connecting to our church.
Mary Ann Sibley — Well, it’s leadership, and it’s having an intentional leadership path. And I was committed to um, requiring and inviting those into leadership at the same level that I would require someone to lead a small group, or lead a bible study. And even though you may be leading, you know, leaders small group leaders for kindergartners or a group of guys in the parking lot. Because my ah my brain is is like why would I want to waste any time when you have people that have raised their hand to serve and they’re going to be with you most of the day, why would you waste it with just things to do, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — Why would you waste that? And so when the heart and the intention is like talking to our leaders to say oh you think you’re going to tell people where to park and train your guys. You’ll train them that’s fine, but that’s not why you’re there.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mary Ann Sibley — You may be the one that will reach them for Christ. You may be the one that they know Jesus but they’re waning or they want to get deeper. You you you. They may not join a small group because that’s too scary, but they’ll come join a team. And through that experience you, I’ve had so many teams start a small group, or invite people in.
Mary Ann Sibley — And um, one of my roadie leaders I call—the parkers, they wanted to name themselves roadies – it was awesome.
Rich Birch — That’s fun.
Mary Ann Sibley — And he’s a big banker. He travels all across the country. And you know he was so good, but he’d say I know you keep saying this, Mary. And I said, you just wait, Ralph – you just wait. And sure enough one day he said one of his guys he was handing him a t-shirt at the end of the day, and the guy said to him this young guy said, you know what, I was going to quit because my wife is so sick and can’t come. But since we were on break earlier, you sat with me and we’re just having coffee. And this kid shared with Ralph how sick his wife was. And Ralph’s like that sounds like what my wife has. It’s not a very common thing. And he goes, Mary Ann, my wife immediately walks by. And I stopped her and said hey Vic, would you mind connecting with his wife? And she’s like yes, let…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary Ann Sibley — …let’s connect. And so this kid says to Ralph, I was going to quit today. But then I realized this is why I’m here; this is why I’m at this church and this is why I’m on your team. And Ralph looked at me and said you don’t have to convince me anymore. Because I get it. And so and so that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Mary Ann Sibley — …is not wasted, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary Ann Sibley — This is this is Ralph saying, hey let me pray for you guys even though you don’t want to share your prayer requests, I don’t care. But it’s those little beautiful moments that we do when we’re forming relationships under under the whole umbrella and the and the strength of who God is in our lives in Christ. And then God makes those moments happen. And you know, I’ve just seen enough, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary Ann Sibley — …that it can seem very um like, oh yeah, sure Mary Ann, you know we’ve gotten so blasé. We’re we’re producing, we’re producing. And yet they’re missing an opportunity to form a discipleship opportunity for those volunteers.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So good. That’s that’s fantastic. Now how do you I know you help churches with this. What does that look like? Like how do you when you engage with a a church. What is that? How does that work? What are you kind of how are you helping them think through these things? What’s that look like?
Mary Ann Sibley — Yeah, um, it usually best involves with an onsite visit. So kind of earlier what you said, I get to be the eyes and ears. I don’t I can do the secret shoppers, they call it, but I even prefer to just let me talk to your people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah for sure.
Mary Ann Sibley — Let me engage with them. They know I’m there. And I can immediately all through the day. So I meet with everyone before I get there in person. I spend the day on Sunday so I can be the eyes and questions and all that. So once we do that, then we come back and we strategize where’s the biggest need, what’s the the biggest path um area of ministry with volunteers. And it could be as a whole or right now I’m working with one church and she’s they’re saying we want our hospitality, our youth, and our children’s ministry. So I’m meeting with each of those groups about their volunteer culture.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s cool. That’s great. Well this is this has been fantastic. We’ve just scratched the surface. I know there’s so much that we could we could talk about, Mary Ann, but I really appreciate you. Any kind of final words as we as we wrap up today’s episode?
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, yeah I always say that the volunteers are not serving just to further your mission, that the volunteers are the mission they are the mission.
Rich Birch — So true. Yep, yep.
Mary Ann Sibley — And we um when we can stop and look at the people that are doing all the incredible things and realize, wow, what’s their story? What what do we know about them? Then that changes everything.
Rich Birch — So good. Well Mary Ann, I appreciate you being here. I know um your website is just maryannsibley.com. Is are there other places online we want to send people to connect with you and and you know connect with everything that you’re up to?
Mary Ann Sibley — Um, yeah I’m on Instagram just @masibley and um, a little bit on Facebook, my page there. But um, yeah, if you go to my website, you click on there, you’ll get my email just send me an email. I also do free consultation. So if you just want to hit that and say, hey Mary Ann, can we chat for 30, 45 minutes – just want to pick your brain and see what you think, I do that for everyone for free. So would love to hear from you. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Oh wow, that’s amazing. That’s great. Yeah I would I would recommend you take Mary Ann up on that. That would be ah that would be amazing. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here today and excited for you know for everything that’s going on in your world, and for that I’m just it was such an encouraging conversation. So thanks for being here today, Mary Ann.
Mary Ann Sibley — Thank you, Rich.
From 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 Days: Key Metrics for Explosive Church Growth
Apr 17, 2024
Today, we’re diving into the mechanics of rapid church growth, specifically how a church can potentially double in size—from 1,000 to 2,000 members—in just 1,000 days. If you’ve been pondering how to expand your congregation effectively and sustainably, this is the episode for you.
The Balance of Growth
Rapid church growth is exhilarating but maintaining a balance so your team can sustain the momentum is crucial. Imagine welcoming 500 new attendees in a single weekend! Such growth spikes can be overwhelming and highlight the need for a well-oiled operational system to handle new faces without compromising the community spirit.
Understanding Attrition
Every church experiences some level of attrition, typically around 15% annually. This includes members who pass away, move away, or leave due to dissatisfaction. Knowing this number is vital because it sets the baseline for the growth needed just to maintain current numbers, let alone grow.
The Power of Documented First-Time Guests
A pivotal metric for growth is tracking documented first-time guests. Aiming for about 3% (or 30 new guests each week for a church of 1,000) sets a solid foundation for potential growth. This approach keeps the community dynamic and engaging, encouraging regular attendees to invite others and thus, organically grow the congregation.
Focusing on Guest Retention
Once guests visit, the next challenge is retention. Thriving churches tend to keep about 26% of their first-time guests. This means if you’re meeting your target of 30 new guests weekly, you aim to integrate around seven to eight of those into your church community permanently.
Strategic Integration
To handle this influx, churches need to think strategically about integrating these individuals. This might involve launching new small groups or volunteer opportunities, creating enough space and engagement points to turn newcomers into regular members.
Sustainable Growth Over Time
By adhering to these metrics—3% new guests weekly, managing a 15% attrition rate, and retaining 26% of newcomers—a church can aim to grow by 26% annually. This growth rate, compounded over three years, means doubling in size, reaching that 2,000 member milestone within 1,000 days.
Actionable Steps
For church leaders looking to harness these principles, it starts with fostering an inviting culture and ensuring each service is an opportunity for members to bring someone new. Moreover, setting up systems to capture and follow up with first-time guests efficiently can help maintain this growth trajectory.
Growing your church isn’t just about numbers; it’s about creating a welcoming community that continually reaches out and retains new members. If your church is on the brink of expansion and you’re aiming for explosive growth, focusing on these key metrics will provide a clear and structured path to achieve your goals.
For further guidance and personalized coaching to implement these strategies, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our team is eager to support your journey of significantly impacting your community and helping more people connect with your church family.
Episode Transcript
Well, happy Wednesday, everybody. Welcome to the UnSeminary Podcast. Today, we’re talking about from 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 days, key metrics for explosive church growth.
You know, friends, what I want to do is kind of look up under the hood and help you understand what are some of the mechanics, the kind of growth mechanics, metrics, numbers, digits that you should be thinking about when you think about growing your church. You know, there are some kind of key numbers, benchmarks that we come across time and again, and I want to expose those to you, to talk you through those, really as a target for your church to be looking at. Now, I’m talking about today, thinking about a church of 1,000. I’m going to use that as an example, but these numbers scale up and down, but that’s an important metric because, you know, it kind of helps us, it’s a round number, let’s be honest. It’s an easy number to kind of get your head around, but the same numbers work if your church is smaller or larger.
You know, there’s really an interesting balance I found in church growth over the years. Really, we want to grow fast enough to make a difference in our community. You want that excitement of like, man, amazing things are happening, but not so fast that your team can’t keep up. I remember years ago, 20 years ago, we had a single Sunday where we had 500 new people show up at our church. We were about maybe 1,000, just over 1,000 at the time. So it was like a 50% bump in a single weekend. Wowzers, it was, you know, it was crazy.
And, you know, although it’s the kind of thing, like everybody says, they would love something like that to happen. It was a ton of work and, you know, we ended up scrambling to try to follow up. We had to scale up groups quickly. We had to scale teams quickly. And you know, the thing about those 500 people, they came literally on the launch of a series and they did not go away. And, you know, although you might, you know, that could happen to your church and it does happen from time to time. Really, I think we should be aiming for something that’s more sustainable, that’s more on pace over an extended period of time.
I have friends of mine, they joke about how the fact that they’re the slowest growing church in America, you know, which is kind of funny. They’ve been growing basically 10% a year, but really since the 90s. And now this church that started as a few hundred people is now pushing three, 4,000 people because they’ve had consistent growth over an extended period of time. And so the question is, could we find some metrics? Could we find some numbers up under the hood based on actual real world experience that we should be thinking about for our church if we’re looking at growing? And so that’s what I want to unpack for you today.
So the first number I want us to understand is really this attrition number. So every church has some sort of attrition. That means, you know, every year there’s a certain percentage of people who go away for whatever reason. You know, they leave and they don’t come back. Now I’ve seen this time and again. There’s a real sticky persistent benchmark here of 15% that lots of churches across the country, they have a 15% shrinkage rate that, you know, they really can’t do anything about. It’s not that there’s something negative happening at their church. 5% of their church just frankly passes every year. There’s a certain percentage of people in every community that just die. There’s 5% that move away. This would be like they moved to a new town. They moved to a new city, you know, job move, that sort of thing. And then there’s 5% that get upset, frankly, for one reason or another. I remember early on, one of my early mentors in ministry talked about if 10% of the people in your church aren’t threatening to leave because they’re upset about something, you’re probably not doing anything right. And I think there’s some truth to that. You know, there are a percentage of people every year that leave and so that just are not happy with what’s happening. In fact, just this week I was talking to a pastor and he was talking about how last weekend they rolled out a vision talk at their church. He was kind of talking about redefining again. Why do we exist as a church? And he said, you know, he got some hate mail for that, but he was like, hey, that’s good. That’s a good part of life. We want that. That’s a critical piece.
So the first thing is to understand that your church does have an attrition number. Now for today’s calculation, we’re gonna set that at 15%. Now that might be more, it might be less. The important thing for us to understand on the attrition number is we have to grow faster than the attrition number just to kind of tread water. So if you, you know, a church would have to grow by 15% if you’ve got a 15% attrition number just to kind of stay the same. And so we’ve got to get, you know, terminal velocity to kind of get out of the pressure of that.
So how do we do that? So one of the key numbers that I talk about all the time, we talk about in our coaching. We work through whether it’s in, you know, my books, you know, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. We talk about it in our group coaching, the Church Growth Incubator, one-on-one coaching is documented first-time guests. This is a critical number. Recently, we had Paul Alexander. He’s executive pastor at Sun Valley Church, giant church making huge difference. And he talked about the same thing. I asked him what’s a key metric that he looks at across his locations. And he said, documented first-time guests. Now, I like to talk about that as documented first-time guests on a weekly basis. And that number in our calculation today is 3%. So on a church of a thousand people, that means weekend, week out, you should be seeing 30 people. Now, in other contexts, I talk about how a benchmark is 2%. And this is true. Your church, if you’re at 2% a week, that’s kind of like table stakes. You need to, you know, if you’re not there, you need to be investing, doubling down on increasing your invite culture. If you’re not seeing, so in this case, if you’re a church of a thousand people and you’re not seeing 20 a week, weekend, week out, I would say there’s something wrong with your invite culture. We’re not seeing enough guests. Now, what that means is over a year at 3%, you’re gonna see 1,500 first-time guests come to your church. At 2%, which would be the absolute lowest benchmark, the kind of table stakes, it would be a thousand. It would be mirrored. And that’s how our good friend, Tony Morgan talks about it with the Unstuck Group. They talk about, hey, you should have the same number of guests in a year that you have on average in an average weekend attendance at your church. I like talking about this number as average documented first-time guests on a weekly basis because I think it focuses our system better.
So in today’s example, a church of a thousand people, they should say 3%. Again, where this is, we’re aiming towards doubling every thousand days or every three years. So if you see 3% average, that means every week, you’re gonna see 30 first-time guests. And the question is, what can we do to actually integrate or to respond to 30 guests? What can we do to try to get 30 guests connected to our church? If I think 1,500, that would be the annual number. That’s like an overwhelming number. The problem with thinking about it at an annual basis is like, I’m not sure how we follow up with 1,500 people, but can I get my team to think about 30 on a weekly basis? Man, I totally can. We can associate, get our heads around, how can we see 30? The other thing, the other reason why I like talking about it weekly, so 3%, again, that’s the number we’re shooting for here to try to get to this doubling every thousand days. The reason why I like talking about it on a weekly basis as well, rather than annual, is because we should be really forcing, driving invite every week, week in, week out. Every week at your church needs to be the kind of thing that people will wanna invite their friends to. And the problem I see about talking about it at an annual number is we’ll often think like, well, Easter or Christmas or Mother’s Day, we’ll see a bunch of guests come on those days. But oftentimes that doesn’t work out. And so what we need to do is be thinking about it week in, week out.
So the first two numbers, attrition, we’re gonna assume 15% annual attrition. That’s a good benchmark. If you don’t know what your attrition number is, that would be the number I’d pick. We see that, that’s a sticky benchmark we see across the church. The second, again, what we’re aiming towards is to try to double a church and to go from 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 days. And so what that document at first time guest number is 3%.
Now let’s talk about guest retention. So how many of those guests, what percentage of those guests are we going to actually try to retain? Now the benchmarks here, the rule of thumbs we’ve talked about is that stuck and stagnant churches keep one in 10 guests. Growing churches keep two in 10 guests. And really thriving churches, churches that are knocking it out of the park, keep three in 10 guests. So the number I want you to be thinking about when it comes to guest retention in our calculation to go from 1,000 to 2,000 in 1,000 days is 26%. And the reason why I say 26% is your goal is it’s aggressive, but it’s also doable. When you think about back to that 30 guest issue every week, weekend, week out, we’re going to see 30 first time guests come. Then what that means is we’re hoping to see seven or eight of those guests stick and stay within that first year. We want to see seven or eight, somewhere in that of those guests.
Now this is important for you to think about because I think sometimes as church leaders, it could be discouraging to think, man, we’re only going to keep seven or eight out of the 30. What about all those other people? But this is just the normal church dynamics. We see this time and again, even growing churches, you have way more people come through the front door than actually stick and stay at your church long-term. This is normal. This is a normative process. And so what we need to be thinking about is what can we do to build a system? Now there’s a ton and we’ll talk about this in future weeks. There’s a ton that we can do to try to figure out what can we do to see seven or eight of those people stick of those 30 every week or 26%. Now, if you follow that, assuming you’re a church of 1,000 people, you have 3% documented average weekly guests, you have a 15% attrition rate and you keep 26% of your first-time guests, that means that you’ll grow by 26% a year. Now the interesting thing about 26% is if you can sustain 26% for 1,000 days or three years, your church would double. You’ll go from 1,000 to 2,000 assuming all of that continuing. You’re losing 15% a year. You’re seeing that 3% week in, week out. If you can sustain that every three years or every 1,000 days, you will double as a church. Now, the reason why I love 26% as a target, it’s aggressive. That puts you in the fastest-growing churches in the country. That puts you among the fastest-growing churches in the country for sure. But what that looks like on the baseline of 1,000 is, man, can we integrate every year 250 new people into small groups? That’s like, can we launch 20 new small groups in this coming year? Could you do that? Could you make that happen? Could you integrate somewhere between 100 and 150 new volunteers in this coming year? We’ve gotta create space for them. That maybe is like launching a new location or that’s gotta expand your teams. You gotta launch new spots. If you don’t do these two things, you’re not going to be building the space to get these folks in. So we need to not just think about attendance on the front end. We need to think not just about how do we drive people to sit in our auditoriums, but ultimately it’s about creating space for them to stick and stay. So at 26% on a baseline of 1,000, it’s what can we do to create space for somewhere between around 250 people this year? And then obviously that number grows. After that first year, you’re gonna be about 1,250 and then you’ll be about 1,600. And then that last year, at the end of that last year, you’ll be 2,000 people. So the key metric, if I was sitting across the table from you today and I was saying, hey, if you’re a church of 1,000 and you’re thinking about growing, you’d like to get on this path towards 26%, I would start with the top end of that funnel and that is the average documented first-time guest. This is a number that you can control. By building your invite culture, by consistently pushing your people towards what can they do to invite their friends, you can increase your average documented first-time guests. Now, how do you gather that information? You gather that information by having an exchange. I like to call it the ethical bribe. On Sunday morning, you stand up every single week, week in and week out, and you say, hey, we’re so glad that you’ve come to Sunnyvale Community Church. Let’s say that’s the name of your church. We’re so honored that you’re here at Sunnyvale Church today. In fact, we’ve got a gift for you. If you’re new here at Sunnyvale Community Church, we’d love to give you this gift. Click on this QR code, fill out this card in the seat in front of you, and take it to our dedicated new here kiosk where we’ve got amazing volunteers who are going to give you one of these coffee mugs that says Sunnyvale or for Sunnyvale on it or this T-shirt. And in exchange for your contact information, we’re going to give you this gift today. And that’s the number that we look at and that’s the number that really should be that documented first-time guest. Obviously, also first-time kids are connected in with that as well.
So that’s some numbers there. So documented first-time guests, your target should be 3%. Annual attrition, assuming we see that lots of times, at 15% of church, your guest retention is 26% is what you’re targeting towards. That will drive overall growth of 26%, which will mean that a church of 1,000 will grow to 2,000 in 1,000 days. Friends, if you’re looking for help for this, particularly if you’re the church that we’ve been talking about today, a church of 1,000 people, we’ve got coaching. We want to get in your corner. We have predictable processes that we do with the churches we coach where we’ve seen this happen time and again. And if you want help with that, just reach out. Email me, I’d be happy to talk about that.
Host: Thanks so much, friends. Pumped to be in your corner. Hope that you have a great week and thanks for being on the path to try to grow your church, to make an impact, to see good things happen, to see people connected, to see marriages renewed, to see people take steps closer to Jesus, to see more people get baptized. Thanks so much, friends. We’ll talk to you later. We’ll see you next week on the Unseminary Podcast. We’ve got a great interview tomorrow. You’re not going to want to miss it. We’ve got an incredible interview coming up. You’re going to see that tomorrow here on the interview show. Thanks so much, friends. Take care.
Embracing the Future with Humility: Community Christian’s Leadership Succession with Ted Coniaris
Apr 11, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ted Coniaris, the Lead Pastor Apprentice at Community Christian Church. One of the fastest growing churches in the country, Community Christian is an entrepreneurial church which has been a ministry “teaching hospital” and vanguard for decades.
Whether it’s five years or fifty years, every lead pastor is called to shepherd their churches for a season. At some point they will step down from their role and pass the baton to a successor. How do we transition well and ensure that what we are building lasts beyond ourselves? Tune in as Ted shares about apprenticeship, team culture, and how to set your church culture up for a successful transition.
5 steps to apprenticeship. // Apprenticeship is fundamental to how Community Christian operates as they develop leaders and people to be activated into their mission. Taken from Dave and Jon Ferguson’s book, Exponential, the five steps of apprenticeship have also been core to the pastoral transition process. Current lead pastor, Dave, is in the process of leading Ted through these five steps, which include Step 1: I do, you watch, we talk. Step 2: I do, you help, we talk. Step 3: You do, I help, we talk. Step 4: You do, I watch, we talk. Step 5: Someone else watches you—the next apprentice.
A culture of humility. // The transition process at Community Christian Church is marked by a clear timeline and benchmarks for progress. Ted attributes much of the success of this transition to the humility and leadership of Dave. In addition to setting a humble example, Ted stressed the importance of being deeply committed to Jesus, and prioritizing teamwork. These elements are crucial in fostering a culture of humility within the church, which is essential for any successful leadership transition.
Tend to your soul in the transition. // Pastoral transitions bring with them a sharp learning curve and juggling a lot of different responsibilities. Build a support network of other lead pastors and talk about what you are going through. Continue to develop a culture of humility by sharing how you’re doing with your team. Ask them for grace when needed. Create daily rhythms that will help to nurture your relationship with God and the most important people in your life.
Be open-handed. // There are things that will change in the leadership team and infrastructure as a church transitions to a new lead pastor. Be open to the new vision that God is calling the church to in this new chapter. What changes will best serve where God is leading you? Don’t be afraid to make changes that may benefit your church as the leadership changes.
Plan ahead for transitions. // Think about how your church culture sets up for a transition. If you are building something that you want to last past you, you have to imagine what it will look like when you are gone. Aggressively remove parts of your culture that will reject a transition, and align your culture so transition will be viewed as a good thing.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and I’m really excited to have Ted Coniaris with us today. He is from Community Christian Church. They are a multisite church in Illinois. If you do not know them I don’t know where you’ve been. There, ah if if I’m counting right, 7 physical locations. Although they always seem their launch another, one micro-churches, online space, Community Freedom locations at correctional institutions and treatment centers in the area. Ted is the Lead Pastor Apprentice at Community Christian. He has been ah a campus pastor in one of their locations but is in the midst of a transition. I’m looking forward to today’s conversation because we’re catching a story as it’s happening. So really looking forward to this, Ted. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Ted Coniaris — So glad to be here, Rich. Thank you so much for having me.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you tell us, kind of fill out the picture a little bit about Community. You know that was just kind of the standard boilerplate stuff. Give us kind of the passion, if we were to come this weekend, what would we experience? Fill in the picture there a little bit.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I mean you could really say so much about the legacy of our church over the last 35 years, but the unifying thread that ties it all together, and and really still is going to be pointing us towards our future is our mission, which is helping people find their way back to God. I mean from the very first day that Dave and John Ferguson founded this church that was the unifying passion. It’s still our unifying passion today and as we’re in the midst of this transition, you know, part of my stewardship is stewarding that mission into the future. I mean that’s that’s my heartbeat. That’s Dave’s heartbeat. That’s the heartbeat of our future as well. So that’s that’s the big idea that ties us all together.
Ted Coniaris — But I think you pretty much covered we had got a lot of stuff going on. We’re entrepreneurial kind of church. We love doing whatever we can help people find the way back to God. So that’s starting churches in prisons. Yep, we’re in.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Ted Coniaris — That starting micro-churches all around the world. We’re in. You know, we’ll do whatever it takes. And we kind of joke sometimes like we’re willing to be the first person to like kick through the door, and then we expect people to come in behind us and do it a whole lot better than we’re doing it. But…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …that’s been the model for the thirty-five years. One of the first churches to go multisite.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — I think one of the first churches to leverage a micro expression in the way that we’re doing it. And you know that’s that’s a fun part of being here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, the Community Christian is a vanguard, a teaching hospital kind of church place, that you you’re taking the the hits and making stuff up and then the rest of us are ah you know are benefiting from that. And that continues I would say that continues with this current transition that you find yourself in. Like this is one of those areas where I think a lot of our churches are looking at and trying to figure out, Okay, how do we pass this on to the next generation. So talk to me about kind of your connection kind of up to this point where you were ended up being identified as the Lead Pastor Apprentice with Community Christian. How did that work, kind of kind of where’d you come from, all that kind of stuff.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I mean there’s so many different places to start the story, but just for sake of time, I was at large church in Chicago area. Not so far from our Community locations, maybe 45 minutes away.
Ted Coniaris — And God had really been doing so much through our time there in all kinds of different roles, was like executive pastor teaching pastor kind of role there. And we started having this really uncomfortable nudge from the Holy Spirit that maybe we should plant a church. And of course with great faith we said, No. We don’t want to do that.
Rich Birch — And like a good multiplying leader I said no.
Ted Coniaris — And yes, and I heard from the Lord and said, no thank you.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — But we were at least willing to explore it a little bit.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — You know, we felt that we’re like okay, let’s let’s go to this conference. We had heard about called Exponential. And so actually it was like ten years ago my wife and I went to an Exponential Conference in Orlando. truthfully like the most engaged I could tell you was halfheartedly sort of exploring the idea of planting with this seed…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Ted Coniaris — …that the Lord had planted. And I remember in the first session I leaned over to Melissa because Dave Ferguson and John lead Exponential. If you’re not familiar with what it is. It’s the largest global gathering of church planters. And if you are at all interested in that you should definitely go stop what you’re doing right now and register for Exponential next year in Orlando. it’s an incredible…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — …Spirit-moved experience. And I was like you know hey these guys are in Naperville did you know that? And she’s like oh wow. I’m like yeah, maybe I should reach out talk to them sometime. And little did I know about a year later I’d be sitting at a table with John and Dave connected through a mutual friend who is—you talk about Community being kind of like a teaching hospital, my friend, John Peacock who launched Mission Church also in Illinois he had did he had done his residency at Community. And Community actually had helped launch Mission and sent about a hundred of their people to go help start Mission along with our number one giver to help launch that really well. So that’s kind of our legacy.
Ted Coniaris — He’s like you know you got to talk to Dave and John. So ended up talking with them and as we were exploring church plant we’re looking at the same community in Downers Grove, which suburb of Chicago here. And really came away from that conversation thinking to myself, the only reason I wouldn’t plant with Dave and John as a part of Community is if it had to be about me. And that is a horrible reason to plant a church to make a name for yourself.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Ted Coniaris — And they’re like who I wanted to be when I grow up you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — I’m sitting with these guys. They’re being so gracious and generous with me. And I had read some of their books and stuff and I was like man, I hope when I’m sixty I can be sitting across a table from somebody like this and encouraging them in the way they’re encouraging me.
Ted Coniaris — And so long story short we ended up planting. I’ve planted one of our churches in Downers Grove six years ago. And God really blessed that; amazing things have been happening – they’re still happening there. And then I started overseeing some of our locations, leading network is what we call it. And now I oversee all of our locations and expressions. So our physical locations and then you mentioned our micro churches, our online church, and our churches in prisons, Community Freedom. And then Dave and I started talking about this next step about apprenticing to become the next lead pastor of Community. So that’s the story in a nutshell.
Rich Birch — Um, and yeah, that’s so that’s yeah, that’s amazing. So the, you know, let’s let’s kind of zero in on the part of the story where you know Dave it takes you off for lunch and is like so what’s your future? You know God has a God loves you and I have a wonderful plan for your life. Like what does that look like? How do you know where what was that what was, you know, yeah, how does how does he broach that conversation? What’s going through your head? You know, obviously you’re a humble leader you’re you know you’re you’re not like you’re like of course I’m the guy. But like how does all that work? What’s going on inside you when you know when that conversation’s happening?
Ted Coniaris — Well first of all I’ll say a part of our culture that’s really important is we are like a very relational culture. And so Dave and John are brothers, if you don’t know, Dave and John Ferguson. They have co-founding pastors of our church. Dave is the lead pastor. And I often will tell people that we’ve inherited—they’re kind of like our family of origin, as a church culture. And there’s like a brotherly sort of vibe to our staff and our team and our church – nobody’s too big for their britches. You know like if you start trying to act like some kind of big shot around your brother, you’re gonna get punched, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna get it. Yep yep, you’re gonna get it. Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so yeah, so we don’t nobody’s too big here. And so Dave and I had a great relationship, have had a great relationship. And the way it started was just very natural…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …me where I see myself and frankly replacing Dave or being the next lead pastor was not something I was really considering at the time. All focused on planting Downers Grove and seeing it flourish and reaching the community that we live in and my neighbors and friends and kids’ families’ friends and all that. That’s about all I could think about. But as my ministry role expanded and thinking more globally about the church, I think the first time we had the conversation came on the heels of talking through some significant challenges that we’re facing as a church. And at the end and Davis one of those leaders is always just looking for everybody’s perspective on it. You know, he doesn’t come in front line high with the one answer you know he wants to hear.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And they after that conversation he’s like, you know, if you ever would you ever consider, you know, stepping into to this role? Like, oh well yeah, I would consider it. You know… you know I guess I consider it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, honored to consider it humbling. Yeah yeah, yeah, totally, yeah yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah and then we just kept meeting and talking about it and became more and more of a reality. And ah, then went through some of the formal steps and got to where we are here today.
Rich Birch — Interesting. So then what does what is the process look like kind of where are you at in that process? You know what what have you learned so far? I know we were joking before we recorded I was like I’m I’m really looking forward to this conversation, then 5 years from now we’ll follow up and hear, everything was great. Um, you know here’s the stuff we learned.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But what kind of where are you at now in the process? What is what have you kind of what’s that look like, you know help us help us understand that.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that’s really fundamental to how we operate as a church is apprenticeship. You know, we are always developing leaders, always developing people to be activated into the mission that the Lord has called them to, however, they’re called and equipped to help people find their way back to God. And so our Kid City leaders have apprentices. They’re apprenticing people in the role that they’re in. our small group leaders. Our [inaudible] leaders, our Community Freedom leaders, ourCommunity Cares, our ministries out in the community. We always want all of our leaders to be apprenticing somebody…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …from top to bottom.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so that’s like our operating system.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so that’s the most significant positions and the most, you know, small minor positions you might think of in our community. It’s that relational apprenticeship. And and the way we’ve talked about apprenticeship is that it’s 5 steps to apprenticeship, and you could look this up or read it in the book Exponential that Dave and John wrote. But step 1 is is “I do, you watch, we talk.” Step 2 is “I do, you help, we talk.”
Ted Coniaris — And then it’s “You do, I help, we talk.” And then “You do, I watch, we talk.” And then “You do, someone else watches,” and that’s the next apprentice, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And those are the 5 steps of apprenticeship. And so we thought what better way to go through this transition than to have an apprenticeship process where we are visibly and publicly walking through these 5 steps in front of our church to reinforce this value, say nobody’s nobody’s too big to be apprenticed. You know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Ted Coniaris — We can always look and grow and develop. And so that’s what we’re doing. We’re publicly walking through the 5 steps of apprenticeship in front of our church which has just been awesome.
Rich Birch — Wow. And what’s the you know when you think about timeline. First of all, I love that framework. Obviously that’s… the thing I love, we you know we’ve talked about this in other contexts where you know we we talked to our people about hey everybody should have an apprentice. But then that seems to be not the case when it gets to the actual lead people. It’s like all you people need to get apprentices. But the fact that you’re structuring it that way I think is fantastic. Um, so kind of where are you at in that process? Is there a timeline, or how are you is it what are the benchmarks that you’ll know kind of you’re moving along? What’s how are you talking about that internally?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, absolutely. So we the the finish line is May May 1, 2025. So that’s just over a year away now. And we started about six months ago in the public phase.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And it so we’re we’re in this um I do, you help; you do, I help transition. So in between steps 2 and step 3 right now, where there are parts of what I’m doing now, which is me doing and Dave helping.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — And there are parts of what I’m doing right now that is Dave doing and me helping.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Ted Coniaris — And we’re kind of transitioning more and more where I will be the primary doer and Dave will be a primary helper. So that’s that’s the transition. So Dave is going to be the lead pastor. He is the, like in terms of clarity organizationally, he is the lead pastor until May 2025.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — However, how we operate and how we function is these 5 steps of apprenticeship in terms of our day-to-day reality.
Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. I like that. I love the kind of clarity there around hey there is like ah there’s a tripwire date that we’re pushing towards, but then also we’re following this process that there is a it’s a handoff. I like that there’s like a baton there. That’s you know that’s really good. What, so far, good, bad, missing, confusing? What’s been good? You know what’s been bad? Anything that you’re like oh like hey this next time I do this, next time I transition into becoming a lead pastor, I’ll do that differently? No, but what a, yeah, what’s kind of what’s your evaluation so far? What advice would you give to other leaders maybe who are listening in?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, great question. So much I could say. First of all I hope I never do this again, right. My goal in step is through this process is…
Rich Birch — Yes. [inaudible on the other side, this will be on the other side right?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I I’m deeply committed to being on the other side of this process in the future…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yes.
Ted Coniaris — …and I’m excited about that. But I I do not I’m sort of packing the coffin in this one. Like I don’t I don’t see myself going anywhere else like I want to be committed here.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah,
Ted Coniaris — But you talk about what were the categories used good, hard, or bad, and confusing… missing confusing?
Rich Birch — Yeah, good bad missing confusing. Yeah, just like kind of general of that evaluation. What’s you know, kind of what’s you already thinking so far?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, um, the good I’ll start with that.
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Ted Coniaris — This has felt inside and outside, and when I say inside and outside—like between Dave and I—in the inside, and the outside—like our leadership and our church—incredibly healthy and it really passes the smell test.
Rich Birch — Um, that’s good. That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — Like it just feels right. Like when we talk to people about, oh this is what we’re doing, and this is the amount of time we’re taking. like we decided to take a significant amount of time because we just didn’t feel like this is something that needed or should be hurried. Like let’s do this well, let’s take time.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — Let’s give people time to adjust. And I don’t need that, Dave doesn’t need that, like it’s it’s it’s felt super healthy. And if Dave were here he would say the same thing. There hasn’t been a point for either one of us where it’s been like oooh is this the right thing to do? Is this…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — It’s just like felt natural…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …healthy, really really good. And I would say a lot of that is a credit to Dave’s leadership and his humility. You were just going to ask a question.
Rich Birch — Well I was going to ask that. So um I so I was a part Connexus Church in in Canada. And um, you know Carrie Nieuwhof handed off to Jeff Brody – both great leaders. And but I would say both of them have the humility that you’re talking about. Like there’s that they are and I don’t know how we get at that. How do we cultivate that? With you know, and maybe we can talk about this on the the person coming into the role. How have you kind of been able to keep your ego in check? Keep your you know is it close relationship with Jesus, is that all it comes down to? Or is there anything that you’ve you know that’s been helpful to keep your you know the humility, because I do think if man if we can stay humble through this process I think there’s a much higher likelihood that it’ll actually, you know, take kind of thing. But what’s what’s been helpful for you in this to kind of keep close accounts and stay humble?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah I think there’s so many ways I could answer that. I think one of the ways is Dave setting the tone. Um it paints a picture of somebody who’s been able to accomplish a ton. I mean in our church nationally, globally. I mean by all measures and on all accounts you could look at Dave’s ministry and be like man that guy he’s done so much incredible work.
Rich Birch — Yeah yep.
Ted Coniaris — But he’s just so humble…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and just a regular guy. I mean my wife and I often joke like our goal is to bring normal back to church leadership. Like we’re bringing normal back, baby, like we are normal people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. I love it. I love it. Yes, yes, true very much.
Ted Coniaris — You know what I mean? Like why do we have to pretend like we’re not normal people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Like I’m deeply committed to Jesus, I’m deeply committed to my wife, I’m deeply committed to the ministry of the church, to preaching, to to learning, to growing, to all of those things, to the spiritual disciplines. But but I’m not, you know, anything other than a normal person who’s deeply committed to those things.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — And so I think the example of Dave, and just saying that on the outset, like I never try to be a superhero.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — I never set myself up to be that. I think that is so dangerous. And and another piece of it that I think is really key is—like of course relationship with Jesus like you mentioned—I’m going to talk about some of the other things, is your commitment to team. I think is really key.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — You, I believe cannot be a really good team leader and create a really good team culture if you are not humble.
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah, true.
Ted Coniaris — I think you could be really successful…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …and you might have some teams that do successful things, but I would argue, you know, your team culture is probably not what you think it is…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — …if you’re not a humble person. I love team. I believe that our teams are going to end up with better decisions, better sermons, better everything that I could produce on my own. I genuinely believe that.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — So what place would pride have…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …in that world. Of course pride is something we all struggle with. I’m not my life isn’t absent of pride by any means.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — But if pride were to poke its head out in a meeting…
Rich Birch — Yep, yes.
Ted Coniaris — …we’re so team-centric and we have such incredible people on our staff team here, I think they’d be like all right big guy like why don’t you sit back down, you know?
Ted Coniaris — Like our culture, our culture will correct itself in that way.
Rich Birch — Yeah the culture would reject that. Yeah it would reject that, it would be like that’s not that’s not who we are.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s not who we are.
Ted Coniaris — No.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Like somebody trying to build a brand, things like that in our culture, it’s like yeah that doesn’t fly here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that doesn’t. Yeah that would be as an outsider that has been my experience with both Dave and John. Like I I bumped in while I was talking talking to both of them. We just you know were recording this the week after Exponential and bumped into both of them and Dave I’ve had a fair amount of interaction back and forth with. John I I really haven’t. And like he stops me in the hallway and is like, hey Rich, and like shakes my hand. And I was like, what? Like how do you know me? Like what is you know, what’s that connection? And you know he doesn’t need to go out of his way to like say hi, right? Like you don’t need to do that. Um, but, you know and obviously he’s got those guys got a million other things going on at a thing like that. Man, that’s that’s great.
Rich Birch — What about on the, you know, bad, missing, confusing? We’ll lump that all together, stuff that maybe like, hey early on here’s some stuff we’re working through um, you know, that you know, we’re we’re so taking a bit to adjust to as we’re you know as we’re going through the process?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah. I mean I’ll speak to that one personally.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — Because I think that’s been the hardest part honestly. We’re in a phase right now where I have been wearing a bunch of different hats, as often happens in a church context. I’m sure all of you listening right now, men and women working in the church…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …my hunch is that most of you wear multiple hats. Um, that’s how we operate too, being entrepreneurial as a community.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — We maybe wear more hats than what would be typical…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …in a different culture. And so I got I’m wearing a bunch of hats, and now I’m putting on more hats…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …and I’m not yet where I’m able to take off some of those hats.
Rich Birch —How many hats can I get? Yeah.
I look like one of those Carnival people selling hats, honestly, you know? Like I’ve got all the hats.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes here you go.
Ted Coniaris — And if you want a hat like come into a hat. like I’m gonna be dishing out hats.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — But um, that’s been the hardest part. I I’m in like what I think and hope will be the most um, strenuous time-wise…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …season of the transition in these middle sections of the apprenticeship process, which I anticipated would be the case.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — But I think I underestimated how I would feel in this time. And so for me, that’s the thing that is the hardest that I’m actively working on right now. And actually coming out of Exponential that was kind of a light bulb for me where I was like, okay, I’ve accepted this storyline that I need to do these things right now. What if I don’t? Like what if what if there are parts of what I’m doing that I I actually need to hand off sooner or we need to stop doing sooner than what we had planned. And so that’s that’s like the rough and gritty middle…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right.
Ted Coniaris — …of the process that I’m feeling right now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Ted Coniaris — Everything is wonderful, but it is not I am not operating at a sustainable pace at the moment.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And that’s something that I’m I’m peeling back and it will take some time, but I’m definitely committed to. And now I’m saying it to you and to whoever’s listening. So you guys feel free to send me an email say, hey Ted, did you actually follow through on that?
Rich Birch — Did you do that? Did you act?
Ted Coniaris — Like give me some accountability.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s great. Yeah, that’s that’s so good. What I yeah I can see that that makes sense. There’s like ah I think the idea of a pinch point here like we’re in a transition going across a bridge and it’s like hey you know things are going to be a little bit overwhelming. You know on the on the kind of personal human side, that is ah that could be a recipe for things to go sideways, right?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because it’s like hey things are busy. What are you doing anything different in this season to kind of stay connected, pace yourself to try to, you know, or is that what you’re identifying like I got to get more of that in my life. What are what are you doing to try to keep/tend to your soul in the midst of that kind of transition?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, great question. I mean I have a pretty robust kind of personal—ah I don’t know what you want to call it—infrastructure around me…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …or scaffolding around me…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …maybe is a better way to put it. And I think in this season of transition I’ve I’ve amped up some of the scaffolding…
Rich Birch — Yep
Ted Coniaris — …that I don’t think will be like permanent…
Rich Birch — Yep
Ted Coniaris — …for me moving forward, but it’s a helpful as I’m I’m building in this really crucial stage.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yep.
Ted Coniaris — So I mean I’ve got a group of other lead pastors that I like who are my dear friends that live in the area here. We’re friends on mission together. We can share anything and everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — That’s really really important. Another part of like creating a culture of humility that actually helps me in this is I will share this with my team. So I’m not hiding this from anybody.If somebody comes and asks me how I’m doing I’ll tell them this.
Ted Coniaris — The people who are reporting to me right now I say, hey I just want to apologize to you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — I feel like I haven’t been present as I need to be in as you need me to be in this season. And I’m wrestling in this in between to try to figure that out. So can you give me some grace in this as we’re moving forward because I might need a little bit more room than than we would we would want than either of us would want in any other circumstance.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — And so just putting it all above board, not trying to appear like I’ve got I’ve got all of it on my back and I have this is all perfect. You know it’s like things are going great like I do feel good. But I know I can’t keep this pace long term.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — So those some things. And then my mornings are really important to me. That’s my space before the kids wake up, you know, my wife and I have a pretty regimented morning. We get up real early. You know, exercise is a part of that. Our quiet time is a part of that. Our connection is a part of that, just for us. We have three young boys 14, 11, and 8.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — If we don’t do it then it’s just not gonna happen.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — So that’s that’s a big part of it.
Rich Birch — So good. You know, um in ah Warren Bird and William Vanderbloemen’s book Next, where they talk about pastoral succession, one of the things, there’s lots of great insights in there, um you know, but one of them that that struck me as like so practical but like ah ah, kind of um, a stumbling point in these successions is oftentimes the the lead pastor who is transitioning out, they don’t have anything to do once they transition out. They don’t have like…
Ted Coniaris — No yeah.
Rich Birch — And and part of what they coach there is like you they need to get a hobby. Like they need to they need to find, you know, they you know… Now, Dave this is not the problem that Dave, you know, has. This like you know I can’t keep…
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …he’s got a lot of hats, right?
Ted Coniaris — Yes. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like he’s got New Thing, Exponential has got a lot of different things going on. How are you guys thinking about the kind of how does the post transition, you know, your connection Community’s connection with New Thing, with Exponential, how does all that fit together?Because you know I think it’s I think there’s lots of opportunity and good there’s good things there. But you know, how how are you navigating the kind of local mission of Community to reach the Chicagoland area versus, you know, the church’s connection as a teaching hospital, frankly for lots of other, you know, other churches?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What’s that look like for you?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah. Wow. So those of you maybe not aware we talked a little bit about Exponential…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — …which is a community with a cause is how we describe it. It’s a collection of conferences, gatherings, equippings for church planters all around the world and Dave is the leader the principal leader of Exponential. There’s Exponential USA, Español, Europe…
Rich Birch — Yeah, Australia
Ted Coniaris — …Asia, you know, it’s all over the world. And then there’s also New Thing which is the church planting arm of Community Christian Church which is now it’s on separate entity and organization as of this last year. Which has last year planted over 8000 churches alone…
Rich Birch — It’s amazing. It’s amazing.
Ted Coniaris — …help catalyze planting 8000 churches in one year. I mean it’s incredible like what God is doing through these things…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …and Dave is also the principal visionary and leader of that. So yeah, he’s got a lot going on. And and in God’s timing here it’s really been a season where those things are what Dave can uniquely bring to the table in the season of his life and leadership as a bridge builder and as somebody who can get different leaders at the kingdom table to work for the kingdom good. Dave is uniquely gifted in that. It’s really like an anointing. There’s no collection of things that he has or does where you say, oh that’s how you do that. It’s more like just who God has made Dave to be and the vision that that he’s set before him.
Ted Coniaris — And so definitely as we go through this transition Dave, I think, is stepping into his season of greatest contribution and most significant kingdom impact. And not not one of lesser kingdom impact. It’s going to look different but I also believe that a part of what I’m stewarding here is as a community to accelerate those things as well. Maybe the best correlation to a model that people may be more familiar with if you’ve been around the church for a while is ah and some churches still do this and it’s a wonderful thing to do but you have like your missionary partners who maybe are in this part of the world. And then every once a while they come back to the church and they speak you know this is what’s happening in Ukraine, and here’s how we’re helping people in the community and what we’re doing. And and we’re financially supporting them. We’re prayerfully supporting them. And we try to send teams and we’re. We see like this is a part of what we’re doing as a church. It’s not just what this missionary is doing. It’s like we have that like in spades, right? It’s like we have this amazing missionary named Dave Ferguson and John Ferguson…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …and by the way these ministries have grown out of this church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — They are us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — And we’re planting churches all over the world and we want to be their number one financial supporter. We want to be their number one people supporter, their number one leadership capital supporter. Like like we are all in for this mission to see more and new people find their way back to God And and we still believe that the best way to do that is to plant new churches. And so Exponential and New Thing are our chief partners in that ministry and we’re deeply involved. I’m personally involved in those things.
Ted Coniaris — And so Dave’s role here at the church pragmatically he’ll step into a founding pastor role. And he’ll still be involved with me relationally. He’ll still be teaching around the church. But it’s almost like ah like a chief missionary…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and kind of like he and Sue, it’s like mom and dad.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — You know it’s like a real healthy relationship…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and a really beautiful thing honestly. And and there’s zero part of me that feels threatened to have Dave around, have him teaching. And there’s zero part of Dave it feels threatened by me – that one makes more sense, you know. But ah ah well…
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Ted Coniaris — But it’s just just works because we love and respect each other.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — And we’re both are cheering for the same things you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — So that’s kind of how we’re seeing it.
Rich Birch — Are are you thinking, so this is like super tactical kind of nitty gritty thing…
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and this might not be sorted out and so you’re like, I don’t know; come back and ask me in a year. But you know, post the Dave transition, is there any discussion publicly around um, you know, restructuring how the leadership team works, or is it going to be is it literally like a one for one. You’re going to plop into what you know, kind of all the functions he used to have, you’re going to plop into that. Or is there what you know is there any kind of spread of some of the stuff he did and again it might be too early for that conversation. I don’t know.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, I think we’ll see.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Ted Coniaris — The bigger thing is, you know, what is this new vision that God is calling us to in this next chapter.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — While there are parts that we’re deeply committed to and will not change…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — …like really significant parts of who we are like our mission and and our part of culture, there are new things that we’re going to be chasing. And so that structure, part of that will see what best serves as we move down that road towards this new vision.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — But there are some things that were we are already changing. So yeah, we’re restructuring our leadership team which actually starts next Tuesday on March 19.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Ted Coniaris — And so we’ve been working through that with our team. And and I’m sort of the impetus for that change…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …and Leanna Weber who’s a key member of our team here, like an executive pastor. She’s gonna be leading that new team. And so we’re we’re starting to implement some of the infrastructure…
Ted Coniaris — …that we’ll need through the season of transition with Dave’s affirmation but with my leadership.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And so that becomes I think the the best of both worlds.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …where you can use the influence and the leadership capital of the last thirty five years of faithfulness in Dave, but also the new vision and excitement for what’s yet to come.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — And Dave is fully on board with all of it where he’s like, as we talk about it’s like man, let’s just do it all right now!
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ted Coniaris — You know like this this is what I would want to do if I was here.
Rich Birch —Yeah yeah, great.
Ted Coniaris — Like he’s he’s as ah, excited as I am about it. And and that really is a gift.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well Ted, this has been just such a rich conversation. I’ve loved we’ve you know like I say it’s ah hopefully you know we could come back in ah in a bit and kind of hear the next part of the the the journey. But anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Ted Coniaris — Ah, no I think one thing you had mentioned earlier just kind of the who’s listening in here.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ted Coniaris — And I think there’s probably some lead pastors who are listening in…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …who are maybe considering like what might be next for you. And then there are probably a bunch of other people who are in second and third chairs who might be working with somebody. You know there’s transition talk. Um I’d like to say some to them and I’d like to say something to the younger group.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Ted Coniaris — So like the group that might be thinking, you’re nearing a transition…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ted Coniaris — …my encouragement to you is start talking to other church leaders right now.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — If you don’t feel like you can talk about it publicly, that’s fine. I totally understand the sensitivity of that conversation. But shoot me an email. Shoot somebody else an email. Like talk about how you can do this with wisdom.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Ted Coniaris — So it’s not just like ah you don’t have to do the model where you just drop out and somebody else drops in.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Ted Coniaris — Like you don’t have to do it that way. In fact, that might be the worst way…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yep.
Ted Coniaris — …for your church to transition. And you need to start talking to other people about how that can happen – somebody that you trust, people that you can trust if it’s not within the context of your existing church.
Ted Coniaris — And then what I would say to the younger crowd who are in some of those same seats who aren’t thinking about a transition yet, be thinking about how your culture sets up for a transition.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Ted Coniaris — Because if you are building something you want to last past you, you have to imagine what it will look like when you leave. And so if there are parts of your culture that are going to reject a transition, remove them from your culture, aggressively.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Ted Coniaris — Part of what makes this work so well is that I don’t think Dave was thinking about a transition. But he aligned our culture in such a way where a transition is received as a good thing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ted Coniaris — …and a healthy thing and actually something people expect, even though we never talked about it and Dave is a younger guy. It’s something that people weren’t they weren’t expecting it. But when we talked about it, when I came up and Dave and I and John talked about it with the church, everybody’s like oh yeah, that makes sense.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ted Coniaris — And it makes sense because of our culture, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, so good.
Ted Coniaris — It wasn’t like, oh my gosh! It’s you think it could happen with someone like Dave.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ted Coniaris — Our culture is receptive because it’s a multiplying culture. And so…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — …um, I would really really encourage the young leaders to be looking at their culture honestly through that lens…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Ted Coniaris — …because if it’s if it’s going to receive and grow past you, you know you got to you got to align the culture now because it takes time.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I know you know I’ve talked with a number of folks that are in those placement, you know, different placement companies, and I’ve heard I heard the term recently a crash landing crash landed succession, where there are these like it’s it it and I and it sounds exactly how it sounds, right? They they show up to the, you know, those organizations and it’s like we you know it’s like a board chair or something from a church and it’s like our lead guy just told us he’s leaving in six weeks. He’s been here for 35 years. We have no way to we we don’t know where to start. And I was like that is terrifying, like that that’s tough, man. And so um, what a great word. You know, particularly on that side for leaders to, you know, raise the banner and say like hey let’s talk about it. Let’s let’s let’s engage with it. That’s yeah, that’s really really good.
Ted Coniaris — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ted I really appreciate your generosity I appreciate your humility and and you know just jumping on the call and and talking through with us today. Really really appreciate that. If people want to connect with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online, where’s kind of the best place for that?
Ted Coniaris — Yeah, you can just check out my email tedconiaris@communitychristian.org you could send me email. That’s the best way to get a hold of me. And then communitychristian.org that’s our website you can check us out there. Connect anyway through there. But yeah feel free to shoot me an email, check out our website, check us out online, whatever you need. And we love to help churches and we love to help churches think about multiplication and planting, and you know multiplying discipleship. So if there’s any way that we can help you with that, not that we have all the answers, but we love talking about it, and helping, and you can join the community of us trying to figure that out.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Ted, appreciate being here today.
Ted Coniaris — Hey, thanks, Rich. Really appreciate it.
Attention Economy: Understanding Its Impact On Your Church’s Mission
Apr 10, 2024
In our rapidly evolving digital landscape, the concept of the attention economy has become increasingly relevant, especially for churches seeking to navigate this new terrain effectively. At its core, the attention economy is about the commodification of human attention, where businesses and organizations vie for our focus amidst an overwhelming sea of information. This shift presents unique challenges and opportunities for churches committed to growth and engagement. We delve into the implications of the attention economy for your church’s mission and outline strategies for thriving within it.
The Shift to the Attention Economy
Historically, economies have evolved from agricultural to industrial and, more recently, to digital. Today, we find ourselves in the attention economy, where the scarce commodity is not goods or services but the attention of humans. This paradigm shift is driven by the fact that in a world saturated with information, capturing and maintaining attention translates to influence and, ultimately, value creation.
Why It Matters for Your Church
For churches, the attention economy underscores a vital reality: the competition for your congregation’s attention extends far beyond the walls of your church. With entities like YouTube and social media platforms shaping the beliefs and behaviors of many, understanding and engaging with this economy is crucial for churches that aim to grow and influence effectively.
Increase Communication Cadence
In an era dominated by the attention economy, the frequency and relevance of your communication play a pivotal role in keeping your church’s message in the forefront of your congregation’s mind. Here’s how to enhance your communication strategy:
Embrace Regular, Targeted Communication: Develop a consistent schedule for reaching out to your congregation. This involves not just the quantity but the quality and relevance of the communications. Each message should serve to connect, inform, or inspire, ensuring that your church remains a constant presence in their lives.
Utilize Bite-Sized Content: Attention spans are shorter than ever, making it essential to convey your message in concise, engaging snippets. Break down complex ideas into smaller, more digestible pieces of content that can be easily consumed and shared. This approach helps to maintain interest and engagement over time.
Think About Deeper Personalization
Personalization is key in making each member of your congregation feel seen, understood, and valued. Here’s how to leverage personalization within your church’s communication efforts:
Leverage Influencers Within Your Community: Identify and engage with individuals who have a natural influence within your congregation. These individuals can help amplify your message through their networks. Personalized outreach to these influencers can lead to more authentic and widespread engagement across your community.
Engage in Two-Way Conversations: Shift from seeing digital platforms as mere broadcasting tools to engaging communities where real conversations happen. Respond to comments, initiate discussions, and encourage your congregation to interact with your content. This level of engagement fosters a deeper sense of community and connection.
Customize Your Messaging: Tailor your communications to address the specific interests, needs, and concerns of different segments within your congregation. This could mean developing specific content for parents, youth, new members, or those interested in missions. Personalized content shows your congregation that you understand and care about their unique journeys of faith.
By focusing on Increasing Communication Cadence and Thinking About Deeper Personalization, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by the attention economy. These strategies not only help to keep your church relevant in the digital age but also deepen the connection with your congregation, driving engagement and growth.
Navigating Forward
The attention economy isn’t just a challenge; it’s an opportunity for churches to rethink engagement and mission in the digital age. By increasing communication cadence, embracing bite-sized content, leveraging personalization, and fostering community engagement, churches can navigate this new economy with purpose and impact.
The journey through the attention economy is complex, but it offers a rich landscape for churches to connect with their congregations and communities in meaningful ways. As we adapt and innovate, the potential to deepen our mission and extend our reach is boundless. Let’s embrace this journey together, leveraging the attention economy to further the Kingdom in this digital age.
Episode Transcript
Well, happy Wednesday, everybody. It’s Rich Birch here from the Unseminary Podcast. Today, we’re talking about the attention economy. What is it and what difference does it make to your church? But before we get there, a little programming announcement.
So, if you’ve been following along, you might have noticed we’ve been doing these experimenting really with these Wednesday episodes. These are solo episodes, less than 20 minutes long. The goal is to provide you some actionable training. These will be the kind of thing that you can apply right away. And we’ll continue on Thursdays with our traditional episodes where we interview church leaders.
If you don’t know, we’re pushing 800 episodes over there. And our goal with our Thursday episodes is we really get you face-to-face with operational leaders in prevailing churches. So, the folks that we interview on Thursday are leading in fast-growing churches, churches that are making a difference. And I wanna get you face-to-face with them to really learn what’s happening in them.
Friends, I’m on a mission. My personal mission is just to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. And so, we wanna continue to provide excellent resources. That’s blog posts, and podcasts, and digital magazines, and emails, emails all the time. And we have all kinds of other resources including courses, and I just tell you, we’re actually doing church-based coaching. All of these things put together really to try to get in your corner and say, hey, how can we help your church grow? And so, we’re gonna move this from being a spreader and say, hey, we’re gonna go for the foreseeable future here on Wednesday with a solo episode. And today we’re on the attention economy.
What is it, and what difference does it make to your church? So, the attention economy, this is the economy we’re finding when we find ourselves where we are today. At one point, our culture was an agricultural culture for probably 1,500, and really what we were trying to do there was extract resources out of the ground. We were trying to convert through the cycles of seasons, make food that we could sell to other people. That shifted in the 16th and 18th century to a mercantile economy where really global trade was a big deal. It was about moving that agriculture around the world, moving spices around the world. Then in the 18th century, man, there was a huge shift to an industrial, through the Industrial Revolution to an industrial economy where that’s where we really had the development of the urban centers that we see all over the world as we really built up industrial development at scale, the power of steam, the power of coal, converting energy ultimately into resources that could be sold and traded around the world. Well, then in the late 20th century, things converted one more time to the digital economy.
You know, this is really the information economy. But then more recently, really what’s happened is we’ve shifted to what has been called the attention economy. And what is the attention economy, you ask? It’s where your and my attention, human attention is treated like a scarce and valuable commodity with businesses really ultimately competing to capture and hold our attention and ultimately turning around and converting that into revenue or ultimately, you know, value and wealth long-term. It really highlights the nature of attention that the idea that, you know, at the end of the day, information and media is at the core, but really what we’re trading, what our economy is based on in so many ways is this idea of holding people’s attention.
If you look at this, there’s this group of stocks called the Magnificent Seven, so Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, the folks behind Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, and Tesla these seven stocks represent the vast majority of growth in the world economy. In fact, actually those seven stocks are worth more than, you know, something like, you know, 50% of the global GDP. These people are worth a ton. Now, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple, and probably Microsoft to some extent. So at least four or five of those Magnificent Seven are based on this idea of holding our attention and holding your people’s attention. We have a valuable resource when people come to our events on the weekend, when they log into our websites, when they subscribe to our social feeds, that has actual value. And the difference of where things were even 10 years ago or 20 years ago is that there are companies that are competing for our people’s attention. You know, you’ve seen this happen.
If you’ve bumped into people in your church where you feel like, man, these people feel like they’ve been discipled more by YouTube than by our church or by the Bible. This is an outcome of the attention economy. YouTube has figured out how to capture the attention of your people to hold it, and then ultimately steer it towards a certain kind of outcome. You know, we’ve seen positive outcomes from this. In fact, just last week, we talked about an Easter 2024 study where we looked at churches that were inviting people to come to Easter. And one of the questions we asked is, how many different ways did you ask your people or did you kind of motivate, train, equip, and motivate your people to invite? And what we saw was those churches that did more than seven different things, seven distinct ways to encourage their people to invite saw a 53% bump over the average in Easter attendance.
Why is this? Well, friends, I would say it’s because of the attention economy. The churches that realize, hey, we’ve got to get in front of our people, stay in front of them, are seeing great results. They’re seeing an outcome in their people. In that case, it was a bump in Easter attendance. You know, we see this show up in lots of different places.
One of the things that often we end up talking about in our coaching is the fact that there are vast, there are way more guests that show up to growing churches that ultimately stick and stay. Did you know this? So sometimes I think we think, well, you know, for every guest, we must see a large percent of those people stay. That’s actually not true. In fact, stuck in stagnant churches will see only one in 10 people of their first-time guests actually stick into their church. Growing churches see two in 10, and thriving churches, the most fast-growing churches in the country see three in 10 guests stick and stay. So for every hundred guests, they’ll only see 30% of those actually stick and stay. But you know what we’ve seen over time, the difference between those churches that see guests stick and stay and those that don’t, is the churches that see guests stick and stay, they communicate a whole lot more than those churches that don’t see guests stick and stay.
In fact, we’ve talked in other contexts that, you know, in that when a guest arrives, fills out that new year card, lets you know, hey, I’ve been a part of that. A best practice is to communicate with them seven times in the first 11 days. And you know how many times I’ve said that to church leaders and they’re like, wow, that’s crazy, that’s too much.
In fact, actually just this week, I was talking to a leader and they said the same thing seven times in 11 days. And then we rattle off a bunch of examples. It’s a handwritten card from people at your new here kiosk. It’s a video that afternoon. In fact, did you know one of the largest churches in the country, if you were to go visit it this weekend, if you were to fill out their new here card, you’re going to get a personalized video greeting from a campus pastor at that church. Literally every week, they send out thousands of these videos, they’ve prioritized this.
Why? Because they know that we live in an attention economy. We’ve got to get in front of people. You know, it’s also like midweek emails. It’s maybe sending them some sort of piece of mail. Maybe it’s even just like baking cookies and driving them and putting them on their doorstep. We’ve got to arrest that attention. People have taken a step towards us. We need to take a step towards them.
Listen, Sundays used to be about the big event. Our discipleship used to be about just getting people to show up on Sundays. It used to be just about enough to get them to come for an hour. But really what we’re seeing is prevailing churches now understand that discipleship is much more of a flow. It’s much more about, hey, how do we keep in front of our people consistently throughout of the week?
So the attention economy, you live in it and I live in it. I know, listen, you probably feel some tension around this. You probably feel like, gosh, I wish we didn’t have to communicate so much. I wish we didn’t have organizations vying for our people’s attention. The reality of it is we do. And so we’ve got to make some changes to the way we operate.
So I’ve got two main takeaways for you today that I want you to think about because of the fact that you and I live in an attention economy. The first is you’ve got to increase your communication cadence. You’ve got to increase your communication cadence. What do I mean by that? You’ve got to communicate more. So if you’re a team leader today, let’s say you’re a staff member. Let’s say your church is a thousand people and you’re in student ministry or you’re in small groups ministry. Stop asking to get in front of the announcements on Sunday. Stop thinking, hey, if I just can get in the announcements or if I can just get our lead pastor to say something from the stage to do some sort of broadcast, what you need to be thinking about is, hey, how can I develop a list of my constituents? So these are the people that are connected to my ministry. How do I develop an email list, a texting list? And then what I should be doing is finding ways to communicate more with those people.
Listen, I can guarantee your lead pastor, your XP or whatever, if you’d say to them, hey, I want to reach out to my people on a regular basis. I don’t need to get out in front on a Sunday every week to talk about what’s coming up. They’re gonna cheer for you. So communicate more. Don’t think about just, if I can just get something in the big announcement on the weekend. No, you’ve got to arrest that from your people and figure out how do you get in front of them.
Think bite-sized. When you think about communication pieces, the reality of it is people live with less attention that we’ve had before. It’s been bite-sized. It’s been atomized. It’s been carved up into small little bits and pieces. We’ve seen this with video. A long video now is considered anything over 90 seconds online, which is crazy to me. People just frankly have less attention than they used to have. So when you’re thinking about increasing your communication cadence, a kind of corollary to that or an impact of that is you’ve got to break things down into small bite-sized chunks. So rather than saying, hey, I can send one brochure home as a student pastor about the upcoming retreat, I’ve got to think about, hey, what are the five different communication pieces I need to send to parents over the next month to keep reminding them about the upcoming retreat, keep keeping in front of them about what their kids can expect, keep talking to them about what is going to happen at the retreat. Think bite-sized so that you can increase your communication cadence.
The second takeaway for you is I would be thinking about deeper personalization. Think about deeper personalization because of the attention economy. The one thing when I think about deeper personalization, think about your church today. And the broader kind of attention economy has figured out that there are influencers out there. There are people in the broader economy who have social influence. And now I know you think about influencer as like the cool guy who sits on the hood of the car and says, hey, you should buy this product or whatever. But really all influencers are are people who are looked at by a certain group of a social group and are saying, hey, I wanna follow what those people do. And you know what? Your church has a series of influencers. Now, those influencers are different than your organizational structure. There are people that have influence in your church that don’t necessarily have any authority. In fact, there may be people that have more influence than the staff or pastors in your church that have authority. And so I would be thinking about who are the influencers? And then how can I reach out to them and get them to help us talk about whatever it is that we wanna talk about as a church? How could we be reaching out to influencers and ultimately asking them to help us spread the message and doing that in a personalized way? If I was trying to spread, say an upcoming event, maybe I would think about who are the five parents among sticking with the youth example, who are the five parents who seem to have a lot of social influence? Hey, why don’t I reach out to them, give them some content, ask them if they would be willing to spread it. Just this week, we saw this happen at our church. There’s a really sad story happening of, there’s a young man in our church with a young dad who’s got kids and he’s struggling with cancer. And on Sunday, a group fired up a Facebook chat and invited a bunch of people and said, hey, we’re gonna gather a prayer event the next day, literally 24 hours later. And the next day, 150 people showed up at these folks’ house. I know that there are, and it was an amazing night, a little bit of worship, a little bit of prayer. It was a lot of fun. The interesting thing that I took away from that, beyond the fact that the local church, when done well, is an unstoppable force for good. Can I get an amen from the people in the back? Outside of that, one of my takeaways from a communication point of view was, man, how many church leaders would be thinking, man, I wish I could get 150 people in a room to pray about anything, but here was a group who informally, it was not because of something that we did as a church, which I think is a fantastic thing, said, hey, we’re gonna take it on ourselves and they’re influencers in our culture. Take note of that, friends. Who are the people who pull that kind of thing together? How could you have deeper personalization by leveraging influencers? Okay, I’ve beat that dead horse. You don’t need to think about that anymore. Another thing when I think about deeper personalization is engagement, think about engagement over broadcast. So this is low-hanging fruit for me. This is something I don’t do well, and I’m saying this publicly because I wanna do it well. In the attention economy, people who thrive, firms who thrive, organizations who thrive, think about engagement over broadcast. Stop thinking about your social media feeds as a broadcast, an industrial broadcast. Like, so what used to happen in the industrial age is stuff was made at plants and sent all over the world. Cars were made in Detroit and sent all over the world. And we think about communications in the same way. Things were broadcast from New York City to all across the country. And you can think about yourself, if you don’t think clearly, you can still think of yourself in the industrial age. We’re not in the industrial age anymore. In the engagement age or in the attention age, engagement is paramount. And so when people comment on your feeds, when they comment on a social media feed, when they send you a message on WhatsApp, when they send you a message on Facebook, what are you doing to respond to those? Those organizations that understand the attention economy are responding to folks online. They’re liking comments, they’re saying amen. They’re working to respond with those. Recently, I did a quick study on this, informal study where I commented to about a dozen churches. And it was fascinating how long it took some churches to respond to those comments. The same is not true with prevailing organizations in the attention economy. If you see organizations that, you know, you go on a MrBeast YouTuber, if you comment on his social feed, watch how fast someone will respond to you. Look at an influencer who’s trying to build their influence. Look how quickly they get back to you. And why is that? That’s deep personalization. There’s something that happens inside of people during the engagement economy when you respond to them online at a personal level. So there it is, friends, the attention economy. What is it and what differences does it make to your church? Two outcomes are increase your communication cadence and think about deeper personalization. Thanks for being a part of Unseminary. Super excited for tomorrow’s interview. You’re gonna wanna pay attention because we’ve got a great interview coming up tomorrow. And we’ll see you next week with more practical training on Wednesday. Take care, friends.
Redemptive Poverty Work: Transforming Urban Communities Through Faith with Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders
Apr 04, 2024
Thank you for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to have Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders from World Impact with us. This organization comes alongside church leaders and offers training and support designed for the urban context.
The American Church has devalued the urban space, either fearing it or viewing it as something to avoid. Church leaders in urban neighborhoods struggle to sustain ministry impact and growth because they don’t have the training needed to build healthy churches in communities of diversity and poverty. Tune in as Dr. Sanders offers resources to help with the critical work of supporting urban church leaders and communities grappling with poverty.
What is urban? // The sociological definition of “urban” involves the three D’s: the diversity of the people, density with more people in smaller spaces, and distance, meaning how we view time and space. Condense all three of those things together and it creates the specific view of the world you live in. The codified evangelical definition of “urban” is black, brown, poor. However, that’s not necessarily what urban is. Whether you understand what urban really is or not, or live in an urban area, it still affects your world and your church.
Cities spread influence. // In the New Testament Paul planted churches in the major cities because he knew the gospel message would trickle into the countryside from these cultural epicenters. Cities influence everything and so we need to pay attention to urban trends there. If we want to know what suburban and rural ministry is going to look like 10 or 15 years from now, we need to look at what the urban pastors are dealing with today. We will have to engage those cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs and build theologies and do practical ministry around them.
Reach out to impoverished neighborhoods. // Poverty isn’t only in urban centers, it’s in suburban and rural contexts too. When churches want to help make the lives of the impoverished better, they need to move into the neighborhood. This is where World Impact steps in to help and equip churches to engage in redemptive poverty work.
Redemptive poverty work. // There are three ways we work in the world. The exploitative way produces work that often does more harm than good, even if it’s well intentioned. The ethical way is focused on the relationship between the person who’s wanting to bring the help and the recipients, and there’s often an exchange of material goods. However, impoverished people have a need that goes beyond material assistance. Just like churched people, they are hungry for relationship and belonging. This is where the concept of redemptive poverty work comes into play—a holistic approach that seeks to address both the spiritual and physical needs of individuals.
Learn what their needs are. // It’s important to know who you’re dealing with in poverty in the United States. The majority of people in poverty are working, with the biggest segment being the single mother with kids. Their jobs simply don’t provide enough to cover their situation. Find out the actual needs of a neighborhood, as well as its assets and potential, with the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University in Chicago. Their website provides resources and tools that will aid in doing an asset mapping of a neighborhood in order to see what the needs and strengths are.
Additional resources. // Dr. Sanders wrote a booklet called Redemptive Poverty Work which gives an overview of healthy poverty work. His other book, Uncommon Church, talks more deeply about issues in urban spaces and community transformation for the common good. Both are available on Amazon.
Take responsibility. // As Christians and church leaders, we have a responsibility to care for the poor. This is not just a social mandate but a theological one. When Jesus talks about the poor always being with us he’s making reference to Deuteronomy 15, which outlines how to care for people in poverty. Caring for the poor is truly a mark of the gospel.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today is no exception. Super excited to have and Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders with us today. He’s with an organization called World Impact. You know, many leaders struggle to sustain ministry impact and growth in urban neighborhoods because they don’t know ah because they don’t have the training that they need. World Impact comes alongside church leaders and offers training, support, designed for the urban context. They empower leaders to build healthy churches in communities of diversity and poverty. When urban church leaders are empowered to own their own ministries, individuals, families, and neighborhoods – they flourish because of that. So we’re super honored to have you on the show today, Dr. Sanders. Welcome – so glad you’re here.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be great. I we I was saying we just bumped into each other or each other’s organizations last week at at Exponential, and so glad to get to face-to-face. Fill out the picture; tell us a little bit more about World Impact. Help us understand ah the work that you do.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, so World Impact started in 1971 and it’s been several things over the over the different decades. But for this iteration of World Impact we focus on the problem that 95% of the world’s pastors have no formal ministry training. Ah, they minister in typically communities experiencing poverty. Smaller congregations, about 50 or so folk, and budgets of under $50,000. So we try to be a solution for them by providing accessible, affordable, and effective ministry training. Because we have a we have a ah theory of change that says that trained urban pastors and congregations lead to healthy urban churches which leads to community engagement which leads to flourishing neighborhoods.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — We focus on. um large metropolitan cities within the United States because we believe if you reach the cities of United States, you reach the world.
Rich Birch — So true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So for instance, if we train in Dallas we know without us lifting a finger that training is going to go to Mexico and it’s going to go to Central America. And as that training goes there. We support the grassroots leaders to take it.
Rich Birch — Um, love it. Dude, that’s so good. I love um, you know, there’s a lot to unpack there. But I I’m really looking forward to hearing more and learning. And I think, you know, if I can be completely honest, I think this is an area that there’s lots of folks that are leaning in. And are saying yeah you know I don’t feel equipped. I don’t I feel like we might be engaging with ah you know some urban leaders, some folks in in context that are maybe struggling with poverty, and we might not be engaging in a way that’s ultimately helpful. And so I want to hear from you around, you know, if you think about the church leaders that are listening in, help us frame this ah issue, help us understand um how we should be thinking about helping churches in these contexts or helping leaders in this in these contexts.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes, so I think it’s always great to start with understanding what we mean by the word urban.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So I’m gonna talk you a little bit first the sociological definition. Then I’m gonna give you the codified evangelical definition. All right? So, the sociological definition is ah three D’s, right? So when we’re talking about our urban space, we’re talking about the diversity of the people. So most cities ought, well not most, all cities you’re going to find different flavors of folk…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …different races, different social classes, so forth and so on. The other D is density. There’s gonna be a lot of people packed into smaller geographic spaces. So that also affects how we view things and how we interact and live our lives. And then the third D is distance meaning how we view time and space. So for instance, World Impact is ah headquartered in Los Angeles.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — When you and I but I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. So when you ask somebody in Cincinnati, you know, how far is it to point a to point b they’re gonna say, oh 20 minutes. If you ask somebody in Los Angeles, how far is it from point a to b, you’re going to say, with traffic…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —…then they’re going to tell you, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —So you you condense all these three things together and creates this specific type of way of how we view the world we live in. Now the codified evangelical definition of urban is black, brown, poor. When the typical evangelical says, oh I live in a urban space, that’s kind of what they’re talking about.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —Um which it but that’s not necessarily what urban is.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But the but the big thing that that the typical Christian needs to understand is that whether you embrace it or understand it or not, the urban space affects your world.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Doesn’t matter if you live in the suburbs. Don’t matter if you live in the cornfields. it affects your world. There’s a saying that um when when the city sneezes the suburbs and rural areas catch a cold.
Rich Birch — No, it’s true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Because, yeah, what happens in the city affects your church regardless of where it’s at, and affects your your your people in your congregations. If you want to know what suburban and rural ministry is going to look like 10, 15 years from now, look at what the urban pastors are dealing with today.
Rich Birch — Love that. I, you know, I I um I’m years ago twenty years ago I remember hearing a mentor of mine talk about this exact issue issue. And he said you know culture emanates from the urban to suburban, and from the west coast to the wast coast. And so you know if you’re looking for, and I don’t know is that true? That that resonated as true. I think all the centers that you’re talking about are cultural epicenters. They’re, you know, the the kind of places where culture emanates from. And so obviously we want to be thinking about them um and really leading in those environments to help under you know to help ultimately inject Jesus into the middle of that. Dig a little bit deeper on that. Help us understand more why it’s important for us to think carefully about those 3 D’s, particularly when it comes to urban ministry.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, well I mean first off if we if we look at the scriptures, it wasn’t a coincidence that Paul and his missionary journeys planted churches…
Rich Birch — In cities.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …in urban mega-cities, metros. Because Paul knew that if the gospel could take root in these major routes of trade, these major cities of influence, the gospel would trickle out to the countryside. I think one of the travesties of the American Church is that it has devalued the urban space criminally. Because of the codification…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …of well, that’s black and brown poor folk. And unfortunately, you know, in the capitalized society that cap or the capitalism society, I should say, we live in unfortunately those who who have not in terms of finances aren’t looked upon to be leaders in that space.
Rich Birch — Okay, you’re being you’re being too nice there. I feel like you’re being too nice. You’re talking about devaluing. Unpack that more. What what what do you mean by that? You know, stop using polite language. You know, but or leaders here. Help us understand this.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah well well yeah well I mean it’s that polite. Is just it’s what’s happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s it’s it’s what happens.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Well, ah, you know, when you know when I graduated from seminary…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …Um I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Um, you know, most of the graduates that I graduated with or whatever, they weren’t looking to do anything in the urban space. I was one of the few that was looking to do things in the urban space.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Um, and I’m talking about the school as a whole. Now I actually went through a specialized urban ministry training program. And all of us were urban folk. But every now and then we would have to matriculate to the main campus. Um, but the but the reality was most folk just didn’t think in they did not it. It gets caught up in um, a lot of the social and cultural and political things nowadays. But the reality is if you if you look at things such as sociological phenomena, such as white flight, like when when folk ah from from um who are from the white the brothers of the lighter hue, I like to say. How’s that for polite?
Rich Birch — I like that. I like that.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Brothers brothers and sisters of the lighter hue um…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …fled to the suburbs.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But there’s also been black flight and there’s also been brown flight. So suburbs have just naturally, it’s just naturally assumed that the suburban location is more valuable and that’s where you want to be.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But the funny thing is, that’s not what influences the world.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — The suburbs do not influence the world.
Rich Birch — No, true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I mean we’re talking about I’m ah um, a I’m 54. I’m a child of classic hip hop, right? Hip hop turned fifty this year. It’s one of the largest musical forms ever invented…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …in terms of influence. It started in the ghettos of the Bronx.
Rich Birch — Right, right. You mean that didn’t come from Orange County, California. It didn’t come from… of course not, of course not.es.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So it did not. It did not. Those orange county those orange county kids were emulating…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …the values, attitudes, beliefs expressed through the idiom of hip hop music…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …that came straight from the city.
Rich Birch — Yep, absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — but the reality is the City influences everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And folk folk have been conditioned to be scared of the city. Or it’s a bad thing to be in the city. Now that trend is reversing through ah a word I’ll use a word called gentrification. And gentrification is essentially taking these urban core neighborhoods and they’re being repurposed and they’re being invested in heavily. So an old factory for instance, becomes loss to live in.
Rich Birch — Yep, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So that’s all the latest craze. That’s all the latest trend. And so now folk of the lighter hue are now moving back in, and other folk are moving back in. So so that’s good and bad. We won’t get in all that. But um but but the whole point is this – that’s what I mean by undervalue. Regardless of where you minister at…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …you need to pay attention to urban trends and what’s happening because that’s the values, attitudes, and beliefs of culture that you’re going to have to engage.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — You’re going to have to build theologies around. You’re going to have to figure out how to do practical ministry around.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So that’s what I mean by undervalued.
Rich Birch — Well yeah, and I’ve said in other contexts, every zip code in the country is more diverse now than it was ten years ago and will be more diverse ten years from now than it is um today.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Exactly right.
Rich Birch — And and um, which is a wonderful thing. Like that’s um, yeah, that’s ah, that’s a very good thing. And but I do feel like we’re oftentimes I remember when so I was thinking about school when you mentioned it. I I help on a lot of church growth stuff. And I only I had like one class in a whole course on church growth. And it was on the homogeneous unit approach to to church growth.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Oh yeah – HUP.
Rich Birch — Which is a terrible idea. like and is like is like an anti-Jesus idea. But it was like it that was the only thing I learned about church growth, was like go find a whole bunch of people, and ironically it was go find a whole bunch of rich, white people that was, although that was never said, that was what I was kind of the undercurrent of that idea. Um, so when you think about helping church leaders, whether they’re in a suburban, urban, rural context, to understand how to work in the urban urban communities or to support how, how does World Impact fit into that equation? What what are you guys doing on that front?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So we we focus on, we have a particular for philosophy um of how it undergoes all of our programmings. And we focus specifically though on churches that are ministering in communities experiencing poverty.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And you will find poverty, it’s, you know, it’s not only in urban centers.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It is in suburban context. It is in rural context. So we can help churches who have a desire to want to to make people’s lives ah better, and and sort of have um what I would say Jesus move into the into the neighborhood, so to speak. You know, John 1:14 the Message translation the bible says “the word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood”.
Rich Birch — Love that. Yeah, that’s so good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I love that phrasing because I believe that’s what a church is supposed to do for its neighborhood and its community. It’s supposed to move into the neighborhood. So then how does the church, Christians, move into the neighborhood, so to speak, when the neighborhood is impoverished. That’s World Impact’s forté and specialty.
Rich Birch — So what does that? What does that look like? I think how how are you helping the church do that, empowering the church to to move into ah, into into a neighborhood, when when they’re you know it’s a community that’s experiencing poverty?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah. So I think um, it’s good to for folk to be reflective here of how we sort of work in the world. And I got this thing called the redemptive frame from a group called Praxis which talks about three ways that we work in the world. And then I could talk specifically about how that applies to redemptive poverty work.
Rich Birch — Sure Yeah, that’s great.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So one way is we work in the world as a human, and when I say we I’m talking about as human beings. There’s an exploitative way that we work…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …in the world. The exploitative way produces work that often does more harm than good. It it may be well intentioned, but it fails to properly understand the complexity of poverty, and consciously or subconsciously we put our own motives above the long term impact on people that we may be having. So I’ve never heard a Christian say I want to go and I want to exploit people in poverty. I’ve never heard him by say that, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — That’s my goal. I want to exploit them.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Now there are other entities and institutions that exploit folk. But from…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that would say that.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, but from the Christian perspective, everybody wants to be a do-gooder. They want to do the best they can and they want to change the people’s world around them. But the reality is we are sinful human beings and there’s nothing we need to do to be exploiters. And unless we intentionally look at the track and how we’re going to engage folk, we’re going to exploit them.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So for instance, most people would want to… when I was pastoring and I used to be an inner city pastor and Cincinnati and like um, from like Thanksgiving to Christmas, all the suburban churches would call me. They want to do stuff. They want to serve Thanksgiving dinner. They want to do this. They want to do that. And um, the rest of the months nobody hear from nobody, and hear from anybody.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And it’s like, that’s kind of a form of exploitation because you’re coming down here because you want to serve somebody dinner. You…
Rich Birch — Yeah, you want the good feelings of feeling of serving. Yeah, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Exactly right. You want to give a gift, and things of that nature. And when I would say well, you know what? we don’t really need another Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t really need toys. What we need is, boy, if you send an army of people to help tutor the kids in this local elementary school that um that we’re working with, that’d be awesome.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders —You know stuff like that. Things that were gonna make real life change. So, exploitative is the one way that we work in the world. But another way that we work in the world is if if we’ve evolved to a better place, it’s a ethical way. And when we have them ethical mindset it’s a step in the right direction. It’s focused on the relationship between the person who’s wanting you to bring the help, and the recipients, whenever possible. I mean in this mindset it’s not it’s no longer about us. But it’s our desire to do good, and it’s like a win-win situation. So you’re not coming in, you may come in from a um and in a in a different power dynamic in terms of I’m coming in. I have resources, I’m going to give you resources. But at the very least you want to see ah the people in the neighborhoods do better, and you acknowledge the agency of the people in a neighborhood…
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …to contribute to their own ah wellbeing and well good to break the cycle of of generational poverty. And the ethical mindset is a awesome mindset. It is the way that we want everyone to operate. You don’t necessarily have to be Christian to operate with a ethical mindset.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — You know the ethical mindset example is this is the the the church that ah sets up a food pantry, right? There are people who are hungry. Ah, we want those people to eat. So we’re going to help folk who don’t have enough to eat. And we’re going to give them food. And we’re going to give them food ah based on the fact that that’s a need. Ah, it’s It’s typically along the lines of some sort of temporary relief in exchange of material goods. And there’s necessarily there’s not any necessarily anything wrong with that. Um, the problem is that the majority of people who are living in poverty are not people who need relief though. That’s not their main need. Their main need is relationship.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — We just did a a study with Barna Group called Inside the Urban Church and the most fascinating thing around that study was that both the churched and the unchurched folks said they’d look to the church to do the same thing, and that was, “I’m lonely; help me belong to something.”
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So it wasn’t the things that we thought. You know was it, Oh they hey appreciate the food pantry. They appreciate all the other stuff, but they said the unchurched are literally saying, if you want to help me, help me be less lonely, right?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Which leads to what what we believe at World Impact of what we try to help and why we focus on the local church so much is that is redemptive poverty work. Because redemptive poverty work is focusing on the life pattern of Jesus Christ which was um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …creative restoration through life sacrifice. So Jesus says, I sacrifice, we win. Regardless of how you respond to me I’m going to come in. I’m going to do life on life ministry. I’m going to help you navigate this thing called life as best I possibly can. And I’m going to help you come to a better place. And hopefully by me doing that, I have earned the right to share the gospel with you.
Rich Birch — So good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I have earned the right to disciple you.
Rich Birch — So good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So so so relationally speaking in terms of doing that type of poverty work, that’s where you’re going to make a significant change. It’s the mentoring or the coaching of a kid for 5, 10 years, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s the um helping ah start and a nonprofit or an organization that is going to help people become more job ready. It’s it’s basically things that are relationship-based and long-term that’s sort of the redemptive thought of doing poverty work.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Love it. Well and that’s a, well first of all I love that framework. What a helpful framework work of exploitative, ethical, and redemptive. Man, there’s a lot there. But I that’s um thanks for doing the work of even just helping us kind of understand that piece that together, you know there’s a there’s a shorthand thing I’m picking up there. Like if, man, if my church is engaged in working with a church um or with another group in a situation of poverty, whether that’s you know in an urban center or around the world, and there’s not a relationship there… it’s it’s like I’m just showing up and dumping resources dumping people. It’s the stereotypical you know like we send kids on a missions trip to Guatemala to like build some house that they’re not looking for. And take away local employment. Like it’s that kind of thing.
Rich Birch — If we’re, if what I hear you saying is, man, if there isn’t someone ah in this leadership pipeline of how you’re developing this relationship that’s sitting down with other people to actually ask, hey, how can we work together. What can we do? How do we how do we um, How do we develop an actual relationship rather than ah, you know, um, an exploitative um one-sided thing. Man, then that’s ah, that’s a telltale sign that things are maybe going in, you know, incorrectly.
Rich Birch — How can we as church leaders build those relationships? What’s that look like? How do we how do we engage… like let’s say we’re a church that’s like we want to do more in this area. We we are self-assessed. We’re not doing a good job on this. We’re we’re too much in the suburbs or maybe we’re an urban church and we’re not engaging in it with poor folks that are, you know, we hire police to move poor people off our front porch. That’s all we do. That’s how we engage with poor people. We don’t want to do that anymore. We want to figure out a way to actually do this well. What would be some of those steps? How could we move through ethical and then ultimately to redemptive?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes, so um, I’ll give some context and then I’m going to give a resource.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So um, the thing to understand about poverty within the United States is that most of those who are in poverty are working.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Most people when they think about folk in poverty, they think it’s the homeless person on the street. That’s just a segment.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Most of the the face of poverty in America is a single mother who has a service industry job.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s the maid at the hotel.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s the it’s the it’s the Burger King worker. I used to say instead of Soccer Moms, it’s Burger King Moms. They’re working at Burger King.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But their their work that’s the the largest segment is a single mother with kids. And they’re doing the best that they can, but the job that they’re working at just does not give them enough money to cover their situation. So the first thing is to understand who we’re actually dealing with if we’re talking about those in poverty within the United States. Most of the services that are set up for folk in poverty within the United States, it’s it’s kind of ironic in that like if you’re like here in Cincinnati, like if you’re homeless, there’s more services for you…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …than if you like have a job and just can’t make ends meet.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So you’re missing the whole entire major segment of the population that actually needs your help. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So so how do we find out their needs? There’s this great tool called um, and it’s easy to understand – it’s abcd. It’s called asset-based community development. There’s a ABCD Institute at a DePaul University in Chicago. And they have a whole gamut of resources that you can utilize in order to what they call do a asset mapping of your of your neighborhood…
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …to see where the the needs are of the neighborhood. I actually did ah a my my thesis coming out of Trinity was how to use asset based community development to plant a church. And that’s what I actually did. I I studied it. I studied the philosophy. I asked it I ah sort of charted out the neighborhood.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I seen what the neighborhood needed. And then I started working and volunteering at a place that was filling that need. And then out of that, after after winning people to the Lord, this, that and the other, I built the actual church.
Rich Birch — Ah, very cool.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And that church is still very connected to the neighborhood. It’s still functioning, I no longer pastor it, but it’s still functioning twenty-four years later.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — So and it so it was a win-win.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It was a it was a um life on life. It was a a redemptive way. I said what’s the way that we can move into the neighborhood? That we can redeem this neighborhood without coming in with my own preconceived ideas? So did the hard work of utilizing this tool. And I guarantee that any church that uses asset based community development will hit the true need of those in the neighborhood that are experiencing poverty.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Well that’s I love that. So yeah, you can find that. You can search for ABCD Institute, DePaul University if you’re looking for more information on that. That’s that’s fantastic. Now I know you actually have a couple resources too. You’re a humble guy so you didn’t go to your own resources. You have a couple resources you’ve put together to help ah you know church leaders to kind of help frame this conversation. You know, we’re just scratching the surface today. Talk us through these resources. Tell us tell us about these.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes. Yeah. So there’s two that that could be very helpful to you. One is I wrote a very small booklet called Redemptive Poverty Work which talks more in-deptly about what I just shared here. Um, it’s a small booklet you can read it over a lunch break. Um so you can get it off of Amazon. It’s like five bucks, but it’s called Redemptive Poverty Work.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — The other more in-depth book that talks about the issues that I talked about is called Uncommon Church. I wrote that book in 2020 and it’s ah it’s a reflection on my over 30 years of work in urban spaces. It talks about the higher level issues of institutional oppression and things of that nature. Um, because the first half of the book talks about vibrant church in the urban space. The second half of the book talks about the institutional forces and things of that nature which shape the urban environment and how the church can address it. So that’s called Uncommon Church that’s on Amazon as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, ah, fantastic. Both these resources I would, and we’ll put links to these in the show notes, friends. I think, you know, my encouragement to you would be to pick up one or both of these resources. As you know if you’re a church leader that’s like hey. This is something you feel like maybe we’re scratching something that you need to be thinking more about, I would strongly recommend that you start here. This could be a great resource to kind of start the conversation for you in your, you know, in your leadership circle.
Rich Birch —So you know Dr. Sanders there may be people that are listening in who let me play the devil’s advocate. And I use that that word very pointedly. Like that’s the way I’m I’m intending that. You know that that hear this conversation like what I heard you describe as what I’ve heard in other contexts described as the working poor, you know, ah, but the the Burger King moms. That’s a that’s a great, that’s a very vivid example of that. To me that’s like the um, that’s the grinding part of a capitalist society. That’s what I said. You didn’t say that. I said that. That’s the part of where capital is is um…
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes.
Rich Birch — …is taking advantage, frankly of of people with very little power. And there may be people that are listening in today that hear me say something like that, or hear us even ask a question like that and that just gets them fired up and pissed off because they’re like wait a second. What are you are you questioning that the kind of the capitalist approach to life? How how do you respond to that. How do you um respond to a leader who, you know, is genuinely asking that they’re not just trying to pick a fight with you. They’re like, hey they’re coming from a you know, ah, they’re not just trying to, they’re just trying to you know kick you, but they are they actually want to have that conversation. How would you respond to them in that situation?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Well I would say to realize that there’s three main ways in which um capitals dealt with, in terms of manmade economic system, there’s that’s capitalism, there’s socialism, and then there’s communism. And all three of them are severely flawed and are are sinful. I mean you just have to understand it. None of them are God – God didn’t create any of them.
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — God created the kingdom of God.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And if we truly follow Matthew 5 through 7, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Which is the if we really look at Matthew 5 through 7 and you really take it for what it’s worth, it’s one of the most radical things of how to live that’s ever been created.
Rich Birch — So true.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — It’s it’s the it’s the it’s the longest sermon that we have from Jesus. I make it a practice to read at least once a week to remind myself of how how what the kingdom God truly looks like and what it is. And the kingdom of God is about people more than it is is about capital. And the I talk about this more in in my book Uncommon Church, but basically our role as Christians is to is number one to take responsibility for those who are in poverty. It is not an option to…
Rich Birch — The poor will always be among us.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — There you go. And that was a reference to Deuteronomy 15 people say oh well Jesus says the poor is all going to be among you so that means we don’t have to worry about them. No, it was actually a reference to Deuteronomy 15.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — And do to write guess what Deuteronomy 15 is about? How to take care of those in poverty. So what Jesus was basically saying is, look if you’re Christian, what did Jesus say to John the baptist… Or John the Baptist was in jail and John the baptist was getting ready to get beheaded. And so he sent his followers to Jesus. Because he’s like look, man, getting ready to lose my life. Are you really the Christ? And one of the criteria that Jesus said and sent back is the work that he did amongst the poor was one of the marks of him being the Messiah
Rich Birch — Amen. Yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Matthew 25—now you got me preaching…
Rich Birch — It’s good. It’s good. Dude, come on, come on. It’s good.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — But Matthew 25, he talks about this that separate the wheat from you know the the great separation. It’s going to happen of who truly was for Christ and who truly isn’t for Christ. And one of the marks of the people that are truly for Christ he’s goes when when I was hungry, you fed me. And he talks about other things about taking care of the poor taking care of the poor is a mark of the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yes, come on.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — The buzzword of what is the Gospel. A mark of the gospel is that you take time, talent, and treasure, and you take care of those in poverty.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — You’re a kingdom of God citizen; you take responsibility for doing your role and playing your part and taking care of those who are in poverty.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Dude, what a great, that’s fantastic. And I love your your frame there around no political system was ordained by God. Like these are all, you know, against, you know, in some ways you know, they they can be used by him. He supersedes all of them. Like I…
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yes.
Rich Birch — You know, I think that is just that’s what a great word. I you know, I had a friend, you know, recently in the last couple years say, man did we did we miss the point of Acts 6? You know the the early apostles are like, hey we’re not feeding these these women…
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yep.
Rich Birch — …and are and are the poor and so let’s get some deacons. And we read that as that’s not important. So let’s get some other people because we’re dedicated to the acts of you know preaching. And they’re like that’s not actually what’s happening here. It’s the up it’s the exact opposite of that.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Exactly right.
Rich Birch — The early church fathers are like this is so important that we do not want to drop this ball. We we have to do this. We have to. Which that has become perverted here I think in some of our circles two thousand years later, where it’s like well just give that to some other people that’s not that important. No-no. That my experience would be the same as what you’re saying. That churches where the message of Jesus is being proclaimed, the poor are being cared for. Those two things are inextricably linked. That ultimately, you can’t you can’t pull those 2 apart from each other. If if you look around and your church is not caring for the poor, I would say you’re not actually presenting the gospel. You’re not, you’re not actually pointing people back to Jesus. Um man this has been a rich conversation today.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, there’s. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, I so I’m going to give you the last word. As we wrap up, we’ll link to those resources. Ah, what would you say what would your kind of final encouragement be to church leaders who are are listening in today?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I would say that ah any person or any church that decides to go on a journey of following Christ, which if you remember when Jesus announced his ministry, he he announced it as preaching the good news to those in poverty. And we have a we have a way of trying to super spiritualize that. Oh he means the poor in spirit. No. He means those who are financially without. Jesus literally said the Spirit is a Lord is upon me the preach of good news to the to those who are in poverty, essentially. Right? In financially poverty, in financial poverty even…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — …if I didn’t necessarily get the exact quote right. You get the point.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — If we follow Jesus down that path, we’re going to see the Holy Spirit show up in ways we’ve never, you’ve never seen Him before.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — I’ve never, I mean if you said, Alvin, give me a testimony of how you seen God move. More times than not it’s gonna it’s gonna involve me, either personally or when I pastored church, helping someone or helping a community that was experiencing poverty. If you want to guarantee that the Holy Spirit is going to show up, get involved in the lives and the hearts of those who are experiencing poverty.
Rich Birch — What a great word to end on. That’s that’s fantastic. Dr. Sanders, I really appreciate you being here today. Where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with you, or with World Impact? Where’s the best place for us to to point them to?
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — Yeah, so if you want to connect with me, um I am on LinkedIn. So you can just type in “Alvin Sanders World Impact” and I’ll pop up. That’s where I sort of keep a work diary and engage people um online. Um, and then the other thing is if you want to learn more about World Impact. You can go to worldimpact.org and go to our website. And hopefully um, you’ll see something on there that we can help you and steer you in the right direction.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Appreciate being here today, sir.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Sanders — All right. Thank you for having me.
Easter 2024 Stats Exposed: Insights Your Church Can’t Afford to Ignore
Apr 03, 2024
During this episode of the unSeminary, we dived into the Easter 2024 attendance figures, collating responses from a wide array of churches. The total combined attendance hit a staggering 249,377, revealing much about the state of church engagement during this important “Eventful Big Day.”
The Importance of Eventful Big Days
Easter can be an “Eventful Big Day” at your church. This is one of the “5 Gears of Invite Culture,” strategies that play a pivotal role in church growth. It’s not just about celebrating a religious holiday; it’s a critical component of the invite culture that churches need to foster year-round. The data suggests that prevailing churches leverage Easter as a prime opportunity to encourage attendance, foster community, and, most importantly, invite new guests be part of the good things happening at their churches!
Key Findings
Average Easter Attendance Bump: Churches should aim to double their regular attendance on Easter. This survey revealed an average increase of approximately 75.42%.
“New Here” Guests: An essential metric for church growth is the percentage of first-time visitors or “new here” guests. Surprisingly, 22.98% of churches failed to track this figure, missing a critical opportunity for growth. For those who did, the median percentage of new guests was 3.33%, surpassing the targeted 2% and highlighting Easter’s potential as an effective outreach tool.
Invite Strategies: The study showed a significant correlation between the variety of invite strategies employed and attendance increases. Churches using five or more methods saw an 85.68% bump, while those employing seven or more enjoyed a 114.53% increase. This suggests a clear path forward for churches looking to maximize their Eventful Big Day strategy.
These insights underscore the need for churches to not only prepare for Easter as a significant event but to integrate it into a broader strategy of engagement and growth. The data points to the effectiveness of diverse invite strategies and the critical importance of follow-up in converting Easter attendees into regular churchgoers.
Easter 2024 has provided a wealth of data that, if properly analyzed and acted upon, could lead to significant growth opportunities for churches. By focusing on expanding invite strategies and enhancing follow-up processes, churches can work towards not just doubling their Easter attendance but fostering a vibrant, growing community year-round. This report serves as a call to action for church leaders to innovate, engage, and ultimately, expand their reach and impact.
For more insights and to join the conversation on church growth and invite culture, visit www.unlockinviteculture.com. Together, we can unlock the potential of our churches and spread the transformative message of Easter far and wide.
Episode Transcript
Super excited for today’s special episode of the Unseminary Podcast. We are looking at a survey that we did this week where we asked a number of churches to give us some feedback around what actually happened so that we can gain insights for you. In fact, the combined attendance of the churches that we surveyed was 249,377.
This has been a fun survey to do. We have extracted a ton of insights for you. I’d love for you to buckle up and listen carefully, particularly because big days, eventful big days, these are a critical piece of your invite culture strategy.
In fact, it’s one of five core strategies. We call them the five gears of invite culture, and we talk about them extensively in my latest book, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. You can pick up a copy of that for your team at unlockinviteculture.com. Listen, churches grow because they train, equip, and motivate their people to invite their friends.
And eventful big days are what we talk about in the book. And what we mean by that are big days that are eventful. They’re the kind of thing that your people want to talk about.
Listen, two things happen on big days. Your people are more likely to invite their friends, and their friends are more likely to attend. And so we want to make sure that we rally our resources on these days to train, equip, and motivate our people.
Well, today you’re going to gain insights into a number of things that happened at Easter this year. And my hope is that not only will you just kind of learn what happened, but ultimately you’ll be able to apply these lessons to your church as we look to next year and beyond. Today, you’re going to gain insight into what is the average Easter attendance bump at churches.
This really would be a target for you as you think about future big days. You’re also going to learn about how many New Year guests people are actually seeing on these days. You might be skeptical and thinking like, does this actually drive New Year attendance? Do we see New Year guests actually show up? We’re also going to discuss if there’s a correlation between the number of ways that churches use to encourage people to train, equip, and motivate their friends and the attendance ultimately that people see on a big day. And then finally, you’re going to gain some insights on getting guests to return. Ultimately, the reason why we do these big days is not because we’re trying to stretch our parking lots or figure out how many people we can pack into the room, but we’re ultimately trying to see our churches grow.
And so what are churches doing to see these guests return? Well, let’s dive in and talk a little bit about what is the average Easter attendance bump. You know, in our coaching, when I work with churches, or you’ll read about this in the book, in my coaching, I talk about the fact that we’re really, our goal for our clients and what we’re hoping to see for you at your church is that you double your average weekend attendance on a big day like Easter. Now, there’s also other big days, Mother’s Day in some churches is a big day, Christmas Eve.
Some people have a big day, you know, in the return to school time at the end of, you know, in the end of August or beginning of September. We talk about doubling, we’re seeing 100% growth on those, you know, those days. Now, this is an important number for you to think about, what are we actually trying to drive towards? Regardless of what happened at your church, knowing the bump between kind of what your normal attendance has been in 2024 and your Easter attendance is one way to measure the front door of your church.
And this is a, this is a kind of, can be a difficult thing for your church to measure because, you know, we’re really good at measuring the people that are in our groups or that attend, but it’s hard to measure what’s the kind of scale, the kind of growth potential, the reach potential of our church. And one of the ways to do that is to measure the Easter attendance bump. And the reason why that is, is because that tells you how many people are one relationship removed from your church.
Listen, these people came because your people invited them. That is what happened here. And so this is a good number to know.
It really represents, I like to think, as your next growth tier. If I was with your church today and I would be saying, hey, this is so fantastic. We had this many people attend on Sunday.
That’s really what we should be thinking. We should be asking the question, hey, what can we, what do we need to do to make it, to see, to create the space for our church to be that every single weekend? So again, the target that we put out there is that we’re hoping that they’re double or see a hundred percent growth. Well, in these, these churches that we surveyed again, overall attendance is about, was about 250,000.
The average growth rate between average attendance and, and, you know, for a regular Sunday here in 2024 and Easter was approximately 75.42%. So 75. So again, our goal is a hundred percent. So we’re seeing, you know, that the kind of average, what typically churches are seeing is 75.42. So, you know, and you’ll see, as we dive into the numbers more pointedly, as churches do more inviting, we’re seeing a higher number of attendance.
So this does validate our thinking, our coaching around the fact that we’re hoping for a hundred percent growth or doubling from your average attendance to weekend or to big weekend days, like our big days like this. Now there was a modest correlation between the size of the church and their Easter attendance. This was different than what I assumed.
My assumption had been that basically as the churches get larger, we see larger attendance or bigger bumps. So basically there’s an accelerant factor. The more people you have, the more people you see, you know, come and invite.
Well, actually it’s just a modest correlation. There is some correlation between that too, but it’s not statistically the correlation coefficient is 0.24. For those folks that remember back to algebra when you were in high school, that’s just a modest correlation. So not a huge correlation.
So did your church see 75.42 or greater? If you saw more than that, then you were better than the average here. Again, our target would be to see a hundred percent growth or doubling. Where did your church go? I’d love to hear, respond in the comments or reach out.
I’d love to hear where church, you know, where they actually look like now. Now this is not just about getting people to come. One of the things that we know that happens on these days is this is one way to kind of measure, hey, where are, what’s the kind of size of your community? And you know, do people, obviously if you attend on a regular base or if you don’t attend on a regular basis, but you do come sometimes you’re more likely to come on Easter.
But really we’re doing this because ultimately we’re trying to reach new people, new here people. And so we asked questions around, you know, how many new here guests do churches actually see? Our target for our coaching clients is to what we say is average documented new here guests should be 2% on an average weekend. So what does that mean is over a year that you will average the same number of guests over an entire year that your average weekend attendance is.
But we express that at what we say, the average documented new here guests on any given weekend is 2%. So if your church is a thousand people, that would mean on a typical weekend, you should see, you know, 20 guests to come to your, your church and you should, you should gain this. So first of all, first insight on this nearly 23% of the churches did not answer this question.
Friends, this is a missed opportunity. 23% of you didn’t have an answer. So my question for you is like, why are you doing Easter? We’re trying to do these kinds of weekends.
We’re trying to encourage people to come to be a part of our church because we’re ultimately trying to reach new people. This is a missed opportunity. Now the median percentage of new here guests in the study group that we saw for Easter 2024 was 3.33%, 33 and a third percent.
So this is a, this is incredible actually. So again, remember our target is 2%, but we saw that the median was 3.33%. This is incredible. You know, 1.3% higher than what we typically see.
This is great news. Now, some of this I think is because of the study group. If you’ve been hanging around on seminary for a while, we have been pushing you to think about this number.
We have been talking about this number. We’ve been focusing you on this number. We are trying to gather a group of churches who regularly are trying to get people to grow and to see their churches reach new people.
Now this also pushes against a little bit of the kind of common wisdom. Oftentimes we say that Christmas is about reaching new people. It’s about reaching people who maybe are, don’t normally attend church.
And Easter is about kind of getting our people to attend. That’s getting people to, getting our people to come back. But actually what this statistics tells us, the fact that we were 33%, when it was 3.33% higher than our typical new documented first time guest number.
What this tells me is that this is not necessarily true. That actually lots of churches are seeing people who are new to their church, who have not normally attended, come on these days. This is not just about getting our people to return.
Massive opportunity, big days are a big deal. Now we looked at the statistical significance between large churches and smaller churches around, do large churches see more new here guests? And there was basically no statistical difference between that. In fact, there was a slight, a super slight, razor thin negative correlation of 0.042 between that.
So what that tells us is there really is no difference. Whether you’re a church of 200, 2000, 20,000, we’re seeing that this is a day for you to see new here guests. Okay, so let’s talk about how churches invite their people to invite or encourage their people, train, equip and motivate their people.
Listen, friends, this is the core, this is core idea to what we talk about here. We talk about growing your church here at Unseminary. One of the things that we come back to time and again, in fact, I’ve even said it in today’s podcast already is the difference between stuck and stagnant churches and growing churches is growing churches, train, equip and motivate their people to invite their friends.
This is a value we need to raise. It’s a culture thing. That’s why, you know, the title of my book is Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture.
This is like discipleship. We’ve got to move people towards that. Training, equipping, motivate, those are specific words.
Training is like the head part of it. We’ve got to, you know, give them the scriptural backing. We’ve got to, you know, give them the big ideas around why this is important.
Equip, we’ve got to give them tools. We’ve got to hand them things, literally stuff for their hands. And then motivate, that’s about their heart.
We’ve got to move them to want to do this. And so we looked at this question and we asked them, okay, so we listed a whole bunch of different ways that they could train, equip and motivate. And we asked them, which of these did you do? And so I’m just going to rattle off the top ones.
So social media, invite cards, text messages and email marketing. Those were the top at, so social media was 25.28%. Invite cards was 19.52%. Text messages was 12.08%. Email marketing is 11.52%. Those were the top reasons that people use. Now we gave a bunch of different ones, including a message on inviting people the weekend before.
So the weekend before the church actually rolls. In fact, actually, if you’re looking for an example of this, and we found that only 11.52% of people actually did this or churches did this. If you’re looking for an amazing example of this, actually go check out liquidchurch.com and look at their message the weekend before Easter.
And you’ll see an example of this, only 11% of churches that did this. Hint friends, we got training coming up next year. I’m going to try to push you to do this.
I think this is a high leverage opportunity. Community events or outreach, 7.62%. Mailers, 5%. Press releases, only 3%.
Blog posts, 2%. Phone blitz, 1%. Now we did ask the kind of other question, give us a sense of the other things people did.
People did backyard Easter parties, Facebook ads or Google or Facebook ads. We’ll put that in the list next year as an example of how people could do this. Rented local signs, yard signs, community egg hunts the week before, just stuff built into kids programming, student gathering.
There were a couple other things. These are the kinds of other things they said. Now most people use most churches.
So key insight coming up here, friends. Most churches used two to three strategies. Approximately only 25.93% of churches that we surveyed used five or more strategies to encourage their people to invite their friends or family to Easter.
Now here is a key insight for you, friends. For churches that used five or more strategies to encourage their people to invite their friends, train, equip and motivate. They saw the average bump between their normal attendance and Easter attendance was 85.68%. Referring back to where we went, that’s a 13% over the average of what we saw across the board.
So what is this saying? If you do more than five things to encourage your people, if you surround them with messages before big days, you’re going to get an even better result. Now we looked at the group that did seven or more strategies. So these are the real outliners.
We listed only 10 strategies. These people saw the bump between normal attendance and Easter was 114.53%. That is a 51% increase over the average. Friends, what does this say? Friends, friends, friends.
When we train, equip and motivate, when we surround people, when we disciple them, when we build the culture, when we remind them, when we puncture through and get their attention and say, friends, invite your friends. We see that. That translates into actual results.
More people attend on these big days. Now, the churches, we also looked at people that didn’t indicate anything and those churches saw a 58% increase. So what this would indicate, what I think this indicates is if you do nothing, you don’t try to promote these days, you should see a 58% increase in attendance at least.
Now, if you did not see a 58% increase in attendance and you were inviting people, I would say you are in need of an invite culture overhaul at your church. I would strongly encourage you to pick up copies of Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture. You can do that at unlockinviteculture.com. Pick up copies of that because what you’ve got to do is move beyond thinking this as just a big day.
There’s actually five different strategies we talk about. We dive deep into them. We give you all kinds of examples.
And what that would indicate to me, if you had less than 60% bump in Easter attendance this year, that man, you’ve got to figure out what you can do to increase your invite culture all year long because we’ve got to move towards a bigger increase next year. All right. So then we also asked around returning.
We asked churches, okay, what are you doing to get people to return? Now, we open this, we ask this as an open forum kind of question as, you know, just like an open text question. Now, next year, we’re going to do this as, I was trying to gather what people actually do on this front. We’ll ask this as a radio box or not radio box, as a checkbox next year.
So then we can drive towards a bit more statistical. But interesting thing here. So first of all, the thing that, you know, I found surprising was there was a number of churches who indicated nothing.
In fact, half of the churches indicated that they did nothing, which was surprising to me. Why are you doing this if you’re not trying to get people to return? But let’s talk about what people did. So there’s a giant contact of the people who said they were going to do percentage of responses.
22.63% did some sort of follow-up contact. So this is the church taking action. So this is a phone call. This is personalized phone calls, emails, text messages, actually sending something in the post. Some churches did home visits where they’re actually getting out and visiting their people. So a quarter, almost a quarter of churches indicated that they were doing some sort of personalized follow-up. Another thing we saw was 13.14% said they were doing a sermon series. They talked about the sermon series on the weekend. That’s a best practice. They were launching a new series to talk about that. 11.68% had some sort of special event coming up. 6.57% had some sort of gift that they gave their people saying, hey, come back and you’ll get a gift next weekend. And then it really started to drop off significantly from there. Communities events, children’s programming, that sort of thing. Now, friends, I wanted our friends over at LCBC. This is a fantastic church, Life’s Changed by Christ. If you do not know this church, you should just search it online. LCBC, my friend Sonia Waltman, literally this morning, as I’m working on this, she reaches out and we were talking about their statistics and their report on what they did. And she talked about the fact that they have a 16-week follow-up process that literally encourages people, engages with them to help move their people into connections.
So it talks about how they are going to try to move people to their second, third attendance. And so what we’ve done is we have linked in the show notes links to this. I put this here because what I want to tell you, friends, is you need to have some sort of follow-up process. We get these guests to come, but what we don’t want to do, there’s literally thousands of them. Based on just this study group alone, there are thousands of guests who arrived last weekend. We’ve got to arrest, we’ve got to take action to try to get those people to connect. I would encourage you to reach out to my friend, Greg Curtis. He runs a ministry called Climbing the Asimileas. It’s all about being an assimilation Sherpa, getting people to connect at your church. He’s been on past podcasts. You can see his search here at Unseminary. Or you can even hire him for a training weekend. He calls them a base camp, which will help you build your own process for really following up with people. If you do not have a clearly documented follow-up process that you’re trying to move people to second time, third time, fourth time returning, and if it’s not immediately implemented, if you don’t have something now in your process that’s doing this, you’re missing out on opportunity, friends. And so I would say that’s a strong call to action for you to think about next steps. So you can check out what LCBC’s done at high level to get a sense of what they’ve done.
But more specifically, my follow-up to you would be to check out Greg Curtis’s work, Climbing the Assimilayas. He could help you from there. Well, friends, what do you think? I would love to hear. Reach out, email me, comment on social, you know, on our various social channels. Thank you so much for the churches that participated in this study. It was exciting to see the 249,377 people that attended your church last weekend.
I would love for you to drop by www.unlockinviteculture.com, pick up copies of my latest book to really help unlock how your church could reach more people, how you could train, equip, and motivate, really disciple your people towards that. And a little hint here for you, a little hint for you here at the end. We have common priced the book. This is a hard sell, I know. We have common priced the book, whether you wanna buy the hard cover or the soft cover, it’s exactly the same price. And for my Canadian friends, it’s exactly the same price in Canadian or American. So we’ve tried to make this as affordable as we possibly can. So if you’re in Canada, go to Amazon in Canada. If you’re in the States, go to Amazon in the States, and you’ll see it’s exactly the same price in Canadian or American. Because why? We do not want there to be anything get in the way, any barriers in the way of your team going through this book.
So drop by www.unlockinviteculture.com or drop by on Amazon to pick up copies of that. Thanks so much, friends. Hope you have a great week. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do to help you. Take care, friends
The Jewish Road: Uniting Act 1 and Act 2 of Our Faith Journey with Matt Davis
Mar 28, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Matt Davis from The Jewish Road, an organization that works to help Christians make sense of their Jewish roots while helping Jews make sense of Jesus.
Most Christians have a basic understanding of Jesus and His teachings, but they aren’t getting the whole story. Jesus has been disconnected from His Jewishness, and Christians have been disconnected from the roots of their faith. Meanwhile, many Jewish people today don’t even acknowledge Jesus as one of their own. Tune in as Matt shares resources that can help bridge the gap between Jews and Christians while enriching our faith.
Drive-by faith. // Recognizing the Jewish roots of Christianity and integrating Jewish heritage with faith in Jesus is not just an academic exercise, but a journey towards a more complete form of worship. Both Christians and Jews suffer from what Matt calls a drive-by faith. Though we read scripture, we often miss many of the important references and connections that link the Old and New Testament.
Bring both together. // The Old and New Testaments are really one singular story and are full of hyperlinks that create connectedness. If we know where to click, there is wisdom that we can gain which will deepen our relationship with the Lord. The role of the Church is to bring the Jewish people back to Jesus. So bringing the Old and New Testaments together is also about bringing the Jewish people and Gentile believers together.
Make the connection through scripture. // There are practical aspects of incorporating Jewish traditions into the Christian faith. Hosting a Passover Seder, for instance, can be a powerful way to engage with Jewish communities and deepen our understanding of Jesus’ Jewishness and the Last Supper. Open your church and invite Jewish neighbors to foster a greater connection and promote dialogue between the two faiths.
The Roman Road and the Jewish Road. // Christians, including pastors, are taught to share their faith from The Roman Road using the New Testament. However, understanding the gospel through the lens of the Old Testament—the “Jewish road”—is crucial for effectively sharing Jesus’ message with Jewish people. Christians need to be well-versed in Old Testament scriptures and to recognize the presence of the gospel within them.
A resource to help you help others. // Church leaders may fear that when they’ve been a pastor long enough, they should know everything and have answers to questions right away. But there is often a lack of resources and training to communicate the gospel from the Old Testament and understand the context for Jewish celebrations. The Jewish Road is committed to providing support and education to bridge this gap. They offer a podcast, speak at churches, take trips to Israel and provide other resources that enable believers to gain a deeper understanding of the Jewish context of Christianity.
You can learn more about The Jewish Road and find Matt’s podcast at www.thejewishroad.com. Plus, download the free PDF, The Prophets Speak: Uncovering God’s Plan Of Salvation On The Jewish Road.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. First of all I know here we are in Holy Week. I know many of you are busy and you you maybe are just going to listen to this after Holy Week but I hope you’re listening to it here today, because we’ve got a great conversation that I think fits so well in ah, this particular week. Excited to have ah Matt Davis with us from The Jewish Road. This is a great organization that really seeks to restore the Jewishness of the gospel through teachings and trips. They help Christians make sense of their Jewish roots while helping Jews make sense of Jesus. After serving in a church as ah as ah, both a teaching and executive pastor, Matt started The Jewish Road with his father, Ron. Ah Matt and Ron are both Messianic Jews who talks about who talk about Jesus and connect Act 1 and Act 2, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Ah, super honored to have Matt with us today. Thanks for being on the show.
Matt Davis — Good to be here with you. Thank you and shalom.
Rich Birch — Yeah, thank you so much. I’m so honored ah that you’re here. So like kind of fill in the picture. Tell us a bit of your story. Ah, you know, that’s kind of boilerplate bio stuff, but give us the that give us the Matt Davis story.
Matt Davis — Yeah, ah born into a Jewish family. But really my my parents were already believers um, at the time. Actually grew up at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa – maybe you heard of that. My parents were saved in this thing called the Jesus Revolution, which now everybody knows because we saw the movie. Ah, but I actually got my very first spanking in the nursery at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. And it [inaudible] one of them.
Rich Birch — That’s a great claim to fame. I love that.
Matt Davis — Yeah, that’s how it all started. Maybe that’s how it all will end. But there was a volunteer named Wally; he gave me back to my dad and said, sorry Mr. Davis we had to spank him. My dad said, he had it coming. So no, no lawsuit, no nothing like that. But really, there was a group there called the Jewish Christian Fellowship that grew to be a couple hundred people, and they asked Chuck Smith for permission to go out and plant the first Messianic Jewish congregation in Orange County. He was in Irvine, California. And ah, large Jewish population there and really, that’s how I grew up for the rest of my life. I got all my spankings from home by that point.
Matt Davis — But um, the the question I got and as I went into ministry later on in the church with the question from all the people in the church was well Matt you’re a pastor but you’re Jewish, how does that work? And all my Jewish friends said, well you’re Jewish, but why are you a pastor? And so the question that comes up for me all the time and even still to this day is, so when did you convert? When did you switch? When did you join the other side? And the implication there is when did you stop being Jewish and then become Christian?
Matt Davis — And I think we have the same question of Jesus. When did Jesus, born a Jew, died a Jew, but when did Jesus become a Christian? And and we have to be careful with how we talk about that because Jewish people believe that in order to follow Jesus, Yeshua, a Jewish messiah, that they actually have to stop being Jewish. And and we want to make sure that they understand that that is actually not the point. So that’s how I grew up was in this Messianic movement and it was very messy, but I also was very much a part of evangelical church as well.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Love that. That’s a fun – I’m looking forward to, like I say, friends, looking forward to diving in on this ah, you know, this conversation. So then then ah, let’s get this part out of the way and then we’ll come back to the conversation. I want to make sure we’re wrestling with ah, how does The Jewish Road, the organization, fit into, you know, this conversation for you?
Matt Davis — Well, we we really had to try to figure out if we are sitting in the middle of this this tension between, really, two peoples, two testaments, Old Testament, New Testament, we really looked at it as as a two-act play, like like you just said in the intro. But we we said really that it’s like every Jew in the world, they bought tickets to this two-act play and the Jews went to the first act and got up at intermission, grabbed a drink, and then went home. They didn’t even see the second act. Meanwhile every Christian the world, they bought tickets to that same two-act play, but they got there late. They actually passed the Jews in the lobby and they saw the second act.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Matt Davis — And the tragedy is that like neither group has seen or heard the whole story. So how do we actually bridge this gap, and then help one another out? So we want to make that there’s just beauty in both sides if we can actually understand the fullness of this story. And I say that both sides really suffer from a drive-by-faith. Now I’ve led a ton of for the last twenty-five years I’ve been leading trips to the Middle East, primarily Israel. But, you know, I’ve been to 120+ cities in Israel, and when you have a 9-day tour in the Holy Land, you have to run where Jesus walked.
Matt Davis — And the most painful part for me is to be in the bus and know that I’m driving by, oh man, that’s where Gideon was, and it’s this amazing piece here, but we we don’t have time so we’ve got to keep driving. And I think that’s what we do. I think Christians do this with scripture is there are parts that we just drive by that we don’t even know we’re driving by. And I think the Jewish people do the exact same thing. They they read through something like Isaiah 53 and it’s pointing to the Messiah and they they keep driving.
Matt Davis — And so I think that scripture—this is how I look at it—scripture has… you know on a hyperlink, on ah on a website, right? It’s usually like blue and underlined so you can click on, it takes you somewhere else. It’s linked to something else. I think that scripture is full of unseen hyperlinks that we are reading right past it and we don’t know that actually you could click there. And what we want to do is let’s highlight this, both in the first act, the Old Testament, and in the second act, the New Testament, and highlight for both groups there is a connectedness. This is one singular story. And if you actually know where to click, there is some wisdom here that we can gain. It will actually deepen our relationship with the Lord.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well from the Christian perspective, and obviously I want to get to the purpose of our podcast. We, you know, we talk to we’re trying to help and equip church leaders. So I want to I want to want this to be a helpful conversation for church leaders, particularly as we’re thinking about. I think this is a good week to be wrestling with these issues. And you know although this year there’s not a direct alignment on Passover it is the time of year where we do have a resonance with our Jewish background just even in our calendar. There’s like this like we know that there’s somewhere in this season we’re celebrating similar days. Ah, we don’t need to we don’t need this to be ah, a deep theological conversation, but I do think we should address some of these things. From a Christian perspective looking back from the Act 2, I think that’s a compelling the second act. I think that’s a ah, that’s ah you know a compelling idea, like we we’re seeing it just from maybe the second act of the play I think is ah is a compelling way to think about it. But from a from a Christian perspective when we look at say Acts 15 where there seems to be a conversation around this very issue. How much does ah, how how Jewish are we asking people to be? Do they need to first become Jewish then to become Christian? Have we just misinterpreted that and said, hey we’ve thrown that that whole thing out? It wasn’t what… we weren’t saying was, yeah, it helped me understand that. What was going on there that maybe we’ve misunderstood from a ah Gentile, you know, Christian perspective?
Matt Davis — Well and the question 2000 years ago was all of the Jews in Acts 15, they’re asking the question, what do we do with these Gentiles who are now professing faith…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Davis — …and wanting to follow Yeshua follow Jesus. And so this is the question they’re like do they need to get circumcised? And the Gentiles are saying, please no! Um, and now two thousand years later the question is the Gentiles, the church asking, what do we do with these Jews who are coming to faith? And so there is a reconciliation that we have to really pull together when it comes to not just the the Old Testament/New Testament. But what does it look like to bring together the Jewish people and the Gentiles? And and in scripture and unfortunately there’s a good segment of the church that says that God is done with the Jewish people. Um, but my my my firm conviction is that that you look at Romans 9, 10, and 11 that that the a Paul that’s telling us, he says may it never be that God has not cut them off. But then the role of the church is to bring them back. And and really this story is is ultimately about God and his people, and that the the church has been grafted into this beautiful story.
Rich Birch — Okay, cool. Very cool. Now what about, so I know so then from kind of the they say the first act, you know, perspective, I know that um, we talked about this before we even started the call, I do know that um Jewish thinkers ah, will often make pretty um, pointed statements around the messianic Jewish movement. And ah talk about it in pretty vile terms, around like hey it’s like the most anti-semitic thing going. Why is that? Help me understand, because that and when I’ve heard that I’m like well obviously I’m you know it’s like you don’t want to be the person hat’s like, you got it wrong, like you’re you know, like you don’t know what you’re saying. I’m like well wait a second isn’t that like now I’m just perpetuating the same kind of thing. If from why is it that some of our Jewish brothers and sisters have a strong reaction to um, you know and understand ah, even you know trying to to weave these two together, and and my outsider opinion or my outsider read on that is that that comes from the sphere of the Jewish world that we would hold a lot in common around a high value of scripture. They would have a high value of scripture as well. But and they’re coming to a conclusion that like hey this whole messianic Jew thing is like it’s not just like that’s a bad idea. It’s like that’s like an anathema to their faith. Why is that? Why do they why do our why did they land there?
Matt Davis — A friend of ours named Michael Brown, he’s an apologist. He’s in North Carolina. He wrote a book called Our Hands are Stained with Blood. And if you can actually go back over the history of the church and unfortunately it’s not a beautiful part of the the history of the church. But we have an anti-semitism that has taken place. Um I could never in in California we had the the crusades with Greg Laurie. I could never take a Jewish person to the crusades.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Matt Davis — Why? Because to the Jewish people…
Rich Birch — Because it was a crusade. Yeah.
Matt Davis — It was the crusade. They you have to deny like deny anything Jewish, get rid of the Torah, and you have to believe. And if you don’t, then we’re going to kill the fathers, rape the mothers, and, you know, throw the kids off the roof. Ah you have the Spanish Inquisition, you have the pogroms in Russia, all the way up until ah World War II and the holocaust. Jewish people today look at Christians and they, whether it’s right or not, this is their mindset. This is their perspective, is that even the Nazis were the ones that went to church on Sunday and the concentration camps on Monday. So for me to put my faith in Jesus, now I have become in their minds, a Christian.
Matt Davis — And now and so really like when you have to count the cost. It’s one thing to count the cost, but in some Jewish families for a Jew to become a follower of Yeshua, of Jesus ah, they will actually have a funeral for them, get rid of all their stuff and never speak to them again. So it’s it’s much harder for a a Jew to actually make that decision. Um case in point, Um, you’ve probably heard of the ah the Outpouring at Asbury which is right down the road from us.
Matt Davis — One of my good friends, he is a Jew. Um his name Zach Mier Kriebs. And and Zach comes from an orthodox Jewish family. His dad is an orthodox rabbi in New York. And and when Zach went to school, he stayed with a family who were Christians and really it started to challenge his faith and and kind of his notion of what a Christian was. And he was really contemplating and he talked to his family about this and they said um, Zach either ah become a Christian or stay Jewish but don’t be a messianic Jew. Because then you’re essentially alienating. And so really, what Zach did was he chose Jesus and he left Judaism. And the conversation that Zach and I have been having lately is how do we actually reintegrate his Judaism, his Jewish heritage roots, into this beautiful relationship with Jesus.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, let’s let’s talk about that. I have a very similar experience with ah you know I feel like I’ve led in churches that are, you know, life giving. They’re positive. Um, you know the kinds of places that you can come and be a part of regardless of your faith background. And um years ago had a very similar kind of conversation with a grown, adult woman who we had invited, friend of ours. We invited lots of times to church. And and and it was like you know we got this series coming up on parenting or like we got this, you know, series on whatever something going on. Like you should come to this. Like and eventually the conversation boiled down to like, listen I love your church. It looks like you guys do a great job. Like I love all the you’re doing like outreach stuff. You’re like making a difference in the community. Fun stuff happening.
Rich Birch — But and again this is a full-grown woman so, you know, as long as my mom and dad are alive, like if I was to just even come, man, the the amount of kind of shame that that would generate in the family, it’s just not not worth it. And and so for me and I’m out like listen I’m a professional Christian, this is why I want to learn from you, Matt, like I that was like a whole new idea. I was like oh, this is like there’s a whole bunch going on underneath of this that I just simply do not understand. So can you give us ah ah, give us a shorthand, you know, maybe even on the with the context of Holy Week. If we’re trying to make our churches be the kind of place where ah, you know we we don’t want to just disconnect from our Jewish roots but actually are open to that conversation, have that be a part of who we are, what what are some steps we should be taking? What should we be thinking about? How how should we be looking at this whole conversation?
Matt Davis — Yeah, I think it’s it’s looking at at scripture with a sense of ah the Jewishness of… I think one of the reasons that people love the show, The Chosen…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Matt Davis — …is we actually get to see Jesus, but in his Jewishness. I love…
Rich Birch — Yeah, true.
Matt Davis — …and I’m friends with some of the people who are advising that—but I love like even in the second episode ever, they they did a shabbat meal, right? What does it look like to actually enter into the sabbath and and to enter into the rest. What what I’m doing right now in this season is going to churches all over the country and we’re sharing a Passover seder. We’re walking people through, and it’s it’s understanding and making the connection.
Matt Davis — So I know lots of people that they will put a little mazuza on their doorpost, right? It’s the little, as you walk in, it’s a literal representation of Deuteronomy 6, which says you should write these words on your heart, but they should be on the doorposts of your house and your gates, right? To be able to incorporate these things that have deep meaning for us as believers as followers of Jesus but also it’s an invitation to be able to say like ah go go to a Jewish person and say like, hey I hear it’s Hanukah. Happy Hanukah! Or ah, you know, we we just celebrated the Passover. Um, and so it’s it’s having an understanding. And it’s not just for their benefit and for outreach sake but it actually is deepening us.
Matt Davis — And that is really, like even in this passion week, um, this is is significant. There’s tremendous opportunity and a lot of churches will open their doors, have us come in. We will do a seder, what we know as the last supper, is really the last Passover seder…
Rich Birch — It’s based on that. Yeah.
Matt Davis — …that Jesus ever had with his his disciples. So to be able to open up your church and and then invite the Jewish people in, and say we actually love the Jewish people. We stand with Israel and there are there are some places that we have intersection in our in our stories.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. What when um I know in the past um we our church hosted a a um, a discussion series with some leaders at a local synagogue and we hosted folks for a meal. And um, it was wonderful, beautiful you know and it was really just a like hey we just want to get to know each other better. Let’s try to you know have a conversation. And um, you know, and it was I was like an executive pasture type person at that point. It was my job to like get the meal sorted out. And so I was like, well we clearly have to make sure that this is a kosher meal. And so I was interacting with a friend from the synagogue and I was like listen, I do do not want to step on a landmine here. I want to do this right. And so he was super gracious and you know helped us, you know, do all that, and you know we bless the kitchen and all that it was great. It was fantastic.
Rich Birch — Ah, but it but the thing to your point around The Chosen there is this, in a beautiful way, there’s like um, there’s all this subtext underneath that there’s like that we I think miss. We just wash over in our churches. We we just ignore that for whatever reason, and I think it’s not you know, probably not a good thing, particularly for our Jewish brothers and sister.
Rich Birch — As we think particularly about this time this kind of Easter season, are there ways, let’s say our church, maybe for next year, you know, it’s we you should not be thinking about whatever you’re doing for this weekend you should do for this weekend friends. But as you’re thinking about in the context of this weekend, would it would it be to like host a seder, what are some things we should be thinking about to to try to help open up our people’s minds around this area?
Matt Davis — Yeah, a lot of people will say, well we did do a seder, it was about ten years ago…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Davis — …and we kind of checked off the Jew-box.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Davis — And I said well you you did an Easter service last year, did you are you going to do it again this year, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Davis — So this is part of the rhythm and the flow of…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Davis — …of what we do and I think it’s it’s good for us to be able to keep it in front of our folks. The story that we’re telling right now is really the narrative of ah scripture is that there’s this throughline of it’s all about the Lamb. And I love like Genesis 22, Abraham and Isaac, they’re going up and to Mount Mariah. And the question that Isaac says is, uh, we we have the wood we have a fire where’s the where’s the sacrifice? And he says the lord will provide for himself a lamb.
Matt Davis — Fast forward to exodus and and now we’re getting through to the tenth plague and and Moses says on the tenth day of the month of Nisan ah, want you to take a perfect lamb without spotter blemish one year old male. And you’re going to on the tenth day of this month you’re going to bring it into your home and you’re going to test it and inspect it and scrutinize it to see if it actually is without spot and without blemish. And on the fourteenth day of the month you will sacrifice it at twilight you will take its blood put it on the doorposts of your house and your gates. Then the angel of death will come see the blood and pass over it, right?
Matt Davis — That’s the Exodus story, that’s act 1, but what we don’t realize is that when Jesus comes into Jerusalem on what we would call Palm Sunday or the Triumphal Entry, Jesus actually rides into Jerusalem on that exact same day – lamb selection day, the tenth of Nisan. And that’s significant, right? In in a lot of churches, and I’ve done this I’ve spoken this for years, but we say it’s Friday but Sunday’s a-coming. And some great churches will say it’s Sunday, but Friday’s coming.
Matt Davis — What we don’t realize is that if that’s the tenth of Nisan, the rest of the week Jesus is tried, inspected and scrutinized. Why? Because you’ll see in Matthew 21 and 22 and we have all the synoptics, but what we see is that Jesus is being confronted, really with the pharisees, sadducees, the scribes, elders, priests. They’re they’re asking these questions like um, well what do we do with ah who do we pay taxes to? Or in the resurrection who will this person be married to? And and what happens in every one of these interactions is Jesus gives them an answer, and in very typical fashion he answers the question with another question.
Matt Davis — But what is significant is at the end of every one of these interactions. It says stuff like they were astonished at his authority. They were amazed. They marveled. Um and then it says they dared not ask another question. They said nothing after that, all the way up until Pilate who says I see nothing wrong in this man. And therefore this Lamb, Jesus, who John said the behold the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, he was found to be without spot and without blemish and therefore on the fourteenth of that same month, at the same time that the lambs are being sacrificed in the temple, Jesus has been found worthy to be slain. And then it is his blood that is not applied to the doorpost. But upon another piece of wood, the cross, the cursed tree, and because of that when the Father looks at the blood, our sins are passed over, and we have salvation, we have life. I mean that story, how significant is that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah.
Matt Davis — …to really connect those two all the way up until Revelation 5 where they’re looking who will open the scrolls? And says the Lamb, only the Lamb is worthy. This through line, if we miss that, and we’re just looking at act 1 or we’re just looking at act 2, we’re missing a massive part of the story.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fascinating. Love that. And I think what a rich um, you know, reminder even for us as we’re in the midst of ah this week. Well, you know, we for friends I’m pulling back the curtain here a little bit. We we do on the podcast, we do this preparation process where, you know, we ask our guests to like you know, put some thoughts together and send ahead of time. And ah you wrote something in the prep that convicted me. And and I got to raise my hand and say I think you’re speaking about me. You talked about, you know, so I’m just going to read it to you and then I’m going to say “respond” because it’s like I I will need help. So you said if Jewish people don’t hear the gospel from the New Testament they don’t hear it from the New Testament Roman Road they they really need to to. They’re going. We need to we need to show it from the gospel from the Old Testament Jewish Road. Unfortunately, and this is the part that got me, most Christians, and worst, pastors, can share the gospel only from the New Testament but they cannot do it from the Old Testament. We can help and I was like oh that’s probably me. Like if you said to me hey talk about the coming lamb, and what he’s done, but you can only use the Old Testament, I think I would it would fall apart from me quickly. It would. Um and I’m sure there’s pastors that are listening in. So so comment. How can you help? What am I missing?Talk us through that.
Matt Davis — Yeah, I think a lot of well-meaning Christians, they want to see the Jewish people saved. They have a heart for Jewish people, and so what they will do is they will go to a Jewish person and they will take them down the Roman Road, right? And you know this, Romans 3:23 for all of sin fall short the glory of God. Romans 6:23 wages sin is death. And and then what the Jew’s going to say is you take me down that road, it’s going to lead to a dead end. They’re going to say, show me from my book. And so that was really the the genesis for us of we need to take them down a different path.
Matt Davis — And if I if I told we we actually were doing a trip, we were training house church pastors in Cuba this last year and we asked them the question. How many of you could share the gospel from the New Testament? And now everybody puts that hand up. So what if what if we just said you can only share the gospel using one book in the New Testament, could you do it? And everyone raised their hand again.
Rich Birch — Yeah Romans.
Matt Davis — What if you just had one verse, could you do that in the New Testament, you know? As long as I have John 3:16, I can make sense of something, right? I can make it happen. I said what if I said you can’t use the New Testament whatsoever. How many of you could actually share the gospel? Does the gospel even exist in the Old Testament in the tanakh, and and nobody could raise their hand and say they could do it. And so we’ve done our our church as a disservice and unfortunately like you ask a lot of pastors, I I know this because I went through seminary, we don’t train like this. But the gospel is very much so there. .
Matt Davis — And so um, you know one of the things I have on on this wrist here is I have the Roman Road and it’s it’s all on there. But we’re actually working on something I’m going to put one on my other wrist and it’s going to be the Jewish Road. Um God planned for salvation on on the Jewish Road. So you take stuff like Isaiah 61 that says that there is iniquity. We all have sinned. You can look at ah Ecclesiastes 7:22. You look at psalm 110. Ah, you could look at Genesis 3. Like ah there are so many passages in there all the way up until if you’ve got nothing, if you forget it all, just go to Isaiah 53.
Rich Birch — Okay, nice.
Matt Davis — But what what we’re trying to do is how do we equip the church to be able to share the gospel with the Jewish people, Jesus’s own biological family, from their book. And so that is that is our hope, that is really why we exist. And by us doing that for us as Jews to come to the Gentile church and say, this is how you do it um in the very same way that Paul was magnifying his ministry as he went to the Gentiles, we get to do the same thing. So we want to equip the church to know their roots and it’s again, it’s beautiful for us as believers, and it’s beautiful to actually be able to share the gospel, the good news. Um, so we actually have that if you go to otgoodnews.com um, we actually ah we walk through and say this is the Gospel. Um, but we’re also printing these out in Hebrew and we’re sending these to our partners in Israel that will link to a site that will actually take Jewish people who are reading Hebrew they’ll be able to read the gospel ah, in their own native tongue. So we’re pretty excited about that outreach opportunity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. I think that’s a great um it’s a great exercise. it’s convicting and I think we you know we we should be thinking carefully about this and how do we how do we um, you know, like you say build up lead our leaders in a way that they could ultimately answer that. You’ve actually provided a pdf here that we’re gonna we’re gonna link to um that that walks through exactly that whole thing. It’s called The Prophet Speak: Uncovering God’s Plan of Salvation on The Jewish Road and it walks through exactly what you just talked about there, friends, if you’re looking for more detail on that. Um, but this is a great tool. You know a great obviously introduces you to The Jewish Road as well at the organization. But suggest, you’ve just clicked the link below. You’ll get access to that and um, we’ll make sure that you you get that ah resource.
Rich Birch — Well pivoting in a totally different direction. So I was supposed to be in Israel in May this year on where we’re gonna do the Jesus Trail hike. I was really looking forward to that and a part of what I was looking for was a slower experience through ah through Israel. That trip got canceled. Um. What are what should we be thinking about trips to Israel these days? Like it feels like and I don’t and I go back and forth whether and it was the the person we were working with they’re like I’m just not sure we should be going right now and they canceled. Um, what should we be thinking about that? You know I I had a friend years ago who said she studied in Israel for a while and she said, listen you should just go. There’s never a good time to go, but you should just go. Stop waiting for this perfect season. It feels like we’re in far less than a perfect season right now, obviously. Ah, but give us some coaching on that. It’s been a you know ah obviously key part of what you’ve done over the years. Help us think that through a little bit.
Matt Davis — Yeah, we were set to take 40 people to Israel on October 8th.
Rich Birch — Yeah, oh wow.
And we woke up on October 7th, the world changed.
Wow.
Matt Davis — And I had you know everybody texting us. I had friends who were tour guides and friends in Israel who just got drafted. And they were driving to their their reserve spot in Israel. And so obviously that trip got canceled. Um the trip that we had planned for this month got canceled. The trip that we had for next month got canceled. Um, so I would say that really it it’s if it’s never a good time to go to Israel, then it’s always a good time to go to Israel. And I would say that my heart is that that I still want to go to Israel and we’re working on on what that looks like, but I want to go there and stand in solidarity with the people of Israel.
Matt Davis — And I know that it’s um, it’s it’s ah it’s a landmine. It feels like um how how do you possibly say that I stand with Israel and not come against Palestinian. It’s it’s a very politically charged issue right now. And here’s what I would say about that is if you watch mainstream media, and it doesn’t matter what you whether it’s Fox News or CNN or NewsMax all of those things. I guarantee you that if you watch those those programs you will come away either hating the Jewish people, or hating Arabs. And and really neither of those are are a good option. I believe that if we read the Bible and if we immerse ourself in what God actually says, I think that we will not only come out loving the Jewish people, but we will also come out loving the Arabs. And I think that that’s a biblical approach, and there’s some nuance that is needed with that. But we are going out there um, but it’s going to be a much different trip. But this is not going to be, hey, let’s go float in the Dead Sea and ride a camel and eat lots of…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Davis — …really great, you know, falafels and schwarma. Um, we we want to go there to, number one, we’re going to be seeing our partners and our friends who are are in the battle. We’re going to be meeting um, hostages who’ve come back. There are hostages that have come back. They’ve been freed and they just joined up and they’re they’re back on the front lines of the battle.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Matt Davis — Um, so we want to go there to stand, and I want to be able to say that the Christian community, the evangelical community in the United States still loves you and still cares. Um, and I have friends who are are Palestinians um, who are Christians and who hate what’s going on. Um, so I really think that it really divides into um John 10 is where I go with it is the the enemy comes to to steal, kill and destroy but I’ve come that you might have life and life abundantly. And it’s it’s really a division of those who love life and those who love death. And that’s where I believe we’re going to side with Jesus on that and nowhere else.
Matt Davis — But, yeah, absolutely, I think we should go. Um I think that if we can um love the people in there. Um, but you have to have a stomach for it, right? If you’re going to freak out and have a panic attack because there’s sirens going off, um this might not be the best time, but there are other ways to be involved and to support the Jewish people during these times.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I have a ah I would call him a good friend who lives in Israel. And you know and it’s an interesting um I and he and I text we’re probably on the every other week text plan. You know like we connect every once in a while and he’s got little kids. And um, you know, some of the videos that he has sent of like of like them literally at the park around the corner, playing, and then the iron dome alarms and all that going off, and then his kids scrambling and all that. I’m like I yeah well I get choked up, when I think about it. Because I’m like, man, it’s it’s a lot. And he’s he’s a great man, great father. Um, and ah you know, I know and he’s struggling. He’s and he’s a business owner and so he’s struggling with, okay, how do I what’s the best way to push forward and like how do we, you know, how do that’s all that it’s a complex situation and so… But that’s good. That’s good coaching. Appreciate that.
Rich Birch — Well kind of as we’re coming into land, what should we be thinking about where where’s our, you know, pull this all together, we’ve talked about a bunch of different stuff here. You know, pull this together. What should we be thinking about, Matt, as we think about ah how, you know, assume that there’s church leaders that are listening and are saying you know what I think this is an area I do need to help my my church um understand more clearly, be be um, you know better equipped on. What would be some first steps we should take just as we kind of bring today’s episode to a close?
Matt Davis — Yeah, as we go to different churches—I say we, my dad and I are doing this – my old man um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Matt Davis — …going around and just sharing years of of ministry experience. He he was formerly a missionary with Chosen People Ministries – you may have heard of but um…You know I I think that there’s a fear that once you’ve been a pastor long enough that you should really know everything. And I remember like 10 years in getting asked a question like, and I’m like I I don’t know the answer to this. I’m going to stall and see if I can look it up on Wikipedia later. Um but I think sometimes people are a little bit nervous to bring us in, even because they don’t want to be found out that they don’t know all of this. Or how come you as a pastor haven’t been teaching us this. And what we want to do is we really want to be a resource for the church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Matt Davis — I want to be a resource for pastors. Um, we just it it it was started as a joke, but we just we bought url gotojews.com – we want to be your go to Jews. And it just redirects to our website. So if you don’t remember thejewishroad.com … gotojews.com. But really um, we want to be a resource and not just because you want another Hebrew tattoo and you want to make sure it says the right thing. But if you’re looking at a passage and you’re saying um, you know, what does this mean? What what is what are the roots of this? We want to be able to be a resource. We want to be able to help ah, to step into that space and say, man, there’s so much more to scripture. Let me show you where some of the hyperlinks are. And not that I even know it all or even my dad knows it all. But um, we’ve been on this journey for a long time and and we’ve we’ve tapped some of those hyperlinks.
Matt Davis — So we want to be able to be a resource. And so you’re looking for somebody to be able to bring context. What are the spring feasts? What are the fall feasts? What is Hanukkah and how does this connect to Christmas? Where are we at. We’re not we’re not condemning we want to be invitational to this and we want to be teachers and resources because I believe that if we can do this well um, then we will have a fullness of faith.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s wonderful. Well Matt appreciate you being here you gave it a couple uro urls which is great. I love that go to Jews – that’s fantastic. Ah, but theJewishroad.com – I would encourage people to take a look, sign up for all your stuff, get on the list. I think this is an area it should be a bubble it should be bubbling in our brains like, hey this is something we should be thinking about. Um where else we want to send people online if they want to connect with you or connect with the ministry?
Matt Davis — If you like podcasts we have a podcast.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Matt Davis — And we tell we tell jokes um on there. Jewish jokes. Jewish humor is a big part that even amidst suffering, and we are people that loves to suffer but we also love to have a little bit of fun in the midst of it. But my dad and I we have a podcast that really helps to outline a lot of this stuff. We just finished a hundred episodes and I’m you’re excited about that.
Rich Birch — Good for you – congratulations.
Matt Davis — So yeah, that’s a really great spot to go and just get educated and and learn a little bit more.
Rich Birch — Love it. And what is it just called The Jewish Road as well.
Matt Davis — Yeah Jewish Road podcast.
Rich Birch — Jewish Road podcast – great so much. Great. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here, Matt. Appreciate being on the show and yeah, thanks so much for for being here today.
Matt Davis — Thanks, Rich.
From Vision to Reality: Crafting a Future Where More People Meet Jesus with Paul Alexander
Mar 21, 2024
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m joined by Paul Alexander, the Executive Pastor at Sun Valley Community Church in Arizona.
As church leaders, sometimes we can have a natural aversion to strategic planning. Yet we see in the scriptures, from beginning to end, that God has a plan. And He wants to pass it on to His people as they wait on Him. Listen as Paul communicates how the church can use strategic planning to prioritize life change and help more people meet Jesus.
God has a plan. // Strategic decision-making and evaluation in the church isn’t about business tactics. It’s about partnering with God to fulfill His desire for community impact. Rather than stifling the Holy Spirit, strategic planning is an act of obedience and wisdom, aligning our actions with God’s will for His Church.
Data informing decisions. // At Sun Valley Community Church, they measure life change through tangible metrics like new commitments to Jesus and baptisms. Tools, like Microsoft BI, connect to their database to track these vital signs weekly. To help them determine where they are going, they use an attender to guest ratio as their primary lead measure with a goal of two guests visiting per every attendee. This data-driven approach ensures they’re making informed decisions that lead to more people meeting Jesus.
Confront reality. // The process of evaluation and decision-making needs to begin with confronting reality about what’s actually happening, or not happening at our churches. Scripture is meant to be a mirror and when we hold it up to ourselves, it requires a great deal of sober-mindedness, humility and trust on a team. Church leaders are responsible for defining reality at our churches. Then we can begin to dream a preferred future and design a pathway to get there.
Annual strategic refresh. // Sun Valley uses annual strategic refreshes to keep the church’s momentum going. During this time, each team meets with leadership during the first quarter to review how things went over the last year and discuss where things are. Paul and the other leaders help to steer that conversation, though over time the teams learn to elevate what needs to be confronted. When the leadership recognizes that momentum’s lagging, they aren’t afraid to create a new problem to solve in order to stimulate growth and get the church moving in the same direction. The key is to be proactive, yet not addicted to a plan, so you can flex and make mid-course corrections as needed.
Wait on the Holy Spirit. // Setting aside time for strategic planning and waiting on God is critical if the Church is going to stand firm and move forward against spiritual opposition. Remember Acts 1:8 and then execute the plan as an act of obedience to Jesus. Planning is not contrary to faith; it’s an essential part of fulfilling the Great Commission.
To follow along with Sun Valley Community Church, you can visit their website at www.sunvalleycc.com and connect with Paul here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today I’m excited to bring you a leader who we’ve kind of been on the outside of each other’s orbits for quite a while online. And it’s so good to get a chance to talk face-to-face and to record that conversation. This is a church that I point people to all the time, and say you want to see people who are doing a good job? You should look at Sun Valley. I have, you know ripped, off stuff from them, pointed people toward them, do you do such a great job. So Sun Valley Community Church is a multi-site church in Arizona. If I can count correctly, 6 locations, an online campus, plus a prison campus. It’s repeatedly been one of the church churches in the fastest growing church category on Outreach 100, which friends if I follow that list really closely, and I can tell you that that’s a rare feat. Lots of times what happens is churches jump on that list and then there there may be a year or two. But the fact that Sun Valley consistently is there is is rare. So we’re going to learn a lot from Paul today. Ah, he’s been an executive pastor at Sun Valley for 13 years. He’s been in ministry for over twenty-five years. He also serves with a with as a consultant with Unstuck Group—we love them—for over a decade. And they work with all kinds of churches on church on health assessments and strategic planning and all kinds of stuff. Paul, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Paul Alexander — Rich, thanks for having me, man. Glad to be on here and hanging out with your listeners.
Rich Birch — Come on, honored that you’re here. Ah you just love love what you do, love love what Sun Valley does. Kind of fill out the picture there. I did the boilerplate bio stuff, but kind of tell us a little bit more. Give us a flavor of Sun Valley, kind of tell us a bit of that story.
Paul Alexander — Yeah, man. Ah yeah, everybody wants to look at the numbers, and all that stuff and that’s fun and exciting and everything. But I mean, honestly, what keeps me in the game for now almost thirty years of full time ministry and at Sun Valley is a couple of things. One is the life change. It’s consistent stories every single week of people meeting Jesus and their lives and marriages and um families just being legitimately radically changed by the gospel, and by Jesus.
Rich Birch — So good.
Paul Alexander — And then, you know, here there’s always something new to figure out. And if you’re wired up like me, having a little bit of fresh meat from time to time is really important for you. And just new problems to solve and, you know, as ah as a church grows and goes from one side to two to three to four to five to six and on and on, there’s new things to figure out. And um, you know, people who enjoy that, and can stay on the solution side of things, my goodness, it can be so much fun. So yeah, it’s been a really good fun run, man. Been here from one campus to, like you said, six, the one in the prison now. We just sold a location and we’re relocating it, ground…
Paul Alexander — Yeah, ground up to a new site so that’s fun. And uh…
Rich Birch — That’s fun.
Paul Alexander — Yeah, so been we’ve done some mergers. That’s the nice way to say it in church world, right? So we’ve done a couple of those and just learned a lot through that experience. We’ve gone ground up a couple of times.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Paul Alexander — But yeah, I’ve I’ve been here as executive pastor here almost fourteen years. Functionally, I’ve had the same title the same the whole time, but you know every 6 to 18 months my job actually changes…
Rich Birch — So true.
Paul Alexander — …um, based on what’s needed.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yeah, that’s true.
Paul Alexander — You know, what what Sun Valley needs in any given season. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true. Yeah I can I can identify that having been in that kind of, you know, executive pastor second chair seat from in a couple churches that went from a thousand to 4- or 5000 people
Paul Alexander — Yep.
Rich Birch — You know, I I joked that, you know, this was back when we used to have business cards, I’m like I just need to take the title off my business card because it’s just like it’s just not, you know, we’re constantly getting coming up with new things and you know and and you just have to adjust…
Paul Alexander — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and you know that that really is staggering growth that’s happened at Sun Valley. And you know you’ve seen a lot of change one to six, and the prison ministry. And, you know, I I had heard somewhere 1200 baptisms a year.
Paul Alexander — Yeah.
RIch Birch — That’s amazing. Like that’s, you know, by God’s grace. That’s incredible. That’s amazing.
Paul Alexander — Yeah, last year we baptized more than 1200 people.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Paul Alexander — And um, yeah, it’s it’s kind of, to be candid with you, it’s kind of pinch-yourself weird that…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Paul Alexander — …you know, okay eight hundred to a thousand people getting baptized like clockwork every single year.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Paul Alexander — And you’re like and and covid when everything was shut down and we weren’t physically meeting that was one of our biggest years of of spiritual growth where people were crossing the line of faith and getting baptized. And so, yeah, the Lord’s ah, you know, the Lord’s hand is on it, yes. But there’s also an aspect of partnering with with God and what he wants to do.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Paul Alexander — And so I think sometimes churches are really quick to say well, I don’t know, the Holy Spirit just moving. And while you can’t not give credit to the Holy Spirit because he’s the one who brings spiritual life and spiritual growth. There’s also the book of Proverbs is in the bible too, right? So there is a way to run the kingdom…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Paul Alexander — …that he’s designed life to work in a particular manner.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I would love to dive into that today. I think that’s a great kind of framework, this idea of partnering with God in what he wants to do. Listen, we know that Jesus wants to impact the communities we’re in, that you don’t have to debate that. Does Jesus want more people to come to know him? Yes. Does Jesus want more but more people to be raised up in a relationship with him? Yes. Let’s not debate that. The question is how do we partner with him? Let’s let’s kind of pull that apart a little bit. What does that look like for you and your role as an executive pastor in a growing church? How do you help the church partner, strategize, you know, planning – what does that look like for you?
Paul Alexander — Yeah, so ah, you know, both at Sun Valley and then with churches I work with around the country with Unstuck, it’s really interesting how church leaders can have a natural aversion to things like strategic planning. Just though the language itself can be something that many church leaders bristle at, right? And usually there’s two big reasons that happens. One is is they’ll use language and say, hey planning is a business practice, and the church isn’t a business. And we don’t want to be a business.
Paul Alexander — Or you hear that planning doesn’t leave room for the Holy Spirit to move kind of an idea. Um, and I’d say okay, they’re right. The church isn’t a business. The scriptures actually describe us as the bride of Christ or the body of Christ, right? It’s not a building that you come to. It’s a movement you choose to be a part of. And and unlike a business. The church doesn’t measure success in terms of your bottom line, or shareholder dividends, or financial profitability, right? We’re we’re measuring success in terms of life change, like you you mentioned earlier. You don’t have to pray about whether we want more people to meet Jesus or not.
Paul Alexander — And when it comes down to decision-making and measuring if things are working or not, I think some church leaders, again they have an aversion to that because um, you know, the whole “is it working” conversation, well what does that mean? In our in our world that means are more people meeting Jesus?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Paul Alexander — And so if if we’re gonna go left or we’re gonna go right, the bottom line is which way is gonna lead to more people meeting Jesus?
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — And so you’re they’re right? The church isn’t a business, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Paul Alexander — It’s a family of God. And then does planning leave room for the Holy Spirit? I mean if if you think through that kind of thinking actually assumes that God only works in spontaneity and in chaos, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.
Paul Alexander — And that would actually be counter to what the bible actually teaches us, and how we actually see God actually behaving in the scriptures, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Paul Alexander — So um, both of those big reasons I hear—you know, leaving room for the Holy Spirit to move in the moment, and then the churches isn’t a business—I think both of those things, while I understand the initial bristling at strategy and planning in a church, um, you know, if we actually use our brains…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Paul Alexander — …that God gave us…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Paul Alexander — …and we’re thoughtful about it, and intellectually honest about it, we we’d be quick to adopt these kind of practices.
Rich Birch — Right. Well, let’s let’s talk about that. So I, you know, I love that great that’s great framing. Life change is the bottom line. So that assumes if it’s a bottom line that we’re measuring that. That we’re, you know, at some level we’re trying to say, hey, are we more effective, or less effective? Is this ministry more effective, is less effective? Is this thing we used to do, is it driving us… Help us think through what are some ways that that we could, you know, I’ll give you a framework. Think you’re imagine you’re a church of a couple thousand people, say 2000 people. You know, you’re maybe an executive pastor and you’re looking at, you know, a bunch of different ministries. How would you be measuring life change?What’s that look like?
Paul Alexander — Well, I’ll tell you how we do it here. How’s that?
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s perfect.
Paul Alexander — Um I’m I’m getting a dashboard every single week. It’s um, for your listeners, it’s all connected to our database. It’s it’s expressed through Microsoft BI, so it’s easy to and dig into as much or as little as we want to. And um, you know we’re measuring and how many people are actually saying yes to following Jesus. And not like the old school raise your hand kind of deal, but we, you know, we have them, we do go old school. We stand up, walk out of the room, meet with someone face to face. You can measure that. Um, how many people are actually getting baptized? You can measure that. How many people are jumping in volunteer teams and being the church, not just coming to church. That’s actually measurable.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Paul Alexander — Um, how many people are jumping into leadership roles where they have spiritual authority and responsibility over a span of care of other volunteers? Again, you can measure all of that stuff. And so if you measure it, then you can A/B test it and try different things to find out what worked.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Paul Alexander — So um and candidly one of the fun things about multisite is you can run multiple experiments at the exact same time…
Rich Birch — Yes, it’s true.
Paul Alexander — …find out which one works and then just go with that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s funny, I’ve said that to churches I’ve coached over the years, around like man, we get you got to get to three or four locations, even just for that reason because man it’s like every weekend you have a month of services that, well, let’s try a couple different ways.
Rich Birch — So let’s talk about the dashboard and kind of when you’re looking at numbers and help us understand, you know, the lead measures versus the lag measures. Is there a lead measure or two that you look at that are that you think might be particularly insightful, that are kind of giving you a sense of of where we’re going. Because attendance and how much money you have, this is my framework on that. That tells you what you did a year ago.
Paul Alexander — That’s right.
Rich Birch — It tells you, you know, it’s an it’s an indication of of work you’ve already done. But what are you looking at from a lead measure point of view?
Paul Alexander — Yeah, that’s a good question. One of the ones that I look at in particular is our guest-to-attender ratio.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Paul Alexander — So how many first time guests can we can we identify? And, by the way, guests want to self-identify. And they do self-identify all the time, and probably the ease it used to be like the communication card that churches…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Paul Alexander — …would like, hey fill out a communication card, and all that deal. Um, people are self-identifying through lots of different ways now. You know, very, like for me personally, if I came to your church where you attend, the first time you knew I was there is probably going to be the first time that I actually give to the church. And so I don’t think that people think that way. Like the first time people self identify to the database, that’s when they’re saying, hey I’m here. And so we have a responsibility to respond to them saying “I’m here”. And so it can be checking in a kid. It can be they want prayer and they identify through some mechanism to to say that. It could be giving. It could be joining a group, volunteering. Whatever way they self-identify for the very first I I time at your church then that begins a workflow of how to follow up with them and how to engage with them and build relationship and connection with them.
Paul Alexander — So yeah, that ratio between how many first time guests or that number to the database each month or each week to attenders. That’s one that we’re looking at pretty heavily.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and and how what is that number? What’s the ratio you’re going for? What’s been the healthy, you know, this is a number I talk about all the time. So and this literally comes up, you know, almost every conversation I have with church Leaders. So what are you guys looking at and, you know, talk us through that.
Paul Alexander — Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know you’re going to hear all kinds of different things out there in church world. Whatever everybody’s favorite baseline for that…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Paul Alexander — …and you know for years and years was 1 to 1 ratio kind of deal. So if you’re a church of a thousand being able to identify a thousand first time guests over the scope of a year. Understanding that you know each church declines by at least 20% every single year. It’s just a fact. 5% of the people get mad at something the pastor says. 5% of the people move because of work. 5% of the people um, you know they die literally, they just they they are at the end of their life cycle factually.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Paul Alexander — And so, again, that’s 15%. And then so if you can get, you know, one out of 5 guests. You can actually grow at a 5% clip. Does that make sense? So 15% [inaudible]. We push our our numbers honestly that we’re looking for a little higher than that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it, love it.
Paul Alexander — So we’re actually looking at a 1 a 1 to 2 ratio is our goal.
Rich Birch — Yep. Okay.
Paul Alexander — Um, most of our campuses for context, you’re talking about how how do we grow? Um, this last year did about a 1 to 1.75 ratio of guest to attender.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Paul Alexander — Um that was that was kind of our norm this last year…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah that’s great.
Paul Alexander — …at each of our locations. Um…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah that’s great. I’ve I’ve talked about that same number um in it’s just slightly different way. I’ve said, you know, I love talking about it in 2% average weekly documented first time guests. So looking—it’s the same number—it ends up being ah, you know… But that’s the bent that’s like the that’s like the table stakes.
Paul Alexander — Yep.
Rich Birch — That’s like the starting point should be there, but then similarly churches we work with we end up seeing 3, 4%. Um and I like talking about it weekly because I think it pushes pressure put puts pressure on churches. So again that same church of a thousand that would mean, you know, every week they should be seeing 20 people a week. Which when I say a thousand guests, people freak out about following up, and what am I going to do. But when you say 20 a week, between 20 and 40 a week, what can we do to actually follow up and build a system to ultimately see those people get connected?
Paul Alexander — It’s super reasonable.
Rich Birch — That’s a great. I love…
Paul Alexander — Right. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s for total totally reasonable. That’s great so guest to attend to ratio ratio. Is there any other kind of lead to maybe one more lead indicator that you look at, or is that the primary one? That’s the big one.
Paul Alexander — Oh goodness, gracious. Um, that’s probably the most important…
Rich Birch — The biggest one.
Paul Alexander — …lead generated for me because, you know, whether they know Jesus or not don’t know Jesus, um…
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — …that, yeah…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Paul Alexander — …it it’s new people we’re engaging with.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s perfect. And that, you know, friends, that you’re listening in, you know, I want to take that, you know, listen to what Paul’s saying here. You know, here’s an executive pastor at a, you know, a large church by every number, you’d say this is a big church. And this number is a number that you can get. This is not like a, you know, this is he’s not doing some magic mumbo jumbo to find like what is the the crazy thing. It’s literally who’s new? And how do we compare who’s new, and sure we can debate all the places we get that from. But who’s new versus your attendee. Man, like that is, you know, it’s not, in some ways it’s not rocket science. It’s not, you know, it’s like we can we can get that together.
Rich Birch — Um, so when you think about, okay, so we’ve got this lead measure. Let’s say you end up pushing into, okay, we want to institute some sort of change management kind of thing in our church. I don’t know what that could be. Maybe it’s an example of something that maybe you’ve got a campus that you want to readjust, or there’s an overall kind of, you know, total, you know, churchwide change you’re trying to make. What does that look like for you? How do you lead that process? How does how do you, you know, begin the kind of planning process to evaluate what we need to, you know, evaluate what we need to do, come up with a plan, ultimately measure it. What’s that look like for you?
Paul Alexander — Yeah, so you know, most people get stuck in confronting reality. You know, and scriptures are given to us not to be used as a, you know, a microphone or a microscope to look in other people but a mirror to look at ourselves.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Paul Alexander — And most people have the most difficult time in this whole thing getting started being honest about where they are holding a mirror up to to define reality.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good.
Paul Alexander — And so I think it takes a lot of sober mindedness. It takes humility. It takes trust on a team. Um, which there’s some big cultural underpinnings that need to happen on a team to be able to actually engage in a conversation like this in a helpful manner. But um, all that being said, essentially it’s the same whether this is your marriage, or whether this is your personal life, or whether you’re leading a church or business, your job as the leaders to define reality, dream a preferred future, and design a pathway to get there.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Paul Alexander — And so all you’re you’re just defining reality. And if if you can’t define reality and confront reality, and be just candid and honest about, hey, there’s some things we’re doing really well and some islands of strength we need to lean into, but there’s also some areas of opportunity of deficiency that we just we haven’t baptized enough people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — Why?
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — Just be honest about that, man.
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — Um, and just let’s change it. If it’s not acceptable, then call it out as being not acceptable, man. There’s there’s got to be a different future for us. And then how are we going to actually change it. You know, and then you start getting into change management – who needs to be in the room, who needs to make the decision, who’s the biggest voice that needs to lead the way. Is there a cultural shift that needs to happen, even from leading the stage and from the church from the stage. Um, so I mean the answer is, it depends.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Paul Alexander — But foundationally you, you know, you’re defining reality, you’re dreaming a preferred future, and you’re designing a pathway to get there.
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s talk about that first step. First of all, I think that’s a huge insight most leaders or people get stuck at confronting reality. Can you talk us through a time where, you know, your role was to help a department, an individual, a campus, maybe the entire church, really confront a reality. That like oh here, you know, leaders by definition take people from where they are to a more to a more preferable future. And so we’ve got to define exactly where we are. Can you talk me through a time where you felt like, hey, part of my job now is just to get everybody on the same page. Let’s all agree that this is not good. Um, which is a there’s a function of leadership, right? We don’t, you know, we lots of people don’t see stuff that needs to change. They just think it’ll always be good. It’ll be we’ll just keep going. Can you talk us to a time where you had to do that, where you had to help define reality?
Paul Alexander — Yeah, oh let me start here. I I would say, Rich, the the best leaders I’ve been around when things are just kind of status quo and going okay, they’ll actually create a problem. They’ll actually…
Rich Birch — Right. It’s true.
Paul Alexander — …they will and they’ll do it on purpose. They’ll create chaos a little bit.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep, yep.
Paul Alexander — They’ll manufacture an issue. They’ll intuitively know things are slowing down, momentum’s lagging, I need to create chaos—a new problem to solve—to get us all moving in the same direction.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Paul Alexander — Back to that old adage: it is a lot easier to to steer a moving ship than to get it going. And so um, yeah, how would I say this? You’re almost asking the fish to describe the water in some respects here because this is a normal conversation for us at Sun Valley. Every single year I’m doing annual one day strategic refreshes with all of our campus teams and all of our ministry teams.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Paul Alexander — And so it’s just normal for us to have an annual strategic rhythm to come back and be honest about where we are. They’re getting they’re getting ah vital signs. Ah, you know dashboard for the year of how things went. And they’re just there’s just I give it to them and they come to the table prepared of here’s here’s where we killed it, here’s where Jesus is moving and we’re seeing life change. And here’s some things that aren’t as good as they were, or what we feel they should be. And so um, so a lot of it I’m, over time, they’re elevating what needs to change. And they’re elevating what needs to be confronted. And so then I’m just steering that conversation.
Paul Alexander — So, but no, it starts with simple things like you know, hey what’s going right? If you’re a leader you get this. If you’re a leader your natural bent is to dig into all the problems. And you’re talking about leaders essentially moving people to a preferred future. People don’t follow people who are negative.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Paul Alexander — And so I think by nature and I think executive pastors, that word means a lot of things in a lot of different churches…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Paul Alexander — …executive pastors oftentimes can get pinned down with a general sentiment that these guys just pop people’s balloons. And these staff members are slowing everything down. And they always want to like…
Rich Birch — They’re the no.
Paul Alexander — …yeah they’re the no person on the team. You never want to be known as the “no” person on the team.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Paul Alexander — Because people don’t follow people they don’t like. And they don’t follow people that aren’t positive. So it’s okay to point out a problem. It’s not okay to not bring a solution. And it’s not okay to not be optimistic about the problem.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Paul Alexander — And so I would encourage your listeners, because the audience is predominantly, you know, um XPs, church administrators, people who are a little more operationally lent, you know, bent um, movement doesn’t get built by policy. And it doesn’t get ah built by administration. So…
Rich Birch — Oh! Oh that’s good.
Paul Alexander — Yeah, so policy slows things down actually. So um yeah.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah. Totally. That’s good. Can you talk to us I was intrigued by your annual kind of review process there. Can you, again, this is one of those things I would say there’s lots of leaders who would say, I do not have time to set aside, what however many days that is—fifteen days, ten days, four days…
Paul Alexander — Oh brother.
Rich Birch — …to do that. Um, you know, and so talk to me through talk me through. What’s that look like? How, you know, ah, you know, so I get a sense of it. You’re giving them kind of that’s what happened in the last year, let’s come and talk about it. Let’s frame up some stuff from the future. Talk us through that rhythm – that intrigued me.
Paul Alexander — Yeah, yeah, so we have a tendency to do that every January and ah February, March timeframe because we’ve just landed a previous year. Our data team will elevate and produce the reports, we’ll distribute those to the different team. So each campus leadership team, management team, whatever language that church puts on that, um, they’ll get that team. You know, our student ministry staff, centrally kid staff, next step staff, creative arts, comp I mean I I don’t know, man, I’m probably doing twelve full days…
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Paul Alexander — …of just with our staff doing those different meetings. And then we have a senior staff team that goes through the church as a whole. And so…
Rich Birch — On the front end or on the back end? Is it like are you doing it like cascading down, you start with those people, or you go up, you know bottom up kind of thing, or or just kind of when they can fit the days in, or what’s that look like?
Paul Alexander — We do when they can fit the days in. It’s always kind of in the first quarter of the year.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Paul Alexander — One doesn’t, I mean a lot of times, again leaders are like well we got to do the senior staff one first because then that’s going to impact everything else. Well maybe. Um, but…
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — But because of the nature of it, if the senior staff finds something that does impact everything else, well fine. Just interrupt everybody do that. Because that’s what’s most important right now, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Paul Alexander — So the flexibility um to be masters of midcourse correction is really important. So um…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, interesting.
Paul Alexander — …like if you know you’re heading for a wall like, hit the brakes, brother. It’s okay…
Rich Birch — Please turn. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Alexander — …to turn the wheel, you totally can turn the wheel. Um.
Rich Birch — Yeah, like yeah, that’s good. I like that. That’s good. Let’s explore that a little bit more. The the balance between, at Sun Valley, between having a plan that we’re executing against versus responding, you know, proactive versus opportunistic…
Paul Alexander — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, we see something let’s jump on it. What’s that look like? How do you how does that workout for you guys?
Paul Alexander — Yeah, well I would I would say a couple things. Number one, we’re not addicted to growth. Number two, we’re also not addicted to strategy. We’re addicted to be seeing people meet Jesus and grow in their friendship with Jesus. And um we do have a strategic culture. We do consistently work this plan over time and I think that discipline to work a strategy consistently in a particular direction over a long period of time yields an incredible amount of fruit. At the same time you do have to have the courage and intuition of a leader to not be addicted to that plan, and not be confined by that plan, but to be consistently getting your head above things and seeing what’s happening and how things are…
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — …and people are responding and be willing to make some mid-course corrections. Um. Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — Yeah, it does. Can you give me an example of that, like that’s not covid, where you had to you know that you had to pivot. We all did that, right? But it’s like, you know, and and it was great to see amazing to see, but like give us an example of like maybe a department or a campus again or maybe the whole church where you were like hey we, this is just isn’t working. We got to change. Let’s but it’s go in a different direction.
Paul Alexander — So I alluded to this earlier in the conversation.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Paul Alexander — We just sold a campus. Okay. So…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right, Let’s talk about that.
Paul Alexander — …big decision most, you know. I don’t know a lot of churches that are selling locations or relocating them.
Rich Birch — Right, yep, yep.
Paul Alexander — So it’s not like we had anybody else to go to look at. And so we acquired this particular location. It’s one of our first mergers that we did.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Paul Alexander — And when that happened, about half the people that were there ended up over about two to three year periods leaving, and then it backfilled and ended up um, you know, what? Tripling, Quadrupling in size in attendance.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Paul Alexander — And yet hit this hit this lid because the the real estate, which I think most churches underestimate the power of, the real estate was frankly terrible. At one point their front door was a main, you know, a main road. A Highway went in and they made it inaccessible, and it got buried in ah into a neighborhood. And um, you know, location matters.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.
Paul Alexander — And anybody who tells you different is lying to you, or inexperienced. And so um, yeah,
Rich Birch — It’s true. Yeah, it’s true.
Paul Alexander — And so we ended up, you know, we could keep beating our head against a wall knowing that we can get it to a certain size and this is the amount of people that is going to meet Jesus and it’s gonna um, be faithful over time…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Paul Alexander — …and it’s gonna experience incremental growth. Or we could disrupt things and do something incredibly different. And we chose option B. And so um, which meant selling it and now that campus is set up and tear down for a season while we’re going ground up in an an incredibly strategic location. And my hunch is, out of the gate, the a thousand people that are at that location are going to move over. It’s going to be probably 2500 people at grand opening. And it’ll settle into 2000 and then it’ll go from there.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah.
Paul Alexander — And so and we’re talking about making decisions based on how many people are going to meet Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — Not how difficult it is or how hard it is, or emotionally we got to communicate and lead some people through this. Because that’s not an easy conversation to have with people.
Rich Birch — No, no.
Paul Alexander — There’s emotional connection to that location. People were baptized there and met Jesus there. On and on and on. It was a merger, so there’s a lot of history even there in that, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah.
Paul Alexander — But do you have the courage to say, if we go left instead of right, more people are going to meet Jesus. Okay, we don’t need to pray about that. We just need to have courage.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Well and yeah, that’s that’s there’s, man. There’s a ton there. I feel like that could be a whole episode in in and of itself. But when, you know, when you look at a decision like that, um, you know, how are you, you know, there’s I love that there’s a certain amount of risk ah associated with that. There’s like this might not work, right?
Paul Alexander — Sure.
Rich Birch — It’s like I agree with you on a conviction on the building stuff I do. And this is a guy who’s talked about portable for a long time. But I think, man, I think we underestimate the power of where we meet, and I think but think is to help us think through at a broad strokes, how do you think about the risk around a decision like that? How do you because there is risk, right?
Paul Alexander — Yeah, man.
Rich Birch — It’s like you could do all this, and spend a bunch if money, it doesn’t work.
Paul Alexander — Rich, I’m I’m weird. And I’ll I’ll confess I’m weird. I mean when when I was when I was called into ministry as a high school kid…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Paul Alexander — …and the Holy Spirit you know called me to ministry it was it wasn’t like you go I want you you’re gonna be an executive pastor at a mega multisite church. Man, if you asked me I like I don’t know what’s an executive pastor and what’s a multisite church? I didn’t know. I just had this calling and leading from the Holy Spirit of seeing thousands of people meet Jesus. And so um, to be honest with you, that’s that’s all I’ve really ever worried about.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Okay.
Paul Alexander — Are more people going to meet Jesus?
Rich Birch — Love it. Right, right, right.
Paul Alexander — Is it risky? I guess. But there’s there’s ah, there’s a lot of money at stake, there’s a lot of people at stake.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Paul Alexander — Um, but I don’t know, man, there is a simplicity to just obeying Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right. Sure. Absolutely.
Paul Alexander — And I think church leaders have a tendency to like overcomplicate it. And like, I mean, we either believe Acts 1:8, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and then…
Rich Birch — Right.
Paul Alexander — …you will be my witnesses and there’s a mission and a strategy and a plan that’s laid out there, or we don’t.
Rich Birch — Yeah, right. Love that.
Paul Alexander — And so. I don’t know, man. And again I’m kind of weird…
Rich Birch — No, it’s good.
Paul Alexander — …and I’m probably oversimplifying it a little bit. Um, but.
Rich Birch — No. It’s good. No, that’s good. That’s a good word for sure. And I, you know, I think sometimes we can we stand at ah at a crossroads of a decision like that and we get paralyzed by analysis, right? It’s that paralysis by analysis thing, and we’re like we think of, you know, 25 different ways where this won’t work. We come up with 32 where it will, and then we worry about the 7 in between. And we’re like okay is this going to I don’t know. And then we spent a lot of time, you know. And then but the but the reality of it is, I remember years ago I had a mentor of mine say, he said, if the only thing that’s standing between you and the mission that you believe God’s called you to is money—which a lot of times what we think about when we think about risk—he’s like, just go raise some money. And I remember thinking, oh that’s a lot simpler when you say it than what it sounds like in my head. And but it’s true, right? It’s like hey that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to keep this thing pointed towards reaching people.
Paul Alexander — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How do we do that? I love that. Great kind of overarching, our job is to simplify, keep people at first principles. Um, that’s yeah, love that. That’s so good. Well this been ah, this been a rich conversation, talked about a bunch of different things, but is there anything else you’d love the share just says we’re kind of coming to land today’s episode?
Paul Alexander — Um, yeah, I would. You know, what I think for your listeners um, as we’re thinking through planning and you know is it biblical is it not biblical. What’s our role and all of it? I mean if if they’re just thoughtful about how God has behaved at creation. I don’t think it was the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father sitting around and saying, hey, I don’t know – watch this. Let’s put stripes on this one. And you know, I mean. God actually had a plan at creation, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Paul Alexander — You know, when Jesus entered time and space, when the world was Rome, and there was a road system in place, Jesus didn’t, you know, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit weren’t sitting around saying, hey Jesus you want to go now? Okay, this looks good.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Paul Alexander — Jesus had a plan. The father had a plan. It was strategi when Jesus was sent.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Paul Alexander — And then if you fast forward to the second coming of Jesus, ah, there’s actually Jesus actually says this. He says no man knows the hour of the time, but my Father in heaven. God has a plan. And when you and I set aside time as a senior staff of a church to plan we’re actually and we’re actually doing something that’s holy. Because holiness is about obeying the scriptures. And so churches that don’t set aside time to plan, leaders that don’t set a aside time to work on their work, they’re missing out on the full power of the church because they’re simply not obeying Jesus in the scriptures.
Rich Birch — So good.
Paul Alexander — And I’m like I’ll land it with this: How arrogant of us as church leaders to think we could out-strategize, out-plan the enemy.
Rich Birch — Oh man, that’s good.
Paul Alexander — The the most strategic being that exists outside of God isn’t us. It’s satan.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Paul Alexander — If he can get you to sin, get you to think, get your heart to be inclined towards things that are destructive for you and people around you, how much more so do you think he can destroy the church. And so for us we’ve we’ve got to set aside time as church leaders to like Acts 1:8, wait on the Holy Spirit. And then go execute the plan. So that’d be my think, if I was going to encourage the listeners on something um man don’t be planning-adverse. You, by doing it, you’re actually obeying Jesus.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good, Paul. this has been super helpful today. I really appreciate being you being on the show. Um, you know, yeah, just it’s nice that you’ve took some time to be with us today. If where where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you to kind of plug into the the Paul, you know, cinematic universe that all the various things you got yourself into?
Paul Alexander — Ah, yeah, and I don’t know honestly if if you have listeners that are interested in having a conversation, or have a few questions, the best place to send them is just my email address paul@theunstuckgroup.com…
Rich Birch — Love it. Easy.
Paul Alexander — …and that’s the easiest fastest way to get me. That’ll keep my Sun Valley things kind of cleared.
Rich Birch — Yep, that’s great. Thanks so much, Paul. Really appreciate you being here today.
Paul Alexander — My pleasure, and glad to be with you.
Leading Through Growth: Executive Pastor Roundtable with Jeremy Peterson, Kayra Montañez, & Jesse DeYoung
Mar 20, 2024
This episode of unSeminary brings together a distinguished panel of Executive Pastors—Jeremy Peterson, Kayra Montañez, and Jesse DeYoung—for an insightful roundtable discussion. These seasoned leaders from across the country share their frontline experiences and strategies in navigating the complexities of expanding churches in today’s rapidly changing ecclesiastical landscape.
What You’ll Learn:
Innovative Leadership Development: Jeremy Peterson details the transformative journey of cultivating leadership within the church. Discover One Church’s effective strategies to empower volunteers and develop leaders for a resilient church community.
Mastering Growth While Fostering Community: Kayra Montañez offers a deep dive into balancing the challenges of rapid church growth with nurturing a close-knit community feel. Learn how Liquid Church utilizes technology and strategic initiatives to ensure every member feels connected and valued.
Strategic Leadership and Staff Culture: At Flatirons Church, Jesse DeYoung emphasizes strategic leadership and a robust staff culture to drive growth. His approach involves aligning bold decisions with core values, fostering a team committed to innovation and impactful community engagement.
Digital Ministry and Engagement: The discussion shifts to the critical role of digital platforms in modern church ministry. From using church apps to enhance member engagement to navigating online services, the panellists explore how technology reshapes church community dynamics.
Strategies for Financial Stewardship: Addressing the financial aspects of church growth, the roundtable covers innovative fundraising, budget management, and stewardship practices that underpin successful ministry and mission fulfillment.
Volunteerism and Service Culture: Uncover the secrets to building a vibrant volunteer culture as our guests share their approaches to recruiting, inspiring, and retaining volunteers, emphasizing the impact of service on church growth and community engagement.
Guest Bios:
Jeremy Peterson is the Executive Pastor at One Church, where his forward-thinking leadership has fostered a strong, vibrant community across multiple locations.
Kayra Montañez serves as the Executive Pastor of Ministries at Liquid Church, guiding the church through significant growth phases with her expertise in operations and digital engagement.
Jesse DeYoung holds the position of Executive Lead Pastor at Flatirons Church, where his strategic planning and commitment to community engagement have been instrumental in the church’s growth and outreach efforts.
This episode offers unSeminary listeners a treasure trove of wisdom from three of the church’s most dynamic Executive Pastors. Their shared experiences and innovative strategies provide actionable insights for church leaders looking to navigate growth, digital transformation, and community building. Tune in to be inspired and equipped for leading your church through growth with innovation, integrity, and purpose.
Wonderful: Charting the Path to Fulfillment in a World Overflowing with Options with Travis Spencer
Mar 14, 2024
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we have with us Travis Spencer, the lead pastor at The Fields Church in Mattoon, Illinois. We’re talking with Travis about his book Wonderful: How to Live a Fulfilled Life in a Very Full World.
Have you ever thought about writing a book? Tune in as Travis discusses the strategic use of his book as a recall strategy for his church, and insights into book writing and how it can benefit your church and larger community.
Being filled with the wrong things. // Regardless of where people are in the world, their lives are busy and full. The problem is they are often full of the wrong things, which don’t lead to a life of fulfillment and satisfaction. In the end people feel “bloated” and barely surviving rather than thriving. Travis describes this feeling as a “life ache” in his book Wonderful.
Three buckets. // In his book, Travis talks about the three buckets people seem to have a life ache in: personal soul care, relationships with people, and our purpose – why we’re alive. Even when our lives include these things, we can still be unhealthy in them. And church leaders aren’t exempt from these struggles. We can work hard to see the numbers in our churches go up while hiding a depleted soul.
Tackling book writing. // Writing a book is a monumental task. It requires discipline and a great deal of vulnerability as you expose yourself to criticism. You need to have courage and push past fears and what might seem impossible. For Travis, getting into a rhythm of writing came more easily when he was able to sit in a relaxing place with his laptop and write about what he was passionate about.
Writing to help others. // Travis’s journey to writing Wonderful began with a compelling “why.” His goal wasn’t to write a book, rather he believed that by sharing what he was passionate about, he could help people and offer practical tools that would lead others to true fulfillment. Has God put a message in your heart to share? Consider what’s at stake if you don’t write that book.
A book as a recall strategy. // Travis’s book was a strategic tool that has significantly impacted his church community. The Fields Church used Wonderful as a recall strategy to bring people back to church in January after the Christmas season. Everyone who attended on a certain date would be able to get a copy of the book for free; after that it would be available for purchase only. There was such a positive response to the free book offer that The Fields broke an attendance barrier on a non-holiday and crossed over 1000 people. Offering something special that happens only one day is a great way to encourage people to invite friends and family to your church.
Creating momentum. // Not only did the book launch create momentum in January, but The Fields Church also used it to kick off a message series. In addition, it enhanced community credibility and created engagement with people at The Fields. Travis is in the process of developing more resources that other churches can also make use of, such as small group discussion guides and how to use the book for sermons.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends. welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know every week we bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. And I got to be honest, friends, most of the people I don’t know. Or I get a chance to meet them through the podcast. But today that’s not the case. Excited to have a friend and church leader that, you know, we’ve got a chance to know each other over these last number of years. Travis Spencer is at the fields church. This a fantastic church in Mattoon, Illinois in Coles County ah which is in Central Illinois. And they they have two locations. Travis is the lead pastor. This church is started over a hundred years ago if I’m doing my math right. Ah and this is a great church. You’re going to want to get to know them. Travis, so glad that you’re here today. We’re talking about a book that he recently released – this caught my attention and I want to bring that to you. Ah Travis, welcome to the show.
Travis Spencer — Rich, thanks so much. What an honor. I love our friendship and I love how you have impacted my life for the last couple years, so thanks so much.
Rich Birch — Appreciate that, man. Super super great to have you on. So um, yeah, love this. Why don’t we start tell us a little bit about The Fields, kind of fill out the… Well I’m going first before you do that, I’m going to tell you, I’ve I’ve said this to you in other contexts. I had a chance to visit, I’ve been at your location a couple times. And I, this funny thing happened when I pulled into your parking lot. You know, I thought like oh, you know, so many churches they have like these fun names. And The Fields is a great fun name. And it’s you know it’s like Impact Church or, you know, and they’re like these great metaphors. And I assumed that The Fields was like a metaphor, like it’s a metaphor for, you know, the the harvest is plenty, and you know all that kind of stuff. And then I I remember I distinctly remember pulling into the parking lot and I’m like oh no, there’s cornfields right there. This is The Fields Church. So tell us a little bit about it.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, we have dual purpose identity. So you you a re right on the spiritual side. It’s like the fields are reap with harvest.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — However, we are right smack dab in the middle of a agricultural area of Illinois. And so there are fields around us.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — And so makes great sense and it identifies with our community. It helps people understand there’s purpose, you know, even we talk about new life all the time and looking life-giving. And and I tell people I tell our team like listen like the fields are out there. The people are out there and we need to help them understand a, life-giving relationship with Jesus. And yeah, so our locations and we’re continuing to grow, and as you know you know we’re expanding in some additional locations. And I have a feeling they’re all going to be in fields. That’s just…
Rich Birch — The brand will stretch.
Travis Spencer — Yeah. I think rural ministry is going to be our, ah, niche.
Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s cool. I, you know, I love it. I Think that’s great. The thing, I don’t know how to say this. So this is the problem, I’m like a guy from the suburbs, spent most of my time ah, you know, in the suburbs. And I like I don’t want this to sound demeaning because it’s not at all. You know that I respect you and respect your ministry. But like your church to me doesn’t feel like, like when I’ve been to services, it’s like not what I would so I would think my assumption of like rural ministry would look like. Like it feels very much like, hey if I was, you know, in well obviously you guys are a growing church. But talk us through that a little bit. Like what what is the experience of showing, you have a beautiful, like your physical locations are amazing. Talk us through what what does that look like.
Travis Spencer — Yeah I mean it doesn’t really matter where you plop a building down. It’s it’s it’s figuring out what what people need and what they’re looking for. When you start learning and and learning what other good healthy growing churches are doing, you just take notes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — And I don’t think it matters if you’re rural or urban or, you know, in the suburbs. It’s, you know, people want quality.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — People want they want to want to identify with, hey when I walk into this building, it feels like me. It feels like something I see in culture I see on TV. And so I think you actually have to stretch to like what the culture’s needing, not, well this is where God’s put me so I guess I’ll just, you know, have some dumpy little building, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, that’s…
Travis Spencer — Yeah, and and we do. We try very hard at being a church that, we are over 100 years old and most people would think we’re less than five years old just because of…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Travis Spencer — …ah, the look, the feel, the vibe. We were very intentional in that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. That’s good. Well you’ve written written a book recently and I want to make sure we dive into that, get a chance to learn. It’s called “Wonderful: How to Live a Fulfilled Life in a Very Full World” and I want to hear all about this. People are living, you know, it doesn’t matter their context. You know one of the things, ah, one of the joys that I have in my life is interacting with church leaders across the country and getting a chance to visit lots of parts of the country. And everywhere I go people are like, well, you know, people in this part of the country, they’re really busy. They’re really, they’re, you know, they got lots going on. They got tons in their schedule. They’re… But, you know, we’re we’re trying to help people not just live, you know, not just thrive or not just survive but to thrive. It’s like a a universal problem, everywhere we go. And it it literally doesn’t matter. And I you know I always I nod politely and say like oh I totally get that I can understand why your part of the country is so different than the rest of the country. Ah, but it’s true. It’s universal. Talk talk to me about that. What are what kind of led you to think, oh I’ve got to, this is a problem that I want to tackle in written form.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, absolutely. Actually I’m entering my twenty-fifth year of ministry…
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Travis Spencer — …so [inaudible] to say that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Travis Spencer — So 25 years of ministry. And that’s not just church ministry. I was a I was a University Football Chaplain for about 7 years, and then I’m very involved in the community on boards and just I’m a huge believer in community advocacy. And so what you do over 25 years is you’re just with people all the time. And it’s not just church people. You know it’s not just people sitting in pews and rows. It’s like around boardrooms. It’s in…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …on football fields. It’s coaches. It’s all these things. And I’ve discovered it’s very easy to feel empty when your plate is full.
Rich Birch — Oh good.
And and that’s like that that’s not like that that that clash of how can I be empty yet I feel so full. But they’re what they’re what they’re full of is they’re bloated. They’re.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — I tell a story in the book. It’s like I remember I distinctly remember being on a cruise boat with my family. And ah my son gets up and goes… You know we’re sitting around the pool floating in the Caribbean going, oh this is great. He gets up he goes and it has a. I go, hey where are you going to, Cody? And he goes, I’m going to get a shrimp burrito. You know? And I’m like oh my goodness, we’re still eating. And then I say, oh pick me up a taco on the way back, you know? But but there’s that feeling that you at some point in that trip, you always feel kind of gross and full and bloated. And I think that’s life because everything is available.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Travis Spencer — It’s available all the time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — There’s your calendar can be over full. You can say yes to everything. And so instead of us as humans having a stomachache I think we have a life-ache. I think we’re I think we’re like wow, why don’t I feel good? Why does it why do I feel bloated and full? And it’s because we’re putting all the wrong things in our life. And to be honestly we’re chasing something and it’s not leading to fulfillment or satisfaction. And I do think that’s a human problem. I don’t think that is a where you live in the United States.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — Like that’s that is everyone’s identifying with that, is I want to feel fulfilled I want to feel satisfied but I feel like everything I’m chasing for is not leading me to that. And so as a pastor I was like, okay like we have to help solve this problem for people. Yeah.
Rich Birch — We got to talk about this. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, let’s let’s stick there for a little bit. I love… well, I don’t love that idea of the life-ache. But I love that um, you know, that concept I think that resonates deeply, you know this idea of we’re overfull. We’re stuffed. Our culture is, you know, time and again it’s like we all individually are living the lives that for most of human history, you know, only kings lived. You know, like we have instant access to food, instant access to snap our fingers and entertainment comes to us. Um, you know, we’re and we’re not built for that. Like we’re not built for you know this kind of constant consumption, constant… In in your own ministry, how have you seen that work its way, that kind of like, you know, people who are are full, but feel empty. Um tell talk to me about that. How how do you see that as a pastor in in the people you lead over the years?
Travis Spencer — Yeah, when I well so I asked a lot of people that question of like so what’s I tried to drill down into that…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — …like what’s what’s the real cause. And and it seemed like after the literally hundreds of conversations, interviews – I have a journalism background, so I kind of like digging into this and I interviewed and asked a ton of questions. Seemed like there was three areas that that we were we were had this life-ache in and we were we needed we needed to find this fulfillment. And it was personal soul care. It was it was relationships, the people in our life. And it was the purpose of why we’re alive. So to boil that down, and the book kind of wraps around these three big lanes, is personal care personal soul care, people, and purpose. Because hundreds of conversations I like looked at all of the trends and it seemed like they all fell in one of those three buckets.
Travis Spencer — I asked it, and I actually asked the question not why do you feel gross, but what fulfills you; what makes you feel good? And their answers fell in one of those buckets. It was, well when I go to church and I have ah, you know, during worship. Okay, well, that’s a spiritual thing. Or when I’m around my kids, you know, and we go to, you know… So there was a people thing. And then it was why I love, you know, helping when I went on that missions trip, when I did something that was good. And so it really was, it’s either like soul care your personal care, people, or purpose. And then so then it’s like I think that we’re we are filling our lives with those things, but they’re still unhealthy.
Rich Birch — Um, okay, well let’s let’s dig into those a little bit. Was there as you’re writing this I know for me as I’ve written in the past there’s a part of it where um I feel like I’m writing for myself. It’s like the most convicting, the part that kind of points at me. Was there any of any of those three, one of those three, or a part of one of those three—whether it’s, you know, wonderful life, wonderful people, wonderful purpose—um, that was particularly kind of self-diagnosing and like self, you know, convicting as you were wrestling through it?
Travis Spencer — Oh, all three, because I think that’s what made the book so easy to write is I have personal stories in every single one of those categories. And it’s just so easy to identify that my goodness, like I’ve not I’m not taken care of myself or my soul in the right way. And here I am as a pastor; I have this spiritual title and yet we can feel very depleted spiritually. And um, you know I think we all have gauges and dashboards in our own life. And I told the story that my son one time his name was mentioned on the local police scanner because he ran out of gas. And our names were mentioned on the police scanner too, which is not good when you live in these rural areas. Everyone knows him. Um, he’s on the way.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s Travis’s kid.
Travis Spencer — Yeah. So he’s on the way to work, or he’s on the way to class at the local hospital on one of our busiest highways. He runs out of gas. He pulls his car over but doesn’t get it all the way over so now over the police scanner is the vehicle owned by Travis Spencer is, you know, blocking traffic and blah, you know.
Travis Spencer — And and so we do the whole, son, you got to, you know, put gas in your tank. But if if you would have just looked at the dashboard and looked at the gauge he would have known like, hey, I can’t get all the way to my job today. And I think if we would take a look at our gauges and go, man, I don’t know if I’m filling up in God’s word. I don’t know if I’m spending some, I don’t know if there’s solitude. I don’t know if there’s…and I don’t know if I have enough rest. Why is there burnout in my life? And so I really think we have to look at the gauges. And I have plenty of personal diagnosis there. I’m like wow I’m, I think I ran on empty way too much, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, yeah yeah, you…
Travis Spencer — And so that that would be that would be one of those personal care kind of stories.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so when you um so I think it’s interesting that you with the way the book is structured, you know, I’ve got it open, I’m looking at the the um table of contents. It’s interesting you you you go from that kind of personal soul care, people, to purpose. And I wonder if, particularly church leaders—obviously there’s a lot of church leaders listening in today—if we go the other way around. We it’s like we start with purpose, like what we and we the thing that motivates us is the mission. We think about the thing we wake up in the morning. It’s a noble thing. We wake up in the morning and we think about lost people in our communities. But then we don’t we end up soul care can feel like, well, yeah, I’ll get to that. That feels like a that’s like a nice to have. Or like that’s like, when I slow down I’ll get to those things. Did you order that in this direction, you know, on purpose? And, you know, what kind of coaching would you give to us for folks that are in our in in ministry, that we do this for, you know, our jobs? We spend our days thinking about these things.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, absolutely. I ordered it on purpose. I don’t know if you’ve ever read like Dallas Willard, but Soul Care, if you don’t take care of your own soul like that’s the foundation of who we are.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — And so if you’re on an airplane, you’ve been you were on an airplane yesterday, and when we’re on an airplane, everyone hears the little, hey if cabin pressure goes down the oxygen masks, you know, fall down. And then it says if you have a child sitting next to you, make sure you put your mask on first…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …before you put the mask of the of the the child next to you. And like what parent is they or what pastor is going to go. Oh I I need to take care of me before I need to take care of the people are in my community that are dying. And so we immediately start putting the masks on other people and we’re saying, hey, I want to help that person, I want to help that person, I want to help that person. And the whole time we have not put the mask on ourselves. The oxygen is not on our in our own lives. And so, again we have to fill up our own lives with God before we can ever try to help someone else. And we mess we mess that up all the time [inaudible] pastors.
Rich Birch — Yeah, but what what I was going to say so… I know, so like so help us, pastor us here as pastors. Why? How do we how do we get around that? Like it it it feels like, well it’s like, why Dallas Willard exists because he’s pointing out an issue that that we seem to get wrong. And maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m the only one who who is listening or in but it’s like that you know we we go to putting the masks on other people first all the time. Um, so you know, coach us on that a little bit; talk us through…
Travis Spencer — So yeah, let’s let’s be raw here.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Travis Spencer — Like we can measure church metrics.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — So I can work really hard and see church numbers go up. I can see groups go up. I can see people through the front door go up. I can see finances go up.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — And so we measure those numbers and we prioritize those numbers.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — And the dashboard that I talked about, like your gas light of your soul…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — …that’s a harder number to measure…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …and it’s an easier number to hide.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Travis Spencer — I think there’s a lot of unhealthy pastors that are bustin’ down. You know the numbers are great in their churches, but but how are they doing?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Travis Spencer — You know, but but the problem is is it catches up with you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it does
Travis Spencer — It really does. Like we can play that game. For some people can do it for seasons, or or years.
Rich Birch — Yeah, decades.
Travis Spencer — But if you don’t if you don’t tackle soul care, I think I think it could be a house of cards.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Well you know, and I was just I was speaking to someone this week who we’re going to have on a future episode and we’re talking about this exact issue. And I said man, I’m just so tired of um leaders who—and I think this is turning around, which is a good thing—but like there’s there was a ah, real period there where it was like every conference I went to there would be some leader in some massive ministry who’s making huge, like huge influence, and then they would get up and say like don’t do it like me though, like I built this thing and then burnt out. Like I wish I hadn’t have done that. And I’m like where’s the person that’s like, you know, I’ve taken a measured life through my entire ministry, and at the same time had huge impact. And there are those people out there and I would count you as one of those, that it’s like okay, there’s a person who is is actually trying to tend their own garden while worrying about, you know, the people around them. Ah, but it it it’s, man, it just it seems like we run into those all the time. It feel like it’s getting better but I feel like we still got it so much so far to go on that front.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, it’d be interesting if as a leadership culture we could instead of so always celebrating the churches that blow up in the pastors to go from this number to some great number, we could celebrate incremental growth.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, like this pastor helped lead his church to a 7% growth for the last twenty years every year.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Travis Spencer — Instead of they were they they started in their living room with 12 people and three years later they have an auditorium of a thousand.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — And we hear that all the time, but it’s like one, it’s not very doable and two, I don’t know how you don’t get burnout in that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — Like that’s a story of complete exhaustion.
Rich Birch — Yes, well and I love, yeah, so friends of mine in Omaha um Stonebridge Church, Mark Chitwood is the lead pastor there, and he that’s one of his jokes. Like they’re they’re a church of they’re sizable church. They’re south of 3000, like there’re probably 2500 people, something like that. And his joke is we’re the slowest growing church in America, you know. But when you hear their story, they literally it’s like they’ve grown 10 percent a year for 30 years. Like it’s just like, you know, and and that over time that has, and I’m like that’s what we want to do! Like that is, you know, that’s a whole other conversation. But you know, interesting, interesting stuff.
Rich Birch — Well, you know, I know that writing a book, this is a huge task, like actually sitting down. Let’s kind of flip and talk rather than about the content. Let’s talk about the process. So what led you to be like, okay we’ve got to, you know, now’s the time I want to write this. Had you been thinking about this for a while? Is this, you know, I feel like every pastor I’ve run into’s got a book in them or thinking about it. But talk us about that talk to us about that part.
Travis Spencer — Um, yeah, absolutely. if you would interview my wife she would say I have a hundred books inside of me…
Rich Birch — Yes, good!
Travis Spencer — …and and up and end up until this time I had zero on print.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Travis Spencer — So you know, I think it’s um I I’m one who is always thinking, dreaming. I do have a journalism background. So I mean I um I enjoy writing. I enjoy that, but this really came down to okay 25 years of experience. if you were to just write one book…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …what’s the easiest one?
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — And then, Rich, you helped me. Like, you know, I want you to I want your listeners to hear this. Like you you said every lead pastor should write a book. And something inside of me said, okay, like I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve talked about it. I have a phone full of notes on it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Travis Spencer — I have never sit down and did it. And and then you actually helped set that plan and go like okay, let’s let’s walk through this.
Rich Birch — Let’s do it. Yes, talk about a process for it.
Travis Spencer — And let’s let’s create an outline and and so really, it was getting thoughts into an outline. Outline into… and then in that and when when I was in the outline process is when I started, Okay, I know the direction of this book I’m going to start talking to a lot of people and getting content from…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. I like that.
Travis Spencer — …from friends, family, Facebook, everything and start asking, like I know I’m going to write on this. So now I want to hear stories from other people. I started categorizing categorizing or cataloging in my own mind my own personal stories that would connect to some of these. But I also did an audit of people in my life and said this person… so there’s a there’s a great lady in our church that’s a a comedian. And but she became a comedian because her father passed away and she couldn’t laugh for like a couple years. She was a very joyous lady who when her dad died, the the laughter stopped.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Wow.
Travis Spencer — And then she had this awakening that, no, I was ah God put this in me; I need to help people laugh. And I’m like, I want to retell that story in the chapter of purpose.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Travis Spencer — Like God’s got that in you. So I was cataloging people that I know. We have some veterans in our church that like have incredible stories of hard work and grit. I tell my own dad’s story if he’s a welder and just smelled like old iron, you know, when he came home from work. But but grit, you know, and it’s missing, and so working hard. And so I was looking at my life, I’m looking at other people’s lives, and then you just have to start writing it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Travis Spencer — You just [inaudible]. And to be honest for me, I sat on my back patio for like a couple hours every night when it was nice out, the sun went down, the patio lights were on. I grabbed my laptop and I just spent a couple hours writing or researching. Um and it just just actually was very enjoyable to me. Like it’s nice out, I’m gonna go sit on the back patio and I’m gonna work on this thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — And I thought if I could do one or two hours and just kind of keep plugging away at it. Now we had a deadline, so just a little bit… we I used this book also to to really catapult for a sermon series and to get back to church in January. So it was strategic. And because of that that put another pressure on you have a real deadline. Like it’s not a, hey I’m going to write a book in, you know, this calendar year…
Rich Birch — Sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Travis Spencer — …like we want to hand this book out…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …in January, so then you had to you had to you had to go backwards and go, Okay, so for distributing it here… So I did have it so that’s why I was like, okay, one or two hours on my patio – I have to bust this out. But it wasn’t exhausting. I tell people all the time, you know, Rich, you gave me a plan, you gave me some, 4 or 5, simple steps, you opened the door into some relationships of editors, designers. You made it fairly simple and I was like it was much easier than I thought. And it really was.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — And if I have learned anything and people ask what do you learn reading but writing a book? It was like it was easier than I thought.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s a little bit demystifying. Yeah, yeah.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, it’s not this massive mountain.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — You know, especially if you trust you know an editor to clean up your stuff. I think I think there’s vulnerability in writing a book. You know, like good grief. Not only is everyone going to read it and you’re going to look at your little Amazon stars and see if anybody commented.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — But you’re also giving it to an editor that’s doing a very deep dive…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — …and going I don’t like this chapter.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Travis Spencer — Or I didn’t like the way you said this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. That’s my son and I want to tell that story about him on the car. That’s a great story.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — You know like yeah you get pushback. Yeah for sure.
Travis Spencer — You push past vulnerability, you push past the fear of it’s impossible to do.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — And it’s doable.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — You know, and I’m like and I’ve already got the next one like, you know, rolling.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Travis Spencer — You know, I’m like, hey, I I can do this. It was very…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. I came… I I would can identify that feeling for sure. I just I literally just came off the release of a book, and and I have that feeling of like okay, let’s go going on the next one. Like it and, you know, I want to I personally I want to use that because I know that wanes, like eventually you’re like, okay, you know, you’re you kind of lose that momentum. But I’m like oh yeah, right, there are, you know, let’s let’s get working on this on this next one.
Rich Birch — Let’s go back to the moment. So, I appreciate the kind words and, you know, that’s nice of you to to say that, but like in that same group that we were encouraging, there was you know 8 or 9 pastors in that room. You know, half a dozen churches. Um, and you were the one that did it. I was challenging all of them. So if if it’s a measurement of coaching, I’m you know I’m batting 2 out of 10 or whatever you know, 20%, something like that. Ah what what was it in that initial phase that that you walked away saying, no, like let’s do this. Like let’s actually because because, you know, if I look at that and that’s not a criticism to other people actually one of the other churches is working on one as well. Um. But and and one of them had already done it. So maybe I’m I’m being self-critical. I shouldn’t be. But um, but what what think about put yourself in that headspace and what was it that helped you actually get over the like okay, let’s start. Let’s actually get the thing rolling. Um you know, kind of the what what gave you the the internal drive to make the commitment to do it?
Travis Spencer — Yeah, one thing was, someone believes that I can do this. Like someone is someone believes in me to write it. And then just some simple steps of I remember you you I think you when you write your books you you speak it out a lot, right? You use like some some…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Travis Spencer — And so and I was like, man, who can’t talk for 30 or 45 minutes on something that’s so passionate in your life.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Travis Spencer — So just get it out. Just get it out of you, and then you’ll clean it up later.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Travis Spencer — But just get it out of you. And I was like besides sitting in the room going, I have these thoughts. I have these…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …you know, I have these ideas. And then you if you match that with people need this content.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, true.
Travis Spencer — The why is very important.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Travis Spencer — The why is not I want to be an author.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — You know, I want to be a, you know, church planting same thing. I just want to have extra campuses. No, that’s a horrible why, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, true.
Travis Spencer — Because [inaudible]. So the why is I don’t want to I don’t want my name on a book – that can’t be the why and it can’t be ah, you know. It has to be I have a story to tell. I have content that can be valuable. I need to deliver practical tools and steps into someone’s life to help them find fulfillment. And so when you hold on to that and say I actually believe I have something that’s beneficial. And my audience usually is a Sunday morning…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — …and then some people online but now this audience is like goes beyond that.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Travis Spencer — And it’s it’s really incredible.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. I yeah I want to underline what you said there just to um to encourage people that might be listening in. You know, if you have got something that will help your people, which I believe you do, like the most selfish thing you can do is to not do the work to release it. Like it’s actually ah it’s a gift of um compassion. I love Seth Godin’s work on that. It’s like a it’s a it’s an act of compassion to ultimately put this together and then to promote it to try to get other people to to actually read it. Um, you’re actually helping people. That’s the goal of it. You’re trying to help the folks that are in this case in your church or their friends or or broader community.
Rich Birch — Let’s talk a little bit about the impact that the book had. Um, I know it, you know you guys you use it as a recall strategy. Just for folks that are listening in, that’s, you know, the the kind of big idea there is coming out of a Big Day. Man, one of the best practices like Christmas is to have some really clear call to action to bring people back. You use this as a part of that for a January recall. Talk us through that from ah you know an impact point of view. How did how has it helped the church. Because I know that’s you know that was a part of the driver for you wanting to do it. It’s like hey I want to I want to do this to try to help us reach people and and help, you know, what we’re doing at The Fields.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, absolutely. At you know Christmas you have your peak attendance. You have a lot of people showing up at Christmas, but then there’s the lull of the new, you know, New Year’s Eve and that weird Sunday that no one shows up to church after after Christmas.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Travis Spencer — And you know and we don’t even have church that Sunday and so…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, like so on Christmas when we have everyone, we’re like coming back on (then we gave the specific day), everyone’s going to get a free copy of Pastor Travis’s new book called “Wonderful.” And and then we and then we’re very specific. If you come back the next weekend it’s for sale in the lobby. But on this date…
Rich Birch — It’s free.
Travis Spencer — …everyone’s getting everyone’s getting a free copy. And so there’s a little investment there, but for me, it’s like we’re getting this we’re getting the word out into everyone’s hands. It’s a huge callback. It’s really a great idea. And so we did that and, you know, we were. I’m I’m [inaudible] I don’t know if anyone’s going to show up to church for my for my book.
Rich Birch — You, but you said that on a call like the week before. We happened to be on a call and you were like you didn’t quite weren’t quite that pointed, but you were like, well we’ll see. Who knows? You know, we’ll see what happens. The books are here. We’ve got a big, giant pile of books.
Travis Spencer — Yeah, you have to preorder these things you’re like, man, do we like, are we going to have hundreds of books sitting in the closet? Like this is a bad idea? I was blown away by that. Our numbers – I don’t know if we were 20% higher than on average.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah.
Travis Spencer — And we hit ah an attendance barrier. I know numbers aren’t everything, but it was the first time we we broke the thousand barrier on a non-holiday.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s huge deal. Yeah.
Travis Spencer — And so here’s what’s fascinating is, okay, like that’s the free book day. And we were like 1100 or something like that. And next week, same number.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Travis Spencer — Next week maybe dropped a you know few families…
Rich Birch —Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Travis Spencer — But to be honest that whole series, and and today we’re out of that series we’re much higher today than we were pre-, you know, before this this book launch. And it did create some momentum. And the second thing is anywhere I go in community, I just hear people say, hey how’s your book doing?
Rich Birch — Sweet.
Travis Spencer — I know you said like you know it’s great for a callback. It’s great for your church. You know it’s good for that series. And that’s absolutely worked. But then the the other key is community credibility.
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — And you can be the pastor in town that’s an author. You can be the pastor in town that’s written a book. And and online you just keep sharing it and people seeing it. And that’s a conversation I hear all the time when I’m out at a restaurant or something. Like hey, I’ve been reading your book.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing.
Travis Spencer — Or hey how’s it go and how’s the book going? And so there is community credibility. And now we’re going to be able to pass this book out all year long to like whether we haven’t decided if it’s new guests or people who graduate like a leadership program or something. But it’s the gift that keeps on giving. You know we have this tool. Let’s continue to use it. And now we’re packaging a ten week, it’s like 10 chapters, so we’re packaging like a discussion guides. I have pastor friends are like, hey, we’d like to do a small group.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Travis Spencer — So I’m leading a small group right now. I want to do it myself to see like what are the right questions in the discussion.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Travis Spencer — So as I’m leading this I’m writing the curriculum. And it’s ah you know it’s ah just a small group discussion. But then we’ll be able to even make that available to, you know, some friends and ministry that they want to you know, take this and run with it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Travis Spencer — It’s been a huge gift for our church and it’s been great.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Well, that’s great, dude. I yeah I want to encourage people that are listening in well I want you I want you to go and pick up copies. I’m assuming you can get on on Amazon.
Travis Spencer — Yes.
Rich Birch — Is there somewhere we want to send them to pick up besides that or is any website or that kind of thing we want to send them to?
Travis Spencer — Amazon’s the easiest and then the other one the the tool that we’re developing especially for pastors because then we’ll do discussion guides and even…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — …give links to how I use the the series…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — …is just go to readwonderful.com, readwonderful.com
Rich Birch — readwonderful.com
Travis Spencer — And then here’s the here’s the you you touched on this is like people kind of are afraid to write a book. I ask myself this all the time, like what’s at stake? I think it’s a Don Miller.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Travis Spencer — Don Miller says this when he’s storytelling. He says one of the parts of the great story at the end of like a of any story is what’s at stake? What if we do do this, this happens. And if we don’t do this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Travis Spencer — …this happens. And what’s at stake if I don’t deliver practical tools and steps of helping people find fulfillment and satisfaction, is if I don’t, the culture will.
Travis Spencer — So so in my mind is if we don’t lead people to true fulfillment and satisfaction, they’re going to someone’s going to try to tell them, this is what satisfying is.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Travis Spencer — And this is what fulfillment is.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Travis Spencer — And so I think we ask ourselves of any book topic or any message that we’re getting ready to teach or any, you know, big series that a church is getting ready to plan is what’s at stake if we don’t do this?
Rich Birch — So good.
Travis Spencer — And for me, it’s like I don’t want people finding fulfillment in other places…
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Travis Spencer — …because that will be empty fulfillment.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Travis Spencer — And they’re going to go right back to the life ache that they had before.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Travis Spencer — And so what’s at stake? Like what’s the cost of not doing this book?
Rich Birch — So good. So good, dude. I love it. What ah what encouragement. I yeah I just want to honor you for for actually doing it and for leaning in. And I think it would be a great, you know, there’s multiple things happening in today’s podcast here. I think it’d be a great book for. I think there’s leaders that are listening in that need to hear the message of this book and would find this as ah, friends, it’s an encouraging book. It’s positioned as, you know, Travis is your friend. This is not the kind of book you’re going to walk away from feeling crappy about yourself. You’re going to be like, okay, no I’ve got some practical steps empowered to take, you know, steps forward. I think it would be a great resource for your staff team, like you could be like hey let’s use this as ah as a resource for us as worth, you know, maybe a training thing this spring or maybe but you know post easter or something like that. Hey, let’s let’s read through this as a staff team. I think that could be a great place. I think, you know, it’s an encouragement to, you know, here’s ah, a leader who who did the work to write a book. I know there are there are literally thousands of pastors who are listening in who have thought the same thing. Well here’s like the 1% who actually did it, and you heard about the response which is amazing. So um, you know, maybe you would encourage you to take a step and and, you know, or maybe you want to do this as a series at your church – that kind of thing. So go to readwonderful.com that would be a great ah you know so starting point. Pickup copies on Amazon. I would really encourage you to to lean in with Travis on that.
Rich Birch — Going to give you the final words. Any final words, you’d love to say there, Travis, just as we kind of close out today’s episode?
Travis Spencer — So when Bob Golf wrote his book, “Love Does,” he put his phone number in the back. We were we were in the we were in my office and and myself and our executive Pastor Evan we called the number. He answered. He answered. Bob answers. And like Bob, your book has been so powerful in our life. Just thanks for writing. And in in his joyous Bob Goff voice he goes, Travis, you have a book in you, you know.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Travis Spencer — And he goes everybody should write a book, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Travis Spencer — So I tried calling the number again to tell him I wrote that book.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Travis Spencer — And he didn’t answer.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Travis Spencer — But so if I had parting comments, one I really do believe everyone has a book in them. And then secondly I want to be as approachable as he is. If anyone has any questions or wants to dive a little deeper, you know, or you know we can get that contact and and reach out. I’d love to help and love to just walk alongside you…
Rich Birch — Yeah, where where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you to be at the church website.
Travis Spencer — Like let’s go to the yeah, let’s go to the church. Let’s go to thefields.church…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Travis Spencer — …and then that would be the easiest contact.
Rich Birch — Perfect. Well thanks, friends. Thanks for tuning in. Travis, just want to honor you. You’re a great leader. You’re the kind of people people should follow and so it’s been great to connect with you today. Thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
Bridgetown’s Pivot from Livestream to Local: Kenny Jahng & Rich Birch Discuss
Mar 13, 2024
In an era where digital presence is almost synonymous with accessibility, Bridgetown Church’s recent decision to cancel their livestream services stands out as a bold counter-current move. This episode of the unSeminary podcast, featuring a conversation between host Rich Birch and guest Kenny Jahng, dives deep into the implications and motivations behind this pivot. Here’s what you need to know about their insightful discussion:
The Announcement:
Context: Bridgetown Church announced it would stop its livestream services starting March 24th, transitioning to audio and video podcasts instead.
Focus: The decision underscores a strategic shift towards fostering deeper connections within the local Portland community.
Insights from Rich Birch and Kenny Jahng:
Understanding Bridgetown’s Decision:
Local Engagement: Emphasizing the importance of physical presence in building community and spiritual growth.
Digital Strategy Reevaluation: In a truly post-pandemic world, many churches are scrutinizing their digital outreach efforts and resource allocation.
Pros and Cons:
The Good: A focus on local ministry can lead to more meaningful community engagement and support Bridgetown’s vision of practicing the way of Jesus in Portland.
The Concerns: Reducing digital outreach might limit the church’s ability to reach those not ready or able to attend in person, possibly missing out on evangelistic opportunities.
Key Takeaways:
The Power of Presence: There’s an undeniable value in in-person interactions that digital formats can’t fully replicate.
Digital as a Tool, Not a Replacement: While digital platforms offer incredible reach, they should complement rather than replace traditional church functions.
Adaptability is Key: Churches need to be flexible and responsive to their community’s needs, whether digital or physical.
Looking Forward:
A Call to Action for Church Leaders: The Bridgetown decision is a conversation starter for church leaders everywhere. It prompts a reevaluation of how digital strategies align with their mission and community needs.
No One-Size-Fits-All: Each church must find its balance in utilizing digital platforms to enhance rather than overshadow the irreplaceable value of physical community spaces.
Rich Birch and Kenny Jahng’s discussion on “Bridgetown’s Pivot from Livestream to Local” is more than just a case study; it’s a prompt for all church leaders to reflect on their digital and local engagement strategies. As the church landscape continues to evolve, finding the right mix of digital and physical presence will be crucial for fostering meaningful connections and fulfilling the church’s mission in an increasingly digital world.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch: Well, happy Wednesday, everybody. Welcome to a special episode of the unSeminary podcast. Super excited to have you with us today. We are having a conversation with my good friend, Kenny Jahng. Kenny wears many hats, but today we’ve got him with the hat on church tech. He’s also the founder of an organization called Big Click Syndicate. He and I served together at Liquid Church. He’s a great friend. Kenny, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Kenny Jahng: I am so excited about today’s conversation. I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but I’m ready, whether it’s a roundtable discussion, a battle of theologies and concepts, I don’t know. Let’s do this.
Rich Birch: Yeah, this is great. So, for friends that maybe didn’t read the show notes ahead of time, our friends out at Bridgetown Church out on the west coast, they announced earlier this week that they’re dropping their livestream as of here in March Twenty-Fourth, I think. And they’re going to provide audio and video podcasts but are no longer doing the live stream. So, we want to talk about that, and I thought, man, who could we have a conversation with but Kenny Jahng. We’re going to actually let you listen to the entire announcement if you have not listened to it. Let’s just take it. It’s a pretty long announcement, like 4 minutes, so listen in to what they have to say, and then we’re going to come back and talk it out.
[Bridgetown Announcement | Tyler Staton]
Hey Bridgetown family,
I want to share with you an important announcement for the life of our church. Sunday, March 24th, will be the last time that we offer a full live stream for our Sunday worship gathering. We will continue to offer the full teaching from every Sunday worship gathering in both video and audio format, so you’ll still be able to access, like you always have in the life of this church, every teaching from every Bridgetown worship gathering on video on our website or on podcast, wherever it is that you listen and get your podcasts.
The vision of our church is “in Portland as it is in heaven,” and so I want you to know the heart behind this decision is to continue to live in line with that vision. That’s always been our vision and it always will be our vision. There was a time in the history of this church as we navigated the complexity of a global pandemic when offering our full Sunday worship gathering on live stream was absolutely essential for us to live out that vision together. Thankfully, now safely on the other side of that complex time, a full Sunday worship gathering that can be viewed from anywhere and everywhere is no longer an essential toward living that vision.
Should it become again, would we consider re-offering a live stream? Of course, we would. This simply isn’t that time, and we’re grateful for that. So, this decision will affect different groups of people in different ways, so I want to address those different groups of people.
First, for those of you who are here in Portland, consider Bridgetown your church home, and might have benefited from this live stream when you’re traveling or just unable to make it to church that Sunday or something like that. Let this just be one more invitation to gather in person in local community on Sundays around the stage and midweek around the table in homes in Bridgetown communities. That has been the heartbeat of our church and the invitation from day one and continues to be.
It is our belief that the future of the church is ancient and part of the ancient way of God’s people is gathering together in person in local community to live out the way of Jesus. So, you’re invited to come and to do that with us.
And then, there will be those of you who have benefited from the Bridgetown live stream as a supplement to your apprenticeship to Jesus elsewhere. So, if you have found the teaching of this church helpful as you attend another local church in another city or something like that, first, I just want to say what an honor and privilege it is that something of what God is doing in our local community might be helping you follow Jesus where you are. And we hope that by continuing to offer the teaching, we can continue to supplement your apprenticeship to Jesus right where you are.
And then finally, there will be some of you who are gathering together in homes or smaller communities, and the Bridgetown live stream has actually served to be the primary expression of worship by which you have gathered together and tried to form community and apprentice to Jesus in a local group somewhere outside of the city of Portland. And again, I want to say first, I’m so grateful that something of the life of this church has helped you to follow Jesus and to form that type of community.
And I want to give you a two-part invitation. The first is the sincere hope that by continuing to offer our teaching, you would continue to be helped by the ministry of this church. But the second is a call to find yourself locally rooted in a community of Jesus followers in the local place where you are. I hope that our teaching will continue to help you follow Jesus, but that you will also live this ancient way in your local place by finding a local community with whom you can gather and live out the way of Jesus life on life with other people.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, blessing and peace to you as you seek to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.
Rich Birch: All right. Well, there it is. Fascinating announcement. It caught my attention. I thought, man, this is something we should be talking about. I do think this is not a crazy question. People are wondering, here we are, four years out from the pandemic, are we still doing this? Is this still a thing? So, let’s start, friends. First of all, we love Bridgetown. We think they’re great people. They’re doing an amazing thing. The reason why this announcement comes on our radar is because this is a prevailing church that’s reaching people and helping people take steps towards Jesus. Just baseline, say that. So, anything that sounds like a criticism is all couched in a “hey, these are brothers and sisters. Let’s try to offer it in that spirit.” So, Kenny, let’s first start with the conversation on what do you think they pulled it apart. Let’s affirm it. What’s good about this? Why, from their perspective, do you think this might be a reason for churches to stop thinking about, or not doing, a livestream anymore? What stood out to you as they went through that?
Kenny Jahng: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of churches are going through this decision process right now, reevaluating is this a place where we invest our resources, time, budget, volunteers, systems development, etc. And I think that’s where it kind of makes sense for many churches where they would say, we just don’t have the resources right now. Like, we’ve had a contraction in the attendance; we haven’t come back to the full COVID numbers and beyond. We don’t have a plethora of volunteers on the sidelines just waiting to get involved. So, I get it from a resource standpoint.
Kenny Jahng: I think there are other reasons why you would say that livestreaming is not necessarily the tip of the sword now. I will say, Rich, this is the one thing I think they’ve made a good distinction is they’re making an intentional decision to stop livestreaming the entire Sunday worship experience end-to-end, but they’re not abandoning the internet or posting videos or streaming videos. So, let’s just put it out there first. This is a very thoughtful, intentional plan that Bridgetown is actually putting out. Tyler has thought this through with his team, for sure.
Rich Birch: Yes, definitely not a knee-jerk. I love their focus. Like, in fact, he starts the video by saying, you know, we’ve got an announcement for our Bridgetown family, and you know, they say the word “local” nine times in that video. It’s like it starts, he says “local,” and then by the end, literally in the last 30 seconds, he says it like “local, local, local, local.” They are committed to practicing the way of Jesus in Portland. They are trying to reach people in Portland. If you were to drive by their website, it says “as in heaven, in Portland.” They’re firmly committed, which I love. The thing I think that’s something we can all learn is how do we have such a crystal clear vision about what God’s called us to do that our church is going to look different from other churches, and I think that’s a very good thing that we should take from this.
Kenny Jahng: Yeah, I just want to highlight, underscore that little thing you said, the nuance is that they see themselves as a local church. For a church that’s as prominent as Bridgetown, I think it’s a very intentional decision that they say we are, at first, primarily a local church. It’s kind of like when we were at Liquid, we shifted our church online strategy to go from “hey, we’re just gonna try to light up Christians and disciple people globally,” but we have to put church online as a ministry that’s subordinate to the mission of the church proper, and the mission of our church was to saturate the state of New Jersey with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, there was a significant shift in ideology of saying, “hey, our primary audience is people within the zip codes of our local campuses.” And so, I, for me, that resonates very well in terms of that focus and that intention on it because I think you can do so many things with that, even if even outside of live streaming your church. Again, I think the decision is to stop livestreaming your worship services end-to-end. It doesn’t mean that you’re gonna stop livestreaming and doing other things on the internet. And so, while it is a marker for something very significant, I think the doors are open to serve their local Portland community in different ways in digital ministry.
Rich Birch: Yeah, it’s true. Love it. Similarly, in that conversation, friends, it would be good for you to look on, you know, ask whoever the minister, web ministry, internet ministry, streaming person is at your church to look into the statistics around. Can you tell where people are coming in from? And, you know, lots of times, and I’d love for you to comment on this, Kenny, if this continues to be the truth. The churches I’ve interacted with, when we’ve actually looked into this, it’s like 50% or higher of the IPs that we can track people are coming from within driving distance of our church. It is a local front door. It’s, you know, we dream of like, and we, and listen, I love lots of lead pastors, but they tell these stories of like, “well, there was a guy in Papua New Guinea who came to our livestream,” and although that does happen, that is primarily a local expression. Are you still seeing that in the churches that you’ve interacted with, that there is like a tilt towards a local, you know, for most churches? Are you seeing that, or what do you think? Does it vary?
Kenny Jahng: Yeah, again, I think there’s a whole spectrum, and I think it really depends on how agile they are on the digital marketing front, how agile they are on the positioning and content marketing side, etc. Are they using keywords? Are they publishing outsider content on YouTube? So, there are all those things, but I think, as a general rule, you’re right, that churches are livestreaming for the local service, for their people in their communities. And I think that’s honestly why many pastors are discouraged post-COVID because, during COVID, if you had an average church of 100-150 people, they would see 300-400-500 people or more attend their livestreams during COVID, and now we’re back down to, you know, double-digit attendance sometimes, maybe triple, but it’s a really small number. And so, they feel discouraged by the absolute number of people showing up for their livestreams. I think Pushpay put out a report; 91% of churches were livestreaming worship services, and but the thing though is, in 2024, that has shifted where only 42% of the churches that they surveyed felt that livestreaming would play a key role in the church in the coming years. And so, that shift from “hey, we were all in” to, you know, it’s less than 50% that are now excited about livestreaming and reaching people over the internet, I think that says something. But I think you have to reverse engineer why that’s happening, and I think it’s because of that local audience. I think it’s because they’re not seeing huge numbers, and so they’re saying, “hm, the ROI is just not there.”
Rich Birch: Yeah, absolutely, and there could be a way to leverage this. Like, you know, my coaching would be, “hey, let’s try to leverage the livestream to point towards this in-person and try to show off that kind of stuff.” And like, “hey, let’s host from our kids’ environments. Let’s try to do videos that show around the room. What if we try that for six months or a year first before we pulled this kind of, you know, we pulled the plug on it. Is there a way to move people down the pipeline?” I was talking to, you know, there was a segment of people that I frankly, it’s just not me. That I hadn’t thought of, but recently I was talking to a church leader about, we were talking about similar kinds of issues, and they were reflecting on people at their church, and there were some folks that were attending pre-COVID that weren’t attending in-person anymore, were attending their livestream, and they were trying to get a meeting with them. And these people came out of COVID with a tremendous amount of anxiety, actually, to the point where they wouldn’t come to an in-person meeting. These people live in their city. You know, they wouldn’t come to an in-person meeting. They finally agreed to do a Zoom call, but upfront said, “I’m willing to do a Zoom call, but I need to have the camera turned off because of the anxiety that I’m feeling.” And I’m like, “man, we want to foster more inclusivity in our churches,” and the livestream is helping us do that. There are people where kind of social anxiety stuff drives them, which is not church leaders, right? We can’t identify with that. Someone who’s given their life to stand up on a stage somewhere doesn’t have the kind of anxiety that would be debilitating anxiety or let alone other types of, you know, disabilities that would stop you from actually being able to attend. A livestream gives you an opportunity to reach those people and create an opportunity for those, and again, that was a category. And I’m like, “and people are still living in the anxiety from COVID.” I’m like, “this isn’t over yet, friends.” But there are, yes.
Kenny Jahng: Yeah, I mean, it was, for, I mean, even before COVID, I don’t know if I ever told you this story, Rich, when I was Church Online Pastor, we, one Christmas, I met these three couples in the hotel that we were having services in, and they were so excited to see me. They hugged me as if I was like their second cousin or something like that, like I didn’t know who these people all of a sudden accosting me, and they were our church online family. And what happened was, this is a crazy story, Rich. They, one couple started watching. Their friends found out they started watching separately, and then a third couple started watching on church online, and then they started, they found out that all three couples were watching, and they started going to one of their houses because they’re all friends. And they started watching together, kind of like what Jay does, a satellite. Jay calls himself a pastor of small groups, not a pastor of church online. So, they were basically having their small group watch online, and then it took them two and a half years, and this is what one of the wives said to me. It’s like, “we did not ask each other. It didn’t come up in conversation for the two and a half years that we were watching together. Finally, this year, I took a risk, and I asked the other couples, ‘hey, would you want to go to the actual Christmas services together in person?'” And they made the decision to come together. You know how far they were living from the church? Fifteen minutes, Rich. It’s not like they were an hour, fifteen minutes away. It took them two and a half years to take the guts to ask their friends that they’ve been watching together with for over two years to say, “do you want to go down the road fifteen minutes and go in person?”
Rich Birch: Yeah, it’s crazy, crazy. No, no, yep, yep. Right? Yeah, totally. And we want to absolutely, and yeah, and this obviously isn’t Bridgetown’s heart by any means, but like, you know, there is a broader, I would say, I would be concerned about a broader movement in kind of evangelical circles that is retreating from culture and again, this isn’t Bridgetown, but it’s kind of an adjacent issue that is saying, like, “hey, we’re, what we should do is be, you know, kind of monks on a hill somewhere disconnected from our culture.” And, friends, like, you got to just look at Christian history. There have been lots of movements like that over time, and it has not ended well for the message of Jesus. Yes, you can kind of retreat into some sort of aestheticism that is, yeah, all about you and your relationship with Jesus, but then the broader culture suffers. And so, again, that’s not what’s happening here at Bridgetown, but it’s kind of connected to that, that, you know, or it’s adjacent to that. Man, we, personally, I think, man, we don’t want to give up any tool that we have. Sure, maybe we want to reduce the, you know, the cost. We want to find but better ways to do it. We want to think carefully about who’s attending, work carefully to move people towards our in-person. All of that’s fine, but I would be very cautious about dropping it at this point in our life. In the same way, listen, friends, I was at the peak of COVID when dear friends, who are not on these calls, were, well, maybe Kenny was, was jumping from, you know, the mountain tops, but we had those people at the height of COVID that were like, “in-person church is over. No one’s ever going to go back to an event. It’s all going to be online. You know, we’re the new dawn of, you know, church online is here.” And I, at that point, I was like, “I don’t think that’s true. Like, I don’t, you know, so now I find myself on the opposite end of this conversation,” which is, “hey, friends, don’t give up church online. Let’s not give up the livestream, for sure.” Anyways, I’d love to give you the last word, Kenny. What are you thinking, and what advice, coaching would you give to church leaders that are listening in today?
Kenny Jahng: And I think it’s worthy of a discussion. So, this is a great conversation piece to take the recording that Rich played, that announcement, play that in its entirety for your team, and then discuss it and figure out what is appropriate for your own ministry because I think every decision that we make in terms of investing in the ministry front, it should be defensible, and we should be willing to give it our all. And it’s the same thing that we say in our coaching, in our social media for churches Facebook group. This is a recurring thing where people are overwhelmed. I always say that churches, communicators especially, feel like they’re on the dreadmill of death, not the treadmill, the dreadmill of death, right? The content beast just demanding content twenty-four seven, and the way to win in today’s world is not to try to do everything all the time. It’s to pick one, two, three channels and do it well, do it with the excellence that God deserves. And so, in one way, I really respect what Bridgetown has done and say, “hey, maybe you need to figure out. Let’s get our house in order for our basic fundamental mediums of how we engage our community.” And then, incrementally, you can bring it back and figure out what works with you. But I think that if you think through with intentionality, I think you will figure out what is the best mix. And again, the last thing I would say, Rich, is no decision is permanent, right? You could always alter it and evolve it, and time marches on. And so, I think that’s the other thing, like, you should give yourself permission to actually ideate and evolve your ministry as you go forward.
Rich Birch: Love it. Well, Kenny, I appreciate you. I want to make sure people check out ChurchTechToday.com. Talk to us about ChurchTechToday. You know, what kind of resources do you provide there? This is an incredible resource, friends, that you should be subscribed to, follow everything that Kenny does, but talk to us about ChurchTechToday.
Kenny Jahng: Yeah, it’s, we’re trying to be the number one place to help you build the perfect tech stack for your church. There’s so much digital happening, and the opportunity of digital ministry is available for every single church today, right? Technology has democratized so much of what we can do in our communities, and so we’re just trying to be a resource for you guys to build the perfect tech stack for your own church, learn about resources, how to deploy them, build out the strategies and tactics. And so, I invite you to reach out and let me know what you’re trying to learn about, what you’re trying to put into place, and we can actually help you build more resources to get you there faster.
Rich Birch: Yeah, love it. So, like, even just some recent articles there, “What’s Happening in the World of AI March Twenty Twenty-Four,” “Ten Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Easter Promotion,” “Moving from Metrics to Ministry Intelligence for Impact,” just so many good things. You know, just lots of great stuff. So, ChurchTechToday.com. You’re going to want to drop by there. Thanks so much, Kenny. Appreciate you jumping in and weighing in on this. And again, yeah, Kenny put that out there, but let me say it explicitly. We love our friends over at Bridgetown and would love to get on a call with them and talk through, would love to hear the insides if they’re interested. More than happy to jump on a call and talk about it. So, thanks so much. Thanks for being here, Kenny.
Unlocking Generosity and Engagement: Key Takeaways from Church Growth Incubator Retreat
Mar 07, 2024
In today’s episode of the unSeminary podcast, we pull back the curtain on an extraordinary gathering that promises to revolutionize the way church leaders envision growth and community engagement. Fresh from the Church Growth Incubator retreat held at Mariner’s Church in Irvine, Southern California, we’re eager to share a treasure trove of wisdom that emerged from two days of deep learning, fellowship, and strategic planning. This retreat, designed for senior leaders of churches approximately 1,000ish in size, focused on nurturing an invite culture to foster church growth.
The Power of Collective Wisdom
The Church Growth Incubator is not just an event; it’s a catalyst for transformation. With bi-monthly calls and two in-person retreats every year, it creates a sustained environment for growth. This February’s retreat was elevated by the presence of not just one, but two esteemed guest coaches, including Phil Ling from The Giving Church and Greg Curtis, the Director of Connection & Assimilation at Eastside Church, each bringing their unique insights and strategies to the table.
Lessons in Generosity from Phil Ling
Phil Ling, renowned for helping churches and ministries raise a billion dollars, shared compelling strategies to enhance church generosity. His approach, encapsulated in the “win, lift, and keep” framework, provides a roadmap for attracting new donors, increasing contributions from current members, and ensuring lasting engagement. Ling’s emphasis on genuine support over transactional relationships underscores the importance of viewing church members as partners in growth.
A significant portion of our discussion on increasing giving revolved around the concept of the “three rooms” – the big room (weekend services), the medium room (tribes or small groups), and the small room (one-on-one interactions). This framework offers a strategic approach to communication and engagement, emphasizing tailored messages for different congregational segments to maximize impact and foster deeper connections.
Greg Curtis on Assimilation and Connection
Greg Curtis, known as the Assimilation Sherpa, offered transformative perspectives on engaging and integrating churchgoers, from newcomers to long-standing members. His insights into the “new assumptions about assimilation” challenge conventional wisdom and advocate for a more intentional, personalized approach to discipleship and connection. Curtis’s strategies underscore the critical role of connection in fostering a vibrant, mission-driven church community.
The Retreat’s Ripple Effect
The Church Growth Incubator retreat has once again proven to be a wellspring of actionable insights and inspiration for church leaders dedicated to growth and engagement. Beyond the sessions, the retreat underscored the importance of community, shared learning, and the collective pursuit of a more inviting, generous church culture.
A Call to Action
As we reflect on the profound lessons and stories shared at the retreat, we invite church leaders to consider how these insights can be woven into the fabric of their own communities. Whether it’s through enhancing generosity, refining assimilation strategies, or simply fostering deeper connections, the path to growth is paved with intention, innovation, and collective wisdom.
For those inspired to dive deeper into the strategies and success stories from the Church Growth Incubator, remember that this is just the beginning. The journey to unlocking your church’s full potential is ongoing, and we’re here to support you every step of the way. Join us as we continue to explore, learn, and grow together in our mission to create thriving, vibrant church communities across the globe.
Thank you for tuning in to unSeminary. If you’re seeking to bolster your church’s invite culture, don’t forget to check out the recently released book, “Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture,” available now on Amazon.
Let’s continue to share, learn, and inspire one another in our collective mission to lead churches toward unprecedented growth and impact.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s episode. I’m really pumped for this because I want to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit, give you an insider scoop, kind of let you in on something that’s been happening in the background that unless you’re paying attention, you will not know about. Rich Birch — Listen, I’m just back from a two day in-person retreat for the Church Growth Incubator. Now, you might be wondering, there’s a lot of words there that you don’t understand. So what is the Church Growth Incubator? It’s a small cohort that I run, for senior leaders of churches around a thousand in size. And we’re working on growing our churches by increasing invite culture. We do two calls per month and we meet for a year, and we do two in-person retreats during that year. And we just got back from two days in Southern California. We were at Mariner’s Church there in Irvine. It was a great time. We learned a lot. We had a lot of fun. We laughed, we learned we, you know, made new friends, that sort of thing. It was great. But today, what I want to do is pull back the curtain on, you know, really, and give you a bit of a sample of some of the things that we talked about. Rich Birch — You see, at each one of these in-person retreats, one of the promises of the in-person retreats is that we will have a guest coach. This is someone who I really deeply value and who, you know, I believe just has a lot to offer to churches. And we get them to come and spend some time with us. And the amazing thing at this retreat was we didn’t in the past, we’ve had Jenni Catron, Carey Nieuwhof actually was at our last retreat as well. But this time around, do we not only had just one guest coach, we actually had two, which was amazing. So good. And so what I wanted to do is to take a few minutes and kind of unpack some of the lessons. Now, friends, this is two days of conversation. Obviously, we can’t unpack everything, but I wanted to give you a bit of a sample of it, because I think these are some lessons that you could take and apply into your church. Rich Birch — So the first guest was Phil Ling. He’s from The Giving Church. If you don’t know Phil, you really should check out his website, thegivingchurch.com. Phil has helped churches and ministry raise $1 billion. That’s a B, billion with a B, which is, you know, just incredible. And the thing I love about Phil, well, both of our guests, well, it’s all the people that we have come, but particularly these two, these guest coach that we had this time around is they are in the corner of churches like you. They really do want to help churches. They don’t see the church as just like a market. Sometimes you interact with people who have services or provide coaching to to churches. And frankly, to me, they kind of make my skin crawl a little bit. And Phil definitely doesn’t do that. He’s in your corner. He is there to help and help you particularly increase generosity. And there’s there’s really two things I want to talk through. Rich Birch — First, we had a whole conversation around the three things or the three actions that we’re doing as we’re engaging with our people to try to, you know, from a generosity point of view, what are the kind of three outcomes that we’re looking for? And he talks about win, lift and keep; win, lift and keep. So win – this is all about gaining donors. So the question for you, if I was to sit in your corner and Phil was to sit in your corner, would be to ask the question, what are you doing to win new donors? You know, we got talking about weekends and how oftentimes, man, the weekend is a great place to, to find new donors, people who haven’t given to your church before. Phil was talking about the fact that 45% of the people in that give to churches in America give less than $200 a year. But those are those are the people who give. There’s a ton of people, including folks in your church, who don’t give anything. And so the question is, what strategies are you applying towards winning new donors? And we spend a lot of time, effort, energy thinking about that, thinking about what can we do to move people from not giving to giving. The reality of it is it from getting them to go from not giving anything to giving something. Man, that is a that is a phase shift. That is a significant shift. And if we could see that kind of thing happen, it would make a huge, huge difference. So win – that’s the first. Rich Birch — The second is lift. This really is about this idea of increasing revenue from people. We had a fantastic conversation around what can we do to see people’s increasing generosity. Obviously you’re feeling this pressure. I’m feeling this pressure as the cost of things become more expensive. We need to also continually continue to think about what can we do to increase the revenue that comes from our, you know, from our people. We talked about, even the value of something like a quarterly vision report where we get back out to our people, regularly to communicate to them about how they’re giving is, you know, is is being put into action, what difference it’s making to the vision, how it’s pushing the church forward. But the question for you is, what can you do to increase revenue? This is particularly difficult in this age when, you know, one of the the downsides, potential downsides of us moving everyone to digital giving, recurring giving, is unless we interrupt with a regular kind of outreach to them, people won’t necessarily increase their giving. So what are you doing to lift their giving?
Rich Birch — And then thirdly, keep, keep. So it’s win, lift, keep. What can we do to show appreciation? How are we keeping the donor? We obviously know that it’s easier to keep a donor than to find a new donor. And this is an area, frankly, I think that many of our churches are lagging behind. We lag behind our nonprofit brothers and sisters when it comes to showing appreciation. And I think we often think of it in a, like, a, a very kind of extreme way. We’re either saying, hey, we need to be putting brass plaques on everything, everywhere across the entire church, which is kind of goofy and dumb. We don’t want to do that. Or we don’t want to do anything at all. There’s got to be other ways to show appreciation. This could be about gathering those folks together. We talked about the fact that particularly the senior pastor time with the senior pastor is a great commodity. And how can you use that to show appreciation to those people that are giving to your, you know, to your church? So we talked a lot about this, but the questions I would have for you, you know, from Phil’s coaching, from The Giving Church around, you know, the three actions that we’re taking when it comes to generosity: win, lift, keep.
Rich Birch — But then we also had a conversation around the three rooms, kind of thinking about what kind of communication happens in various rooms. We talked about the big room, the medium room and the small room. So the big room, the weekends. This is really about participation. It’s about trying to get more people to give at some level. It’s it’s it’s about driving high percentage of your people to engage on a regular basis, participation is the win in the big room. It’s actually not about revenue or big numbers. You know, we talked about within like a capital campaign when it gets to that public phase, really what that is all about, once you get to the public phase, it’s just about participation. It’s just about saying, hey, what can we do to get as many people in on this?
Rich Birch — Then the medium room. What do we mean by the medium room? This is a, you know, this is the kind of tribes or small groups or volunteer huddles, that sort of thing. These would be segmenting your community up into smaller, bite-sized communities. And really, the question there is, is about how we can engage donors and really to speak to their specific needs, to understand what is it that that kind of donor, what are they looking for? And then how are we packaging up what we’re doing in a way that is, gaining their, is helping them kind of get more plugged into the church, is helping them get more plugged in to what’s happening? And so you divide groups up into various, you know, into smaller, medium-sized rooms, and then you communicate specifically to them. So you might get, you know, young parents together and talk about the kids’ needs and talk about what difference, you know, the church is making in the kids’ point of view and how they’re giving makes a difference to the kids in their community.
Rich Birch — And then finally, the small room, really one-on-one. And I think this is one of those areas, we talked a lot about this in our coaching sessions, around coaching lead pastors, particularly, to have one-on-one conversations with, with donors. And we talked a bunch about how to do that, best practices, that sort of thing. And really, the overarching lesson here is the largest checks come from the smallest rooms. And so we’ve got to figure out a way to get in front of people on a regular basis, even if that’s, say, 51 a week, to get in front of those people on a regular basis. And that is more about partnering with people than presentation. So think partnership, not presentation. It’s about sketching out on a piece of paper where the church is going and asking for their input, asking those people to come along. Rich Birch — So, we talked a lot about the three rooms. So big room, medium room, small rooms. So, Phil Ling, super honored to have Phil with us. What and, just incredible gift for the Church Growth Incubator in-person retreat, honored to have him with us. But like I said, although we only really say that we’ll have one, you know, coach or guest at these guest coach at these in-person retreats. We ended up having two this time. Extra value. We had Greg Curtis. He is the Director of Assimilation. Greg has been on the podcast in the past. He’s a dear friend. You’ll be hearing more about him in the future. There’s he’s actually got an offering coming up that I want to make sure you know about, but he, he is my assimilation sherpa. Rich Birch — What do I mean by that? He is the person that I point to when it comes to how are we developing an engagement pathway to get people connected, to go from new here to new volunteer. That new here to new volunteer engagement pathway is critically important. And how are we getting people plugged in? And, you know, our time with Greg was second to none. Incredibly helpful. We got the whiteboard out, and we’re working through some very specifics around people’s individual kind of concerns and comments and, you know, you know, thoughts on what’s happening in their in their community from an engagement or assimilation point of view. But one of the things that Greg talked about in his kind of presentation portion, he had this kind of new assumptions discussion, which was new assumptions about assimilation. And there are five of these that jumped out. There’s a lot more than we talked about, but there are five of these that I thought might be particularly interesting for us to talk about on the podcast to do. Rich Birch — And so the first one is this, no one can make a disciple out of an unconnected person. So we, you know, connection is the first part of the discipleship process. If people don’t get connected to your church, they won’t get discipled. And we might think that connection is like a “nice to have”, but it actually is a “need to have” if we’re thinking about discipling people. So really the first step, no one can become a disciple, you know, you can’t make a disciple out of someone who’s unconnected. And so if you have a heart for making disciples, really your first step is how do we get people connected? And the reason why that is, is because discipleship at its core is it’s life on life. It’s about people seeing other folks who are following Jesus and trying to get a sense of, hey, what is it like to follow Jesus, and learning from those people. So number one, no one made it a disciple out of it, under, an unconnected or under-connected person. Rich Birch — Number two, just making Christians more Christian is not discipleship. Wow. That was one of those like bam, like, you know, mic-drop moments. Just making Christians more Christian is not discipleship. I loved Greg’s push, and this is really one of the hearts of EastSide. We want to be the kind of church where unchurched people are getting connected. We are not trying to sheep steal. We’re not trying to get people from other churches. We’re trying to connect people, people who don’t know Jesus. And so, discipleship is, is about connecting with unchristian people, people who do not follow Jesus, and helping them take steps towards Jesus. It’s not about taking Christians and making them more Christian. Man, what a mic-drop moment. And we had a whole conversation around, okay, what are we doing, particularly, to connect unchurched people? How can we work to ensure that we connect unchurched people to our church? And what can we do to ensure that our assimilation processes are biased towards connecting unchurched people. So love that. Number two, just making Christians more Christian is not discipleship.
Rich Birch — All right. Number three, connection could be taken for granted in previous generations. Connection could be taken for granted in previous generation. We have a whole conversation around, you know, in, in previous generations, whether that was ten years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, this idea of connecting with people and the church being a place where you could connect, where you could make relationship, that was maybe taken for granted before. And this is really an accelerating issue. You know, this is, this is true today. I would say it was true five years ago, but it’s more true today and will be more true five years from now. We can’t take connection for granted anymore. We’ve got to take an active kind of in the driver’s seat, helping our people get connected, building systems to help them get connected, building relationships, environments, steps. Clearly thinking about how are we going from one step to the next, thinking about the places where they might fall through the crack, so that we don’t take it for granted. We need to, to, you know, work hard at this. It’s not the kind of thing that can just be taken for granted. So that is number three. Rich Birch — Number four disc…So that was number three was connection could be taken for granted in previous generation; obviously can’t be taken for granted now. Number four: disconnection is the greatest obstacle to mission fulfillment in your church. Disconnection is the greatest obstacle to mission fulfillment in your church. Ultimately, you know, our our mission goes forward the more people we get connected, the more people we get connected to serving, the more people we get connected into groups, the more people that get connected even just as new here guests – more connection drives the mission forward. If if people are disconnected, then your mission is not going to happen. Connection is not secondary to the mission. It is primary to your mission. It is primary to what we’re doing in our churches. And so we shouldn’t be relegating connection or our strategies for connection down, you know, to maybe giving that to, you know, administrative people or giving that to people who, that are maybe lower down in the org chart. It needs to be at the highest levels of concern in our organization. Disconnection is the greatest obstacle to mission fulfillment in our church. Rich Birch — And then finally, number five, it takes our Sherpa mindset towards connection. It takes a Sherpa mindset towards connection. So, you know, Greg has built his, his entire coaching organization called Climbing the Assimilayas, this idea of, you know, we are helping people. And what are Sherpas? You know, he’s got all these great statistics about Sherpas. Sherpas help people climb Mount Everest. They have, they’re built for that trend. They’re constantly, or that that part of the track, they’re they’re constantly starting at base camp and taking people to the peak. And then going back to the base camp and taking to the peak. They literally have,, more developed lungs to be able to operate at such high level, consistently breathing, you know, thinner air, but moving people to those peaks. And really, that’s what our role is in connection. Our role is to literally help people hand-over-hand, help them be connected. It’s it’s about being a Sherpa. So again, we had lots of conversation around what that looks like in our context. But I loved what Greg had to say, again, Director of Assimilation from EastSide Church, Assimilation Sherpa helping so many churches connect so many people. Rich Birch — Well, friends, our two-day, in-person retreat for the Church Growth Incubator. It was just it was a wild success. If you’re a church of a thousand or around a thousand, I like to say a thousand-ish, and you want more information about Church Growth Incubator and want to learn about our upcoming in-person retreat, or those two calls we do a month. We’re seeing actual results from churches. Churches are growing in this. The ones that that buckle down and apply what we’re talking about, man, they’re seeing results. We had all kinds of other stuff at this retreat, including a done-for-you resource, that really is about increasing attendance at Easter this year. We rolled that out last week. Rich Birch — We also rolled out a brand new tool to keep the front door visible. So one of the problems in our churches is if you don’t see the front door, you can’t understand it. Oftentimes, our staff are just thinking about the back door because they can see it so clearly. But how can we keep the front door visible? And we came up with a brand new tool for that, for that. And we had some fun and, you know, went out on Duffy boats and did a bunch of other stuff. It was a great retreat. Thanks so much, friends. Thanks for being a part of unSeminary., if you haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy of my most recent book, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture, you can do that at Amazon today. It’s, the book is out. So you can go and pick it up today; it released this week, earlier this week. All right, friends, well, thanks so much. Thanks for being a part of unSeminary. And we’ll talk to you next week. Take care.
From Attendance to Engagement: Zach Interviews Rich About Transforming Your Church’s Growth Strategy
Feb 29, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m happy to sit down with Zach Zehnder, who runs an organization called Red Letter Living. The mission of Red Letter Living is to challenge all people to become greater followers of Jesus Christ. Thousands of individuals and hundreds of churches have taken one of their 40-day discipleship challenges.
Recently, Zach interviewed me on his Red Letter Leaders webinar. Today, I wanted to bring you the highlights and key takeaways from that conversation, which centered around church growth strategies and how to leverage big days, like Easter, for church engagement.
Creating an invite culture. // One of the most exciting topics we discussed was the potential of big days like the Super Bowl or Easter to create engagement opportunities for churches. Events are not about the spectacle; they’re about creating memorable experiences that people want to talk about and, more importantly, invite others to. This is where the concept of an “invite culture” comes into play—a church culture that encourages and equips its congregation to extend invitations to friends and family.
Healthier churches. // unSeminary recently completed a nationwide survey of executive pastors which compared results to those from four years ago during COVID. In 2020, 86% of churches agreed they were more financially strong at the end of the year. In 2023, that number has increased to 96% feeling financially strong. Similarly, in 2023 more church leaders would describe their staff as more enthusiastic, more hopeful, and less exhausted.
Take a risk and reach people. // On the other side of the equation, while in 2020 41% of respondents said that their church was looking towards a multiplication effort in the new year, that number decreased to 28% at the end of 2023. So while churches overall are stronger financially and staff is more rested, fewer are thinking about multiplication. Think about what you could be doing in your church now that you are healthier than you were four years ago. What can you launch, even if you’re not launching a new location or planting a church? Can you start a new service or expand on a ministry?
Shareable weekend teaching. // If you want to grow your church, there are five areas that are levers of church growth. The first one is shareable weekend teaching. A Gallup poll revealed that three quarters of the reason why people attend religious services is because of the teaching. However, it’s very difficult for people to invite their friends if they don’t know what you’re teaching about the next week. Growing churches train, equip and mobilize their people to invite their friends.
Leverage big days. // There are already certain days throughout the year when people are more likely to invite their friends to church, such as holidays like Easter, Mother’s Day and Christmas. The key to leveraging big days is to focus on creating experiences that are worth sharing. Do something a little bit different than the norm, such as a photo booth for families. Whether it’s a special weekend service, a community outreach, or a themed celebration, the goal is to make it so impactful that attendees are naturally inclined to tell someone about it and bring them along.
Engagement and volunteers. // Growing churches don’t just post digital billboards on social media, they have online conversations. They have magnetic community service and get people out of their seats and into the streets to make a difference. Getting more volunteers in your church is critical. Volunteer engagement is a driver of church growth rather than an outcome of church growth. A church with a vibrant volunteer culture not only operates more effectively, but also fosters a sense of community and belonging that is infectious and naturally leads to invite opportunities.
Uncover culture. // My new book, Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture, talks about all five levers of church growth and provides a deep dive into practical strategies that churches can implement to increase their invite culture. There is training, equipping, and motivating that has to happen with our people and this book uncovers how to do it.
My new book will be out in March and you can find out more and join the waitlist at www.unlockinviteculture.com. You can also learn more about the 40-day challenges offered at Red Letter Living here.
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Rich Birch — Happy Thursday, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This is Rich Birch. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. Recently I sat down with my friend, Zach Zehnder. He runs an organization called Red Letter Leaders. At the core of what they do is called the Red Letter Challenge, which is a 40 day experience that you take your entire church through. And we’ve had Zach on the show in the past. I really respect him. He recently had me on a webinar of his and I said, you know, I would love could we get that, uh, you know, that recording? Because I’d love to expose it to the listeners of the unSeminary podcast. And here’s the reason why.
Rich Birch — Uh, in this book, we talk about or in this conversation, we talk about some of the core concepts of my book that’s coming up and coming out recently. It’s coming out very soon, and I want you to pick up a copy of it. It’s called “Unlocking Your Churches Invite Culture”. And it really is around church growth strategies that work today. Now, I would love for you to drop by unlockinviteculture.com. That’s unlockinviteculture.com and get on the waitlist. You’ll be one of the first people to get access to this book when it comes out. But this is really comes from years of conversation, boiling down what you can do to increase the invite culture of your church. And Zach had me on his webinar to talk about that. You’ll notice that we gave away some free stuff in Zach’s webinar we talk about some free links, that sort of thing. None of that you’re going to get. That was only for, uh, the folks that were listening in on the webinar. But you can track with Zach over at redletterchallenge.com. If you don’t track with him, you should. That’s redletterchallenge.com. Well, let’s join the conversation. Uh super excited. We’ll throw it over to Zach, who will lead us through today’s conversation all on church growth strategies that work today. Zach Zehnder — Well what’s up, Red Letter Leaders. It is awesome to have you in February’s webinar. I’ve got a great guest that I will be, uh, introducing pretty soon. Um, I just showed you who he was, but excited to have Rich Birch back on. And so I’ll tell you a little bit about him in just a minute. Um, so let us know as you’re coming in who you are. Where are you watching from? What what church are you a part of? We would love to know that. Um, also, we’re going to be talking about church growth today. And so feel free to answer the poll question. Um, did your church grow in 2023? Now what does that mean? Does that mean worship, attendance, small group, whatever… I’m going to let you just determine what church growth means for you. Zach Zehnder — But we got a few a few answers on the church poll there. And uh, then I also want to start off the top with, uh, a great offer for you from Red Letter. Uh, we are in the midst of 40 day challenge season. In fact, this week Lent is beginning. And so we had a lot of churches kick off a 40 day challenge just yesterday. Um, but we’ve got a great special for you. Uh, what a lot of pastors maybe aren’t recognizing right now is that with Easter being early this year, it’s about as early as it’ll ever be, March 31, because there is a… Rich Birch — Just to increase the anxiety there, just to inject a little, little bit of anxiety. Zach Zehnder — Oh yeah. That’s coming. Um, but what that does represent is a longer window of time in that peak season. And so a 40 day challenge is a really great tool uh, honestly, every year after Easte, but this year, even better, because there’s a couple extra weeks to ramp up excitement, um, before summer hits. Zach Zehnder — And so we got a discount there for you. It’s 10% off, um, of orders, and, uh, there’s no discount needed. That’ll just automatically apply at checkout. But if you are thinking a post-Easter 40 day challenge, uh, we encourage churches to get their orders in now. Um, that way you’ve got 4 or 5 weeks to promote it and distribute it well, to have the best experience possible at your church. With all of that being said, I want to invite, uh, or welcome, I should say, um, back to the Red Letter Leader webinar, Rich Birch. How’s it going, Rich? Rich Birch — Dude, it’s so good. I’m so pumped to be here. And I love what you do at Red Letter and your challenges. I, you know, I, uh, I’m a fan and a, uh, client. Like, I’ve loved, you know, been blessed by your resources and think they’re just so helpful. And so, um, I’m sure there’s folks on that have, you know, that have used those and, and, um, you know, and maybe thinking about them in the future. So I anytime you reach out, I’m happy to, to jump on. So good to see you, Zach. Always…
Zach Zehnder — Cool, man.
Rich Birch — …and always good to talk to people in Omaha. I don’t know what it is about Omaha. I know I always say this to my friends in Omaha, but it’s like all the best Christians in the world are in Omaha for some reason.
Zach Zehnder — There you go.
Rich Birch — I don’t know why that is. It’s a very strange… there’s something in the water in Omaha. Zach Zehnder — Yeah. We, uh, I don’t know if you know this, Rich. Our state slogan for tourism was… Nebraska: Honestly, it’s not for everyone. Rich Birch — Oh, really? Ah! Yeah, I thought it was, “We don’t coast.” I saw I saw one that said that, and I was like. Or maybe that was Omaha, specifically Omaha. We don’t coast. And I was like, that right there is a great little bit of copywriting. I was like, that’s a fun…
Zach Zehnder — There you go.
Rich Birch — …fun things. Zach Zehnder — Fun fact we were, uh, 50th out of 50 for tourism before that slogan, 5, 6 years ago, and we’ve moved all the way from 50 to 41 now. Rich Birch — Hello! Hello! Zach Zehnder — But, Rich, they decided last week, it went in the news last week they’re going to retire that slogan and come up with something different. So we’ll see what happens. Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Zach Zehnder — Yeah. Rich Birch — Time to keep on rolling. That’s fun. Zach Zehnder — Yeah, I’ll keep you posted. I’m sure you’re on your seat the edge of your seat, you know. Rich Birch — That’s great. Zach Zehnder — Hey, Rich Birch, you are the man. Rich Birch leads an incredible ministry called unSeminary. And so, church leaders, if you’re not already, um, listening to Rich and being a part of his ministry, you need to. Uh the unSeminary podcast is one of the great podcasts out there for church leaders and pastors, and it’s a weekly podcast. It’s incredible. They do more than just podcasts. Um, so get with Rich. He’s an expert on church growth. And, um, honestly, from from my end, when I think about people that are in the church space, um, that either have been a pastor or are a pastor that are serving though the greater capital “C” church with a majority of what they do, um, Rich is on my two hands, one of the top ten people that I know of just being helpful, uh, being helpful for pastors and churches. And so, uh, he gives away so much free. And, of course, it’s his living. And so I always want to push people to get further in with you. Um, but he is always so helpful. He’s going to be helpful with us again today. And so, uh, super grateful to have you on today, Rich. Rich Birch — Sweet. Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. Zach Zehnder — Yeah. I’m curious. We’re on the day after, uh the big Super Bowl here in America. And you are from Canada, Rich. So I want to know like is the Super Bowl a big deal in Canada? Or is this another thing that Americans just think is the biggest deal in the world. And it’s just like our nation that actually cares about it? Rich Birch — Yeah. No. Yeah, I appreciate that. So yeah, I’m Canadian. Don’t hold it against me. Um, although I uh, yeah, mostly serve of American churches. But yeah, the Super Bowl is a big deal. I’m not, I personally am not a huge sports guy, so I feel a little bit bad because I’m like, I’m the guy that I was scrambling to try to get on Paramount Plus to see the the halftime show. Like that was, you know, that was what I was trying to do last night. But it for sure is a big deal. Like it, you know, like things quiet down. I was, you know, I was out for lunch yesterday and I was asking the restaurant I was at, I was like, hey, you guys, you guys showing the game tonight. And they’re like, no. He’s like, it’ll be really quiet. So it for sure is, you know, it’s uh, it’s it’s a big deal. And, you know, obviously even more so with Taylor Swift this year, and that’s for sure. Zach Zehnder — All right. Right. So let’s get real timely here then, Rich. I want to hear from the church growth guy. Uh, we’re a day after the big game. Is there anything that church leaders can or should learn from the crazy success of the Super Bowl? Rich Birch — Oh that’s great. Well, that’s a fun question. The interesting thing about the Super Bowl is, um, it’s a big day. Like it is, you know, and and it was it’s really cool to see, um, when churches use that, um, that day to try to invite people to come to the church. So the thing that we’ve seen is that the difference between stuck and stagnant churches and growing churches is growing churches, increasingly even more so in a skeptical culture that we’re in. You know, every I’ve said this in other contexts, every zip code in the country or virtually every zip code in the country is more unchurched today than it was ten years ago. And unless we turn that trend around, will be more unchurched ten years from now. Rich Birch — And so, um, you know, the reality of it is that that kind of life has changed. We used to be able to do just kind of mass marketing stuff, but, um, really we’re seeing that not working as effective as it used to. What does work is our people inviting their friends. And so and a part of the way you do that is you, like, have to be engaged in conversations that people are already engaged in. Or one of the ways you do that is engage in conversations that are already happening. And so you can see, um, you know, a number of churches have leveraged Super Bowl Sunday as a, you know, whether it’s just kind of the basic like there was a number of those churches yesterday were over the weekend, were posting the that meme of, um, Taylor Swift talking to her boyfriend, saying like, hey, you’re still going to have we’re still have time to go to church in the morning, come and see us, you know, in the morning. Rich Birch — Or whether it’s something like at Crossroads Church in Cincinnati – don’t know if you know these guys. Brian Tome, fantastic church. For years they have done a thing called the Super Bowl of Preaching where they, um, they kind of play up the football thing bigger than anybody I’ve ever known. And so if you’re if you’re looking for a church that, um, you know, is making kind of a big deal of it, they would be a, you know, that would be a great church to look at. But the what the mechanics behind that, from a growth point of view, is we know that our people are already like they’re asking, hey, what are you doing for Super Bowl Sunday? Like, your people know I don’t watch football. And they ask me, what are you doing for Super Bowl Sunday? And so, man, if your church could provide, um, you know, something that is Super Bowl related to inject into that conversation, it can stir, you know, invite ultimately. And obviously we see the same thing happen on Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day. There are other of these kind of big days during the year. Rich Birch — But a lot of churches uh, I think could take advantage of that for next year. Like, hey, there’s an if you don’t if you don’t make a big deal of it and you just you thought about it on the Thursday before, the thing that’s unique about that big day is I can tell you I don’t know what the date is, but there is there’s an a specific date on the calendar next year when the Super Bowl is going to be. And so you can start planning towards that. And you know that there’s going to be some sort of media circus, right? Every year. It’s it’s predictable. The culture for about 48 hours stops and pays attention to to football. And so it’s like, hey, well, maybe, maybe we should be thinking about that. Maybe we and, you know, need to do something crazy. Like you don’t, you know, you don’t need to do the Super Bowl of Preaching. But you could like, even if it’s as simple as, like the Jersey Sunday thing. Or the, you know, something like that, that is it’s already the conversation that people are having, um, you know, leverage that, uh, you know, to try to, you know, get get people in on it. Zach Zehnder — That’s cool. One of the things I know we did at our church in Florida that I always loved was we called it the “soup” Souper Bowl.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Zach Zehnder — And, uh, and we had a guy that did the, uh, he does a lot of the turf in the field. He actually does it for the Pro-Bowl there in Orlando. And so he created like a obviously a small mock size football field for us.
Rich Birch — That’s fun.
Zach Zehnder — And we have AFC versus NFC and…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Zach Zehnder — You know people would put their canned goods that they brought in on which side they were rooting for thought would win. And then of course we would donate the canned goods to the food pantry. It was it was just a cool thing that I think is really cool. Um, the one, uh, the one thing I get every year um, this weekend, um, pastors get it too, is every year I get somebody that sends me, um, this thing right here, that says you should be as excited about church as the Super Bowl. So when your pastor makes a point this Sunday, pour Gatorade over his head. And it’s the first time they’ve seen it. So I always got a haha tap back, even though I’ve got it every year. Rich Birch — That is so funny. That’s great. So yeah, it’s on February 9th next year.
Zach Zehnder — There you go.
Rich Birch — So coming out of this weekend, if I, you know, this is something you could be thinking about for next year. It’s in Louisiana. So I think that’s Central Time zone. So it’ll be, you know, the, you know, you’ve got to think about that from an, you know, attendance point of view. What’s it going to do to your, you know…but but yeah, I would uh, yeah, I would think that’s something you could look forward to for next year for sure. It’s kind of fun.
Zach Zehnder — There you go. All right. Cool. There’s some Super Bowl ideas for you guys. Uh, awesome. Again, thanks for joining us for Red Letter Leaders today. We got Rich Birch, uh, church growth expert and leader of unSeminary with us. Let us know where you’re watching from. And, uh, answer that poll question there uh, if you haven’t already. I see Roy from Florida. Dave says, what is there for tourists in Nebraska? Come on, Dave. We got a great zoo here, man. World class. We got the College World Series. Good golf courses. But this ain’t about Nebraska. Um, we want to help people get to your church. Not necessarily to your state, but anyway.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Zach Zehnder — Um. All right, Rich. Uh, again, I just think you’re such a brilliant mind. You’ve already talked and we’ll come back to, you know, talking about inviteability and increasing invite culture and that’s Super Bowl, why why we went there. But, uh, you just completed a nationwide survey of pastors. So tell me a little bit about that study, uh, who was surveyed and, uh, the key insights from it. What’s up, Jonathan from Idaho. Rich Birch — Yeah, great, great to see friends that have tuned in. So, yeah, this, um, this survey is a nationwide survey of executive pastors. And, um, so and I have not released information on this. So this is like a Red Letter Pastors exclusive today.
Zach Zehnder — Whoa! Come on!
Rich Birch — So it’s like breaking news. Dun dun dun dun. Zach Zehnder — Can I do some emojis in this. I don’t know if I can.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So we’ve um and so to be honest, so we did this survey at the end of 2020, uh, going into 2021. And at the end of last year, I was thinking, hmm, I wonder, I wonder what we would find if we basically asked the exact same questions, um, of pastors, kind of where are we now four years later? Where are we, kind of rather we’re no longer in the teeth of of Covid or not really in Covid at all. And so where, you know, where we learn. Rich Birch — And, uh, you know, to be honest, so there was some stuff that was probably not surprising. So, you know, we asked a bunch about staff morale. Probably not surprising. People would describe their staff are more enthusiastic, more hopeful, less exhausted than they were, you know, statistical average, you know, statistical, um…
Zach Zehnder — That’s good.
Rich Birch — …you know, significance of that, which is good. I think we feel that kind of health. Um, you know, interestingly, churches are, uh, in 2020, 86%, uh, strong or strongly agreed that they had, um, that they were more financially strong at the end of last year than at the beginning of last year. Interestingly, in 2023, that number was 96%. So, you know, 90. So it had gone up 10%. So churches are feeling more financially strong, at least the churches we um, you know, we we talked about, we talked to. Rich Birch — Now interestingly, I would say so those are all I, you know, I, I think there is, so as I spent a lot of time with the executive pastors and that bears out in the conversations I talked to. Pre-COVID, you, um, you know, Zach, you’re like a lead pastor kind of guy. You know, when lead pastors get together, they’ll talk about like, well, how many people attend your church or how many campuses you have, that kind of thing. When executive pastors get together, they say, so how many weeks you got in reserve? They talk about like, what is the financial reserve of your, you know, of your organization. And for sure, we’ve seen that churches are holding more money in reserve than they were um, you know, pre-COVID. That’s been an adjustment. Um, and that’s a whole other conversation. But I think you can hold too much, by the way. I think you can, you know, I think if you, you know. So so we this kind of connects with some of that. Rich Birch — Now interestingly, I thought on the, I would say on the kind of sad side of the equation or not as positive, uh, in 2020, 42% of respondents said that they agree or strongly agree that they were looking towards a church multiplication effort in the next year, while this year that number was only 28%, so a drop from 41 to 28. And so I would ring the bell and say, friends, this is a problem. Your church is healthier now than you were four years ago. Your your team is more rested, you have more financial resources. There is no time like now just to think about, you know, whether it’s, you know, planting a church. Um, whether it’s, you know, launching a campus, that sort of thing. And, and this does line up like I’ve, I, um, you know, I talked to church…in fact, even just this weekend, I was talking to a church who kind of 10 years ago, 15 years ago, if they looked at all their metrics, they would say, hey, we should launch. Um, but I think there’s like a there can be a hesitancy that I think has come in post-Covid. I think we’re, we’re we’re still a little bit on our back feet, even though the kind of things are feeling better at our churches were like still a little bit more reticent, maybe, maybe, um, you know, a little bit more reticent to take risk. Rich Birch — I think we’ve been in the broader economy. You know, I keep joking that we’re like one month. We’ve been one month away from a recession for 18 months. Like, it’s like we keep thinking it’s coming, it’s coming. But actually, you know, it’s it’s not. Now, maybe it’s coming this spring. It’s like, you know, it feels like every, every turn. And that that I think in some ways has held us back. And so my challenge for church leaders would be to think about, hey, are there like multiplication things that you should be thinking about? Is there, you know, should you be launching a new service? Maybe there’s that kids ministry that maybe there’s like a new student ministry thing, or maybe, you know, there’s… Now might be the time if you’re if 96% of church leaders are saying they feel like their churches are in a strong or they’re in a stronger position than they were a year ago, man, oh man, let’s let’s take a risk here and try to reach some people. Zach Zehnder — That’s great. And I think that probably resonates with a little bit of the audience we’re talking to now, even in the poll question. You know, I was curious what we’d get. Um, because that’s all across the gamut, I think, when you look at churches. But, um, but at least listening right now, we’re talking to, uh, it looks like 88% of the folks that have taken the poll, uh, did increase somewhat last year, 66%, one, 66% say 1-15%, and then, um, 22, 16% plus. And so that’s really good growth. And so I think that that bears out with a little bit of the statistics, at least the people you’re talking with. And I would say, Rich, are your pastors that you are surveying, are they generally going to be a part of churches that, uh, you know, there’s so many pastors and churches. So are they is it a certain segment of pastors or churches that you poll um, that would be more on the growth or mindset multiplication typically than the average, or what would you say? Rich Birch — It could be. You know, obviously it’s biased because it’s people who have followed us in our channels um, and we talk about those things. And it was, um, it’s a it was deliberately set up as a poll of executive pastors, which kind of by definition, um, you know, is probably limiting the size of the church. We did we did a size – I don’t have those numbers in front of me, but it does tend to skew to a little bit of a larger church, which is, you know, that that, um, you know, that bias is towards the churches that I’m trying to serve. You know, those are the there’s I’m trying to serve executive pastors. And so I want to kind of get a sense of where, um, where they’re at. So, you know, if you think about, you know, lots of times the church needs to be at least a midsize church before they start thinking like, hey, let’s have somebody to who will take some of that load from the from the lead pastor. And so, um, so it might be a little bit larger. Rich Birch — But yeah, we’re, we’re seeing that um, we’re seeing, um, yeah churches, uh, like, I think last year it feels like, which is a positive thing, like, I think I’ve stopped hearing churches talk about like before Covid… Like they, they’ve, you know, they’ve it’s been a year since I’ve heard people say that, which is really positive. I think, you know, we’re, you know, we we we should stop trying to get those people to come back. We’re not they’re, you know, are so many people or so many…
Zach Zender — Four years ago.
Rich Birch — Yes. It’s so long ago and but, you know, it held on for a long time, like people talked about it for a long time. And I’m like, okay, let’s let’s move on. We got people in front of us all the time. I don’t know if this is true for you guys at your church, Zach, but like so many times when we talk with the leaders about, um, they’ll be like, well, you know, it feels we feel like a totally different church, like we have all these new people, we have all these different people. There was like a a big mix up of people, you know, changing around churches and then new people showing up. And, um, you know, which is, you know, which is wonderful. So, um, yeah. Interesting stuff. Zach Zehnder — That’s cool. Yeah. So with that, and by the way, if you guys have questions, feel free to throw them either in the chat or there’s a Q&A only section in there too. Um, if you throw something in either one, I’ll probably see it. Um, and we’ll either answer it as we go or spend some time at the end with a few of those questions. This one I think makes sense from Roy right now. Um, he asks because I kind of along what you were saying, I think is where this question is coming from is, sounds like by and large, um, there are healthier metrics and marks, and yet there’s, uh, you know, when we talk about wanting to multiply, people are kind of keeping that to themselves or keeping more financial reserves. And so he asks, are they are we restraining this? Is it because of fear, of fear of the future uh, with increased costs of operations and offerings not matching those increases, or what what is kind of your hunch? Or if you will, data kind of informs questions. And so the question I would have would be what is kind of holding people back then or keeping their money a little tighter if they are in a healthier spot? Rich Birch — Well, we’re seeing, so I spent a lot of time on multisite as well. And so there’s another interesting metric in there. For for years so there have been really good consistent, our friend, Warren Bird, has done such a good job over the years around multisite and launching. And you know, this particular question, it was asking a multiplication question. And, you know, for years when you asked churches, um, what was the size of the core team that went in that launched the new location? It was always mid 70s, like 74 or 76, 72, 73. Rich Birch — And then the most recent study that came out last year, we saw it bump into the high 80s. It was like 88, 89, which percentage wise is a big jump. Now, the great thing is I, I’ve joked with Warren and you know, some other friends in the in the kind of coaching world. For years we’ve been saying to churches, you need to have a larger launch core. We’ve been saying you can’t like the, the, the success of your campus is based on the health and size of your launch core. And so I you know, I was like, well, this is people finally listening to us. But I think, I think what the it points to another thing, which is I think there is a shift in churches. That’s a good question by Ray a, a shift in our thinking in, in church leadership post-Covid, where we are a little bit more cautious. Which I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Like, I don’t know, you know, Jesus talks about, you know, someone went out to build a tower and they, you know, they have to measure, what are we going to do? Like, we got to think about this stuff ahead of time. Rich Birch — There’s you know, I think there is a, um, on some of these items we can be too, you know, we can we can lack faith and lack, and we’re being ruled by fear and not taking a step out. And that could negatively impact us. But some of it is just like, hey, it’s it’s, um, we’re just being more measured. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Like, I have led in churches where we counted our reserves in days, not weeks. And, you know, that’s not a good thing either, right? It’s like, you know, you don’t want to be, you know…But I but I, you know, my challenge for leaders would be, yeah, okay. So we’ve reloaded like, no, there’s no more pandemic coming. Like you’re, you know, you’re in a healthy spot. Like, let’s, let’s be thinking about what is that initiative to take a new, you know, a new step. Um, you know, what is your you know, what is the kind of next step you should be taking? What’s the faith step that you think God… Rich Birch — And it could literally be like multiplying from one service to two services. That’s a huge step. Like, man, I got to find a whole bunch of new volunteers. Or, you know, it could be launching a campus if you’re, you know, a bit larger. Maybe it’s launching a campus, or it’s like there’s that person that in your church that you’ve been that they’ve been wondering about church planting. You’re like, yeah, let’s get behind them and help them, you know, church plant. Let’s let’s take some new steps. Um, here for sure, I think it now’s the time to do it. Zach Zehnder — Yeah. That’s good. And I see a question from Denise that I think we’ll get into a little bit more of the granular now, of actual church growth that I think impacts any size. Um, and so, yeah, let’s get into that then. You know, with our world changing a lot, obviously there’s some data that you, you’ve got that um, it’s been really, really helpful. Um, but what but you are the church growth guy as well. That’s how I know you at least. I don’t if you call yourself that. But I call you that. Rich is the church growth guy.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Zach Zehnder — Um, so, so in an ever changing world, like, are there things that churches have done in the past that we should keep doing? Like, these are still things that if I want to grow my church and obviously I’m coming from a, uh, a standpoint that we’re all in Christ, we’re all in mission because we want to see His church grow, His kingdom expand, disciples made. And so when I say “church growth” like I’m everything is healthy. It’s a healthy mindset. Um, so what if we want to grow our churches, yeah, are there things that in the past we’ve done that we should keep doing? Rich Birch — Yeah. Great, great question. Well, so there are um and this I’ve, friends, I promise this won’t be just a sales pitch for my upcoming book. But there are these five areas that we talk about in this, this book or that that we’ve talked about in the past that are, um, that are the kind of five levers, uh, of church growth. And the first one is what we call shareable weekend teaching. And, um, this really any church, any size, it does not cost more money. It doesn’t take more, um, you know, it’s not like some flashy thing. But but, man, we miss the mark all the time um, on this as as leaders. And it’s a real simple thing. It’s if people don’t know what’s coming up at your church, if they don’t know what you’re teaching on next week, the week after the next series, um, it’s very difficult for them to invite their friends. There was a study done by Gallup, uh, a few years ago that asked, you know, people who attend church, it was actually religious, you know, services. It wasn’t just churches. They said, why do you come? And three quarters of the reason why people come is because of the teaching. It’s actually because of what those organizations are teaching on the weekend. Rich Birch — And so if we’re not telling people what’s in it for them, for their friends. So like, hey, coming up next week, we’re going to be talking about insert X. And this would be great for the friends in your life who are wondering about this question or wondering about that question. Do you know people who are thinking about these things? You should you should invite them to come next, you know, next weekend. As simple as that tactic is, um, we miss it too much. We we make people guess. It’s like, um, you know, when we as churches that preach based on, um, sermons or sermon series, you know, they’ll have like, we’ve got an upcoming sermon series coming on, you know, and and it’ll be like something super clever. You’re like, that looks really creative. I have no idea what that’s about. I have no idea what, you know, why I would want to come to that. Like, um, you know, you need to think about it from the point of transaction where, you know, you are where your people talk to their friends. Rich Birch — So, like, how can I put the words in their mind, in their in their mouth, uh, the ideas in their minds, the tools in their hands that will ultimately help them have that conversation. And that really is at the core of, you know, the difference between growing and stuck and stagnant churches. Growing churches train, equip and mobilize their people to invite their friends. And, you know, shareable weekend teaching – the first of those five. And there’s a lot we can talk about and unpack there. But but really the baseline, it’s like a an aha moment. And it can be something as simple as, if you’re teaching this weekend and you know that you know what you’re going to teach on next weekend, which hopefully you do, hopefully, you know, at least a week out where you’re going, at the end of the message, pivoting to, hey, you know, next week, this is the thing we’re going to talk about. And this would be fantastic for friends in your life who are wondering about these things. Rich Birch — Um, you know, even something as simple as that. You know, you can build up all kinds of other stuff around that, invite cards, all kinds of other things. But actually just keeping it in front of your people about where you’re going. This is why big days at work. So this is why Christmas and Easter, one of the reasons why those work for people inviting their friends is because people are clear on Easter, you’re going to talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Like that’s, you know, they don’t have a question. They’re like, I wonder what they’re going to talk about. Hopefully.
Zach Zehnder — Right.
Rich Birch — Um, you know, they know generally at Christmas time, good chance you’re going to talk about the birth of Jesus. And so it makes it easier for them to invite. They have a clear sense of what they’re going to go. That’s why at Christmas time, people will invite their friends at Christmas because they’re pretty sure you’re going to sing songs that they know, like you’re going to they’re still you go into Walmart and there’s, you know, songs that are, uh, those a lot of those songs are playing on the radio still. Um, and so, you know, they it makes it easier to, you know, to invite. So shareable weekend teaching that would be one of those, you know, things I would be thinking about. Zach Zehnder — Cool. I think that’s so great. And I think sometimes we, I don’t know, I feel like we can underestimate our worth as preachers and the content that we bring every week, uh, and how valuable it actually is. It’s extremely valuable. God’s word, every time it goes out accomplishes what it what it sets out to accomplish. And so I think less from a pride standpoint or anything else, like we just need to remember God’s Word changes people’s lives, and, and look to be practical. I think that’s, you know, one of the things I think in the shareable weekend teaching is we can teach awesome theology all day long…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Zach Zehnder — …and we ought to. And I’m trusting that the people that are on this do that already. But what is that twist of making it practical so that it that people desire to be there. And know what that’s going to do if they come.
Rich Birch — Totally. And and you know this, Zach, but like that same study that found that three quarters of the reason why people come is because of teaching. They ask those people, well, what are you looking for in their teaching? And it might surprise some people because the two things they said, the number one thing they said was they want it to be based on transcendent truth. They they people are looking for, um, things that are, and you see this in the culture all around us. It’s like, um, you know, it’s it’s like I heard a guy recently talking about he’s like, um, this is why I like you, like the Back to Nature movement. People are like, have chickens in their backyards, and they like, it’s like they’re trying to eat like their great grandparents. Or like, I heard this guy recently, he’s like, I’m making my own vanilla extract in my basement. Why do people do those things? Because so much is changing in our culture. They’re like, I want something that is true. That has been true for a very long time. Rich Birch — And that’s true about the Bible at its core. These are stories that people have based their lives on for thousands of years. This is these are compelling narratives and, you know, transcendent truth that makes a difference. But the second thing, and it was right tight underneath, so based on transcendent truth is what they’re looking for. And the second is that it’s applicable to everyday life. That doesn’t sound like rocket science, but I think we can forget that sometimes. That it’s like, hey, this is this isn’t about trivia. It’s not about like, you know, do people really care what it says in the Greek? And I know sometimes you have to do that. Like, sometimes you, you know, you you need to make that, uh, which is fine. But the question is, okay, so I’m walking out tomorrow and it is, um, you know, what difference is this going to make? Rich Birch — I have sometimes felt like, um, in my particular tribe that sometimes our, our teaching can it’s like at the end of it, it almost is like the teacher says, well, there’s some interesting thoughts. We’ll see you next Sunday. Like and it’s and we can miss the application. We can miss, um, you know, we can miss where we’re at. Jeff Brody, my lead pastor, the church I’m at now, he is so good at, like, driving to, like, super pointed like, let’s get to like a very specific takeaway that this makes a difference to you tomorrow. Um, you know, we need to do that.
Zach Zehnder — That’s good.
Rich Birch — So, um, shareable weekend teaching is super important. It’s it’s a critically important piece of the puzzle, for sure. Zach Zehnder — I love it. And I’ve challenged pastors and church leaders too. I think we gotta, you know, let’s talk church language a little bit. I think we’ve got some really great effective preachers that do really well with the justification of God. But the sanctification in a lot of people’s sermons, which is the practical live it out stuff, leaves a lot to be desired sometimes. And, uh, and as much as the teaching, like you said, is true, um, and we need that, we need to know how to apply it and what difference it makes. So I love that. All right, what are some other ones that you have. That was number one you said. Rich Birch — Yeah. So well there’s lots there’s things that are um, this is under the context of things we’ve done that we want to continue? Zach Zehnder — That we still still do. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. So, you know, the I would say another and because we’re coming up to Easter, um, so this would be an area where I was wrong. I and so I’m not the hero of this story. So it’s kind of a fun, you know, thing to talk about. For years I would say almost half of my ministry career, I was like, man, I want every weekend to be the most inviteable ever. I want every I know we talked about big days already, but I was like for years I was like, I almost pooh-poohed—was like, aaah, that’s a bad idea—people, when they would do these big days. And I was like, oh, that’s you know, that’s uh, like that’s a waste of energy. Like I look at the church that did at Christmas time, they did the singing Christmas Tree in our town. And I was like, you know, they had like 500 people up on stage. I’m like, that’s ridiculous. Or, you know, and it happens like, you’ll see it this year at Easter. You’re going to see like, people will make fun of the churches that have, like, you know, the, you know, Jesus gets pulled up into the ceiling and like, you know, all that kind of like the circus stuff. Now, I’m not saying the church needs to have a it needs to be a circus on these big days. But the thing that happens on big days is this: two things happen. Your people are more likely to invite their friends, and their friends are more likely to attend. I ignored that for years. Rich Birch — I was like, no, people should invite any day. Yeah, they they should invite any day, but they don’t. There are certain days during the year where they’re more likely to invite your friend. And Easter is one of those. There’s lots of reasons why that is, but what we want to do is we want to put some extra oomph, extra communication, some extra, um, effort into Easter because it’s coming up, uh, to invite them to come to that experience and, you know, to and… And again, it could be something as simple as, you know, we’re having a photo booth out in front of our, our church and, you know, get your family photos on Easter Sunday. And you and you find that person who’s a photographer at your church, and you take photos and then everything else you do is exactly the same. You don’t need to do some sort of crazy thing, but even a little thing like that, that gives an excuse to people in your and and then what you say is you talk about it for three weeks ahead of time and you say like, hey, invite your whole family. It’s a great time to get a family photo. Rich Birch — I am shocked, I was at Disney World earlier this year and, you know, I am convinced that there are a lot of people who their like core reason for spending all their money flying to Florida is to stand in front of the castle. They literally they’re doing it to stand there and get their their photo taken. Like that seems crazy to me. I’m like, you know, you can get your family photo taken anywhere. We can doctor it up to make it look like you’re at Disney World. But you know, the same is true with this kind of like a simple tactic, like a photo. Um, you know, a photo booth is like, hey, let’s do something on Easter that’s a little bit different. I would challenge you if I was thinking of today, I’d be thinking, hey, what could we do that’s a little bit different? Rich Birch — You know, you don’t need to drop Easter eggs from a helicopter. Although that would be a great thing. You know, you don’t need to, you know, have some, you know, crazy thing. But, um, you want to, uh, you want to, you know, do something that will ultimately, and you think about it again, it’s the kind of thing that people would tell their friends about. So, and the real the key there is eventful big days. You’re going to have you’re going to have big days. But the question is, are they eventful? Are they the kind of thing that, um, you know, people want to talk to their, their friends about? I’ll give you something that’s on the flip side of that, which is what where lots of churches lose eventful big days, because you still got time to to…Is that good? Can I give you something there?
Zach Zehnder — Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Birch — So we think so much about so you think about Easter like and I know what this is going to be like. We got we’re coming through Lent and there’s a lot going on. And then, you know, your church maybe maybe that week you’re doing like Good Friday services. You’re doing maybe Maundy Thursday. You’re doing Good Friday. Like you’ve got a lot going on. And then you and then some guy told you to have a photo booth. And so you got a photo booth. You got like a lot. And then and then what’s going to happen is the Monday after Easter, you’re going to be like, wow, that was great. We had huge attendance. That was amazing. But then what? Like where, where? So those big days, the focus of that big day needs to be on to some sort of recall, something that is saying to those people, hey, you should come back. So it’s like the start of a series. It’s um, come back to, uh, you know, um, you know, we’re giving away something next weekend. We’re, um, you know, in our kids ministry, we’ve got a special thing. Rich Birch — We did this this year coming out of, um, Christmas at our church. We told, uh, our, our kids ministry people, we’re like, hey, thanks so much for coming to our Christmas Eve service in…and this may not work in every market, but it worked in ours. Um, I think it was like the second week in January. We were like, all of our kids ministry environments are going to have live animals at them. And so we literally had like it was like Live Animal Sunday. And it was like there was like rabbits and all kinds of fun stuff. And we told kids at Christmas, hey, come back for it. (And it wasn’t called Live Animal Sunday, there’s some other better name.) But there was like come back for those kinds of things. People miss, church leaders missed the recall. They missed the hey, come back for this other thing. There’s a church in Philadelphia that does this out of Christmas every year. They do a thing called Epic Days. The name of their church is Epic Church – every person in the city is why it’s called EPIC. Rich Birch — And they do an Epic Day every January where they give away a free T-shirt to everybody and they say, hey, you should come on this day. And they’ll say to their people, our pastor is going to make the clearest presentation of the gospel of the year on Epic Sunday. This is the day for you to invite your friends, uh, to come. And so they they leverage out of Christmas Eve, uh, into that. Or we’ve done like a special speaker the week after Easter. So I’ll give you a hint. There’s, you know, there are these people out there who are, like guys like Zach, who are like a great communicator, who you should have come and speak at your church. Don’t have them come on Easter. Have them come the week after Easter. Say like, hey, come back next week. We’ve got this amazing communicator, Zach Zehnder. He’s going to, you know, blow your mind. It’ll be amazing. Um, you know, you want to you add something for people to come back to. Don’t miss that. Um, that really is a is a key tactic that we miss on these big days. Zach Zehnder — That’s cool. Now you’re putting all this pressure on me, Rich, but… Well, that’s good, but for real, that’s a little bit of what we what we love to do at Red Letter Challenge, too, with our 40 day challenges, is we want you to actually go all-in on Easter, on Christmas Eve. And I know, like as a pastor, I’ve went all-in on those days and I’ve woke up on Monday kind of kind of depressed, like, I gotta do this again on Sunday. What? And so let let us do the work for you, have 40 days of ready-done-for-you stuff so that you’ve got like a proven thing that’s going to move your church in the right direction. Rich Birch — Yes! Like this is I didn’t even think of that. That would be a killer time to launch a 40 day challenge. Like so, you know, people show up that Sunday, hey, next week we’ve got this great thing going on, like, you should come back. It’s 40 days on serving. You know, it’s going to be amazing. Here’s a great trailer. And then you there you’ve got your you know, you’ve got your, you know, sermons lined up. You’ve got all kinds of because you guys produce incredible resources to make all that so easy for people. Zach Zehnder — Yeah. And then you can spend the extra time, uh, planning to get the live animals there. Rich Birch — Yeah. And then you got live animals. Zach Zehnder — There you go. I love it. Cool, man. All right, give me, uh, give me three, four and five and, uh, let’s do let’s do those pretty quick so we can get into, um, some new stuff as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, so captivating online conversations. This fits in kind of the new, um, uh, you know, if we wrote this book 15 years ago, we wouldn’t be saying that, ten years ago even. But increasingly, the kind of key piece here is that growing churches, they, uh, they don’t just post digital billboards, they don’t post like, hey, and they might do that, but they’re actually trying to have online conversations. And so it’s actually more about stirring discussion than it is about people just kind of seeing what, you know, your, uh, you know, what you’re up to. Uh, so that’s number three then. Rich Birch — Number four is magnetic community service. So getting people out of their seats and into the streets – critically important. So we see this time and again with fast-growing churches, that they um, they are they’re trying to find ways for their people to actually make a difference, to make a tangible difference. The people in their community see it as a good thing; we see it as a God thing. Zach Zehnder — And, Rich, on that one, real quick. We just did, uh, at King of Kings here in Omaha…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Zach Zehnder — …two nights ago—and I know there’s 700 churches, I think, doing it now—Night to Shine…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Zach Zehnder — …with the Tim Tebow Foundation. And I can’t tell you, man, the amount of, uh, positive press, uh, and the, the big deal that things like that are. I’ve always said, like, I don’t think that every community service thing you ever do needs to be, you know, we need to tell the news we’re doing this, but it’s not a bad idea to have a couple things a year that you go all out for, um, that people want to see and celebrate you for your witness and reputation. And that Night to Shine is like one of those perfect events that everybody gets excited about. Rich Birch — Totally. Yeah. And it is. That’s a great example because, um, you know, when you think about there’s really a double whammy happening at something like Night to Shine. One is people want to be a part of a church that makes a difference, but they also want to be seen to be a part of a church that makes a difference. And you know, when they’re when you feature like, hey, look at all this cool stuff that we did. It makes them feel better about their church, and they’re more likely to ultimately invite their friends. And so, um, you know, that’s a that’s a huge deal. And then the last is appealing volunteer service, which is really this whole in which this is a, um, this… So I wrote a book a number of years ago without which, which Allison, uh, LinkedIn there called the Church Growth Flywheel, which is wonderful.
Zach Zehnder — Awesome.
Rich Birch — These five areas we’re still talking about in this new book, I can’t get off these, but this fifth area really is a significant change in that what when we’ve stared into it longer, what we’ve realized is that growing churches don’t look at volunteer engagement as an outcome of growth. They look at as a driver of growth. So let’s say if you’re a church of 200 people, um, you know, we’ll say, well, we’ll have enough volunteers if we get to 300, that would be amazing. Um, when we get there, we’ll finally have enough people to, like, be in the parking lot or whatever we need to do, but actually growing churches look at it the other way around. They say if we want to get to 300, what we need to do is onboard some new volunteers. And when you think about this at the level of like individual volunteers, if if you can take someone who’s not volunteering and get them volunteering, think about what that does in their life. It rearranges their their agenda. You literally get on their, you know, in their calendar. Rich Birch — And when they leave work on Friday and say like, hey, when someone says, hey, what do you do on the weekend? You’re like, oh, I’m volunteering at my church. Um, they’re like, oh, tell me about that. And then it leads into a natural, um, you know, invite opportunity. And so and typically we see a 3 to 1 ratio there. So for every one volunteer your, your church actually grows by three. So if you add if you can add 100 volunteers typically you’ll see your church actually grow by by 300, or you’ll add an additional 200. So you’ll end up being a church of, you know, a 300 people or an additional 300 people total. And so we want to work ahead on, and there’s a lot we could talk about there, but this is the mechanics behind multisite. Rich Birch — People were like, oh, multisite, the reason why churches are growing is because they’re going to new locations. No, that’s not true. The reason why they’re growing is because they’re engaging new volunteers to go to those new locations. The churches, there are churches that are going that are just taking people who are currently serving… Well, actually, this is not this is this rarely happens. But if you just take people who are currently serving and plop them into a new location and not get new people to serve, your campus won’t grow. You have to actually get a whole bunch of new people. And we see time and again that it’s two thirds of the people who go and serve in new campuses are new volunteers. That will spur new growth, that will actually drive more growth um, you know, at at your church. Which I saw in here, there was a question around, um, like, hey, we launched with the with the ARC…
Zach Zehnder — Oh, yeah.
Rich Birch — …with ARC initially over the last two years, and sounds like maybe they’re stuck. And so we’re portable meeting a local middle school. Uh, you know, so, you know, Spencer, feel for you. That’s like a that’s a tough place to be. I, I would, frankly, I would start with the two things that we talked about on either end. One would be this appealing volunteer experience. Like too many church leaders, particularly of churches sub 500 think, how do we make this less volunteer intensive? It’s like, how do I get less people? I just, you know, and we’re just we’re gunning for like we want staff to do everything. But actually you want the polarity to go the other way. You want to be, we want to be taking things that would be done by staff and giving them to volunteers. And so it’s like, how do we get more people on teams? How do, and and then how do we make that an even better experience? How do we make their experience of serving with you even better? Rich Birch — And then on the other, the very first thing we talked about, shareable weekend teaching. Um, you know, I would look really carefully at the what are we maximizing every one of those steps around your teaching? What can we do to ensure that people, um, you know, know exactly what’s coming? We can talk more about that, but that would be a few things. Zach Zehnder — No, Rich. That’s so good, man. I’m, I’m I’m always learning so much from you. But that’s probably my new key takeaway from this conversation so far is, uh, seeing volunteerism, or servants, or dream team, or whatever you call them at your church, um, not as an outcome, but uh of of a church, but more as a um an accelerant for church growth. Um, that that these these are the people that… and it makes sense. They’re volunteering. They’re stepping up to new roles, whether it’s leading a small group or helping in ministry, or at even an event. And they want to tell their friends about it, they want to tell their people about it. And that and the more they’re invested in your church, hopefully the more they see and the more they talk about it. And so that’s super, super, really cool. Zach Zehnder — So you mentioned these you mentioned your old not old book. It’s not that old. Church growth Flywheel. Great book. There’s an online course that goes with it too that I highly recommend. Um, and now you’ve got a new book coming out. Um, so tell us about that book. What’s different about that one? And some of the things in, in, in the new one. Rich Birch — Yeah. Great. So the new book is called “Unlocking Your Churches Invite Culture”. And um, so it’s around similar topics. It’s around these five areas. We’re talking about these five areas. But I’ll give you a little bit of insider kind of insight. Um, when the the the first book on church growth really I didn’t I assumed every church leader wanted their church to grow. I but you apparently is not true. Like there are church leaders that are not convinced that this that’s like an important thing. Rich Birch — And so we spend more time on the why in this book. We spend more time kind of unpacking, you know what does that look like? The title “Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture,” like, I think I’m convinced that God has wired us to want to make a difference. We want to be a part of something that, um, is impacting our culture. And so it’s not like this isn’t about you kind of importing something on your people. It’s already resonant within them. It really is um, you know, there’s a there’s really a discipleship thing that has to happen with our people to be like, hey, let’s uncover what’s already there in you. Um, and it’s also a stronger focus on culture rather than tactics. So although we get into a lot of tactics, we talk a lot about, um, you know, like, you know, give you all kinds of examples, two dozen churches, we give you examples from and all kinds of stuff like that, uh, which I love writing about, but but I’m convinced over, you know, staring at churches for all these years around these issues that that it really is about that train, equip, and motivate. Rich Birch — You’ve got to consistently work on the culture side of it, which is, do you and like some of that is like, you know, you get your elders or whoever, your senior leaders are together and you say, okay, so who are the people that you could invite if, if we if we were going to get on the phone right now and invite someone to come this weekend, who’s the person that you would feel comfortable doing that with? In fact, let’s actually do that right now. We’re going to get on the phone. And if if your key leaders or elders at that moment can’t answer that question, they’re like, I don’t know who I would invite. I don’t know who, I don’t have somebody who I would who I’m actively in relationship with that I’m investing invite investing in that relationship. I’m inviting them and ultimately trying to involve them in my life. If I don’t have those kinds of relationships, that’s a problem. It doesn’t matter how many flyers we print. Um, you know, we’ve got to work harder on the culture, uh, piece. Rich Birch — And so, um, so, yeah, so the book takes a bit more focus around, and it gives all kinds of practical handles around, you know, ultimately, how do we increase that invite culture? What do we do? And it’s you know, it’s 1,000,001 small steps. Like even just that piece we talked about volunteers there. So we talk about in the book the the new here, the new volunteer pathway or pipeline that that we have to that is a key…Sometimes I think we think that’s like closing the back door kind of thing. That’s like a, you know, a back door function, but actually it’s a front door function. It’s like we most churches have guests arriving at their church, and they have more guests arriving at their church than they’re getting connected. And we have to take responsibility to, to ultimately try to convert those people into people who are like, actively engaged and wanting to invite their friends to our church. And that’s and that’s moving them from being a new here guest, ultimately to a new, uh, a new volunteer. What does that look like? How do we do that? You know, we want to think really carefully around those steps. And, um, you know, and it’s it’s it’s not rocket science, but we do have to think intentionally about those, you know, those pieces of the puzzle. Zach Zehnder — That’s good. And, yeah, to kind of help frame, frame all this a little bit for everybody too, like the very stuff we’ve been talking about…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Zach Zehnder — …right, the shareable weekend teaching the, uh, having big day events, uh, the the the Night to Shine sort of stuff that we’ve talked about, um, all of that is because your people will talk about it. And I’ve heard you say, Rich, before, the number one key to church growth is inviteability.
Rich birch — Yes, yep.
Zach Zehnder — And so if our people are talking about if our people are inviting, that is the number one key I’ve heard from Rich Birch to church growth. Zach Zehnder — And so we need to do everything we can to arm, equip, like you said in your words, train, equip, and motivate our people to invite. That, at the end of the day, is going to be how churches grow. And so it’s our job as church leaders to make that as easily possible and practical in the lives of our people. And so, Rich, tell me a little more like, when’s the book coming out? What can church leaders, uh, expect from it? And anything more you want to double down on what I just said on on the importance of invite culture? Rich Birch — No, you’ve hit it you’ve hit the nail on the head there for sure. Like we, at the end of the day, um, we have to think about everything we do through the lens of, or someone on your team, you know, it might not be you, but someone on your team needs to be thinking about, okay, how are we framing this in a way so that our people will ultimately want to, you know, invite their invite their friends? I was talking to a church leader recently, and this is like a, you know, guy who’s been around for a long time in a lot of churches and that he they ask the question or the in the audience we were in asked the question, what’s the what’s the greatest um, dampener – they asked the negative question – like the greatest dampener of evangelistic culture, or what I would say is invite culture. And this person, this leader said, you know, it’s it’s preaching that doesn’t connect to the real world, that it’s like there are there can be people who, you know, all you’re doing is thinking about filling people’s heads rather than moving them ultimately to action. Rich Birch — And so, so yeah, we want to work a lot on the train, equip, and motivate. It’s all three of those. It’s we have to do training with people. We have to, you know, we have to actually talk about it, teach on it, figure out like another kind of big day example. Um, you know, the week before Easter, the week before Christmas, the week before Mother’s Day before or whatever your big days are. Those typically are like low, unchurched Sundays, like people. If you’re like, think about it, if you don’t normally attend church and you’re thinking about coming to church this year, you’re not coming week before Easter, you’re not coming to week before Christmas. You’re just not like, it’s like I’m wait till next week. Um, man, that’s a great Sunday to teach on why you should invite people to come next weekend. Because, you know, because, you know, obviously you want to be careful about how you do that. But I can tell you, those weekends you have a lower percentage of unchurched people in your room. And so let’s you obviously have to do that in an elegant way. But let’s take the advantage of, uh, of that.
Rich Birch — So the book comes out in early March. Um, but you can if you drop by, uh, unlockinviteculture.com, you can get on the waitlist, um, to, you know, uh, you know, to get a whatever when it first comes out, which is, which is wonderful. I wanted to give, Zach, I thought we were talking about this beforehand, but I want to give the people who are on this. So in the book, when you buy the book, there are each, there’s nine chapters and each chapter has a different content upgrade or has a tool, uh, you know, um, a test, a checklist. If there’s actually a four part video series, we include, like there’s all these different kind of digital resources that we provide. And one of them is called the Invite Culture Litmus Test. Rich Birch — And what this is, this comes from talking to dozens, maybe hundreds of churches about, um, you know, they’ll be like, well, how do I know kind of what’s the benchmark? What are the benchmarks that we’re like that are is our church even on, you know, for reaching like, what’s the how do we measure our invite culture? And so there are three numbers that we’ve used time and again to help people understand what they are. And so we’ll send this to you. And it’s real easy. It’s like simple math. I’m you know, I did not do well in high school math. So this is not you’ll know most church leaders will know or be able to access these numbers quickly. But what it does is that you look at those numbers. And then we give you a benchmark. We say like, hey, if you’re, you know, if you’re in this range, then you’re kind of at industry average or what we would say is like, hey, it’s good. Or like you, you know, maybe you need to spend some more time in that area. So we’ll we’ll send that out to people who are registered. Um, and you know, you take a look at it, that is, you know, that’s one of the chapters kind of content upgrades, um, that we’ll just give to you for free because because Zach’s a great guy. Zach Zehnder — No, you’re a great guy. You’re the one giving it away, dude. So you’re the great guy. All right. So, yeah, to be clear on that, I’ll follow up. We’ll follow up with everybody right after this. Um, in the next hour, we’ll send you an email that has that file. Um, and, and here’s since I’m the challenge guy, here’s my challenge. All right. Find and get whatever numbers you can get from that litmus test now. Um, so do that today, tomorrow, this week, get that done. And again, you all know this Easter’s coming March 31. And so what is one of the three numbers, at least, that you can improve on? Um, do something tangibly and practically for this Easter.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Zach Zehnder — I know there’s going to be things in there because Rich is always really practical with that. So we’ll email that. Rich, can I also throw that in my Facebook Red Letter Leaders group as a file? Rich Birch — Totally. Yeah, that’s totally fine. Yeah. That’s great. Zach Zehnder — Awesome. So so it’ll be there as well. So I’ll put the link to uh, the Red Letter Leaders group there if you’re not in that already. That’s where we’re having some good discussion, uh, through the month. Um. Awesome, man. Well, if you got a quick question, anyone out there, feel free to throw it in. Um, just to kind of sum up a couple things real quickly here. We got a few more minutes left. Um, we’re happy to, uh, do these monthly webinars. We love that we can give them to you for free. Uh, I’d love for you, though, if you’re a pastor or church leader and you haven’t done one of our 40 day challenges, or you haven’t done all of them, we have four of them ready to go. Um, after Easter, again, we talked about is a great time to do that. So in the offer on the side, we’ve got 10% off, um, on any order on our website that reaches a certain threshold. Um, but get those post Easter orders in like this week so you have plenty of time to promote. Um, so you can check that out on the offer sid. Zach Zehnder — Uh, next month. I’m pretty pumped about our webinar. Um, I’m going to bring Kap Chatfield onto the podcast or the podcast – I just recorded podcast last week. So the webinar I’m going to bring Kap Chatfield on to the webinar. Uh, Kap is a Kingdom entrepreneur, pastor and content creator. Uh, get this in 2023. He started the year with a thousand YouTube subscribers, and by the end of 2023 had more than a million. Um, so we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about the benefit of YouTube as a ministry for discipleship, and also get into the really practical secrets and tips of what he did, because a lot of us can do some of the things that he’s doing. Um, so that’s going to be next month. Uh, it was originally scheduled for March 14th. We’re going to push that back to March 28th. Uh, you’re on the list. So you’ll get all the information on that, church leaders. Um, so that’s going to be a really great one. Uh, Rich, uh, hey, man, if people want to connect with you more, what is the best link for them to find you these days? Rich Birch — Yeah, just unseminary.com would be, you know, would be fine. My direct email is rb@unseminary.com. Um, Roy asked an interesting question there around land is so expensive today. Are there connections or resources to receive donated land or finding inexpensive properties for churches? So that’s an interesting question. Rich Birch — So, um, this is so related to um, like the rebirth church movement that’s going on. So there are churches out there that are they are over-capitalized. That is, they have buildings that they’re not using. Um, or they’re, you know, like it’s a 500-seat sanctuary and they have, you know, 25 people attending. Um, like, Roy, I would be pursuing those kinds of conversations. The the what I’ve coached churches and the churches I’ve worked with we’ve done is identify 30 or 40 churches in your area who, um, you know, who might be, you know, who might be in that situation and literally send them a letter. And by letter I mean like an actual, like physical letter. And mail them a letter that’s that essentially says, hey, we’re from XYZ church, and we’re looking to partner with other churches to work together for the kingdom to try to help reach our community. And we’d be very open to conversations with, you know, with, uh, churches that are that are looking for this kind of help. And then list 3 or 4 things that you could do as a church, like, hey, maybe you’ve got like a worship band or you’ve got like, you’d be willing to help with teaching, or maybe you run a great VBS and you would be open, open to helping other churches with VBS, and list 3 or 4 different ways that you could help the church. So not like we’re looking for you to give us your building. That’s not the that’s not the email here. That’s not the letter. But it’s like, hey, we’d love to work together. Rich Birch — And I think you’d be amazed at the conversations that would open up, you know, time and again, you end up at doing stuff that you’re maybe not entirely… Like our church did, did this and we’re running Alpha at a church in the north end of one of our towns. There’s 50-some odd people coming to that. Half of them are students and were partnering with the church to do it. They were like, we would love to run Alpha, but we need extra volunteers to help with that. We can do the meal. Could you guys help us with that? And we’re like, fantastic. Now, I also happen to know that that church is they’re um, they’re one of these churches. They have a very large facility with not very many people attending and are trying to figure out what they’re doing next. We want to be just engage in relationship with those people. How can we have a conversation with them? So that’s like a whole other that might be a bit mind bending there, but um, that would be an opening conversation anyways. Zach Zehnder — I love it, man. So helpful. You always are for all of us, uh, pastors and church leaders. And see, that’s the sort of stuff that Rich knows. Like he just knows his wealth of church growth, multiplication for the capital “C” church is just so expansive. So again, I’d love for you guys to continue to connect with him and unseminary.com. Um, check out his podcast, all that he has there. Uh, John, you asked if this webinar you can share with staff and leaders. Absolutely. We’ll send an email right after the fact. If for whatever reason you don’t get it, shoot us an email at hello@redletterchallenge.com. There’ll be a replay link for you that we want as many people helped in this as possible. Zach Zehnder — So um, feel free to send that to your staff and leaders. And also it’s good to see you, John. Um, but really happy and grateful to do this for you guys. Uh, thankful for your heart and ministry. Um, that you are you are growing disciples, making disciples at your church, um, helping people see the real Jesus. And so Rich, thanks a lot, man, for joining us on this month Red Letter Leader webinar, bro. Appreciate you. Rich Birch — Thank you. Appreciate you guys. Love what you guys are up to you. Thanks so much. Zach Zehnder — All right. Take care guys. Bye. Take care.
The Diffusion of Innovation Curve and Leading Change at Your Church
Feb 28, 2024
In the dynamic landscape of church leadership, the concept of change is both inevitable and essential. As leaders, our mission extends beyond merely maintaining the status quo; it involves steering our congregations toward a brighter, more engaging future. This journey of transformation, however, is far from straightforward. It demands a nuanced understanding of how change is adopted within communities. Enter the Diffusion of Innovation Curve, a framework that offers invaluable insights into managing change effectively within your church.
Understanding the Diffusion of Innovation Curve
At its core, the Diffusion of Innovation Curve categorizes members of any social system based on their willingness to adopt new ideas and practices. This bell-shaped curve is divided into five segments: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards. Each segment represents a unique attitude towards change, from the eager Innovators to the cautious Laggards. Recognizing where your congregation falls on this curve is crucial for crafting strategies that resonate with them and encourage adoption of new initiatives.
Leadership and the Innovation Curve
As church leaders, we often find ourselves at the forefront of the curve, either as Innovators or Early Adopters. Our vision for the church’s future and our willingness to embrace change positions us uniquely within our communities. However, this can also create a gap between our enthusiasm for new initiatives and the congregation’s readiness to accept them. Bridging this gap requires a strategic approach that takes into account the diverse perspectives and adoption rates within our community.
Applying the Curve to Church Change Initiatives
Whether it’s enhancing the volunteer experience, fostering a culture of generosity, or launching small group ministries, understanding the diffusion of innovation can transform how we lead these changes. For instance, when introducing a new volunteer program, emphasizing relational connections and providing social proof can significantly increase participation rates, especially among the Early and Late Majority. Similarly, when promoting financial stewardship, personal engagement and demonstrating the impact of contributions can encourage broader support.
Strategies for Effective Change Management
Segment Your Approach: Tailor your communication and engagement strategies to match the characteristics of each segment within your congregation. This might mean offering more detailed information and testimonials to the Early and Late Majority, while leveraging the Innovators and Early Adopters as champions of change.
Foster Relationships: Change is more readily embraced in the context of trusted relationships. Organize events and small groups that build community among members who may be hesitant about new initiatives.
Provide Social Proof: Showcase examples of successful adoption within your church or similar communities. Testimonies, case studies, and peer discussions can play a powerful role in encouraging participation.
Communicate Vision and Impact: Clearly articulate the ‘why’ behind the change. Connecting the initiative to the church’s broader mission and demonstrating its potential impact can motivate members across all segments of the curve.
Be Patient and Persistent: Recognizing that adoption rates vary, be prepared for a gradual process. Consistent messaging, coupled with opportunities for engagement, can gradually build momentum for change.
Leading change at your church is a delicate dance between vision and pragmatism. The Diffusion of Innovation Curve provides a strategic lens through which we can view our congregations, allowing us to tailor our approaches to meet them where they are. By embracing this framework, we can navigate the complexities of change management with greater empathy, effectiveness, and ultimately, success. Our role as leaders is not just to envision a better future but to guide our church communities towards it, one step at a time.
Remember, the journey of innovation and change is a collective one. It thrives on collaboration, understanding, and shared purpose. As you embark on this path, know that you are not alone. The potential for transformation within your church is immense, and by leveraging the insights from the Diffusion of Innovation Curve, you are well-equipped to unlock it.
FILO: Empowering Technical Artists in Your Church with Todd Elliott
Feb 22, 2024
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Todd Elliott, a writer, speaker and audio engineer serving the local church. He’s also the founder of FILO: First In, Last Out, which is built around supporting technical artists who serve the local church.
Do you ever feel like there is a disconnect between the senior leadership of your church and the production team? Do you wonder how to foster better communication between the teaching or worship pastors and the technical artists?Tune in as Todd offers help in technical skill development, community, inspiration and more.
Foster reconnection. // Technical artists can often feel alone in their roles behind the scenes at churches. A key component of the work FILO does is to help production team members become more effective, not just as tech people, but as followers of Christ. It’s important to remind tech people that they are more than what they do, and their relationship with Jesus matters more than their relationship to the gear they work with.
Give direction for tech. // We live in a technology-based society. Much of what our churches do revolves around it—from social media or streaming services online to lighting during worship services. Church leaders need technology, but we don’t necessarily know how much we want to use it or allow it to influence our decisions. Todd encourages senior leaders to give direction and cast vision in this area, even if they don’t fully understand it. Without their leadership, tech people can make the focus or use of technology bigger than it needs to be.
Foster good communication. // A tech person’s job is to be invisible in their work. One of the challenges is that people notice when things go wrong, but not when everything goes smoothly. This focus on the negative causes production team members not to feel trusted. There can also be a language barrier between church leadership and technical artists in regard to what it takes to achieve what’s being asked. It’s important that senior leaders and creative staff work together and share the responsibility to figure out what it will take to accomplish the ideas being discussed.
Recognize the good. // Don’t only talk about the things that didn’t work. Identify the excellent work the production team is doing and discuss that too. Don’t just tell technical leaders that they did a “great job”, but communicate that you recognize the time that went into their work and the high quality of it. Noticing the good work and calling it out does a lot to build trust.
Define reality. // The range of spending on tech can be vast because you’re making decisions on what you want your church to be about technology-wise. It’s the senior leader’s job to define reality for what the church is about and what is the best way to accomplish the vision, even on the technology side. Todd advises senior leaders to ask to see or hear the differences between equipment options when trying to make purchase decisions rather than simply taking someone’s word for what to buy.
Resources for your team. // FILO offers a number of resources for church tech people to become more well-rounded and effective as human beings, which then helps the church become more effective. Todd’s book, “I Love Jesus, But I Hate Christmas: Tackling the Challenges of Being a Church Technical Artist”, provides chapters that foster discussion on a variety of topics from collaboration and community to the difference between perfection and excellence. The FILO Conference this spring provides an opportunity for professional and spiritual development with breakout sessions, worship and more.
You can find out more about FILO and all the resources they offer for your production teams at www.filo.org. Download a chapter from Todd’s book here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. Man, super honored that you would tune in. We have got a great conversation today, uh, with a new friend, Todd Elliott. He was recommended to us by our friend, Brittany Crimmel, from out west. Todd is a writer, speaker, and technical artist in the local church and the founder of an organization called FILO – First In and Last Out. And they really are built around this idea of supporting technical artists who serve the local church. And they do all kinds of things around skill development, community inspiration. They have a great conference, a book. I want you to get to know Todd, get to know FILO. Uh, welcome. So glad you’re here today, Todd. Todd Elliott — Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here. Rich Birch — Well, this will be good. You know, the name of our podcast is unSeminary, stuff they didn’t teach you, or you wish they taught in seminary. Uh, you know, and there’s nothing like the technical side…
Todd Elliott — Right.
Rich Birch — …that is this fits this category perfectly. Uh, so tell us a little bit about your background. You know, bring us up to speed. Tell us about FILO. Yeah, give us this full the full story. Todd Elliott — Yeah. So my, uh, my story starts like a lot of, uh, people doing technology in the local church. I was in high school. I, uh, had a friend who was sitting behind the soundboard, uh, and he didn’t show up one day, and I got kind of sucked into…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Elliott — Okay, uh, how do we do this? So, I mean, and I would say this is dating me a little bit, uh, you know, back in those days, it was one microphone and a cassette recorder, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — So that was all I had to deal with. Uh, but, uh, just through that experience, I grew as the church grew. I learned new stuff. I, um, and so, you know, the next day it was there was a guitar and then there was some drums. And, you know, it just kind of added as as the church grew, my skills kind of grew with it. And I thought, I would love to do this for a living, but I had no concept of people doing that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — So just volunteering like crazy, um, helped start a church, um, in, in Michigan. And then when I graduated from college, I started working there, uh, doing everything. I mean, it was, you know, uh, like most people do in a church start up, just like I had like, ten jobs and loved every second of it. Uh, but as time went on, uh, realizing, like, I started hiring production staff people. And then, yeah, just sort of leading a group of, uh, you know, volunteer team and a staff team. And really, the story of FILO, uh, comes out of this time. Because for me, I’m like, I, I’m an audio engineer. I have no idea what I’m doing leading people, leading teams.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Todd Elliott — I don’t know how to do it. Um, and I just felt like, who else is doing this that I could talk to?
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — And at that time, there really weren’t too many places. Uh, but I reached out, I called information. This tells you how long ago it was. I called information on the phone, like Saddleback.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — Uh, give me the number to Saddleback. Who’s there? Who can talk to me?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — Um, Willow Creek, all these big churches.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — And, yeah, people would respond and, um, yeah, got to talk to all these people and realized that my challenges weren’t unique. They were challenges that everybody was having. Um, you know, well, what do I do about the the youth pastors asking for too much technology?
Rich Birch — Right. Todd Elliott — You know, Willow Creek’s like, well, we haven’t cracked that code either. So when you solve it, call us back, you know…
Rich Birch —And let us know.
Todd Elliott — Yeah. So there was a lot of that, which, uh, you know, really helped me feel like, oh, geez, I’m not alone. These these problems aren’t unique. And there are other people dealing with them. And, you know, I bet there are other people around me in the, I was in the Detroit area at the time, people in this area that that maybe be struggling also. So I just, again dating myself, I put, I sent out a postcard…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Elliott — …uh, to, I don’t know, uh, hundreds of churches, you know, in a radius around where we were.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — And, hey, we’re going to have this thing Thursday night, this date. Just come, we’ll share ideas. It’ll be a time to hang out. And 250 people came.
Rich Birch — Wow. Amazing.
Todd Elliott — And they were all just staring at me like, tell us what you’re doing. And I’m like, wait…
Rich Birch — You’re the leader. You sent us the postcard. Todd Elliott — Yeah, that’s right. I’m like, I want to know from you guys, what are you doing? Like, I don’t have all the answers.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Elliott — Um, but it really, that was the beginning of me realizing that all the things I was feeling as a tech person in the local church, feeling misunderstood, alone, um, you know, overworked, under-appreciated—whatever that list was—there’s a lot of other people that are feeling the same thing. And so I need to be about doing this for people.
Rich Birch — So good.
Todd Elliott — Um, you know, it’s one of those, like, you see a problem and wonder why isn’t somebody doing something about it? Well, that’s probably a sign you should be doing something about it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — And so, yeah, just kept gathering people, um, in the Detroit area together. This time with a little more expectation, like, okay, they’re coming to learn something, so we’re going to give them something instead of just, uh me not being prepared.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Todd Elliott — Um, and then, uh, I ended up, uh, going to work at Willow Creek Church. Uh, on the production team, uh, for about ten years, uh, leading that team for part of that time and having an amazing experience. Um, all the time doing, you know, Willow Creek was doing conferences and that sort of thing…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Elliott — …and so that was part of my jam. Like, okay, I’m into this. And then, uh, when that sort of ended, uh, kept trying to figure out how do we keep resourcing tech people
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — They still need it, just because Willow Creek’s not doing it anymore.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Elliott — Um, and so when I ended up leaving, uh, my time at Willow Creek, uh, in 2014, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life. Um, uh, but I thought this probably there’s something here…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — …that I need to keep doing. And so…this is probably turning into a longer story than we planned… Rich Birch — No, it’s wonderful. It’s good. Todd Elliott — …realizing that, um, okay, uh, gathering tech people together, helping them feel understood, and being in community with each other is kind of how God has wired me. I’m going to go down this road and see what happens.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Elliott — Um, and if it if it falls on its face, then yeah, I will stop doing it. But if it keeps going, let’s keep going with it. And so that was nine years ago.
Rich Birch — So good.
Todd Elliott — Um, did our first FILO in 2015 and yeah, just learning as we went and um, yeah, just really seeing God move in great ways, just in people’s lives to become, for us, the important part is helping people become more effective, not just as tech people, because, I mean, they they do need to become more effective as tech people, but just as people.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Todd Elliott — To reconnect with you’re not. You’re more than just a tech person. You’re a Christ follower and a church member…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Todd Elliott — …and a part of the body of Christ. And you happen to do technology stuff too. So, um
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Todd Elliott — …trying trying to reconnect them with the fact that, uh, you have a relationship with Jesus that matters more than your relationship to gear. Rich Birch — Yeah. So good.
Todd Elliott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, there’s a ton to unpack there. I love the magic, uh, skill of calling people and, like, hey, I, you know, do you have, you know… and this is very this is very similar to my own story. Like, I in fact, our story intersects a little bit around Willow. I was, in early 2000s, I literally did the old 411 call…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rich Birch — …and I to find Willow Creek’s number. And I called the front desk at Willow and I said…
Todd Elliott — Love it. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …our church is like doing something. We didn’t know it was called multisite at the time. I know that you guys are doing something similar. Who do I talk to there? And the person on reception is like, I think there’s this guy, Jim.
Todd Elliott — Jim, yeah.
Rich Birch — And Jim Tomberlin, who has become one of my best friends, and we spent a lot of time doing a lot of ministry together, but it literally came out of just calling the front desk and saying, hey,
Todd Elliott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …uh, and here we are. And, you know, this podcast came very much out of that. We’re 800 episodes in and it really is very similar.
Todd Elliott — Amazing.
Rich Birch — I just love talking to church leaders and love, you know, learning from and and you know, so many people are so generous with their with their time. Well, let’s talk about kind of let’s talk about conceptually start to start. And then I do want to get really practical leverage…
Todd Elliott — Sure.
Rich Birch — …particularly for executive pastors, senior pastors who are listening in, some advice from your seat, you know, at dealing with the tech people and the technology in our in our world.
Todd Elliott — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — But but man, there’s a time, you know, I made this joke lots with my own people. We dance with technology, like there was a I can remember back to those days where we like it didn’t seem like our ministries were so intertwined with technology. But but it is now.
Todd Elliott — For sure.
Rich Birch — Talk to us a little bit about that. What’s going on there? You know, we are it’s at the core of what we do – video, audio, video, lighting. Talk us, talk to us about that tension a little bit. Todd Elliott — Yeah, I mean I think the, yeah, you’re right in that we, we can’t escape it. We, we live in a, in a technology-based society. And so much of what our churches are about revolves around technology, whether it’s social media or our services streamed online, our services in person, um, message graphics, um, yeah, just there’s a TVs in the lobby with the right information on them. I mean, there’s you can’t escape it. And so the reality is that, um uh, I guess there’s two parts of it. We need it. We desperately need it. On the other hand, I feel like we don’t necessarily know how much we want to use it, or how much it we want it to influence all of our decisions.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — I guess from a production person’s standpoint, the I want to go for it. I want to go all out. I want all the bells and whistles. I want all the haze. I, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — Uh, if you let me loose, I will do all the things. Um, I think, uh, you know, there’s something really great about that, that, you know, that there are people out there that want to, like, let’s push this envelope. I think a lot of times, and I’ve had seasons in my own life as a tech person, that without a whole lot of direction, I could become the biggest thing going at my church.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Todd Elliott — And so, you know, like the there was one Christmas service that I remember, I went to like a party after one of the services with just like regular people who were attending the service. Everybody was like, the lighting was amazing. That was everybody’s response to the service. Rich Birch — Okay. Uh oh. Todd Elliott — If you notice the lighting being amazing, we probably overdid it.
Rich Birch — Um, yes. Oh gosh, yeah.
Todd Elliott — Because the goal is all these things, uh, all this technology is the purpose is to advance the mission of the church, and to, to create a, like a, um, a transparent layer between the message and, and the people in the seats. And I think so often I think we see what other churches are doing online. We, you know, look at their Instagram feeds, we see all this cool stuff, and we feel like we got to be doing that, too, when it’s maybe not exactly right for our church. And I think…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Todd Elliott — …uh, I would say the one of the tensions that exists then, for like an executive pastor or a senior pastor, you’re looking at the technology stuff. You don’t totally understand it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — You don’t totally get the person who’s running it. You know, they’re just like, they’re so different than you.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Todd Elliott — And so part of what I’ve experienced in my own life is that then there’s a little bit of abdicating of leadership by that person to say, because I don’t understand this and I don’t understand you, I’m just gonna I don’t feel like, I don’t know what to say here.
Rich Birch — Let them do it. Yes.
Todd Elliott — But the reality is, without direction, like I said, uh, we’re gonna blow this thing up bigger than it needs to or should be… Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — …because that’s what we see other people doing.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Elliott — And so my encouragement to senior leaders is like, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean that it it doesn’t still require your your direction and leadership and vision.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good, that’s good. Let’s stay there for a little minute.
Todd Elliott — Sure.
Rich Birch — I’m sure I want to leverage your expertise. You talk to a lot of technical leaders, a lot of senior leaders across the country, and I’m sure there are some repeated conversations that maybe a tech director is having with you where they’re like, you know, help me with my executive pastor, or help me with my… And they they insert a common conversation that when they say it to you, you don’t like roll your eyes because you’re a good, caring Christian, but you’ve heard it so many times.
Todd Elliott — Yeah. Yep.
Rich Birch — What is that conversation that they’re having behind our back, and how can we help them? Uh, not in a not in a negative way, but, you know, how can we help…
Todd Elliott — Yeah, no, no. Yeah. Rich Birch — …with that discussion? Todd Elliott — Yeah. I mean, it’s so interesting. Uh, there’s probably a million things that are going on. Um, um, I would say from the executive pastor, senior pastor side, I hear a lot like, it’s so expensive.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — And they all they want to do is spend money.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Elliott — Um, and I would say, um, on the production person side, they don’t really understand what it takes to do what they’re asking. And… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Todd Elliott — You know, they, um, frankly, the one of the challenges that we experience as tech people is that if the goal is to be transparent and invisible when things are going well, uh, nobody really notices that we’re doing excellent work
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Elliott — They only notice when things are going poorly.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.
Todd Elliott — And so the only time I’m having a senior leader conversation is, how could you let that happen? Or, uh, what are you doing wrong? Or, like, how did you screw this up? You know that. And so those things combined, uh, you know, make for a very kind of the tech person not feeling trusted, uh, the leadership, not really trusting them. Um, I think there’s also probably a language barrier there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — You know, the language that a tech person speaks is different from a senior leader.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Elliott — Um, and so all those things combined makes for lots of misunderstanding about what it takes to do what we’re asking. Um, and, um yeah. Just that, that thing. There’s a lot going right that nobody even notices. Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You know, I can see that temptation of, and I’ve seen this, you know, and just even conversations, you know, you, you you mentioned the Instagram thing. It’s like a senior leader, they look at a they look at a 30-second clip from a church’s last year’s Easter celebration.
Todd Elliott — Right, yeah.
Rich Birch — And they walk in, you know, four weeks before Easter. And they say to their tech team, let’s do this. Todd Elliott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, anything that’s got that kind of traction, you know, churches have been working on for months, you know, maybe half a year kind of thing to pull off. They don’t do it last minute. Um, help help us unpack that a little bit. You know, what are some questions I should be asking as a leader, um, you know, in that if I see something that I’d love for us to replicate, how can I engage with my people well, on that?
Todd Elliott — Yeah. I mean, I think the one of the things that I really struggled with in my earlier years was just the, the idea of, um people are asking for stuff and they there’s it’s not open to discussion. You know, we just need to do it. Um, and really the, um, I don’t know that anybody was presenting it that way, but just in, in the time since, if a senior leader said, hey, I saw this online and I’m interested in, you know, could we do this for Easter? Let’s talk about it.
Rich Birch — Right. Todd Elliott — And creating a safe place for me to kind of shoot holes in it, or bring bring up some of my concerns instead of it feeling like we’re doing this, figure it out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — And so, yeah, I think I’m in some conversations with a church right now. And, you know, the pastor’s really struggling with I want to be able to do more last minute changes. Um, I’m like, yeah, okay. I could totally I totally get that. But you have, you know, ten plus campuses of varying degrees of, you know, people who know what they’re doing and people who don’t on the technology side. It makes for a very difficult, uh, you know, time to just do last minute changes if, you know, at at campus “X”, you have a volunteer who, you know, they’re an accountant during the day and, you know, just happened to be doing sound, you know, on the weekend. They don’t, the last minute change doesn’t really work for them. Todd Elliott — So, um, anyway, just the the idea of let’s have a conversation about it. And I would I don’t know how many tech people listen to this, uh, podcast, but the, the thing I’m usually encouraging them is, uh, don’t, uh, don’t come at this defensively…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — …but just open-handedly ask questions and be realistic about if we did it, this is what it would mean, or it would mean this. And to to be willing to share the responsibility of pulling it off with the person asking. Um, and so even for a senior leader to say, hey, I’m not asking you to solve this by yourself, but let’s talk about what it would actually take to do this. Um, instead of just coming out and say, we’re doing this, and figure it out. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. I feel like this is as an executive pastor, this has been one of those areas where, um, as I can really help, particularly mitigate between the various departments, whether it’s maybe my lead pastor who’s got some great idea, or the creative folks, the worship folks, and they’re trying to work with the technical people. Rich Birch — And, you know, even I found just calling out the tension, hey, that’s a good example. There are content people, maybe a lead pastor, teaching pastor who they want maximum flexibility. They they want to because they’re responding to what the Spirit’s saying. And they’re like, they want to they want to be able to change things. And and if you let them, they would love to be able to change it right up until, you know, the moments before the service. Um, while on the opposite end, there’s the people that actually have to pull this stuff off…
Todd Elliott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and they would love like six months notice and…
Todd Elliott — Right, they want to lock it down. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …let’s lock this thing down.
Todd Elliott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And neither of those are going to happen. We’ve got to find some sort of tension in the middle.
Todd Elliott — Right. Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And, and um, and I, you know, I find particularly it’s like being an executive pastor can be like a it’s like air traffic control in the midst of that.
Todd Elliott — For sure. Rich Birch — Hey, let’s try to find where we can take, you know, take it, you know, one step forward, one step back on both sides of the dialogue. Um, it’s interesting stuff. Todd Elliott — Yeah, and I would say to the, the, um, so the tension that I always felt as a tech person is that it needs to be perfect. It needs to, I need to execute this without distraction. And so if you’re asking me to do something that I don’t think I can do without distraction, my immediate response is, no, we, you know, we can’t do it. And so what I really appreciated for my senior leaders was the, the, um, so the permission to fail. Like, hey, if I, if I spell out, um, here’s three options. And I think option A is the best one, option C feels like more what you want to do, but I don’t have confidence that we can actually get it done. Um, and let’s say the senior leader says let’s do C. That the senior leader then says, hey, if it doesn’t go well, I’ll take the heat
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. Todd Elliott — I will take responsibility um, instead of you. Like I, I, I’m seeing that, you know, this is not going to be your problem. And I think even that little exchange is such a trust-builder for the for the production person to see. Hey, somebody’s willing to go to bat for me even, you know, even though I’m saying I don’t think this will work. Um, and I think maybe on the flip side, let’s say they choose option C and it actually works. You know, you know, the tech person said, I don’t think it’ll work, but it does. I think there’s a follow up conversation for the senior leader to engage in with the production person. Hey, let’s talk about why did it go well and why did you think it wouldn’t.
Rich Birch — Right, oh good.
Todd Elliott — You know, just so we can kind of instead of it being a trust, uh, you know, diminisher that, uh, but there’s a there’s still a chance to to build trust in that moment um, even though what the production person said would happen didn’t. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. Love it. So I love that you, you know, named your community and events FILO, first in, last out. I think that’s great. And and that is, you know, that’s my experience with these folks. You know, these are the people who are, you know, it’s dark in the morning when they’re open in the door and everybody’s gone at the end of the day when they’ve packed up. Talk, kind of sticking with that idea. Talk to us from a pastoral point of view around how can we care for these folks? How can we, what are some other tips we could do, some other ways that we could engage that will kind of care for some of their unique concerns, some of their unique…
Todd Elliott — Sure.
Rich Birch — …maybe even personalities. You know, you’ve said it there. It’s it’s almost like this funny stereotype that, like, these groups of people have a hard time interacting with each other.
Todd Elliott — Yeah. Rich Birch — Talk to us at a, you know, at a pastoral level. How can we help?
Todd Elliott — Sure. Yeah. I think that there’s, um, there’s a couple things. And one, I’ve kind of alluded to a little bit, like we usually only are getting spoken to when things are going poorly. So the, the, um, the exercise of looking for something going well is something that I noticed, even as a tech person, changed my perspective of what, you know, being a part of a service. I’m looking for good things, so that I can communicate good things. Um, instead of I think so many of us are geared towards how can we make this better? Okay, this didn’t work. This didn’t work. Let’s fix this. And they’re not bad things, but it creates this culture of we’re only talking about the things that didn’t work. Instead of, uh, saying, hey, I, I know that you spent a little extra on this and it worked. And it was amazing. I think goes a long, long way. Todd Elliott — And I it’s interesting. I feel a little bit of a tension even as I’m answering the question, because part of it is the senior pastor or the executive pastor don’t fully understand what’s involved. And I don’t know that they ever should. You know, it’s not it’s not like…
Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s not their role.
Todd Elliott — …you know, they’re not wired that way. And you know, the the production team, that’s what they’re there for. That’s how God’s wired them. And so sometimes, you know, like, uh, just, uh, I was going to say flippant, maybe that’s not the right thing, but just a casual, hey, great job. You know, the tech person’s like, you have no idea. You know, that that’s how they that’s how they’re receiving it…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — …a little bit like versus, uh, being very specific about, hey, I, I noticed something, and I wanted to tell you about it. Yeah. It’s, uh, so important. Now part of it is the you know, the the role of a production person is to be first and and last out. There is no getting around the reality that you got to show up, you got to prepare, you got to execute, and then you got to put it all away. That’s how it is. And so we’re not even necessarily trying to minimize that. We’re not trying to make that go away. That’s just the way it is. But um, I think for me, when I look back at kind of interactions with senior leaders and the ones that really mattered, yeah, there were specific and even, uh, something as simple as and I’m not sure, maybe this would be harder to do than, than I’m imagining. But there was a point for me where I, I realized the senior pastor is spending hours preparing a message, and I don’t have to I don’t have anything to do with that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — I don’t have to be there. I don’t have to be there. You know, he’s working all Saturday to get ready for Sunday. I don’t, I never see that. And so there’s an unseen component to everybody’s role.
Rich Birch —Yeah, that’s good.
Todd Elliott — Um, it’s not just me as a tech person. Um, uh, but if nobody’s if nobody’s, uh, calling it out or mentioning it, then I just feel alone. Do you know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Totally, totally. Good.
Todd Elliott — Because the because the pastor just kind of waltzes in at the last minute. And here’s my last minute changes to the slides.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. [inaudible]
Todd Elliott — [inaudible] It feels very much like that. Yeah. I’ve been here all day, and you’re coming in, you know, you’re just waltzing in at the last minute. Well, no, they’ve they’ve been busy, and I haven’t had anything to do with that either. So. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. That’s good, that’s a good, uh. Found myself a lot of times trying to hero that, uh, you know, lead pastors, teaching pastors who spent a do you spend a lot of tremendous amount of time working on, you know, that whole message thing, and we don’t see that. And I you know, I’ve said many times, listen, none of us have to stand up there for 40 minutes every week and do that thing.
Todd Elliott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’re doing our piece. But like that comes with a unique pressure that none of us have
Todd Elliott — Right, right.
Rich Birch — Which is amazing. So. Todd Elliott — Yeah. And I think for for me, on the production person side, uh, we’ve really encouraged people to say, when’s the last time you, you, uh, said an encouraging word to your senior pastor?
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Todd Elliott — I think so many, so many, uh, tech people just kind of, uh, you get up there, you talk for 40 minutes. It’s just what you do. It’s a foregone conclusion. You know, it’s easy for you. Uh, but I think, you know, most senior pastors or teaching pastors, you know, they don’t get any positive feedback from their coworkers, you know, from the congregation, maybe. But, um, yeah, to be able to say, hey, I know you’ve been working hard and I’ve noticed and great message this weekend. Yeah, it goes a long way too. Rich Birch — Dude, that’s a great insight for tech leaders. Because there is that like you’re in the trenches with this person week in, week out. You know, you might be the the if you’re an audio person backstage, you might be the person that hands them their mic, you know, hits, fixes their lapel, you know, whatever that is. And even a quick like, man, that was great. Or here’s something that impacted me – that goes a long way.
Todd Elliott — Right.
Rich Birch — That’s you know, that’s… Todd Elliott — Even how can I pray for you this weekend? Rich Birch — Oh. So good. Yeah, yeah. So good. Todd Elliott — I, I was, uh, when I worked at Willow Creek, uh, I used to do a lot of work for the Leadership Summit that they do once a year. Um, and so interacting with all kinds of speakers from all walks of life and, you know, uh, I don’t know, like, uh, levels of fame or whatever, you know, the, the, the audiences that they normally speak to. Todd Elliott — And I was always amazed at how, even saying to one of them, hey, is there a way I could pray for you, or can I pray for you right now? Or, you know, knock them dead, or great job, all that. You know, it meant so much to them. And I’m just like…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Todd Elliott — …you’re like a, you know. Yeah, you’re you’re so big, you know, in our culture…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — …it doesn’t seem like you would need that. But yeah, everybody needs that. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good, that’s good. All right. Let’s pivot in a different direction. Uh, talk to me straight here. There seems to be some aspects of this technology particularly. It’s like a bottomless pit of spending, like and I’ve made this joke before, like, how much do you want to spend on video stuff? Well, how much do you have?
Todd Elliott — Right, all of it.
Rich Birch — You can do something for 20 grand, 200, 2 million, 200 million. You know, you could build the sphere in Las Vegas if you wanted. Todd Elliott — Uh, for sure.
Rich Birch — Help us think about that. I know there’s people in projects right now that are, you know, and you talk to an AVL company and they’re going to give you one idea. You talk to, you know, somebody like me, we’re going to give a different idea. How do you think about that? How do you help churches think about that? Todd Elliott — Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m with you. I mean, it’s a bottomless pit of money. I mean, just there’s no way around it. You could spend a lot, a lot of money on technology. And it’s different than, so I would say, you know, the most expensive thing around churches is facilities and, you know, HVAC, but that’s very, you know, it’s a thing that you can…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Elliott — …you know, we need to cool this space – this is what it costs. versus technology. You’re making choices on uh, like what what do you want to be about? What do we want the, uh, our church to be about technology-wise? And, yeah, the range of of spending is vast. And as a production person, it’s a lot of it’s a lot of money to me. You know, it feels like…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Todd Elliott — …a ton of money, let alone to someone who, you know, isn’t in the middle of it every day. Um, and I would say this, this kind of comes back to the beginning of our conversation is that even though you don’t understand all the bells and whistles and the widgets and whatever people are asking for, the senior leader’s job is to define reality for what are we, what are we about? And then what’s the best way to accomplish that? Um, because I think, um, yeah, the, uh, for example, when I was at Willow Creek, very complicated setup. Um, by, by just by the very nature of the facility. Like it’s complicated. Complicated means expensive. I mean, there’s just no way around it. And so. Yeah, okay, there are varying degrees of how expensive can it be? Um but there’s no way around it. Todd Elliott — For a church that’s smaller, if you’re if you’re wanting to, um uh, yeah, it costs less. It’s less complicated, but it’s still you have that range that you can talk to. I would say, I would encourage, uh, any senior leader, if you’re in a building program or an upgrade process, ask to see or hear the differences. Um, any any integrator, any manufacturer, if you say, hey, you know, I could spend $10,000 on a camera, I can spend $20,000 on a camera. I could spend $100,000 on a camera. Show me. Show me the difference. So that I can make an informed decision instead of just taking somebody’s word for it. Um, because I think, um, yeah, then if the if from a senior leader says, okay, wow, that $100,000 camera really makes the difference. How are we going to, uh…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — …justify that expense and raise that money? You know, then then it becomes a conversation about values, not about what’s the best thing out there or um…
Rich Birch — Right. Todd Elliott — …and I think one of the challenges that we keep talking about is, you see, you know, Elevation Church on social media and they’re, you know, the things they’re doing are amazing. And we want to do those at our church. Well, gosh, I mean, they have their systems are crazy amazing/expensive.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — The other part of it is, they have people there that know how to use them.
Right. Yes.
Todd Elliott — A lot of the the systems, the production systems that are happening there are built around a knowledge base at that church.
RIch Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — And I think I was in a conversation with a church earlier this week and they’re they’re growing and need to expand. And the equipment that we’re starting to like, recommend to them, I’m like, this is a very dangerous step because now it’s more complex… Rich Birch — It requires staff of a certain level. Todd Elliott — …and you don’t really have the people who know how to, okay, this is an IT problem. We got to dig, you know, deeper, versus, you know, when I was coming up, it’s like an analog console. You plug the mic in with a mic cable and it works. You know, there’s no like hocus pocus going on there. But now, yeah, you can get so deep, so fast. And if you don’t have the people that that understand how to get it done, you know, you’re probably, uh, you’re spending a lot of money for a lot of, uh, headaches later for sure. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s fascinating. I know, it’s like with this, the switch from analog to digital boards. I know it was I feel like we’ve been for years, at least from my seat. It was sold on this idea. Like, it makes everything so much easier. All you have to do is load up the last…
Todd Elliott — It’s true. Yeah.
Rich Birch — And it’ll be great. Yeah, but it really has not ended up like that, at least from my perspective. It’s like, gosh, it’s it is this a complex. It can be really complex or it can be simple… Todd Elliott — I mean, I think one of the burdens of proof exists on the production person to talk about, what is this going to get us? And I think, you know, uh, it’s going to make everything simpler. It’s going to solve all our problems. I think, yeah, you’re just creating a lot more. It’s going to solve some and create a lot more.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — And, um, a again, I feel like the purchases of production equipment need to be tied to some kind of church value/mission…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Elliott — …thing.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Todd Elliott — Because otherwise, yeah, it’s just it’s going to be, uh, you know, dealer’s choice. Whoever the production person is… uh, and I, you know, one of the other big challenges is in a lot of churches, the the production person is a young guy with not a lot of experience. And so, like, yeah, when you spend 50 grand on a soundboard, you know, it’s easy for them to kind of throw around, um, you know, when the, you know, the senior leaders are the ones having to figure out how to pay for it. Um, it’s just a lot of responsibility put on a, you know, somebody who’s 25 or something like that, uh, to expect them to really, um, own it fully.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Elliott — And so, I mean, one of the big challenges is finding, uh, like a production integrator that you trust, um, uh, for senior leaders to trust. Because, uh, yeah, that’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money. Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I love that even practical advice around, hey, let’s line up this gear, you know, and let’s actually look at the difference. And, you know, we did that in one of our buildings where, you know, we had an audio, uh, our audio tech was really pushing a certain set of speakers that were, you know, certain amount more. And I remember thinking, like, I just don’t know. But we did exactly that. The vendors brought the speakers in. We hung them in the exact room, you know, on this temporary scaffolding stuff. And I was like, oh, yeah, I can hear that. yYou know, like you… And I’m like, I get it right. And then and then the question is, you’re right, it goes back to the values and okay, do we, you know, is that is that does that make a difference for the, you know, the community that we’re trying to develop and all those kind of things? Todd Elliott — Yeah. And I think too, there’s a I have a friend, uh, Marty O’Connor, who used to be the production director at Willow Creek Way, way back in the, in the 90s. And, uh, he used to have this thing called “the Kay factor”. So his wife was, her name was Kay. Will Kay know the difference? Todd Elliott — Mic X, Mic Y. Like one’s twice the money. Can she hear the difference? She can hear the difference. We’re going for the more expensive mic. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yes. That’s very good. That’s very good. Todd Elliott — I think I think from a production person’s perspective, it’s hard to hear that because, you know, uh, it’s not all about gear, but, I mean, you know, the latest and greatest is pretty cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Elliott — More expensive, but not always necessary, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
Todd Elliott — So that that is a challenge. But yeah, the Kay factor was something that… Rich Birch — That’s a great. I love that. That’s a great shorthand. Todd Elliott — …that’s been helpful. Rich Birch — Yeah. Super, good shorthand. Well I really appreciate this, Todd. This has been so thankful. Tell us a little bit more about FILO. I know you guys do a conference. You’ve got a book. Kind of give us a sense. I think this would be a great resource for us, as you know, executive pastor types to lean in on. But man, you might win points by reaching out to your tech people and say, hey, have you heard of FILO? And I want to send you to their conference. That, you know, that would be a great way to help on that relationship. But talk to us about FILO a little bit as we wrap up today’s episode. Todd Elliott — Yes. So FILO the the whole idea I said it earlier, is to help tech people become more effective, with the end goal of they’re more effective as a human being, but the church becomes more effective. If the if the tech person is a more well-rounded individual and better at their skill and inspired to, you know that what they do matters, the church is going to benefit from that. So that’s that’s our really that’s our big goal. Um, and so yeah, we do the conference May 7th and 8th this year, uh, at Willow Creek, uh, South Barrington is the location. And we do kind of, uh, breakout classes or all different skill development, uh, things audio, video leadership. Uh, you know, basics, advanced, uh, all kinds of stuff. And then we do, uh, worship and a message, uh, main sessions that the idea is just we’re reconnecting with, uh, who we are in Christ.
Rich Birch — Love it. Todd Elliott — And for most of these people, you know, when they’re in a worship service, they’re behind a console, they’re running graphics.
Rich Birch — So true.
Todd Elliott — At FILO, they just sit and receive. They’re just, uh, they’re like a regular person, and you don’t have to worry about anything. We’ll take care of it all. Uh, sometimes it’s hard for them to stop, uh, you know, caring because that’s how you are.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Elliott — But, like, this is not your problem to solve. We got it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s great.
Todd Elliott — But yeah. So that’s a great resource and something that, you know, with Covid we’ve we’ve done a lot of streaming of the event and that sort of thing. But nothing compares to being with other people that are in the same boat as you are, who get you, who understand, you know, a sea full of, uh, uh, you know, black shirts and beards and, you know, uh, some, some females. But the, yeah, just like we’re we know we can laugh at the same jokes. Uh, we’re here together. Such a useful, um, uh, thing. And I call it, like, summer camp for tech people.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Elliott — Like, bring your whole team, pile in a van, uh, share life outside of Sunday morning rehearsals.
Rich Birch — So good.
Todd Elliott — Um, and, you know, uh, be together for dinners and, you know, late night, hang in the hotel lobby and all that stuff, uh, has been so we’ve seen so beneficial for teams. Um, the other big thing for us, we do, uh, something called cohorts. So it’s small groups for tech people. So we do these over Zoom. Uh, it’s a facilitator, and ten people. And we we have people from all over. I had one cohort I had two people from Germany and one person from Hawaii…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Elliott — …in the same group. Uh, and even one of those weeks, the guy from Germany was on vacation in Turkey. So it was like. Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Todd Elliott — Yeah, the time zone differences were crazy. Todd Elliott — But the thing that was so amazing is same challenges…
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Todd Elliott — …uh different churches, portable, permanent Hawaii, Germany. Um, but you know, we we all were wrestling with the same things. And it was so just a great place to feel understood and seen and, and that sort of thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Todd Elliott — Um, and then uh, uh, we have a book called “I Love Jesus, but I Hate Christmas”.
Rich Birch — I love this. So great.
Todd Elliott — Tackling the challenges of being a technical, uh, church technical artist. So the whole idea behind the book is just, you know, based on my own experience, uh, but a a way to facilitate discussion on teams, to think, what do we think about the difference between perfection and excellence.
Rich Birch — So good.
Todd Elliott — Or, um, you know, just how do we do community together? Uh, how do we collaborate with the creative team? Um, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the production team and the worship team feel like two different groups, and yet God has, you know, designed it in such a way that we have to work together.
Rich Birch — Yes. Todd Elliott — So how do we do that the best way possible. So, um, it has discussion questions in the back and um, of every chapter. And there’s just like short, you know, 1500 word chapters, real easy to digest. But the idea is to facilitate discussion.
Rich Birch — So good.
Todd Elliott — Um, and I think we’ll have a sample, a couple chapters, um, that will make available to your listeners just so they can check it out.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s great.
Todd Elliott — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s that’s sweet of you. We’ll drop that in the, in the show notes. I’ll link to that.
Todd Elliott — Cool.
Rich Birch — We’d love to, uh, point people in that direction, but. Well, this has been great. Todd, I really appreciate you appreciate what you’re doing. Love the the work that you’re doing to help so many people.
Todd Elliott — Thank you.
Rich Birch — And and it’s just, you know, it’s just so fantastic. So we want to send people to filo.org to learn more. Is there anywhere else online we want to send them to kind of connect with you or with FILO? Todd Elliott — Yeah. Todd Elliott — I would say the, uh, if you’re looking for social media stuff, uh, we’re @filocommunity at both, uh, Instagram and Facebook is kind of where we have a lot of stuff going on. Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Appreciate you being here today, sir. Todd Elliott — Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Church Merger Tactic: Expanding Your Church’s Reach with “The Letter Method”
Feb 21, 2024
In today’s solo episode, I’m diving deep into a topic close to my heart and crucial for any growing or multi-site church considering expansion: church mergers. This isn’t just another growth strategy; it’s a pivotal approach that could significantly impact how we reach more people and foster an inviting church culture.
The big question on many leaders’ minds is, “How do we even begin to approach the conversation about mergers?” Drawing from my own experiences and the invaluable insights of the late Kristy Rutter, an incredible leader in church mergers, I’ve seen firsthand the power of starting with relationship-building.
The Letter Method
One effective tactic I’ve employed and coached others to use is the “Letter Method.” This involves reaching out to 50 to 100 churches in your target community with a personalized, physical letter. These letters are not just about proposing a merger; they’re about introducing your church, sharing your mission, and most importantly, offering to partner and help. This approach isn’t about acquiring assets but about fostering genuine relationships and exploring how we can collectively serve our communities better.
Dear [Recipient’s Name],
Greetings from Sample Community Church! I hope this message finds you and your congregation thriving and filled with peace. My name is [Your Name], and I serve as [Your Position] at Sample Community Church. Today, I reach out to you with a spirit of unity and partnership, inspired by our shared mission to serve and impact our community for Christ.
Introduction to Sample Community Church
Sample Community Church has been a part of [Your City/Community] for [Number of Years], dedicated to creating a welcoming environment where individuals and families can grow in their faith and serve alongside one another. Our mission is to [Briefly Describe Your Church’s Mission], and we’ve witnessed God’s grace as we work towards this vision.
Our Mission and Desire to Partner
As we look to the future, we are guided by a vision to expand our reach and deepen our impact within our community. We believe that through collaboration and shared resources, we can achieve more together than we can separately. It is in this spirit that we reach out to Friends Bible Church, hoping to explore how we might support one another in our respective missions.
Proposal for Partnership
We are keen to understand the needs and opportunities within Friends Bible Church and to discuss any potential for partnership. Whether it’s through shared community projects, resources, or even exploring more formal ways of coming together, we are open to discussions that will mutually benefit our congregations and, more importantly, our community.
Offer of Support
Our approach is one of humility and service, and we extend our hand to offer support in any area you might need. Whether it’s volunteer resources, shared community outreach programs, or simply a listening ear for pastoral exchange and encouragement, we are here for you.
Next Steps
We would be honored to have a conversation with you to discuss any possibilities for collaboration. Please let us know a convenient time for you, and we can arrange a meeting to explore this further. Our goal is to foster a relationship that not only strengthens our churches but also exemplifies the unity and love of Christ to our community.
Thank you for considering this invitation. We look forward to the possibility of serving together and making a greater impact in the name of Jesus Christ.
Blessings,
[Your Full Name] [Your Position] Sample Community Church [Contact Information]
Building Meaningful Relationships
At the heart of successful church mergers is the spirit of collaboration and support. It’s crucial to approach these potential partnerships not with a mindset of what we can gain, but how we can help. Through dropping in on church leaders, engaging in meaningful conversations, and remaining genuinely curious about how we can support each other, we pave the way for more than just mergers; we open doors to transformative partnerships that can amplify our impact on the community and the Kingdom at large.
A Call to Action
For those of you leading churches, whether you’re already multi-site or contemplating your first expansion, the journey towards a successful merger begins with a step of faith and a commitment to genuine partnership. It’s about more than just growth; it’s about unity, support, and the shared mission of spreading the Gospel.
I encourage you to consider how the Letter Method might open new doors for your church. If you’re intrigued or even ready to take the first step, check out the link below in our show notes for a sample letter template that you can tailor to your context. This isn’t just about starting conversations; it’s about fostering relationships that could lead to impactful, Kingdom-focused mergers.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you have any questions or need further assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out. Let’s make this journey together, one step at a time. Take care, friends.
From Downturn to Turnaround to Steady Growth in a Rural-ish Community with Joseph Berkobien
Feb 15, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re happy to be talking with Joseph Berkobien, the Lead Pastor of Frankenmuth Bible Church in Frankenmuth, Michigan.
Transitions in leadership can be challenging times for churches. How do you recover and grow after a season of decline?Tune in as Joseph shares the turnaround story of the church and the intentional steps they took to recover.
Times of transition. // Frankenmuth Bible Church began in 1982 when a small group of like-minded Christians had a passion for starting a gospel-centered church. When Joseph first joined the 400-member church in 2012, it was as the Worship Pastor. What he didn’t know at the time was the leadership challenges happening behind the scenes. A transition to the senior leadership led to decline and Joseph found himself both preaching and leading worship.
Bring stability to the church. // When Joseph first stepped into the Lead Pastor role, the church had declined to about 200 people. Joseph assured the congregation that he wasn’t going anywhere and they were in this together. Even though as believers we’ve been saved by grace, the church family can be messy and difficult with a lot of pain and hurt. During tumultuous seasons of transition, it’s particularly critical to give a sense of stability to the church body.
Build a solid staff. // After declining, Frankenmuth Bible worked hard to position themselves for growth by bringing on a solid staff team. It can be hard to build a staff that works best for your church, particularly when you’re in a rural area. Joseph encourages church leaders to be patient. Don’t be quick to hire, but wait for the right person. Sometimes a nationwide search can be cumbersome because someone outside your part of the country may decide it isn’t the place for them after arriving. Do a lot of networking and consider hiring from within.
Build small groups early. // Another intentional step that Frankenmuth Bible took was building the small group ministry when the church was small. Starting with a solid group of 200 people provided a strong core that was committed to the church. The church staff also reached out to people on the fringes to get them plugged into authentic community, knowing it would help them to stick and stay.
Reach beyond the doors. // Frankenmuth Bible Church is also passionate about loving their community and fostering unity with other churches in the area.Serving neighboring communities in weekend outreach events helped to dismantle some of the small town rivalry and communicated a genuine love for people. Get people at your church out of the seats and into the streets. Organize fun, outward initiatives. Increasingly, people aren’t as open to being invited to church so we need to go to them and show an interest in the things they love.
Be open to change. // Reflecting on his leadership journey as the church has steadily grown to over one thousand people, Joseph acknowledges the challenges and need for a lot of pivoting. If your church is on a similar journey, don’t lose hope. Believe growth is possible and be open to new things. Joseph recommends checking out the invaluable free resource by Tim Keller, “Leadership and Church Size Dynamics”.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’ve been really looking forward to today’s conversation for a while. We are talking with Joseph Berkobien from Frankenmuth Bible Church. It began in 1982 after a group of like-minded Christians started meeting together in a home in Frankenmuth, Michigan to dig deeper into studying scripture. Today Frankenmuth Bible is a growing, gospel-centered church, really gathering of believers that are gathering together for the purpose of magnifying Jesus through passionate corporate worship, solid bible teaching that’s clear, relevant, and practical to everyday living. Joseph is the lead pastor. So glad, and a mutual friend with Dave Miller – shout out to Dave; we love Dave. Joseph, so glad that you’re here today.
Joseph Berkobien — Oh thanks so much, Rich. It’s an honor for me to be part of this podcast. So I appreciate it, buddy.
Rich Birch — Yeah, honored that you would take some time to be here. We’re recording this right before Christmas although through the magic of podcasting it’ll come on after Christmas, which is entirely appropriate because Frankenmuth, Michigan, in my brain, it’s like where Christmas really comes from. Tell us a little bit about the church, tell us about get kind of set the scene give us the context for for Frankenmuth Bible.
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, sure and well I mean you referenced the fact that we’re Christmastown, right? So Frankenmuth ah is our claim to fame is we have the largest Christmas store in the world, at least I think that that stat is still true.
Rich Birch — It’s amazing.
Joseph Berkobien — And we’re known for fried chicken and stuff like that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joseph Berkobien — So um, popular popular tourist stop for people in Michigan but…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — …ah, yeah, our our church really started, like you mentioned 1982, um but actually that a bible study started 1981 and in the beginning of 1982 it started. Um but uniquely we’re in ah, a small town that was founded by German Lutheran settlers. And they founded a church in the eighteen hundreds, and that’s really been a staple in our community. But um, in 1982 there’s a group of people who really didn’t have ah a tribe they belonged to, and they were doing ah doing a bible study and wanted to have ah a church that really dug into the scriptures. And so they started Frankenmuth Bible Church. So it just started in a living room, then they started meeting in ah a school, um, and ah a gym for a little while at a local elementary school. And after a few years they you know, scrounged up enough money to buy some some land and build a building, and and here we are.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Joseph Berkobien — So that’s kind of how it all started.
Rich Birch — Well I yeah, I’m really looking forward to this story because it really is a turnaround story in a context that is, you know, how like how would you describe Frankenmuth, outside of the Christmas stuff? It is kind of rural, you know, environment. Kind of tell us a little bit about that story; give us the context of kind of where you’re at and then let’s talk about this turnaround.
Joseph Berkobien — Sure. Um, you know this is maybe tricky if people aren’t native Michiganders. But if you’re from Michigan…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Joseph Berkobien — …you always hold up your hand to describe where you are in the state of Michigan, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, the glove.
Joseph Berkobien — Yes, that’s right, it’s shaped like a mitten, and so um, uniquely, ah, Frankenmuth happens to be at the point where we we would say it’s kind of the the gateway to the thumb, right? So so the thumb is terminology that’s used in Michigan. And the the further you go toward the thumb, the more remote and rural you get. And so we’re a community, a lot of farmers. Um obviously being in Frankenmuth we have a lot of ah tourism, so we do have a lot of people who w ork in tour tourism industry here. But we’re one of the kind of small towns that’s closer to some larger towns, but toward the thumb you you just get further and further more remote.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joseph Berkobien — So basically um, our our context is we have just a lot of people who, you know, are Midwest hardworking farmers um and small density population. But just great people in a great community.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joseph Berkobien — A great place to live and raise kids, you know? So yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. And you know, I I want to dig into this today. Part of the reason why I want to dig into this story is I think so many times we can focus on, and and that’s been my context the kind of suburban context you know large fast-growing communities, and to see a church like yours that has been growing quickly over these years is is I think inspiring for so many of us that are listening in.
Rich Birch — So kind of take us back um, you know, kind of before the transitions that you’ve been seeing over these last number of years. Give it, kind of set the context a little bit.
Joseph Berkobien — Ah, sure. Yeah, so I I ended up joining the team in 2012, right? So when I came in our church was right around 400 people, which was really um, pretty sizable for our region. Frankenmuth has um, 5000 people in Frankenmuth proper. And I believe the Lutheran church has technically over 5000 members, which is kind of funny. So um, just in terms of just the the community, it’s it’s not a very big community, but we we were running the rate around 400, but it was up a season of transition. I got hired in as the worship pastor um and didn’t know at the time but there was a lot of leadership challenges that were going on.
Joseph Berkobien — And um about nine months in, our senior leadership, there was a transition in our senior leadership. And so um, our our senior pastor transitioned out and we kind of found found ourself in a season where we began to decline pretty rapidly. Um, we had a handful of staff on the team, but staff started having to step out because we didn’t have the finances to support them.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Joseph Berkobien — And the church just dwindled from there, right? So um, so for me, it was unique. It was my first rodeo. First time jumping into ministry. I was the worship guy. I was new. Um, and I did like to preach and teach. That was something that I had um an interest in. And so basically a few a few months into that transition I got asked if I would help occasionally fill in and and preach. That ended up being about a three year period of time where um I was planning all the sermon series and preaching…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Joseph Berkobien — …and I was also leading worship. Ah so that’s that’s where…
Rich Birch — The one man show!
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah. And and if you know me, like that’s not me, man. I don’t I don’t want I don’t need the spotlight. So it was super awkward.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Joseph Berkobien — Um Dave Dave Miller that’s actually when I eventually met him was during that period of time. I eventually moved in 2015. I got asked by the elder board if I would consider putting my name in the hat to be the lead pastor. And we prayed about it. At first I kind of felt like I was too young, not quite ready. But um, but after further prayer and reflection, I kind of realized, you know, the last few years God had been preparing me for for taking that next step. And so um, when I met Dave Miller, we were in the process of trying to hire a worship pastor…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Joseph Berkobien — …and I was the senior pastor as the lead pastor, but I was also leading worship at the same time.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — So um, so Dave came in and, you know, I was, you know, like leading worship and then switching out my my in-ears and trying to, you know, adjust my microphone to preach.
Rich Birch — Oh man, that’s amazing.
Joseph Berkobien — And it was it was all kinds of awkward, man. It was terrible. I mean we we even—this is how this is how bad it is, Rich. There was a period of time where um, you know, we were a small church. At that time we were about 200 people, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Joseph Berkobien — And um, we we had ah as the worship pastor we had a larger church that had poached some of our musicians. You know, that that’s small church problems that stuff happens.
Rich Birch — Oh man. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — And so and so we had a few weeks where we didn’t have a drummer, and you know we’re kind of getting to a point we we needed the drummer. I play a little drums. I’m kind of a hack, but I play a little.
Joseph Berkobien — So I totally had a Sunday where it was like Phil Collins, right? Like I was on the kit…
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Joseph Berkobien — …leading worship.
Rich Birch — You were leading from the kit. Oh my goodness.
Joseph Berkobien — Yes.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Joseph Berkobien — Then I preached. It was the worst Sunday we’ve ever had.
Rich Birch — Okay, oh man.
Joseph Berkobien — And I’m so thankful we didn’t I’m so thankful we didn’t livestream back then, right? So I’m sure there’s a CD of that Sunday somewhere in the church basement that I want to burn. But either way…
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Joseph Berkobien — It was bad, so I’ll just say that.
Rich Birch — Okay, so so let’s fast forward to, so from Phil Collins Sunday—that’s a vivid picture—to today.
Joseph Berkobien — Oh yeah, attach to my brain.
Rich Birch — What’s kind of an average weekend? It’s not just about the numbers. But it does that’s one indicator of kind of what God’s done in the church. But kind of give us the the picture today, and then we’ll fill in the gap between the two.
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, sure. Well I mean first of all, just want to start by saying, you know, God has been so gracious to our church.
Rich Birch — So good.
Joseph Berkobien — Um, you know, obviously Jesus has been at work in our community, in our church family, and any of the success that we’ve had as a church, you know, I really want to give him all the credit and all the honor…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Joseph Berkobien — …um and all the praise for that. But we’ve also got a great team. And so, you know, part of that process was along the way we we built a great team and so today we’ve got really a solid team of people who um I work with that are just so helpful and so great in ministry, and they um just are amazing to work with. But today, you know, roughly I would say we’re probably running on average around about 1,150 on a Sunday morning.
Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s great.
Joseph Berkobien — So um, yeah, and and and continuing to grow. We’ve we’ve had um growth in attendance since 2014 every year, you know?
Rich Birch — Wow. Love that.
Joseph Berkobien — So we’re continuing to grow. And um yeah, and we’re ah a church a church that has, you know, we relocated to we grew out of our old facility which I can, you know, share some of that in a little bit.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — And we moved to a a location downtown. We retrofitted um ah facility and so now we’re downtown in Frankenmuth.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Joseph Berkobien — And um and yeah…
Rich Birch — So good.
Joseph Berkobien — …excited for excited for this week at Christmas services. So thanks.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, you know, I’m sure, I know there are people listening in that have their Phil Collins Sunday. They have that like, and maybe it was like literally last Sunday, like it was like they’re like, oh my goodness. Okay, I this is really bad. I’m I’m doing whatever their version of that is. I’d love to kind of walk through what was it that God used, as you kind of saw that turnaround. Because that is that’s dramatic. And I love the consistent growth over an extended period of time like that. Having lived in a church that’s grown within fits and starts, as opposed to like consistent growth over the years. Man, I would way rather that kind of consistent growth than like hey, we have a whole bunch of people show up on one Sunday. So let’s talk a little bit about that. What would be some of those early things that changed, that shifted that where you started to see, Okay, we’re getting some traction, we’re heading in the right direction here?
Joseph Berkobien — Ah, yeah, well I mean there’s a number of things. You know, I think one of the big things for me is when I stepped into the lead pastor role, we had just been through a season of transition and it was tumultuous. You know and I think anybody who um, who has been around the church world ah for, you know, longer than a day, you you know the reality is even though it’s the bride of Christ, even though we are sanctified people, even though we’ve been saved by grace, and and and there’s so many blessings about being in ah in a church, the reality is church can be messy and church can be difficult and there’s a lot of pain and a lot of hurt sometimes in the church. And so for me, one of the first things I did when I stepped into that lead pastor role is I just wanted to reassure the church family that I wasn’t planning to go anywhere. You know, I think sometimes just giving a sense of stability and trying to project to a church family that, you know, we’re in it together, and to try to, you know, just encourage that ah that body that had been through so much. Um, that that we have ah ah if you know if God can raise the dead, he can can he can work in our church and in in the life of our church.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s good.
Joseph Berkobien — And so a big part of that in the very beginning was just kind of just ah, projecting that to the the church body. And then from there, ah a big part of it was just the rebuilding phase, you know. And so there was a number of things that for me that were huge. Obviously bringing on a solid staff team because we had lost a number of staff and and some key key positions that we needed, and so it was filling filling those gaps well.
Joseph Berkobien — And then beginning to really build a small group ministry. I think that that was important, you know, even though we were a church of 200, um, we really felt like like there was some momentum that God was already beginning to move within the life of the church. And we knew that as we grew larger that we also needed to find ways to grow grow smaller. And so um, a lot of those things early on were were huge. And honestly, again, man, I I got to just give I mean Jesus was just so good to us. You know what I’m saying?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Absolutely.
Joseph Berkobien — Like like it’s funny after we lost those musicians, I started praying for a drummer and literally ah, there’s a guy that lived next door that started drumming for us. And yeah…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Joseph Berkobien — …which was amazing, right? So and it’s like ah…
Rich Birch — Amazing. Yeah, that’s incredible.
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah. And then and then God’s sort of providing more people. I mean so just to to join the worship team.
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Joseph Berkobien — So I mean he was just faithful too. And I think a big part of it was just, you know, just relying on the Lord for for that and leaning into that for that season.
Rich Birch — Totally.
Joseph Berkobien — Um, but that was a big part of it initially.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s dig into a couple of those. So how do you, take us back to those conversations when you’re building your staff team. Um, how do you cast the vision for like, hey, you should come join our team at Frankenmuth Bible? Um you know, I think this is a problem we all face. It’s like everywhere across the country, every church leader I’ve talked to that’s trying to hire people, they have some excuse for why they’re the hardest place in America to hire people for. Like they, you know, I’ve had friends in Southern California say that. I’ve had friends in, you know, New York. And I’m sure Frankenmuth is that as well. So how do you have that conversation? What what did that look like as you’re connecting with kind of great team members to bring them onboard?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, I mean I want to arm wrestle for that top spot of how hard it is to hire for Frankenmuth, Michigan, honestly. It’s it’s so hard.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — And it can be discouraging and I totally get that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — You know and you can ask our our mutual friend, Dave Miller, how hard it was…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — …to place somebody…
Rich Birch — He’s got his story.
Joseph Berkobien — …when he worked for Slingshot with us. Oh yeah, we we were tricky. But um, you know, I think what I would say is I’ve learned a few lessons along the way. Um, first of all what I would say is, you know, as much as you can, try to be patient. Um, you know the worst thing you can do is be quick to hire.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s good. Yep.
Joseph Berkobien — Um, you want to hire the right person. And so so if you can backfill for a season even if a ministry isn’t perfect. But if you’ve got to high-cap capacity volunteer who wants to step up um to to be patient, to hire well. I think that that’s important. Um, another thing, this is just for me at least, especially in a small town rural community Frankenmuth, Michigan, I learned that um sometimes you get involved in a search and you do this nationwide search. Um and and that can be really a cumbersome. And ah the reality is even if we were to hire somebody from further away, they don’t know midwest, they don’t know Frank…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.
Joseph Berkobien — And you know they they spend one winter in Michigan and they’re going to be out. You know? So um I moved toward a model where where, today, I I begin just with networking. You know, I I network with people and churches um around this region that um are are doing things at a high capacity. And and and the more I can try to have organic search, um look within the church body, look within the surrounding community, that tends to work better. These days I only hire Midwest just because there’s a culture here and I want to make sure that I preserve that culture. Um, but it’s a hard process, man, and it it just takes time. Um, but but God has just really, you know, provided the right people at the right time. And and we also worked with some some search companies at different points, especially as we got larger and had some more resources. Um, but early on, man, it’s a grind. I’ll just say that – it’s it’s a grind. You just got to work hard and and pray and and be patient.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. And then, you know, let’s talk a little bit about the small group ministry piece of that. So that, you know, is critical. It’s um, you know, I put that in the category of it’s like block and tackle. It’s a kind of thing that, hey, we it’s not it’s not sexy. It’s not like it’s not, well I ran a great Facebook ad campaign, but it is so critical. You know churches cannot get over that 200 barrier without differentiating. You know, it was It was intriguing to me that you you answered around this turnaround hey you reassured that your own personal, hey I’m not going anywhere, which I think is a critical piece of this puzzle. But this next step in line was like, hey we’ve got to get people connecting with other folks. We’ve got to find ways for them to get connected. Talk us through some of those initial steps that worked well on um, you know, really moving people into groups and how did that go?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, well I mean you know it was a trial and error thing. And again you know being a young pastor, being in ah ah my first experience, you know, that’s one of those things in in hindsight I would have probably went and consulted for some, you know, some help in that area. Um I read some books during that time. You know, I think pastors like to read read books. And so I had an, you know, an initial model that I tried to roll out which was ah um I think on paper was great, right? That you know we want to have such a diverse approach. So there’s the older and the younger, and and and I think that that can be good. so I’m I’m not trying to knock that.
Rich Birch — No, no, no. I get that.
Joseph Berkobien — That’s a very healthy way.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joseph Berkobien — But but but when you try to actually um, implement that, that became challenging for some people. You know, because it was like um so sometimes people just want to organically, you know, if you’re if you’re ah a mom with a couple kids and like life is hard, you kind of just want to rub shoulders with moms with a couple kids when life is hard, and you can talk together. And so so over time we pivoted and we we just began to have more organic connections that people would naturally have in the life of the church, and we tried to form them in groups. And so initially that was a phase that we took. And and I think that was really powerful because what we saw is especially if there were people that were fringy in the church, we really tried to plug them into a group right away because we knew if the worship was great and the teaching was good, they might come back again. But if they had a substantive relationship that they were plugged into, a tribe, a community, they they were going to stay.
Joseph Berkobien — And so for us it was trying to find those people who were kind of on the fringes and put them into a really vibrant, authentic community where they could get to know people at ah, a really deep level. And um pray together, you know, grow together in their faith, have a meal together that that was just such a powerful way for us to build a strong core.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well and there’s that there’s that tension there of, you know, we want people to develop relationships. You can develop relationships with those people that you have the the most kind of in common with, and so we we want to balance that with also helping people, you know, expand their social network, and get to know people outside, want to find a good tension between those two that’s ah you know that’s good, really really good.
Rich Birch — What else early on when you’d say there so, you know, you start to align your staff team, you build up your small group ministry, what else ah helped you in those early years to kind of um continue to see people get connected and and see the church grow?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah. Well I mean I I think there were a number of things, but you know, one of the big, you always talk about this, I know that, you know, you want to get people out of the seats and into the streets. And I think that’s a great ah thing that that churches should really focus on. Because the reality is we’re we’re in an age that’s different than it was um, you know, a decade ago twenty years ago where you know we had ah…
Rich Birch — So true.
Joseph Berkobien — …a culture where people um, you know, wanted to go to church. And sometimes you just had to be like cooler or better than the church down the road. I mean whatever the strategy was.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Joseph Berkobien — And the reality is people aren’t looking for us today, I mean largely.
Rich Birch — That’s true.
Joseph Berkobien — I mean um, ah church people are. Church people are.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — But people in our communities largely, um, they’re not as interested in what in what we’re interested in. And so for us, a lot of times this idea of inviting people to come to church, um I don’t think that that’s the best method ah, in today’s age. I think the reality is we as the church, we really like to huddle together every Sunday and talk about loving people, but we never really break from the huddle and actually go out and do it. And so for us as a church one of the steps that we took early on was we decided that we were going to do a wide like a widespread serving initiative. Which, you know, churches do this all the time and it’s um, it’s ah a great thing. You talk about it I think in your, is it Church Growth Flywheel
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
I mean it’s a great great way to to reach people. Um, but one of the things we did specifically in a small town that I felt like was really important, you know, small towns have this weird rivalry thing. You know, the sports teams play each other.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — And so if you’re a neighboring town to Frankenmuth, you don’t you don’t really like Frankenmuth. You might come here to shop at Christmas…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — …but you don’t really like Frankenmuth. And um and so because of that we tried to bridge the gap between that that divide. And so what we would do is every year we would pick a different neighboring community um and we would intentionally ah like set up worksites. We’d spend six months, nine months working with the local government, setting up as many worksites as we could. And we would have a Sunday morning, not a Saturday…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Joseph Berkobien — …a Sunday morning where we would gather in a different community. We’d have a brief time of worship and then we would break into our various work groups and serve throughout the community. You know we’re wearing t-shirts and the t-shirts in the back say #welove…you know, fill in the blank whatever whatever the town is. Um and we’re all from Frankenmuth, but yet we’re loving our neighboring towns.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joseph Berkobien — And we’ve had people over the years say, you know what? Why don’t you do a serve Frankenmuth event? And we’ve done some of those in the past. But we want to project to the community that, you know, Frankenmuth Bible Church, because we love Jesus we want to serve others first. And so for us that was a way for us to grow um and expand outwardly. We we cast a wider net because we’re in a small community. And so um and our goal is not to try to to reach people who are already involved in the church. Our goal is to try to reach unchurched people. And and that’s a big big big thing that happened.
Joseph Berkobien — You know, what happened over I would say it several years, from 2014 to 2017, is it kind of was like a snowball. We just started getting more and more people who were either de-churched or unchurched who started checking checking us out. And for us, we found that when you love others, you know, it’s it’s funny, but sometimes Jesus knows what he’s talking about. When you actually love others…
Rich Birch — It’s a good strategy.
Joseph Berkobien — …yeah, and and and on your social media, you don’t just promote how great of a church you are…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joseph Berkobien — …but you actually celebrate other people’s victories.
Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s so true.
Joseph Berkobien — That’s attractive. That’s attractive to a world that’s skeptical about the church and skeptical about Christ. And so um, yeah, just things like that. Or you know, we we would buy banners ah for first like local sports teams, and when they were in a playoffs, we would put the banner on our church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Joseph Berkobien — And like you know I remember I spent a hundred bucks on a banner and back then, you know, back in the day it was like a hundred bucks kind of a lot of money.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — And and someone was like and I don’t know, you know, that’s a lot of money on that banner, but the funny thing is we put it out on the church and we were in the front page of the local newspaper. Because like the community was so impressed that we were celebrating…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Joseph Berkobien — …someone’s you know a sports team. And so um ah, you know, for me that’s one of the big things is if you’re trying to reach the community around you, you got to start to love the things that people love. You know, people love kids, so we started a Christ-centered basketball league for kids kindergarten through second grade. And this basketball league, you know, they learned the fundamentals of basketball, but then at halftime they’d they’d recite memory verses and the kids would get points in the scoreboard, you know, for reciting memory verses.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so cool.
Joseph Berkobien — So just fun outward initiatives to to begin to say, hey we don’t just want to talk about loving people. We actually want to do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And you graciously, you know, mentioned some of the research that we’ve done and with this magnetic community service. This idea of um, getting our people out of the seats into the streets, actually serving our community. People want to be a part of a church that makes a difference. And even, you know, from ah the kind of mechanics side of church growth, they want to tell others that they’re a part of a church that makes a difference. And so they’ll share that those stories they’ll share the story of like, hey, our church went and did this thing; that is so fun. We had such a fun weekend doing whatever. We did instead of doing church on Sunday morning, we went to this town next door and we did this thing um, which ultimately drives growth. And each one of those little engagements, man, added up over time makes a huge difference.
Rich Birch — Now kind of pivoting in a different direction, you mentioned a couple times off the top the kind of Lutheran piece of the puzzle in ah, Frankenmuth. And I know in some communities, in some small towns, the kind of denominational thing is like a big deal. Um,is that is there, you know, is that like a a piece of the puzzle? How has that impacted um, you know, your work at the church?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, well I mean first of all I mean I would just say, I mean so that this was the the the community was founded by German Lutherans. And I mean and and I love Lutherans, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Joseph Berkobien — And I mean one of the big things that’s that’s good, we’re we’re all on the same team, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — I mean we to um I think one of the things I would say that that tends to be common in small towns, and um and in, you know, rural communities where people grew up going to a certain um church. It’s funny but in in Christendom, you know, sometimes we we make, you know, the church down the road competition. And and the reality is ah, we have a common enemy, right? It’s it’s not the church down the road.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Joseph Berkobien — And so for us um, you know, we we really want to be part of the church with a capital “C”. And so a big part of our heart was not to like, you know, try to convert Lutherans.
Rich Birch — No.
Joseph Berkobien — They’re they’re believers, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — We we weren’t trying to trying to to steal anybody from any any churches, or that that wasn’t our goal at all. We we felt like there was space for us, being a nondenominational church, to just really begin to to impact the community around us and those who weren’t plugged into a church. And so that was kind of our strategy. But, you know, one of the things for us um I think there was some some skepticism. You know, we were a non-denominational church. Um, we we didn’t we we do believer’s baptism which is a little bit, you know, weird for some people.
Rich Birch — Little different, yes, little different for our Lutheran friends. Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — And yeah. And so there’s there’s a there’s a little while there where I think people might have thought we were some sort of weird cult or something. And so I think a big part of it was just um, trying to just engage in the community, trying to to rub shoulders with people in other churches. I’m great friend, like I’m a really close friends with all the pastors in town. They’re all amazing. And and, you know, for us, um, we really wanted to start to celebrate that. You know, the reality is um, some of that tribalism can can be um I think a turnoff for the world around us.
Rich Birch — So true.
Joseph Berkobien — And and you look at, you know, man Jesus and and John 17. Right at the at the end of that upper room discourse. he has this this intimate high priestly prayer with the Father, and what does he say? And he prays that that we would be one as he is one.
Rich Birch — So true. Yep.
Joseph Berkobien — And um I mean I mean I just I just feel like that prayer, like we want to be the church that Jesus prayed for. And um, you know, Paul and Ephesians 4 he says, one faith, one Lord, one baptism. You know, I I think that idea of of um being really tribal in that, we wanted to break some of those barriers down a little bit. I understand that there are reasons why why denominations form, and and churches might separate for certain things. But largely my my my heart is that, you know, that the one who unites this is greater than most of the stuff that divides us. And so um…
Rich Birch — So true.
Joseph Berkobien — We really tried to posture ourselves where we were working with other churches. So we did a few initiatives where we actually served with other churches. Or we did events where we would gather together and do things fellowship of other churches um in our in our community. In fact, every Sunday we pray for a different church in our region um, just because we want to demonstrate…
Rich Birch — Oh Wow, that’s cool.
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, well and I think that that actually has been one of the things that that people find refreshing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joseph Berkobien — …about about our church.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Joseph Berkobien — So so yeah, so so that’s been some of the strategy.
Rich Birch — Do you reach out to those churches and say like, hey we’re gonna be praying for you this weekend, anything we can be praying for, or how’s that work? Are you just people you know, or how’s that work?
Joseph Berkobien — Uh, both. I what I would say is if we already know certain things are going on, we’ll be praying for that. But there are times we just kind of cold call a pastor and say, hey, what’s going on in your church. What can we pray for? I just talked to a pastor on Saturday, and they have a church that’s really struggling and we’re going to see if in a couple weeks we can invite them in to come on the platform and we can pray over their leadership. You know, just for us that’s just a really important um important way to really demonstrate again, yeah, that we have a heart that we’re we’re all part of the church with a capital “C”.
Rich Birch — So pivoting in a kind of slightly different direction, talk about your own journey of leading through, you know, all those different phases. Like you’ve grown, you know, from ah, you’ve seen the church from a couple hundred people to over a thousand. Only five percent of churches make it over 1000. And you’re in a community of 5000, so I don’t know that I know anyone that can say that they lead in church that has 20% of the attendance of their of their their community. Like that that’s an in those are all interesting phases to go through and, you know, I believe God’s got more for you in the future. How what’s it been like for you as a leader to transition to lead through all those various phases?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah I mean it’s been it’s been hard.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joseph Berkobien — I would say there’s a lot um, there’s a lot of pivoting that needs it to to take place. Um, this is just ah, maybe ah, a word of um encouragement for any pastor of a small church out there who’s listening. I mean the reality is um, you know, for you, first of all, um, there’s always hope, right? We believe in the Gospel. We believe that God does the impossible. And so one of the things is I just, you know, trusted that God was going to provide for a church. And in all, honesty too, Rich, this is helpful to explain, we we were positioned for growth. I don’t want to overstate, you know, the miraculous. We we were debt free. And we had about 200 people who said, you know what? Ride or die we’re with you, buddy.
Rich Birch — Let’s do it. Yeah, yeah. Totally.
Joseph Berkobien — Because we’ve been through so much.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — They were they were on they were on board. And so um and sometimes, you know, I would even say sometimes you can leverage a crisis. Because the reality is when when our church was dwindled in half, a lot of the people who were unwilling to change ended up transitioning out. And so what we were left with was a really strong core. We had no debt and so we started from there to really cast vision for the future. So but but through that process, to go back to your question, um for me, um, outside of the Bible, the number one resource that I’ve used to to learn how to how to how to transition, is Tim Keller’s church, leadership and size dynamics document.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic.
Joseph Berkobien — That is just gold…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joseph Berkobien — …gold for any leader out there who’s trying to learn how to transition from 200 to 400, and 400 to 800. I mean that is just a great resource. And it’s free online.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we’ll link to it. We’ll put a ah so I would say that’s probably the most forwarded pdf that I’ve that I’ve sent to church leaders. Because…
Joseph Berkobien — It’s amazing.
Rich Birch — …most of the churches I’ve worked with are that I and um almost all the churches I do coaching with are around a thousand or or more. And I’ll end up talking with churches who are who churches are smaller than that. And I’m like listen I can give you some thoughts, but really what you need to do is listen to Tim Keller. And like you know his, it’s so clear and the thing I love about what in that document is he doesn’t ascribe a value judgment to varying so church sizes. It’s just like, hey, this is what your church needs at these various phases. This is how you know to lead. It’s it’s classic. So yeah, we’ll we’ll link to that in the show notes for sure because it is a great ah great document. How did that kind of thinking impact your leadership? Maybe maybe a ah thing or two that has changed over over the years as you’ve led in different you know, different sizes?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, I think early on you know I I had to know every person’s name.
Rich Birch — Right? no.
Joseph Berkobien — Um I had to shake every person’s hand. You know, I had to know ah, you know, when babies were born, we would bring them, you know, ah people would stand up or whatever you you want to celebrate that. You you embrace that small church culture, which is great. And I think that you want to when people if people are in that context that’s a very rewarding time to lead, by the way. And some people the grass is always greener.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Joseph Berkobien — You know people look at ministry and where they want to get and, man, I will I’ll just tell you um in the phase we’re now, and I love it…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joseph Berkobien — …and I love I’ve loved every phase of of leadership, um, there was a there was a phase ah boy maybe maybe 600 for me was my sweet spot because like I knew most people…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joseph Berkobien — …and the systems we didn’t have to have systems dialed in as well. You know what I’m saying? And it was just like I could come up with an idea on a Wednesday and we could do it on a Sunday.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joseph Berkobien — So I mean that was that was ah a great season. But the reality is for me I had to learn how to move from being a doer ah to to somebody who was an equipper. I had to move from being involved in all the ministry to beginning to kind of decentralize some of that, and to raise up other leaders, and get other teams to do things. And and now the reality is, you know, I I don’t know a large percentage of the people who come in.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — Um and and my role in many ways I still try to, you know, connect at the door and and talk it and shake as many hands as I can and talk to people, but it’s it’s really quick hits, you know. I don’t I don’t know the reality of what’s going on in most people’s lives. And so that transition of of my role has had to change dramatically, you know. And so um and and Tim Keller, yeah it’s gold.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — And I I love I loved all yeah to say in that and that document, so just strongly encourage anybody who hasn’t read that to read that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s a simple document. It’s an easy read. You can read it in, you know, not long – half an hour or even less.
Joseph Berkobien — Sure. Absolutely.
Rich Birch — And but it’s super straightforward. And, shocker, Tim Keller, he’s he’s a clear thinker, you know. Amazing.
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Rich Birch — So yeah, that’s great.
Rich Birch — Well this has been just so fantastic. I really appreciate you, you know, just walking through. There’s just so much we could talk about, but what else would you say just as we wrap up today’s conversation, Joseph?
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, I mean I think one of the the big things I would say um maybe that I just haven’t hit that’s really important is just the importance, as a a leader um as a pastor, is obviously you want a shepherd well. You want to love people, you want to focus on um, you know, really being serious about the the ministry of the word and bringing that, for anybody who’s a senior pastor or a lead pastor out there. But I think a big thing too is just casting a compelling vision for the future. I think that it’s so important that we cast vision. You know, when we when there’s ah a void um in the vision-casting in the church, someone will rise up and cast it for us.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Joseph Berkobien — And um, and and that often happens in a smaller church. And so I think just being ah cognizant of that that that we want to make sure that we’re painting a picture of a future that we want to invite other people to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And we we serve a big God and so throughout that process, you know, um we we went to a relocation ah, we outgrew our our old facility as we were through that growth process. And you know we had max that we had probably more cars parked in the lawn than we did in the parking lot. And we were we had closets that we converted the classroom…
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph Berkobien — …so we outgrew that facility. But when we were getting ready to do a campaign, we we didn’t have a “what”. You know, we we knew we were trying to buy um or or build a new location but we didn’t have a a what because there wasn’t a whole lot available. And so we we ran a campaign ah purely based on “why”.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Joseph Berkobien — You know, we we felt like we were at a point um, where if you know, if we invited new people to come to church but there’s nowhere for them to sit, and there’s nowhere for them to park, Um, and and you know the the class is too full for their kids, then they’re not they don’t feel welcome. And we weren’t content to do that. So we we ran a campaign and raised money raised funds for that. But again it’s because we were casting a compelling vision for the future that we wanted to be a church that actually could reach people for the gospel.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Joseph Berkobien — So for us that’s just been a big part of that journey, you know, is just casting a clear vision for people.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, Joseph, I really appreciate you being here today. This has been a great conversation. Um, where do we want to send people online if we want them track with you, or with the church.
Joseph Berkobien — Yeah, you can just go to frankenmuthbible.com that’s frankenmuthbible.com and yeah all our resources that are there. And and and yeah and if you’re in the area and you don’t have a church you want to join us ah for for services, you know, we’ve got services on Sunday morning at 8:30, 10 and 11:30 so people can join us too. So.
Rich Birch — Nice. Thanks so much. Really appreciate that. Thanks for being here today.
Joseph Berkobien — Thank you, Rich. Appreciate it, buddy.
Reflections on Christian Ministry at the Halfway Point with Jon Thompson
Feb 08, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jon Thompson, the lead pastor at Sanctus Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Being a Christian leader is a marathon, not a sprint. In the middle of the social media and the politics and the pressures and the fear and the questions, we can be tempted to lose heart. Tune in as Jon shares wisdom and encouragement for staying faithful and running the race well to the end.
Recognize how you were called. // As Jon celebrates his 26th year at Sanctus, he reflects on the concept of calling. Many who feel the call to go into ministry find themselves discouraged and working outside of the church years later. In his book Perseverance: Fifteen Reflections on Christian Ministry at the Halfway Point –– An Invitation to Make It to the Finish Line Well –– Oh God, Help, Jon talks about how persevering in our callings has been lost. It’s important to realize there are four calling theologies in scripture rather than just one. Church leaders need to recognize how they were called and return to it when they wrestle with discouragement and doubt.
The four callings. // Embracing your unique calling is the bedrock of sustained ministry.If you only have one view of calling, you are more likely to end up leaving when things get difficult. Calling can look like a sovereign decision, like those of Jeremiah and Paul. It can also be a recognition of spiritual gifts which intersect with vocational ministry, as with Timothy. Another type of calling is demonstrated in the Book of Acts where there is a vote, a communal decision made for the church. Finally, for the prophet Samuel, familial prayer dedicates him to the Lord.
Loving God vs trusting God. // From the pressure to perform, to the rapid pace of ministry, to the challenge of maintaining one’s spiritual health, fears plague many Christian leaders. You can love God deeply, yet be filled with fear rather than trust in God. The amount of fear that sits in leaders’ lives in exponential. God is the one who casts out fear with his perfect love; we have to systematically invite him in to do that.
No before yes. // One of the most important ways to persevere long term is actually hearing God’s “no” before His “yes.” Ask God what spiritual gifts he’s given you, what gifts you will never have, and where you will never have influence. God’s “no” creates boundaries because you can’t go beyond the decisions he makes. Rest in his “no” rather than going after the gifts that aren’t for you. The heart of victory is working in your place of spiritual gifting rather than pursuing natural or acquired gifts.
Encounter Him. // At Sanctus, they’ve based their discipleship and evangelism not in class but on encounter. Where does God say he’ll be encountered beyond omnipresence? When you start teaching everyone about where scripture says guaranteed places of encounter are and create an expectation that they will meet with the living God, suddenly everything moves from a programmatic approach to real encounter.
Perseverance. // Jon has written a book reflecting at the midway point of his own ministry walk. Written for those who are considering entering ministry, those who have been in the trenches for any period of time, and even those who are coming near the end of their Christian leadership journey, this book shares fifteen observations that are transcultural, timeless, and transportable to many different settings. Perseverance: Fifteen Reflections on Christian Ministry at the Halfway Point –– An Invitation to Make It to the Finish Line Well –– Oh God, Help is a great book to pick up and discuss with your church team to see where everyone is in their own ministry journeys.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation – we have got Jon Thompson with us. He is the lead pastor at Sanctus Church. This is a multisite church with four campuses, if I’m counting correctly, in the greater Toronto area—you know I love Canadians here at unSeminary. Ah, plus they do you know services online. Jon is just an incredible leader, but I also count him as a friend. He’s a speaker, teacher, he travels, and has written a number of books that I think are just so important for us. And he’s got a book coming out that frankly today friends I’m going to declare my bias right up front – I want you to pick up copies of this book. So. Ah, Jon, welcome I’m so glad that you’re here.
Jon Thompson — Thanks Rich. It’s great to be with you again, and yes I count you as a good friend too.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s nice.
Jon Thompson — Yes.
Rich Birch — We’ve been in each other’s orbit for twenty-ish years, and so the thing, friends, like Toronto is not an easy place to lead a church. It is not the kind of place that’s like ah, an understatement. Ah, you know, very post-Christian. Um, and Jon is leading a thriving church called Sanctus that I’m you know count as a real brother in the faith. They do great things, but my son is also ah a part of the team there. So I pay particular attention to Sanctus. So Jon and tell us a little bit about it. Kind of fill out your story, tell us a little bit about the church, that kind of thing.
Jon Thompson — Yeah, so I’ve been on staff 26 years in this church.
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Jon Thompson — This has been my whole run and this is a multisite church. There’s four physical locations now, and like you said one, one virtual. And when I joined this church, I joined this church actually when I was fourteen years old. I had an encounter with Jesus, was told to come and have never left. Um and it’s yeah, it’s an interesting church.
Jon Thompson — It’s had 4 or 5 very significant iterations, as you know. We, you and I, have talked about this. We were historically, you know, like a very Willow seeker church. And the joke you and I have had is I’m a contemplative exegete Calvinist charismatic who leads the megachurch and what?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Jon Thompson — Anyway, and how that transformation has happened. And so wrestling through multiculturalism, you know, leading in the fourth largest city in North America, totally, you know, post-Christian to re-paganizing, working through spiritual gifts and disciplines and spiritual conflict and politics. And we now 55 nations part of our church so wrestling through how you do multiculturalism well and keeping unity in Jesus. And all the things. I used to have a lot more hair. We both did…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Jon Thompson — …in an ancient time.
Rich Birch — Well tell us a little bit about your family too. Just give us kind of the the personal slice a little bit too.
Jon Thompson — Yeah, so been married for 23 years. Interestingly I was planning on not getting married. I had actually done sort of the small “C” catholic thing where I was going to be celibate and single for the sake of the church. And then the Lord actually, and I don’t believe this is true in all cases… ah, my wife became a Christian actually at a mutual place that you and I both love at Muskoka Woods.
Rich Birch — Love Muskoka Woods. Yep.
Jon Thompson — So she became a Christian there. And then um she came to our church and Lord… she encountered the Lord said, like you need to marry that guy. So that was interesting conversation because she was supposed to marry me and I wasn’t marrying…
Rich Birch — I’ve never heard that before. I don’t know why I’ve never heard that! Amazing.
Jon Thompson — Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah. And pulled the Martin Luther. Anyway, so we um got married. We got 3 kids. I have a sixteen year old, I have a 14 year old, and I have a twelve year old, and life is interesting, all the time.
Rich Birch — Um, nice. So good. Well so first of all, I just want to take a moment and honor you publicly – 26 years at Sanctus. That’s that’s a milestone that’s not the kind of thing that happens all the time. You know it seems like the average pastorate is is measured in months, let alone years.
Jon Thompson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so the fact that you’ve been serving there for 26 years, as a friend I want to say thank you. Thank you for your faithfulness to that community. You know, you are, you know, you’re just a gift to the body of Christ in the greater Toronto area and I’m just honored ah, to to kind of celebrate this milestone. And you know I was saying this to ah ah, another friend of mine who reached 25 years, I said you know there just ah we don’t have enough of these stories out here. We have enough of these people that we get a chance to kind of say like, hey wow you know good for you. And I count that um and myself I’ve had the privilege of serving in another number of contexts. But ah, just amazing that you’ve been there for that that season.
Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with, okay so tell us about that. What was it that, you know, got you started at the church, and then kind of give us your story over those 25 years? That’s that’s I know is a big question – compress 25 years in a couple minutes, but tell us that story.
Jon Thompson — Yeah, so no. Like so I I come from a generation, my parents were missionaries, so I come from the generation the eighties. I grew up overseas, pre-internet. You know, I’m a Gen Xer and so lived in that world and um and came back off the mission field as they used to say don’t say that anymore, and that’s okay. And and so was attending this little church in Toronto on the east side of Toronto and in grade 7 and 8. It was a very pivotal moment, youth pastor basically saved my spiritual life. And in the middle of that grade 8 to grade 9, I had a calling to ministry which is a different conversation maybe for later. And then and then basically um as that took place in grade 9 I had an encounter with Jesus. And he basically said, I want you to go to this other church. And so I came.
Jon Thompson — I was in youth group. Two weeks later the youth pastor said, hey, have you ever preached before? I was like no. And he’s like well you need to start learning. And that’s how it started. So was there…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jon Thompson — …served in youth group as one of the crazy, you know, youth guys. And then from there, started my undergrad and theology and then ran the young adults thing. And then wanted to become a professor, never wanted to be a pastor and all that stuff. And then suddenly became the youth pastor of that church unexpectedly, was youth pastor for a very long time. Ah young adults, youth, junior high, introduction of like you know adolescence, and then all that stuff. And then at thirty years old, became senior pastor and that led multiple iterations of the church from that point forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah let’s let’s stick with the calling piece there. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Because I know this is one of the things you talk about in your book, but but I also want to talk. You know, often I have not done a lot of um, counseling premarital counseling, but I have done a little bit. And one of the questions I’ll ask is, you know, this isn’t on the first session, it’ll be a couple sessions in. I’ll say, hey so you know, there’s a some percentage of of marriages that don’t make it. And um obviously none of the people that are in pre-marriage counseling are thinking that they’re going to be in that that percentage that don’t make it. They everyone stands on their wedding day and says well this is going to be great. I’m going to be, you know, this we’re going to make it for the long haul. But sadly they don’t. The same is true with our calling. I feel like, man, there are people who at certain points in our lives they like say God called me into this thing and then then we find ourselves, whatever, ten years later, discouraged, you know, and we end up in real estate. Like how does that happen? What’s the connection between understanding our calling or listening to our calling and persevering in ministry? How do those connect?
Jon Thompson — Yeah, so I think it’s the ball game. And I think calling’s been lost. And so you know, in this one of the things I have two or three chapters at the beginning I talked about this. So um, ah I’ll so talk about it in three different ways. Number one, you got to realize that there are four calling theologies in scripture. Not one. And this ah actually leads to part of the problem. We all know that marriages break when expectations are not clear. And so if you only have one view of calling, and you don’t have that, you probably will end up leaving.
Jon Thompson — So I jokingly say ah, my calling experience is like Jeremiah and Paul: oh crap, I have no choice. It is so. But there was no debate with the living God.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes.
Jon Thompson — I I was literally in grade 7 and 8 and my parents weren’t pressuring me. There was no zero conversation about ministry. And I literally encountered the Lord and he said, you need to be a pastor, to a grade 12 boy ah sorry a twelve year old boy. And I remember saying to him I don’t know if I want to obey you sexually. That was my first statement. And my second one was I don’t know if I’d love your church enough. And I wrestled for two years. And in grade 9, which again is very young and weird, when I got baptized, I also said to the Lord, I’ll I’ll obey. I’ll obey. And that was a vow moment for me.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jon Thompson — And and so um, that’s, you know, a profound sort of shocking story. Um, and then of course that started making sense because as this happened longer and longer my parents said, oh that’s really weird that happened to you because we never told you this but when you were six months old we were at this evangelistic thing by a guy named Barry Moore who was like the Billy Graham of Canada in the 70s. And very conservative dude and he walked up and put his hand over my head and said this child will be a pastor [inaudible], like set all this stuff over me and walked away. My parents were like baptist people like that’s weird…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jon Thompson — And what what’s that about?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Jon Thompson — And they totally forgot about it, and it was confirmed. So that that sense of sovereign decision affected how I did high school, everything. The dark side of it was I thought that was the only view of calling. So I would dismiss other people’s calling. I’d be arrogant and look down. But there are three other callings. So you’ve got like the Timothy – there’s a spiritual set of gifts that you have and that intersection of those gifts says, yes, there’s longevity and vocational ministry. You got the boring book of Acts where they literally vote and say, I think you’ll do it great at this. And there’s no fire tunnel or Gabriel or anything at all. And then there’s the very un-North American one, right, which is the Hannah and Samuel one. Which basically says like we as the family have prayed and you you are called into this.
Jon Thompson — So I I found that a lot of us need to ah find out how we were called, in what style we were called, and then know it’s true, compare our stories with others so there’s no disunity, over-spiritualizing, under-spiritualizing, all that stuff. That’s the epicenter to keep going when things suck. Because if you don’t know if you’re called, and things are bad…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — …you won’t… like, we live in a culture you and I both know this that it’s all about epicness and amazing and it’s adrenaline driven.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jon Thompson — And and it’s and we want to live life like ah like a Marvel movie. It was this, and it was this, it was this… And we read the bible the same way. This happened and that happened it was so incredible. And we miss the hundred years and 20 years and 30 years between the verses.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Jon Thompson — Like in marriage, if marriage always is epic. We all know who are married long term, it’s not always epic. It’s boring, it’s not great, sometimes it’s terrible, sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it’s awesome. And so what I have found is there’s been a generation or two of leaders that have forgotten calling theology, don’t have language for it, haven’t compared this story, so when the tough thing comes, you don’t persevere because you’re not really sure…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — …if you were asked in the first place.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s good. I love that. You know, I think there is it’s similar I find in my own kind of reflection on ministry that um, it’s comparable to to marriage in that like I, you know, there are lots of days that are not that, to your point, not that interesting. There are lots of days that are just work, you know, there are but I find over the long haul, man, that being able to walk the long road and look back and see God at work consistently over the years, man, what a gift that has been ah, to me personally. Sticking with calling for a second. Um, one of the things you talked about was, you know, fleshing this out in community. What does that look like? How do we do that? Let’s say I’m a young leader. I’m in my twenties. I’m thinking about this. I think maybe I’m, you know, maybe this is the kind of call I’m, you know, this is what I’m called to do. Um, but I’m serving in a church as a youth pastor for the first time and I’m like, gosh I don’t know. How do I flesh this thing out in community? What do I do? Who do I talk to?
Jon Thompson — Yeah, well I would say one of the most significant things is um, back to you know in leadership studies they will say go back and find out how life affected you. So you know, 0 to five, five to ten, ten to 15, 15 to 20, whatever. And they say what books did you read? What podcast you listen to? What major events happen in the world? What never happens is tell me what was prayed over you. Tell me the experiences you had with the Lord. Like no one goes back…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Jon Thompson — …and looks for the pattern of dots. You need to do that. If you come from a family of faith, some of you don’t, but lots of us who do, what did Grandma pray over you? What what happened when they found that they were pregnant and they started praying? What what was stated or prayed over you? And then sit with mature Christians and start saying, I think I’m vocationally called, can we sit and pray over this and talk about this? But have the four categories of calling. Because again, 1 Corinthians 4 to me is the passage about this where Paul says you must view us as those who are entrust with the mysteries of Christ and and our stewards of the household of God. And the word steward is wild because the word steward means the one who is a slave but owns nothing, but still in charge. If you don’t know you’re called…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — …you won’t think you have the authority to lead, and you’ll also forget you own nothing. But to evaluate if you got that position, you’re going to do in community – pastors, friends, leaders. Because if you think you’re called and everyone else says you’re probably not, you need to pay attention. There’s a lot of people and, Rich, you and I know this, there’s a lot of people who went into ministry because they couldn’t hack it somewhere else. And it’s devastating.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Jon Thompson — Because this is not what you get into long term.
Rich Birch — No.
Jon Thompson — What why be a pastor or leader a faith leader, like being a faith leader now is incredibly personally dangerous. It’s dangerous to your reputation, your family. It’s not great pay. We all know it. And it’s like being a politician these days, but God and the devil’s involved. Who would want that? I don’t.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, so true. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Okay, at you putting down kind of your thoughts at you and you called it out, halfway through your journey, you, you know, you you flagged it. Um, what was, as you pulled this together, what would you say was the hardest part to pull pull together from a kind of a transparency point of view? Felt like, ooh this is the most vulnerable piece of this dialogue. This is the piece that that feels a little bit like, ooh I’m not sure I want to say this. Ah but I know you; you’re a transparent kind of communicator. You want to ah you know let people in. Talk to me about that.
Jon Thompson — Yeah, so I started writing this in 2019 just before the pandemic began. So the joke I
Rich Birch — Great time. Great time.
Jon Thompson — Ah yeah, the joke always is that the world ended because I was writing a book on perseverance and it’s all my fault. Um, yeah, so here’s here’s what happened um, to me while I was writing it. And and the thought process, the theology, the experiential on the ground stuff was there, but I knew that I had to talk about fear in this book. I I knew I had to in 2019. Leading to the pandemic for any of us was terrible. Leading through the pandemic in Toronto was horrific.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it was. Yep.
Jon Thompson — Um, and there was 5 sort of volcanoes that happened all at once. And so you, know you, anyway there there’s lots that happened here.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jon Thompson — And not saying oh our life was worse than yours. I’m just saying our lockdowns were way longer than most of the world. Um, you know the the death of George Floyd the murder of him had massive impact here. A very significant megachurch collapse during um during covid also that affected all of us, that both Rich and I are connected to relationally and historically. Um and then there was all sorts of staff issues that happened, and then on and on and on. So here’s here’s what I would say: I was struck about how much I loved God and how much I didn’t trust him. And um, love and trust are fundamentally two different things.
Jon Thompson — And yeah, so I I love God deeply, deeply. I um I can’t wait to see Jesus. I can’t wait to see him. You know what Paul says in Corinthians, I think it’s 2 Corinthians. You know I think I’m maybe I’m going a misquote, but you know it’s better to be away from the body, at home with the Lord. Like that that’s not true for me every day, but I do love him. I love him more than my wife and kids, and I love them a lot. Um, but I realized that ah, leading during covid and leading for 25 years and being ah, an exegetical preaching type guy who goes through books and doesn’t avoid difficult topics, talking about that and having now a global sort of platform, not just a small little one. And I don’t mean the arrogantly just the influence is wider than it was. I was like, oh crap, I’m actually really vulnerable. Like I I’m really…
Jon Thompson — And so what happened was I realized how much fear was inside my head. And and so what I did is I I um I wrote down ah, on notes on my computer every fear in my head…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Jon Thompson — …whether it was logical, whether it was rational. And I suddenly I couldn’t believe how many things about me, my marriage, my identity, my life, my future, life, death, reputation. And see, got to remember too like um because of my upbringing, my parents are awesome, but my mom had horrific post-partum depression so didn’t hold me for six months so there’s attachment issues. My dad clinically burnt out on the mission field. I moved 14 times. I was exposed sexually to stuff way too young, not by them but in other contexts. So you know there’s a presupposition or ah to to abandonment. And then I was like so I love God deeply and I’m a Calvinist, not angry, but I’m a Calvinist. We always, you and I, joke. And so I I have a high view of sovereignty, and a high view of God’s glory.
Jon Thompson — And I said to God, so I’ve read my bible and I’m under no illusion that I get out okay. And I’ve I’ve read church history and I’ve been to 40 countries…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — …I’m under no illusion that Christianity equals safety.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — And then I was like, oh my goodness so I am so afraid. And then I said to the Lord, and actually I don’t know if you’ll have my back. I know you’ve got it at the resurrection. and I know you’ve called me. But wonder if you destroy me in the middle because it brings you glory. And I was like I and it just it just fro… it just froze me. It just it just undid me. And so, I think what I’ve realized is. There is doesn’t matter your personality, background, even to what theological way you ebb. The amount of fear that sits in leaders lives is just exponential. It’s our our families are no different than anyone else’s. And then we have, you know, the pressures of leading in the twenty first in 2023 with social media, and automatic responses, and all this stuff. But then there’s all the soul stuff and that can I keep my soul going at the pace I’m supposed to be leading at.
Jon Thompson — And so just to end this part, what happened was I started realizing Romans 5 says that the Holy Spirit is the love of God poured out in my heart. And then I realized that Paul said in Ephesians 3 that we can know the unknowable love of God which is paradox. So I started saying to the Holy Spirit, if you’re the love of the Father already in me. And I can know an unknowable thing. And perfect love casts out fear, which that means you’re the one who casts out fear, that I have to start inviting you systematically…
Rich Birch — To do that. Wow.
Jon Thompson — …into the fear, each one of them, and say to them, are you going to destroy me? And even if you say yes, what am I going to do with that?
Rich Birch — Hmm.
Jon Thompson — Massive. And not done by the way, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I was going to say that that feels like a lifelong journey though. That feels like a, you know, second half ah journey. Let’s let’s pivot in ah in a slightly different direction, obviously related. So I um, when I think about the gifts of the spirit, when I think about um, you know the fruits of the spirit, you know, things the power side, I often think of you, and you’ve shaped my thinking on this front in a bunch. And I got thinking about this this whole area of our gifting and then the place we bring to it from like, you know, that we have to invest in growing what God has given us, or invest in the skills that we have. You know, you’re a gifted communicator. I put you and I use that word very specifically. God has gifted you as a teacher. You’re and I I think of that from a like the results are greater than the input. I think what you do is really good. But man, when you speak God uses you. But there’s a part of this that you have to keep working on, that you have to keep saying like I’ve got to invest in that. I’ve got to spend time there. It’s not just magical. It’s not just like, hey God’s given you this and it’s it’s magical. Here you are halfway through your your ministry career. How are you thinking about that – areas of gifting and then your need to continue to invest in those things. How does how does that how do those interplay with each other?
Jon Thompson — Yeah, so I’m going to start um I’m going to start in one angle and end up in the other, as you know I will.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jon Thompson — So ah I think one of the most important ways to persevere longterm, and I want to qualify this. I’m not saying I’m going to make it. As I get going here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — Like I’m only 48.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jon Thompson — Ah the scriptures are clear only 30% of leaders make it to the end well. And church history tells us the same. So the stats aren’t great for us. Lord, have mercy. Christ is mercy, as our Anglican brothers and sisters say.
Rich Birch — Amen.
Jon Thompson — But here’s here’s one of the other things that helped me in and around gifts and perseverance, and then I’ll get to the craft. One of the most freeing things for me, which I’ve shared with you before, is actually hearing God’s no before his yes. And I think most North American leaders have been taught, you can do basically anything if you work harder. And I say it’s a lie. It’s a total lie. And actually as I interview leaders that have fallen or walked away, almost all of them talk about this expectation dream they had of what ministry would look like. And when it didn’t culminate into that expectation, They say either God lied, I didn’t hear him, the devil’s too strong, or I was never called, and it breaks. Romans 12, which is actually ah a passage about spiritual gifts. Most people only preach the first 2 verses. Just keep going everyone. Keep going. Right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jon Thompson — Paul not only talks about the sovereign assignment of gifts. In other words, it’s not a buffet – he chooses what you get, which by the way, a lot of leaders need to humble themselves and really have that conversation. There’s also this phrase – he says, the measure of grace. And so the implication is I not only don’t get to choose what spiritual gift I get, he determines how much influence behind that gift I get. So I always use the illustration of like a river and there’s riverbanks. In other words, you can’t surpass the sovereign decision of where the river banks are, no matter how much you work on your craft.
Jon Thompson — So if let’s say there’s four people with the gift of teaching and they’re all sovereignly gifted. The Spirit of God might give one a creek of influence, or to use charismatic word, anointing or baptist umph, whatever. Right? Right? So a creek. Someone might have a river. Someone might have a major river. Someone might have an ocean. All four of them have the same gift. But if the person with the creek believes they should have the ocean and they’ve never asked if God’s going to give them the ocean, they’ll think they’ll get the ocean if they work hard enough, and they won’t, and then they’ll think they’ve failed. So I say to leaders all the time, no matter how long just ask God: What gifts do I have? What gifts will I never have? And the real question actually ask, people, is please ask God what you will never have in influence. So you can actually base your ministry excitement and dreams in God’s no. Because then you can rest.
Rich Birch — Right. Stop pursuing that. Yeah.
Jon Thompson — You can… Because so many of us don’t rest because we still believe this thing’s going to happen, or we’re gonna accomplish this thing. And if you sat with a group of honest friends, they’re like that is never going to happen because you’re not even spiritually gifted that way. And have you asked God’s no. So the reason why I’m saying this to your question is, for me, God’s no… I know what gifts I don’t have and I’ve also been told by the Lord what influence I’ll never have.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — So every time I’m tempted to look over like Peter did to John after his restoration, say but what about John? Jesus goes, what a business is that is what, what, what? I’m, why are you looking at that leader with that platform or that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good.
Jon Thompson — I’m talking to you. So that’s free. And then once I know the limitations, then it is just the due diligence of doing that work consistently. The 10,000 principle is still true in the natural sense of getting better, getting feedback, learning through it. But the heart of the victory is not the working on the craft. It’s actually knowing where if it’s a spiritual gift, not a natural or acquired gift, and deeper than that, knowing when God has said no to me. It’s…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jon Thompson — It’s revolutionary. I tried to do 80% of my ministry only in spiritual gifts.
Rich Birch — Right. Dude, that’s that right there… I hope you were listening, friends. Ah you know there there could be, particularly if you’re a younger leader, listen in, rewind what Jon just said. Go back and ask the Lord where what is his no for you. Man, I think that is a great ah, great word.
Rich Birch — Again, pivoting in a totally different direction. Not really about your book, but I just value your thinking on this and I want to keep, you know, asking these kinds of questions. So for folks that don’t know Sanctus’ is history, you mentioned this on the front end, you know, Sanctus at one point in our part of the world was like middle of the bell curve um you know, attractional like they did the skits like Willow kind of church. like that was the church. Um, and that’s not the case today. And the church has ah has I think is a forefront leader in providing, or providing is the wrong word, cultivating accessible encounters with God in a way that is accessible to people who in a culture that is maybe post-christian, pre-christian or like you said cultivating pagan today. I thought wow that’s an interesting that’s an interesting phrase. Um talk to us about accessible encounters. Because I see this happening all over the place.
Rich Birch — I see I see churches that came from the attractional background saying, hey, if people just show up and find us. There’s a problem because that if it’s just about us, that’s a problem – that’s not good. And then the same I would say churches that are more on the charismatic side are saying we need this to be accessible. We need this to actually reach people outside of our our doors. It can’t just be about creating a great kind of holy huddle here. Talk to us about accessible encounter. What should we be thinking about? How should we be leading in that in our areas? And I realize I asked that with like two minutes left…
Jon Thompson — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but you know, take our time. What what what… Let’s let’s unpack that a little bit.
Jon Thompson — Yeah, I think one of the best ways to talk about this is we’ve based our discipleship and our evangelism not in class but in encounter. And so what we did is we took a lot of time to read through the scriptures and asked a question. And the question is, where does God say he will be encountered beyond omnipresence? So the phraseology we use here all the time is, where does God move from omnipresence to palpability? And interestingly, ah the when the gospel is shared, the life death and resurrection of Jesus is shared, that’s… Ah you know, gathered worship, communion, baptism – there’s all these areas. And we would say like for example at communion, we don’t think he’s in the elements. We we don’t have a Catholic perspective but we don’t also have the historic Baptist perspective, it’s bare memorialism. We would say he’s at the table. He’s not in the elements.
Jon Thompson — But what happened was when we started being honest about what the scripture said where he was. We started saying to our people, he’s actually here because he says he is. Right when that happened, the whole church changed. Because then people said, oh my goodness I’m going to meet the living Jesus. And the whole spiritual atmosphere of the church changed. Because we started using phrases like this is a guaranteed place of encounter. And then you know this, in our context regularly we talk to seekers, skeptics, people from other faiths. Like we don’t just say seeker – I can’t stand when churches say, hey if you’re a seeker here today. I’m like don’t presume they’re a seeker.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Thompson — There are seekers among us, and there are skeptics, and there are people from other faiths, and there are spiritual people, and agnostics, and atheists – we call them all out in our services. And we invite them also to encounter, but encounter through repentance. And so I would say when you start teaching your whole community where guaranteed places of encounter are, and the expectations reorient themselves biblically, suddenly the atmosphere of the church moves from programmatic understanding to encounter.
Jon Thompson — So spiritual gifts is one of those like we talked about. I think that builds such longevity. But then you have to and as we’re literally ending, then you have to have a theology of disciplines and gifts, and you also have to think through how you ah, not only invite into encounter, but how you interpret. One of the biggest problems we’ve got in multiple churches is that they don’t have an understanding of spiritual theology. Spiritual theology is the systematic evaluation of spiritual experiences from a biblical worldview. If you can’t do that, then you can’t invite encounter. Most of us want to dismiss encounter or experience because it’s too complicated and we’re trying to run a church. But the role of pastors and leaders is not to dismiss encounter. It’s actually to interpret the source of it – God, Satan, the tacos from last night, mental illness, or too much Netflix. That’s our responsibility. And when it’s from the Lord then we have to start saying that’s important. And for some of you more conservative living out there, maybe a little passing throwing of a grenade as I end. Don’t presume weird is wrong. Weird is weird. The question is what’s the source of the weird. And remember weird is cultural. Just want to say that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Jon there’s a lot there, and you know I appreciate your I would really encourage people to follow you, follow what you’re doing. This is one of the books you’ve written, you’ve written. Ah you know others that touch on some of that stuff in a deeper ah way. But I you know I just value your leadership and in so many ways. And again just want to honor you, thank you for for being here today. Um, if people want to pick up this current book. So this is “Perseverance: Fifteen Reflections on Christian Ministry at the Halfway Point –– An Invitation to Make It to the Finish Line Well –– Oh God, Help”, um, which which I love. I like that’s a fantastic title. Obviously you can get it at Amazon. Are there other places we want, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, but where do we want to send people online if they want to pick it up?
Jon Thompson — Yeah, yeah, anyone can you can grab that anywhere on Amazon and any Amazon store globally. If in United States you can get it digitally and physically through Barnes and Noble. If you’re in Canada and you want a virtual copy, like we got it on Kobo, Kindle, all those places. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. And you know, what I, to be honest, friends, when I I had got a chance to see ah a early copy of this and I thought, man, this would be a great gift for teams to do together. Like let’s actually have this conversation. You know, this a great time of year to be thinking about, Okay, what are we doing next quarter. Let’s buy a bunch of copies of these books and read them together as a team and then say let’s talk about these in relation to our ministry, and where we’re at. I think, personally, I think, Jon, you’ve done a a favor here to leadership teams to really spur some really next level conversations with our with our people. So I I would strongly encourage people that are listening in to pick up. Don’t pick up one copy, just buy a bunch for your whole team and and go through it together. Jon, I’m going to give you the final words here. Anything else you want to say just as we close off today’s episode?
Jon Thompson — Yeah, all I would like to say is if you are considering Christian leadership, if you are a Christian leader, or you’ve been a Christian leader, I just want to encourage you marathon not sprint. And keep being faithful. At the end of the day, everyone, when we see Jesus face to face, we’re going to want to give him everything. Just don’t don’t forget in the middle of the social media and the politics and the board stuff and the people and the pressures and the fear and the questions. Um, when you see him, you’ll want to give him everything. So don’t give in and don’t give up.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Jon. If people want to track with you online or with the church, where do we want to send them?
Jon Thompson — Ah, Instagram @pastorjon_T, sanctuschurch.com and then just because inundation jonthompsonresources.com that’s J-O-N. That’s got all the books, the sermons, and everything. It’s just it’s a place to have all the things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Great. Thanks so much, Jon. Appreciate being here. Always a great and come back anytime. I’d love to have you back on in the future.
Jon Thompson — Thanks, Rich.
From Eye Rolls to Engagement: Boosting the Effectiveness of Your Church’s Announcements
Feb 07, 2024
This episode tackles a critical yet often overlooked aspect of church services: announcements. Far from being mere placeholders, announcements have the potential to drive engagement within your church significantly.
We start with a relatable discussion on why church announcements typically induce eye rolls rather than enthusiasm. Recognizing this issue is the first step towards transformation.
Learn about this potentially game-changing approach that focuses on reducing the number of announcements while enhancing their quality and relevance. This strategy is all about making announcements a pivotal part of church engagement.
Five-Step Process for Focusing Your Announcements Time
Plan with Purpose // Select a strategic three-month period to focus your announcement efforts.
Engage Stakeholders // Bring together departmental leads to align on announcement priorities.
Optimize Messaging // Use a collaborative session to decide on one or two key messages for each week.
Create a Calendar // Develop and refine an announcement calendar based on stakeholder input.
Implement and Evaluate // Firm up plans and adjust based on feedback, setting the stage for continuous improvement.
The episode emphasizes the goal of moving congregants from passive listeners to active participants, highlighting the crucial role announcements play in this transition.
Listeners will gain practical strategies to make their church’s announcements more impactful, turning a traditionally dull moment into an opportunity for meaningful connection and action.
Transforming your church’s announcements from eye rolls to engagement is not just about changing the content but about changing the approach. It’s a shift towards strategic, intentional communication that resonates and motivates.
Tune in to learn how to elevate your church’s announcements from mere information sharing to a dynamic engagement tool. Discover the power of intentional announcements and see how they can help foster a more vibrant, involved church community. Let’s embark on this journey together, from eye rolls to engagement, one announcement at a time.
Protecting Your Church’s DNA: Jon Delger on Building Culture Within a Fast-Growing Church
Feb 01, 2024
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We have Jon Delger with us today, the Executive Pastor at Peace Church in Michigan—one of the fastest growing churches in the country.
Whether your church is growing a little or a lot, change to the people making up your church will change your culture. How can you protect your church’s DNA and reinforce culture during growth? Tune in as Jon shares best practices for guarding and building your church’s culture among your staff and congregation as you grow.
Face the challenges. // Peace Church has experienced remarkable growth in the last three years, more than doubling in size and expanding to two locations in Michigan. Despite the many challenges that come with rapid expansion, such as space constraints and the need for additional services, protecting our church culture is the most important problem we’ll face during growth.
Clearly communicate. // Every new person at our churches brings a unique set of beliefs and expectations that can influence the church’s dynamics. The key is to integrate these individuals while maintaining the church’s distinct identity. To protect their culture at Peace Church, they have implemented strategic steps in the assimilation process to communicate the culture clearly. From newcomers’ lunches to membership classes, they ensure that each step reinforces the church’s core values.
Be honest about fit. // At membership classes Jon and his team talk about who they are and what it’s like to be a part of the Peace Church family. Rather than pushing people towards membership, they address reasons why Peace Church might not be the right fit for some, directing them to other great churches in the area. This level of honesty and clarity is crucial in building a cohesive community.
Three key parts. // There are three key parts of the Peace Church membership class: theology, ministry philosophy, and commitments of being a member. In theology they talk about what Peace Church believes about the bible and hot-button cultural issues. Ministry philosophy talks about the church’s size and what people can expect. Membership commitments talk about giving and serving in the church and what’s expected of members.
Have a distinct hiring process. // With attendance growth, a church also needs to grow its staff. Jon emphasizes the need for a clear and distinct hiring process in order to vet who joins our teams and protect our cultures from rapid change. Peace Church has a hiring process that begins with a phone screening and then a minimum of two in-person interviews. The final interview is with Jon and the lead pastor, at which point they’re only asking culture questions.
Onboarding, developing, and improving. // After hiring, Peace Church uses three processes for staff management: onboarding, leadership development, and a performance improvement process. In addition, one-on-one meetings are the cornerstone of staff management at Peace Church and have been instrumental in maintaining a thriving church culture.
Care, clear, and coach. // Jon has provided us with a PDF that offers best-practices for effectively leading one-on-one meetings with staff. At Peace Church they recommend that the one-on-one is twice a month and includes three aspects: care, clear, and coach. We need to spend time caring for our direct reports, make sure tasks and priorities are clear and understandable, and offer leadership development to team members through coaching.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited that you’re tuned-in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while. Jon Delger with us, Delger is with us today from Peace Church. He’s executive pastor. You know we love executive pastors here at unSeminary. Peace Church is a, get this, gospel-centered, family-focused, kingdom-minded church—love that. It’s also one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. They have more than doubled in recent years. They have two locations in Michigan. I know I’m going to love this because Michigan is not the kind of place that you say, you know what? There’s a place where churches grow fast. So super-excited to have Jon on the the call with us today. Jon, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Jon Delger — Thank you, Rich. Appreciate it. My honor to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, sorry for flubbing your name there too. You know, right off the top.
Jon Delger — Oh hey, it’s all good. It’s all good.
Rich Birch — Jon, fill in the picture, if people were to arrive at peace church this weekend, what would they experience? Kind of give us a sense of the church, kind of fill in the the the painting there a little bit for us.
Jon Delger — Yeah, definitely. Ah, the main thing they’d experience is a church that loves Jesus, that loves the bible, ah that preaches it loud and clear. That’s the main thing that we talk about at Peace…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jon Delger — …and that we would attribute our growth to. God has just been doing an amazing work. Especially the last three years we’ve been 30% growth year every year…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Jon Delger — …for 3 years straight now. Just the grace of God.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Jon Delger — It’s not it’s not me it’s not our our other leaders. It’s just the Lord is doing something amazing and we’re humbled to be part of it each week. So, yeah, we we’re we’re hovering around 2000 people or so on Sunday mornings at our main campus, and then we just launched this fall our first secondary campus. And actually our vision is to plant campuses that become churches, independent churches, over the course of 3 to 5 years.
Rich Birch — So cool.
Jon Delger — And so we’ve actually launched out a guy who preaches live every Sunday there. Um, so we do full live worship and preaching and all of that at the secondary campus, and that’s been going great. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I know um, you know, the fact that you’re growing at 30% a year, that’s that’s incredible. That’s amazing growth rate. That is, you know, puts you in super rare air across the country. Just to kind of, you know, calibrate that for folks that are listening in. So um, less than 5% of churches make it over 1000 people. Less than half a percent of people make it over 2000 people. And you know, even rare air are growing at that rate. So super honored that you would take some time to to talk with us today to help us understand a little bit about what God’s using um, and to hear more of the peace church story – pumped for that.
Rich Birch — But I know it sounds great, having worked and and led in actually multiple churches that have grown like that. It sounds great from the outside, but on the inside, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot to kind of keep all those plates spinning. And I’d love to talk a little bit about that. You know, when you when we we think about growing, you think about, Okay, what, you know, how do how do we sustain that? What how do we going what would be some of the kind of pain points, the pressures you’re experiencing um in with that kind of growth? What are some of that what’s that look like for you, particularly from your seat as executive pastor?
Jon Delger — Yeah, definitely. So we all we often say here that we’ve got lots of problems, but they’re good problems. And so we’re so thankful to be blessed with the challenges we have…
Rich Birch — Um, gold plated problems. Yeah.
Jon Delger — …but they are definitely. That’s right, They are definitely problems, challenges.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jon Delger — Ah, there’s all kinds of um I mean physical space is one that we’re facing right now we just um just wrapped up a capital campaign and are doing a building project here on the main campus. We opened that second campus, we’ve been doing the video venue thing, just to just to create enough space.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — We actually created some dirt parking up up in our grass field next to the church just because we’re running out of parking every Sunday. Ah so so the space is one of the issues, but I would say if you had to take all the issues that we face and talk about what’s the most important one. What’s the heart of it, the center of it? I would say it’s protecting our culture as a church…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Jon Delger — …um as a whole church and especially as a staff.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jon Delger — You know, even if, you know, whether you’re growing a lot or whether you’re growing a little bit, any kind of change to the people in your church changes your culture. Right? That’s that’s just kind of how that works. You bring in these people who have a different DNA, a different set of expectations, a different even theology. You know, um at Peace we’ve just been growing by people from all different tribes. So there’s plenty of people coming that are secular – they don’t have a church background. Or actually in West Michigan one of the most common stories we hear is, yeah I grew up in church, but I haven’t been back in 10, 20, 30 years…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — …and now I’m just coming back to church. Or there’s a lot of I would say our primary demographic at Peace is people who, you know, maybe grew up going to church but haven’t been since high school. And now they’re in their late twenties, early thirties, they got kids…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — …and they’re like, that’s right I grew up going to Sunday school and now I want my kids to have that experience.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — So they’re coming back, but they’ve got all these different backgrounds there. We’ve got lots of, from Catholic backgrounds, or Baptist, or Reformed, Non-denom, um, Presbyterian, you know, or no church background. Just all these different people with different theology, different expectations, different sense of what does my pastor do? All those different kind of expectations and just trying to figure out: how do we make sure that we protect who we are and actually bring people into a culture, not just a church that doesn’t have a distinct identity.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. Just to underline that for our listeners. You know, you rattled off all kinds of logistical, practical, you know, new parking, video venues, you know, keeping up with kids space, you know, raising money – all of that kind of stuff to try to keep on top of it. And I I don’t want you to miss this, listeners.
Rich Birch — You know, what you came back to ultimately was something that could seem really soft, like oh, we got to protect our culture. Like um, but that just is not, you know we see this time and again with fast-growing churches – that actually at the end of the day if we want to continue to sustain our growth, a part of what we’ve got to do is get really clear on our culture. We’ve got to be, you know, rabid about it. We’ve got to clarify it. We’ve got to keep it in front of our people. We have to keep thinking about it. Sometimes it’s like rearticulating it. So let’s unpack that a little bit. How what when you when you talk about, you know, protecting your culture, um, what does that look like for you? How have you had to do that as a leadership team?
Jon Delger — Yeah, definitely. So we try to make it a part of just about everything that we do. Um, we especially look at each step in the assimilation process. So when somebody comes into Peace Church, you know, what are the steps that they take, and how do we make sure each of those steps very clearly communicates our culture?
Jon Delger — So for us, um, the first step in the assimilation process after you’ve, you know, come, checked in, maybe met somebody, you know, done the follow-up process via text and that kind of thing. The first event that we push everybody to is we’ve called it two different things. We’ve called it, sometimes we’ve called it The Newcomers Lunch. Or recently we’re calling it Meet the Pastors. It’s got a little bit more of a down-home church family kind of feel to it.
Jon Delger — And so at that event, people come, and we usually have 3 or 4 of our pastors there. And they have lunch and, you know, we go around as pastors and just sit with people, talk with people. And then about halfway through the event we get up and sit behind microphones and we have a moderator. We just do so kind of some Q and A. We have some prepared ones. And then we let the group ask questions. But what we make sure and do is we make sure as pastors that we just come back to some of the core things that make Peace Church Peace Church. We talk about, you know, what is our, you know, what is it that makes us unique and distinct. So that’s one of the tactics we use.
Jon Delger — The next step in the assimilation process is the membership class. And for us that’s a huge – that’s the point… So I think I’ve been a part of churches in the past where the membership class is the place where you try to convince people to stay at your church, and and I get that. I get that mentality. I understand, you know, where that comes from. But for us we actually spend that class kind of talk about maybe why you shouldn’t be at Peace Church.
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Jon Delger — We we open by saying, hey, we’re just here—we repeat this throughout the class—hey, we’re just here to tell you about who we are and what it’s like to be a part of this church family. And if that’s not a fit for you, that’s totally okay. There’s other great churches around. We’re not the only ones who preach the bible around here. Um, and we actually I actually usually name a couple of other churches that are good bible preaching churches, but are different than us in size, or in style or and things like that.
Jon Delger — Um, yeah, but we just tried to be really clear, hey if you came, you know, and you thought, man, I want to be a part of this church, but I really wish this church did nothing but sing hymns. Well, hey, we love you, but we’re not changing. We’re, you know, we’re committed to what we’re doing, and that’s going to stay the way it is. And so if that’s not a fit for you, that’s okay.
Rich Birch — Rght.
Jon Delger — So those are some of the main things that we that we do. We just try to be really clear. This is who we are. It’s not changing. We’d love to have you part of this church family if that fits for you. But if it doesn’t, then hey, there’s other places you can go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I um, you know for years I had a a friend of mine who in those contexts, he would say something I would actually would explicitly say that. He would like, hey… So let’s say he was a leader at Peace Church. He would say, if you’re if you come to the end of this conversation and you’ve said, you know, I really love Peace Church, but I wish…and then insert whatever. He would say, tell me what you would insert in there. I wish, like you say, you sang more music, you were more Charismatic, you were whatever, that whatever that thing is…and let me help but you find a church that is that. Because what I what we’re looking for is we need people who are fully engaged on mission with us.
Rich Birch — Now when you when you talk about some of those distinctives, what’ll be some of those things you come back to that that are you would say got a bit of an edge to it, that would say, oh I’m not sure I’m really, you know, um, but people may not stay over this. They they, you know, we always think about culture stuff that’s like oh hey, this is great. But what are the things that might actually encourage someone that maybe they should look somewhere else? What’ll be some of those things…
Jon Delger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that you articulate that kind of push people to make that kind of step?
Jon Delger — Yeah. Yeah. Our progression in our class we kind of we say that we kind of have three, three key parts of the membership class. We talk about theology, then we talk about our ministry philosophy, and then we talk about ah the commitments of being a member. So so in each of those we try to hit a few different things. So in theology, we talk first and foremost about how Peace Church believes in the inerrancy of the bible. It’s true. It doesn’t have any errors in it. It’s from God. And so. And then we talk about some of the outworkings of that. We talk about sexuality. We talk about gender. Um, we talk about just all kinds of different, any kind of hot cultural issue and we just say, this is where we’re at loud and clear. Um and we just try to be super abundantly clear about those things. We try to draw these are these are some people that might disagree with us and this is how. I can get more into some of the theological specifics if you want. But ah Ministry philosophy-wise we we talk largely about church size because that’s new for us, because we’ve been growing so much.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — We talk about, hey you know, if you came expecting to be able to get your lead pastor on the phone in ah in a heartbeat, then hey, this might not be the place for you…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jon Delger — …or you’ve got to change your expectations.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — You know, we have a ah several different pastors. We also have elders that do a great job of caring. Their emails are right on the website. You know, there are people that are there to care for you and love you. But the lead pastor you’re not going to be able to get them on the phone quickly.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jon Delger — Um, so I talk about that. I’ll also talk about just some of the um some things that people aren’t maybe used to in a larger church, such as just how structured and organized we are. You know, we have to be pretty strict with how we do things. Um, which means that, you know, most most ministries are led by staff rather than volunteers. Um, but so I give I give usually an apologetic kind of explanation of how actually having staff-led ministries leads do more volunteer involvement, not less.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Jon Delger — So that’s one big thing I talk about in the philosophy part. When we get to the last part, talking about membership commitments. We’ve used Thom Thom Rainer membership book before. We’ve had people read that. That does a good job. We talk about giving. We talk about, hey we believe that the tithe, 10 percent, is what should be going to the local church. That that’s not a, we don’t get legalistic about it. You know the bible doesn’t say that explicitly, clearly the new testament, but we say hey we believe that the tithe is the biblical minimum, and that it should go to the local church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — And if you want to give to other things, that’s awesome, but that should be on top of that. Um talk about how you must serve. Hey, if you’re not here to be involved in serving, then we might not be the right church for you…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — …because we, you know, we invite members to be involved.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love all that. That’s that’s so good. I love love, talk is through kind of even practically so I understand that kind of meet meet the pastors. That’s has a high relational edge. This is one of the things we’ve seen, again, friends, as churches grow you actually have to work harder on the relational side of what we do. You have to be way more intentional about that. And so I love that. And then going into membership class, how long is membership class? Is that like multiple weeks? Is it one class, literally one unit, or is it like, you know, five weeks, or how does how does all that work?
Jon Delger — Right. We’ve played with different different lengths. Two to three weeks has been our our norm. So right now we’re at two weeks and that’s mostly because of kind of some practical reasons with the church calendar. Ah three weeks I think was probably better – that was probably the right place to be in terms of the membership class itself, but you got to balance that across other things going on. Um, so we’ve done it either as um, as a 3-hour thing, or a kind of 2-hour thing. And we’ve offered it sometimes we’ve offered it um on Sunday morning during one of our three worship services. Sometimes we’ve offered it as a Saturday morning thing. Other times we’ve done it as a couple of evenings. So we’ve done it a few different ways.
Rich Birch — Um, okay, that’s cool. Now are there any other kind of steps in the assimilation process that you you find that actually continuing to stay focused on the the DNA, or the culture of the church is, you know, is effective or important?
Jon Delger — Yeah, I would say another key one, and and normally you wouldn’t think of this as a part of the overall church assimilation process. But for me, it’s critical and that is our hiring process for staff.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, for sure.
Jon Delger — Um, you know with growing in attendance, you’ve also got to grow your staff. And so yeah, our staff has increased enormously over the last few years. And you know if we weren’t protecting who it is that comes on our staff, then we’re to our cultures going to change rapidly. So our hiring process has been very clear and distinct. Um, you know we do kind of the typical things you think of. We do a phone screen and then we do a minimum of two interviews for anybody, even if they’ve been at the church for 20 years, um, minimum of the interviews.
Jon Delger — The final interview is with ah with myself and the lead pastor – lead pastor, executive pastor. And by the time they get to that point, we’re asking only culture questions. Ah so, you know, we assume that talent and all that kind of stuff has been evaluated by this point. But they’re coming and they sit down. And I usually give them a speech um a little speech about a few different distinct aspects of the Peace staff culture. So I usually say—I’ll rattle them real quickly—I say hey, ah the the, you know, the Peace staff culture one one key point is that we are hopelessly optimistic. You may have been a part of other workplaces where people get cynical about initiatives that management bring. But here we say that we are hopelessly optimistic. When the lead pastor or the executive pasture get up and say here’s where we’re going, we’re going to take that hill. Nobody rolls their eyes and says yeah, that’s that’s cute. That’s the the initiative of the week. Everybody says, awesome! We’re doing that.
Rich Birch — Right. Let’s go. Yeah.
Jon Delger — Um and it gets done because the whole team believes in it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — Um, yeah, one of the things I say is that we are scrappy and stretchy.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Jon Delger — So those are kind of kind of kind of cheesy words for me, but you know so in our location we’re outside of the city. We’re in a little bit more of a country area um sort of on the the outside of the city. And so, you know, resources, financial resources are not quite as readily available as they would be in other parts of our area. I mean I’m not complaining – the Lord’s blessed us abundantly.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jon Delger — But we’re just not one of those churches that has lots of money…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — …sitting around. You know we are blessed. We have what we need. Um but you know I know of other churches that are our size and they’re actually asking the question, how do we spend all this money that God’s given us? That’s not really the question we ask.
Rich Birch — That’s not your problem.
Jon Delger — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Jon Delger — So so I tell our staff, hey guys we’re scrappy…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — …which means that we’re the underdog in the fight. You know, we have the resources God’s given us and we’re going to use them to the absolute maximum that we possibly can.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jon Delger — And then we’re stretchy in the sense that things are always changing and adapting, and you got used to that. We joke a lot about our office space. We make offices out of closets. We’ve got we’ve got 40 people on staff right now, and I think we’ve got probably what should be about offices for maybe 12.
Rich Birch — Sure..
Jon Delger — So I mean we just are packing everybody in whatever space they can go…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jon Delger — …and moving them all the time
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. We went through a similar phase where our lead pastor would joke. He would say this felt like the election campaign season of officing, like it was like we were our offices had that kind of like yeah, everybody’s just everywhere. You know, we, you know, even the idea of we had an office felt kind of like, okay you’re really stretching it. We have rooms where lots of people are packed into. But yeah, I love that.
Jon Delger — Totally.
Rich Birch — Yeah I think that’s great on the hiring piece. The other interesting thing too, I wonder, is um, are you seeing the dynamic…there’s this weird interesting dynamic that shifts that as the church grows, there was a time where you were just like amazed that people wanted to work for you. It is like, oh my goodness, people want to be on our team.
Jon Delger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. But then if you stay there, you’ll end up hiring people you shouldn’t hire. And what happens is eventually you have to change that polarity, and I find you have to discount their enthusiasm for working for you. You have to discount that in the conversation. It’s like, okay, that’s fine; I’m glad you’re excited, but we have to get to will, you know, will, you know, will you actually line up with our team culture, you know, performance, all that.
Jon Delger — Totally.
Rich Birch — Let’s stick with the staff thing for a second. What about on the other side someone gets hired and I’m sure this is purely theoretical, but let’s say you have someone who maybe is not aligning with the culture. You’re struggling to get them to kind of um, you know, align with what’s happening at the church. What does that process look like? How are you kind of helping people stay connected, stay plugged into the the mission, the vision. What is it God’s called Peace Church to look like?
Jon Delger — Yeah, yeah. So formally we have ah sort of three processes. One is our onboarding process that we put people through. Another one would be our leader development process. And these second two, not everybody goes through them, but we use them as needed. And then the final one, of course, is the um the PIP process…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jon Delger — …performance improvement process, which we hope for people not to land in, but they do sometimes. We try to do that well. So onboarding-wise um we use a few resources. We use ah The Ideal Team Player – we use that book, and so we walk every new staff member in their first ninety days. They either read that book or read I wrote a short so like a 4-page summary of it, so they have the option they can just read the summary if they want. And then they discuss that with their supervisor and what that looks like. And we also do quarterly we do a presentation on one aspect of ideal team player. So we use that just to kind of…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Jon Delger — …try to keep us on track and keep that as normal, everyday language of our staff.
Rich Birch — Is that like at your all-staff meetings, like it just it’s inserted…
Jon Delger — Yes.
Rich Birch — …in that month’s all-team kind of thing – here, we’re talking about this?
Jon Delger — Yeah, we do we do what we call Staff Chapel twice a month.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Jon Delger — Um, and so one of those presentations is ideal team player. Yeah, um. Yeah, and then yeah, just kind of the normal leader development process, especially with our upper level leaders, we try to just always be talking about who we are, and what it’s like to be part of the Peace staff and our culture, and just try to have I mean the way I kind of visualize is that we try to have a thick enough culture, it’s it’s sort of you could reach out and grab it in the air that it deters people or or um galvanizes people. You know, it either it either makes it really clear that they are supposed to be part of this, or that they’re not supposed to be part of this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well I I would assume I know that a part of this too is just even how you engage in kind of one-on-one meetings with your people. You provided a great resource for us here. This is a template to think about how to effectively lead ah, one-on-one conversations. Talk us through what do one-on-ones look like within Peace Church. How how do what’s the normal rhythm?You know, ah, what do what are your what do you tell tell your team to expect? Or what do you tell your managers to they’re required to have one-on-ones…
Jon Delger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and then let’s dive into this this particular resource. So helpful for folks.
Jon Delger — Yeah. Yeah, I hope it’s helpful to people. Um, it’s it’s been helpful for us just to clarify across the board what does a one-on-one meeting look like. And so what we say in it is that um, it’s the bread and bread and butter of meetings at Peace Church – that the one-on-one is where real work kind of happens between supervisor and staff member. We recommend that they’re twice a month, not every week we recommend. They’re 45 to 60 minutes long. And then I’ve given this as a presentation, and it’s in the document as well, but we talk about three aspects: care, clear, and coach.
Jon Delger — So care. You’re supposed to spend some time caring for your staff member. And I often say, you know, yeah we put we publish this document to the whole staff. So on the one hand, you know, that your supervisor is required to care for you. But I hope, you know, that that actually also comes from their heart.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jon Delger — I say that to my my direct reports. I do care about you. We put it on paper because I want to make sure it happens, and we don’t ever forget about it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Jon Delger — But I do care about you. I care what’s going on in your family and your personal life as well as professional.
Jon Delger — Then clear is kind of the to me it’s got kind of a dual meaning of on the one hand you’re kind of clearing the table,, clearing the things that um, that need to be checked off. But also you’re making sure things are clear, understandable, clarity. And so we use Asana as our project management management software. And so every meeting uses an Asana project and so we walk right through it. And so we um, you know, we check off things that we discuss or that we accomplished. We make notes in the comment section. We add subtasks. So that’s kind of the bulk of the meeting is you got your laptop out and we’re just walking through what are the discussions we need to have, and then writing down decisions we’ve made…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jon Delger — …which is, you know, so we don’t get to the next one-to-one meeting and it’s like, hey last meeting we talked about this, but what in the world did we decide to do? And we try to avoid that…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Jon Delger — …by by making records, and setting tasks, and knowing who’s responsible for what. That’s a big part of the one-to-one.
Jon Delger — And then coach. Coach.We say that supervisors you do have something to offer to your employees. We just gave that I just gave that that speech kind of at our last, we call them department leaders department leaders meeting. We talked about how supervisors, you know, I know because you are all so humble, which is awesome, that’s why that’s part of why you’re a great leader. But because of your humility I know it’s sometimes tempting. It’s like I don’t have anything to offer to these people. You know, I’m just here to kind of direct and kind of make sure they’re doing their thing.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jon Delger — Um, but no, you really do. You’re in your position because you have something to offer, so think about it, write it down, maybe shoot a video, or at least, you know, get on YouTube and find ah, thing that you’re thinking about that your staff member should hear. So we encourage that at most one-to-ones you’re providing some kind of resource – a video, an article, or just some kind of, you know, thought-provoking thing that you’ve thought of yourself.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. I love that distinction. I think particularly on that coach part, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone articulate that, that it’s like hey let’s make that a formal part of this. Like let’s actually ensure you’re coming to I love that push of like, hey you are ah, you’re you’re humble. You may not, but you’ve got all kinds of stuff going on in your head that has brought you to the place where you are where you’re leading today. Let’s just pass that on to other people. I think we often think of that at like a team level, or you know, at a kind of at a a whole church level. But I think that’s what that’s a great that’s great tool. Love that.
Rich Birch — Um and how often are you coaching your managers on one-on-ones? What does that rhythm look like? Is that like it just a normal part of your I’m assuming you are obviously modeling this with your people who then are modeling it down, but is there, you know, how often do you actually work through this, through three C’s with them?
Jon Delger — Yeah, good question. It’s maybe not as consistent as I would love.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jon Delger — It’s ah like you said with the main thing is trying to model it. And unfortunately I don’t always, you know, I’m just like every other manager, I get busy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jon Delger — And is tempting to let those one-to-ones become, hey what do you need from me? Okay, we’re done.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon Delger — Ah, you know it’s easy to let that happen. But that’s part of the reason that we give the guide to all staff so that supervisors and employees know what’s supposed to happen. Ah, that way we can kind of hold each other accountable a little bit when we’re, you know, if I do that to one of my staff, they can say, hey, you know, last couple of meetings it hasn’t been 45 to 60 minutes and we haven’t actually covered the three C’s.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — You know, they can say that to me so that’s an important part of it. Um, so modeling it we try to do. But then ah twice a month we have what we call our department leaders meeting. So that’s ah, that’s most managers. It’s our it’s our upper level managers. So there’s about there’s about eight of us in the room or so. And each of those meetings it’s a requirement, we have it on the Asana every time there’s a leader a leader development presentation, either by myself, or our family pastor, or our lead pastor. Um, and so one-to-ones is a regular topic brought up in those referred back to the three C’s. Um, but we use other topics as well. But that’s that’s the main thing where it probably comes through.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Um, now kind of stepping back in a slightly different direction. So there’s been, you know, accelerated growth over these last three years. Um, what happened four years ago like what what was it that kind of preceded this, you know, this growth?
Jon Delger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And, you know, what what’s your read on that? I know sometimes it’s hard. It’s like the it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar. But what what is it that has, you know, that shifted or changed or maybe you do have total clarity on what exactly that was?
Jon Delger — No great question. It’s it’s actually a little bit of a wild story. It’s ah so, you know, that was 2020 basically was the turning point for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Jon Delger — So um, you know, headed into 2020 we were we were experiencing growth, but it was it was probably you know 5 to 10 percent a year, which is still great.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing.
Jon Delger — You know, statistically across the nation. We’ve been at that. We were at we were at that rate probably steadily for the past ten years leading up to covid.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jon Delger — We’re at steady kind of growth five, ten percent – sometimes a little bit more. Um but in 2020 covid came um, restrictions in Michigan were heavy, so we we were shut down for a period of time. And actually during that period of time. The guy who was our lead pastor and who had been there for 10 years felt the call to go elsewhere.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jon Delger — So he moved elsewhere and right in the middle of 2020 the guy who was the executive pastor became the lead pastor. And then I was the community pastor and I became the executive pastor.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Jon Delger — So right in the middle of 2020 was that leadership change.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jon Delger — And then as we launched out of 2020, we we said a few different things. I think the main thing is just that people were so hungry for truth at that point.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jon Delger — And we happened to be a church that was just really really clear about what we believed about gender and sexuality and every other topic that the bible talks about, topic of life. And so ah, by January of 20… you know we had relaunched in the middle of 2020, under new leadership, and we thought, man, after you know, this this other pastor had been here for 10 years and we thought, you know, statistically we’re going to decline, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yes.
Jon Delger — We’re going to decline for a few years before we get going again. Um, and so we were…
Rich Birch — And a once in a hundred year pandemic. You know they’re throw that in there.
Jon Delger — …oh yeah, yeah, totally.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jon Delger — Yeah. We got going at 2020 and our new kind of leadership role’s thinking, all right, we’ll we’ll take it easy for a few years. You know, we’ll just kind of rebuild relationships get the get the foundation set again and and then we’ll, you know, kind of pick up and hopefully get growing again.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — And you know, we kind of had a very casual approach to things. And so we relaunched at maybe four five hundred after being at 800.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jon Delger — Um and then by January of 2021 we had already broken a thousand.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Jon Delger — And we’re running out of room. We actually after only two Sundays over over 1000 we made the decision to invest like 150 grand in in reshaping our worship center to seat more people. Um I think people were excited about the fact that we were going to respond to growth quickly and so more growth happened. Um and it just things just took off from there, and we just have been holding on for the ride.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s Amazing. That’s cool. What a cool story. Love ah, love hearing what’s happening at Peace Church. So cool to see and, you know, fun to hear about, you know, some of those pivots and changes. And that’s you know, hopefully encouraging for folks that are in who maybe are at the at that, you know they’ve just stepped into a role, they’ve just kind of reconstituted leadership. I think… so were both you and the current lead pastor were existing. How long had you been at the church? That’s kind of an interesting, piece of that puzzle.
Jon Delger — Yeah, he had been around for maybe seven years or so before that. And then I’ve got an interesting background. I had only been on staff for about a year um, but I had I actually grew up at this church as a kid.
Rich Birch — Um, ah, interesting.
Jon Delger — And so I’ve kind of been here and gone a few times. I went away during college, did youth ministry at another church, but in the area not too far away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jon Delger — And then I came back during seminary, did a 4 year internship as kind of like a pastoral resident kind of thing.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jon Delger — And then went out and was a pastor at two other churches – associate pastor and then lead pastor. And then I and then I got to come back in 2019, and then we rolled into this.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Jon Delger — So both of us had history and background.
Rich Birch — Well and then even your your seat at the table there, there is that kind of—um I’ve seen this in other contexts—there’s the ah, call him the the outsider insiders. They’re like you were you had an insider knowledge because you had been around. You knew the church. But had been outside for a while. And there’s that is a really valuable seat to be in because you give you all kinds of trust. You’re like oh that guy’s been around and he knows us, but you have experience to bring to bear that that can add a fresh kind of perspective and spin. Um, that’s great.
Jon Delger — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. That’s really cool to hear, and interesting. Well this has been great. Anything else you’d like to share, Jon, just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Jon Delger — Man, thanks so much for talking, Rich. Yeah, I I just hope and pray for everybody listening God’s blessings on your leadership out there, pray that God grows this church not just at Peace but everywhere.
Rich Birch — So good.
Jon Delger — Preach the gospel and I hope people come to know it and have eternal life.
Rich Birch — So good. Thanks, Jon, I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for being on. If people want to track with you or with the church where do we want to send them online?
Jon Delger — Yeah, peacechurch.cc is our main church website. Actually in January of 2024 we’re launching a platform called Resound where there’s gonna be more media coming out from Peace Church. We’re excited about that but peacechurch.cc is great place to find us and find resources like this.
Rich Birch — Thank you so much. Thanks for being here today, Jon.
Jon Delger — Thank you, Rich. Appreciate it, brother. It’s been a pleasure.
From First Fifty to New Frontiers: Mike Signorelli on Moving Your People to Deeper Levels of Commitment
Jan 25, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Mike Signorelli, Lead Pastor at V1 Church – one of the fastest-growing churches in the country with locations in New York City and other cities across the country.
Are you feeling stuck moving people at your church to increasing levels of commitment? Wondering how to manage the tension between evangelism and discipleship? Tune in as Mike shares the key to empowering your leaders and how to transition people to deeper engagement and growth.
Model the culture. // Are we teaching people to evangelize and lead lost people to Christ in their own lives outside the church? Are we helping them disciple people? Mike knew that New York City was a tough place for a church to grow and he felt strongly that leading the lost to Christ needed to be at the heart of V1 Church. In order to develop a culture of evangelism, Mike modeled the importance of it by living it out himself and leading the first 18 members of his church to Christ. As church leaders, we impart who we are. If we don’t do what we tell our congregation to do, we become the lid.
Discipleship in everything. // Mike also wanted V1 to be about ruthless disciple-making. At V1 Church they intentionally connect the word discipleship to everything going on at the church, from small groups to listening to sermons. Like most churches, V1 has an assimilation pipeline, however they also have a family tree framework that helps disciples make more disciples.
Inward to outward-focused. // Discipleship-focused churches can have a reputation for becoming too inward-looking. To counter this, Mike presents V1 Church’s process of guiding people through three distinct phases that help them move from inward-focused to outward-focused: hospital (healing), to family (belonging), to army (mission). This framework aims to shift the church’s focus outward, combating the consumeristic culture that often infiltrates American churches.
Finding healing. // When people come to Christ, they are coming broken because of the world we live in. As pastors, we want people to jump in and serve, but they can’t live beyond their level of health or be generous when they are in pain. The path to sustainable serving is to make people the healthiest version of themselves. At V1 they have a huge emphasis on therapy and counseling in the hospital phase, building value into a person’s life so they become healthy.
Selflessly lead them. // As they get healthy, people transition to family and start to think about others. Church leaders need to discern when to put people on assignment and recruit them to serve in the church. Transitioning from a family mindset to that of an army on a mission is crucial as it furthers the church’s mission and growth. However, if you recruit people without an attempt to get them healthy first, you’re being selfish. Instead we need to recruit people after selflessly leading them, showing them that we don’t want anything from them. Then we’re empowering them.
10 enemies. // Mike is giving us a free download called The 10 Enemies of Process that helps church leaders work through common barriers that could be stopping your church from moving forward. It’s a great resource to read and discuss with your team.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation with Pastor Mike Signorelli. He is from V1 Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and—I love this—they have a vision to be a global voice of the gospel to all people. I love that – a huge vision. Love it. They’ve grown from one location to multiple campuses nationally across from Long Island, New York City, Chicagoland, Miami with over a hundred revival homes, what they call revival homes globally. Mike and his wife Julie founded V1 Church. We’re super excited to have Mike on the show today. Welcome, sir, glad you’re here.
Mike Signorelli — Hey this is gonna be an amazing conversation. By the way we love your podcast…
Rich Birch — Oh thanks, brother.
Mike Signorelli — …so shout out to my entire team who already listens and is excited about this.
Rich Birch — Well this is a bit of a self-congratulatory moment. We’re actually celebrating 10 years of the podcast…
Mike Signorelli — Wow.
Rich Birch — …which is is crazy to me. And so one of the things I love is I’ve you know, kind of tracked with your church on and off over the years. And so, so fun, actually my assistant said, I’m reaching out to V1. And it was like I don’t even think she knew that we had we had we’ve you know, chatted a little bit, been together in some cohorts, and so super excited to have you on today. Well, why don’t you fill in the picture. Kind of tell us a bit about V1, tell us about your background, ah, you know fill in the picture for folks.
Mike Signorelli — Yeah, and I want to provide as much value as I can for the pastors and leaders listening right now, and so I’m gonna be super transparent and vulnerable.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Signorelli — Our church started with 18 people none none of which had a church before. I was their very first pastor.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mike Signorelli — And it’s because I led them to Christ. And so I have the engine of an evangelist and kind of like the heart of a shepherd. They were agnostics, atheists, Hindu, Muslim. And so primarily I was like how do I lead the lost to Christ because that would be the DNA of our church. And I wanted to make sure that the the DNA of our church wasn’t necessarily transfer growth, even though there’s nothing wrong with that in certain situations. It was like I want, you know, I believe that you impart who you are, right?
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — And so like you can tell your church to evangelize, but if you aren’t evangelizing, as my friend John Maxwell would say, you are the lid. It’s the law of the lid. And so I was like New York City is a tremendously hard place to have a church, and less than 3% identify as evangelical Christian out of the millions of people here. And so I was like I need to learn how to lead lost people to Christ myself…
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — …so I can impart that into my team. And so we started with 18 people. And I actually had moved from Northwest Indiana to New York City, sold my house, cashed out my retirement – one of those stories. And so then going coming into launch day, and I know there’s somebody listening who’s going to identify with this, I was like you know what? I’ve spent all this money on marketing, I’ve done the playbook for ARC—shout out Chris Hodges, who’s a friend of mine.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mike Signorelli — I did everything they said to do and I expected like okay at least the worst case scenarios 300 people show up.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mike Signorelli — And then the next week 150 will remain and we can be sustainable.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — So with with me selling my house, cashing out my retirement…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Mike Signorelli — …doing every everything God told me to do, we go to launch Sunday and we go from 18 people to 50. And I was suicidal.
Rich Birch — Yes, what is happening? Yes, oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Signorelli — I mean and I remember looking at that movie theater and seeing 50 people. And and mind you, my team is so ecstatic because none of them had ever had a pastor before.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — And so they’re thinking, like we just tripled, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes yes.
Mike Signorelli — And I’m like and so on the drive home, I’m so depressed. And my wife puts her hand on my shoulders, like Mike, it’s going to be okay. I’m inconsolable – leave me alone. Don’t even talk to me. I ended up getting three flat tires that day – that’s a whole nother story. And I don’t know if it was demonic but it was like kill mode, you know?
Rich Birch — Wow. Yes.
Mike Signorelli — So it’s like I get 3 flat tires and a parking ticket in New York City. And I remember just having to make my mind up like what is it really about. Because you know we measure, but God weighs, you know? And I remember the Holy Spirit dealing with me about like what if it what if it is 50 people. What if it is 100 people? Like can you learn to love the one? And what’s it all…So I had… it was a real soul searching time. Matter of fact, it took us it took us I think a year and a half to break a hundred.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mike Signorelli — And by the way, I was the executive pastor of a multisite megachurch before I moved to New York City, so I assumed I was going to save New York city and I was going to have this [inaudible]
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Mike Signorelli — And it’s it’s, you know, but in that season I I learned and another thing. And this is kind of a phrase we use in the V1 world. We go slow to go fast.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — And so there was something like fast success builds ego, but slow success builds sustainability.
Rich Birch — Oh good. That’s good.
Mike Signorelli — And for me it was like we go slow to go fast. And so I I came out of my mild depression and I was like, wait a second. What’s hard… where in the world is harder than New York City? And who’s winning there?
Rich Birch — Right. Oh that’s cool.
Mike Signorelli — You know because it’s almost like one of the things about like Christian…Yeah, like one of the things about Christian mission trips is oftentimes they’re for the Christians more than the people they go to serve, right?
Rich Birch — True, Very true.
Mike Signorelli — So my thing was like, you know what? Ah what is harder… so like a lot of times you go to these other countries and you’re like, man, once I see the way they live I feel all of a sudden I feel so much better about where I live. And so I and so I started looking to Muslim nations. I started looking to places where, you know, the odds were like what’s worse than 3%. And I started looking to 10/40 window and so then we switched our strategy to ruthless disciple-making.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s interesting. Right. Huh.
Mike Signorelli — So it was like disciples that make disciples that make disciples. And so I was like, you know, what evangelical American Western, you know, like those those models I think there’s tremendous value in them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — But for me I’m in a situation where it’s like it’s a both/and. It’s not it’s not like… so I didn’t ditch the ARC model. I didn’t ditch some of the things that tried and true, but it was like I need to it needs to become a both/and.
Rich Birch — Do both/and. Love it.
Mike Signorelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Oh I love that. That’s so good. I um, you know I love this idea of ruthless disciple making, going slow to go fast, hey we’ve got to really focus on the people that are in front of us. How do we what what that look like when you talk about ruthless disciple making? What does that look like for you? What it look like for you in that phase? And then, you know, what does it look like today? I also just want to put a pin in this, friends. We started by describing how you talk about the vision or how the church talks about the vision. A global voice of the gospel to all people. I love I’m going to look forward to drawing the line for people. How do you go from 50 on launch day to that huge vision. I love that. So but what did ruthless disciple making look like, what does that look like for you guys?
Mike Signorelli — Yeah, well and you know a lot of times in western American church it’s like we we have, you know, people who that we “release” to do certain things. So, oh so-and-so is leading a small group; so-and-so is preaching on Sunday. So and so… And and that’s appropriate because we do need a standard by which we you know, evaluate whether or not someone’s ready for influence. But then I think what’s missing is, but but like are we teaching people to evangelize and lead lost people to Christ in their own personal life and building a value around that? And then…
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — …are we helping them actually disciple people and how do they do that? So if you were to ask most Christians in America, have you led somebody to Christ? Probably they’d answer no and then amongst the ones that said yes, then you would say, well are you discipling them and what does that look like?
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — So so here’s what we started to do. Um because I don’t want any pastor listening right now to feel like I’m deconstructing their entire church. Because again I’m saying it’s both/and, it’s both/and.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — So the question used to be, how do you disciple people at V1, at V1 church? Now the question is, how do you not get discipled at V1 church?
Rich Birch — Oh I Love it. Love it. That’s great.
Mike Signorelli — So it’s like so it’s ubiquitous.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — And so it’s like it’s holistic. Discipleship is everything. So joining the dream team to serve as a volunteer is a form of discipleship, and we just say that. We’re going to disciple you through volunteer. Um going to a small group is a form of discipleship. But hey listening to Pastor Mike’s sermon on Sunday is also a form of discipleship. So there’s an intentionality of using the word discipleship, but connecting it to things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — …in a way that helps people understand, hey I don’t know if you missed it, but you were just discipled. And, Rich, were for years I would actually get up on stage and say, hey guys, I’m so excited to disciple you right now. And and they would be like, oh this is discipleship. Yes. And then ah and then the dream team leaders would be like, hey guys, I’m so excited we’re in our huddle before service starts. Let me disciple you. And it was almost like we just started narrating the moment and telling people you’re being discipled.
Mike Signorelli — But then another… Okay, so now that’s the both/and. But then another thing that we added in those early days was a system for tracking discipleship. And so in other words, there’s like a pipeline, but also a family tree. So you’ve heard about like the leadership pipelines. So the example of that would be people go to your assimilation. Maybe it’s growth track, and they become a member and then in that membership phase, they become a dream team participant. Now they’re like serving in in the parking lot, and then maybe the pipeline is they become a parking lot like leader, right?
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Signorelli — But so but that’s the pipeline. But then I think most churches don’t have a family tree.
Rich Birch — Hmmm. Oh.
Mike Signorelli — So like and I know this is kind of like nuanced and it might feel a little like mystical and new like new school, like like what is he talking about. But here’s what I would do. I would literally when I meet people who I know are faithfully attending my church, I would say hey I got a question for you. Who are you discipling right now.
Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, that’s great.
Mike Signorelli — So like let me give an example of super practical…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Mike Signorelli — I led this guy named Ayush to Christ who was a Hindu, multi-generational Hindu. And um, his dad had just died. And I was telling him I said, Ayush you can still have a dad. And he was like, how – my dad’s dead? I said, well, God wants to be your father through Jesus. And I gave a basic gospel message. So Ayush starts crying and he’s like, wow, that makes so much sense, like I feel something right now. And I’m like, Ayush, you’re feeling the love of the Father right now – this is… And um and so he accepts Jesus. I baptize him.
Mike Signorelli — And ah, but then Ayush says, Pastor Mike I’m so afraid to tell my mom and my my family that I’ve become a Christian, you know, because ah, you know, this is going to be devastating news because we’re all Hindus. And I say well, Ayush, unfortunately for you if you deny Christ before your family, he’s going to deny you before his father.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mike Signorelli — So I’m telling this New York City former Hindu, you’ve got you have to go tell your whole family…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Mike Signorelli — …that you are now a believer. So he goes and breaks the news to his family. They’re all bawling their eyes out. And then he comes back. He’s like okay, I did it. Am I a real disciple now? So like this is this is the gospel. And I’m like yeah…
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Mike Signorelli — …you’re willing to break your mom’s heart so you don’t break God’s heart.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mike Signorelli — Like that you are a disciple. But then once he starts stabilizing. And there’s fruit in his the fruits of the Spirit in his life, now I have to go to Ayush and say, Ayush, I got a question you, who have you led to Christ? You know, who are you discipling?
Rich Birch — Right, right. And let’s push it on. Yeah yeah, totally.
Mike Signorelli — Yeah, and so like we started creating the concept of like there’s leadership pipelines, I love that, I obsess over it. But then there’s family tree.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — And now I’m thinking. Okay Ayush, you maybe got rejected by your my your biological mother, your biological sister, but now you need to start creating a family tree. Who are you discipling? What does that look like?
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Well and I think there can be a there’s a there’s a tension that it and it’s a false dichotomy that is sometimes felt in churches where it’s like you have to either be, you know, heavily evangelism or heavy discipleship. You can’t do both. You can’t, you know, and and that’s that isn’t true. And we see that time and again with fast-growing churches that it’s like you realize, gosh, we’ve got to do both. We have to find a way to grow people up, to move them farther in their relationship with Jesus, partly because there are so many people coming in. Um, talk to me about one of the the um criticisms of a discipleship a heavily discipleship-oriented church is it can become kind of inward-focused. It can be about hey it’s just about inward kind of I’m gathering information, I’m you know, the stereotype—this isn’t actually true—but the stereotype is like it’s like ah it’s just a boat acquiring information. It’s just about acquiring trivial knowledge. How have you been able to push against that in your environment as you’ve been trying to increase discipleship at V1?
Mike Signorelli — Yeah, absolutely. And this is going to help a lot of pastors and leaders. So I look at people going through three distinct phases
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mike Signorelli — And it and it helps them go from inward focused to outward focused, as you… Because anytime there’s an obsession over self, that’s the fastest way to shrink and kill your church, you know? And and so we’ve got to get people outward focused. We have to get people thinking about other People. and and you know that’s a very hard thing to do because a lot of American culture in particular is extremely consumeristic. And so even so, for example, I tell people the the Lord’s prayer is actually we and our language, not me. So our father who is in heaven, you know, give us today our daily bread. So Jesus when he was discipling, he was using “we” language, “us’ language, “our” language. And to most Americans that’s mind blowing. They never even noticed it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — …because we’re all like me, me, me.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — So the three distinct phrases that I’m trying to graduate people through is hospital to family, family to army.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Mike Signorelli — And and I use that kind of language. And the reason why is because listen when people come to us, they are broken and they’re coming to the hospital. And I will tell you so my brother is a nurse and he gave me this acronym that nurses sometimes use for pain. And it’s Pay Attention Inside Now. So like for example, Rich, if I were to kick you in your stomach as hard as I could, you know…
Rich Birch — Ah, yes, thank you.
Mike Signorelli — …yeah a good friend. You know as soon as I would do it, you would become the most selfish person in that environment…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — …because you would say this pain…
Rich Birch — You got nothing else to think about. Yeah.
Mike Signorelli — …there’s nothing else I can think about.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — So usually selfishness is an indicator of pain. So it’s like the most selfish people…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good right.
Mike Signorelli — …are the most the people in the most pain.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — As matter of fact and you know how I know that? Because I was raised by a single mother on welfare social assistance in a trailer park, marked multiple abusive stepdads, and so I was in a lot of pain. So even when I became a pastor, I was a selfish pastor because I was still in pain. And it’s funny because you can’t be generous when you’re in pain.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — You you can’t give financially because it’s like well I need I I I… And that’s why Jesus puts an example on the woman who gives two mites because, man, her her situation, being a widow, would demand pay attention inside now. I’m in a lot of pain. So that woman did a supernatural act by being generous and selfless in the midst of all that pain.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s good.
Mike Signorelli — So well, here’s my thing though: you don’t you don’t tell people are hurting, stop hurting. You know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — Like what kind of a psychopath would I be if I was like, Rich, stop…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — You know, Stop stop, you know, acting like that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — Because, you know, what’s what’s the natural posture of somebody in pain. They get smaller. So you would if I kicked you in your stomach you would go you would become smaller.
Rich Birch — Yeah, buckle over? Yes, yes.
Mike Signorelli — You would buckle over.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mike Signorelli — And if I said, like stop doing that, you know… So I think a lot of us as pastors, we’re trying to tell people who are in pain stop doing that posture. I need you to serve on the dream team. I need you to serve. I need you to give more financially. I need… And they’re like, I can’t.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mike Signorelli — Like I can’t do anything other than this posture.
Rich Birch — So what does that look like? So I love this, you know, hospital, family, army. So in the hospital phase, what are you doing to try to help people, or what is that kind of practically how does that work itself out to kind of help people move people from hospital to family?
Mike Signorelli — Yeah, and I think this is a tweak on Chris Hodges’ stuff and I’ve talked to him about that at length.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Signorelli — Yes, we believe in assimilation, but assimilation without healing is not going to produce sustainability.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Mike Signorelli — Because people can’t live beyond their level of health.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — So it’s like you’re trying to ask people to do healthy behaviors that aren’t healthy. So what that looks like for me is is, and I’m just going to be brutally transparent right now. Some people come to you like Mary Magdalene. And my friend Robert Morris understands this – they call it Freedom Ministry. Some people may need to get free from demonic oppression.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — There there may be things in their life that’s like man… But guess what, Rich, sometimes it’s not a demon; sometimes it’s mental health. And so in the V1 world I have mental health counselors all that, all over the United States, that we send people on scholarship journeys. And we have a whole budget for our church to be like we’re going to pay for you to go to biblical-based, you know, therapy and counseling for months, if we have to. And we’re making these massive investments in people to get them healthy. And so what that looks like is scholarshipping people from for counseling. Um and and basically like growth track for us looks like a diagnosis, not just assimilation.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Mike Signorelli — So we’re like, hey that person’s marriage is jacked. We need to send them to marriage counseling for a minimum of eight weeks, and we’ll pay for it. Hey that person we think that person’s demonized. They need to get deliverance. They need to get free. And we need to teach them. Because, hey, Rich, listen I’m sorry to say it, but the new age and occult practices are ubiquitous now. People know their sign, but they can’t quote you a scripture.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — You know my good friend, Mike Todd, I helped him through a session that he did at his last Transformation Conference to get people to stop participating in new age practices, like…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Mike Signorelli — So people are coming to us like jacked up. So my goal practically is do you need to go through Freedom, like you would at Robert Morris, or Transformation Church. Do you need to go through um ah counseling you know, ah extended therapy and counseling biblical-based um. Here’s another one, and this is scandalous, but churches need to start thinking like this: do we need you to um, do we need to put some resources in your life for your physical body? And and what does that look like? And so you know, um in V1 world, we might say, hey there’s somebody that will come alongside of you and go on a journey with your with you in ah in your physical body. We have stories of like people getting free.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mike Signorelli — So think about this and this is the vision the Lord gave me. And obviously you could tell I’m more apostolic.
RIch Birch — Sure.
Mike Signorelli — I don’t go by the title but like I love to activate and empower people.
RIch Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — And so like in the 90s the reason why the mall, the concept of a mall was so huge in the United States was because your entire family could go and there were stores for each like niche. So like I kind of look at the local church as a mall where it’s like, hey I don’t specialize in the body, but I do have pastors and staff members that do that will that they love. They’ll love to help you figure out your diet and a workout regimen. You know? Or I’ve got like our church doesn’t do biblical-based counseling well, but I learned this from TD Jakes at The Potter’s House. He has a whole arm that does counseling.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — So it’s like but we will refer you and if finances are a barrier, we’ll pay for it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we’ll help you with that. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Signorelli — And and and so a scripture in Proverbs says the world of the generous gets larger and larger. And the world of this stingy gets smaller and smaller. So as a church we’re like, hey let’s become generous with our gifts. And provide these resources for each other. And so the example and this is like, you know, and then I’ll kind of kick it back to you. But the example is in the 1800s you have that doctor that does house visits – one doctor with the black bag that comes around from house to house. Now here’s the thing…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — It feels so good for that man to walk into your house and you get personal care.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — But you still might die because he’s not he’s an expert in nothing.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.
Mike Signorelli — In the new school hospital has like state-of-the-art cancer facility, state-of-the-art ah postpartum birthing facilities. So really, what V1 has become is so what the what the people want me to be is the doctor that goes from house to house.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — Oh I personally know my pastor. But what I’ve refused to do is let me generalize in everything but specialize in nothing. And so now V1 church becomes a state of the art facility where it’s like, hey I don’t specialize in marriage, but I know someone who does.
Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s…
Mike Signorelli — And that’s another form of discipleship.
Rich Birch — Love it. We’re going to come back to that. I want to come back to that as an idea, but I I want to stick for a second to that this transition of family to army. So I love that. I think you’re raising all kinds of good questions around, Hey you know, if our so our assimilation process is just about pushing people ultimately to get on a team and we’re not addressing, Hey what what’s actually happening within them, man, we’re just setting ourselves up for a failure. I think that’s a really big thought we need to wrestle with. Ah John Mark Comer, I love – he talks about this one of these great ironies of the New Testament is it would appear like for the first 3-, 400 years, well it’s clear the first 3-, 400 years the Christians were pacifists. They they really resisted um, using any kind of force. And but ironically there’s all of this New Testament text that talks about us as soldiers and an army and on mission and, you know, there’s a ton of that language there. Um, which is is a bit of an irony. But how do we how do we help move people who are connected in our church from thinking about this just as a family, but ultimately to a to an army on task, trying to get out and do something. What does that look like for V1?
Mike Signorelli — Yeah, and I’ll try to give you just a super practical answer. But it’s funny because there’s this big trend in Christianity to talk about sabbath, to talk about rest.
Rich Birch — True.
Mike Signorelli — We like, you know, like if you want to like if you’re listening and you want a viral sermon series, do one on rest.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — Because Christians obsessed over that. Never mind the fact if you don’t use it you lose it in your physical body.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — So like if, you know, the muscles atrophy with too much rest, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — And so here’s what that’s revealing. It’s not that we need more rest. It’s that we need proper rhythms. And so like I think for me practically it’s like the way to get people to serve sustainably is to make them the healthiest version of themselves.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Signorelli — So like so what we’re doing is on the frontend, we’re frontloading with so much value, like I mentioned. That’s the hospital phase. We’re like, we will do anything it takes to get you healthy in the front end. So people’s earliest engagement with our church is not, hey meet our celebrity pastor. It’s hey, meet the team of people that we are assigning to your life to get every area healthy.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Signorelli — Then what happens is we’re building so much value in their life, then as they get healthy, the the thought organically starts bubbling up, man, how could I do this for other people?
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — How could I join like, you know, I want to be like the person who helped me. And then that’s when they, now watch though, that’s when they start becoming family, like I belong here. And…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — …these people really care about me and I couldn’t even help them because of the state that I came in, but now their help… But then right when we get at that point that’s when our team starts discerning, Okay, we’ve got to start putting them on assignment. Because as you know, if we stay in the family phase, number 1 that’s not biblical because the early church was adding daily. They were constantly expanding; healthy things grow, but we got it but… Because, you know, we don’t want to be incestuous, right? So then that’s when we start intentionally telling them, hey you were ah when we first met you, you were a heroin addict. We took you, you know, we took you through this long phase. Now you’ve been sober for a year. What would it look like for you to facilitate a connect group for other people who are struggling with addiction?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — And what we found, Rich, is that people will most likely will not think that thought on their own. It needs to be sowed into their mind.
Rich Birch — Intentional. Yeah.
Mike Signorelli — That’s why like Jesus walked up to them and said, hey, I’ve got an idea I know you’re a fisherman, but I will make you a fisher of men. He had to sow that idea. He had to recruit because that’s that’s not a natural thought. So I think a lot of pastors right now are probably getting their mind blown because they think—and and this is I feel like this is going to be the mic drop statement of the whole podcast for somebody—is they think I have served these people so well. When are they going to start serving our house and why does that that just happen um, automatically? Guess what pastor. It’s it’s not going to happen.
Rich Birch — No. That’s good.
Mike Signorelli — And it doesn’t make these people selfish.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — These people love you, they love their church, but they will become selfish unless you transition them. And then you train your leaders to transition them. So it’s ah it’s the culture of V1 to to go out into the the population and say hey, have you ever thought about leading a connect group? Hey, have you ever thought about serving you know and being a leader…
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s good.
Mike Signorelli — …on the dream team. And it’s like that’s a cultural thing. Jesus recruited so you’re going to have to recruit. .
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Signorelli — But watch this: if you recruit them without ah, an attempt to to get them healthy and build value in their life, you’re selfish. But if you do recruit them after you’ve shown them that you don’t want anything from them and you’ve selflessly led them, now you’re empowering them.
Rich Birch — Oh so good, so good.
Mike Signorelli — So yeah.
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s great. Love it. That is so good. There’s a lot packed in there. And, you know, I remember years ago I heard this one pastor where we were he was talking about harvest and the idea of the harvest. And like we’re you know we’re excited about our churches seeing a huge harvest. And and and he made this point that I was like, oh gosh I’ve never thought of it that way, is he said, you know, most of us in this room are are don’t come from an agrarian culture.
Mike Signorelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We don’t come from a place where we had to harvest. And our impression of the harvest is like that’s when all the good things happen. And and then he he points, is anybody here been a farmer? And there’s like one guy raises his hand. He’s like well what happens at harvest? And the and the farmer says, we work really hard. Like that’s, you know, and and that’s true. Like I think I’ve often thought like harvest, sure I want to have a harvest, but it’s like man really what it is is you got to lean in and it’s the same kind of army intensity. I love that.
Rich Birch — I want to come back to this idea that, hey your people—and and this is so true—um, your people are looking for you to be a pastor, to be the like jack of all trades, master of none. Do everything. Talk to a leader who’s experiencing that today, that you have gone through this transition from pastor of a church of 50 people. Um, and that’s a major kind of milestone head thing that people mindset that people have to get their that pastors have to get their head around. I’ve got to not make all roads lead to me. I’ve got to find ways to empower other people. Talk us talk to a pastor who’s in that and is struggling with that today. How do how how can we get our heads around ensuring that we’re positioning ourselves correctly and not actually giving into that um with our people?
Mike Signorelli — Well yeah, and you know here’s the thing. It’s with a lot of empathy I say this because probably the pastor does do it better, you know? I mean that’s the reality of it and a lot of pastors that I know they can sing, play multiple instruments, preach a phenomenal sermon, take up the offering and more money comes in than if somebody else does it. But what happens is you’re winning in the short term, but then you’re losing in the long run.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — And I can’t tell you how many pastors didn’t finish strong because they weren’t raising up children. And here’s the thing, it’s like you’ve got… the way I look at it is um, if they can do it 70% as well as I can, and then I can take them on a journey of development. And I think that’s just part of it – changing their poopy diapers, you know, crying with them, laughing with them. But if you raise up if you if you build a culture of training and development, then what’ll happen is eventually once you do get a couple of layers of spiritual children in your leadership, they will then start policing the culture for you. And they’ll start filling in the blanks and it becomes easier and easier as you go.
Mike Signorelli — I didn’t know that in the early days. It’s just somebody would go up on stage and say something. I’d say oh they just destroyed my entire ministry. Yeah, you know, because they would say something stupid. And I’d be like ah got to fix that.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes, yes, yes.
Mike Signorelli — But here’s the thing like you’re either going to deal with the pain of doing it all yourself or the pain of development of other people.
Mike Signorelli — And you have to choose your pain. You’re not getting out of pain. It’s either the pain of like I got to do this all myself, or it’s the pain of oh no, they said something stupid or they did something. And what I’ve learned is that if you’re willing to go with the pain of development, eventually that becomes a lesser pain.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — And that and so because now like okay watch I’ve got a campus in Miami. I’ve got a campus in Bakersville, California, Indiana I got a campus in Long Island, New York City. I cannot physically be in those places.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Signorelli — But what I’ve done over time, through development and training and releasing and imparting to people, is create a situation where, like Jesus said, it’s better that I go. And and they they couldn’t understand that, like what do you mean? You’re Jesus. It’s better that you go? And most pastors their mantra would be, it’s better that I stay.
Rich Birch — Right. Oh gosh.
Mike Signorelli — And so if we’re really going to be like Jesus, we’ve got to create ah a culture in our church where it is actually better that we go.
Rich Birch — Right. So good.
Mike Signorelli — And and what I mean by that is um, you know, it’s it’s you will do greater things. And a lot of that for me comes from like I mentioned before I never had a dad. I’m a first generation pastor. Nobody invested in my church. I started it with the 18 people. And I just thought like you know what? I’m going to be what I never had.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — And I and I and I felt like people didn’t believe in me, people didn’t understand me. And I was like, I’m going to be… and I was jacked up emotionally. So a lot of V1 is really me trying to be for people what I wish so badly a church was for me. And it’s with that empathy that we’ve grown. Because now, for me, I love preaching, Rich. That’s one of my favorite things, but you know what I love more than preaching? I love watching somebody I train to preach crush it. And I’m that like soccer mom on the side of the field just screaming them down being like yeah because now you know…
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli — Now I can and and you listen what how I know that I’m headed in the right direction, because I haven’t arrived yet. I mean I’m still failing forward. But I I was on vacation one Sunday and we broke an attendance record.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Mike Signorelli — And I just laughed and I was like, okay Jesus I’m learning.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. I love that. We we had a very similar thing when I was at Liquid, just around the corner from you. We went away, the we our leadership team went away for a weekend.
Mike Signorelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And we were visiting another church and that was, you know, super rare. You get all the folks that lead this thing we all went and visited another church. And it was like, you know, there was like I should we really do this kind of thing. And and it was the same thing. We had ah we set record attendance that weekend, record up until that point, record revenue as well. And and I said that on Monday, Tuesday, I was like it’s like the Lord was saying like, hey guys, let’s just remember it’s not about us. It’s about something else. I love that. That’s this is so good, Mike.
Mike Signorelli — Well and let me just tag this on there…
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Mike Signorelli — …because I think this is a phenomenon is the spiritual children, they want to make you proud.
Rich Birch — Oh sure. Yeah.
Mike Signorelli — So like they’ll overcompensate. So it’s like oh, Rich and the team are gone. Let’s show them what we got.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Signorelli — And then they’ll try in in their their elbow grease will get them further. So it’s like sometimes you got to factor that in where they’ll scrap these big wins for you because they want to make you proud.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. Well and I love that. You said something there that really resonated with me as well as when you said, you know, I think, you know, we should be like Jesus and say it’s better for me to go. And I think in some ways some of our cultures have that completely inversed where we actually highly value the person who just stays. It’s like they’ve been there for 40 years. They’ve, you know, they’re the person who’s done the same thing for 40 years. And there’s there’s a real dark side to that, which means they have not raised anyone else up. They have not brought anyone behind them. And so yeah, love that, Mike. What a great, great encouragement.
Mike Signorelli — Thank you.
Rich Birch — Well just as we’re as we’re closing down um I I what I want to hear from you, just kind of final moments. But we also have ah this great PDF, fantastic read for folks called “The 10 Enemies of Process”. Tell us a little bit about this. I appreciate you just giving giving us this this resource, but tell us a little bit about that as we close up today’s episode.
Mike Signorelli — There’s probably, well there’s probably so much that people are thinking like I want to try the things that they talked about in the podcast. And if you have a barrier to actually accomplishing it, there’s probably ten barriers or ten reasons why it’s not happening. And matter of fact I mean I’ve done this leadership talk “The 10 Enemies of Process” at literally the second largest church in America and other places, and and it would even be worth you guys literally reading it and having a discussion with your team, with your staff, because it’s going to hit on things like self-pity.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Signorelli — You know like some of those reasons we’re like why is this… how can I not get them from hospital to family to army? Why am I not transitioning them? It’s one of these ten things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Mike Signorelli — And so I just wanted to make that available just ah, just to love on you.
Rich Birch — I appreciate you doing that. I really appreciate that. I thought the exact same thing. I was going to say that same thing. To me I think this is a great It’s like a ready to use leadership resource. Listen friends, I endorsed it. I took some time to read it before this. You don’t even have to read it ahead of time. Send it to your leadership team and say, hey we’re going to meet next week; we’re going to talk about this. I think it’d be great to be a great blessing for you as you. And I really appreciate, Mike, you putting that together. So as we’re wrapping up, anything else you’d love to say just as we close today’s episode?
Mike Signorelli — No, you know, I’m praying that people are encouraged because um, really for me, like I said, I’m the least likely to even be achieving these things. When when we hit these statuses of fastest growing church, we literally our team cried. Because for us it was not the accumulation of numbers. It was the accumulation of stories.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli —And so like if you have in your heart right now, well I don’t, you know, these people are obsessed with church growth. Actually, no. I think what I want to reframe it is like God wants to give you more stories.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Signorelli —Your life carries more testimonies. And that’s why we cried because we knew the stories of these lives. And that’s really what I think the heart of the Father is for many people. So I’m cheering you on. I’m shouting you guys down, and I can’t wait to hear the testimonies even from this podcast.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Mike. If people want to connect with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Mike Signorelli — Um, yeah I would say maybe go to my website. It’s mikesignorelli.com. I’ve got more resources there, a lot of blogs and different things. And matter of fact I just want to sneak this in real quick.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Signorelli — Rich, really I believe we we are living in the fruit of your yes. And I mean, you know, this but I’ve like forced my team to do so many of your trainings, and we’ve regarded your stuff as like the best of the best.
Rich Birch — Oh so sweet of you. Thank you.
Mike Signorelli — And so this this was the full circle moment because I think when we were only two campuses deep is when I started engaging you and being like, guys, everything Rich is put out, consume it, learn it, I’m quizzing you on it. So I just want to publicly honor you and acknowledge…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s sweet.
Mike Signorelli — …your hard work because we are the byproduct of that.
Rich Birch — Oh I appreciate that, Mike, that’s super kind to you to say that. And yeah I’m like I say I’m a fan from afar. Love what you guys do. Love cheering on V1, and it’s fun to see. And there’s a lot of other stuff we could have talked about today ah, but I really appreciate you really serving our audience and and jumping in. So again I just will we’ll put a link in the show notes mikesignorelli.com – love to send you over there. There’s lots of great stuff there. Thanks for being here today, Mike.
Mike Signorelli — Thanks for having me.
Revitalizing Invitation: Strategies for Engaging Your Church Community
Jan 24, 2024
Today’s episode is unique and particularly close to our hearts as we address a question from one of our listeners, Drew Williams, head pastor at New Life Lutheran Church. This direct engagement with our audience not only reinforces our community’s interconnectedness but also grounds our discussion in real-world church leadership scenarios.
Drew’s church, nestled in the rural landscapes of northwestern Illinois, has witnessed substantial growth, expanding from 200 to nearly 300 members in just a year and a half. This growth, while commendable, has surfaced challenges in nurturing an inviting culture, particularly among long-standing members. Drew’s concern echoes a common sentiment in many churches: How do we encourage our congregation, regardless of their tenure, to actively invite and engage new people?
Storytelling: The Heart of Engagement Storytelling is a powerful tool in any church leader’s arsenal. By sharing stories of members who have successfully invited others, we can create a ripple effect of inspiration throughout the congregation. These stories, whether shared during sermons or as part of the church announcements, can ignite a passion for invitation and demonstrate the tangible impact of such actions.
Focused Teaching: The Leader’s Role As church leaders, our words and teachings hold significant weight. Regularly integrating the theme of invitation into our messages can reinforce its importance. It’s about more than occasional mentions; it’s about making invitation a consistent part of our teaching, helping the congregation see it as a natural and essential aspect of their faith journey.
Magnetic Community Service: Beyond the Church Walls Engaging in community service provides an excellent avenue for members to invite others. Activities that serve the community are not only fulfilling but also present less intimidating opportunities for newcomers to experience the church community. These acts of service act as a bridge, connecting the church to the broader community in meaningful and impactful ways.
Conclusion: A Journey Towards Growth
In summarizing these strategies, it’s clear that revitalizing our church’s invite culture is a multifaceted endeavor requiring persistence, creativity, and commitment. The journey is ongoing and evolves as our church grows.
As we draw this episode to a close, we extend an invitation of our own. Our upcoming book, “Unlocking Your Church’s Invite Culture,” delves deeper into these strategies and more, offering a comprehensive guide to cultivating a vibrant inviting environment in your church. For more details and to be the first to get your hands on this resource, visit www.unlockinviteculture.com.
Thank you for joining us in this exploration of church growth and community engagement. Your dedication to expanding your church’s reach and impact is not just commendable; it’s essential to the spread of our faith. We’re excited to see how these strategies come to life in your communities and look forward to hearing your stories of growth and engagement.
Pastoral Transitions: Matt Davis on Best Practices in Moving Members Off Your Team
Jan 18, 2024
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. This week we are talking to Matt Davis, the President and Chief Pastoral Officer at Pastoral Transitions. This ministry exists to help churches love and support their outgoing pastors and their families. They provides transition services to help pastors continue their life ministry for building God’s kingdom.
Every pastor serving in ministry is temporary; at some point each of us will transition out of our roles. How can churches prepare for staff transitions that will honor and love people well and encourage unity rather than division? Matt casts vision for how to care for pastors and their families well during this painful time in their life.
Are they planted in the right place? // Before considering the transition of a staff member from your church, Matt says to look at the church as a garden. A lot of care has gone into planting someone in their role. However, sometimes that person needs to be transplanted to another space in the garden in order to thrive and grow the kingdom.
Wear both hats. // Ministry is more than an employee/employer relationship and often develops into friendship. Sometimes you may need to wear the boss hat and talk with a person about their performance. Don’t surprise someone by immediately letting them go. Have an ongoing conversation about changes that need to be made. If there’s no change after three to six months, explain that you need to discuss a change in their employment. But then also put on the friendship hat and let them know that you care and how hard this decision is.
Help with the transition. // Pastoral Transitions steps in on a pastor’s last day in a ministry role and helps a church’s leadership message the transition well. Matt writes the pastor a letter that welcomes them into the season of transition and lets them know that he and his group will be working with them to provide the practical and emotional support needed.
Career, coaching, and counseling. // Pastoral Transitions works with the pastors in the areas of career, coaching, and counseling. In the area of career, Pastoral Transitions first looks at what it is that the pastors are equipped to do and what transitional skills they have as a pastor. Pastoral Transitions also does assessments with pastors to help them find any blind spots they need to address. They encourage pastors that there is life after ministry.
Where is God leading? // The coaching aspect helps pastors focus on where God is for them in this season. In addition to life coaching, pastors work through leadership development with Townsend Leadership, and financial coaching with Thrivent.
Work through the emotions. // Pastoral Transitions has a network of therapists across the country, not only for pastors, but also for their spouses and kids. Over six months Pastoral Transitions works with outgoing pastors to help them transition and work through the pain they may have from their change in employment.
Beyond Severance. // Matt is offering the free download Beyond Severance: 3 Must-Have Resources for Ministry Transitions. This resource walks through best practices for offboarding and how to approach these transitions with empathy, grace, generosity, and a focus on unity.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. This is going to be a great episode. Uh, this is one of those questions that I get, uh, you know, I have a list of things that people over the years have said you should talk about this, that I have not done something on. And, uh, because and frankly, this one is because I don’t know what to do about it, because it’s, uh, it’s just it feels like a quandary. And so we had to get an expert on somebody who would actually help us with this, rather than just my opinions. Uh, so we’ve got Matt Davis with us. He’s from an organization called Pastoral Transitions, and they’re a ministry that exists to help churches love and support their outgoing pastors and their families. They provide transition services to help pastors continue their life in ministry, uh, for building God’s kingdom. So this really is going to be a good conversation. Matt is a teaching and executive pastor for more than two decades in Orange County. Super honored to have you here today. He’s the President and Chief Pastoral Officer at Pastoral Transition. Welcome, Matt. Glad you’re here today.
Matt Davis — Hey, thanks a lot, Rich. Good to be here.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and then and then kind of give us a sense of the scope of Pastoral Transitions. What do you guys do?
Matt Davis — Yeah. So after being in ministry at a larger church in Orange County for more than 20 years, having been everything from an intern to a children’s pastor to youth pastor, then my marriage had some trouble. They made me the marriage pastor because we survived through it.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Matt Davis — You know, then I was the teaching pastor and executive pastor. And, uh, in those positions, you know, that it’s a difficult spot because sometimes you have to let people go. And so I’ve made my own share of mistakes, but it wasn’t really until I found myself on the other end of a pastoral transition. And long story short, I earned my way out of ministry. And though I had been there for 22 years, I was friends with all the guys on the elder board and the executive team and all those folks, and we really wanted to do things well. The outcome of that was it was really hard. It was really difficult. And found myself asking these questions like, well, what do I do now? Um, if I’m not a pastor, what am I going to do? What does life look like after ministry? Is there life after ministry? And we went through this triage of trying to figure out, uh, those next steps. And so really the those next steps became what we created, Pastoral Transitions to be.
Rich Birch — Cool. Well, let’s let’s dive in. Why is this an area of so much pain? Like, why does what are the dynamics? Talk us through there. Why why is it that so many, you know, staff and pastors leave churches and it seems like there’s pain on both sides or all sides? It’s like with the person themselves, with their their family, with the church, um, maybe with, you know, volunteers. It kind of is everywhere. It’s like there’s there’s pain all around. Why is that? Why does that happen at churches?
Matt Davis — There’s a lot of stakeholders in the process. And I liken it to I think the church is really good at on-ramps. We bring people in really well. It feels holy and sacred. The elders are part of the process. It’s very prayerful. We’re very open about it. We we, we have, you know, the pastors for that, lots of paperwork and lots of interviews and lots of potluck lunches after service to get to know the new person. It’s almost like a castle and coronation day, right? And the kingdom is alive. And there’s banners that are furled out, and there’s the laying on of the hands, and it’s almost as if, you know, we lay on the hands and we now say, I dubbed thee pastor. And it’s this beautiful moment.
Matt Davis — But that exit, that off-ramp, uh, that what was once a thriving and beautiful kingdom that felt welcoming as the drawbridge comes back up and closes, you see this outgoing pastor and their spouse and their family, and they’re walking away from this castle, and it’s very dark. And what that that castle has now turned into a fortress, and it has closed the door. And now it’s like, well, good luck with your life. We’re going to give you, you know, a month or two of severance and, uh, we wish you well. We’ll pray for you. And and that’s the point where we have a lot of folks in the church who loved that pastor who start to light their torches and say, what are you doing to that person I love? And, and and they, they feel it comes from a place of empathy.
Matt Davis — And I think that what we have, especially in ministry leadership, whether it’s and we work with churches or non-profits or higher-ed, but anywhere I say where, where the kingdom where the church can mess things up, we want to be able to help in those transition spaces so that we can do it better. Because while it’s prayerful and elder-run and and it’s it’s sacred going in, that that outgoing pastor is dealing a lot more with legal and HR, and that transparency and church culture that we tried to create. It’s like, hey, we have open doors and we love everybody here. All of a sudden when we have somebody who’s leaving staff, it all of a sudden becomes very quiet. We don’t really know what’s going on. There’s lots of closed doors, lots of hushed meetings. There’s there’s shame involved sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like we’re being very truthful. So how do we actually make this a process, from the very beginning, that that says, look, we’re going to bring you on this way, and there is going to probably come a day when you’re not going to be here anymore. And we promise to honor you and give you the dignity that you deserve as a fellow, like person, part of the family, the body of Christ that you deserve.
Rich Birch — Hmm. Okay, I love that. That’s so great. And, you know, I think this is one of those areas, you know, we joke at unSeminary that, you know, it’s the stuff they didn’t teach you in seminary.
Matt Davis — Right.
Rich Birch — And on a more, say, a performance-based departure, if there’s a pastor who’s, you know, kind of paint a picture, let’s say I’m an executive pastor and there’s a team member on our team. And, and let’s say I’m starting to walk them through a, a reasonable performance-based process where it’s like, hey, we’ve documented, we’ve had a conversation. Hey, here’s some areas where they’re not going, well. We’ve maybe done that for a month or two, and I suspect, and we’re just not seeing on the other end this thing is just not, they’re not, we’re just not seeing the performance that we’re looking for.
Rich Birch — And I suspect oh, it’s gone from like, okay, I’m coaching this person to now in the documentation, I’m starting to use language like, if we don’t see this change we might need to come towards a transition. Give me some coaching. What should I be thinking about in that moment to make this, you know, kind of the best practice, the honoring this other person? How can I kind of lead that when I’ve, you know, assume that I’ve, I’ve been leading to this point in a reasonable way? It’s not like this isn’t like I woke up one night, I had a bad burrito last night, and I’m like, okay, I’m getting rid of that guy tomorrow. It’s like we’ve actually been walking through. We’ve been having a reasonable process. It’s been documented. We’ve had multiple months of that. We’ve been having these conversations. I’m starting to think, okay, this isn’t we’re not seeing a turnaround. I need to actually start this conversation. What would some of your coaching be to us as we’re thinking about that, to make it kind of as painless or as positive as we possibly can, for both us and this person?
Matt Davis — Well, let’s say from the get go, you’ve already done a little bit of the work because you have been in a process of trying to fix what’s broken, right, what’s not working. So sometimes it is just it’s a fit issue, and you’re a youth pastor, but you don’t like youth, so we gotta we need to make a change.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Matt Davis — So oftentimes, you know, someone will come to us, an elder board, somebody will come and they’ll say, hey, we’re having an issue. We have a worship leader that can’t sing. It’s like, okay, well, um…
Rich Birch — That’s a problem.
Matt Davis — …we’re not just trying to help them get rid of somebody. But the first question is, can we actually avoid a transition? Um, what have you done as far as leadership development to try to actually fix the issue? So if we don’t have that issue, if we can’t solve that issue, I think that there’s a couple of approaches. Number one, I would say rather than this castle motif, I think we need to look at this as more like a garden, right? Like that somebody’s…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Matt Davis — …been planted in there and there’s a lot of care that’s going into that garden. But sometimes somebody needs to be transplanted. And and they’re just not growing. They might not be in the sun in that spot. They… But we also talk about this idea of wearing different hats. And the weirdness in ministry is that because there is this ministry aspect, we’re growing the kingdom, our faith. It’s it’s very integral to who we are as, as humans. But it’s it’s not just an employee/employer relationship. We’ve we’ve crossed lines. And it’s kind of hard to not cross some of those lines just into friendship. And so sometimes we have to be able to say, hey, I need to wear my my boss hat right now.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Matt Davis — And the boss hat is going to say, uh, we’re struggling. This is something that we’ve been talking about, and we’ve tried to be preparing you. And I don’t think that anybody should ever really be in a place of surprise: you’re being let go today, right?
Rich Birch — No, no.
Matt Davis — So if that’s how we’re doing it, then we’re immediately starting this path towards pain and hurt that that could be avoided. So, you know, I would start that conversation by saying, look, I’m going to start here by wearing my boss hat. Um, we’ve been talking over the last 3 to 6 months about how you’re doing in this position. We’ve talked about how you’re feeling about it, how we’re feeling about it, what is not getting done, what is getting done. And and we think that we’re here today to talk about a change that needs to be made, regarding your employment. And then we can immediately also take that hat off and say, but now I also want to put on my friendship hat. And you say, this kills me, like we’ve had friendship, we’ve gone to baseball games, I love you and I care about you. And this is really hard. And I know it’s really hard for you, but it’s also I want you to know that this this pains me that that we weren’t able to rectify this, but we’re also not done with you. And we do care about what is next for our ministry here in the church. We want our next season to be thriving and good, but we also care about you and your next season.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Matt Davis — And so it’s, you know, if you’ve ever been broken up with in high school, like the girl who dumped you is not necessarily going to be the one that’s going to be able to fix things for you and help your broken heart, right?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Davis — So that’s where we come in with Pastoral Transitions. And on that day, we call it day zero, the day that you’re you’re let go. It’s your last day in ministry in that spot. We’ve set up and we’re helping the leadership in that organization to be able to have this conversation well, and how do we actually message this transition well? But they’ll actually have a letter that’s from me and they’ll give it to that person they’re letting go and say, we do care about you. And this is just a note. We’re working with Pastoral Transitions, and we are we care about what’s next for you. They give them that letter. And that letter basically says, if you’re getting this welcome, you’re entering a season of change and transition. And because your church cares about you enough, they want you to thrive going forward.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — And so we’re going to be working with you.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Matt Davis — And so that’s that’s kind of the beginning. And I think that that’s a better way to do it. And then the leadership, the pastor, the executive pastor, the senior pastor who’s also the friend, they don’t have to try to fix the problem for them going forward.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — I remember when I came out of ministry, uh, it was really hard because I had elders like, hey, you should check up on this job lead right here. Or I heard this counselor’s really good. They don’t have to do that. They can just be my friend…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Davis — …and they can just say, how are you doing?
Rich Birch — How are you doing… yeah.
Matt Davis — And hopefully you’re having a point where you can do that. Does that does that help? Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s super helpful. Yeah, that that’s great. What what about the other side? So maybe a little a little darker example. I’m sure you run into these. Maybe I’m on the other side and I um I’ve just had a very surprising conversation where, you know, I, you know, my executive pastor pulled me into my, the office and said, like, you know, this is this is done. I thought we were having months of developmental conversation. And it turned out that’s not actually what we were having. We were it actually was just leading to, okay, now I’m now I need to be transitioning. How what do you say to a person who’s in that moment, and is like, there’s all that disoriented, okay, what what do I do now? Um, how what would be some of those initial steps that they should be thinking about?
Matt Davis — Yeah, one of the things that we we talk about a lot, there’s this, um, kind of framework in psychology, it’s called the Johari Window. And it’s there are things that are known and unknown to me, myself. And then there are things that are known and unknown to others, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Matt Davis — And so, yeah, the places that are open are known to me and known to you, but the places that are known to me and unknown to you, those are hidden, right? The places that are known to you, but unknown to me, those are the blind places in our life. And so we look at this as, and the places where there are hurt, it’s hurt for the church when the pastor is hiding something, whether that’s sin or just an itch to leave. But the pastors that we’re dealing with coming out that are really struggling are the ones that have been blindsided. And they’re trying to figure out what is happening.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — And it does feel like the rug has been pulled out. We’re not getting paid a lot of money to begin with. So how do we actually like, what’s my runway and how am I going to do this?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Matt Davis — What do I… All of that stuff becomes very difficult. And so there are things that we talk about, right. So we’re working through with them, um, stuff like, uh, identity, assignment, and calling. And let’s get really clear on those. Who are you? If you asked me five years ago, uh, tell me about yourself, I would say that I would answer it in terms of my identity and my calling. I am a pastor, and that’s what God has called me to do.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Matt Davis — Five years out, I can look at that and say, really it was just an assignment for me. And even though I preached it for years that my I am a child of God, the beloved of God, Henri Nouwen, really, it was an assignment. And now how do I actually leverage this assignment to do something great? But even the Psalms, um, are a great metaphor, right? There are Psalms of orientation to be in the presence of God, and then there are psalms of disorientation. Why do you hide your face from me? But what we really want—and it’s the wilderness illustration, right? Like the the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness and what do they want? They just want to go back to Egypt, of all places, right? It’s just kind of a crazy notion.
Rich Birch — So true.
Matt Davis — But there is no going back. There’s only reorientation. It’s a new normal. And so how do we walk people in that season of transition to help them with that? And so it’s giving context to this is the place that you find yourself in. And we’re going to help lead you. It’s a little bit of a, with Jesus. We’re not we’re not we’re not Jesus ourselves. But by by following that that cloud by day and that pillar of fire by night, we want to walk with you in this season.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Matt Davis — So that’s what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — That’s good. What does that look like? How are you kind of, what is that, how are you walking with someone through that season? I love this. I, you know, I think this is a great service. You know, we’ve had, you know, over the years, you know, I have had people I’ve had to let go and we’ve ended up having to find like I’ve pieced together a kind of like, oh, here’s a coach, here’s a somebody who will help you with your resume, and then here’s a counselor, or here’s a list of counselors. We’re willing to pay you X amount of dollars for however.
Matt Davis — Right.
Rich Birch — And then plus, here’s your, you know, here’s the severance or whatever that looks like. But it sounds like you guys are kind of offering a bunch of those services in in one. What does that typically look like? Like how do you typically structure that kind of relationship with the person? What do they experience beyond that day zero they get the letter. Um, then, you know, how are you coming alongside them?
Matt Davis — Right. So you can take the church out of the pastor, but you can’t take the pastor out of the church. So we have three C’s for you on this one. This should help. Um, we’re working with them in the areas of career, coaching, and counseling.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Matt Davis — And so really the genesis of Pastoral Transitions is, uh, there’s a guy named Bill Tom, and he and I started this together. And, uh Bill, just Christian in the marketplace. Uh, and he was working really in career coaching, career counseling. He did a lot of executive search. But he kept getting ex-pastors coming in, and he would hear their stories of how the churches really just threw their pastors to the curb, and he just wept for them, and for the stories that he was hearing. And so he he said, what do we do about this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — He actually found me through the chairman of the board that let me go. And, uh, we we brought our forces together. But really, we start with, well, let’s look at what is it that you are equipped to do? And there’s a lot of good transitional skills that you have as a pastor. But we’re working with them. We do assessments. Um, we’re working with groups like Integris that are helping. We do a 360 degree review that’s helping you to, like, maybe you have some blind spots that we need to address. Um, how do you actually tune your resume? And I when I came out of ministry, I didn’t even know what LinkedIn was, much less had a LinkedIn account.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Davis — So how do we actually help them and figure out what it is. And give them inspire them with some hope that there is life after ministry, that God is not done with you yet. So that’s career, right? Um, on the coaching side, we’re working with, uh, we have coaches that are working and, and really asking that question, um, where is God at for you in this season? How are you doing? Um, we’re also doing coaching with, uh, life and leadership, like you probably heard of, uh, Townsend Leadership.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Matt Davis — Um, um, or we’re even working with, uh, groups like Thrivent, and we have some accountants and some other people that are on the financial coaching. How much burn rate? What’s your burn rate and how much runway do you have?
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — So that’s under this category of coaching. And then the last area is counseling. And oftentimes we need a lot of that. And so we have built out a network of of therapists, Christian therapists throughout the country. And we’re looking at it for you as an individual. But we also have it for you with your spouse. Maybe your spouse needs it. We see a lot of angry, angry spouses. They said, we blood, sweat, and tears for this much time. We never got to sit together, drive together to church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Matt Davis — And now this is what happens. And then the kids. I remember, um, on my on the Sunday that they were announcing that I’m no longer at the church. Uh, we had to get away. We went down to San Diego for the weekend just so we could not you did not have to be in there and dealing with all of that. But I remember being in the pool with my middle kid. And he looked at me and he was crying and he said, dad, but I liked being a a pastor’s kid.
Rich Birch — Oh man.
Matt Davis — And that was the moment just it broke my heart.
Rich Birch — That’s like, you know, a dart right to your heart. Gosh. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Oh, wow.
Matt Davis — So we realized that like really this was it was really encompassed a lot. My wife wrote an incredible article that we talk about a cord of three strands, but when you’re in ministry, there’s this fourth strand that is wound in there. And when you start to pull that out, it starts to unravel all of these other strands that are in there. And it’s really painful, especially when you have your identity wrapped up in it. So, we walk with them, and that letter that we give to the the pastor on that on that day that they’re being released, um, they it says basically, here’s my cell phone. You can call me five minutes after you walk out the door, or you can call me whenever you want. But if I don’t hear from you in 48 hours, then I’m going to reach out. And we walk with them. And we do an intake just figure out what what do you need? Right? Like, are you just going to go and work with your uncle’s construction company, or are you just totally fine? But we’ll we’ll do this intake and just figure it out. And over the course of six months, we’re going to help them transition and figure out what is new. And you might need a lot more counseling than that. But what we’re really trying to do, what we’re at is to build unity in the church, and to stop this breakdown, to stop deconstructing…
Rich Birch — So good.
Matt Davis — …like these pastors that are looking at the church that let them go and attribute all of this pain to their relationship with God. We know pastors that have deconstructed, they’ve walked away. And we think like it could have been different. And in fact, even after I was no longer serving at my church, um, part of the conditions of me being there was that we still had to go to the church. Um, which was a whole nother crazy story. And it was really, really difficult to do that, that piece. But I remember about two months into that, there was a guy that goes to the church, comes up to me and says, hey, pastor, I don’t know what you did, but I’m sure as hell glad that the elders don’t know what I’ve done, because they would have kicked me out a long time ago.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Okay.
Matt Davis — And that was the moment I realized the people are watching.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Matt Davis — The people are watching how we treat one another.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Davis — How do we love one another? And it either sends them into one of two places. One is protection, or the other one is performance. That if it’s protection, I’m not safe here with my sin or whatever I have going. Or performance, I better be really, really good because this environment isn’t safe. And so people will just silently, slowly drop out.
Matt Davis — And that’s where we see division. It’s it’s it’s, uh, why I’m wearing the hat. This hat means multiply, not divide. If we could actually restore the mission statement that Jesus left us with go out and to make disciples. Um, we’re not going to solve all the problems in the church, but we’re at least trying to do one thing where we stop division in this place. And we model to our people what it looks like to to be known by our love.
Rich Birch — Love it. I just think this is great. What a what a great service to, you know, to the church and to to people leading. And I love that passion of like, how do we how it’s possible for us to come through this and ultimately the, the body of Christ be stronger – that that’s our hope. We believe that this person is is in the right seat on the bus if it’s come to that. And man, if we could get them repositioned somewhere else in the Kingdom, um, man, there could be such, such a great upside and we could see more people reached. But oftentimes it doesn’t, you know, it just doesn’t end up there. It ends up in this, you know, it’s a very painful, uh, painful spot.
Rich Birch — Let’s talk about and I know you’re not a lawyer, so don’t play one on the internet. But why do so many of these conversations end up becoming, it’s like they become these very legal, like, sign this document, sign this NDA, make sure you say all kinds of positive things about us. Don’t ever, you know, don’t ever say anything negative online. Why does it all why does it seem to end up in that situation so many times, as opposed to like a familial, hey, we’re like family here, and we’re still trying to figure out how we can have, sit at Thanksgiving together. How do we, you know, why does that end up that way?
Matt Davis — Yeah. And I think that’s the part that that makes people have trouble trusting the church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — And we’re not like, hey, let’s number one, we’re not like, you should never fire somebody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — There are certainly times where people need to be let go. But there is this piece that we have to honor people and give them dignity on the way out. And so sometimes that does mean that we’re not sharing their story with everybody in broadcasting that out on the internet…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Davis — …and in the service, that to the extent possible, how do we actually give them that privacy that they need and still be honest? And so there are like I do think that there is a need for legal, but I don’t think legal should be running the show, right? And so…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good, that’s good.
Matt Davis — …there are better ways to do this. What does it look like to bring um, and somebody asked me, they just said like so, so Matt, like, I didn’t get to say goodbye to my church. Um, I was, you know, the drawbridge was let out. I walked across with my family, and then it was brought back up. And it was it was always something that was it’s still is a little bit painful to, like, just kind of think about that. What does it look like? Somebody asked me, well, Matt, what did you need? What what would have been really helpful in that? And to just be able to acknowledge and say, your time here was incredible. Your time here was valuable.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Davis — Um, that sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater. What does it look like to be able to just hey, we’re sending we’re sending Matt out, but we’re also sending him with a note from everyone in our congregation. And we’re going to, because we care about this human. Um, we’re here’s a postcard for everybody, and we’re taking ten minutes in the service right now, and we’re just going to we’re going to we’re going to write this. What what does that look like to be able to say…because I think we talk about these things afterwards, right? And and maybe much longer. And so there’s always, you know, we always want closure. But I think there are better ways. And I do think that if we’re that there has to be a legal piece to this, but that is not all that it has to be. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, it’s like, I like that, you know, it’s not, shouldn’t be the driver in the car. You know, it needs to be in the car. It needs to be a part of the conversation. We need to be thinking about it. But, um, and, and and frankly, sometimes relationships get to that point where it’s like, okay, we may have to be, um, it may have to degenerate to that, but, man, we don’t have to start there. We don’t that shouldn’t be our our opening volley, you know, for us. And, um yeah, I love that that coaching. That’s that’s so good.
Rich Birch — So churches that would reach out to you and say, hey, we’d love to talk with them, when, when typically in this process are they do they reach out to you? Or maybe a better question is when should they reach out to you? When should they say, you know what? I remember hearing these guys on this podcast a couple of years ago and what was their name? Let me go back and search that and find those guys. When at what point along the way should they say, hey, let’s reach out to the Pastoral Transitions people?
Matt Davis — Well, I would say in an ideal world that you should be talking about your last day of ministry on your first day of ministry.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Matt Davis — And I would tell somebody, you know, to the extent that we just put a lot of effort into bringing you on into this position, we also want you to know, uh, we want to talk about and plan for your last day of ministry here. So what does that look like? But I would say from a leadership perspective, the second that there’s a little like the first conversation that ever comes up, right, like, how do we actually have this conversation? Let’s let’s have a conversation about, hey, we’re just talking about it. And what I think a lot of elder boards are looking for, leadership teams are looking for is can we just run a scenario by you for a second? Um, we’re thinking about this and it might be a year down the road. It might be, you know, especially in this season, I know some churches, they’re looking at year end, and what, what’s going to happen financially. Um, so how do we start to set the stage for some of these things? How do we message this? And there’s a lot of stakeholders in this. We have to message this to the person we’re letting go, but we often assume that that person is going to tell their spouse. And I think that that’s a step that we should not be skipping. Um, how do we message this to the congregation? How do we message this to the the staff that remains, or the volunteer teams that that pastor is overseeing? But really, the second that this becomes a conversation of, I think that we might need to have a change. Um, that’s a good time to at least just let’s have a conversation about what that looks like so that we have a path that leads towards a healthy transition. And it’s possible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, fascinating. Well, there’s this PDF that we’re going to link to that’s called “Beyond Severance: 3 Must-Have Resources for Ministry Transitions”. Talk me through this PDF. This is a great resource. Uh, but tell me a little bit about this. And how could this be helpful in this conversation?
Matt Davis — In the corporate world there is something called outplacement services. And even in the corporate world, if they’re going to let you go, they at least have something that is beyond severance. They will say, not everybody, but some of the ones who are doing it well, they’ll say, hey, we’re going to set you up with a career coach and you’re going to get 2 or 3 sessions with them. Um, we’re going to give you a couple of counseling sessions or something like that. And we just thought, how sad is it, of all the things that the church should do well, we think this should certainly be one of them. And so we wanted to take this, this concept of outplacement services. And we kind of coined this phrase “kingdom outplacement”. And what we’re trying to do is and what this document works out, I think that there are some churches that have been incredibly generous and they’ll say, hey, we’re going to we’re going to make sure that you have severance financially. You’re going to be covered for the next six months, for the next year. And that’s beautiful and that’s great. And it’s a it’s an incredible step towards building a bridge for unity going forward. But we would say that we need to go beyond that. Um, and so give a generous severance. That’s on the financial side. But what does it look like to actually give something beyond that? And so that that is those three Cs that I was telling you about, career and coaching and counseling.
Matt Davis — And so we just walk through what are all of these and how do we walk through all of these different steps. What are these must have resources, all the things that you should consider, and why you should not DIY this, why it’s so difficult to actually try to do that. Your job as the leadership of the church is to continue to move forward with the church.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Davis — Um, and that’s where we get to come alongside and say, hey, we’ve got it from here. Now you can just wear the friendship hat going forward and helping them out. So this resource is just outlining here’s what that process could look like. And this is how, if you’re going to try to set this up, this is a good way to make it happen.
Rich Birch — I love it. So good. Super helpful. Uh, yeah, I think this would be a great resource for you to start with. Again, we’ll link to that. You can scroll down even on your phone now, uh, we’ll link to that resource for you to pick that up. Could be a good starting point uh, conversation. So just as we’re coming to land, um, what would be your kind of final advice you’d give? As we’re thinking about assume, you know, people are listening to this because they’re they’re either in transition or thinking about transitioning someone. What would be some of that uh, some, some initial advice or last advice that you would give to them is just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Matt Davis — Well, if the Barna stat is true that 42% of pastors are thinking about leaving ministry, and I think that Covid did a number on all of us as churches, I think that pastoral staffs would love to be able to go back to the days where all we complained about was the volume of the worship and the temperature in the sanctuary.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Davis — Gone are those days. Now it’s, you know, you know, what are we doing with, uh, the community and social justice? And where are you at on Israel and Palestine, all these different things. Um, but how do we actually become a church that’s known by our love? If if this is what Jesus is calling us to in John 13, this is a really good and tangible way for us to be able to model for our people how we treat each other in leadership is going to be a really good indicator for our people of how we’re going to treat them. What does it look like if I take my sin and I come to you? What does it look like for us to be able to be a a generous body? And I think sometimes we become pennywise and pound foolish, and we don’t want to err on the side of grace. We don’t want to err on the side of generosity. And I think in the long run, you can’t possibly lose if you are doing this well and you love people well, just as well on their way out as you did on their way in.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Well, I really appreciate this, Matt. I appreciate your time today. And, you know, it’s a good reminder. You know, I remember William Vanderbloemen said when he was doing his book on succession planning that, you know, every pastor is a temporary or an interim pastor. You know, we all are or at some point going to transition out. But it’s like we don’t want to face that reality. And organizationally, we have to face that reality too. And so we want to build for that. Be ready for that. Be able to do that well. And I love the vision that you’re casting here for how do we how do we see this as a way to multiply, not divide? Um, just love it. Thanks so much, Matt. Appreciate you being here. Where do we want to send people online if we want them to track with you or with the ministry?
Matt Davis — So our our website is pastoraltransitions.com. And you can find us there. We’re on all the social media channels. You can also check out we started a podcast. It’s actually run by my wife and I and it’s called “Life After Ministry”. And we’re asking that question, is there life after ministry? And if there is, is it any good? And so we’re actually walking through, um, and really not going through this, this part of, uh, you know, how the elders messed it up or how the church messed it up.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Davis — But what did you do on day one? What did day one look like for you, and how did you go from coming out of that ministry position to what you’re doing now? And then the last question we’re asking on there is, is there ministry after ministry? And what we find in a lot of the stories that we’re telling, and really it’s a it’s a hub for hope, right? So how do we actually tell stories that are going to give people when we we oftentimes get more people that say, I wish I found you six months ago…
Rich Birch — Oh, sure.
Matt Davis — …and how can I be helped? So the first place we’ll send them is listen to the podcast, because your life is not over as you know it, God is still going to use you.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Thanks so much, Matt. Appreciate you being here today. Thanks for taking time to invest in us. Thank you.
Doubling Impact: Navigating the Shift from One to Two Church Services
Jan 17, 2024
Why add another service? Growth and multiplication are signs of a healthy church. This isn’t just about getting more people in seats in the building; it’s about creating new opportunities for reaching out, engaging more volunteers, and widening your church’s impact. Remember, every empty seat is a missed opportunity to change a life.
Breaking the 200 Barrier
Many churches hit a growth ceiling of around 200 in attendance. Expanding to two services is a strategic move to help break this barrier. It’s about more than numbers; it’s about making room for more stories of life change. This change pushes your church to develop new systems and processes vital for sustainable growth.
Volunteerism: The Growth Engine
Volunteer growth precedes congregational growth. It’s a leading indicator. Expanding to a second service gives a fantastic opportunity to mobilize more people into meaningful service. Remember, engaged volunteers don’t just fill roles; they invite friends, they bring energy, and they embody the mission of the church.
Training: Seize the Moment
Adding a service is an incredible chance to level up in training and outreach. It’s the perfect opportunity to fine-tune your volunteer training and create standard operating procedures to benefit your church long-term.
Outreach: Internal and External Promotion
Internal promotion is about getting your existing congregation excited and informed about adding a new service. This involves clear, consistent communication through channels your members are familiar with. Use your Sunday announcements, church newsletters, and social media platforms to share the why behind the additional service. Emphasize how this change aligns with your church’s vision and mission.
External promotion is about reaching out to the community and letting them know they are welcome at your church. This can take many forms, from traditional methods like flyers and community bulletin boards to digital strategies such as targeted social media ads and updates on your church website.
Fostering Community in a Multi-Service Church
A big question we often wrestle with is how multiple services affect the sense of community. Here’s the thing: community isn’t confined to a single service. It’s about creating connections that go beyond Sunday mornings. This shift is a call to innovate in how we foster community – through small groups, teams, and social gatherings that bridge service times.
Vision Alignment: More Than Adding a Service
This move should be a direct reflection of your church’s vision. It’s not just a logistical decision; it’s a visionary one. Aligning the addition of a service with your church’s mission to reach more people, deepen faith, and serve the community is crucial. It’s about making your vision tangible, one service at a time.
Maximizing Service Times: Strategic Decisions
And finally, let’s get practical about service times. Whether you choose an additive or split approach, the key is strategic decision-making that considers your community’s needs and rhythms. Communicating these changes is just as important – it’s an opportunity to remind your congregation why we gather and the importance of our mission.
If you’re considering this significant step, or even if you’re just curious about what it might look like for your church, tune into this episode. “Doubling Impact: Navigating the Shift from One to Two Church Services” isn’t just a discussion; it’s a roadmap for church growth and impact.
Fast-Growing Follow Up: Insights from Pantano Christian Church’s Growth with Trevor DeVage
Jan 11, 2024
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m talking with Trevor DeVage, the lead pastor at Pantano Christian Church in Tuscon, Arizona.
Trevor has talked with us before and is back sharing how to recognize opportunities at your church and embrace best practices to create space for growth.
Opportunities, not problems. // Pantano recently launched a third service to address parking issues and accommodate their expanding congregation. Aware that people were being turned away at the parking lot, the congregation was so committed to making space for more guests that they asked for another service to be added. Time changes for all services had to be shifted yet were welcomed with enthusiasm. Solving issues, like this one, that your church faces aren’t “problems” but rather opportunities to get your congregation to catch the vision.
Gather to scatter. // Pantano engages in Serve Our City, a practice where the church mobilizes its congregants to go out on a Sunday and serve in different capacities around Tucson instead of holding services. While it might be tempting to worry about giving when services are canceled, Trevor encourages churches not to miss this type of outreach opportunity.From bringing care packages to first responders to building almost 1000 bikes for kids, mobilizing Pantano Christian Church actually stirs people’s hearts to be more generous because they are reminded that the reason they gather is to scatter and serve their community.
Pantano Anywhere. // Trevor believes we can’t neglect to engage people online or we will miss out on reaching a significant portion of the world. One of the church’s strategies for online ministry is Pantano Anywhere, where they encourage people to launch house campuses in their own homes or businesses. Pantano provides training and tools for these individuals to lead and host gatherings and make a difference in their communities.
Spreading outward. // Looking to the future, Pantano is exploring multisite options by partnering with other churches so their legacy can continue. By resourcing their Pantano Anywhere participants, they also look for pockets of people near each that could be targeted for a future campus or church plant in a different part of the state, country or world.
Simplicity saves souls. // Instead of looking at how you can do more, focus on how you can do less more effectively. Pastors and churches may be tempted to make things more complex because it is a form of job security. However complexity fails to empower others. The mantra Pantano communicates to their staff is that simplicity saves souls, complexity causes confusion. By simplifying, the church can reach more people and extend its impact.
You can learn more about Pantano Christian Church at pantano.church.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Really excited for today’s conversation. We’ve got a repeat guest and this is like just a few months later so you know that there’s got to be something good coming up in today’s conversation. Super excited to have Trevor DeVage with us. He is at Pantano Christian Church – this church is located in Tucson, Arizona. They were started in 1961 and are one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Trevor is the lead pastor, been there just since 2022. This is really a follow up conversation from what we had back in the spring. We’ll link to the the conversation back in the spring and that was called it was all about growing, just kind of tremendous amount of growth. This is kind of the back end of that conversation I want to talk a little bit more about that in a little more detail. Trevor, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Trevor DeVage — Well, man, it’s good to be back. I think I joked with you right before we went live is a, man, you you must be at the bottom of the barrel of people, man, because ah…
Rich Birch — No, no.
Trevor DeVage — …you had to bring to bring me back. So ah…
Rich Birch — Not at all, no not at all.
Trevor DeVage — …really, really excited to be with you, man. I’m ah I’m a purveyor and a frequent listener a weekly listener of your podcast and so I’m a humbled, honored to get be in ah in this company… man, it’s good.
Rich Birch — I really appreciate that. Well I’m excited to to dive in. Friends I’d encourage you to go back, we kind of covered a bit of Trevor’s background and the history of the church in our previous episode. Without that some of this will be out of context, but would love to kind of dive in. So your church has continued to grow. Kind of bring us up to speed. How did the fall launch go? Where are things at on that front? Kind of bring us up to speed, you know, in the last six months or so, where are things at?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, so when we talked last we were two services with no parking left. Our parking lot was…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — …abysmal at best. People were being turned away the parking lot. We’ve added a third service actually um. And seasons in Arizona are weird because we we don’t really have seasons. We have two – we have ah hot and and slightly less hot.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Ah but actually school goes back mid-July here. So we um, we waited till about the third week of July and we launched a third a third service actually on Sundays and we actually shifted our service times so all of our services changed. We went to 8:30, 10:30, 12:30 and we moved about 5- or 600 people to that 12:30 service…
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Trevor DeVage — …to alleviate some pressure on parking. And it’s held real steady there for the last last four or five months, which has been great. We also as we went into the fall I thought man we’re gonna get to breathe maybe a little bit. And well apparently will breathe at some point, I’m just not sure when the breathing’s gonna happen. Make you come up for like oxygen but we are we’re in such a sweet season right now. We’re um, we’re at 530 baptisms for this year um.
Rich Birch — Wow. Praise God. That’s amazing.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, we’ve got another baptism Sunday coming in two weeks we’ve already got 20 plus people signed up which means we’ll probably have another 30 or 40 that weekend. And and then we do we’re doing six Christmas Eve services this year. We’ve added a service from last year and um.
Rich Birch — Good.
Trevor DeVage — We do we do baptisms on Christmas Eve and last year we had 99 baptisms Christmas Eve so we’re we’re really excited to see what God will do in our Christmas season. We’re we’re about to shut our campus down next Sunday for a this coming weekend for we do a giant event called Serve Our City. So we shut down our campus services and we do worship service in the community. We go serve all over the city. So we’ll send out across the city of Tucson, partnering with 16 other churches in the area, and and we just go do service projects all over our city.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — So that’s been our last six months man like we’ve just kind of been our student ministries exploding. I think last time we talked I may have even shared, our first time I’ve been in a church where our growth was not predicated on children and students. It was actually adults specifically. Our student ministry has caught up massively. And about two years ago there was about 40 kids in our high school, middle school ministry last Wednesday night. They did a big event had over four hundred kids here as a part of that.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Trevor DeVage — Um, so we’re just seeing God infiltrate in some really crazy ways, and we’re just trying to shut up, get out of the way, and not screw it up.
Rich Birch — Great. Well you know unSeminary, we love to dive in on some of the details here. There’s a couple of those things I’d love to hear um, a little bit more about. So you mentioned parking and I so this is like, man, this is literally they do not teach this in seminary. But talk to me about your parking problems and was it just the shift to three services that helped that, or did you do anything else to kind of help with that issue?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, well the shift to three services had to happen because the problem in our parking lot is we’ve got parking, but we don’t have enough parking for capacity, if that makes sense.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep, yep.
Trevor DeVage — So when our auditorium gets to about 90% full our parking lot is 110 percent full. and so…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — …we literally our cops in security on site they’re like we’re literally watching 10 and fifteen cars a weekend just drive off the lot…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Trevor DeVage — …because I can’t find a space. Going to that third service we shifted we literally told our two services, we need about 250 to 300 per service to move to that 12:30 timeframe. Ah, we have a full cafe here that serves full breakfast and the whole deal. Well now we serve lunch. We have food trucks on site as well. And so we’re supporting local and our and our church as well. And so we we did the first weekend we had about 750 people go over to 12:30 and then it settled in right around 5- or 600 people a weekend are going to that service. And it’s alleviated some pressure but we’re already back in the space of all right, what’s a fourth service going to look like? It’s probably not going to be on Sunday…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — …it’s probably going to be a different day week. Um, and so really, that’s the biggest shift. It it drove us. We sat as uncomfortable as we could for as long as we could. And there’s there’s a principle of leadership I learned from my friend Brandon Beard. I don’t if you know Brandon down in Dallas. But um Brandon said let people sit as uncomfortable as they can for as long as they can because they’ll drive the vision for you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — So we did we. We sat for three months with people going, hey when are we going to do something about parking? And I’m like well if you just give me a couple hundred thousand dollars we can go buy something.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — And um, but there’s nothing to buy. We’re trying to buy property for parking, actually…
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — …and there’s just nothing right now. And so people started going, hey when are we going to change services? And I was like, oh that’s a great idea, even though we’d already been planning it. And then about twelve weeks out we were strategizing internally and then about six weeks out we started rolling it out. I’ve never been in a church where people cheered for changing all service times.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Trevor DeVage — Like we said, hey right change all services and we’re adding a service and we’re going to feed you lunch, and people cheered.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — And people are filming videos on their phone and tagging us on social media of: how beautiful is it that I can’t get out of the parking lot at church. I’m like, usually people lose Jesus in that moment. They don’t they don’t praise Jesus in that moment.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — So um, that has really been the most indicative thing that we, parking dictated us having to go to a third service.
Rich Birch — Okay I love that. Let’s dive in on that on the third service stuff. What else what you when you look back at that kind of communication process. So I want to highlight you changed all the service times. You know, I’ve seen that over the years as we’ve messed around with service times. That’s one of those things I think we we get so nervous about it, like oh my goodness it’s gonna you know it’s gonna, you know, tank or whatever. But I’ve actually found it as a growth every time we’ve made those changes. It’s like we end up seeing growth because I think it’s like there’s something about the communication getting out in front of people and all that. But what were some of the other things that you did that you think helped make move people to that? Obviously there was the pressure behind it. Was there any other communication stuff that you look back on and say, hey, that was particularly helpful?
Trevor DeVage — You you know, I mean Easter last year was a really good indicator for us because…
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — …we had a parking issued Easter. Mother’s Day is actually the other largest day outside of Christmas and Easter here for us. And Mother’s day was a parking nightmare, and we we probably should have we probably should have made the leap then. Ah, but again I just went to let’s leave them as uncomfortable as we can as long as they can. And then we just hyped it up.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Trevor DeVage — And we made it a celebratory thing. It was not a what are we going to do? It was ah this is this is not a problem, this is an opportunity. We don’t have problems at Pantano, we have opportunities.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Um, you know, parking is not a problem if you have if you don’t have enough.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trevor DeVage — People think it’s problem. It’s an opportunity. Um, there’s something happening at our church when you can’t get in and out of the parking lot, when traffic is backed up down Houghton Road Now we tick off most of the neighborhood every weekend. Um, cops are out directing traffic and and so people see we’ve just, that’s become our language. These aren’t problems These are opportunities. There’s a lot of churches that would fail to have full parking lots and not know where to put people. And I’ve been in those churches I’ve been a part of those churches, and so to be on this side of it where it’s like what are we going to do? Well here’s the options and really our people here have been so excited about everything every option we’ve given. It’s lack of a better term is like shooting fish in a barrel, man. They just get excited about about God moving.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Sure.
Trevor DeVage — And then we’ve seen it in our other ministries too. Like student ministries on Wednesday nights, they were all together in one space running a couple hundred kids. Going into the school year they split middle school and high school back out into the the respected spaces. And it’s almost doubled our student ministry by just, again, adding more opportunity…
Rich Birch — Creating space. Yep, yep, for sure.
Trevor DeVage — We’re creating space and growth happens when you create space. And so I firmly believe, probably after Christmas, I’m trying to get through Easter of next year, which is early, that we’re probably going to add a Thursday night service will probably be our next. But um, those service times I was going to do 9, 11 and 1, keep the other two the same, and then just add a one o’clock. And my predecessor, Glen, I said hey I want your opinion on this. He goes, I wouldn’t do that. And it’s the first time he’s paused me.
Rich Birch — Um, interesting. Yeah yeah.
Trevor DeVage — He’s like we used to do a one o’clock, we barely got 2-, 300 people to come to it. Um, he’s like there’s something about that 1pm number that feels really late. Um, he said I would do 8:30, 10:30, 12:30. And I went back to our team I said, the guy that’s been doing this for the last twenty years here…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Trevor DeVage — …it’s the only time he’s looked at me and gone, I wouldn’t do that. I’m like I think we ought to listen. And he was right. And for me that was a moment to honor him, but it was also a moment of his wisdom for him to go…
Rich Birch — Right. He’s been in the community. Yeah.
Trevor DeVage — …Yeah I want to help you; this will help you. And so finding that wisdom from Glen and then he was an advocate with our people too. He was so pumped up and excited and going around and telling people why this is a good thing. And so again it I’d love to tell you there was some massive crazy strategy. It was just we’re out of parking and we had to do something.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. How far out did you go from between kind of communicating you’re doing three services, to three services, till actually doing it? How how what was that kind of look like?
Trevor DeVage — It was twelve weeks.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — We started priming the pump…
Rich Birch — Like, counted down and all that kind of thing. Yeah.
Trevor DeVage — Yep, then about six weeks out we got real real intentional with it. And then I I was on my summer break in June, and then July when I came back, they started the last week of June. And then I came back and I just kind of I blitzed it every week.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — I was like, here’s the deal. We need you to make room for one more because our whole thing is about the 1, right? And so we were like if we’re going to make room for one more to come, for your one to be here, I need you to move so we can make room for one more. And our people just did it. They were happy about it. They bought lunch. There’s food trucks there. They’re, man, they’re just happy people. They’re excited.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Trevor DeVage — And the 12:30 crowd, man, I love them because the 12:30, they they want to be here if they come to 12:30.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Like it’s you know you’ve had some sleep, you’ve been able to go on a hike, you’ve been able to go to the store, you’ve had lunch. If you have not had lunch, here.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — And so man they’re just fired up, ready to go. They’re pumped up. And it’s it’s a lot of fun, man. But we we ramped it up for about twelve weeks to get our people there.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, great. Um, so tell me about this Serve Sunday this idea of mobilizing people. We’ve seen this time and again in fast-growing churches that they one of their key strategies to build and invite culture is they want to be seen as a church that’s making a difference in their community. That they’re actively engaging in making the community that they live in a better place. And so great to see that that’s happening at your church. Talk to us a little bit about the history of that. What does that look like? Kind of fill out the paint the picture there a little bit.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, this is something that pre-dates me here. Something I’ve been a part of in other churches but actually it’s one of my favorite things we do is that it literally we’re mobilizing people to go out. And it’s funny because I’m sure you’ve heard this too. But I’ve heard other guys around the country go, Well what about your giving on that weekend? And I’m like, what about it? And they’re like well are people going to give if they’re not there? I’m like, we live in a mobile world. Are people give mobilely anyhow.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — We actually see our giving go up when that happens because people are a part of mission and vision. Um people give to what they can be a part of.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — And so they’re serving, like we’re in schools. We’re building 960 bikes that are going to be given to kids, almost a thousand bikes.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — Um, we’re in schools, we’re in playgrounds, we’re in local community areas. We have I don’t know how many groups we have that go to first responders, they go to firehouses, police stations, they take food, they take care packages.
Rich Birch — So cool.
Trevor DeVage — And so for us this is very synergetic. This is we just came off of a mission trip to Rocky Point, Mexico, which is every year we take a couple hundred people to Rocky Point, Mexico and built houses. Here we are three weeks later getting ready to just serve our entire city. Um, the history of this that I best I know and I’m only giving you just kind of Cliff Notes because I don’t know the total history. But it used to be strictly our church ran this for all the city. We turned to a local organization who now kind of disseminates for all the other churches. Some churches don’t shut down on Sundays; they they do a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We just find that getting our people out of the regular rhythm of Sunday to go serve in their city is a really good reminder of why we gather on Sundays. And we we just did a series called The Church Has Left the Building. And the whole series has been we we we gather so we can scatter. And week one of the series I literally got on stage and threw birdseed all over our people like [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — So fun.
Trevor DeVage — And it was great. People were getting it in their drinks and their clothes. And um, but at the end of that I just said, this this is why we gather not to gather for the sake of gathering; we gather to scatter into our community. And I told them week one, this leads us into Serve Our City. We’re going to scatter all over our city in a couple weeks in a massive way.
Trevor DeVage — Um, but then we we just finished up this weekend with this series knowing that next Sunday we’re going out, but then we also gave out um we’re going to play the world’s largest game of tag with our city. We’ve got cards that say, tag you’re it. And random act of kindness cards. So um, literally we created a website tagyoureit.fun. And it’s not branded with us and so we told our people go randomly throw kindness on our community and then give them a card that says now it’s your turn. And let’s see how far it goes in our city, and our country, and our state, um and beyond. And so ah for us building into our DNA, it’s not just this one big event that we’re gonna do. But it can be everyday events that we do, because we scatter every week when we leave this place. And so it’s kind of a both/and for us it’s like what’s the big thing that we’re doing, but there’s these little random acts of kindness that you can do every day and tag people to to just see life, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well, let’s so so I do coaching with churches and one of the things we do. We have this group called the Church Growth Incubator and we’ve had 3 or 4 of those churches this year have gone to 3 services. And one of the things I’ve said to churches over the years, when you go to 3 services and it sounds like you’re experiencing it. It it kind of is like just a stopgap measure. Typically it’s like you move to three but then right away you have to start thinking about what is next. It sounds like you’re thinking about a Thursday service or maybe another service time. Are there other questions on the horizon for you as you look, you know, campusing, other types of things? Where where’s where’s your brain going to next as you think about, you know, for Pantano?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah. Well for us, it’s both/and, maybe even another piece. Like our online ministry is very robust. Um, so our online campus engagement, we don’t we don’t count you if you’ve been on for like 2 seconds, we we don’t we don’t do that. We um, we really look for engagement and our engagement is high. We’ve got a couple thousand people that are fully engaged online each and every weekend. Our online audience is about and we do a 1.2 multiplier. We that’s we don’t want to go any higher…
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, we we want to lean on the end of because Facebook doesn’t really let you see that metric. But like our actual church church um, what is it that Life Church gives out…
Rich Birch — Yeah, church online. Yeah, their tool. Yep.
Trevor DeVage — Um, we can actually see how many people are on with that. And so 1.2 seems pretty conservative. But we’ve got about 23-, 2400 people fully engaged online with us on the weekends. So that’s already robust and going. And we do um, every service is streamed live to that. We actually acknowledge those people online. So if you’re on with us um and you let people know in the in the chat, I can be like, oh we’ve got Rich on with us from here. And we’ve got people watching and we’ve got one guy that watches from France and Switzerland every week. We’ve got another guy that watches from Tucson every week.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Trevor DeVage — And we call them by name. So that’s one strategy is our we call it Pantano Anywhere. And you can launch a house campus inside anywhere. If you’re a college student you can launch it in your dorm. If you’re on the other side of the country you can launch it in your living room. And we actually provide you tools, we actually take you through training. There’s ah, a matrix that we use, Robert, who oversees all of our Pantano Anywhere stuff, he he literally leans in and goes, all right here’s what this means: you’re a serving campus, you’re a giving campus, you’re a living campus. And he actually meets with the, we don’t call them volunteers, they’re difference makers. And we so we have a difference maker that leads those. So if you were going to lead one in your home and you’ve got 10 people coming to your house, um, there’s a whole different training that we take you through for that. So that’s our first strategy we’re already doing.
Trevor DeVage — Um I think I think when we talked last time we also have a campus at a local mission here called Gospel Rescue Mission. And we have anywhere from 30 to 50 men and women that are in recovery, in a yearlong recovery program. They come to chapel on on Sunday nights to our service. We stream that down there. The next piece is we are going into multisite. And what is happening right now, there’s a local community close to us that has called and said hey this guy said, I’ve got a building that I’d like to give you. And I I like free I like free buildings. Like those those are great buildings to get.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — Um and it’s in a community where there’s really not a church presence. I’m not interested in putting campuses in a place…
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — …there’s already a viable church. Um, but we’ve got a couple hundred people that are driving from this community about 45 minutes away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — And so the the viability of in the spring of this next year I would say probably more the fall of ’24 um that we could be launching a campus in this other community is is pretty substantial. Um, and really it’s going to be upgrades and updates to a facility that’s been sitting empty for a while. It is an old church building. It’s in a great community, but that’s that’s kind of our next. We’re actually getting ready go do a site plan for that. And um I like equitable equitable places given to us…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — …because with that just, again in the future if we decide hey we want to make this its own church in its own community, we can just launch that thing in a new community and it becomes a church plant versus a campus at some point. But right now we’re looking at multiple campuses. That’s our next kind of strategy.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. And you know we’ve seen one of the shifts post-covid for sure has been towards that kind of thing. For yearst here was like 10, 15% of new campuses were, and that’s by like actual numbers not just like made up numbers, where we’re seeing those kinds of things where actually the 2022 numbers showed that 40% of campuses launched in 2022 came because of that kind of either gift or an extremely low purchase of a building. And so I would suspect you’ll have more of that. And I love the fall 2024 the kind of longer term. We’ve seen that time and again. the success of campuses actually. That initial launch course so taking time to build that. That’s, you know, that’s fantastic
Trevor DeVage — Well, you know…
Rich Birch — I Love the Pan…. Go ahead.
Trevor DeVage — Well I was going to say, I don’t know if you you’ve talked with Gene Appel about this…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — …but this has been a strategy for multisite. I mean they’ve got a Minnesota campus. They’ve got a Vegas campus.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and they’ve been given millions of dollars of equitable property that um their their debt ratio to building ratio is very small.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Like they they’re able to do this for pennies on the dollar and launch really viable churches. And I would say too for some of your listeners that maybe you’re a part of a church that you’re you’re like what are we gonna do? We’re gonna have to close our doors. There are churches that you can partner with that will honor you well um, and and help the legacy continue. And um I like there’s a legacy aspect. It’s not we’re partnering now, we’re not I don’t it’s not hostile takeovers.
Rich Birch — No.
Trevor DeVage — These are partners. Um, and if you’ve ever talked to Gene about this. They do a really good job of honoring pastors and leadership in these churches. And it’s pretty beautiful what I think God is doing right now to unify the church…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Trevor DeVage — …in the United States especially
Rich Birch — Oh absolutely. For sure and and that yeah, definitely if you’re listening in, feel free to reach out. I can connect you with churches that are looking for that kind of arrangement. And and then on the on the lead church side, you know, there are very few church buildings that if, particularly if you got it debt-free, that you wouldn’t want to take on. Because essentially from a financial point of view, you take your cash flow, the equity that’s tied up in that building, and you can you can do renovations on that for you know, relatively low kinds of dollars. You could even write a mortgage over an extended period of time. It gets pretty easy to step in and make that kind of thing happen. So um, that’s exciting.
Rich Birch — Tell me a little bit more about Pantano Anywhere, like what’s the what do you think the end game there is? I know it’s like early, maybe, you know, as you’re thinking about that is that you think eventually those might become campuses, or is it just like, hey you want to service people wherever. Talk us through what that – I think that’s a super-innovative great, you know, great solution.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, I think it’s a I think it’s a both/and because what we’re looking at is if you say you’re a local business owner in a community and you’re like, man, I I’ve got a restaurant that doesn’t open till dinnertime, or it doesn’t open until noontime, well I could have church in my sports bar at nine o’clock on Sunday and promote that in the community. And we’ve got a Pantano Anywhere location now that is, we’re actually talking to a local restaurant on the north side here that they don’t open till like like one o’clock. And it’s like what is the possibility of us putting a campus? They’ve got 40 TVs. I’m like so all you have to do is turn on the lights and open the door. We’ll do the rest.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Trevor DeVage — You have to do nothing and then we just staff it with Difference Makers that we take through training, and put them at that location. So we’re looking at businesses, we’re looking at houses. We’re looking at all the above. But then the the other side to me in that both/and of that is if we find a pocket where we’ve got say 3-, 400 people that are starting to all have Pantano Anywhere locations maybe in their home and their business, and we start to target that. Then we go, wow we’ve got a big pocket of people that are online with us right here in this place now that’s where we start going, Okay, do we target a facility in this location? Do we do we look at a school? Do we look is there a church in the area that, man, there need to partner with and potentially come alongside of, and help them move into the next phase of legacy? Um, what does that look like? And so as we’re looking at these Pantano Anywhere locations, and that could be anywhere in the country, or anywhere on the globe… When I was in Ohio we were kind of doing very something very similar and we had um we had four house campuses in Ghana, Africa. We had 1 in Pakistan where there was 150 people that were gathered around a laptop…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — …and watched church in a bombed out building in Pakistan. And um and they were with us every week.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — And we we would acknowledge them and they were they literally they we sent them t-shirts we like they were wearing their Christ Church t-shirts when I was there. Um it’s the same thing here with Pantano. We we literally I think anywhere around the globe because of technology. I mean just like you and I are doing this, right? I’m looking at you. We’re not in the same state.
Rich Birch — No.
Trevor DeVage — In fact, you know we we got our time zones crossed a couple times…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — …because we get technology.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — But but reality is is that you can do this anywhere and when you find a pocket that starts to blow up, you can go, we viably need to put something in this pocket now that’s not just on a screen but is probably in a community.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Yeah I love that. And you know I think our I love that you’re tackling that thinking through those issues. You know we all need to be wrestling with, you know, this kind of digital age we live in and I think that kind of solution like Pantano Anywhere for sure, you know, we should be wrestling with thinking about, particularly if you’re a growing church. So as you look to the future, any other kind of questions on the horizon? When you look up over, you know, where do you I know it’s like the dogs running down the street and, you know, you’re grabbed that grabbed it by the tail, ah, but, you know, what what do you think it about as you look to the future?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah I I think for me a couple things one the the mantra we keep preaching inside of our staff is simplicity. Like we are not looking how we can do more.
Rich Birch — So good.
How do we do less more effectively? So um, the mantra we kind of keep springing into our staff here is simplicity save souls, complexity causes confusion. Um.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Trevor DeVage — And the reason most most pastors or most church staff complexify things is because complexity is job security. If you’re the only one that can do the complex thing, we’ve got to keep you. I keep telling our team and our system if you make it complex, you will not be here very long. We need simplicity…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — …because if we’re going to reach. The way we’re reaching and then simplicity is key. That’s the first thing. I think the second thing um I’ve always kind of leaned towards what is coming in like what is the new thing in the world that we can use to leverage for the gospel? Um, and so I’m looking at, you know, this has been a big hot topic, but AI right now. Ah.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Trevor DeVage — And a lot of people in church are scared of AI. They’re like, oh the bots are taking over. Um I got news, the bots took over a long time ago.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Trevor DeVage — Um, we’re we’re slaves to these bots. I look at one all day. Um, but how do we leverage things in the church with AI to reach more people in a shorter amount of time? And you know, like Chat GPT, um, like it’s I literally I’ve been messing with I’ve not even used it for anything live yet. But um I took all of my sermon notes for the last series and I put all my notes in and said write small group material with questions. And I’ve got enough stuff on the internet that I can say “and write it in the voice of Trevor DeVage” and um…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — …and then put scripture references and crosscheck. In it in 10 minutes it generated six weeks worth of small group material with questions. And I read through it I’m like, this is exactly how I’d write this and it just saved me.
Trevor DeVage — And so I can go through that and I can edit it. Now I’m not using it. now I think you got to be really careful with this technology because um it it is going to produce other people’s content that you’re gonna say is your own and is not. And I think there’s all sorts of nuances in that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, you gotta work through all that. Yep.
Trevor DeVage — But but I think the church a lot of times we we kind of, like online right. I so I spoke at a conference three weeks before covid and I talked about the viability of online and if you’re not there now there’s going to come a point where you have to be, and if you’re not ready… All the people that conference thought I’d caused covid because they were like, did you try to prove your point? And I’m only like, no, but my point is now proven. Like if you were you…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — …online is, well that’s just streaming. We’re not gonna engage those people. Well three weeks later proved that if we’re not engaging people online, you’re missing 99% of the world and where they’re living.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — I think the same thing with AI right now. If we as the church are not, how do we pioneer AI in the church versus running away from it? And and so as we’re looking at digital campuses like what does that mean? Like how does that how does that play out for us? Um I even look at our production team, what we’re doing with video, what we’re doing with with graphics. I’m ah I’m a creative by nature so like Photoshop and Premiere right now, AI is a part of editing. And so…
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Trevor DeVage — If I’m able to cut down some of my staff’s time with Ai tools…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Trevor DeVage — …We can reach more people in a shorter amount of time, which I think is is biblical.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Like how do we reach the most amount of people in the shortest amount of time? You can run from technology, you can lean in. Every side has a good and an evil side. Let’s use the good side of it to reach more people. So I think for me, simplicity and then leveraging the tools that are coming in technology that we can use to reach more people. Those are the two things I’m looking at.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love this simplicity thing there. You know there’s that old axiom that you can either have growth or you can have control. You can’t have both. And a part of that is the simplicity thing. It’s like, you know, if we so as we simplify ironically as we simplify, we can reach more people, scale faster. And actually connecting those two together, AI is a part can be a part of that workflow of like how do we… And very similarly anybody that’s in the content business which a local church is, you know, we produce a lot of content. We should be thinking about these tools, thinking about how we can use them. I keep saying let’s think about it like a megaphone or like a, you know, a speaker or a sound system. It’s just another tool to amplify the work that you’re doing. Think about how you can use it to extend the work that you’ve already done rather than like, it’s not going to replace you. There isn’t a day while it might someday. But it’s not going to replace ah, you know, you, Trevor, there’s still we we still need you. But, man, if we could in the if we could find a way to use these tools to get your message out in front of more people, man, I think that that’s a really wise use of our time effort and energy for sure.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, and I think if I think if you simplify, if you want to multiply you simplify, and that’s how you amplify. That that’s the aspect to it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Trevor DeVage — That’s the formula: multiplication through simplification is amplification.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Trevor DeVage — And I think that’s…
Rich Birch — That’ll preach. That’ll preach.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, like I could probably put that on a t-shirt for sure.
Rich Birch — Ah, ah, Trevor I really appreciate you, appreciate your leadership love to kind of catch up here how things are going at Pantano. Where do we want to send people online if we want them track with you or to track with the church?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, if you if you want to track with Pantano, which is where I would go, is um, you can go to pantano.church um and find our website there. Um, or you can follow us um @wearepantano on Instagram and all of our social media. Um, and then for me I’m just @trevordevage everywhere um but if you go to Pantano, you’re probably going to find me there most of the time on all of our social media platforms. We have we’ve got arguably one of the best social media specialists in the country. She’s a rockstar and so um, you want to see how somebody does it well, go watch what Amanda on our team does – she she kills it. Um, but yeah, that’s that’s all our places you can find out. I got a website to trevordevage.com that I’m probably not touched in two years but it’s there. Um, you can go you can go see that and look at some past content. But I would go to pantano.church or wearepantano on social media and we’d love to connect with you there.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Trevor. Really appreciate you being here today.
Trevor DeVage —Thanks, buddy, appreciate it.
Beyond the Budget: Innovative Ways to Increase Church Revenue
Jan 10, 2024
This solo episode offers practical insights, strategies, and inspiring stories aimed at helping church leaders expand their fiscal horizons.
The discussion kicks off with a look back at the remarkable achievements of the ‘Best Year End Ever’ cohort, part of The Art of Leadership Academy. Success stories from various churches demonstrate the immense potential and actual impact of focused financial strategies, particularly during crucial fundraising periods like year-end campaigns.
A striking statistic sets the stage for the conversation: 10% of all charitable giving occurs in the final 48 hours of the year. This reveals the untapped opportunity for churches to enhance their fundraising efforts during this peak giving period strategically.
One key benchmark discussed is the average revenue per adult within churches. Noting a slight decline in this figure from 2022 to 2023, the episode underscores the need for fresh and innovative approaches to church revenue.
Three pivotal areas are identified for enhancing church revenue:
Leadership’s Role in Revenue Growth: The episode emphasizes that the most significant driver for increasing revenue is an empowered leader focused on this goal. For larger churches, the recommendation is to consider appointing a dedicated individual, such as a Director of Generosity, to concentrate solely on revenue growth initiatives.
Transforming Offering Talks: A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to revamping offering talks. It’s suggested that connecting the offering to the church’s vision, consistently expressing gratitude, and clearly instructing the congregation on how to give can significantly impact giving. The use of visual stories, such as images from the church’s ministries, is recommended to make a tangible connection between contributions and their outcomes.
Fostering Relationships with Top Donors: The episode discusses the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships with top donors. This can be achieved through special events or personal meetings, focusing on appreciation and understanding their perspectives, rather than direct solicitation for further donations.
The episode wraps up with a call to action for church leaders to strategically focus on these key areas throughout the year. By doing so, churches are not just poised to meet their financial goals but are also better equipped to exceed them, thus enabling a more resourceful and impactful ministry.
Executive Pastor Profile: Sam Beatty from Grace Church, Cleveland
Jan 04, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have with us Sam Beatty, the executive pastor from Grace Church outside of Cleveland, Ohio.
As our churches grow, they naturally become more complex. It’s important to keep them focused and drive towards simplicity so we don’t drift from the mission and vision. Tune in as Sam shares how Grace Church works to stay healthy and focused on the mission/vision so it can yield fruitful ministry.
Focus on the mission and vision. // Leading a fast-growing church comes with its own set of challenges. Amidst the growth churches become more complex and can start to be distracted by the complexities. During growth it’s important to stay healthy as a team and constantly evaluate if you are staying on mission and pursuing your God-given vision.
Examine metrics. // Grace Church has a weekly staff gathering and devotes part of that time to examining metrics for the purpose of both celebration and determining possible opportunities. It’s easy to forget to celebrate because you become focused on the next step in your mission. However celebration is an important step in itself because it highlights what God is doing and contributes to church team health.
Heart checks. // Another way Grace keeps their team healthy and stays focused on the mission/vision is through regular check-ins with both staff and volunteers. By implementing “heart checks” every six months it provides an opportunity to ask questions, discuss experiences, and address any frustrations or concerns. Not only do these check-ins prevent issues from spiraling out of control, they also help to re-focus people in the right direction and get them excited about the mission and vision again.
Listen to others. // In your one-on-ones, have humility as a senior leader and let your staff know you hear what they are saying. Redirect people who have drifted from the mission/vision by asking more questions, rather than making only declarative statements and having all the answers. In our minds we can believe there is only one right way to do something. But often there are many ways to approach a situation. Listening to the other person talk about the way they see things allows us to see a different way too.
View opportunities as discipleship. // It can be hard manage the tension of not wanting to make things complex, but also wanting to create opportunities. When you view opportunities as discipleship and equip others to do them, it will multiply your impact without taking a lot of staffing hours. Grace Church uses vision dinners to bring ministries and groups back to the mission and vision of the church. These simple vision-casting events help to align people while empowering and equipping others for ministry.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You’re in for a real treat today. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. Sam Beatty from Grace Church. This is a church in Ohio, had its beginnings back in the 1950s, and now is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Sam is the executive pastor there, which, you know, we love executive pastors here at, uh, unSeminary. On top of church online, they also have campuses in Middleburg Heights and Olmsted Falls, if I’m pronouncing that correctly, as well as a third campus where they serve an incarcerated community, uh, at the Lorain Correction Center. Uh, they’ve also planted churches across the country. Uh, super excited to have Sam on the show today. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Sam Beatty — Thanks so much, Rich. I appreciate you taking the time and inviting me to the show. And, uh, like I said, uh, we, uh, this is one of the podcasts I listen to frequently. So you and your guests have both taught me a ton, uh, over the years. Rich Birch — Thank you so much, Sam. That, uh, we were joking beforehand. I was I’ve always been looking for my other listener, my mom and you. Now I know. So now I know who the person is. And so you don’t have to listen to this one. My mom will hear it, and we’ll be fine. So. No, I’m just kidding. I really appreciate you. Uh, yeah, I really appreciate you tuning in.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you fill in the picture a little bit? Kind of tell us a bit more about Grace. Give us a sense of of the church. Um, it keeps, you know, some of that kind of stuff. If we were to come this weekend, what would that look like? And every church, when we say executive pastor, it looks a little bit different. So kind of tell us a little bit about your role as well. Sam Beatty — Yeah for sure. I, uh, I’ve been here for 17 years. Uh, we’re in the Cleveland area just outside of, uh, Cleveland. And, uh, it’s been a church that’s been been here for a long time, since the 50s, like you’d said. And just has a legacy. Uh, we’ve had two senior pastors in that amount of time. The second one is is currently here. So Donald Schaefer, uh, was the founding pastor, and, uh, now Jonathan Schaefer, uh, is also, uh, he’s as his son, he took over.
Sam Beatty — And, uh, Grace is just an amazing place to find healing. We hear that a lot. Uh, so we do a lot with Recovery Ministries. We do, uh, we find a lot of people who maybe have been wounded in the past at churches that end up showing up at our door. So I feel like God’s used us in that way. Um, and like you said, we’re a multi-campus church. Uh, we have one other physical campus. We also have, um, the Lorain Correctional, but but in addition to that, we have, uh, several cultural churches. We have an Arabic church that meets on site, uh, a Spanish church, and a deaf church.
Rich Birch — Okay, oh wow.
Sam Beatty — So just trying to see, you know, how can we take the mission and vision of, of Jesus to bring the gospel to the world? And, uh, and the Christian Missionary Alliance, uh, as a denomination really focuses on a global, uh, global mission. So that’s a big heartbeat of ours as well. Rich Birch — You know, everybody wants to be a part of a fast growing church or not everybody. Lots of people are like, hey, that would be a great thing. Uh, but I know that leading from within one of those can have tremendous pressure. Uh, it can be hard to kind of keep everybody focused. What have you found on that front? How as a church are you keeping your team, keeping your volunteers kind of pointed in the same direction? Give us a sense of what that’s look like for Grace. Sam Beatty — Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, um, I had a conversation with our founding pastor when I first came. He was my mentor, Donald Schaefer, and I remember he he had been asked he would be asked a number of times, you know, how is how is the church growing? You know, what’s your secret sauce, basically?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Sam Beatty — And he would say his answer for that was I just minister to who the person is right in front of me. So I think sometimes in the midst of as you grow and, you know, lots of people will tell this, you know, if you’re if your things are going well, you’re going to start growing. And as you start growing, you become more complex. And I think that’s the Craig Groeschel, uh, uh, quote there. But as you do that, then you start to focus on the complexities.
Sam Beatty — And, and I think what, you know, I’m reminded of is always pointing people back to what do, what are we here for, what’s our vision, what’s our mission? And really helping people to see, is this an opportunity that is worth, uh, jumping into? Is it part of our vision or mission or, um, or are we just going to be sort of distracting ourselves with more complexity? So I think it’s a combination of staying healthy as a team and then also evaluating, like, are we staying on mission? And sometimes that’s in the midst of complexity. Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. I love that thought. You know as as our churches grow they can you know they naturally drift towards complexity. And we’ve got to find a way to keep them focused and actually drive towards simplicity and to try to, you know, drive towards more focus, at least. So talk to me about how how you’ve been able to help or how the church has tried to stay focused on vision and mission. What does that kind of practically look like at, uh, at Grace? Sam Beatty — Yeah. Uh, so I think that, um, the challenge is to see, you know, are we striving to make disciples? And I think every church probably has, in some form or another in their vision, making disciples, as, you know, the vision of Jesus. But how do you how are you doing that practically? And I think, um, we’ve seen, you know, situations where are we just doing a cognitive approach? Are we just saying we’re just going to have Bible classes and just for the sake of Bible classes? Or is it just a relational thing, or maybe just an experiential thing? And the reality is, it needs to be a combination of all three of those pieces to be effective discipleship. Sam Beatty — So I think a lot of it is, is being able to see from our team’s perspective, how do we come outside and take a look at the big picture? And really go through almost a sense of, are we looking through filters? Are we trying to raise people up, or are we just trying to hire for a position? Uh, because ultimately that can be the death of a of a church is when you stop having the people who are in your congregation do the work of the ministry. Uh, so I think always reminding people of those truths, uh, and reminding myself of that, uh, just to be able to see, you know, where, Lord, where are you taking us today, tomorrow, and then next year, you know? Rich Birch — And and how what does that look like kind of at maybe at a team level or kind of an organizational level. How do you keep that in front of your people um, when it, you know, beyond just kind of individual conversations, you know, how do we how do we kind of scale that up? What is what’s that look like for you guys? Sam Beatty — Yeah, we do, um, as a staff team, uh, and we have a, you know, a decent sized staff team. We do a weekly, um, staff gathering. And at that gathering, it’s an opportunity for us to celebrate where we are doing those things, because I think a lot of times we forget to celebrate because you’re always thinking about the next, you know, the, the next piece of that.
Rich Birch — True.
Sam Beatty — And, um, so I think celebrating is a huge as a huge one, um. Having those team approaches and saying there are certain metrics that we want to be able to to filter through and we look at, you know, is this an opportunity for us that, um, is going to allow us to grow in the right direction or not? So so I think some things are, um, more celebratory and, and other things are, you know, we’re looking through a number of lenses, and are those lenses things that are taking us in the right direction. Rich Birch — Okay. That’s cool. One of the I know, one of the pressures, um, you know, in growing churches, let alone fast-growing churches is how do we keep our staff from burning out, from, you know, uh, flaming out, you know, ending up making all kinds of unwise decisions? How has, how have you avoided that at Grace? Or what have you done to try to avoid that at Grace? I know it’s not always a we don’t always bat a thousand on that.
Sam Beatty — Yeah. Rich Birch — Um, how what what have you done to try to build a positive team culture? Sam Beatty — That’s good. I would probably even. I would probably even roll in volunteers in my answer to that question…
Rich Birch — Good.
Sam Beatty — …because I think, you know, our staff team is is one thing, but really we have a huge staff if you’re looking at a volunteer base.
Rich Birch — That’s very true.
Sam Beatty — As, as a, you know, a total organization. And there’s one thing in particular, before I was in this position at Grace, I was the head of the worship department. And so I would lead worship and led the teams. And and I think you, you, you learn about a lot about complexity and conflict management and those kinds of things…
Rich Birch — True.
Sam Beatty — …within the worship department area. And we started to to do this thing called heart checks. And the heart checks were things we would do every six months. We would take the entire team and we would meet individually with all of them. And this took a while. Um, but what we found is at about that six month mark, we could really help to re navigate people in the right direction.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — So where people maybe were getting, you know, to a point where there were frustrations bubbling up, but but they didn’t really have they weren’t open enough to bring it up, you know, in a conversation with you. But when you had an intentional time to sit down and, um, and go over that. And so what we did find is if we would skip that and wait like a year, then that’s where things would spiral with certain volunteers. And we’d find a ton of so we found a ton of health from incorporating those heart checks. And so I can’t speak enough for like, your one-on-ones with staff members.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah.
Sam Beatty — Because what happens is you get off the same page. And even where you think you’re on the same page, you know, you think you’re going in the right direction together uh, you’re really kind of getting off page. So if you can have those strategic conversations more, more frequently, those are huge, both from a staff perspective and a volunteer perspective. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let’s talk about that from a volunteer perspective. I don’t know many churches that do one on ones with volunteers. Like that’s that’s a that’s a huge investment of time, effort, energy, resources. You know, is the goal has that kind of rolled out for all your, your, your volunteer teams, like you’re trying to do them twice a year? Um, yeah, talk us through that a little bit. Sam Beatty — Yeah, I’d say we try to do that with every ministry area that’s that’s looking at staff, uh, having having volunteer teams, I mean. And what we do is not program it in exactly the same way.
Rich Birch — Right. Sure.
Sam Beatty — But we say at least twice a year, have a touchpoint with your with your teams. And, and so as far as the worship department would go, we would take, uh, we would do it four times a year, split up between two different departments. You know, the musicians were every six months and we’d stagger three months and do…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — …vocalists. And, uh, and so we would meet with them for 10 or 15 minutes, make it very quick so it was not this long thing. But we would just say, what’s God been teaching you? And what are some, you know, things that you what’s something that you want to tell us that you haven’t told us? And just amazing things would come out of those times. And we also found, interestingly, a lot of them were thematic. We would see the same thing happening with a number of people. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Sam Beatty — Um, but the whole next, you know, the next few months, people are just pumped – they’re excited. They see the mission and vision more clearly. Uh, and I think you’re just on the same page. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s cool. Well, let’s talk about that then, at a staff level and maybe bring it back to the vision/mission piece. You know, talk us through. I’m sure this has never happened, but theoretically, if you were engaged in a conversation with a staff member where you felt this person is straying a bit from the mission, or maybe their area is, there’s a little bit of vision leak there. We’re not quite pointing in the direction we should. Um, talk us through what does that look like? How do you engage that person? How do we kind of keep them, you know, how do we try to steer them back? Those kind of talk us through what that would look like. Sam Beatty — Yeah. And, um, I think this is an opportunity um, it’s an opportunity. Really, you know, when you’re in ministry, this is an opportunity to always help take people two degrees in the right direction.
Rich Birch — Yeah, sure.
Sam Beatty — Because what’s going to happen then is you’re going to head toward, you know, toward the right, uh, the right thing, get people back on mission and vision. So the way I like to do that, and, you know, where we’ve discussed with other staff members is seeing, how do you feel like things are going? You know, you ask lots of questions. And I think a lot of times where people get into trouble, especially as they’re overseeing others, is they make more authoritarian kind of declarative statements to people, as opposed to making it more of a question. Sam Beatty — Like, you know the right answer. We read the same Bible. Like, we just need to ask the question and people will think like, oh, wow, that that’s true. So I think being good at question-asking always helps people go. Taking a humble approach. I think humility is so huge. Um, especially when you’re in more of a senior leadership. Uh, because people will say things that will offend you. Or you’ll think like, hey, I was, I, you don’t know, ten things that were happening in the background. But just to take a humble approach and say, I hear you, I hear what you’re saying, and we need to heal together in those situations, you know. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Years ago, I had a coach, uh, say to me, we had to, you know, person that helps teams for a living. Um, and, you know, they spent some time with us and with our teams, and then it came to some feedback from them, and we were, you know, we were deliberately saying like, hey, we want to we want some help, how can we get better? And this leader said to me, he said, you know, Rich, um, you should you should ask way more questions than you answer. And I was like, oh, that kind of hurts a little bit, you know? And it’s true, right? How do we we need to position ourselves as question-askers, not as question-answerers. I think particularly as we as we become more senior in an organization, it can become tempting…
Sam Beatty — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because and part of it’s true, it’s because like you’ve seen a lot of stuff, you’ve done a lot of things. Um, but man, we need our people to really grow into that. That’s, uh that’s good. Sam Beatty — I think I think, too, leaders are inherently problem solvers. I think I’ve found a lot of good leaders who are really good problem solvers. Because that’s what happens – problems arise and you make the right decision. So I think often we can go into a conversation with another staff member or a volunteer, and we already have the right answer in our own mind. But there’s often 10 or 12 different ways to do something. And so asking the question gives them the opportunity to help you to see a different way as well. So I think having the humility to say, I’m not always right…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, exactly.
Sam Beatty — …I think it’s important. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. Good stuff. Well, I know one of the functional problems we face as our churches grow larger is it’s actually the fact that they grow larger. And, you know, I made the joke before – the only people that like big churches are pastors. You know, most people, if you talk with them, they would prefer a smaller church just because of all the stuff around, you know, who do we who do I connect with and all that? How are you facing that at Grace? What are you doing? You know, this is a big organization. Lots of people, lots of staff. What are some of the practical ways that you’re attempting to try to make Grace feel like, you know, it gets people, can still get connected and be a part of, you know, what’s happening here? Sam Beatty — Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that’s such an important piece because as people stay anonymous, you know, if there’s an anonymity, that’s where they just don’t feel like this is part of my family. And I think part of the this is where the complexity issue comes back in. Like, um, is there a positive to being complex? It’s only if your folks still focused on the strategic pieces. So offering within, you know, men’s ministry, for example, having lots of opportunities for people to be at consistent tables, you know. And that’s that’s kind of like their small group where I’ve seen a number of churches say we do only life groups, and it’s only this way, it’s only this specific program. So you’re sort of programming out an ability for people to to engage with others in the way that God might be sparking them to do. And so I think giving lots of opportunities, but also keeping things very strategic, uh, is, is is important. And that’s I think that’s where we’ve seen a lot of healing. So we have a lot of recovery ministries where people would say, wow, if I miss, I’m people are going to know I’m missing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — Uh, or you’re at a, you know, a smaller, um, we do the thing called Ladies Latte. It’s kind of an outreach opportunity. Our senior pastor’s wife, Mary, uh, speaks at that. And and people go there, and they they build community with just that table.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — And they look forward to it every month. So I think being able to have those those opportunities are important. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s how do you balance those, the tension of those two off of, um, you know, wanting to create opportunities, uh, on one side while on the other side, trying to keep things simple and not, not complex. How do you… there’s no easy answer to this question; I understand that.
Sam Beatty — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But what are some of the ways that you’re wrestling with that tension? It’s probably a tension to live with rather than a problem to solve. Sam Beatty — Sure. Yeah. I think if you’re not living with that tension, you’re probably not growing. Because you’re always, you know, having that complexity back in your face, so to speak. Uh, I think as long as you’re looking at. Sam Beatty — So, for example, if you are, um, given an opportunity – somebody is starting a ministry or they’re excited about something and you can you can empower someone, you can equip them to do it. It’s not taking a ton of staffing hours, but but you’re really equipping that person. You’re doing you’re really doing discipleship. So when you see the opportunities as more of discipleship opportunities, and if you’re constantly equipping others to do them, then then you can have a broader sense of, we could have 10 or 12 things happening. But the reality is we’re not we’re not investing 10 or 12 times our current output.
Sam Beatty — We’re having one…another thing, I mentioned the heart checks, but another thing we do sort of staff-wide, ministry-wide is really challenge people to have a vision dinner or a vision cookout or some kind of vision-casting event. So no matter what, if you’re in men’s ministry and all these different guys are going all different directions, there’s, you know, some complexity there. You still have a central point of vision-casting…
Rich Birch — Oh, I love that.
Sam Beatty — …where you’re doing that for everybody. So that’s the bigger picture.
Rich Birch — And that’s that’s at like the ministry level…
Sam Beatty — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like, hey, what are you doing this year? Because I think a lot of times we, we look at like a lead pastor or someone in your seat, executive pastor, and we’re like, well, that’s kind of their thing. They’re the people that are the vision people. But I love that idea of of saying, hey, at a ministry level, we’re expecting you to do something around casting the vision. Sam Beatty — For sure. Yeah. And we all have different, you know, every ministry area will have different things that they desire for their purpose to be within the scope of that vision/mission. But we make very clear, like children’s vision and mission is equal to men’s is equal to women’s is equal to small groups. Like that it has to have a central vision and mission. And then within that you can have your own purpose. But that’s an opportunity for them to really cast that when they have something like a dinner, or something to gather together and do that. Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s cool, I love that. That’s again, I don’t I don’t know that I know anybody that does that. That’s a great, you know, I think we we see it typically roll out as like a corporate thing. It’s like a hey, we’re kind of doing this as an organization. That’s that’s a, that’s a really cool. Well pivoting in a little slightly different direction. Talk to me about your, you know, campus, the ministry that’s connected with the prison. Um, how does that all work? That’s a, you know, tell me a little bit about that kind of fill in that picture, and how does that connect to the the vision/mission of the church? Sam Beatty — Yeah. Um, that’s a great question. We we had a guy who, Mike Swagger, he’s he works for a ministry that works in the churches. And he approached us. And this is where I think coming with that if an opportunity comes to you, you’re not always just turning it down because, well, we’re too complex already; we just have to turn things down. Um, but he approached us and, and really said, here’s, here’s the issue. The issue, we we do discipleship well in prisons. We don’t have any church feature that’s healthy. It’s not like a community that’s gathered together. And, uh, and the other thing is we don’t have anything for families. So what we sort of came up with and Scott Lessing, one of our associate pastors, he was the men’s pastor at the time and ended up being that campus pastor. So that’s part of his role, did a phenomenal job with it. But what we offer is we we go in multiple times a week. There are lots of different things happening. And the guys have an opportunity to hear the service. So we do it in a very similar way to that we do our other campus, our other physical campus. We have a video of the sermon. Uh, they have their own worship team inside the inside the prison. And, uh, we have a whole team of people who do kind of announcement type things and gathering and praying for people. So it’s a it’s an opportunity to bring volunteers in. And it’s really almost all volunteer led at this point. Sam Beatty — Um, um, and, and what we’ve found is some just some amazing things where guys are getting out of prison and they’re coming to our, uh, one of our campuses now. And, and one interesting conversation in the beginning of this is that the guy who is proposing that we we do something had already approached another large church, and they said, well, actually, if if those people are going to come to our church, then we’re not going to do it. We thought, wow, that is not the heart of Jesus. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Sam Beatty — And so so what we’ve seen is not only people beginning to come, but also the families of the incarcerated guys are able to attend or watch live stream. And so you have this separated family that’s both now gathering and worshiping in the same way. Um, in obviously a different, you know, a couple different ways. But, uh, one other thing cool that’s happening within that. And this all sort of birthed out of seeing opportunities and really taking advantage of them. Um, but we’re starting a school of ministry within the, the prison itself. And the school of ministry is now training and equipping, uh, incarcerated guys…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Sam Beatty — …to be ministry leaders, really to be pastors.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sam Beatty — And the CMAs on board, their their you know, it’s been complex just trying to figure out the how do we…
Rich Birch — Really?
Sam Beatty — …license somebody to be a pastor… Yeah. How do we license somebody to be a pastor and he, uh, you know, is is currently in prison.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — Because it’s separated into, they call it the cadre. And the cadre are long term guys that have been there for a long time.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Sam Beatty — And so the goal is, as these guys can travel around the state of Ohio, they can be given opportunity to minister to others as well.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sam Beatty — So so a lot of cool things happening. But I think it birthed out of that, you know, that are we taking advantage of the opportunities that God gives us?
Rich Birch — Yeah. I just want to underline two things I want to underline there. First of all, like I, I love your heart and I appreciate what you’re saying. Like, hey there, you know, there might be other churches that are like, man, if those those folks are coming here, uh, we don’t, you know, we don’t want them here. You know, to be honest, I think that’s probably the way most churches would react. We wish we wouldn’t, but I think, you know, lots of us would have that kind of reaction. And the fact that Grace, your church, your leadership would say no, like we should do something here. You know, we’ve seen this time and again that fast growing churches, there’s always a sizable portion of their ministry that is it is about reaching people. It’s about making the community that they’re in better, even when it’s it doesn’t when it seems selfless. It’s like, hey, this isn’t this is not really a huge benefit, or at least it’s a long term commitment. you know, literally if guys are in for a long time, you know, before, you know, we’re going to see some trickle down, you know, these this isn’t going to solve a staff thing next week. You know, this is going to be a long time.
Sam Beatty — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so um I just love that. And I also just want to underline the opportunistic thing too, that it’s like I think we all should be looking for where is it that, you know, it’s the old Henry Blackaby thing. Where is it that God’s working and how do we get alongside that and say, hey, I want to be a part of what’s going on there. So yeah, I love that. Yeah. When you… Sorry. Go ahead. Sam Beatty — No, I was just going to say we, we’ve, we’ve seen a number of different models, prison campus models. But the most common is Monday morning you drop off the DVD and then the guys can just watch it. You know, this is this is much more than that. This is actual ministry. Our senior pastor goes out there, I think, every 6 or 8 weeks and preaches.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Sam Beatty — And he and he’ll just, uh, you know, preach the same message he did on Sunday. And they know him because they see him every week. You know, he he’s on the screen for them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — But to be able to gather with them and, and pray with them. And we’ve just seen God move in some amazing ways, even within the, the correction officers and the, the leadership of the of the prison, and so forth. Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That is uh, I love that. You know, I think that’s inspiring. What would you say to a church who’s, you know, maybe there’s a leader or two that are thinking that might be something, or maybe God’s already put something on their heart and they’re they’re hearing this and they’re thinking, maybe we should take a step towards that. What would be step one, step two that you would suggest, hey, here are some kind of initial steps to even take to explore, you know, beyond reaching out and talking with you? I would suggest that. But, you know, beyond that, are there any kind of steps that people should think about if they’re thinking about prison ministry? Sam Beatty — Yeah. And we’d be we’d be glad to come alongside people. But I, I think the biggest thing for us is we, we had that connection. So there was a connection point with a ministry that’s currently in a prison. So I think if you’re looking to get involved, uh, that would be probably the first step is try to find another ministry that happens to be in there and partner with them. So we’re not trying to redo what you’re doing from discipleship standpoint. We’re trying to make a church and and also incorporate the families. We have other teams here in our, you know, current campus, um, that minister to the families of and that’s been cool to see, you know, and when people get out, there’s a whole process where we meet with them. We help them get jobs, we help them get. So there’s all kinds of things cascading from that. Sam Beatty — Um, but but I think, uh, another thing that you would want to do is really contact the warden. Uh, the warden is sort of the… if the warden doesn’t want it, it is not going to happen. So.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Sam Beatty — We’ve even thought about do we go to a couple more around us in the Cleveland area and, and just jump in and we thought, oh we really need an open door.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — So I think having some of those conversations and, and knowing where there’s a successful, uh, it’s successfully happening. If you were to have that warden talk to our warden here, um, she would tell you, wow, there’s amazing things happening. Like, you should do it, you know, and I think can be an advocate. Rich Birch — Right. Interesting, interesting. Well, this has been a great conversation. Um what else is going on in Greece. Anything else you want to share? Just as we we look to kind of land today’s episode. Sam Beatty — Yeah. I, um, I think one other cool opportunity that we’ve seen and taken advantage of is being able to, uh, incorporate cultural churches within our congregation. So we found that, um, being in an area Cleveland has a larger immigrant population. Um, we have more languages spoken than probably a lot of places around. And.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sam Beatty — So what we decided was, is there a way that we could have, you know, churches or campuses that are in different languages? And that’s been something I think that’s been really, uh, uh, a God thing where, where we’ve seen a lot of, uh, people who can’t speak English, uh, come coming out. But I would say just in kind of in closing, uh, as a ministry, I think the more that we can focus on being healthy, the healthier what comes out of you is going to be.
Rich Birch — Right, so true.
Sam Beatty — So no matter what God is directing you in, you know, you may not there may not be a prison opportunity for you, but your opportunity might be small groups or something else. The goal is always to say, how are we making this healthy? And when we when we talk about things like heart checks and vision meals – these are all areas to to bring greater health, you know, to to people, congregants, volunteers and staff alike. Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. Well, Sam, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you spending some time with us today. If people want to connect with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online? Sam Beatty — Yeah, we have um, if you just go to GraceCMA.org, GraceCMA.org, uh, and then there’s a whole staff page there. You can look me up. I’m the only Sam on staff, so feel free to email me. Happy to have you email me and check and reach out. Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, I really appreciate you being here today. Sam. Thank you so much for your time. Sam Beatty — Thank you. Rich.
2024 Unpredictions: Timeless Church Leadership Challenges & Solutions
Jan 03, 2024
As we step into the fresh possibilities of 2024, it’s vital for church leaders to discern between fleeting trends and enduring challenges.
In this episode of the unSeminary Podcast, we delve into the “2024 Unpredictions,” a guide to the timeless challenges and solutions that will shape church leadership this year.
Core Themes:
Parents Will Still Worry About Kids: The digital age continues to present new challenges for parents. Churches have a unique opportunity to provide guidance and support, particularly in the realm of kids’ ministry. Whether it’s through sermon series focused on raising children in a digital age or offering comprehensive family counselling, there’s ample space for churches to make a significant impact.
Marriages Will Be Struggling: With nearly half of American marriages facing challenges, churches must bolster their support for couples. This might mean enhancing premarital counselling, hosting marriage enrichment retreats, or using resources like the Alpha Marriage Course to provide practical, relatable guidance.
The Bible Will Need Explanation: The majority of the 181 million Americans who opened the Bible last year found it confusing. Churches need to double down on making Scripture accessible and relevant. Consider additional resources like post-sermon podcasts, companion readings, or broader reading campaigns to deepen biblical understanding.
The Poor Will Be Among Us: Globally, 700 million people live in extreme poverty. Churches can play a pivotal role in addressing this through partnerships with local and global charities, advocating for social and economic policies, and creating job opportunities.
Gathering Together Will Still Matter: Despite the rise of digital platforms, in-person church experiences remain irreplaceable. Focus on creating unique, engaging in-person experiences that can’t be replicated online.
The World Will Be Smaller: As global connections grow, leveraging technology for global communication and learning becomes crucial. Churches should aim to develop global relationships and share their ministry more widely.
The Next Generation Will Matter More: With lower church attendance rates among millennials and Gen Z, it’s crucial to engage and empower these groups. This means adapting styles to resonate more with younger demographics and inviting them into leadership roles.
While we embrace the advancements and shifts of 2024, these seven areas remain steadfast challenges for church leadership. By focusing on these enduring issues and adapting our strategies to the current context, we can ensure our churches not only remain relevant but thrive in serving our communities. Let’s embrace these “Unpredictions” as a roadmap for impactful ministry in the year ahead.
We’d love to hear how your church is addressing these challenges. Share your stories and strategies with us, and let’s grow together in 2024!
Digital Rabbi: Unlocking Your Purpose and Passion with Sats Solanki
Dec 28, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Sats Solanki, the founder of Reflect Church in London. Sats is not just a pastor but also a coach, speaker, and host of the podcast, Digital Rabbi. Tune in as he shares about the unique journey of Reflect Church and its strategically slow approach to rebuilding after COVID-19.
Make space for rest. // Coming back from the pandemic in London, Sats explains that what Reflect Church sensed its people needed was rest and a deeper connection to God. So they began stripping away elements that felt like more of a drain and a distraction rather than something that energized congregants and created space for connection.
Make it about discipleship. // One change the church made was to simplify Sunday services. They also stopped talking about money on a weekly basis and have actually seen an increase in giving. Sats explains that Sundays are now more about discipleship. As the leadership has stepped back, it has created a sense of ownership and buy-in among the congregation. Reflect Church’s leadership recognized that it is God’s church and while they have a significant role to play, they needed to pause in order to keep in step with the Spirit and not run ahead in their own strength.
What works in your area? // Reflect Church’s strategically slow approach is influenced by the unique geography and culture of London. People in the city work late and have limited energy for volunteering and attending events. Look at your geography and demographics when you make decisions for your church. Your personality, gifting and staff team are unique. Recognize that certain things will work in your location whereas other things won’t.
Energizing vs draining. // At Reflect Church they are now more intentional about creating room for the presence of God and ministry during services rather than having everything precisely planned and structured primarily around teaching. They incorporate more silence and waiting on God in their services, allowing for moments of encounter and reflection. It’s important to help people get connected in the right environments but we also need to examine if we are offering something energizing or draining. People need to come away from church feeling like they have received something.
Use your gifts outside the church. // Digital Rabbi was built around helping people discover and pursue their dreams and desires. People should feel alive and energized using their God-given gifts and the work that they do. Part of seeing the kingdom of God expand means helping people love the work they do outside the church as well as inside the church. Through his podcast, Sats encourages creatives, in particular, to recognize the urgency and sense of stewardship in using their gifts, rather than viewing them as mere hobbies or optional pursuits.
You can find out more about Digital Rabbi and the podcast and coaching Sats offers at www.digitalrabbi.co. You can also find Sats online on Instagram and connect with Reflect Church at www.reflect.church.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You’re really going to be rewarded for that today because we have got a great interview lined up. Really been looking forward to this. We’ve got Sats Solanski. He is from London, which is kind of cool, international guest. Always great to have folks from all over the world on the podcast. He planted his church in 2021—it’s called Reflect Church—out of another church. They have two locations in London, plus they’re part of an international movement called C3 Church Global. If you’re not familiar with them, you should be – a fantastic movement. On top of being a pastor, he also runs a website called Digital Rabbi, which he offers coaching, speaking and hosts a podcast as well. We love having podcasters on. Super excited to have you on Sats. Thanks for being here today.
Sats Solanki — Well hey, Rich, thanks for having me on.
Rich Birch — No, this will be great. It’ll be yeah, I have this funny thing with London. I had never been. I should have said this before we even began. I’ve never been to London in my life, ever, in my entire life. And I was three times in the last 12 months, which is very odd…
Sats Solanki — No way.
Rich Birch — …very, very strange. So I love London, love, love getting a chance to talk with with folks in London. So fill in the picture, tell us a little bit about Reflect. Tell us about your background.
Sats Solanki — Yeah, yeah, sure. So yeah, as you said, we we planted the church a couple of years ago that was out of an existing multi-site church which had been going for, I don’t know, 20, 30 years, something like that. We’d been a part of that church, my wife and I, since really going to university, so it was quite a big change. Sadly, there was a little bit of the, you know, leadership transition, a bit of drama, a bit of difficulty. So that was a thing. And that happened.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Sats Solanki — That happens. Um, and so really it was like, what do we want to do? You know, we’ve got this, you know, group of people. It was around Covid. And London is the sort of city where, you know, a lot of people just left, you know, because, you know, they want to go home. They’re not originally from London. Or it’s a terrible city to have Covid in…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Sats Solanki — …because it’s all about what you can do out and about in this city. So yeah, it wasn’t great for a lot of people. So that obviously had a massive effect on the church. So we had this small group of people like, what do we want to do, you know? So we just take a break or should we give it another go. So yeah, we felt like it was the right thing to kind of try and lead people through. That was the word actually. I kind of felt like there were people there and it just felt almost wrong just to abandon ship, you know, in a time of crisis. So so that’s how it kind of came back and, and really we’ve been rebuilding very slowly. I would say strategically, slowly, but I think that makes me sound a bit smarter than maybe I am. I would say we’ve we’ve leant into that to try and create, um, what we’ve really felt the church needs, which is rest, and what we needed as well. So it’s changed how we’re doing things. And we have this really unique opportunity to start something with some people who are already with us. So it’s not completely from scratch.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sats Solanki — So it gives us a bit of space to explore, um, yeah, without thinking, no one’s going to want to be a part of this. It’s too different from what people are expecting.
Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s cool. I’d love to talk about that. I was when I was doing a little bit of research, I see, you know, you have two locations, one in Bellam, I don’t know London very well, although when I was there once, I had a, I had a great after I had this amazing pizza in this really cool spot, sat for a whole afternoon and it was in Bellam. So I’m like, I feel like. I’m no way. Yeah, which is hilarious. So right off the kind of town square or this, I don’t know what they call it, like the square there is beautiful. One of these I remember because it was a bright, sunny day and I was like, wow, this is not London. This is not my picture of of London. So, so anyways, love I love that part of the world. So that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Well let’s come back to that strategically slow. You know that doesn’t really connect with church planting. You know we have this picture of church planting which is like go, go, go, you know, push hard, do everything, ring all the bells, do everything we can. Talk to us. And that can lead ultimately to unhealthy patterns. I think ultimately that can, you know, you hear this all the time. It’s almost like a stereotype. It’s like we got that’s how you get going. And then ten years later, the pastor or the leadership team burns out and they’re like, they have this come to Jesus moment and they’re like, oh, we should not lead like this. And I’ve sometimes joked where I’ve said, like, has anybody ever started without that? Like, is there a way to do it that’s not that way? So unpack that. Talk to us about being strategically slow. What’s that look like?
Sats Solanki — Yeah. Wow. I mean, great question. I think it’s probably worth just saying like, um, I think often we as leaders and maybe just as people, we tend, we do tend to react and overcorrect. So I would sense just looking at my own journey that the past few years has been a correction, but it could be an overcorrection as well. And I do feel the the pendulum swinging a little bit back, you know. Um, just to give you an example, you know, for a while we just we just a lot of the things you would associate with our sort of church…you got lyrics. We got. If we just we scrapped lyrics when we came back to church. Like we didn’t even bother putting them on a screen. It was that minimal.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sats Solanki — And for those listening, obviously people don’t know me, so they don’t know how I’m wired. But just to help everyone, I’m wired in a way that is visionary, that is driven all of the classic, you know, traits of a lot of church planters.
Rich Birch — Ok yes.
Sats Solanki — And so for me, that was like very strange. But I think one of the things one of the I wouldn’t call it—maybe, maybe, let’s call it a mantra, it’s a mantra now—was this phrase which was, we’ll do what we can do. Because we went from an environment where we had very hard working team, you know, it was all about, come on, let’s build the church. Let’s build the kingdom of God. Let’s go. You know, you know, London for Jesus. All that jazz, which I’m still into. I was totally into that as a concept. But but but you know, it was just it was very, very busy. And so we realized actually what Covid did is it created a lot of space, and it created space for people to think about what their priorities were. And, and one of the things we realized is that Sundays took so much energy. And what it really meant is that most people didn’t have any energy for throughout the week, which, you know, there’s obviously one Sunday in the six other days. So what does that mean for what it looks like to be a Christian the rest of the week? So we just realized it wasn’t it wasn’t bad. It was our love for the church. And we wanted to create something. We want to create space for people to connect with God, etcetera. But the way we were going about it was actually not accomplishing that in the overall across the week. So that seemed to be a pretty big error. And I know it’s not just me because I’ve heard a lot of other conversations, you know. I think there has been something globally across, you know, the global church of people getting this revelation and shifting. And yeah, it’s felt really good.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I’d love to unpack that. You know, that that’s a contrarian position obviously. You’ve you know, you’ve you know, you’re talking about, you know, something that I think is the reason why we’re talking about it is because it grabs your attention. You think, okay, this is a little bit interesting. So, you know, that idea that Sunday takes so much energy, I think is true. I think all of us can resonate with that. It feels like, gosh, it is so much push to make the weekend happen. And is this really a day of rest, like what’s happening here? Unpack that a little bit more. What’s that look like for you to kind of, you know, take a step back from, okay, we’re not even going to have lyrics. What else has that kind of what other things, other ways has that impacted your thinking or the way things are done at reflect?
Sats Solanki — Well, I think I think it’s interesting, isn’t it, because we didn’t not have lyrics forever. You know, it did change. But what was really funny in the first couple of weeks that we did that is I was getting text messages from people who are almost like jittery about it. And they’re saying, oh, and they were suggesting, do you want us to print some lyrics? It was almost like they thought maybe they can’t figure it out how to do it. So so we let people do it. We, we let them print them out. And what it did is it created a sort of environment where it was kind of the opposite of consumerism because because now it’s not like we’re going to create all this stuff for you. Which, which there’s nothing wrong with that but but it does it does slightly disempower people from actually contributing, because we’ve kind of got a top down sort of hierarchical structure. This is what we’re doing. This is what we’re, you know, all of that sort of stuff. And what it did is it created a little bit more sense of, this is our church, obviously it’s Jesus’s church, but, you know, and we do need leaders and all of that jazz. But but it created it created a sense of of of more buy-in actually, like more ownership, which when you really think about what you want as a leader, that is what you want.
Sats Solanki — So another shift we made is we stop talking about money, like not completely, but on a weekly basis. And still, and I imagine this will change, so again, I’ll come back to the overcorrection. But for a little while we just thought, you know what, we’re just going to rest this conversation.
Rich Birch — Take a break from that, Yeah.
Sats Solanki — We would talk about it in a few messages, maybe in the year, but we’ve seen our giving go up. So there’s something about the spirit of it that is attractive. I think when we’re not pushing, we’re not forcing it just in that we’re going to make something happen. We actually understand that it is God’s church and he is the one building it. And we definitely have a significant role to play, but when we just step back a little bit and we get, you know, in step with the Spirit, we’re walking with God, I think God can do things that we couldn’t do in our own strength. And and I think there’s a lot we could do in our own strength. You know, I think there’s a lot we can create in a church without God. And that’s okay…
Rich Birch — It’s true. Right. There’s that, and I’ve said that for years, like one of the I would say like one of those, you know, how you have these like discontenting questions you walk with for a long time. One of them in my life has been so what was actually happening during all those revivals years ago? Was that… And there’s like two really dissatisfying answers. One is it’s like, no, like the Lord was moving and and it was all him. And he loved those people more than he loves the communities we’re in today. And I’m like, that doesn’t sound right. Like there’s a part of that that sounds off.
Rich Birch — But then the other end of that spectrum is like, well, no, those people were just more committed, and they did something and that feels like, oh, you know, and obviously we know it’s it’s, you know, there’s a lot mixed up in there. But for sure, we don’t want it to be all about us. We want it to be about about him. And I love that idea of creating space. And how do we do that? When, you know, when you look at the idea of reducing clutter in people’s lives, you know, there’s Sunday’s one piece of it, but there’s lots of other stuff that we do that that can create all kinds of just kind of meaningless clutter. And what has, as you’ve pulled those away, what were some of those things you pulled away? And then as you’ve started to add things back, because it sounds like you’re, you know, you talk about the overcorrection, you’ve started to have to add stuff back, what has driven you to do that? What have you added back? And how are you doing that trying to do that in an intentional way that looks a little different?
Sats Solanki — Yeah. Well, I think there’s a lot of factors. The first one I think is geography; it has to be acknowledged. We’re in a we’re in London, we’re in a very specific city. We’re in a very specific culture. The world is very different. And and one of the it’s I wouldn’t say it’s a joke, but but I think sometimes when, when on this side of the world, we talk to American or North American pastors, there is a bit of a we do smile, because it’s just so different.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sats Solanki — And often there’s not that kind of awareness. But but I think, you know, every city is different. You know, every demographic is different. I think we’re all called to do slightly different things. And obviously there’s some commonalities, but it’s been very freeing for me to realize I don’t have to do what everyone else is doing because no one else is where I am, with this group of people in this time, and no one else is me. So so that really changes. No one no one else has got the same team as I do, et cetera. So the more you look at it, the more unique it becomes. And I think that gives you a lot of freedom to actually have the courage to go, well, we’re not going to do this and we’re going to do this.
Sats Solanki — So I think to go to some of the practicals, I think there will be quite geographic. You know, I realized that, you know, people just work really late here. So they’re working really hard and often people have moved to the city for their job, you know, for their career, for their things. So it’s almost like some of the more traditional models of come on, let’s get people volunteering and coming to stuff, it’s almost like people just do not have the energy for it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Sats Solanki — And that that was quite hard to acknowledge because you’re like, well, you should have the energy for it. You know, you should be more committed. But just to embrace that rhythm of, of the, of the city. So, so what that’s, that’s meant is that Sundays has become less invitational and more discipleship-orientated, because it’s a major point of connection, because we don’t have a… we can get people midweek, but it’s it’s a little bit difficult. And I suspect that will change, you know, over the next few years because as we’ve created space for rest. And this is the weird tension, and I think tension is a great word to describe everything we’re talking about here, because again, you can overcorrect. But it’s things in tension, isn’t it? Is it God? Is it us? Well, it’s in tension, isn’t it? It’s both. So everyone, we’ve all got to interpret it, haven’t we, for ourselves and figure out where that is. So I hope no one thinks I’m preaching this really extreme. I’m just about I’m just I’ve got conviction about what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Sats Solanki — And I think ultimately that’s what it comes down to, because you have to know that you’re doing what God is asking you to do. And that is the definition of success, isn’t it? That’s faithfulness. Um, so I forgot where I was going, but there was there was something practical. I think you would have to know what we actually stripped out. Was that the question?
Rich Birch — Yeah, what we stripped out and then and as you’ve added back in, because it sounds like you’ve added a few things back in…
Sats Solanki — Yes.
Rich Birch — …or maybe you’ve been thinking about that, what would kind of what’s the framework you’re using to think about that?
Sats Solanki — Yes. Okay I got it. It’s come back.
Rich Birch — Great. Love it.
Sats Solanki — So so so I’ve realized that, you know seasonally, post-Covid as we’ve created rest um we’ve done something amazing, we’ve given people space. But the flip side is, is also true that people have actually lost the capacity to gather as much. So so it’s been good to rest, but now it is time, I sense, for us to be encouraging people a little bit more. So we’ve given people a lot of space, like come on Sunday, you know, we have maybe one other midweek event, which is not which is like once a month. And that’s for the core core of the church in something we call influencers, which is a sort of equivalent of membership. But what we tried to do with membership is make it less church-orientated and more your life-orientated. That’s another story. But I think in realizing people need to increase their capacity, there is a case to bring back all the typical things. We have had groups, but we haven’t put a massive push on them yet.
Rich Birch — Right. Push on that.
Sats Solanki — So so we feel that coming back in okay, it’s time. It’s time to come on you do need to be in a group. You do need to do something other than work. You know, like we do need to tell people it’s so so yeah, that would that would probably be it. I would say in the service itself, we’ve stripped back a lot of, as I said, talking about money. It’s not doesn’t take, you know, it’s not something that’s really there. We don’t have a lot of announcements. But but again, we’re in a very youthful environment. Everybody’s digitally connected. So we can just go see the website. You know, we don’t have to spend a long time telling you what’s on Tuesday evening, Wednesday night, Thursday, et cetera.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Sats Solanki — So we’ve just got rid of a lot of that fluff that didn’t really need to be there for us. Um yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, yeah. So I’d love so there’s a lot we can learn here. So London, you know, obviously it’s a global city and in a lot of ways is, you know, leads in so many areas. And, you know, the fact that, you know, it is really in some ways peering into the future because it’s so post-Christian. You know, I my this was the context I’m used to, you know, worked for years in the Manhattan facing suburbs. And, you know, those are communities we have to keep staring at and learning from. So this is super helpful for us.
Rich Birch — You know, let’s talk more about that loss of capacity issue. I think there’s a real issue there. One of the things in the UK for listeners, you know, may not be aware of this, but the UK government has identified loneliness as like an issue at like the highest level. There’s literally like a I don’t know what they call them loneliness [inaudible]. It’s like, hey, we got to work on this. And so let me be the devil’s advocate or maybe the angels advocate. So like in a season when the culture is identifying, hey, people are not connecting with each other, is it the right move for us to pull back? Shouldn’t we be leaning in? Shouldn’t we, isn’t there just practically something we can do by trying to get people connected, or am I thinking about that incorrectly?
Sats Solanki — Yeah. No, I think you are right. I think we want to help people get in the right environments. But but I think I think the key thing is, is that we need to ask about what we do and what we create for people to attend and connect with…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Sats Solanki — Is does it does it give them energy, or does it drain energy?
Rich Birch — Right.
Sats Solanki — Because I think that’s that’s it, isn’t it? If you come to a service and you feel like I’m obligated to serve, and I feel like I’ve got to do this, and there’s and you just feel it’s not so much about what you’re doing, it’s more about just where the person is in themselves. If they are operating in a place where they’re just giving a little bit more than they would like to, or they’re able to, then they’re going to come away from that event feeling a little bit drained, and that affects how they’re going to show up in the future. And so what we’ve really tried to do is, is just try and be really sensitive with that so that we’re not, you know, when you’ve got a machine which is church, you’ve got roles you’ve got to fill, you’ve got things you’ve got to do, and then you get stuck because you end up prioritizing the overall vision over the individual. And, and we have to flip it the other way and understand that the vision will be built when people are built. And and so we do want to engage people, but we have to figure out a way that’s going to give them energy and make them… And for me, if we want to talk more theologically or practically…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sats Solanki — …for me, that’s about creating more space for the presence of God, more space for…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Sats Solanki — …you know, ministry, not just teaching, you know? So we do a lot more space in our services, a lot more like awkward silences, you know, like where we’d be like, cool, next thing, next thing. It’s like, no, we’re just going to wait on God for a bit and just see what happens. So I think that that is what people need when they come to church, right? They need to come away feeling like they’ve received something.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so true. Yeah. That’s that’s very true. And you know, so my, my background folks that are listening and know this, but I, you know, I really come out of the attraction church movement. That’s where I spent most of my time, and still spend a lot of my time thinking. And 100% agree that like the if you just held on to what we did 20, 30 years ago, that isn’t, you’ve missed the boat. Because it’s like people have changed, and obviously Covid accelerated. And I totally agree on this idea of accessible encounters. How when people come to our experiences, they need to they need to actually experience something. Even just last weekend at our church, Jeff, our lead pastor, you know, he took ten minutes and did a lectio divina. You know, it was using different language and it was, you know, it was clarifying what was happening for folks who maybe have never experienced that before. But I’m like, we would have never done that 20 years ago. Like we would have never said, let’s stop our service and have, you know, vast moments of just quiet where we’re giving people a piece of scripture to chew on, that we just would have never done that.
Rich Birch — Give us some examples of what does that kind of accessible encounter look like for you. How how are you how are you creating that space for people, for them to actually have some sort of encounter with the Holy Spirit? What’s that look like for you?
Sats Solanki — Yeah, good. Good question. I think it’s very individual to the leader, to the team, to the pastor.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sats Solanki — Because and I think the reason that is, is because we all have it’s about gifting, isn’t it? There’s all areas where you you can deposit more, let’s say. So personally, for me, I’ve grown to learn that I’m quite prophetic. And so that involves sharing words of encouragement, et cetera. So I always try and incorporate that into, whether that’s one on one, not necessarily, but just group. There’s just time where I try and get into that space. And the really cool thing, actually, Rich, is that, you know, I’ve noticed that maybe, maybe over the last two months in particular, I don’t know why it is, but for whatever reason, my my sermon prep time, I’ve just stopped doing as much sermon prep. And what I mean by that is like prep on the the teaching side of it. I’ve spent a lot more time just waiting on God. And just saying, God, what do you want to do? And then I’ve had courage…
Rich Birch — Shocker.
Sats Solanki — I know, right?
Rich Birch — Taken more time to ask the Lord, hey, what is it that you’d like to say?
Sats Solanki — What am I doing?
Rich Birch — What is my snappy statement?
Sats Solanki — 100%.
Rich Birch — What’s my bottom line?
Sats Solanki — Yeah, 100%. So so I think that has increased people’s experience and encounter with God. Because I’m now not trusting so much in my gifting; I know I can communicate, I know I can talk, people like me. Like, you know, I’m a charismatic person. Like, but actually all those things are cool, but like, it’s nothing if I don’t have the main thing, which is, what is God wanting to say? Because God wants to speak to people. And when people encounter God, it’s it’s it’s not even like a hack. It’s just the thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. Love it. So good. That’s that’s fantastic. I think that’s even encouragement for folks that are prepping, you know, on the message side, like, what if we took more time to just open up space to say, hey, Lord, what is it that you’re what do you want to say to people today? Like, that’s great. Love it. So good.
Rich Birch — When you think to the future, you know, when you think about this kind of strategically slower trying to figure out how do we do this in a way that, you know, is in rhythm with our community, I think that’s another thing you’ve it’s been lacing in here that I think is a really good insight, which is, hey, let’s look very carefully at our local context, what we’re actually doing. You got to understand the people of London, that’s where God’s called you to, to lead. When you look to the future, are there other questions or other things you’re wrestling with that you’re thinking about for the future? Like this might be something where, you know, we might be pointing in that direction in the future, might be some something on the horizon?
Sats Solanki — Um, I think I think it’s probably just in the tension between everything we’ve learned in this last season, and what we reclaim back from in terms of organization and systems and all of those things. I mean, we’re in a small context right now, like the church is not massive. So that allows us to be very sensitive and very individualized in how we approach what we’re doing. But obviously we will grow. And and we want to grow, you know, we want to reach more people. That’s good. So how do we grow in a way that still keeps that. That’s that’s going to be I don’t know if I have the answers, but that’s probably going to be the the one thing I’m thinking about. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s cool. Love it. So good. Good stuff. Well, tell us about Digital Rabbi. This is kind of fun set of resources. And yeah, tell us a little bit about what’s going on there.
Sats Solanki — Yeah. So I kind of have a background in a lot of creative stuff. So mostly a lot of it was just on the side freelancing just over the years, kind of alongside doing church stuff and, you know, design and copywriting and video. And you just, I think in the age of social media has just meant that you kind of need it all the skills. Right now, job descriptions are like, hey, he needs to be able to do this, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sats Solanki — …it’s like, wow, where are people going to get this? So, so I’ve kind of grown up in that, you know, just learning a bit of everything. And and so I’ve always been involved in doing creative services and things like that. But more recently in the last few years, I’ve just been thinking about, you know, okay, I can do all of these things, but what do I want to do? You know? And that was like a pretty big question I don’t know if I’d done. Because I’ve been in environment, which there are a lot of positive things about the church environment we’re in. And, you know, I mentioned the drama. It wasn’t all drama. There was much to take away from it.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Sats Solanki — But but I think when you’re in an environment where you’re part of something bigger than you, which is a good thing, you don’t always stop to sit down and ask the question, what do I really want? So I think we’ve just found ourselves in a place of like immense freedom, suddenly thinking, I can do anything, so what should I do? You know?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Yes.
Sats Solanki — And so there was a whole process there of like, do I trust myself to make the right decision of what I want to do?
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Sats Solanki — You know, and, you know, it was almost like scary, like the freedom. And and so I think I’ve just gone in a whole learning curve around desire, which maybe we could just tap into for a moment, you know, like
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Let’s talk about it.
Sats Solanki — It’s like when you talk about desire, like instinctively, it sounds kind of like, um, potentially sinful. You know? That’s kind of the word, when you think about desire or going after the things that you desire, it kind of sounds like, oh, you shouldn’t trust that. You know, like what it… I don’t know, maybe that’s just me, but like, that’s that’s been my experience I think.
Rich Birch — Yeah I can see that. Yeah, for sure I get that.
Sats Solanki — Yeah. And so um, just going on this process of like actually realizing that God created desire, and it’s good.
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Sats Solanki — And, you know, actually, you should feel alive and feel energized by the things that you do. And and wouldn’t it be strange if God created us to hate doing his will, to hate. You know, because because it’s that classic thing that when you’re gifted in something, you know, I’m a musician as well. When you when I’m playing music, it does not feel like work. It feels too good. And I go, well, I shouldn’t be I shouldn’t be doing this. This is too much fun.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Sats Solanki — And I often find that we trick ourselves and we go, oh, but this is too easy. So I can’t sell that to people because it’s too easy for me. But the fact is, is that it’s actually the reason it’s easy for you is because you’re gifted for it, and that’s actually part of your calling, your purpose. So the whole Digital Rabbi thing has just come out of that. Me asking questions about what do I really want to do? And one of those things I realized was, I just love sitting down and conversations, like this one and helping, you know, talking to people. And I was just doing it anyway. Talking to people was giving me so much energy, and I realized that there’s a whole coaching thing in this that gives me so much energy. So that’s one of the threads is podcasting. But but really it is around, I think, it’s really around dreams and desires. You know, I think people, especially people who have worked in church or volunteered a lot in church, often sacrifice some of the things that they want for the good of the kingdom. And that’s not a bad thing. I think there’s times to do that, but I do think it’s a bad thing when it’s permanent and when those dreams don’t come back off the shelf and we just get we’re on the treadmill of church life. And then it’s ten years later and you think, well, I never did do those things. And you start to feel a bit resentful and whatever it is.
Sats Solanki — And I think, for me, seeing the kingdom of God expand has to fit into things like that, not just in church environment. You know, I think when people create music, there’s something of beauty in it that is good and necessary. And we must move from a, oh, this is something I’d like to do. This is something I must do, you know? So for all the creatives listening, I just want to encourage you don’t, don’t, you know, don’t don’t feel like, oh, this is like maybe something I should. I want you to really feel like the urgency and the sense of, like, stewardship.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sats Solanki — That was the big one for me. Realizing, actually, God has given me these gifts. I have to use them like it’s it’s not good for me to ignore them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sats Solanki — …for other things that are important as well, but maybe have taken too much urgency in my life.
Rich Birch — Well, and I think, you know, we’ve and we’ve had I can think of we had my one of my friends, Mike Brennan, this is two years ago, three years ago in the podcast. And he’s definitely a creative as well and had served in churches for a long time. And there’s that I think the can be a problem sometimes as a creative in that if you’re doing creative services in a church, there’s that weird thing where it’s like, you know, it’s like it can feel like the thing that I do is just getting wrung out of me. Like it’s like a it’s not actually, it doesn’t feel like worship anymore. It doesn’t feel like it doesn’t feel like, you know, and we’ve got to pay close attention to that I think particularly
Rich Birch — And that’s I think is true for for all of us. We all, anyone who is, you know, if we have the honor or the privilege of of working in a church, there’s a line there that we’ve got to watch carefully. And so, yeah, there may be people like you say, there may be people that are listening in that that resonates with you. I’d encourage you to drop by Sats’s website and check out Digital Rabbi, and we’ll put links to it in the show notes, maybe even jump on our coaching call, you know, grab a half an hour time slot and say, hey, like, this is the kind of stuff I’m wrestling with. And he’s all the way in London so, you know, there’s, you know, he can give you some good outside perspective, good strategic outsider. So yeah, that’s, that’s that’s fantastic. So just as we’re coming to land today’s episode, anything else you’d love to share with us just as we wrap up today?
Sats Solanki — I don’t think so. This has been a great conversation. I just want to say thanks, Rich. Thanks for having me on, and appreciate what you’re doing. I think I came across you possibly a few years ago on Carey Nieuwhof’s podcast. I knew I’d seen your name when it came up. I feel like I know this guy, so yeah. Thanks for everything you doing, man.
Rich Birch — Yeah, appreciate that. Carey is a dear friend. You know, I knew Carey before he was Carey Nieuwhof, and so which is great. And yeah, I appreciate that. He’s a good he’s a good guy a good friend. So appreciate that tha. So well thanks so much. If if people want to find you online where do we want to send them? Find the church, find you?
Sats Solanki — Yeah. So all the Digital Rabbi stuff you can go to digitalrabbi.co also on Instagram @satssolanki. And we’ve got a podcast as well, just Digital Rabbi. Church is reflect.church – that’s our website address. Nice and clean.
Rich Birch — That’s [inaudible]. Amazing you got that. That’s good. All right. Well thanks so much. I appreciate you being here, Sats, and thanks for spending time with us today.
Sats Solanki — Thanks, Rich.
Lessons from Christmas: Elevating Your Church’s Impact
Dec 26, 2023
As church leaders, we often find the post-Christmas period a time for reflection and planning. The festive season’s hustle has settled, and it’s time to ponder on our successes and the areas where we yearn for growth.
In this latest episode of the unSeminary podcast, we delve into crucial insights and strategies to transform your Christmas achievements into sustained church growth.
Reflecting on Christmas: More Than Just Numbers
Christmas is often marked by increased attendance and heightened church activity. But what does this mean for your church beyond the holiday season? This episode encourages leaders to view Christmas not just as a one-off event but as a benchmark for potential growth.
It’s about asking the big question: What if every week was like Christmas at our church? What changes and strategies would be required to accommodate and nurture this level of engagement year-round?
Five Key Areas for Church Growth
Shareable Weekend Teaching: The content of your sermons matters. How can you make your teachings more relatable and shareable so that your congregation feels compelled to invite others?
Eventful Big Days: Apart from Christmas, identify other significant days in your church calendar. How can you make these days special and inviting to both members and newcomers?
Captivating Online Conversations: Utilize your social media platforms not just for announcements, but to engage in meaningful conversations. What online strategies can you implement to foster community and outreach?
Magnetic Community Service: People are drawn to churches that actively make a difference. How can your church’s service to the community be a catalyst for growth?
Appealing Volunteer Experience: Volunteers are the backbone of any church. How can you enhance their experience to not only retain but also attract more volunteers?
A Call to Action
As we step into the new year, let’s reframe our perspective. Let’s harness the energy and success of Christmas and channel it into long-term growth strategies. This episode isn’t just about reflection; it’s a call to action. It’s an invitation to envision and work towards a future where the extraordinary becomes the norm in our ministries.
Join us in this insightful episode to discover how your church can grow beyond the Christmas season.
Remember, what was special for Christmas this year can be normal going forward.
Persevering After Being Fired by Your Church: Kyle Isabelli Reflects on His Journey
Dec 21, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with repeat guest, Kyle Isabelli, the lead pastor from Avenue Christian Church in the western suburbs of Chicago.
Did you know that as many as one third of people working in church ministry will be forced to resign or be fired from their position? If you’ve ever had that experience, or been the leader making the tough decision, the question is: how do you handle it? In today’s podcast episode Kyle shares his story of being unexpectedly fired from his previous ministry position, the internal work he had to do to recover, and the importance of transparent communication.
Where is your identity? // Kyle’s movement to his current church wasn’t by choice. When he was let go from his previous position in youth ministry, it came as a complete shock to him, forcing him to reevaluate where his identity was rooted. He realized that much of his identity was tied to being a successful youth pastor, rather than being rooted in Christ.
Candor is kindness. // As people in church leadership, it’s critical that we are candid and transparent about where people on our staff stand in their positions. Communicate expectations and the consequences of unmet expectations clearly. Provide written documentation to help the person understand the gravity of the situation if things don’t change. A firing should never come as a complete surprise.
What is God trying to teach you? // If you are let go from your ministry position, rather than focusing on what might feel unfair, ask God what he’s trying to teach you. How is he trying to refine your faith and grow you? Kyle realized he needed to learn to let go of self-sufficiency and embrace a complete dependence on the Holy Spirit. This shift in mindset set him up for success in his current ministry position at Avenue Christian Church.
Practical steps. // Use a journal to record what you’re learning during this time. Write down the pain, struggles, and remorse you’re feeling. Working through these strong emotions can help to free you from bitterness and confirm what you are really passionate about in ministry. Take a break from social media and relationships that feed your jealousy or ego. Kyle wishes he had done a better job of setting boundaries and not seeking affirmation from others during his time of grieving and transition.
Refined By the Fire(d). // Kyle has written a book called “Refined by the Fire(d): How to Process Pain, Regain Purpose, and Persevere After Being Fired by Your Church.” Coming out in January 2024, this book is the result of Kyle’s desire to create a resource for people going through what he went through. Being fired from a church position doesn’t have to be a fatal blow to a person’s career in ministry. Kyle’s book helps others reflect on their own stories and the work God wants to do after what they’ve experienced. It also can help senior leaders have more empathy, kindness, and grace when something isn’t working and they have to make difficult staffing decisions.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends. Rich here from the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today. You know, we don’t often have repeat guests on the podcast. In fact of the 700 plus episodes, there’s very few that have come on more than once – most people come just once. But I wanted to have Kyle back on. It was a number of episodes, probably twenty, thirty episodes ago we had him on. He’s at Avenue Christian Church. He was talking about Gloo and all their lessons. But we had this sidebar conversation that I was like, ooh that’s a fantastic conversation. If you’re willing to talk about it, I would love to tell ah to hear more about this. So. But Avenue Christian just to kind of remind everyone is a multi-generational church in the western suburbs of Chicago, is a fantastic church, Kyle is the lead pastor there. Kyle, welcome to the show, again. Thanks for being here.
Kyle Isabelli — Absolutely, Rich. Thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Well I’m looking forward to this. Tell us a little bit about Avenue, just bring us up to speed again on that. Tell us about the church for folks that might not remember.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, yes, as you said, we’re locating the western suburbs of Chicago um. Church has been around for sixty plus years. I came here in 2017 as the student pastor in the summer, and then ah about two and a half years later I transitioned into the role as senior pastor. So January 2020, started as the senior pastor and have been great.
Rich Birch — Great time, Great time. Great time.
Kyle Isabelli — Great time to to start leading a church. And it’s you know, I think like every church there’s a lot of transitions that’s happened over these last few years. But a lot of health a lot of growth has come out of it, and it’s exciting to see the future that the Lord has for us here. And I love the Chicagoland area. My wife Marie and I grew up in the Chicagoland suburbs so we love the area, love the culture and just love seeing the work that God’s doing here in western suburbs.
Rich Birch — So good. Well um, you had shared on our ah last kind of after the episode we had talked a little bit about the fact that you ended up in your current ah ministry placement because of it an earlier transition and you were open to talking about that. Ah, why don’t you unpack that a little bit? What ah, you know, what what ended up leading you to the place where you ended up at Avenue Christian?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, yeah, no, it wasn’t by choice.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kyle Isabelli — So when I was ah I was a student pastor high school pastor at a church in the Chicagoland area from 2015 to 2017. And it was the, about the spring of 2017…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …I was pulled into my supervisor’s office with another kind of executive level pastor, thinking I was going to have a conversation about specific roles they wanted me to do for Easter, if I had to go to a, we were a multi-site church, or was I going to be at the main campus on Friday, somewhere else for Saturday service, you know, I thought that was more of the conversation. And to my surprise it was, hey we don’t feel like you’re a good fit here…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kyle Isabelli — …to lead the Youth Ministry anymore, so after Mother’s Day after the end of the kind of student ministry year we’re gonna let you go. And so that was a ah complete shock to me um…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kyle Isabelli — …didn’t didn’t see that coming, you know. And um, it it brought me to a place of really beginning to find find my identity in Christ again. I know we say that a lot as like christians and as leaders in Christian circles, and churches that our identity in Christ. But um it was clear that a lot of my identity was was found in being like this this youth pastor, being in ministry, and being successful. And even over the course those last couple years of the church, seeing up into the right movement in in the ministry.
Kyle Isabelli — And um it was really hard just to hear that like hey, you’re a good youth pastor but you’re just not a good fit here. And not fully understand that. And so that that really began that journey for me of processing that pain, figuring out what my identity is, beginning to think about transitioning – all in the in the realm of I have a wife at home, I have 2 kids under two, and…
Rich Birch — Who, wow, wow.
Kyle Isabelli — …I have to like provide for them in a very short amount of time because time was ticking at that point.
Rich Birch — Wow. So let’s there’s a lot we want to unpack here. There’s a lot I’d love to talk about.And I appreciate you being willing to kind of talk through this because, you know, there are for sure people who are listening in who have been through this, and um, you know it’s a in some ways a normative part. But man, you never think it’s going to happen to you.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so I really appreciate you being willing to talk about that. When you say it was a surprise, unpack that for me. Was that like were there so were there any signs, or was it completely out of left field when you kind of…? Now I realize at the moment there’s the shock…
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …of like oh my goodness. What’s happening? Ah, but when you look back on it now, years and in in kind of hindsight, what did you see what do you see looking back on that moment now?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, yeah. We, you know, I’ve been at the church my first year I had three different supervisors. Ah people hired me, then were not my supervisor. And then I had a new supervisor that first year, and then he ended up being let go. And so I was on my fourth supervisor. And the the expectations that that supervisor had of me, or my the junior high pastor who worked with me, were very different than the expectations that the other supervisors had of us, the other executive level pastors had of us.
Kyle Isabelli — And so um I think for those first 3 to 6 months of working for for him, it seemed like things were going well. But then slowly began to see some of those, you know, they call philosophy of ministry differences, or mission/vision felt like it was a little bit off. And um, just expectations weren’t clear. And so probably in January February we began to have those conversations of like, okay, what’s a win for ministry, and what does this look like? And we really started to dive into that. And I began to realize okay, we don’t see eye-to-eye and everything, but to me these are not necessarily like essentials for leading student ministry. So okay, if you want me to do this instead of doing that um, ah, okay, we can we can try that and see what happens.
Kyle Isabelli — Um, and so like those those conversations had started to happen. Um and so to hear that maybe I’m not a good fit in the long run isn’t as surprising is probably how I felt back then. But for it to happen so quickly without like an extended amount of time to like evaluate, and talk about it, and say oh well…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …let’s talk more about this, and let’s have some deeper conversations about this. And how does this fit within the realm of our entire student ministry, within the realm of our church. And um, those conversations just they they never got to take place prior to that firing. Um.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — And that and that was hard. But yeah, so there were there were some things then that were made very clear. A unique part of my story that um is probably different than what a lot of people have gone through um is that after I had that conversation—it was a week before Easter spring of 2017—we kind of kept it on the down low for a while because Easter was coming.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — It’s like that’s what we need to focus on. And so within those couple weeks a few of the elders and other executive level pastors found out. And they weren’t happy with my supervisor about it.
Rich Birch — Oh no. Okay.
Kyle Isabelli — And so it almost got like taken back.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Kyle Isabelli — And so they wanted them to have us with ah a mediator in the room, talk through some of these differences, talk through…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Kyle Isabelli — …why why don’t you guys see eye-to-eye? Why did you feel that you were at this place to make this decision? Why don’t you feel like he’s a good fit? Like so then we had like 3 or 4 conversations over the course of the next month where it was very clear that like we were on different sides of…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …what it looks like for the student minister to be successful. Um. And just even just overall general expectations for me…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …as as the youth pastor. And so it was like in that season where it’s like, oh this is very clear. And so at the end of that it was I was like, hey, like you’ve made it clear that I’m not the guy you want leading. I get it. Let’s continue on with this. This is your decision; you’re making it. I respect that. I understand more of where you’re coming from. Um but it wasn’t a surprise at that point anymore, you know, because we had those conversations.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — So um, a little bit of clarity prior. But then after that initial firing and then more talking about it, there is a lot more clarity after that.
Rich Birch — Well yeah, that’s a good there’s good insight there around us, if we’re on the on the management the leader side of this equation, um, you know, we we cannot be too clear, like we have to be painfully clear…
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Candor is kindness. You know being as clear as if this does not change I will have to let you go. Like you know we’re not there yet, but that is where we are headed.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um and and you know here is this um here is what I’m saying in a piece of paper that you can take home, because and that’s just compassionate.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because man, when you start talking like that, people’s brains shut down. Like they’re like man, what? Like as you start thinking about, how am I going to pay my mortgage? What about my kids? Like although, rightfully so…
Kyle Isabelli — Yep.
Rich Birch — …though all those things come to the fore forefront. But let’s talk about, like okay so let’s let’s talk about how you then kind of what what was the internal work that that had to go on? You you, I would imagine, you know, like working in any any ministry position, it’s more than a job. We have an identity to it that and and some of that or a lot of that is good. Some of that’s maybe not so good. Ah, but it’s definitely more than than, you know, you’re not punching a clock. You don’t become a youth pastor because you want to make lots of money. So like how did you process that at a personal level, what that look like?
Kyle Isabelli — Ah, yeah, so as you kind of shared earlier, this has probably happened to quite a bit of people. There’s some studies/research that have been done that say anywhere between 1 and 3 and 1 in 4 people in ministry at a church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …will be forced to resign or be fired from their position. Um, so just even in America 300,000 churches, that’s 75,000 to one 100,000 people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot of people.
Kyle Isabelli — So like this is common.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — Um, it’s a lot of people. And so it just so happened that probably 10 years prior, my youth pastor growing up um, he’d taken a job in California, he was from the Chicagoland area, taken a job in California, he was there for fifty-three days.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kyle Isabelli — And on that fifty third day they said, hey, you’re done here. Pack up your family of four kids and wife and go back to Chicago.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Kyle Isabelli — And that was it. He didn’t get any explanation. Didn’t get any conversation.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kyle Isabelli — And so I remember calling him the day I first found out. And he really challenged me, and his name’s Justin. And he’s like, Kyle, before you think about: this is unfair, this isn’t right, whatever; he’s like: what’s God trying to teach you?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kyle Isabelli — How is God trying to refine your faith? How is he going to try to grow you? How is he… At first I was like, I don’t want to hear this from you; I want you just to be on my side.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — Tell me that I’m right and he’s wrong, that I’m smart and he’s not.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — And like and he wasn’t and I mean that’s why he’s been ah, a mentor and someone who’s spoken truth into my life for years upon years upon years. And so he’s like, whatever now you’re learning, you need to write it down. You need a journal, you need to think about it. And so that’s how I really began to process just the the struggles I was feeling, the pain I was feeling, the remorse I was feeling, the um just the anger that was really building up inside of me. I’m a pretty like happy go lucky person, always positive, you know. And I just began to see bitterness take root in my soul. And those were the things that like I began just to pour out on paper and then type it on a computer and just like try to make sense of it all in that season. And then obviously when we started having these like post-firing conversations about like what went wrong, I began to learn more about like, well what am I passionate about in ministry?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — What do the things I really do care about the most? You know it’s like you’re a youth pastor. I mean you want to see kids love Jesus. You wanna see students grow in their relationship. Yes, we like see a full room; every pastor youth pastor like seeing a full room – that doesn’t change. But um, there’s more to it than that. So like what are the things that really I care about the most in ministry? And those things I began to really wrestle with and think about. Not that I hadn’t previously, but now I was putting it on paper and I was typing it out.
Kyle Isabelli — Um, and then to your point of going into ministry, like we’re not. It’s just it’s a little bit complicated because, and and Carey Nieuwhof has written a bunch about this. And um, he talks about how when you’re in ministry your work is your church, your your friends are in your church, and your church is your church. And so when all three of those things are taken away from you all of a sudden, you lose all of those support systems and those close relationships that you have.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — And so we were wrestling with that and what that was going to look like. We were in a season where my wife had experienced some um just difficulties in in labor and deliveries was still in a lot of pain, and we were relying on our church family. My high school ministry volunteers to like be there for us, like 24/7. And we were we were having to do doctor’s appointments, different things like that to help help my wife out. And it was just it was a hard season in that regard. So it’s like, well what’s what’s going to happen to that support system?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — All of those things were beginning to [inaudible] and process. However, I was starting to learn those things about myself, and I was starting to see oh this is how I handle stress. And this is how I handle when really I’m dealing with conflict and issues in my own life. And the Lord really began to grow um those things in me and grow those fruits of the Spirit in me that needed some pain and suffering in order to develop.
Rich Birch — Love that. I, you know, I love that that advice from your your mentor. The the, you know, isn’t that that’s like ah a true friend in that moment…
Rich Birch — Ah, let’s use this to try to ah grow ourselves, as opposed to just go inward and become bitter. You know, I think all of these kinds of moments, right, they have an opportunity for us to either get bitter or better, right? And how do we how do we find that? Talk more about how kind of your own emotional spiritual depth um, you know, deepened in this in this season. Because I I think that can be um, that could be really difficult to, you know, to see that through in a moment like this where I think, man, we just go to survival mode, and we and we go back to animal instincts rather than, you know, maybe some of those deeper questions. Talk to me about what what that looked like.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. No, yeah, I would say for me it was the dependency on God was lacking in my life. You know I was just ah, you know…6, 7 years already in student ministry. Everything grew up and to the right. Everything was, “Kyle’s doing a great job.” And, “We love Kyle.” And and it it was just, you know, we just experienced a lot of “success in ministry.” Um, and so to really see that um that I had to be more reliant on God and less self-sufficient in the gifts or the abilities, or the skills that God, God has given me. They’re of him, they’re not of me. But to, like a small example is just when prep prepping for youth group nights, or preparing for whatever it was, and even like interacting with students, like prayer just was not existent.
Kyle Isabelli — I knew what to do, I had my rhythm. I knew how to prepare, I knew how to get the game ready. I knew how to do X, Y and Z.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — And it was like those thoughts are coming from the Holy Spirit obviously, and those giftings are coming from the Holy Spirit, the power’s in the Holy Spirit. But I wasn’t like consciously aware of like, God, this isn’t gonna happen unless you show up. God, these things I’m writing down or saying in the moment on stage, you know, it’s like as ah as a communicator you have everything prepared then you say something like a little bit off but it really resonates, like I know that’s a Holy Spirit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — That’s not me. But I just…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kyle Isabelli — …I wasn’t in tune with him. I wasn’t focused and just being with him consistently in my my time with him. And so that was huge. And that really set me up when I did enter into my next ministry position. It’s like, okay, as I prepare, as I go forward, as I invest in the students and the leaders and build teams and get volunteers, prayer has to be a consistent part of that. This complete dependence on the Holy Spirit for everything that I do has to be a part of just my daily rhythm, my my consistent check-ins throughout the day, whatever it is.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kyle Isabelli — So that was that was a huge thing. It just took away that self-sufficiency that had been there for years that I can get it done. I’m the one that can take charge of my own destiny. And it’s like, no this is all God’s. And if he wants to take it away, he’ll take it away. If he wants to bless it, he wants to bless it. And if he wants to refine and grow my faith in dependency on him, he’ll he’ll do that as well. And so that that to me was one of the biggest shifts that I had, and have had in ministry over these last 6 or 7 years.
Rich Birch — Love that. Well, let’s talk about the kind of practical side of it. So this is like maybe the opposite end of the spectrum in that. were there some decisions you made in the early days after or during all that on the practical side that were particularly helpful that you might say to someone who’s who is facing this? Or um, are there things you wish you did that you that you didn’t do that looking back on, you’re like, oh maybe should have made that call then.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah,
Rich Birch — Just you know, if there are any of those kind of practical things?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I’ll I’ll give you one of each. The one positive thing was what my youth pastor had told me to do was was journal, was process…
Rich Birch — Good. Good.
Kyle Isabelli — …these emotions and feelings, get them on the paper and allow, you know, your quiet times in scripture, like spend extra time on it; really journal what you’re thinking and feeling. Um and be more intentional with that. That that was huge. Because we do we have we’re a mixed bag of emotions when something like this happens and I needed that. I really needed that.
Kyle Isabelli — One one such instance, it was probably like three or four months into my new position here at at Avenue, and I I’d taken this position because it was a position where I would supervise someone. So in back in my mind’s like I I’m gonna do things the right way. I’m not gonna be a jerk boss and you know all these favorite things. It’s very self-sufficient, prideful. And I remember leaving a conversation with that person one day and I was getting in my car, and I was and I was like, man, it just be so much easier if I could have someone else here like that I that I know of or whatever. And I was like oh wow. Like I’m three months into this new position. I’m like five six months from being fired and that thought crossed my mind instinctively.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Kyle Isabelli — So then I had to like process that and write that down. And and and in the moments of processing, writing things down, you begin to meet with other people. I met with mentors, met with counselors, like sought help in this. That that was huge. So that was that was a big big thing for me. On the flip side of it, there were things that I ah wish I had done. One of which was I, because in the Chicagoland area you’re still like thirty, forty minutes away from your church and from my church and I was still around people…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — …you’re still – I had to take like ah a year and a half break from social media. So those first six months I was still kind of on social media, kind of checking things out a little bit. Um and I don’t remember when I started, I don’t remember when I stopped, and and all… But like there is a season where I just got really jealous; I got envious. I would still follow the old youth groups like Instagram page and see what they’re doing. I would, you know, like to hear from former students who’d be like, ah, youth group’s terrible that you’re not here anymore. And that would like feed my ego and stuff like that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — Like I had to really, I wish I would have, not gonna say cut off those relationships, but not seek out that affirmation from them. I still wanted to be in connection with them and hear how they’re doing and stuff like that. But I needed to do a better job of just saying like, no, like this isn’t time to gossip. This isn’t a time to slander the other church. This isn’t a time to um for you to tell me how amazing I am, and how terrible the new youth pastor, or the youth group is. And blah blah blah.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — Like I love you and I care about you but like I can’t keep hearing these things. So I had to like cut off social media for a season. I had to um, just you know, not meet students for coffee or different things like that, or leaders for coffee. And just be like you know what, like I appreciate you. Thanks for checking in on us, and that means a lot. And ah you know, hey can’t can’t meet right now. I’m “busy at church” right now…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — …but you know like let’s connect at some point. I just wasn’t in a good space. I wish I had done that better on the onset.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Well yeah I can see that, you know, creating, you know, understanding, hey what is like a healthy boundary there? And that’s probably an imperfect one, but even just thinking about that and thinking consciously about that, and trying to make an active decision around, Okay, what is that? Where is the, you know, the best place, you know, for those kinds of things? So. Interesting. Well, you’ve put together a book on this that I want to I want to make sure we’re gonna give people a chapter to that. We’ve got a link in the show notes. It’s called “Refined by the Fire(d).” Love the title. It’s a great title. Ah “How to Process Pain, Regain Purpose, and Persevere After Being Fired by Your Church.” Ah this must have been a painful book to put together, must have been hard… What what are you hoping, who are you hoping reads this book, and how do you hope it’ll help in the midst of, you know, what can be really difficult days for people?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, yeah. I mean the the book it really it came together pretty quickly within that first year which is kind of crazy because I never thought I would like write a book. Once I got done with seminary I was like, I’m never writing a paper more than 20 pages ever again. You know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kyle Isabelli — And so but in that process of like journaling and typing things out, um and then at the same time looking for resources.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — There’s not really that many like books or resources on something like this. And there’s random blog articles, but there is there’s there’s really nothing. And so more has obviously come out over these last five or six years, but at that point I was like, I want to create a resource for people who are gonna go through what I’m gonna go through, who have gone what I’ve gone through. And I began then to have more conversations with different youth pastors that I knew that had gone through that, or then subsequently went through it after I was let go. And was able to talk with them, and encourage them and it’s like, I want to do something and have something for the the ministry staff person who had to resign, or was forced out, or was fired. They need something that they can walk through and utilize and not only hear my story, but then also reflect on their own story, and the the work that God wants to do in their life. The the “refining by the fired” work that God wants to do. And so um um I’m grateful that, you know, Morgan James Publishing took ah took a chance on my proposal and and they thought it was a story worth sharing. And so, yeah, primarily that’s that’s who I’m hoping it reaches is is the ministry staff who have been let go.
Kyle Isabelli — But you know secondarily, ah, it’s going to be for people that are in leadership positions. I think about myself now as a senior pastor like, if this would happen, how do I want to work with someone if we have to get to this place? You know, what are the expectations I want to be crystal clear about, like you like you said earlier. Like you know you know, being candid – I can’t remember is it. It was a great phrase. So someone go back and hear that – it was good.
Rich Birch — Candor is kindness. Yeah yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — Candor is kindness. Yeah, like how am I clear about my expectations?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — How am I clear about what is a win and if things aren’t going well, how do we intervene?How do we track progress? How do we right the ship? And then how do we gracefully work with someone if it’s if it’s not the right fit? If it’s not going to work out long term? Like how do we have empathy and kindness and grace? And and I would hope that like because of what I’ve gone through, I can encourage that in someone else’s life, or help senior leaders then in ministry positions um, have more empathy, have more kindness, have more grace when they are having to wrestle with some of these decisions.
Kyle Isabelli — So that, and then even just the people in the church. Like one, you know, I think about the students and families especially. Like one day I was there, and then the next day they got an email saying that I’m done. And like they’re like, what, wait a second?
Rich Birch — That’s tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — It’s tough. It’s like this is now we’re wrestling with, like do we stay in the ministry. Do we stay in the church? What do what do I believe about Jesus? Like this doesn’t seem loving. And all these different things. And and so there’s even just a little bit in there for them of like well how do you evaluate that? How do you maintain or strengthen your faith when you feel like the church isn’t acting like the church? And those feelings may be valid, you know. And so like how do you wrestle with that? And um, yeah, so it can really help the entire church, but it is focused really on that ministry staff person who has unfortunately gone through a firing in their ministry career.
Rich Birch — Yeah, do you know do you have any sense of what percentage of people who go through this experience end up in ministry after that? Because I would my gut says that there’s a lot of people who when this happens to them that that’s it.
Kyle Isabelli — They check out.
Rich Birch — Like they become real estate agents. They, you know, they they end up in some other thing. Um, but you…
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, they sell insurance.
Rich Birch — Yeah they sell insurance, you take those relational skills and you figure out some other way to monetize them. Um, but you fought the odds there. You’ve ended up in ministry, and for all intents and purposes feels fairly healthy. You know?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So yeah, what’s your sense on, you know, does it is it kind of a fatal blow for lots of people?
Kyle Isabelli — I think it is. I wish there were statistics about it more. I know Barna has done a lot with their statistics about pastors wanting to quit during the pandemic and everything like that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kyle Isabelli — Those coming back? I guess I don’t know the numbers. I do know this, is that there were issues that you were struggling with or wrestling with while you were at your church that you were let go from, and you do find yourself at a new church, those same issues are still going to be there unless you actually deal with them, unless you actually work through them.
Kyle Isabelli — If you experience an unhealthy leadership situation and now you’re the leader, if you didn’t deal with that you’re just as susceptible to doing the same thing to someone else. You know, like case in point, like I said I thought, “man, I wish I would have had I have someone else here to work for me instead of this person,” like three months in. So I don’t know what the percentages are. I would say probably more take, ah I would say more probably take a break for an extended period of time.
Kyle Isabelli — For me, um I just had a strong calling and passion for student ministry that um, was validated by a couple people just close to me – my youth pastor. Like if this is what you feel called to still, then you should pursue it. And and it it just so happened, you know, the lLord was working. There were three different churches in the Chicagoland area that offered me positions, you know, in the span of those like couple of months. So like, Okay, Lord, like you you still are calling me to this. You know that that it’s a sign, that like even though like there’s the baggage of whatever it was I had, I was probably bringing in, these these people looked at me and were able to talk with some of the other pastors and staff and leaders there and say, no Kyle, here’s how he’s been. He’s been above reproach. He’s had integrity, here’s what he brings, here’s what he’s passionate about. And so to me the Lord really affirmed that in my heart, and obviously I didn’t know, you know, having the perspective that I have now, but you know two years later he was preparing me to to be a senior pastor at this church, and to be a part of this church community.
Kyle Isabelli — So um, ah you know, I think you have to be careful about taking a step forward, but I understand if if there are a lot of people who do take breaks, who do something else for a career, do work in some other industry for now, that can be a good thing. Because it can help them get some good just help and encouragement, and ah I would say a refocusing on what their identity in Christ is, what their purpose here on this earth is.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well I really appreciate, Kyle, I appreciate you taking time to unpack this, and I hope people will pick up a copy of your book, before – I think it comes out in January, right?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — If I’m correct it comes out January 2024.
Kyle Isabelli — Yep.
Rich Birch — But before then you can actually get a chapter of it. So if you just go to the link in the show notes to scroll there on your phone, click on that drop in your email address, and I’m sure then Kyle and his team will loop back around with you when the book comes out. But you can download the first chapter, a great starting point for sure. Anything else, you’d like to say just before we we wrap up today’s episode?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, you can also pre-order the book anywhere you get books. It’s you know it’s all the links are there for all the big books stores, book websites, so feel free to do that, pre-order. Pre-orders are always great for authors – I’m learning this as an author. So that’s a good thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, first time author – love it.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, and and I would say this too, Rich. I in the course these last couple years I’ve come across a couple of organizations that are actively helping churches as well as pastors or ministry workers who have been let go: Pastoral Transitions is one of them in California. And Pastors Hope Network, mainly in Texas, is another one. Bill, Tom, and Dana Harrison – they’re doing some great work for each of those organizations. And so if you find yourself in that season, you need career coaching, you need counseling, you need resume building skills, whatever it is, to really go to organizations I’ve come across that can be a great benefit to those who have been fired from a ministry position.
Rich Birch — So good. That’s great. Super helpful. I appreciate you being on the show today, Kyle. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah I mean for me, it’s it’s website www.kyleisabelli.com I-S-A-B-E-L-L-I. Find me on Instagram, Facebook, that way as well. And as you said our church is Avenue Christian Church so avenuechristian.com
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, man, appreciate you being here again. Appreciate it. Take care.
Kyle Isabelli — Thanks, Rich.
Beyond Predictions: Increasing Generosity at Your Church Amidst Economic Fog
Dec 19, 2023
As we step into 2024, churches face a unique challenge amidst a mixed economic outlook. With predictions ranging from robust growth to stagnation, it’s crucial for church leaders to focus on effective revenue generation strategies. One key area that offers significant potential is the enhancement of offering talks.
Understanding the Economic Landscape
The economic forecasts for 2024 is foggy. Are you feeling like you can’t predict where things are going next year with the economy? Wondering how that will impact your church? People who do “economic forecasting” don’t have a consensus on where things are headed. Here some of the varied views I read recently in just one article:
Goldman Sachs // Expects robust growth in America at 2.1%, which is about double what other economists predict. UBS // Foresees lower growth levels and predicts inflation falling by half in 2024. Bank of America // Expects a scenario akin to stagflation, with only a modest reduction in inflation coupled with a significant drop in growth. Morgan Stanley // Predicts a scenario where inflation returns to target without significant drops in growth. Deutsche Bank/ Believes the economy is reverting to a 1970s-like situation, with central bankers battling persistent inflation.
Stop trying to predict where all that is going! We need to focus on what we can control rather than what we can’t.
Focus on Improving the Offering Talks of Your Church
The few minutes during every weekend where you talk about the offering at your church are pivotal. They’re not just a routine part of the service but an opportunity to connect with the congregation and encourage generosity. Here are some strategies to make these moments more impactful:
Express Gratitude: Acknowledge the hard work of your congregation and their choice to support God’s work through your church. A simple thank you goes a long way in fostering a culture of appreciation and generosity.
Reduce Pressure, Maintain Encouragement: It’s essential to welcome new visitors without pressuring them to give and encourage regular attendees and Christ followers to contribute as part of their faith journey.
Careful Language: Language matters. Shift from a mindset of ‘collecting’ to ‘receiving’ offerings, emphasizing the voluntary and worshipful nature of giving.
Report on Progress: Transparency builds trust. Share how the church utilizes funds, highlighting specific projects and their impacts. Visual storytelling, such as photographs or videos, can powerfully convey the difference the church is making.
Show! Don’t Just Tell: Since many people are visual learners, incorporate images or videos to make your message more engaging and memorable.
In an uncertain economic climate, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by factors beyond our control. However, focusing on areas like offering talks, where we can make a tangible difference, is crucial. These moments are not just about funding church operations; they are opportunities to deepen engagement, foster community, and reinforce the mission of the church.
Conclusion
As we face the challenges and opportunities of 2024, let’s embrace innovative and heartfelt approaches to stewardship and generosity. By enhancing our offering talks, we can inspire our congregations to invest not just financially, but spiritually and emotionally in the work of the church. Let’s step into this new year with faith, purpose, and the commitment to make every aspect of our church services, including offering talks, resonate with our mission and vision.
Why Your Team Should Do a 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge (& How!) with Mary DeMuth
Dec 14, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Mary DeMuth today, an international speaker, podcaster, and author of nearly fifty books.
You may have read through the Bible in a year, but have you considered reading the entirety of scripture in just 90 days? In today’s conversation, Mary shares how this 90-day challenge started as a personal practice for her and has since revolutionized her life. Tune in to hear how you can use this practice with your staff and your church to increase biblical literacy, reorient hearts, and jumpstart spiritual growth.
An overarching view of scripture. // Many people tend to pick up bits and pieces of the Bible rather than exploring the book as a whole. Reading the Bible in its entirety over a short period of time can help people understand that it’s not just a collection of isolated sayings, but a cohesive whole that tells the story of God. Mary’s new book, “The 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge” gives us the tools to read all of scripture in only three months.
Three times day. // The 90 day challenge is broken into a morning, noon, and night approach, and includes a daily devotional as well. It’s a chronological read through the Bible so you get a good idea of the story of scripture, and the readings are designed to take about an hour each day.
Listen to scripture. // Mary suggests engaging with the Word in a format that suits you, whether you read or listen to it. By listening to scripture, you can take advantage of your time commuting to work or while out on a walk. Mary recommends listening to the Bible on 1.5 or 2.0 speed because the scriptures are usually read slowly.
Create space for time and focus. // To make room for this discipline, Mary had to take some things off her plate. We fill our lives with so many things that take up our time and focus. Participants will need to set aside time for reading that might otherwise be devoted to other activities, for example social media or entertainment, effectively helping them fast from the world’s standards and ways of thinking.
Try a new translation. // It’s convenient to read the digital version of the Bible as we go about our busy lives. But Mary suggests that it can be an interesting practice to have a printed Bible in a translation that you haven’t read before in order to break away from familiarity and engage more deeply with the text. She also encourages journaling and writing down questions and insights while reading, either on a separate piece of paper or in a wide-margin Bible, so you can return to them later.
Increase biblical literacy. // Scripture is clear that believers need to move from consuming milk to meat, therefore engaging with God’s Word needs to be active rather than passive. Chew on what you are reading and really think about the words. If we know the Word we’ll become a lot better at discerning truth from error.
Join the challenge. // Mary is kicking off a group 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge in the new year. It can be easy to start strong and then fall behind in big goals so Mary has created a FaceBook group where participants can encourage one another and discuss what they are reading each day. Working through this practice with a group can make a significant difference in a person’s consistency and motivation.
You can find out more about Mary and her book “The 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge” at www.marydemuth.com. Plus, click here to participate in the group challenge this January.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to turn tune in today. You’re going to be really rewarded for this. We’ve got a great conversation lined up. Every week we try to bring you someone who will inspire and equip you; today is no exception. Super excited to have Mary DeMuth with us. Ah, she is an international speaker, podcaster, and author of nearly fifty books, which is incredible, as someone who’s working on his third the but to get to 50 is amazing. Germane to today’s conversation she’s an avid bible reading and has guided so many people ah, really back to scriptures to really supercharge their faith. We’re super excited about Mary’s upcoming book called the “90 Day Bible Reading Challenge” or not her upcoming, her current book. And I want you to pick up copies of this and so I’m just declaring that right up front today. Mary, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Mary DeMuth — So great to be here. Thank you for the privilege of being to being able to be on this platform. I’m excited. I love church leaders.
Rich Birch — Nice. Give us a little bit of your background kind of fill out the story there beyond just the kind of standard bio stuff. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, So actually I was not raised in church, a little bit raised by wolves, had a very traumatic upbringing, lots of um, difficult things happening and I didn’t even know really anything about the church until I became a Christian at 15 through the ministry of YoungLife.
Rich Birch — Love YoungLife.
Mary DeMuth —Then started to go to church right away and it was actually a it was something I had to choose to do because I was um, my family wasn’t going to go. Thankfully I had a car. And I just started back then and have been blessed. Ever since. Um, and we all have gone through our rocky moments with church. She’s messy. Ah, but um, yeah, so that’s that. And then I’ve got three adult kids who are ah making their way in the world and they don’t live in our basement. We live in Texas so there isn’t a basement, so that’s good.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mary DeMuth — And I’ve I’ll be celebrating the thirty third year of marriage to my husband, Patrick, in a few weeks.
Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s that’s great. Well for friends that have listened to the podcast for a while they would know we don’t normally have authors on as like just a standard practice, and but when I saw this book I was like we got to get Mary on to talk about this. I think this is a really exciting topic and and you have done I think a huge favor to so many church leaders. So there’s so many of people in our churches seem to have a Chicken McNuggets approach to scripture. They like pick up little bits and pieces of it as opposed to the whole meal and you’re really challenging us to think about a 90 Day Bible Challenge. Talk us through why are you trying to encourage people to really read scripture, you know, in a fast-paced way kind of see the big story? Help us understand why would you encourage people to want to do that?
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, it started from my own journey and something that I’ve been doing for the past five years, a couple times a year. And a friend of mine was doing it and I thought, that sounds fascinating. And I had read the bible in a year before and… But this to me sounded more interesting because I was going to be able to make those hyperlinks and those connections between Old and New Testament and become a better Bible teacher. What I didn’t realize when I started it was it was going to revolutionize my life…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mary DeMuth — …and it was the best spiritual practice I have ever done in my life, and I’ve done a lot of different spiritual practices as a longtime believer. So I just wanted to share this with others. The little story about that is in the chicken nugget story is a friend of mine is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and she was teaching a class and this was a seminary a brand new seminary student raised their hand and said, “I thought the bible was just a bunch of little sayings like things that you would find on Instagram…”
Rich Birch — Wow, right.
Mary DeMuth — “…I didn’t realize it was a whole book.” It was like oh no, oh dear.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Wow. Yes.
Mary DeMuth — So, this will help people know that it’s not chicken nuggets, like a whole turkey that you stick in your oven and you can make soup with later and it’s it’s everything. And the fact that it’s in three months makes it so amazing and beautiful and it will absolutely change your life. So I’m so excited about having this book out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. We um number of years ago. We did a 40-day challenge of reading the new testament as a church. We did that in the new year. And I was amazed in my individual small group. We had so many similar comments like that where people were like, I didn’t know that was in there. Like I didn’t know that. You know, they ran into all kinds of new stuff, which is is incredible.
Rich Birch — Now you’ve broken this up, which I I think is fascinating, this kind of morning, noon, and night reading kind of approach. Talk us through that from ah you know helping people, you know, how is that, why is that a good practice? How have you seen that been helpful for folks?
Mary DeMuth — Well backing up a little bit the question I usually get is how long does that take?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary DeMuth — And it takes an about an hour. And and so and I’m an all or nothing girl. So originally I wrote this as just one big chunk because I’m just like let’s get this done. Check it off the list. Um, but my editor was like, there’s some people that it life is really crowded, and so how can we make this a little easier? So I have two big chunks – morning and noon – and then I throw in a psalm at night because I feel so bad. But um and it’s it’s a chronological read. So it’s not like as you read the bible chronology but based on the Bible Project’s chronology. So so 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel are in different places. And so that you get a good idea of the story of scripture. So um, that’s kind of how I did that, but I wanted to because I know people have busy lives, I wanted to be able to give them those three sets. And the other thing to think about—sorry I’m talking so much, but I get really excited…um…
Rich Birch — No, it’s wonderful. It’s good.
Mary DeMuth — …is it says the 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge, but you can listen to your bible. And my little hack is when you’re having a crazy day but you have a commute, or you’re taking a run, or you’re taking a walk, or you’re in the car, listen to it, but listen to it on 1.5 or 2.0 speed, because usually the bible is that’s like this really awesome person with a very slow voice.
Rich Birch — Ah’s so true.
Mary DeMuth — So if you’re trying to get it into that one hour um that will help you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So good. Um, so now you’ve put this together, package this into a book, but I’m ah, assuming that this would be the good a good kind of thing to do as a community. I can picture small groups doing this, or maybe um, you know, church teams doing it. I was like, hey this could be a great way we could we could still order these books and maybe say hey why don’t we challenge each other to do this together as a team to kick off ah the new year. Ah but but talk to me about how you’ve seen or what your, you know, thinking was around particularly how people could do this together.
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, I’m definitely facilitating that myself the first of the year. People can go to marydemuth.com/bible to sign up for free. Um, but I also know of a ministry that’s taking their people through it.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mary DeMuth — I’ve heard of churches taking their people through it, which is awesome. And I also have heard, like you’ve mentioned, leadership teams. And um, yeah, the book is it has everything, you know, put out like what you need to read. But um, my my editor said, you know, I’ve been reading the bible a really long time. I’m a bible teacher, I’m married to a theologian, all these things. Um so she said on every page I don’t want a summary because but that’s so boring, who wants a summary. She goes I want something that will surprise me on every page. And keeping that orthodox of course, you know, just don’t…
Rich Birch — Um, that’s a challenge That’s a big challenge
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, so I had to really like pray through and bring something fresh every day. So it was kind of like a devotional through the whole bible. So it was a huge challenge personally for me, but it also kind of brought in all of that work that I’ve been doing all those years. And just the amazing “Ah-has!” that the Lord has brought me, I have been able now to share with people who are reading. And that’s a it’s not a lot because you’re already reading a whole bunch of the bible…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary DeMuth — …but it’s just hopefully something insightful.
Rich Birch — Yeah, to be honest, when I I so I had heard about your book and then I I got a copy of it. And and I was like oh this will be interesting because because reading you know, ninety days of reading that’s a lot. You know, like you say an hour a day that and then I was like, I wonder what she wrote on top of that. Like how is that ah…
Mary DeMuth — What more could be said?
Rich Birch — …you know, as opposed to just here’s a checklist of what to read? It’s like now we’ve got a bunch of you know we’ve got more content. But I think you really nailed the like, hey this is ah, an appropriate amount of of other reading kind of appropriate context, like you say, drawing it together. I think that’s you know, fantastic. Earlier in the conversation you talked about how reading the scripture like this, you know, kind of this big read idea um, revolutionized your spiritual life, revolutionized your relationship with Jesus. Tell us a little bit about that and and it give us kind of an insight into what you’re hoping happens in the lives of people who participate in the challenge.
Mary DeMuth — Well I am a very busy person and I wear a lot of hats um, as an author, and a literary agent, an artist, all these things. And so to do this challenge I had to take something off my plate. It doesn’t work anymore to have a smorgasbord and have things falling off. You have to take some of the potato salad off, and add something. So the potato salad that that I took off was social media and maybe some Netflix. And oddly pulling those things off was its own beautiful spiritual practice…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary DeMuth — …because I was realizing I was being discipled far more by the world’s standards and way of thinking and systems than I was by the word of God. And so the sheer act of pulling that off and then adding the bible for such a long period of time, and it caused me to also be thinking christianly throughout the day because I’d had this chunk of scripture.
Rich Birch — This rhythm, yeah.
Mary DeMuth — Um, and then the thing that I guess the last part of that question is every time I read through, the Lord does something new. And this last read through it was like God, this thought: God is a relentless pursuer of his people.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mary DeMuth — And a lot of times erroneously we feel like God’s kind of like ticked off in the old testament, but the new testament he’ssuper cool and like Surfer Jesus and everyone’s welcome to the party. You know we just have this…it’s wrong, but that’s what we think…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Mary DeMuth — …because we’ve been presented that. But I was reading through the old testament last and God just, I almost got mad at the Lord, like, come on! These people, these Israelites they are worshiping idols and they keep doing it, and the cycle of judges where they just keep turning around and turning around.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, and once again.
Mary DeMuth — And ah and and I was like ok, wait. He is just as much the one, I mean his heart in the old testament is that this nation of Israel, the chosen people would be the city on the hill gathering all people to himself. They did not do that because they got very distracted by their idols. But that was God’s intent for them all along. I mean you hear the Abrahamic covenant and, you know, I’m going to bless the whole world through you. It was always there, and his heart was always there. And so that made me fall in love with him all over the all over again.
Rich Birch — Um, so good. That’s great. Fantastic. Love it. I’m going to ask you to weigh in on a controversy, you know, people like doing that.
Mary DeMuth — Sure, but…
Rich Birch — Um, obviously your and you you mentioned this earlier. We obviously want people to read. There’s lots of different ways to read scripture. You can listen to it on your phone, you can, you know, you can listen to it on a CD, you can read it in a, you know, a paper form. Um, there’s lots of different ways and and our overall message is, hey we want people to read scripture. That’s what we want people to take away. But talk us through, from your perspective, you’ve seen people do this, you know, paper versus phone, paper versus digital. Talk us through what should we be thinking about or questions we should be thinking about on on, you know, again, it’s a little bit of an unfair question because I know your answer is whatever, both of them. We want people to read. But but talk us through that. What would what what should we be thinking about on, you know, like an old school paper bible or, you know, digital version.
Mary DeMuth — Well I do think that it is convenient to do the digital version…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mary DeMuth — …because if you if you have a busy life and you’re in the carpool lane, it makes sense to have that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mary DeMuth — However, as a spiritual discipline and as an author who writes books typically on paper, um I I think it might be an interesting practice to have an empty bible of a translation that you’d like to read that you haven’t read before…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Mary DeMuth — …to kind of shock you out of what you’re used to seeing. And then journal your way through or just you know write questions in the margins. One of the things I encourage people to do is that this is such a rapid read that people who are deep thinkers are going to be like, I can’t do this, I can’t do this. I want you to write down all of your questions and your insights on a little piece of paper, on a little notebook, but you could also do it in a wide-margin bible and just go through and come back to it later. You’re not missing anything. You will always keep those insights, but you’re just going to continue to move on, because there is a blessing in in both ways of studying scripture, both in the deep and the the overarching way. So in that sense I think paper would be a really great way to go about it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. That’s good. I know um I was you know, encouraging some young people around ah a read through the bible, like a big read experience. And you know, very similarly I was saying like, listen what, you know, the the phone is super convenient, but you, you know, it yourself if you get super distracted there all the time there is something about putting the phone in the other room, and saying, okay for these, you know, this 30 minutes or whatever we’re going to sit down, we’re going to do this. Um, you know, not in ah in a legalistic way but in a, hey, like we want to help you kind of be as distraction-free as you possibly can.
Rich Birch — Let’s talk about biblical literacy. You know, biblical literacy is something we’ve seen time and again. We hear lots of people saying like, hey, you know, this is it’s waning in the church. The kind of your average person that attends the average church in the country knows less about the bible. Even that example, you used from, you know, from seminary. Pretty dramatic example. Um, talk us through biblical literacy – where’s your heart on that? What what should we thinking about? Obviously this is a potential solution for that. It’s one piece of the puzzle. But what what are some things we should be thinking about as church leaders around biblical literacy?
Mary DeMuth — I would say this, that Christianity is active not passive, but we have lulled ourselves into a passivity, thinking that if we go to church on Sunday we will be spoon-fed like little babies ah the word of God. But we are supposed to move from milk to meat.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Mary DeMuth — In order to do that we have to chew on it ourselves. We have to actively read it. And also we need to take into example, the example of the Bereans who when they heard all of this new stuff about Jesus, they went back and they searched the scriptures to make sure that what the apostles were saying was correct. And we have lost our discernment. And we are receiving all sorts of heresy in all different kinds of ways and we have no idea that we are. But if you know your word, if you know the bible, and especially doing a rapid read-through, it’s going to give you so much of a foundation. You’re going to be a lot better at discerning truth from error than you would have been in the past.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s really good. So good. Um, any other benefits that come, you know, that might be not self-evident around doing a ah rapid read like this, you know, really bringing then you know the whole council of scripture in in ah in a short period of time like this that’s something we might not be thinking about?
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, another one of the read-throughs that I went through I was just so struck by the heavenly tabernacle – this whole idea of it’s there in heaven and then it’s on the earth and then it’s a temple and then we’re the tabernacle and then, you know, then we go through the book of Revelation. And so you begin to have these most profound connections of the story of God and the story of scripture and you also realize, wait a minute. In my narcissistic, um self-centered world of American Christianity, which can be that way sometimes, this book is not about me. This is about the majesty and the holiness and the story of God.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mary DeMuth — And I think we need to elevate our eyes from always looking at our belly buttons, you know, and it and it thinking about everything for us which is what I think that person that went to seminary was looking at, all the pithy nugget sayings that are all about us. We need to graduate to a grander view of who the Lord is and what his story is.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well talk to us about this ah you know this read-through you’re doing in the new year. Again that’s marydemuth.com/bible. We want to send people there who are interested in learning more, signing up for that. But talk us through what that what is that experience going to be like? What you know what are you hoping people will do? Give us the kind of fill out that picture for us.
Mary DeMuth — Well, there’s a private Facebook group, and if someone signs up and they’re not on Facebook they will also get an email from me every day for ninety days.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Mary DeMuth — And I’m so grateful I’m done with that task; that was a lot to do. And I actually added art to every post because um, it’s I think it’s fun to see biblical interpretations of art throughout the centuries, and how they connect to scripture. So it’s just kind of fun. So it’s illustrated as well. And ah in the group we will be ah, talking about what we have read, and hopefully that will cause people to want to keep going. I know that there are a lot of starters. I’m raising my hand – I’m one of those starters in the New Year, I’m going to work out every single day. I definitely do that. But it I actually do work out a lot more now now that I have a community of working out friends around me. There’s something about that accountability and friendship that causes me to want to be with those people. And so that’s kind of the hope of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s so good. Yeah, I think it’s ah there is that natural kind of rhythm that happens at that time of year when we’re thinking about hey New Year, new you. You could start anytime a year…
Mary DeMuth — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but this is inappropriate time year to get this ball rolling. So, so good. Mary, I appreciate this – any kind of final words as we wrap up today’s ah conversation? Again, I want to send people to pick up copies of “90 Day Bible Reading Challenge.” I’m assuming we can pick these up at Amazon, but where else do we want to send people to to pick up copies of this book ah, you know, to learn more to take some steps towards doing this challenge?
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, it should be in your churches bookstore if your church has a bookstore, any Christian bookstore, and any normal bookstore as well should be able to get it for you as well. Um, everything’s changed in the past twenty years…
Rich Birch — So true.
Mary DeMuth — …so mostly you can get it on, you know, all the online sites is a lot easier.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Mary, I really appreciate you being here. Thanks for being on today’s episode. Where do we want to send people online if they’re if they want to connect with you, kind of track with you, where do we want to send them?
Mary DeMuth — Yeah, my web website marydemuth.com and then I’m on socials at @marydemuth.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Mary. Appreciate you being here.
Mary DeMuth — It’s been a blessing. Thank you.
The January Bump: Game-Changing Perspective on Christmas Attendance Targets for Your Church
Dec 13, 2023
A New Metric for Success: The January Bump
Traditionally, we judge the success of our Christmas services by the number of attendees. But what if we shifted our focus to what I like to call the ‘January bump’? Imagine measuring success not just by the numbers during Christmas but by the increase in attendance we see in January. This approach pushes us to think strategically about how we can leverage our Christmas services to foster long-term engagement.
The Christmas service is more than just a one-off event; it’s a launching pad for what’s to come. Here are three key strategies:
Strategies During Christmas Services
The Power of the Message: The Christmas message is listened to more intently than any other. This year, I encourage you to weave in a strong hook that leaves an open-ended question pointing towards your January series. It’s about creating curiosity and anticipation for what’s next.
Engaging Announcements: Use the announcement time to pivot towards the new year. A compelling video clip about your upcoming January series can be incredibly effective in setting the stage for what’s coming next.
Return Gifts: This is about giving attendees a reason to come back. Whether it’s a thematic book, a special t-shirt, or another thoughtful gift, it’s a tangible reminder of your church and an invitation to return.
Post-Christmas Experiences
What happens after Christmas is just as important as the service itself. Here are three strategies to keep the momentum going:
Exit Signage: Visual reminders as people leave your Christmas service can reinforce the message about your upcoming series. These can be banners, handheld signs, or digital displays.
Follow-Up Communications: Sending out a thank-you email or text with a shareable element from the service is a great way to stay connected. This could be a snippet of a song, a powerful message, or a visually striking moment from the service.
Surveys: Engage your attendees with a simple survey asking for their feedback on the service and subtly connecting them to the upcoming January series.
Pre-New Year Strategies
Finally, in the run-up to the New Year, consider these strategies:
Personalized Video Invites: A personal touch goes a long way in the digital age. Consider sending out video invites from your lead pastor or team members, directly addressing the recipients and inviting them to your January series.
Direct Mail: Utilize direct mail to remind your congregation of the upcoming series. A well-designed postcard can stand out in the usual pile of bills and advertisements.
Invite Loopback: Reach out to those who invited guests to your Christmas services and encourage them to extend another invitation for your January series.
Looking Forward
As we wrap up this year, let’s not just reflect on the numbers we saw at Christmas but focus on how we can carry that momentum into the New Year. It’s about building a culture that doesn’t just invite but engages and retains.
Remember, each of these strategies is not just about increasing numbers; they are about deepening connections, fostering community, and helping people find their spiritual home with us. Let’s use this festive season not just as a celebration but as a springboard for sustained growth and engagement.
Thank you for joining me on this journey at unSeminary. Your dedication and passion for ministry inspire me daily. I look forward to hearing how these strategies work for you and seeing the incredible ways your communities grow and thrive in the coming year.
Here’s to a transformative and impactful new year!
The Chosen: Stan Jantz on Reaching 1 Billion People, Ministry Innovation & Helping Your Church
Dec 07, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re happy to be talking with Stan Jantz today, the Chief Executive Officer of The Come and See Foundation. In partnership with ministries around the world, Come and See is on a mission to share the authentic Jesus with 1 billion people worldwide.
Throughout history, followers of Christ have used any means possible to take the good news out into the world. From Roman roads, to the Gutenberg Press, and now “The Chosen”, technology is being leveraged in exciting ways to spread the Gospel.Stan is with us today to discuss the impact of the TV series “The Chosen,” the role of technology in spreading the Gospel, and how churches can use this series as a tool for evangelism and discipleship.
A tool for the Gospel. // Stan believes that “The Chosen”, a multi-episodic, multi-season portrayal of Jesus and his chosen, is the greatest publishing event in his lifetime. With a goal to distribute all seven seasons in 600 languages, with 100 of them dubbed, Come and See is working to make the show accessible for free to anyone, anywhere, leveraging the potential of reaching billions of people through digital devices. They are currently on track for the first three seasons to be translated into 50 languages by the end of the year. Watching the series can entice people into exploring the scriptures to see if the things they’ve watched really happened.
Help with translations. // While AI may be used in the translation process, Stan stresses the need for human subject matter experts to ensure accuracy and nuance in the translations. The Come and See Foundation works with a subject matter expert in each of the languages and cultures to which they are translating. This expert can be a theologian or pastor who will take the translation and ensure that it is maintaining the integrity of the message, even if it’s not scripture. They also ensure that the correct words are used in the translations. It takes creativity and human understanding to make a final work that is not only clear, but also correct.
Partnering to spread the word. // Come and See has partnered with Gloo, which helps churches obtain free licenses to access segments of “The Chosen” along with suggested outlines for use. In addition to being useful for sermon series or broadcast events, “The Chosen” can function as a discipleship tool in small groups alongside study guides offered on the TV series’ website. It’s also a great evangelistic tool for seekers and raises compelling questions, driving viewers to the Scriptures.
Reaching Gen Z. // In particular, Stan believes there is a significant opportunity here to bring young people, especially Gen Z, back to the church. Each generation has a gateway question that reveals what they value which they will ask when exploring something. For example, a boomer will ask, is it true? Gen X will ask, is it authentic? A Millennial will ask, is it good, for me and for the world? But Gen Z asks, is it beautiful? The approach “The Chosen” has to the Good News resonates with younger generations because of the beautiful, intimate story it portrays. The wonderful thing is it is also a true story.
Go to them. // Whether it’s for outreach, discipleship, missions or more, don’t wait for people to come to you, go to them. Use the free tools and resources available on The Come and See website to create opportunities for sharing the Gospel. Students are hungry to get involved in something meaningful; collaborate with Christian colleges and student ministries to unleash the next generation to use “The Chosen” in powerful ways in their communities.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire and equip you, and today is no exception. I’m really excited privileged to have Stan Jantz with us. He is the chief executive ah Chief Executive Officer of The Come and See Foundation. And they have this incredible mission. I love this—a mission that really draws us out—is a big idea to try to share the authentic Jesus with a billion people. You might be familiar with The Chosen. Well they’re on a mission to try to get this ah message out to remote villages, prisons, halfway houses, and beyond and they’re in in the middle of all of this incredible translation work. I’m super excited—and Stan’s in the middle of all that—so super excited to have Stan with us. Welcome to the show, Stan, so glad you’re here.
Stan Jantz — Thank you, Rich, appreciate it. And love being on your show, and love what you do. Thank you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Why don’t you fill out the picture there a little bit. Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us more your background. I know you’ve been involved on, you know, you know, the publishing side. Ah but tell us a little bit about yourself and about The Come and See Foundation for folks that are unaware.
Stan Jantz — Well I have been my whole life about Christian content. So it started with Christian bookstores. My family owned a chain of Christian retail bookstores in California. I grew up in that. I was around all the books. I was around the media, which back in the old days was sixteen millimeter films, I went to video…
Rich Birch —Love it.
Stan Jantz — So all that stuff, you know, [inaudible] and all that kind of thing. And went to Biola University and got my degree there. I got married, got went back in the family business. And we actually sold that in the late 90s, not because we were so smart knew Amazon was going to change retail, but it’s just something, another chapter.
Stan Jantz — So I started writing books. And I wrote with a partner who is a lawyer and we’ve written about about 50 or so books together…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stan Jantz — …mostly around kind of taking theology and putting on the lower shelves. We did a Christianity 101 series with Harvest House. And most recently I’ve done a couple of solo projects – one is called “Fire and Wind” about the Holy Spirit and then “The Healing Power of God”. And this from a guy and went to Biola where the trinity was Father, Son, Holy Bible, right? So I’ve kind of…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stan Jantz — …had this this new discovery, and by the way, Biola too has has embraced the Holy Spirit. There’s a center there for the Holy Spirit. So.
Rich Birch — So good.
Stan Jantz — But it is the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. so I I cherish the word of God, I’ve love it, I’ve taught just on, you know, in my own life, my wife and I in terms of you know classes and that kind of thing – just love it. I love taking people through discipleship journeys.
Stan Jantz — And so you know as I was kind of going along and worked in the publishing world as well and led the evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which is a trade group that represents Christian publishers worldwide, and so I just I just love published simply means to make public.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — We associate it with books but it’s really any kind of media. In fact, the angels who came about Christmas time, the angels when they came to announce to the shepherd…
Rich Birch — First publishers!
Stan Jantz — …they published glad tidings…
Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Love it. Yeah.
Stan Jantz — …as said in the King James. so it just means to make known, especially with the good news.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — And there’s been this huge, you know, effort through history to use any means possible to take the good news out into the world. And so um, you know I am just so thrilled to be a part of what I think is perhaps the greatest publishing event that, in my lifetime maybe even longer, is The Chosen…
Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s amazing.
Stan Jantz — …this multi-episodic, multi-season portrayal of Jesus and his his chosen. And they just the experience that we’ve all read about in the gospels. And and it just it just has presented this intimate, what I guess we call authentic portrayal of Jesus in a way that’s so vivid, and and and and accurate, and it’s just people are just compelled, as I was too when I first saw it.
Stan Jantz — So the foundation exists to really to make it possible for all 7 seasons. That’s the map. That’s what’s coming. There’ve been there have been 3, number 4 is coming in the first of 2024 to make it possible for all 7 seasons to be distributed around the world. And we’re going to depend on ministry partners like YouVersion and Bible Project and One Hope. The Chosen is working with commercial distribution so coordinate those together to get into places, for us especially, where the commercial enterprises aren’t going to go.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — So make sure that everybody has a chance to see it, and then the translation as you mentioned into what we’re kind of shooting as a goal of 600 languages…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Stan Jantz — …that would be subtitled, but 100 would be dubbed. And we can talk about that later because that’s an extraordinary goal. And then to keep it free so anybody can watch anytime on their device. And and you probably know this, Rich, but I just learned this recently – there are 8 billion people in the world; 6 there are 6 billion smartphones. I mean I just…
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s astonishing.
Stan Jantz — …it’s just amazing. I mean, yeah, and so you think, well it’s just kind of a western technology. No they’re all over the world.
Rich Birch — No, yep.
Stan Jantz — And The Chosen is something that is being then distributed through these devices. And of course there’s streaming services, theatrical, all that, but the key is for free that anybody anywhere can watch it anytime and not have to pay for it. So, those are our goals, and it’s it’s a long, you know, many year plan because the seasons obviously haven’t been finished yet. But we think even beyond when they finish the final season in 2027 that we’ll still be reaching the world, that we want to say the first billion, right, because it is a billion.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stan Jantz — But there’s 8 billion people so we want to keep going after that.
Rich Birch — We got a long ways to go.
Stan Jantz — We do.
Rich Birch — Well I love that. I I love that. And I, you know, I love the the big vision. I love, you know, I love what the The Chosen has done. You know, my own kind of I think there’s a lot of people share this kind of experience. I I was a late comer, I was a sleeper on The Chosen. I was, you know, I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been in vocational ministry for so long. I’m like, man, do we really need another Christian thing? And I and my I remember my wife she was like, no, this you got to watch this. And I remember the first couple episodes I was just sucked right in. And it’s been amazing to watch time and again it’s like people who are brand new to faith, sucked in, and are like wow they you know, go back to scripture want to want to read the real story. Or then longtime, who I would count myself in that, longtime Christ’s followers seeing the bible in a new way, and like it bringing the the story to life. And so I just want to honor you, honor the team, honor you know you know, obviously Dallas and his whole team, what they’re doing on The Chosen side ah to to actually make this happen. So honored to have you on.
Rich Birch — But I’d love to talk about some of your goals here. This is crazy six hundred languages, a hundred dubs – that is there anybody doing anything at that scale? That to me seems, as an outsider to this industry, that seems like massive like that’s ah, that’s a huge goal.
Stan Jantz — No, you are right. I mean typically, and this is really what drew, you know, the folks in ah, you know, probably the Mark Green the the Green family.
Rich Birch — Yup.
Stan Jantz — They’ve been such huge supporters of bible translation. And so translation was kind of the heart and they knew and they they saw this show, and said man this this is this is something the world needs to see. But if it’s just on the commercial side they’re only going to do 40 languages, maybe 50 tops. and I think the record they they in the Guinness Book of World Records the show the tv show that’s been translated the most is Baywatch. Now isn’t that isn’t that quite a record.
Rich Birch — Really!? That’s crazy!
Stan Jantz — Yeah, it’s like it’s like 46 languages.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stan Jantz — And otherwise they kind of stop, you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — …or it could stop. It’s not commercially viable to go much beyond that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — So for us to set this goal up 600 and 100 dubbed… And so right now we’re on track, Rich, for the first 3 seasons to be translated, not all dubbed, but translated into 50 languages by the end of this year.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.
Stan Jantz — And then as we work toward because the dubbing is is something that it still requires a hands-on…it’s a voice actor who is…
Rich Birch — Yep
Stan Jantz — …they want to find a voice that matches the original, you know, that’s in the, you know, the first version of that the English version. And to capture so it looks it looks credible and that you’re not distracted because the sync is off and that kind of thing. So it’s it’s a it’s an art form…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Stan Jantz — …and when you go then from languages 51 to 100 it starts, Okay which ones? Because some of those, and we’ll talk maybe a little bit later about what happened to Madagascar, you know, and there’s some of these languages that are are important, but they don’t fit into that top 50 or even you know top 25.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — And yet what what an opportunity that people can experience the gospel as portrayed through this through this media portrayal in their own heart language. Same thing with scripture. And as you said, then to drive people or to entice people who then look at the scriptures. And for a lot of us, I look at it and said, did that that really happen?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — And so I want to go back and look at it. You know and read that passage.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stan Jantz — But I’ll tell you for people who have never read the bible, it is it is we we see that. It is encouraging and I would just say driving people to want to look at the scriptures.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — And there’s been no pretense that The Chosen is inspired. It’s a show about Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Stan Jantz — The word of God is inspired. That’s where we want people to go…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Stan Jantz — …where they will meet the Holy Spirit, you know, working in their heart as they to help them understand what they’re reading. And if if you know that means then too a life-changing experience of coming to Jesus through that, absolutely. So that translation work is really really key.
Stan Jantz — And then to go from 101 to 600, now it hits that would hit 95% of the of the world’s population…
Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Okay.
Stan Jantz — …that can understand. And now doesn’t mean it could be that you your first language is Swahili, but you understand English.
Rich Birch — Right? right.
Stan Jantz — And it’s like you’re so… people would be able to but we’ll hit obviously Swahili and Telugu and qnd Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Portuguese Portuguese, and all these major languages. And in fact, right now we’re working on translations into Arabic, which is I’m sure you’ve had on on your show people who are tracking what’s happening in in…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — …in Iran. I mean we’re we’re really nervous about Iran. But, you know, but one of the greatest per capita people coming to Jesus, the greatest number right now, percentage-wise, is happening in Iran.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. It’s amazing.
Stan Jantz — And Jesus meets them in different ways than we’re, you know, we would…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — …experience here in the west, through dreams…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — …and through those kinds of things. And so we think it’s so important. And so right now there are three Arabic dialects: there’s classic Arabic, Syrian Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic, and we’re working on those, and it’s not easy, especially with what’s going on there. But it’s so important to bring this message to people that are so hungry for it. They don’t know it yet, perhaps…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Stan Jantz — …but they’re hungry for hope, hungry for something that gives them their life meaning, and and helps in this world we’re we’re living in. And obviously for eternity. So we have a great point we have someone who’s leading that for us – I’ll tell you about him in a second. But just how God’s brought this team together is is pretty amazing because you bring, as you’ve experienced too, people who… he doesn’t just kind of start you from scratch. He’s using everything you’ve done…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — …you’ve worked with, you’ve trained for, for this moment, right, for what you’re doing right now.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Stan Jantz — And I’m sure you could say the true same thing in your life too. It’s ah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Stan Jantz — …no waste, right? Yeah, so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Well, and I love, so obviously love um, you know, the Green family what they’ve done in a lot of different places, a lot of different ah segments of the Christian world. They, man, have really stepped in and with some pretty innovative like, hey let’s try to see this happen. And I love what’s happening here with come and see they’ve obviously been ah, critical piece of, Mark’s been a critical piece of this, you know, of this thing.
Rich Birch — Let’s get under the hood a little bit, and talk about, so I love the technology solution here, like trying to leverage kind of up-to-date they even that that whole thing around smartphones and like, man, let’s let’s be smartphone first and how do we get this app available. How do we do that? Um, challenge us help us kind of stretch our minds a little bit around what how you guys are thinking, how you see that as kind of a tool for the gospel? You know this is this is as old as time, going back to Paul leveraging Roman roads to send letters to each other. You know, this is there’s lots of examples of this, but help us think through you know, how how did you pick the first 50 languages? What’s that look like? Help us wrestle through those things.
Stan Jantz — Yeah, well I’m glad I’m glad you brought up the Roman roads because I’m just going to say this: God loves technology. He uses it for His purpose.
Rich Birch — Yes, true! Yes!
Stan Jantz — You know, now now the Christians didn’t build the Roman roads, right?
Rich Birch — No.
Stan Jantz — It was built by Romans.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — And they didn’t use it for the gospel. They used for for commerce and and [inaudible] you know, and to keep the peace and the in the in the empire.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — But Christians then took that and could go out and take that Gospel, was already…
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Stan Jantz — …the way was paved, literally. And then you have another great one was Gutenberg, the Gutenberg press. And you know we say the first by first book to be printed was the bible. But then it was really kind of a, you know, it was an artistic achievement and a cultural achievement. And it blossomed the whole world. But God used it to get the word out. And that’s when the big translation boom happened was after the printing press, you know. Suddenly we realized, oh I can afford a bible now, you know, because it’s not copied. And well I need it in my language. So people like John Wycliffe and Tyndale and others started translating, and it just became the spread. Now you have this, I would call it, this third innovation in the last two thousand years that just massive and that’s the that’s the internet.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Stan Jantz — That’s that’s the you know the digital age. And let’s use it. It’s a tool and it’s like God is saying, there it is. It’s like the Roman roads of our day. Here you go; you can take it out and it’s going to go everywhere. And you can. It’s portable and it’s it’s possible about any it’s just you know the innovation of its set of this information superhighway is just incredible. So why and we have been using it, obviously, but the beauty of this is you’ve got this visual representations, visual story…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — …that people…we’re we’re in a visual age, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — People are, I mean if it’s YouTube or whatever it is, we’re getting so much more information now by looking at a phone, or at at a streaming service or whatever to get that information. So the timing is just right for this.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — And but how do we use it so it becomes a tool and not a master. And I think you you mentioned earlier about AI and I think a lot of people are concerned, and rightly so. I mean there are some ethics that are so important. And it it goes everywhere from what the big, you know, [inaudible] has been, some of that is about image and likeness. You know what are you going to do with that?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — Or you know doing first draft script writing, but you could just you know use Chat GTP, GPT excuse me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Stan Jantz — But even you know colleges we’ve had this discussion at Biola University about this, you know, at the board level about how do you use it? But make it a tool; don’t let it master you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — So so yes the the idea of how you choose those languages, and in your right, Rich, once you get past past fifty, there’s not a lot of precedent for some of these, especially when you get into dramatic, you know, voice actors, that kind of thing. And I’m not saying we would use AI to do everything, but it’s certainly going to help in the translation process. And there already are missionally-minded technology companies that are focused on this. There’s one you can look it up lilt L-I-L-T dot com.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Stan Jantz — And we were introduced to them. There was ah there was an AI missional conference in Orlando this earlier this year – they’re going to do another one in April. Again, leveraging this technology for for the purpose of getting the good news out to the world. And so they’ve been working with us and we’re just kind of how do you create efficiencies. It’s kind of like I somebody explained to me. It’s like nobody does long division anymore.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Stan Jantz — We have calculators that do it. And now our phone is the calculator. So we don’t have to do that. But it used to take a lot of work. Or Excel helps us organize numbers in a spreadsheet. So you know AI is to words what excel is to numbers. It’s a tool to help us take some of that that effort that would you spend endless hours trying to get to that point where you can now take the content you have and turn it into something.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — And that’s where AI can really be helpful especially in language translation. So and to answer your question of how you choose it, well there had been some wonderful precedents already. I mean the Jesus film is in 1500 languages.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Stan Jantz — And you’ve got the you’ve got the LUMO project that one that One Hope does which is a narrative of the story of Christ. Alpha, you know, has done wonderful translation for their purposes. So we’re we’re looking at what’s the priority that you’ve used Alpha or YouVersion or some of these partners…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — …that we have, and then kind of start then taking those, you know, literally one at a time to then get to that that 600. But getting to the hundred will be the next goal.
Rich Birch — That’s the next major milestone kind of thing.
Stan Jantz — And then beyond that. Yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — Once we hit this 50. And then of course the season are the seasons won’t be finished till 2027.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Stan Jantz — For season 7 and so we’ve you know we’ve got 8 seasons. And it’s it’s ah it’s more complicated because, versus a narrative of the story of Jesus, these are actors multiple actors doing multiple lines of dialogue, and so that creates more challenges for translation. That’s just one one voice narrating it, so to speak. And and then capturing the nuance and all of that. But we we want to use it as a tool, but here’s the key, absolute key.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — We have ah, we work with in each language, so each culture, a what’s called a subject matter expert. Someone who’s either a theologian, a pastor that takes this translation, you know, whether it was done by human. Now again, we’re so far humans are doing the translation so that we haven’t used AI for that yet.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — But once it does, and they it’s like you vet that. Okay number one, we want to see is that…
Rich Birch — Does that… yep, right.
Stan Jantz — …translation not just after it, but does it show the the nuance of the theology and the meaning of of that, even if it’s not scripture. You know, lot of scripture’s quoted because Jesus when he talks often he’s quote quoting from or he’s talking the line that was given in scripture. But that the same meaning and the same understanding can come from that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — And so we rely on these subject matter experts. We call them “Smee’s”. Now for those of you who are anybody who’s a Disney fan, there was a character in Peter Pan named Smee – he was [inaudible] a little little a little flunky, you know?
Stan Jantz — Yeah, yeah, sidekick. Now here’s what so here’s what’s funny about that. So the person who’s working to lead our team is a retired Disney executive.
Rich Birch — Oh funny.
Stan Jantz — And he worked he worked for 35 years as heading up their translation and localization…
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Wow.
Stan Jantz — …department for Disney films and animation all that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — So he has vast experience in terms of how this dubbing is done, how the translating works, but that’s where we kind of kid him around that what Smee is you kind of know about Smee because that’s from Disney.
Rich Birch — Yes, brought that in.
Stan Jantz — Yeah, exactly so so these subject matter experts are really key…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — …because we don’t want miss because of a word a certain word the way it’s translated, or a phrase that kind of changes the meaning and and freaks people out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — We just we want it’s so it’s so important to vet that and it’s ,you know what, that’s true of anybody [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — That’s laborious work. That’s… yeah.
Stan Jantz — It is. But you have to have it. And that’s where the creative part comes in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — Because it’s not but it takes a human, it takes creative understanding, and then of course knowing your subject. That’s you know a subject matter expert. I I know this subject and and working together so that the final product is one that is not just clear, but it’s correct. You know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Stan Jantz — And not vear off from that as well. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well I love I love the front footed nature of this. I love your approach to saying like, hey you know there’s a technology there’s technology out there. How can we leverage that? What can we do to try to say. hey maybe there’s a way we could use this to reach people. It’s opportunistic to say hey…
Stan Jantz — Right.
Rich Birch — …we want to take advantage of what’s there, but not saying that there’s no downside but like, hey maybe there’s an opportunity. Maybe there’s an upside to it in the same way the Roman roads they were not all upsides not not not everything that printed was a great thing. Not everything that ended up in film was a great film. Ah, but man, what could we use it for. Have you seen have you, just as you’ve been kind of journeying with Come and See, have you heard of any churches that have used The Chosen in any kind of innovative ways that has helped them in their mission. Is there anything that maybe as we’re thinking and maybe there’s a way we could leverage this in in what we’re up to?
Stan Jantz — And I would yeah, yes that it it has. We one of our partners is Gloo G-L-O-O.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Stan Jantz — They are a resource for churches. So if you go to the the comeandseefoundationation.org website you’ll see a place called resources, and you can kind of scroll down. And then there is actually, you have to get a get a license to show it, but anybody can show; it doesn’t cost anything. And there are segments that have been pulled along with like suggested outline that you can use it for. They’ve done this for He Gets Us, the He Gets Us campaign, if you’ve seen that. They have the resources…
Rich Birch — Um, absolutely.
Stan Jantz — …we can show the commercial and then talk about it. And this we actually have clips and those clips have been selected. And that’s going to be throughout the 7 seasons. But right now we’ve got you know they’ve got seasons 1 through 3. And I expect, Rich, that there will be… we just met with the folks from Bible Project. And that is such a creative innovative innovation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re great. Yeah, totally.
Stan Jantz — Those guys are on fire. And so they they want to, so again, create resources and materials for different segments. And of course integrated into their style, what they’re doing. And I’ll give you another example. I mentioned the Jesus film, and ah they they have done extraordinary work and we we are working together. We’re collaborating. And right now they’re doing a test at now the this is CRU which is the kind of a parent ministry of the Jesus film. CRU has been running tests on college campuses in the U.S. about 20, I think, 15 to 20. And where they say, okay, free food and a movie. And so students show up and…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. Yep.
Stan Jantz — …and they show them, you know, an episode or two of The Chosen, and then they have a little study guide they’ve come up with…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — …to then talk to the kids about. And they actually have seen some extraordinary results. In just one I’ll just tell you it happened at Columbia University, which is New York City, I mean it’s ah it’s a very, you know, kind of and I don’t know it’s an IV league but it’s it’s pretty close. And there was a young woman, Iranian woman who had been coming to the to the meetings. And when she saw, that was like that was the kind of the tipping point for her and she prayed to receive Christ. I mean it was like, wow, this is…
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Praise God. That’s great.
Stan Jantz — …you know, because yeah people are on a journey. So now that’s not going to happen with everybody, but there’s still there’s a there’s a great hunger among Gen Z. There’s a in fact, there’s a there’s a special ah documentary that was produced by The Chosen called Unfiltered. And yeah your your listeners can go to just go to YouTube, The Chosen Unfiltered. And it’s a documentary about nine GenZ adults who were brought in blind to to say we’re going to show you a movie. They didn’t know what they were seeing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — And they pulled them from different, you know, ran… I don’t know if it was random, but they chose these these young people, these these young adults. And then they respond to it, interview them. It’s ah it’s a very, very powerful thing to watch. And here’s my take on this, Rich, and this is not this is not original to me, I I picked it up from Walter Kim, who is the president of the National Association of Evangelical he was quoting James Choug C H O U N G who wrote a book called “True Story”. And in that book he talks about that each generation has a gateway question…
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Stan Jantz — …meaning that this is the question that you would ask about something. And anyway so let’s as as a Christian, I’m a boomer. So my gateway question to open up a conversation is, well is it true? That’s what I would value. A Gen X will ask, well is it real? Is it authentic? A millennial will ask, is it good? Is there goodness in this for me, for the world? Okay, here’s what Gen Z asks: is it beautiful?
Stan Jantz — Now notice you got truth, goodness, and beauty, with the authenticity thrown in there. But truth, these three values, they’re all important. We’ve been leading with truth pretty much as a church. And I think rightly so. But then you have to look at the generation that’s coming up and yeah, truth’s important, but what they, what they value more than anything is beauty.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Stan Jantz — And I think what’s happening with this particular approach to the to the good news to telling it. We’re telling this beautiful, intimate story and it’s drawing people in. Now you get to the truth eventually; if it’s not true, then it’s just a story, and it doesn’t really matter.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Stan Jantz — But this is a true story, and guess what? It’s also really good. It really is good for…we’ve seen it in culture how it’s good for the world…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Stan Jantz — …to when when when people come to Christ their their life has changed for the benefit of of others as well. So so that’s what I love about is that this beautiful, beautiful story and Dallas give him all the credit for the way he’s telling this…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — …and the the way he’s using close ups, and and how he directs these actors. And oh my goodness it’s it’s really it draws people in like nothing else I’ve ever seen.
Rich Birch — It does, it does. And and it’s you know there are and this is a part of what I love about it, he makes some risky choices. Like it is not a safe portrayal, but but that’s great because Jesus is not safe, right? He’s he’s good, right? It’s the CS Lewis thing. Is he you know is he good?
Stan Jantz — Right.
Rich Birch — Of course he’s good, but he’s not safe, right?
Stan Jantz — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And and I love what what Dallas has done; I totally agree with that now. The interesting thing I wonder if you could shed a light on on what Come and See has done or kind of the broader Chosen movement. Man, it really, it’s one of those few places, which I think is a wonderful thing, it’s one of those few places that seems to be a gathering point for Christians of a lot of different stripes. A lot of different backgrounds have been able to kind of connect with this. And I was saying to a friend, I was saying, oh I’m really looking forward to this conversation later this week. And I said, you know, I I’ve been in ministry for a lot of years, 20, 30 years. And was when I started Billy Graham was kind of in his later days. And but he was still out doing festivals and that sort of thing. And there really hasn’t been, I don’t think, a gathering point like that in a number of years, until this has come along. And there there seems to be like a coalition building thing that you’re doing that I don’t see a lot of people doing. Help us understand, so am I right, am I reading that correctly? And then help me understand how you’re able to do that, because that is I say I would say is pushing against kind of the the flow of what’s happening in the church. It seems like we’re fracturing [inaudible] I think it’s having a huge detriment to us. But how are you doing that? How is that working? What’s what’s happening there um with the foundation.
Stan Jantz — Um, that’s a very good observation, Rich. I really appreciate that and I think that’s where working with these partners. You know, that that part of that I said we we’re making it possible for the show to to be completed, to be translated and distributed. That distribution portion is what’s really key because um, you know those that’s the boots on the ground like the CRU already have students coming or you have, you know, what YouVersion is is doing in different parts of the world. And ministries like One Hope ah, which is God’s word for every child is their goal. It’s an international ministry. So how do we provide a tool that they can then use. And they’re going to create these resources that then people can use and gather together. And the thing about it is there they so they did this with season 3, a theatrical release. Remember they did that with the first two episodes?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yep, yep yep.
Stan Jantz — And then the last two episodes that Jesus walking in the water scene which it concluded was dramatic. And they’re going to do that with season 4. And I think it gets people together and I think, Rich, to your point about churches I didn’t quite finish my your answering your question about how do we you know work with churches. That’s going to be a real key. And the resources not just for and certainly, yes, for a pastor if they want to show a clip and illustrate a sermon with a particular, you know, scene from The Chosen. But also to create, you know, I I’m just going to say like a watch party or something. I mean I told you that we were, when I grew up in the Christian bookstore seeing we had these big sixteen millimeter film – I mean big they really were they big reels of acetate film.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stan Jantz — And churches used to do what they call watch party, especially like around holidays, like New Year’s Eve. And people would come in, watch a movie, or they would call binge watch them maybe put in two or three.
Stan Jantz — And I think where you get people together and then talk about it when you’re done. That’s the really… We, just on a small scale, my wife and I are taking another couple who are pretty new to the faith through kind of a discipleship journey showing episodes of The Chosen and then talking about it. And The Chosen has produced, Amanda, Dallas’s wife, has written these study guides for each season. And it really drives you to scripture and asks compelling questions. And I’ll tell you this couple is growing like I can’t believe. And it’s because and what’s great about it…
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Stan Jantz — …because they’re going to the bible. They want to know more. What is the bible telling me about this? And so I think there’s an opportunity for The Chosen to be that gathering point, as you said, bringing people together. And it’s always, hey if we can’t gather by Jesus, what are we going to gather about, you know?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Stan Jantz — And I think it’s the it’s going to unify where we can get sidetracked on different issues, whether it’s politics, or culture, or whatever’s going on. And and this brings us together and I think helps us see how he dealt with these issues too. And because he especially starting with season 4, the opposition is going to grow. You know we think, you know, we’re dealing with some tough things. aAnd yes in many parts of the world it’s really tough to be ah, be a Christian. Well it was tough in the first century.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Stan Jantz — And and we see that opposition starting to build and I think he he’s been through as the scripture says, he’s experienced everything we have yet without sin. He knows the pressures, he knows what loneliness, he knows rejection, and you see it. And and what I find interesting, Rich, when you when you read the but the scriptures. Ah, and you real, you kind of especially get into John where the you know as the things get a little more intimate. It’s like these guys don’t get it, these followers. They keep asking him, so what do you have to do? You’re going to do what?
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Stan Jantz — You know, he he he was real plain about it: I’ve got to die and [inaudible] come back.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stan Jantz — What what do you mean? You know, I mean, huh?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — And so it’s like and so for us to realize, yeah it takes we have to kind of keep keep reading it and keep experiencing it. But realize that’s that’s been the issue with Jesus is that people don’t always right away understand it, but you have to keep stick with him. And then and then it’s it’s like, oh it’s like the the blinding flash of the obvious. Oh that’s what it meant but he said he come back, you know? And I I really I think that again, but the visual part, that beauty part is such a gateway for people to experience and then to be drawn to the Word.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — Ah, to really encounter what God’s message for us is, you know, as as his people here.
Rich Birch — It’s great. That’s super good insights, and it’s good stuff for us to think about, and wrestle with as we think in our our context. So kind of as we’re coming to land today’s episode, you’ve got a few thousand, 3-, 4000 ah church leaders listening in. What would you say to them? What would your kind of message be to them to be thinking about from from your seat at, you know, at Come and See? Is there something we can do to help? How can we, you know, I think so many of us are you know we’re we’re cheering for The Chosen and we see the impact it’s had. We have very similar, you know, stories.
Rich Birch — I’m, you know, I lead stuff obviously, but I volunteer as a Alpha Leader in my church. And there’s a woman in my Alpha group doesn’t know him and, you know, doesn’t she’s I’m just like some guy to her, which is wonderful. And you know she’s talked about same thing. How like, I watch this show called The Chosen and, man, it’s like just drawn her to the bible.
Stan Jantz — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And I’m like Praise God – Like that’s amazing. I want to see that replicated. So what would you say to church leaders that are listening in today…
Stan Jantz — Yeah, well…
Rich Birch — …just kind of today as we as we land this episode?
Stan Jantz — Yeah, first of all, thank you for all that you do, and the the creative things that we’re seeing that I’m seeing personally. Rich, we mentioned before we start chatting the church I’m involved with a network of churches called Bayside in California. And just they’re using innovation and just reaching into places where churches, we’re not waiting for the church people to come to us. Let’s go to where they are.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — So whether it’s a business gathering, or a student gathering, or whatever it might be. And so I would just encourage we we would love to hear your ideas. We this is available to you. It’s it’s it’s free for you to use. And tell us you’re going to use it so we can you know we want to be able to ah, keep track of who’s doing what. So there’s a licensing form on our website. But just shoot shoot an email to us and you can do that. Say, hey, we’d like to do this or the other. And it could be it could be a weekend, I know one person came up with a thought… by the way in Christian colleges I think are really key to this too. Students, and I had this experience at Biola when I actually sought for the first time at Biola University. They sponsored ah kind of ah…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Stan Jantz — …a showing and 2500 people came.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stan Jantz — And and The Chosen was was there. They represented with some of the actors and and some of their key people. And there were students and there was faculty, and people from the community, and it was extremely… showed outside on the big screen. And it’s it’s inspiring to young creatives. Don’t don’t you think, Rich, We need this generation coming up of young creatives…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Stan Jantz — …and direct them and use their talent, as you said this innovation, by telling beautiful stories and the church to embrace that.
Stan Jantz — And whether it’s in a home group, or or the a church service itself, to be able to be able to show this the story. So I would say we’d love to hear from you. But the the show is available and and we just, you know, want to work. And again as I mentioned Gloo has already done some things, excuse me, with a resource page and they’ve done wonderful work in a lot of ways with churches. They’re now working with Outreach Magazine. And so there’s there’s some, I think we’re going to see these resources and we we’re not out to create them, but we want to partner with churches, with organizations to help you if you want to create resources or derivative material. You know, let us know, and let’s work together to how we can make that work.
Stan Jantz — And a lot of churches with their missions program, they have connections overseas and other countries and let’s think of resourcing. You know, yes, we’ve been blessed in the west with great churches and great organizations. But most of the Christians in the world live, used to be called the global south, now they call it the majority world, if you especially if you throw China into that. I think it’s that 60 to 70% of all the believers on earth live in South America, Africa, or Asia. And it’s it’s, you know, and maybe it’s the difficulty.
Stan Jantz — I mean the church in the early church grew because of pressure right? It was something about that. And I think that that’s in many places it’s not easy to be a Christian, but how can we resource and churches that have missions programs, that kind of thing, we’d love to work with you and where we we see this as an international um you know tool to be used. That’s why the language translation is so key. So again I just encourage you, leaders, that this is a tool to use. And let’s be creative in how we can use it. But the story is going to get really interesting as we go into see said 4, 5 and 6.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — We they had an event called Chosen Con…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stan Jantz — …that ran three weeks ago in Dallas. And you know they had these panels with actors like they do and those kinds of events. And they had ah they had one panel with all the the actors who play the the followers, you know, the disciples, including Jonathan, and he happened to be sitting next to the active plays Judas. That was kind of interesting to watch them interact with each other.
Rich Birch — That’s fun. Yes.
Stan Jantz — Yeah, so but they said that this season 4 was harder than season 3. Up till season 3…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stan Jantz — …it’s been fairly, not light, but it’s been like the wedding at Cana, and these different…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stan Jantz — …[inaudible] things. And now season 4, it starts to get and this is this is not a spoiler alert…
Rich Birch — No.
…but it’s John the Baptist his thing happens right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stan Jantz — And the raising of Lazarus and we know that was a wonderful thing, but we know from scripture that ignited opposition.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — That got really intense. Aand so some of those things and then Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus, said I had to learn a lot of lines and they’re all scripture. So they’re bringing, you know, because you’re getting into where you know again, the Gospel and John, which has so much dialogue, that you’ve got this this happening and it’s like boy. And so only you can imagine then seasons 5 6 and 7 which will in holy week, crucifixion, and resurrection. So it’s so so pray for the and pray for for Dallas and and the cast. This is I’ll just be real frank, the enemy isn’t happy with this proclaiming the name of Jesus the way it is…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yeah, you can imagine that. Yep.
Stan Jantz — Yeah so and and nobody’s afraid, but we’re aware, and and needing to pray against that and that God would bring, you know, not just clarity but also strength, you know, to kind of carry this through. And all ministries are facing this. I mean it’s it’s a it’s crazy.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Stan Jantz — You know, Chosen is not unique, Come and See is not unique. All ministries are facing this. And it’s like, you know, it’s almost like the devil knows, hey things are cranking up. I got to do what I can, you know? And and he and he focuses on things that are effective, I think, that’s which is if we learn anything from CS Lewis you know with Screwtape Letters, and say go go for the where the work is really being done. So but we have, you know, we have such great [inaudible] working together. And the media you’re doing, let’s use all the media.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Stan Jantz — Because people listen to podcasts, people watch movies…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — …people go to events, I mean let’s get it all to working together. And I think too one of the things I’m learning, Rich, is ah collaboration. We could do more together than we could do individually, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Stan Jantz — And and the business schools used to call that collective impact, right? So let’s work together whether it’s in your community, with other organizations and ministries and churches, or regionally, or internationally, you know. And so I think that is is a key and when you find a tool that will help draw people and draw them but draw them to Jesus…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stan Jantz — Somebody asked Dallas at this Chosen Con in a Q and A from the audience, what’s the heart of The Chosen? He did not hesitate and he said: it’s Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — It’s not a show about Jesus. It’s not this production we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — It’s not all the plans we have. It’s Jesus – that’s the heart, you know. And I think when we when you make him the focus as we as we always should, lives will be changed. Because people are drawn today as they were in the first century, people were drawn to him. And he has a words to give life, you know. And he still does. He’s still real, and speaks, and prays for us, and is drawing people to himself and that’s all about Jesus. So that’s what I, folks, that’s for me as as kind of a a place when I’m doing from publishing to everything else, this is really exciting and and I’m I’m honored and humbled to actually be a part of it. So yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, Stan, I really appreciate you being here. We want to send people to comeandseefoundation.org if they want to learn more. I love that challenge of like, hey how’s your church using it? Why don’t you try something, you know, set up the licensing and try some ah, you know, maybe something innovative, something that hasn’t been trying, maybe partner with some other churches in town. Maybe it could fit into your ah you know into a series or do something, you know, to try to leverage this tool. I appreciate your openhandedness of, you know, and The Chosen’s openhandedness to try to say, hey let’s try to do this in a way ah, where we can see more people ultimately pointed to Jesus. Ah Stan, I really appreciate you being here today – is there anywhere else online we want to send people to connect with you, or to connect, you know, with with Come and See?
Stan Jantz — That’s the one. You can and you can send in fact I just you know I probably shouldn’t do this, but Bob Goff puts his phone number in all this books. So I’ll just tell you my emails, my emails real simple but just stan at comeandseefoundation.org, so…
Rich Birch — Great.
Stan Jantz — …if anybody’s got you know feel free to reach out or just go to the website. There’s other points of contact. But, you know, I love I love what church are doing. We were talking offline, Rich, about the the church we’re involved with here in California, and you know the church, and it’s ah it’s just extraordinary the work that churches are doing. And not just. I mean yes proclaim the gospel, but to reach out to the community and to bring hope and healing, right? And it is ultimately about Jesus, but there’s on entry points to get there. And I just I think churches are doing remarkable work. And I think we’re seeing young people being drawn back to the church. Ah, a lot of people have left. There’s you probably have if you haven’t had them on but the book The Great De-churching or The De-churching I think is – those guys have did the study on that I think 40 million people have left the church in the last twenty years.
Rich Birch — Yep, yes, yes.
Stan Jantz — And what’s going to bring them back? And I think for the for the church, there’s a huge opportunity, especially among Gen Z – I’m really convinced about that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Stan Jantz — And if you have a Christian college in your in your area, work together with their student ministry leaders, Christian college students, and there’s a lot of on secular campuses too, so it’s not just Christian colleges. But work with CRU or Intervarsity. These students are hungry to get involved in something meaningful.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stan Jantz — Let’s unleash students, you know, to do something that, you know, could could take this out and to work through your church organization in extraordinary ways.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stan Jantz — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, well I really appreciate being on, Stan. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Cheering for you and the Foundation. Thanks so much, man.
Stan Jantz — Thank you, Rich. God bless.
Residency Reflections: Saddleback Church’s Brittany Crimmel on Her Leadership Pathway So Far
Nov 30, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Brittany Crimmel, a Production Director at Saddleback Church in California.
There is a leadership crisis in the local church with so many churches struggling to know how to find and develop people. However, by participating in internships and residencies, churches can contribute to developing the next generation of leaders. Listen as Brittany shares how her experiences as a resident helped to grow the leadership and people skills critical for her current role.
Internships vs. Residencies. // While an intern at a church is usually around for a summer or a semester, a resident is around for one or two years. Residents are a long-term investment in leadership development where there is a leader who is invested in the resident as a person, as a Jesus-follower, and a kingdom worker, so they are not left on their own wondering what to do.
Invest in growth. // In addition to receiving mentorship, residents are given opportunities to lead projects, preparing them for future roles. Residencies are also a critical time to help future church leaders develop soft leadership skills, such as how to communicate with people in different positions in the organization, or how to win volunteers to a cause. All of this preparation is to set the next gen leader up for success when they go to their first ministry job.
Set expectations. // Clarity is critical in working with residents and interns. Remember that residencies and internships are seasonal and they have a hard start and end date. Make the duration and content of these programs clear to help both the church and the participants understand the expectations and prevent confusion. It’s important not to promise people a job at the end of their residency or internship. A partnership may come at the end of the residency if you decide to offer a job, but to protect feelings and expectations, don’t promise it at the beginning.
Set your pride aside. // People may be tempted to develop a resident for selfish reasons, wanting to keep them at their own church. However, leadership development is operating in kingdom currency; it doesn’t matter if the resident or intern stays at your church. It requires us to set aside our pride and embrace a mindset of abundance, focusing on developing leaders who can make a difference anywhere. Supporting and championing the growth of these future leaders benefits the global church as a whole.
A heart for people. // In the production world, technical skills and people skills tend to be in tension. As a production director at Saddleback, Brittany values people skills and system skills more than technical skills. Technical skills can be taught, but having a heart for people and the local church is crucial. If someone has a heart for ministry, they will be teachable and can be paired with more experienced team members until they learn the role.
Show appreciation. // In Brittany’s experience, she’s found that production teams usually get the short end of the stick. As church leaders we need to show appreciation and value the work of our technical teams, as well as offer support so they can do their jobs well. Many times they don’t want to be called out during the service, so instead stop by afterwards to thank them personally. Offer your help with set-up or tear-down. Lavish value on them as sons and daughters of God and members of your church family.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We have got Brittany Crimmel with us. She is a Production Manager at a little church in California you maybe have heard of, Saddleback. Ah, if you’re not familiar, Saddleback was planted ah back at their first public service in 1980 was planted by Pastor Rick and Kay Warren. They now have, if I’m counting correctly, 14 locations in California, Mandarin ah venue, 5 locations internationally, and a robust online community. We’ve had a couple different team members from Saddleback in the past. But super excited, been really looking forward to getting Brittany on the show. Ah, welcome. So glad you’re here.
Brittany Crimmel — Thank you! I’m excited to be here.
Rich Birch — Okay, so tell us about your role first. If people were to say like what is a production manager? Give us a sense of kind of what what do you do there, give us a sense of that that kind of thing.
Brittany Crimmel — That’s a great question. Um a production director at Saddleback really just gets to work with our audio teams, our lighting teams, video teams, our worship team, our teaching pastors, our hosts here at our broadcast campus, gets to work with all sorts of people to help make the weekend experience ah, really seamless.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I um today we want to drill in specifically to kind of your leadership journey and how you ended up where you’re at. I was referencing talking about you behind your back recently and we were talking about Saddleback. We’re talking about kind of succession situations in general. And I said, well you know the good there’s lots of good things going on at churches all over the country, and I said, including Saddleback and I thought of you and your leadership there. But kind of tell us a little bit of how did you end up landing where you are today. What was kind of your journey to Saddleback like?
Brittany Crimmel — That’s a great question. Um, so I went to a really tiny bible college out in Nebraska. And I remember asking our department head, hey I want to do these kinds of things. I want to sit in a seat between worship and production. Is there anybody who’s kind of done that journey before? And he said, well you should go work for my friend at a church in Baltimore. And so I did that. I was her resident, um got to be there for ah 3 years. They ended up hiring me on staff and it was awesome, a really great growth opportunity. And then during covid at the end of 2020 had a great conversation with Dennis Choi, who I get to work with now at Saddleback, about coming out here to be the production manager. Um, so it has been a whirlwind, but such a joy.
Rich Birch — Okay, so use the term there resident. Help define that. What, there’s, you know, you sometimes hear like resident, intern…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You might hear different kind of terms. Help us pull apart what does that, how what’s your understanding of the of that? What what what does it mean to be a resident?
Brittany Crimmel — Totally. Everybody has their own descriptions. I think resident is most helpful when you think of a long-term investment, right? Interns tend to be spring semester, fall semester, summer interns. Residents are typically around for 1 to 2 years. You’re getting not just the, let me introduce you to people. But, let me introduce you to people and then pass you off and you will lead projects. So you’re a longtime investment.
Rich Birch — I love this. And you know, let’s pull that apart a little bit, Talk us through what that experience was like. How is being a resident in that first church in Baltimore, how is that different than just being like, okay I’m a team member here? I’m just, you know, go and take this area and run with it.
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, I really appreciated my residency opportunity because I had somebody that had gone before me, right? There are not a lot of people who sit at the intersection of worship and production that are female church leaders, and so I happen to get to work for one of those. And she was awesome. And so she had already walked ahead of me. And so as we were going through, you know, opening a campus when I first got there, she talked me through, here is you know, the things you need to be aware of with this. Here’s why we chose to do it this way instead of just being like, Okay, yeah, you’re a warm body. Go, you know, push buttons, or do this or whatever that would be. So a lot of investment, a lot of talking through why those things mattered, understanding the why behind the what instead of just doing stuff for her.
Rich Birch — I love this, and you know I think we all know that there’s a leadership crisis I would say in the local church…
Brittany Crimmel — Totally.
Rich Birch — …that you know so many churches we’re struggling with how do we find people? Where do we find them? How do we develop them? Um and you know there’s a unique thing, there’s lots of people that are listening in from churches of a few thousand people, 1-, 2-, 3000 people, and there are these super unique roles that that you you can’t really just like pull with somebody off the shelf and say like, okay, you know, come do this. There isn’t like ah a specific kind of program that ultimately teaches, hey how do I be a production manager. That…
Brittany Crimmel — Right.
Rich Birch — …that is it is a unique thing to the local church. Um, would you say, or or help me understand how the residency prepared you even for what you’re doing today. What did that what did that look like?
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, I think residency, because you’re right – there are a lot of specific skilled roles in church world. And so finding somebody that fits your specific skilled role is really challenging. But if you go back to leadership basics and development, there are soft skills that everybody needs that everybody can learn in residency. And that was a lot of a large part of my beginning time in that residency, was talking about understanding um communication systems for large organizations. That’s something that is still helpful for me today. Ah, how do I communicate to people who um, are above me, below me, beside me – how do I do that? How do I make sure I’m clear and kind, how do I win volunteers to a cause – all of those things are soft skills that I I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now without them.
Rich Birch — Interesting. So I love this. You know if I um can speak ah, um, you know, maybe with a little candor. Yeah I think sometimes organizations, we struggle with folks in their first role. It’s like they come out of school and it’s like man, how ah, we struggle with, because it’s some of that just normal like how to have a job sort of thing…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That is difficult. Talk about that. How did that, you know, kind of making a step into residency rather than jumping directly into maybe a role somewhere. Did that help you through that transition? What… because from my seat, I would say, man, it would seem like it accelerated your leadership. It accelerated good things that were already happening. But how, obviously, you can’t you didn’t live ah two worlds where you went into a job and then you went into residency.
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But how do you think that might help, either you specifically, or as because you currently engage with residents…
Brittany Crimmel — Right.
Rich Birch — …you know, at Saddleback, so help me talk that through that, some of those initial, you know, years of work. How does it help that situation?
Brittany Crimmel — Totally. I think when you jump into your first job, it’s a lot of like, “I’m learning how to become an adult.”
Rich Birch — True.
Brittany Crimmel — And so you have that on top of, “I’m learning how to become a church leader.”
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brittany Crimmel — And that can be a really rough transition for people, right? You’re holding things you’re not used to holding. You’re leading at a level you’re not used to leading. Things are being asked of you mentally, emotionally, spiritually that are just beyond what you’re able to handle.
Brittany Crimmel — And the beautiful part about residency is there’s a leader who is invested in you as a person, you as a Jesus follower, you as a kingdom worker, and so you’re not left to your own devices to figure out: what is what am I supposed to do? You have this person who is caring for you, shepherding you, pastoring you, developing you, so that when you go out to your first job, or your whatever your next seat on the bus is, you’re not set up for failure. You’re set up for success.
Rich Birch — Very good, very good. Well let’s take a step back. Now you’re in a role where you’re leading. You know you’re you’re managing lots of things, lots of moving parts. When you think about developing leaders now in your area, how has your experience shaped that? What, you know, what has how has kind of the journey you’ve been on personally, where has that brought you to, how has that helped you when you think about ah you know developing the leaders around you?
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah. I would not be able to lead at the level I lead at without having developed other leaders. Like I just got my first intern this summer…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brittany Crimmel — …and we had so much fun and it was so, so wonderful to get to develop her in that way, um and get to just run alongside her, cheer her on, champion her. And part of what allowed me to do that was I had developed leaders in volunteer spaces, and so it freed up a lot of my time to not worry about them because they could lead themselves and run themselves. And so I had more time for an intern who needed more of my time, because you’re walking with them in such a deep way. Um, leadership development is just it’s so important in every facet and it tends to be the I think the intersection of evangelism and discipleship, if you really want to go down that road.
Rich Birch — Oh tell me about that. That’s interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s hear about that. Tell me about that.
Brittany Crimmel — I I think what we do is way too important to leave it to just mediocre leadership, right?
Rich Birch — So good.
Brittany Crimmel — When you are talking about Jesus and the hope of heaven…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brittany Crimmel — …leaving it to meh-schmeh. It’s fine. Like it’s not. It’s way too important. There are people who will spend eternity apart from Jesus because we did not put our best effort into developing leaders who would go radically change the communities they serve.
Brittany Crimmel — It also disciples people, and discipled people disciple people, disciple people. And so leadership development tends to just be, I think, a beautiful intersection there, and really allows us to champion the gospel in ways maybe we hadn’t thought of before.
Rich Birch — Um, that’s so good. When you think about from your seat um, as a resident who then ended up transitioning into ah you know, ah a full time career, and then now as intern maybe a resident at some point here in the future, you know, there’s a number of things that we’ve got to be very clear with our with our people that we’re leading that we’re trying to develop in this intentional way.
Brittany Crimmel — Yes.
Rich Birch — What would be some of those areas where you have, you know, found it either it was good for you to receive that clarity, or man, I wish I would have had more clarity. Ah, you know, talk us through that. What what give us that some of that insight.
Brittany Crimmel — Yes. I think it’s really helpful to remember that residencies and internships are seasonal. And seasons have a hard start date and they have an end date.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Brittany Crimmel — And so they don’t just go on forever. And I think sometimes in the church world we allow things to get really fuzzy. When when it comes to people, we need to make it really clear. So when you think about a two-year-long internship, right, you’d start in August of one year and then two years later by that end of July, we’re done. Everybody knows that going into it, so that that that resident isn’t going, I’m here for, you know, maybe forever. Or I’m here for maybe six months. They go, I know what the next two years look like; this is where God has me. And should something change towards the end and you go, it’s a mutual agreement between a church and a resident that go, you know, I think we want to partner together in kingdom work here. That’s great. But it’s because we know there’s a hard end date. Not just we’re not floundering around. Um so clarity is a huge, huge win when it comes to residents and interns.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s stick with there for a minute around um, you know, where we would develop residences. There’s really two—I always think of these things, well there’s lots of different ways to think about—but, two things that come up often when I think about residents, is we want to be involved in developing leaders because we think that’s the right thing to do for the kingdom. It’s important for us to develop leaders. And then there’s the, frankly, selfish side of it which is, as an organization we’re trying to develop people who may eventually end up on our team…
Brittany Crimmel — Yes.
Rich Birch — …but not necessarily. And that that feels like one of those areas that could be very spongy and end up like, you know, misunderstanding or lack of clarity. Um, give us some coaching or thinking around that. You know, assuming hey we maybe we have maybe we’re a church of couple thousand people, we have 3 residents, and we don’t intend on hiring three people at the end of this. We might hire some. Help us think through how could we approach that…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to be the most clear, the most kind to the people that we’re working with.
Brittany Crimmel — Right. Um, we have a great internship and residency director here at Saddleback and one of the things she first told me when I was in my internship supervisor training was she said it’s really, really important that we don’t promise people a job at the end of this.
Rich Birch — Yes, so good.
Brittany Crimmel — It’s really, really important that we protect their expectations, their feelings, our expectations, our feelings. We may love them and if it becomes time where we are actually offering them a job, that’s a totally different ballgame.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brittany Crimmel — But we we don’t lead with the, but one day you could work here or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brittany Crimmel — We say, this is an internship and a residency and we are so glad to partner with you for this season. And I think that is really helpful, right? We’re all on the same page that way. The other thing with churches, and really just because it’s a run human-run organization, is you have to set your pride aside to supervise an intern, or residency, or a resident, right? There are a lot of people you talked about who can get into the like, I want to develop you so you will be on my staff, or so you will think like us, lead like us, be like us… when leadership development is operating in kingdom currency, which means it’s abundance mentality.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Brittany Crimmel — It does not matter if that intern, that resident stays here, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brittany Crimmel — If they go to lead at another church and they radically change the spiritual landscape of a different town, we are cheering for them. We are championing that cause. Just because they don’t stay with us is not a loss for us. It is a win for the global church. And that is way too important to just white knuckle our pride when it comes to interns and residents.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. I love that encouragement of like, hey it’s not, you know, we’re not just going to do this because we’re trying to, you know, it’s it’s not just a potential, you know, hiring pipeline. It’s it’s an opportunity for us to develop leaders who could be used anywhere and we’ll have these people, you know, for a season, ensure that we’re um, you know we can care for them and see them grow in the season that we’re with us…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and and we’ll see what happens from there. Is there any other areas that would be that we need to be thinking about around trying to drive to more clarity. So totally understand this whole thing around hiring. Definitely you need to think about that. But but there are other areas that you’d say, hey here’s a potential pitfall to avoid um, you know, around clarity?
Brittany Crimmel — That’s great. I think every church is different. Um and so being really clear about the expectations of what are the opportunities, options, resources, available at your particular church, right? I was at a church where um I never saw my supervisor. And that was really challenging because I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, where I was supposed to be developing. Um I felt really far apart from the church because there was no one to help me get plugged in. Um and I’ve been at a church where I had an amazing supervisor, and I talked to them daily. They help me get plugged into the church in a small group. Um, they helped leverage opportunities of skills I needed to develop, things I was already really good at.
Brittany Crimmel — And so being really clear about the expectations – will you get to talk to a church leader a lot, um or at a at us pace that makes sense, right? Frequent, consistent, clear communication. Um, what are the leadership available opportunities, right? Maybe you’re there for summer camps. And so will you get to lead a summer camp, or are you there just to run games? Or are you leading groups, are you leading a devotional? Whatever that may be for your specific area, being really clear about what the opportunities are. And then being really clear to the rest of the staff.
Rich Birch — Good.
Brittany Crimmel — There are some churches that tolerate interns and residents, right? Because it’s an inconvenience. It truly is.
Rich Birch — Sure, right.
Brittany Crimmel — Leadership development is an inconvenience to us because it asks us, it costs us something mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, churches financially. It is inconvenient to do this, but it is way too important to not do this. And so being really clear with your staff teammates about here here’s how we’re going to treat our interns. Here are the opportunities they are allowed for. Here is how we coach them. So you don’t critique them in the hallway; you talk to their supervisor, their supervisor talks to them. Whatever those boundaries may be, that clarity is so so important for for everyone being set up for success. Otherwise both parties just end up frustrated.
Rich Birch — So good. I love that. Um you know, I think when we think about the kind of day-to-day or week-to-week management of a resident, I know ah we got connected through Leadership Pathway…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …an organization that helps churches ah, you know, with these. And a part of what they do is provide coaching to people who are going to have a resident…
Brittany Crimmel — Totally.
Rich Birch — …around even just what to talk about, like here’s a conversation or two. When you think back to that phase as a resident, were there any conversations that you had that were particularly prescient, could have been the kind of things we’ve talked about here that were particularly helpful for you as you were serving that were like, oh man, that was like a light bulb moment, did not think about that before ah, you know, we got in on that?
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, I think both emotional intelligence and conflict management skills…
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Brittany Crimmel — …were huge soft skills um, that I was equipped with, right? My supervisor had to receive those materials and was ready to help me walk through them. Because it’s not if you run into a situation where you are managing conflict, it’s when.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — And so as a you know 19 year old I was like I am not going to go fight with that worship leader or jump into conflict there. No thank you. And so having my supervisor kind of walk me through like, conflict is not the problem. The problem is when we are take things personally, or we get aggressive…
Rich Birch — So good.
Brittany Crimmel — …and it’s not the other person’s best interest at heart. And so that has served me very well um, as a leader today, both in that time now and in the future. I’m really grateful for that.
Rich Birch — So good. Okay, so pivoting in a slightly different direction. So as a production director manager in in your church, there’s like the hard skill side of what you do, which is making it’s the ministry to machines making the things happen. You know, it’s the you know the scheduling all that kind of stuff.
Brittany Crimmel — Yes.
Rich Birch — And then there’s the soft skill…
Brittany Crimmel — Right.
Rich Birch — …all the things we were just talking about, there interacting with people, how do we care for them, building a kind of culture where you know an attractional culture people want to be a part of, all that kind of stuff. Um, talk me through, in your your current role at at Saddleback, talk me through how those interact with each other. And you know how how as you lead are they you know which of those do you worry more about, how do you think about them, you know because I think the kind of role. We all have that in our we all have these less technical side of what we do…
Brittany Crimmel — Right.
Rich Birch — …and then we have the soft skill side of what we do. Um, and how do they intersect in your current your current role.
Brittany Crimmel — Oooo. That’s a tough one. Um, especially in the production world. The technical skills versus people skills seem to always be in tension. Um I think part of the way I am wired is I value the people skills and the system skills higher than technical skills. We can teach you technical skills, but if you don’t have a heart for people or the local church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brittany Crimmel — …that’s going to be a huge problem.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — Um, and so I tend to value those. I also get to support our technical teams and so I am pairing people up with people who are very gifted, very technical. They are the experts in their field. And so there’s no lack of resources. That is not true at every church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brittany Crimmel — Um, there are definitely some things where you have awesome volunteers and it’s just this one guy named Joe and he runs sound every week for you.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Brittany Crimmel — And so developing somebody in that space is really hard. But if you can teach um somebody who has a heart for ministry, if you can teach them, here is how you schedule people and planning center. And it matters because we’re clear and it means we’re stewarding them and their time and their gifts well.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Brittany Crimmel — That will set them up for success far and above anything else, because you can still teach the technical skills. You don’t have to know that. There are plenty of resources and systems and other churches in your area who are operating in kingdom mentality, which means we are sharing everything. There are plenty of resources online. If you go oh I really need to know how to do this. Great! We’ll just Google it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, exactly. You’d be amazed what you can find on YouTube. Yeah.
Brittany Crimmel — You’d be amazed. Yeah. So I definitely think you know they can be somewhat even and we want you to be highly competent and a great culture fit. But I think that those people skills have to win out, especially when it comes to kingdom work, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Because we’re people helpers. So it matters way more that you can sit with someone who comes to the booth sobbing than whether or not you are Dante certified.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. I’m not even sure what that means but it sounds fancy. Um, so so give us a little coaching here. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that you’re here and you’re an expert in this area. So ah, picture this, this is a very theoretical situation.
Brittany Crimmel — Of course.
Rich Birch — You know, church of maybe a thousand people and yeah, we have that Fred or Joe, we have that like tech person and maybe we have a few of them even. And um, they’ve become prickly pears. These people are, you know, they’re very good at what they do, and they are not um they’re they’re not like begrudging doing it. But it’s like the worship people don’t want to talk to them. The the pastor kind of they see them walk in the room and they walk the other way. You know like they’re kind of avoiding interacting with these people. How do we win these folks back? What can we do to try to create a culture? How would you help us maybe diagnose that situation, help… Again, very theoretical – I know you cannot imagine technical leaders…
Brittany Crimmel — No, never.
Rich Birch — …that struggle with those kind of things.
Brittany Crimmel — Um, well first there is a we have a great friend. His name is Todd Elliot. He runs the FILO community, which is first in last out for production teams around the world. And that that really is his heartbeat. So if you need a deep dive into that I would point you to all of Todd’s resources. Um I would also think about the fact that production people usually get the short end of the stick. Um, in that…
Rich Birch — So true.
Brittany Crimmel — …who is emailing them at, you know, 8:55am when there’s a 9am service. It’s usually a lead pastor going, I actually want these slides instead. Or ah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Brittany Crimmel — Not that that ever happens. No.
Rich Birch — No, theoretically, theoretically.
Brittany Crimmel — Theoretically in theory that never happens.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — Or you know, a worship leader who goes, well those lyrics aren’t right. And then you realize well actually the lyrics you provided me were incorrect. I’m happy to change them. But the resource wasn’t right from the start.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brittany Crimmel — Or your community gets a power surge. Well whose problem does that become? Your volunteers.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brittany Crimmel — It’s your production teams. And that’s not usually something they know how to deal with.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — And so there they are catching a lot of things and they get um, ah really the raw end of the deal most of the time. It, when you’re talking about winning them back, I think about just really the words a lot of them are introverted people. And so they do not want the wow we’ve an amazing production team. Let me call them out. That is their nightmare. Don’t do that to them.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — They think more about you stopping by after service and saying, thank you so much for what you did today. I know it cost you something, but it matters.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brittany Crimmel — Or when they are flipping the stage, coming and going, I have two hands and I am just here to help.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — You tell me whatever you need and I’ll do that, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, point me in the direction of stuff to move. Yes.
Brittany Crimmel — Right. If you are wrapping cables, don’t wrap it around your elbow. They’ll show you; I promise. Um, but things like that ask…
Rich Birch — And even if you have to ask it 12 times in a row, what’s the right way again?
Brittany Crimmel — Yes, yeah, right.
Rich Birch — They will appreciate that you’re, you know. Yeah, absolutely, that’s good.
Brittany Crimmel — People don’t want to feel alone. The production people being bitter and resentful, tending to, right, in theory be bitter and resentful is a people problem, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brittany Crimmel — They become undervalued and underpaid because a lot of them are volunteers. And so if you can lavish value on them as both as sons and daughters of God, but also valued members of your church. I mean that that will speak volumes, and you’ll see a significant shift in your culture.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And you know, I think going like you’re saying encouraging us to go out of our way to communicate their worth. And I think sometimes these folks, unfortunately they’re like they understand that they’re ah, you know, a bottleneck…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — and they don’t and they they feel that as a ah real weight…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
RIch Birch — …and they’re like you know they they love the Lord dearly. They love the church. And so they’re like I better show up and make all this stuff happen.
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But someone coming alongside, first to show appreciation, and then hey how can we help build some more people around you. Um, you know they they might not have the ah, you know they may not have the ability to do that. And so us helping them with that can be, you know, a huge huge deal. That’s super…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, and reminding them. It’s not it’s not about what we want from you. It’s about what we want for you.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Brittany Crimmel — Like if that and that also asks a lot of your pride to be set aside, right? Do I actually value this person as a person instead of being the person that can run lyrics for me. That’s a huge deal.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, that’s great. Yeah, and there is a weird thing there, isn’t that true? Like again I we’ve been joking about the theoretical thing, but there is ah there’s a common trope there…
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …of technical people that are driven, you know, overridden by teaching pastors or by, you know, demanding worship leaders or whatever. And some of us, particularly folks that are in executive seats that oversee all of those people or have the ability to push back with that teaching person, like it’s our job to create the culture…
Brittany Crimmel — Yes.
Rich Birch — …of respect for those people and to come in and advocate and be an ally and say, hey like you know, when we have emailed these people, you know, use an example used, for the last four weeks at 8:15am, I want to help us not do that this week.
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How can what can what system can I help get in place so that we give this to them at an appropriate time?
Brittany Crimmel — Yes.
Rich Birch — I think that’s a part of our job.
Brittany Crimmel — I will never forget building um teaching graphics during a run through for months straight for a lead pastor. He would just send in his slides um later in the day then I would ah prefer, but that’s ok. And I will never forget our executive pastor telling him like, hey this is really challenging because then I’m not available for other things. And him going, Okay I’ll I’ll talk to our lead pastor about that. Let me go fight that battle for you, and then seeing a shift. That that was such a meaningful moment to me, and made me believe a lot in his leadership more.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I was talking to an executive pastor just recently in the last week or so where there was like a bit of a train wreck on a Sunday. It was one of those like, hey how’s, I was having the like hey how’s it going conversations. And they were explaining, you know, all of this, you know, kind of stuff that was that happened. It was one of those Sundays where it was like a series of dominoes that fell.
Brittany Crimmel — Yes.
Rich Birch — And and they were and this executive pastor was like reflecting on it, this is not even my area like I understand obviously all of it is my area. I’m supposed to oversee all these things, but I’m not the expert on this.
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, but I was really encouraging them. I was like man good for you stepping in to say, hey what can we do? How can we create… how do we make this a better? You know, how do we try to, you know, inject some care in the midst of this tricky situation?
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
That’s really our job in the midst of all that. So yeah, that’s interesting.
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s cool. Well, I really appreciate this conversation. This has been fantastic to get to know you a little bit better and to hear a bit of your story. As you think to the future, you think about residency, you think about internships, um, what do you think about in the future in this area? Is there would there be some kind of coaching or advice you’d give us? Or or as you think about and leading in your area, are there things that you as you look up over the over the horizon that you would that you’re kind of looking forward to in this area?
Brittany Crimmel — I am definitely looking forward to more interns and residents. I email our director all the time, and I go, hey when is your next whatever? Because I just want to know what the odds are that I could get, you know, an intern or resident.
Brittany Crimmel — She always goes, well Brittany, you know, when God aligns both the right people in the right time, of course, that we’ll do that.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Brittany Crimmel — So she so kindly reminds me. Um I am just so looking forward to more people caring about interns and residents. In the last year we’ve seen so much fruit come of that both for our church and then other churches, and it has fueled my heart to go like, man, the church is in such good hands and such a good trajectory if we can keep going. Because we need need, need, more leaders who are good leaders, not just leaders. And who are good leaders who are here for a long time.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, Brittany, I really appreciate you being here today. You know, cheering for you as you lead at Saddleback and, you know, influence things there. I’m really honored that you would be on the show today. If people want to track with you, ah, where do we want to send them if want to track with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Brittany Crimmel — Yeah, um I mean you can find me at Instagram it’s just @brittanycrimmel. It’s nothing crazy. Um, and you can follow all that God is doing through Saddleback at saddleback.com and we would love to let you in on that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Brittany. Really appreciate you being here today.
Brittany Crimmel — Of course, thank you so much, Rich.
Behind the Leader: Ian Borkent’s Journey of Burnout and Relaunch
Nov 23, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Ian Borkent from C3 Rivers Church in the Netherlands. Ian also started the ministry Grow a Healthy Soul to help church leaders take care of their souls.
Church leaders often focus on metrics such as attendance, salvations and finances to gauge the health of their church, but there are other health metrics to look at as well. The health of an organization often reflects the health of the leader. Tune in as Ian talks about his journey from burnout to recovery, and how uncovering emotions and subconscious thought processes can prevent burnout down the road.
Driven to burnout. // There are typically two types of people – those who run ahead of God and those who run behind God. People who are driven and tend to run ahead of God can be more prone to burnout because they do too much in their own strength while ignoring healthy, God-given limits.
Slow down and be present. // It’s good to be an achiever and allow God to use that gift, but we also need to learn to be content with imperfect things around us. Ian said that while he believed in the principle of the Sabbath—having one day where he could delight in God, enjoy his family and just slow down—he didn’t put it into practice. Like so many people, he didn’t notice the signs of burnout until he was too far gone and in need of an extended break.
Step back for rest. // One of the huge warning signs Ian experienced was back pain so severe that it impacted his sleep and daily life for months. Despite initial beliefs that his pain was physical or spiritual, he discovered that the root cause was emotional, specifically deep suppressed anger. The lack of sleep eventually broke Ian down and he took a step back from the church while hiring a coach to help him work through his burnout. During this time he focused on resting and becoming more aware of how his subconscious thinking was affecting him. Ian also went through marriage therapy with his wife. He took ten months of sick leave to rest and work deeply on his emotional health before returning to work.
Deal with the root issues. // People who burn out can fall into a second or third burnout when returning to work because they didn’t apply lessons during recovery. People burn out because they have deep convictions that are based on lies, or ambitions that are based on an identity that’s not rooted enough in Christ. While you are in the valley, take time to apply the lessons you are learning. Work on the root system of your wrong beliefs to keep yourself from falling into the same traps.
Be a new you. // God put limits on everything in creation, including us. Embrace the limits God has given you. Consciously make the decision to be in the moment. When returning to work, it’s important to stay with the new you. People may have to get used to limits on your availability or new boundaries you set. Teach people who you are now.
Community transformation. // Impacted by Ian’s journey through burnout, C3 Rivers Church underwent a transformation from an organizational/business structure to a more family-oriented model. The leadership removed titles and focused on the function of each individual within the body of Christ. This change eliminated the hierarchy that had been present before. Now instead of the leader dictating the plans and direction, they seek to discover what God’s vision is for the church as a whole. This has led to individuals taking the initiative to start ministries without being asked or rallied by the leader.
Grow a Healthy Soul. // If you’re on the way to burnout, slow down and talk to someone. Through his Grow a Healthy Soul ministry, Ian has provided a free PDF to download that has questions you can ask yourself to uncover some of your subconscious thought processes and how they affect you.
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Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation. We’re going international today, friends. Normally we have guests from across the States, but today super honored to have a guest from the Netherlands, Ian Borkent. He leads C3 Rivers Church. This is a fantastic church and I’m really looking forward to hearing more of his story, particularly as he talks about his own journey to health. He founded a coaching ministry called Grow a Healthy Soul after his own experience with really just terrible burnout. They offer resources and we want to make sure that you get plugged in with them today. Ian, welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here. Ian Borkent — Good to be here Rich. Rich Birch — Well, I’m glad that you’ve that you’re on and that we can connect across such great distance. Tell us about C3 Rivers Church. Give us a sense of the kind of the climate. What’s it like to serve in the Netherlands? Yeah, tell me a little bit about that. Ian Borkent — Yeah. We are a church in Arnhem, which is a city of about 170,000 people in the east of the Netherlands, close to the German border. We have a lot of international students, a lot of young people. And yeah, there’s quite a few modern churches here. Also very traditional churches, reformed churches. We are more in the modern Pentecostal area of of church life. Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Now is it true, is this… I remember talking to a friend, I think it was in Netherlands where we were talking about like donor stuff and all this, and there’s like the state church gets like taxes or something like that, but then you guys don’t. Or how does all that work? There’s like a, you know, there isn’t there like a state church in the Netherlands. Is that true? Am I thinking about that right? Or am I not not thinking about that clearly? Ian Borkent — No, I don’t think that that’s true. It was true. Rich Birch — It was true years ago. Ian Borkent — Yeah, like definitely a century ago so. But no, that’s not the case. It might work differently with tax deductibility.
Rich Birch — Oh, right.
Ian Borkent — I think in the Netherlands, for example, when people give to the church, then they can deduct taxes. And in some places, like the UK, the church itself can deduct taxes. So that those are some differences. Rich Birch — Okay cool. And give us a sense of the spiritual climate. I’m not sure why my brain like went sideways on money stuff. I don’t sure why I jumped there right away. But tell me about, you know, the the spiritual climate of the Netherlands. What what must that be like? My assumption is that the Netherlands is a post-Christian kind of more, maybe even pre-Christian kind of community, not the kind of place that people go to church all the time. A tough place to serve. Give us a bit of the history of of C3, how you’ve been serving there, and talk to us a little bit about that. Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, the Netherlands is very secular, has become very secular place, you know, with a lot of secular ideologies and very similar, I think in that case to, to America. Also there’s a lot of things happening politically with new parties rising up. And and so there is, however, more openness, especially amongst young people towards Christianity.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Ian Borkent — Because for them it’s not so loaded anymore, like their parents generation. You know, the parents were used to more religion and they might have left the church because of religion. And the younger generation is more, definitely more open towards it. Rich Birch — Hmm. Okay, cool, cool. Well, let’s talk a little bit about I know ultimately today we want to talk about your own journey to health and, you know, some kind of a tough season that you went through. But why don’t we take a step back. Tell us your kind of personal journey there. So what led you to the place where, like, hey, you even realized maybe I wasn’t in a healthy spot? You know what, talk us through that a little bit. What was what kind of precipitated that? What came before that? Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, naturally, I’m a very driven person. And what you often see with people that get burnouts, they have a certain personality type, you know, the type T person, like with T stands for tension and or D, which stands for driven. And so you got two kind of people. George Meyer is always saying like you have people running ahead of God, or people running behind God. And I was in the first category. And you know, and that’s all fine and good if you keep that up for a few years. But what about if some crisis hit you, or if there’s a layer, or stacking, of multiple, multiple challenges. Then, you know, I was just doing too much in my own strength and not living within healthy limits, God-given limits, enough.
Ian Borkent — And then I think the final straw was the Corona Crisis, where many people, they said like, oh, this is quite nice to slow down, you know, and be in the home a lot, and do a lot of reading. But for me, leading a church was just very, very challenging…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ian Borkent — …with all the different opinions like about masking or not masking, vaccinating or not vaccinating. And it’s like whichever position we chose, there was always someone not agreeing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ian Borkent — And so that yeah, that I think that was the final straw. But I went through it on adrenaline. And adrenaline, it’s it’s a chemical thing. It keeps you going for so long until it basically runs out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — And then you collapse. And that’s what happened in my case. Rich Birch — Yeah. I, you know, it’s funny, one of my very distinct memories during Corona was I was on a video call and I remember this, and I was feeling exactly what you were feeling the like, gosh, we are like running in a million directions here. We are pushing hard. We’re trying to figure out how do we reach people. And I remember this other church leader said, you know, maybe this is the Lord’s season for us to take a rest, and to slow down and to relax. And I was I remember thinking inside of me, I was like, what? Like what is happening? Like what? Who are you? Like what how can you say that? It’s crazy to think back to that.
Rich Birch — You know, you said something there running ahead of God. That’s an interesting statement. Tell me, what were some of those signs when you look back on that, that you would say, oh, I was running ahead of God. And, you know, because there might be people that are listening in today, or I know there’s people that are listening in today, they would say, no, I’m not running ahead of God. I’m just driven. I just the Lord’s just he’s got a lot of plans. We want to push forward. Help us understand what did it look like when you look back now and say, oh, I was running ahead of God. Ian Borkent — Yeah, I think it’s good to be an achiever. And, you know, God definitely works through people. And sometimes God is waiting for us to do something. But if you are an achiever, and in my case, also perfectionistic, then what you want to do. You just want to always improve things, even at the detriment of your own health, or your own merits, or the raising of your kids. For example, in preaching, I was always trying to improve my sermon preparation and then thinking of some other example on Saturday and trying to add that in, and really supposed to be around the family table, but not really being present. I mean, I was sitting there in my body, but my mind was somewhere else. And just never really being content. And I had to learn to be content and to press the pause button or the stop button on Friday evening and just let the Sabbath be the Sabbath. You know, for me, I’m not religious about the Saturday having to be the Sabbath, but I do believe in the principle of of having one day where you can delight in God and and enjoy your family and just slow down. But it was very, I knew it in theory, but in practice I didn’t do it. Rich Birch — Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so bring us back. We’re we’re in the middle of the Corona Crisis, and, you know, things are are, you know, tough. It seems like every answer is not the right answer. Was there a particular breaking moment where you said, oh, okay, like this I have stepped on it here. Something has gone sideways. It’s just a moment or a series of things that you look back on and, you know, kind of indicated something’s in an unhealthy spot. I need to change what’s happening here. Ian Borkent — Oh, yeah. Like as often is the case with burnout, is that people tend to not notice the signals until they’ve, you know, they’re too far gone. And when you’re too far gone, it becomes suddenly really obvious to yourself and to those around you. Like, for example, I remember I started crying out of nowhere for seemingly small, small matters. You know, like I developed back pain, which at first I thought was physical, but it turned out not to be physical, but emotional. It had an emotional cause. And, you know, eventually I couldn’t think straight anymore. I couldn’t even make small decisions about church life anymore. And so it became apparent to myself and to those around me that I needed a serious break, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — And to just rest first and recover and then to work on the underlying issues. Because there’s always underlying issues that that are there, but that you’ve kind of covered over with working hard or just trying to ignore things. And but it’s like, you know, it’s like a leak in your roof. If you’re trying to ignore it and put tape over it, well, eventually it will just grow bigger. And you will you will start seeing the flooding of of the rainwater come in. Rich Birch — Wow. You know, those are interesting kind of, you know, signs in your own life. You know, I’ve heard people say similar on the emotions issue. It’s almost like the opposite end of that same spectrum where it’s like you, I’ve heard people who have gone through a similar experience say, you know, I stopped feeling anything. Where it’s like I would be at a funeral and of a dear friend and didn’t feel anything. It just was like, this was another day. You know, it’s the opposite of crying at everything. But it was having some sort of an emotional.You know, the back pain – that one’s interesting. Talk us through that a little bit. A physiological response to an emotional, spiritual pressure that you were feeling. Talk us through that. Ian Borkent — Yeah. You know, in hindsight, I’m so happy and glad with how God has designed us as a triune being, you know, body, soul and spirit.
RIch Birch — Right. Yeah.
Ian Borkent — I never really saw the connection because I, I compartmentalize things too much in terms of, for example, the body. I thought if I have back pain, it must have a physical cause because I can feel it in my body.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Ian Borkent — You know, and as I went to the hospital and we did X-rays and blood tests and the works. And basically they said, well, you have normal abnormalities with… yeah, because they said if we scan a 45 year old, like if we scan 100 people that are 45 years of age, then 33% of them or something will have these kind of abnormalities. Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Right. Ian Borkent — But it doesn’t explain the severity of your back pain. The thing is, I had such severe back pain that I could not walk for longer than ten minutes without having to sit down.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Ian Borkent — I could not lie in bed without waking up from the pain. I had lots of nights where I just had hardly any sleep because I was in pain all the time. I, when I was sitting down, I had to stand up again after ten minutes. So it’s like when they what they say to people with back pain, what is the best position, the next position. So there’s always trying to find the next position.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Ian Borkent — And everything in my mind was convinced this is a physical problem, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Ian Borkent — Or it could be spiritual, maybe is demonic or something. You know, like I’ve learned that in the spiritual realm there can be things that cause you physical pain or sicknesses.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Ian Borkent — And so I was focusing on these two areas. So either going to a doctor or asking for prayer, you know, and doing spiritual battle. Ian Borkent — What I had never considered was that the cause for my physical pain could be found in my soul. And that my body is simply expressing a pain. My body is like a prophet. I think Pete Scazzero says your body is a major prophet. So you know, my body knows first what my mind knows later.
Oh that’s good.
Ian Borkent — And and so I had to discover that my body was just giving me pain because I was having a lot of anger inside of me, to be honest. But I did not allow myself to feel that anger. Because being a good Christian, you cannot possibly be angry with friends or family about certain issues. You cannot possibly be angry. So I had hidden in a way and my body started to express it. Rich Birch — Hmm. Interesting. Well, you went into rest and recovery. So what did that look like? How what were some of those? Was there a breaking point that led you to that? Or you know what, how did you, you know, how did you how did it come to you know, that you understood, Oh, like, hey, I’ve, I’ve got to make some changes here. Ian Borkent — Yeah. You know, eventually I broke down because of lack of sleep.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Ian Borkent — The the pain was so severe that I did not sleep well for months in a row. And that, you know, if you if if you sleep not well for a few nights, that’s one thing. But if it’s months in a row, all the while staying busy with work and family life and everything, then eventually it just had such a negative effect on my marriage. My wife found it very difficult to deal with me. I did not know how to deal with me. And so it just became apparent, you know what? I need a break. Rich Birch — Hmm, interesting. Okay, so what did that early rest in recovery look like? How do you how do you how does someone who goes from, Hey, I’m running ahead of God. You know, I’m an achiever. I’m a person who wants to get things done. I’m asking for a friend. How does a person like that rest and recover? How do you take a pause and say, hey, I need to slow down. What that look like? Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, in that case, I am an all or nothing type of person, so that did help me. Either I’m doing everything or I’m doing nothing. So I would just, Yeah, I just announced to to the team and the church like we need a break. And fortunately we were in a church movement, which is really like a family to us.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — So we have a lot of people around us that that could help us or pray with us or, you know, just be there for me. And and so I laid down my responsibilities and, and we focused on just resting and working on things in our merits and working on things in my soul. So I hired a coach in Australia. So I had online Zoom coaching…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ian Borkent — …but honestly, it was like we were sitting in the same room. It was just incredible. Rich Birch — It’s amazing. Ian Borkent — And eventually I’ve also stumbled upon a book by a Dr. Sarno about healing back pain. And how you can get physical healing by working through emotional issues. And that that helped me incredibly to, yeah, to work on my emotional self. So to just basically become more self aware of how I’m thinking subconsciously. Because a lot of things are happening in the subconscious, but we need to uncover what’s happening there. And well, basically took ten months to to rest…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Ian Borkent — …and then to work on some things and, and and eventually I yeah, my back pain disappeared completely. And I knew where things came from. And we had some marriage therapy as well. And you know, we we could start afresh. Rich Birch — Fascinating. You know, there’s, there’s a lot we can unpack there. But I know, you know, just even in my own life. You know, there I will have its upper back pain or kind of in the, you know, when I’m stressed out, I can you can physiologically feel it. You can feel the kind of tension. And it makes sense that if you hold that for a long period of time, the impact it’s going to have on us. When you say, you know, there was a ten month period there. So like, were you out of doing church stuff for that, that length. Or did you take a break or how did that look like, would that look like? Ian Borkent — Yeah, well, I was in like on staff full time and, but I went on full time sickness leave.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Ian Borkent — And so yeah, I said we spoke with the board and they were really understanding.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Ian Borkent — And we have a great board that they said, look, you know, your health is is the most important thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
Ian Borkent — And we also have great associate pastors who said, look, we will look after the church during your absence. And and so I’m really, really glad with with these people. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. What a what a gift to you. And and, you know, that’s an encouragement I think to leaders who are listening in. I sometimes think we we don’t, it’s like we underestimate how much people want to care. You know, the people that are around us who are will rally in a moment like that and say, yeah, like, I, I, you know, they love you dearly and they want to support you. They want to, in this case, you know, you had a group around you, Ian, that wanted to say, hey, we’ll, you know, we’ll help. That’s. Yeah. That’s great.
Ian Borkent — Exactly.
Rich Birch — So, so then how did you, you know, you come through this experience, obviously there’s a there’s rest. I love that you you know and there’s a lot we could talk there around the back stuff. And you start finding a place of, of health and, you know, in a better spot. Well, you can’t just jump back into how things were before. You know, you have to you have to change. And the way you serve has to change. Can you talk us through what that look like? Ian Borkent — Yeah, I think it’s really important to take the time in the valley to eat all the grass that’s growing there. Rich Birch — Oh that’s good, I love it. Ian Borkent — You know, as driven people, even in a burnout, driven people can still be driven. Why? Because they want to get out of the burnout, you know? And they they want to get going again. But my coach, he shared something with me that’s really helped me. He said his estimate is that one third of the people that he’s been coaching, they they have trouble, after working again, and they can fall back into a second or third burnout.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Ian Borkent — And he didn’t say this to say how bad of a coach he was. But as a warning, he said, as a warning, he said, you need to really apply the lessons that you are learning here in the valley. And you need to take the time as long as it takes, to get them deeply ingrained of you. Because it comes from a deep place. The reason why you burned out, it comes from a deep place of some convictions that are based on lies, some ambitions that are based on, on, on, you know, on an identity that’s not rooted in Christ enough. And so you have to work on the root system, and take the time to do that, because otherwise, once you start working again, it’s very easy to fall in the same traps or old tracks. Rich Birch — Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so we’re in that phase, when you weren’t just kind of jumping to let’s look at what’s next, but you were taking time to try to examine, were there any particular learnings for you, or any convictions that came through, even extending that and continuing to say, hey, I want to I don’t want to just jump; I want to make sure that we’re, you know, I’m stepping in a healthy way into what’s next. Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, one area I can mention is, is embracing limits. And that God has actually put limits in everything in creation. You know, the oceans have limits. The day has a limit. Everything is limited. We are limited by time and space, and and so, and energy. So just embracing how God has has wired us I think that’s just that’s just key. It’s just very important. And then, to live like that, and consciously make a decision, I’m going to be present in the moment. Now some people, they are a moment people, so they can be really there in the moment. And other people, they’re always like, especially visionaries, I think, they’re always looking at the next moment. Rich Birch — Yes. Ian Borkent — So for me, as a visionary, I, I had to just learn to enjoy the moment. So, for example, during a meal time with my family and my children, I am there. I’m not somewhere else. I’m not with other people or I’m not at tomorrow’s meeting. I’m sitting here right now with my wife, with my children, and we’re going to have a great meal and a great conversation. Rich Birch — That’s really cool. Love that. Love that insight and love, you know, I think so many of us could learn that, you know, and do that more even in this, you know, in these days. Well, what what changes ended up shifting in on the church front? How did you obviously your you know, you’re still leading the church. You came through this this is the part that I’m you know, I you know, I’m excited about. Sometimes people go through these experiences and their conclusion at the end is, hey, I just shouldn’t be leading in the church. Like I, you know, I should do something different. And that’s okay. That’s a, you know, that’s not a that’s not a criticism. But we need leaders like you who have been able to go through that and then come back to the end of those things and say, oh, no, I’d like to continue to serve here. So talk to us about what what changes have happened on that front. How have you now been able to structure your life and the church’s life in a way that maybe is more conducive to health going forward?
Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, you know, I understand it likewise. Like you were saying, if some people they they make a different choice, and I think it’s always looking at, you know, walking it through with God and praying about these things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — You need to know that you know that you know that you’re still called for this time and place.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ian Borkent — But you know, at the same time, when you’re starting again, it’s really, really important to stay with the new you, and and to live out of that new you.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ian Borkent — And that means that some people, they will have to get used to that, and the church will have to get used to that. Because in the past you might have been more accessible, but you went across your own boundaries too much. So you need to actually teach people who you are now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — And that means that you’re making some shifts in your availability. And then that also means just letting the body of Christ be the body of Christ. So it’s very, very important that we involve the fivefold ministry. You know, I’m more of an apostolic type person. But I’m I discovered, for example, during my burnout, that I’m not a shepherd, but I’m called pastor. Well, that’s confusing in people’s minds. Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah. Ian Borkent — And so we had to look at the fivefold ministry and appoint people as a pastor so that the church knows, this is a pastor, and you can expect shepherding from them. And and this person here is an apostolic visionary, and this person is a prophet. And so those things really helped the church, I think, to understand who is who. Rich Birch — Love that. And so that that’s really super practical. Any other kind of shifts when you as you got clearer around the fivefold kind of approach to ministry that, you know, that that impacted—obviously we’re talking about Ephesians 4—you know, that it changed just even how you operate as a leadership team? Ian Borkent — Yeah. Yeah. We we look at leadership now quite differently. I think we come from, we came from a church culture which was quite hierarchical, and with a lot of organization – I think too much organi,ation. So we started to look more like a company or a factory and less like a family.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Ian Borkent — Well, when I look at the scriptures you see that whole language of of family, you know, we’re called each other’s brothers and sisters, and God is our father. And so there’s more family language in the scriptures, I think, than organizational language. But we were just functioning like an organization. And we had too much distance between leadership and church members. And so we actually went through quite a transformation in discovering afresh what does the Bible say about the the body of Christ? So we’re moving now from a vision of being a house of God to being a body of Christ, where there is less distance between leader and church member. And there’s more that can also create more team transparency, where everyone, including the leader or leaders, can be vulnerable. And I think that’s very important in this day and age, where you see just so many leaders on a pedestal…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — …and then, you know, they cannot live possibly up to people’s expectations. So what they do is they then have some hidden sin or whatever to try to cope. And then the thing collapses, you know. And there’s just too many church scandals, and I think it can have to do with, with this aspect. Rich Birch — Yeah. Priesthood of all believers, I love it. This is this is great. I’d love to unpack that – what that’s kind of look like. And I agree, I think there’s an interesting thing, you know, in the in the Protestant church and the broadly Protestant church, you know, evangelical world, you know, charismatic world. We, you know, we you know, I’m we’re historically we corrected against what some of our Catholic brothers and sisters, some of their, you know, their worlds. But then what has happened is one of the weird trickle downs from that is instead of having a Pope somewhere, we have a whole bunch of mini-popes who are people who we look at as if they have some sort of completely different connection to God than the rest of us. Rich Birch — We, you know, we look at them as, and that could be a lead pastor, could be a teaching pastor, we look at them in this kind of like they’re different than everyone else, which is not a very biblical view and has all kinds of negative outcomes in people’s lives. So let’s unpack that. What does that look like to be less like a factory—I like that —less like a factory, more like a family. Let’s talk about what some of those changes have looked like at C3 for you. Ian Borkent — Well, one thing that we did, and I’m not saying every church needs to do this, but we felt God saying that to us was to remove titles and the use of titles. So, you know, we called everyone who had a serious leadership position in our church, we called them a pastor, you know?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ian Borkent — So we we had a worship pastor, kids pastor, youth pastor, et cetera. Even though they might not even be a pastor, as in, they might not be a shepherd, but they might be prophetic or or something else. But somehow we call everyone a pastor. And then that created a distance between church members and these pastors. And so we said, look, what we need to do we need to focus on function and not on title. And we need to realize that everybody has a very important function in the body of Christ, whether you are the liver or the right toe or the eye or the nose. Rich Birch — Love it. Ian Borkent — So we’re we all have a different function and no one is more important than any other people. So you can just call me Ian. You know, I’m Ian, and I happen to have an apostolic function in this body. And some people are afraid that that, you know, that the culture of honor disappears if you do that and everything. But, you know, the Bible says that we need to honor one another. So I think if I as a leader, if I honor other people, then they will be honoring me. And so, you know, so I don’t think we have to be afraid of that. And I think it creates more health overall in the body of Christ. Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, I love that. I love, you know, clarifying. Did you, what about your experiences, that kind of weekend experience? You know, there are um, in the way we craft what we do regularly that can sometimes reinforce values that we actually don’t believe. Like we actually, if we were to step back and say, what does this communicate? We, that doesn’t actually communicate what we think. And it sounds like you’ve gone through a season where you’ve thought carefully about that. Have you made any changes to what you do, even on a regular basis? Ian Borkent — Yeah, we have made very, very significant changes. Because we used to have church services that tick like clockwork, where everything was planned on the minute through different run sheets, and they were like three people basically on stage determining the content of those 90 minutes. And, and we felt God challenging us to lay that down. With God, saying to us, look, if you want to experience what the body of Christ is like, then you need to let the body be the body. And that means that you need to get more people to participate…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Ian Borkent — …even spontaneously, you know? And I was I was at first I was like, whoa, you know, but God, what if they will say crazy things? Or what if, you know what? We have, we have actually laid things down. And we have said to people that they can participate in bringing a testimony or a prayer. And I have seen, we have seen the Holy Spirit at work, and people encouraging one another. And if something if someone says something weird and someone else has, has gently corrected it, or, you know, we have seen that the Holy Spirit is perfectly okay when we involve more people in a church gathering. And so now we have what we what we call open gatherings, where, yeah, where there is I mean, there is someone who opens the meeting and, and sets the tone. But then we, we basically say, look, let’s pray. And if God brings something on your heart, then we can pray for that right away. And it’s just been amazing to see what’s been happening there. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s cool. I love that. Like the Holy Spirit’s not nervous about what’s going to happen. Like I love it.
Ian Borkent — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s it doesn’t freak him out. He’s he’s okay. He’s good. He’s good.
Ian Borkent — Yeah. Rich Birch — Now, so what’s the impact been on the community? Like love those changes. It reminds me early on when I was first a Christian, I was a part of, in this part of the world, it’s called the Plymouth Brethren movement. And they’re to this day, this still very much it’s like you go to the breaking of bread service, they would call it. And it’s, you know, they wait in silence at the beginning and, and and then, you know, as the Spirit moves, different people are sharing scripture and maybe giving a word, you know, that kind of thing. Beautiful, a beautiful experience. If you if you haven’t experienced that and you’re only, only experience is the run sheet world, man, you’re missing out on something. But what impact has that had on the church? You know, from an, you know, reaching people point of view, all that kind of thing? What what’s the, you know, or or maybe even ask the wrong question. But you know what what’s that been like in the life of the church? Ian Borkent — Um, well, at first people had to get used to it…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Ian Borkent — …because, you know, we come from 12 years of the leader saying where we are going.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — And, you know, so people have been kind of waiting for me as the leader to say, we are going to do plan A…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — …and then they’re going to rally behind it. But now I’ve said, look, what is God giving as vision? What is God, yeah, what is he giving as a vision to this body?
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — So basically we allow for more initiative to come from the community. And so that is taking some time, you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ian Borkent — …to for people to grasp that, like, hey, I can actually run with something that… And for example, what we’ve seen happen is that someone has said, look, I have a ministry in the prophetic, so I’m going to train other people how to prophesy over each other. And so I haven’t asked them to do that. It’s not been something that I have been rallying people for, but they have started that out of the own accord. Rich Birch — Wow – that’s great. Ian Borkent — Yeah. And so those are the things we want to see happen. Of course, you know, within the values that we have as a church community, but not with a lot of control or a lot of top-down leadership or instruction, but rather the other way around, a bottom-up grassroots movement. As I think the church is supposed to be, which is the priesthood of all believers stepping into their God zone.
Rich Birch — Interesting. That’s cool. I love that. That’s, you know, so fun to hear. And there’s a lot we could unpack here. I know that there’s a there’s a ton here. The the idea of moving from, you know, a factory to a family. And, you know, there’s a lot we could unpack on that for sure.
Rich Birch — What would you say to a leader who’s listening in today who would say, you know, kind of pivoting back to the individual who say, hey, you know, I’m I might be burnt out. I’m, you know, I might be in that situation where I don’t know that I know yet, but I could be heading there.
Ian Borkent — Right.
Rich Birch — What would you say to them? What would be some of those initial steps that they should be thinking about or, or steps they should be taking?
Ian Borkent — Yeah. Well, definitely to slow down. Then to talk to someone. You know, a trusted friend or or a coach or someone that is recommended to them, and become more aware of their inner world. So their subconscious world. So I think I sent you some, some questions with this… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. We’ve got that PDF – we can put it we’ll share it in the show notes. I was going to ask you about that, but let’s walk through that. Ian Borkent — In that download, if people just look at those questions and they sit down and they take the time to honestly ask themselves these questions, that can uncover some subconscious processes. Because a lot of our actions in life are subconsciously driven. And so you need to slow down to get to that point. And, and then you will know why you do things. And that’s often more important than what you do. Rich Birch — Yeah. There’s… friends, I would encourage you to look on your show notes. Click that, download that. This is a great resource that you’ve provided. I really appreciate this. There’s, as I was preparing looking at some of these questions, I was like, oh, these are good questions that I think all of us should slow down. And like you say here, quality, not quantity. Like, let’s actually let’s actually answer the question. Think about it. Love that, love that. Rich Birch — All right. Well, as we’re kind of wrapping up and landing the plane here, you this is you’ve ended up pivoting and launching a ministry to help people. Why don’t you talk to us about that? What does Grow a Healthy Soul look like? Give us a sense of of how that how that ministry helps people. Ian Borkent — Yeah, well, I just have a heart for leaders – leaders in the church world, but also in the, you know, in the secular world. And Grow a Healthy Soul is about the soul of the leader. And it’s my own story, of course, getting in touch with my soul and with who I really am, and uncovering emotions and subconscious processes. And I see so many leaders, they look at certain metrics in their life, like church attendance, salvations, finances. And I think we can look at other health metrics. And I believe that the health of the organization comes after the health of the leader. And so of course, they’re connected as well.
Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yeah. Ian Borkent — So we need to talk about these things. And prevention is better than cure. So if people check out my website – growahealthysoul.com – they will see some tools. They will see podcasts, mostly in the English language, but there are also Dutch episodes in between. And and that is there just to help them grow a healthy soul. Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. I would encourage people to to drop by, take a look. Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes. But it’s just growahealthysoul.com. You know I love your heart there around, Hey we don’t it doesn’t, it seems like every leader I talked to goes through a season like this. And that doesn’t need to be the case. Like we could proactively, and I’ve seen this particularly with young leaders, who, you know, are proactively working ahead to say, hey, how do we ask these questions, pace our lives? Sure, still having impact, still leaning in and asking, hey, how can we reach people with the message of Jesus? But you know, there was a previous generation that it feels like it was all about like, you know, burning out for Jesus. And we don’t need to be like that. We can, there’s a different path. And so, Ian, I really appreciate that you are, you know, clearly pacing that out for us. Any kind of final words as we wrap up today’s episode, anything you’d like to say to us just as we wrap up today? Ian Borkent — I think it’s important to talk about it to people, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ian Borkent — So sometimes we as leaders, we tend to feel maybe embarrassed or ashamed. But I think people respect us more if we are actually open about the things that bother us. And what’s important is we need to look at the person behind the pastor, and at the life behind the leader. And so I’m a person before I am a pastor or a leader. And and we need to basically demystify leadership and make it more personable. So just be a person and talk to another person and, and share the things that that you want to share. Rich Birch — So good, so good. Ian, I appreciate you being here today. Rich Birch — Thank you so much for caring for us, and for taking time to help us today. If we want to send people online, where do we want to send them? You know, give us the website for the church and, you know, growing a healthy soul. Any place on social media, those kind of things where we could be following along, tracking with your story? Ian Borkent — Yep. My website is growahealthysoul.com and my Instagram handle is my surname Borkent – B-O-R-K-E-N-T and then G-A-H-S, which stands for Grow Healthy Soul. Rich Birch — Love it, love it. So good. Thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate you being here today, Sir.
Ian Borkent — Pleasure.
Secrets of Top Team Players: Insights from 30,000 Leaders & William Vanderbloemen
Nov 16, 2023
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking again with William Vanderbloemen, the founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, an organization that helps identify executive talent and matches value-based organizations with like-minded people.
When it comes to hiring the best people, what factors cause them to shine? How can you learn to identify these qualities in a potential hire? Tune in as William shares some common traits found in exceptional hires based on interviews with 30,000 leaders.
Twelve habits among the successful. // In the last 15 years, Vanderbloemen Search Group has interviewed over 30,000 leaders. By studying the best of the best from this group, William sought to discover what these people had in common. He debunked the notion that exceptional individuals possess some innate quality or talent. Instead, he identified twelve habits common in these highly ranked leaders—referred to as “unicorns”—habits that are completely teachable and coachable.
The Fast. // One of the most counterintuitive habits he discovered was the importance of being responsive. One study showed that the speed of response, for example to an email or web form, correlates with the likelihood of having a meaningful conversation or connection. People are terrible at getting back to each other, but these unicorns in the church world are quick to respond which makes them stand out.
Follow up. // Responsiveness is not just crucial in personal interactions, but it also plays a significant role in organizations. William notes that a big study on giving found that the current best way to follow up with a first time donor is for the lead pastor or preaching pastor to text that donor the afternoon of the day that they gave. Following up means the likelihood of that donor giving again goes up by three times.
Train to be more responsive with boundaries. // Creating a culture of responsiveness within a team requires clear boundaries and expectations for communication. At Vanderbloemen Search Group, they respond to emails within 24 hours and treat Slack messages after hours as more urgent. However, it’s also important to respect employees’ work-life boundaries. You can train your people to be more responsive, but it’s up to you as the executive pastor to create boundaries where people aren’t afraid. Defining communication commitments annually as an organization also helps reinforce responsiveness. Train both senders and receivers of messages to use the appropriate channels for what is high priority and what isn’t.
The Curious. // Another common habit of unicorns found in the study is called “The Curious.” Leadership requires curiosity. Most people accept the status quo and don’t ask why. The people who really shine in their work learn to ask great questions.
Be the Unicorn // You can read about all twelve of the habits that William identified from his research in the book “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest”. People problems are one of the things that slows down the church and this book is a fantastic tool for personal and team development.
Take advantage of the roughly 4000 free resources at Vanderbloemen Search Group and grab William’s book “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest” at the website www.vanderbloemen.com.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, we’re really looking forward to today’s conversation, a repeat guest, which you know when we have repeat guests, that means they’ve got something good to say. We want to bring him back to the table, hear what they have to say. Super excited to have William Vanderbloemen – he’s the founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group. This is a firm well-known to folks that are listening in, they’re really known all over the world for excellence in identifying executive talent and really matching values-based organizations with likeminded or with org… with likeminded people. (I think that makes sense.) Ah, super excited to have William on the the call. He’s also a sought-after thought leader in really company culture, talent retention, ai and future work trends. William, so glad you’re here. Thanks for being here today.
William Vanderbloemen — Thanks I’m feeling bad about my seating. I’m just sitting at my desk in my office and then I realize I actually have a seminary degree on the wall and this is the wrong podcast to have that hammer shot. So.
Rich Birch — Ah, love it. Love it. It’s true. That’s that’s good. Why do you fill out the picture a little bit the William Vanderbloemen picture, tell us a little bit of your story. Give us the fill out the picture a little bit for us.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah, well I’ll I’ll try and keep you short. I’ll tell people I’m a recovering preacher so we go on and on. I know there are a lot of exec pastors listening. You’re like oh my gosh I thought we were getting out on time, but now no. But ah I, you know, I think, Rich, I probably was born with some malformed gene that’s made me a bit of a serial entrepreneur. And ah you know I was the kid that you know was a paper boy but but bought out the paper routes around me and redistributed them and made it mine more dense and sold off what I didn’t need just kind of. It’s ah it’s a dysfunction. I should probably be in counseling. But ah, and and honestly it’s what made me not want to go into ministry is I wanted to go do something where you’re building something where you’re…
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — And I grew up in a Presbyterian Church, very quiet, great church, but mainline custodial sort of setting, you know. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just is it what it was. I thought go in a ministry and you stand around, I guess you wear the robe all week? Or do you can you wear that to a grocery store, or do you like…
Rich Birch — Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — And you sit with people at the hospital and try not to make too many people mad and preach a good message, you know. And that was like uh-uh. But but God has a way of winning wrestling matches.
Rich Birch — Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — And ah and and we wrestled and he won. And so I went into, you know, Presbyterian Church Ministry, and then I got hold of one of my profs gave me a Lyle Schaller book. Great church growth guy who’s with Jesus now. But one of the the lines in his book that my professor had highlighted was “Jesus called us to be fishers of men, not keepers of an aquarium.”
Rich Birch — Oh good. Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — And ah it was like light bulb moment for me and that’s right when Willow and Saddleback were sort of hitting their stride.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — And it’s like, wow you can be a kingdom entrepreneur. I mean like I can say it cleaner now. I think I was like wow we could overpopulate heaven – that would be so cool.
Rich Birch — I love it. So good.
William Vanderbloemen — And um, so off I went, probably changed too much too quick at a lot of places, but had gracious people around me. And ah, pastored mostly as a senior pastor in the Presbyterian Church. Always had an odd group of friends though, you know, the Willows, the Saddlebacks, the non-denoms. And that was all very threatening. Um, but God was good and then after a divorce, which I would not recommend by the way…um…
Rich Birch — Sure. Okay.
William Vanderbloemen — You know, um I’ve found myself as a single dad with four kids, and in no shape to take care of anybody spiritually. Ah, the church had been very gracious to me. And I ended up taking a job um at an oil and gas company. Try new career, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — I’m like I don’t know that. And they said well you know people so we’ll start you in the ah HR department and a rotation, and then we’ll move you somewhere else, and when we rotate you around you can have a nice career here. First year I’m there, by the way I hated it.
Rich Birch — Okay.
William Vanderbloemen — I was not made for it. They were good people.
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — They were doing good work, they paid well, there were a lot of believers in the company, including the very top people in the company.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — So no knock on them. But it was just not what I was wired to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — And man it can be 15 years of search work to realize just because someone’s talented doesn’t mean they’re right for the job…
Rich Birch — Oh nice. Okay, good. Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — …at all.
Rich Birch — Interesting, right.
William Vanderbloemen — So and that was me I just you know… And so the CEO said um I’ve been here nine years. (I didn’t realize that’s like a lifetime for a fortune 200 company which is what we were.)
Rich Birch — Right? Yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — And so they hired a search firm to find a new CEO, ninety days later they had the new CEO.
William Vanderbloemen — First Presbyterian Houston, where I’d been serving, which is a fantastic church, and within the little world presbyterianism honestly, one of the best ones.
Rich Birch — Yep.
William Vanderbloemen — It took them 3 years to find me.
Rich Birch — Wow, right.
William Vanderbloemen — I was there not quite 6.
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — It took them almost three years to find my successor.
Rich Birch — Wow.
William Vanderbloemen — So they had a twelve year run…
Rich Birch — Wow.
William Vanderbloemen — …with half of it in search mode and half of it with a pastor.
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — And here’s an oil and gas company, now I live in Texas so we don’t believe this, but most of the world believes that the oil and gas world is the death star of the evil galactic empire, and like is the worst thing in the world.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — So why in the world, you know, [inaudible] me off with with what, you know, an old mentor of mine would have called a holy discontent. And and I I can say it now like cleanly, yeah hindsight gives you clarity.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, 20/20. Yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — Why does the business world have a better solution than the bride? That’s just…
Rich Birch — Right. Oh good. Yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — I went home, Adrienne and I just got married. We blended our families with 6 kids. We had a new house that we could barely afford; we didn’t have any money. And I said Adrienne I think I’m supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches. And she looked at me and she said, oh yeah, that’s because churches love new ideas, right?
Rich Birch — [laughs] They’re good with that. They like innovation and trying new things that we’ve never done before.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah [inaudible] he ended up nailed to wood.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — Anyway… long story short…Oh and and the kicker is it was the fall of 2008. Now if you’re not old, like…
Rich Birch — Right. Great time. Perfect time.
William Vanderbloemen — Well okay, then you know. I mean if you’re too young to know of, just Google 2008 economy. It was not good.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — So that was then. You know I got some mentoring from a really great guy. I learned as I went. I had very ah patient clients in the early years. And now fifteen years later we’ve completed 3000 searches um, you know, we’ve just we’ve we’ve gotten to work with some of the best people on the planet. You guys, your team being one of them back in the day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
William Vanderbloemen —Um I’m just very, very grateful for what what doors God has opened.
Rich Birch — No, that’s great. Love hearing that story and and hearing your heart behind that. And yeah, this a part of what I like about you, William, is you ah, you, you are, you know, in the church’s corner. You want to help churches and you want to serve and you’ve built, I think, a great organization that does that consistently, which is is fantastic. I’m so glad to have you on today because I want to take advantage of that vant that kind of vantage point that you have over seeing so many different leaders in so many different contexts. And recently I heard that you did this study of, was it 30,000 leaders? That’s a crazy number.
William Vanderbloemen — It is crazy.
Rich Birch — Tell us about this. What what was this thing that you—I want to unearth this—what was this this study that you guys set out to do?
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, right, right. Well I think I think most massive projects like that, or a book, or anything come from [inaudible].
Rich Birch — Good.
William Vanderbloemen — You know it’s not because what research project can I do today? It’s usually like I got a question I got to know the answer to.
Rich Birch — Yes, got to dig that out.
William Vanderbloemen — And I don’t know, Rich, have you ever have you ever have you ever like been in a meeting—it’s only happened to me a handful of times outside of my job now—but you’re in a meeting, or maybe at a social function, or a church, or whatever. You meet somebody and within 5 minutes you’re like: winner. Absolute winner.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah. True.
William Vanderbloemen — This one’s different.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — I mean I don’t know if you’ve done, had that happen.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Totally.
William Vanderbloemen — I think most people have.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
William Vanderbloemen — And I have [inaudible] for the longest time, I mean I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’m not super gullible. So why in the world does this person win me over in 5 minutes?
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — What is it about them, you know? And when I was younger I used to just hire ’em all, and that’s dumb because back to the point of, you know, I was an idiot. I knew everything because I was 31 and that’s what you do when you’re 31…
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — …you do everything right. I would try and hire them and they weren’t a fit for for the company. A lot of times they weren’t even as talented as I thought, they just reminded me of me and I like me, you know.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — So and then then there are other times where I’d I’d meet great people and not realize I was in the middle of a great conversation. My first conversation with Chris Hodges, he was getting ready to plant his church. John Maxwell introduced the two of us – we were on a golf course. And he said, this is my friend Chris, getting ready to plant, he’s at Church of the Highlands…
William Vanderbloemen — …which is arguably one of the best churches in North America. And I’m like you you know anybody in Alabama? He’s like, nope, I don’t know anybody. I’m like well good luck buddy. You know?
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, it’s I was an idiot. I missed it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — So the question in my mind is, what is it that causes these really special people to shine, and could you find a way to identify really special people when you miss it, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
William Vanderbloemen — For for 14 of our 15 years we’ve just have been very blessed with a lot of growth. And you’ve been in a growing church. Your listeners are hopefully in a growing church. If they’re not they ought to hire you to help them grow. Well they should.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — And ah you know growth doesn’t leave a lot of time.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — You know, yeah it it’s yeah, it’s more fun than not growing, but it’s not like this it’s like people talk about the luxury life of travel. Only until you’ve traveled…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, absolutely.
William Vanderbloemen — But um in the pandemic, every one of our clients closed…
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — …um indefinitely, which by the way, my religion and philosophy degree did not teach me much about P and Ls, but if all of your clients close indefinitely, it will change your balance sheet, right?
Rich Birch — Yes. Exactly. Things are going to change. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — So, it also it also ah freed up our calendar. And so we realized, so when we do a search like we do a search for your camp or whatever the thing is that we’re doing virtual, and maybe there are 1500 people that could be considered.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — And then you get serious about it and it gets down to maybe there’s 150.
Rich Birch — Yep.
William Vanderbloemen — And if you’re an exec pastor, you’ve done this, you do your initial phone calls, you do research, and down down down down down. When we get down to the final, call it 8 or 10 somewhere in there, ah really really talented people, they get a an in-person, face-to-face interview with us. And we realized in the pandemic, you know what we’ve done 30,000 of these now.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — And that was three years ago so I don’t even know what the number is.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s more now.
William Vanderbloemen — And the good thing is I quit hiring people like me. I hire people that are not like me, that are detail-oriented and they’ve kept track of all those people.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — And we have records of the interviews, and we have…
Rich Birch — Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — …so we were able to say like, okay 30,000 – can we figure out who the best of those are?
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — Like the best of the best? Yep, we figured out who got the job, who kept it, who got promoted, who brought multiplication and growth, who brought discipleship to things.
Rich Birch — Oh love it, love it.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense.
William Vanderbloemen — So so then okay, we got the best of the best. We know who they are. Then the question was do you have anything in common?
Rich Birch — Right. What is what’s what’s the commonality? Who was what are the things that these people have what are the traits that they have in common?
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
William Vanderbloemen — And and the answer was yes. And the answer was nothing I’d expected. It was…
Rich Birch — Really? Interesting.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah. I would have thought, like for instance I would have thought um maybe they all have a high IQ.
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — Ah maybe they all got to go to really good schools where they received some degree of finishing, you know, like interpersonal skills. And…
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — Nope, nope. Maybe they’re all one type of job position. No, it’s not that. Like you know…
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
William Vanderbloemen — …ah you executive pastors, you know how long it takes to interview a pastoral care candidate, like they just want to sit and take care of you. I’m like oh my gosh, much prefer interviewing executive pastors. They get it done quickly.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
William Vanderbloemen — Well, they do.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — So it was none of these qualities. What we did find was there were twelve habits…
Rich Birch — Okay.
William Vanderbloemen — …that overwhelmingly were common among these, we call them, unicorns, right.
Rich Birch — Yep.
William Vanderbloemen — And the coolest part was we didn’t see this coming. We were frankly doing a very selfish study to figure out how do we identify these people and not miss them when you have something like my interaction with Pastor Chris. And the cool byproduct of the study was every one of these 12 habits is completely coachable, completely teachable.
Rich Birch — Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — So now instead of spending my day saying, I know how to spot a unicorn. We’re actually able to say, I know how to teach you or help you teach your team how to become unicorns.
Rich Birch — I love that.
William Vanderbloemen — And man, in in a day where the church is is, a lot of people would say, losing relevance, or it’s noisy, or people aren’t coming, and there’s a lot of pessimism, I’m not quite as pessimistic… But how cool would it be if instead of having one person on your staff that’s like that, you had a whole team. And then when a visitor comes within 5 minutes they’re like, these people are like unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Rich Birch — Love.
William Vanderbloemen — And ah so it it led, you know, what was a research project led to okay, let’s make it a resource available to people. Let’s make it a book. And I’ll I’ve spent a lot of my year working on that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, love it.
William Vanderbloemen — Fortunately I’ve got a great team that does all our search work. But yeah…
Rich Birch — Well I’d love to you know, unpack that a little bit more. first of all I love the you know the insight. You didn’t quite say it like this, but as you were saying that it it, you know, I got thinking about what your firm does, what you do. There’s a part of it where you’re trying, what I what I hear in this project, this “Be the Unicorn” book, is really trying to demystify what can be kind of a mysterious thing. You’re talking to candidates, you’re talking to leaders, you’re trying to figure out, and is it like some sort of magic that you know we’re looking for, or should I be looking for habits, or should I be developing them in my people? I love that. Well why don’t we talk about is there a habit or two that you found the most surprising that are like the most kind of counterintuitive in the 12 um, that are like, hmm that’s that maybe pushes in a different direction.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is there something there that we could unpack a little bit?
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, there a few, there are a few. Honestly if somebody’d given me the chapter list, like just the table of content this book, I’d say duh. Everybody should try and do all those things. That’s easy. What idiot wrote this?
Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — Ah the difference is this is not William’s 12 opinions. This is actually data-driven.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — Like this is evidence based research that hopefully comes out really simple. Like you listen to Tim Lucas preach, and it sounds like the simplest thing for him to do. It sounds easy. And the only reason it sounds that way is because he’s practiced it 9,000,000 times.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, he’s worked on it.
William Vanderbloemen — So they’re they’re not a lot of I would call um ah plot twists in the 12 habits.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
William Vanderbloemen — But but one that um that I never would have seen coming had I not started our business is we call it “the fast”, but I probably should have titled it “the responsive”. Very few people… and and every one of these 12 habits was incredibly common among the unicorns and incredibly uncommon among the rest of us.
Rich Birch — Oh okay, okay.
William Vanderbloemen — People are terrible at getting back to one another. They’re just horrible at it.
Rich Birch — It’s so true. Yep.
William Vanderbloemen — Well I mean I I can walk you through study after study. We looked at like inbound marketing for instance, you know, where you use a HubSpot, or an Infusionsoft, or or Church Community Builder, whatever it is, to have somebody fill out a form and say please send me more information or have someone call me.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes
William Vanderbloemen — Car dealers use it, [inaudible], inbound Marketing.
Rich Birch — People respond to those things? This is the problem.
William Vanderbloemen — There was a massive so so there was a massive massive study done…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — …of tens of thousands of companies that pay for inbound software. And the question was how what’s the correlation between how quickly you respond to those forms when they come in and how likely you are to actually have a conversation with the person that wrote in. Make sense?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — So so the study showed some really interesting stats. Like for instance, somebody writes and then fills out a form. If they get a human response, not a chat bot, not an ai, but a human response within 60 seconds, there’s a 98% chance that you’re going to have a conversation with that potential customer, visitor, whatever the thing is.
Rich Birch — Wow, Wow Wow.
William Vanderbloemen — 98%. Slam dunk, no problem. You wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%.
Rich Birch — Wow. Amazing.
William Vanderbloemen — You wait 24 hours, it’s less than 1%.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s convicting.
William Vanderbloemen — Now now now the real punchline is they went on to figure out of all these companies that did the survey what’s your average response time when someone writes in on your company form? Average response time for these people who are paying all this money for this software? 42 hours.
Rich Birch — Wow. Crazy, crazy.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, we contacted the people at eHarmony which is like ah OG of of Tinder or you know…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. [Inaudible] dating apps…
William Vanderbloemen — …whatever the… Yeah. And we asked them like, what’s the response time when people have a potential match?
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — You’re talking about it a website that is full of lonely people that are trying very hard to meet other people.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — You know, the response time is terrible. The unicorns respond quickly…
Rich Birch — Quickly interesting.
William Vanderbloemen — …and and it makes all the difference.
William Vanderbloemen — I stumbled into this when we started the business and I had six kids in the house and no money and all that. Man, if you wrote me in said, can we talk about you finding this for me? It didn’t matter if it was a dogcatcher, I was calling you right away because I needed to go buy groceries, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
William Vanderbloemen — But I kept hearing you got back to us! Nobody gets back to us. Well research shows exactly that. So for instance, XPs, I just read a big study on giving. And ah one of the things that found was guess what the the current best way to follow up with a first time donor is? And the answer is lead pastor or the preaching pastor of the day texts that donor that afternoon…
Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — …that Sunday or whatever day your services are.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep, yep.
William Vanderbloemen —The likelihood of that donor giving again goes up by like 3X if that happens.
Rich Birch — Yep. Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — And it’s the same sort of thing. It’s just responsiveness.
Rich Birch —Well yes. I I love that. So, you know, I so I this idea, let’s stick with this idea of responsiveness. You know this is true. You can think, from an organization point of view I can name on one hand the organizations that I would say are responsive—your organization’s one of them—where like hey you, you know, those people actually get back to you quickly. There’s another one where I know if I email that guy, he’s going to call me in 30 seconds. Like it is you know there and I’m just a little bit of like are they just sitting around waiting for me to to email? But you know, as ah as a client I love that. I’m like because I know when I’m if I’m going to take action on that, they’re they’re ready for me. They can they can handle that, which is fantastic. How do we inculcate that as in our team.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, carefully, carefully.
Rich Birch — So how do we, you know, it seems like we’re struggling to get people to respond in a day to emails, you know…
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but how do we how do we try to help that in our cultures?
William Vanderbloemen — I think super carefully. Now the the cool thing um our study did turn into a book and each chapter is on one of the habits. And so then here’s what we’ve learned and like the data. Here’s what unicorns are saying about how to implement this. And then here’s some tangible steps that you can do. So it’s a very almost like a workbook type book. Ah so so there’s some great examples in there, but I would say um, what’s not as much in the book about responsiveness is how do you build guardrails where you don’t kill your people’s work/life balance. So, yes, respond. But can we have some house rules for what that actually means within a team? When we were 3 or 4 people as a company, you know, whatever. Yeah we were we’re all in each other’s business. We’re in one room where I could hear everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s a hunger, there’s a hunger, there’s a hunger there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, and we were all together all the time so it didn’t matter. We got almost 50 people now – that’s a whole different thing, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
William Vanderbloemen — So for us, for instance, inside the office um, it’s it’s known that for our communication if you email me after work hours, I am the message you’re sending me is please get back to me within 24 hours.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
No problem. Okay, um if you slack me, which is our interoffice messaging platform, if you send me a slack after hours, okay, now we’re at like DEFCON 3. Like now we’re at I don’t know what Canada’s DEFCON is but that’s…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s high.
William Vanderbloemen — So okay, this is kind of important where I’m having dinner with the kids now, but I’m not I’ll deal with it once I get a quiet minute, right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
William Vanderbloemen — If you text me after hours as coworker, that’s DEFCON 2 and I need an answer pretty dang quick.
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — And if it’s if it’s a phone call after hours, you pick up.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep, yep.
William Vanderbloemen — And that requires a whole lot of boundary management.
Rich Birch — Yep.
William Vanderbloemen — Like I really miss our text string during Game of Thrones – that was kind of fun, but…
Rich Birch — Sure sure.
But you know you can’t do… So I would just say you know you can train your people to be more responsive, but I think if you’re the Exec Pastor particularly it’s on you to create some boundaries where people don’t aren’t afraid…
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — …of that. I I just wrote an article on this or actually I was interviewed ah for this by ah The Business Insider. Do you know this magazine?
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
William Vanderbloemen — So they said, are you okay, if we kind of make this a little bit of a clickbait title? I said as long as you tell the whole story.
Rich Birch — Sure.
William Vanderbloemen — Because not every job requires this level of responsiveness.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
William Vanderbloemen — A controller? Whatever.
Rich Birch — Yes, Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — You know, ah a kids pastor? Maybe.
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah.
William Vanderbloemen — But like first time visitor person? Absolute response needed, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, you need to jump on it right away.
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah, yeah. In our world like…
Rich Birch — I think a part of that is what you’ve done there is is even defining for people. We do that annually as an organization. We we go through exactly that same thing. Hey let’s just talk about our communication commitments again as an organization. And we have very similar – email within a day, you know text within an hour, call please pick up. Um, and, you know, and it’s training on both sides. It’s saying, hey if I’m sending you a message I’ve got multiple channels I can send it through.
William Vanderbloemen — That’s right.
Rich Birch — Each, don’t send the message that I don’t need to know until next week. Don’t text me or call me, send me ah send me an email about that. Or you know vice versa, if I’m calling you, hey there’s something that I need an answer for right now. Um, please don’t send me to voicemail because I’m just going to call you again. You know, so how do we communicate that that’s good. What are the…
William Vanderbloemen — Yeah, yeah, well and and what I’m trying to learn is how do I encourage the entire team to be responsive, realizing not everyone has to get back in 60 seconds, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
William Vanderbloemen — They’re different departments of your church, or your camp, or your school, or my company that just don’t requires immediate response. But my my EA, Brian, that requires immediate response…
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — …cause I’m probably not gonna be you’re not gonna reach me, but you’ll reach him and he’s gonna make you so happy that you heard from him right away.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
William Vanderbloemen — And like that’s so he… So like if I’m interviewing for that position, or a sales marketing position, I borderline entrapment.
Rich Birch — Sure.
William Vanderbloemen — I’ll I’ll send a text I will I’ll send a text at 10 pm or I’ll have someone from the company that Brian doesn’t know text him at 10pm said, I heard you were interviewing with us – sorry I missed you today. I’d love to catch up sometime.
Rich Birch — And see what happens.
William Vanderbloemen — And let’s just see how it goes. And if he didn’t respond right away, whatever. It’s not the end of the world. But if he happens to respond right away.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, there’s something here.
William Vanderbloemen — Oh he’s got the same kind of dysfunction we have. That’s good.
Rich Birch — Love it. So you know, there’s so there’s a whole bunch of these, friends. And we want to encourage you to pick up a copy of the book. You can get Amazon. We can we’ll give you all those links in a minute. One of the ones that stood out to me was the curious. So number 8 the curious tell us a little bit about this. Ah curiosity as I think it might be as I age I realize, man, this is like a it’s a secret weapon in um, in leading, but talk to us about what did you find about the curious.
William Vanderbloemen — Most people aren’t curious. Most people accept status quo, most people just do the same thing every day, most people don’t ask why. Oh there’s a wonderful talk. It’s been viewed a bajillion times with Simon Sinek. And he said the minute my career changed was when I started asking people questions. And then I started talking about my beliefs rather than what I do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
William Vanderbloemen — And it just changes everything because very few people go to that place. It’s like the start with why. That’s such a game changer, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
William Vanderbloemen — But very few people do. The people that stand out are the ones that ask really great questions. In fact, I don’t do a lot of search work anymore. There are a few here and there if it’s in longtime friend, or if it’s a really complex issue or something like that. If I’m involved in a search, my team will take it most of the way home, and when we get down to the finalist, I’ll have an interview with him. And it’s for good or bad. It’s the interview with the guy whose name is on the door so people are all, oooh what am I going to get asked?
Rich Birch — Sure.
William Vanderbloemen — I I kind of only ask one question: hey Rich, you’ve already gone through the life story, and personality, and job history with the rest of my team. You don’t need to tell me all that again. That’s fine. I think the best way we can use this time I know the client you’re wanting to land a job with or interview with. I know I’m really well. Ask me anything. I’ll give you the real answer.
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
William Vanderbloemen — And that’s the interview.
Rich Birch — Yes I love it. Love it. So good.
William Vanderbloemen — Because the really great candidates ask amazing questions.
Rich Birch — Yes. Right. Super insightful. They’ve you know they give you a sense of they know the organization, they’re they’re you know they’re they’re looking the 201, 301, dig a bit deeper, hey what’s actually happening, you know. That’s cool. Love that.
William Vanderbloemen — How many times in scripture was Jesus asked a question and he turned around and answered it by asking another question?
Rich Birch — Yeah, all the time. Yeah, all the time.
William Vanderbloemen — All the time. All the time. He did it more than he did answer the question.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, infuriatingly so.
William Vanderbloemen — Right. So you know, the the answers are often within you if you just ask the right questions. And I’m finding very few people ask the why. Very few people go underneath what’s just asked to say… You gotta be careful with that. You might get a renegade. He asks great questions – why are we doing it that way? Why can’t we do it this way? Why can’t… You know, two year olds say why a lot. That’s often not appealing. I don’t know if you remember your kids being two, but like will you quit asking me why.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — But but ah, your listeners are smart. How can you interview in a way that allows a candidate the chance to show whether or not they ask good questions?
Rich Birch — Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — Because for me you you can train your team to get better at all these things but it’s far easier to build a team that’s already good at these things.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
William Vanderbloemen — So so yes, this is a training tool but it’s also like a matrix for how I interview as an exec pastor for this next sound engineer or whatever thing it is that you’re looking for.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well I want to I want to encourage people to pick this up. When I saw this I thought, man, this would be a great tool. We’re coming to that time of year where it’s like you know, maybe we buy copies of this for our team. Maybe it’s a Christmas book, or it’s ah hey let’s work on this together. You know, let’s go through through this as a team – that kind of thing. That’s what really struck me, you can obviously get it at Amazon. You can you know drop by your your website. Ah so it’s the book’s called “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest”. What are you hoping, what’s the kind of seismic shift that you’re hoping happens? You know you spend a lot of time writing a book. You spend a lot of effort trying to promote it. You do that because you want to see something change, something what what kind of change are you hoping for in the organizations that really take this in and and and chew on it?
William Vanderbloemen — Ah I still want to overpopulate heaven, Rich.
Rich Birch — Love it.
William Vanderbloemen — I still want to overpopulate heaven. I want to I want to have to have a conversation with Jesus about we gotta have a building program and build a little more heaven because you guys have introduced too many people to me.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
William Vanderbloemen — That that is what I would like to see happen and so if if if we can help the church go farther and faster toward knocking down the gates of hell…
Rich Birch — So good. So good.
William Vanderbloemen — …then that’s the shift. And I don’t know anything that slows the church down more than people problems.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
William Vanderbloemen — So if if this book can help solve some people problems, help your team get a little better, that’s going to help introduce more people to Jesus and move us toward overpopulation.
Rich Birch — So good. That’s great. Well, William,I really appreciate you I appreciate your you’re one of those leaders in my life that we haven’t interacted a ton over the years, but that every time we are together you say something that sticks in the back of my brain, and and it comes up time and again. And I’m sure that that’ll be the case with this book. It’ll be the kind of thing that as people read ah it’ll be super helpful for folks as they’re they’re leading. so again friends that’s “Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest”. I appreciate you being here today. Anything else you want to say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
William Vanderbloemen — No, ah, just that after 15 years we’ve been writing free content forever. And if your listeners haven’t gone to our site, there are about 4000 completely free resources there…
Rich Birch — Yes.
William Vanderbloemen — …on building and running and keeping a team. And some of you guys and gals have been through business training and you know how to do this. A lot of people don’t. So if we can help close that gap for you. It’s kind of like what you’re doing: stuff they didn’t teach me at that seminary with that degree back there.
Rich Birch — Yes, true.
William Vanderbloemen — So it’s there for the taking. Please use it, go do the best you can, and thanks for your service.
Rich Birch — Love it, and the great thing about the name Vanderbloemen you don’t just spell it somewhere close enough and ah or at Google will will figure it out. It’s a great little hack there of SEO. William, I appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for what you’re doing to serve the church and lots of organizations. Ah, thank you for being here today.
William Vanderbloemen — Thanks Rich! Always a joy.
Talking with Your Lender: Mark Briggs Offers Insider Advice for Growing Churches
Nov 09, 2023
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mark Briggs, the Executive Vice President of Ministry Lending at CDF Capital. CDF Capital is dedicated to helping churches solve problems and bridge the financial gap often faced when trying to expand and reach more people. Mark has been with CDF for over 20 years, helping churches finance their dreams and overcome financial barriers.
What is God calling your church to do in its community? Don’t miss today’s episode, full of coaching on how growing churches can prepare financially for greater impact.
Start early. // Wherever growing churches find themselves, Mark advises that one of the best things they can do to set themselves up for success is to start thinking about their space and financial needs early on. Even if a church is still portable, if they know they want a permanent location down the road, connecting with a financial partner and seeking advice from experts in the field will help a church to prepare in the years leading up to a launch.
Transparency and trust. // The importance of transparency and trust between churches and lenders can’t be emphasized enough. Mark explains that CDF Capital wants to help churches have realistic expectations about their expansion plans and what they will take to achieve. They begin by having open conversations about financial health, attendance and growth numbers, savings position, and overall capacity in order to gain a better understanding of where a church stands and what it can afford. Then they recommend where a church needs to be in order to handle the scope they’re considering. Bring in experts, but go into conversations with eyes wide open, understanding that this isn’t going to be an easy process.
Be open about struggles. // When a church is honest about their financial struggles and ministry challenges, it allows lenders to provide the best possible guidance and support. If your church is in a difficult season in an area, such as a leadership issue or a declining trend, it may be better to wait to expand until you’re in a better place rather than putting additional pressure on the situation. Find a lender that wants to have a partnership and be transparent so they can really see what is going on and make recommendations.
Income and debt. // When talking with churches, one of the things CDF Capital looks at is a church’s total amount of debt in relation to their income. Once a church has debt up to four times its annual income, it can put too much pressure on them. Another thing CDF looks at is the expense coverage ratio which looks at all of your income and expenses and then layers on a debt payment. Ideally they would like to see an expense coverage ratio of 105-110% with some buffer. Another thing to consider is what is the percentage of your income that is used for debt? Mark recommends not getting higher than 20-25%. Have conversations with your lender in advance so they can help you wean your budget to a place where it can support your growing facilities.
Have a conversation now. // CDF Capital has field team members around the country who are available to talk with you about what to consider before going into an expansion project. Contact them for a free consultation to determine what your next steps are.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Well, hey everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will help and inspire you, and today we’re super honored to have Mark Briggs with us. He’s the Executive Vice President of Ministry Lending at CDF Capital. This organization, if you’re not familiar with them, they were founded in 1953 with a single vision and mission of helping churches grow. They, really, there was a significant barrier at the beginning that was around in church expansion, that was around financial need. But over the years, they’ve really grown from being more than just a lender. They really want to come alongside and help and support churches like yours as you wrestle through these kinds of issues. And so, we’re honored to get Mark on the phone to have this conversation today. Mark, welcome. So glad you’re here today.
Mark Briggs — Happy to be here. Just a fan of your ministry and how you serve churches, and I’m just hopeful that what we talk about can be an encouragement and maybe give some good insight to your listeners.
Rich Birch — Hey, super honored that you’re here, Mark. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? Give us your, how do you intersect with CDF Capital? How does that fit into the overall picture?
Mark Briggs — Yes, I’m proud to have been with CDF Capital for going on coming close to 23 years. And I never thought I would work in one place so long. I did local church ministry, surprisingly youth ministry for close to a decade ahead of that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark Briggs — I mean, that’s the very natural transition, youth pastors to…
Rich Birch — To lending.
Mark Briggs — …lending millions of dollars. I mean, who would you want to entrust more with those kinds of dollars?
Rich Birch — That’s fun.
Mark Briggs — But by God’s leading, I was able to get into the organization in a marketing role because again, there was no direct line from what I was doing. And as I started to grow in my role and my understanding of what we did, even back then before it was our stated mission, our organization wanted to help churches grow. And I saw the unique way that we did.
Mark Briggs — I’ve always loved, not in the love of money way, but I’ve always just been drawn to finance. I like numbers, I like just thinking about how to make that kind of stuff work. And I’ve been accused of being a tight wad in my younger years, but I’ve grown through that. But I also love the church. I was in local church ministry, loved so much about it, but it just wasn’t a place where I saw myself being planted my whole life. And I actually went into it a little more reluctantly. The churches I was at primarily in Arizona at the time, had some great success. And that’s kind of how I knew I wasn’t a lifer. I think I like to see things get done.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Briggs — And when you’re in ministry, you do a lot of things, but there’s so much unfinished and you’re always looking at how do we work on that? And so, through the years I’ve worked primarily with a church as a field team member where I would be out and I would walk alongside of them. They would say, here’s our problem. And we would talk about how we could help with that solution.
Mark Briggs — And one of the things, Rich, that again, I never thought I’d be drawn to that, but one of the things in this that has just kind of blossomed in the way we do what we do is I just love walking alongside of leaders and just making it to where they don’t have to be alone. They don’t have to repeat mistakes others have in the past. They don’t have to be just overwhelmed by this, but to be a partner to help them through just such a crucial process has been great. So I love the relational part. I love the strategic part, and the kingdom part is what makes it worthwhile for me. And so done that for a while. The last five years or so, I’ve actually led our team who does that. They work with hundreds of churches across the country, and help them basically finance the dream. And so I loved being able to do that. And again, I loved working alongside the churches. And I wasn’t sure how I liked making this transition, but in the same way, I love coaching our guys who do the same thing. And so that’s given me a lot of fulfillment though I do miss at times being on the campus and walking with them and figuring out those problems. So that’s kind of how I got to where I’m at.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, listeners, dear listeners, I want to let you behind the screen, demystify a little bit. I’m hoping today, I know so many of us, if you’re in a growing church, if you’re trying to reach the community, there is always this gap. There’s this gap. We have to generate more space somehow. We have to figure out how we’re going to create places where people can come and connect with the message. And oftentimes that comes with a financial gap, where we’re like, man, I’m not sure how do we make all this happen? And we frankly might get nervous about reaching out to an organization like CDF Capital. It’s like we’re people people, we’re vision people, and it’s like, oh man, Mark even said he was a tight wad when he was younger. How am I going to call this guy? And so I’m hoping by the end of today’s conversation that you’ll know, man, our friends at CDF, they really are in your corner and they want to help you solve problems and we want to help that.
Rich Birch — So Mark, let set up a scenario that I’m hearing a lot these days with the churches I’m talking to. So we’ve come out of covid, we’re through that, and it feels like, okay, we’ve settled out our giving. Feels like, okay, we’re kind of through all of that craziness. But man, we look around, we’ve gone from two to three services, we’ve added people where our kids’ ministry is starting to push in. We’ve taken on new ministries that we weren’t doing before. Maybe we’re doing more community engagement stuff now and we’ve got square footage issues. Man, what do I do? Who do I call? Where do I start? What’s your look at that as somebody from the ministry lending point of view?
Mark Briggs — Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say when they’re thinking that, not that it’s already late, but it’s never too early to be asking those questions because it’s going to take years, oftentimes. I mean, there are exceptions where something may come up, but even if you’re able to buy a building in three or four months, it could take a year to build it out depending where you’re at and to what level. But I think I would affirm that in the church to say, I’ve seen what happens when you have a permanent space. I know it’s important. And so it’s not too early to have that conversation. And so I think the next steps would primarily be just really understand what God’s calling your church to. I mean, there’s some churches, and I say this as someone who finds this building, there’s some churches that aren’t meant to be as large or maybe the leadership structure and maybe they want to just plant churches. So you just need to decide, first of all, what do you think God’s calling you to do in your community? And then if you’re convinced, hey, we need a place of permanence, a permanent location, I think really that comes down to knowing your community, knowing where you want to be.
Mark Briggs — But I think it’s never too early, even if you don’t have that place nailed down, to connect with the financial partner. And I obviously believe in what we’re doing and we’d love to help you. But whether that’s us or someone else, try to understand what your capacity is. Because a lot of churches, especially if it’s a younger church, Rich, they’ve started, they’ve been pouring into their community, pouring in their growth. A lot of times these churches are trying to just get their tentacles into the community and it’s just off their radar of what does it look like to be owners? What does it look like to change your budget there and everything else?
Mark Briggs — And so I think connecting with someone, it could be another leader who’s gone through before or even again, we’ll do that for free. Just walk you through what are the things that you need to be thinking about ahead of even finding that facility. And then once you’ve found a place, I think that conversation’s even more important because you could certainly talk to experts on the space going, what can we do? Will that fit? I mean, there’s times if, like Rick Warren would say, you don’t want the shoe determined in the size of the foot, so you don’t want a place so small you’re not going to be able to grow. But if you’re able to find a place of size that you go, we can grow here. Then, along with what can we afford, which us or some other lender may be able to help you with, you need to talk to those experts, architects, planners, who can go, can it work for us? That’s the introductory step. But again, what I love about what we do is we don’t mind being a sounding board three years before you do something because we know there’s a lot of different directions that could go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. That’s good. Even just basic advice like, Hey, friends, even if you’re not currently working with CDF Capital, whoever your lender is, whoever your financial, these are our friends, reach out to them, engage with them, have the conversation. Let’s drill into that – understand your capacity. So let’s say I’m, okay, I’m going to reach out to you. I want to have that conversation. Help me bullet point through some of the high level questions that I should be thinking about to prepare even for a conversation like that, that I could get ready to be ready to talk you through where we’re at, to get a sense of what are some of those things you’re commonly asking, questions you’re commonly asking churches as they think about their capacity?
Mark Briggs — Sure. Some of it is looking at some of their just attendance and growth numbers. I don’t think we’re often doing a ton of consulting on here’s the size of building. I think a lot of leaders, they know where they’re at in their town, they know what they’re looking at. I think where we can be the reality check, not in a discouraging way. You know, one of the things you’ve probably heard me say even in our conversations is just, we just don’t want you to get so far over your skis where you’re kidding yourself. Because there’s times these dreams are really big and we don’t want to crush them, but we want to make sure that the expectations are right. And so I think when we’re talking to a church in those early days, you know again, what we would do, we’re highly consultative. I mean, we’re not looking, I mean obviously money makes ministry. It helps fund it. But early on, we want to help churches grow and be that trusted partner.
Mark Briggs — And so we would just, our field people can with a few questions on their financial health, how they use their money, what their savings position is, what their capacity is in the church, we can get a pretty good idea quickly of that kind of capacity. And so there’s that early round. And then in successive conversations, we would gather their finances. And oftentimes we’re willing to run ’em through as if they’re asking for a loan. I mean, we will use that time and expertise, and we have a team of people who can do that because we just recognize how important it’s for a church, not only to recognize where they’re at now, but we can coach them and say, but you’re… almost every time, Rich, they need more than they can afford. And so what we do, we also just kind of coach…
Rich Birch — Shocker.
Mark Briggs — Crazy! It’s always, everything doesn’t usually cost less or go quicker. It costs more and goes slower. But we can kind of say, here’s where you would need to be in order to handle the kind of scope that you’re considering. And so those are the first questions.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Mark Briggs — But just really dialing in to whether or not they’re ready. If they’re too young, usually under two or three years we’ll talk to ’em, but we highly discourage ’em from doing anything permanent when they’re still figuring out who they are. And so those are some of those first steps.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. There’s some good benchmarky kind of things to think about there. Talk us through. So the interesting thing, I face these problems. I’m like, okay, I’m thinking about, man, maybe we need to add some more space on, or maybe we need to renovate or we’ve got these 10 acres behind. Should I add a new auditorium? And so then I’ll go and talk with an architect and start talking with them. And maybe give them a few thousand dollars and they come up with an incredibly beautiful drawing. I’m like, that’s amazing. But then how does that connect into the process? Are there any dangers we should avoid in that? And obviously we love, there’s lots of great people who do this…
Mark Briggs — Wonderful.
Rich Birch — …for a living, so we’re not demeaning that industry by any means.
Mark Briggs — Yeah, and I think that’s where I don’t think you want to go alone into that process where you’re paying someone to say, Hey, design us what we want. I mean, there’s benefits to that if you know how to stage it out or what they could go call phase it out. But architects are essential, and I don’t want any hate mail, but often they aren’t excited about, Hey, let me do a generic low-cost building that’s going to be small and get you on the site in an unexciting way. That’s not generally their bent. And so I think if they have some understanding of programming what they’ll need, architects can work with them on that. But I think the church really having some understanding from a financial partner or someone consulting with them on what they can handle responsibly that really you want to really give them a tight funnel through which to work with. Because Rich, there’s, I could give you a lot of stories. There’s times in my career where I’ve come to a church and they’ve spent a couple of years with a plan, with a dream in mind. They even have pictures on their wall and they go, Hey, can we do it? And there’s times when they’re not even halfway there. I mean…
RIch Birch — Right, right.
Mark Briggs — And that’s a credibility issue for leaders and their church. I mean, we want to help set you up for success to where your church doesn’t get attached to a vision that’s untenable. And so I think bringing in those experts, but you just have to have realistic expectations. And it’s not a downer per se. I guess we can get into more later, but I’ve just seen many churches who when they get in that spot, end up borrowing a lot more. And while it can work, it can be devastating if the stars don’t align. And so I think that’s the first step when you’re walking through, is having a team to look at it with eyes wide open. But also understanding that it’s not going to be an easy process.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Well, and there’s a piece of that – friends of ours at Risepointe, they’re a firm that helps churches, design firm. And I know one of the things I love about them, just as people, is they’ll do these analysis where they’ll end in a church’s facilities and talking through all that stuff. And they’ll say it, he’s talked about it publicly – the church assumes, Hey, we’re going to build a bunch of new stuff, which you would think as a designer…
Mark Briggs — Yes.
Rich Birch — …they’re incentivized to say, great, let’s build a bunch of stuff. And he said, you will not believe how many times I’ve ended up in conversations saying, I don’t think you should build anything. Don’t do that. Let’s…
Mark Briggs — That’s great.
Rich Birch — …add another service. Or instead of doing this whole big thing, what if we made these four small changes that are actually not changing the envelope? And that’s the kind of partner you’re looking for, someone who’s saying…
Mark Briggs — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — …Hey, let’s try to make some wise financial decisions. Can you give me a sense of the kind of typical scope, size of church that you guys work with? What is that, if there’s churches that are out there that are thinking about these kind of questions, what does that typically look like? And I know typical, that’s a hard question. I understand.
Mark Briggs — It’s a good one. And there’s exceptions. We’ll have churches of 300 or we’ll have churches of, I mean we actually have a churches of over 10,000. But I had say the sweet spots that 500 to 1500. Again, that the elasticity can be on either side of that because sometimes when you get into the more mega, larger mega churches, a lot of those roles are professional and the consultative piece, they don’t need as much of. I still think we can add value to them, and we have. But I think it’s those churches, they’ve been in launch phase, they we’re trying to get that first building or we’re trying to make the first and second phase work, but they don’t just pay everyone. Getting through that stage, it’s probably the most exciting time in a church’s life, having worked in and been a part of a megachurch. But it’s a time when you got to make your resources go as far as possible.
Mark Briggs — So you may have an executive pastor or even volunteers until you get to that point. And I think in those cases for us, that’s when we can bring a whole wealth of just experience and advice to ’em that can help round out where they’re at and help them get to that next step. But again, we’ll have partners we’ll work with through many stages, even mega mega. And there’s a high level of trust, but what we find is they get to a certain point where some of the consultation, it’s just they have more of that in-house, so to speak.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. That makes sense.
Mark Briggs — So that’s the range. I hope that’s not too long to answer, but hopefully…
Rich Birch — No, no, no, that’s good. That’s super helpful. And yeah, I get that. And I can see one of the things I love about CDF is, and hopefully this is coming through, friends, that this idea that you’re coming alongside churches and trying to have these conversations, it’s more than a transaction. It’s, how do we try to have a transformation? We know that there’s something happening in your church that is bigger than just you’re taking a loan and building something or launching a campus or whatever. This is going to have an impact. And on the other side of the table, you want people who are friendly lenders, more than friendly lenders really are partners in this. How would you, from your side on kind the lender side…
Mark Briggs — Sure.
Rich Birch — …let’s say that we’re, I’ve got a relationship with a lender, maybe it’s CDF, maybe it’s somebody else, and maybe things aren’t going quite as well, or I’m wondering, I’ve got these early questions, I’m like, man, I’m seeing some things happening in our numbers that I’m wondering about. Should I try to hide that? That’s maybe too softball of a question, but what should I do? I’m a little freaked out because I’m like, man, things aren’t maybe looking as good as they were when we first set in on this. Interest rates are going up, employment, and I’m seeing people lose their jobs. We’re seeing maybe some stuff happen in the donor community. At what point should I really look to say, Hey, you know what, I should reengage with my lender, have this conversation.
Mark Briggs — Good question.
Rich Birch — What would you suggest?
Mark Briggs — Well, yeah, and I can’t speak for most other lenders simply because they may go, oh, red flag, these guys are seeing some declining trends in this area or that area. I think for us, I mean our whole mindset, even if we never have a loan, and it’s actually as a sidebar, that’s one of the reasons I’m really loving our team and our direction now because there’s many different paths our churches can take. And we just want to, we’re not going to do everyone, and we want to just make sure that those we talk to, we can leave them better in a better situation. So if they’re in that situation, my encouragement is, one, if you’re with a lender that you can trust who knows you, and again, I have some bias, obviously, it’s going to help you on the backend because if you hide something from ’em and then you squeak by, there may be, I mean, this is a principle in a lot of life, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Briggs — There may be expertise or input that they could have given you that could have kept you from that place where three years from now, you can’t hire any more staff and you desperately need a couple of positions, but you wanted yes, more than you wanted maybe the right thing for your church and ministry. And so I just think our bias, and there’s others who are similar, is I tell our guys and they tell our churches, is not what do we want to do or what’s the most we can do? It’s how can we help this happen in the best way possible? So we’re looking into solutions with them. And so I think find a lender that is going to have that partnership in mind, and it’s a long-term thing.
Mark Briggs — The other part of that, Rich, that is assumed is they can’t wait another year or two or three because that’s terri… That’s not, I mean, that’s the last thing a leader wants to hear, especially post covid when they’ve been at the mercy of not owning their facilities, or whatever, or having space issues. But man, I’ve seen many churches rush into situations where if they would’ve just waited, seasoned a little more, worked through a leadership issue, waited for a declining trend to flatten or get better, they’re just in a lot better place. And the toll it takes on those leaders can mean they get out of ministry, end up leaving that church just so much pressure. So I’d say be transparent, and if that doesn’t serve you well and they look at you a whole different way then you may have the wrong partner, but honestly they may just be telling you the truth and what you can handle. Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — That does make sense. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. This is one of those areas where I feel like pastorally one-on-one, we coach our people in one way, but then when we think about our lenders, if I can be totally honest, we think about our lenders in a different way, right? And so we would think about, Hey, I want to help the people in my church to have a reasonable debt load. And a young family might come to us and say like, Hey, we’re thinking about a mortgage. And standard advice is do not take all the mortgage that they will give you.
Mark Briggs — Right.
Rich Birch — Don’t do that. But then we turn around and we go to a lender and we’re trying to figure out how do we take on the biggest debt possible because whatever, we need a new kid space or whatever it is. And that’s a red flag for sure. Are there any ratios on that side that we should be thinking about? Are there rules of thumb around too much debt? And I realize every situation’s different, but are there things like that, even just size of debt that we should be avoiding?
Mark Briggs — Yes. I think I can give you some good feedback. I will say one more thing before I forget, Rich, is I mean honestly, and I take this approach with those I work with. If the church is hiding things from you, the lender’s going to generally know if you’re being evasive.
Mark Briggs — Right, Yes.
Mark Briggs — And I say hiding, I don’t mean the worst of intentions, but if churches are open, I’ll have churches go, Hey, we struggled here. We struggled here. Then you just move forward going, the trust level is high.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Mark Briggs — And I actually think it serves them better in any of those situations. Some of the ratios, I’ll say this, these have been tested because about a decade into my work there, a little less than that actually before the financial crisis, around 2008 to ’10, we made some decisions that weren’t great for churches. We said yes. We were not wanting to be say no, we weren’t wanting to be perceived as not having vision or not being behind the church. And so after we had many churches struggle deeply, we went back and did a deep dive into what we should have done. A lot of these ratios just really crystallized. We used them before, but we saw the ones that mattered. And so the statement, I’ll joke around with churches is we’ve made more bad decisions on church lending than many lenders out there. And it’s kind of a fun way to say, we want to learn from our mistakes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s great.
Mark Briggs — And so when churches trip a couple or more of these, it often ended up with issues. Could the stars align? Yeah. But I think one of the big ones that we would look at, I mean it’s a pretty standard one is the amount of debt in comparison, your total income. We call it debt to income. It’s really creative title. But generally you go, you don’t want to be a whole lot more than three, maybe three and a half if you’re in growth mode. And once you get over four times your annual income, that’s just tough. Maybe you’re on a rocket ship or there’s some other outliers that can help. But that’s one that whenever we go over that without a way to mitigate that very clearly, it can put just so much pressure on a church. So if their annual income’s a million, loaning more than 4 million may be tough.
Mark Briggs — And frankly, if they’re spending a lot of money in other things, loaning ’em more than 2 million, maybe too much. But that’s one to look at. Three is usually where you want to be. Another one we’ll look at is we call it expense coverage ratio. It’s basically if we look at all your incoming expenses and we layer on a debt payment, we can take out whatever the rent payment is. And what we want to see is we want to see that you can cover your expenses with your income. That would be an expense coverage ratio of a hundred percent. I mean, really we would like to see 105, 110 with some buffer. Banks, traditional lenders will often want to see 120.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Briggs — We’re a ministry lender. We understand churches aren’t, most churches in growth mode aren’t sitting on that kind of margin. And so especially when it’s a pretty daunting step, will we do some for less than a hundred? Yes. But again, their growth curve, I’m doing hand signals for those in the audience.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Briggs — Their growth curve, their trends, their capacity to make changes should they not grow as much. Those are factored in. But that’s another big one. If we see that in the red, like under a hundred, we go, can they handle this? And again, we’re as consultative as we are as directive, and so we try to walk ’em through that. And so the other one we typically look at, and this is a really good one, is what’s the percentage of your income that you use for debt? And so with young churches getting in their own new building and stretching, that can be up to 30%, 33%. We’ve done more. Again, I’m a little embarrassed that we have done more because it’s just a lot on a church. And so usually we recommend, and more mature churches aren’t going to be a lot closer to this, but we recommend try not to get higher than 20 or 25% because we recognize, I’ve looked at the pie chart of expenses. If you have 40, 50% go to staff, 10% missions, operations and those things that everything else in the church is 10% percent, you suddenly don’t have a whole lot of room. If you’re spending more on debt, then you’ll end up having little for mission, little for staff. And again, it’s your balance. And one thing I’ve noticed through the years Rich, is it’s easier to do a loan of expansion often for a younger church than a older established church. Seems counterintuitive.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting.
Mark Briggs — But the older established churches, especially the debt-free ones, praise God they’re debt free, but what do they do? Their staff budget gets really bloated. They go, we’re never giving below 15% missions because that’s what it says in scripture. They kind of go, they have all these convictions, but then making that adjustment, new leader comes in, they start growing, and they have 70%, 80% of their money committed, and it’s a tough adjustment. So that’s how that ratio kind of folds into the reality of churches.
Rich Birch — That’s good. Just help me sharpen my pencil on those…
Mark Briggs — You bet.
Rich Birch — …how those two, those last two connect with each other. So totally debt to income, understand that. Expense to coverage ratio in that a hundred, 110 would include the current debt service in that number. That would be, so if you’re, whatever, if you’ve got some sort of existing mortgage, maybe you’re paying that off, you’re on the last five years of that and you want to build something new that would be included in that 110, 120%.
Mark Briggs — It would. It would be all your existing expenses plus whatever expenses you’re taking on. So if you are in an existing building already, you’re just going to add on. If you’re renting something, then provided that lease ends, you’re going to be replacing that. And then what we’ll do is we’ll back out any one-time expenses you paid for a consultant or some of these other things. And so one of the things we’ll coach people on, not to get too far ahead, is just if we’re having this conversation, Rich, three years in advance and we know it’s going to be a big step, you’re going to go from 10% of your money going to facilities to 25, 30, that’s not a change you want to make in a year. And so if churches are really looking ahead, they’re looking at how to get, I’d say wean their budget to that place. And so maybe make some incremental steps in next year’s budget and the one after and try to discipline your budget to where you’re getting it ready. And that makes it a lot more absorbable once you get there.
Mark Briggs — And we look for other ways to structure it where it can be, but we want to know that we’ve been in the place where we go, Hey, if you build it, they will come. I mean, everyone at one time or another thinks that, and there’s certain situations you can almost predict it, but wow, we want the churches, if it doesn’t materialize, we don’t want ’em to be strained to where they can’t carry out their mission.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Literally just this week was in a conversation with the church that I’m coaching with and we were talking around, it was literally this exact issue. And I said, over the years, because I’ve been involved in multiple of these deals, situations where we’ve ended up taking on debt and all that, and one of the things I’ve tried to live by is let’s not make a decision that anyone outside of this room is going to have to solve long-term. So functionally, it’s like if we’re going to take on a mortgage, this leadership team should be able to structure their thinking around, can this group of people actually be the people that are going to pay this thing off? If it just is based on our kids are going to have to sort that one out 30 years from now, they’ll have to figure that one out. Man, that’s an inappropriate decision. I just don’t think we should do that. I think we’ve got to be wise and make the decision that. And I understand people leave and change, I get that. I understand.
Mark Briggs — Right.
Rich Birch — But it’s like let’s look at the current leadership team, make some decisions that are saying, okay, where do we picture this thing in 10 years? Or is there a possible that we could do this? Not, again, it gets back to that don’t take on as much debt as everybody will give you. Let’s try to be wise with those. That’s super good. I love that even that idea of, hey, we want to make sure that that debt load stays below 30% of our income. Because I really think anything even in that lane, even in that range, man, that’s where you end up with that borrower is slave to the lender. It’s like, gosh, man, that is just a significant, that’s a…
Mark Briggs — You don’t want to end there. You definitely don’t want to end there, but for a time. And that’s where we are looking. If they’re going to end there and they’re not a high growth church, we wouldn’t want to go there. And so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. That’s good. That’s good. That’s super helpful. While I’ve got you, another, this is a maybe inappropriate question to ask someone…
Mark Briggs — Sure.
Rich Birch — …who’s in financial issues around church, might be a curve ball from left field. Rates – the rates just keep going up. We’re wrestling with that. What are you saying to churches these days? What should we be thinking about on that front? How should that weigh into our decision-making?
Mark Briggs — Yeah, that’s a great question. Our whole, I’m going to just say our church world, I mean it’s true of our society. They’ve gotten, I was going to say drunk on, they’ve gotten accustomed to a rate environment that is historically low and it’s not sustainable.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Briggs — And even in my working life, rates have always gone down in my time working with CDF Capital. When I started, it was in the eights and nines and tens, and it just kept going down. And our team has a new reality and talking to churches. And that affects that next phase because, as you know, costs aren’t getting cheaper. It’s just this weird area, but the cost of money is growing. And so an example of that is if we have churches who have loans that are up for a rate adjustment a year or two, we’re trying to come alongside of them early. And there’s ways it could be to our detriment because you kind of worried they’ll look around because they want a lower cost, but we’re saying, you got to prepare. Because we want them to thrive and they can’t. on short notice with the short runway.
Mark Briggs — You probably want to assume, and again, different lenders are different, but you should just be assuming eight, maybe in the mid 8s, just plan for the worst on interest rate when it comes from an adjustment. And while that may, if churches have become dependent on it, that’s not great. Maybe this is that opportunity to say raise some, I mean, maybe it’s time for some sort of initiative or campaign to go, pay down the money while it’s cheap, and set yourself up for later. And that could be a great result of this. But we’re coaching them that while there are forecasters who think it could go down in the next couple of years, no one has the crystal ball and they should be planning that it’s going to be there. Here, especially in that next year or two. Past that, I mean, it’s anyone’s guess. But…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Briggs — It’s tough. But use it as an opportunity to go to your people to say, Hey, we want to set up our church to not have to pay as much interest now and into the future. How can we do that.
Rich Birch — Well, and I would think, listen, I know on the fundraising side, paying down debt is hard money to raise. That is difficult money to get out and say, Hey, let’s do, but this might be one of those windows…
Mark Briggs — Yes.
Rich Birch — …where actually that might not be the case. I think you could build a case as a leader, as a part of an overall campaign around, Hey, let’s try to pay this thing down because we know everyone, because people see it in their own, their mortgages or whatever, if they’re refinancing, all that stuff. Yeah, man, this is a big difference. If we could try to do this, now would be a time for sure. So appreciate that. I know that’s a curve ball question around…
Mark Briggs — It’s very appropriate.
IRich Birch — ‘m sure you get it all the time.
Mark Briggs — It’s very appropriate. And I think the other piece of it, if I can say one more thing, Rich, which be that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Mark Briggs — …as churches when we were saying we’re doing that loan, 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have been saying, Hey, get ready to pay things down. I tend to think, Hey, get a percentage of your budget you’re okay with it being mortgage. And as you grow, keep it at that. Just pay down your debt. I mean, don’t hand it to the next generation as large. And even now is what I was saying earlier, look ahead what it’s going to be. And the fundraising part is absolutely essential. Where there was a time years back where there’s times we would lend almost every dollar they needed, which is kind of embarrassing…
Rich Birch — Wow. Right.
Mark Briggs — …but we’ve learned from that. And if churches don’t have that investment, their people don’t have that investment, and it’s just a different relationship. That’s what I would encourage. Use it as an opportunity to just have less debt through leveraging whatever is at your disposal to do so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, I’m getting to that phase of my ministry career, and I sense you are as well, that man, I keep thinking about this question, man, how do we leave this stuff better for the next generation? What can we do? How do we structure this stuff now so that the folks that are coming after us, it’s easier for them. They’re able to focus on, and this is one of those areas, I think we’ve got to think very carefully around how do we structure the finances. Well, this has been great. What a fantastic conversation. I really am thankful for your time today. I want to point people to reach out. You said earlier, I want to double check something you said earlier, you said you’ve got field staff who actually would be willing to have these conversations with churches…
Mark Briggs — Yes.
Rich Birch — …even if it’s early. Tell me about that. How do we access that? How do we start those conversations?
Mark Briggs — Yes. We have field team members. They cover the country based in Cincinnati, Portland, Atlanta, Colorado Springs, Southern California, and Kansas City, if I didn’t say that. Yeah. And so on our website, you can go under leadership and it’ll point out which of those team members are. I wish I had, maybe we make the link available, but…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark Briggs — They are, I would say this team, again, I’m biased, but the way we’ve built the team is to where you can talk to them and they don’t need to go, well, let me call someone and get some answers. They’ve worked with a lot of churches, they’ve helped ’em through a lot of seasons, and they can be extremely helpful, even in a short convo, Hey, this is where we’re at. This is how much money we have, this is our income, this is our size. These leaders can really be helpful to get you thinking about some things. And if we need to go to a deeper level, we can bring some of our underwriting team into it. We obviously want to make it, have it make sense, but we want to be an encouragement to churches. We want to be openhanded, and we don’t have that scarcity mindset. But if we can help your church take a little bit different of a path because of some clarity you had from the beginning and you say time, money, expectations, that means the ton to us as a team. And so if we can be helpful in any way, we’d love to do so, Rich.
Rich Birch — Well, friends, I love the CDF Capital folks. Every time I interact with people in this organization, I’m struck by their deep care for the local church. And so I would heartily endorse. You should reach out to them – just cdfcapital.org. You can see, we’ll put links in the show notes there. If you’re thinking about construction stuff, if you’re thinking about purchasing, if you’re thinking about refinance, all, any of those kinds of things, take Mark’s advice. You cannot come too early. I’m sure they get calls all the time where they’re polite people, but on the other end of the line, they’re thinking, man, I wish these people would’ve come to us a year ago, two years ago. So let’s reach out now. Now’s a great season to reach out. Give ’em a call and start the conversation. Even if it’s just a niggling thing in the back of your head, like, man, I think one of the trip wires I’ve said on the church growth side, do a lot of coaching on church growth, is when churches go from two services to the three services on Sunday mornings. I’ll say to them, that’s a stopgap measure.
Mark Briggs — It is.
Rich Birch — That usually… you’re going from 50% of your services are non-optimal to two thirds of your services are non-optimal. You are probably going to need to do something – launch a campus, build a new building, do something. And so if you’ve tripped over that or even considering that third service, now’s the time to reach out to CDF Capital, talk with them. So yeah, that’s great. Well Mark, any final words just as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Mark Briggs — Yeah, I would say, and again, we steer away from being too heavy handed or commercial, but I think what makes it possible, what we do, Rich, is we have close to 10,000 individuals and churches that have, Hey, we have money sitting in a bank doing whatever, and they can park that with us until they need it, and they will help us help more churches grow. In this lending environment there’s less lenders that are loaning because there’s less dollars in the marketplace. And we’re trying to be responsible and get ahead of that. And I would be remiss, we’re talking about wherever we are, we would answer any questions. And again, if people are interested or be open to that, we’d love to have a conversation because you could earn a really good rate and you could know that those dollars are being used to help a lot of churches get in permanent facilities. These last couple of years, we’ve set records with how many churches we’re helping have their own home. And so I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that. We’d love to invite, if there’s anyone out there interested, we’d love to talk to you.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. And we’ve done an episode in the past. We’ll link to the show notes about that side of what CDF does.
Mark Briggs — Yeah.
RIch Birch — We’ll make sure that… Because friends, if you’ve got, that’s a very good point. If your church even has some excess income, you’ve got a rainy day fund, you’ve got whatever you call it…
Mark Briggs — Just reserves even. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Whatever you want to call that, you’ve got that fund somewhere. You should think about putting it with CDF Capital because not only will it, you’ll get a good rate, but then on top of that, you’ll also be helping other churches. So…
Mark Briggs — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Mark. I appreciate you being here today. Give us that website address again where we want to send people if they want more information.
Mark Briggs — Yes, it’s cdfcapital.org.
Rich Birch — Thanks, so…
Mark Briggs — cdfcapital.org.
Rich Birch — Thanks for being here today.
Mark Briggs — Thanks, Rich. Pleasure to be here.
Guest-Friendly Environments: Aaron Stanski on Effective Facilities for Your Church
Nov 02, 2023
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Aaron Stanski, the founder and CEO of Risepointe, with fifteen years of church design and ministry leadership experience.
Do you feel frustrated with your church building, or like it’s holding you back from fulfilling your mission? Aaron’s experience has given him unique insights into the common challenges churches face with their buildings. Listen as he shares how a church can align its facilities with its mission and vision.
Think about the problems as projects. // When it comes to building issues, there are common constraints churches face, such as seating capacity, kids ministry space, and parking. However, other considerations might include classroom usage, leveraging the lobby space, and the condition of facilities like bathrooms. It can be overwhelming for churches to discern what to prioritize in addition to raising the funds, navigating building codes, and dealing with construction costs. Start by putting problems in a project format and attack them in a way that won’t limit the ministry but rather support growth.
Look through the lens of a new person. // When working on a church building, it’s important to view the facility through the lens of an invitation to a lost person. What in your church facility might be a hindrance to inviting guests? What environments are you missing? Buildings don’t do ministry, people do. So we need to create environments where it’s easy and effective to invite and engage with new people.
The Needs Analysis. // To understand the needs of a church facility, Risepointe starts with The Needs Analysis. This process involves spending a day onsite with the ministry team and doing exercises to understand their mission, vision, and the context of the church and its community. Risepointe also takes pictures of the building and gets blueprints which they convert to 3D files. Finally, they ask questions to assess the long-term plan for ministry on the campus, identify the right next steps, and determine any low-hanging fruit solutions. Budget considerations are also taken into account.
Lean Church Indicator. // As Risepointe has studied how churches have been using their buildings and how that’s changed over time, they’ve seen a lot of consistent data that can be used as a benchmark for other churches. Some factors they consider are how many seats a lean church has per square feet of building, how much storage and support they have so they can easily turn multi-purpose rooms, and how they are leveraging technology in their environments. With the data they’ve collected, Risepointe has developed a tool on their website called the Lean Church Indicator to help churches evaluate the effectiveness of their space and identify areas that may need improvement.
Click here to learn more about Risepointe and take advantage of their tools and resources, such as the free PDF “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire and equip you. And I know that today is one of those days. You’re going to love today’s conversation because so many of the churches I talk to have the kinds of problems that we’re going to talk about today, are wrestling with the kinds of issues that we’re going to talk about today. So you’re going to want to lean in. We’ve got my friend Aaron Stanski with us. He’s the founder and CEO of Risepointe with 15 years of church design and leadership and project management experience. He’s really an incredible guy that you’re going to want to get to know. Their church architects and designers have experience working with churches and schools and nonprofits, all kinds of people all across the country to solve real world problems. They want to help you fix some of your physical problems in your building and help move forward from there. So, Aaron, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Aaron Stanski — Thanks, Rich. Yeah, I’m glad to be here.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you tell us a little bit about kind of the Aaron story; give us a bit of the backstory and then connect that to Risepointe.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, sure. I mean, I grew up in ministry. My dad was a pastor, growing up. We actually planted a church in Boston when I was a kid. So…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Aaron Stanski — …got to move out to the East Coast. Got to kind of experience all of that. Of course, that was back pre-social media and all of that stuff. So one of my jobs was to run up to the houses and like stuff the little flyer in the in the door handle to get the word out that we were planting churches.
Rich Birch — Love it!
Aaron Stanski — So I remember doing that on Saturdays and stuff like that. So grew up in and around ministry. Um, ended up going to school for engineering and studying engineering. Got super involved with Campus Crusade for Christ and so did that, and then graduated. Started working for Harley-Davidson Motorcycles as a manufacturing engineer. So that was fun…
Rich Birch — Hogs. Love it.
Aaron Stanski — …doing big projects, capital expansion.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, all of that stuff. Um, but just still wanted to be in ministry…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …wanted to do something with more kingdom impact. So left Harley Davidson and I actually joined staff with with CRU, did that for a few years, was here in Chicago helping plant movements on college campuses that didn’t have anything. And so ended up meeting my wife and so she went back to school to be a nurse, and I joined staff at my church. So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Stanski — …on staff at Park Community Church for a while. And we went through a big building project. We were a big multi-site church here in Chicago. And since I had project experience and I spoke engineering, I had to help, uh, hire architects and hire engineers and AV companies.
Aaron Stanski — And so went through that whole process and found myself constantly translating, right…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …between architects and engineering language back to my pastors and my friends who were on staff. And I was like, man, if I could if I could do this for the rest of my life, if I could go and help other churches go through a process to really kind of identify like, how do we align their facility with their mission and their vision. Like, how do we decide what we should and shouldn’t build, and how much money should we spend. So for the last 15 years, that’s what I’ve done. It’s got to crisscross the country…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Stanski — …and hang out with a bunch of cool churches and learn a ton along the way. So it’s been fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. I’m super excited for today’s conversation. We’re going to take advantage of the fact that you are in the trenches. You are seeing a lot of these projects. I was talking about you to a friend recently. I said, you know, I’m excited to have Aaron on because, you know, you’re working on projects and you’re a part of conversations that are, you know, by definition are 18 months, two years down the road. So it’s like we’re getting a look up over the horizon of what’s happening in the church. But let’s be just totally honest. Man, so many churches I talked to are just frustrated with their buildings. It’s just like, man, it feels like the building is holding us back. What are some of the common things you heard, you hear…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …when maybe somebody gives you a call and says like, Hey, here’s some problems we got to fix? What would be some of those things you hear all the time?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you know, intuitive leaders, I mean, they sort of understand, right? Like, okay, we need more seats.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — Or our parking lot is crumbling, or our kids ministry is just drab. It needs to be refreshed and stuff, right? And so most intuitive leaders, like they understand like what some of those things are. Um, you know, they just, they just struggle with, okay, what type of capital investment can or should be should be used to address those things, right? Like how do we prioritize those projects? And then once we get into it, right, it’s raising money, it’s building code, it’s construction costs, and all of these things can be really overwhelming…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …and can basically cause like decision fatigue and how do we prioritize these things. And so, you know, most of the most of the leaders that we work with, they sort of understand what some of the issues are that they need to address.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — It’s just like, how do we how do we put this in a project format and how do we attack it in a way, you know, that’s not going to limit, you know, our ministry, but actually going to allow us to do more, you know, moving forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So this is why there’s so much there I’d love to unpack. This tension of like ministry versus kind of the practicality of, like you say, building codes, budgets, inspections. Man, that is that’s like it seems like almost like a death cycle. Like it’s like, gosh, we can get caught in this. And it’s like it’s going to and then we just say, forget it. We’re not going to we’re not going to do this.
Aaron Stanski — Right, right.
Rich Birch — Is there common constraints that you’re running up… is it like kids ministry spaces are you’re seeing are the kind of hold back? Is it parking? Is it, you know, main auditorium? Is it, you know, or is it all those together? It’s like we just need a bigger box in general. Are there common kind of constraints that you’re running into that you see, you know, that kind of get the conversation rolling?
Aaron Stanski — I mean, the the most common are, yeah, seating capacity. We’re out of seats. If we’re not out of seats but kids ministry is just like busting at the seams…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …and we can’t fit any more kids. Well, you’re not going to fill those seats if we don’t have enough room for their kids…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …or their grandkids or whatever to come to church with us. Parking parking’s always an issue, like just to to kind of be aware of what’s happening in our parking lot. How full are we? Are people able to get in and out and stuff? And so we sort of hold those three and say, okay, our is one of them out of whack? Are they all in line? And once they’re in line, we can say, okay, now we but we do have to scale them up together if we want to, to continue to grow, right? But outside of that, we start to look at the rest of the building and say, okay, but how often are we using all of our classrooms? How often is the lobby being leveraged for our community during the week? So there can be some other restraints, you know, like if if the bathrooms are terrible and smelly…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …then like new people, like that’s going to be a turnoff to new people, right? Even if there’s room for them to sit in the auditorium.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Okay. So let me be honest. You and I are friends. I’m going to ask a question here. Friends, here like, I can’t believe he said that. He’s does he know what Aaron does? But I’m like, I feel like folks in your general industry. Of course not Risepointe, but in the general industry, it’s like…
Aaron Stanski — Of course.
Rich Birch — …I, you know, you come to the table with all kinds of very pretty drawings, but that’s like disconnected from what my church actually needs. It’s like, it’s like that might be like great on paper. In fact, I was you know, I’ll give you an example. Recently, I was in the last year I was in a church and I was giving some feedback on the building. And I said, you know, I was basically saying to this church leader, you need more signs in here. Like, you can’t you can’t couldn’t tell where the kid’s ministry was. And I said, you know, I bet you your architect said that if we put this this carpet on the floor and we kind of because it’s all got these like arrows and stuff in it, that that will direct people to where it’s going. And the church leader starts laughing. And he said, that’s exactly what our architect said. Now, I know it was not a project that you did.
Aaron Stanski — [laughs]
Rich Birch — It’s it seems like these kinds of firms, they are more or they can be more interested in—I don’t want to, again, this is not everyone—but can be more interested in their awards rather than our needs.
Aaron Stanski — Correct.
Rich Birch — How do you guys battle that? How do you how do you how do you battle that pressure?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, well, I mean, part of it is we are architects, right? Like we are architects and designers and interior designers. We’re licensed in like 30 states. We’re providing a professional service, right? Like there’s…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Stanski — So there’s all this tension to be an architect, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And and that’s, that’s sometimes the problem because when you hire an architect, I mean it’s like buying a hammer, right? A hammer is just like going around looking for a nail that it can hammer down in.
Rich Birch — Right. Good, good. Right.
Aaron Stanski — And architect is looking for something that they can build…
Rich Birch — Yes.
…or something that they can design.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — And with all of the cool tools that we have now, we don’t actually even have to go get it built in order to feel like we designed something really cool, right? Like it’s a 3D rendering, and we love it and stuff. So and so you can lose track, right, of what the actual goal is. So, you know, we have an awesome leadership team here at Risepointe. One of the guys was on staff at his church for ten years. He’s now an elder at his church. All of us are actively serving in our in churches. And so I think that helps keep our perspective there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — The other thing is, you know, we have to we have to view our facility—and so we as designers have to do this as well, and church leaders—like we have to view it through the lens of the invitation to a lost person. So…
Rich Birch — Oh, so good.
Aaron Stanski — …imagine a member of your church, right, extending the invite to a neighbor or a coworker. And if the next thing they have to say is it looks really traditional on the outside, but don’t worry, you know, you can still wear your jeans. Or the kids area is a little smelly, but we really love kids. Or you might have a hard time finding it, but there’s a weird pattern of carpet on the floor that doesn’t make any sense, right? Like all of these things are are hindrances. And so, you know, we have to keep in mind like buildings themselves don’t do ministry, right. And we have to remind ourselves that as architects at Risepointe, right. Like buildings don’t do ministry, people do. So how are we creating environments where it’s easy and effective to make that ask and to invite that lost person, right. We we also need to ask like, what environments are we missing, right? Like what invitations would be made if we had the space to do that? And so I think if we can look at that through that lens, all of a sudden, like the fancy stuff or the trendy stuff, like we can filter all of that away…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …and very clearly say, okay, these are the things we need to go get done. And, you know, like, will it work in the context of our church and our community and, and, and go from there.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, I love that. And, you know, we talk about this all the time at unSeminary that the difference between stuck and stagnant churches and growing churches is growing churches train, equip and mobilize their people to invite their friends. And I love your perspective of saying, hey, when they make that invite, does the building actually connect with that? Do they do we look at it from a first time guest or a new here guest perspective? How do you help churches understand that about their facility? Because I that to me is a profound question.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I don’t know that churches are necessarily always asking that question.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, so for the vast majority of the churches that we work with, we start with something that we call The Needs Analysis.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.
Aaron Stanski — And The Needs Analysis is where we get on site, we spend an entire day with the ministry team. We walk through a series of really fun exercises to understand the unique place God put the church, and the community that they’re in, and their mission and vision. And what are some of the drivers that we see driving our ministry success. We take tons of pictures of the building, we get all the blueprints and turn them into, you know, 3D Revit files. We do all that work and then we sort of come back and we say, okay, we’re going to answer these four questions, right? What’s the long term plan for ministry on this campus? Is there room for growth or are we looking at relocation or are we planting churches or going multi-site? What’s the long term plan on campus? What’s the right next step? Um, you know, do we do have to add kids square footage? Or do we need to address some issue on our campus? Like what’s that right next step? The third thing that we always try to answer is like, what’s the low hanging fruit, right? What are some other churches doing, or what are some things that we could just go execute right now to solve some ministry problems?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Stanski — And then the fourth thing is budget, man, everything drives back to budget. So if we can put some budget numbers around some projects…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …well now I have something that like as a leadership team, we can pray through and understand, right? It’s like, Oh man, I didn’t I didn’t realize it was so inexpensive to do that. Let’s go get that done now.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — Or it’s like, Holy smokes, that’s way too expensive. Let’s go plant three churches or dig wells in Africa, or any number of other things that we could do with that money, right? And so most churches start with that Needs Analysis. If we can understand the context, answer those four questions, you know, draw out some simple plans and be effective about it, I think that helps, you know, push our perspective towards that, that invitation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Listen, that seems like the kind of thing that, man, if I’m a church leader listening in today, man, we should take action on that. We should reach out to you guys, find out about The Needs Analysis, get plugged in. Like that, you know, when I do, coaching on churches will do these things where I go on a weekend and be there. And we talk a little bit about the building stuff just from my even that kind of thing.
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — But man, having someone like yourself be able to or your team be able to to from a thoughtful perspective actually, you know, give some feedback, what an incredible gift, you know, that could be. How far out, if people are thinking about a Needs Analysis with Risepointe, how far out should they be thinking about that? Like can you do that like the next 60, 90 days typically? Or is this the kind of thing like, I got a book six months from now, what’s that look like?
Aaron Stanski — No, I mean, it’s typically, you know, in that 90 to 120 days, you know, sort of a window.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — So I think, you know, the other thing that you have to overlay that with is if you’re if you’re thinking about doing a capital campaign next year or if you’re thinking about trying to address some of these things, getting that done on the front end…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …you know, so that we can figure out what those right next steps are, is is critical right. So it’s just it’s timing.
Rich Birch — Yes. And well, and I love what you said there. I’m going to push you on that.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Man, there are I’ve got way too many calls from church leaders where they’re like, yeah, so we want to start a thing like now. And I’m like…
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — …you know, even if you’re thinking about, hmmm, we might end up there, or if you’re building is starting to get full, or one of the tripwires, I’ll say, I say to church leaders all the time, when you go to that third service on a Sunday morning, people think the third service will give them all kinds of extra space. It typically doesn’t. It’s an acknowledgement of there’s another decision coming. If your church has three services and you haven’t had a Needs Analysis, you should call Risepointe, get booked in…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, for sure.
Rich Birch — …because you have to look at space. Like you said like you’ve got a space issue that if you don’t fix, you’re going to cap the kind of redemptive potential of your church.
Aaron Stanski — And I mean, even if you I mean, even if the church called us up and wrote us a check for like $5 million today, like it would still be over two years…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …from today before they’re actually in that building and sitting in those seats and stuff. Right. And so that time horizon is out there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — And so understanding, okay, how are we going to leverage our largest capital asset, right, our building?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Stanski — How are we going to leverage that for Kingdom impact? I think having a strategic plan around that is critical.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So friends listening in, if you are like if you’ve launched a third service, if you launch the second service and you’re like, you know, you’ve got questions around this, I’d reach out to Risepointe. Aaron and his team are trustworthy. I trust them. They’re friends. You should you should definitely do that. Well, can I take advantage of the fact that you see a lot of different churches?
Aaron Stanski — Sure.
Rich Birch — What are some of the things that you’re kind of learning in this space? You know, kind of lessons that are learning or questions that you seem to keep bumping up up against constantly? Like what are we seeing post-COVID even in the last couple of years? It seems like every question, you know, is kind of couched in that.
Rich Birch — What’s what’s new in these last couple of years on the facility side?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Well, one of the things, you know, that back in the day we used to just say, okay, when you’re when you’re 80% full, like you’re full, right.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — Because people are walking in and they’re saying there’s no space for me here. And if you if you trained your ushers and really got after it and they were really aggressively seating people on a Sunday morning, you could potentially get up to 90% full, right…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …in your in your in your sanctuary. What’s happening post-COVID is, you know, regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, when you go to church, like what used to be comfortable, what used to be like, well, I’m going to leave a seat in between me and the dude next to me because I don’t want to sit right up next to him. Now I’m just a little bit more sensitive to my personal space, but also I’m kind of sensitive to his like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …does he does he find that offensive? Like, I don’t know what his background is and all of that sort of thing. And so instead of leaving one chair, I’m going to leave three. Right.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s a huge difference.
Aaron Stanski — It’s a huge difference. And so what happens, even even if the ushers come down and say, hey, can you scoot in and make some room? Well, then I’ll go from like 3 to 2.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so true.
Aaron Stanski — So I think the question, the question we’ve been wrestling with right, is like, okay, if 80% was the perceived full before, what is it today?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Stanski — And think it changes like based in different areas of the country and you know based on the type of church you are and all that other kind of stuff. But what we do know is that it’s no longer 80%, right.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — You know, it’s it’s somewhere in the 70% or even less than that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — …where people walk in and just feel like, oh, man, there’s not a place for me here. And as soon as that happens, we’re losing out on opportunities to preach the gospel. We’re losing out on opportunities to disciple people. So we just need to be aware of that.
Rich Birch — Okay, this is great. I love this because this connects with some of the church growth stuff that we’re I’m constantly working with churches on. So I what I hear you saying to reflect that back is, hey, it used to be 80%. We used to say that all the time. Not sure what the number is, but it is lower.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — It’s and I would echo that, that’s for sure. The other interesting piece of this puzzle is if if it’s if as a from a church growth point of view, if it’s perceived that there is no space for me to invite a friend to.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — So if the parking lot is crazy full, there’s no space in the kids ministry area. There are, you know, feels like there’s no spaces here. I won’t invite my friend because I’m afraid that they’re going to have a negative experience when they come.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — And so you’ve got to and this has always been true. We all we have to build space, empty spaces for then our church to and then invite people to ultimately fill. So wow, that’s what a great insight. I can I can totally see that. Anything else we’ve been learning. Or anyway maybe you’ve changed…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …as Risepointe has been working with churches that looks a little different these days.
Aaron Stanski — Well, I mean, I think one of the things that we’ve been, you know, trying to study and understand, right, is is how our churches using their building and what does that look like moving forward? Because it’s changed over time, right. And so I’d say for the past five years or so, we’ve been collecting data from, you know, churches that we work with. And we’ve begun to benchmark some simple things that are helpful when we evaluate the effectiveness of our space. So I’ve got lots of senior pastors that ask, Do you think we can fit more seats in here, right – that sort of thing. And so, um, I’ll start by stating the obvious, right? Which is every church, you know, does ministry in a unique geographic location.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — They do ministry a little different. The people they’re reaching have unique needs. So all of that should factor in. However, we started to study and understand like how many seats does a lean church have per square foot of building, right. How much storage and support do they have so that they can constantly and easily turn multipurpose rooms. So they can say yes to community requests and they can use those rooms sometimes three times a day, right. So how many rooms can they do that with? How much space do they have for kids ministry, and how are they discipled people, and what percentage of their building gets used, what percentage of the time? How are they leveraging technology in their environments, right? And so we start to see some pretty consistent best practice emerge. And in the midst of, you know, churches using their spaces in some like, like unimaginable, like really creative ways, we still start we still start seeing this very consistent data start to come up. So this week, actually, we’re launching on our website this thing we’re calling The Lean Church Indicator.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Stanski — It’s a really fun tool. Basically, you go in and you plug in some rough numbers for your church…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — …and it just benchmarks your facility against what we’re calling the lean model, right? So it’s going to help you better understand like what areas may need improvement. And there’s also a team portion…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Stanski — …where you can survey your entire staff team, your entire leadership team. They all get to kind of weigh in, and you can see what areas of space are driving your mission and vision forward and what areas might need attention. So that’ll be a fun one.
Rich Birch — This is this is what I love about you, Aaron. You have like real, helpful solutions for church leaders. I’ve joked in other contexts, I’m not an expert, I just play one on the Internet. And you are an actual expert. You actually know what you’re talking about. Like one of the things I’ve said, and it’s and it’s purely just like from walking through a lot of church buildings, is this the kind of thing where I’ve been like, it feels like most churches don’t have enough crush space or enough lobby space.
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — They they, you know, they they build, they exactly what you said. They’re like, let’s maximize the total number of seats, and they don’t have enough flow space. And so then from my perspective on a church growth side, man, if we have the more lobby space we have or if we can maximize that, that that number, figure out what that is, figure out what the percentage is and ratio is…
Aaron Stanski — Right.
Rich Birch — …we can turn the building faster. I love that you’ve developed a tool to try to help churches go from those kind of vague hunches to like, Oh no, here’s some stuff you could actually do. Is that the kind of thing like what kind of information am I going to need…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to enter to to be able to understand how lean my building is?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, we tried to keep it really simple.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — I mean, I have this very complicated Excel file, Rich, because I’m an engineer…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Aaron Stanski — …and yeah, just I love playing with Excel…
Rich Birch — Yes. Excel formulas – yes.
Aaron Stanski — …and writing macros and formulas and all that stuff. Yeah. But we really tried to boil it down and so, I mean, it should be things that you can pretty easily like just rattle off or things that you can go find out quickly. So it’s kind of like how many acres do you have on your site? Like how many seats are in your main auditorium?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski — I think some of the harder questions are like total building square footage. I mean, you don’t have to get it to the exact…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Stanski — …right thing just to understand…
Rich Birch — Just 50,000 square foot building, you know, between [inaudible]…
Aaron Stanski — Right. In general.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah. Okay, great. Okay.
Aaron Stanski — Compared to other churches, in general, what areas might be deficient or not, you know. And so I think it’s just a starting point, really.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — But I think I think churches will have fun with it. I think us, you know, us pastor types will enjoy plugging it in and seeing how it seeing how it works.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good. I know just recently my wife was in a conversation—she’s on staff at our church—and she was there, we’re looking at some building stuff. And she was in a, we’ll call it a heated discussion around storage space…
Aaron Stanski — Yes.
Rich Birch — Because it was like, friends, in her area—she’s like all on the assimilation guest connection side—she’s like, we and we have privilege, we have campuses. We don’t have enough storage space now. Like we’re always trying to, you know, shoehorn stuff in. And so I’m going to get her to go over there, do that, and then she can point to the guys leading the project on that.
Aaron Stanski — There you go.
Rich Birch — I try to stay out of that, but that’s great. I love it. So good.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I have a mini, I have a mini sermon that I sometimes preach on storage because…
Rich Birch — I love it.
Aaron Stanski — …it’s hard, right? Like every church says, like, we need more storage. But are you storing the right things in the right places? And the fascinating thing is if you can get the right storage next to the right space…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — …you will be able to say yes to so many things, right. Because…
Rich Birch — So good.
Aaron Stanski — …you have the support and you can turn that room and you’ve got the things in it that you need. But if you if you’re storing the five Christmas trees in that very critical closet, yes, you’re out of space and, you know, clutter ends up happening and all this stuff.
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it, love it. Or the flip side of that, I remember we did this one renovation at one of our campuses. And it was great. It was a killer, it was amazing. Like it was it really turned out great. But this one, this one room literally cost us almost $1 million just to do this one room. Like it was…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like a it was an amazing space. And man, that number stuck in my brain so much because then we would put like, really bad programs or like stuff was like not that effective. And I’d be like, We’ve got $1 million room here and we’re doing like crappy ministry in there. What’s happening? You know, crazy.
Rich Birch — What so can we talk about kind of revitalizing spaces?
Aaron Stanski —Sure.
Rich Birch — So one of the things you’re seeing is talk about post post-COVID statistics, a true stat from our friend Warren Bird: 40% of of campuses that are being launched in churches right now are some version of rebirth or mergers. So an existing church joining a multi-site church, 40% of new campuses are those. I’m sure you’re running into these kinds of projects.
Aaron Stanski — A lot of those.
Rich Birch — What what are the are there some general things we should be thinking about on that side? Or what are your kind of comments around that?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, you know, I love it as a strategy, right? I mean, you know, we have, you know, a huge, um, you know, a huge backlog of church buildings that are going underutilized across across the nation. So, you know, the idea of like having to build new when there’s so much stock available, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — Is definitely like, let’s go, let’s go grab that, let’s go do that as a strategy. So I absolutely love it. Um, you know, however, a lot of times when we jump into those situations, like we still have to like up fit them or, you know, get them to a place where we feel like again, right, like we can invite someone to that, to that campus or invite someone into that facility and not be ashamed of it and stuff like that. So, I mean, I think we still have to look at it from like a capital asset and investment standpoint, right? And so I think what happens a lot of times is like if, let’s say if your church averages like that campus or something, it’s got 500 seats and stuff in it, and and we’re going to revitalize that, you know, that place. And we hope to have like a thousand people who are worshiping there and stuff like that. Well, we can probably take those those numbers out and say, okay, it would it would probably cost us in the neighborhood of like $10 million to buy the land and build that thing up new. And the parking lot and the kids ministry and all that other kind of stuff.
Aaron Stanski — And so I think what we have to do is say, okay, so the question is like, what’s the right amount of money then to invest to make that $10 million asset that we’re acquiring more 50% more effective for ministry or double the kingdom impact that it’s going to have, right? And so I think when we look at it that way, we can say, okay, then what’s the right amount to get that thing up to speed…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Stanski —…and we can have that conversation. Um, but I mean definitely seeing it as a trend and I think it’s, I think it’s a fun way to, to kind of breathe some life back into these churches that are right in the middle of communities a lot of times. They’ve got lots of history and investment in them.
Rich Birch — And you obviously if you you’ve done that kind of work with churches where you’ve helped them try to revitalize or reuse…
Aaron Stanski — Yes.
Rich Birch — You know, what do you call that like refresh an existing building. There’s an interesting challenge there. Recently I was in a church, again, this is in the last couple of months, and I was in exactly that situation. It was a campus that had been given to them. And I said in a kind way, I said, the inside of this building is not reflected on the outside. The inside was beautiful. Like they did a really, really good job, but the outside just didn’t have that same… because it was an older building. And and, you know, and I wasn’t trying it wasn’t a dig at them. I wasn’t trying to be, I’m like, this is a great, but but I think that could be a problem. Is there a way to to refresh those…
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …a more traditional building that was built in the 50s to so when you look at it, you say…
Aaron Stanski — Oh for sure.
Rich Birch — It looks great. Yeah. What kind of things should we be thinking about on that front?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, we’ve done things as simple as just like like painting a portion of the building or highlighting the entrance or like, doing the really nice sign. Um, it’s it’s tough, right? Because we’re not adding more ministry square footage. And so we are spending a certain amount of money just on the look and feel. But when we think about brand and we think about like the promises, right? A brand is a set of promises that you’re making to your members…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Stanski — …to your visitors, to your community. And the more consistently you deliver on those promises, the stronger your brand. And so, like churches understand this when it comes to like their website and their print material and stuff. Like we want people to drive by and understand, oh yeah, that’s the church that loves on the students at the at the elementary school. That’s the church that goes out and does that on a serve day. And so how we express the brand on the exterior of the church is important. And, and so, yeah, I mean, there’s some simple things that we’ve done. I mean, just like paints and replacing some brick with some aluminum panel and stuff like that. But it’s a, it’s an important piece to understand for sure.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. This is, this has been fantastic. Now you’ve got a resource that I want to make sure people pick up.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s called “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”. Tell us about this resource and where can we get it? Where do we want to send people to pick it up?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think. We get a lot of times people will come over to the website or, you know, they’ll be talking to us and they’ll they’ll say, Hey, like, man, it feels like we have so many things on our end that we have to go fix before we are ready to hire an architect or something like that, right? And so we just kind of tried to grab some of the things that we’ve heard the most often stick it in a PDF, so you can just kind of go down through it. And like most of the stuff isn’t, isn’t that hard, right? Like you can just wrap your mind around it, understand kind of where you’re at, but it’s important to do it before you jump full fledged into some sort of a of a building project. So yeah, I mean you can just go right to risepointe.com. Um, it’s down there at the bottom of our homepage.
Rich Birch — That’s with an E – Risepointe with an E.
Aaron Stanski — That’s right. Risepointe with an E dot com because we’re cool like that.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Aaron Stanski — So Risepointe.com – go down to the bottom. You can click on, you can click and grab that resource. It’s a, it’s a quick read but it’s it’s definitely a good one.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, we’ve got multiple takeaways for you today, friends. We want you to go over there. Same place on the Lean Church Indicator go over to risepointe.com. You can fill that out while you’re there, pick up that that pdf. So so good. As we’re kind of coming down to land anything else you’d like to say? Thank you so much for coming on. What a, what a gift this has been to kind of get to peel back the doors a little bit, or peel back the plans and look at what’s been going on in in church church building these days. I thank you so much for this. But anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think I just say like, um, you know, a lot of times people don’t want to call the architect, right? Because they’re not building some huge project or they come over to our website and they see some of these like big buildings and stuff. And what they don’t understand, right, is 85% of the work that we do is just is interior modification. It’s expansion. So like we don’t just do big multi-site projects, big construction projects. We really roll up our sleeves and say, okay, you know, you need to redo your kid’s area. We want to help you with that, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Stanski — Like we want it to look awesome. And so we have a great team of people here at Risepointe that would love to just come alongside your church in that season. Serve well. It’ll feel like you have some extra staff members for a time, but that’s because we’re shouldering the brunt of the of the project work for you. So I’d say, you know, it doesn’t matter where you’re at, reach out. We’d love to have that conversation.
Rich Birch — Love it. I know there’s a lot of growing churches that listen in, a lot of executive pastor types that wonder about these issues and are thinking, I wonder what we should do on this front. It’s like you have the questions, but and you have some but you’re not sure on the answers. If you’re in that category, if you’re like these areas seem full. We seem to be, you know, like you say, we launch a second service, launch the third service – man, things are tight. Give Aaron and the team over there, I highly recommend them. They’re they’re good friends and they’ll definitely work with you. Where do we want to send people online? Just as we wrap up today’s conversation to track with with Risepointe.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah I mean I’d say like our website is is by far the best place to do that.
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Aaron Stanski — If you’re ready to have a conversation, you can schedule a call right there, either myself or one of our other, you know, ministry minded leaders there will pick up and and we’ll do that for you. So schedule a call, you know, let us know how we can help.
Rich Birch — Good stuff. Thanks so much, Aaron. Appreciate you being here.
Aaron Stanski — Yeah, thanks, Rich.
Increasing the Generosity Culture at Your Church with Phil Ling
Oct 26, 2023
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Phil Ling, a renowned expert on generosity in the church and founder of The Giving Church.
Did you know that in the average church in North America, 45% of the people that give a church money give less than $200 in a year? Listen in as Phil offers help on how to do an analysis of your giving, and coaches churches on how to cast vision to increase generosity.
Take a deeper look. // In addition to a significant portion of churchgoers contributing very little financially, churches typically experience an 18% turnover in giving units each year. That means they constantly need to attract new givers. A lot of churches think they did well during COVID, but Phil suggests that you take a look at where your money came from, rather than how much money came in, to see if those givers are still around.
Do an analysis. // Do an analysis of your giving to see what percentage of your money comes from what group of givers. Break giving down into categories by looking at givers of $0-$200, $200-$1000, $1000-$5000, $5000-$10,000, and $10,000 and up. Take a look at where you’re strong, where the challenges are, and where the churn rate is.
Cast vision in three rooms. // When casting vision, Phil advises that pastors need to communicate in three different rooms: the large room (Sunday services), medium-sized rooms (like-minded groups within the church), and small rooms (leaders and influencers). The large room is best for communicating the idea of participation. But Phil warns against relying solely on the large room to solve financial challenges. Instead, engage with your key stakeholders to fuel generosity and support the church’s vision. Celebrate when people become part of your vision.
Take the time. // Remember that the bigger your project, the more time you’ll need. This includes taking time for analysis, determining if your giving is below capacity, and where you’re trending. Before you build, count the cost. Do research and take time to lay the foundation. Talk to banks about financing before bringing in architects. Make sure you take time to vision cast to the three rooms.
Lead the leaders. // There are certain roles that will always belong to the senior church leader and that is casting vision and leading leaders. Small room conversations are particularly critical because a church’s leaders and influencers want to be treated as partners in ministry rather than just donors. Give them the opportunity to ask questions and learn about initiatives before they happen.
Download the free resource 5 Ways to Grow Your Church Giving and learn more about how The Giving Church can help you by clicking here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
Well, the team over at Risepointe has been there. As former ministry staff and church leaders, they understand how to prioritize and help lead your church to a place where the building is a ministry multiplier. Licensed all over North America, their team of architects, interior designers and project managers have the professional experience to help move YOUR mission forward.
Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Today’s a super special episode. We have got a real expert on. You know every week we try to bring you someone who will inspire and equip. Ah, but today we are particularly honored. We have somebody who has worked with nearly a thousand churches in over 40 different denominations. And and they have the issue that they have helped with has been transformative to so many of them. We’re so honored to have Phil Ling with us today. He was a church planter, business entrepreneur, and a sixth generational ministry leader, if I’m counting correct, which is amazing. Ah, he’s got a great leader and really is helping churches on the whole generosity side through his organization, The Giving Church and The Ling Group. Super excited to have you here today. And this is the thing they have helped—this is an incredible number—raised over $1,000,000,000 for the purpose of helping church’s fuel ministry. And execute their visions. This is incredible. Phil, we are so glad to have you here. Thanks for being on the show – we’re we’re honored that you take some time to be with us today.
Phil Ling — Honored to hang out with you, and to see you even if it’s just on a screen.
Rich Birch — Ah, yeah, that’s great. Always good to see you. Um, fill out the picture a little bit. Tell us the Phil story, kind of, you know, fill that in a little bit just from the bio. Ah tell us a little bit about yourself.
Phil Ling — The how great I am stuff, you know. That’s that’s ah… yeah.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Phil Ling — So ah, grew up in Ohio, Dad was ah, not only a pastor but a church planter so that was kind of my life experience.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — So I went off to college and then felt that you know the best church jobs are if you to start your own, so planted. And got a call to go to Seattle, Washington. Was on the north end of Seattle and spent 10 years out there planting a church, hanging out.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — …doing, just having a ball, an amazing place it is. You know, there’s a lot of great churches now. I’m the old dude. So when I was out there, it was planting before it was cool.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — And and now there’s some some early great churches. But it’s still very unchurched area.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. God blessed us, grew, lots of people – all that junk. And became acquaintanced with a guy named, John Maxwell. John and I became friends. He gave me the opportunity to work with him. I became Executive Vice President of Injoy, his group. And spent 8 years running around a country with John and working with some really cool people. Got to live on a little farm in central Kentucky, which is where my wife is from…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Phil Ling — …while I [inaudible] on because I got on airplanes. And then he did a weird thing, which is really weird looking back now because the dude’s like the ever run ever ready bunny, he won’t quit. But when he was sixty years old he wanted to downsize and I didn’t want to work for anybody else. So I slid over and became Vice President of Billy Graham Association. That’s a whole story in itself. Ah, they had just relocated from Minneapolis to Charlotte, built the Billy Graham library, all that stuff. But their donor base had aged.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — And so part of the reason I was brought in was to work with that because Billy had gotten old, and everybody else gotten old. It’s still a huge ministry.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — So they they were kind enough also to allow me to throw out my shingle and start working with folks. And had a separate agreement with them to do that. So commuted, got on airplanes on Monday, flew to Charlotte, home on Thursdays, and helping them out, and then doing my own thing. So we put out our shingle.
Phil Ling — We’re boutique. Ah, we work with 90% probably referrals and references people just saying, hey, you know, call Phil and and talk to those guys.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Phil will help you.
Phil Ling — Ah yeah, exactly, exactly. So I um you you rattled off the numbers – crazy. I told my wife yesterday – I said, here’s here’s my claim to fame. Here’s my claim to fame. More than anything else, I literally—and I don’t I challenge, I’ve not met one person that can say, yeah, I did that too. I literally have been in over a thousand church board meetings.
Phil Ling — Now think about a thousand different churches.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — Yeah, yeah. I’d say. And you said 40 different denominations. I didn’t know there were that many. I mean I mean it’s yeah, it’s crazy.
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Phil Ling — And it’s so and and all over the spectrum.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — But they all have the same challenges…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …ah leader cast vision, but generosity fuels vision.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So if you have great dreams, aspirations, and vision, it still can run out of gas on the side of the road.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — It’s like, Okay, how do we pay for this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — And so my early on I said, you know that’s the part, pastors don’t like talk about money. The ones that do go to jail. [laughs] You know it’s not…
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s funny.
Phil Ling — Okay. So that. So that’s what we’ve done. So we’ve fast forwarded. Ah, we’ve been up and running for over 14 years, like you said. Work with a zillion places. Literally all… We are international.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — This will let you know because we’re in Canada a little bit so okay.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Yeah, that’s great. Well, that’s that’s so good. And you know, I’ve got a chance to get to know you a little bit. And um ah the thing I love about you Phil is you have a heart for helping the church. Like there’s, you know, particularly in this area. You know, you made the joke about the pastors that like talking about money end up in jail. Sometimes folks on this side of the equation, it’s like they just see the church as like another market. And the thing I love about you is you’re you’re really trying to approach this from like, hey, how do we help? How do we come alongside support? Um, you know you’ve got a vision. We want to help. Let’s let’s work through some of that stuff. And and and even the fact that you come on today is amazing. Because we want to take advantage of kind of your place in the in the community and the body of Christ. You see a lot of churches. You kind of see what’s happening. Bring us up to speed on kind of generosity in the broader, you know, body of Christ. What are kind of the trends? What are you seeing? What are, you know, what’s what’s happening out there that that we should be thinking about, particularly on this side of of what we do?
Phil Ling — Okay, so it’s my favorite subject right now to talk on. Coming out of Covid, especially.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — And and I I say coming out of Covid. Anybody thinks we’re out of all that crap is is stupid.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — Because we’re… it’s it’s going to be a long time get that toothpaste all back in the tube.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — And it’s affected churches… you got to understand that for 3 years at least we have been told by a lot of folks in the world that church was a nonessential institute.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — It was a nonessential place. So you know, bars were essential. Down here in the US, strip clubs were essential.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Crazy.
Phil Ling — But churches not so much.
Rich Birch — Not churches. Yes.
Phil Ling — And that’s kind of and that creeps into a church that I would have said, say up to like 2019, that the church, North American church overall, if you look at 360,000 churches, there were on a decline. There were always bright spots. There’s always aberrations. There’s always these these tent pole churches that are doing well. But overall, if you looked at average church attendance, all that kind of junk, were were declining, especially within a lot of the the mainline denominations. Then you go into the covid situation.
Phil Ling — And we we released a ah book that we did ourselves—not trying to make money, just try to get information out there—before covid that talked about the coming giving tsunami that, how the changing giving patterns in in North America are affecting church. And that was before all this stuff happened.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Now if you read it looks like we actually were prophetic. You know, like hey those guys are brilliant, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — Because what here’s here’s a few of the stats that I saw before coming into covid that I’m seeing now exacerbated.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — So in the average church in North America, 45% of the people that give that church money, give less than $200 in a year. So 45% of the people sitting in that building that give you money give less than $200 in a year. It’s not because they’re broke.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — That’s a very low threshold. It’s just that they’re not that connected or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Phil Ling — [inaudible] God, all that stuff.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — We’re a safe place to hear a dangerous message. We’re the only club that exists for nonmembers. So I get all that. I’m not I’m not trying to say we got to get our averages up. I’m just trying to understand, its the blameless autopsy.
Phil Ling — So if you looked at that whole 45% given less $200. That collectively only gives about 1.5% of the income.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — So it’s it’s negligible. And we can’t track people that don’t give. You know if you don’t give I don’t even know you’re there. So don’t even know those folks.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So over half the people walking in your halls really don’t contribute financially.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling. You just have to understand that’s how it’s designed. That’s how it works.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — …is on top of this piece, and I’m not a stats guy. I’ve hired stats guys because they’re smart; I’m not. They’re no fun at a party, but they’re really smart. In the average church, you lose about 18% in your giving units every year. And you replace them with somebody else. So average church, you lose 18% of your giving units. If I’ve got 45% giving less $200 a year and I’m losing 18% of my units every year in the average church—that’s a growing church; that’s not a bad church.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Yes.
Phil Ling — That’s just average shift [inaudible]. So every 3 years you got to stand up as a pastor and introduce yourself because that half doesn’t even know who you are. Yeah think of that.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Right, right.
Phil Ling — And and yet as leaders we often talk to everybody like they all have the same tribal history. Like they all have the same tribal [inaudible].
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Phil Ling — They all sat around a campfire and heard the stories. and they didn’t.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — So I say all that. Then we go into the Covid situation, we have lockdowns. It’s different.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — I mean we’ve got clients just about everywhere so they all experience it differently, depending where they were.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — You know, some always middle in Nebraska they’re saying, what’s covid?
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. That was a blip 3 days in March 2020. Yeah.
Phil Ling — Yeah, exactly yeah, but then you know Long Island, New York, Pasadena, California – those are all different experiences. So what what one of the things that I’m seeing that al that’s ah, a preamble. One of the things that I’m seeing coming out of this and coming out of all this experience is I think a lot of churches are kind of fat, dumb and happy. They said, you know, what we we did pretty good financially during all those tough times for a couple of years in covid, and our people were faithful and all that kind of stuff. I’m saying yeah, it’s good. Look to see where your money came from, not how much money came in.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Phil Ling — And what you’re going to find, I think in my humble but accurate opinions—that’s what I tell my son—my humble but accurate opinion, I think what you’re going to find is that your 18% churn rate was actually grew. And the number of new folks that normally come in in a given year was really shrunk. It’s with the front door was not nearly as active as it used to be.
Phil Ling — So the reason you did okay financially is the people that love you and are there are holding on really tight and have white knuckles from pressing down.
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Phil Ling — But you’re going to eventually and what I’ve been saying all along, and I know this is doom and gloom and I don’t mean it to be, but the last quarter of this year is really going to be the test.
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Phil Ling — It’s now that all kind of the dust settles and it’s like, okay this is who we are. So I got to get away from thinking how what do we look like three years ago, two years ago? Let’s get back to that. No no, this is who we are.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Phil Ling — And who I have here who’s contributing, who’s supporting. How many new folks are coming in? How many people are moving away? My observation looking forward, and I got actual anecdotal evidence, but observation looking forward is that we’re going to continue to see really cool churches grow and do cool things and do some amazing amazing things. But overall, the average church is going to speed up the decline. Um, so I I can tell you one denomination that we work with in Pennsylvania, greater Philly area, that in a district there they identified 26 of their churches that closed during covid and never reopened.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — And I know that’s it’s easy to watch and say, well, what was the denomination, and are they struggling, and all that stuff. That’s true. But I think you’re going to see that, and for the first time and I’ll say this [inaudible], for the first time we’re going to see churches that still have people in them, but don’t have a lot of money.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — And they’re wondering, why do we keep having to struggle with the budget even though our people are there. We’re used to dying churches that there’s nobody left…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …but not ones that attendance not that far off, but the money is. part of the reason largest transfer wealth in the history of the world’s taking place right now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — First time in history we have 4 generations alive. And the people that are receiving that wealth are more consumers of your product than stewards to your ministry.
Rich Birch — Oh That’s good. That’s good. Man. Okay, there’s so much there. That, I love that. You know and I that I think is a good segue. A good kind of reminder for us as we think about this season we’re in as being kind of the, okay, this is who’s here? The people that are here are who is here. Um, it’s a good time for us to look at those numbers. And what you’ve said there I’ve heard from multiple churches. It was like, yeah, when you look at what happened during Covid, it was like our core people leaned in more. They gave more, but but that seems to be ending. You know, that that seems to be ah running out. So now so now what do we do? So how do we? Maybe we’re at a church of, you know, let’s say or a church of a thousand people. Maybe I’m executive pastor listening in and I’m thinking, yeah that that could be us. What would you suggest as, you know, as the as the trusted friend along the road? What what should we be doing in this season to kind of look at that more closely, stare into those issues, take some steps towards, you know, trying to rectify that, trying to grow that that revenue side?
Phil Ling — Yeah I um, you know, hope so is not a strategy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — You know, churches that sit at the last quarter of the year and say, I hope we get budget. You know, hope so’s not a strategy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — You count what counts so you have to have metrics. Like I said, I’m not a stat guy. I live in the world of numbers, but I’m not a stat guy. I’m a vision I like vision stuff more.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — Um, but there I think in order to talk intelligently and cast vision intelligently, you need to know a little bit analytically. So the first thing I would do is an analysis of the giving of where your money comes from. We developed one years ago, hired a really smart guy with a degree in statistics, and we looked at 4000 churches from a whole bunch of denominations and said okay, where does the money come from?
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah.
Phil Ling — And break it down into some simple pieces. It’s not it’s not like this huge spreadsheet. But this simple pieces.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — And as I tell churches every time we go through one, they’re your numbers. You know your numbers. I’m going to hopefully tell you what some of them mean.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — So let’s look at A, if if the average church gives ah 45% give less than $200, where are we in that? Maybe we’re not average.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Phil Ling — So let’s let’s look at that. Second, if the average church churns giving units 18% a year, where are we in that? Let’s can see what our churn rate.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — Like then I break it down in the categories of of the giving, and this is every church. I don’t care 30,000 people on the weekend or or 150. Um we’re going to look at 0 to $200 how many folks do we have two hundred to a thousand dollars giving units. How many folks we have? A thousand to five thousand, five thousand to ten, and ten plus. That’s it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — Those are the categories. And then we want to look say, okay, where are we strong? Where are challenges? Maybe we’re really top heavy. Maybe we’re really strong at the bottom two groups, you know, whatever it is. And where does the churn take place?
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So if I looked at it and said, you know what? Our churn rate’s really high between a 200 to a thousand dollars giving rate group. And my response would be okay, that’s not all bad. That means they’re at least attached to you. They’re still kind of kicking the tires and checking you out. I would expect movement there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — If I looked at the top two groups and there was a lot of churn I’d say, okay, you got some issues.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So a you’re changing. Maybe you’ve been changing philosophical direction in your ministry and maybe you change key staff people and have some bumps in the road with that. You know, there are some reasons. Or you happen to be in a place like Toronto or Dallas or something where there’s a lot of management movement. People come in with their companies for a while, there a couple of years, they move on.
Rich Birch — Right, right. People coming and going.
Phil Ling — Or your near military base with huge churn.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — You know, so it doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy. It’s just like understand it. So first, understand this is where our money comes from.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — This is where we’re strong. These are the challenge areas. And then I would roll over, and and this is the key piece. And if any time you ever hear me get on a soapbox I talk about this stuff. I said a leader casts vision, generosity fuels vision. How you cast that vision and what room you do is the huge piece.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So I coach folks that you need to constantly being communicating be communicating in 3 rooms.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Phil Ling — A large room with Sunday mornings online, all those kind of things, large room. Medium size rooms which are like-minded groups within your group, like-minded groups within your group. What are my medium-size rooms? And in small rooms. These are my leaders and influencers. How am I getting front of my leaders and influencers and casting vision? The problem a lot of churches do is they want the big room to solve all their problems.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true, dude.
Phil Ling — [inaudible] platform driven and smoke mirrors. Ah I am the old guy.
Rich Birch — That is so true. Like I so this is I’m not I’ve been in that you know executive pastor seat, you know, on the leadership team but not in that lead seat. And I would say one of the ongoing conversations I’ve had with lead pastors over the years is so many times lead pastors, which makes sense when you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. You know it’s like if if we’ve got an issue, in this case talking about giving, their knee-jerk reaction is let me preach about it. Like we’re going to do a three week series. We’re going to preach on it. And I’m like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa like that’s the last step. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get there, but I love that you know small rooms, medium rooms, ah, large rooms. And you know I’ve seen even those you know guys that are amazing or people that are amazing communicators. It’s like they don’t want to do those other 2 steps. Or they’re reticent to do those other you know those other rooms. But man there’s there’s huge power in that.
Phil Ling — Well Okay, so. Well, Okay, so here here’s deal. First of all, where I come from personally, I never take off the fact that I used to be the church planter. I used to have hair.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
Phil Ling — You know it’s a price you pay for ministry.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Phil Ling — Ah, and so I’m the practitioner guy. I look at it as like I sat on that side of the table. So I understand that
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — I’m not just the little expert dude, came in and said tell let me tell you how to do your job.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — But you have to understand if you’re the if you’re the lead vision caster, lead…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — …the lead vision caster in an effective church, you have a vision caster that casts vision and you have others at different levels that echo the vision.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — So everybody’s echoing the same vision.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — But the big room, and you have to understand what the the purpose is. In the big room, the best thing I can accomplish in a big room is get across the idea of participation. So when I talk about generosity, money, those kind of things in the big room, it’s because I want to stress everybody gets in the car. That if it’s a family vacation, we don’t leave somebody out and leave them sit in the driveway. And we all get in the car with. So we celebrate, we we analyze. I’ve got a church right now that could tell you they just celebrated crossing one thousand five hundred families that have given to their project.
Rich Birch — Wow, Wow. Yeah.
Phil Ling — How much money? Yeah, it’s a lot of money. Who the heck cares.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — Anything that costs more than the price of my house is a number I don’t understand.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Phil Ling — So and the number the dollar thing is, yeah okay, we can throw that out. But the number of families…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — …I want to be one of the 1500. So participation.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — Medium size rooms those those what I call target audiences, those those like-minded groups. They all are listening to your vision differently based upon who they’re with. So if I’m an empty nester, all right, I’m much more motivated by how if you’re raising money how it helps us pass a baton of faith to the next generation then I am what it’s going to give me.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — You know, I always talk about buildings. Buildings are great, but the older I get because I’m now I’m the old dude—my son’s a you know, long haired musician in Boston—I’m the old dude now.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — So the older I get, the less I need out of your building.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — So that didn’t move me.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So medium sizers, who are who are those medium size rooms. What’s their unique question about what we’re doing? Who are the early adopters in those groups? All that junk. But then the third, and this is this is where I love to to jump on this this thing with with lead lead pastors.
Phil Ling — Look at your job, if you’re at a church of 2000 people and your lead pastor, if your church doubles in size, what will you still do? What will you not do? Because if church doubles in size you’ll have staff, programming, all those kind of things and some responsibilities will slip and go somewhere else. But two things: you’re always the lead vision caster. So you don’t give that up.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — You don’t advocate that. You’re always vision casting. In my opinion, my humble but accurate opinion, you always lead leaders. Always lead leaders.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — So small room. It is the number one thing you do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — Is like okay, how do I orchestrate getting in front of leaders and influencers on a regular basis so I can vision cast. And catch me, I hope you’re hearing this. The reason you do it is you give them a safe place to ask you a question.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. That’s good.
Phil Ling — And it is the one time when you get in front of them that’s not driven by crisis.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — Most of the time lead pastor sits down with a leader or influencer in his churches because their family’s fallen apart, the kids driving them nuts, they lost their job. There’s something going on.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — This is not. Its vision.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — It’s like hey let me… and it has to happen first because leaders here, they answer the bell so they should hear things first.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it. So good. That’s great. Um, now I want to loop back on just one thing you said. You talked about these four different categories and kind of an analysis that you would recommend. Hey let’s get this numbers out; let’s look at people in these categories. I love that analytical approach of understanding, Okay, like let’s look at even this churn rate. Is are we above and below that 18% in each one of those. um that feels like the kind of thing if I was embarking on a capital campaign that I would do. And I’m sure you could help with that. But is that the kind of thing even a church that’s not in that kind of season, should they be looking at that? Is this kind of thing they should be looking at even in this season like, hey getting a clear sense of where that as a regular practice?
Phil Ling — Yeah, so yeah, this is my self-serving answers.
Rich Birch — Sure. Okay, sure.
Phil Ling — Yeah, so so if we sit down with a client or a potential client that we’re talking to, and I’ve got one I just did this week. And cast two him – I said, yeah, you could hire us to work with you, and that’d be great, and we’d love it. Blah, blah. But…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — …I really think you should just bite off an analysis piece.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — Doesn’t cost a bunch. Do it first. And what I tell churches going forward and as is clients and past clients is what we’re going to show you, it’s not hard to do. And once we show you how to do it, you should do it every every year for the rest of your life.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — It’s like you always, because if you don’t here’s what happens in church. We all, if I ask every pastor on a Monday say hey, how was this weekend? I guarantee they’re gonna say hey it felt pretty good. Like what’s that mean?
Rich Birch — Felt pretty good.
Phil Ling — What’s pretty good?
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — So people went out and hugged you and said, you did great. I mean so there’s got to be some kind of benchmark. It’s like, all right, how do we judge? If you have a McDonald’s franchise…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — …those guys have been so analytical for so long they can say, hey, you know what on this day last year at eleven o’clock in the morning, this is how much we sold.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — And measure that crap. So…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — …we need to have some things that we measure. And so what what I like to do in the analysis is like, okay, let’s measure number one, where’s our money come from?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Phil Ling — What areas does it come from? When we lose folks and they move on as somebody else comes in where do that where does that take place? Because that there’s two things I’m always looking for. In an analysis um, looking at the numbers and say what does capacity look like for this church? Are we operating below capacity? We really have the ability to do a lot more.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — General fund, capital, whatever it happens to be. We’re we’re below capacity.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — And trends where are we trending?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Phil Ling — And so if you don’t have a benchmark, how do you measure?
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — You remember when you’re growing up as a little kid and they put you against the wall and put a little pencil mark above your head and said, Phil was this high…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Phil Ling — …you know, in in 1979 or whatever it was. So we got to have those as well. I know the numbers represent people. Don’t over-spiritualritize me; I get that too. But if you don’t count something then you delude yourself.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. You just you just go on feelings or instincts or… And that that flows both ways. Like I think there are times where you know you’ll talk to a ah pastor who’s kind of down because they looked out on Sunday and it was like, man I think we were down 20% this one weekend. And it’s like, okay, well that’s just one weekend dude. Like you know, like don’t get so caught up on exactly what happened seven days ago or five days ago. Like where is where is the entire thing going. That’s that’s good advice.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s talk specifically on the the kind of capital campaign. You know I’m as sure there’s people that are listening in that are thinking, Okay, we’ve come out of covid they have that feeling of, okay this is the new community. That’s here you know there’s a number of churches I coach that are have either just launched or are launching a third service. And I always joke on the church growth side, the coaching I do, there I always say the third service, if you’re going with a third Sunday morning service all your, it’s a stopgap decision. You’re saying we’re going to do this and then quickly after that you’re going to have to make some other decision. And that is like build a new building, launch a campus, do something else. Because you go from one of your services one of your 50% of your services being done optimal times to two thirds of your services being non-optimal times. It’s not like you get this great, you know, it’s not it’s not a great solution. So I’m sure there’s churches that are thinking we we might have something a year from now, 2 years from now. We need to be working on that. If I’m at a church in that shoes thinking, man, like we’ve got a bunch of people there. You know we we’ve got needs. What what should I be thinking today, obviously outside of going to thegivingchurch.com, but what would, you know, what what what should I be thinking today? What kind of questions should I be asking um, you know in those early phases?
Phil Ling — Okay, so yeah I always try to answer if I’m if I’m that church, what would I be doing?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Phil Ling — Um one is sooner rather than later, so have your your conversations about working with somebody that give you some help and some guidance along that way long early. It doesn’t cost you anymore to have a guide with you longer. So [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — Right. Oh that’s good.
Phil Ling — … because it’s not I hate it where this like, hey, we spend a bunch of money on architects. We to spend a bunch of money on all kinds of stuff, and then it’s like now we need to raise money.
Rich Birch — Yeah, where were you…
Phil Ling — It’s like, well that’s kind of backwards.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Phil Ling — You know it’s a first in the analogy I use, and I know I won’t take God out of it. I can tell you some God-stories. But then I can tell you what God does on average. So here’s here’s the average. Ah if I’m going to move to Toronto, and I say I would like to go live in Toronto. Let’s get Zillow and let’s look for a great house in Toronto. And I just type in Toronto, great house, with no parameters. It’ll show me some great things probably that I cannot afford. So instead it’s like why don’t we do a little, you know, crunch it down a little bit and say how about houses in Toronto within this price range.
Rich Birch — Yes, good. Oh that’s good.
Phil Ling — You know, the analysis is the first thing to me to sit down, so as a church starts a dream and cast vision, it’s like what do we have capacity to do? Yeah, God can do more than that. I got it. That’s cool.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Phil Ling — But nobody builds a tower without counting the cost. Let’s do a little research. Let’s look at what that that capacity looks like. And I need more time. The bigger the plane, the longer the runway.
Rich Birch — Oh good, good, good.
Phil Ling — So the bigger the project, the more time that I need. I’ve got churches that we’ve worked with for a year nobody knows we’re doing anything.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — And it’s because you’re you’re laying a foundation for a big plane.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — So, start early. Get some analysis so you got you have some ah reality that you’re dealing with. Talk to banks early if you’re going to have short term financing things like that. We have all kinds of relationships we can aim you to. We don’t get any kickbacks or anything. We just try to find good people. Ah but don’t wait. I see too many churches wait.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phil Ling — Ah, churches are designed not to make decisions.
Rich Birch — True. True. That’s true. There’s way too many people that can say no than can say yes. Yeah, right. Yeah, interesting. Well, that’s yeah, that’s good advice even, hey, if we’re even if you’re on the out side edge of thinking, hmmm, we might be a couple years out from needing to, you know, build more space, launch another campus, whatever. Ah, the the joke I’ve made on the multi-site side – very similar – I’ve said, you know, no one’s ever come to me when their campuses aren’t working and said, you know, we just took too long in the planning phase. We just we took took too long and in and getting this thing ready before we launched. It’s it’s always the opposite.
Rich Birch — It’s like, Hey, we’re going to push this thing out the door in three months. And and that’s when you run into all kinds of problems. The same would be true on these kind of initiatives. You’ve got to take time. And particularly related to early what you said earlier those small rooms or small groups, those conversations, that takes time. Like that that that the reason we’re drawn to large rooms is because I can stand up this weekend, get in front of a thousand, two thousand people quickly. Ah and it feels good because we’ve kind of done that but it doesn’t necessarily actually penetrate and get you know deeper into you know the actual conversations we need to be getting into. That’s that’s good.
Phil Ling — Um, and the deeper the deeper your, here’s the reason I go back to to lead pastors and everybody doesn’t want… You know, sometimes you get into the rockstar pastor mentality. It’s like I just gotta stay in the green room.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So it’s like oh no no – gotta get outta the green room. And the small room leadership conversations, the deeper your need, the deeper my questions.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — Deeper your need, deeper my questions.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — So if you’re trying to raise a lot of money for a project, then your leaders have questions they wouldn’t have for just something inspiring on Sunday, take up an offering, and and raise a little bit of money.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and by definition every kind of capital campaign, like where you’re you’re you’re making a significant gift, or you’re asking for significant gifts, you know when you’re you’re asking people to give out of illiquid access access assets or out of their their wealth rather than just their income. That, you know, if if you’re asking me that, if you’re saying, hey, can you sell some stocks or get rid of that you know investment property and give that money to us? Man, I’m I’m going to have some serious questions right? I’m going to I’m going to slow down and want to get a clear idea. And that’s fine. And then to actually execute on that to actually make that this isn’t they can’t. That kind of money just isn’t instantly available. It’s illiquid by definition. And so it takes a while to for that to happen. Yeah, that’s great. Super helpful.
Rich Birch — Now I want to draw, I saw this great resource on your website that I want to make sure people get. And so this is at thegivingchurch.com, there’s ah big button there. It says “5 Ways to Grow Your Church Giving” – it’s a pdf. I want to send people over there. Make sure they pick that up. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this. This is a I can’t believe it’s free, but it’s a great resource for people to pick up. Tell us a little bit about that.
Phil Ling — It’s a lot about what I’ve been talking about, breaking down the three rooms, how we communicate vision casting, all those kind of things. Tried… ah my big deal is I’m I’ve done this long enough, like I said I’m the old dude now, so I’ve done this long enough I want to see fruit grow in a lot of different trees. I want to put good information out there. I think it’s a category that people don’t talk about on how to fuel their ministries.
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Ling — So we produced this. It’s cookies on the bottom shelf. This is not, you know, [inaudible] stuff. This is very practical steps. This is what you can do. I guarantee if you download that, read that, talk about it as a leader, you’ll get good stuff that you can use, whether you ever work with us or not.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, love it. So good. Well I want again, that’s just thegivingchurch.com ah look for that link there. We’ll also put a link in the show notes. So you go over there. Make sure you pick up a copy of that. Just as we come to land, Phil, anything else you’ve said? This has been super helpful. Anything else, you’d you’d love to talk about or anything else we want to make sure we cover today before we wrap wrap up today’s conversation?
Phil Ling — I just want to hit the hammer one more time because you said you know you got a hammer and a nail thing. Ah talking because a lot of your listeners are are senior leaders in their churches. And there are a lot of things you can delegate, a lot of things you can give to other folks to do. Leaders lead leaders.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Phil Ling — Um, so your job is to lead leaders. And and when I talk to senior pastors especially, you’re the leaders and influencers in your church, and I I divide leaders into this: we’re positional leaders – some people have positions. They’re tribal leaders. They got groups of people that follow them, whether they have a position or not. And financial leaders. So put those three together – that’s your job; lead those folks.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Phil Ling — And the reason you take the time have sit down have a cup of coffee and share with them, you treat them as partners in your ministry, not donors to your ministry. Partners talk about stuff before it happens. Donors just say let me show you the glossy brochure and ask you for money.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Phil Ling — Your leaders want to be treated as partners. So.
Rich Birch — Oh so good. Oh I love that, Phil. I that’s I think that’s a great insight. I’d love to have you come back on in the future and and maybe we even just talk about that specific, let’s get into that even more deeply. And let’s drill into how do we have those conversations and how, you know. And because I’ve seen this in my own church. I worked with a lead pastor who was resistant, not in a not in a like I don’t ever want to do that, but just didn’t know what to say. And how do I have those conversations? And you know, and it doesn’t take a lot, it’s like a little bit of coaching ah, could be really helpful. So maybe in the future we have you back on and we could drill into that issue specifically because I think that would be hugely helpful for folks.
Phil Ling — I would love to, I will love too, Rich, because here’s the last thing I’ll say and I know I’m I’m babbling on.
Rich Birch — All good.
Phil Ling — With leaders, your job not to get in the room and ask them for money. Nobody – that’s why nobody wants to do it. You’re not selling ’em vacuum cleaners.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Phil Ling — Your job is to get in and cast vision. Let them ask you questions.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Phil Ling — Because good people ask questions privately. Others ask questions in front of groups because they want an audience. Not an answer. We’re not giving audiences but we do give answers.
Rich Birch — So good. Again, so much there. That’s that’s fantastic. Folks that stayed till the end they got a ah good little nugget there at the end to chew on for this week. Well friends, I would love for you to to track with Phil, to track with thegivingchurch.com, you know, to reach out if if you guys are looking for to do one of these analysis. Now is a great time to do that. If you’re thinking about a campaign, take Phil’s advice, you know, don’t talk to an architect or think about drawings before you talk about the financial piece. Ah you know, let… reach out to them. They would be ah would love to help with that. So thanks so much, Phil, appreciate you being here. Ah, where where do we want to send people online, one more time, before we wrap up.
Phil Ling — thegivingchurch.com, thegivingchurch.com and we, ask us questions, get the pdf, anything, we’ll we’ll respond – this is what we love to do.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Phil. Appreciate you being here, Sir.
Phil Ling — Thank you.
Increase Engagement with Data-Driven Strategies: Ronee de Leon on Unlocking Your Church Database’s Potential
Oct 19, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Ronee de Leon, the Director of Executive Project Management from Grace Fellowship, a multisite church in Ohio.
Many churches have some sort of church management software and mountains of data. But figuring out how to make it actionable so you’re connecting with your congregation is a different story. Listen as Ronee shares how you can make your data actionable and track people’s engagement in order to better shepherd and disciple individuals in your flock.
Making data actionable. // Like many other churches, Grace Fellowship had a wealth of data from their congregants but struggled to know who to reach out to and when. To address this, they developed PATH Engagement Software, an add-on to their church management software. PATH is compatible with both Church Community Builder and Planning Center and provides user-friendly, holistic reports, such as an engagement index to track an individual’s engagement over time.
The Engagement Index. // PATH Engagement Software currently offers five modules including an Engagement Index. Through this program, a church can track both the long-term and short-term engagement of an individual. The long-term engagement lets you track a person’s engagement over time whereas the short-term report helps you understand as people disengage. And because the software refreshes multiple times a day, churches can access the trend report in real-time.
Understanding disengagement. // Many times, there are care issues related to disengagement. By helping to identify disengagement, a church can reach out to individuals and families in order to provide pastoral care and support where needed. The short-term report provides the names of those who are disengaging and the staff that is closest to them can then reach out. Seeing these reports gives churches more clarity so they can come alongside as well as shepherd and disciple people who are disengaging.
Cast vision. // As a church grows, people can start to fall through the cracks, but acquiring good data can help close the gap. It can be difficult to get people to engage with attendance tracking systems so it’s important to communicate the heart and the why behind it. Ronee stresses that every data point represents a soul and churches will be able to better come alongside individuals on their faith journeys if they are gathering good data. Talk about these things consistently with your staff and lay leaders. Enforce the vision to make sure the right data is being collected at all levels of the organization.
Unique Individual Engagement Report. // Another report that PATH supplies is called the Unique Individual Engagement Report. It tracks each individual person that your ministry touches over a period of time so that you can understand the reach of your ministry beyond weekend services. PATH is seeing that through groups or other ministries and activities over and above weekend services, healthy, growing churches are typically serving an additional 35-40% more people than what attendance numbers show at weekend services alone.
Pastoral shepherding. // At PATH they’ve also discovered that the most fruitful discipleship conversations are happening with people who are mid-range engaged. People who are highly engaged and disengage for a time often find their way back on their own. People who are nominally engaged are much harder to win over. But people who are mid-range engaged in the church are very responsive to pastoral shepherding when they begin to disengage.
Leverage your data. // Leveraging data also helps with having effective pastoral conversations. However, staff members or lay leaders need to have the skills and training to engage congregants. PATH Engagement Software offers a free resource called “Shepherding Tips and Ideas,” which provides practical guidance on starting and deepening these conversations.
Plus, click here to downloadShepherding Tips and Ideas to understand how to start a shepherding conversation and dig deeper with people at your church.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
As a church leader you know that your ability to execute your vision comes down to Staffing, Facilities and Programming. All of those needs are fueled by one thing: Generosity. The Giving Church, led by Generosity Coach and Founder, Phil Ling, has worked with nearly 1000 churches of all sizes in over 40 different denominations and raised over a billion dollars to fuel ministry. Don’t run out of fuel for your ministry. Transform your ministry with innovative capital campaigns and leadership coaching.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s conversation because we’re talking about one of those things that I know, listen we got a lot of executive pastors, a lot of people who lead in those kinds of areas at a church, and I know that today we’re talking about a problem that is near and dear to our heart. In fact I would say that today’s issue is one of the things that I bet you earlier this week you were in a conversation about, and we’re going to get a chance to help you take some steps in a practical direction today. Super excited to have Ronee de Leon. She is from Grace Fellowship and PATH Engagement Software. So Grace Fellowship, if you don’t know, it’s a multisite church in Ohio with five physical campuses, if I’m counting correctly, and church online. PATH Engagement, which is what we’re going to talk about today, is a solution that works really hand-in-hand with your church database, if I understand correctly, and applies some logic to really help ah, you understand and move people towards deeper engagement. This is what we’re trying to do, friends. We’re trying to get people engaged, and Ronee is going to help us with that. Welcome to the show, Ronee. So glad you’re here today.
Ronee de Leon — Thanks Rich! It’s a privilege to have this conversation with you today.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so honored that you would take some time to be here. Why don’t you kind of tell us give us the kind of Grace story. And then how does that connect to PATH, kind of how do all those things fit together?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, well, Grace Fellowship is a church that is always pursuing forward movement. We want to help people meet, follow, and share Jesus. And we’re we’re willing to do everything we can to make that happen.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Ronee de Leon — And so like a lot of other churches, we have a church management software and we have mountains of data, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ronee de Leon — But making that data actionable and figuring out how we can know who to reach out to and when in a timely manner, it was a struggle for us. And so we started building a solution that would make our data actionable and just give us reports that were easy to use, user-friendly, holistic, and making us as a staff more efficient as we wanted to chase people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So good. Well one of my um so I’m excited for this on multiple levels. But one of my convictions is, gosh, like so many of us are sitting on so much data, but we’re really not sure what to do with it. It’s like how do we, how do we figure out how to move people? Like how do we figure out how to identify people and then where you know, kind of what their next steps are? Let’s can you kind of give us a bit of an insight into PATH specifically? So talk us through how does your solution actually help us do that with the data that we have already?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, PATH is an add-on to your church management software. We’re currently compatible with Church Community Builder and Planning Center.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Ronee de Leon — And what it does is it takes the data you already have and puts it in really user-friendly reports that quickly let you know who to reach out to and when. So that it’s kind of built around this measure that we created called the engagement index, and that’s a measure of people’s engagement. There’s two different pieces to that: a long-term one and a short-term one. And the long-term engagement really helps us watch people as they increase their engagement over time and the short term one helps us understand as people disengage. It’s It’s really reactive and like I said just gives us really actionable data, so that we know who to reach out to to shepherd and disciple them as they’re disengaging from the programs and activities of our church.
Rich Birch — I love that. Let’s talk about that one first, this short-term disengagement. Um, what does that functionally look like in churches? Are they generating… so I understand get a sense of what what your what your solution does. But are you running this like on a weekly basis, monthly basis, and then you’re pulling people together in a team or like in a meeting? What’s that look like?
Ronee de Leon — PATH refreshes multiple times a day…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Ronee de Leon — …and so you’ve got the downward trend report live in real time at all times. And so the way that a lot of the churches that we work with are using it is at least weekly they’re looking at that downward trend report and that’s that short term report telling us. Somebody’s engagement has changed in the last eight weeks versus their prior eight weeks. So it’s really timely and just really clearly gives you the list of names of people to go chase. And and the way that a lot of churches that we work with do that is based on the team, right? Who on staff is most closely connected to that individual who’s been missing, and how do we reach out to them and encourage them to to come back. Or a lot of times—Rich, you know this—there are care issues related to disengagement. You know, how how can we come alongside and care for as well as shepherd and disciple people who are disengaging?
Rich Birch — Yeah, and how are you actually measuring disengagement? Like what does that what’s that look like? How are you able to ah, you know, because what I understand you’re saying is, hey we’ve got the data already. You’re just helping us see it in a different way that gives us clarity around disengagement or or increased engagement, either way. Um what data points are you actually, how are you able to discern that from from the piles of data?
Ronee de Leon — It’s based on the age group of the individual that we’re looking at. So we’ve we’ve got different indicators. A lot of churches, you know, kids are checking in on the weekend services.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ronee de Leon — So we’ve got that indicator to look at for them depending on what programs a church has for middle school students whether it’s groups and a weekend service or just groups. Adults then we’re looking at grouping, giving, and volunteering. And so we can we can see over all of their engagement that holistic level of involvement and we’re able to see as the attendances decrease based on their personal pattern, historically.
Rich Birch — Okay, so oh so that’s clever. So like I I might be the kind of person that comes 3 times a month. And and over the last three months I’ve only come twice a month or once a month and that would then flag oh hey, something has shifted. But it’s not just a raw report around who’s all the people that have only come once a month, because maybe I only come once a month and that you know that isn’t actually a change. Um or you know, is is that the kind of thing we’re we’re trying to pull apart?
Ronee de Leon — That’s exactly what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — That’s very cool. I love that. Now, so we all know at scale. In fact, recently I was talking with a church that’s that’s trying to break the the 2000 barrier. That’s what I do with coaching, help churches do that. And um, help me with this – I’m going to gonna steal your brain here to help you in this coaching relationship. One of the things I’ve said intuitively is it seems like a lot of times church is less than 1000, there’s like somebody in the church that feels like they they feel like it’s their job to know everyone. And they and there’s a guy at this church particularly, standing out, you know, be standing up in front of the church and it’s like literally everybody that comes in they know them. They know them. They know them. Well that actually can be, I’ve said, that can actually be a lid to your growth. Because you can only ah you can only accommodate so many people in your brain. But what we want to do is actually have our database do that work for us actually ah, you know, retain all those people. Talk us through how um how we can leverage data to to really close those gaps those places where, you know, people might fall through the cracks and ultimately not feel known. Um, what would be some of those kind of key moments maybe in their journey where they could fall through and we just miss them?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, what’s true, Rich, as a church grows, people do start falling through the cracks. You’re you’re unable to know everybody and see if everybody’s been around every weekend. And so as we’re able to take the mountain of data that we have and make it actionable, viewable ah, we know as people disengage in a way that maybe we wouldn’t be able to if we didn’t have the data that we were looking at. So as people are disengaging and we’re reaching out to them, we’re getting the flags. It’s really clear and concise for us. So we’re able to do that. You know, we’re we’re not reaching out and saying, hey your engagement, ah, it’s falling off.
Rich Birch — Your engagement score has gone down.
Ronee de Leon — Right!
Rich Birch — This is the engagement police calling.
Ronee de Leon — Ah, we’re we’re really genuinely going at it. You know we believe that every data point represents a soul. And so…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, every data point truly represents a soul and we’re talking about real people on faith journeys. And if we’re taking full advantage of the information we have, we can help them as they’re in this journey of meeting, following, and sharing Jesus. And so when we reach out, there’s there’s a story we have recently. One of our campus pastors got a flag on one of these reports about an individual who had disengaged from group. And ah you know his his campus is around 500 people. There’s no way he can see everybody, but because of the report he got to reach out to this individual. And so he calls him and finds out that he had recently lost a job, was battling some depression. And so his disengagement really represented one of those pivotal moments that matter in people’s lives, and we have the opportunity to come alongside him and support him through that that difficult season.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I can I can see that. That’s very clear to me for sure. Now a part of this is, you know, your solution can only deal with the quality of data that you have. And so if I’m assuming, you know, there’s got to be some best practices on getting attendance in groups like that. Or getting you know trying to get the right data in the front end. Coach us a little bit around those issues because that that to me seems like a problem I know in the churches I’ve served in. Man, can we just get people to click on the “yes they were here” buttons on our systems. That… talk us through what what’s some best practices on that that we should be thinking of. I know that’s outside of the scope of PATH. You’re just dealing with the the, okay, the data that’s in there, but man that’s critical piece of the puzzle.
Ronee de Leon — It absolutely is and and some of the churches that we work with are asking that question. You know, we really see the value in this. We really want to have the data, but we can’t get our group leaders to take attendance. We can’t get our staff to prioritize making sure that kids or volunteers check in. And so it it really is a cultural shift, Rich. Everybody has to be bought in. But I believe that it’s easy to get people to buy in when they understand the heart and the why of it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ronee de Leon — You know when you put in front of people, ah when you help them understand the real life change, the real shepherding opportunities that we have because we have the data and are able to to understand where they’re at and their engagement, it’s easy to win people over, but it is something that needs to be consistently brought up. The vision behind that needs to be enforced, and and we need to be making sure that that’s happening at all levels of the organization. But it but it matters. It really really matters. And again, when when people understand what you’re able to do once you have that data…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ronee de Leon — …it’s much easier to get buy-in from your staff and your your volunteer leaders.
Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah, totally. Ah um, let’s pivot in a different direction. I feel like so many of us as church leaders, we’re feeling people. We’re people people. We like it’s like, a lot of intuitive leadership. And then that only goes so far, and then eventually we have to actually come up against like real-world data. Talk us through how your tool helps us add real-world information into our leadership as we’re making, particularly making decisions. What how are teams using it? Was is there maybe a story about of an effective use of, you know, of this this tool or this approach? Talk us through that, you know, this kind of feelings versus data. How do we, how do we use those together, or how do we use more data?
Ronee de Leon — A lot of times you feel like you haven’t seen somebody around for a while. You’ve got a couple people on staff who are in the lobby looking for people and maybe they’ll on Monday morning get together and ask, you know, have you seen this family, have you seen this individual? And a lot of times we’re we’re working on feelings. The data helps confirm those feelings and really gives your staff the confidence to reach out, knowing that it it really there really has been a disengagement of some sort for the individual or family. You also mentioned decision-making. We really believe that facts are our friends. Some people will see truth and in the data and and they’re afraid of it, or they don’t like what the data tells them. But facts are our friends and data drives decisions. You know this is true in other industries and it and it works. So why wouldn’t we apply that to our decision-making in church world as well?
Rich Birch — Um, have you seen um, any… so I feel like post covid, all of us are asking this question like people are attending less. It seems like that it, feels like that. Um you know, is that really true though? Who knows? Um you know, have you seen any trends with the churches that you’re working with in the last couple years that are say different than ah than pre-covid? Any any kind of conversation around that?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, what you’re saying definitely seems true across the board. You know, people who pre-covid were maybe 80% attenders feel like they’re now 60% attenders. And so ah, you, you it’s hard to measure the reach of your ministry. You know, your average weekend service attendance is just a portion of the people that are connected to your ministry. And so one of the reports that we provide in PATH is called a unique individual engagement report. And what that report does which is track each individual person that your ministry touches over a period of time. And we’re only counting them once so that you can really measure and understand the reach of your ministry.
Ronee de Leon — And across the board what we’re seeing is healthy, growing churches have a unique individual engagement number that’s about 135, or 140% what their average weekend service attendance is. So if you’re serving 100 people in your average weekend service attendance that you’re seeing attend every weekend, you’re probably actually serving that week around 135 to 140 people, whether that’s through groups or or other ministries, activities outside of that weekend service attendance.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting. So that number, so just so I’m totally clear on that because that’s an interesting number. So what you’re saying is if I’m, yeah, if I’m a church of it staying with a hundred because that’s an easy number, then in other things that are non-Sunday oriented I’m picking up an additional 35, 40% in groups or in, you know… How does that relate to the multiplier number? Because there’s like people will say this thing, which it bugs me, where they’ll be like, oh so we have a…(sticking with the hundred number). It’s like we have a hundred people on average attend, but we know people only attend one every three weeks, so we’re a church of 300. I hear pastors say that kind of thing all the time – nutty language. You know it’s like, well we’re, you know, and course it’s none of the people that listen to this podcast say that. They’re, none of them would say that.
Ronee de Leon — Of course not.
Rich Birch — But ah, other kinds of church leaders say that. But what how does that relate, like this idea of churn and like I’m not, you know, we’re seeing people come through. Do you have any kind of insights on what’s happening on that front?
Ronee de Leon — To be honest, Rich, I think you can assume based on your average weekend service attendance that that’s happening, but until you have real data to to support that, you you really can’t say that.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah.
Ronee de Leon — Based on the unique individual engagement number, that again doesn’t include doesn’t include ah, individual attendance for adults sitting in a weekend in service because most churches are not taking individual attendance for adults in that space. Ah, but until you’ve got data to say that, it feels like a little bit of a stretch to assume that that’s the size of your church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ronee de Leon — And that’s why the unique individual engagement number is so unique. A lot of churches are chasing this and wanting to understand this. You know, even leadership is looking at it saying, okay are we staffed appropriately, you know? If if we think this many people are in our our ministry pond, if you will, but really it’s 30 to 40% larger, ah you know, should we be staffing differently? Should we be adding activities outside of the weekend services if people are engaging outside of that space more often? There’s a lot of questions to be had, conversations to to have…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ronee de Leon — …around that number and understanding the real size your ministry.
Rich Birch — Yeah, the thing that’s interesting about that to that number that 135 to, you know, 140% number is interesting because um there’s this benchmark that’s often used that like a healthy church staff size is 1 to 100 so one staff member for every hundred attendees. But the irony of that 1 to 100 number is like I don’t know any churches that are actually at that 1 to 100 number. There… unless you’re very large, like unless you’re above 5000, 10,000 then they typically get that kind of, you know, economies of scale. But, you know, when you do an audit and say, okay, well let’s look at the staff. Where where are they actually spending their time? Like, you know, oftentimes we’re like we’re maybe a little bit overstaffed here but it doesn’t feel dramatically less. It doesn’t feel like or dramatically more. It doesn’t feel like, oh gosh, we have like we’re swimming in staff. It’s like we could always add more. But that 135 to 140 might be a part of the reason why. Because hey we’re serving a bit of a larger community.
Ronee de Leon — Right.
Rich Birch — That’s ah that’s interesting. Any other kind of insights like that that are interesting um, you know, kind of benchmarky type things that that you guys have noticed across, again leveraging the fact that you see multiple churches through PATH.
Ronee de Leon — Yeah I would say a few things that we’re noticing in an ongoing manner – it’s just true across a lot of the churches that that we’ve seen. Most fruitful discipleship conversations the most fruitful discipleship conversations are happening with people who long-term are sort of mid-range engaged. So people who are highly engaged over a long period of time, if they fall away for a season, they’re often finding their way back on their own. People who are nominally engaged, it’s it’s a little tougher to win them over.
Ronee de Leon — But people who, you know, attend your church maybe once a month – that’s 12 times a year. They go to group maybe once or twice a month. They fall in that midrange level of engagement. When they start disengaging, they’re really responsive to the pastoral shepherding conversation when we reach out to them. And so that’s been really encouraging to understand who is most responsive to that conversation, and and how to get the most fruit out of making these pastoral calls. Um, yeah, it’s it’s been really helpful.
Rich Birch — Um, that’s a fascinating insight. So if just let me reflect that back to you. What you’re seeing is if we put people on a scale and there are people who are highly engaged, if they start to kind of slip away, chances are they’re going to reengage over time. People that are mid-range, if they start to become disengaged, they they respond maybe even better or more they’re more likely to become more engaged ah than, you know, then maybe obviously low-engaged people or high-engaged people. So there’s there’s an interesting target there around, hey these people that are kind of mid-range engaged, let’s go after them, figure out a way to connect with them. Are churches, is that true is that am I understanding that correctly?
Ronee de Leon — That’s correct. Yep.
Rich Birch — Okay, so how are churches following up? Like is this following is this so let’s ah, let’s just say again. I’m going to use you for coaching. Let’s say you’re a church of a thousand people. You know, they’re listening in. They’ve got you know I’ve got a number of staff on my team. I’m an executive pastor, I use your tool, and I see those mid-range people. Is the coaching to have like staff follow up with those people, or should I be building a volunteer team? Who is actually doing those? You know, and then we’ll talk next about what’s that call or those engagements actually look like because I’m intrigued on what that is. But let’s first talk about the who who should be following up with these people.
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, there are a couple different ways that you can approach that. Um again I think we said earlier that the staff member closest to the individual who’s disengaging is somebody is one approach you could take. Somebody who would reach out to them somebody that it means something that they’re connecting with them and notice that they were gone.
Ronee de Leon — Another approach you could take is having lay elders or, or some churches are calling it navigators, so these are highly bought-in people, mature Christians who love reaching out to people who love engaging. They’re kind of ah an add on to your pastoral staff, but it’s a volunteer role that’s really high capacity that you are giving the names of the individuals to follow up with to this group of people and they’re they’re somewhat of an extension of your pastoral staff. We’ve also seen that be really fruitful in some churches.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. Love it. Even that’s a great takeaway, friends, like if I could see this kind of working itself out. We have somebody who’s like a data person who’s going to get these reports pulled them together. They’re going to pull the conversations together say, hey, here’s some people either on a weekly or monthly basis, Hey let’s have these… You know we were doing these quarterly based on on ah just on giving data. I was we would look at like who are the people that are giving less, and we would pull people to get we’d pull our campus pastors together and say, okay, who’s slipping behind trend? And and they’re again not doing collections calls or not like, hey, you’re giving less money. Ah, but and usually what would happen is you would unearth like all the time we were unearthing, yeah, stuff’s going on in our family where, you know, my wife’s…
Ronee de Leon — That’s right.
Rich Birch — …dad died. Or you know, that kind of stuff, which was which was great, but man, having a more holistic view even better. Let’s talk about the actual engagement point. So I’m I’m a staff member. I’ve been engaged to follow up with someone and you’ve actually got a practical resource to kind of help us with that. Why don’t you talk us through that as well. Like how do we actually make this, how do I engage with somebody? What are some best practices there?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I’m glad you asked this question because you can have all the data in the world and check on as many people that you’d like, but at the end of the day leveraging your data is only as effective as you are and your staff is having the pastoral conversation. Ah, many churches have staff members who aren’t pastors who haven’t gone to seminary that are required to make these calls and sometimes they’re they’re difficult. They’re challenging conversations. And some of them haven’t been equipped to have that conversation. You know, we we have found that some church staff are having the conversation without having the conversation.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ronee de Leon — They’re reaching out and someone is saying, you know, well soccer’s busy and and the staff member says, oh okay, we understand; great – have a good day. You know, how do you push beyond that and have the conversation…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ronee de Leon — …and say, you know, I understand it’s a busy season, but when you and your family was highly engaged in our church, what were the benefits of that? Why did you do that? You know, and they’re going to get into ah parenting support, and community, and ah the the kids learning about Christ, you know.
Rich Birch — So good.
Ronee de Leon — That that doesn’t matter now? You know, and and pushing back on that a little bit. How can we help you reengage…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ronee de Leon — …because that still really matters for your family. you know and even maybe being a source of accountability for them. You know, soccer ends in three weeks. Great.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ronee de Leon — I’m going to text you. I’m putting it on my calendar in three weeks.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Ronee de Leon — Can I text you and reach back out and help you do that? So you have to be careful that you’re actually having that pastoral and shepherding conversation.
Rich Birch — So good.
Ronee de Leon — And we believe that this matters so much that we’d like to provide a gift to the listeners. Um.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Ronee de Leon — It’s it’s a resource called we call it we’re calling it Shepherding Tips and Ideas. It’s just a little bit of content. It’s a quick 2 pager for any level of staff. It’ll be helpful for them to to understand how to start a shepherding conversation and then really dig deeper and have the conversation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love this. So friends, we’re going to put a link to this in the show notes. You you should pick it up. And um I could say even if you’re not gonna… this isn’t this alone is like gold. It’s only two pages, but having read through this, I’m like, man, there’s some great coaching on here that’s just super practical. This is like right down the zone of unSeminary, which I love. It’s like just take this ball and run with it. Some great conversation starters. Um you know, my my wife is a people person. She’s like one of these people she’s like this very high bandwidth for caring for folks. And she is um, like lots of people think that they’re her best friend because she just has just that kind of person. Um and she’s very good naturally at that. I’m more of a systems guy. I’m more of a like build a checklist and, you know, all. I’m friendly, but this kind of resource super helpful. Like man, some good conversation starters. So I would encourage you, friends, check out that. Ah, that in the show notes. So ah so good.
Rich Birch — This has been a this been a great conversation. Now as we’re thinking about the future when you think of kind of the future of PATH and the tool, where’s all this going? Like where you need to look up over the horizon, what are you guys hoping for, how are you hoping this will help churches? How are you hoping it’ll, you know, any kind of changes in the future or that kind of thing to help make this even better for, you know, for us as we’re thinking about these issues?
Ronee de Leon — Well we always have ideas for future development. We’re listening to churches or getting ideas and…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Ronee de Leon — …and we continue building out the program. Currently, there are five modules in the program. It’s connection statistics reporting.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ronee de Leon — It’s attendance reporting because everybody has that giant spreadsheet like 15 staff members have access to and there are multiple versions of the truth. And we’re not we’re not going to do that anymore. We’ve we’ve got attendance reporting. The engagement index and those trends that we talked about earlier. There’s some financial reporting and some executive reporting which includes that unique individual engagement number. So there’s there’s a lot in the program right now. But to be honest, Rich, our goal our hope is to help churches pursue people. We we are passionate about the success of the churches that we’re working with. And we want to help them leverage their mountains of data to help people meet, follow and share Jesus. And so right now we’re working towards sharing the tool with as many churches as we can because it’s making the staff more efficient. It’s reporting holistic data really user in a user-friendly way. And we’re we’re seeing real fruit from having these shepherding and discipleship conversations with people.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Any kind of last words just as we wrap up today’s episode any last nuggets you want to make sure that we, and then we’ll make sure we get people to connect with you guys online. But where any other kind of last pieces you want to talk about?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah I know, Rich, that there are some people that are skeptical about data and leveraging data and they’re they’re afraid that somehow you’re going to become obsessed with numbers and and forget the people. But I just think it’s important for church leadership to remember what we said earlier: every data point represents a soul. And when people deprioritze activities and programs at your church that were once a priority to them, they’re going through something whether it’s doubt in their faith, depression, divorce, diagnosis, economic duress. There’s there’s something going on in their life that we as the church have the opportunity to to reach out and care for them.
Ronee de Leon — We we think about Matthew 25 and the parable of the talents. You know, the the one who brought five more talents heard “well done good and faithful servant.” And we as the church really need to make sure that we are stewarding the the people that Christ has entrusted us with well. And we we’re doing everything possible, including leveraging data, to make sure that that we’re able to tell the Lord that we did everything we could to to steward well the flock that he gave us.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. This has been, what a encouraging conversation. And friends, we’re just scratched the surface here. There’s a ton more we could talk about. Ah but I want to encourage people to to drop by your website to learn more. Where do we want to send them online to learn more about PATH and to take step. I’d really encourage people. I know there’s church leaders that are listening in that are like, hey, we should let’s just take the next step and learn more about this. Where do we want to send them online?
Ronee de Leon — Yeah, to learn more about the tool they can go to pathengagement.com. To get the resources we talked about earlier, it’s pathengagement.com/unseminary – we’ve got that free download. And we’re going to do a deep dive on November sixth at 1 PM that we want to invite people to. We’re going to look at PATH, really get into the nuts and bolts of the engagement index and the trends, what these reports look like. Um, and if anybody has questions or or wants to reach out to me personally they can find me at ronee.deleon@pathengagement.com.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Ronee. I really appreciate you being here today.
Ronee de Leon — It’s my pleasure.
Rich Birch — Thank you for being a part of this. Take care.
Ronee de Leon — Great. Thank you, Rich. You too.
Mission Trips vs. Strategic Visits: Nathan Nelson on Transformational International Partnerships for Your Church
Oct 12, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nathan Nelson, Pastor of Mission and Outreach at Bethany Community Church in the Seattle, Washington region.
Do you ever feel like short-term missions trips actually push against creating deep, lasting change in the communities you serve? Tune in as Nathan shares how to move beyond the trip itself to building lasting relationships with partnerships to make a meaningful, long-term impact.
Long-term partnerships. // Rather than engaging in short-term missions trips, Bethany Community Church has chosen to invest in three global strategic partnerships: Agros International in Nicaragua, Roblealto Child Care Association in Costa Rica, and World Relief in Rwanda. These partnerships are rooted in the principals of long term relationships, indigenous leadership, and mutual transformation.
Ineffective short-term missions trips. // When considering short-term missions, we have to recognize that they are for a limited amount of time. Often the focus is on the experience rather than the relationships built with a partner organization, so the trip alone doesn’t make much difference. But with the right approach, these trips can be transformative for both the volunteers and the communities they serve.
More harm than good. // Nathan shares his experience working with an orphanage at the US-Mexico border where despite well-intentioned support from various church teams over the years, the orphanage’s conditions were decrepit, and there were multiple attempts by children to escape. These children felt trapped and were not prepared for life outside the orphanage. 20% of churches around the United States support some amount of work happening in an orphanage or residential care facility. However, these systems are often broken and short-term missions trips do more harm than good toward these vulnerable children.
Family-based care. // God’s design was for children to grow up in the context of the family. Seeking to develop long-term partnerships with organizations that focus on a family-based care model with a goal to reconnect vulnerable children with biological family members have led to beautiful transformations. This requires churches to shift away from the mindset of supporting orphanages and towards empowering families to care for their children. Churches need to be part of God’s work in providing support to families, whether it’s in Rwanda, Seattle, or any other community.
Tool kit from Faith to Action. // If your church is ready to find a long-term partnership helping vulnerable children, the Faith to Action Initiative has great resources to help you find organizations that are embodying these best practices. They also offer a tool kit called Short-Term Missions: Guidance to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children that instructs how to shape a short-term mission trip so that it is effectively doing good.
Strategic visits. // Bethany offers strategic visits which are intended to build a long-term relationship with a partner. During these visits, the partner is the one doing the work on the ground and the volunteers offer encouragement and support the ongoing work of the partner organization. Trips range from 7 to 12 days with teams of 5-12 people annually. Teams spend 3-6 months training before they leave to help set their hearts and minds around the core objectives, the most important being to encourage the staff of the partner organization. After they return, the team has a follow-up meeting once a month for six months. The end goal is to summarize what they experienced into a core discipleship theme and communicate the work that God is doing in the partner organization to the rest of the church.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Do you feel like your church’s facility could be preventing growth, and are you frustrated or maybe even overwhelmed at the thought of a complicated or costly building project? Are the limitations of your church building becoming obstacles in the path of expanding your ministry? Have you ever felt that your church could reach more people if only the facility was better suited to the community’s needs?
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Check them out at Risepointe.com/unseminary and while you’re there get their FREE resource “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. I think this will be one of those ones that’ll be challenging. I know it’s a heart place for so many of us who have served in the church for a long time, but I’m really looking forward to leaning in. I’m going to ask you to lean in on today’s conversation. We’re privileged to have Nathan Nelson with us. He is the Pastor of Mission and Outreach with a fantastic church in Washington called Bethany Christian Church. They’ve got 6 campuses, if I can count correctly, from ah the Seattle region. I love talking to church leaders in parts of the country like Seattle where like, frankly, people lots of people don’t wake up in the morning and say, hey I should go to church today. And we’ve got a lot we can learn from you today, Nathan. So glad that you’re here; welcome to the show.
Nathan Nelson — Thanks so much for having me. It’s a privilege.
Rich Birch — Ah yeah, I’m honored that you would take some time to be with us. Why don’t we start with you kind of telling us a little bit about the church. Kind of fill in the picture there. Help us understand about the church, and then tell us about your role there at Bethany.
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, Bethany Community Church is a 6 location church, at the present moment, here in Seattle, Washington. We have a history of over 100 years in the city. Bethany began as a mission if you will to the indigenous people of Seattle way way back when in a slightly different neighborhood than the one we find ourselves in now. Um, we’ll be talking about mission today so we can assume that some of what was done and some of what wasn’t was not necessarily the best back in those days.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Nathan Nelson — We’ve been reconciling our roots a bit.Um, but fast forward to the present day. Um under the leadership of our former senior pastor, Richard Dahlstrom, the church grew rapidly. And so going from about 200, 300 people to over a couple thousand in just a few years. And so in that time we had a space issue. Ah, and that presented missional opportunity where we said rather than having satellite campuses that would stream one person, one personality, we planted local contextual relational ministry sites, we call them, from the various places that people were commuting in from.
Nathan Nelson — So in our 6 different neighborhoods where we now have locations ranging in size from 50 to 1500, we really seek to be ah the presence of Christ in the neighborhood. And that presents real opportunities for us missionally at a local level, but then over the course of time we’ve developed a pretty robust global mission program. And so that’s where I am privileged to serve.
Nathan Nelson — I oversee all that we do missionally in the church both globally and locally. And have an army of laypeople and other staff that help make the magic happen as well. But um, yeah, we have three global partnerships in different parts of the world um, that range from about 8 to 15 years that we’ve been serving together…
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s great.
Nathan Nelson — …in these different places. And um I’ll talk more about that but a value of ours is this long-term partnership. So I started as a layperson who was in the pews, inspired by the teaching of the church. I went on to become an intern and for my predecessor. And after a season away serving in another capacity, I came back and I’ve been on staff now as the Pastor of Mission and Outreach for about 7 years.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Well we’re going to talk primarily – there’s a lot we could unpack there and there’s like you know there’s a lot even and maybe we’ll have you on in the future to talk about local mission at some point. But today we want to kind of focus the conversation particularly on global, although there’s there’s lots of principles we can apply locally as well. Why don’t you talk to us about ah those partnerships. What do they what do they look like? Kind of how does the what is the framework of those? How does those how does the relationship work with those organizations? Talk us through what that looks like.
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, absolutely. So like many churches, Bethany has ah a history I would say about twenty years ago we did an a self-evaluation, and my predecessor did a lot of the hard work here who now serves that Faith to Action, an organization that we’ll be talking more about today. Um, but Ellie Oswald is her name and she ah took an evaluation. The church and said where is all this money where is all this funding going? And we discovered there was everything from $50 to $5000 um going to different people, organizations, missionaries serving in all different places around the world. If you wrote a letter to the church and asked for money you probably got it at some point. But there was no sort of ongoing relationship of any kind.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting.
Nathan Nelson — And so there was a huge sort of cleaning house process where we had to say, okay, God, what is it that you would uniquely do through Bethany in a strategic sense for the really deep lasting change of communities around the world? And so ah, our partnerships began um, with an initiative that in Uganda that was amazing um, through Living Water. That partnership has come and gone. And now we have these three: one with Agros International in Nicaragua, another one with Roblealto Child Care Association in Costa Rica, and then a third one, World Relief in Rwanda.
Nathan Nelson — And these partnerships are rooted in this principle of long-term relationship. That we lean into the partner organization to be the expert on the ground. It’s of the utmost importance that that organization is led by indigenous people to that region. Um, it’s also super important to us that the shared value above all is mutual transformation. So we’re looking for a long-term relationship with lasting change in the community that has an impact, not only for the community that the organization serves in that we support, but also for our community back home. And so we send teams. We do short-term mission ah like many churches around the world. But it’s our ah, highest value that those trips are simply a means by which we can continue to grow this mutually transformative relationship internationally.
Nathan Nelson — So the way that we do our trips is probably very different than many others around the ah country. And that’s in part because we really seek to take this approach of standing in the back. We want to go and see what God is doing. We want to participate and use our gifts as well in in what Christ is doing in that place. But we really seek to take a posture as learners and enable the local people to show us what God has been up to…
Rich Birch — So good.
Nathan Nelson — …and will continue to be up to in that place. Yeah, so we call all of our our goers and returners ambassadors. They’re ambassadors of Bethany Community Church when they go visit our partners internationally. And then they’re ambassadors to that partnership when they return. And so they spend six months in preparation and six months um following up intentionally as a group before and after their trip um, integrating those themes into their life and communicating them to the rest of the church about what God is doing in that place.
Rich Birch — I love this. Well, there’s a lot there to unpack, which is good. This is why you’ll see, friends, why we’ve we’re honored to have Nathan with us on today’s podcast. You know, one of the things you said you talked about deep lasting change and that ultimately that is what you’re attempting, you know these partners that you’re you’re working with, that’s what you’re driving for. But you know my experience has been, and let me be the devil’s advocates, probably the wrong word to say on this podcast but the, you know, person may be providing a bit of pushback. My experience is sometimes this idea of short-term teams can really push against deep lasting change. It’s almost like the framework, the the method pushes against what we’re trying to do. Am I wrong on that? Pull that apart for me; help me understand, you know, why is that? Why what’s what’s some of the problems that we might have traditionally with this kind of short term missions approach?
Nathan Nelson — Well you named it. A short-term trip with long-term lasting change.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nathan Nelson — That’s a bit of an oxymoron in and of itself, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Nathan Nelson — Absolutely, absolutely it is. You know, I think one of the things about short-term missions that we have to recognize is that it’s short. It’s for a specific term of time. And we put this word missions on it. That’s a huge word. To me, mission…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s a loaded term, right? Yeah.
Nathan Nelson — Yes, mission in the church means participating with what Christ is doing to redeem all of the world. So we have a short-term trip with that notion in mind, and generally speaking as churches, we kind of entrust the youth pastor, or maybe even a layperson who spent some time abroad with the task of leading a group of volunteers to go and do this thing in another place. And I know this is the unSeminary podcast. I’ve served, before my time at Bethany, at a short-term mission organization for years, came to Bethany… I’ve been doing short-term mission trips since I was sixteen years old. And ah I can tell you not one class I took in seminary talked about the logistics…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nathan Nelson — …behind how to do a mission trip effectively.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Nathan Nelson — Not only that, ah you know we we want to believe that these trips matter. But if we look at the trip alone—I hate to say this; I don’t want to burst people’s, you know, bubble here—but they don’t matter.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Yeah.
Nathan Nelson — A trip in and of itself, if only done for the sake of a mission trip, will do far more harm than good. This is why at Bethany it’s so important that any short-term mission trip that we do is done in the context of long-term relationship with a with a partner.
Rich Birch — Right. Absolutely.
Nathan Nelson — The partner is the one who’s doing the work on the ground. A trip has an opportunity to come in and do something unique, do something special that leverages, contributes to the work of that partner ongoing. But it’s not the work in and of itself.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Nathan Nelson — It is not a work in and of itself. So we really have to um, if if rooted in a long-term partner, all of a sudden now I’m willing to talk about short-term mission um, um, being about the mission of God right? I really I really think that that can happen. But it has to be in the context of a long-term partnership. And it has to be done in such a way that we are envisioning the limits of what a short-term trip can do, um, being honest about that, and that our training and our activities for the time that we’re in the ground and our debrief is all built around helping the people that participate in the trip have lasting change that impacts their lives ongoing. So what we’ve seen is that people actually are better as a result of their time going on one of these trips, but it doesn’t happen by accident.
Rich Birch — Um, let’s we’re gonna we’re gonna get there. I really do want to unpack, Okay, what you’re doing that’s different. But let’s just take a pause a bit longer there. Ah you know, I think sometimes one of the criticisms of experiences like this is it can feel like subsidized adventure travel. It’s like we go to people and we say, hey, can you give us money because I’d like to go somewhere that normally you don’t go. This isn’t Orlando; this is not New York city – it’s some exotic location. And then we kind of baptize it in this kind of Christian-y thing. And and I think, you know, and there’s it’s… obviously I’m I’m using loaded language there. Obviously I think that’s bad. But you put an even more finer point on it. You said, man, that could actually do more harm than good. Give me some examples of what that looks like. Because, man, I don’t think anybody that even if even if they just see it at that level of like, hey, I want to have this kind of fun experience. They’re they’re probably not processing it at the level of, man, I might actually be doing damage in the community I’m I’m going to. Talk me through what some of that harm can can look like if not done well.
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, absolutely. I want to give two quick examples. And then ah but I want to preface it by saying, as a church one of the things that we’ve been mindful of especially in our global work is that anything that you’re doing internationally as a church often is in the space of what the industry calls orphans and vulnerable children.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — You are working with kids who are very, very vulnerable in their lives, and often are put in situations where if a team comes for a short period of time, we can unintentionally perpetuate the vulnerability of these children. And so I’ll give you two examples. One, um back when I worked in a short-term mission organization I spent ah several weeks receiving mission teams at the border of the United States and Mexico. There was an orphanage there which we would call a “residential care facility”. And so kids were living on site here. There was a small school on site. Most of their life took place on the grounds of this orphanage. I can tell you that the buildings were decrepit. There were tarantulas crawling all over us at night as we’re sleeping in this place. Um, it’s out in the desert. It’s remote. It’s disconnected from the rest of society. And there was a group of young men who’d grown up there.
Nathan Nelson — And in the time that I was there—this was maybe a month receiving 3 or 4 different teams, um, all well intentioned, all supporting this orphanage for many many years. Um some of the people from these churches had gone and they were working as teachers in the school and that kind of thing over the years. These churches are telling their congregations that this is what God called them to do and that God is doing great work here for decades. I know it. I’m sure of it. And it’s and I don’t mean to shame them,
Rich Birch — No.
Nathan Nelson — The reality on the ground is this: there were three separate attempts in just the month that I was there of kids trying to escape the orphanage.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Nathan Nelson — Kids come back their tail tucked between their legs. I had no I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t know how to exist outside of here. I don’t know how to survive for myself. Ah, kids were not prepared for the real world. And what they were a part of wasn’t working.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Nelson — They didn’t want to be there.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Nelson — They wanted to escape this place.
Rich Birch — Trapped. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Nelson — They felt trapped but they did They couldn’t exist outside of it. Heartbreaking situation.
Rich Birch — Heartbreaking. Yep. Absolutely.
Nathan Nelson — I witnessed that at a young age. I was maybe 19 at the time. I said there’s got to be a better way.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — There has to be that way.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Nathan Nelson — So I want to contrast that with another ah story. I ah one of the organizations we partner with as a church is Roblealto in a Child Care Association in Costa Rica. They’re based in San Jose, the capital city. And Roblealto has been around for over eighty years. And they do what I would consider some of the best work in the care for orphans and vulnerable children.
Nathan Nelson — They have a residential care facility. Um, very very different than the one that I just described.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — But it is it is only used in the most extreme cases where it is no longer safe for a child to be present in their home and they have to be removed. But they will only admit children in those contexts if the families are willing to commit to the work that it’s going to take to get them back on track. And then they seek to reconcile the family. That that they call that the Bible Home. Um, the Bible Home for Roblealto boasts over a 95% reintegration rate…
Rich Birch — Wow, That’s amazing.
Nathan Nelson — …of children to their biological families. There is no other organization in the world that’s even close.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Nathan Nelson — It’s really really amazing the work that they do in the… And at the end of the day, it’s not rocket science. It is a sold out commitment to the reality that kids grow up better in the context of a family. And they believe the best people for these children are actually their biological family members. It’s an absolute crazy statistic but 80% of children who are in residential care facilities have a biological parent who’s still living. It’s a matter of of belief that that person can be restored. That that person or people can indeed take up their God given calling to care for the child that is their own.
Nathan Nelson — And so the rest of Roblealto is so convicted about this that they have a series of what they call child care centers. And the child care centers um, one of which we’ve supported from the beginning for about a decade now, um are designed as before- and after-school programs that have an interdisciplinary team of child psychologists, social workers and the like…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nathan Nelson — …who work with the child and with the family who are at the point of kind of breaking, where the typical family would say you know what I’m going to just drop my kid off at an orphanage because they’re probably better there. Um, instead Roblealto intervenes and they say mom, dad, you can go to work. We’ll take care of him before and after school. In Costa Rica, like many other countries around the world, there’s not the capacity to have kids in school all day. So kids go to school half the day and then they’re left in the streets to wander and get into all kinds of trouble the rest of the day if mom or dad goes to work. Or, mom or dad doesn’t go to work…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — …because they don’t know how to care for their kid otherwise.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Nelson — And so they’re breaking cycles of economic poverty of relational poverty all with this model of of taking care of kids and and intentionally investing in families to help them get on track, to help them get jobs and the things they need to do. And these families are proven to stay together.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Nathan Nelson — So we can talk in a moment about what it looks like for us as a church who supports to send a team, a short-term team. But I introduced that model to say while it’s this… the churches back home are playing videos on Sunday to highlight the work that’s happening. If you’re just sort of a commoner and you’re watching this thing, there’s a way you can tell the first story I told, and the second story, and people will go, job well done. We’re doing it.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Nathan Nelson — We cannot do that. We have to tell the truth about what’s happening.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, well there’s, yeah again, so much there, you know, there’s an unseemly part of particularly the short term experience that, you know, when it comes to orphans, vulnerable children, um, you know it can it can feel like, particularly like in an Instagram world, it can feel like a very strange like why are you really here? Like are you here just to take pictures with kids that don’t look like you? You know as opposed to try to make a difference? So how does a church… So, you know, listen you’ve done a very good job clarifying for us, Okay there’s some real issues here. How do we as church leaders really even think about long-term partnership? How do we how do we investigate or do, you know you know, there’s a lot here. How do we unpack this? What would be some of the initial steps that we would try to figure out best practices. Maybe let’s stay in the kind of orphaned, vulnerable children’s sector. Let’s kind of talk about that. There’s obviously lots of different types of organizations internationally, but let’s kind of keep there. How would we think about that; what does that look like?
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, wonderful question. So Faith to Action, whom I mentioned earlier, has really great resources to help you identify organizations that are embodying these best practices. They have a whole list of organizations that they would recommend to you. In addition to that ah, they have toolkits for how to shape a trip, a short-term mission trip that is doing more good and mitigating a lot of the harm that I’ve sort of alluded to that can happen through trips like this to contexts where there are orphans and vulnerable children being taken care of. So um, that I commend to you all as resources.
Nathan Nelson — But I’ll say for my personal experience um, the reality is there’s about 20% of churches around the United States support some amount of work happening in a residential care facility. And residential care facility, ie. orphanage, is what I would like to um, just kind of say hard stop. Not the ideal. It’s not God’s design. God’s design was for kids to grow up in the context of the family. And so the work that we desire to move ever more towards is to shift that 20% of support towards family-based care solutions that are really seeking to empower the family to be all that it can be for God-given God’s given call to raise and nourish a child to become all that God created that child to become. And so with that in mind, for us World Relief in Rwanda, Roblealto in Costa Rica, are two organizations that work directly with orphans and vulnerable children. However, their approach is very different. I’ve talked about Roblealto.
Nathan Nelson — Ah, one of the things that World Relief has done and we’ve done this in partnership together, actually, is we identified some of the work that was happening on the ground at the time we started was more in support of residential care facilities. And so um, they adapted a curriculum from World Vision ah called ah, Channels of Hope Child Protection. And that curriculum has become integrated as the standard for what they do across all of their work internationally now. And that is all about ah empowering family-based care.
Nathan Nelson — And so I can tell you a quick anecdote from our time in Rwanda the way that this looks. It’s very different than in Costa Rica um but equally is is impactful. There’s a young girl that we met who was a child growing up with AIDS and had been ostracized by the community and so the channels of hope child protection curriculum um, that was implemented seeks to empower local church members in their community to imagine who are the who are those ostracized children? And it’s your responsibility to take them in. And so that shift alone in a cultural context in which AIDS would put someone like a leper on the outside actually go, No, we’re called to go and seek that person out and to bring them in.
Nathan Nelson — So we met this girl in a home. She had a relative—I believe it was her aunt—who who knew of her and she said, Okay, I can be that biological family caregiver for this child. And so she took her in she gave her responsibility. She was raised – the girl was raising chickens at the time, and she said I contribute to my family because I have my chickens and they lay eggs and my family sells the eggs and they’re better because of it. And so this child went from literally not attending school…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nathan Nelson — …was ah, found in the ditch um to now a child who has a role in a family that loves her. And she’s going to school. And you know has the support that she needs to overcome these insurmountable hurdles in her life.
Rich Birch — Incredible.
Nathan Nelson — So I share that with you to say that’s just another example of this mindset shift that we need its churches internationally to shift our mindset from, Okay I can get my head around an orphanage, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nathan Nelson — We give money, people… hundreds of kids come. They’re being fed. They’re being taken care of. And those are the statistics we report back home. To shift that mindset and go, Okay, it’s way messier, way more complicated. Not exactly sure how to tell the story ah here. But that’s equipping and empowering families to go and reclaim their God-given role to care for the children in their lives. And and you can share stories like the one that I just shared with you in Rwanda. It’s a beautiful story, but we have to have that mindset shift.
Nathan Nelson — It’s also true that in communities around the world, even at home, believe me at home here in Seattle we have a homelessness crisis that’s just exploding. And you have so many kids who are orphaned, who are vulnerable. And so many parents who are sitting around who would want nothing more than to be able to care for their child. But they’ve been disenfranchised and they don’t have people believing in them that they can do it. And so we need to, as churches, be a part of what I believe is God’s work in the world, whether it’s in Rwanda, in Seattle or whatever you call home, to shift a mindset both on our own behalf and on behalf of the disenfranchised parents we’re talking about that they can care for their kids
Rich Birch — Um, love it. Yeah so good.
Nathan Nelson — And invest in that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love the the focus on family-based care. I think is is critical. I think that’s, you know, you’ve helped us understand that. Let’s loop back to when you talk about then how does… so um, this is probably the prob… or one of the problems with orphanage-based or residential-based care is it’s like easy to get your head around how do we… or it’s easier to get your head around how do how could a short-term experience fit into that? You know how can we… we can feed kids we can do things we can fix walls that are broken. We can paint buildings – all that kind of stuff. Um, So what does a kind of short-term experience look, you know, what does… I liked your language around standing in the back, trying to find mutual transformational experiences. Pull that apart. Help us understand what does that look like for you at Bethany?
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, would love to. It’s been a journey, my friends, let me tell you.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nathan Nelson — But I’m super super proud of the work that we’ve been able to do. And I will say everything I’m about to say is not ah, something I personally claim. It’s not something that I think our church can claim. It has been a collaborative effort between other churches like us who’ve been asking the questions we’re asking today.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — It’s been a collaborative work with our partner organizations for sure. Um, but we’ve landed on ah what we call strategic visits to our global partners. We’ve intentionally rebranded short-term missions for this purpose. In part we want to be honest and clear about what it is. Short-term mission trip is loaded language. People come with so much baggage around and expectations honestly about what that should or shouldn’t be. So we say our trips are strategic. We go for a reason. It’s a visit. We are going to be there for a little bit and then we’re going to leave. It is a visit.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, love it. Love it.
Nathan Nelson — And then to our global partners. So we center our partnership in the name that we use, right?
Rich Birch — So good.
Nathan Nelson — So strategic visits to our global partner. All of our trips like most short-term mission trips range from about a week to ten, twelve days.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Nelson — Um, all of our teams are much smaller. We’re not sending 50 people to the border to you know, paint a house or build something in four days or whatever. We send teams of 5 to 12 people um, annually to our global partners. We’ve found that less is more. Um, this is the right number of people to accomplish the goals that we have. Um otherwise it’s very easy, especially as foreigners, to be an elephant in the China shop. Um, and it’s hard to be learners, to be present in a community, to really um see what God is doing if you’re walking around like an elephant in a China shop. So 5 to 12 people’s been good.
Nathan Nelson — Um, and in the time that we well I should preface by saying we spend about um, 3 to 6 months ah on the front end training our teams preparing them. We use books like When Helping Hurts. I’ve also contributed to a book called Reimagining Short-Term Missions. We use that in our time together. And really what this is about is setting our our hearts and our minds around our core objectives for the trip. And our core objectives, chief among them is to support and encourage the staff of the organization and the ongoing work that they’re doing. Um one of our objectives as well is to leverage the unique gifts and assets of our teams—and this is important—in alignment with the ongoing work of the organization. So I can give some illustrations of how this this may fit.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Nelson — But um and then and then we spend our time in country and then we spend six months meeting once a month after our return.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Nathan Nelson — There’s a couple key events that we do as a church um, that the teams are integral in communicating—I mentioned this notion of ambassadors—about communicating the work that God is doing in Rwanda or in Costa Rica um to the rest of the church. And we asked them to boil that down and say, why does this matter to everyone in the body at Bethany who will never go to this place? Why does it matter? And so they they distill their experience into a kind of a core discipleship theme, and we allow the global church—Rwanda, the church in Costa Rica—to to be our teacher as a whole church and receive this core message, this core theme. And and we frame a church service around it.
Rich Birch — Hmm, that’s cool.
Nathan Nelson — So that’s some of what they do when they return. But our time in country… So you know, ah let me use Rwanda as an example.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Nathan Nelson — When we when we go on our strategic visit to world relief in Rwanda, we are going to do a lot of time spent in the field, we call it. So what we support are church empowerment zones. A church apartment zone essentially is a geographic region in which local churches have been identified and are committed to um, learning from World Relief for how they can impact their local community.
Nathan Nelson — So for World Relief, the local church is literally the means by which community development happens. They are not… they’re a very small staffed organization. They have just enough people on the ground to train pastors and their laity to be the ones who do the work. So they have a holistic approach to development that includes everything from agriculture to orphans and vulnerable children. Ah you know and the whole swath – sanitation, all of those things. But it’s the laity and pastors who are trained to do the work themselves.
Nathan Nelson — So so churches get united around this purpose. Churches who, if you know the story of Rwanda, were literally killing each other in 1994 and the genocide. And now they’re rebuilding their communities together. It’s beautiful. So when we go, we get to bear witness to that. Um and the United States, I don’t know about you, but um, we have something to learn maybe about unity.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — Ah the idea of churches actually working together is pretty radical.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nathan Nelson — And so um, one of the things that we do is is we sort of imagine our teams when they go into the field—um, the region that we partner in is called Musanze—is we get to go and witness all the different programs that World Relief is doing through these local churches. So they have savings groups. We’ll go and we’ll sit and will watch. We’ll participate and we come as Bethany Community Church – the church that supports World Relief that’s supporting you and the work that you’re doing. And we tell that to everybody that we meet. And as soon as we build those bridges they go, Okay, you’re from a church too. You’re supporting this work here. We actually know about you. Because World Relief is very honoring to the people who who donate and and are supporting their work.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — And we get to hear stories. How has this work impacted you. What was the challenges? What’s the success stories of what’s happening now? We pray together, we celebrate what God is doing. And our teams are sort of taking notes. They’re taking photos. They’re doing video. These different things to sort of capture the stories as they go. Um.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nathan Nelson — So we do a lot of that with the different programs with the orphans and vulnerable children programming they have on the ground. And there’s some like after school groups of children that meet together. They learn songs that are about sanitation or, you know, how to prevent malaria and that Jesus loves you, and they’re all sort of mixed and integrated together, and they learn these songs and they’re practical and they’re theological and they’re good. And you know so when we go into it in a context like that, our goal is not to go and you know say okay hey we brought a VBS!
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — We’re going to put it on. It’s going to be awesome.
Rich Birch — Right.
Nathan Nelson — We go and we say, we stand in the back and we say, you know, hey we we support this work. We’re so happy to be here. Thank you for welcoming us. We just would love to meet you and hear a little bit from you and just see kind of how you guys do this thing that you do. And so the kids, they get to tell stories. The staff, they get to be encouraged because because we’re sitting there saying, man, amazing! You guys do this every day of the week; are you kidding me? That’s awesome!
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. So good.
Nathan Nelson — You know? And we pray together. So it’s that, and and what we’re not doing is picking up a kid and asking someone to take my photo with them, right? Um, yeah, one…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Nathan Nelson — …one ah last little piece I’ll mention about that…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Nathan Nelson — …is in in terms of of of leveraging the unique gifts and assets of teams, one of the things with World Relief that we noticed is over about the course of I would say the first seven years that we were partnering together, um doing trips like how I just described, World Relief eventually said—and their staff in Rwanda is all Rwandese—they said, hey, the way that you guys do trips is so different and we really appreciate it. Our staff’s feedback is actually they can’t wait until Bethany comes.
Nathan Nelson — Conversely, there’s a lot of churches that go on mission trips, and I hate to tell you, friends, the organization that you’re going through, they’re not looking forward to you being there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, they’re wincing. Oh no.
Nathan Nelson — [inaudible] work. It’s stressful.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Nelson — They have to mitigate some of the harm that’s happened after you leave. So for World Relief to say so it was super encouraging. And what they said is hey why don’t you guys, your focus has been on our staff. We have a staff retreat every year. Would you want to come and participate?
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Nathan Nelson — That has become a staple of what we do in our trips every year since.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool.
Nathan Nelson — It’s become so popular that other churches who are supporting them in other regions say, hey we want to do that too. So I’ve been able to train and equip other churches like Bethany to go and get to be a part of this staff retreat experience. And in that time is where you really are building that mutually transformative relationship in a deeper way with the same people year in and year out who are exhausted, and called, and passionate about the work that they do. And man, those friendships and relationships, relationship is core but you’re not going to build that kind of relationship in in an hour…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Nelson — …or in a day with a vulnerable kid. Right? That’s not the point. And so that does matter. But it’s right sizing our expectations, putting it in the correct context, and that enables us then um to have had these experiences, which they’ve changed my life. They’ve changed – I know it’s been a huge impact. So anyway I commend that to you all as just a little bit of ah anecdote towards that idea of what it would look like to stand in the back to support and encourage staff of the organization and the ongoing work they are doing on the ground in the context of a long-term partnership.
Rich Birch — So good. This has been great. Um, you’ve actually shared with us, which we’re going to link to in our show notes, a ah resource from Faith to Action Initiative called “Short-Term Missions: Guidance to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children”. I know there are folks that are listening in that are like, gosh we are we’re scratching the surface here. We’re just…this will let you kind of help you take the next step. Talk to us about this resource. What is it? Who would it be good for? I feel like this is the kind of thing that could be hey this would be a good resource to kind of share with our leadership team. Hey let’s talk about this together. Let’s think about what we’re doing on this front. To me one of the things that stood out today from today’s conversation was this idea that 20% of US churches support residential, you know, kids care. That’s 70,000 churches that are potentially funding something that’s harmful for kids, and man, we want to think differently about that. And so help us understand this PDF – how can it help us? Give us a sense of that.
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, you know, this this PDF just seeks to consolidate what is a huge breadth of work…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Nathan Nelson — …around both giving people resources on the frontend, and a toolkit who might say, man, we’ve been supporting a certain kind of care for a long time and we’re interested in at least exploring what it would look like to transition um to something more sustainable. And so with that what I would love to do is commend to you, yes, this PDF and really the organization Faith to Action. They will consult with you as a church. They’ll consult with you as an organization if you want to transition towards supporting family-based care.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Nelson — Um, and I will tell you, offer myself as a resource. in the short-term mission world. You know the work that we support at Bethany is both with orphans and vulnerable children, and really a whole swath of other Christian community development practices. And with that I mentioned the book that I contributed to Reimagining Short-Term Missions. It’s really in alignment with other books like Toxic Charity and When Helping Hurts. And what we’re seeking to do is in the space of [inaudible] orphans and vulnerable children where the stakes are so high, and so so many others that we support in our international kind of mission work as faith-based institutions is bring short-term mission, redeem the opportunity that it can in fact, be hugely transformative. Hugely transformative. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Nathan Nelson — But we need to do it totally differently. And so that’s the point of the book Reimagining Short-Term Missions. Can we reimagine this in such a way that it is nothing less than a tool ah by the Lord to further his kingdom work in the world. May it be so.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s amazing. Great. I love the vision you’ve pitched for us today. You’ve really helped us think about this differently. I really really appreciate that. we’ll link to the book as well in our show notes, friends, so you can just scroll down on your phone there and click on that and pick up 10 copies and read it with your team this ah, this fall. You know, I know lots of this is the time of year where we’re thinking about, well what’s going on this winter with our trips and all that. Or if we’re going away in a few months, this would be a great resource for you as you’re thinking differently, you want to think differently about those experiences. Ah well, Nathan, I really appreciate you being here. aAppreciate you being on today’s episode taking time to be with us, opening our eyes a little bit. If people want to get in touch with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Nathan Nelson — Yeah, man look me up. You can find us at churchbcc.org and just drop me a note directly. My email ah nathann@churchbcc.org – I would love to interface with anybody. I do kind of it’s it’s it’s not formal, but I do consulting with churches and organizations all the time on their short-term mission practices…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Nathan Nelson — …and I’d be more than willing to offer myself as a resource to you.
Rich Birch — So good. That’s really generous of you. I really appreciate you doing that, giving out your email address and offering to help. Thanks so much, Nathan, I really appreciate being on today’s episode. Thanks for being here today.
Nathan Nelson — Yeah.
Engagement Pathway: Greg Curtis & Tommy Carreras on Best Current Practices on Assimilating People at Your Church
Oct 05, 2023
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Greg Curtis and Tommy Carreras. Greg is the Pastor of Guest Engagement at Eastside Christian Church, a multisite church in California, Nevada, and Minnesota. He’s also founder of Climbing the Assimalayas, a website focused on helping churches design an engagement pathway that fosters connection, enables discipleship and accelerates church growth. Tommy is the Head Sherpa at Climbing the Assimilayas.
Since Covid, the majority of churches are struggling even more to live on mission. The breakdown of community over the last several decades translates to a lack of connection, without which we can’t make disciples. Greg and Tommy are here to offer free coaching around building an effective connection strategy for your church to combat the decline in volunteerism and other engagement issues.
Connection precedes discipleship. // No one makes a disciple out of a disconnected person. Jesus told people to follow Him first and then developed disciples. Without connection, it is impossible to make disciples. Therefore, having a clear assimilation system or engagement pathway is crucial for churches. This pathway should help guests become connected serving church family members, involved in small groups or other community activities, and use their gifts to serve and grow.
Volunteer drought. // There is a volunteer drought in many churches after COVID. Think about it and correctly understand the reasons for the volunteer shortage in your church. The four main reasons aren’t because of a fear of COVID now. Rather, people got out of the habit of going to church, they have switched churches, they have dual citizenship between online and in-person services, or a church’s leaders aren’t viewing volunteerism as part of discipleship.
Addressing the volunteer shortage. // To address the deficit, Greg suggests taking a look at the volunteer positions and changing commitment levels. Combine and cross-train among teams such as greeters, first-time guest hosts, and guest central teams. Do an all church recruitment from the stage. Each staff can identify positions they need help with and set goals for recruitment. Develop a volunteer engagement cycle.
Volunteer engagement cycle. // At Eastside they created a volunteer engagement cycle which addresses volunteers recruiting volunteers and volunteer retention as well. It starts with a huddle that includes a meal where staff can communicate vision and changes, plus do training. At the end is a call to action for the church’s leadership development program. After the five weeks of leadership training, participants either do something fun, like a potluck, or they receive a gift from the church. Creating a flywheel for volunteer engagement addresses the “how” questions around recruitment, retention, appreciation and vision casting.
Resources for an engagement pathway. // Greg and Tommy offer a Climbing the Assimilayas online video course to walk church leaders through the process of creating an effective engagement pathway. This six-session program focuses on spiritual formation, assimilation, metrics, processes, and the essential 4 P’s (one place, one program, two placements, two processes). It’s full of downloadable resources and templates that users can plug in and use. And they have also created a community space where participants can ask questions, share ideas, and learn from each other.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am super pumped for today’s conversation. And let me just tell you right up front this reason why. You might not know—I was telling our guests this just as we were getting launched—I do coaching, consulting with churches, and end up on a weekend, you know, at a different church somewhere else, talking about how we can help their churches grow. And oftentimes I find myself parroting what my friend today is says when I’m out and so talking with other churches. Because I think what they have to say to churches is so critically important. And so today I wanted to get them on and really try to wrestle some free coaching and consulting out of them for you in this next half an hour. So you’re going to want to listen because you’re going to have high value. This half an hour is going to really help you.
Rich Birch — So super honored to have my friend, longtime friend, multiple time guest, Greg Curtis, with us, and a new friend, his head Sherpa, Tommy Carreras. Now, for folks that don’t know, Greg is the Pastor of Guest Engagement at an incredible church in California called Eastside. Well, not just in California, but Eastside Christian Church. There are multi-site church with six campuses in California, Nevada and Minnesota, plus online. That’s a whole story in and of itself. It was founded in 1962, and it’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and I would argue because of the great work that they do on assimilation. Tommy is Greg’s head sherpa at Assimilays, Climbing the Assimilayas, which is a ministry and website that that helps and really shares learnings on how to really help build an effective engagement pathway that ultimately accelerate church churches growth. So Tommy is the lead head Sherpa on this or the head Sherpa on all this stuff, and he’s a great leader that you’re going to get to want to get a chance to learn from. Welcome to the show, guys. So glad you’re here. Thanks for being here today.
Greg Curtis — Awesome. It is so great to be here, and it’s great to have Tommy with us too.
Tommy Carreras — It is. Thanks for the invite.
Rich Birch — I’m glad you’re here. Greg, why don’t we start with you? Kind of fill in the picture there. Tell us a little bit about your background and then tell us about how Climbing the Assimilayas, which I love, it’s a great title, how that all fits together. Tell us a little bit about the story for folks that haven’t listened to the past episodes.
Greg Curtis — Yeah, well, when, you know, I grew up at Eastside, was pastor of a church at launch for 27 years, re-merged the churches in 2012 and when I did, I took on this role and got kind of a blank canvas. Just was prayerful and just trying to to design a strategy that, for what I didn’t realize, was going to be for a church that would become the second fastest growing church in the country during the next few years. Greg Curtis — When we combined churches, we were 3200. Seven years later, we were 12,000. So we still have stretch marks on the church from that kind of quick growth. And I was just chasing it with a connection strategy. When we put it together after the first year, we had a little less than 2000 guests identify themselves. And after that first year we had one out of four come into a small group. One out of seven become a volunteer. One out of fourteen cross a border on an international compassion trip. One out of 20 become a leader. And one of the coolest stats was one out of three got baptized. And…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Greg Curtis — …nobody was more surprised than myself and Gene Appel, our senior pastor. But we just continued working and developing really the principles of assimilation that uh, resulted in when people heard about the growth, they would call Gene: Gene, how are you getting people there? And call me: Greg, how are you keeping them there? And it forced me to start thinking more critically about what are the what are the the facets or components of an assimilation system or an engagement pathway, as it’s starting to be called more often now.
Greg Curtis — What are the facets that transcend scale and culture? In other words, it doesn’t matter what size church you are or where in the world it is, what are the common things? And I, I realized it was what I call the four P’s…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — …that there’s one program. I’m sorry I said it. Four P’s. It’s one place you send your guests to, one place only to be welcomed. And exchange may be a welcome gift for their contact info so, you can build the relationship. One place leads to one program, which is a special environment that you create where people can connect and by virtue of just coming, they are automatically in two processes. That’s the third piece, two processes, which is a volunteer placement process and a small group placement process. And that lands them, finally, in two placements. So it’s one place to one program that gets you in two processes that land you in two placements. A small group. And a ministry team. Small group says, I have friends, which means I’m wanted at the church. And a ministry team says, I have a job, which means I’m needed at the church. And being wanted and needed are two sides of the same belonging coin.
Greg Curtis — So the weird thing is I was using Prezi back then to report on this to the staff, that moving thing, and it had a template of Mount Everest with the summit being your goal. And then you shared all those stats like I shared earlier on the way up and I made a dad joke that just said: So basically we’re all Sherpas helping people climb the Assimilayas so that they can connect with God in community. And it got kind of a laugh bigger than it deserved, but it stuck.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Curtis — And and I started really thinking how every church feels like it’s a coast…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — …to connect with them because they’re a friendly church, which really means they’re friendly to each other. And we had to realize that it’s not a coast for people to connect to a new community. It’s always a climb. And every one of them deserves a Sherpa to kind of put a ladder over the chasms and to direct them to the best path for them so that they can reach that summit, a full connection with God in community.
Greg Curtis — So that’s that’s kind of how I ended up because of so many churches literally around the world that I’ve been able to help and and and contextualize, and even learn from them about how the four P’s work in their scale and culture. And so it’s just become something to help churches with so that they’re great at connecting the people God’s bringing to them every weekend.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So good. And Tommy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background. Give us your story and how do you how did you and Greg get connected? How did that how did that magic happen? How did that peanut butter and chocolate thing happen? And you guys are working together. How’s that? How’s that working?
Tommy Carreras — Yeah, yeah. You chose my favorite combination there. Peanut butter and chocolate. Back in 2013, I showed up in Ventura, California, as a worship arts resident, which doesn’t really lead to assimilation, you would think, but oh, it did. So I showed up two year old church plant and just had the time of my life – my wife and I both. She ended up leading the kids ministry and I stayed on not in worship anymore. I realized I loved, I loved the 15, 20 minutes on Sunday, and the rest of it I can’t lead a musician to save my life. And that was fine, but I got to stay also. And so we stayed long term and a couple of years later I had moved into groups and then moved into like I couldn’t get anybody into groups and realized I had to own the part that was before that. So I took over the event that was our assimilation process at the time. It was very standard, very small, not very well thought out yet, but it was something. And I said, can I can I run that? Because I think I need to if I ever want people to do this. And I jumped into that. And then I have no idea how I found Greg, but I heard that there was this thing… No, you know what? It was Chaz Robbins, shout out to Chaz Robbins, I think…
Rich Birch — Ok. Nice.
Tommy Carreras — …might have been. But he told me, Hey, there’s this thing and I’m going to be somewhere near you, going to, you know, Eastside to do this thing on assimilation. I was like, Hey, I run assimilation now; I should go to that. And so I went to it and it was Greg’s very first base camp where he hung out for two days with like 15 of us, maybe from sort of the region. And, well, you know, the guy that told me was from Chicago. So…
Greg Curtis — [inaudible]
Tommy Carreras — Totally. Yeah. So it was a good crowd and we had a blast. And it was the first time, I think, that you were kind of workshopping these things for a church all at once, like the big download. And I realized—a couple of years ago I transitioned away and I’m in Franklin, Tennessee now doing a couple different things—but I started to realize over the course of time that almost every single thing I did, I was quoting Greg somewhere in my explanation for it…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tommy Carreras — …even if it was totally unrelated to assimilation. It was just something that I carried with.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — And so we just stayed friends the whole time. And I kind of boldly one day approached him and said, Hey, can I think Assimilayas is on fire in a good way, but I want to throw gas on it. And I got the space and time and desire, so could we try that together?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tommy Carreras — And that’s kind of where it’s been so far.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well, there’s a lot to unpack here. And I particularly wanted to get you guys on, if I can be honest, I joked about this in the intro. I often find myself talking to churches where I am just, you know, I’ve talked about the four P’s. I’ve pointed people towards your video course. I’ve said, Hey, you know, you really should talk with with Greg and Tommy. They’re they really know this stuff. But, you know, the thing I want to describe here is, I think sometimes we think about assimilation. It’s like it’s like marketing. It’s like it’s like a term that maybe is like it’s a cold term. It’s like, is that is that really what we’re trying to do here? Isn’t it something deeper? And you caught my attention, Greg, when you said, you know, Assimilation, really, it’s about discipleship. It’s about how do we help people ultimately connect with their relationship with Jesus. And it’s as core as that. It’s not it’s not like some kind of, you know, gimmick. It’s at the core of our discipleship process. Unpack that for me. Why why is that true? Why isn’t it just this is just something that big churches should be worrying about? It’s like something that, you know, it’s a it’s a it’s a process that needs to run in the background. But but challenge us on that. Help us think about this from a discipleship point of view.
Greg Curtis — Well, you know, something Carey Nieuwhof often says is that Covid was an accelerator. It just accelerated everything that was already happening. And what was already happening pre-COVID, was that churches were we’re just getting less and less effective at their mission of making disciples.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Curtis — Majority of churches were shrinking and those that were there, it wasn’t really about growing as a follower of Jesus and representing him to the world on mission. It was kind of preserving their brand or their heritage, or or just their their community and relationships. And so what Covid did was accelerate that to such a point is that now the churches that were doing well before are even doing better. But the majority of churches are struggling even more on mission, you know, making a disciple. And here’s here’s the wild thing is that we were already seeing prior to Covid that the, you know, the the world, the stickiness of community had, especially in western culture and especially in the States and especially where I live in SoCal, right? …has broken down to like the average stay in our community in the same house is two and a half years.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Greg Curtis — And so what used to be taken for granted, which is connection and community where everybody grew up in a town where everybody knew each other’s aunts and uncles and grandparents and all that heritage. And, you know, you could take connection for granted a lot in generations past. Well, that day has been long gone.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — And so when there’s not connection, what does that mean for discipleship? Well, here’s what it means. No one has ever made a disciple of an unconnected person.
Greg Curtis — Normally connection precedes discipleship. That is why Jesus said, Follow me. Brought people into connection. And he had concentric circles. The one that we think about the most is the 12. But they didn’t even figure out who he was or begin that journey till about a year and a half into being in that circle. In other words, the connection preceded the discipleship as we know it. There is no discipleship apart from connection.
Greg Curtis — And so if you if your church does not have an assimilation system or an engagement pathway, whatever you want to call it that is really clear, and in my view, based on these four P’s, that that expresses these four P’s in some way, it looks unique, it’s called different things even. You know, there could be a program that is different links one week, four weeks, seven weeks, you know, whatever. They can call their welcome center, whatever they want. They can have, as many of them are one of them or, you know, give away this or that or whatever. But it’s it expresses this in some ways – these the one place, one program, two processes, two placements.
Greg Curtis — The definition of assimilation is the journey of a person God has led to your church as a first time guess for them becoming a connected serving member. And connected means in a small group. Or if you’re a traditional church, maybe a Sunday school class or Bible class. Or if you’re a seeker church, maybe a Wednesday believer service. Whatever is your community, that’s that, so it’s measurable. And serving means they’re serving. They’re a volunteer at your church and they’re using their gifts and what God has given them to that growth. But the big thing that I don’t think people have seen maybe assimilation or connection or doing better at that as kind of a side dish when we just be a little bit more effective if we could do that or make time for it. I’m about ready to say you won’t be effective at all unless you do it.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Greg Curtis — Because connection precedes discipleship.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that is so good.
Tommy Carreras — [inaudible]…all the wrong things.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That that idea, that connection, well it’s true, that idea, that connection precedes discipleship, you know, I think so many times one of the misnomers of large churches, you know, people will say like, oh, like a small I just feel so connected in a small church. That’s just actually not true. That large churches typically do not become large until they nail this thing, until they figure out how do we get people connected, how do we get them to build relationships? And so actually there’s this weird inverse thing – at least this has been my experience. You can feel very connected in a large church because they’ve they’ve had to build an intentional engagement pathway.
Rich Birch — What do you have to think about that? Tommy, kind of expand that a little more, pull that apart.
Tommy Carreras — You know, it’s so interesting too when you say that about big and small. I had a terrible moment, it was a great moment, but looking back created a lot more stress for me. But it was the right stress. We were in a staff meeting at some point and we were experiencing that same kind of rapid growth. I mean, really every year that I was at Mission, we grew 20%…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tommy Carreras —…give or take 1%. And it was just you create a system and then it breaks in half.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — And it was great. I like new things. So it was a lot of fun, but it was stressful. And we were talking about some of this and at one point I just said in a staff meeting, Look, I know, I know we’re trying to keep up and I know it’s hard and I know we’re trying to get more efficient and all that. But look, I just think that we’re going to get it all wrong if we don’t get more personal as we get bigger. And everybody kind of looked at me, I was like, they were like, But but that seems opposite. I said, I know. We have to account for the bigness by getting better at this.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Tommy Carreras — And then I had to go live that out and take charge of it, which was the hard part. But that was that was the right stress to have. And you’re right, bigger the church like often it just means everybody’s working that much harder at helping somebody find their niche. I was in a church recently, to answer your question and frame this up a little bit, I was at a church recently in Baltimore helping them launch a groups ministry, and they were really keyed in on this idea of an engagement pathway. And we had the upside down, you know, the funnel, the upside down triangle picture, and it was on a whiteboard. And we were talking about where these groups fit into that funnel. I said, Hey, you could put groups all the way up top and if you do them right, or you could put them way down here, if you do them right – it’s up to you.
Tommy Carreras — And they said, Well, we’re stressed about and they’re trying to lead a multicultural church. It’s Baltimore. It’s like really, really, really diverse area. And they’re trying to bring all of that together and lead a really healthy multicultural movement. We had this great conversation. And we were talking about how the steps for different types of people, and especially in different cultures, are different at the top of the funnel. And they were worried that like, well, what if people get the wrong view of Jesus and it’s not hard enough? What if Jesus isn’t challenging enough at the top of the funnel? And I sat for a second thought, Well, you’re right. Jesus isn’t challenging enough. He’s not stretching your worldview. He’s not pushing you out of your comfort zone. Tommy Carreras — And I went up and I drew a regular triangle. So the inverse of the engagement pathway and I said, I think it usually works like this. And at the top where the funnel is the largest, it was the smallest, narrowest view of Jesus, and that’s fine. And it was Jesus comes all the way to where I am. And that’s a really good thing to learn right out of the gate. That’s massive, right? Jesus shows up in the place you don’t expect him. That’s the story of Jesus everywhere. But then as you get more securely entrenched and rooted in the family, because that’s what this is, right? If the church is the body of Christ and it’s the family of God, as you get more secure in the family, then your view of Jesus can get wider and wider because the risk of following Jesus requires the relationship of the church. And if we can get that right and challenge more and expand their view of Jesus, then it’s at the bottom of that triangle. They’re going, I can go anywhere. I can be with any type of person, I can do anything and I’ll find Jesus there. Whereas at the top it was Jesus comes to where I am. It’s so easy. He finds me. Yes, he does. And then he says, Why don’t you go over there where you would least expect me, and I guarantee you’ll find me there too. But you need the relationship in the church. You need these fully, like relationally secure experience. And that’s why I think it’s so important because, again, we’ll never get the broader, more expansive, more beautiful view of Jesus if we don’t have the firm rooted belonging inside of the church. Greg Curtis — And speaking of relationships and small church and big church, like you were saying, Rich. People have to get out of their mind that has nothing to do with the size of the church. It’s about the culture.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — Because I had a friend go to a church three weeks in a row of 40 people. 40 people.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Greg Curtis — No one spoke to him.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s terrible.
Greg Curtis — Small churches can be cliquey and impossible to break into…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Curtis — …and that’s that one certainly was. I had somebody meet us at our guest central angry. It was a woman and and her son. They came to visit for the first time. She said, I vowed I would never, ever visit or attend a megachurch. Why do I feel at home my first Sunday? And she said it that way in that tone. Rich Birch — So angry. Greg Curtis — Why do I feel at home? Like I want to know what is it? Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Greg Curtis — At the end of the day, it’s not a you know, you can be anonymous in a big church and on the outside of a clique at a small one…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Curtis — …or you can slide into both of them very easy. And what it is is culture.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — And if you want to change culture, mobilize your volunteers gifting towards the people that God is bringing to your church to help them connect using your unique expression of these four P’s. And I’m telling you, that’s the culture changer.
Rich Birch — Okay, let’s pivot in a different direction. Obviously, same, same conversation helped me with some of my some of my church friends. So I’ll paint a picture for you, Greg, and kind of help me wrestle through what kind of advice, what kind of coaching would you give them.
Rich Birch — So we survived Covid. That was great. We’re still here. The thing is still running. Like, you know, we’re taking in revenue. We have people attending, small groups are going. But like we, you know, when we came back from Covid, it was like we kind of had to tell everybody, hey, can you can you take up more spots on the team? You know, because we had less people come back. And originally it was because, well, people were freaked out about the virus. But we’ve never really been able to refill our teams. We have a volunteer drought. Gosh, I am not sure how to break that. And now we’ve just been running like this. It’s been here we are a year, year and a half later, and we are it’s the same people and they’re burnt out. I’m not sure what to to, how can an effective engagement pathway help me or what help me diagnose what I should be doing? Help me wrestle through that. Talk me through what we should be thinking about.
Greg Curtis — Totally. And by the way, at my church, which historically this has been a real strength of it, we are feeling that same pain. Pre-COVID, 40% of our auditorium attendance every weekend was a volunteer.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Greg Curtis — 40%.
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Greg Curtis — Coming out of Covid, through the beginning and first half of this year, 15%.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Wow. Yeah.
Greg Curtis — Okay. So I am speaking…
Rich Birch — It’s a huge spread. Yeah.
Greg Curtis — Oh, my gosh. Huge. So I’m speaking from the pain point along with all your listeners for sure. I think it’s the first thing to talk about is just to correctly understand the reasons for the volunteer shortage. And it’s no longer because people are afraid of Covid and all that kind of stuff. That we’ve gone past that. The four main reasons are that a lot of your core people got out of the habit of going to church during that time and they haven’t redeveloped it. They just got out of the habit. The second is some of them and they know, switched churches because, you know, everything got polarized and they saw your church going the way that they weren’t and so they went to another church.
Greg Curtis — But one of the big ones is dual citizenship. They are now a dual citizen of your online campus and your physical campus. And because they’re dual citizens, what they do is they they got used to attending church online. So now that that they like coming back, people who were three out of four weeks coming to your physical church or better per month, three out of four, they’re now one out of four. Right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — Because anything that happens. Okay, let’s just watch it at home. Now we can do that. We’ve got used to it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — So they flick back and forth so there’s not that consistency and they don’t want to sign up for for their old volunteer role that makes them, you know, they’re on that regular interval. And another thing in general is that people aren’t seeing the leaders, the staff of the church at large, aren’t seeing volunteerism as discipleship. Back to that topic. Um Jesus brought them into a group and then sent them out and they still were figuring out who he was, you know, sent them out to serve. I am on this podcast with you right now because in fifth grade somebody invited me to play piano for children’s church.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Greg Curtis — I am also, once I came to Eastside when I was 14, I got invited to be in the high school band and to co-teach fifth grade boys with the pastor’s son. The only reason I am a pastor today or talking to you now is because somebody invited me into the game. Because volunteerism isn’t an elite add-on to your discipleship with the idea that discipleship is just about Bible knowledge. Volunteerism is one of the steps in becoming a disciple.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Curtis — And so we have to see that and cast that vision so that people don’t feel like they’re experiencing following Jesus, just sitting in a pew or staying at home and watching it on TV, per se. So once you’ve kind of outlined those, some of those reasons and you get that paradigm in your head, there are some solutions that we have tried that we’re seeing some results from, and I’m coaching other churches to to participate with me and they’re seeing results from.
Greg Curtis — So here’s here’s just four off the top of my head. Some are simple, some are more, more, more elegant. But the first is you can look at your volunteer positions and change some commitment levels. Not you know, it used to be that a lot of volunteer commitments was an every week deal and you just let them know when you’re on vacation. Is it possible that certain ones would do a lot better and you’d get more people signing up if there was a wider rotation? And so we’ve done some of that.
Greg Curtis — Another thing is, and I love this one, combining and cross training. Is that, for instance, in my world guest services, but this could apply to anybody in any department, volunteers. We have a team called first time guest hosts who meet people ahead of the services, give them a tour, do all that kind of stuff. We have Guest Central, which after the service they get their welcome gift and share their contact info. We have a parking lot team. We have greeters, we have info counter, all this kind of stuff, ushers, all that kind of stuff. We we realized, and I’ll give Amy Dickinson, she’s my Anaheim campus Guest Service Director, she came up with this and we all took note and when it went across campus on it. She said, you know, the greeters, the first time guest host, and the guest central people all have the same shape for ministry. You know, their [inaudible] whatever. Let’s cross train them so they know how to do each other’s job.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Greg Curtis — And instead of booking 18 people for service, I can book eight.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — And they’ll do it before and after the service.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — That changed the game. That that took a lot of steam and hardship and burnout out of the equation by just combining the team. She combined those three, for instance, into one new team called the Welcome Team.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — And even though they still have their individual functions, when she schedules them on Planning Center, she can schedule who’s available for which job she needs because they all know each other’s job and they can serve before and after the service instead of just one time because they were just on that one unique team before. I think that that’s a great tactic.
Greg Curtis — Another thing we just did, the third of four, is an all church recruitment, because if you’re suffering like we we have been and like most churches, I talked to post-COVID in the volunteer realm, this is a church wide issue, so it deserves a church-wide response.
Rich Birch — Right. Ok, good.
Greg Curtis — In other words, it’s more than just one department or leave it to the departments. Go recruit more people. You’re on your own. This is a church-wide thing. So the church staff from senior pastor, executive pastor, everybody down to everybody is going to be involved. So every staff identifies which positions they need the most help in and sets goals for the all church recruitment. And you set it up so that everybody that you can publicly say from the stage that you will get a response in 24 hours.
Rich Birch — Wow. Great.
Greg Curtis — When you make sure that we’re all set up to do that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — Jake Barker, our Anaheim campus…
Rich Birch — Even the youth pastor guys, even the youth team, they got to respond within 24 hours?
Greg Curtis — Yes, sir.
Rich Birch — That’s impossible, Greg.
Greg Curtis — But if you have the right database…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Greg Curtis — …you can automate some of the follow up. But it’s got to all be, you know, everybody’s got to be engaged and ready. And so Jake Barker, our Anaheim campus pastor, did a sermon series for 2 or 3 weeks called The Goat, which is The Greatest Of All Time…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — …tying it to when Jesus said, the greatest among you will be your servant. And calling people post-Covid that listen, you were created for this and life is better when you take off the bib and put on the apron. And he did that for two weeks.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Greg Curtis — And when it was done, you could take a card and drop it in a box about what area you want to get, you know, trying to to get plugged in. And we had stations for personal conversations where people on iPads could talk with you about where to get started. Now, we got we added under a little under 300 in like two weekends. And 24% of them were placed in two weeks in their role, fully.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Greg Curtis — The goal is to get at least 50%. It was less than a month ago and our goal is to get 50% by that month. And you might say, Greg, why only 50%? When you do an all church recruitment, you get people motivated in the moment…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Greg Curtis — …but may not be following. So if you get half of them plugged in, that’s awesome.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s huge.
Greg Curtis — But the last thing has to do with volunteers recruiting volunteers and volunteers being retained as well. And that is developing a volunteer engagement cycle. I do a lot of coaching on this now, but in short, the idea of it is, and it’s really a flywheel, to use your word, Rich. And that’s one word I borrow from you a lot that you planted in my head. So back, back to…
Rich Birch — I’ll let you take it. It’s fine.
Greg Curtis — …I’m big on automating things…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Curtis — …so that I don’t have to think about it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis — And so we created a volunteer engagement cycle that starts off with a huddle surrounding a meal where you envision, communicate changes, do some training. You can even have breakouts. And then at the end of it we always ask the same question: Who wants to grow in leadership? And then whatever your church’s leadership development program is… if you go to my church—eastside.com/peopledevelopment—you’ll see a four minute video that explains it and see all of our prep mods for for every level of leadership, every department.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — So you can take a look at those. But we just invite people to those prep months and then it’s a five week thing for whatever level of leadership that they signed up for. And then at the end of the cycle, we have leaders take their teams on a potluck or do something fun to build community. Or we pass out a gift every year for appreciation. And so what we do is we go through that cycle every six months. So the one that ends in summer is the one where you have like a social gathering with your team. And the one that ends around Christmas, that’s when we, through our leaders, pass out a gift that the church bought for all the volunteers to just say, we love you.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — But by doing that cycle of a huddle, leadership prep mods, and then a a hangout or an appreciation gift, go through that in two six-month cycles, we never have to ask the question, how do we envision our volunteers?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Greg Curtis — How do we get our volunteers to recruit their friends? How do we get them to know about this change? How do we we show appreciation to them? How do we, how do we, how do we, how do we. And I’m telling you, it’s all built in because those dates we always do the same dates, the same month, same week of the same month every year. And it’s just a powerful, powerful way of creating not just a place to serve, but a community to belong in that people will invite other people into because they love it so much.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — And they take they take care of each other.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. I’m glad you mentioned the prep mods and the people development site. That’s a fantastic resource and we’ll link to it in the in the show notes. Like that alone is gold. Like man, I don’t know, churches, it’s simple, it’s straightforward. It’s not not rocket science, but man, if you could pull that kind of thing together, that would be fantastic. That is, that is so good.
Rich Birch — So I want to just lean in on one thing you said, which so you’ve given some examples of this, but just pull it apart a little bit more, which is this whole idea of volunteerism being key to the discipleship process. And you know that we sometimes don’t see it that way. We see it as like it’s we it’s like we think, man, if we could just not have volunteers, the church would be so much better. Like we see it as just like it’s like a sideline thing. How are churches, how can we make the volunteer experience, the serving experience, a more enhanced discipleship experience, Not just people show up and we get something from them. We get free labor from them. How do we make it so it’s a developmental discipleship experience? How do we how can we inject that? You know, Greg, why don’t you give us just another example, maybe another peek into that thinking a little bit?
Greg Curtis — Well, one of the things I do in my video course, and we do it with our guests at church, we actually have a video that they watch. It explains um, their journey, spiritual formation in terms of these kind of milestones which they start longing for God, they start relating with someone who knows Him that God puts in their path. They start hearing their issues put in biblical spiritual terms. And by virtue that they start professing a faith even when they don’t know it’s that’s what they’re doing. They get immersed in it, many times baptized. They start connecting the dots and connecting with new community. And then they’re invited to serve. It’s like when a kid in a family says, Dad, can I help you fix the car? And he hands him a wrench. And what they feel like when they realize they can contribute and then they start before they know it becoming a leader, meaning influencer. So they’re the person now who’s relating with the person who was longing at the beginning, you know. And then they start seeing Jesus reproduced just through those relationships, through their lives, and then they become more and more like Jesus, and then they get disillusioned and broken. And then the cycle begins again with a new arena.
Greg Curtis — But but what’s awesome about that is that literally when somebody becomes like Jesus, Jesus, one of his main things he said, the greatest among you will be your servant. So how can anyone grow to be like Jesus, who said I came not, you know, not to lord over anybody, but to serve? How can we call it discipleship if service—if we know service is part of your journey when any of us talk about it as far as our own spiritual formation—but if if Jesus said the greatest among you will be your servant and I came to serve, how can we even call ourselves a follower of Jesus, much less any disciple at all, if serving (which is is a the church was a volunteer enterprise in the first century)…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis —…you know, if we’re not doing that, it’s we’re not being a disciple. We’re not being disciple, period.
Rich Birch — Right, Right. Okay. This has been fantastic. Listen, I we like to try to keep these episodes somewhere around half an hour. We’re going long because it’s super important. But I want to push even further. And there’s so much we could talk about. There’s so many different ways that there’s so much we could do on this front. I’m shooting from the hip here, Greg. What percentage of churches do you think in America should improve their engagement pathway? Like is it is this a problem that’s like, you know, maybe 10% of churches? Or do you think it’s like the vast majority of churches? What, just just round numbers – what what do you think? How many out there, you know, that if you were to walk in and say, hey, we could offer you some help, what percentage of those do you think you could offer help to?
Greg Curtis — At least 99%.
Rich Birch — Oh, wow. That’s a that’s amazing. Which would agree. This is one of those areas. Unpack that a little bit more. What do you think about that?
Greg Curtis — The average church prior to Covid—I don’t have a current stat, but I bet it’s much worse—was connecting only one out of 19 people who showed up at their church.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Greg Curtis — You know, we’re it’s always goes in and out of being a challenge for us, and we really put a lot of prayer and intentionality into our…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Curtis — …you know, system and our pathway. So the gold standard to me comes from the parable of the soils. Not everybody is going to be equally receptive, but we should at the end of the day, it should average out to connecting one out of four.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Wow. Which is amazing.
Greg Curtis — I don’t know a church, including my own, that regularly or in many cases even comes close to that that vision.
Tommy Carreras — That’s how, you know, it’s a real gold standard when the one touting the gold standard is actively saying, and we don’t have that right now.
Rich Birch — And we’re not there yet. Yeah, yeah.
Tommy Carreras — And we’ve got to keep the pressure on. I think the reality is that it’s really that 100%, because if we’re not pushing it a little bit further than we’re actually drifting away from it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — And if it really is a discipleship goal and what we’re doing is creating capacity for discipleship, because engagement really is creating space for discipleship to happen. If we’re not doing that, then we’re just either saying no to people or we’re saying no to the people that we have. Like nah, you just can’t have more of this. We’re not going to help you get any further. And that doesn’t seem like what we’re trying to do. And it’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — I think volunteering, especially the idea of volunteer recruitment, is as such a crucial piece of this. Often it feels like, okay, we dialed in the roles… until like, you know, two weeks from now when maybe you should change something. Probably not that often, but it just always deserves changes.
Greg Curtis — Including the standards by which somebody can serve, because you need to have a minimum of 20% of your volunteer positions that somebody who doesn’t even believe in Jesus can do.
Tommy Carreras — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Curtis —And would be invited to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — Because well, even…Yeah. And values are more caught than taught. We all know that because we all tell our kids to do what we say and not what we do. But realistically, if we want to teach people about Jesus, we should get them serving like Jesus before we try and tell them how to believe about Jesus.
Rich Birch — Right. Belong before…
Tommy Carreras — Because yeah, you’ll actually you’ll actually start understanding him better and putting words to the character of Jesus. If you’re already acting like him and being taught to act like. And that’s how we teach kids too. We tell them to do certain things and then we actually fill in the details later. And flipping that, getting people serving before they’re ready, before they’re equipped, it actually puts the pressure on us to make sure they’re ready and equip them, but it also lets us teach them about Jesus in an active way, not just an informational way.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Because they’re never going to get the picture if it’s all informational.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, I’d love to pivot in this direction. So there are 4- or 5000 people listening in. If 90% of them need to improve, which is or 99% of them need to improve, man, that’s a huge number. And and they all need to jump on it. And there’s only 52 weekends in the year. There’s only two of you. So you could maybe talk to 100 churches a year. But you guys have gone to the effort of putting together a great video course that I really do hope that, you know, all those 4000 leaders, or at least the churches they’re a part of, buy and engage with. I can’t believe how inexpensive this thing is for the amount of effort that you’ve put in on it. I can’t believe how much value you’ve packed into this thing. I have…and I’ve, you know, they know this. This is one of those things I’ve recommended to other people when they’re not on the podcast. I just I really do think it makes a huge difference. Tommy, unpack, you guys have recently made some changes to the the online course. You’ve kind of improved it, made some differences to it. Kind of walk that through, talk us through what have you changed about the the course?
Greg Curtis — And real quick before Tommy shares the changes because he was really instrumental in that. Just what it is…
Tommy Carreras — Yes.
Greg Curtis — …it’s a six session, 30 to 40 minute session, but with discussion questions to bring with your staff or your volunteer team.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Curtis — You know, in six sessions, almost like a small group, you can do that or you can make it a retreat for your staff, whatever. But it covers it’s in six sessions session. One is the role of spiritual formation and assimilation, and the four P’s. Session two is metrics and and processes and how to do that. Then each one is one of the four P’s. One on on your one place, your one program, your your volunteer placement process, and the last one on your small group placement process.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — And it ties in with our free giveaway that anybody to to our website Assimilayas.com will get a checklist for each of those four P’s and that’s free and it coincides with that. So literally you can hand pages of that out to different people who are doing the course with you. What we’ve been doing it that way for a few years, but then Tommy came and added value like incredibly so. Tommy, tell them, tell them what’s attached to it.
Tommy Carreras — Yeah, well, you know, one of the first things that Greg told me was happening was that everybody that was doing the video course was moving so fast toward implementation, because that’s what it’s all about. What I’ve loved about it is that it’s not like, here’s all the theories and here’s all the hypotheticals and here’s all the concepts. It is if you want to implement this thing, here’s the game plan. And that’s what I love about it. And so it’s it’s so strategic and down to earth and all that and it’s easily, easily implementable that he was having all these conversations with people, not to clarify things, not to, you know, fill out information that wasn’t there. But people would say, hey, okay, so I’m doing this thing. We’re launching it in two weeks, but I got to get some eyes on it. Or what did you do for this? Because I’m all the way into the weeds now because we’re doing this thing. So like, can you check this for me? Or can you send me that document? Or can I just need an example…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — …I got to convince somebody, but show me the example. And it was all this in the weeds talk. And so what we kind of wanted to do was create some more opportunity for in the weeds talk. But also the people doing these things are amazing. And they’re teaching me stuff that I didn’t know, they’re teaching Greg stuff that he didn’t know about his own system, because they’re just putting it into action in totally new context and just…
RIch Birch — Right, different context for sharing it.
Tommy Carreras — …rocking it, and it’s amazing. So we wanted to create a space for people to share that kind of stuff and learn from each other, and where we could so easily engage not just with a person at a time, but therefore with anybody at a time. So we created a community space alongside the course that you get access to. And then that is where people can chime in, ask questions, we’re on there, and they’re swapping ideas back and forth. And it’s a really fun and and more and more active place now that we started it. And then we also just changed out the course so that it was full of all those things that Greg kept sharing on Google Drive with anybody that asked. I was like, Hey, let’s just let’s skip that step and just put it all there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tommy Carreras — And so like there’s 20-something downloadable resources and we just wanted to flesh it out with all the in the weeds stuff because everybody was getting to the weeds pretty quickly…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tommy Carreras — …because it’s all built for implementing as soon as possible.
Greg Curtis — Yeah. And to bullet point that, I mean he added 20 plus documents, templates, resources like job description, you know, all of this stuff that people ask us for when they’re done with the course. Well, now it’s just there for, for you to use.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Curtis — Three months free access to that Sherpa coaching community and people are taking advantage of that and that’s awesome. We also throw in a free one-on-one coaching session for their team.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Greg Curtis — And yeah, so we added a lot of value to it. So I’m pretty excited about all the new people this year since we’ve rereleased it that are just jumping on it, using it, and just sharing the… I just get emails that I cannot believe if my heart wants to burst at what what people are saying it’s doing for their church
Rich Birch — It’s so great. Again, I think this is a great tool. I love everything that you’ve added to it. I think, you know, I have friends, churches that I’ve worked with that are engaging with you guys and they’ve said the same thing, Man, this is so helpful. And it’s not fluff. It’s not just like big ideas. It’s like super practical , put into place. You know, the people who are quick to apply who say, Hey, I want to just like take this stuff and make a difference in my church, you’ve given them what they need, which is is fantastic, on an area that we all need to improve upon. So I just think this is fantastic. We’d love people to go and pick to purchase it, to join, get their teams plugged in. Where do we want to send them online to actually purchase the course? It’s just at your website? Where is that?
Tommy Carreras — Yeah. Well, I mean. Well, let’s let’s make a we’ll make a page on the website just for unSeminary listeners. And I’m pretty sure Greg’s okay with this, but we’ll do 20% coupon just to…
Greg Curtis — 20%.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tommy Carreras — He’s usually okay with generosity.
Rich Birch — Come on.
Tommy Carreras — Just because we want to make it want to make it really simple. Now I now have to pay him the 20%.
Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly.
Tommy Carreras — No, but we’ll make a page. I’m sure you can link it, but it’ll be assimilayas.com/unseminary. We’ll put the coupon code there, and your face and a really nice quote, Rich. And you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. We’ll definitely do that for sure. That’s great. We’ll link to that. So if you just look down, you know, in this show notes, you’ll see the link there. Just click on that and, you know, take action, friends. Like it’s, you know, it’s a great course. You know, you’ve you’ve lasted this long in the conversation. You’re definitely interested in it. We would love for you to to pick this up and what a generous offer. Thank you so much for that – 20% just for listening in. And friends, you’re making money on the podcast today. You know, that definitely costs you more than what it what it cost you to get on that to listen to it today. So what a great a great thing for that. And all those extra resources. I know for me when I purchase online courses, that’s the stuff I love is the like let’s jump in on the templates, give me the stuff that I can apply right away. You know, just put it right. It just, you know, find and replace, put my name on it, put my, you know, my church’s name right in there. Super helpful. That’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Again, Greg, this is I think you’re definitely you’re right up there with Warren Bird, with the repeat guest. You’ve come on many times and every time you come, you just always have so many good things to say. So let’s have you have the last word. Any last word is we kind of wrap up today’s episode? What would you say to folks that are listening and that are thinking about these issues?
Greg Curtis — Just to remember that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And uh you won’t grow your church—and I say this from detailed data and experience in traveling the world of every size church—that you’re not going to grow your church through your next outreach event or whatever. You’ll have those, and a lot of people may come, but your church isn’t going to grow necessarily from that. A very, like one out of 17 churches actually see growth from their outreach strategies if they’re doing four outreach strategies or events per year. Okay? It’s amazing what those are the birds out in the bush that we always try to get.
Greg Curtis — But the one that’s that’s worth more is the one in your hand. That’s the guest that God has led to your church this Sunday, last Sunday, and is going to again this Sunday. That’s the one to connect. And when you connect all of those, your church will grow in number. And and if you see this as part of the disciple-making process, it will grow in depth as well.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, I appreciate you guys being here today. Tommy, give us that website again where we want to send people and we’ll we’ll wrap up today’s call.
Tommy Carreras — Yeah, we’ll make it assimilayas.com/unseminary.
Rich Birch — Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for taking time to to help our listeners.
Greg Curtis — You’re welcome.
Tommy Carreras — Thanks, Rich.
Transforming Team Culture: Karen Berge’s Insider View on the Shift from Unhealthy to Thriving
Sep 28, 2023
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Karen Berge, the Executive Pastor of Ministry at Flatirons Community Church. They are one of the fastest growing churches in the country with five physical campuses in Colorado as well as church online.
Many churches are able to say there are good things happening there. God is moving, people are coming to the Lord, and lives are being changed. But in the tyranny of the urgent, have you discovered that things might not be so great on your own staff team? Karen is here to share Flatirons’ story of growth and how they addressed an unhealthy team culture that had developed.
The tyranny of the urgent. // Flatirons Community Church is located in one of the least religious parts of the country yet attracts a unique mix of people who are unchurched or have experienced church hurt. The church has seen consistent growth over the years, which comes with its own set of challenges. During the early years of rapid growth, the focus was on dealing with urgent matters, such as like setting up chairs, expanding space, and addressing complex pastoral care situations, rather than developing processes and systems.
Focus on heart issues first. // The lack of structure led to significant organizational challenges, such as poor communication, a lack of clarity and direction within the organization, and an unhealthy team culture. Recognizing the need for change, the entire organization underwent a period of evaluation and reflection. During these types of situations it’s critical to address the heart issues before tackling the tactical aspects of improving the culture. The lead pastor stepped forward to meet with each staff member and addressed any hurts and misunderstandings so the team could move forward.
Take time to build trust. // Building trust among the leadership team was another critical step to bring about positive change. Open communication, valuing each team member’s input, and supporting one another were key to this process and had to happen before they moved forward to help the rest of the staff. The leadership also sought input from strategic outsiders to guide them through the process while staying true to the church’s mission and heart.
Develop staff values. // To align the rest of the team and codify the changes, the Flatirons staff focused on developing staff values. No one knew what was really expected of them, how to interact with each other, how to do their job, what is important, and what are the deal breakers. The team thought about what someone from the outside would think if they looked at the staff. In the end they identified core values that were already inherent in who they were, aspirational values, and then unintentional values that needed to change.
Seven values. // The staff values of Flatirons have had a significant impact on the church’s culture and serve as a filter for decision-making. They remind the staff that everything they do should align with the mission of bringing the awesome life of Christ to people in a lost and broken world. All seven of the staff values also work together in a beautiful way to remind the staff of who they are and how they do ministry together. Ultimately the purpose of having a healthy staff and culture is not just for the sake of a positive work environment, but to effectively serve the congregation and fulfill the church’s mission in the community.
You can learn more about Flatirons Community Church and reach out to Karen at www.flatironschurch.com.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. It’s going to be a great conversation, really looking forward to this, been looking forward to this for a while. We have the honor of have Karen Berge with us. She is the executive pastor of ministry at Flatirons Community Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. They have, if I’m counting right, five physical campuses in Colorado and plus church online. And listen, friends, Colorado is a fantastic place, but one of the things about Colorado, it’s one of the most non-religious areas in the country. It’s the kind of place, frankly, people do not wake up on a Sunday morning and say, hey I should go to church today. And Flatirons is thriving there and this is why I love pointing people towards ah towards Karen, towards the ministry at Flatirons. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Karen Berge — Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we’ve had Jesse DeYoung on in the past and I just love love your ministry and ah and it’s an honor that you would take some time to be with us today. Why don’t you kind of fill out the picture for folks that were listening in that maybe don’t know about Flatirons and then tell us about your role.
Karen Berge — Yeah, but happy to do that. Um Flatirons is, as you said, we’re in Colorado. Um beyond even being in Colorado, we’re in Boulder County East Boulder County…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …which if you say Colorado is not necessarily ah the buckle of the bible belt, certainly Boulder County is the the pinnacle of the…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Karen Berge — …the unchurched. We don’t get up and go to church. We get up and go to the mountains…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Karen Berge — …or go skiing or whatever. Um, so we’re in this spot where it um, there’s a lot of I would say unchurched, not interested in in God, not particularly interested in the bible. Also ah, dechurched. A lot of the folks that are part of Flatirons were part of a church, have been in a church, have suffered church hurt. Um, but it’s it’s this weird collection of of folks who on the surface you might look and go I never thought I would see them walk through the doors of a church. And those are our people. That’s that’s what we do. That’s how we do ministry. And and it’s great. Honestly I wouldn’t do it any other way.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. And tell us about your role, Executive Pastor of Ministries; give give us a sense of what that frames up, how you spend your days.
Karen Berge — Yeah, I’m actually we we shift things a little bit. I am Executive Pastor of Campuses…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Karen Berge — …which is sort of a um, when you have multisite most people who are involved in multisite would know this, um, there’s the ministry piece and there’s the operational piece of campuses. So I work with our campus pastors directly, some of our operational central services, and then um, our ministry leads for students, kids, and ah community connections groups, spiritual formation. We sort of work together around what happens at campuses and how that’s aligned. So I spend a lot of time thinking about how are we all Flatirons, but how are we distinctly campuses as well. So it’s it’s kind of what it looks like.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. I love talking to executive pastors. That’s my own background. The thing I love about it is every Executive Pastor role looks a little different.
Karen Berge — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, there just there’s they’re not it’s why it’s always good to get clarity on that. Well, you know Flatirons is is a great church for a lot of different reasons. One of the interesting things about your church is ah you’re consistently fast growing. There’s a lot of churches that will end up being fast-growing maybe for a year or two, but that is not the story of Flatirons. It’s like, man, God just continues to bless your ministry, continues to bring people to it, and people stick and stay. And that’s like over an extended period of time. I wonder if you could give us a sense of what is that like on the inside. I know we look at that on the outside and we’re like that’s just all good news. It’s all fun. But I’m sure I know obviously say that tongue in cheek. There’s a lot of tension, a lot of stress, a lot of um, it can be tough leading within that kind of environment. I wonder if you can kind of tell us that story a little bit.
Karen Berge — Yeah, it’s um, the interesting thing for me was I was a part of the church as an attender—we don’t really do membership but it’s the easiest thing for people to understand—before I took a position on staff. So Flatirons was my home church 20 years ago, 21 years ago when I found it. Um and it was, like you said, it was crazy. We I started attending, we were in an old carpet store, and within a couple of months had moved into just down the block into what was actually a feed store, like a ranch feed store that we remodeled.
Rich Birch — Upgrade from carpet to feed.
Karen Berge — Yeah. Yeah, we are not we are not proud at all. We’re will we’ll meet anywhere. It doesn’t really matter. Um…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Karen Berge — …but we moved into this this bigger space that we thought was going to be it take years to fill it up. It’ll take forever to to get people in all the seats. And it things just continue to roll. It has been a fast growing place, always. I would say with the arrival of a new lead pastor things really ramped up. When when Jim came on board as the lead pastor we saw there were years where we were seeing 20, 25% growth year over year.
Karen Berge — And so what happens then at that point I’m on staff you’re just um, you’re just surviving. You’re thriving, but you’re surviving. You’re certainly not working on processes and systems in the background. You’re not writing staff handbooks at that point. Um, you’re just yelling at people to move chairs around and knock walls down…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Karen Berge — …get some speakers out on the sidewalk so people sitting on the sidewalk can hear.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Karen Berge — Um and in our case, put ah heaters on the sidewalk because it’s a little too cold in the wintertime. We’ve actually done that that’s a real thing. So um.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow, wow.
Karen Berge — So it’s um I when I I say sometimes that we we function kind of tyranny of the urgent, but that really is a little bit what it is. All week long you’re thinking about, hey Sunday is coming. Um, do we have enough chairs? Do we have enough space for kids to show up., you know? Are we going to… it’s crazy. And at the same time because we’re this church of um, ah a different kind of congregation I would I would say than what you might see in a more in a more bible belt location or in the south, um, you’re you’re getting calls and you’re dealing with things that are just…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Karen Berge — …in some cases things you never thought you’d have to talk about, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. Complex pastoral care situations.
Karen Berge — Yeah. Yeah, very much so. It’s heavy emotionally, spiritually. And you’re you’re like just making space for people week after week.
Rich Birch — Totally, totally. Yeah.
Karen Berge — So it’s it’s nutty. It’s a different kind of stress. I mean all, there’s stress in all ministry. Um, but it was it was crazy. And in the best possible way.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — I think it was so exciting that the staff was like, we’re just gonna do it. We don’t care. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Bring it on.
Karen Berge — Next.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love that.
Karen Berge — Exactly.
Rich Birch — Well I think you know, but you might be listening in listeners say like that’s not my church I’m not sure I’ve got stuff to learn. Well you absolutely do because all of our churches, the thing I love that you touched on there for us, Karen, is this tyranny of the urgent. That, you know, we I was joking with some church leaders just last week, I said, you know, the thing about Sundays is they come around with uncanny regularity. It’s like we’re constantly bombarded with oh my… and that’s true whether you’re a church of, you know, 500, 5000, 15,000 – they just they it is constantly coming at us. And we’ve got to push back and figure out not how do we just work in it, but how do we work on it. And I want to really pull that apart and understand what’s happened at Flatirons on that, you know, from that point of view. Maybe help us understand that; pull us tell us a bit of the story of how you how as a team you were able to shift from that and being able to, you know, kind of fight back against the tyranny of the urgent and actually try to take some steps forward. What were some of those those initial steps that start to think, hmmm we’ve got to do something different.
Karen Berge — Yeah, um I would say ah we’ve always had a staff over the years, even back in the days of just craziness that um, loved Jesus and were body, and and loved specifically the mission of Flatirons that we’re gonna even in mission partners around the world we’re going to go places where nobody else wants to go. We’ll do the hard stuff. That’s always been kind of the vibe and the mojo. And our staff were always bought into that. That’s why they wanted to be a part of Flatirons.
Karen Berge — Um I think that we in the in the running hard and fast and just trying to make sure we could accommodate the people that were showing up, um, we were also we had this vibe of anti-corporate. We don’t want to we don’t want almost like do not use the word system. Do not use the word process.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — And if you did, you’d get jeered out of the room, you know. So we don’t want to be corporate.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Karen Berge — We’re we’re Jesus we’re meeting people where they are, and we’re we’re meeting people that have had church hurt. So it came out of a good place that idea of um, we don’t want a lot of a lot of religious stuff that isn’t going to change anybody’s life and is just going to impede them for really understanding who Jesus is.
Karen Berge — So um, that’s great. The the sentiment behind that is great. What happened for us was we found ourselves, you can operate like that I think when you’re a small staff. Um when I took a position on staff initially I think there were 30 of us or so… 25, 30 people on staff. Every meeting we had everybody was in it pretty much…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …sitting around a table. Um, and then you start this growth path over a number of years. Um, and by 2019 we had 165 people on staff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — Um and we did not have—this is just an example—but we did not have an application for employment until 2018.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Karen Berge — So there’s all these years of craziness and of adding you know 4X the number of staff that you have, um and you’re just doing it however, you think is the best way to do it…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Karen Berge — …because we haven’t put anything in place to sort of scaffold all of those things that you need to do. So what happened was we’re growing, growing, growing and and maybe the people in the seats attending wouldn’t have known some of this, I think that your culture it leaks out and eventually the people attending your church, they they do know if there are struggles. Um but we looked up and realized we’re we’re in a really rough spot. We’ve got some real unhealth. Our communication was horrible between leadership and staff, and through throughout the staff.
Karen Berge — Um I think um, our leaders at the top of the of the organization were carrying things that they really shouldn’t have been carrying. They were making decisions way down in the weeds and that just impedes you from doing what you’re called to do and what you’re really gifted to do. So for us, um, there was there was a kind of a screeching halt. The brakes go on, lead pastor goes on sabbatical. Um and and it was and it he it wasn’t he’s unhealthy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — We, the whole organization, was unhealthy. And I think those of us in a leadership role, we I certainly knew—I’ll speak for myself—that our staff was just it it needed some help. Um.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — And they were all great individually. It wasn’t that we had bad people. Um, we just had not ever taken the time to go, how are we doing this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — I think more importantly, who are we? Who do we want to be…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Karen Berge — …in the staff? When people look at us, what should they be able to see about who we are? So we we kind of hit a brick wall.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about that. I I um I think an interesting insight, right? You come to a point where you say, hey the whole organization is unhealthy. The thing you know the way we’re ah the way we do life together just isn’t isn’t positive. And you know, I think there’s that’s an interesting tension we can find is that in the doing of what God has called us to do, sometimes um, you know and that can be really good, the outcomes can be great. Obviously people were coming to the Lord, people were getting baptized, good things were happening in people’s lives. They were being changed. But then we looked at our own team and said, oh things were not great there. What were some of those telltale signs from your perspective? You looked around and said, ooh this just doesn’t seem right. This doesn’t seem to be fitting well.
Karen Berge — Yeah, I think um, we were a very relational staff. We still are. There’s nothing there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re very relational. Um, but without anybody understanding or having clarity around, how do you get things done here? How do you get something approved that you want to do? How do you get an answer to a question?
Karen Berge — How do you get to start an initiative? When you don’t know how to do that we wound up in the spot where I think everybody believed that the way that you make things happen is to make sure you have access to the guy at the top.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — Make sure you have access to the lead pastor. Um, take your thing to him, get him to like it and approve it. And so there’s this weird jockeying for position and jockeying for influence. Um, and at the same time. One of the other things that really was alarming to me was I think we had fallen into this habit of um, we didn’t have any any real lines of communication that we had sort of clarified to staff: this is healthy; this is how we want you to approach communicating with each other or resolving conflict or um, having a face-to-face conversation when, you know, something is wrong. So everything was sideways. All of the communication was sideways. Um, people would talk around each other as opposed to um, that whole Matthew 18. I’m I’m gonna this is there’s something going on here and I’m going to go and speak to my brother or sister and I’m gonna figure out what it is. Um, we we didn’t really I didn’t see any of that. Um, and.
Karen Berge — I would say we were very much ministries were separate. You you didn’t in a lot of cases you didn’t know anybody in in a ministry…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …that was not yours…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …or at least outside of a ministry that you had day-to-day contact with.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — And what that does is it leads to when things are not going well, it’s very easy to vilify because you don’t know them. They’re not at…
Rich Birch — I I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Karen Berge — I know nobody’s experienced that just ah…
Rich Birch — Ah yeah, that never happens in any church.
Karen Berge — Right. Um, and so of course that’s what happens…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Karen Berge — …it becomes ah um, they they you dehumanize people a little bit and and it’s ah I feel like they’re not working as many hours as I’m working. I don’t think that team’s job is as hard as mine. That is a telltale sign.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Karen Berge — When everybody lives in this the space of we’re we’re the ugly stepchild.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — We don’t get the resources we need. Everybody else does.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — So there are a few things, but those are I those are the top ones.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like that insight around just there at the end too of like teams thinking, hey we’re the ones they were the only ones that are really working here. You know, which just isn’t true. We know that.
Karen Berge — Right.
Rich Birch — So when when you when it came to kind of turning the culture around and improving things, you know, there’s maybe two ends of the spectrum. One is like mission/vision/values, like big picture ideas. Like I joke with my my lead pastor friends like their answer to every problem is get in front of somebody and preach. There’s like the big idea thing. And then there’s like the tactics hey we’ve got to solve agendas for meetings…
Karen Berge — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and proper communication lines and… Which of those… was it both/and that you worked on, or is, you know, did one come before the other?
Karen Berge — No.
Rich Birch — Is is there, you know, kind of advice you’d give us on and from your experience kind of which of those did you tackle first, or you know that kind of thing? Give me a sense of that.
Karen Berge — Yeah, that’s a really great great question. Um I think that it’s both, but I would say um, looking at looking at how it played out for us, certainly it started at at the very top and was that we had to address some of the heart issues first before we addressed the tactical pieces. And 100% we could not have gone there we couldn’t have gotten to any semblance of health without the the lead pastor stepping back onto staff with a posture of I’m going to meet with every single person on the staff. I’m going to address um, whatever the hurts are whatever the misunderstandings are. So that whole idea of leaders go first, um I think we saw that and we experienced that and it laid the groundwork for us to be able to then to dig in and do some um, still still heart work with our staff as well.
Karen Berge — Ah but to answer your question more specifically, one of the things we realized was um that we needed—I mean, I could be wrong; you can correct me if I’m wrong—mostly pastors that are gifted communicators and visionaries and and are God is leading them, the Holy Spirit is directing them to this is where I want you to take this body, um, they’re usually not gifted in the tactical day-to-day um…
Rich Birch — Right. No, that’s true.
Karen Berge — …integrating all that needs to be integrated. And so but we had somebody that could do that. We just didn’t have the structure set up in a way that lent itself to them both functioning well that way. So one of the first things we did after our senior pastor came back in and really sort of led the way in, hey here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna fix this and we’re gonna we’re gonna start at the root of it um, was change the leadership org structure so that we had somebody, Jesse, who you mentioned—our executive lead pastor—really integrating and leading the charge on the tactical pieces the day-to-day um, so that our senior pastor could do what what God had gifted it and called him to do in the first place. Um, and our our lack of health and our lack of focus on how are we doing this? had just gotten us to a place where he was having to do everything.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Karen Berge — Um and it honestly it got us to brokenness. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I’d I’d encourage folks to take a listen to ah so Jim and Jesse were on Carey Nieuwhof’s podcast, episode 515. The title of that is The Anatomy of Toxic Church Leadership: Church Growth and Identity and How Leadership Crushes You. That’s a very encouraging title for episode, but it’s a great episode really talking through the inside of exactly the transition we’re talking about here. It’s well worth your hour plus time to listen to that. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes.
Rich Birch — So from there I get that there’s like this alignment issues. We kind of get some of that core stuff aligned well, which is great. Um, what were some of those next steps that or and maybe it’s even things that today you look back and say, wow that has real positive impact in our culture. Those things that continue to resonate that help kind of keep us aligned, keep us pushing in the same direction. What would be some of those steps that were taken as a church?
Karen Berge — Um, one of the things was when I was just kind of making notes to myself of of what’s really been the impact and what’s kind of the chronological order of how that all played out was um as we as we changed the structure and we shifted and we put in place a leadership team, um, that really had kind of oversight tactically over every part of the organization, um, we we really dug into the the how do we manage things. At the same time um, digging into, do we even know who we are? So it was both pieces sort of riding both rails at the same time. The um, the heart of who we are, what do we value, who do we want to be um, based on the mission that God’s entrusted with us to us in Boulder County. Um, and then how do we make that happen? I would say, honestly, and and not not just to to pub Jim here but his posture and attitude as we started to do that and building the trust with the team, because what he’s got to do at that point is let those of us on the leadership team take those things…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s huge.
Karen Berge — …um, and start to put put things in place, we spent a lot of time together um, developing trust. Because it was… and boy it didn’t come immediately, but it did as we really really spent time together um, and as we argued some things out. It was never just we all just have to agree with the lead pastor, with the executive lead pastor. It’s everybody trusting that they brought something to the table that was important and that was valuable. Um, and that we were going to pray for each other, love each other, support each other, and build this this sort of little team of of trust so that we could then start to do that with the full full staff. So if we hadn’t done that first, we wouldn’t have been able to go forward I don’t think. That was that was a huge piece of it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a huge deal. Like I think we skip really quickly to like, what was the tactic? What was the great communications plan? What what is the, you know, what is the rollout? How do we how do we say, “now we’re going to be healthy” to everyone as opposed to saying, hey no, we actually need to slow down, spend a bunch of time together, get to know each other more, um and actually trust each other as a team. That’s a that’s a valuable insight. Um…
Karen Berge — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …so what what was there anything in that phase, particularly any was it like a retreat or something you went on or some experience that was particularly helpful, when you think back at that phase?
Karen Berge — There were a lot of things along the way. I will say this, we got some outside help. We went to executive pastors in organizations that we knew and consultants that we knew um, had experience and could help guide us. Um, knowing that, we were always very protective of the ethos of Flatirons and what God had called us to, the way he had called us to do what we’re doing. But we had people that we trusted to come in…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Karen Berge — …and walk us through some of these pieces. So yeah, we did. We did some retreats. We did some work on our own. We began to to bring in um little little teams of our staff throughout the organization all the way from leadership roles to part-time staff so that we had buy-in from everybody across the board and that everybody knew there’s a whole bunch of people that are a part of this now as we begin to work through this.
Karen Berge — But at the very beginning in the early stages, especially in the pieces where the leadership team was working, we had people come in and help us outside people, which is great because you get a perspective that you your your blind spots are your blind spots.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Karen Berge — And so having somebody there to go, Okay now, here’s what I heard and this is what this sounds like. And to kind of get us back on track was really important to the process.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good thing to underline. You know the the role of a strategic outsider can be super valuable in the in the life of a church and, you know, somebody that’s trusted and you know can make a big difference.
Rich Birch — Well so then what what did you develop as a team to try to help codify some of these changes? Like okay, we’re we’re trying to push in a better you know was there was there any kind of tactic was there anything that helped um, you know, communicate to the rest of the team and and try to align the rest of the team around maybe some some new behaviors?
Karen Berge — Um, yeah, there’s a lot, but but what I will say to kind of as a preamble to this is. We’re what? Three years, three years in based on the start, 4 years in we’re still working on this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, of course. That’s wonderful.
Karen Berge — It’s it’s not it’s not like ah it was a year and now we’re healthy. Um, we’re we’re in a really good place. I was mentioning before we started that we just got back from a staff retreat. And I think all of us felt so you feel the difference is that understanding of, I can’t believe we are where we are now based on where we were before. So we know that. Um, but it’s continuous work to now, and we know what the work is going forward from here too. It’s an ongoing thing. So it’s It’s certainly not overnight. Um to answer your question more specifically, I think the next steps of as we got staff involved. We still had some outside sort of expert help, knowing that the next step for us was we needed to develop staff values. We’ve always had church values. This is who we are. This is what people could understand we were chasing after. But as a staff I don’t think anybody knew and nobody knew what was expected of them in terms of how you interact with each other, how you do how you do your job, what do we value, what is important here and what are the deal breakers. That’s really what your values are, right, is this is how we’re going to function and outside of this could be a deal breaker. But our staff didn’t know that because we we’d never even worked on that.
Karen Berge — So as we put together this larger team of folks with some outside help, um, we started with if somebody was looking at our staff from the outside and just evaluating, what would they say our values are? And that was both alarming and insightful, um, sad…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Karen Berge — …I don’t I don’t even there were some things that came up that were like, oh my gosh. That’s an unintentional value. And so you’re cleaning stuff up, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Interesting. Well, I love… you sent me a copy of this ahead of time which we’ll include in the show notes, friends. And, you know, just to underline um, lots of churches do have values or often churches have a value that they’ve articulated for the organization. But this idea of then trying to push those one step further to say, Okay, how do we how do we do life together as a team? Um man, this is a best practice and really is ah is a great way to kind of align, to continue to try to align and have something to to talk towards. When you put these together, um, how much of this was like things like you said there you identified in yourself, like oh this is who we were? How much of this was oh this is what we want to become? Um you know, what how did that what did the mix of that look like?
Karen Berge — Yeah. It was a really great process, and this happened this was over the course of probably nine months to a year. We had these little teams of 5 or 6 people um, that were not the the leadership team. They were all of our staff from all the different ministries at all different levels of employment and time of employment ah, to kind of go out and put together like what would you say our values are? You’ve you’ve worked here, you’re part of the staff. And they they’d come back with a list and we put them all on a whiteboard, like millions of them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — And there was overlap…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …so you begin to narrow down. Yeah, this is the same as this. And um, and then you then you start to do the hard work of working through. Um some of them we were like we’d love that to be a value. We’re not doing that at all. That’s that’s not a value. What people were bringing back was, in some cases, we would love it if we were this if this was important to us and this was a value. Um, and so we began to sort of differentiate the things that we came up with that all of this team came up with that were like this is who we are. This is core to us. It’s already in us. We couldn’t change it if we wanted to, and we like it. And then we we would pull out the things that we were like um this is important because we’re hearing it in feedback. But we’re not even close to there yet.
Karen Berge — So we had aspirational values, we had core values that were inherent already in who we were. And then what wound up being on the board were some unintentional values that we had to look at and go, um how did that happen? Is it… for instance, we had an outsider at one point who was just here working with us on something and we were very much a, you know, poke fun at people kind of a kind of a staff.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, a little bit sarcastic, a little…yeah.
Karen Berge — …make jokes…yeah, yeah, very much so. And he jokingly said at one point after hanging out that, it’s like you guys have this um this culture of dishonor. And that was like, ooh ouch.
Rich Birch — Oh oh that hurts? Yeah, right.
Karen Berge — Yeah, exactly. But but it wasn’t wrong. It was it was actually true. And I think the things that were inherent in us, one of which is we really value having fun together, um, and we we one of our values is that we’re we’re raw and real. And that means a bunch of different things. But it’s it’s a very transparent, honest sort of ah of a vibe that we value. Um those things in when you let sin creep in…I’m going to get a little churchy there.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Karen Berge — But when you let sin creep in um, that fun value and the raw and real value, what we saw was it it sort of leaked into dishonor, and fun and humor at somebody else’s expense, um, sarcasm that was hurtful. So but but recognizing those things did lead us to we we added a value of competing to honor each other…
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Karen Berge — …which is sort of the guardian, the governor on the fun and the raw and the real. So some of our values became um the guardrails for some of the other values.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Karen Berge — So it was a really interesting process and I would say we worked on that whiteboard and went back and forth and and pulled things out and added things in over the course of a bunch of months. Until we ended with with what we knew were um who we are at the core, who God had called us to be uniquely as Flatirons, and where we wanted to go that we had not ever been able to because of our our real brokenness.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s that…
Karen Berge — Um, and we we landed with kind of the 7 values that we have now.
Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, so I’m going to rattle through them quickly.
Karen Berge — Okay.
Rich Birch — Um, and I not to disrespect; I know there’s a ton to each one of these, but I’d love for you to talk to… so we talked about we compete to honor. That’s one of the values. Um which other of these values has had like ah you know a lever on the culture. So I’ll go through them and then tell us like which one has been kind of an interesting one to see it how it’s impacted.
Karen Berge — Sure.
Rich Birch — So the other ones are we live we live mission minded. We know this is important, we take risks, we are raw and real, we pursue growth and development, we have fun, and then the final one, we compete to honor. Um, which one of those, you know, as it… and now obviously they’ve all impacted your culture but is there anyone in particular that you could think of another way that, oh that’s really kind of helping shape our culture, is kind of had its impact as you’ve been kind of living with it as as a team.
Karen Berge — I would say so the the three that were looks like they’re so deeply in who we are, they’re their core values, they’re inherent is the raw and real value – we are raw and real, um the taking risks – we take risks, and we have fun. Um, and so those are so core to who we are um, what has happened is the mission minded piece has really impacted how we begin to move forward and help the staff understand how the values play out. Because if you’re taking risks, um the absolute filter that you have to use if you’re going to take a risk, and we do let people try things all the time, but what what is our mission? Everything has to run through the filter of we exist to bring the awesome life of Christ to people in the lost and broken world.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Karen Berge — Um, with that idea of unchurched folks, you’re always thinking about that person who’s sitting on the front row that maybe 3 hours ago on Sunday morning, you know, they were at a club and they just stumbled in here with the same clothes on from the night before. Think think about use the filter of who we are, who are we reaching. Um, and so are you talking about, if you’re going to take a risk, are you talking about a pet project? Are you talking about your personal preference? Or are you talking about something that is going to move the needle on reaching people that are far from God in a lost and broken world? So really beginning to understand that that’s the filter through which we do everything…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …I think has impacted our staff in ah in a big way. Um, competing to honor, I mentioned that already, but it certainly has provided guardrails and sort of a refocus on what is our heart in all that we’re doing and what we’re saying. Um and then um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Karen Berge — Yeah, they they all what I love about them is and I think we’re not this smart. We didn’t think about this ahead of time. But we’ve realized God is just good and so they they work together in a really beautiful way to point us back to I I think where everybody’s beginning to understand, this is really who we are as a staff…
Rich Birch — Right.
Karen Berge — …and this is how we do ministry together.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. So good. Well we’ll like I say, friends, we’ll include that document in in our show notes so that you can download it. And see that and it’s interesting because um, even in our kind of pre um, you know back and forth with email preparing for this, at one point you said like oh looking forward to this conversation or something like that. It was in one of the emails, one of the preps. But you even mentioned that you’re like and, you know you know, like and hopefully it’ll help the mission of other churches move forward, like it’s not just about staff health. It’s not like, hey…
Karen Berge — Yeah.
…we want to have a healthy staff. So there’s like this Kumbaya experience – isn’t this the best place to work in in the world. No, like we want that because ultimately that will help push the mission forward, right? That will help us impact the communities we’re in, which I just I think this is great.
Rich Birch — Well, just as we’re kind of wrapping up today’s episode, anything else you’d you’d like to say? There’s a ton we could talk about here but any kind of final thoughts as we as we land the plane?
Karen Berge — Um I I tend to this is the way my brain works and kind of how I’m wired, but I tend to really love the the tactical, practical, strategic planning kind of a thing. Ah and I one of the things we’re working on with our staff is the idea that um you you have all different personalities and people that are their whole everything about them is pastoral. the their calling and their gifting is around people coming to know Jesus and and sitting and praying with people, working through tough times. And we we have that everybody has some of that in different measures. Um and the the practical, tactical, strategic pieces are not um, they’re not antipathy to that. It’s everything works together so that we we’ve talked to our staff about all of us growing and learning and getting better at all the pieces of our work in vocational ministry is is what moves us forward. And the significance, the eternal significance of what we’re doing as a church um, that’s worth working and growing and learning and digging deep into the hard stuff. So ah I’m just… I feel honored and privileged that what what we walked through and trying to create health. Um we’re still here. I mean that’s kind of things can can break it down and tear you up and and we lose churches over that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true.
Karen Berge — So always just hopeful that something God redeems it and it gets used somewhere. So thank you for the opportunity.
Rich Birch — It’s so great. Well, Karen, I really appreciate you taking time to be here with us today. What an honor. If people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Karen Berge — Ah, just Flatiron’s website. I show up there along with the rest of our our leadership team – www.flatironschurch.com so check it out.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Really appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much.
Karen Berge — Thank you, Rich.
How to Leverage AI for Your Church & Your Future with Kenny Jahng
Sep 21, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today’s podcast is the second of a two-part series (you can listen to part one of the podcast here) with Kenny Jahng, an expert when it comes to using AI in the church, and the founder of Big Click Syndicate.
In today’s episode we’re delving into the implications of AI, the fears surrounding it, and how it can be harnessed to help you in ministry.
Using AI. // AI has been with us for a long time, used in places such as Google auto-complete, Amazon, and Netflix recommendations. It’s recently gained attention with the emergence of generative AI which works with people to create new things instead of just analyzing and manipulating existing things.
Getting past FOLO. // Because it’s so pervasive in terms of its potential application, there are many questions and issues that using artificial intelligence brings up. Most notably there is a fear of looming obsolescence (FOLO) and that it will take over jobs. So in ministry there is the question of what is our responsibility to our staff in terms needing to up-skill or re-skill them to protect their jobs in a way to make them sustainable.
Depending too much on technology? // Another concern that comes up is overdependence on technology and its impact on problem-solving abilities and mental health. Are we really putting meaning into what we do, or depending too much on the technology to get it done? What are humans’ purpose in life if AI machines can do everything for us better than we can? Lastly, there are moral and ethical implications of AI and the potential for misuse.
Multi-modal in communication. // In spite of these questions and concerns, churches and ministries can learn to leverage AI technology effectively. There are four general buckets to think about where AI can help in your ministry. The first is communications. It may be better emails, social media, newsletters, bulletin inserts, and so on. AI is now multi-modal and does video generation, image generation, and audio generation, so anything having to do with communications is an easy place to envision AI helping.
Research, analyze, organize, produce, and improve. // The second part to think about is research. AI can help you brainstorm, come up with topic suggestions, summarize contents, or gather information. The third bucket is analyzing and organizing information. AI is great with taking unstructured data, extracting the core concepts, and organizing it all. The last area is improvement. Because AI understands best practices and pattern recognition, it can help you produce and improve something like discussion questions. Or it can reframe content you’ve created so that it resonates better with different audiences.
Train it so it can learn. // Kenny suggests we think of AI as a seminary student intern rather than a push-button solution. It’s intelligent and has a heart to serve, but won’t get things right all the time. Through conversation and redirection, you can train it so that it can learn.
Don’t fall behind. // While AI is still in the early adopter phase, it is becoming increasingly pervasive and relevant in various industries, and it can revolutionize ministry too. It’s up to us as the church to not be left behind. The future of AI will accelerate and will provide opportunities for those who adopt, but drag those who don’t.
Experiment with free tools. // Try out AI through free tools such as ChatGPT or Claude.ai. Copy and paste something you’ve written and ask it what you’re trying to get across and how it would improve it. Kenny also offers the AI for Church Leaders platform and FaceBook group, which offers learning resources, training, and workshops for church leaders interested in leveraging AI for ministry.
You can learn more about using AI in your church through the resources at www.aiforchurchleaders.com. You can also join them on FaceBook to see how people at other churches are using AI in their ministries.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor:The Giving Church
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. This is the second part of a 2 part mega mega episode. We’re talking to Kenny twice in one month which is so good. If you missed our first episode, you need to go back and listen to that. If you’re trying to understand who Kenny is, he’s a good friend, ah, he is one of the smartest people I know, and he is a real expert on particularly artificial intelligence as it comes to the church. Um, and you know he’s a communications expert. He’s got lots to offer. But today we want to focus particularly on artificial intelligence and what what should we thinking about, how should how should that fit into our our our mix. But why don’t we start, Kenny, with AI – kind of help us at a high level. Let’s kind of define some terms. What do we mean by AI? What is that? You know when when we hear that word out there, what does that look like? What is what are some of those kind of at a high level? And then we’ll dig into what what it means to us as a church.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, absolutely. So AI has been the I feel like the media darling of the year.
Rich Birch — Oh absolutely.
Kenny Jahng — Everybody’s talking about it. Um, it came onto the scene at mass media in November of this past year because this thing called ChatGPT came out from a company called Open AI. Now we need to, you know, reverse ah the the screen a little bit because um, AI has been with us for a long time. AI is baked in everywhere. Whether you use um basic GPS is AI driven…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kenny Jahng — …or Google auto complete, or your Netflix recommendation queue or um, everything that pops up on Amazon. I mean there’s so many places that AI is used on a daily basis that we already know and accept. Um and now there’s this thing called generative AI, this version of generative AI that’s come out. And I think the reason why it’s different um, it feels different or has captured the creative imagination of the general public is it is basically, if you think of it from like a Cliff Notes point of view, um, it’s this machine learning, right? Like all the brainiac things that we associate with algorithms and computers and predictions and all that, you know, crunching data, the machine learning AI, on top of that is layered this thing called natural language processing, right? So these are um, you know, new technology techniques that help computers understand interpret and then generate the results in human language.
Kenny Jahng — So you don’t need to understand how to, you know, have you know nerdy glasses and a computer, and a lab code, and be a scientist to figure out how to actually interact with the AI. Now it’s accessible to you, me, and everybody else. And I think that’s one of the reasons why. And because generative AI creates new things instead of just analyzing and manipulating ah existing things um, and it has all started in a text basis, anything that is in the realm of text and language, which is pretty much anything and everything…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — …that’s why it’s applicable to every single industry every single niche…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — …every single level of seniority in an organization, whether you’re entry level or all the way up to the head boss, um, it’s applicable to everybody. And I think that’s why it’s taken the world by storm in the last year or so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. I love ah The Economist, read that pretty regularly, and they had an article about six months ago that made a really good point about AI and that stuck with me. They said we stopped calling it AI once it becomes a normative part of our lives. And so all those things you talked about, GPS, you know even I remember I remember Google autocomplete when it first came out there in like 2010. And I remember being blown away by that. I’m like this is unbelievable. Like it is guessing my next words and getting it right. But but we just take that for granted now now that’s like baked into, like I would be so annoyed if my phone didn’t do that, right? If I didn’t, you know, when you’re typing it’s like I got to type a whole sentence out? Come on. This is I don’t want to do that. Ah, pretty amazing.
Rich Birch — Now when we think about AI, what I’d love to do is kind of break this conversation into two parts. One um, you know, what is the impact that AI is having on our people? You know what kind of pastorally what should we be thinking about? And then the second part, how could we leverage this for you know, really what we do as a church, as we think about this? You know, I would think everybody who is in a knowledge working role of any kind, or maybe just a role in general is thinking about AI. We hear this all the time in the press. Like hey it’s it’s impacting it’s ah, part of the writers strike, you know, out in the west coast. And you know you know there’s lots of people are thinking about it. What how should we pastorally be thinking about AI? Kind of what is what is our, you know, the heart of of a pastoral leader?What should we be wrestling with when we think about AI and its impact on our people?
Kenny Jahng — Um, there are, again, because it’s so pervasive in terms of its potential application, I think there’s so many questions and issues that AI brings up, especially from a pastor’s point of view.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — So I think you know number one is the thing that is driven by fear, right? I like to say there’s a lot of folo in our life. Fomo used to be the word of the year for you know a couple years ago…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — …for social media. Now the word of the year is folo – fear of looming obsolescence, right?
Rich Birch — Oooh wow.
Kenny Jahng — So we all know the storylines in Hollywood and and and what AI is it’s it’s the terminator. It’s, you know, it’s going to take over the world. And on a real practical basis there’s a lot of fear right now that it’s going to take over people’s jobs. And so job displacement I think is a real concern to our people, um, both our own staff as well as the people in our congregations about their own livelihoods. And so I think there’s a lot of questions there of what is the responsibility of a ministry versus a Wall Street company, right? A Wall Street company will just cut because it’s all transactional. Um, but we look at our own staff and people as humans, and it’s very different than just a bottom line P and L statement. So is is there a responsibility to up-skill them, re-skill, um to protect their jobs in a way that makes it sustainable? So there’s all these questions there. I think that’s one of those big issues.
Kenny Jahng — I think another one is um, psychological concerns, dependent overdependence on technology. Um, there is um, is it the movie WALL-E? What was the movie where um, it depict the animated movie that depicted our society where we just become lazy butts…
Rich Birch — Yes [laughs].
Kenny Jahng — …and just watching TV…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — …24/7 with [inaudible] the air…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kenny Jahng — …and just sipping you know, sugar field sodas all day and um.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — So right there’s there’s this sense of over-reliance on technology and AI specifically can you know basically plummet our own problem solving abilities, cognitive skills. And you know and then that leads to our own identity and self worth if you’re not actually doing stuff and and creating meaning and you’re just relying on everything, you’re just coasting along. What does that mean for that and mental health? I think that’s an issue.
Kenny Jahng — Um I think there’s spiritual concerns. Um, you know, what what does that mean, um, you know, in terms of our purpose as humanity in life? Do we actually have purpose beyond that? If if AI and the machines can do anything and everything we’re supposed to do better, right? Everything from um, tending the garden, right? Like um I just saw a ah video of an AI robot that can literally go in and clean restrooms um much more efficiently and much more spotless than a human being. Um you know, and so and then there’s morality and ethics and there’s all these things that I think come into play there.
Kenny Jahng — Um, and then I think there’s, you know, there’s other concerns that we have in terms of bad actors in our society being able to take this and the sinful nature of it and how that temptation…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kenny Jahng — …will creep into almost every aspect of our life. It’s simple things where um if you’re able to employ AI to do the stuff of your work, um, do you take credit for it, or is there attribution? And you take all the shortcuts um and just submit it as is where you really know that it’s not your best work? Um, that there probably needs to be some you know human oversight or human interaction with the content that you produce, etc. So those are some of the issues. I think there’s plenty plenty more that we can nerd out on if we want to.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting that the bad actors one is it is a fascinating thing to think about. Because I think you know I generally we have been I’ve been a fairly pro-tech person. Like I’m like I think technology on balance has helped humanity. I think…
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, the last thirty years of development has been um, you know it’s that whole thing, right? It raised people out of poverty. You know, it has it has helped in a ton of ways. But there are bad actors out there who will leverage technology and will leverage this round of technology. And I think there’s a creeping sense of, man, like maybe it wasn’t ah, great idea to hand social media to ah, you know, kids and like the the negative impact that it’s had on them. You know, I have friends in their twenties who are ditching their iPhones and getting flip phones because they’re so frustrated with what’s happened with Instagram to them, and what it’s done to them. And that’s like and that’s not a few people. I know, you know, handfuls of people who are doing that and I you know can see that for sure.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s let’s pivot and and think now about what we should be thinking about on how do we leverage this technology? So I’m going to I’m going to leverage you as a consultant, a coach – I know this is the kind of thing you’re helping people all across the country think about this. And um, let’s say I’m a church I’m an executive pastor of a church maybe 1500, 2000. I’ve got a staff team of 15 or 20 people. And I’m thinking how can I leverage AI? What should I be thinking about today? Like like this quarter, you know, I know there’s there’s stuff coming in the future, but what should I be thinking about like even today around how we should leverage it? How should I be coaching my team to think about it?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah I think there’s four general buckets that you could think of in terms of where AI can actually help in your ministry workflows.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kenny Jahng — One is because it’s all language-based at first it’s ah communications, whether it’s helping you write better emails, social media, newsletters, bulletin inserts—right?—ads. All anything to do with language communications I think is is a good one. Um, we are now seeing AI go um—here’s a nerdy word—multi-modal. And Multi-modal just means…
Rich Birch — Love it!
Kenny Jahng — …it just means different form factors, different way different outputs. So instead of just text um AI is now you’re going to see a lot more tools, you know, image generation, video generation, audio generation. And so anything that to do with communications is definitely an easy place that you can envision AI helping.
Kenny Jahng — Second one I think is actually a ah much bigger benefit and that’s research, whether it’s helping your brainstorm, summarize contents, come up with topic suggestions. Um, you know finding topics that you’re not um, fully versed on but you want to get up to speak quickly and you know get quick teachings on that topic.
Rich Birch — No, that’s great.
Kenny Jahng — Um, a third bucket is analyzing things and organizing thing. It’s great with data manipulation, taking unstructured data, make it structured, extracting core concepts, reorganizing things, even planning. Recently I just used AI to plan a project.
Kenny Jahng — Um and the last one I would say is just improvement. Because AI this generative AI thing that we have right now is basically trained on millions and millions of examples of content that is just consumed, it understands best practices, pattern recognition of all the best things out there. So it can help you improve things like content logic, the logic of your arguments. Um, it could actually help you take it and produce discussion questions and and clarify those questions so it aligns with what you’re trying to message. Um or reframe reframing the content that you have so that it actually um, resonates better with different segments or audiences. So those are I think four interesting ways that you can actually think of it. And at the end of the day I think here’s the one tip I I would say is, you should think of it as not a push button like one button push button candy machine and you know you push the button and out pops out a nice shiny wrapper that you just open up and consume as is.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kenny Jahng — You really need to think of it as a seminary student intern…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kenny Jahng — …thinking that it’s it it’s pretty intelligent…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kenny Jahng — …it’s open minded, it’s has a heart to serve but it doesn’t know everything. And as with an intern you’re going to assign it the task. It’s the comeback and it’s not going to get it right every single time. In fact, most of the times it won’t get it perfect. But through conversation and through redirection you are able to train it to go back and do it again and again and again. And here’s the difference versus a irl intern, in real life intern, and and an AI intern has a perfect attitude. No matter how much tasks you throw at it, it just says, thank you. My pleasure. How do I do more, right? And so this is a great way to think of it I think…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Kenny Jahng — …in terms of having a conversation, develop that relationship with the AI where it’s a seminary student intern in your office.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I know I’ve had a couple really great interactions where I’m like oh my goodness this is so helpful. One of them was exactly we talk about unstructured data. We had a number of um, feedback on a thing we did. So it was like a forum we sent out to people and it was like give us your comments. And there’s there’s obviously the, you know, we had lots of like rate at 1 to 5, all that kind of stuff, but then there was open comments. And you know, this this can be somewhat unruly because it’s like what do we do with all this? So what what we did was literally took took all that, copied and pasted it it, dumped it into ChatGPT. It informs chatbot chip, very similar to what you’re saying, informed it like hey I’d like you to think like you are you know going to read through all this information and and try to draw out some insightful insights from this. And you know it it started to generate we asked at for statistical, what kind of things we was talking about. What, you know, what were the, you know, what were some of our learnings that we could pull out of it. Now we ultimately went back in and pulled out and tried to find um, you know, which was amazing. It was incredible. Super helpful, very quick. Um and was able to verify, and it was, you know, cut back—I don’t know—hours probably 8 hours of work it would have taken to do that. Um, and to be honest, what would have happened is we wouldn’t have done it. Like you know, we wouldn’t have actually looked at all that customer feedback, or in this case, you know this kind of guest feedback. We just wouldn’t have.
Rich Birch — Another one we did we have a program where very similar kind of thing um where we ask we we send kids to camp and um we provide financial resources for them. And a part of what we do is we give them like ah a form to fill out and we ask them to write, we don’t tell them, we asked them if they could write like a little descriptor of their story. So similarly I asked I asked ChatGPT to think like a fundraising expert and I said, here’s a whole bunch of stories from people. Can you pull out the five most salient stories that will motivate and then I gave a description of the donor that I was trying to communicate with. And, man, it pulled out these great stories and then we manipulated them and kind of, you know, massaged them to make them anonymous. It did all that work for us. Again, I could have done that work that would have taken a day, ended up took take maybe 90 minutes to do what would have taken a day. So I think there’s lots of stuff like that if we start to think creatively around how we can help.
Rich Birch — Now let me be the the devil’s advocate which is maybe the wrong thing to say as a church leader, but you know there’s something like 20%—I think you told me this—20% of churches don’t have a website. Like they… which is crazy to me. Ah so why should we be moving on to AI like is this is this as foundational as the web? Is this as important as, you know, as that at this point, or are we still kind of in the early adopter phase.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, we are so we are definitely in the early adopter phase of this thing, much earlier than any other technology that’s been released to the public, right? So think about ChatGPT and all these chatbots. Um, it actually doesn’t work if you think about it, right? It it it hallucinates, basically gives you false facts. Um, it actually sends back wonky answers sometimes. It’s not something that Apple would release to the public as is.
Rich Birch — No, no.
Kenny Jahng — There’s a lot more development that would happen, right? Steve Jobs would kick it back to the engineers and say, you guys have to pull an all nighter and continue to work on this thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Kenny Jahng — So we are at the very very beginning. And recently there was a survey I think only 17, 17% of um of adults in America have tried ChatGPT so it isn’t it it hasn’t hit in terms of mass usage.
Rich Birch — Which is a lot of people but not a lot of people, right?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, it’s a lot of people, but not a lot. Um, so I think we are at the very beginning. But I do think that this is something that is definitely, again, It’s not VR goggles. It’s not Blockchain.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — We went through those new cycles of fads. And sure there’s definite definite really good use cases for each one of those. But to have this massive penetration across the entire landscape of society, I don’t know if those are ready yet. Um, but I do think that right now we we are in a position, and again you’re seeing it in the headlines, Fortune 1000 companies are adopting this today. If you don’t have something to say about AI to your stakeholders and shareholders in any corporation today, you’re behind. Um and I think that’s really a sentiment of what’s going on. This is here to stay and it’s going to become much more pervasive than we even think. And I do think, you know, I think you said it correctly, at some point it’s going to be normalized. So like all this fad news coverage is going to die down, but it is going to continue to be pervasive in its reach and I think it’s it’s up to us as the church not to be left behind. Because again this isn’t like, Oh you didn’t hop on the VR goggle train, you’re in trouble. No, it’s not like that. This is this is a lot more serious. Um, the future of AI is pervasive, it’s personalized, and it really is going to be something that is going to accelerate and provide opportunities for those that adopt. But it also is going to really drag the people that don’t in my opinion.
Rich Birch — Yeah I would totally agree. You and I are men of a certain age. We’ll we’ll say it that way. And I know for me, it feels very much like the early days of the web. Like I can distinctly remember like ’95, ’96 being like oh my goodness. Like this is a huge deal. Like the the idea of being able to organize the world’s information and have it at a click away, you know, when it still felt like you would click on something and you would go to like I’m in Germany now. You felt like you were you know on some server somewhere in, you know, ah some other part of the world. Um, when you look back at what the internet was at that point, it was wonky it was it didn’t work. It was broken. There was no good way to access the information. There was no centralized way to it was an organized well um, but man it made a huge difference. I personally I would I totally agree with you that I think it’s in that this is at that same kind of level of of um…
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, of importance. I know sometimes, Kenny, because this is what I love about you as a friend, Kenny, you’re such a good early adopter on so many things, and like I remember you were like a Google glasses ah you know early adopter. And you were like, this is revolutionizing! And I’m like they’re goofy. This is they’re terrible. No one’s ever going to wear those. And what I don’t want people to do is to is to put this in that category because it’s not. It is this is not that kind of thing. Um, it’s ah it’s a massive deal that we need to be… You know, you don’t need to be thinking about it all day long, but it should occupy a small part of your brain and think how can I what how can I leverage that?
Kenny Jahng — Oh absolutely. Yeah.
Rich Birch — I think in the same ah, in the same way that church’s progressive growing churches that are making a difference would not operate without a database, you would never think like oh we wouldn’t have a church management system, the same is going to be true for AI. You’re going to have some sort of interface that’s going to help you engage with your people both from a communications and a connection point of view that’s going to be AI, you know, driven for sure. 100% that, you know, and I can say that without, you know, without you know any hesitation for sure. I think it can be hugely important.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, and I think here’s the difference. Ah between this and other “technologies”: um AI isn’t just about tech.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — It’s more about building a culture of learning and adaptability, right? It’s more about having a growth mindset and really asking that innovation question of how might we take the best of AI to apply to what our mission and objectives are and what we do in our work? You don’t have to be a techie to leverage AI; you just need to be a problem solver.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — Right? And so again, if you go back to that seminary intern type of thing like if you had a team of robust interns to be able to do a lot of, you know, ah work for you at your disposal, what else could you get done in your ministry? And I think that’s a little bit of the sentiment that people have to have here.
Rich Birch — Totally true. That’s so good, dude. Well anything else, you’d like to say as we kind of round the corner here and and and close this bad boy down? Anything else you’d love to that we should be thinking about or wrestling with as we think about AI?
Kenny Jahng — Um, yeah, I just I just hope that everyone takes that first step of trying it out. There’s so many naysayers. Back in the day when I was a church online pastor, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
It’s it feels there’s it feels very similar where there are a lot of darts being thrown at you if you are an advocate for AI in the church.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kenny Jahng — Um, and what’s interesting then and the interesting now is there are a lot of people that actually haven’t tried the actual thing that they are objecting to.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kenny Jahng — And I would just say go out and try it and there’s a lot of free tools out there like ChatGPT there’s Claude.ai and I think you’ll be pretty amazed. I think a really small step that you could take is literally copy paste something that you’ve written. Maybe it’s an email to somebody or um, part of your sermon that you’ve written, or just some content. Take copy paste some content put it in there. And just ask it a couple of questions. Um, tell me what I’m trying would you share with me and summarize what I’m on trying to get across in this piece of communication, and how might I improve it to bring more clarity, more um, you know, compelling call to action? Um, how might I actually um make it more understandable? Just ask some basic questions and see what it comes back with, and have a conversation. They’re called conversational chat bots for a reason have a conversation about that thing you just copy pasted into. Just just one simple step. And I think that will give you a lot more understanding and hopefully inspiration in terms of how to actually potentially use this for more things that you might have thought it could be used for.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, Kenny, I really appreciate this. I we didn’t talk about this before he came on but I do want to send people to aiforchurchleaders.com. This is a was a conference an online conference that you put together. Tell me about this. Ah you know what this was amazing. What an incredible resource for people. I think this could be a great starting point for people who are listening in saying, hey, here I could kind of dive deep dive and kind of get up to speed quickly. Tell me what what is aiforchurchleaders.com?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, so we, you’re right. We kicked it off with a um, a large event with thousands of church leaders. But it has turned into a ongoing learning platform. It’s a place to actually get regular learning, training, etc for you and your staff. So if you want to learn how to leverage area for a ministry, whether it’s specific tools like ChatGPT, or Jasper, or Midjourney or any of these geeky platforms that you’ve heard of um, there’s some really accessible training in there as well as advanced stuff. And then we have monthly workshops and webinars to do that. And I think one of the best sections inside AI for Church Leaders is section that deals with leadership topics regarding AI adoption. So if you’re really early on this AI adoption curve and you have some basic questions, that’s the that’s the place that I would start with inside that says you know as ah as a church leader should I trust AI? Um, you know is it something that I could use for my volunteers and my staff? Um, what are the ethics surrounded? What’s the future of it? You know what are some of the questions that a pastor should be asking? Things about AI policies, all those leadership topics is a great way to start. That’s not the nerdy, nerdy stuff um, that actually I think would be helpful for any church leader that’s listening in today.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. So again, friends, Kenny is ah a real expert in this area. He is, as we’ve been joking, the bishop of AI. He’s really on the forefront helping us understand and piecing this together. It’s a bit of the Wild West, but it’s going to make an impact on, you know, so many people so many, you know, ministries. It’s going to help us reach more people. I know there’s so many church leaders that are listening in or saying, listen I want to lead a kind of ministry that makes a difference, that sees more people get connected with Jesus and sees those people grow closer, and I do think that AI is going to help us do that. And you know I don’t think we should be afraid of it I don’t think it’s like oh it’s going to It’s the end of the world or whatever. Um, you know we know how the story ends and He still sits on the throne. And so let’s use all this technology. Let’s find a way to say, hey, we can use this to you know to to reach more people see them grow closer to Jesus.
So thanks so much, Kenny. Where else do we want to send people if they want to track with you online? Ah how else do we want people to connect with you ah, just as we wrap up this two-part episode. So good!
Kenny Jahng — Absolutely. I’m I’m available on socials if you Google me, it’s ah it’s not hard to find me. um the other invitation I would say is join our FaceBook group. We have a FaceBook group under the same name…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kenny Jahng — …AI for Church Leaders FaceBook group. Um, we’re growing rapidly. We crossed 4000 last month…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — …likely we’ll I think we’re going to reach 5000 members this month. And it’s just a it’s a hyperactive group. And it’s a place for people, again, people that have never even tried AI if you just want to lurk and listen and see what people other churches are doing, I think that’s one of the best places to learn about AI from ministry. Because in the news you hear about how AI is being used for lawyers, and manufacturing, etc. But here in that group you’ve literally got thousands of peers learning together.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — And so the AI for Church Leaders FaceBook group I think is a great place as a next step.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks for being here, Kenny. Appreciate you, appreciate your friendship, appreciate all the ways that you help so many people. Thanks for for being on the show today.
Kenny Jahng — Thanks, Rich.
How Your Church Can Have the Best Year-End Ever with Kenny Jahng
Sep 14, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today’s podcast is the first of a two-part series with my friend, Kenny Jahng, the founder of Big Click Syndicate which helps cause-driven organizations get their messages in front of the right audiences.
Did you know the last 45 days of the year are crucial for charitable giving? Because people are thinking about being generous during this time, it’s a critical time for nonprofits. But that also means your people are bombarded with many different good causes. Don’t miss this conversation with Kenny to discover how your church can encourage giving as a spiritual discipline while increasing your mission’s impact in the upcoming year!
The last 45 days. // The last 45 days of the year are a golden period for charitable giving because people are more inclined to be generous during this time. However, the digital age has broadened the range of causes people can support, making it a crowded space for nonprofits. Churches, though, have an edge. More than merely a transaction, giving is a spiritual discipline with a greater purpose which leads to a larger faith conversation. Moreover, unlike nonprofits that may only have one annual event to gather supporters, churches regularly interact with their donors.
Overcoming obstacles. // Despite the advantages, churches may not fully leverage the last 45 days of the year due to reasons like holiday burnout and discomfort talking about money in church. There’s also the tension between driving attendance and promoting giving during the Christmas season. However a well-structured year-end campaign can appeal to the community around you and create a connection between giving and increased attendance.
Best Year-End Ever. // To address the challenges churches face around developing a year-end campaign, Kenny along with Carey Nieuwhof and Rich have developed a coaching cohort, Best Year-End Ever, focused on helping churches have their best year-end ever in terms of giving. Best Year-End Ever is structured with a step-by-step process, providing weekly or bi-weekly online meetings to guide churches through the campaign. Despite covering 87 different aspects, participants have found the program manageable and not overwhelming. The program emphasizes a “quick to apply” mindset, focusing on execution rather than debating and analyzing the process.
Ready-to-use templates. // One of the highlights of Best Year-End Ever is the library of ready-to-use resources. Professional designers have created assets and design templates for various marketing materials, such as brochures, video scripts, social media templates, and text messages. These templates are customizable and cater to different church personalities, whether they are modern, traditional, or somewhere in between.
Work the plan. // The team at Best Year-End Ever has done all the planning work for church leaders so all they need to do is work through the plan. In fact, Kenny and his team are so confident in their proven process that they are offering a 100% money-back guarantee if participants are not satisfied with the results. This guarantee is aimed at activating more leaders, supporting them in funding their ministry visions for the next year, and helping them as they engage their congregations.
To find out how you can get involved in the Best Year-End Ever coaching cohort, visit bestyearendever.com.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You are welcome to the first of a two part series with my friend, Kenny Jahng. If you do not know Kenny, he’s the founder of big clicks Big Click Syndicate. Ah he is really all over the internet. If you are looking for information help on communications, and particularly AI, he is the go-to. Kenny, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, great to be with you, Rich. Every single time I’m with you I just know I’m gonna have some fun.
Rich Birch — Nice. I love this. And you know, Kenny and are are friends in in the real world ah but I wanted to bring him on the podcast to talk really about two different distinct things. So this episode today is all about year-end giving. And then next week we’re going to talk about AI because Kenny is the bishop of AI so you’re going to want he’s helping all kinds of ministries on this these days. But today we want to talk really about year-end giving. But first why don’t you give us a bit of your background, kind of tell us a bit of the Kenny Jahng story ah for folks that don’t know. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kenny Jahng — Great. The clever version is I spent a good deal of time working in the marketplace, mostly in the marketing communications space, right, building those muscles for direct marketing, advertising, you know all the different ah, disciplines of marketing. And then I went to seminary, I was called to seminary and have you know refocused my energies in helping ministries build marketing engines that basically nurture raving fans for the mission.
Kenny Jahng — One of the things that we see is nonprofits, ministries, churches um, they are like the best kept secret. They’ve got so much good, and the work that they do transforms people. And but sometimes it’s just hard to get the word out and so I think God’s call has been for me to take those marketplace best practices and help ministries get the word out on the street, and build just this tribe around the cause and the mission that they have in front of them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, you’re being really humble. Kenny, this is the thing I like about you you, you know, you’ve helped all kinds of organizations, not only churches all across the country, folks that you would know, but national nonprofits as well—folks like American Bible Society, Biblica, CDF Capital, Leadership Network, Redeemer United Methodist. It just goes on and on and on…
Kenny Jahng — A lot of good friends.
Rich Birch — …ah ah yeah amazing. Yeah, and your education background is incredible too. You are like my one of my smart friends. So studied at Duke, Columbia, and Princeton – that’s like the trifecta of amazing schools. Anyways, I’m I’m glad you’re here.
Kenny Jahng — I I like to collect paper, Rich, I like to collect…
Rich Birch — Ah, yeah, that’s so good. Well anyways, well let’s talk about year-end giving. So this is coming up. You know we’ve been kind of teasing this on social media, you know, the last 45 days of the year. This is super important. And I know that lots of nonprofits, particularly, they work all year thinking about this period. You know and that number of the nonprofits that you’ve worked with I’m sure have been thinking about you know that last 45 days from a giving point of point of view. Why is that so important? Why why do they spend so much time thinking about that? Why should we spend time working on it?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah I think it’s it is the entire landscape of charitable giving some somehow is seasonal, right? And that Q4 of every single year is the time where there’s this huge opportunity in front of everybody because people are thinking about being generous. And one of the things that I think is really important for every single ministry to to think about is that in today’s day and world people are thinking about a portfolio of giving now. They don’t just give to one place.
Kenny Jahng — I think back in the day it was a little bit more consistent where if you belong to a church, um, you definitely would support that as the majority of your wallets in terms of giving. And today we’re just bombarded with so many different good causes. There’s there’s an up and downside of social media and digital communications is that it is easier for so many great causes to present their unique opportunities to do good in this world and help you partner with them financially. But at the same time it just makes it a crowded space. And so this is the time of year that if you have a vision for what you want to do next year, and you want margin in your budget, if you want to expand and do have more impact, um, you have the ability to bring on financial partners to really align with what you have to do in terms of the mission of your organization.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Incredible. Yeah, and I know um, there’s percentages out there like it’s a huge percentage of giving that’s given in the last 45 days. Um, and you know that obviously makes sense. I think part of it is driven by tax receipts, right? It’s like it’s this interesting kind of combo in our culture of people are thinking about their annual giving and they start thinking about taxes. But then there also is the broader kind of Christmas season does drive generosity as well. And so that ends up driving up ah you know the amount of giving. In fact I think 10% of all giving is done in the last 48 hours of the of the year which is crazy. It’s like a huge amount of money.
Rich Birch — Ah now what advantages when you think about the local church, so I know from my seat executive pastor, thinking about giving, I see all that um, all those other nonprofits out there. I see them, you know, talking to my people even if it’s through ads online, or you know, every year I get this lumpy mail this huge piece of mail that comes from this nonprofit that I’ve given to in the past, right early in the fall. I know that they’re trying to target me by the end of the year. But what advantages do we have in the local church over nonprofits, particularly, ah who might we might look at and say, man they’re just so well-funded. They do just an amazing job on the communications front. What would be some of those advantages that that you think we have?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, I think we have a purpose and meaning and significance tied to giving as a spiritual discipline, not just as a transaction an opportunity to help something. Now I think, you know, all there are many nonprofits that have great causes out there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — Um that it’s not it’s not that just because they’re transactional it doesn’t mean that they’re not good causes. But I think the advantages churches have is that this can either be the continuation of, or the start of a conversation you can have with your people in terms of what does generosity mean? And that this this season, if it’s a campaign that you’re building or something that you’re trying to focus on, isn’t just a one-time popup shop event. It is part of a larger faith conversation in terms of a spiritual discipline. And I think that’s the real advantage that we have in terms of focusing and framing the conversation.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, totally. The other piece of it too that I know we have is we, and I think sometimes we take this for granted, like we see our people – not all of them, but we see our people every seven days generally. You know, when you think about a nonprofit, think about all the time effort energy they put into like a gala…
Kenny Jahng — Yes.
Rich Birch — …once a year they kind of try to get everybody together. But we’re, you know, in our environments, man, we see people every single week. And it’s so critically important during this time of year that we leverage that weekend, that we leverage the chance to, you know, see people as they come and go out of our environments, knowing it’s not everybody on top of any of that kind of other communication ah that we we use. Now why do you think some churches maybe don’t leverage these last 45 days of the years. What would hold them back? What would be the sticking points around them thinking, I just don’t want to I just don’t want to do something extra above and beyond at this time of year.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah I think the first one is just burnout.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Kenny Jahng — Everyone knows and if you’ve been in ministry for any length of time, Christmas is tiring, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — It’s just the almost the unspoken um business side of doing churches—Christmas, Easter—these big days take a lot out of you as a pastor, as church staff, etc. Um, many times you’re just looking forward to getting through the season. Um, and so putting something else on your plate just is daunting for so many people.
Kenny Jahng — I think the second reason is it’s hard to talk about money. We we are not taught in seminary on how to talk about money and generosity and giving. And the default is that you only talk about when you need it, and then you’re training your audience to have this expectation of, oh he only comes when it’s something… right? It’s only it’s, and there’s a conflict of interest, right? Like when you talk about generosity only when you need it, the audience senses that there’s something off there. So I think people are not used to talking about money and generosity. They don’t know how to um, and so that I think that’s a very big thing to stumble upon.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. I also know for us in the past there’s been this tension. The first time we did ah a year-end campaign like this, there’s this tension of, hey Christmas is a time of year where we want to be driving our people to invite their friends, that we want to be driving… and and will this kind of…
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …if we also talk about giving stuff will that somehow either dilute or distract from that messaging. And that’s just not true, like you can do both of them do them. Well um, in fact, actually one can help the other if we’re a well-structured year-end campaign can um, also help, you know, really your appeal to the community around you. Because you end up talking about things that are making a difference in your community. You end up talking about the kind of things that actually first time guest might be excited ah to be a part of.
Rich Birch — Well we ah you know part of why I wanted to get you on is you and I and our friend Carey Nieuwhof are running something called Best Year-End Ever, which is this is our second year. It’s a coaching cohort. It’s deliberately small. Ah it’s, you know, we’re we’re going to have ah you know a few handfuls of churches in this. This is not like a huge thing. The idea is to get face-to-face with you and me, and Carey over this fall and ultimately lead to the end of the year to to really have what it’s called the best year-end ever. Um, and we’ve seen, you know, our hope is, our prayer is that, man, if you could engage with this process, you should be able to see somewhere around a 10% increase in your annual giving. So if you look at your total budget of the year, it’s not unreasonable…so let’s say your budget is 500,000, it’s not unreasonable to think about a $50,000 campaign that would be above and beyond what you would anticipate at the end of this year. This is our second year ah that we’ve done this. Why don’t you talk us through kind of. Some of the framework of it. How does it work? What’s it look like, all those kind of things?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we we the mantra that we have—I guess we should make t-shirts, Rich—is it’s: plan to work and then work the plan, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kenny Jahng — Some of it is is that there’s not really too much secret sauce. It really is just about discipline, sequence, priority of the work and getting ahead of it. And sometimes it’s again, it’s overwhelming. So what we’ve done is we’ve laid out a calendar based on years of doing this for different organizations and churches. And we’ve basically set up every single week a whole list of things to do. So if it’s like going to the gym, I think, and having a personal trainer where you don’t actually need to think about, Oh what rotation of machines I need to what do I need to do? Is it leg day, is it, right? Like you don’t need to think about all that. You just need to show up. And then every single week we will guide you through the process of what do you need to think of now. What do you think what do you need to think about now that’s going to impact two weeks, three weeks, four weeks later. And so we meet on a weekly basis um or biweekly basis sometimes, and weekly basis sometimes, and we will coach you through the entire process.
Kenny Jahng — I think, Rich, I think there’s 87 different things that we cover over the course of the entire program, and um I think if you talk to any of the participants, they all say it didn’t feel overwhelming at all.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. You know one of the things I we’ve structured this with this just-in-time learning environment where um, really we want you to come to this with the the attitude of quick-to-apply. So don’t… we’ve structured this it is a proven step-by-step process that we’ve put together here and it it includes resources, which I want you to talk about in a second here, Kenny. But we’ve laid it out in a way that’s like okay here’s step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, and don’t come to this with your mindset around like, hey I’m going to debate this; I wonder if this is the way to go. No.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Come to the mindset with quick-to-apply. Okay, I’m going to come to these sessions. I’m gonna say, what can I put into action right away. What we’ve seen time and again—this is true in the cohorts you and I have run, I know in the stuff we’ve done that isn’t together, just when we work with people in general—the people that get the most out of it are the people who come to it with the attitude of okay, what can how can I just apply this? What do I how do I make this happen? Think about execution. Don’t think about, Hmmm is this the right way? This is a proven process and we’ve we’ve laid it out in a way to make it easy for you because we know you’ve got a lot going on. We know you’ve got a ton of, you know, things happening and you want kind of a guide, somebody to to come along with you.
Rich Birch — Now one of the things I love about what we’ve done here is put together a ton of ready to use resources.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to us about some of those. What do those look like? How are they, you know, how are they pulled together? How and maybe talk about last year how we saw some of those be used.
Kenny Jahng — Absolutely. Well I think the program is pretty amazing because you me and Carey sat down and really thought through what does a successful campaign need, right? There’s basically four phases. There’s the Countdown phase you need to do all the work in terms of architecting your campaign and figuring out and planning the timeline. And then there’s the second phase which we call Ignition. And that’s literally like getting people ready, get started, trained, um getting everything set up. And the third one is Launch, to go public. You’re going to actually have a public section of the campaign. And the last one is Orbit, right? We just have this um, you know, final celebration, a recap, and you want to have continuity again in that generosity conversation with your audience.
Kenny Jahng — And so if you take each of those phases. Um, each one of them needs timelines, and checklists, and you’re you’re going to prepare emails, and you’re going to start to actually plan and design brochures, and maybe send out postcards. And you’ll need specific landing pages on your website, right? There’s all these things that you’re going to need. And what we’ve done is we’ve had professional designers create um all these assets and design templates whether it be video scripts, social media templates, um, even text messages to invite leaders to different meetings or coaching people. Um, again, we’ve created a tremendous library of design templates that everyone can use. Um and we went even the extra step, Rich, last year which was we actually responded to the need that not every church has the same look and feel right. Every church has a different personality.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yep.
Kenny Jahng — And so we tasked our designers and challenged them like, Hey, can you come up with multiple versions, designs that an ultramodern, hip, cool church would take, or more traditional steeple church would use, or something that’s in the middle. Um, and so we have multiple variations of every single piece of marketing collateral that we’ve designed for this program. And so they’re all ready to use. They’re customizable. They’re actually built as templates so it’s not hard to use. And in fact I think at least two of the churches, Rich, last year ah, took some of the templates and the executive pastor started modifying the templates because he didn’t even need to assign it to his own graphic designer internally, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. I know, it’s incredible like we, yeah, it’s funny, right? Because you develop resources like that and you’re like, well this will be great; churches will use it. And then they use it, which is amazing. And so… and and I know this is yeah, you’re right like particularly, you know, this might be either a lead pastor or an executive pastor who pulls a trigger on this. And, you know, here we are. We’re in September. We’re, you know, you don’t necessarily want to go to your design people and be like, hey I’m going to dump a whole bunch of new stuff on you. We don’t want to give them that pain. We want to focus on other stuff. And so what we’ve tried to do is even whether you’re um, you know, taking it and just absolutely absolutely running with it, or saying, hey make it look sort of like this. It’s like it gives your designer a huge head start on all of these individual pieces because there there is a certain amount of flotsam and jotsum that we have to generate ah to make a campaign go ah well like this.
Rich Birch — Now, Kenny, what about like potholes? When you think about a campaign like this, you know, that maybe doesn’t go well in a church, like there may not be people who are maybe they’ll do it themselves, um, there’s resources they can find online to help that, what would you say would be a common pothole that you’ve seen either a nonprofit or a church fall into when they roll out a campaign like this where they you know it might diminish their results might not go as quite as well?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, I think the most common one is that you basically, you know, you fall behind, right? and then it feels like, Wow if I just, you know, didn’t get to this by this time that I originally thought I would then you start to abandon the idea of this campaign. And I think this is one of the reasons why this program has worked successfully for the churches that have participated in it. Because um, you know you arrive in October for our first meeting and you start to get acclimated with what the timeline needs to be, and you know all the timings and things like that. But on a week on each time that we meet across the—I think there’s nine meetings that we will meet—um, you actually get personalized coaching. And that’s the place that I think allows you to go from idea to implementation every single week so that you don’t fall behind. It’s not like ah it’s not like some I think some other workshops have been, you go to a training session and then you get a whole pile of homework that you have to do where you just carved out an hour or two hour of your time to go through the training. And and then now you’re behind an hour two of your weekly schedule. And then you tell me I got to do another 10 hours of work afterwards?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — And so this is one of those things on a weekly basis we’re able to catch you up. And you’re actually be able to tell you exactly what you need to do for this next week, next two weeks. And we give you all the predesigns and pre-written templates for you to just customize and put into action. In a in a way one of the ah participants in ah in the past this said, it just makes me look like a superhero. It looks makes me look like I’m super-productive to my staff.
Rich Birch — So true. Yeah, it’s so true. You’re like wow where did you come up with all this? This is amazing. That’s ah, that’s so good. Now actually speaking of ah, you know, results. We had last year ah this one of our our participants a guy, Josh, from a church in New York City, just around the corner from you, he participated. Tell us about it’s the what happened at his church. Again, not typical, but pretty cool what happened at at his church.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, so they have never had a formal end of your giving campaign. And so I think that’s the first thing I think we need to dispel like this isn’t for just those mega churches that have, you know, massive giving campaigns, etc. This is for almost every church. And so they’ve never had a giving campaign at the end of the year. Now they’ve done some fundraisers here and there, maybe for a missions trip or something. Um, and so they’ve actually went through the program, used all our materials and then he reported back that their giving campaign exceeded 4X the amount of any…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Kenny Jahng — …historical campaign that they’ve done um in the past.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy.
Kenny Jahng — And so that’s a jaw dropping number. And if you if you knew the details of the campaign of just how large it was, it was over you know it was 6 figures…
Rich Birch — Yeah, big deal.
Kenny Jahng — …that they were able to raise um in this short period of time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kenny Jahng — And again it was due to the fact that he was just able to stick to the plan. We instead of plan the work, we’ve done the plan the work.
Rich Birch — Yeah
Kenny Jahng — Ah, now you just have to work the plan.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kenny Jahng — And so that’s a great example of if you just follow through with the recipe, you’ll get a great result in the end.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. One of the things I love about Josh too is, you know, we have the the regular calls and Josh wouldn’t show up to the regular calls. He’s like, listen I’m not… the time didn’t work in his time zone, which is fine, so he would just watch the replays, watch them on one and a half speed.So as you can imagine, Kenny and I talk and one and a half times faster, but then jump right to application which is amazing. And then there is a way for us to stay connected in between calls, which he was taking advantage of – reaching out, getting a chance for us to answer questions, because that’s a huge deal.
Rich Birch — I know for me, um, what I’m looking for in a coach it’s it’s like I feel like I can figure out 90% of it. But it’s usually that last 10% I’m like, what about this? I need you to look at this document or take a look at this thing. What do you think about this headline? Or here are the 3 buckets that I’m thinking about it but I’m struggling with what to call this third one. Or you know, here is our, you know, here’s an email that we’re working on for next week – take a look at all of those things. It was great to go back and forth with him, and then, you know, super excited to see, you know, that what happened at his church.
Rich Birch — Now, one of the crazy things that when we put this together with, you know, yourself, with Carey is we’re actually going to guarantee the results. Now I don’t know anyone that does any kind of fundraising stuff that is saying, listen I know you’re going to have to pay a fee for this thing, but the results are are guaranteed. That seems crazy. Ah, you know, but the reason why we’re doing that is because we’re two things: we don’t want to take your money if you’re not happy. We don’t want to take your money; we’re we’re here to serve the church. We want to we want you to feel um, you know super supported, and we want you to feel great about this at the end of the process. But we also know it’ll work. We know that if if churches follow the process, it’ll end up, you know, making a difference. And so talk to us about what does that look like? It’s kind of funny, it’s like results guaranteed. It’s like ah you know like an Amway ad or something. Or like an old those old TV ads in the 70s, you know, it it slices, it dices, it does julian fries. Ah, what do what do we mean by, you know, a results-base guarantee?
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, I feel like I have to put on my radio voice and talk about the money-back guarantee.
Rich Birch — True.
Kenny Jahng — Um, so I I think this comes I remember the first meeting that we had with Carey, you, and me, and it was one of those things where we were just being approached and saw this need of churches of, you know, how do they actually fund their vision for the next year, right? We came out of covid and it was challenging. A lot of attendances disappeared at that point, and giving was up and down and unpredictable. And so there was this rising need of how do we help our congregation get back on track? Um, and for us I think I remember the conversation vividly, Rich. It was all of us were just like these churches need help. We just need to help more churches. We know that the potential is there. And at the end of the day, again it’s not rocket science. It’s just you need to plan the work and work the plan.
Kenny Jahng — And so I think all of us were just… at there was some point in the conversation I remember like, how can we just make it as like frictionless as possible. How can we just make it a no-brainer that as many churches can just take advantage of this. Because I think for me personally and I think you and Carey, it’s like what can we do in terms of like making our dent in the kingdom to fund more ministry. We just need more ministry to happen in every single zip code…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Kenny Jahng — …out there. And it’s just a ah fact of life that you know you need budget and funding to make ministry happen. And so that’s where we started and we just challenged stuff. It was just one of those innovation questions of how might we incite more leaders to actually say raise their hand and say, yes. This season I think I’m going to answer the call of really being bold in whatever call that you have on your life to put into action in in your ministry for this next year. Um how do we figure out how to support you? And so that’s what we said. We said, look let’s make it zero risk. Let’s offer a hundred percent money back guarantee. Um, if if you go through the program and you’re not happy with the results, then what would you want? I mean you would be dissatisfied at the point you like I I don’t want to pay for it. I paid for something that didn’t exceed my expectations. And so we just said, yeah, why don’t we do that? Like we’re I mean like you said we’re confident that there’s a proven process that if your church just walks through it, you’re going to get results.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally yes.
Kenny Jahng — And so that’s why we’re offering this guarantee. I think it makes sense to us in terms of trying to activate more leaders to actually inspire them, support them, and at the end of that encourage them to do more ministry and more impact into the next year.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kenny Jahng — And then it makes sense from the participants point of view that says, you know, we’re here in a high trust environment and we’re going to do anything we can to partner with you to actually make it possible for you to go to your people and um, really activate them in terms of their generosity profile. I think one of the things that you know, Rich, if you look at the stats of giving, um I think a lot of pastors have an aha moment when they look at their giving stats, and sometimes they don’t. And um I so I read something recently 30% 37% of Protestant churchgoing people regularly give money to the church. There’s a lot of people that come to church and actually don’t give to the church, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kenny Jahng — And that something like 70% 17% of Americans have reduced the amount that they give to church, and yet the average number of um charities that someone supports is over like it was like four and a half charities. So the average number of organizations and individual supports is four and a half and yet they’re giving less to the church. And that not all your people that actually come to church give.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — How do we activate them? How do we actually invite them into God’s story…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kenny Jahng — …to do more with what God has entrusted and and stewarded them with? And so I think that’s that’s where this is all being driven from.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. We want to come alongside you. We have a track record of doing this. I can say no one who’s got to the end of the program has asked for their money back which, you know, also gives us confidence now.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But if you want to totally fine.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We you know this is ah it is an a hands open thing. We do not want to hold you back. And we we know it’ll work. Listen, if you put in the work like we’ve been saying. We’ve put the plan together. We’ve brought the resources. We’ve got the experience. We’re ready to answer your specific questions. We would love for you to join us. I really do think it’ll be a great opportunity for you. Super-pumped about that.
Rich Birch — If people are interested all they need to do is go to bestyearendever.com. We get kicked off at the beginning of October so you need to take action now. Reach out. Let’s talk about how ah, you know, if you’ve got any questions we’re happy to answer them. If you’re following me on you know, email or social media, reach out. I’m happy to answer whatever questions we can for you. If you need more information, if you have any more questions we’re happy to do that. I want to give you, Kenny, the last word here as we wrap up today’s episode, but then we’re looking forward to the next week where we’re going to talk to you about AI and really dive deep on how churches can leverage AI to help them. But but let’s so give you the last word as we think about the Best Year-End Ever.
Kenny Jahng — Yeah, I I think it’s it’s ah maybe it’s a challenge or a call to action that says, many times in the leader’s life um, we have we have dreams for what we can do in in helping exalts God and and do some kingdom work. But ah sometimes we worry about our dreams and we try to manage them. And I would say don’t worry about dreaming too big. Um, if you are doing it for the right reasons and you’re trying to to actually mobilize your ministry um I challenge you to bring your vision, bring your goals and let’s figure out ways to fund your vision, and figure out what what we can do to help you put that plan into action for this next year. I think that’s the biggest thing is like how might you actually take the ability for your congregation to rally together around some good causes that you are focused on for this next year, and fund that vision for next year together.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks, Kenny; appreciate you being here. Thank you for all that you’re doing to help so many different organizations. Thanks, buddy.
Fostering Community in a Fast-Growing Multi-Campus Ministry: Scott Freeman on Effective Pastoral Care
Sep 07, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Scott Freeman, the Pastor of Community at Grace Church in South Carolina.
As a church expands, there is a constant tension to manage between growth and deep community. Grace Church has experienced significant growth over the years with ten campuses and over 250 community groups. Today Scott shares about their discipleship-driven model of groups, and how they train leaders while creating environments conducive to life change.
Discipleship-driven. // When asked about what Biblical community looks like at Grace Church, Scott explains the community groups at the church are for covenant members only and are based primarily on location with a heterogeneous mix of people of different ages and life stages. Being discipleship-driven means they don’t only study the Bible, but also incorporate activities such as prayer, service, fellowship, and exploring how to live out the core values of the church.
Groups are campus specific. // There is a benefit to worshiping on Sundays alongside people that you’re in a group with during the week. The staff is intentional about putting groups together based on factors like area of town and shared experiences and gives a lot of thought to which people would work well together and learn from each other.
Check in every three years. // Grace has discovered that having community groups meet for about a three year life cycle is a good timeframe for groups to develop vulnerability and allow individuals to get to know each other. When the group winds down after three years, it also allows new leaders to emerge and step up to lead groups of their own. Making changes every few years in the groups brings in new ways of thinking and keeps people from becoming too comfortable.
Ministries in addition to groups. // As the church has grown, Grace has added other forms of Biblical community besides groups which offer special levels of care and work to complement the community groups. Some of these programs include Re|engage to support marriages, Re|generation recovery ministry, divorce care, and grief share to help individuals with specific needs. Rather than competing with community groups, these ministries have enhanced the personal growth and vulnerability of members and the community groups have benefitted from it.
Group life pastors. // Each of Grace’s ten campuses has one or more group life pastors who are responsible for a certain number of groups at their respective campus. The group life pastors work with the group leaders to equip them, offer support, and share best practices.
Keep groups engaging. // Curriculum for the groups includes sermon questions, reflection on past teachings, and a look ahead to the upcoming teaching. The church also encourage groups to serve together and provides access to additional curriculum through a church subscription to RightNow Media. The church works to keep the format fresh and different to encourage engagement, allowing group leaders to try different approaches so the groups don’t become predictable week after week.
Train group leaders. // Grace’s community group leaders are trained through an onboarding class called Equip. It asks in-depth questions about their lives to assess the leaders’ willingness to be vulnerable and share their own struggles. The church believes that if leaders pretend to have it all together, it hinders transparency within the group. In addition, Scott hosts a monthly podcast for leaders, covering various topics related to leading groups.
You can find out more about Grace Church at www.gracechurchsc.org. Plus, explore various training links and documents below:
Equip Hub // Contains resources Grace Church uses to train leaders and disciple people in their church.
Shepherding Values Hub // Contains relevant resources to equip community group leaders in shepherding effectively in their role.
Shepherding Values Overview // A review of the five guiding principles for discipleship at Grace for group leaders.
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, it’s going to be a great conversation today. Really excited for this discussion – we’ve been looking forward to it for a while. We’ve got Scott Freeman with us. He’s a part of the leadership of a church called Grace Church in South Carolina. This is a ten campus church. There’s fantastic, they’re doing all kinds of amazing things that we’re going to get into dive into today. They exist to make mature followers of Jesus Christ there. It’s really a family of congregations in the upstate region if I’m reading my geography right. So, Scott, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Scott Freeman — Great. Thank you, Rich! Good to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of tell us a little bit of the Grace Church story, kind of help me understand more about the church.
Scott Freeman — Sure. Yeah. The the church was planted in 1995 so we are coming up on 30 years. I actually moved to the Greenville area in 2000, and became a member. I actually am not seminary trained. I was teacher and a coach previously. And so I attended the church as a member from 2000 until 2008, and then came on staff in 2008. So I’ve been on staff now in a variety of roles. All kind of in the world of biblical community for 15 years.
Rich Birch — Love it. There’s been a lot of change, you know, over that time frame particularly in this area.
Scott Freeman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you kind of give us a sense of that?
Scott Freeman — Sure.
Rich Birch — What’s what’s changed and evolved since, you know, that when you started even. It’s kind of interesting.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, when I when I first started attending Grace in 2000 there were probably 200, 300 attendees on Sunday mornings.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Scott Freeman — I think there may have been 10 community groups total. Um by 2008 when I was asked to come on staff, we had grown—it was still just one campus but—we had about 60 community groups…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scott Freeman — …and one pastor was overseeing all of those.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scott Freeman — And obviously he was feeling spread very thin.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scott Freeman — And the decision by our elders was to add three group pastors to kind of work underneath him and take 20 groups each so that we could equip those leaders to then disciple their group members. And so so in 2008 we’re at 60 groups and one campus and now fifteen years later we are at 10 campuses across the upstate and we have over 250 community groups.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scott Freeman — So we’ve definitely grown significantly since since 2008.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. This I’m really looking forward to this conversation because um Grace is one of these churches that is an outlier in a lot of cases. You know, we’re still seeing two thirds of multisite churches aren’t getting beyond three locations. Ah, and it’s it’s less than 1% get beyond ah six. So you know you you are in the rare, you know, rare air on that front. And then the same on the community groups thing, like is you know wide penetration. That’s I’m really looking forward to learning from that. But why don’t we start with kind of…
Scott Freeman — I sent you…
Rich Birch — Yeah sorry, go ahead.
Scott Freeman — It is interesting you say that with the with the three to four. Um I would say that was probably the hardest jump, was and and I was part of that on the biblical community side. I was not ah necessarily in in a lot of the decision making on that, but that was probably the the fork in the road where it was the most difficult. Going from 7 to 8, 8 to 9, 9 to 10 has not been nearly as difficult as that um, when really a central staff became necessary and the 3 to 4 was probably ah, a difficult jump.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. You ah at that phase you go from being a church with campuses to a church of campuses.
Scott Freeman — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — Like you have to really you you can kind of fake it for a while there and like just everybody work harder. Ah, but that doesn’t scale. You know to 4, 5, 6, 7 locations for sure. So why don’t we start with um maybe we’ll start at the granular level. So when you ah when you define um, like a ah biblical community, what does that look like, what what are kind of the group’s experience look like? Help us understand that.
Scott Freeman — Sure. Um, most of our groups are made up of—and I will say our groups are covenant members only—um and a lot of the kind of the way we structure groups works for us. I would, you know, not say it’s right for everyone. I don’t think it’s a right/wrong thing but we choose to make our groups primarily discipleship-driven. Not necessarily outreach and trying to allow, you know, new folks to come in through groups. So with that being in mind it is for covenant members only. Ah, typically it is a heterogeneous mixture. We do have some kind of life stage specificific situations in different groups. But for the most part it’s a mix of marrieds and singles. It’s a mix of different stages of life.
Scott Freeman — Groups meet typically for about a 3-year life cycle. And um, they do a mix ah curriculum wise of questions that we provide from the from the teaching, weekly teaching. And um, we ah we asked that groups not just be a bible study where the group leader ah re-teaches the weekly teaching, but that they pray together. They serve together. There is fellowship. There’s bible study. Um, they talk about how to be generous with their time and their resources together. It’s all of our core values hopefully focused on as equally as possible during that group meeting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I’d I’d love to dig into a couple of those things. You know, the the whole um, you know, heterogeneous/homogenous group question. Why has Grace fallen down on the like, Okay we’re going to… so so are the groups then more kind of based on the region that you’re in? It’s kind of more, you know, like hey we’re in this part of town kind of thing? Is that is that what they look like?
Scott Freeman — Right. Yeah, yeah, um, you know, we do group our groups are based on the campus you attend. So rarely would there be someone from our downtown campus in a community group with someone from our Pelham campus. It is campus specific because we do feel like there is benefit to worshiping alongside folks, you know, on the weekends that you’re in group with. And then there are some just logistical challenges, night of the week, that people are able to meet, um area of town. We are very intentional though about placing groups together. Um, you know, we pray through that process. We do we are strategic and think this couple would be great with this couple. Ah, but there are a lot of times where we make placements and we have folks come and say, man, that was so awesome that y’all knew I needed someone who had also lost their mom because I’d lost mine. And we had and we had no idea. You know and it was just…
Scott Freeman — So um, so we are intentional about that. And there are some again logistical things. But for the most part it is area of town because we do want people in community with folks they’re going to run into during the week… and
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Scott Freeman — …and be on PTA with, and and see in the grocery store…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scott Freeman — …and those type things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Um, now the 3-year life cycle that stood out to me. What do you mean by that? Kind of pull that apart.
Scott Freeman — Sure.
Rich Birch — When you’re when you’re talking about that with people, what do you say?
Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, now I will say that is not written in stone. It’s not, you know, an absolute.
Rich Birch — Okay, sure.
Scott Freeman — Um, we have kind of found that groups need long enough to obviously get vulnerable and transparent with each other, ah, get to know each other. If you um, you know, break up a group sooner than three years, it may not have time for that to happen. We’ve also learned that at typically around the three year mark um, things start to get a little comfortable, maybe a little bit stale. And often there are folks in that group that need to be leading their own group. And unless you kind of kick them out of the nest, it’s it’s not going to happen.
Scott Freeman — And so we’ve kind of, you know, found that 3 year sweet spot of starting to have conversation with the leaders um to say, hey you know, you’re nearing the end of year 3; you probably have some folks in your group that could lead their own now. We’re not going to scatter that group in 8 different directions. Typically it would split in half, maybe split into thirds. But um, the the 3 year change up does kind of, you know, give people a restart.
Scott Freeman — Um, I know we had a group that had been together for 4 years and when I first came on staff. Ah my boss was like you know I really feel like you’ve got some people in your group that need to lead. It’s probably time to to break it up. And and I understood the rationale behind it. My my wife was not happy when I got home and told her that these folks that we’ve been doing life with for for 4 years, we need to kind of go in different directions. But I did realize when we ended that group and started a new one just how predictable. I knew who was going to make the joke. I knew who was going to answer. I knew who was going to say what. And it challenged me as a leader and it gave us the new ways of thinking. And some folks went out from that group and um and led their own when they when they really needed to. And so they would have just stayed comfortable had we not have we not ended it.
Scott Freeman — Um and and we’re still friends with those folks we we haven’t lost community with them.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scott Freeman — Um, so you know so again, 3 years is kind of when we start to have that conversation. There have been groups so we’ve ended after 2, just because it wasn’t going well.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scott Freeman — There have been some that really started to get traction at that 3 year mark and we let it go 4, and maybe even 5 or 6. So it’s it’s not a hard and fast rule. But that’s kind of our our standard.
Rich Birch — Yeah rule of thumb. It’s kind of like that. That’s interesting. That’s interesting.
Scott Freeman — Right.
Rich Birch — That the other thing I heard you say… did I did I hear you say that groups are 14 to 18? You start up… that seems a little large, that’s larger than what I hear in kind of, you know, when you read a book on how to run a groups ministry…
Scott Freeman — Right.
Rich Birch — …you know, they they won’t say that.
Scott Freeman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So is what did I hear that right?
Scott Freeman — Well if I said, if if I could create the ideal group, I would say it’s probably 12.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, okay, great.
Scott Freeman — Um and but A, we run short on leaders…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Scott Freeman — …and so spaces are at a premium and we have to you know expand. There’s also just the we our community especially you know the city of Greenville, lot of industry, a lot of people coming and going. There’s a lot of folks that ah, you know, um are coming in and out. And so there is some attrition in groups. And so we know that if we launch them at 16 to 18 they probably settle in at 12 to 14. So we do probably we launch them a little bigger than we want them to end up, just knowing that in a lot of cases that will happen.
Rich Birch — Smart. Yeah, that’s smart. That’s that’s ah that’s a great idea. That’s that’s compelling for sure. I totally get that. Um, now talk about, so the church as a whole has experienced tremendous growth over these years. And ah there can often be this tension of it’s the like get big, go deep. You know how can you really? I know, you know, this but like, you know, can can people develop actual community in a fast-growing church? Talk me through how the group structure has tried to support that. You know, the growth that’s been happening kind of in the church as a whole.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, I I will say and I’m speaking on behalf of our governing elders here…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scott Freeman — …who make the decisions on when to launch campuses and that kind of thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott Freeman — I think one mindset on adding campuses that has been very helpful is that we don’t ah see an area and think, man, we’d really love to have a church in Spartanburg. Or we’d really love to have a church in Anderson. We have a group of people who are driving 30 minutes to one of our campuses from one of those spots, and it is a no-brainer to say, well let’s find a location and provide a campus in this community where people are already coming…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scott Freeman — …you know, to to our church. And so it’s really um, giving them the opportunity to worship locally and invite their friends versus them having to commute to church on the weekend. And so I think that has helped. Um and then, you know, when you do have 10 campuses, you have 10 growth centers of people going out and sharing in their community about life change that’s happening. And um, it’s really, that’s where you kind of see the exponential growth instead of um, you know one site you’ve got 10 smaller sites that are growing at the same time.
Scott Freeman — And so that has that has really helped. But there has to be depth there and there has to be real life change or it’s not going to be sustainable. And I think people see that um, you know, we’re intentional about teaching the bible. We’re intentional about discipling people and helping them no matter where they are in their christian faith when they first come to Grace, helping them grow in that and grow deeper. And I think people respect that and want to be a part of that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Um, do you guys do any other, you know, things that might look like one of these groups but aren’t really one of these groups, like classes, or you know other types of biblical community?
Scott Freeman — We do. And that change, it really was a mindset shift for us probably 6 or 7 years ago. Community group was the answer for everything in in our minds.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Scott Freeman — You know, if you’ve you’ve got marriage issues, well, you know, get in a community group. You having financial struggles? Well, get in a community group so people can know you and help you work through that. Parenting issues? Community group. And we started to realize that there were and are specific issues that people need real intense focused help in a certain area. And so I guess the first idea or thing we launched was Re-engage which we got from Watermark in Dallas. And we launched that as a marriage ministry. In some cases people did that alongside community group, but in a lot lot of cases it was kind of a off-ramp from community group to really focus on their marriage for a season, get healthy, and then come back into a community group.
Rich Birch — Right.
Scott Freeman — Um, and that went really well. We have since added Re-generation Recovery Ministry. We have divorce care. We have grief share. We have a number of different care and recovery forms of biblical community. And we’ve really had to communicate while community group is the most common and probably the um the form of community that a big big percentage of our members are in, it is not the normal, or the the right form and all these others are are lesser. Um, you know in fact, ah in a lot of cases. People are getting very vulnerable and growing tremendously in Re-gen and then they’re bringing that to their community group after the fact, and our groups are getting better as a result of these other ministries. So we’ve we’ve had to view it as not a competing thing, but as the complementary form of Biblical community.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. And you know, I think that is addresses a practical concern, particularly at school, you know you know, as are as as [inaudible] not as school, as they scale you know as they grow you end up, you know by just by the sheer number of people, it’s like man we’ve got a giant number of people who are going through a marriage issue, are going through you know, recovery. And and so um, you know, if we were a smaller church we could maybe have ah a person in one of those scenarios in a group and kind of um, you know, just deal with it. But at scale you’re like, man, we got to figure out how to how to do that. That makes total sense. I love that. That’s that’s good. Can you…
Scott Freeman — Yeah, and and when when a couple is struggling, say in their marriage or someone is dealing with an addiction or you know any any felt need like that, and it’s week after week after week, not only does it they don’t feel like they’re getting what they need from the group, or the group feels like they’re monopolizing the time, and it really kind of shuts down. You know my wife and I might be on the way to group and have a minor conflict and think, you know, that’s something we should probably bring up to the group, but I mean it it would seem silly compared to what that other couple is going through. So we’re just going to stuff it and stay quiet. And so it can really kind of derail um, what the group wants and needs to accomplish to disciple everyone. So um I think those are the cases where some of these alternate forms of Biblical community become really effective and appropriate.
Rich Birch — Yeah, could you talk me through what what the staff structure looks like. So I think you said you had 250 plus community groups.
Scott Freeman — Right.
Rich Birch — How are you supporting those from ah ah, you know, what’s the staff structure look that provides care and, you know, direction for those groups?
Scott Freeman — Right. Um, every every member every covenant member at our church has a responsible pastor.
Rich Birch — Okay, wow.
Scott Freeman — And so um, they and they know they know who that is. And so um, at our smaller campuses there um is a campus pastor and a groups pastor. And so those um you know our smaller campuses may have 12 or 15 of those community groups. And so that one groups pastor spends a majority of his time working with those um leaders over those community groups. And then ah really his his main job is to equip those leaders to then do ministry within their group. He will get in involved and meet directly with members of those groups at times, but really to replicate himself and to um equip those leaders is is the primary focus.
Scott Freeman — And then so on some of our larger campuses, our Pelham campus is is our largest, we have four group life pastors um, who again still have 20 groups or so that they’re responsible for and they cover those eighty groups at that campus in that same way. So every group leader has a pastor that they have his cell phone number. They can call him any time a day. We have group life women’s ministers who are able to care for the female leaders. All of our groups right now are, because they are heterogeneous, they’re led by couples. Um, and so you know the men are meeting with with the men, the women are meeting with women, and that our staff is there to support those leaders as well. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s ah, that’s cool. Love love that. Um, when you thinking about you know the curriculum. How so you said it’s a mixture of sermon based and then and then are groups do like then picking other curriculum, you have like a set of other things that they can do? Is that what that looks like? Maybe unpack that a little bit.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, we encourage groups to, again, find times to serve together. So there are weeks where they’re completely outside the home and they’re going and and serving somewhere in the community. We do provide sermon questions every week. And and we do that uniquely. We have a couple of reflection questions on the teaching that they’ve just heard and then we have the passage that is going to be taught the upcoming week with a few look ahead questions to that. And so it really kind of creates some anticipation of what’s to come.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Scott Freeman — And it really kind of minimizes the group leader’s desire or a tendency to maybe try to reteach what, you know, you’ve just heard.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scott Freeman — So it’s a little bit of a look back and a look forward. It gets people involved with the reading plan, and hopefully create some questions that they may have coming into next week’s teaching, and they come ready to to learn. Um, we do ah, you know, we ask if they’re going to do a book or something kind of outside of the norm that they run it by us just to um, you know, make sure we’re okay with it. But you know if we’ve got somebody in a leadership position, 99% of time when they bring something up, it’s it’s great.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally.
Scott Freeman — Um, we have we have a church subscription to Right Now Media. So um, we we have group leaders that use curriculum from that at times. Um, we do encourage our leaders, you know, if there’s anything that you are um so dependent on, like we should forget to do the sermon questions one week and not it not be a tragedy. You know…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Scott Freeman — …leaders ought to be able to move on and because things are going to happen. Um, and so we tell leaders, if you’ve done the sermon questions every single week for the last two years, you need to take a season and just stop.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s a good insight.
Scott Freeman — So the main the main thing… Yeah, the main thing is keeping it fresh, not getting locked in on one one way of doing it. We also encourage groups to just change just the group dynamic. So one week ah, you know, come together as a group but then have the guys go in one room and the ladies go in another. Another week maybe just break up into small groups of four. Because the more you can change the the environment, change the people that folks are around, you never know which setting is going to allow someone to confess something, to bring up something that they’ve been scared to bring up. And so we just want to create as many different environments as possible so that life change can happen through that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s cool. I love that. There’s obviously, you know, I love the direct connection, you know, that every group leader or couple has, you know, some people that they can interact with. Love that; I think that’s fantastic. Obviously a really great support in the background from that that point of view. But what other training, if I’m a community group leader, what other training am I getting kind of ongoing ah throughout the three years that I’m journeying that maybe like, do you do classes for them…
Scott Freeman — Right.
Rich Birch — …or you know, what does what does that look like?
Scott Freeman — Yeah, we have a group we have ah ah, an onboarding class called Equip and it’s as much vetting as it is training.
Rich Birch — Right.
Scott Freeman — We we have very um in-depth questions, I kind of icebreakers that are asking, um you you know, hey what’s the biggest challenge you’ve had in your marriage in the last year? What is your biggest failure as a parent? And we just want to see are you willing to share, are you willing to be honest about your own struggles? Because we don’t want you to go into a group as a leader and act like you have it all together, because you don’t.
Rich Birch — Right.
Scott Freeman — And that’s not gonna promote, you know, transparency in the people that are in your group as well. Um, you know we even asked leaders, hey imagine that a year from now you’re disqualified from ministry. What sin pattern would it be that that got you there?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scott Freeman — And just make people think through um those type real, you know, struggles and questions. So we do um, a lot of that a lot of, you know, shepherding ideas. We use a lot of Paul Tripp material with ah Love-Know-Speak-Do um. Ah so we train them um, before we launch them as leaders with material like that. And then once they are leading I do a monthly podcast about just a um, a topic related to leading groups. It might be struggling with you know your group struggling with attendance. It might be how to lead the singles in your groups well. It might be um, you know, ideas of service projects that you can do, different things. Um, so just each month I put something out like that. It goes to all 250 leaders. And then our group pastors are in constant communication with those leaders, whether it’s a quick conversation on a Sunday morning between services, or a huddle where the pastor gets 5 or 6 group leaders together and they just share, hey here’s a challenge I’ve got. How would you handle that? You know, and just sharing best practices and ideas. So um, we we definitely don’t want to train them and say, all right call us if you have any issues, and not be proactive about continuing…
Rich Birch — Ah, good luck.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, you’re ready – go for it.
Rich Birch — Ah we’ll see in 3 years.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, that’s right.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, okay. That’s cool. That’s really cool. Now when you look to the future, what are some questions that are on the horizon for you – stuff that you’re wrestling with, thinking through, hmm like I wonder, you know, maybe some things that you’re, you know, thinking about – do we… should we change up, that kind of thing?
Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, you know, I think we’ve had tension on um, how much freedom to give leaders and then how much to legislate. Um you know, I think if we if we give too much direction and “you have to do this, you have to do this, you have to do this”, then our more capable leaders feel stifled and are kind of like, you know, you really you could get anybody to do that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, you don’t need me.
Scott Freeman — I’ve just become, you know…that’s right. Um, but then some of our our newer leaders who might need more support. Um, and so I think finding that balance of providing enough direction and support for them without stifling the leaders. You know, we’ve got a lot of leaders who are CEOs during the week in their company, and then telling them how they have to take attendance, or how they have to do this. And and giving them some freedom in that and just, you know, releasing some of that to them and say, hey you’re a leader. We trust you we want to come alongside you and help you do that. But I would say that’s a challenge that um that we’re wrestling with. And then just constantly trying to keep the leadership pipeline going and making sure that we have enough leaders. If we do, you know, if God continues to bless us and we do continue to grow in the way that we have, that we have enough leaders to to lead those folks that that God brings to us in the in the years to come.
Rich Birch — Love it. Do you guys do like um like mult… like kind of entry points during the year like groups are starting kind of in seasons or are they just starting all the time.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, um, we do start I guess there are two main, you know, beginning of the spring, beginning of the fall.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Scott Freeman — Our smaller campuses have a little bit more flexibility because the membership class or the entry point might have 4 or 6 or 10 people coming at a time versus a bigger campus that has, you know dozens coming at a time. And so there is some flexibility and our smaller campuses may launch a little bit more often. Um, we have we’ve tried events, like we did ah a group launch…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Scott Freeman — …um which started to feel a lot like rushed or speed dating…
Rich Birch — Okay, yes, yes.
Scott Freeman — …I heard some people call it. Um, and so we’ve we’ve tried to not make it feel like that, but also be intentional and help people find a group as quickly as possible. Um I think we we felt more tension when community group was the only form of biblical community to get people in quickly. Whereas now that we have men’s and women’s ministry, and we have Re-engage, and we have Re-gen, there are a lot of ways that folks can get connected ah in the window of time between them arriving at the church and then actually getting placed in a community group. You know, even if they show up in February and we’re not launching groups until August, there are plenty of ways to get connected to get them involved and and disciple them before they get into a community group in August so.
Rich Birch — Interesting. This is this been fantastic. It’s like been a great, I got a page of notes here. Look it’s like looking up under the hood of everything that’s going on at your church. I love that. Just as we’re kind of coming to the end here, is there anything else you love to share to kind of give us a sense of what’s going on in your, you know, Biblical community at the church?
Scott Freeman — Um, I mean I would just say all the ideas and things that we used or most of it we’ve we’ve stolen from other people, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah for sure.
Scott Freeman — Especially in the early in the early days we we met with a ton of other folks to figure out what it looked like to um, to do groups. And and some of that stuff we’ve held onto, some stuff we’ve changed. Um I will I will share some documents with you that we can, you know, include…
Rich Birch — Oh great.
Scott Freeman — …include in the show notes that folks can um you know use and take and change and do whatever they want to with.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scott Freeman — But ah you know, if we can pay that forward and and help folks um I know when we first went to Watermark and saw the scale that they were doing Re-gen and Re-engage, I kind of thought there’s no way we’ll ever do it at this scale. And I know that there are people that look at our church and think the same thing. And I would just say you really you can scale any of these ideas to whatever size you’re at currently and it can um it can still work. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. What what would be some of the documents or maybe talk us through what those would be because so people could, we’ll put them in the show notes, friends, we’ll link there.
Scott Freeman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But give us a sense of what some of those are, or or you know one that’s particularly helpful you think oh this could be really good for church leaders.
Scott Freeman — Sure, the um the Equip class that we use for onboarding leaders and training them, I can include kind of what we do for that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scott Freeman — We did take those Paul Tripp ideas and expand them into just some shepherding values that we want our leaders to um, you know, to love their groups, um, you know to know them thoroughly, to love them patiently, to speak wisely and direct biblically, and um, you know, to pray throughout all of that. Um, and so there are some ah things that we’ve created around that idea that I can put in there.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scott Freeman — And um, yeah, just just a lot of you know again things that we’ve stolen from other churches through the years…
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Scott Freeman — …and kind of tweak to make our own. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good; that that’s so helpful. I really appreciate that, Scott. That’ll be that’ll be a great resource for for folks to take a look at. And you know, I know we’re always looking to kind of learn from each other and that’s a great a great way to do that. So thank you. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show today. If we want to send people somewhere online to track with you, track with the church, where do we want to send them to do that?
Scott Freeman — Yeah, our website is gracechurchsc.org – sc as in South Carolina and yeah I would encourage we have you know teaching on there. We have a lot of our curriculum from our men’s roundtable, from our Ezer women’s ministry that ah, that might be of help. And um and all of our staff I know that one of my favorite things is meeting with folks from other churches and…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Scott Freeman — …and sharing ideas because we we learn as much as we um share, probably more. So um, ah feel free to to reach out and email and we’re we’re here to help any way we can.
Rich Birch — That’s wonderful. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Scott. Really appreciate you. Thanks for being here, man.
Scott Freeman — Yeah, thank you. Thanks for what you do.
The Future of Faith is Child-Friendly: Stephen Moore on WinShape Camps for Communities
Aug 31, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to be talking with Stephen Moore, the Director of WinShape Camps for Communities. WinShape, an organization started in 1985 by Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, started as a college program and has since grown into five different ministries, with focuses on professional development, marriages, foster care, college discipleship, and summer camps. WinShape Camps for Communities is a traveling day camp program that partners with churches to bring camps to communities all over the US while spreading the gospel of Jesus.
Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to reach more families in your community with the gospel? Want to create opportunities for college-age kids to gain ministry experience while developing their leadership? Listen in as Stephen talks about the importance of children’s ministry in shaping the future of the church as well as the transformative power of camps for campers, their families, and the summer staff.
Children are the future. // Children’s ministry is more than just a place to keep kids occupied during services. The future of the church is children; the gospel is for them too. WinShape Camps for Communities wants to help build local, engaged church members from a young age in the places they visit. They don’t water down the gospel at the camps so the kids who attend can come to a knowing relationship with Christ.
Engaging kids. // The mission statement of WinShape Camps for Communities is to glorify God by creating experiences that transform campers and families with the message of Christ. Don’t just entertain kids by showing videos in your kids ministry, but invest in discipleship and be intentional to engage them as they learn about Jesus.
Form a bond. // WinShape Camps for Communities is about embracing all-out-fun and all-out-faith. By spending time with the kids at camp and investing with them in the activities they enjoy, the staffers build trust and form a bond them. Then when the time comes for the WinShape staff to share the gospel, the kids are ready to open up and listen. Camp is a setting where the gospel can come alive in a way that it doesn’t in day-to-day life at home.
Bringing camp to you. // Not everyone can afford or feels comfortable sending their children to overnight camps. WinShape Camps for Communities partners with churches and local businesses to bring camp to a community. The traveling camps provide a safe and fun environment for children during the summer, while also incorporating the gospel and faith into the activities which range from sports and crafts to science experiments.
Work with others in your community. // WinShape Camp for Communities is for local churches in a community, not just one church by itself. WinShape hosts a big event every January and invites host churches for a rally in Atlanta. There is a three-day event with guest speakers to teach and empower church leaders. They are also invited to bring up to eight people from different churches with them. When they go back home, these churches are given information on how to engage with other businesses and churches to invite them to partner with the traveling camp.
WinShape brings everything. // The churches partnering with WinShape don’t have to provide anything other than volunteers to help connect with the kids. WinShape Camps for Communities bring everything with them, including all the necessary equipment and resources for the activities. Everything they do ties back to the gospel, including flag football, where they take breaks for short devotionals. By providing volunteers from the local churches to work with the kids, the kids will see familiar faces if their family decides to attend services at the church.
An opportunity for young adults. // Working as summer staff at camps is an invaluable experience for college-age kids as well. Regardless of a young person’s area of study in college, working at a camp contributes to their personal and spiritual growth as well as helping develop their leadership skills. Plus, the impact of working with kids and families to make a difference in their lives is priceless.
You can find out more about WinShape Camps for Communities at www.winshapecamp.org.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody; welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today. You know it’s summertime and you know when you think of summer you think of camps, and so today ah we’ve brought you a bit of a different look on leadership on something that all of us I really do think should be reflecting with. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today will be absolutely no exception to that. Super excited to have Stephen Moore with us. He serves as the Director of WinShapes Camps for Communities, a traveling day camp program that brings camps ah to churches all over the country. Ah where he’s ah he’s served with WinShape camps for over sixteen years. Stephen has recruited literally thousands of summer staff to bring the gospel of Jesus and even more more ah to even more campers and families. Super excited for ah Stephen to be on the show. He’s he’s also excited for the local church. And we’re looking forward to learning more from him today. Thanks for being here today, Stephen.
Stephen Moore — Happy to be here, Rich. Thank you for having me and excited to engage with you about camp and about what we’re talking about this morning.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you kind of ah tell what did I miss about WinShape, tell us about WinShape folks that don’t know about about you guys or your mission, kind of talk us through that a little bit.
Stephen Moore — Yeah I’d love to. Um, WinShape was started in 1985. It was ah founded and started by the founder of Chick-Fil-A, Truett Cathy um, and it originally started with the college program at Barry College in Rome, Georgia, and then soon after a overnight camps for boys was added. Then the next summer an overnight camp for girls was added. And so about forty years ago WinShape got its start and today it has grown into five different unique ministries. So we focus on professional development. We focus on marriages, focus on homes, we focus on college discipleship. And specifically where I work we focus on summer camps.
Stephen Moore — So we have five overnight summer camps in North Georgia. We we have teams in Costa Rica and Brazil right now doing summer camps in those countries. And then we do traveling day camps all over the entire United States as you mentioned a little bit ago, and that’s what I have the opportunity to specifically work with – our traveling day camps.
Rich Birch — Love it. This is so good. And we were just before we got recorded, today we’re recording this literally on like the opening day. And so the fact that Stephen is sitting down with us for a half an hour is pretty amazing. So we really appreciate uh your time with us. I know you’re passionate about this.
Rich Birch — And, you know, I was about a month ago just maybe over a month ago I saw an interesting article entitled “Pastors, Children’s Ministry is More Than a Place to Keep Kids Occupied.” And I sat up and I was like, Ooo, that is so true and resonates with so much we talk about here at unSeminary. And so I wanted to get Stephen on to talk about that. That’s a bold title ah, because you know you’re saying maybe there are churches that are just keeping kids occupied. Ah what’s the opportunity that maybe some churches are missing by just kind of having a lower view of kids ministry? Talk us through that.
Stephen Moore — Yeah. I mean I think we see it even in scripture in Mark when Jesus says hey let the little children come to me. You know, the disciples and others are trying to stop that and he he sees and he knows that, hey no, the gospel is also for for children. It’s for everybody. And so we see it in scripture and we believe that at WinShape. Um, we often say at WinShape, we are not the local church but we are for and support the local church. So if you’re a pastor listening to this, we thank you for the ministry you’re doing, and we want to come alongside and support you in that.
Stephen Moore — Um, I think the sad reality is there are people leaving the church. Um, and we’re seeing that and so we want to focus on them and we want to engage them. But we um also know the future of the church is children. You know, seven year olds today are going to be twenty-seven year olds in 20 years. And we want them to be plugged in and invested in their local church. So what we want to create and help build are local engaged church members. And we think doing that at a young age is important. So we do not water down the gospel at Winshape Camps. No, we boldly preach and teach the gospel. And we want kids to come to a ah knowing relationship with Christ um, while at camp and then while in their local church. So, a way that we do that is is through our mission statement. We glorify God by creating experiences that transform campers and families with the message of Jesus Christ. And so we would hope that churches do that with their children’s ministries. Hey, don’t just engage them. Don’t just entertain them. Don’t just throw on Youtube videos and have fun. No, engage them with the message of Jesus Christ and let church be a place where they are able to hear and learn about Him, and ultimately hopefully grow in a relationship with him.
Rich Birch — I love that. And you know one of the things we’ve seen about growing churches that are making an impact is they are next generation obsessed. They’re thinking about kids. This is a key piece of the puzzle that you can’t just kind of phone this in. You’ve got to, you know, think about it strategically, you have to invest in it. You’ve got to ah, give great resources towards that. Why do you think you know maybe some churches struggle with this. Maybe it’s the you know more the investment, the finding people. What is the what’s the sticking point there that maybe holds ah you know, churches back, or the churches that you’ve maybe engaged with or seen out there that have, you know, maybe struggle with this?
Stephen Moore — Yeah. I think um I think some of them is the resources and the volunteers. You know, in order to have a ah thriving children’s ministry you need to have folks volunteer and engage with that. And so I know that that’s that’s something even at WinShape we’ve struggled the last few years and engaging and hiring our summer staffers. Um, there’s so many options for people. Um, and we think working at camp, I mean any camp not just WinShape, is one of the best ways you can spend your college summers. I did it for four summers and I grew so much in that. So I think that’s one reason.
Stephen Moore — And I think too ah, it is work. You know, I think there is an element of oh well, we could just make children’s ministry or our children’s program really simple and entertaining and it won’t take as much like discipleship and investment. But what we do at camp is work. It’s tough work but it’s so rewarding. And it’s so life changing that it’s worth that additional investment in going that, what we would say WinShape, that second mile. I’m going that second mile second to be able to engage with people and invest um within them in a deeper, not just entertaining, but in a life-changing way.
Rich Birch — I love that. Well WinShape, ah you know, your reputation as an organization is just so positive. You know, high quality. Um, you know, people that engage with WinShape are just like, Man, they do just do such great stuff. And one of the things that um I’ve heard people say and then when I was doing a little bit of research I see you actually talked about it, or I read on your website, you talk about all-out-fun and all-out-faith, which I just love that. I love this idea of, hey, our our ministry is both of those things. Can you talk us through that? What does that look like, because man, I think that’s something our churches could learn. How how can we have all-out-fun and all-out-faith at the same time?
Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s that’s a great ah great question. I think what we do and what we try to do is we try to build trust with children. We try to allow them to, you know, play soccer or flag football, or go to gymnastics or painting or crafts or fast food or wacky science. Those are just some of our our skill offerings. We go out out of the rec field and play games, and we listen to what the children are interested in because we know if they are able to engage with that counselor, if they’re able to engage with the volunteer, there’s going to be a trust built. In over 3 or 4 days um then when that staffer wants to sit down and and tell them about the gospel, that kid’s going to be more engaged to listen because they know that that staffer or that volunteer cares about them.
Stephen Moore — Um, and so I remember sitting down with a dad last year he came and he told me he said, thank you for the ministry you do. It’s so meaningful because we teach our kids these things in the home each and every day. But when they hear it from a 22 year old college student that cares about them, that invest in them, that wants to engage with them in whatever that activity is they hear it in a different way. It’s a reinforcement of what it’s taught at home and so that child is more open and receptive to the gospel in that setting because they’re a place they’re they’re doing activities they’re not normally doing. And they’re engaging in fun in a way they normally don’t. And so their faith can grow while at camp. Thats at any sort of camp – at our overnight camps, center day camps. There’s a lot of great Christian camps across America. We we think WinShapes one, but there are other ones too that I think it’s a camp is a setting where the gospel can come alive in a way that maybe doesn’t in ah in a day-to-day activity at home.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve I’ve joked and now you didn’t say this; I’ve said this. So don’t this is don’t don’t take this in a negative way. But I’ve joked in other settings because I’m a huge camp booster. I think it’s really important for for families to engage with. I think it’s really important for, like you say, young leaders – it’s an incredible place to work, whether it’s WinShape or other places. But I’ve joked in other contexts I said, you know, like in a lot of churches ah Jesus has like a bit of a moldy basement and and maybe like ah some you know flannel board or something like that. But when you go to camp, Jesus there, man, he’s like super engaging. He’s got all kinds of fun activities. He’s going to, you know, it’s bright and sunny out and you’re running around outdoors, doing something amazing. What an incredible context for the message of Jesus to ah, you know, to resonate. Just incredible. I just think that’s it’s one of the things that makes camp ministry just so important, I think for kids particularly.
Rich Birch — What what does it look like? So I have to be honest until I engaged with you on this, I did not know that WinShape did day camps. So this is like a learning experience for me. What does that look like when you, you know, you end up partnering with a place, and what kind of activities – how does that all work? Give us a sense of what that kind of looks like.
Stephen Moore — Yeah, of course. And and you mentioned a few minutes ago camp started this morning so yesterday…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stephen Moore — …our five overnight camps kicked off. So parents were dropping off yesterday afternoon, and they’re on day two.Day camp started this morning at 8am in ten different communities across the US.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stephen Moore — So um, we have 10 different teams and those teams we just finished two weeks of training together.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Stephen Moore — So we brought all our WinShape summer staffers together. We professionally and intentionally trained them in their activities, in safety, in gospel presentation, and we send them on the road. Um.
Stephen Moore — And so we what we understand is not everyone can afford an overnight camp experience, nor are parents comfortable. You know some parents might say, hey, I’m not ready to send my first grader away for a week or two, but I do want them to experience camp. So what we said is, well, let’s take camp on the road.
Stephen Moore — Parents are also looking for things to do with their children while not in school during the summer. And a safe and a fun environment is important to them. We agree, but let’s put the gospel and faith in it as well.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stephen Moore — Um, and so that’s what we do. Um so we partner with local businesses. We partner with local churches. And I think if even Florence, South Carolina we’re doing camp there in a few weeks. 25 different churches come together and send kids to camp there.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow!
Stephen Moore — It’s not just one church. It’s WinShape Camps for Communities. We want to be for that whole community.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good.
Stephen Moore — Um, and so we’re doing camp… yeah… in Texas and Florida and Illinois, all the way out to California and New Mexico and Oklahoma and everywhere in between. So um, we come in, we we set up on Sunday we go to church, we attend church at that local church. We set up all day Sunday and then Monday morning through Thursday camps from 8 to 5 and then Fridays our big Friday family fun day. So we we bring in all the parents, all the cousins, and the grandparents, and we feed them lunch. And then our day wraps up, our team packs up, and they go to the next location.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Love it.
Stephen Moore — But I want to focus real quick on… Um, yeah, it’s it’s a fun…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s clearly university, college students doing that. That’s a grinder. What an incredible summer though. That’s so fun being on the road. Sorry didn’t mean to cut you off there.
Stephen Moore — Yeah, no, you’re good. You’re good. We um, we want our staffers to build really intentional relationships with the campers and invest in them. But more importantly, we want local church volunteers there as well. Because we know on Friday we’re packing up and we’re headed to the next town. We we intentionally ask the church to provide a volunteer for every 10 campers.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Stephen Moore — So if there’s going to be 380 campers one week, we want 38 volunteers. Because on Sunday morning when that kid maybe comes back to church for the first time, which happens so often because the parents are like, Man, my child had such a fun week. We don’t go to church. Maybe we should try this place out on Sunday morning. They come on Sunday morning. They’re going to see familiar faces because there’s 38 volunteers that were with us all week are going to be there on Sunday so that child is going to immediately feel that safety and that comfort. And they’re going to even want to be more involved there. So that’s something we also do. That that volunteer component is really important to us.
Rich Birch — Can you give me a sense of the like the scale, the scope of a kind of typical WinShape Day Camp? Like is this, like you mentioned you know, almost 400, 380 kids – is that kind of typical, is that what that is typically looking like, or are they larger smaller?
Stephen Moore — Yeah, well…
Rich Birch — What, you know…
Stephen Moore — Yeah, we’re…
Rich Birch — I know they’re all different, I get that.
Stephen Moore — No, that’s a good question. We um, our average camp size is usually around 250 to 280 campers…
Rich Birch — Yep, okay.
Stephen Moore — …um per per our day camps. Our community camps um we will have some that are going to be closer to 550 campers…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stephen Moore — …and then we’ll have some that are closer to 175. So um we bring in either a team of 20 to 25 people, or if it’s a really large camp. We’ll actually send two teams to one location.
Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense.
Stephen Moore — So this week we have ten unique locations. Next week we might have a really large location so we’ll send two teams there. So we’ll have nine unique communities. So this summer we’re doing 84 weeks of camp over the next nine weeks.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. And um, that’s incredible. It’s so cool. What when at the kind of community level. So is that I talk me through how churches are working together on this. I love that idea of like, hey, maybe there’s a group of churches that are trying to leverage this kind of opportunity. What what does that look like maybe maybe if you could have your like perfect hey this would be amazing if we did this everywhere that would be incredible. What does that kind of look like?
Stephen Moore — Yeah, you know it kind of goes back to our name WinShape Camps for Communities. We are for communities and for the local churches in that community, not just one church. So what we we do a big event every January where we bring in a lot of our host churches. We call it Host Rally. We fly them in um, to Atlanta we do a very like 3-day training. We bring in speakers, guests. We want to enrich and empower them. We know church leaders and pastors can sometimes, it’s a struggle. And so we want it to be ah a very faith-fi like encouraging weekend but we also want to equip them to do camp.
Stephen Moore — So we invite them to bring up to up to 8 people, if they want, from different churche and a leadership team. And so it’s not just First Baptist Church or whatever church. It might be 3 or 4 churches coming to that event. And when we when we send them back home, we encourage them, we help them, we resource them: Hey, this is how you can go engage with other businesses and other churches and invite them to come to camp. Um that that church I mentioned a few days ago or a few minutes ago, 25 different churches from that community. That community had over 80 families attend camp that don’t regularly attend church.
Rich Birch — Wow, interesting.
Stephen Moore — So there might have been 120 families that do. There’s 80 families right there that don’t attend or engage with the church that sent their child to a church for five days during a week. So they’re gonna be so much more likely to say, hey, I want to get plugged in because my child had an awesome experience at camp. They came back changed. We hear that so many times from parents – the child I dropped off on Monday isn’t the same child that I picked up on Friday afternoon; something changed this week. And what we think is, it’s the gospel. We think it’s Jesus. They were introduced to him and engaged it with him in a way they’ve never had before. And so then that parent’s like, you know what? I want to try that out. So we think camp is such a great tool to help local churches connect with people in their community that they normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to do with.
Rich Birch — Love it. How, at the kind of participant or at the camper level, how do WinShape Camps for Communities differentiate against other… like what kind of activities are you doing and what is that like? So again, I can picture your overnight camp experience and I’m trying to picture how do you get that into the back of a bus and move it.
Stephen Moore — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, you know what does that look like?
Stephen Moore — Yeah, sometimes people are like…
Rich Birch — You can’t bring those nice hills in Georgia; you can’t move those nice hills in Georgia you can’t, you know, to everywhere across the country, you know.
Stephen Moore — That’s right, we’ll figure out a way to do that. Um, so I think some people are like, is it just VBS on steroids? And we’re like no, it’s it’s more than that. So you know, we just sent our teams out. They travel in two 15-passenger vans, two 26-foot moving trucks, and an additional pickup truck. So that’s what’s great for these churches. You don’t have to provide anything; just provide us some volunteers and some space to do it.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stephen Moore — We bring everything with us. We bring our sound and our tech equipment. We bring LED walls. We bring an incredible, impressive set with us. Um we bring in 18 different skill offerings from flag football to soccer, to wacky science to archery. You know, we bring in targets and bows and arrows, because we think these campers maybe don’t get an experience this every day. So Let’s do something new for them. We haven’t quite figured out how to bring the horses on the road with us. So horseback riding’s just at our overnight camps. But rocketry – that’s something we bring in…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so fun.
Stephen Moore — …little kids get to shoot off rockets into the air at camp in that skill. So um and again camp is from 8 to 5, and we often hear parents tell us—and the reason this is fresh on my mind is because I just let a session at this at staff training a few days ago—that it’s their child’s favorite and best week of the summer every single year…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Stephen Moore — …and they can’t wait for us to come back to the next year. And we know that’s not just unique to WinShape camps. We know that that that’s just camp in general. It’s such a special unique thing, but we want to be really intentional about what we do at camp and have it tie back to the Gospel. So if we’re taking flag football, we’re in that skill for 50 minutes, we’re taking a water break at 15 minutes in, we’re going to sit down and do a short devo. And we’re going to just, hey, for the next three minutes let’s have a water break and let’s look at a piece of scripture and how that ties into the rest of the day.So we’re intentionally trying to do that through each and everything we do at camp.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that That’s so good. Again this is fantastic. Love what you guys are up to. If there’s churches out there like that are thinking maybe this is the kind of thing I want to pursue, um are there kind of some characteristics or something you’re looking for in churches that would you’d love to partner with? I’m assuming you’re interested in partnering with new churches because you’re talking on this thing. Ah, but you know you might be looking, and obviously not for this summer but for following summers. But yeah, what what would you, you know, who are the kind of churches you’re looking for, what are some of the traits, what does that look like?
Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, so you might disagree with this and that’s okay.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Stephen Moore — We’re not looking for a camp to just come do camp for the kids in your children’s ministry.
Rich Birch — Yes, great. Love it.
Stephen Moore — We think those kids are very, very important. We think those kids need to hear the gospel and we want those kids at camp. Absolutely we want them there. But we want you to be interested in hosting camp to reach kids outside of your doors…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stephen Moore — …to reach your community. That is really important to us and that’s one of the main characteristics we’re looking for in our churches. Are you someone that wants to get outside your walls, meet people in the community. And sometimes that’s difficult and challenging. Sometimes you know people might step into your door on Sunday morning that don’t look or, you know, act like the rest of your church, but those people need the gospel. The kids in your children’s ministry need the gospel, the kids at the church, you know, three blocks down the street need it. So we want it to be a community church that’s trying to engage with other areas and people in the community that aren’t typically in your doors on a Sunday morning. That’s really important to us.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love that. And I love the you know the check they’re around that sounds like the kind of thing like most churches are going to agree with that. But you got to ask the second question, do you really? Ah because, you know, we want to see that happen in our ministries, but then when it happens and the complexity that can come there…
Stephen Moore — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …um, you know we have to be ready for that for sure. So I love that. Do you, um you know, in in the actual programming, do break up into small groups at any point and kind of help kids wrestle with, is there… you talked about like video walls and all that, is there like worship experiences? Give give us a sense of those kinds of that that kind of part of the program.
Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s yeah I can give you just a quick flyover of our day. So we get there…
Rich Birch — That’s perfect.
Stephen Moore — …kids come, they’re jumping on inflatables. As kids arrive, we call it, you know, kind of arrival village training. So um, and then there’s put in different villages. So we have ocean, safari and alpine. And these are funny terms, I know, bu you know we break it down to kindergarten and first grade is 1one age. Second and third grade is another age. And fourth, fifth and some communities sixth grade is our next age. And they’re going to small groups with kids their specific age.
Stephen Moore — Um, we design our camper curriculum, that’s age specific. So ah, first grader is going to have a camper book and a camper guide that looks different than fifth graders. Um, because we want it to we want to engage in with them with the gospel in an age appropriate way. Um, they’re going to three different auditorium elements a day. and in these auditorium elements we have a worship leader that’s leading different songs and different activities. We have a theme director that’s delivering what we would call Christ-centerered truths. In our theme of the day this summer we’re going on a road trip through the life of David.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stephen Moore — So we’re looking at a different story and a different example of the life of David every day. And we’re just tying it back on Wednesday with our gospel message on what it looks like to to be adopted as a son and daughter of Christ. And so we’re teaching that um each and every day at camp. But then we’re also kids get to sign up for four different skills. So we have, you know, so anywhere between 15 and 20 different skill offerings. And kids get to go to four of those throughout the week of camp, and those they get to choose. Um, we do rec every day, and then we do team time twice a day. And in that team time setting, that’s more of the small group bible study setting where they’re diving deeper with maybe you know 12 to 14 other kids on what the message is that day. So, it’s a fun-filled day, and they go home tired.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Stephen Moore — Um, but it’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Stephen Moore — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And I think the transferable, listen you might be listening in and saying, listen, we’re not going to run this at our our church, which is okay. But the thing I do want you to think about is man how can you inject some fun, some intentionality, some um, you know, some thoughtful process – you can hear even in just how Steven’s unpacking that. Man, there’s there’s a lot of thinking around how all of that fits together, so that it speaks the language, that it appeals to kids, obviously parents love it. They’re like this is a great. this is a great thing and want to partner with that. It’s intentionally, outward focus intentionally, saying hey we want to reach people in our community. Just love that. I hope that inspires you as you’re listening in today. Kind of as we come to wrap up, anything you’d love to, you know, so you know, say as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation?
Stephen Moore —Yeah, Rich, you just used some some words that we use often at camp. We call it the WinShapeCamps recipe. So right now we’re doing 17 different camps as we speak. Those 17 camps are 10 community camps in the US, a community camp in Brazil, and a community there are a community camp in Costa Rica, and 5 overnight camps. What we want is we want to be cooking the WinShape Camps recipe wherever we’re doing camp.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stephen Moore — And that keeps us in line. And I’ll just quickly do a flyover those recipe ingredients…
Rich Birch — Yes, let’s do it.
Stephen Moore — …and you know, I would invite any church to do those. Um so resource stewardship – we want to use our resources and take care of the things God’s entrusted to us – um, equipment stewardship. I mean um, sorry we’ve we’ve changed some of these names.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stephen Moore — So Christ-centered truths is another one. So we want we want everything we do to have, you know, Christ as a part of it. Intentional culture. We want to be intentional about the little things we do. So a camper, they’re no longer just stepping foot into you know a local school or local church. They’re stepping foot into the Safari village where they’re a lion and they get to be with their other lions. So we’re gonna be doing cheers and we’re be doing games throughout the day.
Stephen Moore — Want to be people-first. We care about our people. We care about our summer staffers. We care about our volunteers. We care about our our campers. And engaging fun is our last one. We think everything we do, if fun’s involved, kids are going to be more receptive and understanding to hear, hear about Jesus. So um, that’s kind of our WinShape Camps recipe. And so any…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stephen Moore — …church could do that. just like it doesn’t have to be that. But as you do children’s ministry. How can those elements be a part of what you do?
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I love that. I love how those hang together to really create a compelling ministry for, you know, for kids. And I know there’s people are listening in today that have found that, you know, just super helpful. So ah, really appreciate that. Well as we wrap up, if if people want to track with you or track with WinShape, where do we want to send them online? How do we want to, you know, get them connected with you?
Stephen Moore — Yeah, that’s that’s a great question – winshapecamps.org – you’ll be able to choose our overnight camps or our day camps is one it’s going to be your first dropdown option. So that’s one way to get connected. I think my email’s on there. But if it’s not, it’s smoore@winshape.org – um, so S-M-O-O-R-E um and so you could do that. Another thing I didn’t hit on yet, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stephen Moore — …but I just want to real quick before we leave…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Stephen Moore — …um is we want to engage with campers and we think it’s really important, but also I think working as summer as a summer staffer is an unbelievable value experience a valuable experience. I have 3 kids of my my own. They’re 2, 2, and 5, and I genuinely think the practical summer examples I had while working camp were very helpful for me, and they translate to any and every job out there. You could be studying chemistry and working camps still going to be a good beneficial thing for you to do during the summer. So if you know anyone of that college age, you know, 18 to 25 that you think could work camp or would be a good fit for WinShape, send them to us as well because we would love to be able to have them spend a summer with us to grow and be able to share their faith.
Rich Birch — Totally. I heartily endorse that. Ah you know, I do think like I said earlier I think the camp experience is fantastic for kids. It’s a great kind of thing to be a part of, but I really think to be honest, the sweet spot where the the place where God seems to have his ah, uses these experiences I think particularly as on that staff age transition as as young leaders. You know, man, it’s just something amazing happens ah when a young leader dedicates their summer, or like you say, all four you know summers of theirs, you know, college summers kind of thing. Man I just love that. That’s so good.
Rich Birch — Well I appreciate you coming on the show today, Stephen. I hope the rest of the summer, I know it will be fantastic, but we’re cheering for you. Thanks for giving us some time today.
Stephen Moore — Yes, Rich. I appreciate it, and thanks for the time.
He Gets Us: Kyle Isabelli on Reaching Out to Non-Christians with Gloo
Aug 24, 2023
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Kyle Isabelli, the lead pastor of Avenue Christian Church in the western suburbs of Chicago.
Wondering how to connect with hurting people in your community who might not venture through your church’s doors? In today’s episode Kyle and I have a fantastic conversation about the church’s community outreach efforts using the He Gets Us campaign and the Gloo platform. Listen in to hear how you can use these free digital tools to connect with and care for your community.
Gloo and He Gets Us. // Since COVID, Avenue Christian Church has utilized resources that Gloo and Barna offer to churches. In addition to church health and spiritual health assessments, Kyle and his team began to explore the He Gets Us campaign and the connection that Gloo provides to it. The He Gets Us campaign invites people to get to know the real Jesus. It communicates that Jesus understands them and that whatever people are experiencing, Jesus faced it too.He Gets Us became more widely known after two of their ads aired during the Super Bowl in 2023. In addition to being on TV, their ads are also online and on billboards.
The local church partnership. // The He Gets Us campaign messaging engages people in areas where they are struggling and invites them to reach out for help via text. When someone reaches out with a question or a need, the Gloo platform then forwards the messages to local partnering churches. As a partner in the campaign, Avenue Christian Church receives messages from people in their area code seeking help or encouragement so they can respond with practical care.
The response. // As a He Gets Us partner, Avenue gets an average of two to three messages per week forwarded to them. They then respond to the person, letting them know who they are, the church they are from, and that they are available to talk. When they reach out, they have a 50% response rate, with about half of those interactions leading to phone conversations or connecting individuals to the church through attending a service or coming to a small group.
Behind the scenes platform. // Gloo has an online platform that your church can sign up for where all of the contact data is stored. You can send a text message or make a phone call through Gloo and track when you were last in touch with your contacts. If the contacts have opted in to receive communications from your church, you can also export the data to Excel and use it in your church management software. In addition, Gloo offers a host of other high quality resources including prayer prompts, sermon tools, reading plans, discussion guides and more.
Less promotion, more care. // Working with Gloo has helped remind Avenue Christian Church that their digital strategy has to be less about self-promotion and more about how to provide care for people in the community, listen to what their going through, and meet their needs while sharing the gospel.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953 CDF Capital has helped church leaders and individuals bring light to the world through the thoughtful stewardship of their capital. The Church, including your church, requires more than just financial capital, it also needs spiritual and leadership capital. While separate in purpose, these three forms of capital are intertwined and inseparable for the cause of kingdom growth. Together, when we partner with the Lord to bring spiritual, leadership, and financial capital to a church, the results are transformational. At CDF Capital our ministry is simple:we lend money to churches.
CDF Capital, in partnership with Barna Group, conducted a research study to better understand what happens in churches after a new leader comes in. Barna Group interviewed 111 pastors online who have experienced a leadership transition within the last 12 years. Click here to get your free download of the study.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, I’m really looking for to today’s conversation. In fact it’s been probably six months in the making; really been looking forward to today’s call. You’re going to want to lean in for this one. We’ve got Kyle Isabelli – he is at Avenue Christian Church. It’s a multi-generational church that represents the western suburbs of Chicago as they ah help people live their best life with Jesus in charge. Kyle, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here today.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, thanks Rich. I’m excited to have this conversation with you today.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill in the picture about Avenue? What is tell us a little bit more; give us a kind of a flavor, a sense of the church.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, Avenue is a church that has been in the western suburbs for over 60 years. It was originally started in suburbs a little bit closer to the city. And then the mid 60s it it made its way out to Clarendon Hills which is, some people may not know, it’s Downers Grove, Hinsdale for about 30 minutes outside of the city. And they’ve had a heart to really reach the the community, and really be a light in the community. And I’ve been the senior pastor here now since January 2020. And prior to that I was here as a youth pastor, started in 2017. So I’ve been here six years. And it’s been cool to be a part of a church that really is multigenerational, that we have new, younger families that are here, but you also have people here at our church that have been here longer than I’ve been alive, you know. So it’s it’s such a blessing to be able to lead in this context and to see God work and move in really helping more and more people find new life in Christ.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. This um, so today what we want you… we got connected on Carey Nieuwhof’s online community called The Art of Leadership Academy. And you posted in there about your church’s participation in the He Gets Us campaign. If people remember this Super Bowl 2023 a big ad on that, a whole campaign built around that by our friends or powered by our friends at Gloo and, you know, associated other folks. And so today we’re going to dive in this is kind of we’re going to open up the hood take a look at what happened at Avenue understand ah you know, kind of lessons learned, that sort of thing. But why don’t we start with, you know, what led you to say, hey this is the kind of thing we want to be a part of? What kind of got you to that?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, our our church throughout covid had been utilizing a lot of the resources that Barna and Gloo had been sharing with churches. We used a lot of the church health assessments. And the Summer 2022 we had our entire church take kind of like a spiritual survey to gauge their spiritual health as as well as like ways that we as leaders in the church can do a better job of caring for our church. So we’ve been utilizing Gloo for quite some time, Barna quite some time.
Kyle Isabelli — And so we began to hear about the He Gets Us ads which actually launched in March of 2022 during the and NCAA college tournament, the basketball tournament. And so you see a few of these ads coming out, you’re like what’s all this about? And so Gloo then begins to share how these ads are posted on social media, and if people text in saying oh that resonates with me, or I have a question about that, or something speaks to me in that way, they text in. And what Gloo does is then sends those text messages to local churches.
Kyle Isabelli — So for instance, if someone has an area code that is close by our church—so here in the western suburbs it’s a 630, a 708 or an 815 area code—um our church then would receive that text message. So for instance, someone struggle with anxiety, and they see the ad about anxiousness and they want some help or encouragement with it, they’ll they’ll text in: hey, I need help with this; I’m feeling anxious. And we get that message to our platform through Gloo. And so then we’re able to start a conversation with them. We’re starting to text them and and be able to, you know, engage in conversation. And this has been so incredibly helpful because over these last few years in our polarized society um churches and pastors especially our credibility just within society has kind of decreased. I think leadership in general…
Rich Birch — True.
Kyle Isabelli — …our credibility has gone down for better or for worse…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Kyle Isabelli — …whether we did that to ourselves or we’re just a byproduct of being a leader or a pastor or church. Um that’s just the reality of where we’re at. One of the things in Barna, ah Glenn Packiam in his book about being a resilient pastor, he shares that like 55% of people have little to no trust in pastors and church leadership. They don’t they don’t view them as a credible source.
Kyle Isabelli — And so now to overcome that um, people are able to, you know, get connected with the pastor or church with that. They probably wouldn’t have thought of before, but they’re willing to have a conversation about what they’re struggling with it. And it opens up this this gateway to, hey this is I’m a pastor um, from this church. Can we let’s just talk about your anxiety. Let’s just talk about whatever is going on. And so it’s allowed us to kind of reach into our community even more despite people not having the best thoughts or feelings about a church whether for better or for worse.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Can can you give me a sense, so we’ll start with the kind of anecdotal story like you know, maybe somebody that you’ve ended up connecting with as a church and the impact the kind of positive impact either through He Gets Us or pre-, you know, He Gets Us with the other work you’ve done with Gloo.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah. I mean for instance I met with a guy a few weeks ago. He texted, he said he was having marriage problems, he was on a second separation. And so I texted, said, hey, you know I’m really sorry to hear that. Would you be willing to come in and like have a conversation with me? I’m not a marriage counselor, but I can least have this initial conversation with you. And so he came in. We began to talk and um, you know, shared the gospel with him. And said, you know, I I hope your marriage can be restored and there’s some things that you definitely have to work on. But like I want you to know what’s really going to make a change in your life and hopefully from that spiritual change in your heart then you can see changes in other parts of your life. And he’s like he’s like, I went to church growin’ up. No one’s ever told me about Jesus in this way; I don’t read my bible. And so I gave him a bible here at our church. I said, hey start reading through this.
Kyle Isabelli — And um, so now for these last couple weeks I’ve met with him once or twice, we talked through, he’s attended one of our church services. Um, still working through his separation, working with the details of that, but um, just trying to help people out. And I would have never…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …had that conversation with him apart from him clicking on an ad from He Gets Us on, I think it was on Tiktok.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — I dunno which ad it was…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kyle Isabelli — …but he clicked on it. We got the message. And the conversation and the relationship really started because of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. So this is what I love about our friends at Gloo. Like they’re, you know, they’re empowering churches. They’ve developed tools. You know, there’s a number of things that they’ve tried to do to help people, um you know, help church leaders connect with their community. And there is often, you know, a lot of their solutions are built around this idea of providing actual care for people, which I think is amazing, is fantastic. So what about on the kind of, I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like, what about so how many, is that like the one conversation you’ve had? You know, what’s that look like? Or do you have a you know a phone center now, you got 25 people all day long texting people back. What’s that look like?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, so where we’re at um at our church, we started in October of 2022.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kyle Isabelli — So now we’ve been doing this for about—today’s June 1st—we’ve been doing it, you know, eight, nine months. Um we average about 2 to 3 messages per week. Some weeks it’s less, some weeks it’s more. And out of those messages we get about a 50% response rate. So…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kyle Isabelli — …if we text back right away saying, hey, this is who I am. I’m a pastor here in the western suburbs of Chicago. I’m a partner with He Gets Us. Thanks for reaching out. I hear this is what’s going on your life. Would you like to share more? We leave it at that. On the bottom of it it says like, hey this message comes from Avenue Christian Church., You can you can, you know, text n…
Rich Birch — Check them out or you…
Kyle Isabelli — …or text no to get out of opted out or whatever. And so about 50% of people do engage with us, um at least over texting. And I would say out of that 50% probably another half we’ve been able to have phone conversations, get connected in our church and have them start coming to some of our, you know, life groups or small groups at our church. Get them… Some people I’ve had to refer them to counseling, you know, and say, hey, let’s we have some we have some counseling services that we partner with in the area. This is something that’s probably above my pay grade…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — …but let me let me help you out. It’s above my training, let me help you out and point you in the right direction.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kyle Isabelli — So you know some people would look at that and say oh only 50% of people respond back to you. But these are people we would have never connected with in a million years had it not been for being a partner with Gloo and being ah a He Gets Us a partner.
Rich Birch — Um, and then how how is that working, so like you talked about the six is it 630 area code? Um…
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, there’s three different area codes that kind of are generally within the Chicagoland area where we’re at…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kyle Isabelli — …that we’ll we’ll get those coming to our feed I guess.
Rich Birch — And so obviously on the backend there’s a little bit of like ah like there’s obviously multiple churches in 630 or in those areas that are engaged. They’re doing something to root calls to, you know, various different churches. You have a sense of how that looks? And and is that are they scaling it based on the size of your church or how does that work?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I don’t know how they scale it. My my guess from from my initial conversations and then also talking with a couple other churches in the past six months that are in this area is that it’s almost like a checklist.
Rich Birch — Sure.
So it’s just like all right, we sent this one to Avenue today and…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — …and like I know Community Christian is another one and they, you know, they get the next one that comes up. And then the next one that comes up. and so I think it might just go on to rotation. I’m not 100% sure, but we’ve never myself and another staff person handle these initial contacts, and it’s never been like this overwhelming thing where like you said, there’s a call center now…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kyle Isabelli — …there’s 25 people, you know, time of thing. So um, yeah, so all I know is it’s based on area code.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kyle Isabelli — It’s based on where they’re coming from. And and like getting capturing people’s information, you know, you get ah in a church setting to capture a first time visitor’s information is so hard some days, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so…
Kyle Isabelli — It takes them like six weeks…
Rich Birch — Oh, yeah, yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — …to finally a write down their email, you know? And now it’s like we get their phone number and email immediately before even having a conversation with them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Like so if, you know, doing the math quickly, you know, there’ve been somewhere around 200 contacts, which is amazing. Like that’s if you if, you know, eight months a couple and a half, you know, two and a half a week um…
Kyle Isabelli — Yep.
Rich Birch — …you know, 50% of those you actually hear back from. So there’s like a hundred legit kind of conversations. They’re all legit…
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but a hundred conversations you’ve been engaged with. And then, you know, some some people that you’ve actually and then other 50%, so you maybe moved 40, 50 people to actual phone conversations, which is you know, pretty amazing. Tell me what’s the size of your church? Like what’s the I’ve tried to get a sense of scale for people that are listening in.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because it would to your point to even even if you whittle it down to that 50, even if you say okay, the 50 who kind of followed the bottom of the the funnel, for a lack of better word. The people that you you know, actually end up getting on the phone, man a lot of churches would do a lot of work to get 50 contacts…
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like that would be a tremendous amount. So yeah, give us a sense of that.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I mean we’re we’re a church of about 400 on Sunday.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kyle Isabelli — And you know, with you know people come in once or twice a month…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Kyle Isabelli — …you know, probably more would call Avenue their home. But that’s our average attendance. So we’re a mid-sized church. So to to your point to have 50, 40 to 50 contexts, you know, 10 to 15% of our weekly attendance that we’re able to engage with people in the community, like I don’t know an outreach strategy, a digital outreach strategy that has that type of return on investment, if you want to put it in those terms. Like it’s it’s pretty remarkable. Um, and and such a blessing for for us to be a partner with them. So it it to me the the numbers, the math as we kind of broke it down, it just it makes a lot of sense. Especially because it’s something that they give to churches for free. Like that doesn’t cost us…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, you can’t beat the price.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, you can’t beat the price of that.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, and how much does all this cost? Well they give it to you.
Kyle Isabelli — Yes.
Rich Birch — So yeah, absolutely. Just to put that all in context context, friends. So a church of 400 people, you know, the industry average, the kind of ah thing that we would typically would love to see us driving towards from a first time guest contact information, that would average 8 a week. Like we should be seeing somewhere in that range typically. And I don’t know where where you guys are at, but when you even put it in that context, if you think three contacts a week are coming in on average through through the the internet that are above and beyond that, that’s a robust number, again, considering all the work that it does you have to do to to gather contact information from people who attend on a regular basis. That’s that’s incredible. So when you know the interesting thing, so did you see as the actual Super Bowl went through a spike? Did that was there a lot that week? Has it been pretty consistent? Yeah, give me a sense of, you know, as as it’s trickled on do you still get contacts? How’s that going?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I would say Super Bowl saw a little bit of a spike. Um you know in Chicago in particular for most of the fall and then now this new baseball season ah, the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox they consistently have He Gets Us ads in their ballpark. So in Chicagoland it’s probably been more prevalent. I don’t know how that is compared to the rest of the country. So we didn’t see too much of a spike for Super Bowl and the weeks after because it had kind of been a part of everything we’re doing. Um, but I will say that um I just think about the dollar amount that goes into creating these ads.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s huge.
Kyle Isabelli — Like as ah as a church our size like we would never have the millions upon millions of dollars to to create these amazing amazing digital ads, get them advertised in multiple platforms. Like we don’t have the the team, the resources, we can’t do any of that. And so to have that type of resource and for your church just to be a benefit, ah it’s huge. And so it just it makes sense for any church anywhere to utilize it because people are on social media, people are on the internet, people are streaming, and these He Gets Us ads are everywhere. And so it’s it’s such a blessing to be a part of it. So yeah, so not too much of a spike when the two big ads did show. Um, but we, like I said, being in the area that we’re in we I think it’s been more consistent because it’s been here a lot longer.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, I think Chicagoland is one of Gloo’s—I’d have to look, but—one of their focus communities. Like they have a number of communities across the country that they’ve ah they’ve said hey we’re going to put disproportionate effort in, for sure, which makes sense. Yeah, that’s that’s fascinating. All right so.
Kyle Isabelli — Um, yeah.
Rich Birch — when you now are you able to, ah so you get the text and email you get their phone and email which is amazing. Um, have you put those into another follow-up sequence? Are you allowed to do that? What are the restrictions around that? Can you continue to, you know, be proactive? Obviously if Ppeople opt out then, you know, obviously you can’t keep going. But if if what what does all that look like?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, so Gloo, the the nice thing about Gloo is that um there is an actual online platform that you can utilize that your church signs up for. So all of their data is is stored in there. So if we want to do a phone call or send a text message, we can do it through Gloo obviously. But if we have something else going on in our church and they’ve opted into communicating with Avenue Christian Church, we’ll send that to them. You know, we can ask them, hey, we we send out a weekly email of our church… because some people even do um have reached out because He Gets Us started a campaign of saying like, hey, it’s time for you to come back to church. Pandemic’s over; start coming back to church. Do you need to find new church home? So we’ve had quite a few people have responded “looking for a church home”. That’s been their kind of one sentence prop. So um, we’ll we’ll put them in our database, you know.
Kyle Isabelli — And and Gloo ah, you can export it through Excel. So we can load it to our database which is you know CCB, Community Church Builder. And everything’s very seamless. If we want to use more of that data we can import it into our own database, but Gloo has a great online platform that makes it very simple to see everything, all the contacts, when’s the last time you’ve connected with them, what’s the last message that you’ve had with them, so on and so forth. So it it really is a one stop shop – their online platform.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. So what would be your advice, so I’m sure there’s church leaders that are listening in that are like, man, we’re missing the boat here. We should get involved. What would be ah, you know, beyond—and we’ll get to links and all that in a bit but—like what’ll be your advice for a church that’s maybe just starting? Or is there a piece of this that you wish you know back eight months ago, oh we should have done this differently when we got the ball rolling?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I think um I think there are probably many churches like ours that coming out of the Super Bowl ad um, did a series based on like the He Gets Us ads. And that’s another um thing about the online platform is they have sermons and discussion questions that go with some of their ads. So for our Easter series, and it started palm Sunday went through Mother’s Day, we would show one of the He Gets Us ads as a as a bumper video, and then we would you know teach on that topic about Jesus and how it relates. And there are sermon outlines, guidelines that if, you know, you need to use you can utilize them.
Kyle Isabelli — So I think many churches probably started there and just kind of left it, like oh this is a cool thing. Let’s talk about it. Whereas I wish we would have done that in October so that by Christmas of 2022 we would have been really honing into saying like, here’s our promotion, here’s what we’re talking about and then a month later in February it just it continues on. You know, so it’s it’s continuing on people’s minds in our community. It’s on the mind of our church for them to say, oh yeah, our church was talking about this this this Christmas and this fall. And we’re starting to engage with people and and they’re sharing it on their social media and stuff like that. So I wish we would have done that before, but even still connecting with our Easter services, connecting it with some of our big, you know, Palm Sundays and Mother’s Day, continually following up with people in that regard.
Kyle Isabelli — We did a stations of the cross like prayer experience where we tied in the last week of Jesus to different those different videos and and different, you know, scriptures and different reflection questions that came from Gloo, like you can make it your own. But I wish we’ve just done that a little bit earlier. But it’s it’s not too late. Like you can still do it. He Gets Us is continuing to put out more ads and and they’re creating new things and more people are donating, so it’s still free. So I would say jump on and try to figure out how it can help your church’s community outreach moving forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. If you log on, again you just can can go to Gloo.us if you’re if you’re um, a church, you just log on create an account. It’s super easy. Super fast to do. But you’ll see in there in the He Gets Us resources there’s prayer prompts, sermon resources, reading plans, discussion guides – all kinds of content that even if you were not thinking about like even you’re like, I don’t know do I want to have somebody answering text messages. Even if you weren’t interested in that, man, there’s a great opportunity to leverage those resources. They’re well done, high quality. Um, yeah, that could be really really helpful.
Kyle Isabelli — Yep.
Rich Birch — So as you look to the future, how do you think this will shape your, you know, your church’s approach? You’re kind of, you know, where you go from here?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, I think it has reminded us of our need to engage in some of these tough conversations with people, to really get over the fact that maybe the church doesn’t have the best reputation overall.
Kyle Isabelli — And say, you know what, we’re gonna be a church that creates our own reputation in our community. And we’re gonna do that by caring for people’s needs, listening to them, helping them where they’re at. Um and through the through our conversations, through showing them the love of Christ like their hearts will be open to the gospel. Their hearts will be open to attending a church service, or coming to a program, or you know taking their next steps in their faith journey. Whatever it is this is getting us outside of our walls um and helping us understand and see even our own personal digital strategy has to be less about promotion of, hey this is what’s happening at our church, and here’s what we’re teaching on! And it needs to be more about like how are we helping people in our community meet their needs…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …and and hit their pain points and and talk through the things that they’re going through. So it’s it’s really kind of flipped the script for us in a couple different ways and I think that’s going to continue to drive some of our outreach strategies moving forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. This has been just a really, you know, great conversation. Is there any part of this that you look at or like yeah that just actually hasn’t been that great? Or it maybe hasn’t met your expectations or you know it kind of just is like maybe more not negative, but just a little, you know, maybe it just hasn’t been as fantastic as it sounds on this box, you know, kind of thing?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, um, the platform is easier to use on a phone than it is ah than it is on a computer or laptop.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — Um, which is that that’s a small thing. And for me…
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
Kyle Isabelli — …as I was sharing earlier with with you, Rich, is that I’m not I don’t like being on like social media as much.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — I’m not really into like having the apps on my phone; I would rather do it on a desktop. Um and just kind of put my phone away a lot of times, until the fact that it really is a lot easier to communicate with people on the phone versus the desktop. It’s a downside. If you’re fine using your phone, um, go for it. It’s not a big issue. But for me, there’s some kinks in there when it comes to the desktop version. So but that’s you know it’s such a minor detail. Otherwise it’s like ah, you know, I would say one more thing.
Kyle Isabelli — Some of the ads, you know they’re not always my favorite ads all right? Maybe I don’t fully agree with the message, or I don’t really like how they talked about Jesus in this way. Like sure that’s that’s going to happen. But that’s not the point of it. The point of it is that it’s connecting with someone who doesn’t know Jesus, or is far from Christ and it’s given you an opportunity to talk with them. So it doesn’t matter if I don’t fully agree or fully like the ad. Or you know you see a lot of hate that’s on social media over these last few months about He Gets Us. Like there’s so much more good and redemption that can come out of it, even if you don’t one ah hundred percent like the ad. So.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — I would those are two small things that’s like, oh could be a little bit better, but otherwise it’s it’s been such a great blessing for our church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I wonder if um, there was you know there has been pushback on that side on the messaging side. And since you brought it up, I didn’t bring it up, um, you know, maybe just go into that a little bit more. Like it it it has been, you know, it’s an interesting time in our culture where, you know, the way I read that is, you know, if if this was 20, 30 years ago and ah Billy Graham was coming to town, they used to do a lot a lot of ads Billy Graham would, you know, they would do all kinds of ads to, you know, advertise. And you know, I I put it in that category of like you may not love all those ads; you might not love all of that, but at the end of the day you’re like, yeah, it’s Billy Graham though. It’s going to be okay, like it’ll all work out in the end. Um, that’s kind of how I read it was I was I’m like, yeah, I not sure I would have you know you know, but but but it doesn’t seem we live in such a polarized era that it’s like people get so worked up over stuff.
Kyle Isabelli — Yep.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, maybe talk through that a little bit more. Is there anything else on that front that you know, kind of sticks out to you…
Kyle Isabelli — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — …um, you know, as you think about the, you know, at the at the actual messaging itself?
Kyle Isabelli — I would say that, you know, even in our church after we we shared about it and talked about it and then did the series, you had some people like, I didn’t really like that ad; I don’t agree with it. And or I don’t I’ll just be frank – I don’t like that certain companies are donating to Gloo and funding some of it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — And I don’t like where their money’s coming from. And I don’t agree with their political stance on this company.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — And so it’s like I get it. And you can go down that rabbit trail with any type of nonprofit. You can go down that rabbit trail with any type of corporation that’s trying to do good in society. And so I said just look at how it benefits the local church, look at how it benefits the mission of of making disciples. We would never have these conversations with these people. They wouldn’t they wouldn’t give church a chance in million years apart from seeing an ad, sometimes at like one o’clock in the morning…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — …because they’re discouraged and depressed and they don’t know what to do with their life. And this random ad showed up as they’re scrolling through social media. And now we get to have a conversation with them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Kyle Isabelli — Like we don’t get that we don’t get that if they didn’t see that He Gets Us ad. So let’s, you know, at our church we like to say—and I can’t remember who’s the, if it’s Francis of Assissi or someone else, but—our mantra is in the essentials we want to have unity, in the nonessentials liberty, and in all things love. And so our digitals outreach strategy to reach people in our community to me is a nonnessential.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kyle Isabelli — So let’s have liberty. Let’s show grace to one another, and in all things let us show love to one another. So that, yes, I I get the point, but the the pros so much outweigh the benefits…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kyle Isabelli — …and we’re not forsaking the gospel message. We’re not watering down the gospel message. In fact, we’re getting an opportunity to clearly articulate the gospel…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kyle Isabelli — …to these people who are in need.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. And yeah, that’s very well said. And you know, the other piece I would add to that is, you know, you got to look at the form. These are these are quick spots. They’re, you know, you talk about a Tiktok ad.
Kyle Isabelli — Yep.
Rich Birch — Like, man, I feel bad for people who are saying, hey we’re going to try to make a thing that’s like in 4 seconds it’s going to get people’s attention. Like good luck with that, dear pastors. I’m like you know you know, could you if you were restricted to ah to a sixty second thing on a Sunday morning ah, how would what would you do with it? You know, how would you do that? And so, you know, I think on balance, all the stuff I’ve seen, I haven’t watched it all but all the stuff I’ve seen and been like, man, that’s clever. It’s interesting it. And it does it it does what it’s supposed to do, which is move people to do exactly what you said is, hey, I’m struggling with my marriage. I’m, you know, I’m I got this issue, this is this is bugging me, and to reach out. And really then the ball’s in our court is to say, hey, we’re going to pick this ball up and and run with it. So yeah, love that. This has been fantastic. Anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, once again, Rich, thanks for for having me on. And and I would just once again, encourage pastors and in churches go to Gloo.us G-L-O-O dot U-S and sign up. And become a free partner and start getting connected with people in your community who are hurting, who are in need, who are looking for hope, who are looking for healing. Like you have an opportunity to to take a step forward and reaching more people in community. So don’t waste the opportunity. Yeah.
Rich Birch — So good. Yeah, love it. Well this has been fantastic. Where do we want to send people online to track with the church or with you?
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, our church’s website is avenuechristian.com. And then if people want more about me and my family and my life and my journey kyleisabelli.com that’s I-S-A-B-E-L-L-I.
Rich Birch — Love it. This has been fantastic. Thanks for being here today.
Kyle Isabelli — Yeah, thanks, Rich. Appreciate it.
Faith Forward: Fr. Peter Wojcik on Strategies for Engaging Millennials, Gen Z, & Gen Alpha in the Church
Aug 17, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we are joined by Father Peter Wojcik, pastor at Saint Clement Parish in Chicago.
Do you struggle to engage Gen Z in your church? Do you want to invite younger generations into ministry, but aren’t sure where to start? Saint Clement is a dynamic Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Chicago which is having an amazing impact on its community. Listen in as Father Peter shares the unique approach of the 125-year-old church as they engage younger generations.
Get to know Gen Z. // Reaching out to different generations has its challenges. Despite their differences, both Millennials and Gen Z have a longing for spirituality, community, and to contribute to the common good. However, unlike Millennials, Gen Z didn’t refuse to be part of the church. Rather they never had the chance to be part of the church because their parents never brought them. Recognize that Gen Z doesn’t care what church they go to as long as you listen to them, provide opportunities to serve, and invite them to come and belong before finding Jesus.
Experiencing God through community. // Along with Millennials, Gen Z is one of the most isolated generations so community and belonging are critical for them. Take a step back and ask yourself are you focusing on your way of doing ministry and your preferences, or the preferences of Gen Z and what Jesus wants us to do with younger generations? Keep learning about younger generations and how to create as many openings for them to experience God through community as possible.
A place of belonging. // To engage the younger generation, Saint Clement has implemented strategies that focus on creating an environment on the church campus that is inviting, full of life and important to a lot of people. They are also passionate about belonging, and have signs everywhere that invite people in. As people explore Saint Clement, they are also invited to engage in conversations about identity and purpose which are relatively foreign to young people today.
Identity and purpose. // Part of the way Saint Clement invites people into the conversation is by engaging them about themselves before talking about Jesus. In July they hold a special program called Theology on Tap, a four-week lecture series for young adults where they enjoy beer and pizza and hear from a guest speaker, in this case, about purpose. They don’t have to become a part of the church at this point; they can simply come for the program to discover more about themselves and to meet other young people. As a follow-up, the parish then offers a three-week course developed by Alpha that’s called Ever Wonder? which helps create a place for people to have comfortable conversations about identity and purpose. It includes a 15 minute video and 30 minutes of discussion in a small group context. These community-based opportunities lead into Saint Clement’s fall programming which includes Alpha.
Create space for young leaders. // Father Peter shares that over 90% of their leaders at Saint Clement are under 35. These vibrant programs which engage hundreds of young adults were birthed out of a small group of young people who were invited to minister to their peers. If you want more young adults to get involved in your ministry, step back and ask yourself: Do we really need them? Are we going to empower them and really listen to them? Are we going to be okay if not everything will be perfect and they make mistakes? Create that space for them to learn and grow as leaders in your church. Let them know that they are needed even if everything doesn’t work out as planned.
Look into what makes disciples. // When people are ready to grow in their faith, Saint Clement offers Alpha Bible courses, catechism classes, and also uses The Chosen series as a tool to help people learn more about Jesus and the characteristics of discipleship. During this time they watch an episode of The Chosen and then are divided into small groups for 30 minutes to have a discussion about what shifted in people’s lives because of their interaction with Jesus.
You can find out more about Saint Clement at www.clement.org.
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Rich Birch — Hey everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a church leader who will both inspire and equip you and today it’s our privilege to have Father Wojcik with us. He is at St Clement Parish; it’s a dynamic Catholic community in the Archdiocese of of Chicago that really strives to accompany people in a transforming relationship with Jesus and his church. They offer support, prayer, community groups, including Alpha which is actually where um, you know Father Peter and I bumped into each other was at the Alpha Leadership Conference in London. And I’m really excited to have you on the show today, Father. Thanks for being here.
Father Peter Wojcik — Oh thank for thank you for having me. And I’m super excited to have this conversation with you.
Rich Birch — Nice. Good. Well fill out the picture. What did I miss about the parish? Kind of give us a sense of the community; talk us through that.
Father Peter Wojcik — Absolutely. So you know Chicago obviously it’s a large city with a lot of different communities serving different markets, if you will, different parts of ah of Chicago from Latino to African American all the way to um, the community that I serve which is in Lake Home Park. So that’s kind of close to downtown Chicago. We are close to the lake in ah in a quiet, ah old neighborhood and it was a historically German community that established church 125 years ago. And it really was an immigrant community that was rather poor and living at what at that point was really a rough part of city. And they had this dream of creating a community in which the children will be safe. They can educate their children and come together in faith. And we’ve been continuing that and somehow by God’s grace over the last, you know, 125 years this community just kept growing and and and attracting different groups of people.
Father Peter Wojcik — And in about 70s and 80s it became kind of a hub for a lot of ah, people who didn’t quite feel connected with the church ,or especially in the Catholic Church who didn’t quite find their space. And um and they loved it here, and they now became our older population, if you will. And ah, but but they really built a foundation around few principles. The first one is that we welcome everyone.
Rich Birch — Right.
Father Peter Wojcik — We we actually do believe that everybody has the right to come to Jesus and and and that’s how the faith and conversion journey starts is by experiencing his love and mercy. So they they were very they were really passionate about making sure we do that. The second thing was you know inclusivity, knowing that that everyone not only was invited to be part of it, but everybody was invited to be a leader. And so I think the diversity of our leaders was really important.
Father Peter Wojcik — The third one was really empowerment. You know, ah one of my predecessors, Father Fahey, was just a brilliant man when it came to just allowing people to do new things. And when I hear the stories of this community, it was at that time that they really try some very new methods. I mean this was one of the first communities in a Catholic Church here in Chicago that constituted the lay council of people…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Father Peter Wojcik — …that helped the pastor actually to make all the decisions and so forth.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Father Peter Wojcik — So there were a lot of things that they started doing early on. And so my job now as a pastor is to make sure we don’t screw it up and we keep doing this.
Rich Birch — I love it. How long have you been at the at St Clement?
Father Peter Wojcik — So I’ve been a pastor here this is my third year…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Father Peter Wojcik — …running the place. And but eleventh eleventh year of living here.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Father Peter Wojcik — I I moved here eleven years ago so I had kind of a really great benefit of living in in the parish and helping here on the weekends as I work in the Archdiocese. And that three years ago I transitioned into…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Father Peter Wojcik — …serving here full time.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well you know, Father Peter, there there was a bunch that I heard you talk about at the conference that that grabbed my attention and, you know, I was, you know, really struck again that, you know, wow, like all churches may look different. We might have, you know, slightly different approaches to our worship experience or whatever that is, but man, we’re struggling with the similar things. You know, we’re trying we’re trying to figure out how we can point people to Jesus. What does that look like in our context? And and and one of the things that that struck me was particularly your church’s focus on ah, next generation – reaching out to young people. Can you tell us a little bit of that story? What’s what’s happened there over these last few years?
Father Peter Wojcik — Well first and foremost I think there is a distinct difference between Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I think not all the young people are the same…
Rich Birch — Yess.
Father Peter Wojcik — …and you got to kind of step back and recognize it first as a church leader and say well which which which which group do I have? You know, what are the Millennials in my community? What are the Gen Zs? What what is Gen Alpha, the youngest generation? And ah you know and and kind of figure out first those those those groups. You know, I I would summarize them um in a very simple way and it’s a very generic way. So there’s probably more expansive ways to do it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — But but but but in many ways I think um Millennials, by and large, are post-christian generation in least in the United States, at least in the cities like Chicago. They chose not to be part of organized religion.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Father Peter Wojcik — They don’t see organized religion as a pathway in many ways to experience God. They experience God in in different ways, if they entertain that thought. and so there’s this hardship of breaking through all those shelves, if you will, of why not to engage with God, specifically throughout organized religions. That’s one approach, and we try that; we we keep going at it.
Father Peter Wojcik — But but with Millennial ah with Gen Z is a little bit different because I would really talk about them as pre-Christian generation. They they were raised by people my age. They are not um, they’re not really deeply religious by any stretch, but they are longing for spirituality. They are longing to be recognized. They’re longing to contribute to a common good. They want to do good things. They actually do like the sense of community and belonging. They are the most isolated generation together with millennials that we know of. And so there is this natural longing. And unlike millennials they didn’t refuse to be part of the church; they never had a chance to be part of the church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Father Peter Wojcik — Their parents never brought them to church. So when you start with them and you work with them you have to recognize that as a starting point they actually don’t care what church they go to as long as you offer belonging, as long as you listen to them, as long as there’s opportunity for them to actually serve bigger community. And then that you really authentically want them to move in the right direction, which for us Christian leaders is a direction toward Jesus, right? If we actually do it in ah in an organized and thoughtful way I think there is a great opportunity for us to engage that generation.
Father Peter Wojcik — And so that really has been our story here at St Clement, you know. Because it’s Lincoln Park we have this incredible number of Gen Zs around, young people who are coming off college or year two years post college are in our neighborhood. And you know we we just simply keep saying, come and belong. Just try belonging before you try faith, before you try your belief in Jesus, just come and try belonging.
Father Peter Wojcik — You know, Alpha became such a big tool for us because we’ve seen the consequences of it. We’ve seen people coming and kind of just strolling in um, you know because they saw signs, or our welcomers were outside welcoming people to come to Alpha, and they would talk to people passing by and they said what what are you doing? And they’re like well we we run this course and they said I’m not Christian but I can come. And so every course we run we got people actually from the sidewalk in…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s amazing.
Father Peter Wojcik — …because they were just kind of interested. Now I would never do that, I am a huge introvert. You know, I’m in my 40s; there’s no way I would go to it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah I get it.
Father Peter Wojcik — But that’s the difference and you have to pay attention. Just because you as a leader wouldn’t do it…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Father Peter Wojcik — …that doesn’t mean that Gen Z won’t do it. It’s not about your preferences. It’s about them and their preferences. And I think that’s what’s so important is to step back as Christian leaders and ask ourselves, you know, are we focusing on our way of doing ministry? Are we focusing on what Jesus wants to do with that generation, and try to keep learning about that generation. How to create as many openings for them to experience God through community as possible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love this idea of you know, hey we’re asking we’re inviting Gen Z to really—and you didn’t quite say it like this but so correct me if I’m if I’m wrong—but it’s like hey, we we’re inviting you to belong before you believe. And I think there was a previous generation, right, where it was the other way around. It was like you’ve got to believe these things first before we’ll let you in the building. I just I think that’s great. What what else how else have you done that as ah as a church, as a communit,y to try to create an inviting place, create an inviting culture where people can belong, where those Gen Z folks can can be a part of the community?
Father Peter Wojcik — We’ve we’ve done number of things that were pretty systematic and we hold ourselves accountable to those forces. You know, just the outside appearance of the place. You you might think it’s not important but actually it is. If you know if you worship space in our, you know, we have a historic church. If the church looking from um, outside inside looks dead, if there’s, you know, if our dress is dead and there’s no flowers and so forth, what it shows is that it’s a place that is actually not important to anybody…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Father Peter Wojcik — …that nobody cares about that place. So first strategy we had is our campus looks great. And it doesn’t just look great for the sake of the campus. It looks like a place that is very important to a lot of people. That’s one.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s gold.
Father Peter Wojcik — Second second thing that we’ve done is we have signs all over the place to simply say, you know, everyone is invited, we are passionate about belonging, and we want to invite you into to be part of the conversation, right? So before, again, um I think that was so important with what you said, before we jump into um conversation about Jesus we start a conversation about themselves, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Father Peter Wojcik — What’s your purpose, your identity, who who you are.
Rich Birch — Love that.
Father Peter Wojcik — And and and listening to them first. Third one is we, especially around summer, we have a lot of summer opportunities here in Chicago, we develop something we call Theology on Tap which is really kind of a beer evening, and so we have pizza and beer and wine, and we invite young people to come for four weeks in a row – in our case, it’s Tuesdays in July. And basically we say, hey come, we’ll have a big party, and then we have a speaker. And this year our topic of those four weeks is purpose. Um, how to find purpose. And 70% of young adults don’t know their purpose is.
Father Peter Wojcik — So this is one way in which we want to help them. Whether they choose to be part of our congregation or not, we kind of don’t care. We feel like as the disciples of Jesus we are co- responsible each other to have good lives anyway. And so our way to do it is to simply help young people to reflect on how to find purpose and how to discover purpose for themselves. So we’ll spend four weeks. Out of that, so so we usually get somewhere between um, a 190 to 300 people…
Father Peter Wojcik — …an evening [inaudbible]. And that’s a nice way of introducing them, helping them to meet other young adults, especially we focused on new people in the city, right? Trying to invite them to participate so we push it as much as we can through social media and and other channels. And then as ah as a follow-up to it in August we have a three week course that actually Alpha developed um, that it’s called Ever Wonder. And it really is developed for that generation for Gen Zs, and it’s belonging, purpose, and identity. And so it’s very similar to Alpha. You come, you watch a video for 15 minutes—it’s very short video—and then you have a 30 minute small group conversation. And again we’ll do it outside and and it’s just a way for people to get more comfortable talking about what is in their hearts with other people. Because what’s interesting is the younger generation folks that are great at technology. They’re not great at talking about themselves with other people.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Father Peter Wojcik — And so we create a space for them to really have comfortable conversations. And that really leads to our fall programming. So we we have four Alpha for people who want to you know, engage in exploration of faith. We have we have our Lydia course, you know, taken from at the Acts so specifically for professional women. It’s it’s it’s a way for professional women to grow in community. We have about 600 women in that group.
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Father Peter Wojcik — And then and then the last one is the men’s executive speaker series and again and kind of will continue this topic of finding purpose as as men and in leadership. And so so there’s pathways in which we try to build on the sense of belonging, and welcome, and keep inviting people to return, but also keep inviting them to bring friends because it’s an easy way to get engaged.
Rich Birch — There’s so much there – that was like a master class. I love that. I love the the intentionality. I love the, hey, we’re kind of building through the summer. I love the idea of the church as a social platform. Like I think that is a powerful idea that I think um, you know, I think so we we may forget about that in in a lot of our churches that something like, you know, Theology on Tap—know a number of churches to do things like that—that that obviously there’s a lot going on there, but a part of that is actually just providing a way for for people to connect. And then I love how you’re kind of weaving purpose through all of those to kind of lead people from one, you know, to the next. How did this start though? Like so you know that’s a tremendous tremendous amount of momentum that’s already begun begun. There has it just always been the case? I love the history, the fact that, you know, St Clement has been an innovative parish, has been a kind of church that that is trying new things. Was there any innovation that kind of got this ball rolling, that ended up saying you know hey we’ve kind of been in an inflection point to reach more…
Father Peter Wojcik — Sure.
Rich Birch — …you know, younger generation?
Father Peter Wojcik — I think COVID in many cases accelerated the need because you’ve been reading so much [inaudible] about how high was the level of isolation. And ah and loneliness in especially among young adults. And the surgeon general here in the United States just published study on isolation. And it was a striking thing. He said he said in it, you know, um, being isolated equals, healthwise, to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, wasn’t that crazy? That was unbelievable. And I saw that. Yeah, that’s unbelievable.
Father Peter Wojcik — Isn’t that something? Like that that really is the impact loneliness have on your heart and your life.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — And we felt really passionate to say, listen we we are going to do anything we can to keep saying you are welcome. We want you to be part of the community. And we want to meet you whatever you are. And so part of um that that really was was the beginning of it. And second thing is we we really engage a small group of young adults—I would say about 30 of them—and we really started a listening to them, talking with them, and praying with them.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Father Peter Wojcik — And we said what would it look like for you to minister to to other young adults, right? And and that group from 20 grew to about 120 young leaders now which is doing incredible amount of work every week. And so you can see how now they they’re shifted right from being customers of services, which really struggle in the Catholic Church – a lot of people come and they, you know, they kind of treat the church as a provider of services. So they come when they want a service and there will be a customer and then when they don’t need the service they’re out, right? Versus then being part of the community that develops and changes, and and fosters a spiritual life. And so that was our big goal and young adults is to move them from what the culture teaches them they are, which is customers, to really being kind of collaborators in bringing mission together. And it was incredible to watch that shift early on about two, three years ago when they really started driving, you know, first courses, Alpha, book clubs, all the stuff that they fought was relevant for young people their age. And now they they really are driving and building more courses around it…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Father Peter Wojcik — …and you know after Alpha we have 3 different choices people can choose from um, as as to engage more in faith, for more in community. And the beauty of it is that at this point I would say at least 90% of all our leaders are younger than thirty-five.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. That’s incredible, Like that’s very unique. That’s ah, you know, there’s lots of churches that would love that, but haven’t been able to engage at that level. That’s incredible.
Father Peter Wojcik — Well I think it’s it’s really empowering people and calling them to it. I really believe every church can do it but where you have to step back is to say, Okay, do do we really need them? Are we going to empower them and really listen to them?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Father Peter Wojcik — And third are we going to be okay with the fact that not everything will be perfect, that they will make mistakes? They’re young adults in their 20s. There are some things they will do really well and there are some things they won’t do well at all.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Father Peter Wojcik — But that’s part of the collective learning. And if you don’t create that space for them to learn how to do ministry better if you only want to keep rescuing them, and fixing, and improving, then what happens is they get discouraged and they say, well you don’t need us.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow. That’s good. I was going to ask that – was there in that listening process or maybe as you’ve been launching, was there either like a surprise that you’re like, I wouldn’t have naturally thought or I wouldn’t have come to that conclusion that they kind of they tilted the ministry towards. Or is there been like a a stubbed tone moment that’s been like ooh maybe it didn’t go quite as well as we were thinking it would.
Father Peter Wojcik — Ah, there there were a number of those moments We we actually just recently served as some of our leaders specifically as we are working on our strategic plan. And ah and we were able to dig into some of the data and it shows a great difference between how young adult perceive faith, religion, and the role of the church versus other generations. I’ll give you a few examples.
Father Peter Wojcik — So one of the example was to um, propose some of our values that they think are very important to our community. And so everybody over 50 as one of the top five values selected ah “progressive”. None of the young adults selected “progressive”.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Huh.
Father Peter Wojcik — Um, and it was very interesting. Because again and and then we dig in into conversation with young adults and we said, why was that? And they said listen, the world as we live in is crazy enough. We don’t want now the church to become equally crazy. We actually come here so we find some enduring presence of God. So we find connection to a bigger history. So we find here some connectivity and deeper sense of belonging to something that is tradition-driven and that is 2000 years old…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Father Peter Wojcik — …versus three months old. Like we are just done with trends that change every three months.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Father Peter Wojcik — And so that is a very large driving, I think, energy for young adults is they’re really not attracted by flashy new technologies because that’s what they have on their phones every single day. What they’re looking for is really a thoughtful space when they can come and really have a conversation about things that don’t change. Because those are the things you can build your lives around. Not the things that change every single year because those are so fleeting that they’re just tired of it. So so we’ve learned that that, you know, what we have to do with young adults is we have to lead with with really a little bit more teaching and and leading them into understanding why we do certain things and that there is a meaning in all of it. And as they praise the meaning as they unpack some of those topics and conversations, it seems like they’re very willing to invite other people.
Father Peter Wojcik — The other thing that was just blew my mind is the fact that for, I think, Gen Zs and Gen Alpha now, religion is not private. In United States religion has been private for ever and ever.
Rich Birch — Yeah, true. Yep.
Father Peter Wojcik — But the problem is technology, right, took all the privacy away from things that were always private. Kitchen was private. There was never a doorway kitchen.
Rich Birch — That’s a good insight.
Father Peter Wojcik — Now kitchen concepts the kitchens are all open.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Father Peter Wojcik — Anybody who comes here your house sees your kitchen first. That was private thirty years ago.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — What you eat was private. Now it’s, you know, how your closet looked like was private.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — Now everybody has, you know, videos in their closets with their clothes. So all the things that traditionally were private are not private anymore.
Rich Birch — That’s true. Yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — That is the opportunity for the church to say, listen your kitchen is not private so isn’t your religion. Your religion actually is pretty up there in a public square. And so why don’t we engage in this conversation in ah in a much more public way. And I think Gen Zs are actually not afraid to do it. We see it with Alpha. They keep inviting their non-churchgoing friends with no problem the way that I would really hesitate, and they don’t.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting. I love that. That’s so there’s some fascinating insights there, you know, that I’ve that resonates with some of the the work we’ve done and then some of the research we’ve done and stuff you know I’ve seen with the churches I, you know, work with, particularly you know this whole invite culture thing is a massive deal. You know the difference and we, so we say in our circles, you know, the difference between a plateaued or or stuck church and a growing church is growing churches train, equip, and mobilize, their or motivate, their people to invite their friends. That they you know they they don’t just leave that the chance. They try to find they try to do things and frame things in a way that makes it easy for them to invite. Um and it sounds like you’re seeing that definitely with Alpha and other aspects of your ministry. Maybe talk more about that. What is what does that look like for your for your church. You know, how you know how are you cultivating that kind of culture? Is there what what are you doing to try to encourage you know Gen Z or Gen Alpha to to invite?
Father Peter Wojcik — Well in order for them to invite they have to be comfortable that the places they invite people will be embracing them as they are, and will really focus on listening and respecting their perspectives, right? Where people won’t invite people is to places where they think they will be put down or disrespected or somebody would be unkind to them and so forth. And so I think um, you know, in ah in a Catholic Church from the tradition I’m coming from part of our um struggle always was that we had a lot of programming that was very deep theologically and rooted in our tradition. And therefore if you were deep theologically you had a lot of options to participate and deepen your faith. But if you didn’t, there was really no starting place for you, right? There was just no easy entry point. And so um I kind of use the analogy of the pool and I would say, you know, if you don’t have somebody who knows how to swim they would never jump into ten foot pool because that’s ten feet deep they would just drown. But if there is ah you know ten inches of water, they would put their their feet in it. And I think that’s what happens with the churches. The the churches have to have some really shallow entry opportunities that are very important for community creation, for belonging, for comfort that will keep leading people deeper and deeper and deeper into sense of belonging.
Father Peter Wojcik — And for us we kind of discovered through our own trial of an error way of doing things is that basically people are there just kind of three basic entry points for for us here. One is alpha; that’s our biggest one. Second one is the specifically around women and men ministry, just because our spirituality is so different. And what we found is that when the men are alone, they share much more freely.
Rich Birch — Right.
Father Peter Wojcik — And also that the professional women really appreciate a place where they are not compared to professional men. They just are being focus on their own and and appreciate that for who they are. And so so so those are kind of, this is one one place is Alpha. Second would be kind of those gender based ministries that that also are social, the social element, there’s community element, and there’s small group element to it.
Father Peter Wojcik — And the third one is service, right? That that we do actually a lot of service here, a lot of opportunities. But we, out of service, try to invite people into engagement in the community. So we do some kind of service every single week…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Father Peter Wojcik — …around St Clement or in one of our partner organizations. And we just keep inviting people to engage in that. Or engage in sports. We do a lot of open gym, and a lot of sports. And so that’s another way for people to jump in. So it’s social or service.
Rich Birch — Yeah…
Father Peter Wojcik — And what we discover is that once people get into one of those basic ways of engaging and out of that we can invite them to a deeper kind of sense of belonging. And and what we recognize is that, you know, when when people go through this first step, usually what they have kind of three different desires that we try to meet. One is they really want to learn more about the word of God, scripture. So we have we always after Alpha offer bible courses as a way for people to actually learn more about ah, the word of God.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Father Peter Wojcik — Second is we come to recognize that people really want to do more learning about Jesus. And so we use The Chosen series. We design a curriculum around it and and it’s called Following Jesus and so we we kind of look at characteristics of discipleship.
Father Peter Wojcik — And the third one we specifically look, you know, in in our own tradition around kind of some principles of Catholicism, of sacraments and stuff for people who really want to develop more of an understanding of who we are as a church. And so it seems like we we highly encourage, after the entry points, if you will, people will stay together as a small group as much as possible. And I think right now about 70% of our Alpha groups actually stay together for the next offering.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. That’s amazing. I love that. I love the I heard you mention The Chosen um, you know what you do there. Can you unpack that a little bit more because I that’s a really innovative idea and, you know, I seem that would seem like a great kind of next step out of Alpha for sure. Talk to us a little bit more about that.
Father Peter Wojcik — Well we, you know, everybody and when Chosen, came up everybody love Chosen.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s unbelievable. Yeah.
Father Peter Wojcik — And and talk about it a lot. And we thought, well why don’t we use it the same way, as a tool we use Alpha. And so we we kind of precisely the same thing. We, it starts, you know, we welcome people. We have hospitality – for our evening group we have dinner. For morning group we have breakfast. Then they watch the episode of Chosen. And then we divide them into small groups for 30 minutes and they have a discussion. And as Alpha is an entry to ah Christianity, Chosen we we treat Chosen as an entry to discipleship. So we kind of look at different episodes, and people’s interaction with Jesus and we say okay, what shifted in people’s lives because of their interaction with Jesus? What changes in the life of the disciple? And then therefore what should change in our lives once we encounter Jesus? So it becomes more of a discipleship course when we are invited not only to observe what happened to other other lives and and you know people who lived in the time of Jesus, but also what would do this, you know how our lives will shift because of our encounter with Jesus today.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. That’s so I’m like probably bad because I’m like cynical of so much Christian media. I’m like it’s just all so terrible. And so when The Chosen came out I was like I was a latecomer to that; I was like dragged into it. But I find it so compelling. It is so it just, you know, sucks me in and and it sends me back to scripture, and sends me back to my relationship with Jesus. And you know, I find it I get moved emotionally when I watch it. That’s what a cool cool idea. I just think that’s that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Um, can you talk a little bit about the community service thing. That’s a common trait we see in in lots of growing churches is they’re not the kind of place… I think there’s this common notion that which is not true the stereotype of like a growing church is the kind of place that’s like they’re just all about themselves or inward focus. They’re, you know, they’re just it’s just trying to gather people in a box somewhere. That’s not the case. They’re actually places that are that are moving people to actually serve. Talk to us maybe just unpack that a little bit. What does that look like for you guys?
Father Peter Wojcik — Absolutely. So so you know what we we actually seriously try to live out Matthew 28. I think the Great Commission is not only go and make disciples by proclaiming Jesus Christ – that is extremely important and we try to do it every day. But also by ah, really helping people to recognize how Jesus cares for them.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Father Peter Wojcik — And it’s very you know when you go to shelters when you go to um, serve the homeless, before you talk to to them about Jesus you you have to kind of ask them simple questions. You know, do you need the doctor? Do you need help? How how are you feeling?
Father Peter Wojcik — And all those basic questions that that that Jesus will ask first before he tells them about other. We have examples of it in the scripture. And so so I think Jesus modeled all of that for…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — …all of that for us. And so I think that’s what we try to do we. We do believe that in order to grow, we always have to be outward focused, that that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.
Father Peter Wojcik — …the only reason why we form disciples, why we lead them into transformation transformation in Jesus is so then they can help others to encounter the same the same gift. And it it is exercise in generosity. And so St Clement was very blessed to partner with other Christian churches about thirty years ago to establish a Lincoln Park community shelter. And we’ve been one of the partner organizations that started that organization and we’ve been supporting it ever since. So we have groups that do meals and help in the shelter. We have legal clinic that helps refugee um communities. We partner with Catholic charities and and sponsoring refugee families, and so we have meals. Right now we have a whole train meals that delivers meals to folks in in our police stations where the immigrants are leaving really…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Father Peter Wojcik — …to cross the border and were brought here on the buses, and now they have no places to go. And so so there’s many ways in which every day young people ah can engage in in really very practical and necessary service. And then here on our campus every Friday morning. We welcome our homeless neighbors for hospitality for breakfast, and then we have lunches for them. And and again it’s it’s, you know, because we have a Catholic school, it’s a great way for our young kids in the school. We have our middle school kids not only make sandwiches, but I also serve breakfast or homeless friends and so forth. And so it’s a way really for community to say listen, that’s what discipleship is. You come, you get to know Jesus, you worship Jesus, the worship transforms your heart, and you cannot help but you overflow with generosity. And you have to, you have to recognize that generosity toward other people, especially those who are less fortunate than you are, if you are a disciple of Jesus.
Rich Birch — Love it. This has been so fantastic, Father Peter. I really appreciate your generosity of being with us today. Um is there anything else you’d like to share just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode?
Father Peter Wojcik — You know we we always love to serve. So if there’s people who kind of listen to it and say, I’m intrigued and it makes absolutely no sense to me. Well welcome to my cloud. That’s what my teams does every single day when I tell them something. They said it sounds okay, we don’t know what you mean. Um…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Father Peter Wojcik — But that’s why that’s why we have a great team. So if if anyone, you know, needs support or or kind of unpacking, just reach out to us, we’ll be happy to walk you through it. But but I just I really believe that the revival is happening, that the holy awakening a church to a new chapter, leading us to 2033. And and I do believe that there is this outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is fresh, that is new, that is really renewing the church. And and I just hope we we are humble enough to recognize it, um interested enough to enter into it, and trusting enough follow the movement of the Holy Spirit. And I think it’s for the whole church. That’s the beauty of it.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, where do we want to send people online, Father, if they want to track with you, track with the church, where where do we want to send them?
Father Peter Wojcik — So we just visit clement.org is our website. We we have you know, social media. You can follow us on our social media. It’s @chicagopriest – I don’t know how ah in the world I got that one…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s amazing.
Father Peter Wojcik — …but I was I guess early in the market. Ah, and and then our website clement.org, there’s a lot of information, you can pull our information, reach out to us. We love to help anybody who needs help.
Rich Birch — Thank you so much, sir, I really appreciate you being on today. Thank you for your time.
Father Peter Wojcik — Well thanks for having me.
From Struggle to Success: Evan Courtney on Revitalizing a Church Campus Amidst Challenges
Aug 10, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Evan Courtney, the Executive Pastor at The Fields Church in central Illinois.
Have you ever experienced decline in your church or felt like everything was going wrong? Don’t miss this encouraging conversation as Evan testifies to the power of perseverance, overcoming obstacles that lead to new opportunities, and remaining faithful to God’s call.
The launch and decline. // When they launched their second campus, The Fields Church wanted the attendance at that location to be over 200, but that didn’t happen. They struggled to create an engaging Sunday experience and lacked strong leadership for the worship team. Then when COVID hit, they then lost their rental space. By the time the campus had found a temporary place to meet on Sunday nights, attendance had dwindled to 40 people who were essentially the volunteers handling the portable campus setup.
Finding leadership and a facility. // One of the things The Fields needed to put the campus on the right track was strong leadership to infuse their culture and DNA. Evan stepped in as campus pastor for eight months to be a consistent presence and help the campus move forward. Another thing the church needed was a facility that let them get back to meeting together on Sunday mornings.
Adjusting expectations. // It was still during the pandemic when The Fields began looking for a new location for their second campus. The expectations for finding a facility were a lot lower than the original launch of the multisite location. They no longer focused on needing a parking lot of a certain size or a certain amount of seating. Instead they focused simply on finding a building in which they could meet that had the minimum amount of space they needed for their Sunday morning service. Eventually they found an office building on a back road and converted it into a meeting space in about a week.
Relaunching the second campus. // Even though their second campus was on the verge of shutting down, the core group of people attending were committed to seeing the location succeed. They focused on inviting new people and saw growth from 40 to 200 people within a few months. Their growth was not due to any special strategies or magic bullet. They simply showed up, had services, and continued their regular activities in addition to training and motivating their members to invite their friends.
Breakthrough for the second campus. // During the pandemic, another local church approached The Fields about merging. After eight months of conversations, they decided to join forces. The merger brought in more people and a facility located on a busy street. As a result, their second campus saw significant growth, with 400 people attending Easter services and an average of over 200 people on Sundays.
Determine what you need in a campus pastor. // It’s hard to hire someone from a highly metropolitan area to move to a highly rural area, or vice versa. The Fields Church decided to hire someone from within rather than seek someone from outside the area. Campus pastors need to embody the mission of their church, have a heart for the community, and understand the culture and life in an area.
Three limiting factors. // As they look to the future, there are three limiting factors to growth that The Fields Church considers: Will the auditorium space, kids’ space, or parking at their current locations limit future growth? What would a launch and services in a new community look like for a third location?
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am so glad that you have tuned in today. Ah you know every week we try to bring you a leader who will inspire and equip you and today I’m super excited to have my friend, Evan Courtney, with us. He is executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking with. It’s called The Fields Church. Started nearly 100 years ago, it’s a multi-site church with two campuses in Central Illinois, plus church online. They really have a desire to be influential in Coles County, the county they’re in, also across all of Central Illinois, and then eventually be a valuable resources for other rural countries across the midwest or other other rural churches across the midwest. And they’re just fantastic people. Evan, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.
Evan Courtney — Hey thank you, Rich. I appreciate the resources that you always provide to other churches and inspiration that you’ve given us over the years.
Rich Birch — I, yeah, this is a fun one. I was I was joking with Evan ahead ahead of time because like we actually know each other where sometimes I have to like pretend like I know people on the podcast, but Evan and I actually know each other and have been journeying together for a while, and I wanted to bring this story to you and you’re going to you’re going to love it today.
Rich Birch — But, why don’t you fill out the picture? Kind of tell us a bit more about The Fields, kind of you know what did I miss there as we kind of got this thing rolling today?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we are, like you said, we’re 100 year old church that probably for about 20 years all throughout the 80s and 90s was us was really kind of ah stagnant in attendance. So we averaged ah an attendance of about 150 for about 20 years.
Evan Courtney — Um, that wasn’t necessarily negative. What happened was leadership came in and was able to kind of clean and straighten up and kind of balance some things out, and kind of outlast some people. And so that was all that was all really healthy. Um, and so actually our lead pastor now, that was his father-in-law was here for 20 years. And then 2008 transitioned, he retired which was really good during that season. He realized that he was kind of at the cusp of, you know what, maybe he was downward trending as a leader. And so said instead of taking it, continuing to lead the organization down, he’s like you know what? I think I’m going to go ahead and pass this off.
Evan Courtney — And so we passed it off to our new lead pastor ,Travis Spencer. And since 2008 we took about two or three years to kind of look at our schedule and look at what the rhythm of the things that we were doing and we transitioned from being a church of ministries, of events, and we transitioned to being a church of a pathway a discipleship pathway that took about 2 years to do. And during that time attendance flat, which was okay, um, for us. And then coming out of that couple years you know 2010, since then we’ve just seen incremental, not explosive growth, but over the last thirteen years we’ve seen 5, 8, 10% growth every single year.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Evan Courtney — And so that’s kind of where we have been.
Rich Birch — Love it. And this is the kind of story I love because, you know, that kind of growth over an extended period of time, man, it really starts to snowball eventually. And it is um I don’t want to say easier but it is um, you know, it maybe is easier to get your hands around from a let’s serve people and integrate them. If all of those people, if you had 500 people all show up in one year, most churches would would you know wouldn’t be able to handle it. And so the fact that over these years you’ve seen that growth is is pretty amazing. Now we we connected a couple years ago when you guys were thinking about going multisite and ultimately that landed in ah The Fields launching a campus at another ah community ah, just kind of about the year before covid. Tell me that story, what, you know, kind of talk through what was the launch like and all that.
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we actually weren’t even thinking about going into multisite. We were thinking about building a bigger building. Because we are running out of space and in the middle of conversations with the design build company, like the ones that we’re paying to build us million dollar building, they said to us, well have you guys, instead of building a building, if you want to reach people wouldn’t it be less expensive to just plant another location next to this neighboring community?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Evan Courtney — And it was interesting because it was coming from it as they essentially lost themselves business…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Evan Courtney — …by telling us, you don’t need to build million dollar building, you need to just launch into this other community.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Evan Courtney — And for us what it is there’s this community next to us that’s ten miles away. And so we launched the second location ten miles away. But because we’re in rural context, it’s a rival community. And so people from one community don’t travel to the other community, whether it’s sports, restaurants, they don’t do it. And so what we saw, we kind of looked at our data and we saw that we had 70 individuals that were attending our location from this other community. But all of those individuals, none of them were born and raised for that other community. They were all transplants. We had nobody coming, nobody serving, nobody giving, that was from, born and raised, in that community. And so that’s what we did was [inaudible] to gather your these people say, hey you know what? Let’s launch a location in your community. We know it’s ten miles away but there’s this invisible line that people aren’t willing to cross. And so we had a little bit of fear of if we launch a church that close, is it just going to take our attendance and just split in half?
Evan Courtney — Um, but what we have seen is that it really just is a whole different group of people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s pretty amazing.
Evan Courtney — And so is new growth, not just dividing ourselves up.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So the thing one of the things to underline here, friends, when we’re thinking about multisite is, you know, there’s like the stuff that’s on the map, like you can draw it out and it’s like the physical things. But then there are these like emotional, cultural, social, you know you know, lines on the map that don’t show up that really you only know when you’ve been journeying in a community together ah for a while. And you know there might be opportunity there that’s not that far away. 10 miles is not that far ah, but can be way too far for people to attend church.
Rich Birch — Now I want to kind of fast forward a little bit and um, you know, so the campus launched ah, you know, rah rah, we’re excited for that. But then at some point during kind of, you know, obviously you know we I had the first year anniversary, and then we ended up into covid, and there was like this this kind of sign that, Okay, maybe this isn’t going well. I don’t want to you know that’s me saying that. You know you’re you’re not saying that. But you know you came to the point where like, oh gosh this isn’t… can you describe what were some of the points when you look back and you say, oh this is evidence that maybe maybe things were not working, that you know we were we were struggling more in this this new campus than you would have envisioned. You know, we all do these things and envision them just exploding overnight, but that doesn’t always happen. What were some of those kind of points that brought you to the point where like, okay, this isn’t going well.
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we is so when we launch, we didn’t launch at a higher number than we we thought. Like when we launched we wanted to our average attendance to be over 200 kind of be over that cusp. That didn’t happen. We don’t know why. I mean we had huge numbers at launch. But kind of looking back the the weeks and the months after that, one of the pain points that we had was we didn’t have great worship. And we kind of just pushed it out like, hey it’s okay, but really worship hurt us because we were doing video which was already, you know, is a little bit, is a lot different than live teaching. So the engagement’s a little bit different. And then our worship was really bad. We didn’t have a strong kind of a leader taking that. And in honestly a lot of it had to do with we couldn’t find a drummer.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — And so I just remember we’re piping in drums on a soundtrack…
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — …and everybody in that room knows…
Rich Birch — You could tell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
Evan Courtney — …there’s no drums but I can hear the drums. And it just, you know what, it just like the the experiential of the worship was just a very low. And kind of it just it wasn’t a bang of a service every single week. So we knew that was a tension point. And then we were then right when we ran into Covid we lost that space, that the rental space that was at a school, and so we lost that space and now we’re online. And when here where we were out in Illinois, like we were only online for about two months, and then it was starting to ramp back up for us to be able to meet in person. And when we got ready to do that, I think just the amount of energy and the amount of work was going to take more to relaunch to launch.
Evan Courtney — And so what we what happened was we lost some leadership during that transition. And so now we had no facility, um, we had no leader, and so we’re trying to rally who do we have left? Like we didn’t know who we had left because we’re doing online.
Rich Birch — Oh man.
Evan Courtney — And we just and so we called every single church in the community and said, Do you have a timeframe that we could do a service? One out of 40 churches that we called and said, yeah you can use our space…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Evan Courtney — …on a on a Sunday night. And so we did learn during this time that Sunday night services don’t work when you’re portable. So we were bringing in port… so we had people show up 90 minutes before service, set up portable gear, ran service on video…
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — …from the morning service that they could have watched online that morning on you know Facebook and Youtube…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Evan Courtney — …and then tear down and so people are getting there at 3:30…
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — …watching the video message of the person that was actually in the room, the lead pastor was in the room too because he had to help set up.
Rich Birch — Right. Oh gosh. Oh my goodness.
Evan Courtney — And they’re like, why is he not speaking? He’s in the back of the room, I can see him. But we wanted we were just in that rhythm like, Nope we said we were doing video.
Rich Birch — We’re doing this. We’re gonna do it.
Evan Courtney — And so that’s what we learned was like Sunday nights in our community didn’t work. Nobody wanted to be there. We had 40 individuals that were coming to service. And a majority of them were in their dream team their volunteer shirts and we’re like the only people we have is volunteers. So it was bad worship. We were forcing video teaching. And we had a bad time slot. And we we had 40 people.
Rich Birch — Okay, so friends, they’re just a bunch there. Like I think this idea of and sometimes this stuff is is clear in hindsight, understanding what is it that makes your experience, you know, understanding like, you know, we we launch these things and we try like, hey we’re going to try what we can on the music front. And ah but, man, it just didn’t live up ah to that. You know, we’ve got to think really carefully about those things, and sometimes they’re a bigger deal than actually we even know. They’re, you know, we we thought like oh we can make that work and it it doesn’t necessarily.
Rich Birch — So now there would be lots of churches I think at this point that, you know, so you’re down to 40 people, you know, video teaching, we got Travis showing up to set this thing up, mostly volunteers. Um, you know at that point there would be a lot of churches that would say, hey we’re just going to throw in the towel here. Like that’s you know that’s not going to happen. Well, you know friends, the reason why we have this on is obviously because they didn’t throw in the towel, and we continued. So walk us through what were some of what you know the milestones as you came out of covid that you look back on now and say, wow this was a linchpin decision change that led us to where now, friends, and we’ll get to where we’re at today. But things are way better today than than those 40 people. But kind of what were some of those linchpins kind of across the the the months you know after that?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so the big one was leadership. We had to get somebody. We had to get our culture and our DNA back into that into that church, of being online, somebody else’s building, we were losing some of that. So we had to get a leader in there. And I actually jumped in and and let it for about eight months. We just needed somebody on our team that was consistent, a face that they had seen, a voice that they had heard over the years. So that was one was the leadership.
Evan Courtney — The second one is facility. We knew we had to get back to Sunday mornings. And so we had to do whatever it took to get back to Sunday mornings. So the third one was for us to do that, we had to find a facility. And so our expectations of a facility on, for what we called was our relaunch of relaunching this church, the expectations were a lot lower than the launch.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Evan Courtney — Like the launch we had this we we needed a preschool room, we needed an elementary room, we needed a lobby, we needed an auditorium that at least I had 300 seats. We need to have parking for those, you know, we needed a hundred parking spaces. All of a sudden we just kind of threw that out the door and said, you know, we just need to find a space. If we don’t find a space we’re done.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Evan Courtney — So those are the 3, the 3 main things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, so on the facility piece, I love that idea of you actually lowered your expectations. You know, I think that’s that’s a keen insight. As you what what kind of did the minimum bar become as you were like okay, we’ve you know we we need to find something. Sunday morning obviously is the primary was you know the primary idea, but was it what else was in that mix of that conversation?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, we we just needed we needed to find us ah somebody that would rent to us during that time of covid. Coming out of covid there wasn’t a lot of spaces. We needed to find an auditorium that it could at least, or a space, that could at least hold a hundred people. A hundred adults.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — And then two rooms for kids.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s amazing…
Evan Courtney — We didn’t care about parking. We could figure that out, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — Like most those places are gonna have some sort of parking. And we didn’t we didn’t worry about a lobby.
Rich Birch — Okay, so did you…
Evan Courtney — We thought: adult space, two kids’ spaces.
Rich Birch — Right. And so then did you go back to the 40 churches? What what happened next?
Evan Courtney — No, so what we did is ah we actually we just, somebody caught we we kind of pushed out to our team and said you know what, just pray. Let’s ask God to open places. When we first initially launched ah two years before that we had already looked at all the places that were available. We we knew everything. And so somebody reached out to our team and said, hey what about this office space out on this back road. I just passed it; I saw there’s a “for rent” sign. What do you think? So we showed up to it and it was just an open office. And so we looked at it, walked in, and and they said hey do you want this? And we’re like yeah, there’s nothing else. There was maybe 25 parking spots…
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — …open office and 2 break rooms. And so we converted that. We took a week and converted it.
Rich Birch — Oh my… turned it around.
Evan Courtney — We took all of our portable stuff.
Rich Birch — Got all [inaudible] paint out in way we went. Yeah.
Evan Courtney — Yep, got to… yeah, got, we it was it paint, and then we had all over our portable gear. We just we just went from portable…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Evan Courtney — …and installed all that stuff as permanent.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — And so we used spandex to that we were using on hallways to to cover up stuff and we just created hallways out of the spandex. Used all of our portable chairs that we were using in elementary spaces and we just set those up. Um, it just gave us, we had to have a place for the people to go to that said, you know what? This is our church. And we actually ended up in a part of a neighborhood in this community that there wasn’t a church within a mile.
Rich Birch — How interesting.
Evan Courtney — And all of a sudden we put a sign up and people started coming and attending. And we’re like how did you, like how did you hear about us? We’re on this back country road.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — And they said, we saw the sign.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Wow.
Evan Courtney — That’s it?
Rich Birch — That’s it.
Evan Courtney — And so we started getting people from that neighborhood saved…
Rich Birch — No fancy Facebook campaign. No, you know…
Evan Courtney — No, no. And it was ah it was a marquee sign.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Evan Courtney — Right. So I mean I was just sliding the letters in there, a service 10 am…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Evan Courtney — …and then just put our decal up. So.
Rich Birch — Wow. So the but you know part to underline there is I know there are a lot of churches that are portable. You know that this has been a challenging number of years. And I’ve said to multiple churches because they’re like we’ve tried everything we… there is no opportunity. And you know my pushback has been well, if the place you’re renting from today that’s substandard, if they called you tomorrow and said you can’t meet here anymore, you would you would get desperate and figure something out, right? You would figure out some sort of space. But because if you’re in this space that’s kind of almost working, like the Sunday night service was. It’s like it’s working but not really, you’ll just keep rolling until you draw a line in the sand and say no no, we we’re done. We have to find, you know, something else. So so then what happened next from there? So people start to show up. Ah you know things are looking a little you know, better. There’s like an uptick in excitement
Evan Courtney — Right.
Rich Birch — You’re still campus you’re still the campus pastor there. Ah you know what went on next?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, and so a couple of the other things to note real quick about the facility that we had to um, got were hard “yeses” before that became “it didn’t matter” was like ceiling height. It had it it had a nine foot ceiling. It was tile ceiling, and because of that we couldn’t do video anymore.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Evan Courtney — Because you couldn’t get a big enough video screen. And so we flipped to live teaching out of the necessity of this thing is gonna die and we had to get it… It’s kind of like being in the ah ER. Ah, you’re just giving this thing, I see you’re giving this thing all the different hoses – the oxygen, the IV – and so we just said, hey if video is going to hurt this thing, let’s do live.
Evan Courtney — And so we started to do all those. And so what it was was we just Sunday morning continued to do Sunday morning, continue because of now you have your own building and it took work to create things into the building. We just saw an uptick of volunteers because they’re like, hey like they had their blood, and sweat, and their work equity into this building. So now is all of a sudden it became theirs. They became their identity where before they were at this rented school, they were at this borrowed church. All of a sudden it was like there ah an identity of, man, this is our place. And it didn’t matter that it was ah a bad looking building. It was actually the day that we put our sign up, the city called us and said, Evan, you can’t have church there. That’s ah, that’s zoned for high industrial.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Evan Courtney — And I said, well I didn’t I didn’t have a clue, like we were having this church and the church is dying. So what do you want us to do? And they’re like well you need to go through all this code paper. I’m like great, how long’s that going to last? And they’re like it probably takes three to four months. I’m like, well we’ve gotta meet. And he goes if you guys continue to meet, we’d have to shut you down, but that wouldn’t look good on the city if we shut down a church.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Evan Courtney — And I said, understood. And so we just continue to push forward…
Rich Birch — Wow Wow. Wow.
Evan Courtney — …and that’s kind of the momentum of people just continue to show. And they because they saw we only had 40 people, our church looked at each other and said if we don’t invite people, we’re done.
Rich Birch — So good.
Evan Courtney — And so that’s what it kind of was it like it was all these new people because they had all of a sudden they felt like like no, no, no, no, we launched this church. We’re not going to give up on this. And so it just began to invite people out of the woodwork.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Evan Courtney — And so we saw growth up to 200 people from that Oct…that September when we relaunched with forty, that easter we had 200 people.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Evan Courtney — And it was just it was it was I look at it now was it was we did average things over a considerable amount of time and it turned into above average results.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. What would be some of those average things when you look back in that period that you you know really helped reach people?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so the the average things was like, every parade in our neighborhood or our area that was in our city we got into.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — Just so they could see our name. Like that it was we we didn’t do anything spectacular – hay bales, throwing candy out, like nothing spectacular. We did that. Sunday mornings, no matter what, we’re having service. It doesn’t matter if there’s 20 people or 25 people – we’re having these teams, we’re having these monthly meetings. And so we just kind of went back to the grind that we were doing before just all these kind of ah small ah small events that we were doing.
Evan Courtney — We did a you know we do a halloween events that we typically did that was huge, and so we just scaled that back and said what can we do? Same with Christmas and Easter. We had to scale those back. But we just continued to do what we had always done before, and the kind of that just created those results and created those momentums.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You’re speaking my love language. I know you know that, but you know like we have to just keep we have to keep doing these things. Keep keep pushing our people, you know we we talked about this so many times that churches that grow, they train, they equip, they motivate their people to invite their friends. And a part of that means as church leaders, we’ve got to keep thinking about it. What are we doing? What’s coming up that our people could invite their friends to? And you know all of those kinds of things are you know a piece of the puzzle.
Rich Birch — Okay, so now I know there was a significant “C” change here kind of as you continued. So you’re you know you’re at you know, kind of a weird place with the town. Things are like, okay, you got to get out. What happened next?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so during this whole process of right before Covid and during Covid, a local church had actually reached out to us. They were in the middle of their pastor was retiring and they had conversations with us that they knew that either they were going to have to go and do a pastoral search during the middle of Covid to try to find a pastor…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Evan Courtney — …to hire a pastor that they wouldn’t really know anything about. Um or they knew there was an opportunity they can merge with The Fields Church who they didn’t like everything about, but they knew everything, you know, they they knew us. And they knew the goods and they knew the bads. And so we were in the middle of covid having this conversation. They knew we were at a weak point too at this office building that we had renovated. And so they kind of but they knew overall the growth of The Fields Church and the excitement and and they wanted kind of really hitch themselves to us and become a part of what we were doing.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Evan Courtney — And so we went through a timeframe about eight months of conversations with them of them joining into our congregation.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Evan Courtney — So you take us just continuing to do the path every single week and meeting, doing the average every single week. Them coming along and saying, you know what, we want to join you. And so a part of that was they had a facility…
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — …that was across from Walmart, which is the busiest street in town.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Evan Courtney — They wanted to gift that to us, plus all of their people, to give those people to us. And so we were already on this high and already riding this momentum, and then they came in added to that. And so both of those things added together just created a greater impact. It just launched us years ahead of where we would be.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know, the the thing to underline there that we’ve seen time and again is typically in these you know merger or rebirth scenarios, like with this other church, um, you know they typically have been engaged in some kinds of other activity. They’ve been thinking about something else and this is like in the mix of it, right? And they’re you know they were obviously trying to wrestle through what do we do with and the the lead pastor issue is all is usually ah or is a significant catalyst. It’s like okay, either someone’s retiring or they’d like to retire. Or they, you know, they’ve been looking for a long time and can’t find someone. Um and you know, friends, I’m hoping you’re listening today and you’re like you may be pushing against one of these walls and you can take inspiration from The Fields to say, man, we just maybe we just have to keep going, just keep walking in this in the in the right direction.
Rich Birch — Okay, so bring us up to date today. So you know you end up moving into that location. They end up giving you the building, all of that stuff. So what does it look like today? Here we are you know summer 2023 you know what’s that what’s that campus look like? What’s kind of what’s happening there now?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, absolutely. So they merged with us, joined together. We launched huge with them, remodeled their facility. And so today this past easter we saw 400 people…
Rich Birch — That’s crazy.
Evan Courtney — …came out to easter and we are averaging over 200 people um, on a Sunday which is huge, huge for us…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Evan Courtney — …in the community, probably the second largest church in that community.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Evan Courtney — And we’re beginning to see an influx of people that are coming from… so that location to the west of it is where our our our other location is, the location that’s 100 years old. And so on the opposite spectrum, on the east side is all of these people that are coming.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Evan Courtney — And so we’re just seeing an influx of new people, of people getting saved. But we’re not doing anything different. Like there’s no throughout this whole process, Rich, there’s no there’s no magic bullet.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — Like there was no oh like we unlock this special thing that nobody else knows about. I think it’s just like we’re showing up. Like we’re we’re showing up and having services, we’re doing Growth Track. We do growth track every single Sunday. You know, if it’s you know if it’s a on Mother’s Day, we’re doing Growth Track if somebody signs up for Growth Track. And where I think we’re doing less and we’re just continuing to do it, and kind of continuing to do our rhythm.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Evan Courtney — Um, and so that’s kind of what we’re seeing.
Rich Birch — Now it’s somewhere in there you ended up hiring Campus Pastor Mark – great guy – ah what how did you find that individual? I know I’ve heard you in other contexts like cheer for Mark, man, he’s been just such a critical piece of the puzzle. Talk us through that transition because you you know you listed leadership as number one reason, hey we got to fix that. You stepped in but then eventually we made a more permanent change there.
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so we’ve had… the the hard thing is we’ve had four campus pastors in the last in the since the launch of the location…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Evan Courtney — …in the last 3, 3-4 years. Some of that is covid, just you know we jumped in for a little bit. We had another leader that was their first season. And so I think what we’ve learned is that when we hired Pastor Mark, no pastoral experience. Um he had Fields Church experience, had been on staff doing creative ah creative ministries, had done facilities. But what he had was culture. Like he he knew the ins and outs of The Fields Church and loved the ins and outs of The Fields Church. Like he loved everything about The Fields Church. And we’re like well we can… and had the call to pastor, but had not ever been educated that way…
Rich Birch — That’s huge.
Evan Courtney — …or never had gone that season in their life. Had done military and was working at ah, a car dealership. Um, but who was volunteering and serving at The Fields. And we’re like, you know what? There’s something inside of him. He’s got the culture. He’s got the willingness to learn. And so we said, you know what, we can’t, it’s hard to hire somebody outside to move… I mean regardless, it’s hard to hire anybody right now, but to move to the midwest into a community, you know, that’s 2 hours away from any metropolitan area is very difficult. Um, so we were like we’ve got to look internal, hired internal. Um, and we don’t have the culture and the DNA push. Like nobody’s pushing against that of like I really don’t think we should be doing this. It’s more of a sense of like, okay I want to do this. How do I do? That’s a lot easier for us to lead as as executive leaders for somebody trying to push their own kind of agenda that sort of thing.
Rich Birch — Absolutely. Talk us through that um, kind of at a high level when you think about the percentages of… so I hear what you’re saying on the culture piece. Don’t miss that, friends. You know we’ve talked about that in other context that like campus pastors need to, you know, they need to bleed the church. They need to be like wow these people are fully they’re onboard. They love the mission. But then the other piece of this in this case, you know, Charleston’s the name of this community. They need to be Charleston people. They need to have the like kind of vibe of the community. If if you were going to be like 51/49, you know, 51% they need to be like Fields people type people, 49% Charleston type people or the locations you’re in or, you know, how would you kind of grade those two, or is it they just need to be both of those? Talk us through when you think about, you know, this this the kind of intangible side of campus leadership.
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so ours we would probably tip more towards the size of that community.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Of like they’ve got to they’ve got to have that feel. They’ve got to they’ve got to love living here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — It’s not a horrible area. But I mean they just, like anywhere, they’ve got to love they want to be able to envision them growing their family and their kids up into this area. If they can’t do that, nothing else is going to work. Like we even when we hire people that’s the first thing is like hey do you feel like you can fit in here? I had an interview once with a guy that was from Houston. And within the first couple minutes we had a conversation like, hey do you think you’d be able to move here and live here? And he asked me this – he goes, would I need to buy a jacket for the winters?
Rich Birch — Ah, yes, you… at least one, at least need least one.
Evan Courtney — Yeah, yeah. And so I’m like you know what, that was our last conversation. I go I don’t think this is this isn’t going to work.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Evan Courtney — It doesn’t matter how great of leader you are…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Evan Courtney — …if if if you’re not able to adapt, or or to know or to feel or to love the place that you’re going to live is, you know, that’s that’s the big piece for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a huge deal. And you know I think helping us and our, you know, our people get through those questions and understand that and to have the conviction around, you know, what what is it that makes leaders work in this part of the world. You know, I remember when I was serving in New Jersey, you know, very similar issues. You know, they looked a little different, but the same kind of thing. Man, you’ve got to like this kind of that in that case, it’s like northeast grind, you got to like the, like people here really do think that they’re like the most important people in the world and you kind of can’t fight them on that. Like if you’re from Georgia you can’t be up here and be like, well, you know people up here aren’t as cool as they are in Georgia. That doesn’t work. They’ll get shut down real quickly. And you know the thing is that’s a transferable principle regardless of where we are in the country. Every part of the country has that kind of cultural stuff that we’ve got to be aware of. And every part of the country—and I’ve I’ve joked with you about this before—every part of the country believes that they’re the hardest part of the country to hire people in.
Rich Birch — Like I you know I was with with some friends in Southern California and they were like, this is like really tough place to hire people. I’m like I don’t if yeah, that’s not true. Like you know, there’s lots, every every place has this. We all have this and, you know, I think it is true where where you are you know I’ve been in the communities you’re you’re in, and but it’s also true in lots of places. You know and and we and we sometimes, I think particularly if we’ve been in this community forever, it might be hard for us to get our head around how just how difficult that is.
Rich Birch — Okay, when we think about the future, so you look up over the horizon, either in this campus in Charleston, or future campuses or even in Mattoon, you know, what what what’s the future have for you? What’ll be some of the questions you’re asking, or things you’re thinking about as you look to future campuses, future locations, growth all that kind of stuff?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so growth pinpoints that we’re looking at right now is facility, and becoming a concern. Three limiting factors that we look at: facilities, is is there a limit in our auditorium space? Is there limit in our kids space? And is there a limit in our parking space? And if we have a limit in one of those three, then the rest kind of falls apart. And so that’s one of the things that we’re looking at both of our locations right now is what are what’s limiting us from growth?
Evan Courtney — The second one is is what is this we know how hard it is and difficult it is to do the third location, and the majority people stop at that second, so we’re looking at what does that look like. And for us it is a lot different than us doing the second because the second one we were able to look at this we already had this mass group of people in this inside community and and it was easy to get, you know, 75, 100 people to launch. Now we’re looking at a community next to us and we don’t hardly have anybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Evan Courtney — And so we’re having to kind of reframe and think, okay, what does that look like? Does that look like us doing popup services for major holidays? Does that look at us starting small groups? You know does it look at us during outreach events? What does that kind of look like? So those are the two main things is that the facility and then and how do we launch this third location.
Evan Courtney — Because I feel like once we can get that third, the fourth is going to come easier. It’s going the third is going to help our our structure of our leadership and it’s not going to be of us versus them with the two locations, and the smaller and the bigger, but it’s going to kind of change the whole thing.
Rich Birch — I love it. So good. Well there’s… listen, friends, there’s so much we could talk about at The Fields. Um, you know we’ve focused in on this one story but there’s so many other things. I love what you guys do. The pumpkin fest thing I think is amazing. You know I’ve pointed people in that direction. I’m just going to leave that out there, friends – you’ll have to follow them to figure out what you know that’s all about. I think I think that your whole passion for and obviously it’s kind of been in the subtext of this conversation, but passion for these rural communities, I think there’s a lot of people who are wondering the same thing. Like man, there are, you know, none of the name brand big, very large multisite churches are going to plant a church in Charleston. It’s just not going to happen, right? And so the question is who’s going to say, we’ll take that. That’s ah our us. We’ll figure out how to do that. I love that your, you know, doing – there’s lots of stories we could we could tell there. But as we’re wrapping up today, any kind of final you know advice or anything you like to say to people as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Evan Courtney — Yeah, so if we as we look at this I think the thing is is to to not give up on really what you feel like called God has called you to do. And that you are gonna run into hurdles; you are gonna run into roadblocks. But if it is God giving you this call, and he’s going to work it out, and you’re gonna be stronger than where you were going to be before. If we wouldn’t have ran into these roadblocks, we wouldn’t have the loss of pastoral staff and leadership, we wouldn’t be where we are today with Pastor Mark, with this merge…
Rich Birch — So true.
Evan Courtney — …or with this building across the street from Walmart. So just continue to to push forward because you’re gonna run into roadblocks and just sometimes you go around them, sometimes you jump over them, sometimes you just just blast through it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well I mean this has been fantastic. If people want to track along with you or with the church where do we want to send them online?
Evan Courtney — Yep. The easiest place is just to go to the website: thefields.church and then all the socials are on there and you can find out information, email us, all of that information’s there.
Rich Birch — Love it. Really appreciate you being on today’s episode – thanks so much, man.
Evan Courtney — Thank you, sir.
Uniting the Church to Quench the Global Water Crisis: A Conversation with Mike Mantel
Aug 03, 2023
Thanks for tuning into today’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Mike Mantel, the CEO of Living Water International. They are a faith-based global humanitarian organization that links arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene.
What if the church of Jesus Christ could end the water crisis as it pursues the great commission? Listen to today’s conversation as Mike explains how.
Working with local churches. // Living Water International (LWI) started as a ministry focused on drilling water wells but soon realized that the involvement of the local church was key to engaging the communities where they were working. Now LWI equips local churches to address the basic needs of their communities, such as access to clean water. The church is the center of decision-making, bringing together the community to address these needs. This involvement not only provides physical resources but also attracts people in the community to the church and the gospel.
WASH program. // Living Water International is currently working in 18 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia. In each country they work in they identify a “WASH program area” – WASH is an acronym for Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene. These designated areas include about 50,000-100,000 people and are 50-100km across in the lowest income, neediest environments. LWI does a baseline analysis of who is there, how many churches exist, how they engage, what is the community’s water access, how healthy people are, and what is their hygiene. Then LWI invests in this location for 5-7 years with churches so that everyone has clean water, and sanitation and hygiene have been transformed.
Genius of One. // To foster unity and collaboration among churches, Living Water International organizes the “Genius of One” conferences. These conferences bring together churches at the local, district, and national levels, inviting them to work together across racial, economic, urban/rural, tribal, and denominational lines. The goal is to promote unity and reconciliation, emphasizing the prayer of Jesus for believers to be one. Churches come away with a vision for what they might be able to do together for their communities.
Three pillars. // Mike and his team introduce churches in the United States to what churches around the world are accomplishing through WASH. They do that by focusing on three pillars: growing in our knowledge, expanding our experience, and co-investing for impact.
Growing, expanding, and co-investing. // Growing in knowledge includes educating church members about the extent of the water crisis and the impact it has on communities. Expanding our experience is encouraging churches to go on mission trips and engage in hands-on activities related to water and sanitation projects. These experiences open people’s hearts and minds to God’s work and create lasting change. Then the more people invest their minds, space, time, and money in ministries that change the spiritual and physical reality of others, the more we want to experience and learn and invest.
Finding Adventure. // Mike’s book, Thirsting for Living Water: Finding Adventure and Purpose in God’s Redemption Story, started as a personal journey to rediscover God’s presence when Mike found himself in a dark night of the soul. Over time it developed into 12 stories of God’s faithfulness intended to encourage and inspire the reader. The book also serves as a ministry, with all proceeds going towards the work of Living Water International.
You can learn more and connect with Living Water International, as well as pick up Mike’s book, at www.water.cc
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Rich Birch — Well hey everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation – um, this is going to be a great one with my friend Mike Mantel. He is the CEO of an organization called Living Water International. If you don’t know Living Water, they’re a faith-based global humanitarian organization, and they link arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. You know they really are an incredible organization. I’ve had a chance to travel abroad with them and Mike’s a great guy. We’ve had a chance to interact over the years. Prior to his time at LWI he spent 17 years working for a little organization called World Vision—maybe you’ve heard of them—and nine years in the marketplace. Ah, he’s also authored a recently authored a book that we’re get a chance to talk about today. But Mike, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Mike Mantel — Rich, what a delight – thanks for inviting me on the show, and it was great to see you a couple weeks ago at the XP Conference.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that was such a fun time. We were down there. It was yeah, such a good time XPS. It was so good. Glad to glad to hang out a little bit there too. Why don’t we why don’t you kind of fill in the picture there either your picture, or you know Living Water International. What did I miss? Kind of bring us up to speed.
Mike Mantel — Living Water International has been around for 33 years. The impact that the Lord has made through Living Water and the church has been significant. We believe that about 7.3 million people are drinking safe water today…
Rich Birch — Wow!
Mike Mantel — …have experienced the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we’re currently working in 18 countries. We have about 340 staff, most of which are national staff leading the countries in which they serve. And we got a global team in the United States, centered in Houston Texas, but we got folks around the country.
Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so so cool. This is ah this is a fantastic organization, and like I said I had a chance to travel a number of times actually to some some Living Water projects. And I remember years ago, like one of the things you talk about it, and we want to really drive into that today, is this idea of linking arms with churches, having churches, you know, linking arms with existing churches. And I remember I was on the field, we were in Haiti and I was speaking to one of those national workers, and ah and it was like a dawning moment. And you know this idea this epiphany that struck me they were talking about we were in a very poor community, um an open ah, open sewers which is a you know a polite way to say feces in the streets. Um, you know this a tough community. Um and probably the poorest community one of the poorest communities I’d ever been in. And I remember this worker we were talking about you know, just even the strategy of how Living Water does what you do. And they said something that really struck me. They said, you know, if you you look around here, there’s no one else here. The government is not here. You know, there’s there’s no other infrastructure here. There’s no businesses here. The only people the only kind of organization that’s here is the local church. And so obviously you want to work with the local church because you’re a Christian organization. But even if that wasn’t your aim, man that that is such a there there’s such a strategically important organization to work with. I’d love to unpack that. Help me understand how does, and how has, LWI work with churches ah, on the on the field in the 18 countries that you are currently serving in?
Mike Mantel — Well, it’s been an evolution for us. When we started, like most startup ministries, the organization of Living Water wanted to help people access water in the name of Jesus. It was a is a group of drillers, construction guys, church leaders and they they wanted to drill a water well wherever they could, acquire ah a few resources, some volunteers, some drilling equipment, and then move on to the next place where people desperately needed water.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Mantel — But over the years we discovered that the church of Jesus Christ at that local level preceded us. They ah they were active, engaged in their communities. They they had networks of volunteers. They had a vision to love the the thirsty, to love the hungry. Um, they were honorable. And they would be there after we left.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mike Mantel — And so we began to say, Wow, you know, the church as a institution. It’s more like ah a network of ah, bodies of believers – that church proceeds, engages, and then succeeds us as as we move. And then we said, you know, what we really need to do as an organization is commit long term to a broader geographical area, and let’s discover who’s in that footprint. You know we discovered churches. We discovered municipal leaders. We discovered other nonprofits. But always at the center of this work was the church. And we said, let’s just invite all the churches to link arms and engage with each other and become visible. And become relevant to address a basic need of that community. And the church showed up.
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Mike Mantel — It began to organize its brothers and sisters and other churches. It began to link with community leaders. It it it it went to training ah sessions to learn about church envisioning. How do you communicate the gospel through simple stories? What sanitation and hygiene are all about and what’s their roots in the gospels and in the bible as a whole? And and so the church became central.
Mike Mantel — And so fast forward in the last ten years of our existence we identify and work through the collective body of Christ in that local community, which is really a ah complex institution. It’s it’s multi-denominational. It’s multi-ethic. There’s multi-languages engaged, but what holds us together is the spirit of Jesus Christ. And then we equip that church to be the salt and light with the most fundamental intervention in human development, which is water. And so living water the physical and the spiritual living water together is what the church is now able to bring as ah as a unit within these low income communities. It’s absolutely amazing. What the church is doing around the world.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s incredible on the ground to see, you know, like you’ll be in a village and um, you know you’ve partnered, there’s been a bunch of work that’s been done there. And you know when you think about it at that level here’s a community that that hasn’t had access to clean drinking water. They they maybe they haven’t had a you know sanitation and hygiene program running there. And the church takes the lead on that. Man, what a powerful witness in that local community. Like man, what they become even more so the center of the community. Maybe kind of talk about it at that level like what what kind of impact does that make ah, you know to that church, to the community, you know, when the church is in the middle of this? And why is that better than maybe I don’t know like a business running it or somebody else alternatives to the church running it.
Mike Mantel — Well for the the community they see their aunts and uncles and cousins, their neighbors at the center of the decision-making where will this water access point be drilled. How is the education training delivered? Who represents the community you know within a broader dialogue with the municipal leaders with other NGOs. The the church just becomes visible. And in many places in the world, our churches often see their role as inviting people to follow Christ but to remain distinct from the world. You know, that we’re all working our way towards heaven, but you know, let’s not roll up our sleeves together and address the issues in the world.
Rich Birch — Okay, sure.
Mike Mantel — But but but what happens when the church embraces that water produces health, healthy kids are in school, educated kids can begin to develop their economies. When the church provides those resources, that encouragement, people become attracted to the church. And so it’s it’s the action and love of Jesus Christ that helps that church grow.
Mike Mantel — So a church I was on maybe the outskirts of a social community now moves to the center of that social security.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mike Mantel — And by meeting the most basic needs in that community then the church becomes attractive. And relationships can develop, conversations can be had, and that’s where life comes and that that church begins to grow.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that That’s so good. And you know to see that on the ground. It’s just it’s amazing. It’s amazing to see that ah roll out. Now when you’re thinking about there’s this idea of churches partnering together in a region, you know, in a community. Can you talk to me about what that looks like, you know, in the countries that you’re working in, and I’d love to talk about it on a state side as well. But let’s start with, you know, in the countries that you’re working in. How how are they working together? What is that… I kind of understand that at one level like in a a particular community. But what does that look like across say a region?
Mike Mantel — So we start with a country definition. So we work in the 18 countries you mentioned in latin America, the Caribbean, in Africa, and in South Asia. Within that country we identify something we called a WASH program area. And WASH is an acronym—Water Access Sanitation Hygiene—a WASH program area, which is about 50- to 100,000 people 50 to 100 kilometers across. It’s it’s the lowest income, most needy environments. And we commit to stay in that footprint for 5 to 7 years.
Mike Mantel — We go in and we do a baseline analysis. Who’s in this footprint? How many churches? How are they engaging? What’s the water access? How healthy are people? What are their hygiene and sanitation practices? And then we systematically organize and invest in that footprint for 5 to 7 years so that everyone has water, all practices around sanitation and hygiene have been transformed, kids are healthy.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mike Mantel — And then the church begins to ah be more visible and engaged. So it’s really how is the church perceived in its community. So then what does that look like is we start now with ah what we call the Genius of One conference. And that’s usually coordinated by a national association of, let’s say evangelicals in Zimbabwe, with the great talent from ah The Crossing Church in St Louis. Actually we’ve had 25 of these Genius of One conferences…
Rich Birch — Ok.
Mike Mantel — …where ah Greg and his team ah, engage with our team and the evangelical networks. And we put on a two and a half day conference. And we invite all the churches at the local level, the district level, and the national level and usually we get about 200 to maybe a thousand churches that come together.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mike Mantel — And it’s and it’s a powerful invitation to link arms across the lines that divide us – our our racial lines, our economic lines, our urban/rural lines, our tribal lines, denominational lines. And let’s begin to think about um the prayer that Jesus made right before his arrest and crucifixion that we might be one…
Rich Birch — Yeah, unified. Love it.
Mike Mantel — …so that the so that Jesus becomes visible. And so there’s ah Greg and his team and and local moderators do this powerful ah presentation on the unity of the body of Christ.Nobody has to give up their tribal distinctions, or their denominational traditions, but they can begin to see that the crisis calling us to be unified.
Mike Mantel — Secondly we talk about reconciliation and forgiveness or really forgiveness and reconciliation. We talk about the poison of gossip and there’s there’s a number of fantastic ah sessions where pastors, who many don’t know each other…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — …many don’t trust each other, begin to talk about the things that are most important to them from a scriptural basis. Every time, you know across 14 countries I think we’ve been in front of maybe 3700 pastors, every time the Spirit of the Lord moves, people are repenting across the aisles and they begin to get a vision for what they might do together. Because one thing we learned is that churches of different traditions and perspectives have a difficult time being together unless they’re working together.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Mike Mantel — And if they’re working together in a community that desperately needs, in our case, water, that’s that’s a place in which they can intersect.
Rich Birch — Because they can agree on that. Hey, this is an issue we all know in our community, in this particular WASH area, using your definition. Hey, this is, man, if we could get this to people in our communities, the whole community’d be better.
Mike Mantel — That’s exactly it. So no, nobody needs to change their perspectives. They just say as followers of Jesus Christ let’s work together. And and so once ah, an agreement is made, Yeah, let’s consider this. And then we invite pastors to an envisioning workshop. What might that look like from a water/sanitation/hygiene perspective? And does that resonate with you? And does it resonate with you as a collective around this table? And if so, let’s organize. Let’s create some…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — …ah additional training sessions. Let’s go a little bit deeper in how your church might engage with others in training sanitation and hygiene, or sharing the gospel through oral discipling means, bible story and or or what it might look like to continue to maintain this water point? Because once you drill a water point, but for the ownership within that community, a supply chain to that community, local repair possibilities linked to that community, and ongoing resources to so to support that project. Unless there’s an enabling environment that water project will not continue.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — When the water project continues, there’s a platform for the church to continue to engage across our lines that divide us and become visible within the communities. The result is the church grows.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. Yeah, I love this. So friends, if you don’t know water is kind of the foundational developmental, you know, step. Like you can’t, it’s the thing if a community doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, it’s very difficult, if I understand correctly, it’s very difficult to move on to anything else. Education, you know, whatever other things you you might be interested in. So that’s why it’s so and critically critically important. I love this focus of, you know, sustainability. I love even the history, you kind of hinted to this, like when LWI started, it was… at least this is my impression of the stories I’ve heard of the early days. It was like, you know, a bunch of entrepreneurial type guys from Texas, hey let’s let’s buy a rig and go somewhere you know punch a bunch of holes in the earth. But but there’s if there’s nothing, the only thing worse than not having access to drink clean drinking water in a community is having access to clean drinking water and then having it go away. You know that it was we had it for a season, but we weren’t able to sustain it.
Rich Birch — And I love your focus on long-term, the like, hey we’re going to try to do this over, you know, many years, but then we’re going to back out and ultimately, you know, the communities are going to have to take care of it. Do you have an example of one of the WASH programs that has kind of gone through its entire cycle. That you know, you’ve been able to step out of that you could kind of talk us through what that looks like?
Mike Mantel — Absolutely, and and you really understand this process, Rich. And it’s it’s true that the intervention starts long before…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Mantel — …the water well is drilled, or the pipes are are connected to a spring, long before. In building ownership, in organizing teams, in envisioning what the community might do together, long before. And then long after. You know, unless we’re committed to space and partnering with the institution that remains, the church, it’s impossible…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — …to produce health long term…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Mantel — …because healthy water allows kids to be healthy, to stay in school and develop their economies. So unless that happens um the water well will break in the first nine months, there’ll be a major intervention that’s required in the first two years.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mike Mantel — And if if people don’t have access to those resources, human resources, you’re right – they’ll lose their water source.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mike Mantel — Secondly, is if they only have one clean water source—let’s say at school—but they don’t have one at home or at the hospital, health doesn’t accrue. You you need to have water across that community…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — …safe water across that community. And if someone has clean water and they don’t wash their hands, or segment human waste, it… health still doesn’t accrue.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — But to get to your question, we’ve now engaged in about 18 of these WASH program areas. It was a flyer ten years ago. We said, how do we sustain this work and how do we engage with the church and how do we really see results? And we we thought about this WASH program area and and a significant supporter a Christian family said we’ll back you on this. Let’s see if it works.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Mike Mantel — And so we we did our first one in Uganda – I guess it’s been about twelve years ago. We did a second one in another location in Uganda and then we did a new set in Zambia .and then we crossed the pond back to Nicaragua and now we’re about 65% of all of our work is in a WASH program area.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — And so there’s a there’s a half a dozen that have been completed where we we we go in and that baseline study might say, you know, there’s a 36% access to safe water maybe 20% of the people are using appropriate sanitation and hygiene. The church is really not engaged physically, but it’s somewhat engaged spiritually, to 5 to 7 years later, 100% access to safe water
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Mike Mantel — …or let’s just say 85 to 95% access to safe water.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yes, yes.
Mike Mantel — You know, nearly 100% hygiene practices transformed. And the church is perceived as being an active player in the health and vitality of that community, and is growing. And so ah, there are many examples. It’s a big investment…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s an incredible.
Mike Mantel — …big investment.
Rich Birch — Yes, right. And that’s why you have a job; that’s job security for you. You know trying to helping, you know, motivate that. You know, when we first got when I first got um, connected with Living Water, it was when I was at Liquid Church in New Jersey fantastic church – love, love Liquid. I’m not there anymore, but just you know love their mission. And you know I saw it from my side as a as a pastor in a local church, you know, state side where this is a very understandable problem. Like there is not um, you can explain it. It’s clear. It’s it’s not um, and it’s not really debatable like it’s a very open thing to talk about as a church. Like you know people aren’t going to disagree with hey we want to help people on the other side of the world, or you know on our side of the world, get access to clean drinking water. And I saw time and again I saw our people get engaged. You know they were like wow. They just got fired up. I know that continues to be the case you know at ah at Liquid. But let’s talk about that you know on the the state side. How how do you engage with churches? You mentioned ah Greg you know, are there what does that look like? How how are churches kind of saying yeah we want to be a part of this? What’s that look like ah, here?
Mike Mantel — Rich, again, there’s there’s there’s an evolution. When we started we asked churches and members of churches to help fund a water well and bring life in the name of Jesus to a thirsty community. It was ah it was a funding relationship. Over the years what became clearer and clearer is that by engaging in important global issues that the the donor becomes an advocate. The advocate becomes a disciple in what our our mind began to shift a little bit from helping Living Water fund a project to introducing churches in the United States to what churches around the world are accomplishing through WASH, and join what God is doing globally. So it it kind of shifted from help Living Water with some money so that we might change the world, to the church is changing the world. Help.…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — Let’s work together to introduce the body to the body.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s beautiful.
Mike Mantel — And so so that’s what we’re doing. So like in these WASH program areas. We’re organizing at the at the community level, aligning strategy with church denominational bodies at the district and national level. And then we’re trying to introduce the church in the United States to what that church is doing, and we’re we’re doing that through ah 3 pillars over the course of 3 years.
Mike Mantel — So we’re saying all right, my dear friends at Liquid or Crossing or Grace Presbyterian Church, your church body is involved in building disciples at home and pursuing the great commission at home and abroad. Let’s join in what God is doing, and let’s do so by growing in our knowledge, expanding our experience, and co-investing for impact.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — Going back to your first point, growing a knowledge. Yeah I I used to work with a colleague, Bob, at World Vision. He said if people knew better, they’d do better. The the fact the fact is few people know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — …that 771 million people are drinking out of puddles, and that they’ll never get healthy. And that 2 billion people don’t have an ongoing source to safe water. People just don’t know. And they don’t know about the multiplier effect that if if if people had safe water consistently and sustainably that they’d get healthy. They would. Their kids would have a chance to learn and develop their communities. We call that the multiplier effect. People don’t know that. And when the church is at the center of that intervention, the church is able to evangelize and disciple in ways that they’d never imagine possible. People don’t know. So what we want to do is is grow in our knowledge together through ah introductions and resources on the water crisis. The solvability of the water crisis the interplay of water and sanitation and the role of the church. Let’s grow in knowledge.
Mike Mantel — And then the second is expand our experience together. Everybody I know that’s an activist in the world has crossed some dividing line. A geographical dividing line – we call that a mission trip. A ah racial dividing line, an economic dividing line, ah some philosophical dividing line – because when we move outside of our comfort zone somehow we’re more open to God’s whispers.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Mike Mantel — We’re more open to reflection. You know we’re going to go back into the buzz of every day, but when when we’re on the other side of that line, we’re a little bit more open. And so all activists, all tremendous leaders that I’ve met have had that experience – many of which are ah going. Some of it is organizing. So expanding our experience. We we do water walks together. We do, you know, it’s ah marathons and mountain climbing together. We do vacation bible school together. We take trips together. And we do take trips to ah, implement a project, to drill a water well, to put in a pipe system, to teach sanitation and hygiene. But it’s really a part of the discipling experience for the goer.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Mantel — It’s a opening up of the heart of the mind of the goer, and then you can’t shake it. I mean the newspaper comes alive.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mike Mantel — You’re you’re talking about it with your spouse. You’re praying about, you know, what you’ve learned. And sooner or later, sooner or later you’re going to move more deeply into that discipleship journey. But but it’s because of experience.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Mike Mantel — The third pillar’s co-investing. Mind, space, time, and money. When we start investing around ministries that are making a difference, that change both the physical and spiritual reality of of people, the more we invest, the more we learn, the more we want to experience, the more we learn and experience, the more we want to invest.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Mike Mantel — We tell our friends. Let’s let’s get engaged. And and so we we see those 3 pillars as a way for churches in the United States that perhaps structure a component of their discipleship program their missions program. And and don’t be in a hurry. You know, let’s just learn together. Let’s experience it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah – that’s great. I love it.
Mike Mantel — And and I’m beginning to see what what’s been fun these last nine months is, you know, talking to pastors—lead pastors, executive pastors—and they say well how do we how do we start? I said well if you got a missions program, where’s your map. Let’s look at the map. And then let’s take Living Water’s map and put it right over the top, and maybe there’s a geographical intersection.
Rich Birch — Yeah, overlap. Yep.
Mike Mantel — When there’s an overlap we can align resources. And then let’s grow in knowledge, let’s expand our experience, let’s co-invest. And and a part of that is let’s go.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Mantel — You know, coming out of Covid, everybody was frozen, right? Lot of people change your jobs. There’s a lot of new people. A new new position. But we’re all frozen.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Mantel — And we want to get back on mission. We want to get back engaged with people. We want to, you know, be in the same room. We want to adventure. We want to travel. And but it’s hard to get over that lump or that hump. So I’m just saying, let’s just go.
Rich Birch — Right. Nice. Love it. Love it.
Mike Mantel — Let’s just go.
Rich Birch — So good. Well and I yeah I’ve had a privilege of being on a number of LWI trips over the years in a number of countries. And one of the things I appreciate about the on the ground experience, and it’s been years since I’ve been on one, but you know I I know there are folks, and I have been one of those in the past, that are like I would say skeptical of the kind of mission trip experience. Let’s take 12 Americans and go somewhere. Like are we really making a difference? Like what’s that actually look like? Um but the thing I love about an LWI experience is you’re getting a chance to see right up close a you know a WASH program in action. You’re getting a chance to see ah a ah, well being drilled, and you’re you know you’re a part of that experience. Um, and at the end of that you’re changed because you’ve been up close. You’ve seen these leaders. You’ve seen the church doing its good. You’ve kicked a football or soccer ball around with kids. Um. And your heart has been changed.
Rich Birch — One of the trips I was on, we um, you know, our our well was not going well. It was a tough week and it was not happening, and ironically that that’s the one that bubbles to the top of my mind. And, you know we made a decision as a group. It was like well we could you know a lot of these trips are always like the fun day we go and do something you know, kind of enjoy the culture, I think cultural day or whatever. And so we made the decision hey we’re not going to do that. We’re going to stay here and you know the the dynamic shifted from us doing a lot of work, to like the experts, the people that actually know what they’re doing. But man we were praying and we were you know and to see that actually to see us actually complete that project was amazing. It was incredible. Transformational. Um and man I’d love more people to have that kind of experience. That’s a hard thing to um, you know to to shake. It it just gets inside of you.
Rich Birch — The other thing I love from ah a pastor’s point of view, from a leader’s point of view is this is an exciting issue to be a part of because we’re seeing progress, like there is actual progress happening on, you know, this issue. When we first first started talking about this we used to always say 1.1 billion people don’t have access. Now, it’s, like you said, 771 million. That’s that’s incredible to see. Um which there are lots of issues that don’t have that. Now I know the next you know the next 250 million are going to be harder. And the 250 million after that and the 250 million after that are going to be even harder. But but, man, what ah what an exciting time for churches to get involved.
Rich Birch — When you think about… now you wrote a book. Actually I want to talk about this because I think a practical way on that first kind of getting exposure to this could be church leaders to pick up this. It’s called Thirsting for Living Water: Finding Adventure and Purpose in God’s Redemptive Story. Ah talk me through why you wrote this book. There’s a lot of work. You’ve got lots of other things to do. Ah, you’re busy person. Why did you, you know, pull this this resource together for church leaders?
Mike Mantel — Well you and all of those that write stuff know that it is a heavy lift, and why I initially started thinking about writing it, to how I endured writing it, to the impact that it’s having has shifted a little bit. So initially, yeah, four years, ago five years ago, when I started thinking about the church, I said the church in the United States really needs to see how active and how life-giving the church is. You know the church was getting a lot of bad press. You know the church is shrinking. You know it’s no longer relevant to young people. Um, it’s boring. Um I don’t really need to go. Yeah and then it’s kind of like I can watch online at my leisure. You know like and I was thinking, you know, that’s not been my experience.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.
Mike Mantel — So what I wanted to do was just say, hey that’s not not been my experience. Where I’ve seen churches alive and active is when…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — …they are identifying what God is doing and they’re participating in that. So that’s where I started, like let’s ah, let’s talk about what’s right with the church. So then I’m in I’m in the game, right? So then I’m writing, I’m thinking you know we’re collecting stories, we’re talking as a team. And and then ah it was a very difficult period of time, and that became the chassis of telling this story of the church, is my my father died, my wife got cancer, Hurricane Harvey wiped out our town, we had economic challenges. And and and so then I started enduring ah this writing process in the middle of what really became a dark night of my soul.
Rich Birch — Wow.
When I was younger I was absolutely convinced thatGod was the master strategist inviting us into his work. And I experienced 30 years of miracles, mind-blowing God shows up and doing great stuff. In my dark night which is really you know over a few years of the writing process, I began to doubt that.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Mike Mantel — You know, is God the master strategist?
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Mike Mantel — Is he showing up? Can I um, confidently move forward and lead an organization when things just don’t feel good, and I’m not really hearing the Lord as clearly, and the results aren’t there? So then it it became well a discovery of the stories in my life, and other people’s life that sustained me through that dark night. And and it shifted the book shifted to being a series of 12 reflections recalling God’s faithfulness. And when when things got really really hard and in you know the hard lift and the emotional lift um in my personal prayer time what sustained me was just what I felt was a divine whisper: tell people of my faithfulness.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Mike Mantel — Tell stories of my faithfulness. Because you know how often does God tell us through scriptures, remember. Remember the Savior of your youth. Remember the Lord that took you out of Egypt. Remember. And as I remember the stories while constructing this book, I began to see glimmers of hope, and I began to reengage emotionally, and mentally, spiritually with the Lord. And I developed a rock solid certainty that God is in fact, the master strategist calling us to join him in what he is doing as he redeems and reconciles the world. And it’s a great adventure.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Mike Mantel — You can find purpose and adventure.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — And so that’s where it concluded where, along the way, we talk about strategy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Mantel — Along the way we talk about ah leadership. Along the way we talk about what God is doing through his church in Latin America, in Africa, in South Asia, in the United States. And my hope is that when people pick up the book and read it that ah they will be encouraged And they will have practical tools to move through their dark night, develop their strategy, and determine their approach to missions. And and so the book itself became a ministry. So it’s all proceeds, you know, go to the work of Living Water organizing churches…
Rich Birch — Oh love it. Yeah. Love it.
Mike Mantel — …and it’s found some it’s found some connection to pastors.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well yeah, this to me I think would be a great ah well two things, friends, if you’re listening in and you’ve made it this far in, you really should consider connecting with Living Water International. Like they’re they’re incredible people. They’re doing great work. Ah, Mike and his team, every time I interact with a different person at LWI I’m always like these are amazing people, like and they you know love the Lord, and they’re they’re smart and they’re trying to make a difference, and they’re being good stewards, are thinking long-term – all that. So yeah I would strongly endorse, you should talk with them.
Rich Birch — You know a practical next step could be, hey this why don’t you buy 10 of these books and read them as your as your staff team. Maybe it’s like ah one of those book study things you do ah you know in this this next year. And it may not be that hey you and your conclusion is well therefore we’re going to, like you say give a piece of our kind of missions expression to that. But maybe it inspires you in some other way, which is wonderful. That’s that’s great. I know Mike’s a big enough guy doesn’t you know he really is concerned about the big “C” church. And so ah that I think would be a great next step for you.
Rich Birch — Well just kind of as we’re coming to land as we’re landing the plane, um anything else, you’d like to say, kind of final thoughts for folks as their listening in?
Mike Mantel — Well the the big thought I have is that the church of Jesus Christ can end the water crisis…
Rich Birch — Amen.
Mike Mantel — …as it pursues the great commission.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — That they’re not separate. They’re integrated. They’re integral. They’re they’re the two sides of one coin. That as the church comes together in a unified expression of love and action, a doubting world will see that unity, will see that love, will see that action, and millions will come to follow Jesus. And, you know, when we talk about the multiplier impact of water, sanitation, hygiene with them through the church I see a multiple multiplier impact of working together. And solving a solvable problem that is the most fundamental challenge facing the world today, and in the future.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Mantel — And so as we link arms, solving the water crisis we will pursue the great commission. And that’s worth doing. That’s a life worth spent. And so I just encourage people to consider that. And as Rich said, I am happy if you pursue your mission through micro-enterprise, through food, through justice, through um trafficking it, as long as you’re crossing a line that divides us and God is inviting you into doing that. But if water seems to be the thing that God is whispering in your ears, let’s just link arms together. Let’s do it together because I am convinced that we can solve this problem as we pursue the great commission.
Rich Birch — So good. Mike Mantel everybody. So good. Mike, where do we want to send people online to connect with you or to connect with Living Water International? Where do we want to make sure they they they head to?
Mike Mantel — Water.cc
Rich Birch — Easy.
Mike Mantel — Water.cc – come online, all of our resources are there. They’re open-handed, public-sourced, whoever wants to utilize them are free to utilize them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it.
Mike Mantel — Reach out to us on our church page. We’d ah, be delighted to follow up with you to do something custom together to link arms, to grow in knowledge, expand our experience, invest for impact. If you know you can buy this book on Amazon.com; if you don’t have any money just email me and I’ll send you one.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s great.
Mike Mantel — Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a ministry.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes, love it. Yeah I was going to ask you that. We obviously can get the book at Amazon, you know, anywhere else we want to send people online? I love that – email find is you’re going to have to dig around on the on the website find but—you can find it—find his email address and and reach out, but anywhere else we want to send them to pick up copies of the book?
Mike Mantel — You know, but you could always go to thirstingforlivingwater.com…
Rich Birch — Okay, great.
Mike Mantel — …and you know or michaeljmantel.com – either one of those. That’ll give you all kinds of resources um, all kinds of information as it relates to this book. But the easiest thing that is just water.cc and you can find me. And like I’m serious if if you don’t have any money you want to read this book if God’s putting up on your heart I’d be delighted to send it to you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Well thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate you being here today. You’ve just been just a blessing to us. I really appreciate you spending time. Thanks so much.
Mike Mantel — Rich, thanks for everything you do. You are a good man.
Nurturing the Spirit of Advent with Families at Your Church: Chris Pappalardo & Clayton Greene on the GoodKind Approach
Jul 27, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Chris Pappalardo and Clayton Greene from The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina. Chris is Editor on the Creative Arts team and Clayton is the Summit Collaborative Director.
Have you started planning for Christmas yet at your church? Are you looking for a way to help your congregation embrace the true meaning of the holiday amidst the hustle and bustle of the season? As co-founders of GoodKind, Chris and Clayton share how Advent Blocks, their most popular tool, is a unique and tangible way to help kids and adults anticipate Jesus during the holiday season. Listen to the episode learn how you can use it at your church this Christmas.
Engage and connect. // The challenge during the holiday season isn’t that families have no context for what the Christmas story is, or that they haven’t spent time reading those Bible passages. Rather it’s that in December it can get lost with everything else going on. When Clayton’s daughter expressed that Christmas felt like it was more about presents than Jesus, Clayton reached out to Chris to create something tangible that would build the anticipation for Christ’s arrival. Advent Blocks provide a visual and interactive experience that keeps the focus on Jesus throughout the season. They capture kids’ attention and make them excited about turning the blocks each day.
Walking through the whole bible. // Rather than starting with Mary being visited by the angel as most Advent calendars do, Chris and Clayton decided to use the blocks to tell the story of God’s presence throughout the entire bible, with the finish line being Christmas. In the stories, the participants see how sin drives God away and are constantly asking the question, will God ever come back to stay? This refrain helps build the anticipation of Jesus ultimately coming to bring the help and hope we need for the problems we’ve encountered since Adam and Eve.
Simple and fun. // The impact of Advent Blocks on families and their Christmas celebrations has been incredible. Families have embraced Advent Blocks as a meaningful tradition, with children eagerly participating. Chris and Clayton have made it simple to start so adults can just pick up the guide and begin. The visual elements of Advent Blocks, such as turning the blocks each day and the star representing God and Jesus coming to earth, add to the excitement and anticipation. The repetition of refrains and playful language in the stories keeps everyone engaged, from young children to older family members.
Participate together as a church. // Churches can also benefit from using Advent Blocks as a resource for their congregation. The Local Church Program on the GoodKind website allows churches to purchase Advent Blocks in bulk and give them away or sell them at a discount to their people. It’s a way to do discipleship together as a church community. Additional resources, like a guide targeted to adults apart from the blocks and sermon series starter kit, are also available to enhance the community experience and create momentum in your church.
Sermon series starter kit. // Every year Chris writes a sermon series starter kit that coincides with the story and blocks featured on the Sundays of Advent. The original design files for the blocks are also included so that a church’s design team can incorporate them into the teaching and prep for the series. Pastors can then use this kit to bring the whole church into alignment during the Christmas season.
To find out more about the Advent Blocks Local Church Program and get 50% off a sample set, visit GoodKind’s website.
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Rich Birch — Hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation you know most weeks we bring you one leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today we’ve got two! This is amazing! We’ve got Chris Pappalardo and Clayton Greene. They both serve at Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina. If you do not know this church, I do not know where you have been. Chris is the Editor on the Creative Arts team; Clayton is the Summit Collaborative Director. Together Chris and Clayton started GoodKind with the goal of helping people develop the good kind of habits and holiday celebrations.
Rich Birch — They’re best known for a tool that we’re going to get a chance to talk about today, Advent Blocks. It’s a tangible meaningful way to help kids and parents anticipate Jesus ah, not just presents but Christmas and this is important at this time of year because I know many of us are starting to have that Christmas thing bubbling in the back of our mind, and we’re thinking about gosh, What are we doing? What are we doing to get ready for that? And I want to talk about how, you know, they’ve seen this help in so many churches. So welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, guys.
Clayton Greene — Thank you for having us, Rich. We’re we’re really excited to be here. And that introduction, man, you you you nailed it – that that’s us to a T.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Clayton, is there anything there that I should fill into my picture, like what did we miss about, you know, the the introduction?
Clayton Greene — We’ll get into this – Chris and I are actually friends too. We’re co-workers. We’re coworkers at you know at our day job. We were cofounders at our, GoodKind, I guess you know we call it side gig in the in the business but um, and also we’re friends – we we like each other too.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Clayton Greene — So that’s that’s always fun when you’re working with people that you like.
Rich Birch — So first question for you, Chris. Is Clayton just overstepping there? Is it really that you’re friends with…
Chris Pappalardo — Wow.
Rich Birch — …that he’s friends with you but you’re not really friends with him? Just kidding.
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, I love that you you dove right into this. and you’re just just you’re trying to get a yeah trying to get a…
Rich Birch — Hard hitting. It’s hard hitting ah journalism here.
Chris Pappalardo — …DTR for us, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, um, like.
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, Clayton, Clayton is a good friend. I, you know, I don’t rank them I, like in my mind I want to rank them and I recognize this is not a healthy thing. But if I were to rank them…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chris Pappalardo — …he’d be near the top. So.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Clayton Greene — But, Rich, it’s a fair question. Because we actually on our podcast., we do something called holi-yay or holi-nay.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Clayton Greene — And it’s where we go through these random holidays and we decide if they’re good or not.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Clayton Greene — There is a holiday, I believe it’s in June?
Chris Pappalardo — It’s in June, yeah.
Clayton Greene — …every year where it’s best best friends day.
Rich Birch — Oh.
Clayton Greene — And last year it’s the second time we’ve talked about it on our podcast and it’s such an interesting day right? because do you only get one, can you have multiple. And so Chris is one of my best friends. I’m like ah I’m like an elementary school age girl in terms of I have lots of best friends, and Chris is one of them.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Clayton,I’d love to hear about so I had heard about this this tool, this Advent Blocks tool. And it captured my imagination, I think man, there’s something here. There’s what what a cool idea. Ah talk to me kind of a high level. What is Advent Blocks? What is this?
Clayton Greene — Yeah, Advent Blocks is a Christmas practice that helps families engage with their kids and everybody in the home all throughout the Advent season. Um, you know, we we made it because there’s this in building anticipation, kind of all throughout the fall, especially all throughout December. And in December inevitably it ends up being about all those presents under the tree, right?
Rich Birch — So true.
Clayton Greene — So there’s this building in anticipation. There’s music. There’s lights. There’s everything and we wanted to make something that would rival like that anticipation. And Advent Blocks, it ended up. ah, being just that for us.
Clayton Greene — In fact, it was actually born out of it was an accident so to speak. Um, many many years ago. I forget what year it was at this point so I won’t even try. But ah my daughter Kara who was 5 at the time said to me on December 23rd I think, 22nd maybe, she said, Daddy, Mommy and Daddy. You say that Christmas is all about Jesus, but it feels like Christmas is all about presents, right?
Rich Birch — Ooh ouch.
Clayton Greene — And what a knife in the back. So…
Rich Birch — Ouch!
Clayton Greene — And we have no time to recover.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Clayton Greene — We have zero time to recover that year. So fast forward a year. It’s in November and I’m kind of scouring the internet trying to find something that would be tangible in the middle of the home that would actually drive us towards Christmas Day to be thinking about Jesus and not just the presents. I’m not taking the presents away, but wanted a drive towards that. And I I just couldn’t find anything that quite tangibly and beautifully kind of like kind of built anticipation in the same way.
Clayton Greene — So I kind of started drawing some blocks and how they might move. I like working with wood. I showed my wife three options. She pointed at the 1 in the middle and said that one. And it’s 95% of what she pointed at that day. That same day I texted Chris and said, hey Chris…
Rich Birch — Let’s do it.
Clayton Greene — …like I want to I want to do a ah creative writing project. Let’s do an Advent thing that we do with our families, and immediately Chris said yes.
Rich Birch — Chris, I’d love to hear more. So the thing to be honest when I looked into this I the thing I immediately thought of was Elf on the Shelf. And you know Elf on the Shelf, what a ah like it’s amazing because that kind of came from out of nowhere. I remember when that first showed up I was like the way they presented that product was like it had been around forever. And it did. It became like this big kind of phenomenal thing, but it it focuses on the same thing, which is like, hey, presents, presents, presents.
Rich Birch — I loved how this your tool here really drives back to the story. It ultimately drives people back that drives families back to scripture. Chris, can you talk me through how do you do that? How was that function look like? How how is this going to help families actually wrestle with the story of Jesus coming?
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, so the challenge here with with Advent, at least in our experience is not that families have no context for what the Christmas story is, and have spent no time like going to those passages and trying to read them. Like we know the story pretty well. Like Clayton was saying, the challenge is in December it’s just a blitz of everything else. And so we need something that the kids really wanted to do.
Chris Pappalardo — That the blocks the mechanism of the blocks makes it so that as a centerpiece in the home, it’s decorative, it’s playful. The kids are looking at it are like hey we got to turn the block, we got to do number 9. And there’s that accountability that’s that’s drawn in from the kids, which is just just beautiful. But I loved the challenge. When Clayton reached out to me and he said, hey want to do an Advent thing? I was like I’m in. I don’t I don’t even know the full idea. But Christmas is my favorite holiday. Let’s do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Pappalardo — And so we took the the idea of saying like well if we’re going to do this over all of December let’s tell the story of God’s presence throughout all of the bible and have like that finish line be Christmas. Because that’ll help build the anticipation to say like, hey, this isn’t just a few stories about Mary and the Shepherds, which are wonderful. But it’s like you know there’s a problem in the very beginning with Adam and Eve is that they sinned and they had to leave, and God seemed far away. That was actually a problem with Noah and Moses and David and Hagar, and and so you see this problem crop up again and again, you’re like wow is God ever going to come back? Will God ever come back to stay? And that refrain which we have in the writing ends up driving a lot of the anticipation. So by the time they get to Christmas they’re like, this is it! This is! It’s exactly the excitement they should have like yeah what God came to earth? And like yes, this is this is what we’ve been wanting the whole time.
Rich Birch — Talk me through, Chris, like the like an individual day, like at the level of I’m a family doing that. So I I get the idea so like, hey, we’re talking about Noah today.
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is ah does the tool provide, here’s like a scripture reading, here’s some thoughts on that. What how do we what’s that actually look like?
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, with everything we do, we try to make it as simple as possible so that when you get our stuff it’s just like like I’ve got enough things that I may be thinking about, please put everything in my hands so that I just sit with my kids and it’s all ready. I just open up and start.
Chris Pappalardo — So we’ve got the blocks that are lined up 1 to 25 and there’s an accompanying book that goes with it with 25 stories. So I’ve taken 25 of these stories from the bible and just retold them, condensed them down, put it in kid language like elementary school age language. It’s got the reference at the top of each day. So if you would open up and, you know, one of the ones in the teens you would see is the story of ah ah, maybe Saul, right? And that one’s called a very tall, very strong, very brave king: the story of Saul. And underneath it’s got the passage. So if you want to you can go later and you can read the whole thing with your kids. When you read it, it takes about ah, 3 or 4 minutes to read through. And it’s playful and fun and the kids are loving it. And at the end the end of each day it has this line where, you know like I said, God couldn’t remain, he seemed far away. So Saul and God’s people began to hope and to pray God will you come to earth to stay. That same little couplet or the triplet, I guess, at the end of each day where you’re getting you’re getting a digest of the story. You’re seeing, Okay, this isn’t just a story this guy made up. I can go read the original. And then the kids kids kind of have a handy way of of grasping what that is.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Clayton, I’m sure um, you know, this has been rolled out for, you know, a while it’s you’ve had a couple Christmases through here. Do you have any stories of maybe a family or 2 that you know how this has become a part of their Christmas celebration kind of what that’s looked like? Or maybe even in your own family, what’s that look like?
Clayton Greene — Yeah I mean there’s there are tons and tons of stories. It’s it’s one of the things that kind of keeps us us going in it all, I will say the most consistent story um is probably similar to one that I had with my my friend who’s also on staff with us at The Summit, who we were at an event ah, in December, you know, out standing on the sidewalk, waving to people um the way Danny Franks told us to. I think Danny’s been on your podcast here before…
Rich Birch — Yes, love Danny. Love it.
Clayton Greene — Um so they’re waving at people and doing what we’re supposed to do and he says, Man, when I left the house tonight, my kids mean they were just begging me, don’t leave. We have to do the blocks; we have to do the blocks.
Clayton Greene — Or or what time are you going to be home because we have to make sure that we do the block tonight? It’s crazy. You know, ah a lot of this again was accident. Um, it’s like we’ve made the kids into little accountability devices.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Clayton Greene — If you give them something fun and they know I can do the fun thing, and my my grownups will do it with me. Like they they will beg to do it over and over and over again. So I think the most consistent thing that we hear from people is that it was, you know, I’ve started an advent guide before but I’ve never finished one. And I finished this one, right?
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, totally.
Clayton Greene — It didn’t drop off in the middle, it built it was building all the way through. Chris does this really neat thing on day seventeen where that refrain that he referred to changes a little bit. And so it just continues to build more and more and more through the new testament stories. And so it’s it’s the fact that they started and they continued, they started and they finished. As we kind of reverse engineered that, I think one of the things that um helps with that is, like Chris said the numbers, you know, you’re turning it every day. You you take the block, you turn in the number it shows an image that actually matches an image that is in the book, and you continue to turn those blocks every day and there’s a star that sits on top of the block of that day.
Clayton Greene — And then there’s a globe on the other end on the top of the 25. So this star is literally marching across the blocks…
Rich Birch — So cool. Yeah.
Clayton Greene — …day after day after day. And there’s this approximation of the star representing God and Jesus coming to earth to stay. And so there’s that, we built a song into it. Ad so our family that first year it really kind of blew me away how much on Christmas day, the the, and Christmas eve, the girls were just they were talking about the presents; that doesn’t change, right? It is not gonna change. But they also very much wanted to sing the song. They very much wanted to read the story. They very much were aware of and anticipating that part of the celebration. And not only the present part of the the celebration. It’s and and that story just happens time and time and again.
Chris Pappalardo — I think my favorite part…
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. You know, Chris, what are…
Chris Pappalardo — I stepped on your toes, Rich, now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, jump in, jump in. Yeah, no go go jump in. It’s good.
Chris Pappalardo — My my favorite part is I think we accomplished something we set out to do which is to say like, how do we let people know what Christmas is all about? I’ve had not I have had kids and grownups reach out to say, Ah I I never realized that the theme ofGod’s presence and God coming to earth was all throughout the bible, or that was the kind of a key problem. Or I’ve never had somebody summarize the message of Christmas, hey God’s coming to earth this day so so well, and now my kids repeated it. And I’m like oh that’s that’s beautiful that they’ve got like they own that now and see that in a fresh way.
Rich Birch — Yeah I’d love to stick with you, Chris, around the thing to be honest, if I can tell you kind of my impression is I’m like there seems like there’s a lot going on under the hood here. The product is it’s visually beautiful to look at like it’s a nice looking thing. It’s the kind of thing that you um, you know it would look great on your shelf kind of thing. But then it’s also I have a friend of mine, Tim Lucas, who always says man we got to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. We’ve got to make the main thing the main thing. And and this seems to do that. It’s like driving to the message. Help us unpack that maybe at like ah what are all what kind of behind it as a designer, as a thinker, you know as someone who’s trying to teach some you know spiritual truth in a way through this, what are some of those things that you’re actually doing to try to make it sticky for people?
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, so I’ve mentioned the refrain a few times. And um the thing about kids curriculum I’m learning, anything with children, is this is the way like catechisms are or anything that seems very, very simple ah, is actually very difficult to get just right? You can make things memorable but to distill down a really complicated bible idea, a bunch of stories, in a way that’s simple enough that someone hears it and they say oh yeah, great, easy. It it comes off as easy, but it’s not easy to to create. Um and so to to like we did a lot of lot of workshopping on like, well what is the line? What is the one sentence we want? And I was addicted to school for a long time, and so I went to seminary for a very long time and so I’m trying to pour in all of the insights that I’ve got theologically, but then say like I’ve got to translate this down. Like you said, cookies on the bottom shelf.
Chris Pappalardo — So the refrain is one. There’s another recurring phrase that we use throughout the book. Um, the idea I wanted to capture was the idea of God’s justice and truth. In the end God God reigns. That’s language that’s ah, that’s a little bit too inaccessible for like a 5 year old, right? So I say the the promise is that one day God will come to take all the darkness and make it light, to take all the wrong and make it right. And it’s simple, it rhymes, it’s catchy, but underneath that is…
Rich Birch — There’s a lot there. Yeah.
Chris Pappalardo — …Hey there’s a promise that God’s justice and righteousness will one day make the world whole, which is a beautifully rich thing. So that’s that’s one piece of it. I see Clayton wanting to jump in here. So.
Clayton Greene — Yeah, Chris, well I just wanted to to kind of brag on you a little bit. I mean there there are things our family experiences Chris’s writing secondhand, right? Even though I’m part of the creation. My girls will pray those refrains. It’s not just the one at the end of every day but that one about the the dark things being made light. Our daughters, that’s a part of our family’s language now and it comes from the repetition from these stories. It also does… some my daughter Kara’s favorite thing, and this is not kind of this is cookies on the bottom shelf but it’s like you know, just because it tastes good. There’s this part in the Jonah story where it says he went as far left as he could. And then he went lefter. and and our girls just think that’s hilarious like his little play on words there.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Clayton Greene — Ah in the new in the new testament, one of the things he does in order to build the excitement is anytime an angel appears he uses this this phrasing, um it was too bright to be a person. It was way too loud to be a person. Um, and then I they realized THIS. IS. AN. ANGEL – all caps with periods. And it’s just things like that that just make it so that keep everybody engaged. We’ll tell people all the time, the sweet spot is like two to twelve, three to thirteen, something like that. But if you got somebody in that range and then somebody that’s 16 or 17 in the house or even the parents or you know a college student that’s back home. Those people pay attention to this story as well, and often will tear up at some point through it…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Clayton Greene — …because they see how meaningful it is. It’s it’s simple, but it’s not simplistic. And so there’s there’s a there lot of beautiful things that Chris does with the writing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that strikes me as well that this is one of those times a year um that we can as church leaders encourage our families to have spiritual conversations that does feel like it’s in sync with the culture, like it doesn’t feel like hey this is so out of you know left field. It feels like, you know, you still walk into Walmart and there’s still Christmas music playing. And a lot of that Christmas music is stuff we hear in the church…
Clayton Greene — It is.
Rich Birch — …and it encourages actually families because of the because kids are at the center you know of the consumer side of Christmas. It does kind of there there’s this underlying like, hey it’s good for families to do stuff together at this time of year. Man, if we could leverage that for these good things, that’s that’s incredible. You know, Chris, was that a bit of what was going on as you were thinking, how do we kind of leverage this for you know for what Jesus wants to do in people’s lives?
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, a hundred percent. Um you know, I was deeply influenced with this project by a couple of the story bibles that I’ve…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, so true.
Chris Pappalardo — …you know ah am still reading to my kids. And there’s a number that are fantastic, but I think we all know and love Sally Lloyd Jones Jesus Storybook Bible. And part of the beauty of that resource is in addition to the phenomenal illustrations that the Jago did, but in the writing the beauty of it is kids really love the stories and how they’re written. But when a grownup reads those, they come to see the beauty of the gospel in a way that they haven’t before, and they’re like they’re blown away by it. And so that was it’s it’s ambitious to say that’s what I was aiming for. But that’s the target I feel like we should always be aiming for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, no, absolutely.
Chris Pappalardo — C.S. Lewis once said about kids stuff that if ah if a kid’s book isn’t worth reading by a grownup, then it’s not worth reading for a kid. And so that was part of what we’re trying to bring to this is like look, this can’t just be something…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Chris Pappalardo — …that a 4 year old likes. This has to be something that a 40 year old will say, wow thank you for for showing me that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Chris Pappalardo — Um and I think I think we did it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. You know we have I love that that story. But it was funny you were saying saying that because I was thinking about that as we were talking about this. We we lead, my wife and I lead ah a young married, or a parents with young kids small group. And we’re definitely not that our kids are college age but you know we’re quite a ways out of that. I wish it we were there but we’re not. And we have this one couple in our group who, you know, those people that um, they’ve just come to Jesus in the last couple of years and it’s it’s amazing to watch. And I love like there I you know often say like they’re our target, like as a church that’s who we’re trying to reach. And I love I’m going to get choked up when um, when we’re like opening the bible together as a group, I love the the dad, the man, the husband in this this couple, because like we’ll say oh you want to look at something in John. And I love it because he like goes to the index and finds, Okay John…
Clayton Greene — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s page, you know, 1223 and then he flips to that and and like I just love that. But we gave them for last year at Christmas we gave all the families we gave them that ah Storybook Bible. And it was interesting because all ah a couple months later we were it just came up in discussion somehow. And 100% of the families and they’re really across the kind of spiritual spectrum so people have been walking with Jesus for a long time and then you have a couple like this. They all said man I’m seeing the story of God in a new way because I’m reading this to my kids, right?
Chris Pappalardo — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — And, man what if we could replicate that for our people in our churches that would be amazing. That’d be incredible. Clayton, you know, I’d love to ask you this – so to me as a church leader… First of all I was hoping today’s conversation would kind of open this resource up for people. It could be a great thing for people that are listening to to take a look at it. But, really I was struck that this could be the kind of thing we could do as a church together. Like can’t can’t we, like you to 3 to 13 that’s a huge span, like are there churches that have ever got out and said, hey maybe we should try to offer this to our people or point them towards it? Have you ever done anything like that, Clayton.
Clayton Greene — Yeah, and I was so, absolutely. Um, you know and I feel the same thing. You know, before I was in my current role that you talked about before, I was an executive pastor of a church in Wilmington. And getting everybody to to do something together often creates a lot more momentum and and a positive experience among the whole group. And like we think about that organizationally but it also is something that is like insanely biblical as well, that the group is kind of moving and and is and is doing this together that it can’t be something that is done alone. So we make a resource that certainly is delivered to individuals, but positively what we’ve seen in our experience is a lot of individuals invite other neighbors and family members and friends in order to to do Advent Blocks alongside them. And then it started with our church maybe one or two others the the first year that they’re just like hey we’re just gonna get a whole bunch and kind of deliver them to everyone.
Clayton Greene — And so it’s kind of built on itself every year to the point that now we ah officially and intentionally have something we call the local church program.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Clayton Greene — You know we work in the local church and we believe in the local church, and so um this [inaudible] happens begins in the home, but it’s best than when done with the whole church. And that’s like something we believe in so much that we we do this program. We sell the blocks two churches in bulk for them to either give away or resell at a discount to their people. And we we do it at a price that our business advisors tell us is too low for what we should be doing…
Rich Birch — Sure, oh that’s amazing.
Clayton Greene — But we do that because we do that because we actually believe that this is this is gonna be the best place for these people to be doing it. So you can register for the local church program on the website. There’s a place specifically for local churches. You automatically get that that discount in bulk as long as you buy 12. That’s it. The reason it’s 12, just so everybody knows, is because that’s how many come in a big…
Rich Birch — Because the disciples, right?
Clayton Greene — Yes, because of the disciples is why is why.
Chris Pappalardo — Yes, that’s a hundred percent.
Rich Birch — Or the tribes.
Clayton Greene — Ah, that’s that’s how many come in like a a big box. Um, and so, yeah, we we even made a set that is specifically for them to make it as accessible to families as possible. Um, we there is a song I mentioned before, but we actually made the song into a lyric video…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.
Clayton Greene — …because you know sometimes in kids church to like put it up. And so it’s a lyric video that you can that you can use. You can watch it on Youtube for free with ads or if you’re a size church that you want to have without ads, there’s the opportunity for you to for one of those third parties in order to get it in that way. And we even we we added in something maybe two years ago called He is Here.
Clayton Greene — I mean like Chris just said, adults get a really good benefit from reading The King is Coming which is the name of the book inside the Advent Block set. But we wrote an adult guide, He is Here, that walks alongside the same stories and same theme, but it it can be done with or without the blocks, which is important. Because there are people in the church if this is going to be a big emphasis for the church that don’t have kids in the home, right? Single people, people that have their kids are out of school or the kids are kind of aged out of what this this is. You have grandparents. So there’s just tons and tons of people that if you want to kind of get the whole church into alignment, we also now have this resource for them as well. It’s called He is Here. Chris Chris wrote that. It’s it’s similar reflections with some some moments and some encouragement to prayer and practice. And so it’s it’s something that we put a big emphasis on. Chris every year takes the Sundays that line up with the the stories in The King is Coming and we write a sermon series starter kit…
Rich Birch — Oh wow!
Clayton Greene — …which says, hey here are the sermons that you could do that would align with that very specific day. And and by the way this is Chris this is Chris’s day job. If there’s anything we provide that you want, you want this sermon series starter kit.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Clayton Greene — Because this is what Chris does for J.D.…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Clayton Greene — …he and all the teachers at The Summit is help build the engine with which the research and the ideas and all those things are prepared for then the person who is teaching locally to contextually deliver that in the Spirit to those people. But yeah, so we just we try to just hook churches up like crazy.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. So so if I catch this right, well first of all, that’s incredible. I think that’s amazing. Um I love the idea of like, hey this is going to be our December series, and we’re going to launch this Thanksgiving weekend maybe or something like that. Or somewhere we’re talking about it in November.
Chris Pappalardo — Yep.
Rich Birch — And the blocks are available for so for sale or for free. That’s even better. That’s amazing. Um, you know, pick up this resource and then we’re going to talk about it through ah through Christmas. Um, that’s that’s incredible. Listen, friends, I know I’ve worked with a lot of teaching pastors and I’m just going to say the thing that’s going on in your head. You know, that preaching at Christmas time is tough, friends, because people know the punchline. They know it’s going to be all about Jesus is returning. What if… or Jesus is coming. What if this year you did something totally different and and plugged this into your into your system into your approach? I think, man, that could be a real win ah you know for your people.
Rich Birch — Ah you know, Chris, talked to me about churches that have leverage this as a kind of a total teaching thing. Do you have any kind of sense of you know the the experience as at a church level kind of what difference that’s made for for them if they’ve done the kind of whole series thing in you know at their church?
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, I mean the executive pastors, teaching pastors, if you’re in leadership you you know how valuable alignment is. Like you can preach the paint off the walls for like 4, 8, 12 doesn’t matter how many weeks, and if it’s just the sermon going in one direction and everything else in the church is going in other directions, you just wait six months and if you want to take the wind out of your sails ask people what what’s been going on in the church, and then none of them will remember what you preached on.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Chris Pappalardo — Um, but just add a little bit of intentionality get that alignment. So what’s going on in kids, what’s going on in small groups, what’s going on on the stage is all the same, and then years later people will say like, you know what series is fantastic? You know it really changed my life? And they’ll point back to the thing. The preaching may not have been any better, but you were aligned and so it got you moving.
Chris Pappalardo — Um, we’re we’re still kind of early in this and still building, but a friend of mine who left to be kids pastor at a church in Florida was sending me—they used our our the whole kit the whole local church program last year—and so he was sending me updates every Sunday and he was like yeah preach this and his wife is really crafty, incredibly artistic. So in addition to doing like the sermon on that passage and the advent block for day, say four, they took a huge like cardboard box and painted, I mean like six feet tall
Rich Birch — Wow.
Chris Pappalardo — …and painted it so that each day, each Sunday it looked like the little, you know, two inch block you have on the mantle, but it was the image from the advent blocks just up on the stage.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so cool.
Chris Pappalardo — So everybody was looking at it and you know the kids loved it. They’re like that’s it that they got an Advent Block, they got a huge Advent Block. And so it it was really catalytic for the right…
Rich Birch — Why don’t we have the big Advent Block, dad? That’s so cool.
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, so that was just a lot of fun to see that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. That is so cool. Well, can you give me a sense, so don’t talk about the amazing discount because I want people to to go and check out your website, drop by there and and reach out for you that. But what is the kind of retail cost of these things, like if I just want to buy one of these and get it shipped to my house, what what does that what does that cost?
Clayton Greene — Yeah, it’s $59.99 for our Traditions set.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Clayton Greene — So it’s a hardback book and a wooden box. It’s going to last for generations.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Clayton Greene — Then we have a Standard set which is I think $44.99. It comes in a cardboard box with a paperback book. It’s the same blocks. So still going to last really, really long time and and be stored really, really well.
Clayton Greene — And then the the church set before the really good discount that everyone’s going to go check out it it retails for about $34.99 um which is where it starts. But you’ll just have to go look and your eyes will go wide whenever you see what we actually will give it to churches for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. And so if we want to we where do we want to send people just at goodkind.shop – is that the place we want to send them there, Clayton?
Clayton Greene — Yeah, goodkind.shop and you’ll see a tab there for the local church program. That’s going to be the the easiest way for you to find this.
Rich Birch — Yeah I think this is is what a wonderful tool. What a great way to ah you know to to wrap up or to really you know point your people to at this time of year. What time of year Clayton do people need to really get the ball rolling if they’re thinking hey I want to do this. Let’s say I’m a church of a thousand people where like you obviously have some sense of how many of these things you would normally sell, all that. Is that like ah it feels like we got to get going now like feels like we got to make this decision now. But but when do people need to connect with you guys, Clayton…
Clayton Greene — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …if they want to make that happen?
Clayton Greene — Yeah, it does but based on church and their planning cycles. There are some people beginning now. It’ll continue to increase through about August and then from August it’ll kind of go downhill from there. There are some people that find us later in the year, but they’re usually rushing a little bit.
Clayton Greene — The people who find us in the summer plan an event that will actually bring all the families together and make that gift or that that opportunity in order to purchase at a discount a lot more meaningful. And so I would say you know, hey think Christmas in July you know I mean you you need to be thinking about this now so that you’re primary teachers can have the content to be planning the teaching, so that your graphic designers if you have those you know can can be putting things together, which you can we will send you the original files of all of our designs…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Clayton Greene — …and blocks and everything so that they can kind of piece those things in as well and they walk in and it feels like your church created the entire thing. So yeah, but you’re right think Christmas in July. It’s about time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it. That’s so good. Chris, we’re going to give you the final word just as we as we wrap up. Bring us back home to kind of the heart of you know, kind of behind all this. What are you your your local church people that are trying to make a difference trying to help people. Ah. Ah, bring us back to the vision. Why why you’re doing this kind of end us on that thought today.
Chris Pappalardo — Yeah, I think that’s beautiful. Um, you know we often say we call ourselves GoodKind because we want to cultivate the good kind of of habits and holiday practices. And one of the one of the ways we do that is making products that that take beautiful, profound really deep truths, and we make it simple enough that everybody can engage with it. We really think that there’s going to be more movement, there’s going to be more influence, you’re going to see more catalysts for change if everybody in the church does some really small thing, just all together one one tiny step, then if you have a few folks in the church who are really superheroes.
Chris Pappalardo — And um I really believe our stuff helps folks to take a step so that they can look at it a month later, or six months later and say, hey you know what we prayed a little bit more because of that. We actually made this Christmas about Jesus and um, that. I find that tremendously encouraging because the big stuff, the you know the impressive stuff can fade. But if everybody in our church is doing is knowing Jesus a little better, following him a little more closely than I think that’s that’s phenomenal in what we’re after.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well thank you guys so much. I really appreciate you being on today’s episode. And I and I hope church leaders that you’re listening in you’ll take action on this. I do think this could be a really cool. You know thing for you to inject into the life of your church into your people real helpful tool that like you say could for generations make a huge impact. Clayton, remind us one more time where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with you guys?
Clayton Greene — Yeah, look us up at goodkind.shop, goodkind.shop – you can find everything there. You can find our podcast, instagram, of course the local church program.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. And there’s so much there. you know we talked about one thing: advent blocks. But you guys do other stuff too. We’ll have to have another conversation down the road about those things. So thanks so much, friends. Thanks for tuning in. I appreciate you guys being here today.
The Art of Working with (Almost) Anyone: Michael Bungay Stanier Offers Coaching For You As You Lead At Your Church
Jul 20, 2023
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with coach and writer Michael Bungay Stanier, who is best known for his book, The Coaching Habit, which is the bestselling coaching book of the century.
We all know that not all work relationships can be perfect, but how can we improve them? In today’s episode, Michael talks about his latest book How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships, and coaches us on how to improve our work relationships for the sake of our own fulfillment and leadership development, but also to bring out the best in others.
Getting guidance. // Staff relationships can be tough because people are messy and complicated. They have their own agendas and are doing their best, but they aren’t always aligned with each other. It’s easy to find guidance for being more productive and efficient in our work, but much harder to find guidance about how to cultivate the best possible working relationships.
Talk about how to work together. // Have a conversation with your colleague about how you’ll work together rather than just what you’re working on. Talk about how you can work best together and bring out the best in each other. Discuss these things so that you both have the best chance of enjoying the working relationship, and the best chance of the work being good.
Lead the conversation. // As the leader, you should work to develop at least a decent working relationship with everyone, even those you struggle with. Choose one individual and talk with them about how to improve your relationship. This conversation will require vulnerability and courage, but it is a powerful investment in your leadership.
Learn from the past. // Michael’s book offers five questions you can ask during a conversation with a colleague. One of them is, what can we learn from past frustrating relationships? What happened in the past will repeat in the future with different people, in a different situation. By openly discussing past frustrating relationships and learning from them, both parties can gain valuable insights on how to avoid triggering each other while improving the relationship.
Don’t surprise your staff. // Give your teammate clarity by letting them know ahead of time about the conversation you want to have. Tell them what to expect and what questions you want to talk about. Be ready to answer these questions yourself and model vulnerability. Then be present and listen to your coworker. Creating a safe environment during these conversations is crucial, as it allows people to be open and engaged.
Start with one. // Rather than trying to have conversations with everyone you work with, start with one person. Think about who would be most open to having a conversation about improving your working relationship. The very act of making the invitation to somebody is a powerful first step. They might be skeptical at first and change won’t happen overnight, but keep at it.
Looking to build stronger, more effective relationships with your church staff? Check out the Keystone Conversation Kit for Church Leaders—a practical tool inspired by our conversation with Michael Bungay Stanier on the importance of focusing on how you work with your team, not just what you work on. This kit includes everything you need to have meaningful, structured conversations that improve communication, trust, and collaboration with your staff.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited about today because we’ve got a really fantastic guest expert to help you and I with some real practical stuff in our organizations. We’ve got Michael Bungay Stanier. He is really best known for his book The Coaching Habit, which is a fantastic book. If you have not read that, give that to your team. You need to. It’s really is the bestselling—I didn’t know this—the bestselling coaching book of the century and is recognized as a classic. I found it super helpful. But in his most recent book, How to Work With (Almost) Anyone, shows how you and I can build the best possible relationship with key people at work. He’s a Rhodes Scholar, he’s Australian, and our friend Carey Nieuwhof said, Hey, you’ve got to have Michael on, and anything time Carey tells me do stuff, I say, yes. So super honored to have you, Michael. It’s an honor that you’re here with us today.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh, Rich, thank you. I mean, I love that Carey made the introduction, and I’m grateful for that indeed. And thanks for such a nice introduction. That’s really, really warm of you. Rich Birch — Well, why don’t you fill out the picture? Like, what did I miss there? What are some things that you’d love for people to know? Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I’ve got that kind of complicated backstory, you know, that saying, inspiration is when your path suddenly makes sense. So you go kind of a accumulation of adventures and stories and scars and mistakes, but you covered a lot of the basics. I’m Australian. I got lucky when I was in my mid 20s and I won a Rhoades Scholarship and that did two brilliant things for me. Michael Bungay Stanier — One is it stopped me becoming a lawyer because I was doing a law degree and it wasn’t working going well. I mean, I literally finished my law school being sued by one of my professors for defamation. So I’m like, okay, that’s not great.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. [laughs]
Michael Bungay Stanier — And then I arrived at Oxford to study and I met my wife. We’ve been 30 years married now and she’s Canadian. So that’s part of the reason I’ve ended up living in Toronto. And I, you know, when I finally got out of school, I spent some time in the world of innovation and creativity. Amongst other things, I’ve helped invent a whisky that’s been called the worst single malt scotch ever invented.
Rich Birch — [laughs]
Michael Bungay Stanier — Um, I worked into the world of organizational change, so this is where I really got interested in how organizations flourish or don’t flourish. And then 20 years ago or so, I started a company that’s a training company to help organizations use coaching skills to help bring out the very best in their people and thrive as an organization that’s called Box of Crayons. Michael Bungay Stanier — Um, but now I would say I’m trying to be a writer. So of all the things I do, in all the ways I teach, writing is perhaps my my most unique, most practical way. And so these days, I spend a lot of time going, All right…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — …let me go through the misery of writing a book, and then the necessity of talking about the book and getting it out into the world. And that’s kind of how I see myself now. Rich Birch — Love it. Well well, you know, I want to just thank you for The Coaching Habit. And so I read The Coaching Habit and to be honest, did not connect your name with that book until until Carey reached out to me and was like, Hey, there’s this guy. And I was like, Oh my goodness, I would love to get a chance to talk to Michael. That his book is a fantastic, super practical, you know, the kind of thing that you can put right into practice. And so I’m honored that you would come on…
Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh thanks. Rich Birch — …and look forward to diving in. Your new book is called How to Work with (Almost) Anyone Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Work Relationships. I love in the write up I love this because this feels very true…
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …in the organizations I’ve led I’ve led. Not every relationship can be rainbows and unicorns and free flowing ginger beer. But man, that’s so true for us. We’re leading churches. Most of the people who are listening here, they’ve got a staff of 10, 15 people, something like that. And we know that those relationships are so it can be tough at times. Why is that? Why why doesn’t why don’t relationships just magically happen?
Michael Bungay Stanier — Oh I know.
Rich Birch — Why aren’t they rainbows, unicorns and free flowing ginger beer? Michael Bungay Stanier — Because, you know, it’s people are messy and complicated and and and have their own agendas and are doing their best, but not everything is aligned. So you know, if you look back on the working relationships you’ve had, the ones you have now and the ones you’ve had in the past, my bet is it’s probably a bell curve. You know, you have some people at one end where you’re like, I love working with you. For some reason we’ve clicked and we bring out the best in each other and we navigate the hard times with some grace and some ease, and we kind of amplify the best of who we are. Michael Bungay Stanier — My bet is probably you’ve had working relationships at the other end of the bell curve as well. Ah, you’re like, ah, It’s not even that they’re a terrible person. I mean, sometimes they’re a terrible person, but not always. Sometimes it’s like we just can’t click. We’ve got sand in the gears and lots of the work in relationships somewhere in the middle, which is like they’re fine and sometimes they’re a bit off and sometimes they’re a bit on… I realize that we get stuff done through people.
Rich Birch — So true.
Michael Bungay Stanier — We find the joy in our work, through the people with whom we work. And whereas, we’ve all got guidance on how to do the work better, be more productive, be more strategic, be more efficient, be all of that. There’s less guidance on how do we actively manage and bring out give us the best possible chance of the best possible working relationships. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good. You know, I love that distinction of, you know, there’s a lot of resources out there that are around the getting stuff done.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Right.
Rich Birch — It’s the whole how do we you know, but but what are we doing to try to build up the relational stuff? Now, I want to take advantage of the fact that you’re here. You’ve structured this book around five questions.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yes, yep.
Rich Birch — I want to help our listeners and cut right to the chase. There’s got to be one of them that is like the one that that you found in your conversations and your research that’s the highest leverage. I know that’s an unfair question to an author, but let’s let’s start there. Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, I’m going to start I’m going to start I’m going to shed what I think is probably the question, if I can only ask one of those five questions. This is the question that I would ask. Michael Bungay Stanier — But the key if there’s one message I would hope people heard in this conversation between you and me, Rich, it’s have a conversation about how you’re going to work together rather than just on what you’re working on. And and the pull is always on the what because it’s always there and shiny and loud and urgent and bright, but it’s like taking a beat and kind of looking the other person in the eye and saying, Hey, how will we work best together? How will we bring out the best in each other? Rich Birch — Can you frame that up for us? What do you mean by that? How like, what does that look like? Michael Bungay Stanier — So we didn’t do this, but we could have done this before you hit record on this podcast, I could have said, Rich, tell me what makes a really great podcast guest for you. I mean, what do they do and what do they say, and what do they not do and what do they not say?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Michael Bungay Stanier — And I could have said and tell me tell me like the terrible guest or at least the ones where, you know, at the end of it, you’re like, you put your head in your hands and go, Oh, man, that was hard work. And I’m not even sure I’m going to release that episode because it just didn’t work. And I could say to you, Rich, let me tell you, when I’ve been interviewed, the interviews that I love, the ones that really bring out the best in me. And then let me tell you about the interviews that are less fun for me, ones that I’m not so enamored. And you and I have a conversation. We’re not we’re not talking about what I’m going to talk about. We’re talking about how will you and I work best together. And you can do that with all the key relationships in your in your church or in your organization, the people on your team, maybe the key people in your parish or in your flock. The ones like these are key people who need to work well with. Maybe it’s like vendors and so people who support the work that you do in your church or your organization. You can build better working relationships with those people, but it requires a conversation where you go, Hey, you and me, I don’t want this to suck.
Rich Birch — Yes. Michael Bungay Stanier — What should I do to make it not suck? What should I do to make it even better?
Rich Birch — Right.
Michael Bungay Stanier — And whether you pick any one of the five questions that we can talk about specifically and use that as a springboard, you can. But really to take away this idea of just checking in with that other person going, how should we do this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Michael Bungay Stanier — …so that we give it give both of us the best chance of enjoying the working relationship, which gives both of us the best chance of the work being good. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Help us help you understand, maybe and we’ll get to one of those questions in a second.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But as we’re kind of thinking about it from a conceptual point of view, help me understand, maybe there’s people on my team that I when you describe the bell curve, I very quickly went to the people that were on the bottom end of that bell curve.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Right.
Rich Birch — Like you did not have to convince me. Oh my goodness. This is these people are not working.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Right. Yeah. Rich Birch — How do we frame that kind of conversation? How do we how do we approach that one? Maybe I’m not even I don’t even really I want to keep it at the transactional because it is so negative. You know, help us think through that. Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, you always have a choice. You have a choice whether this is worth it or not. Because you may say, look, there are some relationships where I just don’t want to do this because I just want to I want to limit it. I want to keep it transactional. But I know that when I’ve led teams, actually I haven’t really had that choice. I’m like, I need this to be better because this is sucking the life out of me. It’s miserable for both of us, and I want to give this the best chance of not turning into something magical and brilliant, because I think that’s unlikely. I want a bad relationship to get to being good enough. I want to remove as much of the negative as possible. So at a minimum, we’ve got a decent working relationship and we give ourselves the best chance to cooperate because, you know, you have to I mean, maybe you need to let this person go or fire them or whatever. Maybe that’s the solution. But sometimes you’re like, I need to give this a better shot. Or for some reason I don’t have the I don’t have the option of firing them. So we’ve got to figure out a way of working well together. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Michael Bungay Stanier — And I think that’s the conversation where I’m like, okay, Rich, I know we’ve had our struggle with working together. And I’d like to do all we can to try and make this just as good as we can get it. So let’s just pause for a moment and this is have a conversation about how should we do that.
Rich Birch — I love that.
Michael Bungay Stanier — There is risk involved here. Like there’s this is an act of vulnerability. This is an act of courage to do this. And it won’t always work, but it will work often enough. And what you are exhibiting as you show this leadership is powerful for not just the two of you, but also for other people watching on, that it is often a really bold, good investment in your leadership. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the, you know, the courageous conversation that needs to happen there…
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yes.
Rich Birch — …that it’s like, hey, we’ve got to take we’re the leader. It’s our job to lead, to go ahead. And sometimes even just acknowledging, I found that in the past, acknowledging with people, hey, like we both can see this isn’t working well, right? Like, can we talk about that? Like, you know, that wow, what a powerful even just that alone could get us farther down the field. I love that. Well, let’s dive into one of these questions.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Sure. Yeah.
Rich Birch — What if we let’s let’s unpack one of those, you know, pretend we’re sitting across the table trying to coach a leader. What’s one of these conversations that could be particularly helpful for us? Michael Bungay Stanier — I had this with The Coaching Habit because, you know, The Coaching Habit‘s…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — …is like, here are seven great questions. And I’m always asked, What’s your favorite question? I’m like, Oh man, I like all of them.
Rich Birch Yes. [laughs] Michael Bungay Stanier — I literally I literally wrote a version of the coaching habit, which I had 169 questions. And then I…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Michael Bungay Stanier — …and it was a terrible book. I mean, it was a terrible version. So like, I have to get fewer questions. So…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — …took it down to seven. So all of them have their place. But um I would, oh, what would I pick? I would perhaps pick this one.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — I picked the bad date question. It’s question number four of the five, and it says this, What can we learn from past frustrating relationships? Because what is true is what happened in the past will repeat in the future. Even though the past is with different people and different contexts and different moments and you’re a different person. All of that is true, but the patterns repeat. So if I could if I were sitting down with you and I go, Rich, we’re working together. I’m excited about it. You’re a nice guy. You’ve got a cool beard. I’ve got a cool beard. Things are looking good here.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Michael Bungay Stanier —But I’m like, Tell me about it. Tell me when you’ve worked with somebody like me in the position that I’m working with you in, and it just it’s not been good. It’s been a struggle. It’s been really hard. Tell me about it. What what did you do and not do and say and not say that really made that work in relationship struggle? And I’ll tell you the same. And this is such a gift for me because I’m like, okay, I’m getting some really good clues about how not to trigger Rich, how not to drive him nuts, how not to accidentally make him crazy. And he’s getting the same information from me. And so often what we do is we we project or we guess or we assume what it takes to make the person happy and how to avoid them being unhappy. And now I’m just saying, why don’t we say that out loud rather than just making it up about that other person? Michael Bungay Stanier — And it is… so for instance, I mean, little things. If I go if you say, look, the thing that kills me is the is feedback that is always wafty high level positive and never gives me any of the details. I’m like, Oh, that’s really good. Because actually I tend to go for the kind of the pastorly huggy light [inaudible], woo woo, you’re amazing. And sometimes I forget to kind of go, Here’s where I’d love you to improve. I can, I can do that now. I’ve got a note: with Rich I’ve got to get gritty with my feedback. Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay, I love that. So the when we’re thinking… so let’s stick with this, this whole bad date question.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What what can we learn from past, you know, frustrating relationships? I think that’s a really great question. When as I’m going to do this, as I so let’s say I’m thinking about going to a leader. I’m going to have this conversation. I’m imagine, is this the kind of thing I want to prep them ahead of time? Like say, Hey, I’d love to have this conversation, here’s a bit of framework. Maybe I tack it on to the end of a one on one.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Or do I just bring it on them and, you know, talk us through what that looks like? How do we actually have that to maximize it, to kind of get the best value out of it? Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah. Again, you always have a choice so you can decide what works for you. But I would say for the people on your team and the people who are kind of the closest to you, the most vital relationships, the more warning you can give them and the more clarity that you can give them, the the safer this conversation is going to feel for them. You know, in The Coaching Habit, I talk about the neuroscience of engagement and, you know, just there’s a quick detour five times a second. The brain is going, is it safe here or is it dangerous, safe or dangerous, safe or dangerous? And there are four drivers that make a conversation feel safe for people. And it spells the word tera, T-E-R-A. Michael Bungay Stanier — And they are tribe, expectation, rank and autonomy. So tribe, the brain is going, are you with me or are you against me? Expectation is, do I know what’s going to happen or do I not know? Rank is are you more or less important than me? And autonomy is are you making other choices or do I get some say in this? That’s what the brain is going and going. Here’s how I tell whether it’s safe or dangerous. And of course, if it’s safe, they’re more likely to step forward, be vulnerable, be nuanced about the situation, see the best. If it’s dangerous, they’re retreating, they’re backing away. Everything’s a bit black and white. Everything’s a bit fight or flight.
Michael Bungay Stanier — So you’re constantly as a leader looking to try and lift the tera quotient because it makes it safer for all of you, which makes it more likely that you can bring their best and you can build a relationship that feels safe and vital and repairable with that person. All of that to say if you can say to them, Hey, Rich, this is a bit unusual, but I’d love us to have a conversation about how we how we are working together or how we will work together rather than just, you know, the projects that we’re working on at the moment. I’ve got five questions. I read it in a book.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — And I’m going to do some thinking about how I’m going to answer the questions. I’d love you to do some thinking too. So we’re both prepared for the conversation and then we can both dive into it. And then when you jump in there, so what you’re really helping there with the E – expectation around that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Michael Bungay Stanier — There’s also a rank thing, which is like, I’m going to ask and answer this question. So we’re both going to be doing it, not just me asking you. And then when you can start the conversation off, you might say, Hey Rich, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Bit nervous and excited as well. Um, do you want to go first or should I? Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s a good tip. Michael Bungay Stanier — What that’s doing is lifting it’s tribes and autonomy. In that moment, you’ve just bumped up both of those things. And if they want to go first, fantastic. That’s wonderful.
Rich Birch — Right. Michael Bungay Stanier — You’re like, great. And your job is you don’t have to fix anything. Job is just to be present and listen. But if if they ask you to go first, which I think they will most often because they’re kind of going, I don’t know – what are we doing? Trying to get you.
Rich Birch — Yes. They’re trying to get you… right.
Michael Bungay Stanier — I need to see what I need to see what the game what game is being played here so I can get a sense of it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Then your choice is to role model vulnerability.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Bungay Stanier — So the more you are willing to share and be open and be real and maybe be a bit messy about how you answer these questions, the extent that you go is the extent that they will go. So you set the standard by which what’s permitted around vulnerability and openness and and humanness, really. So you get that choice around it. If you if you give top level, abstract, not giving, not I’m not sharing much there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — That’s exactly the same type of answer you’ll get from that other person. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So one of the stereotypes [inaudible] be a lot of people listening in in our world that are called executive pastors.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And like these people are typically not the lead pastor of the church, but they’re, you know, they’re kind of responsible—it would be similar like a COO—responsible for the kind of day to day management. And there’s a stereotype – I know this is not any of you that are listening in…
Michael Bungay Stanier — The other ones. The other executive pastors.
Rich Birch — …but there’s other ones, the other executive pastors, there’s a stereotype that that we can be just very transactional, and not necessarily transformational. We’re not like because we manage the budget, we manage, you know, all of that stuff. And there may even be leaders who are listening in that are self-aware enough to say, you know what, I actually think I am too transactional. I think I am too I am that guy who’s just too concerned about, are you checking your stuff off? And they want to take a step towards this kind of relationship. They want to and but they understand that the expectations on the other side are like, this is like way out of left field. Coach us through how we could make that kind of how do we change? Let’s say we’re convinced we want to make that change. We want to be more transformational, we want to help. We want to be more of a coach. How can I step to, you know, step towards our people in a way that’s better? Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, I perhaps would start not stepping towards your people, but step towards a person. Um…
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Michael Bungay Stanier — …because it’s it’s a… sometimes these books, it’s same with The Coaching Habit as well, people are like, Oh man, I’ve got to change everything. I’ve got to stay curious longer. I’ve got to become more coach like. And it can feel a bit overwhelming because it’s not a it’s not a insignificant ask. It’s like I’m trying to shift the way that I show up as a leader and as a human being. Be more curious about that other person. Be willing to share the spotlight with them. Be willing to invite them in. Be willing for them to take responsibility and accountability that’s appropriate for them. These are non-trivial shifts in behavior and shifts in how you see yourself. So give yourself the grace to know that this won’t be an immediate transformation and won’t happen overnight. But start somewhere.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Michael Bungay Stanier — The very act of making the invitation to somebody is a powerful first step. Feel free to go, they might be skeptical at first. Nobody saw this coming from me.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Like, yeah, that’s okay. They’ll be skeptical. My job is to keep at it. Um, and I would select your person from 1 or 2 different pools.
Rich Birch – Okay.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Probably I would start with like if I if you had to guess who the person who would be most open to this. In other words, it would be safest for you and easiest to practice something new with that person be. Start with one person. You might not even start with somebody who’s part of your church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Michael Bungay Stanier — You may go, I’m going to practice with a vendor.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, the person who provides the things that we need.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Michael Bungay Stanier — I want that. Some of those you want to be transactional relationships, but some of them are more important than that. And you might like, how do I be a better how do we have a better collaborative partnership?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Like you’re practicing kind of in a safe area, but you might also go, look, I’ve got a couple of disastrous working relationships. You know, they feel really broken. Why don’t you could start there because you’re like, honestly, there’s not a whole lot to lose, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Michael Bungay Stanier — If this doesn’t work, it’ll be exactly the same as it currently is.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Michael Bungay Stanier — So that might also be a safe place for you to, to give it a go. Because if it does work well, what a transformation that could make.
Rich Birch — Cool. Yeah. So let me describe another scenario and maybe you could help, you know, help leaders who might be listening in, you know, apply some of this to this particular scenario. So oftentimes, if I’m at a church, it’s not all the time, but if I’m at a church doing some coaching, we’re working on some some issues. You know, one of two conversations happens. This is pretty typical. I’ll have a lead pastor – so they’re typically the person that’s in charge of the organization. They’re like the primary communicator. And they’ll pull me aside and say, you know, I just I really love my executive pastor. This person does a great job. They’re like so good at getting stuff done. Then they rattle off all this positive stuff. But then you know what happens. There’s a BUT at the end of the sentence.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — And they’re like, But can you help me work better with this person? Or, the reversal happened and executive pastor will say, Man, I love my lead pastor. They’re like all vision. I love their teaching. They’re fantastic. But help me understand… Can you talk us through the kind of leading up scenario? How how could I take some of the lessons here when I’m the person that’s not actually the primary; I’m you know, I’m reporting to someone else. How can I work better with that person?
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah, it’s really good. Um, so if I was you in that position, I might do a couple I might think of a couple of things. One is, I want to help people understand the dynamic that’s going on because it is lead and executive together, and those people with their individual personalities. But there’s a pattern that’s playing out that is beyond just who they are as individuals. And the the model I go to most often is called the Cartman Drama Triangle.
Michael Bungay Stanier — And the Cartman Drama Triangle says there are when things get dysfunctional and they always get dysfunctional, three roles play out: the rescuer, the victim and the persecutor. Victim is, Oh, it’s too hard. It’s unfair. Nyah, nyah, nyah. Kind of like, Save me. The the persecutor is wingle-waggler. You’re no good, micromanager. And the rescuer is, Hey, let me jump in. Let me fix it. Let me solve it. Let me take all of this on. And those are all very. And my bad is when you’ve got those dysfunctional relationships, there will be a pattern going on. And it’s really helpful to say, here’s the drama triangle. What pattern do you think showing up? What role do you think you’re playing? What role do you think the other person is playing? And that and then go, Now how might you break out of that drama triangle? That’s already a great start.
Rich Birch — Good. Yeah, I love that.
Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, just going I’m understanding this at a different level. And it’s not just me versus them. It’s a dynamic.
Rich Birch — Right.
Michael Bungay Stanier — But then you make the danger if you’re the coach is you become the rescuer, and you actually maintain this dysfunctional relationship by going, Oh, I know they sound terrible. Tell me all about it. Oh, my goodness. What can you do about it? You actually keep them in their kind of victim frustrated role rather than help them get out of it. So one of the things you could teach them is this idea of this Keystone conversation, which is like, what what what would be… you know, any time you give somebody a choice, Rich, I always say, what are the prizes and punishments? Because every choice is prizes and punishments.
Michael Bungay Stanier — If you were to have a conversation about how you’re working together, what are the prizes and punishments of that? What’s at risk of you doing that? Oh, they won’t like me. Oh, it won’t work. Oh, nothing will change. Oh, we’ll just keep things the way it is. And what are the possible prizes of that? Well, we shift everything. We clear up this this misunderstanding and reset and get back to who we are at our very best. And and have that conversation and go, what do you think? Are the prizes and punishments worth it? Because if you choose not to have that conversation, if you choose not to actively manage that, there are prizes and punishments to that choice as well.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Well let’s talk about…
Michael Bungay Stanier — I don’t know what what landed for you in that.
Rich Birch — Well, the thing that landed, well well, that triangle makes a lot of sense. And I think the that idea of being the rescuer in the midst of the scenario that actually just propagate it’s continue keeps it going.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I think there’s there I think one of the dangers of what we do in our world is, um, we can shy away from some of these, you know, pointed conversations…
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because, you know, we’re afraid of whatever insert whatever the particular punishment we’re worried about. But what ends up happening is we cultivate a whole other set of problems, which is, you know, it’s gossip. It’s, you know, it’s we’re thinking negative things. We’re, you know, we’re perpetuating negative habits, you know, all of that. So, yeah, I think there’s there’s something to just pulling back and having the, hey, let’s actually just have the conversation, define the relationship. Let’s talk about where we’re at. I think it’s so important.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Because the coaching conversation for me is, when I’m working one-on-one with somebody, is what’s your role in this mess? Because the temptation is to look at the other person and go, Tell me about what that what they’re like. They sound terrible. Oh, I get it. Oh, man, that must be hard. And I’m like, That’s kind of interesting. But all we can control and all I can coach is you. And so what’s your role in this? And the drama triangle helps them articulate their role, because rescuer, victim or persecutor, they’re all dysfunctional roles. They’re all kind of perpetuating the stuckness in some way. And then it’s like, what choices do you have to shift this? Because if you want this to be different, be the person who has the courage to say, How do I make this different?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. When I was reading the materials about your book, one of the things that struck me was, Man, this would be a great resource for teams of people to read together, that I think getting it, you know, I’ve got ten people, hey, this would be a great resource maybe for the fall or maybe even over the summertime. I know it comes out here in the summer as like a a good way to introduce this topic to the culture. It will spur that conversation. Is that what you were thinking when you when you pulled this one together? Tell me about kind of what was in your mind when you were writing this book.
Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, um, I hope, I mean, I would be thrilled for teams to pick this up and go, This will help us build a stronger team. And also, I think I’ve written this primarily for people to build trust and safety, and vitality, and repairability. Those are the three characteristics I talk about are the best possible relationship. Is it safe, vital, and repairable – to build that one at a time. One one conversation, one person at a time. So if I’m a team leader, I want that there to be safety and vitality within the team itself. I want it to be, you know, you always hope a team is more than the sum of its parts. But I also want to take responsibility for my 1 to 1 relationships within that team, because I think by building that safety 1 to 1, you then start building the safety for the team to be amplified as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love, you know, kudos to you, Michael. Even in this conversation you have you’re living out your the message of this book. You have pushed me back multiple times to, yeah, yeah, stop ignoring everybody. Stop thinking about everybody. Come back to that one relationship. Let’s go back to one thing, if we can, let’s have that conversation, which I think is a great thing for us to think about. I think sometimes we can just get so caught in the like, okay, we’ve got all this is like a mass of people as opposed to, well, let’s actually just have one of these conversations. If people want… Michael Bungay Stanier — Those interventions happen all the way, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Michael Bungay Stanier — You want intervention 1 to 1. You want to think about your intervention as a team. And if you’re holding an organization, you know, the ten or the 15 of you, you’re like, you’re thinking the culture of your organization and the values of your organization as well. You’re trying to build a place where important work gets done and people thrive, and you kind of need to be working at all three of those levels. If you’re at that, if you’ve got that control and you’ve got that influence. Rich Birch — Love it. Well, where can people pick up copies of this book? I want to make sure that they it comes out at the end of June 2023, if I remember correctly.
Michael Bungay Stanier — That’s right – June 27th. Rich Birch — Okay, perfect. So you can pre-order now, I’m assuming at Amazon. Are there are other places we want to send them. Michael Bungay Stanier — Well, it is true that you’ll find the books and all those obvious places where you buy books.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Michael Bungay Stanier — But if you want bonuses and extra downloads and kind of additional stuff, bestpossiblerelationship.com is a website where there’s a ton of kind of free stuff, including me role modeling what a keystone in conversation looks like. So you can come and see me having a keystone conversation with actually somebody on my team. It was a real conversation that we filmed and kind of want to share with people so you can actually see what this looks like and sounds like in real life.
Rich Birch — Love it. This is this is such a fantastic resource. And friends, I would highly recommend that you pick up copies of this, that you at least get a copy for you. And you know, but maybe for some other folks and you. I do think this is going to be the kind of resource that’s going to help so many of us think through these these relationships. Anything else you’d like to share, Michael, just as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Michael Bungay Stanier — You know, I’d probably just summarize some of what we’ve already said, and you’ve been a really gracious host, so thank you, Rich. You know, I think every working relationship can be better. And I think you can do that by having a conversation about how we work together rather than what we work on, because it’s a way that you connect to the humanity of the other person as well as discuss what’s important in the work.
Rich Birch — Thank you so much. Well, this is great. Anywhere else we want to send people online. So again, that’s best working relationship possible.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Best possible possible.
Rich Birch — Sorry.
Michael Bungay Stanier — It’s alright.
Rich Birch — Best possible relationship. I want to send people there. Anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you and to track with the work you’re up to?
Michael Bungay Stanier — No, my, my, my general website is mbs.works. But you know what you’ll get if best possible relationship is a doorway into all of that as well. So if you’re just remembering one URL bestpossiblerelationship.com is it.
Rich Birch — Great. And we’ll link to all that in the show notes. So…
Michael Bungay Stanier — Yeah, appreciate that.
Rich Birch — Appreciate you, Michael. Thank you so much for being here today.
Michael Bungay Stanier — It was great.
Rich Birch — Thank you, brother.
Michael Bungay Stanier — Thank you.
Rich Birch — Take care. Bye.
The Resilience Factor: Insights from Léonce B. Crump Jr. & Warren Bird on Unbreakable Teams
Jul 13, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Léonce B. Crump Jr. and Warren Bird. Léonce is an author plus the co-founder and senior pastor of Renovation Church in Atlanta. Warren is a repeat guest on unSeminary. He works for the Evangelical Council for Financial Ability (ECFA) and is also the author of several books.
Together, Léonce and Warren have coauthored a book with Ryan Hartwig called The Resilience Factor: A Step-by-Step Guide to Catalyze an Unbreakable Team. They’re here to talk about what it looks like to be resilient in the face of disruption, and practical steps you can take to build great teams.
How do we lead through disruption? // As leaders the great lesson we have to learn is that disruption is normal. For several decades we have enjoyed relative stability, but the reality is we will always encounter disruption. Building a strong, high performance team is essential to getting through these difficult times, but it also is a great challenge in churches today.
Learn to adapt. // If disruption is normal, then education, management techniques, tenure, natural skills and abilities won’t necessarily help you navigate through it. What you need is the ability to take the hard times and keep going. Become healthy, strong, and successful after a difficult challenge. Resilience isn’t just about surviving. Rather after you absorb the blows life gives you, you’re adapting and becoming something different in order to navigate the new reality before you.
Ask God for help. // The Resilience Factor is broken into eight blocks to help you build an unbreakable team, and the first step is to pray and assess your situation. Ask God to give you insight into the new reality you are in. We can have the best research and resources available to us, but unless God’s at work and you’re doing what he wants, it’s all for nothing.
Lead through others. // The strength of our mission and ministry can’t rest on one gift or set of skills. Preaching alone doesn’t build a great church, rather it’s the ability to lead through others. Letting others lead you in their area of expertise helps catalyze unbreakable teams. Léonce shares that one way he does this is by making space for others to speak first in team meetings. Allow others to share their ideas, thoughts and opinions before you add your own to the conversation.
Building trust. // The book includes team and individual exercises which help to increase resilience, such as an exercise on defining the team’s purpose in light of the church’s mission statement and comparing it with other team members’ answers. These exercises help with trust-building and create little wins for the team which build confidence to go for a bigger win together.
You can find out more about the book at www.resiliencefactor.info as well as order them in bulk. Keep up with the surveys Warren talks about at the ECFA website, www.ecfa.org/surveys, and connect with him on LinkedIn. You can find Léonce under the name @leoncecrump on most social media sites and learn more about his church at www.renovationchurch.com.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, really help you as you lead at your church. But today, you’ve got a two for one special. We’ve got two incredible gentlemen here today who, uh, we’re gonna get a chance to dive into something that they’ve been working on for quite a while. We’ve got Léonce B. Crump Jr. He’s the co-founder and senior pastor of, uh, Renovation Church in Atlanta. He serves on a bunch of different nonprofit boards that promote human flourishing. He regularly speaks at conferences nationally, and globally. And he is the author of a number of books, which one of them we’re gonna talk about today.
Rich Birch — And we’ve also got our returning guest, our friend, Warren Bird, from the ECFA, Evangelical Council of for Financial Accountability. Uh, and he’s co-authored so many books I I’ve lost track. I just can’t, you know, I can’t, you know, don’t know about all those – there’s just a lot of them. Uh, and we love Warren. He’s been on the show multiple times, and we’re super glad to have him back. Together they’ve worked with our friend, Ryan Hartwig, and they’ve co-authored a book, “The Resilience Factor: A Step-by-Step Guide to Catalyze an Unbreakable Team”. And I just wanna put my bias right out there at the beginning – friends, I want you to pick up copies of this book for your team. We’re gonna dive deep in with them today. Welcome to the show, guys. So glad you’re here.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — So glad to be here, Rich. Thank you so much, my friend.
Rich Birch — It’s gonna be good. Léonce, why don’t we start with you? So, this is a ton of work, putting a book together. Man, it’s a lot of effort. By yourself it’s a lot of effort, let alone coordinating with two other authors – that’s like triple the work. Uh, so what’s the heart behind this? Why, what, what led you to say, Hey, we, we should write this book. You know, what, what, what pulled you to say, let’s put this together?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah. Um, I actually was invited onto the project, uh, by Ryan and Warren. And it immediately sparked my interest because coming outta the disruptions of Covid-19, I’ve realized, and, and we agree, and we actually put this in the book, that one of the things leaders are going to have to reconcile going forward is that disruption is normal. And the relative stability, maybe that we have enjoyed, uh, over a couple of decades of leadership is actually abnormal. Uh, in fact, we share a story toward the end of the book talking about hypothetically, what if you were born, uh, in a certain era, you would’ve navigated multiple wars, a financial crisis, the Great Depression right on the heels of each other. And so as leaders, I was, I was inspired and challenged to write this book with them, because as leaders, I think the great lesson we have to learn coming outta Covid, especially in modern times, is that disruption is our normal. So how do you lead when, when disruption is reality?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good. That’s, well, I think that’s, that’s a really good insight for sure. And that it’s, it’s, you know, in some ways it’s fascinating that, and if you think of everything that’s happened in the last two or three years, it has been just one thing after another. Covid’s obviously a signpost, but there’s been, there’s been a number of things that just continue to, you know, wave over us.
Rich Birch — Well, Warren, well, part of the, the, the subtitle here is breaking is, is making an unbreakable team, really catalyzing an unbreakable team. And, you know, I would assume in that the kind of undercurrent of that is, man, maybe particularly in the church world, that’s not the norm. Like, that’s not, that’s not normal. Why is it that we seem to struggle with, you know, team development, building high performance teams in the local church?
Warren Bird — That is such a good question. After all these, Rich, you for years have sounded the, the alarm and the challenge of building a high performance, high quality, effective team. And so have many others and lots of literature. And by the way, we try to pull from the best of the research to—in in the book, uh, wrapped around stories—uh, of okay, what really makes a good team? But looking underneath, why haven’t we built good teams? And especially now, coming outta the pandemic. You know, on the one hand, everybody is like vacationing with a vengeance.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah.
Warren Bird — There’s, there’s just this pent up, Hey, let’s really go gangbusters. But, but we don’t see the same thing happening with teams. There’s, well, you know, you’re kind of, uh, worn out and I, I don’t want you to quit. And, and I don’t want you to, to, to have to take on too much and imbalance your life. So this idea of, of vacation with a vengeance applied to let’s, let’s, as a team seek God for something that only he could do, and that, that it would take all of us to do, and none of us could do by ourselves. Um, what might that look like and how do we build the, the resilience that when we get knocked down, uh, to be able to pop back up and say, no, no, no, we’re, we’re going for it. We’re working together. High trust, um, safe environment – how do we do all that? I don’t honestly know beyond… why that hasn’t happened beyond like the Ephesians 4:11 and 12, that, that the role of the pastor and leader is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And yet we do it all ourselves. And here’s team throughout the New Testament, and yet, we tend to do it ourselves.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s, uh, that, that’s a very good insight. Léonce, um, you, the book title has resilience right in the middle of it. Obviously, this is key to, you know, making an unbreakable team. Unpack that a bit more. When you guys say resilient, what is a, what is a resilient team? What’s that resilient factor? What are, what are, you know, what does that look like? How do I know, you know, is my team resilient? What does that look like?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah. Um, the, the idea actually was born of a Mike Tyson quote that did not, uh, make it the book…
Rich Birch — Love it. We’re getting extra content!
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — I hoped that it would. But many of your listeners will probably recall Mike Tyson saying, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Rich Birch — Yes.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — And, and so as we were shaping and crafting this work, that idea is really what came rushing to the surface is, at the end of the day, if disruption is normal, right? If disruption is normal, uh, then education, management techniques, tenure—those things—natural skills and abilities—those things aren’t necessarily gonna help you navigate disruption. Uh, what you need, what what we see as the secret sauce to great teams and great leaders is the ability to take a lick and keep going. In fact, uh, one way we define it there in the book is, uh, resilient means that you are able to become strong, healthy, and successful after a challenge or a difficulty. So, so there’s a measure of flexibility as well as strength. Uh, and it’s an understanding that you’re not just surviving, but you’re adapting to the new normal. You’re, you’re becoming something different to navigate the reality in front of you after you’ve absorbed blows. Believe is, is going be the call to, to great teams going forward. Probably always has been. Probably the missing key to, to, to, uh, so many of the challenges we’ve experienced as, as teams and as leaders. Uh, but the ability to return to shape after being pulled, stretched, pressed, uh, and still be effective going forward. That’s what it means to be resilient.
Rich Birch — Hmm.
Warren Bird — And Rich, we haven’t seen that much about of it. And so because we don’t have that role modeling, we don’t know what to aspire to, to say, think that that’s even possible.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — That’s right.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So, Warren, sticking with you, this idea, it’s step by step. Uh, let’s, what is the first step? So if I say, okay, I want to, I want my, we’re not gonna be able to get to everything, but what is, you know, the first step that we need to take as a, as a team to, or as a leader, I need to take with my people to increase our, uh, our resilience factor.
Warren Bird — We broke the book into eight blocks, which are sort of a sequence. And the very first sequence is pray and assess your situation. Really to ask God, give me insight. And, and, and it’s gonna unpack with who should be on the team, who shouldn’t? Uh, what kind, why are my meetings kind of boring? Uh, how do we do accountability? How do we reproduce ourselves? All that begins with saying, Lord, you gotta do something. We, we can have the best research, the best books out there, the best everything, but unless you’re at work and that we’re doing what you want, it’s really all for nothing.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah. And I, I would add to that, Rich, we, we leveraged the Nehemiah story in that first movement. And one of the things that Nehemiah did so wonderful, uh, is understand the current reality in which he found himself as well. And, and so right outta the gate, even before we get to these different steps, we talk about the new realities that we’re facing as leaders. Number one, today’s world, generally distrusts leadership. Number two, uh, team leadership is here to stay. It is the way forward. Number three, for many of us, your team is largely a new team. Uh, number four, your new team comes with new expectations. Number five, the pandemic may be officially over, but its effects will ripple for years to come. So we kinda walk through each of these new realities as the foundation for saying, you know, if this is true, and, and I believe all signs point to it being true, then the very first thing we have to do, especially as spiritual leaders, is take a step back as Nehemiah did, and say, okay, the, the city’s on fire, the walls are burning. Uh, there’s not much strength or support. Where do we go from here? First to the Lord, and then to actually make a point.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So, uh, sticking with you, sir. Uh, one of the things I’m, I’m sure as you’ve, you know, people have been starting to pre-read the book and you’ve started to share some of this content. Um, I’m sure there’s some of it that’s bumped up as being like, wow, this is like the most helpful. This is the part that people seem to be really be resonating with. What is that, Léonce, that they keep coming back to and saying like, oh, this, this part particular—I know all of it’s amazing, I know every part of it’s amazing—but, but is there any piece of it that particularly has been the most helpful, uh, as leaders have been engaging with these ideas?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — So, so my feedback, and, and I’m sure Warren can, uh, speak to this as well, but with the folks that I’ve had in my immediate circle read the book, the two things, um, that have really, uh, energized them the most has been the idea of clarifying your purpose, which is movement number two. We, we really, really find, um, that a lot of teams – now we may know the church’s purpose, but what is your team’s purpose within the scope of a church’s purpose? Uh, and then how to build a a great team -movement number three. We call it gathering all stars [inaudible] reminding people that you don’t have to settle. Uh, you can actually build a team of top performers if you’re intentional and strategic about it.
Rich Birch — Love that. Well, Warren, one of the things I love about your work, uh, is that it is often infused with these great stories, like you are, and even before today’s call, you were digging for, Hey, what about insights and let’s, you know, find stories, find people… Uh, is was there a story in this book that stands out to you that particularly typifies, you know, what the resilience factor looks like? Is there a story of a, a church or a team that, uh, you know, that kind of captures your imagination around what that looks like?
Warren Bird — The opening story is about a fire. And, Rich, how ironic I’m talking to you in Canada and in the news, uh, for quite some time, it’s been, uh, Canadian fires that uh…
Rich Birch – Yes.
Warren Bird — …the smoke has drifted, uh, to where I’m based in New York, uh, just outside of New York City. But, uh, Paradise, California – the town, uh, in essence burned down. And so many people left, but there was one church, Paradise Alliance Church, that said, no, we’re gonna stay. And all the rules are different about who we are, even as a leadership team, and what we’re trying, what our roles are. But we are going to, if you will, find the resilience necessary to take on the challenges of rebuilding the community. And, and for at least the first year, they became the community gathering point. They did meals for the community, they helped the community bond—those who stayed and all—and they demonstrated the power of resilience and, and the pains that that, that each team member of the church’s leadership team had to, had to deal with their own needs of, of grieving and, and adjustment, and of playing a new role on the team.
Warren Bird — And yet, looking back, they would all agree, together, God used us to do something far beyond what any of us could have imagined, and way far beyond what any of us could have done alone. And we have loved being on the team. It became a high trust, psychologically-safe environment, uh, to growing.
Rich Birch — Fascinating. Uh, good alliance story there too. I, you know, my childhood was in the Christian Missionary Alliance. Always good to get a, a plug in there for A. B. Simpson’s, uh, crowd. So that’s a good thing. Uh, Léonce, uh, one of the things that’s interesting in church leadership is, um—and I’d love your perspective on this—you know, you are clearly, you’re a dynamic communicator. You are, um, you know, the kind of person that people follow. And I think there is a misnomer that often, uh, churches that have dynamic communicators in the leadership position, it’s like, it’s all about them. That’s just not true. Like, that isn’t, a church doesn’t grow and have a kind of impact if, uh, leaders haven’t built teams around them. Uh, but maybe you could talk about that tension of how do you, as a, as a dynamic communicator, as a, you know, um, a dynamic leader, build a team of other people around you that are also, Hey, these are go-getters. These are stallions that want to get lots done, these they wanna, you know, make, change the world. How do you, how do you live that tension out? How does that, how do you attract those kinds of people?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah. I am a huge proponent of Ephesians 4, and, uh, and, and really do believe that the strength of our mission and the strength of our ministry can’t rest on one gift. Uh, it can’t rest on one set of skills. It can’t rest on, on, uh, you know, one leader’s capacity. And, and in fact, the bottlenecks that we’ve experienced over the years at the church, uh, and some that we’re still wrestling through now on the other side of Covid, you know, just to give you kinda our, our story arc. You know, we’re a scratch plant in downtown Atlanta. Three people in the living room, uh, before Covid, we were about 13- 1400 people. After Covid were half that and, and trying to build back to it. Uh, my preaching alone is not gonna get us there. Uh, in fact, I, I know some of the most dynamic communicators that I know are leading churches that are averaging 100 to 150 people. Uh, preaching doesn’t build a church, and even great leadership doesn’t build a church. It’s, it’s the ability to lead through others and even be led by them in their area of expertise and specialty that actually builds great teams. And so, I try to put myself in a position where, where I’m not a material expert or even the point authority over a particular area, uh, I put myself in the submission of the leadership of my team. Uh, and that makes us a stronger unit altogether.
Rich Birch — Love that.
Warren Bird — Rich, could I say something about Léonce that he probably won’t say? And that is, uh, as we were investigating doing this book together, uh, Ryan Hartwig, the lead author, and I went to his church and sat with his team, and, uh, and were wowed. And then as we worked together as authors, we not only had to figure out how do you do team with the three of us, but really each of our effectiveness was contingent on the team that was supporting each of us.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Warren Bird — And so it really, as we went, so they went and as they went, so we went. And, uh, boy was the idea of health in teams, uh, abundantly apparent as we worked together on this book about unbreakable teams.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. And yeah, shout out to Ryan Hartwig. I just, he what a great guy. And he, even in my own life, he, when he when we were at Liquid Church, when I was at Liquid Church, and he came and spent some time with us, and, you know, he asked this haunting question there that day, which still haunts me to this day, which is, well, it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. He said, Hey, you have to lead with more questions. Stop answering so many questions. Like, stop, because all you’re doing is getting everybody to, you know, come to you. And I was like, oh, no. That is like, uh, it still bugs me. So, Ryan, you’re still in my head, uh, you know, effective, uh, piece of coaching for sure. Uh, definitely. So, Léonce, a book like this, as you’re working it, uh, you end up reflecting on your own leadership, your own, your own, Hey, like, what am I doing and how am I changing? The, the work of trying to, you know, externalize ideas changes us. Um, when, how did this book change your leadership? Was there something as you went through this that it was like, oh, hey, I, I maybe need to change my game a little bit, or, or, I’m growing, or maybe asking new questions. What does, what’s that look like for you?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah. It, it really surfaced for me a lot of great questions about our team and where we are and what we need and, and, and where there are missing pieces, where I’ve missed the mark on even, uh, applying some of my own principles that show up in this book. And so, um, much like a Sunday sermon from time to time, there was a great deal of conviction that as I was writing and advising, I was looking at things that I have not been doing consistently. Uh, and then getting the book in front of my team as well, uh, brought great new challenges because we realized that even as well as we function, and, and, and I, as Warren said, I wouldn’t say that about myself, uh, you know, to, to try and take care and not, um, not over, uh, uh, oversell my leadership or our team’s dynamics.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — But, uh, I found that there were gaps in congruence and incongruencies, even in our perspective on the vision. Like, we are, like, we’re sharing the vision, but, but how we’re looking at it, the angle from which we’re looking at it, we found gaps even as we worked through some of this material, uh, to operationalize it before we handed it out to the world. So it was really a growing and challenging time, writing with two other authors, trying to find a common voice, uh, realizing what my tendencies are and what they are not, uh, and what is most helpful and what’s not. Uh, all of those things kind of came to a, a, uh, boiling point there as, uh, as we did this work and, and, and really saw the effects of it across my internal team as well as the team of, uh, of Ryan and Warren and myself.
Rich Birch — And was there anything, when you look even like a specific behavior or…
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Mm-hmm.
Rich Birch — …you know, an approach that shifted, could you let us in a little bit insight on that?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — I can. Um, one specific behavior that I am, uh, diligently working on is not speaking first. Because when I speak, um, even at a table of, uh, of co-leaders, and I do treat them that way, uh, if I speak, it becomes a dictum. And so in order to, to actually draw the best outta the people I’m leading with, uh, I’m the last with a solution. I’m the last with a response. It creates a lot of awkward silence, uh, from time to time. Uh, but that is a very specific thing. I, I am, uh, are you familiar with the working genius?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — So, so I’m I.D. So, so I’m inventing, and then I’m discerning. So it’s very easy for me to get from A to Z without talking to anybody, because I’ve thought through, uh, all of the potentialities. Uh, but what that does is completely neutralize other people’s contributions and talents and giftings. So that was one very specific thing that surfaced during this time.
Rich Birch — Well, like that alone, friends, is gold – what you just heard. Uh, that’s great coaching for us to be thinking about. Hey, even just functionally in conversations, let’s not be the first to, let’s not be the first to answer. Let’s not be the first to jump in.
Warren Bird — So, Rich, you wouldn’t say this about you, but you had Patrick Lencioni himself…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …on your podcast, talking about his, uh, latest book.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. So, Warren, one of the things that you promised in this book is a series of exercises, team exercises, individuals, uh, things that we can do. We don’t wanna make our listeners buy the book, although we do want to buy it. Give us a, a description of one of those kinds of activities that’s in it that could, you know, help us think about how we increase our resilience factor.
Warren Bird — Well, case backstory, we really argued, we, we held up, uh, max Donald Miller books to the publisher, and we said, this is what we want our books to look like with actually, like exercises in the book. And, uh, they translated that as, oh, like study questions at the end of the chapter.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — And that’s not it at all. These are, Okay, pause and talk about it. We have, we have group exercises to do as a team, and we have individual exercises that, you know, write down your understanding of your team’s purpose.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Mmm-hmm.
Warren Bird — And answer these questions about the purpose, and now compare that with others. And by the way, that exercise is just so rich, because as Léonce said a few minutes ago, so often the leadership team of a church just takes the purpose statement of the church and says, well, that’s us. Well, if you think about that for just a second, that falls apart because then you’re doing everything and the purpose of the church? Then why is anybody else needed?
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — And really, can you do the whole mission of the church? So you gotta figure out what our niche is as a team. And when we, when we read some people—you were in the same room on the same team, and this is the purpose statement that each of you wrote—as different as night and day. That’s a really helpful exercise. And we try to do it in, in a framework of psychological safety and, and trust. And we’ve got that, those elements, trust-building, sprinkled throughout the book. By the way, trust-building is not from doing trust falls and other…
Rich Birch – [laughs]
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — That’s right.
Warren Bird — Those, those create bonding. But it’s the little wins together as a team that actually creates the durable trust to now go for a bigger win as a team. And there’s an exercise on that too.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. It’s like a whole training curriculum for, uh, you know, our churches. What’s such a, what a huge gift that you guys have put together. This is what I always find astonishing about books, is it’s like the amount of work that goes in to, to compress all of this down, to get it into, you know, and it’s tons of time and effort and research and thinking, and then it’s like 15 bucks or whatever you’re charging for it. Uh, man, we get to access all that, that what a gift that is to, uh, you know, to the church. I really appreciate you guys, uh, you know, pulling this together. Um, so Léonce, where can people get this book if they’re, I know you’ve got a website, resiliencefactor.info, uh, we could send them there. Are there other places that they could pick up copies of this book?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah.
Warren Bird — Well, Léonce, why don’t you tell ’em what’s on that website, because it’s, it’s not just a picture of you and me.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — And, and, and, uh, Ryan.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah. Um, actually, resiliencefactor.info is an interactive site. Uh, where we have provided some, some extra, or we have provided some extra tools and materials, uh, and things that will help to further your leadership. There’s also an opportunity to interact with us. And so, uh, we, we shot a little video on management versus leadership. We provided some, uh, worksheets and some other tools that, that go beyond the book itself. So the website will be a great resource no matter what not, not just to order the book. As far as getting the book itself? Anywhere books are sold, uh, it will be available. Order in bulk from IVP and, uh, take all of your teams uh through it…
Warren Bird — Well, and in fact, InterVarsity had this idea of, well, if this is a book about team building, then we should give generous discounts…
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — That’s right.
Warren Bird — …to people who buy them in bulk. So go to the InterVarsity site if you’re thinking, oh, I’ll get one for each team member or staff member or whatever. There’s some sweet discounts.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah. And that, that’s what struck me as I’m, you know, thinking about this, is I’m, you know, lots of us are looking for a training resource and we’re looking for, Hey, what, you know, you know, maybe we’re thinking about a Christmas gift even this time of year. Like, hey, maybe for the end of this year, or, you know, we’re looking for a fall training. And this really struck me as that. This would be a great resource to get for our entire team. Hey, let’s go through it. We’ve got some great activities here. Uh, it’ll push us, it’ll get us to ask those questions. So yeah, I’d strongly suggest again that that website is just resiliencefactor.info and the link to the IVP, uh, pages on there. So just go there. You can click through that if you’re gonna buy, you know, the, the bulk books and all that, you can just get that there. That’s, uh, you know, that’s amazing.
Rich Birch — Well, what’s, what are, what’s your hope here, Warren, with this book? What’s your, your dream? Like, uh, you know, what, what, when you’re, you’re hoping for transformation in the teams that are, you know, that are gonna read this, what did you have in mind as you were working with these two fine gentlemen to pull this together?
Warren Bird — Well, my second purpose comes outta my research hat, and that is, I wanna get good information for people about team dynamics and what does success look like, and how do you go from one level to another. And we really took the best literature in the field. We translated into very user-friendly ideas, and we built it into different vignettes in the book. So I, I love, you know, I’m kind of the myth MythBuster lover. And, uh, so to me, I’m, I’m putting good information. This is not just how our team did something. This is what the best research says. But even beyond that, I really want to challenge people to go beyond the, the mediocre. We, we so often doesn’t, I, I mean, when we got married, nobody says, well, I take you to, and we’re gonna have a mediocre marriage. But, but too often things settle down because that’s what we see all around us. But, but there’s a spark still inside us that says, no, there’s gotta be more. And I hope people read this book and they say, ah, I, I’ve always known our team could be a whole lot better than it is.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah.
Warren Bird — You’re gonna help us get there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. What a great, what a great vision. And part of what I appreciate about your leadership, Warren, and your, your writing is, uh, you do push for, like, these aren’t just like soft ideas or like, like those are, it’s rhymes so it must be true.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — [laughs]
Rich Birch — You know, you’re trying to find based stuff on research, and have pushed me in my own work and have been in a very kind way, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this publicly, but in kind way you’ve given me feedback that’s like, Hey, you know, you could do better. We didn’t quite say it like that, but you could do better. And, and that I think gets, that’s why people come back to you time and again, Warren. I just want to honor you in front of, uh, you know, in front of everybody today, cuz you do such a good job on that.
Rich Birch — Well, Léonce, we’re gonna give you the last word as we kind of wrap up today’s episode. Is there anything else you want to share before we close up today’s conversation?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah, I, I just wanna encourage all of the leaders out there, uh, to not be discouraged. God’s hand is still on you. There’s great work for you to do. Don’t take the disruptions as a sign, uh, that things are coming undone. Take ’em as an opportunity. Uh, something that our team has been talking about recently is reframing the situation and saying out loud, God chose us to lead through this time. What a privilege.
Rich Birch — Amen.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — And, uh, and I hope the book will be helpful in cementing that [inaudible].
Rich Birch — That’s so good. That’s so good. Well, um, Warren, if people wanna track with you, where do we want to send them online? Do wanna send them to the ECFA, uh, website or, you know, how do we, if they want to kind of continue to follow the Warren Bird story?
Warren Bird — ECFA for Evangelical Counsel for Financial Accountability, which I was so impressed you said. So just rattle it off, Rich.You, you’ve got my wow book early on here.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Warren Bird — ecfa.org/surveys – and then you can find the stuff that we’ve done like, uh, The New Faces of Church Planting, which Rich, you were so good in helping promote the largest ever study of, uh, in nor across North America, not just, uh US of what’s happening in church planting, including, uh, through the pandemic. Uh, so that’s the best place. And then I’m on LinkedIn is I’m probably, that’s my most active social media.
Rich Birch — Love it. And then Léonce, where do we wanna send people, if they wanna track with you or track with the church?
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — @leoncecrump, uh, on any social media, uh LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, I’m there. And then @renovationatl, uh, on Instagram or Facebook.
Rich Birch — Love it. And I, I was on your website earlier and I noticed that you had your workout regime on your website and I was super intimidated. I was like, man, I gotta step up my game. So I, uh, I appreciate that you posted that publicly. That’s a great thing. So…
Warren Bird — And those of you who are listing and not seeing, uh, Léonce is a former NFL football player and also former wrestler. Uh, so he, he literally picks up a lot, including me, in…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great
Warren Bird — …one of our gatherings.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, I appreciate you gentlemen being here today. I really hope this book helps. I know it’s gonna help tons of people. I hope lots of people pick it up. So thanks so much for being, uh, here today on the show.
Warren Bird — Thanks, Rich.
Léonce B. Crump Jr. — Yeah, thanks for having us.
When Pastors Aren’t Angels: Becca Pountney on Wedding Industry Challenges
Jul 06, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Becca Pountney, the UK’s number one wedding business marketing expert and host of the podcast Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow.
Did you know that many wedding professionals have a negative perception of church weddings? From difficulty accessing church buildings and strict rules, to grumpy ministry staff and poor communication, it’s no wonder that wedding pros would prefer to steer clear of church weddings. But what if there’s a way to change this perception? Listen as Becca shares solutions to working with wedding professionals, and encourages church leaders to look at weddings as a way to serve those who might not otherwise come into a church.
Churches are still a place for weddings. // When Becca surveyed her audience about holding weddings in churches, the first response she got was that churches are still a place where people should get married. A couple may not attend church regularly or only go at Christmas, but many still want to get married in a church and are interested in Bible readings and even Christian songs. On the flip side, however, working with churches can be a huge challenge which turns people off to having a church wedding.
Shift your mindset. // It’s easy to think that couples from the community who want a church wedding only care about the pretty building or location, not what’s happening in the church. But Becca challenges church leaders to shift their mindset. Each year about 22% of weddings in the US happening in religious buildings; that’s over 300,000 weddings annually that could take place in a church. Think about how to use these opportunities to serve the community and demonstrate to people that the church is a welcoming place. Aim to be accommodating, whether it’s to wedding professionals, the bride and groom, or the guests. Many may never have come into a church before, so show them Jesus.
Communicate expectations. // When a wedding is held at hotels or other locations, the wedding professionals typically have had a lot of communication with the venue to make arrangements. But when working with a church, sometimes wedding pros are expected to show up the day of the wedding and figure everything out for themselves. Be sure to communicate expectations or restrictions ahead of time so that wedding pros can adapt as needed. Be ready to answer questions and have a point person available for phone calls.
Think about details. // Similarly to how you try to welcome and serve visitors during weekend church services, build a volunteer team that could serve during a wedding. Volunteers can help with parking, offer tea or coffee, welcome guests, provide directions to bathrooms, and much more. In addition, coordinate with the florists, photographers, musicians, etc. to get an understanding of what these people need.
Be clear about the rules. // Make sure the couple and the parties working with them know the restrictions you have in your church. Explain the reasons for your rules so everyone knows why they are in place. Offer people solutions rather than objections.
Get to know the couple. // When a couple who doesn’t attend your church approaches you about a having their wedding there, see it as the exciting opportunity that it is. Meet with them and get to know them. Ask questions about why they are interested in being married at the church. You can even offer a simple pre-marriage course such as the free one created by Alpha. If you are officiating the wedding, pray about how you can communicate the gospel during that time.
Spread the word. // If you are ready to open up your church to weddings in the community and use it as a ministry, network to find out who are the wedding pros in your area. Host an event to showcase what happens when people get married in your church. Visit local wedding shows and introduce yourself to people.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. And today is no exception. I’m super excited to have my friend, Becca Pountney, with us. She is the UK’s number one wedding business marketing expert. She really helps them build a network of wedding industry contacts, and she provides all kinds of great advice around marketing strategy. And she has a bunch of business training. She’s been featured on places like BBC, Huffington Post, the Herald & Post, and now unSeminary – that just fits, just rolls off the tongue. Uh, she also has her own podcast called “Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow”. Becca, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Becca Pountney — Thanks for having me, Rich. It’s an absolute pleasure.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is gonna be fun. Now, people might be saying, wait a second, this is a little different than a normal, uh, podcast, which is exactly right. But why don’t, before we get into what we’re talking about today, kind of give me a bit of your background. Tell us a little bit about, you know, your business, tell us about, you know, what you do, who you help, all that kind of stuff. Fill in that picture.
Becca Pountney — Yeah, absolutely. So my background’s actually in television and radio marketing. And I worked in that industry in live TV for a few years. And then I got married, and wanted to start a family. And I decided that the television and radio industry just wasn’t conducive to any of those things because I wanted to be there for my kids. I wanted to see my husband and the hours were crazy. So I jumped across, started a wedding videography business so that I could work it around my kids. And I started a networking group because I’m big on building relationships, building connections. So I set up a little group in my area to start networking with other wedding professionals, and inviting them along. And very quickly it became apparent that they were asking me a lot about sales and marketing because that was what my background was in, in the television and radio.
Becca Pountney — And I found that I could just spend a few minutes with people and really help elevate their business. And they said to me, it’s really different because most people keep secrets back. They don’t wanna share, they don’t wanna help us grow. And I was like, I don’t understand that. I want like a rising tide raises all ships. Let’s all help each other. And so that’s how it started, really. And I started very local, just helping people with their social media, helping them with their visibility. And over time it’s grown. I now have a wedding blog for couples, all about planning their wedding. I have wedding industry courses, my podcast membership, and, and it’s just my heart really to see people grow in their businesses and realize that they can do something that fits around their family, around their kids, and still be successful.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, um, friends, Becca and I are in a coaching group with a guy by the name of Chris Ducker. He was on the podcast, actually about a year ago. Uh, and we got talking, uh, about our kind of shared background. And there’s this interesting kind of overlap between, uh, what we do in the church world trying to, uh, serve our communities, and what Becca does with her people in, you know, weddings. And so we just kind of stumbled on this thing and I was like, wait, I just learned something new. You know, they, they talk about the Jahari window, right? There’s that like you, it’s like a whole area of thing you did not know. And then all of a sudden, you know it. Now you see it everywhere. And, uh, and she shared with me this fact, that apparently, and I want you to kind of flesh this out for us, apparently folks in the wedding planning wedding kind of industry, they look at you and I, friends, church leaders, in non-favorable light. How about we say it that way? Tell, tell us about this. What, what this, this kind of shocked me. And then, and then I, as I thought about it more, I was like, oh, maybe it shouldn’t actually shock me. But I wanna talk about this today and we wanna ultimately move towards solutions. But, but tell me about it. What, when you’re talking to other wedding planning pros, people about your, uh, you know about working with church leaders, what do they say?
Becca Pountney — Okay, so this is something that’s really close to my heart because it breaks my heart every time I hear people speaking about the church. So I’m a Christian, I became a Christian at 18. Um, I love Jesus, and I go to church. And when I talk to people in my industry about their experience of church as a wedding professional, it’s incredibly negative, and often even they might not even realize I’m a Christian yet and they’re just talking openly about their experience. And they’ll say things like, I just hate having weddings at churches. I wish I never got booked for weddings at churches. And because of my interest in the area, I often dig a little bit deeper into that conversation and try and understand well why? Like, why are you so anti-church weddings? So after me and you got chatting, Rich, I posted in my group. So I have a group, um, of just under a thousand wedding professionals and I just posed the question, tell me what you think about church weddings.
Rich Birch — Oh, good.
Becca Pountney — To just get some insight.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah. This is good. Juicy insight. Yes, absolutely.
Becca Pountney — So here’s some juicy stuff because this is direct from the wedding professionals. So the first comment was interesting to me because the first person said, I think churches are a place where people should get married. So there’s obviously that kind of undertone that people still see church, and marriage, and weddings as the same thing, like traditional. So they’d say things like, oh, I don’t actually go to church, or I only go at Christmas, but I definitely wanted to get married in a church. So that was kind of insight one. Okay, people still link, you know, Christianity, church, together with weddings. Then came the hard-hitting stuff and I’m gonna share it as it is, and then we’re gonna gonna find the solutions afterwards.
Becca Pountney — So people had lots of complaints around the access to church buildings, not being able to park, not being able to get into the buildings. Photographers turning up last because they’ve been taking photos at the “getting ready” situation. They’ve turned up at the church, there’s nowhere for them to park, and then they’re late. Uh, we had people talking about the amount of rules surrounding church weddings. So they say as soon as they see church wedding, they see rules. So many rules, they can’t do this, they can’t do that. Whereas when they’re getting married in a hotel, there’s not so many rules. And they see church rules combined. Uh, grumpy Vicars, grumpy pastors was huge on the list. So, which again, it just, these things hurt my heart, like to hear it. Just, I’m like, no, this is not what we wanna hear. So turning up to weddings, people being rude to them, people saying, we don’t like you kind of people cuz you’re annoying when you’re taking photos of the wedding.
Becca Pountney — One awful story where the vicar made the photographer sit outside for the duration of the ceremony in the snow because he did not trust her not to take a photo during the ceremony.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Becca Pountney — And poor communication. So, so many sad negative things surrounding this. And I thought, okay, I can see this now. I can see why you are saying to me we don’t like church weddings because they’ve equated all of these negative things with being booked for a church wedding. And we know that that doesn’t need to be the experience, but that is what’s happening out there.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, so that’s, so I love how you broke that down. Obviously the practical thing, the, um, rules, grumpy pastors, poor communication. Um, now it’s funny, this was the same experience I had when we talked where I was like, initially I was like, on behalf of all my dear listeners, I was like, defensive. I was like, no, that can’t be the case. But then I paused very quickly and I was like, oh no, I can see this, this, I can see why this happens. Like I can, I can see it from the, you know, the, the church side. You know, I think there, this can be one of those places where we intersect with people who don’t normally attend church. And although our, like our intentions might be good, what actually rolls out is not that, uh, not that helpful. Can we zero in on those last two grumpy pastors and poor communication, particularly. Cuz I feel like those man, we could, we could cover a lot of ground there. Talk us, talk to us about those, what, you know, what were the kinds of things people were experiencing, you know, in around those issues?
Becca Pountney — So one thing around poor communication is that when they turn up to a wedding at a hotel, at a registry office, often the suppliers have had a lot of contact with those places ahead of time. So maybe the venue people have reached out, they expect to see their insurance certificates, and they have conversations about the venue, how it works, all of those kind of things. It seems to be when they have a church wedding that they’re just expected to turn up on the day, and then find those things out for themselves. So there’s definitely a gap there where there’s just not that same level of expectation because wedding professionals, you know, they understand whatever building they’re in, in, whether it’s a listed building, whether it’s a hotel, whether it’s a church, there’s gonna be different restrictions, different things that are gonna come up, but they’re willing to adapt to if they can know that back and forth.
Becca Pountney — So I think that was one of the big things. The second one was a along the grumpy pastors scenario.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Becca Pountney — I think I understand it, right, because all of these people are coming in and I think it’s easy for us to have a mindset of, oh, these people are just coming here to get married in a church, and they don’t really care about what’s going on in the church; they just want the pretty building. And we’re kind of looking at that with the wrong head space. And so I think sometimes that can reflect because, you know, we know that couples can be demanding; they can have ridiculous expectations. They can want us to work and, they wanna do their rehearsal at a certain time of day and it doesn’t fit in with us. And so we can come to the, the table in a bit of a negative head space. And I hope what we get out of today, and what I wanna encourage people who are listening to is to, let’s stop thinking about the, the difficulties of these things, but let’s flip it around and realize this is an incredibly exciting opportunity. And we should be using these events, these weddings, these things are, are bringing people into our church for good and we should be excited about them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Uh, you know, even that, and, and I, we are gonna get to some solutions here friends, so don’t worry, we’re not just gonna keep picking this scab. Uh, but you know, on the communication piece, that’s like one of those, uh, in lots of or or lots of the churches that are listening in on the weekends, they’re trying to do things to frame the experience for people who are not normally here. You know, we’re, we’re trying to figure out what we can do to ensure that people feel comfortable. But I can see where, man, if we just put a little bit of work into, even just putting together like a one or two page PDF that just kind of talked about, Hey, this is how, this is how our building works, here is where the bathrooms are. You know, here is the, you know, those kinds of things, man, that could go a long way.
Rich Birch — And, and you know, this is where, and this is what I love about you, you’re such a positive, you know, future-oriented, you wanna make things better person, which is great. But to me, I, I listen, listened to this and I thought, man, wouldn’t it be amazing if the people who are listening to this podcast got the reputation in their town—cuz it seems like this is like industry wide—wouldn’t it be amazing if they were the people that got the reputation in their town of being like, you know, I don’t really like all those other churches, but that one church man, they’re amazing. Like they’re, and and it became actually a referral source. It became like, Hey, I’m gonna actually point wedding pros are actually gonna point people towards, uh, your church. So maybe let’s pivot into solutions a little bit. What, what are some of the things… I’m gonna leverage the fact that you’re the pro. Help us understand what can we do better to serve wedding pros as they engage with our ministries?
Becca Pountney — Okay. So the first thing is we need to understand the size and the excitement of the opportunity and we need to be praying into that. So so I grabbed some statistics before this call because I just love having some numbers to understand the size of the opportunity. So in the media, you will hear all the time, church weddings are in decline. And that is true. The trend is that church weddings are going down, however, there’s still a lot of them happening. So here in the UK, 18% of weddings are happening in church buildings. Now in the UK that’s 39,945 church weddings happening a year.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Becca Pountney — Now, if we imagine for a second that on the conservative side, 50 guests are coming to that wedding, right? That’s just shy of 2 million people entering a church building…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Becca Pountney — …in a calendar year to come to a wedding. Now, if we look at the US, which is obviously a huge, hugely bigger market. So we know that 22% of weddings in the US happen in a religious building. So even if we say, okay, some of them might be other religions, let’s take 15% as coming into a church. That’s 345,000 church weddings in a year. Which means, again, a conservative estimate of 50 people coming into the building, that’s 17 million people coming to into a church building for a wedding every year. This is an incredibly…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s huge.
Becca Pountney — …exciting opportunity and we need to be thinking like, we need to be praying that people wanna come into our church building, that they wanna have their weddings here, and how can we use that as an opportunity to show them Jesus, and to show them that we’re a welcoming place, that we’re a great place to be.
Becca Pountney — So that’s the first thing I think people to do…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Becca Pountney — …is just kinda understand how exciting this is. And it, it is exciting. When I got married myself way back in 2010, I knew it was one of the only opportunities I was really gonna have to invite all of my friends and family into a church building, to have them sit down, be there, because they, they love me and my now husband. But also listen to someone preaching, singing the songs, like doing all of the things. And I knew this is exciting. I need to make the most of this opportunity, and make sure everyone who comes to my wedding leaves feeling joyful and knowing that church is a good place. Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. That’s, that’s a massive, I would’ve, if you would’ve asked me what, you know, what is the numbers, I would’ve never guessed they were that high. I would’ve never guessed, man. But it’s true. And, and I think fifties shy, like that’s, that’s a low number,. You know, cuz I, you would know what, what’s the average wedding size, say in the UK? What is the average, you know, that people are having at a reception or whatever? Becca Pountney — Yeah. Usually between 80 and 150 guests.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Becca Pountney — So 50 is on the conservative side. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s incredible. And you know, there’s obviously, there’s probably two ways to look at this, or there’s prob probably more than two ways to look at this, but, you know, there are the, the bride and the groom, and like the, the wedding pro. And if there’s musicians, there’s like the people that are the closest, the tight group that you’re, that you’re gonna interact with as a church. But then there’s also just the guests in general. What, what do you think we could be doing from a solutions point of view to try to serve those groups, to try to turn around this, uh, negative perception that’s out there? Becca Pountney — Okay, so the first thing is that we need to make sure we are welcoming and accommodating to everybody from day dot…So just as we would for your Christmas services, your Easter services, your Sunday services, like have people around welcoming people. Maybe you can offer a car park attendant that can help people park. Maybe you’ve got a representative from the church on the door, or offering to serve tea and coffee. Like be super welcoming because people are coming into your space and your building. And if we were going into a hotel, we would expect the reception staff, the bar staff, everyone to be on board with the wedding day. So it’s no different in a church. So that first moment that the bride and groom come through the doors, the pros come through the doors, and every single guest that’s coming to that wedding, they should have an incredible welcome. And they should feel part of that building.
Becca Pountney — So that’s my first thing. And then be really accommodating to people. So understanding that people don’t understand church, right? So we need to make sure that things are well signed, that there’s understanding of whether they can use the bathroom. Do they have to stand up for the songs? Like be really, really accommodating to people. Because it’s maybe the first time they’ve ever stepped foot in a church, and for many people it may be the first, and possibly last, time they come into your church building. Rich Birch — I love that. So I love this idea of, you know, go out of our way to be more welcoming, um, you know, and even to, you know, find a volunteer group that could help with this, this or could be paid people or whatever. But if, uh, a team of people to help with these, you know, these things. I, yeah, that’s a, to me is a great opportunity. There for sure are people in all of our churches who love weddings. There for sure is that group of people that, um, would be willing to say, you know what, I, you know, it might end up being a dozen times if you’re a really busy location. It might be a dozen, it might be 20 times a year you’re giving up, uh, you know, a Saturday, part of a weekend to come and to help serve. Rich Birch — It doesn’t necessarily need to be you, pastor or vicar, if I happen to be in the UK, um, you know, to, to serve there. But what a great way to get people, uh, engaged. Now, when you think about this, um, ac accommodation piece, drill into this a little bit more. What would you say some of the, uh, the tight spots where, you know, maybe photographers are pushing back or people are like, ah, what they just, they’re, they treat their building with too much, they’re too pristine, they’re too, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re just, they’re, they treat it too much with kid, kid gloves. What would be some of those things we should be thinking about where we could be more accommodating, going out of our way? Becca Pountney — Yeah, so when it comes to working with the professionals who are coming into the building, first of all, speak to the couple and find out who they’re inviting along. So have they got a photographer? Have they got a videographer? Are they getting a florist involved? Like, find out all the information upfront. They’ll be able to tell you that information and get an understanding about what those people need. Do they need access to the building, or when are they coming in? All of those kind of things. So again, communication is key. We need to understand that first of all. Then I would recommend having some conversations with some of the key suppliers, or at least offering to have those conversations.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Becca Pountney — So, hey, you, you got a photographer? Like, here’s my, here’s the details of our pastor or our wedding team, or whoever it is. And, uh, we’d love to chat beforehand about the logistics, get in touch, let’s have a quick call, and we can talk these things through. So the, the photographer, the videographer, feels part of it already. They, they feel like, wow, these people really care. They wanna make the experience good for me. And then in that conversation we can identify some of these tight spots. So we mentioned at the beginning a very simple one is parking. So if you know your photographer or your videographer has gotta rush in last minute, they’ve gotta get the shots that under pressure, their stressed. Like, can we just reserve them a parking space? Can we stick a cone in a car park? Can we tell them ahead of time…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Becca Pountney — …this is the photographer’s parking space because they need to get there and then they need to make a quick getaway at the end as well. So it’s things like that, if we have these conversations and understand the requirements. Do we need, you know, is there gonna be a florist in our building for eight hours? Is there someone there that can bring them a cup of tea or have a chat with them or, you know, it’s the basic things. There’s so many opportunities.
Becca Pountney — And then the final thing as well on helping these pros is talking about expectations. So there may be some things around being in the church or things that you expect as a church that you wanna portray to these people. So explain to them, if, if you don’t want people taking photos during the service, make sure the couple and the photographer know that upfront and make accommodations for it. Explain to them how it works in your setup. But also, I would also challenge you as you’re listening to think, why do we have some of these rules in place and do we need them?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Becca Pountney — Like, are, are they actually rules we need, or have we just built rules upon rules upon rules because they’ve been in, in the, in the church rule book for forever.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s a great question. Like, I think, you know, I think there’s a lot of people who we wouldn’t, we don’t treat our buildings like they’re magical places. Like they’re, they’re a tool that God’s given us to use. Uh, but you know, sometimes these things, they take on an extra weight because it’s a, a religious building. It’s like, you know, I remember when I was in, uh, student ministry when I first started out in, in ministry, I didn’t know that there was a rule that you’re not supposed to have confetti at the church. This is like a thing, you know, weddings, no confetti. And so, um, we did a New Year’s Eve party and I had like a whole bunch of confetti and I knew it was gonna be a mess. I was like, listen, I know this thing’s gonna be a mess. And, uh, so I, and I, so I had planned for it. We’re gonna like get all this stuff cleaned. It’s gonna take a long time, but we’re gonna get cleaned.
Rich Birch — But man, I got like, my hand slapped big time, like, man, it was like you did the wrong thing. And you know, it takes on an extra weight. And I was like an employee of the church. I was like the youth pastor. Um, and I felt dumb about that. Like, I was like, oh, I, I can’t believe that. And it takes, it takes on an extra weight. I think we might forget that as church leaders, that when we’re criticizing or explaining a rule like that, there’s something about the fact that it’s a church building, it feels like, oh, that’s, it’s not just like I’m renting some hall where they said no confetti. It feels like, oh, now I’ve done something terrible because I did this in, uh, in the church. And so be conscious of that. And I think it’s okay to have those. Maybe talk us through, if you are, if you’re a church leader and you have a rule like that, like say no confetti, how do we have that conversation in a way and to not come across as a jerk, beyond being beyond saying, don’t be a jerk, but what, what can we do to try to explain that to people?
Becca Pountney — Okay. So let’s go with the confetti one, cuz that comes up a lot. So just explain your reasons behind it. So as a church, we don’t really like having confetti because it blows over the neighbors. It’s bad for the environment, whatever your reasons are. But then give them solutions. So say to them, you know, what’s worked well before is we have dried flowers and dried flower confetti’s better for the environment. It’s better for the, you know, when it blows over, it, it looks beautiful in the photos. We are more than happy for you to use that kind of confetti. If you want any recommendations, here’s someone that we’ve known that’s done it before.
Oh that’s good.
Give people solutions rather than objections. Or say to them, you know, we don’t wanna have confetti outside the front of the church building, however, you know, there’s this great green space just round the back. We’re more than happy for you to do it there. If you want us to show it, it looks great in photos. So just explain to people if there’s a rule, why the rule’s in place. And then try and find something to overcome it with.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. So a anything else on the solution side? I would say kind of on the defensive, like responding to. And then I wanna ask you the proactive questions. So how, what can we do to actually try to, you know, leverage this opportunity?
Becca Pountney — So one more thing I wanna talk about when it comes to solutions is thinking about the couple itself. So we’ve talked about professionals, we’ve talked about people coming in to the church as a guest, but what about the couple? Because they’re the people that we’re gonna have the most interaction with, potentially as a church leader. So first of all, if someone approaches you about getting married in the church, try not to in like straight away judge them and think, oh, they just wanna use my building. Think, okay, there must be something that’s made them think they would like to get married in a church. And as I said at the beginning, people still equate church and marriage together. I think a really interesting thing is I have a wedding blog and we talk about everything to do with weddings. It’s not a Christian wedding blog, it is just a wedding blog in the UK. Do you know what my best performing blog post is? Every single month and every single year.
Rich Birch — No.
Becca Pountney — It is this: the five bible readings for your church wedding. Every month, every year. My best performing blog post on my wedding blog in the UK is five Bible readings for your church wedding. Again, that tells us something. People are interested in Christianity and church when it comes to their wedding date. So if you have a couple approach you, again, see it as an exciting opportunity. Meet with them, get to know them, talk to them, find out about their background, find out about why they’ve decided that your place would be a good place to get married. And then think about how you can work with them and build a relationship with them over time.
Becca Pountney — So I’ve known some churches who do great things with the marriage course. So they don’t make it a requirement for someone getting married in their church, but they suggest it. They say, we do this great course, you know, before you get married you can come, you can meet with a, an another couple in our church, you’ll get dinner, you can sit down, you go through this marriage course and it’s a great preparation for your wedding day. And I’ve had friends here in the UK who’ve, who’ve gone through that. They’re not church people, but they’ve got married in a church and they loved it because they had that experience that, you know, as church members, church leaders, we get used to hospitality. We get used to people cooking us meals and serving meals up in the church, but lots of people are not used to that. So if someone says…
Rich Birch — No, it’s so true.
Becca Pountney — …like, we’re gonna cook you a lovely dinner, we’re gonna help you with your marriage and we’re gonna talk you through this marriage course. Like that’s an exciting opportunity…
Rich Birch — It’s a huge deal.
Becca Pountney — …and they love, it. So…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Becca Pountney — So really think about that.
Rich Birch — Friends, if you’re looking for a resource on that. Uh, our friends at Alpha, they do it. They do, it’s called, they actually do two of them. One’s called the marriage course and then the other is they have one actually literally targeted, the pre-marriage course. Uh, the pre-marriage course is only five sessions long. It’s really easy. It’s free for you to do as a church. The videos are amazing. Um, they’ve, it’s a layup. It’s available in like a whole bunch of different languages. Like, it, it really is a layup for you if you’re looking to add that to your game. And again, you know, I know you know this, friends, but you know, this doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to do this. You could get a volunteer in your church to put this together, put together a small team and say, Hey, um, you know, we’re gonna offer this pre-marriage course.
Rich Birch — Um, is there, uh, so I love that five Bible readings. I, I, so first of all, that tees up exactly where I was going to next, which is how do we see this as a, as an opportunity, really rather than just being defensive and like, Hey, let’s make sure we get the right PDFs and, and get the cone out and all that. So we do the right stuff. What should we be… because I think there’s a, there’s a real opportunity here for us to reach out to our communities. Give us a sense of if you were to coach a church around how we could leverage this, maybe try to be more attractive to say, Hey, we’re looking for church or weddings to come to our church. What are some of the things we should be thinking about?
Becca Pountney — Okay. So in the wedding service itself, if you are giving a message in that service, you need to really think that through, and really pray it through as well. Like this for me is one of the biggest opportunities. So I talked about my own wedding, and one of the things that I thought was, this may be the only gospel message some of these people ever hear.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Becca Pountney — And so we actually booked an evangelist for our wedding to come and speak…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Becca Pountney — …who was a really great speaker. We spoke, we spoke to him about, you know, we want you to give a great message, we want you to give a clear message, but we want you to give a message that is really inclusive for people to hear, isn’t too long, is, is exciting for people to hear and he really like, he really gave a great message. And if you are getting the, the joy, the benefit, the privilege of, of speaking at someone’s wedding that you may not know very well. Like pray it through and really remember the opportunity that you’ve got. So that’s one thing. Definitely think about the message. Um, also, I just wanted to talk as well on, you know, these people coming into your church, remember they might not understand church. So there’s an opportunity with helping them through these Bible readings. Which Bible readings should they have and why, and what do they mean? And talk them through that process. Song choices is huge, right? We go to weddings and they have the same five songs at every wedding that they sang in assembly at school, because they don’t know any other church songs. But actually why don’t we share some songs with them?
Becca Pountney — I had a work colleague a few years ago get married and he was getting married in a church. He came to me, he said, Becca, we need some help with song choices. We’re thinking “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. Do you have anything else? And I’m like, please, let’s find something else. I’ve put them together a Spotify playlist of songs like “In Christ Alone” and “Amazing Grace” that they didn’t know. And they were like, wow, these songs are amazing. And they had “In Christ Alone” at their wedding while they signed the register. You know, these tiny little opportunities to just understand and talk people through are huge.
Becca Pountney — In terms of attracting people into your, into your church building, understanding that it’s a place where people can get married, like network, find out who the wedding professionals are in your area. Maybe invite them in, like have a little event where you showcase like a hotel would, like what happens that you getting married in our church. Talk to, talk to local vendors. Talk to local people and, and find out what’s going on in your area. Put information out there about getting married in a church. Write a blog post for a wedding blog about the opportunity of getting married in your church. Like do all of the things that you would do in any other area of church life, but with a focus on people getting married.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Like I see these wedding shows, so it’s been a while since I’ve been married. I see these like wedding shows. Like they’ll be at like the Holiday Inn on a weekend and they’ll be like, uh, is that the kind of thing like as a church leader, should I be going to that, maybe a chance to, you know, interact with some of the vendors there, even just pick up a bunch of business cards? What if I was trying to get our name out there or should I get a booth at that thing, or tell me about that.
Becca Pountney — I love wedding shows because it is an opportunity to be like hands-on in the wedding industry and talk to people. So you shouldn’t a hundred percent go and visit some of your local wedding shows. So just go around, talk to people, make friends, find out what’s going on in the area and talk some about your church. Because exactly as you said earlier, Rich, wouldn’t it be great if your church was the place where everyone’s like, you have to go get married there because it’s so welcoming, so friendly and so forward thinking. Getting a booth, I would love nothing more than to walk into the national wedding show here in the UK and see a church with a booth talking about the marriage course, talking about like giving advice on church weddings, talking to people about how to pick songs, how to pick bible readings, giving them advice and talking to them about it.
Becca Pountney — The other thing is, um, working with vendors on things like photo shoots. So one thing that wedding vendors have to do a lot is work together and create photo shoots. And just this last week actually someone in my members group said, does anyone know a church that where we could do a photo shoot? Do you think they would let us question mark? And so again, if you are a place that’s saying, look, hey…
Rich Birch — Yeah, come on in.
Becca Pountney — …our building empty on a Wednesday lunchtime, if you wanna come in, take some photos, you know, set up a wedding, like, please come on in. Use the building, we’d more than welcome that.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s a great idea. I love that. Even being proactive with those other, you know, cuz there’d be people like florists and stuff like that, that are gonna try to show and they’re looking for a place. And this, you know, this actually reminds me of my own wedding. We, there was like this side room that if you were, if you just kind of walked into the place we got married, you would not know it was there. But it was like this beautiful spot. It’s got this like stained glass and all this really cool, and we got these really cool pictures in there. Uh, but you know, if the person who was hosting us hadn’t kind of gone outta their way and said, Hey, we also have this place over here. I don’t know, the photographer wouldn’t have known, they’d never done a a thing there. I wouldn’t have known, we wouldn’t have known. So even tried to proactively think like, oh, this is a great place, you know, if there’s places around your building, uh, you know, to, to do this.
Rich Birch — I also think this is one of those areas where frankly, uh, if you’ve got an older church building, um, you have a real advantage over some of us that do churches in like the big gray box, which is mostly the kind of churches I’ve led in. And so we typically, you know, it’s not like it doesn’t look that nice. It looks more like a, you know, a concert hall than it does, uh, you know, a church. But it’s a real opportunity for you to leverage that and say like, Hey, here’s, here’s a cool spot you could use. It does look traditional. It looks like the wedding in, uh, in, uh, you know, in the movies or whatever. Uh, that is so cool.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Anything else you’d like to, to share? Anything else you want us kind of as we start to wrap up today’s episode?
Becca Pountney — I just wanna encourage you, if you’re listening to this, to just really pray through and think about this opportunity. Because it’s easy to dismiss these couples, but every single couple that’s approaching you about getting married has their own story and they’re worth spending some time with. So every time someone messages you about getting married in your church building, try and change your perspective and think, okay, God’s led these people to me. What are we gonna do with this?
Rich Birch — Yeah. That is so good, Becca, I really appreciate that. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your, uh, your kind and gentle coaching today, Becca. You’re, you’re helping tons, thousands of church leaders do this better. So I really, really appreciate that. Where do we wanna send people online uh, if they wanna track with you, kind of see, you know, get to know you more, uh, get a sense of what you’re up to?
Becca Pountney — So you can go and check out my wedding blog, vicinityweddings.co uk. If you wanna write a blog post about your church building and why people should come get married there, please do. I would more than welcome it. We know that that content does well on the blog. Or go and check me out @beccapountney.com.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it so much. This is good. Now, there might be people that are listening in, uh, who they may know people in the wedding industry. What are the kinds of people that, you know, they’re, there’s a lot of church leaders listening in that, that may, uh, that, that they should be pointing towards you? Like maybe they’ve got photographers or they’ve got people in their church. What, what are the kinds of people that, that kind of track with you?
Becca Pountney — Yes, please send people my way. Anyone who’s got a business in wedding floristry, cake making, stationary design, DJs, wedding venues, basically anyone that puts together the wedding day, please feel free to send them my way. And, um, yeah, I’d love to work with them and encourage them to understand why church weddings are not that bad after all.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, thanks so much for being here, Becca. I appreciate your, uh, your leadership and your support. And, friends, uh, thank hopefully today’s been encouraging for you and you’ve given you some ideas to think about, uh, as we go to, as we move forward and try to serve the communities around us. So thanks a lot, Becca. Appreciate you being here today.
Becca Pountney — Thanks for having me.
Long-Term Vision, Lasting Impact: Curt Seaburg on Strategic Vision in Church Leadership
Jun 29, 2023
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Curt Seaburg, the lead pastor of Victory Church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
While it’s important for church leaders to learn from each other, when it comes to vision, it’s critical to know yourself and the God-given calling for your church within its unique community. Listen to this episode where Curt shares wisdom about setting the direction of your church, creating longevity in ministry, and orienting your life around the natural rhythms of your church.
Start with vision. // If you don’t know where you’re going as a church, nothing else matters. Figure out what you bring to the church as a leader. Don’t just grab onto the vision of other churches and what they are doing. Rather, learn from other church leaders, but know what will work for you and the community where your church is located. What are you going to do? What are you going to be about? Then, what’s the strategy?
A strategy for your community. // It’s very important to know what’s going on in your community. The church that meets the needs of the community will be the church of the community. If you are a multisite church, your strategy can be different at each location so each campus is tailored to the individual community’s needs. Don’t be afraid to take risks and be open to new ideas.
Be a long-haul leader. // Curt has had the privilege of leading Victory Church for about 20 years and has been blessed to see it become one of the fastest growing churches in the country. When the church and community see a pastor leading through life’s ups and downs and the challenges that come up in ministry, you gain a lot of respect. Plus leaders with longevity have the opportunity to connect with families in the church on a deeper level, walking with them through the seasons of life.
Pastor your family too. // Part of the blessing of being at Victory for as long as he has includes Curt seeing his children love the local church. As you pastor in your church and minister to the people around you, remember to also pastor your family. When your kids are young, let them know that they too are in ministry. Curt and his wife have tried to communicate to their children that being a pastor at a church isn’t just about “going to work” but ministry is about loving people. That mindset has helped them leave a legacy and made all the difference when ministry has demanding seasons.
Take sabbaticals to rest. // When church leaders have been in ministry a long time, they can get weighed down and lose momentum. God gave Curt a picture of this, comparing it to a boat loaded down with barnacles. So Curt worked with his team to create a policy for taking a sabbatical. Victory Church offers a 90-day sabbatical every seven years, and their team of pastors are now on a rotation for those sabbaticals. Offering sabbaticals is Victory’s way of taking care of their team and allowing them to rest and take care of themselves and their families.
Let the church know why sabbaticals are important. // When implementing sabbaticals, Curt brought it before the church and talked with the congregation about its importance and why it would be good for the pastors and the church. He encouraged the congregation to keep attending, giving and being involved in the church while a pastor they enjoyed wasn’t there during a sabbatical.
Dial back the workload. // When Curt took his first sabbatical, it led to him implementing a day of rest consistently into his weekly schedule. During a sabbatical it’s easier to see what parts of the church you don’t need to be so deeply involved in. That will allow you to dial back your workload moving forward, and give you time to make space for seeking clarity and direction. Lastly, rather than trying to find balance in ministry, seek to orient your life around the rhythms of the church. When things slow down over the summer, ride that wave until things begin to pick up again in the fall.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well, hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, every week we bring you a leader who we know will both inspire and equip you. And I’m super excited for today’s conversation, Curt Seaburg. He is the lead pastor at a church called Victory Church, which was founded in 2000 by this incredible couple, Glenn and Linda. And they named the church Victory because they wanted people to experience victory in their lives through relationship with Jesus. Well Pastor Curt came to the church in 2004 was that began as the lead pastor in 2006. And and since then they’ve really been on a tear. Man, lots of good things have happened. They’ve launched new campuses. They’ve been expanding. And they really, you know, continue to have a real drive around mission and vision. And they’ve expanded a bunch of locations all around Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And they’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. So I’m just so honored that you’re on the show today, Curt. Welcome – we’re so glad you’re here.
Curt Seaburg — Thank you. What an honor to be with you today, Rich. Man, I’m pumped.
Rich Birch — Yeah. This is so good. I, you know, there’s all kinds of jokes you can make about Lancaster, and I’m not going to make them, you know, I’m just going to let it just lay there. You know, you’ve got a computer, you don’t drive a buggy. You know all of those things. Well, just leave all those jokes there.
Curt Seaburg — That’s right. They’re all around us. But yeah, we’re good.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about Victory? Kind of fill in the picture there. What did I miss?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah. So Victory, like you said, it started in 2000. And started out just in just in Glenn and Linda’s home, and just kind of grew quietly and slowly. But they brought on on the first lead pastor was about two… I think it was 2002 they brought him on. And he was a good friend of ours. And so he had reached out to us a lot. We were on staff together at one point. And we were youth pastors because we’ve been youth pastors for 17 years up to this point.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Curt Seaburg — We were full time youth pastors just living the dream. And we were living down in Lakeland, Florida at the time in a great church with Wayne Blackburn of Victory Church. And we just he just kept after us and after us to come on up and help him get this work going and things like that. And so in 2003, we said, Yeah, let’s do this.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Curt Seaburg — And so we moved up there in 2004 and came alongside. We were there for about a little over a year and a half. And then he had stepped away and they asked us to step in and take the lead of the church. And it’s just been it’s been amazing ever since then.
Rich Birch — So cool. That must be a work of God that you moved from Lakeland, Florida, to Pennsylvania. You know, they typically the trend is going the opposite direction. People are moving, you know, from Pennsylvania to Florida.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, exactly. Hey, but the reality is, man, you know, my wife and I are both from the northeast and we just missed the seasons. You know, I mean, when you’re Florida…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yeah.
Curt Seaburg — It is always it’s either hot or hotter all the time.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Curt Seaburg — And so, yeah, we missed this. We did miss the snow, miss the fall time and things like that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, it’s gorgeous around here. So that was it.
Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s a beautiful, yeah, beautiful. We were talking about this before we went on air. It really is a beautiful part of… it’s one of those parts of the country where I’m like, this might be what heaven’s like.
Curt Seaburg — That’s right.
Rich Birch — It’s quite nice. It’s beautiful.
Curt Seaburg — It’s the garden spot of Pennsylvania.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. All right, so, you know, you’ve led for for a long time. You know, been been in the driver’s seat since 2006, and there’s clearly been changes, growth. You know, you’ve added multi-site, you’ve done a bunch of those different things.
Curt Seaburg — Right.
Rich Birch — I wonder if we could take a step back, help me understand kind of how do you think about setting direction and setting strategy? What is what does that look like for you? How is that kind of evolved over the years?
Curt Seaburg — Well, that is like that’s critical. That really is mission critical. If you don’t know where you’re going, you know, there’s everything else. Nothing else matters at that point.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Curt Seaburg — You got to have a direction. And so for us, it really took us some time to really figure out, okay, what Lord, what do you have for us? Because it’s not only for us as a church, but you also have to take into account what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses as a leader as well, because that’s going to play into it as also.
Curt Seaburg — You have there are some folks that you’ll just grab what somebody else is doing. You try to copy paste that and it might work for a little while, but after you go for a couple of years and it doesn’t work, and the reason why it doesn’t work is because it’s not you, you know? And so it’s great to learn from other people. And I am always learning. I got a best buddy of mine, Blaine, Blaine Martel, he’ll say, If I got eyes, I played your eyes. You know what I’m saying? But he’s just like, there’s always things to learn from other people. And so you always have to kind of keep your eye on the horizon, what’s going on. But you have to be true to who you are as well, and really leave those things for the Lord. And so vision very, very important. What are you going to do? What are you going to be about? And then what’s the strategy? How do you go about that point of the vision?
Curt Seaburg — And so for us, some of these things like took a little while for them to really develop, even though we we got what we thought was a really clear scripture verse in March of 2006 and Isaiah 54 about enlarge the place of your your meeting. And did not understand what all that meant. And so there was a continual I think we were probably into that for maybe maybe 2 or 3 years to really try to figure out, Lord, what do you have for us that’s going to be very unique for us? And we didn’t want to be unique just for the sake of, Hey, look at us, be unique. But we just wanted to be true to who we were. And so that’s what once we had that clear vision and that clear mission, man, it was just it was gangbusters after that. At that point, it was then figuring out the strategy, how do we come about and accomplish that vision and mission?
Rich Birch — I love that. Well, I think that I love this. I think you’re hitting on something that I think we often don’t think about, or maybe we miss a nuance there. It’s really this connection between, you know, ourselves and what God’s calling our church to be. It’s like you look around and you’re trying to assess what is the needs in our community.
Curt Seaburg — Right.
Rich Birch — You kind of where do we believe God is moving? But then that has to fit in context of, Hey, he’s also called you to lead. So when you say it took a while, help us understand that a little bit. Was that you was that you trying to self explore, understand yourself a bit more, or understand, you know, the mission a bit more? Maybe help us kind of pull that apart.
Curt Seaburg — Oh man.
Rich Birch — I’m intrigued by this, this idea of the connection between you as a as a leader and the mission or the vision.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah. What a what a great question that is. Because, you know, for me, it was, like I said, you know, we were youth pastors, you know? And so there was a thing that we did and there was a way that we did youth ministry, and it was and the Lord was really blessing it. To step into what it was like to be a lead pastor. And it was it was a small work at the time. There was only a couple hundred of us at that time trying to figure all that out.
Curt Seaburg — So you’re exactly right, Rich. I mean, it took a while for me to figure out me, but it took a while for me to figure out our church as well. And not only the church, but the scripture verse in Isaiah 54 that talks about enlarging your house and building an addition. We know that for us, that really was our multi-site, that had to do with multi-site, which would come a couple of years later. And so all of those things interplay is really what took it for…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Curt Seaburg — …as long as it did really to help to develop that. And you wanting to bring the people along with you at the same time. We wanted them to own it as well. And so there’s a lot of, when I say they, it was more of a leadership team to own the direction that we were going in the buy-in as well…
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah.
Curt Seaburg — …because it was different than really a lot of things that anybody else was doing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So a part of this process is obviously knowing your community, knowing where you’re kind of the both your church community and the church are trying to serve…
Curt Seaburg — Right
Rich Birch — …or the community you’re trying to serve. Talk to us about how do we do that? How do we how do we try to get to know, how do we how do we learn about them? How do we what is that or what’s that what has that look like for you over the years? Because obviously your community has shifted and changed even since 2006. Right?
Curt Seaburg — Oh big time.
Rich Birch — Things have changed in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. What does that look like for you?
Curt Seaburg — In some ways, it’s changed. In a lot of ways it’s still very much the same. In our area, we are in Lancaster County, Lancaster County is a unique kind of a place. Because if you’re living in the county, the communities are very much all about the communities. So if you’re from Lititz, you’re from Lititz.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Curt Seaburg — If you’re from Manheim, you’re from Manheim, you know? You can only be a couple of miles apart, but you are in those communities. If you are in Ephrata, you live in Ephrata. But if you see some people, like in Florida, and they’re from Pennsylvania and they’re from one of those communities that I just listed, it would be like, Hey, I’m from Lancaster County, you’re from Lancaster County too?
Curt Seaburg — And so like, we own the county when we’re away, but when we’re in the county…
Rich Birch — That’s a good nuance.
Curt Seaburg — …it really is very nuanced, but it’s really played to our advantage. Because our sites that we have—there’s six of them that we have right now—they’re all in these communities. And they’re they’re not that far apart where I have, you know, I got a lot of friends, you know, their sites are maybe 30 miles apart or 40 miles apart. You know, our sites are like eight miles apart, ten miles apart. But they are incredibly distinct, meeting the needs of the people in that community in and of itself. And so it has really played to our advantage to be able to focus just on the communities that are close by.
Rich Birch — Okay. I’m going to push you on this a little bit, because I know you’re a smart leader and you’ve thought about this. So one of the things that in from a multi-site point of view I’ve always kind of struggled with is this balance of kind of we have a unified vision. We have one thing we’re pushing towards, and we have like a unified culture. Like there is by definition, you know, you go to a Victory Church in Ephrata or in Manheim, like there’s obviously some common things. That’s why you’re multi-site as opposed to just church planting.
Curt Seaburg — Right.
Rich Birch — And balancing what you’re saying, which is, okay, we’ve got local realities that we want to kind of nuance to. It should, it should feel like it’s in Manheim when it’s in Manheim or wherever we are.
Curt Seaburg — Right.
Rich Birch — How do you balance those two out? How do we make sure, because in some ways they feel like they’re maybe at odds, like the kind of common approach, you know, Victory Church is Victory Church. And then, oh, we’re also trying to figure out how to be very much in our communities. What’s that look like?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, the in our community. That’s a great question. You’re smart, Rich. There’s it’s very, very important that you know what’s going on in your community.
Right.
Curt Seaburg — So that you can meet the needs of the community. The church that meets the needs of the community will be the church of the community.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Curt Seaburg — That’s that is a big, big deal for us. The way that we do outreach, the way that we do groups, how we’re meeting the needs of, the individual needs in that community is very intentional in the way that we go about things. But when you pull back, people still want to be a part of something that is big and growing and overall it’s healthy and successful. And so that’s where our vision and our mission sits and our strategy sits. So everything else underneath that is very distinct to that area. The groups, now we do all we all do the group same way, you know, but it’s very distinct to that community that we’re in. Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Can you give me some examples of what that how, you know, some of those distinctives how that would kind of work itself out? I get the idea, like the overall strategy point of view is common, but then how, how do you allow some or have some nuance, not really allow, but have some nuance, you know, at a local level?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, it’s the way that we’re meeting needs in that area.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Curt Seaburg — So it would be like one of our locations is, is in Colombia. Colombia has typically been the poorest community in all of Lincoln County. So there’s things that we’re doing in Columbia, maybe that some other churches have started and we’ve come alongside and been a part of it. You know, Hands Across the Street. We’ll do things in helping to meet the needs there that we won’t do in a more affluent area, and something like a like a Lititz. So if we’re in Lititz, we’re really focusing in on on finding out, okay, when they gather together and when we have celebrations, or whenever we have parades or stuff going on, there’s this big park. So we’re engaged there, making sure that people are seeing us, that they know that there is a church in the community. We’re also very involved there in the school system, which because that’s a big deal for that community…
Rich Birch — Right.
Curt Seaburg — …the people in that community are very involved in the schools. And so that’s so that’s a little bit different. So they’ll push that at our Lititz campus where our Columbia campus, they’ll do more of feeding, taking care of of of actual physical needs that people have. So those those locations actually take on the feel of that community.
Rich Birch — I love it. So one of the things for a leader like yourself that has been serving, you know, for more than five years, let’s say. So there’s some there’s some line in the sand where we have to keep reinventing ourselves. We have to keep growing. We have to keep you know, if we get stuck in stagnant, then like shocker, the church we lead or the organizations we lead will become stuck and stagnant. And I, no doubt you’ve led over all these years, you know, going on almost 20 years in the same church. You know, there’s lots of people that that haven’t been able to continue to do that. How do you do that? How do you keep growing? How do you keep learning as a leader, about these things are just in general, what’s that look like?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah. You know, we’re not afraid to take risks. And I think some of that is the youth pastor in you, too.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Curt Seaburg — You know, you’re always looking to do the next awesome thing. You know, what’s something that’s really going to be that’s going to be impactful for people. And so we’re not afraid to do things. So one of the big things that we do is we had never done it before, but we did a biker blessing.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, that’s a couple of years ago. And so, I mean, that thing just like took off. And we were so pumped, so excited about that. And then we’re like, well, what are some other things that we can do? And so our kids pastor at the time, he’s like, What if we did just like this huge splash day, invited all of our communities to do this huge water slide. And there were thousands of people that were showing up for that on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon. And so always looking, listening to the people who are around, some of the ideas that they’ve got, some of the things that you’re hearing about going around in the nation, you know that things are doing, the people are doing. I think it’s not getting so just tunnel visioned into your own thing, but always being open to to new ideas and relationships, conversations, to kind of keep things fresh. There is something absolutely beautiful about being in the place, though, for as long as we have.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Curt Seaburg — You know, there’s there’s a lot of beauty in the long haul, you know?
Rich Birch — Well, yeah, yeah. That’s one of I was I’d love you to talk more about that, because one of the things we see, we’ve done a lot of work on studying growing churches, fast growing churches. And one of the common traits you see is they are pastors, like yourself, that have been there for a decade plus there.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And that’s one of those answers that people don’t like. It’s like, how do you have a growing church? Well, first, spend ten years there. Next, you know, and talk to us about that. What do you think some of the advantages of being a long haul leader, you know, in a location, you know, what are some of the advantages? What does that look like?
Curt Seaburg — Oh, you get, the respect that you really do gain…
Rich Birch — Right.
Curt Seaburg — …from the people that you’re leading because they’re seeing you through all the ups and downs. And a lot of people are here for a couple of years. You know what that’s like. And we’ll spend three years in one place. They come to a difficult situation, they’ll move and spend three years in another place. And they say they got six years of ministry experience. No, they don’t. They got three years in two places is what they got.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yes.
Curt Seaburg — You know, and so I think being around people that see you going through the ebbs and flows and the ups and the downs, weathering the different storms and being a part of of of dedicating the child to Lord, and then you’re marrying that child off later on.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Yes.
Curt Seaburg — You know there is…
Rich Birch — A privilege.
Curt Seaburg — Oh, it is. There’s such a connection, you know, that really happens there as well, because they know at the end of the day, because they’re living life, you know, 24/7. But at the end of the day, if they’re going through difficulties, they know that there’s some stability and they look to their pastor for that stability. And that’s been earned over time to be able to have that. And so, yeah, I think it’s one of the joys that my wife and I have had is to be able to be here as long as we have.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. What a great that’s a great word for people. You know, as we’re thinking about, you know, how do we how do we lead? You know, a part of this is, hey, we should be hunkering down. And so we’re going to be here for a while. And so and I know that there’s so many friends of mine who have led in real, thriving churches that they’re like, they’re not going anywhere.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s like it’s, you know, we just keep plugging away. That’s that’s so good. You kind of relate…
Curt Seaburg — [inaudible] to Rich. I’m sorry. Our kids are really involved also. And so we’ve got four of them. They’re adults. They’re all married right now. We’re not saying they’re married, period. But we got most of them have kids right now.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Curt Seaburg — We’ve got our daughter and her husband, or hopefully now we’re believing God for that. But we got grandkids. And so they’re all a part, too.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Curt Seaburg — And they’re really anchored into their faith, or anchored after all these years., they still love their mom and dad, you know, who have been in their entire life. They love the local church. And that speaks a lot [inaudible].
Rich Birch — That’s huge.
Curt Seaburg — Well, and so not only pastoring your church and loving and caring and leading, but making sure, number one, that you’re pastoring your family…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Curt Seaburg — …and you’re loving and you’re caring and you’re doing that with your wife. And so that has helped us too, I think, in the longevity is because we want to leave a legacy, not only for us, but now our kids and our grandkids to be able to follow after.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we weren’t planning on talking about this, but you went there, so I’d love to hear more. So my my own kids, we’re like, we’re one or two phases before your kids. So my daughter just graduated from university. My son’s in university, in college. And they both love the Lord, they love the church. And like I always say, by God’s grace, like it’s amazing, you know.
Curt Seaburg — Yup.
Rich Birch — You know, but what would your coaching, what would your advice—we’ve got a lot of young pastors that are listening in—what would, you know—and unfortunately, the stereotype is there’s a lot of kids that end up our age who have been kind of the pastor’s kid thing. What would be your coaching and advice, you know, to parents as who happen to also work in a church?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah. You know I think a couple of things that, looking back, that we did, and I’m really thankful for we stumbled on, is our kids, we always told our kids, you know, you’re you’re in ministry until you’re 18. You know, God chose for you to be born to this mom…
Rich Birch — To this family.
Curt Seaburg — …to this dad.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Curt Seaburg — And and you and we’re in ministry. We’re called the ministry. And so that means you are to. When you’re 18, you can make your own decision. But until then, we’re going to church, you know, and you’re going to be at youth group. And so and we made that we didn’t make that rule when they were 14 or 15. You know, when you’re going to have to struggle, it’s going to be a struggle at that point. We led them there early on.
Curt Seaburg — And I think another beautiful thing, too, is that, you know, you put a lot of hours in when you’re a pastor. And there were oftentimes, you know, where the kids would cry and say, oh, daddy, can’t you just stay home? And things like that. We would always tell our kids, my wife was really, really good with this. And Pam would say, Well, Daddy’s going to love people. He’ll be back in a little while. It wasn’t, Daddy has to go to work. Daddy has to go to church. You know, Daddy’s going to love on people. And when he’s done loving on people, then he’ll be back. That was a constant that we said to our kids early on. And I think that really helped our kids to love people as well.
Rich Birch — Right.
Curt Seaburg — And to realize the church wasn’t taking dad away, the church and the people there he’s going to love on those those folks. And that’s a good thing. And so those are just, you know, a couple, oh, boy, we could talk about, we could have a whole podcast and [inaudible] my wife on it…
Rich Birch — That’s a whole conversation. Yeah, yeah.
Curt Seaburg — And and she could write off all kinds of things that we had done. And we didn’t do everything right, obviously.
Rich Birch — No, no.
Curt Seaburg — But those were some things that we did early on that really did help to set up our family to be able to succeed.
Rich Birch — Okay. Kind of in a related area, did you ever do a sabbatical ever during that…
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, that 20 years, or is it coming up? I feel like there’s a lot of guys who are like, it’s coming up, year 42…
Curt Seaburg — Oh my goodness.
Rich Birch — …but what does that look like?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, we actually did. So our first sabbatical, and the only sabbatical we ever took, was in 2017.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Curt Seaburg — So we had been in the ministry, at that point we were it was 30 years that we and we had never taken a sabbatical or anything like that. And so I had talked to our our leadership team at that point and just said, Hey, I know that we’ve never done anything like this, but I’d really like for you guys to consider me going on a sabbatical.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Curt Seaburg — And so I wrote a whole sabbatical policy and gave it to them. And I’ll tell you, the thing that really just spurred me on toward this was this word picture that the Lord had given to me. And it was this picture of a boat that was gliding across the water in this endless ocean. And sometimes the waters were calm and sometimes the waters were rough. But the boat just continued just to keep moving, and keep motoring along. Along with the driver of the boat was enjoying the ride, loving the view, enjoyed the passengers that were in the boat, and they all loved to be together and they loved the scenery. Most often the throttle was wide open, but sometimes the boat actually would stop along the lake and rest for a bit. But then to be back up to speed again.
Curt Seaburg — And this boat had been traveling on this endless ocean for years. And unknown to the driver, the boat had slowed down a little bit. And this is the whole picture that the Lord was given to me. The driver doesn’t even notice it because he’s still making great progress. He’s still loving the view. He’s still loving the people that he’s with. He takes care of the engine, continues to to work hard, but the throttle is wide open. Yet the boat seems to be bogging down a little bit. And when the driver finally takes the boat to the Marina, they pull the boat, they dry dock the boat, and immediately they notice what the problem is. They notice that though everything looked great from the waterline up, below the waterline, all these barnacles had attached themselves…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s powerful.
Curt Seaburg — …to the boat, slowing it down from what it was intended to be used for. And so the Lord told me at that point that, and it’s just as clear as day, Rich, was just pastors collect expectations like boats collect barnacles.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Curt Seaburg — And you never know until you pull yourself out of the water.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Curt Seaburg — And when I shared that with our lead team, I mean, there was like, you mean everybody in the room is just, like, crying?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Curt Seaburg — I mean, it was a powerful moment.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Curt Seaburg — So we instituted a sabbatical policy at that point. And so every seven years, yep, our team goes away. And I can remember the first, I sat down with a buddy of mine at LCBC, Pastor Dave Ashcraft used to be the lead pastor out there. And and I share with him my whole what I’m going to be doing over these next 90 days of my sabbatical. And he’s looking at everything I’m going to accomplish. And he’s like, Curt, I think you’re missing the point of a sabbatical.
Rich Birch — [laughs]
Curt Seaburg — And he really, and he really helped coach…
Rich Birch — Crank it up.
Curt Seaburg — …you need to rest is what you need to do. And so, yeah, so we put all that stuff together and our team now is on a rotation to where we have different pastors that are going at different times now to make sure that they get a sabbatical. And it’s all tiered, you know, to where you sit on the leadership team, or the strategic team or whatever. But we really want to take care of our team by giving them sabbaticals.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s a great word. I love there the encouragement. And maybe you could speak a little bit more to this. Like one of the difficulties of being the first pastor that’s been there for ten years…
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, at a church like yours, is like you are probably going to have to, which is what you did, have to raise your hand and say, hey, this is an issue that I think we need to talk about. And you did the, what an amazing gift you’ve given to generations that have come after you at Victory. But talk to us about maybe there’s a leader who hears that and is like, oh, man, that’s totally me. But I, I, you know, pastors are by definition, like they’re caring for other people. They’ve oriented their lives around other people, and that might feel really selfish.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So help them, help us understand how do you flag that? How do you even kind of open that conversation up?
Curt Seaburg — Man, I am German Swiss. And so all of those feelings were coming out big time.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Curt Seaburg — You know, I’m in Pennsylvania Dutch country, for Pete’s sake.
Rich Birch — Yes. That’s hilarious.
Curt Seaburg — I’m not worried these guys are working 80 hours a week…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Curt Seaburg — …[inaudible] horrible. So what I did is I took a risk and I talked about it on a Sunday morning.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting.
Curt Seaburg — And I shared with our church where things were at as far as just just workloads and what that’s like, and why this is not this extended vacation or anything like that, and why I think I’m so deserving of all this time. But the importance of it and and the benefits that it’s going to bring to our church afterwards. And I had asked them during that time, I said, you know, as we’re getting ready to go, I’m encouraging not to don’t stop attending. We need you to be here and each to support; don’t stop giving.
Curt Seaburg — And so there were things I was asking them to do as well during that time. And when it came back, the first Sunday back, actually, Pam and I sat down and we just gave a whole report of things that we learned and things that we were walking through. And it was absolutely beautiful and it was seamless. Most of that, it wasn’t self-imposed in my own head. Like people are going to feel this way, but they’re really not. Oh yeah, they’re really going to feel that way. You know that why are you taking this extended vacation?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Curt Seaburg — So I think that’s why it’s important that you get out in front of it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Curt Seaburg — And you share…
Rich Birch — Call it out.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, you got to call it out because that’s what a leader does. The leader gets out front.
Curt Seaburg — And so, yeah, that was a real, looking back now, that was such a smart thing. And now when our team comes up for sabbatical, yeah, our church knows what we do for health.
Rich Birch — It just becomes a part of it.
Curt Seaburg — Health and longevity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that. I think, and yeah, I totally get that’s a fun, you know, the Pennsylvania Dutch work ethic, you know, if you can do it there in that in that culture, man, lots of places in the country that would be fine. And I think, to be honest, I think most pastors underestimate, whoever they’re like, whatever they’re like the people they report to their board, their overseers, whatever that looks like…
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …they underestimate how much those people care for them…
Curt Seaburg — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — …and you know that they understand like, hey, okay, that makes sense. Like, and it is like a there’s a Johari window there you have to open for them to be like, Hey, this is something that, you know, would love for us to think about. And I love that. What a great – that’s a great coaching.
Curt Seaburg — That is that is so true. And I didn’t realize too, how much I needed it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Curt Seaburg — It took me, no lie, I was going back and look over my notes. It took me five weeks…
Rich Birch — Sure, wow. Yeah.
Curt Seaburg — …until I finally was able to feel like, okay, now I’m relaxed, now at this point. So you need it more than you think you do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. I have a good friend of mine is on sabbatical right now and he, I was cheering for him. I was texting him. Hey, man, good, good, like, I’m so glad. And he he’s a he’s a really hard worker and his, you know, his ethnic background is Korean and, like, very similar. And it was his reflection. He was like, it feels very odd to be taking it. But he said, you know, Rich, I’ve and so he’s 50. He’s like, I have never taken more than one week off…
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …one consecutive week, even between roles, has never done that for his entire career. And I think, even now I think coming post-COVID like we are post post-COVID now, friends…
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …there are people who are tired, and there’s they got a lot of barnacles on their boat that they need to knock off, get knocked off in the in the dry dock. I just love that. That’s good.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How is that how did that impact your rhythm kind of beyond that? So you came back to that. Did anything change on how you structured your life and all that?
Curt Seaburg — Yes. Sat down with my executive assistant. I said, okay, let’s talk about my calendar. And she’s like, I already have a bunch of ideas for you. So we sat down and we really begin to map out, okay, what does the ideal week now look like for me in this new seat that I’m in. We worked really hard to try to set things up to where it ran really well, even while we weren’t there. And it did. But so there were a lot of things that I recognized during that time. A lot of weeds I didn’t have to dive down into that I could actually stay up out of. And so I wouldn’t have known that had we not taken the sabbatical and realized, Hey, all I need to do is just just need to be touch points. I don’t need to be in these things. That helped a lot in my calendaring and it really helped me to, to, to dial into the fact that I’m going to take a full day off. And so Friday is my full day off. And we would be sporadic about that, you know, to be very honest with you. For years, you kind of do what you had to do. Sometimes you’d have to, you know, work on that day or with…
Rich Birch — [inaudible] yourself, it’s not work.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, so we take, ever since then, there’s been a true sabbatical…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Curt Seaburg — …I cannot think of very many weeks when we would have missed a true Friday off together that we took. And so, yeah, that’s really, for my health and for, um, just direction, for clarity in my mind. I mean, I’m in great health, but just for clarity in my mind, it has really helped to be able to do that, to see things differently. And to project what do I want this next half of my life to look like?
Rich Birch — So like that that connects that kind of is full circle back to, you know, clarity around direction and vision and all that and our we’re a part of that. How God’s called he hasn’t called just, you’re not a random widget that he’s called to lead this church. You’re an individual person.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so a part of that is you’ve got to process all this stuff and work through it and and ask the Lord and and you know that a lot of that happens when in the in the slowdown, the silence, the when things aren’t quite so go go go all the time.
Curt Seaburg — Yep.
Rich Birch — So just love that; that’s that’s so good. What a great this has been a great conversation. Anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Curt Seaburg — You know, I think one thing that that we’ve learned, too, along the way that has really helped us a whole lot is just understanding how to do this whole balance thing. You know, we’ve heard we’ve had so many we have so many conversations with a lot of people, a lot of pastors, just about life balance. And what does it look like to balance your marriage, and ministry, and family, and your ministry, and and just all the ebbs and flows. For years, I would would just I would fight to try to find balance you know, in everything.
Curt Seaburg — And one thing that I had learned learned from a guy by the name of Bruce Miller, he wrote a great book. And and we were together at a pastors’ network probably about 8 years ago, 7 or 8 years ago. And he talked about rhythms, and the importance of not trying to find balance in things, but to ride the rhythms of your church. Know know what your church, the rhythms of your church and ride that. When you got to work hard, work hard. When your church is not in a busy time, don’t try to make it busy.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Curt Seaburg — Take that. Hang around down there, because it’s going to get busy again. There are natural rhythms. And so we have even our church, we diagnose this. And so the first five months of the year, they are like high, fast speed for us. The next three months are the lowest.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Curt Seaburg — Four months after that, it’s kind of like it’s right in the middle, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Curt Seaburg — So the first five are high. Next three are the low, and then the next four are in the middle. And so we have kind of oriented our life around that rhythm and around that…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Curt Seaburg — …flow of our church rather than just trying to fight it all the time. Because you’re trying to fight culture as well. And so it’s smart just to just ride those rhythms. Don’t try to find balance and all that stuff.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. You know, I think that’s one of the things that we’ve lost as kind of our entire well, and maybe not so much in your part of the country, but as the general culture has shifted away from being anything agrarian that has this idea of there are seasons when you plant, there are seasons when you water, and then there are even seasons when you harvest.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And those all have different work paces to them, right? They’re all it’s not the same all the time.
Curt Seaburg — Exactly.
Rich Birch — And so, you know, we’ve kind of slipped into this like just keep working all the time rhythm, which is not really a rhythm at all. That’s interesting.
Curt Seaburg — Yeach, you’re exactly right. Because when you talk about that kind of terminology and you give those kind of illustrations in this agrarian culture that I live in, yeah, they dial into that really quick. So I guess I’m at a little bit of an advantage, maybe in some of that stuff…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Curt Seaburg — …but hopefully our listeners can listen to this and they can they can dial in, and take some of that stuff away. You know, how can I, how can I use that in my church and in my life as well?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. This has been a great conversation, Curt. I really appreciate your time today and thanks so much for leaning in and helping us. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, so we got everything right at our church – just victorychurch.org.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Curt Seaburg — So everything’s there. I’m horrible on on Twitter.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.
Curt Seaburg — You know, I’m I’m really not on social media.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fine.
Curt Seaburg — You know, a whole lot, it’s funny some of our, you know, some church people like, man, is everything okay? You didn’t respond back to me. You know, I sent you a message on Facebook three months ago. I’m like, I’m not even on Facebook. I don’t even think about it anymore or anything like that.
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it.
Curt Seaburg — But uh, just going really everything’s right at that at the church.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s great.
Curt Seaburg — Yeah, so that’s the best place to do it.
Rich Birch — Well, thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate you. Really appreciate you being on the episode. Thank you.
Curt Seaburg — I’m so grateful for you, Rich. Thanks for everything you do for the community of faith at large. And so you’re blessing for sure.
Rich Birch — Well, thanks, brother. Take care, man.
Hybrid Church in a Digital Age: Collin Jones on the State of Church Tech Today
Jun 22, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Collin Jones, the chief ambassador at Resi, part of the organization Pushpay. Pushpay provides a donor management system, including donor tools, finance tools and a custom community app to the faith sector while Resi helps deliver reliable livestream solutions to churches.
Online services and live streaming have been on the rise for years, but the pandemic has accelerated the shift towards church online and hybrid models. Listen in as Collin discusses the reasons why churches are choosing to stay hybrid, plus other changes to church technology over the last year.
Hybrid is here to stay. // Before COVID, many churches were resistant to live streaming, but that changed when the pandemic hit. Even now when people have returned to church, there are still many people watching services online. According to the latest State of the Church Technology report, 89% of churches employ a fully hybrid model, with both in-person and online options available. While most churches accept that this is the reality, they probably don’t have a lot of energy to think about how to grow it.
Online is the front door. // Collin describes three different doors for people coming into the church. Church online is the new front door to your church. Very few people will pass by your church and simply stop by on a Sunday to check it out. Even prior to COVID, the average person would come to online church about 11 times before ever visiting in person.
Keep the side door open wide. // The side door refers to the people who are already in the congregation but are busy. They may be donors or volunteers or community leaders and many times they don’t make it to church on weekends due to conflicts in their schedule. By providing an avenue for them to watch services online, these people can still be invested in the church’s mission and have transformed hearts and lives.
Reach out through the third door. // The third door is digital because everyone a church wants to reach is online. The digital door is part of a funnel that might begin with social media shares or online ads for your church and directs people to your site to watch a livestream. People coming to your website to meet a felt need will hopefully take a next step to engage and come to the church in person.
A shift in livestreaming. // According to data from 2022, about 89% of churches livestream on social media. But when asked what channels they are planning to stream on in the future, only 47%, were planning to use social media in the next year. In the report, many churches are shifting to streaming on their own app or platform. Moving away from places like YouTube or FaceBook allows churches to have more control over helping people take next steps. In addition, it gives them access to important data and allows them to offer content without ads.
Do what works for you. // Overall, Collin emphasized the importance of churches finding the right technology solutions for their specific needs and goals, rather than simply following the trends of large outlier churches. When it comes to winning online, or on any channel that constantly changes, he emphasized three things. First, measure what matters and make sure everyone is clear about what’s being measured. Second, experiment within the boundaries that you’ve set. And third, do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t working.
You can take look at the study results of the State of the Church Tech report by clicking here. Visit www.resi.io and www.pushpay.com to learn more about what the organizations offer.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. You know, every week we try to bring you somebody who will, who really, you know, inspire, equip you. And today, man, is gonna be one of those times. Super, super excited to have Collin Jones with us. He’s with an organization called Pushpay. If you don’t know who they are, man, where have you been? Uh, Collin, uh, was with, originally with an organization called Resi, and right from the year it founded, and they really have led this incredible transformation of helping churches deliver reliable livestream solutions to churches and organizations all over the globe. But then since 2021, uh, after Resi was acquired by Pushpay, he has been with them, uh, really helping, and if you don’t know Pushpay, they include, they have a bunch of donor tools, financial tools, and let really a lot of different things to help your church move forward. Uh, today we want to get a chance to talk about Pushpay’s state of check Church Tech, uh, report that came out earlier this year. In his role, he’s the chief ambassador, which sounds incredibly I, you know, important. It’s amazing. And so, uh, looking forward to, uh, to, to talking with you again, Collin. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Collin Jones — Yeah, thank you, Rich. And fun to get to talk to you again.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you, you kind of round out the picture there. What did I miss? Uh, give us the, the Collin story. What did I miss about Pushpay or about Resi that you wanna make sure we, we know about?
Collin Jones — No, I think that’s great. Yeah, we started, uh, Resi kind of got to a size where it was hard to keep going on our own without a lot of the tool sets around it. So, the reason why Pushpay made a lot of sense is because of all the other tools that they have. So, like the app and donor management and church management systems, and a lot of the data that comes around that. And so the, the main vision of why we came together is so that, um, churches could know and grow their audience and, uh, and their, you know, congregation.
Collin Jones — And so I think like the, you know, we’re, we’re getting to work on a lot of cool things, like we’re, we’re working on a lot of media stuff together. So they’re the media and Resi and all of that. And the app is a lot easier. Um, that was one thing from the state of the church tech that surprised me, or that does, that didn’t surprise me. I knew that it was a trend, but the trend actually surprised me, um, which is, you know, more and more people doing their own apps. I thought, you know, five years ago I would’ve said, uh, you know, cuz people only do five apps, that may not be a thing. And then the other part is the analytics picture, so that you can help to know and then do custom triggers and actions, you know, to engage people. Um, and so, you know, I think, I think you’ve shared it too, you know, like, like you do the flywheel model, um, part of that means, you know, you wanna know and have, have data and insights, um, to how those people are moving so that you can send notifications to someone who, you know, hasn’t joined the community group before and, and you want them to, or whatever. And so Resi plus Pushpay helps meet that. I like to say like, Resi had the eyeballs and then Pushpay has all the data on the back end, um, and the front end kinda tooling to help them. So, um, yeah, it’s been a great partnership so far.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. We want to, uh, take advantage of the fact that you have a really good vantage point of churches all across the country. We want to, uh, take advantage of that and hear more. Uh, you know, I remember pre-pandemic, uh, I remember when you were just with Resi talking about how, you know, and I really got fired up about your product from a multi-site point of view, from, you know, Hey, how are we gonna do that? And you guys solved an actual problem that, you know, for so many churches. Uh, and then you were talking a lot about live streaming, and I remember thinking, yeah, I don’t know, like how many churches are really doing that? We’ve been doing it since 2009. Uh, but like, even pre pandemic, I remember thinking, there’s just a lot of churches that seem resistant to it. They were talking about it like, it was like this odd thing. And then the pandemic happened. Now you and I haven’t talked since then. Uh, so what’s gone on kind of from, you know, this vantage point when you look back over the last couple years, anything surprising or any insights that you’ve gained through all of that transition?
Collin Jones — Yeah. And I’d love to hear you answer that too, of, uh, and it’s especially interesting now, kind of that we’re post-pandemic, you know, maybe we can say that. I don’t, I think Canada, Canada, they just declared it, so it’s been declared in Canada.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Collin Jones — Um, so the, yeah, I mean, it’s been a super interesting, I guess three years. So now it’s May 22. And so obviously Resi, like a lot of churches did stream, like you said, but a lot of them didn’t. And then, yeah. And would love for you to tell too, your, your story with Resi. It’s, it’s always a fun one to hear and I’m sure it’s different now, but, and then we, we enabled kind of the same problems that people are having multi-site, which is, Hey, I need to get this [inaudible] so people would have to spend a lot of money on, you know, dedicated networks or different types of hardware. Collin Jones — And so Resi made that possible for much lower cost. Um, and then the same type of thing for live streaming. And then the pandemic happened, and yeah, Resi grew a lot out of that period. Multisite didn’t grow very much , so multisite kind of stopped. And then live streaming grew a lot. Um, and now I think, uh, Resi supports well over, I don’t know the exact number, but well over 80 of the top hundred churches today, which is pretty cool. And so yeah, it does give you kind of a cool analytical picture across. And Pushpay has a, a lot of the top 100 too. I don’t know the exact number, but pretty cool . So we do get to have a unique picture, I think of, of what’s going on at, at that level, and a lot of small ones of course, too. Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Yeah, you know, the, the interesting thing… Yeah. So for folks that don’t know, Resi, you know, is a, a robust streaming solution. I remember, so I started in multisite, oh gosh, 20, it was early 2000, so 23, 24 years ago. And we were literally the very first that when we were delivering messages from one campus to another, we literally started with SVHS tapes that we were, uh, the very first iteration was we were recording S on an SVHS tape at the nine o’clock service, and then hitting eject at the end, handing it to a guy who then got in a car and drove about half an hour to our first campus. That was our solution, which is crazy.
Collin Jones — That’s awesome.
Rich Birch — And right from the right from the beginning, and, you know, as you can imagine, all kinds of problems. You know, the very first week we launched, like our public grand opening, our, our lead guy looked green, the video went all like, there’s something wrong with the physical tape itself. Um, all the way through, you know, been at every iteration from literally Sneakernet driving it to, um, at one point we were doing satellite, you know. We’ve done, you know, download files, all kinds of different stuff to try to make that happen. And all the way along, we used to always say, you know, eventually somebody’s gonna come along with a solution that does two magic things. One, provides a high quality stream and does it in a robust, resilient manner that won’t drop. Because it’s one thing if a, you know, zoom call hacks, uh, or if you know, you just say, oh, it’s fine, we’ll just come back on, uh, in a bit. Rich Birch — It’s another thing if I’ve got, you know, at that point, thousands of people every Sunday, you know, in a multisite scenario. And Resi does that and does it for what I think is a really reasonable price. And so I’ve just been such a booster of you guys. I think you do such a fantastic thing. And then now to deliver that on the live streaming side, I know it’s just so compelling. The thing I, to be honest, the thing I love about it is at the level of, um, the volunteer who’s in a campus, receiving that video signal at a mult, from a multisite point of view, it’s just so straightforward to use. It’s not rocket science. It’s not, you know, when at one point when we were literally, we were doing satellites, so we were like, you know, it was crazy. Like, it was like, this is nuts. Why are we doing this? This is way more complicated than we need to be. Uh, but having it, you know, really simple and straightforward was just amazing.
Rich Birch — Now when you, you know, so over these last number of years, you said obviously you saw live streaming increase. What is that… are we seeing that like Wayne, is that going back, or is hybrid church really here to stay – this idea… I would say that’s been my experience. You know, the churches that pre-pandemic were suspicious of church online, uh, then they, you know, now they’re like, well, that’s like God’s, you know, tool for us. Uh, but what are you seeing from a hybrid church point of view?
Collin Jones — Hmm. Yeah, I think there’s been another iteration of that too. And that’s really fun to hear that story, Rich. So thanks for sharing. Cause it’s, yeah, we, we didn’t quite do VHS tapes, so you were before us there, [inaudible] the tapes, but, uh, yeah, I guess God forgives speeding tickets, maybe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly. What could possibly go wrong?
Collin Jones — [inaudible] church only. Yeah, yeah, no, that’s, that’s cool. And then, um, yeah, the live streaming component, like, you know, for, I think we saw, you know, I don’t know what percentage of churches were streaming before. It was, I think it was a pretty high number, like maybe 50% or whatever of churches were streaming. Maybe it was a little bit lower or higher. And then, you know, it all of a sudden went to a hundred, like in one week.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — And then, and then I think like in the last year, you’ve kind of had people question that strategy. Like, I think, um, that first time everybody was, I remember our church, we did like free t-shirt weekend,. This was probably , this was in 2021 maybe. In August, we thought the world was gonna come back to normal. So we did free t-shirt weekend, you know, we’re all good. Covid is over, um, come back in person. And then, uh, like the Omicron or Delta…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — …or something like that hit and schools closed again, and everybody was like, oh, no. And then, so, you know, we didn’t give out as many t-shirts as, as we wanted to. And so then things kind of went back to online. And then you had, you know, the, the next kind of semester of school, um, every, just having a lot of kind of online fatigue. You know, at that point we had already kind of done it for two years. Um, and, uh, the, you know, not, not many people are in the room. And I think a lot of pastors started blaming online, like, Hey, this is the online space fault. And so we had a lot of that.
Collin Jones — And then I think there’s been a lot of acceptance around like, you know, we, we say three reasons to stream, which is front door, side door, digital door. And now I think most people accept that those are the reality, but probably don’t have a lot of energy or thinking around the growth of it. We have a few large churches that do, and a lot of intentional effort, but a lot that I think is just kind of the thing of like, oh, no, we gotta do this again, and talk about this again. Let’s just leave it, you know? And so from the data, that data that we had, um, from the State of the Church Tech report, which I encourage anybody to download it, it’s got some great insights in it. Um, 89% of churches employed a fully hybrid model. The way that that was asked was hybrid, in person only, and then online only.
Collin Jones — So there are some churches who are still online only, which is unique. Um, and then about the same amount, the way that we did the data was a little bit confusing on that, um, because, um, online only spiked like quite a bit. So I, I think it’s from, from looking at the data, it’s basically fair to assume almost a hundred percent of those chose it’s, that said that they’re gonna be hybrid again in 2023 from 2022. And so I think what that tells us is, you know, churches have figured out like, Hey, this probably is here to stay, and I can dive into the three reasons if you want. Um, but we probably need to do some more innovation around what, what’s actually gonna motivate people’s habits. So, you know, some churches think I’m doing the online thing just to get people back into the building, and it’s like a funnel or a flywheel, right? Um, some churches are comfortable with people coming online and that’s it. Um, and, you know, the strategies I think are different depending on, on which one you, you choose.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Let’s let, let’s talk through those reasons why to stay hybrid. Why would, why are churches choosing that? Why are they staying there? Um, yeah, what, what, what’s driving that?
Collin Jones — Yeah. So I think, you know, we say front door, side door, digital door. So front door is, online is the new front door to your church, right? It used to be people felt comfortable just coming in, they would pass it and see it. And that happens a much, much lower percentage of the time than it used to ten, twenty, however many years ago. Um, so I think like the stats before Covid, and I don’t know them now, but we’re like, the average person comes to your online church, like 11 times before coming to your building, which is crazy, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Like, it would be very common for our pastors to, to have people come over after and say, Hey, I came to Christ, you know, three months ago, um, I just wanna become in person. Ok, cool
Rich Birch — Well, and, and like anecdotally, I, in, in a small group that I’m in – Alpha group – um, you know, and so it’s, I’m just a helper there. I just sit and pray. Uh, and there’s a couple who, this is this el so we’re talking spring 2023, and there’s a couple in this group who they, their own kind of self story is, Hey, we, yeah, we attend the church. Um, they’re wrestling with what it means to follow Jesus. They would, they would self-describe as saying, Hey, they’re, they’re kind of pre-Christian, or, you know, at least early in their Christian faith. Interestingly, the husband attends in person, and the wife attends online. And she, and they have been attending for quite a while. And it’s, it’s a difference in, um, comfortability around all the covid stuff. And again, friends, this is spring 2023. For lots of us we’re used to being back in rooms, but there are people who, you know, through for whatever reason are there. That’s an example of, you know, where I’ve seen that even just anecdotally in a, you know, super close hand, uh, relationship.
Collin Jones — Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And some of that, I’ve, I’ve heard it very common with social anxiety. And as church just becomes less a part of our fabric of a society, which all the data says that it has, um and Covid pulled that forward, uh, just like some of the live streaming stuff that it pulled together, the, kinda the cultural, it’s not very normal to be a part of any groups, much less churches. Right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Collin Jones — So it’s like you, you’re not a part of clubs anymore, you know, whatever. It’s just much less part of our society. Going to a building, it’s very, very scary. You know? Uh, we, when we moved to Denver, we tried out more churches, and I was, you know, I’m a pastor’s kid and grew up at church however many hours every weekend. And during the week a lot. And it’s scary for me, you know, and I like know people at these churches that I’m going, you know? And it’s scary going into a new church on a Sunday just with your family. Um, and it’s like, how much more scary would it be for someone that you just described, like in an Alpha group, you know, who hasn’t, um. So, yeah, I think the groups are, you know, I think that’s probably where the thinking from a funnel probably went away to a flywheel, which I think you wrote a book about.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Collin Jones — And the, uh, you know, where people are coming in at different stages of kind of the norm, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Collin Jones — Um, of the invite from a neighbor, but maybe it’s to come over to their house for dinner and do an Alpha group, and then watch online, then go to church. So I think like that side door… go ahead. Yeah, ask yours and then…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I was gonna ask that side door. Tell, talk to me about the side door. How would you define that? Collin Jones — Yeah, so side door is, um, so side door is people that are already in your congregation, and they’re, uh, they’re just busy people. So like, culture’s changed, um, there’s now soccer games on Sunday mornings, right? There used to never be a thing, but now coaches don’t care, right? They’re not, um, you know, it’s not, it’s not as much of a Christian culture anymore. So this Sabbath isn’t as revered. And so this is, you know, hey, I’m going skiing on a, on a Sunday, I’m going to Florida in the winter, I’m uh, have a soccer game. I would love to go to church, but my kids have soccer games, so they’ve gotta decide between whether they play sports or go to church. Um, and oftentimes, which one wins?
Collin Jones — And so, you know, these are very active people. Some, most of the time, or a lot of the time, they’re community group leaders. They’re donors, they’re volunteers, right? Um, but, they’re the Sunday schedule for whatever reason, doesn’t always work. And so they watch online, you can get them invested in your mission more, their hearts and minds will be adapted by your sermons, right? And changed, transformed. And so then they’re following along with kind of the heart of your church if you do livestream.
Collin Jones — The third thing is digital. So everyone that you wanna reach is online, right? So there is a digital funnel that still, um, which is, you know, doing things like online ads, having people share um, on social media, um, and to their different friends, right? Um, and campaigns around that of, you know, people coming to your site because they’re searching for a felt need or, you know, whatever it is that if they’ll end, end up at your livestream, that’s where they’re most likely to, you know, engage and come. And that’s kinda the next step that they’re a lot more comfortable taking than coming to a building.
Rich Birch — Do you have a sense, or did this, the study pull out, um, any thinking around, or any kind of framework around how churches are thinking about what the ultimate goal is? Like, is so, um, you know, we, we had Jay from Saddleback on, and, you know, he was talking about, Hey, our goal is ultimately with all our online stuff, is to get to some sort of face-to-face. Now that doesn’t mean face-to-face on our campus. That could be face-to-face in a small group. It could literally be like, we want, we’re hoping people will have coffee with one other person who’s connected to the church in their, you know… So it, so how you define face-to-face is important, but any thinking that kind of where church leaders seem to be at, on, on that question?
Collin Jones — Yeah, the data didn’t go into it for the most part, but I think it does tell a story, um, from some of the, the figures. I think, I think the trend is that most people, a lot of people, um, are wanting it to come back in person at some point. So like, online and hybrid is part of the mix, right? And the fact that hybrid church stayed, um, so high is like, Hey, we value online for, for different things and for for maybe the doors that I talked about, maybe other reasons as well. Uh, but we’re wanting more in-person, you know, community. I think a lot of churches that, that I know of in my network, um, used to have, you know, like Saddleback used to have like the Saddleback Anywhere or whatever, and I dunno if they had that or not, but I think they did.
Collin Jones — Um, same thing with the Elevations and the, you know, different churches like, um, most church… and some of those actually have the resources to do it really well, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Collin Jones — That’s the really large ones. But a lot of the, the medium, the large size churches, um, used to have programs and say, Hey, it doesn’t matter where you are, you can be a member here. Um, we’ll get you on an online community group. And a lot of those programs and staffing around it have, have paused, and it’s been more like, let’s get you plugged into a local community. Or if you’re in person, let’s get you to come into, to come into a community group or, you know, whatever it is. I think there are still online only, applications that make a lot of sense. Um, and that, that’s when you kind of get into to the, the very strong opinions of both sides of that argument, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Collin Jones — Online only versus, yeah. So the, the arguments I guess shifted. Like it used to be like, should we do online? And now it’s like, should we do online only?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — Like, should online only be our thing? Like everybody agrees that we should do online now. Like you don’t really have like… Like I used to do a lot of teachings around this, and you have a lot of, um, people argue about it, right? Of like, should you even offer online as a medium?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — And now it’s less of that. It’s more like, should you do online only? Which we don’t take a stance on. Whatever your strategy is, great.
Rich Birch — No. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, pre pandemic, there was a, a church I was coaching, oh and I’ve done some work with them post -pandemic as well, but they, they’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And, uh, you know, they had a very funny interaction where, um, you know, this was, it was probably a year, like, it was probably spring 2021. I was talking to their lead pastor and he said, you know, Rich, it’s been such a funny journey over this last year. Uh, he said, you know, I pre-pandemic, I probably wouldn’t have got up and publicly preached against church online. Like, I wouldn’t have been the guy that’s like, that’s a terrible idea; we should not do that. But he’s like, I definitely thought it, and and I would’ve, uh, you know, we, and strat strategy wise, it wasn’t a part of what we were doing, you know, at all.
Rich Birch — And then, you know, he said, there’s that great moment there in March, 2020 where, you know, I, I see, he said, I still remember, uh, you know, it was, it was still early enough that we got, we could all get together in our office, and every, everybody came together and I was like, okay, friends, you all need to get a Facebook account today. And we all have to learn how to do Facebook live today uh, so that we can continue to connect with our, with our people. And, and now it’s like, it’s a part of their strategy, his own personal social media. It’s fun. I chuckle every once in a while cause when I see him doing video and, and, um, you know, and yeah all that, uh, it’s, it’s, you know, that’s been the change that’s happened. It’s, it’s been fun to fun to watch for sure. I think the side door things interesting…
Collin Jones — I think that brings up a great point too.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Collin Jones — Yeah, no, keep going. No, the, uh, the social media stuff was really interesting in the data, but we could talk about it later. And you go ahead.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s, let’s talk about that. What’s, what are people’s thinking on, uh, you know, this social media side of this whole piece?
Collin Jones — Yeah, so I’ll read the exact stat. So 89% of churches live stream on social media today, from the data from 2022. And then we ask them, what channels are you planning to do in the future? And so when only 47 were planning, 47%, we’re planning to do social media next year, which is pretty staggering.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Collin Jones — I, I wasn’t surprised that that went down. I was surprised with how much that went down. That’s a lot. Um, this has been trended…
Rich Birch — That is a…
Collin Jones — …with churches that we’ve talked to, but that still surprised me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that does seem that that does seem like a giant drop. Um, I guess are people counting, did you, did you qualify on what is a social network? Cause like YouTube is a, in some ways a social network. Obviously it’s built around video, but I understand the, like what they’re saying. Classically, I guess would be like, they’re not streaming on Facebook; they’re not streaming on, you know, Instagram anymore. Um, like, or they’re not planning on doing that. Uh, but yeah, any kind of, uh, that, that is fascinating. What, what do you think’s driving that? Why, why the kind of shift away from a public place? And I would assume what that means is they’re doing more kind of their own private channel somewhere, um, you know, on their, on their own page, or the church online platform, something like that?
Collin Jones — Yeah, we had a lot. And it’s, it’s good that you brought up YouTube because I think there’s a big trend towards which is, which is great. Um, YouTube is like a top of funnel place. Um, so YouTube as, you know, like the short video content, short form video content as a strategy around felt needs, et cetera. Um but I do think, I think a lot of people threw their audiences to social media and then are realizing that you can’t control them, or can’t control that media. So you’re, you’re basically giving other people your audience. And unless you’re a Transformation Church, or Bethel or you know, a Life Church or an Elevation, like, you’re probably sending your audience to those people, right? Um, which is, which is great, um, for that they’re still watching faith content, but a lot of times you want them engaging with your local community, et cetera. Or you’re sending them to cat videos or, you know, whatever.
Rich Birch — [laughs] Yes.
Collin Jones — So I think YouTube works, YouTube live works really, really well for the top 5% of churches or whatever it is, the top 2%…
Rich Birch — That’s a very good insight.
Collin Jones — …some of the largest. Um, but probably doesn’t for the, the rest, um, for live streaming specifically. I think that there’s still other great strategies for YouTube outside of ease of use. Like it’s easy for your people to go and find, which is great. And I think that’s why a lot of people do it too. Like on a tv it’s really easy to find it. Um, but if they’re on a phone or a laptop, um, then they’re, they’re probably getting distracted, right? And then they’re not clicking on the give button cause you don’t, you can’t even really have a give button. They’re not clicking on the connect in a group button or come in person button or, you know, whatever. And so I think that there’s a big trend to streaming on your own app, um, that increased by 3%, which from 35 to 38. Um, and, you know, doing things like your own, um, platform, um, and different, you know, kind of a trend back to your own platform, I think, which is kind funny. Cause it, it just, I think that’s pretty recent. Like it trended to external platforms like a year and a half ago, you know, and after Covid for a while and now it’s going back. Um a lot of churches that I talked to are, are trying to do it on their own platform just so they can control next steps and get access to more data and, um, not have ads, et cetera. So…
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. That’s, um, that’s a good insight. You know, the two things I wanna pull out there for us listeners, first of all, I like your distinction between, you know, there are those churches and we all have them in our movement—Elevation, Saddleback, whoever, you know, Transformation—that are kind of like, they’re the unique super outlier church. And you know, in my own coaching, and we’ve said it here before on the podcast, it is good to learn from those people, but it is a little bit like saying we’re gonna, if we, this was 30 years ago, saying we’re gonna build our strategy around what Billy Graham’s doing, cuz he seems he’s renting out, you know, he rents out the stadium, so let’s rent out the stadium next week and do that. You would never do that. You’d be like, why is that? There’s, and, and a number of those churches you, you mentioned are, they are just such a, they’re so, uh, they’re such outliers, they’re so different than all of us. We need to look at people that are just slightly above, you know, or slightly larger than us or kind of more, um, you know, in our kind of group.
Rich Birch — And then the other piece is this whole rented land issue, building your house on rented land, something like YouTube or Facebook. Um, the danger there is—and we’ve seen this, right—the, um, you know, something changes, they decide they’re not interested anymore. Um, you know, you that can go away if you push all your strategy just in one location, if you don’t have more control of that, or to your point, uh, you know, you’re just feeding them. You’re just, you know, you’re just feeding their engine. You’re, you’re literally the be the net benefactor of sending someone to YouTube is actually YouTube. It’s not actually necessarily your, your people. I think that’s a really good insight.
Rich Birch — Now, I did see something in, in the report that got caught my eye that I’d love to hear your thoughts on. Talk to me about Metaverse. Uh, what there is like some interesting kind of stuff there around, uh, around that, that I found a little bit surprising. Collin Jones — Yeah. I’ll read the stat. Um, and then qualify it. So 25% of churches that were surveyed planned to offer Metaverse worship services in one year from when that research was done, which is very high, one outta four.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — Um, which also very surprising. Keep in mind that was that this, the survey I think was done right when, you know, Facebook, Apple and all of these companies reporting like tons of spend, kind of like, um, AI is today.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Collin Jones — Like if you ask churches right now, how many of you plan to do AI stuff, it’d probably be like, you know, a really high number, right? And then maybe a year from now, you know, it depends on how the trend goes. Maybe it’s the same, maybe it’s lower. My guess is that we’d have a lot lower, say if we asked the question right now. But that it’d probably still be higher than we think. I think there’s a lot of cool use cases for this. Jeff, Jeff Reed, who I think you know well, um, uh, The Church Digital is doing a lot of, um, Metaverse kind of, um, cohorts with, um, with a few different church planting networks, Leadership Network, one of them that, um, that does strategic content for them, um, with Exponential, et cetera. Um, and so he, he’s got kind of a lot of just really random, very cool God’s using use cases. Some of them are, you know, kind of the, the church model that uses it as another campus. Others are around kind of like a use case, like, Hey, we’ve got this gamer here that goes to our church who plays in VR every day, has a large audience, you know, or whatever. Um, that, you know, started a basically a church for us, right in VR. Some that are doing their own online churches only in VR. Um, and so I think that that’s, that’s a lot of, um, open space that, that we don’t really know how it lands. And the, the connection points probably that are going there are like the gamers that are in it today. You know, um, it is surprising, I think it, last time I looked like 8% of the United States, um, uses VR monthly. Um, which is a, a high percentage, right? And so that is like a great channel to reach people at.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Collin Jones — 8% of the, the United States is a big number, so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s definitely that VR um, I’ve joked with friends… I’m a big Disney World fan, and, uh, you know, they’re, they had a VR headset at Epcot Center, I think it was 1988 or 1989. And, uh, it’s not fundamentally different than what we’re experiencing today. I understand that it looks way better. I get it, but it’s still like, it’s, uh, it feels like it still needs a, some sort of radical shift. And I know, I know Apple’s working on a headset this year. Uh, they’re supposed to be releasing one this fall, so it’ll, you know, it’ll be interesting to see what happens on that front. What’s Resi’s uh, what’s your kind of thinking on the Metaverse? Like, I know like Life Church has done the, like, you know, the campus in, um, you know, the Horizons I think it’s called, and they basically are streaming in, you know, a video from the, you know, from, from their actual, you know, whatever you call it in real life campuses. Is is that the kind of solution? Do you have any churches that are actually doing that kind of thing today? Collin Jones — Yeah, we have quite a few. So, um, yeah, Sun Valley also does to, to Facebook to Facebook’s world. Um, yeah and I, I do think like with the Oculus, like $2- or $300 headset that did like, create like a big, like… I remember we, we had, I forgot what it was, but four years ago we had to put all of the kind of sensors in the corners of the room. We had to have like a really powerful machine running it. Aand then fast forward four years, and it’s just this headset, you know, that’s all you need. Um and it looks way better. So I, I was very surprised at how far it’s gotten in that many years um, with the hardware requirements being that low and the cost being that low. But I agree, like there has to be some… right now, the only real reason for you to go there is gaming, right? So like if you’re, um, but I could imagine like working there, um, doing a lot of different things there and how it would be better than, you know, components of life, which is, you know, a meta thing to even talk about. But the, uh, and, you know, have to feedback and all that, it gets weird quick.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Collin Jones — But um, churches are doing it. Um, often today it looks like just like a multisite. It’s like you’d have, you know, the screens sometimes even dual channel, you know, with like a person on the stage. Other times people will have like their own dedicated pastor for it. Um, and so they’re there. Um, and there are some interesting social dynamics that are different than, you know, in life or online um, that are interesting. I think like, like you can just walk up to someone and start talking to them, all the sermons going, and that’s, that’s a normal thing to do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — So like you can have volunteers, you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Collin Jones — …getting to know people, which you couldn’t do on a, if they’re on a screen, you know, watching your stream.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s interesting. I know Scott Galloway the thing, he, he is always punching on in the New York, uh, New York University professor, he’s always punching on Meta. And like, you know, he, he has a ax to grind there and his, this, the sound bite that he keeps rolling out is, um, so Horizons, which I think is what the Facebook thing is called, um, is, uh, his, his whole thing is like, let’s not forget, friends, that Horizon today has less active users as MySpace today. Um, that, you know, that current, the current MySpace site…
Collin Jones — Yeah, interesting.
Rich Birch — …has more people using it, uh, regularly than, you know, than Horizon. So I, you know, I, it feels like there’s something here. It feels like there’s, I I agree that down the road this, if this does feel like, oh, there, we’re gonna end up there someday. I’m, I was shocked by the one in four churches thing, but I, you know, I think you’re right, there’s probably a caveat there around, you know, you catch the hype cycle at the right moment and, you know, lots of innovators are like, we’re doing it! We’re doing it! Which is, which would be people that are attracted to, you know, talking with you guys.
Rich Birch — So well kind of as we come to, you know, come to land as we kind of come to, you know, wrap up this, first of all, friends, we’ve got a link to the, uh, study in the show notes. You know, pick it up. It’s fantastic. There’s a ton…we could talk for a long time on these. Are there any other kind of, uh, parting thoughts as we wrap up, uh, this conversation, uh, about, uh, the report or just technology in general and its impact, uh, in the church?
Collin Jones — Yeah, I think, I think something that I always try to offer when we’re, when we’re doing this is like, how do we, how do we win online? And I think it’s always experimentation, right? So I think like, you know, really the no-nonsense guide, the winning online or with any channel…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — …um, that’s constantly changing is, you know, experiment, like measure what matters. So measure your mission, measure what matters, make sure that everyone agrees and knows what that is and that it’s very clear, you know. And then two experiment. So make sure that people are empowered to experiment, and that they know the boundaries there and the lines. And then the third is just do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — And that’s really, you know, we all don’t understand online that well; we’re all trying to figure it out.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Collin Jones — It’s all, how can we reach people, more people for Jesus? And so I think, um, yeah, not, not, not feeling behind is a great place to start. Um, and just doing those three things, experimenting and, um, everybody is, you know, uh, in, in kind of the same spot of not understanding online. Um, and we’re all experimenting together.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Collin, I really appreciate you being here today. Uh, again, we’ll link to the show notes. Uh, we’ll link to the study in the show notes, but if we wanna send people online anywhere to learn more about Pushpay, about Resi, where do we want to send them, or to connect with you? How does, how does all that work?
Collin Jones — Yeah, either of our sites: resi.io, so resi.io and pushpay.com, um, which I think everybody probably knows how to spell Pushpay, so I’ll avoid you [inaudible] that. And then the State of the Church report is, is has a lot of other insights too, not just on online on online, but a lot a lot of other digital tools and what people are buying and um, that I think is a great resource as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Collin. Cheering for you and the team. Uh, you know, you definitely got fans over here, so appreciate you being here today. Thanks for helping us.
Collin Jones — Yeah, thanks Rick, so much, Rch, so much. And yeah, I’ve loved your content for a long time and still keep up with it. Um, and love the main idea of unSeminary and this is very much in that realm. I don’t think there’s a seminary class on, uh, church online. Maybe there is now.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Collin Jones — Hopefully.
Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s great. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate you being here today.
Collin Jones — Thanks.
Exploring the State of Church Staff Health: Todd Rhoades & Matt Steen on Findings and Insights from New National Study
Jun 15, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast! Today is part 2 of a conversation that we started back in April with Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen, the co-founders of Chemistry Staffing.
If you’re curious about the state of church staff health in the US, you won’t want to miss this episode as we dive into the findings of the 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment.
Survey topics. // The Church Staff Health Assessment gathered data from 1,063 part- and full-time staff members at churches all across the United States. The sample size included all different church sizes, denominations, people from different positions and age ranges, and the study asked 50 different questions around seven major church staff health categories, including: communication, job satisfaction, leadership, team dynamics, compensation/benefits, work environment, and future stability.
Communication is key. // The study revealed that while 60% of people surveyed feel communication is great, 40% of staff members feel that their leadership needs to improve communication with them. Regular and transparent communication is essential to ensure that staff members feel valued and heard. Address issues by communicating information repeatedly and consistently through multiple channels. Also, provide staff with a way to give feedback to the leadership.
Job satisfaction. // 80% of staff members feel like they are making a difference in their current role. However, the study found that does not necessarily translate to overall job satisfaction. Over a third of those surveyed are either unhappy or neutral about their overall job satisfaction. These results may reveal some toxicity in the church culture that needs to be addressed. A church might be great to attend, but not so great to work at.
Compensation and benefits. // While 58% of church staff members are satisfied with their current salary and benefits, there is a discrepancy between the satisfaction levels of executive pastors and senior pastors when compared with other staff members. In addition, 59% of church staff say that the annual evaluation process along with the strategy for compensation analysis is broken. And when executive pastors and senior pastors are removed from the equation, the number goes up even more. Although it’s challenging to have conversations around your staff members’ job performance, it’s critical that people get clarity on how they are doing in their roles.
Future stability. // 60% of church staff members say that they’re optimistic about their future at their church. Yet over half of staff members surveyed have seriously considered leaving their current church role in the past year, and 56% are open to other opportunities. Todd suggests that this signals a chance for leadership to build partnerships with the staff and understand why there is this openness to leaving. The bottom line is healthy staff members create healthy churches. And healthy churches minimize the transition of staff members.
You can download a FREE 45-page PDF of the 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment results when you visit chemistrystaffing.com/staff-health. Plus, if you are interested in surveying the staff at your church, Matt and Todd can help provide you with a customized survey.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Rich here, and I am super excited for today’s conversation. This is really part 2 of a conversation. Back in April we had our friends Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen on from Chemistry Staffing. And they were just kicking off the Church Staff Assessment where they were really out talking to church leaders and looking to um, you know, gather insights. And today we’re going to get a chance to dive deep into those insights. So welcome back to the show, guys. So glad you’re here.
Todd Rhoades — Thanks for having us; good to be here.
Matt Steen — It’s great to be here.
Rich Birch — So good. Todd why don’t you tell us ah, refresh people what you were so what you were talking about what you’re trying to sample from people, and then kind of talk about the at you know the size of you studied and all that kind of stuff, like kind of the meta information to start.
Todd Rhoades — Sure. Well we we asked 50 different questions around 7 different major ah church staff health categories. So we took ask questions on communication, and job satisfaction, leadership, team dynamics, compensation/benefits, ah work environment, and future stability. Really what we wanted to do was find out, ah particularly since you know the last three years since the pandemic has just it’s been crazy, ah for churches and for staff people. So we wanted to find out what how are how are church staff really really doing. So we were really excited. We had 1063…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Todd Rhoades — …um, full-time and part-time staff people that completed their assessment. Um and a wide range, I mean we had um, yeah, all different church sizes, all different denominations, all different parts of the country, different positions, age ranges. We got a really good kind of a spectrum of responses. And again 50 questions, we asked ah a kind of 50 questions or statements and asked everybody to rate the how they were feeling on a scale of 1 to 5. You know, one would be strongly disagree. Three would be kind of I’m in the middle, I’m neutral. Five would be, man, I’m really strongly agree with this. So the the responses have been been really, really interesting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing. Congratulations on, you know, that’s a good sample size. A thousand is is fantastic. The fact that you were able to kind of get over that that hump is is incredible. And I, so friends, just pulling back the curtain a little bit here and seeing behind the scenes, this is a giant report, like you know 50, 60 pages, like there’s a ton of insights here. There are 17 major findings, and then dozens of like things that we could talk about, and we don’t have all day. We were going to try to do this in half an hour or so ah, but really we want to send you to pick up the entire report. Let’s right start off the beginning, where do we want to send people, Matt, to pick up ah, this report? Where do we want them to download it?
Matt Steen — So it’s it’s chemistrystaffing.com/staff-health.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Matt Steen — And so we’ll send send people that way and I’m sure you’ll drop it in down below. But that’s that’s where you can get the download, right there pretty, pretty easily.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Todd, I’d love, you know, our mutual friend, Warren Bird, I I ask him these questions every time he does a study like this and yeah, he hates it. I’m like okay, what’s your favorite finding. Let’s start with the thing that jumped off the page. And he’s like, I can’t just say one; there’s so many interesting things. So that’s for you, Warren. But ah Todd, where like where do we want to start? What do we want to you know top of the the conversation today. Where do we want to to dig into…
Todd Rhoades — I can’t just say one There’s so many interesting things.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.
Todd Rhoades — Ah no, really, there are. And, hey, Warren, if you’re listening.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — Um, yeah, what what let’s start here, just kind of overall, if we look at the 30,000 foot level. Um. We asked ah, you know all those 50 questions and then we we tallied up all the scores and kind of put everybody into into a number of different ranges all the way from strong, excellent, you know to critical, you know, fair, needs improvement, all of those. So ah, what we found was, overall, and again this 30,000 foot level, a little over half, about 52%, of all the church staff people that we that we got assessments from scored either strong or excellent. Okay?
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, that’s great.
Todd Rhoades — That’s really good. Over over half 52%. Um about 24% scored good. Um, but we look at the goods as being kind of kind of the neutrals. Ah the good scores were in that 3 range out of the 1 to 5 scale. So the good, you know, the goods are getting like a C. You know, a C, a C+. So ah, those are the neutrals. Those are the ones that as we kind of look at what to do with this report and the findings of this report the neutrals are the ones that that kind of are they’re kind of they can be swayed. They can be convinced. Okay, so some of them might have one foot in, one foot out. So about about a quarter ah are fall into that good category.
Todd Rhoades — Another quarter, um about 24%, fall into the fair, ah or the needs improvement, or the critical areas. And as we kind of digest this all this data, I mean those that are that kind of come back with those ones, and a lot of ones, and twos, and a few threes, maybe a four here and there. Ah those are the ones that are um, honestly those are going to be the people that are gonna gonna resign or be fired…
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Todd Rhoades — …ah you know in the next year ah if there aren’t some real proactive steps taken now. So hopefully by identifying some of these critical areas, not just how many people fall into the critical areas, but the individual things that are kind of causing people to feel like this, we think hopefully we can we can start to dive in and make things a little bit healthier.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s ah you know that’s interesting to think about, and we’ll come back to this, but even you know you start to think about those numbers for our own teams, right? Maybe we got 10 staff members, you know, 5 of them are in that you know in in a good spot. You know might be in a good spot. A couple of them are struggling and a couple of them might be on the bubble. Right?
Todd Rhoades — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — What’s and how did what’s your sense… I know so I’m looking forward to next year’s study already, but like what’s your sense just even from conversations, how that (and again unfair question) how that you know trends pre-pandemic even just in the conversations you’re having with churches that that sort of thing?
Todd Rhoades — Matt, you want to take that one?
Matt Steen — I think, you know, I was I was kind of surprised and encouraged, right?
Rich Birch — Okay, good.
Matt Steen — You know, and and I think, Todd and I, we we talk, you know, we spend a lot of time talking with people in transition, or or working with churches that are kind of in in some maybe bumpy spots as they’re as they’re going through a hiring process. And so this came out and I look at it. It’s like 52% of people are are in that strong and excellent. That’s that’s really encouraging for me. Um, and I think that’s I think that’s probably much higher than it was maybe oh two, two and a half years ago.
Todd Rhoades — I think so too.
Matt Steen — Um, and and we’ve even seen this in some of the work that we’ve done as we interview people. You know, there was there was a time there when we were sending more people to counseling than we were to to churches that were looking to hire somebody. And and I so I think this kind of matches some of the some of the anecdotal stuff that we see, which is really encouraging. I you know I am with Todd. You know the the 25% in the goods, man, there’s a lot of there’s a lot that can come from us focusing on some of those areas and and really kind of helping that that crowd feel, you know, more engaged in ah in their in in their day to day. And then we’ve got some we’ve got some issues to clean up with with that bottom 25%. But all in all, man, I genuinely was encouraged by this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Well you know I know one of the things about it seems like everything that in any kind of human relationship communication is so important. Did you find anything that kind of talks about ah, how are we doing interacting, kind of communicating with our teams. You know, do people feel good about that? Where where’s that landing, Todd?
Todd Rhoades — Well and and this is this is one of the one of the top findings that I I think is most important because it has really overarching view on a lot of different things, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — And what we found was that um even though everybody says communication, you know, communication is key and it’s essential, a full 40% of the people that that filled out the assessment feel that their leadership needs to improve communication with staff. So again, you can you can look, and we try to be really balanced in this report. You know, there there are great things that are happening, but there are also some things that that could could stand some improvement. So if you look at this question and this is, you know, as you dive into some of the details and some of these individual questions, so 60% think that communication is great. Um 40 but 40%, 4 in 10 people on a church staff, um feel like communication is needs to be better. So there’s there’s um, communication is not easy. It’s it’s one of those things you have to do continually, and intentionally. Um but a lot of churches are are just needing to really kind of step up in the area of communication, according to what we found.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, it proves that, you know, old anecdote, you can’t really over-communicate, right? You can’t, you know, you you can’t like talk about stuff too much. You can’t like you got to try multiple channels. We’ve got to, you know, give people feedback loops. It’s got to be consistent. It’s got to be regular. Um, yeah, that’s that’s interesting. Interesting.
Rich Birch — One of the things I know, you know, ah during this season—particularly in this which I know this is a fascinating study to me because of the kind of post-pandemicic implications of all of this—is you know, are people holding on to their jobs because they love them. Or are they just holding onto their jobs because they’re worried that they can’t get a job somewhere else. Are are they really happy with their, you know, job satisfaction? How, were there were there things that you pulled out that give us a sense of, you know, where people are at from a you know job satisfaction point of view?
Todd Rhoades — Well yeah,. So let’s start with the positive, okay.
Rich Birch — Sure yep.
Todd Rhoades — Um, when it comes to how do they, do they feel fulfilled in their role, ah we asked the question you know, do you feel like you in your in your current role are having a positive impact in your church and your community. 80%, 8 in 10 people…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Todd Rhoades — …said man, I feel like I’m in my current role that I’m making a positive impact, having a great impact on my church and in my community. So that’s that’s the positive side. Okay, ah where where it gets a little bit um dicier is about 36%, a little over a third of staff, tell us that they’re they’re either unhappy, or they’re they’re in that 3 category. They’re neutral when when they’re asked about their overall, are you satisfied overall with your job, you have overall so job satisfaction. So about a third of the people tell us that they’re either unhappy or neutral. Um, which is you know over a third, that’s a lot of people that are kind of either, no, I’m not satisfied. Or I’m kind of on the fence with it…
Rich Birch — That’s fascinating.
Todd Rhoades — …according to what day you ask me. Um but at the same time, overlap that that still 8 and 10 feel like they’re like they’re they’re making a positive impact. So it’s possible I think from this if you extrapolate the data that people can feel really fulfilled, not fulfilled, but they feel like they’re making a difference, but yet they don’t feel necessarily like they they’re happy in their current job situation. Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s an interesting insight because I think sometimes we might over ah put over emphasis on the fact that like, hey people are getting baptized. You know, whatever, whatever measures that to our church are really important, and we assume that well because people see those things that then translates into, oh then I’m they’re going to be happy; they’re going to like their job. And that’s interesting. That’s just even interesting mental kind of game to play is like it’s possible, there is a segment maybe a third of your team that is at the point where they’re saying, yeah I see that this is making a difference; I am just not very happy.
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — Like I know that what I what I’m doing is working, like but, gosh, it’s grinding me down.
Todd Rhoades — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — Um you know, that is an interesting insight. Fascinating. What do you think about that, Matt?
Matt Steen — You know, I’ve been there, right? And I think I think there’s a lot of people that have been in ministry for a while that they get that, right? They’re they’re they’re looking around. They’re seeing fruit in their ministry. They’re seeing, you know, people getting baptized, people meeting Jesus, good things happening. But at the same time are just in this weird spot of, but man, I’m I’m, I’m empty, I’m hollow, or potentially, you know, there’s some other toxicity that’s going on here. You know I’ve I’ve heard some people say this is a great church to attend, but this is a awful church to work at.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes, yes.
Matt Steen — And and so I think sometimes, you know, that 8 in 10 number can can cause people to hang on a little too long.
Rich Birch — Um, interesting.
Matt Steen — Um, and so I think there’s I think there’s good and good and bad in this. I mean good, man, the the fulfillment piece is awesome. But you know, we we need to you know we we need to be comfortable with with kind of dealing with that whole piece if if you know 3 out of 10 people are kind of wrestling with, hey, I don’t even I don’t even know that I want to show up to work on you know on this day. Um, there’s there’s some, there’s some questions that we need to we we need to work through with our staff, and just help them understand you know, hey how how do we get to a place where you’re you’re fulfilled and actually loving this, as opposed to you know, just kind of muddling through.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that that’s – totally. And well, and yeah, I’ve unfortunately there have been sad times in my ministry where I’ve made the joke, everybody loves the sausage; nobody likes the sausage factory, right?
Matt Steen — Oh yeah.
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Like it’s that it’s that idea, right?
Matt Steen — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch — And and and some of that’s just true. Like some of that is normal.
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like I was… my my daughter she’s just out, first job’s, been a couple weeks in, she’s working at a great church. It’s a great church. But you know we’ve had a couple conversations where I’m like yeah, that’s why it’s called work. Like it’s, you know, like not all of it is necessarily fun, right? Like it is and that that is an adjustment for sure. She’s doing great, but, you know, it is it can be. Well, there’s a lot of executive pastors listening in who I know are like they’re itching to talk about compensation. Ah, you know, even if we’re, you know, we’re we think about that, you know, we’ve been caught in this trap – do we pay people too much? Are that we’re not paying them enough? Um, you know how do people feel about that? You know what are the dynamics? Todd, what did you… I know you asked some questions around that. What what did you pull kind of out from this conversation on that front?
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, well, it’s really interesting. And what I’m going to give you ah are a couple of our findings overall. Okay?
Rich Birch — Okay.
Todd Rhoades — So this includes all church staff people. What we found though is that the numbers change fairly significantly when you take the senior pastors…
Rich Birch — Ohhhh…
Todd Rhoades — …and the executive pastors out of the mix.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Todd Rhoades — Ah, the numbers the numbers kind of kind of go up. And that makes sense, right? Because the senior pastors and the executive pastors are usually the ones that are kind of setting those those compensation and benefits. So just a couple of findings that we found. Um.
Todd Rhoades — Ah, 58% of church staff are satisfied with their current salary and benefits package. So you know on the positive side, 58%…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — …that’s more than half. That’s good.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Todd Rhoades — But that also means that what, if my math is correct, like 42% are not satisfied…
Matt Steen — Struggling.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — …with their current salary and benefits package. And you know, we’re staffing company. We talk to staff people all the time, and that’s one of the things that we hear is that, you know, I I don’t feel like I’m compensated well. Um so so that’s that’s one finding that I think is really significant. The other one I I think is is interesting as well, and again this is a number with everybody included. But the number actually goes up I think it was 64% or something. But ah 59% of church staff say that the annual evaluation process along with the strategy for ah compensation analysis is broken. It needs some improvement. So you take the executive pastors and the senior pastors out, I think that goes up to like 64%.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Todd Rhoades — So that’s a huge number. And again it’s, I get it. It’s it’s tough to schedule out and they’re uncomfortable to do the annual performance reviews. But what you what you get when you don’t do it is employees that feel underappreciated, undervalued and always wonder how they’re doing. Um so ah, just again, we talk about all all throughout this report is maybe some low hanging fruit. It might not be enjoyable or, you know, it’s not something you want to do. But it’s something, it’s just is that’s what the people are telling us is that this is extremely valuable to us. And when you have, you take the 59 number for 59%, you take the 64%, either one is a huge number that says…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — …we’re not getting, you know, kind of what we need.
Matt Steen — Need to do something.
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, we need to do something here. Matt, anything you’d add to that one?
Matt Steen — I think I think some of that is plays back to some of the communication struggles that we were talking about earlier, right?
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Matt Steen — And and people want to know, want to be clear about how they’re doing, you know. Are they doing a good job? Are they not? You know some of the I think some of the brokenness of of of the evaluation process, and all that kind of stuff, you know probably feeds into some of these some of these other numbers of people just kind of being on the bubble.
Todd Rhoades — Yep.
Matt Steen — I think that’s probably the thing that, you know, most of the the neutrals, the people that are kind of on the fence, you know, some some of that can be solved pretty easily you know with with a regular conversation around, you know, evaluation and and helping kind of demystify how how how compensation strategy’s done done in your church. And you know, again, it’s it’s awkward because we never like to have, you know, pointed conversations with people about how they’re doing workwise and that kind of stuff. But at the same time, you know, clarity is so awesome. And just the beauty that comes from clarity.
Rich Birch — Yeah…
Todd Rhoades — And if if you want to take it a little bit deeper, so many of these findings are kind of interrelated, as Matt said.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — You’ve got kind of compensation, but you’ve got some team dynamic things working in here, and and some communication things. But I mean another one of the findings that we found is that over a third of staff members tell us that they don’t they don’t feel like they’ve got clarity in their own role, you know. So that could be that could be as much as I don’t have a job description.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — Ah that could be I had a job description, but everything’s gone haywire since covid, and I’m doing something totally different than my job description. Um, but the whole clarity, lack of clarity by over a third of staff members that say, I I just would like to know what my role is; is that too much to ask? You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, what’s my… I’d like to know what my job is.
Todd Rhoades — Um you yeah just tell just tell me what game to play.
Rich Birch — I’ll keep showing up, but what am I supposed to do? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, and this pushes towards, I know um you know tools like Leader that are trying to provide structured, okay, we’re going to help you with your you know conversations. Or 15five kind of a weekly check-in, you know, those kinds of tools. Man, um and I’ve seen churches use those effectively those are two that I know churches use effectively to try to keep this conversation going so… Because there is the weight of the annual evaluation process can feel super daunting. It’s like the the first time you do it, it’s like, man, we’re going to have to take like a month offs work, and not…
Todd Rhoades — Exactly.
Rich Birch — …have like and do anything else to get all this done. How are we going to do that? And so man if we could shift that out of this kind of big annual thing and more into an ongoing, let’s be constantly giving people feedback.
Matt Steen — That’s it.
Rich Birch — Ah that would be that would be amazing. That, I do find I do find that shocking, to be honest, that 60 almost 60% of church staff say that that process is is seems to be broken or needs improvement. That’s that’s incredible. You baited me here, Todd. You said that ah you said 58% of church staff are satisfied with their current salary and benefits, and you just let a little thing out there about executive pastors and ah, you know senior pastors. Do you have a sense – you might not have the number right in front of you. What did that cohort think about their compensation?
Todd Rhoades — I don’t have those numbers in front of me, but they’re they’re, again, because they’re the ones kind of leading the seat at the table, they seem…
Rich Birch — Setting it.
Todd Rhoades —…to be a little bit more…
Rich Birch — Yes… satisfied.
Todd Rhoades — …um happy with with their… yeah [inaudible].
Matt Steen — The the overall number goes down once we remove once we remove them, in in some of that.
Rich Birch — Okay, I see.
Matt Steen — And and and we see we see a good bit of that through it. You know, where there’s where there’s a general sense of, you know, the the guy that sets the budget is typically fairly happy with [inaudible].
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, exactly.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Steen — …with what with what he’s taking home, right? So…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, maybe talk about that, Matt, from an just an overall trend there that there. Because that’s even an interesting meta finding that, if what I hear you saying, is there seems to be some evidence that like as senior leaders, we’re more positive about our church than than the people that work for us. Is that what you’re saying, Matt?
Matt Steen — We’re seeing we’re seeing some of that. You know, we’re we’re seeing where where we’ll see you know a number is, you know, 60% satisfied when we have, you know, the senior and the XP included, and it drops to 40 when we pull them out. And so we’re seeing a good bit of of that. Now, it’s not like… I think that’s I think that’s normal. I think that’s that’s that’s natural and in in a lot of organizations where where there is that drop. Part of part of how we’re looking to use this, and I’m… spoiler alert – don’t want to get ahead of us, but part of how we’re looking to use this tool ultimately is to to help us understand, what do our senior leaders, what what does our board think about where our entire staff culture is? And and oh, by the way, where is there a discrepancy between what what our staff really feels and really thinks? Because I mean you we we know you know anybody that’s been in senior leadership, it’s it can be really tough, you know, to to to always be up to speed on what what everybody in your team’s thinking, especially if you got a huge team. And so part of part of what we are seeing is is, I don’t necessarily know that is you know it’s It’s a nefarious thing. I think it’s just one of those deals where, yeah, you know, it’s not uncommon for an executive pastor to think that the annual evaluation process works great because they’re they’re running it, right? But but maybe…
Rich Birch — Yes, it’s a great process.
Matt Steen — It’s a great process. I designed it, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Matt Steen — And and there’s algorithms and stuff, right? And then we we forget that there’s there’s a group of people that need more communication that we haven’t necessarily explained, how does this work? Why does it work that way? And so some of what this I think some of what we’ve highlighted over and over again in this is that there might be a little bit of a drop off in awareness um, between our senior leaders and and our staffers that that tools like this I think can come and help help drive some of the conversation, whether it’s awkward or not. But help us kind of be able to to really kind of hone in and say, hey where where are we not seeing eye to eye on some of this stuff. And so I don’t think that’s I think that’s pretty common organizationally in leadership. But, I think it highlights you know, just just how just how steep that that disconnect may…
Rich Birch — You know, Todd, we have heard ah over the last couple years, there have been new words that have come into our our lexicon in leadership that we had not heard before. “Quiet quitting” is one of them. You know this idea that people are kind of fading. You know this I heard one recently “bare minimum Mondays” – have you heard this?
Todd Rhoades — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — Or, you know, people that are saying, you know what? I just phone it in on Monday. Um, did did you guys test, I know you tested ah, you know some stuff around, you know, all that speaks to stability, and like are people staying. Are they thinking, you know, should I be worried like is everybody applying to every the big church across town because they’ve got more money? Um, you know what are what did you find in that?
Todd Rhoades — Well let’s let’s talk about optimism here first.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Todd Rhoades — Um and and you know I wish I wish we would have been able to do this assessment the last two years. And what we want to do, our plan is to continue to do this every year so that we have some some base numbers, and some some comparables so we can see how these numbers move.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Rhoades — My guess is that a year ago, and two years ago, the amount of optimism in the church would have been much lower than it is now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — Um it seems to it seems just from our work with tons of churches, and you know myriad of candidates, that that it’s getting better. And that that’s good. But what our study showed right now as far as optimism, only about 6 in 10 um, church staff members say that they’re optimistic about their future at the church. So it’s you know it’s over half, but there’s still 40 that are like, hmmm am I optimistic? Um, ah and then we asked ah to kind of take that take that a little farther out is we asked, ah how many of you think that you’re going to be, would I think the way we asked it is, would you be happy if you were in your current role, or at your current church in 3 years? do you expect to be there for 3 years? About 42% said they’re unsure. So about 6 in 10 said yeah I hope to be here in 6 years, or in 3 years. About about 4 in 10 are like, I’m not sure.
Todd Rhoades — Um, and again, Rich, just to kind of tell you how how we look at these. As we kind of put candidates in in kind of the the healthy, and kind of the neutral, and kind of the the unhealthy needs some work. We call them the reds, and the the yellows, and the greens, right? So the the greens are that 60% that man they’re all bought in, they want to be there for 3 years. The neutrals I don’t have the breakdown on that, but the neutrals are those ah are kind of like they can be persuaded. They’re they’re just they’re not all in yet. And those those are the ones that are that are the most reachable, with some of the things that that you can do to make these things better.
Todd Rhoades — And then you’ve got the red. You’ve got the criticals that are, you know, some of them honestly maybe are too far gone. Maybe they’re already doing the…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — …the nothing Mondays thing and…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — …and and you know just the quiet quitting. Um, but but still, there’s there’s a pretty sizable for for a lot of the findings that we have and a lot of questions, there’s a pretty sizable number of reds that, man, if we can if we can kind of ah up our game, and and really kind of figure out where the issues lie, and and attack some of these, and and honestly do some, just dirty work, do some discipleship with our staff.
Rich Birch — It’s not dirty work. That’s funny.
Todd Rhoades — Um, here’s here’s the other here’s the other caveat I’ll just throw and here; this is a freebie. Um, so Matt and Matt and I run ah a staffing company, all right? So, we we pay our mortgages by helping churches find staff people.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — That said, what our hope for this for for the findings of this assessment is that we want a healthy church.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Rhoades — And we want healthy staff. Healthy staff create a healthy church. Um.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Rhoades — If if this can help churches to find the issues and to to to deal with the issues, and make things better for their staff, whether they’re the greens, make the greens more green, right? Make make their neutrals into greens. And and make the red, maybe you can get the reds to be neutrals. I don’t know. But if if we can cause church staffs to be healthier and churches to be healthier so that they don’t need us in the future…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — …to run a staff search.
Rich Birch — That’d be amazing.
Todd Rhoades — Man, we’re we’re excited about that. It seems kind of awkward to say that as a guy…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — …that runs a church staff firm. But with healthy churches healthy churches minimize the the the transition of staff members. It’s just it’s just that simple. And if if this assessment tool can help churches kind of figure out how to do that better, then that’s one of the goals we had for it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s an interesting kind of just mental, yeah, kind of an interesting mental frame to put put it in. Because I think even in the healthiest of church, there could still be a moment where it’s like hey we need to hire somebody externally…
Todd Rhoades — Sure.
Rich Birch — …because we’re trying to, there’s an area that we’re trying to accelerate. We’re trying to you know we’re trying to… And it’s like, that’s a good reason to hire. Man, that’s amazing. As opposed to the like, man, we’re burning through people. Our people are constantly, you know, leaving to go to other churches. Man, we don’t like that. And I can imagine from your perspective, it’s like those are not great churches to to, you know, to work with. And those are hard, those are hard places to work with. I shouldn’t say not great. Those are difficult um, can be tricky situations to work with. Yeah, interesting.
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, we [inaudible]…
Matt Steen — Yeah, and I think that’s that’s some some of the some of the the hardest, but some of the best work that we get to do, um is come into those churches that have, you know, churned through several people, and really kind of help sit them down and say, Okay, why is this happening, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Matt Steen — We we let’s let’s see if we can stop that. This this tool I think is going to help help with that. But man, if we can if we can stop that churn, even if it means that I got to go sell umbrellas down on the beach, I’m I’m all for that, because I just I don’t want to see the church get healthy. So.
Todd Rhoades — You do that on the weekends anyway, Matt.
Matt Steen — I do, yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it. Were there any, did you look at any questions specifically around that kind of churn question? And is there a way to kind of benchmark, are people talking to other people? Are there, you know, what what did you find on that front, Todd?
Todd Rhoades — Um, yeah, ah I’ll let Matt talk for a second. I’ll go find the actual percentage, but we found that at least most people are, well, let’s let’s start here. Over over half we asked have you have you seriously considered um leaving your current church role in the past year. And over half, 53%…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Todd Rhoades — …have said, yes I’ve seriously considered it. And over half I’ll I’ll go and look at the at the percentage, I didn’t put it in my notes here. But I’ll go look for it. Um, most most church staff, over (by by most I mean over 50%) would at least consider another offer from another church. Um, so…
Rich Birch — They would they would take the phone call.
Todd Rhoades — …they would they…
Rich Birch — If that church called, they would at least listen. They wouldn’t turn down the like why are you talking to me, you know. They they would listen when the guy calls and says, hey we’re wondering, do you know anybody who might be interested in this kind of role? They they would see through that ruse and listen to the conversation. That’s interesting.
Todd Rhoades — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What do you think about that, Matt?
Matt Steen — Yeah, I… that was that was surprising to me that it was that it was, honestly, that it was that high. Um, but I but it also it also makes sense with some of the other things that we that we’re unearthing here. You know I think we all go through a pay to through phases where I call it “shields down”. You know we where I will listen to that to that conversation. You know, and and I think some of what we’re seeing as we’ve unearthed some of that stuff kind of points to why maybe. You know, maybe there’s some unclarity about what I’m doing. Maybe there’s some uncertainty about whether I’m going to be here in 3 years or not or it. The church is going to be here in 3 years or or not. So I think a lot of that kind of puts us into that shields down type of a type of a mindset. You know, and that’s that’s one of those deals for for us when you know talking to some churches that say, hey, let’s let’s figure out what’s going to help people put their shields up and be so so engaged here that they’re showing up on the day to day. They’re all in they’re not doing, you know, bare bare minimum Monday or or whatever it is. Because most pastors are off on Mondays, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Steen — I don’t even want to know what the acronym is for Tuesday.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Steen — But you know I think there’s some, there’s some simple fixes here. So, Todd, what’d you what did you find?
Todd Rhoades — So it was about, let’s see 50, 56%. So yeah, 56% are open to other opportunities. And that, what we say, is that signals a chance for leadership to to build some partnerships. Ah, just to to understand kind of, kind of why there’s that openness. Um, and…
Rich Birch — That…
Todd Rhoades — …and one thing I will say too is, you know, we’ve we’ve said that there’s greens and yellows and reds. And Matt and I talked to a lot of we talked to a lot of reds that are just really, you know, they have a lot of baggage and are just really working through some things. We talked to a lot of neutrals that are really kind of discerning, should I stay, should I go. But we also talk to some greens and and transition happens in the greens too. It’s possible…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Todd Rhoades — …to be totally bought in and abs… we talk to these not as often as we talk to the to the yellows and the reds, but we talk to greens all the time. But man, I love my church; I love my job but there’s just something God’s just kind of stirring in my heart. And it just tells me that there’s something else. So transmission can happen all across the board. But what we want to try it and highlight is how do we how do we make the the yellows and the reds um, you know, get a little greener.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, I love that. You know, I had the privilege of serving a couple founding lead pastors in the executive seat. And one of the interesting dynamics that I tried to work them through is, or we’ll put it this way. There was a consistent surprise when people would transition from the lead pastor, particularly the founding pastor, because they were like why would anyone want to leave this thing? This is like the best thing ever. Like this is like this is like and that’s because it’s their thing. Like they’re you know they’re the startup founder. And they can’t understand why anyone would ever want to go. But butt, you know, multiple times you know had to work that conversation through with those lead pastors. And yeah, there are people who they’re going to transition, and that’s going to be okay. And the flip side of that is no one is as committed as it as a founding pastor. That’s just true. Like they’re the they started it in their living room and they’re they’re fully bought in.
Rich Birch — Well, you know, Todd, this whole time I’ve been listening and I’ve been thinking, Okay so this is interesting at the national level. Ah man, I wish there was a way that I could know what’s going on on my team. I and I wish there was there was some way that we could figure out, you know, to ask some of these similar questions. Do you have a solution for that, sir?
Todd Rhoades — Yes, yes, sir, I do. Is is one of the things that, like you said, I think the the first step is for everybody that’s listening, go grab the free pdf, like like we said. We’re so we’re ah getting ready to release it. But it’s it’s sizable. It will it will, you can use it as a paperweight when you’re done with it.
Todd Rhoades — But if if you’re interested in staff health and staff leadership, um, and you’re kind of geeky about this, you’re gonna this is gonna be interesting reading for you all the way through, I I think. Um, but the next step, and kind of the elephant in the room, is once you read this and you you kind of see all these national stats, if you’re if you’re kind of the key leader in a church just like you said, you’re asking, well these are these are interesting national figures. But I wonder what it’s like at my church?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Todd Rhoades — So what we’re what we’re doing is we’re offering kind of a kind of an upgraded report, a customized, we’re calling it the Local Church Health Staff Report Assessment. So ah, what we’re doing, just really briefly, is, I think it’s gonna be really cool for churches, is first of all, um, we’re going to have the senior leader, whether it’s a senior pastor, whoever whoever the senior leader is, we’re going to have them take kind of a modified assessment. It’s going to be the same questions, but uh, I was telling Matt, it’s almost like the newlywed game. Remember the newlywed game, Bob Eubanks…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yes.
Todd Rhoades — …all of that where the, you know, they would ask they would ask the husbands, you know, how would your wife answer this question?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Todd Rhoades — Well we’re going to ask the pastors, what’s your perception? How do you think your staff is going to answer this question about about salary and benefits? Or about teamwork or team dynamics. How do you think they’re going to answer it? So so we’re going to have a layer of kind of the senior leadership’s um, how how they how they think it’s going. And then what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna ah um, have ah the church give us their their access to their staff. So each staff member will be able to take the assessment. It’s going to be confidential, you know, for the individual, but we’ll aggregate the data. And we’ll we’ll tell them kind of, okay, for each of these 50 areas, um, here’s here’s where your staff actually feel like they are.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — And we can compare that to where the senior pastor thinks they are.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Rhoades — Ah and and and we can compare that also to the national average. And then optional is we’re gonna allow churches, if they want to they can also have their board members take it. And it’s almost like the senior pastor, how do we feel our staff is doing here?
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Todd Rhoades — So in in that, so so there’s going to be some real interesting findings I think here, not only from the staff level of this is what the reality is, but also where where is leadership blindsided? Where where are there gaps where we think, man, it’s going great. Everybody’s happy with their pay. And we find out that nobody’s happy with their pay.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Todd Rhoades — Ah, but we didn’t know that until we had this. So again, you know you you can look at the the national average, kind of the senior pastor perception, the reality at the local church, and then you can layer on top of that kind of board perceptions as well. But that that will be something that, you know, if you’re if you if you like the the national report, I think the next question is, okay so how are we doing? What’s what’s this look like in my church?
Rich Birch — Yeah, what does that look like. Yeah, love it. So and, friends, listen, can we just have an honest moment for a second. If when you heard Todd say about the newlywed game thing there and you were like, oh, if you winced a little bit. Ah you’re like I’m not sure I want to know. You should lean in and want to know. Like I know there’s no bad information. There’s just information we don’t like. Like how are you going to be able to address these issues unless you get some sort of data on it, right? Like unless you have some sense of where it actually is.
Rich Birch — Man, then… and you’re smart leaders. You’ll be able to address you’ll you’ll see very clearly, okay here are the areas where things that we think are maybe different than what our people actually think. And so um I just love that; I think that’s great. So again, we want to send people to chemistrystaffing.com/staff-health. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, but we really do want to send people there. That’s that’s fantastic. Matt, what what are you hoping? What’s kind of the heart behind this? What are you, you know, what’s the the drive. What’s the change you’re hoping to see happen in in churches that participate in this.
Matt Steen — I I’m hoping to put us out of a job.
Rich Birch — Love it, love it.
Matt Steen — I mean I mean I mean real really, we never got into this because because we we we thought we wanted to be head hunters. We we just we got into this because we love the local church and we wanna see churches get healthy.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Matt Steen — And if we can if we can foster better communication between senior staff and in in the rest of the team, if we can stabilize and and make churches, you know, stop churning through people so quickly, man how cool is that?
Rich Birch — That’d be amazing.
Matt Steen — How how awesome is that for the kingdom? And so that’s that’s really, if we can do one thing that’s that’s really what I hope to see happen.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well this has been fantastic. Todd, we’re going to give you the last word here. I need you to we’re going to bring it all right back around. Channel your inner Warren Bird. Ah what are you what are you saying to leaders that are listening in today about the report. How do, you know, what what do you want to encourage them with?
Todd Rhoades — If if you are, so I think no matter if you’re a senior leader or if you’re the church custodian or whatever your role is at the church, I think you’re going to find some really interesting findings in this ah report. I would just encourage everybody just go download it. Like I said it’s free.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Rhoades — Um, and and read through it, and we’re open to feedback too. We want to hear feedback. And and ah you know we we we value feedback. So um, looking forward to um to seeing exactly how we can how we can kind of help churches and learn um learn from… Ah you know we learned at the national level. But I think as we start to work with local churches and work through this that we’re going to find all different kinds of things that that, you know, we don’t know what we don’t know but we’re about to find out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Well thanks so much, guys. Again, that’s chemistrystaffing.com/staff-health. Go there and you know check it out. Again, we’ll have the link in the show notes. But ah, thanks so much – appreciate all the work you guys do for the church. Thanks for being here today.
Matt Steen — Thanks, Rich.
Todd Rhoades — Thanks, Rich.
Discipleship Leadership Development in Church Planting: Stevie Flockhart’s Leadership Journey
Jun 08, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Stevie Flockhart, Lead Pastor of 901 Church in Tennessee.
Have you ever struggled with the desire for personal recognition and validation in ministry? In this unSeminary podcast episode Stevie shares his personal journey and struggles with comparison and the desire for success. Listen in as he examines critical lessons we can learn from failures, the importance of cultivating a culture of vulnerability on your team, and insights on discipleship.
The comparison trap. // On some level everyone struggles with the temptation to compare themselves to others and receive recognition from man instead of God. Stevie admits that as a leader who wanted to make a difference in the world, the desire for validation and achieving was a struggle. However, through two failed church plants, God gently pruned Stevie so that he learned to lift up the name of Jesus and be faithful with small things. All of this eventually prepared him for planting 901 Church in 2019.
Free to fail. // Stevie’s experiences have given him the opportunity to create a culture at 901 Church where people are free to fail. The staff is encouraged to be wise and be good stewards, but also to be vulnerable, take a risk and not be afraid of failing. Failure teaches us and builds character, making us the people we are today.
Enjoy the journey. // We can be so focused on the destination that we don’t pay attention to the journey we are on. But Stevie says the destination is often a mirage. There is a lot of dysfunction in the idea that if we just get to our destination we will be fulfilled and satisfied. Only Jesus can satisfy us so we need to learn to enjoy the journey, both the successes and the failures.
Learning from others. // In an effort to avoid comparison, we can’t to hide from others. Stevie says while we don’t want to compare results, it’s valuable to compare disciplines, principles or values and to ask what we can learn from others who are farther along than us on the journey. If we want to learn from others, we have to be willing to do the things others did to get where they are.
Apprenticeship. // Both discipleship and evangelism must be prioritized for effective ministry. In addition to offering groups and serve teams, 901 Church has an apprentice program where staff and other leaders meet with two to four people twice a month in order to grow their relationship with Jesus. In addition to reading books and doing things like scripture memorization, they have a lot of conversation around two questions: What is God teaching you right now? What are you doing about it? This intentional discipleship process becomes a pipeline that raises up leaders within the church.
Don’t go alone. // Stevie credits the success and growth of 901 Church to the financial and practical support they received from other churches and networks along the way. As a church leader or church planter, seek wise counsel from others who are farther along in the journey. Part of the way Stevie shares his own learnings is through participation with the Extraordinary Church Collective and also as co-host, along with his wife, of the Essentials podcast.
You can learn more about 901 Church at 901church.com, plus listen to the Essentials podcast there. If you’re a church planter, connect with Extraordinary Church Collective here.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have tuned in today. Oh, man, we’ve got a great conversation lined up. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Today we’ve got Stevie Flockhart from us. He is the lead pastor at a church called 901 Church in Memphis, Tennessee. They’re both one of the fastest growing churches and the most reproducing churches in the country. It was planted by Stevie in 2019, very opportune time, right before the pandemic. Uh, and they’ve seen a whole ton of people take steps towards Jesus. We’re gonna talk about that today. Their dream is to reach the city and have multiple locations across nine, the 901 area and beyond, really ultimately helping to reach, uh, the world in Jesus’ name. Stevie, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Stevie Flockhart — Man, so honored to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Rich Birch — Yeah, fill in the picture there. What did I miss? Kind of talk me through what, you know, kind give us the 901 story. Give us a bit of the flavor.
Stevie Flockhart — No, that was everything. You hit everything. So, no. So we, uh 2019, uh, my family and I, uh, married to Whitney, uh, been married for almost 13 years. We got three kids. So the five of us moved to Memphis, uh, in 2018 to plant the church, to get ready to, uh launch. And so spent time with the launch team. Uh, you do not know… if we knew Covid 19 was coming in 2020. Well, guess what? We were launch in 2021 or 2022, whatever…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …So, uh, we, uh, we launched with about 30 or 40 of us. And man, God just showed up. His hand was all over it um, learned a lot, uh, over the last several years. I’ll get to that in a moment. You know, we planted in, uh, the Atlanta area, went down to, uh, south Florida to revitalize a church uh, unsuccessfully, you know, so in the world’s eyes, man, I failed at it twice. And, uh… Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Stevie Flockhart — I came to Memphis, planted, and, uh, God just started blessing. And his, his favor was all over it, uh, truly skyrocketed. And every category you would ask, whatever, from attendance to salvations, to people, to groups. And then covid hit, you know? And so, uh, you go to three 30 or 40 people to several hundred in a year and a half, you think, my goodness, what’s, what’s happening here? And then Covid 19 hits, you know? And so, uh, if it had been up to us, you know, God really asked, Hey, what do you want to do?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — What’s your perfect plan? You know? And so, uh, we’d have probably planted in 2021, maybe even 2022. And so, uh…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — So we plant the church, And then a year later—uh, Easter 2019 was when we launched—and so truly, almost a year later, a little less than a year later…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stevie Flockhart — …COVID happens. And so just like everybody else, we have to, uh, shut down, uh, meeting in person. Uh, we’re online. And it really did, uh, I don’t even wanna say killed momentum, of course it did. But it kind of gave everybody this new perspective of, so what now? You know? If we’re gonna continue to grow the church, continue to do what we need to do, we might have to do it in ways that we’ve never done before. And so, uh, we came back July of that year, and I’m telling you, God’s just been so good. I feel like we’ve planted the church twice, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — So, uh, it really, and I think that was everybody’s, uh, feeling, but again, for us being so fresh and so new, but God has continued to bless. We’ve continued to develop leaders. Uh, we’ve seen over 1400 people saved in four years.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Stevie Flockhart — Uh, over 700 baptized. It’s just been nuts. And so, uh, uh, developing leaders, uh, I gotta give, uh, just a nod to my spiritual father, Mack Lake, who’s just poured into me…
Rich Birch — Love Mack.
Stevie Flockhart — …and helped me just with processes and systems on how to, not just not do it all yourself and delegate, but truly reproduce yourself. You know, delegate…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stevie Flockhart — …reproduce, empower, equip others underneath you to continue to build the church. It’s been unbelievable. Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. I love, so, such a great story. And I, I love the journey your, you know, your own personal story that, you know, God’s had you on, and I’d love to go there. I’d love to actually hear more about that. You know, you end up on these lists on fastest growing, most reproducing, and…
Stevie Flockhart — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, what does that do inside your head? Is that, how do you fight the… there must be just a natural kind of comparison game thing that happens. Take us inside that. Help us unpack that a little bit. What’s, what’s the story that’s happening there? Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. And so I think, uh, you know, for me, you know, and everybody’s journey’s a bit different, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stevie Flockhart — But I think we all struggle with some of, uh, a lot of the same things. And so, especially leaders and, and guys that want to inspire, you know, and change the world. You know, there’s, so that comes with that sometimes if you’re not careful, you know. The flesh, your enemy will continue to try to lie to you. And so for me, uh, this is the crazy, let’s call it, uh, ironic thing about this: six, seven, eight, nine years ago, I wanted so badly to be on that top 100. Rich Birch — Sure. Stevie Flockhart — If I could, Lord, if I could just make the top hundred, then I could die, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — Top hundred whatever. Don’t even have to be largest or fastest hundred [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stevie Flockhart — …that started this year – just let my name be out there. Something…
Rich Birch — Yep, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …that someone has to know about me.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — And God just has a way, as you know, and as those who have grown in it know, just this way of disciplining and pruning. Uh, and he’s so kind and gentle, but it just hurts so bad. And so, uh, I just had this void, you know, and I knew Jesus, but I just needed to be known – by you, and by that guy, and that guy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — And, uh, and something takes place where, and again, there’s no formula, there’s no magical equation. So please don’t hear that today. But when you start putting your priorities and you get your priorities right, uh, and just being known by God and being known by, you know, listen, if, if, if God loves me, and I know he does, and if my wife loves me, and those three kids love me, all the other stuff, just kind of, just kind of falls to the wayside. It really, really does. And so, when you stop caring about those things, I believe that’s when God really started giving me more. God really started trusting me with more. And so you could go to scripture and say, faithful with the small, he’ll give you more, but, uh, if you’re faithful with what he’s already given you, and I was not for so long, you know? So I would say, uh, and I wouldn’t even say, man, that I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I was just doing it for, uh, other reasons. Man, I was, I wanted to do it for God’s glory. Man, this is for your glory, Lord.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Stevie Flockhart — Just give me a little bit, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — And so I’m here to preach so people would be saved. I just want everybody to know how many people have been saved? Are you with me?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Stevie Flockhart — And so, uh, not until there’s this renewing of the mind…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Stevie Flockhart — …where God takes me through a season. When I say a season, I don’t mean three months. I wish it was three months. You know, four, or five, six years of just pruning…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Stevie Flockhart — …cutting off, tearing away, pulling the weeds of my soul out, to bring me to the place where truly this is for his kingdom, not mine. His church, not mine. And I have seen over the last three or four years that when that’s your posture in your heart, cause God can’t be mocked, you know? So that’s why I, when I say there’s no special secret, like you can’t trick God into pretending like it’s not about you.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Stevie Flockhart — And then he’ll give you more so that you can get more, you know, that God can’t be tricked or mocked.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — Uh, but when you’re truly faithful with what he’s given you, when you understand it’s not about you, it’s about lifting the name of Jesus, I do believe that’s when he starts giving you more influence, uh, and sending more people to you cause you’re not pointing to them to you, pointing them to you anymore. You’re pointing them to Jesus. So that’s what we’ve experienced. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, and even your story of like, you had to… there’s so many people would come on a thing like this and they would skip the fact that the first couple things didn’t go well. You know, they would skip that.
Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. Sure. Right.
Rich Birch — Which is kind of the easy thing to do, right? It’s just like you, you know, you show up and it’s like, we started and things went amazing. And that, that just isn’t the truth, right?
Stevie Flockhart — Yep, yep, yep.
Rich Birch — So how, how do you, how do you lead outta that place? What’s that look like for you as you lead with your team and with other people around you? How do you cultivate that as a part of, you know, even your, your culture, your, um, yeah, the team you’re, you’re with? Stevie Flockhart — Yep. I love you used the word culture. Uh, you know, we have a culture within our church that’s, uh, so goes the leader, I believe, so goes the people. I believe that. And so our staff, uh, we have a staff culture. One of our staff values is we’re free to fail. And so out of that, there’s this vulnerability, there’s this freedom of failure. We take risk. Uh, now let’s be wise, let’s be good stewards, you know? Let’s don’t go spend $3 million and go, let’s just see if it’s a risk tomorrow. You know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — And so there’s wisdom in that. But, uh, uh, looking at my story, if I could go back, and I’ll say this sometimes preaching, I’ll say this sometimes leading on my staff, if I could go back, people would ask, you know, what would you change if you could go back?
Rich Birch — Good question. Yeah. Stevie Flockhart — And you immediately wanna say like, I wish I wouldn’t have planted so early. You know? Cause I was this young guy and thought I was the, the greatest thing that ever hit the church world, and they just couldn’t wait. You know? And God just had me to bring me through. I wish I wouldn’t have done that, but I wish we wouldn’t have gone down to South Florida and spared 14 months of literal hell down there, you know? And so, cause I believe then we were ready, but the church wasn’t; they just weren’t ready to change, you know? And they were in their ways. And so, if I could go back, Rich, I’m being honest with you, sure there are moments and times, but if I changed anything, I wouldn’t be who I am today, you know?
Rich Birch — That’s good. Stevie Flockhart — And I’m grateful for the journey. And so, uh, the destination, I’ve learned, is oftentimes a mirage. Like, you know, like, just, if I could just get here… once you get here, you want to go there, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — Now there’s health in some of that, you know, but there’s also a lot of dysfunction in, if I could just get here, I’d arrive, I’d be fulfilled, I’d be satisfied. Well, Jesus is really the one that can truly satisfy, you know?
Stevie Flockhart — And so the destination really is a mirage. It’s the journey. So enjoy the journey – the successes and the failures. And so where I am today, you’re talking about, you know, unSeminary, what they did not teach me in seminary was how you would feel when you looked at the guy down the road who’s got a whole lot more people coming to your church than you have at your church.
Rich Birch — Yes. Stevie Flockhart — What they did not teach you was, you know, cause again, what we’d pray and what we’d want, I mean, we’re getting real on this pod… Like what we [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
Stevie Flockhart — …change the city.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — And I pray that you would bless this church, and this church, and this church. Just bless my church…
Rich Birch — …as well.
Stevie Flockhart — …a little bit more, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stevie Flockhart — Yeah, yeah. Like, bro, I was jacked up. A little bit more, you know. But even, I guess even the growth, like as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Stevie Flockhart — What if God wants to radically change the city. And it’s from the church down the road. And the church up the road, you know? And you gotta be okay with that. And so, uh…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — I think we all fall into the comparison trap. We all fall into the, uh, feeling worthy, feeling validated. Uh, we all fall into the performance trap, you know? I know for me, uh, that’s just where I was. If I could just perform, if I could just, uh, check off the list, then everybody would see what I’ve accomplished. And somehow I was naive enough, you know, to think that my value and my worth was tied to how many people were coming to my church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — …uh, how many people I had on staff, you know? And, and it’s, it’s a lie man. And the devil will ruin your life with it. So.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — And I lived it. Rich Birch — Love, love it. So one of the things you said there got me thinking about this tension I think we feel where you, we don’t wanna get caught in the comparison trap, and I really appreciate you doing a good job, you know, helping us get inside that. But the other part of this is we wanna learn from other churches. We do want to, it’s not like you can kind of just hide…
Stevie Flockhart — Yep.
Rich Birch — …in your, you know, under a turtle somewhere. And I know it would appear like, yeah, you’re trying to learn from others, you’re trying to grow from others. Help us understand how does that work? How, how has that impacted your ministry? Is there a nuance between those two? Stevie Flockhart — Yep. I do, uh, believe that. So I would say compare disciplines, compare principles, compare values, uh, compare, uh, uh, less results, and compare journeys, you know? And so this person, I could feel, uh, insecure about that guy, or I could go to that guy and say, how did you get here? You know, what did it take to get, so I could compare marriages and say, man, if my marriage was just… or I could say, how in the world do you and your life, your wife, love each other so much? How in the world do you parent your kids like that?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Stevie Flockhart — You know, your kids aren’t perfect, man. How did they get to that point, you know, where you’re releasing them, you’ve given them authority, they’re making their own decisions. You need to compare those things, you know? So could I believe sometimes, and again, we’re talking about the renewing of the mind. This is a healthy person, a spiritually mature, and emotionally secure person asking themselves, wait, how do I get there?
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — And so a lot of times we want what other people have, but we’re not willing to do what other people did to get it, right? You know? Rich Birch — Oh, it’s so true. Stevie Flockhart — So, yeah. And so if we’re living in this, uh, dysfunction of, you know, uh, worthlessness and validation, if I, that’s not a good place to be.
Rich Birch — Right.
Stevie Flockhart — But if we’re living in this place, like I want to be used greatly by God. I want my marriage to be successful. I want my kids to love the kingdom, and love the church, and not be burnout. How do I accomplish that? We do need to compare disciplines and principles and values to other people. Cause sometimes our disciplines and our principles and our values aren’t lining up to, uh, put us in the place that we’d like to be in. You know? So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Stevie Flockhart — I think there’s value in that for sure. Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Um, so one of the things you said, again, going back to one of the things you said earlier, kind of pivoting back to that. Your church obviously has a focus you have a focus on reaching people, people who don’t follow Jesus. You mentioned, you know, 1400 people saved, 700 people baptized. That’s amazing. Praise God. That’s in, that’s incredible. And you know, we know that that’s because God’s at work, right?
Stevie Flockhart — Sure.
Rich Birch — Ultimately, there’s not some magic that you’re doing, but obviously there’s something as a leadership you’re doing to stay focused on that. What does that look like? How do we keep our churches focused on evangelism? Stevie Flockhart — Yep. Yep. Uh, I mean, culture’s, everything, uh, but you’re pointing people back to mission and vision. And so, uh, our mission statement and, and 901 Church is we exist so that people would be reached and lives would be changed. Uh, it’s our way of saying, we are here so that people would be saved, and disciples would be made. I think we have done ourselves an injustice the last several years, especially in the world of podcasts and everything’s online as social media. We’re debating and fighting, and there’s division within the church, evangelism or discipleship. Oh it’s just a show and entertainment on Sunday to get people there, you know? So it’s like, it’s this weird, uh, reality of like, oh, so obviously if your church is big and has lights and there’s a band, it’s gotta be shallow.
Rich Birch — It’s so true. Stevie Flockhart — And obviously if your church is small, and it’s like, it’s must be depth. It’s like, oh, well, goodness. Like, I think we’re missing the point here. We’re focusing on methods and not fo focusing on mission, you know?
Rich Birch — So true.
Stevie Flockhart — And so we’re here everything we do, man, and so we talk about it in staff, and we pray over this, and we fast over this. And we, uh, we have systems and metrics to make sure that we’re living out our mission. And so, every sermon I preach, every song we sing, every group we have, every recovery conversation, every marriage counseling, every person in the parking lot or serves in students knows, I’m here, priority one, for people that do not yet know Jesus. That’s why I’m here.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stevie Flockhart — People reach. But we’re not just gonna stop there. Do I believe it’s the most important thing? I absolutely do. But do I believe it’s the only thing? I don’t, you know?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stevie Flockhart — And so now let’s make disciples. Now let’s get cyclical for a moment. I believe, a disciples number one priority is for people that don’t yet know Jesus. You know?
Rich Birch – Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — And so, uh, and so again, people reach, lives changed. Everything we do is for people that do not know Jesus. But, now you’re a part of the family. You are in the army, you know. We are not us focused. We will not be inner focused. It is continuing to be people that are not here yet. And our people have grabbed a hold of that, you know? And so they love…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.
Stevie Flockhart — …and it’s a part of our vision, our mission, and now it is our culture. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So love that. That’s so good. And one of the common misnomers, and you kind of touched on it there, was, you know, that fast-growing churches are all shallow, that they’re not interested in discipleship. And that my experience in, you know, 10 plus years of studying these, that’s just not true.
Stevie Flockhart — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — That actually to be a fast-growing church, you actually have to do both. You have to do discipleship…
Stevie Flockhart — Sure.
Rich Birch — …as well as evangelism. The words might look different at every church, but you have to do both. Talk us through what that looks like. What does your kind of discipleship process look like? How are you, how are you helping people take steps to Christ? That’s, that’s, you know, all those people that got baptized. What are you doing to help them, uh, grow in those relationships with, with Jesus? Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. And so, I mean, the easy, quick answer would be, you know, we, we push, uh, groups, you know, every single week. You know, we push getting involved on serve teams, you know. Uh, one of the, uh—let me be nice about it—one of the silliest conversations I could have with somebody, is coming to a church, 6, 7, 8 months, they hit the road. Nobody talked to me, nobody loved me. My uncle was in the hospital, whatever, you know, the, the situation is. And unfortunately those things happen. But oh my goodness, we’re so sorry. What group are you in?
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Stevie Flockhart — Well, I’m, I’m not in a group yet. What serve team do you serve on? Well, haven’t… I was going to, but it’s like, so you truly, let’s just get real for a moment. You show up on Sunday morning. You are the back of somebody’s head every week. You sing your songs, you hear the sermon, you leave, and you call that like you’re a part of the church? Like, no, you attend a service, you know? It’s gotta go beyond that. Stevie Flockhart — And we talk about this stuff, you know? We, we, the truth sets us free, you know? So we say get on a serve team, it accomplishes so much. You are the hands and feet of Jesus. You’re serving others. But you’re also building community within those, you know. So even‑I get to that to a moment‑we have, uh an apprentice program at our church. Uh, every staff member, every leader has to have two to four people that they are meeting with, uh, at least twice a month where they’re walking… some, some of it’s books, some of it’s scripture memorization, some of it’s both.
Rich Birch — That’s cool. Stevie Flockhart — Uh, some of it truly is just real life, uh, uh, you know, walk through, Hey, I’m going through this. I need some help right now. And so it it just looks like a, uh, it looks like the way Jesus did it, you know? He spent a, uh, a ton of time with the three, and then a whole lot of time with 12. You very rarely saw him spending an a ton of time with the crowd, with the people, you know. But he’s the most influential people person of all time. How is this? I think it’s the leadership development and the discipleship development process, you know? So those three men acted like Jesus, thought like Jesus, dealt with conflict like Jesus. And those three men went in, you know, met new people and planted churches. And so again, this, this, this trickle effect, this multiplication effect that takes place, uh, it happens all over the world, but it can happen within our church, and it has to start with discipleship. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let’s talk about that apprentice thing. I love that. That is that, um, so like, I, you know, I think I heard you say every staff, you know, they have two to four people they meet with at least twice a month.
Stevie Flockhart — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is that people that are on your team? Is that people, you know, how, how do you define those relationships? How do you ensure that’s actually expanding beyond, you know, kind of just the, the relationships that might be just in front of them? What does that look like? Stevie Flockhart — Sure, sure, sure. So I do believe in, you know, affinity groups where we’re draw we’re drawn to naturally people who are mm-hmm. either like us, or have the same age kids, or some of the same hobby, you know, for sure. And so we don’t just say, go find three random people. You know, but it’s people that…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …you, you would want to have dinner with, people that you’d want to invest in. Somebody that you would, or a couple that you would say, this is somebody I wouldn’t mind spending a whole lot of time with over the next year or two, you know? And so we’ve just kind of put this into practice. We’ve always, you know, had the multiplication effect for sure. Stevie Flockhart — But, uh, I need to go find three people and three couples. It would be, you know, where I’m spend, I’m golfing with them. I’m meeting with them at Starbucks. We go out to dinner with them every few Fridays where we’re spending the time with them, and we’re talking through, you know, and sometimes it’s as easy as two questions. You know, what is God teaching you right now? What are you doing about it? What is God teaching you right now? What are you doing about it? I mean, those two questions. You could have hours of conversations…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …with those two questions. Uh, and again, it’s kind of, uh, never ending. It’s open-ended. And so, uh…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …every staff member has, you know, an apprentice, uh, or they should, you know, every leader, every team lead, every coordinator. And again, we do it, and the language doesn’t matter right now, but you know, there is uh, a flow; there’s a leadership pipeline that we have that every single person are some people are just showing up. Then they move into team members. Well, then those team members can move into leading a team. But then when you recognize and you equip and you pour into, that person can then lead a department, and then you recognize, and you pour into, and you lead and you equip, and then that person can lead, uh, an organization, you know? So lead others, lead leaders, lead departments, lead organizations. And there, there really is a structure and a system, and there’s a way to do this. And I think it’s the Jesus way.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Stevie Flockhart — And so, uh…
Rich Birch — Love it. Some good Mack Lake pipeline stuff there too. He would’ve, uh, he’d be very happy that. Stevie Flockhart — The man, the myth, the legend. Yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. He’s incredible. Yeah. That’s so good. I love that. And I love the, you know, the simplicity of, you know, hey, let’s gets, get in relational, uh, get in, you know, get a relationship, kind of intentional relationship with some people. And then just some simple questions. You know, what are you learning? What’s Jesus teaching? What are you doing about it? Like, let’s just keep that in front of people. I think, man, just that alone, if we could get our people to do that, man, we’d have a leadership development revolution going on, you know, around us. That’s, uh, you know, that’s, that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — So kind of talking about the, your actual planting experience this time, um, talk us, talk to us about, you know, are you connected with a network? Did you just do this all your own? Did you drop into, you know, your town, you know, and just like open the phone book and start calling people? Talk, talk to us about that.
Stevie Flockhart — Wow…
Rich Birch — What’s the support around you look like? Stevie Flockhart — Sure. I think that’s some guy’s stories and I salute them…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …and I honor them. Oh my goodness.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — But no, we could not have, uh, been where we are done what we did, you know, New Season church in Hiram, Georgia when we first started, um, donated probably $50-, $60,000 worth of AVL sound system…
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Wow.
Stevie Flockhart — …for sure. But then, uh, a church, uh, and I consider him, my pastor now Pastor Paul Taylor, Rivers Crossing Church, Cincinnati, Ohio. Uh, they just saw something in us, invited us to be, at the time it was called 10 and 10 Network. And, uh, they, I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars over three or four years. Uh, and what they did for us financially allowed us to bring on support staff, you know, so just going back to that leadership pipeline, yes, you can do it with volunteers, but when you’re able to bring on staff, uh, it’s just a game changer, you know? Stevie Flockhart — So that’s where, again, I can tell somebody like, you know, uh, when you’re faithful in the small, God will bless you. I mean, I started the church. I was the lead pastor and the janitor and the student director…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …and the receptionist, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Stevie Flockhart — …and so, and the card note writer to the first time guest, well, then weeks go by. Yes. And you, you know, empower and equip, but they just came in, uh, financially helped us, you know, emotionally helped us. He was a pastor to me. And so I was, uh a part of, uh, the 10 and 10 network for two or three years. We’ve just changed the name. Now I’m on leadership with them, called Extraordinary Church Collective, ECC, again, based outta Cincinnati. But, uh, anybody that wants to plant a church, we’d love to have a conversation with you. But, uh, they, it was a game changer for me. We would not, maybe 901 exists without ’em, maybe, perhaps. No way, we’ve seen 1400 people say, there’s no way I have 20 staff members four years into this. There’s no way we’re looking at location number two right now, being able to renovate it without them, the mission, the vision behind church planning, uh, and what they want to continue to do. So it’s huge. It’s huge.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Stevie Flockhart — Do it without ’em. Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. And that, you know, that’s one of the things that we’ve seen, and friends, you probably know this if you’re listening in, but one of the things that you know, is like a definitive, Hey, we’ve, we’ve learned this lesson, you know, when one of the defi, the divider kind of dividing lines between church plants that make it and those that don’t, is that, that the ones that have a network are more likely to make it. They’re more likely to push through. And so, yeah, Extraordinary Church network, that’d be great. Where, if people wanna learn more about them, where do we send them online to learn more about, about that, that group? Stevie Flockhart — Yeah – extraordinarychurchcollective.com – and , uh or Google… Rich Birch — Dot com. Ok, great.
Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. And so, Extraordinary Church Collective. Uh, my name, Steven Flockhart…
Stevie Flockhart — And again, we’re starting, it’s, it’s a network. It’s a collective though.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Stevie Flockhart — Much different. Maybe some, uh, traditional networks, and, uh, anybody, what you just hit on though, is I think the key to life, it’s community.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — It’s it, you can’t do it alone. You can’t be isolated. And what you just said, Rich, is so true. A lot of guys are failing and falling because they didn’t have people in their lives to either help them, hold them accountable, or just say, yo, hey, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. Here’s what I believe you should do. And pastors and authorities in your life to say, sometimes not just, Hey, here’s what I think you should do. Here’s what you should do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — And here’s what you should not do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Stevie Flockhart — Go ahead. You know? Rich Birch — Don’t step on that landmine. Yes, exactly. I have done that. I lost my leg. Don’t do it. Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. Wise council is, so, yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. That’s so good. Well, when you look to the future, when you look up over the horizon at 901, what’s, what’s on the horizon? Where are you, you know, kind of what are you thinking about next? What are the questions you’re asking as you look down the road? Stevie Flockhart —Yeah. And so, uh, when we planted, we always knew, so even 901 Church, it’s the area code. It’s a brand of where we’re at in Memphis. I mean, the Memphis Grizzlies talk about it all the time. Rise up 901. Justin Timberlake…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Stevie Flockhart — …Al Green, whatever. I mean, everybody just talks about the 901. And so from the very beginning, our vision behind that was to reach a city to change the world. And so we wanted to be multisite, uh, multiple locations. Uh, God, that’s a long story. I can tell you later off podcast, God gave us a 15,000 square foot building…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Praise God.
Stevie Flockhart — …15 minutes from us right now in the, another city just gave it to us. A church that was struggling, uh, was gonna shut down, sell it, and give the money to missions. They just gave us an almost $2 million property; they just handed to us.
Rich Birch — Praise God. Stevie Flockhart — So we’re renovating that right now. So over the horizon is more locations, multiple locations within the 901. People have asked me, it’s like, what happens when God blesses and God does what he does, and you want to continue to church plant. So we’ve planted churches in Scotland and Chattanooga and the Ukraine and Arizona, and a digital church online only right now. But what happens, like, well, are they 901? They’re not in the area code. You know, the brand is messed up. It’s like, well, we’ll reach a city to change the world, you know? And so, uh, uh, multiple locations we want to, raising up leaders, once again. And again, moving people from one location. We’ve got about 200 of our people right now ready, excited, prepared, equipped, uh, raising them up even now to go over to the next location that’ll launch later this year. You can’t just hope to launch a location next week and send some people over there. There’s a process. It’s going back to that pipeline, getting them ready. So, uh, you ask what’s on the horizon, that’s what’s next. But, uh, we do see ourselves in 6, 7, 8, 9 locations over the next 10 or 15 years…
Rich Birch — So good.
Stevie Flockhart — …within all around the 901. Rich Birch — Wow. This is so great. This has been so fantastic, Stevie. I really appreciate you taking time, uh, you know, to be with us today. Lots of, you know, just, I gotta page your notes here, stuff to think about and chew on. I, I know for sure our listeners do as well. Uh, just as we’re wrapping up, anything else you’d like to say, uh, before we close down today’s conversation? Stevie Flockhart — No, thank you, Rich, for having me. I’m honored. If anybody’s listening, uh, keep Jesus the focus. Not a magazine, not a number. Be faithful with what you have. And he just promises to give us more and more and more. Be a good steward. Uh, let him be, let be trustworthy and let him be able to trust you more. So that’s what I would say to anybody. Rich Birch — So good. That is so good. Uh, where do we wanna send people online if they wanna track with you or with the church? Stevie Flockhart — Yeah. 901church.com. That’s our church, uh, website. But my wife and I also have a podcast called Essentials Podcast. Uh, we just help marriages, uh, parenting, leadership, you know, it’s the essentials of life. So man, anybody that would wanna support that or go there, we’d be very, very grateful. Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, we’ll link to that as well on the show notes. So, thanks so much, Stevie. I appreciate you being here today. Thanks for sharing with us. I really appreciate it. Stevie Flockhart — Thank you, Rich. See you next time.
Long-Term Leadership: Jeff Cranston on Steady, Purposeful Leadership
Jun 01, 2023
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Lead Pastor Jeff Cranston with us from LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina.
How can churches maintain balance in ministry and create engagement within their congregation and staff? This is a question that Jeffanswers in today’s episode of the unSeminary Podcast. Don’t miss this conversation where we talk about focusing on the purposes of the church, teaching systematic theology in an understandable way, and how to increase collaboration and avoid silos in your ministries.
Stay balanced. // LowCountry Community Church had been around since the mid-90s, but when they found themselves faltering at one point, they rallied around the five purpose-driven church principles. The five principles LowCountry articulates are to connect people to God and each other, grow in your faith, serve other people and God, reach, and worship. Churches tend to have a stronger leaning in some of these areas than others so focusing on all five can help you stay balanced.
Create engagement. // As part of their discipleship process, the church has also implemented core classes that focus on each of these five principles. People who are new to LowCountry are encouraged to first take the Connect class, which consists of attending a Sunday service together, meeting and hearing from the staff, and then sharing lunch. The goal is to have everyone coming out of the Connect class take a next step. LowCountry has found that they have a very high retention rate through this assimilation process.
Kitchen Table Theology podcast. // Another aspect of discipleship at LowCountry includes the Kitchen Table Theology podcast. After seeing a rise in biblical illiteracy, including among younger people the church wanted to bring on staff, Jeff realized that most people weren’t familiar with the bible or what Jesus was teaching. Through his podcast, Jeff aims to teach systematic theology in an understandable way, making it accessible to everyone. He says it’s like sitting at a kitchen table, having a cup of coffee, and chatting about theology in a casual way.
Remember your mission. // As a church grows, it’s critical to keep the staff aligned and focused on the mission on a regular basis. Talk with your staff to remind them why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Stay connected to staff health. // LowCountry has also been intentional the last few years about staff health. They partnered with Best Christian Workplaces to do a survey among the staff which focuses on eight key components. The survey provides some hard numbers so you know exactly how your staff feels about the church environment and culture. While it can be difficult to face what needs to be corrected in the workplace, it gives your staff a voice and is helpful for creating a healthier team environment.
Create a culture code. // Another way LowCountry has given the staff a voice is by developing a culture code together. Bringing everyone to the table to craft this document has created engagement, combatted ministry silos, and invited collaboration across different ministry areas, which ultimately benefits the whole church. Once a year the staff walks through the five components, which keeps the staff rowing in the same direction. The five components are courageous pioneers, loyal to one another, work hard and play hard, joyously collaborative, and steadfastly committed to growth.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation today. We’ve got Jeff Cranston with us. He is at LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, South Carolina – pumped to have this conversation. For folks that don’t know ah ah, LowCountry started, I believe in 1994; Jeff’s been there 20+ years. He’s the published author of a number of book and also hosts a podcast, so I know he’s going to have good audio, Kitchen Table Theology. Jeff, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Jeff Cranston — Rich, thank you very much. It’s an honor to be on with you today.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so honored that you would take time out. Kind of fill out the picture there – tell us about LowCountry Community. Give us a sense of the the church. You know that kind of thing.
Jeff Cranston — Yeah, we’re nondenominational, evangelical church started in 1994 um and got off to a pretty good start, and then sort of faltered. And my wife and family, we came in ’99 and it was ah it was really a restart. There there was a great core group of people of about eighty folks with with some good DNA of of caring for people, of ah wanting to reach the community. And so we we just started over again, hit the hit the reset button. And the elders at the time were they they saw the need for it and were patient with me. I was a lot younger then, and but yeah, we’ll be here on ah, we’ll be here in June of this year twenty four years.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Jeff Cranston — But it’s just grown very steadily. Um, we we just have plodded along, Rich. There’s never been any real tremendous spikes in attendance. It’s it’s been a steady climb. Ah but yeah I’m a believer in, you know, slow and steady does win the race most of the time.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Jeff Cranston — And it it’s required a lot of patience so, I can assure you. Because there’s a lot of times I wanted to go a whole lot quicker than it did.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. A friend a good friend of mine in Omaha at Stonebridge ah Christian Church there, Mark Chitwood, he jokes that he says, hey our church is the slowest growing church in America ah, they just have been consistently, you know, in a very similar trajectory just every year little bit more. But it’s amazing over that time you see just incredible growth. And I actually think, man, that’s healthier, that’s in some ways easier to manage. Just love that.
Rich Birch — So you know, if I understand correctly your church you know when you started you were kind of sub 100, somewhere in that range. Today you’re the church is 2000 plus, somewhere in there. That’s that’s amazing growth to see over that timeframe. I wonder if if we could talk a little bit about that. What, you know, you talk about the church was faltering was a bit of a restart. Maybe rewind the clock a little bit in your brain. What was it that, when you thought, you know, in the restart, what were some of those things that need to be addressed? How did, you know, how did those, you know, how and how does how could that impact us today as we’re thinking about our churches?
Jeff Cranston — Yeah, I think the heart of the people they they really wanted to reach out to the community. And we were on Hilton Head Island. The church was originally called The Church at Hilton Head. And for those who don’t know Hilton Head is just off the coast of South Carolina. It’s a it’s ah it’s a high-end destination vacation type place. And it’s ah it’s a pretty difficult place to do ministry. But there were some wonderful people there. And our county—very unusual for the south—our county is around 90 to 91% unchurched…
Rich Birch — Wow!
Jeff Cranston — …so it’s a target rich environment, if if you want to do church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — And they wanted to do church a little bit differently and more contemporary, and so we we sort of rallied around the concept of the Purpose Driven Church principles – the five the five principles -because I think it was all there. And and actually the founding verses of the church were Matthew 22:37-39 and Matthew 28 – the great commission. And they happen to also be the the key component verses for Purpose Driven Church. And all we really did with that was take the five purposes and make them our own. But I really do think there’s a there’s a lot of genius in that, and you do see those five purposes in the new testament church.
Jeff Cranston — So we we call them connect, and you know just connect people to God with the gospel, connect people to each other. And then grow in your faith, serve other people, serve God. Ah reach—that’s evangelism—and and worship. And we’ve just tried to work those five. And what I found is most churches and most pastors, if you just allow yourself to go into default mode, you automatically fall into one or two, maybe three of those five.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s a good insight.
Jeff Cranston — But another two or three will sort of be ignored. You you know in the back your mind, we ought to be doing more in evangelism, or we ought to be do be doing more and helping our people to serve, but we never quite get around to it. And so those five things really gently forced us to stay balanced. And all you have to do is just look back at your year and go, okay were were we all grow this year, were was everything geared to grow? Which in my experience, most churches are geared to grow and to worship. Evangelism gets talked about, but it rarely gets done.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — Ah getting people to serve, that’s always an issue. Ah and then connecting people is sometimes an afterthought…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Cranston — …in terms of assimilation and things like that. We we expect people to visit our churches but we we have no expectations of ourselves to follow up with them, and help them plug in. So those 5 things have really helped us to stay focused, on task, balanced, healthy, and healthy things grow.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. It’s just true.
Jeff Cranston — I mean it’s just a fact of life. If you’re a plant or a baby, it’s just true. And the same thing’s true in church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so what does that look like? So I love that, first of all. I think that’s you know that’s ah, a really good overview, and and look at you know those five areas. Um, what does that look like from your point of view when how how do you keep the church focused on those five areas. How do you keep your team, and your volunteers, and your programming, and ensure that you’re not off balance, that you’re not, you know… Or or is it okay in some seasons to be kind of more focused on one than the other, but on whole you’re trying to keep to all five? Talk us through that. How do you keep us focused on that?
Jeff Cranston — When we were smaller, I tried to find a volunteer champion for each one of those five.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jeff Cranston — So okay, your job as ah as a high capacity volunteer is helping new people to connect. I’ll take care of the gospel part, and training people to evangelize and things like that, and we’ll proclaim the gospel from the in our teaching and so forth, but can you help people to to connect to the church? And then somebody else, can you help people to grow in their faith? And um, you know and when I was a solo pastor is helping them do that, then as we grew we staffed specifically for those five purposes. And now that you know we’ve got 30-some on staff now, ah all those areas are are well covered.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — And so that’s how that’s how we have done it. And you know we the things you think are most important and the things you value, you will put your horsepower behind, you will put your finances behind. And and so we we have just done it that way and make sure that the folks who are leading the charge in those areas have have what they need to do it well. And and we we still talk about it 24 years later. We still you know I look back, and my executive Pastor Jason Best and I, we just sometimes joke, man, we’re still here. What we’re still doing is, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — …if you came to our church twenty years ago we were still doing this stuff back then. And like I said, we just plodded along. And it’s, you know, God has gratefully blessed it and and and we’ve stayed fairly healthy throughout.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know, I was I was joking with a church leader, friend probably a year ago and and um, you know, he was reflecting on the Church of the Highlands and Growth Track. And was like you know, really excited about their ah, you know their Growth Track thing and and was commenting—this is one of those times when I realized oh I think I’ve been in this for too long—um because he was reflecting on, man, isn’t that just so innovative? And I was like it feels very much like the the Purposes conversation we’ve been having for a long time. Hey maybe we should push people through a series of very clearly defined steps, or you know run the bases, whatever the framework… The framework can change a little bit obviously…
Jeff Cranston — Sure.
Rich Birch — …ah but I but I love that. Um, what does that look like for you guys? I know you do have kind of classes for each of those, but talk us through at like if if I was a part of the church, what does that experience look like for for someone who’s attending?
Jeff Cranston — Well, we we have what we call core classes…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Cranston — …and I’m sure most of the listeners, you know, and their and their ministries have very similar things. So we just we just ask them to come to the Connect class first, and that’s where we share our vision and values. And we do that, um we have three services: 8:30, 10 and 11:30; we offer that at 10am on per…
Rich Birch — Every week?
Jeff Cranston — Every month.
Rich Birch — Most weeks. Every month. Okay.
Jeff Cranston — Yeah, except for the summer, and except for December, and you know there’s always…
Rich Birch — Yep, sure. Yeah, like 10 times 9, 9, 10 times a year, something like that.
Jeff Cranston — Ah yeah, yeah, but we we do keep that one going. And then we we have another core class for grow, reach, serve, and worship. And ah we don’t care what order they take those in.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jeff Cranston — But that’s part of our discipleship path ah for for folks. And you know when we when we get a man and what we found something, Rich, just in the last year that’s really been working for… So with the Connect class, they come in at ten o’clock they they go to class together, and we’ll have anywhere between 40 and 100 people in in that Connect class. Then we tell them, and we tell them this all ahead of time via video, we get them to register and and they do it. And then we say okay, we’re going to we’re going to go as the Connect class and go worship together at the 11:30 service. And we thought well they’ll never do that. They walk down there en masse and it’s hysterical because when you walk out, speak, or sing, or whatever, you look over here to the right, here’s all these people sitting there with their name tags on, so you know their Connect class people.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeff Cranston — And then after the service, we take them right back into the other auditorium where they had the class and we feed them lunch. And I speak for about 5 minutes to them because our executive pastor does the class. And then ah my wife and I, and his wife and and her and then we we ask all of our staff to be there for at least the first 15 or 20 minutes to meet folks. So then our goal is to meet every person, every couple there. And we are finding a very, very high retention rate.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — Ah and and people do it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — They’re giving us from about ten o’clock to one o’clock on a Sunday, which has surprised us. But most of the time we when we talk to them they’ll say, we’ve never experienced this in any of the other churches we’ve been in. Or people that are new to church world or you know new to the faith, they don’t know any different.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Jeff Cranston — They just sort of think it’s expected, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — But that’s been very helpful. And then we those other classes and then there’s other corollaries out of the other other core classes throughout the year in terms of bible studies, or seminars, or conferences, or… And then we we do quarterly worship nights and that’s that’s part of that worship core as as well.
Rich Birch — I love that. And you know for folks that are listening in the thing there’s a number of things to pull out there. That this idea of a regular, of clear and obvious step that people should take. You’d be amazed at how many churches don’t have that.
Jeff Cranston — Right.
Rich Birch — It’s like so I’m kind of new around here, what do I do? And it’s like ah here’s 12 things you could do. Like no, no, no – you you go to Connect class. That’s this that’s the first thing. I also love to and I wanna underline something you said there, you know, how involved your whole team is – the fact that you and your executive pastor, it’s a core part, you know he’s going to teach at it. You’re there to say hi at least at the beginning, which again church, friends, is a church of 2000 people – that’s a big commitment for you. You got lots of stuff to do on on a Sunday.
Rich Birch — Ah, and then the fact that you ask your staff, hey at least show up, be here. This is important this is and all of that weight communicates to people, hey you should, you know, be a part of this thing, be a part of this thing. I love that. That’s that’s so good. That’s that’s fantastic.
Jeff Cranston — And we we try to get them before they leave that, we we try to get them to commit at some level to a next step.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — It might be to serve as a greeter, because anybody, if you can smile, you can serve as a greeter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — Now some people can’t smile and we don’t want them to do that.
Rich Birch — [laughs] That’s great.
Jeff Cranston — But you know we all have those folks in our churches.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeff Cranston — Or you know the next the next class which will be offered, you know, the next week, the next core class. Or the next month and so we we do have an assimilation process from from that. It’s not always successful. But it it really is working. We’re seeing some really good benefits from that over the last twelve to fifteen months. You know, because like everybody else, when we were coming out of covid, you had a chance to restart…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — …a lot of things.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — And we we just re… that was one of the things, we just we killed what we were doing before…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — …and came up with this new idea. And we love it, and people really seem to appreciate it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well pivoting in a little bit of a different direction, I noticed ah you know the Kitchen Table Theology ah podcast. And as a podcaster I know ah, that that’s a big commitment to try to do that. You regularly produce content there and, you know, this is above and beyond content than than your weekend services. Ah why did you start that? Talk us through that. You know, as um as a leader at the church, give us a sense of what what was driving that.
Jeff Cranston — I think the last five or ten years, and and I celebrate forty years in ministry in ah next month actually.
Rich Birch — Congratulations.
Jeff Cranston — It’s hard to believe because I’m only… thank you – I’m I’m only 34 years old.
Rich Birch — Yeah, how did that happen?
Jeff Cranston — So it’s amazing how that how that happens but…
Rich Birch — [laughs] Love it.
Jeff Cranston — I’ve I’ve just seen, you know, and it it’s I couldn’t ah I couldn’t ah put hard numbers to it, but I just sensed a growing illiteracy biblically among people in the pew. Non-christians coming to the faith you can understand that. But these are people who’ve been in church for years. Um, can’t tell you the names of the books of the bible. You know one guy said just I said, you know, can you tell me the names of the books of the bible and just interested. And um he just he just holds up his phone, and he says why would I need to memorize it? Well, there’s some things you ought to memorize.
Jeff Cranston — And um so as more I got to looking into it, figured out well hey this is really a thing. And then Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway do ah every two years do a state of the State of Theology in the American Church survey that is sickening and and staggering. It’s you know half of almost half of evangelicals—I don’t have the exact percentage in front of me, but it’s in the 40% range—believe Jesus was a good teacher but not God. These are evangelicals.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Cranston — I mean and you go on and on. And I’m like, oh my goodness. So I’d been thinking about doing a podcast for a few years, but I didn’t have a clue. Well here came covid April of 2020. I said, well let’s do it. So we started it then. And I just I was going to try to do 100 podcasts, and just teach systematic theology. And we call it Kitchen Table Theology because I we want to make it understandable and put the theological cookies on the bottom shelf so if you and I were sitting at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee, and we wanted to talk about the things of God, um, this is the level of conversation we would have. And it’s yeah it it’s taken off a little bit. It’s found a it’s a niche niche audience. But I have I think last year we touched 39 different countries.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s so cool.
Jeff Cranston — And yeah and it’s it’s amazing to me. And so we just do something every week. So we’ve taught all of the -ologies, and now right now I’m going through every book of the bible, and giving them a little bit of background, and pulling some of the theological themes out of every book. And we’re having a lot of fun with that. So that’s my little bit of throwing the starfish back into the ocean, you know, the old story?
Rich Birch — Okay, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Cranston — I I can’t fix everybody’s biblical illiteracy, but I can help some. And so that’s what we’re doing with it. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love It. Can you give me a sense of how that’s impacted either the leaders, maybe your staff, maybe you know people in your church? I would imagine this would be a helpful tool for people even at your church. I understand it’s reaching people all over the world. But what’s even the impact locally?
Jeff Cranston — I I have people every Sunday literally come up to me and just say, thanks so much for the podcast; I’m enjoying listen to it. I found it a couple of months ago. We went back to the beginning and we’re we’re listening all the way through. That that happens every week and and obviously the majority of our listeners are in our footprint, um or the numbers seem to indicate that. But um I’ve just been stunned by it because they’ve never had um, any sort of theological education.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — And even quite frankly, Rich, a lot of I just started seeing it in young men and women that we were considering to bring on staff.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Cranston — I started, I wrote up about a half of a page, um Bible survey with about 7 questions. You know can you name me the 5 books of the Pentateuch? Can you tell me where the um, the Beatitudes are located in the Bible? Can you… No.
Rich Birch — Yeah, not rocket science stuff. Yeah, not…
Jeff Cranston — No.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, yeah. Right.
Jeff Cranston — Basic. I was almost embarrassed the first couple times I gave it to them. They couldn’t do it. And I thought, what are we producing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston —…here, sending to our churches and they think they’re ready to go into ministry, and they literally don’t know the books of the Bible even. And so you know there’s there’s there’s young ministers you know in in my mind when we started this. It was for laypeople, and maybe people, even in ministry that didn’t have a real solid theological background. And yeah, so we’re very encouraged that it’s it’s helping a lot of people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I love the format. I think the length is great. I think your targeting is yeah and I think you’re bang on, obviously you’ve identified an an actual real issue. I think particularly in one of the there’s lots of upsides to the nondenominational movement. I’ve spent most of my time in nondenominational churches. There’s lots of upsides there, but one of the downsides is there isn’t a formal process by which people get like stamped with, yes, this person has some kind of basic level. And although there can be, you know, certain movements that maybe overstress that, there is a danger…
Jeff Cranston — Right.
Rich Birch — …of understressing that, you know?
Jeff Cranston — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Like ah you know, in some ways it’s like maybe the the pendulum has swung too far. Speaking on the staff side, um, you know, talk me through how, you know, you’ve been in your church for, like you say two decades plus um, you know what have you learned over the years of a lot you know, keeping your staff aligned, keeping keeping them focused, keeping them kind of heading in the same direction. Give me a sense of what that looks like for you at LowCountry.
Jeff Cranston — Well, we try to keep the mission in front of ourselves on ah on a regular basis, keeping short accounts, talking with our some of our our our key, you know, staff in terms of pastors and ministry directors. Um, reminding them of, okay here’s you know, hey guys it’s sort of the old Vince Lombardi thing, every at the beginning of so of training camp every year. He’d hold up a football and say this is a football.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — And so a few times a year we kind of go back. Let’s let’s just remember why we’re doing what we’re doing here. You know, it’s to change lives through the message of Jesus Christ. That’s that’s what we’re doing here. And everything we do has to hit hit that some way, shape, or or form. Ah, we’ve been very intentional, Rich, the last few years ah about staff health. And we um, we we partnered with an organization called Best Christian Workplaces which has provided us with a survey.
Jeff Cranston — So we survey our staff, now this year will be the third year, on 8 key components. So what’s it like to work on the staff? Do you like working here? It it covers everything from, you know, is is the leadership inspirational to you, to is there a strategy that you think is sustainable and you understand it and you see where you fit into it? To, is there healthy communication sort of top down, but is there also healthy communication between staff members, and so so much more. And it and it gives you some hard numbers and you find out exactly where your staff are at.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — Ah and that can be good and bad.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — You know it can be if you’re insecure as ah, one of the top leaders, this is not the thing for you…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — …I can I can tell you. And so every year I I kind of take a very deep breath, you know, when we when we get the results. But it’s been very encouraging and you you do see where you’ve got a few holes, and you can shore those things up. And just giving them a voice as staff members I think is very helpful. And and in um, working with Tony Morgan and the Unstuck Group, and working with Best Christian Workplaces, we’ve developed our own culture code, and that has you know everybody had a voice in that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — And we came up with um, five key components of that culture code. And once a year, or sometimes well more than that, we’ll we’ll just walk through that on on staff meetings.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — Hey, let’s just remember… or you know, it happened it happened this past week we were talking about something in staff meeting, I can’t remember. And somebody said well you know what? That’s that really ties into this certain part of our culture code of us being courageous pioneers. That’s one of the things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — …we will be courageous pioneers. And so this is a, you know, we’re kind of setting a new course here, and so to hear them connect what we’re doing back to the culture code and vice versa you you know it’s starting. You know it’s it’s it’s landing with them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Jeff Cranston — And that’s that’s kept everybody I think ah you know, rowing the boat in the same direction.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. Like one of the things, and I’d love to talk a little bit more about the culture code. One of the things that we face as as a church is our, you know, our mission is, you know, is pretty clear. Jesus sets it out, you know, some version of reach more people, grow them in their relationship with Jesus. Like we all have some version of that. But how do we boil that down? What makes what we do unique? And then even more pointedly, how do we ask our staff to act? And so I love this.
Rich Birch — You’ve provided us with a copy of ah you know, kind of an overview of the culture code. So you you talked about one of them: we are courageous pioneers. There’s also, we are loyal to one another. We work hard. We play hard. We’re joyously ah, collaborative. And we so we are we are steadfastly committed to growth. I love those and there’s obviously a write up for each one of those. Which of these would you say has the most kind of like edge in the culture, has the most like ooh that actually is pushing us or maybe has a bit of ah, you know, maybe another way to think about it is an area that maybe has a little bit of disagreement, or you know provides the most kind of ah traction for you as you’re as you’re leading?
Jeff Cranston — Yeah, great great question. I think the one that is the most challenging and just how it fleshes out is we are joyously collaborative.
Rich Birch — Sure, talk about that.
Jeff Cranston — Because there are times when we are not joyously collaborative.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — And there are times you know, just being honest…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Cranston — There are times when um, we want to silo. And one of the statements we have on here is we we neither allow nor accept a colleague to be siloed, or soloed.
Rich Birch — So good.
Jeff Cranston — But there are, you know, sometimes in our ministries we we get rather inward looking in our particular area, and we forget that what we do has an impact on three or four other ministry areas. And then that’s when you start to have some issues. So, having this written out and having everybody… and and they all sign every year in the personnel handbook, this is in there. So they they we ask them to read it every year, sign their name to it. So there’s a commitment at that little biddy level right there. But when we do hit the silos, or when they’re not being collaborative, or if some personalities are rubbing really hard against one another, then we can say hey look we have we look we agreed to this, right? Yeah I know. We we have. Okay, so it’s ah it’s a good place for us to begin those conversations, which has really proven to be helpful. And and and at the end of the day, so far, you know it it works out, and everybody gets back on the same page again. And sometimes an apology is made. Or other times hey you know, um man I didn’t I didn’t realize; I just kind of forgot that that was going to affect A, B and C. Um, yeah, we’ll pull this back and we’ll kind of do a reset, and let let’s let’s work together on this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. That’s ah, yeah I love that. And again, friends, we’ll we’ll put that in the show notes. I do think it’s a good thing for you to ah to download, to take a look at, to wrestle through. Um you talked a little bit about that you kind of got everybody in on that. Can you tell give us kind of an overview of what that process looked like? How did you actually gather those? How did you narrow it down? Yeah, what did that look like.
Jeff Cranston — Oh that’s a that’s a really good question.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeff Cranston — We we got in a room. Um, and we we brought different people in throughout the week, and I think a lot of that was coming with our work with The Unstuck Group with Tony Morgan. And we just started to talk about, well, what’s really…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — …let’s let’s just boil it down. What’s really important to us as a staff team? What what do we want to be engaged with together, as we do ministry here in this demographic in this footprint at this particular church? And it it came out of the belief, Okay look God has God has meshed all of our lives together to be in this one place at this one time. What is what should that look like? And you know we prayed, we took time, we took months. And then we started to craft some language. And we were just we were starting out by putting keywords on the board. You know collaborative went on the board pretty quickly. Grow growth went on the board pretty quickly. Um, Loyalty went on the board pretty quickly.
Jeff Cranston — I remember us spending a half forty five minutes an hour talking about where we finally got on the the word pioneers. We yeah, we had all kind of things. We we knew what we wanted – we couldn’t find the right words. So we started with the key words and then we we built out around that with with a statement, like we work hard and we play hard. And we and I’m thinking quite frankly is is this really one of the things?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — You know is that really that important?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — But it it really is. And and our staff survey you know year after year when we survey them, they love working together and they have fun. You know we’re we’re of the mindset to take God extremely seriously, and don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Cranston — So we we just we just play together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Well and and you know that’s why it’s important to get, you know, a number of voices, the right voices around the table. Because sometimes as leaders, you know, it’s like the fish not seeing the water. We’re just in it. We see it and and and…
Jeff Cranston — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We see it from our perspective and getting other people in the room help us like oh yeah, okay. Because you were just like, isn’t that isn’t that everybody? Isn’t everybody work hard and play hard? No not everybody works hard and plays plays hard. So I love that. That’s so good.
Jeff Cranston — Yeah, and we’re all doing all this activity, ministry activity, and I think it’s very healthy to you pull everybody together, hit the pause button and just say why?
Rich Birch — Right.
Why why are we doing what we’re doing?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — And if you start to get, well we did this last year. That’s no good anymore.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — Last year doesn’t work this year.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeff Cranston — So let’s just let’s just get back to the why, and get back down to some basics. And um man, you know good things really will pop up out of it. And then they feel that they have a voice and you can see their energies levels rising as they begin to think outside the box a little bit. And ah you know and you you get different people in the room with ministry areas that maybe don’t necessarily work together all the time. And now now here they are collaborating on, you know something that’s affecting all of us in our day-to-day ah ministry.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Cranston — So yeah, that that’s been very helpful for us.
Rich Birch — So good. Well this been a fantastic conversation. Anything else you’d you’d love to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Jeff Cranston — Well I I really appreciate the time to be here, and I would just encourage everybody listening if you’re you’re in a ministry of whatever type or kind to just please continue to proclaim the gospel. And never ever allow church work to get you away from the gospel. And let’s go back to the keep the main thing the main thing. Everything everything else has to be an outgrowth of the gospel.
Rich Birch — So good.
Jeff Cranston — And you know we we get ourselves into trouble when we get away from that. And I think in this day and age, ah the American Church has drifted so much more toward experience on a Sunday, you know? And people walking out, well did you like the service?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Cranston — You know, we’re um I don’t get a soapbox but you know what you know what I mean? You’re not here to like the service.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Jeff Cranston — You know we’re here to worship the true and living God…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Jeff Cranston — …and to sit under the teaching of the word and and and worship and sing and all of that. But we’ve we’ve become so experience-oriented and I think it’s caused that drift away from doctrinal truth and all that. And there can be a really wonderful beautiful marriage of the two, but my my encouragement would be let’s stick to the gospel.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good, brother. Appreciate it, Jeff. What would what else would you or if we want to send people to a place online to track with you, with the church, give them the various addresses, where can they find the podcast as well for folks that want to, you know, tune into that. Give us some of the places we want to send people online who want to track with you.
Jeff Cranston — Sure, thank you. Um Kitchen Table Theology. Anywhere you listen to podcast you’ll find Kitchen Table Theology with Jeff Cranston is what it says. And then our church is lowcountrycc, lowcountrycc.org.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Cranston — You can also go to jeffcranston.com and ah you can find all this stuff somewhere among those three that we’ve been talking about, yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Jeff, I really appreciate you being here today. I thank you so much for your help and, yeah, appreciate be on the show.
Jeff Cranston — Thank you, Rich. It’s been a delight.
Doing Less to Reach More: Trevor DeVage on 160% Church Growth in 18 Months
May 25, 2023
Thanks for tuning into this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lead Pastor Trevor DeVage from Pantano Christian Church in Arizona, one of the fastest growing churches in the country.
Is your church in a season of growth, needing to streamline its ministries? Or are you trying to simplify your systems so that they will be more scaleable? Listen in as Trevor talks about how simplifying your focus to what aligns with your mission can provide the momentum your church needs to grow.
Gaining momentum. // Pantano Christian Church has a rich history spanning over 60 years, and Trevor is the ninth lead pastor of the church. While the church has been a prevailing force for decades, with the last decade being particularly fruitful in terms of growth and evangelism, Trevor observed that they needed to identify what was leading to their growth. Knowing why you have momentum is the fastest way to catch the next wave of momentum, and Pantano wanted to be more intentional about their growth.
Set a metric for growth. // Pantano’s leadership began by setting a metric for growth so they had goals to work towards. In the summer of 2022 Pantano was averaging about 3400 people, but they believed God wanted to help them reach 8000 people in the Tuscon area between August 2022 and December 2023. However, do to that and maintain the level of excellence they were known for, they knew they would need to eliminate some of the things they were doing as a church.
Simplify your ministry. // Pantano’s staff put together a spreadsheet of everything their ministries were doing. In anticipation of growth, the staff then worked to eliminate anything that wasn’t working or didn’t align with the mission of the church. Removing programs and simplifying structures allowed the church to make their systems scaleable. For example, the discipleship pathway was simplified from being a 42-week program to being a 10-week program that uses Rooted. That change alone enabled the church to put almost 1000 people through Rooted in the last 12 months.
Do less to reach more. // Having seen growth in every area from baptisms to kids ministry to weekend attendance, Trevor is keenly aware that the staff needs to continue to evaluate what needs to be simplified in their ministry so they don’t burn out. Every three months the staff does check-ins to see if anything is out of alignment with the church’s mission. At every growth point identify what else could be removed that no longer fits at your church.
Simplify evangelism. // Evangelism was already a big part of Pantano’s DNA and Trevor and his team further enhanced that by giving their people the simple vision of reaching one person at a time. In the US, it’s tempting to turn evangelism into a program rather than something we naturally do as Christ followers. But Pantano simply empowers their people to be able to tell their stories well, and encourages them weekly to think about their one person and earn the right to be invited into their life. These stories of redemption are then regularly celebrated during weekend services.
Lead the process. // Trevor admits that simplification is the hardest thing the church has had to do, but it’s had a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of the ministry. Lead pastors need to embrace simplification and drive the process, rather than expecting the staff team to do it. By simplifying the vision and owning it, you will model it to your staff in return.
You can find more about Pantano Christian Church at www.pantano.church and connect with Trevor on social media @trevordevage.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire, equip you, motivate you, point you in ah in a new direction, and today is no exception. I am super excited to have Trevor DeVage with us. He is from Pantano Christian Church – they’re in Tucson, Arizona. They started in 1961, but today they’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Ah, it’s it’s launched four church plants in Southern Arizona and they’ve really started thousands of church literally globally. And Trevor joined here in 2022. Trevor, welcome to the show. Glad you’re here.
Trevor DeVage — Well man, it’s good to be on. Thanks for having me. Um, it’s it’s gonna be fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m really looking forward to this. We were joking ahead of time we have some common friends. It’s always fun to interact with people who are like know each other, and know each other’s friends, which is great. So why don’t you tell us, kind of fill in the Pantano story, kind of what did I miss there? People who show up this weekend, what would they experience, give us a sense of that.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, so you’re absolutely right. We just celebrated 60 years um last last year. Actually a year ago this week we celebrated 60 years and ah and so this church has got a very rich history. We’ve um I’m actually the ninth lead pastor of this church. And so um, over 60 years that’s ah, I think that’s a pretty good pattern. In fact, um, the the last really the last 25 really last 35 years, that’s been 3 guys. Um, there was a guy named Ed Towne who, man, was just visionary for Tucson, visionary for the church. Um Ed Towne was actually killed in a car accident here in Tucson um, as the church was kind of growing. And they they really thought you know the the leaders of the church thought, man, we we may be done because Ed was, they were kind of at that critical growth point as a church. And um, that’s hard. You lose a pastor in an accident.
Trevor DeVage — And ah, then this guy named Tim Coop came in who’s pretty much a legend on the and the west coast especially, but Arizona. You you say the name Tim Coop out here and everyone’s like oh Tim Coop.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — And it was really the visionary that that made Pantano a church that was going to be more than just a neighborhood church. It was going to be a church that was gonna pretty much just storming the gates of hell here in Tucson. And they moved the property we’re on now, and then um Tim had this, like like most guys will, we’re all interim pastors by the way…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — …that’s that’s Glen says my predecessor where some of us are in arms for 30 years; some are for three weeks, you know, but…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Um, ah that was when Glen Elliott, who was the executive pastor at the time, um Tim went to him and was like, man I I think you need to lead this thing, and I’m ready to retire. And Glen had never been a lead pastor. And Glen was like and a missionary in Ukraine, he’d been a pastor in Cincinnati but he’d never been lead pastor. And he stepped into that role and Glen built an unbelievable church over the last 22 years.
Trevor DeVage — And so I’m standing on the shoulders of an unbelievable legacy, that I look around our church right now and I’m like, why do I get to be a part of this? Like it’s it it’s like there’s Mount Rushmore and then they put like Homer Simpson on the side. You know what it feels in a little bit.
Rich Birch — [laughs] Ah, come on man, come on that… yeah, love that. I hear what you’re saying. Well I love that you’re taking time to honor, you know, the the legacy the leaders that have come before you. That’s that’s such an important thing, particularly, you know, with a historic church like yours it’s been around, you know, historic. I was just in I spent a bunch of time in in England in the last ah you know last six months…
Trevor DeVage — And we’re not historic.
Rich Birch — I know and I it was such a different perspective. One of the churches I was interacting with there, they’ve been on that site for 1000 years. There’s been a church on that one one…
Trevor DeVage — Wow.
Rich Birch — …which is crazy. It’s crazy. But anyways, ah you know, but something has changed in the last few years, you know. Pantano really seeing ah you know some incredible growth, and I’d love to kind of dig into that. Why don’t you kind of take us back ah, kind of pre- that growth. Give us a sense of the church and then let’s talk through what’s what’s gone on these last few years.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, well Pantano’s history even… I hate that we have to talk in like PC and and AC, right? Pre-covid, post-covid or after covid.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, it’s helpful though.
Trevor DeVage — It is helpful, but pre-covid I mean Pantano’s been a prevailing church for decades. Um.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — The last decade in particular I mean Pantano was pre-covid, man, this church was going and blowing, man. They were baptizing people, they were they were growing, adding services, adding adding seats, ah the whole deal, right? And then of course the the great shutdown of the world happened and everything kind of came to a halt. Um, the word we all hate around here. Our team hates this word but it’s a reality. Everybody had to pivot. Um, which I think I think of a friend…
Rich Birch — Oh yes, if I hear that one more time…
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, ah, the only time I wanna hear it now is Ross screaming it on Friends, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Trevor DeVage — Um, but coming out of covid, so Glen decided in the middle of the pandemic I think it’s time for me to step aside. And Glen Glen has got a lot of like he’s got a lot left in the tank like he didn’t have to retire. Um and he actually he would he would even say he didn’t retire, he just kind of reallocated his his time. But coming out of that, um we were we were coming out of a pretty hard season in Ohio. Glenn and I had been friends for for quite some time. And ah I thought Glen already retired and so he he calls me in the midst of us kind of going through our hell on earth and he was like wait, you’re available? And I was like, apparently. And he was like, I wanted you like two years ago; I just didn’t think you were movable. And I was like, oh, okay. Um, well why didn’t you call me two years ago; that might have saved me a little bit pain.
Trevor DeVage — But um, here we here we are, and we step into this and here’s what drew me to Tucson. One that three hundred and so fifty days of sunshine doesn’t hurt. But um, what drew me to here was that this is a church that um they are massively aggressive at evangelizing the community around them. And so Glen’s heartbeat was evangelism. My heartbeat is evangelism. I’m way better with lost people than I am a church people. And so um, I’ve just always had…
Rich Birch — What does that look like? What is that massively… how how did you would diagnose like, okay this this church is massively – that’s huge word, massively aggressive at evangelism. What are some of the things that have happened in the past that [inaudible] towards that.
Trevor DeVage — Well, well even just the like something simple, because service, right? Service is huge.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — So I say something simple, but my first weekend on site, we do a thing called Serve Our City where we shut down our church for a weekend. And we we sent like 1700 people into our community to serve for a Sunday.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — And people are like well and now church people, they always, like pastors, are like well what do you do about offering?
Rich Birch — [laughs]
Trevor DeVage — I’m like I’m like it’s…
Rich Birch — No, I’m sure the listeners on this show don’t they’re not really that was not their first concern.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, yeah, yeah, not at all. Ah, but I mean expressly coming out of covid where budgets are…
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah.
Trevor DeVage — Um, but what we found, I mean 70 so I got to be secret shopper for one day here. because I’d been hired and nobody knew it.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Fun.
Trevor DeVage — So I got to go to all these locations and none of these people knew me. So it was like undercover boss, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — And so I go to all these sites around town. And what I found was as I was talking to people, the reason they’re a part of Pantano is because Pantano cares more about the community than it does about itself.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Trevor DeVage — And and so I was like, okay this is my heartbeat; this is who we are. Um, and so all the DNA of Pantano, like all the undergirding of evangelism and the verbiage was all there. Um I think covid just kind of put everything on a halt. And so um, we as I came in, you know, Glen on purpose here’s what’s beautiful about Glen and I’s transition: Glen on purpose didn’t start any new initiatives two years before he retired. The only thing he did was remodel our auditorium, which I’m so thankful today because in the old auditorium we would have been out of space six months ago. Now we’re out of space right now. But that’s the only thing he did. He didn’t, no new visionary initiatives. No new like church plant initiatives, multisite, none of that. He was like I wanted the people to be so primed to go when you got here that when you hit the ground, they could just catapult. And and so literally we just infused like this B12 shot of Glen’s excitement about what we were doing, my excitement coming in the door, and ah man it just it’s catapulted in the last really the last eighteen months. We have…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Here’s here’s what’s crazy: I mean just the number of people that have given their life to Jesus in this place in the last eighteen months. We just this weekend coming up, we will we will surpass 700 baptisms since January of 22. So…
Rich Birch — Wow! That’s amazing!
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, so last year we had 412 last year where it ah we’ll we’ll go over over 295 for this year this weekend that we’ve got. Um easter was our our highest baptisms ever on a Sunday; we had 145 baptisms Easter Sunday…
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.
Trevor DeVage — It was really just God. And it was really really cool because I had Glen and our executive pastor, Roger, doing the baptisms on Easter, and ah—which Glen’s still around; he’s volunteers. He’s a rock star—um, and so he told me before Easter he goes, our our record for one day was 99 baptisms. I said when we get to a hundred I want Glen to get the hundredth baptism and so.
Rich Birch — Oh so sweet.
Trevor DeVage — That that he baptized the hundredth, and he baptized the one hundred and forty fifth, which was really cool. Um, but to see his excitement is the guy that is, you know, you want your predecessor to be proud of what’s going on here. He has just been massively supportive of the growth that is happening; he’s this is why we did what we did is because this next wave. So the last year we’re we’re up about 15- to 1800 people over this time last year.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and I wish I could tell you, man, we’re just brilliant strategists. Um, and I really it come back to something you and I’ve been talking about as just simplicity, is what we’ve really dove into.
Rich Birch — Yes. Love it. Well so ah, well first of all I love all that context. That is so good. And what an amazing um, you know that fact that you’ve, you know, baptized or you’re cross over 700 baptisms since the beginning of last year, that’s that’s just amazing. That’s that’s incredible. Well I’d love to hear about that simplicity piece. So what, you know, what are some of the ways that you’ve simplified? And has that been how much of that was response to growth, because you know as things start to scale it’s like, gosh we’ve got to get simpler because we just can’t keep all this complexity. Or was it proactive like, hey, let’s try to you know pull some of these things out?
Trevor DeVage — Well, it started off as proactive because when I came in the door I hit the ground full time June of last year but I was flying back and forth from January to June, so I was here twelve days a month for like six months.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Trevor DeVage — In that six months I did a lot of just reconnaissance. I was listening a lot to our team. I was listening a lot to our church. And I was watching, without us doing any strategy really that first six months, I was watching our church like hit these waves. I think I can’t remember… I’m going to give Rick Warren credit because that’s who I heard say it. He…or and maybe it was Andy Stanley…
Rich Birch — He’s a good guy to give, either of those guys are good guys to give credit to.
Trevor DeVage — Um, you know just I’ll give them credit. Um, it’s not mine I can tell you that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Um, but the the whole if you know having momentum and not knowing why you have momentum is the fastest way to lose momentum. Um, but momentum and knowing why you have momentum is a fastest way to catch the next wave of momentum. And so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Trevor DeVage — Um, we just saw these waves the first six months. One was I got hired and so there was this energy that came with that. And then there was um, there was Easter and I I tried to get Glen to preach that last Easter, and he was like this is not my last Easter, it’s you’re first. And I I fought him on it. I was like, no bro I want you to. I was like, as the new lead pastor I’m telling you you’re preaching Easter. He goes [inaudible] I got news for you, as the outgoing lead pastor I’m telling you I’m not. And but he I’m doing that to solidify your leadership, he goes because that Sunday will solidify for the community your leadership. And it was brilliant. He was right.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s glorious like.
Trevor DeVage — And then we rode that Easter wave into the sixtieth celebration, and the Glen sendoff, and we moved here in June. So there was just all these waves. So when I finally got on the ground full time, I looked at we did a lead team retreat. We got away for two days and I just told our team I said growth growth is already happening and we’ve done nothing, except ride waves.
Trevor DeVage — Um, I said so if we get strategic so we got away for two days. I said I need to know what is… we got to set a metric of growth. And I know sometimes in the church we start talking numbers and everyone’s like oh all you care about is numbers. There’s an entire book of the bible called Numbers. Somebody cares about Numbers. Um.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — Somebody made a count in the book of Acts for the amount of people that showed up on the day of Pentecost. All these lives matter to us. We live in the twelfth largest unchurched city in America, in Tucson. So out of a million people in Pima County, Arizona um, 850,000 don’t know Jesus.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — And and they’re not antagonistic towards the gospel. They just don’t know.
Rich Birch —Right.
Trevor DeVage — So it’s not like a Portland; it’s not like a San Francisco. They just don’t know what they don’t know. And so I said to our team, I said, we need to set a metric for December of 2023—this was August of last year. December is coming really quick now that that I…
Rich Birch — It sounded like a long ways away.
Trevor DeVage — It sounded like a long way away for vision back in August. Um, and so we came back two months later, and I’m sitting in a leadership team meeting with our team. and I I just I looked at our team I said, all right, I wanted I had a number in my head of what our growth would look like. And I thought it was a good number. And I thought it was a Godly number. And I thought it was a big number. And and then I looked at one of my lead team members and he looked at me—and keep in mind we were running like 34- 3300 right at that moment—and he looks at me, probably one of the most Godly men on our staff, and he looks at me and he goes, I’ve been praying about it and God told me I think 8000 is what we’re going to reach in 2023.
Rich Birch — What?! Oh my goodness.
Trevor DeVage — And now my face said, man, that’s cool. Inside my head I was like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m I’m literally like, I’m looking at trying to be as kind with my eyes as possible; in my head I’m like, you’re an idiot.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trevor DeVage — Like that’s I would use you might as well said a gajillion, like that’s that’s what it sounded like. The next guy at the table goes, oh my gosh I was praying and I got the same thing. And I’m now…
Rich Birch — What…
Trevor DeVage — I’m like I’m looking at both of them like I’ve got two morons on my staff. That’s that’s literally what’s going through my head. I’m like they’ve lost their mind.
Rich Birch — Two open roles as…
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, [inaudible] they’ve been in the parking lot doing drugs? Like what happened? And I start to look around the table and there’s about 15 people on our lead team and nobody seems like baffled by this. They’re all like, yeah that sounds about right. And I’m like so I had elders meeting that night. I go to the elders I’m like they’ll speak reason into this, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — I’m like I’ll go to my board. They’ll speak reason. So I primed them too. I was like, guys I got tell you this crazy thing that our staff just said today. And I’m setting them up for like they’re gonna take my side. They’re gonna be in and I told ‘em I was like, our staff said we’re gonna, basically we’re gonna double in eighteen months. and ah I was waiting for it and they were like, oh yeah, that sounds about right.
Rich Birch — [laughs]
Trevor DeVage — And I just in my head I was like, I have moved my family to the land of delusion. Like these people…
Rich Birch — What is in the water? What is in the water in Tucson?
Trevor DeVage — [inaudible] off the mountain, like apparently they didn’t purify their water. Like I’ve seen Naked and Afraid, and I’m afraid right now, like I’m afraid.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — And ah so I literally I’m on my back porch two days later and I’m praying. And God literally, if I’ve ever, I don’t hear God audibly speak. Like if it it’s James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman, right? And and what what I’ve distinctly got is I’m sitting on my patio one morning, is God God literally spok into my soul like, why are you the only one on the team that’s putting limits on me?
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Trevor DeVage — And I I was like all right, I’ll shut up now.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — It feels like Job, you know? All right, I’ll shut up. I’ve already said…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Oh man. Wow.
Trevor DeVage — So that started the process, if we’re going to reach 8000 people in eighteen months, um we can’t keep doing everything that we’re doing because Pantano has a history, if you ask anybody in our town anybody in church world in our city, Pantano is known for excellence at all things.
Trevor DeVage — So you walk in everything will be done with the utmost of excellence. And so, I told all of our teams I said I need you—so this is where the process started in September of last year—I said I need you to put on a spreadsheet everything your ministry does.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Right.
Trevor DeVage — So ah if you look at just one ministry, it’s like okay they do a lot. But when you look at all ministries, I mean it was pages of stuff.
Rich Birch — Wow. Right.
Trevor DeVage — And and I just told them I said, if we’re going to even get to 5000, you’ve got to cut some stuff out of this. And I said it’s not eliminating bad things, we should stop doing whatever doesn’t fit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — But if it doesn’t fit the mission of what we’re trying to accomplish, there’s things we love that we need to stop doing. And I said, this gonna be hard because you guys have some babies that you love in that list…
Rich Birch — So true.
Trevor DeVage — …that you’re going to have to get rid of.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — You know it’s like you get the puppy that you get attached to and then it grows and you’re like, oh now we got give the dog away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — Well there was a lot of puppies in that list that we were gonna have to give away. And so our our team went through this hard task of, from basically September to October of last year, of eliminating.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — And and it wasn’t elimination nearly as much as it was, what do we what are we gonna do that meets our mission which will help us determine what we say no to. And
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — And I I told our team I said, you can make anything fit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — You can you like I can we got basket weaving for Jesus; I can make that fit, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Trevor DeVage — We don’t have basket weaving.
Rich Birch — I can tell that story.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — So help me understand that was what I… just to drill down on that kind of one layer deeper… Well first of all I love that. I love even just the the task of asking our teams to get it all into one place, like let’s get it all into one document. I think that alone is an eye-opening you know, experience for folks. Give me a sense of some of those things, maybe like easy cuts that were like of course of course that just makes sense, like basket weaving for Jesus, ah, you know. Or ones that maybe were a little tougher, things that were like, ooh I’m not sure that that feels a little bit more close to the bone. Can you just sense the kinds of things that started to bubble out?
Trevor DeVage — Ah, well I’ll use our discipleship department. Um, and ah Cindy who oversees our discipleship department, our Discipleship Pastor, she’s fantastic. Been here a long time. Um, we had we had three we had a pathway discipleship pathway, but it was 42 weeks.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — You would have to go through um discovering faith. Um, you would have to go through, um I’m trying to remember – there was three legs to this. And then we started Rooted.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — Um and I looked at that and I just went I said, Cindy, I said, we’re asking people, we’re trying to get people to know Jesus faster. But then we we get them in a discipleship pipeline and we’re saying but it’s going to take you 42 weeks before we deem you a mature enough disciple to do anything.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — And and she was like, okay. I said and I I told her I said, I’ll let you run this course till till December, and in January will reevaluate. She came back to me in October and goes, I can’t wait till January. She goes, I see where we’re going; I see what it’s gonna take. We’ve got to go all in with Rooted. So she moved these two other pieces into into just electives for people. So our disciples pathway went from 42 weeks to ah to ten weeks.
Rich Birch — Oh wow; that’s a huge cut.
Trevor DeVage — Ah and and so when you expedite by 3 years, that that expedites your church by 3 years.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Trevor DeVage — Um and and actually it expedites it faster because now in the last in the last year we’ve put almost a thousand people through Rooted.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — And and so um, the only 2 things we talk about here at Panano, you’ll hear it if you are ever to listen or watch, is we talk about Rooted – sign up for Rooted, get in Rooted, we celebrate Rooted, we talk about Rooted. Um and we talk about inviting your one to church. And actually we don’t talk about inviting them to church, we talk about inviting them into your life first. Earn the right to invite—that’s kind of our phrase—earn the right to invite to church. But the only way you earn the right to invite is invite yourself into their life first. And our people have grabbed the one, like that’s it’s not new um, but it was in our DNA. So I just grabbed low-hanging fruit of we got to stop doing, we’ve gotta focus. Um and really Rooted and One, but that came from Cindy cutting a whole bunch of stuff…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Trevor DeVage — …um that she loved, that she started, but she was like, alright I’m good; I see the vision. Let’s go. And ah…
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — …I mean same thing across the board: kids, students, ah our production, worship and arts team. We’ve got a cafe that feeds couple thousand people a weekend on site.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — And ah, they’ve had to get more simplistic. Even our even our engagement pathway, like Starting Point, Discover Pantano, Launching Point, um, even we even shifted our mission statement, we didn’t shift it, it was our mission statement, we just leaned into it. We don’t have volunteers here anymore. Um, so a little shift of verbiage for our people, our our mission statement is loving people to Jesus, launching passionate difference-makers.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — We we got up in a series called Difference Makers and said we don’t, we thank you for volunteer; we don’t want volunteers at Pantano anymore. We want difference makers.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and so we we got rid of volunteers. But we were like, everybody can make a difference. And we want you to make a difference in your community, make a difference in your church, make a difference in your family, make a difference in your work, make a difference in your school.
Trevor DeVage — And and so those things, man, just the simplicity of that… Here’s what’s crazy: so we we get to Easter, right at 9000 people for Easter…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — …um, and then post Easter I thought okay we’ll settle in; we were averaging about 4700 before Easter. I thought okay we’ll be about 5000 after Easter. well we went from 4700 to 5700 in a week.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Trevor DeVage — And and so now we’ve been we’ve kind of blown through that that 5000 barrier.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — And three weeks ago I sat down with our team and I went, remember what we did last summer? Um, we’re gonna do it again.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — Um, because if we’re going to go from now almost 6000 to 8000 by December, we can’t do everything we’re doing right now to get to 8000.
Rich Birch — Oh love that.
Trevor DeVage — You guys will be burning out, your team will go… So we’re constantly now evaluating at every growth point. We do three month check-ins. We have a document. It’s called the “smells like smoke” document, which comes from…
Rich Birch — [laughs]
Trevor DeVage — It comes from Jude 23, my favorite scripture: rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and we say if you’re if you’re going to help people see Jesus, you gotta get close enough to the pits of hell to get them out. So you better you better smell like smoke. And um and so we we have this document so we just checked the metrics the other day, it was um that we set last year… Average 4500 by Easter; well, we did that. Um it was run um, over over 700 people through Rooted. We did that. Um our student ministry has gone from 50 kids on Wednesday night to 225 kids on Wednesday night.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Trevor DeVage — Our our kids ministry’s gone from 200 kids to almost 450 kids. Like all of these things…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — …everything’s up and to the right. Now we also understand there’s a lot of excitement when growth is happening.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Trevor DeVage — Um I’m I’m actually praying for those plateau moments so we can breathe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, take a deep breath.
Trevor DeVage — Right, to plan for the next wave. Um, but now what happened is we’re out of parking. We have no parking.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Trevor DeVage — We can grow in our auditorium, but we can’t park anybody. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Trevor DeVage — Um, now we’re adding we’re going to go to 3 services in and July, um in an auditorium that can see just over 1800 we’re we’re out of space in 2 services. So our online ministry is growing. We planted a microsite in ah in a Mission here in town. We’re going to launch a couple more of those this year, but we’ve got to add a third service because God’s God’s bringing people.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — Um, but it all goes back to simplicity, man.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Trevor DeVage — Like it it just do less to reach more. That’s what we constantly say…
Rich Birch — I love that. So this…
Trevor DeVage — …do less to reach more.
Rich Birch — I just think that’s so good. So much in there to unpack. I love um I want to come back to the invite culture stuff in um, in a minute. I want to ask kind of get your thoughts on how you’re cultivating that with your people. But on the opposite end of of um, what I hear you saying is, we need to simplify so that we’ve got the energy, the resources, the focus, the the ability, to move people um, you know when things are simpler. I love that. That’s a very vivid example: forty two weeks to ten weeks. We’ve talked about Rooted a bunch of times on the podcast; we had Erin Smith or sorry um Erin Kerr on a couple years ago ah, from Mariners talking about Rooted, and many people have have many churches have talked about a similar kind of experience. Fantastic.
Rich Birch — What what have has there been anything in the last eighteen months that you’ve added, or the church has added, because of this extra the extra cycles that you think is also helping you that are… Are there new behaviors? There may not be but I wondered if there’s any new behaviors, new systems, new pieces of the puzzle that you think you might be using?
Trevor DeVage — You know that’s an interesting question. I haven’t even thought of that. Um we because we we didn’t really add anything…
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — …we just enhanced what we already here. Um I just begin to look at the DNA of our church…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — …because I still get 30,000 foot view – I’m getting closer I’m I’m starting to get closer to the ground. Um but I still have the perspective and so here here’s what I knew about Glen, Glen was a systems builder. Glen was a strategist. Um, he was great at strat-ops. He like all of so none of our systems were broken. Nothing was broken at Pantano when I got here. So all I had to do was turn dials to fit my personality and my leadership.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Trevor DeVage — And and so um, not I wouldn’t say we’ve added, I’d say what has shifted in our culture is we have focused so hard on the One. Um, it’s literally our DNA every weekend. You’ll hear it every weekend. We mention every message has something that leads back to the One. And ah our people, this is again southwest versus Midwest. I came to the midwest to the southwest.
Trevor DeVage — I Really thought I would be fighting battles here. I don’t fight. Um the battles I fight are church people that want to move too quickly. Um, in the Midwest I fought church people that didn’t know what quick was.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, interesting.
Trevor DeVage — Um and so you know I’m saying?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — Like our people are clamoring, like just give us vision to go after. And and we’ve given them just a simple vision: one person at a time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Trevor DeVage — And so now on our baptism Sundays backstage people are like, this is my One, this is my One, this is my One.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Trevor DeVage — It’s just in verbiage. Um I don’t I don’t know that we’ve added anything; I think we’ve enhanced is what we’ve done.
Rich Birch — Enhanced. Yeah that makes sense. More focus, more energy, taking the energy from other things and said hey… Yeah like even that 42 to ten weeks example, obviously those ten weeks um you know, you’ve got more time, she’s got more time to focus on that to make that and even better experience – that makes total sense.
Rich Birch — Talk to me more about the invite culture thing. I love… you kind of tip to hitting it there – the one, the one, the one. Talk us through, from your perspective as a lead pastor, you know we see this in fast-growing churches. You know the difference between plateaued—one of my core convictions is—plateaued, stuck, declining churches and growing churches is growing churches training, equip, mobilize, motivate, there are people to invite their friends, and you’re clearly doing that. Talk us through what that looks like from your seat, from you know the things that you’re doing as a church.
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, well I think first of all, it’s like we simplify to amplify.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — So what we simplify is what gets amplified.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — So what we have simplified as evangelism.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — And we’ve made I think traditionally in the church, at least in America, we have made we’ve made evangelism a program. And evangelism is not a program; evangelism is what we are called to be as Christ followers. So the great commission says go and make, not sit and take. We have just leaned into our our culture of our people. Um I’ve told ‘em, I’m like, if you want a church to sit and and take from, you want to just get fat off the church spiritually this is not the church for you.
Trevor DeVage — We love you. We’ll we’ll help you find a church. Um, but this is a mobilizing church. And so we just we have we have shifted our people to be able to tell their story well, and it’s not hard. I’m like it’s your story; just go tell it. And so we what we have literally done is, it sounds so like simplistic and so trite, but the reality is we just tell them every week, earn the right to invite. So who’s your One? Ah we we about once a month I have them re-write it down, write that name down. Do you have that name? I ask them all the time. Do you have a One?
Trevor DeVage — The other piece that I think is more key is our staff, part of our staff um review is who is your One, and what are you doing about it?
Rich Birch — Oh good, good, good.
Trevor DeVage — If our staff doesn’t own it, our church will never own it. So the cool thing is I’ve got staff members that in the last year they’re like, this is the first time I’ve actually invited someone. Great!
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — And they’ve come. You know?
Rich Birch —Yes, yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — And it’s like great. Like I play golf. That’s that’s my thing; I play golf. Um, I’ve got to baptize about 8 guys that I play golf with in Tucson.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Um, it’s just an invite. Like and I yesterday I played golf with a couple guys. One goes to our church, one doesn’t.
Rich Birch — Right
Trevor DeVage — Um and now they’ve invited me to play golf. And I’m like, sweet. So you just invited me into 4 hours of getting to evangelize you. Thank you. Like ah it.
Rich Birch — I’ll take it.
Trevor DeVage — We tell those stories all the time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Trevor DeVage — Like you can’t not tell; you have to tell the story all the time. So we’re constantly telling the story about our Ones, and whether that’s in video, whether that’s from the platform, whether that’s in Rooted, whether that’s in a small group, whether that’s in the café. Like everywhere we talk about… There’s a big display in our lobby. It’s seven foot plexiglass 3D letters that say One. We put a ballpit ball with the name of every baptism in the date in there.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and it’s just visual reminders and then we have cards outside our auditorium literally they’re little square like 4 by 4 cards. Um, it’s literally just an invite card that we can’t keep them in stock.
Rich Birch — Right.
Trevor DeVage — People take them every Sunday.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — Um, we’ve just created a culture of invite where if you get them, if you invite them here, we’re going to make sure they get Jesus and they get it in a relevant, authentic way.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well I think, you know, there’s so much I love about this, and you know about a month ago, six weeks ago I was at a church and you know they had me in for a coaching thing. And you know I was on Monday I did not on Sunday but on Monday I was challenging the the lead pastor on exactly this. I said you know some of this stuff is not rocket science. Some of it just comes down to like exactly what you’re saying there, which is like let’s articulate, hey next week is a great week for you to bring your friends for these reasons. Like even just, hey my my message is going in this this direction. Do you know, somebody who’s like this? They should come. You know having those invite cards, doing um you know all those there’s one thousand and one of those little things. I love that such a great example. Friends, ah, you know, Trevor just unleashed a whole bunch of great ideas in a very short period of time. You’ve probably got to go back and write down some notes. They’re so good.
Rich Birch — This has been a fantastic conversation. Trevor, as we’re kind of coming into land, anything else you want to share? Any other kind of pieces of the puzzle you want to make sure that we’re we’re thinking about?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, here’s what I would say, just as lead pastor to any other lead pastors out there. And I know there’s a lot more than lead pastors that listen this podcast. But um and if you’re not lead pastor, lean in so you can talk to your lead pastor about it. Um, but lead pastors you have to be, one, you have to own your vision of what you’re asking everybody else to do.
Trevor DeVage — And and when you simplify, simplification is the hardest thing we do. Ah ah like our team I’m like it’s easy to be complex because complex is job security, because if you’re the only one that can describe it, you get to keep your job for a while.
Rich Birch — Oh dude, come on. That’s so good.
Trevor DeVage — Um, but but but simplicity, like Craig Groeschel a couple years ago in his leadership podcast. He said he got introduced as the most boring leader in America. And he and he said, I was offended at first. He goes, but what the guy meant was when you go to Life Church, you know exactly what you’re gonna get, and you know what they’re about.
Trevor DeVage — And ah and I told our team we’re going to be known as the most boring leadership team on the planet earth because when you come to Pantano, I want you to know exactly who we are and what you’re going to get. Pastors, stop like stop complexifying your organization—I don’t think that’s the word but I made it one—um make sure that this… when you go simplicity you have to buy the simplicity first, and you have to drive the simplicity. Don’t ask your team to drive it. You have to drive it.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and then if you drive it enough, your team will catch it. And then you’re just managing the simplicity, which is actually job security. The more simple you can make it, I think the more people you reach. Um, again, our line around here is do less to reach more.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Trevor DeVage — And if you do less you will reach more when you understand who you are so.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. This has been a fantastic conversation. I love that analogy of being you know more boring. One of the things you know we’ve talked about in a bunch of contexts is your people won’t invite their friends if they don’t know what is going to happen at whatever thing it is we’re talking about – a service or whatever. They need to be able to be predictable. It needs to be… because when if you think about at the point of invite, you know, I talk to you I’m like hey you come this weekend, there’s gonna be a great band. There’s gonna be, you know, whatever this kind of music, that kind of thing. Well, let’s say if they show up and there’s a there’s a a giant orchestra there, which you could argue is actually better than a 5-piece band. You could say actually that’s a better thing. But it’s different than what I invited you to. It’s different than what I said. What does that do in the relationship? It enters this like oh I you don’t know actually know what’s going on at your own church. It makes people nervous.
Trevor DeVage — [inaudible] is what it feels like.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — And what I’ve found is is most most people in our culture here, they don’t care about our band. They don’t care about the quality.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — They care about authenticity.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Trevor DeVage — And so now we do ah really, our team is fantastic.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Trevor DeVage — But what resonates with our people is they feel like there’s no pedestals at Pantano. We have no Pantano pedestals. We kick those over all the time.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Trevor DeVage — Um I’m I’m horrible on a pedestal. I can’t hold my balance anyhow. Um, but we try to be as real as we can be with people. And I think it’s in that that authenticity is what people are looking for.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Trevor DeVage — Um, and as culture is shifting out of a pandemic into whatever the next thing of the world is um, you know the number one thing we did coming out of Easter is we’ve talked about anxiety, mental health. Um, we’ve had a massive growth out of Easter because we just we’re we’re going talk about mental health. Ah talk about things that the church is traditionally not talked about, but do it in a simple way and people will grab a hold of it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Trevor, I’m just so thankful that you were on the show today. I also just want to pause for a moment, friends, and just honor you for your the way that you’re speaking about your predecessors. Friends, it would have been very easy for Trevor to come on and been like, here’s all the changes I made when I showed up and everything’s amazing. Now he wouldn’t have said it like that because he’s a good Christian so he wouldn’t have, you know, he would have couched it in a better way. But he didn’t. Listen carefully to the way he has honored Glen and the leaders that’s come before him. You know, personally as an outsider looking in I think that’s a part of what God’s doing here. He’s he’s honoring your humble leadership in the midst of all that. So I just I just want to honor you, Trevor, for that. It’s ah it’s great to engage with that. I appreciate you being on the show. If we where do we want to send people if they want to track with you, with the church where do we want to send them online?
Trevor DeVage — Yeah, I mean the best place to go is pantano.church – um that’s our website and you can get everything there. We we actually do have a church podcast called The Make. And so you can you can dive deeper with us there and that’s on our website as well. Um, and then if you want to hang out with me, um, you can find me through all those things. But if you just take my name and put it into any social media. It’s just my first and last name: trevordevage – Instagram, Twitter (I don’t even use Twitter anymore and does that thing is Twitter still thing?
Rich Birch — Is that a thing – exactly.
Trevor DeVage — Um Facebook, TikTok all the all that. We’re on all the places. Um I got a website as well. Um but I don’t care nearly much about my stuff is just what the kingdom’s doing, so if you want to follow along with Pantano, man, pantano.church is the place to go.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Trevor. Appreciate you being here today.
Trevor DeVage — Thanks my man.
Practical Help on Increasing Engagement at Your Church with Ken Nash
May 18, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Ken Nash, the Lead Pastor of Cornerstone Church in Michigan, is with us today.
For decades churches measured how well they were doing based on counting nickels and noses, but with the upheaval and loss churches have experienced over the last few years, they need to change their metrics. Listen in as Ken shares how Cornerstone focuses on increasing engagement within its congregation by equipping people for ministry.
The metric of engagement. // When it comes to measuring success and growth, Cornerstone Church is going after engagement with the people who have stayed with them after all of the ups and downs of the last few years. Using engagement as a metric looks like tracking what they call the 4 P’s: personal, participate, passion, and prepare.
The 4 P’s. // Personal refers to the staff having numerous personal conversations with people in the church during the month to get to know the larger congregation. As staff meets with them, they find out where these people are participating in the ministry. Individuals who are serving discover their passion. Staff needs to pay attention to what people are passionate about and then identify a few people who are ready to launch something significant. The goal is to then spend time preparing this group to become the next generation of leaders.
Give authority to the right people. // As the staff at Cornerstone watches people participate in the church, they take the time to get to know them and pay attention to 5 C’s: Does this person show Christ-likeness? Does this person have a calling to this ministry? Does this person have good chemistry with people? Do they have good competency? Do they have great courage? They need to have 4 or 5 of these C’s to be given full authority at the right time.
The importance of equipping. // There can be a temptation to hire more staff as a solution to declining attendance. However, giving authority away and empowering all members of the church to find their callings and serve in ministry is critical to the success of the Church. As leaders step up to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, it becomes a movement.
We can’t get in the way. // Ken believes the job of the senior leadership team is to first serve and empower the rest of staff so they can serve and empower the congregation. As lead pastor he brings clarity to the team and provides guardrails while allowing plenty of room for people to come alive in their passions. We need to embrace a messy middle ground between the extremes of having too many ministries and being too focused on controlling everything. It’s important to say “yes” to people’s passions and ideas, yet ask them a lot of clarifying questions to help them succeed.
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Today, we’ve got a great episode. You know every week we try to bring you someone who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Excited to have Ken Nash with us. Ah, he’s a pastor lead pastor at, ah, Cornerstone Church. This a multisite church in Michigan that’s experienced incredible growth over these last thirty plus years. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country, multisite, like we said. Ken has a dual history. He was here ah prior to 2016 and then returned in the last couple of years to serve in the Lead Pastor role. Ken, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here.
Ken Nash — Thanks, Rich, honor to be with you today.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you fill in the picture? Kind of you know if people were to come this weekend to Cornerstone, what would they experience? What what did I miss there? How do… what’s the flavor of the church?
Ken Nash — Yeah, come as you are church. Very dynamic, filled with lots of life, energy, vitality. Just a church that’s fully alive.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good now you so you had this dual history. You were there pre 2016 and then you came back. Tell us that story. That’s kind of an interesting.
Ken Nash — Yes.
Rich Birch — Often times you you know you don’t you don’t hear that do what was that? What’s that piece of the puzzle?
Ken Nash — Yeah, that’s one of the God’s curve balls. God has a way of being the better storyteller than than my plan.
Rich Birch — So true.
Ken Nash — So I actually built a good friendship with Brad Callajanin and he was the planter 30 years, 32 years ago, founder, you know that kind of thing. And so about 15 years into his ministry, he built a relationship with me. I was serving in a church that was growing quite rapidly in mid-Michigan. And he he just said, would you ever consider working here with me? And so as we started to build a friendship, I came on. I was really the first pastor he brought on as the church grew from his basement into, you know, into a thousand people. He said it’s probably time that I bring on a teammate and so our thought was that I would be the succession plan.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Ken Nash — So we figured here we’re moving along and we have we’re into you know 6, 8, now we’re into 10 years of ministry. And at that point I had gone off gotten a doctorate and studied research on multisite. So then we had planted a church. We planted another church, but we knew at 3 sites total, we thought it’s probably time to just kind of take a break, make sure our staff is caught up with all the changes and everything. So we weren’t looking at doing any more sites. And at that point he was saying I’m probably looking at 5, 5 or 6 more years until I retire. And I was thinking, Okay, if we’re not going to be planting any more churches, I don’t want to just ride the wave and ride on his coattails. I really felt like I needed to take some leadership challenges. So some job offers came and and this one in Buffalo came up and they ah, really, really healthy church out and just south of Buffalo. I took that job thinking that was gonna be my longterm strategy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ken Nash — They were looking for a multisite ministry,I got a chance to get to know a lot of Buffalo Bills players, and you’d be in a really healthy area, a great, great church. And so I thought I’m going to be there for 20 years. And so about about 5, 4, 4 or 5 years in he said, I’m looking to retire. And we were going through the pandemic and it was just a really complicated time and so it allowed all of us to kind of ask the question through the pandemic, what’s my calling, you know, where are we supposed to go in ministry? And so we rejoined together as he was going into retirement years. And so and I heard in succession plan, it’s great to have an outsider insider. And so I actually you know I was ah a part of this church for 10 years, helped it grow through a lot of changes together. There’s a lot of that backstory. But and ultimately, um I was still an outsider because I went off to Buffalo for 5 years, got some lead pastor in a large church kind of responsibility so I could come back and spend my time really doing ministry back here in ah in our home um, home base where my wife grew up and where we kind of grew up in this area. So it kind of felt like this is where we want to do long term ministry anyway.
Rich Birch — I love that. That’s so cool. Yeah I love that outsider insider. I’ve used that language in other contexts as well. There is something if you can find that relational connection ah, but but you have enough distance to be able to um, you know, see things maybe as they are, which sometimes when we’re in it there’s a forest and trees issue and so love that. There’s a ton we could talk about there.
Rich Birch — Now you you use the p-word pandemic. And so I you know I’d love to kind of but get some perspective on that at Cornerstone. You know here we are, it’s so funny, right? It’s like I don’t know, when will we ever be post-pandemic? I’m not sure – maybe 10 years from now, you know, who knows, right? But it’s still impacting all our churches, right? Every church leader I talked across the country, you know, it is like this it’s still in the mix. It’s obviously not as it was two years ago, but it’s still a part of what’s happening. Give us the story at Cornerstone. What you know how did that impact the church? Obviously it changed you you ended up changing coming in at that point. But what how did you how do you kind of read that? What what impact did that have on the church?
Ken Nash — People are still afraid of people. I’m I’m noticing that. And so gathering people, I mean we’re in the people gathering business. And so still we you know we get metrics every week and how many devices are still watching online. We’re close to 40 to 50% of our people are still truly watching online and that’s not those aren’t made up numbers. Those are factual numbers that we see. Very discouraging, very frustrating. But in my opening answer to you as we’re a lively church and dynamic. And and here’s why I say I sense Cornerstone is really fully alive right now, because we’re going after one word: engagement.
Ken Nash — So while we care about and try to minister to people online, and we’re finding ways to engage them, We’re looking at who’s looking at us. What the pandemic allowed us to do, and you you know how God works in this sense of redemption, God can take anything and turn it into a redeeming resurrected value. And so we’ve seen through the pandemic, um, we know we’ve been pruned. And so now we know who’s with us. We had people that got mad when we mandated masks, and then when we didn’t mandate masks…
Rich Birch — Right.
Ken Nash — …and when we you know you couldn’t make the right decision. But then the people that stuck with us are really with us. So now we’re asking the question. Okay, who’s looking at us? Well let’s give them all that we’ve got. And so we’re looking for these sparks of of life and energy and and we’re fanning that into flame. And so what we’ve been actually starting to do is metric engagement. So we’ve kind o pandemic has forced us to change our scorecard. It’s not ah nickels and noses, like it used to be.
Rich Birch — So true.
Ken Nash — You always count the number of people in the seats, you count how much money came in and you’re a healthy church. Well, in some ways thank God that we’re not metricking that way anymore as a sign of a church. And we even knew pre-pandemic that we were that that wasn’t a healthy metric anyway. So it forced us to ask, what’s a better metric? So we’re now experimenting over the last couple of years with the 4 P’s.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Ken Nash — And so we’re metricking these now. Um.
Rich Birch — I’d love to hear about… let’s maybe let’s let’s run through them quick and then maybe we can we can dive into them. So what are the four, and then we can kind of dive into each.
Ken Nash — Personal, participate, passion, prepare.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Ken Nash — I’ll I’ll say them quickly with one sentence [inaudible] each one and then you can ask questions accordingly, but it…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ken Nash — Personal… and think of it like a funnel going upside down. And so the the broadest, the biggest group of people would be the personal. Like I can have 25 personal conversations with people in a given month where you sit down have a cup of coffee and hear their story. Like do I know their names? So I’m asking our leadership and our staff, have you had a personal conversation with um, numerous amount of people this this week so that we’re really getting to know our larger congregation?
Ken Nash — And then participate… as you’re meeting with them, are you finding where they’re participating in the ministry? From that participation we find that that’s where people find their passion. as they serve, they find what they’re really on on fire for. They find out either love working with kids, or I love volunteering here, or I love the the missional aspect of caring for the outreach ministry here.
Ken Nash — And then the last one, prepare, is that the bottom of the funnel. There’s going to be out of all these a few people that really are ready to launch something significant. And they’re going to become your Next Gen leaders if you will. And so I’m going to spend my time preparing these people.
Ken Nash — And so every person fits in one of the four Ps. And so as I’m getting to know new people, as I’m getting to know our so hearing where staff are engaging with the congregation, somebody will say, I’m at ah the fourth P person; I’m I’m preparing people now. And so now there’s I mean that’s what we’re metricking to be able to encourage engagement in the ministry…
Rich Birch — Okay. Yeah.
Ken Nash — …in ways that we weren’t before. Does that make sense?
Rich Birch — Oh absolutely. So I love this and I love that it’s driving, you know, like you say it was been a gift that we’re not just ah, you know, nickels and nickels and noses. It’s trying to drive to something deeper. Let’s talk through maybe start with personal. So how how does that actually work? You’re encouraging your staff to have X number of personal conversations a week. What is how does that work? How are you tracking it? What’s the reporting look like? Talk talk us through that.
Ken Nash — It’s literally setting some of our staff free because they used to feel guilty saying, I go out to coffee with these 3 or 4 people and I I would feel like guilty in the past because I’m using the church’s dime. I’m being paid, I’m on the clock right now. And we’re we’re allowing by giving clear metrics in this way, we’re giving them permission to say, this is your job. What that’s changed in some ways is that our office isn’t as much… ah I mean there’s still a lot of activity around the office and there’s a lot of [inaudible] but it’s not as busy as it used to be. People are out and about connecting with people. And so then each person has to report. And so as we go through our quarterly reports and give people, you know at times of the review, we say give me names of people.
Ken Nash — And so it gets it gets much more granular. And so instead of just looking at mass numbers out there, it’s really kind of thinking of the Jethro and Moses kind of model where Moses said how can I handle all these people? And Jethro says, break them down into just smaller chunks of numbers. And so as you get into the deeper P’s then, a personal would be maybe had just one conversation, and I know this family story a little bit.
Ken Nash — And then we have to network, and so as a multisite ministry we’re constantly thinking, how can we net together all of our ministry so they’re interconnected? So we’re constantly emailing one another as a staff and sharing with each other, hey I had this personal conversation. And as we entered into our database we can then look through as I get to know a new family here, I can say, oh they’ve already been talked to by these two people so they’re getting to be known within the congregation. So we’re kind of creating a net this way. You have a personal conversation, jot these this information down, and, you know, CCB is the format that we use [inaudible].
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that. And we and we’ve done a similar thing pre-pandemic with particularly our campus staffs, the people that were in our locations where there would be an expectation, you’re having an x number of one-on-one conversations during the week. I love that. But I love the drive of saying, Hey, we’re we’re not just having personal conversations. We’re trying to move people to participation. I would imagine at each one of these transitions there’s like, you know, there’s got to be a certain amount of action. I can kind of see that one. I’m having conversation. Okay, now maybe I’ve talked with this this family 2 or 3 times. Okay, now I need to really be finding out, Okay, how are you actually engaging? Is that how this works? Help me understand that.
Ken Nash — Yeah, exactly. And so then you’re literally watching these people that, because we have to realize this is ah another way of looking at discipleship. If somebody starts to engage and they start to serve, there’s something happening in their soul that says, I want to help serve in different ways.
Ken Nash — And if you watch them start to correct things, which by the way anger to us is a good thing. When somebody’s angry, it’s nothing to be afraid of because anger is a kind of passion.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ken Nash — So now this metric we’re saying, hey that’s just proof that they’re on level 3 of of the third P of passion. Um, their their anger about that is just trying to improve our system which let them down. and so it doesn’t create this chaos within our staff anymore when there’s tension in from within the congregation. Apathy is our bigger fear, frankly.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Ken Nash — And so if you as you watch this play out, somebody starts to participate, we go ah wonderful! Did you see any passion come out of them where they’re a little bit grumpy about this kind of stuff over here? And so it’s in in many ways much more conversational in ways than we have been before instead of just treating people like a number, we we really get to know their heart in so many ways.
Rich Birch — Talk me through the participation. You’ve set up participation as being a volunteer thing, jumping on a team.
Ken Nash — Right.
Rich Birch — Is that intentional or was that just an example? Talk us through is that kind of the preferred course that you’re kind of seeing people take directions towards getting in…
Ken Nash — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, on to into participating in the church.
Ken Nash — You know that when when you’re when your ministry is growing and people are coming in from from different avenues, you do want to take some time to vet them and get to know them. We our definition of leadership is… really my job and really our staff’s job is to give authority to the right people at the right time. So um, if you give people authority at the, you know at the wrong time they’re sometimes more passionate about something out over else over here and there end up they’ll end up not being as you know, engaged in the ministry, because they they just ah for whatever reason got trapped by you know, just the busyness of life or whatever, and you just didn’t take the time to get to know them. Or they may be just a toxic person.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ken Nash — And so this allows us to take some time to just engage and get to know them a lot a lot more. Before, you know, as you watch them show some passion, then you actually start preparing them, you need some time to do that. And that’s really the clearest way to say it. It might help um I have so many other ways to look at this.
Ken Nash — The five C’s, and not to give you a whole bunch of acronyms – I know that gets annoying, but this really helps for…
Rich Birch — No, it’s good. It’s good.
Ken Nash — …for memory’s sake, as we’re watching people participate we think of the 5 C’s. And you’ve probably heard of the three C’s, we’ve added 2 more to them. But they’re around this… Does this person show Christ-likeness? Does this person have a Calling to this ministry? Does this person have good Chemistry with people, you know, people skills? Do they have good Competency? And do they have great Courage?
Ken Nash — So a lot of times, you know, they get a voice from, the Lord gives them a prompting and then they just don’t have the courage to say yes to it. And so I’d say, okay would we want to give them full authority. If we’re going to give the [inaudible] to the right people at the right time, then they need to have, in many ways either 4 or 5 of these C’s.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ken Nash — I find like calling, for example, they’re sometimes more called to their you know the PTC or and you know maybe their cottage or some you know retirement plan that they’re going after; they’re not really called to the ministry. So am I going to give them full authority if they don’t have really all 5 of these C’s? I find if you compromise on that, and the only way to find out about the five C’s is to take your time to really study them over time. So we find participation is a great way to get to know people over time. So like well the front door you probably heard this a lot and I’ve heard this actually on your podcast with the front door hospitality is a great way to just get somebody in and plugged in and connected. And get to know them over this time. And then then they say oh but I can’t do it on this Sunday and I can’t do it on this Sunday. And but then they say but I want to launch this over here and you say well they they really haven’t shown a great engagement of ministry. We can’t really trust them to give them full authority yet, if that if that makes sense.
Rich Birch — It makes total sense. I love that ah, that fifth C of courage. I think particularly in this post pandemic world I think one I literally just earlier today I was talking to a church leader about you know we’re just reflecting and this person was reflecting on their own kind of journey, and they were saying you know the thing they were praying for was more courage in this season, that they’re like hey I they’re like ah I don’t have any question on what I need to do. That’s not the question. I know what I need to do. The question is do I have the courage to actually do it…
Ken Nash — Yes.
Rich Birch — …to actually, you know, push forward. And I think our churches, I think that’s just true in… the more our communities become more and more post-christian or maybe even pre-christian um, then we need courageous leaders. I just love that.
Ken Nash — We do. Yeah certainly.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Ken Nash — To to watch people step up and and truly say, not just complain about it, but actually be willing to help solve it with you. A lot of times they sit back passively and they say I wish the church would do this. I wish the pastor would do this. I wish… you know and, but I love it when people have the courage to be but able to say, but I want to help.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Ken Nash — I want to help you join in with you.
Rich Birch — Love it. I I do want to ask you. We had talked earlier about before the call about some research um that I want to make sure we get to, but one of the things I want to underline for folks that are listening in, um I’ve seen this anecdotally time and again in churches, we saw it at our church, we’ve seen it at our church that um, when people come into our church and get connected, you know, we often give them multiple pathways. You say get in a team, get on a, you know, get in a group and on a team. Um, and we’ve noticed that people who first join a group are less likely to get on a team. But actually if you go the other way around, if people first join a team, they’re more likely then to get in a group. That there seems to be a sticking point that that if we if we move people to mission first, they actually drive deeper into the community rather than ah, you know the other way around. They’re other than going… And I’m not saying groups are bad. Don’t don’t save your cards and letters, friends. I’m not saying that. I just I’m pointing out that we’re seeing, you know, some of that kind of evidence. I’d love you to comment on that. What do what do you think about that?
Yeah.
Ken Nash — I have I have found that to be absolutely true. There’s something about how… we call it around here the great question. Jesus actually coaches us on how to be great. So you want to be great in life? He literally says if you want to be great, serve. And so the great question around Cornerstone is, how can I help? And so um, we don’t want people just to volunteer because they’re trying to please me. We want them to volunteer because they genuinely know, I come alive most when I serve. And so that really fits with what we’re trying to move people into, which is engagement in the ministry. Because when they engage in that way, boy, it’s amazing.
Ken Nash — If you get into a group, it’s oftentimes—and again I don’t want to bring cards or letters your way. Maybe don’t give them my information you can come to you—but when they’re in a group, it can sometimes be selfish because it’s…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Ken Nash — …you know, what what can you do for me? I need you to to pray for all that stuff is good. I need to be cared for, prayed for, covered in that. But in terms of engagement, when people start serving and they they just Jesus said you will become great. You want to be great, serve other people. And so you some something happens in us spiritually that you come alive in that. So yeah I spot…
Rich Birch — I love that. The great question. That’s good. I wrote that down. That’s I’m going to steal that.
Ken Nash — [laughs]
Rich Birch — That’s really great. Ah tell me talk about this research, you know we chat a little bit about that that that’s impacted your leadership.
Ken Nash — Yeah, years ago when I was doing some research on multisite, I read a research by Roger Fink out of Penn State, and he was just asking the question, not even from an ecclesiological, not even a church standpoint. He was just asking sociologically about a group of people. Um, we’ve just gone through ah a disaffiliation process with the United Methodist Church, but we have a United Methodist roots. We now and are a nondenominational church, but in there he was finding that the Methodist Church grew from 2.5 percent of the population base when our country was founded in 1776, 1 in 50 people were Methodist…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Ken Nash — …when when um, our country was founded. And then it grew to 1 in 3, just seventy years later. So by 1851, 1 in 3 people were Methodist that associated in in any kind of Christianity.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Ken Nash — And so Roger Fink saw this study and he said, how come the Methodists aren’t 1 in 3 today? And so he he did some heavy research looking at what they did, and he came up with this one statement of finding what happened. Cause the Methodist Church grew so rapidly and then in 1850 it started shrinking. And ever since then you haven’t seen as much influence. And this is what he said, and this changed my ministry. He said the dramatic metric rise of the Methodists was short-lived. It’s instructive to note that the Methodists began to slump at precisely the same time that their amateur clergy were replaced by professionals who claimed Episcopal authority over their congregations. In other words, the pastors got in the way. So we were a grassroots movement of all these lay people that were engaged in the ministry. And they were saying, I have been given authority. I’m able to step into ministry and my life matters. And what happened then in 1851 we voted to say you can only preach if you’re ordained, you’ve been to school, or you’ve been trained properly. And we went from this movement to a denominational monument that stopped the flow of the Spirit’s really anointing over the denomination in some ways.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Ken Nash — And so when I read that I said I I never want to get in the way again. And frankly I have been. I’ve been the spotlights. And Dave Ferguson was a ah real strong help for me when I was going through my study of multisite and all of that. And his concept of hero maker is really spot on with what this research actually shows too, where we can’t get in the way. Our job is to get under and serve the Ephesians 4 model of how can I give authority to and to serve, you know, as an apostle, prophet, you know, shepherd, evangelist, and teacher. As as one of these leaders step up to give authority away to equip the saints for the work of ministry um, it becomes a movement then.
Ken Nash — And so our goal here at Cornerstone is to help 100% of our people to find their calling in ministry. And so if you’re a part of this church, our goal is to help you find your calling. And when that happens then we’re going to give you empowerment and authority so that you can move forward. And then we become a movement and not this, you know, top-down, if-Ken-says-that-we-believe-it-that-settles-it, personality-driven church, but to really be a servant-driven church. We’ve even changed in light of this research. We’ve changed our we call the SLT, or a vision team, but our senior leadership team um, Harvard Business review kind of teaches that kind of stuff, but we changed it from senior leadership team to servant leadership team.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Ken Nash — So our our core leaders are here to say, how can we first serve the rest of the staff? And then how can the staff serve the rest of the congregation so that we can help people find their calling and and their their real passion and ministry?
Rich Birch — I love that. That’s that’s so good. And you know we we see that in churches oftentimes um when they plateau or in decline, actually one of the signs of that at a, you know, so that’s at like a movement level, but at an individual church level, actually ironically, there’s this weird thing that happens where churches are like they’re maybe they’re starting to slow down. And so then the leadership says well we need to do is hire people. Let’s hire let’s hire another Youth Pastor. Let’s hire somebody else to do this role. Let’s hire somebody to do that. And and actually that’s counterproductive.
Ken Nash — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We see that time and again that actually ah, more staff per per per attendee or per you know people in your church actually is an indicator of lack of growth, not um, not a [inaudible] not actually spurring growth. There was a church um, just recently I was was a part of this conversation where they were kind of picking apart the… it was a sad conversation. It was like picking apart the decline of a church. And there was like ah a 10 year slide – it was fascinating. It’s a very large church, 5000 people, and it’s it’s shrunk back down to, you know, I think they’re their sub one thousand probably, 500 people something like that. And they had a 10 year slide where they they were 10 years they had they didn’t grow. But what did grow was their staff. Their staff doubled in that 10 year period.
Ken Nash — Yeah, yeah. And I was gonna ask they must have just kept hiring and hiring and hiring…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ken Nash — …for out for to do the work of the people.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ken Nash — Unfortunate, so unfortunate.
Rich Birch — Yeah and that’s it it’s a temptation. It is a, you know, and and you can see this in um there’s lots of examples of this. But this is a what a vivid example from this, you know, research from Fink for sure. That’s yeah, that’s that’s good. That’s vivid for sure.
Rich Birch — So when you think about, kind of… so I love this. You’re pushing your people towards engagement. I love the 5 P’s. I love a good alliteration. 4 P’s and 5 C’s – that’s fantastic. When you look to the future, how does this ah, you know, how do you think this is going to impact your thinking when you look up over the horizon, what’s it kind of changing in the way you’re thinking about the future?
Ken Nash — It’s it’s hard, Rich, because I’m a control freak. I’m a first born. You know, my dad was an air traffic controller…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Ken Nash — …so I was trained in control. And so I this is contrary to everything that I’m wired to do, which is to control, and be you know that that Moses model of you know, and it’s just so discouraging because I know how to do it right. And anytime I give authority, they do it wrong. They don’t do it my way. And but I was set four years ago as I started to wrestle with this, because I was in a church that grew many years ago in a small church that mid-Michigan church I was talking about it. It grew and then it shrank after I left. And I I cried for several years as I watched all these people that I loved and baptized and walked in ministry with and then they faded away from the ministry. I built the church around me.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ken Nash — And so God finally set me free and said you were trying to control it. And you know, Jesus is the head of the church, not the senior leader. And so when you can get that out of your mind, well I went to this right around that time I learned from Rick Warren; he said somebody was ah as at a conference where he was speaking and somebody said, Rick, I don’t like everything happening at your church. And Rick said the best answer; he said, I don’t like everything happening at my church. And that set me free and it showed me and modeled for me that when you let go of control, it’s going to look different. Because you think you do it all right, and I think my way is best, but you know what? People have their own callings as well, and frankly, they will make it better better because they’re going to bring a passion that you can’t because you’re burned out.
Ken Nash — So if you hold onto the control and say, I want the church to look just like this, and I’m I’m I’m the senior leader and it’s my job to make sure all the parameters in really great shape. You got to let go of that. And so what does the future look like? It’s beautiful because I wake up each day saying, God, how are you going to surprise me with somebody that gets a new holy disturbance within the congregation, this new passion welling up inside of them. And then they they come alive in this. And they’re going to take the church in a direction I never would have…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ken Nash — …had I not had the courage to get out of the way and to to in many ways just give that authority to the right people, the 5 C type of people that are ready to walk in in a humble way of leadership. So as I think about the future, I like I can’t wait to see what this church evolves into…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Ken Nash — …in light of the people God sends us.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. You know, one of the things like in ah when I first started in ministry and you know you and I have a similar ah vintage. You know, there were these churches out there that had the they would, they’d brag about it – they’d say 110 different ministries. They would be like we have all these different things, and then and there was a part of that that was crazy, right? Like a part of it was like okay this is like we’re running in a gajillion different directions and it was it felt unfocused. Um, but it did work in the sense of it engaged a ton of people. I know kind of post Eric Geiger and Tom Rainer’s book, Simple Church, it it it um one of the things we learned was, wow, if if we could narrow down on fewer things, we we’d be more effective. We could we could reach more people, but I do think that…
Ken Nash — I get the logic, I get the logic of that. I do.
Rich Birch — Yes. But one of the things, to your to your point, one of the things that was is probably a negative outcome of that, which wasn’t their intention, was it fed it fed all of our controlling instincts. It fed our instincts to be like, hey we just justified it as Simple Church. Simple church. Simple Church. Simple Church.
Ken Nash — Yes.
Rich Birch — How do you balance those two off? How do we because I don’t think we’d want to go—I um could be wrong—I don’t think what you’re saying is let’s go back to the 112 ministries thing. Let’s get back to tons of different stuff.
Ken Nash — Right.
Rich Birch — Ah, but but but we do want to empower people more; help me understand the nuance of those.
Ken Nash — Well, it’s um I was all in on Simple Church. We we actually followed that model for a while because the control freak in me. You just nailed it, Rich. My my control control nature loved that. However, however, it was going contrary to then this research that just right after I started studying Simple Church, I read this from Roger Fink…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Ken Nash — …and so they were diametrically opposed. And so I think where you’re getting at where’s the messy middle in there? And I think the word messy has to be in that like it is a messy middle. But ultimately I would err I would rather err on the side of the word yes, than to err on the side of the word no.
Rich Birch — Right.
Ken Nash — And so I I loved I think it was Andy Stanley who said, I’d rather say wow first before the how. And the controlling nature in me wants to say how? Okay somebody comes to me with a passion and I’d say, Okay, here’s all the parameters. How are you going to pull it off in a church like this where we have a limited marketing budget, and we’ve got a limited this staff, and how are how are… But if you start with wow and say, wow, this is your calling, your passion; I’m going to say yes to you. If you come to me I’m gonna say yes, but I’m gonna say yes with a hundred questions.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Ken Nash — This will probably drive that one more acronym the word FAN. I’m sorry about this…
Rich Birch — No, it’s good.
Ken Nash — …but everybody has a park and a spark inside of them and it’s my job to fan that into flame. And so that means I’m going to meet with you face to face, I’m gonna ask you a bunch of questions, and I’m gonna network you with people who have a similar passion.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ken Nash — So I’m gonna F.A.N. you. So we’re constantly as a staff saying, how are you who have you fanned today? And as you fan them, they can fit in one of the 4 P’s, you know, and you know so it all kind of fits. But just trying to get clarity. I feel like my job is to bring clarity to our team and make sure we’re all pointed in the same direction. What happens then is we have these guardrails and then there’s lots and lots of room for people to come alive in their passions. Most of the time their passion, as you fan them, it’ll be something they launch in their neighborhood. They’ll launch it in their workplace. They’ll they’ll launch it outside of the church. Or they’ll launch it actually a part of another ministry around the community instead of fighting with the churches, again, a blessing of the pandemic. We realize churches need one another; we need to stop competing with one another.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Ken Nash — So as you fan somebody you start realizing, hey they fit there. So you could say yes to everybody. Yes, with these 100 questions. And so then say do you have a leadership team that would do this? Do you have a strategy in which you’re going to market this over time? So they answer these questions. It may take them nine months to a year to actually answer all the questions, but they have something passionately that they’re going after to launch it effectively. So my job to serve them is to ask them the right questions to help them to succeed, rather than just have me over them kind of patting them on a head saying, here I want you to do this, and I control them. So that’s that’s a difference in philosophy.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Ken Nash — But there’s a that’s a messy middle in there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Ken Nash — But it’s holding on to it loosely rather than holding onto it with great control that I’m going to say no to most things.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, love it. Love it. That’s I love that, you know, FAN: face-to-face, ask questions, network with others. I just love that. I think I think that’s really clear and the idea of ask lots of questions, yeah, that’s our job. Like that’s and we and we’re not we’re not positioning ourselves as like, hey I’m the the either the rubber stamp that lets you do it, or the or the gatekeeper that’s just going to, you know, close it off. It’s like, hey, let me help you process this. It almost feels like Ephesians 4, like our job is to maybe equip people and like yeah, it’s a very novel idea, like it’s very very New Testament. So just love it. So good.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Anything else you’d like to say just as we wrap up today’s discussion?
Ken Nash — Yeah, honestly I love your unSeminary podcast around the idea of saying, okay, what would you if I could go back to seminary twenty-some years ago, I would literally say I wish I had been trained in how to give authority away to the right people at the right time. If I had just gotten that one concept. But but of course school of hard knocks is just you learn a lot, so over the last you know 10 years you know first ten years I learned all this, the last 17 years I’ve been able to practice it and live it out. So school of hard knocks taught me but that is a lesson I wish if we can get pastors to get out of the way and to really believe in the calling of the priesthood of all believers, it’s not just a cliche set at conferences. It is the secret sauce to watching us have an influence in this culture for Christ.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well it’s great. So where do we want to send people online, Ken, if they want to track with you, if they want to track with the church, if people are interested…
Ken Nash — Yeah, thanks.
Rich Birch — …I’d encourage them to you I think you know is a big great church for you to follow along with.
Ken Nash — Yeah, yeah cornerstonemi.org just check out our church and you know I’d love to interact with them and anybody have any questions, I’d love to to care for them in that way.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much… thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
Ken Nash — Thanks, Rich.
Training Your Team to Lead Through Others with Phil Caporale & George Probasco
May 11, 2023
Thanks for tuning into the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Lead Pastor, Phil Caporale, and Campus Pastor and Kingsway Leadership School Site Director, George Probasco, from Kingsway Church in New Jersey.
As a church leader, one of the most challenging aspects of your role can be developing leaders. While it can be difficult to identify potential leaders and provide them with the necessary training and support, neglecting this area can have serious consequences for the long-term success of the Church. Listen in as Phil and George share some practical steps that church leaders can take to invest in leadership development.
A critical issue. // Raising up leaders is critical because pulpits are emptying faster than we can fill them. Whether it’s because of ego, a fear of being replaced, or something else, many church leaders haven’t obeyed Ephesians 4:11-16, instead shouldering the work ourselves. We have to train others for the work of ministry without worrying that they may get more recognition or do something better than us. It’s rewarding when we can fan into flame God’s gift in someone else’s life to help them walk in God’s purpose for them. This process is part of making disciples.
Leader Track. // Kingsway Church launched a 10-week program called Leader Track which is an onboarding ramp for high-capacity volunteers. It helps people apply principles from the word of God on things, such as character development, creating a personal mission statement, and leading healthy teams, to all areas of their work, homes and lives.
Ministry Education. // Meanwhile for those interested in full-time ministry and acquiring a degree, Kingsway Church has partnered with Southeastern University (SEU) to create Kingsway Leadership School (KLS). Through KLS, Kingsway can offer 15 degrees, five of which are master’s degrees. Not only is this a more affordable option for students because they can take classes online, it also provides practical ministry experience along with their theological education.
Head, heart, and hands. // Kingsway Leadership School is broken down into three components: head, heart, and hands. Head represents SEU’s partnership with the church, heart is leadership and character development, and hand allows students to receive college credits through a ministry practicum. This structure allows students to continue to serve in their local churches while also getting a ministry education and hands-on experience.
Ministry practicum. // Because many of the students have full-time jobs, the program takes place midweek in the evening from 6-9pm. This midweek portion includes leadership and character development while Sundays are a ministry day. In their first year, students are exposed to all the different ministries at Kingsway Church and rotate through working with the various ministry leaders. Students in years two, three, and four are allowed to choose their ministry focus and the church leader in that area then becomes responsible for training that student.
Lead through others. // To start taking steps towards intentional leadership development in your church, look at your calendar and identify 6-8 hours where you can be investing in other people. Model this to your staff and provide them with regular, practical training so they are equipped to invest in others. Finally, as church leaders we need to make ourselves available to our staff teams and keep developing them as they develop others.
You can learn more about Kingsway Church at www.kingsway.church, or email George to learn more about Kingsway Leadership School.
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, I’m really excited for today’s conversation ah because it’s a great church, but it’s also a great church in New Jersey, even though it’s South Jersey. It’s not central jersey which just does not exist and so ah, you know and we’re already off to the races just only talking to people in New Jersey but so excited to have some leaders from Kingsway Church here, Phil Caporale and George Probasco, just are fantastic leaders from an incredible church. They’re they’re doing some great stuff ah, both in the you know online world with their church online and a couple physical campuses in South Jersey.
Rich Birch — They also have this really innovative partnership with Southeastern University in Lakeland Florida that we want to drill into and learn more. Ah, Phil is the lead Pastor, George is ah the leader of this school and also one of their campus pastors – welcome to the show show, guys. Glad you’re here.
Phil Caporale — Yeah, thanks for having us, Rich.
Rich Birch — Phil, why don’t we start with you. Tell us a little bit about kind of round out the picture, round out the Kingsway picture. What did I miss there? What what, you know, if people were to come to the church this weekend, what would they experience? Talk us through what, you know, give us the Kingsway flavor.
Phil Caporale — Yeah, yeah, thanks. Well um, our church’s been around a while. It started in in Camden New Jersey in 1925, so we’re just a couple years short of our hundredth anniversary.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Phil Caporale — So long, long history and ironically enough they started in a in a grocery store. And you know what they would do on the weekends is go in and take down all the produce off the shelves, canned goods, and and set up church. So before we were multi-campus or even knew it was a thing in in our history, embedded in the beginning of our church, they were set up and tear down in a grocery store. Um.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Like they didn’t have it 24/7; they only had it on Sundays.
Phil Caporale — Yeah, and then sometime later, a few decades after that, bought ah a purchased a bank in the city of Camden. We have some people in our church that will tell you stories of going to Sunday school in a vault in the bank once they purchased it…
Rich Birch — Amazing. Yeah.
Phil Caporale — …and then move to our current location in Cherry Hill in the ’70s. And and then eight years ago, it’ll be 8 years this fall, that we launched the Glassboro campus that George is the campus pastor at. And that’s been going well, been in a bunch of places in the last several years, actually 8 locations in the seven plus years. Um and if people join us on Sunday in person, online, I think one of the one of the hallmarks of our church is I think authenticity. We hear that a lot from people. It’s very warm and welcoming, people use those words a lot. And even as they’re trying to express the presence of the Lord and how they sense and feel and interact with that. So, love it. Our our heart is for this area South Jersey. Obviously we’re just ten, twelve miles outside of Philadelphia too, so consider ourselves the suburb of that city as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. This is gonna be a great conversation particularly around the whole leadership development issue that so many of our churches are are leaning in, and there’s a lot I want to talk about I want to make sure we we talk to folks. But George why don’t we start with you. It seems like so many churches struggle with developing leaders who are not staff. In fact, recently I was talking to a church, a senior pastor lead pastor at a church, who kind of challenged his team. He gathered them together, and this is a fairly you know thousand person, 1500 person church, that challenges leaders to get together and and asked his staff,Hey like how many of you lead volunteers who lead other volunteers. And ah it was single digit. It ended up being there was just a few of these people in our churches. Man, that just seems to be such ah ah, an issue. Ah, talk to us about this issue, George. Why is this such a critical issue for us as church leaders to be thinking about?
George Probasco — Yeah I think it’s ah important for several reasons. And by the way um, you know all credit to Pastor Phil here because what you see and what you’re going to get from from this is exactly what I’ve been learning from him over the years now.
Rich Birch — Nice.
George Probasco — I’ve been saved and and knew of my faith for about 8 years and Pastor Phil’s always been there every step of the way…
Rich Birch — Love it.
George Probasco — …and so what you hear is a little bit pastor it’s going to be from Pastor Phil.
Rich Birch — I love it.
George Probasco — So I want to say I want to say Ephesians 4 and when we don’t do Ephesians 4:11-16 we are violating the scriptures. And I think so many churches, and this is pertaining to New Jersey um you know, specifically in Assemblies of God and in our network or our fellowship, is that ah pulpits are emptying faster than we can fill them. And um, that’s an unfortunate reality. And I think if I just had to draw conclusions over the years it’s because we violated simply Ephesians 11:14-16. We have not raised up leaders. Because pastors you know, probably themselves or only had a select or a small team to do the actual work of the ministry and they were doing it themselves. And so it’s critical because you know we have churches with empty pulpits now. And we have empty positions and and there’s ah, there’s a serious need in the in in these communities for pastors and ministry leaders to preach the gospel. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Phil, why are church leaders why are we tempted to not develop leaders like why, you know, why do we not do that? Like it seems because Ephesians 4 is, it is very clear. It’s not it’s not like debatable. You can’t be like, oh like I wonder what we’re supposed to do? It’s like pretty clear. But what’s those what’s the temptation. What why do you think we’re we’re tempted to not develop leaders?
Phil Caporale — Yeah, but I think part of it is not knowing how to craft the ask, for one.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Phil Caporale — You know, does it look like if if I’m a pastor, or I’m a ministry leader or director on a staff on a staff team at a church, um, there’s a little bit of that sense of responsibility. Well I was hired to do this. This is this is my job. Here’s my job description with a set list of bullet points that I have to meet some requirements on. And and while that’s true, there’s a part of all of our responsibilities, for those of us that are ministry leaders, pastors, whatever on staff at churches, to to do a part of our job, but we really want to help our our team and other churches as as the Lord allows us to to to really shift that in the sense of, Hey we’ve got to empower people.
Phil Caporale — Right back to what you and George just mentioned a moment ago – Ephesians 4 is pretty clear. You know that God gives the gifts to the church so that we can. We can pastors, evangelists, apostles, prophets, teachers um prepare the people for works of service. But if you read on and get to verses 12 through 16, particularly, there’s a lot of fruit there. Paul talks about growth, and maturity, and building up, and edification, and the body is strong, and people really find um, their groove. They use the gifts and the skills and the natural aptitudes that God’s hardwired into them to be able to um, feel that life-giving sense of purpose, being part of the body of Christ. So I think it it goes back to the the the ability and the awareness to be ah conscientious of the fact that we have to make an ask. I think it’s a little bit too, Rich, of ego that gets in the way of pastors and ministry leaders a lot of time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.
Phil Caporale — If if I train somebody else that could do it as well or maybe even better than me, um, am I going to be needed? Is there is there a need for my position or for my role? So we’ve got to always fight and and and battle against that the need to be recognized, or to get the pat on the back for, you know, any kind of recognition. Um I think one of the greatest greatest things that we can experience—I know this is true of George, of our other leaders, and myself I’ve experienced this—that when you can fan the gift and the flame in somebody else’s life and you can watch them walk in the purpose that God’s designed them for, man, it’s one of the most rewarding things. And then you realize oh no, what Paul is instructing us there, is the same thing he told Timothy, right, in 2 Timothy 2:2. What you hear me say in the presence of others, teach reliable people that can go teach others. So Paul’s saying that you can have influence three clicks removed um and without ever seeing people because you’re passing on what you’ve been given.
Phil Caporale — So I think it’s those couple of things and then I think it’s also there’s not there’s not many good models. And we’re certainly far from having it all figured out. We’ve just been fortunate enough, and God’s been gracious enough to us to put people in our lives that have just said, hey come along, shadow me, let’s do this side by side. We have a little philosophy amongst our staff that, hey whenever you’re doing anything in ministry, whether you’re going to Costco’s and picking up supplies, whether you’re going on a hospital visit, you’re planning an event, take somebody with you, let somebody shadow you. And have conversation, right? So it’s that lead… it’s discipleship’s happening but it’s also developing leaders at the same time.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah I was thinking it’s not lost to me that that there’s two of you here today. I love that you’re modeling it, even in this conversation. George talk me through at Kingsway, so let’s say either you maybe in your campus specifically, or on a team in your you know in your campus you you see one of those people who are like, okay that person’s got some potential. How do you begin? What is the conversation? What’s the platform? What’s the ask for trying to move those people towards leading? What does that look like, George?
George Probasco — Yeah, so one of the things that ah that I specifically do is I try to lead through my staff. So they are really the ones having the conversations, or I am if if I’m approaching an individual in the church that I feel has leadership potential, um, what I’m doing is shoulder tapping them and then connecting them with somebody from our um, our team specifically. And so one of the programs that we launched this year, relaunched that I should say, Pastor Phil can go in a little bit more about that would be Leader Track. And that’s something that is a great pipeline onboarding ramp for ah, high capacity volunteers within the church context as far as that that perspective is concerned. And that is a little bit less skin in the game as far as fulfilling an academic requirements through our partnership with SEU, so.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, yeah, Phil, do you want to tell us about Leader Track, kind of unpack that? What does that look like? How do we talk to that ah, you know what’s covered there? How how does that fit? How’s that work?
Phil Caporale — Yeah, yeah, it had its Genesis in about 2015, so we’re going back a few years. Actually George and about 13 others were the pilot of that and we just put together what was then Leader Step, Rich, was really out of our assimilation and what is our Growth Track process. People were going through that, they were doing everything we were asking of them to move in their journey in their faith, and you know, being involved in the life of the church, being connected in a small group—we call life groups—being being on a ministry team. But then we had a handful of people come up to us, and George was one of them then, that said. Hey I’m I’m in but I feel like God has something else for me to develop. I feel like I can lead others. I feel like I want to learn more; I want to lead better. And so after several of those conversations, it was enough at the time our lead team for us to realize, Hey we should probably lean into this a little bit more and and do something a little bit more deliberate in training um, high-capacity volunteers that can really step into some ministry roles, but really fulfill um, what they’re sensing in their hearts and and let’s let’s do that. You know, let’s go back to Ephesians 4.
Phil Caporale — So we started doing that. We did it for several years and took about 70-ish people through that. And we were watching just the fruit of that, which was spectacular because people were owning their part of ministry. They were owning their they were owning that idea of growing their influence in their homes, in their families, on their jobs. I mean some of the stories that were outside the walls of the church were incredible of how God was working in people’s lives. And then um, from that we we launched a year-long program that was very intense that we just called Protégé, like some others have named it and that discipleship program. And then out of that was birth the the leadership school, Kingsway Leadership School.
Phil Caporale — But even even though we’re in our I think 6 year now of of the school, we realized that hey they’re gonna be people that are aren’t going to be preparing for full time ministry, or don’t need a degree, or aren’t interested in that level of commitment. So we’ve got to bring this Leader Step back that was on hiatus for a little while, and we just thought, hey it really is a track for leadership development and potentially not just leading as a volunteer. But if people are wrestling with a full time call to vocational ministry, um, Leader Track can help begin to allow them to explore that. So we just relaunched it this past fall. We named it instead of Leader Step, Leader Track this time. And it’s a ten week commitment. In fact to pilot it, or re-pilot it, we took our our Kingsway Leadership School to students through it in their fall semester, asked them for feedback, asked them to speak to it. What do you love? What do you not like? What do you need more of? What what could we take away?
Phil Caporale — And then we um, we made an invite of um, we’re hoping to take 40 people through it this year, and we just finished a ten week cohort of 22 of them um, that are already leading in many areas of of our church. Some of our pastors and ministry directors have already made specific asks of them in in you know, worship and student ministry, children’s ministry, whatever else. And now the responsibility is on our our staff to meet back up with those people that have gone through it and continue to make an ongoing investment into them.
Phil Caporale — And so some of the early fruit we’re seeing is relationships that are being forged, Rich, in some incredible ways as well. But people really leaning into it. We’re getting reports similar to what it was in the past of people applying the principles at work. I mean some of these people are lead in high-level roles in their jobs, entrepreneurs in business, whatever it is, education, and they’re taking some of the principles from the word of God on character development, and personal mission statement, and leading healthy teams, and implementing that. And they’re coming back and saying things like this, Hey this works! And we’re like yes, of course it does!
Rich Birch — Love it.
Phil Caporale — You know, that’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Phil Caporale — So it’s it’s been fun to really watch that. And it just it just continues to ignite that fire in us to go man, this is what we as ministry leaders, as pastors, are called to do. And we shouldn’t be surprised of the fruit that Paul promised in the word.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the interesting things is I saw a stat recently I think it was three quarters I think it was like 76% of this is marketplace leaders who are already managers, so they’re already leading people, say they have never received any training to be a manager…
Phil Caporale — Wow.
Rich Birch — …which is fascinating. And so you can see why as a church if we step in and provide some leadership, it doesn’t surprise me at all, you step in and provide some leadership training, man, it makes a huge difference in in people’s lives. Sticking with you, Phil, how do you balance out the um like the in class, something like Leader Track, with the practicality of leading in context, you know the being with people, the two by two, how do those two balance out together? I sometimes feel like we’re tempted by classes like this; we’re tempted by like say all we need is another curriculum. When clearly obviously you know it’s more than that. h, balance that out. How does that work out for you guys at at Kingsway?
Phil Caporale — Yeah, well and George kind of alluded to it a few moments ago. One of the things that we do is we we want it to be by invitation. So until a couple of months ago during a vision so a recent vision series, we hadn’t really talked about Leader Track. Our so our church knows about Kingsway Leadership School, of course…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Caporale — …but Leader Track has always been this shoulder tap, this personal invite from a ministry leader because we wanted to make sure that these people were already they already have a lot of skin in the game. They’re already leading, many of them are leading really well and we’ve identified, our teams identified in them the potential to to take on more, and to and to grow their influence by leading people. Ah, one of the gaps that we noticed, Rich, in our church was between staff and ministry leaders, and others that have led others is this this group of leaders of leaders. How could we get somebody to coach others. Ah, we don’t use this term but it would be like a team captain really where where they’re investing themselves into others, from a volunteer standpoint, which could potentially be a base for us to hire potential staff someday. That’s always a thing that we’re keeping in mind, but it’s not the desired or ah intended end result.
Phil Caporale — So watching people already serve. They’re already in involved, embedded into the life of the church. This is stuff that we’re seeing on display in who they are, and how how consistent they’re involved in the life of the church, and then coming alongside of them and going hey… The content that we provided, a lot of we make it very interactive. We don’t want to just get up and lecture. They can get the information anywhere. We’ve just tried to do our best to contextualize it. And then create even within that large group of the 22 we took through it, um, we put them around small tables. And half of the evening, half of the 3 hours we were together was then building community. And we didn’t ask any of them to do this but one of the neat things that happened out of that, Rich, was very early on they started exchanging numbers together. They were in text threads. They were…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Phil Caporale — …I heard from some that I’m close to, Hey we’re we’re exchanging a prayer requests and so-and-so showed up in my house to encourage me. And nothing we ever said, we just instead of teaching in in rows, like a classroom setting, we said let’s do it around tables so we can naturally facilitate community. And that kind of caught on like wildfire and and expedited a process of us going, Hey here’s some content and curriculum we want to help you with, and if you’ll learn to lead yourself well, you’re going to be able to lead others just as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Yeah and I do think this whole leader of leaders issue, man, there’s so many of our churches we we struggle with this. We we’re looking for people to just do stuff for us, if I can be too if I can be a little too pointed. We’re looking for people who just if you could just stand here and hand out these programs, or you could just you know helping kids ministry. As opposed to, man, I want you to lead a group of leaders to make a difference. Um George, let’s talk about the Kingsway Leadership School. Let’s talk through this. Ah give us this so give us a sense of, you know, kind of what is offered through that. How does it work? How is it partnership kind of give us an overview and then let’s dig into it. So give us an overview there, George.
George Probasco — Yeah, so we’re going into our seventh year come…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
George Probasco — …comes fall. So we’ve learned a ton over the years, Rich. I mean a ton. We had to add and bring in some values for our students because we just our culture was just all over the place, and that’s one of the things that I would just say strongly is that we have to, when you’re developing a leadership culture in your church, you need to have strong values, whether it be church values or if you have like a program that you’re taking your your students through, you have to have values. So that’s one of the things that we instituted.
George Probasco — But an overview, we offer 15 degrees…
Rich Birch — Wow!
George Probasco — …in partnership with Southeastern University. Ah, five of those are which are masters degrees. And so students are able to come for our leadership development within the church, so we don’t teach any SU academic accredited courses here in the church – that is all online only. What we do is we come alongside of Southeastern University and we’re ah, developing the student’s heart and hands.
George Probasco — And so we like to break it down into three categories heart, head, and hand. So the head component would be SEU’s partnership with us. The heart component is leadership development, character development. That’s actually what our pastoral staff and and leaders are actually doing and in our students and developing in our students. And then we love to develop our students’ hands, and that’s through ministry practicum.
George Probasco — So the cool thing about Southeastern’s partnership, if you’re an extension site, is every college student gets college credits through something called practicum. That is an actual college level course through Southeastern University. And if you’re a bachelor uh, degree student or looking to acquire your bachelor degree, that’s twenty four college credits that a student can earn through ministry practicum. So what that means is if they’re serving in their local church, working with under a ministry leader, shadowing them, um, really learning from them, they are logging what they are doing in the ministry and they’re getting college credits for that. So that’s a big deal. So long, the days are over I would say with students going away to college, especially ministry students, not being developed, rather they’re just getting all head knowledge and then no practical ministry experience. So we’re looking to really, again, meet that need where we can provide an academic degree for our students, but also train them up and and give them practical ministry experience. So.
Rich Birch — Now so talk to me through ah, you know, so SEU is a fantastic school, very innovative. This is not a, they’re great school. I love those guys. They’re good people so there’s no negative in all of this. But why the partnership with them? What what about them specifically you would say, hey ah, you know they’re good people to work with? Phil why don’t you take this what what was you know, kind of what drew you to a partnership with them? Why is that been a great connection? How does that how has that been for you guys?
Phil Caporale — Yeah, we um we we early on as we were long um, going through what I mentioned earlier, Protégé, Rich, which was developed out of what Leader Track was the first time our first iteration of it. We had come into contact with a couple people, 3 or 4 actually, that said, hey you should look into SEU. They’re making college education really affordable. And I was um I was really excited about that because I’ve I’ve always I’ve always felt like there’s been these two sides of it, and neither one really fully met the um, the requirements of what it would look like for people that, especially wanted to pursue full-time vocational ministry.
Phil Caporale — And what I mean by that is we had people that would have a lot of experience in in church culture, but were missing that educational, the theology, the doctrine understanding of the scriptures, and the the formal education there. And then there were other people, to George’s point of moment they ago, Rich, that were coming out of bible colleges with almost you know, zero zero ministry practical ministry experience. So when we heard of the partnership with SEU, we did some exploration, we connected with them on some calls, and had them come up and visit us. And and the fact that they could package that and a student would never have to leave Jersey, and stay involved in their local church, do it very affordable for less than a third of the cost. There were a lot of um, very obvious pros to that. And we said, all right, well let’s let’s dig into that a little bit more. And as we did we realized that we can bring really the the crux of the discipleship, and and they can they can get an idea of what it means to here’s what a follower of Christ looks like as they’re growing, as they’re learning the lead, as they’re pursuing potentially vocational ministry. Um, and it it very quickly became appealing.
Phil Caporale — It’s funny, Rich, about half of our student body through the last six plus years has not even been within our own church. It was other churches that kids were coming out of youth ministry…
Rich Birch — Oh really? Interesting.
Phil Caporale — …other adults that were serving.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Phil Caporale — Because it allowed… pastors were interested because they’re like wait a second guys. You mean my this person from my church doesn’t need to go down to Florida for 4 years? Like no, no, they can stay involved in your church. We’ll do the discipleship part, you offer the practicum and SEU… So then it was like this three-headed partnership.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s really cool.
Phil Caporale — Um, and that’s appealed to a lot of people, you know. And and and I think the fact, especially in this day and age, where where you don’t have to go away, and it’s going to cut the cost down, again, until less than a third, that there’s ah, there’s obviously an appealing nature to that. Um, but the fact that they cannot just get practical ministry experience, but stay in that church which they’re part of, perhaps even grown up in, um, really continues to benefit, and feed that, and strengthen the local church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. Love it. So so good. George, give me a sense of the kind of week-in week-out for a student, you know, that’s engaging. What does that look like? How do they, you know, how do they connect with with with you guys? What’s that all again, kind of give us it from from their perspective. What does that look like when so, you know, when they’re in class or what I don’t even share the language you use.
George Probasco — Sure.
Rich Birch — When they’re you know when they’re engaged, what’s that look like?
George Probasco — Yeah, sure. So students gather on Wednesday evenings from 6 to 9. We’ll feed our students. A lot of them have jobs, full time jobs, so they’re doing other things. Um, and that’s another thing about ah Southeastern is that it is affordable and students are able to work a part-time job, or work full-time and almost nearly knock out their their student debt right away. So um…
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.
George Probasco — …but so a lot of them are coming in from 6 to 9, and then what we’ll do is we’ll we’ll do some leadership development, we’ll have chapel, and then we’ll do some character development as well with them. And then Sundays is ah all hands on deck ministry day. So we are exposing them to to ministry. And we take our year one students through ah kind of a general practicum is what we call it. And we rotate them through all the various ministries here at ah at the local church. And we’re teaching them and giving them a a well-rounded exposure to Kingsway Church Min. So it’s not the end all be all, but it’s just the way how we do it in our context.
George Probasco — And so they’re working with different ministry leaders, and they’re being exposed to those ministries. And and a lot of this is and I say and I highly recommend that because what it does is it’s going to build some character. For students that just want to get up on a platform and and start speaking, well we know that that’s not realistic. And so we’re going to throw them in the kids’ ministry. We’re going to throw them in ah, you know, around teenagers or you know we’re going to really help build that character within them because that’s just what we do. And then for year two, three and four what we do is um, we take our students and we allow them to choose their ministry focus. And so…
Rich Birch — Okay.
George Probasco — …we’ll we’ll get around our our practicum leaders. So one of them being our our youth pastor, and if if a student’s interested in that that our youth pastor becomes responsible for that student. And so literally they have their own curriculum that they have built to develop help develop our students ah, to train them up to be a youth pastor or whatever the gap is.
Rich Birch — Love that. So good. Phil, a part of what you’ve talked about is this whole vocational ministry push, that a part of what… and we all know this, right? Like anybody that’s that isn’t just heads down in their local, you know, they realize, gosh, there’s a giant leadership crisis in every church. I was literally just this week talking to some leaders in a particular movement, they were saying hey we’re going to 1500 pastors retiring—and then we all know these statistics—1500 pastors retiring in the next ten years, and they’re graduating, I think it was 8 per year out of their ministry school.
Phil Caporale — Wow.
Rich Birch — So it’s like, Hey this is going to be a problem. We’re trying to, you know, so what has that what’s kind of been the output on that side? I know not all of these people are going to end up in vocational ministry, but what has that looked like, you know, give us some context on what that looks like, Phil?
Phil Caporale — Yeah, um, some of them um, it really gets it gets interesting, Rich, in the sense of placement. One of the things we are very upfront with about students that are interested in the school, in Kingsway Leadership School, is to tell them, Hey there’s no guarantee of placement upon graduation, whether it’s two years, four years, or six years that you’re with us, but we’re going to continue to walk alongside of you. And because of, you know, our network of churches and the connections that we have to a bunch of them um, we’ve been able to and minimally hook up um a student that’s finishing graduating the program, graduating the school with a degree and whatnot with other local churches and their pastors to at least entertain a conversation that sometimes has…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Caporale — …even um, you know turned into an interview, or them pursuing you know ministry credentials, or going down another path ah similar route to be involved in in their local church, or or Kingsway, whatever whatever the case might be. So I think one of the things is always having keeping that out in front of them, especially for those, Rich, that feel or sensing and working through a call to vocational missionary, not just pastoring but even missionary. We have a girl coming through our school right now that where she just finished up her her grad degree, is our first grad student. So she’s got this master she’s got this this Masters of Divinity and she’s preparing to go to India on a two-year term…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Phil Caporale — …as a missionary associate. and so that’s been a big deal. She got to go on that as a scholarship for being part of the school this past this past fall, and just felt a real tug and pull in her heart from the Lord to be there. So she’s pursuing that now and I could certainly see her um, becoming a career missionary. Um, there’s a strong call in her life for that, but she’s really leaned into it. And she’s gotten that practicum experience…
Rich Birch — Right.
Phil Caporale — …that George just detailed a moment ago with um, one of our pastors who’s over missions, and has been able to really lean into that, been able to really draw from that. And not just from our pastor that’s leading her in that, but the connections that that Pastor has as well to some other pastors, to some other missionaries that has opened this girl’s scope of potential resource and influence up so she can explore this call.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is fantastic. I love this. I love what you guys are doing here. I think there’s so much for us to learn from and continue to lean in on. George, when you think about um you know individual students, is there like similar to the student we just heard about, are there any other stories or kind of insights of like, here’s kind of how this is working out practically in in someone’s life?
George Probasco — Yeah I have a student actually, when I transitioned in into the campus pastor role in October of ’22, we had a ah vacant area also I’ve I’ve identified in at the campus.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
George Probasco — And so one of our students one of our students is so high capacity. He actually um, came from another church where he was briefly youth pastoring, but he’s now with Kingsway and in in our program. And part of his practicum it just so happened to work out where he was going to be coming down to the campus with me this year. And so now I have him overseeing um, our guest experience teams at our campus. And um so he’s responsible for for five teams in particular, and caring and pastoring for them. And so that’s just providing alongside of his academics very real ah, very real experience. And and the reason why I say that is because these are just some things that textbooks don’t train you up on.
Rich Birch — Right.
George Probasco — These are things that ah they don’t they don’t tell you how to have a hard conversations, difficult conversations. You just kind of have to be thrown into that. And there’s a lot of coaching with me me and him you know, again, it’s a lot of one on one, so anything that he’s doing, we’re we’re talking about it afterwards. So that’s where the discipleship comes in.
Rich Birch — Love that. Yeah I love that and that that’s been my like very similar experience particularly as people have transitioned into our churches from um, you know the marketplace, is that there is like there’s the academic side that we can deal with it’s like okay you know you can you can learn. There’s a certain amount of theological stuff you can learn. You can take courses, but there is some. There’s real issues around how do we help people get the practical insights around, you know, when you’re sitting across the table for the first time and someone talks about that they want to leave their spouse. You know you know, that the first minute of your response there is really important. And you know you don’t want people being like, I don’t know I’ve never really thought about that before. And so what you guys are doing is, you know, in such a supportive environment is is enabling that kind of thing I think that’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Well, Phil, why don’t we give you the last word. If I was a ah church leader that was listening in today that was saying, man, I think we need to really step up our game on this front. We need to we need to look to grow. What would be some of those first steps that we should take, whether it’s leader track or maybe even pursuing something more robust like, you know, Kingsway Leadership School. What would be some of those first steps that you would encourage leaders to be thinking about today?
Phil Caporale — Yeah I think I think part of the the first thing ah a leader needs to do is is really look at—this is very practical—look at their calendar and of their week, let’s just call it a 40 hour work week as a pastor or ministry director on staff at a church, and and ask ourselves right now, How many hours a week am I giving to intentional and deliberate leadership development? Um, ah one of the things that we put in front of our staff, it hasn’t been a hard and fast rule, but, you know, could you take up to a day a week, six to 8 hours a week, where you’re developing others. In other words, our theme this year for our our team, Rich, is um, our staff is to I just call it LTO – you’re going to lead through others. We have to lead through others. We can’t just think, hey that’s a good idea, or someday I hope to get to it. No, it’s like we have to, right? Some of us are going to be natural just doers all the time, others of us do have a proficiency to develop others, but we’re really trying to move our whole staff to think, you know, I’m here to develop others; I have to lead other people through those that are right in front of me.
Phil Caporale — And so the practical, my the first thought again practical is just looking at the calendar and it’s not necessarily a full day, like I’m just going to pick oh Thursday’s the leadership development day. It may be a two hour pocket here, and a three hour window there. But what does that look like and how do I continue to do that to make an intentional investment in other people? Because look we all know that battle right of of urgent versus important. But one of the things I’ve learned through ministry and in my experience, and probably took me a little longer to learn than I care to admit is that, yeah, you’re always going to have the urgent, but if you’ll if you’ll focus on what’s important, right? In this conversation we’re talking about developing leaders of leaders. If you’ll give more time to focus on what’s important, it will keep some of the urgent at bay. Not all of it. There’s always going to be the emergency situations, of course, but part of the urgency that creeps up at times is our lack of being purposeful and intentional in building leaders.
Phil Caporale — I think back to Exodus 18, right? This the first this is like this is like the um Old Testament version of Ephesians 4 when when Moses is kind of burned out. He’s judging all the cases and his father-in-law Jethro goes, You can’t do this, right? You got to find some leaders that can lead tens and fifties and hundreds and a thousand. And and he said at the end of that, and we often overlook this part, he said if you’ll do this, then you’ll be able to endure and the people will go home in peace. And I just thought about that like longevity and ministry. If if God’s call in our life is not just for a season but it’s for all our lives, and for those of us that are called to pastoral ministry, um, that man, let’s do this well. Let’s look to make sure that we endure and we pace well through this. And others are going to go home in peace. But there’s also tied to that word a sense of fulfillment in their own lives, you know?
Phil Caporale — And again kind of back to earlier in the conversation when you see that life-giving joy come out of others, it adds to your your sense of of purpose being fulfilled as well. So I think it’s it’s as as as simple even as going, hey look at my calendar how many how many meetings have I had with other people this week?
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Phil Caporale — Am I grabbing lunch or coffee with anybody and making an intentional investment into that time? And then as ministry leaders right on staff I would think um, if I’m in the executive pastor role or lead paster role or on the lead team, what are we doing to train our staff? I realized that a large portion of my job I would I would I would contend that about 25% of what I do is thinking about how I’m training the staff to lead through others. Because if I don’t train them, if I don’t model it to them, I’m I’m going to get the same thing from them, right? So it’s got to be something that’s real. So where we can invite people like Paul said, hey you follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. And and as we do that, it it catches on. And it takes a little bit of time and you’re always going to have those on the team or on the staff potentially that are a little intimidated by it. I don’t want other people to pick up my bad habits, or I’m not quite sure to do this. So we just leverage our chapel every week. We have a two hour chapel where we’ll worship and pray together. And then the second hour of most of that is training. It’s it’s it’s hey let’s get into the nuts and bolts. This was what it looks like, not just philosophically or theoretically to train leaders. But this is how we’re gonna do it.
Phil Caporale — And then keeping yourself available. I think as as the point person or if you’re leading a ministry um to just say to the rest of your staff or your team or those that report to you, hey I’m available and I’ll continue to help develop you as you develop others.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. I really appreciate this conversation today, guys. This has been super helpful and inspiring. Really, really good. George, um, if people want to connect with you, with the church with you know to kind of follow along, where do we want to send them online, just as we wrap up today’s conversation?
George Probasco — Yeah, they can ah email me personally gprobasco@kingsway.church
Rich Birch — Oh great, good stuff. And then kingsway.church for everything else if they want to track along. Well, appreciate you guys being here today. Thanks so much, and always good to talk to leaders from Jersey. So thanks for being here today.
Phil Caporale — Yeah, it was a blast, Rich, thanks for having us.
Rich Birch — Thank you.
George Probasco — Thanks for having us, Rich.
Leaning in on the Important (& Potentially Awkward) Conversations Around Women in Leadership at Your Church with Lisa Penberthy
May 04, 2023
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Lisa Penberthy, a church leader and consultant with 20 years of experience and an M.Div and MBA in nonprofit management. She is currently serving as the COO at Dannah Investment Group and is passionate about stewarding people’s callings as well as church resources.
Are you a church leader looking to encourage and empower more women to step into their callings in your ministry? Listen in as Lisa provides practical coaching on identifying blind spots, communicating personal boundaries, and advocating for next generation women leaders.
Identify what’s missing. // When it comes to women in church leadership, we tend to look at the theological side of the conversation. However, practically speaking we need to recognize that it comes down to helping women fulfill their callings. If you’re fully supportive of them, then the question becomes, how do you help empower them by removing obstacles and providing practical support? Start by looking at the blind spots in your church. If none of your executive leaders are women then you’re missing part of the conversation. Pay attention to how many times women have spoken from the stage or given a message at your church.
Circle back. // Women may identify that they have a ministry calling but aren’t ready to step into it due to their current family responsibilities. Male leaders may want to ask these women to serve in leadership, but also don’t want to put pressure on them. Remember that it’s important to circle back to these women and present them with leadership opportunities again. Come back to the conversation and hold the women accountable rather than only asking once and assuming they’ll always say no.
Build trust. // Acknowledge the tension around social interactions with male and female leaders. Each individual needs to establish personal boundaries and points of accountability in their life and leadership. Have honest conversations about those barriers so there’s a layer of trust between the male and female staff and women aren’t automatically omitted from leadership opportunities and interactions. With the right benchmarks and boundaries in place, men and women should be able to travel together or be alone in a room for confidential meetings without hesitancy. Never isolate or penalize women because of your individual struggles.
Upfront communication. // When hiring women on staff, communicate during the interview any limitations in the leadership relationship between men and women. Be forthright about personal boundaries in your leadership so the woman being interviewed can decide whether she is comfortable with them or not. If this conversation isn’t initiated by the interviewer, the woman needs to have the courage to bring it up so she will know where she might be held back in her calling.
Raising concerns. // If a situation occurs that causes a woman to no longer feel comfortable with current boundaries, she has to be brave enough to raise the concern. It doesn’t have to be with her superior, but she needs to come forward. It can be with the church’s HR or the administrative people who handle paychecks, or even the advisory board. She should find the person that is safe to talk to and have a conversation early after any incidents happen.
Encourage upcoming leaders. // Advocate for next generation women leaders in every way you can to encourage them in their work. Invest in upcoming female leaders by giving them opportunities, such as internships, to show their potential. Observe them in their own environments and give them increased responsibility.
Discipling women. // Most churches have more women in the congregation than men. But if there are more women in the seats and fewer women on the platform, then we’re not doing a good job of reaching and discipling the people God has brought to us. We should see more women in leadership throughout all areas of the church, not just the nursery and children’s ministry.
To connect with Lisa you can meet her at the XP Summit on May 16 & 17, 2023 or you can email her.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation with my new friend, Lisa Penberthy. She is just incredible leader that you’re going to want to listen in and lean in with. Ah she was executive pastor of operations at San Diego Rock – if you don’t know this church of fantastic ah organization. She’s been a church leader and consultant with twenty plus years of experience. Has both an M.Div and MBA, which is fantastic, in nonprofit management. Ah she currently is serving as the COO at Dana Investment group. She’s passionate really about helping churches and leaders steward their calling and church resources. Ah, Lisa welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here.
Lisa Penberthy — Rich, thanks for the invite. It’s great to be with you.
Rich Birch — Yeah I’m so honored that you are giving us some time today. This is going to be good. Fill out the picture there. What did I miss? What else do we want people to know? I know it’s so hard to, you know, how do I you know what what what do I want people to know about me.
Lisa Penberthy — What I want people to know about me? Um I believe in the local church. I have served in every capacity of the local church, minus a men’s pastor. So I started out ministry um, as a volunteer junior high youth leader, but a paid janitor. So I was paid to clean the toilets and I volunteered to serve the junior highers, and boy, some days it felt the same.
Rich Birch — Oh Gosh. Oh my goodness. That’s hilarious. I love that. So good.
Lisa Penberthy — But yeah, so so those are local church is where it’s at for me. I’ve served in various capacities at denominational levels. So I’m ordained minister with the Foursquare Church.
Rich Birch — Oh great.
Lisa Penberthy — And served by pastoring local church years were mainly in the Foursquare Church. And then I served our denomination both at what Foursquare would call the district level that serves the local church directly, and then the national level that serves all of the US churches.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Lisa Penberthy — So it’s an honor to serve twenty plus years in those capacities.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it.
Lisa Penberthy — And then I love to teach.
Rich Birch — Oh good. Nice. And where where where…
Lisa Penberthy — So I’ve…
Rich Birch — And that’s been both in the local church context and other contexts? Tell us about that.
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, so Life Pacific University and and then Ministry Institute. So Rock School of Ministry when I was at the Rock and I currently teach at Western Ministry Institute which is a Foursquare Ministry Institute.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I’m so honored that you would be on today to to tackle this issue particularly. Ah so what we’re talking about today really is how can we as church churches and church leaders, people who are charged with leading the church, really ah, encourage, raise up ah particularly female, women leaders in our our churches. I think my assumption is that there are people that are listening in today that although cognitively might agree, hey they look around their circles and they’re like there’s just way too many guys here; there have to be more women that ah, that should be leading in our context. But there must be something that’s going on that we’re not encouraging women to take it in these steps. Or we’re providing we’re kind of there’s some something that we’re doing that’s not working right. And I want to I want to, you offered, which I appreciate to help us kind of think about these issues today, and we want to kind of wrestle through that.
Rich Birch — So what should we be thinking about? What when when we think about this issue, let’s assume we’re in that picture we look around and we say but there’s just there’s just too many guys here. How can we, not that guys are bad, but how can we encourage ah you know more women to lead within our context?
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, great question and my focus is really practical in in just identifying what’s missing. When you sit down at a table, you’ve gathered people to make decisions and you look around and you don’t see any women. Um it it begs the question are we missing part of the conversation? And so starting out really practical is looking around the table – who’s at the tables that you go to? We tend to focus on the theological side in the conversation. But really we need to get beyond that and look at the practical aspect of um seeing women fulfill their calling. So if women know that they’re called, you’ve already determined that that’s where you stand because that’s your belief, then then let’s figure out how to do it.
Lisa Penberthy — So the practical ways look around the table are there women look at your platform, scroll through all of your um, Sunday sermons that you have put on your website and count how many times a woman has spoken. If you can’t find any times then you’ve probably missed the mark. If you’re only seeing it once or twice, but you’ve had 20 plus guest speakers, then you’ve probably fallen a little short now.
Lisa Penberthy — Now if if the primary speaker is just the lead pastor and no one else covers the pulpit then it is what it is. But if you bring guests in for your pulpit, if you bring guests in to speak, and you don’t see any women, then you should probably look a little deeper on your bench.
Rich Birch — Love that. I love that just even really practical, you know, try that. That’s a potential blind Spot we might have. Is that we’re not um, you know we’re not calling in, you know, female guest speakers when we you know when we are bringing in guest guest speakers. That’s great. What would be some other common and blind spots that you see when in churches that would hold ah conviction that would say, yeah we were we’re open to women women leading, but there’s just like a you know there’s just a blind spot that we just don’t see. Are any others that come up?
Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. Um, male leaders default to ah they need to be in the home. And not because they think that that not because that’s their belief, but because they feel that a woman will say no. And so they don’t even ask women because the woman is focused on their young children or they’re ah really focused on their family, they’re the soccer mom. And so they they don’t want to interrupt or they have spoken to a woman in the past that has said, I’m really busy now – come back to me, and they don’t come back.
Lisa Penberthy — So a really simple way to do that is when you identify a woman who is strong and called, and you know that um ministry speaking, teaching is in their future, and they say, you know what? I really want the first five years of my kids to focus on the first five years. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what they really need is that person that circles back after the first five years and says okay, five years is up. Let’s talk again. So coming back to the conversation; hold the women accountable. They’re the ones that said, I see that call in my life; I just want to wait. And so finding that balance. And really, that’s not everyone. When I started going, for me, it was this is my priority. My husband and I waited 10 years for the kids because I wanted to go after my calls so that when the kids came along, I knew the difference of my calling as a mother, and my calling as a pastor. Because they are two very different things that I know God has prepared me for.
Rich Birch — Um, love that. I know, um, so first of all I appreciate you pushing us on this. We want to keep leaning in here and finding ways that we could be creating undo barriers that that we shouldn’t you know that aren’t there. I know for me one of them that I’ve seen in my own leadership is the um is the unexpected kind of social stuff. Hey we’re going, hey let’s go out for lunch. Or hey we’re going to you know, whatever go to a game together. You know those kinds of things. Ah, talk us through ah well is that a problem am I being anxious about stuff I shouldn’t be anxious about? Or is there is there a real issue there that we need to think about?
Lisa Penberthy — So this is a tension point. And everybody has to individually determine where they sit. For me, I have traveled the world with male colleagues because it’s a part of what I’m called to do.
Rich Birch – Yep.
Lisa Penberthy — And my gender doesn’t limit my calling. My choices can limit it. My actions can limit it. But my gender shouldn’t. And so I have put in personal benchmarks and points of accountability accountability into my life and leadership that affords me opportunity to sit in a meeting room with just me and one male. Um, travel the world with just me and one male. Um, but that’s because of the things I’ve put in place for my accountability. And I know my weaknesses and that’s not my weakness. And now I won’t know the male’s weakness. And so open conversations become important. Knowing who you’re working with, knowing who you’re traveling with, um, putting that layer of trust in place becomes important.
Lisa Penberthy — Um, so so navigating those pieces is really important. So if there is a hesitancy on a male’s end of being in a room um with a woman because I’ve I’ve experienced that. And I had to ask a question of a male that said, is this because you don’t trust me, or you don’t trust yourself? And so and then that conversation was had. And then I took it ah a layer deeper and said, okay you trust me, you trust yourself. Is this a commitment to your spouse because I want to honor those things, but I also don’t want those things to keep us from being effective in the mission. And so let’s put it all out on the table. Never isolate a woman or keep from having a lunch with the opposite sex because of that barrier. Have the conversations up front. Because the reality in today’s day and age is you don’t know who’s sitting across from the table. You could have a transgender across the table. You could have um someone ah that doesn’t that is attracted to same sex and you don’t know and so…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lisa Penberthy — …having a male and a male at the table is no different today than having a male and a female.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lisa Penberthy — Now if this is your staff and someone you know then there should also be that same level of trust. You’re trusting where it’s at. So putting in your marks of accountability. And if this is an area you struggle with as a leader, you need to be vulnerable enough to say, hey I need to do it different. This isn’t about you. This is about me. Own up to your stuff. And so so it’s a real tension, and everybody has different markers and that’s the reality of the conversation is your personal barriers and obstacles, not the large picture gender barriers and obstacles, because we’re isolating all women because of our individual struggles.
Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, so this is really good, Lisa. I appreciate this. Can you give us some coaching here. So I um, so let’s assume I’m I’m a leader, I’m a male leader who does have conviction around saying hey I one of my own personal convictions is um, I I don’t want to meet alone. I won’t I won’t do the lunch I won’t that’s with with a a female. I don’t know how let’s say I don’t know how to say that without it sounding like I think you’re going to try to seduce me. Or I think I’m going to you know I’m like totally turned on by you. Like I don’t know how to how do I say that in a way. What’s how what can give us some language.
Lisa Penberthy — Right.
Rich Birch — Give us some coaching around how do we use that language? What what would you what would you how would you coach coach us on that?
Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. First, this conversation should come out in the interview process.
Rich Birch — Okay, good, good, good.
Lisa Penberthy — The woman coming in should know this before. She should know that there’s going to be limitations in the leadership relationship.
Rich Birch — Very good. Okay, good.
Lisa Penberthy — So this should come out in the interview process. And the comfort level of that, whether it comes from the senior leader making the hire, or it comes from the ah HR admin whoever does the hiring process. Either way, that’s where it should come out. The the female leader should not be blindsided…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lisa Penberthy — …um in the role six months in, discovering everybody else got a one-on-one. Everybody else goes to lunch one-on-one, but I don’t. Why? So that’s the wrong time to find out, and the wrong conversation in which to find out. So my first recommendation in this, have that conversation in the interview process. Let the woman make the decision to say, you know what? I’m still all in. I’m okay with that. Here’s the boundaries. Let’s work through this. Um, so what to say and how to say it is is really just coming forth being forthright and saying I have my personal boundaries and leadership, and here they are. You wouldn’t hesitate to say um I have date night with my spouse and I leave at five o’clock on Thursday. So if you’re not going to hesitate to say, I’ve got to be at my kids’ baseball game on Tuesday so I’m leaving. If you’re not going to hesitate on those things, then you need to not hesitate on this conversation. Because this conversation impacts someone else’s calling. So you need to be even more forthright with it. And and the comfort level comes in all the time. That’s that’s always a question. That’s always well I’m not comfortable because then as you said it could really spark a, I’m coming on to you. That’s when you have that other person. That’s why the interview’s a great place because typically the interview involves multiple people. So then that can be had um in a group setting. So so those questions, and as a woman I encourage you to ask the question so that it’s brought out.
Lisa Penberthy — So in interviews that I’ve had I’ve asked, what’s your position? Where will I see it? Where will I be held back that other people aren’t? Is there opportunity? And so as a woman I would say ask the question. It is you need to know what you’re getting into because you can’t get upset for a question you didn’t ask.
Lisa Penberthy — And on the the male leader side I would say if you know that you have hard and fast boundaries and rules, share them upfront. Um, if if you don’t have windows in your doors in your office, get those windows in. Because I wholeheartedly believe every door should have a window on it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Lisa Penberthy — But I also believe once that window’s there, you can shut the door and have a conversation. And so um, so it’s the balance of what have you done to give space for gender mentoring gender leadership conversations to happen. What have you done to make space for that? And what have you done to put in the obstacles? So if you haven’t put that window in, that’s an obstacle that you’ve put in. You’ve chosen that. Because now you have to leave the door open now those confidential conversations – I mean in my role as an Operations Pastor, all the confidential conversations are there. HR questions and conversations. Finance…
Rich Birch — Yes, so true.
Lisa Penberthy — …budgets, layoffs. All of those are closed door conversations that I can’t have unless there’s that window because that’s one of my boundaries. There there needs to be a window or at least a window somewhere that people can walk by. So if it’s not in the door, you know, there’s the window in the door for where the assistant accesses or however, that works but somewhere there is that layer of accountability there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I appreciate that. You know I do fair amount of coaching with churches where I’m on site and just recently I was at a church where there weren’t windows in their office doors. And I found it surprising I was like oh well, this still exists. Like I was like um and there was a fairly new building and as you actually we we brought it Up. We talked I talked about it. Because I was like, yeah, how does that like you know and so they choose to do the door open thing. And then I asked that exact same question which is like okay so what happens when there’s a you know a conversation that you can have the door open for um because of the nature of it. And it kind of got into this like, well ah it doesn’t really happen. And I was like, okay well, that’s Interesting. It’s just interesting, right?
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s interesting to see how people you know, operate. Um, so what about on that you know what about on the balance side. Let’s say that or that you know, kind of the other piece of that that puzzle. Let’s say I am a female leader who is um, you know, um, you know sometimes our convictions our um, our comfortable the way we our comfortableness changes in scenarios. Life is different maybe than when we started. Ah, how would you encourage a female leader to try to speak to this, if their own personal conviction has changed on this. It’s like hey you know I was comfortable but I’m not I’m no longer comfortable. Um, the the reason why I flag this is because there are too many churches where people have been taken advantage of. And so how do we create um, you know, ah a boundary there that’s reasonable. Um, yeah, talk us through that. What does that look like?
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, so in this area, it’s true. They do, the the position changes. It’s they’re they’re comfortable when they’re hired and and they’re in um, the the blissful state, and then something happens something a a statement’s made, a conversations had, and it changes the dynamics of the the comfort level. It changes the dynamics of the the leadership relationship, and so something has to shift. Um, for for women they have to be brave enough and and this is hard to even say, but they have to be brave enough to raise the concern. Now they don’t have to raise the concern to their superior. That’s not where the conversation usually starts. They need to raise the concern um, with within a peer context, within HR. I know most churches don’t have HR so that’s ah, that’s a hard statement to say. But but within that place like who writes your paycheck? That that technically is your HR person if your church is small and doesn’t have HR. Who writes the paycheck because that’s the administrative person that’s balancing labor laws. So let’s let’s put a little little technically. If that’s the person writing the paycheck then they’re the ones that have to know the labor laws. So that’s the person that I would send you to?
Lisa Penberthy — Um if your church is super small and that’s all done through the senior pastor, then there has to be a church council…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lisa Penberthy — …an advisory board, something that is bringing the leadership structure. And and you don’t have to go to all of them, but find the one person that’s safe. Find that person that you can talk to to help have that conversation, or to go with you to have that conversation. Because sometimes that line was crossed and accountability needs to be put in place. And sometimes that line was crossed out of ignorance – an ignorance statement, a really unfortunate illustration in a sermon. It could be that simple.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lisa Penberthy — Ah, that the line is crossed and that that comfort is lost. And so find that person to go to and have the conversation and ah appear or someone that holds your leader accountable. Those are the best go-tos to have that conversation with. And if there is still the comfort level to have the conversation um, have it early. And having it early means um, being brave enough to say, I have a concern…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lisa Penberthy — …and I don’t know where I’m landing on this, but let’s figure this out together. You know, going back to the the sermon illustration, you said something in your sermon Sunday that makes me uncomfortable. And had you said that one on one with me, I would have had to leave the room.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, and that’s ah
Lisa Penberthy — And so approaching it that way.
Rich Birch — Yeah, in some ways I feel bad that I’ve steered the conversation in this direction because I don’t want to inject I think sometimes we it’s like we we come to the worst case scenario. But I do I do think we have to talk about it and I think as executive leaders who are leading particularly within the church, this is one of those areas where, and this has been a growth area for me over these last couple of years. I I realized, man, I need to be really clear with our team who is the advocate that they should go to if I as their leader or if they’re particular leaders to people that lead them do something say something that is that is inappropriate, that’s off off bounds. We have to be as clear as that with our people.
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — This is who you talk to…
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — …this is the advocate that is there on your behalf…
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — …um, that is outside of you know, that and that’s their job there. And you have to you have to identify somebody, you have to make it super obvious, say this is how you talk to them. Um, and you know that’s been a growth area for me even these in these years because I’m like, man, we can’t I don’t want someone to wonder in that moment. I’m not even sure to talk to about this, particularly if it’s about me…
Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — …if I’m the person that ultimately this whole thing leads up to, man, I have to create, even more so, I have to create really clear ah, really clear lines there. Um, so another area of this is our own thoughts and beliefs and approaches to how we manage our home life versus how we manage in ah our leadership scenario at church. I think there sometimes can be a tension there where it’s like how we’ve decided how my spouse and I have decided to manage how decisions are made um, you know somebody ultimately has the tie-breaking vote. You know we’ve talked about that in our own marriage…
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — …who has that tie-breaking vote. Ah, but then maybe I and maybe even unwittingly, unknowingly import that into my leadership at church. Have you seen that before? Talk to talk us through that.
Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. So there is a big difference between your theological position and your marital preference. And and in that what I’m saying is in your theological position, you either lean mutualist, also known as egalitarian, or hierarchy also known as complementarian. So mutualist, which I prefer because we live and lead and are married and serve in a mutual submission. So mutualist. So in a mutualist relationship your role at the church and your role at the home may look very similar. However, um your role at home may look more hierarchy, and you know what it’s it’s okay because it’s your preference in your home. You you know what you believe, you know what the bible points you toward, but in your home you’re like, hey this is how we want to live our life. We want um the the husband to to be the decision maker. And I wouldn’t go as far as saying the head of the house because then we go in a whole different conversation and that’s not what we’re addressing. But the decision maker the one that has the final say when there’s a tie. The husband’s a tiebreaker. In in our home when there’s a tie the person who has the most knowledge and understanding of the topic is the tiebreaker. It’s not a default. It’s not, well you’re the male so make the decision. It’s well you know more about this so you make the final decision. So you know, I’ll I’ll use a very lighthearted, when my husband and I are talking about sushi, he is always going to make the decision. He knows, you know…
Rich Birch — He’s the sushi expert. Love it.
Lisa Penberthy — Exactly. But when when we’re talking about Mexican food, I’m gonna be the one that makes a decision. I grew up in Southern California; he grew up in Portland, Oregon. I’m going to make the final decision. So…
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Love it.
Lisa Penberthy — …so it’s about knowledge, understanding, and experience in in a mutual relationship. Mutual submission means the best person, the best equipped makes the the decision when there’s a tie. Um in and so in your preference if if in your marriage it’s like it doesn’t matter that I know more about Mexican, I’m always going to default to him, and I’m going to stick to the food because it makes it more friendly conversation for everyone, um, it’s always going to default to the husband. That’s okay; that’s your marital preference. It’s not your theological position if you truly are um, a mutualist and egalitarian belief status. This is about the preference in your home.
Lisa Penberthy — And they’re different. And and women get really hung up on that because they find themselves wanting a spouse like that. It’s you know the fairy tale. It’s the prince charming. It’s what they’ve been taught to desire. And really they don’t even know if that’s their desire until they’re in it. But it’s what we’ve been taught. I grew up wanting princesses and castles and then I really said actually I don’t. And my childhood dream adulthood was overseeing an orphanage all by myself because I didn’t need anyone else to help me do it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Lisa Penberthy — So, you know, it’s the balance. Um, and so everybody has to find that. So really, that’s that’s your preference and not necessarily your theological position. And being able to separate those out really helps you better understand where you land in leadership overall. And as um, the other side of the conversation, if you are hierarchy complementarian then all aspects of your life will align that way. Then your home and your ministry and and how you seek a job really will take you in that direction.
Rich Birch — Right right. Okay, cool, interesting. That’s great. Super helpful for sure as we think as we try to you know discern you know, pull those those two aspects of our lives apart and try to think critically about that. So so helpful. Appreciate that.
Rich Birch — When you think about um, particularly next generation women leaders, what can we do as leaders who maybe are, you know… So I’m thinking about executive pastor, leadin’ at a church, a female or male who’s like, hey I want to make sure that young leaders, particularly, are getting opportunity. Because it seems like a part of where this goes off the tracks is like very early on it’s like, you know, women coming out of school or like very early on it’s like we’re not creating the right opportunities. Any thoughts on that? What can we do on that front?
Lisa Penberthy — Um, advocate for ’em in every way possible.
Rich Birch — Okay, great. Yep.
Lisa Penberthy — So um I have had interns in my office space, whether it’s at the church, whether it’s in the corporate world, interns in my office raising up the next generation. It’s one of the reasons why I teach it’s because I believe in the next generation of leaders. I teach as adjunct professor because I want to know that they still exist. And I want to know that there’s still interest because the next generation isn’t as interested there as um, as my generation. They’re they’re not the gung-ho um, grind. Then we skip from the millennials to Gen Z who are back to the grind. They’re like I want the job, I want I want the driver’s license. Look at the millennials, they’re like I’ll get my driver’s license one day. And so the balance of that. So being with younger, um younger leaders became really important to me.
Lisa Penberthy — So how do you pour into them? First hang out with them. Know that they exist, know that they have something to offer. Because if all you’re seeing is kids’ noses in screens, you are not going to see the potential of what they have to offer. Give them opportunity to show their potential. And for for women specifically, and there’s many times me growing up in different roles and capacities as a woman that I was overlooked because it was, hey let’s go to the golf course. Hey, let’s go to the basketball court. And it wasn’t invited because those were hangouts. Let’s find the potential. Let’s have a conversation. Ah well there are women that play golf. I’m not one of them because my golf game stinks. My dad will tell you firsthand. Ah.
Rich Birch — I love it. Yeah, love it. Yes
Lisa Penberthy — I have attempted. But yeah, but but there are different ways to do that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lisa Penberthy — So find those places where you can hang out. And of course you know a male taking just one female to go play golf isn’t reality, so the pickup game of basketball is probably your better bet. And there are women that play basketball. And we automatically think that… we automatically skip over the invite for the woman.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lisa Penberthy — So we have interns and you invite all the male interns. I’ve I’ve watched it happen in the offices that I’ve been… all the male interns were invited to go to the baseball games. Like guess what? I watch baseball every day. Literally every day. Whether it’s my kids playing, or the Dodgers playing I watch every day.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Lisa Penberthy — So um, so so those are just opportunities. Find those places where you can see the next generation of leaders, and women specifically, in their own environment. See what their potential is.
Lisa Penberthy — Go where they’re at instead of taking them where you’re at. And so when you invest in the next generation, you really want to take the time to listen to them. And part of listening is observing.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes.
Lisa Penberthy — See how they interact. See how they naturally lead in environments and then you have that follow up conversation that says, hey when I was watching you the other day at the basketball on the basketball court I saw you take charge. I saw this in you. So stirring up that potential in them really ignites them. And then specifically when it becomes the gender issue, go where they’re at. Find out what what they’re doing. And I’m not saying go get your hair done with them. I’m saying, go find, you know, if they’re on the volleyball court, then pick up volleyball instead of golf. So go where they’re at.
Rich Birch — I love that. So good. Um, when you think about the like do you think the trend in this is heading in the right direction or the wrong direction? Like do you what’s your kind of ah, you know, your assessment on this – are we getting better as a church or or not? I can’t discern that.
Lisa Penberthy — Um, we are not getting better as a church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lisa Penberthy — And here’s the unfortunate thing…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lisa Penberthy — …but we’re not getting better as a society. So I’m currently in an executive women’s leadership program at Cornell University, and the statistics there are heartbreaking because our society is reflecting the same. And the the thing for me is the church has a mandate. Society doesn’t. So as a church we should be the front leaders. We should be the frontrunners. We should be out there saying, we empower everyone because the Kingdom and God’s people are more important than our bias on genders.
Rich Birch — So good. So good.
Lisa Penberthy — And this is not a salvific matter. This does not determine our salvation.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lisa Penberthy — So let’s go make this happen, and get out on the battlefield where salvation does matter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lisa Penberthy — Let’s reach the people where it does make a difference. And so so our trends are still kind of holding steady with less women right around that 45 mark which is better than where it was back in the day. So right around that 45 mark is where we’ll see you know, depending on which statistic anywhere from 45 to 48 of women. Um, but if if you flip it and look at the other aspects of women, and we have more educated women than we do men.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep, yep.
Lisa Penberthy — More more women seek higher degrees but they’re doing all of this to seek the opportunities. Because you have to go after the degrees because a woman won’t be looked at without the degree, whereas it male would be. And so um, so women are going after those degrees so that they have an opportunity. They have a standing chance of well, I don’t have the experience because it wasn’t extended to me, but I have the education. And so finding that balance, getting that education has helped women, but the trends are not in our favor right now.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Lisa Penberthy — And so that that is what I’m hoping people can discover even just in our conversation is there are ways to empower women. There are ways to advocate for them, and to release them, and to see them um take leadership roles that they haven’t had opportunity in the past. And we can see those numbers reflect those decisions.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Um so this might be another unfair question in this area. This is one of the great I think one of the great ironies of the modern church is so many churches I’ve been to if you were to stand back on a Sunday morning or a weekend service and look out over the, you know, over the audience, congregation, whatever you call it in your particular slice of christianity, um, you know that’s 60 maybe 70% women ah 30, 40% men, um and and some even higher some 80/20 you know it. It definitely skews. In fact, I think and one ah hundred percent of the churches I ever visit it always skews towards there being more women than men. That’s like a whole other topic of conversation. But then at the same time the leadership skews the other way. Um, where it’s you know, primarily men um, leading. I don’t even know if I have a question. I’m like what is happening here?
Lisa Penberthy — Truth.
Rich Birch — Like what is happening here? Like what what is all of that? Again I realize it’s an unfair question because it’s like it’s this giant issue that’s in front of us. How do you reflect on that you’ve obviously thought about these issues.
Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — So you know what what do you think? What do you think?
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, so so seeing that, that very thing everything that you said I agree with. It’s the trends. It’s the truth. The numbers will show you. I mean every church that I’ve been into and I’ve been on a lot because I’ve worked a denomination where I that was my job was to visit churches. So um, there are more women in the seats. And if there are more women in the seats and fewer women on the platform, then we’re not reaching and discipling the women that God has brought to us, the people that God has brought to us.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Lisa Penberthy — And so if we truly are raising up and discipling those that God has brought to us, then we should see more women in leadership. We should see more women leading even the simplest of things – our discipleship classes, and and our our trainings that we do um. And yet we oftentimes limit women to our children’s ministry, which ah looking back at my childhood, my favorite ah children’s pastor was a male. And my favorite Sunday school teacher was my grandfather who was obviously a male. And and not because well partly because he was my grandfather, but because he was full of wisdom and all of our friends loved him. He was funny. You know all of those things that you’d hope for. And if if the male voice is absent in the seats, how absent is it in the home. And who do our children need to hear from?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
sa Penberthy — But yet all of our Sunday school teachers are women.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. It’s yeah this is ah this is one of the, yeah, we you know didn’t even get into that the stereotyping of women into you know, serving in, you know, just in in “just” I say in quotes…
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — …in you know kids ministry areas. Um, that’s like ah you know that’s like, again, a whole other can of worms. Or in some movements you know you’ll have women are allowed to ah to go overseas and do roles with mission organizations.
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah, do everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that they are would not be allowed to do in the exact same organization, you know, on this, man, that’s just sad.
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — I’m like how are we still living in that world? That’s that’s crazy to me. Well this is…
Lisa Penberthy — It is an unfortunate dynamic.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Lisa, this has been an incredible conversation. I really appreciate you, you know hoping our… Listen, friends, our hope was to to to continue to talk about this issue, to raise this for us to think about it. Again, my assumption is that there are leaders that are listening in today that see all those problems, and are like I see all that. But it’s like hey, what steps can we take today? Give us a kind of final word as we wrap up. What what would you say to a leader that’s listening in that says, yeah I see all that stuff. What what could be a step or two that we should be taking, even practically this week…
Lisa Penberthy — Yeah.
ich Birch — …ah to try to create better, you know, equality equity in our organizations?
Lisa Penberthy — First I would say lean into the discomfort. It’s unfamiliar territory for most leaders and you got to just lean into it. And then I would say set your own personal boundaries. And don’t penalize others because of your boundaries. Make them your own. Own up to them and make them yours and don’t penalize others. It’s very easy to have boundaries that penalize people from their calling.
Lisa Penberthy — And then communicate. Make sure people know your boundaries. Make sure the woman that you’re inviting onto staff knows that there will be limits if you’re putting limitations in there. And if there aren’t limits, then live up to what you’ve committed to.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it. Thank you so much, Lisa. If people want to track with you, we’re going to be at the XP Summit here coming up in very short times.
Lisa Penberthy — Yes.
Rich Birch — So hopefully folks are listening in that are coming to that we’ll get a chance to connect. But if people want to connect with you, track with you, where do we want to send them online?
Lisa Penberthy — Oh that’s a great question. I’m in the process of launching my website.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Lisa Penberthy — Um, but ah and we have not secured the domain because my husband’s one step behind me.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s okay. Love it. All good.
Lisa Penberthy — So um, but ah, but they they can reach me at lisa@penberthy.rocks
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Lisa Penberthy — So that’s my first name lisa@penberthy.rocks and that is my ministry address.
Rich Birch — Love it. Perfect! Thanks so much, Lisa. I appreciate being here. Thank you for helping us think through and wrestle through these issues today.
Lisa Penberthy — Absolutely. Thanks, Rich.
Closing the Gap Between Your Church’s Vision & Execution with Nick Thompson
Apr 27, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Nick Thompson, the Executive Pastor at The Living Stone Church in Denver, Colorado.
How is your church executing on its vision? If you’re a church leader looking to create a practical framework for decision-making, a Vision Frame might be just what you need. Listen to this week’s podcast as Nick shares how to bridge the gap between vision and execution in your church.
The Vision Frame. // The Living Stone has a big vision: to expand the movement of Jesus followers across Denver, the West, & the World. In order to move toward this goal, the church has implemented a Vision Frame. The Vision Frame is a bit like a picture frame with the church’s vision at the top of the frame, values on the right, strategy on the bottom, and measures on the left side. This framework helps the church discern whether to say yes or no to things because everything they consider needs to fit within this frame. If it can’t go through the frame, it needs to be tabled.
Values. // Values define and determine a church’s culture. Churches can become too focused on comparing themselves to other churches, or choosing something aspirational for their values. Instead pay attention to who God made your church to be and ask what you really value. At The Living Stone Church they found that the things they valued most were people, prayer, and praise. They believe prayer is the work, people are the mission and praise is the response to God’s moving.
Keep it simple. // Nick and his staff try to keep communication simple when they talk about the church’s values. They can operate as a single word as well as a punchy statement that doesn’t need a long explanation. In addition the leaders at The Living Stone are constantly paying attention to where they can talk about one of the values, whether it’s in a sermon or a team meeting.
Strategy. // The strategy is always how your church accomplishes your mission and vision. At The Living Stone, their strategy is The 5% Life, which is a starting point that everyone can engage in as they grow in their relationship with God. The strategy is to spend 1% of the day (at least 15 minutes) in God Time, 1% of the month (1.5 hours) in Group Time, 1% of the week (1.5-2 hours) in Gather Time at church, and 2% of the year (7 days) in Go Time, serving locally or globally in missions. The 5% Life focuses the body at The Living Stone strategically towards God and towards the mission of what God’s asked the church to do.
Measures. // If we want our churches to grow, we need to be measuring how we are executing on the vision. Otherwise we won’t know if we’re hitting the mark or not, and growth will be slow and painful. The Living Stone uses the actions of abiding, connecting, and sharing as their measures. These measures help the church to examine if they are doing what they say they’re doing to get where they want to go. The church asks, are people growing spiritually? Are they connecting with people? When those two things are happening, sharing Christ with those around you is a byproduct.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited today for today’s conversation but looking forward to this one. We’ve got Nick Thompson with us. He is the executive pastor at a church in Colorado ah, called The Living Stone Church and they exist to expand the movement of Jesus followers across Denver, the west, and ultimately the world. It’s one of the top reproducing churches in the world and Nick he’s an executive pastor. We love executive pastors here at on unSeminary. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Nick Thompson — Yeah, great to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to be on.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what don’t you tell us about The Living Stone? Kind of fill in the picture, you know what did I miss there? What what do we, you know, what do we what do we need to to know about the church?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, so we’re ah we’re still what would we consider a church plant. And the church was planted by our lead pastor Keith Baldridge in 2016 of August. And we’ve been journeying for a while now. We’re we’re now in 2023 so we’re we’re encroaching 7 years, and it’s been a great journey. I’ve seen a lot of activity from the Lord and just just unbelievably grateful to be a part of what God’s doing through this church specifically. Um I came on board a little over 3 years ago now. So I’ve been about halfway through been a part of that and yeah, it’s just super special.
Nick Thompson — We’re in a really unique area because ah for the listeners and for those who don’t know, um, Colorado is as a whole is about 94% unreached as far as faith goes. And so there’s there’s no better time to be planting churches here locally in our our state specifically. I know there’s other areas, the west, is very similar so that’s that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love talking to church leaders like yourself that are in communities that you know people don’t wake up on Sunday morning and say, hey we should go to church today. They just don’t do that in Denver.
Nick Thompson — No!
Rich Birch — And the fact that you you know they’re not like oh what what are the things we should do today? Well after we go to church… That’s just not what they’re saying in Denver. So, which I love. I think this is great. We can we can all learn and that’s my heart. That’s the kind of communities I’ve served in as well. That’s so good.
Rich Birch — Well one of the things that caught my eye my kind of got my attention ah at Living Stone was your mission. And so The Living Stone exists or your vision to expand the movement of Jesus ah, followers across Denver the west in the world. And I just I love that. That’s such a huge vision, massive. How how does that work itself out in reality? What does that look like how, you know, how are you as an executive pastor – we’ve often said in the past that executive pastors live at the intersection of execution and vision. Ah, that’s really the place that we we live at, so what does that look like for you at Living Stone?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, it’s ah it’s a great question. Um, really, that’s been the majority of my time being on staff here at The Living Stone has been to take that vision and really form good strategy systems, practical steps to help our church really start achieving that, because you know as vision goes, it’s it’s the thing from God. And you know we need to accomplish it because we’re we’re doing his his will and his work. And so it’s it’s super imperative that we’re we’re thinking and focusing on that.
Nick Thompson — So one of the things that we implemented just about a year and a half ago that has made um a lot of acceleration a lot of momentum, just a lot of inclusiveness for our people… Sometimes there’s a huge gap between vision, especially a big vision like this and how people get there. Um, what we’ve what we’ve gotten to as far as like a solution for us is we don’t want them filling in those blanks. We need to be the the forerunners of here’s here’s how we’re doing it. Here’s… the why is right there but here’s how we’re doing it. We’re gonna really spend some focus time on on getting that right.
Nick Thompson — So um, the thing that we we actually we we say we adopted because we didn’t steal it. We didn’t borrow it. We’ve used the term we adopted from one of our partner churches, Hope Church, is something that we’re terming as the the vision frame. And so it’s basically like a picture frame. You’ve got vision at the top. You’ve got values on your right. You’ve got strategy on the bottom, and then you got your measures on the left side. And having that vision frame has been super impactful, not just for us as a staff team, but also for our people to really understand, you know, why do we say no to some things? Why do we say yes to some things? Um, how does everything that we’re really going after fit with the overall big vision moment that we’re we’re calling expanding the movement of Jesus followers to Denver, the west, and the world?
Nick Thompson — And so it’s really just a ah simple frame and and the way to think about it is if it can go through that frame, it’s probably something that we should be doing or at least have on our future cast. If it can’t go through that frame, it’s definitely going to have to be tabled for now. Maybe in the future it it does make sense. But right now that’s just a no. And so it’s just really simple analytics practices to help our people um, work through that. And I I could go through that if you want me to like really what those each sections are.
Rich Birch — Yeah I would love that. I’d love to hear that I love this idea of really breaking it down and trying to close the gap between those two, vision and execution. So yeah, so so yeah talk us through maybe we’ll talk through those four and then we can come back and could get a sense of you know what what do you mean by all those words. And then how have you actually implemented and rolled that out at you know at Living Stone. So let’s let’s start start with talking through those pieces.
Nick Thompson — That’s great. Um, three of them are are really interesting to me because I truly believe that most churches are going to do something similar to what we’re doing in in three of these categories. They’re just maybe worded a little bit differently. You know, when I look across America and I’m looking at like what churches are doing as far as their vision to some level they’re they’re pretty much similar. The great commission is there for a reason.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Thompson — We’re just we’re just using different language to to help people motivate and get there. But for us our vision is ah ah making followers of Jesus, so creating a movement of Jesus followers to Denver, west, and the world. And the strategy there just just to give the big blueprint is Samaria, Judea, to the ends of the earth. It’s it’s starting where we are and starting to work externally. The west has never seen a major move um, of God and so we want to be a part of that. We feel the calling in that not just for here in Colorado. And so that’s that’s like the small strategy behind why the vision is played out that way. Um, so that’s our vision. That’s our we call it our “mis-sion”…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Thompson — …because it’s really a mission/vision kind of loaded in one. Um you know, moving from there to the right side of the the frame we we get into our values. Um something that I did when I came on staff was I said hey, they had like I want to say it was like 7 or 8 values and nobody could remember what 1 of them were.
Rich Birch — So true.
Nick Thompson — And I said well they’re not very valuable if we can’t even remember…
Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely.
Nick Thompson — …so let’s put those in the trash can for now, even though you may feel like that’s a wound. It’s it’s not a big enough wound because you don’t even remember what they are. And it was really easy.
Rich Birch — <laughs> That’s a great way to say it. Love it.
Nick Thompson — But I said, you know when we’re defining culture, values determine the culture; they they mark the behaviors of what get us to great healthy culture. And so I said let’s not try to force this. Let’s let’s especially because at the time that would have been three and a half, four years in I said who are we? Like what do we actually value? And let’s lean out of that instead of trying to say, I want to be this. I think sometimes churches get into that hangup of…
Rich Birch — So true.
Nick Thompson — …trying to see something over here, see another church over here, and say I want to be like that. But maybe that’s not who God has made that church to be. It’s a body. It’s an organism. It’s not just an organization. It’s this fluid thing. And so we did that we just took a step back and said what are what are the things that we value? And it was really funny because it surfaced really quickly: people, prayer, and praise. Those are the three values that we lean into and you can’t have one without the other. It’s almost like a three-legged stool. They’re all equal. They’re all just as valuable.
Nick Thompson — Um, but we say prayer is the work. Ah, you know we don’t we don’t work and then pray. We pray and then God does the work. We we give him the glory, which is where praise comes in. We don’t we don’t take that. We just allow God to do what he wants to do. This is really his church. We’re just the part of the vehicle in between. And then people are the mission. You know our our church if I was to supersede and say there is a higher value, that would probably be the one. I wouldn’t dare to actually say it on paper or anything like that. But the reality is like you ask anybody at our church like why do you come here? Why are you here? You know what’s the reason you keep coming back? It’s the same answer from every single person. It’s not the preaching. It’s not the worship, no matter how good or how bad any of that is. It’s not really the operational side of Sundays. It’s the connectivity with our people. That’s something that we have that we actually don’t have a lot of as far as the the global church here in Colorado. S we choose to lean into it and make it a high value. Um does that make sense?
Rich Birch — I love that – let’s this pause there for a second. Absolutely, it makes total sense. So the couple things I want to point out. So I love the whole descriptive versus prescriptive conversation on values, right? Like I think we sometimes are looking for aspirational things things we wish were important to us. Talk us through that a little bit more; pull that apart because you you know you you talked about that there, but pull that apart a little bit more. What what kind of was your instinct around hey you know what? Let’s let’s let’s describe more who we are rather than who we want to become.
Nick Thompson — Yeah, um I think part of that too is you know we we, Pastor Keith and I, we get to spend a lot of time helping young churches or not launched churches just yet, we get to do a lot of leadership in that category which is super fun – one of our our biggest life-giving things that we get to do. And one of the things just through learning through this that we we always teach is you know don’t try to, unless God – that’s a one caveat, right? Like if God says, no this is who I want you to be; like this is who you are. And you already know that going in, holy cow man you have a huge leg up like crazy. So that’s that’s awesome. Um I don’t find that to be very normal I think most of the time people are trying to find the DNA of their church, which is really what we’re talking about is like who who is this church. What is the heartbeat? What is the lifeblood? That really accentuate to gets you to the vision.
Nick Thompson — So as far as like the description behind that the things that we were looking for again and again we had a couple years of of play time to understand it. You know three and a half to four years. So it was just a simple question like who really are we? What are the things that really rise to the service when we say this is what we care about? I think some churches—this is what is kind of unique—I think some churches have different flavors of this. Like I think people are always going to be a part of that in some way however the language gets there.
Nick Thompson — Obviously because of what we do, God is probably going to have some center point in that value system. And so those two are are really primary, I think. I don’t know how a church could operate without valuing those two things to some degree or some level. Um, and the extra is is you know I like I like the rule of threes because it keeps things off of like ah a dual net. So just having at least a third or maybe more as long as it can be remembered, as long as it could be…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Nick Thompson — …and that’s what was super nice is that wasn’t hard for our people to grab; they’re already doing it. That’s. That’s who we are. So it’s like you don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to try to, man, we’re we’re the 7 steps of excellence like…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Thompson — …but we’re not so you know we shouldn’t be focusing on that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So good. I also the other thing I love about this the from a communication point of view your your core values is they operate at two levels. And you and it was funny because I was thinking this as I was reading this on your site. Which which to me again friends I think this is like best in class. Um, it can always get there but man if you can push towards it, it’s amazing. That your values operate as both a single word and then a very punchy statement. So prayer, people, praise. And then prayer is the work, people are the mission, praise is the response. Um and and man if you can get if we can push ourselves to that kind of clarity, I I think that just helps us.
Rich Birch — Talk us through maybe in different environments or different ways when you’re communicating, where would you use just the single words where would you use a little bit longer and then obviously expands out from there. There’s the paragraph. There’s the full you know. There’s the sermon. There’s the series. You know like it’s you know it obviously goes you could talk about the stuff for a long time. But talk through the particular difference between when are you using just individual words as opposed to the the you know the the punchy statement the punchy few words together.
Nick Thompson — Yeah, it’s a great question. Um in everything that we do, we try to use the “kiss” method – you know, Keep It Simple Smarty. Um, we try to we try as much as we can, because you know the reality is what’s in my brain, what’s in Pastor Keith’s brain the rest of our staff is so much information…
Rich Birch — Right?
Nick Thompson — …that is not translating at the same rate. And so we do think very um, clearly we do think you know very um, even in private like how what is the best way to get this information across? And so with all of the vision frame, including the values, that’s why we use singular and the long-term expression because there’s moments where we get to teach on it. Um, you know one of the things that Pastor Keith does when he’s preaching is he’ll he’ll throw out his sermon then he’ll send it to either me or or one of our other staff members and we’ll say, hey right here’s a great place to load one of our values in. It’s it’s prime; it’s already there. You’re not, you’re not adding to scripture. You’re you’re you’re using it to accentuate what we’re trying to talk about. So here’s a great place to do that. Maybe we’re having a team meeting in the morning and we’re rallying behind one of our values. You know, if we’re saying people are the mission, you know we get to do a little bit more description with that in that moment. Um, but again we’re throwing it everywhere, especially on the – that’s where I would say would be the difference is if you’re doing a teaching moment, have longer descriptions. if you’re just like putting in the net out constantly so people just feel it, hear it, and start absorbing it, use the use the smaller words.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Okay, so you also said strategy. Talk us through what do you mean by that word? This is one of those words that I feel like in in a lot of or in some circles it becomes it’s like it’s like this magical thing. Ah you know but help us understand what what do you mean by strategy? How does that fit into the frame?
Nick Thompson — So yeah, yeah, strategy is is simply it’s the how. How do we get there? Um, the why is is you know the vision that’s that’s holding that. Even to some level the what is you know in our values. Um, the where and the who, I think all of those exist too, within some of the measures some of the values and and are definitely our our vision. But the strategy is always the how. So that’s what we mean by strategy. And this is actually the one area I think churches get to have a lot of fun with because this probably will not look exactly the same between any one church, unless it’s like a campus or something like that. That’s a little different story. But this is how we how we accomplish the mission. This is what we’re saying. When we do these things. This is how the vision over time gets accomplished. So that’s that’s like the simple answer to that.
Rich Birch — And and so how do you define that? What does that look like for you guys? How would you talk about the strategy?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, so our strategy is we call it The 5% Life. Again, it’s part of what we adopted from Hope Church in Las Vegas, and it’s very simple. It’s it’s 1% 1% 1% and then 2%. So that equals your 5%. We always we always throw this out there for the Christians in the room. What we’re not saying is that we want you to have a 5% relationship with Jesus.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Nick Thompson — Ah non-believers never think that but it’s always the Christians that are like well I think that’s practically heresy. We’re we’re not saying that like even remotely. What we’re talking about is hey, this is a starting point and if we can get everybody to engage The 5% Life, we truly believe, and and we have analytics to prove it, ah that we are growing in that vision and going closer and closer towards that goal. So, breaking that apart, it’s really simple. We ask that people spend 1 % of their their day in God time, which is roughly 15 minutes. We ask that they spend 1% of their month in group time, which is basically our small groups. And they they spend basically one night a week for you know an hour and a half—that’s what that equates to—gather time is another one percent, which is coming to church weekly. 1% of their week is is basically an hour and a half to two hours of of time with service, and just getting to gather and be in fellowship. And then the 2% is go time, going locally and going globally we ask that. You know they would spend their year in a 2% fashion, praying and focusing on the global effect which means they go on a missions trip, or they they do something within that, it ends up being about seven days, they end up spending about seven days here locally on mission too. So it focuses them strategically towards God and towards the mission of what God’s asking this specific church plant to do.
Rich Birch — Um I love that. So I that’s I love that articulation. That’s ah, that’s a ah clear example um I think the thing I love about that is you’re focusing on you know, by by focusing on the percentages and talking about the timeline, ah, you’re giving another level of depth to this. You’re saying hey this is this is the kind of time, this is the kind of—and we we live in a time-obsessed culture…
Nick Thompson — Yes.
Rich Birch — …where time is our greatest attention is our greatest you know asset. Um, you know see you know Facebook and Instagram who are monetizing that attention. And so by saying hey, let’s let’s use that attention, you know, for our spiritual growth. I love that. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anybody else talk about it like that. I just think that’s really great.
Nick Thompson — Yeah. Yeah, we’ve we’ve found it to be highly impactful. I mean it’s simple and yet there are so many sub-layers to that that, especially our staff gets to work with. Like you know we break that apart. We we really help people on the serving level. You know if we can get people to serve, they’re really operating in that gather time. The I would say the most important though of all is the first one. If they can spend 15 minutes daily with God um, we will see the trajectory of their spiritual growth like crazy. Because it won’t stay at 15 minutes, one; it will it will get longer. Ah, they’ll also have a relationship with God. We believe that we believe that we’ll we’ll taste and see that that’s good. And so we I don’t know that we shove it down. People’s throats. But we we talk about it an awful lot. Especially that first one just because we know that you know without that we’re we’re operating and working through, you know, fleshly mindsets and that just takes longer to get there. It it doesn’t matter how great your strategy is for your vision without God. It’s it’s just gonna be so much so much work that we just know God could go before us. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. And then I think the I think if I remember correctly the the other part of the frame is measures is what you’re you’re measuring as an organization? Talk talk me through that. What’s that look like?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, this is ah this is actually again, this is another one that I think would be pretty consistent with any church. Those first top three – the the vision the values and then the measures will be pretty consistent, some version of it with any church. And yet I find that the fourth one is the one that most churches don’t do because they either don’t have time for it or they don’t think it’s valuable. And the reality is you can’t you can’t grow into what you don’t measure. So if you’re not measuring it, you’re not even focused on on the vision is the reality and I know that might be hard for some people to hear, but it is the truth. Like if you’re not measuring as you go—Jesus did this in certain ways—I think there’s so much aptitude for that biblically even with the parable of the talents. Like if you’re not aware of what you’re doing with the things that God’s given you, growth is just ah, slow… it’s not just a slow-go. It’s ah painful. And sometimes it’s like that for other reasons, but that’s just something that we can do right from the get-go for sure.
Nick Thompson — Um, so our measures are they they operate within every bit of what we just described. They’re they’re really simple: abide, and connect, and share. That’s how we evaluate are our people, are we doing what we say we’re doing to get to where we’re going? If if we can measure those things in just a simple way abiding in Christ, meaning are people growing spiritually? Are they are they connected to the vine? And and that comes from that God time; that comes from that gather time. Ah, all all of those ingredients grow that one thing.
Nick Thompson — Are they connecting with people? You know if they’re just islands unto themselves, they’re not going to be effective in the ministry that God’s called them to. And so again, all of that touches the strategy. It messes with our values. And it and in the end it actually gets to our vision. If they’re connecting with people, we we know that they’re going to be alive in Christ and continue in healthy relationship with people and with him.
Nick Thompson — And then the sharing part, and this was this is by far—just to give everybody clarity here—this is by far a most challenging part is to get people to share into the mission. And so we believe that when we do all these things well within our staff teams within our volunteers within our groups, we believe that sharing is ah is a byproduct, sharing Christ to those around them. You know if he’s truly renewed you, if he’s truly come into your life, that’s a gift that you want to give other people. And here in Colorado we’re not, we’re not from the south. So it’s not like, hey come in my house. That’s very weird here.
Rich Birch — <laughs> Love it.
Nick Thompson — Um, but that doesn’t mean we don’t share Jesus. And so we’ve had to get calculated on on how we do that.
Rich Birch — So good. Okay, so talk us through. So love that super clear explanation of the frame. Talk us through maybe how you’ve rolled this out. How does this kind of impacted how you’re making decisions at ah at the church?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, I’d I’d love to just be like super honest with you know, the good and the bad because there’s been some tension for sure.
Rich Birch — You mean it’s not been all perfect? It hasn’t been all like oh it’s amazing.
Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, coming you know, we’re we have taught this now, our church is like living through this we would do it again 10 times out of 10 despite the pain and the the frustrations and the tensions that have come. Um but we we started the rollout by by doing two things. We got our groups involved, because they’re they’re really the heartbeat of our church. Like if you’re in a group you’re you’re part, you’re you’re involved at a pretty high level you’re because you’re doing a buy, connect, share. Um and and we also did a Sunday morning series to really launch this. Um and I knew this was gonna happen anytime that you really hyper focus on vision and say this is what we’re doing; this is who we are. You’re gonna have people that are like, this isn’t what I want. And one of the things that I do at our church is I help people get where they need to go. I thoroughly enjoy doing that because it’s really about the kingdom at the end. If if our church is at the best church for you, you need to be in a church that’s going to be, you know, giving you what you need to be successful as a believer. And so I will I will like literally walk you to that church, however that needs to happen so that you could do that. But that’s one of the things that we saw was a tension point is people who were on the fence and were like, well I’m coming for other reasons. We just had to be honest and say, that’s okay, but that’s not who we are.
Nick Thompson — At some, and I’ve seen this, man, over over years if people are there and they’re expecting something else, and we’re like well maybe we could do that, maybe we can’t. You’re hurting them and you’re hurting yourself, I think in the process because they’re probably never going to let go. If those things are really deep in them, they might even be ministry callings or ministry giftings, but if if you as a church are saying, you know, there’s other churches that that’s what they do and they’re really good at it. Like you should definitely go be a part of their ministry. You’re growing the kingdom. Yeah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Nick Thompson — …like it’s not about just our church sometimes, and so that’s definitely been a major tension. And at the same time, the people that are that is the vision for them too, they have gravitated and like clung to it in a way that I’ve never seen before. Like especially on our measures side. Our measures have been more successful, specifically this year than any year I’ve seen combined.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Nick Thompson — So it’s been major value. Major value.
Rich Birch — And that must be because it’s it’s would you say it’s because it’s gaining momentum internally. It’s like more people know about it. They know what the measures are. They know…so then it becomes you know, shared language, and then there’s a positive reinforcement on that. Is that what’s going on?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, shared language I think is key. It’s huge. It’s also simple. It’s not hard to follow. I mean I think if you’re making things hard to follow, getting to lead well is going to be difficult for you because, you know, people aren’t looking for really really hard follows. They’re looking for…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Nick Thompson — …I mean think how easy it is to follow with our our world, right now. You click a button to some level. So we’re trying to always make that more simple but also highly effective which always comes with tension.
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting, interesting. So what what coaching would you give, maybe looking back over your roll load over these last couple years. What would you do different, knowing what you know now? How would you coach in other churches that are thinking about you know they’re thinking about the frame, they want to you know, dive deeper ah to to ultimately drive, you know, better execution, life change in people’s lives. What would you what would you coach them to think to do differently than maybe you did?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, I would ah I would say definitely get aggressive with that whole idea. Maybe you want to do something different and it’s not a frame. Maybe it’s something, but similar. Like regardless I think having those four things is is worth more than we could probably equate to. And if you if you do that again what you’re doing is you’re creating a simple pathway for people to get on board and follow, and an onramp off too. I would say that’s even more important. Because if you’re from like the bible belt or, you know, if there’s depending on where this church is that we’re speaking to right now, it’s going to look different culturally. It just is. And so knowing those things, both are so important the off off ramp for people who are like, this isn’t what I want; I want a church that is all about like level 10 worship and all the resources go to that. Okay, that may not be you though. So don’t…
Rich Birch — Right.
Nick Thompson — …pretend like it is. Like and that’s that’s a thing as a church plan I think one of the one of the hardest things is is saying, well we need to grow with people because that’s part of our vision obviously. That’s a major key driver. But grow with the people that are part of the vision is is just as as lucrative because if you’re doing it with people who are just on the there there’s a lot of frustration that comes with that. There’s a lot of pulling away from the vision and so you’re working over yourself. I’ve always said this like ah since I started in leadership is I would rather run with 5 people that are all in than 500 people that are barely got a toe in. Because you can actually do way more with those 5 people by a lot. I mean the amount of resource for a leader that has to go into trying to gather and and group people back in over and over is extreme. So find people that are really in with you and get them to replicate everything that you’re doing and saying, but you got to make it simple which is why we have the vision frame.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. This has been so fantastic. I’m sure there’s people that are in their cars that have pull pulled over and are writing stuff out because it’s been so much helpful ah helpful tips here. This has been been fantastic. As we come to close as we kind of come to to wrap up the conversation, any kind of final words of advice or encouragement to leaders who are listening in today?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, yeah, something that I’ve been going through recently I think it has a lot to do with what we’re talking about, but man pray. The bigger the bigger and more leadership anybody gets, I think requires more prayer for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Nick Thompson — So like if you want your church to grow, pray more. If if your church is growing, you should already be praying more. Like spend more time with the Lord because you’re going to need his guidance and his direction.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, that’s a great great word to end on. Nick I really appreciate you being here today, and it’s great to connect a little bit. If people want to track with you or with the church where do we want to send them online?
Nick Thompson — Yeah, ah livingstone.church – that’s ah that’s our online resource and you can see all of the things that we have to offer. We’re we’re going to be offering some more resource pages here soon. A new podcast that we’re starting, some really fun stuff. So, man, it’s been a huge privilege. Thank you so much for letting me on here today.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. So we’ll have links to all that in the show notes but really appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you for your time.
Nick Thompson — Thank you.
Building a Resilient Church Staff: Secrets to Sustaining a Strong Team Culture with Todd Rhoades & Matt Steen
Apr 24, 2023
Welcome to today’s special episode of the unSeminary podcast where we are replaying our recent webinar called “Resilient Church Staff: Secrets to Building and Sustaining a Strong Team Culture” with my friends Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen, the co-founders of Chemistry Staffing.
In this webinar, Todd and Matt discuss the importance of cultivating a healthy team culture prior to bringing on new hires, communicating values and expectations during the hiring process to protect church culture, and taking the time to find the right candidate to build and sustain a strong team culture.
In addition they share a FREE assessment that is opening today, April 24th! Visit churchstaffassessment.com and answer the questions there to help you understand the health and culture at your church.
Protecting your culture. // Whenever we add staff members to our teams, it changes the culture. In order to protect our culture during that hiring process, Todd emphasizes the importance of clearly communicating your values and expectations right from the start. Don’t just have these ideas in your head, but put them down on paper and make sure that everyone on your team is in agreement about what your culture is.
Be transparent. // Once you have a clear understanding of your values and culture, give candidates open-handed access to what your situation and culture are. Be transparent about where your church is excelling and where you are struggling and need improvement. Hiding key bits of your story when talking with potential hires never ends well. It often leads to disillusionment after they come on staff and employment that doesn’t last.
The real cost. // We all want to find hires that are going to be long-term team members. We need to be realistic that finding the right candidate can take 12-18 months. While it’s tempting to quickly fill a need, it’s better to go without than hiring out of desperation. Matt explains that hiring the wrong person is costly not only because of the salary and other budget items spent, but also the time wasted, the significant loss of trust on your team, the sideways energy, and impact on your culture.
Team health. // Before you hire any staff, take a look at your current team and make sure that they’re healthy. If your team is not healthy and you try to bring somebody else in, it won’t correct the problems. To cultivate a healthy culture, remember that kindness and treating others the way you want to be treated goes a long way. Pay attention to providing regular opportunities for your team to offer feedback, whether for concerns or ideas. Invest in staff development, encourage healthy work life balance, and deal with conflicts and concerns in a healthy way. Foster a culture of appreciation, and make sure your team members are recognized for their contributions.
Potential vs experience. // When searching for candidates we are constantly confronted with the tension of hiring someone with potential versus hiring someone with proven capacity. But it’s important to consider more than just skills, abilities and experience. Don’t ignore key factors such as being a theological fit, aligning with your church’s culture and personality, and if the individual has chemistry with you and your team. While there may be times when a skilled person is necessary, take a chance on someone with potential and pour into them, making time for mentoring and development.
Staff Health Assessment. // On April 24th Chemistry Staffing is rolling out a 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment for church staff teams to participate in. This FREE assessment consists of 50 questions based on communication, job satisfaction, leadership, team dynamics, compensation and benefits, work environment and more. Take 10-15 minutes to go through the assessment at churchstaffassessment.com and receive a score that will give you insight into your church’s health.
Don’t miss the chance to take Chemistry Staffing’s FREE 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment at churchstaffassessment.com through May 19, 2023 and learn more about the health and culture at your church.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well, hey, friends, what on earth? Why are we coming in hot with an unSeminary episode on a Monday rather than on a Thursday? You know, for 800 plus episodes every Thursday we have bringed you conversations that we hope will inspire and equip you. But today, on a Monday, we’re coming in with something very special. You see, a couple weeks ago we ran a webinar called “Resilient Church Staff Secrets to Building and Sustaining a Strong Team Culture”. And it was with my friends Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen. And we covered a lot in that webinar that I want you to hear. But even more pointedly, this is what I want you to do to take action on it. Today, April 24th, they are opening up a free assessment. I can’t believe that this is free, but it’s a free assessment called churchstaffassessment.com. And it’s designed to help you understand the, the culture at your church.
Rich Birch — And you do this, it’s 50 questions. At the end they ask for your email address. You don’t actually even have to give it, but if you want to get the assessment, you just give your email. It’s totally free, and it will unpack and help you understand your church staff culture. Now, we’re gonna talk more about this in the episode, but I wanted you to hear this full episode. So we cut out the tops and tails, the kind of frivolous stuff at the beginning of the webinar and jump right in. Uh, but I want you to hear this. Take some time to put this in your ears and listen to this today. And join us on our next webinar. When we talk about this on our emails, you just, you can learn about ’em by just signing up at unseminary.com. We’re constantly unpacking great stuff in those environments, and you get to go toe to toe and ask questions with experts like Todd and Matt. So listen in, and don’t forget to drop by churchstaffassessment.com today. It closes on May 19th, so make sure you get in and do that today. Again, that’s churchstaffassessment.com.
Rich Birch — All right, friends, well, we’re gonna jump in, uh, to today’s conversation. Super excited. We are this, the title of this webinar is Resilient Church Staff Secrets to Building and Sustaining a Strong, uh, Team Culture. It’s gonna be a great time today. Now, just kind of a couple rules of engagement. We will be taking questions. Uh, we’re gonna have a bit of a conversation here. A couple things I want to extract out of these experts minds. Uh, but then we do want to get your questions in. So at any point during today’s call, please just drop them in the chat and, uh, we’ll make sure to get a chance to loop back around to them. Also, I wanna encourage you to stay tuned until the end, because today, uh, Matt and Todd are launching something really cool that you’re gonna get a chance to get it literally in on the ground floor of. So, like, you’re gonna be among the very first people to access this thing today. And so I don’t want you to miss that. Uh, and so we’re just, again, so honored that are, are here.
Rich Birch — So let me give you a bit of an introduction. We’ve got two folks, two friends, uh, on the call today, Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen. Uh, Todd is the co-founder of Chemistry Staffing. You might have heard of them before, if you’ve hung around unSeminary for a while. He’s got over 30 years of experience serving, uh, churches in a whole bunch of different scenarios. Todd, uh, was, has really, you know, helped in a bunch of different contexts as a founder of, uh, churchstaffing.com, which really helped so many churches find pastors and staff online. He worked with Leadership Network, you might know him from, from that context. It’s given really valuable insights, uh, into not only where the church is today, but where it’s going in the future, and how they can continue to operate healthy. He’s a graduate of Cedarville University, uh, so honored to have you on the call today, Todd.
Rich Birch — Uh, and Matt, Matt also, uh, is also a co-founder. We’ve got the co-founders here today of Chemistry Staffing. He served the local church for over two decades as a youth pastor. Yay, for previous youth pastors. That’s good.
Matt Steen — We, uh, you know, we gotta stick together. <laugh>
Rich Birch — Uh, church planter, executive pastor, he’s, uh, studied at Nyack and at Baylor University. Uh, he’s, uh, he’s got a whole bunch of different certifications. He was up in the northeast; that’s where he and I actually originally met. He’s a strata facilitator, uh, with the Patterson, uh, Institute. So, you know, he is a really smart guy or center. Uh, I know he is a really smart guy. Got lots to offer, so, welcome. So glad that you guys are here. Todd, why don’t you, we’ll start with you. Fill out your picture. What did I miss there? Uh, tell us a little more of the Todd Rhoades story there.
Todd Rhoades — Oh my goodness. No, I, I have such a big head after hearing that, that, uh, <laugh> <laugh> and, and, and, and half of it’s true. Even so.
Rich Birch — <laugh> Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — No, uh, you not, not too much more to, uh, to mention there. We really, Matt and I, um, started this, uh, Chemistry Staffing thing about, about six years ago, Matt?
Matt Steen — Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Todd Rhoades — Um, really, really out of a, a sense of we want to try and help ch… and this is what we’re gonna talk about today, help churches, uh, hire for, for what we call, what we call healthy long-term fit.
Matt Steen — Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Todd Rhoades — We want, we want to help churches and candidates find each other where they can serve together for a, at least five years. And that there’s that cultural match, and theological match, and all that, some of the stuff that we’ll get into later. But we started that about six years ago and, and just having a blast helping, helping churches and getting to know candidates and, and trying to make as great a matches as we can.
Rich Birch — Love it. Matt, why don’t you fill out the picture. What did I, what did I miss there?
Matt Steen — Uh you know, Todd, Todd never talks about his family and, and, and Dawn and all that kinda stuff. So I’m gonna go and talk, you know, married for 15 years to Teresa.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Matt Steen — Two of us and a retired greyhound named Nelly down here in Orlando. And so, uh, and like Todd said, you know, never, never woke up and said, Hey, I wanna go be a church headhunter.
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.
You know, it’s just like, you know, Todd and I, we, we we’re, we’re kind of church geeks…
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.
Matt Steen — …and, and the whole thing for us is, Hey, how do we help churches get healthy? And this was a low hanging fruit for us. It is really coming alongside in that, in that transition season. So, that’s it, man.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. And friends, the fact that we’ve been able to convince both Todd and Matt to be on here is, is just amazing. And so we’re, we’re looking forward to try to extract from them. So, obviously, you know, they have stuff, they have ways they can help you. Uh, but today we wanna really try to learn from them as we think about, you know, our particular context. You know, and lots of times when we think about hiring, cuz it’s a part of what we’re talking about, we’re adding new staff members, man, that we know that when, at least I know when I add staff members to our team, it changes the culture. Uh, it, it, it adjusts things. You know, you can’t make that kind of thing without some sort of adjustment. But Todd, how do we protect, if we’re adding a team member, how do we protect our culture during that process? How do we but during that hiring process?
Todd Rhoades — Well, that’s a, that’s a a great question, Rich. And I think that’s, it’s really foundational. You’ve gotta get this part right or everything that follows in your staff search is gonna go or has a high probability of going off the rails. Really, the one piece of advice I would say is, man, you’ve gotta clearly communicate your values and your expectations right from the start. And you’ve, and it’s not good enough just to have it in your head, put it in writing.
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Todd Rhoades — Um, what we find with a lot of churches that we work with, and we work with some great churches, is that when you’re going to hire a new team member, this is a great time to make sure that everybody is on the same page, and that you’re being honest with where you’re and what your culture is.
Todd Rhoades — So, and, and that has to start with, uh, with putting that down in writing and, and getting agreement on that. because you’re going to start, as you’re start interviewing candidates, you’re gonna start sharing that culture and that DNA with those candidates.
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.
Todd Rhoades — And if, if, if one person says one thing and another person says something else, that’s gonna be a real tip off that, uh, that maybe this isn’t quite as healthy a place as you can. So, from a practical standpoint, um, just a couple of couple of things that I think uh, once you get that down on paper and you’re in agreement, that’s really huge that you’re in agreement…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — …um, is give candidates open-handed access to what your, what your situation is, uh, what your culture is, you know, be realistic about, you know, hey, here’s where we’re hitting it outta the park. Here’s some areas that we really need to, to see some improvement or some things that we’re struggling with. Those kind of things. If you find that you’re, this is what we found. If you find that you’re trying to control the situation, as you start to talk to candidates, if you’re trying to control the access or you’re, or you’re, you’re hiding key bits, key bits of your story, to the person you’re trying to hire, chances are that’s not gonna end well for you because you can only hide that for so long. You, you bring them on your team, 12 to 18 months. If you’re hiding something or you’re trying to control access, it’s, it’s not going to go well for you. And we hear, and we, we hear this all the time from candidates when we’re talking to them, is we almost, we need a, a little virtual cuss jar that we can kind of put on our, on our desks every time, every time we hear a candidate say, well, they said they said this, but I got there on the first Sunday and it couldn’t have been…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Todd Rhoades — …you know, we’ve had, we’ve had people say, you know, um, they told us that they had 800 on a, on a Sunday and we got there and there were like 70 people in the room.
Rich Birch — Wow! Oh my goodness.
Todd Rhoades — So, I mean, we, we hear stories like that all the time. So number one, you gotta have your story straight. Number two, you gotta tell the truthful story.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — And number three, you gotta be open-handed with candidates and be honest and transparent and open. If you’re, if you are, that’s the start to a healthy staff culture hire.
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.
Todd Rhoades — If you’re not, it’s, it’s the beginnings of probably doing this again, this whole hiring thing again in the next 12 to 18 months.
Rich Birch — Well, I love that. Like, so I know for me, I, I feel the pressure when we’re in a hiring scenario. It, at somewhere during the conversation, it goes from we’re checking out them, and then they’re, and then eventually it becomes, they’re checking out us. And we get…
Todd Rhoades — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — I know, I feel the pressure of like, in that mode, it’s like, okay, now I want to sell them on like, Hey, what is great about what we do. But I, I love even just that on having that honest conversation with ourselves around, Hey, what, what is the, let’s resist that temptation, let’s resist the temptation, try to make ourselves look better than we are. Um, and what are those, you know, what are those areas that we want to be super truthful on? Yeah. I love that. That’s so good.
Rich Birch — So Matt, what about, so I know I feel this pressure when we hire people, man, this is a costly, expensive process. Like, I’m like, you know, I already feel the pressure. We’re like, you know, by all I would say a hundred percent of the hires I’ve ever done, there’s some gaping hole in our ministry. I’m like, this party is burning and I just need to throw a staff member at that. Uh, and I have told myself more than I’d like to admit, I’ve said, well, someone’s better than no one in that area. I’m sure no one else has ever said that. I’m just not a very good leader. Someone’s better than no one.
Todd Rhoades — Famous last words.
Rich Birch — Yeah and the… Exactly. I’ve done that a couple times, and over time I’ve learned, actually that’s not true. Because the cost of hiring the wrong person is just so high. Um, it’s, it’s just, it’s insurmountable. How do you kind of articulate that with, with people on the culture side, when you hire the wrong person, what’s the real cost of hiring the wrong person, Matt?
Matt Steen — The the real cost 4.7 million, it’s been, you know, scientifically prov… No, I, I, I don’t know that I can put a dollar value on it.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Steen — But sure. But, you know, here’s, here’s where it comes. I mean, the, the, the recruiting cost, just, just spending the money and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That’s, that’s a real cost. The salary that’s spent, and any budget items, I mean, that’s, that’s real cost. But, you know, I think the more significant cost is loss of trust, loss of, you know, the sideways energy, the cultural hits that, that you take, you know…
Rich Birch — So true.
Matt Steen — …all those, all those soft things that you really can’t put a number on. But what are, what are true, because I mean, the time that goes into that goes into, into a search right now, um, I’m telling churches that, you know, if you’re gonna go into a search process, be thinking 12 to 18 months. Now we’re gonna pray that God, you know, God, God shows up a whole awful lot quicker than that. But we’re saying, think about this as a 12 to 18 month run. And if it goes quicker, great. Right? But that’s a significant…
Rich Birch — Okay. Can I just say something? Can I stop there for a second? Just stop there.
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Because you just rolled over that; you’re an expert in this area. I, I wonder if people are surprised by that number, because I, I know for me, I, I’m like, man, we need somebody there tomorrow.
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So, uh, but even this idea of 12 to 18 months. Do you, did you get people surprised when you say that, or no, they’re just like, oh.
Matt Steen — Man, I, I ruin people’s day when I say that. I really do.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay. Right.
Matt Steen — It’s like, yes yesterday, you know, guy’s like, Hey, I really, our worship pastor’s leaving in May, we’d really like somebody here in June. And it’s like…
Rich Birch — <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s the third week of April.
Matt Steen — And it… yeah. I mean, this was, this was literally yesterday. And so…
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Wow.
Matt Steen — You know, and part of what I tell people, it’s like, I, I’m good, but I still haven’t figured out how to sync my calendar up to God’s calendar, right?
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm. Yes.
Matt Steen — God’s not surprised by the fact that we’ve got this staff opening, but his timing may not be the same as ours. And so, part of what I tell people is, we’re gonna pray like crazy that it’s gonna go quicker than 12 to 18 months. But part of, part of the role here is this higher, regardless of what position it’s gonna be, is so critically important to your culture, and to the direction forward that you need to be able to say no to somebody who looks amazing on paper. You need to be able to say no to somebody who you hit it off, and it’s just incredibly talented. You need to be able to say no to that person when the only thing that you can come to is the Holy Spirit is just saying, Hey, um, I’m not so sure about that. Right?
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Matt Steen — And if we’re in this saying, Hey, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s April and I need somebody in June, it is incredibly tough to say no to that person at that point. And so, part of what I tell our church is, is, hey, publicly communicate 12 to 18 months.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Matt Steen — Um, pray like crazy. It goes quicker. And, and man, I tell you what, we, we we’re shooting to get people in place way quicker than that. But the, the church needs to have that, that sense of, Hey, this is gonna take a little while, and that’s okay. We’re not broken as a church. And so, you know, so much of this, I mean, you, you wanna talk about protecting your culture and, and, and building the sustainable, it’s, you, you need to intentionally go slow and, and realize that, hey, you know, we, we blow this.
Matt Steen — We’re losing trust, we’re losing morale. Um, you know, our congregation is saying, oh dear, we’re going through this process again. What’s wrong with us? Um, all the, you know, all the financial costs in, in involved in that as well. And then just what it’s gonna take to recover, um, the, in that ministry area again as you’re going through the second hiring process. It’s, take the long view on this because, you know, it is, it is so tempting just to go and hire the, hire the guy who, their jokes are funny, you know, and, and they remind us of our nephew, and…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Matt Steen — …yeah, they’ve, they’ve been at this great church and they’ve done the job. You know, it’s really easy just to go pull the trigger on that without digging, digging deeper to make sure that they’re culturally they’re gonna be such a great fit. So.
Todd Rhoades — And that’s, that’s where the tension comes in. I mean, that’s what we hear. That’s the tension that we hear all the time, is…
Matt Steen — Totally.
Todd Rhoades — …we need somebody tomorrow, but we don’t wanna screw this thing up.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — You know what I mean? Um, and, and so, so even the, even the 12 to 18 months, like Matt said, we, we, when at church is working with us, we, we strive to get somebody way before that time.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Rhoades — But the first thing we tell search committees is, number one, it’s probably gonna take twice as long as what your minimum, at least twice as long as what you think it’s gonna take. Because, because there’s a lot of different factors to make that, to make a good hire so you don’t screw this thing up. Um, and, and number two, just we try to tell them, breathe, you know, this doesn’t surprise God. He’s not surprised at this.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good.
Todd Rhoades — But give, give, give your leadership team, give your board, give your search committee, give your congregation room to breathe. Uh, kind of the under underpromise, over-deliver type thing…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Rhoades — …that, you know, it’s much better to say, you know, this is gonna be a longer term process than to say, Hey, you know, we should have, we’ll, we’ll have, we’ll have a list of 50 resumes in, in six weeks.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — Um, cuz it, it, it just doesn’t work like that. And, and if it does work like that, you’d really need to breathe and make sure that you, if you make two a desperation hire, it’s better to go without it than to hire out of desperation. And a lot of churches do that. So that’s one of the ways we kinda help them hold their hand through that so they don’t make those mistakes.
Matt Steen — That’s the part…
Rich Birch — Friends, this is a part, oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.
Matt Steen — But that, that’s part of the reason. I mean the, the, the average stay right now is what, three, three and a half years. And, and you think, you think about that and there’s, there’s a lot of long-term guys that have 10 years in. So you think about how many are just staying 18 months, 12 months, something like that. You know?
Rich Birch — Wow, yeah.
Matt Steen — It is, it’s got, it’s gotta take us some time. So, I cut you off, man, that’s so rude to me.
Rich Birch — No, no, not at all. I was cutting you off. I I was cutting. I was interrupting you while you were interrupting me. The, um, well, you know, this is a part of why I love, you know, Chemistry Staffing friends. Like this is, uh, so I, there’s a different or similar organization that does a similar thing to Chemistry Staffing. And this is years ago. And we, we had come to the end, like we had exactly that kind of thing. There was like this burning hole in our organization. We’re like, okay, we need to hire somebody to help us with this cuz this, we clearly can’t do this. And so, uh, so we need to get something new. And so we, we brought, we brought in another firm and I was talking to the salesperson and they were like, we got your person. We totally got your person. We’ll find this person quickly, and I’m sure we can, you know, we, we placed these things all day or all night, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing.
Rich Birch — And then the first time the consultant came and met with us, literally this happened, friends, the first time the consultant met with us, sat down, the very first thing outta their mouth was, man, this is gonna be a very long hire. This is gonna take us forever. I don’t know if we’ll ever find this person. And I was like, what? Like, we just paid you all this money. Uh, and so I really, this is part of why I love, you know, Todd and Matt, because they’re right out front. They’re saying like, Hey friends, this is gonna take a while. No, obviously they’re gonna try to do it, you know, work faster if you end up engaging them. But, uh, really appreciate that and that, you know, uh, that’s not dogging anybody else. That just is, uh, part of why I love these guys.
Rich Birch — Well, let’s, let’s talk about, you know, team, unity, team, you know, health, when we think about the changing culture that happens, we bring somebody else in there, it kind of changes all the relationships. Things shift around a little bit. And we wanna make sure that we, we are hiring people, then that’s increasing unity, that that’s increasing, you know, people feel better about working here after not worse. Um, and that, you know, what, what can we do? How can we keep our team unified and healthy through this process, Todd? How do we, what can we do to ensure that we’re we’re coming out the other end as a more unified team?
Todd Rhoades — Yeah. Well, first is to be a unified team to begin with. So that, that sounds like just a total consultant answer, but I kind of get back to my first…
Rich Birch — No, no, I get it. I get it.
Todd Rhoades — Kind of go back to my first answer. Um, just that first, very first question is, you know, you, you have to clearly know what your situation is, right? So you, you should have, as before you hire any staff, I mean, you really should take a look at your current staff or your current team and make sure that they’re healthy. Um, because if your staff, and if your team is not healthy, um, and, and you try to bring somebody else in, it’s not gonna correct the problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — Um, okay. So I, I, I try to, I always try to, to bring it down to as, as, um, I don’t know, as 30,000 foot view as I can. But I mean, when it comes, when it comes to staff, um, try to be like Jesus, or at least be kind, you know?
Rich Birch — Right. Sure. Right.
Todd Rhoades — And, and I’m convinced that so much of the, so much of the disunity, so much of the conflict that happens in our churches today is, it goes back, this is sounds so simplistic, and I almost hesitate to say it, but almost goes back to the golden rule, right? That you treat other people the way that you would want to be treated. So that goes from the senior pastor all the way down to your staff. How that goods communicated to the volunteers is you really have to treat people the way that you want to be treated. And you have to be kind. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tough conversations. Of course there are tough conversations and tough things. It’s, it’s, and ministry is messy. Ministry is some of the most messy work you can do, um.
Todd Rhoades — But, uh, you need to try and cultivate that healthy culture, you know, provide regular opportunities for feedback, for communication. If you’re not allowing people to speak up to the leadership and to give concerns and to give ideas and to, to innovate and, and communicate, then that’s a problem. You know, how are you investing in your staff development, in your staff training? Um, how are your encouraging healthy work life balance? Um, how do you, how are you fostering, um, a culture of appreciation? I mean, do your, do the people on your team feel appreciated? Do they feel recognized? Um, when there is a concern, do you deal with it properly? Uh, or do you kind of, uh, let it take care of itself or sweep it under the rug? All those kind of things are, are—and we, we all know this, but it’s much harder to do than to actually talk about—is making sure that before you bring somebody else on your team, that the team that you already have is healthy. It’s the best thing you can do.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. I, I was just recently was, um, talking to a senior leader who was reflecting back on their, and this person’s like, driven, done a ton of things, made a lot of impact, and they were reflecting back on their, their career, and was, were saying, you know, it’s not that they had regrets, but they were saying, listen, if I could do it again, I would’ve been kinder and more generous with my team earlier. You know, I’m like, I, and I’m like, man, there’s some real, there’s some real wisdom there for, particularly for up and coming leaders, right? They’re like, you know, hey, like we, you know, we, we have to be guided by that. We have to lead from that, that place. And I thought, man, that’s, that’s so true. I think we all look, you know, we can look at conversations. We’re like, I’m not sure that was a win for the kingdom there. We might have got done what we needed to get done, but like, were we, you know, can we be kinder? Could be more generous? I I love that.
Rich Birch — Well, Matt, when you think about, um, you know, church health. You think about, you know, you guys interact with a lot of churches. I wanna try to take advantage of the fact that you interact with the, with a lot of churches. What, let’s, let’s kind of have a bit of a real conversation. What concerns you when you look at church health these days? What’s kind of like a, something that you’re, you know, a little bit concerned about?
Matt Steen — Yeah. So, so I, I think there’s, there’s, there’s the, the stuff that everybody’s complaining out about out there right now, you know, the, the division society-wise, and all the, the politics and how that’s affecting things and, and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, I think those are, those are big. I think the declining attendance post covid is, is, is an issue. And, you know, I don’t wanna sound sound like a doom and gloom guy. I tell you though, Rich, um, the thing that, the thing that keeps me up at night and the thing that praying most about right now is, is both ends of the pastoral timeline, okay?
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.
Matt Steen — And so what I mean by that is, um, we are going through a pretty significant wave of succession.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Matt Steen — You know, pastors of a certain age realizing that it’s, it’s time for them to retire. Um, traditionally, um, we’ve done wonderfully with this in the church, you know? No.
Rich Birch — Insert sarcasm emoji.
Matt Steen — Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Let’s, let’s be clear on that one. But I mean, so we’ve, we’ve struggled with this.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Steen — And we’ve got a lot of churches that have never once mentioned the succession word that all of a sudden, you know, have six months. You know, and a lot of the, a lot of the work that I’m doing right now, I call it crash succession, it’s succession processes where, um, it’s been less than 18 months of actually being able to prepare for it. And most, most of that work is less than 12 months. And so that’s, that’s a big one. But the other, the other piece of this, um, and I think it’s, I, I know it’s, I know it’s related, but the other piece of this, Rich, is, is our pipeline and our bench depth, okay? We’re struggling, um, in the capital “C” church.
Matt Steen — Um, right now with our bench depth, um, youth pastor researchers have become the toughest that we do. And a lot of that is because, you know, a lot of the rising generations, you know, have, have said, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go in, I don’t want to go into ministry. And one of the big, I think one of the biggest struggles that, or we kind of found ourselves in a bit of a perfect storm here because we’ve got, you know, a lot of bible colleges are shutting down their ministry programs cuz they don’t drive enough revenue. Um, a lot of seminaries are struggling to graduate students that actually want to go into local church ministry. You know, they’re, they’re going out and getting an MDiv and using it as like a vanity degree. It’s like, that’s a huge degree to get if you’re not gonna use it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Steen — But they’re struggling to, to, to, and so we, we need to figure out how do we, um, help people discern a call to ministry? How do we get them to a point where they’re trained and ready to go and equipped and empowered to go do ministry? Um, and release ’em to go do it. And we just, I think over the last, the last few decades we have, we’ve really struggled with this. And I think we’ll have to pay the piper on that. And so, again, gloom and doom. I think there’s hope, you know, God’s not surprised by this, but those, those are the things that keep me up. And those are the two big things that I’m praying for right now local church-wise.
Rich Birch — Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, I was in the last year I was at, um, was onsite at a church doing some coaching stuff and was talking to their young adults pastor and, you know, they had just come back from a young adult retreat and this, you know, couple hundred kids, they went away to this big conference center and all that. And I was like, tell me about it. And, and I was really encouraged because it was so rare and, and, and kind of old school. I said, well, tell me about what was going on. And so he was telling me about people who made first time commitments to Christ, which I was obviously amazing. But then he also was saying, he’s talking about how they, one of the services really focused on the call to ministry.
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And it was like, it was like, and I remember that from when I was that age…
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that was like an old school, like that was a part of those ministries. But I said to this leader, I was like, thank you for doing that because…
Matt Steen — Yes.
Rich Birch — …I don’t know that I’ve heard anyone do that in like 10, 15 years. Like, we need to specifically articulate to that generation, Hey, you know, are you, this is a, this is a noble cause; this is a noble thing for you to, you know, step towards. Love that.
Matt Steen — That’s, that’s awesome. And that’s so good to hear, because Todd, Todd’s tired of hearing me say this. Cuz I’ve, I’ve said for a while, I came, I came to faith, you know, in college, so I didn’t grow up in the church and all that kind of stuff. And when I first started at Bible college, I would hear stories about that. You know, my pastor did a, they did the altar call and then they did the second altar call, who’s, who wants to… And, and really, I thought it was cheesy back then because, you know, I was, you know, twenties and knew everything and everything was cheesy, um. But dude, I, I, so I so regret that we’ve gotten out of that, you know, as the church. So I’m so excited to hear you say that. That, that, that’s pretty, that that gives me hope, man. That’s really cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah. And they do it, they do it every year at their kind of, they’re young, this big young adult retreat thing. And it’s like a whole bunch of churches together, a thousand, 1,500 kids.
Matt Steen — That’s so cool.
Rich Birch — And, and they follow up and they have a whole system for like getting kids, you know, great, you’re interested in that.
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Let’s get you plugged in, which is, you know, is fantastic. So that was great. Well, I know…
Todd Rhoades — That was, that was a huge pipeline to, to get people to…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Todd Rhoades — …get into Christian college and seminary and to start that to talk, nobody talks about calling anymore. And and, uh, so we’ve, we’ve, we’ve essentially, because we’re not doing that, we’ve seen one of our biggest recruitment tools…
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — …for ministry, um, kind of dry up. And Matt and I are, are so excited about the future of the church. Um, but, but the little secret is, is most churches don’t do well in, in training up leaders and in discipleship.
Rich Birch — Right. Sure.
Todd Rhoades — And if, if churches did a better job at training leaders from within, a lot of the work that we do with churches wouldn’t be necessary because…
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — …they would have this kind of internal pipeline. Some churches do that really well. Other churches just have, you know, they’ve, they’re a generation removed from really investing in young people and saying, Hey, this is a, this is something worthy of giving your life and your calling to.
Matt Steen — Totally.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. Well, I love painting. Oh, sorry, go ahead Matt. I keep cutting you off, man.
Matt Steen — We keep doing that, man.
Todd Rhoades — We’re kinda passionate about this stuff.
Matt Steen — Yeah. We, we, we, we really are. Because it’s like, to to Todd’s point, you know, people keep asking us, well, how do we keep our staff? How do we keep our staff? And it’s the same, it’s the same answer. Right? It’s, it’s…
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Steen — You know, if, if you’ve got a youth pastor, you know, sit down with him and say, Hey dude, where do you see yourself in five years?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Steen — And start developing the way for him to get there, you know, and, and, that’s, that’s how he stays an extra five years instead of leaving in 18 months.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Steen — You know, is is that development mindset, you know, go release; let ’em go do their thing man. And that’s, we, we, we get that, we get that throughout the whole church, man. We’re, Todd and I are out of, out of business. And frankly, I’m, I think I’m okay with that. You okay with that, Todd?
Todd Rhoades — You’ll find something else to do.
Matt Steen — You gonna pay the mortgage somehow, you know, Nelly. I’m, I’m cool with that.
Rich Birch — Yeah. You’ll get that dog back running in the dog races there. Yeah. That’s what you’ll do.
Matt Steen — There you go. You’re you’re gonna get me some hate mail now.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, I, I kind of like, uh, painting Matt as the negative guy and Todd as the positive guy – that kind of makes me, that makes life better for me. So Todd, what, what are you guys doing about this? What, how, how is Chemistry Staffing helping with this whole church health area? How can you help? What do you, because I know this is a passion area for you guys. You, you know, you’re…
Todd Rhoades — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Obviously you, you, you do searches, but you’re passionate about the whole long-term fit thing and health is a big part of what you do. What are you doing to help them get and stay healthy?
Todd Rhoades — Absolutely. When we started six years ago, um, our, one of our main goals was to try and help the hiring process suck a little less.
Matt Steen — Can we say that?
Rich Birch — Okay. Yes. I love it.
Todd Rhoades — This is, this is our first audience. We can say that I believe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, you could say it.
Todd Rhoades — But no, both for the church and for the candidate. Right? We’ve, and we’ve been, I’ve been doing staffing stuff for a long time. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a candidate say, I love searching. I love the whole search transition process. And churches never love the hiring process either. I mean, there’s a certain level of excitement. But at the same time, everybody kind of loathes the process.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — And, and you know, if you’re a church, you’re, you’re scared about making a bad decision. If you’re a candidate, you’re scared about making a bad decision. Right? So we want to try and, and mitigate that as much as we can. So our framework, and I think we’ve talked with you about this before, but I’m just really…
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Todd Rhoades — …really five really quick things. We, we try and…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Todd Rhoades — …to get that healthy long-term fit, really looking at five things, and we tell candidates and we tell churches, look, you can’t compromise. And this is one of the reasons why it may take longer to find the right person. You really can’t compromise on these five things. You’ve gotta have a great theo theological fit. Right? They need to be, they need to believe, uh, the things about Jesus that you believe about Jesus. Um, they need to be a good cultural and DNA fit for your church. Um, so you, and we assess for all this stuff with all of our churches and all of our candidates on the very upfront before we even have a conversation with them. So, uh, they need to match the personality of your church.
Todd Rhoades — That’s number three. Number four, they need to have the skills and abilities, the experience, um, and, and the wherewithal to actually do the job that you need them to do. So, uh, you, you’ve gotta do some skills and ability assessments there as well. And then there just has to be, uh, a what we call it the chemistry factor. Go figure. The, the, the, when it comes to chemistry, it’s, it’s, you only learn that by boots on the ground…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Rhoades — …shaking hands across the table, doing life together. Um, but, uh, you know, not only, not only do you like this person, but can you see yourself doing ministry with this person for the next five years?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — Can they see themselves living in your community for the next five years? Do you want to have this, this person in their family over to your house for a barbecue on Tuesday night?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Rhoades — Um, do you, as, as Matt puts it, you know, if, if when you pull into the church parking lot in the morning at, at 8:30 before, uh, you know, to start your day and you see that that person just walked in the building, do you need an extra five minutes just to kind of pray yourself through so you don’t feel, and you don’t dread going into the office with this those… But seriously, those things happen all the time, so, if you can get those five things down, um, we really think that increases the likelihood of a, what we call that healthy long-term fit. Uh, so we try to, we try to process our candidates this process with our candidates in the process with our churches as well. And part of the thing that is, every church is different and every candidate is different. There’s no cookie cutters. So, uh, and that’s part of what makes our work so challenging. But part of what makes our our work so exciting is that, uh, every church and every candidate is different. So the, the, the thrill that you kind of get when you find, uh, a candidate and a church that match all five of those is, is really, really cool.
Rich Birch — Hmm. So good. That’s great. Now, I know you are, um, rolling out an assessment that, and this is the part where we’re so glad if you’re listening in, uh, live, you’re gonna get a chance to learn about this. But can you tell us about this 2023 staff, uh, church staff health assessment that you are, uh, rolling out, Todd? Can you let us know about that?
Todd Rhoades — Yes. Well, this is the first time we’ve said anything about this outside of Matt and myself and our small team here.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Rhoades — So it’s, it’s actually gonna launch in a couple weeks on, uh, I believe April 24th. But since you’re listening here, we would love to have you, it’s, it’s all ready to go. Uh, you can kind of preview this. It’s totally free. What this is, is we’re calling our 2023 Church Staff Health Assessment. It’s, it’s 50 really quick questions that are gonna, um, give you, uh, some insight and you’ll get a, you’ll get a score at the end of it. It’ll take you maybe 10, maybe 15 minutes to take. But at the, uh, at the end of that assessment, we’re going to, uh, kind of give you a score, a health score, uh, based on, uh, communication, on job satisfaction, on leadership, uh, team dynamics, compensation and benefits, work environment, and future, your future stability on a on a staff team.
Todd Rhoades — So you’re gonna get a lot of information just by taking it. But what we wanna do, uh, and, and we think this is gonna be huge, um, for us and for the church moving forward, is we want to get a pulse. Really, so much has changed in the past three years. We wanna get a pulse. Okay, so how, how are—and this is open to all full-time and part-time, um, paid staff, people at churches—we wanna find out how, what’s the state of health in, in most church staff; how are they feeling? Are they feeling appreciated? Are they feeling, uh, like their compensation level is good? Do they feel healthy? Do they, do they wanna stay where they are? Do they, do they feel appreciated? Um, all those kind of things are gonna be a part of that.
Todd Rhoades — Uh, and like I said, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, it’s gonna run from April 24th to May 19th. And then…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Todd Rhoades — …I think we’re actually gonna come back and do a podcast with you to kind of announce…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Todd Rhoades — …uh, some of what we, well, all of what we’ve, what we’ve what we’ve learned through this assessment. So our goal right now is just to kind of introduce it, get as many people to take the assessment as we can um, and kind of go from there. And they, anybody today can, it’s, it’s ready to go right now. You can just go to, uh, uh, churchstaffassessment.com.
Rich Birch — Great. Love it. So that’s churchstaffassessment.com. We want you to drop by there and, uh, and take it today. Now is this, so I got a chance to get a little bit of a sneak preview on this, friends, and this is a great thing. Like this when I, and I can’t believe you’re not charging for this, right? This is like a free thing.
Todd Rhoades — No, no. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely free.
Rich Birch — You guys are crazy. Like this thing, not charge it for this.
Matt Steen — What?
Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly.
Todd Rhoades — Well, we never thought of that, Matt.
Rich Birch — No, but seriously, I’m like, so many people do these kind of things and it feels like, oh, this is like a, I don’t know, like, it’s just like a marketing thing or whatever, but this man, and this looks super helpful for churches, for church leaders. It’s the kind of thing that I think would be great. Are, are you envisioning that we would do this? We’d send it to our teams? How are you picturing that this could kind of be used in our, uh, you know, our church environments?
Todd Rhoades — Well, essentially, I think, um, so come later this year, probably in the fall, this is gonna come from, right now the assessment is a candidate assessment, but I think we’re gonna actually turn that into a church assessment, and there probably will be some paid options for that. But, um, what, what that’s gonna do, what we’re doing with the, with the candidate assessment, is we’re trying to gather as, as large of a pool of candidates and get as much data in there as we can.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Todd Rhoades — So that we can say, Hey, here, on a national average, uh, here, here are on all of these 50 data points, uh, here is how the average candidate feels.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — And then when we can, what we can do is when we come back to, in the fall, is we can come to a church and say, okay, so here’s, here’s what the heartbeat is nationally. What does it look like for your church? How how…
Rich Birch — Got it. Okay, that makes sense.
Todd Rhoades — …each of those, those areas. How, how are your staff able to do? And the other thing I wanna mention too, Rich, is that this, all of the answers are confidential.
Rich Birch — Perfect. Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — We’ll ask you, we’ll ask you at the end for your name and email only, so that we can send you that full report at the end. But we’re not sharing, we’re not sharing individual answers or anything with, with anybody’s boss or anything…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.
Todd Rhoades — …as a cumulative thing to gather the, the information as a whole.
Rich Birch — Yeah. You gotta attach it to a real person. Make sure it’s not… <inaudible>
Todd Rhoades — If I’m a pastor, if I’m a pastor and I’m getting ready to hire a new staff person, I want to know what the health of my current team is. And I, and other than, uh, I don’t know that there’s a really great tool out there to do that right now other than, you know, just, which is, which is a great tool asking people how they’re doing.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Todd Rhoades — Kinda doing some of the healthy things that we said earlier.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Totally. Love it. Again, so that is church staff, uh, health assessment…
Todd Rhoades — Just church staff assessment. Yep.
Rich Birch — churchstaffassessment.com. Um, which is wonderful. So I’d love for you to go by and take a look at that. Friends, we’re gonna, we’re gonna pivot here in the last little bit of our call to questions, so make sure you drop those in. Uh, if you’re listening to the recording, why were you not here live? You missed out. You did not get your li your questions answered. But, uh, we will, uh, we’ll get a chance to, to answer those. So, uh, but again, we wanna make sure you go to churchstaffassessment.com. Uh, you can get early access to that.
Rich Birch — Okay. So Tricia’s got a question here. She’s saying, how do you manage the tension of hiring NextGen versus hiring the most skilled and qualified? Tricia, this is a great question, and I’m gonna want both Matt and Todd to answer this. We’ll start with you, Matt, because this, I think is like, this is the quintessential question. Do we hire someone with lots of potential or do we hire someone with proven capacity? And how do we, you know, how do we figure that out? Um, Matt, let’s start with you and then I’d love to go to you, Todd, as well.
Todd Rhoades — I know what Matt’s gonna say. It’s two words. Go ahead, Matt.
Rich Birch — You can tell you’ve been working together for a while.
Todd Rhoades — It depends. That was Matt’s answer. It depends.
Matt Steen — So, so yeah. So, okay, so yes, it, it depends on where you are ministry wise and what the, what the situation that you’re in, in is. But here’s, here’s the deal. And, and I think, and I, I don’t wanna pick on Tricia cuz she’s in the Baltimore area, and I grew up in Baltimore, and you know, we’re where people go, go birds. Um, yeah.
Matt Steen — So, so, but so many times people start there, okay? They start in skills and abilities and, and skillset. Right? And, and so part of why we always go back to the five, the five pieces is because it’s more than just skills. It’s more than just, Hey, what church did they work at? Can they, can they do it there or not? Right? And so, we’ve got to, we, we’ve got to start with theology, culture, personality because if, if this person has all the skills in the world and they, you know, you know, they’re a rockstar Jesus, it doesn’t matter if theologically you guys are, if you theologically you guys are in different places when it comes to women in ministry or something like that. It’s never gonna work, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Steen — So, so, so yes. Um, there’s times when you want the skilled person; there’s times when you wanna take the chance on somebody that’s coming in. Here’s, here’s the piece though. And I’m, I’m honestly, and this is gonna be an unpopular answer, and Todd’s gonna have to go in PR cleanup for us.
Rich Birch — <laughs> Love it.
Matt Steen — This, this’ll go viral and our competitors are gonna love it. One of the things that I’ve really been thinking about here a lot lately is, is one of the, um, one of the, one of the complaints that we, we hear older generations sharing about the younger generation is that the younger generations wanna start where their parents left off, right?
Rich Birch — Oh, interesting.
Matt Steen — And, and they’re not willing to go and sacrifice and be in the, you know, the cheap apartment and all that kind of stuff. And, and I sometimes wonder if we haven’t taken that, you know, the thing that we’re complaining about and putting it into the church and saying, Hey, we need to we need to start where, where the other guy left off. Right?
Matt Steen — So many times we’re talking about succession and we’re saying, Hey, our pastor’s been here for 15 years and we need somebody that’s gonna be, you know, just like who he is now for the 15 years to come. Well, it took 15 years for that guy to get to that point, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Matt Steen — He needed somebody had to take a chance on him or, and, and kind of help them kind of gain their skills and abilities through. Now, I’m not saying don’t take somebody who’s absolutely not qualified, you know? There, there needs to be some ability to think ministry wise, but sometimes we need to realize that going into this, you know, maybe, maybe the person that we hire, they, they may not be, they, they may be a little bit greener than what would be ideal, but they’ve got the fundamentals and we can pour into them.
Matt Steen — And, you know, part of, part of our role has to be pouring into the next generation, whether they’re on staff, whether they’re in our congregation, whether they’re in our age grade ministries, that kind of stuff. We need to be developing this next generation for us to continue to exist. And so, so I think we need to go more towards the side of risking on the next generation. Now, a lot of people of a certain age are gonna say, Hey, now you’re saying I can’t get a job, and I’m not saying that. But I think, you know, I think that we need to take that, that idea of being a little bit more willing to take a, take a risk on somebody who, who may not have the resume yet, but has the potential to pour into it. I think that’s, I think that’s an okay thing as long as they line up in all, in all of those areas. Um…
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Steen — Now, if, if you’ve got a ministry that’s just, you know, it’s, it’s blowing up and, and you don’t have the capacity to really mentor the next person, then you gotta get somebody who’s, who’s got some seasoning to ’em.
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Steen — But I don’t, I sometimes wonder if we need to rethink what our workload is if we don’t have the time to really develop the next generation leaders on our staff team.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good.
Matt Steen — All right. Clean me up, Todd.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, I think everybody, everybody wants somebody that can hit the ground running.
Matt Steen — Yes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — Everybody, I mean, everybody we talk to. Um, sometimes that, so I’ll bring out the, the negative connotation of that. Um, sometimes when you say you want somebody that can hit the ground running is we want to hire somebody that we can set it and forget it, right?
Rich Birch — Mmm. Oh that’s good.
Todd Rhoades — And that, that is not a good way to hire. So if you’re a senior pastor and your main goal for hiring a youth pastor is I need to hire a youth pastor so that I don’t ever have to deal with youth…
Rich Birch — Yes. <laugh>
Todd Rhoades — …is, is a non-healthy way to look at it. Okay?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Todd Rhoades — So if, if, and what Matt said, and it goes back to what we were saying five minutes ago about discipleship and training up leaders, right? Is, sure, I get it. You’re a senior pastor and you want, you want to have somebody that’s competent that can handle an area. But you also need to be available to, to speak in, to train, to build in, to have those conver conversations. Like Matt said, where do you see yourself in five years? How can we help you get there? You know? Those kind of discussions, if you’re not having those discussions, if you’re not building in, um, it’s, that’s where the 18, you know, 12 to 18 months to 24 months where they take off cuz they don’t feel appreciated. The other thing I would say is, is we’re seeing another reason why we’re so, uh, bullish on the church is we’re seeing a ton of really everything we’ve said about, you know, hard time recruiting people. There are some really, really incredibly sharp people—we call ’em Jesus with a guitar, internally—really sharp people coming into ministry that are gonna just absolutely kill it. But they’re not set, they’re not set it and forget it people. Uh, they, they, they actually want the mentoring and the, the hand holding a little. They don’t wanna be micromanaged…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — …but they, they want, they want that input. Uh, and, and they will hit the ground running, but they won’t do exactly, they won’t do everything exactly the same way the last person did it, nor should you expect them to. So um…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Todd Rhoades — …don’t, don’t if, if you’re trying to do the set it and forget it, you’re gonna look over a lot of candidates that could really…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — …kill it at your church.
Rich Birch — Well, I was gonna, I was gonna ask a kind of a co-related question, which is how often do you—and we can stick with you, Todd, on this one—how often from your vantage point point are you talking with the church where, and you don’t have to, you know, like how often are you talking with the church where they, you think they, they’re missing a great next hire because of this? Where they’re like, ah, like I, man, I, I just wish they would take a risk on this person. I think it could be a great thing. Is that common and you run into that all the time?
Todd Rhoades — Uh, I wouldn’t say all the time. We run into it quite often.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Rhoades — Where, where we’ve, and, and some of, honestly, and Matt can push back on this, some of our best work, I think are sometimes taking candidates that we think, so this, this person can do exactly what you’ve told us you need to have done, but they don’t look exactly like the person that you thought this person would look like.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Oh, that’s good insight.
Todd Rhoades — And, and so is it, is it risky? Um, every hire is risky. But yeah, we, we really try to, to, uh, sometimes we’re even surprised at the people that we find that are like, you know, even some of this doesn’t make sense, but man, could this be cool?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Totally.
Todd Rhoades — So, and sometimes churches are really open and responsive and receptive to that, and other, other times it’s just, you know, a little bit too much. So, and, and we get it. But the, that’s the fun part of the work.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I, you know, I’ve found over the years that man give me a team of, I, I think sometimes when we hire people, we’re looking for the, what is the, the example, the Michael Jordan, the, you know, Wayne Gretzky, the whatever, the, I’m not a sports guy, whatever, whoever the most recent, like the, uh, the superstars, like, we’re looking for that. Or, or we say like, man, I’m not even sure Jesus can do this job. Like, they’re like the, the, that’s what we’re looking for. But actually over time, the more hiring I’ve done, I’m just convinced if I can find solid, like B+ players, <laugh>, you know, who are, who are great. You know, they’re like, it’s the difference between the guy who always gets a home run and the guy who always gets on base. Man, the guy who always gets on base, man that is, uh, or the woman who always gets on base, man, that’s, I can, you can do a lot, you can build great organizations on the back of that. So I, I love that.
Matt Steen — I I tell you, I tell you what Rich, you know, I know I’m the gloom and doom guy, but that’s what gives me the hope for the church, right?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Steen — That right there.
Rich Birch — You’re not the doom, gloom guy. Matt, come here, gimme a big hug. You’re not the doom and gloom guy.
Matt Steen — I, I feel, I feel I feel better, man. I, I love, you know, so many of the churches that we work with are guys that you are never gonna get published, right? They’re, they’re, you’re, you’re never gonna know their name. They’re never gonna go viral, but they are doing slow and steady work in communities…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Steen — …and having such incredible impact. And it’s like, yeah, you’re never gonna know their name. And, and they, they may not have been the, the, the rising star coming outta seminary or anything like that, but they’re, they’re, they’re seeing people come to faith. They’re, they’re walking marriages through crises, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Steen — They’re, they’re baptized in pe It’s, it is crazy what they’re, what they’re doing. And there’s so many of those people out there. It’s, it’s really encouraging. That’s probably my favorite part of, favorite part of my job besides, you know, working, working with Todd.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. Well, I’ve got a question, uh, that since you’re here and all the people have listened to the end, I’m gonna ask you, I’m gonna throw this one to Matt. This is spicy meatball, spicy meatball question.
Matt Steen — Oh, no.
Rich Birch — Hopefully our relationship can sustain this.
Matt Steen — It depends.
Rich Birch — Um, so you’ve seen where this has gone wrong. Like you’ve seen the, like, okay, we hired somebody and, and either they came through your service or you were talking to a, a church and they’ve now come to your you because they hired somebody and it didn’t go well. Like, it, it was like, you know, x number of months later, and it was like a little bit of a gong show. I’m sure you’ve seen one or two of those. Are there any common things, common factors – maybe it’s in the five, it’s like there’s one of those that keeps coming back time and again, or maybe there’s a common trade or something that we should be looking for when we’re hiring? Where does this just go wrong when it, when it goes wrong?
Matt Steen — So when it, when it goes wrong, here’s the common theme.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Steen — Um, most, more often than not, people forget the first three of our five factors, and they, they start with skills and abilities. They look at a resume, they say, oh, I know that church. That’s a great church.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Matt Steen — I listen to their pastors podcast. That’s awesome. Of course they can do the job, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Steen — And then they start to interview ’em based on, based on that alone. And they start to laugh at the person’s jokes and they say, oh, he reminds me of my grandson. You know? And they start to fall in love relationally. And, and there’s a, there’s a, there’s a degree of chemistry there. They, they fall into like, and all that kind of stuff. And, and in the back of their head, you know, you’ve got this question about, yeah, I do know that church, but you know what, they’re, they’re a little bit different than how we operate. Oh, it’ll be fine. Jesus will make it work. And it, and typically somewhere around 12 to 18 months in, they start to realize, oh, maybe Jesus isn’t gonna kind of smooth out our differences on women in ministry. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the fact that we’re Wesleyan and, and he’s pretty hardcore reformed um, maybe that’s not gonna work itself out. Right.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Matt Steen — And that’s, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s when it, that’s when it goes sideways. It’s, we, we short circuit things and we really, we, we really don’t think that theology is as important as it is. Or we really don’t realize that, you know, that church of 2000 works a little bit differently than our church of 500. Right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Matt Steen — Or, or maybe those, those personality quirks that, that are cute, you know, during the interview, they’re gonna cause us to take a hostage down the road. You know, I, that’s…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Steen — That’s, that’s what, that’s what I’d say. I don’t know, Todd, if you think I’m, if you think I’m off.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Anything else on that, Todd?
Todd Rhoades — Yeah, I don’t know that there’s any, any one thing. I mean, uh…
Rich Birch — Right.
Todd Rhoades — We, but, but we do hear, we do hear the theology and the culture pieces all the time.
Matt Steen — Yeah.
Todd Rhoades — That there are mismatches. And again, what Matt, I’ll reemphasize what Matt just said. A lot of times we fall in love too early before we even ask the tough questions. And I’ll tell you, once you fall in love with a candidate, um, and it’s the same, you know, we say this all the time with assessments. That’s why we do, uh, any of our candidates or churches, we do the assessments on the very front end is because we we’re full believers in assessments. But we, we think churches wait way too long to do the assessments. They, they fall in love with a candidate. They bring ’em in for the onsite visit, and before they, before they offer the, you know, the, here’s, we’d like to bring you on our, here, take this Enneagram or take this, uh, you know…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Todd Rhoades — …Strength Finders. It doesn’t make any difference. There could be like glaring discrepancies and red flags and those things…
Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re just gonna justify it.
Todd Rhoades — You’re gonna justify it cause you love them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Todd Rhoades — They’re, they’re great. We love their family. His wife is awesome. We love his…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Todd Rhoades — …he’s got kids the same age as my kids, man. Um, all that stuff supersedes what could be like the really important things that are gonna cause somebody to leave in 18 months.
Rich Birch — Yeah. One of the smartest things… So I, I had the privilege of working with Tim Lucas at Liquid Church for years with you guys, which you guys know, and he, he’s a smart leader on, brought a bunch of fronts. But one of the smartest things he realized early in his, in his leadership, like really once the church started growing was he was like, I need to be in these conversations at the very end because every one of these, I get in and I’m like, we should hire this person. This person’s amazing. Like, they’re, and and, and then he was like, and he was self-aware. He was like, then I go into sales mode and I’m like, I’m just trying to figure out, I’m trying to woo this person to say, Hey, come here, come here, come here. And so he, you know, smartly was like, I need to pull myself outta this, and only come in when we actually want this person. Like, do not trust me to o be able to, you know… And they’ve built an incredible staff team, you know, on that. And, and, you know, and it’s worked out and they’ve, you know, which is, but that takes a, that takes a, uh, a depth of, uh, emotional intelligence and, uh, and humility to be able to declare that with your, with your leadership team. So, love that. Which is not surprising. He’s a great leader. So he’s good at that stuff.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I, again, I can’t believe we’ve got both of you guys in one room. It’s been so, it’s been so honored to have you here today. Uh, as we wrap up, Matt, I’ve been kicking you a little bit. I’m gonna give you the final last words today. What, what do you wanna say as we wrap up? How can people connect with Chemistry Staffing? I, I really do, I say this to people, I don’t say this just because you guys are a sponsor. When people are, talk to me on both sides, either they’re a church or a candidate, like about these kind of things. I always say like, Hey, you should talk to the guys over at Chemistry Staffing, give your website, chemistrystaffing.com. But what, what would you say, what would you say, you know, what would your kind of final words for today’s conversation?
Matt Steen — Yeah, I, so, so yes, I am the doom and gloom guy, but man, I tell you what I am, I’m incredibly optimistic for, for, for the church. We, we really are. You know, there’s a lot of, you know, we just need to shift a little bit about what we’re doing, need to focus a little bit about culture, start developing the next generation. Man, I tell you what, we’re, we’re, we’re gonna be in good shape. But we’d love, love to be able to serve you guys and really would love, if you guys do, go to churchstaffassessment.com and, and, and, and take that, I think that’s gonna be an incredible tool for the church. So much has changed over these last three years. Um, I think that’s gonna give us a really good snapshot on overall church health, um, in this country. So…
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, love you guys. I’m so thankful for the work you do for the church. Thanks for being on here. Again, friends, we’d remind you to go to churchstaffassessment.com, uh, to fill that out. You can do that up until May 19th. So you’ve got, you should do it today, be the first people in on it, but you’ve got only got until May 19th to do that. So make sure you get in, uh, and do that. What a great tool. I appreciate you guys providing this. Uh, thanks so much for being on the call today. Have a good day.
Todd Rhoades — Great. Thank you.
Being a Clarity Champion on a Senior Leadership Team at a Fast Growing Church with Kasey Husen
Apr 20, 2023
Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kasey Husen, the Executive Director of Communicatons and Events at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California.
Kasey talks with us about the importance of having a Communications Director at the senior leadership level at your church. Beyond branding and marketing, Kasey shares how they can create engagement and clarity to help your church win.
The role in the church. // Early on in her time on staff at Crossroads, Kasey served as admin to the worship pastor. From her seat she continually observed a problem with announcements not creating the engagement desired, as well as their cutting into the sermon time. Ultimately she was able to bring organization to that area, eventually leading to her becoming the Executive Director of Communications and Events. Now her primary responsibility is to find clarity in all things and make it transferable to the staff to take action.
Drive for clarity. // Lack of clarity is a major barrier for winning. Churches seem to naturally drift into doing a lot of things that require attention from the staff, the budget, and the congregation in order to be successful. And yet ministry leaders are disappointed with the outcomes. Kasey’s drive for clarity ensures that Crossroads and its ministry teams are winning at the goals they work toward.
Ask questions and speak up. // Kasey says that her primary role as the clarity champion on the executive team has to be fully embraced by the whole executive leadership. They all have to want to provide clarity to people outside of the room where decisions are made (ie – to other staff and congregation). The role of the communications director requires a lot of question-asking, speaking up, and acting as air traffic controller. They are often the canary in the coal mine and see the needs of all of the different ministries within the organization.
Part of the senior leadership team. // For most churches, the executive team is the one making the strategic decisions each week. But a lot of the leaders forget that the conversations and decisions being made in those meetings result in the need to collaborate with other ministry leaders outside of that room. Having your communications director in your decision-making meetings can give you an early opportunity to talk through the barriers you need to address to get the people outside the meeting to embrace your decisions.
Building trust. // Managing the challenge of what to announce from the stage is a continual tension to navigate. Ask questions of your senior leadership to discern what’s most important to them and what they’ll be most disappointed about if there’s a lack of engagement. Communications directors need to learn to lead up to the executive leadership in the church. But Kasey stresses that before providing critical feedback, first you need to build relationships and trust, reiterating that you are on their side and are committed to supporting their God-given vision for the church.
High engagement opportunities. // In Crossroads’ pursuit of clarity and helping their teams hit their overarching goals, the church works to pair ministry opportunities with major initiatives or messages each week. This often creates the highest engagement because the announcement is getting multiple impressions and moving the hearts of the congregation to action in multiple ways throughout the service.
You can learn more about Crossroads Christian Church at www.crossroadschurch.com and email Kasey. Or find her on Instagram at KaseyHusen.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody! Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation – you know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no example is no exception to that. There’s a perfect example of that trying to say two things at once. Ah, Kasey Husen – I’m super excited to have her ah on the podcast. She is the communications the Executive Director of Communications and Events at a fantastic church Crossroads Christian Church located in Corona, California — one of the fastest growing churches in the country. You, if you’re a longtime listener, you might remember earlier ah, that was maybe a month ago six weeks ago we had Taleah Murray on and she was just fantastic, fantastic episode. And so I said, Taleah, who else should we have? And she said, you should talk to Kasey. So so glad to have Kasey on. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Kasey Husen — Thank you for having me, Rich. Super excited to talk with you today.
Rich Birch — Oh I’m looking forward to this as well. Communication is so critically important to all of our churches, and so to be able to tap your expertise today is just incredible. So fill out the picture for folks that don’t know kind of talk to us about Crossroads, kind of fill in that picture a little bit. What… tell us about the church and then tell us about your role there.
Kasey Husen — Yeah, so as Taleah shared earlier in the the podcast you did with her, our church is about 130 years old. That’s very unique. And so we’re a multi-generational church located in a beautiful area of Corona, which is located in Southern California. Um, and so kind of funny thing, I have grown up here in this church. This is…
Rich Birch — Oh fun!
Kasey Husen — …Ah yeah, although I’ve done a couple different roles in ministry here, I have really spent my entire life either going to the school or attending the church. It’s a huge part of my story and I really, ah through teachers at our school and then ultimately church leaders here, discovered a lot of my different gifting. My parents were not necessarily um disciples of Christ and raising me. It was actually my grandmother who said, Hey we should send her to a private christian school. And that’s how I ended up here. Um, and my parents worked full time so I spent a lot of time on this campus. And I credit a lot of where I am today, ah, both spiritually and professionally, with the way that people here have developed me into this place…
Rich Birch — So good.
Kasey Husen — …and helped me really recognize my gifts and using my my my gifts to ah to a purpose within the church. And that’s still the same today. For so many people who are part of this church, we are really passionate about the next generation. If you were to take in one of our services online or to come to our campus, that’s just something that you cannot miss about Crossroads.
Rich Birch — So good. Well this is great, and and talk to us about the role Executive Director of Communications and Events kind of frame that up. Help us understand kind of what does that look like. What ah when how do you describe that you you meet someone and they say, so what do you do at the church. What do you say to them?
Kasey Husen — Yeah, well I can give you a little bit of background on how I got here. It’s a little bit funny.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kasey Husen — Um you know, ah I’ve been in communications now as the Communications Director for the last 11 years at Crossroads. But prior to that I was actually asked to join the staff as an admin to our worship pastor. So ah, you know prior to that, like I said, I had served in this church for pretty much my whole life. But I really had no idea what church staff members could possibly do, working on a church staff for 40 hours a week. No I laugh at that of course.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — I know most of us are working more than 40 hours a week…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — …on really important stuff. But I say this because I came in with no experience. But I really had some strong admin skills and some fresh eyes. And since so much of what our worship pastor does is in partnership with our senior pastor, I really learned a lot quickly about our culture. And I got the opportunity to have a front seat to learn our DNA and what was important to our senior pastor, simply by observing interactions that I would see in weekly meetings. One of those meetings included a debrief of the previous weekend service and a look forward to the one that was coming. And at that time we had slated about 5 minutes in our service every week for the announcements. You know, for a talking person…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — …to get up there and to deliver announcements. And this funny thing happened in this meeting. I observed it for probably a year; ministry leaders would come in to that particular meeting and they would sort of pitch to give their announcement for their ministry that coming Sunday. And as far as I could tell there was really no schedule or max on how many people we could say yes to…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …that would get airtime that coming weekend. So I just observed most of the time they would say yes to all of them. And we all know what happens…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …in that announcement space, especially back when most of us were doing, you know, the talking experience for 5 minutes. A lot of people tuned out. They didn’t engage with any of our calls to action. And the funny thing is in the debrief portion of that meeting every week our senior pastor was chronically disappointed with the fact that he had to cut off time from his sermon, because the announcement time inevitably moved from 5 minutes…
Rich Birch — Went long.
Kasey Husen — …up toward 10 minutes.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kasey Husen — And he’d usually be disappointed that one of the 5 things we talked about that day did not really get engagement. So, to my surprise nobody was really making this connection or tackling this problem because there was no person in this seat…
Rich Birch — It’s all happening right here in this meeting. Right here!
Kasey Husen — Exactly! I’m observing the whole thing; I’m picking up on all the patterns. And ah so eventually I told our senior pastor. I said I think I can help bring some organization to this area of the service…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kasey Husen — …just this 5 minutes…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …and create more of a win for our ministries where people would actually engage with what we’re talking about. And keep the part of the service from cutting into his messages every week.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — So he said yes to that, and then that eventually led to me becoming what I didn’t even know was a role in churches at the time, the Communications Director.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — This was just all based off of you know, instinct and so um…
Rich Birch — I see a problem. Let’s fix it. Yeah, I love it.
Kasey Husen — Exactly, exactly.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kasey Husen — And so it really evolved from from really purely organizing that portion of the service, to really being the primary champion of clarity on our staff.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — And that’s that’s really what I would say if I can name one thing um I’ve dedicated my time and responsibility to finding clarity, in all things, ah to make it transferable to our staff to take action.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So let’s dig into that a little bit more. How has… so I think there’s too many people that are listening in that feel that pain.
Kasey Husen — Yes.
Rich Birch — They’ve been in that meeting, maybe yesterday they were in that meeting…
Kasey Husen — Yeah, right.
Rich Birch — …ah, so you know you’ve done a very good job, you know, kind of outlining that, helping us understand understand that. But maybe on unpack maybe on the back end, how has that kind of increased focus on clarity? How has that ah kind of changed your approach, or the church’s approach, to like initiatives and doing things and various tasks—all that—how how has that impacted? And then we’ll dig into some of the how.
Kasey Husen — Yeah, so I’m an enneagram three – Achiever. So accomplish thing… yes, are you with me.
Rich Birch — Yes! Love it! Enneagram threes unite!
Kasey Husen — Okay, all right.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Kasey Husen — I’m glad when people really embrace being an enneagram three.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — So I’m an achiever, so accomplishing a goal or capitalizing on an opportunity is always a primary driver for me. But especially in church because what we’re doing really matters. And so lack of clarity is a major barrier for winning.
Kasey Husen — And I think a lot of your listeners will resonate with this, that churches seem to naturally drift into doing a lot of things that require attention from our staff, attention from our budget, attention from the congregation, all in order to be successful. But yet I see many people are chronically disappointed with the outcome…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kasey Husen — …of whatever we’re doing. So that is really what drives me to clarity…
Rich Birch — Yeah…
Kasey Husen — …is I want to make sure we win at the goals.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely drive up in outcomes and engagement.
Kasey Husen — Yes.
Rich Birch — Now talk to me about… so one of the things I find super frustrating is, you know, there’s a lot of churches say like a thousand, I—like I I see I feel like I run into this all the time—thousand, maybe maybe even a little bit bigger who they um, they approach communications as a discipline, in like ah in kind of ah in a nonprofessional way. Now some of that is because like the lead pastor, they’re good at communicating and so they think therefore “I should be good at communications.” And the example I use is like, listen when you first start your church, yeah maybe you did the finances or maybe you had like somebody else do like the bookkeeping. But then eventually you need to like hire accountants and like people who do all this stuff…
Kasey Husen — Right.
Rich Birch — …professionally, It’s the same with communications.
Kasey Husen — Yes.
Rich Birch — The church grows to the place where at a senior leadership level, you need someone who is carrying communications. Unpack that for me. I believe you have probably have the same kind of thought around that. Why is that important at a senior level, and how is it helping you drive kind of the kind of outcomes and engagement you’re looking for?
Kasey Husen — Yeah, well, um, it’s certainly true. And I think our senior I know our senior pastor would agree ah that this is imperative. In fact I talked with him before this interview just to get his feedback on, you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Kasey Husen — …how have you seen over us working together for 11 years in this capacity? Like what do you see is most helpful to you? and although being a clarity champion, especially with such a visionary leader is a very difficult tension to manage, he would tell you that he really has embraced that because he knows it’s for the best. I will give the disclaimer that I believe and you know my primary role as a clarity champion, especially on our executive team. It has to be fully embraced by the whole team…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …that we want to provide clarity to people outside of that room – may it be our staff or our congregation. Because if we can’t agree on that, then the person in this role, especially at that level will be chronically frustrated. It requires a lot of question asking. Um you know the ability to also speak up and say where there’s some incongruency. Um, you know, maybe, and I know I wrote this somewhere and in the notes later on to talk about too is um, is that we’re often in communications really well-versed we’re kind of a neutral ministry within the the ministry teams. We’re serving so many different ministries regularly that were really in touch with their needs.
Rich Birch — Yeah, true.
Kasey Husen — And they’re really more candid with us with their feedback on things that things that um are articulated well, or things that they’re kind of hung up on or don’t make sense.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — So we’re often those canaries in the coal mine that will come in and say, Hey I know at this level it all seems really clear to you and it seems like everybody should just be falling in line. Um, but we often have to be the ones to say, Hey here’s where people are a little ah stuck on this.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kasey Husen — We might need to help remove some barriers. And certainly I don’t think that’s the the senior leaders’ propensity. I don’t think that they’re often in those conversations just by design. Um, and they’re not going to get that kind of feedback. And they’re not going to be looking at ministry the way that a Communications Director is. So they can really be an asset beyond even just the promotional side of communications.
Kasey Husen — And when I talk to a lot of executive pastors um and they ask what I do, or you know how I provide value to the executive team often I’ll hear, well we wouldn’t we don’t really devote time to talking about marketing, so I’m not sure that would work in our executive team meetings. And I’m like, wow yeah I think we need to really help people get a clear idea that yes, there’s the function of communications that often is providing you your design, and updating your website, and doing your invite cards and all of that stuff. They’re executing on branding. But the person who’s going to represent them on your executive team is really looking at achieving that level of clarity for the whole team to be able to achieve its goals.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I was in a ah—you’ll get a kick out of this—I was in a conversation recently with a senior leader. It was like, so the senior leaders there and myself and a bunch of other people. And um, they there was like they had this poster printed up with this slogan on it that I I thought was bad. Like I was like this is not good. And um and the senior leader thought this was great.
Kasey Husen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — They were like oh isn’t this this great. And I’m looking around and I’m like I think everybody else thinks this is bad, but they’re just not saying anything.
Kasey Husen — Yes.
Rich Birch — And so then I said, I was the first one to go, and this is I’m not trying to point myself out…
Kasey Husen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but this is an example of the kind of thing.
Kasey Husen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I’m like I don’t think that’s very good, and like for this reason, that reason, and that reason. And then and then everybody else piled on, oh yeah, yeah; so true, so true.
Kasey Husen — Yes.
Rich Birch — There’s there’s something about having that role of the you know the clarity champion that that’s the kind of thing that you find yourself doing. Can you talk about some examples of how, you know, championing clarity at that level at that kind of senior executive level has made a difference in kind of some of the outcomes? Kind of connect those two together. What would be some examples of that?
Kasey Husen — Yeah, definitely. Well for most churches the executive team is the one that’s making strategic decisions every week. So whether we’re preparing for a building campaign, or we’re trying to increase giving units, or getting people to Easter services, or responding to a crisis, the executive team really is like ground zero for these conversations. But what I think a lot of executive leaders forget is that um the conversations we’re having week to week and the decisions that are being made in that room, they’re going to result in the need to collaborate with other ministry leaders outside of that room.
Kasey Husen — And so like I said, your Communications Director is often the canary in the coal mine – they’re going to be the ones who are going to see the different needs of ministries um, and we’re that neutral player we consider ah, we’re serving all of the different ministries. So we’re trying to we’re getting more feedback on things that don’t make sense or do make sense. Um, so having your Comms Director in that meeting is giving you an early opportunity to really talk through the barriers that we might need to address in order for people to embrace a decision.
Kasey Husen — So um, you know, I think we can often experience ah that when we’re in a room like this, we talk about things for weeks at a time. We’re wrestling through these different things and we walk out and you know forget we haven’t done the whole context with these teams or with the congregation. And I see a lot of executive leaders get ah frustrated with the lack of engagement on their staff teams.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — It can almost drift into the, you know, they’re not on board type of conversation. And we have…
Rich Birch — They don’t get us. They’re not there.
Kasey Husen — And we have to remember that the ministry staff, you know, they are over specific goals and functions within the church…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — …where they’re devoting their time to, you know, a specific ministry and achieving the goals we have laid out with them for that ministry. And most of them they just need a compelling why behind the new work that we’re asking them to do, or you know, whatever it is in order to fully embrace it. I don’t really ever experience anyone combative…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …about a direction that we’re going in. It’s most often the time that they just don’t have the context that we have sitting in this room for weeks really wrestling this idea to the ground. So I am often the one who’s asking a lot of these questions in these meetings on their behalf. Again because I’m very aware of the kinds of questions that they might have.
Kasey Husen — So I’ll be asking these questions. My goal is to put together, you know, a document of some sort, usually just one page, whatever we’re working on to really answer those questions that people outside of that room might have. Um and oftentimes it’s ah it’s a worthy exercise for that team – the executive team. You know, like you said you might have some in there who have very different opinions about something. And I feel like I’m oftentimes, you know, tearing off a stick of dynamite and throwing it in. Um, you know that’s kind of my job is to even sometimes take a side of something just to see what kind of reaction I get to know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …okay, we’re very committed to this, you know and not this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — Or to at least drive more conversation in there so we leave that room with more clarity.
Rich Birch — Uh-huh.
Kasey Husen — Um, you know and and the thing is is the like the XP of Discipleship really in that room should desire a level of clarity also, but their primary role in there is not to figure out how to make the messaging clear for different audiences…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kasey Husen — …so that those people can take action. So um, again having your Comms Director in that meeting early on in the conversation really gives them a chance to organize that communication. And ah to advocate for a great transfer to others, so that it results in greater engagement. If you want to…
Rich Birch — Can you talk…
Kasey Husen — Yeah, go ahead.
Rich Birch — Oh sorry I was going to ask if you could talk through maybe an example maybe where there was a change in direction, or like something new was rolled out and, you know, take us inside that room. give me a sense of your role. You know to kind of talk that through a little bit.
Kasey Husen — Yeah, so, oftentimes ah you know I alluded to before that we can really be like the air traffic controllers. Um, and so again because the church just drifts into a place where we end up doing a lot of different things, or we’re excited about a lot of different things that once, you’re Comms Director, what I typically will provide in terms of value to this team, is that when we’re talking about a new initiative I can tell you what planes or messages are getting ready to take off.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kasey Husen — And I can tell you which ones are already in the air. And I can tell you which ones have landed, and even those that have crashed and burned…
Rich Birch — Oh gosh.
Kasey Husen — …if we just you know took took the whole illustration…
Rich Birch — Yes, run it right till the end. Love it.
Kasey Husen — …ah to the end. Yes, um, so so I am often you know having in those moments to say, okay, well we just rolled this out right now and we have people’s attention wrapped around this. Um, for instance, we’ve got a series coming up here pretty soon and I’m already sensing that there are quite a few people who have some different expectations and goals of our people, outcomes from this series week to week and then an overall one that will continue moving throughout the year. Um and especially if it impacts people’s finances. And you know I’m often the one who’s saying okay, let’s remember practically if we do this for seven weeks um, if we throw out that this is important each week, but then we’re also asking them to go sign up to do this over here…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …you know, what are we going to be most disappointed with when it’s not done, when it’s not when people don’t engage with that. And and we can get into more of that as a practical you know how I ask questions with our our senior pastor specifically. Um, but I also do this in um, you know a little ah lesser pressure with like roadmapping a series. Um.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kasey Husen — So I I get in on the front end of this with our senior pastor, or all our teaching pastors. Ahead of a series I’m sitting down and I’m saying, okay, you guys tell us what you’re thinking about doing for this duration. Um, and then I kind of say like what are the goals? What do we hope people will do um after this series? How will it change them? Then we go week by week…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …and really talk through, Okay, what do we want them to know, feel, do (which came from Craig Groeschel), but just applying some of that even to our series…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …um, road mapping so asking a lot of those questions is just another practical way that we do that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the the air traffic controller example I think is a very um is a very vivid example, and I think is very applicable for sure to this. I can see how that would be of huge value for sure. Can you talk a little bit more about… so one of the pressures I think so many of our churches face is there’s this it’s kind of like where you started. There’s this notion that, you know, somebody runs a department or they’re you know they’re involved in something and they’re like if I can just get somebody on the weekend to stand up and talk about this thing. Like if… And and they there’s I know they think all they need is that. But we know that that’s actually not going to guarantee that they’re going their thing could end up crashing and burning.
Kasey Husen — Right.
Rich Birch — Bring us all together. Why why do you just to kind of weekend stage promotions not the answer. How does that relate with the planes flying around? You know how has that actually benefited what you’ve done at Crossroads?
Kasey Husen — Yeah, so um, we have dozens of ministries in our church, and we also serve a preschool through 12th grade school that’s connected to us. So every day we’ve got planes or messages that are taking off, they’re in the sky, or they’re coming in for landing. So part of my job is to really protect the runway, and the skies from collisions or congestion. You know? So um, my executive team really empowers me in this role to really mine for clarity around the overarching winds of our church. And then to help remove barriers. For the most part they allow me to determine the best time for these planes to take off.
Kasey Husen — This took a while to get to this place. So I just want anyone to know who’s listening ah might sound like we got here overnight. We didn’t. It was it was a process. But one process I would give you just practically is we do a ministry planning cycle. And it really just gives us a proactive look at the schedule ahead. So our executive team will meet in the fall, we’ll really lay out the next year’s initiatives and the sermons series…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …and then I’ll put that on a spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet for everyone to see. But a next level thing is that I’ll also back in promotion. We know it’s going to take anywhere from four to six weeks talking about this thing…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kasey Husen — …to get people to actually show up. So ah then I pass that off to the ministries and they’re really able to map out their 3 to 5 goals for the next six months and work ah with aligning with our overarching goals. So we then we built this culture where ministries understand that they can’t rely on the weekend stage to make their event successful. Um, because there’s limited space to promote things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …once we focus on all of those big rocks that we…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — …you know, tackled in the executive meeting and backed in that promotion. So ministries need to detail how they plan to do the work of engaging people around their event or initiative without the support of the weekend stage.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kasey Husen — So if we’re able to emphasize their event at a time where it’s got a practical application from the message that week, or one of our strategic pushes, then that really is seen as a bonus to them. Again to go a long time to get here. And we could not have done that unless we we embrace this as a culture as an executive team. Because all of our executive leaders are really championing this within the ministries that they oversee.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know and continuing to move, I found in the past, moving departments to hey here’s a whole bunch of other ways that you can communicate what you you want to do, and and and don’t be and we can help you with that. We’ll we’ll help you figure through all the different tools that you could use, all the different approaches. And and frankly, a lot of it is like talking with your own people. Like it’s…
Kasey Husen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like it’s actually let’s actually you have a defined you know constituency; let’s get in front of them in the channels that make sense to get in front of them…
Kasey Husen — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …instead of just relying on being in front of everyone else.
Kasey Husen — And I find that that when they have that responsibility in order to put on this event, they actually start to ask questions like: is this really what our people need right now?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — And because they’re having to go to those people on their own and they’re not relying on a huge marketing arm of the church to do that for them. Sometimes these ideas get squashed on their own because they say well, yeah, actually we’re not sure…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kasey Husen — …you know, given all the work it’s going to take that we want to proceed forward with that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kasey Husen — We’re not going to get the outcome.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s great. Um, so a little bit in a different direction around the same, you know, the same topic, a lot of what you do is lead up. A lot of what you do is lead and influence the you know your senior leader, but the you know other executives. Um when you think about that aspect of your role, do you have any advice? You know because I’m sure there’s communications people that are listening that are like oh my goodness, I would love to work there. It sounds like they actually appreciate the role of communications. And they’re they’re trying to think about man, how do I how do I influence the organization? Any advice for folks that would be listening in with that mindset?
Kasey Husen — Yeah, and like I said earlier it can really be um, it can kind of be an exhausting seat to sit in sometimes. Especially because um, I understand, you know, and it’s the same way here. Visionary leaders often they have more room for ambiguity than people sitting in this seat.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Kasey Husen — And so, you know, it’s a tension to manage. Eleven years in I would say we haven’t solved that problem. Um, it’s just again I go back to it’s been eleven years getting to know my senior pastor…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kasey Husen — …and how he prefers to do things, and where we’re going. And often that’s led to me having conversations ah with him, you know, throughout the year. He’s in enneagram seven so he loves doing five exciting things at once. And he really believes that it will all work out. And but he would also tell you as a 7 he has to work really hard ah to fight off the tendency to avoid pain. So in situations where he wants to people to focus on five things, it’s kind of painful to have to tell a ministry we’re not going to do all of those things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — And so I kind of lead up by asking questions like um, okay if we share these 5 things in the Sunday service, come Monday morning which of the 5 things will you be most eager to see results for?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Kasey Husen — And if you can’t answer that one, you know, usually there’s one that’s like I want to see people do this. Then that’s the most important thing. If you need more questions: which one of these will be the most painful for you if we don’t see engagement around it? Whatever the answer is to that, that’s the most important thing. And then I’m usually able to activate around building messaging for that or even fighting to push off other things to a time where the main thing isn’t going to suffer. But also just you know stepping into ah wanting to remove barriers. And when I notice we’re not on the same page about something, um, it’s important for us as Comm Directors even though in our fight for clarity um that we can often be coming in with feedback, we’re wanting to show honor to our senior leader. But also we’re representing about we’re representing what’s not clear about his vision or his communication and that can often feel like you’re calling his baby ugly.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kasey Husen — So um, you know someone in this role I think really needs to earn that trust.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kasey Husen — Um, and to to discern like is this a point where I need to have a conversation because my leader is at risk.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kasey Husen — And, you know, and and I would say if you know that then yeah, that’s a primary function of this role to step into those hard things for the purpose of keeping us on track toward the goal. But I would build that relationship and that trust and there might need to be some calibration throughout the year because it’s such a tension to manage just to continue reiterating: I am on your side, and I’m for you, and I’m in the support of whatever you feel like God is calling this church to do. And so although I’ll come in with some critical feedback here and there I have an opinion about how something might be done best um, you know at the end of the day it’s your call. But I feel like I wouldn’t be doing a service to you if I didn’t share, you know, what what might be a barrier to our success. So we’ve really worked that tension and we’ve established established a lot of trust over the years and I would say if there’s someone in this role, that’s something to focus on.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that’s that’s such a lot of wisdom in that answer around, you know, the relationship side of it, and building trust, and there’s you know there’s wisdom there around, Okay, you know, not every hill is a hill we can die on and um, how do we find, you know…
Kasey Husen — Yeah. Yes, and I like to die on every hill, Rich. I really do.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s this is been for good…
Kasey Husen — Eleven years in and I’m still pumped to die on all the hills…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kasey Husen — …but I have to really really and make sure that I’m being wise about that.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. As we come to close up today’s conversation, Kasey, anything else, you’d like to share? Anything else, you’d like to say to to help her guests as we close out today?
Kasey Husen — I would just say um, you know, in our pursuit of clarity and really hitting our overarching goals, helping our teams do that, there are some really awesome ways that we can pair um ministry opportunities with major initiatives or um, ah messages each week. And I’ll just give one example of that. You know for years we had teams coming to us saying, can you announce our ministry because we need more volunteers for this, you know? And just mentioning that was never really effective and it really just came across needy. Um, so now what we do is every year one of our pastors is preaching on gifts. Um, or they’re preaching on the importance of serving. And so we have now paired the pitch for people to get involved with ministry um, with that service every year, and it’s called Draft Day.
Kasey Husen — So all the ministries are out on the patio doing that. And we have seen the biggest results from pairing messages with opportunities in ministry because you’re getting multiple impressions and actually moving the hearts of people in multiple ways throughout the service to action, once again.
Kasey Husen — So um, there are some great ways, I’m happy if someone wanted to email me I could download them on a couple different ways we do some of the major things in churches…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kasey Husen — …to get people engaged but um, but that’s one thing that I I hope people have have some energy to explore.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well if people want to get in touch with you, or track with the church where do we want to send them online?
Kasey Husen — Yeah, you’re welcome to email me I’m Kasey, kasey@crossroadschurch.com and I’m also on Instagram – kaseyhusen.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thank you so much, Kasey. I really appreciate you being here today, cheering for you guys. Love what Crossroads is up to and I really appreciate your generosity and being here today. Thank you so much.
Kasey Husen — Thanks for having me, Rich.
Leading Through the Crisis Your Church is In (Or About to Be In) with Rusty George
Apr 13, 2023
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Rusty George this week, the lead pastor of Real Life Church in Southern California. In addition to being a pastor, Rusty is a speaker, teacher and author focused on making real-life simple.
As leaders, we all face difficult times and crises that challenge our faith and our ability to lead. Don’t miss this important conversation where Rusty shares his experiences and offers valuable lessons for how church leaders can prepare to deal with a crisis before it hits.
Crises will come. // The last few years have taught us that crises will come whether our church is ready for them or not. Particularly as a church grows, it will face more complex issues ranging from moral failures and suicide on your staff, to school shootings in the community, or even discord among team members. In addition your church may experience backlash from the larger community when crises hit. Admit that yes, you are broken and you don’t have it all together. Use the issues your staff is facing to reach out to people in the community experiencing the same hardships.
Care for your staff. // When crises hit, often the executive pastor is the first person who deals with the issue because he is trying to protect both the staff and the lead pastor. Remember that this work takes a toll on your staff and can lead to burnout. After dealing with the immediate needs, make sure to provide your staff with rest and the help they need.
Managing a crisis. // How do we manage a crisis when we’re in the middle of it? Think about the impact as a series of concentric circles. First evaluate who is the closest to the blast zone in this crisis. What do they need first and how can you help them? Then think about your staff and how to communicate what’s happening and how much to share. Next ask yourself what the church needs to know, and finally what the community needs to know. Lastly, circle back to the impact in your own life after dealing with the immediate crisis. Take time to process your grief and pursue healing with a therapist.
Plan ahead for crises. // Have the conversation with your elders and church leadership about what you’ll do in the face of crisis before it happens. Having a policy ahead of time prevents people from debating the consequences because everyone will know the plan to work through in that moment.
Balance grace and truth. // To deal with situations before they become crises, pastors need to create a culture of honesty where staff can come forward if they need help. Talk about your own therapy, sin issues, and problems. Practice what you preach when it comes to seeking help through counseling. But also be intentional about having hard conversations with your staff.
Look for red flags. // When it comes to protecting your staff against moral failure, there are safeguards you can put in place but ultimately people are going to make their own decisions. Look for red flags with your staff members – for example, do they have any friends on staff or within the church? Do they have any hobbies? If ministry is their only world they can get burned out quickly and make bad decisions.
Getting help with Rusty’s course. // In Rusty’s course, Leading Through Crisis, he takes an honest look at the crises Real Life Church faced, what they did right, what they did wrong, and what they would do differently if they had to do it again. A must-have for church leaders, the course walks leaders through crises such as dealing with issues on staff, moral failures, suicide, school shootings, grief in the community, handling the press, and more.
To get 50% off Rusty’s course, Leading Through Crisis, use the code unseminary during checkout through April 30, 2023. Learn more about Real Life Church at reallifechurch.org.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited for today’s interview. We have a repeat guest and friends, you know, we don’t do a lot of repeat guests here at unSeminary. But, uh, this guest is one of those people I said, listen, anytime you want to come on, you let me know cause I would love to have you on. So we’ve got Rusty George – he is the lead pastor of Real Life Church, multisite church in Southern California. He is a global speaker, a leader, and teacher focusing on making real life simple. He’s a author of, uh, several books, he has a weekly podcast called Leading Simple with Rusty George. So I knew he is, his sound would at least be great. I know that. And he’s just recently actually released a, an online course, which is a part of why I wanted to have him on to really wrestle this through. Uh, but Rusty, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Rusty George — Boy, it’s an honor to be back. Thank you so much. I’m a a big fan of the show and uh, it’s great to be on again.
Rich Birch — No, it’s so great to, to connect. Why don’t you fill out the picture there a little bit. What did I miss? What was, uh, you know what, yeah, what didn’t I talk about? How, fill out the picture a little bit.
Rusty George — Yeah. So I, I did not grow up in California. Everybody wants to know if that’s where I’m from, but I’m not. Uh, California was always a place you’d visit, not a place you’d live, from where I’ve come from.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Rusty George — Uh, so I’m from Kansas and grew up there and, uh, worked in Kentucky for a few years. That’s where a little bit of my accent comes from, as the people out here to like, to tell me. Moved out to California, took over a church, uh, that Kyle Idleman started, uh, and did just an incredible job, and felt like he did what he was called to do, and he left. I came out and it was almost three years old, meeting in a movie theater, and had great momentum already. And, uh, we were just, were able to, to have some really fun years of life in movie theaters, and then high schools, and building a building and moving in.
Rusty George — And I remember having a conversation with a guy who’s a, uh, seasoned veteran as a pastor, probably been leading for 40 years at the time. And I was all excited cuz we just moved in a new building. And so, you know, everything was up and to the right, and everybody was happy and…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Rusty George — Uh, it was great. And he looked at me and he said, man, you’re gonna see some things. And I said, what do you mean? He said, anytime you take a beachhead against the enemy, the enemy notices.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rusty George — And you, you just need to prepare yourself. You’re gonna see some things. And over the next 10 years we did. We just saw our share of, of wins, of highs, but also deep lows. And, uh, seminary did not prepare me for that.
Rich Birch — No, no.
Rusty George — That’s why I love your podcast. Um, but it, it left me, you know, kind of wrestling with, you know, my own calling. You know, you ask a lot of deep questions like, is this my fault? Um, you always second guess yourself – should I have done something differently? And you just learn a lot through that. So we had a, a lot of difficult times, a lot of great times too, but it’s been 20 years now at the church and, uh, we still believe our best days are ahead.
Rich Birch — I love it. I, I’d love to actually talk a little bit more about that and get, dig in a little bit, if that’s okay, around some of that, you know, that more negative stuff. I think this is one of those things we often, you know, we love to celebrate when things go well. We love to look at a, you know, a church like Real Life, which is, you know, has had huge impact, continues to have huge impact. Uh, but there’s the, you know, there’s the, you pull up the rock and look underneath and there’s like, Ooh, there’s some stuff under there that’s not so pretty. Fill out that picture a little bit. Talk us through those things.
Rusty George —Yeah. I remember in my early days of ministry, I love to quiz pastors about, hey, tell me how’d you grow? You know, h how’d you win? How’d you succeed? And we all look for those stories, right, cuz we think there’s some kind of silver bullet out there that’s gonna make everything great. But now that I’m older, I like to ask guys, tell me how you failed, uh, how I can learn from that. And so, I’m pretty open about sharing anything that we’ve done wrong, or we’ve experienced that was difficult.
Rusty George — Um, I, I think, you know, we had a variety of things happen. We had, uh, a couple of moral failures that happened on staff that had never happened up until that point. We prided ourself on this will never happen here. Uh, we’re such a spiritual group of people and, uh, you know, we love the Lord. But the reality is no matter how many, uh, things you put in the staff handbook, how many Billy Graham rules you have, it only works for people that really wanna stay faithful in their marriages. So people would put themselves in compromising positions and they’d make bad decisions. Uh, and unfortunately in a couple of those situations that ended in two separate suicides that we had to walk through as a church. And so, uh, that brought with it a lot of negative press about our church, and what’s really going on there. And I told you they weren’t really teaching the Bible. They’re not very spiritual. You know, so you have internal discord, you have, you have grief on staff, and then you have, uh, you know, these, this, uh, uh, the, the communities lashing out at you as to, I thought you guys had it all together.
Rusty George — And so it became a great opportunity for us to talk about, no, we do not have it all together.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — And we are broken people and we’re all trying to figure this out. And so let’s lean into the mental health side of things and see if we can help people who are struggling with suicide ideation. And, and we were able to do that. We’ve had, um, some staff drama of, uh, you know, a couple of staff members get arrested for various things.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Rusty George — Whether it’s, uh, you know, somebody, uh… and, and this is the thing about growing churches is when you go after reaching unchurched people and you start to reach them…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rusty George — …then you want to hire them.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Rusty George — And oftentimes they’re, they’re past, even though it’s forgiven by God, it’s not over with in, uh, you know, our day and age and it catches up to them. Uh, and that’s such a unique dynamic…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rusty George — …when people from your church come on staff and, you know, you’ve seen this, and suddenly your, your, your boss is, or your pastor is now your boss.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — Suddenly your place of worship is your place of work, it just gets weird and whatever’s in you comes out of you, it kind of squeezes out. And and we just saw that, that some of that just happened. And we had to kind of pick up the pieces of that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — Uh, we had rapid growth and thus, um, a a lot of, we had to hire a lot of new staff, and there became kind of this civil war on staff between the people that were there before the building and the people after the building.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — And how do you bridge that gap? And so those are just a few of the low lights…
Rich Birch — Amazing.
Rusty George — …so to speak, and, uh, you know, things we had to deal with.
Rich Birch — Well, it is interesting, you know, one of the in other contexts I’ve talked about a similar dynamic where as the church grows, at the senior level, it’s not like you deal with less people issues. It’s, you have just as many people issues. But, and, and like pastoral crisis kind of situations in people’s lives. But what ends up, at least my experience of it has been, as the church grows, you end up obviously building systems and have people that handle, you know, the normal stuff, that handle kind of normal crisis in people’s lives. But then the most complex stuff still continues to bubble up to, you know, the senior leaders in, in the church. And you don’t ever get away, at least my experience is you just never get away from that. That is, that’s a normal piece of the puzzle.
Rusty George — That you’re exactly right. I remember hearing from a seasoned pastor, a guy by the name of Bob Russell tell me, hey, everything at our church was amazing. And I would say, I think he said, 80% of everything at Southeast was incredible. And 15% was bad, and 5% was awful. And he said…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rusty George — What do you think I spent most of my time thinking about?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — And I said…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — The 5%. It’s kind of like, uh, I think it was President Obama said, when stuff lands on your desk, you realize nobody else could handle it.
Rich Birch — Right, Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Rusty George — So…
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Rusty George — …when it gets to the senior pastor’s desk, you’re like, oh my goodness. And, and really it’s the executive pastor that gets it first. And, you know, we had a great XP through all of that, that, that shouldered a lot of that. Um, and then, you know, he would call me in when, when only I needed to deal with it or needed to know. But what I failed to recognize was even though I was dealing with my own kind of internal pain and crisis and all that, he was dealing with even more. Because he was carrying weight of protecting me, but also protecting the staff. And that eventually led the burnout for him. And we got him help, and he’s fine now. But you have to remember that, that your staff takes, uh, it takes a toll on them as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love, um, one of the things you say in your, in your online course, I probably don’t love this, that’s the wrong way to say it, but I, it resonates to be true in my life. You’re either, uh, in a crisis or heading towards one. And, and I think post-pandemic, this has become true for all of us. Like we, we can see this, right? Like we were, it was not that long ago, uh, that, you know, we had the Silicon Valley Bank, you know, you know, failure. And it was fascinating. That was an interesting little crisis that was an external, not a little crisis, a crisis that was external. Uh, I remember reading about this thinking, oh, that’s kind of interesting. And then literally within about 48 hours, I heard of multiple people who are pretty close to me, who that was having an impact on them.
Rich Birch — It wasn’t like, it wasn’t just like this, like theoretical something you read in the paper. It’s like, that thing rippled out. And it was like, well, uh, all of our, you know, you know, I knew this one church where their, like, their payroll company had their money in SVP was, and so they were using them as the clearing. And like, you know, it’s, it’s interesting how these crisis, they come, you know, to us. And we’ve all seen this for sure, you know, post pandemic.
Rich Birch — But let’s talk about that around how do, how do we manage it as, you know, as ourselves? What would be some of the, how, how do we as the leader in the midst of all this… um, you know, it’s kind of like doing your kids’ diapers. I remember people would say like, oh, it’s different when it’s your kids. And I was like, no, it’s not any different. They’re just, no one else is going to do it. Like no one, no one else is gonna change their diapers, so you have to change them. The same is, there’s some similar dynamics with crisis. Like, it’s not that it’s… you’re the person that happens to be the executive pastor, the lead pastor, and so it’s your job. How do I manage the crisis uh, if I’m in the middle of it, how do I manage the impact on myself?
Rusty George — Yeah. And this is one of the things we cover in the course is you have to think about it from a variety of concentric circles. The first one is, who’s the closest to the blast zone? Like in the case of, of, of a suicide, it was a family involved in that. Uh, this one individual had taken his life and now, you know, his wife had found him. His kids are coming home from school in a few hours.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Rusty George — We’re over there on site trying to help out, okay, what does this family need first? Okay. So that’s the, that’s the biggest thing. How can we help them? But then there’s a second tier of, okay, what about our staff? Because they’re gonna need to know about this. And so how do we assemble, uh, the staff together, uh, without just, you know, sending out a text to everybody…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — …but get ’em in a room and how do we, you know, and, and then there’s that delicate balance of what’s our story to tell? What do we tell, what do we not tell? Because the wife has what’s, you know, what she needs to say. And, and all of that. Everything in me wanted to, to deal with the neighbors who were calling and the people that were coming outta their houses. And, you know, but they, they weren’t on my radar just yet. So then it goes from staff into the church. What does the church need to know? And then from the church out to the community, what does the community need to know? And there’s different checkpoints along the way.
Rusty George — And I, I think, uh, you know, for myself and for our executive pastor, we just decided, okay, we are locked in on these concentric circles. And we’ll just put kind of a date on the calendar about three weeks out when we’ll get back to our grief. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give you an example. We had another crisis we went through, we had a school shooting in our community, which, uh, took the life of one of the kids from our church, um, and, and injured another. And so it, it was a huge issue, obviously, in our community, but it really devastated our church. And, and truthfully for me, I happened to be in the hospital room when they broke the news to the mom that her daughter had died. And I, I, I will never forget that sound. And, but I had to put a pin in it. I had to kind of put it aside and say, I’ll deal with this in about three weeks.
Rusty George — And this is something we talk about in the video as well, and I got this from some other high level leader. He said, the, the life cycle of a crisis in a church for people of the church or the community is only two weeks. Because they’re so selfish, they gotta get back to their own crisis.
Rich Birch — Okay. Okay.
Rusty George — Which…
Rich Birch — There’s probably some truth to that.
Rusty George — …there’s a lot of truth to that. And we would often…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — …joke about long before these horrible crises that put, you know, put a, a mark on the calendar, two weeks from now, this will no longer be that big of an issue, because there’s other stuff that comes up. And to be able to say, I’m in full crisis management mode now, but in two weeks I gotta deal with this myself. Which I went to grief counseling over it, went to, you know, know kind of the PTSD stuff. What did that do to me and my psyche? And how do I heal up from this? Taking some time off for some of your senior staff leaders that were kind of in on this, that helped us kind of process, all right, where’s our energy gonna go? Because you only get so much, you only get so many hours of the day. How are we gonna work these concentric circles to benefit as many people as possible?
Rich Birch — Okay. I, yeah, I love that. Uh, I think that’s really good. You know, even as we’re thinking about our people, like, hey, we, let’s put a pin in it and then let’s loop back on this two, three weeks from now. We need to deal with this situation, what’s immediately here, and then let’s come back to it.
Rich Birch — Can we talk about moral failures? You mentioned this…
Rusty George — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and, you know, you had this un unfortunately, this is one of those things that has gone through so many of our churches, and we’ve, you know, we’ve, we’ve dealt with this in so many ways. One of the, one of my concerns, I would say, uh, having watched this in, even some of the churches I’ve worked with, it’s, you know, it has racked the, the church is, you know, there’s this spectrum here where leaders make, um, you know, you start with like, maybe silly decisions, and then it’s like unwise, and then foolish. And then eventually you trip over the line of sin. Like, it goes from being like, okay, these were, this was a stupid idea. Like, I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have texted her that extra time, or I shouldn’t have, you know, I said, I was like a weird joke. And then eventually you step over the line to sin, and then on the other end of the spectrum, it’s like evil. Like you do terrible, terrible things, you know, to you now avoid, you know, you’re layering sin upon sin to try to avoid detection and all that.
Rich Birch — One of the things that I’ve found interesting is as moral failure comes out—and there is a question here, it’s not me just making statements—as moral failure comes out, there’s so much cancel culture that goes on now. Right? There’s so much like, we’re gonna flush these people out. And I, I think responsibility is important. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t, people shouldn’t take responsibility. I have a high value on that as a person that’s in the church. But my, I think what happens every time that happens when we, we kind of, these people get flushed away is people who have made silly, unwise, foolish decisions, it gets stuffed down deep. They’re like, I’m not talking to anybody about this. I’m not, I am not. And, and then ironically, it actually, I think can propagate even more.
Rich Birch — So, talk me through moral failure. What should we be thinking about as maybe something’s on our doorstep? There is actually, you know, a a a leader’s come to you and said, I listen, I stepped on somewhere I shouldn’t have. Um, or it’s maybe even, you know, you just sense like there’s something awry with a team member, that kind of thing. Uh, talk us through some of your experience on that front.
Rusty George — Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And you know, as one of my counselors told me after our, our second suicide from an individual—it was one of our campus pastors—we, we uncovered, uh, a bunch of stuff that we did not know about. Anyway, my counselor says to me, you can influence the heart of man, but you cannot control it. At some point, they’re gonna do what they wanna do. And I remember in a couple, couple of these instances that we began to notice some strange kind of interaction between two people on staff. We immediately removed them from working with each other. Um, we, we, uh, we sat down with one individual and it was a bit of an intervention. He asked us for help. We granted help, we provided counseling. We separated that job out. Nothing had had come up that was fireable yet.
Rusty George — So you don’t wanna just start, you know, uh, firing at everybody, because sometimes they’re, they didn’t even know that they were being, you know, groomed or whatever. So you begin to, to try to, to mitigate that a little bit. Anyway, but at the end of the day, they, they make the decisions they make. And so I think the next question becomes then how much do you share? Because everybody in your church wants to know every bit of the details, because we do live in a culture where it’s, it’s all accessible. Right? And so I, I think in the situation of, of one of those suicides, what we unearthed later, I did not know ahead of time. And I became accused of you’re hiding stuff. I didn’t hide anything. I didn’t know anything.
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm.
Rusty George — And so, but it, you know, I think from stage, instead of coming out and airing all the dirty laundry, because there’s families involved, there’s kids involved. There’s, you know, uh, people watching from their hometown, you know, during this time. You have to kind of say, listen, we don’t know all the facts. We’re learning as we go.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — But here’s what we do know. And you just need to know I’m not gonna tell you everything, but I’m gonna tell you what you need to know. And you need to know that we’re gonna do this with integrity, and we’re gonna find out what we need to find out, and we’re gonna help the people involved. Larry Osborne gave me some great advice many years ago. He said, have the conversation now with your eldership. What are we gonna do in the moment of a moral failure? Because it’s gonna happen.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Rusty George — And if you have the conversation before it happens, then you don’t have people picking sides. Cuz what will happen is…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — …half of your people want grace. The other half want justice. So go ahead and come up with a plan: this is what we’re gonna do. Another thing we offer on the course, so you can look through, all right, in this moment, this person gets counseling, this person gets to stay, this person loses their job. Uh, all those kind of things. But at the end of the day, you can only do as much as you can do because they make their own decisions.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Talk us through that a little bit. Cuz I do feel like that to me is like at the nub of the issue, which is like how… I, I guess I assumed when I started in ministry, I, early on, I, I was coached by some great leaders who said, listen, once you decide to be in ministry, your private life is a public consequence that, you know, you, you pick to do this. And so if, uh, you know, what you do with your private time is actually, uh, is relevant to your ministry. And so how do we, and I get that, that’s like…
Rusty George — Sure.
Rich Birch — …I think an interesting principle for me to live by, but I also understand on the other side, we want to guard people. And we want to provide a certain amount, and we’re trying to balance off that grace and truth. Uh, help me kind of divide out the lines there for me a little bit. Help me understand that.
Rusty George — Well, if I had a good answer for that, I’d market that. I, I , I think that it’s different for everybody. It’s a bell shaped curve. You have people on each end…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — …that want to know nothing. And those that want to know everything and somewhere in the middle is a, a healthy balance.
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — You know, I think I, I would start with your, you know, telling your staff, let’s, let’s watch what we post on social media.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — I’m glad that you’re out with your friends and having a good time, but it may not need to be a picture of all of you holding beer bottles, just because we have so many people recovering in our church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rusty George — I don’t care if you drink. That that’s, you know, that’s every church makes their own decision on that. But let’s, let’s keep in mind what the, uh, the larger scope actually sees. And let’s just, let’s just have a, a core value of we’re going to be honest about things. And this is so much better now than it was 30 years ago.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rich Birch — Because pastors are so more likely to talk about their own therapy, their own sin issues, their own problems. And so now it becomes a, I think I can lean in, I think I can trust, um, I, I think in these situations, uh, people, they don’t need to know you’re perfect. They, they like to know you’re real. They just know that they, they wanna know that you’re acknowledging your stuff and moving ahead. So I think in these situations, you know, with your staff and, and with your church, you’re constantly educating them that, no, we’re not perfect. We don’t have it all together. Um, we’re learning as we go. Uh, little things like I always tell, you know, lead pastors: don’t tell people to be in a small group if you’re not in one. And don’t lead it…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rusty George — …you know, be in one; be subject to one.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rusty George — Uh, don’t tell people to go to counseling if you don’t go…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — …because you need someone to talk to and, you know, and, and talk about that from time to time. So it’s just modeling it, I think goes a long ways. And that prepares you for when there might be a problem to say, uh, yeah, we had a, we had an incident, and this is what we’re doing. Now, granted, there are gonna be people that say, I can’t believe you fired him for that offense.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Rusty George — But…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — …that’s church policy. That’s just what we do.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — Uh, in that particular case, now you need to know we’re taking care of them and we’re, we’re helping the family along the way. Uh, and I’ll, I’ll be with them through that process. But that’s like the complicated thing of being a pastor. You wear so many hats.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rusty George — Sometimes you’re CEO, sometimes your pastor, sometimes your therapist.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rusty George —Uh, but it just, it’s different every time.
Rich Birch — Yeah. And I, I love that advice. I think that’s so, so smart around like, hey, we need to have, it’s like we have the co have to con we have to have the conversation before we have to have the conversation. Like, let’s define a bit of what the boundaries are here. Let’s talk that through and agree on that before we get to the point where, like, where is that crisis manual again? Can I pull that off the shelf? Like, now is the time to talk about that. I think that’s so good. I remember years ago there was a, there was a, um, two people on our staff who, um, you know, we were way at this retreat and it was like, um, I just was like, okay, they’re, you’re a little too cozy.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Rusty George — You’re just a little too cozy. And so these were both people that I deeply respected, people that worked for me.
Rich Birch — And, um, you know, on Monday I pulled him into my office and I said, hey guys, like I, I, I’m not accusing you of anything, but I just want to tell you the things I saw. And here are the three or four different things that I saw that were, that, that just rang bells inside of me. Like I, I don’t know that you are being, the language I use was, I don’t know that you are sending the message necessarily that, that you want to send. Um, and again, I’m not accusing you of anything, but this is where that’s at. That took, man, I was like, and I was deep into my career when I did that. This was not like first five years thing. It was years in. It was a, that was a hard conversation. But, you know, it was interesting. Like, I, um, the one person was super pissed, like, I can’t believe, like you’re, you know, you’re accusing me of everything.
Rusty George — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And I’m like, no, I’m not, I’m not accusing you of anything. This is, I’m telling you what I saw. And the other person was really quiet and then looped back around a couple days later and said, you know, Rich, I really appreciate you flagging that. I said, you know, you read it exactly right. I, you know, things were, not, nothing has happened, but like I, this was a sobering moment for me. And I appreciated that.
Rusty George — Right.
Rich Birch — I was like, oh, good. Like that’s, you know, hey, you know, that’s heading in the right direction. Um, but having those hard conversations are really, really tough. I think the moral issue thing is so hard.
Rusty George — What a valuable thing for them to be able to do that. Because first of all, you’re safeguarding the church. We have to always think about that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Rusty George — But, but you’re also maybe preventing them from going down a road that they think, oh, I’ve gone down too far now and now I’m stuck. A couple of indicators I look for in people now.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — I mean, obviously those situations are red flags, but there’s a couple of others that I’ve just noticed. One is, does, do they have any other friends? Um, you know, I I, I often think about the people we let go on staff are often the people that didn’t fit, and they don’t have any other friends on staff, or maybe they don’t even have any other friends in the church of the same sex – that they’re, you know, they, they just have a, a buddy relationship with somebody in their life that can call ’em on something.
Rusty George — And the second one is, do they have any hobbies? I know that sounds like an outlier, but you know, if ministries are only a world, they’re gonna get burned out really quick. And then they start making stupid decisions. And, uh, we, we all know from the host of podcasts that are out there chronicling the failures of people in ministry that, um, you know, it often is a result of a lack of friendship and a lack of hobbies. There’s no…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — …there’s no value to life other than their work. And then they end up resenting their work along the way.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s so good. I remember years ago, similarly another kind of flag that I’ve, that has stuck with me. I was talking with, uh, an individual who coaches a lot of people or councils, really a lot of people who have been through this kind of, um, you know, this kind of experience, a moral fail failure. And I said, well, what, what are your things that, you know, what’s your coaching to us as leaders? What’s the kind of thing we should be looking for without, you know, looking for evil around every corner? Like, let’s not get paranoid about it. And they said, you know, it’s interesting if you just listen to enough stories, you hear a lot of these relationships, if they go sideways with some sort of moral failure, it happens at conferences, away at a camp, away at like, there’s some sort of, like, we’re, and so they were like, listen, just be aware on those kinds of things. Just be, which is interesting cuz that aligned with my other, that my other kind of own personal experience where I was like, okay, that is interesting. Right? And they’re like, it’s just, that’s just how life works. I thought that’s kind of interesting.
Rusty George — It’s true.
Rich Birch — Well this is just one of the kinds of, uh, you know, potential crisis fun thing that churches get to, you know, to deal with. There’s a a lot in this course that I, I really do think… I listen friends, I think this is one of those courses that you should be taking. Um, it should be the kind of thing that you are, you know, you’re, at least from my perspective, you shouldn’t wait till you’re in a crisis to go through this kind of thing. This is kind of good, you know, let’s get ahead with our senior leaders. There’s lots of stuff listed in here. So you talk about dealing with suicide, you talked about moral failure. Um, you talked about, um, you know, this, the tragedy of dealing with the school shooting, which unfortunately, like, it’s just sad that that has to be in a course, like, but it’s it’s unfortunately way too common as you know, it should be. There’s this whole I issue of what do we deal with, you know, the press in these scenarios. Man, there’s a lot in this course. Talk to me a little bit about why you put this course together.
Rusty George — Well, I just saw that, man, we had lived through so much, and a lot of people were asking us about it. I had people will call up and say, hey, what, we’ve got this suicide. What, what do we do with? Or we’ve got, uh, a school shooting, or… I remember after our school shooting, uh, one of the ministers from Sandy Hook called me and said, how you doing? And man, that meant so much to me. Because he’d been through it. Um, and, you know, we were able to reach out to Nashville just, uh, uh, not long ago after their school shooting and, and provide some assistance. So just, I, I think it, it provides some, some healing when you get to share your pain. So we deal with that. Uh, we deal with what do you do when people are leaving your church and it just wrecks your, your soul, which we’ve all been through that. Uh being out here in California, you know, with the death of Kobe Bryant, even though he did not attend our church, uh, the loss of Kobe in the LA area was a huge thing. And he’s, you know, what do you do when somebody dies that’s not always that honorable, but yet your people want you to honor them. Uh you know, how, how do you walk through that? Um, and just staff stuff. I mean, everybody deals with just crazy staff stuff. If you’ve got a staff of two or 200…
Rich Birch — Right.
Rusty George — …uh, people, people bring themselves to the workplace. So how do you manage that? And we deal a lot with internal stuff too, in the counseling that we dealt with.
Rich Birch — Hmm. Yeah. It’s fascinating. Well, if people want to get this course, where do we want to send them online uh, you know, to pick this up?
Rusty George — Yeah. They can just go to my website, pastorrustygeorge.com and for your listeners, Rich…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rusty George — …if they use the code word unseminary…
Rich Birch — Love it!
Rusty George — …they get 50% off. So…
Rich Birch — What!? That’s amazing!
Rusty George — 50%, baby. That’s right. So, uh…
Rich Birch — That’s incredible.
Rusty George — …just for you.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Thank you so much for that. What a gift.
Rusty George — Absolutely. Yeah. And we’re having people buy it not just for themselves, but they watch it with, with their teams or, they’ll gift it to another pastor, which you can do that as well and say, hey, I, I just wanna make sure that you’re taken care of should you go through something like this. Or maybe they are going through something like this.
Rich Birch — Well it’s interesting you say that, cuz actually, as we were talking about this, I was like, man, if I was in a denomination, if I was a part of a network, if I was, uh, you know, if I was in, if I had some leadership responsibility over a number of churches, I would gift this to all those people. I’d use that code and gift it to all of those people and say, hey, here is a great training resource that you can use. Um, you know, it is, uh, it’s super helpful; I’ve had a chance to look through it – it’s super helpful. Um, and, and, you know, put together in a winsome manner that’s not all like paranoid, paranoid, paranoid. It’s like actually helpful. It’s not, it’s, this isn’t hype; it’s help. Um, it’s not fear driven, it’s faith driven. You know, it’s, it’s, uh, but full of lots of helpful resources. So I would highly recommend that people do that. Drop by pastorrustygeorge.com, use that code, which is super gracious of you to, you know, to pick that up. Have you heard any, you know, kind of response back from church leaders as they’ve started using it? Anything that’s kind of stuck, stuck out to them or anything that, you know, has kind of, has kind of resonated as they’ve, as they’ve been going through it?
Rusty George — Yeah, I mean, obviously you hear from some people that say, oh yeah, that’s great. I’ll keep that as a bookmark for when I go through crisis. Uh, but then the people that watch it say, oh, I’m so glad I saw that because now I see a few things that are coming, uh, that I can hopefully prevent or avoid. And, and we deal with the things that we did right. And the things we wish we would’ve done differently, uh, to be able to, to help some people, uh, navigate some of those pitfalls that we didn’t see coming.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. And, you know, and there are in exa these kinds of situations, when they come up with our church, they demand a ton of us. Uh, so taking time now ahead of time to actually dig into them and think about them, man, it’s, that’s the way you want to do that. Even just that one little bit. The one piece around moral failure, Hey, let’s talk about this with our team before we get there. All of these things and a similar kind of category. I was in, uh, an organization where it wasn’t a church, but where we ran into a crisis situation where we literally had to get the crisis manual down off the shelf and look at it and go check by check, okay, when do we call the cops? When do, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And man, if I hadn’t looked at that stuff ahead of time, if I hadn’t thought about that ahead of time, um, that would’ve been a terrifying moment.
Rusty George — Right.
Rich Birch — So this is a perfect course for that kind of thing to, because you might not have, we, you know, I just blew past that. You might not have a, a crisis response, you know, kind of thought about as a church, and this could help you think through this ahead of time. So I would strongly encourage people to drop by, uh, pastorrustygeorge.com, pick up this, uh, today. Anything else you wanna say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Rusty George — Uh, just that I would, uh, love to help out as many people as possible, not make the mistakes that I made, not deal with the grief that I dealt with, so that we can hopefully, uh, keep some guys in the game a lot longer. Uh, because our, our world is in need of so many more churches, and not just churches that keep the doors open, but healthy, uh, thriving churches, which is why I’m such a fan of unSeminary. So thanks for what you do, Rich.
Rich Birch — Thanks Rusty, appreciate what you do, and thanks for being on the show today.
Rusty George — Thank you.
Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress with Brian Dodd
Apr 06, 2023
Thank you for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We have Brian Dodd back with us. He’s the Director of New Ministry Relationships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions, as well as blogging at Brian Dodd on Leadership and the author of several books.
Brian is talking with us about the current state of the church post-pandemic and what we are seeing in terms of church growth. Plus don’t miss the practical tool he offers for discipleship and leadership development.
Connect and restore hope. // Brian has a unique vantage point as he works with growing churches, noting that churches that focus on Jesus, the Bible, and discipleship are flourishing post-pandemic. COVID-19 has stripped away non-essentials, and people are looking for what’s real and authentic.
The primacy of scripture. // While the attractional model still works, churches that model personal holiness and excellence while focusing on the primacy of scripture without the glitz are thriving. Realize that as a preacher you’ve been given a specific message to deliver to a specific group of people at a specific time, and that message can change people’s lives forever. People are dramatically attracted to these type of leaders and churches.
Connect people to God’s word. // We’ve raised an entire generation of people who don’t know who God is. They may come to church on Sunday, but don’t have an active relationship with God Monday through Saturday. Give them practical handles to hold onto in the struggles they face each day. Great systems in small groups that route people in to where they can learn about God’s word and what it says about their life are what people need today. Churches that do that are the ones that are bearing fruit and growing.
Seven skills. // Brian also shared about his process of writing his latest book, “Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress,” and how it can be used as a tool for pastors and church leaders. The book is based on the 31 verses in 2 Samuel 23 about David’s mighty men and pulls out seven skills that are important for leaders to have in a post-pandemic world: production, passion, resilience, teamwork, contentment, courage, and faith. Each chapter has study questions at the end, making it a great tool for discipleship or developing a leadership culture in churches.
Serving others. // If you want to move forward in a post-pandemic world and become everything God wants you to be, these seven skills will help you develop your leadership. Brian wraps up by underscoring the importance of serving others first in our decision-making rather than serving ourselves. If we make ministry and leadership about other people, it will lead to exponentially greater results in the long run.
You can learn more about Brian’s books at www.briandoddonleadership.com. Plus order “Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress” in bulk here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. I’m super honored to have Brian Dodd with us again on the podcast. We were saying this has got to be maybe the fourth or maybe even fifth time. I just love Brian – he’s got a huge heart for serving church leaders and he there’s a very few small group of people who who I say, listen anytime you want to come on, you come on, and Brian is one of those. Ah, he’s the Director of New Ministry Relationships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions. He’s been blogging since blogging was cool. Ah, it’s called Brian Dodd on Leadership. Feel like you know it’s not a lot of us still doing that but he’s still doing it, which is amazing. And he’s author of many books including his most recent book, “Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress”. Brian, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Brian Dodd — Hey, Rich, it it is an honor to be back again. I love hanging out with you, love investing in your audience. Love your heart as well, and you were blogging when blogging what you know was cool also. So…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — …you you and I have persevered and are are still trying to get our voice out there and serve leaders through that medium. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. And your you know I love your I still every week um, you know I’ll love where every week you you know you do this post that’s like the top 10 things that you’ve read that week on Twitter. And all still like check that out and look through and you’re a good curation source of like, hey where you know what you know think good the good ideas. So I’m glad you’re here again. So you you and interact well fill out the picture. What did I miss about Brian Dodd what you know, what how else who else are you? What do you want people to know? Tell us about Injoy that kind of thing.
Brian Dodd — Yeah I mean as far as me. Yeah, I mean you’re right? You you hit them. You know my daytime job is I serve pastors and church leaders through Injoy Stewardship, helping with leadership development and developing cultures of generosity.
Brian Dodd — Evening, for fun and it’s actually turned into something more than fun, I run the website briandoddonleadership.com. And coming out of that’s come a podcast for books, you know, just a number of of resources there to help pastors and church leaders. but being a husband of 32 years and, you know, my wife just retired from being on staff where we attend church. And my daughter is 24 and she’s on staff as a worship leader at a church. Thrilled for her. And come November 12th is the expected date she’s gonna make me a grandfather. So.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness. Brian, how is such a young man like you a grandfather – I don’t know how that’s possible.
Brian Dodd — I tell you it’s Abraham in reverse it’s, you know. Ah, but yeah, I mean so ah, you know so it’s ah it’s a great season for the Dodd family and and we’re just thrilled about everything God’s doing in our lives. So.
Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. That’s that’s so great. I know my ah my wife, we have young adult children who are not in the like thinking about kids mode. But my wife is definitely. She would like to be a grandma so she’s like ready for that. And I’m like you got to just keep that language down a little bit. You know you got to got a few more stages to go here before we get to that. But that’s so cool. That’s great.
Rich Birch — Well you have ah you know you have a unique vantage point um, and I appreciate you coming on to the podcast to try to take advantage of that vantage point. You interact in your day job with church leaders all the time all across the country in your unique slice, you know, folks that are growing and looking to do new things and all that. And I wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit around what you’re seeing in this I really do think it’s post-pandemic. You know I was last weekend I saw I was at the movie theater in our town, and there was this like hole these holes random holes on the wall. And I was like what what are those holes there. And I was like oh that’s where there used to be one of those like hand sanitizing stations. They obviously have taken it down and not patched the holes. And I was like hey, that means we’re post pandemic not hand sanitizer as much everywhere. But what what are you seeing kind of you know from your vantage point when you think about the church in this kind of current phase.
Brian Dodd — You know, Rich, listen to your story you know, Barna and Gallup they spend all this money you know trying to figure things out and if they would just go to a movie theater and look for hand sanitizer, they would have already had all their answers. Ah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Brian Dodd — I think I, because all I do is deal with growing churches, you know, churches that need to raise money for expansion, or major renovations, or payoff debt to do more money or new campuses. So I have a very unique vantage point. And here’s what I’m seeing, and I’ve actually talked to pastors at conferences to see if they’re seeing the same thing and it’s it’s been validated.
Brian Dodd — Ah churches today who understand that it really is all about Jesus, the Bible, his word, how he can change your life, and here’s the steps to do that through discipleship. Those churches are flourishing and here’s why: um Covid stripped away all nonessentials. You know, people people lost a lot during Covid. You know, they lost hope, which may have been the worst. You know, they lost family members. They lost careers, they lost money, they lost trust in just life in general. Some of them lost faith in God through that whole process. So they are they are looking for what’s real.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — And they recognize, if I can use phrases like this flash and dash or glitz or anything like that. Yeah, you know a hazer is not going to reach people for Jesus, you know.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Brian Dodd — And I talk to pastors all the time I say does the attractional model still work? Well in my opinion, yes, and no. No, the opulence, the over the top things, the wow factor – ah those type of things people don’t need that anymore.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brian Dodd — They they need what’s real. They still they still won’t excellence. But if you give them… it’s it’s strange, Rich. It’s almost a 1980s messaging. If you give them a 1980s messaging with a 2000s level of excellence, those churches are thriving. And those are the churches that I see God blessing tremendously. And what does that mean for pastors and church leaders? I say this if you focus more on your personal holiness than you do your personal preferences…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Brian Dodd — …and you realize that as a pastor, I am not a communicator, I am a preacher I’ve been given a message by the Ancient of Days to deliver to a group of people at this point in time in human history – a specific group with a specific message at a specific time that can change their life forever, people are dramatically attracted to those type of leaders and those type of churches.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know and some of this I think we were seeing movements of this before covid for sure, and I think covid in some ways has accelerated or intensified I do think that idea that you know there was so much stripped back during that time frame um, that you know the kind of flash and dash or the you know like the flash in the pan kind of thing I think faded away is not you know, not around anymore. I know there was a study done by our friends at Gallup before the pandemic, so this was 2018 or 2019, where they asked people who attended religious services—it was not a particularly Christian sort of study—but they were saying why do you attend? And to me I found lots of hope in it actually they were said three quarters of the reason why people attend was because of the message because of what was what was being taught at those. And then they asked those people, what is it that you’re looking for in those messages? And the two things that came out um, and almost neck for neck one is it needs to be based on scripture, and the second is it needs to be applicable to my life on Monday like it needs to have you know applicable you know outside of this you know this thing. And to me I took great hope in that because I would say hey that is that’s what we want our churches to be. We want our churches to ultimately point people back to the person of Jesus, not to ourselves, that we’re not the we’re a signpost we’re we’re hoping that people um ultimately see him and will walk out as changed people. What are some ways what are some examples of that? So this idea of like hey churches that are that seem to be thriving in this day are are ones that are focusing on you know transformation, or focusing on um you know what you know what what are some examples of that that you’ve seen as you’ve engaged with people?
Brian Dodd — Yeah, um, I’ll just I’ll just use you know some churches that I know firsthand. I’ll give you some practical tips and you know some of your listeners may go you’re getting into behavioral modification a little bit, but I would say, you know, these these are the expectations. Um, you know you can no longer lead from the green room. You know you you you will lead from the lobby and the sanctuary. You know your staff needs to be in the front row with their bibles open taking notes. They need to be leading in that spiritual hunger.
Brian Dodd — Um, you know pastors, old testament and new testament, biblical teaching. Rich, you said it best tell me who God is. We’ve raised up an entire generation of people who don’t know who God is. Ah, tell me who God is. Tell me what his plan for my life is. I’ve heard that he loves me but tell me what that means. And as you said, Rich, so well, what does that mean to me on Monday through Saturday? And give me real handles that I can somehow… because what are people dealing with today? Um, you know I’ve got neighbors – one’s got cancer, one’s got a kid that’s wanting to transition, one’s struggling with their marriage. Another’s got financial challenges, another another’s in the banking industry. So their career is in flux. They need something real that they can hold on to.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — And so you give you give people real… Ah by the way too um, you know this discipleship, whether you want to call it Sunday school, on campus small groups, small groups, community groups, whatever phrase you want to use, but great systems that route people in to where they can learn about God’s word and what it says about their life, and the bible has to become primary and not a reference point.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Yeah, that’s so good.
Brian Dodd — The church…yeah, churches that are doing that and elevating the scriptures to a point of primacy, those are the churches that are yielding tremendous fruit currently that I’m seeing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s I love that. I love that you’re pointing that out. Listen, you know, I’ve made the joke you know, kind of privately for years that I’m like, friends, just because it’s just because it rhymes doesn’t mean it’s true. Like there’s preaching out there that doesn’t have this kind of like um, is it actually pointing people back to God, or is it just like those are your interesting ideas. And we have to come back to part of what you know I worked with a guy by the name it worked for a guy by the name of Tim Lucas for years and one of his coaching on his teaching is you know when when when he teaches like, listen I need to get to what the bible says like with and he was a dog on it whenever we had other communicators preaching. It’s like you’ve got to get to what the bible says like in the first two and a half, three minutes. Like do not don’t where you know there’s some messages you go to and it’s like you’re 20 minutes in and you’re like are we ever going to land on scripture? It’s crazy.
Brian Dodd — Well you you know, Rich, I heard a sermon once and I don’t know if this individual listens to your podcast or not and if if he does I apologize. But you know his whole thing was Adam and Eve shame equals blame. Okay, so that was his whole thing. It was the rhyme. That’s what made me think of it.
Brian Dodd — And so if you just do a bought just a basic Google bible search on verses on shame.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — What you learn is shame is what happens when you sin and let you know that you’ve missed God’s mark, and you’re separated from God. The issue is what do you do with it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — Now Adam and Eve blame. But if you shame is ah is an action point or is an impetus for repentance.
Brian Dodd — Shame is not bad. If you don’t have it by definition we live in a shameless society.
Brian Dodd — So we actually need a little more shame…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — …and a little people responding to shame in a way that’s godly. Now blame is the wrong way to handle it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — I will I will give that I will give that pastor credit on that. Um, but shame, shame can shame can be a driver towards repentance and you know getting back in a right relationship with with God. So.
Rich Birch — Nice. Now…
Brian Dodd — That’s just an example to support what you’re saying.
Rich Birch — Love it. So now do do you cover this in your most recent book 7… “Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress”? Is that is that kind of stuff you’re talking about in in this book?
Brian Dodd — Well I you know I talk about a number of things in the book. One of the seven skills is faith. You know if you want to move successfully in a post-pandemic world and become everything God wanted you to be and everything you were meant to be, ah faith is the seven skill is the seventh skill. And so it’s actually the most important too. But I do have a page or two dedicated to what I’m seeing in churches that are experiencing post-pandemic growth.
Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Yeah, so talk to me about talk to me about this book. Talk you know this the thing I love about your your books is they’re very grounded in I don’t know how you observe so much that’s going on in the world around you. You have like this giant ability to like see things that are happening and integrate them all together. You see connections between things that I’m always like, man, how does he connect all those dots? It’s pretty amazing. But talk to me about that; talk to me about Mighty – what led you to read write the book, and and what are you hoping people get out of it?
Brian Dodd — Yeah, and so let me address that. But I want to talk about how I connect things because I think this will help the executive pastors…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brian Dodd — …because I want obviously I want them to get the book but also want them to have some tools that make them better. So whenever I write, or I collect information, or I try to build cases for various things, Rich, it’s always the law of the second question.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Brian Dodd — So the average person will go to church and they’ll they’ll be driving home and they’ll go well that is a great service. I had a wonderful time. And then they’ll talk about lunch, or the football game, or you know whatever they’re doing that afternoon. It’s the law the second question – the ability to stop and then go, okay, exactly why was it a great service?
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — Well that’s your blog post. That’s how you coach your staff. That’s how you build momentum because you can replicate the things that God’s blessing and the things you’re doing well. But but that’s that’s the process I go through. It’s really not that complicated. It’s the law of the second and third question, and actually collecting that data and leveraging it for future growth. So that being said…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — …one of the things that fleshes out of that future growth is a book. Okay? So I I did a couple of devotions for work for church and actually for the local business association. And for the local business association I left out chapter and verse. But I really did something on the 31 verses in 2 Samuel 23—David’s mighty men. Because in that that that passage takes place in 1018 to 1014 B.C. David’s on the run from Saul. So I mean he’s he’s in the wilderness, and he’s lost his friends. He’s lost Jonathan. He’s lost his wife. He’s lost his position. He’s lost his income. Sounds a lot like 2020, doesn’t it?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. True, true.
Brian Dodd — You know and so he’s lost everything. Well he starts attracting all these people that the bible refers to as distressed, in debt, and discontented. Okay, so out of this collection of misfits, he forms this elite fighting force called David’s Mighty Men.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Brian Dodd — And that’s how history remembers them. So I began when I would give devotions on it and give speeches on it, it was really well received, and I’m thinking, Okay, this thing’s got legs.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — You know it might be the right message for the right time. And so I chronologically go through that particular set of verses. And the different skills, one’s not more important than the other except faith, which is number seven. Because there’s two sections in there where it said, and the Lord worked a great victory. So without the Lord, the other six, you know, aren’t aren’t going to give you the victory that you want. But I just chronologically go through that passage. And so that’s where that’s where the seven skills come from.
Rich Birch — That’s with the seven. So this is production, passion, resilience, teamwork, contentment, courage, and then faith – so these are the seven…
Brian Dodd — Right.
Rich Birch — …kind of truth that you’ve pulled out, the seven skills.
Brian Dodd — Yeah. So for instance I’ll just do the first one because you mentioned it first…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yep, yep.
Brian Dodd — …and it’s the first thing. The the chief of David’s mighty man was a gentleman named Josheb-basshebeth. And what we learn about Josheb-basshebeth…
Rich Birch — Great name.
Brian Dodd – Yeah. I’ve had to practice a lot on the name.
Rich Birch — <laughs>
Brian Dodd — What we learn about him is he killed 800 men with a spear.
Rich Birch — So crazy.
Brian Dodd — Now here’s the deal, Rich, I am prone to embellishment. Like I go, oh that’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever eaten.
Brian Dodd — Okay, it’s not the most awesome thing I’ve ever.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Brian Dodd — It’s you know it was tasty, but it’s not worthy of awe.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Brian Dodd — And it’s you know and you know so I’m prone to embellishment. But when the bible says he killed 800 men with a spear…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — …he killed 800 men with a spear.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — So if you mentally insert yourself into that story and you’re walking with him, and however he comes upon this army, whether they’re hunting him down, there’s probably a bounty on his head. Or whether he’s hunting them down or whether they just come together, in any event there’s this confrontation between him and 800 men. And I just have it in my mind that he says, okay Brian, back up I need to take care of this. And I back up 50, a hundred yards because I’m sure they got bow and arrow. So I’m backed up a pretty good way and I watch him go to work.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Brian Dodd — And just on him I noticed three things about him.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brian Dodd — Number one: he’s a master of his craft. He knows how to work a spear.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Brian Dodd — And I talk about being a master of your craft. Number two breathtaking health. If you’d never watch two individuals get into a fight, and I’m not talking about professional combat, like um MMA or boxing or anything like that. But like your little league game. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep yep.
Brian Dodd — You’re going to notice two things. Number one, it’s over very very quickly. And number two, both are exhausted, probably from an adrenaline rush. But…
Rich Birch — Sure yep.
Brian Dodd — …you know he had the health to conquer 800 people.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — And the fourth thing you learn about him is there could be no wasted movement. His level of efficiency was that an elite level. So for instance, if you want high production in a post-pandemic world so that you can be a person who can accomplish great things for God and your organization in your church, yeah, you’re going to need those three things. You’re gonna need to be a master of your craft.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — You’re gonna and part of that is you’re going to have to master the fundamentals of your craft.
Rich Birch — So good.
Brian Dodd — You’re gonna have to have yeah you got to have great health.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — Because if your health goes it that’ll take you down.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — You can recover from a lot of things, but if your health goes that’ll take you down. And number three, you’ve got to be highly efficient. Ah edit your life and eliminate all the nonessentials.
Rich Birch — So good.
Brian Dodd — And so I unpack in that one chapter I unpack all three of those things that we learn from Josheb-basshebeth. So that’s one example and of course you’ve got the other six that you mentioned earlier.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that That’s so good. And you can see even with those this again this is, friends, this is a part of why I love about Brian’s communication style. Like he’s so good at just you know it’s the the high juice to squeeze ratio. You’ve got like one thing there and we’re squeezing all kinds of um, ah very applicable lessons out of it for you ah you know to really wrestle with I think this could be a great you know an encouraging text for people, encouraging book to pass along. But then you you go from um from the passage and then give some real some kind of contemporary examples.
Brian Dodd — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to me how all that works. How does how did that how do how did you how you weave those in as well.
Brian Dodd — Well you know, Rich, you’ve written a book. Okay? Have you written more than one or just one?
Rich Birch — Yep, two. Yep, two books, working on the third. Oh sure.
Brian Dodd — Okay, so you’re you’re you’re a writer, so I’m gonna and I think every leader has a book in them.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Brian Dodd — So if you’re thinking about writing a book I’m going to walk you through briefly kind of the writing process of the book. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — Um, I noticed when I used to read Malcolm Gladwell at the very beginning of his chapters, there’d be a bible verse. And then he would write about whatever he’d want to write about. So in my second book Timeless which was Ten Things That Apex Leaders Have Always Done and Will Always Do, I actually expanded on Malcolm’s thoughts. And so what I did is I I opened up not with a bible verse but with a biblical framework for that particular skill. And then because it’s timeless things that people have always done will always do you had the biblical text but then I brought in modern examples. Okay. So mighty takes that concept.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — And so I will build out whatever those, you know, courage or contentment or teamwork or whatever it may be, I’ll build out what the text teaches and then have modern stories of people in a post-pandemic world who are living that out.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — And so that’s that’s how the book is actually structured. And and here’s another thing and and, Rich, I want to say this. And this this is a different point but I do want to invest in your audience a little bit beyond just content of the book.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — This is my fourth book. Okay. Here’s the big lesson I learned in my fourth book. My first three books were were about me, if you want to know the truth about it.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Brian Dodd — My my first book is I just wanted my name on something. I had this book in me I just wanted to get it out. I wanted my name in the Library of Congress. I wanted to plant my flag in this earth.
Rich Birch — Sure.
I just wanted my name on something.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Now I love all 4 books. They’re like your children you love them all.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep.
Brian Dodd — You know my second book, which was Timeless, that was a question I wanted the answer to. Are there common threads that the best of the best, regardless of industry, regardless of whether you’re a church or and athletic team – the best leaders, are there common threads in um? And the answer is yes. So that was the answer to a question I had is a research project if you will know the truth about it.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
Brian Dodd — Third book I wrote 2021: The Year in Leadership was a book I always wanted to write. The reason I started writing my website and my blog is I wanted to write a book. I can’t write fifty thousand, sixty thousand words at one time, but I can write 500
Rich Birch — Right. Yep, yep.
Brian Dodd — And I would just house it on my blog and then kind of scrunch it together and make a book.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — That was the book always wanted to write.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Dodd — So my flag, my question, my book. This book is the first book and it’s just me maturing as an author. But this is the first book I ever wrote for other people.
Rich Birch — Oh good.
Brian Dodd — In fact in the title 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pain…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — So this is the first book I wrote for somebody else.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — And Rich, here’s the thing and this is what I want all your readers to know, and hopefully you won’t have to wait to your fourth book to learn it like I did. Okay?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Brian Dodd — When you make your ministry and your leadership and what you push and present to the world, it’s the old old Zig Ziglar phrase, if you give people what they want, you’ll get what you want.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Brian Dodd — Rich, this is the most pre-ordered, pre-sold book I’ve ever written.
Rich Birch — That’s a good lesson.
Brian Dodd — Ah it hit five five days into it it was the Amazon’s number one bestselling new release for Christian leadership.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — It hit Kindle three days ago and last night, its second day, it was number two.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.
Brian Dodd — Now all the glory goes to God, and number two it’s a lesson I wish I learned a long time ago. If I would have made my writing and my leadership about other people sooner, and serving people sooner…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — um you know it’d look different than it does today. But that’s the logic behind the book. That’s the structure of the book. And I think you’ve got XPs on here today that they’re they’re they’re having to make a decision – is this going to serve me, or serve my church, and if it serves my church, it might hurt me a little bit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — I would encourage them to always serve other people and serve their church. It will work out for them exponentially better in the long run.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I love ah, in fact, in our house we have as you leave kind of the door that we mostly walk out of, and we’ve had this since our kids were a little, we have these these these words it just says: help others. Um, you know that we’ve tried to with our kids all the way along say hey you know there’s a more rich and full life ah, if we orient around the needs of other people, and figure out how we serve them, and get around thinking about that. And what a vivid example um even from this most recent you know book that you’re working on.
Rich Birch — I also love that idea of the framework. I found the same thing in the so two books that have been released, third that I’m working on. Um, it’s done actually – I’m just in that kind of like final grooming of it. Um, it’s that actually coming up with the the framework, the the substructure of how it all fits together is a big part of it, and getting that all kind of sorted out. Um, then from there you know it it does tend to flow because you’re just following the the structure that you’ve put together, the kind of the path that you’ve laid out. So um, love that That’s that’s encouraging to hear. I’m, you know, love hearing about this book. As it’s been out there, has there been any part of it… because the thing I found interesting about the things you you write is you write them and then people read them and they react differently, or like hear things that maybe you weren’t really thinking of, or kind of spurs interesting conversations. Has there been any of it—I know it’s just early—but has there been anything that’s that’s happened so far that’s kind of caught your attention as it’s been out in the real world.
Brian Dodd — Well here’s what’s here’s what’s been interesting. Um, and then all 7 skills, I don’t think there’s one chapter better than the other chapter. But people gravitate to what speaks to them. You know like I’m wired for production. You know, I like getting things to done. I like checking things off a list I’m wired for production. I love the production chapter. So I was talking with a friend yesterday. He loved the passion chapter. Okay. He loved Eleazar and they had to pry the sword from his hand. So we spent a lot of time talking about the subject of passion and what that whole battle scene must have been like, you know, and [inaudible] people versus passion people.
Brian Dodd — And so really the the interesting thing for me, and um in my other books there have been specific points that really jumped out to people. But what I’ve learned about this point is whatever a person’s gifting is, whatever their interest is, however, they’re wired, that chapter speaks to them more than the other six.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — So the good news about that is is it’s a book that no matter who you are as a leader, ah, here’s what I know one seventh of it you’re going to love. You know?
Rich Birch — Which is pretty good! Love it.
Brian Dodd — Yeah.
Brian Dodd — So I you know look if we just get average on the other six we’re ahead of the game…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s funny.
Brian Dodd — …but I know at least I know at least one seventh of the book, you’re going to read that you’re going to see yourself in it.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — And here’s another thing, Rich, that I’ve had another person tell me, anyone can be mighty.
Rich Birch — Sure. Oh love that. Yeah.
Brian Dodd — And you know, they just need permission to be mighty and they need some skills. And so this book this book is giving people confidence to go, and I don’t have to live in 2020 anymore. I want to leave 2020, I’ve started leaving 2020, but now I can leave 2020 in the most productive, successful, God-honoring way possible.
Rich Birch — So good. Well this is fantastic. I know for me, you know I’m struck by this. I think this could be a great gift book to give to someone. I do think this would be a great maybe even a framework for a series, that kind of thing. I think it could be an amazing ah tool for church leaders and so I’m assuming we could pick it up, or I know we could pick it up at Amazon. Is there anywhere else we want to send people, maybe to your website or there are other places we want to send them to pick up copies?
Brian Dodd — Yeah, you you you can get on my website. Let me tell you who I wrote. You know, I said I wrote the book for other people you, let me tell you who I really wrote the book for.
Rich Birch — Okay, sure.
Brian Dodd — If the business community reads it and loves it, great. The athletic community if they read it and love it, great. And I hope they do. Okay. This book is written for pastors and church leaders, and at the end of each chapter I have a set of study questions. And here’s why I did that. Ah, it is a great discipleship tool.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — I am praying and my hope is that pastors will do it as a sermon series, and they’ll have an accompanying small group um lesson going right along with them. And they’ll read that chapter and then they’ll do those five study questions at the end of each chapter. And it does build to faith at the very end.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — Um, and so what I’m really really hoping is that you know because at churches, you know, I love the phrase we want to develop a leadership culture. Well absolutely. Question is how do you do that?
Rich Birch — Yeah, what’s that look like? Yeah.
Brian Dodd — And there’s there’s not many books out there, you know, like okay we can take ah a book and you can pick the name of any book, but let’s read a chapter. What’d you read? What’d you learn? How are you going to apply it? The old Dan Ryland process.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Brian Dodd — And really what you’re doing is you’re repurposing a book to make it a discipleship tool in your church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — This book is written for fun and enjoyment and learning and application. But it’s also written then know if you want to disciple your leaders, or you want to start a leader group, or a business leader group, or a sermon series, this book is written that you can do that over a seven week process.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — And obviously buying the book, to answer your question, buying the books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. But if you go to Xulon press, who I used for my self-publishing, I would get the bulk orders through Xulon Press, if you want to do 10 or more.
Rich Birch — Okay, love it. Good.
Brian Dodd — And Xulon is xulonpress.com
Rich Birch — Press dot com. Okay, great. Perfect. Well this is this has been fantastic. Anything else, you’d like to say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Brian Dodd — You know, Rich, you and I known each other a long time. Um I just want to thank you that you have given your life to serving pastors and church leaders…
Rich Birch — Well thanks, man.
Brian Dodd — …and you’ve been faithful in that. You’ve been consistent in that, and you’ve done it with unbelievable excellence. You’ve been a great friend for over a decade, and I just want to thank you. I mean to be honest, you are now such a constant in the church leadership world, you can be taken for granted.
Rich Birch — I appreciate that.
Brian Dodd — And trust me, there’s guys like me that we don’t take you for granted. So thank you for everything you’re doing.
Rich Birch — Well I was, you know, it’s I appreciate that that’s super kind of you to say that – means a lot coming from you, Brian, for sure. You know, I was I was joking with our mutual friend, Carey Nieuwhof, we were talking about this. How um you know it’s amazing people come and go in this space all the time. But there’s like some of us have just been around. We just won’t let go. It’s like we just both you know if anything we got staying power, so you know I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. Ah, we want to send people to briandoddonleadership.com – is there anywhere else we want that to send them to get connected with you ah, to follow along with you and your story?
Brian Dodd — Oh sure on Twitter is @briankdodd and Brian’s with an “i” and @briandoddonleadership on Instagram. So yeah, any of those.
Rich Birch — Love it.
We got links to them all on my website so you can go to the website and then springboard off of that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — But yeah, if you know love to interact with your audience, love to serve them in any way I possibly can. And yeah, just being an absolute honor to play a very, very small role in helping equip them to become everything God created them to be.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much – appreciate that, Brian. Take care, brother.
Brian Dodd — You too.
Sunday Service Dedicated to Pre-schoolers & Their Parents? Church Growth Lessons from Marcus Gibbs & Bubble Church
Mar 30, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We have a real treat today. We recorded this interview in person while in London, England with Marcus Gibbs, Vicar at Ascension Church.
Are you looking for innovative ways to reach unchurched communities and serve the next generation?Listen in as Marcus shares the simple yet engaging Bubble Church model and its potential to reach unchurched communities and revitalize struggling congregations.
Think creatively. // In London and the UK there are far fewer people who are familiar with Christianity or have any experience with church than in North America. That means churches have to really think creatively about how to engage people there. Marcus explains that unless you can answer the question of how to do church, no one will come through your doors.
Open your doors. // Ascension Church set up a coffee shop inside their 100+ year old building that has become an avenue for drawing people in. Since opening Parish Coffee four years ago, it has transformed their outreach efforts. The coffee shop attracts a thousand people a week, and has provided an opportunity for the church to launch several other ministries, including a debt center, a refugee drop-in, and an eco-station. Marcus notes that 85% of his time is now spent ministering to people midweek, rather than just on Sundays.
Bubble Church. // During Covid, Ascension Church also started a half hour service on Sunday mornings which is called Bubble Church. Aimed at parents and their preschoolers, the service includes puppets, action songs, a Bible story, and an activity or response. Bubble Church has become a beloved community for families who previously had no experience with church.
Automatic onramp. // Not only is Bubble Church a great way to teach kids about God and the Bible, but it’s also a no-threatening way to introduce unchurched parents to the gospel. Kids and parents can get involved with serving during Bubble Church too. And as the kids grow older, it provides an automatic onramp to the next service at 10:30. As a result, Bubble Church has become a model for growth that the Church of England is adopting as a strategy for renewal for struggling congregations.
Planning before you launch. // When Marcus and his team launched Bubble Church, there were elements of the service that they didn’t include initially. Marcus said looking back they would have handled differently talking about things such as serving, giving or even an offering prayer in order to normalize them to an unchurched crowd from the beginning. If certain elements aren’t present from the start, they can be hard to work in later.
Where is God already at work? // When Marcus first became vicar of Ascension Church, he had his own ideas about the sort of community he wanted to reach and serve. It wasn’t until God opened his eyes and showed him who He was bringing to the church through Parish Coffee that Marcus realized he needed to focus on serving young families. As church leaders we need to recognize where God is already at work and lean into that, adapting to the needs in our community.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well, hey friends. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you are tuned in today. We’ve got a, a special episode; today I’m recording live, which doesn’t normally happen. Normally I’m across a Zoom call, but in the room with my friend Marcus Gibbs from Ascension Church. This is a fantastic church in southwest London—that’s London, England for friends that are listening in—that you should, you should really should be tracking with. There’s some really cool stuff that’s happening here. They’re a Church of England church here in southwest London – that’s below the river, fantastic neighborhood. I’ve actually been here for the last couple days spending some time with Marcus and his team. So it’s been, it’s been just wonderful. Thanks for your hospitality in that. But Marcus, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.
Marcus Gibbs — Oh, it’s great to be here, Rich. And yeah, really been awesome hanging out a little bit, and yeah, just great to be on the podcast.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Why don’t you tell us about the church. Kind of give us a flavor, maybe talk a little bit about the community, talk a little bit about, you know, how long have you been here – those sorts of things.
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah, so I’ve been the pastor here for nine years, and it’s a great community. It’s really vibrant. We’re not in central London, but we’re not far out from the center. And they call it Nappy Valley round here…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Marcus Gibbs — So there’s lots of kind of young parents with young kids. And it’s quite a wealthy area, to be honest. People commuting into London, people working in finance, that kind of thing. And when I took on the church nine years ago, yeah, it it needed a lot of love to be honest. There was a lot of different things that I needed to look at, really practically even to do the whole building, which needed a lot of work. It’s a 140 year old Victorian building, and it, the heating at the time didn’t work, so we had to raise some money to put some central heating in and just to kind of get the place up and running really. So, but it’s, it’s, it’s a great community and I absolutely love it here.
Rich Birch — Well, one of the things I, I love about talking with leaders like yourself who are leading in contexts where people don’t just go to church. You know, like give us a sense of the kind of spiritual makeup. Most of the people that are listening are American, but, you know, there’s a vast less number of people, percentage-wise, in London that attend church. Give us a bit of that makeup. Tell us about that.
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah, no one goes to church. It’s, it’s, it’s like no one, like no one.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — There’s a lot of lovely people. They’re kind of good without God. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re kind of wandering around very, very friendly, very polite. They’ll, they’ll stand in line and queue and do really nice things, but, but fundamentally, no one comes to church here.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — You know, if you open a church here in southwest London expecting anyone to come, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And that means that we have to really think creatively how on earth are we gonna do this thing called church here in this part of London. Because unless you get an answer to that question, nothing will happen.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And I think for us, the, the, the real sort of turning point was when someone in my congregation said, Marcus, we, we need to open a coffee shop in the church.
Marcus Gibbs — And the moment—this guy was called Sandy—he said to me, we’ve gotta open a a coffee shop. I said, you’re absolutely right. I mean, people love that coffee round here. They love their flat whites; they love, you know, hanging out. And actually, it made a real virtue of the fact it was a 145 year old Victorian church. Because sitting, looking up at incredible architecture and stain glass windows, drinking your flat white is something that, you know, the local Starbucks can’t offer.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Marcus Gibbs — So four years ago, we opened the coffee shop, we called it Parish Coffee, and it has transformed absolutely everything. Because we now have around a thousand people a week coming through the church to drink coffee, to hang out. And suddenly we’ve become this church for the community. And I often say to people, we don’t wanna be the best church in Balham. We wanna be the best church for Balham.
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so good.
Marcus Gibbs — We want to be like a church where people say, if they weren’t there, we’d really miss them. And I think that’s, that’s kind of something that’s happened over the last few years where I don’t think they just miss us because they’ve missed their caffeine. Although I think they would, by the way, But I think what we found is on the back of the coffee shop being open during the week…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …we’ve been able to now launch several other ministries. So we’ve been able to open a debt center to help people with debt problems. We have a refugee drop-in for people who have landed on our doorstep from other countries who need help and support, and so that’s now started. We run a little eco station where people can reuse and refill their kind of empty shampoo bottles and things like that with new products instead of rebuying plastics so that they’re caring for the environment.
Marcus Gibbs — Plus we’ve now become a place where the local sick from college come and visit and, and hang out and eat, eat donuts, and drink coffee. So it feels like this place is now really alive during the week.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And it’s totally, I mean, it’s ruined my life in the, you know, my life before the coffee shop and before all these initiatives was mainly based around Sunday.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — You know, it’s like you spend the week getting ready for Sunday.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Marcus Gibbs — I’d now say 85% of my time is midweek…
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — …ministering to the people midweek.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Marcus Gibbs — Sunday, Sunday’s great. I love Sundays.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Marcus Gibbs — But actually, it’s the other days that I, I love even more because that’s when we’ve got unchurched people walking in who, who just look around and say, wow. This is awesome. I love it here.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Marcus Gibbs — And I wander around and chat and sometimes get to pray with them. And then sometimes I sort of help by the, by the way, we I forgot to mention, but we do this thing on a Sunday, we do this thing on a Sunday called church.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And maybe you should try church. And they look at me and they say, oh, yeah, okay.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — Let’s try church. That sounds good.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — So, so it’s been, it’s been a real transformation for me as well, and it has been and continues to be a lot fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well, the thing, yeah, I think listeners who are listening in, one of the things, I think it’s super critically important that we all learn from leaders like Marcus in context, like in some ways you are peering into the future. listeners. Because every community that, that are people that are listening is becoming more unchurched. And we’ll eventually end up exactly where Marcus’s community will and obviously outside of a dramatic move by the Lord, obviously, but this is what’s happening. Our church, our communities are becoming more and more unchurched. So in some ways, you are looking into the future by listening in today’s conversation and hearing about what, you know, some of the things that have happened at Ascension.
Rich Birch — Now, I, one of the things that I was really excited to come, you know, fly across the pond to come and see was something called Bubble Church. This is a service that your church does first thing on a Sunday morning. I had a chance yesterday to check it out and just loved it. Tell me, what is Bubble Church? Just for folks that are listening, and give us a sense of what Bubble Church is.
Marcus Gibbs — In real simple terms Bubble Church, it’s a half hour service on a Sunday morning, aimed at parents of little ones. I mean, preschoolers kind of up to five, six years of age and, and little kids. And it’s, it’s very simply in many respects, they come in, they sit on a bubble. What do we mean by that? A bubble is a little circular piece of carpet that the family sit on. And like I said, it lasts about half an hour. And there’s puppets, there’s action songs, there’s a bible story that the puppets act out, and then there’s an activity or a response so that after the Bible story, they open a little bag on their bubbles, on their mats, and they open it up and inside there’s maybe a craft activity, or a way of responding to the Bible story. And there’s some words that we use at the beginning and the end, and then all of a sudden, after about half an hour, we say goodbye. And that’s the end of the service.
Marcus Gibbs — So it, it’s kind of family time all together. We kick off with coffee and croissants which is a very southwest London thing to do. And the, the parents and the little ones absolutely love it because it’s a service that is absolutely targeted and designed for them.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — Unashamedly so.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — We’re not trying to reach everyone. What we are trying to reach is is this demographic that we’ve got here of these young families with little kids. They don’t want to be in a church where people look at them and say, shhhh be quiet, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — So this service is like totally for them. And just a bit of a background is you know, we went from zero people coming to this service, and you, and, and I just wanna reiterate, no one comes to church…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …here in the UK, or it’s such a low percentage. And within six months we had over a hundred people coming through the door.
Rich Birch — That’s, that’s amazing.
Marcus Gibbs — And 8 out of 10 of these people have never been to church before.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Marcus Gibbs — So just get your head around that.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Marcus Gibbs — They didn’t grow up a Christian, their parents weren’t Christians, they’re coming with their kids, and they have never been to church before.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And so for us, this was like, wow.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing… [inaudible].
Marcus Gibbs — You know, we’ve been trying to get, if, if we could get an extra a hundred people a week coming who had never been to church before, within six months to our normal main service…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …we’d be like, wow.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Marcus Gibbs — And just a bit of background, we launched this during Covid, because here in the UK the government had said they, they clamped down and said, you can hardly do anything. You know, we, we had what was called a lockdown, we could hardly do anything. But one thing we’re allowed to do was to do an hour of excise a day outside. And the other thing was, they said, if you do go to church, you can go to church, but you have to stay in your bubble, which means you have to stay with your close family.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And so we thought, okay, if you can stay with your bubble, let’s call it Bubble Church and we launched this church.
Rich Birch — Love it! You redeemed all of Covid just for that.
Marcus Gibbs — We did. We did.
Rich Birch — If that’s, you know, and that really is what got kicked off and that’s that, and that’s, that was the initial catalyst.
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How did, how did you spread the word at the beginning? Because to me that’s amazing. Like, the fact that people, is it just, you know, people talk to their friends? Or what, what was it that kind of, you know, that initially got the word out there that people were able to hear about it?
Marcus Gibbs — I mean, launching Covid times was actually a really good thing because people were hardly allowed to do anything.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And so the moment they found out, wow, we can go with our kids to this church service, we’re allowed to do that, that’s one of the things we’re allowed to do. It really helped. And so it gave them an opportunity to do something with their, their, their children. But also, I mean, we did run a toddler group for, you know, parents and little ones during the week, so we told them about it. There’s a lot of WhatsApp groups and FaceBook groups in this area that we advertised on. And amongst parents around here, word gets round.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — You know, if something good is happening…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Marcus Gibbs — …they’re like, you should check this out. You should, you parents and moms and dads, they all kind of compare notes. And so the word spread and it’s continued to grow. And I’m really pleased to say that even though we are now post-Covid and there’s none of these lockdowns, we’re a little bit concerned, oh, is it gonna continue growing…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …or is it gonna now decline?
Rich Birch — Yeah, cause people…
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah, it, it’s continued to grow. And what’s awesome is the Church of England in this country who really understandably are looking for ways to, to grow the church, they came to us and said, look, we would love for you to roll out this Bubble Church to other churches around the country.
Rich Birch — Right. Absolutely.
Marcus Gibbs — And so they’ve given us some funding, and now we’ve employed someone whose job it is to basically go and coach and train other churches on how to run Bubble Church.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it.
Marcus Gibbs — And I, I’ll just, I just wanna say the, the thing that’s good about it is it is simple.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Marcus Gibbs — It is it is really simple.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — So when you go to explain it to other churches, it’s not like, oh, you need a PhD and you need to have really, like, studied, you know, theology, [inaudible] and…
Rich Birch — Child psychology…yeah, yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …you know, it is, it is really quite straightforward. But for some reason, and obviously I believe that’s, that’s God, the Lord, it seems like we’ve developed a kind of recipe, a kind of way of doing this church service that really seems to work well. And if we can be part of helping other churches with that, then great.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. Well, and you know, I know so I’m not from a tradition that has a lot of liturgy or we have a different kind of liturgy. We would not call it what we do a liturgy. But one of the things that I found interesting about, you know, participating in in Bubble Church yesterday was there are a couple elements that, particularly at the beginning and the end, that feel very liturgical, but actually very much fit if I was watching a children’s television show. Like it’s the lots of kids TV shows do the same kind of thing where there’s like this, this predictability that that kids like. And, you know, as parents, we get to know all those things, which I think is actually super beautiful and amazing. You actually told me an interesting story about that, about the ending, kind of the benediction, for a lack of a better word, that, you know, impact. Tell me about that again. You told me that story yesterday.
Marcus Gibbs — Oh no, it was lovely. We had we’ve had a couple of parents telling us that their kids, when they go to bed at night or at home, act out those words from Bubble Church.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. I love that.
Marcus Gibbs — God is bigger than our fears. God is kinder in the kindest person, and they’re kind of doing the actions and they’re using these words. And they come to us and say, we act out Bubble Church at home. You know, and you see the power, actually. You know, we are not hugely liturgical here…
Rich Birch — No.
Marcus Gibbs — …but just a few words with these actions have really kind of lodged in, in the minds and hearts of these little kids. And it’s just, yeah. It’s beautiful.
Rich Birch — Well, and the, the hope is the beautiful thing about those, I was thinking when you told me that story yesterday, I thought, man, there’s gonna be kids… you know, we always have to have an eye for, we’re not raising children. We’re, you know, we’re raising adults, right? We’re raising people who 30, 40 years from now, you know, I’ve got faith for, there’s gonna be somebody who is in a tough part of their life and they’re gonna remember, you know, God’s big, he’s bigger than my fears. He’s bigger than, you know, and he’s close, wants to be closer than a friend. All of that. It just is amazing. I think that’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Do you have any stories of maybe a family that’s connected through Bubble Church that you’re convinced maybe your church wouldn’t have reached before, you just maybe who hadn’t stumbled into your, you know, your main service or any, any, your other programming that could kind of paint that picture a little bit about how this has helped your, your church reach the community?
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there’s this one family who – how can I put it? They’re like uber cool. I mean, they’re like, you know, they’re the most beautiful mother and father I’ve ever seen.
Rich Birch — They got all the, the good genetics.
Marcus Gibbs — Literally when God was handing out, like the good looking genes, they’ve got all of them. And, you know, they’re just lovely people, but I don’t think they would’ve ever have kind of come to church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And something really funny happened. I I, I just know that, you know, their background was not one of church. And I heard them chatting to a new couple just the other week. And the new couple said, oh, are, are you, are you new here? And they said, no, no, we’ve been coming now for six months and this is our church. And I just…
Rich Birch — Beautiful.
Marcus Gibbs — …kind of overheard them say that. And I thought, wow. Yeah. This isn’t just some event they come to. This really, they see it as their church. This isn’t some kind of little kids group or something. They see it as their church. And they’ve now started to volunteer and help with Bubble Church. And their, their, their children are starting to now help lead the service as well. And this is, this is the really cool thing about Bubble Church I’ve found, is that as the children get older, there’s so many roles that they can get involved in, in terms of serving.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Marcus Gibbs — So we’ve got some of the kids who like, you know, were really little when they started; they’re now a little bit older. They’re now doing the puppets. We get them helping us lead the service on the stage. We get them helping with the refreshments. And they just love it. And so this family who previously would’ve had, I, I think very little to do with church, now see it as their church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And not only see it as their church, but are serving in that church.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Getting plugged in. Incredible.
Marcus Gibbs — And this is this this is just brilliant. There’s another family, there’s, there’s, there’s a chap called Gary, who I think is a single dad, actually.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Marcus Gibbs — Think a single moms is a single dad; he’s got two daughters. And you know, in the nicest possible way, I think he would’ve found normal church services just too much for him.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Marcus Gibbs — Like an hour and a half or an hour and a quarter…
Rich Birch — Yeah, too long.
Marcus Gibbs — …with his kids, I, I think he would’ve just found the whole experience almost too overwhelming, too foreign.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Marcus Gibbs — Just something he wouldn’t have known about or known what to do, wouldn’t have known when to stand, when to sit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — Just, it would’ve just not been for him.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — Whereas I think there’s something about Bubble Church. We all sit on these carpets on the floor, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — It’s a bit like, it’s like a great leveler.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — We’re all in this together.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Marcus Gibbs — The adults, the kids – we’re all on our bubbles.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Marcus Gibbs — And everything about it requires no prior knowledge…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …of church, of Christianity. And so I think for someone like him, he doesn’t feel stupid.
Rich Birch — No.
Marcus Gibbs — He doesn’t feel like he’s made to stupid ’cause he doesn’t know where to go to in the Bible when we say turn to this to the Bible.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — It’s like, because we are doing it for the kids, the parents can learn as well without being made to feel stupid because because we’re explaining it to the kids.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — They can be learning…
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s very clever.
Marcus Gibbs — …without, do you get what I mean?
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Marcus Gibbs — Without feeling like, oh, I don’t know what this means, or, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …I don’t know this bit of a Bible or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — So I think, I think we’ve found that it’s very accessible.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And you know what, it’s just really turned things around here.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. Now talk to me about, I’m sure there’ve been a few times where you’ve maybe stubbed your toe or you feel like, hey, we did stuff that maybe didn’t work. Or like, there was some things that maybe were like, if you were talking to other churches, you’d be like, avoid this. Has there been anything with Bubble Churches you’ve got launched that, that, you know, you would, you would advise people as, as they’re thinking about this kind of thing, you know, to, to maybe do different?
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah, I think—and we’ve talked a bit about this, Rich—I think one of the things we didn’t do at the beginning because we were so excited about people coming through the door, is we didn’t mention giving at all.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — And you know, we just wanted them to be blessed…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Marcus Gibbs — …and feel like this is, you know, kindness of our hearts.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — And, and that was lovely and, and it really is lovely. But I think what I’ve learned is if things aren’t there from the start…
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — …are quite hard to then crowbar in later. You know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Marcus Gibbs — It’s like you know, if we’ve been doing Bubble Church for a year and then all of a sudden out nowhere, we start to include a little slot in that half an hour talking about, hey, would you like to give to the work of our church?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — Suddenly people like, wait there!
Rich Birch — Wait a second, is this a beat and switch?
Marcus Gibbs — You know, you, you, you never talked about that a while ago.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — You now talking about that ’cause we’re…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — And there’s a few things that I think looking back, not just on money, on, on serving, on, on offering prayer at the end, a few things that we’ve added subsequently. And it’s, it’s been all right. But I think if we baked those into it from the beginning…
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — …I think everyone would’ve gone with it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — And that would’ve been seen, that would’ve would be viewed as just normal. That’s part of what Bubble Church is. Whereas I think trying to introduce key elements later on…
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — …is trickier.
Rich Birch — Yeah. That makes sense. Now, so one of the things you mentioned was that, which I think is amazing, is that you’re looking at, you know, helping other churches that are asking these questions. And, and one of the things you and I had talked about was, you know, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with some churches that are unfortunately at the, the end of life. They’re in the kind of, they’re in their, they’re death blows. Things are, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re considering closing. And oftentimes I find the saddest, most depressing part of those conversations are the leaders in those churches saying, you know, there’s, it’s been, and they know the date. It’s been 15 years since they’ve been a kid here.
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know, it’s been 20 years since we’ve, you know, we have, we have a, we have a, a nursery that’s completely dusty because we haven’t had any kids here in so long. And the thing I I love about this is I do think from a church renewal point of view, like, man, it could be a great strategy. And obviously that’s a part of the story that God’s writing here. Talk to me about what your thought or your vision might be around some of that. Like, how could you see other churches adopting this? What could, you know, how could this fit in? You know, what’s your heart on that front?
Marcus Gibbs — Well, I’ll tell, I’ll tell you the story of my friend Gabriel, who is based in North London. He’s a pastor of church there. And coming out of Covid, you know, we are good friends and he, he just says, you know, I’m really not sure whether I can carry on. You know, Covid had absolutely decimated his con congregation. They were an older congregation. A lot of ’em weren’t coming back. Things weren’t looking good. And he, he basically said, Marcus, can I steal Bubble Church? I just wanna steal the whole thing.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Marcus Gibbs — Can you send me just everything?
Rich Birch — Send me everything! Send me your puppets!
Marcus Gibbs — Send me the slides, send me the puppets, send me the Bible stories. Send me literally everything.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Marcus Gibbs — Video yourself doing it. Just send me the whole thing. And I said, of course. So we sent him everything and we, we look back now and realize he had the gift of desperation, you know, it was that, you know…
Rich Birch — That’s good. I like that. Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …and he, he, he, he, he started Bubble Church. And we do it weekly, but he said, look, I, I don’t have the resources to do it weekly on a Sunday morning. I’ve already got my existing services, but I’m gonna do it monthly. And he phones me every month and just tells me story after story after story of how amazing…
Rich Birch — That’s great. Love it.
Marcus Gibbs — …Bubble Church has been. And how it has transformed his congregation. He’s also now built a whole new congregation with it. But he’s got the most incredible stories. I I, can I just share a couple?
Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
Marcus Gibbs — So one is because he does it monthly, he, he was telling me that one of the dads of the little girl who I think she’s only three or four, asks her dad every week, is it Bubble Church Day? Is it Bubble Church Day?
Rich Birch — No, not today.
Rich Birch — And it’s like, not today. And Gabriel and I were saying we don’t know anyone who asked that question of our main service.
Rich Birch — Yes. Right.
Marcus Gibbs — We have no one who says, is it the 10:30 service today?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — You know yet, yet here we have kids literally saying to their parents, is it Bubble Church?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And that’s just amazing. And then the other thing, the other story was he had some people who start coming to Bubble Church, and as often happens, London is a very transient place, and he’s in North London, and they said, we’re moving way out of London. And so, you know, we’re gonna be heading outta London. And he spent the next five minutes saying, we’re really gonna miss you. So sorry that, you know, you’re leaving. And they stopped him and they said, oh no, we’re not not leaving. He said, what? He said, we’re gonna travel from where we live outside London every month…
Rich Birch — Wow. To come back.
Marcus Gibbs — …to come back for Bubble Church. And he looked at ’em, he said, are you joking? He said, no, no, we’re gonna come back. And then he thought, yeah, but will they?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And they did.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.
Marcus Gibbs — And so, and for me, the joy in this is—and I know you are like this, Rich, as well—seeing our other leaders, other brothers and sisters kind of see the joy of growth and God bringing people into their church. For me, seeing the transformation in his own life, in his own ministry…
Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s huge
Marcus Gibbs — …in his church…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …brings me incredible joy.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Marcus Gibbs — And I know sort of, this isn’t meant to be one big kind of advert for Bubble Church, but I’m, I’m just excited about it, because the other thing that starts to happen is, and he’s seen this at his church and we’ve seen this at our church, people then say, actually we’re gonna start to stick around for the next service.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — And or actually we’re growing out Bubble Church now, so we’re gonna stick around for the next service.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And I have spent seven of my nine years thinking, how do I grow my 10:30, my next service? Right?
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And ironically, the way it’s growing is because we started Bubble Church, which is before it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — As those families are growing up…
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — …they’re going into the next service…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …and we’re growing our next service…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …but not in the way I thought we would be.
Rich Birch — That’s great. I love it.
Marcus Gibbs — And so actually it provides the sort of on-ramp to the next service.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — And so that’s, that’s just been fantastic.
Rich Birch — Marcus, That’s that’s so encouraging. That’s, I I love that. And I think the thing, you know, one of the transferrable lessons I want people to pick up here is, you know, Marcus, you know, has a passion for, you know, next generation, trying to help you know, families with kids. That, that is like at the core of what growing churches have done for years, which is, hey, we’ve gotta think about that. We can’t, that, you know, senior leaders, you can’t outsource that to someone else. You can’t outsource the passion. There’s parts of it that like at the end of the day, somebody else has gotta run these things and all that, that makes sense. But the passion for it, the like, hey, I’m excited to, you know, for that is, is that’s your role as a senior leader. You’ve gotta be, you know, fired up about it.
Rich Birch — Actually, one of my, my memories that I’ll take for sure from my experience in Bubble Church yesterday was, yeah, I was sitting at the back trying to be the, like, you know, the guy watching everything and checking it out. And then I, I look up and, and Marcus is a, you know, he’s a vicar in the Church of England friends. He’s a, this is a serious man that’s on a serious agenda. And I look up and there we’re doing actions action songs and the vicar’s up there doing actions. And I, that just warmed my heart. I was like, man, that even for those kids to see, here’s a vicar who is willing to do these actions, personally, I think that’s gonna speak volume to generations. And obviously it speaks volumes to the leaders who are involved because they look around, and they can pick up whether they know whether you are actually passionate about this stuff or not. They know if you’re just trying to paint the, you know, just be like, no, no, this is really exciting and you’re not really that excited about it. And you know, I think Marcus is a perfect example of that. It’s just so great.
Rich Birch — Well, when you think about the future of Bubble Church kind of up over the horizon, you know, where’s your, where’s your head go? What do you think, you know, either here locally or in other churches, where, where’s your your brain go? Where do you think this thing might be going next?
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah. I wanna answer that, but I just wanna say on, on that point you said about me standing up and doing the actions and everything, I just want to quickly share that…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …God had to really break something in me. I, I, I just wanna share this because again, I, I keep repeating. I’ve been here nine years. Bubble Church happened two years ago. And I think maybe for the first seven years I had in my mind the kind of people I wanted to minister to here.
Rich Birch — Oh, good. Oh, right. That’s good.
Marcus Gibbs — I, I, I, I wanted these young professionals. We’re, we’re in London. I wanted these people in their twenties and thirties, probably single, you know who have great jobs in finance up in the city. That’s the kind of thing I did before I moved into church leadership and I, I was pretty much saying to God, look, here are the people I want to minister to.
Rich Birch — Send these people.
Marcus Gibbs — I’ve got, I’ve got some great talks and sermons to give. I can share my experience of when I used to work in London before I was ordained. I, I was pretty much saying to God, you know, I know, I know who my target congregation is.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — And the church wasn’t great.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Marcus Gibbs — The church wasn’t great. And I, I think there was just this moment where insofar as I hear God, I just felt him say to me one day, who are the people I’ve actually given you?
Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Marcus Gibbs — And the people he had actually given me were the people in our coffee shop that I mentioned at the beginning. And when I looked around, they were all there with their strollers, and these little kids and loads of parents and little kids, and that’s the area we’re in. And I said, but God, they’re not the people I want to minister to. And he, we, you know, we did that kind of back and forth that…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — …you know, you hear, and he said, yeah, but they’re the people I’ve put on your doorstep. And in that moment, I think suddenly realized, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good.
Marcus Gibbs — You know, I never, I never went into church leadership to do puppets.
Rich Birch — Right.
Marcus Gibbs — I never, I never went into…
Rich Birch — That’s the quote of the episode right there.
Marcus Gibbs — I never went into church leadership to do puppets. I never went into this to do action songs.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Marcus Gibbs — But fundamentally, the, the testimony is this, that since we went with I think the people who God was giving us versus the people he wasn’t giving us…
Rich Birch — Right. That’s, that’s so good.
Marcus Gibbs — …once we started to go with what he was doing…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — …we’ve, we’ve started to see this incredible growth. And like I said, it’s impacting every era of our church. And so for me, you know, I’m just grateful I got there eventually; it took me a few years, but I’m just pleased I eventually got there and realized this was what God wanted to do here in our context, and I’m pleased I kind of finally worked that out.
Marcus Gibbs — In terms of Bubble Church moving forward, you know what it’s not gonna be for everyone, that’s fine. You know, it’s, it’s not gonna be for every context. It’s not gonna be for everyone. But I do believe that because of its simplicity and because we’ve started to see how this works in all sorts of different contexts that it could well be for some people mm-hmm. And if they’re willing to give it a go, I’d say give it a go. And there is just nothing better than seeing a church start to fill up with young people again. So…
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Marcus Gibbs — Yeah. Our hope is that, you know, we are here to serve. That’s it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Marcus Gibbs — We want to find ways of helping others launch Bubble Churches around the country here in the UK, but as you know, I’m open to traveling globally, and…
Rich Birch — Particularly to warm climates.
Marcus Gibbs — That’s right. Particularly to places with nice beaches.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.
Marcus Gibbs — But no, anywhere we, we, we would love to be able to share what God’s shared with us really.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well, and yeah, I just, I just want to honor you though, like, I think, so essentially what you’re saying is, hey, I saw where God was already at work, and I got on board with that. Which sounds really easy, but you actually did it. You actually leaned in and, you know, had the eyes to look and to look around and be like, hey, who, who’s actually here? And having, you know, I spent some time in your coffee shop today. I’ve been meeting with people and stuff, and it’s, it’s amazing. Like, it is like, yeah, these are all the people that you’re talking about. It’s lots of people with strollers hanging out with their kids. And and I that’s another really good lesson for us leaders as we’re listening in, is, is there’s the perception of who we think we want in our church versus who is actually here, or in our communities. And you know what, if you just leaned into who’s actually there, rather than you know, who you wish, you know, God would send you. I, I just think that’s, that’s so good.
Rich Birch — You know, if people want to to track with you, to reach out, to actually connect with you, connect with Bubble Church, cause we’ve kind of talked a little bit about that. Where do we wanna send them online? Like what’s a website or that kind of thing?
Marcus Gibbs — Just go to bubblechurch.org.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Marcus Gibbs — And from there you can get hold of me and you can find out more about Bubble Church. So that’s bubblechurch.org.
Rich Birch — Okay. Easy. Super easy. And the other thing, the other person I wanna honor and all this is our friend or our mutual friend, Carey Nieuwhof. He, so he Marcus and I are both in an online community that Carrey runs called The Art of Church… The Art of Leadership, not Church Leadership, just The Art of Leadership. And I, it’s a fantastic online forum. It’s like a private forum. You have to, it’s like a thing, you gotta pay for it to get involved and all that. But that’s actually how Marcus and I got connected. And man, Carey does such a good job on that, does such a great job of pulling all that together. And just wanna honor him in, in all of that too, cause it, it really is a fantastic resource. If you don’t know about that, you should check that out.
Rich Birch — Well, as we’re wrapping up, any final words, anything else you’d like to say as we kind of close down today’s episode?
Marcus Gibbs — It’s just been great to hang out, Rich, and I really appreciate you. And I just want to add also how much I appreciate Carey and all that he’s shared online and with that network as well. I’ve learned so much, so thank you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, thanks so much, Marcus. It’s been great to spend time with you at your church and, and just, you know, God’s best. I’m just excited to see what happens and, and I really do think churches, there are probably people who are listening in who today this has moved you, maybe even specifically towards, hmm, maybe we should find out more about Bubble Church. I would take action on that. Go to bubblechurch.org. Learn more, take some steps. Marcus is a great guy, very approachablev would love to help you. So thanks so much. Thanks for letting us be here today. Thanks for being on the, the show.
Marcus Gibbs — It’s been great.
Leveraging Data to Drive Ministry Outcomes at Your Church with Erik Henry
Mar 23, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Erik Henry, the Executive Pastor of Central Christian Church in Wisconsin.
Data is critical to accurately understand what’s happening at your church and what’s changing over time. Listen in as Erik discusses the importance of using data to make informed decisions at your church as well as best practices for creating a survey that collects the needed information.
Data allows you to make decisions. // As church leaders, we can rely on our gut feelings when making decisions. But what if we could use data to make more informed decisions? Data allows you to make decisions based on what is really happening, but it’s only as good as the question it answers or the decision it helps you make.
Behavior and self-reported spiritual maturity. // It’s difficult to measure spiritual maturity because it’s so complex, individualized, and often cyclical. However we can measure behaviors and self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity. While this data isn’t useful on its own, tracking the changes to these measurements over time can help you determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
Create surveys. // Surveys are a useful tool for gathering data and tracking changes over time. However there are also limitations of survey data and we need to interpret it carefully. For example, when measuring the self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity of church members, it is important to consider the sample of the church that is willing to take the survey. Erik warns against overstepping the difference between causation and correlation, as pastors may push certain behaviors as the mark of spiritual maturity, leading to a new kind of legalism.
Focused and brief. // Erik emphasizes the importance of keeping surveys simple, clear, specific, and brief, with no more than 10 short questions. Each question needs to be directly aimed at something you want an answer to. The surveys at Central Christian Church are sent out via email and use Google Forms which most people are familiar with.
Determine what to ask. // What are the key performance indicators for your church as a whole? Focus your questions on measuring your KPIs to get the most useful data from your surveys.
Survey Fatigue. // Incorporating surveys into your communication strategy is a helpful assistant in the decision-making process, but be cautious about overusing it. Central Christian limits churchwide surveys to twice a year. After surveying your people, consider distributing the results and connecting it to your decision-making.
You can learn more about Central Christian Church at www.centralwired.com. Plus check out examples of their surveys below:
Central Check-in // A churchwide survey that assesses Central Christian’s people and finds patterns that may help the staff to help the congregation grow in their faith throughout the coming year.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. Today is definitely going to deliver that for you. We’ve got Erik Henry with us. He’s the executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking along with, Central Christian Church. Now there’s only one of them in the country;I know this is one of those names of churches – there’s a lot of them out there so which one are we talking about? We’re talking about the one that’s kind of in the middle between Chicago, Madison, and Milwaukee. This is a fantastic church or a multi-site church with both English and speaking congregation. Ah, one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Erik, so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.
Erik Henry — Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I’m honored that you’re here. I’d love to love your church. Love what God’s doing there. Can we start with kind of tell us about, for folks that don’t know, fill out the picture tell us about Central and then tell us about your role. What is what do you do as an executive pastor at your church?
Erik Henry — Sure. Yeah, Central is a it’s kind of a… yeah I talk to executive pastors all the time and all of us say that our churches are weird. Um, every…
Rich Birch — Mm, so true. Yes, very true.
Erik Henry — Every church is not like any other church and so ah, but…
Rich Birch — But yours really is. Yours really is.
Erik Henry — Ours really is.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Erik Henry — But you know we we live we’re a large church in a small community. You know 35,000 people in our community and um, it’s not in a big city. It’s not in the suburbs. It’s not in in a growing area. It’s actually in a semi-depressed area, and so you know a lot of it’s very blue collar. It’s not white collar. You know people working in um, in executive roles. It’s it’s very blue collar community and it’s it’s just a different place. And so um I love it. I’ve been at Central for 23 years. I was actually teaching math, high school math…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Erik Henry — …and I I was on just coming to church here. They asked me to come on staff and start ah, young, ah like a Gen X Ministry, back when that was a kind of the thing.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, Gen X. Gen X, remember that? That was like all the cool and hip.
Erik Henry — Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. That’s when we were young.
Rich Birch — It’s going to happen to you, Gen Z friends. It’s going to happen to you someday.
Erik Henry — True story.
Rich Birch — But you’re going to look back and laugh and say, remember when they used to pay attention to us? Well they never paid attention to Gen X. I’m Gen X as well. So.
Erik Henry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But yeah, that’s great. Love it. So you started there and then kind of works your way up.
Erik Henry — So anyway so I started there. I’ve been here 23 years…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Erik Henry — …and I just kind of I can’t decide whether I kept getting promotions, or I just couldn’t keep a job.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Erik Henry — But I went from um I went from Young Adults to ah Worship Pastor to Creative Arts Director to Discipleship Pastor to a Campus Pastor.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Erik Henry — And then now I’m the Executive Pastor. I and I got into this role in February or a January of 2020. so I thought I was hopping right in at the perfect time…
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Erik Henry — …and then a month later you know what.
Rich Birch — A vision for a new decade. You know, got 2020 vision we know exactly… all those churches that had clear vision for 2020, we know exactly where God’s going to lead us that year. No, not true.
Erik Henry — Bingo.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Erik Henry — So um so yeah anyway so it’s it’s been a blast. I’ve so I’ve got 3 years under my belt as Executive Pastor.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Erik Henry — Um I you know we we had wanted this to be sort of ah a more of a ministry use ah, focused Executive Pastor role. We were going to hire on an Operations focused Executive Pastor, but you know with everything that happened um that I’m filling both of those roles right now.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — And so um, but truthfully I love it. I enjoy it. I but I am doing a job that I was never trained for, especially on the operation side. And so I’m I’m going back to school.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Erik Henry — I’m getting my MBA right now…
Rich Birch — Oh very cool.
Erik Henry — …in data analytics.
Rich Birch — Data. That’s cool.
Erik Henry — And so so it’s something something that I really enjoy. You know I’m a math guy; I’m a geek and so um, so the the data thing is exciting to me. I’ve been really enjoying. I’ll graduate with my MBA in December.
Rich Birch — Right. Congratulations, congratulations on that. That’s so good.
Erik Henry — Yeah, thanks.
Rich Birch — Well you know data is interesting. I know a lot of we have a lot of executive pastors or executive pastor wannabees that are listening in ah and when you said data I know that people perked their ears up and said, ooh this one’s going to be a good episode. I’m excited about that. Because we do we think about… a lot of executive pastors see the world through spreadsheets; we that you know the world is just a series of spreadsheets, different tabs. Um, but you know talk to us about data. Why why is data important for us as church leaders to be thinking about?
Erik Henry — Yeah, great. You know I love this stuff. Data for me, and I think it should be for everybody, data is all about making good decisions. Um, data is only as good as the question it answers or the decision it helps you make. Um and so ah, part of the problem that I see in church a lot is that churches and leaders in churches usually make decisions from their gut. You know? The the sense.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Erik Henry — So and and I’m not I’m I’m not denigrating that. There’s there’s a place for that. And and not just your gut but also your spirit. You know there’s a there’s a place when you are um, following and and listening to the Holy Spirit. There’s a place for listening and and ignoring data. But I think I think we do that a little too much.
Rich Birch — Are okay.
Erik Henry — And I think, you know, part of what I think is important about data is it allows us to make decisions based on what’s really happening not based on a gut feeling. Um and the reality you know as well as I do ah a lead pastor is going to hear what the people want him to hear. They’re gonna he’s gonna…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Erik Henry — …he’s going to hear what ah because people love him.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Erik Henry — People want to love him.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — People want him to think that they’re really on his side. And so sometimes even though a lead pastor can feel like they’re in the know and they get their people. Um it is not exactly that clear because they have a skewed understanding because people show them what they want him to see.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know I’ve said for years, there’s there’s no bad information. There’s just information we don’t like. We want data. We have to get, ah you know, the the real information on the ground. But let me play the the you know the negative voice. Ah you know, listen come on, Erik, we’re in a spiritual game here. We’re we’re trying to help people grow spiritually. You can’t get that onto a spreadsheet so don’t even bother. Why would we do it at any level? Isn’t it just all about like you say you know how you know how the Spirit leads, but you know at its core, you know, we can’t; we can’t. The core thing that we hopefully do in our churches, see people take steps towards Jesus, you can’t get that onto a ah spreadsheet, can you?
Erik Henry — And I agree with that, to a point.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Erik Henry — I do because there are things that we can measure and there are things that we can’t. Um and and so I’d like to, you know, first off the bat the first thing that I know that every pastor would love to be able to do is measure spiritual maturity. I can measure if you are where you are when you come here. and then I can measure how spiritually mature you are as you ah go through all of the programs or whatever of our church. My opinion, and this is just my opinion, you cannot measure spiritual maturity.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Erik Henry — It is way too complex. It is it is so clearly ah, an individualized um thing. It’s also it’s it’s circular. It’s cyclical, and it is not an up and to the right trajectory. Rarely is it that.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s a good insight.
Erik Henry — Also it has so so often it has so little to do with our church. The way that people grow we think it’s going to be our church that grows them. But the reality is the way that people grow is when they lose a loved one and they walk through that, and it’s painful, and in the end they see that they have gotten closer to Jesus as a result.
Erik Henry — Now I’m not I’m not saying that there are no, there is no role for the church. Of course, there’s a huge role for the church at this. But to say that we can measure spiritual maturity. Um I think is a little ah overstating.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — But there are things that we can measure.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — We can’t measure maturity, but we can measure behaviors, and we can measure self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Okay.
Erik Henry — Now I want to I want to suggest that those are two different things. Spiritual maturity is different, actual spiritual maturity, is different than self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity.
Erik Henry — Because we’re not always um as self-aware as we want to be, as we wish we were.
Rich Birch — Right. It’s so true.
Erik Henry — And so um and so as we measure these things, it’s just really important that we are are clear and careful about describing exactly what we’re measuring. Um and mathematicians and statisticians, that’s what you’re about. We don’t want to overstate.
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Erik Henry — We want to be very careful everything that we say is only what we can prove through the numbers.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Erik Henry — Pastors, on the other hand, are not very careful.
Rich Birch — God bless them. God bless them.
Erik Henry — I love them; I’m one of them.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Erik Henry — But we are not careful, usually, about how we use data. And it’s not because we’re…
Rich Birch — Right. Well…
Erik Henry — Go ahead.
Rich Birch — No I was going to say like that’s like one of those standard running jokes, right? Like in fact I think it might even be in my bio where I talk about the sizes of churches I’ve worked at, and I even make the joke I’m like those are not senior pastor numbers. Those are actual numbers. Like because you know we all we all and I’ve… listen, the senior pastors I’ve worked for amazing gentlemen…
Erik Henry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But they all this the guys I worked for had this propensity of like yeah, there’d be a room of whatever a thousand people, and there’s like there was at least 4000 people there today. And and so and that and we all have that – obviously they’re easy to make fun of. But we all do that. I do that. You know we we kind of skew what we see kind of fits our story. We’re constantly, there’s ah ah you know, ah a confirmation bias that we have. When when you talk about behaviors and then self-reported feeling, can you give us some examples of those?
Erik Henry — Sure.
Rich Birch — Let’s pull apart that a little bit; talk to me a bit about behaviors.
Erik Henry — Sure, absolutely.
Rich Birch — What are some of the behaviors if we’re trying to get at? Look under the hood, what’s actually happening in our churches?
Erik Henry — So questions like, ah how many times a week do you read the bible? That’s a behavior.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Erik Henry — Um, that’s something that we track. Ah another so that there’s sort of the on your own behaviors. Then there’s also the ah are you a part of of participation in some of our church programs, like for instance, are you serving on a serving team? Yes, or no. That’s ah, an important question for us.
Erik Henry — Are you um are you taking advantage of any of our classes or small groups. That’s another question, you know, that we’re trying to track. So those are behaviors. Am I doing a thing; am I um am I participating in a program? But then when it comes to self-reported feelings. It’s how how connected do you feel to other believers? Now that is a very soft number.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Erik Henry — Do you know what I’m saying? That’s a 0 to 5 how connected do you feel to other believers at Central Christian Church. That the number 4 means almost nothing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — Now what it what what it does do is you can start to track over time where that number moves to. So if if on average you’re 2.1 this year, and a year later you’re at 4.2 – whoa! Whoa! We did we must have done something. Something happened. Or you go the other direction. Ooo we’ve got a problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — But the first time you measure it a 4.0 means literally nothing, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, it’s just a…
Erik Henry — And so those are the when it comes to self-reported feelings about spiritual maturity, you’re measuring the change. Not the actual number.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. I love that. Now, so a part of what I hear you saying is actually really driving to doing more surveys, asking people to reflect on their their own.
Erik Henry — Yes.
Rich Birch — There’s obviously a couple different kinds of data – one is just like how many people are in groups. But another one is like are you in a group? That’s two different ways to look at it. Help me understand what place do surveys fit in in the way you’re using data, where you’re gathering gathering data, and then how that helps you in, you know, making decisions at the church.
Erik Henry — Surveys are huge for us. Um, because trying to to, you know, you can you can count the number of people who go to your classes in small groups. You can count your attendance, you can count other things, but it doesn’t doesn’t give you all that much information actually.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — So there’s a difference between um, the number of people who show up in seats and the amount of times per month on average your your person, your people attend church. So how many times per month do you… you can’t get that in any way other than a survey. Um.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — There’s no real way to pull that off. So surveys for us are really important. We’ve gotten we’ve decided that we’re doing two surveys a year.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — We’re doing one every six months. So for me, there are there are four things that we are really careful about with surveys. Number one simplicity. It’s got to be simple. It’s got to be…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Erik Henry — …clear and easy… and the second one is clarity. got to be absolutely clear with your question. They can’t be they can’t have to think about it like, what do they mean by that? Specificity. Each question has got to be directly aimed…
Rich Birch — Driving behavior. Yep.
Erik Henry — …at a question that you want an answer to. And the fourth one, and I’m this might be the most important one, it’s brevity. You cannot ask more than 10 questions.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — And they but it better be very simple short questions if they’re 10 of them. Um, because people will not fill it out.
Rich Birch — Yeah I… Okay, let’s talk about these two.
Erik Henry — Yeah
Rich Birch — Let’s keep pause here and drive driving on this a little bit. So you’re doing two big surveys a year. Um are you doing those like on weekends, slowing down the service, speed bump. Okay guys, either take out your phone, or you know here’s a piece of paper. Talk us through functionally what does that look like.
Erik Henry — Yeah, yeah, we do. Um we we do two things with each of those surveys. Number one we send out send it out on email to everybody. The truth is we’ve decided Google Form is the best way to do it.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — I mean there’s lots of other things [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s fancy stuff but um.
Erik Henry — …Survey Monkeys, but what we found with our people because we are blue collar um, church, our people are like if you’re going to want me to learn a new thing to take a survey I’m not doing it.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Okay.
Erik Henry — And so everybody knows Google; everybody knows Google Forms, so we just send a link to a Google form. Click, click, click, click, click – it’s less than a minute usually that it takes to do a survey.
Rich Birch — And what and what um, give me a sense of maybe a couple stories around stuff that’s changed at the church because of these surveys. That like, hey you know we we learned something here or it confirms something that was going on, um you know, that ended up kind of driving a different behavior.
Erik Henry — Yeah, one one of the main there was a huge shift post pandemic in that number that I just talked about when it comes to how many times people come to church. It used to be less than two.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — Um, now we’re over three, so which is a major shift. So we have ah you know our our numbers are still not… in-person numbers are still not quite back to what they were pre-pandemic. Um, but the people that we have are coming more often. And so that just changes your communication strategies. It used to be we had to say something for four weeks…
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — …before everybody would hear it. It’s not the same anymore.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Erik Henry — So that changes our communication. That’s a small one. But they’re just other things.
Rich Birch — No, that’s a good example.
Erik Henry — Yep.
Rich Birch — Okay, so now I so ah one of the churches I served in, um, they had 2, 3 decades of they did an annual survey which was a great great practice. And we worked very hard to not change the questions…
Erik Henry — Yes.
Rich Birch — …because what we were trying to do was to try to get year over year, talk us through that. Ah, what does that look like?
Erik Henry — Very important. And I’m sort of with our staff I’m like, hey what we have is what we have.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Erik Henry — Don’t don’t suggest more. Don’t don’t… because that’s the there I mean listen, and it’s not their fault.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Erik Henry — They’re like, oh man this is great. We’re getting all this information. I would love to get more information.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Erik Henry — I’d love to get different… I’d like to hear and that’s a great thing. You can’t do it. You gotta say, what is the stuff that matters the most? Because you cannot get people who are like, another survey are you kidding me?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erik Henry — Or a 25 question survey? Never gonna fill it out. You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I wonder if um, would you be willing to share us like a PDF or something that shows that…
Erik Henry — Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …whatever the 10 questions you use – that that’s great. We’ll put that in the show notes, friends, so you can see that because you should be doing this is a best practice.
Rich Birch — I I want to come back to something you said there, ah because it connected to another idea I was thinking about which was, so you’re saying, hey you’re seeing that people are saying that they’re coming more. They’re actually their average ah number of times a month has gone up which is actually, I would say if you were to ask pastors across the country, they would say it’s gone the opposite direction.
Erik Henry — Right.
Rich Birch — So you’re seeing a trend that’s different now I actually think the deeper point is most people don’t know, they’re just guessing.
Erik Henry — Right.
Rich Birch — They’re blaming their lower attendance on that.
Erik Henry — Yep.
Rich Birch — Um, but you actually know that. How have you seen… how have you used the data to compare to national trends?
Erik Henry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I’m sure that’s a part of the conversation of you know the way you’ve thought about these things.
Erik Henry — Yeah, so one of the other things that I think is really important is you have to um, you have to think about the the skew of all of your data. So everything that we do, because we do in-person in the services we allow people to do it right in the service and we do email. Everything that you get, we had 305 responses to our survey this last survey. Um every one that you get is skewed because it’s somebody who is willing to fill out a survey. So there is a correlation…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Erik Henry — …between someone who’s willing to fill out a survey and someone who’s willing to come to church more times a week or a month.
Rich Birch — A month. Yeah.
Rich Birch — And so ah so if you… for us to compare our 3.1 number with the national average, which I think right now is 1.6 or 1.7…
Rich Birch — It’s just under 2. Yeah, yeah, yep.
Erik Henry — Yeah um I don’t think that’s a fair comparison.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — Because usually it’s Barna who’s doing that research and they know what they are doing. And they are getting very ah um, they are getting sample sizes that are absolutely random. We are not. And so…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Erik Henry — The the the statistician in me is like we can’t compare those two numbers. Our 3.1 is not equal to their 1.7. because…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, your 3.1 is compared to, you know, friends that maybe are aren’t tracking along, the 3.1 is most relevant as compared to your 2.4 three, four years ago.
Erik Henry — Exactly right.
Rich Birch — Because that tells you that difference. It’s it’s hard to make that comparison to other churches and understand, you know, what does that, you know, what does that look like it.
Erik Henry — You know and it goes back to it goes back to the question of what being very careful about what you’re saying you are measuring. Because we’re not actually measuring our whole church. We’re we’re measuring a sample of our church…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Erik Henry — …that’s willing to talk to us. Um, and those are that’s a different question. And it goes back to also to you know what do you do with the information? The pastor always has the best of intentions.
Rich Birch — Bright.
Erik Henry — But you know I hear all the time I hear them saying things like, you know all you have to do is read your Bible every day, pray every day, um join a small group, give, and you know here’s this list of 5 things and you will be spiritually mature. And um, that sounds great… because what they do is they see this data and they’re like hey people who are are spiritually mature are doing all of these things. And so they think it’s a cause and sometimes it is. But the reality is they’re they’re overstepping. There’s a difference between causation and correlation.
Rich Birch — And correlation. Yeah.
Erik Henry — And so um, when you have those those ah the pastors who want to push all of these um behaviors, if behavior is the is the mark of maturity, you end up in the end with a little bit of a new kind of legalism.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s a good insight.
Erik Henry — Because it’s like if if you just check the boxes then you’re good. And that’s not how Jesus led.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Erik Henry — That’s not how he taught. And it’s much more complicated than that and so but data is wonderful. It can be used in a way that can end up getting you to a new kind of legalism.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s a great insight. Very, very good insight there. You know, I’ve similarly I’ve struggled with this tension of um, we do want to be clear. And so lots of churches, we all have the like whatever the five things are. You know, these are the you know, get on a team, give, be in a small group, you know, attend services, bring a friend – something like that. And ah you know for years I’ve said that that is super reductionist, and is actually not that high of a bar. Like when I when I would look at what Jesus says he says you know, follow the narrow road.
Erik Henry — Yes.
Rich Birch — And like give it all up and follow me. I’m like that doesn’t sound easy. But we have to come up… There’s a tension there because we do want to we have to communicate something…
Erik Henry — Right.
Rich Birch — …that helps people take a next step…
Erik Henry — Correct.
Rich Birch — …but it it can be super reductionist. So let’s look under the hood a little bit on on questions that you’ve asked. So I’m going to ask you either extreme. On one side ah, question that you keep asking that you’re like we probably should stop asking that question because it’s it’s not helpful, like we’ve had the same answer for so long. It’s it’s not helpful.
Erik Henry — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Or what’s the one question that you don’t ask today that you’re tempted by your team. You’re like, oh maybe we should put this one in here. Do you have do you have anything on either side that that would kind of stretch our thinking a little bit?
Erik Henry — Ah sure. Yeah I can give you the one like the first one where you you…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Erik Henry — …we asked a question for a little while that was that had to do with the fruit of the Spirit because we’re thinking okay maturity will produce fruit.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Erik Henry — So love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness – the whole thing. Um and so what we started doing was having people rate on a 0 to 5 how those fruit are being lived out in their lives. Again, this is a self-reporting thing, right? So this is self-reported feelings about the fruit in their life. And we did that over time and guess what? Nothing ever changed it. What what I what you…
Rich Birch —Oh interesting.
Erik Henry — What you found was that the it was just an average of how people feel about themselves in general, and that just doesn’t go anywhere.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting.
Erik Henry — And so it just turned out to be a a waste of time.
Rich Birch — Right. One to cut off the list. Oh that’s good. That’s interesting. Anything on the other side that you’re tempted to be like, oh or or the one, or maybe another way to phrase that, is is there a team member that keeps hounding you that like we’ve got to do this. Like, you know, we’ve got to have this, you know, this question in that you’ve resisted, you know, is there’s anything on that end?
Erik Henry — Yes. One of the thing that comes to mind is ah is marketing.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — So marketing is such a difficult thing to measure, the the effect of marketing. And so when we talk about marketing, we just desperately want ah data. And so we were like what about a question that is about how you were invited to church. Or what you used to invite someone to church. And the problem is it just changes so much.
Rich Birch — Right right.
Erik Henry — And and it’s different we have different strategies all the time. And so I know that there’s there are some people that would love for us to add some of those kind of questions. Um, but I just don’t, again, you just have to make the the call about what are you trying, what is the most important thing.
Erik Henry — And we have, you know, I don’t know if if your your church or other churches you use KPIs – you know, key performance indicators, and and our goals. And so we have KPIs for our whole church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — And so most of our questions are directed toward measuring our KPIs, not just whatever’s out there. But but what are the things that are most the key performance indicators for our church as a whole. What are those things, and we that’s what we use ah to to decide what questions we ask.
Rich Birch — Love it. Um, when you ah survey—so you come up those to twice a year—what’s the tenor of the staff environment? Are people excited by this? Are they looking forward to it? Are they nervous? What do you do to ensure that, you know, that that your your team kind of is prepared and then buys in – what does all that look like?
Erik Henry — Yeah, the plus is we got a fricking great staff culture.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Erik Henry — I mean our staff culture is fantastic, and so everybody loves it.
Rich Birch — Okay, great.
Erik Henry — Nobody’s… I think there’s a little bit of of nervousness because this isn’t the only surveying we do. We actually do ah volunteer satisfaction surveys…
Rich Birch — Okay, right. Yep.
Erik Henry — twice a year as well. Um, part of the thing is you know you don’t know how volunteers are feeling about your staff because, again, they love them. And I always tell my staff I say listen, if you can’t make your volunteers like you, there’s a problem. You know what I’m saying?.
Rich Birch — Sure sure.
Erik Henry — Like if you can’t get a volunteer volunteer to say, hey I think that this staff member is great…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Erik Henry — …that’s like that’s the highest priority…
Rich Birch — That’s base. Yep. Yes, yep.
Erik Henry — …that’s bare minimum your volunteers better like you.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Erik Henry — And so um and so I I do think there’s been a little bit of nervousness surrounding those. But we’ve now we’ve now just this year moved to a single volunteer satisfaction survey that goes to every for every staff member. It took us a while to come up with the questions, and I can share those too.
Rich Birch — That would be great. We’ll take it. That’d be great.
Erik Henry — Um, but you know, what what questions were would work across the board um, that would actually give us an understanding of how a staff member is doing, that kind of a thing. So.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah because I’ve struggled. We’ve struggled, and so we have combined kind of both of these together into one.
Erik Henry — Yeah, okay.
Rich Birch — And um, have done that kind of, for lack of better word, customer satisfaction stuff and that has driven um decisions around staffing stuff.
Erik Henry — Yes, absolutely.
Rich Birch — And so we’ve tried to not like, hey friends like don’t freak out about this. It’s good. Again, it’s the same thing – there’s no bad information. There’s just information if we don’t like. But we’d rather know so that we can improve. And and there was a season—it’s not so much, you know, it’s not all the time—but there was a season where it was like that kind of freaked people out. They were like oh my goodness. What. Because people are worried.
Erik Henry — Yeah, yes.
Rich Birch — And I’m like well, you know, it’s it’s going to be… In in one way I kind of took that as a compliment because I was like okay that means that people are taking it serious and they realize we’re taking it serious.
Erik Henry — Right.
Rich Birch — We’re not just this isn’t just like here’s a bunch of random ideas, and like okay well we’ll go back to doing the things we did the way we did it before. So…
Erik Henry — Exactly right.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Are there any other surveys that you do that you might be kind of interested to kind of touch on? This has been a really helpful conversation.
Erik Henry — Honestly I think we we try to keep it at that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — Those are the two main things. Otherwise we’re we’re going to end up with a ton of… Oh, the other thing that will always happen is the lead pastor is always going to be like, hey we’re thinking about this decision, let’s do a survey. Let’s let’s do a survey. And so unless it is unbelievably important I push back on that.
Rich Birch — Okay, and why is that? Why is that? That seems like a good use of that.
Erik Henry — Right. Survey fatigue.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Erik Henry — I I want to make sure that we continually when we do them um… Oh the other thing I’ll say is that we we feel like we we have dropped the ball, and are going to are trying to do better at finding ways to release the information that people have given us. You know, they don’t want all of the details of every little thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — But to be able to say, hey thank you for taking this survey, here’s what we found out. Um, we have we’ve dropped the ball on that and this year we’re really trying to to turn that around.
Rich Birch — Yeah, because people are more likely to give us information if we if they see, oh look they they… You know it’s like any conversation, it’s a conversation – you talked and now we’re responding.
Erik Henry — Yep, exactly right.
Rich Birch — We’re saying oh yeah, we heard you say this and here’s some changes. Well this has been just so good. What a rich conversation. And you know hope, friends, as you’re listening in, you’re catching a little bit. There’s a ton we could talk about here. Ah but super helpful. I appreciate you sending us those. We’ll have those links in the in the show notes. Anything else just as we’re kind of wrapping up today’s episode you could share or you’re thinking about, Erik?
Erik Henry — Ah, yeah, like I love your the the unSeminary concept, the you know what do you wish… and I you know I was thinking about that as I prepared and I thought to myself you know what I really wish? I’m not a seminary graduate. Um I’m a math teacher; I’ve been in ministry since I was twenty years old. But um, but I I feel like the people who come out of bible college or seminary sometimes now don’t really understand the complexity of ministry.
Rich Birch — That’s true.
Erik Henry — That um, that it is so much more complex than we like to make it in a classroom. I mean the ah, part of the complexity comes because your your life becomes revolved around this ministry as a pastor, Executive Pastor, whatever you are, which also means all your friendships are part of this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Erik Henry — And all of the people that you lead are are part are friends, and those dual relationships are so complex. So I have to lead this person who’s who’s also the person that is my friend, or my wife is best friends with his wife, and now I’ve got to I have to lead…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Erik Henry —…and and challenge and make decisions surrounding these things. It is just so much more… and you you have the relational side, but then you also on the other hand have what I call running the church machine. You know?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Erik Henry — As an executive pastor part of your job is to keep the machine running.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Erik Henry — To make decisions that make sure that you have ah a future as a church.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Erik Henry — Um, and so but sometimes that is a tension with the relationships. And learning to live in the tension is one thing I really wish I had known earlier in my ministry, was basically first of all everything takes longer than you think it should.
Rich Birch — True, that is very true.
Erik Henry — Everything takes longer than you think it should. But if you do the right thing, I know that sounds so stupid, I know that sounds so obvious, but man the right thing is is sometimes a hard thing to find when you’re living in the tension between the relationships, the people that you love, the people who are mad, the people the ah the machine of the church that you are responsible for, it gets very very complicated. And you have to ask yourself which voices matter in that conversation.
Rich Birch — Right.
Erik Henry — What priorities matter in that conversation. And and in the middle of it, we can convince ourselves what we what what we think is right because it’s easier. Or other people can help us help convince us of what we should do. But there is this thing I find more often than not, that if I quiet myself I can normally find what’s right. And if I just am willing to do the right thing and give it time to work itself out, everything does.
Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so good. Well and there’s so much, particularly I find in our roles as Executive Pastors, there’s there’s a lot of decisions that we make that are um, they do get at the the very core of why do we exist as an organization. Um and they’re really important but they’re not necessarily seen. They’re like, you know, they’re kind of like secondary or they’re behind the scenes…
Erik Henry — Yes.
Rich Birch — …or they’re… but but man, if we if we cut the corners there, if we um and you know there’s extreme examples of that, obviously, where organizations get into fraud and all kinds of super, you know, bad stuff.
Erik Henry — Right.
Rich Birch — But you know you’re not ah nobody listening in is doing that. But we can make other compromising decisions that aren’t the right decision that aren’t the right thing that aren’t pushing us towards the kind of church God wants us to to be. And yeah, that’s just a really good word. I really appreciate that, Erik.
Rich Birch — This has been a fantastic conversation. I thank you so much for being on today. If people want to track with you, track with the church, where do we want to send them online? And friends I would encourage you to do, this is a fantastic church; Erik’s a great leader. Where where do we want to send them online?
Erik Henry — We’re at centralwired.com and and then we got all the you know Facebook, Instagram, all those other things too.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Erik Henry — But um, in general that’s that’s kind of the place to catch us.
Rich Birch — Love it.Thanks so much, Erik. I appreciate you being here today, sir. Thank you so much.
Erik Henry — Thank you – really appreciate it, Rich.
Moving from Spanish Translation to a Full Spanish Ministry with Tim Hill
Mar 16, 2023
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Tim Hill, executive pastor at Bear Creek Church, located at the crossroads of West Houston, Katy and Cypress, Texas.
Every zip code in America is more diverse today than it was ten years ago. And it will be even more diverse ten years from now. Listen in as Tim shares how Bear Creek Church paid attention to the opportunities around them and the practical steps they took to serve their changing community better.
Serving the community. // As Bear Creek grew over the years, they noticed their demographic changing and they developed a significant Hispanic representation in the church. This group of people spoke Spanish as their primary language, but had children that were speaking English as their primary language. So the church arranged for listening devices that could be used during a service, enabling a Spanish speaker to listen to the sermon being translated to their native language.
A growing Spanish Ministry. // The need for Spanish translation kept growing as the community outside the church saw more Hispanic people come to the area. So Bear Creek decided a separate Spanish service was needed not only to serve this people group better, but also to help them fully connect with the church. Before launching a Spanish service, they made sure they had Spanish speakers as a part of their leadership throughout the ministries of the church. Initially for the Spanish service the church utilized guest preachers, but as they continued to grow they hired a part time Spanish Ministries Pastor.
Spanish Service. // To ensure that they are one church with two different expressions, the Spanish Ministries Pastor preaches the sermon one week behind from the English services. He gets the written sermon so he can review and personalize it for the people in his congregation.
One church. // Rather than having separate English and Spanish versions of every ministry, translators are placed in each ministry so they can communicate with Spanish speakers. Kids ministry, for example, is in English, but there are always Spanish translators available to interact with parents or help where needed.
Take a look at the budget. // To ensure that the Spanish Ministry feels fully a part of the church, Bear Creek makes sure that the budget for that ministry is meeting its needs, whether it’s for more staff, a bigger meeting space, or the latest technology for the service. The budget is growing as the ministry is growing.
Lead change, don’t introduce change. // Introducing change can freak people out if there’s a sudden culture shift. But leading change will offer you the opportunity to cast vision to your church. Do the research and determine whether the change will be a minor shift or a bigger shift. What are the opportunities there? Come up with a plan and be strategic about what you communicate.
Set goals to determine your next step. // It’s natural to use attendance as a goal marker, but figure out what is the story behind it and what is your next step. Once Bear Creek moved from Spanish translation to a full Spanish service, they saw that attendance continued to grow. That marker told them that their part time Spanish Ministries Pastor needed to be moved to full time. It also signaled the need to set goals for communications, additional staffing, and raising the quality of their Spanish service. As you seek to serve your community better, pay attention to what an increase in attendance might be signaling for you.
You can learn more about Bear Creek Church and reach out to Tim at www.bearcreek.church.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation, been looking forward to this one for awhile. We’ve got Pastor Tim Hill with us. He’s the executive pastor at a church that you should be tracking with, Bear Creek Church. They started as a bible study in the late 70s and currently is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Ah, they have and they’re located at the crossroads of West Houston, Katy and Cyprus, Texas – fantastic part of the country. We’re looking forward to learning from you today, Tim – welcome to the show.
Tim Hill — Hey, thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — So tell us a little bit about Bear Creek, kind of give us the the flavor if people were to arrive this weekend, what would it look like? Kind of fill out that picture a little bit.
Tim Hill — You bet. So Bear Creek sits right at um, an intersection where you find people shopping and buying their groceries ,where they’re doing life, but right around that it’s all communities and neighborhoods where people live, ah schools near us. We have four or five major elementary schools, two or three high schools. So lots of families live right where we are, and so they do life together as they come to church. When they ah when they arrive we’re we’re really a ah multi-ethnic church. We have um around 25 or 30 different countries represented, both within the Hispanic community, but also quite a few people from the continent of Africa.
Rich Birch — Oh very cool.
Tim Hill — And so they’ll even be wearing those colorful outfits that they wear when they dress up and go to church. And um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — Anyway, it’s just ah, a place where everybody feels welcome and warm and loved and that’s really important to us that we create that environment and that experience. We have multiple styles of worship services. We’ve got activities for every age group going on at the same time. So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — …everybody can find their place to fit in and and enjoy worshiping and and growing in their faith.
Rich Birch — So good. Now you know it seems like the executive pastor—we love executive pastors here, executive pastors here at unSeminary; I’ve spent a lot of time in those roles—but every executive pastor you talk to, their role looks a little bit different.
Tim Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah, tell me about how you frame up that role. If somebody at a church says executive pastor – what is that? How do you explain that?
Tim Hill — Yeah, well really the the simplest and easiest way is the pastor casts the vision and sets the direction for the course. The pastor and I have a great relationship, but then he leans into me to make sure that I am. working with the staff and driving the church that direction. So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — …I lighten his load. I am his number one servant is the way I look at it. And so um, he he he…
Rich Birch — So good.
Tim Hill — Yeah. He leads the church, and I run the church.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Yeah, in another context I’ve talked about how, you know, executive pastors lead at the intersection of vision and execution; kind of where do those two things intersect you find an executive pastor.
Tim Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool. Well you are one of the fastest growing churches; you lead within one of the fastest growing churches in the country. When you think back to the last, I don’t know number of years, what would be some of those changes or areas of growth or development that you’ve seen at Bear Creek that might be interesting for us to kind of kick around and explore today.
Tim Hill — You bet. So like a lot of churches the last few years have been crazy and we’ve had a lot of churn. And so there are times we look in our church and it’s a whole different group of people than what it was say even 5, 6, 7 years ago.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Tim Hill — One of those areas is as we just watched the demographics within our community adjust and change, we have a significant um Hispanic representation – folks that in the home Spanish is their primary language but yet their kids are growing up ah in learning English as their primary language. So we we saw as a church that we needed to adapt and adjust. We had always had a little bit of a Spanish ministry, but it was not very friendly to that culture…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — …and that and that group people. So they would come to church. They could go and pick up some really some listening devices. They could go into the service and while they’d be in an English service, somebody live was sitting there translating the pastor’s message while he was preaching it.
Rich Birch — I love that. Let’s let’s dig into this. So what would be some of those signs that you noticed, oh there’s a shift happening in our culture, that you know, you start to say oh there’s you know we’re seeing different folks arrive. What were some of the, you know, some of those things that were kind of telltale signs of that?
Tim Hill — Yeah, so one was the people that we had coming we, just with our relationships with them, were listening and they were letting us know of folks coming in. The other is we have a great relationship with our school district. We have the ah, we sit within the third largest school district in the state of Texas.
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.
Tim Hill — Over over 100,000 kids are a part of the school district and the school system is excellent. We can go look at each school near us and identify what is the makeup in that school. And we started seeing that the kids going there were were coming from homes where Spanish was being spoken. So they were identifying themselves as Hispanic. And so as we saw that, like and then when I say grown, several of the elementary schools over half the kids identify as Hispanic coming family wise.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Tim Hill — So so as we saw that, we knew there was an opportunity there. When we think when I think about challenges or problems or I just I immediately think, Okay, where’s the opportunity here? What can we do with this?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Hill — Is there something we can do with it or not? And if we can, what does that look like? So I just that’s how I go at it is ask those kind of questions, and that’s how we identified the opportunity there.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. So then you’ve add you added Spanish translation. We’ve done this as as well at our church. Talk to us about kind of that process. What did that look like um as you started to add that in, and then what impact did that have on the folks that you know you’re reaching?
Tim Hill — You bet. So the Spanish translation, ah we had folks that were the pastor’s voice in Spanish is how we did that.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm.
Tim Hill — So there were a couple of people the pastor would have to he scripts out his message. So now it’s it’s fairly rough; I mean he’s obviously going to deviate sometimes in the midst of that, but they would sit in a room with a device watching and listening the service, and then looking at his script, and then doing that for those folks. Now in order to give something a little more personal, we did have a bible study in Spanish at an alternate hour. But as we saw that growing, I’ll tell you we we shifted just before the pandemic and then we almost had to relaunch it after the pandemic, and that is a full out Spanish service.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — So we consider ourselves, instead of multisite, we’re like multisite within our site. So ah, we added at 11:00 at the same time that our English, one of our modern services going on, we have a service entirely in Spanish.
Rich Birch — Okay, I love that.
Tim Hill — And so that led us to have to… oh go ahead.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So let’s talk about that transition. What led… because I think there’s a lot… So first of all I’ve experienced exactly what you you what you’ve done. We’ve added Spanish in and have found, you know, it’s it’s a fascinating um ah, transition. It came about as we really tried to engage with Hispanic leaders in our community, people that were part of our church, and saying hey that would be a great add. But then obviously you saw that start to meet a need and then what led you to think, Okay, now we want to take the step to a full service, and then let’s talk through what that service actually looks like.
Tim Hill — You bet. So in that first stage with listening devices and people following along and engaging, when we saw that number growing from 20 to 30 to 40, we just knew that in listening to some of those folks, they wanted to worship in Spanish. That’s their heart language. That’s how that’s how they grew up experiencing God in their life. And yet they wanted their kids growing up English to be able to be a part of the church.
Tim Hill — Now, a key focus for us, we’d watched other churches do this. It was really important that we stayed one church, but with different languages. So in order to do that, we strategically started thinking about leaders, like several of those Spanish ah, Ministry leaders, they serve as deacons in our church. They serve on our finance committee. They serve on our personnel committee. And so we made sure that they were a part of um, all the areas of leadership. Um, then we I approached to this just like if you were launching a church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — So if you in all the research of the preview services—so we started off at an Easter—you pick a big day and you launch with a service on that day. Prior to that we did a one just to almost like a practice run.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — Is our technology good? Are we in good shape? Because it’s a different service. Our our media and worship guys, they all had to work at finding Spanish worship leaders so they had their ah end of that. So we did a kind of a early test trial run service, then we did the Easter service and then from there we did a once a month Spanish service. Um…
Rich Birch — Okay, love it.
Tim Hill — And we did that in our student building so we had to flex a little bit with our student ministry but use their worship space to help us. In the process of doing that, we started ramping up to use our gym and create it just like if somebody were going into a school. It’s it’s portable church in the gym.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — And we built up to where we could do that every Sunday. Also in that process it was creating an invite strategy for those folks, a promotion strategy to the Spanish speaking families in our community. So that’s where we went. We started with a part time Spanish pastor. So early on the the pastors preaching in those services were just guest…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — …preachers coming in in Spanish. But then we knew we had to add a staff person. We started with a we actually started with a part time Spanish Ministries Pastor. Um…
Rich Birch — Okay, so…
Tim Hill — And then it grew from there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. Talk to me about how… so I’d like to dive in on this whole area of um, how do we ensure that we’re one church in really two different expressions. What does that functionally look like? Because for folks that aren’t listening in this is one of the we’ll call it challenges, difficulties, opportunities that can come up with churches as they’ve added any kind of second language ministry is it can start to feel like, oh we’re two separate churches meeting in the same building. So how do you… let’s talk about maybe at the functional level, you know, the services. How do you ensure that it feels like, hey these are kind of two expressions of the same thing? How do you integrate teaching or do you even try to integrate teaching? You know how do you integrate the you know the worship experience, all that? What what does that look like?
Tim Hill — We do. So the Spanish Ministries Pastor, he preaches our pastor’s message one week behind.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep. Love it.
Tim Hill — So he personalizes it. So he has the text, he has the outline, and then he can personalize that so that it’s applicable and relational to the people in the Spanish ministry service and their culture.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — So that’s how we keep that as one church at a teaching level. Now on a weekly basis, one thing as a leader um the Spanish ministry’s pastor, and the pastor, and myself have a weekly meeting so we’re keeping him really close to us…
Rich Birch — Yeah
Tim Hill — …and tied into our vision, and where we’re going, and and maintaining a strong relationship. On a weekly basis in the service it is not unusual for me… obviously the services are at the same time so it can be real hard for our lead pastor to get in there, although he does get in there from time to time and we juggle some scheduling around between the services. But I’m in that room every single week.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — Whether I’m on the platform or not. When I go on the platform, the Spanish Ministries Pastor, he he translates for me. Now a lot of the people in that service are bilingual. I wish I were bilingual but um Spanish with an East Texas boy’s accent does not go real well.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — So I can understand it way better than I can speak it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Tim Hill — But he does a great job and he translates. So we make sure that they see the all the staff. When they do their their gatherings of new members or membership gatherings to bring people into the church, we as an entire staff, both the Spanish Ministries Pastor and and their leaders, and all the English leaders in preschool and children and students, we all come in and introduce ourselves and they see us. So we’re, from the very beginning, highly focused on identifying and everybody seeing us as one church, one staff, in it together.
Rich Birch — Okay, I love that. And are you doing um kids ministry in Spanish? Ah or is the is the goal to have, because of the kind of first generation/second generation thing, kids ministries in English? Is that… and maybe talk through that decision a little bit because that might not be self-evident for people that haven’t explored in this area.
Tim Hill — You bet. Yeah, our our goal was not to create every single ministry in Spanish and replicate everything. So every ministry there are ah Spanish Ministry volunteers from the Spanish Ministry that are bilingual and so when people come, if the parents are need to speak in Spanish, we have folks there to help them. Ah the the lanyards that those leaders wear are different colors so we can identify who our bilingual leaders are.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Tim Hill — But those kids are growing up English.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — They’re going to school ah, with everybody so we know that the dynamic in the home is even sometimes those kids will come and translate for their parents when they talk to us. So but they want to be involved in the English activities. Plus that’s also where their friends are. That’s where everybody they see at school ah, is part of that. So ah, and so when they come and they’re there with their friends. So that’s just the model we adopted, doesn’t have to be the only way to do it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — But for us that’s what we decided and it’s worked really well. I can tell you that just to give you an idea that Spanish ministry, prior to the pandemic had reached about 170 people in worship on Sundays.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Tim Hill — And then it dipped down and it got hit real hard by the pandemic. And we came back. We were 40 and 50. We brought in a new Spanish Ministries Pastor; that was one of the turnovers in staff at that time. We’re now up to running 250 in our Spanish service…
Rich Birch — Wow! That’s great.
Tim Hill —…on Sunday mornings. So…
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s great. I love that. And you know that’s um, yeah so cool to hear about. So hopefully our relationship can sustain this. I’m sure it can, Tim, because you’re a good guy, you know, but talk talk to me about how we ensure, in the spirit of hey we’re trying to be one church you know in a under in a couple different expressions, how do we ensure that the Spanish ministry doesn’t feel like, you know, the the you know the redheaded stepsister, or the you know the the second class citizen the you know they don’t get as much as as the English ministry side. How are you trying to address that? That I’ve seen that as a real issue in some of these scenarios where it’s like we we want we want to ensure that um, you know, this ministry that kind of gets everything it needs. And so talk to me through how that how do you think about that? How have you tried to work towards that? What’s that looked like?
Tim Hill — Yeah, so we we we are conscious of that, I can tell you. And we ask that question so we really work to ensure that the budget for the Spanish Ministry is growing as they’re growing. It’s meeting the need when where’s the need for an additional staff, we’re adding that staff. When they need an event that’s unique to them, we’re resourcing their ability to do the events. One of the things that I can tell you one of the next challenges we’re facing is because it’s growing, we foresee over the course of the next year it’s going to outgrow the gym. So we’re looking ahead at that service moving from 11 to probably at a 12:15 or 12:30 time slot.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — But moving into our main worship center.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Tim Hill — Which means they will have access to all of the exact same resources. Now while they’re in the gym we are providing as great a resources as we can.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Tim Hill — And their worship and the leaders that are there and and they have paid leaders and volunteer leaders on the platform. So that’s how we’re doing that. We’re just we’re super conscious of that. And by incorporating them into as much of the other church activities and events and mingling with them, we’re we’re really tackling a lot relationally but also just some of those things that they can see and feel…
Rich Birch — Totally, totally.
Tim Hill — …and then where it’s gonna go in the future. You know they’re a priority to us and we stress that to them all the time. They are the church; they are Bear Creek in Español and…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Tim Hill — And so we want them to know that and feel that and that’s us a lot of it just relational being there and saying hi all the time and greeting them. So, yeah.
Rich Birch — Are you still doing English translation, or you know, Spanish translation in the English service, or did you get rid of all that together?
Tim Hill — We got rid of all of that.
Rich Birch — Okay, so that this is the option there. That makes total sense. Okay, that’s great. That’s great. Now any kind of surprises as you know now that you’ve been doing this for a while and, you know, obviously, man, that’s incredible to see the growth that you’ve seen is amazing. Love seeing that. That’s so good. Any kind of surprises, things that struck you as like oh this is maybe a little bit different than we anticipated when we first stepped into this area?
Tim Hill — I’ll tell you here’s what’s surprising. We know that the Hispanic community is out there. The way we promote our church in English, being able to get mailing lists and sending cards out and new movers lists and and having all that, it has been much harder to find that information in Spanish. Now we have found it…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Tim Hill — but but it was not as easy to go out there. And several of the those companies that we resource out to sometimes when we would ask them, hey do do you do this for Spanish so we can specifically target Um, the Spanish in our community? And the answer was no.
Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting.
Tim Hill — Um and so that was a little bit of a challenge and a little bit of a surprise and we found workarounds for that. But…
Rich Birch — Yeah, very cool.
Tim Hill — Um, but that but that was a little bit of a surprise of, knowing how significant that community was, how hard it was to get the word out there that um we were church. You know so we’ve got a big building, sits on the road, people see it. Ah we had to make sure we had signage out on the ah along that road that was in Spanish so that people knew that. That that was just a little bit of a challenge to overcome that barrier. Some people it was intimidating for them to look at that big church and they just thought it was a big English church.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Tim Hill — So that was a little bit of a barrier but, you know, not a surprise to us just one we had to work through. But getting the word out was ah was challenging.
Rich Birch — Has been challenging. Interesting. Well I I just love this. What a great story. So cool to hear. Um, you know I think all of us ah, every zip code in America is more diverse today than it was ten years ago. And it will be more diverse 10 years from now. And I love this, you know, this story of you know your church seeing this opportunity, stepping in, taking practical steps. I love the idea of like hey we tried this thing and it you know seemed to get a bit of traction and then we grew that.
Rich Birch — What would you say to a church leader who’s listening in today, and maybe specifically on, you know, they they look at the demographics of their community. They’re like, hey there’s a growing Hispanic community in our ah, you know, either around us or even in our church. Um, what would you say to them if they’re thinking about, maybe we want to take some steps. Would you suggest they they take similar steps? Is there anything different you would do knowing what you know now?
Tim Hill — Yeah, I I would encourage them, you know, so when I think about this I know the way we did it. It’s really important to lead change and not introduce change.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Good insight.
Tim Hill — You know introducing change or announcing change, that that can freak people out. Particularly something as significant as a a little bit of a cultural shift within your church. Because that’s what will happen is there’ll be a shift there. So um, thinking about strategy and how you do that. Identify those pockets in your community um, and if there’s an opportunity there. But the way that I go about that is I I kind of view view what those opportunities were and then we start praying about it.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Tim Hill — We seek we seek what the Lord’s direction is there. We’ll even, as we start to do that, ask our some of our key spiritual leaders—staff, and even lay leaders—to start praying about that with us. So that’s just a way of seeking God, but also introducing the idea that there may be an opportunity here.
Tim Hill — Then um, while we’re doing that is the research, and figuring out what what is it gonna take? What might it look like? Is it is it a minor shift, like a translation service, or is it um a service in and of itself? Is there another church in the area that’s doing this and are they struggling and can you merge? And I will tell you in merging that you’re going to run into a whole different set of problems because I’ve been in a church where we did that. And when a church comes to you already thinking they’re their own church and if you want to have the idea that we’re one church, two languages, that is a big barrier to overcome. It’s not insurmountable, but it can be really hard. So the way we did it, launching our own we could set the culture right from the beginning.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — Um, when you do run into things that are challenges, I always try to be solution-focused.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — So how how are we going to deal with that? You know we we do set some goals in our Spanish Ministry. Um, it’s you know, recognizing the population, but but you got to be real flexible with that and be realistic because it is some of the, for us, the unknown there um…
Rich Birch — Yeah, what what if some of those goals look like; how have you kind of cast those out?
Tim Hill — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What if what is that lean on what’s that look like?
Tim Hill — So, you know so we we kind of set some goals. When you think of so attendance is always the first one that a lot of us in my role and even, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tim Hill — …we we go straight to attend… but attendance, I I try to figure out what’s the story behind the attendance and what is that telling us to to do next? So with with the launch it’s kind of like I said when we were when we were just um, listening devices and we saw it growing, there’s an opportunity there. What what would be next? So then it’s launching. So then it’s smaller part time. So then at Easter in the promotion, you know, had an attendance right off the bat of like 60 people. But we were already at 40 people on listening devices, so you know it was… But once we launched into a service and weekly and we saw, you know, there’s there’s a hundred people coming every week, that part time person he really needs to be full time.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Tim Hill — So so that was kind of a goal of we need to get him to full time. And full time means, man he he gets all the same salary and benefits that any other pastor on our church gets. So there’s a significant investment there. But also, you know, what 100 people coming. we got to make sure we’re continually raising the quality of the worship. So.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — We need to expand the praise team. They need you know some additional singers. We need to make sure they have good technology on the walls and can do things. We’ve we’ve got to expand communication because all of our communications got to be both English and Spanish. And so who how are we going to get that done? So so there’s all those all those things going on. And so goals around that of you know of really staffing, expanding the quality of things, striving for excellence. Um, but a lot of it was attendance driven.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Love that. Talk to me through the um, you kind of mentioned in in passing there. There’s this tension, and this is true with any ministry. This is not necessarily unique to your Spanish ministry. But there’s always this tension between we want to have timelines for goals, like a goal without a timeline is just a dream. Ah we want to have timelines, but we also want to be flexible on those things. We know that there’s going to be, you know, what was that? You know that everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face – was that a boxer said that? You know it’s like, you know, we we all think things and then it’s like okay we then we go into the real world and and we live, we have to… How have you worked that through, maybe in the church in general, or specifically in the Spanish ministry, trying to have hold those two things in tension?
Tim Hill — Yeah, so so with goals, setting checkpoints so, you know, along the way.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tim Hill — So we would you know the goals were short term sometimes, you know, it was… Um, or if even if it was long term, well you know we’re at 50, we want to see it get to a hundred, and at a hundred we can do these things. And the leader that was part time moving to full time, he was well aware of that and we’re meeting with him. We’re saying okay hey we’ve got to 60, how’s it going? What do you need help with? You know is there any ideas, you know we want to get you there as fast as we can. And so um, you know we we check along the way. Um, but ah I know there’s been times where in those goals we realize this this just is, one, we might be looking at the wrong thing.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yep.
Tim Hill — Um, you know it’s um, ah you know, where with the attendance we backed up and said man how many first time guests are they having in the Spanish service? So where are those first time guests? How do we get the word out to them? How do we reach them? Do we you know, creating a culture of inviting within there. So helping the pastor shift some language of teaching, but then what can we resource? Will they work with invite cards? Will they use that when they’re at the store and they’re inviting folks, or you know at school or wherever they’re at?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — Um so that’s that’s just kind of how we adapted and adjusted when we would see, Okay, this… we’re struggling here. What’s what leads us to that? Again when we think goals we’ve got the goal, but then we think lead measures. It’s what are the behaviors. The ministry things that we’ve got to do to get to that goal, and that’s where we would go back and start looking at those things.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well this has been just a great conversation. I know so many of us are, again, I think so many of us are looking in our community and saying man, what can we do? And I love that you’ve provided just real practical steps and a real clear picture um, you know, vision forward.
Rich Birch — Um, as we’re wrapping up as we’re kind of looking to to land, how has the Spanish Ministry how’s that impacted the English ministry, kind of the fact that you’ve added this, has that had some kind of ah you know positive, you know, impact on the rest of your ah the rest of your community?
Tim Hill — Boy it sure has. Our our church is… so our vision statement, and we tell our people, we vision to be a gospel-centered, disciple-making community for all people.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Tim Hill — And if we’re gonna live that out, um it is important for us as we reach our community um that we reflect that. So so they’ve bought into that vision and so when we celebrate like um when we baptize people, the Spanish pastor will come over into that 11:00 service and baptize folks in Spanish so our English folks get to see what’s happening. We’re constantly reporting in, hey right now at 11:00, you know, we’ve got our Spanish service going on. And so we’re sharing the story of what’s happening. They’re doing the same thing over on the Spanish side of what’s happening in the church. So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Tim Hill — …just those celebrations and casting the vision and so people are just excited.And of course they’re they’re in the same part of the building. So we’ve intentionally set things up where they worship and where they go to groups that they have to walk through the hallways. And they’re not in the closest rooms but sometimes even rooms that take a little while. And so it’s just creating community. Um, even in those in-between service times where they’re walking in the hallways together and seeing each other.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. So good. Tim, this has been so helpful. Great conversation today. Anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Tim Hill — You know, I would just ah I would just encourage, you know, all those leaders out there. As challenging as times can be for us as believers that we may feel there are still so many opportunities. People are so hungry for ah, God’s life change that he could make in their life. And I would just encourage leaders look for those opportunities. Pray about that;be open to that. And then as they identify those things, allow God to lead them to see where where he might expand their vision to to to reach out and share the gospel and help make disciples of those folks. That’s what that’s what we’re striving to do all the time.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good, Tim. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Tim Hill — Yeah, if they just want to go to bearcreek.church…
Rich Birch — Love it. Easy.
Tim Hill — …that is our that our website just go to bearcreek.church – they can see us there. They can watch services. They can see our ministries, they can link to us as staff, they can email me from there, or contact me. Anything I could do to help, that’s the best way.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Tim – really appreciate you being on the show today.
Tim Hill — You bet. Thank you, Rich.
Seeking God’s Best for Your Church Even in a Hostile Environment with Terry A. Smith
Mar 09, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’ve got Terry A. Smith with us today; he’s the lead pastor at The Life Christian Church (TLCC) which serves the New York City metro area. He recently wrote a devotional called, The Lord Bless You: A 28-Day Journey to Experience God’s Extravagant Blessings, and today we’re unpacking a story Terry tells in chapter 13, titled “Resistance Training”.
Resistance Training. // “To actualize any God-inspired calling, we must overcome conflict.” Terry begins chapter 13 of his book sharing about how God placed a dream in his heart to open a new location for the church in some of the last undeveloped land in the urban area where the church served. This dream took 10 years to find fulfillment and Terry said that every bit of that journey was hard. There are practical steps Terry took to lead his church to persevere in accomplishing this dream, and it led to God’s blessings in the end.
Develop friendships. // Terry knew in his heart this would be TLCC’s property and he began praying to that end. He surrounded himself with people who would believe with him, but he also started developing relationships and friendships with the power brokers and political leaders in his community. Terry set up meetings with each member of the town council, told his story, and asked what the church could do for the community. Connecting with local leaders helped them recognize the value the church brought to the community.
Build connections. // In the bible, even prophets who were in exile needed to be known and trusted by the ones in power in order to speak with them. You may not agree with everything that local government and political leaders support, but you can look for what you do have in common. Find a way to serve people and recognize that you both want your city to thrive.
Let them say yes or no. // When talking about big ideas such as purchasing land to build a new location, Terry would speak about it in a way that would give his board, elders, and church leaders the opportunity to offer feedback, critique, and have the power to say no.
Make it all clear. // When Terry brought the idea about the property to the board, he shared his heart and cast vision in a way where he wasn’t putting his finger on the scale, but made it clear that he was willingly submitting to them. He didn’t want to move forward without their blessing, and would accept whatever decision they made. Don’t act like you’re giving someone the ability to say no to you if you’re not willing to receive their no.
Celebrate the steps. // After casting the vision, the real question is how to keep the momentum going over years of work. Have a strategy in place. TLCC developed a 12-step checklist to work toward their new location and each time they took one of these steps forward, they would celebrate as a church. Tracking these steps and celebrating over the years helped keep people engaged and encouraged. In addition, they opened their 53,000 square foot building in phases to keep people from burning out on this project.
Find local leaders. // Outside of local government leaders, pay attention to the business leaders and the other religious leaders in your town. When you’re a new church in town and you’re posturing yourself to serve the community, look for the Rotary Club, Lions Club or Kiwanis in your town. Making those connections is a powerful way to work together to bless your community.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Building a Positive Working Relationship with Your Church’s Financial Institution with Eric Schroeder
Mar 02, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re having a great conversation with Eric Schroeder, the president and CEO of CDF Capital, an organization that helps churches grow in order to transform lives and communities.
Financial matters, like spiritual matters, are very personal. And when you’re dealing with something personal, it can be hard to develop a trusted relationship with the right people. Listen in as Eric shares what to look for when choosing a trusted financial partner for your church, and how to build a positive working relationship with your church’s financial institution.
It takes time. // When it comes to dealing with finances, we all want to have a trusted relationship with the people we work with, and that goes for our church too. When looking for a company to work with the church, remember that it takes time to develop that trust. Ask yourself is the person you’re talking to on the other side of the table for you? Do they understand the needs of your church and have its best interests in mind?
Transparency and communication. // It’s important to be honest with your church’s financial institution. Share your annual budget or plan with your financial professional. Communicate with them often. Outside of the financial focus, build your relationship with them. Invite them out to lunch and ask them about their family. Help them to see who you are as a church.
Develop the relationship. // When it comes to finances, church leaders can feel the tension between wanting to be good stewards while taking advantage of a great opportunity for the church. However, in these interactions with their financial institution what church leaders sometimes fail to steward well is the relationship aspect. If the relationship with your church’s lender has been developed strongly, the lender should loyally stand with the church whenever challenges arise. It’s important to be building a relationship that will be sustained for the long haul.
Know the endgame. // Bankers can be skeptical about whether a church’s financial growth will continue or decline when the economy hits rough patches. What is your church’s growth strategy? How are you using debt effectively? Debt can be used as a tool if you’re growing and expanding, but ultimately your lender should be helping you get out of debt. There needs to be an endgame for debt.
Build a strong team. // If a church is built around a strong team then it will be successful no matter what it faces. Lenders are nervous when they evaluate a church that is known because of its “celebrity” pastor because they know that when the pastor leaves the attendance in that church will decline. But churches that really impact their community stand out to lenders.
Mission-focused. // If your church is looking for a financial partner, CDF Capital has been working with churches for over 70 years. They are passionate about helping churches grow and have strong expertise in the financial operations of a church. Plus, CDF is mission-focused by helping plant new churches through their partnership with Stadia.
Three pillars. // There are three pillars CDF believes are essential for church growth: spiritual capital, leadership capital, and financial capital. CDF is committed to praying for church leaders and seeing the church further its mission. They pour into leaders by providing them with the resources to be effective and do what God has called them to do. The spiritual capital and leadership capital must be strong before financial capital can come into play.
You can learn more about CDF Capital at www.cdfcapital.org and reach out to a member of their field team to see how they can help your church grow.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited that you’ve decided to tune in. Today’s going to be a great conversation I’m really looking forward to. We’ve got Eric Schroeder with us. He has 33 years of banking related or banking adjacent experience. And in 2021 assumed the leadership of a great organization, CDF Capital, fantastic organization that if you’ve been around unSeminary for a while you’ve heard us talk about. Well, today we get the man behind it all. Super excited. He’s the president and CEO of CDF ah, they were founded in in 1953 with really a simple mission to help churches grow. And you might know them for the lending that they do, but they really do so much more than that. They want to get in your corner and help your church grow really ah help your church with sustainability. Super excited to have you on the show today, Eric. Welcome – so glad you’re here.
Eric Schroeder — Well thank you, Rich, I’m glad to be here. Um, so to just tie a bow around what you said.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah – fill in the picture.
Eric Schroeder — First of all, first of all I’m a Christ-follower, husband, father…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Eric Schroeder — …then banker.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Eric Schroeder — So I’m kind of I’m kind of a banker by trade, but I’m really you know a Christ-follower first. And I ah grew up in the church; I love the church. And um I love what CDF Capital gets to do. So thank you for that intro.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. I’m so glad that you… and you’ve been involved with CDF for quite a while, even before you were you know took the big chair here. You were on the board for a while, right? Going back to early 2010s, something like that… was it that am I… that true?
Eric Schroeder — Yeah, that’s correct. I was on the board of CDF Capital since 2010, so I’ve been…
Rich Birch — Okay, great.
Eric Schroeder — …you know around the organization for a long time.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Well I’m looking forward to today’s conversation, and you know we’re friends. So you know if you’ve been listening for a while, friends, you know that CDF Capital are our premier brand partner. Literally every single episode of CDF of the unSeminary podcast is brought to us because of our good friends at CDF because they’ve leaned in. They want to get in your corner. So if you think of all the good stuff that you receive regularly, it happens because CDF has chosen to sponsor. So I really am thankful for ah, for Eric and the entire team. Ah, but but we’re friends, so I want to start with maybe an inappropriate question right off the top, you know.
Eric Schroeder — Oh no.
Rich Birch — What is it what is it with finance people? What is it with banking people? Why why do you make us so nervous? You know why are are can we even trust you can we trust a finance or are you just trying to get money out of, you know, are you trying to take our you see us as a market? Do you just see us as something to extract revenue from? Ah you know obviously I’m asking that in a tongue to cheek manner, but ah, but yeah, tell us why is that? Why are finance people just why are they so hard to trust?
Eric Schroeder — Rich, that’s a great question. So um, if you look at who are the most trusted professions. Gallup has done a study on this – they’ve done studies on this for several years. Do you know the number one trusted profession in 2021?
Rich Birch — Um, maybe nurses or teachers something like that.
Eric Schroeder — Correct. Nurses.
Rich Birch — Oh nice look at that.
Eric Schroeder — Teachers are second. You’ve done you’ve done your research, Rich.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Eric Schroeder — And bankers are right smack in the middle of that.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Eric Schroeder — And you know who’s right there with bankers?
Rich Birch — Church leaders.
Eric Schroeder — Pastors.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Eric Schroeder — So if you think about it, um I think the reason is because we’re dealing… financial matters and spiritual matters are both very personal, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, very true.
Eric Schroeder — So when you’re dealing with something personal, it’s hard to develop that trusted relationship in some way. So my banking career, that’s what it was all about. If people didn’t trust me, they were not going to come be a client of the bank I was a part of. They weren’t going to invest in the bank that I helped start. Um, a little bit about my background, I did help start a bank in 2007.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Eric Schroeder — And it had great success, went public in 2019. But it wasn’t because of me; it was because people trusted me and we had a great team that served our clients well.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — So it’s always been about that trusted relationship. And, Rich, you know this – it takes time to develop. It doesn’t doesn’t happen overnight.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so I’d love to, you know, do this; I’d love to kind of drill in on this a little bit for the people who are listening in. Friends, we’re not trying to convince you to you know, connect with CDF. We’d love for you to, but I want to try to tap on Eric; he has graciously agreed to come in to really tap on this issue around trust. How do we how do we, on our side as church leaders, What can we do what would be some of the kind of telltale signs of lenders that we should be looking for, you know, that really do have our best interest in mind? Like when we’re when we’re evaluating, whether a CDF or other other people, what should we be looking for? What what would be kind of the the types of things that we should be considering?
Eric Schroeder — Yeah, and that’s that’s a great question and this is not about CDF Capital.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Eric Schroeder — This is about the church, and church leaders, and what is best for them. That’s that’s always going to be our approach is what’s best for the church and what’s best for church leaders. So drilling into that, is the person you’re talking to on the other side other side of the table, are they for you? Do they understand your needs? Are they trying to push something? Um, you know, we are not very I would say salesy. We’re more consultant…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Eric Schroeder — …from their approach.
Rich Birch — So true.
Eric Schroeder — So we’ll direct a client to the appropriate lender to the right solution for them even if it’s not at CDF Capital. That’s that’s always been what we’ve been focused on is what is best for the church. So I’d encourage church leaders to really look at, okay, being transparent with your banker, being overly communicative.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Eric Schroeder — If you have a [inaudible] coming down the road, be talking to your your lender about that, or your banker. Be inquisitive. Ask questions. Find find out if they’re using the banking services, all the banking services that are available to them, and in their appropriate ways. So there just become a learner of how to be a better bank client or better lending institution client is what I’d recommend people to do.
Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s talk about that overcommunicating piece; unpack that a little bit more. When you say I… because I do think are oftentimes, there are some leaders who look at their relationship with whatever bank or lender that they’re dealing with, it’s almost like an adversarial thing. It’s like I’m going to try to only tell them I’m going to make it look real sunny. I’m going to try to you know, spin it in a way that um you know things look amazing. And that’s obviously not helpful long term – you want the most you know, kind of clear picture on both sides of the table. But what would be some of those things we need to say about over, you know, overcommunicate with your your lender or or with a banker, you know, um, on either side. What would you what would be some of those things that you’d be you’d be talking to or you’d encourage people to talk to their, you know, their institutions about?
Eric Schroeder — Well church leaders and churches are always, every year developing an annual budget or an annual plan. So I would share that strategic plan with your your financial professional, who you’re working with. I would share the budget with them. Um, and I would you know have periodic interactions with them. Go have lunch with your lender or banker. Um go meet with them on a regular basis and establish that personal relationship. Ask them about ask that banker about their family. Um, you know, that is making it more less transactional and more relational is always better. Because, Rich, you know, CDF Capital, banks I mean lending institutions, financial institutions, we’re all dealing with a transactional product, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Eric Schroeder — And so how do you take that transactional product and make it relational? It’s hard work. It’s tough, and it just takes time to be overly transparent with your bank or lender and just um, making sure you’re you’re communicating with them often.
Rich Birch — Yeah I know… this wasn’t this wasn’t a banker this was ah someone who we ended up being um you know doing a we rented space from them. They were landlord. We ultimately ended up buying the property from them. And in that transaction we had this little interaction that reminded me how important relationship is in these things. We had pursued this building multiple times. And um, they kept brushing us off. They kept and you know this was in the northeast, and they kept saying oh go away, go away, go away. And I think it was because their perception of what a church is was different than what we were doing. You know we’re a large church 4- or 5000 people. Lots going on. And and they and, you know, this was a big facility, 150- 160,000 square feet, and they were, you know, I think they were like there’s no way, right? Well lo and behold one weekend we were running a special event down the shore. Um, and we had rented out this this thing right off the the beach and it was in the summertime. Great thing. And literally that one of the principles of this organization was riding their bike on the boardwalk past our thing, and saw signs for us. And they called their real estate agent and they said, is this that church that, you know, but keeps bugging us about stuff, you know, about that building? And they said absolutely that’s that’s the same organization. Lo and behold wouldn’t, you know, Monday or Tuesday we got a call back from that broker who was like, hey um I would love to hear a little bit more about what you’re talking about because they saw obviously we had whatever 4- or 5000 people down the shore. They were like okay, that’s a different thing.
Rich Birch — The thing that reminded me in that—and that became actually a great transaction for the church—the thing that reminded me was going above and beyond relationally, trying to connect in a way and that the fact that they saw us, you know, in our environment made a huge difference. You know, I think doing the same thing with our banker, trying to you know, bring them in on the conversations about what’s happening around, you know, and and then but like you say vice versa understand what’s going on in, you know, on their side. So critically important.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about the transactional nature of what we’re doing. You know, I think that can degenerate into into that, and my experience has been if it’s just about interest rates, if it’s just about, you know, where I can get the best here or there, um, if things ever go sideways or if things get a little tougher, ah man, that makes it really difficult. And obviously we all, you know, we all don’t wish those things didn’t happen but sometimes things get tough. We have to figure out how to, you know, redo some stuff. How do how can we push against the transactional nature of this kind of relationship, try to you know, develop more ah, relationally? Anything else on that front?
Eric Schroeder — Oh absolutely. And and trust me, I feel the tension. And I don’t use that word “trust me” lightly, but um I do feel the tension that church leaders have with being good stewards and making sure it’s a great opportunity for the church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — However, you know, what I think people fail to sometimes steward well is their relationship, relational capital. So the relationships, if they’re stewarded well too, you know, as you said, Rich, when that church may run up against a hiccup, that relationship has been solid. That lender should stand with that church. So that’s where the loyalty comes into play. That’s we’re not always shopping for the best rate – I wouldn’t always recommend that. But I would I would definitely hold my lender, you know, accountable to make sure that is this rate fair and competitive and competitive in today’s marketplace. And explaining why that rate is is what it is. So trying to, you know, unhitch that, you know, is action from the rate and hitch it up to more the relationship piece I think is really really important for the long term health of the relationship.
Rich Birch — You know one of the things I’ve run into with—and this again is this is not with CDF Capital this would be with with other, you know, with particularly on the lending side—um, with other lenders is you know, I think when when banks look at us or lenders look at us, it’s it’s hard for them to get their head around what our business is. They can look at the the spreadsheet; they can look at they they see this revenue. Um, but I’ve had lenders say, you know, almost these exact words when we’re in dialogue where they’re like, so how do you make money again? Like what how so people just give you this money? And what and so what makes you think they’re going to continue to give this money? This is particularly a problem in growing churches when because you’re seeing, you know, you maybe in the last three years your revenue has doubled or is tripled in the last couple of years, and a lender looks at that. You know, I always thought, well isn’t that a positive thing? They look at that suspiciously. They’re like that’s going up, but… it goes up quick, man it could come down quick. Unpack that for me from, you know, again, taking the the CDF hat off a little bit, just a traditional lender point of view. What are they thinking in that moment? How can I help them understand ah that trends? Or or ah or should I just ignore, you know, more traditional lenders and talk to CDF, frankly? Ah, but help help me understand that.
Eric Schroeder — Now that’s that’s another great question, and one of the things that lenders wrestle with all the time. Um, so thinking about this from the background, and I go back to I grew up in the church. Um, ah I jokingly say I was born on Sunday and I was in church the next Sunday and kind of…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Eric Schroeder — Um now I’m not perfect; I’m I have missed some Sundays, folks, so don’t think that um…
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — But but anyhow the the model where growing up, the plate is past passed every Sunday.
Eric Schroeder — So there’s revenue coming in every week. And if you look at that model, you know, and in healthy growing churches the trend should follow growth, you know, additional additional revenues. And you know bankers or lenders are skeptical about, you know, is that going to continue? What does an economic downturn, how does that play into? Um and you and I both know that, you know, people that are really connected to the church, that impact doesn’t wane in in an economic downturn, for those that are really connected.
Eric Schroeder — Now um, there is some decline in giving during an economic downturn. And if you’re I’ve seen this in capital campaigns, if there’s a capital campaign and you have a sudden economic downturn, that capital campaign may not be as effective. So um, what I have really just talked to, you know when I was on the side of a banker finding out what’s the church’s growth strategy, and how how did they use debt effectively.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — Debt is a tool.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — And churches that use debt effectively, it is really good to ah, to know an endgame. You know in CDF Capital, as a lender we’re working to help churches get out of debt, not get in debt. So that that’s our mantra is, hey we can use debt as a tool if you’re growing and you’re expanding, you’re out of space. We can help you with those options. A lender can help you with those options. Not not to have something long term though.
Eric Schroeder — So churches that are growing, if the lender understands there’s an endgame to that debt and there’s a way to get out of debt, I think that’s where it makes a lot of sense as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. This is such a funny dynamic because I think again for particularly for folks who maybe don’t come from a church background, it can be difficult when they kind of look under the hood. Because a part of it is they start to understand the dynamics and they’re like, okay well a lot of this seems to rotate around there’s like somebody shows up on Sunday and talks. It’s like people like hearing that person talk and so they give. And they’re like well what happens if, you know, something goes sideways with that person then then what goes on. And and you know it’s an interesting and’s just it’s interesting, having been across the table trying to explain what we do from a business point of view um, you know beyond just the numbers. Because that is a part of the lending equation – at least that’s been my experience. That’s a part of the equation. There’s ah, there’s ah there’s the numbers piece, but then there’s also the do they understand what we do piece. Is that true, or am I just making that up? Is that true?
Eric Schroeder — That’s that’s absolutely true. And it’s understanding the leadership of the church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — And it’s um, if a church is not built around one leader. CDF Capital is not built around me.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — It’s ah built around a great team. And if the church is built around a really strong um, team, the next church is going to be successful no matter what. I think lenders when they evaluate a I’m going to use the word celebrity pastor…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Eric Schroeder — …that would make them nervous…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Eric Schroeder — …because if that pastor leaves, is the giving going to really decline?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Eric Schroeder — Um, the other gauge that we look at, Rich, is—and you mentioned this and when you were talking about um the story with the the bank and the real estate broker—is churches that are impacting the community. Those are the ones that, you know, people can, a lender they can say, I see the impact you’re having in the community.
Eric Schroeder — And we hear story after story of churches that we’re working with that are impacting the community, and that that’s just pointing people to Jesus. And that’s that’s we love that we get to be a part of what God is doing through the local church.
Rich Birch — Love it. Now can we talk a little bit about CDF specifically? I would like to I’d love for you to kind of unpack that a little bit. Help me understand when you think of kind of the core differentiations between CDF and say some other, either lender or bank, place where I could put my deposits. What would be some of those key differentiations that you’d say, hey this is um, you know, this is what makes us different? And and by different I mean better. What is it that… I’m asking you to brag – you’re like a good christian, Eric; you’re not going to brag, but I’d love you to do that. Kind of tell us a little bit – why why would we choose CDF?
Eric Schroeder — Well I think people would choose CDF if they’re mission-focused. And there are a lot lot of great opportunities out there for people to really get connected to a mission. We we’re focused on the local church. Across the United States we’re focused on helping churches grow. And you know, if you’re going to make an investment with CDF Capital um, you’re being a part of what God is doing through the local church in helping churches grow.
Eric Schroeder — If you’re one of the churches coming to us for council, you’re you’re helping um other churches. And we’re a ministry; we’re a nonprofit. So the the dollars that we make is different from my banking background. So that the dollars we made went back to the shareholders, you know? So they’re creating shareholder value.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Eric Schroeder — Um, which what CDF Capital gets to do now is create eternal value and kingdom value by um, helping plant new churches. So that is one of the biggest initiatives of CDF Capital is using the resources that we generate through our our business model—you can you can’t see the air quotes I’m doing…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Eric Schroeder — …um but “business model” is really focused on helping helping plant new churches. Um, so that’s what we’ve been excited about. Um.
Rich Birch — Tell me more about this. Because I think there’s people that don’t know anything about this part of what CDF’s involved in. Unpack this whole thing about how you have been helping plant churches.
Eric Schroeder — Well um, so we have part of our net assets are really part of a quasi-endowment fund which is the church planting fund. And so Stadia has been one of our great partners that we have partnered with for the last 20 years that they’re doing a great job of helping plant new churches. Um, so Stadia was actually a sister um is a sister organization of CDF Capital. Um, so anyhow, it’s it’s been a fun process, you know, to be a part of the church planting effort, you know. Because you and I both know when when I hear the numbers that Barna puts out that the church attendance is in decline, that people are walking away from their faith, that really, you know, Rich, that doesn’t scare me, that challenges me and our team more that we have a lot of work to do. And that we’re going to do our best to make sure we can do what God is calling us to do to turn that tide. Um, so Stadia has just been a great partner um, that we’ve had for several years years in those efforts.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Yeah, this is one of the things I love about CDF is I keep bumping into, I learn about more about your organization, I keep bumping into all these great things that you guys have done to help and support. This is, you know, one of them obviously helping, you know, Stadia and there’s you know there’s lots of different ways that you have stepped in and and tried to help other, you know, ministries which I just think is amazing. Like and I think that can get lost in in the the communication stuff because, you know, we help churches grow – I think there could that’s actually what you do, which is I know it’s shocking to say, but it’s like it’s not a marketing term, friends. It’s not like oh this is like ah that’s like a slick thing to say when you’re trying to reach churches. It’s like no no, this is actually what you know CDF is all about. Is there anything else on that front when you think about when you say you know “we help churches grow,” um, what else comes to mind when you think about that, you know, that that kind of catch phrase?
Eric Schroeder — Yeah, so um, the three pillars that we believe are essential for church growth, and I would I would say in this order: Spiritual Capital. So are we pouring into the spiritual lives of church leaders across the country? Are we praying for them? Um you and I both know through covid and through the pandemic it’s been tough on church leaders. So spiritually we want to pour into them to know we are for them.
Eric Schroeder — The the second um pillar is really Leadership Capital. Um, that’s another part of really CDF Capital – we’re we’re pouring into leaders, um, making sure that they have the resources to be effective and to do what God has called them to do. Um, you’ve mentioned I heard um the previous podcast you did – the XP Summit that’s coming up at May in Dallas.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Eric Schroeder — I mean that’s a way that we can pour into um, young leaders and a leadership capital component of what we do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Eric Schroeder — Ah and then the you know the the third one is the Financial Capital.
Rich Birch — Right.
Eric Schroeder — And really we’re not going to get to that piece unless there’s strong spiritual capital, strong leadership capital, then the financial capital comes into play.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Eric Schroeder — So um, that’s that’s really the three pillars that we’ve used to help churches grow. And really God is used, enabled us to help churches grow. It’s all it’s all him, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I really appreciate that. And and friends that are listening in, this is true. Like you know my interactions with CDF, this is very much the way this is what they bleed. Like there this is not like a some sort of like weird marketing thing where they’re like, well we’ll tell people we pray for them and then we won’t actually do that. And before today’s call we prayed for you as we were, you know, kicked this thing off. It is, you know, it’s it’s Eric’s heart, it’s the whole team. Everybody I’ve interacted with um that is they they live this stuff out. And so yeah, just just fantastic.
Rich Birch — All right, Eric, I’m going to push you on one other thing here. So I want you to get real crystal clear. So we’ve got 4- or 5000 church leaders listening in. Um and there are people that this has tweaked oh you know maybe I should be thinking about we’ve got some funds. Maybe I should be thinking about putting them somewhere else, putting them in a different kind of savings vehicle or something like that. Or we’re thinking about a project in the future that, you know, our our reach is a little bit beyond our grasp. We need to, you know, I was talking with a church leader recently, a church planner about this, and I said because he was kind of bummed about um you know some financial stuff. And I said well this is the problem. You know, we we always have to we have to have more seats than the people we have today. So we’re always trying to figure out how do we do that? How do we get more places, more spots? How do we create capacity for people? And so if I’m, what kinds of churches are you looking for? What’s kind of the middle of your bell curve, the kind of ideal this is the type of church that we’re looking to work with on either of those sides? So like hey you maybe have a church that’s looking to put some money on deposit, or a church that’s um, you know, interested in lending. Um, how would you describe them? Because because I would love people to actually reach out and connect with you guys.
Eric Schroeder — Absolutely. So, Rich, it’s it’s both/and. Um so we’re looking for investors, church leaders that want to be a part of what CDF Capital is doing across the country. So those investments are how we’re able to fund the loan opportunities that come up, and then the interest income generated from that is what goes into church planting. So if you look at it from that that business model standpoint, investments, loan Interest, church planting. So investors that want to be involved in that journey with us, we’d we’d welcome that. Check us out at cdfcapital.org. The…
Rich Birch — Um, are is that mostly is that mostly individual investors, or is it institutional like organizations?
Eric Schroeder — It’s it’s individual and [inaudible].
Rich Birch — Okay, both/and. Okay, great.
Eric Schroeder — And for church leaders that are listening that think, okay, we’re out of space; we we we have or we’re leasing a building. What we do a really great job of is helping churches get in their very first building. Um, we step in when most banks um, when it’s a riskier loan opportunity for a bank where it’s maybe the first building, they don’t have the track record. We’re stepping in and helping churches um a lot with with their first building. So reach out to one of our field team; reach out to Mark Briggs. Um and cdfcapital.org – you can find the field team representative in your area on that website. And they they’re truly what God is using to make a change across the country in helping churches grow.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And and so, friends, you heard him say churches that particularly are looking for to get into their first space. Um, you know you might be there today, thinking hmm that that could be us. I would encourage you to reach out again. That’s just cdfcapital.org. Um, it’s very simple to navigate, easy to understand website, easy to find what you’re looking for. Ah you know, just step in there and you know you see right on the front page: church loans and more. You just click on that explore button and you know they can go through that.
Rich Birch — Is there when you talk about like, and I know every church is different so this is a little bit dangerous asking you this question, but are there like size of budgets, you know, that you’re you’re kind of is a sweet spot? You know I would encourage everybody to reach out to you, but is there you know, kind of a particular sweet spot and obviously you need to talk to people and get, you know, a custom thing and all that. But are there particular, you know, churches churches that are of interest for sure?
Eric Schroeder — Well um, Rich, what I would say is if we’re not the right um lender partner for you, we can direct that person, that church leader…
Rich Birch — Love it
Eric Schroeder — …to their right partner. We’re happy to connect them to our friends in the marketplace that that can help them.
Rich Birch — I love it. Friends, you so you heard that. Let CDF do the work for you you. You’re not sure who to talk with, call CDF, give them all your information. If it doesn’t work there, ah, they’ll help point you in the right direction to so to somebody else. Man that’s a huge help, a huge assistance ah, particularly if you feel a little bit stuck you know in this area. So so good. Well, Eric, what else what else would you like to share just as we kind of close up today’s conversation?
Eric Schroeder — So Rich, this is February 10th that we’re recording this and so my Chiefs are going to be playing – I live in Kansas City, Missouri, or actually Lees Summit, Missouri suburb of Kansas City, so my Chiefs are playing this Sunday so as I thought about really kind of what are the four quarters? What if you were thinking about a game plan for CDF Capital? So some things I think people should know um, CDF Capital has 70 – first quarter: CDF capital has 70 years of serving churches, have 70 years of experience doing that.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Eric Schroeder — Second quarter, CDF you know the mindset would be CDF Capital has strong expertise in the financial operations of a church.
Rich Birch — Yes, so true.
Eric Schroeder — We’ve we’ve seen this you know over 70 years. Um kind of the third quarter game plan would be we care about church leaders which is why our ministry cares about spiritual and leadership development. We care deeply about the church and church leaders. Um, and the fourth quarter, and this is where kind of the winning strategy comes into play, um, we care about the future of the church and church planting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Eric Schroeder — And the reason is we know this is God’s plan A; there’s no plan B. And we know plan A wins. So um, we’re really excited about the future of the church. We’re here to help church leaders.
Rich Birch — Love it.
And we’re just we’re just excited to be a a part of what God is doing. the mantra that I kind of tell our team all the time is work hard, have fun, and give God all the glory.
Rich Birch — So good.
Eric Schroeder — And we as an organization are here to give God all the glory.
Rich Birch — So good. Well, Eric, this has been a fantastic conversation by the the magic of traveling into the future, friends, you’re listening in you knew who won the Super Bowl. So regardless of whether the Chiefs won or not, we know that that’s a 4 part winning strategy for CDF. So really appreciate you being here, Sir. Again, thank you for your support of unSeminary. We really we appreciate It. We couldn’t do it without you. So I really appreciate that and thanks for all, you’re doing to help so many churches across the country grow, whether it’s church plants or, you know, church looking to get into buildings, all of that. So really appreciate that. Thank you so much.
4 Minutes Every Weekend to Increase Revenue & Spread Culture at Your Church with Taleah Murray
Feb 23, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Taleah Murray, the Executive Pastor of Ministries at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California.
One of the areas Taleah oversees at Crossroads is offering talks and using video to share the impact that the church’s generosity is having as people give. Listen in as she talks about finding stories of life change, and how to use storytelling to increase generosity and spread culture at your church.
Celebrate the good things happening. // Talking about the offering can be our least favorite part of weekend services. But it doesn’t have to be awkward, or feel like you’re begging for money. At Crossroads Christian Church, every week during the services a video is played or a story is shared leading into the offering time. These stories are a time to celebrate the good things happening at the church which are made possible when people give. By highlighting stories of life change, or the impacts of various ministries, the church connects people’s generosity to what the church is able to accomplish.
Look around you for stories. // If the thought of finding 50 stories to tell throughout the year feels overwhelming, begin by taking a look around you and asking what’s happening at your church because of people’s giving. Taleah suggests to start by looking at the events you’re doing and missions opportunities your church is involved with. Ask your team members where they are seeing stories in the lives of their volunteers, or in their own lives. Share stories from people getting baptized, or tell the story of a big day like Easter or Christmas. How many people visited, and what happened? Then connect these stories to the giving at your church.
Find help with videos. // If you don’t have a videographer on staff to help with offering talk videos, look for companies or people in your area who film and edit videos. Build a team of volunteers at your church who know how to record and edit videos. Ask the young people in your church who are familiar with using YouTube, Reels or TikTok to see if they can help capture and edit footage. Even if you aren’t able to do a video every week, tell stories of life change using photos on slides.
Make the connection. // Taleah recommends not going over three and a half minutes in your videos. Even if you capture a lot of footage in people’s stories, zero in on how the church helped them get to the point they are now. Then during the offering portion of your service, work with your host so they can communicate to the congregation the role they’ve played in giving and how it is contributing to the work of the church in people’s lives.
Create culture through storytelling. // When you show stories about the people in your church, especially if your church is larger, it helps people identify with each other and makes the church feel smaller. Plus as you share stories of life change, it also helps to create a culture of welcoming brokenness.
Reuse stories. // Beyond the weekend services, Crossroads also shares the stories they capture on social media. In addition, at the end of the year when giving statements are sent out, the senior pastor will write a letter reminding the church of stories shared throughout the year. This helps to remind people where their money goes when they give. Letters are also sent to first time givers with a reference to what was talked about during the weekend they gave.
You can learn more about Crossroads at their website www.crossroadschurch.com or at their Instagram page at CrossroadsCA. Plus check out examples of their offering talks below:
Boldly Bless // It’s amazing what a church can do together by each giving just $1.
Chad’s Story // Incredible story of finding Crossroads and getting involved with his family.
Liz’s Story // How Crossroad’s Spanish ministry is impacting her.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Ah, you’re going to love today’s conversation. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today is no exception. Super excited to have Taleah Murphy Murray—I said Murphy! Taleah Murray with us. She’s the Executive Pastor of Ministries at a great church that you should be following, Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California. (I’ve have friends in Corona and I’m like it’s been a bad couple of years if you live in in Corona because of the name Corona.) It’s about 4000 people attending. They started in the 1890s, and they’re one of the fastest growing churches, now, in the country. Ah Taleah, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Taleah Murray — Hi, thank you for having me.
Rich Birch — So glad you’re here. Yeah I know you must have, particularly early in the covered pandemic when it was all like the novel corona virus that you must have had that joke lots for sure.
Taleah Murray — We did. We did. I was part of a coaching network and they um called me and they said where is where are you from? And I’m like I don’t want to say where I’m from because I don’t want to tell people I’m from Corona.
Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely. That’s a beautiful part of the world though, if you got to be from somewhere. That’s great.
Taleah Murray — It is. It’s great.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, what did I miss? Kind of fill out the story, tell us a little bit about Crossroads. Give us the picture, you know, talk to us about the church.
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so Crossroads has a lot of history. We’ve been around since 1892. Um, we’re in the suburbs of ah, you know, like we’re kind of um about an hour from LA. Um so yeah and it’s a megachurch. we’re about 4000, 5000 people. You know nobody knows what they are after covid.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.
Taleah Murray — Um, but ah, but yeah, we I love I’ve been there for 15 years now, and so um, it’s ah it’s a great church. Um, our pastor has been there I came over with our senior pastor who’s there now for a fifteen years ago, and we’re in the middle of um, a succession plan. And yeah.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s cool. That’s ah, lots of exciting things going on. Your role is Executive Pastor of Ministries; talk to us about that kind of what does that include? What is that framework, what what are kind of the pieces of the puzzle that you you think about all the time?
Taleah Murray — So yeah, my role is Executive Pastor of Ministries. I’m over Children’s Ministry, Junior High, High School, College, Spanish, Care ministries. Um, and I also because I’ve been there for so long, I just get to do the things that I see that’s necessary…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — …so I also um am the story curator ah for us. And so if that’s a sermon illustration that we need, a story for or um, a story for offering that we’re going to talk about today. Um, and I also do a lot of like the development of our communicators. Um, and that way. So yeah I get to do a lot of different things there.
Rich Birch — So good. Love it. Well one of the things we want to talk about today is really has to do with story. And it’s this this moment in um, in the church in our in our services where we talk about the offering, or the tithes, or that kind of piece of the service. And it seems like and we were joking about this beforehand I was just a couple weeks ago was at a church that um it was like they just blew past that part of the service. Like they didn’t it was like whoever was, and I don’t think they were actually embarrassed, but it was like they were embarrassed. They were like, okay, and if you want to give, give now. And then they they you can give online. Actually they didn’t even say that. Um they just kind of acknowledge that it was that you could give, and and they moved on. But that’s not what you guys do at crossroads. Why do you think, before we jump into why you do what you do at Crossroads, why do you think so many churches are miss this moment in the service? They don’t… um, you know they kind of miss this opportunity. What why do you think that is?
Taleah Murray — I think that um, it’s awkward for people to talk about money, and so I think that people are afraid to talk about money a lot of times. Um I also think that um it’s a little bit ah like unknown. What do we do, like where’s the the coaching around this section of and can we like just blow past it? Do we sit in there and look like we’re begging? Um, you know like it can feel like we don’t really have intentionality around it. Sometimes we try to make it, and it’s worship, right? It’s a form of worship. So then do we do the whole worship, and do a song through it? So I think we’re just really kind of and we don’t have a great strategy around that moment. Um, and also I think sometimes we’re afraid of that moment because ah we don’t want to look desperate. We don’t we’re thinking about people who invited their friends to church, and we’re saying, gosh what are they going to think if they hear we’re asking for money? So I think that’s probably the problem we have with it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that makes total sense. So why don’t you talk, first let’s kind of describe what you do at Crossroads. I would encourage people to watch online to, you know, dive deeper. You know when you see this in person, obviously you can only do so much to describe in this kind of setting what you do. But talk to us about what it looks like, and then let’s then we’ll back up and kind of pick apart the process, how do you end up there, and all that. So talk to us what a typical, you know you know, typical weekend what is the offering moment look like.
Taleah Murray — Okay, so I’ll just describe to you our service because that will help a little bit. So we have um you know three songs at the top, then we we’re a church who does communion every week so we have a host that comes out and then does communion. Um, and then we’ll do like baptisms during the next song. So we’ll have another song. And then out of that comes the offering moment. and usually that’s a video. It’s some sort of inspiring story, either it’s a person’s story, it’s a story of a ministry, or an event that we just had, um and so it’s some sort of really great video moment. And then out of that a host will come up and connect what they just saw to people’s giving.
Taleah Murray — So they’ll connect the, whether let’s say last week we showed a um video about kids camp ah kids ministry… ah, actually we’re doing that this week I believe, sorry. So they’ll come up and they’ll say um, because you give here, because of your generosity, 111 kids were able to go to camp this past weekend, and 15 of them gave their lives to Jesus. So if you want to join us in ah, generosity and making these kinds of stories possible, this kind of life change possible, you can join us by giving (and then we give them the way they can give). And then we’ll pray over the kids who made decisions at camp. And then Amen, and then we move off and a transition video will show.
Rich Birch — So good. This is fantastic, friends. Like this again, what Taleah and the team are doing here, this is best-in-class. So If you’re looking to improve this part of your service, you should lean in and learn, you know, from her. So so every week you’re doing this? So you’re looking for 50-some odd stories. Let’s start there. How do you find these stories? What how are there 50 good things happening at Crossroads?
Taleah Murray — There are! There are so many good things. I think you just have to mine for them. So now that um, we have a culture of storytelling, and because I oversee these ministries it makes it easier for me. I mean I’m I’m overseeing these ministries where there’s stories all the time. And my leaders are they they come to me. You know we have this story. You know we have this story. But I’m also looking at just the events that we do.
Taleah Murray — We do a special needs prom; I know I can get two stories out of the special needs prom because we do one where we have um, people that were giving away dresses and giving away [inaudible] they had tried them on. And so I’m you know, looking for stories with that. Anything we do overseas with our missions partners, that’s because of people’s giving, so everything’s an opportunity. I’m like what happens around here because of people’s giving?
Taleah Murray — So that happens and then um, just stories. I mean we have an invitation, you know, we’re a culture that does an altar call every week. And so… and we do baptism. So anytime there’s a baptism, I’m back there asking them, tell me how you came to know Jesus. Tell me what brought you to this moment. Um, and so there’s stories there.
Taleah Murray — And a lot of times um, you know, our team members, because that’s the goal, right? Is to have we want people to serve in the church, because that’s where they find true life change in community. So I’m going to ask every single team member what their story is, how they came to start serving…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Taleah Murray — …what that looks like. So I’m constantly mining and there is something going on every, every week. Um, you can tell the story of Easter. You guys do, you know, every church does big Easter, right? Like get somebody to take b-roll of your Easter story. Tell how many new families came, tell how many baptisms you had that day. Um, there’s a story in everything.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So first of all I love that like, you know, this I would I would agree, you know, just having your kind of an antenna up for this, and creating the space of saying we’re going to tell one of these stories every week. Um you know you’ve got to find one. It’s got to, you know, it’s got to open up. Now talk to me about the video piece. I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like they’re already given up. They’re like there’s no way we can’t do video every week. Friends, I don’t want you to get lost on that. We’ll come back to that idea. But why are you choosing to do video. That’s a significant investment. Tell us kind of what’s happening behind that.
Taleah Murray — Yeah, well video is the medium. Like I feel like video I mean everybody’s watching YouTube um; you know, you hear about the hours that people spend on YouTube. Reels are the thing on Instagram. It’s it’s the way. It’s the way people communicate and so it is a worthwhile investment.
Taleah Murray — And there’s been a time when we didn’t have video people. And there’s people… and I get it I live in California; you know, Hollywood’s right down the street. But there are people you can contract with. And it’s every single time worth contracting. I’ve con… I mean I’ve gotten gritty, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — …to find whatever we can – whoever does video I will take it and I will direct that piece of it to put it together. Um, but I would say it’s really worthwhile. It pays for itself in the end because people are moved through video. They really are. And there’s young people in your church who do video on their phones and it’s amazing. And they can edit something for you to put together for the weekend.
Rich Birch — It’s so true. Yeah.
Taleah Murray — My son is fifteen years old and he’s loves video, and he’s shooting a lot of the videos that we’re doing today. And for free!
Rich Birch — Love it. Right.
Taleah Murray — He is my son. But yeah…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Taleah Murray — But they want to learn and they want to…
Rich Birch — You’re paying him in other ways you’re like continuing to feed him so, you know, yes.
Taleah Murray — I feed him. Yes, yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — So but they they are willing because they want to get, I mean these young people want to be they want to do their craft. They’re doing YouTube on their own. You know, get them and ask them, hey would you make a video for me? You know, can you go to children’s ministry and video what’s happening this weekend and edit something together for us? So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — …I really think that you can do that. You can also tell this story um like some of the things when you said, how do you do 52 videos? Well there are sometimes where we are we’re not doing a video. It’s very rare, but we will pray for our missions teams that are going out, and we connect that story, and the work that we’re doing as we’re praying for them to people’s giving. Um, so there’s things like that too.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — But but I would say video is a worthwhile investment. It really is. It’s paid for itself…
Rich Birch — Yeah I love…
Taleah Murray — …over and over and over again.
Rich Birch — I love that. I know there’s some executive pastors that are want me to get to that question; talk about the financial impact, but we’ll get there friends but not yet. Um, so one of the things I’ve I’ve coached churches on this area if they don’t… so I do love the the your look at video and kind of how you’re doing that regularly. But but the thing that you might—I don’t want you to get overwhelmed by this, friends—even the the one step to say we’re going to have a picture every week that shows the vision of the church. So the example you used of like the the weekend retreat, the youth weekend retreat, even just showing a picture of that rather than just talking about the youth retreat, having a picture of that is like is way more effective, but too many of us miss that um, you know you know, images speak so much louder than just ah, you know, just words.
Rich Birch — So talk to me about videos. I’m sure there’s some common things that you’re like make a great video, or there’s times where you’re like oh that didn’t really hit the mark. What would be a couple of those coaching things from you? You’ve seen a lot of these videos – what works really well um, you know, with a video that places in this moment in your service?
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so you never want to go over three and a half minutes. Like a video that’s over three and a half minutes…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Taleah Murray — …is way too long, way too long. And when you have somebody that wants to tell a story… so a lot of times we’ll tell just one person’s life change story. So ah, let’s take, you know, um we told Toni’s story a couple weeks ago. Toni’s a girl. Um, she she talked about how um she was at this place in her life where she grew up with her dad, who was in in and out of prison, her mom who killed herself when she was ten months old…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Taleah Murray — …and um, she just had this life that was, you know, terrible. She was abused and all of these things. So ah, we told Toni’s story; we asked her about that. Then she came to know Jesus and she started coming to Crossroads um, when she decided to make a change in her life. She had known Jesus before, but then she came to Crossroads and was like I’m going to jump full full in. She got involved in life groups and in community. Um, and then she had this condition, and she went to our Ash Wednesday service and got prayed for, and God healed her…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Taleah Murray — …at this Ash Wednesday service…
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness! Oh my good…
Taleah Murray — And yeah, it was amazing and so she she’s like.
Rich Birch — You got this all in one video?
Taleah Murray — In one video.
Rich Birch — This is amazing. Wow.
Taleah Murray — So but that’s a lot of things, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — So she’s talking about all the things. So I mean I have about 30 minutes of content…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Taleah Murray — …and I’ve got to get that down to 3 minutes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Taleah Murray — So when she’s telling this story you have to have a really good eye to say, and a cut you know, like hardcore, you know, cut to say where am I going with this story? And there’s an arc to every story. Give me the down, you know, what happened the before Jesus piece. Then give me the climax moment when you met Jesus or whatever the thing is – for her was the healing. And then tell me what the how the church because it’s always you’re trying to make the church the hero.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — I know that Jesus is always the hero…
Rich Birch — Right.
Taleah Murray — …but we’re trying to make the church because we’re saying the people in the audience need to see, I did that; I was part of that. Um, and so we do that. So you have to be really cutthroat to say where do I want the story to go? What pieces are going to be important? And then how can I get to the roundup to say at the end of it, Crossroads helped me. So I usually ask them to finish this statement, tell me why you’re thankful for Crossroads. And they’ll say, you know, I’m so thankful for Crossroads because I found community; I found whatever here.
Taleah Murray — Then I’m able to come up and hit the ball out of the park with the host piece to say because of you…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — …Toni was healed, Toni found Jesus, Toni found family that she’s never had before. And you got to do that, Church, you know, because you give here.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — So…
Rich Birch — So good. How do you repurpose those videos? So I do you use them in other places? Do they show up on, you know, your social channels and all that? What what else because you know I’m I’m assuming you don’t just produce them and use them on the weekends, use them at other spots too. How else do you use them?
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so pretty much every single one of them, you’ll find on our Instagram page. So um, our social media person puts it up on Instagram, so it’s content also, you know, for the weekend. Look at Crossroads; look at how you’ve helped Toni’s life change. So we use that.
Taleah Murray — And that one we also used for um—I had them do 2 cuts of that one—so we use it for our women’s ah conference. And I asked a different question at the end of it because our women’s conference was called Flourish. So I said, Toni, tell me how you have flourished in this season. So she’s able to give me that ending, and then we’re able to get the Crossroads ending, you know, for the for the weekend service…
Rich Birch — Still good.
Taleah Murray — …so we can repurpose them that way. A lot of times these ministries too want to, like for the kids, can’t video. They’re going to use that to send a parents next year to say, look at how kids camp you know, send your kids to kids camp this year because look at what happened last year; look how fun this is. And so we repurposed them for almost like market target marketing for the events that we have.
Rich Birch — Love it. Fantastic. So friends, you should go over to it’s just @crossroadsca on Instagram and check out. You can see some real live examples of this. Maybe I’ll have you afterwards, if you could if I could impose upon you one other thing, to pick out like here’s 4, you know, here’s 3 or 4 ones that are like, hey these are kind of like the best examples so that our people could point them to their video people, and say we need to make these kind of things. Um, you know that that could be really helpful if you’d be willing to do that for us, Taleah. um, so talk…
Taleah Murray — Yeah I will totally do that.
Rich Birch — That would be amazing. Talk to me about the hosting spot. So you kind of you kind of gave us an overview, but so we have an idea of what’s happening in the video. And then we come out on a live person stands on stage talk us through what that typically looks like – maybe you know common pitfalls, things that that people, you know, maybe don’t they when they fumble it, you’re like somewhere you’re you’re like oh they did it wrong. Or they’re like oh they really did it great. They… What what what makes that moment fantastic?
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so um, the… I script everybody.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, good, good.
Taleah Murray — So this is what really helps and now a lot of them do it on their own because they’ve grown, but when you’re building the culture, you’ve got to script them to teach them the language. And so I will make the connection for people from whatever the video is to… and so now they can do it themselves. I have all pretty much every one of our hosts – we have um like, you know, eight or something that can do this and they really well. But they understand they are connecting the story to people’s giving. And so there’s certain language that we use: you did this. You know, you made, because of you you made this possible. The thank you for your generosity um, you know. So some of them are a little bit harder because we’re trying to figure out.
Taleah Murray — So um, another idea for a story type video we’ve started telling the stories of our staff members, like so people can see our staff members because… um, so we had our junior high, we have two pastors in our junior high, Katie and Zack, and we asked fun questions of them. Tell me how many, you know, kids you’re reaching, tell me what your biggest ministry fail is, you know, tell me.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — But then we get down to, tell me why you love why is junior high ministry needed, so needed. And then it gets at the heartstrings, you know, and they’re telling these things about…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good.
Taleah Murray — …what they they love. And then the end we ended it with the like what’s a trend that’s happening right now on TikTok? And they did the tortilla slap and it was just hilarious, right? Like so…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — And so with everybody laughing laughing. So now this host has to come up and tie that to giving. And so they tied it…
Rich Birch — Right. Exactly.
Taleah Murray — So the way they did that was just because you give here we have this ministry that’s reaching 480 junior high students a month. And these pastors are leading them and you see the need for them. They’re talking about all these lies these kids are getting. So sometimes it’s harder, you know, you have to help them make that connection. Um, but it really is only like the host spot afterwards is 30 seconds to a minute.
Rich Birch — Okay, quick.
Taleah Murray — Ah, we’re just making the tie real fast. We’re not trying to sound like we’re begging. We’ve made the you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — …we’ve made the connection for them, and then we just need to always give the how. So text GIVE is our thing, you know, to this number. Or you know, go on our website, or we’re on Venmo, and but let’s pray over our junior high ministry right now. So and then we finish it with prayer.
Rich Birch — Okay, love that. That’s good distinction that hey you’re looking for 30 seconds to a minute. And just to kind of pull one thing apart there that I want to make sure, because again I’ve seen churches miss this, particularly I think post-covid or corona since you’re here, post the corona the novel coronavirus. Um we’ve missed the it was more obvious when we were all of us were passing plates, or whatever, how to give. And we now have multiplicity of ways for people to give, and we might stumble that part of it. So you are telling people every week, here are the ways. Do you talk about all those ways every week, or you just to kind of feature one? What does that look like?
Taleah Murray — So usually we have… ah so I have this script memorized but it’s usually…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — …the 2 things. You know, so we tell people because there’s people watching online and in the room, so we say you can text this number to give. Or if you’re in the room and you brought cash or check, there’s offering boxes around the room that you can drop your offering in after the service.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Taleah Murray — Um and so that’s how we say it. We just added the Venmo piece and so we’re noticing as we say Venmo people are like we’re tapping into a different audience.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Taleah Murray — So we’re kind of trying that right now. So we’re giving them the three ways. Um you know so…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Taleah Murray — But normally we wouldn’t do that. Ah, but because it’s new…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Taleah Murray — …we’re doing it and we’re seeing how long we’re going to last with that.
Rich Birch — And do you have any kind of associated graphics with that. Do you do like ah, you know, to stuff come up on the screen, or lower thirds to kind of you know, bring the number up on screen, all that? Tell tell me about that.
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so we have a lower third that just has the “Text GIVE to” the number so that’s… it’ll show up while I’m talking. Um and it doesn’t show up during the video it shows up as soon as like the host comes up and starts talking about the how to give peace.
Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, so let’s talk about outcomes. Let’s talk about the difference you think this piece is making. We’ll get to the finance piece – keep listening, people. But let’s talk about the non-tangible. Ah so for my as an outsider, I would say man this would have driven is driving so much great culture stuff at the church. It’s because you’re celebrating, this is what our church is about. Talk to me about the non-financial kind of benefits of doing this um, you know, to the church and you know the church culture has been what that what what’s been positive on that front.
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so we’re a big church. We’re a megachurch, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — Like we’re talking 4 to 5000 people…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Taleah Murray — …and so it can feel really big. Now when you’re showing somebody’s story every week, or you’re showing your pastors, and you’re telling who they are, um, it becomes people identify with those people and say, I was an alcoholic too. Oh my gosh, this place welcomes alcoholics. You know, I was that too. Or I know that person is actually my preschool daughter’s teacher. I didn’t know that was his story. And so now they’re becoming small, right? So they’re coming and they’re seeing people and it makes people um more approachable, and it makes them human, you know. So I mean it just it really does connect people, but it also creates a culture of our church where we’re saying and, you know, we’re a church who welcomes brokenness. Um, and so it’s it’s a culture establisher. And then also with my ministry leaders, it’s helping them get to know people and their stories because they know I’m looking for them. So all of a sudden we become a church that’s small because everybody’s asking questions and they’re knowing they know we’re going to be asking for who who do you know? Whose life has been changed? What is your newest team member’s story?
Taleah Murray — Um, and so we just become a church that knows people because we have to know them for their stories.
Rich Birch — Love it! Yes. Love it.
Taleah Murray — So it’s really changed us to be a culture of like people feel known, and and feel welcomed, and um, it really is a leadership development tool as well because you’re having your leader say you need to know people. So make sure that you’re you’re talking to people and asking them their stories.
Rich Birch — Right. I love that; so good. We have a group coaching thing that we do with a church with about a dozen churches and they’re all over 1000. You know some 3 or 4000—in that range—and one of the things we come back to time and again, there is the real “competitor” of a church of that size or is, in some ways, is ourselves. But it’s this idea of um people, like the joke I always make is the only people that like big churches are pastors. Um, you know, we, you know, we we have to make our churches smaller. We have to figure out how do we make it feel more relational. And so this kind of thing you know you’re only telling fifty stories. I’m not and undermining that – stick with me here. You know that’s fifty stories out of 5000 people every year. That’s a ton of work to make all that happen. Um, but you’re doing that, wishing that you could tell 5000 stories, hoping that someday you’ll be able to tell all those stories. But that does in some ways it it shrinks the church makes it feel much more small it makes it smaller.
Rich Birch — What about on the financial side? You keep doing this, you’re investing you’re investing a significant amount of your time. You’re investing obviously video time – we don’t have to get into specific specific numbers, obviously. But obviously you’re convinced internally that this helps financially, I’m assuming. You know, talk about that.
Taleah Murray — Yeah, so um, we started this in 2017, probably November of 2017, we started telling stories because we had launched a campaign where we were um, trying to build ah buildings for our kids ministries and stuff. And so um, when we launched that, we decided we had to tell the story. So it became a priority for us. And at that time we were maybe telling one a month because we were just trying to keep vision in front of people. Um, and so it kind of ties into, you know, the campaign piece that giving went up, giving units went up, significantly.
Taleah Murray — Then in um, 2020 we had to double down because we started realizing, oh shoot you know that was when nobody knew what was happening, and we didn’t know what that was going to look like we were afraid if we’re not meeting every week buckets are not getting passed every week. Are we going to make money? So we started telling a story like intentionally um, weekly because we were doing a lot of things, ah you know overseas, with our food pantry was growing. And so we just did that and we went up in giving all throughout 2020 with those stories.
Rich Birch — So good.
Taleah Murray — Um, and so it has really proven um, and our giving has not gone back down to pre-story levels. You know like we we kind of adjust…
Rich Birch — Right.
Taleah Murray — …you know a little bit since the campaign kind of but but we’ve gone up significantly since we’re telling stories. And we hear a ton of feedback from people who are saying, thank you for telling me where my money is going.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — Because a lot of times people don’t see, and they don’t know, and so you’re telling them weekly where their money is going.
Rich Birch — It’s so true. Yes, it’s so true.
Taleah Murray — So um, they love that people love that. And they’re proud of their church so they will share these stories…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — …um from Instagram they will share them to tell people, look at what my church is doing, you know? Um so it really is great for them.
Rich Birch — I love it. Yeah, it’s so true. I think this is one of those things that we take for granted in in local church leadership is that, you know, we don’t have everybody that comes and sits in our rooms every week but we do have a large portion of them that do come and sit in front of us every single week. If we were any other nonprofit in town, ah man, they would kill for that kind of engagement. They would love to be able to have their people in front of them every single week. You think about, you know, the local food bank throws a a giant gala once a year that takes a ton of time, effort, and energy energy and they do that once, where we get to do it 52 times a year. We should take take advantage of that and get in front of our people.
Rich Birch — Um, maybe could you talk a little bit about, and this is kind of it’s adjacent to the offering um the offering portion, the offering segment. What other things are you doing on the kind of donor development side that are kind of connected to storytelling? Are there other ways that you’re you know talking with with donors or people that give to the church, or just the church in general that that are using stories? Is there other ways that you’re kind of spreading this through the rest of that strategy?
Taleah Murray — So the the way we we um will tell, you know, we’ll send statements to people.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Taleah Murray — Um, at the you know the beginning the end of the the tax for their tax deductible or whatever the amounts.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Taleah Murray — And so in that our senior pastor pastor will write a letter. And he’ll use a lot of the stories that we’ve told throughout the year.
Rich Birch — Right.
Taleah Murray — So you know we’re talking how many people we’ve served through our food pantry because of you. So when they’re seeing their tax statement, they’re seeing that story again, those stories retold um in that. And so and we’ll do that like in the middle of the year too, we send out these like, here’s where you are; you didn’t know. And then remember this is what you’ve done with your giving in a letter, a written piece. Um, at the end of the year a lot of times we’ll send a printed piece that’s like beautiful, you know, um pictures and all the things, but we’re using these stories again. Like people are, you know, we remember we’re using all the stories told, um throughout the year with the images and we’re telling people that as well. So that’s how we’re using the stories in those settings. We have somebody who is starting now to do like stewardship pastoring um and he’s praying and pastoring the people. Um, oh and also we’d send like a first time, when when the first time givers…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Taleah Murray — …we’re connecting, we’re sending them a letter and we’re telling them whatever the adjacent story was um, you know that that they just gave that week and because of you we were able to send these kids to camp, or you know whatever the case is. So um, the other thing that we do that’s kind of an align with a giving and it kind of goes to this place is we do this thing called boldly bless.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Taleah Murray — Where we ask people to get $1 more than they normally give. Um and then we bless the family and we tell that story.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Taleah Murray — And sometimes we’re not able to give that story on video because it’s one week. You know it’s within one week.
Rich Birch — Right.
Taleah Murray — And so sometimes we can run it over that fast. So we’ll just tell it and like you said show pictures of if the family lets us. Sometimes it’s not… we don’t want to exploit that and so
Rich Birch — Um yes because of the nature of it. Yes, yeah, yeah, because the nature of what it is. Yeah yeah.
Taleah Murray — Right. If we went shopping for a family we’ll show the staff shopping for them. You know, um in stuff like that.
Rich Birch — Yep, Love it.
Taleah Murray — So ah, but we tell the story that way. And then we’ll use that in our first time giver letter that week – because of you we were able to buy groceries for this family.
Rich Birch — Wow. Ah friends, as you have heard, this is best in class. This is fantastic. This is just yeah, so great. This has been super helpful today, Taleah. What um, anything else you want to share just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode? Anything you know in this whole area that you want to ah, encourage people if they’re thinking about maybe stepping into this, thinking about taking some steps towards this? What would you say to them?
Taleah Murray — Um, I would say that this is don’t, like you said this before, don’t leave money on the table. There’s so much that people can be inspired by and there’s different pockets that people give out of. So you’ve got your, you know, faithful obedient tithers that don’t need any inspiration. They’re just going to be obedient. But then you’ve got your on-the-fencers who just need to be inspired and you’ve got your skeptics who are saying, you know, I don’t know that I can trust this church. And what you tell them when you’re investing in this kind of thing is you can trust us. I’m going to show you where your money’s going. This is a wise investment.
Rich Birch — So true.
Taleah Murray — And that’s also language that we use with the host piece, like the church is the best investment. It’s you get the greatest return on investment at the church because you’re investing in life change and people’s eternal eternity.
Taleah Murray — Um, and so I would say invest in this portion. Invest in a video person. Invest in coaching your hosts to be super intentional um, which is why I said like I script them. Because it needs to be succinct. We don’t need people to hate the offering portion. We want them to love it.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Taleah Murray — You know to look forward to that portion of the service. Um, so just be really intentional and invest your time in it. It’s worth it.
Rich Birch — So good. This has been fantastic, friends. Ah make sure you scroll down; check this check the show notes. We’ll have some links to kind of best-in-class ones from Crossroads specifically so you can kind of see that it would give you kind of a visual example of what we’re talking about here today. Taleah, thanks so much for being on. So honored that you took some time to be with us today.
Taleah Murray — Thank you so much for having me.
Kadi Cole Interviews Rich Birch about Female Leadership in the Church
Feb 16, 2023
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kadi Cole who leads the organization Kadi Cole & Company which helps with leadership development, management skills training, executive level coaching and more.
This time Kadi is taking over hosting the podcast as she interviews Rich on how men can open the doors to female leadership in the church.
Exposure to differences teaches us. // Different cultures, even around North America, look at genders differently. Growing up, Rich was exposed to different cultures as his family moved around often. Our experiences within churches, various denominations, different schools and neighborhoods can impact our views on women working in the church. Those who are exposed to more diverse viewpoints tend to be less locked in to one particular paradigm. Regardless of how we grew up, it’s important to be aware of and address our own biases.
Learning from what you see. // One person who still stands out in Rich’s mind is a man whom Rich worked with early in his church leadership days. This man helped with tasks that might typically be left to women on a church staff. He honored and spoke highly of the women on his team, and modeled that to the other men in leadership. Most people learn from what they see, not necessarily what they are told to do.
Different opportunities for men and women. // Rich and Kadi grew up in a time where men and women in church leadership had vastly different experiences. Decades ago when they were new to ministry, Rich and Kadi visited the same church on separate occasions and met with the same pastor. Rich asked to shadow his staff and had the opportunity to spend the day with him, even going to his house where they talked one-on-one with no one else there. Meanwhile Kadi took her sister to the church with her so that she was never alone. She didn’t go out with the pastor anywhere and never considered that she might be able to shadow his staff. This was the dynamic that they grew up in, and it wasn’t until years later that they realized how different the same experience was for men versus women.
Ask for opportunities. //For women in church leadership, it’s important to learn and ask questions. Ask for the opportunities to learn more. As a female leader, offer those who are new to ministry the opportunity to spend time with you and learn from you. Invite someone along with you as you go about your work.
Speak truth and encouragement. // Women in church can be held back by their own limiting beliefs. High capacity female leaders are perfectionists and know that there are few opportunities for them, so they put a lot of pressure on themselves. When godly, male leaders who are spiritual authorities speak truth to them about themselves, it helps women change their views of themselves. Speak encouragement to the women in leadership at your church. Let them know when they are doing a great job. Remind them that the gifts they bring to the table are important and needed.
Advice for men and women. // Rich advises that for the men in church leadership, if these conversations around women leading aren’t already happening, you’ll probably need to start that dialogue. It will require some awkward conversations, but it’s worth it. For women, Rich encourages them to use their voices and to step up. Take risks and take advantage of opportunities. Offer the good gifts that God has given to you.
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a different kind of episode today. Um I’ve got my friend Kadi Cole, a return guest, which you know whenever we have a return guest that’s a good thing, but it’s a different kind of episode. But let me tell you a little bit about Kadi. Kadi is an incredible leader. She spent 16 years at Christ Fellowship in Palm Gardens, Florida leading a whole variety of um areas. The church grew from about 3500 to over 20,000 which is incredible. Um, she, a number of years ago, stepped out and leads her own organization called Kadi Cole and Company. Ah she’s had key roles with organizations like Leadership Network, Replenish Ministries, Multi-site Solutions. Ah, she has a passion to help church leaders who want to do a better job, particularly on developing female leadership talent within their congregation. So super excited to have Kadi on because we got chatting and, so this is a little bit weird, but we got chatting and she said, hey Rich, I’d love to interview you on your podcast about that. And I was like, that sounds amazing. So so happy to have you on the show, Kadi. Welcome, or happy for you to have me. I don’t know how this works exactly.
Kadi Cole — Yes, I’ll take over the host microphone now. So yeah, thank you so much, Rich, for letting me come in here. Yeah I I’m just always so fascinated as I work with churches and particularly male leaders around this topic of how do we do a better job developing female leaders, the talent that God’s brought to our churches, or even in our lives. And really male leaders are a huge piece of kind of shifting the conversation of that, opening doors for women, ah equipping, mentoring, challenging, sponsoring. I write a lot about all those different kinds of ways that men really have the power and they many ways hold the keys. And you’re such a champion of women. You’ve certainly been a champion for me; you’ve opened doors for me. I know you’ve done that for a lot of other women and a lot of other churches and places and even on this podcast.
Kadi Cole — And so I’m really curious to hear about your story in this topic. Ah, what it was like for you, when did you realize this was kind of an issue. How have you navigated that? Um, what are some things you’re still working on? So that’s what I want to talk to you about today. And I have a feeling your listeners are going to be fascinated by what we learned.
Rich Birch — Well, thanks. I’m looking forward to it as well. This is I was just looking up. This is episode 747 and we’ve only done this once before with my good friend, Carey Nieuwhof. So I feel a little bit nervous to be honest. I was like I was saying to Christine, my wife, I’m a little bit nervous; I don’t know what’s she going to ask. How’s it going to go? Ah, but yeah, no, this is a topic I am passionate about and super honored to get a chance to kind of chat with you today.
Kadi Cole — Great. Well Rich, why don’t we start by kind of taking us back to the beginning. Talk to us about the context in which you grew up that informs so much of our ideas and frameworks around gender, who we are, who people of the opposite sex are, and how those rules kind of play out, particularly in our faith. So kind of fill us in on the context you grew up and um, some of the the things that when you look back now you start over like, huh, that’s different than maybe how I think now and here’s how I got there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, great question. So um, when we were younger like, you know, like when I was in elementary school, that sort of thing, um, we went to church, but it was not um it wasn’t like ah it was ah definitely a cultural experience. I would say you know our family had this kind of great awakening at one point um, where you know church and kind of the things of Jesus went from those are interesting ideas that it wasn’t like we disagreed with them. It wasn’t that we were like oh it, it just wasn’t a huge deal to us. And and we were my my dad moved a lot when I we were kids. And in every couple of years he would move to a new place, and or we’d move to a new place, and they were super brand loyal to their ah particular slice of Christian world. And we would just literally go to the whatever the church was the closest the kind of brand that we always went to. And we were just about to move at one point and ah the minister at our church had an affair with another minister. And that was ah pretty profound for my parents. Um, they were like oh whoa like maybe we should really maybe take some time to consider when we move the next time what church we should go to because they felt kind of a little bit burned by that. And it’s a very Jesus kind of story because he’s good at taking bad things and making them great, and that was obviously a bad thing, but in our little family it was it was a great thing.
Rich Birch — We we literally were just moving and um, my parents did end up going and looking at a number of different churches. I remember that as a kid. I was like this is like you know I’m in the you know grade 8 you know that kind of timeline. And um, we we ended up at this one church that was this great Presbyterian Church, you know, in hindsight and great evangelical presbyterian church. And I remember distinctly two things. First of all, they they talked about the bible like it was true, which was new was a new experience, like it was like oh like they think this thing’s actually true. And then they prayed like it was actually stuff was going to happen, like that was and even as like ah as an eighth grader that really did kind of stick with me, and it was really there that God got a hold of our whole our entire family’s life. And I would say that’s where we became Christians. I that I think ties into this because even from early days, the church that we were a part of there were there were women in leadership. That was a part of the equation of what was going on there. Um, now kind of over the time you know we shifted, we we moved again like as always happens we moved um a couple years later, and um we went and this struck me, so this is now I’m in high school. You know my parents go to um the the minister at our church and we say hey we’re moving to this other town. This is all pre-internet, right? And they’re like, hey can you help us find a church in the new community? And so he goes and and I don’t know what he did like calls people. What did you do before the internet? I don’t know what they did.
Rich Birch — So they… and he comes back to my parents and says…
Kadi Cole — There are these things called the Yellow Pages, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yes! But he he comes back to them and he says, you know what? You shouldn’t go to the Presbyterian Church in in the town there. And at the time I didn’t you know like I don’t know what all that means. Um, but he’s like there’s this great church and it was a Christian and Missionary Alliance church. It was a different a totally different denomination.
Rich Birch — And even as like ah as a grade 9 kid that really like struck me that here was this guy suggesting, hey you should go somewhere different. Um and because he was like I think you’ll find that is more—and you know I didn’t have the language for this at the time—but it was like that were probably more aligned with, you know, your experience here, what they teach about the bible than necessarily the Presbyterian Church did in the town we were moving into. Um now that kind of started the trajectory leadership change trajectory where I’ve spent most of my time, ironically, not in kind of more mainline churches. I’ve spent more of my time in what we would call you know more of the eventually the kind of. evangelical non-denominational world. That’s where I’ve spent most of my time.
Rich Birch — But I do think those early years did impact particularly the gender thing. And the other thing too in I went to I did go to bible college, like I was one of those people. And the bible college I went to is fantastic – it’s ah, a school in Canada called Tyndale. And they’re they’re proudly what they call transdenominational, and they celebrate the fact that people come from a wide variety of of backgrounds. And that was really formative to me because I I um early on didn’t um like I was kind of like engendered in me in my leadership that like we should celebrate people who look at the bible differently. Like where I think there’s that isn’t necessarily the case with lots of people where I think there are people that are like if you’re not from my tribe, you’re not from my narrow group, then I can’t we can’t work together. And so um, very early on…
Rich Birch — And then I took a great ah class, um Professor Elizabeth Daly, Dr. Daly’s class, on gender in school. I was thinking about this, preparing for this. I’m like wait where did that… and I still actually have the textbook. It’s one of the few textbooks I kept. Um her class really impacted me because I would say that was the first time that I actually thought about this issue that I was like oh like yeah okay, there are people who who think um, you know who are trying to maybe limit women’s abilities to lead. Um that was like ah even like a new idea even at that point. I was like oh whoa, that’s interesting like okay this is something to think about. And that you know I that for sure her class that class impacted my thinking around this whole area. Obviously we got into all the theological stuff. Um, but it it impacted even just practically how we how we even just even how my wife and I have our marriage. Like there was stuff that came out of that class around how she because she was it was all this kind of sidebar stuff around how her and her husband managed their kind of relationship that ended up impacting even how Christine and I manage our relationship. So those would be a few things I think from my early years that impacted my thinking around and just leadership around gender.
Kadi Cole — Interesting. That that’s so fascinating to me because there’s a few things I want to highlight from your story. First of all, you moved around a lot, which means there was diversity even in the kind of cultures you were a part of, the kind of schools you were a part of, the neighborhoods you lived in, the ways families operated. And we do know that in different areas of the country, or in North America in different areas of the world for sure, cultures look at gender differently. Even bible believing really scholarly people we have different views around gender in our culture. And so that probably even ah, maybe shook anything that was sort of like locked in as a paradigm every time you move, you kind of get a new paradigm about those things. And then, like you said, some of these more experiences in churches and dynamics, this class, all of those things really form our view around this.
Kadi Cole — And all of us carry biases along in life that we’re us unaware of. You know, hopefully we spend time thinking, and praying, and experiencing things that kind of bring insight and awareness to those. Ah, but we have seen that people who have a broad variety of diverse experiences tend to have more insight around those, obviously just because you get exposed ah, to so many things.
Kadi Cole — Ah when you um, kind of look back on your leadership journey then, like in Ministry Leadership maybe in bible college or your first couple pastoral leadership roles, when did you realize that gender was kind of like a dynamic in your leadership? Like as you’re leading a meeting, or that maybe there are women on your team that have different backgrounds than you, and so they’re coming and showing up to the table differently. Or there are men who maybe have different views than you and they’re ah treating women differently, or or just that it’s a thing. I think sometimes people don’t realize it’s a thing and then you sort of go, man, there’s something here that’s affecting us. And it’s hard to put your finger on till you all of a sudden you uncover it and you’re like, wow this is actually sucking a lot of time and energy from our productivity.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Great question. So I I’d love to say it was like super early on, I really understood this. Um, but actually it was it was one of these examples of like a small thing that has had like weird weird disproportionate impact on my thinking. Um I was serving at ah a great church in the Toronto area. And there was ah a leader who I deeply respected – who’s probably 10 years older than me, is just a little bit farther down the the road and it was this is like a silly stupid small thing, but it really did impact me. We were we were having a staff lunch. So at this point our staff probably had 30 or 40 people on it. I was a part of the senior leadership team. This other individual was also a part of, this guy named Darrell was also ah you know part of the senior leadership team. And um, we were just getting you know pulling everything together, getting this lunch ready. and um. You know the way it was being served was it was like you know there’s all this food sitting out and then there was a couple people standing behind the counter, serving the meal. And ah there was I think maybe 2 or 3 people standing behind the the counter. And again super small detail but Darrell he said to there was um, ah one of our assistants was standing there about to start serving out the meal. And he said to her hey, is it okay, if I don’t have you do that? Is it okay, if I step in? Because I just don’t always want it to be like, you know, there’s always a woman who’s handing out the food.
Rich Birch — Um, and I it struck me. I was like that is an interesting um observation, you know, that and although you know it was ah it was a small thing and it was a um, it was a visual thing. Ah but I would say that was one of those early things that I was like oh yeah, that’s interesting, like even just who serves the meal. Who is like the person that’s always handing stuff out um can be perceived, can can say something without us ever saying anything.
Kadi Cole — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — And so I’ve often thought back to that moment that ooh something turned in me that I was like, oh I need to pay more attention to this. You know I respected Darrell; I still respect Darrell. He’s a great leader. Um, you know and and even though it was a small thing… And then you start to notice it, right? Then you’re like oh, here’s a guy I lead and I notice; it’s not just about handing out food. There’s all kinds of things in his ministry where he’s trying to find ways to honor um, you know, provide opportunity for, speak highly of, um, you know, ah you know, cutting down other guys if they’re like, hey you shouldn’t be making a joke like that. That’s not a great joke. Um, you know those kinds of things that um, that you know, I had definitely had an influence on me for sure. And that was that you know that’s in my you know, kind of in those first ten years of ministry that that definitely stood out as one of those kind of turning points. Um.
Kadi Cole — I love the intentionality of that. And those things really do first of all that it says something really significant to that woman. And it gives an example to people like you and other people who are watching. Ah, but the other thing is, and we’ve talked about this before the last time we chatted about this, is just how easy it is for our leadership decisions or our cultures or kind of our habits and practices don’t always exactly match our theology. And most people are picking up on our theology from what they see not necessarily just from what we teach. And oftentimes we don’t teach on this topic because it is kind of controversial and it’s not something you want to, you know, be talking about every other month. And so ah, those intentional movements really do carry a lot of weight. They have ripple effects.
Kadi Cole — And it’s also really encouraging, I think it’s things all of us can do, right? It’s things all of us can be more aware of our surroundings, more aware of the way we program something, or the way a meeting operates, or who we delegate to without even thinking about it. We can really cause some ripple changes and bring more awareness just with that sort of intentionality.
Rich Birch — Well yeah, and I love so the other thing so there was not I don’t like it was I think there was just the three of us standing there. Like there wasn’t a whole big… it wasn’t like he made a big show of it, right?
Kadi Cole — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It wasn’t like a he—and this is Darrell like he’s that’s him to a “T”. He’s like he’s an amazing leader. Um, and is always trying to you know he’s always one of these guys always trying to lift other but lift other people up which is great. But it you know it was one of those, oh wow, like that’s an interesting you know it was a kind gesture ah and and incredibly true, right? Like that it’s it’s one of those like oh yeah, like I would have if it’s always it’s always women handing out the food, that may not that may subtly communicate something that we don’t want to communicate.
Kadi Cole — Rich, what would you say is one of your biggest lessons or stories about how leadership experiences can be different for men and women?
Rich Birch — Well, so this is in a similar timeframe, a couple of years before the the lunch. Um I ah, you know our church was growing. We were, our church very similar… we have a similar our, your, my backgrounds – we very similar kind of background. We started doing multisite before we called it multisite, like it was it was we were doing this we didn’t even know what to call it. We’re doing this thing 35 minutes away. And um I was aware that I had heard through the grapevine—this is like this is 2000/2001—I had heard through the grapevine that Willow Creek was doing something similar, but I didn’t I didn’t really know, and I didn’t know anyone at Willow at the time. And so I literally dialed—you’ll get a kick out of this as a Gen Xer—I literally dialed 411. Like I was like I don’t know their phone number. I dialed 411 and I’m like Willow Creek in and I think I even said somewhere in Chicago, like I don’t I don’t even know where it where it was.
Rich Birch — And so eventually I got through, and and got to the the person that answered the phone. And I and I explained this – I said you know there’s our church is doing this thing, I think you guys are doing something similar. Who can I talk to? And they’re like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. There’s this guy Jim; you should talk with Jim. I’m like great – put me through to Jim. And so I get Jim, didn’t answer his phone, and went to his voicemail. And I I said like hey, I explained a little bit about our church I’d love to chat, and here’s my email address. Um, and so he emails me back and so then I say this crazy thing – I said, hey I would love to come and spend a week with you. Can I? Ah, like I’ll fly down. I said you I you don’t need to do anything. Like I’ll just follow you around, I’ll follow your team around, I’ll sit in on whatever meetings. You don’t ah, you don’t need to book anything specific. I just want to kind of soak in everything I can.
Rich Birch — And he’s like… so we get on the phone eventually and he’s like, that’s a bit odd. Um, but sure if you want to do that, that’s fine. And [inaudible] remember went down in like October and it was initially at the beginning of the week, ah like it was literally I just followed I just following his people around. He just has just gave me a bunch of meetings, and we sat in all that. Well eventually we start talking, and you know by the end of the week he’s like hey, why don’t you come over to my house and we’ll have dinner. And we’re we’re hanging out and um and you know I didn’t end up staying in his place, but was there for quite a bit, and you know we we became fast friends.
Rich Birch — Now for friends that are listening, you see how these two things are intersect. I would say it took me 15 years after that event before I realized something happened at that that will not does not happen for for female leaders: me going over to his house, hanging out, like literally sitting on his couch. You know he was making dinner. Um his wife was away and we were just hanging out. You know the all the informal stuff there cemented our relationship to the point where, you know, I left that week I started that week I don’t know this guy. I left that week still to this day he’s one of my closest ministry friends. You know we we don’t talk all the time, but when we do talk, it’s like we’re right right back in it. And like I say…
Kadi Cole — Well and you two have collaborated a lot over the years around multisight…
Rich Birch — Yes, we’ve done a yes.
Kadi Cole — …and yes, yep.
Rich Birch — And that started from that. It started from his generosity of saying sure, hey why don’t you come in and hang out? But again I like I I wish I could say you know I realized that that was some sort of unique privilege I had. I didn’t I didn’t understand that. It was, like I say, probably 15 years after that until I realized, oh wait a second, like I’m you know what was your experience? You’re you’re friends with Jim. Like you know, tell me about that.
Kadi Cole — Yeah, so yeah I have a I have a story also. And just for the record, I want to say Jim Tomberlin is one of the most amazingly generous leaders.
Rich Birch — Incredible! Yes, incredible.
Kadi Cole —And he has been a huge champion of mine. He’s opened a ton of doors for me, and I know I could call him with a request and he would do everything he could to help me. But this was twenty years ago and I was in the same place you were. Oddly enough I was ah kind of leading the multisite initiative at my church. Again, we didn’t know what to call it. I was looking up, I was on in magazines looking up church magazines…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kadi Cole — …for churches that had more than one address…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kadi Cole — …trying to figure out how to navigate this and we were hearing rumors of places. And I’d been to Willow Creek to some of their conferences a couple times. So I’m like they showed up in a magazine and so I ah called up there and emailed and just said in fact, my whole orientation to it was so completely different than yours (Rich’s) because I looked up their services; I just planned to go to a service. I stayed with my sister to save money because I didn’t, you know, I didn’t really have a department. I had a girl title that I worked for the executive team, and I was charged with researching this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kadi Cole — I didn’t know that people could like request to hang out for a week. So I’m just going to go to a service at their campus.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kadi Cole — And I did… I think I left a ah voicemail or email and just gave Rich a heads up – I had no idea who he was, and said I’m going to be there I would love to just grab 15 minutes of your time after service to ask you a couple questions. And I went and I took pictures of everything…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kadi Cole — …and I you know jotted down all the notes…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kadi Cole — …and learned how to hang a sign in from the ceiling of a school and you know all those early days.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kadi Cole — Um and so it was great and he was really helpful. He’s probably stayed with us 45 minutes. I brought my sister with me because I didn’t want to be sitting with this guy, you know, just the 2 of us. I didn’t know what the dynamics would be. And so um and that was great. And then I didn’t talk to Rich again for probably 10 years.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kadi Cole — And ah when we were sharing this story one time a few years ago, that’s when I realized just maybe three years ago, that oh my goodness people had such different experiences. I didn’t even know to ask for those things. I didn’t even know that shadowing a leader at a church was an option. I certainly never got invited to someone’s dinner at their house till maybe five years ago when I wrote a book.
Kadi Cole — And so and ah that isn’t Rich’s ah you know that wasn’t you, that wasn’t Jim, that wasn’t me – that was just the dynamic that we grew up in. And all of those sort of experiences and habits I would say one of my challenges as a leader has been to learn and ask questions, and then ask for those kind of opportunities. Every time I’ve asked someone says yes. And if I would have asked Jim, he would have said yes. I really just never thought of it.
Rich Birch — Right. Fascinating.
Kadi Cole — And not only that but to also offer that to people. Because when you grow up without a lot of those experiences, you don’t know to offer them. It’s kind of like parents who, you know, never said I love you, or never heard that from their parents, they have to work extra hard to offer that to their kids. And so even in my own leadership I’ve had to really challenge myself bring someone with you, invite someone to come, bring them to your house for dinner. You know, just all of those things that I think for many men this is just how you grow leaders and how you do leadership. But for women who are kind of breaking in, these are brand new concepts. And we don’t know that world exists. We don’t know to ask for it, and we certainly don’t know how to offer it to other people.
Rich Birch — Um, oh um, yeah, that’s so fascinating to me. Like yeah, and it’s humbling. You know I think a part of that it’s it is um because I I don’t… so it was odd. It was odd that – it wasn’t like there was lots of other people doing that. I remember him at the time I met with some guy there and he and I was like this is amazing. Like I can’t believe that, you know, you guys, you must get these all the time. And they’re like… Because at that point multisite was like this weird thing that Jim was working on. It was like…
Kadi Cole — Right. I would say though in church ministry people were doing that. If you were a youth pastor you could kind of like find the guy and go hang out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. No that is very true.
Kadi Cole — Yeah.
Rich Birch — No that’s very true. That’s absolutely true. Yeah, that’s true. It’s interesting
Kadi Cole — So Rich, um over the years then so you’ve kind of had this journey of of having your mind expanded, thinking about it, reflected, but I also know you’ve been a pretty intentional champion for women in different environments and churches that you’ve been in. What are some of the actions that you have ah considered and been intentional about and like purposefully done to open doors for women, or advocate for female leaders that you think of made a good impact? Maybe some of the things you did that actually were terrible ideas. I’m sure people would love to hear about what not to do.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Rich Birch — Just kind of teach us from your experience with 25 years in the game, like what have you learned about how to do this and how you can leverage your ah position and your authority to open doors for female leaders.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. So um, there’s been a number of things over the years. I think the general ah what I’ve tried to do is be a vocal advocate for women um both with them directly, ironically. Like I think there’s a um, like literally just today I was in a podcast interview earlier where there was an incredible woman that unpacked literally best-in-class stuff. Like I’ve never heard this stuff before. And after it goes off the air and and she’s like, oh was that was that any good? Like was that, you know, was this like? And and I’m like, oh I’ve seen this before inside. I didn’t say this to her. I’m like and so I was like listen what you just shared is the best stuff that I’ve ever heard any church leader share on this. Like this is this is a big deal, like it’s it’s amazing what you’re doing. And I know um you know I there’s I guess part of it with women directly I’ve tried to find those moments to be like I want you to know that what you’re doing is amazing, like it’s incredible. And and I want to make ah explicit what I know is implicitly true.
Rich Birch — Um, you know I’ve also tried to be a um, a willing advocate and ally with other men, with other guys. Um, you know there was a church I who I dearly love worked for and you know love them and when we were engaged in the before I went and worked there, you know, your work working through all the different things that you’re, you know, trying to figure out. And um one of the things that I bumped up against was their um you know their theological conviction around women in leadership was different than mine. You know they they they wouldn’t use the word the title pastor with a woman. Um and they wouldn’t they limited, you know, the role of women in leadership. And so we talked about it before we went in, and before I started. I was like well I just disagree with you on this, and like so we need to talk about it. And we talked about it. We had like let’s open scripture and look at how we, you know… I said listen on my side I’m I’m willing to join because I don’t I don’t think, and don’t take this the wrong way Kadi, but like for them it wasn’t like a huge deal. It was just like this is what we think. And like we’re not, they’re not pounding it. But it is like ah but this is this is where we are. This is our conviction. And I’m like, okay well if you’re willing to hire me knowing that I have a difference, you know, of thought on this, and knowing that it’s going to be something that’s going to come up. Like I’m I’m going to talk about it, but I’m not going to talk about it all the time, like it’s not like every meeting we’re going to talk about these things. But don’t be surprised when we bring it up.
Rich Birch — And so over the years, you know, there was ah there was a ah particular woman that was on our staff, and and this probably is I was probably not that atypical of it an experience, but she oversaw our kids ministry, and was probably the most creative person on our team. Like did um, just did amazing stuff. Like and so I started by saying like well she’s does an amazing job pastoring young, you know, or the next generation. And that was like what – what are you talking about? I’m like I know we don’t call her a pastor but like that’s actually what she’s doing. Like we we we may not like we may not use that word but that is actually what it’s happening. Um, and, you know, and she was the kind of leader who was not like I’m trying to you know she was not trying to go for the title. She wasn’t like, hey this is a really big deal for me. But I I was in that same kind of encouraging way like, man, you’re doing an incredible job here. Great stuff, all that.
Rich Birch — And that led to a series of conversations over, it was probably—I was thinking about this before—like it was probably over eighteen months to 2 years, like this was not a like instantaneous thing. It was a protracted conversation. Um, where eventually it came to it came to a head where it was like, ok I either need to stop talking about it, or they need to fire me, or there needs to be some sort of change because it’s it’s not um, you know, we can’t just keep talking about this. And so I um and and eventually they did end up changing their position. You know it ended up being like hey we’re we’re going to, um you know we’re going to take a different view on this. And actually to this day they you know they’ve they’ve done that which is…
Rich Birch — Um, and that’s like a whole there’s a whole other conversation we can have there, particularly I think in multisite churches I think there should be, man, there’s there’s lots of opportunity even if you would hold you know federal headship the you know the most senior roles for men. Even if you hold that to be true, um, man, there’s still a lot of latitude I personally think, um and and would challenge you to to think about that. And and and challenge you to to think about it from like what do you actually think about scripture. Because I think this is one of those areas where people just kind of take they just swallow what’s been given to them. They haven’t really thought about it. They haven’t they haven’t processed it. And you could end up having a lower view of scripture. You just are like I’m just kind of taking what’s come to me; I haven’t never actually wrestled with it.
Rich Birch — So that you know that was pretty dramatic, and the thing I love about that is there’s a lot of incredible women who are serving in that church today who are, you know, doing, you know… And that that woman that I told you about that’s like the most creative person on their team, she serves on their senior leadership team today. They’re you know, doing incredible, you know, incredible things and the church is way better for it. Like it’s like the church is moving forward and reaching more people.
Rich Birch — Um, so yeah, that’d be a few of attention intentional things. But to be honest, I actually think although that was a little bit dramatic and that was with, you know, kind of advocating with guys, I actually find the the kind of like both silent like um, opening doors like, hey why don’t you can you come and speak at this thing? Or like can you be a part of this? Or can I serve the food instead of you? And the like trying to be encouraging along the way I think actually has more impact. I think actually just saying to people, no no like it’s going to be it’s going to be great. You can do this, you’ve you’ve got this. So I don’t know – there’ll be a few things.
Kadi Cole — Oh I love both of those stories. And there is something to be said for people who champion against the systems or ah, you know, take on women being paid less for the same work. Or whatever it is in your context that you see some things a little ah inequitable or could use some championship that those systems and structures do open doors and have long term effects. But I do want to agree and highlight just that ah affirmation to women, that what you’re doing really matters, or you know your stuff, or you’re good at this – you should keep doing this.
Kadi Cole — Ah, we talk a lot about the sticky floor – I think we talked about that on the podcast. It’s kind of those thoughts and ideas women have in their head that sort of keep them from having confidence or keep them from going for leadership opportunities. And if you want to listen to that podcast, we’ll put it in the show notes. (Um you see how I delegated that to you on that.)
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good – I love it.
Kadi Cole — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Well and that’s true though because you know and I and I’ll say I don’t know that I’ve said this publicly. I can’t remember if I said this on the episode with you. But like and I’ve said it to a number of ah female leaders who I’ve had on the podcast. When we first started the podcast 746 episodes ago, Beth, who is like this only happens because she works on it. She’s amazing. Um her and I I was like what I want to do, is I want to have every other episode be 1 female, 1 male, 1 female, 1 male. And and what I want to do is not I want to have female leaders, and not talk about the fact that they’re female leaders. Like just talk about the amazing work that they’re doing.
Kadi Cole — Oh I Love that.
Rich Birch — And so I think we got 5 or 6 episodes in, like and we ran out of women.
Kadi Cole — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like I was like, I can’t find I can’t find enough. And so you know that’s like super heartbreaking to me. Um, and but interestingly, so over the years we’ve you know we we probably pursue like of the at those 750, call at episodes, like we’ve probably pursued 700 of those like we mostly go and find people. And if we ask 10 guys to be on the podcast, 9 out of 10 will say yes. If I ask 10 women, it’s probably 7 or 6 will say will say yes. Ah if and then um women who express um concern after, like ask to either hear the episode or… because obviously I don’t want I want people this is not I’m not like some hard hitting I’m not trying it’s not gotcha journalism. I want people to walk away feeling great about it. And so I’ll say that, hey just let me know. You know, there’s probably it’s it might be 10x the number of women who express some sort of concern about the content to men. And so I um in my little world I want to do what I can to try to turn that around. So I’m even this woman I was telling about earlier today, I’m like I had the same conversation with her. And I’m like please can you send me ah women leaders because I we want to feature them more. Um, so but I’ve… that to me has been a real stark example where because it’s like statistically true, and I’ve been in all those conversations. I can I can tell you that. And that there’s a part of that that frankly, like really bums me out. Like I’m like, oh, that’s that’s a wide swath of the Christian world.
Rich Birch — Women leaders particularly who are feeling like not great about their own leadership. Or or or maybe it’s the other way around; maybe guys are like just oblivious. They all think they’re experts. I don’t know what it is. Like it’s some… there’s there’s there’s definitely a gender difference there – that my experience has been that there’s a gender difference. Um and uh man, I’d love to turn that around and make that different for the next generation. I would love to create – I’m a Gen Xer born in 1974 the bottom of the bust, lowest birth rate in the twentieth century. And so most of what I’ve been doing in my ministry is taking stuff from the boomers and giving it to, you know, millennials or Gen Z. And man I would I would really hope for women coming after us that this would be like it’s just a non-issue. That like in 10 years we they would listen to this and be like, man, those people were so silly back then. I really hope that happens.
Kadi Cole — That would be great. I actually think that’s going to happen. I believe that. I think and one of the keys is is what you’re talking about. It’s helping the women leaders who are doing it now ah think about themselves from a more truthful perspective. So ah, part of this mindset is that high capacity female leaders are perfectionists, and we want it to be great. And we know that there’s very few opportunities for us. This is actually research that shows up for any minority. And so we put extra pressure on ourselves. We don’t want to do anything that’s going to like embarrass us, or embarrass you, or disappoint someone. So our standards are much higher than what most guys know that they can get away with.
Kadi Cole — And so when you help me know, hey what you did there was excellent. Like I might go, was it good enough? And you’re like that was actually an A. And I’m thinking, if I could just get a C.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kadi Cole — And so every time a male leader, especially a godly leader, right? A spiritual authority person, a pastor, speaks truth to me about me, it changes my own view of myself. The biblical example of this that I talk about a lot is Esther and Mordecai. You know Esther is positioned by God to have this huge influence. And when it comes time, she second guesses herself. She’s like, I’m not the person for the job, and everyone else knows she is. She can’t see it. And it takes a Mordecai to step in and say, listen who knows but you have been put in this position for such a time as this. I see God’s hand on you. I’ve seen him position you. This is exactly why you’re here. Don’t back down; lean in.
Kadi Cole — And as women who grow up in circumstances, sometimes very similar to Esther, we can’t see that for ourselves. And so thank you for doing that. And I just want to encourage everyone out there, men and women, any sort of leader, you know, the more encouragement, the more affirmation, the more we can identify and call out greatness in people, it really does help them see themselves better and opens more opportunities for their future from from just who they are.
Rich Birch — Yeah I would, say so this um one of the things I do in my life is I um help run this ah overnight kids camp. It’s like this great curveball in this environment, people are like what? It’s like a whole other conversation. But it’s it’s great. It’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s the it’s the place that gave me my first kind of leadership um opportunity.
Kadi Cole — Amazing.
Rich Birch — And um and so I’m happy to give back to that. It’s an interesting piece of the puzzle. One of the things that I’ve done there is I pretty regularly with the guys whenever we have like a chance to do, you know, like we’re maybe just with the guy leaders is I’ll ask the question, I’ll say you know at some point you’re going to realize that you’re you’re the most powerful person in the room. (It’s classic Andy Stanley.) You’re the you know you’re the most powerful person in the room. Yeah, that’s going to happen in your life. And the question is, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to use that moment – to serve yourself, or are you going to use that moment to serve others? And um, you know, I I want to be counted as a leader who used that to serve other people, right? That that we like hey I think that’s what Jesus demands of us. I think and you know this is a part of a broader spectrum. We could be talking or a broader conversation around you know I’m a um I’m a white male. You know with has had lots of privilege in his life. There’s lots of things that when I look over the history of my life just doesn’t make sense. It’s like well I think it’s because it’s just who I was, right? And I, you know, have the same conversation, you know, 10 years ago had similar revelation with my black friends, where I, you know, had someone challenge me around said, hey you know sit down with a black friend and ask him ah to tell you about when you know their dad or their parents told them about what to how to interact with cops. Have that conversation. And I’m like what are you talking about? That’s crazy. And so talked with a friend of mine, had this conversation over lunch. I said listen this is going to be a little uncomfortable; I’m so sorry. But I I am trying to learn and grow.
Rich Birch — And this this individual I would say came from a very similar background as mine like I would say like like they grew up in the suburbs, they’re you know all of that stuff. And their experience interacting with the cops was different than mine [inaudible] experience. And so now when I if I get pulled over, and hasn’t happened a lot in the last ten years, but when I do get pulled over by cops, I take my wallet out, I take turn the cars off, I put the keys on the on the counter in front of me. I do all of that stuff that my black friend does because I’m like I shouldn’t have to… he shouldn’t have to think about that. Like he shouldn’t that shouldn’t have to be in his his brain.
Rich Birch — And so you know I think this is a part of a, you know as a part of a whole thing that I you know I think there’s a personal journey. But I think it’s it should be a journey in general I think as Christ’s followers, as leaders, who also happen to be in this case, white and male, are trying to figure out how do we use our power?
Kadi Cole — Right.
Rich Birch — How do we use that to help other people? Or you know because it’s because a bunch of it’s been given to us. It’s actually got nothing to do with me. It’s not that I’m not great.
Kadi Cole — Yeah, we’re well we’re blessed to be a blessing, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kadi Cole — Like we’re supposed to be conduits of those things. And so when we recognize what we’ve been given, we are more empowered to be able to give it away, and multiply that for the kingdom.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kadi Cole — So okay as we wrap up here, one last question. I’d love to know what piece of advice you’d like to give to the guys who are listening around this topic? And what one piece of advice would you like to give to women, female leaders who are listening?
Rich Birch — Um, well I would say to guys. In order, it’s unfortunate, but to lead within the ah evangelical church which most of the people who listen would call themselves at least be “small e” evangelical. This area is going to require you to have some awkward conversations. Like it doesn’t if it’s not happening, if there’s not a dialogue already taking place around these issues, you probably you need to raise it. You need to raise your hand and say, hey, like can can we talk about this? Like there’s because this is a part of the world that we’re in. Like this is um and and it probably requires us as guys to pick up that ball and and run with it. Um, that we can um, get the ball rolling in a way that’s different in the same way that that guy Darrell for me was like oh that was like a paradigm shifter because he’s he stepped out and like. That’s a bit awkward, right? To say to explain to someone, hey I I don’t want you to have to serve this meal all the time because I don’t always want there to look like women are people who just serve meals. That’s like an awkward thing to say, right? It’s like because you’re like well I don’t think of you like that. That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t actually think that’s who you are. Like you can get all caught up in that. But I think we have to probably um, be you know we we have to take the lead and and do something here to to lead some awkward conversations. It’s probably going to take that.
Rich Birch — And then I think to women, I don’t know. Man, like there’s just so many incredible women who lead in the church who are doing amazing things. And um, you know, this past fall my wife and I were we got a chance to travel to um HTB out in London and was a great experience. And um, you know my there was multiple times where people had words of knowledge kind of prophecy over her. And they—which I don’t know what you think about all that stuff, but that’s fine, just go with me here for a minute, friends—and multiple of them pointed in the same direction. It was like you have a voice; you should use it. You know, you have a voice. And I’d say I’d say to women like like you have so much to offer.
Kadi Cole — Yes.
Rich Birch — Like I look at the churches that have women empowered in them and I’m like those are such life-giving places where where just so many good things are happening. And um, you know it’s going to take you like stepping up in a weird sort of way to like um for that to for all the good things that you have to offer for those to happen. And I wish that wasn’t the case; I wish just it was I wish every church was just the place that kind of welcomed you. But in the same way that guys are going to have to have awkward conversations, like you’re going to have to take advantage of opportunity that comes your way. Like you’re you’re going to have to um, you know, to stick your neck out a little bit. And um and say yes when someone asks you to be on their podcast. Um, you look you’re you’re gonna have to you’re gonna have to do that. Um, because because it’s about modeling for the next generation. So like on that story but my my wife, there’s a young woman who’s um on our staff at church and she’s she’s in her early 20s and she’s just starting out. And our church is very um empowering to women. Um, but she’s been saying to her like, no, like don’t don’t feel stuck and limited. Don’t you know don’t feel like this is the box you’ve got to run in. You know the sky’s the limit. The church needs you; we need you to step in. And so um, you know I think we we have to get beyond all the just like the Billy Graham rule and all that stuff like there’s so many… you know we’ve got to get to the place where we’re like, how do we find a way for both genders to be fully alive and fully leveraging who we are to reach the people who, you know, God’s put in our path. So those would be a few things I would say.
Kadi Cole — I love it. Well and that’s the goal. And we need we need men at the leadership table. We need women at the leadership table. The goal is not to um, not the goal is it for the future to be female. The goal is for the future to be together. That’s what we’re really trying to do, and we both have to show up and say yes in order to do that. So, Rich, thank you so much for your ah vulnerability, and your authenticity, and just speaking from your heart, and being open for a you know crazy idea from me um, ah to be able to have this conversation. I hope it really blesses people and encourages people to continue to lean into this topic. And ah, we both have resources on this subject so if people want to learn more please reach out to us. And thanks so much. I just really appreciate your championing women and your role in the kingdom.
Rich Birch — Yeah, turning the tables back around on you, Kadi, I how can people get in touch with you, because I know there are church leaders that are listening in that are saying, man, we need to we probably need to do some work in this area. We need to but think about this a little bit. Give us a frame of what that looks like. They’re almost 3 quarters of an hour in at this point. Give us a framework on ah you know how can you help churches think through these issues. What does that typically look like, how do you engage, and where can people get in touch with you?
Kadi Cole — Yeah, so I did write a book specifically for church leaders on this called “Developing Female Leaders”. You can get it on Amazon or Audible. And then my website kadicole.com spelled k-a-d-i-c-o-l-e-dot-com. I’ve got all sorts of resources and downloads. I coach people, I do consulting for churches, I speak at a lot of churches. Um and would love to engage you if you want to move forward on this topic, whether it’s with your elder board, or your staff, or your congregation on a weekend. Um I’m very passionate about it and want to really help churches, you know, make the most of who God is brought to their congregation.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Kadi, appreciate you, appreciate your ministry. Thanks so much for ah for interviewing me today. It was great. Thanks so much for being here.
Kadi Cole — Thank you, Rich.
XP Roundtable: Finances, Volunteers, Staffing & More with Lisa Penberthy, Jeremy Peterson & Brandon Beard
Feb 09, 2023
What larger trends are impacting churches across the country? The landscape of our culture continues to shift & evolve. Growing churches respond to those changes and find ways to thrive. Learn from the latest insights on trends and how those impact you and your team.
Don’t miss this special podcast episode as we hear from three Executive Pastors in the trenches who are making a difference today:
Jeremy Peterson is an Executive Pastor at One Church in New Hampshire and Vermont with 20+ years of experience. He loves helping churches and teams break through barriers, and enjoys reading, running, and college football.
Lisa Penberthy is a church leader and consultant with 20 years of experience and an M.Div and MBA in nonprofit management. She was an Executive Pastor of Operations at San Diego Rock Church. She’s passionate about stewarding people’s calling and church resources.
Brandon Beard is a church leader with 30 years of experience and is an expert in church growth, ministry structures, and leadership development. He currently serves as Executive Pastor of Campus Ministry at Compass Christian Church in Colleyville, TX, helps churches navigate the future and experience exponential growth, and loves working in Uganda and cheering for Seattle sports teams.
We’re talking about their outlook and their current strategy for 2023.
Communicate why giving matters. // It’s not uncommon for churches that went debt-free during covid to now see giving drop 30-40%. Whether you’re going after a particular vision during a capital campaign or going debt free, after you celebrate, it’s important to continue the conversation. Make sure to thank your givers and help them understand why giving matters. Connect the dots for them so they can see how they are helping to move the mission forward.
Clear entry points for service. // While churches have gotten people back into the seats, we are still struggling to get volunteers to return and serve. A whole new group of people joined our churches in the last year, and people who are new have to learn what it means to serve. If you have a discipleship program, the first step is to help people find an entry point, whether they have made a decision for Christ or are haring about him for the first time. Make that process really easy for them and help them get engaged with opportunities as they move forward in their relationship with Jesus.
Listen to your team. // Slow down and listen to your staff team to really know where they are at. Listen to some younger people on your staff and learn from them. Set aside short-term thinking and start dreaming about where the church wants to be in five or ten years.
Support your lead pastor. // Covid has taken its toll on most lead pastors; it’s time for executive pastors to lead up. Be sensitive to your lead pastor’s exhaustion; give them some care and time off for the sake of their mental health. Everyone needs to be honest about where they are right now.
Business or friends. // It may be harder to develop a relationship with the lead pastor. You need to know if your lead pastor wants to be friends, or wants to do business. You can do both, but know which is priority. Take notice of how involved the lead pastor really wants to be in different aspects of the church. Remember that trust with your lead pastor is built over time.
Find the needs of the community. // Figure out who you are as a church and what is the need in your community. If something isn’t working to reach your community, make the necessary changes. Engagement is the new way to measure attendance.
XP Summit. // XP Summit is an opportunity for executive pastors to connect with one another. It allows you to sit down with others and talk about the challenges you’ve all been going through, plus get the coaching you need.
For $50 off the XP Summit in Dallas on May 16 & 17, 2023 use the discount code unseminary, which can be applied until February 15. Learn more at www.xpsummit.org.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Get a Head Start on Your Church’s Multi-Use Strategy with Frank Bealer
Feb 02, 2023
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Frank Bealer, the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Phase Family Centers as well as Chief of Staff at Local Church.
Is your church considering a multi-use strategy? Does it seem overwhelming as you think about how to get started and all that you need to learn? Listen in as Frank shares how to get the resources and coaching you need while mitigating the distractions that can come with multi-use.
Preschool, parents, and events. // Phase Family Centers were started with a desire to help churches both fund their ministry and engage communities differently. The idea was broken down into three boxes: preschool, parents, and events. Frank, along with Reggie Joiner, worked on figuring out how to structure a multi-use strategy that was really intentional about coming alongside churches for the purposes of improved stewardship and community engagement.
Uniquely suited. // Churches are uniquely suited to help meet the needs of the community around us. It could be something such as offering preschool, which is one of the crises in America right now. Churches already have the facilities and the posture needed to help address the childcare crisis, and permeate the operations of a preschool with warmth, safety, care, kindness.
Do a site and market analysis. // Rather than assuming that preschool or event space is the thing needed in your community, first do a site and market analysis like any other business would. What are the actual needs in your unique community? Determine what is the business plan, what is the strategy, and what are the end goals.
Mitigate the distraction. // Any extra program or ministry you do is a distraction from something. It’s important to mitigate that distraction when you get involved with multi-use. Hire a manager who is a good culture fit with your church and also has experience for the business you are adding (ex. preschool, coffee shop, event center, etc.) Then instead of using Google to figure out your manuals and policies, partner with Phase Family Centers to put together the resources you need. You get to run the operation but you’re not alone in figuring things out. When the manager is having a hard time, they can call Phase for help instead of distracting the church’s executive leadership team with their questions.
Have a marketing plan. // Preschool is a proven business. Events are a proven business. However, don’t assume that people will show up as soon as you open just because you’re a church. It’s important to have a marketing plan and budget as you seek to serve and meet the needs of the broader community.
Phase helps anywhere on the multi-use journey. // Phase will work with churches who know where they want to go as well as those who are stuck figuring out where to begin. The Phase Family Center website provides more information about working together, and starts by exploring questions with you. Then a call with someone at Phase will unpack your ideas, dreams, and what may be your barriers.
You can learn more about teaming up with Phase at www.phase.center/partners, plus find Frank on social media @fbealer.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation – longtime friend Frank Bealer with us. He’s the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer family or Phase Family Centers, and he’s also the Chief of Staff at Local Church. He’s he’s fantastic leader; he’s the kind of person you should be tracking with him. Frank was at one point the Family Pastor at a little church called Elevation there in North Carolina—I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them before, friends—ah before he moved over and has joined or really launched Phase Family Centers. He he’s also is really which faith family, if you’re not familiar, or Phase Family if you’re not familiar with them are really a leader in this whole multi-use strategy that we really should be thinking about. And so I wanted to get him on and he agreed to come on. Frank, so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.
Frank Bealer — Man, I’m glad to be here. And as always, Rich, I’m always learning from you and listening to podcasts and other great leaders that are out there. So thank you for facilitating this and being so generous with your time to drive these conversations because I know they’re making me better.
Rich Birch — Oh thanks so much. I really appreciate that, Frank. But why don’t we fill it the picture a little bit. What did I miss there on the Frank Bealer story? What what do we want to make sure people know about about you?
Frank Bealer — Oh gosh. Um, yeah so business guy turned pastor, serving at Elevation full time. Felt led to figure out a way… what I was wrestling with is, Elevation was, at the time we were at I don’t know 17 campuses or something like that 12 to 17 during that journey of campuses. Um, attendance was up, giving was up, small group attendance was up, volunteer participation was up, frequency of attendance was going down. So I was trying to crack the code of how do we engage families different. I saw the children’s ministry data. I was trying to figure it out from both Sundays and during the week.
Frank Bealer — At the same time. A good friend of mine, Reggie Joiner, who created helped launch North Point Community Church with Andy Stanley and created Orange curriculum, was wrestling with an idea of how do we help churches fund their ministry and engage communities differently. So he drew three boxes on a piece of paper that would ultimately be Phase Family Center. He called it Preschool, Parents, and Events. And it was his way of going, Ok can we do a multi-use strategy but be really intentional about it to where we really come alongside of churches to leverage that multi-use for both improved stewardship and greater community engagement.
Frank Bealer — And so fast track. Um, you know that was happened by a mutual friend of ours, Rich, Carey Nieuwhof, you know my best friend, Carey. Carey made the connection with ah me and Reggie. At that point I was a speaker dude for Reggie. Ah, but then we realized that we were wrestling with some very similar things that honestly church leaders across America and across the world have been wrestling with. And we’ve just kind of got our unique take on it at Phase.
Rich Birch — Love it. So kind of ah, pull apart Phase a little bit – tell us a bit more about it. What is the, you know, how do you attack those 3 issues, those 3 areas of engagement? What does that actually look like for folks that maybe are un ah unaware of Phase and what you do.
Frank Bealer — Sure. So at our first location we worked with a site developer, bought thirteen acres, eight acres buildable, about million dollars an acre. I mean expensive land where somebody would want to have a church, but it’s cost prohibitive. Great location. Um, and what we did here was we’re the operator. We’re the master tenant. And we run a preschool, coworking/coffee shop and events. And oh, by the way, there are a couple churches that use the space on the weekends. They pay nominal lease payment or part of the lease payment, but most of the facility, this 62,000 square foot facility, is paid for by the business operations that we run. We carry that.
Frank Bealer — While we’re in the process of building this building, Mark Batterson up in DC said, hey, ended up with this city block; God’s doing some really cool stuff.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — There’s a child care crisis in DC; we’re trying to figure out how to do this. We don’t want to do it alone. Can we partner together? So up there we helped renovate their children’s ministry space. It’s used by the church on Sundays and during the week we operate a preschool.
Frank Bealer — Well all this is happening, and then covid hits. So I end up in the 62,000 square foot building, sitting here by myself, waiting on the world to reopen. The thing that didn’t change were churches were still calling, wanting to figure out multi-use and what a Phase Partnership could look like. And I guess I should point out Phase – PHAC that phrase comes from the idea of parenting idea of us saying this negative statement, it’s just a phase.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Frank Bealer — Like it’s like we just got to get through this, right? And get on to next thing. Well our idea is it’s just a phase; don’t miss it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — You’re never going to get these moments back. Some of the things that drive you crazy, like that baby not sleeping us means that baby’s not going to sleep on your chest anymore and you’re going to have those special moments, right? So we’re just trying to help parents leverage those moments. So Phase, while I’m sitting here by myself. Um, I’m trying to figure out how I can help more churches because at the pace I was going, I could do 3 to 5 a year…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — …where we’re the operator and we’re dropping in churches and or partnering with churches in some way. And yet the demand and inquiries was way higher than that.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Frank Bealer — So we’re trying to figure out what to do. And so I had created a licensing idea to share our resources and and concepts and things that we’re learning and things we had spent lots of money on, trying to figure out. Well during that I gathered my investors together to give them a financial update due to covid and when we’re going to reopen, and then share this licensing idea.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — And one of the guys that was on the call is the Chief Innovation Officer for Chick-Fil-A.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Frank Bealer — And as I present my licensing idea he says, Frank, that’s a really good idea. Congratulations. You just invented franchising. And we all had a good laugh of like, okay and I’ve never done franchising.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — And the idea of Phase, ah called Phase Partners, the idea of us franchising and partnering with churches to help with the operations, and help give them wisdom, but it be in their business, but not letting them do it alone was born out of that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Frank Bealer — And so now we have a franchise disclosure document and we’re now helping churches execute on a multi-use strategy.
Rich Birch — Okay, I love this. And friends I want to dive in on this. The thing I love about Frank is was tons I love about you, but the one thing I love about you one of the things I love about you is, you know, you’re trying to solve real world problems. You’re helping real churches, you know, with real things. And here you are providing a great solution for something that I think a lot of us have wondered about, which is, hey we’ve got this facility. And I’ve even heard of, in fact, I know of churches I’ve coached who have spent real cash like actual money like tons of money on space that they envision for multi-use, but then doesn’t actually get used in that manner. Because of they miss this operational in between. They missed this like, hey we’re not sure exactly… how do we do this? How do we how do we run this stuff?
Rich Birch — But let’s take a step back and convince me that I should even be thinking about that. Like I, you know, isn’t like having a daycare, or running an event center, or you know opening up a coffee shop, isn’t that just a distraction to what we’re supposed to do as a church? Isn’t that, you know, it doesn’t that reduce our flexibility? Doesn’t it don’t we become slaves to somebody who’s running a totally different kind of operation? Help us understand how those fit together; how does a multi ah -use strategy actually help push us forward?
Frank Bealer — Yeah, so yeah, those are all complexities that we have to navigate, right? And so let’s rewind a little bit. A few decades ago churches all across America ah we’re doing some kind of multi-use strategy and many of them were doing something that was somewhat lackluster in performance.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Frank Bealer — It wasn’t ah experiencing the evangelism they thought it was. It wasn’t discipling the number of kids they thought it was. Um, there was not a good, healthy, symbiotic relationship. And so it’s us and them, and the preschool took my crayons, and…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Frank Bealer — …we couldn’t find this, and they broke this table, and it became very adversarial.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Frank Bealer — So then you have a crew like Andy Stanley and a lot of people that are going, we’re doing too much stuff in a mediocre way; let’s get back to the thing that matters most. Let’s present the gospel clearly; let’s do a really good job on Sundays.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Frank Bealer — Well I don’t disagree with any of that. That was it was a response that I felt like overall our nation needed to do. We needed to shore things up and get back to some excellence and some expectations and quality in what we offer. It’s not enough to just have good facilities. That’s not a strategy. I have a building; let’s do stuff with it. That’s not a strategy. And so…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Frank Bealer — …there was this kind of reining in. Well now what we’re seeing is there’s a whole funding conversation of like there’s a necessity to this. But let’s put that aside for a second because that’s not really what you were addressing. You were talking to, how do we share space; this is distraction from what we’re supposed to be doing. This relationally what does this look like?
Frank Bealer — Well we know in our nation here in America that top 10 priorities among every presidential candidate and thought leader in our nation, child care is a huge issue.
Rich Birch — So true.
Frank Bealer — So specifically, preschool, it is a childcare crisis in our nation. And the church is uniquely positioned to meet that need. We always want to be able to meet needs in the community. Now here’s where I would push back.
Rich Birch — What why is the church uniquely unique… Why is the church uniquely suited for that need?
Frank Bealer — Great question. Because we have the facilities already. Okay, which is a huge deal.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Frank Bealer — We we have the facilities already and we have the posture that’s needed to help fix our childcare crisis. We need warmth, safety, care, kindness – that needs to permeate the operations of a preschool. And oftentimes that isn’t present. It’s cold. It’s sterile.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Frank Bealer — It’s people that are just taking a check. Um, it just doesn’t have the warmth and extension of family that people long for. So what you have in our nation is everybody is saying we have to increase the quality of care, and decrease the cost. I don’t know how to do that.
Rich Birch — Right. How do you do that? Yeah.
Frank Bealer — The church can actually help do that. We could figure that out. But here’s our problem. Okay, if I go back to all the church that say it’s a distraction. We finally stopped doing it; people hated us because we stopped doing our preschool. Or we no longer open our event center up for other things and people are mad at us in the community, and look what we did. Well I always like to go back to, what was your business plan, what was your strategy, and what were your end goals with your preschool operations, or your event business, or your coffee shop? What was the win, and was it realistic?
Frank Bealer — It’s interesting to me, Rich, that people that talk multi-use oftentimes in the church space talk about it from the lens of saying, hey we have children’s space; we should do a preschool. That’s that’s not at all what you should do.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Frank Bealer — What we should do is do a site and market analysis, like you would for any other business across America, and go should we open a preschool? Anecdotally somebody has said that they had a hard time finding childcare in my community.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Frank Bealer — But what’s the real need? Is it low income families can’t find affordable quality care? Is that there’s simply not enough license spots available for children? Well that determines your business model. In fact, many churches and preschools should have a licensed preschool so they can operate with government subsidies and serve low income families. But they don’t go in with that level of strategy. So…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Frank Bealer — …so I say okay, so there’s this opportunity to engage the community. This need is real. But is it the church’s responsibility? Is it a distraction? (To go back to what you said.) And the answer is absolutely. It is a distraction.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Frank Bealer — So what we want to do is how do we mitigate the distraction?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Frank Bealer — Any extra program or ministry you do is a distraction from something.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Like I mean that’s a true statement like it’s not like as long as we split ourselves, that takes more responsibility. Here’s what I believe is the flaw in the multi-use strategy, okay? For across America, okay? Current multi-use strategy, visionary leader plus building facility. Add a manager. Someone who has managed a preschool before, managed a coffee shop—not owned—managed a coffee shop, managed an events business, plus Google. That is the equation for multi-use success in America.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — And it’s ah if we don’t have a handbook, we’ll Google one, find and replace the words. Now we have a handbook.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Frank Bealer — If we need a policy on diaper changing, well Google one on the internet.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — What Phase is trying to do differently is go, well yeah when you do that you’re going to kind of find all these cracks along the way where it’s not cohesive, and there’s going be these flaws and when Google doesn’t give the answer you’ve got to go to your executive leadership team. And now it’s a distraction. So what we’re proposing is a visionary leader with a building, hire your manager. That’s your person. Find the right person that’s a good culture fit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — And instead of using Google, use Phase. Let us provide your [inaudible] and your manuals, and your resources…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — … and let us figure out how to lock all the iPads in all the classrooms…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — …so inappropriate videos aren’t shown to children…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — …and like all those little nuanced things. How to do background checks properly that are different than church background checks.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Let us come alongside and help you. It is your business unit. You benefit from the upside of the profits and what’s what’s there. You get to run the operation, but you’re not alone.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — So therefore the manager when they’re having a hard time their first phone call is to Phase instead of to the executive leadership team of the church. We think that mitigates distraction and becomes a game changer to go, we can have better stewardship, engage our community better, but mitigate distractions.
Rich Birch — Love it. So we know we had Mark DeYmaz a couple weeks ago on the podcast, and one of the things that we kind of briefly touched on was how the legal structure of these things all hang together. And you know you’re talk you’re talking about the church owning a business, you know, that’s obviously ultimately trying to generate revenue that would, you know, plow back into the church. Talk us through what you see as best practice on that side, the kind of structure. Obviously there’s a ton there. This is not legal advice. We’re not, you know, we’re not, you know, we don’t provide any of that. But give us a kind of the the back of the napkin; help us get our heads around that piece, you know, as we’re thinking about how this structure is. Because the because the issue again with my pessimist voice on, the issue is, man, who controls this thing? What if it goes sideways? You know, what, you know… I’m I’m a pastor; I’m nervous about kids in our kids ministry and they come for a week an hour a week let alone 8 hours a day five days a week, you know.
Frank Bealer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk us through that. What’s that look like?
Frank Bealer — So at the end of the day most churches that we work with across America will have a…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Frank Bealer — …an a wholly owned subsidiary, an LLC, a for-profit entitity that’s owned underneath the nonprofit.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — Common board that’s influencing that and guiding that. And that’ll generate some taxes…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — …on a part of your facility.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — It’s no big deal if it’s in the proforma. You just build it in the financial model. And it either makes sense to do it or not.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — But we don’t have to be worried about that. That’s one of the things that’s unique in multi-use strategy. I rarely see, when I talk to a church has been thinking multi-use, a quality business plan and proforma. There’s a lot of assumptions. It’s not very detailed. And I’m sitting there going, Ok maybe it generates some taxes. No big deal; put it in the proforma. It either works or it doesn’t work.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Frank Bealer — Um, the same with your insurance. We have a standard at Phase that has all these additional coverages that we think you should have for a daycare that aren’t required by state, but help mitigate that exposure for the church. The way you do your additional insurance, all that, we spell all that out for you.
Frank Bealer — That makes the policy cost more money. That’s fine. But does it work in the financial model or not? One of the big things I’ll say about distraction, Rich—this will be helpful – that proforma—one of the biggest tensions between a preschool or weekday school program and a church is the “us and them” nature of sharing the space. Specifically…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Churches on Sunday morning receiving their space in a condition other than how they expected.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Frank Bealer — And vice versa Monday morning 6am preschool teachers start rolling in, and it’s other than what they expected.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Our solution in this world—I do not understand this, Rich; this is crazy to me.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — Our solution has been, well let’s give good checklists to volunteers at church on Sunday to hand it over on Monday morning. And then on Friday afternoon, after a really long week, let’s give our teachers our preschool teachers that are making 15, 16 bucks an hour a checklist of other things they have to do after all the kids leave to make the church happy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — That creates an us and them response, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Frank Bealer — Easiest solution ever, Rich, $250 to $300 a week, in your proforma…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Frank Bealer — …you hire an outside cleaning service that also moves the furniture.
Rich Birch — Right. Resets everything. Right.
Frank Bealer — Now if there’s a problem, there’s an outside accountability that nobody’s mad at each other. We’re not asking volunteers. We’re not asking teachers to work harder because they’re affiliated with the Church. We eliminate all that. And it either, once again, works in the proforma or not. And so we build our business plan, not overly optimistic, open a preschool at 50% occupancy and ramp up to 87% occupancy. Those are clear benchmarks and goal. We can know this and know that that doesn’t create a lot of capital burn on the front end. And then we can generate some great revenue for ministry. Do whatever you want to with it, okay? Um, it all either works in the proformo or it doesn’t.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — And that’s the thing that I get really excited about. Preschool is a proven business.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Events… proven business. Coworking, debatably, a proven business. So we can take the good assumptions out of the church space.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Well, we’re a church. As soon as we open it everybody’s just going to show up. No, no, no. Let’s have a marketing budget. Let’s have a plan. And if people choose to enroll or engage because of your credibility, let’s let that be a blessing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — …not the business strategy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — We’re going to build it and they’re going to come? No no, no. Let’s build it so they don’t know who we are. Can we build a sustainable business that serves and meets a need in the community, choosing whether or not to use faith-based curriculum and what guidelines you’re going to put around events, around the facility, and what you’ll allow and not allow in your facility. That’s fine. Put those guidelines in place. This is a very… Rich, I think we’ve overcomplicated it.
Rich Birch — Right. Sure.
Frank Bealer — And that’s why it becomes a distraction and burden because we we downplay some of the complexities and don’t build a plan for those.
Rich Birch — Sure. Now if you’re if I’m a church that’s sitting here thinking, Yeah, okay, maybe we do need to think more clearly on the multi-use side. I feel like you’ve you’ve hit a few buttons, even in my leadership. I’m like, gosh, I feel like we’ve done the thing where it’s like, hey let’s just roll out a coffee shop. People just come in because it’s going to because you know they like us.
Rich Birch — Um, there’s those three kind of different types of businesses you’ve talked about, whether it be a daycare, an events business, or you know a coworking/coffee kind of thing. What is your recommended route between, you know, the kind of starting point for a church? What should they consider? Which is the best of those models to start with – ah you can’t start with all three obviously. But if you were saying, hey wait a minute; maybe you can. I don’t know. Talk us through that. What should I be what should we be thinking about if we’re like, okay, we we should we do want to take some steps in this direction.
Frank Bealer — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Maybe even with Phase.
Frank Bealer — The from a profitability and a financial just just how the numbers work, depending on your location, events can be good. Depending on your locations, preschool could be good. Those can go along at the same time, or separately. Because they impact different people, different sides of the building. They really are two different business models. Candidly, if you get preschool right, the EBITDAR—okay to get technical for a second—so earnings before interest, taxes, all that stuff, and rent. So your number that you produce, you can be in the 25/30% of revenue for a preschool operation…
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Right.
Frank Bealer — …if you do it the right way. And that’s an industry benchmark. That’s not overly optimistic. If you’re doing $2,000,000 in in tuition a year, that’s that’s a really big number to fund ministry.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Frank Bealer — Like and that’s very attainable. This can be done pre-rent and you choose to do you pay yourself rent, or fund church planning initiatives. You can do whatever you want to with the money. That’s your call. Um, so from a preschool from an impact in the community, it has the greatest financial impact for the church and impact in the community to open a preschool. Candidly. It just if the need is there, genuinely there, and I believe that you should do a site and market analysis to determine what the real need is there, and we’re happy to help with that. Um, so that’s one. Events is just easier, ok, to do. Overall if you’re in the right location to do that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Um, as Mark has said on your podcast. You got to price it the right way and structure it the right way. But I’ll tell you the biggest problem with events is even if they build a pricing structure (a church builds it), they dabble in events. And so maybe it generates a few thousand dollars per per month. Just to give you perspective, at Phase Alpharetta.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, been there. I know I feel exactly what you’re talking about there.
Frank Bealer — Okay.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Frank Bealer — At Phase Alpharetta, 500 seat auditorium, okay.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — Outside of Sunday, because we have no revenue on Sunday – that’s a church. Outside of Thursday nights because the church is doing worship programming. So I can’t do anything. We run a business over there. We have a sales manager, and like they get along, and they know the church, the partners, no problems. We run a business; it generates about $60,000 a month in revenue. Six. Zero.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Frank Bealer — $60,000 a month.
Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.
Frank Bealer — And that’s on average. Just plug…
Rich Birch — With 500 sq feet?
Frank Bealer — 500 seat auditorium…
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Frank Bealer — …burning through like in… Now there’s expenses for cleaning services and things like that. But there’s a eye open. What I want to do with that number is not go, wow I can make $60,000. Maybe you can’t; depends on your location. All kinds of things. But here’s what I’m saying. There’s a different in opening a business and running it like a business unit.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — And therefore you have marketing, and you go to trade shows, and you’re engaging with the community different, and the rotary and stuff like that. That’s different than we are now providing a clear pricing structure for our events for when people call us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Frank Bealer — And that’ll be a few thousand dollars maybe a month.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — So it’s very different approach.
Rich Birch — Yeah I could see that. And I’ve been there. Totally get what you’re saying. You know it’s that difference between our our building is available for rent, and we’re running an events business. That’s two totally separate approaches, right? It’s like if someone calls us, sure we’ll rent you. It’s like you can rent a space in the library at in town. But the library is not set up to rent their space there. It’s not what they’re thinking about. There isn’t someone that wakes up every day.
Frank Bealer — Great example.
Rich Birch — Well maybe maybe in your town, not in my town. You know they’re they’re, you know, they’re not thinking about that all day long. That’s ah that’s interesting. Yeah and I could see that on the daycare. You know there’s a recurring revenue side of that, right, that you are… you know, those kids they need to be cared for every day over for years you know and obviously there is you know they eventually age out. But then there’s more kids that come up, you know, underneath all that. That’s interesting.
Rich Birch — Now if there let’s say I’m a church out there today and I feel like, hey we’ve we’re already running one of these things, or maybe all of them. We’re doing all of this. And I’m like, this is not going well; like this is painful. Um, we’ve done the, you know, maybe they was a little too close to home when you said the manager and a Google search. They were like oh gosh, that’s what we did. Um is that the kind of church you’d work with – a church that’s already engaged that they’re like we’ve got to redo all this; we’ve got to rebuild this thing. Talk us about talk talk to us about that.
Frank Bealer — Absolutely. So we will do both. So what Phase does the way it works, simple. So think of ah if you’re not familiar franchising, if you want to franchise a McDonald’s, something else, you pay an upfront fee that comes with training and marketing and things like that, and then a percentage of revenue for your ongoing support, basically. Um.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Frank Bealer — We are currently in conversations with right now my my database list of active churches that are we’re in dialogue and working through this is we have 239 churches that are currently working with us in some stage of, I’ve got questions; I need help. Maybe they haven’t spent a dollar.
Frank Bealer — There’s 39 that have spent money and are working that direction toward, help us figure this out; help us improve our business model, ask the right questions. We don’t know; we’re not preschool experts. We’re not event experts. We don’t know what we don’t know. But they’re resonating with what we’re saying. Phase will work with both. We think that there’s a tremendous opportunity for churches that have had a preschool and it’s ended up at 62% occupancy, and it never quite had the impact they want, and they can’t figure out why they can’t get more.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — Or they’re full and losing money and they can’t figure that out either because that was never part of the plan, and now the donations to the church and tithes are now funding the preschool ministry, but it’s not a that that wasn’t the plan.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah.
Frank Bealer — It’s not like we’re meaning to do that. And so I think there’s a coaching element to this and just a way that Phase can serve where there’s gonna be some people that we just share some of our resources with. We’ll give you our handbook; that’s fine if you want it. Like I’ll give it to you; I don’t I’m not gonna charge for that. But there’s some that need they need ongoing support. I’ll tell you here’s how they got there, Rich. Most of the time when you talk about a church that like, yeah, we’ve ended up with this kind of mediocre “not where we thought it was going to be” performance. And we don’t know what to do because we have a great space. We have a good location. We have a big church. Why isn’t this working? Usually what it is is they started with one manager that was somebody that was known and trusted, and somebody they really related with and it was safe, and they understood the vision and culture, and they were really solid. They were confident in that hire. Well then that higher retires, or moves on, or changes. And then we get a new hire. The problem is we don’t know how to train that person.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — Our senior leadership team isn’t an expert in preschool or events business; it’s not what they do. And so now what ends up happening is this senior leadership team ah gets a handful of straws and somebody draws a short straw, and they now oversee that area of ministry. And and so suddenly they’re like I guess I’ll Google some stuff and figure out, how do we fill our school? How do we get better teachers? How do we do training?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Frank Bealer — And it’s just kind of pushed by the wind. And it’s really what whatever comes top of the Google search is how we’re training. And then we know in church or anything that we’re doing, right, we’ve got to get better and have a strategic approach to improving and constantly maintaining.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Frank Bealer — You you teach this; it’s what unSeminary podcast is. It’s all the things you didn’t learn that you need to know.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Frank Bealer — And yet nobody’s raised their hand going, hey, you needed to know this for preschool.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — I’m sorry you they didn’t tell you. And the first person they just knew it because they were awesome, and they just loved the church. And and honestly they weren’t great but they went so above and beyond, they took care of any flaws in your system. When they have somebody working a 9 to 5 job…
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — …that’s not going above and beyond and serving your church, and you’re starting to see all the cracks, it’s not an indictment on anybody. It’s just we never put the infrastructure in place. So what Phase is trying to do is if you ever read the book “E-Myth” or “E-Myth Revisited”, it’s that idea of we’ve got all the systems, all the opps. Their first phone call is to us and we’re like, oh we already have that, and let us help you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — And there’s very few circumstances, we believe, where the church leadership is having to get involved to make decisions about how to operate a preschool or an events business, if that makes sense.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Absolutely. Well this is, you know, fascinating. You know as we kind of come to you know to land here, as we kind of look to the you know the end of the conversation um, if I was a church and I’m interested, I’m like okay you’ve convinced me enough that I’d least need to think about some next steps. What would be some of those next steps. How do we, you know, take kind of some initial steps to kind of get to know you guys better. Maybe start this conversation. Obviously it’s a significant conversation. You’re talking about upfront money. Talking about signing contracts – all that. No one’s going to do that in ah in a whim, but what would be some of those first steps that I could take if I’m if I’m intrigued today.
Frank Bealer — Yeah, so ah, we have a landing page phase.center/partners. Um, we’re continuing adding more and more information on that site. Um I logged in today and it was down. I had to call somebody be like ah our a hub spot I disconnected something, but it’ll be fine by the time this airs. Um.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
Frank Bealer — …phase.center/partners – um, ah you go there, visit that. That’ll have good information. It’ll the information on there is designed to spark more questions, okay? Well how do they do curriculum? Can we do it as a nonprofit license center, or do we have to be for-profit? The answer depends on your state – just different rules like that.
Frank Bealer — And then we schedule a call and we jump on, one of our team members jumps on with your senior leadership team, maybe a couple elders or trustees or whatever, and we just dream for 45 minutes. Let’s just talk. Let’s talk about what’s working, what’s not working, what you see. What are the barriers and opportunities? And then build a plan for next steps.
Frank Bealer — More often than not what we find is that if they don’t currently have a multi-use strategy, it’s really really simple. They’re dabbling with it. They don’t really know where to begin, but it’s logical. So they feel like they should be having a conversation; they don’t know where to begin. For more often than not the very first thing that someone should do for an event or preschool operation, coffee shop too I just don’t not have a lot of knowledge around, that um is a site and market analysis.
Rich Birch — Right.
Frank Bealer — They need someone that’s an industry expert in that space to tell us what are opportunities and what our challenges are in opening a preschool in our space, or opening an events business, so that we’re then informed for our next step in conversation. What are the things that are going to make our space great? What aren’t? And so there’s very natural next steps. We’re happy to have a conversation; we’re not gonna charge anything for it. And we may land on, yeah, we don’t think you should do this, or maybe you should pivot. Or have you ever thought about something, you know, very different than what you’re thinking now.
Frank Bealer — But here’s the thing, time and time again when we talk multi-use rarely ever am I getting a hard: no, we don’t want to ever have this conversation. I’m getting a: we’ve had some bad experience in the past but we feel like we should revisit it. Or no, we’re in a season where we definitely need to have a conversation, we just don’t know where to start. That’s the two conversation. There’ve been great leaders like Mark that have inspired church leaders across the nation that they need to do something with it. It’s just a little overwhelming.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Frank Bealer — And so what Phase is trying to do is provide a bunch of those answers to make it a little less overwhelming, if that makes sense.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Well and I think I think that’s a really clear um analogy. I think you know we want to partner with someone who had this is different than running a church. This is you know you I think sometimes as senior leaders, particularly competent senior leaders, you know we have to know where our expertise ends. Like we’re we’re good at a certain number of things and some of that relates to what we’re talking about here. But there’s a whole other school of thought and a whole other, you know, domains of expertise that you need to bring to bear to run a great preschool, run you know an events business, run coffee or you know coworking, all that. So um, I really appreciate this. This has been a great conversation. If people want to track with you, ah, we got it we gave them that web address. We’ll put that in the show notes. So if you if you forgot what that was, or you’re driving, whatever you can come back and check that out. Anywhere else we want people to get in touch with you if they’re you know if they want to track with you, Frank? And then any last words you have to say before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Frank Bealer — You know, just on social media. I’m fbealer – I’m always posting about thoughts and things we’re learning, and reposting other people that are speaking into this space. So I think that’ll be helpful. Um, but yeah going to that Phase Partners page, that’s the way to do it. Um, because that they’ll get to connect with me or whatever and we’ll share ideas and… And we’re going to have a road show this fall. We’ll be traveling around the country…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Frank Bealer — …doing one day sessions around. We’re called the Multi-use Strategy Summit. We’re hosting one in Alpharetta in February, right about the time that this is airing. But we’re gonna have more this fall. We’re actually traveling and going to other places so churches can come – more convenient to them. And just spark a conversation for one day.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, friends, I would encourage you, Frank is a trusted leader the kind of person you should reach out to. And if you’re even if you’re in the kind of area of like this might be the kind of thing 6 months or 36 months from now that we could be even thinking about, I would encourage you to track along with them. Drop by that website. Follow him on social media. It would be a great thing for you. Thanks again, Frank – appreciate you being here today and cheering for you. Love everything that you’re doing at Phase. Thank you.
Frank Bealer — Thanks Rich! We love you too.
Help to Fight the Scourge of Predictability in Your Church Services with Lance Burch
Jan 26, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Lance Burch from Reality Church in Omaha, Nebraska. He often explores and identifies current cultural phenomena and then tries to find a way to connect them to biblical truth.
Listen in as Lance shares how to pay attention to the questions the culture around us is asking while presenting ancient truths in a novel way.
Do what Jesus did. // Our churches can be way too predictable, which can hold us back from what God calls us to do. By contrast, Jesus was never predictable; his stories often had surprise endings yet communicated truth in a way that resonated with the culture. If we are to be like Jesus, then we need to do things the way he did.
Look at things in a new way. // One of Reality Church’s core values is surprise. Adding even small elements of surprise, such as a prop during a sermon or spontaneous baptisms in a service, keeps things from being too predictable. One way the church incorporated this value on New Year’s Day was by changing the seating to be in a circle and sharing stories of God’s faithfulness.
Holding to the truth. // While digging into scripture and singing truth to each other will always be core, Reality Church looks for novel ways to present these ancient truths. The goal isn’t to change the truth of scripture, but rather to have the church experience it in a new way.
Be clear to your listeners. // When writing messages and engaging culture, Reality Church is careful to stay true to the Bible by using a framework that asks: Is this accurate? Is it clear? They want to stay true to the scriptures while also creating a bridge to listeners in their cultural context. How are your listeners interpreting their entire world? What “language” do they speak? What questions are they asking? One way to tap into this is by paying attention to the questions that popular music and entertainment are asking.
Connecting with the culture. // One of the elements of surprise that Reality Church has used is rewriting popular songs to create parodies that can be used for teaching moments and to convey a certain idea from scripture. These songs are fun and really accessible, plus serve as a great invite tool on “big days” like Christmas. A couple of songs from the last few years include We Don’t Talk About Rudolph, which is a parody of Encanto’s We Don’t Talk About Bruno, and also a parody of a song from Hamilton.
Be clear that it’s a parody. // Creating parodies are legal under fair use, however make it evident that your work is a parody and that you’re not trying to appear as if the music or other content is your original work. It’s not legal to claim that the music or media is yours, so do reference the original work that you’re making the parody from.
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Listen I’m really excited for my conversation today with my friend and brother from another mother, Lance Burch. Now he spells his last name differently, probably the right way. Actually surprisingly when people spell my name wrong, they spell it the way he spells it. You have to look on your player to see how to spell it the right way. From Reality Church in Omaha, Nebraska – fantastic church. He really is I think one of the most gifted people in the country around looking and identifying kind of cultural phenomena, things that are out there, and then trying to find a way to connect that to biblical truth; obviously the goal is ultimately to point people back. Um, Reality’s a fantastic church. And Omaha, I don’t know there’s like a concentration of just amazing people in Omaha and so I’m so glad to have you on the show, Lance. But thanks for being here today. What did I miss? Build that picture a little bit. Tell us a bit about Reality.
Lance Burch — Well okay, Reality is something that we we call an entry level church. It’s something that we came on when somebody left our church. And and I think on the way out the door said you guys are an entry level church. And at first I was like what!? And I got super super kind of mad about it. And then I sat back in my chair and I thought you know, ah like of course we are.
Rich Birch — Yeah, don’t we want to be?
Lance Burch — Yeah. I’m so glad that Jesus is an entry level savior.
Lance Burch — That there wasn’t some sort of hoops or something that I had to jump through, that he finished the work. And so we’re trying to we’re trying to make that really clear. That ah, we don’t want to be cool. We don’t want to be um, like ah kind of out there, or we’re we’re “better than” at all because we’re not, and I’m not cool. But we do want to be really clear and we do want to make it clear that we’re listening to culture. That’s an important thing.
Rich Birch — This is…
Lance Burch — Ah one more thing about the Omaha churches.
Rich Birch — Yup. Yeah.
Lance Burch —You could not be more correct. This is a great place to do ministry. I’m a part of ah a network called Within Reach and the pastors here ah just a great place to move the Kingdom forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah. It it is is fantastic. Like I I am consistently amazed I bump into all kinds of great people from Omaha, and I yeah I just think it’s so so fun.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Such a great great community. So so friends I need to let you in on kind of tear down the third wall of the pretend radio show that we run here called the podcast. And um, you know Lance and I have connected a number number of times over the year.
Lance Burch — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — I’ve been to Reality, we’ve talked multisite, ah, count him as a friend, and he and I have had kind of a bubbling conversation in the background over the years around a number of things that recently I was like, listen, I just want to get you on the show and have this conversation in front of everybody so that you can benefit from it. Um, and so you’re going to hear that kind of unfold out here in in front of us and one of the things. You’ve talked about predictability and why this is it’s like the scourge of predictability. Our churches are just can be way too predictable. Why is that a problem? Why is predictability a problem, like big “P” Problem for the gospel, holding us back from what God’s calling us to do?
Lance Burch — Well one of the the big “P” Problem here is that Jesus wasn’t predictable. And we are called to be, you know, with a body of Christ, we’re the hands and feet of Jesus and we’re also you know to develop the mind of Christ. Now ah he told the rich young ruler to sell everything. He didn’t tell Zach he didn’t tell Zacchaeus to sell everything. He said I’m coming to your house; come down out of that tree. He didn’t tell the woman at the well to sell everything. He didn’t tell Nicodemus, you know? Ah it was just like, you got to be born again, Nicodemus. Why? Because Nicodemus was building his world around how he was born, his his heritage. That rich young ruler was building his world around his stuff. And this woman at the well was building her world around like relationships, and you know the next person.
Lance Burch — I think since Jesus knows that we’re individual, ah when he when he comes on the scene, I think he comes to us that way. And if he said the same thing over and over again, then maybe we’d be right to do that. But he didn’t.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — He’s he’s ah surprising in the way that he teaches, and the the authority that he takes in the way that he’s listening, and the illustrations that he uses. Almost all of his stories had a surprise ending. So that’s the big problem, if we are are saying we’re following this guy, we’re following Jesus, then we ought to do it the way that he did.
Rich Birch — Love that. So okay, so what does that look like? So I would say the thing when I when we first when I first kind of heard you talk a little bit about that, I was like oh I would say that does um that’s my experience of your ministry is your… my experience of reality is that you’re predictably unpredictable. Like there’s I I know that there’s you guys do things that kind of capture people’s imagination. Ah in ah in a good way. So what does that actually look like for your church? Like what be some of the ways that you’ve tried to lead out of that as a you know as the lead pastor?
Lance Burch — Yeah, you know it’s one of our values. It’s one of our core values. It’s surprise. That… it’s at the end of… it’s the last one: surprise. And the way it shows up is, well like New Year’s day we changed the seating in here to be in the round. Um I didn’t I didn’t talk that day. We just had stories and worship. And really when people we just told them something was going to happen. It’s incredibly powerful to have stories. It’s incredibly powerful to just to see each other for once and kind of use that day.
Lance Burch — Ah, the deal is that we don’t want people to show up, and number one, we don’t want it to feel like chaos. Of course there are going to be some things that we’re gonna do um, we’re gonna go to the scripture. We’re gonna we’re gonna sing truth to each other. But the novelty and the way the perspective the new angle on the same ancient truth is kind of what we want them to experience. So that um so it’s kind of like when you when you see something um and then you see it from a slightly different angle and it it changes the way you view it. We want to somehow do that with… We don’t change scripture. We don’t change the ancient truths. We don’t change what Jesus said, but we say to them what if you were looking at like this, what would that mean? So that we hope that we get emails and maybe lobby talk that says you know I did I knew that, but I never really thought of it that way. And…
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. So I’m not I’m not a preacher. Folks that have followed the podcast know that’s not what I do. That’s not my primary thing. But one of I but I have a deep respect for that, and I had deep respect for that function within the church, and love to kind of help create cultures and climates that allow that to happen. And what you’re touching on one of the core problems that I that I see so clearly. For someone like yourself that has to teach every week is, we we teach from a fixed text. Like we we don’t actually want super innovative ideas, like we don’t actually want things to be so different. You know, we and so because it’s a fixed text. Ultimately there are only so many words that we’re going to bring people back to. There’s one message, one core of Christ.
Lance Burch — Right.
Rich Birch — Actually don’t want the most innovative teacher ever to preach at me because it’s like I don’t actually want something new. I want I need scripture to be I need the teaching to be based in scripture. But so pull that apart. How do you as a communicator…
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …how do you flirt with that line? What does that look like? How do we do that? How do we how do we give people a new angle but don’t step into heresy?
Lance Burch — Right. Yeah, the other day we we preached a sermon, and and our bottom line statement, the the sticky statement was: if it’s new, it’s probably not true. You know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — …if somebody’s if somebody’s coming on the scene and I got a new revelation. No the we learn the the truths of christianity at a deeper level, but we don’t learn new truths.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — So um, the way we pick that apart is well first of all I’ve got a team…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Lance Burch — …that helps me construct the series and does a pretty cool eval. And I have this framework that asks: is this accurate? Is it is it clear? Is it passionate, delivered with passion? That came from me from my kind of mentor and ministry Joe Duke at LifePoint in in ah Reisterstown, Maryland. He has this framework and I use it. And so we really do look at the accuracy of what we’re talking about. It’s if that’s not there, then that’s an F immediately. I mean you you failed at your one job to make these truths really clear and to lean into scripture. Um at the same time, ah, while you’re being accurate, you’ve got to be clear.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — And now what clarity means in any given cultural context is this bridge between this always true thing, absolutely true thing and how they’re interpreting their entire world. Like, what language do they speak? Um, what what questions are they asking? And you don’t know the questions that a culture is asking unless you know what their music is saying. You can’t.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Right, right, right.
Lance Burch — Nobody asks questions like music.
Rich Birch — Right
Lance Burch — I mean movies do, um TV shows do, I guess in a little little sense. But man the music of any given culture…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lance Burch — …will tell you what do people are what are they really craving, what do they what do they want.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — So that gap, that that there’s the gap – clarity to accuracy.
Rich Birch — Okay, I love that. Now. So there’s people that are listening in who are probably thinking wait a second I’ve heard some of this before; this this is that sneaky old attractional church. You’re just trying to entertain people. You’re just a carnival barker. I know that’s not your heart. Obviously I know that’s you know that’s not who you are, ah but how does that fit out in your mind? And then well and I’d love to get into a specific tactic; I want to push you on a specific thing that I’ve seen you do.
Lance Burch — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — But kind of at a philosophical level, what’s entertainment? What… yeah we don’t want to entertain people, do we?
Lance Burch — Absolutely we do. Um, we absolutely want to entertain people. Jesus did this. Um Jesus, I know that I’m we’re not, the pastor is not Jesus and even the church itself is not going to perfectly embody who Jesus was. However, Jesus used creative stories, illustrations, and why? Why? He could have, you know what? He could have just given propositional truths about God. But you know he didn’t. And the reason he didn’t is because he loved the people in the crowd.
Lance Burch — He could say things that they couldn’t understand but they’d be absolutely true. And he could walk away from that, and he could say I gave him the truth; they didn’t do anything with it. But you know what he did instead? He said here’s these people made out of dirt and I’m going to try to communicate incredible truths that they can’t comprehend. But how can I do it? Let me talk about a farmer. Let me talk about some vineyard workers. Let me talk about a tower that fell on some dudes. Let me ah you know even current events.
Lance Burch — So if Jesus did that, um, what what in the world would a pastor want to do with standing up on a platform, saying if you don’t understand me then that just means I’m doing the right thing. That doesn’t make any that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lance Burch — Um, but you know to your argument about the attractional thing, did the American Church um, spend too much money or or too much energy in putting on a show? Now there’s a difference for me between entertainment and a show.
Rich Birch — Yes, Yes, yeah.
Lance Burch — Entertainment to me means to entertain someone means to hold their attention.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — Jesus did that consistently.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lance Burch — Jesus never put on a show. In fact, he he rejected that when it was a a temptation in the wilderness. I’m not gonna put on it…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lance Burch — …I’m not here to put on a show. But when I show up and when my truths are are proclaimed, they are attractional. They are. The only thing that’s really not attraction about christianity is the is um, is the sacrifice that it requires to to be like Jesus. The the teaching and the truths, they are attractional, and we don’t need to make church um, what’s the word. Ah you know we we don’t want to you know repel people from church. When when they show up I think every pastor’s glad. You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. No, it’s good. I think it’s you know that’s a good ah, you mean the other context, I’ve said listen I’m proudly have come from and that is my background is kind of the attractional church movement. And I and yeah have there been excesses like in any movement? Absolutely. Ah, but I think at its core I would agree with you that at the end of the day, I look at so much of Jesus’s teaching was attempting to grab people’s attention to get their engagement, and then ultimately to move some you know closer along obviously to move everyone. But you know that you need to do that and that if you call that entertainment or attractction, that’s fine with me.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Okay, so I want to talk about a specific tactic that you do at your church. So for so in my brain I was like, oh I I think for the last number of years Reality has been doing these um like parody songs at like Christmas, and other kind of special times during the year. And then I poked you on it I’m like oh there’s like a deep well here. Oh my goodness this is like decades of work that Lance has been doing. Talk to us about this particular tactic. Kind of describe it first. How have you used these kind of parody songs as a part of your you know, big days. A part of you know, kind of the communications you do as a church.
Lance Burch — You know I went to Creative Church Conference at Fellowship in…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Lance Burch — …in Dallas.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lance Burch — And I was young in ministry um, and well not not not terribly, but I saw a new tactic. And in their student ministry, this guy was rewriting songs. Um and I was trying to change a culture in Student Ministry at LifePoint that was kind of a toxic kind of cutting people down. So I said, why don’t we take this idea of rewriting songs and make it about an individual. So we called it the comfy chair song.
Lance Burch — And we had kids nominate a kid. They would I would say, Okay, what’s their favorite song? They would tell me their favorite song, and then I would say, would just tell me about them. And they would give me a page of stuff about this person – their quirks, their what they love to eat or what they, you know, what they love to do, or what they were good at. And I just would by a specific set of criteria, syllables and vowel shapings, rewrite that song for them. They would sit in the comfy chair, listen to the song, and then kids would line up at the microphone and say nice things about him. And it changed the culture.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s so cool.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love that.
Lance Burch — So so it got me into this heck I was doing that like 50 times a year, you know.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lance Burch — So I wrote a ton of them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — And it it got me to where I was I was pretty good at it, like I could count count the syllables, even the you know the emphasis needs to be the same. And so so I had a lot of fun at it.
Lance Burch — And out there at Saddleback, another guy was doing that – one of their youth workers. And he did a couple of videos that I emulated. And now we we found out that the kids were just they loved it. And I thought I wonder if it would work in the church setting. And you know, Weird Al made a career out of this; I’m nowhere near Weird Al status but ah, but he made a career out of it. And while it’s cheesy, it’s also fun and accessible. And so we we started we did Queen, we did that one one time for Christmas Eve, we did of course the Hamilton thing. And this past year we did We Don’t Talk About Rudolph and it…
Rich Birch — Yes. So good. So you just breezed over those. Take just slow down and give us a bit of those like you did Queen and like talk through that what you’ve done the last couple years just to give a sense.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’re going to put links in the show notes, friends; this really is going to be a bit of an incomplete podcast until you go and watch some of these things. So.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’re going to try to describe this. It’s hard to describe in, you know, 30 seconds but kind of talk us through what some of those look like.
Lance Burch — Well ah, the Queen thing was Bohemian Rhapsody, and I remember one of the lines was like ah drama at Christmas time, instead of “Mama”, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — And ah we we took it through that whole kind of chaos of Christmas, like things are going on and then kids are up, and so it’s kind of a chaotic scene. And then and then I think we ended with Christmas really matters at Reality. Chris…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it. Yes.
Lance Burch — The Hamilton thing happened during covid, you know.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lance Burch — We had a church member who actually had a barn. That we we didn’t do this on our platform at all; we had a church member that had a barn.
Rich Birch — Oh, I wondered where you shot that.
Lance Burch — Oh my goodness. And we had just hired a guy who had a connection to Midwest Light and Sound; they came in and they lit it on to emulate the Hamilton lighting. Ah, got a choreographer in there. We thought let’s do something special for covid; everybody’s at home. We were doing a Christmas eve video. And I thought baby born in Bethlehem / Alexander Hamilton – same syllables.
Rich Birch — Ah, love it. Love it.
Lance Burch — So we just we wrote it. We wrote it based on that and I loved every minute of that one.
Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, so now the the thing and then this year you did Ah We Don’t Talk About Rudolph which is kind of like a retelling of the Rudolph story, but to the “Encanto” you know that We Don’t Talk About Bruno…
Lance Burch — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …ah, which which was funny. It was you know I and I’ve joked about this on you know Facebook and stuff I’m like these these have become required viewing for me when it comes up in my feed, does not matter what I’m doing I you know. I apologize, clients, if I’m doing work for you, or I stop and I’m like okay I have to watch these because they’re they’re so well done; they’re so creative. Talk to me about song selection. So I was saying to you this before we got on, I don’t know and I find particularly the last couple of years—the Hamilton one, the Rudolph one, but even the Queen one like you seem to be able to tap the zeitgeist you you. You talked about this a little bit, the music, ah you talked about this, it’s like the questions that are being asked by music are the questions of a generation or questions of a culture.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah unpack that a little bit. How do you how do you find these songs? How do you find… I feel like I’m pretty connected culturally, but I’m like you just seem to nail it like that is the song that is like perfect for what we’re talking about.
Lance Burch — Yeah, well we we start talking about it, and we um I mean we have a good team of people that are that are really looking around and and kind of thinking about it. What’s weird is old music is new again because of playlist and things like that or it shows up in a movie. Um, and there’s usually one when we land on it it’s like like what you said, of course.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Lance Burch — Of course it’s this one. and we haven’t of course we we haven’t landed on this next year’s.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — But when when it happens, it’s just this it cuts across the culture.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lance Burch — Um I felt a ah little bit of pull toward the Encanto. We adopted two girls from Columbia; the movies about Columbia.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay. That would do it.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What what were some of the ones that were in the running for this year – do you remember some of the other ones? I’m trying to catch like what is the…
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I’m trying to unpack what is kind of… I’m trying to get inside your brain.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What is the what are some of the other ones that were thinking of there?
Lance Burch — Well one of the other one was from Encanto. It’s the pressure song about…
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Lance Burch — …can you imagine a family on Christmas Eve who has the family coming over. They haven’t they haven’t completed the the menu; they haven’t bought all their gifts. That just that kind of tick tick tick pressure thing…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
Lance Burch — …which would have been a good one, but we opted against it. We we always choose like there’s always a pop song in there somewhere, like a Meghan Trainor – something that’s you know, vocally sort of interesting. Um and you know Wednesday right now if we were going to do it like say today. Um I think we would probably and this might I don’t know what how people feel about this…
Rich Birch — Who knows? Yeah, yeah.
Lance Burch — But ah, but the Wednesday phenomena.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — Why why is that popular, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yes.
Lance Burch — I think it’s because a lot of people feel like Wednesday, like kind of kind of out there, a little quirky. If people knew the real me they wouldn’t like me. And now I’m going to now I’m going to pretend like I don’t care. Or maybe Wednesday’s being for real. I don’t know.
Lance Burch — But that’s the idea. We try to figure out what is what cuts across all of the the lines. And we don’t always hit. Maybe some people didn’t even know We Don’t Talk About Bruno but…
Rich Birch — Yeah I don’t… yeah, that’s if you were, had anyone who’s anywhere near any, you know, childhood age of at all, you knew that song. You continue to know that song. It’s one of those that that’s out there.
Rich Birch — Ah, you know I think the other so the other interesting piece of this for me, as someone on the outside looking in, so pull back a little bit from a strategy point of view. Friends that are listening in, these big days—Christmas, Easter, maybe Mother’s Day—you have 3 or 4 days during the year where two things happen, and you’ve heard me say this before, friends. Two things happen. One, your people are more likely to invite their friends, and two their friends are more likely to attend.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Now when their friends come, they are thinking—and this brings us back to the predictability thing—they have a framework of what church is. And then Lance and his team rolls out We Don’t Talk About Rudolph and, man, their expectations are shifted. They’re like, this is different. You know over the years I used to love, I would say the same thing, I used to love when we would people would say in New Jersey particularly I loved we would get like ah somebody would kind of greet us on the way out and they would say, man mass has really changed a lot since I was a kid. And I’m like yes, okay, we are we’ve hit it, right? We’re close to where we’re trying to get to. but these days are important for us to put extra effort into. They’re important for us because we are going to have extra people in the you know in the room that are not don’t necessarily attend church.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, so talk to me about how that fits into that part of your strategy, the kind of like hey we want to do, put extra effort – like this is disproportionate amount of work.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You’re thinking about, you heard it, friends. I don’t know if you heard that roll by. He’s already thinking about next year’s Christmas. It’s in… somewhere there’s like a little there’s a bucket open that currently Wednesday’s in, and eventually something else will eventually – it might be Wednesday by next fall. We’ll we’ll kind of click in and then you guys will do something. Tell me how that strategically fits into your kind of when it comes to reaching unchurched people or the friends of the people we’re trying to attend our church.
Lance Burch — Yeah I want our people to have an easy invite. When we we usually promote this like we want it to be a surprise.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lance Burch — We don’t tell everybody what the song’s going to be. We might throw a little hint out there. But we so but we let them know that there’s going to be something…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — …that is going to surprise their friends, and it gives them the easy invite. One thing that you hit on, we do do a lot of work on this. And so I tell our team, and I think this is super important, that if the product looks fantastic and everybody’s ticked off at each other at the end, then we failed. There’s the product goal, and then there’s this process goal. We made a real big goal this year to say let’s have fun the entire time. Let’s laugh…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Lance Burch — …and not get not get kind of angsty about this, because if we do we’re going off track. And it was fun the whole time. One of the things one of the deliverables about the parody song is that it’s fun for our team, and it’s fun for the volunteers that are a part of it. They get to be in on the secret and they invite, you know, ah a lot of people because they know they’re going to be in it. This year… can I can I mention somebody?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Totally.
Lance Burch — We we had this girl – um, eighth grader. Her name is Addison, and Addison played our new reindeer in town. And she could… our new elf and she couldn’t wait to meet Rudolph. Maybe you didn’t see the skit before the song, but it’s not on the video. But Addison improvved in front of a group of adults, and she was phenomenal. It was that’s another good side of this. Just let people use their gifts. There are people gifted at singing and dancing and lighting and sound, and I don’t think God wants us to just use those gifts. He does want us to use them in the community. But it’s another way for us to praise to to use ah skillfully use the things that he’s given us, the gifts that he’s given us. And Addison did that in such a great way. So it was cool to see an eighth grader be a part of it too.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool. I love that. The the process again, friends, I know this is like it’s like a half step. Ah when I, folk, I’m going to we’re going to email out on this one and I’m going to send the links ahead of time and say hey you should watch these before you come because it’ll it’ll give you a little more context. If you’re already mid midstream, you got to go watch them. But the the interesting thing on, or another part of this this puzzle, is I’ve heard people push back. In fact, on one of my posts about this I had someone pushed back on the legal side of this.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So for the people who are thinking about this thing, talk is talk to us about parody. Why is parody okay.
Lance Burch — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah talk that through from a legal point. Because it’s like Disney is a major company that you’re you, you know, you’re using their, you know, their music.
Lance Burch — Yeah, exactly. And there was a church that did something ah that they used the name Alexander Hamilton; they did a full length thing…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Lance Burch — …and it was called Scamilton in social media. It was really wrong. I mean they they tweaked the story a little bit, used a lot of the lyrics. Parody songs are completely legal. Parody songs are what they call fair use. It’s what Weird Al made his ah lifestyle on. It is a protected form of speech and it’s great. I mean I think that we ought to be able to parody things. It’s what Babylon Bee does. It’s what ah ah, in in and in a news format. And ah, what the Wittenburg Door did.
Rich Birch — You know, like yeah Saturday Night Live.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Like there’s like there’s tons of, you know, there’s tons of parody. The the trick I think from and I listen obviously I’m not a lawyer, I don’t play one on the internet, but my understanding of the line on parody is it needs to be self-evident that it’s parody. That you’re not trying to ah, you know, trying to put yourself off as you know it’s like it it needs to be tongue in cheek. It needs to be like, hey this is you know this is a parody. Um, that’s that’s the line ultimately that you’re um, you know, going to follow. And so some of that you could I’ve seen some churches do these where, which I can’t remember whether you guys do this or not, they literally will sit put like on YouTube it’ll it’ll say like parody song…
Lance Burch — We do.
Rich Birch — …like we’re being as explicit as that so that it’s, you know, super obvious. Yeah.
Lance Burch — Yeah we put that on there. I mean I don’t, but whoever is smarter than me puts that stuff on there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s so good. Okay I love this. Well let’s bring this back to predictability. When you think about predictability, the thing that’s interesting here, friends, that I want to pick apart is the thing that’s predictable in this case is, which is important for inviting, is that you’re going to do something special. That’s that’s Predictable.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You’re going to make that happen. The thing that’s not predictable is what you’re going to do. Ah, how does this how is this permeated… so this obviously is on your big days. How any other examples of how this kind of thinking has permeated other aspects of your ministry throughout the year? Other just examples that we could kind of as we go to and close this thing down.
Lance Burch — Yeah I think every week um, since surprise is one of our values, every week we want to bring in surprise. And that could be mild; I mean it could be just the use of a prop. Um, we had another surprise on Christmas Eve which was we were doing a candle lighting service and there was there was a canister on the stage and it had the candle. We always lit from the front. But I said, you know, in the context of the last few years darkness is a really good context to to see the light, you know?
Lance Burch — And we get distracted with all it and then I walk over to this thing you couldn’t even see a candle was there and I lit my candle from it and every candle was lit from that. A very mild surprise…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — …but it’s just different. And I think the deal is we don’t have to spend bucks on this. In fact, creativity I think keeps you from throwing money at stuff. And we don’t need to just invest. We can’t we can’t outsplash Hollywood or Nashville or any of the studios. What we can do is we can use the gifts that God gave us, and on a weekly basis um use a prop or bring somebody up or um, you know, tell the Gospel in ah in ah in an engaging way. Or we do spontaneous baptisms at our church…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.
Lance Burch — …where we you might you might have shown up, you didn’t know that you were going to get baptized, but you just heard the gospel. We got everything you need. And and hearing that story is a surprise. I mean heck every time Jesus interacts with somebody, ah, they don’t know we don’t know how it’s going to turn out.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Lance Burch — Only he does.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — And that’s that’s really cool. So that’s why I like coming in on Sunday and sometimes it’s Jesus that is doing the surprising and not us.
Rich Birch — So Good. This is this is great. Kind of final topic of of conversation and I hope our relationship can sustain this. One of the things I find fascinating about your leadership as a leader you seem to like to have fun with your people. Like you you know like I’ve seen you like a part of these parody videos, you know friends, again, you got to watch these things. It’s not like this is like a group of people doing them and then Lance is standing off stage, clapping. Oh isn’t that great. Like I’ve seen you do all kinds of funny things that are, you know, great, engaging, um, you know you know surprising ah. And I think there would be a lot of pastors that would look at that and say, yeah I’m not doing that. There’s no way. I would love for that to happen on my church, but like I’m not dressing up in the giant um… or the the the head to toe um, ah jack-o-lantern suit I remember seeing you in once. I was like what?! Like talk to me about that. What is you have this fun playful side…
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that I think is super endearing from a from a leadership point of view. I think people want to follow people like that, but talk to me about that.
Lance Burch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What’s what’s what’s that all about?
Lance Burch — Yeah, that it might not be everybody. I grew up kind of in theater; I did comedy for a while. Um, ah, quick throwaway I’ve got this cover band called Silly Joel where we do we go out and we play Billy Joel things. I love karaoke. So part of this is just kind of personality.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — However, let me encourage people who wouldn’t maybe be drawn to this. Nobody nobody comes in here thinking the pastor is gonna do something like that no matter what my personality is.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Lance Burch — So when they see that, all the sudden this inaccessible guy with barriers, and I could never be like that guy. If we if we choose to say, I’m gonna act silly. And they might think, well I think I could approach him; he just wore a pumpkin suit in front of me. Um then I think that could be a good thing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lance Burch — So I would encourage, you know, stretch a little bit. You don’t have to do everything, but um, surprise your crowd with your willingness to to maybe step. We’re asking them all the time to step outside of their comfort zone.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lance Burch — We’re asking them all the time to do stuff that maybe stretches them a little bit. And so I’d say to leaders, don’t be afraid to act silly; it’s it’s it’s vulnerable, it’s authentic. And we all act silly anyway, sometimes when people aren’t watching. So use that, if you can, to to gain access to, you know, just to somebody’s attention.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well, love it, friends. So good. We know you know that the human mind is a predictability engine. We just ah, you know we we watch patterns – pattern pattern pattern pattern pattern. And then when we can change that pattern when we can do something that’s out of pattern, in this case, you don’t expect the pastor to be in whatever – the the Hamilton play, the you know the orange suit that you know, whatever um that that that causes them literally your brain leans in on that and is like oh that’s different. Something is different about this organization. Well, Lance, I’ve really appreciated your friendship. I appreciate this conversation today. I appreciate you being on. Any final words, and and where do we want to send people if they want to track with you, with the church, that sort of thing.
Lance Burch — Sure. I guess my final word was it’s really easy to be like the guy on the platform or the or the guy, you know. I have an amazing team. The team at Reality Church, my staff, the people that support me. I’m only good at like two things; I can’t even keep a calendar. There’s so there’s so many things that people do for me. So um I just I don’t want to let this thing go without saying ah ah, it’s a privilege to to be able to be here.
Lance Burch — Though the last thing um if people want to see what we do Reality Church Omaha on YouTube, if you search, but you’re gonna have the links anyway. Reality.church is our website. Um, and um I think we’re gonna be out there ah eventually with a podcast called Things I Used to Think which is hopefully…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Lance Burch — Yeah, it’s just basically we start out with some things that um, you know, we used to think. Like I used to think if there was a car following me while I was walking home from my friend’s house that they were going to shoot me. You know there’s all sorts of things that just live in our head and and I think it teaches us something…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Lance Burch — …when we we talk about the things we so look for that. But reality.church is our website, and we’re on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and all the socials as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Appreciate you, sir. Thanks for being on here. Thanks for for sharing with us today.
Lance Burch — Yeah, thank you, Rich. I appreciate it so much.
Tithes & Offerings Are No Longer Enough To Fund Your Church with Mark DeYmaz
Jan 19, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to be talking with Mark DeYmaz, who planted Mosaic Church in Arkansas and is co-founder of Mosaix Global Network.
We’re nearly a quarter of our way through the 21st century and yet some churches are still operating on models from the 1960s. In spite of good intentions and a lot of activity, many pastors are merely managing the decline of their churches. Listen in as Mark talks about the 20th century metrics we need to stop chasing and where we need to shift our focus.
Works over words. // In order for the church to continue to move forward, we need to be thoughtful about the time we’re living in. We are in a Matthew 5:16 century – one where the works of churches impact unbelievers more powerfully than words. Whereas the 20th century was about explanation, the 21st century is about demonstration and getting out into the community rather than staying behind closed doors.
Play for influence. // In the 20th century churches played for size; in the 21st century churches need to play for influence. Influence is not tied to size, but rather to diversity. The greater your church’s diversity, both in terms of the structures and the demographics, the greater your influence will be in your community. People in a smaller, more multi-ethnic church can go into a larger swath of the community with the messaging of Christ compared to a larger homogenous church.
Multiple streams of income. // In the 20th century churches were funded by tithes and offerings, but in the 21st century we need to look at multiple streams of income. This doesn’t mean we get rid of tithes and offerings. Rather we revisit what good stewardship looks like according to Jesus’ teachings. Consider the parable of the talents; the wicked, lazy servant is the one who did nothing with his assets. Our assets are people, money and facilities – how are we stewarding them to fund the mission of the church?
Look at the buried assets. // So many things in today’s world have changed the way that younger generations are giving to the church and how much the church is receiving. Churches should take a look at their buried assets in order to release the economic engine to make money to both pay their bills and provide for their ministry. This includes connections that your people have to others and how you can aggregate money quickly.
Rent your facilities. // Even pre-pandemic, most church facilities sat empty from Monday to Saturday. That’s not good stewardship. The simplest way to earn income is to rent your facilities. Get a commercial realtor to come into the church and tell you how much unused areas of your church would be worth in the commercial market.
Monetize existing services. // Another option for earning money is to monetize existing services. One example might be using the coffee shop in the church to cover your costs as well as fund ministry. You may not have enough in tithes and offerings to cover expenses in the coffee shop. However by charging for something like coffee and breakfast biscuits, you can cover your costs as well as generate income to provide for ministry and outreach.
Earn through business for God’s work. // You can also start a for-profit LLC under your nonprofit. Create a business and hire employees, provide services, or sell items. Some of the profits earned by the business can then help to fund ministry at your church. Create a sister nonprofit under your church to handle outreach ministry in the community. Through the separate nonprofit, pursue grants and donations from local, state, federal, and outside entities.
Follow the law to keep tax exempt status. // You will keep your tax exempt status as long as you follow the laws. The money you make from the services you offer has to go back into the church. You also have to pay taxes on the property and business just as any other business would in your area.
You can find out more about Mosaix and the services they offer at www.mosaix.info. Plus, pick up The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough, and What You Can Do about It and Mark’s other books online wherever books are sold.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. I’m really excited for today’s conversation; we’ve got Mark DeYmaz with us. He is an incredible leader from central Arkansas. In 2001 him and his wife ah, founded Mosaic Church, which is a thriving multi-ethnic ah church in an economically diverse community doing all kinds of great things. Today he serves not only as a directional leader of Mosaic, but is also a champion of a movement of churches really that are trying to be ah, multi-ethnic, make a difference all across literally the world, Mosaic Global Network. So super honored to have Mark with us. Mark, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah, Rich. Thanks so much for having me.
Rich Birch — Why don’t we start with kind of fill out the picture. What did I miss there about your background? You know, kind of give people a sense of Mosaic; tell us a little bit more of the story.
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah I’d be glad to I served as a Student Ministries pastor in predominantly white evangelical churches for 18 years coming right out of college at 22 years of age. And the final eight years of those 18 brought me to the city of Little Rock to a wonderful church. At the time in 1993 that church was 2000 people; eight years later it was 5000. My youth group of 7th through 12th graders went from 150 to 600. I was in the top 2% of paid youth pastors in America. I’m living the dream this amazing church I had 500 kids ah you know in small groups, 250 volunteers, 9 full-time staff, built a 3.5 million dollar student center. Again, so I’m living the dream, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark DeYmaz — And one day in the late 90s I looked around this otherwise amazing church and realized the only people of color were janitors. That was 1997, and that began to bother me.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — I didn’t know at the time why that bothered me but it began to bother me. And that took me on into a journey into the new testament doing my own exegesis so to speak, throwing out what I’d been taught in seminary. I had a master’s in exegetical theology at the time, now my doctorate, my DMin in exegetic theology. And so I began to wonder about the things I’d been taught in the new testament or about the nature of the church. Was it, in fact, segregated? Jews, that is Jewish Believers, went to Jewish churches, Gentile believers to Gentile churches. Was the homogeneous unit principle as we had learned it—um, the way to plant, grow, and develop a church quickly is to focus on a single people group—was that beyond pragmatic, was it, in fact, biblical?
Mark DeYmaz — And so I did my own homework, so to speak. By the late 90s I I realized that every church in the new testament was a multiethnic church – men and women, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor. As we say at Mosaic today, walking, working, worshiping God together as one. And so once that biblical vision and mandate got in my belly, I determined of course ah with a calling from the Lord to stay in Little Rock, to leave that church, to go to the urban center of Little Rock in the summer of 2001 with what Christianity Today would call three years later a big dream in Little Rock – could in fact, men and women of diverse ethnic and economic background walk, work, worship, God together as one? Could they will themselves to do that in order to advance a credible witness of God’s love for all people, not just some.
Mark DeYmaz — Here in the city of Little Rock, the neighborhood we went to 30% poverty, 66% of kids without dads in the home, highest violent crime in the city; determined to lean into Matthew 5:16. You know I believe this is a Matthew 5:16 century. In the Twentieth century you can get away using words to reach people for Christ. Today it’s all about works. He said not let them hear your good words, but let them see your good works, and this is what will shine a light on who God is and how much he loves. Hope for all, not just some.
Mark DeYmaz — So in 2001 after 18 years in the multi… ah I’m sorry in the ah homogenous evangelical ah, predominantly white churches, I came to the inner city, started Mosaic—a church for all people not just some people, multiethnic, economically diverse. And within several years my friend my good friend, Dr. George, the African-American sociologist today at Baylor University, we had connected, we met and we realized that if God was showing me and, and him from a sociological standpoint, that churches ought to be multi-ethic for the sake of the gospel, surely he must be showing others around this country and the world.
Mark DeYmaz — And so we pulled together about 30 people in November of 2004 to consider this in Dallas, Texas. That led to the establishment of Mosaix Global Network and the mission and vision of Mosaix for now almost 20 years is to help pastors and ministry organizations build healthy multi-ethnic and economically diverse, socially just, culturally intelligent, and financially sustainable churches. So I serve as the directional leader of my own church—now we’re 10 years old at Mosaic—but I also serve as the co-founder and the CEO of Mosaix Global Network.
Rich Birch — Love it. One of the things you talked about there I found super intriguing which I know is a part of what you’ve been wrestling with, you talked about how in the Twentieth century churches grew based on the word – on, you know, on you know, speaking, ideas. And then in the Twenty-first century, you know, churches are growing based on works, action, getting people out of their seats, into the street, making a difference actually in their community. Are there any other of those kind of dynamics that you’ve seen as we kind of, you know, pivot from one century to another. You know I was just thinking, gosh, we’re we’re a quarter of our way into ah, the Twenty-first century and we’re still some of us are still living on models from the 1960s. What would be some of those other changes that we need to be thinking about as church leaders?
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah, you know, Rich. That’s a great question. I’ve addressed that for some time and this past year put that in writing in one of the chapters in a book called “Red Skies” published by 100 M the missional community. It’s a compilation book of Alan Hirsch, myself, Deb Hirsch, many others. But in my chapter on economics, I talk about that very thing. And the way I frame that is most pastors in America today, in spite of good intentions, all their activity, etc they are merely managing decline. They are merely managing the decline of their churches. And if you… and of course all the statistics show us that ah, attendance down, giving down, etc, etc. Ah, people’s interest in the church, the pipeline professional ministry leaders, the lack of strong student ministry today providing young people that are fired up to to be Christ-centered folks as well as going to ministry – all those statistics, if you will, show us we’re just managing decline. And if you understand that then, I asked myself several years ago, if that’s true, if you accept that premise, why is that? And the way I framed it in the book, the way I speak about it is that we are still chasing Twentieth century metrics. So the scoreboard, the dashboard is still all lit up by Twentieth century metrics, right? But as you rightly mentioned we’re nearly 25 years into the Twenty-first century and the metrics are still twentieth century.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s crazy.
Mark DeYmaz — So what are those metrics if we’re going to in fact, disrupt and reinvent for the Twenty-first century? You know the [inaudible] understood their times and knew what was right in that moment for Israel to do. We have to be thoughtful about our times to know what is the best course forward, and it is certainly not a return to the Twentieth century metrics. So, all that’s to say yes the twentieth century, the way people came to Christ, is you shared, you brought Billy Graham to your city. He clearly explained the gospel, you shared the 4 spiritual laws, clear explanation of the gospel. You gave people Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, More than a Carpenter. Later Lee Stroble, The Case for Christ. And all of this is explanatory.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark DeYmaz — So in a simple way You can say the twentieth century wasn’t ah the the difference is explanation versus today demonstration. Again, Matthew 5:16 – we’re going to have to lead with the kindness, meeting felt needs, empathizing, entering into people’s stories, and meeting those needs first at the bridge of humanity before we’ll ever get people to consider across the bridge of Christ’s divinity.
Mark DeYmaz — Another one is size versus influence. In the Twentieth century you played for size; in Twenty-first century you better be playing for influence. And influence is not tied to size as it was in the Twentieth century. As I mentioned, I was a part of a thriving church of 5000 white, Republican, suburban upper class, professional people. And in a city like Little Rock…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — …when I was there I thought, boy we have a lot of influence in the city. But when I left that to start Mosaic I realized the Democrats hated that church. People of color didn’t even know that church existed. On and on I could go. And so I realized that yes, it’s a lot of bodies, but they are only getting out on a Sunday and infiltrating, if you will, 1 or 2 slices of a 15 or 20 slice demographic pie.
Mark DeYmaz — So the point is, the greater your diversity, both structurally in terms of ah the the structures of your church and the demographics of your church, the greater your influence is going to be in a community. Because I can have 300 people of ah 30 different nations and economic diversity in all different types of backgrounds culturally. And when they get out on a Sunday morning, both Republican, Democrat, etc, ah black, white, rich, poor, and when they get out, they go into a larger swath of the city with the messaging of the Christ and the messaging of the church. And you could argue which church has more influence in a city. I’d rather play with 100 healthy, diverse people the way I’m describing than 1000 all-white, all-black, all-asian, and I’ll prove to you my influence is 10 times my size. So size versus influence – the greater your diversity, the greater your influence in the city.
Mark DeYmaz — Of course Twentieth century homogenous ah homogeneity Twenty-first multi-ethnicity, right? Twentieth sustaining innovation, Twenty-first disruptive innovation.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — So all of those are just a quick highlight of some of the the things we discuss. And one of the big ones I know you want to talk about today…
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Mark DeYmaz — …is in the Twentieth century tithes and offerings…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — …and in the Twenty-first multiple streams of income. Tithes and…
Rich Birch — Okay, so yeah, yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — In the Twenty-first century it’s no longer enough to not only sustain your ministry but to advance it in a healthy way.
Rich Birch — Okay, so this is to me this one, so there’s first of all, friends, you need to be following Mark ah, if you’re not already. There’s so much that you’re unpacking there that I’m I’m like amen, amen, amen. I remember, like I so ironically I spent a lot of time thinking about church growth and I think I only had one it was like literally one class in one course in school that was on church growth. And it was all on the homogeneous unit model, which which now looking back on it I’m like I’m that’s like sin at its core. Which is crazy, you know, all these years later. Like I’m like and it was just taught as like this is just the assumptive way. But now, man, if you pursue that model, you are yeah your church is just not going to impact at all. So love that. Um, but I would love to dig in on this financial piece. I heard you say this and I’m like I think Mark’s gone off the deep end. He’s being crazy. Obviously tongue-in-cheek – don’t think that. Tithes and offerings – isn’t that the core of how we’re supposed to fund our church? Convince me otherwise.
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah again Twentieth versus Twenty-first century understanding um at the core… and let me just quickly pivot and say the homogeneous unit principle is biblical insofar it’s applied for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership development.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mark DeYmaz — But once you cross the line to plant, grow, or develop a local church. There’s no biblical license, freedom, or mandate to target a single people group to plant a church. The church is to be for all people wherever possible and certainly in the United States, it’s very possible across a wide swath of this country. Having said that, back to sustainable economics.
Mark DeYmaz — When in the twentieth century again tithes and offerings, Twenty-first multiple streams of income. What am I really talking about? Good stewardship. In the American Church… so let me just start with a biblical framework. The reason why you need to not and when I say move away from tithes and offerings, I don’t mean get rid of tithes and offerings and not not not encouraging generosity. Of course we’re gonna keep doing all that. And that too is biblical. However, we’ve got to do some other things because that in and of itself in the Twenty-first will not be enough like the Twentieth, right?
Mark DeYmaz — So from a biblical standpoint, and I have written a book The Coming Revolution in Church Economics as well as a book called Disruption – it’s into all of this. But very quickly, think about it from a biblical perspective and a sociological perspective, and I’ll just throw in a couple on each. So in the American Church, and again Twentieth century metrics, the way most pastors understand the term stewardship is three ways. One to manage what God has given us. You know, God has given us this building, these assets. There’s a hole in the wall. There’s a pothole in the street. We need to fix it. We need to maintain and manage the resources God has given us. It means recording accurately the the gifts, the tithes, and offerings that you receive. We got to record that accurately, and number three we’ve got to clearly communicate to our donors how we’re spending that money.
Mark DeYmaz — And those are the three ways in which stewardship is defined in the American Church. Now I believe all of those things are part of good stewardship. However, if we’re very ah technical or exegetically sound, that’s not how Jesus defined stewardship. Jesus said, and he taught us in the parable, right? You gave me five – here’s your five, and I made you five. You gave me two – here’s your two, and I made you two. Well done, good and faithful steward.
Mark DeYmaz — One guy, as I like to say, sat on his asset, right?
Rich Birch — I love it. Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — One guy sat on his asset and and he sat on this asset and he’s called the wicked, lazy slave, or or servant, steward if you want. And what what does that mean? He says I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose it. So he he led with fear not by informed faith as the other two. And what does Christ say? Take away the one asset from the guy and give it to the people that know what to do with it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — And that is happening all over this country. In terms of Jesus overturned the money changer – what about that? You know, we’re not supposed to touch money. Has nothing to do with fair or benevolent profit. It was all about unjust economics. They were upcharging people for the exchange rate of a Roman coin to a Jewish half shekel. They were marking up the turtle doves so to speak for the survey or for the sacrifice beyond what the poor could otherwise afford.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — It was all about unjust economics. So biblically, we need to think deeper about these matters. And then from a sociological standpoint, easy to make the case right? Tithes and offerings completely and consistently dropping. But more than that from a secular standpoint, you’ve got generational shifts and attitudes and approaches to giving. Nearly 80% of all giving to the American Church as of several years ago is given by people born before 1964.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark DeYmaz — And doesn’t mean that younger people don’t have money; they just they don’t trust institutions. They believe that their volunteerism and/or their endorsement of the church or the products, the service of the church is equated with their giving, where if you’re older like me at 61 years old you see those as a both/and not an either/or. So there’s generational [inaudible] there’s some attitudes and approaches to giving.
Mark DeYmaz — The rise of dual income households – that’s gone from where in 1960 about 20% of US households had dual incomes, just to live a middle class life today it’s almost 80%.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark DeYmaz — And it’s not [inaudible] that have all this extra money. It takes at least two income streams if not more in the American household just to live a generally middle class life today due to wealth inequality income gaps, the inflation the highest it’s been, ah, you know middle class wealth is the lowest it’s been since 1940. So there’s all these factors sociologically, but the mindset of the church continues to be as if the single paycheck of a tithe and offering will help the church, if you will, live a middle class life.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — So remember 80% or so of households in the 60s – the the old Ozzie and Harriet thing, right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark DeYmaz — Theoretically dad went to work, mom stayed home with the kids, got involved the PTA. That one paycheck from dad’s work allowed that family to have a house, have a car, etc. Those days are long gone.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — And they’re never coming back so we’re going to have… So the practice of church economics is is to leverage the assets of your church in pursuit of good stewardship. What are those assets? People, money, and facilities. Not just the people you have but the connections to others they have. Not just the money you may or may not have, but your ability to aggregate money quickly.
Mark DeYmaz — Ah, your facilities – most facilities even pre-pandemic sit empty from Monday to Saturday. That’s buried assets. Money in your bank account. That’s buried assets. People. So the point is we’ve got to turn on the spigot, if you will, to release the economic engine and assets of the church. Again, not to go out and make tons of money like as as if it was capitalism, and run amok or we’re in it for a profit. But no, if we keep giving everything away, we’re not gonna be here in five years. It’s the church that owns [inaudible] and I walk in I say well how much do you charge these groups coming in? Oh no, we just let them do it. Just let them come in for free. It’s our ministry. Well who’s… the toilet paper, the water bill, the electric bill, etc.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark DeYmaz — You see what I’m saying? That’s not good stewardship. I know the heart is right. But that is not good head stewardship…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — And you don’t have to and I tell, like using that as an example. You don’t just charge the cost of it, but you don’t charge top dollar.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — Somewhere in between so you’re covering your costs.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — You’re making a little something, but not an exorbitant fee to be benevolent. And the point is when I have the when I’m generating income from ah a profitable standpoint, when I’ve got the tithes and offerings, and the other leg of this by the way, Rich. We talk about three legs of a stool, like offense, defense, special teams – the tithes and offerings starting a for a nonprofit sister organization to your church whereby you can chase local, state, federal grant funding go beyond what your church can otherwise do. And of course as I just lean into in this example of a gym, the for profit side where we’re leveraging assets to generate ah ROI and the aggregate of tithes and offerings, your grants and donations both from local, state, federal as well as outside entities, other churches, [inaudible]…
Rich Birch — Yeah, foundation stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — …with the ah ROI pursuit of for profit entities, that aggregate is how you’re not only going to survive but sustain, become stable, and thrive going forward in the Twenty-first century.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So good. Now I’m wondering so you you started to get into a couple practical pieces there. I like that three-legged stool piece. I think we have clarity on you know that kind of the the normal church leg of this, you know, the stool. Talk us through a little bit of that um, particularly that that the profit side, that – you gave us the example of the gym. Um, give us some other examples of the kinds of things that either you’re doing or you’ve seen other churches do that like oh that’s an innovative way to to try to generate some income um as a church.
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah, so just let me be clear. The gym example is yes, that’s an example, but I use that to help us free our minds and think with a different mentality. So again, the mentality is we’re giving this away; we’re doing ministry. But you’re not going to be here in five years if you don’t change that mindset. So that’s what that example was about. Um, again, three-legged stool, we’re talking about the third leg – your special teams, if you will, your for-profit ROI side where you’re leveraging assets, generating income. On that side let’s just break it down and think think about it like this… By the way, let me say,
Mark DeYmaz — the simplest way for a church to generate income is to rent its facilities.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark DeYmaz — That is the simplest way, the cleanest way; rent your facilities. If you’re going to rent facilities, as many churches do, I’m not the first person to suggest rent your facilities…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark DeYmaz — …or what have you, but but what has happened heretofore is people see it as nice, not necessary.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Mark DeYmaz — Okay, isn’t it nice you have this preschool. Isn’t it nice that we rent our parking lot for this and we pick up a little income. That’s a nice mentality. Today it’s necessary. So in other words, it’s part of a comprehensive strategy that heretofore has not been developed that I put forth in Disruption, Coming Revolution in Church Economics. So with that in mind, again, the simplest way to make money is to rent your facilities. And the way to do that is to get a commercial realtor to come into a certain area of your church, empty classrooms that keep you converted converted to nonprofit centers, counseling offices, law law offices – all kinds of things. They’re sitting there dormant. Get a commercial realtor to come into your church and say on the commercial market, this area would be worth this amount of money.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — So I’ll just use an example. These 5 classrooms, this 3000 square feet would be worth $5000 on the commercial market.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz —Okay, we’re not in it for top dollar again. We’ve got a strategy of the the tithes and offerings, grants and donations, and now the for-profits. So we don’t have to make top dollar, but I can’t give it away for free, as we said, so I might rent that space for $2000 or $3000, which which has an impact on the people I’m renting it to. In other words, it’s lowering their overhead…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — …so they can offer their goods and services at lower prices to the community. We call that benevolent ownership. I I as a church, we make something. Small business – we take pressure off of them in terms of their overhead, and they pass on that savings to the community. So everybody wins in that scenario. So the simplest way is to leverage your facilities.
Mark DeYmaz — Here’s another example of that. We talk about monetizing existing services. So put that ah, ah you know under the the renters space benevolent ownership. This other aspect would be monetized existing services. There’s already things churches are doing and paying to do in terms of the space they built, the people they employ, the equipment they have. They’re already doing that, well monetize that. That’s like low hanging fruit.
Mark DeYmaz — Here’s a perfect example: many churches, most have some type of a coffee shop or coffee area, right? And they’re giving free coffee away every Sunday morning. When you think about that, who’s paying for that free coffee? Tithes and offerings in most cases, right? So somebody decides we’re going to take $2000 a month out of tithes and offerings; that’s $24,000 a year. We’re going to let that walk out our front door in the form of free coffee, and with with hospitality hoping somehow not only are blessing people, but hopefully that some of these people will like our church someday so much that they come and they start giving. Okay. But what does $24,000 a year take away from actual ministry?
Rich Birch — That’s a good question.
Mark DeYmaz — I might be able to hire a part-time uni-tasker or part-time some… I might be able to fund the entire VBS…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — …and go to whole different levels with $24,000. So I’ve got this space; I want to give away free coffee.
Mark DeYmaz — But you partner here with business people who know how to monetize that space in a benevolent way. So we did this at our church prior to the pandemic. We we had built out our coffee area. I went to ah to Sam’s Club. I buy a microwave. I buy a little tin foil. I buy Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits with cheese for $.95 a biscuit.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — You wrap them up and heat them up. You sell them for $2 on Sunday. McDonald’s sells them across the street for $3.50 so I’m already $1.50 under…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — …what you get based on the same thing across the street. The people start buying the biscuits, and let’s just say that the the mark is 2000 a month, all I have to do is sell 2000 biscuits a month to make $2000 to cover the free coffee and recoup…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — …$2000 a month in my tithes and offerings to put to direct ministry. We don’t think like that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — Nobody taught us to think like that in seminary…
Rich Birch — No, no. That’s so true.
Mark DeYmaz — …but again business people know how to do this. So your job as a pastor, you don’t have to be the one to do this. You have to understand the strategy, again as I lay out in my books—Disruption, Coming Revolution of Church Economics—and then empower people to to put this thing together. So that’s an example…
Rich Birch — Love it. So good.
Mark DeYmaz — …of monetizing existing services, right? So benevolent ownership of your facility, monetizing existing services, and the last thing is you can—actually most pastors, again, don’t know this—um, you can start for-profit LLCs under your nonprofit. Um and and in other words, real for… real business. So for instance, you might go out and and get two capital partners, and so we want to, you know, we’re always printing these t-shirts; we’re gonna create a t-shirt printing company right here. And we’re gonna move it into the church. We’ll provide the space. We’ll buy the equipment, etc, etc. That’ll be our investment. You get these two other investors; they put money in. And all of a sudden you’re hiring your high school kids, your college kids, you’re providing jobs, you’re doing this marketing, and you’re never paying for t-shirts again. And anything you’re giving [inaudible] selling to your church, you’re making profit.
Mark DeYmaz — How much money do you pay for janitor service in your church? What if you repurpose those funds to actually start a janitor company that employs people, etc, get a couple of capital investors. Now you’ve got a business.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — Everybody gets a third of profit. The janitor company is doing so, you know, goes out gets contracts, and the net that that company makes beyond the employee costs and all the things, salaries, the net pays for your janitor coverage every year. So that company’s cleaning your church but the way you’re they’re being paid is through the net profit…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — …of the work they do outside the church. And again you recover significant dollars to repurpose to ministry.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mark DeYmaz — So benevolent ownership, monetizing existing services, and starting new businesses whether under the nonprofit formally as an LLC or not. And that leads to a question, Rich, I know you’ve probably already anticipated; I’ll just roll into it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — What about my tax-exempt status?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mark DeYmaz — And most pastors are afraid if we get into these things we’re going to lose our tax exempt status. And that is not true if you play by the rules. And there’s really just simple rules to play by. Number one, um that when you, let’s take a coffee shop, for example – if if I am making money as a church if our church is making money through that coffee shop through the year of course you report that on your taxes as unrelated business income. But let’s say that’s generating a profit and we we made $10,000 this year, $20,000 – whatever it is. That money, the $20,000 net profit that we receive as a church needs to go back into the budget of the general church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — I can’t say, hey $20,000 – awesome. Hey our 5 board members, everybody gets a $4000 bonus, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — You can’t do that, right?
Rich Birch — No.
Mark DeYmaz — That violates a law; you’d lose your tax exempt status.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — The other thing is you have to pay taxes on that property and or that business just like any other business or coffee shop would in your city, state or in the country. You cannot leverage your nonprofit status to try to avoid paying property taxes, or what have you.
Mark DeYmaz — So in our case, for instance, after 15 years we were able to purchase an abandoned 100,000 square foot Kmart, and for the past 8 or 9 years we’ve rented 44,000 square foot to a suburban fitness club that moved into the inner city and took that deal. Now they’re they that off what we make off them is right now I can’t do the math quickly in my head, but probably I’m going to say 40% or 35% of our mortgage is paid just by that one contract.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Wow. That’s fantastic.
Mark DeYmaz — Okay, not only that but 6000 people from the community belong because our price to them is so low they can lower the prices to people for this quality help, you know, physical fitness and all that, and and so all the community joined at $10 a month, no contract.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — And that has an impact on the health and wellbeing, the emotional psyche of a community that today’s 24% at or below poverty.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good.
Mark DeYmaz — So all of that is in the books and again we could talk all day about it. But as fast as I can talk and give you an overview, that’s what’s going on.
Rich Birch — Yeah you you yeah yeah, you anticipated the question there. I was wondering a bit about the if if you could give an overview a little bit about how the legal structure works. But I think you gave some clarity there. Is there anything else on that for for the pessimists in the room that are like, listen we just can’t do this. This is too risky. Ah, you answered it well there, but is there any other kind of because I know it’s actually pretty straightforward. There’s a number of churches that are doing this, but you know is there anything else we need to think about that on the structure side how those three entities kind of interact with each other?
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah, well again, you you mentioned fear if you’re not doing this because you’re afraid, you’re no different than the guy in the bible burying the asset.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — You as a pastor may not understand this. You may not understand; you gotta we we walk by faith not by sight. Now there’s a fine line between faith and foolishness…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — …and what that means is, pastor, I’m looking you in the eyes so to speak right now, you don’t have to do all this.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — You just have to understand it from a theological…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — …sociological pragmatic standpoint, and then go out and empower the people who share your heart…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark DeYmaz — …share your vision, share your theology, and let them take these things and run with it for the glory of God.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — And now the the last thing I’d say is say what else to add. So picture if you will those of you who are listening, picture a football team and draw it in your head as a three-legged stool. There’s offense on one leg, defense on one leg, special teams on the other. Each team has its own players, its own metrics, its own coaches, its own game plan. Ah, and to win the game, you’ve got to have all three teams functioning at a very high level and minimizing the state, or you don’t win. Most churches only play have an offense, if you will – let’s call that the spiritual game. That’s that’s most churches. Some social game and very few the financial game like we’re talking about.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark DeYmaz — So what we’ve got to do in the Twenty-first century is a move away from a single dimensional game to playing a three-dimensional game.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — And and of course the spiritual is already happening. And in terms of and all we need to do the adjustment there is to make sure our churches are moving and leaning in towards the increasing diversity of our society – Revelation 7 on earth to become the embassies in which diverse ambassadors walk and reach the world for the gospel. So there’s innovation there, but on the economic side that’s tithes and offerings. The third leg we’ve already talked about, right? So that’s going to generate for profit ah ROI whether that’s done formally under as an LLC or just as unrelated business income to your nonprofit.
Mark DeYmaz — But the second leg, let me just throw this in there, and answer your question. The second leg I just kind of threw out. What you want to do is create a nonprofit – not many nonprofits, one nonprofit.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good.
Mark DeYmaz — That nonprofit is going to have multiple programs within it. Cause most ah, people might approach like I don’t know let’s say they have a heart for foster care. So they start a nonprofit for foster care, or maybe it’s ESL class in immigration. We start an ESL or I’m sorry a nonprofit for that. But when you do that you end up with 8 nonprofits, 8 boards, 8 tax returns, 8 [inaudible] – it’s inefficient
Rich Birch — Oh gosh. Yeah yeah, yeah, super inefficient. Yeah yeah, yeah, super inefficient.
Mark DeYmaz — So what you want to do is create one nonprofit. By the way you don’t want it across town. You want it under your roof so that you’re sharing expenses across the board.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — There’s ways the church aggregates that. And this nonprofit—think about it as two sisters in the same house or the defense to the offense—and it’s led by social justice types: compassionate, kind, merciful people. People that go to school for an MSW for instance. Ah that so the first leg is your pastors. The second leg is your MSW types.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — Your third leg is your business people…
Rich Birch — Love it. Powerful.
Mark DeYmaz — …and that’s who [inaudible] right? Now the…
Rich Birch — That would be incredible.
Mark DeYmaz — Right. So the executive director types of your nonprofit, they build out the multiple programs that are meeting and servicing the needs of the community. And again on the economic side where do you get money? You get money by chasing local state and federal grants which are available for these works in ways that they wouldn’t be available if those works were organized under your church.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mark DeYmaz — So practically what you do is you start with any compassion, mercy and justice work going on in your church, form the nonprofit, and shift those things out from under the oversight of the church, under the oversight of the nonprofit board before you add.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — And then you look for money outside. And what happens it’s not just local, state, and federal grants. That’s grants. But donations means there’s there’s Christians in your community, individuals that go to other churches that don’t have a distribution program but they have a passion for food insecurity. And they will donate money not to Mosaic Church, but to the nonprofit Vine & Village.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — Churches will send their money and their people to serve in those programs. You know, churches typically don’t write a check to other churches, right? But they’ll write a check they’ll write your nonprofit a check because and they’ll send people to work. I’ll give you one quick example.
Mark DeYmaz — We have in our city a private Christian school called Episcopal, started by the episcopal diocese, very wealthy school, whatever. And they send, every week, about 6 to 10 of their students in the entire high school (9th through 12th grade)…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark DeYmaz — …they send 6 to 10 kids to work in our food distribution program on Tuesdays between 10:30 and 1:30. And they’ve already gone through the entire high school once; now they’re doing it again. And this is partnership for us, right? But they wouldn’t do that if it was Mosaic Church, right? But they do it because it’s a nonprofit. And I’ll just end with this, right now I invite your listeners to pray. But um, for fifteen months we have chased a $3.5 million dollar grant from the state of Arkansas…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — And nonprofit was awarded that grant, and it’s down to one vote of a congressional committee in the state of Arkansas that has to vote.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark DeYmaz — And but we’ve already passed 9 out of the 10 tests…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark DeYmaz —…and we’re just [inaudible] 10 tests. But that would be $3.5 million dollars to our nonprofit.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Mark DeYmaz — And I and when I met with the State Comptroller fifteen months ago and I sat down to discuss this this work, the first question he asked me was, now is this a church? That’s what he said. Now is this a church?
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Mark DeYmaz — And I said no, it’s a it’s a 501c3 community development corporation that’s a separate nonprofit. And he said it’s hard to give away money. And what he meant was…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark DeYmaz — …if you were a church, you might as well walk out now because you’re not getting a penny.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark DeYmaz — But because you’re structured as a nonprofit and essentially we have a letter, we’ve been awarded three and a half million pending…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Mark DeYmaz — …the vote ah the the final vote of a congressional committee.
Rich Birch — This one one next step. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. This has been incredible, Mark. I really appreciate you leaning in on this and you know so clear and so passionate. I appreciate you coming back and pushing us. I’m hoping listeners as you’re listening in today ah, you’re thinking, hey man we should take a step on this. And I think a now real practical next step is I would love people to go and pick up a copy of your book. It’s just simply called The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why (what we’ve been talking about) Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough and What You Can Do About It. People can pick that up at Amazon; is there anywhere else we want to send them to pick up copies of this? Personally what I think this would be a great thing to do, friends, you’re looking for you know your next staff training thing. Buy copies of this book. Buy 10 copies of this book for your entire staff. Read it together and then talk about, hey what what changes should we make? How does this affect the way we’re doing what we’re doing. But where else we want to send people if they want to pick up copies of this book?
Mark DeYmaz — Well, you know I mean I’m pretty simple guy. You already mentioned Amazon. Anywhere where books are sold, Barnes and Nobles, wherever.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mark DeYmaz — I’m sure Baker, my publisher, would love for you to go to their website and buy it.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Mark DeYmaz — But to your greater point, yes, this is what people are doing. They’re buying a copy…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark DeYmaz — …for every one of their elders, every one of their staff…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark DeYmaz — …and they’re walking it through, and reading it through because frankly in that book I also talked about the entirety of the three-legged stool.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark DeYmaz — But but more than that it’s beyond the economics of the all, it’s really about freeing your mind. In fact, there’s an entire chapter called Free your Mind.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Mark DeYmaz — And and even if you your thing wasn’t economics, it will drive you to think differently, and ultimately about the Twenty-first century.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Appreciate you, Mark. Thank you so much for your leadership. Thanks for your encouragement today. Where do we want to send people online if we want them to track with you or with the church or with Mosaix Global, or where do we want to send them?
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah, the best way and and that’s what we do and I appreciate bringing it up – mosaix.info m o s a i x dot info – we are literally helping churches, organizations—my next call in 15 minutes as was a very large global organization—but again Mosaix has products and services, people to help you build healthy multi-ethnic, socially just, culturally intelligent, financially sustainable churches. That’s what we do day in and day out.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark DeYmaz — And and it’s kind of like you just pick one – hey we want to work on our economics, or we want to work on our cultural intelligence, or we’re looking to hire diverse staff. So we have different departments, if you will, that will help you with any one of these angles or aspects you’re looking to move your church forward into the Twenty-first century and move away from Twentieth century metrics.
Rich Birch — So good.
Mark DeYmaz — Again to be healthy, not only survive and be sustainable ultimately sustainable for the sake of the gospel going forward in the century.
Rich Birch — So good. Appreciate you, sir. Thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show and all encouragement to you. I look forward to hearing about that donation coming in from ah you know the gift. That’s so good.
Mark DeYmaz — Yeah, you will pray with us. Thanks so much for having me, Rich.
Rich Birch — Take care, brother.
Reflecting on Seasons of Life, Leadership & Their Impact on Your Team with Lee Coate
Jan 12, 2023
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Lee Coate, the executive pastor at The Crossing in Las Vegas, and the president of Growmentum Group.
Today Lee is talking with us about Growmentum Group, how they are helping church leaders accomplish their missions, and how to use the different seasons of leadership that are found on your teams.
Accomplish your mission. // Growmentum works with churches to help them accomplish their missions. They value partnerships and offer a full access relationship with the executive leaders that come to them. By providing an outside voice and reaching out to church leaders on a regular basis, they help you to work on the ministry while working in it.
Become farsighted again. // The last few years forced church leaders to plan more short-term. As a result we’ve become shortsighted in our leadership and vision and are struggling to think in a more futuristic way. Growmentum works with churches to become more farsighted in their vision and examine if their values are more actual, or aspirational. It’s ok to have aspirational values, but then we need to build some farsighted vision around how to make them more actual.
Work on it, not just in it. // As leaders we have to be really intentional to model farsightedness by looking ahead in ministry and not only focusing on today. Schedule “work on it” meetings that are isolated from your normal work. Get your team together to work on ministry, uninterrupted, at least once a month. Hold quarterly half-day “work on it” meetings with the decision makers, and annually get away a day or two away to set the farsighted vision.
Widen the targets. //If most churches could get a 10 year target, paint a three year picture, and operate on a one year plan, quarter by quarter, on a regular basis they would start to see their mission gain some ground. Target more widely and not only specifically.
Seasons of life and leadership. // Everyone wants high capacity leaders on their teams, but would we be prepared for what they’d demand from us? Different age groups translate to different seasons of leadership, and each brings different strengths and weaknesses to the table. Lee has identified these four main seasons as: Princes and Princesses (18-25 year olds), Warriors and Warrioresses (roughly between 25-40 years old); Kings and Queens, and then Sages and Muses.
You can find Lee Coate on most social media sites or send him an email. If you’d like to know more about Growmentum Group you can learn more at growmentumgroup.com. Or follow along with The Crossing at thecrossinglv.com.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. Super excited for today’s conversation—a repeat guest—which you know when it’s a repeat guest, this is somebody that you are going to want to lean in on. Lee Coate he is the Executive Pastor at The Crossing in Vegas as well as the President of Growmentum Group. Growmentum Group offers executive leadership coaching, strategic momentum consulting, and customized really solutions to help organizations reach their full potential. Lee, so glad that you are here today. Thanks for being on the show.
Lee Coate — Rich, thanks for having me back, man. I enjoyed getting to connect with you, and it’s good to to connect with you even when we’re not riding our Pelotons and actually being able to have a conversation.
Rich Birch — Exactly, exactly.
Lee Coate — So I feel like we should be on our Pelotons riding as we have this conversation. But…
Rich Birch — It’s true. It’s true.
Lee Coate — It’s good to be with you guys and all the church leaders that’ll be listening. Hopefully this will be a helpful conversation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. I do love the Peloton. We’ve gone through this this challenge, every day of the month challenge, which is really fun actually. And it was people all from all over North America and which is really cool. This is small group was kind of a fun. The Peloton’s been fantastic. Yeah.
Lee Coate — I was waking up every day. I was waking up every day to those messages, you know, hey I did my ride I did my ride. So it was very motivational for those of us on the west coast that were coming in later to the process. It was great.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah I don’t I the people that ride at the end of the day, I’m always like that’s impressive. I cannot do that. Like the guys that ride like at night, I’m like that’s crazy. That’s that’s unbelievable.
Lee Coate — Now I’m a first first thing in the morning. Whatever it is has got to happen or it’s not going to happen.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely for sure. Well what we want to do today, I want to take advantage of the fact that you have ah a really… well first of all, fill out the story. Tell us a little bit more about Growmentum; tell us about you know the church. Give us what what did I miss there in that description?
Lee Coate — Ah, you you did well; you didn’t miss much. But you know, Rich, you know after about 35, 40 years of ministry, you know, and and this season where I still feel like you know there’s a lot to contribute. I’m still operating on a day-to-day basis as an executive pastor here in Vegas. And so um, kind of boots on the ground on a regular basis, but also over the last few years have come together with K Chung who is really the founder and the CEO of a group that we call Growmentum. And it really kind of accelerated like many things in COVID as church leaders kind of you know took hit after hit and were really looking for some um, someplace to come together.
Lee Coate — And so Growmentum really has evolved, but it’s also accelerated. We’re working with churches all over the country, even have a couple now in Canada, so there you go, Rich.
Rich Birch — Nice. Love it. So good. Okay.
Lee Coate — And it’s it’s really just um, us partnering and our mission is really to help them accomplish their mission. We really value relationships and partnerships in that process. And so some of what we do uniquely is kind of a full access relationship. So we have a lot of guys that are on the executive level that you know are not only doing some of the formal stuff that we, do boots on the ground with them and with their team. But also you know hey they’re reaching out on a regular basis which makes my text messages and emails and all of that really interesting. But if I can contribute from an objective standpoint, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — We all need those individuals that are not there in it, so that we can work on it with them. So one of our things that we say, our axioms, is we want to be that group that helps you work on it when you’re in the midst of working in it. And what the challenge is when we are pulling away, we’re pulling our team away or we’re just having a meeting that the agenda is work on it, we all realize that the work in it is not happening. And so it has to be really really intentional. Because the drift to the work in it is always going to be the pull. And so part of what we’ve tried to do with clients and then just people that are in our network is just one, that encouragement to work on it. And then tools and things that they can have that conversation around.
Lee Coate — I mean you see this all the time, Rich. It’s like guys going man I’ve got this meeting. Or I want my culture to get better. I don’t know what to do. Like I’ve got a meeting in 20 minutes and I want to build the [inaudible] culture; I have no clue what to do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — And so we try to provide them with regular tools as well, both in conversations and through other resources to do that. And so hopefully today’ll be a bit more of that, maybe on a wider scale as we kind of talk together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So good. And I love your heart for serving church leaders, and you know, friends, I’m a huge fan of us having a strategic outsider, someone who can provide that like you say work on it ah, you know when you’re in the midst of working in it. And so just so good. And I so want to encourage people to get it make it make sure they get a chance to connect with you and and with Growmentum. I think you guys do great work.
Rich Birch — So you have an interesting vantage point because you see a lot of different churches. A lot of different um, whether it’s you know, direct coaches the churches that you’re coaching or it’s just through you know discussions with other folks in Growmentum. When you think about um, you know, the issues that seem to be top of mind that you keep coming back to time again, or maybe you keep seeing the impact of those like oh here’s here’s like a um, you know a thing that we just keep seeing you know as we’re as I look around the landscape, what would that be? What would be some of those things that come, you know, time and again that that you think might be interesting for us to tackle today?
Lee Coate — I think I’ll start with this one…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lee Coate — …and what we like to say is this is like you know we we’ve kind of become so shortsighted in our leadership in, in our vision, so we’ve become we’ve got into the habit of being shortsighted in our vision that now we’ve we as leaders are struggling probably in life, but specifically in the church to really begin to think in a much more futuristic way. Let me explain what I mean. Like during COVID, and again I I don’t want to have COVID conversations, as you don’t either, Rich, right? We’re like we’re we’re all so fatigued.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — But I think one of the things that we learned there is we were forced habitually to think as leaders in a very shortsighted manner, right? We were you were doing it. We were doing it. You were encouraging and coaching guys like we don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re you’re on a 30 to 60 day plan, right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Lee Coate — And that’s what we were doing, and that was necessary. But what happened I believe as I’m starting to talk to guys is that sort of became ingrained.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — And so now it’s like all of the sudden we start to emerge and it’s like how do we get farsighted again? We’ve become so nearsighted in our style. And then you couple that with whatever leadership fatigue they’re they’re dealing with, whatever the team exhaustion they’re dealing with. And then to go, Okay, how do we get farsighted again?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So a lot of the work that we’ve been doing specifically in the last year and a half is helping guys to build some structure that would begin to bring that farsightedness back into view for them, right? When we talk a lot, and we’ll talk in a minute about some team health things, I think one of the key components of team health is also making sure that the team actually understands the unique missional objective that we as a as church are trying to accomplish, right?
Lee Coate — We say something at Growmentum. We say, strategy drives our vision through our values towards our mission, right? And so mission mission is the same for all churches – Matthew 28 Jesus kind of gave it to us, so we can’t really change it, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — We don’t have that option…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yes.
Lee Coate — …but we all say it in different ways.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — We all use our own language, right? So then we get to values, and values are really unique. I think values are actually under underappreciated.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So that’s a secondary thing we’ve been looking at with churches. It’s like sometimes churches just kind of throw values on the wall, or you know it’s something on their website, but values to me should be what’s unique. Why do you exist when our church exists up the street, or that other church exists? It’s because there’s a uniqueness to who you are, what you guys care about, and so we’ve got to filter all of our decisions through that. So we challenge teams right now really to get more farsighted in their vision, and then are your values more actual or more aspirational, right?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Lee Coate — And really have a conversation around that. Like are these values that were just and it’s okay to have, Rich, a few aspirational things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But to just be aware that currently, whatever it might be, you know we want to be a come as you are environment. Is that actually happening or is that just more aspirational? If it’s more aspirational…
Rich Birch — Oh right.
Lee Coate — …maybe we can build some more farsighted vision around how to make that more true.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — And then the last thing really goes to vision, which is like ten or three years, and then strategy which is like what do we need to do tomorrow? Like what do we need to do tomorrow…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — …to make sure that that mission gets accomplished. So that’s a long answer but I really see that more and more being the case of like how do we get leaders farsighted, and how do they lean back into why they uniquely are positioned where they are.
Rich Birch — Oh I love that. Let’s talk about that farsighted issue first. What would be some of the kind of evidence that you’re seeing in churches that maybe we’re not thinking far enough down the road that we’re you know we’re we’re being too, you know we’re thinking too much about this weekend or we’re caught too much in in ah, you know this kind of current situation, rather than looking up over the hill.
Lee Coate — Um, yeah I think it’s a continuation of that work in it conversation, right?
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Lee Coate — The the demands I mean that’s not a new that’s not new ground we’re treading, right? The demands of the day and and all of those things. I think as leaders like if you’re an executive level leader or you’re leading a team, I think part of it is we have to really be intentional to model that. Right? If we’re affirming all the work in it all the time or every meeting that we’re having it has an agenda that’s very “work in it”. That’s going to become just by nature very nearsighted.
Rich Birch — Oh That’s good.
Lee Coate — But if we’re having time that we’re intentionally setting aside to say listen, we’re going to work on it in this in this environment. Like we actually I actually believe that teams need a rhythm in meetings that doesn’t just have a part of the meeting that’s “work on it”. I don’t think that works I think the work in it will always invade and overwhelm. I actually would encourage our listeners, whatever their rhythm of meeting with their team is, to actually isolate that “work on it” time.
Rich Birch — Oh love it. Yeah.
Lee Coate — And it needs and it needs to happen minimally on a monthly basis, right? So then it’s not just a quarterly or ah or a yearly annual offsite. But it’s ah a it doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be it doesn’t even have to be any longer than your normal meeting rhythm, but just like we’re clearing the decks and we’re going to work on it a little bit. I mean here at The Crossing where I’m at serving every day, man we’ve we’ve we’ve wrestled with that same challenge.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yeah.
Lee Coate — So it’s not something I’m just observing as I’m out there doing it. It’s something that I’m I’m living out in a in a real way, you know? And so yeah, so that’s part of it.
Rich Birch — Um, when you think about the ratio, even if we’re thinking at a high level around okay, our team’s time invested. Do we think like is it like a you know a third of our time, 10 percent of our time? How much you know when you think of what is a good healthy rhythm. It probably depends on the church. But how often should we be thinking about like I need to get my team away to be thinking about stuff that’s up over the horizon?
Lee Coate — I would loosely say there should be a once a month rhythm of a normal non non-evasive meeting that’s work on it.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lee Coate — You know where it’s like yeah we’re just in the room and and we’re just all coming together. I would say quarterly I would encourage at least a half day with your executive – those that are decision makers. And then of course annually a day or two away to really set that farsighted vision that’s going. We’ve we’ve we’ve introduced a lot of churches to EOS and using that system; some of your listeners will know it. Um we we don’t dive deep into it because we believe that you know 99% of churches (I just made that number up, Rich), but you know the large large percentage of churches if they could just get a ten year target, paint a three-year picture and operate on a one-year plan, quarter by quarter. If they just did that on a regular basis and just wash, rinse, repeat, they would start to see their mission that we’ve been given this huge mission we’ve been given. We would start to see that actually start to gain some ground. If we could just get there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So that’s a big deal.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Let’s…
Lee Coate — I think it’s funny, Rich, we actually chart we actually challenge guys, we’ll we’ll say hey tell us what your, you know, give us a sentence or two or two or three bullet points when we start a relationship with them, like what is your ten year target? You would be shocked how hard that is for senior level leaders. And I know some of it is because the recent coaching has always been everything changes so fast. You should think further out. I think I disagree with that a little bit because I think target is very wide. It’s it’s not specific, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So like here at The Crossing I’ll I’ll rattle off our target. Our target that we’ve come up with is in 10 years The Crossing will be a multi-generational multiethic network of churches with a median age of 35 that has doubled its outward focused impact. Now what does that mean, what does that mean? What is a network of churches? We actually don’t know yet, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — Like what does that mean, but I’ll tell you what if we have a target of a median age of 35 because our power lead pastor is going to be moving on in that realm…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lee Coate — …we got to do some strategic thinking around that, don’t we?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — That’s not going to happen magically.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So we put that in our targets so that now when we start painting a picture and working every every year, and every every quarter, we’re thinking about how does this contribute to that target more likely being hit. And there’s the last thing, if we don’t hit the target and we fall a little short who cares?
Rich Birch — Yeah, you’ve you’ve gone a long way.
Lee Coate — Because the target…
Rich Birch — Exactly.
Lee Coate — Correct. And so we’ve got a coach guys to get them out of thinking that target is like ah is ah is something that’s like restricting. It’s actually free.
Rich Birch — Well and I love that because there’s there’s like ah you’ve identified even in your ten year target there like durable long term um, yeah, aspirational and actual goals for the organization that kind of regardless of what happens between here and there like the getting younger is a durable issue. We’ve got to figure out how to do that. The becoming multi-generational, becoming multiethnic, like those are like it’s not like 10 years from now the world’s going to change so much that we’re going to say, you know what? I think we should have a less multiethnic church like that’s just not the way the world’s going, right? The reality of it is on that issue alone every zip code in the country is more diverse today than it was ten years ago, and it will be more diverse 10 years from now. And so our church unless we get passionate about how we’re going to do that, um, we’ll just drift. We’ll drift in the wrong direction. I love that. I think that’s so good.
Lee Coate — And what’s what’s what’s exciting is as as I mentioned a moment ago as, Rich—that was so good—as as challenging as it is when we get the team in the room, and the and the lead guy has we’ve worked with us ahead of time and he’s got that sentence or that 3 or 4 points. And we we make him the hero.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Lee Coate — So we step away…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Lee Coate — …and he stands up in front and goes, here’s what I believe the target is. And you know what happens to the team that’s sitting there, right?
Rich Birch — No, I love it that. Yeah.
Lee Coate — All of a sudden they’re going, you know, yes! Like right? And some of that is just give us a target.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. It’s rallying.
Lee Coate —But then on top of that is like I can get excited to get up every day and rally around…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Lee Coate — …that objective because that informs what I’m going to do on a daily basis.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. That’s so good. Well let’s let’s let’s hone in on the team issue specifically. You know you mentioned the team there. I know lots of folks that are listening in are executive pastors or senior you know, lead pastors and we’ve got a team. What are you seeing on that front? You know as you’re helping leaders lead their teams, are there regular patterns you’re running into or things that we should be wrestling with and thinking through in this age?
Lee Coate — Um, I think this is probably a pattern that has always been there I think it’s probably a little bit accelerated at the moment. Um, and that is the dynamic between some of our more mature leaders and some of our emerging leaders. And that dynamic, again, I know that it’s always been there but I believe that maybe with some of the acceleration that we’ve seen with especially our emerging leaders like maybe a little bit, and I mean this in ah in a kind way, but a little bit of impatience sometimes that emerges there. I think the dynamic between our emerging leaders and our more mature leaders is definitely something that is an ongoing conversation that I’m having and also an observation. So when I’m sitting with teams, it’s like, Okay, how do I rally these younger leaders while also maintaining a bit of like um my experience, or or my desires, or my my best practices as me as the senior leader needs to see. So I’m personally wrestling with that as well you know in this season of my life.
Lee Coate — You know I’ve I’ve changed my life mission in the I went on sabbatical last summer and came out of it. And one of the things—it’s not a perfect statement, but—I’m still wrestling with is you know personally I believe as I’m in my fifties, the next ten years of my life is really you know how is God how is God powerfully positioned me to influence and serve the leader that I once was – these younger leaders.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Lee Coate — So how can I how am I now powerfully positioned by my experience, etc. not to just continue to be Lee accelerating, but to influence and serve the person that I once was, that I can see that was me, right? And so that’s driven a lot of the conversation around that and how leaders… because we want younger leaders, don’t we?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — But we really don’t know what to do with them sometimes.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, let’s let’s pull…
Lee Coate — Because they they can be challenging.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s pull that apart like I think you know this is so I think germane is at the core of so many of our of issues whether it’s um, you know, succession issues, or staff development issues, or even that that aging down issue we just talked about. It’s like we all, you know, I remember years ago a friend of mine said you know the the problem with deciding that you want to lead leaders is that they want to lead. And so when you gather young leaders around you the problem with that is they’re young leaders.
Rich Birch — And so um, you know I think you know you and me are in that kind of like I don’t feel like an old leader yet, I just feel like a leader but I’m definitely not a young leader anymore. I know that. So help us think that through a little bit. What how what how should we be wrestling with it? As maybe someone who does have a few more lap laps on the, you know, on the car. What are some things we should be looking at to kind of engage next generation leaders?
Lee Coate — It’s interesting listening to when you said that because I’ve talked to pastors all the time, both with their staff and probably even with the volunteers, which is another conversation, but they’re constantly saying to me (I know you’re hearing this too), like how do I how do I get more high capacity leaders, right? How do I get stronger leaders?
Lee Coate — And I’ve rarely said this but I’ve often thought this that I don’t know if we are actually prepared for what a high capacity leader would demand of us. Think about the high capacity leaders in the workplace. If if I get some of—and I’ve experienced this—if I get some of those people engaged at the church, they’re not playing. Like they need to know what are we doing, where are we going.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — I have a limited time; I have limited resources. What do you need me to do? So I think sometimes there’s a false narrative where leaders go on I need these high capacity leaders. And if they had them, they wouldn’t know what to do with them. It would freak them out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So I think we have to think about what is that. But specifically with our staff, one of the things, one of the conversations I’ve been working through with my team is something that I jotted down on a napkin at breakfast. I kind of do some of my best thinking with a napkin and a really sharp Sharpie. Um I sit at the same breakfast place all the time. And the other week I was sitting at the same table and I noticed some of my Sharpie was on the table itself. So probably I probably probably owe them a new table.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Lee Coate — But one of the things that occurred to me is I was thinking about seasons of life and leadership right? Not just younger leaders…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lee Coate — …but like what are the seasons. And there’s probably a little Richard Rohr and a little John Eldredge woven into this…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — …but it’s it’s the idea of like it… And what I’m about to share with you is really not about age, though. There’s obviously some age…
Rich Birch — Some connections. Yeah.
Lee Coate — …built in. Correct. What I mean when I say it’s not about age, I don’t think you get to a certain age and you necessarily transition into this next season.
Rich Birch — Oh good. Yeah yeah, that’s good.
Lee Coate — I think that there’s probably some ballpark of like this is a season based on age. Um, so let me just give them to the listeners and then you and I can banter around about them, you know? Um, ah we start with prince or princess, right? And I think that’s probably like our 18 to 25 year olds, right? I’m talking about your staff leaders, and what’s interesting about these individuals is we call them princes and princesses. I think the term is is really great because I think it it makes sense for um, for that season that they’re in. And what’s great about the prince and princesses, Rich, is they have passion…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — …and they have curiosity.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — Like they are curious, they are asking questions. They are doing all those things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — And so I love having those princes and princesses around. My son is 24; he’s just joined our staff here at The Crossing.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah.
Lee Coate — He is a prince, right? That’s where he is. He’s passionate his life his season of life allows him you know a little more leeway. Um, as far as how engaged he is, right? So their biggest contribution as a prince or princess, if you’re listening right now, your biggest contribution is passion and curiosity, right?
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Lee Coate — But but there’s a dark side.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Lee Coate — And we can stop at each of these. There’s four of ’em, Rich, if you want to.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Lee Coate — There’s a dark side and um, it’s not going to surprise anybody, but the dark side of a prince or a princess is entitlement. It’s the idea of like I want to move fast. I know it all.
Rich Birch — Right. I know it all. Yeah.
Lee Coate — Right? And I want to be at the table, right now.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Lee Coate — You know I’ve been serving here for six months, why am I not making the the decisions for the direction of the organization?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — Right? And if somebody’s listening and they feel like I’m an old guy being cruel… I’m not. Because I was that person too.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Lee Coate — So just so you know we’ve all been there and been that person, and felt that tension.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Lee Coate — So that’s the prince and princess stage. That’s really important.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s so when we think about… so yeah I think that’s a really vivid picture. I think that’s a you know I think we can picture those people in our um, in our circles. If we don’t have those people I think sometimes those those people can be flushed out of our organization because it’s like we’re scared like you say of passion and curiosity. We don’t know what to do with that. And so it’s funny you say that about your own kid, like my the lead pastor at our church recently, my my daughter is 22 and she’s like super creative and all that. And she and he said to my wife recently he’s like, man we got to figure out some way to how do we harness that – that’s just is so exciting. And I thought that’s an interesting word when you think about the prince and princess. It’s like well there’s a lot of good there. But it’s like hey how do we get that kind of you know in in the right spot. Um, what are the other ones? What are the other kind of categories?
Lee Coate — Somebody once said with prince and prince as I was sharing this a few months ago somebody told me there was parallels with Paul the apostle. And they kind of broke it down and said like when Paul was a prince he was the one holding the coats while they were stoning Stephen. You know he’s kind of there, curious about what’s going on. It’s an interesting playout. So the second one is um, warrior or Warrioress, and this is probably your 25 to 40.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — You know, it’s that season where there’s a degree of either purpose that has been discovered, or purpose that is at least desired, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — So it’s like I have a direction that I want to go. Um the warriors in warrioress, man, they are so vital.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — Because they bring the energy to your organization.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — Like my team right now is filled with warriors, man. And they are getting bloody every day; they’re strapping the sword on. They’ve got the armor; they are going. And they have it seems like they have unlimited energy, right? And they want and and the the healthy warriors want to, you know, cliché but they want to make a difference. They want to provide value. They want to do all those things.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — Ah the dark side of the dark side of warriors is um, burnout, basically. It’s that idea of you know I’m in this prime season…
Rich Birch — Just keep running.
Lee Coate — …feel like um yeah, they keep running and maybe the purpose that they’re chasing is not discovered or it it starts to be elusive. And so I think some of that can also produce the burnout. I’m doing this over and over and over again and nothing I’m not really ah I’m not really getting where I want to go. I’m not winning the battles, right? What does that mean? So that can lead us to some burnout for sure.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Lee Coate — So prince/princess, warrior/warrioess…
Rich Birch — And then what’s next?
Lee Coate — …um, third is king and king and queen. Um I don’t know where you are, Rich. This may be you. Um I’m definitely a king.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lee Coate — And when I say those words sometimes people can think well, you know, that’s ah that sounds kind of arrogant. That’s not the direction. What what it really means is the kings and the queens bring experience.
Rich Birch ‑ Right, right.
Lee Coate — That’s their contribution to the organization. And they provide direction, right? So my biggest contribution right now is I’ve got all these warriors…
Rich Birch ‑ Right.
Lee Coate — …and if I’m constantly going hey guys, let’s go this way and here’s what you need to be aware of, right? And let’s sit down together and let’s review everything so that I can use my experience to help you avoid things. And they’re like cool, right? Here’s the thing that’s interesting with my warriors is I need to strap the armor on once in a while; I need to put the sword on. I need to get in it with them.
Rich Birch ‑ Right.
Lee Coate — There’s certain moments where it’s like I need to get in there. But what’s interesting is they love that. But then there’s also a moment where they’ll say, leave; we’re good. We got it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — We’ll let you know if we need you again, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lee Coate — And so again and and I don’t want I don’t have the energy to be in there now. The the dark side of Kings and queens is they get they can check out, right? We can get to the point where you know we’ve kind of arrived maybe; we’re not as ambitious anymore. Um, we don’t have the energy, and so in some ways we can check out and just put our lives put our leadership lives on cruise control. And nobody nobody even knows it cause sometimes as a king and queen it’s pretty easy to just kind of sit on the throne and not really do anything…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — …that’s moving the organization forward.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Lee Coate — By the way, Rich, if if you walk into a room and you have to tell someone you’re a king, or you have to announce that. You’re not.
Rich Birch — You’re not a king.
Lee Coate — You’re not a king.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly.
Lee Coate — So if anybody listening if you’ve got to go in and say, guys, I listened to Lee and Rich and I’m a king.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lee Coate — You’re not the king.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, totally.
Lee Coate — The king whenever a king walks in the room, people know the king’s in the room, or the queen’s in the room.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that totally, absolutely, yeah.
Lee Coate — They just know; they defer.
Rich Birch — That’s vivid. That’s very and that’s interesting you say the dark side around that kind of like being checked out that being, you know, like not not as engaged. I remember ten years ago I was with a lead pastor of a very large church and definitely in the king phase, and I remember him saying, he said—and it was like a bit of a shocker—and at the time I was like I don’t get what you’re saying because—maybe it was more like fifteen years ago—he was like well you know this is not like a full-time job. Like this isn’t this doesn’t take all of me. Like I I and I remember at the time thinking that’s very odd, like that’s an odd thing to say. I’m like you’re leading a church, at this point was like you know tens of thousands of people and, but now I can kind of see that where I’m like there’s it. It can create that opportunity for you to just as you know on the negative side of you know, being a king just kind of amass your kingdom and sit back and let all the let all the warriors take care of everything. Interesting.
Lee Coate — Where I where I think this is important to talk about with your team is I think warriors will get frustrated with kings and queens…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — …if they experience that, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — Because again the warriors they just want direction. They don’t need you fighting every battle, but man they’re going to get frustrated if you don’t provide them.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Lee Coate — And by the way if you’re a warrior, nobody wants a warrior that acts like a king.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Lee Coate — So if you’re in a warrior phase, be a warrior, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — When it’s time to be a King…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
Lee Coate — …we’ll all know that and and lean into it. The last one, Rich, is what we call a sage or a muse. This is you know, what that latter season of life and their greatest contribution is wisdom and being advisory um, as they’re on the team. I think this can also be maybe kind of as a side note something that we can look at even as our church, you know, there’s something about this probably that also speaks to our church, our congregation, our volunteer structure, all of those things, right? Because there’s always that tension between what do we do with the more you know mature people in our church. But man if someone’s a sage and they know that, and they embrace it, that is so amazing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s huge. It’s huge.
Lee Coate — That is so healthy they can bring that with time now. The dark side of a sage is they have an agenda.
Rich Birch — Okay, what do you mean by that?
Lee Coate — So well I mean and we all experience. It’s like when you’re a sage and I bring you into the room and you say listen, here’s here’s what I’ve learned, here’s what I think, here’s what I would suggest you do, go do that, let me know how that goes. Right?
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, yeah.
Lee Coate — And and and they’re kind of like, you know, it’s not that they’re disengaged. They just understand their role, right. But if you’re a sage and you’ve got an agenda behind the advice that you’re giving, that can be unhealthy, right? It can be it’s that older staff person that really is giving advice based on I don’t I don’t like these changes, or I don’t I don’t think this, right? They’re they’re giving advice with a personal agenda.
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — That can be the dark side of being a sage or a muse.
Rich Birch — So then…
Lee Coate — And we have to work really hard to move people along, rich, in this. We do…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lee Coate — I had a prince that was on my team in the last year and as their role evolved, we really needed them to start warrioring and they literally said, not not with words but with action, I’m not ready to do that and I don’t want to do it. And so they chose to do something else, right?
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Lee Coate — Because they like being a prince. I mean think about a prince. Princes aren’t princes are usually like they’re not like; they’re born that way, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lee Coate — Like when you’re a prince, it’s like you just all that’s all you know. I’m a prince.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Lee Coate — And so you have to move them out of that stage…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Lee Coate — …into like no, it’s time to go to battle. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s I think that’s a really helpful framework. It’s a creative framework ;I think it’s a helpful framework too to think. Because I’ve even said I’ve said to young leaders, like it doesn’t bother me as ah as a leader to look at somebody in their twenties who is kind of they’re still trying to figure it out like they’re they’re trying different things they’re like in and out of stuff. And but there is there’s a weird moment there which I’ve so I’ve said to people I’m like there, I don’t know when it is I don’t have a way to prescribe it, but it’s like if you keep doing that it goes from being like a normal behavior which in this case is I would say is a princely behavior, or a princess behavior, of like hey I’m trying to figure out I got lots of passion I got lots of curiosity I’m trying different things. But then eventually if you just keep keep stuck in that phase then you get passed over. Because people are like no well we actually need warriors. We need we need you to settle down on something and to, you know, take up arms and and push forward. Um yeah I think that’s really fascinating. What a fascinating work.
Rich Birch — Now this is interesting framework. How have you found this helpful as you’ve been engaging with your team at the church or with other, you know, with other churches.
Lee Coate — Yeah I mean I think so pretty simply it’s it’s you know it’s something that you know just trying to kind of build out obviously…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Lee Coate — …it’s something new but you know in the culture meetings that we have here at The Crossing when I stand in front of the team. It’s become language that you’ll hear them use. Right? And so as we’ve kind of unpacked it a little bit…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Lee Coate — …in a facilitated way now you’ll start to hear, yeah, he’s that you know that’s a prince thing. Or he’s not in ah, not in a detrimental way but more in a like understanding way.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Lee Coate — And then as so as as this is something that has started to take some form, there have been a lot of occasions with teams and churches that this has been really helpful, you know in that work on it rhythm that I’m talking about, this would be an example of something where hey we’ve got an hour or 2 hours we’re gonna sit, and we’re gonna we’re gonna wrestle with this. Where are you; where is your team? What is your best contribution? Are you leaning into the dark side a little bit? I mean you know your listeners are already going, yeah, this is a rich conversation that they can have.
Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting. So good. Well I love this. This is so helpful. Um, what ah what a cool framework. As we went through this, you know, I was just recently in the last six months I was talking to a king um, in your language, who um they they were they’ve come to a bit of a a crossroads where they’re they’re feeling that pressure of like okay, so now what? They’re like now now what do I do? And um, are are really asking the question am I going to warrior for the next ten, fifteen years? Am I going to you know do I do I have you know it kind of in me to continue on in a purpose, or do I need to say do I need to really switch to being a sage or a muse? And and and and they definitely are feeling that, you know, I think that checkout thing really strongly because they’re like like my life just keeps running. It’s fine like it’s all it’s all fine; nothing’s not you know there’s no, nothing’s really nobody’s burning the bridges at the door. We can keep going as we’re going, so I just think this is really helpful, Lee. I appreciate this framework; this is great.
Lee Coate — Absolutely. I wonder if there isn’t I mean anything to the quietly quitting conversation again. Not a conversation we want to have again.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lee Coate — But I don’t I think this could I think this could also contribute to some of that…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Lee Coate — …if there was frustration on a team where they could have a better understanding of where they currently were…
Rich Birch — Right.
Lee Coate — …and what that would demand of them. So I think I think that would be really key. I would say, Rich, as well before we close up is that, you know, somebody asked me and I think it’s true. I think that again I said this is an age. I think there are things where it’s a season like I would say in my executive pastor work I’m a king. I would say in my Growmentum work I’m probably in a warrior season, frankly. I’m using that king experience and direction. But as far as like what I’m doing and digging a new thing out of the ground. It’s kind of a warrioring.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s a good phrase.
Lee Coate — So that’s where I think sometimes even a king might say—some of the people you reference—it may be time for them to find, if they’re not ready to be a sage, they need to find an area of their life where they can warrior again a little bit, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Yep.
Lee Coate — And lean in a little bit if they’re feeling bored or those things. So I think it’s just a I think it’s a I think it’s just a healthy conversation to have…
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting discussion. That’s so good.
Lee Coate — …thanks for letting us have it rich.
Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so great. Now we’ll we’ll in our show notes what we’ve got. Like ah you put together a slide that talks through all of these. Um I’d encourage you, friends, you should take that, print it, maybe hang it in your desk somewhere or you know in your office. It might be something that could be interesting to ah come back to time and again as you’re thinking about your team and wrestling through.
Rich Birch — Now, Lee, I want to make sure people get a chance to connect with you just as we close up. Where do we want to send them online to to talk to connect with you, with the church, with Growmentum – where are all the places that they can chase you down?
Lee Coate — Absolutely; it’s really simple. Obviously if you’re a social media person I’m there living life on social media like everybody else. And so it’s just simple; all of the handles there are @leecoate. I haven’t left Twitter yet so you can find me there, but mostly on on Instagram.
Lee Coate — But then more importantly you can follow Growmentum Group. We’re on Instagram and you can email me specifically and I can have some conversations if you’d love for me or our team to have more conversations with you. If this conversation would be helpful to have in person or Zoom we can do that. But it’s Lee—very simple—lee@growmentumgroup.com
Rich Birch — Love it.
Lee Coate — lee@growmentumgroup.com – I’m sure it’ll be in the notes as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally; we’ll link to it there.
Lee Coate — So I love to have a conversation with anybody who wants to have it. But praying for the leaders out there. It’s not easy; lean in. We’re gonna we’re we’re gaining ground. So let’s keep doing this thing.
Rich Birch — Love it. And and, friends, you know I don’t so first of all I think if if anything today you’ve said like oh I think I’d like to talk to Lee or the folks at Growmentum, act on that instinct. Don’t don’t just let that pass you by; reach out. So I I don’t do this for everybody; I really do trust Lee. I think he’s he there’s there are people (shocker) who are in this market who see it as a market, but that like Lee doesn’t. Lee sees it as a chance to try to help church leaders. I know he wants to help you, wants to come alongside you and be a strategic outsider to help you think about these things. And I would strongly encourage, recommend, endorse that you reach out to him if you’ve got any question. This would be a perfect year if you do not have someone like Lee in your corner, this would be a perfect year to do that. So thanks so much Lee; I appreciate you being on the show. Thanks for coming. We’ll have you back in the future. Love, love talking to you. Thanks, buddy.
Lee Coate — Thanks, Rich; appreciate it, bud.
Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons with the Right People at Your Church with Scot Longyear & Heath Bottomly
Jan 05, 2023
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re with returning guests Scot Longyear and Heath Bottomly today. Heath is the Lead Pastor of the Creative Teams at Pure Heart Church in Arizona and Scot is the Senior Pastor of Maryland Community Church in Indiana.
Scot and Heath talk with us about their book Fight For The Future: Creating The Right Blueprint For Building God-Sized Dreams.
From dreaming to doing. // Individuals, ministries and churches often talk about things that they should do, things that are a good vision or a good dream, but we don’t take action. In Fight For The Future, Scot and Heath talk about moving from the dreaming stage to the doing stage. This process consists of three key elements: the right things, the right reasons, and the right people.
Right things. // One of the hardest things churches wrestle with is believing that the right things are simply good things. Because we all want to do good things, churches can have an avalanche of good things thrown in our laps. Before we know it, we’re giving a small amount of energy to a large number of good things and aren’t accomplishing significant milestones in any of them. Fight For The Future asks what is that thing you are called to; what is that dream in your mind and heart, and how can you intentionally pursue it?
Discovering the right things. // To find what your church is called to do, ask what are your church’s passions? Where has the Lord placed you in your city or in certain relationships that you have? What are your resources, and what is the Lord stirring up in your heart?
Right reasons. // We are all creative beings and we’re all building something. The question is why we are building what we’re building. Is what you’re building largely about yourself and your empire or legacy, or is it about God’s kingdom?
Right people. // We all struggle with finding the right people in ministry. At Maryland Community Church, the team filters potential hires through a long process to see if they are the right culture fit. During this process Scot asks the potential hire just two questions: What am I going to learn about you in six months that will surprise or embarrass me? If I have to stand in front of our congregation and read a resignation letter from you because of a moral failure, what would that moral failure be?
Missional unity. // In some cases we need to hire people who are really specialized at what they do. But if someone is super-talented and not aligned with the mission of your church, they are not the right person. The mission needs to be more important than the talent, and the work can’t be about perfection, but rather excellence – knowing you did your best.
Hand off leadership to the next generation. // If we’re not in the process of working to figure out how to hand off leadership and responsibilities to the next generation, it goes back to the mindset that we’re building an empire around ourselves. A kingdom-focused mindset goes out and multiplies.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey everybody welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. It is a great day today. We have got, in fact I think this is the first time on in the history, you know, 600 episodes in that this has happened. We have previous guests who have both done solo episodes that now are coming on a combined episode. Super exciting. What does that mean? That means you’re in for a real treat today. We’ve got Scot Longyear and Heath Bottomly with us. Heath is the Lead Pastor of Creative Teams at Pure Heart Church which has two campuses in Arizona if I can count correct. Ah, he’s also the ah the co-owner of Media Maven Publications and he’s a creative strategist beyond incredible experience called the Experience Conference. Scot Longyear is the senior pastor of Maryland Community Church which is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, not in Maryland though, in Indiana just to throw curve balls because he’s so creative. Um, and he is also the Pastor of Experience Conference and is is a co-host of the really popular and incredible Worship Leader Problems or Probs podcast because they’re so cool. Ah Scot ah, Heath, so glad you’re here. Welcome to the podcast. So so thanks for being on the show today.
Heath Bottomly — Thanks for having us.
Scot Longyear — Hey, thanks for having us. Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Now this is going to be good. I’m excited about this. I saw recently that you guys released a book and today, again, we’re breaking with tradition. Normally, friends, I like to talk with our guests, and then if they got a book, talk about it at the end. But actually I want you to check this book out so much I want to get it right up front. So the name of this book is Fight for the Future: Creating the Right Blueprint for Building God-sized Dreams. Um Scot, why don’t you tell us why did you guys collaborate on this book? Why this book? Why take the time, effort, and energy to put this thing together?
Scot Longyear — Well I think, Rich, we’ve we’ve just found you know there are a lot of people that talk about like, man, we should… and we should do this, and man, if our church did this and did this. And and’ll I’ll couch it in a story. Um, ah just ah, probably one of the one of the biggest lessons I learned when I had lunch with John Maxwell, which sounds really awesome, doesn’t it? To say like ah um…
Rich Birch — It’s a nice name drop. That’s a great name drop right there. Just right you should have rolled right past it. That would have been great. Well, you know me and John, so I sometimes call him Johnny ah, love it.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, yeah.
Scot Longyear — Right, it’ll seem less impressive when I tell you how we did it. So…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scot Longyear — Years ago we’re at a we’re at a conference. There’s about 2000 people that are there. I’m attending a conference with some of our staff. And John Maxwell is teaching on stage, doing his thing. And in one of the sessions he says, Hey I was teaching you know last year and there you there were three guys in the front row while I was teaching, they just flipped up this sign that said: Lunch – we will buy. And so John just tells the story. And so I look at some of the guys that are with me, and we’re younger and we’ve probably got more ambition than brains. And we’re just like, Whoa.
Rich Birch — Let’s do it.
Scot Longyear — So we break we break from that session. We go back and we’re we’re finding the church staff. We like we need some cardboard and a Sharpie. So we we get a cardboard in this Sharpie. They start the second session. Again, this is there’s about 2000 people. It’s this this new, but very traditional church so they have this giant choir loft. So John starts teaching from stage and as he’s teaching we go up behind him in the choir loft the three of us walk up sit down and then we just flip this sign up that we made says this says: Lunch – we will buy.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Scot Longyear — So John’s teaching and some people just start they start laughing. And so he stops; he doesn’t know what what to do. And then he turns around. And and I don’t know ah, Rich, if you’ve ever had one of those occasions in your life where time kind of stops. And then you think…
Heath Bottomly — You’re questioning everything.
Scot Longyear — So it was kind of this slow mo thing he turns around and and he looks at the three of us. And I had two thoughts going through my head. I thought this was a terrible idea.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scot Longyear — And I think I think we’re going to get kicked out of a John Maxwell seminar, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Scot Longyear — So he looks at us and he’s quiet for like 2 seconds, which seems like three days. And then he starts laughing. And he says, hey Charlie—which is an assistant or something—he says, make room for three more guys for lunch.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Scot Longyear — And I’m like so takes us in a back room. We have lunch with John Maxwell, and like a few other guys. And we’re like that we’re just we’re just the peasants that came like to the king’s table, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Scot Longyear — But I didn’t care. We’re in the room do the thing. But the most surprising thing to me, Rich, was after that we’re walking the hallways a little bit as the hero, to be honest with you.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Scot Longyear — And people were like, whoa man, how was lunch with John Maxwell? And I’m like well how was your lunch you know? Like um, but what surprised me is that is that several people in different conversations said this: man, me and my me, my guys, we talked about doing that.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good.
Scot Longyear — Man, when we heard John when we heard John say that, we thought about that. And the only the only reason I had lunch with John Maxwell that day is because I acted on the dream, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Bias for action. Love it.
Scot Longyear — And so many times we’re just like here’s a good dream, here’s a good vision, but we get locked up in that, and we don’t do anything. And so we took a real hard look at the book of Nehemiah, put our heads together, and said how is it the Lord teaches in in the book of Nehemiah, which are principles for today. How do we move from just this dreaming stage to this actual doing stage?
Rich Birch — Oh love it. Yeah, and I love this book I think this could be a real gift. Here we are, you know, at the beginning of the year where all this is the natural time of year where we’re all thinking like, hmm I wonder what’s this year going to be. This would be a great thing I think to process with your team together friends. Now um, Heath, I wonder if you could… So this that you’ve broken it up. I love this book because you’ve broken it up into just three really big ideas. Stuff I can get my head around. I’m a simple guy. Right things, right reasons, right people. Talk me through right things. Maybe I’m the guy maybe I’m the person who’s like the bias for action dude. I’m willing to do anything. How do I know if I’m heading in the right direction? I’m doing the right things. Help me unpack that.
Heath Bottomly — Well I mean I think we even jump into a few different myths in the book um, confronting them and and a lot because a lot of times we think the right things are simply good things. And and that’s probably one of the hardest things that churches wrestle with because we all want to do good things. Ah, and so because of that though we end up getting this this avalanche of good things thrown in our laps, and if we don’t come up with them someone else in the community is coming up with and you know what you should do. You know, and and before you know it um, you are giving 2% of energy to each individual thing.
Rich Birch — So true.
Heath Bottomly — And not really accomplishing… I mean I don’t want to say you’re not accomplishing anything but you’re not accomplishing significant milestones in any of these areas, because you’re not actually giving them the energy that they’re due.
Heath Bottomly — And so ah the right things in the context of this book is going, what is the thing that you know that you can do, and that you’re called to? What is that what is that idea that dream in your mind and your heart and focus in on that and then intentionally take the steps in order to pour the the most amount of energy towards accomplishing those things.
Heath Bottomly — Ah and because otherwise the the thing that will derail the the biggest dreams of God for your life are good things. Because they aren’t bad things, because it’s easy to say no to bad; you can just go, no we ain’t doing that. Good things, man, it’s it’s hard to talk yourself out of doing some of these good things.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Heath Bottomly — And that’s probably the biggest derailment that I see happening, in in my life and in churches that I work with.
Rich Birch — Scott, unpack that a little bit more I can see that that issue really clearly like so many churches. It’s not that they’re lacking of doing things; they’re doing a lot of different things. The question is how do we pick the right things. What is…
Scot Longyear — Right.
Rich Birch — What does that look like how what how should we be straining that out. Maybe we’re we’re looking around in all the different things that are happening in our church and we’re trying to figure out what are the right things for us to do – not not give we don’t want to give 2%; we want to provide more energy, narrow the focus, all that. What’s that look like?
Scot Longyear — Yeah, well for sure you know you got to lean into the Father and like what are you calling us to and that, and he speaks in a ton of different ways. He’s going to speak to us through our quiet time and and that. But I think you’ve also got to you know, not really read the tea leaves; we got to read the days, right? Like you’ve got to look at what are your passions, you know? Because he’s not going to… I guarantee he’s not going to call me into be in a CPA somewhere, like that’s not that’s not the right thing for me…
Rich Birch — Right.
Scot Longyear — Nor for any organization, right? So what is it your passion or the or a lot of the passions in your church are doing? And what are some of the resources, and we talk about resources. I think one thing that we don’t talk about is the resource of proximity. You know where has the Lord placed you in proximity – whether that’s certain location in your city, whether it’s ah certain relationships that you have. When you when you look at the book of Nehemiah, he was like I was cupbearer to the King, right? And so like like there’s a proximity that’s in the middle of that.
Scot Longyear — And then it’s the whole Blackaby thing of find out where the Lord is moving and get there.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Scot Longyear — You know some of the best things that we’ve done in our church have been because the Lord has started to stir some stuff up, and I’m and I’m like I sense the Lord’s moving here. Maybe we should put some resources here. And ah, you know it’d be easy to go like hey man that’s [inaudible] great leadership and the Lord’s like um, or maybe you’re just doing what I’m already doing…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Scot Longyear — …and moving that way and you start seeing the traction on that. You know what but one thing that we um ah, we kind of explored in the book—which was real helpful to me that Heath came and brought with—was he talked just a little bit about this whole idea of empires versus kingdoms. And that’s really this that was really eye opening to me.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, and it really ties it really ties into this whole element of focus is on creatives no matter or in leaders whoever they are. Everyone has a natural bent toward building. We’re all taking items and creating something because we’re all creative beings. I work with my with creative teams and everything I tell them the fifth word in the bible tells us the first characteristic we know about God. in the beginning god created…
Rich Birch — Created, yep.
Heath Bottomly — …and and we are given that same tendency, and and and talent um embedded and it looks different for everyone. But we’re all creative beings. We’re all building. It’s a matter of what it is that we are building.
Heath Bottomly — Now ah we can we can build things that are personal ministry elements and everything um or we can build personal ah companies and things like that. At the end of the day their intention, your mindset towards those things will determine whether or not that’s an empire or is it are you building the kingdom. I know great guys who build incredible companies but they’re kingdom-focused; they go this is for the intention of doing ministry and for taking… A good friend of mine Kevin Rowe he owns a body shop. But his whole thing is I own this body shop and I employ these employees because I am providing for these employees’ families and providing a space where they can hear about God.
Scot Longyear — Awesome.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah. Love it.
Heath Bottomly — And so that even though he’s building something he’s building a company, he’s doing it with a kingdom focus. Um but I think a lot of people, even I’ve caught myself doing this, we can lean in toward empirical thinking in ministry. And we start building and putting blocks upon blocks and creating things that are actually more about creating our establishment, and creating our programs, creating our our legacy—you hear legacy a lot as a buzzword around—more than their long lasting impact on the kingdom. So when you start focusing, again the right reasons is when you start taking a look at that, if you’re doing the right things you have to then take a look and go are I doing them for the right reasons.
Rich Birch — Right, right. What’s the drive behind it. Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — Is it kingdom focused or is it empire focused? And ah, and we even talk about a couple things of ways that we can kind of check ourselves and check our teammates too on going, hey if you have a tendency toward this if you react this way towards things, It’s a good litmus test to determining ah the the empire focus or the kingdom focus, even within ourselves.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Heath, sticking with that idea. Um, so let’s assume you know maybe I’m a pastor of a church of 1000, 1500 people; I look around and I’m like man I feel like we’re doing too much. And I’m you know we’re we’re spread thin. You know one of the things we see on the church growth side is larger church churches actually do less things. They do them with more energy than than smaller churches. Like I’m always surprised you know, talk to a church of 150 people and they have like 25 committees, and like all this stuff. I’m like I don’t know how do you do that like it’s crazy. But um, what is the difference… I know you’re a great strategy you’re a great strategic leader. What’s the difference between discernment and strategy? How do I how do those two kind of interact with each other? How do we how do we bring the Lord to bear in our decision making process while at the same time use the brain that he’s given us? How does that fit together in your brain and what’s that look like?
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, well I think there’s some other one of the biblical examples that I’m always drawn to in this because what you’re talking about I get asked a lot. They’re like ah you’re just thinking business strategy. Um, there are things where you have heard the voice of God an angel of the Lord appeared – you know you you see these stories in in scripture all the time of or the Lord spoke or spoke through something… that is you know and discerning which of these voices are true um, which of these are from God. Um, that’s ah, that’s a Holy Spirit connection then there’s also things that are just um decisions that you make based on what you know to be true about God.
Heath Bottomly — And so and it’s going I know this is right; I know these these elements are true because the principles are right. And a great example of that is is um Jonathan ah with his armor bearer. And ah once again, Israel’s fighting you know the Philistines, and so Jonathan and his armor bearer kind of go off to the side or whatever and they go and Jonathan makes this this profound move. He said you know what? Let’s call up to these Philistines that we see at this camp. If they ask us to come up, we’re going to take that as a sign that God’s giving us this army.
Heath Bottomly — Now this wasn’t based on, at least in scripture, it wasn’t based on anything where he had in his devotional time, you know, or a good friend had come to him and said, hey thus sayeth the Lord. This was a moment where he said based on what I’m feeling, and based on what I know about God, I’m going to take a risk. And I’m going to take – this is a gut feeling.
Heath Bottomly — And he went up and the consequences of that were not like if he’s wrong, it’s not like hey, you know, reset you know and better we’ll try again tomorrow. This was I I die. Um, but I love at the end of this little story, ah they end up winning and then it says that the earth shook.
Heath Bottomly — And what hit me so hard is that so many times we are looking for something we need the earth to shake around us. We we just think in our ministry and our lives or whatever and why isn’t something powerful happening? And a lot of times it’s because we’re actually not taking the steps to do the things based on that gut instinct, and also what we know about God to be true. And because here’s the thing with the earth of shook if Jonathan hadn’t taken that step, that wasn’t a thus sayeth the Lord’s step. He took the step and it resulted in the earth shaking.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Heath Bottomly — And so that that that’s how I see those two things working together.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that That’s so good. Again I love the the framework right things, right reasons, right people. Um, Scott one of the things I appreciated about you I’m a very casual observer of you, ah your ministry. It seems like you’re one of these people who actually believes in team leadership. Like even in this conversation it’s like you guys wrote a book together. Like you know, um, my impression of you as a lead pastor is like you’re always like talking about other people around you and like you’re gathering team around you.
Rich Birch — You’re you know at the Experience Conference like even in the earlier this before our call today you did this. I was like, oh it looks like the Experience Conference went great. And you were like oh the team did such a good job. Like you’re constantly pushing and that so that’s a compliment to you. Right people is we all struggle with how do we find the right people. To attach to, to draw in, to find, to get plugged in – talk us through that. How does the book of Nehemiah… what is it how is that you know story from thousands of years ago relate to us today as we’re trying to build teams here?
Scot Longyear — Yeah, well he’s [inaudible] realize he’s got he has a vision that that he can’t accomplish himself, you know…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Scot Longyear — …which I think God often does, you know. And people like I can’t do this on my own. Are like well yeah, duh. Right? So you’re going to need to you go need some help.
Rich Birch — That’s the point.
Scot Longyear — Yeah. And and I think you know maturity you know realizes that like I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. Um, and so you want to you know you want to create a team of just like like go-getters. Let’s go. But having I mean it’s the whole Jim Collins thing, right? The right people on the bus. You know it’s the who, then the what, um and that’s been a hard leadership lesson. Ah, for me probably for a lot of leaders over time because you’re just like I think you’re a nice guy and we’ll get along. Let’s do this. Next thing you know you got to fire your best friend.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Scot Longyear — You know you go through a couple releasing people into some other ministries. We’ll say it like that right help you to find another ministry…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Scot Longyear — …outside of our ministry, like there you go.
Rich Birch — Finds you better place, position you better in the kingdom.
Scot Longyear — And that is and I’m an enneagram six so it’s like that’s death to me, right? So like that gives you motivation to like you have to have the right people. And so how that’s translated for us is you know on our team at at our local church, we have worked really hard at ah, sustaining attributes and we’ve got the same thing. We call them permission to play. So if you’re interviewing at our church here’s what it means that you have to have to play on our team. We’re looking for that culture fit, right? And we want to go slow in hiring because we’ll be slow because I don’t want to I don’t want to release people. I don’t want to go through that as I don’t want the sideways energy. I mean I need the right people on the team that’s motivating other people, and you’re taking your lane, and you’re even coming out of your lane to help other people, and like we’re going and we’re not fighting about it.
Scot Longyear — But um, here’s ah, here’s and I don’t know it works for everybody but but here’s in our context, we’ll run everybody through ah a, really long hiring process. There’s a battery of tests because again we’re looking for a culture fit. And you might be amazing, but you’re just not in nothing wrong with you. You know nothing immoral…
Rich Birch — Right.
Scot Longyear — …just not a cultural fit. So um I usually by this, unless it’s a really, really high level position, um, by the time the team um, have have done their due diligence and they’re like here’s the person that we want to hire, um, I’ll come in with the person if it’s midlevel or above, and I’ll do ah only a 30 minute interview with them and I’m asking them two questions. And these are my favorite questions and I say to them these may be…
Rich Birch — Love it. Oh lean in, friends, this gonna be good. This is gonna be good. Love it.
Scot Longyear — …these may be the hardest questions that you get all weekend. Um, but they’re going to tell me…
Heath Bottomly — Where’s my coffee? Oh sorry.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scot Longyear — So the first question I ask ’em is this. What am I going to learn about you in six months that’s going to surprise or embarrass me?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Scot Longyear — And and I just shut up. And um, it has been super helpful and and I’ve gotten gotten comments all the way from, gosh man, I don’t really don’t know if there’s anything at all. You know, ah to when I was younger I attempted suicide. Um, there’s a bankruptcy in my past. Here’s something… Again, um ah and I’m asking very intentionally. I’m asking for culture fit. How honest can this person be; where are you going to fit on the team? I’m not looking for anything that’s going to disqualify them, right? I mean there may be something that comes up like, hey we need to talk about that…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Scot Longyear — …that guys be like I’ve got pornography in my past. Okay I need to know that because I’m going to help put some fences around you. The second question is sometimes tied to that, sometimes it’s the same answer but sometimes it’s different. And I say to them this I just asked this question last week with the hire that we were doing. I said if if I’m going to have to stand in front of our congregation and read a resignation letter from you because of a moral failure, what is that moral failure going to be?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scot Longyear — Again then I just this shut up and you know there’s a lot you know people like well I don’t think it’s going to be anything. I’m like okay, no need to talk, brother. Like come on.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scot Longyear — All of us has something. But again I I want to know when are you going to be a fit, and then two what is how can I help you in that. Because I don’t want us to get to that. And so that kind of helps me determine like is this a right fit, is it not the right person or not. And if not like will and we’ve had to make this hard decision. We’ve had to say no when there’s nobody on the bench.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, those are hard. Yeah.
Scot Longyear — Especially right now. It’s really hard to hire people um for a myriad of reasons and in the church world and so we’ve had to say we’re going to say we would rather hire the right person than than make a ah bad hire and and hope. So yeah, that’s kind of where we are.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Heath Bottomly — Um I I think a lot of times I think a lot of times too we we get blinded by really talented people.
Scot Longyear — Oh gosh.
Heath Bottomly — Ah and and we we lose sight of this thing called missional unity. Um I’ve had I’ve been on teams where it’s like, okay everyone knows what what they’re doing, but they’re all slightly off…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — …target of what we’re doing missionally. Now you know everyone goes, oh well hey you know we got a love on them. We got, you know, yeah, you got to love on them and and encourage it. But at the end of the day you have to make a decision based on is missional is the mission that we’re called to more important, or strong enough ah, to be willing to make some hard calls on this even though they’re really talented at what they do? Is the mission more important than the talent that we’re experiencing? And and that’s a hard thing to do because man there’s some really talented people out there that are not in missional alignment.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And I you know I think there’s ah when a church gets to a certain size, you can end up hiring professionals. And some of that you have to do you have to find people who are really specialized in things. But that’s a particular risk in that area. It’s like just because this person has done this amazing thing at this other church does not mean that they’re aligned with your particular mission. That’s a very good insight, Heath.
Rich Birch — Sticking with you around this whole idea of the right people, and you know one of the things so one of the things you’re known for is crafting great experiences, and crafting really creative experiences and things that are compelling and people want to be a part of them. There’s an interesting tension there particularly on the creative side between kind of getting the pros—people who are already fully baked ready to do the best thing ever—and they’re like you know, slot them in and they’ll nail it. And then the other side is like developing people; people who are, you knowy or maybe not quite there yet and how do we safely do that. Talk us through what that looks like. How do we wrestle through getting the right people you know the development versus the fully baked situation. What’s that look like for you, Heath?
Heath Bottomly — Well, it’s really tough because a lot of times we see creative elements and we think um, well creativity is is really only happens the stronger the collaborative process is. And that’s actually just not always actually most of times not always true. The collaborative process usually dulls down the creative level to the to a common denominator that is shared by the amount of people in the room. So you could have a really sharp creative idea that those usually stem from 1 or 2 people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — Ah collaboration usually so how many people get that creative element. And so that principle that’s in place is happens on the on the talent and development route as well. So you get some really talented people; you can get some really cool traction. You can get some really cool movement. You may not have as much buy-in on it because not everyone gets it. But if everyone gets it. It’s not always the most creative thing.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Heath Bottomly — And so what we tend to do is try to go, okay, let’s you know it’s not a magic formula. But let’s take ah a let’s take your your music team, for example. Um what we tend to do is go, hey, on any given weekend, you only have you have one project on the stage. And so what that what it means by that is someone who you are leaning into and developing who’s not there yet, um, but the rest of team can shore them up and work on them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — …and so and then that rotates around. Now every team is going to be different. You got to figure out what that percentage and what that is, but it’s an intentional Lego fit that you’re doing going how many pronged Lego are we going to be. Are we a two-pronged Lego, are we a six-prong Lego – what can fit to it without taking down um, what we have said this is our level of excellence. And this is the other thing I tell my team, we are not in the business of perfection. Perfection will always point out where you fell short. It will because none of us are perfect.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — But excellence, at the end of the day you can go I brought my best, and I did my best for the guy standing next to me the girl standing next to me over here. We can all look each other in the eye and say yeah we brought it to the very best that we could. So there’s a there’s a book called—what is it—Canoeing the Mountains. And there’s a line in there it says, it’s it’s okay to fail; it’s not okay to suck. And I’m like and I’m going, dude I want I want t-shirts that’s say that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.
Heath Bottomly — Because that is our mantra going…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Heath Bottomly — …we can fail all day and that’s part of the development process. We want people to know if you’re you’re not failing, you’re not trying.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — If you’re you’re not experimenting enough. You know you need to be able to do that. In the process of failing. It’s not okay to suck it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Heath Bottomly — Don’t let the failure be because you didn’t do it well. You know, and so…
Rich Birch — Yeah, you didn’t put in your part of it. You didn’t develop.
Heath Bottomly — Exactly.
Rich Birch — You didn’t yeah you didn’t practice your craft – all that stuff. Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — But if we are not in the constant business of working to find out how to hand off things and responsibilities and and real leadership to the people around us, the next generation, if we’re hoarding it, again it comes back to that mindset of Imperialistic mindset. It is an empire that we are building around us instead of a kingdom mindset that goes out and multiplies. If I’m not ready to if I’m not okay with handing off some of the biggest authority responsibilities to my team and letting them run, not saying abandon them, but provide the parameters and go here’s what I need at the end of this, but whatever decision you may I’m not gonna overrun you. Um if we’re not doing that meaningfully in some ways, we’re actually without even maybe realizing that we’re building an empire around us. So that when we’re not in the room anymore, it can’t function and it can’t…
Heath Bottomly — I heard a leader say, yeah but it doesn’t it doesn’t feel like me. And I’m like that’s probably one of the best things that you can actually be bringing into an organization is that it doesn’t feel like you. Um, because if it feels like you, then if you’re not there the whole thing crumbles. And that should never be the goal of kingdom-based building. Um, but unfortunately that is the goal of empirical thinking.
Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting. Okay, that’s that’s good that’s good. I think that’s a tension we feel we sense in lots of things, right? We want to find a way to we all we should be developing people, but how do we, you know? I love that – some really good thoughts there.
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s, Scott, let’s talk a little bit about the book. So Fight for the Future. When I so when I checked this out I really did think this could be a great team resource. Could be the kind of thing, hey let’s let’s work on this together as our staff team. Let’s, you know, read through this; you’ve got discussion questions based right in there. Um, tell me what you were hoping its impact would have, you know, particularly maybe in the church context. That’s who’s listening in. How could you see this resource being used by church leaders?
Scot Longyear — Yeah, so you know I’ll go back to the, you know, implementing the dream. And you make such a great point. There’s so many good things to do. We need to you know you got to whittle those down and and do the right things. And so you know, I think it’s I think it’s a unique resource, Rich, because Heath and I come from some different perspectives. Um, but we’re all the the same direction, different voices. You know he is one of the most creative people that I know as you’ve heard, you know, in strategy and all that, and thinks like very he’s he’s like a right brain/left brain like creative. Like like sometimes like you got to break that down like for me a little bit more like it’s like so. And I’m like I’m the I’m the 3-point preacher guy, want tell you some stories and give you some practical like stuff, and and roll. And so…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, sure.
Scot Longyear — Ah way we approached it was we said, man, hey here’s the framework out of Nehemiah. It is right things, right right reasons, right people. And so we each took a chapter in there um and spoke from our own voice in that. And then just ah, you know again, those discussions they’re real practical and I think like anything else they get some discussion going.
Scot Longyear — Because most of the time we’re moving like super fast and we’re just doing this stuff but we just got to pause and go, like now wait a minute. Are we going the right the right way? Are there new things that we need to be to be pursuing? What might that look like?
Scot Longyear — And we take a you know a super deep dive as we go down and and we talk about you know, being the kind of person that God wants to use. And ah you know your how how you know what’s what’s done in in quiet with the Lord really informs everything else. And so it’s it’s much deeper in the middle of all that. But, you know, our dream that people would would read it and go like yeah, let’s start taking action on these dreams that the Lord has. Because if it is his dream, he’s going to use somebody to do it. And so if he’s calling you, like do it. And if you if you pass on it, he’s going to use somebody else.
Rich Birch — Right.
Scot Longyear — And then if we can be a help to you in in that. Um you know I can tell you a thousand ways not to do things…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Scot Longyear — …you know or a thousand mistakes we’ve made it, like don’t do that. Don’t do that. You know we would.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Scot Longyear — We’d love to come beside you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Heath, want to more add to that?
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, um, something that I really appreciate about about Scott, I mean at first off thank you, Scott, for those wonderful encouraging words; you you pet my ego.
Scot Longyear — You are welcome.
Heath Bottomly — Um, no, but no serious in all all seriousness. Ah you’ll see the chapters that that you know the ones that I’m penning or whatever that I’m writing, they’ll they’ll be very much this is how the structure will look. These are how the pieces move together. This is how these steps. And then you you flip the page and you go to Scott, and Scott really just penetrates right to the heart and he goes, and this is what God is going to need to do in your life in order for this to be something that’s lasting. In that that I love that that mindset um that Scott brings to that. Because at the end of the day, you know, there’s this tension that you hear a lot with strategy and and ministry – I’ll just call it that.
Heath Bottomly — Um, there are people going hey it’s not about strategy. It’s not about that, hey we’re too we’re too planning, you know, we have to be more Spirit. You know, let and everything as if these are two things that are opposite each other…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — And actually they’re most efficient when they work in tandem with each other…
Rich Birch — Yeah together. Absolutely yeah, for sure.
Heath Bottomly — …and in the same way, what is ah the example of, you know, people go, well hey, you guys are strategizing too much on how to build, how to fight. I had someone tell them go this isn’t a fight for the future; God’s got this. And I’m like actually it is a fight because there’s an intentionality. God will build his church. How much, like Scott just said, how much you want to be a part of it is up to you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — You know in the same way the kid who had the, you know, the loaves and fish or you told me no one else there had any food. Um but he was the only one who stepped up. And because of that he’s the only one mentioned in that story, you know and was a part of that story.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. Right.
Heath Bottomly — When we’re talking about fighting for the future, it’s asking how much do you want to be a part of the story. God’s gonna do what he’s gonna do.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Heath Bottomly — He doesn’t need us to feed the 5000, but he invites us in and going so what are we going to do with that. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. So good. Well this has been a great conversation. Could you give us you know a two minute shot as well, Heath, on the Experience Conference? So I think you guys do such a great job on this. If I’m an executive pastor—we know there’s lot of executive pastors listening—and to me I think this could be a great conference for you to say, hey I want to take my creative folks together. Let’s go and do this together. I think it could be ah, just a fantastic experience for your team. Ah, give us the you know why Experience? What’s unique about it? Why do I need another conference—those kind of things—but give us that that sense there, Heath.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, absolutely. And what I love about Experience Conference and what drew me to it to begin with was the fact that it is less about the um, the stage in the floor, and it is more about peers talking to peers from experience, or from you know here’s the journey thus far that here’s some hurdles that I’ve faced. Um and sharing that with each other and in that room you have you have such an even blend of voices on so many levels, both in in speaking but also in you know singing you know in everything. the fact I love how Scott you know has shared in the past that it’s one of the few experiences where he’s been able to sit next to his team and worship together…
Rich Birch — So good.
Heath Bottomly — …you know in in song. Um, but that’s one aspect of it. The mindset, being able to talk to people and share a mindset that tells them you’re not alone in this. Oh you thought maybe you were the only one struggling with this, you’re not. You’re in a room full of people who are all doing this together. Ah, that community is something that’s truly I’ve found unique because it’s less about a concert, and nothing against concert – I love concerts and I think there’s something very powerful about just bringing people together and just celebrating together. Um I don’t I don’t downplay that at all, but this is not that.
Heath Bottomly — Um, this is much more about ah that communication and that bond peer-to-peer. And it’s a great way for whether you are in the music ministry or creative Ministry or any other area of ah your church ministry to come together with the same mindset together as a team. I think there’s a lot of potential there for your team to walk away with something truly unique.
Rich Birch — Um, love it. Yeah that’s just at experienceconference.com – like again friends I would encourage you to check that out. I know you know there’s a lot of it. It seems like there’s a lot of conferences going on obviously all this stuff kind of post pandemic is ramping back up. But I really do think this is one that you need to at least make the decision against like look at it take take a look is this the kind of thing that you could and should take your team to it’s right at the end of August beginning of September – August 29th to September 1st if I’ve got those dates right. Um, so yeah, and there’s discount cliffs and all that, so make sure you check that out.
Rich Birch — Scot, if people want to pick up copies of the book, I’m assuming they can get them at Amazon. I think Amazon still sells books; they seem to sell everything else. They can get them there. Is there anywhere else we want to sell send them online to pick up copies of Fight for the Future?
Scot Longyear — Ah, yeah, several places – you can grab you go through my website scottlongyear.com; grab them there. It is Amazon. Ah Heath, we also he did the other side of the the marketing – we’re on Barnes Noble, right?
Heath Bottomly — Yeah yeah and Apple Books of course for ebooks and everything like that are also available.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Heath Bottomly — Amazon provides both the the Kindle version and they do; they have the physical copies as well. Best way to get a physical copy though is scottlongyear.com.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Heath Bottomly — Um so that that would be the and he’ll I believe he’ll sign copies of the books that leave his his establishment.
Rich Birch — Oh nice. Look at that – great.
Scot Longyear — I’ll sign Heath’s name too.
Heath Bottomly — He’s been doing that for a long time.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, yeah, that’s fun.
Heath Bottomly — [inaudible] checks. No wait.
Rich Birch — Well, this has been great. Scot, why don’t we give you the last word; what anything else you want to say just as we wrap up today’s conversation? I really appreciate you guys coming on and investing in us. And this has been super helpful. I’ve got a page of notes here stuff to to chew on. So I appreciate that. Anything else, you’d like to say.
Scot Longyear — Yeah, no I think I would just encourage leaders. Um man um, thanks for staying in the game. I know the latest stats are somewhere between 38 and 40% of us are like if we could if we could take and another job with the same benefits, we’d jump tomorrow. Um. and and I’ll go back to I was I was talking with a friend. I don’t want to name the ministry placement agency they were with, and they just said we’re just talking to a lot of folks and they’re a lot of folks who are looking for jobs and they’re no longer talking about calling. They’re talking about I want this position, and I want it in this city. And so I just want to say thank you for being true to the calling.
Scot Longyear — Ah, that your work, even though it is hard, it is not in vain. It is not in vain.
Rich Birch — Amen Amen.
Scot Longyear — Like this is a this is a holy work that the Lord has called us to. I know it’s hard, man. I know there’s a grind. I know there’s a frustration. There’s an exhaustion that has come. But it is not in vain.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scot Longyear — And I want to just tell you you’re doing like well done now and we’re one day going to hear from the Father as he turns to us, you’re going to say well done. So keep up the great work.
Rich Birch — Love it. Appreciate you guys. Thanks so much. Again, friends, I would check out their book and you know and jump in with Experience Conference. These are great folks – you should be following along. Thanks so much. Thanks for being on the show today, guys.
Heath Bottomly — Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Scot Longyear — Thank you, Rich; appreciate it.
Lessons from Inside a Rapidly Multiplying Church with DeWayne McNally & Paul Schulz
Dec 22, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with DeWayne McNally and Paul Schulz from Hill Country Bible Church in Austin, Texas. DeWayne and Paul both serve as executive pastors of ministry by dividing the responsibilities; DeWayne handles the operations, multiplication and family ministries while Paul takes care of the personal/spiritual growth related ministries, including the worship experience and multisite.
To reach people in our communities, our churches can’t just grow; they need to multiply. Listen in as DeWayne and Paul share how Hill Country Bible Church has used both church plants and multisite campuses to reach the city of Austin and how disciple-making starts at the individual level.
Spread out on each level. // Everything Hill Country Bible Church does is driven by their God-given mission to saturate and reach Austin. Their strategy is two-fold, including both the launch of new multisite campuses, and planting new churches around Austin. The original Hill County location is on the cusp of the suburban part of Austin, so campuses will be placed in locations that are congruent with the psychographics of this area. Church plants, on the other hand, are established in areas that might have a different makeup which Hill Country can’t reach as easily. Either way, the goal is for multisite locations or churches to continue to multiply.
Multiplication starts with you. // At Hill Country, multiplication starts at the individual level, then moves into small groups, and then becomes what they do at the church level. If you’re a disciple-maker who isn’t reproducing disciples, then you’re not multiplying. Start from that point and then raise up a church planter who will in turn infuse the DNA into the elder board of a new church plant. Here the church planter’s purpose is to reach the people close by, but also send out the next set of church plants.
Create a disciple-making focus. // Hill Country casts vision for multiplication on all levels of ministry. In addition to small groups there is a disciple-making initiative which is a more focused and intentional program. People either self-identify that they want to grow in this way, or they are invited into discipling relationships. The whole goal of these discipling relationships is to teach people to multiply and become disciple-makers.
Three step ministry philosophy. // Personal connection and discipling relationships are key to Hill Country’s DNA. DeWayne shares how he is currently discipling three men and they in turn each disciple three men which leads to exponential multiplication. This structure includes a three step philosophy of ministry where they ask: Who are you? Where are you at spiritually? How can I help you take your next step? All of these questions are explored within personal discipling relationships.
Are you actually creating disciple makers? // If you want to multiply, begin by looking at yourself and how you’re doing discipleship. Are you actually creating disciple-makers or are you just creating scholars filled with head knowledge? How are you multiplying your leadership? Now is the time to think about multiplication and create a strategy. Normalize it while your church is small and make it a part of your culture and DNA.
You can learn more about Hill Country Bible Church at www.hcbc.com and connect with DeWayne or Paul on the staff page.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Reframing Evangelism at Your Church with Shaila Visser
Dec 15, 2022
Thank for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Shaila Visser, the Global Senior Vice-President for Alpha International. Alpha is an 11-week course that creates a space for people to invite their friends for a conversation about life, faith and Jesus.
Worldwide, an increasing number of pastors believe evangelism is wrong. This mindset, on top of the changes of the last few years, has caused the Church to lose sight of its God-given mission. Listen in as Shaila reframes the beauty and call of evangelism, sharing how churches can create a culture of leadership development, love in action, disciple-making, Spirit-led living, church building and more.
Look outside your walls. // Pastors are working hard right now getting their churches up and moving again after all the changes the last couple years have brought. Many churches have seen a lot of core leaders, volunteers and staff leave which has shifted the focus to what’s going on inside the church. It’s hard to think about how to mobilize your congregation to reach people externally. But Shaila says that we need to get people back on mission and look outside our four walls.
Focus on evangelism. // Alpha found in their global surveys that 31% of pastors think evangelism is wrong. Among them 46% of children’s pastors and 48% of youth pastors think evangelism is wrong. Furthermore, 65% of pastors are not prioritizing evangelism in their churches. These statistics raise alarm bells because God has given the Church a mission, and there are many people in crisis who don’t know Jesus.
Redefine evangelism. // Shaila says we have to redefine evangelism and reframe the beauty and call of it. Evangelism isn’t about tactics. Rather her friend defines it as joining a conversation that the Holy Spirit is already having with another person. Thinking about evangelism this way gives people relief in knowing that they’re not converting someone themselves. Instead they are participating in helping others come to faith. It’s okay if they don’t have all of the right answers to people’s questions because it’s the Holy Spirit’s work.
Evangelism culture. // Evangelism can’t just be a strategy; it needs to be part of the culture of your church. Be intentional about talking about it at every level. Infuse your whole church with a desire to reach their neighbor. Tell stories of evangelism to your staff and during weekend services. Don’t just talk about salvation decisions, but simple stories of someone inviting their neighbor or praying with a colleague.
Celebrate invitation. // We love to celebrate baptisms and people’s decisions to follow Jesus, which we should. But if those are the only things we celebrate, it gives people the idea that if they can’t convert someone to follow Jesus they are failing. When we celebrate invitation, however, we help the church to realize what their role is. People get on board and take part in it. And when the church starts inviting, people will come to the Lord.
Alpha as an ecosystem. // More than a course or curriculum, Alpha is an ecosystem that helps build the future church, develops leaders, exemplifies radical hospitality, demonstrates love in action, teaches reliance on the Holy Spirit and so much more. It helps the church be what it was meant to be, and helps to build the type of disciples you want at your church.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Man, I’m super excited for today’s conversation. In fact we’ve had this one lined off for quite a while. Super excited to have Shaila Visser with us. She’s the Senior Vice President, International, with Alpha. If you don’t know Alpha, you really should. It’s an eleven-week course that creates a safe place, whether it’s online or in person, where people can really bring their questions. It’s an amazing tool and really an incredible movement that started at a church in London called Holy Trinity Brompton in 1977. You maybe heard of Nicky Gumbel. He took it over in 1990 and really has repositioned this to to make a difference all over the world. I think somewhere around 30,000,000 people have taken Alpha all over the world. It’s been translated in over I think 112 languages. Ah Shaila, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.
Shaila Visser — Aw Rich. It’s so good to be with you today.
Rich Birch — So fun to connect and get a chance to spend a little time on the microphone. Fill out the picture – kind of tell us a little bit about Alpha. Give us what did I miss there? Tell us about your role.
Shaila Visser — Well first of all, you didn’t miss much. It is true that just about 30,000,000 people have taken Alpha. We have a massive vision to see 100,000,000 people take Alpha through local churches around the world. And it’s just fun to hear stories of Alpha in Nepal, Alpha in Vancouver, Canada, Alpha in Chicago, Alpha in Lima, Peru and just to know that God is on the move. And I, you know, I think Alpha is the thing that makes Alpha a little bit special is some of our key values that play out in it. And we we really believe in radical hospitality, radical love and warmth, and and acceptance around a table and food. And you know so we just have some key values I think that have made Alpha pretty sweet for this season, and you know for Gen Z and and Millennials in particular.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well friends I need to declare conflict of interest right up front. So I although I’m super excited to talk ah to Shaila really from her perspective globally around some issues that we need to wrestle with and think about as a church, I actually volunteer at my church as an Alpha leader. Love it. I love ah, those conversations. I love being around the table. The thing that I and I love that particular environment I’m just the guy who you know helps with Alpha, which is wonderful. It’s it’s ah it’s amazing and I love seeing consistently the people that end up in our in my Alpha groups. Like man these people are wrestling with huge huge issues and what an incredible environment. What a privilege as a church leader to sit and listen to someone um, explain really where they’re at. It’s it’s amazing. So ah so I declare that right up front I love love Alpha.
Rich Birch — Well why don’t we talk about you have an interesting vantage point on the church because you interact with church leaders, not only, you’re Canadian as well – we won’t hold that against you. Hopefully our listeners won’t hold that against me either. Ah but you not only across Canada but around the world, and you know one of the things that we’re seeing kind of in this kind of post-covid whatever this is this season is, we’re talking to leaders like yourself saying hey what are you seeing? What are some of the things that you’re seeing around you as we kind of pivot out of all that as we look to the future? What would be some of the maybe either problems or issues or things that you see church leaders or churches wrestling with in this season?
Shaila Visser — Well I think what’s common to church leaders, and I’m going to talk about all over the world…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shaila Visser — …because you know we network and talk to and listen to pastors all over the the world, is their their resiliency has been amazing.
Rich Birch — So true.
Shaila Visser — Like I really like even though they’re exhausted and they have taken hits, I just want to honor pastors that they’ve been resilient.
Rich Birch — So true.
Shaila Visser — But what I’m noticing is in the midst of all that, church leaders are regathering, they’re wanting to know who is in my congregation now.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes yep.
Shaila Visser — It’s a big change. You know, people have moved around, people have left. I mean key volunteers have left which is really heartbreaking. So people have left. And then people have come in and they’re trying to discern who is our new core team of volunteers, and people that we can really count on in the congregation. But in the midst of all that, they might not be looking outside the four walls and wondering, you know, who’s out there who doesn’t yet know Jesus that we need to be thinking about as well. Because it’s hard. I get it. We’ve got to regather, ah get people back on mission. Get people meeting in small groups again. How do we then mobilize them to think outside, especially if you’ve have less people coming. It’s hard to think about how you’re going to run what you’ve got internally let alone what you might need to do to galvanize people to reach externally.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah I I love that. I want you to push us on that a little bit.
Shaila Visser — Okay.
Rich Birch — So you’re so you’re super kind. You’re nice, which is great, but I I see this even in my own just my own personal life like it’s easy over this season. It’s like the kind of I’m live closer to home, I spend a lot more time in my neighborhood. It’s easy to not look around and see people around me. Ah, when we think about that at a church level, what would be some of the kind of evidence that you’re seeing that hey maybe maybe we’re not looking outside the walls as much as we should? We’re maybe being a little too insider focus, not enough outsider focus.
Shaila Visser — Well I will say that we’ve done some surveys globally, and particularly in Canada just with pastors, and what we found is that there’s an increase in pastors that think it’s wrong to do evangelism.
Rich Birch — Really? Tell me about that.
Shaila Visser — So the 31% of pastors surveyed say they think it’s wrong to evangelize.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shaila Visser — What was more alarming for us is 46% of children’s pastors and 48% of youth pastors thought it was wrong.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shaila Visser — And it goes to 65%…
Rich Birch — That’s stunning.
Shaila Visser — …65% of pastors said they they are not prioritizing evangelism. So if you think about just those stats, it really raises the alarm bells to say, okay Church. We have a mission. God has given us a mission. And yes, it’s been very difficult. But what about all those people that are in crisis that don’t know Jesus?
Shaila Visser — Give you just one small example. Ah this past Saturday I went and met with my husband’s a police officer and his former partner, she just had a baby, she and her husband. And the baby isn’t gaining weight and isn’t doing well. And so I offered to come and pray for them. And neither of them are Christians. She has she went to Catholic school and hasn’t been to church since she was in grade 12. Her husband’s an atheist, but they were desperate. And just the ability to see beyond ourselves to the pain, but not just see it, not just say, “oh I’m going to pray for you” which everybody says fine, thank you.
Shaila Visser — But actually run towards it and offer something in a moment that is beyond our capability to help them, which is offering prayer, which is calling on on the Father to come in by the power of the Holy Spirit and make a difference. And you know I laid hands on their little newborn and they wept and they wept and…
Rich Birch — Oh so sweet. Yeah.
Shaila Visser — And at the end they said you know maybe we should be going to church. I mean here’s an atheist and a person who’s not been to church in years.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — And it’s because the Spirit of God is calling people, and ministering to people outside of our four walls, and he’s inviting us to have eyes to see them, and hearts to consider their needs…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — …in the power of the Holy Spirit to meet that need. So I just think I don’t want us to miss it. So we’ve got stats on the church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — But then we’ve got an ah increasing need out in the world today of people that are longing for hope. They’re longing for someone to offer them something they can’t access themselves. And if the church doesn’t run towards that, we’re going to miss it.
Rich Birch — Right, love that. I love what a beautiful story. Love that picture of um, you know, people receiving prayer, being really open to that. You know, we I had a very similar experience in my current Alpha group where um, we we actually at our church, we had a mutual friend of ours, Tammy, was speaking and she was offering prayer at the end of the service. And um, a lady who had been actually was only her second week attending on a Sunday, she came to Alpha first before she came to our church, and she was saying you know I’ve never had anyone pray for me in my entire life. And she was she was talking about how like incredibly special that was, and she was like I didn’t really understand it. But wow that was amazing and, you know, in the midst of everything that was going on and, you know, on the wrestling, that’s you know that’s amazing. Interesting.
Shaila Visser — And can I just say, Rich, that I think the secret sauce of evangelism right now, particularly in North America, ah the way into hearts is through prayer.
Rich Birch — Interesting, Interesting.
Shaila Visser — Because it’s so um, caustic, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — …in the world of politics right now. And the church is in the mix there, which doesn’t help the narrative that Jesus is good…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Shaila Visser — …and loving and kind and compassionate and slow to anger, and all those sorts things. And when we come in just person to person offering a supernatural opportunity when we pray the Holy Spirit’s presence and present with that person. So don’t miss the opportunities around us; don’t get stuck in the greater narrative of the church, you know, what people think of the church and the cultures against us. But get actually stuck in with real people that have real problems…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Shaila Visser — …and offer prayer and see how the Holy Spirit leads you. And watch as he opens eyes and hearts because that’s what he’s inviting us into…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — …the one by one loving our neighbors.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I’m hoping ah listeners, as you listened in, that you were shocked by those statistics around you know 31% say it’s wrong to evangelize. 46 and 48 of you know children’s and youth pastors. I’m hoping yeah as Shaila said that, that that shocked you. I know it shocked me. Um, but Shaila, let’s come back to that.
Shaila Visser — Yep.
Rich Birch — That we ah we can’t we can’t be content with that. Ah, we need to push back against that. What is the you know what’s the solution there? How do we um, how can we as leaders push back against that in our own churches? What, you know, maybe we see that maybe we look around and say like, oh man I can kind of see that growing in us. I see this culture maybe growing up around us of of, you know, maybe walking away from evangelism. What would be your coaching for us?
Shaila Visser — I really think we have to redefine evangelism.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Shaila Visser — I think when people especially if they’re you know—I’m a Gen Xer—especially if they’re younger than Gen Xers. As soon as they he… hear the word evangelism, they immediately jump to method. You know it’s like this natural tie-in…
Rich Birch — Here’s this pamphlet; here’s this thing…
Shaila Visser — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Here’s this tactic. Yes.
Shaila Visser — Yes, exactly. And so there’s a hangover of a tactic that may have worked in a different generation that’s been thought to but still be fruitful in some way here, and in Canada and the US, and therefore they opt out. And they have they really don’t like it. So what we want to do is redefine evangelism, reframe the beauty and call of evangelism. And so I want to give you a definition of evangelism…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Shaila Visser — …that my friend Darryl Johnson has given that I think is not only biblical but it’s helpful to address this very issue. And it’s: evangelism is joining a conversation that the Holy Spirit is already having with another person. So let me say that again…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — …evangelism is joining a conversation that the Holy Spirit is already having with another person. So that means before you go in to talk to anyone, the Holy Spirit’s already been at work. When you’re in the conversation, the Holy Spirit’s at work. When you leave the conversation, the Holy Spirit’s at work. And so we’re not the initiator. And when we start to remember that and realize that evangelism is joining what the Holy Spirit’s doing, it gives you first of all relief that you’re not converting someone. You are participating in someone coming to faith. but it also makes you realize that if you really screw it up, if you really say the wrong thing, don’t have the right answer, can’t answer their very complicated questions, it’s okay.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Shaila Visser — It’s okay.
Rich Birch — Love it. So this is friends like I this is a part of why I love Alpha as a movement is I, having seen this firsthand of the training that you that you know your organization provides and then the coaching on the ground around like it’s not our job it’s not my job to do like bible jujitsu with people, and like get them to like take a certain step, get them to say a magic thing. That at the end of the day, I love it for me as a Christ follower, it stretches my faith to say you know what? The Holy Spirit’s at work in these people’s lives. My job is to come alongside and to maybe play a role to ask the Spirit, hey what part of my what part of this conversation do you want me to part of? Where do you want me just to shut up and not say anything, you know? How do you want me to listen? Um man that’s that’s really life-giving. I find that incredibly life-giving. So but what does that look like? So how do we how do we in in our churches join that conversation? How could we, you know, find a way to um, really try to cultivate that with our people?
Shaila Visser — Yeah, so I’ll give a couple of examples of churches that I think have done it really well. And it always starts with the senior leadership of any church, right? And it starts with what are the conversations that you as a staff, or you and your elders, or your board are having around this very topic? Because it’s going to leak from there. If you realize as a leadership team at your church that nobody’s talking about who they have relationship with that’s outside of the four walls, that should set off a little alarm bell.
Rich Birch — That’s a problem. Yes.
Shaila Visser — And yeah, but but it does happen. We it happens at Alpha Canada…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Shaila Visser — …that we’re talking all about, you know, strategy and ah the people we’re working with and the church leaders we serve. And then suddenly we realize we haven’t talked about the guest who at the end of the day is our motivation.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — And so churches like look at your conversations first and say, does this come up at all?And I know the churches that are the most um, activated in reaching their communities are the ones that at the staff level it’s talked about regularly. And I’m not just talking about like the senior staff. I’m talking the janitor talks about it, the person who’s doing maintenance, the person who’s, you know, taking care of the facilities, like everybody’s talking about it. And it’s got to leak out as culture.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — If it’s not culture and it’s just one strategy as part of the church, it’s not going to infuse your whole church with this desire to reach their neighbor. So I’d say that’s where you start. What does it look like at the top level…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — …ah um of your church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. That’s a real practical takeaway, like even this week to say, um, maybe you you do a week of just observing your team, just kind of mentally in your head. Like does that ever come up? And does it ever leak out of my life? And you know and where are those conversations I’m having with people? When you know when am I not just, you know, here in Canada it’s becoming winter. It’s very easy for me not to talk to my neighbors in this season because it’s like it’s so cold out, doing that—well at least my part of the country, not and where Shaila lives – it’s never cold there. It’s beautiful there all the time. Ah, but where you know what does that look like in my life. But then and then maybe next week you try to stir that conversation with your team. I love that. Practical.
Shaila Visser — Exactly. And then there’s two other things I’d say to it. What are you storying? And what I mean is ah if you are in executive leadership at any church there are stories you’re telling. So how often are the stories being told by staff members, whether it’s on stage, you know at the front from the pulpit, or whether it’s just like in small groups, how many people are telling stories of evangelism? And not just like someone came to faith, but hey I hung out with my neighbor or I offered prayer for my husband you know partner at work. And you know, how are those stories coming about because that’s also forming culture – the stories you tell. So even having ears to hear, okay, yeah, we’re talking about it on our staff team. But what stories are we telling that are leaking out…
Rich Birch — That’s Good. Oh.
Shaila Visser — …and then becoming intentionally out. And then the third thing I’ll say is what are you celebrating? So in the church as you know we love to celebrate baptisms. We love to celebrate people coming to Jesus. We know that the angels rejoice, as they should, as we should, when someone comes to faith. But here’s what that does in the church if that’s the main thing we celebrate is what it does is it means average Christian who doesn’t have the gift of evangelism, who is terrified to invite their friend, thinks I’m not that person. I can’t convert anyone. I’m not going to do that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — But when we celebrate what our part is, then people get on board. So let me tell you what I mean by that. Celebrate invitation.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser —I’ll give you a story from my friend Gary who is the senior pastor of a very very large church here in Canada. They decided to do a big Alpha campaign. They wanted a thousand guests to come to their Alpha. They were going to run at workplaces and ah in ah, schools for kids, etc, etc. and in the church. And he had a celebration Sunday. They’re pentecostal so you know they’re going to like do the whole crescendo to the best story, right? So the congregation really gets ramped up to this is exciting.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — But and you know he started with someone who said, oh I invited two friends; they came to Alpha, you know, I’m so excited see what happens. But the story he ended with was a woman woman in her mid 50s who said she invited 50 people to Alpha – her whole neighborhood.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shaila Visser — Well you know in a Pentecost Church they’re clapping, they’re like this is amazing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Shaila Visser — And he said what happened? And she said no one came.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shaila Visser — And he said, today we celebrate you for doing your part. You invited.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so touching. Oh my goodness. That’s beautiful.
Shaila Visser — You you invited.
Rich Birch — That’s beautiful.
Shaila Visser — And see when we flip that narrative. We’re helping the church realize: I know what my part is to play.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — Get them inviting…
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Shaila Visser — …and some people will come.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well and and we know that you know it takes two or three, five or six, twelve or fifteen different invites with some people, right? They have to hear it about it a bunch. They’ve got to, you know, they they think about it. They might go online, see something. What is this Alpha thing? What is this or what is this church thing? What is this before I would would plug in? I love that. Do you have any examples of so one of the things that Alpha does well as ah I would say as a movement, as an outsider looking in, is this whole storying thing. Like retelling the story time and again just like woven right into what you guys do. You’re constantly even in today’s conversation you’ve done a very good job of that. What are some other ways you’ve seen churches do that well? Um, you know some other examples of that of, you know, kind of, you know, storying the right things as a church?
Shaila Visser — Well, you know for churches that have run Alpha what we have seen is they always bring up people onto stage, you know, during a service to talk about tell us your story. And they asked 3 simple questions. Um, what was your life like before you came on Alpha? Ah, what was your experience like on Alpha? What difference has Jesus made in your life? Just 3 simple questions.
Rich Birch — Yep, love it.
Shaila Visser — It could it doesn’t have to be Alpha, it could be anything.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — But they do it so regularly that the church is familiar with hearing people that don’t know Jesus or didn’t know Jesus six months ago, three months ago, a year ago, that the the story is being told so often, that the church just thinks this is normal. But the problem is if we just do it one Sunday a year or two Sundays a year, it doesn’t feel like people are coming to faith on a very regular basis. And so what you want to do is tell simple stories. It doesn’t have to take up very much time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — These stories, typically when I hear Nicky Gumbel do them, or other pastors, it’s a minute.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Shaila Visser — It’s a minute and a half. It’s so quick. But what you’re doing is you’re giving people a vision that this is normal to expect people to come to faith.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — So I think that’s the kind of story I mean people may film it as video because then they can edit it…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Shaila Visser — …make it as short as they want, but there’s something about the…
Rich Birch — Put some music under it.
Shaila Visser — …yeah, but you know what, there’s something about the beauty of a raw moment. And I love that they do this at Holy Trinity Brompton in London – these raw moments with real people on stage. Because when you do the video, it may be produced beautifully, but in the moment something’s going to be said that’s absolutely hilarious or really deeply touches you…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shaila Visser — …because it’s an embodiment of the story in front of them. So don’t get away from that that raw kind of messy testimony …
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — …that you may have scheduled for a minute and a half and it goes four.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — But but it’s beautiful and the congregation is really motivated to say, that could be my friend. Because what the the congregation is hearing is so many stories that they know people like that.
Rich Birch — Right, love it.
Shaila Visser — And it gives them confidence to invite.
Rich Birch — We are two thirds of the way into this interview and um, you haven’t even told us about Alpha. Like this is a part of what I love about your movement. It’s like humility is baked into what you guys do. Like it is It’s at the core. and and you know earlier you just rolled over ah—which I loved, it was this which again I was like very classically well, it’s classically you and it’s also classically Alpha—you’re like yeah we’re trying to you know, get Alpha in front of 100,000,000 people. Like if that was me I would be like I’d be leading with that and hammering that but not Alpha.
Shaila Visser — Well, because…
Rich Birch — You guys are like there’s there’s humility baked right in. It’s amazing.
Shaila Visser — Could I say, Rich, that this is the reality…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — …including Nicky Gumbel the pioneer behind Alpha…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes
Shaila Visser — We all want people to meet Jesus.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — Alpha happens to be a tool…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — …and a ecosystem that really helps everything from church planting…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — …to um to create a culture in a church of Holy Spirit dependency etc. It does lots of things. Like most people think Alpha is just a plug and play tool. They don’t realize it’s an ecosystem that can really help the church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — And when people get the ecosystem, it really flourishes and it helps build leaders, develop leaders, etc, etc. But we’re we’re so much about Jesus. We’re so much about spirit-filled living that Alpha is not what gets us up every morning.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shaila Visser — So so people coming to know Jesus does.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — So really, that’s why the posture is, we’re not trying to sell Alpha.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shaila Visser — We’re trying to say, guys, if this can help, let us help you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — But we need the world to know Jesus and that’s what is motivating to us.
Rich Birch — Okay, so I’m going to push you on that though.
Shaila Visser — Okay.
Rich Birch — Because I want people I think there’s folks that have this is what I have this what happens when I talk to people about Alpha…
Shaila Visser — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …Church leaders across the country, they’re like that’s like a curriculum, right? It’s like ah that’s like what is it a bunch of videos and and they think about it at that level. Um I totally understand, appreciate, and have seen how it’s so much more than that. It’s a culture.
Shaila Visser — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Talk to us about that. For folks that maybe have a sense of it. It’s eleven weeks long, there’s a weekend in the middle. There’s videos. There’s a guy from England. Like I don’t know much about it, but help me understand how. Alpha could be or has been used as a kind of culture reinvigoration tool. I know it’s not it’s not the only one. And I know you’re not just interested in that as the only one. But talk to me about what that actually looks like in churches.
Shaila Visser — Well I think what we hear, and why church leaders when they really get to understand Alpha, and we do trips where we take pastors over to London. We have our Alpha USA conference coming up at the end of January in Florida. That’s a terrific opportunity for people to really get a feel and an understanding. But here’s what’s beneath Alpha. so it is what you just said. It’s eleven weeks. It’s you know it’s got an Alpha weekend. But here’s what it does for the church. People that are new to faith or have not even yet heard about Jesus or ever given their lives to Jesus, ah, it is building the type of disciples you want at your church.
Shaila Visser — So that’s why many churches will just say if you’re new to our church, we want you to go on Alpha. And they’ll put one group of Alpha that’s like people that have been christians for a while, but they put it through because they want them to understand what radical hospitality looks like. What love in action feels like. What it is to be Spirit dependent. What it even means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. What it means to pray for people reliant on the Holy Spirit. What it means to develop leaders who come in who’ve never taken Alpha, they don’t know Jesus, they come back as a helper because they’ve come to Jesus. They come back as a small group leader.
Shaila Visser — So there’s leadership development baked into it. There’s a heart for reaching more people baked into it. There’s so many things that a local church is like if I had resilient disciples in my congregation that knew how to pray for others and trust the Lord, how to be outwardly focused, how to be deeply prayerful, I would want that they realized that Alpha creates this ecosystem. And at Holy Trinity Brompton in London they always say Alpha is the front door, and church planting is the back door. And they’ve planted over a hundred churches.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shaila Visser — So it’s like they’re just seeing people come in, but they’ve got a certain type of DNA in them when they’ve taken Alpha that really helps grow the things church leaders want to grow in their congregation. So it’s it’s it’s the secret sauce that if people understand it is more than a tool. It gives you way more than that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah and I’ve seen that firsthand that you can see this kind of cultural. It’s sneaky because you you think about it as a church leader as a program, but it has a much more um pervasive or can have a much more pervasive impact on you know on the entire church, which I just think is wonderful and beautiful. And um and at the core is this idea that we’re trying to create a place for people who don’t know Jesus and are wrestling with what it means with all the big questions in life. We’re trying to create a place for them to feel welcome at the table. One of the things that’s super obvious um is this culture of hospitality in Alpha. Talk to us more about that. Why why why does Alpha see that as a kind of ah it seems to be like a key part of of the of how God’s used Alpha over the years.
Shaila Visser — Well we see it all over Jesus’ life, right? Is just this radical hospitality and welcome of the stranger…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Shaila Visser — …of someone who’s very different but also sitting at a table and eating with people. And so pre-pandemic ah meals and food are a very significant part of Alpha.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shaila Visser — People often evaluate Alpha looking at the videos. Are they good quality? You know and we create Netflix quality videos. But they’re actually just evaluating that. But what they should see is as Alpha as a mini little ecosystem within the church is actually about the radical hospitality at the table. Then you watch this little 25 minute video, 20 minute video and then you have open discussion. And so what it is doing for people is it’s teaching your already existing church members who are volunteering how to be a listener. Because as you and I know, Rich, ah Gen Z in particular want to know that Jesus is good. And they have to have an experience of it.
Shaila Visser — And Alpha provides an experience of it but also teaches your leaders how to be listeners, how to join the Holy Spirit, how to shut up and not tell people what they should think. And the younger generation needs that so hospitality, food, listening that are those are core components and that is not what the church is known for. And we train it deeply into everyone who’s running Alpha.
Rich Birch — I love it. So good. Well I I’ve just this has been a great conversation today. I love that you’re pushing us on this and thinking in a new way. You know, as you look to the future kind of as you’re wrestling with how do we how do you help encourage churches build this kind of redefined evangelism culture, what are some of the questions that you’re thinking about as we look to the future things that you’re wrestling with?
Shaila Visser — Well I am really wrestling with the next generation. Alpha has always been target locked on on young people in their twenties. That’s who we design Alpha for. So if you’re like I want to hit Gen Z and the youngest millennials, then Alpha is really thinking always about everything we do is about that that age group.
Shaila Visser — But then we also have Alpha for youth which is really radically ah fabulous in our our network of churches around the world because it’s not just, how does a youth worker use it? It’s actually how do students run Alpha for their friends. And we’ve really got a student led movement happening. but in the midst of all of this um and coming out of pandemic life, I hope we’re coming out of pandemic life.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, me too, me too.
Shaila Visser — I hope we’re hope we’re through it. Um I’m asking four questions, Rich. I’m asking the question what if the future leaders of the church Aren’t in the church today?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Shaila Visser — Then the second question I’m asking is what if the future leaders of the church aren’t even christians today? What if the kid you pass at the mall, at the restaurant, wherever is going to be a pastor…
Rich Birch — Love that Love that.
Shaila Visser — …but today they don’t know Jesus. And then the third question, especially in this North American culture where we understand media’s against us. It’s just it just feels like there is there is no longer any Christian majority to speak of. What if the harvest is actually plentiful all around us and we don’t have eyes to see it?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shaila Visser — And then the last question I’m asking church leaders and Alpha Partners is: what if all three things are true – what should we be doing differently?
Rich Birch — So good.
Shaila Visser — What should we be doing differently? And the Holy Spirit and your team and your friends, they start to actually answer that question. And when you start to answer those questions, you start to see possibility.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — I think we’re living in the most fabulous possibility time even though the world is dark, even though things are tough. The bright morning star shines the brightest when the night is darkest. And I’m excited. I really think, Rich, the harvest is plentiful all around us. And I can’t wait to see what the church does.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — Because people are longing for hope. They’re longing for peace. They’re longing for purpose. And we just got to we got to reach them…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shaila Visser — …in the power of the Holy spirit.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, Shaila, this has been what a what a gift this has been today. Friends, I hope you’ve been encouraged and ah, reinvigorated. Lots to chew on. I think I’ve got a page of notes here – things I need to wrestle through and think about in the coming weeks and months. So I really appreciate that, Shaila. If um is anything else you want to say just as we kind of wrap up any kind of final thoughts as we as we close down today’s conversation?
Shaila Visser — I think I just want to encourage and challenge church leaders. You know I’m a Canadian, so I say it softly. I I want to encourage and challenge church leaders: in the midst of pulling people back together, don’t miss who’s outside of your four walls.
Rich Birch — So true. Yeah.
Shaila Visser — There is opportunity. Your future best leaders. Your future best um staff members. They’re out there. And they don’t know Jesus yet. And you can make a difference.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I appreciate this, Shaila. Hey where do we want to send people if they want to track with Alpha? Where do we want to send them online? How do where do we want them to kind of plug in with you guys?
Shaila Visser — Yeah, go to alphausa.org. you’re going to find all of that and then you know please consider going to the conference. You’ll really understand the cultural ecosystem and it’s not just an Alpha sales job. Please like hear us. We don’t do that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.
Shaila Visser — Um, but come to the Alpha USA conference. I think you will love it. And if you’re in Canada, ah, do come over to alphacanada.org, connect with us online. We are so happy to serve churches around the world, and particularly in the US and Canada.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here today. I really appreciate it.
Shaila Visser — Thanks, Rich! Love what you’re doing and so happy to be with you today.
Business as Core to the Mission of Your Church with Johnny Scott
Dec 08, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m happy to be talking with Johnny Scott, the lead pastor of Generations Church in Trinity, Florida.
Ever wonder what a self-sustainable church might look like? Curious about how to use business as ministry? Listen in as Johnny Scott shares how churches can use holy-owned businesses to reach their communities in creative ways while also developing a revenue stream to fuel future missions.
Theology of city building. // At Generations Church, viewing business as missions is a core part of their DNA. From the very beginning of scripture we see God at work creating. Prior to Genesis 3 work was a gift from God rather than toil. We are invited to partner with God in meaningful work no matter our occupation.
An exile mindset. // In Jeremiah 29 God’s people living in Babylon are told to pray for and seek the good of their city because if it prospers, they too will prosper. Johnny believes it’s important for us to have an exile mindset while we are on earth. Instead of living comfortably separated from the world, we need to go out into the marketplace and serve our communities.
Go to them. // Churches can no longer simply wait for and expect our communities to come to us. Jesus taught in synagogues and the temple, but he also often went to the marketplace and into the city. We need to do the same.
Becoming self-sustainable to give more. // How do we turn the church into a place that is fully sustainable on its own? Johnny’s goal is to get to the point where the church doesn’t need to operate on the money people give. Instead every dollar will go straight to local and global missions.
Exhale and move forward. // One of the things Generations Church has learned is that they will probably do less in a year than they wanted to, but will do more in ten years than they ever imagined. Growth and reach may start slowly but it quickly becomes exponential. Believe that God wants to do more than you can imagine.
Change the church mindset. // There is a biblical principle never to be a slave to the lender. Scripture also teaches to use man’s currency to get kingdom currency, which is people. Leveraging the world’s resources to gain influence can help lead people to Jesus.
Cultivate the resources. // Every resource your church needs to dramatically impact the community around us is embedded in us. Our job is to cultivate that.
You can learn more about Generations Church and their ministries at www.generationscc.com.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited about today’s conversation. Today we’ve got Johnny Scott with us. He is the lead pastor at Generations Church – church in Florida, North Tampa, which has been through a few things ah, recently. Super excited to have Johnny on the show. Was recommended to us by a mutual friend, Chris Hahn. Welcome to the show, Johnny. So glad you’re here.
Johnny Scott — And so glad to be here, Rich. Heard about, you know, what you guys do from Chris and yeah, we’re we’re excited to be where God has us here, in Trinity actually, just north of Tampa ah, you know, kind of like a bedroom community of Tampa Bay. And you know when I started this position as lead pastor—the first time being a lead pastor um—never never never thought you know in 20 years of pretty much traveling the country and playing guitar and being a worship pastor that God would call me to this. But through a series of events [inaudible] and ministry, God does that. Um had an incredible time in bible college. But, you know, I kind of get the premise that you know some of the things, while I I learned how to exegete scripture and expository preaching…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — …and I had a great time there, some of the things that I’m called to do and I’m doing now in my daily, I just have to step back and be like like God, what what are you doing? Like this is…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …it’s crazy. And for us, you know, business as missions ah, we call it like maybe maybe even a church 2.0 model is just that idea of what what is a church like that’s you know self-sustainable okay? And and for me this is ah a deep theology of what I call the theology of city building. Um which is our God given DNA. You know the first time we see God, God is creating. That God is a creative God. God is a work God. There is there’s no toil in work before Genesis chapter 3. The famous chapter in my house is my boys quote all the time. Why are we doing this? Because of Genesis chapter 3. They’re like, they quote it. It’s this mantra because…
Rich Birch — Um, ah because we live in a fallen world.
Johnny Scott — But it’s toil.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — And you you guys, it’s you don’t know work without toil. Well God does work, right? And then Jesus Jesus says I’m going to prepare a place for you. Jesus is working. Our last picture of Jesus is working. I believe that there will be work when we get to heaven. The idea that we’re going to be lounging around on on clouds playing harps, that sounds boring. I’m with Kenny Chesney.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — I don’t want to go right now either if that’s what it’s like.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Johnny Scott — It’s not going to be like that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — It’s going to be work with the most creative being ever, right? And and and then we’re going to have no inhibitions of toil. And until that we have got to have ah like a proper exile mindset. And we don’t have an exile mindset. We’re we’re comfortable. I’m comfortable. We live we live in a great neighborhood, and I’ve got you know TVs…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …in multiple rooms. Okay? I mean like there’s water…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Johnny Scott — …there’s running water. I don’t feel like, God saved me from Babylon.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — I don’t want to move.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — But when you get that exile mindset like Jera Jeremiah was preaching to a people that were exiled and they say, God, save us from where we’re at. God’s answer to them, and people misquote it all the time, “Surely I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord.” You know, Jeremiah 29:11. That verse is tucked into a big fat NO from God. I’m not going to.
Rich Birch — Yes, it’s so true.
Johnny Scott — No, you’re gonna be here for 70 years. So if you’re my age, if you’re 46…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Johnny Scott — …you’re not going to live to see it. So what God tells them to do is plant gardens, marry your sons and daughters…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …pray for the city that you are in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — And when it prospers, you will prosper. And it wasn’t, hole up in your synagogue, these bastions of isolationism, which is what, you know, church was when I grew up. As a youth pastor I would I would go and say, Hey, why don’t you quit coming to that school event on Wednesday night and come to church.
Rich Birch — And come to and come to our thing. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Johnny Scott — Yeah. And we would say, come to see our show (we never said that but that’s what it is) at 9am or 11am on Sunday morning, and we’ll be ready for you then.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Johnny Scott — It, the the hubris of that, and we never felt that way, you know…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — …in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up. And we’re in attractional church model. Jesus, you know, communicated the gospel at the end of the sermon on the mount. It says people were astounded and amazed.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — I have no problem with having art. And we spend money on that, and we do a good job at that. But we will not demand people, hey come to our show. So we started to get this idea of let’s be a serve first idea…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — …because Jesus was always invasive with the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — Jesus says, Zacchias, I’m going to your house today. We know he was in the synagogue.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Johnny Scott — But most of our stories, he’s out in the city and places where we should just go to the marketplace. So, the deep theology…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Johnny Scott — …the deep theology for this in my life goes back to Moses on the mountain. Marketplace ministry, business ministry, business as ministry um…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Johnny Scott — …for me, it goes to the setup of the temple. Okay, the setup of the temple, if you read Numbers 35, Moses is on the mountain. He’s getting all the all the culture. The first time in the history of humanity the culture has been, here it is. Like we go out and we invent culture through war, and crazy things that happen, in traditions that develop over hundreds of years, and that’s not how culture developed for the the God-made culture, this Judeo mindset. It was given. Here’s your seven festivals. Here’s when you work. Here’s when you party. That’s how it is.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — And wrapped up in that in Numbers 35 is how the temple will work. He says, I’m going to give you these cities.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Johnny Scott — I’m going to give you the land around these cities. You’re going to do all the livestock and all the wheat, barley, oats. All of that is for the temple. That is that is to sustain sustainability, the work, the Levite family will do at the temple.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Johnny Scott — God didn’t come to the people and say, I need you to tithe 10%…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …so that the temple can function. No the temple was going to function. So what was the 10% for? This is very clear throughout scripture. It’s a thread. It and one of the words used in the Old testament is the word lavish.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — It is for the 7 festivals that God sets up for us to regularly—7 the perfect number—how do we how do we party in God’s culture perfectly? That’s how we party.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Love it.
Johnny Scott — And so there’s this perfect setup of regular parties that the 10% goes… so the storehouse of the Lord is full. So there’s no party like a God party.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Johnny Scott — He owns party.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — So Numbers gives us that, then you move to the old testament and we see paul Paul’s selling tents. Now Paul wasn’t selling christian tents.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — Paul wasn’t selling tents for christians.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — Paul was just selling tents. Now just I’m I’ve been living in this this scriptural narrative of Paul in a city like Corinth. I mean this is a major metropolitan port. Paul…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Johnny Scott — Paul rolls up in here and he’s like I’m gonna sell tents. And I’m just thinking you think that they don’t have tent sellers already, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Johnny Scott — That the people of Corinth are like [inaudible] oh my goodness we’ve been looking for a tent guy. Hey everybody we got a tent guy finally.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — The tent guys in Corinth, they like: hey bro, I’ve been selling tents here. My dad sold tents here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, my great Grand Pappy sold tents here.
Johnny Scott — And my grandpa sold…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Johnny Scott — Yeah, who are you? And so Paul is doing this commerce thing. And just think about how that is, you know. He’s not like inviting people over to watch the Superbowl and then the halftime show you know trying to get them at a multilevel…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — …marketing thing with tents. Okay. Like I’m going to work your [inaudible]. He’s that’s not what he’s doing, okay. Paul Paul is he’s he’s in the trade. And so I have this picture of Paul in the shop on Monday and he is a christian who’s living out his world faith, and he’s helping other businessmen. And after like a very short season because he is just for other people, there’s a guy’s like I’ve got to get tar. Well go see Paul. Well don’t that Paul guy sell tents? Well yeah, but he helps so and so out with shingles and I know that he does ship tar. Yeah.
Rich Birch — He knows a guy who knows a guy. Yeah.
Johnny Scott — He’s just he and and the word is like yeah but man if you go over there, I mean it’s it’s you’re going to have to put up with like this Jesus thing he’s talking about. You know it’s like yeah but he knows everybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — I think that if he would have had a poor quality tent or a tent that didn’t hold up and I’m like, well, you know, he’s a really good motivational speaker but the tents are just crap quality. That…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …what would that have done to the validity of his gospel?
Rich Birch — Right, right. Oh love that point.
Johnny Scott — So he he had to be in a marketplace, and compete in a marketplace, and go through the politics of the local Chamber of Commerce. And come in in such a way where he brought value, and served people, and did not defame the gospel he preached in any way. And it’s such a a word picture or like a narrative for us to get in and say, how do we is the church enter into a place that is actually our rightful place…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — …to be fully sustainable on our own…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …stand on our own feet. And when a when a preacher says, I’ve said this, God we don’t need your money. You you get to give to a church because that’s going to bless you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — But then really to be able to say, like every dollar that you give here goes straight to local and global missions.
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
Johnny Scott — I’ve never I’ve never been able to say that.
Rich Birch — No, but that’s the goal? Is that is that ultimately like we… I love. Well first of all, this has been great so far. I love we it’s like we jumped in midstream, which is fantastic.
Johnny Scott — I know, I know.
Rich Birch — It’s so good.
Johnny Scott — We just we just went right there.
Rich Birch — But is that ultimately—let’s but let’s get to that—is that ultimately where where you’re hoping things will get to?
Johnny Scott — Um I’ve stated that goal from from the pulpit and there’s a couple of caveats to that. You know, ah first of all I’ve only been here 5 years, church has been around 50 years. There was a great church before the guy before me, before the guy before him. It’s been…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — …it’s a great church.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Johnny Scott — And so I didn’t come to this church with this missiology. You know when you come to a land…
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — …you come into a land, you’re like well what do you already have? And um I was just in ah a I just love church. I grew up – I love church. Church rescued me as a sixth grade boy when my family is going through divorce, and I was just loitering. And so everything about church I believe it is the answer for everything and culture. It’s our birthright.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — You know, Erwin McManus says in “Barbarian Way” it is the the birthright of the church to be the fountainhead of creativity to the world.
Rich Birch — So good.
Johnny Scott — I mean we could do an entire podcast on that.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Johnny Scott — We could just get wrapped up in what does that mean for business as ministry?
Rich Birch — Yeah, what does that look like. Yeah.
Johnny Scott — And that’s that’s a part of our fabric. And so as I come into like this church and I see what they have. And we start looking at this. And you’re like is the final goal here, Johnny, that you’ll be able to tell people on Sunday every dollar given 100% of it goes straight to… I would say yes. But however, however, what’s changed a little bit in my mind is, you know, Jesus says the gospel is Jerusalem, and Judea, then the ends of the earth. Okay?
Johnny Scott — And and I’ve told our people—like famously, I think they’re sick of the line—I’m not in charge of um, you know Target, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — The the national the my my wife is drawn to Target like a moth to flame.
Rich Birch — Mine too. Mine too.
Johnny Scott — You know she she’s like a diviner. She’s got a stick in the woods and she’s like it’s over here and she can just kind of find it, right?
Rich Birch — Yes. So true. Yeah.
Johnny Scott — Like finding water underground. And I’m not in charge of Target nationally it’s a national… man, but the Target up the road from our church, I call that my Target. Because I am spiritually responsible. James 3:1 – not many of you should presume to be teachers of law but knowing that you’ll be judged more strictly. That’s what that’s what that means deeply to me that I will be responsible for that Target. I’m not allowed to drive by Target. If my car drives by it on a regular basis, it is in my realm. It’s in my 360 degrees of being able to touch and care. And God always expands our care, right? He is this…
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Johnny Scott — And we’re creatures that like oh if I just care less. and we’ll eventually get our care down to not-very-much, and it will only be about things that give ah… So God is in this process of telling the people in Babylon, no, you’re not going to pray for just your synagogue of that which you can control, where people who agree with you. You’re going to pray for the whole city. Well you know what? The Jews didn’t care about? Babylonian holidays, Babylonian customs, Babylonian anything. They hated them. And God says, no, you’re going to pray. Think about how difficult that was.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Johnny Scott — And what we were not there. I love the school across the street. I mean we we have a school across the street. It’s a high school, has 4000 kids in it. Then there’s a junior high next to it with 2000 kids in it.
Rich Birch — Wow.
And our church built a student center 6000 square feet with an occupants of 350.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — I mean it’s just like we said like well we’ll we’ll try…
Rich Birch — The majority that won’t come here. Yeah.
Johnny Scott — …that it’s it’s going to hell in a handbag.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — We’re we’re we’re looking at um, $380 million dollars worth of businesses mission growth in the next, I don’t know 2 years, on our property, and MPUD right now on a hundred acre live, work, play community that has no dedicated space for students.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Johnny Scott — And here’s why. Students just go to the business department and book whatever space you want for the rest of the year. You get first dibs. Come early. Because when you’re done booking it, we have a full on event center.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — The largest farmers market in the county. Um, you know a winter concert series.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — Just like guys you’ve got 20 bookable venues, like I don’t care. Book one.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — And so that mentality of are you going to stand on stage one day and say every dime… Well, when I pay a youth pastor, like we don’t have a youth pastor on our staff. We’re hiring missionary youth pastors. Instead we we have Florida Premier Soccer. They’re 11,000 families, probably one of the most successful soccer organizations on the East Coast, okay.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — They’re here on our campus. We have a turf field. We’re trying to build five more. That whole clubhouse and for-profit entity that is G-Sports for us has the elite of those kids practicing on our turf field on Wednesday nights.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — And when I first started this journey in my heart, the elders were like okay, we’re going to rent the field out. We’re going to get people here um, but we’re never going to have games on Sunday and we’re not going to let them be here on Wednesday night, right? And I’m like old school youth pastor. I’m like oh yeah, that makes sense. And then I’ve completely changed in the last two years of watching this happen and being on the field and seeing kids. And and now our mentality is instead of telling kids: stop being a soccer player, come to youth group on Wednesday night. We’ll have—today’s Wednesday for us—so we’ll have 300 kids at youth group. That’s just where we’re at right now during junior high and senior high. And I will show up at the beginning of high school tonight because my my whole family’s here. My kids are all here leading worship and serving. Whatever.
Johnny Scott — Then I’m going to walk over to a soccer field where we’re putting a missionary there. And we’re never going to tell the soccer kids to quit soccer and come to youth group. Instead we’re going to say how can we give them a small group experience and be in their coach’s lives, and start to win coaches to the Christ. And serve first, right? Before Jesus heals, before Jesus says follow me, Jesus always served.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Johnny Scott — They never have to come to youth group to be a believer, man. Ever.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Love it.
Johnny Scott — It’s it’s revolutionary revolutionary.
Rich Birch — Let’s take it I so I love this. Let’s take a step back. One of the things I I love about this. I knew this was going to be a great conversation. For years I’ve said to people, and and you know I’ve been in, you know I think you and I in similar kind of circles in the church world. And for years I’ve said, listen when you read the bible, it is clear that God appears to prefer to work in the marketplace not in the holy places. That’s just scripturally true. He he constantly is reaching people when they’re out in the the real world. Not then it’s not that he doesn’t work in kind of holy places…
Johnny Scott — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …or set aside places, but he seems to prefer to work… Now I bump into your story. Now you as a church, this this minister’s business as ministry, give us kind of the handles. What does that look like for you? How would you be different than kind of the the typical church, you know, around the corner from you. What does that what does that look like for Generations?
Johnny Scott — First of all, this is we’ve not arrived at all.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Johnny Scott — And we we are we a, man, my goodness, everything that we have started has been harder than I thought. Um and I don’t regret any of it. And ah one of the axioms that we have is we can we will acknowledge that we’ll do less than a year than we want to. But we’ll probably do more in 10 years than we ever imagined. And that’s just given us this exhale, okay.
Johnny Scott — And so um there are about 9 business entities right now. We went from 17 church staff to over 100 church staff in the last seven months.
Rich Birch — Whoa.
Johnny Scott — We think we’ll be at 250 church staff or 250 staff overall businesses in the next eighteen months, but we see about a hundred businesses on a hundred acre property in the next five years.
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay, that’s a lot to take in.
Johnny Scott — Yeah it it is. I know dude. I’m…
Rich Birch — That is a lot. Like there’s so lot lots of churches have a coffee shop that like and they’re like oh my goodness we’ve got a coffee shop. I know what you’re doing is different – pull that apart. Why is it?
Johnny Scott — Um, yeah I will well for me God says he’ll do more than more than I can imagine. And I started to think about that. When he says I’ll do more than, I’m like I don’t know. I’m imagining some pretty crazy crap, and you’re telling me more? And I’m one of those guys that you know I’m telling you stuff on a podcast where, you know, people watch this podcast, they’re going to hear stuff that, you know, I don’t I don’t tell all my buddies around the country. Because unless you come here to get your boots on the ground, you’re just not going to get it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — I’m having conversations where I’m like okay I’m not going to talk about this to anyone else because this is stupid. But we we are we’re we’re engaging right now with you know, an equity group to buy 49% of a MLS Next Pro Soccer team. The church is going to own 20% and um, we’ve already got a built in fan base. We believe by 2026 World Cup time that that prop, that entity this soccer club could be worth $25,000,000.
Johnny Scott — um that’s that’s cra that’s crazy, right? And like we’re getting into it I’m I’m answering your question in a backwards way because we’re getting into a gray space. because people start to say well, what are you gonna do if, you know, MLS Next Pro, which is their minor league team, if they start to say that franchise is going to do gay pride month, and demand that you have that on your Jerseys. Well here’s my first answer: I don’t know. I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Johnny Scott — And but here but but here’s how this has worked. Grow me, you know, I’m an X’r, you know, son of boomers. I know the greatest generation ever, you know, because they were grandparents. And I I know where we’re at right now is we have this next generation these next generations that we’re trying to pull into ministry. And ah I’ve seen what we’ve done which is, you know, cast people out, tell people that they’ve got to believe before they can belong, and it’s not the model that Jesus had.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — And so all of these entities that we’re doing I’m willing to get into the gray space and say we’re going to make decisions based upon the leading of the Holy Spirit and the facts as they present themselves when we get there. How about that? And we can only move at the speed of trust. And um, we’re God has slowed us down and sped us up, and with the current things that we’re doing and how they’re interacting, our our fear of mission drift you know. Because we’ve got the classic examples. Well did you know that Harvard started out preaching? And how are you going to guarantee not doing mission drift? Well, how are you going to guarantee not doing anything crazy, and and not trying out of the box things are going to do… like seriously?
Johnny Scott — So we feel like we’re in the fight. We feel like the Holy Spirit is leading us. And while we’re not sustainable yet, I see within 18 months, you know, we could be to a place where you know there is 0 debt for our church. And we can say every dollar given goes straight to. But here’s what I’ll do it’s that Matthew 25. We we had a high level leader say to us, when when does this stop? And I just I had a like a a very clarifying moment. I said this is, by the way, this is never going to stop.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — This will never stop. Because when Jesus comes back in Matthew chapter 25, he doesn’t say, everyone without church debt stand in line. He says, I want to examine your point of leverage. That’s what he says.
Rich Birch — That’s a good question.
Johnny Scott — And so for us, um, you know I, man, I’m I’m getting I’m so I’m stepping on some toes, I know.
Rich Birch — It’s good. It’s good. Step away.
Johnny Scott — But but but here’s the deal, bro. Here’s the deal with this, and because it gets me frustrated. Um, we we’ve changed what, you know, like cleanliness is next to godliness. I’m like where is that exactly. And we’ve put like well debt-free is what God wants. And that’s not what God said. God said use man’s money, that’s man’s currency to get kingdom currency. Kingdom currency is people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — So we leverage man’s money to get that. And so if you’re a church and you have no debt and you’re worth, you know, $30,000,000, I think that our property in the next ten years could be valued at over $100,000,000. Easily, okay.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — And if our if our loan to debt is like well we just got all of debt. We do everything cash now. I’m like wait wait a minute, wait a minute. What if we leveraged say 35% of that? And put that into church planting globally, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — What could we do a $35,000,000? Because everyone’s like well you know what the payment on that… Because someone would say to me they’re like, I remember when our payment you know a monthly payment was something like $47,000. And someone said do you know what we could do with $47,000 a month? I was like yeah. A lot less than ten million now.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, right.
Johnny Scott — That’s what that’s what you can do. And and so I think that the biblical principle is never to be a slave to the lender. Well when you’re leveraged at such a point that regardless of an economic downturn, you know I think we’re in two we’re in two quarters of you know like GDP downturn right now. So we’re technically in a recession. There are still banks lending, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — And and we could still go out and get a lender who’s excited to do business with us as we build what’s going to be a ten acre facility with a soccer, a new soccer field, on top of 2 levels of parking.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — I mean this, it’s crazy architecturally what we’re getting ready to do. We’re not a slave to the lender, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — Because lenders want to be involved. And so changing church’s mindset to say we’re going to appropriately leverage man’s resources/dollars to get influence. I’m after influence.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — Because if we have influence. Um, now we can use that influence to make it all about lifting Jesus up, right? I mean five years ago when I when I got here I wasn’t meeting with people that didn’t know Jesus. And now I’m I’m in a meeting with people and I had a guy who I count as a dear friend. And he looked at me and he just said, hey man, you’re crazy. And I so and I said, no, I said I really want to reframe that for you. Because I want for you and I to start to have a conversation that I’m not crazy at all. I just believe that God is real, and that Jesus wants to be lifted up.
Johnny Scott — And so all the things I’m doing, it’s not so that you think, oh that pastor is crazy. Or he’s an entrepreneur. No, no, no. I want you to start to say he’s fully believing that Jesus is going to be lifted up in this. And I’m pushing the conversation to be about Jesus lifted up. He says, if I’m lifted up, men will look to me.
Johnny Scott — Then they’ll have to make a decision if he’s the Lord, liar, or lunatic. And he’s where he responds to me and he says, well soccer is my god. And I loved his response because…
Rich Birch — Yeah, now you’re having a real conversation. Right.
Johnny Scott — Because now we’re yeah, and so I said I said here’s the here’s the deal. I said I I’m gonna I I said I I like soccer, and I want to come and enjoy soccer. And God gave us soccer because soccer is super fun, but soccer makes a bad god. So I’m I want to have a God-off with you. And as as you and I enjoy soccer together, and high five, and grow soccer, I’m going to constantly be comparing my God to your god. And my assertion is that your god is fake, not real, and you’re worshipping something that should just be enjoyed. That’s a gift given to you by my God. And now we’re having a six month conversation about is God real?
Rich Birch — Right, now you’re engaged. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Johnny Scott — And you know what God’s doing? God’s showing himself that he’s real. Because this is where he gets glory. I don’t have to do it. I write spiritual checks all day and I’m like you better cash that one Lord it’s got your name on it. You’re you’re my you’re my guarantor. Right?
Rich Birch — Sure, sure, sure.
Johnny Scott — And this this business is ministry. You know as I’ve got ministry teams, because here’s here’s the the rub you get into. I’ve got pastors’ friends that are like oh my goodness, man, I don’t want to do that that sounds like such a headache. Oh yeah, I’ve got 3 schools on my property right now.
Rich Birch — Right. It’s a headache.
Johnny Scott — I’m I’m launching two more schools, 2000 learners in 5 years. Um curriculum is expensive. Startup costs is expensive. FF and E is expensive. Shared ministry space is horrible, and everyone’s fighting. And you know I’ve got traditional 1.0 ministries people going, well, you know, Johnny sometimes you spend too much time with businesses and stuff. Like well no, that’s what I hired you for you know and and guys it’s not businesses versus traditional ministry. Business is ministry.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — And to get that we are one, right? And this is why Jesus’ is last word to us, his last prayer and his his final discourse in John was all about unity. He didn’t pray for ideas. He didn’t pray for business performance. He didn’t pray for money. He prayed for unity. So here’s the premise I actually believe: that every resource our church needs to dramatically impact the community around us is embedded in us. My job is to cultivate that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — I continually fight for unity.
Rich Birch — When you so to pull apart a little bit you kind of were heading towards or hinting towards what, you know, there might be some skeptics that are listening in that would say like, isn’t this all just a distraction from church 1.0? Or you know, the preaching of the word? Insert whatever language in there. I understand at a personal level. I love that story because I think that’s a great, you know, soccer is god story – I think that’s at the heart of what you’re trying to do. But how do you do that at scale? I get that you have an opportunity to do that as a leader – you’re engaging with one other leader, but then how does the church do that? How do you kind of do that with the thousands of kids that are on the property and the ten thousands of people that come to watch soccer? Um, what what does that look like for you today?
Johnny Scott — Okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna do two things. I’m gonna dodge your question here real quick…
Rich Birch — At least you admit it.
Johnny Scott — …and I’m all and I am…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — …but then I’m also gonna give you some very practical things. Okay, my dodge is when I do this on a very personal level um to me that’s that’s stopping mission drift from my heart.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Johnny Scott — And speed of leader, speed a team.
Rich Birch — Yep yeah, absolutely.
Johnny Scott — And I want I want my team to have that ethos about us that, you know, we’re doing this on an individual level and if we do it at the smallest level, it’ll happen on the macro level, okay. And if and if I model that. So that’s how I’m keeping my way pure in all this. I’m keeping my religion undefiled, right?
Johnny Scott — Um, the second more practical answer to that is ah there’s profit from these businesses. I mean the fact that a youth pastor would walk into my office and say um, hey we’re going to take kids to camp and you know my budget is $50,000 this year. Like no one in the business world does that at all ever anywhere.
Johnny Scott — Like and like what I remember, you know, one of my mentors in ministry like we made enough money off summer camp to fund our own intern for $7000.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — We made $7000 profit because we just built it in.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — So that we we’re completely backwards at how we run ministry.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — Like we’re ser… McDonald’s has got a sign that says 50,000 people served. Well we’re serving people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — But why do they charge and we don’t?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.
Johnny Scott — Do you not believe in what what you’re giving people?
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — So we need to have a total transformation on how we serve people. We’re offering a value and there’s something valuable to it. Ah, but on a very practical level. These businesses are making profit. Their performers are set up to make profit. And I’m I’m there’s profit that comes back to the elders oversee everything in our corporate structure. You know there’s no, there’s not a lot of boards set up. It just goes straight to the elders um through a very very really good list of, you know, organizations through with our our org lawyer. Um, and so we’re we are reinvesting those dollars with missionaries that are intentional.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — And we don’t pay people have coffee; people drink coffee for free. You know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — Like I never want to be that senior pastor that’s like, how big is your discipleship team? It’s like nine people. It’s like what like like that’s everyone to everyone disciples here at church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — You know our one of our things is you are God’s plan for your street.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — When people walk up and say you know we should start a program for it like, great. Go do it. God put that on your heart not mine.
Rich Birch — Right.
Johnny Scott — So we’re we’re going to have metrics and like we’re working on what are metrics right now and deliverables for someone who is assigned to that school as a missionary. Because my ministry staff’s doing ministry 1.0. And there’s a piece of me even when you said it a minute ago a minute ago. You said to me, well you know the the gospel clearly shows us that you know missional effort and always happened in the workplace. I was like man he’s so right on the text. And there’s a part of me that reared up. And I was about came at you, I was like, hey bro, the church is the answer for the world man. Hey bro, you know? And so I have that fight within me, you know?
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah.
Johnny Scott — And ah so you know as a church, we’re extremely churchy. Like if you come we get to be churchy. I’m I’m pastor first with everything I do. Sunday is not for talking about like it’s the gospel gospel gospel; we preach the gospel Christ crucified on Sundays. And if you want to know about what’s happening like book a meeting on Monday, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Johnny Scott — So practically like we’re just putting embedded missionaries in these entities and giving them deliverables on what they’re really going to do to show that they’re making headway.
Rich Birch — That’s fascinating.
Johnny Scott — So that’s where we’re at, and it’s messy. We’ve not I’ve said it a few times we’ve not figured it all out, but we feel we feel like we’re not getting.
Rich Birch — No, no. Yeah, yeah. I love it.
Johnny Scott — We’re not doing something new I’m getting back to Paul’s framework. I’m just selling tents. Not Christian tents. Not tents to christians.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Johnny Scott — Right?
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, let’s kind of as we come to land. Rattle through we did I love this. We did this interview like completely backwards which is good.
Johnny Scott — I I know.
Rich Birch — Rattle through the 9 the 9 businesses, give us a framework. We talked about soccer. What are some of those other ones that they’re currently, you know, that are are currently running? What are that what do they look like or not all of them just like kind of a flavor of what they look like?
Johnny Scott — Yeah, so you know a full on convention center that serves ah the the entire community would be a big one. I mean the the farmers market might sound like a small deal. It really is a massive influence in in our community.
Rich Birch — Huge deal. Yep.
Johnny Scott — We have ah you know standard christian education on our campus, but the fact that I have non-faith based education franchise on our campus is a really big deal. A sports school, you know, that a parent’s paying $23,000 is a year to send their kid to um, that’s bringing life back to them. Two coffee shops um, that are actually international coffee shops while we’re roasting our own stuff and working with missionaries in 3 different continents around the world to bring single source, fair trade coffee.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Johnny Scott — Um putting all that together. That’s great.
Rich Birch — Fantastic.
Johnny Scott — Um, our sports brand is probably got four or five entities in it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Johnny Scott — I could just do an entire thing with you on the sports brand. It’s I forget stuff like a counseling center I don’t I don’t even know man.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Johnny Scott — It’s it’s crazy. It’s crazy.
Rich Birch — This is so fantastic fantastic, Johnny. I this has been great. I I do think—just want to encourage you—I really do think you are scratching ah towards, like you say, Church 2.0. I don’t think you’re way off in the deep end on that. I think I think that what you’re doing is pushing towards what I think all of our churches need to do, and you’re asking the questions hey where do we go from here? What does it look like in a particularly in a post-christian culture to reach the culture around us to use the resources God’s given us to make an impact in the world around us. I just think it’s fantastic. Anything else you want to say as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation?
Johnny Scott — I you know I would just challenge pastors that you know might be overwhelmed. This was this didn’t happen in a year. This has been a 5-year journey and I’m not the guy, you know, that God is put together. I mean if I were just to talk about the team that God is miraculously assembled and and folks are like well you know, that’s just Johnny’s personality. It’s it’s not, it’s not. I think this is part of who Jesus is in saying I I want to have a church that, you know, is just out there serving. and maybe for guys like for us we started with just a Crossfit gym. That’s it, man.
Johnny Scott — And God started to put these other things together. And for you, you know, you got to contextualize all this. We we took this from missionaries overseas actually is where the dream started in Kenya – Nairobi, Kenya.
Rich Birch — Very cool.
Johnny Scott — And I challenge guys all the time that are like well that’s just you know that’s your personality. No no, it’s not. Like you can do just one of these things. And it will bring so much fun and you will start to have personal evangelism, and reach in your community like never before. Start somewhere.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good, Johnny. Appreciate that. Where do we want to send people online if they want to check, you know, check out the church, kind of track with your story. Where’s the best place for us to send them?
Johnny Scott — Ah, generations generationscc.com is a church’s address…
Rich Birch — Perfect.
Johnny Scott — …and then The Commons at Trinity is we renamed the property The Commons at Trinity. Um, and you know that that url is up and Instagram… you can follow the journey of the business develop the CDC cool.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much – appreciate you being here today.
Johnny Scott — Thanks, man. Yeah, God bless, bro.
Working Genius with the Team at Your Church with Patrick Lencioni
Dec 01, 2022
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Patrick Lencioni, one of the founders of The Table Group and an expert in leadership, teamwork, and organizational health.
Pat’s also the author of 13 books which have sold millions of copies around the world, and today he’s talking with us about his latest book, The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team. Listen in to learn how to help your team tap into their God-given gifts, identify the type of work that brings them joy and energy, and increase productivity while reducing judgement and burnout.
What is a working genius? // When it comes to getting work done, one task can give someone joy and energy while it feels draining to another person, even when they love their job. Pat identifies six types of working genius, spelling out the word WIDGET, which identify a person’s God-given gifts so they can work from a place of increased productivity while reducing frustration and burnout.
Understanding WIDGET. // Understanding the six types of working genius gives you a model for understanding yourself, your team members, and why you need all of the working geniuses to be present and working together on your staff. It will also help you to place people in the right roles so that they thrive while helping the church to thrive.
Wonder. // People who have the working genius of wonder are naturally fed by asking questions. They are concerned with possibilities and potential. Wonder is always the first step; without it our organizations will keep doing the same thing until they stagnate.
Invention. // People with the working genius of invention are attracted to developing a new and better way. They will partner with the person who has the working genius of wonder to turn questions into new solutions and systems.
Discernment. // The working genius of discernment is a God-given gift of using your judgement, intuition, instinct, pattern recognition, and integrative thinking. Give the person with this working genius a problem and they can naturally identify the right thing to do.
Galvanizing. // The galvanizing working genius belongs to people who wake up every morning and love to inspire other people to act. They exhort, encourage and rally people together to take action.
Enablement. // The positive form of enablement is the next working genius and it’s critical for a team. Being gifted with enablement is all about joyfully coming alongside people and helping them with whatever they need in the way they need it.
Tenacity. // The last working genius is tenacity and it’s about finishing things and plowing through obstacles. People with tenacity are focused and persistent; they won’t move on to the next thing until the current task is completed.
Take the quiz to know your gifts. // Without knowing what gifts God’s given you, you can’t fill in the gaps with the team around you. Take the Working Genius Assessment in about ten minutes to identify your working geniuses, your working competencies, and your working frustrations. Plus, complete the assessment with your team and receive a team map that will reveal any gaps in the organization.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today’s no exception. It’s our honor, really our privilege, to have Patrick Lencioni with us. You probably have heard of him before – he’s one of the founders of The Table Group, which is really a pioneering organization around ah, organizational health. They really do a fantastic job – started in 1997. As the president of The Table Group, Pat spends his time speaking, writing about leadership, teamwork, and organizational health as well as consulting with executives and their team. He’s also the author of 13 books, which have sold a crazy number – 6,000,000 copies, translated in 30 languages. His latest book, which we’re going to talk about today, The Six Types of Working Genius. Pat, welcome to the show.
Patrick Lencioni — It’s great to be here. I’m so excited – when I saw this on my schedule a few weeks ago and woke up this morning I thought, this is the kind of podcast I love to do. I love to speak to your audience and so I’m a kid in a candy store today.
Rich Birch — So honored that you that you’d come on – really appreciate it. What what did I miss there? Kind of fill out your story. What parts of, you know, Patrick do we want to let people know in on.
Patrick Lencioni — You know I mean I I I always like when people go: Pat Lencioni – here he is. That’s it. You don’t need to tell. But I think the one thing that your audience might be interested in is 10 years, almost ten years ago, I started an organization with another gentleman called The Amazing Parish. And though I work with like I work with, I know a ton of megachurch pastors and pastors and different denominations and Christian Evangelical all that, I’m Catholic and we started an organization called The Amazing Parish ten years ago that really serves pastors in Catholic Churches…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — …who went to seminary and didn’t learn how to lead didn’t learn how to develop teams. And and we help them with that in a very spiritual, prayerful way. So I love this audience. Not only from my Evangelical friends but I’m steeped in it in the Catholic Church as well. So this is fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. I I have to confess—I said this before we got on air—I have been following you for a while – did not know about The Amazing Parish until I was doing research for this and I checked it out. It looks amazing. So yeah, friends, you should go and check out that website. It’s really easy to find. amazingparish.org if you want to check that out. It would be a great thing.
Patrick Lencioni — And you know what’s an interest. What I love is so many of my Evangelical friends have actually come to our annual conference…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — …where we bring people there, and and we’re partners with Northpoint and Andy and the and the folks there who you’re friends with.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — …and they’re serving churches and we’re helping them and they’ve come to our conference and so yes, yes, ladies and gentlemen, in this time of persecution and craziness in the world. Evangelicals, Protestants, Catholics are all realizing we’re all brothers in Christ so it’s wonderful.
Rich Birch — Oh absolutely. Actually I was just in London…
Patrick Lencioni — And sisters.
Rich Birch — …and a couple couple weeks ago and spent a bunch of time with with an organization called Alpha.
Patrick Lencioni — Oh!
Rich Birch — And there’s a yeah lot of the huge Catholic component within that and I dinner with a guy across the table who spent a whole night talking, and it was it was fascinating, you know, sharing across the table about our ministries. How similar, you know, we really are for sure.
Patrick Lencioni — Well and let me tell you the evil one hates the idea that we’re talking, and I mean that but…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so that’s true. That is very true. Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — …years ago I had the chance to go to London and go to speak at um, um the conference there and meet the Alpha folks, and and be be involved with the with the folks that do that on the Catholic side as well. It’s wonderful to see how we’re cooperating and working together.
Rich Birch — It is.
Patrick Lencioni — It’s great.
Rich Birch — It’s very good.
Patrick Lencioni — Nicky Gumbel. That’s what…
Rich Birch — Nicky Gumbel.
Patrick Lencioni — …Nicky Gumbel. Yup.
Rich Birch — Absolutely. Love it. Well I’m really looking forward to diving into your most recent work here Working Genius – The 6 Types of Working Genius. Talk to us about it. What is this model? You know, like give us a sense of what what we’re talking about here today.
Patrick Lencioni — Essentially this is this is two things. It’s a model for understanding yourself – the gifts God gives you when it comes to getting real work done. Like to the specifics of which kind of task, activities give you joy and energy and God intended you to do because it’s a gift. And which kind did he not give you, and it drains you of your joy and energy, and feeling guilty about not being good at that is not good. It’s not good. And and that’s how I developed it and I came about I came upon this by accident in trying to address my own frustration at work. I was finding myself grumpy at work…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — …for 20 years off and on even though I worked with wonderful people doing something I loved. But I would often drift into grumpiness and I couldn’t figure it out. And somebody finally said, hey why are you like that? And I and I said I don’t know. And by the grace of God I came up with this model just for myself. And then we found out people were were just were were saying, no this is universal; this helps me. And and so it went crazy. But what what this also is is not just an individual tool, but it is the fastest and most transformational tool for teams to better appreciate one another, readjust how they get things done in an organization…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …and certainly in a church…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — …so that they can lean into their geniuses more…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Lencioni — …and and call other people to work up into their geniuses. It is such a wonderful tool. As it turns out God made us to need one another. We don’t… none of us have everything.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. The—and I want we’re gonna talk about the assessment I had a chance to take it and it was fantastic, but we’ll get a chance to talk to that—one of the things I loved was you’ve got these kind of six different types, and they spell out the word “widget” but Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enabling, Tenacity – widget. That seems kind of crazy to me that you use that as a, you know, as that the the word under it all.
Patrick Lencioni — Well let me tell you it was mostly by accident. So we got as we were. We were really coming up with like what’s the right word for each of these these geniuses…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — …and we got it was W and I and D and G. And I was like okay, I’m not going to make it spell widget. I’m not going to do that. And then we were struggling with a word for the the fifth one, and we were like there’s only one word and it’s it’s enablement. It’s like in the in the good way…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …enabling others to. And when I got to that I said, now I’m going to find a darn T word because it’s not going to be widgel or widger. So we and we found a great T word. So we didn’t do it on purpose. In fact, we were kind of worried about doing it that way…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …because it sounded like, did you do that on purpose?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — Most of it was by accident and then we said okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna finish it. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so why don’t you take us through that a little bit kind of unpack that a little bit. Give us a sense of the model; talk us through what that, you know, what those what those six are.
Patrick Lencioni — Great. So I’m going to do it in the order in which they generally occur in getting things done. Although nothing’s that neat and tidy and I’m going to start from the highest altitude – the first thing down to the lowest, like landing the plane. So the first thing, the first genius—which most people who have this don’t think it’s a genius because mostly they’ve been either criticized or kind of looked at funny when they do it, but it’s critical and it’s a first step in anything—is the genius of wonder. The genius of wonder – the W. And and people that have this genius and it’s completely God-given are naturally inclined to, and are fed by, asking questions and thinking about things at a high level – about possibilities and potential. And and and asking questions like, is there a better way? Is this enough? Should we be rethinking this? Why why are things like this? And why do we do it this way? And and it’s it’s it’s how this model came about.
Patrick Lencioni — My colleague Amy said to me one day, why are you like that? What goes on?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — And and that question somebody says—and this is true in any kind of organization—is there a better way to do ministry?
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — Is is the way we’re doing youth outreach, is it is this really working? They’re they’re not saying they have the answer…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — …but they’re the ones that look at and go, I’m going to ask the question.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — And it’s critical, and there are certain people that are naturally inclined to doing that, and it’s a beautiful genius, and we need to realize that without it our organizations…
Rich Birch — Right we don’t move forward.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah, or we keep doing the same thing.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — I I had a group of of executives of a multibillion dollar tech company, who had been behind the curve in innovation for years. They had no new products, and they were just living off of their old products. And when they saw their their their team profile, they realized nobody on their on their leadership team had W. In fact, it was worse than that. Almost everyone had it as one of their working frustrations, their least happy thing.
Rich Birch — Oh gosh – they were repelling it. They were pushing it away. Absolutely.
Patrick Lencioni — Exactly.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Patrick Lencioni — And the CFO who certainly was not a Wonder said, if we don’t learn to wonder we’re never going to figure out this market. So…
Rich Birch — Wow, wow. That’s great.
Patrick Lencioni — So we need people to do that. But that’s not enough somebody has to ask the question, then somebody else says, oh please please. The next genius – the genius of Invention. Please let me try to come up with something new. That’s that person who goes, oh I can think of a better – let me think of a – give me give me a whiteboard with nothing on it and a pen, and I will come up with a new way to do youth outreach.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — You know, this is one of mine and your working geniuses – I’ve seen your results. And you and I are not intimidated by, in fact we’re attracted to the need for a new way.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — And you know what else? Rich, we do this even when it’s not necessary. And that’s how you know it’s a you know it’s a genius…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — …because like I would like to do this all the time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — And it’s okay for people to say, hey Rich, I love your Invention, man. God gave you a great gift, but this is not the right medium for it. You know because you know…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, let’s do that at a different spot.
Patrick Lencioni — Right. You’re about to roll something out and I’m in a meeting in my company and and I’m like, ooh I have an idea! And people go, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second! I think we’re done with the idea phase for now – we’re like two days from implementation. We’ve got the plan. We’re doing great. So sometimes, sometimes it’s a genius that we’re not supposed to use and that’s okay.
Rich Birch — Right. So I when I read when I read this, took this, you know, your assessment and and rolled through it this particular piece of it really stood out to me as true. For years, probably 20 years, when someone would ask me, hey, what is it that you actually do? Because they try to, you know, sometimes be an executive pastor who’s not on the stage all the time people wonder what is your job, like what do you do around here. And I would always say the shorthand I would say my job is I live at the intersection of vision and execution. I love taking the “where are we headed”—the Wonder in your language, the Wonder, what do we think that God’s calling our church to do—and then actually figuring out how we’re going to go and do that. Like let’s actually… so it is like a little bit of vision casting. It is I have to and I and I can live in that space. But then I love then saying ok, let’s figure out what that looks like let’s go make it happen.
Patrick Lencioni — Right. Well and we’re gonna get to let’s go make it happen. I love that that you said that. Um, so so there’s Wonder and Invention, and those two…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Patrick Lencioni — …the first two—are what’s called idea ideation. That’s where new ideas come from.
Rich Birch — Ok, ok, love it.
Patrick Lencioni — Okay, by the way I’ve had I had we had a pastor right after this model came out. He took the assessment, and he wrote to us and he said, I thought I was a a fraud, and I should have never been a pastor. He’d been a pastor for over ten years and he goes, I thought I was a failure…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Patrick Lencioni — …and I I picked the wrong profession. And he said, I realize now I just don’t have W or I, and so writing a homily, writing a sermon, was really hard for him. And so I looked at his type and I said, do you like to counsel people? He goes oh I love to. Do you like to come alongside people where they’re at in their discipleship journey? Oh yeah I do. I love that. Yeah, see a pastor is not a pastor is not a pastor.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Search.
Patrick Lencioni — All you need to do is find somebody on your team or somebody that you know who’s good at W I, and spend a few hours with them every week and they’re going to help you. But don’t feel guilty.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — And it was he said it it changed his whole view of his pastorship.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — Okay, so so those first two – Wonder, Invention. Then we get to the D – discernment. Discernment is a God-given gift of using your judgment, your intuition, your instincts, pattern recognition, and integrative thinking. It’s people that just kind of have a sense. You give them a problem and it’s not about data or expertise, but they have great… they look at things and they just see things and they go, this I think this is the right thing to do. And they’re usually right and they and it is an absolute gift. Some people just think that way.
Patrick Lencioni — I love to tell the story of Tracy, a woman in my office who has great discernment. When my wife and I are talking about just about anything, like should we refinance our house, or where should we go on vacation, or or how should we handle this, or does this look good, or what kind of car should we get? Here’s the…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — Laura will say, ask Tracy.
Rich Birch — I I love it. Love it. So good.
Patrick Lencioni — I think the last three cars I bought I finally said, Tracy, I don’t know – what do you think? She was you need this. And I’m like then I probably should get that.
Rich Birch — Ah love it. Yes, Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — And you know what’s funny. She said when she was a kid her friends would ask her for advice because she always had…
Rich Birch — Ah, oh that’s amazing.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and we all know people like that, right? We all know those people.
Patrick Lencioni — Right.
Rich Birch — That it’s like they they’re just in our orbit and and we just want to listen to what they have to say, and they’re yeah they’re very discerning. I love that. That’s so good.
Patrick Lencioni — Right? And it’s a God given talent.
Rich Birch — Yeah, cool, cool.
Patrick Lencioni — And it’s real and when you say to them, prove it with data. They’re like oh yeah, yeah, that’s not my thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — I I don’t know. That’s not how I make decisions.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it yet.
Patrick Lencioni — So so discernment is great because when people invent something, like you’re an inventor having somebody that can come along and discern it and go, Hey, three of your ideas are pretty good. This one’s fantastic. This one here would never work. This one needs a little bit more work.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — So we had a guy write to us and say that for years he thought he kind of thought his wife didn’t like him. She was against him. And he said for their anniversary they took the Working Genius Assessment. He goes he goes I’m an inventor and I come up with new ideas all the time. And every time I come up with a new idea, she tells me what the flaws are.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Patrick Lencioni — And he goes I thought she was like trying to crush my enthusiasm. And they took the assessment and her lead genius was discernment.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — So he would give her new idea and she’d say, the way I love you is to try to give you feedback because I want it to work for you because I love you. And it changed their marriage.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — So it’s one of those things we we often judge people like you’re criticizing me because you don’t like me. And it’s like oh no I’m a discerner and that’s how I love on people is I give them advice.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. So good. Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — So Discernment is the third one.
Rich Birch — Okay, great.
Patrick Lencioni — And and the next one comes to one of yours, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — And that is Galvanizing.
Rich Birch — Galvanizing. Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And that’s the G. And that is people that wake up every morning and love to inspire people to act. They love to remind people to exhort people.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — Exhort exhortation is a great word.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Lencioni — You know they’re like come on! You can do this! We can do this!
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — So your your two geniuses are Invention and Galvanizing. The word we use for that pairing is the evangelizing innovator. They come up with new ideas.
Rich Birch — Yeah when I read that…
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah when I read that again that did that did resonate. I was um and I posted on social I was like okay so I took took the Working Genius. For those folks that know me, what do you think? And you know it’s that little thing on Instagram where they can pull the bar. And it was 100% of the people said 100% of it. Like they were like, yes, that was that’s very much you.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — This idea of somebody who is out you know, evangelizing saying, hey let’s let’s let’s pull this thing together. Let’s make this thing happen. We can do this, you know, whether it’s in lots of different areas of my life. So that’s kind of fun.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah, by the way, a little a little personal feedback I I know a lot of I-Gs, G-Is like you. And one of the things I found about all of them I love them. They’re some of my favorite people. But when I first meet them I always suspect that they’re not authentic because I can’t believe anybody could be so excited so often.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — And then my third interaction…
Rich Birch — So now you’re reading my… but Pat this is the first time we’ve met.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I’ve had that feedback from people in my life in the past where people have said they’re like are you…? Like yeah like they would say like after we’re friends for a little bit, they were like when I first met you I was like, is this guy real? Like you see is he really honest in that way? Which is so funny so that’s great. Love it. So fun.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah, um, and praise God that this actually works. You know I don’t think I invented it. I think I discovered it. I really do believe…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Patrick Lencioni — …God like anointed me with like, hey Pat, here’s an insight that can help other people…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — …who are feeling guilty about themselves, or are judging others, without understanding it. St Francis of Assisi said, you know, seek to understand more than to be understood. And the more we can understand other people then the more they can understand us too.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — So anyway, so you’re a Galvanizer. Now here’s the thing about me, I’m not.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — But I’ve learned how to do it and I I can do it well. But I don’t like it.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting. Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — And so that’s how this whole model came about, Rich. I would come to work every day, ready to invent and discern, and people would go well, you’re the best galvanizer we got so galvanize us. Galvanize us. Galvanize us.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, okay.
Patrick Lencioni — And it was burning me out. And and…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Patrick Lencioni — And so sometimes just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean that’s actually what you’re called to do. You know I love that I love that idea that when you make a decision go where you’re where you find peace. And and and if you don’t have peace and when you’re doing something but people say you’re great at it, maybe there’s that there’s probably something a little bit wrong there. You know when Barry Sanders the football player, if you follow football, retired—like the best running back ever—retired when he was like 28. And…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy.
Patrick Lencioni — …and you know why? I don’t think he loved it. He was just good at it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — And God really does call us to spend as much time as possible in the things he gave us that give us joy and energy.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — So this isn’t just about talent. It’s about joy and energy…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …where we and that’s where usually our talents lie.
Rich Birch — Yes I love that.
Patrick Lencioni — So you’re a galvanizer; you love doing that.
Rich Birch — I do. Actually I’ve I’ve seen that many times. So what what’s that what are your two? You said Wonder is your first – are you W I? Is that what you said?
Patrick Lencioni — No – I’m I and D.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Patrick Lencioni — So I’m an inventor and a discerner. And that’s called a discriminating um ideator.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — Which means like when I come up with new ideas – this is going to sound very immodest but but humility is not being falsely modest. Humility is actually acknowledging what is true. And and since we know we’re not God and it’s a gift, um acknowledging your gifts is not a violation of humility. In fact, to deny your gifts is.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — Because they’re a gift. How can I brag about my gifts?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — So when I come up with new ideas a a disproportionately high number of them turn out to work…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …because because I I have this loop of invention and discernment, invention and discernment. So by the time I I put it out there, I’ve already kind of evaluated it.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, that makes sense.
Patrick Lencioni — And so it’s just kind of how it works.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — Now I suck at a bunch of other things. That’s also humble.
Rich Birch — Nice. Now these last two. Enablement and Tenacity – those are the last two. Talk us through what those are.
Patrick Lencioni — Those are both your and my working frustrations. By the way, Rich, do you know what a working frustration is? A working frustration to compare it… Your Working Genius is like pouring coffee into a Yeti mug and putting a lid on it.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — You know it holds the it holds the heat for hours and hours. You’re Working Genius – you could spend ah an entire day in your Working Genius and feel like I’m not really tired. You know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — The the next two areas are what we call your working competency. That’s like pouring coffee into a cup and putting a lid on it – a regular plastic coffee cup. It’ll hold it for a while. You can do that. Your working frustration is the coffee cup you pour into and it’s got a hole in the bottom of it. It’s going to drain you of joy and energy. And it’s hard to spend much time certainly over a period of time. We really aren’t designed to spend a lot of time in our areas of working frustration.
Patrick Lencioni — And so the next area which is both your and I working frustration. It’s hard to admit this as followers of Jesus, but the next genius is called Enablement.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Patrick Lencioni — And it’s a beautiful thing. It’s not enabling an alcoholic or a drug addict. It’s enabling people by coming alongside them and helping them with whatever they need.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Patrick Lencioni — And there are people who have a God-given gift, and you all know it because you see it in your organizations, when somebody says I need help. Their energy, they’re like, oh please I want to help you. What do you need?
Rich Birch — Pick me, pick me. Yeah yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — Right. Because they love to help on your terms. Now you and I love to help people too. But when somebody asks me for help, I want to invent and discern for them.
Rich Birch — Hmm, okay.
Patrick Lencioni — I don’t necessarily want to give them what they’re asking for. Um the best explanation I have of this one is when my wife says to me, Pat, I need your help this weekend. Before she even tells me what it is I start to feel a little bit drained.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And then I said oh okay, what do you need help with? She says I need help cleaning the garage. So now I’m even a little lower. So what I immediately go to my my strengths and I say, are you sure we need to clean the garage? Tell me why you think we need to clean it. That’s my discernment.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — And she’ll say, I don’t want your discernment.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — Trust me, we’re gonna I need to clean the garage. Then I go, Okay so what’s your system? Maybe we can come up with a new way to do this. And she says, I don’t want your invention.
Rich Birch — Yeah, just…
Patrick Lencioni — I just want you to stand in the corner. And when I hand you a box, I want you to put it where I tell you to.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — That is paralyzing to me.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And there are other people that are like no, no, no, no, no. I will get joy out of just watching this person get what they need.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And that is a God-given genius. Now, I still have to do it sometimes, Rich.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — But there are certain jobs that would require me to do that every day that would send me into the looney bin.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni —And that’s why one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And God didn’t give anyone everything. And I would be a really bad nurse.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — But I’d be a really good diagnostic doctor. I like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — I would be the one in the emergency room where people come in and I would like have to use my discernment to quickly evaluate all the variables
Rich Birch — Figure out what’s going on. Yeah, I love it. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — Right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah, but then if somebody said okay just give these people whatever they need, would be really hard for me. Not because I’m a bad person. I thought for for the last fifty five years that meant I was a bad person. It’s like oh that’s just not a gift.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — So it’s not an excuse but it’s an explanation.
Rich Birch — Yep makes sense. And then Tenacity.
Patrick Lencioni — The last one is Tenacity. This is the genius of finishing things, and plowing through obstacles, and crossing things off the list, and meeting the numbers, and and fulfilling the the standards. And there are people who wake up if in the morning—I call them freaks, no I love them, but I’m not one of them—who say give me something to do that I can finish…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Lencioni — …and see the results of it, and that gives me joy and energy.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — Rich, I’m the opposite. I get halfway through a project and I think it’s largely solved, and I want to move on to the next thing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what is the next thing?
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah, I don’t have angst when things aren’t yet finished…
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — …which is why I need people around me. And if I’m a pastor of a church—executive pastor, whatever—one executive pastor is not the same as another one, and another one.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — So you have to know what gifts God gave you, and then invite people to work with you that fill in your gaps. And so if you’re the pastor, an executive pastor, and the pastor of your church is is really like the the preacher, the preaching pastor, is really strong in certain areas, you’re probably going to have to fill in some gaps.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And and but more importantly than even the two of you can’t do it all.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And then you’re going to build a team around you and say, hey let’s look at our team map.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Patrick Lencioni — Because when a team fills this out they get a map with everyone’s type on it. And they look at it and they go, oh we’re totally exposed over here. We don’t have anybody doing enabling. I was I was in a church organization that had no enablers which is rare.
Rich Birch — Right. Well and you know… yeah that is interesting… So that’s actually very quickly as when I did the assessment I could see very quickly how this could work so well in a team environment. I like how you’ve laid out even just the widgets. You know it makes sense how kind of ideas flow from just ah, you know an idea all the way through to execution, or tenacity. You know how do we move the the thing all the way through? I love that. Talk me through what it looks like in a team environment. Go a little bit deeper on that because I think there are people who listen in around these assessments and it’s like it’s like they’re just cynical. They’re like oh gosh another one of these you know personality assessments. I don’t blah blah blah. I don’t want to do this. Tell me how this works and how could I roll this out well.
Patrick Lencioni — Okay I love this. First of all I like people that are skeptical because that means they’re not going to just take anything. And when you convince them that it has value then they’re on, they’re on board even more. So I like that.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Patrick Lencioni — And I did not think the world needed another assessment. I like them all. I like Myers Briggs. I like um DISC. I’ve done them all.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — But what what I didn’t have is one that translated quickly to how to put people in roles…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …that brought them alive. This this assessment takes 10 minutes to fill out. And you look at your results, and like you said and the the face validity is super high, like people like this is me. And then when you look at on a team 15 minutes later everybody in the room is going, oh crap. Yeah now I know why we do that really well, and why when we have to do something like this it doesn’t work well. Now I know why Mary is burning out because she’s the only Tenacity person on the team and she’s landing the plane every day.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — And not why… and you know and it explains so much. So I think the the the immediacy of benefit of this is like nothing we’ve ever experienced. I know my Myers Briggs type.
Rich Birch — What does that mean?
Patrick Lencioni — I just don’t know what does that mean I should do every day.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Or who I should interact with, or what is you know, when we think about projects and we think about doing things – that was the thing that that struck me as I was like okay I could see how this could work within our organization…
Patrick Lencioni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …which I just think is that’s a gift to people for sure.
Patrick Lencioni — Here’s another thing. I think, by the way, churches are more important than any other organization in the world. You know, there’s family—the home church—and then there’s churches.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Lencioni — And the sophomore company down the street or the restaurant or whatever else, the church is more important. It’s people’s souls. So I think that we should have higher standards. Well I think it’s beautiful when a church becomes a source of wisdom for people in their life. And I think that churches should be introducing this not only to their staff and volunteers, but to their congregation.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And saying let us, as your as your church, let us help you understand what God gifted you with so that you can bring that into your home, and into your workplace, because church is relevant everywhere. So you know I love that Dave Ramsey, who’s a friend of mine, Financial Peace University has brought so many people to Jesus because they’re like…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …I’m I’m struggling with my finances. Well here’s a biblical way to understand your finances. Well I think that this is a very God centered way to help people understand what they what they’re meant to do.
Rich Birch — Oh I love that.
Patrick Lencioni — And it doesn’t only apply to to work like when you’re at work at your church or in your job.
Rich Birch — Right.
Patrick Lencioni — It applies to work at home.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — My wife and I – our marriage changed because we realized the combination of our working geniuses left us exposed into areas that caused a lot of arguments over the years. And now we have grace for one another. And we are outsourcing things that we thought we felt guilty about before, but we’re just bad at.
Rich Birch — Okay, makes sense.
Patrick Lencioni — So it’s really changed our our marriage and our home life as well as our work life. And our and the parishes that use this. in the Catholic world and the churches that use it in the Evangelical and Protestant world are just finding it to be really um, it allows them to reduce guilt and judgment and increase morale and fulfillment.
Rich Birch — Yeah I can see that, I was I was going to ask you if there’s any examples from a church, Catholic or otherwise, who have used this on kind of a wide, you know, kind of a wide margin like you’re saying there a wide part of their church. Because I could see that as a a real gift to a church. Do you have an example of that?
Patrick Lencioni — Oh goodness. I mean yeah, I mean the the pastors some pastors are like I know pastors who are W-I’s, right? So which means is they’re they’re the that’s called a creative dreamer.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Patrick Lencioni — And they can just go for a walk in a park and come up with threes homilies or sermons…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Patrick Lencioni — …and and and they preach. And then they go, and like in the Catholic world—so it’s ah particularly challenging because we don’t have executive pastors.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — We’re trying to teach them to do that more. Like no, we need to have a team and you need to to give some responsibility to others. But there’s pastors that don’t really like counseling.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — Like E and D, let’s say are there frustrations, and they feel really guilty. Like I know Catholic pastors who don’t like to do the sacrament of confession. Now they don’t have a… they have to do it. But that’s not the thing that gives them the most energy and joy because that’s a very pastoral role.
Patrick Lencioni — Exactly. And they’re like oh my gosh. I’m a preacher and I love coming up with new ideas. And I like looking at what’s going on and what people need to hear. And it’s like yeah, you’re not a bad person. That’s a beauty. Now find, build up a counseling ministry. And when you go do your confessions, offer that up to God and say, God I’m going to go do something that’s hard for me, but rather than feel guilty about that I’m going to lean into that and say, I’m going in there to do something that’s hard, and I can do it for two hours a week.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And say, that’s okay. We have a guy in our office named Matt, who you met. He um he does not like tenacity that much. So when he has to do tenacity work, he goes into one of our offices and he goes, I’m going into the T cave. I’m coming out in 2 hours. And and he comes out and he’s like yes! I finished all those things!
Rich Birch — Yeah, I did it all! Check the list!
Patrick Lencioni — Right.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — Whereas we… you know I’ll tell you a really really quick story is when I was a kid my dad used to try to get me to mow the lawn with him. And I did it out of duty, but I hated it.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Patrick Lencioni — And I felt like a bad son.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And and I carried that forever. And I realized he wanted me to do it. He wanted me to be an enablement and tenacity person, follow him around, he’ll tell me what to do. I’ll do it and I have to do it perfectly. And it was exactly my working frustrations.
Birch — Right, right. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And so here I am fifty years later going, oh I wasn’t a bad son.
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Patrick Lencioni — Whereas if it he if he had said, hey Pat, I want you to look at the the yard and I want you to envision how you think it should look.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — And come up with a way to do it. I’m not saying he should have done that, but I would have been like YES! Invention, discernment.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, love it. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — But he needed T work.
Rich Birch — Well, this seems to me like, yeah I love this. And isn’t that true. That feels like a very true statement. I’m a little bit younger than you – not that many years younger, and I do feel like in this this age is is about figuring out our childhood. It’s like looking back and being like, oh right. That’s what was going on fifty years ago forty years ago.
Rich Birch — Um so to be honest, Pat, I don’t know if other people said this you when I read this and looked at this, this feels like in a different category than your other writing. This feels like wow this has got huge—and yeah, and obviously you’ve had huge influence, you’ve helped so many people so many organizations, your writing is is so helpful and you know catalytic in so many ways—but this feels like it’s in a different category. What’s your thought for the future of Working Genius? What are you thinking about? What’s your kind of dream for this? What’s your hope for this as it kind of continues to ripple out?
Patrick Lencioni — Well as I’ve gone through my own healing in my life, which is really the essence of our spiritual life is healing, you know, it’s be healed. I’ve come to hold things a little more lightly and realize it’s all a gift. And so when somebody first saw this—one of the guys in our office who has who has discernment and galvanizing, which is called a intuitive activator—he looked at this and he said, right away, this is going to be bigger than The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which is the the most popular book.
Patrick Lencioni — We’re convinced that that’s true. I’m also convinced that this is a gift, and that we just want to steward it well.
Rich Birch — Oh love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And so my hope is that nobody ever, you know, I mean that so many so many fewer people feel any sense of guilt or frustration in work because they think that there’s something wrong with them.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Patrick Lencioni — But more that they realize, oh no I’m just meant to do something else.
Patrick Lencioni — And that’s true if they’re 16 years old, or 20 years old getting out of college, or if they’re in the midst of their career and they’re and they feel like they’re failing. Or if they’re retiring and they’re saying, God what else do you want me to do? I think it’s like well I’ve given I’ve imprinted this on your heart. Do things like this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — So I want the world to be that much more fulfilled in their doing, because they’re aligning that with what God has intended for them.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — So that would be that’s my that’s my dream…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — …but I’m I’m holding it lightly and letting God take it where it goes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I would echo that. I do it does feel like to me it has that kind of like, oh this has like long burn potential in a lot of different organizations and a lot of places. And I’m hoping frankly the churches that are listening in today that they’ll take steps to do the assessment, pull their team together, have the conversations.
Rich Birch — Where where do we want to send them if they’re thinking, yeah I would I want to do that. I want to take some steps. I want to want to learn more. I want to jump in and and kind of get a better sense of this.
Patrick Lencioni — You know, and it’s so funny because I I have a company we serve the corporate world. And in the corporate world, we price this very low, because we wanted we don’t want it to just be in the corporate world. But then when I talk to a church like oh but it’s $25 to take this assessment, right? And um. And but if ah if if somebody had a volume, like we want this to go throughout our church, we we do discounts and stuff like that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, sure.
Patrick Lencioni — But take the assessment…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Patrick Lencioni — …and the report that comes back is usually like super helpful. And and you look at a team map, or you share this with your friends, or your spouse, or your boss.
Patrick Lencioni — Um, we had a guy in a church that—here’s a great way to look at this – a story. A guy who worked in a church who was getting ready to do his performance review, and he knew it was going to be bad. He was he was struggling.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Patrick Lencioni — And he took the Working Genius Assessment. He brought it to his manager. And said I want to go over this with you before, and and the guy looked at it and said well it’s no wonder you’re struggling, we have you in the wrong job.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Patrick Lencioni — And and he he literally said, I got promoted because I because they figured out what to do with me.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Patrick Lencioni — And so the first thing people can do is go to workinggenius.com. It’s a it’s our website working genius – two Gs in the middle. And and you can take the assessment. It takes 12 minutes to take or 10 minutes. The results are very powerful. This is a better gift to give somebody than a tie, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Totally.
Patrick Lencioni — And it’s like it’s like what do I give somebody that can change their life? Um so sometimes I think that’s ah, that’s a great thing to do. One day I’ll be glad when we just give it to everybody for free, but we’ve had to put a lot of time and energy into it, and we’re selling it in the corporate world.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s great.
Patrick Lencioni — But in a church this can be a great tool.
Rich Birch — Now, and again friends, I would encourage you to do that – workinggenius.com. Go. I think as a bare minimum that’s a great idea even this time of year. Maybe this is what you do instead of Christmas gifts for your staff. This could be a great, you know, conversation starter. A great discussion piece. Listen particularly, you know, I’m thinking particularly on the staff side. You know, you can. You’ll get more than $25 value. It even sounds stupid to say that because of course it’s more than $25 value.
Patrick Lencioni — Right.
Rich Birch — Repositioning people into their, you know, asking the question of, hey what what is the kind of your seat on the bus, ah, you know, what does that look like? Love it. So I think it could be great.
Patrick Lencioni — You know you know, Rich. We just did a podcast that came out yesterday um about Working Genius and the holidays. And we’re we’re encouraging people to actually do this at Thanksgiving…
Rich Birch — Oh love it.
Patrick Lencioni — …and and or and or just just take a one page sheet of the six Working Geniuses. And say to instead of arguing about politics, or or or playing doing charades, it’s like just say, hey can any be what which of these do, you guys, feeds you?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Patrick Lencioni — Which of these gives you joy and energy? Which doesn’t?
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And it’s like families are like, oh my gosh, I I never realized that about you. That’s so true! When you were a kid you always were drawn to this.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And and and it’s a really wonderful way for a family to celebrate one another’s geniuses.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Patrick Lencioni — And so anyway.
Rich Birch — Well, Patrick, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you for Working Genius. Thank you for your your work. I got to be honest, just such an honor to get a chance to talk with you a little bit. When your team reached out I was like I’m like, you have the right person? You must have asked the wrong person. You must be looking for someone else. But really, super honored to have you on. And your work has made an impact—I know you know this—has made an impact on lots of leaders lives, and so the fact that you would come on here just really does ah it honors me. And I’m just thankful that you were here today. So thanks for that. Thanks for being on the show today.
Patrick Lencioni — As the people at Chick-Fil-A say, it is totally my pleasure.
Rich Birch — Yeah thank you so much, sir. Have a great day, and like again, friends, workinggenius.com – pick one of those up. Thanks so much for being with us today, Patrick.
Patrick Lencioni — God bless.
In The Trenches of Guiding a Church to Be More Outsider Focused with Chuck Fenwick
Nov 24, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m excited today to be talking with Chuck Fenwick, lead pastor at New Haven UMC in Indiana.
How do we build churches that are both reaching new people, and caring for the people who are with us? It’s a universal tension all church leaders face. Listen in as Chuck shares about how to identify your target audience and allow them to influence the decisions you make.
Create a basis for your target. // When it comes to decision-making at New Haven, sometimes people can have an “us” or “them” mentality where “them” refers to people that the church is trying to reach whereas “us” includes the people already at the church. So the New Haven staff focused on defining who their target audience is by creating a fictional family with names and a backstory. Now when faced with decisions, they ask how that fictional family would react to it. Would it interest them? What impact would it have on them?
Look at the community around you. // In creating the fictional family, the details about them were chosen based on what the church sees in the broader community around them. The age of the couple—35 years old—was common for those who have walked away from the church, but are considering coming back because of their kids. Identifying this target audience doesn’t mean New Haven doesn’t care about people outside of that age range. But it does mean that every decision made is based on this fictional family because the church wants to gain traction with this age group. It challenged the New Haven congregation about what it meant to really be a Christian; it’s more than just showing up to church.
Recognize the influence. // The this fictional family the father was responsible for 51% of the decision-making and the wife 49%. Why? Because the husband may come to church with the wife occasionally, but there is a difference when the husband goes of his own volition because he wants to. Many times if the husband decides to go, the rest of the family will too. But often if the wife decides to go to church, the husband may decide he’s too busy, and so she only goes with the kids. Winning the man over is that slightly bigger part of the process.
Help reach them. // Drawing people to church is one thing, but retaining them is another. One of the things Chuck tries to teach his people is that the people outside of the church’s walls need Jesus, but don’t realize it. That means they need you as a Christian to give them hope. The next generation needs Jesus, but they probably won’t come to you asking for Him because they don’t even realize they need Him. It’s up to each of us to reach out to others and care for them, because the pastor can’t do it all.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and this week’s absolutely no exception. Super excited to have Chuck Fenwick with us. He is the lead pastor at New Haven UMC, located in Indiana. Ah, Chuck and I are both a part of Carrey Nieuwhof’s The Art of Leadership Academy, with a kind of team discussion leader type people in there, and Chuck is on there and is so helpful to folks. I wanted to make sure to get them on the podcast, wanted to spread some of that good here on unSeminary. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Chuck Fenwick — Thank you! It’s great to be here and yeah, do whatever I can ah share and also learn…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Chuck Fenwick — …because you’re the genius not me.
Rich Birch — I don’t know about that.
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, fill out the picture – tell us a little bit more about yourself, tell us about the church, that kind of thing.
Chuck Fenwick — Ah, well I came into… I’ve been in ministry most of my adult life, some as um, a lay person doing ministry with youth and even campus life youth for youth for Christ. And decided to go to seminary later, kind of as a second career. I worked in some um, kind of marketing things, even for a newspaper so talk about outdated…
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Chuck Fenwick — Um which some people could relate that to the church in some ways but ah…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, and then I’ve been at this particular church—it’s a United Methodist Church—I’ve been here twelve years. And so for those that don’t know anything about the United Methodist Church, that’s odd um, we get we get moved…
Rich Birch — Yes, normally a rotator every four or five years, right?
Chuck Fenwick — Normally, yeah. We get moved ah we don’t decide where we go. And um so it’s odd that I came here as the associate pastor, and was working with youth and doing some other things, and they decided to make me the lead pastor a few years ago. And I’ve been here now um, a little over twelve years. And um, it’s that is bizarre that that happens. And we’re a church of about I’d say 200, give or take. We probably average a little bit less than that maybe around 160 to 180 on an average Sunday, and and probably about 300 or of 350 or so that call our church home if you will. So you know how that works and but…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, for sure. So what…
Chuck Fenwick — So yeah, that’s that’s me and that’s…
Rich Birch — Yeah this the U the UMC… I forget what they call that that the system of moving people around. What’s that called again?
Chuck Fenwick — Well, we’re appointed.
Rich Birch — Appointed, right.
Chuck Fenwick — Um and that’s really about that’s about I’m not sure what else you’d call it. But yeah, we have appointment seasons.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — So every year in January, February, March the bishop along with the cabinet, which is district superintendents, get together and decide who goes, who stays. And we are we are allowed to tell them what we want.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Um and for the most part they’ll go with that unless they just say no.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Chuck Fenwick — Which they can. They say, no, we believe this is where you ought to be. But um…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — So I’m in Indiana and I’m my conference is Indiana, so I won’t unless I request it I won’t ever leave the state of Indiana. So.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, that’s an interesting system. I know, you know, there’s been we’ve had some folks on the past we’ve talked about that and and it’s ah you know there’s definitely some strength there and there’s obviously some some interesting weaknesses. And you know, one of the ah, statistically one of the stats of larger impacting churches is lead pastors who have been with those churches for ten, fifteen plus years that just seems, which makes sense, right? You need to build up some leadership momentum. So that’s fun.
Rich Birch — Well one of the things I want to talk about today, you and I had a brief conversation pre- ah pre-call around this whole idea around how do we build churches that both are looking to reach new people, and at the same time are caring for the folks that are with us. That’s such a a tension. It’s a universal tension that we we all face. Ah and you guys don’t face that at all. It’s never a problem at New Haven UMC obviously.
Chuck Fenwick — Never. Never.
Rich Birch — Just kidding. But…
Chuck Fenwick — I can’t imagine one time when it’s ever come up.
Rich Birch — Yeah, talk to me about that; talk to me about that tension. Why why is that? How does it come up? How have you seen that? What does that look like? What what’s that look like in your church?
Chuck Fenwick — Well anytime, and I’d say most UMCs just in general are a little more traditional. Um, our idea is contemporary is playing something that probably the the Bill Gaither band did in ’84 or something…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure, sure.
Chuck Fenwick — And so um and that’s only a very slight exaggeration.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And so it comes up sometimes with things like music, or um, one thing is we’re also a tradition that does ah, like a lot of pastors wear robes and stoles, and you’ve probably seen that. I I don’t. I don’t like them. Ah, it’s it’s not be… it’s just because I don’t like it. And so things like that, believe it or not, come up. And ah it’ll It’s a lot of well you know we like that. And usually the we is, you know, we’ve been coming here for a long time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And no one ever says, I don’t like new people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — It’s just…
Rich Birch — No, no. People are too smart to say that.
Chuck Fenwick — Right? This is what I want to see, and what I like to see, and that kind of thing.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — And so ah that that kind of thing comes up and um, even at times – are we focusing too much on on reaching others but not taking care of us? And and I wouldn’t say it’s ever a in a mean way. It’s always: no, we know we want to reach other people, but I also want you to do these things for me.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And which I think is in life. That’s the way we all are, really.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Chuck Fenwick — Like, oh yeah. I’m all for that. Just don’t neglect me in the meantime.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — And if I feel neglected—even if I’m not—if I feel that, then I don’t want that. And so, that’s it’s come up a lot, or I would say a lot. But most of the time when it comes to music or any change that we would make, um and when it comes to of course with all that comes budget items and okay, where are we going to spend our money? On “them” or us?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah. I love that. And that you know I think this is like this is one of those things I think all of our churches wrestle with – this is universal. Does not matter, the size of the church doesn’t matter. You know if you’re into into robes or not, ah you know, it it is a you know this is that one of those tensions. So how have you kind of attacked that? What is that what does that look like at New Haven?
Chuck Fenwick — Well, we’re – it’s a little new for us.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great.
Chuck Fenwick —Um I wouldn’t say we we’ve mastered it by any means.
Rich Birch — No.
Chuck Fenwick —We’re still in the trial.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — But one of the things we did—and you talked about The Leadership Academy—one of ah one of my staff. She is our Digital—I don’t know—Director. I would call it Goddess, maybe, because she like…
Rich Birch — So good at it. Yeah, yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah, but she took one of the ah classes that was offered through that, like a cohort or something, and we really focused on, okay, what’s our target audience?
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Now one of the things we didn’t… it’s not like we announced this like, hey, here’s our target audience. I put this ah out for our leadership, and our staff, our key leaders, so it wasn’t just for everyone because ah we did we we put pictures to, and made created names, backstory, everything, ages. Um to a point of we we know where these their kids, what grade they are in, how old they are…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s cool.
Chuck Fenwick — Um and so it helped ah because one is they’re about 35 years old.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — And so it’s not that in there being the target doesn’t mean that if you’re um older than that, which I am… So let’s say you’re 50 or 60, it doesn’t mean we don’t care about you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — It means that every decision we make we’ve got to make it based on this couple.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, we call it’s “Drew and Maggie” – we’ve named them.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — Um so Drew and Maggie, we we say, how is this impacting them? Would they be into this? Would they want to show up? Would we, you know, what are we going to do in the community for them as well?
Rich Birch — I’d I’d love to dive into this – I think this is so great. So talk to me about Drew and Maggie. Give me the let’s let’s start there – like tell us a little bit about how to, you know, tell us about this these personalities. And then we’ll jump to how is that actually impacting some of your leadership decisions.
Chuck Fenwick — Well um I kind of… it it was key for us that that she helped me a little bit, but that I really drove this as far as who they are. And so one—I’ll give the quick background of Drew—is um, he’s happy with his life. Ah, he wants the best for his two kids. Um, and his parents were divorced and when he was young. Um and they his mom and stepdad forced him to go to church, and he got burned out. He saw hypocrisy, like who doesn’t. He’s not anti-church. Um he’ll bring his kids to some of our big events because of course he fictitiously lives in our community. Um…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Chuck Fenwick — And ah he just… it’s not a priority. And if he if there’s a reason for him to show up, he will. And he’ll show up even if he’ll bring his kids to VBS, he’ll show up for VBS Sunday. And he doesn’t it’s not that he dislikes it. He just… do I want to spend my time doing this? Um, so his kids are really his his motivation. And ah, and so and he’s about 51% of our target. And Maggie is 49%, if you want to look at that.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, yes.
Chuck Fenwick — Which doesn’t mean we don’t care about her.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chuck Fenwick — It just means because in her mind she would like to come. She doesn’t want to come without him, and she’s not mad at him for not coming.
Chuck Fenwick — If she said, “hey let’s go to church today,” he might not agree. But if he said, “hey I’m ready to go,” she’s all on board. So that’s why he’s kind of a little bit more of a priority. Um, she has she’s kind of the same background. She’s okay with church, but obviously it isn’t one of those things she pushes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And um would do it, but and so that’s where they are. Their kid their kids are 8 and 4…
Rich Birch — Love it. Well the thing I think that…
Chuck Fenwick — …and we gave him hobbies.
Rich Birch — Oh what are their hobbies? I love it. I love it.
Chuck Fenwick — Oh well, he he loves listening to podcasts – all the time listen to pod… he listens your podcast.
Rich Birch — Doesn’t listen to this one?
Chuck Fenwick — No I don’t… ah he coaches a kid’s sports and he likes disc golf.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Chuck Fenwick — I didn’t even know where that came… that popped in my head.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — So she likes gardening, running and reading because she hosts a monthly book club. This is…
Rich Birch — Okay I love that. So the thing I love about this is a great exercise. Obviously a great creative exercise, interesting. You know it’s definitely right-brain, gets us thinking about it. But you know, when it goes beyond just so some some interesting ideas, it can make a great impact on the way we do what we do. Talk to me about why you landed on some of those things about you know Drew and Maggie. What was it kind of in your in your experience at the church or some of your convictions that led you to that? Is this like a amalgamation of the kinds of people you think that have resonated with your ministry, or it’s like your heart drive for the kind of people you’re hoping, you know, that connect or what? Tell me about that.
Chuck Fenwick — Well, a couple of… the the age group is one that at least I’ve seen in in our local context that kind of have walked away from church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — But they’re about that age when they or if they consider coming back…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — …that might be it, mostly because of their kids. Um, if if the kids are really into it, fine I’ll sacrifice my hour to take you there. So that was a lot of it, and knowing that okay, that’s an age group that we have lost…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — …um in general and so what can we do to to gain that to gain traction with that age group. And as far as his attitudes for church, I see that so much. And um I heard ah I heard another pastor tell me one time and this—and if I need to clarify you can tell me as long as doesn’t sound too horrible. So there’s there’s something I love and something I hate, even though hates a strong word. I love Christians, but I hate church people.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Chuck Fenwick — And I’m like well I don’t know if we should use word hate or not…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — …but it was kind of the idea of that, especially for Drew, Christianity isn’t the problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Essentially it was church people that was the problem.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Chuck Fenwick — And I probably don’t even need to define the two the differences obviously but. And so that’s where I thought okay as a church we need to be more more Christian than just church. And um, those things supposed to they’re supposed to go hand in hand…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Chuck Fenwick — …but they don’t always.
Rich Birch — Well and there’s that I think it was Bono that said, I like Jesus, it’s just as friends I’m not sure about. And, you know, it’s that same idea, right?
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s like I really like Him and I think what He has to say is true and right, but but man the way that’s worked itself out is is ah you know can be pretty negative. I want to underline for listeners the thing that you I think have hit on here, particularly when it comes to people’s motivations for coming I think you’ve you’ve said a few things there that you just skipped over that I think are really critical. I think there’s there is a there’s a key piece around kids ministry. We’ve said this multiple times on unSeminary that leading thriving, growing churches are disproportionately engaged in next generation ministry. They are thinking about kids and youth. It’s not it’s not a secondary thing. It’s not a like we’re babysitting those people. It’s like wow we’re going to we’re going to double down there and we want to do a great job on that stuff. And then the other thing, you know, talk to me about the 51/49% thing there – the male/female. I’m going to push you on that a little bit – tell me about that.
Chuck Fenwick — Okay, well good, good. Because I don’t want somebody to hear it and think oh the guy is since you’re a guy, the guy is more important.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, honestly, this is from what we’ve seen in experience.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, and I wouldn’t say we and nowhere. Do we have this in writing.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — Um but it’s the idea and that we have seen and we have couples that um yeah, he might come with her occasionally. But if he says—and and I did some interviews with different I wouldn’t say interviews I asked different people.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — Um but and it did come down to if if he is in, the male of the couple would say, you know, “I I want to go this week,” almost always families will go. Um, if she says, “I really want to go this week,” there’s a good chance maybe he’ll go, but most likely she’s going to bring the kids and go.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And not that he’s going to, forget it I’m bailing on it. It’s just, I’ve got other stuff to do. Maybe it’s projects around the house. Whatever. Um and that, even at all generation levels, that that seem to be the thing. And so that’s why it’s not like a 90/10% thing. It’s more like we know if we if we get him, there’s a good chance she’ll: okay, yeah, let’s do this. Um, and so I…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — I almost don’t like saying it always because then it all all of a sudden it’s like, wait a minute…
Rich Birch — Right. And well and…
Chuck Fenwick — So which isn’t true at all.
Rich Birch — Yeah and I think you are hitting on a dynamic that we see in a lot of churches, or I would say in all churches, right, that oftentimes when you just look at who is engaging in what we do, you know it skews 60, 70% female. Um, and you know we do have a harder time attracting men. That’s just true.
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Like that’s a you know there’s a ah, there’s just truth to that. That’s like you can’t argue with who’s actually sitting in your in your rooms, and I I appreciate that that you’re even flagging that as like hey there’s something we need to think about. Here’s we we have to think about what can we do to try to um, you know, to try to entice him to to to want to show up to you know…
Chuck Fenwick — Right.
Rich Birch — And some of this is just practical. Like I, in other contexts, same principle but just apply differently. Um, you know for years I’ve said to student ministry and kids ministry people I’m like we have to program towards the most cynical person in every age group. Like and so like if I’m programming you know grade 1 to five year olds and it’s a mixed group. The the 5 year old guys are like the… or grade five ah, but guys are like the hardest dudes to to connect with in that room. Like they’re they’re, you know, we’ll have like so you know, we can get girls, unfortunately, you know, not unfortunately, but just you can get girls to get up and dance and sing and do like funny, you know, actions and all that. And then you see at the back of the room, here’s a bunch of grade 5 guys who are like totally disinterested.
Chuck Fenwick — Yep.
Rich Birch —And so we we have to think about those grade 5 guys if we who is that most cynical person? And I think to your, you know, similar kind of way to think about Drew is that you’ve described the most cynical person, right? 35 year old, you know, divorced parents. Um you know is ah disaffected by, you know, stuff that’s happened in the church. How do we, you know, reach them? So talk to me about how Drew and Maggie have have impacted maybe you personally as you’ve thought about leading, and then more broadly as a church.
Chuck Fenwick — Well personally, and I guess a lot of it’s internal, just the way I think…
Rich Birch — Yep, yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — …the way I deliver messages or craft messages. I found this out. I said it by accident I don’t use a lot of notes on Sundays. Um I write down just a couple of key transition words. And so sometimes something pops in my head. Ah, or when we record our online service, because we don’t livestream. That’s a whole nother story and we won’t ever livestream. But um, if it pops in my head sometimes I just say it. And one of the things I said was, here’s a challenge. And so I kind of laid out a number of days and said—this was on a Sunday—if you start this tomorrow, however, many days—I don’t remember the details—but it was basically I’m challenging you to start it tomorrow. And then what popped out of my head was, but I get it. For some of you guys you’re just like me and because I said start tomorrow, you’re waiting until Tuesday. I already know it. And I had multiple and, when I say I don’t mean a lot—4 or 5 guys—come to me and say, you’re right. The moment you said tomorrow I thought, I’ll wait until Tuesday.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Interesting.
Chuck Fenwick — And and so I just started thinking of this idea that, okay, I need to have him, that guy in mind. Because for her she would say, oh yeah I should start this tomorrow. He’s saying, oh you want me to start tomorrow, then I’m going to wait at least a day.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — And so that some of that’s just for me. As a church we just had a really big decision. We we got a grant. It was very substantial. It was over a quarter million dollars um ah, from our state. Um, and it was for ah basically for our preschool. Um, so I didn’t want you to think, what the state is funding church stuff? It’s for our preschool…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — …um and child care and we’re going to redo our our playground, make this thing huge. And because we’re we’re pretty much at capacity. But one of the things came up as, well we could also use some of this money for other stuff. And the other stuff wasn’t bad stuff. It’s all improvements that we could do, and ah fix that air conditioning unit, and and all of it’s great. Do the kids need air conditioning? Yes, they do. And this came up as far as our target audience going, Okay, yeah, they want their kids to be comfortable when they’re here, but I know from my perspective when I see when my kids were younger if I at that age, and luckily we have ah we had 2 people on our board about his age who have kids and said, When I see a fancy playground, you may say, well do we really need to spend this money? I see that you care enough about my kid to make this happen.
Rich Birch — So true.
Chuck Fenwick — And I would say I wouldn’t say that completely everybody just said, oh you’re right, let’s go ahead and do it. We did decide yep, we’re going to spend it on this playground. We’re going to rock this thing out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, and a couple other things. But it was one of those that we we say this is our target and let’s let’s make decisions based on our target.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Chuck Fenwick — So that was one of the biggest things we’ve done.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s a great practical example, right, where the rubber meets the road on these things…
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that like yeah, if we’re if if we say we value next-gen ministries then that should reflect in our actual spending, like we you know it…
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …it should show up. That’s that’s Interesting. So now I…
Chuck Fenwick — I say it I don’t say it a lot but with their last name is “Wellman” – I don’t even know where I came up with that.
Rich Birch — That’s funny. I love it. I love it.
Chuck Fenwick — But and I every now and then I’ll say well what does this do for the Wellmans?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chuck Fenwick — And um and it’s still new enough that occasionally people go, wait, what? And then our target remember they oh yeah, the Wellmans. So it’s kind of funny that that’s kind of been the mantra whenever we have a kind of bigger thing, and okay, what about the Wellmans. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, cool. I love it. I think that’s great. Again, practical takeaway. I love this idea. I think it’s a great, you know, framework for you to think about. I know for years at at when I was in New Jersey, I would talk internally we didn’t have it as clearly or as succinctly um defined. We had a similar convictions around the male but you know female thing similar age group. And you know there I used to talk about um, you know we’re trying to reach the guy who on Monday morning gets on a train and goes into New York City, has some sort of highfalutin’ job there, and um, has zero time, thinks he’s super important. Um, and you know we we have to speak that person’s language because their own kind of their thinking about the way they their self-perception and the way they think about themselves, if we don’t address that, if we don’t if we’re not thinking through that filter, we’ll miss them consistently. Because in that case and, you know, it’s partly a um, ah, regional issue, it’s like the the folks that are in that kind of target ah they are so kind of self-obsessed, they’re so self-concerned that if we don’t figure out a way to connect with them ah, they’ll they’ll just, you know, we won’t we won’t as a church be able to reach them. It’ll be very difficult for us to to move forward. And so so I love that idea. Now how does this connect with then the reach and keep thing? The okay, so that gives us a clearer sense of the people we’re trying to reach. How do we balance that off with the people who are already here and caring for them? How has this approach helped that those conversations?
Chuck Fenwick — Well, we’re and like I said we’re still at the very beginning of it.
Rich Birch — Yeah totally.
Chuck Fenwick — And so I toward the beginning so we’re still working through that. But one of the things we’ve really tried to push recently is that the the Drews and Maggies, the Wellmans out there, they need Jesus – they just don’t realize it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — …which ultimately means they need you as as a Christian and they need you to to act like a Christian. And I think I’ve even said it not a church person act like a christian not a church person.
Rich Birch — Yes. I love it.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, ah because we’re we’re not trying to necessarily say, come to the church. We’re trying to give them hope, which is through Christ. And so that’s really where that part has come from. As far as the caring for each other, um because okay we know that has to happen. And unfortunately and also fortunately for this church, um I’m horrible at pastoral care. Like I can’t express there’d be no way to describe how horrible I am at it.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — And ah everybody knows it around here.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chuck Fenwick — And some are not, you know, it’s not like I make everyone happy with it. But it means that because of that our people have to step up and do that. And so they have done that we have some teams that will visit and take care of each other, but then also for the ones who, Okay, yeah I want this to be about me, they still understand that this we we’ve got to handoff. And it’s always got to be handed off to the next generation. And they need that. They need Jesus. You’ve already got Jesus. That’s awesome. Now they need Jesus. And um, they probably won’t come to you asking for Jesus because they don’t even realize they need him. And that’s kind of where that has come from. And some and that’s been right at the it’s that’s been a broad stroke kind of stuff um. We’ve and I guess really quick one practical thing…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — …is we started a big community garden. It’s huge. Way bigger than we thought it was going to be. And we get all the food away.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Chuck Fenwick — Now we have a meal that we do here every week. And there and one of the ideas, well why don’t we use some of this food for our meal? Basically it will save us money having this meal.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And my wife who’s in charge of the garden said, you know, that’s that’s a great idea. But we’re not going to do that. We are giving this food away 100% to our three local food banks. We’re not even going to distribute it to people because we’re not going to reinvent the wheel. They know how to do it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — We’re going to grow it, harvest it, give it to them. They give it away. And that’s been one of those things of of it’s small, but it’s the, and I wouldn’t say the people who said we could use this… So for our our meal because people from the community come to our meal, so it’s not selfish…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chuck Fenwick — …but it’s one little thing in a practical way that said, no, this really isn’t about helping us and our budget. It would help, but we’re not going to do that. We’re giving it away.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chuck Fenwick — And so I think it’s going to be a lot of little things like that that make the difference.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love the idea of yeah, um, we ultimately like discipleship or helping people grow closer to Jesus, act more like Jesus, is ultimately the journey of denying ourselves, and saying it’s not about us. It’s about other people. It’s about being other-centered. It’s about how do we reorient all of our decisions around how can I help other people? That’s that’s what discipleship is. And so I love that idea of yeah, in your care systems, in that, you know, even something like the, you know, the community garden, I love that – I think that’s so fantastic. How have you helped motivate, or what does it look like to get people involved on the care side? Maybe drill into that a little bit more. How have you been able to because I think that is a key place where folks, you know, frankly in a church of your size, that the thing gets stuck because of that. Because it’s like okay, we can’t we we can’t get more people involved in…
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s like if if, you know, if Pastor Chuck doesn’t show up, it’s ah you know, I’m not being cared for. So what does that look like in your context?
Chuck Fenwick — Um it hasn’t been easy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — Because there are times when I’ve heard people say something similar to, well no one from the church even came by.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — And I and sometimes I’d say, well I thought—and I’ll even name some people—or I thought we had some people that were visiting, and did I not hear that correctly? And, well yeah…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — Like the and their our friends from the church. And and so then I, well but they don’t count?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Chuck Fenwick — And so and I don’t say it that way. I’m like, ok well yeah, so they were visiting you. And I just kind of say it that way going, Ok good then you did have someone that was visiting you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Chuck Fenwick — Um and it it’s really been we’ve just said it. Our leadership has been on board with it right from the beginning. Ah because of course early on when I was the lead pastor and we we said okay just keep in mind every time somebody stubs their toe and goes the the clinic the pastor’s not going to show up.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chuck Fenwick — And so our leadership had to get really on board because they had to have my back.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Because of course people aren’t going to come to me. They’re going to go to one of them and say hey did you know he didn’t show up? And like that’s good. Did someone show up? Because if not, the system’s broken.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Um, otherwise if someone came, that’s what we’re after.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And it’s really been doing that. And I haven’t recruited a lot of people, I’ll admit. My I keep saying my wife, ah she only works part time for us but has about like 19 different jobs…
Rich Birch — Sure sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — …in the church that she does. And 1 of them is working with people doing that. Um, connecting with people, and then ah those who visit and that kind of thing. And so the toughest part has been, like I just said, ah what represents the church. Because if you’re my friend and you show up, you’re just my friend showing up. Um is least the way some of them or I think some people see it. You aren’t the church showing up, you’re my friend showing up. And that’s been a little hard even though I say, ok so you did have someone there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — Um and it’s not like I want to say well see you’re wrong. The church did ah.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — So but people hearing it and realizing. Okay, we can do this. It’s not a big deal for me to go see a person who’s at home, or recovering, or whatever. And and so it’s taken a while; it’s taken a maybe ah probably the last 3 to 5 years of a shift in our our thinking. And I wouldn’t say we always get it right. I tend to make people mad on ah about daily, no, we’ll say weekly basis. Um, but yeah.
Rich Birch — Well and I think that the principle to pull out there is there is something about making the implicit explicit, right? like it’s actually like. It is finding a way that’s not like um, it’s not obnoxious. It’s not like oh, like well you are being cared for, like stop whining. Ah, but it is it is being as clear as, hey at our church this is what care looks like. Care is really important. And my experience has been you have to be as explicit as as exactly what you’re saying, which I’m sure you’re doing this, Chuck, where it’s like yeah like you might be used to a church where you know the pastor is going to come every time there’s you know something going on, but we’ve just found that doesn’t work partly because I’m no good at it. And because that is, you know, if it’s just about me we’re not going to be able to reach more Drew and Maggie’s in this world. It’s not going to happen.
Chuck Fenwick — Right.
Rich Birch — And so ah so we have it set up like this. And you know, and then explain what that looks like. And then like you say if if the if someone’s not being cared for, that’s the thing we need to flag.
Chuck Fenwick — Right.
Rich Birch — If if someone’s not being um, you know, loved in the midst of all of that, that’s the problem we have to figure out how to to ensure that. Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — And occasionally that happens, you know, you’ll hear someone or literally no one, and no one knew…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — …and no one got a message. And like okay we got to solve that one.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — But that isn’t necessarily you weren’t there so it doesn’t count. Um, and I’ll tell you if if seminaries fail us, that’s one of the places right there. Is it’s always about how you as pastor we’re going to train you how to care for people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chuck Fenwick — And no one ever talks about or at least my seminary which I think was a great seminary…
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah.
Chuck Fenwick — …just it was more about you as the pastor. You do the care. As soon as that baby’s born, you better, get there. And I was even told that – you’ve got to get there, especially if ah, it’s say a Methodist and a Lutheran, and they’ve married, and now they have a baby, you better get there before the lutheran pastor.
Chuck Fenwick — So it was. But and I’m not, you know, I know that’s kind of the education system.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chuck Fenwick — But it’s the idea of going wait a minute I mean this is pretty scriptural, right? Even even Jesus walked away.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chuck Fenwick — And and even the disciples after he left said, No, we can’t do all this. We got to get other people who do this. So.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s interesting. Well this has been a great conversation. I’ve really appreciated this get to know you a little bit better, and get to know the church. Is there anything else, you’d like to share, you know, when you’re thinking about this whole area of how do we create a kind of church that really is transitioning from being kind of insider-focused to outsider-focus, saying hey we want to reach people. We want to really be for New Haven. We want to find a way to to love the people around us. Anything else you’d you’d like to ah kick around today?
Chuck Fenwick — Well, we really have pushed for New Haven because we’re about this community and that’s what it really all needs to be. And and I guess the biggest thing, and I hear this often and I don’t want it to be cliché, but the the why far more than the what and the how. Um talking about the the Wellmans, Drew and Maggie, and this is why. We can we can have ah a church that caters to all of us and eventually we won’t have a church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chuck Fenwick — And then that’s if that’s what we want, that’s okay. And no one really wants that. But ultimately it’s why are we doing this? It’s because if we’re following Jesus it’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s bottom line
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Chuck Fenwick — And that’s where it comes from is we’ve got to focus on why we are for our community and not just for ourselves.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Chuck Fenwick — Ah, the easiest place is our website which is newhavenumc.com.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chuck Fenwick — And the .com is important because if you go to dot org you’ll go to New Haven—what is it—somewhere out east. It’s the big Connecticut.
Rich Birch — Okay, oh that’s funny. Love it.
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah, we we had some ah we had some people watching us online and come to find out they were they thought they were watching the church in Connecticut.
Rich Birch — Oh hilarious. Oh that’s hilarious.
Chuck Fenwick — And and even talked with us and then was like oh this isn’t the same place.
Rich Birch — Oh funny
Chuck Fenwick — But newhavenumc.com…
Rich Birch — Love it. Great stuff.
Chuck Fenwick — …so that’s where you’ll find everything.
Rich Birch — Well, Chuck, I really appreciate this I appreciate you being here just you know, thankful thankful for you thankful for your leadership…
Chuck Fenwick — Thanks, it was great
Rich Birch — …and I appreciate being on today.
Chuck Fenwick — Yeah, thank you very much. It was great to be here and great talking to you.
What Are the Best Predictors of a Church’s Ability to Multiply Itself? A Warren Bird Conversation
Nov 17, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’ve got Dr. Warren Bird with us today. He’s the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), and an author of over thirty books.
Vision for multiplication. // In the multiplication part of the study, the first thing surveyed was how much it was a part of a church’s vision, upon the launch of the original church, to create a network of multiplying churches. Was it not at all, a little, or very much? 36% of new churches were already thinking of creating a network when they launched their first location. Also, as churches have established, they increasingly have a vision to plant more churches or launch more campuses. 52% of multisite churches say it’s part of their vision to keep adding campuses.
Clarity of vision. // Church leaders always ask what size launch team they should have for a new site, and how that size influences the number of people on opening day. The study showed that the number of attendees on opening day is three times the number of the core group. In addition, churches with big vision grow at a markedly faster rate. Clarity of vision is a core issue in the growth of a church, much more than theology. If your church has an extreme clarity of vision, it always goes hand in hand with growth.
Are you making disciples? // Disciples are not people who just show up to church, but people who are being transformed to be like Jesus. The study asked where a church’s focus was on the issue of evangelism and discipleship. Growing churches were found to have a higher focus on reaching the person who isn’t there, rather than helping the person who already is present grow in their faith.
Do you have the goals and focus for multiplication? // The study identified the top ten predictors on whether a church would be likely to multiply. Warren tells us the top three: first, in the past year the church leaders have participated in a meeting that focused primarily on church multiplication. Second, the church leader surveyed is personally developing a named apprentice leader. And third, the church has specific goals for future church planting.
What describes your way of doing church? // When asked to describe their way of doing church, “missional” is the top response from the church leaders surveyed. Warren says, to him, missional means having a clear focus and being excited about bringing people into a relationship with God. Another question was how often do you give people the opportunity to receive Christ? The top response in that question was weekly, particularly among larger, growing churches.
You can access the complete results from the survey for free at www.ecfa.org/surveys. Visit www.ecfa.org/pulse to keep up with everything Warren is doing, and find free resources from ECFA for your church or nonprofit organization.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have tuned in today. You need to buckle up because we’ve got our friend of the show, Dr. Warren Bird – he’s been on multiple times. I think you’re the most guested a person on unSeminary – one of these people whenever he’s got something, I love to get him to come on because he’s got such great insights. If you don’t know Warren he is the Senior Vice President of Research at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability or more popularly known as the ECFA. He’s an author of over 30 books. Ah but the thing I love about Warren, although that is all true, he really has a heart for churches and for church leaders. This is not just some like academic study. It’s not because he thinks it’s interesting, fascinating from ah a laboratory point of view. He wants to see churches thrive, and so ah, honored to have you on the show, Warren. Ah, welcome back. So glad you’re here.
Warren Bird — Rich, thank you and this is really full circle in that you were the very first person, when we came up with the idea of what became the nation’s largest… I’m sorry… North America’s largest…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …study on church planting and multisiting, you were the one that said, okay give me a first crack at it. What do you think you’re going to find…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Warren Bird — …and what are some of the early stuff…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Warren Bird — And, Rich, you your enthusiasm for what God is doing ah then and now – to have some actual numbers to go with it ah, remains undiminished, and I love talking with you.
Rich Birch — Great. Well, thank you so much and I appreciate that’s a that’s kind words. I yeah we were just before we started I loved how you’re saying you literally just kind of did the last analysis on this. Kind of give us an overview of the study for folks that maybe didn’t listen into that first podcast or two. What what was this most recent study? And then we’re going to dive into some kind of specific findings that I find particularly fascinating, but what what were you setting out to try to do with this? It’s a landmark study – huge study. What were you trying to do with this one?
Warren Bird — We really wanted to find the state of church planting and how it parallels to multisite campusing across North America. That hasn’t been done. There are so many angles you can go that what I did is I set it up so everybody got 15 minutes of questions, but not the same 15 minutes, which enabled us to do drill down ah reports. We’ve done one on race and multiracial churches, on funding, you know, how do you finance a new church. Where the snag points on the pandemic, what are implications from the pandemic—on the one we’re going to look at in particular today—on multiplication/replication of what’s happening there. So I I hope that when it puts all together, people will have a realistic picture of of what’s happening right now. And then they can diagnose: Okay, what what do we need more of? Where does God seem to be blessing that we need to put more energy into? And so forth.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. One of the things I love about your work, Warren, is like there are people—yeah, even like folks like myself—who will like do a survey and I’ll get 100 people on a survey and then I’ll say like national survey based on 100 people. But, man, you’re over 2700 participants – 2300 church planters and founding pastors, 387 multisite directors or campus pastors, 50 plus denominations including Southern Baptist, ARC, you know, both Canada and… And actually I was impressed by this, as a Canadian, US was 92%, Canada’s 8%. That’s an impressive amount of Canadian representation, I think. You know, the fact that we’re 10% of the population size of of the US, that’s that’s amazing. Um I love this. So, friends, the thing I love about Warren is he he takes the data science side—I think that’s the right word—of this very, you know, seriously like this is, hey we want to actually make a real survey here. It’s not just like, hey let’s pull a few friends on Facebook and see what they’re what they’re saying.
Rich Birch — So the the thing I want to dive in on is particularly this multiplication and replication, particularly. So churches who plant churches, Campuses who plant campuses. Um, what are you looking for? You know, the kind of big overarching question, what are the best predictors of a church’s ability to multiply itself? To me that’s like the $10,000,000 question – if we could figure that out, oh my goodness, you know, the kingdom of God could go forward.
Rich Birch — There’s a number of things that we um, you know, could start with you. You talk about ah, in the very front end of this kind of this part of the study, you you talk about a finding around kind of what churches talk about their vision for multiplication. Can you pull that apart for us?
Warren Bird — Absolutely. And just so you know, Rich got to preview a report that by the time this airs will be just fresh off the press.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — They are free…
Rich Birch — I know it’s amazing.
Warren Bird — …at ecfa.org/surveys (plural).
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — ecfa.org/surveys – that’s the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, as you said so articulately. And Rich and I are going to kind of talk through the report that’s titled multiplication. And yes, let’s go to vision first. Because the first finding that we present in this one is is we ask, Okay so the the desire to create a network of multiplying churches. That’s a mouthful. That’s a big concept. That’s a… I don’t know if twenty years ago I could have we could have rattled that off, and people go, oh yeah I know what you’re talking about.
Rich Birch — I know what that means. Yeah, no, that’s true.
Warren Bird — But I think today most people get the idea of a network of multiplying churches. So when you launched, how much was that part of your vision?
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s amazing.
Warren Bird — Was it not at all? A little? Very much? So we took the extreme part of the scale, which was very much, and and drumroll the percentage was of new churches, 36%.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Warren Bird — So that’s more than more just over 1 out of 3 said, when we launched we were already thinking, praying, dreaming that there would be more than this one location. Now maybe that was microchurch thinking. Maybe that was megachurch saying. Who knows? But the dream, the vision, and hopefully the calling, was there. That knocks my socks off in and of itself.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Warren Bird — When I planted a church, Rich. The first church I plant and my goal was to get to the next Sunday.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — I I never once stood up and said someday…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …God is gonna use this motley group of people and we are gonna impact our county by having multiple churches coming out of it, or impact our world for that matter.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah I love that. I thought the same thing when I read this this finding because, similarly, I I self reflected and I’m like, man, the kingdom of God’s in a better place today than it was twenty years ago. I’ve been involved in in the front lines of multisite for years, but when I think back to when we started, we we were celebrating an addition strategy. We were saying, hey we’re… and and we thought it was a big deal. We’re like, wouldn’t it be amazing… and you know, our original thing was what if we did one campus a year for 5 years. But there was no conversation around “and someday those campuses will launch campuses.” That that wasn’t that wasn’t a part of the dialogue. Now in this same part of the study what I did find interesting was there wasn’t, particularly on the multisite campus side, there was an accelerating there seems to be an accelerating factor that people are seeing that. They’re they’re they’re kind of seeing that more now than they did when they began. Talk to us about that.
Warren Bird — Yeah, so actually there are two columns in this first chart. The first first column is, okay, when you first launched, was it very much part of your vision, or what percent said very much part of your vision. If that’s not enough, then when we ask, and today is it very much part of your vision? That number or percentage went up both for church plants and for multisite campuses. So the vision—one year, five years later—whatever it is in your experience, it’s going up. It’s increasing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — That’s powerful.
Rich Birch — It is.
Warren Bird — And the multisites actually ah registered a little higher. Today 52% of multisites say, this is part of our vision to keep adding campuses.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that intuitively works out. Like I would say the churches that ah that, particularly will call it like in whatever this era is, in this… I had someone recently I heard referred to this as the pandemic era, and I was like I don’t really want to call it that. But this timeframe, like this kind of covid timeframe, churches that are still talking about doing multisite, um they are I would say there’s a high percentage of the conversations I’m having where they’re asking that question. It’s like but you know maybe maybe we’ll work harder on, you know, on granddaughter or even great-granddaughter campuses.
Warren Bird — Well yes.
Rich Birch — Maybe there’s we need to spend more time there.
Warren Bird — Let let me correct myself. I said just a minute ago adding campuses that wasn’t the question. It was multiplying churches.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah. Love it.
Warren Bird — So it’s the it’s the granddaughter, and great granddaughter and grand-nieces and and all of those that come from…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …one thing starting another.
Rich Birch — Love it. One of the questions that comes up, and it it ah like this every time I’m talking to a church, coaching a church on the front end of multisite, and they’re, you know, particularly and that’s been my you know that’s been my background…
Rich Birch — It’s it’s literally the like million dollar question that everybody asks, which is what kind of size of launch team should I have? What size, you know, what what should we be doing? It’s like every time we keep asking that question… was did you find in your findings here that there’s a correlation between the size that ah, you know, that that churches are, whether they’re multisites or campuses, or I mean churches that there’s like a correlation between those and then their ability to then ultimately multiply? Did you see a connection between those two?
Warren Bird — Well, that’s really two questions. The first is we did find a solid ratio between core group size pre-launch, and launch day. Now again, this is this is the kind of tipping a hat towards a launch large or or launch public, or or at least have a definitive launch day, and not all churches do – I get that. But of those who who could say yes, our church was officially birthed on this day, the ratio was consistently 1 to 3.
Warren Bird — So if I had 10 people in the core group, there were 30 on that opening day. If I had a hundred people in the core group, there were 300 on that opening day. Now to your the next part of your…
Rich Birch — Can I just stop for a second? Ah so this I this is a part of why I I love—and I said this I’ll be more off air. This is part of why I love your research, and it’s going to sound this’s going to sound really selfish, friends. Like that 1 to 3 ratio, I’ve said so many times to people, I’m like that that it like it works out, anecdotally. We see that in so many different conversations that we, you know, time and again if you’re looking for what does that look like, you know? and the fact that we’re actually seeing that is great. I love it. That’s that’s fantastic. What I love when, you know, those things I also like when we’re proved wrong, but that’s kind of a fun ah, because 1 to 3 literally just yesterday was talking to a church on the 1 to 3 core. So keep going. Sorry about that.
Warren Bird — Well and that that really then says, okay so what kind of church do you believe God is calling you to lead? And and their financial, you know, what is your financial model for for eventual sustainability in terms of what what you’re dreaming ah, will happen? But that that 1 to 3 really can be repeated again and again. That that okay, we had our initial launch, we had our our our big Sunday launch, we had our grand opening, we had our… I’ve known churches that have done up to 7 different launches, each time seeing somewhat of that ratio. That whatever we had at that moment um by pulling out the stops and making a big invite and bring event um that that we ah surged ahead.
Warren Bird — So now the second part of your question is, and what is the predictability of replication? And I did not find a size—again I have 2700 responses, so I can slice and dice…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …by when the church started so well, let’s look at 3 year old churches. Let’s look at 5 year old churches. I found more of a correlation with vision. And I actually put a chart in the report on that, where we ask people here’s the question: how many times your church will multiply in the next five years? And we asked this one just to church planters. And they that was a fill in the blank. And you could fill in anything from 0 – you could write in the number 0, to 1, 2, 3, 4, so I picked the two extremes. Those that wrote in 0 – not – I have no vision to multiply over the next five years. And I picked those that said 10 or more times. It’s like whoa!
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah – mind-blowing.
Warren Bird — And again, this may be micro-churches, mini-churches ah church across town —who knows—missionary churches overseas that we’re going to send teams to. They didn’t define how. But that is a huge vision difference. And the point I’m making on this, later in the survey we said, so the church that you’re serving, describe the people in terms of are they, you know, what percent would you say are are converts, what percent are renewal (which would be which I defined as kind of the de-church – people who had some kind of relationship with God or church and and dropped out and are now coming back) and we also had transfer growth, and we had biological growth (having children).
Warren Bird — And and the churches that had big vision also had…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. Yep.
Warren Bird — …at least reported…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …very large conversion and renewal…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …in their congregation. And same thing we ask ah, you know what’s your attendance at your biggest at your big gathering worship attendance this year, last year, year before, and so forth, so that we could chart including pre-pandemic for those that were had been launched several years ago – what your growth rate was. And we found that churches with big vision were also markedly growing…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …at a much faster rate. Now I’m not giving causality. I don’t know…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Warren Bird — …which which came first chicken or egg.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Warren Bird — I’m just saying that among those churches that are dreaming big, they’re also seeing more significant reporting, more significant conversion, renewal growth, and um bodies, people impacting.
Rich Birch — Yeah. So so this one I love that you’re highlighting this. And friends, I want I don’t actually gonna give you the numbers because I want you to go and get this study. I want you to go to ecfa.org/surveys and actually get it.
Rich Birch — But to be honest, the the difference between those two I found shocking. The annual growth rate since launching the it’s it’s not like a small difference. It’s a giant difference. Um, you know, the conversion rate versus renewal rate it is it’s bigger. It’s definitely bigger the kind of churches that have bigger vision. But the actual growth rate, man, is is amazing. So I know this is the kind of question you maybe don’t like to to answer. But help us work that out. What is that what do you think is happening there? Is it churches that are they’re articulating vision around multiplication? They’re articulating there’s and then they’re building systems towards that and so that’s generating opportunities to you know they then that ends up kind of driving growth, or what? What do you think is actually happening there? Again that might be an unfair question to a surveyor.
Warren Bird — I know from other solid sociological study that clarity of vision is a core issue…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …in the growth of a church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …more than theology. So I may be a theologically liberal church, but if I have extreme clarity of vision – we are about this One thing, which in a broader theological spectrum you don’t find as much. They’re the ones that are growing. And likewise among evangelical conservative whatever label you use for those that are more focused on on needing that faith in Jesus Christ both to to transform my life and to use me to transform this world while we’re populating heaven. Um, that focus, that clarity, always goes hand in hand with growth. That does not…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Warren Bird — …doesn’t necessarily guarantee it…
Rich Birch — No, no..
Warren Bird — …but it’s very rare…
Rich Birch —
Warren Bird — …to find a growing church that’s not marked by unusual clarity of vision compared to other churches.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Fascinating. Again that works out even just on the, you know, pedestrian you see that like you see that in churches that that have um, yeah, that have a laser focus on they have core conviction around, you know what does the bible teach and what are kind of imperative around ah, reaching people around us that does translate. You see that, you know, that translates. Where when that goes soft, there does become like a okay so why would we do that? Like why? You know, which is interesting. Now ah later in the study you talked about… I was like, is Warren picking a fight on this one? New churches that grow are more more focused on evangelism, less on helping existing believers. Well first of all I love that you were trying to to tackle this question. This is an interesting question. Um, it’s the kind of reach versus keep question. Are we driving towards trying to reach new people with the gospel of Jesus, or are we trying to help those people who are already? Help me understand what you were saying here. And I know you’re not trying to pick a fight, but help us work through what you found and what does that look like there.
Warren Bird — Well sort of I am trying to pick a fight in that…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — …I spent a good year before we finally framed the survey talking to church leaders and say, okay if there was this state of the church of new churches and…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Warren Bird — …and all, what do we need to measure? And the immediate response is, well sure, measure attendance, measure numbers, but but get beneath that—people would underscore—and measure discipleship. Are we making disciple-makers, people who reproduce themselves, people who not just show up with their bodies, but but they are being transformed by the power of God in becoming more like Jesus Christ. That is not an easy issue to survey.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Warren Bird — So so in this particular question we simply ask, where is your focus? Ah and and again we used a scale and I took just the “very much”, which was the the high end of the scale…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Warren Bird — …on the issue of evangelism and discipleship. And then I sliced and diced and said, okay, let’s break that into um, growing churches, not growing churches, ah all kinds of of ways of parsing that out. And I found a real difference that growing churches do have a higher focus on reaching the person who’s not here, than they do on helping the person who’s already there grow in their faith. Again, it’s hopefully there’s a lot of overlap heavy overlap between those categories, but given that you had two different categories, ah, that’s what we found.
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting. Yeah so I found that – that one stood out to me. Um, you know I think we time and again… a part of so ah in my work when I help churches around church growth, the thing I keep coming back to time and again is it’s it’s kind of using similar, it’s driving at the same issue but but coming at it from a slightly different angle. Which is, you know, I’ll say listen, one of the main differences between growing churches and non-growing churches is growing churches, or even fast-growing churches, train, equip, and motivate their people to invite their friends, which I realize is one it’s not all of evangelism. But it’s one piece of evangelism. And there’s ah and I would contest it’s like the starting place of evangelism. We got if I can’t invite somebody to come to my church, the chances of me engaging in a deeper evangelistic conversation is pretty low. Now I know there are those people that do that. But the thing that I found interesting about this is it reinforces that idea that, hey growing churches are that’s not a secondary focus. It’s a primary focus. They’re saying yes, we’ve got to stay focused on that issue. And it also reinforces the the difference between discipleship and scholarship. I think sometimes we we use with the word discipleship, but actually what we’re what we’re doing is we’re encouraging people to just continue to consume information about Jesus. We’re not pushing them to apply that. And I would say the ultimate application is reaching out to your friends. It’s actually saying, hey I want to tell other people about Jesus. That’s the highest form of of discipleship. But but we’ve all seen churches…
Warren Bird — I found it a profound discipleship moment for me this morning in the gym…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — …as I was changing clothes, I had struck up a conversation the day before with someone. he came back in and I prayed so hard, Lord, help me find a bridge to share my faith, to invite, to to talk with him about his faith, to invite him to a church event. And I go to a church that gives me lots of excuses and helps to be able to invite people and that it’s ah it’s a friendly place, and well I’m one of the greeters. I like…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …ah of making people feel welcome.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — Ah, but but it was a discipleship moment for me…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …to try to figure out how can I do the evangelism piece this morning? How can I show him God’s love in a practical way?
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Yes, so good.
Warren Bird — I failed, by the way.
Rich Birch — Okay. Well…
Warren Bird — And I’m praying that that he’ll be back next to be changing clothes the next time I’m there and that God will give me another chance to open my mouth.
Rich Birch — It’s a vivid picture. It’s a vivid picture of Warren Bird at the gym changing. That’s great. It’s great. No I appreciate that. And you know it’s funny I we all have those. I I whiffed on a similar experience I was in a there’s ah I’m in this coaching group with ah a number of people who I’m not sure where there it’s it’s around some kind of business stuff. And I’m not sure where they’re at with faith. And we were I was at a retreat this summer and a guy who I did not know, um, kind of where he was at with Jesus and we showed up at the hotel. And opening night I was checking in and he comes up to me and he says, Rich, Rich, Rich! I got to talk to you about it have you I got to talk to you about something. And he pulls out of his his book bag. He’s like have you heard of this guy Erwin Mcmanus? He wrote this book called The Brilliance of Jesus. I heard him speak at this event and I’ve read this book and I’m so fascinated about what Jesus has to say. He knows I’m Christian. And I was like tell me more. And it’s the beginning of a conversation. But again to me I’m like those are that’s the real moment. Am will I lean in as a Christ-follower at that moment to say, yeah let’s talk about that, and continue that conversation’s ongoing. And…
Warren Bird — Yeah, and and by the way my pastor…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Warren Bird — …who who encourages me to do those things would have checked the we do evangelism is a slightly higher priority than discipleship.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Warren Bird — Rich, can I jump to that the the golden nugget table…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — …that’s the …that’s the multiplication predictor?
Rich Birch — Okay, let’s talk about it.
Warren Bird — We ask… I talked to Dave Ferguson, and a whole lot of people, I said I’m compiling composing this survey – give me your hunch, something that I can test, of what you think is a predictor of whether a church is going to multiply, or multisite campus, is going to multiply. And I ask—there were 12 of them I came out with from different people—and then I limited the responses to those who said they had multiplied already.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, yep, makes sense..
Warren Bird — Okay so let’s see what characterizes them. And let me just hit the top three. Number one was in the last year have you participated in a meeting that focuses primarily on church multiplication, in your city, regionally, anywhere, yeah national thing, like Exponential. But are you being pushed in that way? Are you finding fellowship, are you are you being encouraged? Are you here being reminded of what the scriptures say about multiplication? That was number one.
Warren Bird — Number two close behind. Are you the leader personally developing a named apprentice leader, such as small group level, pastoral level, or board level? In other words do I have a church planting resident as part of our church? Do am I leading a small group that. There’s someone who is sitting beside me who knows that at a certain time period I’m leaving and they’re moving into the driver seat? Do I have ah ah future board members that that I’m cultivating and replicating? Wow that’s number two.
Warren Bird — And number three, does your church have specific goals for future church planting? If you aim at nothing you will surely hit it.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — But if you do A and you do have that that helps with the focus issue. And then on down and I give the top 10 in that list of those who have replicated. To me that’s just gold.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I love that because this is again why I think a part of what you do is so helpful from… or lots of what you do is so helpful. This is one of those things that’s like you you can get very prescriptive on the other side which is, hey if we’re trying to increase the multiplication temperature in our church, if we’re trying to turn up the volume on that, you know, the the parallel to what you’ve done with that chart there is let’s do these things. Like let’s actually how are we ensure that our people, like the three you talked about, how do we make sure that regularly, more than once a year, people are in conversations, in meetings where they’re talking about multiplication? How can we ensure that our core leaders actually can have a named apprenticed leader? And then do we have goals around those things? Let’s actually talk about those and and and get them out. Um, and and you can see in the rest of them and again you’ll have to check it out at ecfa.org/surveys to see the rest of it. But it’s super helpful for a leader who’s looking for, Okay, what can I do to actually push this this you know multiplication forward as a church. I love that. That’s fantastic.
Rich Birch — Above that chart on that same page. And again, friends, you’re going to have to get the whole thing. There’s a ton here. We’re not going to be able to pull apart all of it. There’s a ton even just in this this one which is just one slice of a much bigger study. There’s lots of other things that Warren and the team looked at. Ah, interesting about the kind of the way people talk about the current way of doing church. You know, the the top three here were missional, multi…
Warren Bird — So let me set let me set it up.
Rich Birch — Yeah, set it up.
Warren Bird — Of churches that had multiplied…
Rich Birch — Multiply. Yes.
Warren Bird — …by their own definition.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Warren Bird — We gave them about 25 words and we said so check as many as you want, but what describes your way of “doing church”? And Rich, you gave the top one there. What did you say?
Rich Birch — Yeah, missional. Yeah, missional, multiethnic, or multiracial was number two. And then online church, digital church, phygital… I can’t believe people said phygital but yes…
Warren Bird — Okay, so phygital was like 3%…
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — …but it was it it meant the same thing.
Rich Birch — It’s in that category.
Warren Bird — So online was the, of those three choices, online was by far the more popular. Digital was way down the list. And phygital was near the bottom, but it was like 2 or 3%. So it that added to to become part of the 34%.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and… you know, it’s interesting again, I was in I was in a conversation literally just yesterday where we were talking about increasing invite culture stuff. And had a pastor who I dearly respect came up to me after and we were talking. And you you know, he didn’t ask it this way but essentially what he was asking is he’s like, hey isn’t the attractional church movement kind of dead? Shouldn’t we just be missional? And um and he didn’t say it like that. Again, he wasn’t that aggressive around it. But you know missional is a… and my pushback was yeah, all missional is saying is like you have a mission for a church. You have a you have a um, you’re you’re clear on what you’re trying to do. You’re outward focused. You’re not about yourself. You’re trying to make a difference in your community. It means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. When you think of that missional word there—again, 54% of people self who are in these churches that are growing, multiplying, they’re identifying as missional. How do you pack unpack that? What does that look like? What do you think that means? What do you think that’s saying?
Warren Bird — Clear focus. We know what we’re about. We are excited about our relationship with God and about bringing as many others as possible into it. We give opportunities. That was another question. We asked so how often do you give people an opportunity to receive Christ to become a follower of Jesus Christ? And I worded it generically so that it it it wouldn’t ah ah, limit. But the idea is ah… and I I said weekly, monthly, um more often than monthly, or never. And I was delighted by how many people said weekly. And you know, sermon… I’m sorry survey construction, looking back, I probably should have said “almost weekly” but I didn’t I said “weekly.” And ah and growing churches, especially in this case, larger growing churches are the ones that have the most consistent invitation of sorts.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. I loved too on that that list, I loved personally—which may be a little bit counterintuitive—I love that multisite, as a way people describe themselves, is farther down on the list. One of my things that’s bugged me for almost two decades is when people… like to me multisite is just a way to an end. The end is reaching more people, is seeing people come into relationship with Jesus, and seeing those people reach more people. And you know for years when people are always like described themselves as like we’re one church in three locations. I’m like don’t describe yourself like that. That’s not… that’s ah, such a small vision. It’s it’s, you know, it’s and I’m a huge fan of multisite. Ah but I I love the fact that people are, you know, that even that is like a is a falling descripture even though I’m a huge fan of multisite and and that approach to life.
Warren Bird — So, so Rich, let me just jump in and tell you the big finding from the report where we compare multisite and church planting.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Warren Bird — And the biggest finding, at least in my opinion, is they fuel each other.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Warren Bird — If you are a church planter, you are more likely to favor and support multisite. If you are multisite…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — …you are more likely than non-multisites to favor church planting. The two feed each other. There initially when multi-site movement started there always you ask the questions: what are the unintended consequences? What are the toxic pieces? And and oh it’s going to kill church planting.
Rich Birch — No, no.
Warren Bird — No, it has fueled church planting.
Rich Birch — Yeah and for sure like and I’ve seen that just anecdotally and the… Like you the more longer I’m in multisite, the more I realize that is one tool that fits in certain contexts, but it it doesn’t fit all. If we’re if we’re interested in actually multiplication we’re interested in seeing people who reach people who reach people, we have to have multiple approaches. Not just one. So yeah, love that. This has been incredible…oh sorry.
Warren Bird — And and let’s not underestimate that that third listed item of online digital, phygital, whatever you call it – that that this is a huge audience. This is a huge way of of doing going back and forth. Ah like my wife and I lead small groups. Sometimes we meet online, sometimes in person and and they they intertwine. It’s just one more way, not only to reach more people but to make church possible for more people.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Warren Bird — And and the the churches that have reproduced involve digital. And maybe some of their outreaches are purely digital. But that’s that’s for another chart.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well this has been fantastic. Friends, we’ve just barely scratched the surface trying to get you interested in actually dropping by ecfa.org/surveys to pick up them. And again, they’re free. I’m not sure how Warren does that, but somehow they’re free. And they’re amazing studies and will be super helpful.
Warren Bird — Well I’ll I’ll tell you how we do it. That ECFA’s, you know, several thousand members a bunch of them are into church planting.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Warren Bird —And so this is serving our members. And what we do with everything that we do to serve our members, it’s like hey, anybody else? If it helps you, we’d love to share it with you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Warren, I appreciate that. This is like I feel like this next question is like asking the the star performer in a play at the end of a very long run, they’ve just finished their their broadway run they’re twelve, fifteen weeks into the run, and they just had their closing night last night. And and someone comes to them and says, hey what’s your next play? Ah, what are you thinking about next? You know, what’s the what is the next Warren Bird study? Do you have anything on that front? And you can, like that that person, say can I just take a break? Like can we get this one out the door? But what is any thoughts for the future on things you may be looking at next?
Warren Bird — I do have about five different topics…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — …that that I’m I’m working on and thinking, praying about…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Warren Bird — …and and exploring. And I look forward to unpacking those on another Rich Birch podcast.
Rich Birch — Yes, love it. We’d love to have you come back.
Warren Bird — But but for now, Rich, you are and we’re recording this the day after I finished the last analysis and study. And ah what I’m having a happy time doing right now is is kind of thinking among to myself, so what was the biggest finding? What was the biggest surprise? What’s the headline? What’s what’s the biggest implication? What’s the biggest challenge?
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — What do I wish I had I had asked that but didn’t ask. So so for today I’m still processing that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — And then I’ll circle back and and start preparing the next projects.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well cheering for you, Warren. You’re a great gift to so many of us – appreciate all your work. If people want to track with you—so we’ve said it a few times but ecfa.org/surveys—is there anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you, or with the great work you’re doing?
Warren Bird — Yeah, um, ecfa.org/connect
Rich Birch — Okay.
Warren Bird — …or better yet ecfa.org/pulse
Rich Birch — Okay.
Warren Bird — That will that will everything I do will be announced through there. Plus there’s just lots of free resources that help ah churches and Christ-centered nonprofits to do integrity well, which is what ECFA is all about. How do you lead? How do you set up your board so that it’s it’s not an underutilized group? And then it really does partner with the senior pasto,r or CEO, or whatever. How do we how do we do things so that the only stumbling block is the cross of Christ…
Rich Birch — So good.
Warren Bird — …and not some bad, foolish, or or even unthinking decision that leaders have have allowed their organizations, or or key people to go down.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that.
Warren Bird — So we’d love… everybody can benefit from what the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability does. Yes, Canadians too. Although you do have a wonderful counterpart up in Canada. The CCCC.
Rich Birch — The four Cs. Yep. Absolutely – they’re they’re good people. We love them. They do a good job. So good stuff. Well, Warren, appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time today, and for all your energy and and enthusiasm for serving the church. Thanks so much, friend.
Warren Bird — Always a joy to talk with you, Rich, and I read your unSeminary, um I listen to the podcast and I read all the good stuff you put out. So I’m honored to be among that crowd.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. Thanks, buddy.
Creating & Sustaining an Empowering Culture at Your Church with Dr. Derry Long
Nov 10, 2022
Thanks for joining us here at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Derry Long, from the Yellowstone Theological Institute. He’s served for 45 years in many church leadership roles and is here to share his knowledge with us.
At churches, it’s not uncommon for 20% of the people to do 80% of the work, but as church leaders, we need to own how we might contribute to a lack of volunteer involvement and empowerment. Listen to today’s podcast as Dr. Long shares how to create and sustain a culture of empowerment at your church.
Our part in the issues. // Church leaders need to own that we primarily produce a telling organization. People come, and we tell – most of it one-way communication in our teaching and leadership. That one-way approach often creates passivity and reduces collaboration. Another problem is that we can create a smorgasbord mentality in ministry, putting too much on the menu in the hope that the many options will entice people to serve.
Four things that empower people. // The problem isn’t always the telling in our churches, but the execution. How do you empower people and build an on-ramp to service inside and outside the church? Dr. Long found that there are four things that empower people: choice, competence, meaning, and significance.
Ask these questions about the leaders. // When looking at someone who is leading in the church, think about these questions: Where are they giving their volunteers choice? How are they building competence into the volunteers’ life? How do they find out if the people serving have a sense of meaning in their service? Are people serving simply because there’s a need, or because it’s what they feel they’re meant to do?
Every role has significance and responsibility. // Create a culture where every role has significance, and communicate that significance. Offer both “entry level” serving options and opportunities for growing in leadership. Not every volunteer role has the same level of responsibility, so look for those volunteers who show a level of skill and responsibility beyond the role they are currently in, and give them the next opportunity.
What are the economic engines of your church? // To avoid the smorgasbord mentality at your church, you have to know what the organization is about. There may be people who have skills that are valid but don’t fit within your ministry needs at this time. Leaders have to make this call. Every organization must know its economic engines. What are the four or five things that produce disciples, generate donors, bring people in the doors, or connect people to the community?
Four traits to an empowering culture. // Dr. Long started studying what characteristics must be present within a culture in order for a person to function in an empowered way. Four traits needed are voice (treating someone like they are present and valued), support (understand the reality of another and addressing it), modeling (when a leader’s behavior is in line with their rhetoric), and trust (because empowerment brings choice, and choice has risk, people can’t be empowered without trust).
If you’d like to learn more about what he talked about today, you can email Dr. Derry Long.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today’s no exception. Super excited to have Dr. Derry Long with us from the Yellowstone Theological Institute. Now I know it’s the unSeminary podcast. But today we have like an actual like academic – someone who has actual bona fide, you know, credentials. I just play an expert on the internet, but Derry actually is one. He has served for over 45 years in many different roles – pastor, church planter, pastoral coach, regional overseer, international teacher. He’s served as a lead pastor in a number of churches, for nearly thirty years, in both metro and rural areas. His PhD is from the University of Birmingham ah in England. He’s and he’s just a great guy.
Rich Birch — He’s currently professor of Christian leadership at Yellowstone, like I said, Theological Institute, and he came to us ah by recommendation of our friend, Vern Streeter. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here, Derry.
Derry Long — Thank you, Rich. It’s good to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, thank you for taking time to be with us. Fill out the picture there. What did I miss on the Derry story? What is it that you want people to make sure they know about you?
Derry Long — Well one of the first things I think is that my ah resume, that you have so eloquently expanded on, really ah displays a commitment to the church. Um I’ve actually been frustrated with the church. I grew up in the church. My mom was a Sunday School superintendent, played piano for worship. The church has been part of my life, but at 55, I stopped being a pastor. I resigned. I thought this is not working right. I don’t I don’t like how it functions.
Derry Long — And I moved to England, got involved in a PhD ah project where I began to study how to create and sustain empowering social environments. And that renewed my vision, and really for me got me back in touch with how the new testament pictures the church um all along. So um I guess I’d just add that. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Hmm, love it. Love it. Well we’re we love the church here at unSeminary. You know I’ve joked in other contexts that like I’m like a church leadership wonk. I’ve we’re 600 episodes in on this thing. I could talk to church leaders all day long. And really want to try to to help them, and so I’m ah you know you’re going to be just such a great addition. I’m so glad you’re here.
Rich Birch — You you have an interesting vantage point because not only because of your background because of your work that your engagement in a lot of different contexts, and so I’m going to throw you like a giant open question. When you look at the church today, as you engage with leaders, what would be a couple of those maybe problems or pain points or things that you see coming up time and again with church leaders, with the leaders you maybe that you engage with, or you hear people, that kind of are are common that you you keep hearing, you know, you keep running into or hearing about?
Derry Long — Well, there’s a there’s a big complaint among church leaders, and that is that the the people in church are too much spectators and too much consumers. Um, but my view is that they are the product of our system. And yeah…
Rich Birch — Ah, you’re putting a mirror back on us. You’re saying hey we we created these people.
Derry Long — Exactly.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Derry Long —I I think these these are not people who don’t aspire, but we don’t we have not built on ramps and we live by that 20… 80/20 principle of 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I thought that that cannot be right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — That’s not that’s not how that was meant to be. Well is it that everybody’s just lazy, or they don’t care, or they care about other things? And so when we have lower participation then we we criticize the people and we spiritualize it instead of owning that we are not building the on-ramps…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Derry Long — …that get them to the way they were created to be.
Rich Birch — Love it, love it. Doctor, you’re coming in hot here. This is good. I love it. So ah, you know this whole idea of low participation. So this is you are, you know, this is why I’m excited to have you on. Friends, friends that are listening in, you’re going to be really blessed by today’s conversation. I feel like you’ve tapped into a lot of church leaders. A lot of pastors, conversations, they get together and, you know, ah, once they get beyond how big is your church and once they get beyond some of that initial stuff, you know, when you hear them complaining it’s like, oh my people are just so lazy. They’re so lazy. They don’t they don’t want to engage. Um, and I love that you’re challenged here around maybe the low participation is about us. What would before we get to solutions, before we get to on-ramps—I do want to get there though—let’s talk about what would be some of those signs those things that maybe we’ve done that actually is lowering expectations, that’s creating in our people this idea of like “just show up; you don’t need to participate” that’s that’s that we’re then ultimately reaping as we engage with folks.
Derry Long — Well let’s say two things. Number one we we need to own that where we’ve we’ve primarily produced a telling organization. People come and we tell. They come and worship worship in the morning and most of it is one-way communication. Teaching it… often our leadership styles are telling. So there’s this there’s this one way communication that seeps into almost every everything we do. And and that telling, that approach to that that telling approach actually creates passivity. And it it reduces a sense of ah collaboration.
Derry Long — The other is um, we we create almost a smorgasborg mentality – come and pick and choose. And we think the stuff we have on the menu is good enough that if you you pick enough stuff, you’ll just get healthy and you’ll you’ll just serve. And in fact, but that simply does not work.
Rich Birch — Um, wow this is so good.
Derry Long — Um, so for example, people will say we want to be a friendly church. But if you say um, what system do you have for your hospitality ministry? They they don’t have a system. Well we really need leaders. Well, tell me how you’ve designed your leadership pipeline. Well they don’t actually have a leadership pipeline. They’re just hoping that there’s enough good stuff on the menu that if people pick it, they’ll end up getting the outcome they’re hoping for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting because I you know… so I’ve been in ministry going on three decades and I remember when I started lots of churches would celebrate like we have 112 ministries. Like they literally would say stuff like that.
Derry Long — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Like we’ve got and it was it was this idea of the smorgasborg. We’ll come back to that. So Let’s talk about, so I get the telling organization issue. I can see that. So um, and I can even understand how that would create people who frankly, just sit around and listen then. So what’s that what should we, rather than being a telling organization, what should we be doing? What would that look like? How should we modify that?
Derry Long — Well I I don’t think the problem is is the telling; the problem is the execution.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Derry Long — Like where where’s our on-ramp? How do we build a bridge? If we’re if we’re telling them on a Sunday morning, or in the class, and we’re we’re inviting them to serve in some way, what’s the bridge? And I began to study how to create, sustain, and sustain empowering social systems. And to my surprise um one of the people I started studying was John Wesley.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Derry Long — In the 1700s he began working with the a totally disenfranchised group, which were the working class of England. England was a very much a caste society. You were paralyzed and stuck wherever you were born. That class was uneducated, irreligious. Ah, they had no time because of their work schedules. They were poor. Ah they they had no mobility. And and yet he created a movement that was so powerful that when he died, other than royalty, he was the most famous person in all of England. And he did it with people who had been called by the church of England “rabble”. And he created a very participatory um ministry model.
Rich Birch — Okay, let’s talk about that. What is so on-ramps, creating a participatory model. What does that look like? We all would love to have the impact of John Wesley, but when we look at our context, how do we what does that look like for us?
Derry Long — Well let’s go back to so when it when I began to study this, what I studied was what empowers people? And empowerment is simply the ability and the opportunity to act to the benefit of something righteous. The ability and the opportunity to act to the benefit of something righteous. God’s purposes, my own well-being, my family. And I found that there are four things that empower people. Two are intrinsic and two are extrinsic.
Derry Long — One is choice.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Derry Long — So God, from the beginning, he tells Adam and Eve, now I want you to name the animals. We don’t have any record of a review system when they did that. I don’t like Zebra. I don’t like Zebra – let’s find something else for that one, you know.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah yeah.
Derry Long — And so ah, a new manager for a large shopping mall gathered his janitorial staff together and he asked them, um tell me about your job. Like for example, when you’re shampooing all the rugs and stuff here in the mall, who decides how to buy the the detergents for those shampooers. Well he said it’s always been decided in the office and they they just order it. Well the manager says don’t don’t you know better than anybody else which shampoo which shampoo ingredients clog up the machine, require more maintenance? He says, of course we do but nobody ever asks. Well that seems minuscule but within the sphere of their responsibility, that manager began to give them choice. And choice is an empowering, and you find it all through scripture.
Derry Long — The second is competence. And competence is ah, you know, he that’s faithful in a little you’ll become ruler over much. Everybody wants to be good at something, and not not just that, everybody’s actually wired to be good at something.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Derry Long — And so those are extrinsic. But the intrinsic ones are meaning, and meaning means if nobody else saw it, when I’m doing this, I know I was meant to do this.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Derry Long — There’s an internal sense of connection between what I’m doing. I mean when my wife goes down and works at base camp in the children’s ministry, she was one of eleven children. She was the oldest daughter. She grew up around kids. She understands kids. When she’s doing that, she knows she’s doing something she was meant to do.
Derry Long — But the fourth is significance: I need to know what I’m doing matters. It has some impact. Then and everybody plays to an audience.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derry Long — I once visited with an elderly man who is the hardest working man I ever met. And I was a terrific pastor and, but I always wondered at at the level of his work level. And we were driving along one day and he said, you know, my dad told me I’d never amount to anything. And I thought all this all this all this time in his life, he’s still talking to that audience…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Derry Long — …that audience of one – his father, showing him that he he and he had amounted to something. And so choice, competence, meaning, and significance.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Derry Long — If if I’m empowered, I’m I’m experiencing those four things.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that love that.
Derry Long — And I’m only empowered if I think I’m empowered.
Rich Birch — Love that. That’s so much here. You’ve just like unloaded so much I want to pick apart there and understand. Help us go over again, kind of pull apart meaning and significance again. I I feel like I ah maybe missing the difference between those two, and it’s probably just me. It’s definitely just me I’m I’m being slow, but work through how how would you differentiate that inside, you know, the the mind of people who are in working with.
Derry Long — So me meaning is an internal sense that what I’m doing fits how I was designed.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, ok, right. Great. Well said.
Derry Long — Significance is what I am doing is making an impact…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Derry Long — …in my external world. So I get…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. Yeah I love that. I remember years ago I was at a church, you know, one of these name brand churches that, you know, lots of people look up to and they ah, you know, ah super charismatic ah, not in the like spiritual gifts category, but just in the attractional kind of you know, lead pastor who you know, you know one of those world famous in our little world and church church world. And I got to spend a week there at just hanging out with people like not with leaders just with normal people and the thing that blew me away, I was in a conversation a couple days in with a guy who was a camera operator. So volunteer camera operator on Sundays, and he said to me he said, you know, the the two hours I get to do this every weekend, I come alive. This is like, man, I just love this. I feel like this is the most alive I’ve ever been.
Derry Long — Yep yep.
Rich Birch — And and we have the opportunity to do that. Now on when we think about the are the churches you run into, when you think about kind of low hanging fruit on these four – the areas that you find that we’re stumbling most on when it comes to engagement, which of these four, or is there a combo of these four, that you feel like we’re that you commonly are seeing where that churches are not doing a great job ah, you know in helping their people be empowered?
Derry Long — Well I I think to start with there we’re not looking at people from this angle.
Rich Birch — Okay, right. Not even thinking about it. Yeah, yeah.
Derry Long — We’re not, we’re not coming to him and thinking, now when I’m relating when I’m trying to recruit for base camp or our our children’s ministry, ah, they’re you know, am I thinking from this angle? If the the person who’s leading base camp when they’re when they’re helping their teachers and their volunteers and where are they giving them choice? How are they building competence into their life? How do they find out if the people that are serving have a sense of meaning?
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Derry Long — Those people who are doing it simply because there’s a need, and those people who are doing it because they know they were meant to do it. Um, in what ways does that person, when they’re doing it, know that other people know that they’re not not only know that they’re doing but that it’s making a difference in somebody’s life?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Derry Long — How, as a leader, do I make sure that they have that sense of significance? Where’s that communication line?
Rich Birch — Love it. So help me tackle a problem that I see in so many of our churches – maybe using this framework, or helping us kind of wrestle through this. I feel like sometimes even in my own church um, there’s a giant gap in our ah the way we position volunteer roles. We would have like I would call them shallow end of the pool kind of roles. Like you can you know be a um, an usher you can greet people. You know, we used to hand out programs, we don’t do that anymore because Covid and all that. But you know, like there’s there’s like, you know, and they they’re great roles because I love that’s those roles because they’re they’re they are easy on-ramps for people. They’re like, you know, you can show up basically one week and then next week we can say, hey great, stand here at this door and be nice to people.
Rich Birch — But then there seems like there’s a giant gap in, particularly when it comes to meaning and significance, then it’s like either of those—and obviously I’m using hyperbole here—it’s like you either do one of those shallow end of the role. Or it’s like you’re discipling people or you’re like ah, you know, an elder, like you’re like responsible for the entire thing. How do we create roles or opportunities that that are kind of across along the spectrum that kind of ramp up. Do you get the problem I’m I’m describing?
Derry Long — Sure. Ah to start with I’d I’d say one of the we have to create a culture where every role has a significance, and we communicate that significance.
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — Like for example, ah I go to Journey Church here in Bozeman. They run I don’t know they run about 1500, but my volunteer role is ah I so I stand at the Connect Table afterwards and if there are new people and they have questions then, you know, it’s it’s ah it’s it’s it’s down there with the ushers and the hands shakers and…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Derry Long — …and but but those roles help people who are unfamiliar in an unfamiliar place to to find out information in a non-threatening way.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Derry Long — And so you start communicating to the people who work work that every role matters. The second is not every role has the same level of responsibility. But if I’m working with people in hospitality and the Connect Table, I’m also looking for, again he that’s faithful in the little I’ll make ruler over much. Who who seems to exhibit understanding and skill beyond the role they’re presently in. And I look for that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Derry Long — You know, do I see someone that more they they seem to go the extra mile? They seem to have more understanding about how we’re functioning than would really be required of them. Um, do I and and but I’ve but I’ve got to be looking for it. I have to have eyes for that. I have to see as a leader if I’m head of that department that part of my responsibility is is finding those people, looking for those people, and giving them the next opportunity.
Rich Birch — Mmm, love it. Okay, so one of the earlier one of the things you talked about was this smorgasborg mentality. This idea that one of the things that can hold us back is we is we just have it’s non-connected, a series of things. We basically say, here’s the menu; you figure it out. Um, one one of the things I think can create that or I’ve seen created in the church is um, we say to people like, hey if if you’ve got an interest in an area and you’ve got passion in that area um, we want to empower you to like go and start that ministry. And that’s how I think many of these, one I don’t think, I know that’s how many of these churches ended up with 100 plus ministries because it’s like they people they were they they saw a need, and they just said well let’s start something to to meet that need. How do weh ow do we fit these things together? How do we create an empowering environment where people feel they do feel meaning in what they’re doing because they’re maybe leading in an area that feels like it’s made for them, it has significance and that wow it’s pushing the mission forward, but it doesn’t just add to a, you know, a giant smorgasborg ah buffet of like hey there’s a a gajillion different things to do as a church? How do we how do we reconcile the tension of those, or am I not thinking about that correctly?
Derry Long — No yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. Ah, but first, every organization needs to know what it’s about. So there may be people who have skill a skill base or a passion that is valid but it it doesn’t fit here. Or it doesn’t fit here at this time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — And leaders have to make have to make that kind of call of ah…
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — …you know, does it fit here?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Derry Long — The second is the the an organization, if you use Collins Good to Great, he uses this phrase—ah, he he he means it in a secular sense, but I’m going to use it in a sense for the church—he says every organization must know its economic engines.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep, yep.
Derry Long — In other words I might do 50 things but there’s only 4 or 5 things that are actually producing disciples.
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — The other things may be good ministries, but I don’t get to do those if I don’t do these 4 or 5 things well. And and a leadership has to know what are the economic engines of this organization.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Derry Long — What produces disciples? What generates donors? What what brings people in the door? What connects people to the community? What are what are the economic engines? So I used to when I was going to college I worked at a grocery store. And grocery stores um, there’s permission to play. Like if you go in to a grocery store, they got to sell some things because they’re a grocery store. They they make no profit up off it. They you know they break even, but that’s permission to play. If you’re going to play in that arena you got to have that product. But they have certain departments where their their profit margins are in those departments, which means they have to make sure they make profit in those departments because that that takes care of all the other departments. And so I have to make sure that as people I’m working with people that I have arenas of ministry connected to the economic engine of the church that are meaningful and that I can’t always meet every need…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Derry Long — …for ministry that person has.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know I know but for sure you know that resonates with and it just even a personal lesson, the longer I’m in leadership I realize it is more about talking about less things, focusing down, saying no to more things. You know, how do we focus? How do we provide more energy to using, sticking with Collins on the flywheel, how do we get more of our energy onto that? Um, it’s amazing how much that book all these years later still you know has huge impact. I literally was just listening to conversation with senior senior leaders like literally guys that report to Jeff Bezos at ah, Amazon that were were talking about their hedgehog concept, and their flywheel. They’re like, hey we keep thinking about that. We keep coming back to and that’s like you know a giant organization, right, that’s that’s asking that question. How do we pare down? How do we stay focused? How do we, you know, add energy?
Rich Birch — When you think about that side of it, kind of the focus side of it, the how do I as a leader um add energy to those areas that are going to ultimately be more empowering, that are going to get more people engaged. Any thoughts on that or things we should be wrestling through as we you know, try to help people define, you know, how they should get engaged?
Derry Long — Well, there’s ah, there’s a interesting thing that often happens in academic research. You start researching something and you find ah somebody’s already found it out. So when I went to England I was researching what empowers people only to find out we already knew what empowered people.
Derry Long — These four things that I just mentioned, they’d already been discovered. Gretchen Spreitzer from University of Michigan, others, they they had already, so then I began to ask, well if we know what empowers people, then why are so few organizations able to do it?
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — So I started studying what what characteristics must be present within a culture in order for a person to function in an empowered way.
Rich Birch — That’s a good question.
Derry Long — And that that research… And my theory was that was based on the Imago Dei, created in the image of God. So that would be true whether it was a church, a nonprofit, or a business because all people are created in God’s image. So I began to actually do case studies on businesses, churches, and nonprofits, and I found that those different arenas used the exact same language…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Derry Long — …when they talked about being empowered. And there were four traits that were part that were present in a culture where people could function in an empowered way. And the first was voice. In fact that was the single biggest discovery of all the research I did. And voice isn’t just asking, well Rich, what do you think? Voice is treating someone like they’re present. Like if they weren’t at the table they’d be missed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — Like they are a key component of the structure of who we are. And the the the the sense of an employee that they’re just treated like they don’t even exist is so devastating that almost no employee can stay in an organization where they’re treated as as someone who doesn’t have voice.
Rich Birch — Yeah, as a cog. Nobody wants that feeling, right?
Derry Long — No, no, no.
Rich Birch — Nobody likes feeling of like, you know… yeah.
Derry Long — The the second is support. And support is not an attaboy, you know, kind of a slap on the back. Support is where I understand your reality, and I’m ah I’m addressing you through your reality. It was amazing to me how many people that what they’re really dealing with, the both the leaders or others simply don’t don’t don’t know what they’re dealing with in in their day-to-day responsibilities.
Derry Long — Um, the third was modeling. And modeling is simply where the leader, the leader’s behavior is in line with the leader’s rhetoric. And I found ah I found an organization that said they had never seen an improvement program work. And and so I I read more about that and here’s what would happen. The leader go to way to some conference, and then they’d come back with a 3-ring binder and hey I got a plan! And then they have a meeting…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Derry Long — …but the people in the organization knew that that was only going to last as long until the leader went to another conference.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Derry Long — And so they had this they had this, they developed this pattern. We’ll hear him out, and then we’ll wait them out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derry Long — Because they know we’re just going to change. They’re waiting for leaders who say I’ll die on this hill.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. I wish that wasn’t I wish I couldn’t think of examples of that. I wish that one was like that one is so common.
Derry Long — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Like I and I feel that temptation like ah…
Derry Long — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch — …you’re you’re like, man, this is the silver bullet. This is the thing.
Derry Long – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And scrap everything else we’ve talked about. Let’s run with this. Yeah, that’s that’s…
Derry Long – Yeah and and the and the fourth is trust. Because empowerment brings choice, and choice has risk. And so if there’s not an atmosphere of trust, then people won’t operate in empowered way. But it’s not trust.
Derry Long — a trust attitude. It’s trust behavior. And the difference is Jesus was giving the disciples responsibilities well before they were fully capable of executing those responsibilities. He was showing trust behave he was showing a trust behavior before trust attitudes.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Derry Long — And as voice, support, modeling, and trust exist, then a person can operate in those first four that we talked about: choice, competence, meaning, and significance.
Rich Birch — Love it. This is so good. You know, one of the things you’ve been taught you’ve said multiple times is this idea of create and sustain, so in some ways um like I can see the create side of this maybe easier. That’s probably the not a very precise word. It’s like ah, getting this ball rolling is one thing, sustaining it over the over ah an extended period of time, creating an empowering culture versus sustaining an empowering culture, I could see where there would be some well there’s natural all systems tend to wind down. When when you kind of have thought about that side of it kind of keeping this going, what should we be thinking about on that front, when you think about kind of sustaining an empowering church culture?
Derry Long — Well, the first four are are about how I’m empowered.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Derry Long — But the second four are what sustains it.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, okay, okay, that makes sense.
Derry Long — So the you go back to the idea of lag and lead measures.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Derry Long — So like instead of measuring attendance, I measure what is producing the attendance. And that becomes the primary measure. So attendance is the is the lag measure. The lead measures what’s producing it. These four traits I just mentioned, these are actually the lead measures…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Derry Long —…and that’s the thing that ah enables me to sustain in the organization. And connected with this are certain are certain um, um, leadership traits that become sustaining issues. For example, ah a leader a leader who wants to have an empowering culture, so he wants to flip the 80/20. Instead of 20% doing 80% of the work, he wants 80% of the people working. Um that leader has got to be a leader with a healthy ego. They can be a fragile, you know…
Rich Birch — Right.
Derry Long — …temperamental, territorial. There’s nothing that builds trust; that that doesn’t build trust.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Derry Long — You got to have so the the leader has to have a healthy ego. They have to have a positive view of people.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Derry Long — You know I’m not I’m not trying to hurt a bunch of people who don’t know know anything. These people aspire. My job is to help them in in that aspiration.
Derry Long — They have to measure their achievement through relational a relational grid. Are they just task-oriented, or did a little relationships matter? Um, they got to see that micromanagement actually is the enemy of an empowered culture. Um so you know I could go on but…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Derry Long — …those those traits in the leader, and then those four traits of the culture, they sustain the the traits within an empowered person.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well this you know listen I feel like we well it’s like one of those we’ve it’s been both scratching the surface in that, gosh, there’s probably so much more we could talk about, but it’s also been a fire hose. I’ve got pages and notes here of like ooh stuff I’ve got to wrestle with so I I really appreciate this, Dr. Derry. Is there anything else – there’s tons we could talk about but is there anything else, you’d like to kind of for us to cover just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Derry Long — Yeah, one thing. People often think when they think about empowerment to think about delegation. Hey I’m going to empower Rich. Rich, here’s here’s a project. I’d like you to do it. My door’s open. If you need me, come get me. That’s about as far from empowerment as you could get. One of the reasons people fail at empowerment is they don’t own that it is a highly relational construct. It involves more relational connection, not less.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Derry Long — And so the emphasis has to be in relationship.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we got to keep working that side of it, right? We have to. It’s not I think that’s a good caution for sure. Well, Derry, this has been fantastic. Super encouraging conversation, and like I say helpful and lots for us to chew on. Um, where if people want to track with you or track with this thinking if there’s you know is there places we want to send them online? How how can we have them kind of continue to track along with this?
Derry Long — Um I’m not sure the answer, you like like my my email address you mean?
Rich Birch — Sure, yeah, that’s great. If they want to reach out to you, what would that look like.
Derry Long — Sure ah DL@YTHI.com (Yellowstone theological incident).
Rich Birch — Perfect, great! Well, Dr. Derry, I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for that for the help – this has been super enlightening lots for us to to chew on, and yeah, appreciate for your your help for today for our leaders.
Derry Long — Hey, thank you very much, Rich.
Embracing a Team Mentality to Spark Growth at Your Church with Aaron Tredway
Nov 03, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast – so glad that you have decided to tune in. This week we have with us Aaron Tredway, Lead Pastor of Fellowship City Church in Ohio.
As church leaders, we know that when we empower others, we can accomplish more together than we can alone. But it can be hard to “give your job away”. Listen to today’s podcast as Aaron shares how the team mentality at Fellowship City Church has allowed them to turn around from a place of decline to growth.
Team philosophy on leadership. // There’s always a temptation to fill the gap yourself rather than bring others in to raise them up and release them. Church leaders wear a lot of different hats and we have limited capacity so we have to get creative about problem solving. Team leadership can be a solution to our limitations, but it requires us to lay down our egos and not build the ministry around our own personalities.
Team preaching. // One example of team leadership at Fellowship City Church is the preaching team. Every Thursday this team of more than ten people meets to do a full runthrough of the message, whether Aaron or another person on the team is preaching. The team vets the message together and, as a result, on Sundays it’s really the voice of the team bringing the message even though one person is communicating it.
Give your job away. // At Fellowship City Church, the staff is taught to embrace a team mentality where they are working themselves out of their jobs. Everyone needs to hold their position and title loosely, and intentionally think about how they can operate from a place that serves the team best. To combat fears about being replaced, Aaron reminds us that because there is always enough work to go around and enough people that need to be reached, there will always be an important place for people to serve out of their callings.
Help them find their place. // To help people at the church get plugged in, a vocational paid staff at Fellowship City Church created a leadership system that raises people up and releases them into ministry. He worked to get the system off the ground, but then handed it off to unpaid staff who are now facilitating it. Rather than shy away from empowering volunteers in these roles, create intentional touch points to help them continue to grow in their leadership while staying aligned with the church’s mission and vision.
Aim for significance, not success. // As people start to reach their life goals, they have a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment, but it doesn’t last. Aaron has written the book, Don’t Miss Your Life: The Secret to Significance, which reveals that many of us are dissatisfied with our lives because we are aimed at the target of success rather than the target of significance. Gift this practical guide and read it together with your team to discover how we can find a life of meaning in God’s kingdom.
You can learn more about what’s happening at Fellowship City Church by visiting fellowshipcity.org, or find out more about Aaron and his book at aarontredway.com.
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Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who’s going to both inspire and equip you and today’s no exception. Super excited to have Aaron Tredway with us. He is a Lead Pastor at a church called Fellowship City Church. They have 2 locations located in Ohio around the cultural epicenter of the world, Cleveland. Aaron is the the Lead Pastor – he’s been there since 2017. At that point the church had existed for 40 years and was in decline. We’re going to pick up the story from there. But, Aaron, welcome to the show today.
Aaron Tredway — Hey, Rich, So great to be with you man.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you fill out the story. Tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how did that connect with Fellowship City, and kind of bring us up to speed on that.
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, well first, I love the idea of the cultural epicenter which is Cleveland, Ohio.
Rich Birch — It is isn’t – that’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t that true?
Aaron Tredway — It’s how everyone introduces me. I just I pastor at church in Cleveland, Ohio. No that’s that’s awesome. I’m not a native Clevelander, but I gotta tell you I’ve grown to love this city. I love the people of this city. I actually originally from California, and had the opportunity to travel a lot in my life. You know, kind of I guess I sometimes call it my former life. I was a professional athlete I was professional soccer player for 13 years. And really ah spent about 25 years in professional soccer altogether. But the Lord always had ah a calling towards vocational ministry on my life. I went to seminary kind of while I was a player – not common thing to do. And not because I thought it was called to be a pastor per se, but I was kind of always like a pastor to professional athletes along the journey.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Tredway —And found myself at ah at a local church. I’ve always loved the local church whether I was living in Harare, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Brazil, or now Cleveland, Ohio – I’ve always loved the local church, had a passion to see people equipped and released to live out the kingdom, and and live for the glory of God. And so so, yeah, I found myself in Cleveland, Ohio 2017 with my South African wife. We had moved here and this church was in decline. It was, you know, it was ah a great church at one point. And this community, in my opinion, needs a great church, and it wasn’t quite that at that time.
Rich Birch — And what when you say it was in decline, kind of paint the picture. What does that look like? How did you, you know… So there’s two fascinating pieces of that. One is tell us about that. What did that look like? And then how did you land there? How did those two pieces kind of come together?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah. I guess the shortest way to describe it is I was a missionary of this church with an organization called Ambassadors Football. After my career in in soccer, I joined an organization, a ministry – a Gospel Ministry, presenting the gospel, doing discipleship through soccer all around the world.
Rich Birch — Very cool.
Aaron Tredway — It’s part of how I met my wife in South Africa. And so really ambassadors exist to serve the local church around the world, to help the church harness the power, the vehicle, of soccer to do discipleship and evangelism in their own communities.
Aaron Tredway — And so when we moved to Cleveland, Ohio, it was kind of a natural place to land because we were supported by this church, and so we kind of landed here, and I ended up on the board of this church. And so I served as an elder for a few years, and and we we went through a 10 year downturn in terms of leadership, where you know there was was a little bit of moral failure on on the part of one pastor. There was just some, you know, some deficiencies – a gap in leadership over 10 years. And really, what was a 40 year legacy of real impact in this community had quickly diminished to, you know, we were on a lifeline, so to speak.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Well I’d love to hear the story of kind of what what has God used in the life of your church over these years between 2017 to now, kind of what would have been a few of those things that have bubbled up as like, hey it seems like God’s using this to help us reach our community to kind of restore the church to where it had been in the past.
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, I think there were were probably a lot of questions to answer when I first came in to leading the church. And you know I’ve led a few different organizations. Um from a professional soccer organization franchise here in the United States, to a fairly large nonprofit globally with offices in forty different countries. And you know, so so from a leadership perspective I feel like, you know, not that I’ve figured everything out, but I really have a philosophy on leadership that’s really built around team. It’s really a team-centric model of leadership where I really want to just empower those around me and believe that together we can do more. It’s kind of cliché I realize, but I really believe and we pull our resources and leverage that which God is instilled within us, we can do more than I could personally do on my own as a leader.
Rich Birch — Mm-hmm. Now let me poke on that a little bit. I think a lot of people say they’re into team leadership. They are like, yes, they know that because you’re supposed to say that. But then it seems like a lot of local churches are like these pyramids that all bubble up to like a single person at the top. When you say “team”? What do you mean by that? What do you mean by team leadership?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, I can’t speak for for other churches; I’m not… and you know, I’m I’m an unconventional lead pastor.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yes, great.
Aaron Tredway — I backed my way into this role, but I gotta say as well I really feel I am here for such a time as this, that God equipped me to be in this position. Um, and you know it it might not be that we’re reaching at this point the outer most parts of the universe yet. But but God has me here. And so when I talk about team, I do recognize that, you know, a lot of people say they want to do team and and value team. But for me what it means is is trying my best to not build the ministry around my own personality.
Rich Birch — So good.
Aaron Tredway — And I think if I would ah to to boil down my philosophy, it’s, you know, from everything from from preaching on a Sunday um, you know, I had ah an itinerant preaching ministry for 20 years. So even though I’m a fairly new pastor I’ve preached in 150 countries.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Tredway — So, you know, I’m not the greatest preacher, but I can preach a bit.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Tredway — And and yet I think the the real tension is not to fill that gap myself. Really try to bring in other people and to raise up, and also release, them, to do that that work as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So that’s a great example of, you know, how do we kind of acquiesce, how do we give to other people—maybe talk about that a little bit particularly on the teaching piece—what has that looked like? How has teamed work itself out in that, because that does seem to be ah, it’s like um, ah, a bottleneck, a capping off point that we can find ourselves in. What what does that look like, how does that work itself out in your church?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, I’m probably like most people; I have I wear different hats. I’m a husband, I’m a father, and I lead ah a nonprofit organization in addition to leading in the local church. So there’s lots of different balls you’re trying to keep in the air all at the same time. And the preaching team is just one example of how I manage that. You know, I think one of the great challenges that I’ve seen in the local church is capacity. You know, unlike big fortune 500s who might have you know maybe deeper pockets or or greater resources, whether it’s kind of paid staff, or you know just the finance to go get the right people in the right position, I think the local church often has to think creatively. And I think team leadership is a potential solution to that. It does take the laying down of ego in some ways – something I’m always trying to work on. But but the example would be with our preaching team. So I’ve got about at this point 12 guys…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Tredway — …on a team that meets every Thursday. And we do a full runthrough of the Sunday message, whether it’s me preaching on Sunday or somebody else on the team…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Tredway — …the team fully vets the message. The the preacher preaches it, and they have the ability to speak in. So it’s really the voice of the team bringing that message through the communicator on any given Sunday.
Rich Birch — I love that. So the thing you’ve hit on that we’ve seen in so many churches is teaching, particularly at and very large churches, is a team sport. That it’s although there may be one person who’s ultimately up communicating, there’s often a group of people behind that. I love that you’ve systematized that even with kind of every week we’re going to pull that group together. I love that one of the other interesting nuances around team, I think in the local church, is oftentimes churches that are struggling with team, they have a very kind of strong line between who’s on staff and who isn’t on staff. And they get really wrapped up in like titles and, you know, that kind of stuff that I think can ultimately undo some of the teamwork stuff that we’re we’re trying to build. Am I wrong on that? What’s what’s your take on that kind of thing when it comes to ah, you know, how do you think about staff, paid and unpaid, all those kinds of things – what does that what does that look like for your church?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, for for us it’s kind of like everybody’s on staff.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Tredway — Some some people get paid and and other people don’t.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — In fact, other people might pay…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Tredway — …to be on staff but we kind of have a mentality that we are one team kind of working together, pooling our resources to the best of our ability. And I think especially with the the volunteer staff, you know, everybody else that kind of sits in the seats on a Sunday, it is a paradigm shift.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — You know, this for us at Fellowship City isn’t a spectator sport.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway —You know this is this is a battleship situation. We’re not on the, you know, the the cruise liner where we’re sipping drinks and everybody… it’s all hands on deck. And it it is easy to say but you’ve got to really be intentional about instilling that within your people, from my perspective, or kind of it’s human nature. You know, if I can kind of just eat along for the ride, sign me up.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Tredway — You know, I’ll just cruise along.
Rich Birch — Interesting. So talk to me about how you’re how you’re getting people onto your teams. What’s that actually look like? So I Iove this. Oftentimes you know I’ve said in other contexts that actually volunteer growth is actually a precursor—we’ve seen this time and again in church growth—it’s actually a precursor of church growth. So if you’re building your volunteer teams, getting more people onto your volunteer teams, that’s actually an indication that overall growth is coming because there’s this whole thing that happens as people change their own life, and they become a part of their team, they talk to their friends about it and and they’re like well I now do this thing at my church, they end up naturally inviting people. It becomes a kind of accelerant for church growth. But talk me through what that looks like – how are you encouraging people like you say, you know, echo what you’re saying, get out of the stands and onto the field, stop being an just an observer, become an active participant. What what does that look like for you?
Aaron Tredway — At every level of of our ministry within our church, we’re trying to promote this idea of team. So whether it’s kind of the preaching team to you know the kids ministry team. Every aspect has a team mentality.
Aaron Tredway — And I know that there’s, you know, that this whole idea of the leadership pipeline is quite a popular concept, which I like as a leader, but I’m I’m really probably more invested in the idea of a greenhouse, where we’re constantly growing people up. And and really the the perspective and mentality of our paid staff is to be working themselves out of a job. And that’s that’s a mentality, you know. And unless you’re strategically and specifically thinking in that direction, but we’re trying to create a culture where we’re all thinking: how can I replace myself as fast as we can. How can I hold my title and my position loosely because I just want to be in the place that I can serve the team best?
Rich Birch — Okay, I love that. Let’s lean in on that a little bit. I think ah, we’ve all run into team members on our staff who have not that hasn’t really fully got into their head, and they feel like, gosh, if I replace myself, then what’s going to happen? Like if I find other people to do what I’m doing, doesn’t that mean I’m just going to be somehow made redundant, which we know that’s not the case, but work work us through that, kind of talk us through what does that look like for your team.
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, I’ll try to illustrate that – maybe from outside of church world.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Aaron Tredway — You know I served a long time in soccer and, you know, soccer, you know, whether Americans want to believe it or not is the most popular game in the world.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, true.
Aaron Tredway — And so, you know, the the reality is there are a lot of people doing soccer ministry out there. And and whenever a new soccer ministry has arisen over the the history of Ambassadors Football, we never viewed it as competition. Because we all felt like there’s enough people and enough ministry…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — …around the world through soccer to go around. And that’s kind of how I feel like in the local church. No matter how big the church happens to be, there’s enough people and enough work to go around. So whether I’m the lead pastor today, or I’m a campus pastor tomorrow, or I’m an elder you know, or I’m a kids ministry director, or… to me there’s just there’s so much to do…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — …that if I’m thinking through the lens of team, there’s always going to be ah, an important place, not just a place, an important place for me to serve out my calling.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I and, you know, I think one of the critical pieces of building great teams sticking—and I am like the opposite of the sports guy, so this is I’m way out of my field here at this point—but you know, knowing your kind of place on the team is important, getting a sense of kind of what is my what’s my unique piece that I bring to the table. Um, how are you doing that at you know Fellowship City? What does that look like to kind of help people find their place, to find their spot in how they can serve, how they could be an active part an active participant in what’s going on?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, we’ve got ah a few different kind of of formalized mechanisms, I suppose. We we in-house started like a leadership university, just in our church. It’s not something formalized. We actually launched through a seminary, Ashland University.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Aaron Tredway — And and we found like they they did a great job that first year – it was a nine month thing, but we felt like it wasn’t contextualized enough. And you know so one guy he, on staff, he kind of owned that. And the reason I bring that specifically that example up is because he owned it. He got it off the ground as a vocational paid staff. But now that thing is fully run by unpaid staff, where we are raising up and releasing leaders into ministry. But but it’s actually not being facilitated in any way by somebody being paid by the church.
Rich Birch — Oh I love that. That’s so cool. And so how do you then kind of that’s a good example of any of ah you know and an area where you know you’ve been able to hand that over. How do you kind of how does your team interface with that? How do you ensure that that continues to push ah, in the right direction, that it continues to meet the needs that you’re hoping it will meet in the church?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, it’s a good question and I I interpret it as a cultural piece. You know, you want to make sure that the culture of what you’re doing remains consistent across the board, whether you’re you know a single site church, or you’re multisite.
Aaron Tredway — You know, especially as you kind of broaden your your reach a bit. But that that happens you know, even within ah a single location, if you’re running programs especially if they’re being led by unpaid staff then you know how do you maintain that. For us it’s its intentionality.
Aaron Tredway — You know, it’s It’s not saying, Okay, well we raise them up and now they’re fully released. Fly!
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah. Go do it! Yeah, yeah.
Aaron Tredway — You know, is to continue to have very intentional touch points along the way continue to walk the journey of leadership out. It just means that I don’t have to handhold quite as much.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — It means that I, as a leader, am released to begin to invest my time elsewhere, while I maintain and monitor, you know, other things going on.
Rich Birch — Well and that’s as you know as old or as foundational as Ephesians 4, right? That’s our job is to equip the people, to release them, to get them ready for ah, you know, the ministry. I love that. Where are the bounds like have you run into areas where maybe that handoff hasn’t gone as well? Like I, you know, I can imagine areas where, you know, sometimes people just want a paid staff member. It’s like maybe it’s like hospital visits, or maybe it’s funerals, or you know are there things like that where where people have kind of pushed back a little bit on this handing off or or there been kind of, you know, interesting engagements on that level?
Aaron Tredway — It’s such a good question and I’m sure you know your listeners especially pastors have dealt with with this question. For me coming in, for our church which was a fairly traditional – we’re a nondenominational church, but fairly traditional sitting in a fairly traditional community here in Cleveland, Ohio. And so the idea of multiple voices on a Sunday morning…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — …from the pulpit, not normal.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Aaron Tredway — Not not readily embraced. The idea of the lead pastor, or more appropriately, the senior pastor…
Rich Birch — Oh sure, sure.
Aaron Tredway — …not being the one who would go to the hospital, or you know make the call, or etc etc. Not normal here.
Aaron Tredway — So was it that like we snapped our finger in 2017 and after 40 years we shifted into this, you know, everybody embraced… No!
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — It took time. You know it’s interesting too because you know not having been a career pastor, um I talked to a lot of pastors now. And and we talk about, you know, like different emails you might get, or comments that you might get on any given week. And the interesting thing to me is I got a to me an unprecedented amount of feedback in my early days leading Fellowship City.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Aaron Tredway — It felt like everybody wanted to have a say in what we were doing…
Rich Birch — Everybody’s got an opinion.
Aaron Tredway — …everybody had an opinion.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Tredway — And as a professional athlete I was not unfamiliar with that reality.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Aaron Tredway — You got the armchair analyst…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Aaron Tredway — …in sport, right? It kind of feels like the same thing exists in church world.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Oh wow.
Aaron Tredway — You got people who are not professionals…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Tredway — …sitting out in the seat kind of commenting like they are the coach.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Tredway — And fair enough; that that makes sense to me. But the interesting thing that happened is the longer we just stayed consistent with what we were doing, and how we were doing it, and unapologetically, for the most part, the more I felt like people got on the bus.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — And got on board. And I’m not saying that I never get an email with a negative critique or kind of, you know, input. But it’s very rare for me now.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Aaron Tredway — Very rare.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — In covid I got two emails the whole of the last two and a half years.
Aaron Tredway — And that’s stating a lot to anybody who’s been leading in a local church for the last two and a half years.
Rich Birch — Absolutely, absolutely. There’s been lots to comment on, for sure. That’s that’s incredible. Yeah, I love that idea of staying consistent, staying focused. Um, you know, and people will follow leaders long term. It’s normal at the beginning when you start in a location, you know, for there to be questions for sure. But I love that idea of consistency, pushing in the right direction.
Rich Birch — I’d love to pivot in a different direction. You have a book that just came out that I want to talk a little bit more about, if if you don’t mind. It’s called, Don’t Miss Your Life: The Secret to Significance. Tell me about this book. This is a lot of time, effort, and energy to pull this kind of thing together. What was it that you that led you to say, now is the time; I want to pull this book together.
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, thanks for asking. Ah I’m super-excited, like you just said it. It just launched just came out October 4th and and we’re real excited about this particular book. I’ve been, you know, fortunate enough to write a few books in the past. But really this book specifically is kind of like my life and and my my whole philosophy put into a few hundred pages.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Tredway — And really it’s a book on on living out our God-given purpose. You know, I can’t speak for everybody but for me, growing up I wanted to be an athlete. And you already said that’s not what you wanted.
Rich Birch — Yes. Sure.
Aaron Tredway — So this is not a book about becoming a professional athlete. But for me, growing up, you know, I had this vision of what my life maybe could or should be. This idea in my mind. And and when I got there, it was an amazing thing. I felt you know the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Um, but the interesting thing, and I think most people can probably relate with this, is you know when you start to attain some of the things of the world, and some of the the things that you maybe desire most, they do satiate and satisfy, but not long term.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s true.
Aaron Tredway — And and for me I had an experience standing on ah a dirt soccer field in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1998 where I went on a mission trip and I’d never been on a mission trip. Um I was a 21 year old kid at the time, and I’d only come to know Christ a few years before. And I’m on this mission trip and we’d played in a stadium of 60,000 people the day before…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Aaron Tredway — …but now I’m standing in the middle of nowhere Africa. And and I don’t know if it was the audible voice of God, but I felt God impressed upon me, do you think I left you on the soccer field all of these years just for you? Or do you think that there’s a bigger purpose, you know?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Tredway — Is there some reason that you are here that is more important than just the significance of self?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Tredway — And for me what I realized in short is that I had aimed the at the target of the the target of my life was the wrong target. So for me, it’s really become about, how do I aim the target of my life at significance instead of aiming at success…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Tredway — …which is what I always thought we were supposed to aim at.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. You know, I’m struck by this because I think this could be a great book as like ah ah, either a team discussion, like with my the people who you know I work with, or even as a gift, you know, maybe to people in our churches, significant donors, that kind of thing. Because I think this whole idea of, you know, we come to the place in our life where we have some level of success but the question is is that of any significance, is that actually making any difference. I really do, I love that idea. Now as you wrote this book, what part of it resonated the most with you, or has resonated as you’ve had it released out there with other people, that it’s like okay this this this kind of core piece of it seems to be the part that’s getting the most traction?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, there’s this idea that I didn’t come up with – those are all but always the best…
Rich Birch — Yes, I love it.
Aaron Tredway — …called the hedonic treadmill – have you heard of it?
Rich Birch — No, tell me about it.
Aaron Tredway — It’s this idea that, you know, it’s kind of if you imagine that you’re running on a treadmill, and the the more you run and the more you attain the thing that you want the more you want, that thing.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Tredway — You know, it’s like it’s like sugar. If I if I feel like I crave sugar and I eat some sugar. I’m satiated for a moment, but the second I eat the sugar, I want more sugar.
Rich Birch — Okay, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Tredway — So it’s like this treadmill that you can never really get off because the more of it that you get, the more of it that you want. And the more of it want, the more of it you get, et cetera, et cetera, and it just keeps going.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Tredway — And and for me I think that’s something that’s resonated with me. As I started to experience just a little bit of of success, I craved it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Tredway — I wanted more. And I started to experience more. And it’s almost like I could never get enough. And and I think that idea resonates with people.
Rich Birch — So true.
Aaron Tredway — Um that that, you know, when you experience success really that the success isn’t going to satisfy the deepest longings of your soul.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Tredway — Um, and so the question becomes, what will?
Rich Birch — Love it. Well and yeah, you can see where that the hedonic treadmill can be really the part of a ah, really vicious, negative, downward spiral in life. Um, or. You know there could be a part of that that could actually drive to something great, right? That’s like hey you know there’s if if we can get our our desires aligned with things that ultimately pushes towards the Lord that could be a you know that could be fantastic. .
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, definitely.
Rich Birch — Um, now when so where do where do we want to send people online if they want to pick up a copy of this? So like I said, friends, I was struck by this because I do think this would be actually best in a team, ironically, ah that this would be best for either your team, like here we are in the fall. Maybe you’re thinking about either, you know, at last quarter kind of training stuff, I think could be great. I think it could be great if you’re looking for um, you know, conversation starters with maybe a group of leaders around you, but ah, where do we want to send them online if we want them to pick up a copy? Where do we want to send them for that?
Aaron Tredway — Yep, it’s it’s kind of everywhere books are sold type of an idea. You know, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, aarontreadway.com …
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Tredway — Everywhere books are sold, that’s that’s where it will be.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well I appreciate you being on the show today, Aaron. Is there anything else you want to share with us just before we wrap up today’s episode?
Aaron Tredway — Yeah, um, you know again, it’s it’s probably a widely known saying, but you know, I’m married to an African so I feel obliged to to share this.
Rich Birch — Yes.
You know, this idea that if you want to go fast then go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Aaron Tredway — And for me in my my leadership, whether it’s here in the local church, or or a para-church, or on a soccer field, I’m all in with this idea of going together.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well, where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you, or with the church? You talked about aarontredway.com – where do we want to send them for more information about the church if if they want that? I want to make sure people are tracking with your story; I think it’s pretty amazing what God’s doing through it.
Aaron Tredway — Thanks, Rich. Yep, our church is Fellowship City Church. It’s fellowshipcity.org and again I can be contacted personally: aarontredway.com
Rich Birch — Thanks so much – appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much.
Aaron Tredway — Thanks, Rich.
Under the Hood of a Multiplying Church of Nearly 30 Church Plants with Josh Husmann
Oct 27, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m excited today to be talking with Josh Husmann, lead pastor at Mercy Road Church in Indiana. Mercy Road is one of the top reproducing churches in the country with a passion for multiplying disciples, leaders, churches, and expanding the reach of the gospel throughout the state of Indiana.
If churches want to exponentially expand their reach for Christ, they need to think differently about how they are multiplying. Listen in as Josh shares about church planting, disciple-making movements, and empowering the body of believers to do the work of the ministry.
Family of Churches. // When Josh and his family moved to Indiana, the goal was not to build a big church but rather to to reach as many people for Christ as they could in their lifetime. They decided that the best way to do that was by planting new churches. Mercy Road wanted to see people live on mission so as the church grew and ran out of space, they sent people out in all four directions around the original location. From there, the Mercy Road Family of Churches came to life, each operating as an individual church but with with the Mercy Road DNA, name, vision, and values.
Multiply Indiana. // In addition to the Mercy Road Family of Churches, Josh has helped start Multiply Indiana which is a separate church planting nonprofit that partners with national church planting networks to focus on planting churches all across Indiana. To date they’ve seen over 20 churches planted in the state through the nonprofit, not including any in the Mercy Road Family of Churches.
Work in teams. // One thing that has helped Mercy Road multiply is doing everything in teams. Rather than preach every Sunday of the year, Josh does it once or twice a month while developing other communicators. The same goes for other ministry teams. Mercy Road teaches its people to live on mission with the goal of being sent out. As a result they build a pool of leaders and communicators that continually help plant new churches.
A common pitfall. // Mercy Road Church has the big goal of reaching a million people for Christ in the state of Indiana. Josh acknowledges that’s a crazy goal that will only happen through discipling and sending. A downside of this model is slower short term growth. If Josh had preached every week, he knows the church would have grown more quickly, but that was not the culture that they were trying to create. By not giving people what they want, it can cause financial challenges, but it’s worth breaking those norms to see people understand and join the mission.
Empower and align. // Mercy Road is passionate about empowering the priesthood of believers and decentralizing ministry. But this can feel chaotic when things don’t align with what you’ve envisioned. Think about how you can work together to support and empower others to live on mission while not messing up the other work you’re doing.
Ministry is free. // On the monetary side of ministry, the first thing Josh reminds his staff is that ministry is free and it doesn’t cost you anything to talk to someone about Christ. On the practical side, Mercy Road doesn’t want the vast majority of their money going to buildings and staff, but rather to serving the community. Part of the way they do that is by allowing people to designate their financial gifts in addition to tithing. In this way they are able to give away 50% of the total giving outside the walls of the church in a given year.
Developing pastors. // For the churches that have been planted from Mercy Road, Josh gets on a weekly call with the other lead pastors to talk about what they need help with in their work. They also have a one-on-one with Josh once a month, and he’s always available for calls or texts when they need coaching.
To learn more about Mercy Road Church, visit mercyroad.cc, or mercyroad.church to explore the Mercy Road Family of Churches. You can also check out Multiply Indiana at multiplyindiana.com and find Josh on social media @joshhusmann.
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and I’m super excited for today’s conversation because I know it’s going to do both. Super excited to have Josh Husmann with Husmann with us today. A fantastic leader from a church called Mercy Road Church in Indiana. It was started in 2010. They have a vision to plant churches that plant churches and they to create disciple making culture that impacts the world outside of the walls of the church. Excited to learn from you today, Josh. Thanks for being here.
Josh Husmann — Yeah, thanks much for having me on. I’m pumped and I love that you’re making practical impact saying, Okay, what are what’s actually working? What can we do to expand the kingdom?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Josh Husmann — So I’m excited to be here. Thanks for asking.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so fill out the picture a little bit. So you know you have, if I’m counting right, five kind of churches in the family—the Mercy Road family—and you’re looking at planting more. Kind of tell us a bit of the story; fill in the picture.
Josh Husmann — Yeah, our story was I moved from California, believe it or not, to Indiana to started church. Why would you do that? I don’t know.
Rich Birch — As people do. Yes.
Josh Husmann — Ah, but you know it was just a calling. God, in a moment of prayer, said do this, and it was a crazy story, and it all happened, even told me these three friends of mine from high school would help us start a church. One wasn’t a Christian, one was working for Entertainment Tonight in Los Angeles, and you know all of it happened. And it’s just a wild time the last 12 years of our lives.
Josh Husmann — And so we moved to Indiana and the goal was never to to start a big church. The the goal was to reach as many people for Christ as we could in our lifetime, which I’ve been reading a lot of books like Ed Stetzer’s Viral Churches and others that talked about the fastest form of evangelism was new churches. Knew I was called to plant a church, but didn’t know anything practically about how to do that or what that meant. And so we just started with that vision from day one. We wanted to be more about ah multiplying disciples, multiplying leaders, ah multiplying services, and multiplying churches, and networks. And and that’s what um I mean praise God over the last 11 now 12 years, we’ve got to see that occur.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Josh Husmann — Um, there are five soon to be five Mercy Road Churches. We also before we began starting Mercy Road Churches we just planted churches, and we planted, including the Mercy Road Churches, it’ll soon be I believe 28 churches through Multiply Indiana…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Josh Husmann — …which is a separate church planting nonprofit we helped start to partner with national church planting networks for church planting only in the state of Indiana. And so yeah, we’ve got to see a lot of multiplication occur.
Rich Birch — Love it. There’s so much I want to dig into there, but um, you know so many churches talk about being a multiplying church and wanting to have, you know, actually raising up leaders, and the thing I’m excited for, Josh, to lean in with you is because you are actually doing that. That’s actually a part of the story here, which is incredible. So why don’t you pull back… So first of all, why Indiana? I love that you have a, you know, a pretty solid line built around, hey God’s called us to this state. Tell us that story. What’s what’s going on there?
Josh Husmann — Yeah, so the story – it makes a little sense. I grew up in a small town in Indiana but ah, my adult life had been in California. My wife’s from Southern California. We had her first son out there. But in that moment I had I’d gone to this conference, heard a pastor speak. It was the recession was starting – 2010 actually gotten worse. And I remember just ah, being there and being like God, we love our church. We want to be there forever. But if you would have us do anything what would it be? And in that moment of prayer I had the most real moment with God I ever had in my life. It knew he wanted us to move to Indiana, start a church, and these three friends I mentioned would help us. And you know I think the calling to Indiana was largely based on I was going to tell people about my faith in Christ, and in California all my adult life and these people I knew growing up I didn’t know where they stood spiritually. And I think in that moment of prayer God gave me a burden ah for the state of Indiana specifically.
Josh Husmann — And so we we never even had what most church planters had which was we want to plant in this city, or this county. Like we had no clue. We mainly planted in Carmel, Indiana because my wife was from the suburbs of California and it was the most easy for her to make the cultural adjustment to. But the vision was always to just plant throughout the state. And so that that’s why we we put the parameters on the state of Indiana itself. What would it look like if we did a regional focus rather than just going anywhere?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So talk through how you’re structured. You’ve made a couple different distinctions – there obviously are you’ve planted these 28 churches. There’s a subset of those that are Mercy Roads. Um. But you’re not multisite; these are independent churches if I’m reading this correctly.
Josh Husmann — Yes.
Rich Birch — So help me kind of understand how that all fits together.
Josh Husmann — Yeah, and and and with Multiply Indiana we will only plant plant in Indiana. With Mercy Roads someday we might do something beyond that, but that’s not really our our we’re not really thinking about those things.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — Our the the heart behind it was we just wanted to reach more people for Christ. And we always looked around and said what resources and ability did we have? And we had grown rapidly as a church. As a three-year-old church we bought a old Borders bookstore, moved into it. The church began to grow more, and and we were really planting out of the culture, reaching on church people.
Josh Husmann — And what started happening was we were running out of space at the building that we had. We had to make a decision. Are we going to build on? Do a project? And we ultimately decided we’re we’re church planters, and if we could raise significant resources we probably wouldn’t invest it in one building.
Josh Husmann — And so we started dreaming if we had those resources, what would we do? Well we want to get people to live on mission, and to go reach more people. So what if we just set them out four different directions from Mercy Road to plant churches? And that’s where the Mercy Road family of churches came from, was ah that we wanted to get more people to leave because we were out of space at our building.
Josh Husmann — But if you go back even a few years before that when we moved to town and it grew rapidly in those first few years, when we were moving into that first building as a three almost four year old church, ah, we had decided to start multiplying Indiana then. And so we moved into our first building and planted another church a mile down the road, and we had a few families go with it and so we just kept doing that. And what we found was ah it wasn’t that hard to connect with planters, send resources, and, you know, we might have ten people go with them and plant a church.
Josh Husmann — Um, and so we were able to do that pretty rapidly, but over time we weren’t getting enough to go, and so that’s why we eventually started the Mercy Road family of churches to plant with our DNA, name, vision, and values. And when we plant those even though they’re one legal entity when they start, we use “church” not “campus” from day one because we want them to get the vision this is going to become a self-sufficient, autonomous church. We just spun off the very first one. Um, they’ve been growing very rapidly and are about 2 years schedule. So ah yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Josh Husmann — As they get that to that state that they’re able to be autonomous, we spin them off.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so the goal would be, it sounds like the goal is obviously to get they’re not necessarily autonomous from the beginning but the goal be to get there eventually. That’s kind of the the hope.
Josh Husmann — Yeah, and they really from day one operate self-sufficiently, they set up an advisory team. It’s not the legal board, but they set up an advisory team that becomes the legal board. They their staff runs everything; I’m just coaching the lead pastor.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Josh Husmann — That’s that’s pretty much how it works.
Rich Birch — So so obviously behind all this, the kind of substrate ah underneath all of that, has got to be a pretty robust discipleship development, you know, leadership engine. Talk us through that. How what does that look like? What’s the best way for us to understand that? What’s God kind of teaching you through that piece of the equation?
Josh Husmann — Yeah, well ah first I would say this: I think in in all of this I have never met anybody, and we’re certainly not that the plug and play solution just do this and you’re gonna do this amazing thing for God.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Josh Husmann — Right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
Josh Husmann — Like there’s a lot of messiness that goes into this.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Josh Husmann — And for us ah, the one thing we had right was we do everything in teams. I’ve never preached ah, you know, more than three Sundays in a month from day one. And most most of the time I preach two Sundays a month and sometimes now only one Sunday a month. And we raise up communicators. Our worship team – we always have teams leading worship. Ah we partner with other great communicators and bring them in as regular guest speakers. And so we developed people. When we planted those churches, we had a backlog of communicators and worship leaders.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Josh Husmann — And and that’s just the Sunday stuff. You know, for us church is not just a worship gathering. It’s a community on mission. And so we had taught people through our discipleship huddles and through our outposts how to be discipled, and then how to live on mission. And so they got that we did not want to be the church where it was come to our gathering, get into a small group so you find friends and stick around here. Our goal was we’re trying to disciple people and send them out.
Josh Husmann — The biggest book that I gave to our board to really help get the vision for them was J.D. Greear’s book Gaining by Losing, that they would get the concept of being known for your sending capacity, not your seating capacity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, so why do so many of us resist doing things in teams? So I think this is one of those things it’s like we all know intuitively, yeah yeah yeah – I can’t do this alone. We all intuitively and as communicators we’re like, man, yeah I shouldn’t be the only one up here. But then here we are 48 weeks a year the same person’s up front.
Josh Husmann — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Why are we not pushing against that? What have you been able to unlock in your culture?
Josh Husmann — I’m gonna give you my opinion.
Rich Birch — Yes, great.
Josh Husmann — My idea, you know, I think we tend to like almost demonize people for why they’re doing these selfish things. I actually think a lot of times it comes from a heart of wanting to reach people for Christ and grow the local church, but we’re we’re not able to see the forest for the tree. And what I mean by that is um, we use the analogy of people are trying to reach as many people as they can for Christ, and they think that means they have to grow their local church as big as it can be. We set this vision from day one when there was 40 people in the church. We want to reach a million people for Christ in the state of Indiana.
Josh Husmann — That’s silly, there’s less than 7,000,000 people in the whole state. It’s ridiculous. Ah, but if we were actually discipling and sending it could occur. And so you know we talk about we’ll never gather a million people in a place…
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — …but if we disciple and send we actually could. So we use the analogy of we don’t want to be the redwood tree. We want to be the aspen tree. The aspen tree is the largest living organism according to mass in the world. And the reason for that is you can have a five thousand square mile forest that operates as one living organism – it’s called a clonal colony. It’s where, in the movie Avatar, they get the concept of these trees thinking. James Cameron’s wife is a big fan. The director of that movie – his wife is a big fan of aspen trees. And you know that vision to ah see this whole forest develop rather than just our one tree, that’s what we’ve tried to communicate to our church.
Josh Husmann — We don’t, you know, if if I spoke 52 year weeks a year, and ah Eric, our worship pastor when we first planted, led worship every every Sunday, we would have grown faster. I know we would have. People would come to us all the time. Well why don’t you just preach every week? Why don’t you… and we had to tell people because we’re not building that type of culture.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Josh Husmann — We’re looking at the long run – the forest, not the tree. And I think they eventually came around and started getting it.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I love that, you know, vision of like, hey we should be looking to the long term win here. The long term game. What are we trying to end up. That’s that’s fantastic. Now you joked about the messiness of that.
Josh Husmann — Yep.
Rich Birch — What are some of those common pitfalls you’re finding in there your approach, kind of common ways that are like ooh, this is something we’re struggling with. We’re still working through.
Josh Husmann — Yeah I think there’s there’s a lot. And I mentioned one – you could kind of hurt the short term growth…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Josh Husmann — …because you you know aren’t giving people what they want. And and that’s really hard, if we’re being honest, in the Megachurch world. I have a lot of friends in that area and if the lead pastor who preaches 48 to 50 times a year doesn’t preach, 40% of the people don’t show up, right? Like but if we’re ever going to break those cultural norms, we have to fight that battle. And so that’s ah that is a hard pitfall that it creates financial trouble. You know we could have grown faster if we’d done it had done it differently.
Josh Husmann — I think the other thing that gets really messy though is when you are about decentralized ah empowering of the priesthood of all believers—something we talk about a lot…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Josh Husmann — …you get people doing things that… I’m not even talking about the people who are doing bad things, sinful things right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — Like I’m just talking about people who are doing great mission-driven things who don’t perfectly align with everything you envisioned.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — And so it can feel like very chaotic. I can give you a great example of that.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Josh Husmann — So we we have, rather than small groups, we have a outpost network that includes a variety of different ah communities on mission. Outposts are just groups or communities living on missions. Some of them are micro-churches in the home, and some of them are livi… like doing outreaches or ministries in the community. And we allow people to apply for financial grants that we empower them. We give them video announcements. We give them space in the lobby. We do all this stuff. We tell them if it’s not sinful and the Lord’s calling you to do it, we’re not going to say no. Go do it.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep, yeah.
Josh Husmann — Well we made that decision early on and I had a guy come to me who was a new christian, who had come to Christ in the ah, through a bar ministry we were supporting. And he’s like Josh, I was at my lowest of my lows. I found amazing friends through the local church, changed my life, I got Jesus, I want other people to experience this. So he’s like I’m a big WWE fan…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Josh Husmann — …and I want to start an an an outpost for ah wrestling fans. We’re gonna watch Monday Night Raw and then do a bible study. I’m like okay, that sounds cool.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Josh Husmann — That’s your passion. Go for it. Not my thing, but go for it. So he does. He get six dudes showing up on Monday night. They’re watching Raw.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — They’re doing a bible study. Some of them aren’t Christians. It’s awesome.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — I’m I’m high fiving him in my office. He killed it. And I thought that was the vision. He goes well I’m glad you liked it because ah you guys are we are moving into our first building and at first property had high ceilings. And he said when you get that building done, I want to do a live wrestling show. And I want to I want to, you know…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Josh Husmann — …raise money for charity and talk to people about my faith. And that’s when I was like you know sometimes you like have inner dialogue and it it acts I couldn’t keep it in. I accidentally said like, dude, I think that’s a terrible idea. I would never come to it. But we had just decided I had to say yes to him so I was like, you know, ah, yeah, you can do it.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Josh Husmann — And so he started wrestling theology. Long story short he did it once a month that entire first year; he had about 150 to 200 people show up every week. They reached more atheists for Christ through that outpost than all our other outposts combined that year.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Right.
Josh Husmann — I would have squelched that in a second because I was like I don’t want our young church being associated with something that I don’t get.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Josh Husmann — Well after we saw that it was like, this is amazing.
Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting.
Josh Husmann — But, you know, you think, Well, that’s a great story. That’s great to celebrate. No, it’s messy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — So, Rich, called it wrestling theology fellowship. One day I show up and the outposts get to put stuff in our lobby and hang up posters and stuff. And he had a life-size cut out of Brock Lesnar in a speedo in the lobby of the church when I showed up on Sunday. And then he had posted posters all over our bathrooms, and they had just gone through a rebranding. And wrestling theology fellowship now was using the acronym WTF on all of their promotions. And I’m getting all these comments from parents with young kids that’s what in the world’s going on?! What is this?! You know… and so we had to walk through like, hey this is a good thing, but also how can we work together and have it not mess up the other stuff we’re doing? And and we’ve worked through those things, and why can’t the spirit of God help us work through those things.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. I love that. I had a friend of mine who said you know one of the things when you’re when you set yourself out to say we want to develop leaders or surround yourself with leaders is they’ll lead, which is great and also messy at the same time. Totally love that. What a great story.
Josh Husmann — Yes.
Rich Birch — I love that wrestling theology fellowship. Love it. WTF. That’s hilarious.
Josh Husmann — But it’s worth it right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Josh Husmann — Like I mean we’re a big believer in that God. The same spirit of God that is in me when I preach is in that other person…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Josh Husmann — …if they’ve received Christ and so their body’s a temple the Holy Spirit. We got to empower them to live on mission in the same way.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So there’s a lot of Executive Pastor types who are listening in, and um oftentimes when we think about multiplication efforts, one of the things that comes in is just the financial stuff. Is like how do we do this financially? How do we kind of fund something – by definition we have to we have to get give resources to something before it’s something to make it become something, and so how do we do that? What does that look like for you guys?
Josh Husmann — So I think that for one we, you know, I try and keep in mind um, church has been done for two thousand plus years, lived on mission in ways where you didn’t have to have the things that we think we have to have…
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — …in twenty first century culture in order for a church to exist.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — So I start there. I tell our staff ministry is free. It doesn’t cost anything to talk to somebody about your faith in Christ and disciple them. That said, I get the practical side. I think the one thing that we don’t do, we want to envision the future of the church, and I love that – that’s my heart think how can we do this differently, be more generous. My atheist and agnostic friends often critique the church as you get a 501c3 from the federal government because you’re supposed to be helping the community, but today all of your money goes to your buildings and your staff – how is that meeting the needs of the community? And so we said from day one we didn’t want them to be able to say that about us.
Josh Husmann — And so as a church plant just starting from day one, you know, a healthy church usually tries to give away 10% of their resources. We we gave away 20%.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Josh Husmann — And then we set a goal about year 2 or 3 of over the next decade we wanted to give away, get to the place where we’re giving away 50% of the total giving outside the walls of the church in a given year.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Josh Husmann — And we we’ve achieved that the last couple of years. Um, it’s not as hard as it sounds. And I’ll tell you the one thing I was going to say is as crazy as that is…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
Josh Husmann — …it doesn’t mean that we don’t utilize intelligent stewardship that people who have spent a lot of time and energy for decades on have learned. Ah, we have a person on our board who is our treasurer, who is um has been a managing partner for CapinCrouse, one of, you know, the the big consulting firm for churches financially. I we invite him in so that we can learn…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Josh Husmann —…but then we don’t let that limit us for what we believe God is calling us to do, if that makes sense. And so with that that 50% of the total giving sounds a lot harder than I believe it actually is. It’s not 50% of the general tithe. It usually doesn’t end up being more than ah, 20% of the general tithe, sometimes 15%. And and the rest of that is all in committed designated giving.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Josh Husmann — It does mean at the end of year the year you’re usually doing an end of year giving campaign for a outside-the-walls mission opportunity – for us has been largely church planting.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Josh Husmann — That’s how we’ve been able to plant all these churches is we we were trying to hit our giving goals.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I love that. Ah so if I understand that a part of what you’re doing is folks are giving… is it the kind of thing where like there’s say ah a food bank in town and the church is giving X amount of dollars to that. There may be people in your church who are designating through the church to give to that food bank.
Josh Husmann — Yes.
Rich Birch — So that’s where you’re driving up the 50% number. That’s what…
Josh Husmann — Yeah, yes, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Josh Husmann — And I think that is a failure of ah local churches to learn from the nonprofit world.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Josh Husmann — Every nonprofit finance expert will tell you that ah people prefer to designate their their financial gifts.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Josh Husmann — Now that said we teach biblical tithing. I believe as a follower of Jesus…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Josh Husmann — …the first 10% should go to the local church. But you know in ah and our world people could give way beyond that 10% in wealthier communities and make an impact.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Josh Husmann — And you know I don’t we’ve proven this in suburban communities. We haven’t proven this in inner city communities. So to my friends who are planting in the inner city, it could look totally different. This is just what we’ve done because we think God placed us in the community we’re in to siphon resources to places of greater need in our world.
Josh Husmann — Um, and so, yeah, we’re trying to spend less on our buildings and staff so that we can give more resources away. But we do we open up the floodgates if you are a mission partner of our church, you’re listed on our ah on our online giving that you can select the tab and give directly to them. We also have had people… we give hundreds of thousands of dollars to micro-churches in Africa that we’re helping start. And that’s been largely in partnership with someone who was doing that, heard that we were willing to do church differently like this, and and combined and partnered with us, and we do that together now. So it’s a, you know, it it sounds harder than it is, one. And I actually think that you would actually grow resources financially significantly by doing this.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, I well and I could see that. I think so I’ve done something similar, not at that scale. But there are definitely… my experience has been with donors particularly there are donors who would love to kind of give through the church and have frankly the church be able to celebrate the fact that they’re giving more than themselves. Like they, you know, they would rather the, you know, kind of the good news be the good news story be like, wow this Mercy Road has done a bunch of great stuff with all these different organizations. And so yeah, that’s coo.l I love love that. That’s that’s fantastic.
Josh Husmann — Yeah, it it does have its challenges too.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Josh Husmann — You know one of the things we did then was ah… all of our mission partners… So we we don’t work with ah some of the larger mission partners out there for sponsoring a child but we have a local one here that we work with. And when they do child sponsorship, for instance, when they come to the church, we have all the give and go through the church. And some would say well that’s just a ah passthrough. And I argued, no, it’s fighting for the the local church and saying we gotta stop cutting the church out of these things, because the church isn’t gaining anything financially. It’s more work for us.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Josh Husmann — But what it does is. It gets us to actually participate…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Josh Husmann — …and stop handing off mission work to the parachurch world. And that’s just a personal ah of theological view of for me is I think the local church has to be more invested in mission, and and that means ah not just handing that off all the time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Yeah and and friends I’d encourage you to to go check out ah their website mercyroad.cc in drive right through. It’s actually one of the things that caught my attention when you drive through to your giving page and then right there. I don’t know that I’ve seen a church do that where you literally list, you know, The Significant Marriage, Multiply Indiana, Dotted Line Divas, Center Ice Ministries – you know 2:8 Ministries. That’s pretty amazing. That’s pretty cool. I love that.
Josh Husmann — Yeah, yeah, no and and that list was longer when we planted the churches. Some of them took some of those mission partners with them.
Rich Birch — Okay, cool.
Josh Husmann — And so you know it’s kind of neat to see each church now beginning to grow that list, and and that’s the stuff that also motivates us gets us excited to see resources going through that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s ah pivot in a slightly different direction, back to the kind of coaching and leading of the churches that that have been planted from Mercy Road. How do you structure your time to care for, lead, provide guidance and coaching for the lead pastors who are in that that network? What are you doing – is that do you meet with them weekly, monthly? Is it informal, formal?
Josh Husmann — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is it you have like a 2-year residence program? What’s that look like?
Josh Husmann — With the Mercy Road family of churches it, you know, and you know again I’m not gonna say… we’re church planters so you know half the time you’re you’re you’re building the plane as you’re flying it, right? And get ready, ready, fire, aim.
Josh Husmann — And I think for us ah what we did was we thought God was calling us to send the church in four different directions so we began to raise resources, send people out, found lead pastors for each of those. Some of them came within our church and actually a couple of them came outside the church that just got excited for what we were doing – the DNA of the type of church we were planting.
Josh Husmann — And ah, but then as we sent people out, they get on ah a phone call or a Zoom call with me every Monday for at least an hour. We do one-on-ones every month. I’m always available if they call, text, email, whatever. Ah I I find what happens too, if you if you hire good church planters, you know, coaching Church planters is always a unique experience.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Josh Husmann — And sometimes they really want your help. It usually has to do with setting up systems, or finances, or opinions about next steps as a church, or or building stuff. But sometimes some of the things that that need coaching, they don’t always want that coaching. And so, you know, it’s that’s messy too.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Josh Husmann — We’ve had to figure that out along the way because part of it with what we did that was also unique was we bought buildings for a couple of these churches as we planted them…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Josh Husmann — …and ah you know that’s something in midwestern culture. Yeah I used to be in Southern California that’d be a way harder thing to do, but here you could do something like that.
Josh Husmann — And but that meant that the sending church had a lot invested in this, and so we had to walk through hey we gotta work with you in the early years. And if I had to do it again, I’d be really strict the the first year – this is what we’re doing. And then I would really give them a lot of freedoms after that first year um because the lead pastors we’ve we were very critical about who we hired for that and so far they’ve all worked out great. We have an amazing team.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Josh Husmann — And what’s been interesting is I had to be open to to learning from them and them doing some things differently than the way we originally did them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — Um and that that’s been great too because sometimes God wires people differently.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So when you look up over the horizon, you think about the future, you think about kind of where’s God taking Mercy Road next, any kind of questions you’re asking, things that you’re wondering about as you look look down the road around this whole multiplication and kind of where where is God leading you around that you know that whole aspect of your ministry?
Josh Husmann — Yeah, I’m thinking a lot about it. In fact, we just had some of our team up at Chicago last week with some of the New Thing networking…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. I love those guys.
Josh Husmann — …with Dave Ferguson at Community Christian, and ah you know he was talking about the future of the church, both in person, the meta church, ah, they’re doing some church work in prisons, and ah you know, thinking through like all the different aspects of what we’re trying to accomplish. And for us I think that the next thing in the Mercy Road family of churches we’ve really proven, hey if we send out hundreds of people and we’re highly invested early on, this works.
Josh Husmann — But we’re now looking at, hey if if we sent a $100,000 of resources and ah gave you the whole playbook; we wrote we wrote a whole Church Planting Playbook that’s going into print, and here’s how we do this. It’s a different model of ministry because we don’t just do small groups. We do one-year discipling huddles ah, we do ah communities on mission, these outposts. And and then we financially resource those, the the finances operate differently. So here’s how we do it, and then ah I’ll personally coach you, but you could plant this anywhere in the world. That’s kind of the next step for us.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Josh Husmann — We’re a little ways from that next leap. But I think that’s what gets me excited is we’re trying to reach so many people for Christ, and and when it doesn’t require so much investment up front and people can have more freedom, that gets me excited to partner with planters that way.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that.
Josh Husmann — And then also within that you mentioned a residency program. We’re actually working in partnership with Indiana Wesleylan to create that at our church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So good, Josh. This is been a great, you know, I got a page of notes here. Lots of things to chew on – really appreciate this. Is there anything else you’d love to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Josh Husmann — Well yeah I think in general the thing that I always encourage people that I think they miss is, this is the the practical stuff I wish somebody would have told me, which why I love this podcast.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Josh Husmann — But you get beyond that and then get practical in your context means take this stuff and go, okay, but in our area what is the Spirit of God telling me? I always think we we hear from these great leaders. Not me but like, you know, they’re really great leaders at the conferences and all that kind of stuff, and we just think I could never be like that. I couldn’t achieve that. And you can’t. You probably are never gonna be as the amazing communicator that some of those people are, or or I know I won’t be.
Josh Husmann — So what I’ve had to do is go, Okay, but what is the Spirit of God telling me?
Rich Birch — So good.
Josh Husmann — Like if we just listen take take this kind of stuff and go, okay but in our context, what would this look like?
Rich Birch — Right.
Josh Husmann — And stop thinking that we if that if I don’t find the cookie cutter version from the person down the road, I can’t do this. No you you can. And it’ll probably do it better than ah, we ever did it. Because we’re not that organized. We’re kind of crazy church planters. You could probably do this way better. And but be believe that the spirit of God still speaks and could use you in that way. Man I’m telling you really amazing things will happen in the American Church if we start thinking like that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah I love that – just that whole like stop trying to live somebody else’s vision, right? Like what’s God called you to do?
Josh Husmann — Yes.
Rich Birch — What’s he uniquely set you up to be, and and why not run towards that. This has been so fantastic today, Josh. I appreciate it. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church or the network? Where do we want to send them?
Josh Husmann — Yeah, ah mercyroad.cc is the original Carmel church – mercyroad.church is the Mercy Road family of churches. And Multiply Indiana is the greater umbrella for church planting in Indiana…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Josh Husmann — …that we’re doing and you can find me on most social media just Josh Husmann – one S, two Ns.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Josh – appreciate you being here, and thanks for being on the show today.
Josh Husmann — Thank you.
Leading Slow & Steady Change in a Fast Growing Church with Mark Williams
Oct 20, 2022
Thanks for joining us at the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Mark Williams, Executive Pastor at New Day Christian Church in Port Charlotte, Florida.
The last few years have seen a lot of changes for church leaders and their congregations. How do you continue to grow and change when people are burned out and trust needs to be rebuilt? Listen in as Mark shares about the slow and steady changes that have helped New Day build steady momentum leading to growth.
Make sure both are aligned. // When New Day offered Mark a job, he was hesitant to take it at first. He wanted to make sure the lead pastor had 100% trust in him before he took the job. The lead pastor and executive pastor need to be aligned and trust each other. As part of this process, New Day’s leadership and staff read through The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey and made it their mantra.
Take your time to build trust. // Working the first six months as Executive Pastor was a hard time to build trust with some people. Mark took his time, not making major changes right away. He focused on building relationships so the staff could see he cared about them, and waited two years before introducing changes. Even small changes can bring stress, so you may need to ease into them when building trust in some situations.
Trust lay leaders. // One of the things that Mark changed was the mindset around hiring people. Over-hiring can slow down the progression of a church. Instead of hiring another person for every need that comes up, look at lay leaders and volunteers to see who might be able to help with a project. Who can you develop and empower to help with things the staff is planning?
Celebrate, don’t beg. // Mark also worked with helping New Day make changes on the finances. One of those was communicating that giving is an act of worship. New Day helped people understand that they have an opportunity to partner financially with the church and see lives transformed. The staff shared stories celebrating the ways that generosity was impacting lives in order to show people how they can participate in that work.
Plan ahead and make changes. // New Day knows that some things they’ve always done will need to be changed as the church expands to more campuses. So they are preemptively changing some of their leadership development and processes regarding how events are done. They are making the plans for slow and steady change now before encountering troubles that could quickly arise in the future.
Be the one who pushes forward. // It’s easy to start with an idea, but it can be hard to keep the focus and momentum going over the long haul. The executive pastor can help keep everyone pushing forward and stay focused on the goal.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we bring you a leader to both inspire and equip you and this week I’m super excited to bring you Mark Williams. He is the executive pastor at a church called New Day Christian Church, this is in Port Charlotte, Florida, which is a great place to be. And and this is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It was started in 1959; the current lead Pastor Rusty Rusty Russell started in 2010. Super excited for this conversation. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Williams — Thanks! Thanks! Appreciate you having me, Rich.
Rich Birch — Oh this is going to be great. Why don’t fill out the picture tell me a little bit more about the church. What did I miss? If people were to arrive this weekend, what would they experience? Give us a bit of the flavor for the church.
Mark Williams — So I mean for New Day, we’re we’re a church that yeah as you said, starting ’59 but to went through some bumps along the way, some leadership decisions that… they built a building in ’04, hurricane hit, boom, set everything…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark Williams — Actually building standards changed, cost of materials went up in ‘05, and um…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark Williams — …and they launched that building. And as soon as they built the building, opened up in 05, so what they were able to pay for and they couldn’t build everything.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark Williams — And so we currently sit in that same 35,000 square foot building. We run… last weekend we had 2000 people on site, and so when you really start to equate that it just doesn’t the math doesn’t make sense.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Mark Williams — And so we we you know we park in a grassy knoll in the back of the property, and the whole nine yards. So it gets very interesting around here. But as far as ah in 2005 shortly after they opened inadvertently they let their lead pastor go…
Rich Birch — Ok.
Mark Williams — It was probably ah the the best leadership decision.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — The process wasn’t necessarily the greatest and…
Rich Birch — Ok ok yeah.
Mark Williams — And so prior to Rusty’s arrival in 2010 they had ah Minister Jamie Snyder was in. And he kind of went through and got things aligned and everything like that. Still you know the growth was there but nothing major.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — And it really wasn’t until probably ’15/’16 that I think that the congregation knowing, the community knows that Rusty’s here to stay. He’s not leaving. And I think and he’s also been very in kind of putting himself into the community a little bit more. He works he’s the development coach so for Port Charlotte high school. So.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Mark Williams — He he goes in there. He’s at every football game. He goes lifts waste with the the boys. And so he is like in the community, and that transition really just started New Day started growing. And and really probably our biggest growth what happened started having it probably right around ’17/’16-’17…
Rich Birch — OK.
Mark Williams — …amplified up ’18. So we were just been on a a metric growth, adding services and those kind of things. And then probably the biggest thing for the biggest change for us was 2020.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Williams — Everybody says you know, ah such a horrible thing. We grew. Not…
Rich Birch — Cool tell me about that. What that look like?
Mark Williams — Now that’s not necessarily in person but we grew.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah.
Mark Williams — And we were still, you know, we baptized over 100 people in 2020…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark Williams — …coming in from watching us online. We never had that experience before so we leveraged it. A lot of churches they were closed down. I think we were doing online streaming for I think it was only four or five weeks…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mark Williams — …and we started meeting outside because we live in Southwest Florida…
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Mark Williams — …and so it was easy to just say, hey we’re gonna meet outside. So in May we started meeting outside. Storms came and we’re just like well, it’s too hot. It’s gonna rain. What do we do? And so we said we’ll meet inside.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Mark Williams — And so we just did some creative stuff to get people where they feel comfortable. And we live in the second oldest demographic county in America. So…
Rich Birch — Really?
Mark Williams — Yes.
Rich Birch — Ok, ok.
Mark Williams — And the if anybody’s ever heard of The Villages in Florida.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Williams — That’s the oldest…
Rich Birch — OK.
Mark Williams — …demographic so…
Rich Birch — And then Port Charlotte’s number two.
Mark Williams — And Port Charlotte’s number two. So our our, you know, we I’d say 50% of our congregation is sixty plus.
Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting huh.
Mark Williams — And so um the nice thing is when you’re you’re moving to southwest Florida, you’re you’re more apt to change. And so we don’t have a lot of issues when we want to make changes. And so we make very logical changes. We try to make sure that we’re, you know, how I always kind of describe it to the staff is like, hey when we’re gonna make a change. We’re we’re we’re on a cruise ship and so our changes need to be thought out and we’re gonna make slow changes. We don’t want a bunch of people puking off the side of the boat. So you know…
Rich Birch — One step at a time.
Mark Williams — And so the larger we get, we just need to keep making small, you know, small changes and small adjustments, but making sure they’re always looking further down ahead – where are we going and where we going to how are we going to get there? So 2020 we grew financially, we grew numerically, and you know, I think last year we were back to pre-covid…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Mark Williams — …in person. And then we hit snowbird season in the summertime.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — But we’re back to last last last week we had 2000 people. And that is ahead of our pre-covid numbers for this season. So snowbirds don’t come back usually until November.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — So based on that we should, you know, we’re probably getting gain another six seven hundred people in November to May.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Mark Williams — And so so just makes an interesting…
Rich Birch — So yeah, strong. That’s great, strong you know results and that’s that’s and that’s interesting, encouraging ah you know even reflection on the you know 2020s impact and then how that’s, you know, what that’s looked like continue to shuffle out. How do you guys define the executive pastor role? It looks different at so many different churches. It’s it’s kind of like I always people ask me what does executive pastor do? I say well the the most true thing is they do what the lead pastor doesn’t want to do, and that looks different in every church. So what what does that look like for you? How do you guys define that role? What’s that look like?
Mark Williams — I mean pretty much that’s it. If Rusty doesn’t want to do it. He’s not doing it. I’m gonna do it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.
Mark Williams — But ah, probably honestly I came in in 2000… 2018, four years ago, and after a really kind of ah, an interesting leadership shift, and some really, you know, some trust a lot of trust was broken. Um, and so I came in and one of the steps was I I turned them down three or four times to to move here.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Mark Williams — I really didn’t want to move to Southwest Florida.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Williams — I like Northeast Ohio where I came from. I know I’m weird but um, but it’s…
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s funny. As people do obviously you love the plains of Ohio. You often hear people say that, you know, give me flat cornfields. That’s what I’m looking for.
Mark Williams — We we had hills in Ohio so…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Mark Williams — But it was more about seasons and it’s hard to really get excited for Christmas when it’s nice and warm and you’re at the beach and stuff…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yes. Yeah yeah, yeah, fun.
Mark Williams — I got so but it was just so kind of coming back to that, my biggest thing was ah, Rusty’s got to have 100% trust in me. And I’m not going to I don’t want to come there until he has a you know he can feel like he can have that. So through prayer and through a lot of conversations, I think few three or four months later, we finally came to terms that okay God’s calling us to another ministry role. We still weren’t sure it was New Day. And and eventually it was just like okay, it’s New Day. And we need to come in here. But we need to come in with, you know, full speed ahead, full tilt. And but at the end of the day, it’s got to be, you know, Rusty’s got to be completely aligned with me and he’s got to trust me.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mark Williams — And so part of that process, they started going through “The Speed of Trust” through Stephen Covey.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Williams — And we’re going through that book to kind of build the trust back in with the the leadership, and um and the staff, and all those things. And so I read it and it was just pretty much that’s going to be our mantra. So we make every staff member coming on, you read that book. Yes, it has nothing to do with Jesus in there. We get that. But the, you know, the four cores um the four cores of credibility, and the 13 behaviors, those are things that we expect our staff. So we extend a ton of trust to our staff and we really empower them to do that.
Mark Williams — So my job is is, yes I do everything that Rusty doesn’t want to do. But I mean my first thing hitting the ground running was to right-side our finances, to ensure that we were able to grow. They started an 8:00 Saturday or Sunday morning service and I was like that’s just we’re not going to grow.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — We can’t do it with the current format. So you got to make a prime time hour. And Saturday night I think it was in February of 2019 we are open start our first two thousand our first Saturday night service. And we grew, and we continue to grow. So we got to make, you know, you got to repool. The only way for growth is to pull seats out or build a big, you know, build more seats.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Mark Williams — And so and that kind of fits into a model that the church has wanted to launch campuses and those kind of things.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Williams — So we’re on the we’re on the precipice, hopefully. I’m gonna say we’re there. We’re in permitting stages to open us our second campus in a strip mall in Northport…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark Williams — …which is ah where a next group of group of people are at and coming in. And so we know that’s where God’s calling us to do is to go into multisite. And it’s really to take the local church back to local church.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Williams — And we want to be in the local community so we could build some massive mega structure or something like that. But we just don’t think that’s what God’s calling us to do. We feel like we would rather be…
Rich Birch — Right. Closer to the people.
Mark Williams — …a half dozen or more sites. We’ll always keep building campuses until there’s no place for us to go. Or we just you know to to continue to spread the gospel. It’s all about as the mission.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Mark Williams — It’s ah it’s not about growing numerically. It’s about honestly keeping people from going to hell.
Rich Birch — Totally.
Mark Williams — And so that model so that’s my job is pretty much to remove the barriers so that we can hit hit that model, and fulfill the mission that we feel God’s calling us to do to make disciples who make disciples.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Mark Williams — And build the team, and build team synergy. So we’re all focused on that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well so I so the thing I love I’d love to pull apart a little bit, get a little bit more into, is a lot of times executive pastors in in the church are um, you know, this isn’t obviously universally true. But you often hear the story of like someone who’s maybe from within the church, they maybe were you know in the different field, and they um you know they were they were brought in they maybe so it’s first time they’ve been in vocational ministry. Or it’s someone who’s maybe come up through a different system. So there used to be the group’s guy, or they used to, you know, they were involved in family ministry. The fact that you moved in in a season where the church was attempting to rebuild trust, that’s an interesting um, kind of um intersection for you to find yourself at, from a leadership point of view. Could you pull that apart a little bit more? When you maybe when you think about your first, you know, hundred days, your first six months, what were some of those things that you found that helped you gain trust? I love the focus with Rusty, but then even with the staff team and others, as you as you found yourself landing in in the community?
Mark Williams — It’s it’s kind of it actually the first six months was hard. I think um I think I wanted to quit probably 10 times, personally. It was hard because I mean everybody loved you know my my the guy that… and I mean the congregation kept saying, you know, hey, you got big shoes to fill.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — And so it’s like I’m not that guy, and he’s not me. And and we will eat we will eat differently. But so it it really took a long time to build that. I knew… so some of the staff expect me to come in here and start throwing things around and blowing things up. And I felt that, you know, it’s one of those things… moving moving furniture in the room of a disoriented person creates more chaos. So the worst thing that I could do is start changing things.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — And so I just was building slowly, building relationships, building trust, going this guy is actually for real – maybe actually does truly care about me, and ministry, and the kingdom. And and so it was it was I would say I didn’t make any major catastrophic changes for almost two years.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Mark Williams — Even though I suggested Saturday night. But it was like kind of hey guys we really should look at doing this and they were like oh yeah, we should do this. So and kind of backdooring it and making it everybody else’s idea…
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Mark Williams — …helped, you know, helped bring it along. But it was just small, even some of the small changes that I made, it still created some, you know, there was just a lot of… it would brought back some of the stressors that people really weren’t ready for and they were surprised they got. And so as you kind of dove through those things and you’re building that trust, I took basically my thought process I will take two years before I do major catastrophic decisions within some of the staff. And um, and try to model some some things around.
Mark Williams — So I tolerate some staff longer than I needed to, and but I thought, you know, just it wasn’t healthy for their congregation. It was changing some mindsets. So through that two years, I changed the mindset from we need to keep hiring people, when I’m looking at the the finances aren’t there to keep hiring people, but it actually is counter-indication to what I think we’re called to do. Ministers are called to develop. And so and basically I looked at them all I says if you’re doing direct ministry, that’s where you’re going to get in trouble.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Williams — If you if you’re in the middle of the weeds, that’s when you’re going to get written up. That’s how you will get fired. Um and so it’s they’re like, you know, stop shunt you know, like what? But what you’re telling me what? I’m like yeah, I don’t… you need to develop people. So it kind of goes into a leadership model that if the organizational chart of of is you know Jesus first, and we go through to the first person that walks into the door. How are we getting you get that guest to be a regular attender? How are we going to get the regular attender to be a member? How are we going to get that member and, you know, to be on the team, serve teams? How are we going to get that person, you know, that team member on moving up? Our goal should be to develop them to be an elder of the church. How do we do? Is everbody going to be an elder of the church? No. But that doesn’t mean we don’t work hard on the developing them.
Mark Williams — And we extend trust to them. We train them. We work ourselves out of a job. Because if I work myself out of a job doing this lane, or that lane, or that lane, then God’s—trust me—God’s not going to make you go, I can sit at home all day long. He’s gonna open up another door. And he’s going to have you you know, bring something else up. So the more we can empower the the lay leader, if you will…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Mark Williams — …the more ministry that we can happen. The the more you know we’re getting more people in, we’re getting visitors coming. We’re going to get people into the baptistry. We’re going to see life changing, life change happen because of the members of the church, not the pastoral staff.
Rich Birch — Yes, so true. You know the thing so the thing the two things I want to underline, and then want to come back to a part of that. So friends, you’re listening to executive an executive pastor at one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And I love your emphasis on, hey we’re not going to go quick on this stuff. We’re going to slow down. We’re going to, you know, I want to build trust over an extended period of time. I think there’s this perception of like if you’re going to be a fast-growing church, you’ve got to just like move fast and break stuff. And you know which is often breaking people. And so I love that encouragement around like, hey we’ve got to go slow on this stuff. We’ve got to, you know, work a cruise ship make instrument or make small nudges in the right direction over extended period of time.
Rich Birch — And then this whole notion of hiring, and it’s absolutely true. One of the it’s been proven a loss of stuff statistically that actually one of the death knells of churches is actually over-hiring. That actually will slow down the progression and the growth of a church. So let’s talk more about that. Let’s talk about the how did you move? How did you shift your staff culture, your team culture, from you see a problem and the knee-jerk reaction is we need to hire somebody? Ah, you know we need to find somebody, even if it’s ten hours a week, can we just hire somebody ten hours a week? Ah to: no, actually I’ve got to develop others. How how did you do that? How did you articulate that? What does that look like? And then how how have you taken some even early steps in trying to develop that with with your team?
Mark Williams — I mean in the early stages, the one thing I didn’t really hide behind it because they didn’t really know how bad the finances were here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — So I didn’t even know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — I probably wouldn’t have taken a job if I knew how bad the finance. But um you… So I was like can’t even we just can’t afford.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Mark Williams — I was like, guys we can’t afford to bring somebody on. So it was it was just like, okay so who do you have around you that can do that? And so a lot of it was as I got to know more people it was like, no bring Bill in. Bring George in. Bring whoever, you know. There’s somebody in your ministry that’s immersed in your ministry. They are rocking it. Why are you holding them back?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — Why are you afraid to pull them into the fold? Um, you know I talked to a gentleman yesterday, just grabbed coffee with him, was like you know we have a similar… I was a volunteer firefighter; he was a retired firefighter. And so, you know, we have this little bond, and I just I pushed him I says I need you to step in. And he’s like, what does that mean? I’m like, I need you to step in and be this guy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — And so I laid out who I want him to be and who I desire him to be. And it wasn’t just to go he needed and he’s like, I can do that. I’m ready to do that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Williams — I’ve made time in my life to do that. So it’s not just but sometimes it’s just releasing him.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Williams — And he he’s right, he’s just sitting there waiting. He doesn’t want to offend anybody. I’m going, get in here. Get messy with us.
Rich Birch — Yes, jump in, jump in. Exactly.
Mark Williams — You know, right? You know we… yeah, so just but is is slowly doing it, but also also kind of releasing others. And I’m the worst person to release stuff. And I I’m I can preach it all day long. But I I…
Rich Birch — It sounds so good.
Mark Williams — It it does I have a plan for that. And you need to follow my plan.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Williams — But and so I have to I had to model some as stuff. I got to release stuff. And that was hard. It’s very hard for me to release strategic planning, and releasing some thought process, and some dreaming. So, you know, as I pull back what God’s calling us to do and what we’re doing is like, okay how do I release this? How do I let it go? What do I need to do? And that’s, you know, once he once some of those pages were open, it was like easy to just dive in and say, here you go.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. So good. I think that’s such a critical lesson for us all as we, you know, I think there’s this particularly as we grow as the church we gets to a couple thousand people there becomes enough finances floating around that the staff can think, oh like I can just you know we just buy our way out of this problem. But that’s not the case, you know. We’ve got to continue to it’s Ephesians 4, right? We’ve got to continue to develop people and release them. Um, that’s so good.
Rich Birch — Now you you brought up the finances there a little bit. I love the joke of I’m not even sure how bad things were. Can you talk through what did that look like – how did you right the ship financially? Um, maybe on both sides where there’s things that you did on the on the revenue side, or the expense side, to help wrestle through those in your in these these first you know four or five years since you’ve been here?
Mark Williams — I would say in the in the initial phases it was more of the fact of just assessing, you know, once I actually peel back all of it and, you know, church of you know church is running probably 1400/1500 people at that point in 2018, so this is, you know, we’re on that I mean we’re in at beginning and trying to release up. And and I closed the you know, my first month and I really shouldn’t give these numbers, but I closed the first month…
Rich Birch — Sure. No, that’s fine. You don’t have to.
Mark Williams — Um I mean I probably had more…
Rich Birch — …in the negative spot.
Mark Williams — It wasn’t negative, but I I mean it would be a decent amount for a home.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah,
Not not an organization. Basically I did not have enough money to to make payroll…
Rich Birch —Yep, yep, right.
…if money didn’t come in next week so… So that’s that was my tension. I was just like so.
Rich Birch — Not where we want to be, obviously. You know you don’t you shouldn’t be measuring cash on hand in days. That’s not the hope, right? You know, like yeah, that’s interesting.
Mark Williams — Correct and floating credit card. You know float their credit card. Not always yeah, pay it off. No it needs to be paid off.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Mark Williams — So on the on the payment side. It was like this our goal is we’re paying the credit card off before the end of the year.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — Every month it’s paid off. We’re not floating some finances. And revenue was simply just some of it was just simple. It was like you guys moved from passing the plate, which is great. You put boxes in there. Okay, you know that’s a model. But giving is an act of worship. And we we can’t forget the conversation that since it is an act of worship that it is a part of worship.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Mark Williams — And so we should have a conversation about the fact. you that means so when I walked in it, it was eliminated from the worship service. We didn’t talk about it.
Mark Williams — It was just it was just talked in the back. So I mean honestly was just some of this was that. And then going through going, look at this person’s life. Look at this person’s life – share these life stories.
Rich Birch — Right, these stories. Yep, absolutely.
Mark Williams — Have conversations about the wins. Don’t be afraid to talk about and it’s not. You’re not asking for money as much as you’re saying you, we want you to financially partner with what what you’re doing here. And so just the simple language change and actually having language made a huge milestone step. And then going and and we never did go in and browbeat people for money.
Rich Birch — No
Mark Williams — We didn’t we didn’t, you know, plead with them. We didn’t ask I never beg and said hey you know we don’t have ah we don’t have enough, you know, there was never fear brought in. It was always about celebration.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it.
Mark Williams — And so through those constant celebration stories, it led us into well we knew we were gonna launch a campus and in Northport. We thought it was going to take us a year you a year sooner than it did, or it’s going to, because you know a horrible thing called 2020 happened and…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mark Williams — But you know March 29, that was our that was our commitment Sunday for the capital campaign to pay for the campus so everybody and her brother was like…
Rich Birch — Oh gosh! Wowzers! You weren’t even meeting; you weren’t even face to face, if I remember, you said you were four or five weeks not even, you know, just online.
Mark Williams — Yeah so we went a week lot later than everybody else did, but we still did a commitment drive.
Rich Birch — Wow! Yep.
Mark Williams — And we still and we gave everybody the ability to do the commitments online. We offered everybody communion every week. So we did a drive through communion – pick up your communion for service every single week.
Rich Birch — Okay, cool. Yeah.
Mark Williams — We did that for three, four months. I I called our communion supplier. We I bought 10,000 units of communion. They’re like, what are you doing? Because nobody else is doing this. I says we’re providing communion – we do communion weekly; it’s part of who we are.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
It’s part of our worship environment so we’re going to do this every week, and we’re providing it for our family. So if you need it, stop by.
Rich Birch — Stop by; we’ll get it to you. Yeah.
Mark Williams — And and so we gave, you know, weeks worth, you know or, you know, ten weeks worth. And part of our success through that five weeks is we, you know, they said 10 people or less. So your small groups gather together, worship together…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — …and do the whole thing together, and then the group leaders would come, get communion for ’em and. And so we always had communion ready to go. And just we kept being the church. And that’s how we continued to grow.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark Williams —Because they were they were inviting their neighbors, like oh I come coming over, and their entire subdivision would do Easter that Easter they did all did Easter together.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Mark Williams — And then one guy brought in, picked up 3-400 cups of communion, gave it to everybody in their community. I was like can I do that? Like I don’t care. You know…
Mark Williams — You know and so just those kind of things that, you know, and then the money the moneys continue to come in, and people partnered with some ministry and we’ve been able to supplement things, buy things. Um, we’ve been able to celebrate some amazing things. We’ve you know we’ve given a ton of money away, benevolence.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mark Williams — Um, the first time I’ve ever done this in my entire life. The end of 2020 because our our staff worked their tails off…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — And so I had money left over in the salary budget line, and I went to the elders and said you need to give these guys some…
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Mark Williams — …so not a raise but you need ’em a bonus.
Rich Birch — Yeah little a gift of appreciation. Yeah yeah.
Mark Williams — Yeah. And it was and so they got, you know, it was like first time I ever said, I’m going to give a bonus. And it it was like it was like we want to celebrate what you guys did.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that’s great..
Mark Williams — And and you know so they worked hard, and and ah honored that. So money’s always been and one of those things and other things are just it just always been just we’re always just pushing one step further. And I would say that if whenever we see the need, New Day’s gonna step into the gap.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — Right now we’re struggling with getting, you know, we’re very passionate about conservative Christian worldviews. So maybe with a solid solid Christian worldview. True Biblical worldview. So um, when we’re hiring staff and that’s we were having a hard time finding it. And so we partnered with a bible college and this January, will we have a full fledged partnership. We’re gonna be holding classes here at New Day.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Mark Williams — And we hired a pastor to oversee that – just 100% oversee that, get it launched. And and the money’s gonna come in for that. We don’t…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — You know it’s not 100% there yet. But God will provide that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well and I love that being, you know, there’s so many things you said there that I think were so good. That this idea around when churches are struggling financially I think so many times we can look so much on the expense side like okay, let’s find… and you’ve got to be wise on that, right? We’ve got to go through and be you know super wise. But then, just even a few things around you know, clearly articulating the vision, taking time to celebrate, talking about hey wow God’s at work, being clear on where money is being spent, like a sum of those those things, that’s a part of what God uses to ultimately see things turn around. My impression is that things are in a much better place today than they were ah, you know, say four or five years ago even if you’re, you know, just the way you’re talking about even, hey wanting to to launch ah ah, a school partnership, all of that, which is amazing. Praise God – that’s incredible.
Mark Williams — Yeah, no God’s God’s done some amazing things. Ah, we’re actually I’m in the finishing up a merger. We have a small church in Sarasota that is that has reached out to us last year, earlier in the year and I’m we are finalizing we will be probably in 2023 launching a campus in Sarasota.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Not on our radar, not on our plan, but God brought them to us. They came to us and so we will be launching a campus in Sarasota…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Mark Williams — …which is about 45 minutes from here.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — Little more missional in experience for us. But you know nothing… God has just completely ordained this whole process.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — And um and so yeah, now we’re ending up with a third campus in six months after we open another campus and…
Rich Birch — Yeah, exactly. Not surprising though. That’s, you know, that’s God blessing your church. That’s that’s amazing. So when you look up over the horizon a little bit, what are some of the questions that you have as you’re thinking about the future at New Day? Obviously you’ve got a couple campuses coming down the pipeline. There’s a few other pieces there. Are is there anything else as you kind of look to the future that you’re excited about? I know it’s slow and steady change at New Day, you’re not it’s not next week, you know, we’re looking down a little farther down the road, but what what kind of things are you looking forward to?
Mark Williams — Ah, well actually I have two. There’s two campuses I probably see in 2024 we will launch two more campuses.
Rich Birch — Oh cool.
Mark Williams — Um, and then most of the reason is that we have to find we have to find seats in our current…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — …in the Port Charlotte campus we have to find seats. Northport’s only gonna pull so many but other at the other areas are gonna pull some. And so launching two more campuses will pull more seats which will allow us to grow in both locations. So we can see exponential growth.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Mark Williams — I mean on my radar in 4 years will be everything will double.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — So I told the staff yesterday said, you know, Lord willing 4 years from now we’re going to be a church of 5000, and we’re gonna be a church of with, you know, five, six campuses. And so the question is to them, I trust you so how are we gonna do this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — And so that was the question yesterday is tell me how we’re going to do this.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — What do we need now to to start looking for now? So we’re changing some of our language now, we’re changing some of our our leadership development now. We’re changing some of our processes, and and how we’re doing events. And all those things are there they’re being changed today because we know that we’re gonna have to have that change very, very quickly.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Well and there’s no doubt it gets back to even that leadership development piece. The thing about multisite and being, you know, I’ve led in that in environments like that that are fast growing that are, you’re pacing, hey we’re going to double in two, you know, two years from now. You can see where from where we are today. And developing and releasing leaders is core to the middle of all of that. Like that is the um, the limiter, right? iIf we can’t find and release people who are, to your point, you know, the the type of leader that you’re looking for, that they’re um, you know that they’re on brand, they’re missional, they’re exactly what you’re hoping, you know, however, that works that language works for you in, you know, at the church, man, that that doesn’t happen by happenstance. You’ve got to work through that one step at a time. Yeah that’s that’s great. That’s fantastic. That’s great. This been a great conversation. Anything else you want to share just as we’re ah wrapping up today’s dialogue?
Mark Williams — While there I mean it’s just you know I think the biggest thing I’d like to share is just you got to love what you do.
Rich Birch — So true.
And when you love what you do, you know, my assistant yelled at me today because my my calendar is ugly. And and I just said, but yeah, you know what? But I love what I do.
Rich Birch — Right, right. OK.
Mark Williams — And you know we work six days a week, and we just do yeah we just push through. And I think the key is is that when you truly fall into the fact that I did come from lay leadership in to the ministry, and so I know it can be done. And then I grew, you know, moved up in the organization into an executive pasture role, then came here as the executive pastor. And they original wanted to hire me as a business guy and I said no, if I can’t pastor the staff, if I can’t be that person, I don’t want to do it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — And so so many people think the big executive pastor is they that is the business side of the organization. It’s the human resource of our organization. It’s not it is it is the vision. It’s the dream side. It is the implementation, is the its alignment, it is caring for people, you know, recognizing where the finances were going. You know, we’ve already given next year’s raises in August…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Mark Williams — …because and we also gave a pan… we also gave an inflation stipend in in March because we saw gas price. How are you know y’all are used to… You can’t afford this.
Mark Williams — So it’s coming up with how are we going to do those things? And investing into the staff because I truly care about, you know, all 18 of our staff members. And how I gonna love them through it, and their families. And I want them to stay, and and I don’t want to hire another 10 just to make it easy around here.
Mark Williams — So but I think just going back to each one of them is you got to find your call…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — …and you really just, you know, and never let up off the gas. And that’s what I think that’s probably the biggest thing, so the response for 2020 from us is we never pulled our foot off the gas pedal. And we stayed.
Rich Birch — Right? Stay focused. So on that. Yeah, totally. Well and that relates even to your cruise ship analogy, right? That it’s like there’s I think too many churches, are too many leaders, it’s like they’re quick starts. They get the ball rolling and then they’re constantly changing as opposed to having the the the focused momentum of like we are heading in this direction. We’re going to keep going in this direction kind of regardless of where there’s like this weight and momentum behind the church that our job is to is to keep pushing forward. Um, and so we’re not going to be erratic and be all over the place. We want to stay focused in in our effort. I think that’s good.
Mark Williams — Right. I mean so my job I think probably the thing that I do the best that I do the most is I’m always looking five years ahead.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — And so it’s what am I going to do to get there 5 years ahead. I’m now at the point where I can trust the staff to say, this is where we’re going 5 years ahead. They couldn’t have handled that two years ago or even three years ago.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Sure, sure, yeah.
Mark Williams — And so and so now they’re able to hear and are going and yeah, some do throw up a little bit, and you know get that experience, but it’s that’s where we’re going…
Rich Birch — Yeah, right.
Mark Williams — …so now you understand why we’re making those changes today to get to that point. And it’s just, you know, I never want I never want to look back and going, yeah, but we could have…
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — And I use the analogy that oftentimes we stop, start and stop, start and stop, and it doesn’t take much for the train to keep a train from ever going. Just a small little block they put in, and they bolt it to the track, and that’s it and it’ll never go. But once it’s going, you can’t put that block in it’ll it’ll get it’ll get shot off the track.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — You’re not going to stop the train once it’s going. The issue is so often we we say that we have to have everything too far planned. So we don’t have everything too far planned I would say there’s sometimes we’re put in tracks right in front of the train, as we’re going along too.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yes.
Mark Williams — So we want to use the transportation analogy we’re put and there’s a few times that our fingers have been bit.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — I’m not good I’m not going to deny that, you know, ah. I think in 2019 when we had we had 7 seats open in the worship center…
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s crazy.
Mark Williams — …and no seats were next to each other.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Mark Williams — And so when you bring that family in…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mark Williams — …when there’s 2 to 3 or 4 people and you can’t sit next to each other, guess what they’re not doing?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mark Williams — Not staying.
Rich Birch — Right. No, exactly? Yeah, absolutely. Well I really appreciate this. Thank you so much for your your time today, Mark. If people want to track with you, or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Mark Williams — So I mean our website is ndcchurch.com
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mark Williams — …and you can always just ah, shoot me an email if you have any questions of anything we’re doing here. It’s markwilliams [at] ndcchurch.com
Rich Birch — Perfect. Appreciate that, Mark. I’m so thankful that you were on the show. Appreciate you taking time out today to spend with us. Thank you for that.
Mark Williams — Hey thanks – appreciate you. Thanks for what you’re doing.
Gaining Brand Clarity That Makes Growing Your Church’s Mission Simple with Joey Speers
Oct 13, 2022
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to talk with Joey Speers, a brand builder and digital marketer. He and his wife founded the Speers Collective Inc., the parent company of Creativ Rise and Brand Therapy.
Joey is talking about how churches can generate brand clarity that makes growing their mission simple and enables them to connect with the people they’re trying to serve.
Intentionally shape your brand. // Joey defines a church’s “brand” as the feeling people get when they experience and interact with the organization. It encompasses the logo, the interactions people have when they come to your church, the message they hear, the conversations with staff, and so on. Church leaders have to think about this because if we don’t intentionally shape how our churches are being experienced, we can lose momentum on our missions.
Your brand is about the people. // A church’s brand is also about the people it serves. One thing a lot of churches do wrong is make their entire brand about themselves on their websites, social media, and even Sunday services. The brand is not about the church or organization, it’s about what God is doing in the people the church is serving.
Understand your brand identity. // The first part of brand identity is the internal characteristics of who you are as a brand. If your church was an individual person walking down the road, what would they say is their reasoning for doing what they do? What gets them out of bed in the morning? Who do they love to help? How do they make people feel?
Customer identity. // The second part of brand identity is customer identity. Who would the customer, or community member, that you met walking down the road be? What do they believe about the world and what are some of the problems they’re up against? What are some of their hopes and desires? How do they want to experience change so they overcome their problems?
Filter everything through your framework. // Everything within your ministry becomes easier when you have a framework of who you’re trying to be as an organization. Whether you’re making your announcements, planning your groups or sermon series, or even onboarding new staff, people need to know what part they play and how it connects to your mission in the world.
Covid gives churches a chance to relaunch. // People have more questions about the role the church is playing in our local and national community than ever before. Churches need to meet people in their questioning. If your organization isn’t clear on why it exists and why someone will benefit from it, people will pass it by and look for something else that can serve their need. Relaunch your brand with the focus of letting people know that you are for them and why.
Brand Therapy provides clarity. // Brand Therapy is a consulting system Joey built to help people find clarity in their brand identity, their customer identity, and identity alignment. First Brand Therapy will come in and talk with your team to clarify who your church is, who you are trying to serve, and how these things fit together. Then they’ll put all the data together in a guide that you can use as a framework for your church communications, both internally to staff, and externally to the people you are serving.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Hey everybody! Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today is absolutely no exception. Super excited to have a newer friend of mine, Joey Speers. He’s a brand builder and digital marketer. He and I are both within Carey Nieuwhof’s leadership community, his private community, called the Art of Leadership Academy. Ah, and we both are active in there and we were talking online. So I said hey Joe, I’d love to have you come on the podcast. He and his wife Christy are founders of The Speers Collective Incorporated which is the parent of Creativ Rise and Brand Therapy. Brand Therapy helps clients like you actually, like churches, generate super brand clarity and makes growing ah your mission possible. Joey, so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.
Joey Speers — Thanks for having me on, Rich. Excited to chat.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you talk to me – give me a bit of the Joey Speers story, for folks that don’t know. Ah, give us a bit of context, your background, that sort of thing.
Joey Speers — Yeah, so a little bit of context, I’m ah sitting here recording this from Northern California. I’m not originally from here, however. I am Canadian actually, from where you’re from. We’re not not not too far apart.
Rich Birch — Yeah, right around the corner.
Joey Speers — Um, yeah so raised raised in Ontario, raised in the church. Ah, for that context for this this conversation. Started a business when I was younger at 14. Really loved it. Got ah just had a knack to want to solve problems at ah at a young age, and it just caught fire in terms of my passion for it. Um, and it’s been I’m 23 now; I’ll be 24 in ah twenty days which is pretty crazy. I feel like I’m getting old, Rich.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Joey Speers — But yeah, so it feels funny saying I’m 24, but I will be going on my tenth year of of being an entrepreneur, if you want to put it that way.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joey Speers — Um, but I was flying home from LA once, a girl tapped me on the shoulder in the airport, and I married her. So met my wife in the airport. She’s from Northern California. I decided to leave Canada, come down here and pursue her, and best decision I ever made.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joey Speers — So I’m now sitting here in Northern California and yeah my wife and I run a couple different businesses. We’ve got a photography content um creation and strategy agency. We’ve got my brand agency, which is Brand Therapy – mentioned. And then we’ve got an education platform in the middle of that. Because when we look at the world, we just believe there should be more creatives, like us, that get to do what they love for a living and succeed. And so ah yeah, Creativ Rise is an education platform – it teaches creators business so they can run a business. So yeah, it’s a blast. We get to do a lot of fun things day to day and so can’t wait to chat all about it…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joey Speers — …and how we can give some of your listeners some value.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So good. So yeah if you if you’re sitting in front of a browser, drop over to ineedbrandtherapy.com – we’re going to talk a little bit about that. So so there might be people that are listening in that, you know, obviously a lot of church leaders people who, you know, don’t spend their time necessarily thinking about brand. So let’s take a step back. When you say “brand”, what do you mean by that?
Joey Speers — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What what is a brand? What is it? What is that? What is that idea? Is that just like a logo – are you saying I need a better logo? What is it?
Joey Speers — Yeah, and that’s a great question. So I define “brand” as how you are experienced. So your logo is definitely a part of that. But um to go a lot deeper, and at the same time simplify it though, brand is simply just the the feeling that people get when they experience you, when they interact with you. They see your logo. They show up at your church. They hear the message. They shake hands with somebody from your organization. Brand encompasses all of that. So if that’s the definition we’re going to roll with, which it should be the definition everybody adopts, um, it’s undeniably something you’ve got to think about as as a church leader, as a business leader, right? Because it is it is fundamentally how you are being experienced. And if you’re not intentionally shaping how you’re being experienced, then you know you’re still being experienced, and you’re probably going to be getting experienced in a way that you’re not intending to necessarily be experienced.
Joey Speers — And I think that’s where a lot of people lose um, momentum on their missions because they’re just not as intentional about how they want to be experienced, and what they want to create in the world, and how people, you know, get involved in that. Um, and yeah so I’m trying to dedicate a lot of my life to help and people get clear on that, and create ah just a better trajectory for their organization, and the people that the organization is impacting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I know it’s been said that we all have a brand. The question is whether we have one on purpose or not, whether we’re intentionally building it and cultivating it…
Joey Speers — Exactly.
Rich Birch — …like and there’s a lot of churches we’ve walked into and you’re like, gosh there the brand the brand is screaming loud and clear here, and no one’s spent any time thinking about it. Ah, when you think about, so let’s say you’re talking—I’m sure you talk to a lot of churches—and you engage with them, I’m sure there’s kind of common questions or um ideas that you are often finding yourself repeating when you’re talking to them around what they should be thinking about when they think about brand. Are there is there some low hanging fruit, if we’re trying to get more clarity, kind of get better um, you know to position our brand better in our communities, what what would some of that low hanging fruit be?
Joey Speers — Yeah, it’s a great question. There’s probably a couple things. But the thing that I would say is potentially the lowest hanging fruit would be that most people think your brand is about you. And it’s actually the opposite. The best brands in the world that are not about them. They’re not about themselves; they’re about the people they serve.
Joey Speers — And so from a church perspective, ah, one of the things that I feel see a lot of churches doing wrong, and again simply because they just don’t they’re not intentional about this, is they make their entire brand about themselves. Their entire website is about themselves, all their social is about themselves. Ah, even even sometimes the Sunday experience, you know, is about themselves – the way they ask for people to get engaged in in groups. The way they ask for people to serve. They make it about themselves. The way they ask people to tithe – that one really that one really grinds my gears sometimes, right? I’m like oh this isn’t even… tithings not about you as an organization.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — It’s about what’s happening in people, you know? And it’s it’s about that personal, you know ah, commitment and personal sacrifice. Um, and yeah, like doing what God has you know gifted you to asked you to do in stewarding, you know, what your finances. Again that should not be about the church, even though the money’s going to the church. It should be about here’s what’s happening in you and through you.
Joey Speers — Sp all aspects of that. I think the lowest hanging fruit is so many churches because they don’t intentionally shape the brand, the brand becomes about themselves. And when your brand is entirely about yourself rather than the people you serve, ah, you don’t actually connect with a lot of people that you want to serve.
Rich Birch — Right. So we’ve talked about that at a like a tactical level, say around announcements. Too many churches get up and and say, hey we’re launching groups and this is when they launch, and they’re on these days, and these times, and you should join. Well, we don’t even say you, they just say, you know, this is a really important thing as opposed to, hey, are you looking for community? Are you the kind of person that you know wants to grow in their relationship with Jesus? Are you looking to improve, you know, insert 1, 2, 3 things. If you’re interested, you know, you should join a group. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about? It’s positioning what we’re doing really in the eyes of our people, really from their perspective. Is that the kind of thing you’re you’re encouraging us to think about?
Joey Speers — Yeah, exactly. And there’s there’s a couple things that I would say are the pillars that you’d have to first foundationally create, that all of that language, all of that communication would come out of. And I think how I would describe that is there’s two, two aspects to your brand. There’s the brand identity, which is the internal characteristics of who you are as a brand. A question that I love to ask if is if your church was a a single person…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — …walking down the road and I ran into them, you know, how would they make me feel?What would they say they believe about the world? What would they what would they say is the reasoning for why they do what they do? What gets them out of bed in the morning? You know, who do they love to help? That’s your brand identity – the internal characteristics of what makes you, you. And then you’ve got the second part of a brand which is your customer identity.
Joey Speers — Again, if you met a singular person walking down the road that you serve, who would they be? You know, what age are they? Ah, or they can they kind of just be any age? You know, if you’re a church you got to serve everyone. So um, but what do they believe about the world? What are some of the problems they’re up against in the world, right? What are some of the things that are stopping them from overcoming those problems themselves? What are some of their hopes, and desires for how they want to experience the change in order to get them from problem to a place where they no longer live with that problem, right?
Joey Speers — And so I think when you when you can identify some of the brand identity characteristics that you guys want to you want to include in your brand, and who it’s for—the customer identity side of that—I think getting up on stage, and making your announcements not about you but about the people you’re serving, you know. Ah, planning your your groups, planning even just sermons series. Everything becomes a lot easier because you’ve got a framework for who you’re trying to be as an organization that’s clear. And you’ve got a framework for who you’re trying to reach as an organization that’s clear.
Joey Speers — And the best part is those go both ways, right? When your entire organization, top down—the person who mops the floors to the person who gets up on stage and speaks—when your entire organization knows who they have to be to build, you know, a bigger, a bigger vision of like what that organization is who they who they claim to be, when everyone’s clear on that the customers—or in my lingo, the customers—the community members, the members of your church, the seekers that are coming for the first time, they’re going to see that. And and see clarity in that and understand who you are and how how being there is gonna benefit their life, right? So it it goes both ways, which is really cool and that’s that’s one of the coolest things about branding.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. I love that idea. You know, I think there’s a lot of great communicators who often they intuitively do this at the level of say the message they preach on Sunday…
Joey Speers — Yes.
Rich Birch — …where they intuitively think, Hey when I’m preaching this message today, this is the person I’m thinking about. They have this person in their mind’s eye. This is the person that they’re they’re they’re wrestling with. In fact I found over the years that actually the best communicators get very specific, maybe even down to an individual. Like this is yeah, there might be 5000 people at our church…
Joey Speers — Yep.
Rich Birch — …but I’m hoping that Joey hears this message today. I love that idea of pushing us to think about, okay who is our target as a church? And it could get that specific. Now when churches… say there’s those two different sides. There’s kind of our own if, you know, if we kind of had our, you know, our organization was a single person what they look like versus the people that we’re trying to reach. Is there a side of those that churches particularly, or you found ministries maybe particularly, have had ah had trouble wrestling with, and why? Why do you think there’s one or the other that we we tend to have, you know, more of a difficulty, you know, thinking through?
Joey Speers — Yeah, that’s a great question. So I would say it depends on who you ask.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Joey Speers — If you ask the founding pastor they’re gonna say we don’t have any issues with the brand identity. You know that stuff’s all in my head.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joey Speers — And I go, well, that’s the exact issue, you know. Your entire organization, everyone who’s a part of this, the same way we say you know the church is is the body of Christ. Everyone, you know, this part of it’s the arm, this part of it’s the leg. Your brand is the same – each role that someone is serving in your church is an arm and a leg; it’s the nose of your brand. And so if they don’t know what body they’re making up, and you know what fuels it, what what it believes about the world, who it’s serving, then there’s a lot of disconnection.
Joey Speers — So from a lead pastor perspective, a lot of them think they have that side clarified. But we often actually have to step in and help them clarify it a little bit more. But our job most of the time is actually helping them distribute it to the rest of the organization.
Rich Birch — Hmm, interesting.
Joey Speers — Because unless the rest of the organization gets that right there’s there’s ah, there’s a massive gap in efficiency. There’s a massive gap even in retention with people who are serving. The fastest way to kill your retention for your volunteers, or the the people who are serving in your church—paid staff—is to have them confused on on why they’re doing what they’re doing, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Right.
Joey Speers — And how it builds into the bigger, the bigger vision of what they’re doing. And then on the other side of that, um, I think a lot of churches do struggle, yes, with figuring out who they want to talk to. So here’s my answer, Rich to to kind of gloss over this: I don’t think it’s one of them, I think it’s both of them.
Rich Birch — Sure. Okay.
Joey Speers — And I think the issue with the customer identity stuff, the community member for the for the lingo of this podcast stuff, is that they go, well in the business world, it’s more straightforward because in business you just want to pick one person, get rid of everybody else, and then scale that one person audience, right? You want to find people who are—if at your a fitness company—who are you know, looking to lose x amount of fat and looking to get abs. We don’t want to talk to anybody else. You can’t do that in the church. The church is for everybody, right?
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Joey Speers — So it’s’s ah, you’ve got to be a little bit more intentional on how you create a message, create an invitation, for people to experience your brand that’s welcoming to everybody. Whether they’re six months old going to daycare, or the you know childcare for the first time, or whether they’re 80 and they’ve been going to that church for or they’ve been eighty and they’ve never been into church, and they walk in for the first time. Right? You’ve got to be able to craft a message that is going to speak to everybody. So I think people struggle with both of them for very different reasons. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good flag. I think um oftentimes we think that our churches are trying to reach everybody. They can’t reach everybody. The church universal will reach everybody in our communities. Ah, but our, you know, our church has some sort of unique ah, opportunities. You have unique ability to reach people, and I don’t think it’s a problem for us to kind of say, hey we’re we’re trying to narrow down. Obviously not in an exclusionary sort of way…
Joey Speers — Yes.
Rich Birch — …probably not as exclusionary as you know as the, you know, like you say the fitness company around the corner. Ah, but I do think that’s something you know for us to wrestle through. Ah, so put this all in context coming out of Covid a part of why I was excited to talk to you is I know the churches I’m talking to, the churches I’m doing coaching with, the ones I’m engaging with, man we are all still it feels very much like we’re still emerging from that – we’re still trying to figure out. And it feels like we’re… ah that there’s a lot of churches that could be really ripe for this kind of work in this season, rethinking these things, kind of you know, pulling back and saying, okay hmm I need to maybe we need to think about these things again. We need to think about brand identity. You need to think about community or customer identity. Have you seen any impact particularly say in the last couple years as we’re kind of coming out of covid around all of this identity stuff in general, brand identity stuff?
Joey Speers — Oh my goodness – 100%, right? This that’s a great point, Rich, because you know covid caused so many people in a lot of different ways um to think differently about something, right? We all were were, whether we decided to or whether we were just pressed to think differently, we all had to think about something in a different way over the last couple of years.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — And I think for a lot of churches um it posed the question. Their community was looking at them going, well, what do you guys think about this?
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — What do you think about lockdowns? What do you think about the vaccine? What do you think about ah, politics, economics right now, recession? You know, what do you think about my finances right now? And so I think… my father-in-law’s a pastor and he’s been so fun to watch through the last couple of years because he’s going man, we just got a level playing field to recreate the best foundation we’ve ever had in the church, and it is time to relaunch the American Church. Like this is when we need to ramp up.
Joey Speers — People have more questions about the role the church is playing in in our local community, our our national community, and the global community than ever before. We’ve got to have answers. We’ve got to have intentionality. We’ve got to meet people you know in the in the questioning. So I think absolutely – Covid created problems. Anytime there’s problems there’s more opportunity, right?
Joey Speers — And I think from a brand perspective if your organization is not clear on here’s why we exist, here’s why you’re going to get a benefit from this, here’s why we want to invite you to this, here’s the plan to do that. Like if your brand is not fully built with that stuff, I think people are they’re going to pass you by, and they’re going to go looking for somebody else who can serve them in that way. So yeah I think more than ever, Rich, Covid has given every church a great opportunity to relaunch.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — And you could sub the word relaunch for the word rebrand. Not that you have to change anything…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — …but you need to relaunch your brand. And hey this is we are for you. Here’s why we’re for you. You know all that stuff.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. And you know I think there’s ah one of the questions I keep asking leaders are what are the assumptions that were true in 2019 that aren’t true anymore? And and we have to keep asking those questions. And that’s a you know I think that’s a perennial question. We can ask that any time in our ministries. But it does feel like particularly in this season.
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s kind of dive a little bit more specifically into your offering, like how you actually help organizations, or how you actually help churches. So like are you the kind of guy when you like or you know coach when you’re coaching on this stuff, is it like, you know, we have a 30 minute conversation and then next week you’re going to show me logos and idea boards with like fancy colors and you’re going to tell me the difference between this blue and that blue and why I should use this blue and that blue? How does all that work? You spend more time on the upfront, the kind of hey let’s dive deep on what is it that actually makes you different. Or are you more on the like the kind of production graphic design we’ll think about that stuff the actual what what it looks like or how it rolls out it. Walk us through what that actually looks like. What what are you actually offering to organizations in your service?
Joey Speers — Yeah, 100%. Well this may sound cheesy, but the same way God looks at the heart, not the the outside, I feel like that’s the way I pursue branding.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.
Joey Speers — I don’t touch any of that stuff until we’ve figured out who you’re going to be…
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, okay.
Joey Speers — …how you’re going to show up, who you’re showing up for, why they need you, what are you helping them overcome in their life? So the brand identity and creating that there’s a ton of questions that go into creating a really good brand identity, and then a great customer identity. But I think it’s just a waste of time to talk about colors and and argue for 40 minutes on which, you know, shade of blue is going to be more beneficial for something if you still can’t get up on stage and clearly tell people why, you know, they should care about what you’re doing and how you’re trying to impact them. So yeah, we spend 100% of our time um, in fact, we don’t even do we don’t we’ve done a few rebrands over the years but that’s not even something I would say we offer.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — That’s probably something more specific to, hey this is really a problem. We’ve done everything else. Now great, let’s also solve that problem. But now it’s I think it’s a waste of time to solve any of those problems until I think the real problems are solved.
Joey Speers — So how it looks: Brand Therapy is is just a consulting system that um I had built years ago and had some guidance from ah some people that I really look up to that have been been doing leadership development stuff for years for fortune 500 companies. They kind of helped walk me through the way I viewed the world and the way I viewed branding. And and they’re like, man, you got a really special knack for this, you just get this stuff. And we built a system that I’m just really proud of and it’s it’s really exciting. So we just step in and it generally starts with a full day. And we ask you a ton of questions we call it brand therapy because it feels therapeutic.
Rich Birch — I Love it.
Joey Speers — People cry. Um, people scream and jump around with excitement when it clicks. People get confused. People find clarity – like it’s all of that in in in one experience. And what’s so cool about it is it’s it’s something that we encourage people to invite their their entire like executive team into. There’s no point in doing this just with the founder…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joey Speers — …if the founder’s problem again is he already gets most of this, but he doesn’t know how to communicate it. So Brand Therapy is not only so helpful to communicate, or sorry, to clarify all of these things – the brand identity, the customer identity. There’s a third piece to that we actually call identity alignment. Like how do those two things now talk? Because just because we know who you are and who they are doesn’t mean that everything’s still going to line up. So how do we make sure that we’re lining stuff up?
Joey Speers — Well, you know, getting to walk your entire team through that. Your executive team, you know, most churches would pick the top 7 people that maybe are are running a bunch of the stuff that they’d be in on the conversation. I think when you can do that not only do you get clarity, we then take all that the data we we shape ah, it’s actually a guide that we deliver to you, print them out and and give them to you. It’s like a we call it like the bible for your brand. I don’t know if that if that sounds bad but we love calling you that. Because it’s like here here’s a step-by-step way to ensure if you follow this, You’re gonna have a brighter future, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Joey Speers — The same way the bible promises us basically the same thing, right? You’ll have more hope, you’ll have more this, you’ll have more that. And so yeah, we basically just deliver that and then we consult with you on how to implement it. Um, which is so important and more importantly, how to help everyone get a piece of it and everyone understand how what they do builds into the greater vision, the greater purpose, the greater drive of what that organization is doing. It is so fun to be able to watch a team come together, looking like the lead pastor is excited, you know, or has all the vision but nobody else gets it.
Joey Speers — And it’s so exciting to watch in a week later after we’ve done all this stuff, you know, an organization that has never been so excited to go out and help people, go so excited to go and serve people simply just because people get why what they’re doing actually builds into what that what’s happening, right? It gives people ownership, which is so cool. And I think every organization could could use a few more employees, few more volunteers, a few more people serving, that that are excited to take more ownership.
Rich Birch — Friends that are listening in, I want to ah let me speak to you for a second, as an executive pastor. Um I know there’s people that are listening in that are like, this just seems like really like man we don’t have time for this. We don’t have the money for this. I’m not sure I should spend effort on this. Ah, listen for for a moment. Take it from a person who’s led in fast-growing churches. Communications—which is really what we’re talking about – this is all a part of that kind of communication piece—is a professional function. It is like um… and and there are points in your history where you need to lean in with someone like Joey to say, hey help us get better at that. He he has an area of expertise that you probably don’t have within your church today. And it’s a professional function in the same way think about the way you handle finances at your church. Early on in the church you probably maybe you had a volunteer that did your bookkeeping. And then eventually you’re like, we can’t keep doing that we got to hire a bookkeeper, and then as your church grew you added more professional function on that to the point where then maybe eventually have like a CFO that kind of type of person on you on your team.
Rich Birch — Communication is the same thing. I don’t know why we don’t ah handle it the same way though. We it requires a level of professional care to it. Just because particularly our lead pastors think they’re good at communication doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily have the professional function that someone like Joey actually has behind what they do. Because this is all he does all day long. Um, and so something like Brand Therapy can help you accelerate the work, can help you think through, Okay, what should I be doing differently? How can we, you know, kind of guide this part of what we’re doing and make it better?
Rich Birch — So question for you, Joey, as you’ve engaged with people, I’m sure there’s churches that you’ve talked with or organizations maybe more broadly you’ve talked with that would say, like I’m not sure – is this really worth it? Is it worth all this time, effort, and energy? Why would I bring an outside person in? Why why don’t we just go away? Why don’t why don’t I just read StoryBrand, tell all my people to read StoryBrand, and then we’ll just like pull out the pdfs from the back of the StoryBrand book and do it ourselves. Why engage with someone like yourself? Why have someone like you there to kind of guide you through the process?
Joey Speers — Yeah, that’s a great question. Huge fan of StoryBrand. I feel like ah Donald Miller shaped a lot of the way I view the world. Um, but the the problem with reading a book is there’s no implementation. You’re not getting someone helping you implement that, right? And I think that’s the the biggest fall that a lot of leaders take is they’re so excited to read the book, but they don’t now know how to take what they’ve learned, implement it into the organization, and most importantly, like distribute it through the health of their staff.
Joey Speers — And so ah, the same way – I’m recently married I’m I’m a year and a half in. You know, I love what you were saying about communication, Rich. Like communication is so crucial. Communication and marriage is everything. If you get communication wrong, you you get a lot of other things wrong, right?
Rich Birch — For sure.
Joey Speers — It’s the same thing with your organization. You could have the best groups, the best program, and you could have the best sermon. You could have the best opportunities for kids. But if you can’t communicate how that’s going to benefit someone’s life and how they should be invited into that and all the other stuff, it just falls at the wayside, right? So um I think that’s where there’s a lot of churches who, yeah will look at something, I guess, and go, well I just don’t know if we have the time. My my counter to that would be, well, It’s only one day.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Joey Speers — And even just the the reality of how we’re going to help you, you know, like talking about that brand identity guide that we give at the end. I even give the example all the time I’m like, man, that will cut your onboarding time from weeks…
Rich Birch — Oh so good. Yes.
Joey Speers — …of them having to get used to your organization. You give them that book, have somebody who’s, you know, an elder on staff type thing someone who’s been there for a while walk them through the brand identity. Here’s who we are, here’s how you’re going to play into that.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s a great idea.
Joey Speers — Here’s who we’re serving, here’s how you’re going to help reach them, and here’s how you’re gonna help benefit them. There you go. Like they get started instantly. So you even just save the time on even like onboarding, for one.
Joey Speers — If you ever have to, you know, even if you spend time coming up with communication for your website, if you spend time coming up with communication for your next sermon series, for anything, like it just speeds it speeds things up. And so that’s I think that’s my only answer, right? You’ve got to find things in in your leadership that you can you can throw some kind of resource at that’s going to shortcut you, that’s going to that’s going to speed you up, right?
Joey Speers — And that’s the best thing about ah you know learning how to steward your money well. If you steward your money well, you’re probably looking at your money from the perspective of how can we use this to buy us speed in our impact. And Brand Therapy is a phenomenal way to do that because it’s buying you massive amounts of speed in in, like you said, your communication getting so much better, in so many other so many other things that become assets that just make the long-term health, and the short-term health, of your organization I think just drastically go up.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So you had said, and and we probably don’t have time to dig into all of it, but I love that you called out um I think I would imagine one of the problems with a process like this is it has that kind of feeling of well we went to the mountaintop, we generated this thing. In fact, we got the amazing brand bible, and then we set it on the table somewhere and then didn’t think about it for 10 years, which I can imagine, are 5 years which I can imagine for you is like super frustrating. You’re like man I just ah, yeah, you know why just invested all this blood, sweat, and tears, energy into an organization and then it just it just became dust on a you know ah, maybe on the the pastor’s coffee table in their office. Then they didn’t actually do anything with it. What are some of the, back to low hanging fruit, some of the two or three kind of distributing, you know, tips for getting this beyond just the ivory tower, the 7 staff who talked about it, and actually pushing it out to the organization? What are some of those channels? What are some of those approaches that when we’re thinking about rolling out a brand change like this or a brand clarification like this, ah what are some of those things we should be thinking about or looking at to kind of help us accelerate the adoption across our organization?
Joey Speers — Yeah, totally. So well first of all I think the way we set it up. Everything we do we try and go, Okay, how do we make sure implementing this is fast, effective, and easy? Um, if if we were to do all this and then I was to make implementing this hard, it just would it just wouldn’t be worth it, right? I might as well not do it. So I think the way that we format the guide, we pair the value in the guide to tangible actions you take daily inside of your job, whether you are a lead pastor, whether you’re someone who’s who’s writing programming, whether you’re writing slides for the weekend – whatever it’s going to be. I think we we do a good job of pairing that.
Joey Speers — And um the thing that I think hooks people to continue to use it, because I’m yet to actually see somebody drop off and just totally stop using it. I think the reason why is because when you get so much clarity for how you can talk about what you do, um it’s just so much fuel. And it fuels you to keep coming back to the root of where that clarity was. And even better when you as a Lead Pastor Executive Pastor have a couple team members below you now know what you’re thinking, and you know that they know what you’re thinking. It is a phenomenal feeling, right? And I think a lot of people love that.
Joey Speers — So when you think about implementing it daily, um I always say just keep coming back to the to the source. Like you you got to write a new sermon series? Use it as a filter. Make sure that the topic for your sermon sermon series, look through this part, this part, and this part of the guide, which is easily laid out, and just filter it. Go, does this align with that? If it does, awesome. We’re on the right track. If it doesn’t, then we probably have to reconsider this, right? And so I think that’s probably the biggest one. The best way I’ve seen people implement it even if it just takes two minutes a day is taking the tasks they’re doing and filtering it. Because when you have a great brand it almost acts as a, in the business world, the business plan.
Joey Speers — And in the church world, like a mission, right? It’s like okay, if this is what we say the problem is that we see in the world, here’s how we’re committing to say we solve that problem. And then here’s the result we believe people experience when we solve that problem for them after they’ve been invited into it. You just use it and that’s what we we call that like just your simple brand story that we help people create like a three sentence little paragraph. If you wake up every day, every meeting you start, you go, Okay, this will only be effective if it aligns with this brand story. Filter everything through there. So I think there’s there’s just a lot of aspects of the guide that make it undeniably clear in your head and everybody else’s head in the organization that. just it makes it it makes it hard to ditch it. Um, yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. I love that. Well and I think there’s a key insight there around connecting to people’s daily function. I think is such an important piece that we have to push. We have to when we think about implementing any kind of organizational change, it has to come down to, Okay so what difference does that make on Monday morning? Like how how do we actually um…
Joey Speers — Yes.
Rich Birch — …make a difference next week? How do we make life better?
Joey Speers — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And that’s going to require some work. It’s not like, you know, Joey can do all that work for you. As team leaders you’re going to spend a bunch of money to get Joey to come in, but then do the extra work to go the extra mile to say okay, we’ve done that, now let’s figure out let’s keep pushing it, you know, beyond and keep coming back to it time and ah time and again. You know, I just love that. It’s like with any software I always say, like I said this to the church management people all the time, I’m like if we can’t get if we can’t get our people using church management software much as much as they use email um, it’s useless to us.
Joey Speers — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We have to figure out how to make it as easy as possible that people have email and the church management system up. Or like if you have a human, you know, ah lots lots organizations have human performance, you know, software. If it’s not up as much as email…
Joey Speers — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …it’s not It’s probably not functional. So love that, love that. Well this has been great conversation, Joey. Is there anything else you’d like to share just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode, as we come to land the plane as they say?
Joey Speers — Yeah I mean I’ll just go back to what I said in the beginning, I think it’s so important. I just want to encourage every leader listening to this, ask yourself take two minutes after this episode and just ask yourself: man, how do we make our brand more about the people we’re trying to serve and less about us? Because it’s it’s very hard to do that. You know our brands always become about ourselves. That’s just human nature, you know. That’s that’s even biblical. You know if we don’t focus on intentionally making our lives about other people, it becomes about ourselves. And so if you don’t focus on making your organization about the people you serve very very specifically, and you have tools to back that up to help you do that on Monday morning—like you just said, Rich, which is such a great such a great statement—then your your brand, your organization is going to become become about just maintaining the people within it.
Joey Speers — And I just want to encourage everybody um, whether you take something out of this episode, whether you contact me and we try and help you do that, either way I just encourage you how can you continue to make your your brand, your organization, the mission of your organization, more about the people you serve and than it is about you. And live that out daily. And I think that’s a great again, Rich, such a great point. Like if it’s not if you’re not able to implement it daily then it’s it’s not worth it. Um, you know if you think your if you think your organization’s about you know the people you serve. But all you do all day is just things to maintain the organization, and the people within it, which is what I think I see a lot of church leaders doing just trying to get the next Sunday, trying to keep the health of their staff together, you know? Like they spend so much time internally focused on what’s going on inside which there’s obviously a place for and that needs to be accounted for.
Joey Speers — But I think when you can rally everybody under one one mission, one team, and everyone’s got clarity on how they build into that I think it just makes everything better. Everybody can spend more time focusing on actually serving the people you want to serve as ah as we’re all called to do. So yeah, leave it with that.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Well if people want to get in touch with you, or to learn more about… we obviously gave that address earlier: ineedbrandtherapy.com – is there anywhere else we want to send them online to track with you?
Joey Speers — Yeah, Instagram is a great spot. I hang out there quite a bit just due to the nature of what I do. So @joeyspeers on social media across everything, but mainly Instagram is what I hang out on. ineedbrandtherapy.com great if you want to go there and check out more about Brand Therapy. Or joeyspeers.com if you just want to check out some of the other things that I’m working on. It’s more of just kind of a landing page to talk about some of the things that I’m trying to push for in the world based on what I believe, the people I’m trying to help.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joey Speers — So yeah anywhere you’ll be able to find me, I would love to connect with you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much for being here today, Joey. Thanks for all the help. Appreciate it.
Joey Speers — Of course, Rich. Thanks for having me on.
Leading Change in the Midst of the Messiness of Ministry with Mike Bonem
Oct 06, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Mike Bonem, a coach and consultant who helps church leaders with vision discernment, organizational design and strategy.
In the last three years, everyone has had to make massive changes. Now as churches have found their new normal and are looking to the future, there can be pressure from within to return to the way things were. Listen in as Mike talks through how we can lead our congregations and staff through change which pushes the mission forward.
Resisting change. // As churches have made changes about what to start and stop doing, there has been an intense resistance to changes from some people. When people are resistant to change, they may not want to let go of their comfort. Seek to understand where that desire to hold onto comfort is coming from. Are they scared that the change might fail, or pull the church apart? Explore what’s underneath their resistance.
Explore different opinions. // When people are resisting, try not to immediately think of them as your enemies. We can’t only surround ourselves with people who think like we do. Lean into them rather than away. Explore their opinions and be open to valid points they are making.
Is the mission clear? // Give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are committed to the mission. If someone has questions, realize they may have a different interpretation of the mission than you do. Talk through your understanding of what the mission means and the implications of it.
The next step. // The classic strategic planning model looks 3 to 5 years into the future, but in the current season Mike encourages churches to simply focus on their next right step as informed by the mission. Given your mission, what is your best interpretation of what the next steps are that you should take over the next six to twelve months?
Leading change through the mess. // Mike’s book The Art of Leading Change: Ten Perspectives on the Messiness of Ministry focuses on the part of our work that doesn’t fit nicely into a spreadsheet. Working with people is messy and unpredictable and the ideas in the book will help you move a group of people toward a new destination.
Keeping the right mindset. // A leader’s job is to get people aligned, and part of that requires bringing people into agreement with the course of action being taken. But people pleasing refers to a mindset of not wanting anyone to ever be upset or frustrated with you. When church leaders give in to that, it can stall any change or progress in the organization.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Super excited to have Mike Bonem with us. He is a coach, a consultant, but more than that he’s a friend of church leaders like you. He’s been in this ah for you know, 20+ years, works with congregations, denominational leaders, nonprofits – really to help through vision discernment, strategy, all different kinds of things, organizational design. But like I say, Mike more than all that is a friend of church leaders and so so honored to have him on the show. Mike, welcome. So glad you’re here.
Mike Bonem — Thanks so much, Rich. I’m really excited to be back on the show with you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, glad that you’re here. What fill out the picture there a little bit for – what what did I miss on the thirty second “who is Mike” conversation?
Mike Bonem — No I mean you nailed it pretty well, and um I really like the way you said you know a friend of pastors and ministry leaders because that’s what I want to be. I’ve I’ve served as an executive pastor for a decade and had a career in business before that. And probably the most important thing of who is Mike Bonem is, I’m married and we have four adult children and a couple of grandchildren.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Yeah I know my wife as we were talking before we got on. We’re in the the empty nester phase or starting the empty nester phase. And she’s eagerly looking forward to that next phase which you mentioned there at the end. And I’m like don’t rush it. Don’t rush it. You know, but we’ll see. It’ll it’ll be great. Well it was funny before we got on, again I said this to Mike, I was like it feels like you know when were we on again? And I know I know covid seems to have like it makes it has made it weird to think about time, like everything’s kind of strange. And look back it was 2016 last time Mike was on, but I’m actually an avid follower of Mike, read his newsletter. It’s so good. Such great stuff that comes out of him. It’s been quite a while. These last number of years man change has been on the horizon. You have a great position in that you interact with a lot of different church leaders. What what is what are you seeing as some of those changes that church leaders are continuing to deal with that are like hey it’s it’s kind of like top of mind – things that come that church leaders are wrestling with these days in this whatever phase we find ourselves in our churches these days?
Mike Bonem — Well, that’s just it. I think we’re not even sure what phase we find ourselves in, right? The there was, you know, it’s it’s it’s interesting to think about change at this stage. You know, kind of beyond the onset of the pandemic because everybody had to make massive changes right when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020 and I was surprised actually at how well people made those changes—big churches, small churches—how quickly and how well for the most part they adapted. I think it’s been much more of a struggle ah, coming out of the pandemic. I heard lots of leaders in the first 6 to 12 months of the pandemic saying oh this is ah this is a huge opportunity for us to rethink everything. And when we get on the other side of the pandemic, we’re gonna be fundamentally different than we were before. This is ah this is that great opportunity to break the mold and yet many of the people that I interact with, they’re falling right back into that mold. Or or probably more accurately they feel like they’re being pushed back into that old mold by you know by a number of different conditions. And so as much as anything right now I think one of the big change questions is, can we really make some some significant shifts in how we think about doing church?
Rich Birch — Yeah I’m a… for longterm listeners to the podcast, they know that I’m an an avid follower of the Disney company as a company, and you know love mostly what they produce. And you know I just read this interesting article where their CEO was talking about the the change on the movie side. How how people consume movies, and how they’ve, you know, the thing that was interesting I thought for us in our little world is is they were saying, hey our read on it is people are fundamentally changed in how the types of movies they want to go and see. And the idea of the event, you know, is still a deal people will show up for, in their case, big Avengers movies, big Star Wars, whatever. But that probably the shift around you know, smaller movies and people won’t go out to buy popcorn for those. They’ll just watch them on their, in their case, Disney+. which got me thinking about our world and like, you know, there was a lot of those conversations two, three years ago – what difference is the church online going to make? And and it does feel like we’re on kind of the shakeout side of all that where like it’s okay. We and I hear it this all the time from church leaders. We have all these people watching online, still no idea who those people are, no idea how that fits in our ministry model. No idea what to do with them.
Mike Bonem — Right.
Rich Birch — And you know we’re looking at our own kind of what we used to call in-person attendance like all of that we’re we’re still wrestling with kind of the impact of how all that you know what that looks like going forward. Change, it is really a constant.
Rich Birch — Um now when I think about change, so you mentioned something interesting there. You talked about they’re being pushed into change. Ah talk to me more about that. And and is because because my experience has been and it could be that at just the seat I’m in. I feel more like resistance from change, like it’s like there’s more people around me saying like, oh I don’t want to change. But tell me more about that. Let’s talk about that idea being pushed in or resistance to change. What’s that look like?
Mike Bonem — Well what what I said was they’re being pushed back into the old mold.
Rich Birch — Oh, right. Yes, ah yes, yes.
Mike Bonem — So it it’s exactly what you’re talking about. It’s the resistance to change. It’s the you know the for many church leaders. The people that are back showing up, and that are still faithfully giving money to the church, ah, many of those people are the ones who are saying can we just go back to the way it was before?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mike Bonem — And so it’s it’s so it is that resistance. So this golden opportunity to do some things differently is running into intense resistance from people saying, we just want to have it the way it was in 2019.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Bonem — Can we go back to our same Sunday schedule? Can we go back to our same you know programming, and do everything the way it was? And so yeah, it’s very, we’re saying the same thing just using a couple of different words, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So let’s pull that apart. What is it what is what what are some ways that resistance could show up in our people? What is that what could that look like in you know, maybe some of those conversations, or some of the ways people might ah you know engage with us when we when we talk about change?
Mike Bonem — Oh you know I’m um, one executive pastor I’ve worked with you know they changed their whole worship format when Covid hit. When they came back in person they said we don’t have enough people to do a traditional and a contemporary service. We’re going to do a blended service. And, you know, this is not a I’m not advocating for or against the blended style of worship, but you know her opinion is it’s really worked for them. And yet ah more than a year into being back in a format that they believe is working and most people are saying is working well, they have a handful of people that are still saying, when are we going to go back to the old schedule with two worship services – one traditional and one contemporary.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Interesting.
Mike Bonem — You know, why why can’t we have it the way we had it before?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Well I so literally this morning I was out for a walk, talking to a friend church leader on phone, and he said he was in a fairly senior leadership meeting – similar resistance. Ah, where they were talking in about a change a potential change, and literally the words that were used by—and this is a like church that’s looking to reach people and do you know all kinds of things—he he said you know these these this group of senior leaders, literally one of them said, well I’m just really comfortable how things are now. Like I’m I’m… And and he was like, whoa, wait a second! Like so, you know, when since when did comfortability become the the value as opposed to the mission of our church? How do we not just run over people ah, in that? Because I I guess my tendency is like and I, you know, and I I reacted strongly when this leader said that. I was like, wow you got the wrong people around the table. I didn’t quite say that, but you know that would be my natural a tendency. Now that’s not the right way to go but talk me through how, coach me on that. How should we be thinking differently about maybe the people who are resisting change and not just putting them in a category of like, okay those people we need to get rid of those people. Those people are not the people we want around the table.
Mike Bonem — Yeah, no I think it’s a great question, Rich. And the and it it happens all the time. Sometimes people are not as explicit in saying, “I like my comfort.” And and that does become a real obstacle to change. What what I would say is we need to understand what they mean by comfort. You know where where’s that coming from? Is it… because it’s red flag for me too. But like I I know if I heard that from a church staff member today, one thing that would run through my mind is it’s been a hard two and a half three years for church staff. It… Does this “I’m comfortable” just mean I’ve been running so hard for this last two and a half years that I just want to catch my breath for a minute before we launch into something new? Or is it somebody saying, is is comfort really synonymous with I’m scared of what that change might entail. I’m scared we might fail. I’m scared that, you know, that we’re gonna that there’s gonna be major conflict over it that’s going to pull our church apart. Those are those are really different ways… Or is it I’m just comfortable and, you know, I don’t want Jesus to make me uncomfortable, right? Which you…
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.
Mike Bonem — So so I would I what I would hope that a leader would do if they found themselves in that kind of conversation is to get curious about what the person really means when they say “I’m comfortable” and what’s underneath that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. And and instead of just volley… I feel like my natural tendency would be to volley back with, hey this is the mission. Here’s the strategy. We agreed to this thing that was on paper. We’re pushing ahead. Instead of what you’re what I hear you saying, I think what I hear you saying is like slowing down. Hey, let’s take some time. It’s the, you know, a lot of executive pastors listing in. It’s the pastor side of Executive Pastor, right? It’s the, Hey let’s actually try to to listen, to care for people in the midst of that. What does that look like, that kind of you know the more relational, we’ll call it the soft side? What are some ways that we could do that um, you know, if we’re find ourselves with some potential resistors to change?
Mike Bonem — Well, you know a starting point is we’re being more and more conditioned socially to to think of everything in the world as being divided into into two camps – those who are for me, those who are against me, right?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good.
Mike Bonem — I mean that the and and so the the very first thing you have to do is is try to recognize when that mindset is popping up for you and and and purge it, right? It’s like no, I’m not I’m not going to to immediately think of people who are resisting as being my enemy. Ah and then to to really to lean into them rather than leaning away from them. Rather than saying look I’m, you know, I just want to surround myself with people who think like me, I need to pull back and say no, you know, actually this person who’s resisting may have a valid opinion I need to explore what’s behind that, what’s underneath that. You know tell me more of why you know you think this is not a good idea.
Mike Bonem — Maybe, you know, they’re gonna they’re they will have thought of something you’ve not thought of. You know, the I think of the kind of big picture visionary leader who says, oh yeah, we need to we need to charge up this hill. And the more detailed-oriented person in the congregation—whether it’s a staff member or a volunteer leader—who says, wait a minute I have three questions before we charge up that hill. The visionary leader hears that as resistance. The person really actually had some legitimate questions, like which side of the hill are we going up?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Bonem — Right? That that actually makes a difference.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes – I love that. That’s a great… I love that – that’s a great analogy. Like and and trying to see folks as not the us versus them that all those which can be often, like you say, false dichotomies. Like let’s slow down, hey we’re we’re you know… People haven’t particularly when we talk about leaders that are still with us, the people that are still journeying with us now, there ah, there have been lots of opportunities over the last two three years for them to opt out. The fact that they’re still with us means that they’re committed to the mission, right? They’re not, they’re at some level have stuck in because there’ve been a number of places along the way where they could have opted out. They could have pulled away.
Mike Bonem — Yeah. I think the other thing actually that what you just said brings up for me is you said they’re committed to the mission. And I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they really are committed to the mission. But I’m also going to wonder, is the mission clear enough? You know, what like when I’m saying we need to do this, charge up begin charge up this hill…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Bonem — …because that’s where the mission leads us. And somebody else is raising questions about it, it may be that I have a different interpretation of the mission than they do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Bonem — And we need to go all the way back to the start, right? And say let’s let’s talk about the mission. What is it what is our understanding and what it means and what are the implications of it? And that can be an incredibly important conversation, especially right now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a good insight I think particularly in again, whatever this phase is ah you know that we’re kind of post- whatever in mid- whatever. Um it does feel like we have to come back to revisiting the mission vision stuff and keep in in front of that keeping that in front of people working hard to say, hey, what do what do we what can we do to ensure that people are are with us? And doing the extra work on our side, owning that. Hey, that’s our job. That’s our job to keep that in front of people. Um, now when you think about ah, change in this season, what else is kind of a top of mind as you’re wrestling through what it could look like, how how we should be thinking about change? What are you learning on that front as you’re leading people?
Mike Bonem — So, you know, I’ve I’ve been working with with churches, Rich, for 20 years I guess. Or yeah, more than 20 years now. And ah early on um I really was much more of an advocate of the classic strategic planning model that looks 3 to 5 years into the future. And there’s still value in that at times. But but especially in this season I think we need to focus a lot more on what’s the right next step.
Mike Bonem — It needs to be and it clearly needs to be informed by the mission. But you know thinking we can make plans that stretch out two years, three years into the future just doesn’t seem very realistic or even very wise stewardship right now. I’d I’d much rather focus on, given our mission, what is our best interpretation of what the next steps are that we should take over the next six to twelve months.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you…
Mike Bonem — And if we can get agreement on that. Yeah.
Rich Birch — What is the what is the time horizon that you’re thinking about because I think that’s a good insight. How far out are you thinking – a year, or kind of like the next budget cycle, or what what does that look like?
Mike Bonem — I think yeah I think 6 to 12 months.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Mike Bonem — Six six months is long enough to run an experiment to try something new and to either make some assessment that this seems to be working, or or it needs to be it could work but it needs to be tweaked, or this wasn’t a good idea at all.
Mike Bonem — So so yeah, kind of and it depends obviously on what kind of initiative you’re talking about. If if we want to do something ministry with a local elementary school, we probably ought to make a commitment to them for the entire school year, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Mike Bonem — Or at least for a semester.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Bonem — Um, if if if we’re talking about something that actually has implications for the facility that’s going to require some remodeling of the facility, we may need to look a little bit longer, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Mike Bonem — Because once once you start tearing up or adding onto a building, you know you don’t change that after six months.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah that stuff is more permanent than we think.
Mike Bonem — But for a lot of those ministry initiatives yeah 6 to twelve months is a good time frame.
Rich Birch — Yeah and there’s a new.… It’s it’s true I find myself in similar conversations where we’re we’re exercising our um you know midyear budget reevaluation process more than we have, you know, in the last ten fifteen years. You know, we’re we’re working harder on the, okay you know we’re halfway through this year, what do we need to readjust? How do we need to um, look at… And you know the interesting thing and this this brings us to… you you released a book a few months ago called The Art of Leading Change: Ten Perspectives on the Messiness of Ministry. The thing why I appreciate this book and appreciate this insight is there is a part of this that you’ve captured so well. Ah that um, there’s an art side to what we do that’s not science. It’s not it doesn’t fit super well in a spreadsheet, which I know for us who like spreadsheets ah, that it can be difficult. Talk to me about that – talk to me about what you mean by the art of leading change.
Mike Bonem — Yeah, the, and thanks for asking, Rich. The that book that I wrote twenty years ago was um, leading was called Leading Congregational Change, and I often introduced it when I would speak at a conference or a seminar and say, this is going to be more about the science of leading change. The it’s the it’s the process. It was based ah partly on John Cotter’s model from his business book, Leading Change. So it’s you know here’s the steps you need to take, here’s the you know here’s how you think about it in a real concrete scientific way.
Mike Bonem — And and I would always say even when I was introducing that twenty years ago is there’s a whole art to leading change. That’s much harder to convey and that I’m not going to be talking about in today’s seminar. And so I finally came back to that idea you know here with this book that was just released, and said you know what, it’s time to talk about the art, the messiness which always comes back to people. It’s always related to people. And actually what we’ve talked about earlier in this conversation are a couple of the points in the book. The the idea that resistors are not the enemy, and the idea of take the right next step are 2 of those ideas that that I draw on in talking about the art of leading change – the the things that are more subjective and harder to to codify in a spreadsheet.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I think that acknowledges it’s that interesting tension, right? That that um, it’s It’s both sides. We need to have we do need to have a science. We do need to have approach. We can’t just be willy-nilly. Talk to me more about the messiness. Let’s talk about that a little bit because ah, you know we all have the short the hand joke for that. It’s like oh Ministry would be so great if it wasn’t for the people. Or you know, like we all have some way of kind of ah you know that’s like the black humor of a surgeon who’s like you know, making fun of the people he’s working on. We have that kind of in our mind like, Gosh this is just tough with people. Ah, talk me through that. Why is it so messy?
Mike Bonem — Well because people are involved, and people are messy is is the short answer, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Mike Bonem — And so you know we we we we talked earlier about well the people that are there are still committed to the mission. But because we’re humans we all hear that mission through our own filters, and through our own lenses, and we interpret it slightly differently. And so then we say we’re going to make this decision, and this is obvious what we should do because of our because it’s consistent with our mission. And you know in a room of 10 people 3 of them fully agree, 3 of them kind of cock their head and they have a little bit of a question, then and you know 2 of were checked out on their phone so they weren’t paying good attention, right?
Rich Birch — Ah, you’re on Twitter.
Mike Bonem — But but but but you know what one one or two of them say oh the no, that’s not what I understood the mission to be at all.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Mike Bonem — And… Right? And that’s just the the human nature. You mix into that that in some of our churches we have. We’ve put people or allowed people to be in leadership positions who are probably not as mature in their faith as they should be to be in carrying those leadership responsibilities. And so they enter into a discussion or a decision, you know, not necessarily asking genuinely seeking what would God want us to do. And that makes it even messier. So so I mean those are just a couple of the reasons that that it gets so messy, I think.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and then you you mix on top of that, like that’s a great vivid example of those 10 people, you know, you mix on top of that the power dynamics of who you are versus the people you’re leading. And, man I’ve been in in that where you realize you get you get down a road and you realize oh like six months ago you disagreed and never said anything, and here we are today ah living with six months of ah, you know, what I just didn’t understand what was going on. And um. um, you know we’re now having to retrench and and let’s go back to where we were six months ago and let me lean in as a leader I need to because I didn’t create an opportunity for you to actually speak what your concern was. Um and wow that’s ah you know that can be difficult. I I wish I did not have vivid examples of that in my mind but it it it feels like, man, that’s just a normal part or has been a normal part of you know of leading um.
Rich Birch — Talk to me about our desire… so related to all of this is is this whole people pleasing issue. Um, you know so many of us get engaged in leadership and um there’s a part of it that is rallying people. There’s a part of it that’s like, hey a part of my job is it’s like the politician side. It’s the mayoral side. I’ve said in other context of like, hey our job is to kind of get people aligned. And and so there’s there’s a good part of that, but then there’s also a part of that that can be literally just people-pleasing. It’s it’s political at its kind of base level. Talk to me about that. What how… is that helpful, not helpfu? How how do we how do we think about that?
Mike Bonem — Well I agree with what you said. Yes, a leader’s job is to is to get people aligned. And so and and so and alignment certainly has an element of, you know, the the people who are are you know agreeing are, you know, they agree. They’re they’re happy with this course of action that we’re talking about taking. We’re going going to, you know, we’re going to launch this satellite campus and we want people, we want our other leaders, to say, yes, we agree. That’s a good idea.
Mike Bonem — But people pleasing to me is when a pastor really falls into a mindset of I can’t ever let anyone be disappointed in me, or frustrated or upset with me. And when when that becomes the mindset then it can really stall any kind of change or any kind of progress for the organization because there’s always somebody who’s not going to be happy with the decision. And and so you’ll you’ll end up boiling something down to a much less bold initiative that kind of looks like a lowest common denominator decision.
Mike Bonem — And the other thing that people I think don’t realize when they when they go too far towards that let’s-get-everybody-on-board, people-pleasing mentality is you’ll actually upset the more innovative, forward-thinking leaders and you may lose some of them of the process.
Mike Bonem — Now that they they often won’t say I’m unhappy with you. But so you think about the person who was most excited about that new idea to launch a campus, and was was actually going to be a part of the core team to to go and they were ready ready to launch out. And then somewhere along the way 3 or 4 people said, oh we’re not sure that’s a good idea right now, and you pull back away from that and say maybe we need to wait six or twelve months before we launch the campus. Now those bold people who are ready to be, who were on board from the start, they may not come back and say, Pastor, I’m really unhappy with you. They might just silently check out.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Mike Bonem — And so in your effort to please one group of people you actually just leave somebody else without even knowing it.
Rich Birch — Well, yeah, and there’s that—man, I’ve seen that tension over the years—there’s the frankly the most your more innovative um passionate um leaders, they have the ability because of who they are. To check out and to literally leave ah, you know a lot quicker than ah, you know, than than people than maybe some of those resistors that we’re talking about, people that are um, you know that are slowing us down a little bit, because of just who they are. And that you know man that’s that. That could be dangerous because you’re you’re you can lose some of that that innovation pretty quickly.
Mike Bonem — Yeah, that’s exactly right. And it may be that they will just check out rather than actually leave, and that’s just a that’s a loss, right? That’s a missed opportunity.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Mike Bonem — There was some research a dozen or so years ago of really high profile Christian leaders in business, and politics, and and media. And one of one of the most striking findings that came out of that—it’s it’s by Michael Lindsay in a book called Faith in the Halls of Power—and one of the most striking findings was that many of those people were not very engaged in their local churches. They were members, but they were not engaged. And one of the primary reasons they gave for not being engaged is that they found the the slow moving bureaucracy and unwillingness to change in local church to be so frustrating that they decided to give their energies like to a large Christian nonprofit where they felt like they could have better and better impact. And you think about that if you have a business significant business leader has great gifts to offer, but the way we’re doing leadership actually causes them just to check out – what what a loss for our local churches.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what a loss – absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Well so I when I got to say when I read this, when I saw this book, the thing that struck me on this is that this I think could be a great resource for leadership teams to go through together. It’s felt like one of those great books where like you’re like the what you do so well, being the friend, the consultant sitting on this outside of the circle and saying, hey friends like here’s some things that you should be thinking about. Ah and let’s talk through that together. I felt like, man, you’ve translated that well. When you were writing this book, what were you hoping the kind of impact or the use of it? I pictured it as a great book for our leadership team to do together hey this would be less than like ah just a solo person reading it. Sure you could get something out of it as a solo person reading it by yourself. But man, I think it would be even better even if it’s just one more person, one other person that you could read it with. Really struck me that that would be the best context, but tell me what you were thinking. How how did you hope this book would be used in churches?
Mike Bonem — No, very much what you said, Rich. Yeah I would I’d see it as being a book for a leadership team to look at together. Certainly, like you said, I think one person could still get a lot out of it. You know, that that conversation that you talked about with your friend earlier earlier today. I would hope that that when that resistance popped up, when that person said “I’m comfortable” that if your friend had read this book, the idea that would go through their mind is, oh yeah, resistors are not the enemy. I don’t need to immediately, you know, kind of treat this person as as a bad person.
Mike Bonem — But it’s even better if a leadership team can can wrestle with those ideas together. And so the the 10 perspectives which are the subtitle, they’re all written as a sort of short, hopefully the readers would find them to be pithy phrases that a leadership team could could all hang on to. So one of the one of those perspectives is “Who is Not in the Room?”. And the idea behind that is that as leaders we we can quickly fall into this pattern of of making decisions just thinking about the perspectives of the people who are around the leadership table.
Mike Bonem — But as a church we’re supposed to be thinking about the people who are not there. It goes back to that comfort question again, right? Who’s not here? Who’s and not a part of our church that God is calling us to reach, that God is calling us to have a positive impact with? And and you know again, the the chapter title and the phrase is Who is Not in the Room? because I would love for a leadership team to just embed that phrase into their thinking so that whenever they’re making leadership decisions they say, hey before we make this decision, have we really thoughtfully considered who’s not in the room?
Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it. Love it. Well and there’s and and there’s so many of these, friends, in this in this book. So you know… Lead with Trust, Dig Beneath the Surface, Take the Right Next Step, Heavy Loads Require Strong Teams. I think this is a it’s a culture shaping book in that sense where it gives, you know, great kind of concepts to hang on to. Mike, where where could people pick up copies of this? Again friends I’m encouraging you not to pick up one; I’d love for you to pick up a bunch of these, but ah, you know where where can people pick up copies of of this book?
Mike Bonem — I mean it’s on all the right, you know, it’s on Amazon and all the regular online ordering spots, and and you know on my website. There’s a link. There’s a short blurb about it and a link to order it as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and what’s your website address again?
Mike Bonem — It’s mikebonem.com so and Bonem is spelled…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Mike Bonem — …B O N E M.
Rich Birch — Yeah I would love for people to go over there, like I say. So I’m a subscriber, I read Mike’s stuff when it comes. I I get a lot of church stuff and I can say when Mike’s stuff shows up in my inbox, I read it, so you should as well. Super helpful content and, you know, thoughtful, and just just fantastic. So I I would go over there and and and subscribe to Mike’s list for sure. Anything else, you’d like to share…
Mike Bonem — I appreciate that, Rich. Yeah thanks.
Rich Birch — Oh come on. It’s good stuff and anything else… Ah you’ll notice I don’t say that every time other people are on. Um, anything else that ah you’d like to share, or anything else we’d like to kind of talk about just as we’re coming to land today’s episode?
Mike Bonem — You know, I guess the one other thing and just in this broad heading of change that I’m aware of is how hard it can be to be the change leader. And so for pastors, senior pastors, executive pastors, others who are listening to this, and you know you’re feeling like, yeah gosh, you know, there’s some change we really need to make. And then at the same time maybe you’re just feeling just discouraged, right? Thinking about how hard it’s going to be. I at least want to acknowledge that and honor that. Yes it’s hard. And I think one of the most one of the most important things you could do for yourself if you if if I’m describing you right now is do a little bit of self-care and soul care. And make sure you’re not doing it all by yourself. If you don’t have a team that’s working with you to clarify what changes are needed and then to… And it goes back again to one of those chapter titles, Heavy Loads – to have a team that’s going to help you lift that heavy load. Do that before you do anything else.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, friends, I really appreciate Mike. I appreciate his leadership. You should follow him for sure. Like I say pick up a bunch of copies of this book, and and follow along with him I think you’ll be you’ll be blessed by by doing that. I think it’ll help your ministry as we face a tough season. Mike, I appreciate you ah being here. Thanks so much for being here today.
Mike Bonem — Thanks so much, Rich. Really appreciate your podcast and all that you do, and and glad to have this opportunity.
Technology Insights to Drive Ministry Outcomes with Aaron Senneff
Sep 29, 2022
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Aaron Senneff, the Chief Technology Officer at Pushpay. Pushpay is a digital engagement platform that provides a donor management system, including donor tools, finance tools and a custom community app, to churches.
Technology is more important than ever in the church. But how do we effectively use it to inform our ministry approach and confirm that our ministry is “working”? Listen in as Aaron shares about how to use data to drive engagement and giving at your church.
Technology and churches. // In 2021 Pushpay did a Church Tech Report to find what people were thinking about technology in the church. Almost all respondents said technology was very important or critical to their church and ministry. 94% of churches who started online streaming during COVID say it’s a part of their future ministry.
Look at the data. // Technology tools can offer a way to look at who is engaging in the church. Pay attention to giving patterns and what givers attend online. Take a look at who are first time and second time givers, which can show who is making a commitment. We can’t do anything with the anonymous IP addresses of people who attend online. Provide an option, whether it’s a link or a QR code, to have people check in when they attend an online service. Offering some sort of online form enables you to follow-up, whether people are first-time visitors or regular attenders.
Have the information online. // Use your church management software to help people take next steps. Information about groups and volunteer opportunities are already there, so highlight them through your app. Having the information readily available online allows it to be accessed by anyone visiting at any time and creates a psychologically safe way for people to engage.
Engagement leads to giving, giving leads to engagement. // Don’t focus on how many donors you have or the monetary amounts. Rather use the data you have to figure out how to get people to engage in the church because those people are going to give. Similarly people who give will be more likely to engage and take next steps in other areas of church.
A heartfelt thank you matters. // Pushpay’s research has shown that a heartfelt acknowledgement of a monetary gift matters to the giver. It’s an important way for churches to engage with their donors and it doesn’t have to be hard. Recognition can be as simple as an automated email from Pushpay or MailChimp when someone gives for the first time, or commits to give regularly.
Technology Pushpay offers to bring data together. // A lot of churches have found that they end up using a bunch of different software to handle everything they need for their services, which can cause a lot of confusion. Pushpay offers systems, such as ChurchStaq, which are built to grow community, generosity and engagement. It brings data together to create the reports you need so you can see how people are moving along the path—from curious to leadership—and lets you know if the ministry is working.
You can learn more about Pushpay and their services at www.pushpay.com.
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody! Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. Listen every week we try to bring you a guest who will both inspire and equip you. Today it’s our honor, our privilege, to have Aaron Senneff with us. He is the CTO, the chief technology officer, at a little organization called Pushpay. Which you might be familiar with their Pushpay product or CCB Church Community Builder or really a whole bunch of other different things that they’re doing to help churches like you. And it’s our honor to have him with us today. We want to pull back the curtain, learn a little bit more from Aaron. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, thanks so much, Rich. It is well it is my honor to be here. So thank you for the invitation and I looking forward to the conversation. unSeminary seems like I’m either imminently qualified for this because I have not been to seminary.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — Or underqualified…
Rich Birch — No so glad you’re here.
Aaron Senneff — …but happy to be here and talk about church technology.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is so great. Well why don’t you tell us for the four people who are listening in who don’t know who Pushpay is, tell us about Pushpay and about your role there.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, so Pushpay is you know just to distill it is in the church technology space.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff — So you know one of the things like many people would be familiar with from our organization is a giving platform. There are thousands of churches in the United States that use Pushpay’s giving to help you know manage and collect donations and donors in their church. We make a church management system as formerly known as Church Community Builder, now part of a broader product we call ChurchStaq and then other technologies to offer, you know mobile apps that you can sort of brand and label for your church and communicate with your audience. We’ve we’ve recently acquired a streaming platform by the name of Resi. And so really, really, you know if you just distill it what we’re trying to do is try to figure out, you knowy what kind of technology needs do churches have? How can we assist them and enable them with their mission of, you know, reaching the lost with the gospel and making sure they can run an as effective and healthy of of a church as possible?
Rich Birch — Yeah I I really love what you guys do. I’m definitely a fan from afar for years. I kept saying, man, somebody’s got to sort out this giving thing and make it simple. You did it with Pushpay. And then for years I’ve I’ve been in a multi-site space since the early two thousand s and I was like somebody is going to figure out this ah, you know streaming thing to make it work at at scale, and that obviously Resi’s a part of your family now, and ah you know ChurchStaq or CCB. Fantastic solutions. So I just I really, you know, just love what you guys do and how you empower so many churches to, you know, to to really do a great job reaching our communities. You know I think most people who are listening in today if I’m an executive pastor I would say, hey technology is important piece of what I do.You know I I think we all thought we saw this pre pandemic but then the pandemic obviously accelerated all that. In fact, you guys did a study that found I think it was over 90% of church leaders or church churches believe that technology plays an essential role in helping their church achieve mission. Tell us more about that.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, um, well good – thanks for asking. Yes, well recently we did what we call the Church Tech Report. Yeah, this is something that’s accessible on our website if you’re interested. There’s some really interesting observations that come out of that. But you know we serve thousands of churches. So we we took the opportunity in 2021 to send out a survey to about 2000 leaders, you know, maybe people who are directly responsible for technology at their church who are executive pastors, maybe influencers for those technology decisions. And you know we we feel like we know our customers and the church pretty well but it gave us an opportunity just to, you know, make sure we weren’t you know missing the forest or the trees and understood how people were thinking about technology in the church. And you know it’s it’s probably not surprising in the sense that yeah in some ways it just confirmed things that probably most of us really are already understanding. And that’s that technology is important and getting more important…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — …in the eyes of Church Leaders. So that’s probably not shocking. Sometimes we look at that data and we think like okay, but the way that is happening is a little bit interesting and unique and thought provoking. So it was a really good chance for us to sort of like step back and ask what is happening in the technology space and and again provide that to the you know the broader church leadership in the country to see how other people are thinking about it.
Rich Birch — Were there any ah kind of benchmark findings – things that kind of stood out that were like oh that’s kind of an interesting thing for us to be thinking about when we think about this whole space?
Aaron Senneff — Yeah I mean I think like there’s some things where it’s very confirming. So as a good example, if you just ask the question to you know the average ministry leader: How important is technology to your ministry? I think you know 93% of respondents say it’s very important. Over over half a respondents said it’s extremely important, so almost critical to the future of the church. And like I said that is that is probably not shocking.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — You know, maybe confirming things that a lot of us already know. I think there were a few things that that have made us think a little bit more about the role that technology is playing. You know you you heard some things in the survey about, you know, not so much that that churches don’t find the tools that they want. It was more like, hey we have too many.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — They’re working against each other, or they’re siloed…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — …or how do these things work together? So there was this kind of this idea of like, Okay, how do we how do we like wrangle some of these things so that it’s working for us better? Um, you know, live streaming, again, probably not shocking that every virtually every church went online over the last three years if they weren’t already. So some you know some 94% of churches were were in the last year and last two years looking to get online and bring their services through streaming. You know the real question that we’ve had for a long time is what happens over the next two to 3 years as sort of you know covid is put behind us? And the reality is virtually every single one of those churches is saying online streaming is just part of our future.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And so now instead of ah, a tool to kind of get through a period, it is now a tool that will be a part of their ministry going on. And I think like another one that I… this one sticks out for me because I think we’re we’re all used to social media.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff — Churches are very very invested in social media right now. Some ninety ninety some percent use it. But if you ask, is it important in the future? That really dropped off…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Aaron Senneff — …which I think is interesting – less than 50% thought it would be strategically important to them in the future. And that’s you know there’s some whys behind that…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Senneff — …that are fun to ask questions about, but I think that one was a really interesting observation. So like I said there’s some things in there you go, yeah I get that. Everybody’s talking about that. That makes sense. And there’s other times you think, hmmm what is that telling us?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, interesting. I do coaching with churches and a number of kind of the fastest growing churches in the country and there’s ah one of the stories I love to retell around the pandemic and streaming—and then really this is a bit of a long question or long introduction to get to a short question. But you know this this church, they, you know, their lead pastor by admission would say listen before March 2020, I was like anti-church online, thought it was a terrible idea, was like hey this is you know I’m not sure that’s like only for those a different kind of church. However, and and he would say like I was probably looked down my nose at churches that did that, and looked down my nose around a church’s use of social media. And he he retells this story about how somewhere there in mid March 2020 he pulled his senior leaders together and said, okay friends this is what we’re all going to do. Everybody’s got to get a Facebook account today. And we have to figure out how to get streaming and you all need to figure out how to how to ah, start using so social media this week, like this has now gone from a low priority to high priority.
Rich Birch — Now I think so many of us are on the other side of that now where we’re like yes, we have all these people viewing our streams. Or maybe our attendance is down from where we were before and we we don’t know what to make of all that. We’re not sure… Okay, so who are all those people? How do I connect with them? What are you seeing from your perspective? How how are you seeing churches kind of tackle that? Yes they’ve got into streaming. We have this audience; we’re not entirely sure what to do with it. We’re not entirely sure how to connect with them. What are some of the things you’re seeing on that front?
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, well you know the idea of that like who is out there?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — I think one of the things we can acknowledge is that’s probably been a problem for a lot of churches for a long time, especially larger churches.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — You know people walk in. They sit in a service. They walk back out and.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff — Um, but we have processes, like churches have installed processes to try to get people to engage. So you’ll often hear like hey, fill out the contact card. Go visit us at the you know the new visitor center or the connect center. And so people who have the choice have this like avenue to to connect. And one of the think the frustrations that we hear as people engage online is some of those avenues are either broken, or they’re just kind of disjointed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — So it’s much much harder to figure out who is there, and how are they engaging in the community? How do we do we form community those people, and minister to them, and disciple to them? So it’s, you know, I don’t think the the idea of who’s out there is a new problem.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — But like a lot of things, you know, covid just stretched things that were already happening and so now we’re in the situation where, gosh now it’s a very real problem because you know it’s it’s one thing to see that I have whatever – your analytics tell you that have 20,000 people you know, eyeballs on glass, but who are those people?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And are they returning? And are they engaging? So I I think you hear a lot of you know, continued sort of frustration or thinking about how do we make this a genuine community?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — Not just people that are on the stream but people that are a part of our church.
Rich Birch — Right. And what what are some of the practices you’re seeing that are helping on that front? You know how how are how are they using in your case this the series of tools that you have? Because you have a number of different touch points. Someone might give once or someone might, you know, check in they might check their kids into kids ministry. Or they might fill out one of those new new here cards on on the website. How is all that working together? What are what are some best practices that we’re seeing bubbling up kind of post-covid and post this current you know period we’re in?
Aaron Senneff — Yeah I think there’s a couple things that I think about. And one one is that you’re right that you know we mentioned churches already investing a lot in tools, and sometimes those current tools are providing some windows into how people are engaging. So like giving records might be a good example. We always encourage look at first time and second time givers especially time because that sort of indicates a commitment, you know? You you don’t have to look at your online online analytics only and ask who’s out there. You can look at well how have giving patterns changed? And are there people that when we went online, they’re giving patterns… …talking to a church probably just about a month ago and you know it was one of those churches like you said that probably wasn’t highly organized around online. Very capable church. Very effective church, but online is sort of secondary. And we were we were just talking to some of the staff and the CFO just said, you know, what one interesting thing that did happen is, you know, we just got a gift from someone in New York for $5000. We’re thousands of miles away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And you know we talked about that being well, you know, nobody just does that. You know, like that’s probably a window…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — …or a ministry opportunity, or a who is that and what community are they in, and how did that happen that you have a chance to follow up on. And because they gave you know a person’s contact information. You know that’s an opportunity to reach out and say hello. But I think also the the other thing that that can happen as like I mentioned that opportunity to connect sometimes gets broken. So we will we are starting to see churches do things like maybe use, you know, we’re we’re familiar with check-in for checking children into you know the the children’s worship. What about asking people to check in when they participate online? You know there’s some really nice mobile tools to do that. It doesn’t have to be awkward, and or maybe just saying hey if you’re just joining us for the first time or joining us for the second time, you know here’s maybe a link to a form, or a QR code to a form – just fill that out real quickly. It’s the same thing as filling out the contact card if you’re sitting in the auditorium, or walking to the connect center. And I think those you know those don’t tell us everybody who’s out there. We still have the problem just like in physical church of the people who walk in and walk out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff —But it provides this invitation through your digital tools to let people let you know that they’re there.
Rich Birch — I love that. Talk to me more about the adult check-in thing. That that seems like the Holy Grail of, you know, connection ministries if we could get adults to check in. That’s like one of those I feel like for 15 years we’ve been wrestling with that. At the church I I was out for years we did name tags and I was like man, we should automate all of that process. And like let’s let’s get a whole bunch of you know and you know iPads and we’ll check people in. And just even the conversation around that, man that raised the anxiety with folks. But talk to us about that. What… I love that idea. I think from a connections point of view it could… it’s powerful data.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah I I totally agree with that. Like this this is one of the things I you know I just wished as as a yeah know giant church organization across the United States we were doing more of this, but there’s some great examples. So you mentioned it – I just visited a church in Houston not too long ago and they use child child check in but they use it for the adults walking in the church. So you walk in, bunch of kiosks for everybody who attends. They check in. They even chose to print name tags just to get over the awkwardness…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — …of not knowing who everybody is. And it’s also just a really great way to say, Okay, now we know who’s here. Well there’s no reason you can’t do that on on an online service.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff — So we have churches that have maybe like set up online campuses.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff — And they ask people to check in. We have, you know, because like in our product stack the mobile app is very connected to the CHMS so you can surface what we call instant check-in to the mobile app. So one way one way, for example, that we’ve used that in the past even for our own company is we used to we used to have this conference that we call Church Disrupt. Some of your your listeners may have tuned into that. So they might have experienced this. You you listen online; you register you listen online, and when ah when a session starts we would send out a push notification and that push notification would just say, hey can you just check in? Let us know you’re here. And you just go through a really quick exercise in your phone to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — You know it’s just like child check-in but it’s just on your phone…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff — …and it says like my family’s here and participating. So those are like that is a really great way to take, you know, a bunch of data that’s a bunch of anonymous IP addresses that you can’t do anything with, and then say okay now we have people that we can follow up with. We can engage. Whether you’re a first-time visitor, you’re a regular attender, or whatever – we know how you’re participating online. That opens a ton of doors.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely/
Aaron Senneff — And if you don’t have that information then it’s hard to follow up.
Rich Birch — Yeah absolutely. Yeah I love that. And I you know I I think there’s ah, there’s always this tension where the more anonymous… so most of my background I would say would be in the attractional church movement – that’s been kind of where I spent most of my time. And you know there’s always this tension between the more anonymous we make an experience theoretically it makes it more appealing to put folks because they’re totally in control of the experience. But the downside of that—and this is true in in-person church or online—the more we take an active role in trying to connect with people, the better we can get them to stick and stay and and provide a great experience for them. The more, like you’re saying, the more we ask them to check in or do a little bit of friction around the fact that, hey we’re glad you’re here. Um, you know that that helps us ultimately get people connected long-term. Talk to me about the in-person applications of that.
Rich Birch — I love that one example used in Houston. Are there other things that churches are doing to add to use technology to kind of drive connection? I’m thinking particularly at a larger church, a couple thousand people church where yeah you you know you look out and it’s like I have no idea who all those faces are out there.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, we this is something that’s really personal to me because one of my you know my wife and I have been fortunate to be part of several churches, just as we’ve moved around the country with our jobs and other things that have gone on. And you know a lot of people probably have the story but we joined a certain church that was 100 people meeting in a high school gym. And a church like that you know everybody, the senior pastor knows everybody. You know you know who’s coming and going you know who’s setting up the chairs. You know who’s you know, wheeling out the worship equipment into the gym.
Aaron Senneff — And then we we just kind of like were one of those churches that the growth just was amazing. And we one day woke up in and in a new building. You know a thousand people and it was filled the first Sunday we were opened. And I remember we were on the leadership team. The elder team and you know that that first Sunday we had a meeting and you know was one of these days you should be high-fiving each other, like hey we’re we’ve done great.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — And I remember our senior pastor coming in and saying like, hey I think we we have a problem because I just talked to a few people and they they didn’t connect very well. Like our church felt a little cold to them. And you know this is just breaking his heart that this is who we become, and how do we fix that?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And the funny thing is this is long enough ago that you know here I am a technology executive that is software for a living, and I was like I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, right.
Aaron Senneff — I don’t know how to do that. But, you know, things have changed a lot. And you know a lot of people are more inclined to engage digitally first now. That’s just the way it is. So I think sometimes just simple things like, hey what is what is the next step? So a church I just visited recently was really good. They they published a form for for visitors. There was a QR code on the chair. Scan the QR Card, it takes you to form. Fill out a form that got the contact information and then it took me to a series of videos about what their church is about. So you heard like you know some of the founding members, the pastor, some of the staff members just talk about like who are we, you know what kind of place of this. I thought that is a really inviting way to just share a little bit and start to get people connected.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Aaron Senneff — And then if you think about next steps. Um, you know I think like being public about the types of groups that are available, the types of volunteers volunteer opportunities are available. Maybe like missions your church cares about. And the thing is these are already all in your CHMS. Your groups are already there. You know your volunteer serving opportunities are already there. Your mission opportunities are already there. So being able to just surface those whether it’s through the app or the website gives people a really safe, psychologically safe, way to engage, you know, without having do the scary thing of walking up to somebody you know at a physical meeting and be like, okay I’m new here. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but what do I do now?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love that. I love that. You know it’s interesting – QR codes, right, they like came back with a vengeance here with ah you know the pandemic. It was like they were like they we’re all but dead. But now it’s like you know we’re everywhere you go you see them and it seems to have been, you know it’s like a a relatively easy… people I always… My benchmark for that is always my mom. It’s like if my mom knows how to use them, then there should be some, you know, there and she definitely knows how to use QR codes, which is kind of fun. So…
Aaron Senneff — And that’s that’s one that it’s just stuck, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — Like you you saw it get wide adoption to solve some problems.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — But I just walked into a restaurant this weekend and guess what there’s no menus. There’s QR codes. Like it has just stuck.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — And I think that’s probably true with a lot of technology changes that happened over the last two years.
Rich Birch — Oh totally. Absolutely. I had the same in a restaurant—oh this was in the last month—where they all their payment stuff was done—you would appreciate this as a payment company. Was the same thing – there’s a QR code on the table, and once we were done ordering you just literally scan and opens up to some mobile website where it had our order all there. I put the tip in and all that and paid right there on my phone, which was fantastic as a client, as a customer I loved that. I was like this fantastic. I don’t have to wait for somebody to bring me a check. I can just do it and you know away we go. Let’s let’s talk a little bit about the donor the donor side the donor development piece. You know you guys are at the the nexus of a lot of that um, at at Pushpay.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Obviously we’re we’re heading into some uncertain waters on the the economy side. You know the the whole impact of inflation and where is that heading and you know coming recession. All of that stuff. What is the advice that you’re giving to churches kind of at at a top level first around donor development. Um, you know, are there things we should be doing now to get ready for what’s coming ah, you know, assuming that things might turn a little bit sour here in the in the coming you know, couple quarters?
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, well valid concern. You know, I think that a lot of large churches are looking into the future and probably rightfully so have some concerns over you know what does what does participation look like…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — …and then what does giving look like and you know will our church continue to grow on the path that it’s grown on in the past. So those those are really valid concerns. Um, and by the way there’s so many good churches out there that do this so well that for many of them I just want to say like I am not in a position to give you advice on how to manage that because…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Aaron Senneff — …you know your ministries and you execute them really well.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — But the thing that I always think about when we look at data of how people engage with churches, engagement leads to giving. Giving leads to engagement. So I think that you know one of the things we want to try to do is not so much focus on, you know, Okay, how many donors do we have?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — Are they are they reoccurring? What’s the what’s the amount? I think we want to try to use those opportunities or the data we have to try to figure out how do we get people to engage in the church because those people are going to give. so I I would say you know a really good set of giving tools shouldn’t just be a list of transactions. It should be a list of people that says…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — …like hey yeah here are the people that are first time. Here are the people that are second time. Again, that opens up the door for you to reach out and ask like, hey you’re you’re new or you’re maybe just giving for the first time, you’ve been around for a while. Thank you. Or what has changed that’s leading to that? And then the other part I’d say—and totally obvious totally obvious—but um, online participation is just how a lot of people are going to show up to churches right now.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Aaron Senneff —And so I wouldn’t overlook that. And one of the things you want to try to figure out is, first of all as you engage engage the online audience like like I said engagement is giving giving it is engagement. Those are those those both going kind of go hand in hand. So make sure you give them seamless, easy ways to participate if they choose to do so. Don’t make it hard. There’s some really good technology tools to you know, just kind of link into your stream. Go right here to the giving page and give if you want. And also just realize if you’re getting people to volunteer, if you’re getting people into small groups, those people are going to be much more inclined to give in the future. So it’s a holistic equation. It’s not just about, you know, collecting gifts.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. I love the idea of simplicity and how do we make it simple. How to think about it from you know how do we reduce friction through that process. Um, you know how I think that’s so critical. The other thing you said, which I wonder if we could pull apart a little bit, is the acknowledgement side of it. The for some reason you know the church is I’ve seen so too many churches stumble in this area where they they don’t spend enough time actually just thanking people. And I don’t know why that is I think it could be a left hand right hand thing where like we don’t want to you know we don’t want to um, you know we don’t want to have some sort of weird relationship with our donors, and so we don’t want to say thank you to them. But but the reality of it is that people have lots of places they could give and the fact that they’re giving to your church is pretty amazing. You you mentioned a couple of those key milestones: first gift, second gift, setting up recurring. Um, are there any kind of best practices you’re seeing on the acknowledgement side that we should be thinking about?
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, well so first of I just think a a well done heartfelt acknowledgement does matter. We actually do see that in our research. It does matter.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — That engages people in the church.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Aaron Senneff — So and the and the funny thing is it doesn’t have to be hard.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — So I I was you know talking one of the things we do is we we don’t just meet with church leaders, we meet with people who participate in churches and sort of ask you know what their experiences are like, and you know how are you engaging in the church. And there was just one recently interview that I was in and this individuals talked about like, hey I gave to my church and I got a really nice email from the pastor that was directed to me that just said, thank you here’s where your gifts are going. We really appreciate you participating. And they were just reflecting on that made me feel valued. You know I I just very much appreciate that it just didn’t feel like I sent a bunch of money to the general fund and it disappeared. I felt recognized.And you know the funny thing is, Rich, like I almost just kind of wanted to say, like that probably came out of Pushpay or MailChimp or something like that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — Like like it is automated. It is simple. It is easy.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yes, yes.
Aaron Senneff — But it is valued.
Rich Birch — Right. Absolutely.
Aaron Senneff — So yeah I totally agree with you that acknowledgement and recognition is a really important next step.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Yeah, absolutely. That’s good. I just recently I had a guy pull me aside and say—we do we do like a handwritten note process for you know, basically people that have given at a certain level—and and um, you know this this guy pulled me aside and he said you know, Rich, like the fact that you would take time to write that note means a ton to me. Like the fact that you would and and it was it was like this you know like it was a little bit humbling frankly because I’m like it doesn’t take that long. I get generated a report that says here are the people. I have a stack of thank you cards on my desk I write notes and send it to people. It’s it’s not It’s not a big deal. Like it’s you know and you know it’s always if I know them if it’s like, hey you know it was a great seeing ya, or hope things are good with the kids, or you know that kind of thing – pretty straightforward. Um, but it was a good reminder to me again around acknowledgement and we’ve got to work hard on that. We’ve got to keep thinking about what we can do on that front. Now earlier you mentioned a problem that I’m hoping our relationship can sustain this, Aaron. I’m hoping that you know we’re we’re 25 minutes into our friendship and hopefully you can you won’t hang up on me. But one of the problems I find with technology is man, we just keep bolting on new stuff. It’s like the newest tool we got this thing, we got that thing we have all these different pieces of the puzzle, and that is really hard to manage. And and we have data silos and you know and I and I want to say stop it. Stop getting new subscriptions for a $20 a month you know tech solution. So I’d love for you to talk specifically from Pushpay. How are you helping churches solve that problem. What are you doing to help us wrestle through that?
Aaron Senneff — Yes, and not I’ll just tell you, Rich, not just you.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — So definitely a theme in churches.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Aaron Senneff — There’s probably a lot of people in your audience that are kind of given a shout for hooray. Someone said it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — That is really true. Church software like I think churches really over last ten years invested in technology. But now you step back from a technology stack and you’re like okay. We have a volunteer scheduling system over here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — You know we have maybe a database of people over here. We have a giving solution over here. You know someone else is using worship planning over here. Someone else has got maybe a accounting system and and it’s all in different silos…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Senneff — …and hard to connect. And so I’m I am just going to say this. This is an area where Pushpay intends to help solve.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And I think we’ve got some really good head start on some things. But I’ll I’ll just tell you like why I think that’s important and where I think it can go.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Senneff — We we already know this – people are engaging digitally in the church. So if you just think about your systems today, the ones that already listed, you’re giving platform, wherever you register volunteers, where people sign up to be in a group. You know, how people consume information whether it’s through a email or a text message or an app, how they get online streaming, or how they do that. How they you know, how they may be messaged with people who are in a group. What you’re seeing is all these little what I call “digital footprints” of how people are engaging in your church that are collected, you know, just kind of automatically because people are engaging. And what we really want to be able to do is then say, okay we can step back and we can see, you know, how Rich is participating in our church. We can see that he he attends regularly. We can see that he’s a regular giver. And you know maybe we could say like and he’s not an active volunteer right now. That’s a great person to ask to step up.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — Because he’s checking the attendance box, checking the giving box. Could we push on volunteering? Could we just reach out and say, hey we got some great opportunities. Do you think you could help? You’re probably inclined to say yes. So I think those types of opportunities of assembling that data, getting a really good 360 degree view of people, and then being able to tailor your ministry approach to those people based on, you know, sort of that engagement journey looks like. Did they… are they just curious? Did they just join the live stream for the first time? Or are they like committed members that have been participating for a long time and it’s time but for them to step into leadership? Um I think the data that we are already collecting can tell us a lot about those things and can help us be more effective at ministry Leadership. And then also I think that outcome is now you can see with a real concrete data how your church can grow. So you can see people moving from, you know, curious to participating, to involved, to committed, to leadership. And and then ask the question that everybody wants to know, like is the ministry working?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — Is this working the way we designed it…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — …with data? So you can do that today with some of our systems. Like I would say ChurchStaq which is the combination. You know you get all the people get linked together, all those records get tied together. You can run some really great reporting on how people are engaging and it also say we should already be way better at this. So if you just want to ask like where is Pushpay going next? This is sort of the next frontier to help people really understand their audiences and and community as well as possible.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s good. Like I I think there’s it’s there’s an interesting kind of philosophical or maybe not philosophical or it’s like approach to technology is the future which, you know, I I think you don’t have to be a technology strategist to figure out what Pushpay’s solution is, is the future one giant solution that kind of does it all, or is it a whole bunch of solutions held together by Airtable and you know that’s like we kind of tape it all together ourselves. Um, which there’s a ton of churches that are doing that – I know you know that. That are like hey we’ve got all these different things and we’re going to pull it all together and then to try to answer the same question. Um, man I’m just just cheering for you from the sidelines. If there’s a way for you to make that work together to ultimately answer the question that you’re saying, which is hey how are people actually taking steps closer to you know a relationship with Jesus and across all of these different you know data points, um, man that would be powerful for so many of us.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, and I do think is moving that way. And I think you see both approaches, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Senneff — So you do see churches saying hey we are going to figure out how to stitch this together.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — So we’ll use these these separate tools and we’ll figure this out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And I think that’s admirable. That’s also a ah like a hill to climb.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Aaron Senneff — So there’s some effort that goes into that. And then you also see a very common approach of okay, we really need to like make our stack more uniform…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — …maybe more in all in one, and that way all the data is all all the way there together. So you see you see both for sure and the one thing I would just want to encourage everybody, you know, obviously I’m part of Pushpay. I like the all in one. We should be doing that for you. We should be making it helpful. But the one thing I would just say to everybody, be sensitive about where your congregant data goes. You know, maybe less critical if you’re thinking about a general ledger, or you know your accounts payable or accounts receivable, because that’s not like how your congregants are engaging.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Aaron Senneff — But when you think about who’s volunteering, and when are they volunteering, who’s giving when are the giving, how are they participating you know, are they in groups. Um, that is really important data…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Aaron Senneff — …to understand how your church is changing. And if you cannot tie that together, you are missing a lot of information.
Rich Birch — Yeah, no, that’s good. That’s a good insight. You know I know for years we would look at we do a quarterly report with our campus pastors where we all we looked at was giving trends. So we just were like who’s kind of behind trend and ahead of trend. And the conversation I would ask is ah, like I’m not actually concerned about the money side of it. It’s what is this telling us about our people, right? So people who have been giving at you know they were giving x amount of dollars now they’re giving half of what they were giving a year ago. That’s sending us a message that’s sending us a pastoral care message. There’s something’s happened in their house that is that we need to address, that we need to find out what’s happening there. Not not because we’re the the money is telling us a story, but we’re not actually primarily concerned about the money thing. You know and we could be if obviously if we’re thinking about donor stuff we are thinking about that as well. But there’s there’s so many examples of that, you know. But that if we could get better as churches, hey we used to check our kids in every other week and now you’re once every three weeks. Um what are we doing? It seems like a basic thing. It’s like ah…
Aaron Senneff — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …but but too many too many of us aren’t doing that. We’re not accessing the data we have today.
Aaron Senneff — Yeah, and that’s another thing I would just encourage that’s a good use of data, and that’s a really great segue. Because I think it’s one thing to just look at a donor list, especially if you’re at like a 10,000 person church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — Like okay we have you know 5000 active donors. What do I do with that?
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — Well if you’re really trying to focus ministry just like you said. Changes in donor behavior mean something.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — You know, maybe it’s just something small to celebrate like a job change…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Aaron Senneff —…or you know our family’s changing. But we have heard story after story after story that those changes were indicating of life events are really important for the church…
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Aaron Senneff —… to come alongside and minister to those people. You know death in the family that led to an inheritance that led to a gift. So your your thank you note is now like ah oh how can we come alongside you and and help your family during this time? Or a job loss or the family’s being disrupted in some way. And so I really encourage people use the data to look for those moments – those changes…
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — …like what are the windows that we can open to say, Okay, something changed that is a chance that is a time for us to ask what’s going on. And you’re right like checking in every Sunday and then not. Or becoming going from a recurring donor to irregular donor.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — Like there’s just different changes like there like those, and it helps distill the 5000 people in your audience to the hundred people that you can reach out to this week.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Absolutely. Well, Aaron, I I appreciate this. There’s a ton we could talk about here, but I I appreciate you just opening up a window a little bit. Again thank you on behalf of the thousands of churches out there that use Pushpay and all your various solutions to to help make ministry better. Appreciate what you’re doing I know you probably put out a lot of fires every day. So the fact that you give us some time here means a lot. So I really appreciate that. Is there anything else, you’d like to say just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode?
Aaron Senneff — Yeah I’ll I’ll just say to everybody that’s out there. You know, I’ve considered a privilege to be able to work next to churches. It is honestly a privilege to be a part of Pushpay. Hard time to be in church staff. You know, divided churches, a lot of things changing in the work, and so I just I just want to say this – we we meet with ministry professionals every day. It is a very difficult time to be a ministry professional. We love you all and um, just ask everybody to take care of yourselves and hopefully Pushpay can do our part and try to help on the technology side. So that’s all.
Rich Birch — That’s great. So we want to send people to pushpay.com – is there anywhere else we want to send them to kind of learn more about what you guys are doing?
Aaron Senneff — pushpay.com is a great place. It’ll take you a lot of different ways.
Rich Birch — Right.
Aaron Senneff — And then if you if you do a little digging, you’ll find the church technology report. There might be some things that are insightful to you.
Rich Birch — Okay, thanks so much, Aaron – appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much.
Aaron Senneff — Thank you, Rich. Appreciate it.
Outreach Lessons from the Statistically Most Secular City in North America with Jeremy Norton
Sep 22, 2022
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jeremy Norton, lead pastor at Mountainview Church in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.
Being a church leader in a place like the Yukon is a little like living in the future. Listen in as Jeremy shares how to engage with your neighbors and city in a post-Christian setting.
Challenges in today’s world. // Canada is post-Christian and more secular than the United States, giving us a glimpse of the direction the US is heading culturally. Whitehorse, Yukon in particular is 51% proclaimed atheist or agnostic, making it the most secular city in North America according to Statistics Canada. In addition to the spiritual climate, this area draws individuals with a deeply-rooted independent nature. There is a mix of strong conservatives, a large number of government employees, immigrants, and a population of native Americans, which can create a lot of tension. All of these elements make for hard soil where it’s a challenge to spread God’s word.
Be present. // When there is a high secular presence in a community, it’s a long process in building relationships and sharing the gospel, and you need to be patient. Work regularly in public settings and invite people to sit down and talk as you get to know them. Close your laptop and turn your full attention to them.
Don’t give up on the game. // As you dialog about faith, people may get angry at the answers to their questions and leave. Graciously allow that and don’t give up. It’s a long game and requires wait time—sometimes a process that can take weeks or months—for them to come back and talk again.
Build the relationship between you. // Don’t get caught up heavily on politics or ideologies with someone who isn’t a believer. These are the wrong areas to focus on initially; the relationship has to be built first so that they might trust you to share the gospel with them.
Listen to them. // If someone hasn’t given their life to Jesus, don’t let conversations focus on hot topics that cause so many arguments. Instead, ask personal questions and try to politely steer the conversation toward what they are personally struggling with. Move away from the big picture to the smaller one to focus on what they believe and feel.
Do, don’t just talk. // A highly secular culture is looking to see what you do, not so much what you say. Mountainview Church has the vision to serve their city to reach the city, and they meet felt needs in the community, whether it’s providing food during Thanksgiving, or serving the homeless in brutally cold temperatures.
The journey north. // Jeremy has released a book, Northern Roads: A Journey of Life and Leadership Serving on the 60th Parallel. In it he shares lessons God taught him during his journey which ultimately led to his work at Mountainview Church. He hopes to encourage people through his testimony, as well as help Christians understand that there are missions opportunities in the northern part of North American that are often overlooked.
Visit www.leadbiblically.com to learn more about Jeremy’s book, plus find information about workshops and retreats. You can also find a link to a YouVersion 5-Day Devotional Reading Plan related to Jeremy’s book. Visit Mountainview Church at mountainview.church.
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One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to tune in. It’s going to be a great conversation today. Super excited to have my friend, Jeremy Norton, with us. Jeremy is a pastor in a location that in some ways I think is like living in the future. Stick with me friends. Ah, he is at Mountainview Church which is in Whitehorse, Yukon in Canada, which is you could call it north. That’s about as north as I think this is the most northernly interview we’ve had. Jeremy is the lead pastor there. Jeremy, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.
Jeremy Norton — Thank you so much. I’m a fan of the podcast and you know you’ve been ah a good insight and resource for us as a church and for me as a leader. So yeah I’m pumped to do this.
Rich Birch — Ah, super sweet. Thank you for for saying that. Why don’t you fill out a little bit of the picture. Tell us about Mountainview; kind of give us to tell us about the church, and then maybe talk a little bit about your story.
Jeremy Norton — Totally, yeah. so Mountainview Church is in the city of White Horse. Now the city of Whitehorse is only 30,000 people so for most it would be like wait 30,000? Isn’t that like a town? Yeah, but it is the capital city of the Yukon. Ah, the Yukon is the territory right beside Alaska. Alaska is our neighbor – for any American listeners that would kind of give them a placing of where it is. It’s a territory, not a province. So we have 3 territories in Canada – very different than provinces and how they function in things, but a part of Canada. To give an idea the viewers or listeners on the ah land mass and population, It’s the same land mass as California ah, but there’s only 40,000 people…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Jeremy Norton — …in the in the entire land mass…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jeremy Norton — …with 30,000 of them living in Whitehorse. So 3 out of 4 people live… so that would be like imagine LA only has 30,000 people and the rest of California has another 10,000. That’s where…
Rich Birch — It’s amazing.
Jeremy Norton — That’s where I live. That’s how I function. Now the good part of that is that so goes Whitehorse, so goes the territory. So a huge evangelism effort in the city of Whitehorse – if you can reach Whitehorse, which is what we’re trying to do at Mountainview. You know, serve the city, reach the city. Um, it can have a massive impact. So yeah, that kind of gives you a little bit of an idea. I I served for my first ministry was as a youth pastor in Alaska. I served a bit in Alberta, but I grew up in Ontario. I actually met my wife in the Muskokas and so I’ve been around different places, but landed in my calling for the past eight years here in the Yukon.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, there’s a lot I want to dig into, and I appreciate you giving that that overview and the sense to kind of you know, set up a little bit ah of the you know the tension that Whitehorse is in. The fact that it’s you know it really is in like you say 3 or 4 people in the territory live in there and that’s just incredible. Incredible statistics. The thing that caught my attention and as we were kind of connecting, getting ready for this I really do think that the spiritual makeup of your community might in some ways give us a view into the future a little bit. Talk to us about that. What does that look like? What’s the kind of spiritual dynamics in Whitehorse?
Jeremy Norton — Ah, yeah, so you have um… so for those that are Canadian or understand Canada. Canada is definitely post-Christian, more secular sensed way further down the road than the United States would be. So the United States a lot of times we say hey, look to Canada to kind of look to what’s happening culturally in the future. I think the UK and Europe is even further down the line than Canada is.
Jeremy Norton — But when we look at Canada as a whole and you look at statistics Canada, the city of Whitehorse and Yukon territory has actually has the highest percentage um of atheist agnostic. It’s the most secular city – Whitehorse is the most secular city in Canada, even more than Vancouver, Toronto.
Rich Birch — Wow wow.
Jeremy Norton — We have around 51% that are that kind of like proclaimed to be atheist or agnostic.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton —And according to Statistics Canada. So that makes Whitehorse a challenge…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeremy Norton — …in a big way. Um, ah the ideology you know one out of two people that you talk to either rejects the idea of God entirely, or see absolutely no like there’s no importance to it to think about it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeremy Norton — So imagine that every other person that’s how you interact with, and so trying to establish churches there, try to establish evangelism efforts there, it is it is hard soil. And and based on the research based on the stats Whitehorse would be the hardest soil. Ah, perhaps ah, perhaps based on the stats in North America…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …which is crazy to think about.
Rich Birch — Right. Now why… Yeah yeah, that is crazy, and I and I want to really dive into and talk through what you’re learning on you know, particularly the outreach and evangelism front. But before we get there, why is that? What what is it what’s your theory? What’s the theory of why ah, this community is such a magnet for ah, you know, for like you’re saying agnostic atheist kind of the post-christian culture?
Jeremy Norton — Yeah, so there’s the the big factor is the is the deep, deep rooted independent nature. That’s probably the thing that binds everyone who’s in the Yukon, is there is a strong independence in them. So I… it would be interesting to do like an Enneagram study on the Yukon versus versus the rest of Canada, like I don’t know if it’s just it it draws obviously different personalities. But strong convictions heavy independence.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — Sometimes the Yukon’s nicknamed as the colorful 5% of Canada. Ah, in in all the people that kind of don’t fit in the rest of the country, they escape to the Yukon.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Jeremy Norton — Um, so so that’s one piece is no matter what your conviction is in Whitehorse, everyone is deeply independent and it kind of gathers that type of people. The other piece to it is ah Whitehorse is the kind of the hub for northern sovereignty in Canada. For anyone that’s kind of followed you know geopolitical stuff in regards to the north and natural resources and these types of things. It’s a, you know, it’s ah it’s a hub. You’ve got Alaska, Canada, and Russia – you got all these people all these nations that really that we found the north will be important in the future.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — And so there’s like this arctic sovereignty, northern sovereignty thing going on. So Whitehorse is the hub of that which increases the level of government employees and government presence.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeremy Norton — So we’re 33% government employee.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jeremy Norton — So one out of three people either…
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Jeremy Norton — …works for like the feds, the territory, or municipal government, or subsequent, you know, organization. So then when you have a high government presence, high independent presence…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Jeremy Norton — …and then we also have our second ah, you know so we have mining, which is like one of our major major private businesses. Then the second is guiding, like hunting and fishing guiding into as well.
Rich Birch — Okay, interesting.
Jeremy Norton — So so for anyone that understands mining, fishing, hunting…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …that is fairly super conservative.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeremy Norton — Then you have this high government populace…
Rich Birch — Right. Interesting, interesting.
Jeremy Norton — …that’s mixed in these two groups typically aren’t big fans of each other…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Jeremy Norton — And so so and then add in a whole other later layer that that we have 25% first nations.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — So one out of 4 people is first nations so that adds an element.
Rich Birch — Fascinating.
Jeremy Norton — And then another strange thing that’s that’s come up in the past five years the Canadian government has allowed fast track immigration for ah for certain certain ah countries. One of the biggest that Canada’s found is Filipino population. So right now if if if ah if someone from the Philippines comes to ah Whitehorse, Yellowknife, or or a Iqaluit for the first five years they can get kind of fast tracked permanent residency.
Jeremy Norton — So the last little mix is one out of ten people – we’re 10 percent Filipino in our city. So…
Rich Birch — Interesting. What a fascinating mix.
Jeremy Norton — Yeah, so if you add ah it is such a strange mix such a strange mix.
Rich Birch — Yeah interesting.
Jeremy Norton — Um, so all of that creates kind of it’s just a really mixed bag and there’s there’s tensions. It’s just the way it is. It’s people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting, interesting. That’s so cool. Well I’d love to hear about what you’re learning on kind of the outreach and evangelism you know side of things.
Jeremy Norton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So you step into that culture. You’ve been here for a while, ah, what’s working? How are you engaging the community? What does that look like?
Jeremy Norton — Yeah, probably the um the the biggest thing I think is is presence. Um I I choose to kind of work in coffee shops. I have a little studio here that I do some recording in but at home. But um if you’re in a heavy atheist agnostic culture, it’s not that I’m going to share the gospel and someone’s going to be like, oh I need Jesus. Now they might. Holy Spirit can drop and that can happen. But when you have ah such a high secular presence, ah, such a heavy um, spiritual kind of opposition, I would say, it’s a long game.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — You you may have someone that asks questions about things; they may sit down at a coffee shop and they kind of know, okay, why are you always here? You know I see on the laptop. You know I see you doing things. Um but something we talked about before is ah something really important for any pastor or leader that’s kind of working in a public setting that wants to reach the public, one of the things I do is if someone sits down or I invite them sit down, I close my laptop.
Rich Birch — I like that.
Jeremy Norton — And closing the laptop is one of the very first cues. Um that it’s like I I am willing to take the time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — And you have to understand this is going to be a long conversation, and they actually may get frustrated, leave, and you got to kind of politely allow that. But they’re going to come back. And so to reach an atheist agnostic culture, you need to be patient. They may come back to you three weeks later, three months later, and said hey, you know we were talking about it. Just because they may not like what you’re talking about in the moment, talking about Jesus, talking about sin, or the need for a savior, and all these different things, you can’t give up. It’s a long game.
Jeremy Norton — And and for me, I’m a fairly conservative guy and there can always be a temptation, always a temptation to get into kind of more conservative ideology, which maybe I’m more lean to as kind of more on the evangelical reform side. But I have to pause that and understand that this person they they are going to reject so much of that.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Jeremy Norton — And so I can’t get caught up too heavily in the issues…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …with someone who’s not a believer.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — I have to lay that aside and say okay, my relationship with this person has to be built so that they might trust me to to share the gospel with them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — But they’re feeling me out and they’re super skeptical. They’re super independent, and so they’re going to push back just about it as much as everything. I don’t know I don’t know if that all makes sense.
Rich Birch — That makes sense. Yeah I’d love for you to pull that apart a little bit more. I love or I’m intrigued, interested in this idea of you know, how do we how do we stay connecting? What are you learning about staying connecting relationally with people over an extended period of time? I know I was just joking with a friend, oh in the last couple months, about how you know when we’re engaged in those kind of conversations, um I know my tendency is like I just want to see this deal close now.
Jeremy Norton — Yes.
Rich Birch — Like can’t let’s let’s get let’s help how do we get this person across the line, which can um which can just short circuit so much, right? A part of what we’ve got to do is be committed over the long haul. How are you balancing that out with also the need to be truthful, and to not soft pedal, and to not be like to steer away from the issues? …because I know that’s not who you are. How does that balance out? How does that work out for you as you’re engaging with folks?
Jeremy Norton — Yeah, and for me I’m I’m not those who would know me would would say I’m not a patient guy.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeremy Norton — Um I’m I’m ah um, I’m pretty I’m an Enneagram Eight. I’m I’m pretty future-minded and and I I like change. I like making decisions. I like moving forward. But I’ve just had to understand that um I have a higher expectation, a way higher expectation, for those who have given their life to Jesus. I i if someone does not have the Holy Spirit, I cannot…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …I cannot expect that they understand any of the deeper issues about identity, sexuality…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton —You know all the other hot button issues that maybe we get we get tempted to go into. Now if someone is is a believer, I’ll call them to certain things. But if they’re not, if they if they don’t have the Holy Spirit, they haven’t given the life to Jesus, you have you have to kind of politely, kind of share where you stand. Um but try to steer the conversation ah toward what they’re personally struggling with.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeremy Norton — And and you you have to move away from the big picture and move to the small picture. So ask really personal questions.
Jeremy Norton — You know if if if they’re really jazzed about talking about identity, ask them like where do you find your identity? What is your greatest value? So lots of questions.
Rich Birch — Love that.
Jeremy Norton — Um, everyone including probably you and I loves talking about themselves. So…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure, sure.
Jeremy Norton — Right? It’s human nature. And so if you ask them those those questions um very few people I think in our day and age want to… very few people in the church—this might sound controversial but—very few people in the church want to give an atheist or agnostic airtime.
Rich Birch — Oh interesting.
Jeremy Norton — Do you see what I’m saying?
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Jeremy Norton — …like they kind of they’re like, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t you know and…
Rich Birch — Right. But we’ve got to listen, right? We’ve got to listen. We have to, right? Like…
Jeremy Norton — You gotta. You have to.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah I found we we’ve been like, I love one I love Alpha. We use it at our our church.
Jeremy Norton — Excellent.
Rich Birch — And one of the things I love about their um, you know the culture there is around just simply listening, listening to people’s stories, and um and letting letting some heresy fly, you know, letting some some bad ideas float out there…
Jeremy Norton — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch — Because you’re building up relational equity to then end up, you know, helping them take steps closer, you know, towards Jesus. So how does that translate—I get that on the personal front; I love that idea I think that’s a um, you know it’s even practical coaching for us as we’re thinking about leading, what are we doing to be visible? What are we doing to be relationally connected? I think those are all good things. How does that work itself out and in the church context?
Jeremy Norton — Oh yeah.
Rich Birch — What does that look like kind of corporately as you’re ministering in your context?
Jeremy Norton — So yeah, that’s a great question. So ah, corporately a secular highly secular culture, heavy atheist agnostic – they are looking to see what you do, not so much what you say. And so for us we’re we’re gearing up for so we we have this so in our vision we want to serve our city to reach our city. That’s the big part as a church. And so we’re gearing up for for projects that are coming up.
Jeremy Norton — We do a project called Stuff the Bus where we get a school bus in front of our biggest grocery store. We make connections with the Whitehorse food bank and we we connect with people as they’re walking in and we do it on Thanksgiving weekend. And we say hey, Thanksgiving’s awesome -we’re going to eat a ton of food. There’s people who don’t have food, would you take this little list and would you think about maybe picking up 1 or 2 of these items…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …while you’re doing your Thanksgiving shopping, and and then we’ll actually put it on this school bus, and we’re gonna drive this school bus over to the food bank and stock all the shelves before Thanksgiving.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Jeremy Norton — And so we’re we’re not like we’re not standing outside of the grocery store sharing the gospel. And and I understand there’s there’s maybe like one side of evangelicalism like you have them captive audience, like that’s what need to say buy groceries, and give your life to Jesus. Like no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They are expecting a bait and switch. This this is simply an initiative to serve our city.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — And maybe, maybe—Lord willing, through the Spirit’s leading—we’ll get an opportunity to reach them at a later time. They may show up on a Sunday morning because they’re like I don’t know who this church is but they stuffed a school bus full of food for the food bank.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — Okay, that resonates with me. These guys…
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Jeremy Norton — This the the hypocrisy of every church is the hypocrisy of humanity. We we don’t always get it right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — We’re still a sinful people a part of Mountainview. We struggle sometimes. We make mistakes. But at least they can say, okay well they’re trying really hard.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeremy Norton — And then we do a couple other initiatives. So this this ah another thing that just is is ah is a showing thing we have something called Backpacks of Joy.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeremy Norton — And so after the school season, encourage people to buy up all the backpacks around town that are on sale when when the back to school is in the fall, and keep them. And we stuff them full of gifts and cards and stuff…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …and then on Christmas, right before Christmas Eve we actually walk the streets of Whitehorse.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jeremy Norton — Um, and at that time we’re talking like you know negative 30 could be negative 40 by that time.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Jeremy Norton — And there’s still we still have a homeless community.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — And we have a shelter in stuff, but there’s still people on the street when it’s that cold.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Jeremy Norton — And and You know, giving them things – what their mitts, they’re got mitts, they got hands in pockets, they got… so what we’ve done is we put together their Christmas gifts in a backpack and then we hand out those backpacks. Now in there, yes, there’s a bible. There’s some information about our church, but really, it’s like food and gifts and stuff so that so that people that are are unfortunately living on the street they can get a Christmas gift. So these are these are just a couple of the ways of some of the stuff we do…
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, I love that.
Jeremy Norton — Um to serve, to reach.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. And you know there’s this we see have seen this consistently, again with churches in all different contexts, that churches that are making a difference, that are growing, that are reaching people, they do have this kind of demonstration and proclamation double…
Jeremy Norton — Ah, yes.
Rich Birch — …you know, double barrel thing, right? We we there should be things that the church does that you can point at that the community might say that’s a good thing. We think it’s a God thing, but we can we can agree on like, hey this is a good thing to do like Stuff the Bus, Backpacks of Joy. There’s going to be very few people in town that are going to say, wow, that’s a bad thing. I don’t know. You know you’d have to be a pretty hardened atheist to be like man, I wish that church would stop stuffing that bus full of food. You know, like you know of course…
Jeremy Norton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …of course you’re going to think that’s a good thing. So and obviously that’s not the end of the conversation, that’s the beginning of the conversation, but love that.
Jeremy Norton — Yeah, and then there’s like some unique stuff that happens um related to kind of the north. Like people don’t people don’t know about so third third Monday in January is called Blue Monday. Now Blue Monday is the darkest time. It’s it’s not the darkest day as physically, but it’s the darkest time in the north.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — The highest levels of depression, highest levels of suicide, domestic abuse, and everything – it’s up the third Monday – it’s called Blue Monday this is because the nostalgia of Christmas and New Year’s is over. Most people are totally fatigued of volunteerism…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeremy Norton — …and charity fatigued from the Christmas season. All the credit card bills are coming in. It’s dark. It’s cold. And so Blue Monday is actually a time it’s a huge need. And we actually partner with Village Church one of the kind of fastest growing biggest churches in Canada. We partner with them to do another initiative called Boxes of Light where we’ve worked with community organizations to put together a help card of all the different resources someone might might need—whether they’re in addiction or depression or suicide and stuff like that—in ah in like this really nice packaged card within this box of of gifts, like hand warmers and and and food and things like that. And and it’s actually like a really nice gift and it’s three weeks after Christmas.
Jeremy Norton — And we we work with community organizations – ah First nNations Health and AA and different organizations and we don’t even know who gets these. We actually just drop them off to them. So there’s kind of some you know some security there for who’s struggling. And they know and same with there’s place called Kaushee’s Place which is the women’s transition home for battered women children. So we just hand it to these agencies and then in the at Blue Monday in the darkest time of the year in the middle of January…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Jeremy Norton — …when there’s when resources are at their kind of slimmest, Village Church helps Mountainview bless these people. And and last year and this year Village Church actually brought a team up from greater Vancouver. So you can imagine the culture shock of for them.
Rich Birch — Ah yes.
Jeremy Norton — And they actually help us with the project and they actually come up to the north in the darkest, coldest time to really experience, okay, what this is… It’s hard to believe this is a first world nation and, you know, this is Canada, but um, you know it that people live here.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeremy Norton — This is dark and cold and depressing. And not that there isn’t those things other places in Canada.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s interesting.
Jeremy Norton — So anyway these these are the different types of things that are that are helping us have conversations about salvation eventually.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Now you just earlier this year actually released a book called “Northern Roads: A Journey of Life and Leadership Serving on the 60th Parallel” – love that.
Jeremy Norton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um tell me about this book. Why did you write this book? What you know it’s a lot of time effort and energy to pull together. Ah, what what led you to the place that said like, hey this is probably good time now to pull this together?
Jeremy Norton — So working in Calgary, working hospitality. My a a mentor of mine I was just serving in the church like crazy and he’s like you know some people do this full time. And so I was like oh okay, so I went back to school, bible college. And ah then I started putting out resumes, and my wife was from Alaska and so I I actually went on youthpastor.com because I was going to be a youth pastor to start. And kind of internet dated this church in Soldat in Alaska near where she grew up.
Jeremy Norton — And and I and then got hired there. And that really started kind of my northern journey and and where God was fostering my call to the north. And I started, not only did I struggle with American-Canadian transition, and we both speak english, but those two countries are so incredibly different. And I think most Canadians and most Americans don’t fully comprehend…
Jeremy Norton — …how radically different we are. And so went through that, as well as living in Alaska. And there’s just there’s so many different things and so many lessons learned. There was tragedies ah, that I walked through, personally and in our church that I served in. And and there was huge highs that like huge lessons learned. And it was actually my mom at the time—it was like twelve years ago now—she’s like, Jeremy these are crazy things – you need to write these down. I was like, okay, I’ll start writing them down.
Jeremy Norton — So I started writing them down and then um, my journey continues, settle in the Yukon. And then I start kind of looking back at some of this, and I start putting it together, and I’m like, wow maybe this is a book. Maybe maybe I could put this together. And so I did and I sent it out to some publishers and I’m super thankful and gracious that Ambassador International picked me up. And their editing team worked with me.
Jeremy Norton — And um, so yeah I was able to launch a book that basically tells the story my northern roads journey. How a kid from Southwestern Ontario near the Michigan border grew up in like a city like one of the most southern places in Canada. Um, how I ended up, you know, in Alaska and in the Yukon. So yeah, and then all the different lessons that God taught me through that. And so it’s been extremely successful. People have been really gracious and have enjoyed it and so yeah, it’s been fun. Really fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, wow. Well, that’s that’s cool I’d love for people to pick up a copy of this. I think it could be a great read. Um, you know it has that kind of memoir feel – great kind of story. You know ties into some of the the northern, you know, mystique, which I think could be fun. There could be folks that are out there ah that maybe as a gift, or as you know a friend that you know you could pass on. When you wrote this, what kind of transformation or change were you hoping would happen in people who were reading it? What’s kind of what are you writing for? What are you hoping will will take place in ah in the lives of your readers?
Jeremy Norton — Um, a couple things. Like the first thing is just um to under to under to become a better leader. I think that’s probably the one thing. I I there was a lot of very biblical, very spiritual lessons that God taught me and I think anyone ah, can see those lessons. And at the end of every chapter I kind of say okay here’s how this might apply in your situation. So that’s kind of the first thing. I want people to grow ah as leaders grow in their faith and and that’s possible because there’s there is so much scripture that I’ve tried to put in the book. Especially at the end of each chapter.
Jeremy Norton — Ah, but the other thing is for people to understand um, especially maybe people who have only ever lived in a bigger city and and for those that that live in the southern part of Canada, and the major cities that strip across the US border and those that that live in the United States, ah, that there is a big wide world and there’s way… there’s different challenges and there’s different things that people walk through. And you know sometimes people might think, oh, they’ll think oh missions—and you know and and I’m not saying please don’t hear this. You know I’m not saying we don’t need to go to Africa and Asia and South America and stuff like that. But so often ah the North—Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut—the whole strip of North America often gets missed. And yet this is in our own continent.
Jeremy Norton — And and there’s massive struggles. And so maybe maybe someone will be called to visit, just maybe for fun. But maybe someone will be called to serve the north as well. And that would be amazing.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeremy Norton — That would be the the biggest win is if someone read my book and was like you know what? The Holy Spirit’s calling in me that I need to serve in the north.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeremy Norton — Ah, there’s a need so that would be great.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool. So we could pick up copies of this at Amazon, or there other places we want to send people to pick up a copy of of Northern Roads?
Jeremy Norton — Anywhere books are sold. Chapters Indigo, christianbook.com, literally Ambassador International has done such a good job at at making sure that it that it is everywhere. You can just Google it.
Jeremy Norton — Ah, the other thing that you could do is you can go to leadbiblically.com which is my site. And there’s lots of resources there. There’s courses and workshops that we can do either online, in person, for for your church, or your team, whether you’re in nonprofit, homeschool co-ops, Christian school, churches. Whatever you want to do? There’s also you can buy the book right there.
Jeremy Norton — And then there’s also um Ambassador International worked with YouVersion and if you want kind of a free snippet to kind of see some of the content, they actually took some of the Northern Roads story and some of the they they worked with me to to help me put together a devotional. It’s a five day devotional plan on the YouVersion Bible App. You can just search Jeremy Norton ah A Five Day Journey of Life and Leadership. And yeah, and and ultimately the goal is I want people to come to know Jesus, I want them to get closer with the relationship with Jesus, and this can just give them ah a little it gives them a taste a – 5 day taste.
Rich Birch — Right, love it.
Jeremy Norton — Drawing closee to Jesus and kind of learning a bit more. So.
Rich Birch — So good. We’ll put links to all that in the show notes. This is so fantastic. Well Jeremy, I I’ve loved get to know you a little bit better, and hear a little bit of your story. If people want to track with you outside of that website is there anywhere else we want to send them online to learn more about the church or you know, ah or yourself?
Jeremy Norton — Ah, yeah, sure. Um, so mountainview.church mountainview.church. Right now our website is mountainviewwhitehorse.ca but over the pandemic we have we have grown, so depending on when you listen to this, it might still be mountainviewwhitehorse.ca but Thanksgiving/October sort of Canadian Thanksgiving in October we’re transitioning to mountainview.church
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeremy Norton — …because we’re becoming less centralized to to Whitehorse. Over the pandemic more and more people are are listening. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I appreciate you being here. Thanks so much for being on the episode and I appreciate your ah work with this book, Northern Roads, and just want to encourage you cheer you on as you’re serving in the north. Thanks so much, Jeremy. Thanks for being here today.
Jeremy Norton — Thanks for having me. It was super fun.
Practical Help on Taking Your Messages from Good to Great with Pete Briscoe
Sep 15, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking today with Pete Briscoe, who was the senior pastor at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Dallas for almost thirty years and preached through the Telling the Truth ministry, reaching an audience of more than 1.2 million people every week.
Currently Pete is a coach for church and business leaders and is sharing with us today from his wealth of preaching experience about common mistakes preachers make and how to fix them.
Teaching is a critical part of what we do. // Those thirty minutes or so we have each week allow us to speak into the hearts of our people whether we’re leading them, casting vision, encouraging them, challenging them, and so on. Preaching is one of the ways that God speaks to His people, and it’s the most important time of the week for the body of Christ.
Create tension early. // One of the things that’s crucial to making a gripping sermon is creating tension early on in the message that is then released by the biblical text. It’s not easy to do creatively and can feel formulaic. Plus it requires a lot of energy and thought-process, such as reading first person research and studies rather than just typical third person articles.
Practice your sermons out loud. // Pastors who have been preaching for a long time can be tempted to skip practicing their sermons out loud beforehand, but it’s a very useful discipline. It can help you see what in the message needs to be fixed before you speak in front of the congregation.
Don’t break the spell. // You have to work at “casting the spell” in your messages, getting people to a place where they are so focused on what you are saying that they forget about everything else that’s happening and they just want to sit and listen. A lot of times we break the spell by reminding people that they’re listening to a sermon. Instead we want people to soak in the words and really think about the scriptures being shared.
Don’t let things slip in. // It’s so much easier to cast the spell at the beginning of the message rather than in the middle of it, and there are many things which we try to sneak into our sermons that can break the spell. Announcements about events within the church, or slipping in cute stories about our family that don’t really fit the message are examples of things that can break the spell. Sometimes we even break the spell with the Gospel by shoe-horning it into the sermon in a formulaic way every week.
Look to the Word for the application. // Most communicators are comfortable digging into the text as they preach, but helping people apply God’s word can be a challenge. People don’t want someone telling them what to do, and we can be tempted to talk about the same applications each week. Pete tells us to look to the text for the specific application, rather than creating a new one.
Engage them on one point. // The goal of application is to drive home the point of your sermon for the next week. Point people to the application in the scripture and give them one thing to focus on. If you can engage your congregation to do something, with the express purpose of driving home the point of your message so it sticks, then the application has been successful.
Training while on the job. // A lot of pastors approach Pete for 1-on-1 coaching, but he recognizes he can’t do that for everyone. So Pete’s put together an online course to make his learnings more accessible. The course, 9 Common Mistakes Preachers Make …and How to Fix Them, provides training to improve your preaching while you’re still fulfilling your other job responsibilities.
Explore Pete Briscoe’s pastoral training course at petebriscoe.com. You can also learn more about what Pete is up to at petebriscoe.org.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Journey Beyond Burnout & Compassion Fatigue with Janetta Oni
Sep 08, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Janetta Oni, the Creative Director at The Summit Church in North Carolina.
Compassion fatigue is far more common in ministry than we might like to admit. It can be easy to wear busyness like a badge of honor while burning out in the process. But there’s a way to lead from healthy boundaries for the benefit of both you and your team. Listen in as Janetta shares about getting help in the face of depression, setting boundaries around your work and family, and paying attention to your team’s mental health.
Remember Who you’re working for. // Janetta fought through her own compassion fatigue when she didn’t set healthy boundaries and pushed herself too far in her work. As a church leader she now leads from boundaries and protects her team as well. Her job in stewarding creative people is to help them enjoy what they do and take it seriously for the gospel, but also to create margin and guard against the pressures that will come.
Receive outside help for your mental health. // Staying busy in ministry makes us feel valued and important, but it easily leads to overwork, burnout, and eventually depression and anxiety can take over. Mental health is not a DIY project and it’s important to talk with someone else, such as a professional counselor, to work through our pain and struggles.
Rest and create boundaries. // With the help of her counselor, Janetta realized that she had made an idol of her ministry work, and the importance she derived from her work. To take steps toward recovery, Janetta started to take God’s command for Sabbath seriously. Consistently rest on that seventh day and learn to say no. Then create boundaries around your work week. Identify the hours that you work, and then go home to your family and create boundaries around your time with them.
Enjoy a family Sabbath. // Janetta’s family has a traditional Sabbath that begins at sundown on Friday with a meal at home. They enjoy food that they love, and then on Saturday they put their devices away and rest. More than just a day off to catch up on errands or chores, the 24-hour period is dedicated time to enjoy the Lord.
Help others protect their boundaries. // In addition to setting boundaries in her personal life, Janetta leads her team from boundaries as well in order to protect them. Set boundaries with your team on what they can and can’t do and then give them creative space to work. In this way they aren’t being micromanaged, but there is still a fence to protect them. On the creative team, this looks like creating margin around events and paying attention to the capacity the team has in their work for different ministries.
Ask yourself the big questions. // If you’re struggling with compassion fatigue, burnout, or depression in your ministry work, ask yourself if you’re living with toxic habits, or working in a toxic environment. One of those things you can control. If your work environment is toxic, ask yourself how much longer you can stay there before your health is poisoned and you have to go? Examine yourself if you’re behaving in toxic ways, and find a good counselor to help you find healing.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, everybody – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have tuned in. Super excited for today’s conversation with Janetta Oni. She is at Summit Church. If you don’t know Summit we’re going to get a chance to hear more about them. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country in North Carolina with nine locations, plus services in Spanish. It’s a fantastic church and Janetta serves as Summit’s Creative Director. So we’re really looking forward to learning from you today. Welcome to the show.
Janetta Oni — Thanks! I’m excited to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s such an honor that you would take some time out to be with us. I know it’s always a busy time particularly in your seat…
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …so super honored that you would be here today. Why don’t you tell us kind of fill out the Summit story for folks that don’t know. Give us a little bit more detail there around the church.
Janetta Oni — Absolutely so I’m actually um, three years into The Summit. I um I guess I’m not as new here as I thought I was, so 3 years in pretty deep. But Summit has just celebrated it’s 20th anniversary. this past year and it was is really cool to be a part of that, seeing it it’s been a part of it came out of a church kind of ah ah just a regular old Baptist church, and then they decided to relaunch, and focus a lot on sending, and missions. And they brought in a newly seminary grad called J.D. Greear to come in and kind of he had all the zeal and the the mission zeal, and he um God really used him and a group of core—we call it the the 300—to really um take Summit in a direction of sending as many people as possible out into the world planting church churches.
Janetta Oni — In the three years I’ve been here I’ve been ah able to help with the communications department and now the creative arts department. So it’s is awesome to be a part of…I know it’s easy to say, oh God is doing something when you’re a part of something big like actually literally big. But honestly I I feel like the anointing on The Summit um … it’s not a perfect church, but that the Lord is doing something through the people who have, as we say, put their yes on the table.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Janetta Oni — And that’s just really cool to be a part of.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah that you know God’s doing is writing, as an outsider looking in, God’s writing a really unique story through you and through your team at The Summit. It’s been amazing to watch. I love the church planting stuff. You know on the on the path to planting a thousand churches, which is pretty amazing, and…
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, and just incredible. Just just love it. What why don’t you tell us about your role?
Janetta Oni — Yeah, we just hit the halfway mark on that, by the way.
Rich Birch — Amazing! Isn’t that incredible? Like that’s amazing.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you tell us about your role? So Creative Director – what does that look like? Give us the kind of scope of that.
Janetta Oni — So um, I’ll back up like ah a year. Um I was ah I was the Communications Director, and I’ve been doing communications in the local church for about 10 years. I was serving at another church before I got to The Summit. And um communications for a church like this is ah a big undertaking. Um and communications is anything that people see, read… um content they consume from the church, about the church, for the church. And what I was noticing is that um in the day-to-day processes of just getting out all the communications, talking about events, the Creative Arts element was kind of on the to-do list, and not something that kind of took precedent. Um, and and if you think about it in the church world, Creative Arts for some reason seems frivolous. It seems like, oh well if we have time to do something like that we will.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — But I just don’t see that in the bible. I see creation and cultivation from the very onset. I mean God created something we see that in um, Exodus when ah God is giving the instructions for how to, okay people are going to meet with me – I’m gonna get some priest, but before we even get them in their role, I need some people who can make stuff in order to make that happen.
Rich Birch — Hmm, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Janetta Oni — And so I just had a passion for creative arts. So I um, me and a couple people I kind of ah just asked my my supervisor, I was like you know what? Let’s just move creative arts to its own thing. We’re still a part of the whole system, but let it be its own thing so we can just focus on that. I love the arts; I love leading creative people. Um and creating um the margin for them to think creatively. And even just see how we can draw out some of that in the church. How do I not just be a creative arts director of a group of paid staff, but of our whole church. We got some really creative people in the church. So it’s been a cool 1-1/2 year journey so far creative arts.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s so cool.
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love hearing that. I love I love how you created some space for this too. I love that story of like kind of there’s a ah leading up lesson there I think for folks that are listening in. Hey you saw an area and said hey, here’s something we need to do to kind of expand and push forward and I love obviously the fact that your leadership was like willing to say. Yeah, let’s let’s do that. Let’s make that happen.
Rich Birch — Now there’s a lot when I think about, man, The Summit – this is a big organization. A lot going on, a lot happening. I’d love to kind of get inside a little bit the personal side of kind of leading in that. What does that look like for you? I’d imagine there’s a lot of pressure in that. Talk to us about what that looks like for you.
Janetta Oni — Yeah, so first I’ll say, I am ah grateful for The Summit. I actually ah came into I I said I came in three years ago, and thus far The Summit has been a safe space um to thrive, even though it’s a big machine. The the leaders here are um, our even in our little department, one of our goals for the year is to care about people over product. Um, and that’s been really good. Um I think there’s a lot of potential for a lot of pressure.
Janetta Oni — But um, me, I have hit rock bottom before in ah church work. I have um I remember I was making a website for the church I was serving at, and I just hit rock bottom. And um I think I I was I was burning out. I had compassion fatigue. I was diagnosed with compassion fatigue. I was just trying to do everything, because we work for Jesus, right? We’re supposed to, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Janetta Oni — …when we we say we work for the church. So that means we got to sprint into the finish line and soon as God says, well done good and faithful servant, that’s when we can catch our breath. And…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …and so coming into The Summit, having hit that rock bottom, went up um through some ah mental health. I got in counseling. I learned how to create boundaries and so now leading—and we can get into that a little bit more but—now leading, I lead from boundaries. I protect people.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Janetta Oni — Um I think that’s one of my main jobs as a leader is to help protect their margin.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Janetta Oni — Um they’re better employees when they’re not ah burning the candle at both ends. And so I think my my job in stewarding creative people is to help them enjoy what they do, help them take it seriously for the gospel, but also to to guard against that pressure that can come. Like people are watching, or people won’t like it, or um that pressure is there but to just say take a breath.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Janetta Oni — Um and realize who you’re working for. So yeah, the last three years has been up and to the right for me…
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Janetta Oni — …it has been mentally. It’s been, and I’m really thankful for that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I’d I’d love to pull that apart a bit a little bit and hear a bit more. When you say compassion fatigue, I’m sure there’s people that are listening in that are like…
Janetta Oni — Yes.
Rich Birch — …oh I think I have experienced some of that!
Janetta Oni — Right.
Rich Birch — Talk to us about what that looked like, and how did you, you know, how did that work itself out in your life? What did that look like for you when you were in the midst of that?
Janetta Oni — Absolutely. So I ah, like a lot of people who work in ministries and work for a local church, there’s this um I guess this unspoken rule that you have to be available 24/7.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — You are here to ah shepherd the flock and you never know what the sheep are going to need, so you just give everyone your phone number, you say call me at any moment. If there’s a fire, I’m the fireman, if there’s… and and the more we do that, the busier we are, the more important we are, right?
Janetta Oni — And so I definitely um, early on in ministry adopted that position, like um I was kind of addicted to the oh “I’m so busy today”. Because the more I was saying I was so busy that and maybe the more important I felt. And that’s kind of outside. No, that’s kind of um, something that we who work in ministry, for some reason need to feel important, especially if you’re on the fringes of when when your Grandma’s like, well my daughter she um, does… I don’t really know what she does.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — She works at a church all day.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Janetta Oni — So you you you lean on anything to make you sound important. So for me, it was, I’m slammed. I’m busy.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Janetta Oni — And one day I just was too busy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — And um I remember just going into the children’s wing of a church, of our church. Left my office because I didn’t want to be found. And just hiding in like the middle school um room…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Janetta Oni — …so that no one would find me. I didn’t even want to go home. I just didn’t want to be found. And after a few days of just really hitting that ah that rock bottom, that depression and anxiety – that’s when it started to manifest. And I remember telling my husband, close the doors. Close the blinds. Lock the doors. No one…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Janetta Oni — Like I just didn’t want to hear anyone else’s problems…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …at that at that time.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Janetta Oni — I just felt so like I was drowning in everyone else’s problems, and then I started to sense my own. And it just my counselor um diagnosed me with um compassion fatigue. She was just like you’ve had enough. And I just didn’t care about anyone else’s problems. I didn’t want to hear it anymore.
Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Wow, that’s that’s powerful. So let’s talk about you know your counselor. How did you find that person? What did that look like? Tell us kind of what did that… how did you go from being in the middle school room to ah, to then you know, starting to take steps in the right direction…
Janetta Oni — Right.
Rich Birch — …talking with someone, processing it – what that look like?
Janetta Oni — That was I think this is an important ah part of especially the Christian walk. I remember sitting literally sitting on the on the kitchen floor. Um, and just talking to my husband and in with the depression, just saying things I’d never said before. Like um, just saying things like maybe life would just be better if I wasn’t in it, you know, and that was like a trigger.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Janetta Oni — Um and I also remembered um, not wanting to talk to a pastor for some… And I think what that was, I’m not saying that was right, but I think what it was is I didn’t want people to think I wasn’t a good Christian at the time.
Rich Birch — Right, okay.
Janetta Oni — Like oh well, what’s your sin? I didn’t I didn’t want Job’s friends to come…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …and be like, well what did you do? What did you do to get here?
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — I was in the word. I was doing my quiet time. I was going to… I was doing everything right, and yet here I was having this mental breakdown. And so I didn’t I just I think I feared someone coming into the house and telling me to have more faith, and telling me well if you just lean on Jesus and confess whatever sin you’ve done, things will start to write themselves. And that may or may not have happened but I just remembered being very defensive against it. So I told my husband, I will only talk to a counselor, because I know that something’s going on in my head and my heart. and I know that it is not um, God punishing me. I know that. And and there are consequences for our sin. But I knew that this was a mental thing. Um and now that had to be the grace of God. So I knew of this counselor. Um, and I’ve somehow got her and somehow my husband got her number, and…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — He called her and said, she’ll only talk to you. And by the grace of God she met me…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Janetta Oni — …that day and said let’s talk.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Janetta Oni — And um, that was the journey that was the beginning of a journey to just really sort some things out. Mental health is not a DIY project. And I love DIY pro… I love doing it myself. I cannot do mental health by myself.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — And really no one can.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. You know you talk about boundaries, and this is ah such a critical piece of this story. Help me understand your own journey to that. What did that um, you know how did you start to identify, okay here are the the boundaries I need to set up in my life that are healthier for me for me to serve to serve well – all that.
Janetta Oni — Um I think it started spiritually. My my counselor, she was a professional counselor, but she was also a believer, strong believer. Um, so she sometimes when you get higher in um, in authority and influence in a church or a ministry, people stop telling you things, like hey you are in sin. Um, that’s just kind of people just look up to you and see, but she she made me realize the idol that I had made my Christian work. Um and the idol that I had made my importance in that Christian work.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Janetta Oni — Um well if I don’t do it, um, what’s going to happen? People are… she literally asked me one day, she was like, are people going to lose their salvation if you take a day off? And I was like well no, but you know so she held…
Rich Birch — Is yes.
Janetta Oni — I think that was the beginning. It’s just putting myself in a proper place. You know, not thinking of myself more highly than I ought to, as scripture says.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Janetta Oni — Um and even in a way that that’s good for me.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Janetta Oni — It’s not just good for the church, it’s good for me. And then from that taking God’s Sabbath seriously. Taking um I shall work six days um, as unto the Lord, and then I shall rest. Um I think Christian leaders are infamous for breaking the sabbath and thinking God is proud of them for doing it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Janetta Oni — And I was that that was definitely me.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — So that that was the beginning. Um taking 24 hours together, a group of 24 hours, not staggered on a couple days…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Janetta Oni — …but just saying no. That taught me to say no.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — It and it started with just one day. And then um, then that led into boundaries of the work work week. I work 9 to 5, and then I go home to my family.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — And 9 to 5 is is enough to get done what God has called me to do. And to believe that. And to have faith in the time that God has given me to work, and to have faith when he says that’s enough. And so yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah I I love that let’s let’s talk about the sabbath a little bit more. I think this is you’re you’re so right. It’s one of those practices that unfortunately so many of us don’t actually practice…
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …that we, you know, we find a way to kind of squeeze things in. Um and and listen, friends that are listening in, listen The Summit’s a high capacity church. There’s a lot going on. This is a you know fast-growing church, large, all of that…
Janetta Oni — Yes.
Rich Birch — …and the fact that you’re choosing in such a key leadership role to do that. Maybe talk about what some of the pressures are of taking sabbath…
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …help help us understand, you know, what how have you had to kind of structure your life so that that could be a part of you know, kind of your regular rhythm?
Janetta Oni — Yeah, so first of all I want to say to the ministers out there, I get it. It it feels different to talk about a sabbath when you work on Sunday. You know, ah my husband is a pastor, and so our work weeks look different. We both work for The Summit. I work Monday through Friday. He works kind of Monday through Thursday, a little bit on… so you know it just kind of gets. Um, so there’s there’s the idea of what happens when there’s an emergency?
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — Um, what happens when I am working at the place where I’m worshipping? And so all of those are factors but um, and there’s just we have three kids who love their devices, and feel like they can’t you know function without them, and so when we say here’s a day off from your devices. They think this is the good Christian life? This sounds this doesn’t sound really like Jesus to me. Um.
Rich Birch — That’s funny.
Janetta Oni — But the thing that we decided to do is we um, kind of have a traditional sabbath, so we ah sabbath at sundown on Friday.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Janetta Oni — And we have a meal um like a meal at home, and um, we try to make it everyone’s favorite thing. Like so what do you want? Um, what do you want to eat? What are you looking forward to? So it’s just an incentive, but to look forward to something. Then Saturday ah we we don’t we try not to buy things. We try and not we’re definitely put our phones away. That’s the hardest thing. It’s not just to be off from work. It’s not a day off. It’s not just a day off, so let me get that yard work done. It’s a day um to set aside and enjoy the Lord. A day John Mark Comer has been very helpful in this. I don’t know if you guys guys have read his book – Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is one of my favorite books and has been very formative um in this. But starting with the sabbath, choosing a 24 hour period that your whole family can sabbath together. Um, and then giving yourself grace, you know. Learn to um, ah recognize in it in emergency. Sometimes there aren’t emergencies. Not everything can be an emergency.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — If it’s an emergency, I I jokingly say if it’s an emergency call 911, first of all.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Janetta Oni — And if it’s the kind of emergency that only I can help, I know you’ll find me.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Janetta Oni — And that’s actually been pretty rare…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …and even for my husband who’s a pastor that’s that’s kind of rare it’s it’s more rare than we um, have made allowance for, so have faith that um God wants us to have a sabbath. Have faith that it’s his idea, and then just give it a try.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. And yeah, that’s a great that’s a great encouragement. You know if there’s ah if there’s an emergency every time you’re sabbathing, then there’s a problem with the way you have the rest of your life structured.
Janetta Oni — Right. Exactly.
Rich Birch — You know there’s some other issue we’ve got to address there.
Janetta Oni — Yes.
Rich Birch — Now you you commented or talked about leading, particularly creative folks. I’d love to lean in on this from this perspective, from that perspective. So I think we all struggle with this regardless of our kind of what we do in in ministry. But I think particularly folks who are creative um, and they so they are constantly kind of there’s a self-expression portion of what they do that it can be very difficult to turn it off.
Janetta Oni — Yes.
Rich Birch — It can be very difficult to say, oh I’m going to rest. Help me understand now from a management point of view, how are you leading other people to create healthy boundaries? How are you helping them to to not end up in a place where they’re…
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …you know, hiding in the middle school wing?
Janetta Oni — Right.
Rich Birch — How how are you doing that?
Janetta Oni — Um it it is um, it’s a tough thing. I think working at a church is hard work. I don’t um I don’t ever want to gloss over that. It’s hard it’s hard, rewarding work and there are certain pressures. And pressures aren’t always a bad thing. You know, there’s there’s deadlines and putting a creative process and a deadline together can be very… it seems counterintuitive. Um, so for me I think what’s important is to to have a a lot of white space – a lot of margin around the piece of paper. Um and to give give them set times and say, at this time I want you to do something that gives your brain a rest. Whether that’s reading, I make our team takes more walks around our building than any other team. Like…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Janetta Oni — Like go walk around the building. Um it’s it’s it’s something that’s very important because your brain is always it’s it’s a different kind of work. Like there’s the kind of work where you’re doing physical activity and you’re producing something, you’re sitting and and you hold it up and say this is what I’ve done. I think we don’t account for things like decision fatigue. The kind of work where you’re trying to decide what’s right? What’s wrong? Do this, don’t do that. Um, those are the things that are that make us more prone to stress.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — And so my job as a leader this is—um, anyone on my team will tell you—what I do is I say here’s the fence. This is where you don’t go. This is the yard; here’s the fence. My job is to make the fence. Don’t go outside the fence. Now in the yard you can do whatever you want. I’ve set the boundaries of what not to do. And and I actually came up with this when I was with my kids and I’m like if I just have this area where I know my kids can’t wander off to, they can have at it. They can have as much fun as they want to.
Rich Birch — So true.
Janetta Oni — And they’re not being micromanaged. I’m not burning out from micromanaging them, and they have creative space without feeling like they’ll float out float off into outer space. You know like when everything is a um, available, then nothing’s available, you know? And so I think good leadership, I try to be a good leader I don’t. I try um, but I think giving people boundaries…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Janetta Oni — …as to what they can and can’t do helps protect their boundaries too. If you say, this is…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …this is what I want you to do, but I want you to do it the way you were designed to do it, is the safest thing for a lot of people. Give them give them a yard to play in, and give them a fence to feel safe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what would be some of those those boundaries, because again I think particularly within the creative world, Sunday is always coming…
Janetta Oni — Amen.
Rich Birch — …or the weekend is always coming, right? Like there is a relentless and it seems like we go from Christmas to Mother’s Day…
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to something in the summertime, to the fall launch to, Christmas to mother…
Janetta Oni — Yes.
Rich Birch — …like it’s like it just keeps going. It just is now it’s never ending. So yeah, what are some of those practically? What are some of those boundaries look like?
Janetta Oni — Um, so one of some of the boundaries is saying no. Um that that um I know there are a lot of ministries out there who feel like the gatekeepers, and the bad guys, because everyone has great ideas great ideas…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Janetta Oni — …and they really are great ideas, but we can’t do all of them.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — And so one of the boundaries is saying, hey this is what we’re working on Easter, you know what we’re working on in Easter? Easter.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Janetta Oni — Um, we have done the the creative work for the sermon series that we’re doing, and we we have to limit the capacity of what we’re called to do. Um and sometimes that’s staff staff to staff. So just having a good relationship with other staff to realize we’re not doing this to be mean…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …we’re just doing this because there’s 10 people on this team that and they can’t do everything. And so learning to say no to projects. Or saying wait to projects. Let’s wait and do this. We don’t have… we do have to do Easter on Easter Sunday.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Janetta Oni — We can do that maybe in the summer? Um…
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right. Yes.
Janetta Oni — So so just having boundaries with your calendar, with our calendar, saying these are the events. This is what it’s going to take. Working together, um, having people from other departments in our church come in and say, hey you’re creative too. I know you don’t get paid for this, and you don’t have that much to do for this, so hey you want to help with this project a little bit? That helps have fun with it to actually do something new.
Janetta Oni — And um I think the most important thing is just to plan.
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — Ah the plan out if like like we said before, if everything’s on fire, then eventually we’re gonna be on fire.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Janetta Oni — So let some let’s take some… We’ve been working since I got here and I think we’re finally there to ah, bump everything back, like to the point where we’re gonna start talking about Christmas this month…
Rich Birch — Yeah, good. Great. Yeah.
Janetta Oni — …you know, instead of oh wait! It’s November what’s that thing we always do December?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Janetta Oni — Oh yeah, Jesus was born – we should probably um, but just ah remember the things that are coming up and talking about them in advance. And I think we finally – it’s possible guys, I know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Janetta Oni — …working at a church is like, now we’ve been trying to get things backed up like four weeks out, three months out forever. You can do it. You can do it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, particularly for some of those big days. I think on the creative side, there’s some of that that we know, like you say at Christmas, Easter. Every church has 4 or 5 of those days a year that you know are are big deals…
Janetta Oni — Yes.
Rich Birch — …and you know you can kind of keep them on the on the burner so they don’t surprise us right, and we can get ahead and be amazed, right?
Janetta Oni — Right.
Rich Birch — The things we can work on ahead of time. Yeah, that’s great. What would you say to someone who’s listening in, you know, there’s someone who’s listening in who has had the experience that you had of hiding in the middle school room, might have been something different.
Janetta Oni — Right.
Rich Birch — What would you say to them… but they’re still there. They’re still like um they don’t want to talk to anybody. They they heard “compassion fatigue” today and they’re like, I think that might be me. What would be some of those first steps you would you would encourage them to take?
Janetta Oni — So I think ah the first thing is to determine um, is it am I living ah with toxic habits, or am I in toxic environment? Um one of those things you can control. Um I am I am a person who loves the local church, and I say if you are in a place where, you know, your your church is maybe in the awkward teenage phase of and it’s just trying to figure itself out, and trying to grow into its body, have some patience, and you know stick with it. If you’re in a toxic environment, I think with a literal toxic environment, if there are actual chemical toxins in the air, you have to ask yourself how much longer can I stay in this environment before my health is poisoned, and I am not okay? So that’s between you and the sermon of those wiser people around you and God whether it’s time to stay or go.
Janetta Oni — Now, the second part is to say am I just behaving in toxic ways? Is is this kind of self-inflicted? It could be both, but to look in and say, what am I doing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Janetta Oni — …to contribute to this? Like do I need help? And have I been trying to DIY this for a long time? Do I need some objective help? I would say probably the answer is yes. Get it get the counselor get somebody get ah a good counselor. There are bad counselors out there; get a good counselor. Um, preferably a Christian counselor someone, or a counselor who is a Christian um, if they’re a professional counselor. And get some objective like, here here’s my story, what do you think is going on here?
Rich Birch — Right.
Um, and I think those are the first two steps. What’s going on? Is is the environment toxic? Am I behaving toxic? Is it a little bit of both? And who can help me sort this out?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Janetta Oni — I think that’s our very first steps with it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Janetta, this has been fantastic. So helpful. Anything else you’d like to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Janetta Oni — Um I think I just want to just remind everyone who works at a church, your work is so important. Um, and you are the church too. Um I think when we start to become leaders in the church, we forget that we’re also the flock. And and it is a great thing to lay down your life for those you love. Just make sure it’s the way Jesus would want you to and not the way um, unhealthy habits is. Don’t sacrifice your health just due to bad habits. Do it. Don’t sacrifice your health at all. But if you if you’re picking up your cross and bearing it and laying down your life for others, make sure it’s Jesus ordained, and not due to just unhealthy habits. Really, really parse that out.
Rich Birch — Love it. So helpful. I think this’s been such an encouraging conversation today. I know that’s our hope, that’s our prayer.
Janetta Oni — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I know that’s your hope as well. Thank you so much. If people want to track with you or with the church where do we want to send them online to just kind of connect with you know…
Janetta Oni — Yeah
Rich Birch — …what’s going on the church and all that?
Janetta Oni — You can follow The Summit, um mostly on Instagram. That’s where you’ll see most of us is Summit RDU um, that’s where ah, um, we are on all the channels. Um I’m Janetta Oni everywhere – Janetta Oni on ah if you follow me on Instagram you’re just gonna see a lot of funny memes because I like to go to social media and giggle.
Rich Birch — I love it.
Janetta Oni — Because so much of my work is in in in social media and it can be a dark place. So I’m just gonna go there and giggle.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, I love it.
Janetta Oni — Um, so yeah, you can follow us. You see some of our creative work there.
Rich Birch — Great thanks so much, Janetta. I appreciate you being here. Thanks for helping out today.
Janetta Oni — Absolutely. I’m just… thanks for letting me be here, Rich.
Inside the Groups Ministry of a Fast Growing Baptist Church with David Raney
Sep 01, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with David Raney, the Executive Pastor of Ministry from 2ND Baptist Church in Arkansas.
2ND Baptist is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and as a growing church they want to make sure people get plugged in so they don’t fade away. Listen in as David shares how to build a system for healthy small groups that’s always reproducing new leaders.
Building the small groups system. // A big challenge churches have is how to shift people from casually attending to being fully involved. At 2ND Baptist Church they found that the best way to do that is through small groups. But that meant reworking their system as the church grew and launched a portable campus.
Ongoing open groups. // 2ND has both an on-campus model of small groups for their permanent location, and a home group model for their portable location, however the philosophy for groups is the same. The groups are open and ongoing, meaning that they don’t have an end date and anyone can join at any time. All groups—whether they are for teens, parents, or seniors—are sermon-based and work through same content each week, which creates synergy across the whole church.
Give leaders resources they need. // The system 2ND has in place focuses first on building group leaders so that groups can then grow and multiply. There is a small group leader handbook that gives clear direction about what the church is expecting and not expecting of leaders, plus has examples of what healthy small group life looks like. There is a heavy emphasis on making sure group leaders are trained and have the resources they need. Leaders are also encouraged to find others in their groups who could be future leaders, and train them to go out and start new groups.
Three circles of healthy small groups. // 2ND’s goal is to have a well rounded small group life that creates avenues for people to take next steps with Jesus. They created a Venn diagram to demonstrate how that looks. In the first circle is weekly bible study, in the second circle is monthly hangouts, and in the third circle is quarterly help-outs. Hangouts are all about spending time with each other to deepen friendships, and doing things such as going out to eat together after church. Help-outs are an intentional way for the group to live on mission while having fun, and focus on the group serving together in the community.
Replicate God’s work in the group. // People can be hesitant about starting a new group when they already have a group they enjoy. But David explains to his leaders that it isn’t about trying to split up a group, it’s about replicating what God is doing in their groups and growing new groups from them. New small group leaders are required to come out of an existing small group so that they understand the culture and DNA of what 2ND is trying to do.
Home groups and campus groups. // Both home groups and on-campus groups have their pros and cons. Home groups tend to be more relational while on-campus groups can be more convenient for people to attend and have built in child care. Regardless of how groups are handled, consistently launching new groups and constantly communicating about them to the congregation will help grow small group life at your church.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Advice on Taking Your Best Next Step When Life Is Uncertain with Jeff Henderson
Aug 25, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jeff Henderson, founder of The FOR Company, which helps organizations build a good name where purpose and profit grow together.
Many people are more familiar with what the Church is against rather than what the Church is for. What does your church WANT to be known for? What would the people you are trying to serve say you ARE known for? Listen in as Jeff shares how to shrink the gap between these two questions.
What’s uniquely different? // Jeff built the framework of The FOR Company around two questions: What do you want to be known for? And what are you known for? When the answers match, you create vision carriers for your organization. Your people will invite others to try your church because of the vision and integrity that has been built.
Close the gap with clarity and research. // Most organizations have a gap between what they are known for and what they want to be known for, so Jeff and his team help non-profits and businesses close that gap. Once you clarify what you want to be known for, then do research on what you are known for. Once you have that research in hand, you’ve got to get to work on closing the gap. If there’s confusion in the office space, there will be confusion in the marketplace.
Begin at the top. // What is the problem that your team has been gathered together to solve? Every organization needs to be solving a problem. When Jeff works with an organization, he has the leadership team write down what they think their organization wants to be known for. More often than not, the answers are very different from each other. That’s when you know the work of clarification has to be begin at the top.
Get into the community. // How do you figure out what people in your community think about your church? Ask guests for feedback when they attend your church. To keep from isolating yourselves from the people you’re serving, have staff and leadership meet in the community as often as you meet in your church offices. Use your social media accounts not just to promote your church, but also highlight businesses in the community and add value to them. Introduce yourselves to business leaders and create personal interactions in the community. Have the courage to listen to feedback and don’t take it personally if you discover your church has work to do.
Apply these questions personally. // The pandemic has forced people to look closely at their lives and ask hard questions. Many people realized they didn’t like their jobs, but figuring out what to do next can be a paralyzing situation. Asking what you want to be known for can be a way to clarify your next step. You don’t have to figure out your whole life, just figure out what’s next and keep moving forward.
What to do next. // If you’re looking for help on taking your next best step in your career or circumstances, pick up Jeff’s book “What to Do Next: Taking Your Best Step When Life is Uncertain”. This book outlines the process Jeff used to determine the next best step for him and how you can pursue more meaning and purpose in your life and work as well.
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today. You know we every week try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and that’s our goal every week, but this week I know that’s going to happen. We’ve got my friend Jeff Henderson – he’s an entrepreneur, speaker, pastor, business leader, really incredible leader. For 17 years he led 3 of North Point Ministry’s campuses in the in the greater Hotlanta or region. I’m sure it’s hotlanta this time of year! And he’s also has been really helping churches, organization, businesses wrestle with this whole idea of what do they want to be known for, and how do we action that. He leads and and that all has taken the kind of current kind of framework of an organization called The For Company. He really helps organizations really build a good name where where purpose and profit grow together. Jeff, welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here today.
Jeff Henderson — Rich, it’s great to see you again, buddy. Thanks for having me on and big fan of yours and just appreciate, you know, we’ve known each other for a number of years now so excited to see what the Lord continues to do through you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Jeff’s one of those guys that I consistently find myself quoting things that he said twenty years ago. And I’m not just saying that because you’re on the phone I or on the call. I literally there are times where I was in a call, conversation this week talking about, of all things, multisite. And it was like the classic campus versus you know, central discussion. And literally twenty years ago you had a car I was standing with you at the at the I like to call it the grocery store location of Buckhead. And you said something that I just keep resonating and I keep repeating, and I said well my friend Jeff Henderson said this twenty years ago so it’s still true, or maybe not quite you twenty years ago, a long time ago. So I’m glad you’re here. But talk to fill out the picture, tell us a bit more like kind of for people that don’t know you tell us a little bit more about who is Jeff and anything I missed there.
Jeff Henderson — No, that was great. Well, you know, I’m a preacher’s kid so I promise myself I would never ever work at a church. So yeah…
Rich Birch — And that didn’t work out.
Jeff Henderson — I I promised God, God I’ll never work at a church.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Jeff Henderson — So if if we don’t get anything out of what I say today, never tell God you’re never going to do something. So I really I you know I was a marketing guy, business guy. You know, I love sports and I didn’t know that you could do sports marketing so I started working for the Atlanta Braves baseball team here in Atlanta. And then worked for another another few other organizations, then landed at Chick-fil-a and managed their sponsorships, sports marketing, regional marketing, beverage marketing, and never thought I would ever ever leave. But we were involved very heavily involved at North Point, and long story short, God just called us to leave that and to help start the church you mentioned ah Buckhead Church. In the early early days we just kind of jumped on board and eventually became lead pastor and was there for 8 years.
Jeff Henderson — And then was asked to leave that to go start two other North Point campuses in a northern suburb of Atlanta called Gwinnett. My wife Wendy and I are from Gwinnett County. My dad pastored church in Gwinnett. So to be able to do that was just so much fun. So we did that for was at North Point for 17 years.
Jeff Henderson — But when we were there at Gwinnett, we began to ask a lot of the questions that I was taught and trained in from a marketing background, which is what do you want to be known for? And we in the early early days of of Gwinnett Church we, you know, discovered a kind of stumbled on this reality that for many people they’re more familiar with what the church is against rather than what the church is for.
Jeff Henderson — And that was both both broke our hearts and also excited us to go, you know, in our community let’s try to change that. And so that’s when we launched For Gwinnett and and it really began to take off. And and then about 2 to 3 years into that, Rich, I came into the office one day and I got a coffee mug from ah, a church somewhere in Winnipeg that said For Winnipeg and you know and as a thank you note and I thought, oh my goodness people are paying attention to this. And so um, it just began to kind of spread like wildfire around really around the world. And then businesses started to do it. And then when we became empty nesters in the spring of 2020, Wendy and I felt like this was a season that we could now be released from day-to-day church work and to really go help other churches and businesses really clarify what they want to be known for. And the two questions kind of that we built the whole framework around. And so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last twenty-some odd months. And so, you know I have I think I do this, Rich, I think every 6 to 7 years I go do something new.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — So um I don’t recommend that but that’s kind of my track there.
Rich Birch — That’s what’s happened. Yeah, exactly. Yeah I love it. You work for a hashtag. That’s what I love.
Jeff Henderson — That’s right.
Rich Birch — It it’s like you work for the for, you know, city in the world hashtag, which is incredible. And it is amazing. It’s actually been fun to see as that has spread. So many churches have embraced this idea of, hey we want to be known for something, which I just think is great. What a cool thing that you’re stewarding. Now you talk about these two questions that you built the whole framework around. What are those two questions that when when we’re thinking about this idea of being for.
Jeff Henderson — Absolutely. Well, question number one is, what do you want to be known for? What is your what is your vision? And it doesn’t have to be you know For Gwinnett like ours was. It could be whatever it is. But what is you know Steve Jobs would say, what is your dent in the universe? What Andy Stanley would say, what do you bring uniquely different to the marketplace?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — That’s your vision. So that’s question number one. Question number two is not yours, but it’s your that your customers or the people that you’re trying to serve. It’s their question to answer. And question number two is, what are you known for? What are you known for? So question number one is, what do you want to be known for? Question number two is, what are you known for?
Jeff Henderson — Here’s the power of those two questions, Rich. When the answers to those two questions match, when they’re the same, when what you want to be known for is actually what you’re known for, you create vision-carriers for your organization. They carry your vision to their friends and they say, you should you’ve got to try out this church, or you got to come to this restaurant. or you got to work at this company. And they become your vision-carriers. And the reason that’s true, let’s just talk about business—this is true for churches, but we’ll just put it from business language. A business is no longer what it tells customers it is. A business is what customers tell other customers it is. That’s the ball game.
Jeff Henderson — And um, you know my experience in launching, not just in business world but launching three churches in Atlanta, if you were to say, Jeff, we’ll give you you know $50,000 to launch the coolest website and social media campaign, which would be cool. Or I’ll give you 100 people that will tell people and invite people to your church, and what you’re doing. You can’t have both. You can only have one. I’ll take those 100 people every single time. Now that’s not to say we shouldn’t do websites and social media and all that – we should. But um, we all know this, this is true for church or businesses, the most powerful form of advertising if you will is positive word of mouth advertising.
Jeff Henderson — And I know in church world we don’t like the words advertising and marketing and and and I get all that. But from my perspective it’s just simply people that can communicate your vision and can tell people about it. Because the language of organizations are so under… the value of that is so underestimated because when you ask people, hey what do you want? What do you think this organization wants to be known for? When there are glazed looks, when they go have to go to the filing cabinet or their computer to pull it up on something that we came ah you know came up with ah eight seven years ago, then suddenly your vision’s not portable. And if it’s not portable portable. it’s not memorable. And if it’s not memorable, i’s not personable. And so that’s why these these two questions have been really really helpful for in for organizations. And it’s really really simple. People go that’s really really simple. Absolutely. But don’t equate simple with easy. It’s actually hard.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeff Henderson — Because in any organization—I don’t care how great it is—there is a gap between what they want to be known for and what they are known for. And so what we try to do is to teach them how to close the gap. Once you have clarity on what you want to be known for, and then once you have some research, or data or some understanding of what you are known for, you got to get to work closing the gap. But the great thing about that is when you have that clarity in an organization, um, the organization understands it and we’re all moving on purpose.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — But if there’s confusion if there’s confusion about this in at the office. Um, if there’s confusion in the office space, there will be confusion in the marketplace about what you want to be known for. So…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — …so that’s what we’ve been teaching churches and organizations. And this is something that I didn’t come up with like three weeks ago, Rich. This is something like like a mentor of mind said, you know, I was telling, man I’ve been so fortunate you know Chick-Fil-A is a multi-billion dollar company. They’ve had same store sales increases for you know decades now.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — I worked at North Point – one of the largest churches in America. How that’s such a big blessing. And he goes well, it’s a blessing but it’s also a stewardship, you know, responsibility..
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good point.
Jeff Henderson — But did you learn, that catalyzed that growth because you were on the front line of both of those. Tell us what you learned. And I thought and that’s that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book. I’m like oh that’s a great point. and so it really kind of came down to both of those organizations were really clear about what they wanted to be known for. They had measurement systems and practices about, you know, where the gaps were, and they went to work.
Rich Birch — Love it. Let’s talk about that first question around being uniquely different, particularly in a church context. I think that’s an an interesting idea that maybe some of us can struggle with, right? It’s like how do we define what is uniquely different about us. What what kind of processes do churches need to go through? What does that look like to actually try to begin to to flesh that out? So many church mission statements are the same. It’s like we want to reach and teach people for Jesus. We want to ah you know, win and build the lost, or whatever. Like we come up with the same stuff. But but talk to us about this uniquely different thing. What does that look like?
Jeff Henderson — I think it goes back to, what is the problem that you’ve been gathered together to solve? What is that problem? Every organization, business, church needs to be solving a problem. And for me what what drew me away from the business world to North Point is when I I heard Andy Stanley say, hey Atlanta doesn’t need another church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — Atlanta needs a different kind of church. Atlanta needs a church where you could invite your unchurched friends to, and they could attend, and begin a relationship with Jesus. And we all know what our lives the difference our lives would have been if we had grown up in a church like this.
Jeff Henderson — Now that’s not to say that everybody resonates with that kind of vision. But it resonated with me. It resonated with Wendy. And it resonated ah with us so much that we were willing to take a huge pay cut to go and be a part of, you know – this is back in the day with video church is like what!? Their church the preacher’s on video!? That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of! So it was all this big “I” experiment idea. But what wasn’t it wasn’t video church that we were going to – that was just the mechanism. What was what we were going to was, hey Atlanta doesn’t need another church. Atlanta needs a different kind of church that’s focused on unchurched people.
Jeff Henderson — Now again that may not be yeah… your your listeners, they may say, that’s not what resonates with me. Okay, that’s cool.
Rich Birch — That’s fine. Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — Well then what is the problem you’ve been gathered together to solve? And that’s why for us For Gwinnett tied directly into the vision of North Point to create churches unchurched people love. Because we wanted to add we just we felt like when Jesus people show up, the community should get better. When we go work, when we go to school, when we go to restaurants, we go into the community, we just want everybody to go, I’m so glad these Jesus people are here. I’m not sure I believe in everything they believe in…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — …but man. And what is it about our community that they’re just so… they just… I’m so glad they’re here. I’m so glad that church is here. In fact in the early days of Gwinnett Church I had this this statement , Rich, where I would say, you know, if we ever decided to go out of business as Gwinnett Church, my hope is that the community would rise up and protest.
Jeff Henderson — And go you can’t go out of business. If you go out of business, we all lose. And I just I mean imagine if that were the case in every community around the world.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Jeff Henderson — And part of our vision for The For Company is we would like to have a for-minded church in every community. That doesn’t mean that every church has to be, you know, for their community. I personally think they should, but that may not be the unique…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — …unique vision.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — But I think it goes back to you know what breaks your heart. What’s the problem you’re gathered together to solve. And this whole idea that Atlanta didn’t need another church, Atlanta needed a church for unchurched people – that just broke our hearts in in a really good way and compelling. So again…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — …it doesn’t have to be that vision. But what is what is that unique vision for your for your organization? I mean at Chick-Fil-A, they want to be the world’s most caring company. That has nothing to do with chicken.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — It is just a mechanism to draw people in, but and you know their goal is to be the world’s most caring company. Is there a gap? There’s a gap in any organization. But everybody knows that. And that’s part of the trick. You know, I work with so many… one of the things I do, Rich, is when I go work with organizations, I’ll I’ll hand out pieces of paper and say, hey I want you to write down what you think this organization wants to be known for. Don’t say it out loud. Just write it down. I collect…
Rich Birch — Oh nice. Love it.
Jeff Henderson — I collect the pieces of paper and then read the answers out loud. And more often than than not the answers are so different, and the room gets really quiet.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — And we begin to realize see this is what we have to we’ve got some work to do because if the leadership team isn’t clear about what we wanted to be known for, then the people outside of this room certainly aren’t. And this is you know this is why companies there’s a huge wave coming right now. We all have been through the pandemic. But the sans-demic is coming. And the pandemic means ‘with all people’.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — Sans-demic means ‘without people’. Meaning that especially in corporate ah, you know, corporate world right now there’s a there’s the war on the war of talent. People are looking for great people to—and let me just speak in America language just as ah and ah for example. In America we have a shrinking population. There are more eighty year olds than two year olds for the first time ever. And if you fast track that about 15 years from now, um, there’s there’s going to be a war on trying to find people and hey…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — …we have to say we’ve got a great culture over here, come work for us. We promise you that we’re gonna have we’re going it’s going to be a great place to work. Well one of the ways you do that is you got to get ahead of that and you got to get really crystal clear about what you want to be known for, so that you can create a culture that attracts the right people for the vision that you have. So this isn’t just some nice sweet little thing to do. This is a strategy for the future that that unless you if you don’t jump on board in terms of trying to really clarify this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — …you could look up and you could have a lot of work. A lot of opportunities, and no one, or very few people to join you in the mission.
Rich Birch — Right. I love it. You know I years ago I had a a friend of mine, we were talking, similarly talking about our church. And he cast a vision for the value of our campuses to the communities they’re in. He said, you know, what would be amazing is if someday it our church got to the point where when the when the community found out that we were looking at launching in that location and we finally said we’re going to launch a location, if the house values, the housing values of that community went up because people so valued the fact that our church was there, that actually would be reflected in real estate costs. And I was like, wow! That is a massive vision for for the difference that our churches could make – just love that.
Rich Birch — Well the second question I find fascinating, kind of what are we known for. I feel like so many of us we we live in ivory towers where like we we get into our little groups that we we think we all know what we are supposed to be about, and like we—and that’s a humbling example of like maybe we don’t even know that, but I feel like most of us who are listening and are like oh yeah, yeah, we all know we all know. How do we find out what we’re actually known for in our community. So, you know, we’re we’re a church of a thousand people. You know, we’re in our community. How do we figure out what do people in our community think about us?
Jeff Henderson — You need to go ask them. You need to be out there.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jeff Henderson — And you know, you could do everything we would… I mean I’m not saying this is a great idea but we would actually pay people. We would find them on Craigslist and pay them $25 to come to our church just to give us feedback on what they experienced.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeff Henderson — We would I would make sure that our staff meetings and our leadership team meetings we were meeting in the community just as often as we were meeting at our offices. My concern was that if we go to church, and we’re all in meetings and we’re we’re all there, we could we could isolate ourselves from the community and not understand who are we actually trying to serve.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — And so with our social media accounts, we would make sure that every third or fourth post would be more about the community, would be something about the community and not about us.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Jeff Henderson — That forced us to go out into the business community and introduce ourselves to business leaders and say, hey would you let would you be okay if we featured your business on our Instagram page?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — And they’re like well how much does this cost? And we would say it doesn’t cost anything.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — Well do we need to come to… you want us to put flyers in about your church in our restaurant or business? No, you don’t have to do that. And then they would look at us and go then why are you doing this? This doesn’t make any sense. I’m like well we’re for our community and we believe one of the ways that our organization and one of the ways our community gets better is to have thriving businesses. So we forced ourselves to get out and have personal interactions with with with people. And then we would do research just to ask that ask that question. So you could have anecdotal that can give you a pulse of how you’re you’re reading. And then you could have hard hard data. But…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — But the challenge with that is, you know, when you ask these questions it requires courage, and it requires a thick skin, if you will. It’s you’re you’re picking up the rock and looking at all the squiggly things underneath it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — And um and so you have to give yourself some grace, and you have to give yourself the understanding that, hey I’m asking some tough questions. I’m asking, how do we get better, and how do we shrink the gap between…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — …what we want to be known for what we are known for. And don’t take it personally if you actually get some feedback that we’ve got some work to do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — We shouldn’t be surprised by that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — And so um, so but you got to go out there and ask, but you have to put yourself… It’s it’s much very it’s very similar to, you know, as as Christ followers if we’re not careful we can look up and the only people that we know are other Christ followers.
Rich Birch — So true.
Jeff Henderson — And you have to be intentional about putting yourself out into the community, and and rubbing shoulders with people who who may not ever come to your church. But you’re learning from them and you’re just adding value to them. And so many of you are the business leaders that we featured I mean some of them would start attending in our church, and many of them didn’t, but that’s okay because we still want to add value. It goes back to, you know, our church is adding value whether you show up on or not. And that’s why when covid hit and I was I was still lead pastor Gwinnett Church at this time. I just got our team together and said, hey here’s the cool deal. We just got to keep doing what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — Because what we were doing was what we should have been doing all along, which is telling the community, hey you don’t have to come to this building. We’re still for you. Let’s just pour fuel on what we’re already already doing. And so that’s why you know any anytime there’s a crisis like this in History, there are, as hard as it is,—and I’m trying to downplay the the tragedy we’ve been through but—there is a glimmer of possibility of hope.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — And that’s what this I think has provided the church. There is an opportunity for us to rethink things in a really positive way.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. You know one of the things I’ve done, you know, multiple times when I’ve out at a church for a weekend, or doing some you know coaching or whatever, then you could do this, listeners, is all like pop into a gas station that’s close to the church. I don’t pick up a thing of gum or something or, you know, some mints and I’ll say like, hey I’m new new to town. You know, what’s tell me about that church over there, like what what do you know about that church around the corner? And then just listen. And it and it’s ah it can be humbling. You know it can be it’s great as the outside guy to say like, well this is what I heard. I know multiple times I’ve when I’ve shared what I’ve heard that that’s it’s humbling for the leadership team. Because oftentimes I would say the common thing having done that at I don’t know a dozen churches over the years has been actually a like, I don’t actually know anything about that church. Like I I actually know very little, like I’m like I see people there but I don’t you know I don’t really know anything. Um, it’s not that it’s negative. It’s just kind of neutral which obviously is is a form of negative. Now you mentioned the the pandemic and kind of were I don’t know what phase of the pandemic we’re in – post-pandemic, intra-pandemic we’re in this – who knows, right? It’s like I I always think like well maybe we’re stepping out of it but you just never know.
Rich Birch — But you know when we think about all these things, what do I want to be known for as ah as a person – where where am I spending my time? That feels like a very that feels like a question of the day with people today. It feels like the kind of thing that folks are wrestling with. I know we’ve been talking about it organizationally, but have have you bumped into people who are wrestling with these kind of questions even personally?
Jeff Henderson — Oh absolutely. In fact, that’s the the premise of the book or the subtitle of the book was a growth strategy for work, but an even better strategy for life. Because these two questions—what do you want to be known for, and what are you known for—are just as important and just as effective and maybe actually more important and more effective for for you and me and for our listeners personally. What do you want to be known for as ah as a dad, or a husband, or as a leader, as a follower, as a financial steward? What is that? And then what are you known for?
Jeff Henderson — Like I could tell you, Rich, man I want to be known for being an intentional, legacy-leaving, memory-making dad. But you know who you have to go to to see whether I’m actually doing that? Not me…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — …it’s my daughter Jessy and my son… You know, your dad was on the unSeminary podcast telling us how great a dad he was, but you know, can you give me the real data here? So…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — …so kind of the next step of this is is there’s so many people who’ve come out of the pandemic and or, to your point, where are we in the coming out of the pan… who knows?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Henderson — But wherever the the pandemic has forced people to think do I like my job?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — Do I like this career? And so that’s why this whole thing that’s been happening I think since the fall of 2020, the great resignation—at least in America—4,000,000 people every month just quit their jobs…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeff Henderson — …to do something else.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeff Henderson — And they’re waking up every day going. What what do I do now, and what do I do next? And that can be a paralyzing situation. But for me I mean my story was in the, you know, the fall of 2020, I made a career move in the middle of a global pandemic, or whatever the timeline was.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — And we just felt like this was we’d been talking about this for well over a year and a half. We became empty nesters. It was going to be a new season for us. We actually were going to leave in in May of 2020, but with when the pandemic hit we extended that out for for a few more months until we just had to to make this make this leave. But a lot of people have asked me, how did you figure that out?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — And how did you figure out what to do next? And you know and that’s been kind of my track record, leaving Chick-Fil-A for Buckhead Church, Buckhead Church Gwinnett Church, Gwinnett Church to what I’m doing now. And it’s been I got the questions so often that it really just led me to the next book that I wrote, which is simply called “What to Do Next”.
Jeff Henderson — And I think what happens is is for people as they’re asking these questions, what I want to be known for. And you know these these questions can be so sometimes daunting, intimidating. It’s like I got to figure out the rest of my life. But what I’ve been telling in this season is hey, here’s good news. I got good news and I got good news. The good news is is you don’t have to figure out the rest of your life.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — The other good news is you just got to figure out what to do next.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — And and when you do that one of the best ways that you can understand what you want to be known for is to figure out what to do next. And and for some people that that means to stay a little longer in your current role. Um for others, the greatest risk isn’t leaving, for others the greatest risk is actually staying.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — You know you’ve been in similar situations where you were working at a church…
Rich Birch — Yep, absolutely.
Jeff Henderson — …and then you decided, you know what, I think this season has come to an end for me. Well, how do you know that? What’s what’s what’s the decision making criteria you use to do that? And and and so I talk to a lot of people who are suffering silently on on Zoom calls, or in their cubicle, or at home, because they’re like I just feel like there’s more within me, but I just can’t figure out a process of how to figure it out. So I think that’s why these questions of what you want to be known for and then what do I do next, they really go hand in hand. And if you can make, you know, the best wise decision possible in terms of what your next is, then you keep moving.
Jeff Henderson — One of the things that that helped me so much early on in this new season is was speaking at a conference with John Maxwell who’s ah you know the leadership guru and he’s written like 90 books on leadership…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — …and just a mentor and role model of mine. And and so I was speaking to this conference and he spoke first and he said, hey I never had a clear vision, I just kept moving forward. And I thought oh my goodness.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Jeff Henderson — I mean I get I get it that I don’t have a clear vision, but John Maxwell didn’t have a clear vision? And he just kept moving forward?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Jeff Henderson — And that’s one of the things I’ve been doing in these last twenty months is I just have kept moving forward.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — And and and and just kind of making it up somewhat as as I go along. And and I think that’s freeing for people…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — …when they go, I don’t have to figure out the rest of my life. I just need to figure out what’s next. And even when I was when I figured out that next move, I just got to keep moving.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and I you hear that a lot actually from leaders that that it’s like in hindsight it’s like I it all kind of fits together, but it’s not like I planned 25 years ago that this is where I would end up. It’s like we kept taking steps forward and kind of they all it kind of what evolved one to the next. As people are wrestling with um, you know, this decision. They’re kind of in their stuff their where they are today. They’re they’re wrestling, they’re thinking maybe maybe this is the time for me to step out and try something new. What do what do you think the the fear around inaction is? So or or maybe indecision?It’s like the why does it feel good to be in that middle zone where people are like oh I’m not sure, and then we just kind of are brewing in that. Because I it see I feel like I run into people who are in that all the time, who are in this kind of like they’re they’re one foot in one foot out. Um you know why is that? Why do why do humans like that? Or why do why why are we are we stuck in that spot?
Jeff Henderson — I think it’s because we’ve never been taught how to manage risk in our lives personally. We’ve we’ve been taught how to manage risk, like financially, or manage risk by getting life insurance.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — We manage risk by getting car insurance. But there’s no such thing as career insurance necessarily.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — And so what what happens is is your level of comfort as it relates to risk often dictates whether or not you’re you’re willing to make a move. And and sometimes you can be too comfortable with risk.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — And if you’re too comfortable with risk, that’s not good. But if you’re not comfortable with risk at all, that’s not good either. And I think what we’re trying to do many times is we’re trying to eliminate risk. And what I’ve discovered in a move like this, you cannot eliminate risk…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — …but you can reduce it. You can you can reduce it. You can shrink it. So what I wanted to do in this, you know, in any career move that I’ve had, I’ve never wanted it to be like I’m leaping across the Grand Canyon.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — What I wanted what I wanted to do is, I’ve got risk, I can’t eliminate it. But it’s kind of like I’m jumping over a mud puddle. I might get wet; I might get muddy, and it won’t you know it won’t be fun, but at least I’m not plunging thousands of feet below. And and so what I wanted to do in this new book is, how can you shrink the gap from the Grand Canyon to a mud puddle.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — So that if you do make the leap you you get wet. And the other thing is is that you’ll never truly know what can be put in your hands until you let go, but letting go is hard. For example yesterday I was in a meeting of a client that wasn’t a client of mine twenty months ago. I didn’t even know I would be actually doing what I was doing yesterday for them. Um, and I never would have stumbled across that unless I had let go. But the other thing that I’ve realized about this is that um the path to your dream job often leads through your day job. What I mean by that is your…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Jeff Henderson — …your past experience, your strengths, your giftings, they’re all clues about what your future is. For example, the meeting that I was in yesterday, I was coaching communicators. Well communication has been a part of my background from the very beginning.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — So I’m not going to go coach musicians because that’s not in my background, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — I don’t like to play anything. I don’t know how to sing. But I do know how to coach communicators. And so that that understanding of my background, my day job, my my experience, my gifting, my talent. It’s all clues to pay attention to to figure out what’s next. And so…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — …I think for someone who might be dissatisfied with where they are, I think they got to find out what their strengths are. They got to find out how can they shrink the gap. One of the ways that you have to shrink the gap is to get a little bit of a financial runway. I mean how how long could you so go without taking a paycheck? Is it a month? Is it two weeks? Is it six months? I mean build up some financial margin that that will allow you to explore.
Jeff Henderson — The other thing I would highly recommend, Rich, is side hustles. You know people, because of my Chick-Fil-A background people ask me, hey Jeff, do you think I should but be a Chick-Fil-A operator? That sounds like a pretty cool job. And my response is I don’t know, but I know how you can find out.
Jeff Henderson — You should go down to your local Chick-fil-A and apply for a part-time job.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — And if you don’t like the part-time job there, you’re certainly not going to like the role of being a full-time operator where your whole likelihood depends on this.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jeff Henderson — But if you enjoy it, and you fall in love with the business, that’s good. Well, that’s what a side hustle can do.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — Ah, side hustle is you keep your day job, but you’re working on the side and a lot of people are like I don’t know if I can do that. Well okay, but understand…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jeff Henderson — …you either can be frustrated or you can actually do something about it. That’s the whole John Maxwell keep moving forward. It’s it’s much similar to…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jeff Henderson — …very similar to one time when I had a cold, Rich, and I kept complaining at my wife like I got a cold. I got a cold. And Wendy’s like, you should go to the doctor. I’m like I’m not going to go to the doctor. So I kept complaining and finally she’s like, hey Jeff I love you. But if you’re not going to go to the doctor, you forfeit the right to complain that you have a cold, right?
Rich Birch — ‘ve had the same conversation with my wife.
Jeff Henderson — Yeah, it’s usually a husband kind of a thing, right?
Rich Birch — Ah yes, yes.
Jeff Henderson — We’re just not going to go a doctor. Well when I hear people complain about their job or where they are, and I’m like, okay do you want to do a side hustle? Have you created some financial margin? Do you know what your strengths are? Have you, you know, the other thing we we could talk about is building your network of contacts..
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jeff Henderson — And there’s a lot of stuff that you could do
Rich Birch — There’s ton you could do.
Jeff Henderson — If you say, Jeff, I’m not going to do any of that. Okay I understand that. But you forfeit the right to complain about your job any longer.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Jeff Henderson — Um, and so there are some things that you can do. It will take a little bit longer probably than you think.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jeff Henderson — Sometimes it won’t. Um, sometimes you start working on things and they just kind of pop out of you know clear blue sky and I think that’s the God factor. Um, but um…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — …but if people wrestling with that, that’s that’s one of the reasons that it’s basically a field guide. My field guide that I’ve ah used the last twenty some odd years about how to make the career decisions um, that that I’ve made.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — And but it’s not for the faint of heart, but neither is staying.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Jeff Henderson — Neither is staying. You know so you got it… but but risk I think to your to your great question, Rich. I really think it’s we’ve never been taught how to manage risk in our personal careers.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it. Well this is so good. So the name of the book is “What to Do Next: Taking Your Best Step (why my my words are not working here today) When Life is Uncertain.” Ah, obviously available at Amazon. Is there anywhere else we want to send people to pick up a copy of this book?
Jeff Henderson — Yes, well it’s available… well it will be available everywhere in August.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Jeff Henderson — It’s preorders now. But yeah and I would say this too, if even before they they get the book, they could I have a free career risk…
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah.
Jeff Henderson — …assessment at jeffhenderson.com. It’s a it’s just called the career risk calculator. Basically what it is, Rich, is it’s a series of questions and you get a red light, a yellow light, or a green light.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes, yep.
Jeff Henderson — That’s not a pass fail. It’s not it’s not any of that. It’s like if you get a red light, it doesn’t mean you failed what it means is is whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Before you take another move, we got some work to do. Um, if you get a green light that does not mean you are now required to leave your job.
Rich Birch — I Love it.
Jeff Henderson — That mean that it’ like okay you got a green light. You’ve got some you know financial margin or whatever. But here are some extra things that you might want to think about before you make the move. So they can even before the book gets out, they can just go to jeffhenderson.com
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — …click on that, and this is just completely free assessment. But that will give them some clues about what their action items might be to help figure this out. And even for those who would say Jeff I love my job I’m not even sure I’m ever considering this, I still think it’s helpful because you never know what could happen.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, love that, friend. So again, go to jeffhenderson.com for that. Is be a great tool, great thing to do as you’re thinking about, even if it’s in your like you say in your mind you’re kind of wrestling through this I think that would be a great next step. Jeff, I really appreciate you being here on the show today. Anything you want to say just as we wrap up today’s episode as we kind of close things down?
Jeff Henderson — Yes, Rich Birch, you’re amazing. That’s what I would like to say.
Rich Birch — Oh come on. Oh, no.
Jeff Henderson — I’m grateful for what you’re doing for church leaders. And I would say for church leaders and pastors in particular, I mean I I grew up I’ve been in church all my life. But obviously these are challenging, challenging days. Don’t forget that the grace of Jesus that you preach about is also available to you.
Rich Birch — So good.
Jeff Henderson — Don’t also don’t hide you need to have someone who is pastoring you. You need to have someone that you can share what’s truly going on inside of you. And so fight for that. And you know that’s why we’re so glad that you’re part of the unSeminary podcast. It’s one of the things Rich’s try to do.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jeff Henderson — So God loves you and just don’t forget that the same grace that you’re preaching about is available to you as well.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much. So we want to send people to jeffhenderson.com – is there anywhere else we want to send them online if they want to track with you?
Jeff Henderson — Yeah, you can just go to Instagram or LinkedIn um, um, Jeffery Henderson at Instagram and and you’ll you’ll start to see a lot more as the book starts to come out with a lot of other free resources and stuff.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Jeff – appreciate you. Appreciate what you’re up to. Thanks for being here on the podcast today.
Jeff Henderson — Thanks, Rich.
Aligning Mission & Organization to Achieve Creative Outcomes with Heath Bottomly
Aug 18, 2022
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We are talking with Heath Bottomly, the Lead Pastor of Creative Teams at Pure Heart Church in Arizona.
Does your church’s organizational structure match the vision that you believe you have been called to? Listen in as Heath shares how to get clarity about what is true, realign your structure, and build margin into your systems in order to achieve your God-given mission.
Be intentional and plan. // It’s become more difficult to strategically plan and navigate our quickly changing world. We have to be intentionally planning what our strategies are for where we want to go, and intentionally streamlining processes. Does your church have the ability to pivot in a day’s notice, or take advantage of new opportunities when they arise?
Begin with the end in mind. // What is your church’s mission statement and where are you headed? Does your church have the capacity needed to achieve your mission? As Heath has conversations with churches, many times he discovers that how they want to go about fulfilling their mission doesn’t match how they are staffed, or where they’re putting the bulk of their energy and resources.
Say no to the good for the best. // It can be difficult to redirect energy within our churches so that we are focusing on the right things to achieve our missions. But everything we say yes to means we are saying no to something else. The hardest things to say no to are good things, but we have to sacrifice the good things for the best things.
Have the hard talks. // When a church is focused on things that are out of alignment with its mission, the senior pastor feels the weight of that, and how it affects the people attached to these areas. No matter how much you try to care for them, some people may still feel devalued in the process. However, we can’t let that restrict our decisions. The best way to broach hard conversations is showing what the reallocation of that time, energy and resources could look like. Demonstrate what could be accomplished in pursuing the mission and vision or the church and ask the people involved which they think is the better stewardship decision.
The importance of margin. // Many church leaders struggle to introduce margin into their lives and church systems, but Heath says margin is the only way that we fight for the future. How many people on our teams are actually and adequately creating margin in their personal lives in order to take advantage of opportunities when they come? Margin also creates space to dream about the future. Take time to dream with your team. Pay attention to what percentage of time you are allotting toward margin vs the tyranny of the urgent.
Plan for the right people. // Margin also allows us to hire the right people when they pop up instead of waiting until the need is a pain point. Great people are not available long. The right fit is hard to find, and when a position opens up the people that apply may not be the ones that are actually right for the job.
Experience Conference. // Heath is also the creative strategist for Experience Conference, an opportunity for worship leaders, creative leaders, production, and more to come together. Rather than being a concert or green room environment, it’s more about bringing peers together to hang out, jump into workshops, and learn from each other.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super excited for today’s conversation. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Excited to have Heath Bottomly with us. He is he’s got lots of hats.
Rich Birch — But if I can keep a couple of the hats straight. He’s at Pure Heart Church which is a two campus multisite church in Arizona. This church has strong values of transparency, vulnerability, relationships. He’s the lead pastor of creative teams – you know we love creative people here at unSeminary. Excited to to lean in on that. He’s also ah, runs, owns an organization called Maven Media. Plus he’s the creative strategist for a great conference called The Experience Conference. Heath, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Heath Bottomly — I appreciate the opportunity. Excited to be a part of it, and looking forward to chatting today.
Rich Birch — Love it. And our mutual friend Scott Longyear said, you got to talk and so anytime Scott says I got to talk to somebody, there it is. So I’m super excited to to get a chance to connect. Why don’t you…
Heath Bottomly — You know I love love Scott, love Scott. He’s a great guy, good friend, and always always a pleasure to connect with more people. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. So why don’t you kind of fill out the picture a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Give us a sense of the church. Talk through those things.
Heath Bottomly — No absolutely. Pure Heart is ah a church about you know about thirty years old in the Phoenix area. It’s ah it’s a growing church um. We’re probably we actually um, we technically list ourselves as having three campuses. Um.
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Heath Bottomly — And because we intentionally created an online campus ah that has its own campus pastor and everything like that. Um, and so in-person we’re probably, you know, I know people always go so how big is it? You know because that’s just the question…
Rich Birch — Yes, ah yes.
Heath Bottomly — …as if that makes it, okay I’ll listen to you.
Rich Birch — Yes. With post Covid is it is an even more difficult question…
Heath Bottomly — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …because it’s really what does that number mean? I don’t know.
Heath Bottomly — Really nothing. It’s just how many people want to want to hang out on…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Heath Bottomly — …ah you know, ah around you on campus. And it helps that our our Glendale campus has a has a restaurant actually on the campus.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Heath Bottomly — So um, so it may be that they’re just hanging out for tacos. Um…
Rich Birch — I love it. Which is a good reason.
Heath Bottomly — Which would always draw me.
Rich Birch — Exactly, exactly.
Heath Bottomly — But but but we run probably about 2 to 3,000 people on a weekend on campus, and then um, we also have a good number of people probably another 1500 to 2000 online um each week.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Heath Bottomly — So it’s a great great church. We do a lot of some people would say a lot of crazy thing we have um we have an intake center on campus for people dealing with um addiction…
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Love it.
Heath Bottomly — …and also mental health um issues. We have an entire Life Bridge um Ministry which deals with resources. Helping people get prepped, even prep for job interviews, finding ah things they need and this is actually… they do drop-ins for food in neighborhoods. Um, but they’re all across the Phoenix area. It’s got ah it’s got a ah a workout area on campus and everything…
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Heath Bottomly — because you know it’s going We want people to take care of all elements of ah that of their created body, mind, spirit, everything. So.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s so cool. And then you also have the you know hats where you’re connecting with a lot of leaders across the country…
Heath Bottomly — Yes.
Rich Birch — …whether it’s through Maven Media, through the conference – which is fantastic. I’d love to actually start there. You know you interact with a lot of church leaders. You connect with, you know, them. I’m sure they’re reaching out to you looking for help, advice, consulting – that kind of thing -coaching. What would be one of those things, particularly in this season, that you know you find yourself bumping into, or kind of tensions that church leaders seem to be having consistently that that you see that you end up, you know, talking them through or or or at least engaging with them on?
Heath Bottomly — Well yeah, and um I would say that probably in years past there’s been a lot more of a buffer zone for this. So um, but lately I’ve seen that it’s become a point of of, not conflict, but struggle is being able to strategically plan, um and intentionally ah navigate situations. in years past we had kind of a there wasn’t as much of ah, an urgency in it because you could always kind of figure things out because we always know well the weekend’s coming…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — …so we’ll just figure it out then…
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — …um, we live in a new world now where it’s actually ah, you can’t take those things for granted anymore.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — You have to be intentionally planning out um, what your strategies are for where you want to go. And you’re going to have to really streamline things because you have to think about things, like how much margin do you have um in order to pull the trigger on opportunities, or if something catches you off guard, do you have the ability to pivot in a day’s notice? And a lot of churches I think it it highlighted the fact that they did not have the ability to pivot that quickly.
Rich Birch — Right right. So true.
Heath Bottomly — Um and and didn’t have built into their system both margin for not only financial resources, but personnel resources, connection, networking resources. Um, they didn’t know where to go when things go sideways. And so that’s kind of this new world that we’re kind of navigating and those are some of the things that um, what I’ve been brought in a lot more recently is looking at, does your organizational structure match the vision that you say your organization has been called to?
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Heath Bottomly — Um and that just hasn’t matched up. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah I would love to dive into that. You know it has been it’s been quite a few years here. You know it’s been the last couple of years I was talking to a leader recently and and they were reflecting on exactly this issue to say you know when you think about the last couple years. Any one of the kind of crises that have come come by, whether it is covid, whether it’s you know, racial unrest, whether it’s um, you know the war in Ukraine, whether it’s the economy. Any of those in and of themselves lots of churches would have a hard time dealing with. On their own. But what we’ve had is just this kind of repeated, you know, it’s kind of one thing after another. It’s like we’re always waiting for the next – it seems like we’re always waiting for the next shoe to drop, and it can make it very difficult. Ah so talk to me about how so how do we ensure that our organizational structure is aligning to our mission – that those two things are, they’re not disconnected. We don’t just have this kind of interesting mission statement on our wall but that doesn’t actually impact what we’re doing day to day.
Heath Bottomly — Right. I think it’s a lot of it is is really diving into clarity. Um, because yeah, like you said, and you know it’s interesting to me how many mission statements I come across and they basically all say the same thing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — I mean it’s it’s hey we want to make Jesus known to the you know to the world, or we want to grow to become more like Jesus. Um, and those are very truthful statements. But what does that mean in your organization’s capacity? What does that look like? Um how are you guys doing that? Um, when I dive deeper into these conversations with churches, um I find out that the heartbeat of how they want to go about doing that oftentimes doesn’t match how they’re even staffed, or where they’re putting a bulk of their energy in resources.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Heath Bottomly — I talked to people are going, man, we really want to we really want to connect in ah in a digital world. And I’m looking at their staffing and it’s almost entirely based on very ah, ah, organic or in-person meetings. And I’m going, so how are you planning on making that move?
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Heath Bottomly — Um which then brings about or we want to make an impact in the culture around us, but everything is internally focused staffing wise…
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — …and structurally within their church. You walk into their service and you’re going, this doesn’t say anything to the culture around. It’s all about drawing people who have already have institutional knowledge of this organization. And so then we have to go through and revamp, and build margin into their structure so that they can then take a step into the opportunities that present to get them to their vision.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. Can we dive into that a little deeper because I do think that’s a real common problem, particularly when we think about the creative programming what we do on the weekends, the language we use the music we use. There’s lots of times where it can feel like a pretty significant disconnect. How do we ensure that ah, that we can add how how can we ensure that our organizational structure actually does allow us to kind of operationalize actually try to connect with the culture around us? What does that look like?
Heath Bottomly — I mean it all kind of depends on your specific ministry. Um, the last thing you want to do is try to become something that you’re not. Um because that actually does more damage I think to to um organizations, to ministries, is when people are trying to…people are trying to become the cool thing. And and honestly—it sounds horrible because I’m not expressing it well but—the coolest thing is being the most real thing. And so I remember in high school the coolest teacher that I had was was one of the like he loved English. You know of at… the taught… the subject. I’m like I’m sorry but there’s nothing cool about about verbs and and like diagramming sentences…
Rich Birch — Shakespeare…
Heath Bottomly — …but he in literature, I mean he would just get so intense on it I’m like the guy’s a nerd, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — But he was so cool because he was so real.
Rich Birch — Right, it was genuine.
Heath Bottomly — Now the guy who, the PE teacher, who was trying to be hip and cool and relatable or whatever, everyone’s like the guy’s a dork, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah he he looked the part…
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — …but he wasn’t so back to churches and organizations. It’s knowing who you are. And that’s why that clarity element is so important. Once you can do that um, then it’s a matter of we all know the phrase “begin with the end in mind.” Um, and for most of my life I have I have been able to ah, once we start with what the end is almost, I I tell people I can almost see the red line that connects the dots, steps. And I’ve always assumed for most of my life I’m like everyone sees that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — It wasn’t until well into it that I started learning going, oh okay, this isn’t common. Um, but what then I can do is help clarify. There’s a class that is offered in a lot of colleges called logic. And what it does is it says, if you say this, this is where that ends at the nth degree. Um and using that same mindset, looking at our organizations and going, if we really want to accomplish this… say we want to um, be influential in the arts. Um you will not magically wake up one day and be influential in the arts.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — You’re going to have to create space and show what that looks like by investing in it, because what you are actually doing draws the people who are attracted to doing that. It doesn’t work the other way around.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — You can’t go, when we get the people we’ll become an artist environment.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Heath Bottomly — You have to actually go, we’re going to embed artists in this. We’re going to create space where artists want to come to – an environment where they want to be a part of it, and then it grows so.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s ah, that’s an interesting application. I think it’s so true, particularly um, that is one of those areas where I think people often maybe are super aspirational. They want to as exactly use they want to become the kind of church that is creative but but they think that that’s like a disconnected, kind of like you just have to wear skinny jeans and then that’ll do it. No, it’s so much more than that, right?
Heath Bottomly — Yep.
Rich Birch — You’ve got to build a culture and a climate around that. Love that. That’s ah, that’s a perfect example. Now, when you think about that particular this whole idea of misalignment, this whole idea of, hey we’re not heading in the right direction. How do you go about realigning your structure internally? Let’s let’s say we do have a sense of, okay we need to make some changes. We need to maybe shut down some programs that that we weren’t doing, or kind of redirect some energy. What does that look like? What what should we be thinking through when it comes, particularly on the um, you know on the misalignment side on kind of realigning people and resources?
Heath Bottomly — I think ah, there’s that phrase “everything that you say yes to means that you’re saying no to something else.” Um, once you start holding that grid up against your organization, you start going point by point – almost like you know the TV show where they go, does this bring me joy?
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Heath Bottomly — Um, you know and and you go, do I let it go or not? Um, there is always an argument to be made for the things that you are doing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — It… very rarely is it a clear, almost never is it a clear right and wrong of whether or not you should be doing something. There’s always a good reason to be there’s always a good reason to have um, a quilting ministry in your church. There’s always there’s and there’s a case to be made for it.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Heath Bottomly — Um, what’s important is going, will it help us get where we feel God is calling us?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — Because and also in our attempt to be everything, ah we oftentimes are nothing.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Heath Bottomly — And and what I try to do with organizations is go, I want you to have the sharpest edge to your ministry, which means that you’re going to have to pare down some of these things that are… the hardest things to say no to are good things. But you have to sacrifice the good things for the best things and when you do that, you will always have people who go, you’ve missed the mark. You know you don’t care ah, you don’t care about people.
Rich Birch — You don’t care about this anymore. Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, and and you have to that’s just you have to live with that. I mean Jesus dealed with that. People are going why aren’t… you know they would give him a hard time for saying the hard things.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — Like you know what. Why are you calling us to this? That’s way too difficult.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right. All the time.
Heath Bottomly — Um, but he needed the edge in order to accomplish what he needed the church to become um by doing that.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, yeah, let’s get a practical example of that. So I um, you know is there’s this church who – this is probably it’s hypothetical but not not really, it’s based on what you hear happening. So let’s say I’m a staff pastor. So I’m not the lead pastor, or maybe executive pastor, associate pastor – and we have a pet project that our lead pastor just loves like it and the rest of our staff kind of snicker about it. We know this is not aligned with our mission. This is not aligned with where we’re going, but for whatever reason that individual just loves this thing. How do we start that conversation. What does that look like? How how could I lead up in this dialogue around, hey you know there’s this area that’s a little bit out of alignment with what we’re doing. Or or maybe widely out of line. It literally like you’re saying is the quilting ministry. It’s the you know think we all churches have these kind of like just random programs that aren’t really pushing us forward. How do we lead that conversation?
Heath Bottomly — I think there’s a few different ways – the one that I’ve found um, especially for senior pastors tends to be um… I mean these guys they know that they are stewards of what God has entrusted them with resources, and to the point where that actually I I feel the weight from people. They really connect with that.
Heath Bottomly — Um, that’s where a lot of the stress comes from. I was a a creative arts and worships pastor for years. Um, and then stepped into a senior pastor role for about 3-1/2 years. Um as a worship pastor, I knew the things that we needed to be doing. I knew them, I mean inside and out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah I say that satirically.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — Um and I’m like it’s an easy decision.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — When I stepped into the senior role I suddenly went I felt the weight of those decisions…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Heath Bottomly — …because it’s not just cutting a ministry. It’s It’s potentially making people feel devalued in the process.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — No matter how well you how well you try to take care of them.
Rich Birch — True.
Heath Bottomly — …you can’t you can’t make sure that they don’t feel that. Um so but that doesn’t mean that should restrict your your decisions. So all that to say understanding that senior pastors feel the weight of the people that are attached to these things.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — The best way that I’m broaching conversations is going is reattributing, showing what the reattribution of these resources could look like. And going if you keep utilizing these resources in this direction…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — …what, ask the question, what what’s the what’s the win?
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Heath Bottomly — And then going, the reallocation of these resources, time, energy and really clarifying that resources go beyond finances. It’s bandwidth. It’s um because I’m a big proponent for margin. And I can dive into that more but most churches and most ministries do not ah work well with the idea of margin. But, margin is the only way that we actually tackle and fight for the future. Um, we just expend all the everything that comes in and feel like that’s good stewardship, if it all goes right back out.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — Um, which isn’t isn’t good planning.
Rich Birch — No.
Heath Bottomly — Um, but if we can then go, okay, the reallocation of these resources could, we project, could accomplish this toward the vision and ministry of the church. And then go ask the question going, what do you feel is is a better stewardship for that?
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Heath Bottomly — You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I think there’s a lot of wisdom there too, leading with questions I think is is a good thing, right? Help helping senior leaders wrestle with as opposed to coming accusatory. That never works, you know?
Heath Bottomly — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I think the idea too of of trying to understand—and this is for any, you know, leading up in any scenario—is to understand what their priorities are, and to cast the change that we’re talking about in as a step towards their priorities. You know they ultimately yeah, it’s not ah, it’s not a judgmental statement, but ultimately everyone’s selfish at some level and we’re concerned about our stuff. And so what is it that your senior leader is excited about? How do we recast this change in light of what they’re, you know, fired up about?
Rich Birch — Talk to me about margin. I’m sure there’s I’m sure there’s church leaders that are listening in that are like, margin? What are you talking about? I’m just trying to get ready for this fall, and like I’ve got twelve things to do and only you know three days to do it before kids get back from school. Man margin is the farthest thing for my reality. How can I find margin? What should we be thinking about margin? What does that look like?
Heath Bottomly — Well, it all comes back to, I know that some of the things that you address on this podcast and everything are going, so what is it about that you’re not picking up in seminary that is useful, and actually you should be learning if you’re going to be jumping into into ministry. Especially organizational ministry because people will go, man, it’s not about the systems. It’s not about the process. As soon as you actually want to take advantage of resources and like things like insurance, 401K – as soon as you want to add staff, you’re an organization whether you like it or not.
Rich Birch — So true.
Heath Bottomly — Um and so you need to be trained in what how to effectively lead an organization. Ah, financially, um, strategically, all of these things. Otherwise you can you can do church anywhere. I mean the body of Christ you can meet in your living room and you don’t have to worry about all these things. But if you want to engage in those things, and benefit from them, then you should understand the best way to utilize them and structure yourself accordingly.
Heath Bottomly — Um, and so when it comes to margin, first off, there’s the there’s the personal. How many people are actually adequately creating margin in their life to take advantage of opportunities when they arise? What we do is we feel… there’s that weird ah work ethic element responsibility thing that goes, if I… the busier I am, the more important and the more responsible I am.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Heath Bottomly — And and it’s and it’s it’s so… I don’t want to say it’s backward because I’ve also seen the other side of the coin where people are like I’m going, they’re like oh I’m I’m so I’m so busy. I’m like you did nothing, but these 2 things this week.
Rich Birch — Yes, right. No no production. Yeah exactly.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah I’m like you spent you spent all day working on one song you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yes.
Heath Bottomly — …like going you you can be more efficient. Um, but margin is going, am I creating space to—for some so start simple—am I taking time each week to dream about the future? Am I taking a certain amount of hours to do… am I doing that with my team? How much of a percentage am I allotting towards things that could be, compared to Sunday’s coming and the the tyranny of the urgent, of the immediate? Um, every organization that is, outside of ministry, that’s ah, that’s affecting change and impacting culture has a research and development, has ah lots funds for opportunity. Um, they do that so they can actually try things out, fail at them, and learn how to do it better.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Heath Bottomly — And from there they can find the way that changes the future.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — Um, ministries need to start then um, people who are leading ministries, need to get a lot more efficient and learning clever ways of how to, first off, how to run a budget? Most guys who are pastors in churches or leaders in in churches have no idea how to budget.
Rich Birch — It’s true.
Heath Bottomly — You know they’ve never been trained in it. They’re they’re making it up as they go. And then they find themselves going I think I did it right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — And then going why why why are we not growing?
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — Or why are we not doing things? Um but creating margin within your budget by creating even zero-based budgeting, which irons out going, what do you want to accomplish this next year and what will that cost? Don’t go, this is what I had last year…
Rich Birch — Add 5%. Yeah exactly
Heath Bottomly — …and now this is what I have this year and I want to add…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, what do you want to accomplish and why? Um and then creating space, then in opportunity and margin, even with staffing. And this is where this is going to get a really a little touchy. Um, great people are not available long.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — And so usually by the time we’re looking for a position, um, we end up finding people who are either, often they off chance they happen to come available right then in that window…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — …and it’s like oh what a steal. What a God moment…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — You know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Heath Bottomly — Um, or there are people who’ve just been available because they’re not exactly the best fit…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — …but they’re the best of what’s available…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — And then ah that which then turns into frustrations down the road if we have.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — Ah, CCV Christ Church of the valley is a great church here in Phoenix…
Rich Birch — Fantastic church.
Heath Bottomly — Um, and I love how they wind themselves up to get key campus pastors. They will hire a campus pastor even if they’re not launching a campus…
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — …because they’ve created margin to do so.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Heath Bottomly — Because they know that those at the right fit is hard to find so when one comes available they will go and they’ll have them do something else in the meantime.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — You can’t you can’t get there unless you have strategically planned for that.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love that. Yeah, that’s that’s such truism in hiring. I’ve seen that in my own ministry over years. I’ve hired a lot of people and there is that the people who are available are not necessarily the people you want to hire. Um, you know the people who have um, who are going to apply aren’t necessarily the people you know you want to find someone—I’ve said this so many times. My best hires when I first started talking to them, they were completely happy in their existing role. They weren’t you know they were loving what they were doing and so then you kind of always have to be recruiting, talking to people, leaning in. Hey like what’s God’s plan for your life; where you headed next? That sort of thing. Love that. That’s that’s good. Love it.
Rich Birch — Now… so talk to me about the Experience Conference. It’s coming up here. Ah tell me about it. Give me a sense of the conference. Who’s who’s who would benefit from it, besides everyone. Um, you know, tell me more about it.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah. Well Experience Conference is is really a unique opportunity of worship worship leaders, creative leaders, production, everything, to kind of come together. What I what really drew at me to it as an attendee years ago was this element that we hadn’t really defined but then we put words to a couple years down the road was this idea of lowering the stage. And what that was is going, I had been to so many different events and conferences that um—and this isn’t a bad thing but—it it was more of a ah, bunch of concerts all mashed together. And and then I’m looking around the room going, these actually we’re all peers, you know. So you get a Brandon Lake you know on stage and he is doing the same thing that everyone else in this room does week in and week out. And actually there’s more people who will hear Brandon’s songs from the people in the community than from Brandon himself.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Heath Bottomly — And so we started going, once I came on staff, we really started having intentional conversations with the with the artists and speakers and going just reminding them, hey you’re talking to peers in the room. This isn’t a ah…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Heath Bottomly — …a a worship concert event that you’re used to doing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Heath Bottomly — Um and that changed the tone tremendously.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Heath Bottomly — And it became less of a green room environment and much more of a of people hanging out with each other.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Heath Bottomly — Um jumping into workshops. And and it changes the heartbeat of it. You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Yeah I totally get what you’re saying I remember years ago—this is probably twenty years ago—when Matt Redmond was Matt Redmond. And um and it was him in Pilavachi, and Mike Pilavachi, they were at this conference and I just happened to be there. And that was very much the vibe of it. They were they very much were there just to try to help, and like, hey what can we do? And like here’s happy to share some stuff we learned at Soul Survivor and all that. And it felt very like, hey like you’re they’re not trying to present themselves as rock stars. It’s just like we’re here. We’re just another kind of worship leader. And we’re all trying to do the same thing. And it might look a little different in your context than my context. But how do we how do we lead together?
Rich Birch — I love that that idea of how do we network together. What do you guys do at the what do you do at the conference try to encourage that cross communication engagement with each other? What does what does that look like at Experience?
Heath Bottomly — Well we try to create a lot of intentional space. Even how… and I mean and it all comes down to how the the people who are part of it respond. I mean ah—I’m just going to brag on him a bit because he’s awesome—but Andy Rosier from Vertical, he um he is now at New Life in ah Colorado. And actually we have him, John Egan, um Natalie Runnion, like ah Eddie Hoagland, and everything – all as part of the speaking team this year, which is really cool.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic.
Heath Bottomly — Um, but Scott Longyear, who’s the pastor of the conference, um was meeting with the teaching team. And Andy says, he’s like how long do we do I have do we have to speak in this one session? And Scott was like oh you have about thirty thirty five minutes. And he surprised us he he was like, can we use less time to speak, and then open it up so that we can we can interact, and and spend some time praying for individuals in the community here?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.
Heath Bottomly — And I was the first time I had ever heard someone say can I, a speaker, go, can I speak less?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Heath Bottomly — And spend more time with people? Um, it’s that kind of mentality. Meredith Andrews a few years back, we had our event the day before we were supposed to launch. Um a hurricane blew through…
Rich Birch — Oh God.
Heath Bottomly — …or actually was was going to blow through and so they shut down…
Rich Birch — That’s that’s Orlando in the fall. Orlando in the fall. Yeah
Heath Bottomly — …the airport. Yeah, but it’s the first time they had shut down the airport in advance…
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Heath Bottomly — …of the potential because it was in order to get funds, federal funds, they had to take proactive measures.
Rich Birch — Oh okay.
Heath Bottomly — Um, but it killed our conference. But we already had about 600 people on the ground um in advance of the conference. Um, so we showed up and we’re going to do like going, for anyone who was there you know a makeshift you know boot camp basically like version of this thing. And Meredith called up and she was scheduled to perform one of the sessions. She’s like God’s just laid it on my heart um, do you need me? And we’re like ah to do I mean yeah to do what? And she’s like, whatever.
Rich Birch — Aw, so sweet.
Heath Bottomly — And she came in and she led, or was a part of leading, worship for every session that we had.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Heath Bottomly — She she helped out with the prayer ministry aspect. She was interact… she was leading workshops. That’s the type of environment and heartbeat that uh is what we feel God is called Experience Conference to…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Heath Bottomly — …on um, even a broader level moving forward.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, friends that are listening in, you know, I know we have a lot of executive pastor types who are listening in who are not necessarily the folks that are going to be on stage leading worship. However, we all know that our creative people over the last couple years, we’ll call it they’ve been stretched.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s been a tough couple years here, friends.
Heath Bottomly — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — And this could be a great thing when I when I was going through all of this and looking at your material, the thing that struck me was like, wow like this could be a great thing, frankly to give to a couple of your worship people, or maybe a small team of them as a hey, thanks so much – a shot in the arm injection in the arm, as we kick off the fall here. Um I think it could be, if they’re if they haven’t gone you know in the past, this could be a great thing to go to that. So where do we want to send people if they want more information about Experience Conference. Where do we send them online?
Heath Bottomly — You can go to experienceconference.com…
Rich Birch — Yeah, great.
Heath Bottomly —…and it’s all one word – all lowercase. And it it’ll take you right there and it’ll give you all the information you need to know. What I love is like even you know Pastor Scott um shared this with our team a couple years back, he’s like ah it’s a huge thing for him. He he loves the fact that he gets to come and he brings his his team, his worship leaders. And he gets to stand next to him and worship together…
Rich Birch — Huge deal.
Heath Bottomly —…which usually don’t have that opportunity on a staff team to do that…
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Heath Bottomly —…and build camaraderie because that tension and we know that it exists. There is a lot of tension between, um or can be between, the lead pastor/senior pastor and the worship pastor, or worship leader. And so anything that we can do to kind of ah create common ground and really sync that up and strengthen that is a win.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that – love it. Yeah, and even just that—we all know this friends but—you know getting in a car and driving if you can or flying you know, even just that alone to do that with your worship people, that is such a great accelerant relationally. Um, and it’s like the conference is a bonus, in this case, the conference is a huge bonus on top of that.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Listen I would strongly encourage you to ah to check out the conference if if you haven’t checked it out, I would you know, check it out and it could be great. Scott’s great guy obviously he’s a great guy. It’s been so good to have you here today.
Heath Bottomly — Thanks.
Rich Birch — I know we’re coming in to land the plane here, but is there anything else you want to share as we wrap up today?
Heath Bottomly — You know I do just, I know we just touched on it. Um, but I would be remiss if I didn’t kind of zero in on this for just a second is…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — …I’m seeing a lot more because of the craziness of the last couple years some of these tensions between senior pastors and worship pastors have come to the surface a lot more, and I want to I would love to encourage um, both parties in that conversation um with this is that so much of our frustrations in ministry and life come from unmet expectations. But so so often those expectations have never been communicated.
Heath Bottomly — And what I’ve been having the opportunity to do is work with senior pastors and worship pastors to really encourage them to get clarity on, do you actually know each other? Um and one of the main things that I mean by that is a lot of times senior pastors think that they’re hiring a shepherd to lead their worship ministry. And and when I say shepherd I mean someone who is is interested in discipling and guiding and teaching the theology, the richness of the faith, um spending one on one time.
Heath Bottomly — And the reality, and what I found time and time again, is that there are often, and these are like 3 of the top ideas um that I found more common in in those who lead a worship ministry. You do have the shepherds, but you also have worship artists. Um, and you also have what I found is the rallier. Um, and all 3 of these are hugely valuable and vital can be vital to your organization. But if you think you have one, and yet you had you’ve hired another personality of this, your expectation for them is going to be constantly butting heads, and the frustrations will grow because you actually don’t know the person that is on your team as well as you thought you did.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Heath Bottomly — And sometimes we put so much value on the shepherd part, which is a huge value…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Heath Bottomly — …that we minimize the value of of a worship artist, the creative, who who wants to to minister to people through inspiration and showing them a reflection of God that they haven’t seen before. or the rallier who can connect in that moment on the weekend in a way that maybe a shepherd can’t. Um, if you have unmet expectations for any of them. You’re going to be constantly frustrated…
Rich Birch — No that’s good. Yeah.
Heath Bottomly — …by what you see as weakness and it’s on a weakness.
Rich Birch — That’s really good. I love that distinction there, man. That feels like that could be a whole conversation right there. That’s that’s really good bit of coaching there, particularly again I think for for friends who are listening in who are like senior leaders trying, but maybe feeling a little bit of frustration…
Heath Bottomly — Yes.
Rich Birch — …or maybe feeling like, hey how is this thing working out I’m not sure what do they? You know how do those people fit on our team? I don’t get it. They’re weird and they have funny hair. Um, you know how does they you know how does that work out. So I appreciate that – that’s that’s really good. Well Heath, I appreciate you being here today. Where do we want to send people online ah if they want to connect with you, if they want to kind of track with your story – where do we want to send them?
Heath Bottomly — Um, you can send them to mavenmediaproductions.com. You can also reach me through the Experience Conference page as well. Or it it sounds funny that I’m actually um, but you can go to heathmichaelbottomly.com…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Love it.
Heath Bottomly — …for my personal page. And interestingly enough you can go to heathmichaelbottomly.ninja
Rich Birch — Funny! Love it.
Heath Bottomly — …um because as soon as I knew ninja was available I’m like yeah I need that…
Rich Birch — Scoop that up.
Heath Bottomly — Um I’m going to need that. Yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. This has been great. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate you. Excited for the conference. Hopefully goes well. I know it’ll go well this year. I know these all of these events it does seem like this is like fall that all this stuff is returning. So it’s great. Didn’t even mention for listeners, it is at the Disney Resort, which for no for longtime listeners people know that’s a bonus point for me, so you know that’s a good thing. So appreciate that.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, yeah, Coronado is beautiful…
Rich Birch — It’s killer.
Heath Bottomly — …and it’s it’s gonna be a great time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’ll be great. Thanks so much, man – you have a great day.
Heath Bottomly — Yeah, thanks – you as well. Thanks for having me.
Leading in the Unchangeable Present with Larry Osborne
Aug 11, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Larry Osborne, the Teaching Pastor and Kingdom Ambassador at North Coast Church. North Coast has nine locations in California, one in Ohio, one in Hawaii, and one in both Mexico and Japan.
Churches can be tempted to look back to the old way of doing things and wish we were there. But we’ve been trusted, empowered and equipped to lead in this new, strange time. Listen in as Larry Osborne offers advice to church leaders in this season and how we can lead in the unchangeable present.
Know where you are. // Churches need to have a clear understanding of their goals when moving forward, but Larry says they also have to know where they currently are. Right now a lot of churches don’t know where they are. They were on one road prior to COVID and didn’t just move backward – now they are on a completely different road. Our churches may still be heading for the same goal, and have a lot of the same things on the new road toward that goal, but are starting from a different point and we need to accept that.
The effect of choice on the world. // We’ve always lived in echo chambers, but they used to be geographical, rather than by choice. In today’s world we have so many choices that it naturally creates these echo chambers. Larry believes that more choices in our culture will increase our inability to communicate because we are choosing the information world we want to live in.
Kingdoms, not castles. // The result of more choices means our ministry lanes need to be narrower, but we also have to be more supportive of the lanes right across the street. In other words, we have to be more supportive of churches that are different from us because different churches may be able to reach people that we can’t reach. If we think ‘Kingdom’ instead of ‘Castle’ we will be as excited about the church across the street as we are about our own, rather than viewing them as competition.
Connect people in all ways. // A lot of worship leaders and speakers desperately want to get everyone back in the room for church services. They may feel like their church is failing if people aren’t physically in the church. Internet services used to be viewed as only a way to introduce people to a church, but they can be so much more than that. An entrepreneurial leader can transform church online into a community where people truly connect.
Focus on relationships. // What we need to focus on in the church is relationships and iron sharpening iron, rather than whether services should be only in person or online. Believing that gathering with a large group of acquaintances is the only way that we can meet according to Hebrews 10:24-25 is a modern idea. Some people can better focus and absorb the teaching in a small group or through an online service that they are able to pause and think about. Others focus better in person with the pastor in front of them.
Serve more people with more services. // Larry doesn’t think mega churches will be going away, rather the churches are adjusting their services to serve more people as needed. Rather than build bigger buildings, offer more services across your campuses to reach people in smaller settings.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. We’re in for a real treat today. We’ve got Larry Osborne with us. Larry’s been connected with North Coast Church for a long time. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country, if you’re not aware of it. Larry’s been at the front of so many different innovations—North Coast has been as well—video venues, you know, so ah small groups, multisite. Larry was the lead pastor there and then co-senior pastor from 1980 to 2019, if I’m doing my math right. Ah, but he’s currently serves as the teaching pastor and kingdom ambassador, which I love, mentoring pastors and church leaders around the nation. He’s also so authored several books. Larry, welcome to the show – I’m so glad you’re here today.
Larry Osborne — Well thank you. Glad to be with you.
Rich Birch — Larry, fill out the story. What did I miss there if people aren’t, you know, aware of you or the church? What what what do we want to make sure they know?
Larry Osborne — Not a lot. I just tell people we came… a lot of people think I founded North Coast Church. I didn’t. It was a small group of 70 about a year and a half old meeting a high school cafeteria. So much of the church planting thing I went through, borrowed desk on the trash of the big church I’d been a youth pastor at and uh my office was a parishioner’s garage, and we had skateboarders out the window while I’m trying to preach.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Larry Osborne — So I kind of knew that thing, but it’s just it’s been a fun journey. You know like everything and has it’s hard times. But I tell people basically North Coast is a church I always wanted to go to.
Rich Birch — Oh love it.
Larry Osborne — Often when I work with church planters talking about how to plant a church, I go, plant the one you want to go to and see if anybody else wants to go to it.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Larry Osborne — Now to my shock quite a few people wanted to go to one just like that. So it’s a youth group for adults.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, love it. That’s great. Love it. You know and like I was saying in the intro, you really you know God’s used you in a bunch of I think really strategic ways over your ministry career. And there’s lots of innovations that have ended up impacting hundreds, thousands of churches across the country that that your you particularly were early on in, and so I’m eager to kind of tap your brain today as we kind of come out of covid, or I’m not even sure what this season is as we kind of pivot beyond that, what are you seeing in in churches? As you’re talking with church leaders in this kingdom ambassador role, what are some of those things that you’re, either problems that churches are facing, or advice you find yourself continuing to give…
Larry Osborne — Sure.
Rich Birch — …what are you talking to churches about these days?
Larry Osborne — Well if if you’re going to lead anything you have to have a clear understanding of what you’re headed towards, what your goal is, right? But you also have to know where you are, and I think coming out of covid the problem is that that most churches don’t know where they’re trying to go, but an awful lot of them don’t understand where they are.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Larry Osborne — If I had a whiteboard I would draw kind of a highway if you will that’s heading up towards ah a star in the upper right corner, whatever it would be, and I would put a church three quarters of the way up pre-covid, and that’s a road we’re on and we’re heading in this direction. And now most people think okay, we went backwards for a period of time. Ah, but we’re on the same road. And so I get lots of pastors saying hey, help me figure out how to get back to where we were and then back in the race.
Larry Osborne — I had two kids who ran distance, and on the track side, not cross-country side. If you had your heels clipped or clipped somebody’s heels you would stumble or maybe even fall. You had to get up and run faster than everybody else to get back in the pack and see if you had anything left. And I think that’s the picture that a lot of us have. How do I get back to where I was, and then move on? But the truth is if you can see the word picture of this road with a church where it was and then lost some ground but gaining it back. The reality is we’re not on that road anymore. We’re somewhere over here…
Rich Birch — Oh nice. Wow.
Larry Osborne — …on the far left hand corner, and we’re in a completely different place. Now we’re still heading for the same goal.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — And we still have much of the same things we had on the previous road. It’s kind of like the second temple. When the second temple was built, there are a lot of people, the older heads of households, older priests, older Levites, wept and mourned because it wasn’t as big as the first temple, even though in Haggai it says the glory the second is going to be great in the glory first, and by the way you never even saw the first with this, you kind of glory in it. But they’d they’d experienced something bigger, and they thought better. And that’s kind of where we are now.
Larry Osborne — The the second temple still had a Court of the Gentiles, still had a Holy a Holies. It still had, you know, it still had all the same elements. And so in that sense I don’t think church has changed.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — But we’re in a completely different place.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — And then the second thing was I really believe that ah the whole internet conversation. And the online realities in the church have been sped up by about 10 years…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Larry Osborne — …and a lot of churches are still confused by that. They’re trying to get people back, rather than from this new place saying, Okay, we’re leading people to Jesus and we’re not done until we’ve taught them to obey everything he taught us. What is the best way to do it? And some of the old things, but there’s a bunch of new things, and just old stuff won’t work anymore.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, let’s dive into that. That’s I think is a really clear word picture – not surprising from you. What what when you think about the kind of road that the fact that it shifted, what would be a couple of those things that you’ve seen, either in North Coast or in churches that you’ve kind of talked with that, are like here’s some new realities we need to be thinking about, we need to be kind of wrestling with? Maybe the internet is one of them. Are there others?
Larry Osborne — Yeah I would say you definitely have to come back to a couple things about the internet…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Larry Osborne — …but there’s been a cultural shift, and it’s caused by echo chambers. We’ve always lived in echo chambers, but they used to be geographic, and now they’re by choice. And so you have people who live in MSNBC and people who live in Fox News…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Larry Osborne — …and everything in between. And the only thing they know about the other side is what their source tells them about the other side. And we’re becoming angrier and angrier. And I I believe part of it is there’s this phenomenon of choice. Everybody I talk to hates echo chambers, and what what they’ve done our inability to dialogue. But nobody’s willing to get rid of choice. So I’ll ask 500,000 pastors at a conference, how many of you hate it? Every hand goes up. How many of you are willing to go back to just three network news stations? No hands go up.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Larry Osborne — I mean you’ve gone one AM or or one FM radio station instead of your…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — My phone has eight days of music on it. Whatever mood I’m in, my choice. So I don’t you know, when I look forward, no one can see the future but we can see the unchangeable present. And ah change, I mean choice coming into our culture is going to increase our inability to communicate…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — …because we’re choosing the information world we want to live in. And I’m always telling people, all the angry people over the last few years didn’t suddenly become stupid and immoral on whatever side you’re on, the other side.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Larry Osborne — …I believe going forward we’ve got to understand that just like a missionary understands when they move into a country, hey this is a red flag word. This is a concept. This is you know it’s relational time not chronological time. Whatever it would be the new world in is one in which I think our lanes of ministry have to be more narrow and our support of other lanes right across the street has to be tighter. You know it used to be kingdom ministry started overseas, or more than 40 minutes away…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Larry Osborne — …now it’s just right across the street. We literally…
Rich Birch — Yeah unpack…
Larry Osborne — We literally…
Rich Birch — Yeah, unpack that a bit more.
Larry Osborne — Another free church. That’s our tribe…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Larry Osborne — …plant across the street from one of our campuses.
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.
Larry Osborne — Why? Because they’re not a threat.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Larry Osborne — We’re all reaching very much narrower than we ever did in the past, and the I would love my church to be like heaven.
Larry Osborne — If I’m really reaching lost people, they ain’t going to heaven. They’re in hell.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Larry Osborne — And then I started saying, okay this is what heaven’s like, that they won’t they won’t even listen. So I think that’s one of the things in Romans chapter one, it talks about the downward cycle of a culture that ignores God, which I think many of us feel we’ve done. Most Christians think you ought to read it romans 1:18-32 – read it carefully and you’ll be shocked, because most Christians think the bottom cycle is sexual decadence. It’s not. The final said when he says he gave him over to a depraved mind to do what ought not be done. It’s slander, gossip, no faithfulness, no mercy, knowing these things are wrong, but approving – talk about virtual signaling – those who do them. It’s every single thing is relational destruction in that list, not sexual decadence.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Larry Osborne — And that’s where we are right now and if I gripe about it…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Larry Osborne — …instead of saying, wow Lord you put people behind enemy lines. How exciting is this? We’ll never be able to move forward.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, so how do we as… so I think I think that’s ah, a searing insight I think a very good insight for us to be thinking about – this idea of echo chambers and the idea that we’re living in a, you know, a more maybe more fractured culture than before. One of the the complexities of leading a larger church, at least I found it, as we go beyond 1000, 2000 is you you do have to become broader. It’s like you have to figure out how do you appeal to more people in your community um, and North Coast has done this over the years, you know, you did that with the kind of multiple venue thing that we found different ways to do that. So how does how does that those lessons, those principles apply to where we are today, if if we are living in a kind of an increasingly echoey chambery world. What what does that look like for us going forward do you think?
Larry Osborne — Well if we would think Kingdom instead of Castle, which is excited about the church across the street as we are about ours. We we had a real life experience of this a going and blowing college ministry where that college pastor wanted to start a church but wanted to stay in the area because his daughters were in high school, his kids were in high school.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — He ended up planting a church um about five miles from our house.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — It was a little more charismatic leaning than we were, so we told him, hey Assembly of God give you 75 grand to do it, go with them. We’re still gonna give you the $100K. Ah, well, you just didn’t you just didn’t do that fifteen years ago…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — …because it was almost like a church splinter.
Rich Birch — Competitive thing. Yeah.
Larry Osborne — And it’s not a church plant reaching lost people, it’s it’s just a new church. But in this day and age of all the narrow things, if I think Kingdom, there is no competition of another church. And the irony is, excuse me, at one point he came up to ah and said there’s this church of another tribe in the town that had kind of died and they were looking at him to maybe come and be their pastor. And our first response is, oh man, that’s so close to us – I don’t know. And then when we walked out the room, Chris Brown, myself and one other, we looked at each other said, Lord have mercy on us. Because if he said this dead church wants to be called North Coast Church campus with live preaching instead of video we would high five how much God is blessing us, but because it had another tag…
Rich Birch — Oh gosh. Yes.
Larry Osborne — …we we had a brief hesitancy.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — And so that to me is a real practicalness of like, you know, the the people listening are are leaders in this. It’s like are you helping the new church plant buy chairs? Are you letting them use your building? Are you constantly in touch with a way where you’re not trying to become one thing? Blended services were a great way to make no one happy, and blended churches are a great way to make no one happy.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Larry Osborne — But let’s just celebrate these different little ah lanes we have and support that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — Starbucks doesn’t care if I quit going to the one I go to and go to another…
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — …you know, ah, eighth mile away.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — The branch manager does. They don’t care if I go to Seattle’s Best because they own that too.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Okay, good good great insights there. Let’s get back to the internet conversation. So our, you know, I I like that insight of like, and I think it’s true, you know the internet has, you know, what has happened through covid in a lot of ways is just accelerated trends that are already there for sure, kind of church online. You guys have been doing church online for a long time. We’ve been involved in that for a long time, and it went from like this fringe thing even two years ago, I was surprised at how many people really looked at that suspiciously, to like okay now it’s a part of who we are. As you look up over the horizon, what should we be thinking about or wrestling with on that front?
Larry Osborne — Well what happened in the past is when churches got a little bit larger because of mobility, they start having two services instead of one, people said we can’t do that we won’t be a church. Yeah, we were. Then you had three, then you had a night service, and you had another day. Same complaint.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Larry Osborne — So then you had different places, or you put something on video. Oh we’re not one church. And then afterward you go, oh we absolutely are. Because what makes us one church is our focus on Jesus Christ, it’s the discipleship that happens through the life on life connections that are happening. And the transformations take place through the word of God, the renewing of a mind. And so in this new place we are we’re at we need to start realizing there are other ways that people get the key information that renews their mind than just physically in the room. What I find is worship leaders and speakers desperately want everybody back in the room.
Rich Birch — We want we want big crowds. Right.
Larry Osborne — Yeah. And so like at North Coast one of the things we’ve done is, now we’re in a very blue state and a bunch of different things and some other people, but what we did is we said we’re happy that we can offer a live option, rather than the word ‘come back’.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — And that broadened the number of people we could reach because if we said, hey you can come back now, for all those who choose not to come back for whatever reasons, but they’re still involved, there they just been subconsciously called the second class citizen.
Larry Osborne — My friend Nathan Artt of Ministry Solutions does some great stuff on on this. He talks about Home Depot. And I’ve had the privilege of being in a situation with Frank Blake the guy who turned them into the internet focus. And I might be off—’cause it’s off top of my head—a percent or 2, but something like ah I believe they’re the fourth largest online retailer.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Larry Osborne — But only about 5% of their sales come online. They don’t capitalize. People go back and forth. So any of our listeners right now that live near a Home Depot know there’s sometimes I want to go there and see the thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — Because can’t quite get it. There’s other times I know exactly what I’m getting and I don’t need it right now, so I go online order it and they ship it to me. There’s other times where I know what I’m getting, I go online, I order it, and then I go get it from the locker box that they have. And I’m just interchanging all the way and we used to think of the internet as a funnel to get you to church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — And and it isn’t.
Rich Birch — No.
Larry Osborne — It’s just an alternative way to get the information.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — And people will go back and forth and how they’re comfortable. And that changes the way you introduce it, who you have leading it…
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — If it’s a funnel to lead you back to the church. You probably have a shepherd as your campus pastor online. If you see it as another opportunity, you have an entrepreneurial leader over that ministry, a person who has industry of building things, not just loving on people because the opportunities are massive.
Rich Birch — Right. Where would…
Larry Osborne — You don’t cannibal…
Rich Birch — Yeah I like that I think that’s a good call. I think we we all have to figure out how this fits in into our overall ministry mix that there are… I think the thing we’ve all seen—I hear this time and again when I talk with church leaders—is we we we know we have people that are connecting with us online, they’re they’re connect they continue to connect with us online. And even if you were in that category of like, oh I really hope all these people will come back um, you realize not all those people are “coming back”. They’re going to connect with us online, and they want to connect with us online, and we don’t want to like turn it off, which is but very terrible idea. But what would you say are maybe some of the limitations, or are there any limitations? Are we just got to work through some of those limitations?
Larry Osborne — Well…
Rich Birch — What where would we kind of say it’s maybe not a full expression?
Larry Osborne — Yeah, we we’ve defined ‘forsake not the gathering yourselves together as the manner of some is’ from Hebrews 10:24-25 as a large group gathering, when it was written to people in house churches.
Larry Osborne — So our idea that you have to be in a larger group where you have acquaintances, not affinity and relationships, is very much we’re like a fish in water – you have fish, house, water. What water? That’s all it knows.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Larry Osborne — So ah, we tend to read the bible in scripture and experiences through our our modern day lens. Ah, but you need iron sharpening iron. But if this idea that everybody needs to be back in a group setting in rows, whether there’s lots of rows or few rows, listening to one person talk up front, I want to go well, you do realize that didn’t happen for a few hundred years of Christianity.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Right, right.
Larry Osborne — Right?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Larry Osborne — I mean what what we need is relationships; we need iron sharpening iron. So one of my best friends will probably never come back to North Coast Church physically. But what he does he meets with his life group. They watch the sermon together, then they have a brunch, they pray for one another, they love on one another, somebody’s going through a medical… I mean they’re being the church in a house church model.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — But we’re going, oh no, you need the crowd. And yes, some personalities need the crowd. I get more out of the time shifted sermon the weeks I’m not preaching. You know I only preach about 20 times a year and when I’m in live, I’m wondering why that gal’s given that guy a back rub, and why they don’t just get rent a room ah, two rows in front of me. And then I’m noticing the little noise from an air conditioner over here. All of these distractions.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — But when I’m listening online or a podcast, I can pause I can think about it. My wife and I can talk – I get way more content by my personality…
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — …by not being in the room, believe it or not.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Larry Osborne — And I think a lot of pastors who are, and and executive pastors and leaders, who are trying to drive everybody back are actually the same way. When they go to a conference, they sit on the back row on an aisle…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — …but they’re upset when their people sit on the back row on an aisle.
Rich Birch — See this is what I like about you, Larry. You have some pretty searing insights that I think are true. You know and I think it was you that said, I’ve requoted or I keep quoting it to you, that it’s only pastors that like big churches, that you know that actually functionally, like the average person that attends it’s a hassle when our churches are packed out. When there’s 2000 people all trying to cram into a room somewhere that we like it because we stand up on the stage and we look at and we think isn’t that cool? Um, but actually if you were to talk to most people in our congregations they wouldn’t necessarily say I prefer that – that there’s a lot of people that would say I would actually like a smaller environment.
Larry Osborne — Yeah, what they’re pursuing is quality. That’s why it gets big. They’re not pursuing big.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Larry Osborne — They want enough energy…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — …the room’s got to be half full and enough energy wherever the room is, whatever its size is to feel like something’s happening here.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Larry Osborne — But but they’re not pursuing big. They’re pursuing quality.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — And because of mobility, it being ubiquitous today…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Larry Osborne — …ah, people can now chase after the the best or the better instead of the closest…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — …which is for almost all of human history where you had to go.
Rich Birch — Right. Interesting. So in kind of related issue, you know you’ve been at the core of the megachurch movement for as long as it was called the megachurch movement, and there seems to be people out there now, relating to a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about, that are are kind of ringing this death knell for ah that particular kind of form of church. What’s your thoughts on that? Where where is where do you think this is is going long term? Are we are we going to all end up in ah you know a lot of smaller churches? What what do you think that’s going to look like?
Larry Osborne — Well I’ve I’ve heard this before and it’s a both/and. Part of it is dead. The culture has shifted. Big thanks to video venues and or the multi-congregational model. What we’ve done is when people drive more than 20 minutes, two things disappear: come and see evangelism, and youth involvement. Which is why we do our campuses. We’re not trying to grow. We’re we’re actually going where we have feet on the ground of people driving too far, and come and see evangelism is a major way adults come to Jesus Christ. So the really big buildings were before we could had the ability just even financial and quality to use video and some of the stuff we can use now. So had we not come up with that, somebody else would have in the next two to five years. I mean it was just like duh.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — Um but ah in that sense I don’t think people are going to be building 5-, 6-, 7000 seat…
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — …buildings anymore.
Rich Birch — No, that’s true.
Larry Osborne — Because that is an event that takes you 30 minutes to get out of, and what people do is they go to an event sporadically. But if you’re talking about megachurches with lots of services and thousands and thousands of people, that’s not going away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — The first, you know, megachurches were created for the same reason big box stores were created.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — The Automobile. You know when I was a young kid, we had one car. Now every apartment you drive by doesn’t have enough parking because if there’s three people in the apartment, there’s four cars. And that ability now, as I said earlier, we don’t have to go to the close we can go to the best, or in our moment the better or best. So that creates big but once big becomes too much of a hassle, you’re like that restaurant with a long line. And after a while you only go there on a special occasion.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — Ah, but I don’t think big churches are going to be gone. You know for a while there was this millennial millennials don’t like megachurches. No they didn’t like boomers’ megachurches.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — But soon as they had their own, they loved them.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, it’s so true.
Larry Osborne — And that’ll be true with Z, and every group – that we have the ability to make large and the moment it becomes congestive… Like we have a rule at North Coast, you got to get out of the parking lots of any place in 7 minutes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Larry Osborne — Okay, and if not and that’s why we don’t build bigger and bigger buildings. We had more and more services. Pre-covid time, place and local campuses we had 56 services. Why? Because we could reach a ton of people in a lot of smaller settings that didn’t tell them…
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — …this is too much of a hassle to check your kid in or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah and that parking thing that is that’s so true. Like over the years I’ve we’ve written on parking on our blog and talked about it and and it is one of those like unseen things that, and typically because lots of church leaders are in the building when there’s when there’s hassle out in the parking lot and they don’t see it, and they don’t realize what pain that is. And so we’ve got to lean in on that issue. It seems like a funny practical thing, and I’ve said that to church leaders over the years how long to take people to get out of the parking lot and they look at me like I don’t know what you’re talking about like you know, but it’s a it’s a huge issue.
Larry Osborne — Yeah, here’s what happens when anything gets large, you get sucked to the middle.
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne — You want an illustration of it think of a high school Principal of a really large high school. He or she will only know the worst kids and the best kids and have no idea what a regular student’s like.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — So you have to fight to the fringe. So one of the things I’ve done over all the years I continue to do at North Coast is I like to arrive 4 minutes before the service starts, every now and then when I’m not preaching to see if I can jet out of there like right at… because because that’s the only way I can know.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Larry Osborne — I wonder how many pastors walk around and see of a larger church and actually take a look at at at the line people trying to check their kids in.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Larry Osborne — And we’re here early, leave late, so we think it’s all great, and then we have no idea what people are experiencing. You got to fight to the fringe.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s very good. Larry, if you were, you know, you’ve been like I say I’ve been a part of so many innovations over the years. How do you personally stay fresh and personally stay engaged with you know where culture is going? What does that look like for you like you you? You seem to be always have these effervescent kind of just ideas bubbling from that are you know, just from the world around us. How do you stay fresh personally?
Larry Osborne — Well I think part of it’s a natural giftedness. I get asked that all the time. But even as a young kid I could mentally model outcomes, and say if we do this this is going to happen just quickly. Like some people on a chessboard can see a few moves ahead, if I do this or if we do this, or whatever, which by the way I can’t.
Larry Osborne – So but I’ve always noticed that about organizations and cultures. Not so much about an individual…
Rich Birch — Right.
Larry Osborne – …but ah organization. Ah, and I don’t think anybody can see the future. I’m not a big fan of the books that tell us where we’re heading because when you read the old books by the people they’re all wrong…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — …but I’m a big fan of the unchangeable future.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Larry Osborne — So I’m always looking around like like what we tend to do is we straight line today and say this is where we’re headed. Well if that’s true, I’d still have a ponytail and be living out of a VW van. You know?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Larry Osborne — It’s like no suddenly boomers got jobs, and millennials got jobs. You have kids and it’s like we don’t stay the same. Life changes. As life changes culture. But when Peter Drucker forty years ago said Europe is going to have a massive social problem of all their pensions and social safety net and immigration problem, he wasn’t seeing the future. He was seeing the unchangeable present. Zero birth rates. If we have zero birth rates today, we won’t have enough workers to feed the pension 20, 30, 40 years from now.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Larry Osborne — And so that’s what I’m looking for. That’s why I said echo chambers. I think I can be spot on. Time’s shifting. No one’s willing to go back.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Larry Osborne — Having to turn on the TV game right when it starts that there are certain things you realize are unchangeable future. Building bigger and bigger buildings – what’s what that’s what video venues came out of is we’ve got to find a way to make it small, and nowadays we have incredible sound systems projectors and cameras. And here’s the other unchangeable, when I was in a big room after the seventh row they were watching the screen anyway.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Larry Osborne — So everybody was watching a video venue anyway. Anybody’s spoken there knows like, look at me look at me and they’re all looking at the side.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, everyone’s eyes are off to the side. Yeah, absolutely.
Larry Osborne — Yeah, unchangeable future.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure and you know and I’ve seen that from you over the years, even that today you know the conversation, you know, could have been like convenience and choice. Those are consistent cultural that is just baked in seems to be baked into the culture that and we look to the future people are going to be asking more questions around how do I have more choice and how do I how can I access those things in a more convenient way? Um, those are that has been true for 50 years, 50+ years, 100 years, 1000 years will continue to be true. It’s like it’s like Jeff Bezos for years has been talking about you know, hey we know that 10 years from now at Amazon people are going to want product products faster and cheaper, like that’s just true, right? Like and so how do we build over an extended period of time towards being faster and cheaper, which they have. They’ve marched in that direction and made a huge difference. Well I really appreciate this, Larry. As we wrap up today’s episode anything else you’d like to share before we we close it down?
Larry Osborne — Well just remind everybody what an incredible privilege it is to be doing ministry in some of these strange and unique times. You know I’m over here by the Marine Corps base and the the Navy down in San Diego, and it’s the greatest honor ever to be a Navy Seal. And they put you behind the lines in those kind of situations only when they think you can handle it. And and we should in no way, be looking back at the old days and wish we were there. We’ve we’ve been trusted and empowered and given all we need to do what we need in this new, strange situation. And so we should wake up every day going, wow. How can I charge that hill?
Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Larry, I appreciate you being here today. I appreciate your investment in us. Um, if where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or if they want to track with the church, where do we want to send them?
Larry Osborne — Northcoastchurch.com has our stuff and our sermons and all that. And there’s ah, a site called Larry Osborne live which sometimes is pretty dead; I don’t do a lot of social media. But it’s got things in my books and stuff like that kind of connected to it. But…
Rich Birch — Great.
Larry Osborne — And then there’s a North Coast Training Network which is a part of Northcoastchurch.com so that’s off … see all the stuff we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Great. We’ll link to all those things. Again, Larry, appreciate you being here today; appreciate your leadership over the years. Thank you so much.
Larry Osborne — Thank you.
Managing High Performance Multisite Creative Teams with Melody Workman
Aug 04, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Executive Creative Director Melody Workman from California-based Sandals Church – one of the fastest growing churches in the country for several years now.
It’s hard for churches everywhere to build high performance volunteer teams. Often our growth strategy for volunteer teams doesn’t match our growth strategy for church planting or campus expansion. Listen in as Melody shares about how to shift to a team-building mentality that will support growth at your church.
Make the shift to building robust teams. // At first Sandals Church had a great growth strategy for planting campuses, but no growth strategy for building high performance volunteer teams. Melody began putting a lot of emphasis around the idea that when hiring someone they can’t simply be really skilled at their job, but they also need to be a strong team builder, or they probably won’t work out at the church.
Who knows what you know? // Great leaders always ask two questions: Who knows what I know, and who can do what I do? As church leaders we may falsely believe that if someone else is as skilled as we are that we are devalued. But the truth is that when we reproduce ourselves, we have increased our value. Now we’ve trained others to know what we know.
What do you value? // When it comes to what the church values, Melody tells her team that if they’re not vocal about it and it’s not visible, it’s not really a value. Team building needs to be front and center all the time if it’s something a church values. Talk about team building in your meetings and cast vision around it for your team. People are not drawn to tasks, they’re drawn to vision. Recognize that team building brings value to the volunteers involved, the campuses, and to the church.
Show the volunteers you appreciate them. // You’ll find that volunteers will care about the work that needs to be done when you care about them. Recruiting is only part of the job; build time in your calendar to express gratitude to your volunteers. Let them know that you couldn’t do everything you do without them, and that you wouldn’t want to.
Growing pains of a growing church. // Growing churches are going to have growing pains. For example, it can be hard for the central team to be aligned with the campuses. First, celebrate the fact that you are growing. Then establish wins. Melody worked with the executive team at Sandals Church to outline the Weekend Win: what is the win on that weekend regardless of what campus you are at? They also have weekend evaluations that come from the campuses to the central network staff every weekend. Supervisors from both areas review these evaluations.
Look for the little wins. // When recruiting team members, every leader brings different strengths to the table. Work with leaders at each campus to set sizable, reachable goals. Melody underscores that it’s important to celebrate before you evaluate so that you don’t deflate your team. Leaders at Sandals know they will be evaluated on team building, so Melody makes sure they are offered constant encouragement when they take steps toward this goal. Every step is celebrated. Without celebration, a team will become deflated by evaluations, and a deflated team will underperform every time. Celebrate the small things and it helps evaluations become less of a nemesis.
Building and Caring For Your Team. // Sandals works to train up leaders from within, and one of the ways they do this is through ROGO school, which stands for Real with Ourselves, God and Others. One of the ROGO resources Melody has developed is called Building and Caring For Your Team. Help leaders build and care for their teams by watching the video below, and downloading this PDF.
The Vision And Heart On Building Teams | ROGO School | Sandals Church
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and this week is no exception. I am super excited for, been looking forward to this conversation. The Executive Director of Story and Experience from Sandals Church. Sandals is an incredible church – Dan Zimbardi was on in the past, executive pastor from there. It’s repeatedly on the fastest growing church list across the country. They are consistently there and have been there a bunch of times which means we need to lean in and learn from them. If I’m counting right they have 13 campuses across California, plus Spanish services, and church online. A robust online strategy that I’ve pointed to multiple times with Sandals Church Anywhere. Melody is ah the leader we’re talking to today. Melody welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Melody Workman — Hey Rich. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be great. I why don’t you fill in the story. What am I missing about Sandals? I feel like it’s hard to keep up with – you guys are always moving, always shaking. There’s always something new.
Melody Workman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So what what what do we what did I miss about the the Sandals story?
Melody Workman — Well I think you covered it pretty well. We we did recently just make a change on my team specifically. We we’ve been the story and experience team but we’ve just now moved over to being Sandals Creative…
Rich Birch — Okay, nice.
Melody Workman — …and that’s worship production video and design. And we have kind of our tagline is that we we tell stories and create experiences that connect people to Jesus in real life.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Melody Workman — Our vision at sandals is this vision of being real, and so I want to bring storytellers, and artists, musicians, people who love audio production, all of that stuff here who want to tell the greatest story ever told and connect people to Jesus in their real life. Not a weekend experience, but ah, a day by day experience that they where they love and encounter Jesus.
Rich Birch — Love it. You know for folks that are listening in Melody is at the center of a a church that does a great job on exactly what she’s talking about. You you have you know huge influence over this area. But when I hear all those areas; I’m like there’s a ton of people behind all of that.
Melody Workman — Right.
Rich Birch — Talk me through kind of what the you know you just which I loved just you know, rattled through here’s all these different teams – talk about those teams give us a bit of the scope, scale – help us think through that, give us ah a sense for folks that are listening in, on the team side…
Melody Workman — Sure.
Rich Birch — …when you think about here here are the kind of areas that you’re leading.
Melody Workman — Yeah, so worship and production. We run live services, multiple live services at our campuses. Right now we do have 14 – ah our latest campus that we’re launching in Santa Rosa which is north of San Francisco um isn’t fully launched, so we’re running one service there right now. But we have one part time person in worship, and one part-time person production at these campuses which means everybody else is a volunteer, so I’m excited to get into talking about how we do that, because it’s 52 weekends a year we got to keep this machine rolling.
Melody Workman — Video and design are really our teams around um everything that you see outward facing around our art, bumpers for video for sermon series, any videos that we create, story videos. They are the ones who are kind of thinking through how do we make this idea come alive. We work a lot with our senior pastor, Matt Brown. He comes into these conversations. Um, and it’s different for every senior pastor, but he really loves to sit in the ideation phase And we we kind of lean in and like what’s God saying to him. Okay, how do we bring this to life. So um, we have a lot of fun. But um, we we work really hard.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, so there’s a lot of people wrapped up in there. A lot of teams. I love the you know the focus on volunteers. I think sometimes there’s this misnomer as churches grow larger that like well that’s like got all be paid people…
Melody Workman — Yes.
Rich Birch — …but you know Sandals has done so much of what you do is with volunteers. I’d love to learn from you on that. What what what is the ah maybe some of the the problem around building teams? When you think about, Okay, it’s difficult for churches to do that. Why is it? Why is it so hard for us to build high performance teams?
Melody Workman — Yeah, man, when I first moved into the role that I’m I’m in now, I recognize that we had a ah problem and that we had this growth strategy to plant campuses, but we had no growth strategy for our worship and production teams.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Melody Workman — So when you take them out of the equation, weekend services are going to really take a nosedive. You know you walk into a service you want a full band, you want a stage that’s alive, you want ah a full booth where people are running and in the lights, the lyrics, everything looks and sounds really good. So I recognized, we don’t have a growth strategy for this. And so when I was visiting campuses I was seeing really small teams and I I thought we’ve got to address this. So I kind of started putting a lot of emphasis around this idea that at at our core, when I’m hiring someone, they may be a great musician. They may be able to sing riffs ah around, you know, whatever. They may know everything about tech. If they do not value and understand that they are a team builder, they’re probably not going to work out here. And so it’s a unique person to find…
Rich Birch — It is.
Melody Workman — …musicians – you can find musicians everywhere, especially when you’re an hour outside of LA, But do do you have someone who wants to invest in people? And so that’s where I recognize our core problem wasn’t just, a hey you guys got to build teams and get people. I really had to help people see and embrace the value of it. What is it actually that we are trying to do? And that’s when I think we’ve made a real shift um, to have the robust teams that we have right now.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love this. And and for folks that are listening in, like I have found this same tension around ah particularly in our creative department where it’s like it seems like—and listen I love creatives. I love worship leaders. I love people that do creative things—but there’s like a um, I want to be the person on stage you know, kind of undercurrent with some – not with all – where it’s like and and the idea of replicating other leaders – finding, releasing, equipping, other leaders. It seems to be difficult for folks in that domain. is that true am I misreading that I feel like I bumped into that dynamic.
Melody Workman — Sure. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Have you seen that with some leaders?
Melody Workman — Absolutely. I think it’s difficult for leaders to think about it because I think that we are often thinking about it through the wrong lens. We think that if someone else is as good as we are, we have devalued ourselves. When the truth is when we when we when we reproduce ourselves, we have increased our value because now there’s someone else who knows what we know. I think I think great leaders are always asking these two questions: who knows what I know, and can do what I do.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Melody Workman — This is what I this is what I burn into our team: who knows what you know and can do what you do? You need to that needs to get you out of bed, that needs to motivate you during the day. You need to be seen. I mean when Covid hit, we all had this weight to carry of who who can fill in? I’m I’m positive or I’ve been I’ve been you know exposed. What are we going to do? So that really did create a moment where I think our teams in a fresh way understood how important this is. People have to know what I know and can do what I do. if I’m the only one who knows this, I am not an asset to the organization the way that I could be, if not only I know it, but 2, 3, 4, 5 other people know it as well. So it’s been a shift to get people to see that. But here’s the other here’s the other beautiful thing too. Um. What I tell our team all the time is people are not drawn to task, people are drawn to vision.
Rich Birch — True.
Melody Workman — So throw this idea of asking people to help out the window. I say all the time – we are not asking people to help we are empowering people to serve. Um. You know 1 Peter makes it really clear that God’s given each of us a gift. He did the hard work of giving us the gifts and skills we need. We just have to empower people to use them. And so I’ve watched you know one campus in particular, our model is really around dying churches, and going in, and bringing new life to them. And so we had a campus where there were 8 people left…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Melody Workman — …in this in this certain congregation. Everyone was over 65. And so we had a part time worship lead. How’s he gonna build a team there?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Melody Workman — Like what how is he going to do this? He he now has um, he now has 20% of the congregation on his team on on his team.
Rich Birch — Wow! That’s amazing.
Melody Workman — And and and they’re young, and they’re vibrant, and they’re full of passion. And when I interviewed him for a conversation not too long ago, I said what was the strategy? And he goes like this I just don’t quit.
Rich Birch — Right. Nice. Love it.
Melody Workman — That that was it. Like that was the answer. He just he… I hustle. And so I think too when it comes to team building, we can talk about things to try and things that you should do. But I think at the end of the day leaders have to be telling their teams, this is a grind. It is a grind. If you’re built on a volunteer structure like we are, this is a grind. It doesn’t go away. Volunteers get to quit whenever they want to, like Sunday morning at 7:30 they get to quit if they want to.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Melody Workman — And so we have to know that we have to understand this is the reality of the situation.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Melody Workman — But when you’re empowering people to serve and you’re casting vision, man people want to be a part of that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Melody Workman — And that’s how we’re seeing our teams grow.
Rich Birch — Love it. I love that you’re calling this out, you know. This is one of these things in campus expansion, you know, I coach churches around that – I’ve done a bunch of that myself – and oftentimes I come back, the way I say it is, like there’s a lot of this that’s just isn’t sexy.
Melody Workman — Right. Yep.
Rich Birch — Like it’s just a ton of work like. It is we’re going to call people. We’re going to get in front of them. We’re going to… when you talk about the grind, that team building is the grind. What would be some of those elements of the grind? With leaders that are really succeeding and building strong teams in your environment, what are those things that they’re kind of consistently doing that feels like, you know, wow we’re just we’re just pounding on this time and time again?
Melody Workman — Yeah, that’s a great that’s a great question. I would say I start with this idea of a value, like what is a value? And so here’s here’s what I tell my team: if you’re not vocal, and it’s not visible, it’s not a value. Don’t don’t say building a team is a value if you don’t talk about it and you don’t see it. My teams know, they know when we go into a team meeting or whatever, we aren’t not talking about team building. It’s it’s gonna show up. They you know they might do a little eye roll. But they know we’re talking about it because of the value. The value that it brings to their campus, and the value that it brings to our church, and the value that it brings to the person.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — Um, when I meet our volunteers around our campuses when I travel, they’re so excited to be a part of the team. They’re so thrilled that they’re getting to use these gifts and skills. Someone had to go invite them. Someone had to go have a conversation. So one of the things that I tell my team is start with this idea that if this is a value, you’re talking about your team all the time, you’re casting vision for your team, because if it’s if you’re not vocal and it’s not visible, it’s not a value. Um, well.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Melody Workman — One of the second things that I tell our leaders all the time too is you’re going to find volunteers that care about the work when they feel that you care about them. And so don’t don’t like recruiting is just a part of it. Um, there’s this after piece to, you know, doing things that cost nothing, but mean everything. Text text your team, like build time in your calendar to, hey our weekend services were dynamic and you were a part of making that happen. We’ve adapted the phrase for volunteers, we couldn’t do this without you, and we say that – it’s true.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s absolutely true.
Melody Workman — Like we we’ve got a part time person, like on that’s who’s getting paid, and so that’s gonna last you for about a couple weeks until the congregation’s like where’s everybody at, you know? So let your volunteers know we couldn’t do this without you, and we wouldn’t want to. And so we’ve we do some strategy things, but I sometimes when I’m sitting with one of our campus leads in there like I’m having a really hard time building a team, I’m like tell me what you’ve tried. And a lot of times they’re they’re thinking up here like and I need to be doing this and spending a lot of money, when really put on your calendar: text everybody on your team.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Melody Workman — It’s gonna take you less than an hour. It’s it’s little things. And sometimes we we skip the little things, and then we miss big results as a you know because of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Yeah I love that. When when you say part time, how how part time is part time that those those people are? Does it vary depending on the campus size or what does that look like?
Melody Workman — Yeah, so if we have a campus that runs 3 services, sometimes you’re up it’s like up to 25 hours.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — If they run 2 services, it’s 20 hours. They have a midweek rehearsal. But we don’t like these aren’t full time roles…
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — …like this is not the only thing these people have going on so it’s even more of a challenge. So we have to really sometimes sit down with them and say, you’ve got this many hours a week. Team building is our highest value. I want to see this reflected in your hours.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — I want you to show me with your hours what you’re doing and and how you’re connecting with your team, reaching out to them, having conversations. Um, and and with our model, I often say to our campus lead, when you’re feeling a pain point here I want to know what your dialogue with your campus pastor is like. Because your campus pastor wants a full stage, I can tell you right now I know he does. So how many conversations are you having with him around this idea?
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — So in our model we’ve got we call it Network; a lot of people might call it central. Then we’ve got the campus. Our job at the Network is to resource, train, and equip these campus leads. So we resource them. We train them. We equip them. And so but it’s a very collaborative effort from a coaching perspective that you’ve got a Network supervisor and a campus pastor aligned with each other that team building is a value. It doesn’t work if one holds it and one doesn’t.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s very true.
Melody Workman — So we so we spend a lot of time with our multi-site model, making sure that networking campus supervisors are aligned with what the employee should actually be producing.
Rich Birch — Love that. Let’s talk about that a little bit more. We did so unSeminary for about a year we did this once-a month episode that was on multisite. And it was at what what we did was we had this like roundtable. It was the same people every month. People would send in their questions and the um after about six months I realized everyone is sending us the exact same question, which is exactly what you just talked about there.
Melody Workman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Some version of, in your language, Network versus Campus.
Melody Workman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s like, how do I get these people to work together? How do we get alignment? How do we get our Network Supervisors and our and our ah Campus Pastors, how do we get them working together? Talk us through what that looks like – it could be within you know this this particular area or more broadly. How are you doing that? How are you staying connected, ensuring that you’re aligned with those people?
Melody Workman — Yeah, this is the ongoing conversation in an organization, you know, the size of ours. And I I, like you, when I talk to friends in ministry who are multi-site, this is just an ongoing pain point. So I think one of the things that we have to recognize is if you’re in a growing church, you have growing pains. This is a growing pain of a growing church. So we shouldn’t go man, this isn’t working. We should say, hey we’re having growing pains.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Melody Workman — Let’s celebrate that we’re growing. Um, let’s not take that for granted so where I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this is as I visit the campuses and I understand, one, I established something called the Weekend Win. What is the win on the weekend regardless of what camp Sandals Church campus you’re at?
Rich Birch — Okay.
Melody Workman — Um and that started with ah a conversation with a guy on our executive team who oversees our campus pastors. We collaborated and said, we feel like these things are what are inside a Weekend Win: a team that’s well-prepped, a team that brings presence to the platform into the booth. They’re they’re they’re reading the room; they know what to do. And they’re they’re highly connected to people, so loving the volunteers, recruiting new people. This is this is what we want it to look like. We feel like when you’ve got these three components, a dynamic weekend service is is going to happen.
Melody Workman — So then we kind of had to take a step back from those and then go, okay, so then what does it look like for there to be collaboration around making… how how do we make this happen? So some of the some of the tactical things that we’ve done are, because we also have some dual role employees.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Melody Workman — They’re a full time employee with 20 hours at the Network 20 hours at the campus. So they’ve got two hard lines. So how how do we make that work?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Melody Workman — Um, we’ve we’ve done some things like two on ones. So there’s there’s a 1 on 1 but then once a month there’s a 2 on 1.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Melody Workman — And that looks like the Network Supervisor, Campus Pastor having a quick brief conversation…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Melody Workman — …before they sit down with the employee, and they go, hey from my perspective, she’s doing great. From my perspective, she’s really struggling. Okay, where? And then let’s we’re gonna address those. The second thing we do is we have weekend evaluations that come from the campuses to the network every weekend. And campus pastors and network supervisors both have eyes on those. So they know the campus pastor was at his campus so he could tell you, I felt like this went well. The Network Supervisor who may not be there can go, there was some behind the scenes stuff that you that you’re not aware of that we need to touch base on. So the weekend evals tell us a lot about how it’s actually going. And and they both have eyes on that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Melody Workman — Um and and and so we’ve had to address, how do we do performance reviews. Um, and we’re we’re still working through some of these, but what I have what I have said to our campus pastors and Network leads is, if we have a frustrated dual role employee most likely that’s our fault, not theirs.
Rich Birch — Oh so true. So true.
Melody Workman — We haven’t we haven’t created a structure that’s working for them, so they’re not doing great work for us. Let’s improve the structure. Let’s improve the process, and then let’s see if their performance grows. And and by and large it really has as we have addressed the the pain points with having the network campus, you know, fun, fun structure.
Rich Birch — Yes, tension tension to be managed.
Melody Workman — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. So many times that’s that’s such great, friends, if you just listen and there’s some great coaching that we just went through there. Thank you so much you know for that, Melody. You know so many times that conversation degenerates down to who’s in charge. It’s like who gets to fire who. And that’s like the worst case scenario!
Melody Workman — Right, right.
Rich Birch — And I love that picture of let’s get together and agree on what the win is, let’s do the hard work at the campus leadership and network leadership to say, Okay, what is it that we’re actually trying to do? Because we both need to agree on that because we’re pushing at it from just different angles.
Melody Workman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’re trying to come to the same thing where as opposed to, you know, because oftentimes that’s where the tension is created. They both sides of that equation maybe think the win is different. They don’t…
Melody Workman — Yes.
Rich Birch — They don’t actually have alignment on what that is. That’s very good. When you when you…
Melody Workman — Well and one thing I would…oh go ahead.
Rich Birch — Sorry, go no go ahead.
Melody Workman — No one thing I was gonna say to that, Rich, because this is something that I hear a lot even when I talk to pastors and friends in in other churches. One of the things I think needs that needs to be addressed at the executive level is, if ah, if a senior pastor, an executive pastor, is visiting a campus and they hear something or see something they don’t like… I call it the power of the first text. Who are they texting when the stage isn’t going where they want it to, or there’s production issues? Whoever they’re texting first has to have a voice, and weight, and and say into how those things are going.
Melody Workman — So I’ve heard of churches that are structured where the campus pastor has full autonomy in terms of leadership over campus staff. But if someone visits their campus and and they don’t love how it went, they’re texting someone at the network but that network that person on the network doesn’t have a voice. They don’t have say into it. So I would I would put it back on executive level leaders to say if when you visit a campus and there’s something that you don’t like or something you want to see more of, the power of the first text. Who is that person? Make sure they have a voice and a seat at the decision making table. Um, otherwise you’re you’re creating the problem. And and you need to address that by giving leverage and decision making responsibilities to the people that you’re reaching out to to say, hey fix this.
Rich Birch — Yeah I Love it.
Melody Workman — So that’s ah, that’s a pain point that comes up a lot that I hear about.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love it. So on the team building, you know how do we build and release great teams volunteer teams. What is Sandals doing from a recruiting point of view? Like I think sometimes there’s this tension of like somebody else needs to get up and talk about this thing and that’ll solve my problems. Like and whether that’s in creative or in you know, other areas, what is what is kind of recruiting at kind of a system wide point of view look like and then how does that relate to you know what your particular team is doing?
Melody Workman — Um, I think we I think one of the things that we talk about is our our core values that we’re raising up within our own church the people that we want to see. I I want to I want to visit a campus… I will sometimes sit down with a worship lead and say. You know what a win looks like for you? A win looks like for you when you’re on but you’re off. Meaning you’re at your campus. You’re coaching your team, but you’re not on a position, because you have raised up and developed people who can do what you do. They know what you know, and they can do what you do. So you’re walking in a rehearsal with a coffee, you’re cheering them, on you’re highfiving them, but you don’t have to be on because of the work that you’ve done.
Melody Workman — So we’ve we’ve put a lot of training and resourcing around our own development. We have what we call ROGO school—that’s Real with Ourselves, God and Others—because that’s our vision, but it’s ah it’s a development. It’s a training school. We’re trying to train up from within. So I can tell you that for us on the worship side of things, um 70% of our most recent worship lead hires have all come through ROGO School.
Rich Birch — Hmm – wow.
Melody Workman — We’ve trained, and equipped, and resourced them, and then we’ve hired them. So just recently I was at an event that we were having and every single person on the platform was in ROGO school.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — They were and so I’m I’m watching it work.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — Um, you know you know we you know we’ll utilize some of the higher level things, you know if we want to reach out to a head hunter, creative staffing, church staffing – those type of things for higher level roles. Um, but when we’re looking for these part-time roles, a lot of that we’re doing internally…
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — …because we trust our own process.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Melody Workman — Like we we know this person knows what they need to know. And sometimes when when you’re growing church The DNA of the church culture inside a person is more important than their raw talent or skill.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Melody Workman — They they might be able to lead like crazy. But if they don’t understand the context in which they’re leading, it’s not going to work. So we’ve we’ve done a lot of hard work. You mentioned Dan Zimbardi before – he he really kind of birthed this idea of let’s train him up ourselves. And so we’re we’re seeing the fruits of that in in the past few years for sure.
Rich Birch — Love it. When you take it kind of a layer below that—so I’m at of campus, I’m one of these part time people, I’m ah—what ah what are we doing as a church or what’s the church doing ah to help me find a drummer? I need a draw I need more drummers. There always seems to be, you know, that seems to be an issue.
Melody Workman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How much of that is just on that individual leader? Are you doing like a regular recruiting process at that level for like the volunteers on your teams? What does talk us through what that looks like.
Melody Workman — Well, what’s what’s been beautiful as as we’ve grown is, you know, everybody brings different strengths to the table.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Melody Workman —So I might have a worship leader at this campus and they’re just the dynamic team builder. They’re a people person, they’re charismatic. They’re work in the lobby every week, they’re they’re they’re just that person. Then I’ve got a person who maybe is more introverted, conversations are difficult for them, and so what we do is we look at the size of the campus and then we set sizable reachable goals. So I might say, you know to to one of our worship leads, your campus is about 300 um, you’ve you’ve auditioned X amount of people, I want to set a 30 to 60 day goal. I want you to have 3 conversations and audition one person by the end of the month. Can you do that?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Melody Workman — These bite size goals because then what happens is—and this is one of the key points I think when when you’re when we talk about hey team building is our thing, you’re being evaluated by team building—one of my core principles across the board as a leader is celebrate before you evaluate so that you don’t deflate your team.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Melody Workman — Since I want them to do this. They’re constantly being evaluated by how they’re doing. But ah, but a deflated team is going to underperform every single time. So I will reach out to that lead and say hey did you have the conversation, how did it go? Oh I was nervous, but I did it. Dude, you did it! You did it. That’s awesome. You had a conversation. Dude, you might have a new drummer in just a month. How think think about how awesome that’s gonna be.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — And that celebration is like fuel in the tank for them. And so what I’ve what I’ve seen, Rich, and and this is how I know it works, is that through celebration, evaluation becomes less and less of a nemesis. It becomes less and less of like, ah oh I can’t stand this. And then when when they feel like there’s this, okay I’m celebrated so the evaluation is gonna come. They’re not deflated. A deflated team is a depleted team.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Melody Workman — They’re exhausted even if the work isn’t too much.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — They’re just constantly feeling your displeasure.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — So I have we have to look for the little wins. When we started a campus up in the mountains, um, we we recognize right I mean right right off the bat, they’re gonna attract most of the same people all the time. They’re not gonna get the influx of visitors that are other campuses get. We’ve got to do things differently. So that leader we started going, hey what could you do? You could visit some coffee shops? Could you put together a jam night. Could you… and he just went into the grind. But every time he auditioned somebody, we we like went nuts. We were like you did it! Dude you did it!
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s great.
Melody Workman — And now he’s built this phenomenal team.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s so good.
Melody Workman — And so it’s a grind, but man when you celebrate the little wins, your team will go the distance; they will do the work.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Can you talk to us… this is kind of a foundational question I probably should have started here, but you think 600 episodes in I could think through this these things but um, you know we’ve been talking so much about the fact that you have such you know part-time staff like that which is an amazing. Um why? Like why not just… so the church could afford it. Um, you know I love the decision. It’s not a challenging question from a like, I think you made the wrong decision – I love it. But explain why. What is the thinking behind that?
Melody Workman — Well…
Rich Birch — Particularly in this area, particularly in the worship and creative area. Why why not just because you could hire ah, band of 8 people and they could be there every weekend…
Melody Workman — Sure.
Rich Birch — …and and you wouldn’t have to do any of this.
Melody Workman — Well, it’s an interesting that’s that’s a great question. I think it what it comes down to is overall our church is is built on a model of discipleship.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Melody Workman — We think that we can we can equip people to do the work that they’ve been called to do, based on you know 1 Peter 4:10. And in doing so they’re becoming more like Christ, which fits within our discipleship model. You know we have something called a growth path. We want to move people through this growth path. And if they’re a contract musician that’s showing up on the weekend, that’s not a bad thing. I mean we we know they’re going to hold it down at electric guitar. We know they’re going to hold it down on keys, but are they becoming more like Christ in the process? We value that more than we value, sure we got a full team.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Melody Workman — And so shat’s why the grind is there because spiritual growth is a grind, you know?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Melody Workman — So we have to just kind of embrace that. Listen helping people become more like Christ is painful. It’s refining, it’s difficult, but I’ve got a guy on my team, Rich, who visited Sandals Church, was was deep into drugs, like he he was dealing them. He was he was a mule type of in in that. And his friends’s like, you dude, you gotta go to church. You gotta turn your life around. And I have watched him go from sitting in the audience, hearing a message, deciding to come back, auditioning for the team, and now one of the best worship leaders we have on our staff. And that doesn’t happen if we just go, hey we’ll pay you to play the drums.
Rich Birch — Right.
Melody Workman — Hey we’ll pay you to… and again I’m not putting that down…
Rich Birch — No.
Melody Workman — …because in some situations you have to do it. You can do but in this in this model is the work hard? 100%. But is the return the most amazing thing ever to watch people go you get to watch people on their growth path? It’s like nothing else. It’s like…
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Melody Workman — And sometimes in Ministry you’re just you’re just dying for some joy. You know you’re just dying for some wins.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes.
Melody Workman — So when you get to see people come in where they come in and watch where God takes them through this discipleship process, it it makes it all worth it. As hard as it is, it makes it worth it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good, Melody. That’s fantastic. Yeah I’ve lived in both worlds where we’ve you know, paid a lot of creative people and and ah both approaches have lots of issues with them. What the the path you’ve taken um, yeah, it’s like you say it’s the grind. It’s it’s hard work. But I think it’s a better set of problems.
Melody Workman — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I think like you’re saying it’s actually pushing us towards what we’re supposed to be doing as a church. It’s it’s pushing us towards discipleship. And and, friends, you know we’ve talked about this in other contexts. Ah fast-growing churches have a lower per capita staff than slow growing churches. They have less staff per capita. That is just what happens. And you’re seeing the mechanics behind why that is because you’re attracting people, getting them plugged in, all of that. That’s fantastic. Well, Melody, anything else you’d like to share just before we wrap up today’s episode?
Melody Workman — Um I Just I think I want to just give a word of encouragement to to those who are in this grind of building teams, especially in this post-ish Covid world that we’re in.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes.
Melody Workman — Um I don’t want to I don’t want to move away before I just say, you know, there have been times where we’ve gathered our teams together and said, when’s the last time we prayed that God would bring us more people? Like we’ve got strategies. We’ve got you know tactics. We’ve got parties. We’ve got. But when’s the last time we got to get we got down on our knees as a team and said God, would you bring us people that you want to be here…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Melody Workman — …to serve you with their gifts, but also to to grow into who you want them to be, and and that we would get to be a part of it. And so we’re in Christian world we’re in churchworld. We’re in ministry, so we kind of throw around prayer. Oh we got to pray about it. but I want to leave people with this idea that prayer changes things you know?
Rich Birch — So true.
Melody Workman — So lead by example as a leader and say, I’m committing to pray over this myself and we’re going to pray over this together as a team. And and don’t don’t negate, you know, the basics for for high level strategy. Um, you you need both. But one thing you got at your team’s got to see you do is lead by example, and so pray for your team, and then pray for their teams. Um that that’s been a that’s been a game changer here for us.
Rich Birch — All right, Melody. Just before we end, you’ve given us a resource here, Building and Caring for Your Team. We’re going to link to it in our show notes, but tell us a little bit about it.
Melody Workman — Yeah so I mentioned ROGO School which is how we develop our own leaders, and so I put this together for our ROGO leaders – all about how to build and care for your teams. And so if it’s if it’s a help to any of your listeners, I wanted to make it available to them. So theres’s a video teaching and then I think there’s a PDF as well that they can use. And man, I hope it’s a help. It’s been a help to our leaders here for sure.
Rich Birch — Yeah, friends, this is a great resource. This is a… now you’ve come to the end of the podcast, you’ve listened to this, you should dive in, watch this teaching. It’s the kind of thing you could share with your team. This could be a great like training thing – you’re looking for something to do on a staff meeting, this is like ready-to-go resources. So helpful. Yeah, thanks so much for sharing that with us.
Rich Birch — Well I really appreciate this, Melody. Thank you so much. Such great coaching and encouragement from you today. An honor that you would be with us. Um, if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
Melody Workman — Yeah, so um, I have a website melodyworkman.com which you can get in touch with me there. Instagram I’m just @melodyworkman – no fancy names or handles that you know there and there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Melody Workman — There’s direct links through my Instagram to both Sandals Church and Sandals Creative. Um, and so shoot me a DM. You can you know reach me through my website and I’m happy to connect; I’d love to.
Rich Birch — Great! Thanks so much, Melody – appreciate you being here today.
Melody Workman — Thanks, Rich. It was great.
Burnout, Perfectionism & Identity: Inside Chris Hahn’s Personal Journey to Restoration
Jul 28, 2022
Welcome to this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Chris Hahn, the Executive Pastor of Missional Spaces at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago.
In the demands and activity of ministry, church leaders can find there is a disconnect between their public leadership and struggles in their personal lives. Don’t miss today’s podcast episode where Chris shares his story of how God brought him to a place of burnout and brokenness in order to bring about His redemptive purposes.
Stepping back. // Chris has been in ministry for over 30 years, starting in student ministry, moving into working as a children’s pastor, and finally an executive pastor role at a large multi-site church in Kentucky. Amidst all of the growth and hard work at the church, in January 2020 the leadership brought to Chris’s attention that he was not operating from a healthy place. Chris sensed that something might not be right internally, but he hadn’t wanted to confront it. It ultimately took outside help for him to see that he needed to step back from ministry.
Seeing the truth. // Although leading up to this point Chris was walking with Jesus, praying and in the word daily, he realized he’d been ignoring the warning signs in his life. Chris was experiencing burnout, and ignoring it resulted in immature behavior patterns. When God got his attention and everything was stripped away, Chris knew that he had to make some serious changes in his life, and he left his executive pastor role.
God has wired all of us with emotions for a reason. // As Chris sought healing, he wanted to understand what had gotten him to this place and how he could have ignored it. He began journeying with mentors and a counselor to take an honest look at his life and committed to being 100% vulnerable. In one of the early sessions with his counselor, she asked Chris how everything he was going through made him feel. Chris realized the truth was that he didn’t know how he felt. He knew what he thought about everything and how he should feel, but not how he actually felt. At that moment Chris realized he didn’t really know who he was anymore.
Figure out why. // Chris had to start a journey back to how to feel emotions again and understand what it means to sit in feelings and not just get through them, compartmentalize them, or bury them. It is important to figure out what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling a certain way. Then just sit in it and recognize that you feel sad, even if you don’t know why, and it’s okay. You may need to talk to someone about why you feel what you feel, or journal about it.
Find your ministry mentors. // Chris reached out to his ministry mentors to help him find his way back along the path back to health and wholeness. These people are pastors he had worked with, spiritual mentors, close friends, and a trusted counselor. He could reach out to them and be vulnerable, and they would be completely honest about what he should do. Through this process of healing, Chris realized that God was rescuing him from going deeper into unhealthy patterns and falling further into burnout.
It’s okay to not be okay. // Chris never thought he’d be able to return to ministry within a church, but when he surrendered these fears to God, God brought him to his current position at Willow. In his current leadership role, he’s able to help create a culture where it’s okay to not be okay and not feel like you’re going to get canceled. Within the church we need to create a culture from the leadership to the staff where we can talk about things we’re struggling with, not be afraid to get help, and lovingly confront and be honest with each other.
Be transparent and real. // Find someone you trust to talk about your own struggles in your life. Be completely transparent and honest with them, and be willing to go to those hard places. Chris also makes himself available to any leader or pastor who needs to talk in these situations. No matter where you are or how far you’ve fallen, God isn’t done with you. Your failures don’t define you and they can be redeemed to help others down the road.
You can reach out to Chris by emailing him here. Watch a bit of his testimony at Willow Creek below.
Chris Hahn Sharing at Willow Creek Staff Gathering
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Today’s a special episode of unSeminary. It’s going to take a little bit of a different conversation than we normally have. Got my friend Chris Hahn with us. He is the Executive Pastor of Missional Spaces at ah, church in Chicagoland you may be heard of before, Willow Creek, but really today I want to hear more about Chris’s own story, and kind of his own ah you know the journey that God’s had him on. And so obviously what he’s doing at Willow connects with that story, but I’m actually more interested in the kind of broader story. Chris, welcome to the the show. So glad you’re here.
Chris Hahn — Thanks, Rich. Man, it’s great to be on. An honor to call you my friend, and also to be a part of what you’re doing which is impacting a lot of lives of leaders and churches. So thank you.
Rich Birch — Thanks so much. I ah, we’ve had a chance to connect a little bit over the years and excited to you know to kind of have a conversation in public today um about just the journey you’ve been on. I really really appreciate that. So why don’t you tell us a little bit of the the Chris story, kind of pull back, give us the 20,000 foot view. How do you, you know, kind of the journey you’ve been on and then we’ll narrow in and talk about the last kind of this last long leg of your journey.
Chris Hahn — Yeah man, well appreciate that. I I’ve been in ministry for over 30 years. It started out in student ministry and then out of college landed at a church in Kentucky, a large church in Kentucky, where um I started as a children’s pastor, and did that for ten years, and then kind of moved around which I would say like all like yeah, all ministry can be learned through the lens of children’s ministry. There’s so much you can learn that but…
Rich Birch — So true. The best people comes out of kids ministry.
Chris Hahn — Totally, totally. Um.
Rich Birch — So true.
Chris Hahn — And then I navigated a couple of transitions in there to where I eventually landed over the last ten years or so of my time there I was executive pastor, and the lead executive pastor for the church. The church was, you know, large large church, multi-site. We’d gotten into the multi-site world, had a lot of campuses and expanding our campuses. Our our goal is to kind of put a healthy church within the reach of anyone in the state of Kentucky. And we we pushed the gas as as hard as we could and and took off after that.
Chris Hahn — And, man, I think the the big piece of my story is at in January of 2020, which was at the beginning of when a lot of lot of lives began to to change, right? I had no idea but was was called to my attention that I I was I was not in a healthy place. And I think I knew it internally but I I did not want to confront it. And I as as an as I’m I’m in Enneagram One and I don’t know a ton about enneagrams, but I have learned a lot about what that means for me in this in this last season. But um was called to my attention, man, that I was unhealthy and it was was at a place where I needed to step away from what I was doing. And it was one of those where you know walked into a meeting and had no idea what I was walking into and walked out and you know everything had changed.
Chris Hahn — And um and and really what I, Rich, what I looked by what I look back now and see is that I was carrying a lot. And I was ignoring a lot and as an Enneagram One I really felt like it was just my responsibility to do what I was what I was supposed to do and do it really well really really well with ah a great deal of responsibility. And what I what I just kind of glossed past was man and we we’d had family challenges that—my daughter had had a significant relationship that broke up and I just kind of navigated that, I was actually the Chairman of a board of a small college that we had to close the doors on. During that period of time we were restructuring our staff as we were getting ready to expand our mission a little bit, and um I just kind of kept plowing, right? I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t really pay attention to any of the warning lights that were on my dashboard that I was I was getting really tired and burnt out.
Chris Hahn — And um one of the one of the things I look back now and see is that I’d walked with a family, two families actually in our church, that lost 20 year old sons, and I did the funeral for one of them. My kids had been friends with these these guys. And I remember walking out of that that situation one day just thinking I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
Rich Birch — Hmm, interesting.
Chris Hahn — And I’d never really thought that before.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — But but you know what man I just I just ignored it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — And um I allowed myself then in in my, what I now can look back and see was was burnout, um I allowed myself to slip into what I would just say is is really immature patterns. And um I was walking with Jesus, I mean I was in the word every day you know my prayer life was great…
Rich Birch — Yeah, right.
Chris Hahn — …so it wasn’t like I, you know, was into you know anything that was immoral, or or ah my holiness was was slipping, but I was I was just in my fatigue being really um, kind of an immature mainly with my with my speech and the way I talked to people. And um, when when I realized that when it when I when when God got my attention and everything was completely stripped away from me, um man I I knew that um that God was getting my attention. And I knew that I had to had to make some some serious changes in my life because he was he was putting me in the situation…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Hahn — …to have to make some changes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m I’m really looking forward to to talking about this. And you know, friends, Chris is giving you a a gift today of helping us understand to get inside of this and so um, it’s it’s an honor that you would would share a little bit. You know just to give a little bit of outsider context, the part that I think is fascinating about this story about what God’s done in your life is I think we all have faced, to different degrees, where you know the church you were at like you say large church in Kentucky it was growing up into the right, you know, lots of great things going on in ministry while at the same time you know your own personal life you were, you know, struggling with um and maybe even like you say unknown. And I think that we have all experienced that in ministry. There is a disconnect when we lead between what we do publicly and then who and then what’s happening in our own lives. And so um in some ways you know I look at it and say wow God did a great thing because he got your attention about these things, and didn’t let it continue but before it could become you know much you know much worse situation.
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s talk about maybe the first steps of, okay so you are you know called into this meeting and, you know, it’s this beginning of this revelation process. Wow – like something is out of step. Talk us through what those those you know first few days and weeks what did that look like. What was what was going on?
Chris Hahn — Yeah, you know what’s crazy is when I walked out of that meeting, as devastated as ah as I was, there was something in me that had a sense of relief, which is really really strange.
Rich Birch — Hmm, interesting. Yes.
Chris Hahn — You know it was really strange. I did not expect that. Um but I immediately of course called my wife who’s ah has been amazing, has been my rock but this whole thing but um, gathered with friends, gathered my adult kids, and then I started you know calling my my spiritual mentors, my ministry mentors, my um, counselor and just saying, hey here’s here’s here’s where I’m at. This is what’s happened and I I need help. I need to figure out like what is it in me that that got me here, but also like like why would I have ignored it?
Chris Hahn — Like to me that was a bigger problem is if I’d been sitting across this desk from myself, you know, months before I would have seen some of those things, but there was some arrogance in me or something that just caused me to ignore what I was what I was seeing. So I started journeying with my mentors and with my counselor in in ways that just was like strip me completely away, right? I mean it’s like I want to like figure it all out and I’m willing to be 100% vulnerable, transparent. And there was ah there was a session I had with my counselor early on where was walking through some stuff and she said she asked me she said how does that make you feel? And I looked at her, because I was like I was committed to being honest, and so I looked at her and I said, you know, I I don’t know.
Chris Hahn — I I know what I think about it but I’m not sure what I feel about it. And then then I really thought about it I thought you know actually I know what I should think and I know what I should feel but I’m not sure what I think and feel. And you know you never want to look up and see your counselor looking at you with real wide eyes, right? That’s never a good thing. Um.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Chris Hahn — But but she was she was looking at me in a way where she had just had discovery and she said, you know, you don’t really know who you are any anymore, do you? And man, it was at that moment where I was like, you know what, I hate to admit it, but I don’t. And um I had learned over the years just how to compartmentalize my feelings, how to not really feel em. Um to the point where then we had to begin journeying out like me even recognizing what certain emotions were. Like I couldn’t really even identify sadness versus anger or you know, discontent or whatever emotion – I couldn’t really even identify.
Chris Hahn — Um, so I had to start a journey back around just starting to feel again. And understanding what it means to sit in feelings, and not just try to get through them. You know that was a big part of my my journey as well. And then we had friends that were super close with us that allowed us to come, stay down at their house just for several days, and just kind of just kind of rest in their in in that community, and then just in what the Lord was doing. And and these friends, along with some others, interestingly enough, just kept saying as they were praying for us they were getting they kept getting the word rescue. They kept getting this word rescue as they prayed. And um, you know, just kind of like you know, not really sure what this means. But um, we feel like God’s God’s doing something around rescue. And now we look back, you know, two years later and realize God was God was kind of rescuing rescuing me from, you know, kind of going deeper into maybe spinning out further into burnout.
Chris Hahn — So then I took you know I took several months and really just thought, I think God’s that’s probably done with me in the church. Because the last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt a church or hurt people. I mean I got into ministry to help people, right? I love the church.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chris Hahn — And I just kind of felt like I’m probably I’m probably done. And you know was was talking to God saying, man, I’ll do anything that you want me to do except go back into the church, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chris Hahn — Because I was scared to death. And and, you know, honestly there were people like you who walked with me in that time that were so kind to allow me to have the space to process that way. But also were kind of encouraging thinking you know I know when you and I had a conversation at one point where I said, actually I feel like I’ve been holding onto this thing where I’ve thought God’s, I can’t go back into the church, but God I’ll do anything else. And once I finally opened my hand to say, okay God I’ll do whatever you want me to do. And have that conversation even with you, you were like, yeah I know God’s not done with you in the church. Like there’s something there’s something there…
Rich Birch — I would agree.
Chris Hahn — …that that we needed to process. But I just had I just, man, I I thought I was done. I mean I just thought I was done.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Chris Hahn — You know?
Rich Birch — Talk talk to me about ah so… I have similar story around counseling around feelings, for sure. And like I only thought there was a couple feelings. Turns out, there’s a lot more. And you know, ah talk us through that. What difference did that… because there may be leaders who are listening in listen there’s people who like pretty driven pretty like you know, hey like you say Enneagram Ones we got to check out, check the stuff off the list. We got to get it all done.
Rich Birch — Um, and we’ve learned systematically to like stuff that stuff down. To just like I’m going to keep my emotions down. And I know for me, you know if I’ve have struggled over the years even with positive emotions. Like great things will happen at church, and I just want to move on to what’s next. I’m like I’m not taking a moment even to just be thankful, to be happy…
Chris Hahn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …or what you know what happened. Talk to us about the difference of kind of understanding, identifying, sitting in, kind of go a little bit deeper onto that.
Chris Hahn — Yeah, that’s great. I so it kind of embarrassed to say, but I looked back I looked back at at my leadership and I kind of wore it as a badge that I didn’t feel things. And you know, I didn’t even like thump my chest and go dink dink dink like you know my heart can be hard, I can go in and handle really hard things and not feel it. And I thought that was honorable in some really weird way, and then I learned that it was the opposite. It was a big problem. So um, through counseling, you know, honestly reading some of Brené Brown’s books. Um there’s a podcast called The Adult Chair where I learned some things, but learning to identify “this is what I am feeling at this moment” and really sit and whether that’s write it all out and and kind of figure out, okay I’m feeling this, why am I feeling this way? What am I feeling? And then and honestly just sitting in it. And and recognize that I feel sad right now, and I I don’t really know why, but I feel sad. And I just need to sit and be sad, and it’s okay to be sad. Or I needed to talk to somebody about why I might feel sad. You know Journaling was a really really big big piece of this to sit and just really write down what I was feeling and identify it. But then not to just not to move on from it. To realize God…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — …God has wired me with emotions, all of us, for a reason and they’re there to to help us and and to teach us something, right? So there’s a book that’s called Permission to Feel and in that book it describes a bunch of different emotions. And so I I really camped out in that book a lot trying to identify, okay, here’s what I’m writing out that I think I’m feeling, and now let me kind of look at look at this book to see, okay, oh it’s not necessarily anger, it’s frustration. Or or whatever it is, and then and not not trying to rush out of that and into something else. Um, and that what’s what’s what’s phenomenal is that that process that I say I started in 2020, like I’m still in it.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yes.
Chris Hahn — Like I’m still in that process, you know, now of of each day figuring out, you know, what am I feeling, why am I feeling it, and not really feeling like I have to do something about it. I don’t know if that makes any…
Rich Birch — Absolutely, no
Chris Hahn — …if that but makes much sense or not.
Rich Birch — Absolutely, yeah. I love that. You know it sounds like you had around you, um, an existing network. You had people that were there. Um, is that a misread, or did you have to build a network of people, counselors and you know mentors and stuff, during this season? I’m thinking particularly folks who are listening in today who are like, I look around and I I don’t know who I would talk to. I’m not sure who I would have that conversation with. Help me understand how you know how you identify these are the people I should be processing with.
Chris Hahn — Yeah, that’s a great question. So I I reached out to who I would would refer to as my ministry mentors initially, which was my former youth pastor.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chris Hahn — Who I honestly hadn’t really had had conversation with like intense conversations for years. But I I knew he loved me and I knew he would you know would speak hard things to me, but also would would you know embrace me for where I was and who I am. So reached out to him, reached out to a former lead pastor, reached out to some spiritual mentors as well. Just you know people around the country that I’m I, again, knew loved me and knew cared for me. Close friends and then a counselor we had had who had helped us navigate some family stuff at you know years before. And I’d ah actually is what’s weird is I kind of made it up ah a little bit of my routine where at least once every couple months I would just go and sit and say, ask me hard things because I don’t know, I feel okay, but ask me hard things. So I had that I even had that rhythm and routine built into things that just wasn’t 100% I don’t think I was going to the depths where I needed to go.
Chris Hahn — So I had that network somewhat in place but it wasn’t they weren’t necessarily the people that I I ran with every day, or you know they weren’t you know the the closest friends that you know you’re doing doing life with. They were people who I knew that I could reach out to at any moment with anything going on and they would be they would love me, but they would be completely honest with me. And my my former youth pastor, he’s the one that really just challenged me. He said um, he he told me some things to do but he also said go back to your leaders and just say, I need to know everything. Like I need to know every piece of me that there was an issue with because I’m getting ready to dive into some really hard work…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — …and I want to make sure I do all of the work right away. And I just took I took those that wisdom and took it to heart, and and followed exactly what what these these folks said to me that or so was so important as they coached me.
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s interesting. That’s good. I love that encouragement of even like, you know, people who you haven’t connected with in a long time that you know you had some, you know, relationship with I think that’s really really good. You know I’ve heard another context, right, you’re looking for people who love you, but aren’t impressed with you, right? They…
Chris Hahn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — They love you but aren’t like they’re they’re not like, wow, you’re like the most amazing person.
Chris Hahn — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You’re you’re just a person that they they deeply deeply love. I love that. That’s ah, that’s so good. Now. So let’s let’s talk about um your processing all of this, and at the same time because you were talking there about you’re thinking about what you’re going to do next, right? There’s the like am I going to become a real estate agent? Am I going to… How does how does all that fit together? Because to me that’s the, man, that’s a complex that’s complex to figure out when it’s so attached to, you know, the kind of pressure point the the crisis point was so attached to where what your your vocation. How did you navigate that? What did that… how did all that fit together?
Chris Hahn — Um, um so I I initially started thinking, you know, I ah didn’t feel like I was losing my call to ministry or anything like that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — So I was like I I’m gonna do something ministry-wise. But it just may not be in the church.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — Like I I thought I’ll go do something in in fitness and be able to have a positive impact on the lives of of people, you know, physically but also spiritually, and in that same context and I’ll I’ll do ministry that way. And I had one friend who’s out in in California who just really kind of pushed me a little bit around the church thing to say man, you know you know what? You’ve where you are and what you’ve done does not disqualify you from God using you the church, and the church needs you and needs what you but you bring to the kingdom. And so I just dismissed it at first because I was like man there’s I just can’t do it like I I don’t know if it was humiliation or embarrassment or just again I I never wanted to hurt a church. And so I just started to just pray through it honestly and just really give it over to God to say man if if I’m supposed to do if I’m supposed to say I’ll do whatever you want to do, then I gotta be willing to really do whatever you want me to do.
Chris Hahn — And the day that that—it’s funny—the day that we, my wife Sharon and I, the day we kind of came to that realization and opened our hands to say okay, God we’ll do that. Um, the very next day had three churches call me out of the blue, and just said hey heard this is this is where you’re at, would’d love to talk with you. And I was like okay God – that’s confirmation…
Rich Birch — He got your attention.
Chris Hahn — …that that maybe I need to I meet I may need to listen—yeah…
Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting.
Chris Hahn — …and and pay attention to that for sure. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah I think it’s um, and this is not… listen you know this as a friend I respect you and the whole team at Willow, what what you’re doing (and that’s a whole for whole conversation for our whole other day), what the ministry that you guys are you know, attempting to rebuild and all that with the stuff they’ve been through. It is—I didn’t think of this until literally till now—but it it just feels like a God story that he’s placed you, a person who you know has struggled with some performance stuff and how does that relate to life and as on the other and on the other side of that, and now you’re leading in a ministry who there’s there’s echoes of those issues that have impacted, dramatically impacted, the ministry there. That feels very gospel; that feels very you know making taking bad things and making good out of it. That feels amazing.
Rich Birch — Um, help me understand um, you know, one of the things I think I’ve been thinking a lot about over this last year it it seems like they’re everywhere we go you know and so many ministries have had leaders fall. And that’s just a normal part of the, you know, it’s like it’s like baked in some for some strange reason. You know, having been through what you’ve been through, help us think through how we create a culture where we can create the kinds of places where people go from making maybe unwise decisions to foolish decisions and then somewhere on the other end of that spectrum is like radically hurtful, damaging you know like I’m out doing something super negative to people, manipulative like super super dark, but we want to catch people when they make you know they’re making foolish/unwise decisions and we want to create the kind of culture that can open up and be like, hey let’s talk about those things. Having been through what you’ve been through, how are you trying to build a culture now that would allow that for yourself and for other people? What does that look like now kind of on on the other side as you’re trying to wrestle through that?
Chris Hahn — Yeah, that’s an amazing question, and man our our whole journey to Willow was, man, God just in the middle of every bit of that.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chris Hahn — And my first conversation with Dave it was like, okay God’s doing something here. But then as we journeyed that out um seeing what I had gone through, knowing some of the experience that I I’d had even in leadership but just the redemption of what God had done in my own life. And man the impact that Willow had had on my ministry for you know all the way back into the 80s is…
Rich Birch — Yeah, like so many of us, right? Yeah yeah, we all have. Yeah
Chris Hahn — Right, right? It was like like God was lining a lot of this up and so um I think in the in the church, the church world we have to get better with creating a culture where it’s okay to not be okay.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chris Hahn — And not feel like you’re going to get canceled, or you know it’s like we we really have to have intentional um, opportunities to be in the lives of one another. I think Willow’s done an amazing job of responding to some extreme challenges and difficulties to reestablish a healthy church. And to be in the lives of people, to provide opportunities, to say hey if you’re if you’re not okay, then, you know, let’s talk about it doesn’t mean you’re going to lose your job.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Chris Hahn — There’s there’s avenues that we can put in place that that can help you with that. One of the things that was ah, really um, really helpful for me personally was um in, I started in July 2020 at Willow, and in October of 2020 I got up in front of the whole staff and told my story. And and just was transparent and vulnerable. And in that culture that had not been something that had been done before where leaders would have admitted, you know, failures or mistakes or faults, and that opened the door for a lot of um lot of vulnerability within our team which I think was helpful. So I think leaders have to go first, right? I mean I think I think as leaders in the church culture, I think we have to from the senior leader elders on down have to create a culture where it’s okay to not be okay and to talk about things that you’re struggling with. And to confront one another on things that are that seem to be out of line. You know it’s like, hey I’m I’m picking up on this behavior in you and I love you enough to tell you something’s not right.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — And I want to journey this out with you as opposed to just cutting you off or distancing myself from you…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chris Hahn — …before it gets to a place where where it spins out of control, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Hahn — And so creating space for us to be honest with ourselves, with one another. Creating places where we can kind of cry uncle – I’m I’m carrying a lot and I need help. Creating spaces where you know you have somebody who will will be 100% vulnerable with you and you with them. You can’t do that with everybody, nor should you – that’s not healthy, but you have somebody, right, that you can just be really vulnerable with. Not be afraid to get help, you know, in in the in the church culture – to say I need to go to go see a counselor, or whatever that might be, but really creating a a culture from leadership all the way through the the staff and organization where we admit our failures and it’s okay to to to not be okay.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I think that’s um I think that’s what we’re all trying to create. We’re all trying to get there. One of my concerns with, you know, we have these very public, you know, use the word cancellations. It’s like cancellations of someone’s and they step over an egregious line. They shouldn’t you know, like in some ways It’s like yeah that that makes sense. That’s that’s understandable. Um that every time one of those things happen, my concern is, man, people are just stuffing their stuff down deeper and deeper, because they see that happen and they’re like if I even open the box a little bit, man, things are gonna I’m done. And it’s and you know and that um, man we have to figure out how to how to turn that trend around, and stare at these issues more deeply.
Rich Birch — So so how are you leading differently now? So you know, here you are, you’re leading in the middle of ah you know coming out of the pandemic, facing everything that you’re that all of us are facing. Um, you know it Willow is a complex, large, you know, ministry, you know, doing all kinds of great stuff in Chicagoland. You have a huge portfolio there. I could imagine that leading in the portfolio you’re in, man, it is set up for you to take the step back to where you were before. Like it is set up for you just to but to lean back onto old habits, old approaches, old old ruts in your in your mind in your in your brain. Um, what’s different? How is it how are you leading differently today?
Chris Hahn — Yeah, great question. Um my it’s funny, my counselor here in Illinois that the established relationship with, you know, she has said numerous times like I, out of everything that you’ve come through and that your journeying, I just can’t imagine that Willow was the best place for you to step into. You know she kind of says that. And just just like it’s like it’s like you stepped into a really difficult situation. And um I’ve I have had to just be super mindful of it’s not about me, number one. Like it’s just not about me; I am here to serve and love people well. And I may get some things wrong and, you know, I may not um, I may not be like in the achievement category like the you know the straight A student, which is good for me because I don’t need to be. But I’m gonna I am just gonna continue to remind myself daily that it’s about caring and loving people, caring for and loving people really really well. And so there have been times where I’ve just said, you know what? if that’s if if this over here is what I’m gonna have to have to shift to become in order to produce or achieve or see results from, then I’m okay to step away. And I just may need to step out, and do something different. And because of what I’ve come through, I know God has a plan and God can do that, but I I just can’t allow myself to go back there. So I’ve got good people in my life. My wife is one of them who, when she starts to see up, and is like what’s going on? And we’re…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chris Hahn — …Yeah and and I keep the rhythm of counseling so that my counselor can can ask me difficult questions as well. Um, but I’m just at so much peace, man. Now I will tell you it took me it took me a long time to get my confidence back. And I was not surprised… I was I was not expecting that I was super surprised by that just a leadership confidence, like I was really really like scared and nervous that I was going to step into something that I just wasn’t even aware of because I wasn’t aware of of things in the past. But that’s kind of come back a little bit and not in an arrogant way at all. I just I just won’t I just won’t allow myself to go to go back into those scenarios. But having really good relationships around me, good guardrails has has been so far super helpful, and just not a fear to to just go, ah this this might not be for me.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — You know if it gets a point where I’m not healthy, I’m not going to allow myself to get unhealthy so that a ministry can can get can see growth and progress. I’m just not going to.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, dude, I love it. I love ah I appreciate what you said about your wife there. I know and I’ve joked in other contexts that the voice of the Lord and the voice of my wife, wow they’re like they just sound very similar. There’s a there’s a resonance there that you know…
Chris Hahn — Yup.
Rich Birch — …oftentimes she’s things see things so clearly for sure. Well let’s let’s maybe talk directly to a leader who’s listening in today who can your stories resonating a little too much for them. They’re saying ooo I in fact, a couple times they’ve thought about turning this off because they’re like yeah this is I don’t want to hear this this conversation today. What would you say to somebody who’s, you know they maybe are in that maybe it was the language thing, they’re like they find they find themselves saying things that like I wow that’s like why am I talking like that? Or they see things coming out of their leadership that’s like oh that’s coming out of a place of death and destruction, not at a place of life. Um, what would you say to somebody like that today?
Chris Hahn — Yeah, well number one I would offer an opportunity to have a conversation with me offline, and I would love to be able to to help anybody who’s in that scenario where where it wrestle with that because I can relate so much. And so I make myself available to any leader, pastor that would would want to have a conversation and and be safe and that. But if it’s not me, you got to find somebody. You have to find somebody that you trust that you can go to and just be 100% transparent and vulnerable with. That’s to me the very first up. Just not having any facade, not having anything like you got to put together and just be able to be completely honest, maybe it’s a counselor. Maybe it’s another pastor, but a different church, but somebody that you trust. And and that’s I think that’s where it it all has to start and and being willing to to go to those hard places. Ah, there’s a book by Alan Nelson called Embracing Brokenness, and um I would encourage us to, even if you’re in completely healthy places, I would encourage ah to read that book. But especially when you’re in a season where you’re where you’re maybe dealing a struggle with some things like that. It talks about being voluntary broken and and then also involuntary brokenness and we’re going to be you know God’s going to bring us to a place of brokenness one way or the other and so it’s it’s much better to go there on your own. That book walks through a lot about how to really get to that place of laying some of that stuff down and and really making sure that we don’t sacrifice our heart on the altar of ministry for sure. So the big thing that mentions is having a conversation with somebody you can be transparent and real with you know, fully vulnerable.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it. Yeah, friends, this is how this podcast came about. Chris reached out to me because of ah a previous episode that we had on and he said, hey, if I if I can ever be a help with anybody let me know. And I said, hey, well why don’t you come on the podcast and talk about it publicly? And he ah he was, graciously agreed and so that’s not off the cuff there. He he is willing to talk with you. And so we’ve got a link in the show notes to his email and all that. So if you need to pick that up, reach out. Chris is a great guy. He’s a trusting a trusted leader that you you know you could connect with. So I really appreciate this. Chris, thank you so much for being on today. Is there anything else you want to say just as we as we close out as we close out today’s conversation?
Chris Hahn — Man, the the the thing I’d love to just say is I as as difficult as January 2020 was for us, we wouldn’t go back. I like we just wouldn’t go back to to the way life was prior to 2020, even though everything got completely flipped upside down. Um the redemption of God’s story in my life is incredible. And I think it was something that I think Sonny or Shawn – one of them said on on your previous podcast. It’s something about you have to fall all the way, right? And you can you have to fall all the way. And um I think in falling all the way, God God has rebirthed something in me that is redemptive. So probably the big takeaway is just you know God’s just not gonna be done with you, no matter no matter where you are. God’s not done with you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Hahn — And your story does not define you; your failures don’t define you, and it can all be redeemed to help other people down the road as well as yourself. So just lean into it, and allow God to do what only God can do, and watch the story he unfolds. It’s incredible.
Rich Birch — Well I think that’s a great place to end – great last word Chris I appreciate being on the show today send love to the entire team. Cheering for you and for everything that’s going on at Willow. Appreciate being here today and and for helping us and helping and open up a little bit about what’s going on in your life. Thank you.
Chris Hahn — Thanks, Rich.
Leading Through Healthy Open Brokenness & Vulnerability with Carl Kuhl
Jul 21, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Carl Kuhl with us, the lead pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the country, Mosaic Christian Church in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area. Listen in as Carl shares about the missing piece that will help people in our churches go deeper, both with God and each other, in order to find healing and freedom.
A church for the wounded. // Mosaic Christian Church has a bold statement on their website that they are a church for people who don’t go to church. Carl explains that it’s a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 14. Paul tells everyone to speak a language everyone can understand so the nonbeliever can hear the gospel. Part of the way Mosaic does that is by doing church in a way which makes it ok to be broken and hurting.
Be real with Jesus. // As Christians we can forget the things Jesus saved us from and the depths of our brokenness. We become disconnected from what it looks like to live life without God. We can help ourselves remember not only by being around nonbelievers, but also by continuing to let Jesus address our junk. Our relationships with Jesus and others will deepen as we are honest about the ways we’re still broken, so that God can continue the lifelong process of healing in our lives.
Embrace open brokenness. // We need to combine open vulnerability about our brokenness with the truth and grace of the gospel. The result is true community in the church. Shifting this culture has to begin with the leader, whether we are hanging out with friends, spending time with family, or teaching and leading the church. To make sure there is an appropriate level of sharing with the church, first talk about what you want to share with trusted leaders, friends, and your spouse.
Grace and truth. // What is the truth that you don’t want anyone to know? That’s what is most important to share and bring into the light. The confessions of our brokenness have to start with the leader in order to demonstrate that the church is a safe place for everyone. Start the community that you want to be a part of. If we allow God to really work in us and deal with our brokenness and sin, then when we confront someone else about their sin, it will come from a place of love and compassion, not judgement and comparison.
Transform the church. // Carl has written a book called Blood Stained Pews: How Vulnerability Transforms a Broken Church into a Church for the Broken. Many churches feel that they are missing something and need more – a deeper, truer community where vulnerability and the gospel collide. Through personal stories and powerful insights, Carl’s book calls us to more deeply consider God’s grace and turn our churches into places people can run to when they are wounded.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. Today we’ve got a repeat guest, somebody who was on just a year ago. And you know when we have a repeat guest it means we’ve got more to learn. So super excited to have Pastor Carl with us. He is the lead pastor of Mosaic Christian Church, which is in Maryland. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country and it’s serving the Baltimore/Washington DC area. And we know that that’s not the kind of place in the country that fast-growing churches normally come from so we’ve got a lot we can learn from Carl today. Welcome. So glad that you’re here.
Carl Kuhl — Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me back. Really excited to be here.
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is going to be great. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the church, kind of fill out the story a little bit anything we’re missing. What do you want people to know about Mosaic.
Carl Kuhl — Yeah, we like you said our church plant from 2008. My family planted it back then you know, moves to some portable locations, and got in our own building a few years ago. And we are back back back from coronavirus world where I just think we’re in the new normal and have been in the new normal, and pushing along and seeing a lot of great momentum.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well you know one of the things when I go you should go to your church website. So mosaichristian.org if listeners, if you were to go there now, and huge bold letters on the front of the website: a church for people who don’t go to church. That’s a bold statement. Tell me why you’ve landed on that. What do you mean by that? I’m sure that’s much more than just a ah marketing statement. Tell me about what you mean by that?
Carl Kuhl — Absolutely. I think it’s a biblical statement. And you’re aware that in church world we’re always like swinging the pendulum back in the direction that it went too far from, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Carl Kuhl — And I think this is a response to that. I believe every church is theologically, biblically supposed to be a church for people who don’t go to church, but what it’s simply at its most basic form is our paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 14 – that Paul says, hey I love that you’re doing these spiritual things, but speak a language that everybody can understand so the non-believer here’s the gospel. And what we’re saying in that simple phrase is: we are the church. We do not apologize for that. We love Jesus. He is our savior. The bible is our standard. At the same time we are going to do church in a way that makes sense to people who don’t have a background in church or the bible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what would be some of those things, and this is what I appreciate about you – you’re not um, that’s not just like a slick marketing kind of thing. Um, this drives deep. It gets to who you are as a community. But what would be some of those things that are maybe beyond the surface, beyond the ah, you know the veneer that drive deep and say, hey we want to be the kind of place where people regardless of their background can feel open, can feel safe, could feel like hey this is a great place to to be?
Carl Kuhl — You know as Christians, um I’ll speak for myself, and but I think others can relate. We are so bad at remembering the depths from which Jesus saved us. And we forget. And we get in our own little world that’s full of joy and hope and community, and we we have to remember what it was like. I believe it that happens in a couple ways. One of them is just by being around non-believers. Who is your friend that you’re praying for to be saved? Because when you’re doing that you’ll look at everything through the lens of their eyes and ears. And the other thing is just continuing to let Jesus deal with our own junk, to be vulnerable about our brokenness, so Jesus can continue this lifelong process of healing us.
Rich Birch — Let’s let’s let’s pause on that vulnerability idea. You know, I think one of the criticisms that can be kind of thrown against the church is that we can sometimes be considered shallow, or considered not authentic, not vulnerable. Why why would you say vulnerability is really an issue, something that we need to to lead with as a church? I totally agree. But why why is that so important?
Carl Kuhl — Well, you’ve heard, we’ve all heard, right, the thing of like, I I want to go deeper. Or I need deeper teaching, or or deeper this and that. And sometimes as church leaders we get offended and write those people off, I think most of the time, but that desire is healthy. Like I I want to go deeper with Jesus, right? I want go deeper in my relationship with my wife, and my good friends, and all of it. But I think we miss what it’s about, because deeper isn’t I need to go back and get a refresher my koin a Greek.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Carl Kuhl — Deeper is being real about the ways I’m still broken that Jesus hasn’t fixed yet, and ways in—whether it’s pain, whether it’s doubt, whether it’s even some hopes I have about the future that I’m scared to talk about—giving those to Jesus letting him do what he will with them so that I can become who he wants me to be. So um, deeper… so there’s a lot of talk about vulnerability in our world today, right? I mean I love the Brené Brown books and podcasts, and there’s all different people talking about that.
Carl Kuhl — But what I noticed over the last several years is I would get get those tools and realize I’m worthy and I’m enough because I was able to combine what these secular people are saying with the gospel. But I realized there was this gap in the church, in christianity, as far as equipping people to do this work, because we need to combine my broke… my open vulnerability about my brokenness with the truth and grace of the gospel. And the result of that, I believe, is when true community happens that Jesus calls this church.
Rich Birch — Oh I’d love to hear more about that. What is what is open brokenness? Maybe we’ll start with you as a leader – what does that look like for you? I think this is ah is critically important. It’s one of those I would say major paradigm shifts from when I started in ministry, which is too many years ago to count. Ah, you know at that point it was like it was almost like we wanted leaders who were super human. Um and that I think was super unhealthy, but it was like we wanted them to be distant. We wanted them to be perfect. Um, and that didn’t work out. But now I love that you’re pushing for and and championing open brokenness. But what does that look like for you as as a leader, Carl?
Carl Kuhl — As ah leaders have to go first.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Carl Kuhl — And so it simply means that whatever context I’m in, I have to set the standard of here’s what it means to be vulnerable here. Whether that’s sitting around a fire pit with my buddies, whether that’s around the dinner table with my family, and obviously including when I’m on the platform teaching our entire church.
Carl Kuhl — And so I had this pit in my stomach a couple years ago when we were doing a long series through the Song of Solomon, and you know most of that can be fun, and there’s grace, there’s truth, it’s all great. But I realized oh arguably the number one sexual dysfunction in our country has to do with porn. I’m going to have to talk about my past porn problem. And I wrote a sermon that I was probably more nervous to share than anything I’ve ever shared. I even said in the intro like, hey this sermon would get me fired from some churches.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Carl Kuhl — And I had run it by trusted men, my wife had read it, so it wasn’t me just getting up there being inappropriate, right? I did hear of one pastor who got up and said, you know, I need some of you ladies to dress better because I have a lust problem…
Rich Birch — Oh gosh! Oh my goodness!
Carl Kuhl — …and I was like whoa!
Rich Birch — Whoa, whoa! Yeah back it up back it up.
Carl Kuhl — Honey that’s our last day at this church!
Carl Kuhl — Um, but at the same time, one of my friends and I talk about this way, it’s what gives me the bubble guts. That’s what I have to share. So I went on this retreat a couple years ago that helped me kind of crystallized this thinking, because one of the exercises we had to do is we had to get up in this room of about 30 or so men and say: the truth I don’t want you to know is blank.
Rich Birch — Okay, Wow.
Carl Kuhl — And I was like, oh crap.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Carl Kuhl — But other men went first…
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — …including a couple leaders, and so I had no choice but to follow their example. The trick though is in church world we want it to be the truth I didn’t want you to know. So for what I mean is I went back, I don’t know, a year or two later and helped lead that same retreat, and the organizer said hey Carl would you be one of the the men who modeled this exercise, like you’ll go first. And I said oh sure. Yeah like I can share what I shared and all that. And they corrected me they said no no, no, no, no. It’s not the truth you didn’t want people to know two years ago. It’s the truth you don’t want people to know now. And I’m like oh crap.
Rich Birch — I got to do this again!? Ah no, oh my goodness. Wow.
Carl Kuhl — I got do a whole other one. Yeah. But but I believe that’s what it means to be a leader is always putting yourself in the front. It’s giving people ammo, saying you can shoot me with this if you want, but I know freedom with Jesus only happens when I’m real. So I have to be real in the context of community if I want this community to be worth anything. Because I know you have stuff that you need to be open about, and I don’t know what it is but I know—and I’m not going to compare our things—but I know what my thing is doing to me your thing is doing to you. So if I’m brave enough to put my thing out there and say, hey here’s what Jesus is helping me deal with. I don’t have answers yet. So don’t ask me what the solution is, but I just know he’s got me and he’s gonna get me through it. Somebody else is gonna have their thing.
Rich Birch — Love that. So yeah, we’re kind of tiptoeing around this, and you know talking about um you know how we’re how we can create a more open broken community. Talk me through how you’ve been able to structure that at Mosaic in a way that is responsible. You know you’ve kind of mentioned it a little bit there because we you know we want to create a place where people are able to um to share. But also we want to do that in a context that’s that’s helpful, like that one story but that kind of like – we don’t want it to be like that one story…
Carl Kuhl — No, we do not want that.
Rich Birch — …like the pastor who said something inappropriate. How have you been able to create some some guidelines, some um you know some boundaries around ensuring that people are sharing appropriate things at the right time in the right place – that sort of thing?
Carl Kuhl — Yeah, so I’d always rather err on the side of sharing too much because the church you know it’s like that pendulum thing. The church is traditionally not shared enough. And so it’s like, hey take a risk, right? It’s it’s gonna feel scary. It’s gonna it’s gonna be dangerous I think it does start up front.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Carl Kuhl — Um, it does have to start in the preaching. So just one really practical thing we do, because I I need it and I preach about 75% of the time here, is on Wednesday the week I’m preaching I will always preach my entire sermon in a conference room to 2 other people. And I’ve used other pastors over the years for that. I’ve used mostly current staff now. And it’s not just anybody. It’s selected people who I know will help me, not like fine tune a theological point (although they can if I need that). It’s more like, hey are you being vulnerable? Are you being appropriate? Are you giving bread for the hungry? Like that’s one of the primary questions they ask and they’ll push back on me.
Rich Birch — Hmm I love that.
Carl Kuhl — And so last week I went in that and I thought, man I’m not gonna have anything due on Thursday – my sermon’s done. And then I did that and they’re like, yeah you need ah you need some work here. Um so it took some more hours.
Rich Birch — Wow. Love that.
Carl Kuhl — But ah, that’s one place it starts, and then even as we talk about community, our staff has to model it and how they lead volunteer teams. Our group leaders have to model it. You know when we interview group leaders if if they’re just, you know, I if they just say they’re full of the joy of the Lord all the time every day, I’m like, I’m happy for you.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Carl Kuhl — That’s not my experience.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Carl Kuhl — So let’s go a level deeper.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Carl Kuhl — And if they can’t, I don’t know if I can put them around other people whose lives are falling apart as their leader.
Rich Birch — Okay, I wonder about you know there’s this um, aspect of creating the kind of community that is full of both grace and truth. There’s kind of the other side of vulnerability which is calling out; it’s the, you know, Matthew 18: hey you’ve sinned against me. There’s a, you know, there’s a problem between us. What has that looked like in Mosaic? How have you encouraged people to live um, you know a transparent life when it comes to maybe confronting each other, or talking through ah you know, talking to each other about issues that that sometimes we might just avoid because it’s you know, not polite company or whatever that looks like in some churches?
Carl Kuhl — Yeah, so this a great question, that not many people ask me about this is, so when we talk about Matthew 18 or you know like Christian church discipline, um Jesus always tells us to look in the mirror first, right?
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Carl Kuhl — I mean multiple places he talks about that – sermon on mount ah, you know, let him without sin throw the first stone. All that stuff, we always look in the mirror first. So if it’s not safe for me here to be vulnerable about, I have this issue that’s going on – I have this doubt, I have this pain, and I’m mad at God, then I guess I’m just gonna look to throw stones at other people, because I can’t share my stuff so I’ll just find somebody who has something worse. And that’ll take that’ll take the spotlight off of me.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Carl Kuhl — So I think a lot of the problem with “church discipline” is that we haven’t done this, because if we create a culture where it’s okay to be broken, then I’m not constantly the police looking for who else is doing something worse than me.
Rich Birch — Oh, I love that.
Carl Kuhl — So then if I do confront it’s because I’ve already done some work myself and then man, it’s really based on compassion, because I know how much I don’t know and mess up and need Jesus, so the confronting thing is not going to be a finger point. It’s going to be a thing with with tears of hey, I’m concerned about you. And that’s just 100% different than how a lot of us envision that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. so the thing I want to encourage our listeners, I just think this is I think you’re the kind of leader people should be following around particularly on these issues. I think there’s something you are are pushing on an issue here that I think all of our churches are facing whether we talk about it or not. Um, you know, we’ve all seen these kind of high profile flameouts of significant leaders in the Christian world, and the problem with even talking about that is I know that it’s like going to be evergreen content because when you’re whenever you’re listening to this, even if you listen for a 2 years from now, chances are there was someone who just recently had some sort of huge flameout. And one of my kind of concerns for us, the broader us, is you know, rightfully so someone that does something where they step way over the line and then, you know, this kind of huge crashing accountability comes down on them, and they’re like extinguished off into the universe somewhere. They’re gone.
Carl Kuhl — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And the problem with that is oftentimes the way that’s handled, I think there’s a ton of people out there that see that happen and what it does is it actually forces our own issues deeper down inside. We’re less likely to talk to other people because we’re like gosh, I’ve done really crappy stuff and if anybody knows about that, man I’m done. Like it’s gonna it’s going to explode over me. And I’m not saying that people shouldn’t shouldn’t have shouldn’t be held responsible for their activities. But there are times where we make an unwise, you know, foolish decision that actually hasn’t hasn’t become sin yet. It’s not… it’s just stupid. You’re being an idiot. Like why are you doing this? And oftentimes as church leaders there’s no way for us to talk about those things. There’s no place for us to actually begin to engage that. Um and I love that you’re pushing us to think about how do we become vulnerable with the people around us because I think if we did that more there would be more leaders who wouldn’t go from foolish, to stupid, to sinful, to egregious sin. Um, whatever that spectrum is that and ends up with you know you know them, you know, ending up ultimately being canceled…
Carl Kuhl — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …and like I say expunged out into the universe somewhere. What does that look like for you and your own team dynamics? As people have maybe come forward with things that are in that category of, again, ah it that – there’s a wide spectrum here, but in that kind of unwise/foolish. You know doesn’t really um, haven’t stepped over a line yet. But man, we want to get some corrective behavior. What does that look like for, particularly say that your team, the people that are reporting to you – whether it’s either elders you know on that side or on your staff? What’s that look like for you?
Carl Kuhl — Well, you know I think it’s AA that says you’re only as sick as your secrets, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Carl Kuhl — And I love like kind of the progression you talked about of like, it’s silly to stupid to you know, eventually egregious. That’s so true. And I can honestly say you could not find any dirt on me or my past that men in this church don’t know. Not every man, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yep.
Carl Kuhl — I mean I have boundaries. But there are specific men that you could go to him with the whatever you could find on me and they’d say, yeah we know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — He’s told us.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Carl Kuhl — And so I think it again has to start with the leader. I heard one of those you know leader… I was caught so here’s kind of something you may call a confession but really isn’t…
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — …where he said “Where do pastors go?” And my answer—I was yelling at Youtube—was where everybody else goes!
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, we’re not different.
Carl Kuhl — To their church!
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, it’s it’s called the body of Christ.
Carl Kuhl — We say… yeah we say with other things: speed of the leader, speed of the team. It’s true with this as well. If you don’t think it’s safe for you, somehow people are going to pick up this isn’t a safe place for me either. It’s a safe place for me to share that type of stuff but not this stuff.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right.
Carl Kuhl — And so as leaders we have to go first, you know, combination of elders, and staff, and men and women in the church. I know you know this audience is not exclusively pastors, but it’s a lot of pastors…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Carl Kuhl — And you have to start the community that you want to be a part of.
Rich Birch — No that’s good. Yeah, that’s so right.
Carl Kuhl — I absolutely believe that. Not in a selfish way—like, oh we’re just going to sing my favorite worship songs…
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — …but in a broken way of, I’m going to be I am going to lead this. This will be a community that can support me, or I will go find a new one.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Carl Kuhl — Which means I have to put stuff out there see if they could support me.
Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely. Love that.
Carl Kuhl — So when it’s come to ah leaders um, with you know, hard big things, ah, it’s grace and truth.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Carl Kuhl — And so I heard, um and want to ascribe this to Tim Keller—I’m not sure who it was but that sounds right—said that sometimes we approach the paradoxes of the bible where we want fifty-fifty each of them. Ah, or we think they’re supposed to be balanced, so we’ll even approach a situation say well is this grace, or is it truth, or is it fifty fifty both. But the paradoxes of the bible are 100% both. So when Jesus says you die to live. It’s not like sometimes die, and sometimes live, or it’s like half and half. It’s no you fully die so that you fully live. And with grace and truth it’s full grace and full truth.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Carl Kuhl — So it’s hey, you can’t lead here for a season, and the season may last forever, we’ll see. We’re gonna act as if it’s forever, and we’ll see what happens, but we’re gonna pay for you to go to this weeklong therapy that costs thousands of dollars.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Carl Kuhl — You can’t be on our stage right now because of what’s going on in your life. And it’s bad and it’s ugly, but my wife and I are going to personally mentor you nonstop for the next several years to see if we can help your marriage heal.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Carl Kuhl — You know so it’s it’s full grace. It’s full truth. And I find that when the leader goes first about their stuff, and you work diligently to create a culture of that, that people accept that. You know I get frustrated, if I kind of give a related tangent.
Rich Birch — Yeah totally.
Carl Kuhl — Um, I get frustrated when christians and churches and pastors don’t preach on hard things. And obviously we need to preach on joy and hope and the things that you know make life easier with Jesus. But we also need to preach you know, like on sexual standards, and you know, sometimes cultural things, right, that are in the gospels…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Carl Kuhl — …and we want to ignore and just go back to like let’s just make everybody feel good today. But I think one of the reasons we’re hesitant to preach on those things is because we don’t we aren’t open, we aren’t vulnerable, so there’s not a context of grace so it comes down just as heavy handed truth. But when I preach on sexuality and say God says some hard things and some y’all need to knock it off. When that’s in a context of my own sexual brokenness that I’ve written about, that I’ve preached about, people are like, he’s not throwing stones.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Carl Kuhl — He just wants us to find what he’s found.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. And now how much you know I think one of the criticisms of fast growing churches is is exactly what you’re talking about. It’s like well they’re just all, you know and it’s just different criticisms. They’re all just easy gospel. They’re all just grace grace grace um, or they avoid you know, tough things that we don’t want to talk about. The kind of vulnerability we’re talking about, the brokenness we’re talking about – from your perspective as a leader – how does that connect to the fact that you’re a fast-growing church? How how do those two things relate to each other? Are they related; are they not related? How how does that fit together?
Carl Kuhl — I absolutely think it’s related. I think it’s best illustrated in how we do baptism. And we have a high view of baptism because Jesus and Paul and the bible do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Carl Kuhl — And so we tell people when you want to accept Christ have faith and that’s expressing repentance and baptism.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Carl Kuhl — And it’s a central part of our service like during the last worship song the band will kind of you know vamp a little bit and the lights will come up on the baptistry, and we always tell a story of the person. It’s quick but it shares their brokenness. So there’s two things going on with our baptism. One is we ask people if we can share like what got them there really. And so there was a woman recently who addiction has ruined her life, like destroyed her life, and we got into that in just a sentence or two. But then pointed out, she wanted to wait till she was seventy five days clean to get baptized, but we pointed out to her, hey Jesus isn’t gonna love you more when you’re seventy five days clean, and you’re gonna still need his grace just as much then as now. So if you want him, he’s ready. And so she was getting baptized that day.
Carl Kuhl — You know but I was sharing openly about addiction and in that baptism tub we’ll share about addiction and divorce and ah seeing ah fellow soldiers get killed and how it messed you up and that eventually brought you to Jesus, but the thing that goes along with it is these aren’t spontaneous baptisms. We tell people when you want to get give your life to Christ, check this box on the card or online, and we’ll talk to you about it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — And we want to make sure, you know, we baptize so many people who say, I got baptized kid – I don’t know I was doing.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Yeah, exactly.
Carl Kuhl — And so we don’t want to like baptize 10,000 people and then they go to other churches and I never really know what they are doing. So we have a conversation with every one of them. And last stat I was told, just recently, is 51% of people who want to get baptized we tell them not yet. We say hold the horses…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carl Kuhl — …and we say we have some homework for you.
Rich Birch — Huh.
Carl Kuhl — And if they’re kids we say, go read the gospels of Luke and John, write down all your questions, and we want to meet up again.
Rich Birch — Wow!
Carl Kuhl — And if they don’t do it then they’re not ready.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carl Kuhl — Because if Jesus is your Lord, if he’s your savior for all eternity, you’ll go read like a couple books, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, Wow.
Carl Kuhl — And a lot of people we say do you have we say to all of them, do you have sin on the calendar?
Rich Birch — Right. That’s a good phrase.
Carl Kuhl — And you know we had a guy recently who literally said hey ah, let me get back to you, and then he called us back and said I canceled some things that were on the calendar, I’m ready to follow Jesus.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carl Kuhl — And we’re like let’s go.
Rich Birch — I love it. I so I love that.
Carl Kuhl — And we tell our church that, so it’s like hey just because you check the box it’s not like you’re in, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Carl Kuhl — There’s there’s no hand raise or sinner’s prayer in the bible. It’s like let’s get real about what it means to follow Jesus. So I think that captures in a church of full grace and full truth, hey we’ll baptize you when you’re just barely clean, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, yes.
Carl Kuhl — But we want to make sure you know what you’re doing because it’s too good to get this wrong and mess your your future spiritual growth up. So…
Rich Birch — I love that. What a great ah vivid example and a great kind of looking under the hood. I appreciate you sharing that of how grace and truth works itself out in that one incredibly important step of baptism. That’s just so great. Now, you’ve written a book called… I love this title by the way – this is like, lean in friends, it’s a great title: Bloodstained Pews: How Vulnerability Transforms a Broken Church into a Church for the Broken. It’s obviously around what we’ve been talking about today. But what got you to saying you know what I need to I need to get this…do the hard work of pulling it all together into a book. Ah why write this book?
Carl Kuhl — I believe this is what the church is missing.
Rich Birch — OK.
Carl Kuhl — And we feel it, but we can’t articulate it. I think this this is related to the whole deconstruction thing. I think this is related to what you said about the tension of fast-growing churches – are they just shallow and hype? I think this is related to when we’ve been part of small groups and it’s like nice, but I need something deeper, but then I don’t like that word deeper so what am I missing? I’m missing true community when vulnerability and the gospel collide. So if you have time I’ll tell you the story that was kind of the genesis of it.
Rich Birch — Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
Carl Kuhl — A few years ago we weren’t subscribing to any streaming services. We didn’t have cable. I was home alone. My wife was out, kids were in bed. I ended up watching this documentary on PBS.
Rich Birch — Oh nice. Love it. Love it.
Carl Kuhl — So it’s like in black and white, and it’s about these two medics in World War II. They were air-dropped into Normandy on D-Day; they were mis-dropped. They end up in this tiny town and immediately one of them sees this 900 year old church building, puts his cross red cross flag on it, and says this is going to be our trauma center. And they take turns going out with a wheelbarrow and bringing in soldiers who’ve been shot up, and bringing them in there.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carl Kuhl — And it’s really dramatic over the course of the night. At one point a dud bomb falls through the ceiling and doesn’t go off.
Rich Birch — Oh gosh.
Carl Kuhl — Another point a German soldier bursts in with the machine gun. But when he sees they’re just there as medics to help wounded soldiers, he crosses himself and leaves. They make every soldier of both sides check their weapons at the door.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carl Kuhl — And they save some 80 men’s lives that evening…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carl Kuhl — …before the fighting moves on to like the bigger areas of World War II.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — But the thing that struck me about it was after the war was over, and the people were rebuilding the town they fix, you know, the the hole in the roof, all the stained glass had been shot out, so they replaced all of that. But when they came to the pews they were stained with blood, and they didn’t replace the pews. They didn’t sand it down. They left it.
Rich Birch — Oh wow.
Carl Kuhl — Because they said this church was built 900 years ago to be a place of hope and healing for the bleeding and broken, and on D-Day that’s what it was.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Carl Kuhl — So I’m watching this documentary…
Rich Birch — Gosh. That’s amazing.
Carl Kuhl — …my wife gets home. She sees me watching this like little PBS special and I’m weeping, and she says, babe, are you okay? Like do I need check you in? And I said, I’ve just seen the best picture of church I’ve ever seen.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Wow, that’s that’s…
Carl Kuhl — Because when Jesus says in Matthew 11, hey if you’re tired or worn out, if you’re weary and broken, come to me and I’ll give you a real rest. And I love the way the message paraphrases verse 30, says I help you live freely and lightly.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Carl Kuhl — When I see those bloodstream pews I say that’s it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — That’s it. That’s how we get it. So I wrote the book.
Rich Birch — Wow, so good. You know I was struck when I looked at this, I thought man this this seems like the kind of thing that would be… I’m sure there’s leaders that have been listening into today’s podcast and they’re saying, man I wish I wish I could be more that way. I wish our culture could be more this way. To me this struck as a great leadership book to maybe you know here we are in the summertime this is a great like, hey let’s read this together over the next three months. Let’s get together three times and talk about what we’re learning. Um is that is that what you had in mind, who did you have in mind as you were writing this book? What was the kind of the the people you imagined that could, you know, consume this content and then ultimately hopefully live differently because of it?
Carl Kuhl — This book is for Christians and fringe Christians who have who are longing for better community. And they have something inside them that’s not working, or that’s broken, sometimes even a dream and and it’s just not out there and they feel alone. And I would say if you need if the promises of Christian community have let you down, this book is for you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Um, talk to me about your thought you’d mentioned there around it seems like deconstructionism is like everybody’s talking about it. Talk to me more about your thoughts on the connection between vulnerability and deconstruction particularly.
Carl Kuhl — So deconstruction goes to like these bigger questions of what is the church, and you know can we trust the bible, and those are always important questions in context. I do draw a line in leadership between being cynical and being skeptical. Skeptical is honest questions. Cynical is trying to poke holes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — And in the gospels Jesus will answer skeptical people all day long. All day long. Cynical people he does not have time for.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Carl Kuhl — I love when Jesus says like I wish I could get away with saying some of the things Jesus says.
Rich Birch — So true.
Carl Kuhl — One of my favorite quotes when he says, how long—he says to his followers—how long do I have to stay here and put up with you? Like if I said that in the staff meeting I think my elders would get an email. I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Yes, so true. That’s great.
But it’s ah Jesus is all about skeptical. He hates cynical, right?
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — And I think deconstruction, when by the time we hear about someone’s deconstruction., they’re already cynical, right? It’s already like I can’t help you at this point. I want to help you but you’ve just gotten to a place where I can’t. But we have to let them be open when they have the skeptical questions…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
…the honest questions.
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — And I think the reason people get to those bigger cynical questions is because they couldn’t be open about the real questions that weren’t even that big, but it just was like one small domino that led to a bigger domino. Like if I can’t ask this…
Rich Birch — Right.
Carl Kuhl — …then why do what what’s even church supposed to be about.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Carl Kuhl — So I think this doesn’t solve someone who is already deconstructed. But this will prevent the next generation from leaving the church saying it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Rich Birch — So good. Well friends, I I really want to encourage you to pick up copies. Like I said, this is the kind of book you shouldn’t buy yeah copy for yourself. You should buy 5 or 6 and you should get some people together and actually read it together because I think ultimately that’s what we’re trying to drive towards within open ah, vulnerable community is is discussion with others. I think this would be a great conversation starter for your team. We’re actually going to provide a link to the first chapter which is incredible. So you know if you’re looking to to get a sample of it, you could do that but you could just skip over that and pick up a copy. I’m assuming we can get it at Amazon. I know we can get it Amazon. Is there other places we want to send people online to pick up ah, copies of Blood Stained Pews?
Carl Kuhl — I know it’s getting on a couple other places, but Amazon is just the easiest, so just get it on Amazon.
Rich Birch — Great, good stuff.
Carl Kuhl — But it is available there. Audio, it’s available digital for the Kindle readers, and obviously paperback. We do have resources that we will give you for free…
Rich Birch — Oh love it.
Carl Kuhl — …if you do a group study, or some churches have already contacted us and said hey this needs to be like our church’s culture. We’re doing an entire journey, an entire series that everything in the church is focused on. So if you contact me at Carl with a “C” at mosaicchristian.org, me and my team would love to help you with giving you any free resources we can.
Rich Birch — So generous. Thank you so much, Carl. Is there anywhere else—this has been a fantastic conversation—is there anywhere else we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church?
Carl Kuhl — Yeah carlkuhl.org is my website and that’s where you can just sign up for updates and we’re giving away the free chapter through this podcast. It’s also available on my website as well And then Mosaic Christian Church YouTube page is really the best place if you’re interested in more content.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Carl; appreciate you being here. Cheering for you – hopefully we’ll have you back on in the future. I enjoy you know learning from you and appreciate what you’re doing at Mosaic Christian. Thanks so much for being here today.
Carl Kuhl — Appreciate the work you’re doing. Thanks for having me.
The Surprising Journey Toward Being a Community Focused & Fast Growing Church with Vern Streeter
Jul 14, 2022
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Vern Streeter, the lead pastor at Harvest Church in Billings, Montana.
Harvest Church is one of the fastest growing churches in the country and has had a long-time value of being community-focused. Listen in as Vern chats with us about paying attention to the unique needs in your community, and how you can creatively impact and serve your city in Jesus’ name.
Focus on the community to be relevant. // Planting a church where the focus is simply “doing church” should not be our primary goal. If people don’t want churches in their neighborhoods because churches are irrelevant to their lives, Vern believes that’s the church’s fault for not connecting with the community in meaningful ways. At Harvest Church their mantra is to be so tangible and relevant that even the most ardent critic of Christianity would be bummed if they ceased to exist. Plant a church with a focus on serving the community and being relevant to them.
Serve others outside worship services. // In an effort to build a connection with the community, Harvest Church didn’t start with worship services, but rather with serving the neighborhood. They began with simple activities such as raking leaves and taking care of landscaping, and over time have held bigger events and gotten really creative about serving their community. That even led to the construction of a pool and water park for the city of Billings.
Rally others to new ideas. // Vern advises to other pastors who hear an urge from the Lord to do something crazy for their community to just get out there and go for it. Ask yourself what your community needs and rally everyone to the new idea that will serve the community in a surprising way. Followers of Christ are tired of the consumerism in churches and are ready to surprise and delight the community in Jesus’ name. Think outside the box and get outside the church walls to engage the curiosity of unbelievers, and your church will gain traction in your community.
Needs unique to your community. // Montana and Wyoming lead the nation in per capita suicide and the need for mental health care is huge in the community. To address this need, Harvest Church is redirecting funds that were originally for a new building and they are constructing a mental health facility to serve the community instead. The arrangement is not without challenges, such as accepting medicare, medicaid, and insurance, and having all federal and state licenses that are required. But the team at Harvest believes this is a specific way that God is calling them to serve their community with excellence while being unapologetically bible-based.
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Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we like to bring you a leader who will inspire and equip you and I know today is no exception. Super excited to have Vern Streeter with us. He is the lead pastor at Harvest Church in Billings, Montana. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country. They, a number of years ago, started the Better Billings Foundation which we’re going to hear more about, and their kind of practical outreach to make a difference. They’ve been done all kinds of really cool things. I’m excited to learn from them and part of what I love is Billings, Montana is not the kind of place that you would say a fast-growing church comes from. And so we can definitely learn from Vern today. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Vern Streeter — Really glad to be here. Thanks, Rich.
Rich Birch — This is going to be great. Why don’t you fill out the picture kind of tell us a bit more about Harvest. Give us the kind of the picture, if people were to arrive this weekend, what would they experience?
Vern Streeter — Yeah, so ah, Harvest Church was planted in the year 2000. I was a youth pastor for 10 years at the mother church across town, and this area of the community needed a church like what we do and so um, they asked me to consider it. After a few years of working on it. We we launched in a high school in the year 2000 and started working on getting into our own piece of property. So we bought a property next to the school and moved into us building in 2004, which we thought was a temporary building. It’s currently our permanent building and but what we did…
Rich Birch — Yes, still temporary all these years later. Yes.
Vern Streeter — Yeah, so we did the classic cafe-gym-atorium. We we built a gymnasium that converts to the worship center on the weekend. we are still setting up in chairs and ah but we put we did that because our heart is to serve the community and we knew, hey man, a gym’s gonna get used.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — And it is, it gets used every single day. And you know the acoustics are terrible, but we’ve we work on that constantly. And our lobby’s got climbing walls in it, and have great coffee and real open and friendly and welcoming and then you step into a gymnasium that’s a worship center. And we try to do a really good job on but so people experience on the stage as far as theming our sermon series and so on. Ah so you you’d walk into a place with good energy, and a little unusual because all of a sudden you’re rubbernecking noticing that there’s people climbing the walls.
Rich Birch — Love it. I love that heart from the beginning of being the kind of church that you know wants must want to make a practical difference in the community. I think that is just such a great thing. I think there’s a lot of churches that talk about that, but from what I can tell Harvest Church is actually doing that right from you know, there’s even something as obvious as the way you’re building is is using. Let’s talk about that. Where has that led you as a church as a leader as you’ve thought about how do we make an actual difference in Billings with the real issues that people are facing?
Vern Streeter — It was really moral for me because the Lord ah he made it very clear to me that if you’re gonna plant a church that’s just gonna kind of ‘do church’, don’t bother. And so let me let me let me expand on that a little bit.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Vern Streeter — So when when I was the youth pastor and realized I was going to be planting this church, I was researching the starting of new churches and read an article about subdivisions and planned urban developments or so on that ah are writing into their deed restrictions or their covenants that they didn’t want churches in the community. Which is a little alarming article to read when I was about to plant a church, but the Lord was really gracious but really firm with me – kind of a boot on my neck going, you can’t just be offended by that. You got to think more about this and think deeply about it. And so we we just had this little session where he just had me going down layers. And I’ll shorten the process but the the question was like whose fault is this that a community doesn’t want a church? And what he was revealing to me is that this was an issue of relevance – well used word – but that a guy would make a decision that he wants a laundromat or a gas station in in in his neighborhood but not a church.
Rich Birch — Right. right.
Vern Streeter — And he’s concluding that the church has some irrelevance to him where of course he wants his clothes clean and a gas for his car, so that matters to his life. But what flipside on its head is that the church has been entrusted with the, actually the only thing that matters, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Vern Streeter — So like a guy’s eternal life or human flourishing. And so, but so if if they deem that the church is not doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. That’s the church folks’s fault. That’s that’s us.
Rich Birch — Yes. Wow.
Vern Streeter — We were entrusted with it and we’re the ones that made it irrelevant. So I just owned it. I just didn’t do anything but own it. I was like yep, Lord, that’s on us. I just in that moment was representing churchdom and went, all right, we’ll be different. So this little mantra of we got to be so tangible and so relevant that even the most ardent critic of christianity would be bummed if we ceased to exist – this was kind of a sentence we just kept telling ourselves and so when we started our church, we started by raking leaves and doing yard care in neighborhoods…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Vern Streeter — …where we were gonna plant. So we we didn’t start with worship services. We started serving and I just wanted our whole launch team to go to get it like we.
Vern Streeter — We’re going to get our hands dirty, guys. We’re going to work hard and have sore muscles because of it…
Rich Birch — Love that.
Vern Streeter — …rather than our cool new worship service with a band. You know.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah I love that because I think so many times the easy answer to relevance is exactly that. It’s skinny jeans, a band, and some lights, and and that just is proving to be not that relevant. And um, and I love that you’ve asked the deeper question and also owned it, and said hey that’s on us, not be not from like a blaming point of view, not from a like pointing fingers, but from an acceptance point of view. I love that from the beginning you were like how do we serve? You know, even as simple as raking leaves. Where has that where’s that continued to lead you?
Vern Streeter — Yeah, so so the very next thing we did was partnered, partnered I guess a good way to say it, is we used a high school. So we were the first church in Billings to ever use this school district’s property.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — So we had to keep break ground in there. Some school board stuff.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Vern Streeter — But what we told the principal was we are going to be a blessing to your school. And he’s not he wasn’t a Christian so we didn’t quite even understand why we needed another church in town. It was pretty funny.
Rich Birch — Mmm, yes.
Vern Streeter — And um, but we just started serving that school.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — Everything from the intangible of praying that the Holy Spirit would linger all week long after we left, to the very tangible of all the stuff that we have you can use at any time that you want, to we’re buying stuff that the school needs, to the way we treated the custodians, to how we left the rooms, to the way we would bless teachers tangibly. So we just put our arms around the school. We were actually the landscapers and the yard care for the high school for a while because…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — …it needed help and the school didn’t have the money and so we were like we got it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So right away we we now we’re doing worship services, but we’re also serving like crazy the school. and that principal later when we were planting a church in another town, in ah in a school which was also gonna be new in that town, he wrote a letter of reference to that principle…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — …saying the single best administrative decision he’s ever made was allowing Harvest Church to use his school.
Vern Streeter — Exactly. So then it expanded from then then we got into our own building, which was unique, was like hey we own something now, so how do we how do we use this? But.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — But didn’t stay inward. We we started doing everything from Easter egg hunts and with helicopter drops, to there was no there was no great fireworks display in our region and so we now host the what we call Celebrate Freedom (a name I stole from somewhere in Texas), and we do this huge Fourth of July thing…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter —…and pay for the whole deal, and it cost us 70 to 100 grand a year and it’s our gift to the community. And then we would do classic compassion weekends where we’d shut down services and spread out all over the city and mobilize a couple thousand people to serve like crazy. Those are so fun and so effective.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — And that was everything from putting a roof on a widow’s house, to building a bridge over a city ditch because the city didn’t want to do it, to filling in—one of our funnest projects was we – the the graves in the city cemetery were all collapsing because…
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Vern Streeter — …because, you know, the coffins I think like that body rots and then the coffin collapses after fifty or eighty years. And so so they were all sunken…
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Vern Streeter — …and so they supplied the dirt but we supplied the manpower, and we went into this this cemetery for two days, man…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — …and refilled graves and replanted grass. It was an awesome project because it really, really built credibility with the city of Billings. They weren’t sure what to think of us, especially because again, an indictment on church folk, they were used to churches going, hey we got like a serve day – you got some projects for us? And then not finish the projects. So half a gazebo gets painted, or something like that. So they talked to us about that. And we were like, all right no matter what happens we are gonna complete our projects and go above and beyond, and we have a heritage of that. And they have learned to trust us over the years which really paid off when we actually built a water part for the community. That partnership with the city was…
Rich Birch — Dude, I love how you just rolled over that, like that is so great. Well then that paid off and when we built a water park. You did what? What did you do?
Vern Streeter — Ah, so one of the dynamics one of the dynamics in Billings is that we’re kind of a bifurcated or divided city because of geology, not geography, but literally geology. There’s a cliff band that runs across the north end of our city that necks down at the Yellowstone River…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …and so you’ve got the city separated by this cliff, and the only way to get to the part of the city I’m in is through that bottleneck by the river. Ao my area the community is called the Heights and there’s probably 40,000 people that live here and there’s about 100,000 people that live in the valley, if you will, below those rims.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Vern Streeter — So this area of the community wasn’t um, didn’t become city, wasn’t annexed, until like the late 80s…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Vern Streeter — …and there’s people that live here that are still angry about that because of the sort of the independence period, you know, of Montanas…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Vern Streeter — …and they didn’t want to be in the city, but they’re in the city now. So now we’re in the city. We’re paying city taxes, but there was no city recreation center, or or swimming pool.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Vern Streeter — So you got 40,000 people, no city swimming pool. But every time we would go to the voters, it would always get voted down because the rest of the city would go, well I’m not going to the Heights. Why would I…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Vern Streeter — …why would I vote to have my taxes raised for a pool I’ll never use, which I felt like was like, see this is the problem with the world…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — …and so we’re doing something about this. So the Lord was just he just impressed upon me like, that’s going to be your responsibility, and that that was after a couple of failed votes over a few years you know. And so we put it in our master plan, but it was phase 4. But we moved it from phase 4 to phase 2.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So we got we had to get out of the school and as soon as we did. We started a capital campaign to raise money for a water park.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — And so we raised like 4 we raised five million bucks to build, literally it’s the best water park in town, by far.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Vern Streeter — Matter of fact, it was the only water park for a while…
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Vern Streeter — …then the city pool started going like we better put some slides in. Um, but one of the but one of the amazing things that happened is, well one of the amazing things that happened is that our church agreed that we should build a water park. That’s unusual to get…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s super unusual.
Vern Streeter — …several hundred, you know, I don’t know what we were 1500 people or something like that to go like yeah, let’s let’s not do some for ourselves. Let’s do something for the city that, and then we’re just going to gift it to the city. So so what we did is built this water park. We had to start a foundation to kind of do the firewall thing. And then ah, we got a director over it. We employ about a hundred kids every summer.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — It always turns a profit but we charge very little…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …and we just need to just need to make like 25 grand every year to put into the maintenance fund for a new pump or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Vern Streeter — But but one of the moments that was most special for me was we were on our way to a meeting with engineers to talk about finalizing the product, you know, what we were gonna do on our land because we got these 29 acres. And the city of Billings calls us and goes, hey we got 7 acres of land that’s basically unusable that we don’t have any money to put in to do anything to it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — How about you guys put that pool you’ve been talking about there?
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — So the city so the city literally gave us seven acres of land and and it’s in a way better location than where our church is because we’re at the we’re at a dead dead end basically. So now it’s in the center of the community basically…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — And that thing is slammed all June, July, and August. It is a blast.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s incredible! I love that – I love the the heart. So I don’t know, so I we had run into this story and I’m like I I don’t know any other church – now you probably do because you’ve talked with me – I don’t know any other church that’s built a water park that’s like, hey that’s led to that kind of you know situation. I love that you’re employing students. I love that it’s meeting a practical need. Um, you know, I love that it’s you know that arm’s length thing that’s kind of a fun you know, fun part of the story. Um, what would you say to church leaders that are thinking, they might have that kind of God-story resonating in their brain where like the Lord—it might not be a a water park—but it might be something of a similar nature of weirdness, like what? The Lord’s telling me to do this! What would you say to them as as they’re you know, hearing that, you know, today?
Vern Streeter — Yeah, I I would say, hurry. Do it. Get after it. Now. Now. You need a visionary…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — …courageous guy that’s going to stand in the pulpit and rally everybody to this new idea. But…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Vern Streeter — But but I do think that church folk I I think they get self-nauseated at consumerism themselves, and so the idea of let’s do something that’s radically different than what a church normally does, that radically serves the community in a surprising way, and I think that’s what and one of the fun things is the surprise that people have experienced.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Vern Streeter — I think Jesus surprised people all the time, and so for a church to do this is surprising to people, and it draws interest in what kind of a church does that? So it just seems that we’ve done a really good job of serving ourselves over the millennia…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …and to do things that are outside the church walls and outside the box, that surprises people and causes, especially non-christians to go, what’s the deal there?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Vern Streeter — That we’ve gotten tons of traction because of that.
Rich Birch — Okay, so let me let me, we’re friends, but let me push you on it. What are some other ways that as you’ve been, you know, being led by—which I love this heart for like how do we how do we help our community? How do we lead our community?—that may be push to deeper issues, that open up to you know things that – ah I’m not saying that a water park is not ah, not ah, not an yeah, a real issue but ah, you know there’s got to be other things that you know in your community that’s led you to think like hey we should we should maybe help with that. We should tackle it with that issue too.
Vern Streeter — Yeah, so for sure so we we’ve done everything from like we had this we had this hearse that pulled a coffin that was actually a barbecue and we would we would pull into the skate park with this thing. It’s got the best sound system of any hearse in town I promise you. And we would open that thing up and it’s got a cooler and barbecue in this coffin and it was a great opportunity to talk to kids about eternity. Or we have a car care ministry that takes cars in and gets them ready and usually they’re going to single moms, and so people don’t trade in their cars anymore. They give them to Car Care ministry and that thing that goes out. We have an ambulance that we converted that would go out and serve the homeless. So those kinds of things have just been just regular things for us.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it.
Vern Streeter — The latest and the doozy now that we’re that we’re doing, is that we’re we’ve we’ve opened a mental health practice.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Vern Streeter — So we’ve we’ve opened a mental health practice and it’s in matter of fact, it’s so um, preeminent for us that we reprioritized a recent capital campaign. So Covid helped us reprioritize it, it did.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — But the money that we raised for a worship center is actually getting totally repurposed and going for this mental health facility. Now, this is all about, and this is a major important theme and I think anybody listening to this like this is what you’ve got to evaluate is: what does your community need? So our community actually needed and I put it in quotes for sure but “needed a water park”, or a swimming pool for the 40,000 people that didn’t have one. So we did that. Or we didn’t have a fourth the July celebration that was safe and fun for families. So we did that. Well the mental health deal is the same deal. So we have a mental health crisis. It’s literally a crisis in our part of the country. And you put Billings in between Calgary to the north, Minneapolis to the east, Denver to the south, and basically Spokane or maybe Seattle to the west, and so you we are in a hole. And lots comes into Billings, but it’s very it’s regional at Billings, but we’re still very rural, and as you can imagine.
Vern Streeter — So our mental health situation is not good. The federal government has designated us a mental health shortage environment. So there’s actually funding available to try to get more people, mental health practitioners, to come to our region.
Rich Birch — Hmm, wow.
Vern Streeter — And our suicide rate leads the country.
Rich Birch — Wow, wow.
Vern Streeter — So we so we flop with Wyoming. Montana/ Wyoming lead the nation…
Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.
Vern Streeter — …in per capita suicide. And we know all the reasons why, by the way. We know that we know why we lead it. And I could list them for you. But the what we decided then was, and we’ve done this pretty much since the beginning of our church, was like understand that there’s mental health issues. Let’s try to help people. And it was really um, pastoral counseling without any credentialing…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …but we’ve been working on it. And then ah when covid hit, as you know, mental health
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …anything that was like under the water and the water went out. You could really see it, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Vern Streeter — And so our pastors were buried in marriages that were just falling apart.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — And I remember sitting in this one meeting and they all just had their pulled out their little lamb skin books – you know those those deals are journals. And they’re just they’re just reading couple after couple after couple to me that are either separated, divorced, or divorcing. They’re out. There’s domestic violence. And it was just heartbreaking, and just all that Covid ugliness…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …that exposed the mental illness deal. So we went all right, man. Let’s start a mental health practice.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — So we the this we got this director of operations and she’s a juggernaut.
Rich Birch — Right.
She’s awesome, but she she ran a she ran at a party rental business.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay.
Vern Streeter — Well, what do you suppose is one of the first companies to go under during covid would be a party rental business.
Vern Streeter — So she so she had to close up shop and sell her building. We scooped her up. She’d been at our church basically from the beginning and she is a leadership beast, and so I just sat down with her last January. And was like let’s go, Lene, let’s open a practice. And in nine months we had our first counselor hired. So last September we opened.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — We now have five counselors.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — They’re all busy.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — And then we were gonna do this building and we went, we don’t have the money to build the building anymore because of Covid increases, supply chain problems, and then inflation on top of it to put it out of reach.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So God graciously just was like you should build a building. So we’re building a sweet counseling building that will not look like a counseling building. So that…
Rich Birch — Right. Amazing. And then you’re going to stay in your existing facility and then that’s and that’s on your property.
Vern Streeter — Yep, yep.
Rich Birch — Yeah wow, that’s amazing.
Vern Streeter — We got twenty nine acres and we’re putting it on the far northeast corner of our property, put it away from the church, put it in a more tranquil location, off beaten roads.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Vern Streeter — People in Montana are embarrassed to go see a councilor so we’re gonna be real sensitive to that, and kind of put it out of the way where you can sneak into that parking lot and get in the building quickly, and get help.
Rich Birch — Wow, yeah, that’s amazing. What what the… I love that. I think this is first of all, this is just incredible story. What God’s doing at your church I just think is so cool. Um, you know as on the the mental health facility, what’s the launch of that look like? So you obviously you have a number of counselors on the team, you know how are you spreading the word? How does it work from a just kind of give us ah you know a leadership a little bit of deep dive around, you know, how are you paying for those people all that kind of stuff?
Vern Streeter — Yep, it’s really good. So again had to set up another 501C3 so it’s its own corporation; the church actually owns it. But we’ve got the firewall in place. Additionally though we did not want to turn away people. So…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …that means we’re taking medicare, medicaid, and insurance, which that means is that we have to have all the federal and state licensure that that is required.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So that means we get to do talent recruitment and get the right people here that have those credentials.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — We’ve got the clinical director that we got from another town in Montana. And then some local counselors to to join us. We are unapologetically bible-based and Jesus-centric, but John Townsend and Henry Cloud would be who our guides are on the clinical side.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Vern Streeter — So that’s model of mental health from those guys. And then our all of our providers, all of our counselors are in the process of getting their credentialing, their hours. And then a variety of of credentialing, right? LC/PCs…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Vern Streeter — …or social workers, or whatever it is, so…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Vern Streeter — We’re kind of getting the ah full team together that is…
Rich Birch — Right. Pulling the team together.
Vern Streeter — Yep, and it’s broad like we we want to help everybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So from children to older adults as well as addiction counseling. So that means we’re providing the services that are required there by the state. So we are being a um we are playing nice. We are joining what the state and the feds require…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — …but unapologetically Christian, but with a high level of training and expertise. So it’s not pray and memorize a verse. Like we are doing deep dives into a person’s soul and their mental health issues. So that and and um, we have the accountability in place to be able to do that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — Actually had to contract for a while with another Christian counseling agency in town to be our clinical director before we had our own.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So that we would have the oversight and the accountability that’s required and…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Vern Streeter — And so there’s you know, Medicare, Medicaid, there’s counseling agencies that don’t accept it because it’s such a pain in the butt.
Rich Birch — Right.
Because there’s so much paperwork. You’ve pretty much got to hire somebody to just do red tape.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Vern Streeter — And so you got It’s these precious people who’ve got no resources are getting turned away.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — And we went nope. Nobody gets turned away.
Rich Birch — No not under our watch. Yeah yeah, yeah. Wow.
Vern Streeter — So so that means we had to deal with sliding scale so we had to figure out what what can you pay. So it’s everything from 0 to $150 an hour, depending.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — And then whatever your insurance company does and whatever Medicare and Medicaid does for you, we are just making it work for people because we want them in the room with a counselor.
Rich Birch — Wow. And you if it structured as a 501c3 or is an LLC or what is that organization? What is that? Yeah like is it a for profit, or is it a nonprofit structure, or charitable?
Vern Streeter — It is a okay…
Rich Birch — That’s a curveball question. Sorry.
Vern Streeter — Yep, ah it’s a you know it’s it’s just where I need my director of operations. It’s either an LLC or a 501c3.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fine. Yeah, that’s fine.
Vern Streeter — And I thought it was 501c3 but it it is a for profit entity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Vern Streeter — Um, which we’re trying not to make a profit.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense still make total sense. There’s a number of churches do that.
Vern Streeter — We just, right, we’re just going to pour money back into it and just and just talent recruit and just get the next counselor on board.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Vern Streeter — Because it’s a massive shortage in Billings. In some cases it’s six months to get into see a counselor.
Rich Birch — Yes, Wow, that’s amazing.
Vern Streeter — Well people are pulling a trigger by that time. So…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, absolutely. Wow, that’s amazing. So what’s the what’s the top end kind of vision there? Is the hope to… do you have like ah a sense of the number of people that you’re hoping to serve? Or you know, what what is that what does that look like when you articulate that to your people? What what is it you saying?
Vern Streeter — Yeah, yeah, so there’s going to be about a dozen offices in there, so we could get have a dozen counselors, even more with some office sharing. There’s breakout rooms in that building because we we feel strongly about what happens in a small group and processing things together with groups. We do a thing called T Groups which is follows the John Townsend’s Townsend leadership program model where there’s teaching but then lots of processing in a small group. So we’re designing the building to hold that, but we’re also putting 150 seat amphitheater in there…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Vern Streeter — …that will be like a oh like a state of the art college classroom.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Vern Streeter — Ah, and that is for the purpose of education. And especially all the those that continuing education requirements. We’re gonna we’re setting ourselves up to be the place that this region will go to to do that learning…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Vern Streeter — Because we can bring it, we can pipe it in, but we’re also bringing guys in.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Vern Streeter — We’ll bring in Cloud and Townsend to to pour into people and we’re going to be um, unreligious about it. I mean so certain, again, unapologetically Christ-based, Christ Center, bible bible-based, but but some of our speakers are going to just be some of the best practitioners in brain science.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yeah.
Vern Streeter — For instance, those guys are coming in and they’re gonna teach.
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — So we are gonna have this education part of this as well. So we’ve got tons of room to really serve the region, and that’s the goal. We are not we can’t just think about our county…
Rich Birch — Right.
which is the biggest county in the state…
Rich Birch — Right.
Vern Streeter — We got to think about the region just because of how it’s spread out we are.
Rich Birch — Well the fun thing I love about this story, Vern, is I love how it started where so many churches start which is like, let’s rake some leaves in the neighborhood. Let’s, you know, let’s do that and somehow it goes from raking leaves…
Vern Streeter — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …to having you know the most advanced mental health facility, ah you know world class offering incredible service. I love that. I love the story that God’s writing there. When when you think about the impact on, I don’t even know what you call it, the kind of the rest of the church. The the box that we would normally call “church” – you know weekend service, getting people into small groups, kids ministry – all of that.
Vern Streeter — Yeah.
Rich Birch — How has your approach to being community-focused, how has that impacted um—I know that sounds like such a juvenile question—but how does it, how is all that working together? What’s it what how does that impact you know what’s happening on that that side?
Vern Streeter — Well, ah, yeah. So I don’t think it’s a juvenile question I’ll give you but I give you better more credit than that. Because here’s what’s happened in Billings is like somebody moves to town and they’re with their realtor and they’re talking about schools and churches and things and they go and the realtor goes, well, the first place you should probably check out is Harvest Church. And they go well, why? And they go well, they do a lot for the community.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Vern Streeter — And then the person goes. Do you go to Harvest Church? And they go, oh no I don’t go to church at all.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Vern Streeter — But but that church, man, they do a lot for the community.
Rich Birch — Yes, I love that.
Vern Streeter — So so 22 years now that it’s a deserved reputation.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Vern Streeter — We do do a lot for the community, and and christians and non-christians alike go like well that that just seems right.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Vern Streeter — So I love that that’s our reputation and and we have got to keep doing it. So that’s one of my little my things with this. Our staff is all right, what’s the next thing we’re gonna do to serve the community?
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Vern Streeter — We have to stay on it. So it does require somebody to keep it going because man it’s easy to get insular and inward. But the but the reputation I think has given credibility for the gospel.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Vern Streeter — You ask people why they came to Harvest, It’s probably had something to do with our community involvement.
Rich Birch — Love it. This is so great. I I this has been a great conversation. So fun to hear. Anything else you want to share just as we’re wrapping up today’s episode?
Vern Streeter — Yeah, um, one of the things that I my my church hears a lot from me is that we serve the one who said he came to not to be served but to serve and to give his life away. So so guys, you know how I talk to him like we if we say we follow him then we’re gonna be doing the same thing. And so that’s where that service thing is um, foundational to us, and and will it’ll just never stop here. Um our core values are word-centered, community-focused, growth expected, fun required. And so that so unapologetically word-centered but community-focused is number two on that list. So if a person comes to our church and doesn’t want to be a part of the community, they’re they eventually gonna probably move on because we’re pretty obsessed with wanting to serve our community.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it.
Vern Streeter — And it needs it more than ever we lead the nation in suicide.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Vern Streeter — So come on. Let’s go. We got to get outside of these walls and help people.
Rich Birch — Vern, this has been so good. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. I want to make sure we send people to the right places online. If they want to know more about Harvest Church they just go to harvestchurch.tv. Are there other websites that we want to send them to or is that the primary place we want to send them?
Vern Streeter — That’s the primary one and then um, please go with grace in your heart to that website. It is being redone, launches in June.
Rich Birch — Okay, all good. All good, all good. We are always we’re all our websites are always at that phase.
Vern Streeter — We’re always a little embarrassed by our websites.
Rich Birch — We’re always like you got you got other stuff to do besides make a great website.
Vern Streeter — Exactly.
Rich Birch — You’re you know you’re somewhere between running a water park and a mental health facility. It’s fine if your website… and I think your website’s great.
Vern Streeter — Okay, thank you – appreciate it, Rich.
Rich Birch — That’s great Vern I appreciate you being here. Thanks so much for being on the show today. Thank you so much.
Vern Streeter — Great to be with you. Hope it helps a little bit.
Balancing A Growing Family & Ministry with Paula Ley
Jul 07, 2022
Welcome back to this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Paula Ley, executive pastor at Radiant Church in the Tampa Bay area.
Paula is talking with us about the spheres of influence in our lives and how to balance the busy seasons of ministry while still prioritizing our most important relationships.
Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint. // Paula has served in many different ministries from being a missionary to working for Radiant Church, to starting a non-profit with her husband. She has a saying that she sticks to which is: the principles don’t change, the particulars do. When you’re grounded in the word of God, He can move you anywhere and give you unexpected experiences, and he never wastes a thing. You might not be in the right role right now, but God will use it in the future if you stay close to him.
Spheres of Influence. // When working in ministry, there is a lot that can bleed into your personal life. Church leaders carry a huge responsibility, and so Paula put together a system called the Spheres of Influence that helps her make decisions about what to prioritize in her life. She also uses it when coaching team members and volunteers so they can figure out what to say yes to and what to say no to.
Start with God in the center. // On the sphere, Paula starts out with a small circle and puts God in the center of, indicating that a relationship with him is top priority. From there she draws more concentric circles, moving out from the center. Next she has a circle for her husband, then her kids and grandkids, and then her job and ministry. As the circles get larger they extend to other parts of her life. These Spheres of Influence help you stay on task, but also keep people as most important in your life because ultimately as pastors, people matter more than what role we play.
Urgent items. // Urgent items will move into the inner circle at times, but they can’t stay there. By nature urgent items are short term. Otherwise they need their own permanent spot in the Spheres of Influence and regular attention in your life. Examples of urgent items might be a sudden death in the church, or other events that need a pastor’s temporary focus.
Hard calls and soft calls. // Once you have your Spheres of Influence drawn, Paula says to pay attention to hard calls and soft calls. The hard calls are the things that God has brought into your life which need you and aren’t going to change, for example: your spouse, young kids, aging parents, etc. The soft calls are the outer circles in your life that do change, such as job, ministry, and other relationships.
Finishing well. // Time management and prioritization applies to everyone. Pray about how God wants you to organize your spheres. Each person has to draw their own sphere, although it may help to speak with a spouse or family as they can help us pay attention to patterns of workaholism. Heavy seasons of ministry will have a sacrificial component to them, but it’s also important to make sure that your innermost circles are healthy. Finishing well is about having integrity in those inner areas.
Serving Beyond Borders. // Paula works with the non-profit Serving Beyond Borders which helps leaders and nationals in other parts of the world create leadership structures for church planting. They partner with existing ministries in other countries to reach out to the people in their communities.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Latest Church Trends Post-COVID with Tony Morgan
Jun 30, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tony Morgan, the founder and lead strategist of The Unstuck Group, which offers consulting and coaching for churches as well as practical resources such as courses, access to research and more – all to help churches get unstuck.
The Unstuck Group does quarterly trend reports that reveal where churches are thriving or getting stuck in this season. Today Tony is talking with us about some of the latest findings.
Spread the gospel. // One of the notable trends in churches right now is that baptisms have increased over the last 12 months, indicating that churches are reaching new people who are taking steps in their faith. This is an important shift because in the beginning of the pandemic, ministry leaders became so focused on taking care of their own congregations that they lost sight of the broader mission of spreading the gospel. The report on baptisms indicates that churches are bouncing back to being focused on pointing new people to Jesus.
Create an intentional discipleship strategy. // The average number of people that churches are baptizing is 5 people for every 100 people in attendance in a given year. In other words, if a church has 1000 people in attendance, on average between 50 and 60 people go public with their faith through baptism. Churches need to keep in mind the fact that people are on a spiritual journey. God ultimately has to work on someone’s heart to prompt them to take the step to be baptized. However churches also need to be intentional by having discipleship strategies in place that show people what their next steps are.
Create an intentional reach strategy. // In addition to having intentional discipleship strategies, churches need to have intentional reach strategies which engage new people outside the church and faith. The most common challenge for churches is this “front door” issue – engaging new people with the gospel. Without an intentional reach strategy we cannot live on mission, and it’s only a matter of time before our churches start to plateau and decline.
Decrease in church engagement both ways. // The Unstuck Group has gathered data for the first quarter which shows about a 15% drop in online engagement and a 27% drop in in-person church attendance. Church leaders have been hopeful that if people aren’t attending in-person then they’re watching online, but these numbers are indicating that church engagement overall is decreasing.
Engage with people online. // Our online services can be part of our reach strategy – many new people will watch a service online before they ever attend in person. However we need to create more connections with these people instead of just streaming services. Engage with people online to help them take next steps. Use social media for more than just promoting what’s happening at the church and actually interact with people. Discipleship happens in community so connect people online with each other as well.
More statistics from reports. // Tony shared some of the other statistics that the trend reports reveal as well. For example, growing churches have smaller boards and fewer committees. Growing churches also have less debt than declining churches and are baptizing a higher percentage of people. Most notably, declining churches have significantly bigger staff teams than growing churches, employing 56% more full time employees. Overstaffing means the staff does the work of the ministry instead of equipping the people of God to do it, as Paul instructs in Ephesians 4:11-12.
If you want to get a copy of the latest trend report from The Unstuck Group you can go to www.theunstuckgroup.com/trends and explore all of the resources available to churches.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today’s absolutely no exception. Super excited to have Tony Morgan with us. He’s the founder and lead strategist of an organization called The Unstuck Group – they help churches get unstuck. Unstuck offers consulting, coaching with several kind of different areas including multi-site, staffing, digital strategy, just to name a few. They’ve been around for quite a while. Tony’s previous experience was in senior leadership roles at Westridge, at NewSpring, at Granger – he’s published several books and also hosts his own podcast. Tony is the reason why there’s a lot of reasons why I love Tony – one of the reasons why I love him is he is in the corner of church leaders. He loves church leaders and wants to help, so Tony, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Tony Morgan — Rich, it’s so good to be with you, and and you just nailed ah you just nailed it. I mean that’s what I’m about. I’m trying I’m trying to help ah churches get unstuck. But honestly it comes down to the pastors and church leaders that we get to serve.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Tony Morgan — And I know especially after these last couple of years whether you’re in Canada or the us or anywhere else, my goodness these have been challenging days. Ah, and so we do, we want to be in your corner trying to help you accomplish the mission God has for your church. So thank you for giving me this opportunity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and I know we’ve I’ve I’ve joked with your team about this and I think I’ve joked with you about it. You know I do coaching and consulting with churching on churches as well, and it seems like every time I talk to people they’re either they’ve either just talked with you, or they’re talking with you, which is great and so, which is fantastic, and there’s more than enough churches to go around. And so I I love pointing people to you guys. I really do think, right, this is not as there’s not an ad. I asked Tony to come on. I I really do think that what you do is great for churches and you make such a difference. And there are folks in this market who will remain unnamed who I get the vibe that they look at churches as just another market. It’s like they could be selling to people who run grocery stores, but they’re selling to churches, and and that’s not you guys at all. You really are you want to make a difference and so I just love that. I think it’s an honor to call you guys friends. So I love Unstuck, love what you’re up to. Well what fill out the picture there. What am I missing about Unstuck or parts of your story? I want to make sure we get out there before we we roll in.
Tony Morgan — Yeah I mean we do. We’re trying to provide all kinds of coaching and content as much of that as free…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — …free of charge as we can, Rich. But at the end of the day. What we love to do is actually be on site working with churches where we walk through a process to help them kind of assess where the church is, what’s working, what’s stuck right now. Um, plan for the future. Um, and needless to say again after these last couple of years I think churches are recognizing kind of that mission, strategy, vision for the future. There need to be some tweaks right now. And then making sure your structure is in place, whether that’s staffing or volunteer structure to support that, and that’s the core of what we do to help churches. But in the meantime if there’s some content that we can offer that will be a help you and your leadership and help your team consider next steps, we’re grateful for that opportunity.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well one of the things you do consistently are these trend reports – The Unstuck Church Report. Every time I see these, friends, this is on my required reading list; whenever it comes out I am always poring over it. Ah, there’s so much good stuff. Um, and we’re kind of caught when we’re recording this. We’re kind of caught between quarters and so the last most recent public one was the Q1 2022. Ah, but you know you’re working on another one. The team’s working on another one but there was a couple things in there particularly that stood out to me this report was, if i’m if I’m correct, it’s really the first report that has a whole year of data.
Tony Morgan — That’s right.
Rich Birch — Ah you know in relation to kind of the whatever you… I don’t even know what you call this anymore post-Covid you know…
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …intra-covid whatever this season that we’re in, and get…
Tony Morgan — So you’re right. And let me just confirm.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — So this is the first time one of these reports when we go year to year comparisons, it’s actually on this side of the beginning of the pandemic compared to a year before when we were still in the pandemic. So I think we’re, for the first time, getting a true sense of not, and again, not just covid but the world has we’ve just experienced so much these last couple years, but we’re finally starting to see a glimpse of how this is starting to impact church ministry as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. One of the things that stood out to me was—there’s a bunch in this report again friends you want to pick it up—but one of the things that stood out to me was this whole conversation about baptisms and the fact that in the twelve months preceding that baptisms actually went up, which is ah fascinating. You know I think it it tells us a bit of a story of what’s happening under the hood. You know I’ve often joked another context I think that baptism is a great thing to measure because it’s like a real issue – you have to get people under the water. You know it’s like it’s it’s a good thing to measure…
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …outside of it’s like, you know, what it means spiritually. It’s it’s it’s kind of a fun metric. Talk to us about what you learned. What are you seeing, and what do you think the implications for that, you know, in this season for our churches are is?
Tony Morgan — Yeah, so I’m actually encouraged to see baptisms start to bounce back over the last twelve months, because you know again looking at this data a year ago. Now granted of you know, especially for Canadian churches but other churches just being locked down and not being able to meet certainly that impacted the actual number of people getting baptized as well, though we found churches engaged in some creative ways ways for folks to experience baptism and go public with their faith. Um, even though the church wasn’t meeting. But all that said, um, the baptism numbers were low a year ago. And that that was actually it was actually confirmation of what we were seeing in other areas of the data where it just didn’t look like churches were reaching many new people.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tony Morgan — And I get it, I mean especially at the beginning of the pandemic. I think churches were so focused on how do we how do we take care of our own congregations that honestly I think ministries lost sight of the broader mission, which is to spread the gospel and to point people, including new people, to Jesus. And so it’s it’s it’s just encouraging for me now a year later to see that starting to bounce back.
Tony Morgan — And in case you’re curious, and I think this is just a good barometer for any church to be considering, the really the average number of people that churches are baptizing is 5 people for every hundred people in attendance in any given year. And so if your church, you know, if your church has 1000 people in attendance, I would expect probably between 50 and 60 people on average to go public with their faith through baptism. And so if you’re curious, you know, how are we doing based on the size church we are, that’s kind of a good benchmark to be looking at. And of course we hear stories – two of churches that are experiencing far more life transformation than that. In fact, a church that Amy Anderson and I—she’s our director of consulting—we were just with them last week and gosh it’s amazing what God is doing in their ministry, especially in this season. But just, I think it was over Palm Sunday, they baptized 250 people in one Sunday and so…
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.
Tony Morgan — That’s ah, that’s what those are the stories, Rich, that I love to hear, especially now.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tony Morgan — Because it feels like I mean we’ve had so much working against us as church ministries in these last number of years, it’s fun to see some celebration now of real transformation happening in people’s lives and…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Tony Morgan — And goodness, I love hearing stories like that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. You know I know a part of my area work is helping people with this whole idea of invitability – that you know growing churches are churches that encourage their people train their people, equip them, motivate them, to you know to invite friends that that’s like a huge piece of what we have to do. And there for sure the joke I’ve made with churches through this has been there was a season there where inviting a friend to a church felt like, yeah I’m inviting you to get sick…
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …or like can you come and like you might catch a deadly disease you know, but can you join us this weekend and it makes sense that there was obviously a drop in invitability there, ah you know for a while.
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I love that 5 per 100. Again, friends, this is why Tony’s so great. He’s like… I play I play an expert on the internet,Tony actually is one. Um, when you think about churches you know, trying to encourage that number, trying to encourage baptism, um are there are there some best practices on that or some things we should be thinking about trying to move people towards that? So what would advice would you give to churches that are wrestling with that?
Tony Morgan — Yeah I mean obviously it’s it’s God moving in people’s lives…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tony Morgan — …that ultimately gets them to a place where they begin to follow Jesus and then hopefully go public with that decision through baptism. However, Rich, I mean you I could I wish I could just show you…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — …practically what how this plays out in most churches. Because really one of the things we want to help churches think about is people are on the spiritual journey that for most, I mean I think for everyone, begins with in this place where folks aren’t interested in faith, maybe not even curious about faith. And over time hopefully God intervenes in their life in some way where they start to ask spiritual questions, eventually put their faith in Jesus, then engage with a church and go through a discipleship journey, and ultimately become disciple makers themselves.
Tony Morgan — And so there’s these steps that we want to, in the churches that we’re working with, that we want to help them just kind of identify what’s what’s our strategy? What’s that spiritual journey going to look like for people so that we’re encouraging folks to take their next steps towards Christ?
Tony Morgan — And what I find interesting in the churches that we’re engaging with is that there are a lot of churches that have great discipleship strategies in place once people connect to the church and once people are connected to faith. But, I think what distinguishes the churches that are seeing the most life change is not only do they have a discipleship strategy, they also have a reach strategy. It’s well-defined. In other words, they they are very intentional about how they’re trying to engage people outside the church and outside the faith.
Tony Morgan — And um, there are many aspects to that, for the churches that are doing this well, including by the way intentionality around Sunday morning worship services. Um, but I think the key and and the distinction that we see oftentimes is, for the churches that are seeing a lot of life change, and therefore baptisms are higher, it’s because they have both a discipleship strategy and a reach strategy.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know the the thing I’ve noticed, similarly, over the years in helping people on that reach strategy side, using the language that you’re using there, is I think there’s this misnomer that like churches that are thinking about the front door are ignoring the back door, and that’s just not the the case with fast-growing churches.
Tony Morgan — Right.
Rich Birch — They are working on both sides of that equation. They are thinking very clearly about what are we doing to reach new people, and to keep the people that we’re having. They’re not… it’s like it was like a preaching point for a while there where it was like you could only do one or the other.
Tony Morgan — Right.
Rich Birch — But that’s just not actually true. That’s not how churches that are making the kind of impact that we’re so that are we’re seeing, that are exceeding maybe what is normal, they really see it as both connected for sure. What would you say on that, if there was that false dichotomy in the the churches that you’re engaging with, that you’re trying to help be Unstuck, do they have more —again using the forced dichotomy—is it a a reach problem or a key problem?
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Is it is it which which of those it seems that they need to spend more time working on?
Tony Morgan — That’s a good question. I mean ah there have been some rare exceptions where we’ve gone in and attendance has been declining, not because they have a front door challenge, but because there is more of a backdoor challenge. In other words, that discipleship strategy wasn’t as defined as it needed to be, as clear as it needed to be, and so people, new people, were connecting to the church and connecting to the faith and kind of getting stuck in that spiritual journey. But by far the more common challenge, Rich, that we see is churches that don’t have a back door issue. It really is more of a front door where they’re just not engaging enough new people.
Tony Morgan — And in fact, in one of the recent podcast episodes Amy and I were talking about this. This is the great wisdom that I periodically offer, Rich, if you want to grow your church, if you want your attendance to grow, you actually have to reach new people at your church. They pay me the big bucks for wisdom like that.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Tony Morgan — But I think sometimes as as church leaders we forget the fact that I mean people are a living life and included in living life is job changes and moves and things like that and so there’s just this natural attrition that happens in churches. And frankly, if we don’t have an intentional reach strategy in place, it’s just a matter of time before our churches start to plateau and decline. So um, you know…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Tony Morgan — I liken it to at The Unstuck Group. We eventually do have to make some money ah for my family to have food on the table, but also to pay the salaries and support everybody else on our team. And if we just focused on the churches that we were currently engaged with, we would be about six months out from having to shut our doors.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tony Morgan — Because we kind we need this constant stream of new churches that we’re serving in order to pay the bills…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tony Morgan —…but also to help us continue to fulfill our mission. And as church leaders I think sometimes we we just are we’re so focused on ministering to and pastoring the people that are already a part of our congregation that we forget that part of the mission that God’s called us to is to actually go engage new people to try to share the gospel message so that new people began to fall in love and follow Jesus.
Rich Birch — Dude, love it. I love that. That’s ah, that’s good to hear. You know it’s an interesting… that’s a fun way to think about it that you know for some reason we can make that translation when we think about organizations or businesses, but it’s like we… I think there’s a segment of the church world that it that feels almost like unspiritual to like think about what are we doing to reach new people, which is ironic. There’s something strange about that. But but that does seem to be out there. Um, so…
Tony Morgan — Yes, yeah, go and go go and make new disciples. It’s it’s our mission, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, it’s not a new idea by any means.
Tony Morgan — Yeah, so yeah, it’s not a new idea.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so one of the things that so in the last couple years I love the transition that has happened with church online. And I love what’s taken place on that front. Ah probably a year ago I was talking to a friend who I’ve done a bunch of work with their church and he was reflecting back on his own leadership. And he said, you know, if you were to ask me in February 2020 he’s like I didn’t have a Facebook personal Facebook account. Um I was not online. In fact, I I don’t know that I ever preached against church online, but I definitely was the guy who kind of dogged it. Um, and then he said I distinctly remember it was like March 17th, whatever the date, he was he pulled all his pastors together and he said all right, friends. Y’all need to open up a Facebook account. You need to figure out how to do Facebook Live and we got to move this thing online. And then and you know it was a great statement, this great leader who’s like, listen I’m so humbled by what God’s done on our online stuff. I’m you know I’m sad that we missed it. You know all those years – it was kind of a cool engagement.
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But here we are 2 years past all that now I talk to leaders all the time, and they’re like we have all these people attending online. I have no idea who those people are. I’m not sure what do we do with those people. What so what are you seeing in the churches you’re working with? How what is what is this, you know, either the stats are telling you or just as you’re engaging in conversations as, you know, we’re kind of a couple years past this online revolution that’s happened – what where are we at today on that?
Tony Morgan — Yeah, so let me ah this is actually some you’re getting a sneak peek, Rich, at some of the new data coming out…
Rich Birch — Ooo love it! Ooo love it!
Tony Morgan — …and the next quarter’s report.
Rich Birch — First first release here, you’re not going to get in trouble; Tiffany’s not going to get any trouble here, is she? She’s not gonna like pull in…
Tony Morgan — Yeah well I might get in trouble. Tiffany’s fine, but I might be the one that gets in trouble.
Rich Birch — Yes I mean that’s what I’m saying – she’s not going to be the one that’s going to get you in trouble. That’s great.
Tony Morgan — Yeah, yeah, so um, this is ah this is the first quarter now in all I mean over these last two and a half years of dealing with pandemic and everything else. This is the first quarter that we’ve actually seen a drop in online engagement, a drop in the number of people viewing online services. It was ah the fresh data showing about a 15% year over year decline. And so here now um, in in fact, the data looking at in-person average weekly attendance in this next Quarter’s report, it’s a little bit better than the last report. The last report showed a 30% decline year over year for in-person attendance. This this next quarter I think is 27% or 28% decline year over year. So there’s a bit of an ah improvement, but attendance is still down year over year…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
Tony Morgan — …in churches. And I think as pastors and church leaders we’ve been kind of… I don’t want to say we’re okay with that, but at least somewhere in the back of our our mind we’ve been we’ve been using online engagement to kind of offset that in our mind. And until this last report I I could see why pastors were using that to justify that.
Rich Birch — Hmm, fascinating.
Tony Morgan — But now what the data is showing is not only is there a decrease in in-person attendance, but there’s also a decrease in online engagement. And so I think over these last number of months we’ve been hopeful that people that aren’t in attendance are still watching and engaged online. And I don’t know and I’m sure some of that is still happening, but if if it was happening, we’re starting to see that attrition in online engagement as well. And I kind of understand, I mean if the only connection…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tony Morgan — …with our ministry was by watching services online and people aren’t connected to a group, and they’re not connected to serving opportunities, and they’re never showing up in person on Sunday morning to just kind of experience what it is to be on mission together as a body of Christ, then I can see over time how there would start to be a disconnect if their only if their only involvement was watching services online. I think we’re starting to see the front end of that. And you know it was big speculation through throughout all of covid how long will people do this? It might be about 2 years and that’s it.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, about eight quarters and here we are. Yes, yeah.
Tony Morgan — So um, yeah, so now is it going to just cut off immediately?
Rich Birch — No.
Tony Morgan — No I don’t think so but over time I do think there’s something to us um, continuing to press in, even in our online opportunities to encourage people, yeah I’d love for them to come back to Sunday worship, but at a minimum people need to get involved in in others’ lives.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — There there need to be opportunities for us to engage with other believers. Um, whether that’s in a bible study or a home group or a serving opportunity. We we need that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tony Morgan — Um, the other thing I would add here is I still believe in online.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tony Morgan — And what I’m seeing more and more is that when it comes we talked about the difference between reach and discipleship strategies for churches. And how they eventually overlap and and kind of feed off of each other, um the churches that are effectively leveraging online, it’s really helping them with the front door side, that reach portion, of their um ministry strategies. I think over time we’re going to learn there are some things we can do related to to discipleship online. But honestly discipleship is highly relational.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tony Morgan — I mean it’s one life on another life. And yeah we can we can do some of that online, but we really need people kind of sharing life together….
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — …for that real transformative change to happen. And so when it comes to reach strategies though online, I mean there’s a lot of opportunity there for us to engage with people that aren’t currently a part of the church and aren’t currently a part of the faith. In fact ah, Rich, my volunteer serving opportunity that I engage at my church…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tony Morgan — …is in the connection space and it’s kind of where new people stop before and after the services. I can’t tell you the last time I talked with a new person who did not, before showing up on Sunday morning…
Rich Birch — Oh sure.
Tony Morgan — …watch a service online.
Rich Birch — Oh sure. Absolutely
Tony Morgan — I can’t tell you the last time that that happened. And so it’s it’s really critical…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — …I think for us and our reach strategies to be leveraging online, but we can’t be assuming that people connected to our church can live their entire ministry ah relational existence online. I just don’t think that’s possible.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so fascinating. I think that’s so true and I you know as we wrestle with this I think we have to continue to lean in. A couple episodes ago we had Jay Kranda from or from so Saddleback on and I love what he talked about because he was pushing us on, you know, moving beyond the stream.
Tony Morgan — Mmm-hmm
Rich Birch — I think so many of us are stuck that that like what church online is, we’ve reduced it down to it’s just a stream. It’s just like it’s just a post of the video. Um and that’s not ministry in the same way that watching sitting in the back of a service, sitting in the back row of a service is not church, right? That’s…
Tony Morgan — That’s right.
Rich Birch — That’s something different than church. And so I think we have to keep looking at that. I love that. You know, interesting it’ll be interesting to see how, as that trend continues. Now kind of connecting these two together like do you think and I’m I’m not so I’m with you. I’m, folks that are listening in, I’m not anti-church online. Listen we first started doing church online in 2009. I’ve spent a lot of time effort and energy – I’ve burned a lot of brain cells around how do we do church online. Like I’m pro-church online. So don’t don’t save your cards and letters. But do you think that there’s a connection there between the drop we saw in discipleship stuff in 2020 early 2021, and the kind of the fact that that we were just online. Like and the fact that we now, two years later, if we’re not moving people along, we’re seeing that drop like are we seeing are we… There was a there was a moment where, and Carey Nieuwhof’s a good friend of both of ours, and there was a moment there where he was like—and Carey, I love you—but he was like you know, jumping up and down: this is the this is the revolution we’ve been all been waiting for. And I’ve always always like yeah I think it’s a part of it…
Tony Morgan — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …I think it’s a part of what we’re talking about, but I don’t know that it’s all of it. I’m not asking you to pick a fight with Carey…
Tony Morgan — No.
Rich Birch — …but tell me what do you think about all that what do you what do you think?
Tony Morgan — But yeah, and actually I appreciate Carey really pushing us as churches…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — …because it’s probably causing us to think further ahead than we would normally be comfortable thinking and and making some initial innovations and take and test driving some new things that maybe we wouldn’t have considered without that push. But I will say this I just I’m not convinced that the goal for church is to become like Amazon where we’re providing ministry online 24/7 when anybody needs it. I’m just I’m not convinced that that’s the case. And again I really do think there’s some opportunity. I love the fact that you’re talking about online not just being the stream on Sunday…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tony Morgan — …because it’s for it to be effective, it needs to be far more than that. And there are ways that we can can connect with people relationally primarily through social media channels that are available to us where we’re not just promoting what’s happening in the church, but we’re actually engaging with people online. And then secondly it’s not just the service content that people are looking for online. They’re looking for answers, next steps around a lot of different topics that people consider are considering right now related to family health, marriage health, um emotional health, and on and on and on.
Tony Morgan — And there’s so much opportunity for churches to engage people with helpful content that does begin to point people to faith and point people to the church and so…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tony Morgan — …lots of opportunity there. But I don’t think trying to become fully online is the answer to the mission that God’s called us to.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good flag. I think, you know, we again I think we want to find a good balance there. We want to leverage—I’ve said this in other contexts—I really do think church online for all of us is going to look more like what. Gent jeannine or Jenny Jeannine Allen does with IF gathering where it’s like if you look at what their strategy is, it’s like some in person, a ton of online content, you know groups that are in-person, small groups, large groups, mid-size events, like it’s like a whole plethora of kind, you know, of ways to connect with the message. I think a lot of I think we’re going to look more like that, we’re going to you know as we you know look to the future. Um, that’s exciting. It’s interesting. It’s exciting times. I love it. Was there anything else either from the last report or the next one that’s coming up… dun dun dun…That ah you want to you, you know, you find particularly interesting or you’d love to comment on?
Tony Morgan — Yeah, let me just highlight in the last report one of the things that we offered in our bonus section was just to look at some of the distinctions between growing and declining churches. And let me rattle off some of these.…
Tony Morgan — Growing churches have smaller boards and fewer committees than declining churches. Interestingly growing churches have less debt than declining churches. I think I would have expected the opposite that if the church is experiencing growth in order to help fund that growth that might they might have to borrow some money to, you know, either build new buildings or expand or whatever multisite, whatever that might look like, and actually the reverse is true.
Tony Morgan — Ah growing churches are baptizing a higher percentage of people than declining churches. I was glad to see that because again I think there’s this assumption that if the church’s experiencing growth, they’re kind of just poaching Christians from other churches, but and it would actually show, no, that’s not the case. I mean some of that may be happening but there’s ah, there’s conversion happening, faith conversion that’s happening in churches and they’re seeing more life change.
Tony Morgan — Here’s one of the big shocks for me though: declining churches have significantly bigger staff teams than growing churches.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tony Morgan — Yeah, you heard that right. Declining churches have bigger staff teams than growing churches and quite a bit bigger. Declining churches employ 56% more full time equivalent employees than growing churches, And you know I could I don’t know if we have enough time I could speculate on why that is…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — …but let me just say what we see in churches is when they kind of overstaff—and there’s a lot of overstaffing in churches right now—the staff end up doing the ministry.
Rich Birch — yes.
Tony Morgan — And the challenge is that’s not that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tony Morgan — I mean Paul is pretty clear in Ephesians we’re supposed to be equipping the people of God to engage the work that God’s called us to. And the church the growing churches commonly do a lot better job of hiring people that know how to raise up other leaders, and equip and empower God’s people to engage the ministry. And not only does that help them save some money on staffing, but it also helps them to become a healthier thriving church…
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that.
Tony Morgan — …and that’s the more more important part of that story. Here’s what’s interesting though, Rich. When we looked at some of these differences between growing and declining churches, there really wasn’t a lot of difference post-pandemic as we were seeing pre-pandemic. In other words I really think if churches are kind of struggling to get back to where they were, whether that’s and life change through baptisms or attendance or people connecting to serving and groups and whatever, if that’s what you’re concerned with right now, a lot of a lot of the shift that might need to happen in your churches is just getting back to some of the fundamentals of healthy church. I mean it’s not new things that we need to consider…
Rich Birch — Right.
Tony Morgan — …it’s actually getting back to some of the fundamentals of what we need to be true about healthy thriving churches. And the good news that with that is you don’t have to guess you don’t have to be you know predicting what is online going to do or not going to do with our church going forward. You just you kind of need to go back to the mission God’s called you to as a church. And just recognize there are certain elements of what healthy church looks like, and we need to double down on that, because that’s what’s going to make the the biggest difference for your church today and in the days to come.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, so friends you know Tony is a is a good guy. Super friendly. Nice guy. When I read that when I read this part of this report to be honest, the thing that went through my head is like ooh this is the part where Tony picks fights. Ah you know and in a good way. He’s like hey pointing out here are some of these tensions. And it’s funny I was thinking about literally that point around higher staff versus or more staff versus less staff. There’s a church I’m doing some coaching/consulting with right now on multisite and there I’m helping them walking them through launching. And um and this is a growing church and we were talking about the staff footprint at the the new location and I was pushing for a larger footprint than they wanted to do. And I was in my assumption what I was like—and and it was so great—the executive pastor and lead pastor were like, I just don’t—and they said exactly that they echoed that they’re like—I think if we hire those people it will hamper us right from the beginning. We can do this with less staff, and it was like and I had your report ringing in my brain and I because I know that I’ve said that to church leaders in the past, hey we’re overstaffed – that’s going to slow the growth of our church. And I was like it was one of those like oh yeah, that’s right, it was like another humbling moment. So ah I again appreciate the work that you do you – you and your team just do such great work. Friends, if you want to pick up a copy of either the last or by the time this comes out maybe the next one. All you need to do is go to theunstuckgroup.com/trends. Is there anything else, Tony, you want to share with us as we wrap up today – any kind of last parting thought?
Tony Morgan — Yeah. No, I just I can appreciate it. I mean number one I’ve been in ministry, like you, and secondly I’m still engaged in ministry of a local church. I just I know the challenges that pastors and church leaders are experiencing. And again, it goes well beyond covid Itself. There are a lot of other factors that are impacting what churches are experiencing right now, but more importantly, what pastors are experiencing right now. And I just want you to know I’m in your corner. Our team, I continue to pray for you on on a regular basis. We just we we we love what you’re doing. We’re grateful that you’re committed committed to this mission and if there’s anything we can be doing to support you and your ministry going forward, we would love to have that opportunity.
Rich Birch — Love it. Friends again, a hearty endorsement from me of The Unstuck Group. They’re great people. They they really do want to help and so you’d be you’d be wise to follow them and to reach out. If you’re like hm we’re stuck in an area. We we need some extra help on some things, they they would be glad to jump on the phone and talk it through. Ah, Tony, where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you or with The Unstuck Group.
Tony Morgan — Yeah, the easiest way is just to go to the website at theunstuckgroup.com
Rich Birch — Great! Thanks so much. Thanks for being here.
Healing the Racial Divide in Your Church with Derwin Gray
Jun 23, 2022
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Derwin Gray, the lead pastor at Transformation Church in South Carolina.
In the bible we see every nation, tribe, and tongue worshiping Christ together, yet in our country and churches we continually see examples of the racial divide. Listen in as Derwin shares his heart and steps that we can take toward racial reconciliation in order to achieve God’s vision for a redeemed and reconciled multiethnic family of believers.
Consumer Christianity versus authentic Christianity. // Jesus says the world will know His disciples because of their love for one another. There is a difference between consumer Christianity which says Jesus is a means to an end and authentic Christianity which says Jesus is the end. Jesus broke down every dividing wall so we could be a part of a new multiethnic family. This is intrinsic to the gospel.
Our differences reflect God. // Some Christians don’t want to talk about race, but Derwin points out that the bible does talk about it. God redeems our colors and our culture to be a beautiful reflection of Him in the world. At the end of the bible there’s every nation, tribe, and tongue worshiping around Christ. God saved us as individuals to put us into a family, and this family is a multicolored family. Keeping silent about the issue of racism hurts the witness of Christ.
Homogenous unit principle. // The homogenous unit principle teaches that if churches want to grow fast, they should gather and target the same type of people in a church. This idea was developed by a missionary in India to reach out to the different castes of people and bring them together as the family of God. But it was changed in the US to reach out to people who already look and think alike. Decades later the result is increased political division, racial prejudice, and isolation in the body of Christ, along with deteriorating discipleship.
A gospel issue. // If you truly want to heal the racial division in our churches, you need to recognize that there will be a backlash. You need to have a theological conviction that this is a gospel issue so that you can stand against the opposition. Examine your motives for taking this step. You shouldn’t want a diverse church just because America is more diverse, but because it is the outworking of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Diversity in leadership. // Your leadership should reflect the congregation you want to have. That doesn’t mean that someone is on the immigration team just because they are Latino, or someone is on the urban team just because they are Black. It means sharing the pulpit and needs to be reflected in leadership positions that make decisions, such as executive pastors and small group pastors.
Cross-cultural competency is important. // Love means being willing to learn about someone else’s culture. When you have the majority culture, you don’t have to listen to others’ stories. Choose to listen so you can understand where people are coming from, and what they experience in their lives. In the gospel, our ethnic differences don’t need to be obliterated, they can be celebrated. All of us through the blood of Jesus are equally declared righteous.
Healing our racial divide and living in His light. // Derwin’s book, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation, is meant to help leaders lead more effectively in the area of racial reconciliation. It goes through Scripture, showing the heart of God, and how God from the beginning envisioned a reconciled multiethnic family in loving community, reflecting his beauty and healing presence in the world.
Don’t miss the giveaway unSeminary is offering to the first five leaders who commit to reading Derwin’s book with another leader at their church. For a chance to win two free copies of How to Heal Our Racial Divide, respond to an email from Rich with your interest.
You can learn more about Derwin Gray, his book, and other resources, such as The Multiethnic Church Roundtable, at his website www.derwinlgray.com. Or follow along with Transformation Church at transformationchurch.tc.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. My name’s Rich and the host around these parts and I am just so honored to have our guest with us today, Dr. Derwin Gray. He’s the lead pastor at Transformation Church it was started in 2010 by himself and his lovely wife, Vicki. Ah, if you don’t know Transformation I don’t know where you’ve been, but it’s a multi-ethic multi-generational missional-shaped community in South Carolina. Over the years Transformation has launched a bunch of campuses and locations including at the Kershaw Correctional Institute and the Lee Correctional Institute. They have outreach opportunities in a number of others. They have a location in Spain, which is amazing. On top of all the Transformation Church stuff that ah that that Derwin’s involved in, he also is a speaker and author, and just an all around great guy. Derwin, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Hey thank you so much, Rich. Appreciate that and as you were just saying about Transformation Church, I mean God has been incredibly gracious and he has brought some incredible Gospel partners who serve along in the staff and in the congregation. And so Jesus is building his church. We’re simply his hands in his feet, but I sure am grateful that he called my wife and I a start Transformation Church and it’s beautiful to see it blossom and mature. And yeah, I’m just blown away and grateful. Thank you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well we’re so honored that you would you know have that you’d come back on the show. So a little behind the scenes, friends, that are listening in. We’re hovering right around 6000 episodes and when I was looking back over ah the episodes I was thinking man, who would I like to have back on and Derwin was at the top of that list. I really wanted to have you back on, partly to loop back on something you said. We were talking about, which I’m hoping to dive in today, racial reconciliation issues and um I was, up until that conversation, you know I felt like oh I’m like a pretty progressive leader and want to do what I can to ah be the kind of church that reflects our community, and and have led in that way and have we taken you know real practical steps in that way over the years. And you graciously challenged me in that episode and to to actually think a bigger thought, ask a bigger question, which is actually the gospel is about reconciliation and it’s about ultimately ah, the kingdom of God and creating a multi-ethnic future even now. And that has stuck with me and so many times over the years I’ve said to people as we’ve been talking about these issues, I said you know my friend Derwin, he he leaned on me on this issue and and and I really have just… And so I I just am so thankful for you, thankful for your leadership. And so I’d love to pick up that conversation…
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …and I know this is one of those you know conversations you find yourself in, but I just want to say thank you for that all those years ago. I appreciate your you know, even gracious and and loving challenge in the midst of ah you know, even a podcast. So appreciate that.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Well and I appreciate you being a good student, and humble, and listening, even five years later. So so so pretty much um, typically within the American Church context we tend to be very pragmatic and pragmatistic says if it’s right, do it.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Or if I’m sorry if it works, do it…
Rich Birch — Mm if it works do it. Right. Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Not if it’s right.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Because the way God’s economy works is it’s not about doing it because it works, do it because it’s faithful. And so when it pertains to.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — racial reconciliation, this is not a side issue…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think in a desire to have people come to Christ it’s like a beautiful car that we have stripped to its most minimum aspects and go okay, this is the car. No actually it’s a part of the car. And so within evangelicalism typically we say this: believe in Jesus. He’ll forgive your sins. You won’t go to hell; you go to heaven when you die; he’ll be with you. Well, that’s a part of the car. But the entire car goes back to in Genesis 11 when God’s family scatters. In Genesis 12 he calls a man by the name of Abram, changes his name to Abraham, which means father of many. He says Abraham I’m I’m going to give you a big old family made up of. All the nations of the earth. So let me give you a big old multi-ethnic family, and through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, in the nation of Israel and ultimately Jesus comes, the Jewish savior. And so Jesus’s sinless life, his atoning sacrificial death on the cross…
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …His resurrection from the dead, seated as Lord, descending of the Spirit is not just to forgive our sins, but is to give Abraham that family with different colored skins. And through the Holy Spirit’s power, through the Gospel as we begin to love each other across our ethnic and demonic barriers.
Rich Birch — Mmm.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Jesus says you will know my disciples because they love one another.
Rich Birch — So good.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And so there’s a difference between Consumer Christianity which says, Jesus is a means to an end, and Authentic Christianity that says Jesus is the end.
Rich Birch — So good.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And so Jesus being the end… Romans 8:29 says that he’s the first born of many brothers and sisters from the dead. So in his humanity, he is the prototype of this new multi-ethnic family. And so this is not intrinsic to, this is not separate from the gospel. This is intrinsic to the gospel. What I like to say to folks is listen, over the last twelve years of Transformation Church not only have we seen over 7000 people come to faith. Not only have 4 of us from around a table turned into thousands. Not only have we seen over 1000 baptized. Not only do we have um a free grocery store and we do backpack meals, but we also have a multi-ethnic congregation and we understand Justice. So what I’m proposing is that the gospel is so much bigger than an ah individual transaction.
Rich Birch — So true.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — God saves us as individuals to put us into a family, and this family is a multicolored family. And I know some of the pushback right now is like, well, why do we have to talk about race? And I’m like well because the bible does.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Think about it. The nation of Israel were slaves in Egypt for 5 years. Canaanites Hitties, Jebusites, (…) on the way to promised land. Babylonians, Romans, Barbarian Scythians, Cornelius was an Italian, there as a Samaritan woman at the well, there’s a good Samaritan. At the end of the bible there’s every nation tribe and tongue around Christ. Our colors and our cultures have the image of God. God redeems our colors and our culture because this colorful family is a beautiful reflection into the world. And I believe it’s a dark, demonic attack that has kept the church silent, particularly the white aspect of Christianity silent…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …on this issue and it’s it’s hurting the witness of Christ so bad.
Rich Birch — Absolutely. Yeah, no absolutely, And I I appreciate that, Derwin, like that is um, yeah, that’s ah, so true and I appreciate you raising the flag for that and and you know providing corrective witness as, particularly to leaders as we think differently, and and try to walk out of or walk away from as as you say demonic practices in the past. I remember when I was in… so like I’ve done a lot of work over the years on church growth, like that’s where I spent a lot of time thinking about how do we help our churches reach more people. And ah part of the irony of that is I only remember one lecture from school on church growth. And it was the homogeneous unit – that was what was taught. Like and and when you talk about the pragmatic nature.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yep.
Rich Birch — Um, that was a pragmatic approach that was in hindsight, you know is like you say demonic. It’s it’s just because it works, and I’m not even sure it works anymore, but just because it works ah, you know doesn’t mean it’s it’s right. But you know that um, you know I think that has impacted so many of our churches over the years…
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, yeah…
Rich Birch — …we’ve we have been stuck on this idea.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …and and and yeah and and and, Rich, you know, particularly for the executive pastors and ministry leaders that are listening, they don’t even know that they’ve been baptized in the homogeneous…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …unit principle. So let’s just do a little history. First of all, what is it? The homogenous unit principle was a principle developed by ah Donald McGovern he was a missionary in India. And in India you have a caste.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And so what he said is I’m gonna reach the different people of those different castes, but then I’m going to bring them holistically into a church together as the family of God. Because if you don’t, you’re gonna have racist and classist class-filled churches. Well Americans got a hold to to to it and conveniently it fit racist culture of okay, yeah, if you want to grow fast. And who doesn’t want to grow fast? So in order to grow fast, let’s make sure that we reach people who think alike, look alike, same political persuasion. And what you have is you have these churches of sameness. And research shows that homogeneous churches increase political division, racial prejudice. Um it it it deteriorates discipleship. And then let me add this, Rich, is… and I don’t want to be ah… hear my heart in this.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — All’s the church growth movement has done for the most part is made bigger churches bigger. Because you have better speakers, better music, better facilities and Christians go to the better place to consume.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — But if you look at the rise of Christianity in total, um, it’s not really rising a whole bunch in America. Where the church is growing is in Latin America, Africa, China, India. The fastest conversion rates are in Iran. And so what the homogenous unit principle’s done and the church growth movement has done is you have basically created “Amazon” churches, and then “mom and pop” churches and there’s really not a whole bunch in between.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And our church is a very large church, but our methodology for going ah about it is not a consumptive model. Like I believe that you can actually grow…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …healthily, without having to be pragmatic, and creating these bubbles of isolation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Yeah and and so this is a part of what I love about Transformation. This is why I love watching what your church does and pointing people towards you because I really do think that, and and maybe I’m just too pragmatic, but I love watching and trying to learn from what your church is doing to work this out practically.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Totally.
Rich Birch — To work out, okay, what is this… how how does this… how does the rubber meet the road on this? Because I think there are, unfortunately, there are a lot of leaders that are out there who are, like you say, we’ve been kind of baptized in the homogeneous movement, Even if we don’t know it…
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — …like even you know even if we don’t we’re not aware of it. That’s just that’s that’s been the dominant idea, but you know and I know that ah the church of the future is more diverse than the church of the past. It has to be. Like that we have to be more like the gospel. We have to work this thing out. Um, so what would you say you know I’m sure you have church leaders talk to you all the time.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And you know ask the question, okay, so I’m I’m convinced you know I’m not resisting on ah, the you know the idea that our church needs to take steps increase steps towards diversity.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And I’m not you know… I’m I’m with you on that, and they you come from a genuine place.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah.
Rich Birch — What would be some of those steps that you would say, okay here are some some steps we should take towards that. What does that look like?
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, so the so the first one by way of illustration, when Wolverine got the adamantium put inside of him…
Rich Birch — I love it! Love it!
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …it changed and it it it changed it changed his DNA, right? So you have to have more than simply, I agree with the idea.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — The theological conviction that this is a gospel issue has to be the adamantium inside of you. Because if not, you won’t be strong enough.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — This is what I tell all my white pastor friends. If you’re serious about this, you’re going to lose 30% of your people in one year, so your theological roots had better be like the adamantium in Wolverine and so that’s why I wrote my book, How to Heal Our Racial Divide. Pastors can listen to our messages. We also have a roundtable called Building Multiethnic Church Round Table, like this has to be in you deeply. It can’t be like we’re not trying to have diverse churches because America’s more diverse.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — We’re trying to have more diverse churches because that is the outworking of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So that’s first. Secondly once you have those theological gospel convictions, your leadership has to reflect the congregation that you want to have. And when I say leadership I don’t mean like you know the one minority guy, if he’s black, you know he’s always on the urban team.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — You know he goes on because only black people live in poor, you know, and if he’s latino then he’s on the immigration team.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — But, you know, sharing the pulpit. Um executive pastors, administrators, small group pastors – so it has to be reflective in leadership that makes these decisions. Thirdly cross-cultural ah competency is so important. Let me give you an example. In my sermon from last week, I opened up with the story from Encanto. Encanto is a movie about latinos…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …we have latinos at our church. And what I opened up with is this, I said yes I’m Felix. I look like him. I’m Felix and everybody laughs. But one of the themes in the movie is we we don’t talk about Bruno.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And everybody’s like you had a laugh and I said well for most of our white brothers and sisters in Christ you were not taught don’t talk about Bruno, you were taught don’t talk about race. So I used a latino movie to bring out a point, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And so cross-cultural competency is understanding that Mexicans are not the same as Puerto Ricans.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Puerto Ricans are not the same as Cubans. Cubans are not the same as Venezuelans. And then you have various a… so so love means I’m willing to learn about your culture.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And that’s what Paul did in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 … to the Jew I become a Jew, to the Gentile I become a Gentile. In other words, he understands their culture. So empathy and sympathy and saying, hey man I get you. I understand you. I feel your pain. And I believe that’s what Jesus did with the woman at at the well. She was a non-Jew. I believe that that’s what Jesus did when he told Jerryius you know, ah like I haven’t seen this much faith in all of Israel. Like cross-cultural competency. But here’s the hard part…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …and I want my white brothers and sisters to to hear this. When you’re the majority culture. It’s harder for you to listen to other people’s stories because you don’t have to.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Because because as the dominant culture, it’s like an elementary school when all the desks were pretty much right-handed desks.
Rich Birch — Right. Yep. Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — But for left-handed people people was very hard to write…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …like they could write but it was very hard. So the right-handed people had right privilege.
Rich Birch — Hmm.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And so majority culture people have privilege, meaning the world was created by them and for them, and so why listen? So it takes great depths of humility very incarnationally to listen to someone else’s stories. Like one of the one of the things that’s really frustrating as a 51-year-old black man is I shouldn’t have to defend that racism is still a problem. I shouldn’t have to like.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — I shouldn’t have to like give a blood test and a lie ah, you know, ah ah, a lie detector test. I’m like no the statistics are here. But here’s what’s happened though, bro, is at our church we’ll have white families that adopt black kids, particularly black boys, and when they’re young, they’re cute and cuddly. But when they become teenagers, they become a threat. And then those same parents will say things like, we had no idea that it was this way. Our black adoptive son is treated much differently…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …than our white ah adopted son. We had no idea. And I lovingly say how come you had no idea?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Black people have been sharing that with you for a long time.
Rich Birch — Long time. For your whole life.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Well what happened is the pain became approximate.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Let’s not wait till the pain becomes approximate to be our brothers and sisters’ keeper, because that’s the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yeah, dude, I love this. A number of years ago I read ah Jim Wallis’s book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and The Bridge to a New America, which in that he…I loved that book. It was fantastic and in that it one of the eye-opening… and this was one of in my own journey and these again I would say from thinking, wow like you’re pretty progressive to like you don’t know anything – you’re an idiot. Um in my own you know in my own life. He talks about very similarly he said, you know talk to ah as a challenge to a white guy. He’s like hey, talk to a black friend, black male friend, guy about the talk that his parents had about what happens when you get pulled over by a cop.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — And so a good friend of mine I talked to and had that conversation and it was an eye-opening experience. I was like I um was a little shocked by that. I was like I you know as ah as I remember I I don’t remember my parents ever telling me about what it was like to talk about cops, if we ever had that conversation, was like don’t be an idiot in speed. That was basically it. Um and and so yeah I I appreciate, you know, you pushing on that issue. That’s another great book for folks that may be looking to journey.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, you you know, and and also you know like you you have the police brutality. You know I I think those are the easier aspects of things that you see. What I’m what I’m trying to help the body of Christ with is particularly for the people who don’t who don’t think they’re prejudiced.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — You know they’ll say things like yeah well you can be my brother in Christ, but not my brother-in-law. Or you know like seminary, I…
Rich Birch — It’s messed up.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — I heard how great Jonathan Edwards was and George Woodfield, and they both condoned slavery.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — But yet Dr. King, who may have had affairs, was considered unsaved. But yet those guys who owned slaves well they were men of their times. I’m like no. Ah, William Wilberfors, John Wesley were abolitionists. Um, he you know? So it’s not been an issue of your time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And then if a black man writes a book, it’s black theology.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — If a latino man writes a book, it’s latino theology. If a white man writes a book, it’s theology.
Rich Birch — Just theology. Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, and so what I’m trying to do is show how in the gospel…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …our ethnic distinctions don’t need to be obliterated. They can be celebrated. That our ethnic differences actually make us different for the better. And that all of us, through the purifying blood of Jesus are equally declared righteous, so therefore when we look at each other we see the righteousness of Jesus and we treat each other accordingly.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And that moves us to Philippians 2:3 – do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but consider others better than yourself.
Rich Birch — Love it. Listen it’s funny you you mentioned Encanto because I… first of all I love the Felix, I love that! You know that you must get that…
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — It is true I am Felix.
Rich Birch — …and I like how he treats his wife you treat Vicki the same way. It’s so fantastic.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Um, yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah, but so with so much respect, which is great. But um, you know that’s an interesting that’s an interesting movie because I I watched it and I had this same similar kind of experience where I was like there’s a whole bunch of stuff happening in this movie that I don’t get at all that’s happening on a bunch of different cultural levels and I think is amazing. I’m like this is great. And it’s a kids’ movie, right? It’s a kids’ movie. But it’s you know, fantastic. What would you say to leaders who are leaning in to say hey, I want to grow my own cross-cultural competency. I I want to grow that – sure I I feel deficient in that area. I feel like hey there’s there’s you know something I need to grow and what what would you suggest to to them?
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — I would say read my book How to Heal Our Racial Divide.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — That’s why I wrote it.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Cause ah readers are leaders, leaders or readers.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And so I wrote this book for readers to become leaders and for leaders to read it to lead more effectively.
Rich Birch — Love it; love it.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Um, so that’s the first thing is it’s like ah you know about 29 years ago this week I was drafted by the Colts. So I had to learn the playbook.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Ah, couldn’t just go play I had to learn the playbook.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray —And so learn the playbook which is written throughout the bible, and you’ll begin to see as you read my book, you’ll begin to see scriptures and things you never ever thought, like how did I miss this? Well I think we miss it because the devil wants us to. And the teachers who taught it um oftentimes it was the most conservative seminaries that were holding the gospel that were the most racist. I mean could you imagine Dr. Tony Evans not being able to get into some schools? In 1980?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …there was a church in Atlanta that wouldn’t allow him to be a member of the church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s crazy.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — I get emails all the time just a few weeks ago um, some people who came to our roundtable, had people leave their church because the first two black people in the history of that church got baptized. So they left the church.
Rich Birch — Oh my goodness.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah yeah, so um, so like really to grow in cross-cultural competency you have to read authors and people who’ve been doing that, and they’ll take you back to the bible and you’ll see insights. You know like Jesus…
Rich Birch — Love it. Right.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …I mean when he goes to Samaria that’s an exercise in cross-cultural competency. It’s an exercise in reconciliation. It’s an exercise in overcoming misogyny.
Rich Birch — What so ah yeah I want to make sure people are are pick up a copy of this book. So again, you you reference a name there. It’s How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, And the First Christians Knew, About Racial Reconciliation – again this friends you should pick this up where books are available. Has there, now that the book’s been out for a while, have there been ah any kind of surprising interactions with it that either you’ve heard that are kind of interesting stories, that you know the impact could be positive or negative, ah that it’s had as you know as it’s been out there for a while now?
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, the the first one is montree college is using it as a textbook for one of their classes.
Rich Birch — Oh cool huh.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — So that’s pretty awesome.
Rich Birch — That is awesome.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Ah Pastor Rick Warren said over a hundred books in his library on the topic that mine is different in that it’s so biblical and gospel laden, but also with cultural awarenesses and practices. You know he says it’s the best that he’s ever read. Um I’m getting tons of feedback just from people going, this is what we need the church needs this the church needs this. We need this. More people need to read the book. And so it’s been overwhelmingly positive. For pastors who are interested at our Church, Transformation Church, we’re doing a series called color blessed where I’m working through some of the material material in the book because we’re discipling our congregation, and so you can listen to see how I do this. You know like I’m not writing from a classroom I’m writing with dirt under my fingernails from actually pastoring a multi-ethnic church, having a doctorate in new testament and so I just want to be helpful to the bride of Christ, because, man, the last six years has just really been embarrassing for Christians.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And I want to lay this challenge out. We’ve got all these multisites, and all this stuff, and under our noses Q-anon fills the church. Christian Nationalism…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …fills the church. Racial division…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …anti-vax, people arguing about masks. And we got all these campuses and all this stuff, but I’m goingh how is it on our watch that we are a part of the problem, not the solution?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Like we like NASA we have a problem, and we’re looking at it in the mirror.
Rich Birch — Yes, look.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — So I just want to… I think we need a new reformation. And I hope my book is a part of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah so good. Yeah I agree. It’s interesting. One of the things I you know I end up doing is end up in churches, and you know in the current season their, you know, leadership is are often asking like what are you hearing? What are you seeing? And the Q-anon you know Christian Nationalist thing I reference that as one of the top 3 things that I’m like, this has this is an issue for all of our churches. It is ah, it is like a weed that is growing up around us that we have to, we can’t we can’t ignore we have to do something about.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yes.
Rich Birch — And even if your church is not. It’s impacting your church even if you haven’t seen haven’t seen the evidence of it yet. It’s huge.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Well this is this is ah about, um oh gosh, probably four or five years ago I was on a podcast and I said to the podcaster, I said if you rarely preach about the sin of racism and racial injustice at your church racists are filled in your pews. And I got all the pushback. And then every one of them have come back and said yep, you were right. So within white evangelicalism a lot of these things have taken root…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Because a lot of the messages are very individualistic. They’re very therapeutic.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — They’re very 4 ways to get over this five ways to get over this. It’s not a real expiration of Jesus, and what he’s accomplished. And then you’re taught don’t talk about race; don’t talk about politics. Don’t talk about controversial issues and while we’re being silent, News Max 1, Fox News, CNN, CSNBC…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — …all these news channels are discipling our people and we’re wondering why if we say so something that Carlson Tucker doesn’t agree with they agree with Carlson Tucker instead of us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Because we have been hirelings and not shepherds having difficult conversations. Last week’s message that I did is called how do we have color blessed conversations. What I meant is we’re not going to be “let’s don’t talk about Bruno” people. No, we’re going to talk about the issues in the framework of the gospel.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — And we’re gonna have four L’s love, listen, learn, and leverage.
Rich Birch — Mmm, love it. Listen, friends, who are you know, friends, who are listening in. I so in my role I get books sent to me all the time. This book was a book I bought with my own money because I want to support Derwin. I want to support what he’s done and have read it and found it challenging, and helpful, and biblical – all 3 of those things. This is the kind of book you read and it it draws you in and so I want to encourage you, and Derwin didn’t know I was going to do this. I’m not trying to make a big deal, I just want more people to read the book I want. I what I want to do is give away 10 copies of this that I’ll pay for directly. What I’d love you to do if you’re listening in is zip me an email. You know you get a lot of emails from me, if you’ve been listening long enough. You’ve signed up to our list. The first 5 leaders that reach out what I want to do is I’m going to buy you 2 copies under this condition: that you find another leader at your church and that you read it together, that you commit to reading it together. So it’s not like a lone thing. I want you and another leader to read this book together and then have a conversation about it. And I’d love to hear about it I’d love to hear how that goes so again first five people that email me look for that. We’ll send you those books. I would love to have that to hear you know how that conversation goes. And and for folks that aren’t there I would love for you to pick it up. So go to Amazon. It’s How to Heal Our Racial Divide by Derwin Gray. I’d love for for you to pick it up. Well Dr. Gray, I really appreciate you being on. Is there anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I would say to every leader that’s listening um is this is is Jesus is the greatest prize we could ever possess. That everything we could ever want is found in him. And some of you may be listening and saying well what does that mean? This is what I’ll say it means this the nearer you draw unto him, the clearer that answer will be. That everything we do and say will be fueled by his resurrection life. And so racial reconciliation is one aspect of what it means to be a disciple. And as you read this book, your love for Jesus, your love for scripture, your love for people, your love for yourself and his mission will grow exponentially. It’ll be healthy for you. And just know that I’m cheering you on. I believe in what God is doing in your life, and it’s an honor to partner with you all in the gospel.
Rich Birch — Well thank you so much, sir. If where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church which where do we want to send them online for that?
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Um, yeah, just go to derwinlgray.com – derwinlgray.com – that’s gray with an “a” derwinlgray.com and that’ll take you to everything.
Rich Birch — Great. Thanks so much – appreciate you being here today, sir.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray — Thank you.
Leading in Our Churches & Community in this Current Moment with Dino Rizzo
Jun 16, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. In this episode we’ll be chatting with Dino Rizzo, the executive director of the Association of Related Churches (ARC) as well as part of the senior leadership team at Church of the Highlands. ARC was created in 2000 by six pastors and has grown to be a preeminent church planting and leadership support organization.
Having been a church planter himself, Dino has a passion for training other church planters, and coming alongside them as an older brother in Christ to cheer them along on their journey. Listen in as Dino shares encouragement for church planters and leaders in this season.
Decide on your outlook. // It’s been a season where church leaders everywhere are evaluating if their souls are healthy and their spirits are full. Painful seasons can cause you to focus on the complications of church and leadership and become disillusioned. Bring your focus back to the simple gospel of Jesus Christ and decide what your outlook will be.
Look at your soul. // If you find you are frustrated, angry, fixated on the negative, and comparing yourself to others, it’s a sign that you need to shift your focus. Remember that you are valued by God for who you are and not what you do. You are seen and loved. Look at the field you’re in and know that this is where God has you in this season. He’s responsible for your usefulness.
Reach out to others. // If you feel isolated, remember that you’re not alone. Take time to cultivate relationships and be proactive about reaching out to those around you. If you have friends you haven’t seen or talked to in a while, you can be the one to take that first step in reconnecting with them.
Serve your community. // So many times the way out of your own pain is by serving someone else. There is no peace or fulfillment when you live your life for just me, myself, and I. Dino recommends that before having your first church service at a new church launch, serve your city. You’re not there to just build a church; you’re there to make the city better and will grow the church by engaging and serving your community.
Empower your people to make a difference. // Church of the Highlands wants to empower their people to make a difference so they hold a Serve Day in July with the purpose of serving the people in their community in various ways. An “all call” event like this helps to pull in people who aren’t already exercising those serving muscles. Rather than a one-time event, a serve day is meant to build a culture of service at your church. As you create serving opportunities, you can develop leaders, build partnerships, and plug people into small groups where serving is a regular part of life.
Be a blessing today. // With all of the pain and hurt in the world, one of the greatest things we can do is decide to be a blessing each day. Get up and bless the people around you, even in the smallest ways, and model it to your church. For ideas on how to begin, visit www.serveday.com and www.servolution.org.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Super honored to have Dino Rizzo with us today. He’s the executive director of ARC, The Association of Related Churches. If you don’t know ARC, man, this is an incredible movement. It was started in 2000 by six pastors—and one of them’s on our show today, Dino—and has grown to be really a preeminent church planting organization and really leadership support organization. They’ve launched, I think at the last count, over a thousand churches in the last twenty years which is amazing and they just keep it going. They they not only launch but support churches. They have just all kinds of you know, great helps for churches and they really have a focus on churches reaching unchurched folks. And so I just really love ARC; we love that whole community. So, Dino, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Dino Rizzo — Thanks Rich! Always enjoy it and love last time we had a conversation, and appreciate your listeners and all those that are that are making a difference.
Rich Birch — No, it’s so good, Dino. Why don’t you fill out the picture for us. Kind of give us ah, you know the Dino Rizzo story – ARC and you’re also involved in leadership at Church of the Highlands, so kind of fill out the picture for us a little bit.
Dino Rizzo — Well, you know you know like everybody that that has had an encounter with Christ, you’re you’re just such a debtor to what God has done in your life, and I I always felt that way. You know I was reached through outreach; I was not raised in church. A little small church in Dillon, South Carolina…
Rich Birch — Nice.
Dino Rizzo — …made a move towards me when I was working at at the beach, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And ah so church did an outreach – it impacted my heart. I ended up in a church you know, got to go to bible college, you know which was a shocker, involved with student ministry – I’ve always loved student ministry.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dino Rizzo — My wife and I planted a church. We we planted a church in ’92. And so during that time you just spend. You need resources, you need help, you need some training, you need some how-tos, and there wasn’t that many, so we had the ability to help church planters. We wanted to do that. And through that process a good friend of mine, Billy Hornsby, who’s Chris Hodges’ father-in-law came to me along with Greg Surratt, who pastors at Seacoast, said, what if we came together and trained church planters to launch churches, and and do all we can can to to champion them? And so that’s been, you know, and I was pastoring a church. Pastored church in Baton Rouge for 20 years, and then I’ve been doing this now in Birmingham with ARC. We we just launched our 1,031 church…
Rich Birch — Love it!
Dino Rizzo — …just a few weeks ago. And then I get to serve at Church of the Highlands. I love Chris Hodges; he’s a dear friend. Pastor Chris has just been ah, he’s just the real deal. And and then all the lead team and all the churches that support ARC, and people like yourself that help us champion this idea to train a church planter where they can go in and launch a church. And then to be just some just be older brothers to them and just cheer them on as they go about their journey.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it, Dino. I you know just want to honor you and what you know what God’s done through your leadership and your group of friends who over the years have made a huge difference. You know there are not a lot of people who you know you can point to and say hey, you know they were catalytic in a movement of God, and you are definitely one of those people, so it’s really our honor to have you on today and and to kind of tap your brain a little bit. And yeah, just love what you’re you know what you’re up to. But you know you talk to church leaders a lot, you engage with a lot of church leaders. A part of what I love about ARC we actually had Greg on, Pastor Greg on a couple episodes ago so it was it’s been good to kind of connect with our ARC friends again. And one of the things I love about ARC is—and you’ve just heard it, friends—you guys bleed loving leaders. Like the the impression I get from you is like, wow like those people love leaders, like they love church leaders. You want to help and you talk to a lot of church leaders you engage with a lot of leaders. What are some of the questions or conversations you seem to be having regularly with leaders in this season that you kind of keep bumping up against as you’re engaging with them?
Dino Rizzo — Yeah, it’s it’s a unique season. I mean we we had a lot of conversations during Covid about how do you make it? How we going to survive? Ah, you know how do, how do you, how do you deal with the fallout of everything that’s happening in our world. Lot of pain in our world, lot of trauma, lot of hurt. And so you’re trying to help people find healing and find health. Ah leaders, people who lead churches, people lead college groups, small groups, worship leaders, on and on. So we’re doing, you know you do everything you can to help them.
Dino Rizzo — I know, you know, I’ve I’ve had my journey. I’ve had my painful seasons. There’s been times that, you know that that I was not where I needed to be, and so those are tough times. I think everybody is evaluating you know is their soul healthy? Is their spirit whole? You look around at a world. There’s a lot of things going on. We’ve seen things recently in the church that is that are that is painful. And you’ve got to just kind of decide what your outlook’s gonna be. So you’re right I spend a lot of time on the phone with pastors and and planters and just friends, just trying to help them to have an outlook from God’s word, from what Jesus has done. I really am old school. We look to Jesus; we look to his word. The worship, prayer, friendship. You know the world is very complicated. Church can be very complicated. Leadership gets complicated. You can get hurt. You can get disillusioned. I try to bring some things back to the simple gospel of Jesus Christ. Serving people and trying not best to stay healthy through what I’ve learned through grace and mercy.
Rich Birch — What would be some of those signs, as you’re talking to a leader, that you’d say hmm you know this person may need their outlook kind of refocused on Jesus, or like realigned. Maybe you’re in a conversation and you know the call it, you know, you get a prompting for the Spirit, or you’re like you’re hey there’s there’s I need to lean in here. What would be some of those kind of telltale signs of like oh here’s here’s a conversation I need to to to maybe help someone in this season. Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — Sure. Well, Rich, a lot of times I can hear it because I I’ve walked through it myself. And so…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Dino Rizzo — I know you know I know but you know like you’re not in a good space because there’s been times I’ve not been in a good space.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Dino Rizzo — And so you’re looking for frustration. You’re looking for anger. Ah, you’re looking for negative. You you know when when we go negative, when we go critical, when we when we’re frustrated beyond what is healthy. When we all of a sudden you know everything is bad. You know we we believe the worst. Ah you know now we’re focusing on everything that’s not working. How about what we don’t have. And and you begin you can hear that in someone’s conversation.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Dino Rizzo — And I think you’re listening for that, or you’re looking for the signs that that someone is unhealthy or that they’re not in ah in a good place, and you’re just trying to bring them to a place of understanding that, hey, you know, you’re not a human doing. You’re a human being.
Rich Birch — So good.
Dino Rizzo — It’s not about what you produce. It’s not about what you perform. You know God didn’t call us to be celebrities or producers. God called us to be his children. So sometimes you got to bring it all back to the the base of I am loved.
Rich Birch — Mmm.
Dino Rizzo — I am seen. I am noticed. And I’m cared for. And I’m grateful to do anything I can for our Savior today.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — Whatever that may be, I’m just thankful for it. And you know how it is, Rich. Everybody’s comparing today. You compare yourself. And that’s such a poison.
Rich Birch — So true.
Dino Rizzo — And so you’re just trying to get God’s sight. Look at the field that you’re in. Here’s where God has you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — He’s responsible for your usefulness, and settle in on that.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s so good. I love that. One of the things that I would say is a hallmark of ARC is it does seem like a great network of friends. It’s people who even just how it started and how it’s continued. But there’s a lot of leaders that are isolated who do feel like they’re on their own. Like they don’t know anybody that they can talk to about what’s going on in their world. What would you say to a leader that’s in that spot today that that feels a little bit disconnected, that feels like hey I I don’t have somebody I could I don’t I don’t have an overseer I could call to kind of wrestle through these issues? How how how do we how do we fix that?
Dino Rizzo — Yeah, well, it’s isolation is a dangerous place. I mean you you think when you’re alone in your thoughts, you could come to the wrong conclusions.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Dino Rizzo — It’s just every man, every woman, a couple can, a person on a staff, an XP, a worship leader – when you just get alone in your thoughts. So I would encourage people to you know to know that, man, you you can’t you can’t let that thing boil over too much. You can’t let that ruminate too much in your Spirit. When you’re when you feel lonely, when you feel forgotten, when you feel overlooked, when you are when your heart when there’s you’re disheartened about your leadership, or somebody else’s leadership… hey someone’s let you down. Man, I’ll tell you I went through a season of my life where a leader let me down, and then as a leader I’ve let people down…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dino Rizzo — …and you know you’re you’re trying to get that person back that, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one who’s ever done this. There’s a thing called the Holy Spirit. There are mature people that can talk about it. Don’t let it stew and just realize that, man, you’re gonna be okay. You’ll get through this. We will get through this. But you know and and then really you have to seek it out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — Ah to I’ve got some good friends in my life. And I’ve had to I’ve had to fertilize them. I’ve had to dig around them. I’ve had to text. I can’t sit back and say why ain’t nobody texting me?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dino Rizzo — Why anybody hitting me up? I’m gonna text a friend. I’m gonna call a friend. And I’ll get on a plane and go see somebody when I feel like I need to do that. So I’ve always I’ve always tried to be proactive in that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love that. That’s a great encouragement for folks today that even, hey if you feel isolated like you, you know, the ball’s in your court. You got to pick up the phone.
Dino Rizzo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You know I’ve said in another context, a great place to find those contacts is to scroll to the bottom of your text because there’s people that you haven’t texted in a long time, and it’s like who are some of those people down there that you know you need to reengage with you got to jump in again and say hey what you know how are you doing? What’s going on in ah you know in your world? You know I’d love to pivot and talk about community service a little bit. I know this is a passion for you – mobilizing people in our churches to you know, get out of their seats into the streets, making a difference. Doing things to actually you know to to make our communities more like heaven, to make our communities more like what what God wants them to be like. Um, that’s been a part of your story. That’s been a part of your encouragement over the years. Does that still work today? Is that the kind of thing we should still be doing? Is that like or is that just like an old idea that like we need to leave that back behind?
Dino Rizzo — Yeah I think it works more than ever because people are hurting.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo —And there’s such a ah deficiency of so many things in people’s lives. You know the the depression, the anxiety, the trauma is on is on the rise. The ah a food food challenges in certain communities, reduced opportunities in certain people groups. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of pain. A lot of fear, lot of shortage of a lot of things. So I don’t know if there’s ever been a more important time for us to to lift up our head. And you know a lot of times that’s the answer out of your own depression. That’s the answer out of your own pain, is you know, they talk about these these things of depression and and anxiety, that’s so often so one of the ways is is serving someone else.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Dino Rizzo — And so I think there’s such healing to that in your own heart and so lifting up our head, noticing what’s going on around us. we get so into our our thing, our world. Noticing that there’s pain and there’s challenge and there’s a neighbor, there’s a people group, there’s a nurse in home, there’s a school that’s being challenged. There’s somebody that’s overworked. There’s a widow. There’s a single mom. And and let’s engage, and you know sure we can give them foods, we put food basket together. We put a care kit together. We cut the grass. But you know what else we can do? We can sit listen and talk to somebody.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Dino Rizzo — And so all those ways are ways to serve. And I think, Rich, one of the things that that’s been happening is you know because I talked to so many church planters, guys that are going into new cities, I mean we’re we’re parachuting in a city…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
Dino Rizzo — …and you know I’m starting to church I’m.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — Ah, can’t wait to preach; I can’t wait to I have my first service.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dino Rizzo — And and so it’s kind of too focused. I’m always talking to church planters, hey before you have your first service, serve the city.
Rich Birch — Yes, so true.
Dino Rizzo — You’re not there to build that church. You’re there to make that city better. And then that goes right into just humanity. There is no peace, there is no fulfillment when you just live your life in me, myself, and I.
Rich Birch — So true. Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — You got to move from that and so helping people have ideas and discover ways to engage their community and I really believe it still. Ah, think you can’t grow a church…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — …without eventually engaging your city.
Rich Birch — No, I totally agree. You know longtime listeners will know that that’s ah, definitely been a thread through our podcast. It’s it’s something we talk about pretty consistently in our coaching, around you know, churches when you you know around how do we see the kind of engagement with our community serving our community as really key, one of the keys, to you know, growing our church. When you think about that from a church planting point of view, there’s so much you can do, like there’s so… You know gosh like I I always say to church planters, man like you are like you’re going to have this giant home in heaven because they just are incredible what they’ve done, what they do consistently. But but looking to kind of serve in the community, trying to mobilize your people to make a difference in practical ways in in your community—whatever that language looks like for you—um it it feels like that could fall to the bottom of the list pretty easily. It could be like, wow there’s so much else to do.
Dino Rizzo — Sure.
Rich Birch — Do you see that or have you seen that be a critical piece of church plants that make it, or church plants that thrive? Is there a connection between those two? Ah, you know, have you seen that as like a pattern that consistently has happened there? Kind of talk to us about that a little bit.
Dino Rizzo — Yeah, I would for sure think that. I would ah there’s a guy right now that’s planting a church, mayo so well, in Atlanta in a cool little area. It’s great some there’s some great churches in Atlanta – he’s found a little spot there in Sandy Springs called Live Church. But he launches in I think it’s September 18th. he’s having its first outreach tomorrow tomorrow.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Dino Rizzo — He’s a couple months away from launching…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
…but he’s gonna launch a he’s gonna do an outreach. He’s and I told him said why so early? He said I want to know the community.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Dino Rizzo — I want to know them and I want us to be known, that we care, that we’re there. And so I think it’s the heart of God that we care for our our city. I think Jesus is the example we serve because Jesus did. And then I think once you get the heart of God—ah I’m glad I’m in this city, I love my city, I love these people—then you got to do something that I call crack the code. You got to figure out what are the needs there. Because every city is different and their needs.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — Every it’s not a one size fits all. It’s not a rubber stamp. You there just every, you know, what’s happening in Boston is not what’s happening in Beaumont. That’s not what’s happening in Spokane.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — So there are different there’s pain, and struggle, and challenge different in all. So you’ve got to crack the code and figure that out. And then you begin to provide an opportunity. Hey we’re gonna do an outreach on Saturday; hey we’re gonna we’re gonna get together and we’re gonna we’ve seen a need we’ve, but we’ve identified a need and so we’re gonna we’re gonna select a day to do an outreach. We’re gonna gonna get leaders together come over bring those weed eaters.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dino Rizzo — You know, bring that that bucket over here. We’re gonna car wash. And then you know and you just go. And and you know what’s awesome? What I’ve seen happen is is it becomes a part of the celebration.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, right.
Dino Rizzo — It becomes a part of the culture that we care, we notice, and we love. I just think it’s the heart of Jesus. I’m always thrown off and excited when I read this verse Acts 10:38 – now God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. And how he went about doing good…
Rich Birch — So good.
Dino Rizzo — …and healing all who were oppressed by the devil and God was with them. It may be, Rich, my favorite scripture because it just shows you that there was power and there was service and there was blessing on this.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s the proclamation and demonstration right? It’s like those two go hand in hand, right? And how, you know, if we do one without the other it, it loses its it loses it. We’re not, we’re not living the kind of life, you know Jesus wants us to live. You know we have a lot of executive pastor types who listen in on the podcast and you know they might be listening in, you know there are a couple thousand person church, and they’re saying like we don’t really do anything like that. That’s not really our our deal. We’re good at like services. We’re good at getting people into boxes and doing that stuff, but we don’t mobilize our people. Talk to us from a Church Church of the Highlands point of view around what’s it look like to mobilize people at a larger scale, so not from a church, you know, a church plant point of view but like.
Dino Rizzo — Yeah.
Rich Birch — I know this is a big part of what God’s doing at Church of the Highlands. Talk to us what that looks like because if you guys can do it sure, a church of a couple thousand could do it. Talk talk to us about that.
Dino Rizzo — Well I mean the heart of Pastor Chris is to empower people to make a difference, so we want to give them them those opportunities so we we do a thing called Serve Day. It’s in July. A lot of churches do love weeks and they do it in the spring of the father’s just so you know at Christmas so you know that we we giving hope, or the Christmas tree. You’re just trying to provide an opportunity where there’s an all call. They say about 11% of the body of Christ has an outreach bent. So if you have a church of 200 there’s a couple in there that already think about bikes for children…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — …helping those that are have that that maybe are elderly, men thinking about what’s going on in the unreached people groups. You know there there’s just they’re all it’s already in them.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dino Rizzo — And some people already have that bent there in their profession. They’re a nurse and they’re a social worker…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — …care provider, they work at a treatment center – these wonderful people that that serve humanity all day long. So normally in a church, if you’re a church of 2000, your next week you got some people there already doing this.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Dino Rizzo — You’re trying to harness that with an all-call. And then from there we’re gonna identify leaders, and we’re gonna start doing some consistent things…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — …in a city, where consistently…
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — …we are there, because I don’t think it’s about one and done, or we’ve come in to rescue the city in this one day.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — No, no, no, no. We’re building culture. And for us our number one way that we’ve created is through small groups. We have small groups that have outreach bent…
Rich Birch — OK.
Dino Rizzo — …but really every ah small group even though it may be curriculum based it may be providing pastoral care, there is an element of compassion.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Dino Rizzo — We just feel like that’s a part of it. So it’s small groups and then we try to find some things that are kind of consistent or sustainable serves. Hey we’re gonna we’re gonna partner with the food pantry. We’re gonna partner with you know those that ah do Habitat for Humanity.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — And we’re gonna do this on a regular basis.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — Or we’re going to start a food pantry. We’re going to figure out a way to work with…
Rich Birch — Yeah make a difference in that area.
Dino Rizzo — …you know, single moms that are struggling, etc, etc.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. So just to underline what you said there, I love this idea of yeah, there’s going to be times where we do all-calls. We kind of get everybody and I want to talk to you about that in a second. But then we we kind of mirror that with consistent things we’re doing maybe throughout the year. Talk to us about the all-call. Why is it important? Why do because it’s a ton of effort and energy. I’ve sat on the sidelines and watched what you guys do with serve day like I’m like that it gives me a headache thinking about it. Why is that important? What’s the drive to get as many people as possible who are connected to the church out and doing something?
Dino Rizzo — Because I just think there’s gonna be a a void and a gap in their life. Everybody is busy. Everybody can be narcissistic. Everybody can be consumed in their own pain. So we’re trying to create a date out of the year where I know you may not be called to it, it may not be your thing, but we’re all going to go out and be the hands and feet of Jesus.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dino Rizzo — All of us are, and probably two thirds of our church will come out and be a part of that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Dino Rizzo — And then you know and what happens is a lot of time somebody all of a sudden man, they they get the itch.
Rich Birch — Totally.
Dino Rizzo — They didn’t know that was their gift. Ah oh my gosh. This is what I’ve been born to do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Dino Rizzo — So it’s an amazing thing. How it’s a catalyst been it create some capacity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. And friends I’ve seen the mechanics of that in our own church, you know 4 or 5000 people we will when we do these big outreaches, man, it is a fertile ground for recruiting into the rest of what we do. So we deliberately will say to our team leader type people you’re going to lead something on these all-call days. You’re going to be but this is a time to make a bunch of relationships with people, to find new folks who could get plugged into other areas. And it’s amazing what awakens in people as they you know as they serve and get out in front of folks. Talk to me about what with a little more detail around what what you’re encouraging your small groups to do. I love that that a part of the small group experience is having a compassion bent. What does that actually look like? How does how do you…how are you working that out with your groups?
Dino Rizzo — We do three we do three semesters of small groups. We do a fall semester. That’s you know, twelve weeks, ten/twelve/fourteen weeks – a spring semester. Our summer semester of small groups is six weeks long, because everybody’s busy. Everybody’s going to the lake…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — …going to the beach, ah going to the mountains…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — But we end it with the serve day.
Rich Birch — Okay, okay, that’s cool.
Dino Rizzo — So it ends with that. Every small group then gets to identify, so we give them curriculum and we’ve we’ve got curriculum. We’ll talk about those resources. But more importantly, they get to decide as a small group, hey there’s a neighbor down the street who Ben they’ve they’ve gone through some things. There’s a sickness. There’s a disability. Ah, there’s ah, there’s a pain. Let’s go fix their yard. Let’s go repair their backyard. Hey there’s a school down the street. The playground is jacked up. Let’s go fix that playground.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Dino Rizzo — Hey there’s a there’s ah a halfway house that is in our community that needs to be painted. You know, let’s go over there and and serve those precious people that are trying to, you know, find freedom in their life, and trying to do better things. It’s that you’re just trying to find ways to be a blessing.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — And so that is very small group driven. And again let me say, I thank God for the big event. I love how it’s organized. It’s always better when it’s organic like that through people…
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Dino Rizzo — …who leaders they get ahold of this. And you know the other thing, it’s even better when people make a decision every day than I’m going to notice what others don’t notice. I’m going to see what other people don’t see.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Dino Rizzo — I’m gonna hear what other people don’t hear and I’m going to be a blessing today. People may say, Dino, that’s cheesy. That’s Mother Teresa. You’re a do gooder. But I’m telling you we’re living in a world right now. A lot of hate, lot of shame, lot of disappointment.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Dino Rizzo — I think one of the greatest things we could do right now is get up in the morning as a pastor, as a staff person, as a church planter: I’m gonna bless someone; I’m gonna be a blessing today. I’ve been doing a thing in um, drive through windows, and I’ve just doing a little thing that I just let him keep the change.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Dino Rizzo — So they’re not 4¢ but I’m trying to, you know, if if the meal’s $4 I’m trying to give $10, and and I’m just tell hey man you keep that change. I want to bless you.
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, right. Right. Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — And I’m you know I’m a big old dude. I don’t care I’m Italian. I say, hey man hey man God loves you; God cares about you. And again I think that is better than nothing.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Dino Rizzo — I mean just something – a cup of water in Jesus’ name.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.
Dino Rizzo — It’s better than a great idea that’s never released.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.
Dino Rizzo — You know intentions don’t don’t do anything. Intention is not gonna dig a well. Ah, good intention is not going to give out groceries into Ukraine right now. But an idea that, hey man I’m gonna support Samaritan’s Purse or I’m gonna support Convoy of Hope as they’re distributing groceries in Ukraine. Now that makes a difference.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Dino Rizzo — So it’s yeah, and I think that’s I think that’s for leaders to model.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true. Yeah, absolutely yeah. Talk to me about that piece – the modeling piece. I can imagine that, you know this idea of of being a blessing you know being you know, offering practical help into a community. It’s got to be at the core leadership level, right? We’ve got to feel that as senior leaders. If we don’t feel that it’s It’s not like we can outsource that, or it’s not going to go far if we just give it to somebody who’s one of those 11% who’s already convinced. It’s like we’ve got to own this. Is that true or or you know what’s our role as a senior leader in trying to see this as a value of our churches?
Dino Rizzo — Yeah, you have to model it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Dino Rizzo — I mean I know we do our survey days. Pastor Chris is out front, man. He’s leading the prayer. He’s visiting those places, he’s encouraging people. He’s connecting, hearing people’s stories. You know that’s that’s with any good leader. It’s like you can’t have worship in a church if the the senior leadership is not worshipping.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — You know you’re not gonna have transparency in a church if the senior leader’s not walking in integrity. It’s like you know you’re you’re not gonna have a giving church if the if the team is not giving.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Dino Rizzo — I mean that’s not gonna have we have to model those things in our life…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Dino Rizzo — …as as staff, as leaders, as planters, as pastors you know in whatever it is. It’s just there there’s, you know, it the the the momentum is in the modeling.
Rich Birch — Right.
Dino Rizzo — I just believe with all my heart at at every ah church.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. This has been so good, Dino. I really appreciate you being here today – this been like ah I’ve got pages and notes here, stuff I’ve been thinking about, chewing on as we’ve been talking. Is there anything else you’d love to share just as we’re kind of closing out the episode? Anything else you’d love to share with us today as we close out?
Dino Rizzo — No, I appreciate you doing this because I think it’s important that and you know the information world right now is is just it is on blast and there is so many things that can can just bum you out and there’s things that can you know set you off. And so the more positive, the more empowering, the more equipping we need to be able to get up in the morning and have a good outlook, get up in the morning and have ah a good perspective. The church has been around for a long time, and and the one who started all this, our Savior, He’s okay. And we’re gonna be okay. We always get better, always improve, always lean in better, but man this…God is doing great things. I’m but I’m a person that just believes that God is at work in Northern Africa. God is at work in the Amazon. God does at work in Siberia. God is at work in downtown Chicago. There are people who love God that are doing great things everywhere.
Rich Birch — It’s so true.
Dino Rizzo — And I just like focusing on those things.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. One of the things I love about ARC is you guys just produce so many and such great resources. And over the years I’ve pointed a lot of leaders, church planters and otherwise, towards the stuff that you produce because it’s just so helpful and you’re so generous with it. It’s just like hey here it is you know, take it. Where do we want to send people online if they want to connect with ARC or are there kind of specific—we’ve talked about serve day stuff today—is there places we want to send them for more information on that? What what does that look like?
Dino Rizzo — Here here for all things ARC it would be arcchurches.com. You know, hey I want to plant a church. Hey I’d love to you know I love to be trained. I would love to connect with some other leaders in my community. You know so arcchurches.com and then for serve related outreach, there’s two. There’s serveday.com which gives a lot of different resources. It’s a free platform. You also can download literally a serve app that if you’re a church leader and you’re trying to figure out how to do an outreach, the serve app can serve that. And then there’s servolution.org which is great resources. There’s in in in those two sites, there’s probably 500 ideas on outreach…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true.
Dino Rizzo — …plenty of outreaches. And then you know there’s of course there’s there’s Instagram and other platforms. But I would say those 3 things are the main things.
Rich Birch — Love it. And we’ll we’ll link to all those in our show notes, friends, so you don’t need to go dig around for those, so you you can see you’ll be right there. I would encourage you you know this has been just so fantastic to, Dino, today I really appreciate you being on. Thanks for for being here today; I appreciate it.
Dino Rizzo — Hey thank you, Rich. I always enjoy the talking to you and always enjoy seeing.
Rich Birch — Thanks, man – take care.
International Business & Marketing Coach Chris Ducker Offers Advice for Church Leaders
Jun 09, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with marketplace leader Chris Ducker, who is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and runs several businesses.
As churches find themselves more a part of the online world, there is continually a challenge to connect with people in a meaningful way. Listen in as Chris shares how to add a personal touch to your interactions online, encouraging conversations instead of simply shouting into a virtual megaphone.
P to P versus B to B or B to C. // We may be familiar with businesses and organizations being business to business or business to consumer, but Chris says the new focus should be people to people. At the end of the day, whether you are signing a deal with a company, or serving a community, people are attracted to you because of who you are and what you stand for.
Attract and repel. // If you want to build a community and attract a certain segment of people, you have to be you all the time. You will equally deter and repel people away as you will attract the right people who want to be part of your tribe. You can’t please everyone. Understand what you want to be known for, where your unique traits lie in respect to that, and how to lean into it.
No comment left behind. // When someone sends Chris a direct message on social media or email, he believes strongly that they should get a direct reply from him because they’ve taken time out of their day to reach out to him. He tells us it’s wrong to ignore someone who has come to you in this way, seeking help. Take the time to respond to them even if it’s only a quick response.
Connect to the people. // Ask people open-ended questions about how you can serve them. When you are willing to have a conversation beyond a yes or no answer, you’ll be able to receive information that can help you offer value to others using your unique skillset as a leader.
Online communication is not a megaphone. // Pastors may not be willing to get into as many conversations online because it can be overwhelming and feel like a time-waster. But for those who decide to do it, Chris believes only good things can come from it. It’s a way to build relationships and you never know when one little question you answer can change a person’s mindset. As leaders we need to take seriously the responsibility to show up for our people.
Have a virtual staff. // Build a virtual team to support on the online communication and social media part of the church work. It will give you more time in your day to focus on aspects of your work that only you can do when you have others handle the repetitive tasks.
Hire the staff type you need. // If you’re looking for someone who can work a few hours a week on tasks you’d like to delegate, you can find individuals through freelance sites. The other way is to hire someone for a role rather than just a task, which can be done through Chris’s site virtualstafffinder.com. Virtual Stafffinder will go through the process of going through applications, vetting and testing them so you don’t have to focus on it.
One person is not the same as three. // A common misconception Chris notices when hiring virtual team members is the assumption that one person can successfully do three people’s jobs. That doesn’t work with local staff, and it doesn’t with virtual staff either. Another big mistake is assuming that because a person has a specific skill that they don’t need guidance or onboarding of any kind. Training always helps set new team members up for success.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody! Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. Normally those are church leaders, but today we’ve got a great marketplace leader – guy by the name of Chris Ducker. If you do not know Chris, I don’t know where you’ve been. He’s a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author. He runs all kinds of businesses. He’s a great guy and today we’re looking forward to tapping into his expertise. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Ducker — Thanks for having me, man. It’s great to be here.
Rich Birch — This is going to be fun. I I really appreciate you doing that. Why don’t you fill out a little bit of the story – kind of give us the Chris Ducker story. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Chris Ducker — Well born or raised in England, hence the weird sounding voice.
Rich Birch — Ah, nice. Love it.
Chris Ducker — Um, and um, you know I’m a dad of 4, a husband of 1, and um, a business owner.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — You know I have been in I guess you know ah, been in the marketing and the sales game pretty much my entire career. Ah set up my first business in 2004 which is still rocking and rolling to this day. Second business 2010; still rocking and rolling, and the third business in 2015; still rocking and rolling.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chris Ducker — So we’re doing good. And I got to work every day and get to work with people like you and other smart people and helping them figure out how to become future proof, and build great followings, and monetize their expertise and all that sort of stuff. And that’s what I’m all about.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. You know if you’re a longtime listener of unSeminary, you’ve you know you heard throughout the years where we’ve tapped the expertise of marketplace leaders like Chris and we’re super honored that you would take some time out to be with us today. But listeners, I want you to stay tuned until the end because we’re giving away a great giveaway just for people who are listening in and you’re going to have to listen to the end to find out how to get it, so stay tuned. I don’t want you to miss ah, you know where we’re headed today. But Chris, you know one of the things I love—there’s a lot I love about you – there’s a lot I love about your how you position yourself; I think the coaching you do is just so solid—but one of the things that I’ve heard you talk about is how organizations have gone from b to c, and b to b (so business to consumer, business to business). You you you like the word P to P – can you explain what does that mean? P to P – what do you mean when you say that?
Chris Ducker — P to P is people to people, right, or person to person. Whatever you want to call it. Um I think you know, and I’ve I’ve been and I’m still involved in the b to b and the b to c spaces, obviously. Um I’m a brick and mortar guy. You know I built my businesses from the ground up. I have facilities. I’ve got venues. I’ve got buildings. I’ve got you know all that sort of stuff that goes along with building businesses, you know, in a brick and mortar setting. But also I’ve noticed that as I’ve kind of leaned into the online world, ah pretty much since like 2010 for anything other than just kind of like checking email right, and watching you know cat videos on Youtube or something, like I’ve noticed that generally there’s a lack of personality online. There’s a lot of ego online, but there’s a lack of personality in the way that we build our followings, we attract the right people into our ecosystems and ultimately get to the point of being able to provide value to the people that we want to serve, and inspire, and work with. Um and so P to P was something I came up with um, actually it was an ad lib on stage in LA…
Rich Birch — Nice. Love it, as the best ideas are. Yes.
Chris Ducker — Oh my god, dude, like in 2014, I was on stage in LA and it just came to me. And I dropped it and I said you know it’s no longer about B to B or B to C. It’s actually about P to P. It’s people to people. We want to do business with big brands because of the security that comes with it and all the rest of it. But at the end of the day when you sign a deal, no matter what that might be, almost all the time you’re going to be signing that deal because of the person that you’ve been with working with.
Rich Birch — Hmm, that’s so true. Yeah, that’s so true.
Chris Ducker — And it’s very very true whether you’re serving you know a community ,or whether you are trying to sell something, or whatever it is, those people will attract towards you ah because of who you are and what you stand for – and what your principles are like, and and the value that you can bring. So that’s really what P to P is. It’s all about creating that personal touch.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I know one of the kind of tropes in our world in the church world is if someone decides that they no longer want to work in the church, they they seem to always become real estate agents. I don’t know why that is, but I think it’s because of this P to P thing. It’s like that that’s one of those areas where it’s a highly personal kind of sales environment. It’s it’s about building relationships. But I sometimes think maybe, and this is why I want to lean in with you because I I love this perspective coming from a business sales point of view for us to think about in the church world, I think sometimes we think like well we’re just kind of people people and like that maybe really isn’t what could use to help build our organization. So I’d love to hear more… how are you coaching say what could seem like an impersonal business, like an online business, where they’re you know they’re selling stuff across the internet. How do you coach them to be more personal? What is what does that look like? I’d love to try to figure out what that looks like for us as we’re thinking about what we’re doing which is obviously super personal.
Chris Ducker — Yeah, well you know first of all, um, it comes down to the leader. It comes down to you first and foremost. Like you’re in charge of this. No one else is in charge of this. So the words that come out of your mouth, that’s down to you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Ducker — The actions that you take, that’s down to you. So you know if you want to build a community, if you want to attract the right people, if you want to sell to them online, you’ve got to be you all the time. You can’t try any smoke a mirror act. Like you’ve got to be you all the time. And actually
Chris Ducker — Admit and accept to yourself that in the action of doing that, you will equally deter and repel people away who don’t like you or your vibe…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — …and at the exact same time attract the right people that do want to be part of your tribe. Right? So it’s…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — …your vibe will attract your tribe. I call it marketing like a magnet, right? You attract the best and you repel the rest kind of thing. Um, and honestly you’re in control of that – all the way.
Rich Birch — So good.
Chris Ducker — Hands down with the content that you create. Like this podcast right now, by you doing what you’re doing on the show whenever you hit the publish button, people will listen in, and they’ll say I like Rich. I like what he stands for. I think I can learn from this guy. I’m going to carry on subscribing and listening in. Or they’re going to take the exact opposite and say, I don’t really like this guy I don’t like the way he sounds or I don’t like the way he talks…
Rich Birch — Yeah, which is fine.
Chris Ducker — Well yeah I just I don’t like the way he looks…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, like that haircut.
Chris Ducker — …you know on the audio podcast I don’t like the way he looks, right? Like my mother would say, you’ve got a great face for radio.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, love it.
Chris Ducker — You know I mean like I I think genuinely um, it’s down to you. So just you know the most important thing is understanding what you want to be known for, where your unique traits lie in regards to that, and then understanding that you’ve got to lean into that uniqueness at every available opportunity to attract the right people into your world.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. So yeah, translating a little bit there I think sometimes we look at other leaders and are like, we mimic them. We’re like, hey we’re just going to be like them. We copy and paste what we’re going to do. And I would say even from a spiritual point of view, God has made you how he’s made you. Be that person.
Chris Ducker — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — Like don’t you don’t need to be somebody different. Be who, you know, who God’s called you to be. And actually I’ve seen over the years particularly those leaders who lead fast-growing churches, they’re very comfortable in their skin. They are who they are and they’re like, hey I’m going to be that person and I’m okay with that you know, I don’t need to try to be like the person down the street that leads that other church. Now pushing a little bit towards tactics, the the part that impresses me about you from afar is is this: so there are a lot of church leaders who have a following of 500 people on Instagram um, who are are you know maybe have a thousand downloads a week on their their podcast, and they have built walls between themselves and their tribe. They have they’ve deliberately like they don’t respond. They don’t engage. They don’t but but you you have you know you have a giant following literally all over the world, and you’ve been able to scale that. You feel very personal online. Ah can you talk to us about how you’ve done that? What what have you done to build community to to at least give off the impression that you are trying to have actual relationships with people? I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sure seems like that when I engaged with you online.
Chris Ducker — I can assure you it’s very very true.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chris Ducker — And what you see what you see is what you get. Um, obviously as as as things have grown over the years there have certainly been situations we’ve had to change and tweak slightly, right? So you know if I post something and you know I get you know thirty, forty comments, the rule that we have as a company is no comment gets left behind. And so…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chris Ducker — …you know do I have the time to reply to 40 comments 3, 4 times a week? No I don’t. So but you know I’m very lucky, I’m very blessed, extremely blessed and very honored to be able to work closely with my wife, first and foremost, and then also to have my eldest daughter working with us…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chris Ducker — …as well, who does know me, who knows…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — …you know they both know who I am, and what I stand for, and what my values are, like and how I talk and how I would reply to certain things. So yes, sometimes they will reply on my behalf as me on social media, for example. Ah, but if you know the the one area that I am just really unwavering on is that if somebody does send me an email, or does send me a direct message on social, they have to get a reply. They have to.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chris Ducker — They’ve taken time out of their day to reach out to me based on something that they’ve seen me do, and for me to just ignore them, that’s just wrong. Like that goes against P to P entirely…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — …first and foremost. But it’s just wrong. Like that’s one human being that has come to you for either a little bit of feedback, or a quick answer, or maybe you know maybe they just need an ear for 30 seconds, like whatever it is. Um, and it goes you know it goes I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care what skin color you have, or who you love, or what you believe in or don’t believe in, um, it’s just being a nice human.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes, yes yes.
Chris Ducker — You know what I mean. At the end of the day. And so that no comment left behind is is real. We we live and breathe it every single day as a company. Um and a lot of the time I will reply but a lot of the time also I’ve got members of my team replying as well.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chris Ducker — But it is real and that’s why I put a little bit of personality into some of the posts as well. Sometimes the post will be very business focused, very strategy focused, and then sometimes I’ll just share the fact that you know I’ve reconnected with a friend…
Rich Birch — Yep..
Chris Ducker — …ah for the first time in 3 years and what it means to me. Or that you know I spent the day um, you know, working on a bonsai tree.
Rich Birch — I was gonna say it’s got to be bonsai trees. Bonsai trees.
Chris Ducker — Yes something being like you know it’s doing it’s bonsai. Or you know I made a Lego a Star Wars Lego set with my son on a Sunday afternoon…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — …like this is the stuff that I think makes me me.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — And so I will share it so people get the real snapshot and not the highlight reel that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Ducker — …is social media across the board pretty much.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah, I love that again. Friends who are listening and I want to encourage you, I think Chris would be a great person for you to follow online, and and try to do the translation in your brain around Chris runs a ton of businesses all over the world. He’s got a huge following, but look at how personal he’s being to try to draw people in. And I could say as someone who’s engaged with him online ah I get those responses which is a bit shocking to me. I like, to be honest, it was it was refreshing, has been refreshing and it’s been great to kind of push in and learn more from you for sure. Recently I was in a coaching thing with Chris where he was we were talking about responding personally to people. And he was you know, warning us against don’t just copy and paste, don’t just copy and paste to a bunch of people, and respond to stuff because people can smell that stuff a mile away, right? You sound like a robot when you do that. Ah, for sure I love that. So Chris, give us a bit of coaching here. So many churches over the last couple years have increased their online presence ah, kind of surprisingly post you know covid. So you know we pivoted online, we’re doing a lot more online and you know the kind of average picture—you wouldn’t know this—but the average church that I talked to they’ve they’ve had you know a bunch of people return their brick and mortar services, but they still have a ton of people connecting with them online. But we’re not sure what to do with them. We’re not sure how to deepen those relationships to you know to use the language you would use to kind of move them down the funnel, to kind of try to get them more connected, get them more connected with other people. From your perspective, what would you do? How would you talk to a business that would say hey I’ve got to a ton of people on the fringe – how do I move them closer to what you are offering?
Chris Ducker — Well, you’ve got to have conversations.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Chris Ducker — You’ve got to ask questions, and not close-ended questions, right? So a close ended question is something that will end with yes or no, or Tuesday or Wednesday, you know – that sort of type of thing. You want open-ended questions because open-ended questions um create the opportunity for somebody to share information with you. And once you’ve got that information, um, you know you then have the ability to be able to use your unique skill set as a leader to go ahead and provide value to them based on that information. So maybe they’re struggling with a relationship, or maybe they’re struggling with a business opportunity. Maybe they’ve lost some money in the stock markets. You know, whatever it is. If you, particularly as a spiritual leader, has an opportunity to lead that person through whatever they’re dealing with, you’ll you’ll have a much much better rate of success if you ask the right questions and engage in proper conversations. And as I always say, conversations then lead to conversions.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chris Ducker — So in in my world as a business leader that means a transaction takes place for money, right, in some way.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yep.
Chris Ducker — Um, whereas you know from from a spiritual standpoint, it could be well you know now now they’re ready to join the church properly, and maybe they’re going to donate or you know get involved with sponsorship or something along those lines.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chris Ducker — So I I honestly feel also that um you know, personally also as as somebody who believes in God and believes that we’re all here in our own skin for a very clear, you know, obvious reason. Um and that is to serve each other, and to help each other, and to love each other, and support each other, and I’m a big big believer of that. And that’s something that I speak to my children about every day. It’s something that my wife and I share on a regular basis. Whether it be, you know as a family, or with friends, or when we go to church or whatever the case may be. And you know it has been tough over the last couple of years with covid not being able to go to your place of worship.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — Not being able to see the people that you would usually see on that regular basis, and I tell you what, any church leader that was able to pivot and bring things online and genuinely continue to serve their following, to serve their flock over that last couple of years, more power to you.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Chris Ducker — More power to you. Because a lot of people struggled with going from in-person to virtual for obvious reasons.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Ducker — Um, but if you did it, if you tried to do it, and if you did it successfully, more power to you. Because you’re already ah, ah you know head and shoulders above a lot of the quote unquote competition out there, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love it. I think that’s so many times I think in our world um, or maybe it’s just the people I bumped into it’s like we’re trying to we see online as a place where we’re actually trying to get out of doing conversation. It’s like gosh I just people can come at us from in every direction but because it’s it feels like there’s just so you know it can be so much inbound. But I love the coaching and the encouragement to say actually no like let’s try to get into conversations. Let’s not use that as a way to shut down conversation. It’s not ah, it’s not a megaphone. It’s ah it’s a chance to engage and and be back and forth again. If you follow Chris you get a sense of how he does that online, or there’s lots of leaders that do that. But I think Chris does it…
Chris Ducker — Oh I mean tell them follow you. I mean you you do it beautifully, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah sure. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Chris Ducker — I mean it’s you know the the other thing is that um, don’t forget again, you’re in charge of it, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — You can either do it or not do it. It’s totally up to you. What I can tell you, you know, very very confidently and very securely in myself giving this as advice is that if you do it, only good things can come of it if you’re coming from a place of genuinely serving.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes.
Chris Ducker — Um and I think that you know you’ve got a lot more to ah gain…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Ducker — …by spending time with people like that and fostering relationships online than you do by not, quite frankly. And you never know when one little bit of advice or one little question that you answer, you’ll never know when that can change that person’s mindset, change their life…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Right, absolutely.
Chris Ducker — …maybe even, right? So I think you know as leaders as stewards we are in a position of responsibility and we and we should take that very seriously, and and show up for our people.
Rich Birch — Yeah. I love it. All right pivoting to a little bit of a different area of expertise in your in your world. You have such deep experience, expertise, you’re an expert really in building virtual remote teams. You’ve done a great job at this. In our world, in our little industry, ah, we’re just on the front end of this. There are just church leaders that now are are scratching the surface. You know, ironically I was blogging about you know hiring VAs because of you ah you know ten years ago but but there really are that’s it’s it’s not mainstream. It’s we’re just early stages. But I am hearing more and more leaders ask this question, hey isn’t there parts of what we could do that are remote remote or fractional staff? Um, what advantage would you say to, you know, what’s the advantage to a church leader who’s listening in today? Maybe they’re a single staff at a church, or maybe they have 2 or 3 staff. Ah, to say maybe we should look at adding a virtual team members – what advantage really have you seen in the organizations you’ve worked on adding virtual staff?
Chris Ducker — Well, there’s a lot of advantages. Um, and I’m not surprised that as an industry it’s starting to become more and more important ,and but more talked about because obviously a lot of things in in in the church world have come online over the last couple of years…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — …and that’s created a whole different set of skills and roles and needs for these churches, and the leaders of those churches very specifically that need to be done, right? Like updating your social media more regularly than maybe once a week. You know, doing all those things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — And so a VA can really help you across the board in obviously continuing to spread your message, continuing to show up and and you know talk about you know, events in the community, or how you are serving people, or you know special events you might be doing online. But honestly at the core principles of what it comes down to in terms of delegation from a leadership standpoint is that you are getting more time…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — …in your day. That’s it.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — That’s the biggest plus more than anything else is that, you know, I don’t know a leader in any industry that wouldn’t love an extra couple of hours in their workday every day right.
Rich Birch — So true. Yes, yeah, it’s so true.
Chris Ducker — And so that’s really where VAs come into play. So whether it is just you know managing your email inbox or updating your social media. Maybe you are getting a little bit more active online and you’re uploading a show to YouTube once a week or you’re you know going live in a Facebook group and you want to kind of collate questions and comments and things like that. All these things – if it’s repetitive, if it’s a repetitive task, then a VA can handle it for you. And as a leader, your time is much better spent in your zone a genius than you know playing around in Canva trying to create an image to share on Instagram. Know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yeah it’s so true. Friends, friends, who are listening in pulling back the curtain a little bit like here it unSeminary like we’ve lived this for a long time. My primary assistant she lives in New Jersey, our video editor is in the Philippines our um, our text editor you know copywriter she’s in Zimbabwe, like and it all works very easily to connect with all those people. And and the thing that excites me about it is I’m not limited to the 8 people I know around me. I could find people around the world who have very unique skills who are very good at what they do. Ah, and and frankly are happy to serve in ah you know in this kind of environment. So I think there’s huge opportunity for that. But so let’s say there’s people listening in – there’s a ton we could talk about here, friends. Again, you should follow Chris there’s more. He’s got more information on this kind of stuff. But there’s someone that’s listening in and saying yeah maybe I could see maybe hiring somebody 15 hours a week to help me with, you know, administrative stuff the kind of you know the general VA or social media VA kind of thing. Where where do we find great team members? What is that like how do you find these people? Where are they ah you know where do you access these folks?
Chris Ducker — Well there’s a couple couple of different ways to do it. So first up like if you’re just looking for somebody say like you know 10 hours a week or something, then you know you can go to a website like you know freelancer.com or you can go to… what’s the other one? There’s another big one as well.
Rich Birch — Yeah Elance, maybe?
Chris Ducker — Ah, Elance! That kind of thing exactly.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — Um, there’s a lot of different opportunities for that where you’ll post your job, you get a whole bunch of applications. You got to wade through them a little bit obviously, but you can find somebody relatively easily and and you know get them to do that video editing or whatever it is.
Chris Ducker — And then the other way is you know to hire for the role rather than the task and that’s what we focus on at Virtual Stafffinder. So You can go a virtualstafffinder.com and you can hire somebody either part-time or full-time. And we’ll go through the process of, you know going through all the applications and vetting them, and testing them, and all the rest of it so you don’t need to do it yourself. So you know a couple of different ways to do it. Very much kind of like ad hoc one-off jobs or bring somebody on full-time or part-time at least um and kind of have them as a team member as well, bearing in mind that most people do need full-time work. So if you hire somebody part-time, the chances are that they’re probably going to be working for somebody else at the same time. So if you want them just for you, if you want to be greedy and have them just working on your own stuff and your stuff only, then hire them full time, you know.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Chris Ducker — And a lot of the time ah, you can find people you know over in the Philippines for example, speaking incredible English. They’re trustworthy. They’re very God-fearing people. 97% Catholic the country. All educated in amazing English, you know, great experience online. They spend 12 hours a day on Facebook, right? You know like these people can do the jobs for you. I guarantee it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Chris Ducker — And you know a lot of the time you can you can find that help um at a really really good rate. Ah you know sometimes as much of ah as a third…
Rich Birch — Right.
Chris Ducker — …what you might, you know, pay if you were hiring somebody locally to do exactly the same job.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And that’s been my experience with particular our video editor who lives in the Philippines. She’s killer like she’s amazing. And because all the content and the majority of the content I generate is Christian and and I love that you know she has… I didn’t I wasn’t looking for someone who particularly had a faith background I was I wanted someone who could be great at video editing…
Chris Ducker — Sure.
Rich Birch — …but she just had she just happened to be ah you know she gets what we’re talking about which is, you know, fantastic. What would you say would be a couple common pitfalls of hiring your first virtual team member? So let’s say okay, we’re going to take a step into this. What would be a couple of those common things that we kind of mess up, that you see people mess up when they make that step?
Chris Ducker — I mean I think the first thing is the assumption, and so many people make this assumption, that you can hire one person to do like three different people’s jobs.
Rich Birch — Oh it’s so true. Yeah yeah.
Chris Ducker — Um I see it a lot. You know you hire one person, you expect them to update your social media, program your website, and do your video editing. Come on. Let’s get real with each other.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Chris Ducker — It doesn’t happen in the real world. So it’s not going to happen virtually either. That’s the big thing kind of you know, hiring one person do several people’s jobs.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Chris Ducker — Um the other really really big mistake is that expecting that even if they’ve got skill set, the experience, even if they’ve got the right attitude, the nice you know a nice personality, um, and they’re kind of on board with what you stand for as ah as a corporation as ah, you know as ah, a group or company. Um, they’ve never done this for you before.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Chris Ducker — So the big assumption that oh because they know how to lay out a blog post, they can do mine perfectly the first time I asked them to do it, for example.
Rich Birch — Yeah, right. Yeah.
Chris Ducker — That’s a silly assumption to make. So that lack of onboarding, and that lack of initial training is a massive mistake that I see people make. And a lot of the time, you know they look at that and say oh you know, VAs are are not worth the time. They don’t get it. Well a lot of the time actually they don’t get it because you didn’t try hard enough to help them get it.
Rich Birch — So true. Yes, yes., yeah.
Chris Ducker — That’s just a harsh reality. You know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, and and we’re like any of our team members, they’re real people. And like we want to take time to invest in the relationship, get to know them. You would never hire a team member on your staff at church and say well if this doesn’t work out in the first month I’m letting them go. You would never do that. You would take time on the front end to say, hey I want to work with this person over an extended period of time and let’s you know, let’s make it happen. So I want to encourage people…
Chris Ducker — And be a nice person.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Chris Ducker — You know like be a nice person to work for. Like send them a birthday gift.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes yeah.
Chris Ducker — They’re on your team. If they have a baby drop them a care basket with a load of diapers and some you know you know, ah, butt powder you know and for the newborn baby like you know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Chris Ducker — Like do what you got to do to like show up and be nice as well.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Chris Ducker — Like they’re they’re part of your team. It’s it’s important to be a nice person.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely so friends I’d encourage you to drop by virtualstafffinder.com. They’ve got this great, um you know, virtual assistant salary guide which you could download. And it would give you a sense of kind of if you’re thinking about hiring someone to help you with like Chris is saying like a piece of the puzzle at the church, you could get a sense from that of what that would cost. Ah that would be a great starting point. Well, we’re going to wrap up in a minute here. But I’ve promised you listeners that that we’re going to have a great giveaway and this is what we’re doing. Chris, has got a book which I want you to tell us about here in a second called Rise of the Youpreneur: The Definitive Guide to Becoming the Go-To Leader in Your Industry and Building a Future-Proof Business. We’re going to give away 10 copies of this but this is what I want to do. We’re going to give it away to just 5 leaders who are listening in so you’ve listened this far in you’re almost half an hour in, what I want you to do is to respond to some email that we’ve sent you so you no doubt if you’ve been listening you’ve subscribed and so I want you to respond to one of those. And the first five people who do that but I will send a copy to you. Actually I’m going to send you 2 copies because what I’d love you to do is to actually commit to reading this with another leader. Maybe a volunteer. Maybe a donor from your church or a young leader in your church, and then I would love you to report back in the next ninety days and say, hey what did you guys learn as you did that. Tell us about the Rise of the Youpreneur, tell us about this book. Why did you write this? What what will people get if they you know if they tap into that book?
Chris Ducker — Yeah I mean this this is really based around my build, market, monetize framework of building a business based around your expertise. So um, it really is a you know it’s it’s a step by step guide right? The way from kind of like figuring out what you want to be known for and how you can help people right the way down to monetizing that expertise, to monetizing that experience that only you have. And building out an entire ecosystem a suite of products and services to be able to continue to to help people, not just at the the first part of their journey with you, but the second the third the fourth the fifth and and so on and so on.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Chris Ducker — So it really is ah it’s an a to z of building a business based around you and what you’re all about.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s a book I’ve read multiple times. Actually just reread it at the end of last year. Again it’s great super practical step… I know unSeminary folks love practical step-by-step stuff and this is definitely one of those. Well I’d love to ah you know wrap up this. It’s been an honor that you have been on the show. Anything else you’d like to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Chris Ducker — Yeah, well, all your all your audience members are leaders. Am I right in saying that?
Rich Birch — Absolutely, yeah for sure. Yeah.
Chris Ducker — Yeah, so my advice to them all would be to make sure that they carve out regular time, and it doesn’t need to be daily, but it has to be at least weekly. Um, to continue to learn themselves. I’m just a big believer that great leaders continue to learn, so that they can continue to lead. And I make time every every day quite frankly, actually to continue to upgrade myself whether it be just 15 minutes of quiet time reading, or going to a conference or an online event, or you know being part of a mastermind group – whatever it might be. Just continue to learn regardless of how fantastic you think you are, you’re not that great, and you need to continue to learn in order to continue to lead.
Rich Birch — Love it. Some great British encouragement at the end. You know, you’re not that great. Let’s be honest, let’s be honest.
Chris Ducker — Just like mummy would say to me kind of thing, right? Yeah.
Rich Birch — Chris, I love this. I really do I appreciate you. I’ve been, ah like Chris had kind of alluded to there, I’ve been in a coaching group with Chris over this last year and I have just appreciated his his work. So I thank you so much for that and appreciate you being on the show today. If people want to follow you, track with you, where do we want to send them online?
Chris Ducker — Well, they can just head over to chrisducker.com, you know. I’ve got links to everything I do – my books, my shows, my programs – everything are over there. So chrisducker.com or give me a follow on Instagram @chrisducker.
Rich Birch — Great. Well thanks so much, Chris – appreciate you being here. Thanks for being on the show.
Chris Ducker — Thanks for having me, man.
Helpful Insights for Church Leaders with Brian Dodd
Jun 02, 2022
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. This time we’re talking with Brian Dodd, the Director of New Ministry Partnerships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions. He also runs a blog called Brian Dodd on Leadership which provides perspective, encouragement, and solutions for church and ministry leaders.
When you look at the world today, there seems to be a real deficit in leadership at the top levels. But if you look at everyday life and what’s happening in local churches, local businesses, and community there’s extraordinary leadership going on right now. Listen in as Brian shares wisdom and insights on leadership that can be used to train, inspire, develop, and equip your people and teams.
Humble leaders grow churches. // Around 85% of churches are plateaued or declining. If your church is one of the 15%, what are you doing to get to that point? The number one characteristic Brian sees in pastors of growing churches is unbelievable humility. A humble leader who is ready to follow God’s leading and steward well what they’ve been given is a number one asset for a growing church.
Three components to spiritual leadership. // There are three components to spiritual leadership: God, the assignment, and a person. God determines the assignment and then gives a person the privilege to be part of that assignment.
Character, competence, and creativity. // When doing personal coaching with church leaders, Brian has them focus on character, competence, and creativity. In his research on leadership, he found that character didn’t make it to the top ten traits needed to get to the top in a person’s line of work. While you may not need character to get to the top, however, you will need it to stay at the top.
Leadership skills and leader skills. // A leader must develop leadership skills and leader skills. Leadership skills are developing the skills, talents, and abilities to accomplish a task or assignment given to you by God. Leader development is becoming the man or woman who can accomplish those tasks given to you by God. When you systemize the setting of God as the primary resource of everything in your life and leadership you have solved 90-95% of the character issues you’ll face.
Creativity is about solutions. // Creativity is directly tied to what we are producing. It’s leveraging resources in a new and different way to produce results that nobody has ever done before. It doesn’t come from abundance, but rather from a lack of abundance. We need to make sure we aren’t leading in a domineering way that stifles creativity and does not produce solutions.
A tool for leading your people well. // Brian has written a book called 2021: The Year in Leadership. The Stories of Faith, Athletics,Business and Life Which Inspired Us All. Every page is filled with leadership lessons and contains over 80 illustrations that church leaders can use in sermons, trainings, team huddles, as well as individual growth and development.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey, everybody – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. Today We’re also going to bring you someone who I know you’re going to be encouraged with. You’ve got my friend Brian Dodd. He is the Director of a New Ministry Relationships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions. He runs an incredible blog called Brian Dodd on Leadership where he really provides lots of great information and help. Over the years he’s a couple times has pointed people to ah resources on on unSeminary. Listen friends, this is why I want you to to lean in. Brian, I think, is a professional encourager. He is so good at getting in the corner of church leaders particularly and and wants to help push your ministry forward. So I’m excited to have you on the show today, Brian.
Brian Dodd — Hey, great to be here, Rich. It’s my second time so I am honored to be back. Ah, you’ve been a friend for years, and hey man thrilled to thrilled to spend some time with you and invest in your audience a little bit.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you tell us a little bit about ah about you – just fill out your story a little bit. Give us your your background. Fill out what I didn’t I didn’t say much there, but kind of tell us a little bit about who you are.
Brian Dodd — Yeah, so I mean you you said it well. I’m Brian Dodd. My daytime job is Director of New Ministry Partnerships at Injoy Stewardship Solutions and what I do there is I help pastors and church leaders think through what’s necessary to fully fund their mission and vision. So when you talked about being a professional encourager, hey we’ll give all the credit to God for that. You know we we all drift into states of carnality from time to time, if you want to use that phrase.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Brian Dodd — But but yeah my job is to is to talk with pastors and church leaders and listen to their story and uncover things that we then can discuss based upon those findings. Hey here’s what’s possible. So I do that all day, and thrilled to do that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — This is my twentieth anniversary doing that by the way. Yeah, so passing a milest…
Rich Birch — Oh congratulations, congratulations! I’m not sure how such a young man has been there for 20 years. I don’t know how that worked out but nice.
Brian Dodd — Exactly. I started you know in grade school, you know as an intern. Yes.
Rich Birch — Ah yes.
Brian Dodd — Started in the mail room as an intern.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it. Nice.
Brian Dodd — Started in the mail room as an intern. So um, yeah, and nighttime, yeah and kind of like you, Rich, you know I produce helpful content for leaders. Um, you know, mainly it’s it’s primary to Christian leaders.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — But I delivered in a way that it helps the athletic and education communities and the business community as well, and other nonprofits. And out of that once again, kind of like you it’s grown into podcasts, books, things of that nature. But but yeah I mean you and I are in the same space on ah on somewhat of a similar journey, not exactly the same. But yeah God’s kind of set us aside, you know help his bride…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Brian Dodd — …and resources bride and let let you know let the church be everything God intended it to be so.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. and you know we we are ah old school you know bloggers, like you know back when that was like a thing you know we both been doing this for you know back when, you know people used to it used to be cool to be a blogger, so and we just never gave up. That’s I always joke like yeah I just never stopped writing I just kept going so which is funny. Ah.
Brian Dodd — Right. Yeah, we were blogging when it wasn’t cool, when it was cool, and now when it’s not cool again. So we’ve…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.
Brian Dodd — …and ah we’ve we’ve ah we’ve we’ve lasted the whole journey. So.
Rich Birch — Nice. Well you talk to church leaders all day long, like you said in your day job, and so the reason why I wanted to get you on was to take advantage of that. The fact that you’re engaging with church leaders a lot. To kind of get a sense of where the church is at, to kind of hear what’s what’s top of mind with leaders these days. What are the things as you’re engaging with that you just see either explicitly or implicitly in the conversations that you seem to be engaging with on a regular basis with church leaders?
Brian Dodd — Yeah I want to point out two things that are that are that I think are unique. Um, you know that that that would make your listeners go okay, that’s ah, that’s a different perspective. Ah, the first thing is when you talk to church leaders, and you’re talking to Christian alpha male and alpha females, okay. Um, you would think that there’s a level of bravado, and ah a level of gravitas, and ego and all of that. I find that to be unbelievably rare.
Rich Birch — Mmm, true.
Brian Dodd — And you know one of the questions I always talk to people or when I talk to leaders and I’ll say look, give or take what stat you’re reading this week let’s just say on average 84 to 85% of churches are plateaued or declining. And as you like to point out that still does in fact to factor in compared to the growth of the city.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Brian Dodd — But let’s just say 84/85% are plateaued or declining. You’re one of the 15%.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — Obviously it’s the goodness of God, but what are you doing that’s causing that 15%, or that makes you one of the 15%
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. Yeah.
Brian Dodd — Rich, the most common answer I get is you know, Brian, we obviously try to you know, serve our community. We obviously try to meet needs. We obviously try to put on great Sunday services that are relevant and speak to the needs of people. And we try to have in great systems in place and drive people to groups. You know we do all the things that you hear you’re supposed to do. He goes Brian but the bottom line is we were talking about it in staff meeting this week, we have no idea where these people are coming from.
Rich Birch — Right. Right, by God’s grace.
Brian Dodd — And we’re just trying everything we can do not to mess it up. The the number one characteristic I see in pastors of growing churches is unbelievable humility.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Brian Dodd — And they are and they are privileged to be part of what God’s doing. And and realize that you know they’re like a surfer riding a surfboard. They didn’t cause the wave, they didn’t build the surfboard, they’re they’re just trying to steward the surfboard in the wave well.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Brian Dodd — And you know so that’s that humility is, number one, attractive in leaders to begin with. But I think a humble leader is your number one asset, other than the Holy Spirit, to be an accelerant for growth of your church. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good. And that I love that you pointed that out, like that is true in so many leaders that I’ve run into over the years. And I would say particularly you’re true it’s you’re right. Like yeah in I’ve had the honor, the privilege, would be like you to interact with leaders at some of the largest and fastest growing churches in the country, and ah the vast majority are do hold what they do ah very lightly in the sense of that’s not that they don’t steward it, but they they don’t take credit for it when it’s all said and done. They’re like, wow, I’m honored that I get to sit in the seat that I’m in I get to do what I get to do. Um but man this is really because of God and because of what he’s he’s up to. That’s that’s a I love that you’re pointing that out because I I think the assumption could be like you say like, you know, being a driven leader or being you know, kind of making it all about yourself.
Brian Dodd — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah could be the you know the assumed norm of what it what it could look like to to lead ah a growing church.
Brian Dodd — Yeah I think the first person you know that ever talked about this on what I would call a national level was probably Jim Collins, in built to last when he talked about the myth of the of the larger than life leader.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — But the the reality is I see I see that every day.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — I see that played out every day. And the thing about it, Rich, there are three components to spiritual leadership. There’s God, the assignment, and a person. And God determines the assignment. Things he wants to get done at this particular point in time in human history. And then he gives a person the privilege of being part of that assignment.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — In other words God’s going to get done whatever God wants to get done. But he invites us into that process, and so you know the lasting leaders, the ones that make the most impact, um that they realize that you know in all honesty, God could have picked anybody for this assignment. I just want to steward…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Brian Dodd — I just want to steward it well while I was given to me. So.
Rich Birch — I want to come back to the ah that idea and come back to this idea around what can we do to develop our piece of the puzzle, who we are, I’d love to get your thoughts on that.
Brian Dodd — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But before we get there, this is an example ah, literally was just in this conversation with a friend this week that’s from the marketplace that illustrates exactly what you’re talking about. In one organization that’s been led by two very different leaders, which is Apple Computer, famously you know you know Steve Jobs famously gregaric. Ah famously um you know you driven and um, you know, maybe a bit problematic in how he interacted with other folks. Now that was used in the market. It you clearly you know made a huge difference. But if you look at the value of Apple today, it dwarfs where it was under Steve jobs under their current leader, Tim Cook, who is exactly the kind of leader you’re talking about. Who is ah you know much more of a team player, much more not that he’s not you know doesn’t have opinions, not that he doesn’t you know, ah, he’s not not that he’s not sharp but he is a much more hey, let’s do this together. Let’s figure out how to build a great organization. I don’t need to make this all about me. I don’t need people to cheer for me every time I step out of the building. Um, and you can literally see it if you look up, you know, just the value of Apple Computer. There is an inflection. There’s a number of inflection points but actually the most significant inflection point over the years is actually when Tim Cook took over as the CEO over these last years, which which doesn’t play as well in the in the leadership ah you know, kind of whatever you call that you know this fear of communicators that love to talk about it because they like like a guy like Steve Jobs because he’s so flashy. But actually Tim Cook is doing an incredible job. That’s that’s amazing.
Rich Birch — Well let’s talk about the development piece. So I love that – God, the assignment, and the person. When we think about the person side of it, we think about us and you think about our own development – what we should be doing to grow as leaders. What what are some of those things we should be thinking about as as we lead, as we try to develop who we are, as we lead in the context that we’re in?
Brian Dodd — Yeah, definitely. You know I want to say one other thing and then I’m going to answer that question about God, ad assignment and the person. God uses the assignment to mold the person to be more like Jesus. So for us long time church…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — For us longtime church people, we would say hey the assignment is part of the sanctification process.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — You know it chips away at you, it molds, it shapes you, it humbles you, it does all those things.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Dodd — But in terms of you know, when I look at when I talk to leaders and I coach leaders, and I say okay look, we’re going we’re gonna talk about personal coaching. I want to zero in on three areas…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Brian Dodd — Character, competence, and creativity.
Rich Birch — Ok, interesting, a different set of three I was going to say that’s a different set of 3 Cs.
Brian Dodd — And yeah now most people do… that’s a different set of three most people do character, competence, and chemistry.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Brian Dodd — And I get that. And you and you do want chemistry, and I think you could you’d have to shoehorn it in but people’s skills, and emotional intelligence, and EQ, and all that, you could shoehorn that into character if you wanted to. But but character. Yeah, you know the second book I wrote was a book called Timeless and what Timeless was is I studied 180 what I call apex leaders and organizations – the best pastors, the best coaches, the best athletes, the best businesses, you know all of those type of things.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Brian Dodd — And I identified 302 traits they had. I narrowed it down to the top 10. The 10 most common threads. So that’s the 10 enduring practices. Now when you do a project like that there are some things that you’re going to assume are the the or the 10.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Brian Dodd — You know you’re going to assume teamwork, and hard decisions, and persevere, and variance. You know you’re going to assume those things. And they were in there. I assumed character would be in there. Character did not make the top 10.
Rich Birch — Mm interesting.
Brian Dodd — Matter of fact, it came around you know around fifteen-ish. Okay?
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, okay.
Brian Dodd — And here’s what the study told me – you don’t need character to get to the top, but you need character to stay at the top. And…
Rich Birch — Mmm, that’s so true. So…
Brian Dodd — So go ahead. But.
Rich Birch — Yeah I’d love to talk about that. So we unfortunately we don’t have to think long and hard to find examples of leaders who have either their you know their creativity and their competence has got them into the room, or got them to the place they’re at, and then their character erodes, and and it extinguishes them. It’s not like woo who do we have to think of that we’ve got too many examples of that, particularly in the Christian world and in the church world. But what should we be thinking about on the development of character side? How how do we actually develop that? How do we how do we, you know, stretch that muscle?
Brian Dodd — Great, great question. And Rich, you talked about my encouragement at the very beginning so we’re not going to single people out. We All know we all know. And look. We’ve seen people fall in in ministry, in entertainment, politics – you name it. I mean every walk of life that they’ve had that. Ah, here’s what I think happens and then I’m going to talk about what to do with this information.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Brian Dodd — There are two things that a leader must develop – leadership skills and leader skills, and those are two completely different things. Leadership skills is developing the skills, talents, and abilities to accomplish a task or assignment given to you by God. That’s what most people think of, Rich. It’s the reading the books, listening to your podcast, read unseminary.com, going to conferences.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Dodd — Yeah, you know it’s the development of the skills, coaching networks. You know all of that kind of stuff. Leader development is not developing the skills, talents, and abilities to accomplish a task or assignment given to you by God. It’s becoming the man or woman who can accomplish a task or assignment given to you by God.
Brian Dodd — This is the development of character. And the number one thing that I talk to leaders about and I’ll tell them I say, look, genius is making the complicated simple, not the simple complicated. Do you start the first 30 to 60 minutes of every day in a quiet time with God? Bible study and prayer. When you set God as you when you when you systematize the setting of God as the primary resource of everything in your life and leadership, you have just solved 90 to 95% of the character issues you’re ever going to face.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — And so many times when I talk to leaders know they don’t do that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Brian Dodd — You know they’ll wake up. They’ll get their coffee. They’ll do this, they’ll they’ll check their phones first thing. You know and look I’m guilty of that as well. You know, the teacher is the number one student – I’m as guilty as that ah as anybody. But yes, the the setting aside of a as simple as it sounds, Bible study and quiet time is is so critical to the development of character. And here’s the thing, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — There’s been some high profile people that have had issues and I don’t need to name them, and neither do you. But when somebody says to me, Brian, are you surprised so and so had that problem? I may or may not be taken off guard. But all leaders, Rich, if they’re not careful, can spend so much time on developing their leadership skills…
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — …that their leadership skills will outpace their leader skills…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — …and then their skills, talents, and abilities will take them to a place their character can’t sustain them.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — And to be perfectly honest, I’m as susceptible to that as anybody. You know we’re all one decision away from stupid as the say in goes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, no. Absolutely.
Brian Dodd — So so I don’t think negative about, I just very pragmatically know that this is a process that probably happened.
Rich Birch — Yeah, and how do you How how do you coach a leader. So I think one of the occupational hazards of being in the church is our content is so connected to our spiritual development. So we um, you know, we’re we need to be in God’s word, we need to be leaning in and drinking from that well for our own spiritual development. Ah, but we all know that there’s a difference between that and making the making of messages, the leading of team meetings, all of those things where we’re also engaging in scripture. How how do you separate those two? How do you ensure that in your own life how have you found, you know the ability to, hey I’m I’m in I’m in God’s work today and this is about, hey Lord what do you have for me today? Not like I need to come up with the great talk for you know this this church I’m going to talk to next week?
Brian Dodd — Rich, I want to challenge that thought process.
Rich Birch — Okay, good – challenge me.
Brian Dodd — Well I’ve heard everybody say that that your personal devotion time should be completely separated from “the job of pastoring”.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Brian Dodd — Okay. And we’ve all heard that.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — Why? Why do we have to live a bifurcated life? Why can’t Sunday be an overflow of what God’s doing in our life throughout the entire week?
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Brian Dodd — Ah, that’s just a question I want to ask. You know, um, there’s there’s definitely room for disagreement on that and people have been very successful doing it both ways. Okay, but just a…
Rich Birch — Yeah, well, there’s yeah, there is no, there’s for sure you know what you don’t want is, hey you’re getting up and talking about things that ah… yeah I think the saying is you want to you know, smoke your own stack, like you know you want to whatever you’ve got, you know, your eat your own dog food. Whatever the the phrase is. Listen I don’t want to get up and have something that’s so disconnected from my own personal life that because that’s dangerous as well, right? There’s ah, there’s a danger on the other end of that spectrum too. That is a very good point. I appreciate you pushing on that.
Brian Dodd — Well, you know if I’m setting up an annual preaching calendar. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — Let’s say I’m setting up an annual preaching calendar and it’s going to be built around our core values as a church, and then here’s what we want to see God do in the hearts and lives of our people through the next twelve months. And obviously all pastors know if something pops up, like a pandemic or something like that, there’s margin to change.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Brian Dodd — Okay, but at that same time I am kind of like, just like you pick a word for the year, which is now very popular thing to do…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — …why can’t you say, okay God, that’s the journey you’ve got me going on as well.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — The shepherd and the sheep are going on the same journey this next twelve months.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.
Brian Dodd — and that that and and I think that can really help relieve a lot of “pressure” that someone may be feeling and that you have to have an unbifurcated spiritual experience as a pastor or church leader.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, that’s good. Let’s talk about creativity. Why why do you list that in the three? Why is that you know the kind of thing that we should be thinking about? What and what do you mean by when you say creativity, and why is that so important for leaders today?
Brian Dodd — Okay, so I am the classic meat and potatoes guy.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Brian Dodd — You know, I just wear blue, brown, red you know, staple colors.
Rich Birch — Ah, sure.
Brian Dodd — I’ve had the same hairstyle just thinner since the late 70s. Um, been married to the same woman for 31 years
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — Until we just my daughter just got out of college and we had money freed up. Both my cars were over 200,000 miles.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — I mean I’m a very stable/boring individual.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — Okay, all right? So this is coming from that type of mind. Most people think of creativity as lasers, light shows, skinny jeans, low v-necks, and scarfs.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Brian Dodd — And that is not creativity that is style.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — You cannot have creativity without creation. Ah, whoever your top producers are in your church. That’s your most creative people because they are creating the most. Oh for instance I’m gonna take an extreme example…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — …the 70 year old second grade Sunday school teacher who somehow has this generation of people that came through her class and are now missionaries and pastors.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — I can make the argument. She’s the most creative person in your church.
Rich Birch — Yes, Love it. Yeah.
Brian Dodd — Okay so creativity is directly tied to creation. Who are, you know, are you as a leader, are you producing? And I’ll also I’ll also go you know talk about this: creativity is directly tied to solutions as a leader and creativity is not “working outside the box”. Creativity is leveraging resources in a new and different way to produce results within the box that nobody’s ever done before.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Love it.
Brian Dodd — And like Craig Groeschel and the invention of the you of the YouVersion Bible App…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — …and you’ve you’ve had them on your podcast I’m sure. Creativity, you know comes from… does not come from abundance creativity comes from a lack of abundance.
Rich Birch — Yeah, restriction for sure.
Brian Dodd — If you have a if you have abundance, you’re just going to pay for it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — That scarcity causes you to figure things out.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.
Brian Dodd — And here’s the thing is a leader. When I walk into a meeting that’s already in progress and they’re trying to solve a problem and I walk in, one of two things is gonna happen. They’re either gonna go, oh Brian, great you’re here. We’re bouncing around this idea. What do you think? Or either the room’s going to shut down. And creativity goes out the window…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Brian Dodd — …collaboration ceases. All of that all of that open communication stops because I lead in a domineering way that stifles creativity, and does not produce solutions. Or either I lead in a way that does. So yeah I talk to leaders about, walk me through the issues that you’re facing and how you’re going about solving those problems. That’s how I classify creativity.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. That’s actually at the core the reason why I started the podcast all those years ago was I really do think that ah, huge part of solving problems in the church, you know—and this is like in my own church as I’m leading in the things I’m leading in—is like finding those ideas in other churches that are maybe not directly applicable, but are like two steps removed and then saying you know what if we tried a little bit of what those guys were doing over here, and kind of added that to our thing. I wonder what that would do. You know, and then trying it and then being like, hey maybe maybe we’ll see what difference that could make. I really do think that’s the value of conversations like this because, you know, you you chew over it with other leaders. You learn. You get a chance to try see what does this what does this look like? How do we how do we move from here? Love that. Love that. Well I know you’ve got ah a brand new book that’s just come out, or is coming out. I’d love to hear a little bit about it. It’s called 2021 The Year of Leadership. The Stories of Faith, Athletics, ah, Business and Life Which Inspired Us… I’d love to hear… Inspired Us All. I’d love to hear a little bit about that. Tell us about why why this book. Why did you why did you pull this one together?
Brian Dodd — Yeah, um, number one it was ah, always a dream of mine to to write this book. And I I can unpack that in a little bit, but for the reader you know when you look at leadership in the world today, Rich, and you look at it like on a top level, there seems to be a real deficit in leadership, right now. You know John Maxwell even famously said all throughout 2020 that he was leadership sad. You know at that top level there just was such a deficit of basic fundamental leadership skills. Okay. But, Rich, if you if you look at everyday life and what’s happening in local churches, and what’s happening at local ball fields, and in local businesses, and things of that nature, there’s extraordinary leadership going on right now.
Rich Birch — Mmm, love it.
Brian Dodd — So I wanted to take a I wanted to create a forum that a lot of those stories could be told. And so that’s why I wrote the book so that you could just see on a day in day out basis throughout an entire 365 day year…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — …was extraordinary leadership last year leadership that as I said in the title, it is inspiring. And if I’m an executive pastor of church leader here’s how I use the book. Number one, there’s leadership lessons on every single page. Now I self-published this book and we can talk about that in a second, but there’s leadership lessons on every single page. So there’s no fluff. Every page matters, every page you can use to say, okay I got something now I can go train my team. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Brian Dodd — There’s over eighty illustrations that you could use in sermons. You know if you’re leading a team meeting and say okay I need an opener, this book is for you.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Brian Dodd — And so it’s just a great tool and resource to help pastors and church leaders with their individual growth and development. But also, hey this is a tool that helps me lead my people well.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — So that’s that’s the macro reason that the book was written. So.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah I I think when I was checking this out the thing that struck me was exactly what you said there. This could be a great tool even to give to my team like who are leading people. You know if I’m an executive pastor at a church today and I’ve got you know 10 staff who you know report to me or whatever. This could be a great book to give to all 10 of them and say, hey I know you’re looking for stuff for your huddles. You’re looking for stuff as you’re engaging, you know people. This could be a great resource, so I’m glad you said that because that was actually the thing I was like ooh this could be a great ah, kind of a great tool on that front. Anything that as you were pulling this together I’m sure but you know you’re talking about inspiration, you’re talking about inspirational leadership in a lot of different spheres, was there a story or two that kind of bubbled to the surface that were like, wow this was particularly in so inspiring or you know, shocking, surprising kind of like made you kind of lean in as you thought about it?
Brian Dodd — Well okay, this is and this is a personal favorite of mine.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Brian Dodd — Okay, so this is this is this takes up like three pages in the book. So so if you’re an executive pastor, coaching a small group pastor. Or you’re a small group pastor, or you’re a pastor teaching on the value of community, these three pages are for you in the book.
Rich Birch — Yes, okay.
Brian Dodd — In early July there’s a town called Nome, Alaska. Now you’re from Canada – this is Nome, Alaska.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — The population 3866.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Brian Dodd — Nome Alaska is so remote. It’s at the Seward peninsula of the Bering Sea. This city does not even show up on the Alaskan roadway system.
Rich Birch — Ok.
Brian Dodd — It’s a 90 minute flight from Fairbanks, Alaska into wilderness.
Rich Birch — Right. Wow.
Brian Dodd — In early July there was a guy named Richard Jesse. If you go to Nome, Alaska and then go forty miles deeper into the wilderness, this is where Richard Jesse was, okay?
Rich Birch — Okay, yes.
Brian Dodd — So what happened with Richard. He was out there one day and he was driving his ATV across ah a river, and he was ambushed by a grizzly bear. sSo he’s attacked by the grizzly bear, the ATV sinks to the bottom of of the of the lake. His cell phone sinks to the bottom of the lake.
Rich Birch — Oof oof.
Brian Dodd — And it’s him and the grizzly bear forty miles from a town that’s so remote it does not show up on a roadway system. Okay?
Rich Birch — Okay, you have set up the tension. I’m leaning in.
Brian Dodd — I know. So for three days with just a gun he holds this bear off.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Brian Dodd — Fortunately for him low cloud cover comes over Nome, Alaska so a a helicopter crew Coastguard then has to divert around the low cloud cover to get where they’re going and they discovered that he had made an S-O-S signal, and they and they so and they lowered the helicopter and rescued him.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.
Brian Dodd — So hopefully Richard has already signed the book and movie deals and got Leo Leonardo Dicaprio to play him.
Rich Birch — Yes, ah yes.
Brian Dodd — But but you listen to that story, and I think there’s three big lessons that come from that story. Okay. Number one, Rich, human beings were not designed to be alone. We were designed to be part of community, right? And what what we learned from Richard Jesse is when we’re alone and we’re disconnected, we are open to all kinds of attacks. Spiritual attacks, emotional attacks, psychological attacks, physical attacks. And one thing that we learned from Richard is that when we’re in community or when we’re not in community, no one’s there to watch our back.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
No one’s there to take care of us. That’s the first thing we learn. Second thing we learn is when crisis and calamity come into our life, embrace the gift of the brevity of language.
Rich Birch — Hmm ok.
Brian Dodd — And economy of words. The three letters S-O-S communicates a great deal.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Love It.
Brian Dodd — I love the movie Sully. If you go back and watch the movie Sully. As soon as the Canadian geese—we’re going to blame it on y’all, Rich—when the Canadian geese hit the airplane…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — …notice the language that takes place between the co tom Tom Hanks and the copilot. It’s very crisp, very sharp.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — Your plane, my plane. He goes through the checklist and the stewardess or excuse me the flight attendants begin to tell the you begin to tell the passengers head down, stay down, head down, stay down.
Brian Dodd — So when there’s crisis, a brevity of language is your friend. We don’t need people waxing eloquently during times of crisis. Okay.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Brian Dodd — And the third thing is don’t quit. You know there’s going to be people on that staff and in that church that today may be the day they quit.
Rich Birch — Right.
Brian Dodd — They may quit the ministry. They may quit their marriage. Sadly, some of them may be considering suicide and quitting life. Um, another Tom Hanks movie Castaway. There’s a great scene when he’s back in Memphis and he’s telling his friend about the experience and he said I just kept breathing. I just stayed alive and then one day the tide brought a cell in. You never know what the tide’s going to bring in.
Brian Dodd — Richard Jesse would agree with that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Brian Dodd — He kept staying alive. He kept fighting. He kept doing everything he could to hold the bear off. Because you never know what low cloud cover could bring in.
Rich Birch — So good. Love it. Yes.
Brian Dodd — And today may be the day somebody on your staff or in your church today may be the day that God brings in low low cloud cover, and they’re going to be rescued.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Brian Dodd — So this is an example of how the book can be utilized. That it takes stories like this Richard Jesse – an incredible demonstration of self-leadership.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — It takes stories just like that and how you can use them in a church context to really equip, and motivate, and inspire the people of your church and your staff.
Rich Birch — See see friends as you’re listening in, this is why you should be following Brian. He he does this stuff all day long pulling out incredible leadership lessons from ah the realms of entertainment, from sports, all different areas. I find it so helpful, so engaging and so helpful. So yeah I would love for you to pick up a copy of his book. Friends let me be completely honest, so there are times where people want to bring come on and talk about their book, and most of those people I turn down. Not only was I happy to have Brian on to talk about this book, but I also bought the book myself like with my own money. I didn’t say, hey send me a free copy, because I really I I just believe in Brian, believe what he’s doing and I think this is a great resource. So I’d love for you to pick that up. We could pick this up at Amazon. Is there anywhere else we want to pick it up? Where should we be sending people who want to pick up a copy of the book?
Brian Dodd — Yeah, you’re right, Rich. Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Brian Dodd — And you know for some reason if if those slip your mind you can go to briandoddonleadership and there’s a link right there to pick up the book. It’ll link you right back to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that’s great.
Brian Dodd — But but yeah, those are the those are the places to get it.
Rich Birch — That’s great and then you’ve also… listen, you just Brian just keeps given to you. So we’ve given some stories, some good stuff to wrestle with, but you’re also going to give us a downloadable resource that we want to pick up. Kind of tell us a little bit about that. Ah, what is it that we’re going to. We’re going to link to in the show notes here? Where what do we want to send people for that?
Brian Dodd — But yeah, a couple of years ago I started accumulating just great leadership quotes. And I know if you’re ever a person who has to develop content, you love quotes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Brian Dodd —You know quotes frame it. You know quotes quotes give you additional credibility because somebody very famous said something that supports a point you’re trying to get across.
Rich Birch — Yes, so true.
Brian Dodd — So I started to accumulating quotes. And twice a year I always do here’s the best quotes I got from the first half of the year, or the second half of the year. So obviously at the time of the year that you and I are taping this I’m in the process of gathering for the first half of 2022. But for the free downloadable resource, yeah, they’re just going to click the link in your show notes and we’re going to provide them the best 75 great quotes from the second half of 2021. You know that’ll just make them laugh, it’ll challenge their thinking. It’ll inspire them. Um and great resource to build into the into the content they’re creating.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good, so helpful. Like I say friends, Brian is in your corner. He wants to help you out. Ah well I think we’re gonna land this plane here. I appreciate you being here. Is there anything else you want to share with us just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Brian Dodd — You know, Rich, the the only other thing I’d say is your I got introduced to your content unSeminary ten years ago maybe give or take.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Brian Dodd — The information that you’re providing to church leaders is invaluable.
Rich Birch — Oh thank you, man.
Brian Dodd — And you know I just want to I want to end by encouraging you. Um I do believe with every ounce of my being that that being a pastor is the toughest job in the world.
Rich Birch — Very true. Yep.
Brian Dodd — And if for no other reason, two things. Number one you lead volunteer armies, and satan is not omnipresent. He’s not everywhere. He’s a master of deployment, but he’s not everywhere. So there’s some places that you’re not going to run into satan today and you’re not going to run into the enemy. The people you resource and the people you equip face him every day. And so what you do is you fill in gaps that they were not taught in seminary that when you fill in those gaps that that eliminates a place that the enemy can work.
Brian Dodd — So my friend you are you are providing an invaluable resource to pastors and church leaders, particularly executive pastors, and I just thank you for all you’re doing. So if I can ever encourage you in any way we are all on the same team and fighting the same battle and and I appreciate what you do.
Rich Birch — I appreciate you, Brian. Thank you so much I want to make sure people get to your website. We’ll have links in in our show notes. But it’s BrianDoddonleadership that’s Dodd with two d’s or I guess 3 ds um, you know we want to make sure that you get over there anywhere else. We want to send people online if they ah, want to track with you?
Brian Dodd — You know I’m still old school a little bit. I like Twitter.
Rich Birch — Yes!
You can put links in Twitter you know. Hot links in Twitter @BrianKDodd on Twitter.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Love it.
Brian Dodd — I like you know I’m still, you know, I was at Twitter when it wasn’t cool, and when it was, and now it’s not you know, kind of like blogging. So but yeah.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, no, it’s true. You know it’s it’s funny I was I was talking with a friend this week about Twitter. I was like Twitter has been you know I’m still there I’m not as active as I once was, but I do find myself opening it up more recently like over the last six months than I have. I’m like there is something great about the simplicity of Twitter that is that’s actually fantastic for connecting with people.
Brian Dodd — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So love that. Well Brian, I appreciate you being here. Thanks so much for encouraging leaders. Thanks for what you do every day to help leaders that Injoy and in your own stuff. Just wish you the best as we continue through. I’m looking forward to the I’m looking forward to the book for 2022 as well. I’m sure you’re gathering ideas now. So looking forward to that.
Brian Dodd — I am I am in the process of writing it now. So yeah.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks Brian appreciate being here.
Coaching on Rebuilding a “New” Launch Team for Your Church with Shawn Lovejoy
May 26, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Shawn Lovejoy, the founder and CEO of Courageous Pastors and Courage to Lead. His work is all about coaching leaders around what keeps them up at night and focuses on personal and organizational growth.
Shawn is talking with us about building and redeploying healthy teams in our churches after the struggles of the last couple of years.
A switch in the focus. // Shawn says that three years ago, before so much of the upheaval we’ve experienced, 90% of his talks with pastors were on the nuts and bolts side of leading a church and 10% on the personal side. Today with everything we have going on in our world, that has now switched to 90% personal and 10% nuts and bolts. Shawn’s organization talks with pastors about getting back up and finding confidence and courage again.
Grieve the loss, then move ahead. // Grieve the loss that you had in your church since the pandemic, but then focus on moving ahead. Look at the church leaders currently on your staff as your new launch team and pour into them. Rebuild the team you’ve got and deploy them to equip your people to live out the church’s mission.
Look at building leaders at every level. // The opportunity for church leaders now is not to focus on getting more followers, but rather building leaders at every level. Look for people who aren’t just ministry doers, but ministry developers. Build teams from the staff to lay leaders to volunteers. Train your staff team to replicate themselves and give their jobs away. In doing so they make themselves indispensable rather than being bottlenecks. And building a strong leadership culture at your church will strengthen you at the center so you can stand firm when the next challenge comes your way.
Culture, team, and systems. // Shawn’s book Building a Killer Team Without Killing Yourself or Your Team helps leaders move ahead with becoming a better leader and team builder. Shawn can trace every growing or non-growing church back to three things—the culture, the team, and the systems—and he coaches around these three gears of growth. The number one thing that keeps church leaders awake at night is people. We need to stop believing that if we can hire a certain person it will solve all of our problems. Instead we need to learn to develop our people on healthy teams.
Build great, healthy teams. // Shawn’s process to building healthy teams focuses five pillars. This sequence includes fostering togetherness, recruiting and building great talent, bolstering accountability, structuring for growth and peace, and maintaining rhythms and finish lines.
Be clear and honest with your staff. // We all would love to acquire the best team ever. But we all have folks on our teams who aren’t meeting expectations. As a leader, part of developing staff member means talking to them when we are not happy with their performance. By doing so we can help them get realigned, or they may recognize the current position isn’t right for them. Be clear and honest about not meeting your expectations. It allows them to hear from the Holy Spirit on where they are called and whether they should opt out. Offer clarity and honesty on where they are winning and not winning, on what’s acceptable and not acceptable.
You can learn more about Building a Killer Team Without Killing Yourself or Your Team at www.killerteambook.org. To get coaching help, listen to the Courageous Pastors podcast, and explore more free resources that can help your church, visit Courageous Pastors at www.courageouspastors.com.
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Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. At CDF Capital, we care about each of these components. When a church is properly resourced financially, spiritually, and in leadership, lives are transformed.
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know today we’ve got a leader you’re going to want to lean in on and and learn from. We’ve got a leader of leaders – someone who’s connected with just so many great people across the country. We’ve got Shawn Lovejoy – he’s the founder and CEO of Courage to Lead which is all about coaching leaders around what keeps them up at night. They really facilitate organizational and personal growth for leaders. He has a real diverse background. He’s been a church planter, a pastor, a real estate developer, entrepreneur, a leadership coach. He is the host of the Courage to Lead podcast and just a fantastic guy. Plus he’s written ah a book that we want to make sure you hear more about. So Shawn, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Welcome back to the show. You’ve been on again which is nice, which if you’re longtime listener, you know we don’t do that often. So glad so glad to have Shawn back.
Shawn Lovejoy — Honored to be with you and honored to be your friend, and I’m glad you and I have a relationship, man, because you’re one of the smartest guys that I know, but you’re also one of the most approachable and accessible guys that I know. So I just appreciate that about you.
Rich Birch — Oh thanks so much, Shawn. Why don’t you kind of fill out this Shawn story a little bit for folks that might not know who you are. Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us that kind of a bit of the story there.
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah, so I didn’t grow up wanting to be a pastor. Nobody my family had ever been in ministry, you know. I grew up in Alabama, man. We are all my my grandparents and all his brothers – they were all in bar fights. They’d all been stabbed and shot, you know, and so and then my my grandfather broke the cycle. Um, godly man, you know, and got his family back in church. So um, I’m third generation you know Christ follower. You know my dad was the same – Baptist deacon, you know and but all I ever want to do is follow in his steps and do real estate. And I got my real estate license when I was 19 years old, started selling real estate on the side. By the time I’m 21 I’m making a 6 figure income, and that was in the early 90s, Rich.
Rich Birch — Yes, back when 6 figures was like a big deal.
Shawn Lovejoy — That’s that’s when 6 figures was a lot of money. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Wow.
Shawn Lovejoy — And I started teaching a college and career Sunday school class.
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah, you didn’t know this part of my story did you?
Rich Birch — Ah I didn’t know this this is new. This is great.
Shawn Lovejoy — And and God swept the whole church really up in revival out of our Sunday school class.
Rich Birch — That’s cool.
Shawn Lovejoy — And like ruined us in the best way. And I walked in and told my dad I was leaving the family business and going to be a pastor.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shawn Lovejoy — And he compared me to David Koresh that day. You know he told me he said even David Koresh thought he was doing God’s will.
Rich Birch — Oh gosh – that’s a great opening line. Oh my goodness. Nice like it worked. Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — Ah ah well it made no sense. You know what I’m saying. And so served a couple traditional churches and then moved to metro Atlanta and started a church. You know it kind of grew, despite my preaching, into a megachurch. But I always felt like a business guy trapped in a pastor’s body.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and I realized that I was good at the between Sunday stuff. Which is what seminary does not teach you…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — …thus the need for this podcast.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — Like I I started the church when I was 28, Rich. I was starting a church and I had never led a staff meeting.
Rich Birch — Right. Amazing. Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — I had never hired anyone much less fired anyone before, nor had anyone ever taught me how to do any of that. So we had we had four and a half hour staff meetings on Mondays.
Rich Birch — Nice – sort it all out. Get it all figured out on Monday.
Shawn Lovejoy — That’s how I started. And so through great coaching you know and and school of hard knocks, you know and then I started coaching leaders. You know, just how to get better between Sundays, and how to stay sane, centered, and married in the process, like that’s that’s an important tenet of you know my coaching over the years.
Rich Birch — Amy Amy
Shawn Lovejoy — And so made the second scariest decision I made eight years ago to hand off the church and go full-time coaching.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and we’ve been coaching marketplace and ministry leaders now for the last eight years, and I’m having the time of my life. We’ve got 17, 18 coaches now, you know it’s just crazy what God’s done. So.
Rich Birch — That’s so good.
Shawn Lovejoy — I never walked off a stage when I was a megachurch pastor, Rich, and said I like, I was made for that, honestly.
Shawn Lovejoy — But like you know how that is, like I walk out of coffee shops and boardrooms now all the time and I’m like man, I’m good at that.
Rich Birch — Yes, love that. Yeah yeah, totally.
Shawn Lovejoy — God’s given me a gift I’m, you know so I can I’m decent on a stage, but I’m I’m better in circles than I am in rows.
Rich Birch — Yeah, right. So good. And so you really have two parts of what you do. There’s the Courage to Lead side, which is is really about marketplace leaders—correct me if I’m wrong—and then you’ve got kind of the courageous pastor side which is about coaching pastors. Help me understand those two – give us like… I want to focus in on what you’re seeing in pastors particularly, but kind of talk to us about the two parts of what you do.
Shawn Lovejoy — Well I always felt like because I had a previous life, you know outside vocational Ministry, a lot of what we were teaching was scalable to the marketplace. You know and I wrote my first book to pastors The Measure of Our Success with Baker Books. The editor of my book cried he said I’ve never been a pastor but all this personal leadership stuff you’re teaching like man, I need to hear this. I could… he tried to get me to expand it to marketplace leaders as well and I just said no, I just want to write to pastors. Because I’d had several pastors disqualify themselves in the process of building this thing they were building, and just passionate about it. So the goal all along was to take the organizational design principles and leadership principles that I’ve learned from great coaches, and scale it from the ministry into the marketplace as well, and we’ve been able to do that. For a while they lived under the same brand, you know, now we have Courage to Lead and Courageous Pastors and we’re coaching both.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Well you spent a lot of time thinking about leaders. A part of why I love you and what I love what you do is there are folks who are in this space of you know, helping church leaders who I get the vibe from sometimes that that they just see us as a market. They just see us as like, hey we’re trying to like sell junk to churches. And that’s not you at all. I really do you give out the vibe and I’ve seen it consistently of your love for church leaders. Um, and which I I just want to hero and champion I think is fantastic. You spend a lot of time thinking about church leaders, talking to church leaders. What are you seeing these days? You know we’re coming up on 600 episodes I wanted to get you on and kind of tap your kind of meta thinking around where are church leaders at? What are you wrestling in what are they wrestling with? What are you hearing them thinking about consistently these days?
Shawn Lovejoy — Well I would say you know first of all, you know three years ago 90% of my discussion with pastors was on the nuts and bolt side. 10% was on the personal side. Three years later the backside of political tensions, and pandemic pandemics, and racial tensions, and every other kind of possible accusation that pastors could have thrown at them in the last three years, you know it’s now 90% personal and 10% nuts and bolts.
Shawn Lovejoy — Like a lot of church leaders lost their swagger, I call it.
Rich Birch — No, it’s true.
Shawn Lovejoy — In in the last three years like we we just we’re just trying to stay out of off the front page, stay out of the headlines…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yes, yep.
Shawn Lovejoy — …you know not be accused of something we didn’t do, trying to be so careful and so tentative. If you’re not careful, you still can get in that mode where you’re playing defense all the time. You know so one of the things we’re talking a lot to pastors about is like, hey we got to get back off of our heels and get back up on the balls of our feet again. We got to start thinking. Let’s not let’s don’t move the target, move the bullseye, settle for less. Like the Lord wants your church to grow, more than you do.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s so good.
Shawn Lovejoy — So don’t over spiritualize this. Okay, he wants your church healthy things grow so we need to hold ourselves accountable to that and we can’t blame the pandemic forever. We got to we got to get back, you know and play offense. But that takes some you know some some they got to get their confidence, their courage back, you know to to take new ground in Jesus’ name.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s talk about that. So I love that. I’ve seen that as well. I think there is we’ve all taken a hit in these last number of years.
Shawn Lovejoy — We all have. Yeah.
Rich Birch — And and it’s this sense of like, oh gosh I’m not sure, you know what is it that God’s calling us to do. I do sense that there’s a pivot, as in conversations I’m having, there’s more and more leaders are leaning into… they’re not talking about rebuilding. We’re we’re done thinking about the percentage of people that were with us in 2019.
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah.
Rich Birch — We’re like okay these are the people that are here. Let’s let’s build from here. What are you doing to help them get back in the game? What kind of coaching are you giving them? How are you helping but to kind of regain that swagger as you say? What’s that look like?
Shawn Lovejoy — One, you know I’ve been telling a lot of guys—it’s a beautiful biblical metaphor.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know in Jewish culture some still true but ah orthodox do, you know, that when they when there’s a death, they have ah a period of grieving publicly signified by the sackcloth and ashes idea. But then there’s like that day of declaration when when the the period of grieving is over, and widows date again. It’s okay to ask a widow out on a date.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know I’ve told pastors like you need to grieve the loss that we had because that will affect you. It’s called PTSD and as much as 50% of pastors could be clinically diagnosed with PTSD. I really but do believe that. But there comes a day of declaration when it’s no more. We’re no more focused on the loss, like you say.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — We don’t have 70%, we don’t have 80%, we got 100% – that’s what we got. We got a new launch team for the next level.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah so good. Yeah I love that. Yes, yep.
Shawn Lovejoy — So we’re not going to talk about who’s missing anymore. We’re not going to talk about who’s left anymore. End of discussion. And I think there’s power in saying, no more. After today we got what we got, we’re going with the goers. The good news is everyone hasn’t left…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and and now we’re going to develop a strategy to take what we’ve got and treat them as a launch team to go into the future.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Shawn Lovejoy — And there’s power I think there’s spiritual and emotional power in that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so you haven’t heard episodes that we’re recording so Greg Surratt said exactly the same thing. He was like, listen friends we have to treat the people that are…
Shawn Lovejoy — He probably stole it from me somewhere.
Rich Birch — Yeah I’m sure he, you know, but ah hey I think that’s important like let’s lean in here folks, we’re hearing similar things here. Ah and he literally was the same language around we should be thinking about this as a new launch team that it’s like, hey you know and and he obviously talks to a lot of church planters and you know and there have been a you know ton of churches that have taken a hit. And seeing like okay I’m I’m back to just a couple hundred people. But hey if you were to start with a couple hundred people um, ah that would be amazing. You would have loved it right? You’d be like this is incredible. Um.
Shawn Lovejoy — I tell guys, you know Rich, I say how many people were here this past Sunday? And they’re like well you know, only 200 or or only a hundred or whatevers. Like and what was your giving?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — Okay, all right. It was you know $3000 let’s just so let’s be very very concerned.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — …say if I went to a church planter…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and said I’ve got a core group of a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that I’ll hand you…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — …over the would you what… how many church planters you think would take that deal?
Rich Birch — Yes, all day long. Yes, all day long. Absolutely.
Shawn Lovejoy — Ah yeah, it’s matter perspective.
Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely, yeah. I love it. So let’s think about that. So we’re we’re talking to some church leaders. We’re trying to encourage them, hey you you know we’re let’s think about the people that were you know they’re with us. They’re a launch team. That that means building teams again. That means rebuilding the people we’ve got. That means kind of redeploying them. What would be some of those practical steps about enlisting the people that are with us? Kind of helping them get plugged in helping them end up in, you know the right seat on the bus. All those kinds of things. What kind of things should we thinking about that that?
Shawn Lovejoy — One of the things we learned through the pandemic is one of the most indicting things about a lot of churches we talked with is not they couldn’t… it wasn’t just fringe people that left, it was leaders that left, and they didn’t even know where they were.
Rich Birch — Yeah yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — So we’ve worked with a lot of fast-growing churches. But and I attend one now. But during the pandemic a lot of those churches looked around and said we we can’t even find our leaders. Like we’re not as close to we as we thought we were to our leaders. So I think the opportunity now is not focus on followers, getting more followers. But with this new launch team you know, to really look at building leaders at every level. So the new team I’m building is not a much of ministry doers, they’re ministry developers, and we’re going to build teams at every level. And the next time some calamity comes along, because it’s going to come along – Jesus sort of promised that, you know we’re going to be strong at the center.
Shawn Lovejoy — We’re not going to have people we pay to do ministry, and we’re going to build a leadership culture. And you’re responsible for not just making Sundays happen but reproducing yourself. I want a list of people you’re meeting with.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — That you’re training to think like you think, see what you see, say what you say, and we’re going to make that part of our metrics on our staff going forward.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — That you’re reproducing yourself in the lives of others, and we’ll be stronger next time if we’ll start at the center and build out that way.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Let’s lean in a little bit more on that. I think we all agree Ephesians 4 we should be building up. Our job is not to do the ministry. We need to be equippers of the saints. That’s what we’re called to do. But we all seem to be caught in this temptation of let’s just find some doers, or or maybe even more pointedly, let’s pay some doers because then I don’t have to develop people. Um push the push more on that.
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Tell tell us more about the distinction between a doer and a leader. Help us understand that.
Shawn Lovejoy — It’s like everything else that God has taught us. I mean his his his teachings are not restrictive. They’re freeing. I mean you know, I tell guys the the tagline for the book is “this doesn’t have to kill you”.
Rich Birch — Hmmm.
Shawn Lovejoy — Like if you’re if you’re overwhelmed right now and you’re overextended, you’re over committed. You have to ask yourself is it because Jesus has put more on me than human what’s humanly possible… Or is it because I’m a control freak…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and I think nobody can do it better than me?
Rich Birch — Yeah, right. Yes, yes, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — And I I want I want or can’t build a team. You know so one is that it’s that spiritual desire and commandment but two it’s it’s leadership’s a spiritual gift. So pastors need to hear the mandate to say we need to put people in leadership positions not that push buttons and move chairs, which is what we tend to hire. We tend to look for doers, technicians.
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — When we’re better off… God knew there’s not enough money to go around to pay everybody to do ministry. And very few people were paid to be good in the new testament church.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — Very few of them. And money was scarce.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and it can and can and will be scarce at times with us. We’re never gonna have enough money to pay everybody to do ministry. He knew that would be a lid to the church. So he said, you guys that are the elders you gotta you got to teach people, you got to equip people rather than do the work of the ministry.
Rich Birch — So why do you think we’re so tempted towards doers? Why why does? Why do we?
Shawn Lovejoy — I mean it’s it’s easier for me to just grab somebody and put them on staff and start paying them. You know because Sunday’s always coming. It comes every seven days.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know it’s the tyranny of the urgent over what’s really really important. So but the cool thing is it is measurable. Like I I can I can I can raise the value of this in our organization and say, you’re no longer just going to be prized for making junk happen. Like you’re actually going to be valued and indispensable here by giving your job away over time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it. It’s It’s so good. You know I think we’re always, you know, leadership development is one of those pieces where it’s like it’s like we all know we’re called to that. we all know hey that’s the thing we’re called to do but then actually so few of us actually hunker down and do the week-in/week-out… What would be some of those habits that you’ve seen, or those kind of repetitive things that leaders who develop other leaders just seem to do all the time? …They find themselves repeating time and again?
Shawn Lovejoy — Well, you know it starts at the top. I mean I was just with a you know megachurch this this week who knocked it out. You know had 8000 people there for Easter – is an all time high for them. Their biggest auditorium seats 900 people…
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and 8000 people they’re just people everywhere. But I asked the pastor, I said how many times you teach this past year? He said I think 48 something like that.
Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — Dude, it starts at the top. Starts at the top. Like you need to be here those 48 Sundays, perhaps, but you need to get get get down to about 35 Sundays a year. Not just for your benefit, but you need to pick 4 to 6 Sundays this next year, let somebody else teach, and you be there and debrief after every single service, like that’s how you build a deeper bench.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know we usually don’t give our job away in ministry until we’re on vacation. But like the new value is like I want you to have four Sundays a year. Let’s just start there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — Four Sundays a year when you’re not on vacation, but someone’s doing your job.
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — Worship leader, one Sunday a month. Okay, you can’t be on the stage you’re here can’t be on the stage.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — So like you can begin to systemize this at every level, and like raise that value. That man the goal is not just performing, producing events and services and getting my atta-boy atta-girl because of that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — But like I’m I’m I’m reproducing myself and other people and that’s championed on our team. And valued and that’s what makes me indispensable.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — A lot of leaders get insecure like, but if I get off the stage, you know… You know that they might like the new guy better or whatever.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — But that’s that’s pride. That’s fear. None of those things come from God. That’s straight from the evil one. We have to wrestle those things to the ground. In reality I’ve been the senior leader. Man the most indispensable people on my team were people who had that knack of giving their job away. The ones that couldn’t became the bottleneck, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — They hit a lid and and everybody will.
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s an interesting thing there, you know, I think and I’ve seen this happen in my own life, I’ve seen it happen with other leaders where you know early on—maybe in our 20s or 30s—we have a measure of success. And oftentimes when you peel back the layers of what that is it comes down to, wow that person is like super-dedicated. They are um like they’ve got tons of energy. They are willing to come in early and leave late. And all of those things are good, but there’s a downside to that, which is um, you well, first of all, you can’t keep doing that. At some point that’s a that’s actually a function of your age and your you know energy and all of that, and that does wane eventually in life. I know that’s hard to believe, young leaders, but eventually that does wane and we don’t reinforce the right behavior early on which is you have got to develop people around you. That’s actually that’s the killer skill we’re all looking for at the end of the day that is the way you will be indispensable and never lose a job in the local church, which is if you can replace yourself time and again as opposed to you’re the person that was always here before the doors open and you’re here you know and late into the night working hard. But we but we all still do seem to pat those people on the head and be thanks so much for working.
Shawn Lovejoy — It’s so true. It’s so true.
Rich Birch — So so difficult. Um now you’ve written a book I want to dive into. Talk a little bit about this. It’s called Building a Killer Team—I love this—Without Killing Yourself or Your Team. We don’t want to kill anybody ah… tell us about this. Why did you write this book? And we want to I friends we’re going to send you to killerteambook.org – we want to send you there today. But tell us about why you wrote this book. What was it that led you to say, hey now’s the time to write this book?
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah, well you know we’ve been coaching and teaching for years around what we call the gears of growth, like I can trace every growing or non-growing church really back to three things. It’s the culture, the team, or the systems. And they’re separate but interdependent gears.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and we’ve talked about as you said earlier coaching leaders through what keeps them awake at night. I could promise every leader who’s listening to your podcast today. The number one thing that keeps them awake at night? People. Finances is number two, but it’s people. And the two biggest lies from hell ever believed is like, it’ll be easier when we get to here.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — And if I can hire this person, it will solve all my problems.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know, then you realize every person is a problem, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — And so I sought out to sort of take a lot of our coaching on and around what we’d done in terms of like how to build great healthy teams.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — And build it into a framework or a sequence. And shout out to you. I don’t want this time to get away from you because I I sought out some of the smartest people I know… I say in the book like every great decision and great idea ought to come out of out of a out of collaboration not isolation. You know and so knowing that I wanted to put together a framework, a sequence, and a little bit tighter in a knit way um I reached out to you and my buddy Kenny Jahng, you know over three years ago, if you can believe that.
Rich Birch — It’s been that long?! Gosh.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and I said hey guys, help me. Like I’ve got a lot of great stuff here bouncing around in my head, but I want to build like a mandate. I want to build a sequence. I want to build a framework. I want to build a job description for how a leader can build a killer team without killing themselves for their team. But I didn’t use that word and you were the ones spoke up and said, you know what you’re describing? You’re describing a killer team. And I’m like bam! That’s it! You know God was loud, and it was birth out of that meeting.
Rich Birch — Right. It’s funny. Yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know in collaboration with some friends. So shout out to you and God speaking through you, and then it was just off to the races. It just made a lot of sense and I later went looked it up – it’s on the back cover of the book. The first word the first definition of the word killer is a murderer, somebody that slays people, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — …but the adjective is something that’s strikingly impressive or effective.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — And I thought that’s it. That’s it. That’s how … So so ah so the the goal of this work was to get up, give a job description to a leader who says I I need to be a better team leader, team builder, and I’m kind of overwhelmed, kind of overextended, kind of overcommitted, kind of overexposed – something we taught as a leader. And I look like I’m always available, and I’m in the middle of the weeds and I can’t get out, and that was the heart behind the book.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. So The thing I love about it is it is a sequence. It’s a you know, it is a a process. It’s a a way to understand how to step through developing. Can you give us a sense of that process – kind of give us a you know, maybe a few of those highlights that have been like, okay here are some important steps in this process that we need to make sure um that we follow as we’re building our relaunch team, as we’re thinking about you know, rebuilding the teams around us.
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah, so we we talk about five in the book – five pillars of a killer team. One is to foster togetherness. You know we’ve got to we’ve got to help the the worship ministry care about the children’s ministry. Because I hate to tell you this, they don’t care about the children’s ministry.
Rich Birch — True.
Shawn Lovejoy — Like we have to get the team and the family at the table, get them communicating with each other, learning from each other. And I say in there, killer teams are not just committed to the mission. They’re committed to each other.
Rich Birch — So good.
Shawn Lovejoy — And of course that that goes hand-in-hand to what Lencioni says in The Advantage. He says a highly-aligned, highly-cohesive leadership team is the competitive advantage. And I think that’s true in church, by the way. It’s not… they’re all we’re all singing the same songs, teaching out of the same book. Why are why are a few growing and many aren’t? It’s it’s this team piece.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — It’s a leader’s ability to build a cohesive leadership team, and then recruit and build great talent. You know you got… I tell people average talent will sign up on a card and raise their hands, you know. Elite talent has to be recruited. And then you got ah you gotta you gotta to keep that talent. And then we talk about bolstering accountability, and building what we call last 10% culture and we we encourage more conflict in the book. A healthy conflict, rather than artificial harmony. And then structuring for growth and peace, and that’s you know reproducing. We talk about building one-pizza teams. I don’t want more people reporting to a leader that can split a pizza.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Love it. So good.
Shawn Lovejoy — Because I can manage more people than that, but I can’t reproduce myself in 15 people.
Rich Birch — Right. No.
Shawn Lovejoy — I’m not that good.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know Jesus only selected 12 – how many you think we can do?
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and he spent more time with 3.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — So the good news is more people can lead 4 people than can lead 15 people.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, I love that.
Shawn Lovejoy — So it’s that’s literally your leadership pipeline. And then maintaining rhythms and and finish lines. You know it’s it’s making sure we set a team culture where there’s like ah a daily finish line. We can’t be working all the time. A weekly finish line, and a so a rhythm in our culture where we celebrate wins more often. I was talked I talked with the CEOs of two of the ministry staffing companies – two of the biggest ones. This the ministry search firms in North America – you would know they’re known if I called them. And the great resignation has happened in the church as well as the marketplace.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Shawn Lovejoy — And one Harvard Business review, and I think this is true for ministry, one of the primary reasons people are are giving for resigning from their positions is not going somewhere else for more money.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — It was that we never celebrate the wins here. Like nothing’s ever good enough.
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, that’s good.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know and Sunday’s always coming, and the next series has got to be better than the last series, and we got raise the bar and we’re about excellence because that’s what Bill Hybels said you know blah blah blah blah blah and like nothing’s ever good enough and and we we never celebrate progress and…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — …the the simple little life change stories that make ministry worth it all, you know? And so.
Rich Birch — Well and that I think is a particular danger in the church world because Sunday is always coming, because we are on this treadmill, and you know and you you know you feel this. And you know you come through whatever big day Christmas, Easter, you know some huge things happen, baptism Sundays, whatever that looks like in your church. And I know for me I have to fight I have to fight the feeling inside at like one o’clock two o’clock Sunday afternoon where it’s like okay well here comes the next one. The next one’s coming like we you know that’s we just need to move on. But we’ve got to slow down. We’ve got to you know say okay, let’s celebrate. I love that that’s you know, defined finish lines. That’s really really good.
Shawn Lovejoy — I say in the book, Rich, that some of the most depressing times in my life as a megachurch pastor was in the car on the way home from Easter services after hitting our numerical goal…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and realizing, oh stink.
Rich Birch — Yeah, we just raised the bar.
Shawn Lovejoy — Sunday comes in seven days – like it’s so fleeting.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know that’s what I mean by the fact that this this numerical thing, it’s a mirage. Like you’re if you’re not happy now, you’re not going to be happy there.
Rich Birch — Right right.
Shawn Lovejoy — And it’s learning to enjoy the day and live in this rhythm between intensity and rest every day. And enjoying the journey, because it gets more complex. It gets more difficult as God blesses it. So I got to make sure I’m in this for the long haul.
Rich Birch — Love it. Can you give us some practical coaching around, you know, we all love to acquire. We all would love to acquire like the best team ever. We would all be like we’d like to find these people, raise them up, put them on our team, and be like these are like you know these are experts in all these areas. But you know we all have folks on our team that maybe are not just not cutting it in one way or another. They’re just not um, living up to our expectations. They’re maybe not living up to their own expectations. What coaching would you give to us on what we how we should help get them realigned, or frankly move them out? What what would what does that look like for us? Because that’s a part of building a killer team right is that…
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …hey you know there’s going to be some folks that maybe aren’t performing as well. They’re not in the killer category yet. What’s that look like?
Shawn Lovejoy — I think I got to like like three chapters in the book on that but I’ll try to do it in 60 seconds or less. You know one… I have a leader called—you’ll love this, Rich—I mean you had this a million times happened to you. Like I’ll have a senior leader or a team leader, you know, call me and they’re frustrated about somebody on their staff or on their team, and they’re whining, and groaning. And and they’re like what do you think I should do? And I’m like, well first of all have you told them what you just told me?
Rich Birch — It’s so true. So true.
Shawn Lovejoy — 99 out of a hundred times, you know what their answer is. Well no, not exactly. I’m like well first of all, that lacks integrity. If you’re frustrated by people on your team, and you’re not telling them, like that lacks integrity.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Lovejoy — You need to be willing to be clear and honest with them about not meeting your expectations. And the cool thing about that is the clearer we get with our expectations of a team member, the more it allows them to hear from the Holy Spirit. And self-select, opt-out, you know, etc. For them to come to the… it’s better for them to come to the conclusion they can’t keep up then you come to that conclusion privately and then go surprise them by it. You know and if we’re thinking about moving somebody, or managing them off the team like Lencioni says. And I tell leaders if they would be surprised by that conversation, we haven’t been honest with them along the way.
Rich Birch — Yes. Right. Absolutely.
Shawn Lovejoy — So it begins with like an honesty and a clarity. And here’s where you’re winning. Here’s where you’re not winning. Here’s what’s acceptable. Here’s what’s not acceptable. I owe you that kind of honesty, owe you grace, honesty but I also owe you proper placement.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — Like I owe you the privilege of being in a seat on the bus that aligns with your gifting, your wiring, and your level of talent. If I put you in over your head, it’s gonna steal your joy, and it’s gonna steal my joy.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Love it.
Shawn Lovejoy — So that’s why we’ve got to hang on to our roles loosely and keep our eyes on the goal, you know? And so all of that spiritual enterprise and that conviction and courage to be more candid and not try to be the most popular person on the team, be the most respected person on the team, and to be really, really honest and courageous with our with our teammates puts ourselves and our teammates in our best position to hear from God, and know whether we’re meeting expectations or not.
Rich Birch — Yeah there’s no doubt that candor is kindness, right? That we want to be super clear with people on where they’re at and the earlier we can do that, the better. Um, you know I know in my own life I’ve respected leaders who have come to me early and been like, hey this is not meeting my expectations. I would way rather that than… because we’ve all been in the opposite of those conversations where it’s like they’re they’re describing something that happened last week but you can tell that there’s emotional baggage from a year ago, two years ago, ten years ago…
Shawn Lovejoy — Yep yep.
Rich Birch — …and you can smell that stuff a mile away. And we just know then then I feel and I feel stupid as a leader. I’m like I can’t believe you didn’t talk to me about this. We could have sorted this out. Love that. Love that. Love that. Well, where do we want to send people, you know, I want to make sure people pick up a copy of this this book. So where do we want to send them want to send them to killerteambook.org – tell us more about that. What what do we want to where do we want to send them all those kind of things?
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah, well I self-published with my my friend and coach Sam Chan’s …(?)… labels mainly because I wanted to get the book as cheap as possible so I could give it away. You know I don’t need to I don’t need to try to get rich or famous on books. I’m a coach.
Rich Birch — Totally.
Shawn Lovejoy — But but I want this content out to as many leaders as possible. So we’re able to get give give almost give the book away…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Shawn Lovejoy — …you know for shipping plus cost and you know by not signing with a national publisher.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shawn Lovejoy — So you’ll see that reflected at killerteambook.org literally for the cost of me printing the book and shipping it to you.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, love it. Friends, this is incredible. You know you know this book is worth, while it’s worth multiple times… you know the content is worth you know a hundred times what you’re going to pay for it or more – a thousand times what you’re going to pay for it. Ah, but even just you know you know from a book point if if you go there, you’ll see it’s a super low price. Like it’s say it’s just cost plus shipping, which is amazing. This would be a great tool for for teams to do together. is that the best place we want to do that there too if I’m looking for multiple copies – should I just send everybody on my team there to pick up their own copy? Is that the best for that?
Shawn Lovejoy — Yep yep, you can that literally. There’s a couple bump ups you can buy 3 copies 10 copies.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know there’re on the site if you want extra copies for your team. And I should say you know one of the reasons we wrote the book the way we did, it’s not just for ministry leaders. It’s for marketplace leaders.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — So I say to senior pastors, and stewardship pastors, and executive pastors like you, you getting some of these for the Christian CEOs and…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s a great idea.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and and Christian leaders in your congregation, you know, um, they’re all trying to build a killer team and you can get some street cred.
Rich Birch — Oh totally.
Shawn Lovejoy — By giving them a book that’s safe. It’s not loaded with Christian-ese, you know, because they may or may not be as devout in their faith. You know as you want them to be. And they also might be leading teams that are diverse spiritually. So I sort of wrote it through those lenses as well. But it’s a safe book to give to the Christian leaders in your congregation. And you’ll get some street cred by adding some value to their lives. You know because…
Rich Birch — I love it. That’s a great idea.
Shawn Lovejoy — Yeah yeah.
Rich Birch — You know I think particularly you know we we have those sometimes we don’t know what to do with marketplace leaders in our church. We don’t know how do we connect with them. I know there’s church leaders that are listening in that are a bit perplexed on how to engage with them. I love that idea – hey buy 10 but buy 10 copies of the book—friends, you won’t believe how cheap it is—and you know wrap it up, write a nice note on the cover, hey I was thinking about you as you lead at X organization…
Shawn Lovejoy — Gold.
Rich Birch — Um, you know my friend Shawn wrote this book – I think you’ll find it helpful. Let’s get together in a month and talk about it. Man, that would be amazing. I love that – that’s a great idea. So good. Well Shawn, this has been incredible. I appreciate your time today. Anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Shawn Lovejoy — I’ll just close by saying you know the team is not the frustration. It’s not the interruptions, not the distraction. It’s not the footstool to build your kingdom. You know the team is the work. That’s what I say in the book. I mean the team is the work. And and at the end of the day I’m proud of a lot of things God’s accomplished through my life, but but but um, ah, all the books and the institutions and the nickels and the noses, and you know zeros – if you want me to boast about something I’ll talk about that the men and women I’ve been able to reproduce myself in.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Right.
Shawn Lovejoy — You know they have great ministries today. You know who came to a really really difficult spot in their life and I coached them through that…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Shawn Lovejoy — …and they broke through. And you know whatever. Your legacy will be people.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Shawn Lovejoy — It’s so it’s it’s crazy that we would have that conversation in ministry, Rich, but we do.
Rich Birch — Yeah, no, it’s true.
Shawn Lovejoy — Make it about people. The team is the work it is. It is the closest group to you that you have an opportunity to disciple…
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Shawn Lovejoy — So don’t just use them to build this kingdom, man, reproduce yourself in them. That’s what you’ll be most proud of one of these days.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So good. Ah so killerteambook.org – is there anywhere else we want to send them online if people want to track with you or with what you’re up to?
Shawn Lovejoy — Of course couragetolead.com is our marketplace expression of what we do. And then courageouspastors.com and the Courageous Pastors podcast over there is what we do on the on the ministry side of things.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Shawn Lovejoy — Lots of free stuff there.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Shawn. Appreciate being here today.
Shawn Lovejoy — Thank you, man.
Reflecting Back 5+ Years After a Sr. Leader Transition with Executive Pastor Kevin Cook
May 19, 2022
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Kevin Cook, executive pastor at Cross Point Church in the greater Nashville, Tennessee, area. They have six locations in middle Tennessee plus online services.
God has entrusted those of us who are executive pastors with a significant leadership. While He may be preparing you for what’s coming next, it’s critical that we be present and pay attention to what God’s saying to us in the now. Listen in as Kevin shares how God prepared Cross Point Church for an unexpected senior leader transition and kept them from missing what He was doing.
What is He saying to you today? // Sometimes it’s difficult to see what God is doing in our lives, and we become restless, wanting to move ahead to something different. When Kevin joined the lead team at Cross Point as the Executive Pastor of Stewardship Operations, he struggled to see how his wiring connected with some of his responsibilities and wondered if he belonged elsewhere. After an especially draining season, Kevin learned that his relationship with God is more about being present with Him in the moment, following His promptings today, and being willing to say yes.
Focus on the now. // God is often preparing us for things we could have never imagined. When we are so focused on the next we can miss what God is calling us to do in the now. We get our to do list and try to take control, figuring things out on our own. Rather than focusing on the next thing you have to do, look for what it is He has for you here and now.
Say yes to God. // Kevin said yes to God and chose to stay at Cross Point, paying attention to what God was doing. Two months later there was an unexpected lead pastor transition. Cross Point approached Kevin about moving from Executive Pastor of Stewardship Operations to becoming the head Executive Pastor, leading the church through the transition. Kevin knew there was no way he could approach this transition on his own so he turned himself fully to God for guidance. God led him to pray for wisdom, discernment, clarity, unity, and peace. Peace sometimes doesn’t come until after the decision is made, but God will lead you to that peace in His time.
Don’t lead on your own. // Kevin didn’t dive into leading the church on his own. He started a small interim leadership team and with their help would follow where God was leading the church. What God has called us to do is more important than us as individuals. We need others to help us and we need to allow God to lead through us, but we also need to hold on loosely to what we’ve been given.
God will work in His time. // During the search for a new lead pastor the interim lead team kept the church up-to-date on the status of interviews and candidates. Six months into the lead pastor search Cross Point had said no to 10 candidates, but they knew the right person was out there and they had to wait for God to reveal who it was. God’s calendar is not our calendar and He will send the right candidate when it’s time.
Be there for the lead pastor. // There’s a huge amount of pressure on lead pastors, especially in larger churches, and it’s so important for the executive pastor to be a support to the lead pastor. Help hold the lead pastor up by praying for him. Be willing to charge the hill with him, be there for him, develop that relationship of trust, and help alleviate pressure in his work.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing
One of the things that they never teach you in seminary is when to move on from your current church. Over the last couple of years, we have been having a TON of conversations about this with pastors all over the United States. Of all the ministry decisions you make, leaving your position will be the toughest.
Rich Birch — Well hey, friend,s welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in and today. You’re going to be really blessed. We’ve got a fantastic conversation lined up with my friend new friend Kevin Cook from Cross Point Church in the greater Nashville area. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. They have, if I’m counting right, 6 locations in middle Tennessee plus an online campus, but do all kinds of amazing things. This is a great church that’s been around for a long time and Kevin is the executive pastor. You know we love executive pastors here at unSeminary. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin Cook — Hey man, grateful to be here, honored to be here. I love I love your podcast.
Rich Birch — Oh thanks.
Kevin Cook — I don’t I didn’t go to seminary.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Kevin Cook — So when you talk about things you weren’t talking seminary I wasn’t even there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Kevin Cook — I catch I get a lot of good tips from from your podcast, man. It’s great. So thanks for doing what you do.
Rich Birch — I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. You know my um actually my parents lived in Nashville for a while, and just for about eighteen months. And so Tennessee teacakes was the part I took away from that – these little treats. I don’t know if that’s like a thing but like a couple times I was there we had these really cool things to eat which I just thought was amazing. So ah, great part of the world to ah be from. Why don’t you fill out the picture. What did I miss about Cross Point? Kind of tell us more of the story; fill out the picture for us.
Kevin Cook — Okay, okay, Cross Point this year we’re—actually September—will celebrate 20 years…
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Kevin Cook — …so and it’s it’s crazy that it’s got here that fast. I’ve ah I began attending in 2007 myself um and at the time I was working in public accounting. I’d gone back and got my accounting degree, CPA degree working at a public accounting firm, and was approached to that we were gonna so launch our so I guess our second multisite campus, would have been our third campus – they approached me about being a campus pastor. I was I was 5 years into public accounting career. Um loving it. I grew up in my dad’s a pastor and I was like my dad was a pastor of Independent Baptist Church, didn’t make much money growing up. I’m like, that’s not for me. I don’t want any part in ministry. I want to have a job and make more money, and take care of my family, and I’ll serve. But all that changed. Ah 2008 our pastor and executive director approached me about coming on staff as a campus pastor. And really took me out of my comfort zone, but I said yes and day after tax season in 2009, I signed an offer to go work for Cross Point.
Rich Birch — Spoken like a true accountant. Spoken like a true accountant. Tax season’s done. Okay, now I can move on to life.
Kevin Cook — Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so in in may of 2009 I came on.
Rich Birch — Love it. I love it.
Kevin Cook — Um as a campus pastor and and was in that role for almost two years and they put together their first executive team. And and they asked me to pray about being Executive Pastor of Stewardship and Operations and so. Honest, it took a couple months to make that decision cause I felt like I was kind of coming back into my comfort zone, whereas as a campus pastor was out of my comfort zone. But I ended up doing doing that joined that executive team in 2011, and served in that row as Executive Pastor Stewardship Operations until September ’16 and transitioned just executive pastor at the point of a lead pastor transition. So yeah, that’s kind of my story and how I got to Cross Point a little bit.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kevin Cook — And I’ve got ah my wife and 5 kids…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — …and we’ve been at cross point 14-15 years now and love it. So.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing. That’s so good – 5 kids that’s… I’ve got 2 and that keeps me you know I have no hair left after having 2. I you know, respect you with 5. That’s that’s incredible. Well we want to talk about that ah transition you know 2016. You know I think so many of us that are leading in this this role of executive pastor, we may find ourselves leading when our senior leader our senior pastor transitions – that might be planned or it might be unexpected. I’d love to dive in and kind of reflect back all these years later. First of all, it’s kudos to you, you’re still there, chugging along you know, being a part of the community. That’s a great thing. Don’t want to roll over that. But I would love to kind of pull that apart. Help us understand now looking back on that transition, what have you learned? How have you grown? Ah take us back to that. Let’s let’s let’s think about what, you know what that experience was like for you.
Kevin Cook — Okay, if you don’t mind, Rich, I think I want to rewind the tape maybe a couple more years…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kevin Cook — …now that I’ve that I really look back and understand what the Lord was doing in my life. Um, back in you know, probably 2014 so just divulged just a few minutes that we’ll get back to that point.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook —But I think this is important for for maybe people to to understand and maybe even learn it. Maybe some of it will apply to their own life. But so I grew up… nothing against baptist. My dad was an independent baptist pastor then in a real conservative Southern Baptist Church all my life. Um I got saved at an early age of five years old, and and I don’t doubt any of that. I totally understood what I was doing on that day. But most of um, my life my relationship with Jesus was really about do’s and don’ts. It was, you know, don’t do this and don’t do that and read your bible and pray. And and you’d read your bible every day, and go to church 3 times a week. And and so it was really about dos and don’ts, and really what I found is that led to more guilt and shame because I’m human and most of the time I felt like I was failing in my relationship with him than succeeding.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — My wife didn’t grow up in a christian home and she came to the Lord at age 19. So her journey with Jesus has been different than mine, and and I actually learned a lot from her. And so it wasn’t really until 7, 8 years ago maybe I don’t know 8 or 9 years ago I just like I really began to understand what um ah a meaningful or ah, kind of real relationship with the Lord with Jesus was. And I’m not talking salvation, just like everyday life. And and what what I begin to learn is that it wasn’t as much about what I did, what I didn’t do, but just being sensitive to his presence in my life moment of a moment, hour by hour, day by day. Um, and then I learned that he’s just always wanting to like communicate with us. It’s like that’s what prayer is – just a constant communication. Um, someone had given me this prayer along the way, hey what do you want me to say, Jesus? What do you want me to say? What do want me to do? What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? Um, yeah, that’s applicable to about any situation you’re in. And and as I began to learn that I just noticed there was, I won’t say audible, but I began to understand the voice of him. I begin to understand his prompts. And as I begin to say yes to those prompts.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Cook — Um, it sometimes we we get a glimpse of why he wanted us to do it. Sometimes we won’t know do we get to heaven. Um, but um, there’s a couple key moments in my life as it applies to my role and you can ask Jenni Catron. I know you know her – she’s she was our executive director…
Rich Birch — Yes, good friend.
Kevin Cook — And for 3 years I served under her leadership on this lead team, and I was always like, Jenni, ah can I just remove my… can you remove me from the leadership team? I’m a CPA. Let me be let me oversee the finances and operations. I don’t need to be in this room.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — I don’t have the creative mind. I don’t think like you guys do. I I just give me my spreadsheets, and balance sheet, and P and L, and we’ll be good. And she was like, no Kevin, no no I’m not ready to do that. I think you need to be here and you bring more value than you realize. And it wasn’t until we had an offsite like in ’15, late ’15 early ’16 that someone came and walked us through, I think it’s the Paterson Group Thinking Wavelength. Um and and there was like 6 questions that this man asked us and we all had to rate ourself.
Kevin Cook — And then he plotted it on the board. And at the time there was 4 of us on the lead team counting our lead pastor like in 2016. And it was like 7.2, 6.7, 6.8, and here I was at 2.3 that was my average plotted on that board.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — And that man who I’d never met before in my life turned around to me and he said, I bet you there are multiple times you want off this team.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — And I was like, yes sir.
Rich Birch — Yes, sir. That gets your attention.
Kevin Cook — He goes look at that board, look at that board. This is why you’re here. Because if you weren’t here, nothing against them, but they would be off the rails. And you’re the one that’s, yes, you’re less of a risk taker. You slow down the process, you pump the brakes, but you’re needed. Jenni wasn’t here at that time. I called her after that meeting. I said, I’m sorry – I had a light bulb moment…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — …and I and I’m want to embrace it and help me. Podcast? Books? What can I do to to learn and embrace that I need to be here? So that happened in I don’t know early ’16 I think.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — And then um, there was a moment in July of 2016 and I knew things weren’t right at Cross Point. I couldn’t pinpoint it. It was just been a tough several months. Honestly I was probably really close to burnout myself. Um, just needing a break. Um, and so I we took a ten or eleven day vacation to Florida. And um I was about day nine I’m sitting on the beach, and I just told my wife I said hey I’ve just got this prompting from the Lord I need to go back to the house and just spend some time with him. I’d been in the routine of get up, go to the beach, have a walk from my wife, eat lunch, go to pool, go to the beach. I mean we just beach bums. Nothing wrong with that, but my routine had been all about me and for 8 or nine days. She goes, that’s fine. So I go back and I get out my journal. I keep it with me to this day. It says July 6, 2016 and I just begin praying, I begin journaling, I write in that journal, Lord I don’t know what’s going on. Will you release me? Can I leave? Um my wife and I have always had a plan to like live in Florida someday. Like is there a church in Florida could use my gifts? I even stopped and went to staffing.com and Vanderbloemen and someone else – is their executive pastor roles in Florida? Um, and just like I don’t… do I have a place of influence? What decisions are being made with me being out of town? All this lot of selfishness.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Kevin Cook — But just what this is where I was.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — And I felt like the Lord said, you I’ve got a… you need to listen to message. I’ve got a message for you. Open up Youtube. Right hand column’s got all these messages and the top message was a message from Steven Furtick.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kevin Cook — And the title the the title of the message was “Don’t Stop at Six”. Let me give you backstory to that. Um, and this is just this is on me, nothing on Steven. I’ve written him a letter and apologize. I’d love to see him someday, and tell him. I went to a conference in 2010 after I first got on Cross Point, and he spoke and I wrote him off. I’m like he seems too arrogant.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kevin Cook — Um, that’s on me, not him, but I wrote him off.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — I didn’t listen to anything. I didn’t listen to sermon, I didn’t read a book, until may of 2016 two months before this experience at the beach. I went to a conference at NewSpring.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kevin Cook — You probably know Stephen Brewster – he was on the team.
Rich Birch — Yep. yeah yep.
Kevin Cook — One of my best friends, still is to this day. Um, he’s like, hey Kevin, let’s go to this conference. And he said it’s a one day, we’ll drive over, spend the night, come back the next day. And I said okay, who’s what’s the lineup?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — I looked at the lineup and I literally said, I’ll go with you and I’ll tolerate Furtick.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Kevin Cook — So six years, six years I’ve been holding this.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yep.
Kevin Cook — Again my fault me being judgmental. We go to the conference, we have lunch, christian chicken, chick-fil-a chicken. We get our food. We get our food. We go to the far end…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, no good christian conference without Chick-fil-a. It’s got to have chick-fil-a.
Kevin Cook — …That’s right, that’s right. We go to the far end of that mezzanine. It’s just huge glass window like looking out over the property at NewsSpring. We just happen to be right where the speakers are going to come out of the auditorium area upstairs, walk across the offices, and have their own lunch. So some of the some of the speakers begin coming out. And honestly it was a few speakers that I thought, hey they may wave or say hi or something like that.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — because we were only like maybe 2 of 8 people that were down at that end.
Rich Birch — Right. Okay.
Kevin Cook — Then Stephen Furtick walked out and I remember going, oh great. Well, he’s going to go straight from point a to point b. He ain’t talking to nobody. Again on me.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Kevin Cook — Well in the floor there, there’s about 6 people sitting there and they’re like, hey Pastor Steven, have you got lunch? What do you need? You know and it’s his team that’s with him. He talks in for a second he walks to to the door, but then he veers off to the right, he comes right over to me, puts his hand on my shoulder.
Rich Birch — Huh.
Kevin Cook — He says, how you doing man? You enjoying the conference? Glad you’re here. We had taken one of the buns and thrown it away, so we were eating chicken with one bun and he’s like he noticed that he goes, I guess you guys are trying to eat healthy, aren’t you? You only eat with one bun. And and it was it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Kevin Cook — He’s like, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day and he walked off and went went his way and I just sat there. And I told Stephen I said that was for me.
Rich Birch — Right? right? right.
Kevin Cook — That was a God-wink to me. He is a human being. He’s just like me.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes, yes, yes.
Kevin Cook — I’ve been wrong for 6 years, writing him off.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — It’s all on me. He spoke that afternoon, I took 4 pages and notes, it was incredible.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — Let’s go back to July sixth.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kevin Cook — If that moment doesn’t happen, July 6th I probably wouldn’t listen to that message. I click on that message.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kevin Cook — I listen to the whole thing and basically the message is about the children of Israel. They’re walking around the city of Jericho once a day for six days they have no idea why they’re doing it. They’re doing it because Joshua said so. Joshua doesn’t even know exactly what’s going to happen. They go seventh day, 7 times around, and during the message he was like, too many people stop on lap 6. You get tired, you lose perspective, how long Lord? And when you stop on lap 6 you missed the miracle of lap 7.
Rich Birch — So good.
Kevin Cook — And I wrote I wrote in my journal and I said Lord, I want to go back. I don’t know what lap 7 is…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — I’m going back. Give me back my passion. I’m not leaving; that was for me, and I’ll go back and serve you and walk another lap.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — Two months later September 11th lead pastor unexpected transition that evening. The elders say no longer are you the executive pastor of stewardship operations. We want you to be the executive pastor.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — We know you’re not a communicator. We know you’ve never preached on stage. We can all figure that out, but we want to follow you and you lead us to the next.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — And I walked out that building not that night there’s a huge sign that says crosspoint.tv out in the front…
Rich Birch — Yes, yep, yep.
Kevin Cook — …it’s huge and I look up at that and I honestly I said, what the hell? What what? I literally said what the hell? What has happened?
Rich Birch — Wow. Dude, that’s a killer story man.
Kevin Cook — And then are then I remembered. I remembered and I said Lord is this lap 7?
Rich Birch — Wow! Ah dude so good.
Kevin Cook — So all that to say, it was me learning to that my relationship is more about being present with him in the moments of my life.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — And following his promptings and being willing to say yes, whatever he says. Um I look back now and it was all along the way. Um that he was preparing me for something…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Kevin Cook — …that I had no idea was gonna happen. I was beginning to focus on the next…
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes. Yes.
Kevin Cook — …like can I go somewhere else?
Rich Birch — Yep, yep, yep.
Kevin Cook — And I took my I took my focus off the now.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kevin Cook — And I think there’s sometimes in the now where he’s preparing us for the next that we don’t even know about.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — And so anyway I know I talked a lot there, but…
Rich Birch — I love that. I let’s not jump onto that yet because there’s something I want to highlight for people. Friends, the thing. So I love this. I think you’re opening us to a really important reality which is I think sometimes in our roles as Executive Pastors, we can just spend a lot of time thinking about nickels and noses and spreadsheets, and we miss the story that God’s writing around us, right? We or we could miss the story…
Kevin Cook — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — …that God’s writing around us. And I I love how you you know, went through that. How hey you know been for years. We’re kind of wrestling on these questions. Hey, God What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? And like you were open to hey, like well what what’s his you know, what promptings, where what? What is he saying to me? What is… And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Or I’m not sure how that works. And then but then that was all a clear pattern in hindsight. You don’t see it going forward. You only see it in hindsight, right? And then this whole thing with Furtick. I have a very similar story with ah a leader that, well tell you some other time because it’s not about me. But same kind of thing where I wrote off this leader, and then I I met them. And I was like, I’m such an idiot, God. That’s like ech… so your story very much echoes where I’ve seen him do the same kind of thing in my life. I love that. I think the word of encouragement I want to give leaders who are listening in today is, man God’s trusted us as executive pastors with a significant leadership. And and he may be preparing you for for what comes next, but man we need to be so present in the now. What is he saying to you today? So critical. Encourage us around not looking up over the horizon. Encourage us you know to continue with lap 7. We’ll we’ll stick with ah with Furtick’s Don’t, you know, don’t stop at 6. Ah yeah, help us think that through a little bit.
Kevin Cook — Yeah I think our tendency um you know, a lot of executive if we’re talking to mainly executive pastors here, a lot of times our role is behind the scenes, you know. And and very little front scenes, people don’t know who you are, and and and that’s okay. And and I think sometimes because we’re not the communicator. Um, it may be easy for us to just feel like that that that lead pastor has a relationship with the Lord that I’ll probably never be able to have or attain. Um and I just don’t believe that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — It’s for it’s for every it’s for the attendee, it’s for everybody. And I do think that too many there’s a lot of times is is we can we can begin looking at the next project. Um the next assignment. Maybe that’s maybe that’s in the church. Maybe it’s you know, there’s so many people these days moving outside the church, and going out into the market, or going moving on to another church. And and sometimes that’s that’s supposed to happen I think sometimes we can begin focusing so much on the next that we lose we just kind of lose focus of what’s happening in the moment. And I really think like going back to my story, if I would have taken that journey on down the road and gone on to a church in Florida, Cross Point would have been fine. Cross Point, God, it’s God’s church. It’s not my church.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Kevin Cook — It’s not any lead pastor’s church, but I would have missed everything that he’s done in me in the last six, seven years because of everything that he’s allowed us to go through. Um and if I’d been so focused on the next I want to missed that little message of, hey you need to hear this, or I’ve got this for you. Which all he was doing in the moment was preparing me now in the present for something in the next that I had no idea. And I think sometimes we can just kind of look to the next…
Rich Birch — Mmm, that’s so good.
Kevin Cook — …and we just and and it’s our own plans. I mean even the Jesus Calling for today was like, hey listen, listen to me continually. Like I’ve got plans for you now. And I think too many times, and maybe it’s part of an executive pastor, we get to our to do list. We we get we take things in our own control and try to figure things out on our own. And sometimes it comes out okay, but maybe it’s not really what it could have been. Because we just get focusing on that next thing that we need to do.
Kevin Cook — And I like to tell people just say, just just linger in his presence a little while, just linger in it.
Rich Birch — Love it. Love it.
Kevin Cook — You know so.
Rich Birch — So good. Well I I well first of all I hope as you’re listening in today, friends, there maybe some folks that maybe you are spent a little too much time on Vanderbloemen, or whoever, Chemistry Staffing, on there looking somewhere else and maybe the encouragement for you today is to: hey, Lord what is it you have for me here now in this you know in this time? You know I think that’s a good that’s a really good takeaway for sure. Let’s jump all the way kind of you know, looking back now from the vantage point. Here we are six, seven years later um you know, looking back on all of that transition when you looking back kind of reading into the history, what were some of the things that God used? I was saying to you this you before we began recording – I think there can be times when there is a transition, whether it’s planned or unplanned, where there’s maybe this unspoken question out there which is: what’s going to happen beyond that senior leader? Is it going to thrive or not thrive? And, man, Cross Point has, you guys have just continued to thrive, do great things in your community, reach people, see people take steps for for Jesus – just amazing. It’s so good. When you look back on it, what were some of those things that he did in your leadership in your, you know, broader team’s leadership that really positioned you to continue on to continue to thrive even you know all these years later?
Kevin Cook — Yeah I think—and I and I was as guilty as anyone then—I I think there was a season where things were going so well Cross Point was growing, you know to that point 2015 I think or was our best year ever. You know we were 12-13 years old at that time, thirteen years old. And I think we began relying too much on our own strength and our own ability. And um and and and we just we we just swung the pendulum too far that way. Um, so I think I remember the Monday morning after September 11 and and that night when the elders had, you know, said that to me about, would love for you to be just become the exec to pastor and lead us. I have a ah closet at my house that was actually my office (I call it the cloth-ice) and I’m laying um I was laying in the floor just crying out to the Lord.
Rich Birch — Wow wow.
Kevin Cook — Because I know there’s no I know there’s no way I could even approach this on my own. And he gave me a prayer that morning. Um, 5 words. I ended up having chalk art done on my office wall and put it on the office wall. But the 5 words that I that I that I prayed for and I shared with our team and just shared with staff and whoever is he gave me like, Lord give me wisdom, discernment, clarity, unity, and peace. Now I knew peace. Sometimes comes after a decision of whatever decisions we’re making; sometimes peace doesn’t come before. It’s nice to have a lot of it before you make a decision, but that that was just really power for me like man I just you know James 1:5 says if you like wisdom ask of him; He’ll give it to you abundantly.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yep.
Kevin Cook — That’s what Solomon asked for and he gave Solomon abundant wisdom, plus a lot of other things. And so ah, just prayer became just a vital part ah more so in an organization during that time than than but than before. And again I was on the leadership team…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kevin Cook — …I own that okay I own that. I’m not blaming anybody. Um and we we kind of focused on some soul care for our staff. I think we were kind of encouraging our staff to lead themselves with spiritual leadership. We would tend to focus more on organizational leadership. So during that time we but we know we think Ortberg had written a a book soul care Soulkeeper, and we know we went through that early part in that transition. Um, and then but then in a matter of few weeks, of the four on that lead team, I was the only one left.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — I knew of a knew of some of the transitions that were already in the works, going to happen, so it wasn’t just because lead pastor resigned. And I just I told the elders at night I said, guys I I can’t lead this on my own; I’ve got to build a team around I lead better through a team. And so there were 5 people on the team – 4 guys and a lady that just kind of brought around the table and said guys, this I consider myself interim executive pastor, and I want you guys to consider your I want I want I’m inviting you around the table as an interim leadership team. We just can’t grab the table tightly; we gotta hold it loosely. And I think ah the elders have asked me to lead; I’m asking you to come around me. I don’t know if this transition is gonna be three months or year or whatever, but let’s let’s let’s just allow God to use us to lead, but let’s hold the table loosely because I kind of compared it like…
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s a good insight. That’s a very good insight there. Yeah, that’s good. I love that.
Kevin Cook — …I I saw myself like hey a head coach could come in and then decide a new offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. And so I knew I was there for this time in in that if it wasn’t long term, then God had a plan for me. But I knew where I was supposed to be in the moment and so I just asked those you know people to come around the table. Four of them are still here.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Kevin Cook — Four four them are still here. One’s going into kind of sim…
Rich Birch — And you’re still here. Yeah.
Kevin Cook — Yes, yes, yes, um, so you know I we… prayer. Um, we had unified as a team. The other thing that I did as I said elders, because I used to lead the board of trustees kind of the the team that helped us oversee the finance and legal and facilities and expansion all that and, then our elders were our spiritual leaders and held the pastor accountable and you know that where theology was lining up, mission of the church, and scripture. And so now I’m leading both and in this interim so I just said the other thing is I would love a trustee to be at an elder meeting if we have an elder meeting. If we have a trustee meetings have an elder there, that way where the communication is unified. I’ll drop the ball. I’ll drop the ball if it’s just on me to keep everybody you know on the same page. Um, so I just say team chemistry and unity and God having and one of the two of the guys around the table that stepped into those roles were former pastors that had come to Cross Point – been there less than a year. And so God knew that we needed some of that pastoral care…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kevin Cook — …and leadership to to guide our church during that season. And so prayer became a focal… leading leading as a team together and just like hey, we’re gonna do our best, but if we’re gonna lean on Him. And our goal was just not to mess it up.
Rich Birch — Yeah, don’t drop the ball.
Kevin Cook — So we we just worked real close worked real close together and and true really tried to keep communication clear with each other with staff and with the church.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love… yeah I love that. There’s so much there. You’ve just unloaded. You know the increased focus on prayer this whole idea around soul care, team chemistry. I love that idea of not holding the table tightly. I think that’s critical at all times. I was literally just saying that to a friend this week around, hey like we all need to position ourselves. I think think the the Lord wants us to position ourselves that like somebody else better could come along, and we’re happy to hand it over to them because the mission’s more important than our piece.
Kevin Cook — Right.
Rich Birch — You know what what we’re what God’s called our church to do is bigger than us as individuals. Love that. And then the communication channels thing. Were there other ways that you kind of kept the tried to increase the communication during that season, or or maybe even continued has that continued over these years?
Kevin Cook — Well we you know we we try to stay in communication. We I think we would send out to initially it was like weekly. You know some some form of an email. You know we have a a countdown like before the service and so one thing that. Most the time it was me for several weeks where I was a part of the countdown, and just kind of give it an update you know, like if we had interviewed some candidates. That that thing got really drawn out. We were six months in and we had said no to 10 guys.
Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness.
Kevin Cook — Um that that the search firm had a wave of 6, and then a wave of 4. And we just we just knew that they were great candidates, but it just wasn’t our guy. And so we we continued to to update the church weekly or biweekly then six months in we had we had a Sunday and we just called it kind of the state of the church, and it was called Uncharted.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kevin Cook — And 1 of our guys on the team, Chris Nichols, gave a message you know and it was called Uncharted. and I gave about a 8 to 10 minute—that’s the only time I was really ever on stage—just kind of giving ah just kind of giving an update. And and I’ll tell you we we do run through on Thursday and they wanted to record what I said on Thursday, and that way if if power went out then the campuses would have that. And I mean, dude, it was horrible. I botched it. I didn’t even have really what I wanted to say. I finally say guys just quit recording.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Kevin Cook — After it’s over with our creative director and one of our lead communicators came into office and I said hey guys I’m sorry I know that was awful. And they said, yeah it was.
Rich Birch — As only friends can.
Kevin Cook — Um and but it wasn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t until Sunday morning that I felt like God gave me, I woke up early and he gave me what I needed to share.
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Kevin Cook — And basically it basically it was back to when Samuel came to anoint David the king, actually didn’t know who’s going anoint but he came to Jesse. One by one all the brothers came in and the one or two that you thought would be the king, no. And he’s like do you have anyone else? Yeah I’ve got one in the field, and they bring him in. And so I just shared that with the people we’re not looking for a king but we’re looking for our next pastor.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — and what I’ve learned is our calendar and timeline is not his calendar.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — And all of that I know is we’ve interviewed and met with 10 great guys, some in person, some Zoom. And our pastor just has to still be in the field. and God’s grooming him and I’m trusting he’s gonna send us send us our pastor in his time…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kevin Cook — Within ten days we had our best 3 candidates.
Rich Birch — Wow!
Kevin Cook — It was crazy and and one of those was Kevin Queen, and that’s a story in itself, how he got here – just a whole God thing. Um, so yeah, we we did our best ah you know, update ‘er and we had that moment you know six months in.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Kevin Cook — And so it it was hard but you had to be intentional or else they’re gonna fill in the gap.
Rich Birch — Right? yeah.
Kevin Cook — You know your your your church attendees is gonna fill in the gap if you’re not giving them some updates, and they’ll fill in the gap and usually that’s not what you want. So.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love that. I love that. Well kind of keeping with the the spirit of the conversation, where are things today with you not looking next? Normally I would say what’s on the horizon. But what’s kind of what’s God teaching you today. What’s happening in your world? You know what are the things you’re wrestling with now as you’re as you’re leading at Cross Point.
Kevin Cook — Um, you know to to your point, you know we had a guy come in like one week after our lead pastor resigned in ’16. He’s like, hey you’re gonna see attendance drop 25%; you’re gonna see a giving drop 25-30%. All of that happened ten months. I mean it did, mainly at our broadcast campus. Um, but then Pastor Kevin came along with even a stronger emphasis on prayer. I mean just um, he just he just brought that – that was just in him. Um, and so um I think 2018-19 was our best year ever.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — We recovered. We had more in attendance, and more giving, and baptisms, and salvations and opened the new campus a couple years ago. And so ah, we’ve learned a lot in the last couple years going through covid. And our main our national campus got hit by tornado six days before the world shut down with the covid…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, that’s there’s so much.
Kevin Cook — …and so we still don’t have offices. We’re still, we’re still navigating that rebuild. Um, so again, just continue to depend on him. Um I think something that I’m actually in the in the moment wrestling with I’ve got a friend of mine on the team, Matt Warren, and he could probably unpack this more, but just seeing what’s happening with other pastors. And I just I think I think the model where you have a lead pastor. And how many ever report to him and that lead pastor is basically the only employee of the elders. There’s just a lot of pressure.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, so true.
Kevin Cook — I think there’s a lot of pressure that comes with that. So it’s kind of like, is there a better way? Is there a different way? And I don’t know if it’s a different model, but how can we um I’ve talked a lot about how navigated the transition to how God was preparing me but, how how can we maybe avoid…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kevin Cook — …a potential where a pastor just kind of succumbs to to that pressure…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — …no matter really how their walk with the Lord might be. It’s just a lot of pressure, especially in larger churches and. And so that’s just kind of something just kind of praying through and as an executive pastor I gave a talk one time to some other executive pastors on that executive pastor/lead pastor relationship. And and I think for executive pastors, it’s it’s really really important – a few things that the best way we can lift him up is on our knees, praying.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Kevin Cook — And and ah and and there’s a scripture you know where I think it’s Aaron and maybe Jethro that held Moses his hands up until they were steady. And I never had focus on until they were steady, so there was some intentionality there. And so I think holding our lead pastor up in prayer to hold his hands steady. Um, I think another thing that executive pastors can do is be willing to climb, charge the hill with him. Go you know to climb up on that mountain with him and then um, learn how to humbly lead up well.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kevin Cook — And I think I think as you but develop a relationship with your lead pastor where you can both trust each other’s heart, then that’s an invitation to be able to to lead up and and potentially speak into some things just just to help…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kevin Cook — …whether it’s to alleviate pressure or potential mistakes or whatever. So that’s that’s kind of some things to kind of focus on…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kevin Cook — …now for you know that I’m continue to learn and I don’t have it now I’m not perfect in any of this. Um, so there are times I take control, bring things back in my hand and I get too much of my to do list, but just trying to stay focused in the moment, and lead as best if I can and in that second chair. So
Rich Birch — Love it. This has been so fantastic, Kevin. I really appreciate you being here today. We’re going to link to that “Don’t stop at Six” Steven Furtick message in our show notes. So if someone’s listening in they want to that be a great follow up at next kind of step in this conversation. Ah, but is there anything else, you’d like to share just as we wrap up as we kind of bring today’s conversation to a close.
Kevin Cook — Nah I think I’ve probably talked too much and shared everything I know.
Rich Birch — No, it’s good. Fantastic.
Kevin Cook — But I do I think I just think man just just lingering his presence, and and you know that that can be driving down the road. You know I don’t know how guys, ladies connect with God. it it may be in your in your favorite chair in the morning. It might be on a walk. It might be through worship, driving sitting in traffic. But I just think pay attention and just connect with him. Connect with him wherever wherever that might be. And if you have a favorite place, go there and linger awhile.
Rich Birch — Love it.
it’s it’s it’s rewarding. And there’s really nothing better than that.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Kevin I appreciate you being here today if people want to track with you or with the church where do we want to send them online?
Kevin Cook — Um, church website is cross point.tv Um I’ve so I’m on social media and that kind of stuff but use them just viewing…
Rich Birch — Ah, yes, yeah, yeah, nice. Love it.
Kevin Cook — …I hardly ever post anything or comment anything.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yes, nice. Love it. Yeah.
Kevin Cook — Um, my email is Kevin@crosspoint.tv I was the first Kevin there so I’ve got that Kevin@crosspoint.tv – um man I’d love to I’d love to connect. However I can help other executive pastors or listeners I can – feel free to shoot me an email love to love connect with them.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well Kevin I really appreciate you being here today appreciate your heart. Thanks for sharing the story and I love just hearing what what God’s doing in your life. So thanks so much buddy.
Kevin Cook — Appreciate it. Thanks so much.
Encouragement For You From Nearly 4 Decades of Ministry Experience with Greg Surratt
May 12, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Greg Surratt, the founding pastor of Seacoast Church in the Carolinas and also a founding member of ARC, Association of Related Churches, which trains, coaches, and equips church plants across the country.
So many pastors are wrestling with similar concerns and soul care issues today. They are wanting to know, “Is it ok where my church is right now?” Listen in as Greg shares from his own ministry experience over the decades and offers wisdom and encouragement to struggling church leaders.
You’re not alone in your struggles. // The last couple of years have been some of the hardest between the pandemic changing everything, racial tensions, the elections, division about vaccines, mask-wearing, and more. Church leaders are dealing with so many emotional issues from all of these burdens in addition to their concerns about their church. Depression, anxiety, trauma, and grief are all very real for many pastors right now.
Go by faith. // Discouragement can be an occupational hazard in ministry. There are times in your life when you don’t feel encouraged, but you still need to encourage others. By faith keep doing what you need to do. But having internal disconnect should be the exception and not the norm. Examine your life to make sure you have an integrated inside and outside. Living with this sort of integrity is the only way to sustain ministry for the long haul.
Find friends who can help you. // Get a group of people around you who love you and are an encouragement to you, but also people who are not impressed with you and will call out pride in your life. Surround yourself with people who know you, are concerned about your future, and want to help you get from here to there.
Focus on what God has given. // Don’t look at your church’s pre-COVID attendance numbers. That’s in the past. We aren’t entitled to thousands, or hundreds, or even tens. Express gratitude for the people God has brought to you and be the best pastor you can be to the people you have right now.
Culture trumps vision. // Greg believes that the most important part of the founding team for a new church is having someone who can create culture. Culture is treating people right and creating a place where they all feel valued and part of something bigger than themselves. If you can get a visionary leader who knows how to treat people right, create culture, develop leaders, and call out the potential in those around them, it’s a strong recipe for future success.
Live well and finish strong. // Many pastors don’t have a group of friends who understand what they are struggling with and can come around them. This need led Greg to start taking groups of church leaders on retreats. During this time away there is no agenda, but rather attendees can just rest, relax and experience the peace of God. At night they process with each other what God is doing in their lives, and allow time for friendships to be built with each other.
Don’t give up. // God never wastes a crisis. It’s in these seasons that he establishes us and our leadership is built. If we remain faithful and persevere, we will see a harvest and realize what a privilege it is to lead at this time.
If you want to follow along with Seacoast Church, find them at www.seacoast.org. Or if you’d like to know more about the retreats Greg mentions, visit www.retreatatchurchcreek.org
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Rich Birch — Well hey, everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Super excited to have you with us today. I’m super excited for our guest. His name’s Pastor Greg Surratt – he’s a fantastic leader from a church that if you don’t know, I don’t know where you’ve been. Greg is the founding pastor of Seacoast Church. They have, if I’m counting correctly, 12 physical locations in North and South Carolina, plus church online. It began way back in 1988 with 65 people in an apartment clubhouse and has really become a preeminent church across the country. Greg is also a a founding member of ARC – Association of Related Churches. We’ve had a ton of ARC pastors on over these last number of years, and just just love it so much. ARC is a fantastic organization that trains, coaches, and equips hundreds of church planters. They’ve done I think a thousand church plants across the country. Super excited to have you on the podcast today, Pastor Greg.
Greg Surratt — Glad to be here. It’s an honor, Rich, appreciate it.
Rich Birch — Now this will be great. We for folks that maybe have been following in they’ll know we’re closing in on 600 episodes, and I know I said this to you, but I was like who are the people I’d love to have on that I’ve never had on and you were at the top of the list. So glad that you’re here. Why don’t you fill out the story a little bit kind of what am I missing? What piece of the puzzle do you know do I need to we need to bring people up to speed on?
Greg Surratt — Well, the most most important part is I’m married to my girlfriend of 45 years and we were high school sweethearts and I think we’re still sweethearts.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Greg Surratt — She still makes my heart go you know whatever pitter patter. And I think I don’t irritate her too much, so that’s good.
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Greg Surratt — We have four kids they all live in the area and we have 14 grandkids, and that’s the best part. And so that’s kind of my life right now.
Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. Well through your work, through ARC, and and just you know your heart I know you have just ah, just a huge bandwidth a huge love for leaders and church leaders, and and so I really wanted to pick your brain as we’re, you know, kind of 2 years out from the pandemic, we came through which was historically significant time as we you know, kind of wrestle through what’s next, I wanted to get your sense of the kind of conversations that you’re having with leaders ah these days. Whatw hat would you say are some of the things that are kind of top of mind as church leaders reach out to you, or you’re chatting with people these days? What are the things that you’re you’re wrestling with with them?
Greg Surratt — Lots of soul care issues. As you mentioned, I think the last couple of years are the toughest leadership challenge that I’ve seen in my lifetime. And you know with the pandemic and racial tension, elections, you know, the craziness of you know vaccines or no vaccines…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — …all the stuff that we’ve all had. And what’s interesting is I’ve talked to… we we started a retreat center about a year ago just to deal with soul care for pastors, and so I’ve talked to over 500 pastors over the last year in pretty in-depth situations and circumstances, and everybody’s feeling the same thing. Everybody wants to know is it okay where I’m at…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — …as far as my church you know, um. We’re nowhere close to where we were pre-pandemic – is that okay? Where where’s everybody else? There’s kind of you know I don’t know if it’s comparison as much as it’s just want to know, am I okay? And then you know dealing with heart issues, emotional issues, the trauma of the last few months. I know I was talking to one psychologist and I said it’s almost like PTSD. And he said, no, in a lot of cases it is PTSD. You know it’s it’s just traumatic, traumatic stuff. And then you know then where do we go from here? What do you think? You know is is the church done? Are people coming back? Who’s coming back? You know, just all of those kinds of questions.
Rich Birch — Yeah, well I’d love to dive into the soul care question a little bit. So I’ve spent most of my ministry career two, almost three decades, two and a half decades ah, in that second seat, at that kind of executive pastor seat, and have served with just incredible people as the lead pastor in the churches, you know I’ve had a privilege to serve in. And one of the things I’ve observed from my seat is there’s this interesting um, it could be occupational hazard of, particularly lead pastors. I think I think we all do it to a certain extent but I think particularly lead pastors can be prone to this or or it’s kind of built into their job where what we project publicly, and how we’re doing privately ah, there can be a disconnect there. And so there’s a part of that that’s like healthy, because it’s like hey we do have to kind of lead. We want to push people forward. We want to you know help understand you know want to give people hope for the future. And then that eventually if we if we if that if there continues to be a distance a gap between those two, wow we get into a dangerous, dangerous place. Help us understand that gap a little bit more why why you know is that an occupational hazard? What should we be thinking about when we think about this kind of gap and and and where does it go from being reasonable, responsible leadership to like oh, now you’re in a dangerous zone, when that gap gets too large.
Greg Surratt — Yeah, um, and I’ve never heard it as an occupational hazard. That’s totally right.
Rich Birch — I think it is.
Greg Surratt — You know I always say that I always say that discouragement is an occupational hazard of Ministry…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — …and that you’re going to get there. You just got to figure out um, how do I not stay there.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — You know David encouraged his heart in the Lord and so that’s a whole nother issue. But yeah, um, it’s amazing how weekends come about every seven days.
Rich Birch — Right. So true.
Greg Surratt — And and ah every seven days you’ve got to be an encourager with your you know with ah with a word from God. And there are times in your life where you don’t feel encouraged. I mean I know I you know I’ve done over the years marriage series and actually we don’t do as many series on those anymore because every week when I would do a marriage message we would have the biggest fight that we’ve had you know in years.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — And I have to get up on the weekend and go…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — …hey here’s how to have a biblical marriage.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — So I couldn’t I couldn’t sustain a whole series on that so you know with that.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Greg Surratt — You know you’ve got you’ve got those types situation, if you have family, you know and and I would say you know one one antidote is to always drive two cars to church on the weekend.
Rich Birch — Nice, give me some extra time. little extra time.
Greg Surratt — I think that one I know well you don’t have a fight on the way there.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Nice.
Greg Surratt — You might have a fight before you leave but you don’t have one on the way there. And you know those are little disconnects that that happen and if you’re in any kind of leadership and if you’re expected you know to um, you know produce a message or a lesson or whatever it happens to be that you’re doing, there are going to be days you just don’t feel like it, and you don’t feel it, and you’ve got to, by faith, do what you need to do. But if you find yourself… that should be the exception.
Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good.
Greg Surratt — Okay and it is an exception that happens to all of us. But it needs to be the exception if that’s the world you’re living in then, Houston we have a problem.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Surratt — Because integrity is… I heard somebody define integrity as just being integrated – that the inside is integrated with the outside. And if you’re going to sustain ministry over the long haul you need to have an integrated inside/outside, this-is-who-you-are. And that’s sustainable. Putting on you know, putting on the the uniform and stocking it up. You got to do it every once in a while, but that is not sustainable.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — In the long run and that’s where people crash.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How do you… what’s your encouragement to leaders on who they should be reaching out to? A part of what I love—and I’m I’m not trying to pre-answer your question but—a part of the way I love how ARC is designed at a kind of um, you know fiduciary level with overseers who are leaders from other churches – I think there’s so much wisdom in that because because there’s something about being able to reach out to leaders who are a little farther down the road than you. But but let’s say you’re listening in today and there’s a leader who feels like, wow it’s not the exception, it’s become the rule. I am living this gap all the time and I don’t know who to reach out to. Where do we send them? Where should we where should they be reaching out to?
Greg Surratt — Yeah, first of all I like to say that every leader needs to sit at a table with a group of people who love you, but are not impressed with you.
Rich Birch — Oh so good.
Greg Surratt — Where you can be real. You know because your church is impressed, and they they should be. I hope we’re living a life you know such that um people are proud of that, or people will celebrate that. Um, but you’ve got to get a group of people around you that love you, love you, love you. They are for you. They want to help you. But they’re not impressed with you. And they can see things. You know, what I do with the the and and we’ll more specifically try to answer your question in a minute. But in my own life um, what I try to do with the men that are around me, and I’ve got two or three groups of them, is encourage that I need men who will look for, that will encourage me but will also look for pride in my life. If there’s pride there there may be other, you know, issues and other types of sin according to the bible. And so I need people who are they love me, but they they are concerned about my future, and they want to help me to get from here to there. Now the question is what do you do if you don’t have anybody like that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — …and that’s where a lot of lot of pastors find themselves. One of the reasons we started a retreat here in Charleston a year ago was to gather groups of about 12 to 15 people. And then usually at the end of that, almost always at the end of that, you’ve got a small band of brothers. Not everybody you know takes the journey, but most do. And you’ve got somebody that that you can call on Sunday afternoon when you want to quit.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — You know, ah here’s what I want to do, I just want to watch a violent movie on Sunday afternoon. I dont want to talk to anybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — I don’t want to plan anything. Just let me let me you know, chill out. But you’ve got to find friends…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Greg Surratt — …in ministry. That’s why we say don’t do ministry alone. You got to find friends. A band of Brothers who go, yeah I know, I know. I know, I’ve been there. I am there. Don’t quit. We’re gonna be okay. Let’s talk it through. You got to find that. And where do you find those? You know, you mentioned overseers…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Greg Surratt — Ah, that’s one avenue of of you know, use that. Some people just appoint overseers, which are elders, pastors, outside of the local church. Some people just you know, assign them, but don’t really use that…
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Surratt — …and use that avenue and that’s that’s important. Other friends in Ministry, sometimes in the same town, sometimes that gets weird. Um, and so you know another ah possibility are mentors.
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Greg Surratt — Ah, just and I like to say you know, don’t ever say no for somebody else. You know you say, boy I’d love to have so-and-so speak into my life a little bit – well ask them.
Greg Surratt — Ask it. Yeah, give him a Starbucks card…
Rich Birch — Right, totally.
Greg Surratt — …you know and let’s stay on it. Let’s talk or can we do it once a month you know or once a quarter. And what’s been very effective to me too also our counselors.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Surratt — And I have a counselor who happens to be on our staff. It’s cheaper that way.
Rich Birch — Nice. Love that fantastic.
Greg Surratt — But yeah, but he’s my friend. And he also is an 8 on the enneagram, so he loves to you know, get to the issues.
Rich Birch — Lean in.
Greg Surratt — Lean in, yeah. And I’m a 3 so I want to lean out and look good, you know.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, exactly.
Greg Surratt — And but it’s you’ve got to have men, women in your life who care, care enough to confront, care enough to you know encourage, in the in the confrontation is encouragement. I mean if you don’t know me, don’t confront me, you know. I’m not listening.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Greg Surratt — But if you know me, um I want people around me that can that can do that, and sometimes a counselor can get you through a stuck point so.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Well, we’ll come back to the retreat center. I want to hear more about that. But I want to loop back on something you said about you know that question that you keep hearing people ask is that like where do we go from here? Um, you know I think there has been a lot of questions. You know we’re all seem to be wrestling with this. You know you know what is what does our church online attendance mean? What does our weekend attendance mean? Who knows? What does all this mean? Is anyone ever going to come back? You know. So what are you seeing on that front? What are you coaching churches to be thinking about, church leaders to be thinking about on that front?
Greg Surratt — Um, yeah, um, first of all, um, pre-covid attendance ought to be a number that you write down somewhere, put away, and don’t look at anymore.
Rich Birch — Yes, amen, brother. Amen.
Greg Surratt — You know that’s I was… hell is yesterday and this is today. And you know, um, some people are are looking at it as ah, a relaunch, you know. And maybe you’ve got 50 people on your relaunch team. Well, that’s pretty good.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Greg Surratt — Or 100, or you know five hundred, or a thousand. If I didn’t know what the pre covid number was I’d probably be pretty excited…
Rich Birch — Yes, true.
Greg Surratt — …about you know where we are, and what we’re doing right now. And so first of all, but let’s put that number away. Um, secondly um, who who is, let’s let’s take care of the people that we have right now. You know I I look around sometimes in the parking lot or on a weekend and go, my goodness. I’m amazed that this group of people has shown up today to worship Jesus and listen to a message. It’s an amazing thing. It’s an that that God would use you, that God would use me to do that is absolutely amazing. I’m not entitled to thousands or hundreds or even tens, I just need to to say God, thank you. And I am going to be the best pastor that I can be possibly. I had a an anecdote. I had a you know the online thing, you never know who was watching online.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — And I did a message the other day and ah, um, a fairly prominent person I had no idea was watching online and um and took issue with something I said, so we had a conversation. And in the conversation I realized that this guy I didn’t know I had opinions about is looking to me to be his Pastor.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Greg Surratt — He doesn’t need a critic. He doesn’t need somebody that’s you know, worried about why we don’t have as many people as we had before the the the pandemic. He needs a pastor. He needs…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — He needs somebody to love him and care for him. And you know I re-upped in that moment…
Rich Birch — So good.
Greg Surratt — …to just care for the people that God has placed around me. If God put him on our online or in our church, then I need to do my best to care for what God has given me. You know while it’s true that if I’ll be faithful and little God’ll give me much, that’s not the motivation. The motivation for me is am I the best pastor I can be for the people that God has given me. And then he’s he’s well able to… Galatians 6:9 is you know, kind of my life verse. Everybody else gets a word every year, I’ve only gotten one verse in my lifetime…
Rich Birch — Sure sure.
Greg Surratt — …and it it’s the same one every year. And just a little new insight into it, but it says don’t be weary in doing good for in due season, He’ll bring a harvest. Harvest is coming…
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — …if we don’t quit. And what do we worry about, we stress over? The harvest. And you know when you take responsibility for an area you don’t have authority over, that’s God’s authority, then you’re gonna be stressed a lot. And so harvest is coming, whether that’s one, five, 5000 – God knows what’s best for me and for our situation. But yeah, I’m going to forget pre-covid numbers and I’m gonna I’m going to pay real close attention to who is there.
Rich Birch — Yes
Greg Surratt — Because they need a pastor.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. And you know we hear that time and again so many church leaders I’ve heard say that in this season where, you know they’re like I stand in my lobby on Sunday or in our lobby on Sunday morning, or on the weekends and like there’s a ton of people who are who I just do not recognize. There’s a bunch of new people that have come back to our churches, or are at our church. And, man, we do not want to miss those people. We don’t want because we’re thinking of people who might have been here you know two, three years ago. Gosh that would be a huge, huge mistake. I love that. That’s great coaching, Greg, for sure. So pivoting to ARC. I I just love ARC. I I think what God’s done through the band of friends that you pull together there to do the thing that you know has happened is is just amazing. When you think about those thousand now plus churches, what would be a few of those standout traits of um, the core teams – the people who are going and launching churches that seem to thrive and and make it? I’m sure there’s things that bubble to the surface of like, here’s a couple of those things that we just see time and again are the kinds of ah, groups of people who ah plant churches that that make a difference and thrive over the long haul.
Greg Surratt — Well I think, you know, I think you need a visionary leader that, you know, has a vision for a community. Um I used to think that’s probably the most important. It is an important aspect, but I think I think somebody that can create culture is hugely important to last. So what does that mean? In its simplest form, culture is just treating people right. Jesus, you know, said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s not that’s not real deep. That’s not real… it’s it’s hard. It’s not it is kind of simple, but it’s difficult to pull off. Paul says treat older men as fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, and he says by the way don’t hit on the sisters. He says do it in all purity.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Greg Surratt — That’s not rocket science. That’s family. But he’s talking about difficult difficult conversations in that particular passage. But if we can create a culture. If I if a pastor can create a culture where people feel loved, they feel valued, they feel you know that their needs are are important, and there’s not this hierarchy of who’s important and who’s not. Boy I’ll tell you what if if you get somebody with a vision that can create that kind of culture, and and then empower leaders, you know. They don’t feel like they have to do it all themselves, and can trust God that the leadership that we need is probably either in the house or in the harvest. And so we’re going to believe God for it and look for it. That’s one of the things I love doing is you know, speaking prophetically into somebody’s life.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Greg Surratt — Like like Jesus did where he said you know you you were this, to to Peter, he said you you were kind of swayed in the in the wind, you know and now you are Peter. You are a rock. You were Simon, now you’re Peter. And we see that several places in in scripture. You know, with with the Apostle Paul who was Saul, now he’s Paul. And the the symbolism there for me is is to take a look at the people that God has given you, and rather than wishing for someone or something you didn’t have, it’s let’s call out, prophetically, what is in those that God has given us, and develope those. So if you so kind of a long answer.
Rich Birch — No, that’s good. I love it.
Greg Surratt — But if you get if you get a visionary leader who knows how to treat people right, create culture, and can can develop leaders, can call out um the the potential in those around them, to me that’s a real strong um recipe for future success.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And you had mentioned there that you feel like you’ve had a shift or nuance in your time, particularly with you know, adding that culture creator piece in there. You’ve seen that it’s not that you didn’t think that was important. You’ve seen that as more important. Um, maybe talk a little bit more about that. What has what has shifted in your thinking around that over the years?
Greg Surratt — I don’t I don’t know that I wouldn’t say that I didn’t think it was important.
Rich Birch — Okay.
Greg Surratt — I I didn’t I never thought about it.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — You know we started Seacoast 35 years or 34 years ago just about exactly, and um I was all about vision.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — You know vision, vision, vision. And I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to culture. I didn’t know how to spell the word. And and then when you you know when you start to add people to the team… every organization that has more than one person is gonna have issues.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Greg Surratt — You’re gonna have church dealings. You’re gonna have you’re gonna have issues. You’re gonna have hard conversations. You’re gonna want to avoid them, or or push in too strong with them. And that’s that’s where culture culture meets vision and culture will will eat vision all day long.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — If you have a bad culture where you’re turning over people, and turning over people or maybe it’s just negative, negative, negative. That’s gonna that’s gonna chew up vision every time. And so as I began to see that, I mean it’s important it’s hugely important – the environment that we work in, the environment that we worship in – that’s when for me, it made a shift to say vision’s good. Vision’s important, but culture trumps vision every time.
Rich Birch — Well just to honor you you know publicly, one of the things I love about Seacoast is, you know, I’ve been in ministry long enough that you hear rumors of other churches, and one of the things that resonates off of Seacoast is, that’s a good place. That’s a good place. Ah you know, that’s ah you know that’s a that’s a good house. That’s a place where, you know, that you guys treat your people well, you treat your staff well, you know there’s good things there. So that you know clearly something’s happened under your leadership over the years there so. I wouldn’t want to let that moment pass.
Greg Surratt — Well thank you.
Rich Birch — So thank you for you know way, you’ve led that for sure.
Greg Surratt — We do the best we can. And I want to you know I want to I want to have a house that I’d like to work in.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Greg Surratt — If I wasn’t if I wasn’t the first one there you know, which is basically the reason I was in charge is because I was the first one there.
Rich Birch — Nice.
Greg Surratt — Yeah, and if I’m not the first one there, why would I stay?
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — Why would I why would I want to be here? And so that’s what we’ve tried to create.
Rich Birch — Nice. Well, one last area I’d love to pick your brain on is just you’ve been such a strong advocate over the years of reaching unchurched people – that has been you know a key part of of your ministry, at least as an outsider. It’s been someone… I’ve seen you advocate for decades for that. How have unchurched people changed over your time? How how has the you know, what’s what’s different today than than maybe 35 years ago when you first got started in this?
Greg Surratt — Yeah, you know 35 years ago it was about kind of leave them alone, and let them be anonymous, and you know all that went around went around that. And you know I mean there are some ah, fundamental values that probably are similar. But I think today people want to be a part.
Rich Birch — So true.
Greg Surratt — We we have a lot of people that join our serving teams before they ever join the church, or make a commitment to Christ, or you know anything like that. It’s they want to they want to make a difference with their life. And they um, and when I say they you know, that’s a broad brush there. There are as many different kinds of people as there as there are methods. But um, I feel like a lot of people that we’re in contact with. Don’t expect you to be perfect. In fact, they they suspect if it’s too perfect. If if the…
Rich Birch — Right. Okay. It’s too glossy.
Greg Surratt — …if it’s too glossy – that I’ve said for years and years and years rough it up, put some sandpaper on it. That’s too that’s too slick, that’s too glossy. And I not just of the experience, but I think of the leaders too. We want to be examples. But if we’re all the time you know, nailing it and it’s wonderful, and life’s great, there’s not going to be very many people that really are interested in that, because their life isn’t. And so help me… how do you navigate the hard stuff in life. How do you navigate? You know how have you gotten through? And so I don’t think you have to be as perfect.
Rich Birch — Yes.
In fact, if you’re if you’re more perfect, it’s probably not a good thing.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt —More authenticity, and more involvement, participation. In fact, we’ve changed our worship over the years from being, hey you don’t have to participate in this, to highly, highly, highly participatory.
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah I just recently was talking to some 20-something leaders, and we were reflecting on this exact point. And I said you know, when I started in ministry, there was this idea that that church leaders were like the perfect example. They were like… In fact, you wanted… it was like people wanted distant leaders who were kind of like they were super human. That was kind of what and and you could see these leaders look at me like, what are you talking about? That’s terrible. I can’t believe that! But I’m like, it’s true. Like that was that was, it was almost like that was the framework we were given. And that we all know that’s just not true anymore. I love that. That’s that’s so great. Greg, I wonder if you could tell us about the retreats you’ve been running. Give us a bit of insight into that – a little bit more what does that look like? And and if there’s people that are listening in today, we’ve touched on a couple issues that they might say, hm maybe that’s a kind of thing I’d love to be a part of.
Greg Surratt — Sure.
Rich Birch — Tell me a little little bit about that.
Greg Surratt — Yeah I I began to, we began to notice a few years ago that we were doing a pretty good job of cranking out church plants.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Greg Surratt — You know we’ve we’ve got we’ve helped people plant a thousand of them, and we’re going to do a thousand more you know I’m excited about that. We’re not going to stop doing that. But it was a little bit more difficult when it comes to keeping guys in the game. And I think we’ve all seen and heard examples. Is it a pandemic right now of pastors falling? I’m not sure that it is. I think that social media amplifies whatever is done. But if there’s one it’s not good.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — And we’ve all heard about many. And so the idea was, what can we do to to help guys live well and finish strong. That’s that’s kind of my motto.
Rich Birch — Oh love that.
Greg Surratt — I want to live well and I want to finish strong. And so we nosed around in it a little bit. I’ve I’ve taken guys on some retreats. And and then um, ah absolutely beautiful piece of land—66, actually 110 acres—on the water, just 30 minutes from downtown Charleston, which by the way is one of the most beautiful, romantic cities you can bring you know your spouse to. But place opened up and we almost immediately began hosting groups of pastors, 12 to 15 pastors, for Monday through Thursday. And they come in and we tell them right away, there’s no agenda. You can take a guilt-free nap if you need to. In fact, one guy took took a guilt free nap every day – hadn’t taken one in his life.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes.
Greg Surratt — I think he had 6 or 7 kids and planted a church during covid. He needed a nap, desperately.
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Greg Surratt — But we’ve got all kinds of things to do: fishing is just world-class, and just a lot of things that that we can do, and we make provision for. But the idea is to come and just relax, experience the peace of God. At night we process around a table what God may be saying, what he’s doing. And it has been just amazing. It really has. It’s… we’ve done we’ve had 500 leaders and we’re still looking for the first dud group.
Rich Birch — Well it could be this week. Who knows?
Greg Surratt — You know the the group the group that it doesn’t connect. Yeah, the group it could be you, right? But the group that does it?
Rich Birch — Ah yes, what an advertisement. Come! Be the dud.
Greg Surratt — Yeah, it’s fun. Let me tell you it’s fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good.
Greg Surratt — I mean we’ve done all guys. We’ve done church staffs. We’ve done guys who are friends that come. And they’re all fun, but the most fun is when you get a group of guys who don’t know each other.
Rich Birch — Right.
Greg Surratt — And oftentimes don’t have that friend and ministry that we were talking about earlier and…
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, if if people want more information on that, is that the kind of thing like they have to know you?
Greg Surratt — No.
Rich Birch — Like a secret handshake to find out, how do they?
Greg Surratt — No.
Rich Birch — How do they find out about it?
Greg Surratt — Go online at retreatatchurchcreek.org…
Rich Birch — Okay, retreat.
Greg Surratt — …retreatatchurchcreek.org – get all the information you need, send us an email, sign up, come…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Greg Surratt — …and we’d we’d love to have you.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well this has been a fantastic conversation, Greg. I will put that we’ll link that in show notes, friends. So if you’re wondering, you can just scroll down, click on that – we’ll make sure you you get there. But, Greg, is there anything else you want to share just as we’re wrapping up our time together? I really am just so honored that you take some time to be with us today.
Greg Surratt — You know, just what a if you’re a leader what a privilege it is. It’s been a tough 2 years. But you know what? Um those types of experiences establish leadership I think of Joshua – Old Testament who was you know the assistant to Moses. Moses dies. First thing Joshua has got to do is get people across a river at you know the flood season. I’m sure there were complaining, you know. You know, ah this is the wrong time. If Moses was here he would have thought all this through. All that kind of thing, and God takes Joshua aside and he said, watch this. I’m going to establish you in this crisis, and they’re going to know that I’m with you just like I’m with Moses. And I just want really want to say to leaders right now, God is establishing you in this crisis. He never wastes a crisis. You hang in there. God has God’s got this. He really does. And I believe, and boy that’d be another longer conversation. But I believe just like when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, and it was a crazy time. And people wondered where is America going, and where is the church. Um the largest revival of our generation broke out in the Jesus people movement and I think that we’re on the edge of that kind of breakthrough. And what a privilege it is to be a leader during these times.
Rich Birch — Greg, what a great encouraging word. I appreciate you. Thank you so much – appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you.
Greg Surratt — Thanks.
Pushing Your Church’s Culture Forward in This Current Season with Jenni Catron
May 05, 2022
Thanks for tuning in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jenni Catron, the founder and CEO of the 4Sight Group which helps both leaders and their teams be healthy and thriving.
With the disruptions that covid has brought, many church leaders are struggling with a sense of overload and fatigue. Shifts in how we work have created fractures in teams which have resulted in strains on relationships, communication, and trust. Listen in as Jenni talks about how to address these issues in ministry.
Relational connectivity. // Recent statistics show that 25% or more of employees are considering leaving their jobs. Many people are feeling disconnected from the significance of the work they’re doing because they aren’t in proximity to their leader, team, or the people they serve in the way they used to be. Interactions with teammates have become largely transactional as we do more virtually, and we’ve lost natural human interaction that happens when we’re face-to-face.
Focus on the why. // Organizational clarity has been difficult in this season because we don’t know what the next few months or years will look like. But rather than focusing on the what, we need to focus on the why. If leaders can go back to their why, they will re-inspire their teams. In this great reorganization people want to be a part of something that has meaning and purpose. We don’t have to give our teams a detailed roadmap to the how. Once they understand the why and reconnect to that, they will work together to discover the how.
Organizational structure should serve our strategy. // Org charts can feel bureaucratic, however they provide clarity for every staff person at your church to understand how they contribute to this mission. One of the most critical things we can do as leaders is provide clarity for our team and help people see their place in the organization.
Work on your Org Chart in layers. // As you work on your ministry’s org chart, you’ll need to go back and forth between what and who. Look at what your organization needs to achieve its mission, and then what core functions are necessary to achieve it, whether they are operations, creative weekend experience, etc. Start at the top and figure out how many direct reports a leader can have. Define the roles and then look at who in the organization best fills those roles. Continue this process layer by layer.
Changing values. // Values serve us for a season and while sometimes that season can last for decades, other times that season may come to an end a lot sooner than we expected. In cases like this, take a look first at what doesn’t need to change and what still represents who your organization is. From there, find the values that no longer embody who you are and identify why those should change.
Four steps to writing values. // Jenni has given us access to the resource The Four Steps to Writing Values that are More Than Statements on a Wall. This document walks readers through how to evaluate your values. You’ll identify what is the belief, why it’s significant, what are the behaviors, and the language to then talk about them.
Culture Blind Spot Assessment. // If you want to troubleshoot the culture at your church, visit the 4Sight Group and take the Culture Blind Spot Assessment. 4Sight will then talk on the phone with you about the trouble spots that are identified and how they can help you.
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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends, Rich here from the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we bring you a leader that we hope will really inspire and equip you and today I know that is no exception. I’ve got my friend Jenni Catron—she’s the founder and CEO of an organization called The 4Sight Group—they provide coaching and consulting churches and consulting services to churches and other organizations. She’s a writer, speaker, leadership coach. She’s really an expert in this whole area of culture particularly. She’s worked at ah, a number of great churches and including Menlo ah, Menlo Church and Menlo Park and Cross Point Nashville. She is incredible. Jenni, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Jenni Catron— Rich, this is fun. Thanks for having me.
Rich Birch — Now Jenni, if you’re a longtime listener, was our actually our second guest on the podcast and we are…
Jenni Catron — Is that right?
Rich Birch — That is true. It was Carey Nieuwhof was number one, and then Jenni Catron was number two. And we are approaching 600 episodes. And so I was thinking about that and I thought who do we need to help? Now you’ve come back I think… yeah fact, that might be the last time. I don’t I don’t know if you’ve done three – I should’ve looked before today.
Jenni Catron — I was going to say, I can’t remember but that’s crazy. It was episode number two. That’s super fun and…
Rich Birch — Episode 2
Jenni Catron — That’s awesome.
Rich Birch —A long time ago.
Jenni Catron — Yeah.
Rich Birch — It was a part of the pre- before we even launched recorded. You know you got to record a few before and so yeah, you were number 2. So the fact that you’ll still come on all these years later is…
Jenni Catron — Oh my gosh.
Rich Birch — …is to your credit.
Jenni Catron — No I’m thrilled – this is fun to be back. This is great.
Rich Birch — So glad that yeah, that’s will be fun. Why don’t we kind of talk through tell us about 4Sight. Kind of fill out the picture there – I gave a very kind of quick overview. Give us a sense of of 4Sight. Who do you help? What do you do? That sort of thing.
Jenni Catron — Yeah that’s awesome. Thank you. Yeah 4Sight was really birthed out of my passion for leaders to be healthy and thriving and for their teams to be healthy and thriving. And you know I had the privilege of serving in full time ministry, like you said, for about 12 years on church staff in the role of executive director, and executive pastor, and and then prior to that had been in the corporate world for about a decade. And what I just recognized over and over is that the the significance of the health of a leader and then the power of a great culture team dynamics that just enable us to achieve a mission. And that when those 2 things are happening – when a leader’s healthy and thriving and the team is healthy and thriving – you just I feel like you can conquer the world, right? Like whatever that mission is you are able to just achieve that with so much more meaningful success if you will. And so 4Sight was birthed out of that of like how can I help more leaders and teams just you know do what they they feel called to do and in a way that is life giving to them. So so that’s what we do. We do leadership coaching, so we have a team of coaches that do 1 on 1 leadership coaching, and then we also have our culture framework which is just a a framework that helps walk through, hey if you know whether your culture’s kind of mediocre or your culture’s really toxic right now, or it just needs a tuneup you know – because there’s no perfect culture – um, we come alongside, do workshops and ongoing consulting to help just give you those building blocks to build a healthy and thriving team.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well you know I know in like I said this earlier but I’m going to underline it whenever I think of culture issues at the top of the list is you, and and so friends you should be following Jenni and the 4Sight Group and reaching out to them for sure. They’re just fantastic people. But but part of what I’m doing here is taking advantage of our friendship. You talked to a lot of different leaders. You are connected in a lot of places, having a lot of different conversations, and so I wanted to kind of tap that kind of meta idea of like, hey what are you hearing? What are some of the things that either churches are coming to you, or you’re kind of as you’re engaged in conversation, you’re like oh I’m seeing a trend here. What are be a some of those maybe these are you know problems that our churches are running into leaders are coming into, maybe a pain that you you consistently see coming up – what what are you hearing these days?
Jenni Catron — Yeah, there you know there’s a couple different themes that are standing out to me. One of which is just there’s just such a sense of overload and fatigue – like that feels really prevalent. I think it’s you know the compounding effect of two years of just just disruption and constantly having to figure out, okay now how do we do it? Okay now how do we do it? Okay, how do we plan, you know?
Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yes.
Jenni Catron — You and I talked offline just before we started recording of just you know the practical reality of how challenging it is to even plan as far out as we might have historically. So there’s just like this it’s if I think it’s just catching up with us. Um, I think that’s compounded by the level of disconnection. Especially when we talk about teams and cultures when we’ve most… most organizations still have some level of hybrid work, you know. There there are some that have returned completely to the office but by and large there’s still a lot of like kind of you know hybrid work scenarios or still working from home. But what that’s done is it’s created just fractures in connection for teams. And so the relationships are strained. The trust is strained. Communication is strained. And so you’re just feeling like and I think that’s also like contributing to the fatigue factor.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jenni Catron — So those are like really two of those big things that I’m seeing is just this kind of sense of overload because we’re just a bit exhausted.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — And then we’re also not connected the way that we historically would have been. and while that’s getting better in some places, that impact on the on the team dynamic, I think is is really starting to show. Is you know we’re starting to really see that more.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, well and I think yeah that makes total sense. You know I wonder if a part of this has been pre- all of this – I don’t even know what we call this season anymore.
Jenni Catron — What do we call it anymore, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, post-Covid – whatever. I don’t know whatever you call this. Um pre- that so many of us were used to leading where like we saw everyone that we were leading like every day. We were slapping them on the back…
Jenni Catron — That’s right.
Rich Birch — …there was you know it’s the old water cooler idea, and so there was ah there was both a relational thing that we could do there where we could kind of stay connected and we had high enough you know, kind of emotional EQ that we could figure out where people are at. But then even just communicating what’s important as an organization was all done face-to-face where then now it’s not definitely not all done face-to-face. And so you can see how that has really has really strained people over these years for sure.
Jenni Catron — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — What what’s some of the outcomes you you see of that like on teams? Like what is that what impact is that having on um, you know the the kind of people who are working in churches or their you know the teams who are you know who are you know trying to make this thing happen?
Jenni Catron — Yeah, you know this is this is more of a Jenni theory than me being able to deliberately connect the dots…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jenni Catron — …but you know part of what we you know are hearing is the the great resignation of people reevaluating and changing jobs. And I saw one more recent stat that said 25% of employees are considering leaving.
Rich Birch — Oh.
Jenni Catron — That was as I’ve seen that number as much as 40 or 60% depending on which what what research you’re looking at. But by and large everybody’s asking the question of why am I doing what I’m doing? and I do think that is a byproduct of people being disconnected from the significance and purpose of the work they’re doing, just because they’re not in proximity to their leader in the same way where they’re or they’re not in proximity to the who that whoever they serve. So if we’re talking to a lot of church leaders, you know, if you can’t… every leader has felt this right? Like our attendance is a fraction of what it was pre-covid and that’s really like just frustrating and we don’t see the same people. We wonder if some people are even around, and and while we want to be mindful of who is here and making sure we’re being thoughtful to connect with them. Again I think that is still just um, just been emotionally tiring for most of our teams. And then with one another because they haven’t had the same level of proximity in in the office. You know as much as we’ve gotten really good at video and Zoom and all of these things. Um unless you’re really purposeful about creating connection which just sometimes feels a little awkward. So what’s happened is so most so much of our work has become just transactional. We’ve lost, like you said, those water-cooler, pat-each-other-on-the-back, high-five you know, just chitchat and in it for a minute in the hallway and between meetings. And some of those like really human interaction things that happened naturally for teams were completely extracted when we had to go to all virtual.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — And unless we found some mechanisms to replace a little bit of it, and I think there’s some things you can do in a digital environment to replace some of that. But I think all of I I think it’s been hard for team members to name that that’s why I’m not energized about my work.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — You know again, for years we’ve been saying people don’t quit jobs they quit bosses…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jenni Catron — …or you know like we stay someplace because of the culture and our leader…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Jenni Catron — …and we’ve known that for forever. Well I think a good reason why people are are asking the question of you know, should I stay here? Do I want to move on to something different? Is because they’ve lost that relational connectivity that brought so much life to their work. And while we might be starting to bring some of that back, um, its you know now it’s we’re having to rebuild that those muscles and know how to do that again. So ah I think there’s there’s a lot in there so I should probably like pause and let you tease out what’s most helpful.
Rich Birch — No, no, no, that’s good. I love that because I think I know for me that’s kind of as it’s gone through these different phases it’s like, well if we let’s play like a better game on Zoom. Or like I’ll send pizza to everyone’s house.
Jenni Catron — Right.
Rich Birch — Or like we tried to we started with like these um, like how do we how do we kind of approximate or synthesize what it was like to be in person? But the thing I like that you’re pushing on is actually I think a much deeper issue which is it really gets it’s like the organizational clarity question, which is like why are people here? When I think of the people who are who are thriving in this season in the organization I lead, or you know churches that I run into, it’s people who have clarity on what is the big thing.
Jenni Catron — Yes, yep. Yeah.
Rich Birch — What is the thing that kind of transcends the you know all the kind of frills or whatever? So what what are some things you’re seeing on that front around either… because it does seem like if people are wondering, why am I here? I do feel like every organization is is asking that question now again, right? It’s like okay what is it what is the next five years supposed to be like now?
Jenni Catron — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Everything’s changed – the world’s different. Um, you know what are we building? You know we stop talking about rebuilding, but what are we building? So um…
Jenni Catron — Yes, yeah.
Rich Birch — What does that look like when you think about organizational clarity in this season?
Jenni Catron — Yeah, and I think ah, you’re you’re you’re hitting it ah dead on in that it’s actually really hard, right? So for the senior leaders in the room, you know that are at you know in that most senior leadership seat, it’s been really challenging to clarify where are we going. And and I think because of that frustration of I don’t know how to predict next month let alone 5 years from now. Um that then in some ways, and I and I’m named myself because I said that the the head of the organization that I lead and it’s in some ways we we we’ve been in such a reactive posture, and and we had to be initially, right? It was like whoa what is coming at us? How am I going to deal with this? And it was just kind of react…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — …and you know play a little whack-a-mole and try to just you know keep the wheels from falling off. And ah I think the challenge for us as leaders right now is to push ourselves back to a proactive posture, um get out of reactive mode, and go more okay wait, how am I going to engage now moving forward? But there’s a lot of work we have to do to get ourselves there because it’s really discouraging.
Rich Birch — It’s so true. Yes
Jenni Catron — It’s really frustrating to go, I don’t know what the next few months are going to look like. I don’t know how to predict that. All of my typical mechanisms for that aren’t working anymore. And and I’m grieving loss, right? I mean so a lot of the pastors that I’m working with are still you know, as much as we know it shouldn’t be about numbers and you know like we don’t need to fixate on the metrics, there’s the we are grieving that we used to reach a thousand people and now it’s five hundred a week. And we have this number of people who are connected online, but we don’t quite know how to like…
Rich Birch — Don’t know what that means. Yes.
Jenni Catron — …do what to do with that. Yeah, we don’t know exactly what that means. And um and you know so we’re still grieving just that loss and I think we have to really keep wrestling with that. So long way around to your to your question is I think we have to really go back to why. I think we got so focused on what – like what do I need to be doing, which is the strategy piece, but that real sense of purpose like why? Why do I do this? I remember, and I may have told you this, Rich, but I remember sitting at this very desk in April of 2020 going, Oh my goodness – what am I going to do? I’ve spent the last four years of this organization traveling ah all around…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — …to different churches and organizations, speaking, consulting, being on site with leaders, and what am I gonna do? and I was I was I was sitting here praying and I felt like God was like well why do you do?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — To equip leaders to lead thriving teams. They and I just felt like I was like and they still need that.
Rich Birch — Yes, maybe more now than ever.
Jenni Catron — So now it was how, right? Yes exactly exactly. So it was like and I that was so grounding for me, Rich, because it was like wait. Why? Why do I do what I do? So for church leaders? Why? Why do we do what we do? Why do we do what we do? People need the hope of Jesus, right? Like arguably more than like in many of our lifetimes, like the the disruption, the frustration, the anger level, the uncertainty, the fear – like all of these things that have been plaguing our culture, our broader culture for these past couple of years – people desperately need hope. We know that anxiety is skyrocketing. We know that suicide rates are skyrocketing. You know, so again, particularly ministry leaders that why is arguably more critical than ever. So like if we can get ourselves re-inspired in that why…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — …of like wait, no this is why we do what we do. This is why this matters so significantly. Okay, now how? All right guys, I’m not sure how. And I literally I would do this as a leader if I were in the shoes of a lot of our listeners. It’s what I’ve done with my team. It’s like okay guys here’s why we do what we do. Now I am as confused as you are about how, so we’re going to have to figure out how together.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Jenni Catron — I’m not exactly sure how this is going to play out in the next one year, or three years, five years, but here’s what I know – this is why we do what we do and here’s a couple stories of seeing it in action. You know because the stories exist.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — You know I’m I’m hearing so many stories especially in ministry um, about people who are showing up for the first time because they’re hungry for hope.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — They’re hungry for somebody to bring some answer that will give them a sense of peace. We can provide that especially as ministry leaders, and then you know make the correlation to whatever you do if you’re in a nonprofit, or a business…
Rich Birch — Yes, right.
Jenni Catron — …like there’s a compelling why that you’re giving your life and energy to. And so I think if we can come back to that and our team can see our belief in it, they’ll come along for figuring out the how.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — I don’t think they’re desperate for us to be able to map out the exact plan. In fact, what we know about younger leaders is they want to be more collaborative.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — They don’t want to just be dictated to…
Rich Birch — Just told, here.
Jenni Catron —They actually want to be more collaborative in in in doing the work together. So they just need to know that we’re anchored in a sense of purpose, and the data is telling us that too. There’s ah, a lot of research right now about, you know, in this great reorganization um what do people really want?They want to be a part of something that has meaning and purpose. You know and they want to give their lives to something that has significance.
Rich Birch — Yeah
Jenni Catron — So to me that’s a huge opportunity.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s fantastic. I love that. You know one of the things that kind of related to that as you know, there’s been a lot of churches out there that like say eighteen months ago there was a youth pastor who mildly knew something about technology and so then we said great, you now are the church online pastor. And that person’s been doing that for eighteen months. Um and now the church is you know that we’re doing that, we keep doing that, it’s fine. Um, but now we’re asking the reorganization question.
Jenni Catron — Right.
Rich Birch — We’re asking the like okay, how do we this is the kind of new normal. We have a sense of what we’ve done, what what our why is. We have a sense of where we’re going. If I’m a church leader today thinking about you know I just have this sense that we’re that I’ve got maybe all the right people on the bus, but they’re not necessarily sitting in the right seat. Um the real answer is call 4Sight. They’ll help you unplug it and figure it out. But but how would you go how would you walk through that process? How would you help them kind of begin to translate, okay, this is kind of our new reality. We take we have a clear idea of where we’re going, why we’re doing what we’re doing, and we have an idea of our kind of current context at least for the foreseeable future.
Jenni Catron — That’s right.
Rich Birch — Um, how do we look at moving people around? What’s that look like?
Jenni Catron — Oh that’s such a good question, and honestly this that has been a big hot button. Um I think there’s just a lot of people asking that question because we’re realizing there were some roles that we historically have that ah are not as critical. Um, and then there’s some roles that have become more elevated in our strategy. And and and like actually looking at that very deliberately, building out that organizational structure that really reflects it is so so so key. And here’s why. I just want to give a why on this because a lot of people especially a ministry if we hear “org chart” we’re like, argh!
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, ahhh!
Jenni Catron — Org chart feels bureaucratic feels you know…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Jenni Catron — …but here’s what a great Org Chart does is it provides clarity for every person to understand how they contribute to this mission. Like every person understands here’s how my role helps us achieve this mission. And ah clarity is one of the the biggest things we need to provide as leaders. It’s one of the most critical things we can do is provide the clarity for our teams. And so clarity of that purpose, which I just went on my long rant about, but then secondly like helping every person see their place in that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — So that’s what an org chart does. So to your question, it is the okay, yup, what… One of my my big convictions is that our structure our organizational structure needs to serve our strategy. That’s the purpose first. So um and when I’m working on org chart stuff with teams I often talk about toggling the what and the who. Um and that there’s you’re…
Rich Birch — That’s good. I like that.
Jenni Catron — …you’re going back and forth between what and who as you’re looking at it because you need to go, okay, what does the organization need to achieve our mission? Okay. So we got a structure for strategy. So if I know that we’re going to need—these are the core functions that are going to that everything needs to flow from. You know? So if online… like there’s a church that I’m working with right now that online has been so significant for them that they realized we need to elevate that to more of a higher position organizationally. So so knowing you know, next to, and we’ll just do churches because I know a lot of the listeners are church leaders but you can make the application for whatever type of organization you’re in, you’re seeing your pastors in that most senior leadership seat. So then your next tier of the organization is really based on, what are the core functions necessary for us to achieve our mission? So it’s probably you know all your ministries, it’s your operations, and it’s your um creative weekend experience, whatever bucket that might be in, and that might vary for you. But you’re just getting clear about what are those core areas that are essential for us to achieve our mission. Um,
Jenni Catron — Then there’s a question mark of okay, what’s the appropriate span of care? You know how many direct reports does that leader can…
Rich Birch — Right. Need. Yeah, can take.
Jenni Catron — …can yeah need and can actively lead. You know can can really provide great leadership for. So ah, so maybe that’s 1, or 2, or 3, or whatever it might be – that’s going to clarify how many how many folks sit there. And then you go okay, now who? Now who can best fit these roles we’ve defined? And then you just keep doing that layer after layer of the org chart depending on how big your organization is. But it’s the what do we need? And then okay, who do we have? And we just keep toggling back and forth between those two things to help us build a structure that really serves our strategy, but also finds a clear place and position for the team members we have.
Rich Birch — I love that. That’s great coaching. Yeah I know I’m more of a systems leader and would lean much heavier on the like we’ve got to get the pristine org chart that’s like the ideal, if we had the most ideal people ever.
Jenni Catron — Right, right.
Rich Birch — Um, you know, this is how it would go. But I like that challenge of like oh we should be toggling between who do we who is actually here…
Jenni Catron — Yes.
Rich Birch — …and you know and and then who are you know and then how does that fit with where you know we need to be looking at both sides of that equation.
Jenni Catron — Both sides.
Rich Birch — That’s good I like that that’s good.
Jenni Catron — Yeah, well and what you and what you have a lot in—because you probably lean a little more of how I would as well that I—you know like what’s the ideal structure you know and then…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, let’s sort that out.
Jenni Catron — …but in ministry a lot of times we get so fixated on the who because we’re often more relationally wired. And um and then we just create these really odd roles because of what some people’s personal passions and interests are, but it’s not really actually helping us do the thing we’re called to do.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — And so as leaders we have this dual responsibility right to both steward the mission of the organization, and the people that are assembled here in their gifts and so forth. And so it’s really that back to tensions that we manage. You know we talk about that a lot. It’s like it’s really the both/and. And I push leaders to say start with what,
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Jenni Catron — …because most leaders they will get hung up on the who.
Rich Birch — We’ll go to… yeah yeah, that makes sense.
Jenni Catron — Yeah. And so start with the what. Like if I were clean slate building a new org structure to help us achieve the mission in this season of of the organization’s life, what should that look like? Because a lot of times then what you find is you find some really unique ideas of like, oh wow I think this person, with a little bit of coaching and development could really do this thing. And I’d never thought about that. Or I’d never seen that potential in them. Right? Or this individual over here is a perfect fit. Or you know you just start to see different um, you get different ideas and different perspective that um can be really fun to uncover.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s so good. So another another kind of question around you know this whole kind of organizational-development-in-the-moment-we-find-ourselves is, I do sense that I end up engaged with with leaders that they’re either the senior leader or they’re a part of the senior leadership team, and something has shifted within them in the last couple of years, and they’ve changed. And they sense that the organization needs to change, kind of like at the values level like where it’s like you know we used to be X but I really think going forward, you know, the Lord’s calling us to or…
Jenni Catron — Yep.
Rich Birch — Um, or I think that we need to change strategically. It’s like this value this is like… or or the cultures changed around us and we need to respond to that.
Jenni Catron — Right.
Rich Birch — So it’s kind of like an aspirational values change. Is that a good idea? Bad idea? How does someone do that? Is that you know should values always be just defined on who we are today? How do how do you balance that out? What does that look like in the current season?
Jenni Catron — Oh I love that question. So it’s a really great question because I think you’re you’re hitting on probably some of the the tensions we feel as leaders of like the landscape is shifting. Now what do I do with that? Um, and so yes, and I think that um you know, values are one of those things that they serve us for a season. Now sometimes that season can be really extended. It can be really long. There can be organizations ah you know that have a set of values that really guide, you know how they work together and how they achieve mission together, and that works well for two decades. And then sometimes there will be something that that ah can almost creates a little bit of ah, almost a rebirth, or a just a pivot to a new season. And so sometimes that’s a new senior leader. Sometimes that’s a you know something like we’ve just experienced where it’s really shifted our our focus and our strategy.
Jenni Catron — And it’s time to take a re-look. So I think it’s completely, if you’re sensing that, I think that’s completely appropriate. And what I would do is I would say okay, what what doesn’t need to change? You know, maybe we have a set of 7 values, which is probably a little too many but most organizations have that much.
Rich Birch — Ah, yes, yes.
Jenni Catron — Um, so let’s say you have a set of 7…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — …I would recommend more like 3 to 5, but um, but you look at it and you go okay, these two or three things, no, that’s still us.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — Like this conviction to serve others, or um to you know you fill it full that in with whatever it might be …
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Jenni Catron — Those are still really core convictions. We still really believe these are critical. But you know what, here these other three those were important to us for a season, but they’re probably not the most critical things for now.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jenni Catron — I’ll give you an example of this. One of the organizations that I was a part of we had to defined a set of values. They served us really well, well for about 10 years or so. New senior leader came in and you know had it, you know, just his own set of convictions and things that were important for the new era of leadership. And they they did; they pulled them out and they looked at them, and 6 of the 7 they kept, and he swapped out one. And there was one that was just really important to his leadership and what he believed was essential for the season…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — …so he didn’t throw the whole thing out but they did a really helpful reflection on why did these things need to guide us? And that’s what’s important about values is they really become kind of those guardrails that help every team member understand, how do I work here? And how do I work with each other, with one another to to succeed, you know to be a healthy contributing part of this team? So I think I think the the taking a look at it, discerning which what needs to stay what needs to go, and then and then really digging into okay, why is this critical right now in this season, and then what does it look like? Right? So what’s why does this what’s the belief? Why does this value matter? And then behaviorally what does it look like in action?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — Because if you can give that kind of clarity to it then, because back to your point about it’s kind of aspiration, right? We probably are not fully living into that.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jenni Catron — But if I can give enough definition to it I can help my team understand, here’s what we’re aspiring to, and we’re gonna keep working to lean into and live into those values in a way that they do become true of us sooner than later.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good because there can be a problem with those aspirational values where your team can get cynical about them, right?
Jenni Catron — Totally.
Rich Birch — Where it’s like oh yeah, we’re supposed to be whatever XYZ but like I never see that. And so you have to call I’ve found you have to call that out…
Jenni Catron — That’s ah exactly right.
Rich Birch — Like yeah this is we’re trying to lead into that direction. This is kind of like where we see um, and it may be a good season, or maybe I’ll ask it this way, is this a good season to reevaluate that? Is this a good season for us to be rethinking, I’m assuming values and um, even maybe some vision/mission stuff too?
Jenni Catron — Yes, I think so. Especially if you have question marks about it. If you’re like like you know this is clear. This is you know I I feel confident and comfortable and boom, we’re going, I would say invite a few voices around the table. I think part of the the blind spot we can have as leaders is that culture always feels clearest to us because we have the most control, right?
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Jenni Catron — And so we have to be conscientious of the fact that while it might feel clear to us it it probably is a little more murky to the rest of the team. So that could be mission or vision. It could be values. So I think I would pull some team members to go, if you have your own question marks, that’s a great place to open the conversation with some other team members to say hey, here’s what I’m wondering I’m wondering if we need to relook at this. And I am seeing a lot of organizations doing this right now of just like hey, this is a healthy time to kind of reset that baseline Um, we we use a tool in our culture framework called the culture hierarchy of needs. And it’s you know it’s similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of like those basic needs that we need to flourish as humans. But it’s it’s okay, what does that look like in an organizational context?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — And one of the one of the core foundational blocks there is like just clarity – organizational clarity. What is our mission?
Rich Birch — Right.
Jenni Catron — What’s our vision? What are the values that guide how we behave? And so a a look at that to make sure that that that foundation is clear and strong, and everybody understands that then helps us build you know, build the the trust, and the connection, and so forth that allow people to really flourish at work.
Rich Birch — Love it. You’ve actually given us access to a resource called the 4 steps to writing values that are more than statements on a wall. That title is a little bit – it hits a little close to home there, Jenni. Because I think we’ve all worked in those organizations where it’s like we’ve got those values, do they actually impact us?
Jenni Catron — Yep.
Rich Birch — Ah, talk to us about this tool. Give us a sense of what you know what is this? Ah you know how how could a church leader who’s listening in how could it benefit them as they’re leading?
Jenni Catron — Yeah, and it does. It just helps you kind of look at the, okay, what are our values?
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jenni Catron — And if if they don’t exist. You know you’re going to get some you know, just some suggestions on how to even build them. But what are those values? And then—I kind of hinted at it a little earlier—what’s the belief? Why does that matter? Why is this significant for us? What are the behaviors? What does that look like? And then we talk about the sticky statements or the language that we use to talk about them. Because let’s be honest, we can have a value of collaborative communication and it’s like, that doesn’t get anybody super excited, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jenni Catron — But if we put a fun like statement or axiom around that that is kind of a little bit of like insider language, it’s kind of we all understand what it means, it gives them a little more life. Um and makes it a little more specific to your context so that that um that free download just kind of walks you through that process, and and helps you put a little more specificity and just a little more teeth into these values, so that they don’t become the thing everybody just kind of chuckles about, because they’re like yeah we say that we do blah blah blah.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Jenni Catron —But really, we don’t. Um so it’ll get you kind of started in that direction.
Rich Birch — Love it. This is so good. I want to get a sense for our listeners how they could engage with 4Sight Group. So I’m a just pretend I’m an executive pastor of a church – I don’t know 1500 people, we’ve got 25 staff – and I sense that you know there’s man, there’s just some stuff on our culture that I think we need to address. How does 4Sight help with that? How how does your group help engage that issue?
Jenni Catron — Yeah, that’s fantastic, and thanks for thanks for that question. First of all, just at the top of our website is ah we call it a culture blind spot assessment. And it will it’s a quick little free assessment that you can take that just helps you identify, okay, what might be the trouble spot for us? And it assesses on 4 different areas of culture. And that usually kind of gets you pointed in the right direction. And then secondly from there it’s like hey let’s just get on the phone. Let’s talk about it because culture has its uniquenesses and nuances. So you know every organization might have a little bit something different that you need specific support for. And then beyond that oftentimes it’s either we do we get you in a one-on-one coaching relationship where then we’re just working with you directly as the leader on whatever we’ve identified as the trouble spot. Or we come and do a 2-day workshop with you, and we deep dive with you and a team of your staff to define, hey what’s the reality of our culture currently, what do we aspire to, and let’s build a plan to help you get there. And so that’s the the culture workshop program…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jenni Catron — …that is a great place for folks to get connected. But that assessment will get you started. A conversation will help us figure out what’s the best way that we can help you just create that culture where you’re you’re thriving and your team is thriving.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Friends, you know Jenni’s not just a friend. She’s we’ve also had her in our organization. She’s helped us with some stuff and I can say you know, this can feel like one of those areas where it can feel maybe a little bit tender for you as a leader you’re like oh…
Jenni Catron — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like to have somebody come in for a couple days and talk about an area that I feel a little bit ah, maybe not great about. Ah Jenni and her whole team are so good at getting in the corner of you and your team. Really this is not a like hey we’re gonna make you feel dumb…
Jenni Catron — No.
Rich Birch — …or like point out all your problems. It’s like let’s build to the future. Let’s figure out where we go from here. And I have found that the the free assessment is—everybody who’s listening should go take it—it is a great kind of starting point. It gives you some some great early ideas. So I would encourage you, friends, to go to get4sight—that’s with with a 4 not the FOR (I can’t even and spell). It’s with the number four – get4sight.com …
Jenni Catron — That’s right.
Rich Birch — …that would really be the the best place. Anything else you’d love to share ah, just while you’re you’re well we’ve got you today?
Jenni Catron — Well I would first of all, Rich, thank you so much for the opportunity to connect. I’m always super grateful and grateful for the work that you’re doing, and the way your equipment leaders are such practical resources and tools. That’s just such a gift. But to everybody that’s listening, thank you for your faithfulness in leading. I mean this has not been an easy season for any leader at any level. And so thank you for just your faithfulness in that. And um and I hope that you know you’ve been encouraged in some way, but if there’s any way we can, you know, be a resource or a support or a help um, we are always eager to be a part. So just thanks for your faithfulness and leadership. That’s what I’m super grateful for.
Rich Birch — Nice. Again is there anywhere besides get4sight.com we want to send people online? I do want people to listen to your podcast. People sometimes ask me as a podcaster what podcast do I listen to, and your podcast is one of my must-listens-to…
Jenni Catron — Thank you.
Rich Birch — …so um, you need to listen to that as well. Where where finer podcasts are aggregated. You can pick that up. Are there is there anywhere else we want to send people online?
Jenni Catron — Ah, no I think get4sight.com. It’s the word, g-e-t, the number 4, and the word sight s-i-g-h-t. And that’s a great place. I’m @jenncatron on all social media. So I love to connect with folks there. That’s ah, just a great way to stay connected with me personally. But yeah, we’d love to we’d love to connect and yes, the the podcast is Lead Culture with Jenni Catron and so clearly talking all things leadership and culture.
Rich Birch — Yes, good stuff. Thanks so much, Jenni. Appreciate you being here. And maybe we’ll have you on in another 600 episodes, you know.
Jenni Catron — I love it! Let’s do it!
Rich Birch — Yeah, thanks so much.
Jenni Catron — Perfect. Thanks, Rich.
Insights on Pastoral Restoration After a Fall with Shawn & Sonny Hennessy
Apr 28, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Shawn and Sonny Hennessy, from Life Church Green Bay in Wisconsin. Shawn and Sonny are also co-hosts of The Rise After the Fall podcast and together founded The Exchange Collaborative.
The highs and lows of ministry, and the trials of life can threaten to destroy pastors and church leaders if they don’t address their own brokenness. Everyone experiences trauma and has weaknesses that can lead to a fall. But that’s not the end of the story. Listen in as Shawn and Sonny talk about how to find healing and move toward restoration after a fall.
So many hide before they fall. // There are so many pastors in the midst of a fall or in danger of a fall who hide, either in pride or fear, and don’t reach out to someone for help. They may feel that they don’t have someone they can go to, or they may fear losing their position and livelihood, especially if they are the senior leader.
Step away when needed. // God has used Shawn and Sonny’s own brokenness and restoration process to found The Exchange Collaborative where they come alongside other pastors and church leaders who are struggling. In addition to offering resources such as The Rise After the Fall podcast, Shawn and Sonny have put together a program for pastoral restoration. As part of this program, one of the things they offer to pastors who are at a point where they really want help is a financial incentive to walk away from their ministry for a year.
Fake it until we make it or fall. // Some of the biggest pastoral falls come from the things people are ashamed and embarrassed about, like financial or sexual impropriety. A lot of times our insecurity causes us to hide our own doubts about ourselves, and we try to fake it until we make it. So as church leaders we actually fail the most by not admitting our weaknesses in the first place, and then not setting up safeguards to prevent our falls.
Walk in repentance. // The first step toward healing and restoration is admitting that we are broken. The pastoral restoration program is not for the person who just wants to save face and preserve themselves. Rather it’s for those who want to walk in repentance. It helps leaders who are broken dig down to the root cause of why they took a wrong step in the first place.
Paths for help. // Everybody’s needs are different so there are a couple of different paths in the pastoral restoration program. One option is for people to come to Green Bay for 30 days to a year and live there, going through an intense restoration process. The Exchange Collaborative offers housing, a job, a church they can attend, and the Journey to Wholeness course to work through. It is an honest and open process that will help leaders, and their families, defragment and reconnect.
Other options for restoration. // There are other options for those who can’t come to Green Bay for a year for the restoration process. Shawn and Sonny can fly to pastors and work with them and their families while they are still serving in their ministry role. There is also an option for 2-3 day intensives at various locations. One is at the Living Waters Retreat in Arizona on June 23-25, 2022. Additionally, you can contact Shawn or Sonny directly through their website if you need to talk with them about help you may need.
Create a culture of vulnerability. // As a church leader, you can create a culture where people on your staff will feel safe opening up about their struggles before their life goes off the rails. Have conversations about your struggles and how you are addressing them. You don’t need to bare your whole soul, but can start by speaking generally to lay down a foundation for your team. Talk time to pray for one another. The Journey to Wholeness course offered at The Exchange Collaborative website is also available for your staff to walk through together.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week here on the podcast we try to bring you a church leader who will both inspire and equip you, but today we’ve got two! Two for the price of one, friends. Super excited to have a return guest. Well you know when we have return guests, that means I love what they have to say and want to expose them to you. We’re 600 episode in we have only done a handful of return guests. So super excited for that. You need to lean in today. We’ve got Shawn and Sonny Hennessy from a fantastic church – Life Church in Wisconsin. Shawn is the senior pastor. He’s international guest speaker, author, blogger. He’s a chaplain to the Green Bay Packers—are you a shareholder though? That’s the real question—and the co-founder of The Exchange. And then we’ve got Sonny – she’s a lead pastor at Life Church Green Bay and CEO of The Exchange Brand. Together they co-host a podcast called The Rise After the Fall, speaking really to church leaders ah, who have taken a step too far, who have fallen and really about this whole area of pastoral restoration. Sonny, Shawn, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Sonny Hennessy — Thank you.
Shawn Hennessy — Thank you, and yes I am a shareholder actually.
Rich Birch — This is… oh you are? Okay I wondered.
Shawn Hennessy — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Wow. I’m not sure what that means. Like I don’t know does that mean you’re like someday you can, if they sell, you get money? Is that what that means? I don’t know.
Shawn Hennessy — There’s no no monetary impact. You can go once a year to the shareholders meeting and you can listen with 75,000 or so of your closest friends to what’s going to happen.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s that’s so good. Sonny, why don’t we start with you kind of filling out the the picture a little bit. Kind of talk to us about Life Church – give us to kind of bring us up to speed on that to kind of tell us a little bit of the of your story. How you know how Life Church is and give us a bit of that picture.
Sonny Hennessy — Well, we’ve been at Life Church almost ten years in Green Bay, Wisconsin, of course, and we find it to be the greatest work we’ve ever done when it comes to ministry. And it came after a meteoric rise and a fall. And we almost lost our marriage – ie. we both messed up enough to to almost walk away from our marriage. And it’s after that that we saw God do the most in our life. Ah Life Church, we basically like relaunched it ten years ago with about 80 people, and a little building. And we were three times on the fastest growing churches in America Outreach list. One year as the second fastest growing, so literally it has been a ride. And then the pandemic hit, and we were able to really sit back, lean back and say, what do we want the next ten years to look like? Well we want to be pastors but we also want to help pastors who thought their life was over at the time of the fall, their fall, their step back, and realize it’s not the end. It’s never the end with God.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm, yeah; I love it. So I um I it seems like for about a year I had everyone who I knew in ministry said to me, hey hey have you—and I already knew where it was going—they’re like have you listened to that Mars Hill Podcast? Like have you heard about that conversation? It’s like if I feel like I couldn’t get away from it and um, you know I had friends that were on the team there, and so actually to be honest I haven’t listened to it. Because I’m like I, listen I was knew people in the midst of all that and so I was like I didn’t really want to relive it all. But I think anybody who’s listening in has a clear at least idea around you know, ah, kind of all the situation that happened there, but you’ve, Shawn, taken this kind of position with your podcast called The Rise After the Fall, which is, like you say, not a rebuttal against that but really talking about well what what happens when you know a leader falls. Talk to me about your heart behind that. What what led you to say, yeah this this is the conversation we need to be having?
Shawn Hennessy — Well, we came to the game late in the the rise after the The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. I had heard a lot of people talk about it. And ah I was a huge Mark Driscoll fan. I loved his books, loved his messages. I actually I I really felt like I had a kindred spirit to him in so many ways in the way that I viewed leadership and ah… And then I listened to the podcast and I realized I didn’t have a kindred spirit with him.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Hennessy — And there were a lot of things that I heard in that podcast that broke my heart so deeply. And we’re not only connected here in Green Bay, we’re deeply connected in Seattle, and that church for a period of time changed that city…
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Shawn Hennessy — And then it changed it again and that was the thing that really prompted me, I think, to do a group of talks about people who are struggling with their position and ministry. And the thing that really resonated with me about that podcast was the number of opportunities that the leadership who are on that podcast, who are trying to pick up the pieces, reached out and extended an olive branch for restoration that was was denied, for whatever reason, and I think that there’s so many pastors who are either in the midst of a fall or in danger of a fall who, whether it be pride or fear, don’t reach out to somebody or respond to somebody.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm
Shawn Hennessy — Maybe it’s because they don’t feel like they have someone who they can go to, like if you’re a senior pastor. It’s difficult to go to your denomination because you feel like maybe you’ll lose your livelihood. Pastors aren’t very marketable outside of churches.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — Like I mean a we could go sell shoes at Nordstrom, but what else are we have.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — You have your degree in bible…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah.
Shawn Hennessy — …and so there’s not a lot of stuff that you can do. And so that’s a positive but it’s also negative in the fact that if you’re on staff at a church and you feel like you’re about to go through a fall, it’s difficult to go to your senior pastor because you wonder if you’re going to lose, again, your livelihood. And so this this program, it’s not just a podcast for us. It’s a complete restoration program and process where one of the things that we want to offer to people is actually a financial incentive to walk away for a year.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well I want to dig into that. Before we get there would you guys be open to opening up and talking about your own kind of restoration journey? I would love to hear a little bit about that. Maybe Shawn, we’ll start with you, and then, Sonny, I’d love to hear kind of—I know that’s like, tell us about that in two minutes or less – like good luck with that. But like yeah to kind of give us a bit of the framework of your own… how you come to this this whole topic of restoration.
Shawn Hennessy — Well I came to faith late. I came to faith in my early 20s. I had had a rollercoaster of a life. I came from a rough background and was playing football on a scholarship, and got arrested for robbery, got sentenced to 15 years in the state pen…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Shawn Hennessy — …served 111 days, I got off because of overcrowding, ended up at a little Christian school in North Dakota. It was an assembly of God Bible school – I didn’t know it until I got there. And one of the things that I discovered in ministry is if you have talent, many times your lack of integrity is overlooked. As long as you can perform, you don’t have to live your life up to a ah certain standard as long as you don’t make the overarching entity look bad. And I lived my life in that. I lived my life with having a lot of natural ability. I’ve never been afraid in front of a crowd. I’ve never not had anything to say. I’ve always had a magnetic personality. I’ve always drawn people even before I was a Jesus follower. And everything that Sonny and I ever did in ministry, it felt like we had the Midas touch. And then in the midst of that we we were never forced to deal, I was never forced to deal with the lack of integrity that I had in my life. And I also was never forced to deal with the excessive amount of pride that I had in my life. And so every time I would be blessed, my ego would be puffed up. And finally after you know, almost fifteen years in the ministry, it was it. And I I got to a place where my talent took me as the old adage would say that my my character couldn’t keep me. And it didn’t only affect me it affected the people in the church we were leading at the time. It affected Sonny, it affected our kids, and it was as we say in our beginning of our podcast, we had a meteoric rise and we had a devastating fall.
Rich Birch — Hmm. Sonny, I’d love to hear your kind of how you plug into that story.
Sonny Hennessy — Shawn and I both went right into ministry after being called to ministry. And I mean we were passionate and we do everything still very passionately. We go one 180% in and 180 miles per hour, and so we just got fell in love with Jesus and just did ministry. So at home the emotional baggage or how we saw our parents be married and fight and yell, and not hit each other, but fight and yell – we just did that because it was … sides the way we um, saw people that we admired spend money, we spent money, even if it meant tons of credit card debt. And so we’re being bogged down, not by we were out having affairs, you know, no by we would go to church and do it so well and that was our everything, and come home and take everything out on each other, overspend then be overstressed, ah treat each other poorly. Um and it just that never gets better. It just increases and increases and pretty soon we’d be like man today we had a good day, we didn’t fight, and then we well at ten am we did. Well that’s true, but hey most of the day we… like that’s a terrible marriage to live in. And then we took over a church that had ah a pastor who had had financial indiscretions before us, but we didn’t know that. We took on a mess and that really started to cripple us in our ministry now, plus what was happening at home. And you don’t make good decisions when you’re weary.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Sonny Hennessy — And you you tend to find pride in things that you are successful at, and that covers the things that you’re unsuccessful in, and and makes those actually worse in the dark. And so we had gone to people before about our marriage or marriage conferences. The reality was we didn’t have a marriage issue. We had never dealt with past abuses in our childhood, ah past bullying in our childhood. Ah we were we were not emotionally healed because we had never considered true therapy for ourselves. We didn’t have a marriage problem, we had a Shawn and Sonny problem. Then we got in in a house and then we were really bad roommates. And usually you can move out from the roommate you have in college and you just are like I’m done with them. We couldn’t really do that, but we got to a point I moved out. And then we we had to submit… at that point when I moved out and it was clear I was going to file for divorce, which I left the ministry and the pressure as much as I left Shawn, in all honesty. Our marriage wasn’t that much worse, but the ministry was crippling us. And now with a pandemic, we feel that weight. Ah I left both the ministry and Shawn, and when our denomination found that out, it was clear we can’t continue this way. And we rightfully both lost our credentials. Ah and it was a turning point that we didn’t have a reputation to uphold anymore. It was devastated, and we fell all the way. And we talk about that on our podcast is that you have to fall all the way and those who truly get healed and whole are the ones that did fall all the way. So there’s pastors that – there’s a current pastor right now that there’s indiscretions coming out from ten years ago. Or um, you know, we I believe that the Bill Hybels story – it was years ago…
Rich Birch — Yeah, two decades. Yeah, it was like 20 years…
Sonny Hennessy — …Yeah we’re not talking like just deal with it when it comes out in the news today, we’re talking if you don’t fall all the way, then you do ten more years of ministry after you were sexually inappropriate with someone. That’s not okay. And and so we want to be there. Not just for those who are currently like mud on their face, but those who who need help and it’s not yet exposed.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it.
Sonny Hennessy — And how can we help you that we don’t expose you, but you truly fall all the way, and then we step in help.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, I love this. So I’ve um, for folks that know me, you know have been whatever two and a half I guess it’s almost three decades. And now to say three decades, that seems like a long time to be a ministry. But it’s been, you know, in that second seat you know that executive pastor seat. That’s where I’ve spent most of my time. And one of the unique kind of power dynamics that I’ve seen—and I’ve worked for incredible lead pastors I love the folks, they all happen to be guys. They’re just great guys—and but one of the things I’ve said to all of them is they don’t have peers. Like they don’t have people like even as close as I would say um I would be when I’m still with with you know these folks like they’re they’re not my peer, like they are be as the leaders of the organization. It’s a fascinating place to be. Um, ah and I feel terrible for folks particularly in that seat – I think they do carry a unique pressure. Shawn, ah help us understand this kind of scale or or common areas where you’re seeing kind of pastoral you know falls. Where we’re seeing like, hey this just isn’t working out um, where people are stepping over the line. What are the kinds of things that um, you know that people are either talking to you about, or you’ve you know you’ve engaged with um you know as you’ve you know, just as you think about this whole area?
Shawn Hennessy — Well I think there’s probably two main ones that people would naturally think about. They’d think about obviously some sort of a sexual impropriety, or some sort of a financial impropriety. And I think actually the the biggest part is the things that people are hiding. The things that they’re struggling with that maybe they’re embarrassed about, but the things that that we don’t learn, let’s say, in seminary. Like you don’t learn how to deal with you know, being a person who sits in that first seat, you’re not taught in seminary how to deal with a multimillion dollar budget. And so when you when you start to grow as a church. You’re excited about this growth. But then you’re also insecure about the fact that when you go into a meeting of let’s say board members, you’re you’re not the smartest person in the room when it comes to that. So a lot of times we’re trying to fake it until we make it and so we do that in so many different aspects of our life whether that be in relationships or whether that be in things that we’re allowing ourselves to view on our phones. There’s instant access to everything nowadays. And and so I think where where people are failing the most is in the prevention of all of these things in in admitting or identifying the areas where they are weak, right? So um, let’s say you’re you have a weakness with a member of the opposite sex. Well you have you have to have people in your life who know that.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Shawn Hennessy — And then you have to have those people with you at all times possible. So if you’re on a Sunday and you know that you’re going to have some sort of your eyes are going to wander, well make sure that you’ve got somebody who’s with you at all times. You’re not just wandering the halls letting your eyes wander.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Shawn Hennessy — If you have a problem with money, then you’ve got to let somebody know about that so that they can be performing these checks and balances on you. But we’re so we’re so afraid to admit that we have some sort of a deficit in any area of our life…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — …that we don’t put the safeguards in our life. And so I think back to the question at hand, is I think the biggest area that people fall is in the admission of where they’re weak.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. So, Sonny, I want to describe a situation. You know I don’t think anybody who starts in ministry says, hey I’m going to be the person that’s going to train wreck my marriage. I’m going to train wreck the church over any of these issues. Like they nobody if we all think it’s going to be somebody else, right? We all are like I’m pretty sure that person but not me, you know, which could be part of the problem. But you know there’s this um, terrible nasty part of sin where it it—at least in my own life—it like can eke its way in. It’s like very subtle at the beginning. It’s these small steps where I like make a small compromise, and you know a little compromise little compromise, little compromise, and then eventually at some point you, step over a line. You step you go beyond a place where it’s now no longer, hey I’ve got a problem with money. I now have done something that I shouldn’t have done with money at the church. Now I maybe haven’t like it’s not like you know Jim and Tammy Fay Baker kind of like I bought 4 houses and a Lamborghini, but like I stepped over something. Um, what do I do? How how do who do I go and talk to? How do I how how do I start that conversation? Sonny, where do I where do I go when when something like that happens? Because I think that that issue I think is happening to if it hasn’t happened to ah, 100% of the leaders – it’s real close to 100% of leaders that are listening in.
Sonny Hennessy — Well there… like Shawn said, when we know that we could go to that one directly above us who writes our paycheck, or the board, or the denomination who approves that we stay as the lead pastor, that is a scary ah, scary point to get to. Just like it’s scary for people to go to marriage counseling sometimes until someone asks for a divorce. It’s like we could have done this sooner but that that’s the scariest part. So I I do believe that the reason we have a heart for The Exchange Collaborative in it being for all people, pastors who are in any denomination is because, like we had a youth pastor reach out to us from San Diego. I don’t have to go to his pastor. I’m not you know, obligated to go to his pastor. We’re not trying to hire him. We’re not trying to do something that would hurt the church, but he came to us in confidence, we helped him, he was overwhelmed. They’re not able to pay the bills. When you can’t pay the bills and you’re a pastor, this is where you’re a youth pastor and you can’t, and he said we’re having a hard time buying diapers and wet ones.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Sonny Hennessy — What’s that $20 bill that the cafe brought in this Wednesday, what’s that going to matter? I’ll put this back next week with my paycheck. And it starts there. And he didn’t say that, but that’s the risk we’re we’re taking. And I heard this recently that from a rabbi, a messianic Rabbi. Shawn and I are very much into a Messianic Jewish context of of the bible and and so we’ve been listening, and this one messianic rabbi said an unbroken leader is a dangerous leader. And that great leaders walk with the limp. Well what Shawn just talked about, the the first step is admission. If we’ll admit it and admit I’m broken I I need some help because that 20 is a big deal. Or that text to my my worship leaders, you know who’s a female, that’s a problem. That’s the first step in admitting, admitting we’re broken. Because I think all of these pastors, especially the ones who have fallen recently that were the head of many churches, wow you just so you saw them as a Billy Graham even. Like they’re going to get through the end of their life but they they obviously had never been fully broken. They were trying to carry this load and say, I am not a broken leader. But we we have to be broken. And you know the money and the sex and all of the stuff we’re talking about – it’s not really the problem. You know Shawn had a pastor’s wife that we worked for say, “Shawn, here’s some ministry advice. Keep your hand out of the offering and sleep with your own wife and you’ll be fine.”
Rich Birch — True.
Sonny Hennessy — But but that’s great advice but like why does someone not end up following through?
Rich Birch — Right.
Sonny Hennessy — It could be because at 14 you were sexually messed with, and your whole concept of sexuality has shifted, and now you want to control anything sexual, and so you find you do things that are that are wrong. There’s always a root cause and and so our hope is not just to say, hey come to us before you fall or after you fall and we’ll be ah, a listening ear and we’ll keep it confidential. We actually take people through a program that forever changed Shawn and I. I said before we didn’t have a marriage problem. We had a Shawn problem and Sonny problem that stemmed from when Shawn was in first grade and I was in I was six years old. And then the things that happened over the course of our childhood that created the problems for us in ministry that really looked like they had nothing to do with ministry.
Rich Birch — Yeah, so, Shawn, why don’t you kind of frame up the different—I know there’s ah, there’s a lot that you do to help people but—kind of give us a sense of the scale of of of what you’re doing, what you’re offering, how you interface with this um, you know beyond being a listening ear. Ah, what kind of organizationally what does that look like.
Shawn Hennessy — Yeah, and I would say that we’re really designed not… we’re really designed for somebody who’s at a point where they want help, right? Somebody who you have to ask yourself, do I want restoration, or preservation? And so we’re not in the we’re not in the preservation business primarily. We’re not for that guy who’s trying to save face. We’re for a guy who wants to walk his life in repentance. And when we had our fall, one of the things that we had to go through is we had to go through a program in Colorado with a guy named Dr Harry Schaumburg called Stone Gate Resources and I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it was just going to be a counseling program, but basically he made us read John Piper 12 hours a day so that we could remember what repentance was. And it was it was a breaking. And so we’re really a place for somebody who’s at a point where they’re not trying to save face in their ministry, they’re trying to get back to the to the root cause of why we became a follower of Jesus. This idea of I once was lost but now I’m found. And this this breaking of your heart and your spirit when when you first heard that message of the gospel. And so yes, we are listening here. We do want to be a place where people feel we are safe to come to, but it’s really too different for arms if you would, and and so one could be a route for somebody who is in danger of having a fall and we give them some steps to avoid that. We give them some sense and sort of accountability so that they can avoid some of the pitfalls that we and many of the other people that we’ve been blessed to work with have not avoided. And then it’s for the person who has fallen, and they have to walk away. And that was Sonny and I. Like I left the ministry. And when I left the ministry, Sonny left the ministry too. And I was unemployed for six months. I was I was a blogger which basically was my prideful way of saying I was unemployed.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Shawn Hennessy — I could not find a job.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — I wrote a blog that no one read. And so I was a stay at home dad and I made lunches and we didn’t have cable or internet or heat in our house. And Rich, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it it stripped me down to the bare metal so that we could reforge forward without any sense or symbol of success. And so if it were somebody who’s fallen, we do have an opportunity for them to come here to Green Bay and ah and live in the city for a year, and go through an intense restoration process and it’s not easy. It’s not for the faint of heart. We’re honest and we’re open and we want guys to understand that this is ah it is a loving hand but it is an honest hand. And so we do have some we do have some businesses here that, down the road during their restoration, they could plug in and work at those, plug in and just sit in the church. It would be beautiful if for the first 30 days that they were here. They don’t do anything. And that’s the thing that requires us to fund this ministry.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Shawn Hennessy — So that people and their spouse can come here and bring their kids and not have to worry about “I’ve got to go get a job at the grocery store bagging groceries” and they’re going to have an opportunity to just sit and defragment. Some of these guys haven’t read the bible, or girls, haven’t read the bible for their own personal reflection in years because they’ve just been mining it for messages. And so you know this opportunity to sit and refresh for a period of time. Then we want to put them through the Enneagram. Let’s find out what you are? What’s your personality type. What are your what are your spiritual gifts? How many people don’t even know what their spiritual gifts are? And then put them through kind of a hybrid version of Financial Peace and a lot of these people don’t know how to deal with their money.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Hennessy — They or they may not have any money. And a hybrid version because it’s a little bit difficult in our day and age to never use a card. And I get Ramsey’s heart behind that…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — …but you know we go lots of places now you can’t use cash. I try to use cash somewhere the other day and the person looked at me like I was an alien. Like I was trying to hand them…
Rich Birch — Right, right. What planet are you from?
Shawn Hennessy — …Like like I was trying to hand them paper Covid or something…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — …and they say, I only take cards. And then this restoration process where the basis of our process is—and and if you put it in the the secular terminology, every person at some point has had some sort of a trauma where they were fixated. My brother’s a brother’s a psychologist. He actually lives in Fort Erie, Ontario…
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Shawn Hennessy — …and is a professor at Buffalo State, and and in the secular world they would call it fixation, where once you’ve been fixated on a certain moment in your life, you’re emotionally not able to mature more than 18 months beyond that point, meaning that when you come to another moment of trauma, and any time you come to a moment of trauma thereafter, you revert emotionally back to that particular point.
Rich Birch — Oh wow. Yeah.
Shawn Hennessy — In the spiritual world it was called we’re arrested in development, right? And so every time you come into a point of trauma you are triggered back to that moment. So back to Sonny’s point where I was in first grade when I identified my moment of fixation, or when I was arrested in development, and so for the rest of my life up until the point that I received restoration and healing, any time that I had anyone challenge me on anything, I would at best act like a third grader. And so I would yell, and I would pout, and I would hide things, and I would lie. And and if you don’t understand that somebody’s acting like a third grader then you just think, you know, what a creep. But when you understand in this context, and when Sonny and I began to understand where we were arrested at development through through the restoration process, which is not quick. I mean the program is a number of months. And then it it really what happens is once you identify that moment of trauma, it unlocks in your brain. And you know it’s like the renewing of the mind, and they’ve done brain scans where once that was identified the neurons then rush to that area of your brain and and you supernaturally begin to mature at a rapid rate. But it does take your brain 3 years to fully rewire itself, and so it is ah a continual process. But there’s so much healing that happens almost instantly. And so as Sonny and I went through that process, we were able to identify with each other I would go, oh well right now Sonny is xyz. Or she’d say, well Shawn’s right now, Shawn’s in the third grade. And it didn’t make it okay but it made it relatable.
Rich Birch — Right, right. Understandable.
Shawn Hennessy — And so that’s the biggest bulk that of the program is helping these pastors identify, yes, you have a money problem. But you know when I went through the beginning stages of my restoration process, I went through Emerge, you know, in Ohio. And the counselor that I talked to, he looked at me and at the time I was dealing with a financial issue. And and he said something that was so eye opening to me. Said you know, money’s not your issue. It’s the symptom of your issue. He said if you don’t identify the root of what your issue is, you’re going to move from money to something else. It’ll be pornography. It’ll be an affair. It’ll be food. It’ll be gambling. It’ll be something. And so for us if we can help these guys and and girls figure out what it was that that threw them off track, and they may have been six years old, and then let’s reverse engineer how to get that back. And and for me honestly, Rich, the goal isn’t to get people back in ministry.
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Hennessy — If they want to go back in ministry Then that’s great. But I really want people to be healthy and whole, and at the end of the day I want them to go to heaven.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Sonny, let’s talk about that restoration piece. You know with the folks that have come through your program. What is the you know trajectory? Like obviously I love the – part of what I love about you guys, I love your focus on like, yeah, yeah, all that other stuff but let’s actually talk about where you’re at your relationship with Jesus, who are you as a person – that’s the most important piece. I know there’s people that are listening in that are that are thinking like either I’ve stepped on a bomb and it’s about to blow up, or it blew up and no one knows, and they’re thinking about the future. Talk through you know what is the trajectory on people being restored. It feels like I was in a conversation earlier today with a leader who said, I feel like we used to restore people to ministry but that doesn’t happen anymore. Like it’s like we just flush them out, and then we they never end up back. So give us a sense of kind of what are you seeing with the folks that you’re working with, Sonny.
Sonny Hennessy — There are different needs because everybody’s individual, obviously, so there’s those that need to come more in residence like like Shawn talked about – come and we house them. We get them a job. We have them be in church, sitting there. We have them go through what is called Journey to Wholeness. And that would be a ten week course once a week. That’s the take it for ten weeks and you’re processing as you go, and then you probably take it again, especially if you’re with us for a year. There’s also the people that we fly to them. And we sit with them because they’re not able to leave, and come to us for thirty days or a year. We go to them. And we’ve done that where we’ve gone to a pastor, worked with a pastor while they’re staying in their church, or staying in their congregation if they’re a messianic rabbi, and and we work with them, and their children, and their family. And then we bring out the Journey to Wholeness ah co-founder to do these intensives, because she is so great and she’s the top of the Journey to Wholeness of of all the people who are helping people just in our church, she can go and take this to other cities and has.
Sonny Hennessy — Ah, then we have something that’s even more approachable, and she’s done intensives—like a 2 to 3 day weekend—either going to the people. She’s been to Dallas, Seattle, soon to be Arizona um, or people can come to us for a weekend in Green Bay. So then the third thing, and we’re actually just going to do this for the—it’s kind of the first time that we’re advertising it; we’ve done this multiple times—it’s an intensive in a location where we’re giving the dates and we’re opening it up to people. We may not know so June 23rd through the 25th in Golden Canyon, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. We’re hosting it at Living Waters Retreat. They’re sponsoring it and donating this for us to use because they see the need for pastors. So it would be for pastors or probably, hopefully, couples who um, who will be able to register on our website. And you know at this point we think we’re going to have to close it off because it’s better when it’s smaller. So you’re actually the first time we’ve said this publicly…
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Sonny Hennessy — …June … through 25th The Exchange Collaborative will be hosting this intensive where it’s a two day, two and a half day process. And like I said then there’s also the option that we are contacted directly through our website at theexchangecollaborative.com and then we go to pastors, to churches. I mean they could say look we need this between myself and my spouse.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Sonny Hennessy — That’s it or it could be, can you come in and meet with me – my board knows. Or I’m like I said a youth pastor, can can you come in and talk to me, but only my senior pastor knows. And some it’s all over the headlines, and you know we hope that some of those people will even reach out.
Rich Birch — Okay, this is great. So I want to ah, there’s a lot I’d love to talk to you. I do want to come back, make sure we give out those website addresses again. So friends, if you didn’t catch them get your pen. We will come back to that. Shawn, what can we do in our churches to create the kind of environment where people are willing to raise their hand. So I’m thinking about you know I’m executive pastor listening in, I’ve got a staff team of 15 people. Yeah I’m I may be worried, I’m not worried about my lead pastor in the sense of like oh I’m worried something went wrong, but I’m like let’s assume that that that person’s got their stuff together. But I’m thinking about the other 15 people on our team. What can we do to create the kind of culture where people are willing to to open up about like, hey this this is is an area in my life that’s going off the rails. Or what should I do if I’m if I want to create the kind of place where that that could happen? Any any ideas about that, Shawn?
Shawn Hennessy — Well in our personal context, we just created a culture of vulnerability…
Rich Birch — Right
Shawn Hennessy — …where it’s okay to not be okay. And if you can’t admit that you’re not okay, you’ll never become okay – you’ll never get the help. And so of course for us, we have the luxury that it does come from the top down. But if nothing else you’ve got to gather with somebody who you know, somebody who you who you can trust, who you can be vulnerable with, who who you can trust. And so once we start to own the things that are a deficiency in our life, with with the attitude… I think there was a phase where where people wanted to be relevant. But really what that meant is they wanted to be crass. And so I don’t think that we’re looking for that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Shawn Hennessy — …to where a guy can borderline brag about the fact that he drinks beer or that he, you know cusses or you know, whatever that there was that culture there in the in the late 90s where it was like how far can you go? I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about, hey I’m struggling with anger. Have any of you struggled with anger? Oh bro. Yeah totally, I struggle I struggle with anger all time. Well, how do you deal with that? and it’s not like you have to bare your whole soul. But you can start out with just some of those general, I’m not going to get fired over them things. And lay down a foundation among your team, where like if you are the executive pastor, maybe you’re holding committee meetings and in those things, you’ll use them as prayer requests. I mean I think we still pray for each other?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Shawn Hennessy — And this idea of I mean do we really want to pray for each other? It’s like the old adage where people say, you know, how you doing? Do you really want to know?
Rich Birch — Right, right. Sure sure.
Shawn Hennessy —We’ve got a created environment where we really do want to know. And and we want to…
Sonny Hennessy — And like and if I can add, during this pandemic, Shawn and I cried in front of our staff. And I had a lot of regrets, I’d walk away and look at him and go boy I blew that and I’m not a good leader. Our staff—and we had attrition—we had some staff that I think went, wow we thought they were healthy and whole and on the rise after their last fall. And they’re they’re kind of acting like they don’t know what to do you know in the middle of a pandemic, and maybe they’re not the leaders we thought they were. They don’t have character issues now but they’re just not very strong. And I think it can like unnerve some people who’ve put you on a pedestal. But honestly, we both cried. We both wrung our fists, and didn’t know what to do. And and then we saw our staff say, I literally am just hanging on; I have so much anxiety. Five years ago none of our staff would have thought, I’m having anxiety and I need to say something about it. We also do Journey to Wholeness. It’s a Journey to Wholeness is a course we do with our staff, and if we have too many staff members that have come on since the last time, we’ll redo journey to Wholeness.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sonny Hennessy — Shawn and I have done journey to wholeness three times now, and we would do it again…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sonny Hennessy — …and we could offer that to churches journey to wholeness is now coming into corporations. And their HR departments bringing them in to work with the staff so that they quit losing staff…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sonny Hennessy — …who just can’t handle the pressure…
Rich Birch — Totally.
Sonny Hennessy — …but they have issues from childhood.
Rich Birch — Love it. This has been incredible. There’s so much we could talk about here; I feel like we’re just scratching the surface. Like gosh there’s so many other things I’d love to ah, to dive in, but I do want to respect your time. I know you guys have got a lot going on so I appreciate you being here today. Why don’t we give ladies the last word so, Sonny, what what do you want to say as we wrap up, as we kind of close off today’s episode, as we’re kind of but kind of try to tie this stuff up here?
Sonny Hennessy — Well I think trust is a big thing to say, hey I need help, but can I trust these people? For sure it would be important that you listen to a couple of our Rise After the Fall Podcasts on any of the platforms. Just so people can get an understanding of not just Shawn and I, but the path and the process we’re talking about. Ah they can go to theexchangecollaborative.com which talks both to leaders and it talks to pastors. I don’t um and at that point they can also register for the retreat in Arizona. If that gets full, our hope would be to add more. But as they will see there are both – we come to you, you come to us, how much, and what is the commitment level. And we definitely are not trying to form some structure that is immovable. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, but the the basics the what Shawn just talked about. Those are musts, right? We have to get to the root. We have to get to the fixation point. And we think that’s that’s the biggest key to all of this, really.
Rich Birch — Love it. Shawn, Sonny, I’ve really appreciated you being here today. Shawn, where do we want to send people online? Let’s give them the website addresses and stuff again where we want them to connect if they’re, you know, I’m hoping there’s people that are saying like, I man I need to reach out to these folks and have this start this conversation. Where do we want to send them?
Shawn Hennessy — Yeah, theexchangecollaborative.com. Our podcast is on, as Sonny said, on all platforms The Rise After the Fall. Our church website is lifechurchgreenbay.com. We’re actually just now starting a series called The Rise After the Fall where I’ve got 5 pastors coming in who had failures and came back from them. They had incredible success after a fall. And so theexchangecollaborative.com lifechurchgreenbay.com and then The Rise After the Fall on any of your platforms.
Rich Birch — Great. Well, we’ll definitely make sure we link to all that – it’ll be in the show notes. I want to encourage you to follow follow these guys. Good friends, people that are doing great work, you you… it’s It’s been an honor that you would come back on the podcast. Thanks so much for being here today.
Shawn Hennessy — Thank you, brother.
Latest HR Dynamics Impacting Your Church With Tiffany Henning
Apr 21, 2022
Thanks for joining the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tiffany Henning, founder of HR Ministry Solutions which helps with human resources in churches and faith-based ministries.
At the beginning of 2021, many churches were restructuring their staff. Now in 2022 with so much inflation, there are concerns about how to compensate staff fairly. These things combined with the fact that so many have left ministry over the last few years leave churches realizing they need to retain the staff they have and take care of them well. Listen in as Tiffany shares insights into current HR trends in ministry and changes you can make now.
Address harassment issues. // Aside from COVID issues, Tiffany says the second most common phone calls HR Ministry Solutions gets are about harassment issues. There is more unwelcome and offensive conduct these days, and so harassment issues can come up often within churches.
Align pay rates with market value. // In 2022 the biggest challenge has been compensation because of inflation and the difficulty finding new quality staff hires. Churches are realizing that they need to hold onto the staff they have and align pay rates with the current market value.
You have to be proactive. // By the time you hear from an employee that they’re not happy or they’re looking at other places, you’ve already lost them. Be continually plugged into your staff. Have “stay interviews” and ask your staff how they feel about working for you, what motivates them to come to work, what they are passionate about, and what would motivate them to leave. Download a sample Stay Interview template from HR Ministry Solutions here.
The top of the lists. // While your budget will ultimately drive compensation, studies show that pay is actually not number one on the list of what is keeping people at their jobs. They’re looking for time off, flexibility, work life balance, good culture, and to be poured into. These things cost time more than money, and if staff leaves you will spend much more time rehiring for the open positions than you would caring for existing staff on a regular basis.
Deciding on outsourcing. // Churches are taking more steps toward a flexible work arrangement by looking at what they can outsource, such as accounting and creative needs. There are many organizations that can do things at the fraction of the cost of a staff person. To decide whether some things can be outsourced, think about your compensation strategy and what things you really want to put your money into without causing a major shift in culture.
Regular check-ins with your staff. // Weekly and bi-weekly check-ins with the staff are becoming more common because regular, low key, honest conversations are healthy and needed with your team. They can help keep your staff from burning out and help you understand what issues they may be facing outside of the church. Having that relational capital really helps you understand and minister to your team while also leading people in a much better way.
Change starts at the top. // Culture changes come from the top down. If the lead pastor isn’t on board about making changes to better care for the staff, it will all fizzle out. Take a look at yourself and make sure you are involved in those changes to model them for your staff. Realize that one staff person going south can really tank your entire staff, and a big chunk of your church as well. Conversely helping your staff helps your numbers and the whole church.
Mental well-being. // The percentage of people in ministry that take anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication is big. It is a stressful job and one benefit people in ministry can really use is paid professional Christian counseling. Offer this as a benefit to everyone—even during work hours—so they can receive the help they need. Another thing to consider is allowing dogs in the workplace. Pets are emotional support animals and can help with your staff’s stress and mental well-being.
Free burnout webinar. // HR Ministry Solutions did a free webinar they are sharing with us called Identifying Staff Burnout & Learning How You Heal with a downloadable checklist you can use. Often church staff don’t realize they are struggling with burnout until they read through a list of the symptoms.
You can learn more about HR Ministry Solutions, sign-up for their newsletter, and book a free 15-minute consultation call at www.hrministrysolutions.com.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know today we have got a guest for you that it’s a real treat. I’m super excited to have Tiffany Henning with us. She is with an organization or runs an organization called ah HR Ministry Solutions. This…Tiffany’s an expert. I know I sometimes play one on the internet, but she actually is. Whenever I think of human resources issues in the church at the top of the list is Tiffany. She’s incredible. HR Ministry Solutions – they really do provide a lot of solutions for churches to ensure that their cultures are healthy and sustainable. They do consulting, she has all kinds of online resources, handbooks, you know, sexual harassment training, all kinds of good things. Ah Tiffany, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Tiffany Henning — Thank you. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your enthusiasm.
Rich Birch — Oh no, it’s true like…
Tiffany Henning — Most people don’t get that enthusiastic outside of myself and my staff about HR, so thank you.
Rich Birch — No, no, it’s good. I know. Well I well for as a leader, someone who’s had teams for years, I know this is one of those areas—this is probably why I love you so much, love what you do—this is one of those areas we can either be defensive, like we just wait for problems to come up, or we can be, you know, we can be proactive and say like hey let’s go and actually put in systems that’ll help us build incredible cultures. And I know you are much more interested in the proactive, how do we get ahead of the game.
Tiffany Henning — Yeah.
Rich Birch — So fill out the picture – kind of tell us a bit more about HR Ministry Solutions. What did I miss there?
Tiffany Henning — Yeah, absolutely we are actually a faith-based organization ourself. So we only work with churches, church ministries, mission organizations, and the like. Um and we love it. We were really birthed out of our own experiences in the church. Ah, working in the church world, ministry and stuff, and really just have a passion for um, you know helping people in the ministry scale HR things and ah my staff have all either worked in the church HR, have done ah have done ministry in churches, or another ministry. Um, and we’re also married to pastors as well. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Nice. So yeah, real steeped in the church environment which is so good and this is why I reached out to Tiffany, I said okay here we are. We’re coming to closing in on 600 and some odd episodes and I really wanted to kind of tap your brain on kind of what you’re seeing. Out there in the environment. You talk to a lot of different churches. You are constantly connected with them. What would you say are a few of those kind of HR related issues that you just see as common or or you keep running into, you know, with churches in this season?
Tiffany Henning — Ah, you know that’s great there there just always is that overarching ah thing which is like staff handbooks. You know, I tell people outsource your staff handbook. I don’t know if you… even if you have an HR group of like 10, just outsource it. You will stab your eye out otherwise. I’m like…
Rich Birch — Haha, nice.
Tiffany Henning — You know, let us do it. Or someone else that you know. We do ’em specifically for churches and ministries so we know those extra things that you can put in or remove as a faith-based organization. Um, you know and aside from Covid, like the second most common phone calls we get are actually harassment issues. And um…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Tiffany Henning — …because I think um, you know previously people think harassment is like Harry Weinstein you know, like like very tied with the the sexual piece. You know, do this for me and I’ll do that for you.
Tiffany Henning — But really, it’s it’s more nuanced nowadays. It’s more unwelcome conduct, offensive, you know it’s all in the in the interpretation of the victim and things like that. And in churches where you are hugs waiting to happen and you know our relationships are a lot different and closer and more casual than they are in the corporate world. I think that’s why it comes up a little bit more often. Or people just feel like your church, everyone needs to be wonderful and they forget we’re all human and messy in that.
Rich Birch — Hmm, interesting. Interesting. Yeah there’s there’s a ton. Um, you know, um, particularly on that that would be good to unpack, maybe at ah at a future date. I’ve been actually thinking about getting a bit of a panel together because that that definitely seems like one of those issues that obviously is not going away because as you say people are people. People are humans and there’s a lot there for us to wrestle through. And I know one of the things that I have run into as I’ve talked with leaders—in fact, actually just yesterday was texting with a leader. Um you know senior leader in a church, and they were they were comparing notes. They’re like, hey what’s happening on your compensation side and they were reflecting, hey they’ve seen a 14% increase—this is one church that was seeing a 14% increase in their compensation line this year because of just everything we’re seeing on that front. What what’s happening what are you seeing on that with you know, kind of out there in in the church world these days?
Tiffany Henning — Yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting that the beginning of 2021, the big thing is everyone was restructuring their staff. They were realizing covid was here to stay, let’s restructure our staff and we have to change the way we do things, change the way we’re doing ministry. Um, you know shift people around, and and all of those things. This year the biggest thing has been compensation. Because as you mentioned, like inflation I think it’s like 6.8%, 7%, 7.9% – it keeps going up. And gas prices. So those things added to the fact that this whole great resignation which is people are just leaving ministry altogether, that finding quality ministry people, staff hires is getting more difficult and so churches are finding, hey I need to retain the staff I have and help them through just this high financial with housing and gas and everything. You know so they’re asking more for hey we need to align our our pay rates with market value more so. Traditionally people were like we’re just going to… it’s a church, it’s a ministry, you know you’re not going to get paid anything. But I’ve really seen the shift of, hey we need to pay our people what they’re worth to retain them because they also know, hey if we hire someone new, we’re gonna have to pay more than we’re than we’re paying now in order to woo someone over to, you know, our organization.
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s can we dig in on that? Like what what should we be thinking about as we think about kind of the compensation issue? I’ll give you a story for my own past. We there was a key ministry leader—um, obviously not going to reveal any details here, but you know—a key ministry leader who ah, came to us and they were considering a move, and and literally kind of put us over a barrel. We’re like this other organization wants to pay me X and um, that was considerable. It wasn’t just like ooh this is a little bit. This is a pretty big jump. Um, and you know, what, basically, what can you do about it? And um, so you know we kicked it around as a leadership team. I loved… it was one of these times—the moral this story is I was wrong just so you know this is where this was heading. Ah you know, ah we kicked it around as a leadership team. Our finance director was like, we should not do this. Like if we do this ah, you can’t keep people just with money. Um, that, you know, will not work. And I was like no no, no, it’s going to be great. Like we’re going to keep this person; it’s going to work out. And yet that’s not what happened you know, we gave them the raise and within six months they actually still ended up leaving, actually to a different you know, different organization altogether. So I’m concerned when I… ao when I hear this stuff I’m like oh it’s anxious because of past pain. But how should we be thinking about our compensation in the season? What what if you were advising a church, you know what would you be kind of wrestling through that? What were some of the steps we should take when we think about those things?
Tiffany Henning — Those are great questions and actually that’s a really great example for you, because everything I know and everything I read says, you know if someone comes to you with a better offer and they bring it back for you to match, especially in the church world, you can match it all day long but within six months—and that’s what you said within six months—they’re probably going to be gone anyways because it’s not just a financial thing. There are other issues that are wooing them away and you know they think it’ll be the money that makes them happy and it’s not. So you’ve already kind of lost the person at that point. So really that first and foremost things is goes back to what you said just in the intro and when it comes to HR’s you have to be proactive. Because by the time you already hear from an employee that they’re not happy, or looking at other places, or whatever, you’ve already lost them, for the most part, you’ve already lost them.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Tiffany Henning — And so or there may already be some bitterness or or issues that they’re dealing with that, you know at that point there’s too much water under the bridge. So you know the first thing I say—and I’m going to give you some steps on the compensation side…
Rich Birch — OK.
Tiffany Henning — …but one of the first things I say is you have to be plugged into your staff. Like don’t assume no news is good news. So well, we really recommend there is something called a stay interview. We love these. These are when you get with your staff and you ask them hey, how do you feel about working for us? What motivates you? What what are you passionate about? What motivates you to come to work? What would motivate you to leave our organization? You know, just really getting those, finding out what would cause them to leave, what would lure them to leave, and what keeps them there. Because those are the conversations you have if they’re like, well you know, really you know what would would lure me to leave is if I had a better role in leadership, or something like that. And you’re like, wow I didn’t even know this person… you know this person is a custodian and I didn’t even know they wanted to be a pastor. (I had that situation before just so you know.) I didn’t know they were interested in the pastoral track. And so really gives you an opportunity to pour into those people before it became a unrest in their heart and mind. Um, you know when it comes to pay, when it comes to market ranges, we also understand—and everyone understands in the church world—your budget is going to ultimately drive it. You can’t pay market range if that takes out your whole budget.
Rich Birch — Yes, totally.
Tiffany Henning — Yeah, like you you know, but there’s a lot of other things that you could do. In fact, all the studies now show that pay is like number 4 or 5 on the list of what people are looking for. They’re looking for time off, they’re looking for flexibility, they’re they’re looking for work/life balance, they’re looking for good culture. And they’re looking to be poured into. So those are the things and most of those things don’t cost you a penny.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tiffany Henning — I mean they cost you a little bit of time, you know. And yes, time is money, but think about how much time you’re going to spend rehiring that position if they leave.
Rich Birch — So true.
Tiffany Henning — And any other relational capital that comes up, you know, with that person leaving especially if it’s not a good thing. So you know totally in that um, really time off is a huge thing that you could do that, at the end of the day for the most part, is not going to cost you an extra penny. Now if you, you know, have a preschool and you got to hire a substitute, yeah, that cost you money. You know if you have a worship leader and you got to hire someone to replace it for Sunday, yes, that costs you money. But for most of your staff , they cover for each other. And so making more time off is a way. Number one people are more rested; it prevents them from getting burned out. Um you know and everything like that. The flexibility is allowing them to work from home, giving them boundaries, don’t text them at three o’clock in the morning, you know…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tiffany Henning — …realize the world will stop won’t stop spinning if they don’t answer that email or text right away. I mean really, we we as the church world are so bad at that, but we need to understand that God calls us to a lot of things, not to always be attached. He caused… like you look at Jesus and yes, he ministered to the 5000, but even when there were still needs, he pulled away. He invested in his 12, he invested in his 3, and even pulled away for himself to go hang out and pray to God, and just kind of give him some rest. So we really need to model that. Sorry that was a ah huge tangent there. But…
Rich Birch — No, no, no, no, no, it’s so good. Actually I’d love to stick on this kind of flexibility thing. One of my hunches—again, this is where you’re the expert I’m just the person that talks to people—ah I hear more and more, you know, these kind of flexible working arrangements, whether it’s like fractional roles—even at the senior level. Like a fractional executive pastor or um, you know more remote stuff going on, or more part-time roles, or job-sharing, those kind of things, which seemed like they were um, like churches did them, but it was kind of like the total flexibility or the total sum of them was like well we have part-time staff and we have full-time staff. That was kind of it…
Tiffany Henning — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …like we don’t have all of this. Are are we seeing more of that? Are you seeing more of kind of a bunch of different ways that churches are doing that? Is there anything we should be thinking about if we’re going to take a step towards a more flexible staff arrangement?
Tiffany Henning — Um, yeah, there’s a lot of things that churches are doing. One of the things are is they’re outsourcing things a little bit more than traditionally. Accounting is actually one of the big things we’ve seen a lot of outsourcing. And then of course a lot of the creative things you know, huge huge churches that maybe really want to have their hands on certain things, you know, we understand. But when you start to look at all the organizations and companies out there that can do your graphic design, can do certain video, can do things at a fraction of the cost as a staff person. Like really figure out what your first things first are, figure out your compensation strategy, where do we really want to put money into, and then that’ll help you figure out, okay, what can we outsource without causing a major shift in our culture. Um, you know, but when it comes to the whole flexibility, absolutely a lot of churches have, you know, they used to be: everyone needs to be in here from this time to this time. Now they have like one to two workdays where everyone is, you know, or one day that everyone’s expected to be in the office and then flexible arrangements for other people. Granted some of your support staff may still need to be there. I mean a facilities worker can’t really work remotely.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tiffany Henning — You know, but maybe they could work at three o’clock in the morning. I don’t know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tiffany Henning — But you know really kind of figuring that out. Um how it works for them. I think definitely another piece is like stay-at-home parents. Like parents who have kids to be able to work through that and work around that. Um that is ah the huge value. And I have to say like our organization, ah, you know as well as I, love staying home here. Like I love people who are coming back into the workforce. I love that because they are some of the hardest workers, and most passionate people that I’ve seen in the workforce.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love it. And when you think about you know that whole, that kind of touches the staff structure issue. You kind of mentioned this earlier but again thinking that last year was it was like the year of the video editor. Like if you were a video editor and were like, you know, I’m sure there’s I would love to know the statistic of how many like 21-year-old video editors in churches got hired in 2021, because I think it would be tens of thousands of them. Like it was It’s like every church has found the guy in the youth group who can do video and now he’s like embedded in the church staff. So there was that were some of those kind of covid reaction hires. But then as you said there’s that’s kind of shaking out. What are some of the trends you’re seeing on that front as you think about kind of you know, rethinking realigning staff structure?
Tiffany Henning — You know that’s really good. There’s a lot of um online pastors – that has become a huge thing as well. But when they’re looking at staff structure, we really see again it goes back to 2021 and now people streamlining a little bit more. Like you used to have like an executive pastor that was over 17 people…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Tiffany Henning — …and you know there’s no way to really pour into 17 people and really have your eye on the ball. So what we’re seeing more is people really empowering people under them. Um, and being more involved in the day to day of your staff. Now that doesn’t mean micromanaging, but again going back to that 21-year-old who is doing the video video editing, they may have mad skills in video editing but this may be their first job ever.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tiffany Henning — They may not know you know they may not have leadership skills. They may not know how to interact with people. And honestly they may not make the best mature decisions. I’m not saying all 20-year-old, 21-year-olds are like that, I am just saying we need to understand and not assume that okay they they know this stuff. You know so we’re seeing people ah, being a little bit more intentional and not leaving these people out in the island by themselves. They’re really kind of pouring into them more.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Okay, so one of the things that I know is a passion for you is really this whole area of organizational health. That really, we’re trying to focus on how do we make sure that our staff are healthy. And you kind of touched on this when we were thinking about the compensation part. I’d love to kind of dig in a little bit more. What are we seeing as kind of best practices around increasing you know, making this a great place to work, not just a place that’s a paycheck, making this the kind of place that people want to come to. What are some of those things that, you know if a church calls you up and is like, I think we need to you know we need to fix… I’m not sure where to start. Where where would you what kind of things we’d have them thinking about?
Tiffany Henning — In their culture?
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Tiffany Henning — You know what? Honestly the first thing and probably the biggest thing right now is is really the shift from, oh we’re all on the front lines and we’re ministering to God together—not that that’s not true but um—seeing their staff as also people they need to disciple, that they need to pour into, not wait for an annual review to have an issue, to have these discussions. So really weekly, biweekly check-ins are becoming more common. And honestly, they’re more healthy because you can have honest conversations that are more low key and don’t feel as heavy. And these weekly or biweekly meetings start to build relational capital with your staff. You have more of a chance to see them starting to burn out before they even get there. You have a better idea of knowing what’s going on in their personal life, so when they’re late every day you find out, you know you know that their whole staff their whole family has been struck with covid, and is having a really hard time. So again, having that relational capital really helps you understand and and minister but also lead people in a much better way. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, you know I literally was just talking to Scot Longyear. He is a lead pastor of a church in Indiana called Maryland Community Church was ironic for the name, but and he was literally just we were just talking about this. They a part of their staff responsibilities, a part of their what they do is their personal discipleship time, like their devotions. Like he’s like that is baked into I pay my staff to do that. And he’s like you know he’s like I know that sounds crazy. It’s like shouldn’t they all just do it. He’s like well I want to make sure they do it because I know if hey my team is growing spiritually if they’re developing as people, trickledown impact on the church is going to be amazing. And I was like wow I I don’t know any church—I’ve never heard I said this to him—I don’t know any church; I’ve never heard a church articulate it like that. That say like, hey where we want this to be a part of—it’s obviously it’s and it’s a it’s a given expectation—but the fact of saying hey do we want this to be a part of your you know, did you do that this week? Let’s talk about it. Ah, is fantastic – I love that. When you think about this discipling staff, what is that what are some other are they have you heard of any other kind of innovative practices or things that have stuck out to you around kind of increasing the spiritual development of our team as they serve with us?
Tiffany Henning — Yeah, um, and and actually let me take a little rabbit trail for a moment…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, love it.
Tiffany Henning — …and this is ah this is a heavy comment but this is what we see a lot. We will deal with ah HR people, Ops people, even sometimes executive pastors, people who want to see the change. But they’re not always the top level leadership, and so sometimes they’re trying to lead-up which is extremely difficult. But when it comes to culture, it really really has to be from the top down. Like I’ve been in organizations and I’ve worked with people in organizations as the HR person they’re trying to lead laterally, but if the executive Team ah you know, lead pastor, whatever, if they are not on board and modeling this and pushing, it making it a core value, it’s going to fizzle. So I really really encourage um, people to you kno,w in those levels to really kind of take a hard look at themselves and feel like am I part of the problem first. And invite you know, trusted advisors into their life to speak into them. I worked with a church once where the person was telling me that that they wanted to start this thing with staff of prayer and worship, and all this stuff and and the lead team was basically like that’s fine as long as we don’t have to be involved in it. And you know and it was like and I understand from a mindset of their schedules are so busy already.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tiffany Henning — But at the same time again. We need to realize we need to model what Jesus models, and realize that really one staff person going south can really tank your entire staff and a big chunk of your church…
Rich Birch — So true.
Tiffany Henning — …so pouring in your staff really is helping your numbers, is helping the the building, helping the box. Ah you know, all those – the 3B’s the bodies, box, buildings – it really you know directly affects those things that maybe even the churches who want to grow are not thinking about so.
Rich Birch — Love it. Any other areas when you think about you know, kind of reshifting to staff health, thinking about staff health, is there other other things we should be thinking about on that front these days?
Tiffany Henning — Um, you know mental illness is kind of the catchall word. But I the percentage of ministry people, pastors, people in ministry, that take antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication is huge. I think it’s close to 40% to be honest with you. There’s some loose surveys in that, and that should be extremely telling to us. The number one most stressful job year after year in all these us surveys are social workers. And so if pastors are not social workers, I don’t know what they are. You know?
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes, yes.
Tiffany Henning — So really, it is the most stressful job, and you don’t ever check out of it.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Tiffany Henning — You know and when you’re ministering when you have a relationship with God and you’re ministering to people about God It really becomes tied together a lot. So when it when it comes to the health of your workers, again pouring into them, getting getting a handle on where they’re standing, making some of those additional benefits flexible as well. I think a couple benefits that are also really good is paid professional counseling. I cannot say that enough. And maybe require your people to do it. And here’s the thing too for your married spouses. Um have them do it with their spouse as well. I read an article—it might have been by Carey Nieuwhof a couple months ago—and it was about the ah the most overlooked person in the church, and it was the pastor’s spouse. So you know that is that is a huge thing.
Rich Birch — So true.
Tiffany Henning — Because again what happens at home affects their work. So I think offering professional counseling—that doesn’t mean your your board members or elders are counseling them—like a professional Christian counselor. That way they know it’s confidential but they have a place to process through everything that they’re going through and feelings. And then one other (weird) but one other really top benefit um, that has come to the surface, like I mean it’s not weird, but it’s ah dogs in the workplace. Or animals in the workplace.
Rich Birch — Really?!
Tiffany Henning — That has become huge. It’s funny I was I was um ah, looking at a Christian organization. Ah you know their business but they’re Christian that serve churches, and I was looking at their staff handbook, and they have an entire section -an entire section in their handbook! – on dogs in the workplace. And I was like wow, that’s interesting to me that they they really have that core value. But when you think about this whole thing over the last decade about you know dogs and cats and whatever being emotional support animals, there really is truth to that. You know obviously you’re going to have to set some groundwork, you know, ground rules about barking, and keeping them separated, and the types of animals that come in the workplace, as well as their their bowel movements elsewhere.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tiffany Henning — Am I allowed to say that on podcast?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fine.
Tiffany Henning — Um, ah anyway, but you know what I think there could be just super super high value in that. Especially if your people are feeling stressed and everything like that, there is this correlation between pets and people’s well-being and mental well-being, so that also could be a very good answer. Again, you have to make sure people aren’t allergic and and kind of scale certain work groups and departments. But there definitely is a way I think to integrate that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I’ve I’ve definitely I’ve, so I’m a dog person. Love I love my dog. She’s fantastic. She’s like a little bit – she’s a rescue, which is fantastic, but a part of the outcome of her being a rescue is she’s quite a nervous dog.
Tiffany Henning — Yes.
Rich Birch — Not aggressive but just nervous. Like she like it’s freaked out at the weirdest stuff, and so I’ve sometimes thought like it’d be fun to take her to the office. I’m like no, that’s like way too nerve-racking for her, that will be like you know crazy.
Tiffany Henning — Yep.
Rich Birch — But yeah, that’s cool though – I could totally see that Well I think particularly again, that’s seems like a post-covid thing.
Tiffany Henning — Yes.
Rich Birch — Everybody got a dog over Covid and then now it’s like, now what do we do with them?
Tiffany Henning — I know.
Rich Birch — You know, kind of thing which is yeah, that’s really cool.
Tiffany Henning — I know and they all got rescues like I have a German shepherd That’s like your little dog…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tiffany Henning — …and trust me when that dog gets scared over the Instapot and anything like that and she tries to climb on you – not just sit on your lap like climb on top of your head like she’s trying to get tall. So yeah I definitely – she would not be a good go-to-work dog.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s so good. Um, so I love earlier you talked about the stay interview, which I’m like I don’t know why I’ve never heard of that before. I’m like that’s such a great idea. Um, are there, when you think about um kind of the mental health area, and to kind of getting back to that, are there other are there ways to bring up mental health with our team in a way that respects them that doesn’t like, no one likes to be told they should go to a counselor. No one likes to be told like, hey you should do that. How can we do that? You know, we’ve tried to be the kind of environments that are ah, definitely pro-counseling and like we’ll talk about it as leaders, and talk about positive experiences as individuals, or like I talk about about me and my wife when we’ve been in counseling and just how positive that’s been. Outside of kind of the general culture setting if it, what kind of conversation could we be having, or or how could we approach that conversation to say, hey like you know there may be some issues here that you you should be wrestling through. Any advice for us on that front?
Tiffany Henning — Yeah, again, it goes back to having those weekly/biweekly check-ins.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tiffany Henning — You build relational capital. You can ask those questions. Hey, on a scale from 1 to 5 how stressed are you? Um, heard this great question—I don’t know where I saw it—this great question many years ago leaders can ask the people under them: how will I know you’re stressed out? What will I see like?
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Tiffany Henning — And I always jokingly say you know you will see a sixty four ounce Dr Pepper from Seven Eleven right next to me as long as as well as some Hostess product. That’s how you will know I’m stressed out.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tiffany Henning — Or I’ll have angry eyes. You know?
Rich Birch — Yes, that’s great. That’s a good question.
Tiffany Henning — So those are the those are the things as well. I would recommend this—people may not agree with me—and I recommend this. The last two years has been super hard and I would be surprised if the majority of your staff wasn’t burned out or headed that way. Um, the people who’ve been with you for 2 years. It’s been a crazy 2 years for all of it because not only have we scaled it in the workplace in the church, but we scaled it in our personal lives, with kids at home, not at home. We scaled it working from home now and blurring the lines between work and and home. Those boundaries you know we have ou our phones set to ding every time we get an email. So those kind of things um, you know are difficult. In light of that, I would almost say number one, pay people their hourly wage to go do counseling. So have them do it in the middle of the work day or whatever. So pay them because then you can require them to do it. Um, and again, let them know, hey we won’t we don’t know, even if we recommend that you go to this person – there’s confidentiality.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Tiffany Henning — So whatever you talk to them about, we’re not going to know.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tiffany Henning — So if you want to badmouth the pastor, whoever…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Tiffany Henning — …you know work through that on that, because I guarantee if they have issues they’re talking to someone.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tiffany Henning — So it’s probably someone you don’t want them to talk to.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Tiffany Henning — But back to the thing of everyone feeling the burnout, and if you don’t want to specifically pick people, say hey we’re going to roll out this new, you know, benefit and stuff, and we’re going to start requiring all our staff to go on a quarterly basis. Or every four months, or twice a year, or whatever, and we’re going to pay you to do that. So do it as a blanket statement because again the people that you know are stressed, or burned out, or headed down that road, for everyone you see like that there’s probably 10 more who are well on that road.
Rich Birch — Right.
Tiffany Henning — Um and so in fact, we just recently did a burnout webinar, and had a lot of resources including a checklist as well. I don’t know if you’re able to podcast to to have resources for them…
Rich Birch — We’ll link to it. Absolutely.
Tiffany Henning — …but I’ll I’ll give that to you so that you can have it because I think this would be something goodf or their staff to do. Because we we did a 3-part email series and in the history of our organization, that is the one email that got the most responses ever. People going, oh my gosh I didn’t realize I was until I checked off you know, 14 out of the 15 things. And so I think it’s that way with burnout – people don’t realize that they’re that way until they kind of step back, look at a checklist, and go oh wow – yeah, maybe I am.
Rich Birch — Maybe I am that. Yeah well I’d love to get that. We’ll put that in the show notes. We’ll link to that in the show notes. So people could pick up that resource, watch the webinar – that would be fantastic.
Tiffany Henning — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — So so helpful. Like, friends, as you are seeing, Tiffany’s just a wealth of knowledge but then is so helpful, like just I just love how open she is to helping. I want to make sure that we point people to you, but before we get there, anything else you want to share? Any kind of last minute words just as we kind of shut down today’s episode?
Tiffany Henning — So um, you know what, probably the the wrap-up thing I would say—especially because we’ve been talking a lot about staff; we’ve been talking a lot a lot about pay—that I really think of it as like you know, getting a car and taking care of a car, or paying for the oil changes paying, for the tune-ups. Yeah, it costs you along the way. But you are not going to have at 3 years the whole transition break down so, and have to replace that. And that’s what’s happening – we haven’t done oil changes with our staff. We haven’t because we haven’t had the time, and we haven’t had the money, and I totally understand that, but you have to step back and look at the full picture. The amount of time you’re going to spend and the amount of money you’re going to spend is going to be like 5 times than if you invested in that person to begin with.
Rich Birch — I love it. So good. Love it, Tiffany. Listen friends, I want you to drop by hrministrysolutions.com – this is what I want you to do: go, scroll to the bottom, put in your your name, email address. Tiffany’s—I was saying this to her before—the the emails that that that they send are super helpful. I look at them all the time. It’s one of those ones I open. I’m like, hey let’s take a look. You’re always on topic. I feel like you’re reading my brain sometimes because you’re you know, hey what’s this question? I’m like I’ve been wondering that! And then their HR Ministry Solutions has got the answer for me. But um, is there any other place we want to send them online? So hrministrysolutions.com – anywhere else we want to send them online to kind of track with you guys?
Tiffany Henning — No, I say, you know, just what you said – sign up for our newsletters. Ah, you know we have free 15 minute calls, whether you want to talk about our services, or just ask an HR question. I always say the first call’s free. So you know, take advantage of it. Ah, free is a very good price. So ah.
Rich Birch — Yes, I’m glad you mentioned that because now that you’ve said it I want to point people to this. I think this is crazy. I’m like I think it’s amazing that you’ve opened yourself up, open the organization up to say hey, like we’ll we’ll get we’ll jump on any call 15 minutes answer a question or just get to know you better. Again, you could just get that you see that it’s a link on the top right hand corner. I know there’s a lot of executive pastors that would say free is a good price point. So um, why don’t you drop by there and and book one of those calls. You’ll get a chance to see the goodness that is HR Ministry Solutions. Appreciate you being here, Tiffany. Thanks for for being here and hope to have you on and ah, future episode again.
Tiffany Henning — Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Rich.
Helping You & Your Team Ditch Discouragement, Fear and Anxiety with Scot Longyear
Apr 14, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Scot Longyear, the senior pastor of Maryland Community Church in Indiana, and guest host for the Worship Leader Probs podcast.
Two years after the pandemic, church leaders are still trying to figure out where to go from here. It’s been a tough season to wrestle through with our staff teams, and one that’s been riddled with fear, anxiety, and discouragement. Listen in as Scot shares about addressing the cracks in our foundation and finding freedom from that internal anxiety.
Talk about who you are now. // At the end of 2021, Scot’s staff decided that in the new year they would no longer talk about what they used to be before COVID, but focus on who they are now. Things have changed a lot from what they were two years ago and it can be hard to process all of this on a personal, and professional, and ministry level. Pay attention to where God has revealed the cracks in your foundation. Spend more time connecting with your staff as you move toward health.
Transparency and vulnerability. // Everyone in ministry has struggled in some way since COVID made its appearance. For a leader there is a delicate balance between transparency and vulnerability. Your staff doesn’t have to be your primary counselors, but let them see that you also struggle like they do. It’s not uncommon to struggle with anxiety that comes from an imposter syndrome. Acknowledge that our thoughts make a huge difference; we want to be a people who think well.
Connect with Jesus. // For Maryland Community Church’s staff, their connection with Jesus is number one. Scot says the staff is paid to do devotions because as followers of Christ we need to hear the truth, know the truth, and live out the truth. There are so many voices competing for our attention, from the culture around us to social media and other church leaders. Everyone has an opinion about how we should be doing things, and we have to make sure we are listening to the Holy Spirit in all of that.
Key truths tied to scripture. // In Romans 12 Paul says we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. When our mind thinks differently, we act differently. Scot speaks key truth statements from scripture to himself when lies begin to stir up anxiety or doubt at vulnerable times. On Saturday nights before preaching on Sunday, Scot takes time to recognize any lies that are being lobbed at him by the enemy, take those thoughts captive, and replace them with scripture and his key truth statements. Actively allowing scripture to renew our minds is what strengthens us for our callings and helps us keep moving forward after so much discouragement and fear.
DITCH Your Thinking. // Scot has a released a book called DITCH Your Thinking which talks about how the mind impacts the brain, and how our thoughts actually create neurological changes. In his book, Scot explores a proven system to help you identify negative thoughts, hand them to Christ, and watch Him transform your thinking, and your life.
Determine, Identify, Truth, Capture, and Hand them over. // DITCH is an acronym – D stands for Determine the Emotion. There are eight primary emotions that we might find ourselves fighting and we have to identify which one we are facing. The letter I is Identify the Stronghold, which is a process where we dig into what we are feeling with “why” questions. Next we want to Truth that Stronghold, Capture the Lies, and finally Hand them to Jesus. Go through each of these steps to work through the problems you’re facing, renew your mind, and move forward in your faith.
You can learn more about Scot and order his book at his website www.scotlongyear.com. You can also find out more about Maryland Community Church at www.mccth.org.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, friends – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is absolutely no exception. So super excited to have Scot Longyear with us. He’s the senior pastor of a church called Maryland Community Church with two campuses in Indiana not in Maryland which I’m sure creates sometimes a bit of a a fun conversation on the internet. He’s also author of a book that we’re going to get a chance to talk to, plus he’s a part of the Worship Leader Problems podcast, which if you’re not listening to you and you need to make sure you check them out. Ah, Scot, welcome to the show.
Scot Longyear — Hey, thanks Rich. Just honored honor to be here.
Rich Birch — So good. Um, it’ll be I’m looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better. Why don’t you tell us about Maryland kind of fill out the story a little bit – give us ah, kind of a snapshot of the church.
Scot Longyear — Yeah, right. Well, you’re exactly right – like every time I talk to somebody outside of our region, you know, I have to lead with it’s Maryland Community Church and nowhere near the state of Maryland…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scot Longyear — …because I have conversations with people like, hey how are things going in Maryland? I’m like I have no idea have zero idea so ah. Church started in 1925 literally in a one-room schoolhouse huddled around the fire. And so we have a great, in our region, Rich, this is ah just ah, a great history and really a strong brand and um, so yeah, we’ve like everybody else I mean we’ve navigated, you know coming up on 100 years here in a few years – big celebration that we’ll do. And so tons of history and often wonder if the people around you know they’re sitting around ah warming themselves around a fire in the middle of of winter in Indiana if they would get a picture of what’s going on now.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scot Longyear — Um, yeah, some of them would probably be like that’s crazy; we’re walking out and some would be just they so enamored at what the Lord has done for so for so long. But yeah, it’s real interesting too because we are multi-site um – I would say a church of size in a city not of size and so that gives us some real ah, unique opportunities that we’re still trying to lean into.
Rich Birch — And you’re currently two campuses. Are you looking at doing more down the road, or is that you know or who knows?
Scot Longyear — Yeah, right.
Rich Birch — You know don’t you reveal any secrets, but…
Scot Longyear — We have honestly we’ve been on that track, Rich, because it makes sense. Where we are where where city proper is about 60,000 surrounding about 100,000 and so it gives us um, again, kind of a unique opportunity because big fish/small pond and we have folks that are driving driving in. So there’s about if you look on paper, there’s a we we eventually should be around 7 or 8 campuses of people we have driving into our city. What I’m wrestling with right now, because we’ve had on the books man here’s the next place that we’re going, and we’re launching up to that and it was you know, ah Paul in Acts when he’s going into I think it’s in Asia somewhere in Asia and the Holy Spirit would not let him go in. You know so we had that with one of our with one of our sites, and then we just were leaning in towards it towards another one and what I’m getting ready to reveal now to our leadership is feel like the Lord’s saying again I’m not going to let you in. Um, so we’re like we never want to get ahead and a step ahead of what the Lord is doing. And so it’s that whole Moses-thing, right? Like Lord if you’re not going with us then we don’t want to go.
Rich Birch — Right.
Scot Longyear — And so while we have ah plans and continual leaning that way and what I’ve told our staff is we’re gonna keep we’re gonna keep our our lamps full so when the lord is ready we’re ready to go in terms of finance and structure and all that. But I really think he’s, and this is this is super fresh that I’ve only shared with part of my leadership team is that, the Lord is really doing positioning us in our city to continue to work transformation in the place where we are. And we have a unique opportunity because we are a smaller place. Um, you know if we were if we were church our size and we were in you know metro Louisville or Chicago or even Toronto um we couldn’t even have a conversation like that because it’s just it’s just so massive…
Rich Birch — Right.
Scot Longyear — …and so man. Yeah, so that’s a big that’s a big like I think so, but I’m not real sure. We’re trying to determine what the Lord is doing…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Scot Longyear — … in in the middle of that. You know we’ve we’ve gone to camp two campuses very successfully from all that I talked to and all the research that I’ve done. Um, and my XP too is like number three is hard baby, like buckle up. It’s going to be tough.
Rich Birch — Sure, yeah.
Scot Longyear — So so yeah that’s kind of where we’re leaning.
Rich Birch — That’s cool man – that’s exciting. Well I know this season, you know has been an interesting one. What’s that you know may you live in interesting times…
Scot Longyear — Right.
Rich Birch — You know, the last couple years have been – I remember you know we were joking beforehand where like want to talk a little bit about kind of where people’s heads are at around you know this season and even kind of… I’m not sure is it post covid intercovid I’m not sure where it is.
Scot Longyear — Ah, yeah.
Rich Birch — We started I remember back two years ago um you know we did a couple episodes and I remember thinking like ah, we’ll do two or three episodes about covid and then we’ll move back on and…
Scot Longyear — Right.
Rich Birch — …here we are two years later and we’re all still trying to figure it out, but it does seem like you know I want to talk about you as your leading your people, as you’re thinking about your team, and even the people in your church. It is a season that has been seasoned with fear, with anxiety, discouragement.
Scot Longyear — Man, yeah.
Rich Birch — It’s been a tough season for people to wrestle through. Ah, kind of walk us through that help us think that through – what is that look like for for for you, for people that you’ve run into, whether it’s your staff, or just even people in your church? What’s what’s that looking like for you these days?
Scot Longyear — Yeah, you know, Rich, I um I think I’m um, um, maybe on the front end of trying to do you know a post-mortem on it, and so a few things that come to mind. Um you know obviously we’re I mean we’re we’re running. You know we’re trying to find a playbook on this thing and it just doesn’t exist. you know, so…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scot Longyear — You know, ah we must have s slept through you know how to lead a pandemic 101 when we were being prepped for ministry
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Scot Longyear — …and so um, you know one thing that we did as a staff, we decided last at the end of last year we’re like look, when we come to ’22 we’re no longer going to talk about “well we used to be” and “what used to be” and and all this. And so when it when it clicked into ’22 we said, here’s the deal, this is the church we are, right? This is the church we are. And um, you know to be quite transparent, I was like I was like yeah, that’s cool. And then I looked at ah our pre-covid averages and our post covid averages and two things bothered me in that, Rich. Um one I found that I had a little bit more pride than I would have liked to admit, you know. Because I was like because when things are going good, you’re like man numbers don’t matter, babies. No, it’s all good.
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Scot Longyear — But I found I sure liked to be I sure liked being ah, lead pastor of a church at 2500 more than I did a church of 1600. And so the Lord and I had to really knock around. And man I’m I’m still I’m still dealing with some of that I think in my soul, so it’s revealed some stuff in me. And then I think um I think also, man, it’s like I’ve just got um you know we’ve got a, for us in our context, I’ve got a thousand people that are in the wind, and I don’t know where they are, Rich. Like I I mean I know some of them are joining us online, and we’ve got great online stuff going and all that. And we’re still trying to, you know, dial in what is church, and what is not when it’s when it’s online, but my soul hurts for those people. I was sitting down with a guy who’s becoming a friend and just a fantastic pastor, Brady Boyd, out it in a New Life in Colorado Springs and I was sharing that with him. And he just looked at me and he’s like, Scot, they’re not coming back. And I’m like no man, no, no, no! And he’s like they been gone for twenty four months they’re not coming back. And so we’re trying to figure out how that how that mission field all works. But in the middle of that you know like we’re just taking beatings, right, when it comes to our leadership. And we’re taking beatings when it comes to our you know, how to process all this on a personal, and professional, and ministry level, and caring for our people. And you know, one mistake that I made is you know, we buckle down. We’re like okay, we’re gonna do this online thing and um, if I was going to rewind and do it over again, I would have I would probably have quadrupled the time that I normally spent connecting with my staff. Because when we regathered—and we have a healthy staff, man—but when we regathered, we were not healthy together. Because everybody’s on the edge, they’re looking for a dog to kick, and all of a sudden you’re making me mad, and I’m writing the narrative on this, and we had we had a lot of work we had to do when we came back together. Um you know and and some of it was and then I know, you know, I know you’re listeners are in agreement. You’re leading a staff and and especially your you’re upper level level staff, man, there’re they’re hunting dogs, and they’re ready to hunt, like let’s go. And when they’re pinned up, they can start nipping at each other…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Scot Longyear — …and so that just kind of created a whole ton of conversations for us, where we’re like all right, let’s sit down, what’s going on, here we go, and just fine. You know, it put everybody in just really not a great head space, and I’m I’m thinking too that it really… I don’t know that covid in all all of this season created a bunch of new stress and anxieties as much as it revealed some of the cracks that were already there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, true.
Scot Longyear — We could kind of just normally patch. You know I can patch this up with a day off, or with take a little sabbatical, you know, ah stretch here or whatever. But I think it it just kind of revealed what was already there. And and and I think the Lord’s kind of going to use that in some healthy ways as we patch that up and get even more healthy for the future.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I you know, I do think, you know, it’s it’s that difference between… I think we’ve all been telling ourselves, hey this is we’re going to stop rebuilding. This isn’t about “let’s rebuild to areas”. We want to build like let’s look to the future. That sounds great like that’s one of those like that sounds great, but there’s still a lot of stuff we’re dealing with. There’s still then Okay, how do we actually do that, and how do we process that? How do we kind of you know, get a certain amount of freedom from from all of that kind of internal anxiety? How are you coaching your team, your people through that?
Scot Longyear — Right.
Rich Birch — What has that looked like? How are you helping direct them from here’s this kind of negative space where I was maybe discouraged or filled with anxiety, to to a new normal that hopefully is filled with freedom, right? And is filled with you know the kind of life that we’re hoping our people will have.
Scot Longyear — Yeah I think of a couple of things, Rich. I think as as a leader it’s a delicate balance between, you know, transparency and vulnerability and all that, and we you know one of our cores – we want to live with integrity um, but I want to realize that my staff, there are not also not my primary counselors.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Scot Longyear — But I also want to make sure that they they can identify, I’m like oh man, this guy’s struggling here as well, okay. And so just just last week with our staff as we were talking through some some different things, I was like let’s talk about let me talk about right now this whole idea of um, just the anxiety that you might be ah, rolling along in the imposter syndrome. You know anybody with imposter syndrome? And I was surprised you know even even later with some emails some some of my top level staff go, man, that’s the way I feel. And I’m like me too me too. And here’s how I’m wrestling through and I’m doing that. And then we also know too, man, that we are um, you know our thoughts make a huge difference. And so we want to be a people who think well. And so I just want to continue to encourage our staff. Man, we need to hear the truth, and know the truth, I live out the truth, and it’s got to be cemented into us. And so one of our our primary pushes is we’re continually having our staff, man, your connection time with Jesus is number one. Like I pay our staff to do devotions, which I think is the greatest job in the world, if you can get paid to do devotions. Because I want them listening to the truth of scripture and listening to the truth of the Holy Spirit. Because that truth really changes, because there are so many voices that are going on right now. Not only in how do we figure out church, but like everybody’s opinion in the world, from every single topic of of thousands of people who are now experts and want to tell you how to do your job, and I’m like who do I even listen to in the middle of that.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Rich Birch — Another piece of that, Rich, too is is figuring out, you know, your makeup. I think it’s really healthy for leaders to figure out, you know, what’s your enneagram, what are you on the DISC, what’s your personality profile – just to realize okay I’m going to navigate this a little bit differently than other people might. And it’s going to help my words as I form to somebody else’s it little bit bit different personality makeup and somebody as well. But man, it’s a it’s it’s a fight. I mean I’ve I’ve come closer to ah some um ah panic attacks, I would say, and fights with depression than I than I ever have in the past.
Rich Birch — Right. Let’s let’s let’s loop back on that thinking piece, particularly. You know it’s the it’s as old as Romans 12…
Scot Longyear — Yep.
Rich Birch — …you know, like it’s amazing how ah, you know when we read scripture. There’s all kinds of times where it just jumps off the page. You’re like, man, this could be written for today, right?
Scot Longyear — Yeah.
Rich Birch — And that’s one of those passages. That’s just the front end there. How are we renewed? Like don’t be conformed to the pattern of this world but have our thinking renewed. How are you encouraging your people to be have the right thinking, to be aligned with what the Lord—I love that even just practical tip around you know, paying your staff to do devotions, I love that—but is there what else could we be thinking about as we think about kind of our our renewing our mind, staying focused on how we want how he wants us to think?
Scot Longyear — Yeah I’ve just been enamored even even pre-covid with with that. Again, it’s exactly where you said it’s the Romans 12, you know, that we’re transformed by the renewal of our mind. And I’m like man Paul kind wrote anything there…
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm
Scot Longyear — …you can say we’re transformed by prayer, by the movement of the Holy Spirit, by whatever, but it’s we’re transformed by the renewal of our mind; when our mind thinks differently, we think and act differently.
Rich Birch — Right.
Scot Longyear — And when I first was you know on the train, I’m like that’s new age, like I don’t know that’s a bunch of crazy…
Rich Birch — Yes yep.
Scot Longyear — …and as I hit some crisis points and dug down with my therapist, you know, she’s like you know you need some truth statements. and I’m like, that sounds nuts, until I started getting in on it…
Rich Birch — Ah, yes.
Scot Longyear — …You know and so I’m even I mean I was I was real intrigued… Dr Caroline Leaf is obviously just brilliant in in this area, and she she quoted a study that 12 minutes – they did a scientific study if we would pray for 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. So we pray 12 minutes a day for eight weeks, the neurological changes in our brain are so deep that it’s noticed on a brain scan.
Rich Birch — Wow.
Scot Longyear — So thinking literally changes the makeup of the brain, And so Rich, it’s it’s like the Apostle Paul was true. It’s like scriptures true that the truth really does change…
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Scot Longyear — …change us you know and so on a practical way for me for the first time in my life I’ve come up with here here are my true statements, and so Saturday night is a time is ah is a spin up time for my brain because Sundays comin’. And it’s just it’s a bunch of smoke and mirrors because I know that the pressure is coming, so it may be a pressure from a meeting that’s coming, it may be a pressure from whatever ah my mind tends to tends to go to just whatever—I’m like I mean even last night I’m like, okay I’m we’ll do a podcast with Rich, man how’s that gonna go, but and and Lord’s like well with stop being dumb, right?
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Scot Longyear — So how can I think differently about this and so I’ll come up with like I mean I got some key truth statements that I will tell myself that are based in scripture so that I know that they’re not Scot’s truth ideas – these are words written through the Holy Spirit, words from the Father that are true that I can hang on. So when the rest of the chatter is around, that’s gonna help me to to pattern. Plus I have to be man, we just have to be so careful of who and what we listen to…
Rich Birch — That’s so true.
Scot Longyear — …especially in a world where it’s I mean we can get this 24/7, like just not only news cycle but everybody’s voice, and it’s like I’m just not not convinced that that’s so healthy.
Rich Birch — Right. No, that’s so true. You know that I think in in the long term I do think—and I’m not the first person to say this, lots of sociologists and you know thinkers, and pastors have been saying this for you know years now—that I think we’re going to look back 20 years from now, 10 years from now, maybe 5 years from now on the influence of social media in this season on our brains…
Scot Longyear — Mmm-hmm.
Rich Birch — …in the same way that we look back at cigarettes from like the 50s where, you know, you’ll see those pictures of like you know, 9 out of 10 doctors recommend Marlboro’s and you’re like – what? That’s crazy, right? The fact that we’ve just kind of adopted this, hey just open your brain and just let stuff constantly pour in.
Scot Longyear — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Um, let’s let’s dig down on true statements a little bit. I love help us know about the line there between, you know—and you you flagged it—kind of positive self-talk new agey like “you can do it” and “people love you” kind of statements. And let’s embed the truth of scripture and what God thinks in our lives. How do you, where do you find that line? What does that look like? How are you wrestling with that in your own life?
Scot Longyear — Well, that’s a great question because, man, if you push this too far, then you’re pumping yourself up the entitled, like you know I’ve got this, you know it’s it’s all about me. You know I can do all things with Christ through Christ who strengthens me. Well let’s just take that out of context right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, sure. Yes.
Scot Longyear — So I want to make sure sure that I’m like pushing these things together like, Lord is this true? Is this what you say? You know so as I went through the hard work of like here are my true statements, every one of my truth statements would have a would have a scripture tied tied to them and so um.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Scot Longyear — One of my yeah, you know so one of my… So for me as a senior pastor, um primary communicator at our church, create content, all that kind of stuff, and I’m like man, I’ll say the wrong thing, you know what’s going to happen, and all that and so one of my truth statements is is for Sunday is um, something spiritual happens when I preach, as I join the Holy Spirit in his work.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Scot Longyear — And I say to myself I wrote this Holy Spirit, that this sermon with the Holy Spirit, and I’m on to deliver it in partnership with him. And then my scripture out of that is Matthew 10:20 that says it will not be you speaking but the Spirit of the Father speaking through you. So I’m like here’s the truth I’m not alone in this; I’m joining the Holy Spirit in his work. And man when I say that to myself, I kind of kick my shoulders back a little bit, Rich, because I’m like I’m like let’s go. You’re gonna take me on now, devil. Like okay I’m speaking I’m joining with, I’m not alone in the middle of this. And then I’m like well is that really true? I’m like well Jesus says this in Matthew, and I you know I do think that that’s the voice of voice of the father in that. Um you know another one like I’ve got I’ve got a whole list that I I call my Saturday Night Confessions because those are the…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scot Longyear — …you know that’s when when things start getting really really ah, charged up for me.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Um, and I have to think you know so one of me is is that my words literally change lives.
Scot Longyear — Now, you could take that one of two ways. Like well so you better not screw it up, right?
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scot Longyear — But my words literally change lives. You know Romans 12 ah 10:17 is my scripture there – faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word about Christ. You know and so it’s like yes, I’m given this this great mantle, but like what I’m doing matters. And I think in one of the spin-ups that we get sometimes is like what you’re doing doesn’t really matter…
Rich Birch — So true.
Scot Longyear — …you know it’s just it’s inconsequential. And it’s like you know what it actually it actually does matter, and so I’m going to partner with the Lord in the middle of that. And I think some of the truth too are, you know, man I don’t know how I’m still learning how the brain works and everything, but there’s so much mental chatter that happens…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scot Longyear — …and I’m like I’m talking to myself a lot. And then I’m like, is that normal, or am I cracking up? But what I find is that I have I have to have a filter to recognize, is this the voice of my father, or is this not the voice of my father? And so for me as things come in sometimes I’ll hear things and or sense things and I’m like um I’ll run that for a little bit, and then I’m like I’m like wait a minute. My father doesn’t talk like that.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Right. Yeah.
Scot Longyear — It’s not something that my father would say, is that? I know him I know him pretty well and I’m getting to know him him more and more, and that’s not what he would say. So if that’s not what he wants to say, or is saying to me, then I have to dismiss that. I want to capture that thought I’m going to take that thought captive and say it doesn’t belong here, because I will only listen to the truth that comes from my father. That’s what I want to be built on.
Rich Birch — Right. I Love that.
Scot Longyear — That’s what I want to speak, speak on and I want that to come out of my heart. So, man much easier said than done.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scot Longyear — But I really think the battle is fought and it is won or lost in our minds.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love the practicality of what you’re saying. If I’m kind of catching what you’re saying – let me reflect this back to you. I love that you’ve done some work ahead of time to identify, here are you know some true statements, here are some things that I I need to remind myself… I need the Lord to remind me so I’m gonna do the work to kind of capture those, get those together and then I’m going to rehearse those thoughts even on, you know, like you’re saying on Saturday night as we’re kind of ramping up. And I know we’ve all had that. We all have that all the time the Saturday night oh my goodness it’s the middle of the night I’m lying awake staring at the ceiling. And thinking either either an odd thought or like worrying about a slide…
Scot Longyear — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — …or like this you know is you know as a staff leader. It’s like… did we get that thing plugged for tomorrow. Um, and that can feel like just a giant distraction. I love that – what a great encouragement to ah your team. Are there other times, before we leave this this truth ah, you know statements idea here, are there other key times that you find yourself, hey I’ve got to make sure I kind of set some time aside to to reconnect with these truth statements? I love the Saturday night – that seems real clear. Are there any other times where you find yourself needing to do that regularly?
Scot Longyear — Yeah, I’m probably don’t I’m probably not great at it because usually I’m waiting until I hit…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yes.
Scot Longyear — …hit something, so it’s like like maybe me a mild crisis to come back to it so I need to be proactive instead of instead of reactive.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Scot Longyear — So I think that would be my like ah, do as I as I say not as I do. Like if you can make these a pattern…
Rich Birch — Sure, sure.
Scot Longyear — …of like here I am every every morning and I and I tell people, and here’s what I tell people but I still am not doing it as much as I want to. Like you get up in the morning, make your bed make up your bed, and make up your mind. And maybe you even make up your mind first…
Rich Birch — Hmm that’s good.
Scot Longyear — …as soon as you wake up. Like I’m making my of my mind and then I’m going to make up my bed which is that’s a whole like just getting to jump on the day.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well I want to pivot and talk about your book. You’ve you’ve released this book called “Ditch Your Thinking” which is a great title. Um help us understand why did you write this book? Obviously this is kind of in the orbit of what we’re talking about, but kind of give us the the overview to help us think through this book and and you know, what what’s the message here.
Scot Longyear — Yeah, I mean it just comes from what we have been what we’ve been talking about, and kind of just my personal story, and I’m like man if if I’m wrestling with you know, fear and anxiety and worry, I bet there are a lot of other people who have too. And I think what we’ve seen over the course of time is I don’t know if more people are wrestling with it or it’s just more socially acceptable to talk about, but it’s just it’s just rampant you know. And I think when you when you open up and you’re like man, I actually deal with this, people like oh wow, you too? And I’m like yes. Like we have to get a handle on this and so not from an expert level certainly starting out, but more from just like, man, so many of us are wrestling with this and I’m wrestling with this as well. Intrigued by the whole idea of how the brain changes. You know there’s there’s the there’s the mind and then there’s the brain. The mind is is our emotions and thoughts and then the brain the squishy material and how the mind actually impacts the brain and everything else. You know the whole study of neuroplasticity – that our thoughts can literally change our brain and sculpt it like it does a muscle. But then I’m like how do we practically get down on that? and so.
Scot Longyear — That’s where DITCH comes from: D-I-T-C-H. So Let’s go old school preaching, right?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scot Longyear — Each one of those stands for something different. So ditch is actually a system that I I literally use when those thoughts are coming in. And going like okay, this is not from the father but it’s still taking up residency in my brain and it needs to be dealt with. And so I’m going to run it through this framework DITCH, and come out through through the other side, hopefully with ah with ah you know a little bit of of strength and and listening to the truth of the father, and not just kind of the random whatever that’s that’s popping around.
Rich Birch — Could you run through quickly—that I know it’s like this is the worst thing to ask an author—hey can you run through the DITCH quickly – just give us the overview I know you wrote 50,000 words on it but give us the give us the high level ,and then we’re gonna encourage people to pick it up. But give us the kind of high level there.
Scot Longyear — Right. Yeah sure. Yeah, let me let me bust through it and then I’ll and I’ll drop down on on a couple what I think are are the keys in it.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Scot Longyear — D is you’ve got to Determine the emotion when something comes in. What’s the emotion? Is it anger? There’s there’s 8 ah primary emotions. I write about all 8 of those in the book, and ah, what’s what’s that emotion? So you’re laying awake ah in bed at night and you’re like that emotion is fear. That’s the emotion. So I’ve got to figure out first of all what I’m trying to fight – the emotion. Then I stands for Identify the Stronghold. Now a stronghold in scripture is sometimes something, you know, the Lord is my stronghold or my fortress, but there’s also a negative stronghold that typically is a lie. And so we’ve got to do some hard work to drill down on what that stronghold is, and so we’ve got to ask why? Why am I afraid? Well I’m afraid because um, we’ll get up in front of people. Okay, why are you afraid about getting up in front of people? Because I’m afraid I’m going to say the wrong thing. Why are you afraid that you’re gonna say the wrong thing? So for me when I drilled down on that to give you an example, Rich, um I’ll be ah I’m afraid that I’m gonna when I speak in front of people I’m gonna say the wrong thing. Why are you afraid to say the wrong thing? I’m afraid I’m say the wrong thing because I’m gonna look stupid. Okay, why is looking stupid bothering you? And if I drill down that long enough, I’ll get to the why of, well if I say the wrong thing people are not going to like me. Well why is it important that people like you? Because if they don’t like me then I’m not worth much.
Rich Birch — They get more convicting, the more whys the more whys get more convicting.
Scot Longyear — Exactly, exactly.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Scot Longyear — But if you do the hard work of whys and you get down on that, and… So that’s just one example, but for me as I drill down on that, then my stronghold is that my identity is tied to what you think of me. So if I’m not in a healthy place, we’ll end this in this podcast podcast, Rich, and I’ll be like man I blew it with that guy. He thinks I’m a moron this is gonna go out, these people are not gonna like me. Um I have no value. So my value is actually tied to your acceptance and that’s a complete lie, right? But that’s a stronghold that we’re in. So then I’m going to take once I find out what that Stronghold is, and it’s gonna be different depending on what emotion you’re dealing with, then I’m gonna put truth – that’s T. So D is Determined the Emotion. I as Identify the Stronghold. T is I’m going to Truth that Stronghold. So I’m gonna throw the truth of scripture on that. You know in my case I’m going to say I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Like I’m a son, I’m a beloved son of the King. So I’m going to put truth on all that. But it doesn’t end there, Rich, because often we’ll put Truth on stuff. We’re like yeah I know the truth but um, it doesn’t seem to really be really be working because I got all these other residual thoughts that come in. Because the our enemy is just going to lob these thought thought grenades at us. So we’re going to capture those thoughts when they they come in.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scot Longyear — We’re gonna Capture them and then H is we’re gonna Hand Them to Jesus. And here’s where—and I talk about this in the book—this is a great trick; I have yet to do it, but I have some friends who’ve done it .Um Craig Groeschel was teaching on on this once and said, here’s what you do – laying in bed at night, that’s when we get spun up and we’re like, man, here’s the anxiety that I have on your on your a nightstand next to your bed. You have some 3×5 cards and a pin and you’re just gonna write on there here’s what my here’s what I’m worried about: I’m worried about tomorrow with this staff thing, I’m worried about this conversation cause I’ve got to put a guy on a PIP or I gotta let him go, or I’ve got a whatever, so I’m worried about this – here’s my worry. Then you’re gonna get up from your bed and you’re gonna take that piece of paper or that 3×5 card that you’ve written on, you’re go to your kitchen where you’re gonna find a box that’s in your kitchen. That’s just a God box and you’re gonna physically say, I God um I’m giving this to you. So scripture says that we’re to cast our cares on him.
Rich Birch — So good.
Scot Longyear — God I’m casting my care on you. I’m putting it in the box; I’m leaving it there and I’m going back to bed. Now when you go back to bed, what’s gonna happen? You gonna spin up on something else. Oh it’s not this guy that I got had a tough conversation with. I’ve also got this that I that I have to do, now here’s another worry. I’m gonna write that down, again I’m gonna take it and when I’m gonna put it in the God box in the kitchen. I’m gonna go back – God I’m giving that to you; I’m gonna go back to bed. Now then if you’re laying there and you’re like oh man, okay I really am worried about that first thing that I wrote down. That meant that conversation that I’ve got to have with one of one of my people – it’s not going to be good. You’re worried about it again. Here’s what you do. Get your butt out of bed, go to the kitchen, pick up that card out of the box and say to the Lord: I’m taking this back because I don’t trust that you’re gonna take it. Now you’re gonna have to wrestle with the Lord on that, right?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Scot Longyear — And you go to end up putting it back. And I’ve had some friends that have done that and they’re like, wow this was incredibly freeing, because it really put a physical action on something that I was thinking. And so that’s the whole like we’re going to continue to hand it to Jesus in that. And and so for me as I hit some of this stuff I’m like okay, let’s go. Let’s go to work. I gotta to determine what this emotion is, I want to identify the stronghold, throw some truth on it, I’m gonna capture it, and hand it to Jesus. And it’s given me some handlebars to get the truth prevalent in my life so that I can stop listening to the lies, and I found that it actually changes everything, because again, Paul says in Romans chapter 12 that we’re transformed by the renewal of our mind. So this is just a whole practice of how how do we very practically renew our mind.
Rich Birch — Love it. Of those steps, which one are you finding personally is the hardest step for you – that it’s like okay this is the piece that as a leader. I know in the books I’ve written it’s always like you write the book and there’s a part of it where you’re writing for yourself like, oh gosh this is the part I need. Or it’s same with preaching, right?
Scot Longyear — Yep. Yep, yes.
Rich Birch — I’m preaching this message for myself today. I don’t care – you all are going to listen in but this is for me. What part of this is the part that you find yourself wrestling with?
Scot Longyear — You know, honestly, Rich, I think it’s probably the in the identifying the strongholds because some of them are easier than others. So there are probably some strongholds that are from family of origin, from some younger years, for some people it may be rooted in some abuse or neglect that really need to be drilled down in some professional counseling. And I feel like in my life there’s some that I’m like: I can’t there’s something there and I don’t know what it is that’s making me do do this um, and so that’s where I’ve got to just continue to do some really really hard work.
Rich Birch — Love it. Oh this has been a fantastic conversation. I know when I ran into your book here, the thing that struck me is little two things. First of all, one I’m like this is would be a killer series at a church.
Scot Longyear — Right.
Rich Birch — I think this could be a fantastic like, hey you know that’s a great five-week conversation. A six-week conversation. Maybe you know, be great to give the book to everybody – that kind of thing. And then the other thing I was struck by was, hey this would be a great team, you know, like a weekend retreat or two day overnight kind of like hey, we’re going to read this and then process these things together in a safe environment. How have you seen people use this resource in a way that’s been surprising or encouraging? You’re like hey it’s kind of fun to see ah, you know this book has has had this kind of impact.
Scot Longyear — Yeah, it has been and I I designed it um, you know, for small groups. I didn’t design it for small groups but but made it so that you could use it for small groups, with small group questions and that in it. And I was kind of surprised because I’m always you know just to be completely transparent like as a pastor, you know, you release a book and I don’t want it to seem like manipulating, like we’re going to do a series on the book. Everybody go buy my book. You know because people are like, wow you’re getting rich. And you and I you and I both know that that very few authors are are banking, right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that’s not what happens. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Scot Longyear — Um, but ah, but when I was getting ready to release the book a few of my key staff came to me and they said you’re not going to like this. But we really think you need to do this as a series. And I said okay and um and I did take it on the chin a little bit to be honest with you from from some folks, but I felt like the the content was was just going to be so helpful and so we did an entire series on the book in our small groups. We said if you want to go through this as a small group, you’re certainly welcome to do that. And so so that’s been that’s been good and some good feedback from people going like, man kind of again like the you too, and there’s there’s hope like here’s some handlebars that I can put around this, because I think people like I wrestle with this but I don’t know what to do and do do I go to counseling and and I don’t know or maybe I have but but yeah, I’m still having some hangups on that. And so I’ve been really excited to see some some folks who I believe are getting some freedom because again, not because the the book is just amazing amazing, but it push pushes you to the truth and some of those some of those tools that we just needed.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well if people want to pick up a copy or 10 where do we want to send them send them – to your website scotlongyear.com – that’s with one T. Are there other places we want to send them to to you know, pick up a copy?
Scot Longyear — No, that’s the primary place. Ah, that’s there, and so if you’re if you’re looking at ordering bulk um, just reach out to us just scot@scotlongyear.com and we can give you some some pricing and and all that kind of stuff. We tried to make it accessible for everybody in terms of price and shipping and everything. And then and then also with some groups if you’re like, man, could you customize this for us, I’d be happy to you know do some video work for you and and record that to try to get try to get some more people on board.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Scot Longyear — But yep scotlongyear.com would be the place where all that resides.
Rich Birch — This has been so fantastic. Scot, super helpful today – I’ve been taking notes here. Stuff I’m wrestling with him in my own life. I’m like my this has been some good practices, some things I should be thinking about so I really appreciate that. Where do we want to send people or anywhere else if we want to but track with the church or you know anywhere else where where should we send them online?
Scot Longyear — Yeah Maryland Community Church um you can get ah just a kind of little peek into to what we’re doing there and then I also ah you know do a lot of work like you mentioned with um Worship Leader Probs – just some phenomenal things are are going there. And then in terms of ah, worship leaders and and leadership, I’m also involved with a conference called the experience conference which happens once a year at Disney, of all places, in Florida and so if you’re ah you find yourself in a realm of production or worship leading, I would encourage you check that out that’s experienceconference.com.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Scot – appreciate you being here. Thanks for being on the show today.
Scot Longyear — Thank you.
Moving Beyond the Stream of Church Online with Jay Kranda
Apr 07, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jay Kranda, the online pastor of Saddleback Church in California.
Digital ministry is here to stay and churches need to think about how to move beyond just managing their weekend stream to actually connecting people online to the church and each other. Listen in as Jay Kranda shares how to focus on closing the back door of your church online experience rather than focusing on having a huge front door with a lot of subscribers.
Define your wins. // Saddleback has moved away from the term online campus to embrace online community instead. This is an important shift because of how they define their wins when it comes to digital ministry. Digital ministry can look very different from one church to another based on a church’s objectives and strategy. The main objective for the online community team at Saddleback is to provide church for people that live thirty miles away from one of their physical locations.
More than streaming services. // Jay is commonly asked how there are so many people who engage with the church from far away. Aside from the fact that Saddleback is a well known church around the world, Jay has been developing systems and teams for ten years now and so he has built the online community to be more than just watching streams of the service. Just as physical church is more than a building, don’t limit church online to merely watching a service on YouTube. Take time to begin developing more robust systems, people, and teams to support an online community.
Meeting spaces online. // Create a Facebook group where you can interact with each other like a community of churchgoers would in a physical space. You might not see each other in person because you live in different states or countries, but you can still be a community online and create connection. Work on developing and investing in a community here week after week and you will begin to see a return over time.
Focus on smaller events and connections. // Don’t worry about the big streaming numbers when creating a place for online viewers to interact. Focus on small events and one-on-one Zooms that allow you to offer pastoral care and develop people. Offer online classes for things such as membership. Host some kind of monthly or quarterly 45 minute Zoom where you talk to new people about how to engage with the church and answer their questions. Many people are not walking through a church’s doors anymore, and they want to figure out who you are before they visit in person.
How far you reach. // When deciding how to staff for church online, first take a look at your online audience. How many people watch services on each platform? Run a report on how many people are within an hour drive of your church and how many are outside that. Over the last two years, how many have given to your church that live an hour away? That will help you determine how to invest in your strategy and if this is a local outreach, a farther away, or a hybrid. Jay recommends that most churches think locally.
Hire a team. // Too much of the online pastor or director’s time has been focused on just project managing the weekend stream. Have a media team that can help with this part to allow the online pastor to be a pastor and connect with the online audience. Make sure to cast vision for the online pastor and define the win. An example of a win for a local audience would be to connect the digital to the physical and be thinking about how to move people from online to an actual physical location. Connect your win to your church’s strategy.
Keep the online groups healthy. // One of the big game-changers for Saddleback’s online team was to move people into online groups and begin connecting them with each other. To keep groups healthy, Saddleback has certain requirements that have to be met. One of the goals is for every leader of online groups to become a member of the church and go through the online class within the first 60 days. You can create an online group and invite your friends, but Saddleback won’t plug new people into your group if you’re not a member of the church, and agreeing to their covenant. They also make sure the group leaders are regularly talking to them, and that they take an online leadership training class for groups.
Double your focus. // Evaluate how many hours a week you spend thinking about your digital ministry and aim to double it this year. Recruit people from your church who are skilled in this area whether they are coders, marketing strategists, or have a large social media following. Hold a digital summit event at your church, cast vision, and find talent at your church that can help you double down on digital ministry.
You can connect with Jay at www.jaykranda.com and find a free digital mini-course on how to think about digital ministry.
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Rich Birch — Well hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have tuned in. Super excited for today. Ah, you know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you; today’s no exception. Super excited to have Jay Kranda on. So Jay is one of those people – so we’re almost 600 episodes in and for years I’ve had a list of like people I want to have on and Jay is on that list right near the top. So super excited to have him with us. He is, if you don’t know, he’s the online campus pastor of a little church in Southern California that’s been around for a few years called Saddleback. Ah, was planted by Rick and Kay Warren; their first public service was in 1980. They currently have 14 locations—if I’m counting right—in California, a Chinese venue, 4 locations internationally, and a really robust online community, hundreds—I think close to a thousand—online groups. So many good things, and listen, it is the thing that’s great about ah Jay, he really is such an expert in this area and so generous around church online. Jay, welcome – so glad that you’re here.
Jay Kranda — Thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s you know it’s funny like when you say the location number, I don’t even keep up with how many we’re at, so I’m like trying to like I’m like I think that’s right. It sounds like you’re on our website right now and that sounds correct. Yes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, we pulled that off – did a little research there. You know it’s true. I there is ah so The Meeting House a church I was at in Toronto for years, they precovid it had 21 campuses. And there’s somewhere around 6 or 7, when you get beyond that you’re like I just stop counting. There’s just there’s a lot of them, you know. So that’s ah, that’s so good. We’ll fill out the picture for us – kind of give us a bit of the Jay story. Tell us you know how do you fit into the overall, you know matrix there. You kind of talk us through that a little bit.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, so I I started at this church you know right out of actually the last year of college. And I started on our communications team, and I kind of came from a church of about 500, interned at Saddleback. So I’m the you know the glory story of starting as an intern and getting a job and being here for a long time, you know?
Rich Birch — Still there. Still on that internship.
Jay Kranda — Um I know. Still there. I know out of an end… I know still on the internship. It’s you know I you know I get free rent, I guess… No um, but you know I was like the classic guy who just kind of came to faith in high school and wanted to serve the church. And one of the interesting things was when I started they had this little thing called the internet campus about 12/13 years ago that they had somebody had started, but hadn’t really nobody was developing it. And fortunately, somebody at my church—one of our elders—connected me to a couple other churches, like Life Church and so forth, about thirteen years ago. And I just got really excited and and I I really one of the things that got me pumped was you know as somebody who had kind of only known smaller church contexts, I couldn’t believe they had like 500 plus people watching, and nobody was doing anything. I was just kind of you know, like my my mind that was you know, like I was in a youth ministry where we had like 80 kids. And we did a lot to get those eighty kids there.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — And so when they said like oh 500 people are watching this stream every week…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — …and I was just talking to somebody else about this – I remember in college… I’m trying to remember when it was—like 2007/2008—I remember I would watch, every once a while my like one my first my first computer that was like my computer was this like Toshiba deal, and I remember I would watch Louie Giglio’s like Wednesday or Thursday night college ministry. It was like 720 or something?
Rich Birch — Yes yes yep 722 I think it was called?
Jay Kranda — I don’t know if you remember this thing. is that I remember that was like the first stream that I ever like church stream like I watched.
Rich Birch — Yes, wow. Wow. Yes.
Jay Kranda — And I just couldn’t believe I was watching this thing in California…
Rich Birch — Right mind bent, mind blowing. Yes.
Jay Kranda — …that was happening like I think in Atlanta, and and it was just… so my brain when they told me about this, I was like I just remember I was impacted by that stream and it kind of started to unlock…
Rich Birch — There’s something here.
Jay Kranda — …like wow we could like do something here. It wasn’t that you know I didn’t know what I know now, but I just was really excited about that. And then yeah, just over the years we started to invest and then obviously of course covid hits and you know online stops being the side thing and becomes like the thing.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Jay Kranda — And now we’re in a season of okay, great now that we’re back in person, you know what is the structure? And so one of the biggest things we’ve done um over the last couple years has been we really moved away from online campus to online community. And we’re really trying to divide up what are the real wins? And so really like one of the things I… what happened during covid, I jokingly tell people now I reported to three different people through covid because we kept trying to do like the musical chairs, like does this work does this work? Does this work?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jay Kranda — And um and I remember just we were having, I just we as a church kept having a lot of honest conversations about you know, yeah I always tell people that digital is is kind of like a multiverse like there’s so many ways that you could make this a win. So don’t lock in too quick too early just be very honest because I think what what it looks like for your church might look different from mine based off of your objectives and and your strategy. And so we really landed in on this idea that you know, my my and my team’s main objective is it is to provide church for people that live thirty miles away from one of our physical locations. And so if you were to draw a map out, everything around a 30 mile radius – even our internationals, everything within that goes to them, and everything outside is kind of unclaimed territory. It’s kind of I jokingly call it now like the it’s kind of like the west if you look at you know the United States and like everything west was just like no man’s land, like that would be our territory.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Jay Kranda — So if you fall within that territory technically I’m your first contact. Our team is your first contact…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — …and we’re the ones that will help either get you into another church, or you can engage with us. And so and then we started to launch, recently, more robust ways for to start church in your home, and so… And then if you live local, that’s where my team you know, kind of plays as a job as as kind of helping you figure out digital wins. We do play a little bit of a role helping our church figuring out digital. It’s a very minor role. It’s kind of more ad hoc projects. But I think that’s been the biggest change is just solidifying that and trying to figure out—I’m not gonna say like we know it exactly it’s It’s a little bit still of ah of a foggy mess, but I feel like I feel like we’re a little bit more clear.
Rich Birch — Yeah, okay I love that. I love that insight around the 30 miles piece. Ah you know we started doing church online in 2009, ao so like a few years after you know you guys have done that, and then obviously all of us ended up, whether we were into church online or not, in 2020 it was like: here it is! We’re you know we’re doing it now. And I think a lot of us are thinking about that question. I’d love to dive into that a little bit deeper. You know how should we, or where are you at I guess is probably a better question where are you add on really trying to to to divide those lines? I like the thirty mile thing. I also—just subtext, Jay—I know you feel this pressure, you know the entire team at Saddleback, they’ve got I don’t know what would be in the thirty mile radius there’s probably 50 million people maybe 45 million people. Jay and your team you’ve got 7 billion – you go for it. You can you know reach…
Rich Birch — …outside of you know 30 miles. So hopeful hopefully you’re being resourced well enough for to reach the seven billion. So but ah talk to us a little bit more about that. I love this idea of that kind of thirty mile line. What what led you to that? Because I think a lot of us are struggling with that – how do we integrate this into, you know, it was like for a while there we were offline/online; now we’re trying to do both. How does all that fit together? Work us through that in in your thinking – how that’s how that’s impacting you at Saddleback today.
Jay Kranda — Yeah I think you know—and and this is a common thing that I’ll be asked—like they’re like oh how do you have or like how does your church have so many people that engage with you far away? And and and I will say, obviously it’s because of who our pastor is, our church.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jay Kranda — You know those are the default things. The other thing is is that I’ve been in the online pastor for you know about 10 years. I’ve had a long time to develop systems, and people, and teams…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Jay Kranda — …and there’s really I’ve I’ve invested in a long time. And I always tell people that usually there’s something around, like they go like: we just have a bunch of people watching on our stream, but nothing else. And I always remind them, do you have anything else?
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Jay Kranda — Like like normally they’re just streaming their services, and there’s nothing. I go that’s like saying like you’re arguing about what church is and all you have is a building and you meet once a week. Like we know church is not…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …that’s that. I was I was just ah I’ve been reading this book by Doug Es ah Douglas Estes the last couple days about SimChurch. It’s kind of an OG church online book from 2009, and and he talks about like the origin of of the the German word church is like literally like more building. But if you actually look at the biblical word, you know it’s obviously more of an assembly or a gathering of people, and sometimes we still lean heavy towards that German English…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …you know, kind of root than the actual like ah Greek root. And um, so I think for us a lot of what we are trying to do is that we do have an objective where we want to provide church for people so we take that word seriously. So we look at our Ministry philosophy, our methodology, and we’re like okay, like okay here’s a and and usually it’s really best to go, OK, so how do you do this locally? Well we have a worship building for worship. Great. Okay, so we have that online. Okay, how do we do groups? Well, we need to build a resource groups where we’re not in the business of mailing and doing all this stuff. Okay, how do they connect with each other? I think that’s one of the biggest things that people underplay because it’s hard to invest in it.
Rich Birch — So good.
Jay Kranda — It’s a little bit of like come and see, that like church like when I go to church like me and my family when we go to church, we go to Saturday nights typically, because I hate getting up in the morning. And that’s the worst. Like that was something in seminary I should have been a red flag as a pastor like like I don’t.
Rich Birch — I don’t like getting up particularly on the weekends early.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, on the weekend like I don’t like getting up like to be at church at 9am on Sunday morning does not sound fun to me…
Rich Birch — Yes, love it.
Jay Kranda — …so I’m so glad my church has a Saturday night service…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — …and then I just schedule my team to be there on Sunday if if I have to be there, but just kidding.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — Kind of. So the but like like for example, like Facebook groups was a game changer for us because it allowed us to create a, I call it like a patio, where you could run in and talk to people. Because I don’t have the luxury of running in and talking to my people typically…
Rich Birch — Right, yeah.
Jay Kranda — Very rarely do I see somebody who’s part of my community. I might see local people who recognize me or know me, but they’re part of our Lake Forest campus or our San Diego campus.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Jay Kranda — I remember I got to visit our um, our campus in in the Philippines in Santa Rosa and I remember like people knew me because they they’re in but they’re part of Santa Rosa they’re part…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes.
Jay Kranda — …they’re in the our Philip Philippines campus and so but I don’t get to run into the person who’s part of our community that lives in Toronto, or lives in Winnipeg…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …or lives in Florida or wherever, so our our Facebook group was that became our space and we have about like 9000 people that are in our Facebook group and we treat it like a patio…
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Jay Kranda — …or the backroom of our church where hey, if you want to, and I tell people introduce yourself. And but was hard about that is you’re you’re expecting like okay, let’s say you got 10,000 people watching your stream and only 500 engage in your Facebook group, and that dropoff sometimes for people is like well how do I make that more? Well you gotta develop it. You gotta to invest in it. And and I always say don’t worry about the big number anymore, like the the key is like I call it like habit stacking kind of like how James Clear would say is: Can you get on a, can you create small events and one-on-one Zooms, and just the goal is to meet with 5 people a week on a Zoom…
Rich Birch — Right. Dude.
Jay Kranda — …and if you stack that over a course of 52 weeks it starts to actually be real church.
Rich Birch — Yes. Dude, I love this.
Jay Kranda — Because don’t worry about the big streams. Like think people get so wrapped up because they want to be in you know, like an Elevation or whoever, Life Church, like big… Like they’re killing it as evangelism like that’s what they’re doing, but like I get more excited about like the pastoral like developing people, but the only way you do that is you gotta have the coffees and for us that’s just Zooms. And and the other thing is if you start meeting with people one on one and like for example, we have classes. We teach our classes every month. We teach that every month on Zoom. And we have we have 3 classes right now, and we teach we probably only get like probably 40 people a month in our classes right now.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right, right.
Jay Kranda — But here’s the deal, like so if you might go, we might have let’s say 50,000 view our service in a week and only 40 people in a Zoom a month. But if I’ve been you know we’ve been doing classes for 4 years.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — That starts to accumulate it builds momentum…
Rich Birch — Yes, builds momentum dude I love this…
Jay Kranda — …and helping people. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah dude I love – your pushing us here in such the right direction and I want to dig into this a little bit more. So much of us… there was that phase in early covid—and I rolled my eyes at the time, so I hate to say I told you so—but I rolled my eyes at the time where like everybody was trying to figure out the stream number – they were like well you take the total number of streams and you multiply it by 1.7, and good friend of mine, Carey Nieuwhof, he was saying that, and then I was like dude come on, you’re focusing on the wrong thing.
Jay Kranda — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah what should we be focusing on though – kind of you were hinting at some measurement stuff there. What are some of the things that we should be measuring on the community side? What are the things that yet you look at and say ooh we are actually moving forward in getting people. I love that 40 people in you know are your classes. What are some of those things that you think you kind of recommend to churches?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, so if if I was – and and again and and I think this is where philosophically depending you know there’s kind of a local church that’s just doing digital…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — …and then there’s like a church that is wanting to maybe build out way more for people that to engage from anywhere. And those are two different approaches. Both are really good strategies…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jay Kranda — …and but I think for for anybody who’s doing online I think even for the local church who’s just trying to do digital, right? I would say so many people are just not walking through your doors anymore, and they want to figure out who you are, and your stream is one way for them to discover who you are, but they want something more robust. And so I honestly—and I know I’m coming from a like you know anybody listening in this that knows Purpose Driven will go like well yeah, you’re gonna say that because you’re a Purpose Driven guy…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah.
Jay Kranda — …but which I I get – I do bleed that, but I think anybody online who really wants to take digital serious should consider hosting some kind of either monthly or quarterly like 45 minute zoom where you just talk about how to engage with you. And again, you don’t need to do it monthly based off of time and focus, but like especially online pastors like if I didn’t have class 101, which is our membership class, I would call it something else.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — And I would just be like hey, like for example, when I was a high school like pastor early on and I was actually shadowing my high school pastor, so I was like high school pastor and training. My pastor would do this dinner for 12 thing and he would get together every month new high school students and he would have dinner – he would have lunch at his house and it was a chance to interact with the pastor and his family. And then also he would bring student leaders like me and we would hang out. And it was like an informal time to get to know. And I think you need to have that online because what it is, is it’s a chance for for a new person so you get to say, hey if you’re part of our online community, you’re not sure where to engage, come to this Zoom on this date. It’s 45 minutes; we’ll answer your questions. And then I would just share a little bit about the church, here’s how to engage and then have Q and A. I would do something like that and then so I would measure, OK, great, this is how many people watch our service, but how many people are in that new Zoom type of class every month?
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jay Kranda — And and then I would I would measure how many people are active in a group? How many people are in like a Facebook community space? And then I would look at giving – giving for people beyond thirty miles. Because honestly like I I you know not to like make promises to people when you invest in this, but like our giving is substantial…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Jay Kranda — …and it’s not because of me, it’s because we’re actually maturing people. Like your I mean like it’s through…
Rich Birch —Yeah, they’re taking steps closer to Christ and generosity is a part of that. Yeah, absolutely.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, yeah, they’re watching. They’re part of groups. They’ve taken classes, and out of that—now it didn’t it wasn’t like day one—but out of that people started to give, and you start to multiply that. So I think that there is through… now I think what a church has to figure out is you know what is the digital strategy if I’m a church of like 150 and I’m pulling off physical services. I would still say hey that membership class that you’re doing or that class you’re doing maybe once a quarter you do a Zoom for people, you know what I mean? Maybe not every month but you still host it in person every month. I think those are the tensions because people like me are structured very differently and so that’s where you have to figure out what does success look like? I just think people… I always I always go back to the like the Peloton example of like if you go on Peloton’s website um before I buy the bike I can take a free training class to see what they’re about.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And I think a lot of people in the church like new people want to see what you’re about.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.
Jay Kranda — And the only thing we offer them a glimpse into our church is a worship service which unfortunately is not always the best first entry…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda —…because it’s assuming a lot. It’s assuming you know, certain things you know when to stand ,sit up, sit down. You know why am I worshiping about this blood song? You know what is this message? What you know, what what is where… Like you have other entry ways into your church like a membership class or something that’s a better first introduction. Is there a way to make that on demand? Is the way to make that a Zoom? You know stuff like that I would think about and then measure that.
Rich Birch — Love it. And and so this is one of those things I’ve been talking about you behind your back for years when people ask me about online and groups particularly, I always say well you follow whatever Jay does because it’s like you guys are actually doing this. You’re actually moving people into community. I want to come back to the group thing in a second, but I want to kind of pose pose to you like a theoretical question. Let’s assume I’m a executive pastor of a church of a thousand people and we’re trying to we’re we’re we’re not just like begrudgingly doing church online – we’re like we really want to do this. We want to take some steps. What should I be thinking about from like a staffing structure point of view? Like help us translate that so it’s not a church of a couple hundred. It’s a church of a thousand. I’m thinking I want to hire some people. I’ve got you know the youth guy who for the last two years has been doing church online. And um, do I move him out and say yeah, you should do that full time? What should I be thinking about from a staff structure point of view?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, so I would first just at a high level I would run ah like a report in your system…
Rich Birch — Okay.
Jay Kranda — …of like how many people like how many people who are watching you every week on your church online platform website, Youtube, everything – how many people are within a hour drive of your church, and how many people are outside? Just kind of get a lay of the land of kind of your audience. The other thing is try to figure out over the last two years how many people have given to your church that live an hour away from your church. Like just cause that will be a motivator. I will say for most people that’s like oh wow, like it’s either wow one way or wow the other way. So one thing cause I think that determines how to invest in the strategy.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — Is this a local strategy or is this a far away or is it a hybrid? Um and I do think most churches should think locally, like think local local digital lens. I I don’t think strategies like ours make sense for everybody. I think that’s that’s the focus. Now on the structure staffing I I think I definitely think you should be thinking about providing a ah provide some vision for that online pastor or that online director. And I do think at a church of a thousand plus should be thinking about making that full time. And but the key here is you gotta what are what is the win, and I think too much of their time has been focused on just project managing the weekend streams.
Rich Birch — So true.
Jay Kranda — And and as a as much as that’s important, you do need a point person to coordinate make that better. Like for example, like at our church, one of the things we’ve done a lot of since we’ve gone back to media in person is we’ve gone back, we’ve really taken live hosting very seriously, and and it does; it takes a lot of work. Um and like at a church our size a lot of coordination with our worship team and technical teams. And and we do we we live stream our our largest campus, our Lake Forest, and then all we do is we go live 3 minutes before and it’s a chance for the online team to talk and we do present it like, hey we’re hanging out at Lake Forest, but we’re talking to you online. Hey if you live local, you know, come here. And so so there’s coordination even on that strategy. But I think the larger win would be how do you make them, how do you make a local person, ultimately, how do you make their digital experience better to coming in person? So for example, one of the things you could work on is… I was talking to this church in Dallas that does this, where like their online person they schedule like a meet and greet once a month where, hey by the way if you’re—and they had one location so this was a little simpler…
Rich Birch — Easier to do, yeah.
Jay Kranda — …so but it was like—hey you know as the online pastor I would love to meet you here at my church so at the end of March after the 11:00 service I’m gonna be in the in the back of of our church – let’s meet. And that’s connecting like you’re digital to your local, and being very clear about what the wins are. And so they’re not just thinking about coordinate the stream they’re thinking, how do I move people online in to the actual physical. So they’re planning that but that takes somebody a lot of… like like for example, one of the things I’m trying to do is I’m trying to coordinate with different different campus pastors at our church, and I’m trying to do every month have a different campus pastor co-host with me, so I get to promote their location. But that takes—and I think this is where I would encourage a ah an executive pastor or senior pastor—kind of give creative scope to your your online pastor, not just to host this thing, but to actually how does it connect to your church’s strategy. So for example, my church is about our locations. Like I know that. And so I’m like hey, what if I, and so I’m thinking what if I cohost and I just bring in a different location once a month.
Rich Birch — So good.
Jay Kranda — And that promotes it. The other thing is you know what what are better integrations experience. So ah, the last thing is like we launched this Plan a Visit experience recently which is a total beta new thing where. I wanted, instead of just going to slash locations and picking and showing up, I wanted them to actually plan a visit and I wanted, we wanted it to be we were talking as a church we wanted to be text-based where you’re actually texting with somebody at that campus. So it’s more personal. So launching that. And so like hey, focus in on making this experience better. What are the features and the things, because we didn’t have a good call to action from the weekend, I felt like. Because I hated saying, hey come to our church – just go to saddleback.com/locations.Now I get to say, hey come to our church go to saddleback.com/planavisit which was way more clear. But those are the things that I think with staffing and structure you do gotta figure out, do you want it to be a campus, or more an extension of your local? Um I think campuses are okay. I like the extension of local. This is why we lean into community – our online community because community means the diffusion of our local and are online. And I don’t—I’ve struggled and I know some would disagree with me on this—I think online campus communicates the wrong value. I think it communicates that you want them to stay online, and that might be your church’s strategy, which you know, that’s okay. I think that there are expressions of that that can look more sound. For us, we ultimately want them, even online, to be doing person in doing their expression of church in-person. So, for example, if you live far away, at the end of our funnel is that you’re starting a group in your home and you’re watching the services physically. That’s our strategy. So I Think if if you’re not in on that win of people staying online, I would really consider going away from online campus, personally, but but that’s a larger debate to be had.
Rich Birch — Yeah, there’s ah, there’s a lot there for sure in that conversation. Um I love – let’s talk about that funnel. Let’s talk about moving people towards groups. Um, you know I think this is an area where Saddleback you for years have led. You know, recently over the last say four or five years I’ve loved watching so many churches get fired up about Growth Track, you know out of Church of the Highlands.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — And you know, ah my my running joke is a person who’s you know, almost three decades in ministry I’m like yeah, like that’s called 101, 201 like you know, Saddleback’s been doing that for years. And so it’s not surprising to me that it works because we’ve seen you know, just a real you know, I love that so fantastic, but so I I think people people who are listening in have a sense of whether it’s run the bases or whether it’s Growth Track, moving people from weekend to a you know, some sort of experience that lets people know, you know, engages them in their faith. But how are you moving them to then actually saying okay I want to lead say a Zoom group and then ultimately maybe to leading an in-person group with friends. Can you kind of talk us through what that looks like? I know there’s a ton there – we could talk for hours on that. But give us kind of the overview on that piece.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, and you know obviously before that there was catechism.
Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. I yeah I understand that yeah, it’s exactly exactly.
Jay Kranda — So so so so you know it’s funny like these things are you know again, whatever you call it, I just think you got to have a another venue or another space. I usually I ah, used to talk about this as like you kind of have your large group experiences which is your worship services, then you have your medium experiences, which might be like you know your family center or your patio, your church, then you have you’re small, which is like you know in ah in a room, or maybe over coffee. And the question is how do you do that online when you need different rhythms and you need different spaces to kind of facilitate that. So yeah, so for us, you know it’s funny when we first started doing this I was I was just a small group’s pastor, and I would jokingly say I would jokingly say that I was just kind of like an affinity leader at my church where we had our women’s director, our men’s director and then we had like the online director…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes yeah.
Jay Kranda — …and my job was just to make sure the streams work and just whatever that entailed like and then I was over all of our online only groups and I was just I just kind of was a venue at our church early on. And I literally reported to our small group’s pastor at our church and over time as we started to expand that I think what I’ve really learned is that if I could get somebody online in a group with other people, their care is way more sustainable and healthy. So like for example, my team is not huge but I have I have a team of of 4, and 3 of them are small group pastors…
Rich Birch — Right. Okay, love it.
Jay Kranda — …and essentially 80% of their job is to make sure our groups are healthy. So each of them have about 500 or so groups. And so most of their job is just to contact those groups every month…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Jay Kranda — …and just build that team. Because pretty much like like I have our worship service, but I will say at scale, our worship service is very easy to manage at scale.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — Like it’s not the same like to think that to have ten plus thousand people watch to think that’s the same as one of our local campuses where they have 300 people, it’s not this like it’s so much easier.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Jay Kranda — So much so I don’t have to do a lot on the weekend outside of like physically being present to host and maybe troubleshoot and just make sure stuff is working, which can be a headache. Um but that works so a lot of our time is is getting people into groups, and so it’s for example, like that’s like a lot of my early time like… One of the game changers—and and I I haven’t said this a lot—but like one of the game changers of how we started a bunch of online groups was I signed up for a click funnel account…
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, yeah. Sure.
Jay Kranda — …and I literally created a funnel of like you want to start a group. Ah, you want to join a group. Great, hey have you thought about starting a group? And I would create I created funnel pathways…
Rich Birch — Yep, love it.
Jay Kranda — …and I remember like our old school model was, and our church’s world class at this, but you had to go out and talk to somebody and do all this and I remember I remember one week and we started like 70 groups or something through this click funnel process and I remember like somebody coming like how did that, Jay, how did that happen?
Rich Birch — What did you do? Yeah, yeah.
Jay Kranda — And I was like well people already know what they want and I’m just funneling them…
Rich Birch — Yep towards that.
Jay Kranda — …I’m just fine and and I remember now we’ve moved away recently from click funnels and we built this out but like, I think too many times people like their call to action is to… like here’s the deal users online have gotten a lot smarter and they don’t want to talk to somebody.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s a good insight.
Jay Kranda — …like I was just like yesterday I had a I signed up cause I’m like an old man now or I’m getting older and I had I signed up for life insurance and or term insurance…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — …and I remember the company that I used, Protective or something I I got locked out of my account and they forced me to call somebody to unlock it. And I was like I literally like I’m not like a grumpy person with like agent people…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Jay Kranda — …on the phone because I know that they’re not getting paid that much, but I was like why do I have to call you?
Rich Birch — Yes, this seems so backwards. Yes.
Jay Kranda — Like it but think about all these complex things that are church that you are forced to go out to a table, or talk to somebody. And I guess my my thing is is that I understand why that’s needed and a good concierge experience and it’s always good to build it have an option. But I think if you spend the time and record a video and explain it on a page, people can figure it out on their own, and guess what if you do that now people could do it all waking hours of the day. That’s the power of the internet. That’s the power up online. And how many times do people oh let’s just talk Sunday, and if you go to, for example, people watching this, if you go to what we just launched this new experience on saddleback.com – if you go to saddleback.com/online, if you go to our our community page, you’ll see like we have a video where we explain how to engage, and how to sign up for a group…
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, yeah, right.
Jay Kranda — …and how to take class 101, and how to start a watch party, get an extension, and we just lay it all out. And funny thing if you invest in a video and in text explaining it and easy ways to start it people will do it…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, right. Right.
Jay Kranda — …even when you’re not on it. It’s it’s like starting a business. People will buy the product because it’s on the page. And so I think most pastors and churches haven’t thought about that process. And so I think that’s been… and then ah, there’s a lot of reinforcement you’re and I mean like our Facebook group reinforces that. The hosting reinforces that. Our website reinforces that. The weekly emails I send reinforce it, because ultimately what I’m asking somebody far away, I’m asking them to watch every week and engage. I’m I’m asking them to be in our Facebook group, to take some of our classes one time on Zoom. I’m asking them to be in a small group, and I’m asking them ultimately to host something in their home called an extension. And that’s ultimately what I’m I’m doing.
Rich Birch — You moving towards them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay Kranda — And so there’s a lot of repeating and and honestly that’s what my pastor and our church is brilliant at is that we repeat that stuff a lot and we don’t overcomplicate it. I think what gets harder online is there are the harder thing to figure out is what do you do with people spread out. So for example, we do something special where we do we do something called Meetups where we will pick pick geographical regions and somebody on my team their job is to focus on this, where once once… Like it’s probably 2 to 3 times a month we’ll say hey everybody who lives in Canada, we’re gonna meet on Zoom. And the goal of that is to connect people to each other. And and the ultimate goal was maybe maybe you could start a group with somebody, but we do these Meetups which that’s probably the biggest difference between our our local campuses and us online is we don’t have concentrated groups of people just I could just connect with each other. I have to in our Facebook group, in these Zoom Meetups, I have to we have to host special programming in order to connect people to to each other. And then what like as you know like Canada’s huge so it’s like wait I’m over here…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, right.
Jay Kranda — …and you know I’m in Vancouver and like we’re not near so what do we do? Well we have to host a sub-Meetup, you know what I mean? And so and then sometimes like we’ll do a Meetup and only 3 people come on that thing and but guess what those 3 people start a group together. And so that’s probably the biggest difference. I don’t know if I answer the full question but that’s kind of where I will.
Rich Birch — No, it’s good. I love that. That got me thinking about—if you got a few more minutes I’d love to tap this question—the care of those groups. So help me understand the the tending. Um I I understand from a staff point of view that sounds like a coach level kind of like, hey we’re keeping on top of them, caring for the leaders, making sure they’re still meeting, trying to you know… Give us a sense of what that rhythm looks like for your team as they’re caring for those groups.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, it’s funny. We were just in a conversation a couple weeks ago and we were talking about what’s working, what’s not working. And one of the things I always struggle with with online is is the deep care for people, like where are our real gaps. Because ultimately like I always go to that James verse about you know as a teacher and a leader of the church I’ll be accountable for the people under my care and I think I’ve always struggled with, okay what do I do with somebody you know, a state a country over who sees like they’re part of our church, like they’re members, and they give and they’re part of a group, like what type of care am I offering? And and you know can I marry, bury them? Can I is there a benevolence option? Like what counseling crisis, like what you know… Because because there are to act like everything’s figured out I think is so naive. And I think sometimes when people argue about online church and online ministry, digital ministry… I ah like I texted a lot of friends during Covid who were pretty hardcore online, which they’re my friends, so I understand where they’re coming from, because I feel like sometimes online guys and and and women leading in this effort, they’re so focused on justifying because they’re so been like beat down…
Rich Birch — Yeah, they… yes sure.
Jay Kranda — …that sometimes they get too extreme. And um, you know they’re they’re they’re literally like like I always tell people like DJ Soto during VR church, like he is a he’s literally like a modern day evangelist. So he’s out in the Bush doing something totally different …
Rich Birch — Yes, yep, yep. Love DJ.
Jay Kranda — …and it’s like reading Peace Child, like you’re not even, like to think you understand their paradigm, you you just don’t.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Yes, yeah, true. That’s very true.
Jay Kranda — Like you don’t like and so like as much and so but I also will text I text people during Covid like, hey guess what being online only and not having physical relationships—I’m a homebody get Covid sucked, like it was not fun the whole time like being stuck at home—like there are gaps to this.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — And so I think so so to say all that, one of the things that we do is we do try to connect people to each other. And the way we measure this as ah as a whole is um, a couple things. We have a goal to make sure every leader of a group is a member of our church, like has taken that Zoom class, so they know what it means. So we don’t require you to be a member initially but over the first 60 days you have to be a member. We also don’t plug people into your group if you’re not a member.
Rich Birch — Mmm, oh that’s a good distinction. Yeah, right.
Jay Kranda — So your group could start off of like if you and your friends want to start a group and you’re you know you’re in Toronto and you want to do that great. Go start a group. But if you want me to plug people in your group, I have to know that you know what we believe, and you’re agreeing to our covenant. Like now you and your group—so the idea is that you’ll just mess up the people you already know, you’re…
Rich Birch — Sure, sures sure. Yeah, yeah, yes.
Jay Kranda — …and I mean this is kind of like the, you know, the raw explanation of that. And so you have to be a member, the leader with that… So we have a goal so we might have 1500 groups, but how many of those groups are actually members, and so that’s like the big goal. The next goal is, are you regularly talking to us? Like and we define that by like a 45 day range…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — and so if you stop talking to us um we’ll like tag you in a way…
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — …that will remove you from our finder, and then we’ll ultimately we’ll delete your group.
Rich Birch — Right.
Jay Kranda — And so we’re very active. So we might start you know you know a couple hundred groups a year, but we also delete you know a hundred groups a year, you know what I mean? So it’s like so we have a lot of growth. But there’s also a lot of purging happening at the same time, because because part of a high growth mindset, you know, you’re gonna it’s kind of like it’s like Wikipedia. It’s like you’re going to have a lot of messed up pages every once in a while, but I think it’s controlled chaos a bit.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Jay Kranda — The other thing is we do teach a leadership class on like how to lead a healthy group which is taught via Zoom and we actually teach two versions. So when I look at our groups, we might have 1500 groups, but how many of those groups are members, how many of the hosts are members, how many of them are regularly talking to us, and how many of them are taken our leadership training. And if they do those things, then I start to go great. And we look at it, okay, great. You know, what—I’m just saying this like—let’s say 1200 of our groups out of 1500 are members. Okay, what’s going on with the other 300?
Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s talk about it. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — And then let’s say only 500 are taking our leadership. Well why is nobody taking this class? Is the class not relevant? Is it not helpful? Um, for example, one of the things we problem solved recently was we teach our class our membership class on Sunday afternoons pacific time, and I knew we were missing a lot of our international. So we’re teaching a Friday night Asia kind of specific class and we’re gonna do that twice a year to kind of help our more international people because Sunday at 2, you know, it is a hard time because it’s going to be like late late you know Europe time, and it’s going to be you know, early morning Asia, you know, time. And so I think those are the things we struggle with being an international kind of impact…
Rich Birch — Yep yep.
Jay Kranda — …but that’s how we measure the health of our groups like kind of at at a high level.
Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so good. So helpful. This has been such a good conversation. I’m going to beg you to come back on in the future, because there’s so much we could talk about, but I do want to respect your time. You’ve given us a great resource that we’re going to pass on to people. It’s a fantastic ah PDF called Online Church: How to Go Beyond Streaming a Service to Bringing People into the Body. One of the things, friends, that you’re as you’re listening in, you’ve heard clearly that I just love about you, Jay, is hey this isn’t about managing, or maybe it’s we need to move beyond just managing the weekend stream. We need to move beyond just how do we make sure that that works. We got to dive so much deeper. Tell us a little bit about this resource; give us a kind of ah um, why we should download this and yeah, just give us a bit of insight into that.
Jay Kranda — Yeah, this was a an ebook that I worked on with our kind of our training team at our church um during Covid. It was just kind of outlining some framework around how to think about online church How to like structure it. So it’s very raw. It’s I mean it’s very like philosophical, and then there’s some very practical things. But it’s it’s there to kind of get you thinking. I really want I really encourage pastors to just get beyond streaming because I think it it is like the eye candy. You know people want to have a big stream, a lot of subscribers which I get, and I think that’s good, but you could have a huge front door but lose everybody through the back door. And I actually think if you focus on the back door first, I think you’ll long term because what happens is when you move people around the bases, or whatever your your approach is, you you actually train people to evangelize, which will ultimately grow your front door.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Jay Kranda — And I think we actually we’ve we’ve benefited greatly on being a very deep place for people to connect, which ultimately people invite. And so I actually credit most of our successes just personal evangelism than any… Because we we spend money on ads and we do things but it’s very a fraction compared to a lot of other churches our sizes and so I think this is a kind of give you a framework to start thinking about it.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good, Jay – I appreciate this. I really appreciate you being on. Anything else you want to say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Jay Kranda — Yeah I I was I would just kind of say, you know I would look at your church and think about how many hours a week do people actually think about digital right now, like at your church. Like think about it, like this is how many hours we do ministry, like put your hours in their – volunteer hours, total it all up and kind of go, okay, you know what, of all of our hours. We only have one hour a week we actually think about digital. And my encouragement to you as a church—I know it’s very confusing, and it’s hard, it’s always moving—trust me I get confused by digital all the time.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Jay Kranda — You know. I download TikTok and I’m like I don’t even understand what the world is going on on this platform.
Rich Birch — Yeah, sure. Yes.
Jay Kranda — I don’t sing; I’m not a drama student. Like I don’t know if I could be successful in here. So I feel that too. It’s it’s hard, but my encouragement is just to double your focus on digital this next year.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jay Kranda — Like so if you have an hour a week, how can you move to 2 hours? And then recruit. Like one of the things that I think could be super helpful is do like a digital summit like event at your church and cast the vision, hey if you do digital for your work…
Rich Birch — So good.
Jay Kranda — …like if you’re a coder or a marketing strategist, do like a digital summit at your church find out the talent at your church, and go hey help us. I think you need to provide a place like years ago, creatives needed a place at their church to be engaged, you need to give the digital experts at your church. Like I know you probably have somebody who has probably a thousand followers on Instagram or killing it on TikTok and tap them in to help your church figure it out, and just paint them a vision and then unleash them, but double your focus and list some new people through that digital summit idea, and trust me, I think the fog will start to kind of clear over the next couple months.
Rich Birch — So good. So helpful. Jay, I really appreciate you being here today investing time in us. I’m literally taking pages and notes here stuff I’m I’m looking forward to chewing on. How can we connect with you, kind of track with the church? All of that stuff. Where do we want to send them online if they want to kind of follow along a little bit closer?
Jay Kranda — Yeah, so actually my website jaykranda.com. I have a free Youtube course where I did like a 12 episode…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Jay Kranda — How to Think About Digital Ministry. There’s also if you want to learn more more about online groups, I did a a course with Small Group Network on how to lead online small groups. There’s actually a free version on their Youtube channel, which you could find links and everything on my on my website.
Rich Birch — Great. We’ll send people over there. Super excited. Thank you so much, Jay, all the best cheering for you. Thanks for being on the episode.
Jay Kranda — Thanks.
Shifting Paradigms Impacting Growing Churches with Sean Morgan
Mar 31, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re chatting with Sean Morgan, founder of The Ascent Leader, a year-long development program structured around relational cohorts which is designed to engage ministry leaders in transparent conversations and one-on-one coaching with world-class leaders.
As we transition from COVID being pandemic to endemic, there are paradigms church leaders have carried for decades that need to change. Listen in as Sean talks about where we need to shift our thinking and adopt new mindsets to be able to reach our communities and move forward in the future.
Redefine “full”. // One of the things Sean believes we need to reexamine in the church is the 80% rule that says if the room is 80% full, then it’s “full”. With everything that’s changed since covid and the social distancing people were encouraged to do, Sean believes today that “full” number is around 70%. However, you don’t grow your church by reaching your current attenders, you grow by reaching the unchurched. And Sean believes unchurched people who visit your church will feel like the service is full when it’s at 50% capacity. People who are new and visiting your church don’t want to be wedged right in between two other people.
Get back to some of the normal. // As church leaders, we have to get out of the mindset that we want to see the room 80% full before offering another service. Get back into some of the normal rhythms of your services before COVID. If you had two services before, but are now offering just one, go back to the two scheduled services as before. If you don’t create more space for people, they won’t come. Cast vision to your team not about filling the room, but rather reaching people. If you wait to hit the 80% mark in your service, it will create a bottleneck both physically and mentally.
Have focus to lead your team. // In this season, leaders need to continue caring for themselves and developing themselves by creating margin in their lives. Margin fuels focus, and in return focus fuels more margin. A great leader has focus and their team knows what their focus is and what success looks like. That leader can say no to things that aren’t their focus. When a leader doesn’t have focus, the team is on edge because they don’t know what to expect or how to measure success.
Listen to those close to you. // To create space and margin without being so busy, listen to your spouse and others close to you. Give your team permission to speak to you on what’s working and what isn’t. Ask and listen to your spouse about where you’re spinning your wheels, and do the same with your team. Those closest to us can see things that we can’t, and can identify our weaknesses. Create a culture where you can openly talk about these things.
Coming together to grow. // Leadership is lonely and it takes work to be transparent and vulnerable. This is why The Ascent Leader developed cohorts. Church leaders have an unlimited amount of content at their fingertips but it’s just noise until they can process it. The Cohorts bring a small circle of peers closer together for support, feedback, and learning as they grow in their leadership. Here church leaders can meet physically and process curated information together through facilitated conversations.
Shift gears when needed. // At times you have to shift gears in leading a team. What got you there on the team won’t always get you to the next level of your leadership. The Ascent Leader offers three cohort tracks to serve ministry leaders where they are. One track is for pastors navigating the transition into a new leadership role, one is for leaders seeking to grow in preaching, and another for planting pastors looking for the key relationships, tools, and resources for their new season of ministry.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today!
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and this week is absolutely no exception. Super excited to have my friend Sean Morgan with us. He is the founder of an organization called The Ascent Leader. If you do not know Sean, I don’t know where you’ve been, but you really should lean in on today’s conversation. I think you’re going to find this really fruitful. The Ascent is they do they do these one year long (that really become multiple year) development programs that really do these incredible cohorts with leaders in transitions, with communicators, senior leaders, all kinds of fantastic folks. Sean has his pulse on ah so much that’s going on in the local church. Sean, welcome to the show.
Sean Morgan — Yeah, it’s great to be here, Rich. Not only a huge fan of you, the unSeminary podcast, but I do track what you’re doing often, and shoot emails every now and then with questions on stuff I heard that you you spoke on when you so when you pop up on other podcasts. Those are ones that I always highlight to listen. So It’s a joy to be here.
Rich Birch — Oh thanks so much. I’m I’m honored that you’re here. Why don’t you tell us kind of give us the Sean Morgan story – tell us a bit about your background and then how that connects with The Ascent Leader.
Sean Morgan — Yeah, so I never had a strategic plan for ministry or a call into ministry at a young age. Like I was really interested in airplanes and followed that passion into the air force and ended up flying airplanes which ah, shifted gears from a full-time job to a part-time job when I left active duty air force and joined the reserves. And a big part of that was I fell in love with a local church plant outside of San Francisco and that was really my call into ministry was there. And it wasn’t just a call into ministry, it was also focused on that town, that church, and serving that lead pastor. Like I felt a very distinct piece of the call was identified in serving, complimenting, that lead pastor for a season. Um and I felt like that from the very beginning. I thought it was actually, foolishly, I was like oh yeah, this would be 6 to 12 months, you know then it was almost 8 years.
Rich Birch — Nice. Love it.
Sean Morgan — Um and then God blessed that that church – we had some highs and lows in the church plant. A guy named Thom Rainer, who was CEO at Lifeway and has written a ton of great books, wrote a book about that church that other leaders wanted to come in and glean from us. And that turned into ultimately what I’m doing now which is discovering ways to engage with leaders relationally and conversationally, to figure out what their next steps are for what I would call whatever channel in their world is going to bring the most ministry fruit, low-hanging fruit would be a concept, or the most everybody has 3 or 4 or 5 key things they could be working on. But if you can really build relationship with people you probably can figure out what’s the one that’s the most important – that’s going to be you know, take them further faster in Andy Stanley terminology – so that’s what we’re able to focus our ministry on now is figuring figuring that out. And we do that at The Ascent Leader in a cohort environment.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well one of the things—there’s a lot that I appreciate about your leadership—one of the things I appreciate about your leadership is you are in the corner of local church leaders. You really are the kind of person that’s a friend of leaders, you come alongside of so many different leaders. I know so many people through the years have been um, really helped, honored, blessed by your your cohort work. And so I wrangled you, I twisted your arm, and I said listen, I want to I want to tap your brain about what you’re hearing as you’re talking with church leaders across the country. You’ve a lot of relationships with church leaders – would love to kind of hear kind of what’s the headspace that you keep running into, the kind of issues or where people are at. I was kind of joking earlier it’s not this isn’t really the like 2 year covid anniversary show, but there is like ah you know that’s an interesting milestone. We find ourselves, you know a lot of things have changed in the last two years; a lot of things are exactly the same. What what do you find yourself running into as you’re talking with leaders across the country?
Sean Morgan — Yeah, that’s great. As you were asking that question I’m so glad you said, you know, there’s this phrase – a lot of things have changed, and a lot of things are exactly the same. And that’s absolutely right – we’re still us. Through through all of the turmoil of 2020/2021 and to whatever we are now – endemic? Who knows?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Sean Morgan — Um, we’re still us. We still bring our stuff. And so we still have things that we do well naturally and things we don’t, and then that bears fruit in our teams and our organizations. But I would say from from the where we are here and now – one of the things that I see is leaders are are still… even though I think the language is changing not everyone’s comparing themselves to precovid, and say oh we’re yet precovid and I think that’s healthy, you know it’s like where are we now? And what do we need to do to go forward? But I do think there is a sense of, from a standpoint of how many people can we reach, there’s still a big argument that is you know going to take years to really conclude is the nature of tracking church size by Sunday morning attendance not being helpful to true transformation, right? True discipleship.
Rich Birch — So true.
Sean Morgan — But I do think there’s some elements of that that are like well how many people can we reach and serve? And what I’m seeing, one one thing that’s definitely a theme for right now in ministry is there are paradigms we have carried with us for decades that need to go away. So it’s it’s not just the precovid attendance thing but there is ah a thought of a little bit deeper than that. So one of the questions I always try to dig into with leaders is the why? Okay you said that. But why is that? Why do you think that’s true? And if it’s true, why is it actually true? And um one of the things that I think we need to really reexamine in church is what we used to call was the 80% rule. Do you remember that?
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely – if the room is 80% full, it’s full. Right? Yes.
Sean Morgan — Yep, yep. Yeah I think that number for your church attenders today is between is is down 10%.
Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, interesting.
Sean Morgan — So I think average church attenders want more elbow room. We’re all in the we’re all coming out of 24 months of social distancing and just being a little further away. So I think that that that’s changed, whether it’s a tiny little bit or a couple percentage points, I’m going to say for the average regular attender in your church today I think that’s 70%. Now here’s where here’s where the rub is. You don’t grow your church by reaching your current attenders.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Sean Morgan — You grow your church by by reaching unchurched right? People who aren’t there. I think that number for unchurched is 50%.
Rich Birch — Oh oh this is okay – I’m just taking notes here. There’s a bunch I want to loop back on this.
Sean Morgan — So yeah, okay.
Rich Birch — So you think it’s lower for folks that don’t normally attend church. Why is that what? Why do you think that is?
Sean Morgan — Well, they don’t know anybody.
Rich Birch — Right.
Sean Morgan — So if you go to church—and and I love your church by the way; I get you know have a privilege of being sort of an insider there in some ways—but you know, you go there. It’s a great church but you know people and you you…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Sean Morgan — …Generally, you know, Willow Creek years that ago had the sections mindset of trying to connect people in communities based on where they sit in the room because they’re they’re frequently in those same parts of the auditorium at the same service times. And I think there’s some truth into that or creatures of habit. So you don’t mind going in and there’s somebody from your small group and you guys sit up next to them. If you show up in that room and you’re already feeling timid about, why am I even here?
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sean Morgan — Like I talked myself into coming here. I talked myself into getting out of the car and walking in here. You don’t want to sit in a seat between two people. If you go into a movie theater and look where people sit before the show when the lights on and you can actually see, people don’t sit together. If they come together, they sit together.
Rich Birch — No, it’s so true.
Sean Morgan — If they don’t, they want their own row. And so there’s just this mindset of of… Now as the room fills up obviously that that social distancing space narrows, and there are concerts and venues that are filling up every seat, but in general I think the feeling of people when you’re unknown and you feel unknown, you just don’t want to be wedged in between two people. And I can tell you what, nobody likes my singing so they don’t want to sit next to me..
Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, so there’s a lot of implications there. I think you’re I think you’re definitely on to something there. You know I know even just as ah as an individual—and you know I do this for a living – I think about church for a living—when I go to a new place where I don’t know anybody. There is that just natural kind of like pushback around just like a little more space around me. So what would be some of the implications of that? I guess that’s driving towards more services, smaller services. You know I like I would say I’m a fan of multisite – to me that what I hear I hear more campuses, more smaller campuses. That does resonate with some of the conversations I’m having with church leaders out there, thinking about hey like it two years ago three years ago we might have deemed a campus successful if it was five hundred or seven hundred people. Maybe maybe a campus of 200 is successful. Maybe if it’s it’s fewer people and we’re going to do two of them or three of them. Where we used to just do one – kind of cram people in. Is that the kind of thing you’re seeing or or bumping up against?
Sean Morgan — Yeah I think it um, it’s multiple things. So like if I talk to a church and they say you know here’s where we’re here’s where we’re at and we do get—I try not to ask first but like where were you at before covid—just getting a sense of the size of your room, and how many service times you had, and those types of things.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm
Sean Morgan — Most of the time if somebody tells me, they’re 50% full and I say, well how many services are you running? Well we had one. How many did you run before covid? Two. Um, why don’t you start a second service? Well because we’re not quite full now. And what they mean by that is we’re not at or near 80%. And I’m like, there is a sense of um, we like the room full.
Rich Birch — Yes
Sean Morgan — If you’re preaching. It is so awesome to walk in and see standing room only, like you feel great.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Sean Morgan — We got to get out of that mindset; we have to just we have to readjust. So there is a sense of—I can tell you I’m going to say a phrase, which is like—if you build it they will come. That’s not entirely true, but you know what is true? If you don’t build it, they won’t come.
Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yes.
Sean Morgan — And so I think we have to get out of that mindset of trying to get toward 80% full. I think we have to go back to, hey people are ready for some of the normal rhythms of their life. like if you had an 8 am and a 10 am but right now you’re running one 9 am; get your 8 am and your 10 am back. Create the space and then work your team with the vision, not to fill it as the goal but to be reaching people. I think there’s a whole new opportunity here. And so yeah I would say that’s definitely something that we’ve got to think about that different. We have to create space, so we know that, right? When we talk about just welcoming new people into church, like from the experience from the curb in, like is this a positive experience? Do people feel welcome? Well part of feeling welcome is having room.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sean Morgan — And their needle for what feels right with how much room is needed… like here’s another one that I think maybe might be like 1980s/1990s old church advice was um…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Sean Morgan — …only put up half the chairs. And then when people come in and you’re pulling chairs out of the back, they’re like whoa, this is magical…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Sean Morgan — …like we’re we’re you know like this room’s filling up. Do you know who that feels good to? The people that work there.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Sean Morgan — Do you know who you know what that feels like when it’s your first time or your second time? It feels like nobody prepared for me. I’m not welcome here.
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah yeah.
Sean Morgan — Like if you go over to somebody’s house and there’s a dining room table with 6, and you walk in to their house and 6 people are sitting down seated sitted seated down and and they’re all talking and enjoying the dinner table, and you stand there and then somebody has to oh oh yeah, yeah let’s let’s go get an extra chair for Sean.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Sean Morgan — Or let’s go get an extra chair for Rich. You don’t feel the same as when you walk in they thought about you before you got there and there’s your chair.
Rich Birch — Yeah, welcome.
Sean Morgan — And so I think some things like that we just have to reexamine. Those aren’t difficult things for for church but they’re all paradigms that have carried with us over the years that we have to reexamine because there is some huge opportunity from just the standpoint of we have the opportunity to reset some things.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely.
Sean Morgan — And and we can choose which ones those are. So that’s that’s one area where I feel like um, it’s going to be uncomfortable for leaders to do that. Nobody wants to preach with a 50% full room, but my guess would be if you start that now you’re gonna see it grow a little bit by the time you know, May rolls around and then by fall you’re going to see it grow even more. But if you’re so if you stay with one service instead of two, or two instead of three and you’re waiting for that 80% mark, I think it’s the bottleneck in a lot of ways. It’s not only the bottleneck physically, but maybe even for your psyche and your mental thought process, and that of the team.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. The other piece of that that I love from a ah church growth, multiplication, leadership point of view is more services requires more leaders. It requires us to get out and find more leaders, which we know ultimately does drive growth. That as we engage more people in the mission and as we force ourselves to find people and say, hey can you get plugged into what God’s doing here – that does drive growth in our churches. That does. Because all those people’s lives change and then they end up telling their friends like oh I’m I’m volunteering at the church now. Why are you volunteering at the church? Oh you should come. All of those those are all positive um, you know, kind of outcomes of new services, new volunteers, where I think sometimes in this season there’s a bit of like, well we we feel the overwhelm of not having as many volunteers, and so it’s like we back off from that. We let’s well make it easier for ourselves. Let’s make it easier so we don’t have to find those people.
Sean Morgan — Yeah tail wagging the dog. Right.
Rich Birch — Yeah absolutely. We got to go the other way around. Yeah I heard a leader say recently said you know we’ve got to stop thinking about rebuilding, and we’ve just got to get back to building. Like we we’ve got to stop focusing on, well let’s try to get back to where we were before…
Sean Morgan — Right.
Rich Birch — …and just get back to we’re reaching people. Like we just got to get our head around, okay, we’re outreaching – gonna reach a whole bunch of new people. Yeah I love that.
Sean Morgan — Yep, yeah, that’s a beautiful statement.
Rich Birch — Now when you’re thinking about leaders as individuals – a part of what I love is you have like the pulse on on people at you know, at the at the level of you know, I’m an individual leader – not even necessarily outside of even you know, them leading in their um you know, in their community – what would you say the need of leaders that’s maybe stayed the same – that was their precovid, that’s still there now, that we have to kind of as as individuals – what what should we be thinking about? How should we be kind of caring for ourselves or developing ourselves in this season, that again was maybe their precovid, but is still there now today?
Sean Morgan — Yeah, so I love the thought of margin and focus and synergy and alignment and clarity. These kinds of ideas – man the I had a conversation with a great leader yesterday who asked me a question about some somebody I was in a conversation with, and they were surprised that this person like had time in their schedule to do these things. And I was like I’m not surprised, because the leaders that I see leading some of the biggest things in terms of just movements and and that sort of thing—is not again about church size, but but the things that I’m just taking notes on and awed by—they’re leaders that have focus, and their team knows what that focus is, so they’re focused on that which means they say no to the other things. And then their team actually knows what success looks like; their team knows, okay so a leader without focus comes in the room and their team is always on edge because this person has a high standard, but we don’t know what they’re going to measure today. Focus actually tells everybody here’s what we’re going to be measuring, and here’s the yardstick for measuring. So how do you get to focus? And I said margin is the birthplace of clarity, which leads to focus and it’s a win for you and it’s a win for your team.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Sean Morgan — And the crazy thing is is when you have focus, it actually fuels margin. There’s there’s a repeating cycle there, but it has to start with margin. So that’s my answer is, leaders need focus. They needed it before they need it now. I do think leaders are figuring it out having been… the pendulum always swings side to side, right? And so when you get squeezed, and pinched, and pressured through all the things that the last couple years have offered, you feel that more, and you react to it, and you adjust. And so I feel like people now are are coming into this next season of ministry saying: I don’t have margin. How do I get it?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. I love that. I love that margin is the birthplace of focus – that is so good. That’s going to stick with me for sure. I love… How are you finding that leaders are are maybe restructuring their lives to get more margin? to to find that space? I totally agree with you that there seems to be this… there was a time, I think in a previous generation where being busy was seen as a badge of honor, right? And our friend Carriey Nieuwhof has said this publicly, right?
Sean Morgan — Indeed. Yeah.
Rich Birch — At one point it was like hey you talked to a leader ,and it was like I’m busy, busy, busy – that was like ah propagated by who ultimately a lot of those leaders who lived in that you know unfortunately have ended up flaming out. Their lives have not it’s not worked out well in life. Where I think we’re getting to a better spot where people are saying hey I that isn’t my goal. My goal is not to be busy, busy busy, but it’s to be focused and have mission. So what are some ways that you’re you’re finding that leaders are adding more margin or getting more margin into their lives in in this season?
Sean Morgan — Yeah I think that there’s a couple things. The first one is just listen to your spouse.
Rich Birch — So true.
Sean Morgan — Husbands listen to your wives; wives listen to your husbands. Um I am always amazed when I talk to a leader’s spouse at how smart they are…
Rich Birch — Right? So true.
Sean Morgan — …and how insightful. And these leaders are immersed in ministry all day long and need you talk to their spouse for 10 minutes and they can summarize everything in a couple of minutes.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that is so true.
Sean Morgan — So listen to those people close to you, and that includes your team, but there’s an additional there’s probably an additional onus with working with your team, as you have to give them permission. Like genuine permission – they have to know they can speak into things. Because I think it’s probably almost 100% true that most employees know what their boss’s weaknesses are.
Rich Birch — So true. Yes.
Sean Morgan — And most employees, like we all think we know what our boss’s weaknesses are. Um, so I I think the it’s also true that they know when you’re doing things that are going to be moving the organization forward and where it seems like you might be getting pulled, and we can all be numb to that – that frog and water concept. Which I’ve never tried that with a frog – I’m not recommending it. But…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Sean Morgan — …But you know you know what I’m saying. It’s like the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nobody knows that that is actually a true thing. But the metaphor works.
Rich Birch — A thing that happened ah true. Don’t let yeah exactly exactly it’s good.
Sean Morgan — So we have to build that into our teams. We have to say it and then they have to feel that we mean it when we said it. Like I tell leaders there’s no such thing as an open door policy. You can’t just say that because that puts the onus on them to come in and break the ice and enter. You you can have an open door policy, but you have to grease the skids, right? You have to create the culture that allows things to move that direction and I think as we listen to our spouses on where am I spinning my wheels? If I had to say no to one more thing, what what would that be? And we need to do the same thing with our teams, and we have to ask them and we have to mean it, which means we have to have showed them that they they really can speak into that. That’s different. There is a ah, decades old sort of like just that loneliness of the corner office and some of those things are fairly unavoidable, but some of those things I think have been created over the years of leadership isolation. And we can do some things about it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. I love that. I think that’s so true. I think we have to it’s like we’ve got to go first when it comes to creating and a community a culture with our teams where they’re willing to call us on our stuff, right? We’ve got to show that; we’ve got to open up that vulnerability. We have to you know we have to work to be transparent. It doesn’t just magically happen. I love that. Now I’d love to pivot in here a little bit more about what you’re doing in cohorts. I just love what you’ve done here. I have had multiple friends that have engaged with you have done have just really been incredibly blessed by you know what you do but kind of tell us a little bit about that. What you know what are what are these magical cohorts that you are ah, you know you’re leading with leaders across the country. Has that worked? Give us kind of description of what that looks like.
Sean Morgan — Yeah, well we started this about seven years ago and the whole point of it was I had felt over the years, and you see it more clearly now, but you know content was everywhere. And more people were engaging in content and it’s basically free, right? Books you can get for free. Libraries. Audible. If you really follow an author most authors are blogging, like their thoughts are out there. If they’re pastors they’re preaching about some of the same stuff they’re writing about. Podcasts. So there was there was a ah, rising just as the amount of content available at your fingertips if you were hungry was was rising. It was basically unlimited then, and it’s beyond unlimited now. That doesn’t really work mathematically, but you know, um, and so I started feeling like what are what are… that that actually could feel heavy right? It could feel dizzying, so what are leaders doing with that content? And I had a theory. One: leadership’s lonely. We talked about that – some some of those things you can fix some of them you can’t, but leadership’s lonely. And two, I had this thought that you, everybody has to process the information out there. Um, in fact, it’s almost like it’s data…
Rich Birch — Right.
Sean Morgan — …and then as you process it it becomes informative. It becomes information. So it’s noise, right? And then you you capture pieces of it and then as you process it and think about it and there’s a certain amount of that – introverts do more of their processing by themselves, extroverts with others, but we all need to share ideas with other people. We all need other people to lean in and validate our thinking. And so I started this thing of there’s a lot of great conferences out there, there’s a lot of great content out there, leadership gatherings out there. What if I could do more with getting leaders around fire pits, or my podcast leaders in living rooms, at those metaphors, but I was actually literally thinking about what if I could do that and curate, not only who’s there but what they come in wanting to wrestle with, like if you could get the right who’s and they already know sort of central themes that they have in common then they’re walking in the door maybe having no relational connection. But the possibilities of tight relational connections are right there on the cusp.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Sean Morgan — And then what if you could so you could curate that and then what if you could facilitate the conversations that begin to bring that out. Here’s what I’m seeing, here’s why I’m seeing it, here’s why I think it’s important to me. What do you guys think? Well I know you I’ve been to your church and so that all create that all that type of thing sort of creates ah, proximity and a closeness that really I would just rev revolve around the word relationship. And you’ll ask better questions of me if we’re in a better relationship because there’s trust that begins to form. And so I asked myself and we we experimented and we got some things right early on and we got some things that we didn’t get right and we and we continue to make tweaks and adjustments. But I asked could we create that and one of the things was how would we do that and the other thing was how often do you need to do it. And we came up with three, we think for all of our cohorts. We pretty much kick them off and they gather physically, typically in an AirBnB three times a year, and we come underneath ah, the tutelage of a mentor. Somebody typically we’ve studied, we all know, who open up their home, and in the inside version of their life and leadership and we usually get access to their executive team. So there’s a personal sort of thing of that in their home and then there’s a professional side of it into their executive team in their church.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Sean Morgan — And all the while we’re doing all everything together, right? So we’re we’re doing coffee together. We’re piling around cars together. We’re doing meals together, and it just brings us closer and closer and it’s all those little in-between things that take what generally would be good and just keep adding 5 or 10% to it to where it really has become a great thing.
Rich Birch — Love this. Friends, if you’re listening in and you’re not experiencing something like this, I would highly recommend that you reach out to Sean and his team. We’re going to give you more details at the end. But but even if you don’t want to talk with him, these kinds of relationships where you’re journeying over an extended period of time with a group of people with intentions—so it’s not just like hey we’re dudes hanging out or we’re we’re leaders hanging out—it’s like hey we’re we’re we’re wrestling with the same kinds of issues and we’re in each other’s lives enough to be able to push in, I just think there’s so much value there for sure. So interestingly in a so time when—I’d love to hear why this is because it seems intentional looking out I’ve never asked you this question—in a time when everything is going online, everything is like over Zoom. Everything is digital. It’s like The Ascent Leader you’re going the opposite direction. You got to get on planes, you got to get in rental cars, you got to sit in people’s backyards. Why? What is the magic in that? Why why bother? Why not why doesn’t it just all work over Zoom?
Sean Morgan — Yeah, that it is very intentional, and I I applaud everything that people are doing to to pioneer and experiment into those spaces. And obviously during the pandemic that was life-giving to so pretty much everybody. Um. And so I’m all for that. You know the idea of of digital community and things like that like, I’ve I’ve been deployed in the air force I’ve been deployed 4 times so I’ve spent about a year of my life living in a tent somewhere on the other side of the planet. So been a digital husband and a digital dad in those moments, right? Lots of phone calls, lots of Facetimes, and all those things – it was wonderful. Um I wouldn’t choose that as my first option, I’d rather like take my kids out to ice cream than watch them eat ice cream on Zoom but that’s what was available. It was a wonderful tool. And so I feel the same way, like there are some great things there but I I do feel that at the end of the day, we talked about this or on the podcast, we’re still people. We’re still us – we are still made for community. So there’s Adam in the garden, and what did God say? Said this not good.
Rich Birch — By himself. Yeah, yeah.
Sean Morgan — But when community was created…
Rich Birch — It’s very good.
Sean Morgan — …this is very good. There’s something in us. We are hardwired to be like our creator in many ways and there is a community in the trinity. And there will be always a longing for community and so I think some of that is just physical proximity. And even you know not I’m not a mass person or a no mass person you know, do it, you need do to say safe and follow guidelines. But I’ll use that a little bit as a metaphor of like there’s something pleasing to taking your mask off—like metaphorical mask of of showing people who you are and the literal mask of kind of being able to, like I do feel like like you can hide behind that and like where I think you’re actually seeing in young people like they’re reluctant to take their mask off not because they care about Covid but because there’s some social anxiety, but once you begin to trust the people around you, you’re okay taking your mask off and um, yeah, so.
Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well I love this and you know I as ah so in my time in the local church I’ve been in that executive pastor seat, you know, two and a half decades of that kind of work, and one of the things I’ve said for years with senior pastors that I love and have a real honor and privilege—guys like Carey – our mutual friend, Tim Lucas, Bruxy Cavy in Toronto—you know for years I said to those folks particularly that they don’t have a peer on the staff team. There might be 50, 60, 70 people on the staff team, but and and I and I am a good friend of theirs and I um, love them and care for them and you know do everything we can, but I’m not a peer and a lot of times those people particularly those lead pastors or communicators, people who do that, the work of their lives is so different than the rest of their team and the thing I love about what you do is you create a place where people like that can get those kinds of relationships and so it is such a different pressure. I know a communicator is is one of the cohorts you do um where it’s obviously groups of people who you know communicate for a living and that’s such a strange, that’s a strange, weird head thing where it’s like you are the product of the organization and you’re leading at the same time. Man, that’s an odd relationship to be in, and I can kind of see it, but man to get around with some other folks. I know you also do a Transitions cohort. Tell me about that. What’s that one all about?
Sean Morgan — Yeah, that’s the thing that I spent about 80% of my time on personally, and there was a lot – ten years ago there was a lot going on about succession transition stuff, but really if you go if you go look at 95/99% of it, it’s about planning for succession. And I realized that there’s this baton pass and then what’s on the other side of that is everybody on the church kind of goes oh oh glad that’s over with. And then what’s on the other side of that is typically a 35 to 45 year old first time lead pastor, not always first time but sometimes, probably the vast majority and they’re they’re going. Um. I feel like a fake because I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m in charge and I don’t want to tell anybody because I don’t want him to lose confidence like I do believe I’m called here. So what do I do? In the axioms of leadership that I’ve been taught on the team don’t always apply leading the team, right? What got you here won’t get you there? Like what got you here on the team won’t get you there leading the team. You’ve you’ve got to shift gears in some ways as a leader in that role and just in the season of transition where everything is the way it is because somebody else decided it that way and set the culture that way. So it was this enigma and they were very lonely leaders. So that was the first thing that I began to step toward is working with post-succession, transitions leaders and it continues to be the mainstay of what we do. We just launched this week Church Planters – so there’s two ways to become a lead pastor. You either follow somebody or you go plant your own, and we just announced this week that we’ll be launching Church Planter cohorts, and I’m really pleased – that’s with Andy Wood who’s a friend of yours at Echo. He’ll be the director of that space.
Rich Birch — Right. That’s fantastic.
Sean Morgan — So we’ll really be able to help lead pastors across the board and I’m really pleased with that. God’s clearly ordained that. And the transition site really just continues to to gain momentum and looking to develop some content that will come out later this fall to help leaders outside of what we do in the Cohort. We’ll have some digital content out there.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well Sean, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate you giving us some time today to check in and and to hear where you’re at and to learn. Is there anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Sean Morgan — You know, first of all, thank you. It’s an honor to be here and I know you’ve got a great following with this podcast, and it’s your 600 episodes in, so that says a lot, like you’re bringing it in. I think Carey is the one it says with podcast people paying with their time and you’re clearly honoring that, and so it’s just a joy to step in and speak into that. I mean there’s a couple other things – I think one of the things that that leaders are going to have to address and we can talk about this later or and there’s some other experts that I think we will know some is. Most leaders saw an increase in giving during the Pandemic. Um, not all churches but most of them did pretty good, but they saw a decrease in giving units, which means their major gifts were were the driver behind that which is hey that’s a blessing, but there’s there’s some stuff below the surface that’s gonna have to be you know, worked on in churches to address that. And if you didn’t have major gifts coming in your budget was probably down. Maybe even way down. And so there’s some things that have to be addressed there. So I think that’s another huge topic that’s looming in the next few months. In fact just talking with leaders in the last thirty days, I have heard this story, I’ll bet at least 6 times, and it’s December giving was the single best month we’ve ever seen. In January and February we’re as much as 30% below budget and we don’t know why. Ao there could be this that could be a more poignant conversation sooner than I than we all hope it will be. I hope it won’t be, but I do think in the next three months or six months leaders are going to have to go deep there, face the music there, and begin to take action in different ways.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. You know I’ve been saying to friends, similarly, I’ve been saying you know if you don’t have a systematic approach on the fundraising side of what you do on the revenue generations—I literally just two days ago was talking with a lead pastor about these issues. He was you know he was picking my brain on some of that stuff and and um, you know at the end of the call I said to him I said, you know thinking about revenue needs to be a normal part of your day. Like this this shouldn’t be an exception. This shouldn’t be a like oh once a year I think about it, twice a year I think about it. It’s like every week you’re going to need to think about how are we increasing revenue. And I think a lot of our churches have skated by not having to do that, but that is odd for organizations of our size with the number of staff and the revenue that… Most organizations the senior leader—ah so a portion, a slice – it might not be all but it would be you know a third of their time—they’re thinking about revenue, they’re thinking about what… And that’s and that’s like that’s like Elon Musk, you know richest guy in the world, you know runs a big organization – he’s thinking about how are we going to sell more spaceships, how do we sell more you know… he doesn’t delegate it all that he’s actually wrestling through that. And the same is true for us, I think, but for some reason there are still church leaders out there that look at that as like oh that’s like below me or it’s like you know it’s yucky; I don’t want to think about it. So and that’s interesting.
Sean Morgan — Yeah, and I think it could be over spiritualized. Well, it’s God’s provision and all this I saying its like well yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan.
Rich Birch — That’s a good that’s a good word. Yeah yeah, exactly exactly and take some action on it. Sean, so good. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with The Ascent Leader, or track with you? How do how do we want people to kind of follow up with you post today’s episode?
Sean Morgan — Yeah I mean the best way our our website is great. We just did an update late last year which is The Ascent Leader A-S-C-E-N-T … theascentleader.org and their our social’s really through Instagram @theascentleader.
Rich Birch — Love it. Thanks so much, Sean. Appreciate you being here, and I look forward to having you back in the future.
Sean Morgan — Would love to. Thanks, Rich! Thanks for all you do.
Rich Birch — Take care.
Tips for Making Your Church More Single Friendly with Kaylee Estes
Mar 24, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kaylee Estes who was the Connections Pastor at Restoration Community Church in Denver, Colorado.
More and more people are single in our churches today than in previous generations. Younger people are waiting longer to get married, the divorce rate continues to increase, and even as lifespans increase, married people will likely find themselves widowed at some point. Listen in as Kaylee talks with us today about how to better create space for single people in our churches.
Don’t overlook singles. // Many ministries, events, and messaging in churches are built around couples and two-parent families, and single people may feel overlooked or pigeonholed. The fact is there are more singles across all age spans in our churches than ever before and it’s important to communicate to them in a way that they can connect to without putting them in a box.
Be careful about using the “singles” label. // While labeling small groups or ministries with the word “singles” is done with a good intention, it can inadvertently communicate that the purpose of the gathering is for dating only and puts unnecessary pressure on people. Single people may be wanting to connect with their peers in a similar stage of life for reasons other than finding a partner. Instead of using the word “singles”, try other terms like “30-somethings” or “college and career”. It’s ok if the groups are co-ed. The truth is when you get a bunch of people in a room, whether it’s a small group or a larger social ministry, people who are single are going to find each other just as married couples will find each other.
Use stories from singles too. // Whether you are the pastor who does most of the preaching, you handle the social media, or you are responsible for some other aspect of external church communications, pay attention to the stories, metaphors and examples you use. It’s harder for a single person to identify with a marriage-related story and apply that to their own life. However, if you share a more relationally-neutral story, such as about coworkers/classmates, neighbors, or friends, then both a married and single person can put themselves into that scenario. Share about how a widowed 42 year old is stewarding their finances well, or how a divorced 64 year old is living on mission. Or how a never-married 20-something is serving their community. Use a variety of ages and stages in your examples.
Ask, don’t assume. // A lot of times people make assumptions about singles, what they need, and how they want to be involved in the church rather than asking them. Don’t assume that single women want to do all the serving in your kids ministry. And don’t assume that the bulk of the volunteering should fall to young single people or they will become burned out. Ask them how you can better support, serve, and equip them. Ask them what they want to do in your church. Don’t just assign them tasks that you think they’ll like; ask them where they feel most called to be.
Represent a variety of life stages. // Don’t overlook single people in the photos of your church life. In both the graphics inside your church and on your website and social media, use images of singles as well as couples and families. Feature perspectives from single people in your messaging too.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, everybody. Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad to have you tuned in today. You know every week we bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Excited to have my new friend, Kaylee Estes, with us. She was the Connections Pastor at a fantastic church at Colorado – Restoration Community Church – a fantastic church – you’re gonna want to ah be following along with them. Ah Kaylee was a Connections Pastor there which is a fantastic part of ah, you know the church as we’re trying to get people plugged in – something we love to talk about. Kaylee, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Kaylee Estes — Thank you, thank you – thank you for having me.
Rich Birch — Um, why don’t you tell us about the kind of scope of the Connections role. Um, what was that? That looks hand look a little bit different at at churches. So talk to us about what that you know looks like.
Kaylee Estes — Yep, yeah, it definitely looks different at all churches. So at Restoration the role was twofold. The biggest portion of my role was overseeing our small groups and groups ministry and then I also oversaw all of our first impressions, assimilation, that sort of thing as well.
Rich Birch — Nice, okay and the to kind of tell us about ah Restoration a little bit. Like give us a sense of the you know, just the kind of style of ministry and how how did small groups fit into that. But just you kind of fill out the picture a little bit for folks that wouldn’t know.
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, sure. Of course. So Restoration’s a nondenominational church and they are fantastic. They really emphasize excellence and they also emphasize um Bible knowledge, and really understanding what our faith looks like as well as making sure that we are growing and that we are also evangelizing – making sure that we’re going out to our city and and telling people about us. So small groups was a pretty integral piece for that. When I got started though they did not have anybody overseeing small groups, so I came on board and I got to really you know, jumpstart their ministry there, and and it was really cool because I was able to try a lot of new things and what didn’t work I, you know, threw out the window and kept going and tried new things. And by the end of the 3 years that I was their Connections Pastor I ended up tripling their their groups’s numbers and it was just a really thriving ministry so it was really fun.
Rich Birch — It’s fantastic. very cool. Well I know from previous conversations as we’ve been connecting and getting ready for today that um, I’m really excited to have you on because this is one of those topics – it hard to believe; I think we’re 600 episodes in and this could actually maybe be germane to the problem. We’re almost 600 episodes in and I don’t think we’ve had this conversation, which is ah, and so I come confessing to you, my pastor, that we haven’t talked about this issue that we should be which is really the whole area of how we create space for single people in our churches. And I think so many times our churches are built around either couples or built around families and I know you’ve got some passion in this area. Um, let’s just start at kind of a broad level. Why should churches be worrying about thinking about creating a space for single folks in their community?
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, so personally this has become a passion of mine because I am single, have been single unmarried, um forty years old so it’s been a while now. Um but wouldn’t change it, to be honest, and but in a broader sense the reason why it’s become such a passion of mine is that more and more people are single in our churches. And it’s from a few different aspects. So there’s there’s the fact that our younger generations are waiting longer to get married, and so therefore we’re going to have more single people because of that. And then also on the flip side of that, we have you know our divorce rates continue to increase and so we have more people who are divorced and so than they’re single. And then as people continue to increase their ah lifespans we’re going to see more and more widows and widowers. So across all age age gaps or age spans, we’re going to see more and more singles—um, unfortunately or fortunately, either way—um, coming into our church or that we can go and evangelize to.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. You know, I know um I saw this chart once that was fascinating. It was looking at the age of the first marriage of, it was it was men um over a hundred years. And you know, the interesting thing about this chart was—and maybe I’ll find and put it in the show notes—was if you look back one hundred years ago um the average because of life expectancy was much lower, um, people were getting married in the last third of their life. Well that because of life expectancy has gone up that has even though in the last say twenty years we would say people are getting married later, they’re actually getting married in the percentage of their life way earlier which has this interesting kind of, you know, when you talk about widows on the back end, there’s interesting interesting stuff there.
Kaylee Estes — Yep.
Rich Birch — So let’s let’s dig in. Um, we’ve got, you know, a few thousand church leaders listening in and what would be, where do we need to start when we’re thinking about how do we create space for single people? How? What what are we doing? What do you see in churches that are like, ooh that’s like ah a problem like ah either whether it’s quick fixes or stuff that we should be thinking about? Um, you know how do we create a better a better community feeling for folks who aren’t aren’t married, for whatever reason?
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, exactly. I think that, first of all, I think that a lot of times churches try to find some big fix, like how can we have a paradigm shift, or how can we do—which is great in a lot of a lot of areas—but I think that just some of the the key starting points um, the three that I have identified are actually really subtle and really simple. And the first one is really the language that you’re using surrounding your groups or your Ministry Names. So a lot of times people say oh well we have a singles ministry or we’re going to create a bunch of singles groups for our singles and so then they’ll be able to gather and you know hang out with each other, which is a good intention, right? That’s a great intention. However, for me personally, um and a lot of people I’ve talked to, we can’t stand it. When you put singles in a name. We just can’t, because the moment you do that you’ve now created like this pressure, or this um this perceived assumption that everybody in that group or that Ministry is wanting to date and that that’s a dating pool.
Rich Birch — Hmm. Okay, okay.
Kaylee Estes — And for a variety of reasons there could be people in there who don’t want to date. Um, they could be just feeling like they need a season of of singleness. They could be um, right after a divorce, they could have gone through a really hard season of depression or addiction and they’re just needing to kind of come out of that. Whatever the reason, they may not want to be put into a forced pressure situation where all of a sudden everybody who’s there knows that we’re all singles and we all might want to date. So you know, we have apps for that. We don’t need that in church and then.
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah isn’t that funny? That that’s an interesting um phenomenon I’ve definitely seen where it’s like any anytime we identify something as a singles event the assumption is that’s a bunch of people who are not wanting to be single…
Kaylee Estes — Yes, yes.
Rich Birch — …which is a funny – that’s that’s an odd kind of cultural thing for sure.
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, well and part of that is um, you know for whatever reason historically um, the church sees singleness as a waiting period before you get married.
Rich Birch — Okay, yep.
Kaylee Estes — And so there’s this assumption that every single person wants to get married and wants to get married right now. And you know honestly, that’s just not true for again variety of reasons. And um like I said for the younger generations it’s just not true because they’re waiting. They’re wanting to um, experience life, work on their careers, go travel, do whatever they’re wanting to do, and so they’re waiting to get married. Um, so yeah, but what I so what I did as a Connections Pastor is I made sure, I intentionally made sure that we did not put the word singles anywhere. And so um when we had groups that started and I had someone who would come to me and say, hey I want to start a singles group. I’d go, great, that sounds wonderful – we’re not going to put the word singles in it. Um, you can, you know, call it the Wash Park Group (which is a location in Denver). You can call it, you know the 30-somethings group. Whatever you want to call it um, just don’t put the word singles in there. And you can make it coed if you want to. Because the truth is is that when you get a bunch of people in a room whether it’s a small group or a larger social ministry people who are single are going to find each other, just like people who are married are going to find each other. So we don’t we don’t need people telling us what to do. We’re we’re grown adults. We know what to do.
Rich Birch — Mmm, interesting.
Kaylee Estes — And the other reason for me too as a pastor is, I really want to keep that small group kind of sacred in a way because the small group specifically, you know, that’s where we’re supposed to come together as a community and grow and hold each other accountable, and learn, and and develop deeper relationship with God, and spiritual rhythms, and that sort of thing. And so I don’t want people walking into a small group thinking, oh who am I going to date from this small group? Like that just kind of weirds me out to be honest.
Rich Birch — Sure. Sure, totally. So now have you found as a Connections Pastor there does seem to be two general schools of thought or two general approaches that churches take. One are kind of affinity-based groups that do that would lend themselves to the kind of like singles group or there’s the like 30-somethings-with-kids group, or there’s the like 40-somethings-bald-guys-who-like-technology group, which would be mine, or or there’s the or there’s the the kind of geographically-based groups that are more like hey let’s be in, like you mentioned, ah you know a particular neighborhood. From ah a single perspective is it better to lean more towards the the kind of community-based – is that is that a better more welcoming environment, or can it work in both approaches?
Kaylee Estes — Honestly I think it can work in both approaches. I think if you’re a bigger church, then you have a lot more opportunity to do everything, right? Because if you have a bigger church then you’re going to have the people who are wanting to go and ride bikes forever, and there’s going to be singles or marrieds. And then there’s going to be people who want to be in the geographic location, and so on and so forth. And so bigger churches have a lot more flexibility. Um, if you’re a smaller church I—like um Restoration is, we see about 400 people on a weekend—um, you you really do need to think a little bit more broad, just because you don’t want to isolate singles and you also don’t want to pigeonhole them. And so you want to think more on the terms of a geographic location or broad age group. So 30-somethings or young adults or um, you know, mid-professionals or something like that where it’s a little bit broader.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Kaylee Estes — But you also don’t want it to be so broad that you end up with some 20s and 40s and 60s…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kaylee Estes — …because yes they can get along – I’m not saying they can’t; please hear me there. And yes, they can have fun. I have mentors who are older than me and I mentor younger people. So um I’m not saying that, but like I said you get a bunch of single people in a room and they’re going to be looking for someone else – potentially. Maybe not right now, but maybe someday down the road if and if and when they want to get married. And so you don’t want to put 20s and 40s and 60s together because a twenty year old does not need to be dating a sixty year old and vice versa.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kaylee Estes — Um, so you do want to kind of keep some boundaries in there.
Rich Birch — Okay, very cool. So You said there were there were a number of things so I get this our language totally understand that what else should we be thinking about.
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, so another thing that’s really simple for um, lead pastors for sure, but then also anybody who does social media marketing or any sort of communication coming from the church, is also a language thing. So it’s changing um, your stories, your metaphors, your examples – those sorts of things. So a lot of lead pastors, not all, but a lot of them are married, and so by default they will share stories from their marriage, or from a marital perspective, which again I totally understand and I get because that is easy for them, and also Jesus used a lot of marriage metaphors, so I I truly do understand that. But again, there’s more and more single people in our church and so it’s harder for a single person to hear a marriage story or a marriage metaphor and switch that into: well what does that look like for me as a single person? However, if you share a story that’s more relationally neutral, so you talk about friends, or you talk about coworkers or whatever. Then that married person can put themselves into that pretty fast, especially if you’re talking about friends because typically your spouse is one of your friends, and so you’ll just automatically think oh well I’ll just grab my spouse and go do x-y-z. Um, a simple one that I’m thinking about is a lot of times pastors like to talk about um you know, being a good neighbor. And so inviting neighbors over for dinner with your spouse, right? And so um, that happens a lot I hear that one a lot and that’s great, but again for a lot of people who have roommates who are single, who are living by themselves, like they don’t have a spouse. And so if we can say things like, hey go grab one of your friends, or go grab your roommate and invite your neighbors over for dinner or um, go play games with them. You know, game nights are super fun, or whatever it is, then that again that married person can put themselves into that story really really easily. And so it makes it a little bit more um, a little bit easier for the single person to be invited into that conversation, and not feel ostracized which is usually what ends up happening.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Kaylee Estes — And so similarly with social media, with other sorts of you know, communication again, make sure that you’re using examples that are I guess single-friendly for lack of a better term.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm – no, that’s good.
Kaylee Estes — Um, but always grab stories from, you know, the couples, the marrieds, the couples with kids, you know, whatever – also try and grab stories from single people. You know, how are single people stewarding their finances well? How are single people reaching their communities? And again that single person could be a widowed 42 year old. It could be a divorced 64 year old. It could be a never married 23 year old. But getting those different perspectives um, again helps those people not feel ostracized, not feel like they’re on the outside. Because there is plenty of messaging within a church talking about marrieds and families, and I always put families in quotations because that’s usually assuming that it’s a married person with children.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Kaylee Estes — And there’s a lot of different families out there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, the definition of family is pretty broad in most of our communities, right?
Kaylee Estes — Yes.
Rich Birch — And and we often do just portray family as mom and dad and kids, right? And that’s you know that’s not necessarily the case for sure.
Kaylee Estes — Yes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I think that’s a great coaching around you know the language we use. And it’s a good reminder that you, know, we’ve seen this in other contexts, other podcasts that we’ve done, that particularly as the church grows, teaching, the kind of weekend teaching/preaching…
Kaylee Estes — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …whatever that’s called your church becomes a team effort – that there’s like multiple people contributing to that message…
Kaylee Estes — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — …and ensuring that someone who is single, or at least has that hat on is thinking about it from a single perspective, would be very helpful to be like…
Kaylee Estes — Yeah.
Rich Birch — …hey there’s you know there are probably some simple ways we could tweak this that that are not going to take any problems. It’s not gonna take away the messaging for people who are married with kids but could really open up the door a little bit more for single folks.
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, and I’m actually really glad you brought that up because one of the things that Restoration did that I thought was really excellent is that um they had me as a single female on their teaching team calls. And so we had like you said a variety of people teaching, and I would be on those calls every single week, and it was really just so that I could sit there and say the things that you’re just now saying. So I could sit there and say ,oh hey like you just talked a lot about marriage like can you please do do something that’s not about marriage because people like me are just going to shut down, because we’re not there yet and we may never be.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kaylee Estes — So um, just finding that person that that you trust theologically, that you trust their opinion and asking them to be in those calls, or in those meetings is a really simple, easy way to make sure that when you’re structuring your series, when you’re structuring your messages, you have someone kind of checking checking that out for you.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Are there other areas where you could see that engaging a single you know like you say a trusted leader who’s single um are there other areas where you could say, hey this would be a good place to just bring them in the room and ask questions and and explore. There’s some other examples of that – the teaching one seems like a really obvious one to me.
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, yep.
Rich Birch — I’m like oh yeah, of course that’s like such a win. Are there other, you know, aspects of our – design of our experiences or, you know, those kind of things that would be really helpful you think?
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, to be honest, the short and easy answer is invite them everywhere.
Rich Birch — Sure, sure. Yes.
Kaylee Estes — Because because here’s the thing, like a lot of times people make a lot of assumptions about singles instead of just asking the singles, what do you want to do, or how can I support you? And so no matter what the area is—whether it’s your your kid’s ministry, whether it’s your students’ ministry, if you have college your college ministry, your first impressions, greeters—whatever it is just ask. Ask them, you know, what what can we do better for you, or what do you want to do? Um, you know I have an example where we had a young lady. We had a college that’s really close to our church and we had a young lady who came in and and said, oh I really want to serve and so the person my colleague immediately put her on the greeting team. And said: great – we need greeters. Let’s put you on the greeting team. She’s like great. Okay. So she starts greeting. Well about three months later she comes up to us and says you know I’m really shy, and I can’t stand greeting. I actually really want to do the tech team.
Rich Birch — Ah, sure. Sure. Yes. Yes.
Kaylee Estes — And we’re like yes, we need people in the tech team. We always do. So we immediately switched her over and that was – that ended up being a positive experience because she was brave enough to come and talk to us but a lot of times people just get irritated, and they need to get angry, and to be honest, sometimes they leave the church because they’re like, wow you didn’t even ask; you just assumed. And um, that was ah a nice story because the assumption was also greeting, but to be honest, a lot of times for female singles the assumption is let me put you in kids. And I just personally that one ruffles my feathers because I…
Rich Birch — Mmm, grates on you. Yes.
Kaylee Estes — Um I don’t always want to assume that anyone wants to be with our children and also we want people who are with our children who are excited to be with our kids, right? We don’t want like quote unquote second tier and I’m not saying singles are second tier, or but or parents are, I’m just saying when you just automatically assume, oh well, we need help here so I’m just gonna put you here that…
Rich Birch — Sure.
Kaylee Estes — …that’s not the best way to build any ministry to be honest. Um, so really just asking questions and also another thing that I see happen a lot, and I literally have had colleagues say this to me, is they start asking single people to do multiple serving opportunities. So, oh you’re leading a small group. Great. Then that means that you can be um, you know a communion lead or you can be a first impressions lead, and also we’re gonna need help at parents night out so you’re gonna help with that too. And they just start heaping things on, and I’ve literally turned to my colleagues and been like, what are you doing? They’re going to be burned out and overwhelmed. And their response is, well they’re single – they have plenty of time.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kaylee Estes — And again that one drives me crazy. But it’s because just because we’re single doesn’t mean that we have tons of time.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kaylee Estes — Like yes, we do have some time that is more than a married person because we’re not investing in that marriage that married people are investing in. And we absolutely have more time than parents do ah hands down parents I just bow to you all. But um, but as singles we do have things that we’re doing. We have jobs just like everyone else. We make plans. We have friends and relationships that we’re trying to cultivate, and if we are choosing to date, well then we’re spending time dating and developing those relationships as well. And so you don’t want to burn your singles out.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kaylee Estes — And so don’t just automatically assume that they’re going to do two or three or four things. You know, really ask them. Ask them what they want to do. Ask them how they can be supported. Ask them if they want to potentially, you know, be on an advisory board or something like that to help you know, make sure that your social media is more friendly to singles – that sort of thing. But just ask questions. It’s really simple and we really appreciate it when he get asked.
Rich Birch — Love it. That’s so good. That’s so so helpful. When you think about um this you know I’m sure that you’ve bumped into churches that are like super pro, you know, singles – they’re like, hey this is a great, you know, this is a great thing. And then it’s almost like you can you can smell it from a mile away you walk into a church and you’re like oh this just is not this is not a great, you know, place for singles. What would be you know, two or three of those things on the negative side?
Kaylee Estes — Yeah.
Rich Birch — You’ve been so positive today. You’re a positive and uplifting encouraging person. What would be some of those things that you as a single leader ah you know you sit in a really unique spot. You’re both single and you’re a leader in in the church that you can just pick out quickly, like man you we need to stop. We need to avoid these things because they just single folks can smell it from a while away.
Kaylee Estes — You know when you walk into a building or um, walk into the foyer or whatever and all you see are pictures of couples and kids, then immediately you’re like oh great here we go. Because that right there, right? Imagery can set the tone for culture super fast. And so that one’s a big glaring one for me. Like it’s also a big glaring one for me for you know, um, showing different ages. Like just put a variety of people in your pictures. And that goes for your social media because a lot of times the quote front door is not walking into the building, but it’s going on to social media and it’s looking there. So for me, that’s a big glaring one, and then also um I would say just again, it’s it’s your messaging. It’s your language. So if someone sits in and on their very first sermon whether it’s in person or they’re listening to it online, and you don’t have any examples that include a single person or a single person’s perspective, then a red flag, red flag, red flag.
Rich Birch — Right. Love it.
Kaylee Estes — Um, and it just it’s just one of those things where you just really have to be as aware as you possibly can, and I know it’s hard from when you’re married. But um, yeah, you just really do have to work on it.
Rich Birch — Love it. So helpful. As we’re kind of coming down to land today’s episode, anything else you’d like to share with us as we kind of wrap up today’s conversation?
Kaylee Estes — Um, I just think bottom line I just want people to know that you know singles a lot of times get ah a bad rap as being selfish or or being self-centered, or whatever, because we we do cry out like this. Um, but but honestly it’s just because we want to be seen, we want to be heard, and we want to be known. And so that’s the simplest thing, again, is just go and engage the single people in your church. And just talk to them because that’s really all, we’re desperately wanting.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Love it. This has been so helpful – I really appreciate you ah you know being here today and helping us think through these issues. You’ve been so helpful for us as we wrestle through this issue and and hopefully it’s been encouraging for you listeners as you’ve been listening in. If people if people want to get in touch with you, kind of track with you on social media or any of that stuff, where do we want to send them online? Where’s the best place for them to to connect?
Kaylee Estes — Yeah, they can find me on Instagram – um I think my Instagram handle—I know I should know this—but I think it’s 303kaylee
Rich Birch — Nice. Great. Perfect.
Kaylee Estes — Um, and so yeah, go ahead, find me on Instagram. I’m starting a blog and so you’ll start hearing more from me. And yeah I’d love to have any of you there and and engage with you there. So please do.
Rich Birch — Perfect. Thanks, Kaylee – I appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you so much.
Kaylee Estes — Yes, thank you so much, Rich.
Inside a 4X Growth In Group Engagement at a Growing Church with Joe Boyd
Mar 17, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Joe Boyd, lead pastor of Grace Fellowship in Minnesota. They are one of the fastest growing churches in the country as well as a church-planting church and have started 28 churches during their 34 years of service.
Jesus changed the world with a small group. Groups help fulfill discipleship and fellowship functions, create a connection and family, plus are a critical component to helping your church close the back door. Listen in as Joe talks with us about how Grace Fellowship shifted their groups culture and saw a huge increase in engagement.
Take a look at the groups. // When Joe first stepped into his role as lead pastor at Grace Fellowship, he took a look at the small groups within the church to gauge their health. Within his first three months in leadership, Joe visited each of the small groups and found that only 23% of the adults in the church were participating in groups. The groups that were in existence were strong and the members enjoyed them, however no new groups were being started.
Create a plan ahead of time. // At this point Joe and his team made the commitment to shift from being a church with small groups to a church of small groups. They didn’t want to rush into things, so made a plan to launch more groups nine months out. Grace Fellowship looked to the Rooted experience at Mariners Church to provide training and brought their staff through it before rolling it out to the rest of the church. Both adults and youth were exposed to Rooted and the result was a 70% participation of adults and 100% participation of teens in groups.
Drip it before you drop it. // Before relaunching groups, Joe dripped the topic to the congregation by talking about groups over and over. After the staff went through the Rooted experience, the church rolled it out to their leaders. By reimagining small groups, by modeling it, and then by challenging their leaders to carry it out, Grace Fellowship began building a new culture.
Devote the resources. // As Grace Fellowship rolled out their plan for groups, they devoted a significant amount of time, money and key people to leading the process. They also built a campaign around the launch of groups through the fall and didn’t allow anything else to compete with it. This was tough on one hand because the church didn’t grow through the fall, but Joe saw existing people at the church consistently engaging and taking ownership of the church.
Make it a priority. // While growth didn’t come in the fall for Grace Fellowship, it did come at the beginning of the new year. Now people were confident that if they invited their friends to church, they would have a positive experience. Make it a priority to get groups right because it will give you the foundation to grow and not have constant turnover.
Slow down and work together. // If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with others. Slow down and spend time getting your team together to talk through a plan for groups. Not only does it allow everyone to bring their gifts and talents to the table to develop the plan together, but everyone will be bought-in when it comes time to roll out the plan.
Have a leadership structure in place. // Some lead pastors may think that churches become successful and grow based simply on their outside appearance – making themselves look attractive and fun. But the secret behind a growing church is having a leadership structure in place that is focused on developing and retaining leaders.
Focus on groups. // Looking to the future, Joe believes one thing that will scale up will be groups and group pastors. In groups you have to care for leaders and identify additional leaders for new groups so that you can make room for the number of people coming into your church. If you want to be a church of small groups as you grow, you need more leaders in the groups ministry than just about anywhere in your church. This will add to the success and health of your church moving forward.
Grow slow and strong. // A lot of times we get hung up on fast growth in our church. But Joe reminds us that compound growth that is slow over time can actually grow our church into one of the largest. We can have plans to grow, but we need to actually focus on and care for the people rather than just the numbers.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well hey, friends – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and I know today is going to be no exception to that. Super excited to have my friend Joe Boyd with us. We’ve known each other for a few years and it’s so exciting to have him on the podcast. We just were catching up from not having talked for a number of years – so good to have Joe with us. Joe is the lead pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It’s called Grace Fellowship in the Minnesota part of the world. They have one location, church online, it’s one of the fastest growing churches, they’re doing lots of incredible things in the Twin City Metros area. Welcome to the show, Joe; so glad you’re here.
Joe Boyd — Rich, it’s great to be back and great to see you and catch up and I’m looking forward to to sharing some insights that we’ve had around small groups this year.
Rich Birch — Fill out the picture for us about Grace Fellowship kind of paint the picture a little bit tell us a little bit about the church. Give us a a bit of a flavor of the church.
Joe Boyd — Yeah, um, Grace Fellowship is a church that’s 34 years old. It’s actually one of the few churches in the country that has that it’s a church-planting church in their bylaws and we’ve started 28 churches in those 34 years.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Joe Boyd — Um, and so there’s a long history of ah reproduction in this church and I’m the second pastor.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Joe Boyd — So the first pastor was here over 30 years and then they had a little over a year interim, and I answered the call to come up from Kansas to the Twin Cities and take over and, man, it’s been a wild ride stepping into you know the world turning upside down in the midst of all this. So yeah, it’s been a fun ride.
Rich Birch — Yeah, what a time to what what a time to start in a church. It’s great.
Joe Boyd — Yeah, yeah I like to think that it’s like dog years, so the past three years have been, you know the longest 21 years of my life.
Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah, so true that is so true. Love that. Well we are going to talk about groups and and I you had shared a little bit about what was happening at Grace, and I frankly I found that astonishing. It was one of those like lean in like, what-what-are-you-talking-about, you know, thing which is pretty incredible. But set the scene for us. Give us a sense of kind of what’s the group’s culture been like. What ah you know, kind of pre- some of the changes you’ve made as you think about what what did that look like. Give us kind of talk us through what that was kind of before um, the in the before times before you had made some changes on that area.
Joe Boyd — Yeah, coming in coming into Grace Fellowship… um I was I’ve made a shift. For a long time I was always focused on church growth and and I’m a starter – I’m a catalytic leader, and and for the ten years prior at my previous church we would grow but we’d have this back door. And so it wasn’t until the last three years I was there that we finally started to realize groups are so critical. And so we we started to make some changes and the church got way healthy. And um, and so when I came in that was one of my number one questions was how are we doing on groups? And they they said well you know, we’re doing pretty good, and and I personally made it a mission in the first first three months to visit every one of the small groups.
Rich Birch — Oh nice.
Joe Boyd — Now um inside of a church that was like 600/700 people um you would think that would take longer. But what I found was that only 23% of the adults in the church were participating in small groups.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Boyd — Now what I will say is that the groups I visited were very strong. There were even groups that had been meeting for fifteen or twenty years, and and so I didn’t want to turn any dials and mess those up. Um, but but what I did find was that they weren’t starting new groups. And so um, you know the way we would classify that is would say it was a church with small groups but not a church of small groups. So what what began was a commitment that we’re going to make this shift.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Joe Boyd — And it’s not going to happen overnight. Um, you don’t you don’t birth a baby in night. Ah you know without nine months, and the bigger the plane the longer the runway. So we said that we would launch groups in the fall. Um, and that was about nine months out. And what we learned was that we needed ah a plan to get there, so we leaned into what Mariners Church had done through Rooted and did the Rooted experience which was really good. A couple of real practical things: if you’re gonna be serious about groups, you’ve got to make a priority to identify money and people and time to it. And then we took our entire staff through Rooted before we did it as a church and…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah, that’s cool yet.
Joe Boyd — …That was really good because then they were able to speak with confidence that this was good. And um and I had one of my strongest leaders directing this and we started to add groups and follow the process, and when we pulled the trigger, the adults and the youth did this in our church and um, when we got to the end of it, we had 70% participation in the adults.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
We had a 100% participation with the teenagers and and and lives were being changed, we saw people grow groups form out of this and…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Boyd — And then that led us to turning the corner and going into the the 2020, which none of us saw coming…
Rich Birch — Yep, yes, yes.
Joe Boyd — …and and what happened there, Rich, was like everybody – I mean we got shocked, but what I believe was that God was already on the path of of creating the the ark or the lifeboats for for people. And so what we found was that we weathered the storms of isolation much better because the vast majority of our church were in groups. And so we saw care happen. We saw all those things happen. Now over the past you know year year and a half what we begin to notice, no matter how many times we’d call, checkup on people that were not plugged in, the vast majority of people who did not stay with the church for one reason or another ah, we’re not in groups…
Rich Birch — Were not groups. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Joe Boyd — …and and and and so so the groups really became the main force of the church, the way we communicated, the way we cared, and it was that was that was our saving grace.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, love it. Let’s dive into that a little bit. You know one of the things I’ve I’ve joked about and this is a part of why these numbers caught my attention was you know it seems like most churches can get a third, you know, maybe 30% between you know in that range of people in groups by just having groups. Like it’s like if you have groups you can get that many. Like and and that I don’t want to discourage anybody that’s listening in you know if you’re trying hard and that’s where you’re at, but that that is that seems to be the the dynamic. The thing that I found fascinating about this story was you were actually lower than that, you know, you were lower than the you know what that kind of like benchmark is and then have seen tremendous growth. Let’s pull apart what you did in that in that ramp that kind of nine months. How did you get it ready? We loved Rooted. We’ve had actually had Erin on from Mariners – that was I don’t know maybe two years ago so we’ve and we’ve had many churches talk about just how great it’s been, but let’s let’s pull apart what kind of happened in those nine months to get ready for that. I understand you went through with your staff, but what are the things could we kind of ah, help leaders to think about as it you know if they’re looking to try to increase their engagement on the group side in ah you know these months and and years.
Joe Boyd — Well I would say first and foremost our elders pulled away and we really prayed about the priorities of the church and that was the one that kept coming through that we knew we were going to engage our community and serve our community but we really knew we wanted to get discipleship and groups down because. It it it fulfills so many functions of the church it fulfills fellowship but it also fulfills discipleship and it creates this connection and family. Jesus changed the world with a small group.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Joe Boyd — And and so we we we think about that a lot. And so that was the first thing, having the support, having prayed through that through a retreat, coming back and being resolved about it. And then what happened was begin to, as lead pastor, begin to drip it before we dropped it. I would sprinkle in and just talk about small groups, small groups, small groups all the time. and. And as we were building up to it in Minnesota the summers are kind of a time when people really get out and go north and go to the cabins and go to lakes and, but we continue to work through that time preparing for these moments where we were gonna we were building the team that was praying. So simultaneously we had the the staff going through it as quickly as we could to have the experience all experiences, and we process that what was good what what, you know, what did we learn. And and then we begin to roll it out to our leaders and we were building this culture by reimagining small groups, by modeling it. And then challenging our leaders to carry it out. And and we had a plan. We devoted significant amounts of resources. When we were at 23% we weren’t really spending very much money on groups, and we weren’t spending a lot of time on groups. We weren’t preaching and teaching about it. And we definitely didn’t have a full time designated person to it. Once we did that, that’s whenever things started to move forward.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Joe Boyd — Um, the the other thing we did was we we built up to a campaign. We did not compete against this time.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Boyd — Um, as ah as a catalytic, evangelistic, outreach-oriented pastor, all right – you know me to know that’s true.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes.
Joe Boyd — Um, it took everything out of me, because when you launch a ten week series in the fall—which is a prime time for growth potentially—um I thought, well, we’re gonna just do this, but this was what we were doing. And and so we weren’t really growing. All the way up through Thanksgiving we didn’t really grow. But what I saw was the consistency of people coming and engaging. And another thing we noticed…
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Joe Boyd — …was that people quit saying “your church” and started calling it “their church”.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s great. That’s great. Love that.
Joe Boyd — As we ah as we saw people engage, they took ownership for the church. We had the funniest story that I heard in this whole thing was that um one of the group leaders um, was invited by a woman to come to the church 10 years prior. She was about to start Rooted and ran across that person—who didn’t go to the church anymore—invited that woman who originally invited her to the church back to the church…
Rich Birch — Right. Oh gosh; oh my goodness.
Joe Boyd — …she got into the groups, and here’s the best part – she started taking spiritual steps and that lady got baptized.
Rich Birch — Wow! I love it.
Joe Boyd — It was it was just crazy. So so so we got really stable and people took ownership of the church and um, we celebrated it, and I’m not good at that – I’m always onto the next thing…
Rich Birch — Yep sure, let’s go to the next thing. Yeah.
Joe Boyd — …but we celebrated it, and that was a critical moment. And then we set up hey here’s what’s next, and we went through Christmas, and we started in January, and that’s when our church really started to explode because people were confident that if they brought their friends, their friends would have the experiences they were having.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Boyd — And and so so making it a priority to get groups right actually gave us a foundation to grow and not have that constant turnover.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah I love this.
Joe Boyd — So those were just some of the big wins.
Rich Birch — I love it. You know, let’s talk about the series piece of it because you know this is one of those um things that we hear with regularity as we talk with churches that are not only um, you know seeing a higher levels of engagement in and the group side, but are growing as a church – that they’re dedicating time in the fall and in the winter. um for you know, kind of ah an all church campaign. Um, you know it could be Rooted, it could be—you know there’s a lot of these out there—The Red Letter Challenge. There’s a lot of ways to do this, but it’s the idea of like let’s all focus for a certain amount of weeks on kind of a single idea. We’re going to give you some resources, we’re going to encourage you to get into a group. Um, what would be some of the the kind of outcomes from what you did that that first year? Have you continued to do that? Why or why not? Let’s talk through that series a little bit.
Joe Boyd — Yeah, we did. Um, we the following year we did another series. We didn’t go 10 weeks we went 7. Um and we wrote it. We wrote our own but we modeled the Rooted method. And and so we wrote “What’s a Galatian?” and went through the book of Galatians as a church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s fun.
Joe Boyd — And then um and and then we’ve also this year we did History Makers which takes us through the first 7 chapters of Acts. Um, so we’ve made it a commitment, a rhythm for us, that when we come back in the fall. We’re going to to start off in the fall and go to the end of October, maybe the start of November, and really get a groups’ push.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Boyd — Um that is all church-focused and very in the Bible – book-heavy. Um, we also did a push this past year in February and March on relationships. I wrote a book that was in-house in our church called The Secret Sauce of Relationships, and we did the same thing there and we were seeing a boost in groups at that time because coming out of 2020 people were so isolated that they were desperate for relationships, and we were trying to create a habit of groups. Because you know when people don’t go to church, um, when they miss church they begin to not miss church.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good..
Joe Boyd — And so they get out of habit and out of routine. So we were trying to create a reason to build on those groups and we added a few groups. It wasn’t a lot but we added a few and we were building up steam and so when we did History Maker, which included video of the original people that started the church…
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool.
Joe Boyd — …and in conjunction with Acts and the story of Acts. Um, we made a jump and we didn’t even realize we made it until October – the end of October – because we measure all of October and we measure all of February for groups participation and those are the 2 times we measure. And we jump from 70% to 93%.
Rich Birch — That’s unreal, dude. That’s crazy.
Joe Boyd — Um and it and that’s in a year where we grew over 50% from the year before in adults coming out of all those.…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s unreal.
Joe Boyd — Yeah yeah, it’s, Rich, I’m telling you this is so not like it’s it’s not…
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s crazy.
Joe Boyd — There wasn’t a really smart person that came… well there was: God. Jesus Christ came up with this plan.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, well and friends, I know, listen I just want to underline this. Um, you know Joe’s leading one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It would be really easy for you to say, well, it’s easy to grow from 20 to you know, 90% in groups by by shrinking the church just to have less people attend and then you’ll have… But that’s not what’s happening. You’re seeing both increased engagement in groups and growth. You know from a kind of top line or weekend service point of view, which is which is amazing. That’s incredible to see. That’s that’s amazing. Praise God. And like you say, that that you know a big part of this is, you know, He’s moving in His people which is incredible, but that’s amazing. I love that, Joe.
Joe Boyd — Yeah, and in um, you know the interesting thing about about about our church is that um this church -God is really doing something. I would say in a lot of ways there’s a lot of tradition, a lot of history in this church of doing it ah, you know the way we always did it, and um and our elders and our staff and key leaders in the church have really been leaning into what the Holy Spirit’s doing and what we’re hearing.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Love that.
Joe Boyd — And I’ll tell you we we quit we quit chasing cool. Like I was the guy… there’s a lot of leaders and a lot of pastors out there that, I don’t know if you were like me, but I didn’t really know what to do so I’d look to see what the the hot churches were doing reaching people…
Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah.
Joe Boyd — …and and I’m like worked for them, let’s do that. And and and a lot of my early leadership was very, was more of an echo than a voice. Um and we started to really spend time listening to people and getting comfortable with where God placed us, and who we are, and I quit being a lone ranger leader that was driving fast and going by myself.
Rich Birch — Love that.
Joe Boyd — And I slowed down because I believe that if you want to go fast, go by yourself. But if you want to go far, go with others.
Rich Birch — Right; love that.
Joe Boyd — And so by slowing down and going with the team and and and seeing the gifts and the talents and letting the team help come up with the plan on how you do this, the buy-in was so much greater, and it seems… Listen, to every catalytic leader, you’re gonna think I’m crazy when I say this, but slowing down and getting your team together is—even if it feels like it’s slow and for me there were painful moments where I was like, seriously, like this doesn’t feel fast enough—
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Boyd — Um, it was the best decision we ever made.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Joe Boyd — Was the best decision we ever made.
Rich Birch — So ah, can I ask you a question from, you know, as ah I’m not a lead pastor; I’ve been in that kind of second seat – that’s where I’ve spent most of my time. And there seems to be a lot of lead pastor types out there um who—and I’m sure it’s not any of them that are listening into this podcast—but who seem to pay lip service to groups. They’re like no, no, no groups are really important, like they’re really really important. But then it it just doesn’t translate in either their own actions, like you saying hey I’m going to go and, you know, visit all our groups. Or it doesn’t translate in the way they prioritize their time, or they don’t see um, you know they’re not kind of structuring things around the church to to um, you know to really help and aid the the groups’ thing. Why do you think that is, and what would you say to a lead pastor who’s maybe a little bit skeptical, or just isn’t really into the the groups thing? What would you say to them?
Joe Boyd — I would say this – I’ve studied…I had I had the privilege of studying some of the fastest growing, healthiest churches in the country before I started my last church. And if you look at what gets attention um, you think that that’s the solution.
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Boyd — So largely content is is pushed out like crazy. If you want to hear great preaching… listen, the reason why American Church has shifted so much was because everybody realized, oh there’s great preaching on other churches in the internet and I’m home anyway so I’m gonna watch one of these communicators. Um.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right.
Joe Boyd — And I think that a lot of pastors think, oh the reason their church is big because of what they preach about, and the way that they preach, or that they’re creative, or I have to dress a certain way, or I have to ah vibe. I mean it’s it’s like buying a car by evaluating the way it looks on the outside.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good. That’s good.
Joe Boyd — Great paint job. Super cool look, but but here’s the thing very little time gets focused on the mechanics work where you lift the hood up, you check the engine, doesn’t even have an engine. Um, you know how does that work?
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Boyd — And and I would say that churches that are growing, and and pastors, I promise you there are people watching this right now that you’re better preachers than some of the 2000 and 3000 person church pastors that you’ve seen online. And you scratch your head and you go why? Why is this? Well it’s largely because there’s a leadership structure in place that is focused on retaining and developing leaders. And and and here’s the here’s the thing I came away with. In Isaiah 49 there’s this place where it says that that God hid me in the shadow of his hand. And the thought that I had was that… or the question I asked myself was am I more am I more concerned with being discovered, or am I more concerned with being developed?
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Joe Boyd — And and and I really think that if you want to see healthy things, think about this: Jesus drew crowds, but he sent them away. When he had crowds He sat them in groups and had his disciples lead and care for them. Um Jesus spent an enormous amount of time on groups. Forming groups, identifying and raising up leaders is very hard work. It often happens behind the scenes.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Joe Boyd — Um, it is not quick. It is not easy. We’ve all preached these great messages that cast vision and direction, but there was a structure for it…
Rich Birch — Yep.
Joe Boyd — …and so it just fades away. And so you have to lay the train tracks to run the train. And I believe that groups, and I believe leadership development in the church, are those train tracks.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Joe Boyd — And I just wasted enormous amounts of time preaching really cool stuff that didn’t have train tracks and it didn’t go anywhere.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, totally yeah.
Joe Boyd — That’s what I would say I think it’s a lack of knowledge um of just knowing how that part works and and it’s a lot of work.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I love that, Joe. And I you know I think there is a real… I think you’ve you’ve really echoed and hit on an important point there where, you know, a lot of times we are we’re appeal we, you know we get drawn in by fast-growing churches and like what’s going on there, and and we miss the substrate underneath there of all this groups and relational stuff that’s holding it up that if that’s not there those churches don’t sustain over the extent over… you might get a pop of growth, but it won’t you won’t continue to see that. All right. It’s very cool. So I love we didn’t really even get into the pandemic. Obviously people were you kind of hinted towards this during that season, um, you know where you’re in lockdown and all that the groups provided the primary care engine and all of that and then we’ve now see this huge bump. You know your 9 out of 10 people attending groups – that’s incredible. When you look to the future, kind of peer up over the horizon a little bit, what do you think is next on the groups front for you guys? How are you, you know, what what questions are you still wrestling with/are you still thinking through as you’re thinking about how you continue to keep people plugged into groups? What are the you know, kind of what are you thinking about in the future when you think on this this groups issue for your church?
Joe Boyd — Yeah, as we think about our time resource and and staffing allocations on this, um out of out of all the things in our church that will probably scale up, it’s going to be groups and group pastors. Um, and and here’s what I mean. We we have a worship experience, okay, so we’re only going to have so many people on stage preaching. We’re gonna have so many people leading on worship. Those services are going to, you know the the number of people that can participate is not as dependent on the number of people that we hire on staff to lead or invest the time. But that’s not true in groups. In groups, there’s a point where you you have to care. So if you go back to the Jethro principle in Exodus, you know that you know some can lead to tens and hundreds and fiftys, and and so we know that we need to continue to scale and identify additional leaders that can lead groups so that we can continue to add to those numbers um, so that they’re supported. Because if we if we think, oh—and I used to think this too—like I was a groups pastor and I thought you just need one groups pastor and develop people underneath. But the problem is we’re living in a very transient culture right now and people are moving and shifting and and you need relational stability in your leadership. And so we’re looking to develop those leaders. We’re continuing to develop care leaders underneath that care for you know, five to eight small group leaders at a time. We’re trying to strengthen that part of the body as much as we possibly can, um and and and so when you see that succeed you need to lean into it more…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Boyd — …because you need more leaders in that groups ministry than just about anywhere in your church, if you’re going to make the shift of being a church of small groups.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it.
Joe Boyd — And where you continue to grow. And and so that’s it for us. We’re praying through that. And we’re just like everybody else – we’re we’re facing the realities of our economy and you know, giving may not be as strong as it was before, but we have to lean in on the most important discipleship aspects of our church because that’s what’s going to lead to the the success and health of our church moving forward.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. So Good. We didn’t really talk about this ahead of time, but you know I know a part of the passion for why you went to the church that you’re at is its desire to plant more churches. You’ve mentioned this. It’s a really a replicating Church. It’s um, that’s like a whole other conversation we could have around how do we continue to be that as a church, and what does that look like for the future? How do these two things fit together as you think about kind of replication in the future, as you think about planting more churches? Um, how does the kind of what’s happened there—the story that God’s writing on the group side—how do you see those all fitting together as you as you look to the future?
Joe Boyd — Well I think um I think one thing is really true – you reproduce who you are. I mean look at your kids, right? I mean they they’ve got… there’s there’s uniqueness to them and there’s gifting to them, but largely your values and the life experiences they learn get reproduced because… Growing up I always said, well I’ll never do that when I grow up, and then you find yourself in that situation and you do what you experienced growing up. Um, so I think the same thing’s true about the churches that you reproduce. Um and and looking back I was in a church that helped start 10 churches in 10 years, and some of them were different and some went different paths but largely they followed the model that we had, and unfortunately for the first 6 or 7 years we really didn’t have this group health thing as a priority. And the early churches suffered for that…
Rich Birch — Right.
Joe Boyd — …because they were preaching the way we preached and doing what we do and think oh it’ll work for us and and and and I just didn’t know enough. Um here, when I came in the focus was we are going to get as healthy as we can because if people follow us we we wanted least say, hey we this is real. It’s biblical. It’s stable. Um, you know a lot of times we get hung up on the fast growth but compound growth that’s slower over time, like the difference between the fast-growing churches and the largest churches in America um, largely has a lot to do with time. And and a lot of people don’t even realize that if you had 10% growth over 15 years or 20 years, your church could potentially be one of the largest churches in America…
Rich Birch — Absolutely yeah, absolutely, you know, for sure.
Joe Boyd — …um, and we miss that.
Rich Birch — And way better to manage way easier to manage that growth. Yeah, way easier to manage it. Yes, yes.
Joe Boyd — And doesn’t freak people out because people hear, oh you’re fast growing. They think: you care about numbers and not people. And that’s not the heart of pastors…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Joe Boyd — …because I know a lot of the the pastors that are fast-growing church leaders, but but it’s a perception. we deal with…
Rich Birch — Yep, yep.
Joe Boyd — …and and and so but you’re right, you can build something a little slower and and make it healthy. But the to answer your question about multiplication. We have a vision to help start a hundred churches that multiply by 10 each.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.
Joe Boyd — And we’re focused on mid-sized cities in America um, and right now the pandemic has created a shift from the large urban centers back to the the mid-size cities. And what I would say is that Jesus was born in a small town. He he did most of his ministry in Galilee (midsize), and then ultimately he was in Jerusalem which was their largest Jewish center. Um, but midsize cities, in my opinion, are small enough to change, but big enough to matter.
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Joe Boyd — Because the small towns mimicked midsize and the large cities replicate or multiply what happens in mid-sized cities…
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Joe Boyd — …and so over the next 30 to 40 years, we want to invest in starting churches there, and and that niche because we believe there’s going to be this move from small town to mid-size to the urban centers. And this is going to be the sending church. And so we’ve got a 10X church network we’re working on. Exponential’s been looking at it and and given thumbs up on it, and New Thing is thumbs up and said yeah, and so we’re seeing it converge. And my denomination, they’re they’re leaning into this, and so that’s that’s a passion, but but for me I believe we want groups to be the driving force around that health and stability.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that – I love that. We’ll have to have you on at another point and talk about the you know the the multiplication vision there. And and I just think that’s so great and so good. I you know I know, one of the things I’ve wondered you know, and have seen that unfortunately you know, there was like a pause there on so many of these multiplication efforts for a good year or eighteen months of you know, churches – they just stopped thinking about those things. Because they were everybody was freaked out about you know, you know, their own thing. Now that seems to be turning. It seems like okay, now we’re back to planting churches. We’re seeing new churches open. We’re seeing people back into campus expansion that were doing it before, but I know that’s your heart as well to see like, hey we want we want to continue to encourage that. Joe, this has been a great conversation – anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Joe Boyd — Um I would just say to anybody who’s listening to this. Um, if you’re if you’re a leader of a church or you have any influence on the discipleship of the church. Um, really really focus in on groups. Um. I didn’t for a long time and I think that was pride blinding me, or ignorance blinding me, and um I just can’t stress enough that really take a deep dive and really ask God what he’d like to do in and through groups or discipleship in your church, and then do what God tells you to do because that that could be a big game changer.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good Joe. Appreciate this. I’d love to point more people in your direction. If people want to track along with your church and follow along, where do we want to send them online to do that?
Joe Boyd — Yeah, if um, if you want to find what we’re doing our website’s easy. It’s findgrace.com because that’s what we want. We want everyone to experience grace. And on social media you can find all our social media links there. Some of our social’s from previous Grace Fellowship MN so it’s a little bit easier to go to findgrace.com first and then track us from there.
Rich Birch — And then go jump from there. Good.
Joe Boyd — Um, yeah, and you can find staff and contact them if you have questions about what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Joe Boyd — We’re a team effort. We’ve got great people that can that are here to help.
Rich Birch — Love it. Joe, thanks so much for being on the show – really appreciate you and cheering for you and your ministry.
Crucial Conversations with Team Members at Your Church with Matt Slocum
Mar 10, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Matt Slocum, executive pastor at Victory Life Church in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Conflict is inevitable in relationships and it’s important to handle it well. Matt is talking with us today about how Victory Life Church sought to help its staff get better at having crucial conversations as the church grew.
Develop a system. // When a church is small it tends to be more relational and can handle day to day tasks without systems and “family rules”, but all of that changes as a church grows. Even with a mission statement, a growing church can suddenly discover that it isn’t doing enough to communicate expectations to the expanding staff, and there are a lot of gray areas left.
Honoring others. // After some issues of conflict, the church realized that people hadn’t necessarily been doing anything wrong, but they were feeling dishonored. So the leadership developed some governing core values to help them communicate with each other when problems come up. These core values are different than bylaws or an employee manual; they deal with more day-to-day communication. When something happens, it allows the staff to fill in the gaps with trust and say to a coworker, “I know you didn’t mean it this way, but I felt dishonored when this happened…”
Coin conversations. // Victory Life had their core values minted on a challenge coin as a tool for the staff and core lay leaders. When conflict arises the staff can sit down to have a “coin conversation” with another staff member and everyone understands what that means. This conversation is a time when people let their guard down and move forward for the purpose of unity and restoration. The coin is a physical reminder to have a conversation rather than just arguing, blaming each other or leaving things unresolved.
Take a step back. // Matt reminds us that it may take a few days to be ready to have a coin conversation. If you’re looking to win an argument, you’re probably not ready to have a conversation. But if you can emotionally get to a point of desiring restoration, and wanting the best for the other person in spite of your being hurt, then that’s a good place to start.
Four core values. // The four core values at Victory Life are: faithful, teachable, honoring, and excellence. These governing values are embraced by the staff and are also taught in membership classes to the church. Victory Life doesn’t shy away from communicating that if people embrace these four values, they will be challenged, but it will lead to growth and being a part of an amazing community and environment.
Teach your teams. // Because of the core values and coin conversations Victory Life Church has, the staff team is strong and can readily recognize issues that come up. Still, it’s important to take the time to coach and lead your team members so that they feel equipped to have a crucial conversations with their teams and colleagues. Help your team to understand how to get good at conversations and see the real issues underneath what is happening. Remember to be honoring, but also honest.
Get your staff’s feedback. // When you’re developing things like core values, engage your staff to get buy-in and see what resonates with them. Ask them what they think the real issues are, and then use that information to develop the foundation of your values.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow.
Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation.
Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Well, hey everybody – welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you, and today is absolutely no exception. I am excited for today’s conversation. We’ve got Matt Slocum with us. He’s executive pastor at one of the fastest growing churches in the country – Victory Life Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. The thing I love about this church is Michigan is not the kind of place you would say, that’s a place where fast-growing churches come from.
Matt Slocum — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s a tough place to to to to minister out of and I’m so excited to have Matt on the show with us. Welcome to the show today, Matt.
Matt Slocum — Thanks, Rich, for having me today.
Rich Birch — Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about Victory Life – kind of give us the flavor of the church. Help us kind of understand the church and then tell us about your role.
Matt Slocum — Sure, well um, Battle Creek, Michigan we’re a home Cereal City Capital of the world. They say this is the headquarters of Kellogg’s so yeah, this…
Rich Birch — Okay, nice Cereal City USA. Nice.
Matt Slocum — That’s right, yeah. Um, Victory Life – actually this month we’re celebrating 20 years of being a church which is great.
Rich Birch — Nice. Wow.
Matt Slocum — Been here the whole time; helped actually launch it twenty years ago. Was an automation engineer for 13 years but felt a call into ministry…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Matt Slocum — And so we just supported the local church. And about twenty years ago when it was launched it was about 65 people. And pre-covid we were pushing about 2000 so God is really consistent, healthy growth over the years…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Matt Slocum — Um and so yeah, multiple building campaigns and expansions of our facilities as well as ministry. So love the love the church same same senior pastor the whole time. My family’s been attending for 20 years and excuse me, and I’ve been on staff for almost fourteen now as a pastor so, then executive pastor for 10 years. So learning a lot always learning more.
Rich Birch — Very cool. Wow yeah I love it. Well you know one of the one of the well why don’t you talk about the kind of how you guys define Executive Pastor. I know you know I’ve joked with XPs—that’s really my ah, that’s the seat I’ve been in for the longest—and you know it seems like every XP you talk to, although there’s some overlap, you know it looks a little different in every church. Kind of define that give us kind of show tell us to talk to us what’s the sand sandbox that you find yourself playing in regularly?
Matt Slocum — Sure. When I came on staff I was handling the finances and I was the children’s pastor…
Rich Birch — Oh yes.
Matt Slocum — …so I had a unique dual role. Two part-time positions to to make a way. And our staff was small – we had four pastors on staff, I think, at the time. And I just grew, I grew into an associate pastor, was life groups, things like that. As we grew our staff grew and ah our senior pastor had nine direct reports. Ah so we were very flat.
Rich Birch — Hmm, yes.
Matt Slocum — Ah, but he’s the type of guy’s entrepreneur – Pastor James is – and just a forward-charging, great guy and so he just liked to be involved in everything, and we had a consultant come in and said, what you’re doing is not good, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Not sustainable.
Matt Slocum — Kind of Moses father-in-law type thing. And he said, you needed an executive pastor to kind of handle that and we think Matt’s that guy. So um, in all that wisdom we, I was promoted to executive pastor. So it was Pastor James, myself, and then I had nine people reporting to me.
Rich Birch — Ah, wait a second!
Matt Slocum — And within a literally I think within six months I burned out – um chronic fatigue syndrome. And worked through that for a year they put me on a medical sabbatical I mean we just we were running five and six services. It was just very, you know, very busy, stressful. And then we said let’s keep a one to five ratio with direct reports, and so for a number of years it I just had five reports. And then we just recently recently reorged in this fall and ah now there I’m one of three executive pastors now.
Rich Birch — Okay, great.
Matt Slocum — So we have kind of the mop – ministry, operations, and programming. So I’m over operations…
Rich Birch — Yep yep, very cool.
Matt Slocum — …facilities, administration finances, things like that.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Matt Slocum — And then Pastor John, he’s my other one of our other executive pastors. He’s over ministry. And then Pastor Tim just promoted up to programming.
Rich Birch — Oh love it.
Matt Slocum — So there’s four on the executive team. So the three executive pastors and the senior pastor and we’re all very close, good friends. We’ve been through battles together, and that relational component I think is really what makes things extraordinary.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well and yeah I love that because you’ve you’ve really positioned for growth for the future. You know what you’ve done there, I know you know that that that kind of a couple two or three executive pastors, that kind of leadership team thing is really common as we see churches go from two thousand to five thousand as you kind of make that jump. So I’m excited about that; I’m excited to see the future of Victory Life and kind of where you know where that goes. Well one of the things about leading at that level that I know you know is really you end up serving in this kind of chief of staff. You have a lot of people and I love that you even led there. It’s like hey we’ve got you know people reporting to you that that is ah can be really difficult can be hard at times. What would you say has been some of the challenges over the years on the staff leadership side on kind of ensuring that people are aligned, pointed in the right direction, moving in the right direction? What would be some of those challenges that kind of come to mind when you think about leading from that seat?
Matt Slocum — I think um, the challenge was when we were smaller as a staff, we were very relational so we were able to handle things without systems, and without kind of family rules. We had a church mission statement that we do live by, but in that in the gray areas people make different decisions than you were wanting or expecting, but it’s never been communicated. So over the years we’ve had difficult situations come up, and we handle it from a standpoint of, well, you did do this, or didn’t do that, and we didn’t want that. And the person’s like, well you never told me that.
Rich Birch — Mmm.
Matt Slocum — Um so I just kind of did what you I thought. And we’d kind of end it, and kind of move on a little bit, but really not settled. So over the years we developed – we realized really the issue was, for instance, maybe it wasn’t that you did something wrong, I felt dishonored, and that’s really the issue. So we developed over the last three four years some governing core values that we live by. We communicate them we we overcommunicate because you can’t overcommunicate anything, can you?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yet right.
Matt Slocum — People people just forget, I forget, and so you’re always communicating in many ways these staff values. And that’s how we start the conversations, rather than “you did this” or “you didn’t do this”…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Matt Slocum — Um I can go into it and say, hey, I know you didn’t mean anything, but when this happened I felt this way, I felt a little dishonored and that… And we live by these rules, just that other person ideally would say, man I don’t want you to feel dishonored. I’m really sorry that did that. Well now all of a sudden you’re moving forward.
Rich Birch — Right, right, right. Interesting.
Matt Slocum — And moving past the issues you know and you’re seeking to honor one another.
Rich Birch — I love that. Now can you maybe drill, you know, one layer deeper on kind of distinguishing the difference between hey, here’s a staff team who who just executed something poorly that wasn’t great, and where it it feels like oh actually you stepped over the line and and it actually steps into a place of dishonor. Can you give me an example of a situation like that, or or dream up an example? So if you’re if you’re trying to protect the innocent in this scenario.
Matt Slocum — Right. Yeah, um, well you know they say you don’t need bylaws until you need bylaws, right? So how often do you read your bylaws? How often do you read your employee manual? Those are kind of guard rails um for the organization. So it’s very clear when you step over those lines. Um, but for the day-to-day um, you need something that’s more, now if you were originally we’re very corporate also, but you could manage that, but we decided we want to be relational and that is tricky and takes time. So um, maybe for instance—I’ve done this many times—I have gone around people not in the chain of command because it was simpler and easier and maybe the pastor who reports to me, I went you know, um under her to her direct report…
Rich Birch — Yep. Right.
Matt Slocum — …and just had her do… and she wasn’t aware, and then she finds out about it, she’s gonna feel very dishonored and things like that. And so it’s her she has the ability to come to me and say, hey I heard about this, is this true? I was a little thrown by that. My appropriate response, like you are totally right, I dishonored you in that. I’m sorry. Um, a lot of times it’s communication/chain of command type things. There’s no intent to dishonor or deceive anybody, but it’s, you know, you just you run at a fast pace and you you know you step out of like those lines, and that person is understanding, going I know your heart behind this. But we also had these staff values minted on a coin.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s cool!
Matt Slocum — They’re honoring. Ah, if you’ve heard of a challenge coin the military uses these for different deployments things like…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yeah.
Matt Slocum — We minted a challenge coin with our governing values on it. And we can sit down and say hey I need to have a coin conversation and everybody knows what that means.
Rich Birch — Love that. Right.
Matt Slocum — You just kind of let your guard down. And we just move forward for the purpose of unity and restoration.
Rich Birch — Love that. Yeah yeah, no, that’s good.
Matt Slocum — So hopefully that answers your question, but usually it’s not intentional things, but we do want to grow and we do want to be challenged. And so we know that’s where God God uses us this and the challenges.
Rich Birch — Yeah, why don’t you take us inside one of those conversations, help us to understand. So I love the idea of a physical tool – I love – challenge coins are amazing. If you if you if you’re not familiar with those, those are a great tool and actually not that expensive to get done. They’re ah you know a great can be a great kind of internal piece for sure. But take us inside one of those conversations. What what have been, for you, some of the guiding principles that have led to real positive outcomes on the other side of conversations that that could be considered, hey this is this is like two or three layers deep – we’re pushing deeper here. We’re going beyond just that “this is what you did” to “hey, let’s address the underlying, kind of, culture issues”.
Matt Slocum — Sure ah, protect the innocent. Um, there was a situation a number of years ago where a staff pastor um kind of broke ranks with a frustration.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Matt Slocum — And it got to the volunteers. Um his frustration with the pastoral team. Now these things are normal. Those are gonna happen and that’s why we have this conversation, but it kind of broke ranks and we felt like, man you hung us out a little bit and so. Plus you drew volunteers into a situation they really didn’t need to be a part of. It probably blew up their security in the leadership a little bit and it was kind of a minor issue, honestly. And so I was able to sit down and go, hey, boy, that really that didn’t feel right.
Rich Birch — Hmmm, right.
Matt Slocum — And just going, here’s how we felt about that; we felt dishonored. We felt like it was a lack of loyalty a little bit and really, you need to be able to come to us with those situations. So it’s just saying, hey I’m part of a team here..
Rich Birch — Right.
Matt Slocum — But the great thing is it’s a tool. Instead of saying, hey you said this. Well I didn’t say that; I didn’t say it like that. Well, that’s what I heard. Well now you’re in the weeds already, right? And you’re not… it’s not gonna be fruitful, and one of the things we say, you’re ready to have a conversation with somebody if you’re ready to restore that relationship.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.
Matt Slocum — If you’re if you’re looking to win an argument, you’re probably not ready. So if you can emotionally get to a point of saying, I love this person, I want the best for them, I’m frustrated, but I really want to restore this. That’s a good foundation to start that coin conversation and you might need to take a couple days to have it.
Rich Birch — Mmm, yes.
Matt Slocum — But now you know that there’s room for the Holy Spirit to bring unity. There’s you know room for God to move and bring reconciliation.
Rich Birch — I love that. Well and I love that, you know, positioning of your own heart, right? To say, hey am I am I coming at this from a I’m just trying to prove my point, as opposed to, no, like there’s a bigger thing at play here. I want to restore relationship; I want to you know I want us to move forward. What are your your four values – you kind of hinted at them? Um I think you’ve got four…
Matt Slocum — Yeah, yes.
Rich Birch — What are those values? Talk us through those and how have those impacted the church.
Matt Slocum — Whoop, well I dropped the coin right there so…
Rich Birch — Ah, that’s great.
Matt Slocum — But they are faithful, teachable, honoring, and excellence. Um, it’s a it’s kind of ah a merging of what we had as core values/governing values as a church. When ah when we would do our membership class we say here’s our here’s our church values. When you step into it it’s an amazing environment, but it means you’ll be challenged. Well then as we had these staff difficult staff conversations we develop some staff values. And then we realized, well this is ridiculous, we have two sets of values. And so we boiled it down to these four. So a faithful um somewhat self-explanatory, but Jesus always expected a return on what was given. The faithful steward brought back more then was given and that was expected. Um and it wasn’t for that servant’s glory excuse me it was for the glory of the Master. And so to go, whatever you’re going to put into my hands, it’s going to increase; I’m going to leave it better than I left it. Um, you know with job descriptions there could be just really clear things that aren’t being addressed. And you can go back and to a governing value of faithfulness and going, you’re really not being faithful in this area, and we need to see growth there. So you can be very direct and specific about things, but it’s always going back to a governing value.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. Now which of these—so faithful, teachable honoring and excellence—which of these four have been the the place where you’ve got traction? Where it’s like ooh we seem to be having the most conversations in this area? So it’s either like, you know, looking at it from the positive point of view, hey that’s been the most effective tool to kind of push the culture forward. If I was a pessimist I would say, oh this is the area where hey maybe we’ve struggled a bit, but which which of these four has been the one where we seem to be coming back to conversations in that area more, you know you know, more often?
Matt Slocum — Well I’ll say the one that resonates with me personally the most—they all do because we live by ’em—is honor. Um I’m a type of person that can go introverted there. There was a season where um I didn’t really speak my mind. And what that does—I’m introverted—you don’t speak your mind and um, you know they say unresolved or unexpressed emotion lead to depression. And so I had ah had a bout of depression because I just wasn’t speaking my mind, because I didn’t want to dishonor anybody. Um, but then my mantra for this is honoring, but honest. And so that’s where we can we can really work through some things because we know this is a safe environment. And this has helped me over the even the last two years to just have my voice to another level with my senior pastor. We’re very close as friends and sometimes that can have its own challenges of am I an employee or a friend? And him and I we talk all about this and we just work very well together, but to go hey I’ve got to be honest, I don’t want to dishonor you – I hope this is a safe place. And those type of things couch a conversation and go yeah, go ahead I don’t want you to feel like that. There was times I in my early days of pastoring I was very… “zeal without knowledge” is not good as scripture says.
Rich Birch — Ah sure. Yes.
Matt Slocum — I just came in and spoke my mind and he’s like, that’s not how you start a conversation. So honor is one that resonates resonates with me a lot – honoring and honest because I think many times we have a difficult conversation and we’re trying to find a reason to to get around it, or say no to something, when the reality is it just doesn’t line up with what we want to do. So you’re you know for instance, someone wants to come into your house or they want to do something and you’re like I think think we’re busy. So there’s an external reason rather than the real reason and I think this really helps us boil down to the real reason because it really helps for future conversations too.
Rich Birch — Mmm.
Matt Slocum — And I think because of these type of things our staff is very strong; if something if there’s ah, an issue going on it’s gonna stand out real quick and we can address it. So yeah, so honor that would be that would be mine.
Rich Birch — Um, love that. Yeah, love it – faithful, teachable, honoring, excellence. I love it. What else have you done with your team to ensure that this pushes beyond you but kind of down into the culture to ensure that, hey we’re pushing kind of crucial conversations. It’s one thing for us to have that…
Matt Slocum — Right.
Rich Birch — …but then it’s another thing for our team to say hey I want to do that with the people that they oversee, and they manage, and they serve. So how have you been able to see that kind of go to the next couple layers down?
Matt Slocum — Well lot of it’s training. A lot of it’s getting good at conversations and you know pushing the baby bird out of the nest going, you can fly; you can do this. Um and not, you know, for me I’ll I’ll end up taking things on myself that I really don’t need to do and go, okay, you can have that conversation and just coaching coaching a staff member through going, here’s the real issues. You know a lot of times if there’s an offense, you really kind of got to minister to that person who’s going to have the conversations. And so there’s a lot of one on one coaching for those type of things. But also we developed these staff values that really the foundation of it was that a pastoral retreat and getting the buy-in of the staff, going what do you guys think are the real issues? I think we had a list of twelve different values um at one point and going. So now you have team buy in to this. We really need to engage the brains, the hearts, the spirits of our staff. Doesn’t mean we don’t make decisions as leaders, but we really want to hear what they’re thinking and then we can take that information, go back, and make a make a decision from there. But I think that was really beneficial whether it was our mission statement or vision statement the governing values Those were not done in a vacuum. Really we took key leaders and staff and brought them together and said what do you guys think are the key ones? And honestly some of those things made it in the final round that we weren’t thinking.
Rich Birch — So how did you, I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. How did you narrow down? I think a lot of us have that like we’ve got ten different values. You know I’ve said in so many contexts, listen we’ve got to get these down to three or four…
Matt Slocum — Correct; right.
Rich Birch — …like I can’t remember more than three or four like it just, you know. Even if it’s stuff I’m passionate about. So what did that look like – can you kind of take us inside that conversation how you were able to kind of synthesize into these four?
Matt Slocum — Right. And you know our senior, we’re senior pastor led so it’s really his heart screaming for something. So it started with him; you have to have—especially for something like this; this is not something you can delegate to an executive pastor—this is really the heart of the senior pastor. Um, it’s good when the senior pastor involves the team, which ours did. Pastor James did. And we as I said we had a retreat and we brainstormed. We said we’ve got, we don’t do conversations very well, sometimes, and what’s the real issue? Um and as leaders we have to grow ourselves personally. And so we just we had a whiteboard. We got a we went to a retreat center. We got a whiteboard and we we just started throwing things up on the on the board. What resonated? What didn’t? And sometimes there were as many cuts at it. Okay, let’s come back to this in a couple days. What’s resonating with you guys? And then trial and error – what works, you know? Um and it just boiled down to somewhat organically. It wasn’t a process cause we were learning it it as we went; we were building the airplane in the air a little bit, without trying to hit the ground. Um, so that was kind of our process. It was really organic.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Matt Slocum — It was honoring to be part of that and I think that was a big deal. And get the buy-in and the team if people want to be part of something that their voice is heard and you know, and we’re doing ministry – this is important and it’s life changing. So that was kind of our… and then over the years you evaluate and go and is this still is this still effective for ministry? So…
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Matt Slocum — And then about once a year we do a key leader meeting, which would be our staff ministry leaders (if they lead), if it’s a volunteer who leads, volunteers, and our top givers – the the financial leaders of the church – we get… it’s about 240 people we gather them together once a year, and we we gave them all the coin. We we explained it. So now these volunteers are taking it into their ministries and pushing it out into the church. And we have the coin in our in our pocket too. And ah the military has ah a funny thing with the coins. If if no I haven’t done this but at ah they go to a bar and whoever puts the coin out first if if one guy is missing their coin, they’re the one who buys.
Rich Birch — Yes.
Matt Slocum — So we have a coffee shop at our in our church and so we’ll all pull our coins out and um, you know whoever didn’t have their coin, they’re buying, you know, so we have the coins in our pockets. We’re just living this thing because, you know, I came from a corporate world where mission statements and values were on the walls of the conference room, but nobody knew what they were; nobody lived by them.
Rich Birch — So true. Yep.
Matt Slocum — But we have a mission statement that we’ve lived by for 20 years. I mean we we died and bled to create this thing and we live by it and that’s our filter. So governing values are a similar other thing we just make it a culture. You’re gonna see it everywhere. Um, and we’re gonna live it. So yeah.
Rich Birch — Oh. Yeah I love it. I love that. I love the practicality of it. I love the the clarity of gathering people together. Um you know and and having you know a bit of a process in the fact that you went away and you’re you know whenever there’s whiteboards and a retreat center involved, there’s good things happen usually um, but you know and then but then pushing to like no, we’re we’re not just going to like you say leave it on the wall.
Matt Slocum — Right.
Rich Birch — So many churches do that. They we come up with these things, we leave it on the wall, but we don’t actually live it out. I think that’s so fantastic. That’s that’s great. Good stuff.
Matt Slocum — And then anybody new into the church, you know our new members class. We call it connect to the vision – vision of the church. They’re going to hear about these things so they not only know the vision, the values, but we’re we’re challenging them to step in and when they step in we’re saying now you will be challenged. Um and you’re gonna assume the best of people. But if you want that, we guarantee that in a year you’re gonna look back and you’ve grown in Christ, and that’s really what we’re doing.
Rich Birch — Um, love it. So good. Great. Well This has been a fantastic conversation. I know so many of us we you know we struggle with ah how do we have the kind of crucial conversation? How do we, you know, have the conversation that can be difficult? Is there anything else, you’d like to share on that front to kind of help us – a a tip or an approach that has helped as you’ve been engaging with your people on, you know, these kind of difficult conversations?
Matt Slocum — Yeah, unless I would say unless it’s an urgency where you like, oh I’ve got a 24 hour deadline to have this conversation because of you know, maybe legal reasons, things like that. Ah be intentional. Maybe take ah a couple extra days to calm down.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Matt Slocum — Because because honestly we can get really upset about something and the person meant nothing, but we still have to talk about it.
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.
Matt Slocum — Um, take a lot of time, maybe get counsel on how to proceed. There’s we have an we have an apostolic elder board that’s outside of our church of of pastors. And many times their senior pastor will go to them and ask them their thoughts on the situation. Um, and to be wise, but you know you don’t leave that hanging out there. They say if if after two years you have the same problem, you’re the problem. And so you don’t want to leave that hanging out there forever, but you know maybe take a little bit of time and just proceed with caution because you do want to restore and challenge at the same time.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. This has been a fantastic conversation, Matt. I appreciate you giving your time today. Where do we want to send people if they want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online to to connect with the church going forward?
Matt Slocum — Yeah, ah victorylife.church is our website and then also the links to there are to all the social media platforms. You can find us Facebook, YouTube, Instagram – all that all that good stuff. Yeah.
Rich Birch — All that stuff. That’s great. Thanks! Thanks so much, Matt. I appreciate you being here today. Thanks for helping us through this podcast today.
Matt Slocum — Thanks, Rich – I really appreciate it.
Is Church Multiplication on the Rise? Don’t Miss This Conversation with Warren Bird
Mar 03, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m talking with Warren Bird, the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.
It’s time for a fresh look to see what God is doing, especially coming out of the pandemic. If you’re wondering how church planting and launching multisite campuses have changed, you won’t want to miss this conversation. Listen in as Warren offers a sneak peek at initial findings of his currently open survey, New Faces of Church Planting, plus invites you to participate.
A new era. // Warren believes that church planting and launching multisite campuses has shifted in a number of ways over the last several years. Not only from the suburbs to a more multiethnic, urban context, but also from being the work of a solo church planter to being more of a team effort. It’s changed from being standalone enterprise to being very network supported. It’s significant to pay attention to these shifts because as goes church planting and multisite launching, so goes the rest of the church. ECFA’s current survey, New Faces of Church Planting, is examining current multiplication trends which Warren believes will ultimately shape the whole North American Church.
Initial findings. // The survey just opened in late February 2022 and some of the very early findings indicate shifts in church multiplication. There are seven things Warren is starting to see that seem to have changed in church planting over the last 10-20 years. The first is that a huge number of survey respondents identify themselves as missional, but even more significant is that the second most common way churches are identifying themselves is as being multiracial or multiethnic. Our communities continue to become more diverse and churches are moving toward being less homogeneous and embracing Revelation 5:9 where the kingdom of heaven is going to include every tongue, tribe, nation, and culture together.
Rent or own? // About one third of people who have responded to the survey so far own their facility. Coming out of the pandemic, Warren anticipates this number may shift even further. Many rented spaces closed during the pandemic or stopped allowing churches to use their locations, and churches realized how difficult it is if you don’t have control of your location.
Creating healthy disciples. // The number one thing churches are doing to create healthy disciples is helping their people with personal spiritual disciplines. A significant second response is service to the community outside the walls of the church. Third was helping people produce fruit in their lives, such as embracing justice, or forgiveness, or love, peace and joy, which would not have been as widespread ten or more years ago.
Primary ethnicity. // While the primary ethnicity of church planters was predictably Caucasian, the second most selected option so far is multiethnic or multiracial. The more this becomes the norm with new churches and new campuses, the more the broader church will shift.
Residency and internship vs assessment. // More than one-third of church planters or campus pastors did a residency or internship, and over half said that they had undergone assessment. A residency or an internship is a big commitment, but about 87% of multisite directors—those who are responsible for their church’s multisite campuses—said they preferred that their campus pastors have done a residency or internship.
Top things done online. // Coming out of the pandemic there has been a huge shift as to what churches do online. Whereas ten years ago it would have focused solely on broadcasting services, now the top things that churches do online also include small groups, staff meetings, prayer teams, counseling, children’s ministry, plus more.
Church multiplication. // More than one-third of the church leaders responding have been involved in planting one or more new churches. And more than two-thirds of the multisite churches have added another campus during the last three years. That seems to indicate that not only were there a lot of launches leading up to the pandemic, but also during the pandemic.
Participate in the survey. // At the time of this podcast airing, the survey will be open for a couple more weeks so you still have a chance to share your experience with church multiplication. The survey takes about 15 minutes. By participating, not only do you get a free copy of the final findings, you get invited to a webinar with Warren where he’ll answer questions about the survey results. Secondly, you’ll be entered in a drawing to win one of several Amazon gift cards. Plus, if you are in the US, you’ll receive the spiritual demographics for the zip code that you select which will help you identify needs that you can meet in that area in Jesus’ name. Finally, you’ll receive ECFA’s top five tools for church planting, such as how to start a new church or how to determine cash flow level – all for FREE as a thank you for participating.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich Birch — Well hey everybody, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today. You know every week we bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you. This week we have got a friend – a personal friend – I love this guy. You’re going to love hearing today from Warren Bird. Warren, if you do not know him – Dr. Warren Bird – is from ah, he’s the Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Um, or that he’s a friend. He’s one of those people, and there’s not very many of them, who I say anytime you want to come on the podcast, Warren, you just let me know. And he reached out and said, I want to come on – I got something big coming up that I’m excited for you to plug in. Warren is a gift to the church. He’s a real friend. Warren, welcome. So glad you’re here.
Warren Bird — Hey thank you, Rich, and the feeling is mutual. I listen to unSeminary regularly. I encourage others to do it and I always ah learn something, so I look forward to today.
Rich Birch — Nice. Yeah, so so excited for this. For folks that don’t know, why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about your role – you… I have I just have so much respect for you. I oftentime I’ve I know I’ve said this before when you’ve been on the pat on the program in the past I’m like, I play an expert on the internet; you are actually and a church expert. And so, so many times I’m just echoing what your research you’ve done or work that you’ve done so I just just, you know, we’re just so indebted to you. But why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us about your work with ECFA. Kind of give us a ah who is Warren Bird/why should we listen kind of introduction?
Warren Bird — Well, the nickel tour is I love Jesus and I’m a frustrated evangelist and I wish I could win the world to Christ, but I can’t. God didn’t give me those gifts, but he did give me gifts to come alongside people like you and many others, especially pastors, and say, look if I put tools in your hand that help you make wiser decisions, bolder decisions, ah have more confidence, and and go for it, and so that’s led to me being, after pastoring for a number of years, the research director at Leadership Network, and now at the (you said it so well, Rich) ECFA -the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. And for Canadian counterparts, there’s a CCC organization in Canada, but where where I get to, if you will find best practices and put them in people’s hands. And it so turns out that this whole idea of church multiplication we have like hundreds of ECFA members that are into church planting or multisiting. And so we said, well let’s do some kind of survey, clear the ground, show what the state of church planting, of multisite compared to church planting are today, and let’s see what we can learn and then put back in the hands of people so that they can lead the charge all the better.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love this. So friends, I want you to listen in. We’re going to ask you to take an action today but I want you to listen in. Um, for this whole entire conversation. You’re going to get some nuggets here that you’re not getting anywhere else. It’s going to be a great conversation. There’s… ah so one of the things, if you don’t know about Warren, over the years he’s done a number of these studies that are literally foundational to us understanding what’s happening in the broader church. They are incredibly thorough. This isn’t just like when I do a survey I send it out to a couple thousand people – you work on you know, just real research basis that’s you know, founded in like I say actual practices.
Warren Bird — Yeah, but this this would be the largest cross-denominational survey of church multiplication…
Rich Birch — Wow. Love it. Yes.
Warren Bird — …that anyone has done and when we launched just last week. Ah, we had fifty denominations and networks – Canada and the United States…
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Warren Bird — …all pulsing their people so that we really get a representative picture of what God is doing. And the last such national survey was one Ed Stetzer and I did that became the book Viral Churches, subtitle: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers. And so much has changed in the, by the time this comes out, 14 years since the research there.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — And it’s time for a fresh look and to see what God is doing, especially coming out of the pandemic ah has church planting has multisiting changed, and if so how? But you know how’s it how’s the funding? We just go a whole bunch of different directions, and the good news is we ask everybody just for 15 minutes. So, Rich, if you took the survey you wouldn’t get the same questions as Maria down the street as José you know across the the province or state.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Warren Bird — Um, everybody gets a slightly different set of questions. But if you’ll give us 15 minutes – okay maybe it’ll take you twenty – um, we will then give you a report back so you can see the state of what’s happening. We’ll give you we got Amazon Gift Card incentives. we’ve we’ve got all, we’ll come back to the incentives, but but we’re your time is gonna pay.
Rich Birch — It’s amazing. Yeah, absolutely So. You’ve already got to this but I want to let’s dig in a bit more…
Warren Bird — Okay, yeah, and ah, we’ll spill the beans. Go ahead.
Rich Birch — …on the on why this study. So why do? Yeah, yeah. So let’s dig on on so it’s called New Faces of Church Planting. Why this study, kind of, what were some of your assumptions as you were putting it together? Why did you say, Okay now is the time for us to do this? Ah you kind of dug into that, but give us a little bit more on that.
Warren Bird — Okay, New Faces of Church Planting. I am convinced that church planting has shifted not only more from the suburbs to a more multi-ethnic urban context, but I’m convinced it’s moved from being the solo church planter to much more of the team effort in terms of launching. And that it’s it’s changed from being a standalone enterprise to being a very networked supported. I planted, Rich, years ago – the first church I planted I remember going to the bank and to to open up a bank account and they laughed at me. They said, you know, what kind of account do you want? I go, I don’t know. And and and and now today. There was no manual, there was no anything to help people, there was no Exponential Church Planting Conference, there was no unSeminary podcast.
Rich Birch —Mmm-hmm.
Warren Bird — And today people are much more networked. So um, the funding patterns, everything. We want to… I’m suspecting there is a new era and and here’s what I’m convinced: that as goes church planting, and multisiting for that matter, so goes the rest of the church in the years that follow.
Rich Birch — So true.
Warren Bird — In other words, the patterns, the experiments, the the things explored, the breakthroughs that these kind of pioneers – whether it’s the the local church plant or the the connected with your campus multisite – um as they find breakthroughs, others pay attention, are influenced by it, and they will follow as well. So this is going to shape the whole North American Church.
Rich Birch — Love it. So we usually a typical weekend the an unSeminary podcast, we have five-, six-, seven thousand (it’s in that range) listening. Um, who are you hoping will take this study? When you’re you’re looking for kind of a bullseye, who’s the person that’s listening in that you’re thinking, I really want them to to to jump on and take this survey?
Warren Bird — Actually I’m trying to have—let me let me say it two ways—one I’m avoiding the bullseye in that we use this thing called skip logic. So it’s like, well church plant. So when you start the survey you get like this initial fork – are you more church planting, or multisite? Well if you’re multisite, I want to know are you the multisite director, meaning like the executive pastor – someone who’s who oversees? Well I got a separate set of questions for you. Or are you the campus or location pastor? And if so I’ve got a specific set of questions for you. Or were you multisite and you’re not anymore?
Rich Birch — Okay, cool.
Warren Bird — I got a specific set of questions for you. So so there’s a whole kind of like multisite tree.
Rich Birch — Yep.
Warren Bird — Let’s say the trees’s got a big fork and the first fork is multisite with each with different branches and forks going along, or church planting? Okay so so are you in church planning? Were you in church planting? Were you maybe part of a church planter and you finish? If so, is the church still open? If so, I got a question for you. Or did the church close? Well I want to know why, from your perspective, as you look back, you know, help us understand what happened and and what can be learned from that. All right?
Rich Birch — Mmm, right.
Warren Bird — Are you, you know, actively church planting? Are you are you the founding pastor? Because sometimes you have a turnover of pastors in a church plant. Let’s say in year two or three or four – so so we want to parse that out. So so it’s all about the bullseye is multiplication.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes, so basically anybody that’s been involved in anything but…
Warren Bird — And I’m no matter who you are I’ve got a path for you.
Rich Birch — Yes, okay, so basically if you’re listening in today and you’ve been involved in multiplication, really at any level, you’ve kind of had any engagement around the issues of multiplication, church planting, multisite – whether you’ve been on staff or you’re the lead pastor, the founding pastor, you’re you know you’re a campus pastor – all of those well all of those people – we’re looking for you to take the survey. Is that is that is that…ah, a way to say it?
Warren Bird — Yep, and for all of you you get your own special branch, and you get, you know, it’ll be… I’m aiming at 15 minutes in terms of the question count. And you get to see the findings, you know?
Rich Birch — Yeah, this is great.
Warren Bird — Well, it’s it’s gonna be great. It’s it’s gonna really create metrics, um benchmarks, ratios, patterns—both pre and post pandemic—where we’re gonna have really a picture of where the church is now, and where it’s headed. And enter and… go ahead.
Rich Birch — Okay, so I’m gonna I was gonna say I’m gonna ask you an inappropriate question. Hopefully our relationship can sustain this, Warren. It’s been about a week since the survey’s been open. Man, I and I know this is like the worst thing to ask someone who’s who’s midstudy. Are there any kind of early, interesting findings? Early things that you’re seeing that you could let our audience in on? Kind of peek up under the hood a little bit? Again, you could turn me down.
Warren Bird — Absolutely. Done. Gotta do for you, Rich.
Rich Birch — Oh you love it! Let’s hear them. Ah great.
Warren Bird — Um because we h ave 1427 ah participants as of minutes before this call…
Rich Birch — That’s great. Love it.
Warren Bird — …So I prepped by looking over the initial frequencies, and and so first, you know, a lot of things I can I can tell you that that won’t surprise you…
Rich Birch — Yes.
Warren Bird — You know like okay we say well well, what about your facility? We asked this both for church planters and for multisites. Um, you know, do you lease it 24/7? Do you lease it with limitations? Ah. Do you own it? Whatever… Um lease with limitations is the is leader.
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — How old are you? The average person… I better not say that. Well I’ll say that. 42 years old. It is either the campus pastor, or the church planter which…
Rich Birch — 42; interesting.
Warren Bird — Which to me is very exciting because that’s much younger than the average pastor in North America. Here’s another trivia, and then I’m gonna get to so something that I think here that’s some changes that I’m seeing.
Rich Birch — Right, some interesting shifts.
Warren Bird — We asked um when did you or will you become self-sustaining, and of those who who are at least three years in it. Um, by year… end of year three, 43% were self-sustaining financially…
Rich Birch — Wow.
Warren Bird — …which is which is I I don’t think we knew that before and…
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah yeah.
Warren Bird — …that’s very encouraging. Now again, of those who aren’t, I got a path down there.
Rich Birch — Right.
Warren Bird — You know to say okay so how are you funded? And I got all kinds of funding questions and and it’s fascinating—I’ll just go that way for a second. Um top 3 leaders in terms of funding are ah—for church planters at least because multisite pastors tend to be on staff—but for church planters, their own contribution by earning or their spouse’s earning, their denomination, and or um churches that have sponsored them. Um, so so there’s skin in the game, but there’s others helping, ah which is exciting. So let me let me shift; let me really spill the beans and give you—I think I as I looked over the data I jotted down—here are 7 things that I think have changed about church planting and I’ll draw multisite parallels.
Rich Birch — Mmm.
Warren Bird — Ah, where appropriate. Over the last… definitely over the last twenty years, probably over the last ten years, and I’ll do him as a countdown. Number seven, we gave like 20 terms, you know, describe your either multisite campus or church plant and we gave them all kinds of words like, like including buzzwords like, are you hybrid? Well that’s barely used. Are you phigital? You know the mix of physical and digital. I I think ah five, eight percent so far have said we’re phigital.
Rich Birch — Ah, it’s that high? That’s crazy! I I don’t know anybody – I know we’ve been using that term, but I’m like I it seems like such an awkward term.
Warren Bird — Yeah I okay I’m I’m not prejudicing; I’m just telling you what people…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Warren Bird — Are you are you ah virtual, or or meta church? And I got 4% saying yes on that. But the the win, the the top of the heap, are are you missional? That’s the word that people more—now this isn’t theology, I got another question about that—
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep; pe.
Warren Bird — …and missional is to degree theological, as all of them are in a certain way. But here’s here was the big surprise for for my number 7 countdown, the second most cited was multiracial or multiethnic.
Rich Birch — Love that.
Warren Bird — And you would not have had that years ago there’s an…
Rich Birch —No no. In fact I remember when I was in school, and I’ve said this before on other podcasts, I remember when I was on when I was in school the only—it’s ironic I talk a lot about church growth—I only remember like one ah like lecture on church growth stuff. So it wasn’t even a whole class. It was like one lecture and it was and literally it was about the homogeneous unit ah principle of church planting which is literally the opposite of multi-ethnic. It was like, what you need to do is be like—today I don’t even think you could get up and say that—you could what you need to do is everyone should be the same, like figure out how you get like the most narrowly defined cultural background um, and you know plant from that. And that’s in in my ministry career of two and a half decades that has completely turned upside down where that’s – I love that that’s exciting.
Warren Bird — Yes, but but I think homogeneous today is multi-ethnic society…
Rich Birch — Yes, right. That’s what people that’s what people are used to. That’s true. Good point.
Warren Bird — And and that’s what we expect the church to be.
Rich Birch — Yep yeah, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. Yep yes.
Warren Bird — And and so that becomes the comfort zone, which you know Revelation 5:9 the kingdom of heaven is going to be every tongue, every tribe, every nation, every culture together. So we’re we’re more into looking like heaven and we’ve been helped by society moving that direction.
Rich Birch — Yeah I Love that.
Warren Bird — Al right now number 6 is is small but I think it’s it’s happy. Do you own your facility? Do you rent it? What do you do? One third own it um, which which…
Rich Birch — Oh yeah, interesting.
Warren Bird — …In this era of well we’re all renting school buildings, and all ‘hell not in the pandemic anymore’. So I’m gonna dig deeper on that. But just to say that’s an area we explore and I think there’s gonna be some changes in that coming out of the pandemic.
Rich Birch — Yeah, you know that’s interesting because that is just anecdotally with the churches I’m talking to even on the multisite front, that is for sure one of those things that’s shifted in the last two years where we, you know, we there’s a lot more churches looking at owning or you know more 24/7 type things. I think one of the things that the—and I listen, I’m a big I’m a big proponent of portable but—one of the the things that really the pandemic pointed out to us was if you don’t have control of your location, it can be very very difficult, right? It can, you know, that creates extra potential grind, and the and at the same time, there’s interesting kind of confluence there with the churches I’m talking to. Anyways, there’s like the, can we can we actually do what we’re called to do, and we’re more interested in community service stuff and so we need space to do that. We need square footage to like run things that are that are you know helping in the community. So anyways, so that’s that’s cool number 6 I think.
Warren Bird — Well you you have read directly into number 4 in my countdown of changes over the last decade plus, especially in church planting. I asked, what are you doing to create healthy disciples? And other words yes, technically we all as soon as we follow Jesus we’re discipled so I guess we’re really looking at disciple-making, but what are you doing? Number one emphasis was the personal spiritual disciplines, you know, are we helping you in your walk with in your relationship with God, and your prayer life, and your reading scripture each day, and the like.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Warren Bird — Number two, Rich, was service.
Rich Birch — Interesting, interesting.
Warren Bird — Service to the community, and beyond the walls of the church.
Rich Birch — That’s fascinating.
Warren Bird — I don’t think we would have seen that um and and again I gave about eight or nine options there. Um and that service was number two. Number three—definitely wouldn’t have been—was lifestyle of—and I gave 3 pairs—love, peace, joy, justice, forgiveness, and I forget the the last quality, but are you helping produce that kind of the kind of people who that’s the fruit of their life that they are living out, in this case justice? Whoa that would not have been wide as widespread ten or more years ago.
Rich Birch — No. So interestingly so I I launched a released a book four years ago, five years ago—Church Growth Flywheel—and we talk about five different things that—and this was based purely on my observation from at that point 300 interviews with leaders from the fastest growing churches in the country—and those churches that consistently, fast-growing churches, we’re seeing them do community service things. Like we’re seeing them do outreaches. We’re gonna mobilize our people – get out of the seats, into the streets – go do things. But interestingly over the years that chapter on community service is the one chapter that has done two things. One, it’s it’s got the most pushback – people are like, really is that really that important? And it’s the churches that actually said, you know, what we added that to our game and it made the biggest difference in what we were doing. We’re we’re doing, whether it’s Night to Shine, or we’re doing, you know, these kind of community engagement service opportunities. So that’s that for sure in my own little world, I’ve seen a shift in that where you know that it’s at the time it seemed like a. You know like a radical idea, but I love that it’s we’re seeing more and more churches actually do that actually say, hey how do we engage and and serve the community? That’s so good.
Warren Bird — And Rich, you didn’t ask me to say this but I read that book cover to cover and it’s like sitting down with Rich Birch for a couple of hours and getting his best takes on on problem solving and areas to explore in your church, so that that book’s gonna have a long tail for it.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Warren Bird — You know the bottom of the heap was, in the what are you doing to create healthy disciples? Teaching people to put God first in their finances.
Rich Birch — Interesting. Yeah, yeah.
Warren Bird — You know and yet you know the whole world is still struggling with living paycheck to paycheck and and being in financial debt and looking for that freedom that that I believe God’s principles can help people experience. Besides…
Rich Birch — That’s an opportunity.
Warren Bird — Yeah opportunity. All right that…
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely like over the years I’ve seen that with in the churches I’ve led when we’ve done Dave Ramsey or when we’ve done um, you know Joe Sangl stuff, like it’s amazing how those, you know, it’s it’s humbling frankly as we help people get their finances straight. It’s like other um, you know the other parts of their their kind of relationships and their you know their relationship with Christ – other things seem to come in line, which I guess makes sense. Money’s such a big a part of their relationship. But what else you – I cut you off there.
Warren Bird — No, no, no okay so we started with number 7 was the terms people use number 6 was you know your facility. Do you own it? Number 5 was what are you doing to create healthy disciples? Number 4 primary ethnicity. This is going to reinforce the multisite – number 1 predictably was Caucasian, number 2 was not hispanic, asian, or other ethnicities, but it was multiethnicity or multiracial. So again, this is becoming the norm and and I’m convinced as churches go, new churches new campuses, so goes the rest.
Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely; love it.
Warren Bird — Number 3 is – I ask it two ways. One is I ask the individual taking the survey, if you are the church planter or campus pastor, did you do a residency or internship…
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Warren Bird — …in the last…I think it was the last five years before launching whatever you you help launch? And more than one third said yes.
Rich Birch — Really?
Warren Bird — And I’ll speak where you assessed and that was well over half. But you know assessment is like a weekend or a week long thing a residency or an internship is a big commitment…
Rich Birch — Absolutely, yeah.
Warren Bird — …and though that’s a game-changer. But let me before you comment. Let me tell you the the biggest game-changer. We ask multisite directors, in other words, those responsible for their churches’ multisite campuses: Do you prefer that your campus pastor be assessed? And so far… I’m sorry, do you prefer that your campus pastor have done a residency or internship? So far, you want to guess what what they’re saying? It’s high I’ll give you that.
Rich Birch — Yeah I was going to say, it’s high, like you know that that’s from your previous studies. You know I’ve said I think it was like 91% of all campus pastors are from within the congregation. So it’s a very super high so I would imagine this would be similar number. 80/90% I would say it’s quite high.
Warren Bird — Yeah, you got it. It’s 87% so far that did.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Warren Bird — So to me this is this is just this whole idea that’s bubbling all over of doing a ministry residency before actually planting/launching your campus. I just see that as more and more happening and moving that direction.
Rich Birch — Yeah that’s great. Well and on that particular one the interesting takeaway for multi-site churches on that particular piece is, I think so many times when we’re trying to hire people we look externally; we’re thinking like I got to go find people. And you know the the advice I, you know, and it’s because of your past work, I quote it all the time I’m like, stop thinking about that – the first if you’re going to have 10 campuses, the first nine of them are going to come within your church. The problem is you got to go find those 9 people now and start developing them. How do we, you know, we don’t let’s not wait until we need a campus pastor. We’ve got to start you know, who are the top 9 people that we think we might might potentially – 5 years from now – be a campus pastor. Let’s work on how do we develop those people now, and develop them from within – raise them up in the system. So yeah, that’s interesting that continues to resonate – that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Warren Bird — I remember the first survey I did on multisite when it was just, you know, words were just starting. And by the way in this survey, we ask, what do you call your person? And campus pastor is still overwhelmingly the top choice. Location pastor is 11%… ah, site I’m sorry – location pastor is 15%, site pastor is 11%, and other is 6%, so I’m going to use the phrase campus pastor, but if you need to translate, okay.
Rich Birch — Sure.
Warren Bird — But what way back to early on the very first survey I did of multisite when was first starting I asked, the following question was in there. And when people asked me about the survey, I said here’s the question that surprised me the most. We asked when you launched a new campus, did lay involvement go down, stay the same, or go up? And Rich, I think that’s the stat you were referring to that lay involvement. It was like 87% or 91% – it was something like that. I was such a surprise to me that the next time a couple years later when we did, through Leadership Network, another multi-site survey, I asked the same question again and got the same ridiculously, delightfully high number. And so all that’s great. You’re mobilizing your lay people. Go ahead.
Rich Birch — Um, yeah, absolutely well. And yeah I absolutely yeah multisite again ah the way I’ve said it internally is multisite from my own personal experience and taught… I’m working with so many churches, it is like the best way that I’ve seen to mobilize people, to get more people plugged into the mission, and obviously church planting does that as well. Ah, because there’s like this interesting, we gotta find people, we gotta get them plugged in, we you know we yeah, we have to get them. We can’t just have people sitting. We’ve got to get them. My son interestingly he’s in in college now and he started going to a church that’s couple years old—they launched right actually they launched fall 2019 right before the pandemic so they’re still very much in the in the church plant mode, and he’s like—the lead guy’s names Yesper—he’s like, Yesper, he’s like really good at getting people to volunteer. And I’m like yeah because he has to, like you you have to get people mobilized like if he doesn’t get it, there it’s not gonna happen. So love that I think you got a couple more. Don’t give us the number one yet I want to do something before we get to the number one yet. But yeah I think you’ve got a couple more before we get to that.
Warren Bird — Okay, and and let me just do it aside. Your leaders are so good when the campus is new at raising up lay peopleople and then when you start needing staff, that’s the big fork in the road if you hire staff to be doers instead of minister-makers, instead of leader-makers, instead of pastor-makers, then you move all this great lay power, you diminish it and you you change it into only the paid.
Rich Birch — That’s the temptation right there that is the temptation that so many of us fall into.
Warren Bird — Absolutely. Okay number 2 may seem obvious. But ten years ago if I had asked what are you doing online? At most you would have gotten, we broadcast our services. Um and let me just give you kind of I’m going to rank them in the order. We gave like 25 choices you know you, do you communion online, do you counseling online… Here here were the top ones: number one was corporate worship. Number 2 with small groups, which is I mean my wife and I are leading a couple’s ah small group, and it happens tonight and we’re going to meet 3 times in person. I live we’re we’re based in New York where things aren’t quite as as healing as in other parts of the continent and but but each week it’s on Zoom. And it’s working great – I mean we never would have imagined that. So small groups, then third staff meeting, fourth prayer teams, fifth counseling, sixth children, and on it goes.
Rich Birch — That’s amazing.
Warren Bird — And all these things that, you know, we just wouldn’t have imagined that we could do.
Rich Birch — No, it’s so true. Even personally like we, you know, we’ve been you you know, we have obviously journeyed together a little bit with Liquid and, you know, we started doing church online in 2009, and you know have a long journey there but in my own personal life, it really took the pandemic to convince me. Oh I can do stuff online like even coaching and like you know meeting with other leaders and and all of that. Even though you know I’ve we’ve invested a lot done a lot to get but there’s that’s something there.
Rich Birch — Before we get to number one, I want to encourage people to go to unseminarysurvey.com um, we’ll have the link in the show notes but we just want to make it super easy. You’re listening to the unseminary podcast, just go to unseminarysurvey.com. It only takes 15 minutes um and I know you’ve got some kind of benefits for people. You’ve got like if you I know you’ve got like draws for Amazon gift cards, and stuff like that. Tell us… through and you get access to the survey… tell us about a few of those things before we get to the number one thing you want to share.
Warren Bird — Let me tell you three of them – one is you get a copy of the findings…
Rich Birch — Okay, which is killer.
Warren Bird — …and you get invited to a webinar where I’m going to answer the questions a week later, so if you got specific questions, I I can’t wait to answer them because usually I learned so much as someone says, but did you compare this to that, or the people who said yes to this you know do they tend to be over there? I’m like what a good question and I go look it up and then I can say something helpful on the webinar. So so one, you get to learn…
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — Um and and I can’t wait to share it with you, and ECFA does things with excellence I’ll be illustrated and easy to understand and so forth. Number two, yes, we do have those Amazon gift card drawings. I think we’ve got eight at $50 each and and we really do you know we use a randomizer to pick names when and I’ve done this in previous…
Rich Birch — Nice. Shocker.
Warren Bird — Well well I say that because when we write people and say you’ve won – this is not a joke you…
Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Yes, people are like is this what I has yeah that’s amazing. Yes, yes, that’s funny.
Warren Bird — What um, yes, it it spam? And it usually takes my assistant a couple of times to say, no, you really – we want to give you a Amazon gift card your name was randomly selected.
Rich Birch — That’s funny. Love that.
Warren Bird — For those in the US, we want to give you spiritual demographics of your zip code or you know the area that you select.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — We want to help you see you know how many how many single adults are there in your community, what is the racial makeup of your community, what are the what are the needs in terms of ah, parents at home – single parents and so forth.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Warren Bird — Um, that it’s going to help you identify needs that you can meet in Jesus name and it’s a tool that you can use with your team and all that.
Rich Birch — That’s great.
Warren Bird — So and I think there are 2 or 3 other incentives listed, but we want to make this worthwhile for you. Um, and…
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I…yes?
Warren Bird — …oh oh I’m sorry I’m sorry I would more we have the top 5 tools for church planting from ECFA like…
Rich Birch — Oh, right. Um, right. Yet. Wow.
Warren Bird — …like over the years we’ve come up with a bunch of resources and we picked the 5 most so like how to start a new church, or how to do the housing allowance for the for the minister, or campus pastor or…
Rich Birch — Mmm, right. Yep. Wow.
Warren Bird — …Or how to you know, set up a budget, or a you know, determine cash flow level. So so this is this is really stuff that’s going to help you and FREE for taking the survey. It’s.
Rich Birch — Yes, yeah, that’s great. Again friends, just drop by unseminarysurvey.com that’ll just just redirect you, take you right to the survey. I’d encourage you to do this; I would say it’s worth doing it. It’s only 15 minutes – it’s worth doing it just to get the the the one thing, which is just to get the results, is killer. You’re going to literally you’re going to be given incredible insights that’ll help you as you look to the future in whatever kind of way you’re involved in multiplication. But then all this other stuff is like just incredible gravy on top. It’s definitely worth your time. It’s worth your team, it’s worth encouraging your team as well, like if you’ve got people on your team, like if you’re the executive pastor, get your lead pastor to do it as well so that you know you might get a slightly different nuanced views on it which would be fantastic.
Warren Bird — Well, the executive pastor goes down a different path than the campus pastor.
Rich Birch — Yeah, which is wonderful. So want to do that. Now you said there were 7 – you’ve given us 6 of them -this is amazing. What’s number 1?
Warren Bird — Okay, has your church—and then I’ll bring in a multisite parallel, but if I’ll first do at the church level—has your church—and we give them involvement in other church planting and the top of the heap that we asked was—have you been directly involved in launching one or more churches? We also say have you been indirectly—like you know we give money to a fund, or we encourage, or we prayed for this, but—have you been directly involved with planting one or more new churches? More than one third said yes!
Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.
Warren Bird — So far it’s 39% – almost four out of ten. That is a game changer if that ends up being true and what’s happened, and let me give you the multisite parallel.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing.
Warren Bird — Have you added another campus; has your church—that you’re a multisite campus—have added a new campus in the same same time period – in the last three years? Okay last one for church planting was 39%; this is two thirds – this is 65% have said yes.
Rich Birch — Wow, That’s amazing.
Warren Bird — So I can’t wait to dig and you know, kind of like because we ask when did you launch. And so I can do post pandemic or pre-pandemic.
Rich Birch — Yes, yep.
Warren Bird — But I’m thinking this is saying that there have been lots of launches both leading up to the pandemic but but during the pandemic. Whoa!
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. Well and it also speaks frankly on the demographic side. It speaks to you’re getting the right people to take the survey, right? These are people that are actually engaged in this activity…
Warren Bird — You know that’s you’re right. You’re right.
Rich Birch — …which which is which is good, right?
Warren Bird — And and I paid an academic to to tear apart my survey and that’s one of the things he said you know you’re going to get the choir in there and they’re going to give you the rosiest point of view because they’re you know they’re all in and they’re doing what they believe in. Um, so you’re gonna have little bias.
Rich Birch — Yeah, but which is what you want though you want we want to know what those people are up to and so that showing you like hey there’s there’s good. You know you? you’ve hit the right market. That’s that’s great.
Warren Bird — Yeah, yeah.
Rich Birch — Well, Warren, this is incredible. Again, it’s unseminarysurvey.com. We’ll link it in the show notes; you’ll get an email about it, so we’ll pester you about it. As you know if you hang out with unSeminary, we’ve known to pester you from time to time. I really do want you to take this. Um Warren, anything else just says we kind of wrap up this episode anything else you’d like to share, or anything else we want to make sure we send people to? I’m sure this is like the big thing these days, but anything else you want to say as we wrap up?
Warren Bird — Now just thank you. Thank you for your investment of a few minutes is going to help thousands, if not tens of thousands of other people – just thank you. They’re hard questions. They’re not easy questions like I’m going to ask, you you know, your attendance different years, or finances how do so you have to think about it. It’s not just a yes/no, but we we try to limit the questions so that you can – if you if you move quickly – 15 minutes.
Rich Birch — Yeah, love it. Well one last question for you – can I get you to come back on, maybe in the you know, after the dust settles, and you’ve you’ve chewed on all the data, I would love to have you back on to to you know test some of these theories. It might be kind of interesting to see some of the early data versus you know, what actually ended up coming out. Would you be open to that, Warren – can I bend your arm to come back on the show?
Warren Bird — For you, Rich, who who bent my arm to spill the beans already…
Rich Birch — Oh nice. Ah sure. Good.
Warren Bird — …Let’s let’s come back and let your listeners be among the first to hear what people said. Yep.
Rich Birch — Good, great, good stuff. Well thanks, Warren – appreciate you, again. It’s unseminarysurvey.com – drop by there. Do it. You know, set aside the 15 minutes/20 minutes/half an hour. You know you got to have some focused thinking time – you can’t do this in the car on the way in the morning. Do that and and you’ll help not only your own church, but like you say thousands of other churches. Thanks so much, Warren. So glad that you’ve been here. Have a great rest of your week.
Warren Bird — Thank you.
Office Hours: Volunteer Recruiting Best Practices & Reaching New People
Feb 24, 2022
Welcome to this month’s Office Hours episode. This month Rich is taking on your questions about building volunteer teams, and reaching people who might not normally attend your services.
Leslie Moffat, administrative pastor, Celebration Church in Brantford, Ontario, Canada:
“For churches with multiple services, do you recommend the same volunteers stay on for the entire morning and cover both services, or do you have two different teams?”
Volunteers and growth. // Churches grow because people invite their friends. When you get more people plugged into volunteering, that ultimately leads to more people coming to your church and getting plugged in long term. In fact attendance levels are typically three times the number of volunteers you have.
Attend one/serve one. // A best practice for volunteers is letting them attend one service and serve at another one. This helps create balance so that a small group of people aren’t doing a large amount of the work. Attend one/serve one values your volunteers and keeps them plugged into the community, especially if they are serving in kids ministry.
One in three rotation. // The best practice for serving rotations is for volunteers to serve one week and then being off for two weeks. The exception may be small group leaders in kids ministry which may need high consistency and are better serving every week or every other week. A three-week rotation for other positions in the church is easier than serving once a month when some months have four weeks and others five.
WIIFM? // What’s in it for me? When communicating about volunteering, don’t communicate your need but rather communicate how the people in your church will benefit from volunteering. Don’t use the word “we” when writing about volunteering, always use the word “you.”
Talk with groups. // The best volunteer recruiting tool is the shoulder tap. Look at existing small groups you can visit, and sit down to talk about the opportunities that could benefit them. Talk in a relational context, not an obligatory one, and you’ll see a better return rate. Create fun social times to let people at the church connect and enjoy themselves, and you can give a short talk about the vision of the church and getting plugged in.
Jeff Peters, executive director, La Croix Church in Missouri:
“How do we reach new people in our community who aren’t going to attend a worship service, either in the building or online? Also how do we build a more robust leadership pipeline that isn’t so staff-centric.”
Increase the invite culture. // The way our churches grow is when our people invite their friends. We should look for ways to increase the invite culture, and not just on a Sunday. Churches can hold programs such as Financial Peace University to engage people looking for practical help in their lives. You could also offer Alpha, which brings people together to watch a video, talk about faith, and have a meal together.
Go out to serve others. // Instead of telling people to “come and see” what your church is about, go out and serve the community. Look for regular opportunities to help make a difference in your community and get it on the calendar. Have the cash available in your budget for addressing problems that arise and consistently get out into your community.
Leadership book club. // Start a small leadership book club which can help develop the leaders in an organic way. You can start out leading the book club, but then encourage one of the others to lead it in the next round.
Campus expansion. // Think about launching a new campus to develop a robust leadership pipeline and volunteers.
Thank You for Tuning In!
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Stop Copying and Pasting the Announcements for Your Church!
Feb 22, 2022
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I know this sounds like some homespun advice from your mom, but it does apply to looking for resources on the internet to improve the weekend services or announcements at your church.
A quick search online will reveal an endless amount of templates and done-for-you resources that you can simply plug and play into your services; however, if you’re looking to improve your announcements, copying materials from someone else’s church is not the way to go about improving your church.
It’s Time to Think Carefully about This Important Part of Your Weekend Services
Rather than trying to take the easy way out and copying what somebody else has written, you need to find a way to improve this aspect of your service systematically by training your people and motivating them toward a better approach.
Now, it’s understandable that you might want to simply copy and paste announcements. In fact, there could be multiple reasons why you would be tempted to take this shortcut.
You’re frankly not sure what to say this weekend, and although you know that announcements should be done, you aren’t sure how to leverage them to move people toward engagement.
You might even be unsure of why you do this aspect of what you do every weekend.
As you look to improve your announcements, let’s talk more in-depth about why copying and pasting an announcement script from a website is a terrible idea for your church.
Best Practices Versus Blind Copying
Studying other churches is a good thing to do. Finding leading churches that are five steps ahead in various aspects is a great way for your church to level up its development and skip stages that could be holding it back as you attempt to reach more people.
Here at unSeminary, we do this through our weekly podcast. For nearly 600 episodes, we’ve interviewed church leaders from some of the fastest-growing churches in the country on a wide variety of topics. We do this because we want to help you find the best practices to apply at your church. Blind copying, however, is a terrible approach because it doesn’t ultimately force the transfer of the understanding behind the practice. It just copies the end-state practice.
Announcements Are About Increasing Engagement
The musical worship portion of what you do every weekend is about transcendence. You’re hoping that people will connect with God and get a clear picture of His love and care for them.
The teaching portion of what you do is about transformation as you open scripture and help people wrestle through how to apply those lessons to their daily lives.
The hosting portion, while typically the smallest piece of what happens on the weekend, is critically important because it’s about moving people to action. It’s about moving people beyond just thinking and getting them to actually take a step.
The announcements are the engagement engine!Talking about announcements and ensuring that you’re doing a good job on your announcements is about increasing the engagement at your church.
Most modern airplanes are flown on autopilot when they’re flying in the air, but they switch to human pilots when they go to land. Similarly, announcements are of the utmost importance and cannot be done on autopilot. You need the care of humans at your church making decisions around what’s happening in this aspect of your service. If you are looking to increase engagement at your church, diving deep into improving your announcements is a great place to begin.
Three Reasons Not to Copy and Paste the Announcements This Week at Your Church
Your church isn’t in Alpharetta // Every resource you find online comes from a singular context and is written by a group of people that have a particular perspective on the world. While you might actually be in Alpharetta, Georgia, if the resources are from a different church community, then they don’t have the same context as your church. Your church is moving your people toward the next steps that you need your people to take. You need to develop a resource that has your community’s unique voice in it. Copying and pasting will make you sound like some other church in some other context and won’t meet the needs that you need to move forward.
Your team has unique needs // You know that team member who does the announcements at your church who seems to get up every weekend and try to turn the five minutes of service hosting into their personal standup comedy routine? Or what about that leader who you really want to host, but they simply lack the confidence at this point to do that? No copy-and-paste resource will help you navigate the unique needs of your team. You need to move beyond these generic resources and find a way to train your people to build up their unique needs and approaches.
You’re called to develop people // The training and equipping of people is core to what we’re called to do as church leaders. (Ephesians 4:12) Just because it might be easier to give people an online copy-and-paste resource that you found late one Saturday night doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. In fact, a little bit of inconvenient training can go a long way in helping your church improve not only in the announcements but in many aspects of what you do. Training is a critical part of how we help people grow and develop in their faith.
Looking for more help with your announcements? This FREE 3-part video series is for you.
Are you looking to improve the hosting of your weekend services?
Have you already tried improving this area but aren’t sure what to do next?
Are you ready to take the next steps to increase engagement in your announcements and ultimately your church? I’m releasing a FREE three-part video series designed to help your church with better weekend hosting. The lessons in this series come from my practical experience of hosting hundreds of services in multiple contexts and coaching many other leaders in this area. The three videos are:
Video #1: 5 Reasons People Aren’t Listening to Your Hosting. Your first video will clearly define for you why people aren’t paying attention to the announcements in your services.
Video #2: The One Best Practice to Ensure Higher Engagement with Your Announcements. In this video, you will understand what the single most important practice thriving churches change about their announcements to improve engagement.
Video #3: 3 Church Hosting Myths Debunked. Finally, you will dive into three misunderstood myths about hosting announcements that move people to action.
In-Person Community & Bold Digital Innovation in a Lonely World with Benjamin Windle
Feb 17, 2022
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with return guest Benjamin Windle from Life Place Church in Australia.
Whether or not churches are going to opt in to the digital revolution is no longer an option. Now the question is, how do churches operate and minister in a digital world, particularly to younger generations? Listen in to today’s podcast as Benjamin shares research and insights on what Millennials and Gen Z are really looking for, and how churches can reach them.
Understanding younger generations. // When it comes to digital ministry, we can be tempted to design our churches around convenience and comfort to such a degree that we shift the necessary convictions in our church. Part of this is because we may have misread what younger generations are looking for in church. We may wrongly think that they are shallow and interested primarily in entertainment and what’s “cool”, and focus our services on that. But instead we should see younger generations as a movement of thoughtful people in search of significance and authenticity.
Be part of a community. // One of our primary needs is community. Loneliness among Gen Z in particular is epidemic and coincides with the surge in social media. We may think that young people want everything to be fast and easy and on their phone, but we shouldn’t be afraid of challenging them to be a contributing part of a biblical community.
Seven layers of community. // Benjamin has found seven layers of practice to community in the bible. Preaching, worship, prayer, and evangelism can be done well online. But the other three are best done in-person: interpersonal responsibility, inconvenient hospitality, and institutional physicality.
Interpersonal responsibility. // We all have a spiritual fingerprint of God with unique gifts and need to understand that we each bring something special to the church and community. We aren’t in community simply to receive; we’re in community because we have a biblical responsibility to each other.
Inconvenient hospitality. // Benjamin challenges us with the idea that community or friendship doesn’t really exist until we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for each other. Inconvenient hospitality is a necessary and intentional part of God’s design for community, and it’s where richness is found in our relationships with each other.
Institutional physicality. // Barna discovered that the thing churchgoers missed the most during COVID was taking communion in-person. It’s likely that Gen Z will start to crave the physicality of what community really is, such as sharing a meal together, as their lives are primarily focused on the online world.
Reimagine, reevaluate, reconnect, and rebuild. // Benjamin has put together a report with Barna called Digital Church in a Lonely World: 7 Ingredients of Church Community. It walks through the seven layers of community and also bold digital innovation. In this report Benjamin covers four words that form a framework for churches of any size to apply to any area of their ministry. These include: reimagine, reevaluate, reconnect, and rebuild. Download the full report from Barna.com.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Episode Transcript
Rich Birch — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know every week on the episode we like to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. Super excited to have a repeat guest which, friends, you know if you’ve been listening for a while we’re 600-some odd episodes and we very rarely actually have repeat guests. So you know you need to lean in and listen to Benjamin Windle today. He is from Australia – senior pastor at LifePlace Church in Australia. Always good to connect with someone else in the Commonwealth. Ah, Benjamin, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Benjamin Windle — Well I feel extra blessed now knowing that I’m a special repeat guest. I’m going to put that down to the accent more than anything.
Rich Birch — Ah, no, not at all. I yeah, we’ll link to your past episod.e I just am so honored to that you’d take some time to be with us today. So so glad to be here. Why don’t you fill out the picture a little bit tell us a little bit more for folks that maybe didn’t didn’t catch your first episode, which I think was just over a year ago. Ah, give us a sense like again, tell us a bit of your story. Give us a bit of your background.
Benjamin Windle — Well I’ve been vocationally pastoring full-time for 20 years. Raised in the ministry, my father is a pastor; my father-in-law is a pastor. Oh my goodness – I couldn’t escape it. Um I now have a special focus on Millennials and Gen Z, from both a writing and content creation point, helping pastors think through some of the unique challenges of these generations, into which I fit, and that’s where a lot of my, I guess, writing and content comes out of.
Rich Birch — Love it. Well today we want to kind of reflect a little bit. Here we are two years on into this pandemic and into the impacts that it’s had, and you know one of the things I’m hearing from ministry leaders across the country is there is like this surprise, a little bit, that here we are, it’s still impacting us a couple years later. We’re still very much in this, um even if the impacts look a little different than they have in earlier phases. But what has it felt like for you? Kind of what’s it felt like for you to be two years into this um this pandemic? Where is it what does it feel like for you at this, you know in this season?
Benjamin Windle — Well I think it’s a moment, right? I mean to reach that two year mark. And as you said to kind of say, hey here we are. We’re still in it. Um, some things we we at least have a sense of this, Rich. Some things may return back to what they were. But I think what there’s a ah, degree of consensus on, is there are a number of things that have forever shifted and are evolving. And I think when it comes to the intersection of church and the digital space, that’s where we’re all asking a lot of questions and trying to navigate through what does the future look like here?
Rich Birch — Yeah I know we all, one of the things that you know when we reflect back on that two years ago, you know I’ve been doing at our church, church online since 2009 so it wasn’t really a new deal. It was obviously super intensified when we, you know, when we particularly in those early phases of the pandemic. But what has changed over the last two years is like everybody has some sort of digital aspect of their ministry where even that maybe wasn’t the case two years ago. What do you think the church will look like in the digital age? What do you think, as we kind of peer to the future, as we kind of from this precipice where we sit today. What what’s that going to look like when we look to the future?
Benjamin Windle — Well I think it’s important that we’re asking the right questions to know what our churches should look like. And I think we’re at we’re at an important juncture here in this conversation because we don’t get to choose whether or not we’re going to opt in to the digital revolution. I mean it’s fundamentally shifted everything about our lives long before covid, and in many ways we were laggards to um what it means to operate and minister into a digital world. So I think within that, asking the right questions around technology and that space is going to be crucial. And for me, you know we talk about this being a moment 2 years in, but here is a real moment for me. This is maybe six months in, Rich, um I passed ah in a beautiful state called Queensland in Australia—they may not have let us out of our state ah for two years—but it’s kind of like a prison paradise being locked in. So I go to the beach with my kids Sunday morning. Oh my goodness, first time in living memory I’m not in a church on a Sunday.
Rich Birch — Right. Ah yes, yes.
Benjamin Windle — Because we’re locked down. We’re shut down. I’d pre-recorded my sermon. I’m sitting there on the beach. There’s a little cafe. It sells baked Portuguese custard tarts, which I wish I could just right now bring you on a plane, just to get over here and and…
Rich Birch — Little taste of heaven.
Benjamin Windle — Oh my goodness. I got that; I got my coffee. My kids are playing in the beach in the sand. It’s wonderful, and I have this moment as a pastor: I could get used to this. This ain’t that bad, this online. I got on my phone, you know, the the Sunday service is streaming. Like this is…
Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yes
Benjamin Windle — … a pretty good gig. Are you kidding me? If we asked this question, “what do people prefer,” we are at risk of architecturally designing our churches, and our faith, around convenience. And I guess I’m putting a little red flag, a marker, out saying, we need to be careful that we don’t orient around convenience, or comfort, to the degree that we fundamentally shift convictions in our church that are absolutely necessary. So this is, in some ways, somewhat of a cautionary tale.
Rich Birch — Absolutely. You know, it’s interesting you say this because I think this, for me, has been one of the reflections here, you know, when this—whatever this phase is we call intra-covid, post-covid—whatever the phase is we are right now, where there were those people who I think early in the pandemic we we kind of sold them this idea that it was like, hey go to church online and it will it’ll it’s just like attending in person. Like we said things like that. It’s exactly the same. And then, you know, just recently it was talking to or my wife was actually she was talking with a ah young mom who, you know, said I I am just drowning here, like I we haven’t returned. We haven’t come back and um for, you know, one reason or another. And you know my as a, you know, what am I an armchair kind of pastor leaning in on the conversation, I’m like, I think the problem is that they are disconnecting with culture. They’ve disconnected with friends.
Benjamin Windle — Yeah, yes.
Rich Birch — They’re disconnected with community, and sure they’re watching the stream, but that but they’re not driving ah, you know, to a deeper um you know deeper relationships. So when when we think about this issue… I think this is a good flag, and we think about, okay, how we don’t want to orient around convenience, we don’t want to you know we don’t want to make our ministries about, hey it’s just easier to do it this way. Is that does that point to like a bigger problem? Does that ah, do you see that um, we may be thinking about, particularly our Millennial and Gen Z friends, in a way that like we maybe have misdiagnosed, that we’ve misread, what it is they’re looking for, ah when you think about that question in relation to the two you know generations particularly that you said you spend your time thinking about… What have we maybe be mis… misthought about them as it comes to digital ministry or this, even this moment with them?
Benjamin Windle — Well one of those misreads is, when we think of these younger generations, how often we would say we think feel like they are shallow, or lack substance, or want everything faster, easier, preach shorter sermons and I think then as pastors we can buy into this idea that um services need to be more entertaining, stages and production sleeker, sermon shorter, more visual props. Um, and it leads to what I define or term as “cool fatigue” within the church.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm.
Benjamin Windle — And I think it is a misread when we think about these generations to think that’s what they’re actually searching for. What if instead of thinking that way, rather we saw new generations as a movement of people in search of significance and authenticity. What if we saw them as thoughtful, considerate (which they are), educated, spiritual. They’re hungry for a mission, and if that’s the case we shouldn’t coddle this generation too much. And we should not be afraid of challenging them. And to me one of the crucial challenges is this: the challenge of what it means to be a contributing part of a biblical community—whether it’s convenient, whether you feel like it’s easy, whether it fits into your lifestyle—the willingness to challenge them. On here’s what biblical community, true biblical community really looks like.
Rich Birch — Love it. Okay, I Love this. There’s so much to dive in there on. I Love the “cool fatigue” idea. So I’m going to push you on that a little bit. Um, are you saying that churches shouldn’t have a primary orientation around um, how do we engage with the culture around us. Differentiate that for me because when I look around, I see some of the fastest growing churches in the country, I look at them and I’m like, wow, those ministries are cool. Ah you know as defined by, they seem to be trying to engage the the culture around them. Help help us understand that “cool fatigue” idea a little bit more.
Benjamin Windle — No, we should try and reach the culture. We’re just misreading them when we think that that’s what they want.
Rich Birch — Okay yep.
Benjamin Windle — Ah I’m I’m yet to speak to a young person, you know take a 25 year old, Rich, and I’m like, oh why did you leave the church? I mean Barna tells a 64% of this generation who are raised in the church walk away from the church, or have walked away from the church. Why why did you walk away from the church? Well you know what, there weren’t enough LED screens on the stage. The the logo wasn’t cool enough.
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Benjamin Windle — The Instagram the color of the theme on the Instagram feed it, you know what, it should have been magenta Monday through Thursday. I mean it’s just it’s actually not the things that they’re truly searching for, and we have to go deeper. And one of the the key areas is there is a search for real community.
Rich Birch — Absolutely.
Benjamin Windle — Why? Because there is a loneliness epidemic. And this loneliness epidemic intersects with the surge in social media, online, and so we have 13 to 17 year olds that are spending over five hours a day on their screens. That goes up to nearly seven hours for older teens and yet loneliness – think of this – 79% of the same generation say they are lonely.
Rich Birch — Right.
Benjamin Windle — So you’re on your screen 7 hours a day and 79% of you say they are lonely. 45% of Gen Z say they feel lonely at least some of the time. These are staggering numbers that are coming out. So I look at that and when you say, you know, however you were to that reach in terms of like reaching the needs speaking to this generation. Well one of the primary needs is the need for community.
Rich Birch — Love it.
Benjamin Windle — Have we actually withdrawn and taken away the core of what they actually need because how we perceive them in our mind is: you guys don’t want any of that. You guys don’t want to be inconvenienced. You guys want it short, fast. You you want it on your phone. I’m not so sure about that. I think that there may be a reaction back the other way for a real search for what it means to be ah, a part of true community.
Rich Birch — Yeah I love that. I was listened to a pundit recently who kind of echoes what you were saying. That you know, he was wondering if in 50 years from now people will look back at our generation, this moment, this kind of social media-obsessed moment in the same way that we look back now and you you see like photographs from the 40s and 50s of doctors in hospitals smoking cigarettes…
Benjamin Windle — It’s our modern day cigarette. It’s our modern day cigarette. Yeah.
Rich Birch — …and you’re like I can’t believe they were doing that all, right? Its the same. It’s the same kind of thing. Weird. Like people are, you know, we are generating this incredible loneliness, or the systems are generating this loneliness which ultimately ah, makes us do what? It makes us be more addicted to them. Interesting. So so how do we form real community? What are you learning on this front? How do we, how do we do that? What is that look like? What are some of the hallmarks of the things we should be looking for? I love a couple of things you’ve said so far, but let’s let’s kind of dig into that a little deeper.
Benjamin Windle — Well it is the linchpin word – the word community. And actually defining what that means. So for example, we can say this: Well, we’re streaming an online church service and there’s a chat bar. So if people can chat, you know, we kind of we tick that off the list. That’s community. I’ve done a much deeper dive in this area, and I found biblically in the new testament there are seven layers of practice to the idea, the concept, of community. And many of those can be done very well online, and we need to know which ones can be done well online and which ones are best served in-person, at least at this point in time, so that when we have people in the room, we have people in-person, we know what we’re trying to achieve. So, for example, content can be done very well online – preaching, worship, um prayer, evangelism, but there are three layers to community – new testament community – that I believe are best served when we do them in-person.
Rich Birch — You’ve set me up. You got you got to tell me what the three layers are – you least got to give me an overview. Don’t leave me hanging, Benjamin!
Benjamin Windle — Ah, ah, of course – number one interpersonal responsibility, number 2 inconvenient hospitality, and number 3 institutional physicality. Now by means of just quick definition… Interpersonal responsibility: I was raised in an era of church—and I thank God for this—that there was somewhat of a demand placed on my life to give something out of the human qualities that God had put in me to others. And we all have gifts. We all have a spiritual fingerprint of God on our lives. We bring something special to a church community. We need to teach people this. You bring something that nobody else brings. You’re in community not to receive. You’re in community because you have a biblical responsibility to those group of people. And when you read through scriptures and in in the new testament, we truly do have a job description. Ah that aren’t just clergy or pastors or leaders welcoming guest warmly in the book of Acts. Um, working enthusiastically with people (1 Corinthians); loving each other as brothers and sisters (Hebrews); providing food and clothing (James) – I mean we could go on. So interpersonal responsibility or put it this way, Rich – are we actually a part of a community, until we’re responsible for other people? It’s it’s an interesting question.
Rich Birch — That’s a great question. Yeah.
Benjamin Windle — Next, inconvenient hospitality. This one for me is so important. Um I don’t think community or even friendship exists until we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for each other. Um I mean if we lived near each other and I get a text message from you one day, Rich, and you’re like, hey you know what? Um I need I need something – could you just pop over to my house and help me out? I’m like ah you know what? That’s probably going to take me like 8 minutes, and I’m sorry, but no, you’re just not that important to me. Um. Inconvenience is not an unwanted byproduct of community. It’s a necessary and intentional part of God’s design for community. We need to intentionally create communities that inconvenience people.
Rich Birch — Absolutely. That’s so good.
Benjamin Windle — Why? That’s where meaning is. That’s where richness is found in terms of other people. And then lastly ah when we talk about these three areas is institutional physicality. There’s more that we could say about this, but one example that Barna found is the number one thing that churchgoers missed during covid was taking communion in-person. And it’s likely that Millennials and Gen Z who live so much of their life online will start to craze the physicality aspect of what community actually is.
Rich Birch — Love it. You know it’s it’s, this such lines up, most of my experience has been in over the last twenty years has been in the attractional church movement. That’s where I’ve spent most of my time, most of my thinking. And you know for years I would as a communicator, I would say you know I think we’re doing people a disservice when we talk about small groups, community groups—whatever you call them—in our in our churches because we oversell them. Um, we we tell, we say to people, we say get in this it’s… getting community is just as easy as signing up for one of these groups. And all you’ve got to do is like show up on a Tuesday night and somehow the magic of community is going to happen. I said you know I don’t know that that’s actually true – the communities that I’ve been a part of—this is why I love your your middle part there of inconvenient hospitality—the communities that have been, meant the most to me, they require more of me. I’ve got to lean in; I’ve got to be a part of it. I can’t just um, you know, I can’t just show up. It’s not it’s not like a group of friends, it’s more like family than it is like friends. Friends, I get together, we all agree with each other; it’s fun. There’s something about when I get together with my brother who kind of slightly annoying to me, you know, my brother and my, you know, like my but my physical brother. Um that I but, but I like love him deeply I have it’s incredibly deep relationship with him. And I think it’s the same in biblical community…
Benjamin Windle — True.
Rich Birch — …that we we have to find a way to go beyond just these easy convenient ah, definitions I Just love this I think you pushed on the right button.
Benjamin Windle — Well ,well on that, Rich, and and I think you you’re pressing on a button right here when it comes to small groups. Okay, just for a moment right?
Rich Birch — Yes, yes.
Benjamin Windle — Think about what you just said there. We tell people like you’re you’re in our church. You’re literally in our church. But if you want community, come back midweek to somebody’s home and you’re going to find community. And I wrestle with that a little bit now, and I’ve been around it like you for a very long time, because I’m like, but hang on a second, you’re telling me that our primary gatherings, we are readily essentially acknowledging the central thing that these two generations are searching for in church, we don’t even have it here at a weekend.
Rich Birch — Cannot find it here. Yeah.
Benjamin Windle — We need to more closely examine that. It’s it’s like this: imagine going to a cafe to get a coffee and they’re like oh no, no, no, no come back. Come back on Tuesday night. We actually don’t do coffee here. Come back on a Tuesday night and you’ll get coffee to a small group. But you’re like, hang in a second, isn’t the whole purpose of what you guys do to serve this this item?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.
Benjamin Windle — And so again that just registers on my radar. For me, we have to reimagine church that everything we do has a community layer to it, and we can no longer say: our weekend services, well we know they’re not great at community, but just come back midweek at a small group. I think we need to reexamine that.
Rich Birch — Oh that’s good I love it. You know I think there’s yeah, there’s so much we could talk about here now. I one of the things I want to make sure people check out is this and just incredible report that you’ve put together for with our friends at at Barna called Digital Church in a Lonely World: 7 Ingredients of a Church Community or of church community. Tell us about this report. What what led you to say, okay I want to put this together. This is a significant resource I want people to pick up, but kind of give us the bit of the backstory, the kind of setting up. Obviously we’ve been talking about it when talking around it, but give us kind of the the story here. What what led you to this piece?
Benjamin Windle — Well I’m super grateful to be partnering with Barna and grateful for David Kinnaman, believing in this piece. We’ve put together a beautifully designed 69 page PDF that walks people through not just the seven layers of community—that’s part 1—but part 2 is bold digital innovation. And that tension is really important to me that on one hand we have an understanding of the layers in the dimensions to community, but on the other hand we have a pressing in to bold digital innovation because we are not immune to the digital era. If we fight against it we we will lose, but at the same time and I quote Christian Lewis Lang: technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master. Technology both helps us and hurts us. And so I think it’s easy for us sometimes to become so grandiose or idealistic about the use of technology because it’s become essential to us. But I think we need to have a nuanced approach and within that nuance we are innovating in new and exciting ways, but that innovation needs to it needs to move, Rich. And it needs to become less about innovating in a space of content, and we need to start innovating in community when it comes to technology. Um I mean, for example, you think about this whole offline online thing. I can now order custom-made Nikes (my sons do this) on an app.
Rich Birch — Mmm-hmm
Benjamin Windle — Yeah, but they still physically arrive at my door and they physically put them on their feet.
Rich Birch — Right.
Benjamin Windle — You can go to McDonald’s now and use a touchscreen and put together your meal, but you still physically the food they serve you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Benjamin Windle — I order an Uber on my smartphone but a physical car still turns up, it’s not the replacement of offline with online. It’s knowing how these two marry together and how they can best marry together in terms of community formation.
Rich Birch — Okay, so I know you’ve got ideas on that in in the practical world. Let’s let’s kind of frame this in maybe a church of 500 people. They’ve you know they’re not ah just your average kind of church – couple team members. What should we be thinking about when we think about our digital strategy? So many churches are wondering this in this moment. It’s like we kind of backed ourselves into this thing, now where do we go? I want to get people connected. I I realize we are living in a digital world that people are connecting online. How do I use that to leverage ah, community? What’s that look like?
Benjamin Windle — Well we need to think of our digital strategy as a spiritual formation ecosystem. So we need to zoom out, look at it holistically. And there are 4 words that I cover in this PDF that form a framework for churches of any size to take a look at, which is number 1 to reimagine, number 2 to reevaluate, number 3 to reconnect, and number 4 to rebuild. Now if we apply that lens to areas of our church, like ministry, like what would it look like to reimagine social justice, and then reevaluate and then reconnect and rebuild it. What would it look like to do that with evangelism, or small groups, or missions, or pastoral care? And not feeling like—and and if you’re a pastor and you’re listening to this—not feeling like you need to be backed into a corner on this where everything now needs to be digital. Um I’m trying to give pastors permission to wrestle with the complexity, and to be able to say this intelligently, there are some things that digital does better. But there are also some things that in-person does better. Knowing the difference between those two is a conversation that churches of all sizes can have. And in fact, Rich, it’s entirely possible and I think likely that there will be churches just like what you mentioned who actually decided live streaming our Sunday service is not part of our digital ecosystem. We that is actually not the way that we’re good…
Benjamin Windle — Hey I’m over here in Australia, you know what I mean?
Rich Birch — Ah yeah yeah, exactly. Yeah, we can’t throw stones that far. No I get it. No I totally understand that that right that it might be, you know, we’re not looking for a one-size-fits-all kind of solution. We need to look carefully at what is it that God’s called our church to, and how do we design a ministry that that weaves these together. Yeah, that’s good I love it. Sorry I think I cut you off? Yeah.
Benjamin Windle — Um, and when I say they reached that maybe live streaming isn’t the core of a digital strategy. Yes, but it might be 10 other things, right?
Rich Birch — Right. Yep.
Benjamin Windle — That are done midweek in terms of digital tools and and there’s a surge in innovation in this space which for me is really exciting.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Are there churches out there that you’re running into that you think are particularly innovating well that aren’t the kind of, like I feel like we all look at like 15 churches in the world and we pay attention to those ones, is there… can you give me an example of a church that’s like maybe we haven’t heard of before that we could we could kind of look at closely, and be like, oh that that’s kind of they’re doing some interesting things there?
Benjamin Windle — Well I mean I think that’s a really great point because the digital space at this point, you know, there are certain churches that can just do that much better. And so I think that can be almost a little bit of a dangerous trend. I know it in my backyard in in the church that that that I’m a part of and and I pastor ah um, you know for example, one of the things that’s very important to us is asking this question: What can people, what do people get when they attend a Sunday service that they cannot get online? Well here’s one of the really simple things which they can’t get: a great coffee, and they can’t get a meal.
Rich Birch — Right.
Benjamin Windle — So I mean we we literally have a catering team and volunteers and our goal is to do the very best coffee you’re going to get all week. And that becomes not just an add-on like oh yeah, there’s coffee at the end. Um, ah our service starts with coffee for half an hour…
Rich Birch — Right. Right. Yes.
Benjamin Windle — …at the end we call it church part two. It it becomes ingrained in the culture: stay, eat, connect, talk. So I think there are churches all around the country and all around the world that are figuring out how to do what they need to do within their local context, and that’s a great thing.
Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Well I I want to encourage people to pick up this report – I really do think it would be so helpful. Personally I see this as a great leadership tool. It could be a great thing for you to get your leadership team to buy. Don’t just buy one, and you know have a discussion around it. This could be the kind of thing that could lead easily to like a retreat away – you’re away for a day or two, really wrestling through this kind of content. Um, where do we want to send people if they want to pick up a copy of it – where how do we, how do we do that? What are we, what is the best way to do that?
Benjamin Windle — Just go to barna.com – it’s available there for download right now, so head over to Barna.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good, so helpful. Well as we’re coming to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share? This has been just a kind of the beginning of the conversation – I hope we’ll have you back in the future. But what anything else you’d like to say as we as we go to wrap up today?
Benjamin Windle — Hey, can you even imagine if I get a third slot on this show?
Rich Birch — Ah, come on it’d be great.
Benjamin Windle — Ah, ah my central thesis in this paper is we need to embrace in-person community, whilst also boldly innovating in the digital space. A closing thought for me would be reflecting on the ministry of Jesus, and looking at how often he physically touched people when he prayed for them, when he broke bread around a table -like the beauty of that. Um, the physical moments of his journey that became a part of the spiritual sojourn he was taking the disciples on. You know, Peter physically getting out of a boat. Talking to the woman by the well – the well was an important part of that object lesson. And so the physicality of that has a beauty. It’s something that I think people are craving, and we need to go on the journey of innovating in the digital space whilst also maybe reimagining the wonder and the beauty of community and calling people into inconvenience, because inconvenience is where depth is; it’s where richness of friendship is, and it’s worth it.
Rich Birch — Yeah, Benjamin, I appreciate this. For folks that are listening in I cannot more heartily endorse this – I really do think you should pick this up. One of the things I appreciate about Benjamin is I think there are people who are um, who are like obsessed with getting people to come back into our boxes, like you got to come back and sit in our boxes and that seems to be that is missing the point. It’s not the point of just get people to sit. It’s not a point to fill up our rooms. Let’s not get back to that, friends, but I appreciate your thoughtful approach around, hey this is what are we trying to do to build deeper community, and how do we you know, do that in in a world that is increasingly digital. How do we blend that well. So I really heartily endorse that, folks – pick up this report. Use it. Hopefully it helps spur lots of conversation. Benjamin, thanks so much. Anywhere else we want to send people online maybe to your own website – where do we where do we want to send them if they want to track with you?
Benjamin Windle — Thank you so much, Rich. Yes, please head over to Benjamin Windle — (W I N D L E) dot com. I have whole whole bunch of resources and various white papers that I hope can be a help to you.
Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Benjamin. Take care – thanks for being here today.
Benjamin Windle — Pleasure.
9 Tiny Habits That Can Cause Huge Disengagement During Announcements
Feb 15, 2022
When you have a little pebble in your shoe, it’s hard to focus on anything around you besides that minor discomfort, right? We sometimes do the same thing with our tiny habits during our weekend service announcements.
What about that little smudge from your kid’s finger on the TV as you watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster? Small distractions can deter even the biggest fan from concentrating on their favorite movie.
People can get distracted by the smallest of negative habits that you might have when you’re hosting your weekend services.
Your goal during these 5 minutes of “doing the announcements” at your church is to motivate people to spring into action. Part of the service is asking people to engage. These are incredibly important moments every weekend when you attempt to inspire people to plug into a group, join a service team, or give to the mission. Surely you don’t want a small (bad) habit to distract them from doing good deeds.
Churches looking to grow in the future have to find ways to increase engagement.
Jesus didn’t call people to “attend” to him; he called people to “follow” him. Engagement has been baked into Jesus’ message from the beginning!
Eliminate These Tiny Habits from Your Weekend Hosting to Boost People’s Engagement
Sports commentary // Commenting on the local sports heroes all the time or every weekend will drive people to stop listening. It’s a crutch when you don’t know what else to say—don’t do it! Add a high-value transition, like commenting on what just happened in the service rather than what your sports heroes have been up to.
“Blessings” and other insider language // I don’t know what it is about doing the announcements that makes some people use “churchy” language. Rather than talking about how great the youth event was, they talk about what a blessing it was for the youth to be involved in fellowship in that way. What?! Use language that makes sense to people who don’t normally attend church. (And stop taking up those “clap offerings!”)
Ignoring what just happened // We’ve all been in that sort of service where someone gets up to make the announcements and their hosting is completely disconnected from what just happened. It’s like they were only waiting backstage for the rest of the service to be over so that they can perform their part. Your announcement is part of the experience your guests just had. Treat it as the same service and respond to what happened and look for a way to elegantly hand off to what’s coming next.
Shielding your eyes from the light // You go on stage and there are bright lights for people to see you. You want to be able to see them too, so you make a shield over your eyes with your hand. Stop that! It takes people out of the moment, reinforces the fact that those lights are there, and makes people feel disconnected from you because they can’t see your face clearly.
Not introducing people // Who are all those people on stage with you? If you’ve ever visited a church and not known who was on stage, you know how disorienting it can be. Take 10 seconds to introduce everyone—it puts first-time guests at ease.
Acronyms or fancy names // Does your church use a bunch of acronyms for various ministries and departments? Stop it. Acronyms are how insiders talk to one another, and they deliberately build walls because new people don’t understand them. Cut it out! Just say the whole phrase and avoid the use of acronyms. The same rule applies to “clever” but unclear names for various ministries. I once heard an announcement inviting people to a “keenagers” event. What exactly is that?
Practicing your stand-up comedy // Sure, you want to make people smile—but you don’t need to practice your latest stand-up routine on them. Your goal isn’t to have them busting a gut in laugher but to simply have them engaging with what you say. Smiling is a great goal, but you don’t need to overshoot by making your guests roll on the floor with laughter.
Weird prayers // One of the reasons we pray in public is because it represents what a “normal” prayer life is like. However, some church leaders fall into the trap of trying to impress people with big words or overly complex prayers. Don’t do it. Model a prayer life that uses normal language to connect with God. It’s a simple way to help people take their next steps in this important part of their spiritual lives.
Not making an ask // People are anticipating that you’re going to ask them to engage, so ask them. Don’t leave them wondering, “So … what do you want me to do?” Make the ask clear and compelling. Say it in a way that draws a line in the sand and forces a decision. Don’t beat around the bush. We’re fighting to increase engagement. People need to know what you want them to engage in—so ask them!
Increasing Engagement Is About Putting Our Guests First
Ultimately, these nine habits are manifestations of us putting ourselves and our needs ahead of our guests.
We need to think about how our ministry will be received by the people who are attending our services.
Our goal is to start with them in mind first and put their needs first.
We have to think a little less about ourselves and a lot more about them. Then, we must put that attitude into action when we host our weekend services.
Looking for more help with your announcements? This FREE 3-part video series is for you.
Are you looking to improve the hosting of your weekend services?
Have you already tried improving this area but aren’t sure what to do next?
Are you ready to take the next steps to increase engagement in your announcements and ultimately your church? I’m releasing a FREE three-part video series designed to help your church with better weekend hosting. The lessons in this series come from my practical experience of hosting hundreds of services in multiple contexts and coaching many other leaders in this area. The three videos are:
Video #1: 5 Reasons People Aren’t Listening to Your Hosting. Your first video will clearly define for you why people aren’t paying attention to the announcements in your services.
Video #2: The One Best Practice to Ensure Higher Engagement with Your Announcements. In this video, you will understand what the single most important practice thriving churches change about their announcements to improve engagement.
Video #3: 3 Church Hosting Myths Debunked. Finally, you will dive into three misunderstood myths about hosting announcements that move people to action.
Increasing the Impact of the Serving Experience on Volunteers with Rachel Long
Feb 10, 2022
Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Rachel Long back on the podcast. She’s one of the executive pastors at Emmanuel Church, a multisite church in Indiana.
Today Rachel is talking with us about building healthy volunteer teams within our churches.
Take a step back and evaluate. // Back at the end of 2018, even before COVID, the staff at Emmanuel started to notice that the church had shifted from a serving culture to a consumer culture which was more focused on what the church could do for you. The staff knew this consumerism was the symptom of a bigger problem and so began to examine the themselves. What they found is the staff had become very siloed and volunteers were possessively claimed by staff members. Even leadership noticed that their language became more about filling spots on volunteer teams, and they realized they had slowly faded completely off vision. The staff needed to take a step back and determine where they’d gone off track and how to make sure their volunteer teams (known as Impact Teams) aligned with the church’s vision.
Build a system that is a better fit. // Emmanuel began by looking at larger churches to see examples of how they could add some structure to their teams. After experimenting with a modified version of Growth Track from Church of the Highlands, Rachel and her teammate, Leah, began to build a system that would be custom-fit for Emmanuel. They developed six pillars which defined what a healthy Impact Team would look like, with the main goal being seeing people that have come to Christ then grow in Christ. This goal now aligned with Emmanuel’s vision and mission.
Six pillars of a healthy team. // The six pillars Rachel and Leah developed are 1) Systematic Staff and Volunteer Training – things like lunch-and-learns, vision nights and even job descriptions for volunteer positions. 2) Appreciation – regular thank yous, infusing appreciation into team nights, and taking note of what would be a meaningful thank-you to individual volunteers. 3) Impact Week – a time where volunteer teams across all campuses come and serve during one week, all together. 4) Impact Team Night – an event six times a year where the campus pastor gets to preach to his or her campus and really infuse the vision of serving there. 5) Volunteer Onboarding and Data – has to do with making sure the staff’s data is correct because good data matters. 6) Vision and Branding – things such as branded t-shirts, using the Impact Teams logo, and communicating with language such as “serving opportunities” rather than “filling spots”.
Showing appreciation. // Embracing more appreciation was a huge game-changer for Emmanuel and included not only new processes, but also funding their appreciation. They started with systematic thank-you note-writing and helped the staff to understand what a great thank-you note looks like. Staff learned to call out and applaud really specific instances where a volunteer had an impact in small or big ways. Emmanuel also gathers all of their volunteers in one place to celebrate them with a themed party and gifts. And one of the new things they are starting is recognizing and celebrating the serving anniversaries of each of their volunteers.
Impact Team Night. // Adding Impact Team Nights every other month has been pivotal to the growth and success of Emmanuel’s volunteer teams. These nights are held at each campus and include a time of worship, some snacks and have a fun theme of some king. After worship there is vision casting which is done by either the campus pastor, the lead pastor, or a panel of campus staff. Then new Impact Team members will go to Impact 101 to start the onboarding process while existing team members will go to their specific areas of service for special trainings. Trainings might include going deeper in their service area, or prepping for a holiday or other big day coming up. Team Nights are a great time, not only to connect with other team members, but also to connect with the staff that is caring for volunteers from week to week.
Impact 101. // During the onboarding process at Impact 101, the staff provides a tour of the campus and offers a DISC assessment to help new volunteers find their best fit. This time also allows staff to infuse into new team members the knowledge that they are growing in Christ through serving, and the volunteers are helping other people come to Christ as well.
You can learn more about Emmanuel Church at www.eclife.org, or email Leah Torrison for more specific information about Emmanuel’s Impact Teams.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Transform Your Volunteer Culture with This Exclusive Resource!
In this episode with Rachel Long, we dive deep into how to increase the impact of the serving experience on your volunteers. But why stop there? Take action with our Dream Team Night Planning Calendar: How to Host Volunteer Training & Appreciation Events—an essential tool to help you plan and execute powerful volunteer training and appreciation events.
This 12-week countdown provides you with everything you need to host an impactful Dream Team Night that energizes and empowers your volunteers. Download this exclusive resource now through unSeminary Extra Credit and start building a stronger volunteer culture today!
It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow.
Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation.
Episode Transcript
Rich — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. My name’s Rich, your host, and this week we have a repeat guest which I’m super excited about. And when you when you know it’s a repeat guest, you know that there’s gonna be good things coming because there’s always more to say, so I’m excited to have Rachel Long with us. She’s from Emmanuel Church – a church that started in 1977. They’re 6 or 7 (depending on how we count it and when this comes out) locations plus online. They’re one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Rachel is the executive pastor and oversees multisite – all kinds of things multisite, strategy, campus leadership. I also think you oversee family ministry, HR, finance, counseling, outreach – basically everything! Rachel, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.
Rachel Long — Oh I am thrilled to be back here with you today. You have such a great podcast that’s so helpful. And before we get started I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for the work you’re doing with irresistible teams. Four of my employees are going through that – they just started that process – so such a great blessing for churches. And so just thank you for doing that putting that together for them.
Rich — No I’m so so honored to have them. That’s ah that’s a cohort we run I run it with my good friend Christine Kreisher and it’s it’s fun. It’s great to do. It’s good, you know, hopefully helpful…
Rachel Long — Yeah.
Rich — …and um so it’s that’s that’s really good. So why don’t you fill out the picture a little bit; give us the kind of …bring us up to speed on where things are at with Emmanuel, and how you know, kind of what’s been happening on that front.
Rachel Long — Yeah, so Emmanuel Church is nondenominational. We do have our roots in… we were baptists to begin with and then that changed around 2005. And in 2013 we launched our very first multisite and it was about 25 minutes from our broadcast campus and since then we’ve been steadily launching multisites almost every 2 years and we just launched our… so well we’re getting ready to we’re in soft launch right now. So February 6th will be when we launch our sixth campus so very exciting time. We have but this is what’s really cool too – it’s our second church adoption, which is a whole new thing that we’ve done over the from 2019 till now. And it’s our first campus that’s an hour away from our broadcast campus…
Rich — Amazing.
Rachel Long — …So the challenges there have been different, but wow – such a great group of people and we are really really enjoying that. And Emmanuel exists to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ – that’s our vision and our mission – and it’s led by our senior pastor Danny Anderson who has led the church for just over 20 years now. Um he’s only the second senior pastor that our organization has ever had and he keeps the vision in front of us and it has been incredible to watch the staff move through covid shutdowns and only a few months of that and all the campuses to remain open. And wow it’s just been incredible to watch this team move through that, but right now I mean … looking for its next church adoption too…
Rich — Love it.
Rachel Long — So I am over expansion but I have really really great teams under me in each of those. And so our multi-site expansion team has three areas that we’re looking at now and it’ll be our first one that’s an hour and a half away from our broadcast campus
Rich — Love it.
Rachel Long — …so stretching out, stretching out and growing. But yeah, that’s just a little snapshot of Emmanuel.
Rich — That’s so good. I’m excited about the church adoption. The fact that this is your second one and that you’re looking for more. That’s such a great thing. You know we’re seeing a kind of across the country 1 in 3 new campuses is coming because of adoption, so not surprising at all that…
Rachel Long — Sure. Yeah.
Rich — Ah, that you know you guys are right on pace for that which is ah which is amazing. So that’s that’s exciting. So when you think about you know changes maybe that have been happening at Emmanuel you think of kind of you know, maybe stuff that has that’s looking a little bit different that you’ve been able to kind of see some changes in the last year or so 2 years, what would be some of those things that would bubble to mind? What would kind of come come to the fore as you think about that?
Rachel Long — Yeah, they have been some painful changes. We were not exempt from the great resignation that’s going on now where everything from corporate organizations to church organizations is seeing around 20% of their staff resign or go look for new positions or jobs and and take advantage of some things that are available to them. Not all bad, but I mean we’ve gone through a little bit a lot of bit of pain and stretch in that area. Um, you know our senior pastor was just talking to me the other day about how um the pain that we’re dealing with right now with this is what grows us into the leaders of the next level, and it helps us to move forward in in our own leadership skills. And there’s been a lot of honing – I don’t know if your listeners have felt that but um, in every executive pastor cohort I’m in, or group, they have been like: wow, we are having to really hone our leadership skills and grow in that way. And so I would say that we’ve had a little bit of pain with staff, but the other thing that has happened is we’re still seeing people come to Christ, and we are seeing our campuses start to grow and our online campus is still thriving as it was just a year ago when I was here. But also you’ve seen it change into some really ah, deeper relationships from the online campus than we’ve ever experienced before. And then people steadily coming back to our brick and mortar campuses. Um, of course when it’s safe and of course with practices that adhere to CDC but really starting to come back and re-embrace their faith, and find church was really missing in their life and finding their spot back in their church homes. We’ve still got a long way to go and it’ll take a while I’m sure. But that’s kind of what we’ve seen over the past year. So not all positive but always growing. Yeah.
Rich — Love it. Yeah, love it. Now one of the things I think many of our churches are facing in this season is um some of this is like – yeah we were joking beforehand – I don’t know what phase we’re in with Covid. Are we post Covid, intra-Covid? Who knows, but whatever we find ourselves in we’re in this kind of Covid-impacted time…
Rachel Long — Right, right, right.
Rich — …is you know we we always need to… regardless of the season, we’re always looking to try to build engagement with our people…
Rachel Long — Absolutely.
Rich — …or we try to say, how do we… how do we help our people be more engaged? Um, but it feels like that’s even more urgent in these seasons, kind of, how do we move people from being consumers to being contributors to to being fully plugged in?
Rachel Long — Right.
Rich — Um, what has that looked like for Emmanuel What? What as you’ve been kind of wrestling with that process in this season, any changes on that front or things that you’ve been working through that might be helpful for us to to wrestle through with ah with our listeners today?
Rachel Long — Yeah, you know it was even pre-covid that we looked around our organization and we started to see that somehow this slow fade had happened where we have moved um from in our serving culture in our volunteerism—we call them our impact team at Emmanuel—we saw like this—this was probably around the beginning of 2019…no the end of 2018—that we saw like, wow the the culture here has really shifted to consumer in our congregation, like: what can the church do for me, or do for my organization? But with anything else when we look when we saw the symptom, which was the consumerism in our congregation, we had to look at our staff. And in our staff we saw this siloed feeling, this siloed um: this is my volunteer; this is my person. And what was hard about that when we saw it was we realized that we had slowly faded completely off vision. And what I mean by that is Emmanuel’s vision is to see people come to Christ and grow in Christ and we had started using language that was: we’re going to fill this “spot”. So I have 4 children’s ministry “spots” to fill on Sunday, instead of looking at our people and thinking through, okay, what is the opportunity to serve that we could give them so they could grow in Christ? And really like focusing on that second half of our vision through serving. And when we saw that, man, that was a little bit unnerving because it was coming straight from our staff. And and if I’m being honest, it was coming straight from me. Like, you can’t ask them to serve in children’s ministry; they’re in the high school ministry. And back off – that’s that person’s volunteer and let’s don’t poach! And whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! We began to think about like running a Sunday morning or a Saturday evening – any of our weekend environments – instead of, is what I’m offering, is what we’re looking at really helping someone grow in Christ, and fulfill the second half of Emmanuel’s vision? And once we started to get our mind around that, that’s when we started to see a shift. And thank goodness that we did that then because that infrastructure has what’s served us to be up year-over-year in our Impact team members. That this time last year in 2021 we were 1590 for our Impact team members and as of this week – so we check on Mondays – we were in 1834…
Rich — Wow, that’s great.
Rachel Lon — …so we’re still continuing to grow our impact team. Um, but it’s because of that infrastructure that we built back a little bit. But I don’t ever think it’s too late. That’s just what we’ve seen.
Rich — Love it. So how did you push some of that change through, so from a change management point of view I love that you identified it, and then you started to make some adjustments. Were there, are a few kind of strategic levers there that helped, you know, make that shift for your people?
Rachel Long — Yeah, we do what we usually do, which I know is a church protocol, to look around – what are the churches at the next level than you – what are they doing, ah right? And so we looked at Church of the Highlands, and we went and visited, our teams visited, and we tried to adopt their Growth Track without adapting it for Emmanuel, and that really fell flat. And it’s just kind of funny because if you listen to the first time I was on decentralization, you know that we wreck that train first, and then we did it better. But the same is true with…
Rich — Ah, there’s a pattern here. There’s a pattern.
Rachel Long — …yes yes, thank God we’re allowed to fail forward.
Rich — Yes, yes.
Rachel Long — And but we so we tried to put Growth Track in exactly as they did it, and it it didn’t fit. Like we were putting on a shoe that was in… and rightfully so because you know, at that time we’re like a 5000 person church at that time, and we were looking at a 30,000 person churches, you know, and trying to step into that. So what we did was very similar to the decentralization – pulled back and got buy-in. And so we gathered some people from each of our teams. Um, some people who are really good at recruiting and training volunteers, and we asked them like, what areas did you see things that kind of fell apart with Growth Track and what could we do better?
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Rachel Long — Kind of a look forward look back. And when we did that um Leah Torrison, who is still head over all of our Impact team um information—and she’s an excellent resource for anyone that would want to get more information about this—she um and I worked to build a systematic way. You know, a system and once you can build that system and work that system, um that would fit Emmanuel. And so what we landed on were six pillars of what a healthy impact team would look like with the main goal seeing people that have come to Christ then grow in Christ. So vision-centered, but yet systematic so that anyone in the organization could resource it, and use it, and put it within their ministry.
Rich — Love it. Yes.
Rachel Long — And feel supported in it, and not siloed as a staff.
Rich — Yeah I love that so just I want to get to what the six are, but before we get there, um I love just the I just want to underline for our listeners that, you know, this this is a best practice, looking at other churches, growing from other churches, but too many times we just do the copy and paste and we don’t do the step-back-and-learn. Hey, how do we adapt this to us? Like how do we so, you know, and and I just love that you’re, you know, you’re just being real honest about that and saying, hey we’ve got to figure out how this fits in our our context and and so if I understand the pillars correctly, you would say—and and correct me if this if I’m wrong—it’s like each one of these six, you would say, service teams need to have each one of these six pieces. It’s kind of like we need to work on all of these to ensure that it’s the best experience to fulfill the vision of the church. Like this is kind of like best practice for you in those areas – is that the best way to think of these pillars?
Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah, that is what worked…this these are the 6 that we saw were worked… would not… that we weren’t doing right now, and that’s what worked for Emmanuel. And we’ve done this for um, you know, almost three years now and so…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Rachel Long — …There was lots of continuous improvement and I’m happy to point out like, ooh this didn’t work or it worked for that season…
Rich — Sure.
Rachel Long — …but we had to tweak it in year two because it was exhausting the staff. So you know how sometimes you go grand and you need to hone in small as you get going.
Rich — Right. Yeah, totally totally. Hey, backup – let’s do this one thing. So why don’t we do this, give us an overview of all six…
Rachel Long — Yep.
Rich — …just kind of run through all of them and then we’ll dive in on maybe a couple of them that that were like the highest leverage change or ones that kind of jump to the you know the fore if that makes sense.
Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah. So the first one was systematic staff and volunteer training. So we didn’t have a solid onboarding for when we had new staff members to infuse them with the culture of um servitude that we had within Emmanuel. And so then as new staff members come, it would get lost. So we implemented lunch-and-learns with that. We have impact vision nights, and also um, we had all of the staff…we challenge them if it is a position that is worthy of being an opportunity for people to grow in Christ by serving in that position, it needs a one-page job description.
Rich — That’s good.
Rachel Long — And so the staff, that was a key factor in um, this… in training in its systematic training. We also have … another the other pillar another pillar is appreciation. So regular thank yous, and infusing appreciation into team nights, and really pushing through on adding like a favorite thing to their their volunteer information sheet. We also implemented ah Impact week, which is kind of a cool thing where everybody comes together and serves in one week together, so being one church with multiple locations. Um and I can elaborate on that. It’s a pretty detailed process but it is going out into the community as an Impact team and serving. Team nights was… when we started it, it was once a month – now it’s every other month – that was one of the tweaks…
Rich — Yes.
Rachel Long — … where we gather together and we’re a video venue Church. So this happens to be where the campus pastor gets to preach to his or her campus, and really infuse the vision of serving there. Um, and that’s on our Impact team night. Volunteer onboarding and data. This is maybe not the sassy side of it, but this is the side where we made sure that our data was correct because good data matters. And then vision and branding – making sure that we have t-shirts and we have all of the things that make a team a team.
Rich — Yeah.
Rachel Long — And that that’s across all of the different serving… so instead of children’s ministry wearing one shirt and ah, you know… the only the only ah… what do I want to say, like exception that we made was because we didn’t want our production people to have bright red shirts on stage. They have black shirts.
Rich — Yes, same shirt. Yeah.
Rachel Long — But everybody has the same Impact team logo. And so the vision and branding – making sure we’re using the same words; stop saying “filling spots”; start saying “serving opportunities”. Those were the six pillars – those that’s just a quick run through of them. Yeah.
Rich — Love it. Yeah, no, That’s so good. So good. Okay, so are were there a couple of those that were either real, maybe sticking points like ooh… you know, this this wasn’t going well, and by, kind of, your focus on it you were able to turn it around, or it was or they’re high leverage like, oh we saw real positive change because of the focus in in those areas?
Rachel Long — Yeah, I’m going to start with appreciation. I know people say thank you and they write thank you notes, but here’s how we got a little more detailed into this one. We started with systematic thank you note writing. So I, we use this system called ROCK for all of our data management, and in that you can very simply just add that you’ve written a thank you note, but we became very very focused on everyone filling out – like if you sent a thank you note, or you did a text, or you called, it might seem laborious to take 2 seconds to fill it out in ROCK, but it helped the whole organization. So making sure, and and then talking through with people, what does a great thank you note look like, which I know sounds tedious, but not just “hey, you did a great job” and signing it “children’s ministry staff” but like, “I loved it when you…”, “you helped this family come to Christ by doing this…”, “this dad came to Christ while you were in the nursery serving…” – so being super detailed about that. And then another thing is we put some serious cash toward our annual Impact team party where we pull every single Impact team member. 1500 descend upon – this time it was our broadcast campus – and we celebrate them. It’s themed out. It’s ah, there’s a gift for each of them. We really put some serious focus and money into that. And what it did was the people who are at our Seymour campus which is a solid hour and 10 minutes away from our Garfield Park campus could now see all of the people that are…
Rich — Mmm-hmm
Rachel Long — …um, serving together and it really bonded that one church and made them feel like they were really part of something. And then we started doing anniversaries. That’s our latest thing that we’re doing for appreciation serving anniversaries…
Rich — Oh that’s cool.
Rachel Long — …and really highlighting that person, um and it is at their campuses. But then making them also be something that they can wear, something that they, so that they can be recognized. Oh you’ve been serving for 5 years on the Impact team – that’s amazing. So really, um, customizing, and then funding our appreciation.
Rich — I love that.
Rachel Long — And that was a really good transition, but difficult when you’re always trying to stay on budget and stay under budget from the year before. So that’s one thing that we did that was important.
Rich — I love that I just want to underline something there. One of the things I’ve said to churches that I’m coaching in the kind of, you know, plus 2000 to 5000 range, somewhere in there, is there’s a weird transition there where um, actually you have to look at those things that very small churches do instinctively, and figure out how to do them at scale. And it was interesting to me that the two things you said would be easy for a church of 2-, 3-, 4-, 5000 people to not do which is handwritten notes – how do we systematize handwritten handwritten notes at scale?
Rachel Long — Yeah.
Rich — And then a party to get everybody together. If you’re a church of 100 people and you’ve got 32 volunteers, you’re going to do that. That becomes a lot more complex when it’s 1500 volunteers, but you’ve got to do that.
Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah.
Rich — You’ve got to do that and it’s actually, that’s a part of what accelerates that all that good stuff that happens that helps you get to that next level. I love that – that’s that’s fantastic. So appreciation was obviously a big part of it.
Rachel Long — Oh, and just to piggyback on what you just said when we were in lockdown and when we could not gather that many people, we pivoted and did party to the people, and I just want to tell you what my staff did. Our staff—this is amazing. So we figured out a way to deliver their gifts and to divide it up across the 70 staff members so that we deliver gifts for a whole week. We put an Impact team balloon, all the branding, on their doorknob or mailbox and and brought signs. Some of our campuses dressed up and did 80s and had played music as they came up.
Rich — Love it.
Rachel Long — My group did cheerleaders. There were … it it was so incredible. We gave in a time when um—that was last year… I went our, ah in 2020—when our team was discouraged because they couldn’t be with so many of their Impact team members – to get to go out to their houses, decorate their yards, and it did it took a lot of time. A lot of finance. But it was worth it, and they called it Party to the People. And I know that that and and our Heart Touch Initiative that we did is why we kept so many impact team members and they were ready to come back – that connectivity.
Rich — Um, so good.
Rachel Long — And so I just, one, want to shout out to my team, and then two, just piggyback on what you said.
Rich — Yeah, and I love that and again this is, that’s a great example of one of those if you were a small church of a couple hundred people you could think about doing that, hey, we’ll take a Saturday we’ll deliver stuff to people’s homes. To do that at scale it obviously takes a lot of time, effort, and energy, but it pushes back against that notion that large churches can’t do relationships well…
Rachel Long — Right. For sure.
Rich — …which we all know is not true, but it it really pushes back against that. That’s good. Was there maybe one of the other six that that stands out to you is like oh that was you know a really good kind of a key lever for us.
Rachel Long — Yeah, our team nights. I would say this is probably the other huge um rock that we did when we started having, first we did team nights every month so that we could onboard, onboard, onboard. Well you, if you have a large staff or small staff, you know that the rhythm of their family, it makes it hard to have a team night, you know, once a month in addition to the services that are coming every week, and small groups, and added on and on and on. So we moved to every other ah month, but super impactful because one, you’re hearing from the staff that cares for you and that you see every weekend, and of course we and Pastor Danny goes to the different campuses and preaches and and vision casts on the different team nights at different campuses, but usually it’s their campus pastor.
Rich — Mm that’s cool.
Rachel Long — And they’re pushing forward um, whatever we’ve talked about the month before in our staff lunch-and-learn. That’s just focused on Impact team and then additionally at that team night we have what we call Impact 101. And we do in-person onboarding at Impact 101. Now we do one-off 101s? Yes, we don’t want to ever turn away somebody who’s ready to grow in Christ through serving, but the Impact 101 where you can have a room full of people together that are ready to start serving, then they do a tour of the campus, they have them do a disc assessment…
Rich — Love it.
Rachel Long — …Assessment so they find their best fit and the staff is really able to infuse them with that you are growing in Christ through serving. You’re not a spot. You’re not a spot. You are helping other people come to Christ. So that Impact 101 and when you put, I don’t know why but when we named it 101 instead of like Intro to Impact, that just kind of took down all the barriers, and people were like yeah, I can do a 101 class. 101 is simple right?
Rich — Right, right. Yes, Yes, yeah.
Rachel Long — 101 is fine. That that was common knowledge and common verbiage, and so that we we consistently have Impact 101 full at the at the broadcast campus, and really great attendance at our other campuses too. And so that’s been I would say the impact team nights and the onboarding process switching, pivotal, pivotal to our growth and success and new new people coming onto the team.
Rich — I love it. Can we go one layer just a little more detail on them? So you do them every other month so somewhere around six a year there. It sounds like they’re at night, so they like and and do they include like, sounds like some, they’re somewhat like teaching – is there like a musical portion? Do they do fun stuff? Give us a little of the kind of, fill up with the, fill in the picture a little bit.
Rachel Long — Yes. Yeah, no, that’s great. So there’s always some sort of snack or food at the beginning and it’s always…
Rich — There’s gotta be -gotta be ah.
Rachel Long — …yes, right, right? And so the whole thing is themed.
Rich — Okay, okay, yes.
Rachel Long — So whatever the theme is for the night. And the campuses have like a basic theme, like you could say neon. But then the campuses have the autonomy to make it however their campus sees fit and would work for their congregation. We have worship together and then we have the vision casting from the campus pastor and/or a panel – sometimes they do a panel. And then after that—this is a key component I did not tell you—after that the people who are first there, for the like this is their first time ever at an Impact team night, they’ll go to 101 and start the onboarding process. All of the other Impact team members, then this is when we have our trainings, so they will go to their specific areas of service, and if we know we have an Easter special coming up then whatever big day is coming then they’ll work on that big day project, or if they if we know that we’re gonna do special things in a children’s ministry for big day, then they’ll work on that. But it can be whatever whether it’s the online campus or whether it’s worship, you go deeper in your training than you can on a Sunday morning debrief. So they’ll go out to the different areas to serve and and it really, is it really is… we have every campus has two services so it is where you get to see all the people that you serve with…
Rich — See everybody. Yeah family reunion kind of feel. Yeah, yeah.
Rachel Long — …and you can you’re nine o’clock – exactly – and the nine o’clock worship team and musicians can learn from the eleven o’clock what’s working for them if it’s not ah if it’s not a campus where they have the same all the way through. So it’s ah, great time to learn from your other Impact team members and see all the high school ministry small group leaders. All those small group leaders from across the campuses. So that’s what an Impact team looks like.
Rich — So good. I love that. And what what would you say on the you know, the Impact team nights is there? What’s the percentage of people—I have a feeling you and you know this—that are actually showing up to those? Like are they you know, what is that – you’re you’re good at numbers so yYou must have some sense that it’s it’s actually generating you know engagement
Rachel Long — Yes, yeah, so we we are hovering around like 65 to 68…
Rich — Okay, that’s good. That’s good.
Rachel Long — …for several of our staff their Q1 goal their lead measure is to get 75% of their team to the Impact team night. So um, that’s a goal that we have out there would be 75%. Now you talked to Leah Torrison who’s over our Impact – she’s our centralized employee over excellence and continuity for that – 100% is her goal…
Rich — Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Rachel Long — …but I would say that? Um, you’re looking at we’re striving toward 75% through conversations and reminding them and, but when we lowered the number that we had, like we when we went from 12 to 6 in the number of impact team nights we have, we saw the attendance start to to go up.
Rich — Go up. Yeah, that’s great. So good. Do you have any kind of documentation on any of that that you could share with us that would be maybe helpful for, you know, for our listeners I’m wondering if there’s anything we could put in the show notes.
Rachel Long — Um, yeah, absolutely – I have a packet for you – even the DISC Assessment – we do it digitally and paper. We have that that took us a long time to build. I have that and then um, what. I prepared was just like starting in 2018 and moving through the whole process…
Rich — Oh nice.
Rachel Long — …Some of the foundational pieces as well as the pillars. So.
Rich — Super helpful. Again this this is why I love having you on, Rachel, you’re so helpful to to folks. There’s so much we could talk about – maybe we’ll have to have you back! You know to talk about Impact weeks I think that’s a great, you know, the the idea of mobilizing, mass mobilizing people to make a difference again. We see this time and again with fast-growing churches that this is a key part of that strategy…
Rachel Long — Yeah.
Rich — You know, data is a big deal. You know I’d love to talk about that at some point…
Rachel Long — Yeah, for sure.
Rich — …it’s just a way we care for people at scale, or scale. There’s so much. Is there anything else you’d love to share just as we’re kind of wrapping up with today’s episode?
Rachel Long — Yeah, yeah, just one more thing. Um, as we moved through this and we got to where we were systematically doing all of the pieces, when I met, when Leah and I met for the next year’s evaluation, one of the things we did was look at each pillar and build pillar teams. We didn’t start with pillar teams. We kind of needed to stay lean for the first couple of years of doing it. But um, the last year we have used pillar teams and it has been a blessing. And what I mean by that is like if we have ah we found five employees that are exceptional at appreciation in all the different departments and invited them in to be a part of the excellence and continuity in the impact team by participating in being a pillar team member. So now Leah meets with them, and they get to help with buy-in across the whole organization, sure, but they’re also a voice at the table. They have a seat at the table. To talk about what is working and what isn’t working, and that way we could stay super nimble with our impact team…
Rich — That’s good.
Rachel Long — …because we’re getting constant feedback from all the different departments in all the different pillars, and the lift is not one person but you don’t have to hire an entire impact team centralized for excellence in continuity because you do have one point person but you’re still getting all the information from the other, from the other parts and departments in your organization.
Rich — So good. This has been fantastic, Rachel. I appreciate you taking time to be with us today. Um, where do we want to send people online if they want to track with Emmanuel. What’s where’s the best place for us to send them as we wrap up the episode?
Rachel Long — Sure, our our website is e like Emmanuel c like church, life.org and my last name is Long. So it’s rlong@eclife.org, or if you’re specifically looking for information on Impact teams you can contact Leah Torrison which would be ltorrison@eclife.org.
Rich — Nice. Thanks so much I Love that you’re giving out her email address. That’s fantastic.
Rachel Long — Ah, she’ll love it. She’s amazing.
Rich — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much for being here today.
Rachel Long — Oh thank you. Thank you.
Why Church Leaders Can’t Stand Doing Announcements
Feb 08, 2022
Do you dread being asked to get up and host a weekend service at your church?
Can just talking about hosting the announcements this coming weekend make your stomach turn?
Is your team pushing you to drop the announcements? And maybe even more worrying, do you have a good reason not to drop them?
Are you convinced something is wrong with the announcements at your church, but you’re not sure how to fix it?
As a leader, are you confused about how you can improve this aspect of your church services?
Over the last two decades, I have been leading churches from the second chair. I’m not the primary communicator, but I love leading on the operations and communication sides of what we as leaders do in the local church to help them grow and reach more people. So, that means that for hundreds of weekends, I have hosted weekend services in a bunch of different contexts.
In doing so, I’ve learned a lot about how to do announcements well and ensure that this aspect of our weekend service is successful.
I’ve had some pretty awkward experiences during weekend services that I don’t want you to repeat, like the time I walked out onto the stage to do the announcements after our band’s second song, only to find out later that the band had planned to do three songs!
I’ve also learned a lot from coaching other church leaders, helping countless campus pastors get over their fear of doing announcements and raising awareness of why this part of what they do is so critically important to the development of their particular faith community.
I understand that your team may not like doing the announcements or hosting your church service. Over the years, I’ve heard a number of reasons church leaders give for disliking doing the announcements. Here are a few:
The Laundry List
We’ve all seen someone get up to host a weekend service, and we can tell by the way they’re looking at the piece of paper in their hands that they have a long, boring list of items they need to talk about.
They have four or five different things from three different departments happening over the next four weeks that they’re required to somehow speak about each of them with an equal amount of passion and energy.
This is a terrible way to do the announcements. No one should ever have to rattle off a laundry list of items. In fact, the best practice is to narrow the focus, and have one item, two at the most, that the person who is hosting the service needs to move people towards.
The Speed Bump
Imagine for a moment that you are participating in an incredible weekend service. The music at the front-end is transcendent. It’s helping connect you with God and is taking you to a new place. It’s being spoken in a deep way that is sometimes hard to communicate with just words.
And then, at that moment, the host gets up and places a giant speed bump in the middle of the service.
The service takes a dramatic turn to focus on some problem with the youth ministry. There’s a plea to the congregation to step in and help prevent the kids from running wild in the streets.
Speed bumps happen when the church leadership doesn’t think clearly about the place that announcements have in the overall flow of a weekend worship experience. It shouldn’t detract from everything else that’s happening. In fact, good hosting should feel like an extension of the worship and teaching moments during weekend services.
Announcements should connect what’s being said and felt in the service to people’s schedules. Plan your weekend service announcements around a clear call to action that moves people to their next discipleship moment.
The Weather Report
Okay, this one’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
You know that host who, every time they get up, starts with a weather report for the weekend.
“Man, it’s cold out there today.” “Wow, it’s really sunny outside.” “Gee, I think it might rain this afternoon.”
This verbal tick has its place in wanting to connect with the audience. Its heart is in the right place. Using this verbal crutch is simply a way of establishing common ground with the people that are listening.
The problem is that if the host repeats this time and again, week in, week out, it becomes boring, staid.
It’s the same when that one host gets up every weekend and gives a commentary on what’s happening with their favorite sports team.
It’s a verbal cue that tells the audience that the next few minutes are going to be completely irrelevant to them, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they stop paying attention.
The way to avoid this verbal tick is to provide active coaching to the people who host your weekend services.Provide them with a clear framework rather than simply letting them get up there and do whatever they want. Active coaching can help avoid such verbal ticks, which are distracting and ultimately derail the weekend hosting experience.
The Second (or Third) Fiddle
This has to do with the host’s mindset.
Some people think that hosting the weekend service announcements are not that important.
In fact, it can feel like a demeaning task, like they’ve been given a junior varsity role when really, they want to be playing in the big leagues by giving the sermon during the service.
If your people feel this way, it’s because you’re not clearly communicating how important this aspect is to the service.
I believe that it’s time to raise the value of this aspect of our services. We need to see the announcements as a critical piece of what the church is doing on any given weekend and make a concerted effort to provide energy, feedback, and direction to our church leaders as they lead these critical five minutes of our services.
I’m personally fired up about improving the hosting aspect of what we do as a church. It is not a minor part of what we do, but critically important as we really try to build the community and momentum as a ministry.
The Sweaty Palms
This is the opposite of the last point. The communicator that’s up on stage doing the announcements feels a tremendous amount of responsibility because of these five minutes.
There’s nothing worse than a nervous communicator spreading that nervousness to the entire audience. This can create all kinds of problems for the rest of the service.
Often lead pastors or whoever speaks on a regular basis at your church and doesn’t do a good job coaching people with sweaty palms because they’ve done it so often that they don’t need to think about it very much, and they don’t feel as nervous as the person with sweaty palms does.
The antidote to this is practice. It’s one of those things you need to do time and again, not just in front of a mirror or a coach but in front of an audience. Over time, you will feel a new sense of confidence that will ultimately transition to the people around you.
Another great antidote to this is co-hosting. Rather than putting all the pressure on one person, having multiple people on stage sharing the responsibility is a great way to train people up in this area.
Looking for more help with your announcements? This FREE 3-part video series is for you.
Are you looking to improve the hosting of your weekend services?
Have you already tried improving this area but aren’t sure what to do next?
Are you ready to take the next steps to increase engagement in your announcements and ultimately your church? I’m releasing a FREE three-part video series designed to help your church with better weekend hosting. The lessons in this series come from my practical experience of hosting hundreds of services in multiple contexts and coaching many other leaders in this area. The three videos are:
Video #1: 5 Reasons People Aren’t Listening to Your Hosting. Your first video will clearly define for you why people aren’t paying attention to the announcements in your services.
Video #2: The One Best Practice to Ensure Higher Engagement with Your Announcements. In this video, you will understand what the single most important practice thriving churches change about their announcements to improve engagement.
Video #3: 3 Church Hosting Myths Debunked. Finally, you will dive into three misunderstood myths about hosting announcements that move people to action.
Increasing Multi-Faith Proximity While Remaining Gospel-Centered with Kevin Singer
Feb 03, 2022
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Kevin Singer, co-founder and co-director of the student-led movement, Neighborly Faith, which brings Christians and Muslims together.
There is very little in the church to help equip believers regarding how to engage with our neighbors of other faiths in a way that is both committedly Christian, and also exudes the generosity and love of our Lord. Kevin is with us to share how Neighborly Faith seeks to equip evangelical Christians, particularly on college campuses, to love all our neighbors, no matter their religion.
Neighborly Faith helps to build bridges. // What it means to love our communities must now include loving those who have different worldviews than we do. There are a lot of students who are passionate about Jesus and want other people to know about Jesus. The purpose of Neighborly Faith isn’t necessarily to teach Christians how to love Jesus, because churches already do this work, but rather to build bridges between Christians and those who practice other faiths around them. You can’t change hearts if you’re not in relationship and building trust with the other person.
Get to know each other inside the walls. // Kevin encourages to begin by getting to know your neighbors and increasing proximity with each other. Visit a mosque open house and share a meal with the people there. Then invite them to come to your church, or home, and share a meal with you. Don’t expect people to do things that you won’t do, including reading the Bible. As you build relationships with Muslims and invite them to read the Bible, be willing to also read the Quran if invited to. If we truly believe that Jesus is immensely attractive in a world of many faiths, then have faith in that. But also have faith in the fact that Jesus is going to protect you spiritually if you engage with Muslims and their religious traditions.
Work together on projects. // Helping serve the least of these alongside your Muslim neighbors can be fertile ground for relationship-building. Organizing clothing donations for Afghan refugees, for example, is not a Muslim thing, rather it’s obeying God’s command to love our neighbors. Go out and look for ways to do cooperative work with Muslims in your community and see what doors open up for the gospel.
Gospel opportunities. // Most Muslims in your community have either never met a Christian, or have never learned about Christianity from a Christian. As you build relationships with Muslims, you would likely be the first person to preach the unfettered gospel of Jesus Christ to them. By inviting them over to share a meal, Muslim neighbors would be able to see the gospel embodied in the fact that you invited them in, you paid for the food, and showed them hospitality.
Be clear on what you mean. // You can be gospel-centered while still having terrific, neighborly relationships with friends of different faiths. Instead of censoring yourself in front of other Christians in this area, name it to the people who you are most worried about and what they might think. Be vulnerable and let them know what you actually mean by your actions and building friendships with people of other religions.
Figure out who they want to be. // All of our communities are more diverse than they were ten years ago. Neighborly Faith helps college students figure out what kind of Christian they want to be as they show up in the world and move into adulthood. Events are organized on campuses to bring Christian and Muslim students together. Christian pastors will speak onstage alongside a Muslim partners on different topics, such as how to suffer well or the purpose of prayer, so they can give their unique perspectives. The goal is for Christian students to then connect and have conversations with Muslim students, or Muslims in the community.
Share the work back home. // Neighborly Faith also runs a fellows program to coach and equip students to do this sort of work at home with their churches.
You can learn more about Neighborly Faith at www.neighborlyfaith.org. Church leaders who would like to learn more and have a conversation with Kevin can email him.
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Rich — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Every week we try to bring you a leader who both inspire and equip you and this week is no exception. Super excited to talk to Kevin Singer. He’s part of a ministry called Neighborly Faith. It’s a student-led movement that’s bringing Christians and Muslims together. And I’m really excited for this conversation to learn more. Kevin is the co-founder co-director of Neighborly Faith. He’s planted two churches in the past. He’s got some war wounds and teaches world religion at two community colleges in Illinois. So glad that you’re here, Kevin. Welcome to the show.
Kevin Singer — Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Rich — Yeah, why don’t you tell us about Neighborly Faith. Give us kind of the overview to for folks that have never heard of of your organization before. Give us that that overview.
Kevin Singer — Yeah, so like a lot of young people I took my one class in in college about world religion and and at that point I was ah you know, ah a perennial expert in in all topic world religion. Um, no, but ah, you know I took that course because I had to and…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — …Um, you know and and I think the way it was framed, I think it’s still framed, is like how am I going to survive this, right? Like how am I going to… how am I going to get through this class? Um, because apparently as a young Christian I was susceptible to literally all other religions besides my own and…
Rich — Sure – that’s funny.
Kevin Singer — And ah…but me for real I came in and you know the whole thing you you know I sort of had apologetics brain at that point and, you know, and for a lot of the things I was hearing in that class, you know, for a lot of it I was able to say, oh you know, Jesus is better. Jesus better, you know. And then I’ll never forget when they showed this video of ah the the Hajj, which is the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – um part of the five pillars of Islam -and you know just seeing scenes of of of ah Muslims just just crying um with and and seeing that sort of ah emotional response was a bit perplexing. I think it was it wasn’t it wasn’t as easy as and well they have works and we have Jesus right?
Rich — Right.
Kevin Singer — Which is what you hear a long time which is so it’s so you know that’s how we dismiss you know billions of people and um I remember I took this to to my Cru – I was in Cru at the time, leader in Cru which is a ah national campus miss – love love them um…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — And and and you know I give him credit, my discipler at the time. Um or someone I met with every week who just provided sort of like spiritual mentorship. I said you know you know I’m really having this struggle. Um, you know because I know, you know, all the religions are all other religions are false, and and you know Jesus is the only way, but I’m really struggling with the humanity of this, you know, just um… it’s easy to be like it’s easy to say those sort of isms. You know that that we have as Christians, but I mean these are these are people who clearly have like a spiritual bone in their body.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — Ah, trying to figure this out you know and in in I think at the time I remember him saying yes you know don’t worry about that. You know, they they need Jesus, and let’s just focus on on on getting the gospel to him you knowm which is which is true. Um, and but I think I remember feeling like despite the fact that that’s true, it still felt sort of like a deeply inadequate response to…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — …You know what is my responsibility to to these people in our community. and so ah, as you mentioned before I planted a couple of churches with the SBC – the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board – um, which was a good experience. Towards the end of my ah North American Mission Board ah funding cycle, I needed to sort of supplement my income. So I walked into the community college down the street um because they had a new testament course. Ah yeah I could teach a new testament you know…
Rich — Yes. Yes. Yes.
Kevin Singer — And yeah God – everything comes full circle. You know you’re like never gonna encounter the world religions again. Well, they said well you know this this guy he’s been teaching new testament for the last two hundred and seventy years and there’s no way he’s going to give course up. So he said he said why don’t you teach world religion? You could do that, right? Yeah, you know I’ve got my dad in my head like you never turned down a job right?
Rich — Yes, yes.
Kevin Singer — So like oh yes, of course I know everything about world religion. I could definitely do… I think my my spouse that’s I was was pregnant with our first with our our first… and um I was like yes absolutely I can do that. So for that first semester I was learning right along with my students. But what was most impressionable to me is just the incredible conversations I was getting in with students across a number of different faiths who were learning about, for example, the Trinity from a Christian for the first time in that course. Um, and just seeing like wow there are some really incredible opportunities for a whole slew of people who sort…we have Christians have said, well if they’re not atheists then they’re set they’re, you know, they’re done. They’re you know they’ve they’re they’re, you know, sort of programmed by these other faiths, and and and… But what I found was a lot of curiosity and interest in Christianity. Um, and so I ah I started talking to some of my Christian friends family about this and everybody was kind of like, that that’s weird like…
Rich — Mmm yes.
Kevin Singer — That whole thing is weird like we don’t have a category for like cross-faith… like like we we know how to reach an atheist like we’ve been talking about that for decades, but like a Muslim? Like what do we even do with that? You know and it really is just so so so a long story short was for me… and I recognize that there is there is very little in the church to to help equip us for how to engage with our Muslim neighbors and other faiths – so Buddhists, Hindus, etc – in a way that is both a committedly Christian right? But also ah…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — You know it exudes the generosity and the love ah of of our Savior and Lord who who deeply loves these people and is in is seeking them as much as he’s seeking anyone. You know I think of I think of Paul and in Acts 17 and in Athens he’s like the the God who you seek is seeking you. He’s here. And like there there’s just this incredible opportunity, especially as our society becomes increasingly diverse. And so I met my colleague Chris who runs the the organization with me at Wheaton. We were studying theology together and um, it sort just sort of took off from there. we we we started a podcast where we interviewed Christians who are doing this work who you know maybe not be on the front page of Christianity Today.
Rich — Yep.
Kevin Singer — Um, and eventually we started you know, ah raising money to engage Christian college students and sort of what does it mean to be a Christian in a society of many faiths? And and I’ll leave it at that.
Rich — Love it.
Kevin Singer — That’s sort of how we got there and why we think it’s important is because our society’s more diverse. There’s more Muslims, Buddhists, Jews (especially non-religious) than ever before who do not have a Christian worldview. And so what it means to love our communities must now also include the question of how do we love those who have different worldview than we do.
Rich — I love that you know I remember years ago hearing a commentator or thinker in this space saying you know there was a time where the kind of faith community was like and a dining room table where you had you know on either ends there was kind of the Protestants and Catholics and then there was everybody else. And you knew that there were other people at the faith conversation but it was really a Protestant/Catholic thing.
Kevin Singer — Yes, that’s right. That’s right.
Rich — But however, now, we’re really at a roundtable where um, we have people from a wide variety of backgrounds in our culture I think anyone any leader who’s listening in who’s paying attention to the faith dynamics in their community have seen that. That is absolutely what is happening in all of our communities. Again I’ve said in other context every zip code in America is more diverse today than it was ten years ago and will be more diverse ten years from now than it is today.
Kevin Singer — That’s right. That’s right.
Rich — So when you when you’re coaching students – I love this – what would be some of those kind of early conversations you find yourself getting into? How are you helping? What is that kind of those those early discussions look like as you’re helping students on campus think through these issues?
Kevin Singer — Yeah I think number one what we found is there are a lot of students who are passionate about Jesus and want other people to know Jesus. and that we we don’t feel like the the purpose of our organization is to teach Christians how to love Jesus or how to share Jesus. We believe strongly that churches are already doing a really good job at this. We we we’re one of those like evangelical adjacent organizations that still loves evangelicalism and feels like there’s a lot to to there’s a lot there and there’s a reason why evangelicals are still some of the most passionate, committed, convicted, winsome, persuasive Christians in our society. We believe that. What we want to see is an increase not in godliness or faithfulness to the great commission, but proximity to these people.
Rich — Mmm.
Kevin Singer — Like what we found is is is we are, first of all, we’re a deeply pragmatist organization. We we do not, you know, we’re we’re not up late at night digging deep into the wells of like inter-religious theology and all those things. What we’re interested in is how can we be sort of bridge-builders between these Christian communities who are mostly Christian, and the people within those communities know and are friends with mostly Christians, and that mosque down the street… like like who is gonna who is gonna make that invitation and who is going to… So for us, it’s an issue of we know you love Jesus. It’s obvious. Like you just spent X number of dollars of who X number of miles for example to be at this conference…
Rich — Yep.
Kevin Singer — But the question is, you know, how can you get in this… because… in the same room, because you can’t actually change hearts If you’re not in relationship.
Rich — Yeah.
Kevin Singer — And and here’s the thing. That used to make a lot more sense than it does now in our increasingly depersonalized additional society where the idea of like slowly building relationship and trust is just not part of our repertoire anymore. Like like we like we’re we’re much more attuned I think to thisæ
Rich — Sure.
Kevin Singer — …Like hit and run gospel stuff than we are now to this like patient, slow… like I just I don’t just know Muhammad for an hour, I know Muhammad for a month. Or I know Muhammad for six months. Or I know I’ve known Muhammad’s family for a year right? like the only way Muhammad – which happens to be the most popular name in the world by the way, so I’m not just about just coining that. I’m saying a lot of Muslim men are named Muhammad.
Rich — Yes.
Kevin Singer — But like Muhammad is not going to become a Christian ah, if you are not in their life. And and here’s the thing. I think for a lot of us Christians, we’ve been discipled when it comes to interfaith ministry – I really don’t like that word and we can discuss that later – but like we have been discipled into the space as like maybe God will give them a dream. It like like we… and that is pretty much the extent of our theology of other faiths is like… well I can’t…
Rich — Righ, right, right.
Kevin Singer — There’s no way I’m walking in that mosque and there’s no way that like I’m having dinner with Muhammad but God will send a dream. And I know I sound sarcastic and I kind of mean to be a little bit that like like that is wildly insufficient if we like really care about the Great Commission, um is is – and I mean we see we see Romans, Paul is just like you know how will they know if they haven’t heard and if no one is set right?
Rich — Yes.
Kevin Singer — Like how beautiful the feet of those who preach good news. And so for us like where we start is just the simple fact of like your community that you love includes people of other faiths. And you know what it means to be cross-cultural now cannot be divorced from other faith traditions, right? Like when we talk about Afghan Refugees right? We’re not just talking about Christians – we’re talking about a lot of Muslims. So when we talk about afghan culture, right, or the culture of immigrants coming to our country, we can no longer to divorce that from the five pillars of Islam and… so what does that mean for us to be, you know, equipped? And so you know some of that I think includes getting to know Islam. But we don’t like telling people that you need to be an expert in Islam to reach Muslims because we have found that that’s another major hang-up of Christians is…
Rich — Right, right. Interesting.
Kevin Singer — …well, I’ve never read the Quran and it’s like well they’ve never read the Bible. Would you suggest that you don’t approach you? You like…
Rich — Yes, yes, yes love it.
Kevin Singer — But so ah, you know, without getting too deep into the weeds. You know we really want to foster that, like you need to be in the same room. You don’t need to be an expert. Um, and you know relationship and building trust really matters in this particular space.
Rich — Love it. You know I … one of my, when our kids were little one of the things you know you feel like as a parent, there’s like a lot of what you do you feel like fits in the middle of the bell curve, like I’m not sure that was positive or negative it it just was. And then there’s a bunch of stuff where you’re like, I’m not sure that was actually helpful. And then there’s a very small percentage of things you do where you’re like, that actually maybe was like a momentary flash of goodness which is not a lot of those – you have a few of them. I remember when our kids were little we had at one December with our neighbors who were Jewish and then friends of ours that were celebrating Kwanzaa.
Kevin Singer — Yep.
Rich — We had all three of our families got together and had a great kind of winter celebration. Hey why don’t you Why don’t we talk about our various traditions…
Kevin Singer — Oh that’s great. That’s great.
Rich — …and and and work through it and it was actually it was fascinating because in that conversation we guys Christians got to talk about the difference between… our our Jewish brothers and sisters didn’t really get the the -which is I found shocking at the time – really didn’t understand the nuance between Jesus and Santa that like those two things are are not really connected. That the the whole Santa tradition is not really a part of what we celebrate as Christians it just… And it was great. It was like and it was like humbling because I was like, oh I really have no idea what I’m talking about and so… Ah, so proximity. Let’s talk about that. I love that. How are you… I’m sure you’re talking to church leaders and I’m sure you have like the go-to advice like, here’s the thing that you should be doing to increase proximity. What would be some of those two or three things that you find yourself talking to church leaders consistently about increasing proximity to, ah, you know other faith groups in their community?
Kevin Singer — Well, the first thing I want to say is it’s really nice to see someone accidentally put the Christ back in Christmas. That that’s pretty that’s pretty hilarious. And after all the culture wars you were like, I’m somehow doing that despite the fact that I had no intention to.
Rich — Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.
Kevin Singer — Um, mad respect mad respect for that. Um. Yeah, so increasing proximity. So so practically speaking number one every mosque in your community probably has an open house once a year. That’s a great opportunity to walk in the door, share a meal. Um, ah this is not this is not like ah like a like ah ah, Romans 14, you know, 1 Corinthians, like food sacrifice to idols kind of thing. This is just food that was cooked in a certain way that promotes ritual cleanliness and it’s not that unlike kosher…
Rich — Yes, yes, halal.
Kevin Singer — Um, and so you’re not walking in, you’re not walking in and sharing food that you know was put on an altar or whatever. It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s probably the same food that you’re getting from your ethnic grocery store, you know, sort of down the street. Um, so I would suggest go to an open house. That’s a great place to start and then I would suggest returning the favor: would you would be willing – you and your families – to come to our church and share a meal with us? Because here’s the thing, if there’s anything I’ve learned in multifaith ministry, it’s that returning the favor and inviting people to do what you’re willing to do is always a great step. So like ah just last week I was speaking at Cru’s winter conference in Indianapolis to like hundreds of college students about this right? And what’s really fascinating is one of the students said, you know I can just I cannot get my Muslim friend to read the Bible. He will not do it. He will not open it. And I said, what would it look like for you to actually read the Quran, and tell him, I’ll read a little bit of the Quran; you read a little bit of the Bible?
Rich — Yes.
Kevin Singer — Right? There’s just that there’s that reflexivity. There’s that mutuality that promotes a lot of exposure ah not just for you to learn more about their worldview, but to them to learn more about your Christian worldview. And if we truly believe as one of my favorite theologians ever, E. Stanley Jones ah, who wrote “The Christ of the Indian Road”, if we truly believe that Jesus is calling and he and he is just immensely attractive in a world of many faiths, then have faith in that. And but also have faith in the fact that Jesus is going to protect you spiritually if you engage with them and and their religious tradition.
Rich — Oh.
Kevin Singer — Um, I think we can say that if we truly believe that he is um, you know there’s no Name under heaven, then I think it’s actually an extension of our faith, not a portrayal of our faith to engage with, say the Quran, for the sake of inviting them to engage then with the scriptures. So mutuality. Showing up to their open houses. Um, working together on projects can be sort of a fertile place to go. Like so I brought students from Cru’s winter conference to a local mosque and we organized clothing for Afghan refugees. There was nothing Muslim about that right?
Rich — Yes.
Kevin Singer — Like, in fact, we showed up and we did that because we have theology of loving neighbor, right? So we’re we’re not drawing on their theological resources. We’re drawing on our theological resources by showing up and and organizing clothing for the least of these, right? So there’s there’s that cooperative piece as well. But I understand if some people out there are like, I’m not I’m just not ready to be publicly seen cooperating with a Muslim in that way. And I would say start small. You and maybe one other person in your church. Maybe go to the mosque for an open house or send an email to the imam there and say, hey we’d love to host a family or two at our home, just to get to know you because you’re members of our community. We want to love you and bless you in any way we can. Um, here’s the cool thing, number one I’ve never seen a Muslim in the five or six years I’ve done this ministry that’s like, no absolutely not. It’s always the opposite. Always, we’re so excited you reached out. We want to get to know you…
Rich — Love it.
Kevin Singer — …and and the number one thing most people need to hear is most Muslims in your community have either never met a Christian, or have never learned about Christianity from a Christian, so you would be likely the first person to preach the gospel or speak the gospel in a Christian way, not in a way that’s littered with, well here’s the contradictions and here’s where it doesn’t fit with the Quran and here’s, you know, why Muhammad or…
Rich — Right, right.
Kevin Singer — Or you know other Muslim voices have disagreed with this doctrine. Like you would actually be able to preach for the unfettered Gospel of Jesus Christ and they would be able to see that embodied in the fact that you invited them over, you paid for the food, you invited them in. Um so the opportunity is so rich. Um.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — I mean again, these are not people who have heard the gospel a thousand times and are now deconstructing. These are people who have never heard it and fruit is truly there. It’s truly a fertile ministry.
Rich — Love it. Now you had talked earlier about you don’t like the word interfaith. I’ve heard you say multi-faith let’s talk terms – why why don’t you like that term?
Kevin Singer — Yeah, yes. This is a critical question. Okay, so um I… obviously being in this space there are a lot of invitations to be a part of what are typically termed interfaith groups or groups that are like, let’s get one of every type of person in the room. We’ll hold hands. We’ll sing a song. You know we’ll wear our our robes and our hats and then look, we’re all together and we all agree, kind of like. And we we have engaged in every kind of way and we just continually find that it’s it’s really difficult to find a space that identifies as interfaith that does not sort of subtly ask people to leave their most passionate beliefs at the door.
Rich — Okay, yeah.
Kevin Singer — Um, because the truth of the matter is like, we as Christians believe something that is both incredible and offensive, right?
Rich — Yes, yes, yes.
Kevin Singer — Like and and there’s a sense in which a lot of interfaith groups – and you’ll see them in your community. Usually there’s posters and flyers where you know sort every symbol is is on there and they’re like, hey come on now. Um, we would certainly never tell someone like don’t be in a room with people who you disagree with. We would never say that because I mean that’s the whole point of our ministry. But what we would say is it is always a better use of your time and investment to say, Christian community, let us connect with a other faith community, than it is to try to work through some like typically more progressive interfaith group that, you know, is is likely not going to be super excited about the idea of you wanting to share your faith.
Rich — Right? right.
Kevin Singer — Um, even though I would say they are just as persuasive in their particular worldview as we are in ours. Um, it’s just different right? So anyway…
Rich — Right? Yeah, yeah, well I could see that. That’s an interesting distinction where I you know I think we’ve felt that tension right? Where it’s like, yeah I want to engage; I think that’s really good coaching like, hey let’s try to engage directly with a mosque…
Kevin Singer — Yes, yes, yes, perfectly said. Agreed.
Rich — …or indirect with even even more granularly with some neighbors or with some friends rather than an intermediary group who is who is essentially saying, hey friends if we could just all believe a third thing which actually isn’t what you believe or isn’t what our Muslim friends believe, it’s it’s a third thing which is…
Kevin Singer — Perfectly said.
Rich — …hey we some all somehow all of us are kind of in this weird middle ground. I love that that’s that’s great.
Kevin Singer — Perfectly stated you said better than I could actually.
Rich — So no, that’s great. That’s I think that’s I was great insight on your on your side there. So now let’s say I’m sure there’s church leaders that are listening in that as a person, like as an individual they would say, Yes, there’s something in their spirit that would say yes, this is a great thing, I should do this. But then quickly and behind – and maybe it’s just me that’s saying that – quickly and behind there’s the like, Ooo if I take steps as a leader in this direction, it’s going to look like…
Kevin Singer — Yeah.
Rich — A whatever – I’m becoming more liberal – I’m whatever they’re they and different. You just have different problems with that.
Kevin Singer — Yeah, totally totally. Yes.
Rich — Is it possible… I love what on your website says… you can be gospel-centered while still having terrific, you know, neighborly relationships of friends, you know, a different faith.
Kevin Singer — Yes.
Rich — How what would you say to a leader who’s feeling that kind of nerves that’s feeling that kind of oo tension.
Kevin Singer — So what we’ve learned in this space in this particular area is you have to name it. So like instead of sort of – trying to think of the word here – instead of sort of censoring yourself in this area for this for the sake of sort of Christian cultural purity, what we’d say is name it to the people who you are most worried of what they might think. Like name those things, say, look y’all know I love Jesus more than anybody, you know, but I’m really afraid that if you’ll see me walk into this mosque, you’re going to think this… but what I want you to know is what I actually mean is this.
Rich — Right, right. Right.
Kevin Singer — There’s really no like this is one of those areas where like vulnerability and just naming what your fears are to the people who you’re you’re afraid of their thought or opinion really pays off. And you’d be surprised. We get this question so often. I got this question ten times when I spoke last week at Cr. It’s like, what are other people going to think? I’m like, tell them, like I’m afraid of what you’re going to think. Will you think this if I do this? And it actually creates some great conversations about sort of the importance of engaging difference. Well and sort of do we even have a framework for that. And um, I mean if you think about it, it’s it’s well I don’t want to draw too many hasty comparisons. But I think we all know the tension of being invited into a space where it feels like our convictions may have been compromised in order to enter that space. You know whether it’s a mosque, or see an LGBT wedding, like we were all familiar with this like we’re invited to something and we just are afraid of what people are going to think.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — And I think the great thing is is that we’ve got a lot of scriptural um evidence for walking into spaces that are not sort of in total agreement. I mean Paul in the synagogues for God’s sake. Do you know like or … hell … the marketplace is right?.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — The the ah you know the the areoppagus and in in Athens right? Like entering like sometimes we have to pierce the darkness um to bring the light and I think so I think there’s some scriptural credibility in saying I’m going to walk in. And that doesn’t mean that I’m any less Christian for doing so. I’m bringing my light my tabernacle of Christ with me into these spaces and I expect him to show up in some big ways.
Rich — Yeah, isn’t that a sad – you didn’t say it I’m saying it’s my podcast – isn’t it a sad commentary on our place in the kind of Christian development over the years that what was one of the core tenets of Jesus actually being with people who are being with the unclean being with people who…
Kevin Singer — Right.
Rich — Are perceived as the not the people you should be a part of – that was actually how his ministry was known he was known as a drunkard and a partier because of the people you hung up with and isn’t it a weird – here we are two thousand years later and it’s like it’s flipped upside down. That you know where that is a concern. Ah, that’s you know that’s but that’s a sad reality that we find ourselves in for sure. So how does Neighborly Faith how do you actually engage? So I understand I get to get a sense on campuses I can get a sense of what that looks like. Do you do work with, you know, churches and how how do you, you know you’re speaking, what does that look like? How are you actually helping people in this area?
Kevin Singer — Yeah, so a lot of our work is campus-centric insofar as you know we want to essentially what we want to do is when we we want to build into sort of the missiology of young Christians a missiology that spans, you know, religious diversity right? So because it’s really ah in seminary and it’s in college where students are like what kind of Christian do I want to show up as in the world? They’re sort of individuating from their parents and they’re you know, receiving a lot of curriculum, sort of like how I show up in the world as a Christian for the next fifty years of my life will be shaped very strongly by what I experience on campus. And so we’re we’re trying to get into the recipe in a sense. Um, now where churches come in is we’ve had pastors speak at a lot of our events as the Christian dialogue partner. Um, and so we’re constantly asking pastors like would you be willing to get up on stage and talk to a Muslim about, I don’t know, pick pick a topic. Ah you know, ah you know what does what does it mean to suffer well? Or like what does it mean to um, you know what’s the purpose of prayer? Or have topics that both people can sort of present their unique perspective on as a Christian as a Muslim. Um again, this is you know E. Stanley Jones, one of my you know heroes, he he wrote ah a book called you know “Jesus at the Roundtable” and a lot of it sort of was this like you know when you present the Christian experience with other experiences for some people in that crowd. They could say there’s something unique about that experience that Christian experience of suffering, or faith, or struggle or…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Kevin Singer — And so we’ve had we’ve asked pastors to be part of those conversations we’ve had churches host um our our students and and Muslim community members for events. Um, yeah, we’ve got church partners who, and pastors who, encourage us and mentor us in our work. Um. But but the the large ah emphasis is sort of bringing Christian students to these conversations and connecting them with hopefully Muslim students, but sometimes it’s it’s Muslims in the community who may not necessarily be students…
Rich — Love it.
Kevin Singer — …so that’s that’s where a lot of our our interests are. Um, we also have run a fellows program where we sort of coach students and equip students and resource students to do this work with their churches and so one of our our fellows, Carissa, a few years ago she, you know, used our coaching and our resources and she brought her church to visit a mosque that year, wrote about it for a bunch of different platforms online, and it was just incredible sort of the the amazing conversations that were had as a result of that mosque visit. And she went to you know a very very very very conservative church. I mean it was, again, there was a lot of naming. You know this is what we’re doing. This is not what we’re doing. This is what we’re saying; this is not what we’re saying. And we helped her to sort of frame that so that the elders of this very very conservative, rural church were like sure that makes sense to us. We can do that…
Rich — Right, right.
Kevin Singer — …and and it was great. So those are some of the different ways we’ve we’ve worked in in through and within churches in our work.
Rich — Love it. That’s good I do want to give people contact information so they can get in touch with you…
Kevin Singer — Sure.
Rich — …but anything else you want to share just as we kind of wrap up today’s episode?
Kevin Singer — Yeah, so there’s one more thing that I like to share especially you know with with with more moderate to conservative Christian audiences, is that our work is not an endorsement of like the best possible sugarcoated version of Islam. Like we don’t we don’t actually feel like we have to say Islam is great in some way to do this work. Um, sometimes there can be confusion like well. It seems like these guys have bought into this idea that Islam is actually not what everybody, you know, or or what some people say it is. I mean we I mean we are still thinking, convicted, thoughtful, prayerful people that like yeah like we do ah see issues within the Quran. We do see you know ah ah things within the Muslim faith that could if, you know, thought through and identified a certain way lend themselves to violence. Like like these are things that we see and but for us the question is not, is Islam here to you know subvert our society and destroy us? It’s, are these people who God has called us to love? Can we be ah, test a testament to Christ in their lives? That is our our emphasis, but it is not to the dismissal or the ignoring a very real and legitimate concerns about certain aspects of the Muslim faith. And I think it’s important that I say that that you don’t have to sacrifice any skepticism or suspicion. That you have to decide to maybe suspend some of those suspicions and fears in order to be a witness in their in the life of someone who’s never heard the gospel. And I think it’s always important for me to say that for for those people who are like, I just I can’t get past that. Here’s the thing you don’t have to.
Rich — Sure.
Kevin Singer — But you do need to get past is your fear um because we were not given a spirit of fear but a spirit of love, right? And and a spirit of power, and we can we can we can exercise that in the lives of our Muslim neighbors.
Rich — Um, Kevin this has been so good. So helpful. This is just the top of the very tippy top of of the the iceberg that we’ve touched on here and I’d love to encourage people to get connected with you.
Kevin Singer — Absolutely.
Rich — So your website is neighborlyfaith.org – where else do we want to send them online to get plugged in to connect with you?
Kevin Singer — Yeah, so we are on all social media platforms. You’ll find us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook ah at neighborlyfaith. It’s pretty easy to find us. Um, if you are ah a pastor out there, or a ministry leader, or a church planter who is just like this sounds great, like I think it would actually be really good for our people to hang out with some Muslims this year. Like send me an email – I’d love to just have a conversation with you and just say how can we help? How can I encourage you, support you?
Rich — Love it.
Kevin Singer — We we do have some funds to help with bringing Christians and Muslims together and so if your if cost is prohibitive for you, we’d love to be in conversation.
Rich — Love it and and why don’t we give us your email. We’ll put it in the show notes too. But don’t give it just so people hear it in their in their ears too.
Kevin Singer — Sure it’s Kevin at neighborlyfaith dot org.
Rich — Perfect. Well thanks so much, Kevin, I appreciate you being here. Excited to hear and track with what you know as your ministry grows and impacts more people in the future. Thanks so much for being here today.
Kevin Singer — Thanks so much for having me. This was great. Great questions and and look forward to continuing to follow the podcast as well.
5 Leadership Hedges Against Inflation for Your Church
Feb 01, 2022
Just when you thought the word “unprecedented” couldn’t possibly be used any more, we continue to climb into levels of inflation that haven’t been seen in over four decades.
In fact, the last time we saw inflation this high, the world was a completely different place.
Bread had soared to the cost of 50 cents a loaf.
Late-night TV was ruled by Johnny Carson.
A newfangled invention called the modem was just released for personal computers (which had barely taken off).
Ted Turner had just launched a TV station that broadcasted news 24 hours a day called the Cable News Network (“that’ll never work!”).
We find ourselves leading in an environment of increasing inflation. Although in the local church world, we may not see its impact right away, it is going to affect your church and mine.
Small business owners in your church are no doubt trying to puzzle out how to increase the fees that they charge for the services or goods they provide to combat inflation as it continues to rise. In a recent study by the US Labor Department, inflation had peaked at 7%, which is something that you and I need to take note of as leaders in this environment. [ref]
What difference does inflation make to our churches in this season?
Put most simply, inflation erodes an entire country’s spending power. As inflation continues to rise, the cost of goods continues to increase, and salaries try to match those levels. The entire country has a more and more difficult time purchasing goods with existing resources.
This was one of those financial earmarks that we were watching carefully at the end of 2021. In fact, most economists were advising waiting while we got through the Christmas season to see what would happen in the new year. But alas, inflation is continuing to rise. Our churches need to think carefully about how we react to this as we plan for our ministry for the rest of this year and beyond.
Here are a few articles to dig deeper into understanding inflation:
In 2007, I had the opportunity to travel to Zimbabwe, which just happened to be in the midst of a rapid inflation increase. It was a heartbreaking time to be in the country because during the two weeks we were there, the cost of everything doubled. One of the key church leaders we had met with was converting donation dollars into building bricks. He was literally buying bricks to warehouse for future church building projects down the road that were yet to be authorized because although the Zimbabwean dollar was worth less and less with every passing day, he at least could have a giant pile of bricks under lock and guard that could be used in the future.
The current inflation that we’re experiencing isn’t going to be anywhere near that level, but it is something that we need to be thinking about carefully as we plan for the future.
This blog post really isn’t financial advice for your church. I would suggest that you need to secure solid financial advice from trusted individuals as you think about how to position your church financially for the future. What I want to talk about here is a series of things that we can do as leaders to help guard our churches from the impact of inflation in the coming year. You may hear such financial advice from your advisors as:
Borrow now with interest rates at an all-time low. These are bound to go up, and now’s a good time to lock in rates.
Refinance your mortgage. If you’re carrying any long-term debt, now might be a perfect time to either pay some of it off with the cash you have on hand or refinance for the future.
Plan for a 25% wage increase. Although your wages are not likely to jump that high, it is a good to consider what would happen if the cost of your staffing were to jump by 25% overnight.
Lock in long-term pricing. Now would be a good time to renegotiate every contract that you have to secure long-term pricing at today’s lower rates.
While this isn’t financial advice, the following leadership options could help your church as you deal with inflation in the coming weeks and months.
Leadership Hedges To Help Your Church In a Time of Inflation
When we talk about a leadership hedge, we’re referring to a protective move that you could do as a leadership team now to ensure that your church is prepared for inflation in the coming year. It’s about positioning your team and community to weather the storm of increasing fees and costs of doing what we do over the next 18 to 24 months.
Proactive Fundraising Plan
At its very core, inflation is about increasing the cost of services. The cost of “doing business” is going to be higher a year from now.
If we don’t continue to increase the amount of revenue that is coming in per individual giver, we could be caught in this gap with the costs of “doing business” increasing without the same happening to the revenue from our church.
What would it take to see a 7%–15% increase in revenue this year on a per giver basis?
This considers the total number of givers as well as the revenue per individual giver. It could include actions such as an active appreciation plan, where you reach out and ensure that people are clear on how thankful you are for your giving, or a year-end campaign—oftentimes, churches see a significant bump of anywhere between 10% to 15% in the last 45 days of the year. It might even include a plan to convert occasional givers into regular givers. For example, we all know that converting people to online giving is key to the financial health of our organizations going forward.
Explore New & Novel Investing Strategies
Over the last two years is that many churches have increased their cash positions. As we went into the pandemic, we became more fiscally conservative and wanted to increase the total number of “weeks” of reserve funds that we had on hand in case of an emergency.
Many churches grew their cash on hand in a matter of weeks or months of an emergency stopgap. The problem with that is that the cash that we’re holding is slowly devaluing if it’s not returning at least 7% interest, which is not the case in a simple bank account. That cash is losing value, and unless we look carefully at how we’re investing it a year from now, the money that we’ve saved up over the last two years could be eroded significantly as the cost of what we do increases.
Now might be a good time to reexamine your portfolio risk and reward ratios and understand that this money is given to your church to help in case of a rainy day, and although in some ways we’re not free from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are through the most significant phase of it.
It would appear that there are sunnier days ahead on that front. You might want to take a more risk tolerant approach to your investment strategy knowing that you’re potentially not going to need this cash for years to come. You could even look to more novel approaches; in fact, we’ve seen a number of churches across the country who became sole owners of an LLC using these cash reserves to actually do active investment, including opening up an entrepreneurial venture, such as a coffee shop or a rental facility. (We’ll be talking more about this in the coming months at unSeminary to give you some practical help and guidance in this area.)
Increased Leadership Development Spending
Your team is the best hedge against uncertainty.
I’m not talking about increasing salaries, although this may be something that you need to look at in the coming months. Now is the time to double down on the resources that you provide to your staff to increase their leadership development. While the cash sitting in your bank account may not be earning you interest, if you were to raise the leadership capacity of your entire team this year, that would pay dividends not only in the short term but also for years to come.
This could be the year to spendmore on conferences that can both inspire and equip your team. This could be the year that you hire coaches for various departments. Oftentimes, experts from the outside can provide a great shortcut to your team as they’re looking to reach new people and increase the overall effectiveness of their ministry. It could also be the year to add extra support in the way of part-time administrative help or remote staffing contracts that could be simpler to get out of in the long run but could provide a great lift to your leadership in this coming year.
Look for “Noticeable-Less” Cuts
One of the tough realities of leading in an inflation-driven environment is when you look carefully at the spending side of what we do.
I remember years ago, when we were in a period of reducing spending across the board, we cut back on the budget that our kids ministry team used in their craft budget and got it down to a really small amount. And to be honest, it was such a useless cut because it not only cut away at a core experience for our guests but also didn’t make a substantial difference to the overall operation of our organization.
We can’t cut the budget by 10% by limiting googly eyes in kids ministry. We need to look at significant items and ask the question as we come out of the pandemic: are there things that we need to cut that people will notice?
What is the pet project that our senior leadership team has held onto for too long that we just need to get rid of because it no longer helps us effectively for the future?
During the pandemic, are there things that we learned we don’t need that it’s now time for us to act on?
What can we cut that people would notice and would make a difference to the overall budget?
I suggest that looking for “noticeable-less” cuts around 10% is the way to start. These kinds of cuts will cause your leadership team to breathe deeply and ask if they really need this ministry area but could provide great long-term financial health for organizations on the other side once they’re gone.
Consider Tech Upgrades
I know this might seem like a strange point to make as you consider the option we just talked about, but this could actually be the perfect period to double down on your purchasing of tech equipment that could help multiply your ministry in years to come.
Is there enabling technology, such as RESI, that could help you launch new locations and that you’d rather spend today’s dollars on than dollars a year from now?
Accelerating purchases like this is a wise decision in this season; because of the inflationary effects of the loss of spending power, the money you have right now is more powerful than it will be a year from now. It will be more expensive to buy these items even then.
Look for items that will extend the reach of your church. This could include things such as new camera gear to add more capacity to your online experience. It could be something within your multi-site strategy that could help you open new campuses more quickly. This is a perfect time to consider more tech upgrades as you look to the future.
Still looking for more help as your church deals with inflation? Try this.
If you’re looking for the next steps to take coming out of this article, I would suggest three things:
Get your team together. Let’s not hide from the fact that inflation is a real thing that’s happening around us. It has been a shift in our culture in the last year, and it will help your team to see inflation in their areas.
Share this or similararticles about inflation to help them process and think through what might need to change in the life of your church.
Discuss what actions you could take. Find actions that empower your entire team to help them take steps forward and ultimately grow as a community.
You can do this—your church will prevail if you continue to stand. At this point, you’ve been through the toughest season of leadership in a generation, and this trail on the impact of inflation will test the lessons that you’ve learned during the years dealing with COVID-19. We’re cheering for you and are in your corner.
Office Hours: Attracting Young Families & Help with Hiring Your Next Team Member
Jan 27, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this month’s Office Hours podcast episode. Today Rich is answering your questions about attracting young families and getting help with hiring your next team member.
“I wanted to pick your brain on attracting more young families to our church.”
Know your neighborhood. // The ESRI Know Your Neighborhood Tool provides mapping information regarding neighborhood styles at a granular level, which drives deeper into social behavior in your area. Have your leadership team talk about the ESRI neighborhoods in your area and how you are connecting, or not, with each of these groups of people.
Five things to try to connect with young families. // 1) Host a parenting series targeted directly to young families. 2) Audit your kids ministry by getting someone to look at the quantitative and qualitative results of your ministry pre-COVID and post-COVID. Bring in a strategic outsider to help you find where you could be doing a better job with things. 3) Think life milestones for your church. Listen to this podcast with Kurt Brodbeck from Northview Church for life milestone examples. 4) Ask a focus group of five families how you can make it easier for them and their friends to connect with your ministry. And then ask how you could help them right now. 5) Find the things that the families with young kids in your area care about and get outside your walls to get involved in those things. How can you serve and love and care for the schools, kids, and young families in your community?
Audrey Eisenberg, executive pastor, Inland Hills Church in Chino, California:
“How can we get the word out about opportunities in our church in such a way that they feel exciting and meaningful to the kinds of people who we would love to have join our team?”
Internal versus external. // Look at internal and external church hires from two different perspectives. What are you trying to accomplish? You hire someone internally for an area when you want to maintain the good things that are working and incrementally improve. But you hire externally when there’s an area in your church that’s broken and you want to find a way to accelerate and fix it moving forward.
Cultivate your relationship internally. // If you’re thinking about hiring internally, create some fishing ponds where you can better get to know potential leaders in your church, and then hire from there. Determine if any of your top 50 donors might be able to move into a leadership role. These people are already bought into your mission. Or put together a list of key leaders and host a book club. Get together, read a book and talk about. This allows you to get to know people better and identify potential future hires.
Network outside the church. // In networking outside of the church for an external hire, create a spreadsheet with three columns. In the first column write the name of 10-20 people who have some sort of existing network. Rate their influence from one to ten in the second column, one meaning they have a huge social network and ten being not that influential. Then in the third column rate the likeliness of them getting your jobs out to people on their networks. Sort the names by the influence rating and then by the possibility of the networking influence column. Start with the top of the list and work your way down to ask them if they’ll help you share about your open roles.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Mega to Meta? Your First Step in Starting a Metaverse Ministry with Jason Poling
Jan 20, 2022
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Jason Poling, lead pastor of Cornerstone Church of Yuba City in California. For the first ten years of Jason’s ministry as a pastor, he felt like he had been living in “maintenance mode.” While his church was experiencing growth, some of which was due to brand new believers, a lot of the growth came from the already-churched crowd. After a bold prayer for God to increase his faith, in 2019 God opened his eyes to the massive, unchurched population in the digital world.
Listen in as Jason talks with us about the mission field in the Metaverse, how your church can begin to reach the lost, and even establish a campus there.
Ripe for harvest. // The Metaverse is a unique space where especially younger generations who are digital natives go to build relationships. No matter how cool or relevant your church is, there are some people who will never attend a brick-and-mortar church. Yet the Metaverse provides an easy entry point for them where they can check out a service and interact with the other people there in a safe, low-pressure way.
What is VR church? // The Metaverse version of services at Cornerstone Church are very much like being at the in real life (IRL) location. Instead of seeing physical people, you’ll see their avatars. As you walk toward other people in the Metaverse, audio is spatially constructed and you’ll be able to hear them talk and enter into conversation, just like IRL. The one thing you need to participate is a VR headset. In the Metaverse, Cornerstone streams their services, similar to how they would on other platforms like Facebook or YouTube. In addition to VR, you can utilize Discord (similar to a beefed up version of Zoom) and Twitch (a streaming platform that goes beyond YouTube) to create a robust experience in the Metaverse.
Keep a connection. // Cornerstone Church of Yuba City treats their VR church as one of their campuses and maintains a connection between their IRL site and their Metaverse location. Talk to your IRL campuses about what God is doing in the Metaverse location, and talk to your Metaverse campus about what God’s doing in the IRL locations. Hybridize training and offer opportunities for things like bible study or small groups for your people both IRL and in the Metaverse. Make use of Discord and its ability to use a two-way camera to provide opportunities for more interaction between IRL and the Metaverse. Share vision and prayer requests across campuses.
Build relationships. // Remember that people primarily visit the Metaverse to connect. Serving people in the Metaverse can look like approaching them and asking them how you can pray for them. While it might seem creepy to approach a stranger out of the blue IRL and do this, it’s normal in the Metaverse. Many people might be discouraged, lonely or depressed and hungry for relationship. Even if people might want to be anonymous at first, in the end they are much more open to conversation in the Metaverse. There are always opportunities to share Christ’s love and encourage others.
A world of its own. // Jason suggests thinking of the Metaverse as a world that has different continents. Each VR platform (AltSpace VR, Rec Room, Horizons, etc.) is a different continent with different tribes that have had very little exposure to the gospel.
Test the waters. // You can experience the Metaverse world first by logging into the 2D version to find what might be attracting people on that side. Then pick up a VR headset, which currently is about $300 and talk with people. Explore the world and Metaverse church services to see what you can do and what the Metaverse has to offer.
Try out small events. // When you’re ready to set up a church experience, Altspace VR is one of the easier platforms to try out your first Metaverse service. Set up an event and it will show up to others who log into the platform. It will start small, but keep showing up, don’t get discouraged, and persevere in sharing Christ’s love and the community will grow.
Diving deeper. // Curious about the Metaverse and the mission field there? Rich will provide an Oculus headset to the first church leader who emails him and takes time to explore the Metaverse, as long as they provide a 500 word write-up about their experience there—the good, the bad and the ugly—to be shared on unSeminary.
You can learn more about Cornerstone Church of Yuba City at www.cornerstoneyc.com and find information about their virtual services there. Jason has also provided a copy of his article about diving deeper into the Metaverse world for download. It shares his story and offers encouragement for people who might be skeptical of the value of starting a Metaverse ministry.
Help Taking Your First Steps Into Metaverse Ministry
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Rich — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, so glad that you’ve decided to tune in. Every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and today is no exception. This is going to be a conversation that’s going to push you in some new directions. Super excited to have Jason Poling with us. He is from Cornerstone Church of Yuba City, a fantastic church in California. They have a location there in the physical world, but then also one in the Metaverse. So super excited to have you with us today, Jason. Welcome to the show.
Jason — Great to be here. Thank thank you Rich.
Rich — I’m really excited for this conversation because I feel like everywhere we go, we’re talking about the Metaverse and I’m excited to actually interact with a church leader who’s taken a few steps ahead for us and is leading and trying a few things and learning. So this is going to be a great conversation, but let’s fill in the picture. Tell us about Cornerstone. Give us a kind of a bit of the flavor of the church that kind of thing. And then we’re going to jump into all things meta.
Jason — Yeah, so we’re we’re just north of Sacramento but we’re in a small agricultural area – I mean it’s a bigger, everything’s bigger to some degree in California, and Texas of course but I lived in Texas as well so yeah I can say that…
Rich — Sure sure. Nice. Yeah.
Jason — but um, we’re in ah in about 150,000 people and at the in the in the area we live. Um, I’ve been at this church about 4 years it’s ah it’s a sort of a medium, small to medium size church. Um, you know when I came it was just ah was kind of struggling and God has really done a great work over the last 3, 4 years – been so thankful for that. And we just ah, it’s a church that you would not expect that would go into the Metaverse at all. If you came to my church, especially 3 or 4 years ago that would not even cross your mind.
Rich — Right. Yeah.
Jason — And so I will will of course go into all the detail details on how that happened. But it’s really been neat to see the church really get excited because the church that I’m at, they definitely have a heart for mission. They want to see people come to Christ. And so that is really been the driving force and impetus and and so allowed this church to do crazy, I mean crazy things right? The Metaverse! So it’s it’s been great. It’s been a great great experience. Great church here in Northern California.
Rich — So good. Yeah, this is a part of what I’m glad you brought this up because I was as I was doing some research you know, look digging into the church kind of seeing who who you are. Um this is like a normal church like you are you know, which which again I didn’t know how to say that I didn’t want that to be ah you know demeaning. But ah, which I which hopefully actually motivates people to be like hey this should be something we should be be thinking about. So let’s tell this story a little bit. How, why did you end up in VR or or you know Metaverse? What did that… How did all that happen? Tell me that story.
Jason — Yeah, yeah, so obviously everyone knows the pandemic. We know that that that happened that’s a reality and of course that pushed everyone digitally, so that did have a huge part of in the whole picture but we were actually moving that way and God again – God’s Sovereign – so thankful. Were preparing and moving that way well before the Pandemic. So I’ve always been involved in technology, very interested kind of geek out like that I love gaming. I remember even back in the day… I’m I’m ah older than I look – of course you guys can’t see me the podcast, Rich can see me – I’m older than I look. Um, but I I would be very interested in VR. I remember going to malls and they’d have these little little booths set up and you could do like a game or kind of a Dave and Busters kind of place where they’d have ah a VR. Of course it was really generic. It was like diving into like Tron, if you remember Tron…
Rich — Yes, yeah, yeah, yep.
Jason — Tron-type of quality of of graphics but it was still amazing. And so VR just never quite took off, never got to the commodity pricing and the ability to kind of mass distribute it. And then of course Oculus, and then of course Zuckerberg and Facebook and he took Oculus over and then of course now the Meta right? .
Rich — Yes, yes.
Jason — But anyway, um I’ve always been interested in technology. So when I saw about VR coming out, I was really excited just from a personal level. But as a pastor, I mean as you are, I mean we I just want to see more people come to Christ and as I began to look at the statistics, you know that all, everyone listening this podcast knows that we’re not on an upward track right? The the movement is not going upward in terms of seeing more people come to Christ in the United States and and people being churched. And so I’m like man. How do we reach them? And so it just, a bunch of things came together I’m like, the meta versus huge.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — There’s you know literally billions of people you know, communing on the Metaverse, fellowshipping in their own ways on the on the Metaverse, in the Metaverse, and I’m like, this seems like a hand-in-glove situation.
Rich — Yes. Yes.
Jason — We could get out there and start reaching. And that’s exactly what we decided to do. And we got a team, we got a team together. Some, obviously some, younger people to start, but you know believe it or not we’ve got some older members of our congregation that are now involved in in the ministry in the Metaverse. But we did start with some younger that were more digital natives and we just started doing it. Um, we basically started April of 2020. So right right there at the at the pandemic. And we’ve been doing it ever since.
Rich — That’s amazing.
Jason — And been it’s been amazing to see the conversations the connections we’re making with people. Especially younger generations that have no connection to the church tell us time and time again they would never have gone. They say it. We would never have gone to a brick and mortar church. No matter how cool it might have looked or relevant. We wouldn’t, we wouldn’t go. And so VR just provided this a little bit more easy entry point for them. It just it feels a little more safe so because you can pop out quickly.
Rich — Yes, yes, yes.
Jason — You know you go and you don’t you don’t get stuck at a service where you’re nervous they’re gonna, you know, sacrifice chickens on the on the altar or something, you know, they can get out quick. So…
Rich — Yeah, yeah, totally totally.
Jason — It’s just an easier entry point. And then once they’re in, and you develop relationship with them, begin to share the gospel with them, people get saved. That’s that’s what we’ve been doing for 2000 years, right? So anyway that’s we just did that and that’s what happened so.
Rich — Love it. Dude, I love it. So good. So give us a sense of, so I think, you know, folks that are listening in.… we were joking about this ahead of time… you know, I would say are in that like understand in a broad sense what VR is understand in a um, yeah, like get us a little bit of a sense of what that looks like. Fill out the picture for us though. What is VR Church? What are, what…what kind of… what is your ministry look like in the Metaverse? How, what are the kind of… you say you have a campus in the Metaverse – what does that look like what is the kind of scale and scope of the ministry?
Jason — Yeah, it’s great question. And it’s it’s really, it is at this stage in the game it’s kind of interesting to see because most people that they just don’t have any idea… but it’d be it… I love trying to get people into it if I could get them ah get to wear a headset, just to try it out and see they would actually find. And if they came to one of our services they would find that it looks pretty similar to what happens in IRL, or what we call IRL is In Real Life church – physical church. Um, and that may be just the way that I have chosen to do it just for my own bandwidth. I I realize you know I can’t create something completely new here. I know it seems crazy to go the Metaverse. I’m like, I’m already preparing a sermon preaching twice on Sunday morning. I just want to kind of do the same thing ah without having to stress myself out. And so I wasn’t sure if that would work. But again people are people, and people are hungry for truth. And so what I what I we basically do almost the same service in the Metaverse. So the only difference that you might, would experience would be you wouldn’t see physical people. You would see avatars. But when you’re in the 3D experience it’s very immersive, of course, the whole point of 3D and Metaverse…
Rich — Yep, that’s the point.
Jason — …is it’s spatially constructed right? So you actually can walk over to somebody and hear them more clearly and if you walk away, you can the the audio is even spatially constructed and so it really creates exactly what you feel like when you walk into your church on a Sunday morning in real life. And so it’s really not much different. Now, there’s other ways to do VR ministry. I’ve got buddies that just go straight up ah, go evangelize. Well, that’s not much different either just going street evangelism right? They just go into they go into VR pubs and just strike up a conversation. So it’s not it’s, virtual reality obviously is replicating, it’s mimicking what we experience in in reality and so it’s not that different. I think what’s hard for people to get past is the the currently the quality of the the graphic rendering right? So some of the, if you watch one of our videos we post, someone you can see them on Facebook, Youtube, or our livestream ah from our VR services…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — …it’s 2D and you can do it 2D but you’re you’re not going to get the immersive experience. And so when you watch it, it’s going to feel, it’s going to look a little cartoonish. It’s kind of hard for people to get past that. But if you can get past the idea that it’s not about the the quality of the graphics, the cartoonish nature of of the avatars, it’s the people behind the souls behind those avatars. Then then you can start saying oh this makes, this really makes sense. So I think it’s just getting over those hurdles…
Rich — Yep. Yep.
Jason — …of the unknowns. So yeah, it’s very similar what we do on Sunday morning IRL.
Rich — Yeah that’s great. Yeah that’s fun. And what um so what networks are people like, if someone’s saying, I want to, actually, how do you invite someone to the the VR version of your church? What does that actually look like how do how do you… how do you actually make that happen? How do I get somebody to actually attend one of your services, you know, in the Metaverse?
Jason — Right. So I mean one one thing is just go to our website. You can go to cornerstoneyc.com… cornerstoneyc is for Yuba City dot com and then slash VR so pretty pretty simple to get there.
Rich — Yes.
Jason — And then they can see where we’ve got the links to the two the three platforms that we’re currently on ah, VR. And then we also have our Discord… which I don’t know how much your listeners know about Discord’s like a Zoom on steroids. Really awesome robust platform and then our Twitch channel, which again I don’t know if these might be terms no one knows what that means. But it’s it’s it’s a streaming platform ah you know more like Youtube but even beyond that.
Rich — Yep yep.
Jason — And so we have we have access you can get into any of those places. Of course our Facebook, normal Facebook page, and YouTube page will show the streams of the services. So you can you can actually go and see it really simply. Now to actually go in the immersive side you do, at that point, need a headset.
Rich — Mmm-hmm. Right.
Jason — So that is the one obstacle to entry. But again, we’re we’re really trying to reach people that are already there, already digital natives in the VR Metaverse. Um, but you can go out and get one for what $299. So it’s not it’s not cost-prohibitive for someone to…
Rich — Yeah, totally.
Jason — And I would encourage anyone listening, I mean, if just to, I mean most and probably a lot of people you’re you’re you’re talking to probably have the budget in their church to buy a $300 headset for the staff and then just kind of dabble just kind of experience it…
Rich — Just experience it. Absolutely.
Jason — …and see see what it is so it’s not. It’s not really a loss actually – 300 bucks is pretty, that’s pretty nice. I mean you could you could start a church in the Metaverse; church plant for 300 bucks.
Rich — Yes, yes, yeah, come on that’s amazing.
Jason — That’s that’s insane. It’s insane.
Rich — Yeah, that’s incredible. How have you been casting vision for this in the you know in your real life church in the on you know in the physical space? Ah, what does that look like how how do you talk about this with people in your in your you know the physical you know location? What does that look like how are you kind of helping move people you know IRL into you know the virtual world?
Jason — Yeah, yeah, great great question. Of course you know, um it all obviously the the senior leader has to be excited about something and keep it in front of people, so that that’s I think one of the reasons why obviously it’s taken off here is I just talk about it a lot. I’m so excited about it and we tell stories about what’s happening there and so we always talk to the in real life congregation, the campuses about about what’s happening, and vice versa. We talk to the VR campuses about what’s happening IRL. So there is, ah there is a beginning, and not just the beginning, it’s really come to some maturity of ah of relationship. And there’s a few things that have happened. Ah, one one thing we’ll do is when we do trainings – um like I’m right now doing a bible counseling training. Um, you know we got about 50 people in in process with that. We’ve got we we did life group training…
Rich — Totally.
Jason — …ah preaching trainings, all that kind of stuff – we always hybridize it. So that was one of our initial goals is make sure this is not just this separate thing…
Rich — So good.
Jason — …Outposts that they have no connectivity to the in real life church. No, it’s hybridized. And so when we train, we’ll have them on Discord and that’s, again, a wonderful platform for that. And two-way cameras, speakers – we got it all set up to where it’s it’s it’s really awesome…
Rich — Yeah, yeah.
Jason — …that we can interact very…And so there’s a lot of relational development that actually occurs there. We’ve gotten a lot of our members on Discord here IRL so they’re interacting with people. Um, we in a VR family reunion where about twelve people… or maybe not quite twelve – a couple couldn’t come… they came out to northern California from our VR family to hang out…
Rich — Oh that’s fun. Love that.
Jason — …hang out with us for a weekend. And so they and they stayed at some of our IRL members houses just a lot of overlap a lot of fellowship.
Rich — Love it.
Jason — Um, just a lot of ways in which we, you know, we pray for each other all in the Facebook group together. So when a prayer request comes out, it’s VR or IRL. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the Cornerstone, as we call it, the forever family and and so we’re all in this together. So we’ve just really been strategic about making sure there’s ah, a connectivity, a hybridization between the campuses. So it’s not this outpost. Yeah.
Rich — Ah, yeah I love that one of the things I’ve been saying is I think ah, the our online ministry, you know so many of us have done, you know, church online. We’ve tried to figure that piece out and yeah, like we were… the pandemic…like gosh the ultimate, like man, we’re so glad we took those steps. But it’s still to me, and listen I started doing church online in 2009 – been doing it for a long time. We spent a lot of time, effort, energy, a lot of brain cells on it. Ah, but it still feels like we’re not quite there yet. It still feels like we’re um, it’s not quite. It doesn’t feel native. It doesn’t feel like it’s from the technology right?
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — It doesn’t feel like, it’s, it feels like we’re bolting something on. And I love that you’re trying to mesh the two to hybridize because I think there’s some magic there. What have you learned as you’ve tried to bring those two communities together? Any, kind of, steps that you would say hey you know we we should be thinking about these things if we’re trying to to take you know a step in that direction?
Jason — Yeah I want, well I should mention too one one thing we did do – and this is where you know your cost does go up if you want to go this far – and you know obviously to start you don’t have to do all this. It’s all 300 bucks and everything’s free…
Rich — Yep, yeah yes, yep.
Jason — …but we did hire a Metaverse pastor. So and I think he might be the first meta… like his title is Missionary Pastor to the Metaverse. Sounds so cool, you know…
Rich — Yes, yes, love it. Yeah, that is so cool.
Jason — …but he’s down in Fort Lauderdale so he’s the entire country away from us. I got connected…
Rich — Oh, very cool.
Jason — …I got connected to him through I don’t know if you don’t Jeff Reed in Stadia – Jeff, I think, is Exponential now. But anyway, ah so this guy’s Michael Uzdavines is a great guy and so he’s our Metaverse pastor. Um, but he comes out… we have him come out with some regularity to the church here and he’ll preach live. He also actually preached on our big screen to the whole congregation. That was really ,that was really an awesome experience too because he could see, he could see all of us right?
Rich — Yes.
Jason — …two-way camera while he’s preaching to the IRL congregation. So, anyway, that’s that’s one thing I forgot to mention that just kind of, again, brings the thing together a little bit. But um, you know I think we just, I don’t know if there was a strategy other than just constantly trying to bring the two together in every setting so in vision, visioning as well.
Rich — Yes, yes.
Jason — So we’re doing… I think I sent you this thing about in IRL… we’re trying to do this thing called our City on a Hill initiative to really kind of go to where the people are instead of trying to always get them to come to our church. Um, long story short, we’re like well how do we do that also in the Metaverse?
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — And so we’re we’re making sure that the the visioning that we that we cast, the vision that we cast, and the things that we’re doing, we try to replicate it both ways. And so we did thing called Love Yuba City,…Yuba City’s two counties that’s ah where we’re at, we’re just kind of on the line. So ah, we went out and and took a Sunday… a lot churches do this… we took a Sunday off and went and served the community in all these different ways. Well in the Metaverse we did the same thing.
Rich — Very cool.
Jason — So it’s not, you can’t do some of the physical things, but there’s a lot of ways that you can bless people believe it or not in the Metaverse. Um, and so we just kind of replicate those things make sure we’re all in the same page…
Rich — I Love that.
Jason — …when we’re doing ministry and so it all feels a lot more connected I guess. So I’m not sure we really I wish I could say we we mapped it out for years…
Rich — Yeah, yeah.
Jason — …and had this perfect strategy which I could say I wrote a book on it. No, we kind of just dove in and just had that concept of…
Rich — No, it’s good.
Jason — …IRL is so important. I do think still the physical, that’s how God made it it. It is superior. But it doesn’t denigrate or mean that we can’t do ministry digitally and try to bring the two together somehow. So we just had that as our kind of north star and and everything is kind of flowed flowed from there.
Rich — Love it. We’re going to come back that put a bookmark in that. Ah, but I want to talk about, I want you to flesh that a little bit more.. What were some of the things that you were doing to serve the community in the Metaverse? What did that look like? How did you again, you know you can’t… building wouldn’t necessarily be, you know, going and helping paint someone’s house is pretty easy – just click and you know change the color. So what, you know, what were you doing in in the Metaverse to help serve, you know, in those communities?
Jason — Yes, the first year we did we basically we started out and said, hey how about this Sunday morning – since we’re not gonna have service to this afternoon – go out into your local community and and serve in some way and then let us know, like tell stories, you love to hear story. What what did God do? So that was cool and of course they did that as well this year. But we also said why, in the Metaverse, why don’t we all go in together and we’ll go to all the different worlds together. And just, I think, they I was actually… I couldn’t be there because I was at the one here in in IRL… but Metaverse pastor had them all put on avatar, like their name, and then “how can I pray for you?” And so they go around to say, hey you, just want to know if…
Rich — Oh yeah, that’s cool.
Jason — …hey if there’s anything I can pray for you about. And believe it or not. It’s not as maybe creepy as it sounds because in the Metaverse people are there to connect. Like that’s why they’re there.
Rich — Sure.
Jason — And so usually people will strike up a conversation, they could pray for them, encourage them. There’s also things I don’t think anybody did this year, but what we want to do eventually is, there are, as you know, there’s a lot of digital, there’s a whole economy that occurs in the Metaverse. So right now we’re getting to crypto and blockchain and nfts, you know, so there are things that you can do that are tangible in that they’re economically related, ah to bless people where they’re at in the Metaverse. And so we’re kind of envisioning what would that look like to have something that was more tangibly beneficial…
Rich — Yep.
Jason — …to people to to the Metaverse denizens. You know what I mean?
Rich — Yep yep, Yep! Absolutely, love it. So good. Let’s pull back and talk a bit about the Metaverse. So I I was listening to, so I’m hoping, my hope is – because I’m gonna, I told you heads I’m gonna be a little bit of a devil’s advocate. My hope though, is exactly what you said – that people go out and buy a headset, and actually jump in, jump into Atspace, jump into… and and experience this. Because um, you know this goes back to Second Life ten years ago where we were, you know, Life Church was like, hey let’s put a Second Life campus on and it was like amazing.
Jason — Yeah, yeah.
Rich — Um, you know I think we’ve been scratching, culture has been scratching this itch for a long time, and it would appear like things are lining up and we’re going to actually end up in some sort of VR connected Metaverse here and so are, we’d be silly to not take these steps. So friends I think we should. You know we should do this. I heard recently, I heard ah a ah pundit talking about the Metaverse and said you… know like this year in 2021, so this is just going to go out in early 2022… but in 2021, it’s estimated that 16 million VR headsets were sold. In the same year 3 hundred million crocs were sold and this person was saying listen, like the the scale of this is still infinitesinally small…
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — …like it is it is… and I often joke about this… I know that a technology is reaching mass adoption when two things happen: when my when my wife, or my mom are interested. It feels like a long time until my wife or my mom will put on a VR ah headset…
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — I can’t imagine a day, but it it it seems like a long ways away. How far away from that kind of adoption do you think we are, or what will be some of the things that will need to happen before we see that kind of adoption, from your perspective, from someone who is working and living and playing in the Metaverse already today?
Jason — Yeah, the great question I do think it’s still and it’s it’s, you know, and there’s ah if you can do some research and stuff and yeah I’m not like heavy… and DJ Soto’s another guy is a great friend who started the first virtual reality church. He’s done a lot of this… I think it’s really interesting to see some of the trends of when something reaches a tipping point.
Rich — Yes.
Jason — And sometimes it gets, so VR is technically past this point where it it could, ah it could be a technology that goes the way of the dodo bird right now. It’s past that point but it’s still in the trough where it’s not taken off in a massive way but all all ah, all indicators point that it’s going to, like you just said.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — I don’t know when that’s gonna happen, but one of the big players, I mean once Apple drops something then the game game’s over right? I mean it is, is that thing, that’s why I meant, I think because Apple currently is in development with, and of course top secret right? But it’s all, things get leaked…
Rich — Yes.
Jason — …but they do have some um AR/VR ah, glasses that they’re working on. It may not be something that is massively adopted because it’s probably gonna, you know, as Apple always does, cost a lot. Um, but they’re, Apple’s so good at creating a you know creating ah a a culture around some a product, creating an ethos, making something look good…
Rich — Yes.
Jason — …and work well. And so I think what I’ve seen in some of the early indicators it’s going to be not these clunky headsets, it’s gonna be real nice…
Rich — Yes.
Jason — …and trim. And I think once that happens… and I think that’s why Zuckerberg’s kind of trying to really get ahead of the game because he wants to be the guy who’s known as the Metaverse guy, not Apple.
Rich — Right.
Jason — …and and I yeah everybody else is gonna, once Apple breaks it, I mean I was in the cell phone industry back when the iPhone first came out and it’s crazy right? Like now it’s it’s ubiquitous. I mean like your your grandmother does have and ah iPhone now. And so it just happens so fast. I think once Apple does that I think we’re off to the races and it will just…
Rich — Yeah, that’s good.
Jason — …Will just keep accelerating. And of course you got to have on the other side—the software developers, the coders—as they get better at their craft and have more resources at their disposal, and it becomes ah just graphically rich, and it overcomes some of the obstacles that might be there, it’s going to be, it’s going to take over the world. Now some people, it can be a little dystopian when you start thinking about it…
Rich — Sure sure.
Jason — …and it might be, but you know this underview. We’re not able to you and I aren’t going to stop that and so we somehow have to not give over everything to it but yet reach into where people are at and that’s where they’re going to be so.
Rich — Yeah, totally. Well and I think it’s the same… listen friends, I for years, it’s amazing, like for years we were hounding people to get onto social media. It was like, friends, like your people are there and there are still a ton of communities… and these stats are like publicly available… there’s a ton of communities across the country where 60% of the population is on Facebook weekly which I know we all think like Facebook it’s old and it’s like, you know, it’s like old school that people aren’t there anymore. But when you think about that if 60% of the people in your town were doing something every single week, you’d be silly as a leader to not go and check it out at least – to say hey we got to do something there. And so where we seem to be I would totally agree with you on that I think from a future facing point of view, we’re headed here. This is not, to me, it’s not in the question of if, it’s just a matter of when…
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — …what, how are we and and folks like yourself, um, you know are leading the way helping us understand that. You know the other thing I heard which captured my imagination that I think I think is really true is in a lot of ways we’re already there. Like we are already layering over top of our physical existence a digital layer.
Jason — Yeah, yeah.
That’s ultimately what the Metaverse is about is it’s about layering on you know in a Ready Player One ultimately a sort of way, but we’re already doing that. If you own an iphone and you have a set of airpods with Siri connected you already are layering on a level…
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — …a layer, a level of data on top of your real world existence. It’s the same with with Amazon’s Echo – you’re layering in data in a way that was really inconceivable just a few years ago.
Jason — Right.
Rich — Um I noticed actually this this ah Christmas season that Amazon’s Echo headsets which are, it’s it’s a headset that you’re designed to wear all day long, so you never take it off and it’s an AR experience – that is trying to take Echo with you. And I I think those things all point in the direction of, oh this is where this thing is headed like we are, how do we use data to you know enhance our reality and I think there’s really something there. That’s that’s really what
Jason — Yeah, that’s wise. Yeah I think you’re right and and the Metaverse, yeah, basically it’s just trying to bring in other senses right?
Rich — Yes. Yes. Yep.
Jason — It’s trying to bring in the visual rendering of what you just described. I think you’re right on. We’re already doing it from the audible level right?
Rich — Yes.
Jason — …and and to some degree I mean I guess that’s probably the only sense that you’re necessarily getting in terms of the AR layering. But yeah, but what what VR is bringing or what Metaverse is bringing is is the visual I mean that’s all it’s happening.
Rich — Well yeah, and yeah, and you can see I think again I think on the audio side and I listen I’m not… you’re the expert in this area, I’m definitely not the expert… but to me it feels like that a udio is the back door ultimately to the Meta the Metaverse. If we can convince people or if as people get convinced, you know, what would be great would be to carry around the entire internet not just in my pocket, but in my ears, that I can talk to and have that thing either connect with other people, or play whatever songs I want to play, or you know in our case, hopefully you know recite this scripture verse, or you know connect with my friends…
Jason — Yeah, yeah.
Rich — …that it’s only one step further to a set of great glasses that help me connect you know with people who are in other parts of the world. It’s actually not a a giant step…
Jason — No, it’s not yeah.
Rich — …you know which is an interesting, I don’t know, interesting thing. Well so this is great, if people are listening in today I’m hoping again, they’re they’re convinced that they should pay, maybe take a take a run at this. They should actually take a step. What would be a couple of those first steps beyond the, okay so I’m, I’d like to I buy a headset and they’re probably on sale because it’s in it’s January when this is out, so I can get a good deal on one of those. What would be some of those first steps that that you know, kind of all of us should take?
Jason — Yeah, I mean definitely if you know you could check out like our website or or yeah DJ Soto’s VR church. You can kind of at least look at what it is. You could then go and see from a 2D experience the livestreams or what have you to kind of check it out. Then you could actually download, you can download most of the platforms and again think of the Metaverses in terms of this world that has all these continents and then there’s all these tribes on the continents, and basically it’s it’s a mission field. There are new tribes that have no, or very little exposure to the gospel. I’m always amazed at how little ah, the the folks the Gen Z-ers and Millennials on there just have no exposure. But anyway each continent is kind of like a platform. So for example, we jumped in first to Microsoft’s continent which is called Altspace VR. And then we also have one in VR chat which is not affiliated with any large tech company.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — But Facebook’s got their Horizons now that just launched into -it was in beta for a while. You’ve got Rec Room which is massive. Rec Room is not connected to a tech, a large tech, well they’re large but they’re not known. But they but they’re great in that they have cross-platforming so you you basically reach everybody everywhere – cell phone, console, VR headset – everything.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — But anyway any of those places you typically, typically… I know Altspace can do this… you can download in VR chat you can download um a 2D version so you can actually enter into the world, talk with people, all that stuff… kind of like what second life was basically that’s what it was… um so you could do that, you could experience if you if you didn’t want to spend any money you could do all that just to kind of expose yourself, go to go to a and I would encourage you get the headset, I mean it’s only 300 bucks and then go to some church services. Go to ours, visit us, visit DJ’s, visit the others, and and just kind of see what it feels like. Check out the world. Just kind of enjoy. Just have fun. Enjoy seeing what the Metaverse currently has to offer. And then from there if you’re like um, my goodness there is so much fruit in the harvest field out here, because I because I guarantee if you’re, if you even try to strike up a conversation, it so often happens within the first five minutes you’re gonna be in a deep conversation. I’m always amazed when I go in there because it’s not like the IRL. In that in the IRL it does feel like everyone’s on their in the Rat Race right?
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason – And you might go to you go to church and after church you try to hang around talk, but people got things to do and they’re out.
Rich — Right right.
Jason — In the Metaverses people, the whole reason they’re there, the whole reason is to connect and communicate. And sometimes a lot of people are very discouraged, lonely, depressed, and so, and they also feel at first a degree of anonymity that allows a little more freedom of expression, but quickly the and um the anonymity goes to the wayside. It’s like this cool entry point. But then you you begin to know this person, deeply. And and so anyway, you’ll you’ll find if you even just try to open up a conversation and you can say hey you’re you’re from a church. You’ll start having some… now you might get some trolls, that there are some trolls if you know what trolls are…
Rich — Yes. Yes.
Jason — …ah and and God, Jesus loves trolls too. So but they can be pretty that can be pretty brutal sometimes but at the same time there’s a lot of opportunities for for… anyway. So you get in there ah, if you’re like wow this is awesome. The next step you’d want to do is is just literally let’s say you start an Altspace which is probably one of the easier places. Not the most populated; it’s it’s it’s actually pretty small in terms of numbers. But it’s it’s easier to get into and try it out. They have all these already made worlds for you.
Rich — Right.
Jason — So you don’t have to craft anything. All the coding is done for you and you can actually set up your event just like you would on on Facebook events or something. Super simple. And and if you’re a pastor listening you’re like man I I am nowhere near a digital native. I guarantee you there is someone. If you’re a large church, on your staff…
Rich — Yep.
Jason— …There’s someone on your staff that’s digital native that can do it in their sleep. I guarantee you if you’re a small church. There is someone in your congregation. Probably a teen, a millennial, that that um, that is a digital native. If you just…[unclear]…mission and say hey I got a mission field for you. I I’ll come alongside you and disciple you along the way. But here’s a headset, go in there set up an event. It’s super easy and that’s all free. And then it shows up and when people come into the world at the time that you do your event—maybe it’s a service; maybe it’s just a hangout—um, they’ll see your church on the events page and a lot of times they’ll check it out. Probably some somewhat to troll. Maybe.
Rich — Yeah.
Jason — Somewhat just because it’s like hey, I’ll check it out; I’ll talk. And you will start to have conversations. And it will start small. We started with like I don’t know three or four people. And now probably on a given Sunday in Altspace we probably get, I mean it’s not like, we’re not megachurch, by the way, I mean, and you you are limited a little bit on the amount of people that can be in just just because of the the coding, and the and space that you can have, so we probably get thirty forty people on average in our Altspace…
Rich — Yeah.
Jason — …we probably get I’d say sometimes we have 70 in VR chat but, you know, probably forty/fifty. So I mean but these are all all souls that don’t know Jesus, we’re trying to reach them so…
Rich — Absolutely.
Jason — …and and some of them do know Jesus there’s plenty of stories I can tell you about that. So anyway you just start the event. And then just then it’s just the old the old way of faithfulness. Just show up every time. Just keep showing up. Don’t get discouraged if for several weeks or for a while you’ve got three or four people. Those are three or four people, I mean, that you can reach for Christ.
Rich — Yep.
Jason — And then just watch it as as they start talking and they realize that you you love them. And and you know right? Friends friendships happen. That’s why they’re there…
Rich — Totally
Jason — …and then it will grow. It’ll just grow. Just just be faithful just show up in those in a free world. You basically spent 300 bucks. It’s that easy. So.
Rich — Love it.
Jason — I think once they start doing that and they start having those robust conversations around the gospel with these unchurched people, then then it just takes fire people get excited. You can tell stories to your congregation, your IRL say… Oh my gosh, like like the one I always love telling is the is the “future queen of hell” – that was her avatar name – came in a year and a half ago…
Rich — Love it.
Jason — …She told us later – the story has a happy ending – but she told us later that she came in to troll, to mock us. And she was just overwhelmed by how welcoming we were – we’re like hey, we don’t care if you’re satanist. You know we believe in Jesus, but you’re welcome here. We love you. You know you know and so she came, befriended, became ah very regular, came to every service, every event. And even helped us build – because she’s ah a coder -helped us build our newest campus in Rec Room – beautiful campus. And then a few months ago she became a Christian, is being discipled now, and got baptized in the in the world that she built. She got baptized there about a month or two ago. So.
Rich — So good.
Jason — Like when you could tell those stories to your church, it’s like… And she’s she’s in the UK, 23/24, told us that she would never ever have gone to a brick and mortar church. All of her family. She’s the first Christian in generations there. Almost all of them are new age or wiccan or what have you. And and still those are stories that resonate with with your IRL people…
Rich — Totally. Totally.
Jason — …and and it just takes fire. It just takes fire after that.
Rich — This is so good. So good. You. All You also provided a copy of an article. Um that we’re going to link to in the in the show notes. This is all about, um really it’s about the topic we’ve been talking about. You dive a bit deeper, you kind of tell this story, you know. Anything else you want to talk about this this pdf? This could be a great resource actually for church leaders. This is what I thought when I read it – I’m like this could be a great resource for church leaders like to pitch this out and say hey let’s think about this together, um, read this article and then let’s come to a meeting next week and talk about what should our first steps be into the Metaverse.
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — But but tell us a little bit about this article.
Jason — Yeah, yeah, so I got selected to come to a ah ah shark tank is what they called it, you know the the tv show. But Exponential to this future church initiative, and I was at the first shark tank in Austin this last year, and they actually had ah about four of us, five of us from the Metaverse…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — …doing Metaverse ministry, so it’s really cool at there. Exponential’s getting really excited about Metaverse stuff. They’re they’re really pushing it. So we did the shark tank thing, and they you know did a podcast, did ah a thing on Outreach Magazine, and and of course this article they wanted me to write. And so yeah, that’s all it is is basically just to kind of tell my story, my journey. And I’m I’m not an author – I don’t have any books or – that’s about it.
Rich — Yes, yes yep.
Jason — So yeah, that’s my article, but I thought you know that is ah it just basically shares Ah what I think a lot of pastors will be encouraged by. And I think you’re right, if they just were to show that to maybe to the staff, or to the elders, you know skeptical people, and say, wow ah, maybe this is legitimate. Maybe it’s doable.
Rich — Totally.
Jason — So yeah, if they can use it to that end that would be awesome.
Rich — Love it. Well friends I’ve really appreciated… you’ve been just a huge service to us today, Jason.
Jason — Oh thanks Rich.
Rich — This has been so great, and in the spirit of what you’re talking about I’d actually love to offer anybody that’s listening in I’d love to offer up one Oculus headset. So…
Jason — Wow.
Rich — If you’re listening in, and you lead a church of less than 500 people, what I’d love you to do is to email me rb@unseminary.com and the first person that reaches out I’d be happy to send you one. But on this condition, you’ve got to tell us about your experience about it. So I’d love for you to actually do this, to take a step and actually see. And at least be willing to write a little bit – I don’t know – 500 words on what your experience was like good, bad, or the ugly. I’d love to publish that unSeminary and encourage people to actually take this step, because I think I’m with you, Jason, I do think that this is a is one of those areas that I think too many of us have been sleeping on. We were talking about this earlier I’ve heard this amazing statistic that one in three churches – 30% of churches – don’t have a website which is shocker to me that… none of these people that are listening in are in that… but um and we traditionally as a church have been really behind on these kinds of things and I want to encourage people to take that step. Anything else you’d love to share with us, Jason, as we kind of wrap up today’s episode, as we as we close things down here today?
Jason — Yeah, it’s hard, well I mean there’s is there is all, you know, there are the – and this isn’t really probably for today because we’re closing down…
Rich — Yeah.
Jason — but like obviously there are some issues people have obstacles with um, our ecclesiology are um, you know some of the traditions. Um, how do you… how do you do real church in the Metaverse?
Rich — Sure.
Jason — And so that’s another conversation and actually I always… again you know they can feel free to send your listeners to to talk to me if they have questions about how I process through that because that can be a real roadblock for people.
Rich — Sure.
Jason — They’re like how do you do communion? Baptism? is that even, does God approve…
Rich — Right.
Jason — …that in the Metaverse? And I understand there are different traditions that are listening even now that that’s just not going to work for them. And that’s fine. I got Lutheran brothers that that just not going to work. But you know there are other view views. You know like a Zwinglian view, one that’s a memorialist view, and so it works for us. So I just I think some people. Um I would love to help them think through without getting have the… sometimes the shock value of it all pushes us away from the opportunity to reach the lost.
Rich — Yes.
Jason — And and I understand there is legitimate concerns so we can’t yeah, can’t go into that detail, but I… that has been an issue, I’ll be honest with you, Rich, of adoption.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Jason — Many people are like. That’s just, I can’t even get past that…
Rich — Sure. Yeah.
Jason – And I’m like, I understand – I was there I struggled with it wandered through it. But I anyway, I maybe it can be of service to bring some some thought as I’ve of really processed through it theologically, ecclesiologically if that helps it all. So.
Rich — Um, yeah I love that. Listen I was in the same conversations 20 years ago when we were starting in multi-site and we started using video in in campuses and people were like, this is not real church. And and I would have never thought at that point…you know that’s estimated there’s there’s 5 million people today in the country who are at a video-driven campus of um of multisite. I would have never guessed 20 years later that’s where we landed – it felt like such a fringe thing. and in the same way I think that’s where we’re at with with VR church I think there’s lots of people are like there’s just no way. But we’re on the front end of what I think is ah is a change in culture…
Jason — Yeah.
Rich — …and and we’ve at least got to be exploring it as our churches. We can’t we can’t put our head in the sand on this one. So…
Jason — Good word. Thanks! Thanks brother.
Rich — Jason I really appreciate you being here. Where do we want to send people online if people want to track with you, track with the church, where give us those website addresses and all that again.
Jason — Yeah I mean just website cornerstoneyc.com. I mean that’ll opening you up to… of course you can check where you can connect with me there. Ah you can go to the VR obviously slash VR… but all the headings are on the website. You can find the online church offerings that we have but cornerstoneyc.com.
Rich — Great! Thanks so much for being here today.
Jason — Yeah thanks, Rich – appreciate it.
Best Practices in Onboarding New Staff with Ken McAnulty
Jan 13, 2022
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Ken McAnulty, executive pastor at Arise Church in Florida.
The hiring process is tough, and ramping up new staff can be awkward and stressful if it isn’t done with a lot of intentionality. Ken is with us today to talk about how to onboard new hires well and set them up for success.
Create a great experience. // What do you want new hires to experience when they come to work at your church? What do you want people to understand? These are questions that Ken and his team began to ask as they created the onboarding process at Arise. Their goal was to set a healthy pace so that when a new staff completed their onboarding week, they would feel like they could run in their role without hindrances. The pace that a church sets during the first week of a new hire’s orientation is the pace that individual is going to live by for their first year.
What works for them. // The first thing that Ken and his team do is to make sure that they have things set up for the new staff member before their first day. They communicate with new staff about things like setting up their office in a way that works for them and providing a computer of their choice with software they need. They also add fun aspects to the welcome by doing a bit of research on new hires through social media, or by talking with a person’s spouse, to surprise them with things they enjoy, such as playing a favorite song upon their arrival.
Four things to impart. // There are four things Arise Church really wants to impart to their new staff members in their first week. They want them to walk away with a sense of the culture at Arise, a sense of care that they’re about more than what they do, a sense of competency or an understanding of how they can be successful, and finally the course or path in which way they should go.
Sense of culture comes first. // Culture is much more important than competency. So the pastor takes the new staff member to lunch and talks with them about the history and culture of the church, as well as the future vision. After spending time with the pastor, the new hire then sits with other staff members who they will work closely with and hears their stories. Plugging new hires into relationships not only communicates culture, it humanizes the staff and creates open doors so they can get to know each other faster. The onboarding week wraps up with a truth or dare lunch which provides opportunities for the staff team to be authentic with each other and build rapport.
Last Day at Arise. // The last culture component of the onboarding process is a document called Last Day at Arise. Working through the document helps new hires intentionally think about how they will be known at Arise and who they’re going to be. Finally they will review that document with their direct-up at the end of their first week. This creates accountability as well as future coaching opportunities to help the new staff member achieve their goals.
Take time to express care. // When we expect new staff to hit the ground running right away and we become all business about getting them plugged in to their role, the person is lost in the tasks. We’re in the people business, and that needs to start with our staff. Each person we bring on board has a gift and a calling that we’re being given by God to steward. Take intentional time to express care for them and communicate that they are more than what they do for you. Every day of the onboarding week at Arise, certain staff have lunch with the new hire. The onboarding process can feel like a firehose, so Ken checks in with them throughout the week to see how they are doing and what questions they may have.
Competency and course. // Competency is about how to do your job or role, and course is about knowing which way to go. When a new staff starts, they aren’t expected to solve any problems. Instead Arise follows the John Maxwell method of training where: I do and you watch, then we do together, then you do and I watch, and finally you can do alone.
Define success. // Along with the details of how to do their job, Ken gives new hires a binder that has a welcome letter, a calendar for the first week, the contact information for everyone they need, core values, their budget, and more. Rather than charting their own course, show new staff a clear path they can follow. Clearly define wins so new hires understand how they can be successful in your organization.
Looking for a structured way to onboard new staff at your church? Check out the Onboarding Week Planner for New Church Staff template, inspired by our conversation with Ken McAnulty on best practices for welcoming new hires. This customizable, step-by-step guide will help ensure a smooth and effective transition for your team. Access this resource as part of unSeminary Extra Credit to take your church leadership to the next level!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow.
Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation.
Episode Transcript
Rich — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Wow, so glad you’ve decided to tune in today. You know every week we try to bring you a leader from a church that will both inspire and equip you, and today is no exception. Super excited to have Ken McAnulty with us. He’s a fantastic leader – executive pastor – at a church called Arise Church. This is one of the fastest growing churches in the country currently the lead pastor’s a guy named Brent Simpson. They have – if I’m counting right – three campuses in Florida including one on a Native American ah one Native American, or an Indian congregation…
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — …and also translations into Portuguese, and Spanish, and Malay – is that the other language, I think?
Ken — Malayalam.
Rich — Malayalam – I knew I didn’t write that down right. Ken, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.
Ken — Thank you, Rich. Honestly, it’s kind of a bucket list item for me. I’ve been listening to you guys since I started my journey as Executive Pastor and and man you’ve helped me so much, so it’s It’s been…
Rich — Come on ah come on. That’s so sweet of you to say, that’s so sweet of you to say. I’m I’m excited. We were joking ahead of time, I think so we – I’m letting you behind the curtain a little bit – we do a little prep before the show and Ken prepped enough for three conversations which is fantastic because I’m hoping to have him back on. Ah, so Ken I kind of gave I I butchered the bit of an introduction about Arise. Fill out the flavor – tell us a bit about the church. Give us a sense of your role. Talk, talk through, give us a kind of, fill in the the the map a little bit for people’s brains.
Ken — Yeah, no worries. Um, so Arise was started in 1959 in Brandon. In fact, right around the corner from where our current location is, just started as a little a-frame church and about 11 years ago pastor Brent Simpson came and we were at about 70 people at that time, and man he just, he just saw the church just begin to explode and grow. They immediately went to 2 services soon were in 3 services and began looking for another location because they were in a sanctuary that seated about 150 people.
Rich — Wow.
Ken —And so found a location just literally right behind the property and began building in 2017, 2016/2017. I joined the staff in 2018. I had the the blessing, luxury, and fun of jumping in right after they moved into the new building…
Rich — Oh fun! All the fun part about the building not the hard part.
Ken — Right, right! I didn’t, I didn’t have the stress and tension of building like they did, but I got to see that just the, just the immense growth so when we moved into that building we were – and I’m just going to toss numbers because it helps understanding…
Rich — Yeah.
Ken — …We were about 550 people in man, by 2019, by the end of 2019 we’re sitting 1100…
Rich — Wow.
Ken — …And so just had some dramatic growth of people giving their life to Jesus. We’ve seen God do just some crazy, crazy, awesome things. Just awesome stories of God changing people’s lives, and I get to serve as the executive pastor and so what does that mean? Well I have our Indian Campus pastor. He jokes that I’m the executor pastor. So I execute people and things not not not people. I get stuff done, take care of the finances, take care of the facility, and and help manage a staff. So.
Rich — I Love it. Love it. Why don’t we ah parallel this this staff team growth because you would have seen some interesting growth over the time you’ve been there because if you kind of came as you pivoted into the new building and then have seen that growth I’m assuming there was kind of ah a similar connection to the growth team, the growth of the staff team. Tell me about that. What’s that look like over the time you’ve been with the church?
Ken — Yeah, there was you know since since I’ve been here or or right around that time we’ve hired 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… probably half a dozen to 10 full-time staff members. You know some of that’s been transition, some of that has been has been new growth and so it’s been a large growth of our team, not only in those full-time spots, but then also in administration. We’ve had had to hire quite a few administrative assistants and and things like that. So there’s been a lot of hiring going on the last couple of years.
Rich — Very cool. Love that. You know, onboarding staff, um, you know I think we as we hire staff, I think oftentimes – at least I know I do and and I think there’s a lot of friends who would be in a similar boat – we we identify a problem area that we’re looking for someone to solve and so we’re like, okay, we really need to maybe an area’s grown or like there’s a part of our church that just is not going well and so like we we really need to get some more time associated with this and so we hire some staff and we spend all this time, effort, and energy, money to get them, and then they arrive and we just want them to start solving problems, ah…
Ken — Right.
Rich – But getting those first couple days, weeks, months can be really tough to, kind of, what do we do? How do we onboard people? What does that look like for you? How have, you know…
Ken — That’s a great question.
Rich — …What would be some of the, or or why is that such a tension? Maybe we’ll start with the tension piece. Why is that such a tough time? Why is that such a tough place when we first have new staff arriving?
Ken — Well, Rich, I know that many of your listeners have been through that transition point and I’ve been through that transition point and man it can be such an awkward time. This moment where, you know like you said, all this time, and energy, and effort, and money even, is spent on bringing this person in and then so often those folks are just released to the wild and expected to do ministry without an understanding of really what’s going on. And and really we discovered that it creates this awkwardness, this weirdness. You know, one of my staff told me this: one of the weirdest feelings is to be brought into a place with an unspoken culture, an unspoken taboo, and unspoken jokes…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Ken — …And have no idea what things you’re going to step on.
Rich — Oh that’s so good.
Ken — And and we really felt that tension. We really felt that, that problem. And so our lead Pastor, Pastor Brent, looked at me and one of my counterparts, my coworker Tina Blunt, and said, “I would like for you guys to really kind of develop an onboarding. I don’t know what that looks like.” And so we just began to dream, and and we said, you know, what what would it look like if we got to come onto, you know, a great team? What would we want that to look like? What do we want people to understand? What do we want their first week experience to to look like? And so we really just begin to tailor this one-week experience that we call our onboarding week. That that really helps resolve those problems and and sets the pace for our staff.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Ken — Because what we really want to do is, we want to, we want to set a healthy pattern and pace so that when they get done with that one week they feel like they can run, and there are less hindrances for them. One of the things that we’ve just kind of discovered is the pace that you set the first week is the pace that they’re going to live by for the first year.
Rich — Oh that’s good.
Ken — And too often there are churches who don’t set a pace and so then they wonder why their staff are not doing what they want them to do. Well I think it’s our fault. We’ve got to take that responsibility.
Rich — Mmm, that’s so good – I love that. What a great word: hey, this pace if that we set at the beginning really is how they run, how they’ll, you know, how they’ll be a part of it.
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — So let’s pull that apart a little bit when you think about… I don’t know, well, the best way to do this… the first day. Maybe even pre-first day.
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — How how are you setting that pace? Well, how are we kind of setting up this conversation in the in the earliest moments? What’s that look like?
Ken — No, it’s a great question. You know some of the first things that we want to do is we want to make sure that before they get there their first day that we have things set up for them. We don’t wait for them to arrive to begin to set things up. So we want to make sure that we have a dedicated space. We want to make sure we communicate with them about office furniture. You know, we have a budget set aside for them to get office furniture and we talk to them about pieces that we may have already that could be adopted to their office. And so we set up a basic office setup for them. We make sure that we order their computer so that means we have to communicate: Hey do you want a Mac, a PC, what do you want on it?
Rich — Huh.
Ken — And then we put together a communication binder that’s ready for them on their desk. And one of the cool things that we do (and this has been communicated to us by the staff that just kind of came organically) is we kind of, we kind of do some research on them and so we find maybe their favorite song or favorite type of music and we make sure that’s playing on their computer the day that they come in, their first day of work…
Rich — Wow.
Ken — …Which is kind of one of those really cool things. Um, we try not to be too too stalkerish with it, but you know we want to make sure that that that it’s welcoming.
Rich — Yeah, how are you finding out their favorite song? What do you are you? You do like a forum ahead of time or like what’s that look like?
Ken — So it it really depends on the person. Sometimes we’ll reach out to the spouse who is…
Rich — Okay.
Ken — …And we, you know, we kind of dig into that because their spouse oftentimes loves to have, you know, they they want, they’re invested in their spouse being, having a great first day experience and so we we include them in on that. Ah, sometimes we’ll do a little research on social media. A little social media stalking, we can find out there because some of that stuff is listed on Facebook and other social apps.
Rich — I love it. That’s so good. A little bit of research goes ah a long way.
Ken — It really does.
Rich — That’s a great thing. It’s amazing how – we were joking earlier. We knew we were gonna head in this direction – I was talking with some friends recently about their first day experience and I was like, hey what was your worst first day experience?
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — It’s amazing how quickly those conversations come up. And simple stuff even just the computer – having, you know, so many people in that that circle were saying, Wow, like I showed up and there was, like no computer there. Or like they found a computer under a back desk somewhere and like threw it on my table. You know it’s like some terrible thing. It’s amazing how that’s that’s incredible. How how do we go maybe beyond so I love the physical setup stuff I think that’s fantastic.
Ken — Right.
Rich — What are we doing to kind of drive maybe a little bit deeper into what they can expect to be as a part of the team as a part of, you know, what it means to be in the part of the the church?
Ken — Yeah, absolutely. So you know it’s it’s funny – this this conversation that you and I’ve had have helped what we call put put clothes on the baby that we birthed, and so we really have been able to kind of narrow down some things that we really want to give to people in that first week that we really want to impart to our staff. And so we we discovered four things that we really want to impart and since I’m a preacher by nature I did four C’s, you know, because that’s how we work…
Rich — Yes.
Ken — …It wasn’t three so I didn’t get the whole preacher thing in there. So we really want people to walk away from that first week with a sense of culture…
Rich — Okay.
Ken — …A sense of what am I walking into – what’s okay, what’s taboo. We want them to walk away with a sense of care that they’re about more than what they do. We want them to walk away with a sense of competency of an understanding of how they can be successful, and a sense of course – which way do they go. So ideally after that first week they’re going to feel like they can run now. We’re not going to solve everything that first week but those four big areas are the things that we’re trying to solve and we did things intentionally, unknowing beforehand because you know we were just creating the baby but really intentionally to kind of resolve these four issues.
Rich — Yes, love it. So let’s… I love… so first of all preacher at heart. Love that. Let’s walk through those. Let’s talk about maybe each one of those, culture first.
Ken — Yeah, yeah.
Rich — Um, man this is such an important piece of the puzzle. I love that you’re saying like hey, what’s okay, what’s taboo. That’s an interesting way to think about it. What are you doing to ensure that people are kind of onboarding with the culture?
Ken — Yeah, no, it’s a great question. First of all, we think that culture is way more important than competency. In fact, if you look at great organizations, like Chick-Fil-A, and we’re associated with a great supermarket down here in Florida called Publix – they do a great job of the type of stuff.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Ken — Those kind of organizations say that culture trumps competency just every day of the week.
Rich — So true.
Ken — And so we want to make sure that we communicate that well. And so we give our pastor two hours to to take that staff member to lunch and to walk them through the history and the story of our church to walk them through the future vision. One of the really cool things that he does—and I don’t want to spoil us for any future employees but—
Rich — Ah, yes.
Ken — …One of the one of the cool things that he does is he takes them out to a local highway right by and really begins to talk about the percentage of people driving by that are not saved that don’t know Jesus.
Rich — Wow.
Ken — And that’s the mission of the church just to really kind of get their eyes in the right place. And then we take thirty minutes at a time and we set them down in front of the staff that they’re going to work with and allow them to hear the stories of those staff members, which is really cool. In fact, the the staff that we’ve onboarded have said that that is the most impactful thing that we do this week is to sit them down in front of those people.
Rich — Wow.
Ken — One of our staff members said it like this, He said it humanizes the staff and creates open doors for deep conversations later. Another staff and I’m giving you quotes because I did my research another staff said, “the intentional getting to know each other faster rather than hoping it occurs over time.” And and so it’s it’s this intentionality of saying hey listen, we’re going to plug you into relationships because those relationships will communicate culture. And as part of those thirty minute stories what we tell our staff is, tell them why you love working at Arise. Because oftentimes the “why” somebody loves working at Arise surrounds the culture, and it surrounds the mission success. That’s why people love working at it. So when we allow our staff to communicate that it just it just, man, it increases the the impact of our culture.
Rich — Wow.
Ken — And then we do simple things like reviewing core values and proverbs and things like that. And then we do a couple of really cool things. We do… and and this is gonna sound a little funny… but, we do a truth or dare lunch with our staff.
Rich — Okay, truth or dare lunch?! Things get spicy right off the top!
Ken — They do. They do. We do that the last day of that week, but um, we really do that to to allow some authenticity there. And to really open up the door. What we’ve done at the beginning of the week is our staff has been authentic with this with this new staff person. And then at the end of the week it’s really their opportunity to be authentic back. And, man, when when they walk out of that moment, they walk out of that moment not feeling like they’re an outsider, but now all of a sudden they’re an insider.
Rich — Okay, yeah.
Ken — Because now they’re inside jokes that we all have together. And and so it’s not just about while I’m trying to find my way to fit into this team. Now I fit because I have inside jokes with them. And and then the last thing in this culture component that we do is we have a document that’s called our last day at Arise document.
Rich — Hmm.
Ken — We asked them to fill that out and then their last day of that week they check in with their direct-up and they go through that document. And what that document does is it really helps them to intentionally think about how they will be known at Arise. What they’re going to be known for; who they’re going to be.
Rich — Oh Wow. Huh.
Ken — Ah, because when we when we start at the end and we build a culture, looking at the end, we can be intentional about that. So if I say I want to be somebody who’s kind, who that when the staff… when I leave the staff say I was always listening to them, that empowers me to now be a listener…
Rich — Oh gosh, this is so good.
Ken — …And so we want to be really intentional about allowing those folks to really kind of create their own path in our organization and really build those strengths.
Rich — Oh, I love this. Now you gave me a sneak peek at this document – would you… would it be okay with you if we and included this in the show notes for people?
Ken — Absolutely.
Rich — I think this ah, you know to be honest friends, this is one of those things you should just rip this thing off. It’s a Word doc and put your church name into it ah, if that’s okay, Ken.
Ken — Yep! Absolutely.
Rich — And ah this would be a great thing for even to kick off the new year as a staff team and say let’s actually think about this and then and then let’s build it into our onboarding. I I just love that. That’s so good. I can imagine that those docs – that’s a powerful moment for people as they think that through.
Ken — It is, and and if I can just encourage your listeners, don’t leave it there; don’t just let people fill it out, but talk about it. Because with the talking about it comes accountability.
Rich — Yes.
Ken — Because then that can bring back conversations of, hey man this I know this is how you said you want to be perceived and this is who you want to be to people – let me help you with that. Let me help you become that person. But it becomes really kind of this powerful moment and I know for me it becomes a powerful reminder of who I’m trying to be when now people have come back to me and they’ve said that I am those things…
Rich — Oh that’s so good.
Ken — …That that you know we’ve had some staff leave and they said, you know, I love Pastor Ken because this is who he is. And when I look back at that document it matches and man that just, that just lights my world because that means that the person that God put on my heart to become, that I’m becoming – shows me a big win. So.
Rich — I love that. The, um friends, that again and what a great resource. That’s that’s so fantastic. You want to get that in our show notes for sure. So you said culture – the second you said was care, talk talk to us about that. What, how are you showing care for your team as they arrive?
Ken — Yeah. Absolutely, the the first thing that we want to do is we want to make sure there are gifts there.
Rich — Okay.
Ken — We want to we want to be known as a generous staff, and we want them to understand that there’s a generosity that comes with working here – that we’re going to be generous to each other. So we we buy them a book to read, but it’s not a book we want them to read…
Rich — Hmm.
Ken — We once again do our research and find out who their author is their favorite author and we buy them a book that they would care about. We buy them their favorite cereal. Why? Because cereal – it sounds weird but there’s little mind intentionality – cereal’s what we eat to the beginning end of the day…
Rich — Okay.
Ken — …and so we buy them cereal because it’s the beginning of their journey with us and so…
Rich — Oh cool. Love it.
Ken — …Just kind of one of those things. Then we buy them a coffee gift card or a favorite restaurant gift card -something that’s going to light their fire because what we also want them to know is, you’re about more than what you just do here in the office. We want you to have moments of care outside of the office, moments where you can just take care of your family, where you can go and you can be apart from us. It’s not just about what you do here.
Rich — Ah.
Ken — We also we we schedule with this clear understanding, for us Fridays and Saturdays are a day off and so their first week we have a literal schedule of every thirty minutes or fifteen minutes that they spend with us for their first week that I create for every staff member that we on board…
Rich — Wow. Right. Wow.
Ken — …And on Friday and Saturday we clearly put: OFF – do not come into the office.
Rich — We do not want to hear from you.
Ken — Yeah, and and that’s really the goal because we want to create this habit of Sabbath for them.
Rich — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good.
Ken — We want them to understand that they’re more, they’re about more than what they do for us. They’re a person and we want them to feel cared for. Every day we have lunch with them. One of the most awkward things I found, Rich, is when I’m going to a new place, what do I do for lunch, you know?
Rich — Um yes.
Ken — Do I bring my lunch? Am I am I supposed to have lunch? So I let them know up front, hey don’t bring your lunch all week we have lunch plans for you. Lunch is on the church. It’s on us and we’re going to strategically send them with different people so that they can build those relationships. Um, so it may be their direct reports. It may be their direct-ups. The first day I said it was the pastor and so we we send them with different folks each day and it really kind of builds culture around these lunch breaks these times off. Um, one of the cool things that one of my staff told me is he said: it helped me to understand the culture of lunch because nobody was looking at their watch trying to rush back. And we don’t have that kind of culture – for us we’re not demanding people be back at 1 and so it helped him to understand what was expected of him in that in that lunch hour…
Rich — Love it.
Ken — …and which was really cool and so some of that’s just caught. And then I do at least two check-in appointments – fifteen to thirty minutes – usually one is at the end of the first day and then usually one at the end of the week where I ask, Okay how you doing? You’re drinking from a fire hose. Are you okay? What do you have questions about?
Rich — Yes.
Ken — And just ah, just to check in with them.
Rich — I love it, Ken. I love being challenged by leaders like you. I thought we were doing a good job with our first day staff having the first day organized moment by moment. I love that that first week. And you know we’ve received – for friends that are listening, and I think that’s crazy, but I can tell you – we got I’ve got so much positive feedback from people say, listen I just love the fact that you’ve gone out of the way to ensure that might… because people don’t know what to do. They show up and…
Ken — Yep.
Rich — …they’re they’re excited. It’s overwhelming because you’ve been given them out a whole area – it’s like go solve the problems, and it it feels like you know, take on the world, change the world, because that’s what they’ve, you know, they’ve bought into the vision of the church…
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — …but they don’t know where to start and and the fact that you block that out for an entire week is is so good. So good.
Ken — Well and here’s one of the other things that does, and leading into this idea of competency, Rich, is we don’t let them solve problems that first week. I don’t want them solving any problems that first week.
Rich — Okay, tell me about that. Yeah, so let’s talk about that.
Ken — …because I want them to learn how to solve problems in our context.
Rich — Hmm. Good.
Ken — You know too often if they’re going to come in and try to solve problems in the way that they’ve always solved them. They’re going to run into cultural cultural issues and cultural conflicts and so I want them to to be prepared I want them to soak it all in. So we don’t necessarily give them any problems to solve that first week. In fact their first Sunday with us, we tell them come and observe. Come and shadow. We we tell you’re not gonna open the building. You’re not going to run a meeting. You’re gonna come and watch. We really follow this training – this John Maxwell of idea idea of: I do and you watch. Then we do together. Then you do and I watch. And then you can do. we want to ah, intentionally expose people to teamwork which is going to accelerate their culture.
Rich — So good.
Ken — So that’s one of the competency things that we do. And really what we found is while it may seem that it slows their competency process or their ability to input into the organization, that’s actually not true.
Rich — Hmm.
Ken — What it does is it accelerates their ability to input into the organization…
Rich — Right.
Ken — …because they’re almost like that horse in the gate that is just chomping at the bit ready to go…
Rich — Sure.
Ken — …and you’re keeping them in the gate and telling them hey listen this is all how all the horses run and so man when we let them go. They’re ready to go, but they’re also ready to go in the right direction…
Rich — Yeah, I can see that.
Ken — …and and they’re running really fast and so we found that it’s actually better to do it this way than just to try to release somebody because oftentimes when you just release somebody. They don’t even know which direction to go.
Rich — That’s so true. Yeah.
Ken — And I’ve been there before. You know you walk in and you’re like okay you want me to solve this problem but I don’t even know what caused the problem I don’t know anything. So it’s it’s just one of those things that we really want to be intentional about.
Rich — I Love it.
Ken — And then we also give them a ah, really clear job description…
Rich — Okay, yep.
Ken — …and and within that, and I’ve given you an example of this as well – actually my job description. Um, but we want to clearly define wins because we want them to be able to celebrate when they’re successful and and that way they know when they’re accomplishing what we’ve asked them to do and we tell them up front that that job description is always maneuverable. We’re going to add and subtract to it in our annual reviews and things like that. But…
Rich — Love it.
Ken — …Um, we want them to understand clearly how they can be successful at our organization.
Rich — Okay, so I want to ask you a bit of a meta question. So it’s like ah so you know you started with culture, then care, then competency, then course. I think a lot of us would have those in reverse order – we would start with, like and, I’ve I’ve done this, I’ve done this…
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — …like I’m I’m confessed. You’re my pastor, I’m confessing to you. It’s like here are the 48 buckets that are on fire. Can you just solve this now? Um, but you’ve taken ah an approach like, no no slow down, and let’s learn who we are first. Is that on purpose, is that…
Ken — It is.
Rich — Is that is and and because you’ve backend loaded the the kind of what I’ll call the job responsibilities piece. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Ken — The temptation that we have as pastors, because oftentimes when we have this gap that we want to hire for the temptation that we have is to plug that person in right away, and to get them to do it because we’re stressed and we’re overloaded. And what happens there when we become all business about bringing someone in, the person gets lost. And we have to go back to this core of we are in the people business. Not not even the ministry business; we’re in the people business. And so each person that we bring in is a person with a gift and a calling and a future that we are being ah handed by God as stewards to steward that forward.
Ken — And so we’re taking this really intentional, intentional time out to really kind of create these moments for people to to be people and define their future. You know it kind of goes back to this last day at Arise. I mean what, what organization really asks somebody… and the last question on there is: what are you leaving a rise to do?
Rich — Yes.
Ken — You know what organization asks somebody on their first day, hey what are you going to leave us to do? But but we realize that folks will leave us, and that’s okay, but the goal is that they not leave the kingdom.
Ken — We want them to keep going in the kingdom and man we want them to exceed us. We want them to do better than us. We want them to plant churches that grow bigger than us because we’re about the kingdom and so that means we’ve got to be about the people first and that starts with our staff. And here’s one of the things that the last thing I’ll say to this. Oftentimes when we forget our staff and we pursue the business in place of our staff, it is symbolic of what we’re going to be doing and what we are doing with our people – that we’re pursuing numbers and we’re pursuing digits as opposed to people.
Rich — Um, yeah, it’s so true. So true.
Ken — And and really, we’ve got to check our hearts and get back to the foundation of this. It says, I’m going to care about people and because I care about people, God will bless me with those numbers because God blesses us when we take care of the little things. And really those things right now are not things, they’re people and we’ve got to take care of them.
Rich — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. No, that’s so true. That is so true. Love it. Love it. Love it. Now the last, ah competency and course help us understand those two. What? what’s the nuance between between those two help me understand the difference there.
Ken — So sure. Competency is just kind of you know this this: how I do my job, my role. For for course, it’s this idea of: which which way do I go. One of my staff members that I talked to about this, he said, it’s like ah the church and and the staff, the pastors, putting our hands on the shoulders of a new employee and kind of telling them: This is the way. You know, to quote the mouse guy. You know this is the way.
Rich — Yes.
Ken — Um, and so the employee doesn’t really have to invent their own path. Rather the path is laid out for them. And so I create this binder that they receive on their first day. It’s got a welcome letter. It’s got that calendar of their first week. we give them important contact information. How many staff, how many jobs have you gone to where you don’t even know how to reach out to the other pastors, or you’re you’re running through your phone: hey what’s your phone number, you know?
Rich — Oh it’s so true. Yes, yes yeah.
Ken — That’s the last thing that we want to have to have happen. You know we we want to give them that information we want to pre-think about what they need. We give them core values and leadership proverbs. We give them their budget. How much money can I spend? You know, that’s the question. Employee handbook, that last day at Arise worksheet. And and one of the things that, you know, we’re we’re still growing, man. We haven’t perfected this process and we’re going to get better. In in my meetings with people getting ready for this, that’s one of the things that I asked, how can we do this better? And one of the one of the guys told me, he said, man provide some kind of FAQ…
Rich — That’s good.
Ken — …some kind of fact sheet, you know. He said there’s there’s little things that I just didn’t know. I didn’t know that we had free Cokes in the fridge. I didn’t know where the snacks were…
Rich — Who are those Cokes? Whose Cokes are those? You don’t want to take the senior Pastor’s Cokes! You know you don’t want to do that!
Ken — Yeah, right, right! I didn’t know where the bathrooms were, you know. And it’s just simple things like that. And so that’s even going to be one of those things that as we’re getting ready to onboard new staff, we’re going to be adding into there just some simple FAQs.
Rich — Um, love it. Love it.
Ken — Um, just to answer some simple questions that people would have. And then we make sure that those folks get to meet with our direct-ups.
Rich — Yeah, it’s so good. This is so good. Can you give us a sense of this is kind of related but ah, a sense ah of what your staff rhythms are? Once people start so are you doing like monthly one-on-ones. What is your kind of all staff meeting process look like? What do you do, annual goals, that kind of stuff? How does all that plug into this kind of onboarding process? What’s that look like?
Ken — Yeah. So weekly we have what we call an executive team meeting which is all of our location pastors and myself and our other executive. So weekly will have that and then we’ll break out from there into staff meetings with each location. And so weekly we have a staff meeting with each location and then no less than biweekly will have individual one-on-ones with our staff. And so you know we try to meet regularly and and I’m going to tell you you know this is a whole nother showing to itself, but man that that care piece does not stop at the onboarding because I’ll have an hour or one-on-one meeting and the first thirty minutes is about them. It’s not about me and it’s ah not about what I need from you. It’s about you. It’s about your wife. It’s about your kids. It’s about how you’re adjusting. It’s about whether or not you need to buy a house. It’s it’s about you and so that’s that’s kind of the rhythm that we have. And then annual reviews. Yeah.
Rich — Love it. Love it. Yeah and then annual reviews – that’s great. The I love that that’s a that’s a great insight. One of the things I’ve said in my one-on-ones is yeah that isn’t the place for me to assign work to you if if we’ll do that. And usually we do that in a team environment…
Ken — Right.
Rich — …or there’s other other areas where hey we’re talking about that. This is really a place where I’m here to be a coach to you. I’m here to help you what you know. What what are the areas that you feel stuck or blocked that we can help you get unstuck? It’s It’s not about me. If if you walk out of this meeting with a pile of to-dos, I’m not doing my job.
Ken — Right.
Rich — So yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. This is so great. Now you’ve provided a number of documents. Let’s kind of talk through those a little bit. So you’ve got ah a day 1 schedule example. Anything you want to kind of talk through that and give it a sense of what that look what that document’s about?
Ken — So literally like I said we schedule out every fifteen minutes, and and that doesn’t mean that there’s something in every block but you know they’re they’re blocked with spaces in between. And then and then we also make sure to schedule in breaks. We tell people up front that they’re going to be drinking through a firehose, but you know we want to schedule in breaks for them as well. But our staff have told us that literally that coming in on on a first day not knowing what to do and then having a book handed to you that tells you everything that you’re going to do for the first week is so relieving for them. And we give them moments where they can set up their office and do those normal first week things, but it’s so relieving not to have to try to figure out what you’re supposed to do that first week. And so it’s it’s a lot of work on my on my end up front and really kind of coordinating all that but man it’s worth it because they have ah a real good sense of what they’re doing.
Rich — No, yeah, that’s so good – I love that. And you know when you think about on the work side man, the church is investing a lot of lot of money, frankly in hiring these new staff, and and we all know that like that’s a, you know it’s a huge investment we want to make sure that we leverage it well.
Ken — Yeah.
Rich — You’ve provided a table of contents of ah of ah a binder that you give to them. Can you talk this through the binder a little bit? What is that tool? Um, you know how does it all fit into this as well.
Ken — Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about that in the little course section and it’s it’s that binder that really kind of guides them the first week. And so it you know I wanted to give that to you for your listeners so that they can have some ideas of of things that they can put in there. You know you guys are gonna have to create your own stuff. You know I can’t give you your employees cell phone numbers or anything like that. But those those are the things that we try to provide for them and man…
Rich — Yes, yes, yeah, love it.
Ken — …We’re always looking to grow that thing and so if anybody has any creative ideas of things that we can put in there, we’d love to hear it because we’re always trying to make sure that we provide better for our staff.
Rich — Love it. This is so good I really appreciate your help here. This is really I think a gold standard on you know, onboarding new staff. So you’ve just done us a huge favor by providing some great coaching here. Is there anything else, you’d like to share with us just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Ken — There is. We’ve done something twice that we just kind of stumbled on where where we actually paid for our last two full-time staff members to come on, to have a week off. So so we brought them on payroll…
Rich — Oh in between their their last job and yeah, yeah, yes.
Ken — …And we started their payroll in between their last job and this job and what we found is that that really gives our employees just this really moment to to have a fresh start, to turn their head. And yes it costs, but we’re we’re looking at. You know our staff are our most valuable resource, not our building, our staff. And we want longevity. Man, I’ve heard horror stories of churches who don’t allow a staff to take a vacation for a year when they get on and things like that and staff leaving one church on Sunday and starting their next church on Monday or on Wednesday and man this is so unhealthy. It’s not healthy. They can’t they can’t shift their mind or turn their mind to to what you’re asking them to do. They’re still recovering and reeling from the the trauma of leaving a place, and the grief sometimes of being pulled away from a place and missing people, different things like that. And we’ve got we’ve got to steward people better than that. We need to give them some time. And yeah I think this is something that we’re gonna continue going forward because both those staff members have really said that that that gives them that opportunity to reset, and it’s just one of the healthiest things that they were able to do, so yeah.
Rich — Yeah, that’s so great. Ken, this has been so helpful. I am just so honored that you took some time out, to not only pull this together, but then help us think through these issues. I want to make sure people track with Arise and and plug in with the church and and follow along with you guys.
Ken — It’s my pleasure. Yeah.
Rich — Ah, where do we want to send them online to connect with either you or the church?
Ken — So I am not big on social media. Our church is, so that you can find us at myarisechurch at Brandon online. You can also email me Ken@myarisechurch.com. Pretty easy to find the website’s myarisechurch.com. I’d love to hear from any of them and love to hear more ideas on what we can do better.
Rich — Love it. Thanks so much, Ken. Appreciate you being here today.
Rebuilding a Team Culture That Was Broken with Jesse DeYoung
Jan 06, 2022
Thanks for tuning into the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jesse DeYoung, the executive lead pastor at Flatirons Community Church in Boulder, Colorado.
Jesse is talking with us today about how Flatirons Church worked through a difficult season of ministry, addressed their broken team culture, and witnessed God’s redemption among the staff.
Recognize what’s not working. // The culture at Flatirons is self-described as anti-corporate and so for years the staff largely resisted structures and systems. As the church grew, however, it became difficult to uphold the vision without systems. The culture on the staff at this point was to push off blame and responsibility to the lead pastor. As a result, more and more pressure fell on the lead pastor and he was forced to take a six-month sabbatical.
Acknowledge the need for repentance. // At first in the lead pastor’s absence, the staff felt confident that everything would be sorted out and fixed with regard to issues in the church. But those same problems came back a short time later, making it clear that the issues didn’t come solely from the lead pastor, but from the church culture itself. The first step in moving forward was that everyone acknowledge a need for repentance and growth.
Offer severance. // When the lead pastor returned at the beginning of 2020, Flatirons knew they would need to reduce staff, partially because there were some staff that just weren’t aligned with where the church was headed, and partially because of covid. So one of the things Flatirons did to begin the changes needed for the church was to offer a voluntary five-and-a-half-month severance plan that church staff could take. The leadership had conversations with people to guide them in what was best for them and expected a small number of people to take the severance. It turned out that a third of the staff members stepped down, demonstrating that change was needed.
Redistribute responsibilities. // To help the lead pastor level up and teach and lead in a way that is sustainable, Flatirons realized that they needed someone who was going to carry his other prior work and responsibilities. This decision led to Jesse becoming the executive lead pastor and managing the rest of the lead team. Now Jesse and his team work together to solve most of the issues within the church and keep it running. This structure allows the lead pastor his time to focus on his ministry.
Stay relationally connected. // Jesse meets with the lead pastor once a week so that he can tell the pastor about everything that’s going on before they meet with other staff. Four or five times a year they go on a day trip together to have more unstructured conversations. This time allows them to relationally stay connected.
Four things to keep in mind. // Jesse keeps four things in mind in his relationship with the lead pastor: Emotional awareness in the moment between each other. Honoring the lead pastor with generous empathy toward what baggage he carries in his work. Trying to spend five to ten percent of his energy to help his lead pastor win. And confronting each other when your opinions on matters disagree.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Connection & Engagement Lessons from a Fast Growing Church During the Pandemic with Julie Hawkins
Dec 23, 2021
Today we’re chatting with Julie Hawkins, the Next Steps Pastor at Chapel Hill Church in Washington state.
So many churches had to quickly develop an online presence at the beginning of 2020 and it made the area of helping people take their next steps more challenging. Listen in as Julie shares how Chapel Hill Church took advantage of opportunities to pioneer new methods of building deeper relationships and increasing connection and engagement, and how they are using what they’ve learned moving forward.
Try new things. // It can be hard for larger churches to make sudden changes. However, the early days of COVID gave Chapel Hill Church the opportunity to try new things quickly and see what worked or what needed to be changed. With these pioneering efforts came more exploration of what could be done online and this actually led to deepening of relationships and increased engagement.
Virtual mission trips. // One of the things the church did was organize some virtual Go teams with their global outreach partners across the world. What they discovered was doing an online mission trip allowed the church to engage a segment of their congregation that would never be able to actually visit countries like Cambodia or Thailand. Similarly, the church was able to engage with their ministry partners in a deeper way by listening to their needs over Zoom and praying for them. Chapel Hill also included cultural aspects to the online experiences, such as sharing a recipe or music from the country, or providing fair trade gift boxes.
Build local outreach relationships. // Similarly, with local outreach partners people at the church learned that while showing up to serve is a great opportunity to build relationship, you can continue to build that relationship outside of the actual experience. Take time to pray for various ministry partners and connect with them online.
Online evangelism. // Chapel Hill was surprised by how well groups like Alpha did when moved online during the pandemic. People were still willing to dig into the deep questions of life. In fact, they saw more people come to faith through their online Alpha groups via Zoom than they’d seen in person.
Online life groups. // During the initial phase of the pandemic, life groups were also moved online to Zoom, and more people joined those groups than ever before. Having the meetings on Zoom moving forward allows people to stay connected even when they’re out of town or unable to get together. People love these little communities that have been developed.
Training online. // Chapel Hill adapted much of their training to be online too, and hope to continue with this method moving forward. Online training allows people to watch the videos at their own speed when it fits into their schedule, and then build a relationship in person.
Connecting via text. // When it comes to connecting with people and reengaging new people, or those who haven’t returned to in-person services yet, Julie uses the tool Focus Growth. Focus Growth helps with first-time guest follow-up by reminding the staff to begin a conversation with guests via text message. Text messages are a primary way we communicate and so it allows the church staff to reach out without overwhelming new people or being too pushy. The response from guests has been overwhelmingly positive.
Future relationship-building projects. // Using technology to help us better care for people has many applications. Just a few that Julie has on her radar are creating a structured framework for engaging volunteers at the church, creating a system of congregational care within the large church so that people feel well cared for, and working with the leadership to make sure they are caring well for themselves and the staff.
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Episode Transcript
Rich — Hey, friends welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in today – every week we try to bring you a leader who will both inspire and equip you and I’m super excited to have Next Steps Pastor at Chapel Hill Church, Julie Hawkins, with us. This is a fantastic church you should be tracking with and I’m excited to talk to Julie and to learn from her. She’s on the people side of what we do really helping people journey through Alpha, getting them connected through life groups, serving both locally and globally – Julie, welcome to the show. So glad that you’re here today.
Julie — Yeah, thanks for having me.
Rich — Why don’t we start with you telling us about Chapel Hill – kind of fill out the picture for us, tell us a bit of the story. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country – tell us, you know, give us a kind of a flavor of the church and then your role.
Julie — Yeah, Chapel Hill it is not in North Carolina – people get confused about that – but it’s in Gig Harbor, Washington and it started as a chapel on a hill (clever name) and we have grown over the years. I’ve been at Chapel Hill, ah, personally for about 30 years. I grew up there so it is such a blessing to serve at the church that I grew up at.
Rich — Oh nice.
Julie — And we are a church that is really committed to being for our city and our community and also being for our our world. So that’s one of the things that I love about Chapel Hill – my role as the next steps pastor is I am there to help people take whatever their next step is in the discipleship pathway or process and so I help people connect to community through our life groups and through celebrate recovery. I help people connect to service through local and global outreach or serving at the Church. Um, and then I also help people connect to reaching others with the gospel through Alpha. Obviously I don’t do all of that on my own; I have a fantastic team that helps me with that. Ah, but I get to be kind of the point that people come to to help connect them into their next step and help connect them to the church.
Rich — Love it. Well I am really looking forward to learning from from you and from the church. I think one of the things, for longtime listeners of the show, you know I love particularly talking to church leaders who are leading in context where you would say, like, “That’s not a place that churches should grow,” and Washington is one of those places.
Julie – Yeah.
Rich — This is a tough community to reach and Chapel Hill has been one of those churches that’s just made a huge impact on its community. So I’m really got my notepad out I’m really looking forward to learning today. Particularly you know when I think about these last (we were joking about this earlier) these last eighteen months or so during Covid and on the people side – the kind of connection side. Wow, it’s been a tough season for that. Let’s talk about – remind us back to March 2020. What were some of the early impacts of Covid on Chapel Hill? What did it look like in those early days? Let’s start there.
Julie — Oh man that seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?
Julie — Ah, yeah, yeah, but it’s pretty incredible to think back ah to 2020 March 2020 We felt like we were on the cusp of a lot of things like we had seen as a season of significant growth. Our Alpha was really growing and we were seeing more people from outside of the church come to Alpha which is a really key transition when you’re running a course like that.
Rich — Love it. Yeah, totally.
Julie — And we we felt like we were just about ready to step into all of these really incredible things and then all of a sudden the world literally shut down and we had to. That word that everybody used so often in 2020, we had to pivot and then pivot and then pivot, and so it was really a strange time because there was almost a … as we looked back, it was like, “Wow, God was doing so much and then we had to pump the brakes. What in the world is going on? Why did that happen?”
Rich — Yeah, amazing. You know one of the things that I think we all experienced during that was this sense of, it was like this disorienting like, “Okay now what are we going to do?” When you look back to these last eighteen months, what were some of those things that you were able to, you know, try new to, you know, to kind of experiment with. What were some of those things that, you know, you found yourself doing things as a church that you just normally wouldn’t have done?
Julie — Yeah, so for us we didn’t have a livestream of our services before Covid…
Julie — …and so all of a sudden it was like, hey we gotta do this, so we very quickly developed an online presence. And because we developed that online presence we started playing with, what does that look like to do it more? And I think that one of the things that I really appreciated about Chapel Hill and our leadership team and the way we approach this season is we just had the willingness to try things. At large churches it can be hard to change quickly and I think that the early days of Covid gave us the opportunity to try things quickly and say: did this work? Do we want to change it? Do we want to can it and go a completely different direction?
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — It kind of let us, you know, pioneer a little bit in ways that large, established churches don’t have the opportunity to do. And so a couple of those things, just thinking back on ah things that we did, is we did ah some virtual Go teams with our global outreach partners and what we found with that was it allowed us to engage a population of our congregation that would never be able to go to Cambodia or Thailand and they were able to engage with our global outreach partner in a way they weren’t able to before. And we did it once and then we thought well what if we did it more and had like a recipe that you cook from the country or some music that you listened to from the country so we even grew that.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — Um we had conversations with our local outreach partners that helped people know how to pray for them and really engage intentionally with our local outreach partners, recognizing that um, showing up to serve is a great opportunity to build relationship, but you can continue to build that relationship outside of either the team that goes and visits or the team that goes to serve, so I liked that a lot.
Julie — we did a thing where we um launched a mental health Monday with our care ministries…
Rich — Oh love it.
Julie — …And our director of care would talk through things that people were dealing with especially when we were in lockdown on quarantine. What’s happening with your mental health? She even did one where she interviewed all of the kids in next steps – all of our staff’s children – and talked about what they were dealing with.
Rich — Oh wow, that’s cool. Yeah.
Julie — So we did mental health Mondays and we did A-Way-to-Serve Wednesday, engaging people in service and and they were just very like low quality, quick videos that we did. And we even give the freedom to say, “Man if you want to talk for five minutes about this, or if you want to talk about for fifty minutes about this, this is the time to try it.”
Rich — Yeah, give it a whirl.
Julie — So those are a couple things. Exactly, like, why not? I have one more thing.
Rich — I’d love to hear about– okay, go one more thing.
Julie — The other thing that we did that I was super excited about was ah we tried online Alpha and that was, again, one of those things that it was like, how in the world can you dig into life’s big questions online? And it was funny because I had gone to a call about online Alpha the week, like 2 weeks before covid, and then all of a sudden it’s like everything’s online. And I’ve been… it was… I’m excited that we’re through that season now and we’re not doing online health anymore, but we saw more people come to faith through Zoom than we did with our in-person Alphas so it was just incredible to see the fruit from that.
Rich — Yeah, I know I um, so it was the June of that year I was involved in an online conference and Nicky Gumble was – from Alpha – was a part of that and, yeah, one of the things he was talking about was he apparently was was resistant to online Alpha. For years he said, you cannot do this online. You have to have the meal. We got to do the Weekend. You cannot do this and, and so then he tells the exact same story of like, “Well then I’m an Alpha leader and so we were leading online Alpha and saw the exact same thing – saw all these people come to know the Lord and just saw really cool outcomes from that.” That’s that’s really amazing! I love you just rolled…
Julie — Yeah, I mean the Holy Spirit can work, the Holy Spirit can work through Zoom. Who knew? Who knew?
Rich — Absolutely! Absolutely! Who knew? Exactly – it’s amazing…Which I just loved that as a leader for him. You know, he’s got a few laps on the track, you know, to be saying, “Hey I’m still learning and growing and trying new things,” which I thought was great. So I love that you just kind of rolled over the virtual Go teams. I want to hear more about that. So you did these international service opportunities – pick that apart a little bit – help us understand what was it? What did you do? What kind of impact? Yeah, talk me through that.
Julie — Yeah, so our strategy with our global outreach focus in general is to build relationships with our global outreach partners. And so because of that we have fewer partners than some other large churches might…
Rich — Yep.
Julie — …Because we intentionally want to go deep in relationship with them. And we also want to emphasize that our it’s a relationship and it’s not based on transaction. And so because of that, it actually really lent itself to this virtual Go team model that we were having conversations with our global outreach partners over Zoom.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — And people were able to ask them questions about what life is like in their context, they were able to ask them questions about the ministry that they were involved in. We were really ah, able to ah, lean into intentional prayer ah, praying for the partner over Zoom. And and then we added a couple other things like um, we did fair trade gift boxes, if we were able to, from the country where they they would get like a maybe like a little ornament. Maybe a fair trade trade group from Haiti, or something like that. So just like, you know, when you go on a Go team, you come back with something tangible that you…
Rich — Yes…
Julie — …Like that you show everybody, and so we had that same component to it, and recipes and music and things like that. And then really the service thing, especially during Covid um, a lot of our partners, they weren’t receiving teams, but they were still, they were having to pivot and do ministry as well.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — And so being able to tell the story of their ah, changes in ministry was really important, but then also helping them fund some of that was a huge part of it. So I feel like the serving piece of it became a: we’re going to help support you as you’re shifting from being a seminary in Mexico to being a food bank for your local community.
Rich — Right. Absolutely. I love, I love that. And I know so many of our international partners (um, and I wonder if you’re experiencing this as well) I know in a lot of churches, we’re unable to go still. Like it’s, and, and they, you know the horizon on that is measured in years. Like it may not be, you know, may not be next year even. It might be into 2023 before we’re able to to do that again. And so, and I think a lot of us are still trying to figure out ways: How do we keep building those relationships? How do we keep connected with these people? So I love that – what a cool – I love that kind of virtual Go team thing.
Rich — Now, when you think back to this season, you’ve tried a lot of things, is there anything that you’ve done that you think will impact the church as you look to the future? You’re like, oh here’s some things that we’ll continue to do, ah down the road for, you know, you know, because of this season when you think about it.
Julie — Yeah I’m sure there’s many. The one that comes to mind initially is that we moved a lot of our life groups on to Zoom…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — …And initially moved all of our life groups onto Zoom, and we saw more people join life groups in that initial season than we ever had before, because, I think it’s people that were involved in our community but maybe hadn’t joined a group, and all of a sudden your life group was where you were doing life in these, like, tiny little communities.
Rich — Yes, yes.
Julie — So we saw these people join and a lot of life groups move to Zoom and what people realized is you can still stay connected to your community Even when you are out of town or, especially for our men’s life groups, Ah they would instead of meeting at a coffee shop at 5 o’clock in the morning, they’re able to meet on Zoom and build those intentional relationships. Or if everybody on the group is traveling you can meet on Zoom, so it allows people to stay connected. So that’s one that I think of initially.
Rich — Right.
Julie — And we also adapted a lot of our training that we, we had been doing in person.
Rich — Oh yeah, cool.
Julie — We adapted a lot of our training to be online and I think that’s something we’ll continue. I think that we’ve realized that flipping the classroom and having the teaching component be a computer and then having the relationship in person is, um, is a good model, and that people are able to watch, um, whatever the training piece is at their own speed and then they’re able to come and build a relationship in person. So that’s something I think we’ll, we’ll hopefully continue to do and maybe do more and even better.
Rich — Yeah, love it. That’s so good. It’s, for sure. Yeah on that training piece, that’s definitely – you can see that where you know it’s like we’re all used to – not just Zoom – but we’re used to kind of online stuff more now than we were two years ago. That’s, that’s fantastic. Well I’d, I’d love to take advantage of the fact that you are, you live and breathe getting people connected and I think all of our churches are facing this, in this, again, post-covid, intra-covid, whatever this season we’re in. We’re all asking the question, how – now people have been impacted, we’ve seen that. There there maybe is some hesitancy for people to reengage, hesitancy to join teams, hesitancy to jump into a small group or Alpha um, what are you seeing that’s helping on that front in this season? How are you, you know, helping people at Chapel Hill take those steps, or, you know, is there, is there anything that you’ve seen that is, has been, kind of, helping people in this, kind of, as we’re exiting covid or whatever it is again? (I’m not sure what we’re in!) …You know as we’re in this current season to, kind of, get plugged into community.
Julie — Yeah, yeah, it feels like perpetual Covid. I don’t know if we’ll ever be out of it.
Rich — Yes, yes, exactly.
Julie — But ah, we’ll just continue adopting as we go. Ah so, ways that we’ve connected people—it is a constant thing that we’re wrestling with, certainly, and ah reengaging people that haven’t come back to in-person worship yet, and also reengaging new people—a couple of tools that I have found to be useful is, ah we’ve been utilizing a tool called Focus Growth which is a first-time guest follow-up, ah platform.
Rich — Okay.
Julie — Well actually it’s, it’s way more than first-time guest but we’re using it for our first-time guest follow-up and it’s a way to um, help people indicate that they’re new and then begin a conversation with them via text message. And um, and then also what it does for me that’s very helpful is it sets them in, it puts them into a process queue so it reminds me to go back and follow up with them and say, like you know, this person…
Rich — Yes.
Julie — …They’ve been here for two weeks and, um, it would be a great time to invite them to Chapel Hill 101, our initial class to get to know the church.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — So it kind of is, I found that the best way to connect people is to have an intentional leader who is connecting with them and so Focus Growth has helped, like it’s helped nudge me when I need to connect with all of the people that are coming in.
Rich — Love it.
Julie — And it’s been great, like um, we’ve gotten so far, we’ve had a 100 percent return rate from people.
Rich — Wow!
Julie — Yeah like incredible! So they get, when they receive that text message from me asking how they connected to Chapel Hill, we’ve had 100 percent of a return rate answering the question of how they ended up at the church. So I feel like I, more than standing at our – we have ah, ah we call it the wood wall – it’s where people come to connect after the service…
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — …More than that I see building relationship through these text messages and then being able to get to know them a little bit better and say, hey maybe this is your next step.
Rich — Love it.
Julie — So that’s been really helpful.
Rich — Yeah I love that and there’s something about the… obviously everyone’s on their phone, and there’s… you can see that where there’s like ah, there’s a the, the trick has always been, at least I have found from my seat on getting people connected, it’s like you you want to give people enough anonymity that they don’t feel like we’re jumping down their throat. Like you want to give them some space but you don’t want to give them too much anonymity because then they’ll never connect, right?
Julie – Yeah.
Rich — It’s like we know that human relationships happen when people get to know each other and so, you know, I can see where a kind of texting solution would be an interesting middle ground there.
Julie — Yeah, exactly.
Rich — Yeah, that’s cool.
Julie — And it’s so easy in a large church to slip through the cracks, do people…
Rich — Yes.
Julie — …For people just to kind of anonymously come in and never be noticed or never engage, and obviously we don’t want that because we believe we grow in our relationship with Jesus when we grow a relationship with one another so we want to connect with people, but we also don’t want to overwhelm people. You know we don’t want people, we don’t want to, ah we don’t want to come on too strong, and a text message, that is how we communicate so we found that more than an email or more than a phone call, a text. And it’s a dedicated text line that I have that I… several times a week I spend time just responding to people and connecting with them over, over text message.
Rich — Hmm, very cool. I Love that – that’s, that’s fantastic. What a helpful conversation this has been; I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for taking time. When you think about kind of up over the horizon, you think okay like we’re you know, 2 years from now we’re so we’re on the eighth wave or the twelfth wave or whatever…
Julie — Yeah.
Rich — …and we’re you know, continuing to process through, ah Covid, what do you think, you know, where is, where does your mind go on kind of future things at Chapel Hill when you think about where are there things down the road you’re thinking about testing or working on to help people get connected in groups, or to get plugged into more service opportunities. Are there, you know, questions you’re even asking ah, you know in the future? Where’s your, where’s your mind going when you think about that kind of thing?
Julie — Yeah, the two big things that I am thinking about in the new year – my kind of New Year’s resolution projects are…
Rich – Yep.
Julie — …the first is that I am, I’ve been really thinking about volunteer engagement before Covid and then we’ve seen it progress even more during Covid. We had a deficit of volunteers and I know that we are not the only church that’s experienced that…
Rich — Okay. Yep.
Julie — …I know that there are quite a few, or that that’s the norm now is that people aren’t jumping to serve. And so I’ve really been thinking through. How do we engage volunteers? How do we shepherd them well? How do we retain them? How do we, how do we begin even in that recruit, ah stage? So that’s something that I’m thinking about and ah, really working hard to build a structure and framework that is um, that’s good for volunteer engagement.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — And and then the second thing that I’m thinking about – which I feel like all of these things kind of walk hand-in-hand – is congregational care.
Rich — Hmm.
Julie — It has been a long hard season for a lot of people and people feel disconnected, people feel weary, and I recognize that um, in large churches it can be hard to know where to come to receive that care that they need. So ah, that’s one of my projects that I’ll be working on in this new year is thinking of what does a system of congregational care look like in a large church so that people feel well cared for.
Rich — Yeah, that’s great and, and there’s the question like I’ve found in that – and I’d love to get your thoughts on this – there’s the, the people who kind of follow the system that get in a group, that get plugged in, that like have a natural kind of um – whether they’re more outgoing or they’re just, they’re, they just are, they’re joiners; they love to plug into stuff – ah, however, then then there’s the folks that are fall outside of that that just for whatever reason aren’t in a group but they still have issues that we want to care for. They’re still the kind of person we want to, you know, find, you know, to care for them. So any thoughts on how we, we kind of, early thinking on how you think you might help get those people connected and plugged in and care for them, because that’s always an interesting group.
Julie — Yeah, yeah, well obviously ah, our ultimate goal is to engage people in our discipleship process. At the same time we recognize that not everybody fits into that box. And we also recognize that, I don’t think that discipleship is formulaic necessarily…
Rich — Right.
Julie — …so there are people that are growing in other arenas. We were just talking about, ah in our leadership team, a group that they’re already doing all of our discipleship process. They’re just not doing it at our church, outside of worshiping at our church. And so how do we engage them in worshiping, serving, connecting, and reaching others with the gospel when they’re already doing it so well.
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — …So yeah that it is a big question to wrestle through. And I think that um, it’s really finding out that one touch point and how to engage them in that that one touch point. And so if they’re here in one of those four environments engaging them there and then inviting them into further relationship.
Rich — Love it.
Julie — So that’s that’s kind of what I’m thinking through, but I do think that it is that constant the person who is a ambivalent attender. Maybe not even a regular attender, and then all of a sudden they’re, they’re desperate for care and it’s like, we don’t really know you and so how do we… but I want, we want to care for you.
Rich — Yes.
Julie — So learning how to to do that and is something that will be a big hurdle and I’m excited to tackle it but I don’t quite know the answer yet.
Rich — Yeah, that’s cool. Well this has been fantastic. What a great conversation. Is there anything else you want to share just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Julie — Um, yeah I always have more that I could say – I love to talk.
Rich — Yeah, that’s great. That’s why we have you on!
So I think that one of the things, as I’ve been thinking through this congregational care piece, is I’ve also been thinking through, ah, caring for church leadership as well.
Rich — Hmmm.
Julie — And I am just convinced that healthy churches are led by healthy leaders…
Rich — So true.
Julie — …and that the greatest thing that we can do as church leaders, to lead healthy churches, is is be just as concerned about our own health. We need to be paying attention to our spiritual health, our mental health, our physical health, and… and so I think that even within this thinking through congregational care, I’m thinking: how do I care, how do how do we care for our team? How do we care for our pastors? How do we care for our staff?
Rich — Mmm-hmm.
Julie — So um I just, I think that for all of the ministry leaders out there that are thinking, how do I uphold and shepherd this flock that the Lord has entrusted into my care? So much of of that is actually caring for us as shepherds as well. I’m thinking, how am I caring for myself too?
Rich — So true. So true. Pastor Julie, I really appreciate you being here today. Super helpful. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with the church? Where do we want to send them so they can kind of follow the Chapel Hill story a little bit?
Julie — Yeah, yeah, chapelhillpc.org is our website. You can check us out there and also if you look up Chapel Hill Church on Youtube you can find us there.
Rich — Great. Good. Thank you so much – appreciate you being here today.
Julie — Thank you.
Helping Female Leaders in Your Church Find Their Leadership Voice with Kadi Cole
Dec 16, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Kadi Cole, the founder of Kadi Cole & Company, an organization created to help leaders of all organizations. Kadi is with us today to talk about encouraging female leaders at your church while removing barriers from leadership opportunities.
Find the drop off. // Many men in church leadership are trying to help the women on their teams develop their potential, but they find that opportunities aren’t being taken advantage of by women, or enjoyed by women who are there. We may unknowingly put up barriers to women thriving in leadership and do a disservice to what we’re trying to accomplish in creating opportunities for them. If you find this is the case, look at where women are entering the pipeline in your church’s staff and volunteers, and where they’re dropping off. In most churches there is a big drop-off in women moving from the lower level leadership roles to manager roles. If you see that drop-off then you know there is something in your culture preventing women from finding their place and feeling confident.
Ask about experiences in those roles. // If you have women with great potential stepping down or stepping back from leadership, ask them what their experience was in the organization. We may hear a variety of answers from the work not being worth their time, to lack of feedback to help with growth. But sometimes we simply have things in our culture that make meeting easier for men and not women based on needs for their daily family and home lives.
Acknowledge the awkwardness. // When you’re thinking about how to talk to women about their roles and what is holding them back, it will be an awkward conversation on both sides. Just acknowledge that it might be weird and uncomfortable to talk about these topics. Let her know that you care deeply about her and her being everything she can be in the kingdom. Communicate that you want to talk about what needs fixing in your leadership that will help open doors for her to lead successfully. Make space for that confidential, honest and authentic conversation to happen.
Ask open-ended questions about life. // It’s easy to make assumptions about women or their life stage, so be individually focused by asking them open-ended questions about their actual lives. Communicating assumptions without knowing the truth sends mixed messages about a female leader’s value and importance as a leader. Valuing a female leader and her contribution means making space for her voice.
Give advice, not just compliments. // Giving vague compliments on a job well done isn’t constructive. Women rely more on constructive feedback. Offer specific compliments, but also add in suggestions on what to do next time. This affirms and develops her leadership while also encouraging her that she’s still wanted on the team.
Help clean the sticky floor. // When a woman comes into a male-dominated organization, it’s not easy to navigate and can bring out insecurity. Each woman has a “sticky floor” that is made of doubts and conversations women have in their own minds that keep them stuck. It causes them to hold themselves back from moving forward and going for leadership opportunities. You can help them fight the sticky floor by letting them know how they are demonstrating leadership. In addition to their confidence, also help them increase their competence by developing specific leadership skills that prepare them for higher levels of management.
Increase leadership confidence. // Women often tend to hold themselves to higher standards in their work and compare themselves to others. In Kadi’s latest book, Find Your Leadership Voice in 90 Days, she hopes to give women step-by-step guidance on how to step into leadership roles with confidence without compromising who they are.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge
One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the time after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!
Building a Team Culture at Your Church that You’ll Love with Brian Cook
Dec 09, 2021
Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Brian Cook, the lead pastor of ACF Church (Alliance Christian Fellowship) in Eagle River, Alaska.
Right now 4.5 million people in the US are quitting their job every month and 50% are looking for a new job. Staff culture is a big deal and it’s important to enjoy yourself at work. Listen in as Brian talks with us about shifting your team culture so that your staff and volunteers will love what they do.
Do you enjoy the current culture at your church? // A short time after coming to work for ACF Church Brian realized that he didn’t really enjoy the culture there, but also that he was responsible for setting it. If you find yourself in a similar place, ask yourself what you and your team have done to create your current culture. Ask your staff what it’s like to serve at the church. Encourage your team to be honest and share their thoughts and experiences.
Set up the structure to grow. // Part of the problem at ACF Church was that they didn’t have the structure for their growth. When the church grows the team should grow, but also a structure for moving from a smaller size to a larger one is necessary. At ACF people felt like they were cogs in a wheel that could be replaced rather than part of a team that was being discipled and building relationships. Instead of trying to use people to build the ministry, ACF wanted to shift to using the ministry to build people. They set up a discipleship structure with a director/coach/team captain and flow charts so each person knew who they were caring for and who was caring for them.
Check in with others. // ACF Church determined that the right number of people for someone to lead is six individuals. This small number gives leaders the time to check in consistently with their people. A higher number made it difficult to keep up with the check ins, and less than six wasn’t meeting the needs of the teams and church.
Know what to look for. // There are things the leadership looks for in their team members to identify those who could move into a leading or coaching role. This includes looking for those who are setting the culture in their area by investing in their colleagues and praying for them without being asked. They might arrive early or stay late for meetings or events, and have trust and rapport with others.
Create changes needed in leadership. // As the church grew, Brian found himself overwhelmed with doing all the leading at the top by himself. He realized he was trying to excel at things he wasn’t built for, so he divided his work into three jobs and brought in two people to work on the leadership team with him. In addition to the lead pastor role, this now includes the executive pastor and director of operations. Each of the three jobs has their own focus. As lead pastor, Brian’s focus is on the vision. The director of operations focuses on how to “make it work”. The executive pastor role is to “keep it moving”.
COVER is needed to love your role. // Brian is giving us a digital copy of Leading At ACF Church: Being a Coach. He wrote this to help him define someone who loves what they do at the church. He created the acronym COVER, which stands for Care, Oversight, Vision, Encouragement, and Resources. These are the things people need in order to love their jobs. The staff has weekly COVER meetings with every team member which last 20-30 minutes. During this time they focus on those letters and whatever the immediate need is. Oversight, for example, helps people understand what is expected of them and what success looks like. Encouragement reminds people of the big why behind everything ACF Church does by telling stories of how God is at work.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Helping Teams Leverage, Not Loathe, Personality Differences with Eddie Hastings
Dec 02, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Eddie Hastings, Executive Pastor of Ministries at Chets Creek Church in Florida. Eddie is talking with us about using personality tests to better build and communicate with your staff teams.
Know and trust each other. // When a church grows, especially to have multiple campuses, you’re not with the teams at each location often. As a result, you have to work harder with those teams to get to know each other and build trust. Value each team’s input on the strategy in their context at their location. Provide opportunities for the people on different teams to come together in meetings to talk with each other.
Understand your team. // It’s important for us to understand ourselves as well as the people on our team – who they are, what they’re like, how they think. Just because you all work for the same church doesn’t mean you view and process things the same way. Eddie’s staff uses the DISC personality profile to bring together individuals that are all very different into a community which God has called together to accomplish a mission.
Differences between us. // Rather than pigeon-holing people, understanding different personalities helps us ask, “What does this person need from me as I lead them? How do I talk to them, give them feedback, and help them develop?” We often communicate with others the way we want to be communicated with and that doesn’t always work to reach those who are wired differently from us.
Balance the personalities on each team. // Eddie uses the DISC profile to explore how a potential hire might fit into the team they would be part of. In this way he can balance out the personalities within teams and distribute strengths where they are needed across the staff.
Talk and understand each other. // Eddie’s team does one staff retreat a year. They do the DISC profile tests every other year and then talk about them together as a team. As they discuss the results, they review what fits them and what doesn’t. These moments help people to better understand each other.
Know what works for each member. // When it comes to coaching conversations, personality tests can help you better understand how to approach a team member. The goal here is to help them understand where their performance needs improvement so they can receive it and act on it, rather than seeing it as an attack and becoming defensive. For more task-oriented people, a direct approach that is clear on the specific changes they need to make is important. For more relationally-oriented people, they will take feedback to heart, so focus on the action that needs changing, not their personality.
Find what each staff needs. // Personality assessments can help you find what each campus staff needs. Take a look at who is already on the team at a location and see what may still be needed in gifting and strengths. When hiring for a leadership position, look for a personality that the other team members will work well with and want to follow.
Have multiple interviews when hiring. // When interviewing someone new for a position, have as many interviews with them as you can, and more than you think you need. Bring other people into the interview who may have nothing to do with the position, but are trusted and know the church culture well, so that you can get a better feel for the potential hire and how they might fit in with the church staff. Remember that ultimately hiring is a spiritual decision.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow.
Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation.
Bonus Deep Dive: Health Care Sharing For Churches? Marq James Helps Us Clear Up Misconceptions
Dec 01, 2021
Are you a senior leader in church thinking about health care options for your team? Did you know that your team is anxious about this aspect of serving at your church? Today on unSeminary we want to help with that worry & stress. We are joined by Marq James, an expert in health care sharing options for church leadership teams to talk about this innovative and cost savings approach. We tackle questions like …
What are health care sharing ministries and what makes them different than traditional insurance?
What sort of churches is a health care sharing a good fit for?
What are the top reasons churches don’t consider health care sharing at times?
Is there a church team too small for health care sharing? What about too big?
Why should a church or individual consider and trust Medi-Share specifically?
Marq James is a strategic, customer-driven leader known for consistently creating value, profitability and aggressive growth through sound fiscal management and building, leading and enabling high-performing teams. Possessing the passion of a successful entrepreneur and the discipline of a veteran executive with tremendous personal energy and strong emotional maturity. Utilizes keen analysis, insights, and a team approach to drive organizational improvements and implementation of best practices. An adept relationship builder, known for guiding executive teams through complex dealings, cultivating strategic partnerships, and fusing disparate interests for win-win outcomes. It’s our honor to have Marq on the show!
Medi-Share, the largest and most-trusted Christian health care sharing ministry, might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
We’ve been long-standing partners with Medi-Share and despite its growing popularity, we’re always surprised at how many people haven’t heard of health care sharing or don’t know exactly how it works.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
If Jesus Gave a TED Talk? Neuroscience Communication Principles The Master Teacher Used To Persuade His Audience with Charles Stone
Nov 25, 2021
Thanks for joining in for the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Charles Stone, lead pastor at West Park Church in Ontario, Canada. He also is an author and provides training for pastors.
75% of people forget most of what they’ve heard from a talk within an hour. 90% forget what they’ve heard after a week unless we learn to employ certain techniques and principles in our communications. Charles is with us today to share how to craft your communication so that it better sticks with your listener.
Understand your listeners. // Most pastors do a good job extracting what the scriptures say. However, we also need to clearly pay attention to what is going on in the brain of our listeners and how to craft the communication of the message (before we get up to preach) so that it sticks.
Consider how we process. // It’s hard to keep people’s interest today. You can overdo the entertainment side of teaching. We need to take into consideration the way God created our brains and how we process information and learn as we preach the gospel because Jesus modeled these same things.
Eight blobs of communication. // Charles refers to eight “blobs” on the platter of communication to keep in mind: clarity, attention, affinity, capacity, durability, emotion, mindset, and transfer. Each of these principles has three takeaways in Charles’s teachings. You don’t have to use all eight of these when giving a message, but try using three or four at a time. Download the 8 Core Communication Principles Checklist here.
Principle of clarity. // In the principle of clarity, Charles teaches to begin with the end in mind. The three takeaways for this principle are to clarify the big takeaway (gist or verbatim), create a concept map, and the primacy recency principle. The primacy recency principle is about how people remember the most of what you say at the beginning of a talk, and they remember the second most at the end of the talk. This is because as you introduce a new concept, the brain begins to process the information to send it into long term memory. It’s important to front load and back load your key points because that’s what your audience will remember.
Dual coding in our brains. // The brain encodes both visually and auditorily. When you mesh those two together, that is known as dual coding, and what you’re saying will stick better with the listener. Your working memory is where things are processed and if it’s important enough it then moves to the long-term memory. Working memory is like a small stage. Only so much information can be on that stage at the same time. If you can use dual coding to better help people remember your teaching, it will stay in memory longer. One of the ways of helping someone remember is by using acronyms. Acronyms can be easier to remember, and then your listeners can recall those memories of what was learned.
Stay simple and clean. // Don’t allow the visuals you use to be so attention-getting by themselves that people forget what the message is about and what the visual means. Don’t overcomplicate your visuals. People may be so focused on the visuals that they don’t listen to your words. Meanwhile putting a small amount of text on a screen reinforces what people are hearing because it is both heard and seen.
Create a concept map. // Another way to use simple visuals is with a concept map. This technique might look like using an image to represent a concept, such as love. There are several websites that offer free stock images for your slides, or try software like Doodly to sketch a simple diagram.
You can learn more about Charles’s book, If Jesus Gave a TED Talk: Eight Neuroscience Principles the Master Teacher Used to Persuade His Audience, and read the first chapter at his website www.jesustedtalk.com.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Leading a Fast Growing Church While Having Healthy Rhythms & Boundaries with Zeb Cook
Nov 11, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Zeb Cook, the lead pastor at Apex Baptist Church in Apex, North Carolina. Zeb is talking with us today about establishing healthy rhythms and boundaries in your life so that you can continue to thrive in the ministry where God has called you.
Create a system of boundaries. // When you’re young and just starting out in ministry, it’s easy to think that you can run at a fast pace nonstop, especially because the power of God is with you. But the reality is that ministry can be very draining. We can keep up a fast pace for a time, but at some point we will all hit a wall. Zeb found in his journey that creating healthy rhythms in his life is an important part of running the race well. Developing a system of boundaries around you will help you see clearly when you’re running in an unhealthy direction.
Be honest about your limits. // To begin establishing healthy rhythms and boundaries we have to get really honest about our limitations. Stop pretending that you can handle it all. Be honest with yourself and then be honest with other people around you. There will be certain seasons of your life that are especially draining and it’s important to recognize when you are pouring a lot out because you will equally need to refuel more. Remind yourself that it’s okay to say no to things.
Make the changes needed. // Take the time you need to do the simple things in your life like get a good night’s sleep, exercise, or eat better. Be cognizant of the small compromises that can happen when we are depleted. Recognize the dragon when the dragon is small and slay it. Have a layer of accountability so that you can address temptation and sin before it gets out of hand, and make the changes needed.
Be disciplined and committed. // When you make a radical commitment, the results always come. Make a commitment to make the changes needed to take care of yourself. Be disciplined in developing healthy habits, your relationships with others, and your time with God. Identify where there are deficits in your life and what needs more attention.
Keep the balance. // There has to be a balance of boundaries when you’re a servant leader. There are some invitations you are drawn to while you won’t connect with others. But you can’t base all boundaries simply on what you do and don’t like to do. Instead ask what is best for the faith family you’re serving. Take a look at what’s coming up in the church and what hours you have in your calendar, and attend what you can. It’s ok to say no too.
Don’t hide yourself. // We can easily identify narcissistic pride in people, but for many of us pride can be more subtle. Instead it manifests itself because of our insecurities. Pride wells up when we constantly try to prove ourselves and be seen in the best light. Combat this by remembering when you were first called into ministry and what was driving you then. Don’t hide your struggles just to look good. Be vulnerable and honest with people around you.
Connect with others. // Everyone in ministry needs a support network. Look to other pastors or church leaders in your area and connect with them. They can understand experiences you’re walking through and be the friends you need in your life.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Is your church ready? Are you re-opening? Ready to welcome MORE people to worship and grow with your church? Are you out of space or are your interiors dated and needing improvement?
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Going International as a Multisite Church with Tommie Bozich
Nov 04, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tommie Bozich, the executive pastor of Trinity Church, a multisite church with locations in Virginia and also internationally. Tommie is talking with us about what led them to launch a location in Stuttgart, Germany, and what a church should think about when considering an international campus.
Problems and opportunities. // As Trinity began their multisite journey, they realized that with the help of video teaching, they could take sermon messages anywhere. They already had a few campuses in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area, which has a huge military population. When some church members who had been transferred to Stuttgart, Germany lamented at the difficulty of finding an English-speaking church overseas, Trinity realized the opportunity to launch a campus serving the military and English-speaking community abroad.
Church plant vs church campus. // Launching a church campus is very different from planting a church and when Tommie went to Germany with his family, they were sent with the mindset that this international campus is part of Trinity. Trinity did not want to start up this campus and then check back months later, but there were still challenges with the distance that made this campus feel separate.
Thank God for the resources. // As the Stuttgart campus pastor, Tommie and his team had to rely heavily on video and remote meetings before that was widely popular. It can be easy to become resentful and feel left out when you’re so far away. But rather cultivate humility and thank God for all that you can do with the resources you have. Embrace being uncomfortable.
Find family. // An incredible family is created when you connect with other English-speaking believers in a foreign country. It teaches us a great deal of humility and breaks down many of the dividing walls that exist back in the USA. Everyone is looking for community, especially those who are moving to a new country and don’t know anyone around them. Tommie found that people who were not followers of Jesus came to the church so that they could find community and then were saved through that experience.
Love goes a long way. // The church in Germany started out primarily with American families living there, a lot of them military. But soon German friends and neighbors were invited and started attending, and they loved it. Love transcends a lot of boundaries and brings people together.
Identify similarities between locations. // Decide what elements of your international campus you want to be the same as your other campuses. At Trinity’s Stuttgart location, they had similar worship styles and branding, and were on the same sermon series. Make sure your central staff thinks about how teaching and kids content will translate in another context. Accept that some things won’t translate and incorporate the elements that will.
Reliance on God. // When Tommie and his family moved to Germany to help launch the campus, it forced him to rely heavily on prayer for everything. Nondenominational churches in Germany were practically nonexistent and God had to open the doors for the church to find a place to meet. As you lean on God in prayer, He will show up in ways you never would have expected.
More than one. // When sending people into foreign places to launch a campus, be sure to send them in at least a pair so they can work together. Their families can keep each other company and help each other through this new environment and life.
Mission over method. // Have a decent amount of flexibility both in the personalities of the people starting this new location and the church’s ability to allow them to minister in their context. The mission always has to be more important than the method. How do you need to shift the method to accomplish the mission?
Think outside the box. // Consider the possibilities of what can be done with technology and sending people out. Trinity now knows that they can equip a believer who’s in the military and going overseas to be a light for Christ and create community. This doesn’t always look like launching a campus, but it could be providing resources for a person to lead a small group and invite others to participate in church online in their home.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Practical Advice on Fostering a Kingdom Mindset In Your Church with Brian McMillan
Oct 14, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Brian McMillan, from CenterPoint Church in Long Island, New York. Brian is talking with us today about how pastors can keep their souls healthy by being generous and Kingdom-minded toward church plants coming into their area.
Challenges of church planting. // When planting a church, many pastors quickly discover that other pastors in the area may be territorial or fearful about a new church in town. When Brian was planting CenterPoint Church on Long Island, it was before there was much church planting support and resources available. As a result, Brian sought the help of five other respected pastors in the area, assuming they would welcome his efforts to reach the unchurched on Long Island. Instead Brian was met with rejection, loneliness, discouragement, and even slander. Sadly these experiences are not uncommon because of the deep brokenness, insecurity and fear that many pastors are living with.
Bringing beauty from pain. // After so much rejection, Brian and his church planting team had nothing but faith to go on. God often takes pain and rejection and redeems it, making it into something beautiful. In the end CenterPoint developed a strong desire to be the kind of church that raised other churches and ministries in the area up. By being Kingdom-minded they saw church planting to be about much more than simply starting a church. Instead it’s about seeing Long Island come to Christ.
Blessing other churches in the area. // A large part of CenterPoint’s budget goes to local church planting. They make sure that any church plant, no matter how close by, is supported by them. Support can be financial, offering opportunities for another church’s teams to shadow their teams, or giving a new church stage time in some way. CenterPoint even lets the people in their services know that if God is calling them to help with a new church plant, then to follow where He leads. CenterPoint also lists on their website over 20 reputable churches of different denominations and personalities so that if someone visits their church and doesn’t find it to be a good fit, they have some other solid options in the area to consider.
Be generous and openhanded. // Staying Kingdom-minded isn’t easy. Brian admits that losing people to other churches is hard and it can be easy to get jealous of other churches and the amazing things they are doing. But if you want your church to grow and be healthy, you need to get the blessing of God. And God blesses people when we’re openhanded and put His Kingdom above our own kingdoms. When we’re generous, God will do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.
Keep your soul in check. // Generosity keeps the souls of church leaders healthy too. Without it, fear creeps in and affects decision-making. It becomes based on self-preservation or bettering ourselves for our persona or church brand. But being really generous and willing to give away the people in our churches is a soul check. It shows that this movement is all really about God and not about a person or a brand. Give as much as you can to bring life to other churches in your area without bringing pain to yourself.
Build connections with local leaders. // ReviveLI, a group that Brian started, brings church leaders on Long island together to support one another. Currently it includes about 50 pastors who get together every two months. They pray and eat together, building relational connection and supporting one another. As Brian puts it, when you can be life-giving to other pastors, you are racking up some serious treasure in heaven.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Moving from Paid to Volunteer Music Teams in a Fast Growing Multisite Church with Stone Meyer
Oct 07, 2021
Thanks for tuning into this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Stone Meyer, executive pastor from The Bridge Church in Tennessee. Stone is talking with us today about the musical worship part of services and how to develop excellence in your unpaid volunteer musicians.
The musical worship aspect. // The musical worship aspect of services is an important part and is often the first thing people hear when they enter your church. We may think of church as a presentation, but church is really people. Ephesians 4:11-12 says we are to equip God’s people for acts of service so the body can be built up, and this includes musicians who have been gifted to minister to God’s people through their talents.
Raise the standard. // For many churches it can feel like we need to pay musicians in order to get the quality of music that we want. The truth is it’s a risk to use volunteers for the worship team. And if we don’t have enough volunteers, we can be tempted to lower the standard to attract more people. Really the opposite is true. If you raise the standard, you’re going to get more volunteers because great players love to serve with great players.
Make changes when needed. // Rebuild the music team when things aren’t working out as you’re hoping. The Bridge Church took one step back to take two steps forward. First they scaled down their worship teams, and then they looked for people who were both excellent in their proficiency, and had great spiritual leadership. Initially these steps eliminated volunteers, but ultimately it raised the level of excellence and now they have a large pool of worship team volunteers to invite into service.
DVLP process. // The Bridge Church wanted to raise the standard on their volunteer worship team, but they also wanted to create a development pipeline so people could reach that standard. That pipeline is a program called DVLP which is 100% volunteer run. Each week there are 90-minute rehearsals for the worship music, and in the hour before the rehearsals DVLP happens. DVLP is a 12-week development process for anyone new to the team. It helps set new members up for success, allowing them get to know their teammates and coaches, be immersed in the culture, and learn about how everything works.
Don’t say no. // Someone interested in DVLP begins by completing a short form about their relationship with Jesus and their music knowledge. There is then a 10-15 minute evaluation with the individual. About 75% of the people go on to join DVLP, but for the others the team doesn’t tell people “no”, but instead “not yet.” Those interested persons may still need to grow or develop skills in some areas before this group would be right for them.
Encourage those you coach. // The primary role of the coaches in DVLP is not to tell the new members what they did wrong, but to train, teach and develop people, encouraging them to believe in themselves. They ask those going through DVLP what they felt that they could do better during rehearsal so that they can examine and study their own skills.
Learning and developing. // The end of DVLP involves evaluations for each person to see where they are and if they’re ready to graduate and begin serving on a team. Some of the main values of the team are development, learning and curiosity. Some people will go back through DVLP to coach, or to grow new aspects of their God-given potential.
You can learn more about The Bridge Church at bridge.tv.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
It’s hard to know how to grow your church. Especially as you come out of a pandemic in a changing culture. But you desperately want to. You believe the church can still grow. The good news? You don’t have to do it all yourself. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find the right group of people who will help carry the load and bring growth to your ministry. You’ll be relieved. People will be helped. Your church will grow.
Download this guide TODAY for an easy 5-step plan to get the right leaders on board. We’ll give you 5 surprisingly easy steps to activate your congregation.
Moving from Maintenance to Movement in this Season with Van Vandegriff
Sep 30, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Van Vandegriff, lead pastor at Cedarcrest Church in Acworth, Georgia. Van is talking with us today about dealing with COVID and helping people at the church to shift out of neutral and reengage with the mission of the church.
Reengage with the mission. // When the church reopened in 2020 after the quarantine in Georgia, Van found that people had formed new habits. Some people preferred staying home and watching the service online rather than gathering in the church building. Others had slid into neutral in their faith. But the number one thing isn’t having people in a seat at church on Sunday mornings, rather it’s helping people follow Jesus. Cedarcrest decided that leading people to reengage with the mission, instead of getting people inside the church, was the thing to focus on.
Pay attention to needs. // One of the ways Cedarcrest helped its people to reengage with the mission was by paying attention to the needs in the community around them. Right across from the church is a community of under-resourced families who could not afford laptops or even things like internet. When schools closed down in 2020 and met online, Cedarcrest opened its doors and provided a place for the children to come and attend classes online. Volunteers from the church helped the kids connect with their teachers on laptops provided by the church and even held P.E. classes, playing games of kickball during the school day. This outreach was a huge success for the children nearby, introduced their families to the church, and Cedarcrest’s people came alive as they were invited to live on mission.
Join God in his work. // Van and his staff started to really pay attention to what God was already doing in their communities so that they could join him in his work. This led to them taking church out to the neighborhoods around them during the month of July. Each Sunday they showed up in a different neighborhood with musicians, speakers, bounce houses for the kids, and food to grill. Being willing to take this risk opened the way for Cedarcrest to meet lots of new people and get them connected to the church.
Using giveaways. // Giveaways can get people’s attention, so the church held one for various prizes at their outdoor summer services. This incentive allowed them to collect people’s information with their permission, and then the church could reach out to those people in the future.
Next steps tent. // At their Summer in the Suburbs events, Cedarcrest Church saw at least four times the normal number of first time guests. Cedarcrest set up a next step tent at their outdoor services which provided information on what people could do in their next step toward Christ, how to get connected at the church, and what activities are available for kids. Even if people don’t take their next step immediately, Cedarcrest hopes it will point them to God down the road.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Sermon Planning Rhythms that Produce Engaging & Faithful Content with Zach Lambert
Sep 23, 2021
Thanks for joining us on the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Zach Lambert, lead pastor at Restore Austin in Austin, Texas. Zach is with us today to talk about how to take the stress out of sermon planning and coming up with biblical and engaging topics in your teaching.
What are you preaching on? // In a study done by the Gallup Group, they found that 75% of people who attend church do so because of the teaching. Yet when Zach gets together with other pastors, they often express that one of the hardest things about preaching is coming up with incredible ideas for sermon topics and series that will resonate with their congregation.
Planning the year. // When Zach first planted Restore Austin, the feeling of needing to come up with a new sermon series every few weeks was exhausting. He wanted to preach sermons that kept people’s attention, centered on Jesus and weren’t just self-help teachings, plus aligned with the church’s values, vision and measures. Zach and his team also wanted to include diverse voices and current events and stay engaging. In order to break this stressful planning cycle, they began to structure everything around an annual sermon series theme.
What is your congregation going through? // Each spring Zach and his team meet to decide on what that sermon theme will be for the next year. In planning their year-long focus, the team gathers as much information as possible about their congregation, what questions they have, and what they’re walking through. What are they celebrating? Where are they hurting right now? Also, ask yourself what is God teaching you as the leader and how can you mesh that together with what your congregation is going through. Use all of this data for ideas and how to plan the next year.
Take control of your own schedule. // If you don’t control your calendar and schedule, someone else will. This principle is true whether you have an administrative assistant or not. Zach spends every Monday afternoon just reading the passage he will be preaching on and taking notes. He knows that if he’s intentional about that time on Monday, it will percolate in his brain the rest of the week. Then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings he works to write his sermon so that he is ready to roll on Thursday afternoons and can provide his notes to the production team. Friday is then a Sabbath that Zach can enjoy with his family.
Be creative about taking breaks. // When Zach first planted Restore Austin, he was teaching nearly every week. Over time, he has scaled that back to build in rhythms where he’s taking a break and exposing the congregation to diverse voices and topics. One creative way Restore Austin does this is by doing what they call “Summer Mixtape” where they bring in other pastors and have them preach their best sermon. The last two years with covid, Zach did Zoom interviews with people from around the world. Some of those included interviews with authors who had written important books on racism, biblical womanhood, and more. During this five- or six-week preaching break, Zach works on planning the next year.
Other ideas for Sundays. // In addition to the Summer Mixtape series, some Sundays Zach does a hot seat where people submit questions beforehand and Zach answers them. This format requires a lot less prep during the week for him. Restore Austin also has about four Sundays during the year where they don’t meet for a traditional service. Instead two of those days are serve days and the other two are a party with a purpose, such as a baptism with a barbecue.
You can reach Zach on Twitter at @ZachWLambert and learn more about Restore Austin Church at restoreaustin.org. Download an example of their sermon series calendars here.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Building Staff Culture While Leading During Trying Times with Rusty George
Sep 16, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Rusty George, the lead pastor at Real Life Church in the Los Angeles area. He’s talking with us today about what it’s like stepping into the lead pastor role after the founding pastor.
Don’t squeeze into the previous mold. // When you are stepping into a leadership role at a new church, particularly as the lead pastor, it’s important to be your authentic self. Trying to squeeze yourself into the mold of the previous pastor will feel disingenuous because it’s not who God created you to be. Some people will be surprised at things changing with the new leader, but continue to lean heavily on vision rather than memorializing the past.
Right guy, right place, right time. // When God puts you into a position, it’s so you can bring your unique wiring and gifting to the table to serve the church. A church consultant taught Rusty that what makes a church grow is having the right guy at the right place at the right time. We need to be ok with not everyone being happy with us and stop apologizing when we follow God’s leading to make changes at the church. If you’re going to follow a legend into your new role, you’ve got to be really certain that it is the call of God because there will be some dark nights of the soul. It’s only the knowledge that it’s the call of God that will keep you going.
Be clear on your calling. // While transitioning to his new position, it was initially expectations of other people that Rusty had to wrestle through and quickly get over. Ultimately, however, it was his own doubts and questions that were the bigger challenge to overcome. We can compare ourselves to other leaders at other churches and feel like we haven’t “made-it” yet. To get passed this ineffective thinking, be really clear about what you’re trying to do. Are you trying to just make people happy, or are you really trying to reach people in the community? If you’re trying to really reach people, double down on that and explain that it might change the way the church teaches, the programs offered, where the church meets, and so on.
Get to know your staff. // Each of your staff represents a constituency of people and you want their buy-in right away. Spend quality time with your staff so you can get to know them. Work together to make the vision and mission statements clear. Have fun together, share wins, and build those relationships with each other. Appreciate the past and accept the new when it comes to changes within your staff.
Have unifying, specific initiatives. // To articulate and move people in your congregation toward vision, cut the plans down into bite-sized portions rather than just focusing on plans far into the future. Have a specific mission for the future but create micro-plans to focus on along the way which serve to unify your people. If you are unsure about how to develop unifying, specific initiatives, ask: Is how other people see your church what you want it to be? How do other people react when they hear your church mentioned? Identify that unifying mission for your congregation so that others in the community will know what your church is about.
What to do after prayer. // Rusty’s book After Amen: What Do you Do When You’re Waiting on God helps us understand what Jesus teaches us to do after we pray. The book offers seven steps of faith based on scripture that we can take after prayer which can affect the type of answer we might receive from God. Rusty offers a number of resources on his website for churches who might want to use this book to preach a sermon series as well.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor with Carey Nieuwhof
Sep 09, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Carey Nieuwhof, a leadership expert, author, speaker, podcaster, former attorney, and church planter. He’s with us today to share about how to address the crisis of overwhelm in our work and lives.
Digital scales in a way that physical doesn’t. // After the pandemic, we understand this truth at a whole other level. Digital avenues build momentum which keeps growing and growing. One example is Carey’s podcast, which has enabled him to use his time to help even more people. By contrast there’s no way he could travel to speaking engagements and reach all of those same people at a sustainable level. Moving more to digital has increased reach while reducing overwork, overwhelm and burnout.
Control and scale are opposites. // You can’t have total control and also grow things, so you have to learn to trust your team more. Recognize what you do well, hire great people to do the rest, and trust them to do their jobs. Give them room to do their part without you trying to control it. Growth happens when there is more freedom.
Find what moves you. // Carey spends an hour in the mornings reading scripture, praying, and reflecting to discern what his next step is and what really moves the needle on any given day. To help you find the things that you need to focus on, think of it like a Venn diagram with concentric circles for gifting, passion and impact. What are you truly gifted at? What energizes you? What produces the greatest results in your life? As you examine your jobs, experiences, and things you’ve been drawn to throughout your life, there is a center line that you’re going to keep coming back to again and again. That’s probably a clue to how God wired you and what is going to help your organization win. Then spend 80% of your time doing the 20% that really moves the needle.
Overwhelmed, overcommitted, overworked. // The challenge for us is that there are so many opportunities in life that we can pursue or shiny objects that we can chase. This is why gaining clarity about our gifting and calling is key. Ask what you are really good at, learn how to say no, and learn how to keep other people from hijacking your time.
Time is a fixed commodity. // Your value to the organization is not synonymous with how many hours you work. Learn how to focus your time because you can’t spend it on everything. Figure out how to leverage your energy and how to avoid having your priorities highjacked. When it comes to time management, you are managing a fixed commodity, so there is only so much you can do with that time you have. Take an honest look at yourself and pay attention to your energy levels during the day. Then do what you’re best at when you’re at your best. That is where the exponential returns begin.
The crisis of overwhelm. // Carey has a new book soon to be released, At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor. Overwhelm is the crisis of our age, and through this book Carey tries to help us live in a way today that will help us thrive tomorrow. At Your Best will help you replace chronic exhaustion with deep productivity, clarify what matters most by restructuring your day, discover why vacations and sabbaticals don’t really solve your problems, develop a personalized plan to recapture each day so you can break free from the trap of endless to-dos, and more.
Get through the hard decisions. // In At Your Best, Carey explains categorical decision-making to help us get through the hard decisions in life. You decide ahead of time what you’re not going to do to make future decisions easy. What categories can you eliminate today? Your no’s then become automatic in life when you have these decisions made ahead of time.
You can find out more information about Carey’s book at his website http://www.atyourbesttoday.com. Plus gain access to a free master class when you preorder the book.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Leading Change That Lasts with Hillsong Atlanta’s Lisette Fraser
Aug 12, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Lisette Fraser, the COO/executive pastor of Hillsong Atlanta. Leading through change is at the core of serving as an executive pastor and church leader. Today Lisette is talking with us about where to begin when stepping out and leading change in this season.
Leading change. // So much of the focus of our work as church leaders is leading through change and helping make things better, but at times it’s hard to know where to begin. Lisette realized that she has to start with vision when leading change. It’s not just about changing something we don’t like, or moving things around, it’s about figuring out what the right vision is and what God is inviting you to do. When the vision is clear it allows you to start thinking about everything else.
Find what the vision is. // Prayer is a big piece of the puzzle in seeking what the Lord is doing. Often we can have a sense of discontentment in ministry and we know things aren’t quite right. Prayer helps point us to the outcome we desire and that points us to the vision. What are you trying to get after? Be very specific and invite others to help build a picture of what that looks like.
Storytelling is a big part of leadership. // One of the things you have to do in leading change is create a shared story of future hope. A story connects to people and moves them. When thinking about change, think about what kind of stories remind us of what we wish we could get to. What do the stories tell us about what it could look like?
Change your vantage point. // There are many things that shape how you see the world, from stage of life and age to ethnicity and culture. Our limited view can affect our ability to bring change because we’re trying to move something for a whole group of people. Invite other voices that represent different groups of people, and learn to tell stories that speak to these different groups. If we only tell stories from our limited vantage point, they won’t make sense to others who are outside of our worldview. Ultimately it’s about learning how to be a communicator who can talk to all different types of people, but also a listener who invites the voice of all kinds of different people to give you a fuller perspective.
Have courage to step out. // Trying to put together a team made of different backgrounds can sound great, but also can create tension. It is hard work to make sure your table is diverse, but it reflects God’s kingdom so much more than a homogeneous structure. It may take some courage to step out and find those people who don’t look like you and think like you, but it’s worth the effort.
Offer a place in the bigger community. // Post-covid people have felt so stuck and disconnected from both community and purpose that they are now very hungry for both of these things. God has designed us to do things for the purpose of the kingdom. Offer people a place to be in that bigger community and to be a part of something greater than themselves. Let them know that whatever part they play, it matters. Keep connecting what people are doing to the vision.
Give them the opportunity to lead. // There are a lot of ways to get to the same point. If we want people to be invested, we have to give them the opportunity to lead and help us build what we’re after, while doing so with open hands. When people get to help build, they will be more personally invested in the vision. Don’t be afraid to allow people to experiment and coach them through any future changes. Create spaces for people to try things.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Inside Team Culture Development at a Fast Growing Church with Chad Asman
Aug 05, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Chad Asman, executive pastor of Heritage Church just north of Detroit, Michigan. He is with us today to talk about developing team culture at your church to create future leaders.
Start with culture. // Heritage Church worked to create a leadership pipeline not only to develop future leaders for the church, but also anyone else in their area. Begin by identifying the talent and leaders present in the area and then work to grow them. Focus on developing the culture of the church so that it will be a place that attracts leaders.
Learn about your personality. // If it’s fun to be at work and you like the people you’re around, it creates great chemistry. Chemistry is one of the big points Heritage focuses on as they develop culture. Use personality tests to give staff and high level volunteers an awareness of how God has made them. Tests such as Myers Briggs, the Enneagram, StrengthsFinder, or spiritual gift assessments can help them understand how they are wired so a role can be built around their gifts and strengths. Understanding each other’s wiring also helps encourage empathy for one another and builds a foundation of communication. Taken as a whole, you’ll be able to see that your staff covers a range of gifts, strengths and personalities and how you need each other to make up the body of Christ.
Bridge generational gaps. // Understanding each other’s personalities has helped tremendously to bridge generational gaps on Heritage Church’s staff. Ages vary from the Gen Z and Millennial to Gen X and Boomers and it can be easy to blame differences on age. In reality it doesn’t matter what age people are, rather we need to recognize God wired us with different personalities. Underscore how the younger generation can learn from the older generation and how the older generation can equip and encourage the next generation coming up. Recognize that you are one team working together toward a common goal and you need each other.
Develop the DNA. // Infuse your values and philosophy into your staff and then they will help develop the DNA of the church. At Heritage Church they have staff meetings every two weeks with the essence of a leadership lesson included during that time. Once a year, usually in January, there are staff meetings weekly which focus on all of the values, and teaching phrases and slogans to remember.
Serve the team. // At Heritage the leadership tries to do one fun team experience every quarter. It could be anything from handing out Grubhub gift cards to the leadership grilling for the team. People love when they are thought about and cared for and these experiences bring a lot of joy to the team. Having the highest leaders in the church taking a role as a servant and serving the team is a culture-setting opportunity.
Be openhanded and loving. // As a senior leader do what you can to interact, coach, and care for your team. Be real with your team, love them where they’re at, and help them to be the best possible leaders they can be. Be openhanded with them and understand that the people on your team are not your resources but God’s resources.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
How to Get Traction on Execution at Your Church with Allie Bryant
Jul 29, 2021
Thanks for joining this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Allie Bryant from Trader’s Point Christian Church. Although they have six campuses in Indianapolis, currently four are opened along with church online due to covid.
Allie is the Strategic Alignment Executive for Traders Point and she loves getting the right people in the room to talk about the right things. Today she’s with us to talk about strategic planning – doing the right work to make sure the church is attaching actions to its vision and focusing on advancing the mission.
Organize the execution of the vision. // In the church world people are always asking, how do we get the right work done, move faster and pivot better, but also, how do we do it well? This is where strategic alignment comes in so that we can execute well on the vision at our churches. When trying to figure out how to do the right work, we need to organize it in such a way that we’re not burning out our people or running out of resources. As you plan your strategy, constantly go back to the mission and vision so you don’t waste time or resources.
Connect your work to the vision. // We all have an “operating system” running in the background at our churches whether we realize it or not. The question is, how effectively is it running in your organization? Traders Point is upgrading their operating system to become centralized in a way that lets everyone understand the mission, vision, strategy, and how each staff member’s work attaches to the strategy.
Quarterly ministry plans. // Quarterly ministry plans allow the Traders Point staff to condense what they are doing into a quarter. During this time they figure out two or three key things that can move them forward, and those are the limited things that the staff prioritizes. From there they evaluate how they did in tackling their goals.
Develop action steps. // Quarterly ministry plans each have an owner and a project manager who look at the strategy each quarter and decide what to focus on. What do you need for that strategy? What is the goal, and what is needed to plan it? Lay out action steps about a month before the new quarter starts. Then for accountability, have weekly 30-minute meetings with your team to discuss everyone’s status reports.
Decision-making matrix. // Traders Point has created a decision-making matrix to help with alignment when there is conflict between ministries and what they might want to do. There are four categories of decision-making that help the staff understand who makes the decision and how a decision was made. Traders Point will also have a stakeholder meeting that allows the ministries involved to have a conversation and decide what compromises could be made to help each group achieve their goal. To help with these decisions Traders Point is gradually incorporating Agile methodology within their organization as well.
Slow down and get aligned. // Some projects and initiatives may take longer than a quarter. Be realistic about what you can complete. If you find that you are behind on what you hoped to achieve in a quarter, the first three months can focus more on discovery, which allows you to determine what the problem is that needs to be solved. Continue to have that strategic conversation, but recognize you may need longer to execute on your plan.
Strategic calendar. // This calendar first looks at spiritual themes. There are certain seasons where you plant and certain seasons where you harvest. Many new people tend to come into the church between August and January and this helps with planning out sermon series. Then the quarterly ministry plans are laid out to determine what is needed to help support the themes each quarter.
Efficient meetings. // Meetings are where work gets moved forward and decisions are made, but there are some thing you can do to make them really effective. First, have an agenda ahead of time that lets people know what you’re planning to talk about, what was discussed in the last meeting, and the goal of the current meeting. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Communicate who will be attending the meeting, what are people’s responsibilities and what the expectations are. Be sure to drive towards next steps before the meeting wraps up.
You can learn more about Traders Point Christian Church at www.tpcc.org and download a number of meeting resources that they use (including project and meeting templates) at this link.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Balancing the Healthy Tensions of the Executive Pastor Role with Tyler Althof
Jul 22, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Tyler Althof, the associate pastor from Action Church in Florida. Tyler is with us today to talk about tensions to manage when you are leading from the second chair at a church.
We need a sense of security. // As church leaders we need to have a deep sense of security to do what we do because it’s so important. In Acts 4:13 the Jewish leaders saw that Peter and John had been with Jesus. Jesus is the one calling us and equipping us for our roles. We have a battle between security and insecurity inside of us.
Don’t hide things. // In the executive/associate pastor position, there are several tensions to manage. First we have tension in protecting and shielding our leader, but not hiding information from him. Insecurity can make you think that you need to hide information or problems from your leader to keep them from thinking you’re a failure. Hiding is a form of self-preservation. If we give in to insecurity, we give our leader filtered information and that can cause them to develop a warped view of the organization. They only know what little you have told them and so they makes decisions without knowing all of the details. They could lose credibility in leadership as a result.
Talk and ask questions. // To combat the temptation to hide things, learn about each other and ask lots of questions. Don’t assume you can do your part well without input from others, so talk to your leader and get feedback.
Help develop solutions, but don’t solve all the problems. // Only the senior leader can decide on some solutions and make certain decisions. You might find there is a tension between figuring out what problems they need to decide and what problems you need to help decide. At Action Church the staff knows that higher level issues will need the senior leader’s attention – this includes new things, broken things, and expansion things. Don’t assume that you will solve all the problems yourself; talk with the leader when needed and get another opinion.
Be personally involved, but don’t take things personally. // Our hearts are so into ministry that we can put a lot of emotion into our work and feedback can feel like a personal attack on our very life. Find your security in Christ so you can have these conversations with your leader and not be crushed by them.
Remember that you are trusted. // Anyone who is in a second chair position is deeply trusted. The senior leader would not give you that level of responsibility if he did not like and trust you. Don’t be afraid to clarify what needs to be done and ask questions about their thoughts and opinions.
Think of him as your pastor. // You can be friends with the senior leader outside the church, but when you step on the church property, think of him as your pastor and the one you submit to spiritually. Respect him as the leader and be deeply conscious of how others see you honoring him as your pastor.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Since 1953, CDF Capital has helped Christians and churches embrace their part in this story by providing the 3 kinds of capital every congregation needs for growth—Financial Capital, Leadership Capital, and Spiritual Capital. CDF Capital’s XP Summit Cohorts provide an exclusive, year-long experience that brings together hand-selected global ministry leaders and your peers in an intimate, small-group setting. Visit http://cdf.capital/UnCohort to learn more and enroll today!
Tackling the Early Days as a New Executive Pastor with Matt Gilchrist
Jul 15, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today I’m talking with Matt Gilchrist, executive pastor at Hope City Church in Missouri. Matt is talking with us about getting up to speed as a new XP at a church and how to connect with your lead pastor, your staff, and spouse during this season of transition.
Joining the team. // Matt has a very complementary relationship with Cody, the lead pastor of Hope City Church. Cody is a real visionary and loves leading the church, but as it grew he knew he was carrying more than would be healthy for him in the long term. The church has grown quickly in the seven years since it’s been planted, but some of the systems and structures weren’t in place as they needed to be. Matt came on staff as the executive pastor to focus both on ministry and on the operations side of church.
Connect with the lead pastor. // The relationship between the lead and executive pastors at a church is critically important. Often the lead pastor is responsible for casting the vision and the executive pastor is responsible for executing on that vision. Spend even more time together than you may think you need in order to stay on the same page. At Hope City there is a staff circle on Monday to share wins from the weekend, and Matt and Cody meet for lunch weekly to make sure they’re on the same page. Ask lots of questions and build trust with each other. The lead pastor especially needs to know that he can trust his XP. Matt wanted to make sure that Cody knew he would always have his back and that Matt wanted to be an extension of his thinking. Check in again Wednesday or Thursday before the weekend rolls around. Touch base throughout each day and week if you can’t meet in person, whether by phone, text or email.
Connect with the people you lead. // Matt meets with ministry team leaders at Hope City Church every other Wednesday when there isn’t a staff meeting. He lets them know ahead of time what they will be talking about when they meet so that they won’t feel ambushed by his questions. They set 90-day goals throughout the year to determine what they want to do. Meeting regularly helps them track how they’re doing as they work toward those goals.
Be intentional about building relationships. // When Matt came on board, in some of his first meetings with the staff he also had the opportunity to hand out raises, and this was a great, positive way to connect with his new team. Take time not only to have regular one-on-ones with your team, but also engage in casual gatherings such as lunch together with the larger staff, or playing games in the office. It may not all be ministry minded, but it helps build relationships with the people you lead.
Empower and communicate. // Empower your team leaders to handle issues that may come up and be as collaborative as you can with them. Talk about what is the decision that needs to be made and work to quickly communicate it so leaders can pass it to their teams. People want to know that they can contribute and they want to be given opportunities to contribute. The more you can pay attention to these things, the more quickly it will help you and your teams to gel.
Be intentional in your conversations. // When you are starting someplace new in ministry, you can’t ask enough questions. Ask and learn from other people in similar positions and exhibit a collaborative spirit. Also be intentional as you communicate with your spouse about this part of your life. You won’t be able to share everything about what’s happening in the church, but you still need to have meaningful conversations because your spouse will know when you’ve had a bad day or when you’re in a difficult situation. Find a balance in what you share so that you are able to talk life and ministry with your spouse, but not share so much that they can’t worship and enjoy church on Sunday.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Improving Your Church’s Financial Competencies with Ken Fisher
Jul 08, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Ken Fisher, Executive Pastor at Church at the Mill in South Carolina. As one of the fastest growing churches in the country, Church at the Mill has doubled in size in the last five years. As a church grows, the staff needs to consider how they operate so they can serve the growing congregation well. Ken is talking with us today about how changing the budgeting process has created unity, strengthened the culture, and accelerated the church’s vision.
Get the ministry team involved in budgeting. // It is important for a church to have a good budgeting process. Get the ministry team involved and talk about what they need in their ministries. Together lay out what your expenses are and what you would like to have for the upcoming year. Budgeting will help you with calendaring as well so you’ll know exactly what your plan will be for the upcoming year, and what your expenses will look like. It will give you a high level of confidence when presenting your plan to the congregation.
Demystify the idea of budgeting. // Creating a budget can feel intimidating for some ministry leaders because it’s not something that was taught in seminary. Break it down into simple steps by starting from the ground level and asking what you want to accomplish next year. From there, explore what it will cost to pull off certain events or initiatives. Ask yourself how are you operating as a good steward of the gifts being given by the congregation for the kingdom? Are you spending those resources in a way that impacts the kingdom?
Align your plans with the church’s vision. // There are lots of things we want to do in ministry, but we need to narrow down our focus, and this is a tough tension to manage. Ask yourself what is working well in your ministry and what you want to start, stop or continue as you go into next year. These questions drive the discussion of whether the areas you want to focus on fit into the overall plan for the church.
Plan for the unexpected. // What we plan to do can shift dramatically when something unexpected happens. Have money set aside in savings that could be used if something comes up and there is really a justification for using those resources. An example of this could be launching a new campus from an unplanned merger with another church. Determine creative ways you can offset unexpected or unplanned expenses.
How budgeting can impact culture and vision. // Budgeting can be a way to connect people with your church’s culture and reinforce and accelerate your vision. The senior pastor at Church at the Mill put together the 10 Characteristics of Our Leadership Culture. It helps draw out the culture that the church staff aspires to demonstrate and gives basic guidelines in leadership. One of those attitudes is that “we win when my win is helping you win.” The spirit of partnership across the team and ministries is very strong which makes for constructive conversation when having difficult budget conversations.
What’s different post-pandemic? // Church at the Mill launched their first e-discipleship program last fall. It’s a weekly curriculum that the senior pastor created, and with over one thousand people involved, it has been one of the glues that has kept the church together. These online groups allowed the church to have connection with those who didn’t yet feel comfortable going back to in-person small groups.
You can learn more about Church at the Mill at their website www.churchatthemill.com. You can also email Ken directly.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge
One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the time after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!
Leveraging Research to Drive Design & Communication Insights at Crossroads Church with Vivienne Bechtold
Jul 01, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re excited to be talking with Vivienne Bechtold, the Director of Studio and Leadership Development at Crossroads Church in Ohio. Crossroads has been one of the fastest growing churches in the country for several years, but this growth hasn’t happened without being intentional about reaching those who are far from Jesus. Listen in as Vivienne shares how Crossroads has used data to make informed decisions about how to be increasingly effective at drawing more people into a relationship with Christ.
Use data for marketing. // Most churches try to collect some sort of information from the people who visit or attend. However if you don’t dig into that data, you won’t know how it can help you understand your audience better. Vivienne has spent 27 years in the marketing industry and now runs Studio, an internal agency at Crossroads that interprets data, handles research, design, marketing, social media and other digital products for the church. Their ultimate goal is to help the church more effectively reach people who are far from God. Learning to market to people using the data you collect isn’t just about numbers, but about being curious about people and the insights behind the numbers.
Understand who you’re reaching. // Initially Crossroads didn’t have a team handling their data and marketing, but rather started with two people that would do focus groups and one-on-ones to gather research on what attendees were looking for. The church then built an analytics team that mined that data about who was coming, what areas they were coming from, what their demographics were, and so on. Using these insights, Crossroads started to put together a picture of who was drawn to the church and what they needed. This information led to them targeting a group of a dozen 25 to 35 year old men who didn’t go to Crossroads. Church staff went to where these people hung out, interviewed some of them, and invited them to attend two services and then offer feedback on their experiences.
Implement changes. // The information Crossroads received from these new guests helped them to see the Sunday experience from the perspective of a visitor. As a result, they were aware of what people connected with and what turned them off. They made changes in training their teams how to recognize new people, right from the parking lot, so they could serve guests better. Crossroads also altered the order of their service. Rather than starting with worship, they started with something that would help connect people coming in with what was going to happen the rest of the time. Seekers often didn’t understand the value of worship and instead wanted to hear a message, so the church wanted to make sure their visitors stayed to hear the teaching.
Your strongest marketing tool. // Crossroads discovered that when their people knew the topic of an upcoming message, or some sound bites that would be interesting to their friends, they were much more likely to invite others to church. When your people invite their friends or family to church, it is the most powerful marketing strategy you can use. Empower your people to share about the church and what is coming up in a sermon series by providing tools for social media or email that can be shared. Consider direct mail pieces leading up to Easter or Christmas and work with the natural dynamics of how people interact with your church.
Use data to rebrand. // Churches tend to plateau after 20 years and in order to get over that, they need to reinvent themselves. Crossroads found that the seekers coming to their church today were different than ones from 25 years ago, and generally had no experience with church at all. So the church began to ask how to be relevant to these people today and reevaluated its branding. Crossroads realized their branding was very corporate and wanted it to be more unfiltered, fun and and fearless, which better represented what the church had grown into. So Crossroads rebranded in 2020 to better capture who they were as well as target that group of 25-35 year old men they are trying to keep in mind. The rebrand includes new colors and visuals, but also new vocabulary that everyday people use. Crossroads talks about themselves as “Spiritual Outfitters” that equip and guide you through this adventure that you were made for as you follow God. Consider your church’s current branding and if it’s serving to help reach the people you are targeting.
Look to the future. // As we continue to collect data and process our learnings from 2020, it can inform changes we need to make for the future. One lesson is that first impressions can happen a lot of different places, including online, and when people do show up in person, they are looking to connect more quickly. Pay attention to when people want to watch sermons online. For some, Sunday mornings may now mean family time. Are your people more likely to listen to a message and participate in worship online, but come to a physical location for groups or service opportunities? The pandemic was a time of isolation so think about how can you help people engage and serve together when they attend church at your physical location.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Moving from Pre-Recorded Church Online to Live with JD Mason
Jun 24, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with JD Mason, the online campus leader from Liberty Live Church in Virginia.
JD is chatting with us today about how church online has evolved for Liberty Live Church since the pandemic and why they made the decision to transition to live, rather than prerecorded, broadcasts.
Trial and error. // Though Liberty Live Church had an online campus before the pandemic hit, there was still a huge learning curve during the changes over the past year. Before COVID, they used to pre-record all of the host segments, intros, and outros, but they switched to a live broadcast during the pandemic. When COVID hit, there were no volunteers and minimal staff, so learning how to automate as much as possible while doing a live broadcast was key. While recording live, it takes a lot of trial and error when dealing with technical glitches or unexpected situations, such as a fire alarm. Help the staff stay calm and explain to the audience what is going on so they are in the loop and can pray along with you.
Why live? // Having plans for a live broadcast can help bridge the gap to getting to know people who are in their homes. Live broadcasts, with all of the unknowns in the moment, can also still help people feel like they are in the room and a part of what’s going on at the physical campus. As host, sharing something that’s happening in your week makes you relatable. Ask questions in the chat to create conversation and connection. Comment live on what people are sharing, and pray for people as their prayer requests pop up in chat. This interaction makes your online community feel seen and heard.
Harness the energy of the room. // Initially the worship used during the online services was prerecorded because it was higher quality, but Liberty Live discovered that people preferred hearing the worship streamed from the main auditorium, even if it was more raw. Create anticipation for your online community and throw to the live broadcast of worship as the energy and music are building.
Plan for growth. // If you are building a community of online churchgoers, think about how you can keep growing this campus. What are your goals for the future? At Liberty Live there are online Wednesday night services on certain topics for the purpose of discipleship, and Sunday nights will begin to broadcast exclusive worship nights with an acoustic vibe. Future plans also include an online women’s bible study, and a Right Now Media catalog of all pastors and staff featured in messages, so the online community can get to know the staff. As Liberty Live Church builds an inventory of services and studies, they will also catalog them on a YouTube channel for on-demand streaming. Online church can help you reach out to people everywhere. Create a plan to use your online services to extend your reach, whether it’s locally, regionally or globally.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Bonus Deep Dive: Current Best Practices in Operational Reserves for Your Church with Steve Carr
Jun 23, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re doing a bonus deep dive about operational reserves and how much our churches should be saving. We have expert Steve Carr from CDF Capital with us to help us think through these questions.
Maintain generosity. // During the pandemic, churches trended toward either maintaining their giving levels or increasing those levels. Most churches weren’t drastically impacted financially during this time because their congregation still gave. The blessing during this time is that many churches emerged almost financially stronger. The thing to be aware of now is: How are you cultivating givers to maintain that generosity?
Plan ahead in savings. // Pre-pandemic the general rule was for churches to have three to six months of savings in reserve. Many churches are now looking at a six-to-twelve-month trend in judging how much they need to store in savings. It’s up to the church to determine what is a good amount and how long should they maintain it.
Help in forbearance. // The Church Assistance Plan at CDF Capital allows the equivalency of two months forbearance for every church in their portfolio. The payment is offset to the end of the loan. 66% of the churches in their portfolio have used this plan for help during this time.
Are you really reaching the community? // People tithe and give so that the church can have an impact. We don’t want to keep so little in reserve that it puts the ministry at risk. There is a tension to be managed. Even if your church has a lot of money in savings, for example in an endowment, ask yourselves: are you operating just to keep the organization flowing? Or are you actually being creative in the way you’re trying to reach your community?
View through a theological lens. // The teams in churches should talk about their theology of stewardship. How do you allocate the funds you have now? How can you be generous with your abundance? How will you prepare for an economic dip that may affect those funds? View it all through a theological lens and be responsible in not spending everything you have post-COVID. Think about how you as church leaders will embrace the changing world in post-COVID reality.
Hold onto humility. // We might think we know what’s going to happen, but we never do, and that shows our limitations as human beings. If we can hold onto being humble throughout this season, our churches will be better off in the years to come.
Keep cash readily accessible. // Steve recommends that fifty percent of your church’s reserve should be in a flexible checking or savings account. You won’t get a great interest rate, but CDF Capital can help with that. Additionally, put some of your reserves into a higher yield certificate to get a better rate.
Diversify your savings. // Diversification is still a principle that needs to be applied to congregational savings. It’s not wise to have all of your money in a single institution. There is an element of risk in anything done with money, so having them in different places can help lower that risk.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
National Church Leader Survey on Attitudes Towards In-Person, Remote, or Hybrid Work Arrangements
Jun 22, 2021
Is your team moving back to an “in-person” office experience?
Do you know how your team members feel about working at home once life looks a little more normal?
What does the future of church leadership work arrangements look like?
We must understand the impact that COVID-19 has had on our church leadership environment and consider those various dynamics that have been born out of the pandemic.
How work “gets done” has evolved over the last 20–30 years as information and collaboration technology have gained traction and changed our communities. Many of those changes that we were seeing pre-pandemic have simply accelerated over this last year.
I can remember those long-gone days in 2018 and 2019 where having a dedicated Zoom account was a special thing. But now even my mom knows how to use Zoom and understands that there’s a 40-minute limit for non-paid accounts! What a difference all of this has made on the way work gets done within the local church! What changes have we seen in people’s preferences regarding getting church work done either in person or remotely?
In the broader marketplace, there seem to be two factions that are digging in around the office environment of the future. Ironically, if you look at companies that are involved in information technology, it seems like they hold divergent and passionate views on both ends of the spectrum.
On the in-person side of the conversation, Google, Apple, and Amazon have recently confirmed that they will return to in-person offices as their default approach. Part of this could be because of the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars that they’ve spent on offices around the world. But they’ve also done all kinds of studies that show there is something about being in the room where it happens.They believe that face-to-face drives collaboration. All three of these companies have made incredible fortunes by helping people work remotely, but it should be noted that they are moving their own workforces into offices post-pandemic.
There are also strong voices advocating for the other side of the conversation. Twitter, Slack, and Dropbox have all made bold steps towards being “remote-first” organizations. Some of these organizations have told their senior management they’re not required to come back to their offices, while others have made moves to get rid of office space or enhance their remote working abilities.
Take a look at the headlines in any major publication and you’ll see that people are grappling with the complex issues around what work will “look like” post the pandemic. For instance, here are just a few articles that have cropped up in recent days:
The same conversation is taking place in churches across the country, as our culture shifts to whatever the next normal is going to look like. We’re all trying to identify what we need to do to create either in-person or remote work arrangements as we look to the future.
In light of this, unSeminary surveyed church leaders from across the country to understand their attitudes, preferences, and experiences regarding working remotely since the start of the pandemic and how it has influenced their thinking going forward.
Overview of the National Survey of Church Leaders
Between May 24th and June 4th, 2021, we surveyed nearly 350 leaders from churches ranging from less than 100 members to over 10,000 members. Our goal was to get a clearer picture of what church leaders are thinking when it comes to structuring their work going forward.
We compared their answers to GitLab’s 2021 Remote Work Report, which is the leading report on working remotely released by one of the largest all-remote organizations in the world. We did this because we wanted to compare the attitudes and behaviors of local church teams and their marketplace counterparts.
We know that the work of the local church is not the same as working in the marketplace. However, there is much to learn from our contemporaries about emerging attitudes and behaviors in the broader marketplace and it is wise that we compare them to how we work within the local church. We also believe that we must be able to lead in an environment that understands what’s happening in the marketplace. Oftentimes as church leaders, we’re out of step with trends in the broader culture because we structure our work differently. This study attempts to understand the similarities and differences between local church leaders and marketplace leaders.
Personal Reflections on Remote Work within the Local Church
On and off, I’ve been working remotely for the better part of 20 years. I can remember in the late 90s, spending a tremendous amount of time working from home: emailing, building websites, doing communication plans, and trying to collaborate back and forth across email. The volume of remote work that I do has grown over the last two decades. Some of my work “on the road” with churches across the country has necessitated me being able to do much of my work from a coffee shop or a hotel room. At the same time as working remotely, I also stay connected with various churches and team members scattered across the US, and all over the world. In many ways, I was living in a remote-first world long before the pandemic hit. And through experience, I’ve managed to keep strong tabs on what’s going on in specific locations. It is possible to make a huge impact while working remotely.
There are vast differences between how my work life is structured and how my parents’ generation structured theirs.
I’m firmly Gen X. I was born in 1974, the lowest birth rate year of the 20th century, and while I was growing up my dad was upwardly mobile in his career. As a kid, I clearly remember times where we’d have only one car and so we’d drive to my dad’s workplace to pick him up and take him home from time to time. I remember that some days we’d wait and wait for him to finish his day at the office. The work he did, although it was primarily knowledge-based, needed to be done in proximity to other people and to the organization that he was leading.
The upside for his generation was that work was something you physically went to. I have no recollection of my dad doing anything that looked like work from the office whilst he was at home. His work stayed at the office. (In fact, some of my fondest memories of that time would be the rare occasion of going into “work” with him on the weekend if he needed to check on something.)
However, the downside was that work was something that he went to. My dad coached my hockey team in my early years, and he attended a lot of other school events. However, many of my contemporaries did not have their parents watching in the audience because they needed to be at their offices, working.
The distinct line between the office and the home had its upsides and downsides. As we chart the path forward, I think it’s important for us to think carefully about how we structure the home lives of our team members. We want to maximize their effectiveness as well as ensure their long-term health as they serve within our churches.
Summary of Survey Findings
This blog post contains some of the highlights of the learnings from unSeminary’s study; however, I would encourage you to pick up the full study that is much larger than what we can cover here. It dives into all the facets we studied and provides a lot of action points for us to think about as we move forward. But for an even shorter summary, here are three key findings from our national church leader study that focused on attitudes towards work as we move beyond the pandemic:
Church leaders are open to more remote work. // As the study shows, church leaders are open to more remote work in the future. It doesn’t appear that there is widespread hostility towards this. However, the volume of remote church work is far less than in the marketplace. It seems that we were positively predisposed to working remotely but need some guidance to take steps towards it.
The nature of our work is still seen as in-person. // So much of what we do as church leaders is seen as in-person, whether that’s recruiting and training leaders, hosting services, or various other actions that take place within the local church. Many church leaders see these as things that can only happen in an in-person environment. This is somewhat ironic, considering we’re coming out of the backend of a pandemic where for long periods many of us were forced to figure out how to do in-person things, remotely! There is an opportunity here for us to take some of these learnings and apply them to our future. We can craft a new hybrid work and leadership experience for our teams. There is strong evidence that working remotely is better for our people and our ministry outcomes. We need to explore what that looks like in the coming months and years.
Church staff are not prepared to work remotely. // Church leaders are far less equipped to work remotely than their marketplace counterparts. One of the things that you’ll see through this study is that there’s a huge gap between how marketplace leaders and church leaders see their readiness and attitudes towards working remotely. This study confirmed one of my suspicions that as executive leaders within the local church, we need to work hard to help our people be prepared for a more remote future. We need to stop focusing on improving our systems that served the church of yesterday and focus on readying our leaders for the future. This study outlines some examples of the kinds of work we could do on this front to help our people be better prepared.
5 Key Learnings from a National Church Study on the Attitudes Towards In-person and Remote Work Arrangements
There are five significant findings that this study presents. Local churches should consider these findings as they pivot off the backend of COVID-19 and reform their life-work balance situations for their team members. Each one of these findings compares the experiences of local church leaders to marketplace leaders and contains some potentially effective “next steps” for church leaders.
In-person, Remote, And Hybrid: Attitudes and Approaches to How We Work Today and in The Future
One of the striking similarities between marketplace and church leaders is that 4 in 10 say that their organization’s policy towards work is hybrid.
Both church leaders and marketplace leaders indicate that their current organization’s approach is to provide an experience where both in-person and remote work experiences are available. It’s worth noting that both surveys took place at the tail end of the pandemic. At this time, many jurisdictions across the country were still restricted in what office work could look like, or COVID hesitancy was still expressing itself. There were still people, even as vaccination rates rose, who were nervous to enter face-to-face environments.
The findings show a few differences between church leaders and marketplace leaders when it comes to attitudes and approaches to structuring their work lives. Marketplace employees are six times more likely to have a remote-only approach to their workplace. 32% of marketplace leaders indicated that they have a remote-only workplace approach whereas only 5% of church leaders are currently experiencing this. This is not a particularly surprising find. As noted earlier, so much of what we do in the local church is seen as in-person by nature.
We should be thinking about this critically because this difference may mean that church leaders won’t be able to communicate effectively to their people and the broader culture as they may not know what “work” in the marketplace looks like anymore. It is amazing to think that almost one in three marketplace leaders surveyed indicated that their work environment has become remote-only. This surely represents a shift in attitude, particularly from 10 years ago. This trend towards remote-only continues to increase within the marketplace and needs to be something that church leaders think about when helping people work through what it means to be a Christ-follower in the workplace.
Amongst church leaders, there is a level of ambivalence shown around whether they’re supposed to be in-person or remote. Church leaders are two and a half times more likely to say that remote work is either “allowed or tolerated but is not the norm or default”. Only 14% of marketplace leaders would describe their work environment like this, while 40% of church leaders say that this is the case. This could also represent a level of ambivalence in local churches around how they structure their work-life balance. The knowledge-based work that church leaders do means they could have flexible approaches to work arrangements that would be suited to remote configurations. While flexibility is a good thing, fuzziness is not okay. Clarity needs to be king when we’re structuring people’s work arrangements. As we come out of COVID-19, one thing we need to be clear on is what we expect from our teams. Pushing beyond the fact that remote work is allowed or tolerated, we need to be clear with people on exactly what that arrangement will look like going forward.
Church Leaders are not Prepared, Equipped, or Released to Work Remotely.
This area represented the largest disparity between the marketplace and church leadership. Part of the survey tried to understand people’s ability to be both prepared and trained to work remotely. It also asked them to reflect on their organization’s willingness to release them to do that healthily. People were asked to select which of the following statements applied to their attitude towards working remotely.
I am satisfied with the tools and processes that enable remote team communication.
My leadership team understands what it takes to operate a team remotely.
I am able to accomplish all of my tasks remotely.
My leadership team gives me agency and authority while working remotely.
Remote work is the future of work.
I recommend working remotely to a friend.
All these areas attempt to get a holistic picture of people’s attitudes towards working remotely. It gives us a sense of how prepared and aligned team members are around the area of working remotely.
On average, marketplace leaders rated these statements collectively as 81% true. Astonishingly, 8 out of 10 marketplace leaders indicated that each one of the statements is true for their workplace when only 1 in 3 of these same leaders experience a fully remote work environment. Noticeably, 8 out of 10 marketplace leaders have the framework in place to step towards working remotely in the coming years. However, on average, only 36% of church leaders rated these statements as true. Church leaders were less than half as likely to express that they’re favorably prepared or released to work remotely. Therefore, there is a significant difference between marketplace leaders and church leaders when it comes to feeling prepared to work remotely.
Executive leaders within the local church need to focus on equipping their teams to work remotely if they are looking to fuel this aspect of their work culture. This will require three aspects:
Training // Provide consistent training for people focused on how to work remotely. This should not be generalized, but specific to the type of work that each team member needs to do. This will encourage your team to step forward in their position with confidence.
Tools // Investing in collaboration tools and a consistent approach to connecting when not in the office is important for churches to do if they’re eager to craft an effective remote work environment.
Empowerment // Ultimately, having a more remote workforce drives the organization to be more trusting of its team members rather than depending on a centralized command and control structure. Remote workforce managers need to trust their people to do their work to move the ministry forward. This study could point to the fact that too many church leaders are holding onto old, centralized control structures rather than a decentralized vision and outcome-result approach. We’ve seen widespread adoption of these newer approaches in the marketplace.
The Majority of Church Leaders Don’t Anticipate They Will Work Remotely Post-Pandemic.
Only 19% of church leaders surveyed believe that they will primarily work remotely after the pandemic has receded. This is compared to 74% of those in the marketplace sample.
I wish I had the pre-pandemic numbers on this to compare with our results; however, I will work with our findings to illustrate my point. 19% means that nearly 1 in 5 church leaders believe that they will work remotely after the pandemic. This is a sizeable portion of the local church workforce. There are about 600,000 ministry leaders in America. So, our findings indicate that 120,000 of these leaders hold this opinion. That’s a lot of folks sitting in coffee shops and the spare bedroom in their house!
There have been some “remote work evangelists” who, in this season, have been calling for this huge shift post-pandemic. They’ve been jumping up and down, talking about how no one should go back to the church office, and that all of us will end up working remotely as we did during the height of the pandemic. Most church leaders are not accepting this view at present.
However, nearly 1 in every 2 church leaders believes that they will work remotely sometimes. From my perspective, this shows that there’s an openness to work remotely. Church leaders are noting the trajectory of doing more work outside of the office as they look to the future. However, they haven’t made the jump to say it’s all going to be done remotely.
Although this is the case, there are still many leaders feeling unprepared and not trained or released to make the jump to work remotely as their default approach.
This represents an opportunity for the leadership of local churches to open dialogues with their teams about their preferred future work arrangements. This part of the study indicates that at least half of the people serving on your team are thinking that they will occasionally work out of office. Keep this in mind when you engage with your team members and plan a way forward.
How does your team want to structure their work going forward? How can you support that? What could it look like to help your team achieve their work-life balance through a combination of remote and in-person work arrangements? How do we create an environment where people can easily shift between one and the other?
Workday “Rituals” Look Very Similar for Marketplace Leaders and Church Leaders.
One of the questions that we explored in our survey is, where does your typical workday begin? What do church leaders or marketplace leaders do when their typical workday starts? There was a striking similarity between these two groups. 53% of marketplace leaders say that they begin their workday by checking their emails, and 51% of church leaders said the same thing. Email is how many leaders start the day. This is an important thing to notice because email continues to be the monster of all collaboration tools. It is the preferred way for people to begin their day, and it’s still a primary connection tool.
While there are a lot of other communication and collaboration tools that have attempted to unseat email, it would appear, for good or bad, that email continues to have a stronghold on leaders across the country. This is an important thing to note because we need to train our people on how best to manage their email. Just think about the fact that every morning, 50% of your leaders sit down and check their email before they do anything else. We want it to be a well-used tool and something that drives ministry collaboration going forward rather than slowing it down.
Here is an interesting thought: If you’re looking to reach leaders in your church, then sending an email that hits their inbox first thing in the morning is a great way to get their attention. A way to aid this would be to survey the people in your church and find out what the beginning of their workday looks like. What time do they start working? You could do this under the guise of trying to understand their work-life balance, and that this information would help you communicate with teams.
There were some other interesting findings when we looked at how people structured their workdays. For example, 1 in 3 church leaders indicated that their workday startup routine varies, whereas only 1 in 7 of marketplace leaders said that their workday varies. Therefore, there is less randomness with marketplace leaders in how they begin their days.
This could represent the fact that the work we do in the local church has more variety, or it could represent that there’s less discipline in how church leaders structure their work lives.
Although only two-thirds of surveyed people were lead pastors or executive pastors, a small finding is that only 1.75% start their day looking at numbers or the numerical performance of the organization. For marketplace leaders, the result was only 5%, but it is markedly larger than what’s happening in the local church. I know that these are small numbers, but it is worth noting that far fewer church leaders start their day looking at the numbers that are driving their organization. They could look at things like giving, attendance, newcomer numbers, etc. This could be an area of further inquiry as we go forward. A lot of churches track numbers, but how are we using those numbers to drive the performance of our teams and our organizations?
Church Leaders Are 50% More Distracted Than Marketplace Leaders
The survey also asked what the greatest pain is in a person’s workday. Both groups said that distractions are the greatest pain associated with their daily function as a leader. However, church leaders indicated this pain to be 50% higher than marketplace leaders. Only 25% of marketplace leaders indicated that distractions were a pain point, as opposed to 37% of church leaders.
Just stop for a minute and think about this. Distraction indicates that people are doing work that they see as not core to the mission. The only way that you would identify something as a distraction is because you self-identify that it is sideways energy.
You only consider something a distraction when you know that it’s taking you away from focusing on what you’re responsible for doing. Just over one in three church leaders say that their daily distractions are their greatest source of pain in leading their local church.
Your church team members are finding distractions to be a consistent pain point. Our role as leaders is to help give our team focus and ensure that our people are plugged in with the essential work that’s pushing the mission forward. Each one of our team members is given spiritual gifts that we know empowers them to uniquely contribute to their team. When they’re not operating in their area of gifting, they’re not living out their God-given purpose in life.
We believe that each of our team members should be focused primarily on doing only what they can do. We hire people to solve problems and move the mission forward in a specific way. How can we help them stay on task? What do we need to do to help reduce their distraction? This finding could make landmark differences in the life of your church if you focus on trying to solve it with your team members.
3 Next Steps Church Executive Leaders Can Take Out of This Study
Our goal was not only to listen and understand where church leaders are at. We also wanted to provide you with some potential next steps for your team. We suggest you pull your leadership team together and look at the study and reflect on how you can push your team forward as you craft a post-pandemic office and work environment.
Here are three potential things you could look at:
Clarity // Define what the next normal will be. It seems like church leaders across the country are open to more remote work environments, but let’s move beyond just tolerating either in-person or remote and define it for our people. Getting clear as we come out of COVID will enable our team to make wise decisions around their work-life balance. Fuzziness in this season around “how” work is done should be rejected. Let’s be pushing hard to ensure our people gain deeper levels of clarity on how work is done in the church.
Training // Don’t assume that your people know how to do the work that you’re asking them to do. Oftentimes, we define what we are hoping people will achieve in their areas, but we do not spend enough time training them to reach these goals and work in a hybrid environment. Don’t just launch a new tech tool. Rather, push towards training that can help them understand how to get the most out of the tech tool and other systems. Teach your people what good collaboration looks like and reward them for engaging with each other (whether it’s in-person or online). Like any good relationship, communication is something that needs to be worked on because it doesn’t just happen. Help your people communicate more effectively in this season and as you move forward.
Focus // Clarify the win. Help your team define what the win is in their area of the organization. From a big picture point of view, we want to understand what the “mission win” is. What is the overall goal that your church is looking to achieve in this season? How do we know that we are taking steps forward, and not losing ground? Then, at a micro-level, how do we define ideal work habits? How do we know if people are succeeding in their areas? What new numbers and metrics can they look at to understand if what they’re doing is working? How can we help them push back against distraction if we don’t clearly articulate what the win looks like for them?
Download The Full Report to Dive Even Deeper into In-person, Remote, & Hybrid Working Arrangements for The Local Church
The full report includes lots more information. This post provided an overview but if you download the study, you’ll find our in-depth review on various areas, areas that we didn’t touch on here. These areas include:
Learnings around how people are collaborating within their teams. You’ll get a deeper sense of what collaboration is looking like within the local church today.
A look at what tools church leaders are using to connect and collaborate.
What aspects of your church’s “work culture” is winning? Where do we need to be improving? In this part of the study, we look at aspects that are reportedly working for church leaders in their pursuit to create healthy working environments. We also look at areas that seem to be detracting and distracting ideal work environments.
You’ll understand church leaders’ concerns and what they will miss if they are to work remotely. In this part of the study, we dive into the potential pains of working towards a more remote work environment. This information could help you craft your communication plans if you’re looking to increase how much you and your teamwork remotely in the coming weeks and months.
You’ll get an opportunity to look at how we conducted the study, as well as the breakdown of the types of churches that we selected. The best part is that this study is completely free! All you need to do is enter your email address. Using the link below, we’d love for you to share this with other church leaders. Feel free to pass it on to others who may see this as a helpful tool for them as they lead!
Plus the full report also includes expert commentary from leaders who offer their perspectives and takeaways on the research. Even more helpful insights to guide your team as we navigate this season!
Kenny Jahng – Chief Innovation Officer at Big Click Syndicate & ChurchCommunications
Kadi Cole – Best Selling Author, Speaker, Consultant
Tim Stevens – Executive Pastor at Willow Creek Church
Christine Kreisher – CEO at Irresistible Teams plus Author, Speaker & Coach
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Rebuilding Connection At Your Church Post-COVID with Abby Ecker
Jun 17, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re talking with Abby Ecker, Next Steps Pastor from The Journey in Delaware. She’s with us today to talk about getting people connected and helping them take steps from just attending weekend gatherings to moving into the core of the church.
Help people take steps, not leaps. // People have always needed to take small steps rather than leaps, and that’s even more true as we come out of the pandemic. Think about the very small steps that you can encourage your people to take to help draw them back to the community and connection we all need.
High tech, high touch, high heart. // Consider how to create high tech, high touch, and high heart experiences. One of the high touch experiences that The Journey did at the beginning of covid was to repurpose their shuttles (previously used for parking) to go around and visit people at their homes. This was a no-contact visit where two team members stood outside the home, passed out some Journey swag, and let people know that they love them and are thinking of them.
Basic reaching out. // Many churches may feel that they don’t have the labor or resources to do big mobilization efforts where they are calling every member of the church to check in, or planning huge outreach efforts. The Journey has been there and one simple thing to do is to develop a connections team to do basic outreach and follow-up to those committing their life to Jesus or visiting the church. Make calls to people who decide to get baptized, give, or volunteer. These calls aren’t necessarily about getting people to take more next steps, but rather a way to say thank you, express that you’re thinking about them, and ask how you can pray for them.
From seat to serve. // The Journey will be trialing a program called Plugged In, a hybrid customizable experience using both online and in-person elements. Short videos share the vision for the church and how to move out into serving the community. Then for another high-touch experience, people are paired with a coach where they can talk about where they want to serve. Attendees will leave this experience connected to a team and receive follow-up videos that walk through the church’s culture.
Ask the right questions. // Coaches for Plugged In are given resources to help them know which questions to ask the people they meet with. Their biggest goal is creating connections with these people through asking the right questions and getting to know them. Coaches function as a neutral connection point and will be the ones to check in after someone’s first serve experience to see how things went.
Lead with a clear why and what. // It’s of the utmost importance to lead with a clear “why” and a clear ‘what’. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Why are you trying to do this event? Are you doing it just to make yourself feel good? When so many things are out of control, our tendency is to control the things we can control, which are often the “hows”. Go forward with a clear “why” and a clear “what” to help lead someone else to the next step.
Vision is the currency of leadership. // The “why” only matters if we can identify why it really matters to others. What does it mean to help this other group in the things they need? If you can figure out why they should care and can connect with them, you can move forward in progress.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Expanding the Leadership Voices at Your Table with Jeannette Cochran
Jun 10, 2021
Thanks for joining us for the unSeminary podcast. This week we’re chatting with Jeannette Cochran, executive pastor Seneca Creek Community Church in Maryland. Jeannette is talking with us today about what it is like being a female executive pastor in a church and how you can empower more women to engage their gifts and lead in your church.
Lead in trust and honor. // Too many churches are dragging their feet on including women in leadership or executive roles within the church. The church can’t reach its full potential until men and women are leading together in relationships of trust and honor. Both men and women are created in the image of God. When women aren’t allowed to step into their callings and passions to serve the church, the body of Christ loses out.
Remain humble. // An essential quality in a healthy church is that the leaders remain in a humble posture of a learner. At one point in history, Christians tried to argue from scripture for slavery, but that changed because Christians were willing to continue to humble themselves, be learners, and be teachable. Leaders today should ask themselves if they are open to hearing the voices of others. That is the leadership model that Jesus has given us, that leaders will be listeners and learners.
Make a commitment. // Make a commitment to shared leadership and actually look around the table to ask if you do have diversity and the voices you need. Unearth those biases and stereotypes you might not realize are there. Commit to having hard conversations and creating safe spaces where you can be honest with each other. Be open to listening without becoming defensive.
Trust is the beginning. // Be open to women and communicate that you want to hear their feedback. Many women are socialized to be people-pleasers and minimize themselves, especially in Christian circles. Let them know that you are open to hearing their challenges and pushback and that they aren’t going to be penalized for speaking up. Women, on the other hand, need to do their homework and be willing to put themselves out there. It takes vulnerability on both sides.
Don’t be held back. // Often women leaders may not recognize that they have limiting beliefs that are holding them back. What is that internal voice we’re listening to? Whenever there is a sense of stepping out to become vulnerable or taking a risk, that voice will come at us and try to stop us. Don’t allow that voice to hold you back. Recognize that internal critic for what it is and turn it down to listen to the voice of God in us. Individual coaching can help tremendously with this issue.
Don’t view each other as a threat. // We need to have thoughtful boundaries, but not view each other as a threat. Many times, women leaders may be seen as a threat because the way things have always been done may need to change. Scripturally we should be looking at how we can view each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. Ask how you can have some thoughtful boundaries that help each other to feel safe and cared for, but not view each other as enemies or threats.
Look for the potential. // Studies have shown that many times men are promoted based on potential, but women are promoted only based on performance. So look for that potential in the women at your organization to move them up to the next level.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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5 Mindsets Church Leaders Need to Change Post-COVID
Jun 09, 2021
As the leader goes, so goes the organization.
It’s often been said that the mindset of a leader ultimately drives the behavior of an organization. It’s a scary thought when you consider that our internal thought life can express itself in the people that we consistently lead. I think this is a truism when it comes to leading organizations of any kind, including your local church.
Over time, churches seem to take on the personality of the leadership. As we start pivoting out of COVID-19 and the incredible impact it has had on all our churches, we need to look inside and understand the mindsets that we have picked up over the last year. We must identify which of these mindsets may negatively impact our organization going forward.
Now would be a great time for you to self-reflect and understand what you’ve been thinking and how that might be working itself out in the organization you’re in.
As a parent, I have seen how my habits, hang-ups, and hurts can come out in the life of my kids. While we see it vividly in our kids, the same is true in the organizations we lead. So here are five mindsets that you may have adopted over the last few months and need to shift or rethink as you go into full-on relaunch mode.
From Surviving to Thriving
There’s no doubt that over the last year you’ve had to make a lot of difficult decisions to ensure the survival of your organization. It first may have been to pivot to church online, if your church wasn’t already online, and no doubt you’ve encountered many tough financial decisions.
We’ve all made several decisions that have been focused on how we stay afloat as organizations.
If we’re just about survival, we’ll miss the opportunity to take new risks and push toward new horizons.
What aspects of your personality are leaning towards merely surviving rather than thriving?
From Keeping to Reaching
One of the sad realities of watching church leaders talk among themselves in this season is that it seems like so much of the conversation is about getting back to our attendance pre-COVID. This is a potentially dangerous mindset.
It is understandable and maybe even natural but make no mistake, it’s also dangerous. This is because this mindset may cause us to think that the goal of our church is to simply keep the people who were previously attending.
If we focus so much on keeping, we’ll miss the opportunity to reach new people.
Your community has changed in the last 15 months and those dynamics need to be addressed and be considered as you think about reaching new people in your community. We need to fully engage in reaching the world today and not wishing for the world of yesterday.
You’ve seen a lot of new people connect with your church online and the question you should be asking now is how to accelerate that! How do we identify what we’ve learned from our online experiences and push these lessons forward to reach even more people? Even as your church continues to gain momentum in its regathering phase, the benchmark should not be how our attendance compares to our attendance in the winter of 2020. Our benchmarks should be determined by how our attendance compares to the community we’re attempting to reach.
From Reaction to Vision
Your leadership reaction senses have been finely honed, much like a cat’s. You’ve had to make quick pivots over these months and come up with new solutions.
It’s almost like we’ve been bracing ourselves for the other shoe to drop, but the difficulty is that shoes have continuously dropped over the past year. This is a helpful new skill for the future; however, now’s the time for us to peer up over the horizon and start to ask the question: Where does God want your church to be a year from now? What about five years from now? What about twenty years from now?
What have you learned over the last year that can help you and your organization chart a brand-new course for the future? Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and look up over the horizon and see what God’s called you to do next.
From Cynical to Hopeful
Cynicism is an acid that will erode your spiritual life if it goes unchecked.
I love the book Didn’t See It Coming written by my friend, Carey Nieuwhof. It offers a conversation about cynicism and how it’s a negative part of our leadership journey. We need to look for cynicism as it wells up in us and replace it with hope.
Replace the negative thoughts about how everything is going badly with a positive understanding of what God wants you to do next.
In some leadership circles, cynicism is a heralded trait. It’s almost like we want to out-cynic others! Resist those communities and resist that way of thinking.
From Us to Them
At its core, the pandemic has driven us to think internally.
It has forced us to travel to fewer places and it’s pushed us to think more inside the four walls of our homes. We’ve been scared to shake the hands of our neighbors or give a hug to a new friend. If we don’t address this we will radically truncate our church’s ability to reach the community around us and to love the people God sends our way.
In what areas of your life do you find yourself looking inward rather than outward? In what areas of your church have you shifted towards thinking more about the people who are attending rather than the people who aren’t attending? The local church is the only organization in the world whose primary concern is reaching the people who aren’t connected with it yet. Let’s get back to that. Stop thinking about us and lean toward others.
Still looking for some help with your post-COVID mindset? Try these things.
Mindsets don’t shift overnight; it takes significant internal work and continual processing to push them towards where you need them to be or, ultimately, what God has for you.
Taking time out to evaluate your mindsets is a starting point, but from there, I encourage you to take steps toward developing the kind of mindsets that God would have for you in this season. Here are three steps you could take to help build a healthy mindset for a post-COVID world.
Gather your team and talk through areas of your mindsets that need to shift. Ask them to reflect on areas that they’ve seen creep into your church over the last year. Identify what bits need to be rooted out and the areas that should be pushed forward as you enter your next phase.
Process your internal thought life with a great Christian counsellor. Counseling will positively affect a leader’s life. People who are trusted with the care of others should entrust themselves to someone who can help them work through their thoughts. Counseling is a great place to start.
Make journaling a habit. Journaling will help you to think about your thinking. Simple reflection on the day, writing down your thoughts, or even journaling your prayer life will help you externalize what’s internal. Oftentimes making the implicit explicit spurs an incredible journey as you start to get a clearer picture of what’s happening on the inside.
I’m cheering for you. Thank you so much for leading. I’m excited to hear what God does in your church and through your leadership in the coming year.
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Season of Hope: Your Church’s Fall 2021 Growth Opportunity
Jun 08, 2021
The coming months hold an unprecedented opportunity to see your church impact more people than ever before.
As the country begins to shake off the shackles of COVID-19 and the ensuing economic calamity, we’re seeing new windows of opportunity. We must leverage this season for the message of Jesus.
We can echo what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:9, “a great door for effective work has opened to me.” Let’s not miss this tremendous opportunity that is just around the corner!
Fall 2021 is when your church must invite more people to be a part of your community.
The difference between leading churches and languishing churches is that leading churches motivate their people to invite their friends to church. Whether it’s in-person or online, churches that make an impact consistently find new ways to encourage their people to invite their friends to be a part of the church.
Typically, in the fall, we see growth opportunities as people reorient their lives and come up with new rhythms. It’s sort of like a “second new year”, particularly because many churches are trying to reach families and kids. The return to school drives how young families operate. This fall will be the first time that kids return to school and normal family life emerges from the haze of the pandemic that started in March 2020!
Let’s not miss this opportunity, friends, and find ways to leverage this turning point to invite more friends than we ever have before.
As I’ve watched churches in this season, I’ve noted a disturbing trend. Some churches are leveraging soft guilt with their people about how important it is for them to “return to the building.” Churches that obsess about getting people to the building will ultimately lose the bigger picture. It’s a small vision to just get people back into the buildings they were in before March 2020. Let’s cast a bigger vision and move beyond shame and motivating people to get into our boxes. I’ve heard too many churches leverage negative emotions to motivate people to return. Here are some lines that are being used:
“We know there’s nothing like being in the room together.”
“It’s time to return.”
“Our forefathers fought for your right to attend church. You can fight the couch and join us.”
“When the doors of the church are open, believers need to darken them!”
I’ve even heard churches misquote passages like Psalm 122:1 [ref], which sets a dangerous precedent when we talk about our church buildings like the temple in the Old Testament. There’s a theological point to be made that one of the things Jesus undid on the cross was the limitation of where the spirit of God chooses to move. On the cross, Jesus declared that he can move in any place and any season. This needs to drive our mission in reaching new people, not a hyper-obsession with getting people who used to sit inside our boxes to come and sit in them again.
Let’s not miss this opportunity to encourage our people to invite their friends. As people reorient their lives, there are new opportunities for your church to invite people to be a part of your community, whether that’s online or in-person.
There are all kinds of signs that travel will be at incredible levels over the summertime. As we approach Labor Day, it will begin to wane, and people will be looking to establish new patterns in their lives. Let’s create a positive community image with our people that will encourage them to come back and be a part of the good things that are happening in our churches. Here are a few ways that you can leverage this fall to reach more people.
5 Ways to Leverage Fall 2021 to Grow Your Church
Growing churches consistently motivate their people to be a part of the mission. At a bare minimum, they move people to invite their friends to be a part of the good things that God’s doing in their lives. However, fall 2021 presents all kinds of opportunities for drawing people to church.
Package it as a season. // Many churches will have individual series that may last for three to eight weeks. However, for communication purposes, I think churches should package fall 2021 as one branded season. String several series together to make a season with an informative title e.g., “Season of Hope”, “Changing Seasons for the Better”, or “Homecoming Season”. We know that nothing builds momentum in a church like something new and so repackaging the fall, from a communications point of view, will build anticipation. It will also be the kind of thing that sparks people’s curiosity and encourage them to invite their friends to be a part of it. Through studies, we know that varying levels of COVID hesitancy will continue in our culture. [ref] Thus, rather than trying to drive everyone back to a single Sunday or a single series, branding the entire season gives a lot of on-ramps for people to connect with your church when they are ready.
Leverage all the “firsts” again. // There’s no doubt that during this fall your church will be doing several things for the first time in a long time. During the pandemic season, you may have attempted some of these; however, this fall will see us returning to a new normal and celebrating significant mile markers is important. They also create great opportunities for inviting friends to be a part of the church. For example:
Baptism. While many churches have taken chances and flexed their creative muscles with performing fascinating and different baptism experiences over the last year-and-a-half, let’s use this season as an opportunity to gather people together and celebrate the life changes that have taken place. This is a great opportunity for people to invite their friends.
Infant Dedications. Perhaps your church doesn’t normally feature these within your main weekend services; however, this might be a great time to break that tradition as baby dedications are a fantastic time to invite family and friends to come and be a part of your church.
Back to School Sunday. Let’s celebrate that most kids in the country will be back to in-person learning this fall and plan a special Sunday that celebrates teachers and students returning to class.
Christmas. No doubt we’ll be talking more about this in the coming months, but Christmas is at the end of the fall season and provides a massive opportunity for us to invite our friends and community, whether it’s in-person or online, to connect with the message of Jesus.
Don’t Miss the Halloween Opportunity // October 31st can be a controversial day in the calendar. While I have no intention to get into the theological nuances around what Halloween means and whether Christians should even be a part of it, it does represent a unique opportunity for your people to connect with their community. (Looking for some information on this? Click here to check out my friend Bruxy Cavey’s notes on why Halloween is a great opportunity for you to connect with your community.) For most of our families, Halloween will be the first time they’ll connect with neighbors. Resist the urge to do something at your church building and instead, mobilize your people to leverage this day as an opportunity to bless and care for their neighborhood. Encourage them to get the full-size chocolate bars and invite family and friends to a fun family-oriented church event sometime in mid-November. Help your people with some practical instructions on how to engage with their neighbors. They could provide coffee for parents, or maybe something a little extra than what they would normally do. This Halloween is a fascinating one because it lands on a Sunday! Your church could provide take-home kits that can be picked up on the Sunday before Halloween or on Halloween to help people leverage these days. I’m not talking about handing out tracks. What I’m talking about is helping our people engage positively in their neighborhoods. Think about it. In many communities across the country, you’re going to have dozens of people come to the doors of the people in your church. How can we leverage this as an opportunity for the gospel?
Catalyze Social Connections. // One of the clearer outcomes of the COVID season has been the lack of social connections. It’s almost like we need to teach people how to be friends again. This creates a great opportunity for our churches to be platforms upon which people can build relationships. Don’t miss this opportunity to develop events and opportunities for your people to develop closer relationships with each other and invite friends to join. Here are some ideas:
What if your church hosted a tailgate party in the parking lot one Sunday after church? Get everybody to wear their favorite team’s jersey, and maybe invite people in to watch a game on that big screen that hasn’t been put to much use over the last year-and-a-half.
You could host a fall family crafting day where you invite families to bring their friends and put together a simple craft that they could do with their kids.
If you want to go all out, I know some churches leverage the fall with a firework spectacular, which is a great way to kick off the night before school starts this year. Set up an outdoor stage and have your band play all kinds of songs off the radio. Hand out invites to an upcoming series and just as the sun begins to sink, set off some dazzling fireworks.
Give Back to the Community. // Church has never been about the buildings. Resist the urge to communicate (subtly or blatantly) that you want to get people back into your rooms. There is nothing magical about your building. God wants to do work in your community. In fact, the balance of scriptural evidence is that God seems to prefer to work outside of holy buildings rather than within them. Think about any of the major characters in scripture and where God connected with them. Most of them were in the marketplace, fishing, or tending their sheep. They were out in the real world. Let’s mobilize our people to get out of their seats and into the street.
What if this fall you attempted to mobilize 70-plus percent of your church to make a difference in your community? Connect with a local civic leader and find out what your community’s needs are and how the church can help fulfil them. What would happen if your church mobilized hundreds of volunteers, tens of thousands of dollars, and thousands of people-hours to make a tangible difference in your community? What a great opportunity for you to show your community that the church is re-gathering, but not re-gathering to get people to enter our buildings; rather, re-gathering to get out into the streets and bless the community!
Maybe there’s a way to give back to first responders or to long-term care homes that have been negatively impacted in this season. Or maybe there’s a way to give back to schools as they relaunch in-person learning in a significant way. Pull together your leaders and get creative. Find ways to make a difference this fall in your community.
Packaging all these things up into a single season for your church would create an incredible number of new opportunities for your people to invite their friends. Branding them all within a single unified theme would give them a cohesiveness that will build momentum to move from one to the next.
Don’t miss this opportunity that’s just around the corner! None of us has ever come back from a pandemic but let’s not just whimper into what’s next but look for a way to accelerate and move forward the mission that God’s called our church to.
Want more help? Ask Carey Nieuwhof Your Church Growth Questions.
On June 10th, we’re hosting a special live online event with Carey Nieuwhof where you’ll have the opportunity to ask him questions about church growth.
For years, he’s been studying churches that grow and make an impact. During this event, you’ll have an opportunity to get your questions answered. Want to know how to mobilize more people towards your mission? Wondering what you could do to encourage people to be a part of what God’s called your church to do?
Join us at this free live online event. To learn more or register, click here. If you’re reading this after the live event, you could also follow the same link to see the recording of our time together.
Focusing on Jesus in a Distracted World with Steve Brown
Jun 03, 2021
Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Dr. Steve Brown, President of Arrow Leadership and author of the book Jesus Centered: Focusing On Jesus In A Distracted World. Steve works to help leaders find clarity, community and confidence in their work as Jesus-centered leaders. He’s talking with us today about how to lead more like Jesus by loving your people well and encouraging them right where they are.
Pray for and love others. // Jesus loved the disciples – not only with words, but also with time, actions, and by praying for them. Do we treat the people we are supervising with the same care and encouragement? Sometimes we can see people as vehicles for getting stuff done, or as obstacles to completing tasks, instead of praying for and loving them. Steve has created a chart for each month in which he has two people from his team who he prays for every day. This schedule can get you into the rhythm of thinking about the people you lead and praying for them regularly. Connect with people at work by pausing and asking more questions. Check in with your team members to see how they are doing in their lives outside of the office.
Give encouragement. // As a senior leader, let your people know that you are thinking of and praying for them and are proud of them. Sometimes we overestimate how encouraging we really are, and underestimate how much people need encouragement. Some people like to be called out in public, other people like to receive a card, or be invited out to lunch – just begin and learn what means the most to your team members as you go.
Jesus in leadership. // Steve’s book, Jesus Centered, talks about three important conversations to have with your team as you look to Christ as your model in leadership: How can we be led more by Jesus – individually, as a team, or as a church? How can we lead more like Jesus as a team and individually? And how can we lead more to Jesus? These are critical conversations and will yield a lot of good fruit on your staff and in your church.
Safe, Stretch, and Stress. // As you prepare to help your team members grow, look at each person with three S words in mind: Safe, Stretch, and Stress. Where are your people in those categories? Is someone in a safe space and not challenged enough in their work? Lead them into the stretch zone with increased responsibilities. In the stretch zone they will need to learn to depend on God as they grow beyond what is merely safe. But if stretched too far, they can land in the stress zone and you’ll need to bring them back to a place where they are stretched but not stressed. Knowing where your people are helps you to discern the next developmental step for each team member.
Tic Tac Toe. // Another tool that helps team members find their sweet spot is to have each person draw a Tic Tac Toe board. Then have them identify nine words or phrases that represent them when they are at their best professionally. Write these words into the squares of the Tic Tac Toe board. Next have them decide whether each box is red, yellow, or green. Red is for those things that aren’t happening, yellow are things that happen sometimes, and green are things that they do regularly. Use this tool to discover what is holding your team back from their best. Are people in the right spot in your organization? What can you do to help them?
Jesus-centered development. // Arrow Leadership offers Jesus-centered programs, personal mentoring, organizational consulting and resources that develop you and your team to lead differently. The programs have different streams depending on if a leader is emerging or established, and each stream is highly personalized, highly intentional, and highly transformational. Participants will explore leadership, character, spiritual health, self-awareness, and more. And these programs also provide safe places where leaders can be vulnerable and real.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Improving Your Working Partnership with an Executive Assistant with Jannet Morgan
May 27, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re chatting with Jannet Morgan, the Executive Assistant (EA) to Lead Pastor, Tim Lucas, at Liquid Church in New Jersey. She’s with us today to talk about the role of the EA supporting leadership in the church and how to make the most out of that partnership.
Be aware of the challenges. // Sometimes it’s difficult to establish a good working relationship between the executive and the executive assistant. In some cases hiring for the EA position is put on hold until budget allows for it, but by then the executive may be overwhelmed and overworked. It can be hard to find someone great to gear up quickly to support the pastor. There’s no manual for this sort of relationship and as a result executives may not know where they need the most help while EAs are trying to learn on the fly, but also struggle to discern what an executive or pastor really wants. Executives may not know how to manage their EA since they are trying to offload what they are doing.
Where to begin? // At the beginning of the exec/EA relationship it’s common not to know where to start. People wonder what should the routine and workflow look like, and how should we work together? In the corporate world, the EA is often an entry level position whereas in the church it’s a high level position. Often a pastor’s EA is privy to sensitive information as they help the pastor with various issues such as staff, church finances, contracts, and so on. Jannet recommends having conversations early about priorities, goals, communication, and expectations.
Get to know each other. // In the beginning of an EA’s employment, have a few meetings just to get to know each other and invite your EA to ask questions. If you can, try to allow for overlap between your new EA and old EA so your new hire can learn more quickly. Also, arrange for the EA to meet with other members of the team that you work closely with or who your EA will work closely with to understand roles and relationships. It’s helpful for your EA to know what your top goals are so that they have a better understanding of how they can support you well. Communication of expectations between you both should be clear. An EA needs to study the executive, understanding what he likes to do and anticipating what his needs are. Jannet often shadows the lead pastor, attending meetings with him so she can keep abreast of what’s happening on different projects and what problems are surfacing. As their partnership has grown, Jannet can now stand in the gap for the lead pastor when he’s not available and communicate with people who are coming to him for questions or approvals.
Empower and grow the assistant. // As a leader, you can approach hiring an EA in two ways: Do you want someone who is purely an assistant—doing your expense reports, calendaring, and correspondence? Or do you want to go beyond that and leverage the skillset which you hired them for, pouring into them because they are so important to your work life? Think of ways you can empower them and grow their leadership skills to be a growing leader in your own organization.
Five essential conversations. // Don’t miss the June 23rd workshop designed for executive church leaders and their assistants. This workshop will dive into five conversations that are essential for the executive and the EA to have. These include talking through priorities and goals, rules and filters, personal preferences, discussing the communication rhythm, and expectations for the EA role.
You can reach out to Jannet via email and learn more about Liquid Church at liquidchurch.com.
2 HOUR LIVE WORKSHOP // JUNE 23rd // 3pm (ET) or 12noon (PT)
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Applying Pandemic Learnings from Church Online to Post-Pandemic Church with Jenn Clauser
May 20, 2021
Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jenn Clauser, the Director of Communications at Coker United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas. She’s with us today to dig deeper into online church and how to integrate it as a core part of our mission to reaching people who are far from God.
Optimize your website. // Before COVID, Coker felt led to make their online presence more robust. They partnered with Missional Marketing who rebuilt the church’s website for search engine optimization. By paying attention to what people are looking for in keyword searches online from month to month, a website can be made to do outreach for you. Coker layers these words into their website in an authentic way by using them in sermon series. Divorce, for example, is a high search term in the month of January, so Coker tends to lead into the year with a series about families. They might use phrases on their website such as: How do you avoid divorce? How do you care for someone who has been divorced? How do we strengthen marriage? By developing a strong online presence, you will be easily found by your community in their time of need.
Create connections. // As online viewership increased during COVID, Coker began to ask how they could see the analytics as faces. These are real people looking for guidance and connections. Feed them where they are and offer them help and services online even if you can’t see them. Coker did this by connecting their online audience to meaningful community. A few steps they took included setting up a way where online guests could register their attendance and let you know their names and email addresses. They created a place for online prayer requests and a team responds to these requests in real time. Coker also offered people a free book in exchange for their email address, as well as one-off courses, like a simple marriage class. Have a connections expert who is in charge of reaching out to them see where their needs are.
Launch classes online. // Within their online campus, Coker listed all of their courses online. Allowing all of your classes to be attended in that format opens the door to a new audience who may never have attended your church before. Coker has their classes set up similar to Google Classroom. People can get the class content, a Facebook group where they can connect during the week, the Zoom link, and other resources for attendees. Online classes provide a way to reach people that won’t walk through the doors of your church right away, but they feel comfortable being present in an online Zoom classroom. It gives them the chance to know others’ faces, and provides a bridge where they could feel comfortable attending church in person down the road. Don’t miss this mission field opportunity.
Brainstorm new ideas. // Recognizing the opportunities that are provided by mixing online and in-person, Coker is brainstorming a lot of possible ideas right now. In the fall they are launching an intentional discipleship program where people take an online assessment, get their results, and then meet with a spiritual director who will guide their next steps. Depending on what the spiritual director recommends, people may then get involved in online classes to help them study the Bible better or dig deeper into prayer. Another new thing Coker is trying is assembling five community groups. Four of these will be in-person and one will be online. Each group will meet quarterly as a community gathering for things such as a BBQ, a study group, a monthly dinner, etc. Coker will see what organically grows from there.
Listen well. // During this transitional phase it’s important for churches to be listening to what their community needs as well as how they want to connect with your church. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas and offer a mix of online and in-person services or events. Most of all, make space to listen to God. During the pandemic, God has shown Jenn that she needs to be intentional about her connection with Him. Pay particular attention to your sabbath, your time with God alone, and time with other people and how God might be speaking through them. Commit everything to prayer, and know who your Spirit-led experts are. Talk decisions out with other leaders at the church, but also don’t be afraid to use Google to research and learn!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Carey Nieuwhof
Leadership has felt pretty uncertain and divisive this past year. How do you make decisions when the future isn’t predictable and your team has different opinions? Download the FREE Pivot Ready Cheat Sheet to get help making progress and gaining clarity through rapid change and disruption. It will give you a framework that effective and resilient leaders use to make decisions and take action.
Is Your Team Languishing? Practical Help for Executive Pastors.
May 18, 2021
It’s clear that we’re entering a post-pandemic stress period in the life of the local church.
All around us we see signs that our teams are stressed and not sure what to do next.
Anecdotally, we’re hearing about huge turnover at churches, and we cannot ignore the rising anxiety in leaders across the country.
Recently, Adam Grant wrote an article in the New York Times called, “There’s a Name For The Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing”. This article has been passed around in many of my circles because it accurately captures where so many of our teams are at right now.
The sense of blah that has come over many of our team members is impacting not only their mental health but the ability of our churches to push forward and make a difference in our communities.
As executive pastors, we’re concerned and are wondering what we can do to help.
Rather than being content with letting this problem roll over us, I want to provide some guidance to help you wrestle with actions you could take to help your team move forward. I believe that it’s possible to move from languishing to flourishing. In this season, we must help all our team members take steps away from languishing and toward flourishing. Ultimately, we need people to grow their relationship with Jesus because He anchors our forward-facing steps.
Our friends at Medi-Share have released a particularly helpful study in light of the issues in Grant’s article. This study is called the “10 Things About Mental Health Every Pastor and Leader Should Know” and its findings can help us figure out a way forward for our teams.
3 Actions Your Church Can Take to Help Languishing Team Members
Actively de-stigmatize counseling // One of the shocking statistics that stood out in the Medi-Share study was that 71% of pastors fear their congregation knowing that they’re getting counseling. Counseling has been an important part of my journey as a leader over the last 10 years. I have found it exceedingly helpful. In my marriage, it’s been a source of joy as we’ve taken time to slow down and draw from a trusted advisor who can help us wrestle through what God has to say about our relationship and help me think about thinking.
Gone is the season where pastors and church leaders need to think about themselves as superhuman. This statistic made me sad to think that there are still many pastors out there who fear that people in the church may think less of them for seeking personal counsel. Because in fact, the opposite is true. Investing in your own mental health by seeking counsel is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.
As a leadership team, we not only need to provide access to counseling as a way of helping our team grow but actively work at de-stigmatizing it. Casually talk about it in your leadership teams. Ensure that the way you speak about it from the stage is pro-counseling. Find ways to encourage your staff to connect with counseling. Medi-Share provides remote counseling to its member churches, which is incredible! Learn more about it here. I’ve found remote counseling to be immensely effective and easy to slot into my life during this season. It could be a perfect tool to offer your teammates as they navigate the post-pandemic period.
What can you do to help remove any hesitation around getting counseling for your team?
Help Your Team Make Professional Friends // According to the Medi-Share study, 75% of pastors said they felt isolated and alone, both personally and professionally. We all know that people who feel isolated present a real danger to their mental health and the mental health of those around them. The stereotype of the lone pastor sitting in their office, whittling away on their latest sermon while dealing with current church pressures has some truth to it. Ministry can be a lonely profession even for people serving on a team. We must turn this around for our people!
Within your staff community, ensure that you are creating opportunities for people to connect. One of the most important things that people need to succeed in any job is a “work friend”. It is our responsibility to structure opportunities for friendships to develop and grow. Taking time out to do something social has always been important for our teams and is doubly important in this season. You could also provide opportunities for your people to develop friendships external to your church.
Part of the reason why we run online coaching cohorts at unSeminary for executive pastors and team members is that we want people to develop friendships across the country. One of the amazing outcomes of the pandemic is that people are increasingly more comfortable with meeting and developing relationships online. These professional huddles are an important tool for people to develop friendships and not feel isolated. Sharing problems that you’re having at your church with others can be a breath of fresh air and you’ll realize that you’re not alone.
How can you help your team make more professional friends in the next six months?
Encourage People to Live a Healthy Lifestyle // It is a best practice to provide health benefits for your church. Now might be a great season for you to look at the health benefits that you provide. Ensure that whatever benefit program you’re using provides a full complement of mental health resources. It would be good to review these benefits with your team to ensure they understand the importance of accessing every mental health opportunity that your insurance solution offers.
I’ve also seen various creative ways to encourage healthier living in church staff and members. Here are a few that may inspire you:
Healthy Living Team Competitions // Where teams compete for who lives the healthiest life! Who can drop the largest percentage of weight during a given time? Fun! (Like “The Biggest Loser” but just for your staff teams.)
Actively Encouraging Exercise // I’ve seen churches provide exercise plans and encourage teams to get out and exercise on “company time”. This is not only for participants to feel better about their bodies but for them to also grow their relationships.
Rethinking the Church Snacks // One of the real dangers of working in a local church is it seems like everywhere we go donuts and carbs are targeting our health and trying to bring us down to the stereotypical image of the overweight pastor. We need to work against this. When was the last time that you looked carefully at the snacks provided within your church environment? We must ensure that the snacks we provide reflect the lifestyle we hope our teams will follow.
What actions could you take to encourage your entire team to live a healthier lifestyle?
Are you looking for more help for your team in the mental health area? Download this resource.
This report will give you a clear understanding of what’s happening within your church team. It could be a great discussion starter. Download this report and email it to everybody on your staff team. At your next team meeting, pull out a few statistics as a starting point to help your team think through and wrestle with their own mental health and how a positive environment can be created for your team.
Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
If you are trying to find, develop and keep young leaders on your team look no further than Leadership Pathway. They have worked with hundreds of churches, and have interviewed thousands of candidates over the past several years. They are offering a new ebook about five of the core competencies that are at the heart of the leadership development process with every church that they partner with…just go to leadershippathway.org/unseminary to pick up this free resource.
Pete Briscoe’s Lessons from Coming Alongside Senior Leaders to Help with Communication & Self Care
May 13, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Pete Briscoe, who served as the senior pastor for nearly three decades at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, Texas, and now consults with and coaches pastors.
He is with us today to talk about growing communication skills to improve preaching as well as how we can find deeper fulfillment in our work and lives.
Coaching church leaders. // While at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, Pete recognized that he would cycle through ups and downs where he would do really well when they were in the middle of building something new, but then would become very restless and bored with normal day-to-day ministry. This internal struggle was something that Pete largely battled alone, feeling like many people couldn’t understand or weren’t safe to share with. As the highs became higher and the lows lower, Pete made a decision to step down from his position to get help. He asked himself, “Can I do this role and be a healthy person at the same time?” and ultimately decided it was time for a change. After he stepped down from the senior pastor position, Pete and his wife decided to sell their house, purchase an RV and head to the mountains. They now drive around the country, going to different cities and working to coach and consult with church and business leaders.
Success vs fulfillment. // Pete takes a look at self-care and communications when coaching church leaders. One of the things Pete discovered on his own journey is that there is a difference between the engineering of success and the art of fulfillment. The success side of leading can be more of a science – we do certain things and the Lord blesses it and it tends to work, but we may still be left with a lack of personal fulfillment inside. Fulfillment is more of an art which is individual and personalized. There are spiritual, relational, and generosity factors involved.
Dream about the future. // When it comes to self-care, Pete spends a day with church leaders in order to walk through what their life looks like now, and what’s broken and stuck. He asks questions about what’s working and what needs to change, go, or stay. From there Pete helps his clients spend a lot of time dreaming about the future and what they want their life to look like. Many pastors tend to think that they will spend their whole lives in church ministry and don’t think about what comes next. So Pete helps people sort through these conflicts and feelings and plan for the future. Then Pete helps them put together a life plan to get there.
Uncovering who we are. // Who pastors really are can get lost in the persona we create. It is appropriate not to share everything with the whole body of believers, but that also creates a slightly different person than who we really are. In time, who we really are gets lost in that bigger public persona. In Pete’s conversations with pastors, he draws out this knowledge, asking: What’s real about you? What’s not? What’s going on behind the scenes that no one else knows about?
Improve communication. // Pete also helps pastors apply communication theory and pragmatic communication to preaching. As people become better communicators, it helps them to become better preachers too. Pete is also launching a course to help pastors grow their preaching skills. A two-hour session helps leaders learn how to craft a gripping message. Part of the course includes working on a sermon and then recording its execution so that Pete can help pastors tighten up their presentation and delivery.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge
One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the time after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!
Pitfalls and Possibilities of VR Church with Jonathan Armstrong
May 06, 2021
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Jonathan Armstrong today, an educator who has also helped run the virtual reality (VR) lab at Moody Bible Institute.
Our perspective on what technology is and how it’s affecting our world keeps changing. In fact as younger generations have grown up with certain technologies, they don’t realize how much these things influence the world we live in today. However, technology is incredibly important to people’s lives and that means that pastoral care has to embrace it and learn to respond to it. Listen in as Jonathan shares the possibilities and pitfalls of using virtual reality in our churches in the future.
What is VR? // Virtual Reality at its core is a type of internet technology – a way of interacting with data streams online. VR products, such as headsets and motion tracking, allow you to manipulate, interact with and experience data in real space. In a broad sense a virtual church is any way you convene as a community using online technology, such as watching a livestream of church or meeting as a small group over Zoom. But more narrowly, a virtual church could be one that meets entirely on a virtual reality platform like AltspaceVR or Facebook Horizon.
More virtual gatherings. // Very few churches exclusively use an online VR platform for their services, but many more churches have some sort of virtual meeting space where church online is streamed. In the future, Jonathan believes that significant numbers of people will use VR as a way to congregate. While Zoom was the medium of choice for meeting in 2020, the next two to five years will likely show a transition to more VR as goggles and other products becomes more affordable and accessible. However VR will open the door to not just a local gathering online, but rather a global one with people from many different countries. It will be a totally new kind of church experience.
Think outside the box. // Whereas Zoom does boardroom table discussions well, VR is a much more abstract form of media. While you could do a boardroom discussion in VR, you would be massively underutilizing it’s creative potential. So when it comes to VR church, don’t simply think about replicating the inside of your building, with people virtually sitting in pews, staring at the front of the room. Rather, think of VR as something that can communicate Christian truth in any way you want. Facebook perceives that this is the most powerful communication medium that humankind has ever invented. This technology can change human history as much as the printing press did in our past.
Pitfalls and possibilities. // In considering VR, the first mistake we should avoid is the assumption that it will be a tool to translate everything we currently do in a church service effectively into another format. While VR could replicate our current productions, it doesn’t play to the medium’s strengths. We need to be creative theologians in this matter and we can’t be afraid to fail as we innovate and try new things. Some possibilities could include immersing ourselves in stories from the Bible, or pastors putting themselves in a “Paul” avatar while preaching from the book of Ephesians. There could be a “community theater” approach to the Bible as well where participants show up in VR “dressed up” as different characters and enact as a community a story from scripture. And the possibilities for Christmas or Easter are endless.
Communicating the truth visually. // 65% percent of people are visual learners and VR challenges us to think more visually as we communicate truth. We are now living in a post-literate society. That doesn’t mean that people can’t read, but rather they can and choose not to. Our current forms of church are built for the highly literate person of the 1700s who reads and studies scripture, but we need to carry traditions of focusing on the Word into a world that has been influenced by radio, TV, and the internet. Using VR to communicate truth visually can become part of that new form of church.
You can learn more about Jonathan and his work at Aqueduct Project.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Practical Strategy for Developing High-Capacity Volunteers with Danny Franks
Apr 29, 2021
Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast! This week I’m chatting with a repeat guest, Danny Franks, Pastor of Guest Services at The Summit Church. The Summit Church has twelve locations around North Carolina and the heart of the church is set on sending. They continually want their people to be asking: how does God want to use me and send me?
As a church grows, it’s not uncommon for the culture and DNA to get watered down. The Summit Church realized that as they launched more campuses and moved to a central model, the guest experience looked drastically different from one campus to another. Listen in as Danny shares how to examine your church’s DNA and replicate it by developing high-capacity volunteers that will in turn invest in others.
We can’t send people that we don’t keep. // In order to be a good sending church, we first need to learn how to be a good receiving church. For The Summit Church this meant taking a good look at their guest services experience at each of their campuses. Guest services covers a person’s visit from the street to the seat and everything in between. It’s about making sure the church is doing everything it can to help its guests know that they’ve been expected, planned for, and that the church is excited to have them return.
What is your DNA? // To create a uniform guest services experience at each of your campuses, first ask: What is our DNA when it comes to caring for guests? It will be a process to talk through who the church is and what it looks like to welcome guests well and help them take their next step toward the gospel. After a lot of prayer and discussion through these questions, Danny developed a High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort to help communicate the church’s DNA surrounding guest services clearly to all the campuses.
Identify your high-capacity volunteers. // The High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort is an eight-month journey where a small group of two to five volunteers from each campus come together. At The Summit Church there are about thirty volunteers that are a part of the Cohort at one time. They meet each month for an hour and a half to discuss books and principles that help everyone understand what the church’s DNA is. The books cover a wide swath of topics and serve as a springboard for the monthly conversation and there is always a practical component to what they teach. Ultimately the goal of the Cohort is to equip volunteers to be better leaders.
Invest and Influence. // As the Pastor of Guest Services, Danny has a dotted line relationship with the Guest Services Directors at each campus. They report directly to the campus pastor and may be responsible for guest services as well as things like small groups and membership. Sometimes all of their responsibilities feel like an impossible task but when they are identifying high-capacity volunteers who are in turn trained, they are replicating themselves in a smaller group that can then go on to invest in and influence others. The Cohort process has allowed the Directors to be more like shepherds and less like administrators. And it’s empowered volunteers to find areas of need where they can pitch in and help with specific problems.
Where to begin? // You don’t have to be a multisite church or a mega church to start a High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort. Any leader should be looking for who their high-capacity people are and invest in them. The first question to ask as a leader is what’s the win? What are you trying to accomplish with this cohort? What is your timeframe? Your cohort doesn’t have to last 8 months – you can do a smaller, focused version over six weeks. Next define the parts of that DNA that you want to clearly communicate. If you have trouble identifying who your high-capacity volunteers are, that may indicate there is a problem with your leadership pipeline. Something needs to shift to make sure you are regularly identifying and bringing in those potential high-capacity people. Also be aware of not having a clear end goal in sight. For more tips on how to begin, download this PDF: High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort: A How-To Guide.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
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Practical Help for Church Leaders in Emotional and Spiritual Growth with Bill & Kristi Gaultiere
Apr 22, 2021
Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. This week I’m excited to talk with Bill and Kristi Gaultiere from the organization Soul Shepherding. Bill and Kristi felt called to study psychology for the purpose of ministry, and serve as spiritual directors and pastors to pastors. Soul Shepherding offers resources and training for pastors and leaders and the people they influence in order to thrive with Jesus.
Over the last year the sacrifices of ministry have gone way up while the rewards have gone way down, and that’s a tough combination for pastors. It’s led to many pastors feeling tired and soul-weary, or burned out as they’ve had to postpone retreats, sabbaticals or even vacations. Listen in as Bill and Kristi share how to nurture your inflow as a church leader to make sure it matches all that you’re outflowing for sustainable ministry.
Inflows and outflows. // With everything that’s happened over the last year, there seems to be an epidemic of tired and burned out leaders. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to want to pour ourselves out as a drink offering to God. Being called into ministry is exciting and great work and it’s worth giving our all and sacrificing for, but we have to do it in a way that’s sustainable. We can lose touch with our own needs because we focus so much on helping everyone else. Nourish that inner flow of the Spirit in you. This is where Bill and Kristi step in to help as they foster soul care and intimacy with Jesus for leaders through conversations and spiritual direction.
Spiritual direction. // Spiritual direction is simply a context of meeting with someone who is really trained to listen closely to the Lord. The Holy Spirit is really the spiritual director, but Bill and Kristi listen with the pastors they serve to what God is saying and doing in pastors’ lives. Ultimately it can be something that helps people work through a healthier rhythm of life with spiritual disciplines to what is sustainable and life giving for them.
The CHRIST model. // Jesus defines the journey of our lives so Bill and Kristi use the CHRIST model to identify six stages of faith. This model is about (1) Confidence in Christ, (2) Help in Discipleship, (3) Responsibilities in Ministry, (4) Inner Journey, (5) Spirit-Led Ministry, and (6) Transforming Union. Our churches are really good at helping people with the first three stages on this list as people come to Christ, and get involved at church. Because of the need for efficiency, consumerism, and so on, what’s harder in western church is the second half of these stages.
Facing the wall in front of us. // It’s around stage 4, the Inner Journey, where people hit a wall in their lives. At the wall, the trial we experience becomes a place of stuck-ness, where our discipleship is stalling and we’re spiritually dry, or we have faith questions that aren’t being answered. In each stage, different spiritual disciplines and soul care practices are likely to be helpful. As Bill and Kristi work through these stages with people, they are able to personalize the discipleship process based on the stage someone is in and what they need.
Receive God’s grace. // We develop a gap between what we know intellectually and have learned in our work versus how we are living and habits we have. Pastors can believe and teach about God’s grace, but not be living it out in terms of letting God care for them. We need to accept that we can’t just minister to others; sometimes we need to let others minister to us too. We can’t grow alone – our spiritual growth is intrinsically connected to other believers and we need the body of Christ no matter if we are a pastor or someone in the congregation.
Help for your leaders. // Bill and Kristi wanted others to benefit from all God gave to them and so they wrote a book, “Journey of the Soul: A Practical Guide to Spiritual and Emotional Growth”. Bill and Kristi love to spend time with pastors and staff walking them through the “Journey of the Soul” and teaching them about the stages of the CHRIST model. Staff applies what they learn to their own lives first, and then come together to strengthen the community and the mission by teaching the model to small group leaders through resources provided at journeyofthesoul.org.
You can find out more about Bill and Kristi’s book, bulk orders, and other resources and training materials at journeyofthesoul.org, and you can learn more about Soul Shepherding at www.soulshepherding.org.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
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How to Beat the Spring Lull & Gain Momentum at Your Church
Apr 21, 2021
The season between Easter and summer is a strange one in the life of a church.
Many churches gain momentum coming up to Easter and then find the weeks that follow before summer arrives, drag on.
In any other year, this lull in momentum can feel difficult to climb out of; however, this spring is particularly difficult as we all try to come out of a COVID-induced coma that so many communities seem to be in.
We naturally anticipate seeing more people attend online and in-person services as summer approaches, but this spring you might be feeling a larger “drag” on momentum than in other years. Momentum is a key asset that every leader needs to consider when they make decisions in their church. This spring is no exception.
Momentum is forward motion fueled by a series of wins. We need to be looking for ways to both generate and increase momentum in our churches.
3 Components of Generating Momentum
When looking for ways to build positive momentum in the life of your church, you should be looking at either introducing new aspects to your ministry or improve preexisting ones.
NEW // Anything new in your ministry will trigger momentum. It could be new leadership, new direction, or new offerings. Momentum is rarely triggered by tweaking something old. It is triggered by introducing something new! Of course, momentum can be positive or negative.
IMPROVED // The new must be a noticeable improvement from the old. As leaders, we must consider if what we’re adding is a significant improvement over what we’ve already been doing. If you are in a situation where there is not enough money to do something new and improved, you are doing too many things.
IMPROVING // Momentum is sustained through continuous improvement. It’s a flywheel. Continuous improvement requires systematic and unfiltered evaluation. You may need to take a long and hard look at what you’ve been doing and find ways to make significant improvements to it.
3 Steps to Increase Momentum
As your church moves through a series of things that go well, you will gain momentum.
Whether this is volunteer engagement, overall community engagement, or even finances, your church needs to move from one step to another when it comes to gaining momentum.
We need to identify what we win at and show our people that good things are happening in our churches. It really is as simple as these three steps:
Set a Goal. // First set a goal that is attainable and will stretch your community. Communicate the goal as widely as possible and begin rallying your people toward this. Make sure that the desired outcome is understood by your community.
Exceed the Goal. // Develop plans for executing your goal that will ensure you exceed your desirable outcome. It’s important to build your plan around exceeding your goal. How will you help your team reach higher than their target?
Celebrate the Wins! // Many churches are simply not good at celebrating when good things happen. There’s so much negative going on around us. A part of what we need to do is to slow down and celebrate. Build a plan and factor in the celebration at the end. Celebrate that you not only succeeded in attaining your goal but that you also exceeded it!
Consider what areas you could help in adding momentum to your church this spring. To do this, think about investing in several things that will help your people be more engaged with the mission of your church.
6 Ideas to Inject Momentum in The Spring Of 2021
Below are six ideas that your church leadership team could brainstorm when planning on injecting new momentum into your church. Each one of these ideas can be examined against the rubric above: set goals, exceed those goals, and then celebrate the win.
How could you take one of these ideas and make it “new or improved” in your context?
Another round of phone calls. // One of the most fascinating wins over this last year has been the number of times I’ve talked to church leaders and they’ve celebrated the fact that their church has directly called hundreds or thousands of their community members. Many large churches have added this to their game plan over the last year and have commented that they will continue this practice as they look forward. A group of well-trained volunteers reaching out adds a personal touch and shows that your church cares. It will also boost volunteers as they are inspired and trained to excel in this practice.
Community service. // We’ve talked about this in a lot of other contexts but getting your people out of their seats and into the streets to make a difference in their community is an amazing way to not only be the church but also be the kind of church that your people want to be a part of. Spring is a perfect time to get out and make a difference in your community. Reach out to some community leaders and find out what needs must be met this spring. Even a park cleanup can be a great way to give back to a community. Regathering people around the practice of community service is always a win.
Connection events. // Building strategic social events this spring could be a way to add momentum to your community. Many of our churches and people that attend them have been socially disconnected for a long time and building intentional events designed to help people reconnect with others in their neighborhood, or maybe their town, would be a great win! In many communities across the country, this is a perfect season to get people to reunite. Planning events with the goal of attendees developing friendships (not listening to us talk) is what will gain you momentum in your church this spring.
Invite your people to invite their people. // For so long, during this intra-COVID period, we’ve seen a decrease in our people inviting friends to come to church, whether it’s online or in-person. This season would be a great time to build an “invite your friends” campaign. Whether it’s around a specific series or an upcoming big day, this is a great season to remind people about their important role in expanding the kingdom of Christ.
Plan and launch a church-wide campaign. // This would be a great season to launch a chuch wide campaign that attempts to align weekend services, small groups, kids ministry and personal learning experiences. Church’s that have run a campaign like Red Letter Challenge have seen a boost in engagement on multiple levels. Even the effort of pulling together a campaign can be such a momentum builder for your team!
Try that crazy idea. // Have you had a wacky idea sitting in the back of your mind? One that you’re not sure whether you should action? Take this as permission to try it out. We’re still in an intra-COVID period where our communities will not only accept but be willing to try new things. Maybe it’s a new community service project, a new way of doing weekend services, or a creative series of messages you’d like to present. Try something new this spring. Reach out to 10 other churches and ask them what the biggest risk they’ve taken in the past year is. Then implement it at your church.
Looking for more help to build momentum into spring? Download these resources.
Increase Your Church’s Volunteer Community with This Proven Multisite Expansion Tactic PDF // In this resource we dive into the mindset behind great connection events and give you lots of practical help to ensure your team does them right!
8 Lessons Learned from Making 2,005 Phone Calls PDF // In this resource we pull apart key lessons from a church-wide calling campaign where we contacted over 2,000 people in less than two weeks. You’ll find lots of actionable ideas for your church this spring!
Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge
One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the time after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!
Turning Obstacles into Opportunities: Church Real Estate Lessons with Andy Wood
Apr 15, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Andy Wood, founding and lead pastor of Echo Church in California.
Many times in ministry, the thing that should be an obstacle actually can become an opportunity if we think about it differently. Echo Church held strongly to this idea when it came to finding a building in the pricey San Francisco Bay area. Listen in as Andy shares how the spiritual and the strategic can work together to uncover God-sized opportunities.
Look for opportunities. // When it came to finding a location that the church could afford, Andy first turned to God in prayer. Echo Church held the mindset that if Facebook and Google could get into a building, they should be able to as well. As he sought God, the Lord began to speak to Andy’s heart to be like a Joshua or a Caleb in the Bay Area. This idea meant instead of seeing only the obstacles in the real estate market, they had to look for opportunities.
Spiritual and strategic. // Meanwhile on the strategic side, Echo Church looked at what kind of facility they would be able to afford so they could pack it out with services. The spiritual and the strategic need to work together in these situations. Use eyes of faith to see possibilities, and then on the strategic side look at your trajectory of growth and what you could raise in your budget.
Invest for the future. // Echo Church ended up moving into a 54,000 square foot building, though they could only afford to use 22,000 square feet initially. Yet they saw an opportunity there. They established a relationship with the owner of the building and asked if they could be the master tenant and pay the landlord what he was making to rent out the whole building, some of which was empty. Echo Church did a giving initiative, signed a 35 year master lease, raised the value of the property through improvements, and found companies in the area to fill the open 20% of the building. As the church grew it eventually brought the cost down so it could begin to invest in other properties.
Generosity begins with the leader. // It’s easy for leaders to lean too far toward the strategic and forget about the spiritual aspect of these opportunities and giving initiatives. The bottom line is generosity has to begin with the leaders. Andy has found that as he works on his own personal generosity, God moves to stir generosity up in the church too. Remember that your health as a leader influences everything you touch and everything you lead.
Fundraising. // The spiritual and the strategic partner in capital campaigns as much as in any other area. Raising funds needs to begin with prayer and working on your personal generosity. From a strategic standpoint, seek training on fundraising. Every time you’re raising resources or casting vision, however, it has to be deep in your heart and not simply strategic.
Be aware of the trade-offs. // The more aware you are of the different trade-offs in going into debt, the better decisions you can make. In some contexts it might be wisest to pay off all your debt, and in other situations it’s wisest to absorb debt. Extremes on both sides (having debt or not having debt) can become an idol. At the same time you don’t want so much debt that it cripples other areas of your ministry. Whatever your unique situation, recognize that there are trade-offs for every financial decision you make.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Carey Nieuwhof
Leadership has felt pretty uncertain and divisive this past year. How do you make decisions when the future isn’t predictable and your team has different opinions? Download the FREE Pivot Ready Cheat Sheet to get help making progress and gaining clarity through rapid change and disruption. It will give you a framework that effective and resilient leaders use to make decisions and take action.
Loving the Church You Serve with Carl Kuhl
Apr 08, 2021
Thanks for joining us for this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with church planter and lead pastor Carl Kuhl from Mosaic Christian Church in Maryland. Mosaic was planted in the fall of 2008, launching first in a movie theater, and has become one of the fastest growing churches in the country.
When planting a new church, many leaders are tempted to copy culture from other churches and then create systems of their own. In reality we need to do just the opposite. Listen in as Carl shares some ways to help your church discover its culture and stay true to it.
Copy systems and create culture. // There’s nothing wrong with borrowing from other churches that are doing something well, especially when it comes to systems, such as assimilation, discipleship, and so on. When you are planting a new church, don’t be afraid to borrow from books, conferences or other churches for your church’s system development. Culture, on the other hand, can’t be borrowed. Spend your creative energy and focus on developing your own unique culture as a church, which will be greatly influenced by you as the leader, your experiences and personality, as well as the area where you are planting.
Don’t lose your culture. // When Carl planted Mosaic Christian, the goal was to be a church where open brokenness is the thing that’s celebrated above all else. When a church knows what its thing is, it can be really powerful, but you have to stick to it with confidence. Churches can get lost when they try to be something they’re not or when they try to change their culture every few years. Go on a journey as a leader and a team to explore and arrive at this idea of what your church’s culture really is. Then hold on to it and build everything around that idea.
Know where you are called to lead. // When you’re a leader, even of something like a small group, you have to love the thing you lead or you won’t last there. Don’t just believe in it or agree with it. If your heart isn’t drawn to it and doesn’t love it, it may not be the place for you. We need to identify as leaders: What type of church do I want to attend? What kind of community am I drawn to? These types of questions helped direct Carl when it came to creating the culture of Mosaic Christian.
Embrace the culture. // Carl and his wife wanted to create a community that was on mission, but also a place where they’d find deep friendships themselves. Because open brokenness is such a part of Mosaic Christian’s culture, Carl knew he had to model that vulnerability in his own life as well. This meant talking about areas of personal struggle from the stage while preaching so others would see his honesty about his own brokenness. How are you modeling the the aspects of your church’s culture that you are asking others to embrace?
Church planters don’t all look the same. // When Carl began to pursue planting a church, he felt like he didn’t fit the mold of what a church planter “should” be. He realized that most of what we’ve heard about church planting is wrong because we place God’s abilities in a box and limit the possible impact on the kingdom as a result. It inspired Carl to write a book based on his experiences, The Contrarian’s Guide to Church Planting, which is less of a how-to book and more about letting God use the gifts and wiring He’s given you. Don’t be limited by what a spiritual gift test says you should or shouldn’t do. Rather identify the things in you that can be used and pour gas on them. Most of all, be yourself and the unique leader God created you to be.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge
One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the Sunday right after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!
3 Key Lessons For Your Church From a Study of 20,000 Online Events
Apr 06, 2021
Recently, a report entitled The State of Virtual Events 2021 was released, which looked at the experiences of 100 leading brands that ran over 20,000 online events in the last year. This study explores these brands’ thinking around online events as they have made the “great pivot” to utilize this option more and more.
Like your church and mine, we are all trying to figure out how this new online world will impact our organizations moving forward. As I delved into the report, I found there were a number of lessons that we could pull out to apply to our own operations as we look to the future. The report examined 100 leading brands and the lessons they have learned from running online events of various kinds over the last year. The events included webinars, online summits, online conferences, and various virtual sales, marketing, and communication efforts.
The types of brands that were included are household names such as:
Nestlé: A producer of baby food, medical food, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods, and snacks. 29 of Nestlé’s brands have annual sales of over $1 billion, including Nespresso, Nescafé, Kit Kat, Smarties, Nesquik, Stouffer’s, Vittel, and Maggi. Nestlé has 447 factories, operates in 189 countries, and employs around 339,000 people.
Condé Nast: This company’s media brands attract more than 72 million consumers in print, 394 million in digital and 454 million across social platforms. Titles include Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Pitchfork, Wired, and Bon Appetit among many others.
Volkswagen: Who for over 80 years have been putting more volks in wagens! Their brands include zippy cars like Golf, Jetta, Passat, Atlas, and Tiguan. The company is worth $141 billion and has a sprawling operation that includes a huge presence in its largest market: China.
One of the things that jumped out at me in this report was that 51% of the respondents reported that they had hosted their first virtual event in the last 12 months. [ref] This made me lean in, because so many churches across the country have made their pivot to church online for the very first time since the pandemic rolled out in March 2020. The entire world is figuring out how to work more online, and while some of us have been leading churches online for ten plus years, many churches are experiencing this new online reality for the first time.
58% of the people surveyed in this report believe that they will invest more in online events as they look to 2021 and beyond. [ref] That is probably due to the fact that 91% of respondents say that these experiences were successful. These two statistics together led me to conclude that we need to extract lessons from the marketplace to apply to what our churches are doing online.
As we continue to work out what it means to be a “hybrid church”, which many of us are leaning towards in this current culture, it really does feel like we have all made the pivot to online; but now we are asking ourselves, what next?
In those few days in March 2020, we jumped in and implemented a tremendous amount of infrastructure to work out how to present church online. Many churches started by adding midweek content, communication, and connection events, but have since dropped those or have experimented with new things. However, we are now at the stage where we are looking up over the horizon and trying to assess how to navigate the world into this next reality.
In the last week alone, I have held multiple conversations with church leaders around this issue.
Recently, I was talking to a senior leader who wanted to get back to a world where they did not have to worry about church online. After serving the church for multiple decades, this leader finds the recurrent nature of preparing timely messages for a mid-week video shoot unsettling, and even after a year has been unable to settle into the rhythm of creating online content.
I have also received feedback from an executive pastor who is attempting to balance the staffing and financial resources required to successfully present both online church and in-person services. As the pastor was trying to reorganize their team and think through priorities, they found it difficult to make effective leadership decisions in this intra-COVID-19 time.
I recall speaking to a staff leader who was passionate about the early gains they have seen in their particular ministry area because of their online offerings. Although the ministry was reaching more people than ever before and seeing people take steps closer to Jesus, the staff leader was afraid that the church leadership was going to drop these learnings and new areas of ministry prematurely.
So, what can we learn from these 100 leading brands and the 20,000 events that they have hosted over the last year?
Here are three lessons taken from this report that I believe are particularly applicable to your church and mine.
Online Events Drive Both Engagement and Awareness
45.3% of the respondents believe that these online events create deeper engagement with their particular audience. Making up the second-largest category, 18.9% believe that these online events build stronger awareness in their market. [ref] Engagement is critically important when thinking about online events. We have all realized that the vanity metrics of Facebook likes or YouTube views do not ultimately tell us if we are creating a deepening commitment with users.
We are attempting to drive engagement by encouraging people to take further steps like joining in the various chat environments or downloading a free resource. We want people to move beyond participating only as a passive viewer and to actively connect and engage with our online offerings. The businesses in the study saw this as a measurable way to continue engagement.
These businesses also believe that online participation is an important tool for building awareness. Building community awareness is not something that church leaders give much thought to. But in an increasingly online world, we must think very carefully about how we ensure that people are simply aware of who we are.
If people don’t know that we exist, they won’t take those first steps into our community.
Our online church experience has always been a great way to build community awareness in the halo of people around our church. This will continue to be the case in the coming years as our churches look to reach people who are not yet connected with us.
Over this last year, many churches have reported to me that they have connected with new people who previously would not have come through their door, whether local or on the other side of the world. Part of the reason for this is that their online experience is driving more awareness in the community at large. As we look to the future, how can your church’s online experience build more community awareness through deeply engaging experiences?
Evolving Tech Platforms for Church Uses
50.3% of the businesses surveyed said that Zoom was their primary tool for running an online event. [ref] Likewise, many churches across the country have used Zoom as a tool for small groups or training, or maybe even for the weekend service itself. However, a fascinating aspect of this study is that beyond Zoom, there is an incredibly diverse array of software technology platforms used for online events.
Each one of these platforms, whether it be YouTube, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, GoToWebinar, On24, or WebEx (and the list goes on), represents opportunities for your church to reach new audiences and to engage people in fresh ways.
One of our new realities, as we continue to deal with the online space, will be the need to consistently explore the latest platforms as they evolve so that we can expand our message to further locations. Like a tech startup, we should be consistently looking to the horizon, capturing those emerging platforms that might present opportunities for us to reach new people.
I have been particularly impressed with the work at Sandals Church, where they have taken an omni-channel approach to church online. They use a multiplicity of online platforms for posting their church experiences, and either build channel-specific content or customize the content to resonate with each platform. Whether it is Roku, Facebook, YouTube, or a panacea of other solutions, Sandals is finding a way to connect on multiple platforms.
The future of our church online experiences will not be locked into a single environment but will reflect an omni-channel future. Sandals is already pointing the way towards this future.
Online is Here to Stay
One of the strongest findings to come from this study of 100 companies is that 85.3% of the company leaders surveyed believe that online events are here to stay. [ref]
Rather than being a blip that arose during the pandemic and that will later be dropped, these marketers, communicators, and leaders believe that online events will remain and become a part of their future.
This is astonishing when you consider that a year ago, half of these leaders were not running online events at all. This reflects the experience of many churches across the country. However, I still run into church leaders who are thinking about dropping their church online experiences as fast as they possibly can. Please don’t do that.
The future of your church and mine is a hybrid model where some people will engage with us only online and have a full-orbed experience that will help them step closer to Jesus, while others will also continue to attend our in-person experiences, much as they did prior to the pandemic.
How can we take the best of one to improve the other?
What can we do to make our in-person experiences leverage some of the great benefits of our online experiences? What have we learned from our community about our online experiences that can make our in-person experiences even better? And vice versa, how do we continue to push towards an online experience that incorporates some of that human touch that comes more easily and naturally from an in-person experience?
Online experiences are here to stay, and we must continue to find ways to leverage them as we look to the future.
Looking for More Help as You Think About the Online Hybrid Future of Your Church?
The State of Virtual Events 2021: A study of 20,000 events run by 100 top brands, from which this article has drawn useful lessons. This report provides insight into what marketplace leaders think about online events.
160+ Online Event Examples: A spreadsheet of actual events that have been hosted in the last year. Perfect for helping your team think outside the box!
Helping Leaders Slow Down with Christa Hesselink
Apr 01, 2021
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Christa Hesselink, founder of the organization SoulPlay. SoulPlay offers creative experiences, curated resources, and personal support to help individuals and groups dig deeper, listen well, and journey towards loving themselves, others, God, and our world, well.
The last twelve months have been incredibly demanding for church leaders and more than ever we are learning that we can’t ignore what’s going on in our inner lives. In fact the busier we are, the quieter we need to become because success isn’t found in achieving and doing. Listen in as Christa shares how slowing down and re-centering ourselves on God helps us to love well in our ministries and lives.
Pay attention to your inner life. // From her own experience in ministry and taking a sabbatical, Christa knew that people needed to learn to slow down and ground themselves in God. But since the pandemic, church and ministry leaders are also learning just how much is inside them that they can no longer ignore. Slowing down can bring up a lot of insecurities, and leaders are sometimes afraid of feeling vulnerable and facing the problems they encounter in their work and life. It’s much easier to achieve and do, but these aren’t true measures of success. Rather our primary work needs to be slowing down and centering ourselves in God. Only from that standpoint can we observe the habits of our thinking and emotional terrain which need renewal.
Show don’t tell. // Since the start of the pandemic, 20% of those who previously identified themselves as regular church attenders never returned in any way (online or in-person) to church. People are longing for a format that transforms and want an experience with their life in God rather than simply mental instruction. 70% of the population filters the world through their senses so we need to think about experiences that show how to believe, not just what to believe. SoulPlay specializes in offering creative experiences to connect people to God. Think about how you can incorporate experiences like these at your church.
More than thoughts and emotions. // Leaders struggle with slowing down because they don’t know how much they need it. Western Protestant faith tends to be left-brained in nature, influencing people to wrongly believe that just acquiring more knowledge will make us more like Jesus. We can be so disconnected from more right-brained activities, like worship or listening prayer, that we don’t know how to quiet ourselves and work on the inner landscape of our lives. Spiritual formation takes a look at what is the soul and what is the connection between the mind, heart, and body.
Direct your attention to God. // As we do the inner work needed in our lives, there is not a cookie cutter plan that works for every person. However, curiosity and courage are required to move ahead into new spaces no matter who we are. Christa offers spiritual direction and coaching in which she does a lot of listening to her clients, helping them to direct their own attention to God. SoulPlay is like an outfitter for the spiritual life, offering retreats and workshops as a way to introduce people to slowing down and giving them the opportunity to turn inward.
Personal Pandemic Evaluation. // Christa has given us a free tool to help in slowing down and paying attention to our inner lives during this season. It is a set of questions called the Personal Pandemic Evaluation and provides a list of questions to use alone or with your family or staff. Through a time of reflection this tool will help you process the last twelve months as well as its losses and gains, how they are connected, and what you’re looking forward to in the future.
Christa works with clients all over North America and you can learn more about SoulPlay and connect with Christa at www.soulplay.ca.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
How to Help People Who are Burned, Bruised, or Wounded in Your Church with Steve Grusendorf
Mar 25, 2021
Welcome to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Steve Grusendorf who is a part of the denominal leadership at the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He started as a local pastor at a CMA church, always serving in leadership development, and a few years ago became involved in this aspect at a denominational level, now serving as Director for Ministry Studies.
Leading a congregation through crisis—whether it’s a moral failure, a sudden transition, or something else—is a unique challenge that leaders may not always feel equipped to handle. It can be easy for us to miss the wounded that may already be invested in our church, especially when they’ve been wounded by the church. Listen in as Steve shares how we can get better at spotting and loving the spiritually wounded right within the shadow of the church.
Don’t let awareness fade. // We try to prepare ourselves to help wounded people when they are drawn into the church for the first time, but sometimes we miss those who are hurting and already within our church. We can’t assume that everyone who regularly attends our church and is involved on some level is ok, or is even a believer.
Avoid the perfection trap. // Within the church, we know we aren’t perfect, but no one talks about it. There is a difference between the living church and the local church. The living church is all believers and you have to be a genuine follower of Jesus. But the local church is a wide open place to come for healing. It can be filled with believers, skeptics, seekers, and even people who may have less than positive motivations for being there. The local church needs to be the place where people come to be redeemed.
Tell your story. // As a leader, if we only focus on telling our current stories (after following Jesus) we can come off as being perfect. We can’t forget to tell the story of our lives before Jesus. Communicate that the local church is not a place for perfect people, but rather a place for broken and hurting people who want to find healing and redemption. Share the story of how you were one of those people.
Serve, forgive, and pursue. // We may know these three things, but don’t always communicate them from the platforms God gives us. Service has to trump power all the time, and it has to start with the leadership. Leaders, we need to find a place where we are participating in our churches without leading. Be careful about putting power above service.
Aftermath: A book for the spiritually wounded. // Steve wrote his book, Aftermath, for people who are spiritually wounded and also for church leaders who want to get better at spotting and loving the spiritually wounded right within the shadow of the church. Steve saw there was a pattern where people in the church are often unheard and stuck in their pain, and as a result may walk away from the church or God entirely. As leaders, be willing to make yourself available in a variety of ways, and process with others the painful things that are happening in the nationwide and global church.
Watch for wolves. // As leaders we are taught about how to care for the sheep, but not always how to deal with the wolves. We need to be aware that sometimes these people can come from the inside and prey on others. Stay vigilant and look for these three red flags: Firstly, a person who desires leadership without participation in discipleship. Discipleship is more important. Second, a person who desires leadership without demonstration of good follower-ship. To be good leaders we first must be good followers. And third, a person who desires leadership but expects to skip steps to get there.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway
We all want millennials and GenZ on our team to reach the next generation. We need them like never before. But the first years of anything is tough.
Reduce turnover, stresses, avoid the pitfalls of quitting or termination with those who are just beginning their journey by engaging a coach for them.Avoid early departures on your team. Young leaders quitting too soon or getting fired is more than just a sunk cost. Don’t wait to get them a coach to help them face the unique challenges of starting in ministry. Visit Leadership Pathway to see how they can help.
Pandemic to Endemic: Five Questions Your Church May Still Need to Answer About COVID-19
Mar 23, 2021
The cultural and economic impact of COVID-19 is one of the greatest influences on the local church in at least a generation.
Over the last year, we’ve seen COVID-19 impact our ministries in innumerable ways.
In some respects, COVID-19 has accelerated positive change in the local church. The shift to equipping the majority of churches with the means to minister online will no doubt pay dividends for years. People who wouldn’t normally darken the door of a church will have access to the good things that happen there, not to mention we’ll extend our churches’ abilities to serve people outside of the traditional boxes we inhabit. We’ve also seen an incredible push in the last year of churches working in their local communities by partnering with social service agencies and other local organizations to distribute food and care for those in need, which has made a tangible difference on an unprecedented scale!
However, we’ve also seen some negative impacts from COVID-19. There is evidence that 20% of the people that were attending our churches before the pandemic haven’t returned in any form, whether that be in person or online. [ref] It may take us years to figure out how to reengage the people who were with us just over 12 months ago. There’s no doubt that kids’ ministries within most churches across the country have also taken a serious hit during this time. This is particularly troubling when we know that the majority of people who make a decision to follow Jesus do so before the age of 18.
However, on the horizon is a new set of questions that many churches are going to need to face as the COVID-19 pandemic shifts into a new mode of what scientists call an endemic.
In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level in a geographic area without external inputs. For example, chickenpox is endemic in the United States, but malaria is not.
While we are encouraged by the vaccine rollout that’s happening across the U.S. and in many other countries around the world, there is increasing evidence that COVID-19 will shift from being something that we can potentially put in the rearview mirror to something that we’re going to have to live with in the coming years.
I’m not a scientist, nor do I play one on the internet, but I would encourage you to read up on and explore this topic for yourself. We’re going to wrestle with a few questions that I believe our churches may have to face as we shift from pandemic to endemic. First, here are a few articles from reputable sources to begin your journey of learning about COVID-19’s potential pivot from pandemic to endemic:
Health.com: “What Is an Endemic Virus? WHO Warns COVID-19 ‘May Never Go Away‘” // This article covers a recent press conference with the World Health Organization’s Dr. Michael Ryan, the Executive Director of the Health Emergencies program, where he said, “It’s important for us to put this on the table. This virus may become just like another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away. Based on the shifting variants of concern and vaccine rollout, many communities across the world may simply just need to deal with the impact of COVID-19 for years, if not decades, to come.”
Nature | Journal of Science: “The coronavirus is here to stay—here’s what that means” // This study features a recent survey of scientists on the front line, 60% of which said, “It’s very likely that COVID-19 will become an endemic virus, that is one that continues to circulate in pockets of the global population.” It then expands on exactly how it may become endemic. It also discusses pediatric vaccines and how COVID-19 may become similar to chickenpox or other diseases of the young and will continue to flare up across the world.
Reuters: “’When will it end?’: How a changing virus is reshaping scientists’ views on COVID-19” // This article explains clearly, in a non-alarmist way, how the disease continues to shift. It talks about how the U.S. government’s predictions about a return to normal lifestyle repeatedly get pushed back. They’ve been moved back from late summer to Christmas, and then, most recently, to March 2022. It also explores the global reality of how we’re seeing vaccine passports rolled out and what that could potentially mean for travel, as well as other realities that are being foisted upon us thanks to COVID-19.
The conclusion that I’m left with as a leader is that there’s a very real potential that, although we will definitely return to some sort of “next normal” later this year, the idea of “snapping back” to what life was like in early 2020 is unlikely, as COVID-19 continues to make its way through our communities in different forms in the coming years.
That leaves us with a series of questions that we may need to wrestle with in the coming years, as we think about our churches’ responses to this persistent disease and its impact on them.
Here are five potential questions that you may need to face in the coming years. Gather your leadership team together, tackle these questions, and think about how it is that you might be able to respond, even if just for your building, reopening, recall, and reengagement plans for the coming months.
How Will Your Kids’ Ministry Respond to Persistent Surges?
One of the clear realities of an endemic is that, at least for the coming year, we’re going to deal with surges of COVID-19 amongst the young.
It’s also highly likely that for the coming months, even beyond vaccination of adults, we’re going to see school districts closing and moving back to online learning.
The good work that has been put in with school boards across the country to figure out how to do instruction at scale online will be employed once again. What difference does that make to your church as you look at your weekend services and the way that you think about doing kids’ ministry?
Many churches have used the “online or in person” statuses of their local school board to indicate what they should be doing with kids’ ministry. What does this mean, then, if a school decides to do two weeks of online learning to slow the spread of the disease through its population? How will you respond? Will you move everything on your kids’ ministry online too?
Think back to a year ago. With hindsight, what would you have done differently in your kids’ ministry to prepare for that? Now project that into the future. What different decisions would you make today if, over the coming years, your kids’ ministry were required to move back and forth between in-person and online formats because of how COVID-19 were moving through the underage population in your community?
Is Your Church Ready to Re-Implement Restrictions Periodically?
The idea that the social distancing measures that we’ve seen in place for the last year will just simply go away in the summer is highly unlikely.
It would appear that we are heading to a reality where the requirement to keep a distance from other people, wash our hands, do contact tracing, and other nonmedical interventions will likely be the last of the restrictions to be fully lifted.
As the pandemic shifts to an endemic and swells in various regions, the continuous changes within these nonmedical interventions could require your church to also be constantly shifting what it’s required to do.
What will social distancing look like in the future?
How do you continue to do contact tracing for the percentage of people in any given auditorium? Rather than hoping to shed those requirements, it would be better for us to develop plans now for how to reengage these in the coming weeks and months.
If you travelled regularly before 9/11, you might remember life before such strict airport restrictions. Did you think at the time that we’d still be taking our shoes off for airport security all these years later? Our ability to adapt to a new restriction like that is really high. Some of these new restrictions will be with us for a long time, so what needs to change today in light of that?
Will You Take a Pro-Vaccine Stance on Booster Shots?
Look carefully at the research predicting what will happen as the pandemic shifts to an endemic and you’ll realize that we’re likely in for years of booster shots for vaccines.
In fact, there are already plans afoot to distribute booster shots as soon as fall of 2021. As community leaders, we have to think carefully about how we communicate around vaccines. How can we encourage our people to get vaccinated? What difference does it make to our staff? How do we encourage them and leaders within our community to get the original vaccines and boosters that may be coming?
Your church may be called upon, as we’ve seen across the country, to be a vaccine distribution center because we have larger parking lots and better ability to move people through at scale than your local pharmacy or grocery store.
The science and history of vaccines is really clear (clear enough for Penn and Teller or Bill Nye the Science Guy to explain it, anyway.) We can’t let the fringe elements of our churches present this as a “two-sided issue” where various opinions should be considered. Vaccines are saving lives. We need to be on the right side of history and encourage our people to get vaccinated.
How Will You Engage Your People in the Worldwide Family of God Without Mission Trips for Five Years?
It’s likely that robust international travel will be among the very last things to return to normal.
It seems like a bygone era when we could go to the nearest international airport, jump on a plane, and, within hours, engage with our brothers and sisters in various countries around the world.
You’ll notice how dramatically this has shifted if you talk to international mission organizations, who were used to undertaking international leadership junkets that took donors and leaders to meet with on-the-ground professionals making a difference in their community for the message of Jesus.
The same will be true for your church. For years, many churches have relied on taking people on international mission trips to do good work while they’re on the ground. The greatest impact was on the people who were doing the travelling, as the posture of their hearts when they returned changed within a much larger vision of what it means to be a part of the worldwide family of God.
While the focus on helping locally has been incredible in so many churches around the country, this has sometimes meant taking a lesser focus on developing or helping other parts of the world.
How, then, can we think creatively about engaging the average people that attend our church when we won’t be able to travel with them, whether that’s by government fiat or people’s hesitation to go to developing countries around the world?
What Would It Look Like Shifting to Smaller Gatherings for Years to Come?
One of the fascinating outcomes of the pandemic will be its psychological impact on people gathering in large crowds.
It looks like it will be at least a year, potentially more like 18 months, before anyone in the country will be able to gather in groups much larger than their families or what we would typically see at a Thanksgiving meal.
What impact will that have on us when so many of our ministries depend on packing hundreds, if not thousands, of people into a single ventilated space to hear Jesus’ message that you’re engaged with the body of Christ?
Has there been a shift in your people’s attitudes where they’re now more likely to come to smaller local gatherings than find themselves back in larger ones? Should we be looking at redesigning our campuses to have multiple rooms to accommodate smaller groups?
Multi-site churches are particularly well equipped for this, as we’ve been used to figuring out how to rescale our ministries for different sized locations if, in the future, people want multiple smaller ones.
If you knew today that you weren’t going to be able to gather more than 250 people in a room for the next five years, what differences would it make to the way you’re currently thinking about your reopening plans?
Rather than continuing to figure out how to fit 30% of people at six feet apart in your buildings, should we just be repositioning all of those spaces to look for smaller ones, rather than trying to drive back towards larger groups?
Pandemic to endemic—what questions does your team have?
I encourage you to gather your leadership team together, talk through these five questions, and wrestle with any other issues that are pertinent to your particular church. I’d love to hear from you, either by email or in the comments below, on what questions you are tackling as you think about this shift from pandemic to endemic.
I’m cheering for you; this is an incredible season to be a part of the kingdom of God.
Working at Health while Facilitating for Growth with Renaut van der Riet
Mar 18, 2021
Welcome to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Renaut van der Riet from Mosaic Church in the Orlando, Florida area. Passionate about making the gospel beautiful however they can, Mosaic is continually pursuing how they can serve each other and how they can serve their community. This heart has led to tremendous growth in seasons, which also has exposed areas where the church needs to work on its health.
As church leaders, we run into trouble when we become obsessed with measuring the health of our churches by the size of our churches, as our culture pressures us to do. But fruitfulness is the biblical measurement for what indicates health. Listen in as Renaut shares how to stay healthy as a leader and a church while you are growing.
Stop growth for the sake of health. // Stopping growth momentum or slowing it down for a season can be a huge fear for churches. We may feel that we have to keep it going no matter what, even if it’s negatively affecting the broader health of the church and staff. Ultimately, growth without health will not be sustainable. Many large churches will grow and grow and grow only to then crash and burn, or have a major staff turnover. During one of Mosaic’s growth spurts where they doubled in size in a season, they found their DNA became diluted and they needed to pull back to work on their health and culture.
Regular commitment to exposure. // When the pace of growth is going fast, things can look great in public so we assume that it is also going well behind the scenes. The reality is, when things are growing fast some things will fall through the cracks or not get the attention they need. That eventually erodes health without our even noticing it. Combat this drift by having regular evaluations of both your leadership and infrastructure so you can bring issues into the light and address them before they get out of control.
Show your truth. // Secrets and shadows should be our greatest fear as ministry leaders. Just as we need to bring issues in our ministry into the light, we need to be honest about the state of our souls. As Renaut notes, the sooner we share our deficits, the sooner we’re free because then there’s nothing for people to find out! Whether you’re on stage in front of your church, or working with your staff, be honest about your shortcomings. Pastors’ lives are as messy and imperfect as anyone else’s. Let in the light on your life to protect yourself from making really big mistakes down the road.
More fruitful, more health. // The bible doesn’t say: the bigger the church, the healthier the church. Rather fruitfulness is an indicator of health. We have created this belief that if you pastor a big church, you are a better leader. But that’s simply not true. Leading a church is a bit like gardening where each of us are given a plant to care for, and each individual plant is very different from other kinds. Each plant has unique challenges in its care and also gifts to offer. Be thankful that each different church can learn from each other and has something different to contribute to God’s mission.
Cultivate healthy intimacy. // As church leaders, if we become obsessed with our positions, then church becomes an idol. As a result we won’t want our souls to be exposed to the light and an obsession with growth will override our church’s health, eventually causing things to fall flat. When church leaders fail, we see that intimacy with God, their spouse and biblical community has been eroded over time. It’s important to learn how to continually cultivate these areas of intimacy to stay in the light.
Find What is Missing. // To help with these challenges, Jimmy Dodd of PastorServe and Renaut authored a book, “What Great Ministry Leaders Get Right: Six Core Competencies You Need to Succeed in Your Calling“. The book teaches church leaders how to care for their own souls well, how to care for their families well, how to not make the church an idol in their life, and how to cultivate good friendships, encouraging healthy relational intimacy. For years this material has been taught at Mosaic Church to their interns, volunteers, staff, and ministry leaders in order to cultivate health in the church as it grows.
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Carey Nieuwhof
Leadership has felt pretty uncertain and divisive this past year. How do you make decisions when the future isn’t predictable and your team has different opinions? Download the FREE Pivot Ready Cheat Sheet to get help making progress and gaining clarity through rapid change and disruption. It will give you a framework that effective and resilient leaders use to make decisions and take action.
Practical Help for Church Leaders Dealing with Home Life Pressures with Michelle Leichty
Mar 11, 2021
Thanks for joining in to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to be talking with Michelle Leichty, the Communication Director at Covenant Church in Indiana.
For many church leaders, managing their homes and serving in ministry has been especially challenging to balance during the pandemic. Shifting back and forth between work burdens and home burdens is stressful and can leave people feeling like a failure at home. Listen in as Michelle shares how you can address your biggest pain point at home and develop a system to deal with the pressures.
Identify the biggest pain point. // Like other church staff, Michelle found her role as the Communication Director become much busier and more demanding during the pandemic. In her search for managing both her work and home life well, Michelle began by reflecting on what her biggest pain point at home was. For Michelle it was planning and preparing meals, but for another person it could be maintaining the yard, doing laundry, or cleaning.
Brainstorm solutions. // After identifying your one biggest pain point at home, write down what the current process is for taking care of it. Think about what you could do differently. Brainstorm solutions, ask other people for ideas, and experiment with ways it could be handled differently. We document and systematize in our work life all of the time, so why not do it at home?
Make a plan. // In these situations, it’s easy to feel like you’re failing at home because you aren’t getting the same regular or positive feedback that you might at work after a job well done. Begin by focusing on just one thing at a time in this process. Set aside time one evening or weekend to make a plan for the coming week. Michelle, for example, planned out her meals for the week, made her grocery list, and did her grocery shopping. She also prints a calendar for every month with meals for the upcoming week written on it. The calendar then is attached to the fridge so everyone in her family can see what the plan is.
Experiment with new rhythms. // When the pandemic first started, Michelle felt really burned out with her increased work responsibilities, so she decided to try some new things at home around meals. This led to having her four children and husband each take a night to make dinner. Michelle still planned the meals, laid out the recipes, pointed out the ingredients, and then told the kids to start 60 minutes ahead of their dinner time, leaving the rest in their hands. This process freed up Michelle to stop and take a walk after work and clear her head before engaging with the family at dinner. Experiment with changes in different areas of your life. Even if they don’t work out, that’s ok. What works for one family may not work for yours. Try a new rhythm and experiment with the changes until you find something that works for you. It’s ok to set boundaries around your family so that they aren’t being sacrificed on the altar of ministry.
Transition is hard. // No matter what type of change you are facing in life—whether it’s because of COVID, a new job, a new baby, etc.—the transition is hard. Change can be good, but the transition can be really difficult for you and your family. It’s important to process the change and grieve what you’re leaving behind, whatever that is. Maintaining systems during change can add some normalcy and stability while transitioning to something new.
Find the rhythms. // Different seasons of life call for different rhythms at home. A newly married couple will have different rhythms than an empty nester couple or a single person or a couple with young children. It’s ok to change what worked before that isn’t working now. Start small by thinking through one pain point and changing just one thing at a time.
You can learn more about Covenant Church at www.covenantepc.org and download this document Michelle has provided to help work through developing new rhythms at home.
Thank You for Tuning In!
There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please shareit by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremelyhelpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!
Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Red Letter Challenge
One of the best times of the year to start an all-in church series is the Sunday right after Easter. The team at Red Letter Challenge have become the 40-day church series experts…they created not only a 40-day church series, but offer unique daily challenges as well for everyone in your church to complete. It’s a fun, amazing time and many people take steps towards Jesus! Pastors, grab your free 40-day challenge book here and see what your church can do!
Speaking Truth to the Hearts of Executive Pastors with Kevin Davis
Mar 04, 2021
Welcome back to this week’s unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Kevin Davis from 2|42 Community Church in Michigan. Kevin is one of the executive pastors and focuses on small groups, culture, and leadership development.
What makes a good ministry leader? How can you learn to lead yourself well? How do you work through conflict with other church leaders and put the church first? Listen in as Kevin shares about what has impacted him the most in his own leadership development and how church leaders can best live out their ministry callings.
Church first; job second. // Being a campus pastor is a difficult job in the church world because you may feel responsible for everything but you don’t have the authority to change everything. Yet the role is very important. At 2|42 Community Church each of the campuses are in varying communities and it’s critical that each campus pastor has a voice in the decisions and direction of the church so that one campus doesn’t speak for the rest and miss capturing what’s needed. Campus pastors need to bleed and know the DNA of 2|42, but also adapt and make it contextual in the communities where they serve. What helps with this is that nearly all campus pastors have been hired from within and so 2|42 is their church first and their place of employment second.
Know your calling. // In order to deal with the tension between responsibility and authority, the campus pastor, or any other church leader, needs to have some good practices in place. Know your identity and where your worth comes from. You don’t always have to be right. If you know God has called you to this ministry, then you can stick with it knowing it’s where you’re supposed to be, even when things aren’t easy or there’s conflict. Develop relationships with other staff members and cultivate loyalty to hold on to the relationship side. Honor each other and work through your differences. Keep short accounts and always put the church ahead of yourselves.
Submission. // Kevin notes that submission has been the most formative aspect of his own development as a leader. Being a good follower of leaders is what prepares you to be a good leader. We are not called to be famous. When you’re in your 20s, focus on developing your character – this time is about who you will BE for the church. That way in your 30s, 40s and 50s it will be about what you DO for the church. The best thing a young person can do right now is to be in submission, be mentored, give people access to all their business, to let others challenge them and form and shape them into the character of the person God needs them to be in 10 years.
Learn to be a servant. // Don’t let culture (even church culture) define success for you. A large part of an executive pastor’s job is to discover the gifting and calling of the lead pastor and then fill in the gaps around that. This dynamic creates a collaborative power. Remember that all authority that is placed over us is from God and that submission is a form of chosen suffering. Your leadership structure and those in authority over you (regardless of how good or bad they are) can make you more holy as you learn to be obedient. Champion your boss, supporting him or her, and work to make them successful. Follow the leader over you in the way you would want to be followed.
You can learn more about 2|42 Community Church at 242community.com and connect with Kevin via email. To learn more about NewThing visit www.newthing.org.
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